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Emily Johnson from Get Mentally Fit sits down with Chris to discuss the stigma around mental health, psychological safety, and siestas.
Hello Folks, In this election season before the results on May 2, from Movie Herald we would like to talk about the politics in Tamil Nadu and Tamil Cinema. Both are tied together and we can't leave one and discuss the other topic. In this third and final episode, we will be discussing in detail the growth of social media, meme culture and how the next-gen is making the most out of it. Also, we discuss the shift of politics from the stars to the thinkers. Karthik Sambanthan from Kadhaippoma With Karthik is joining us to discuss in detail the various phases and how movies became a part of Politics and how it unfolded. Please listen to the same and share your thoughts on it. #Politics #Elections2021 #May2Result #TNElections #tamilnaduelectionresults P.S: The Pun in the title is intended.
In this clip from episode #125 of the ProActive Podcast, Meryl Johnston reveals the inspiration behind her business pursuits, as well as how she balances her career and lifestyle.
In this clip from episode #125 of The ProActive Podcast, Bean Ninjas Founder Meryl Johnston explores the multi-pronged approach she used to make her company a success.
In this clip from episode #125 of the ProActive Podcast, Meryl Johnston and Chris Hogan discuss curating an international business team, internships, and content marketing.
In this clip from episode #125 of the ProActive Podcast, Bean Ninjas' Meryl Johnston explains the importance of having perspective in your ambitions.
In 2016, Meryl Johnston founded an accounting business that now has roots in Australia, Serbia, the Philippines, Amsterdam, the UK, and the US. On this episode of the ProActive Podcast, find out how she built the Bean Ninjas empire while retaining her core value of ‘freedom'.
Cake Equity CEO Jason Atkins and MeMedia's Chris Hogan delve into the things that attract investors to a startup. Catch their full discussion on episode #122 of the PROACTIVE Podcast.
In this bonus clip from PROACTIVE Podcast #122, Cake Equity CEO Jason Atkins explores the realities of venture capital, and why it may not be right for everyone.
Jason Atkins from Cake Equity recently discussed all things 'startup' on the PROACTIVE Podcast. In this bonus clip, he reveals how to value businesses during these early stages.
In this bonus clip from episode #122 of the PROACTIVE Podcast, Cake Equity Founder Jason Atkins runs through one of the most common hurdles to budding startups - the deal.
Keyword research is, well, key, when looking for ways to connect with potential audiences. Doing your homework when it comes to SEO allows you to reach the right people and create long-term marketing assets that pay dividends for your business.
For the uninitiated, marketing liabilities and marketing assets can be tricky to distinguish. Listen as MeMedia Founder Chris Hogan explains how to create assets that pay off for your business long-term.
Failing to prepare is preparing to fail. Marketing through a strategic, multi-channel approach will help create assets for your business, instead of liabilities.
Sharing your product, service, or idea with the world can be an exciting time, but it's important to do your homework before you jump into the market. Conducting appropriate research will allow you to better understand your niche, purpose, and the needs of the consumer.
Marketing and sales go together like beetroot and sandwiches. That is to say, perfectly! Focussing solely on sales without any form of marketing won't satisfy your cravings long term, so combine the two well and the taste of success will consistently follow.
Brand identity extends far beyond just a logo. Listen as Chris Hogan delves into what branding truly entails.
A lot of confusion exists around the world of SEO. Explore the basics of SEO and how to best go about maximising traffic to your website with MeMedia Founder Chris Hogan.
Keywords aren't the only way to boost a website's SEO. Listen as Chris Hogan explains how to get the most out of your meta titles and meta descriptions.
When it comes to SEO keywords, sometimes less is more. MeMedia Founder Chris Hogan explains how to avoid the common marketing mistake of keyword stuffing.
Knowing when to use capitals can be tricky, but that doesn't always have to be the 'case'. Listen as Chris Hogan explains the importance of proper formatting.
Setting a consistent tone of voice for your business is an important step in creating and maintaining a solid relationship with your clients, as Chris Hogan explains.
Expecting results from your marketing requires more than just a single person marketing team. Theres the copywriting, graphic design, camera operator, video editor, website design, website development, social media distribution, social media advertising, Google advertising, data analysis... did I miss anything? Oh yeah. A marketing strategy, tone of voice, brand guidelines, and team leader to overlook everything. I hope you build an awesome team.
James Bartle is the founder of Outland Denim, a clothing company determined to help put an end to worker exploitation and human trafficking. Listen as he discusses with Chris Hogan how consumerism can be a force for good, the need for businesses to have a purpose, and why there's hope in the fight against slavery.
Sacrifice, the Olympic Games, and winning a boat race with two cracked ribs. These are just some of the topics Chris Hogan discusses with Olympian and competitive sailor Ky Hurst on this episode of the PROACTIVE Podcast. Find out what it takes to perform at the pinnacle of professional sport, and how Ky manages the expectations of himself and others.
Published Dec 17, 2019 DON'T MAKE THESE SAME MARKETING MISTAKES IN 2020 2019 has been another pivotal year in terms of Social Media Tactics and how marketers like Kirsty Chapman and us here at MeMedia have had to constantly stay on the ball. One of my favourite topics of discussion on Get Fact Up is marketing and who better to do it with than a fellow marketer with her finger on the pulse of digital. Kirsty Chapman is an experienced marketer, executing outstanding digital campaigns in the property sector. We've been lucky enough here, at MeMedia to have had the joy of creating content with Kirsty on clients like Villa World This episode could have gone on forever but we felt we'd covered most of the top level social mistakes being made across LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook and general customer service. Much Love. Chris
Published Nov 11, 2019 VIDEO TRANSCRIPT Chris Hogan - Good day world, Chris Hogan coming to you from Burleigh Heads studio here at MeMedia, for episode 111 of Get Fact Up, and I have with me guest today Mike Clark, who is the Queensland state leader for the Key Person of Influence. And if you haven't heard of the Key Person of Influence, basically you might know of a guy by the name Dan Priestly, who's an Australian who moved offshore and developed a great programme called the Key Person of Influence, and wrote several books around it as well. So, Mike, welcome to the show. - Beautiful, welcomed to be here. Thanks for having me Chris. Chris Hogan - Mate so, how did you come to be here in Queensland running Key Person of Influence programme? - Do you want the short story or the long story? Chris Hogan - No Mike, well, yeah. No. - No, I mean, so Dan is the creator of Key Person of Influence. The methodology that effectively we stumbled across by the first sort of six years of my career and our career together, we spent a lot of time with people in business, who had a shit tonne of influence basically. People, I mean, you mentioned Richard Branson, so we used to put him on stage in the UK, people of that calibre and a few levels beneath. And then when you spend enough time with people who do business in that sort of capacity, you realise that the way they operate, the way they think, they think differently to a lot of different business, or normal business leaders do, everyday business leaders. So, basically from, you know, short story is with business with Dan here in Australia we had a, my first year of business had a pretty rapid success, taken a business from one mill to eleven million turnover, they couldn't sustain the growth, so we found ourselves jumping on a plane, going to the UK, and would master the art of running events which is how we gave this business so much growth, and then-- Chris Hogan - There were Triumph in events? - Yes, Triumph at events, that's right. And so then we found ourselves in the UK, launching a few speakers, promoting people, as I mentioned it, who had a lot of influence, financial crisis hit, our business fell apart , and we were given some sage advise by an organisation and a guy who's had a huge impact on our business, who just said listen, you're not building any intellectual property in your business, until you actually build intellectual property, you make some good money, you know, promoting other people's stuff through selling events, 'cause we were events and promotional organisation at the time. And he said until you actually develop your own intellectual property, you won't be able to build anything evaluation in your business. And that was the pivotal moment, because that was the moment then, when Dan sort of consolidated, you know, all these observations we'd seen from working with these influential business leaders, and figured out that there's five key pillars that they consistently applied, and he wrote a book about it. And so the premise was, what if we could show everyday business leaders who are struggling to stand out, how they can have greater influence by applying these five pillars. And then, that was 10 years ago, you know, jump forward, you know, we've now had 3000 people work with us and we've crossed 8 cities around the world, four continents, and I work with us over the 12-month journey, which we call an accelerator, and it just works, you know, it just really works, and I took that as my cue around that time, to step away, to grow a business that I scout across Europe. But I've reconnected with the guys after 2017, after I exited my business, birth of my second daughter was very difficult and challenging. Thankfully we made it through it, very grateful for that, but it shook me to my core, being away for 12 years, living in the UK, and I thought, you know what, time to come home. I started catching up with Dan a bit more frequently, and you know, pitched me an idea, he said, "have you seen your work team since you stepped away?". And I was like, "No I haven't, what's up?". And then so I just sort of checked-in, I was just blown away by the level of commitment that we have to just helping people implement. So we basically give away our ideas for free, get people to engage in those ideas, and they go, "Wow, that resonates.", and then, we pay for it, you know, and I believe businesses these day, they'd need to charge the implementation of the ideas. And so that's what the accelerate is about, and I spoke to a lot of people, like literally 100s of them before I decided to make that step, and the feedback that I got was just exceptional from hundreds of clients, and so I said, well, how about we hatch up a deal on our licence in intellectual property, to get back involved at the game, and so I've moved my family back 14 months ago, to now, basically we are, you know, a licenced intellectual property for the state of Queensland. So I'm working, going around Queensland, finding some world-class business leaders. So, that's the medium story I'd say. Yeah, fantastic. And what I find fascinating is that this, apart of the story that I didn't know, and you know, my perception was that Dan sorter it a little bit of business here, and then, you know, but did a lot of business in the UK, and was about to launch his Key Person of Influence work and ran a programme in Brisbane that I turned up to, so that I met him about just before he released his first book. - [Mike] Okay. Chris Hogan - But he was, I guess he was stress-testing some of those ideas in his workshops maybe, and-- - Absolutely, yeah. The early years of it, I mean, it's sort of, so what we do now is we show people how to turn their ideas and their thinking, and what I find is that a lot of business owners and entrepreneurs have a lot of influence, but it's just poorly packaged. It's like, in a one-to-one conversation they can skit somebody a prospect who maybe has a perception about what they do, what they industry, and then when they sit down with this business leader, this business leader is able to have a conversation and share these light bulb moments, to get and go, "Whoa, hang on, "I didn't realise it was like that, "I didn't realise the stats on things, "and I didn't realise that that was the problem "associated to it.". And then as a result of that, they can completely shift the mindset of the individual. And so that's what thought leadership is effective, that's what influence is, it's shifting the mindsets of people, almost like changing the radio dial, from one station to another, and so effectively, the idea around it is that you then need to just package that more intelligently, into intellectual property. So the way that ideas work, they have my ideas, to method, to product, to software, which becomes intellectual property that's highly scalable. And so, in the early stages, just like we did and we show our clients to do, Dan was going out there and saying, "Well, these are the things that I think, "these are the five pillars I think "that are the things that people need to apply.". He did some personal coaching with a few clients, to just get them to do that, and then when we launched in the UK, we had these people staying up on stage and go, "Yeah, actually, you know, I've applied these five things, "they frickin' work." Chris Hogan - Yeah, exactly. - And then we had a lot of highly, you know, a lot of very experienced mentors, who would also share in that sort of, you know, who could also resonate with those five pillars. And that's what I did intuitively. And so, the reason I share this is because it's the process and the method, the same thing that a lot of business owners do, that they know they're sitting on something valuable, but what we've got to do is we've got to go out there and then basically codify that as effectively, codify that, put into method, put it into framework, put it into an infographic so now it makes a visual sense, and then we need to then go out, and basically, stress-test it, and prove that it is the actual thing that does get the result. So, that's the sort of, that's how it all kicked of. And obviously we're now 10 years into it where, and I got a lot of case that is behind it. Chris Hogan - Yeah, exactly. And because I've met Dan so long ago, to be honest, I believe there is no such thing as that original idea, so, you know, I met Dan, I was influenced by many other people, you know, across the industry, Marty Weintraub from Aimclear, I don't know if you know him, you know, Simon Sinek, you know, Seth Godin, there's just so many authors and amazing people around the world that have helped influence and shaped the methodology that we implement here. But what I find absolutely awesome and amazing is that I've started the KPI programme and I've seen what you guys are doing for me that I've been doing for clients for years, but I needed you guys to do it for me, because I couldn't do it for myself. It was hilarious, like, oh God, I do this stuff for people, you know, I help them understand who their client is, I help them understand what their values are, but I'll be back at it if I can do it for myself. And it was... And that was part and parcel of problem and that we hadn't actually really codified, we haven't really codified. We had a methodology, but there was elements missing in the system and the process and the codifying of it, hadn't been properly stress-tested, and so, thank you for the push, you know, several months ago, where you said, "Look Chris, just get that idea "and get out there and stress-test it." And that didn't just come from you, Grant Cardone said that on stage at Success Resources Australia event as well. The time from idea to actually implementation or execution needs to be super short, because you need to know if it's gonna fail or not. And that time frame, if you keep it nice and short, then essentially you can iterate on that and move forward. - Give feedback. You expect your first version to be crap, it is a bit of, just as, manage expectations. Chris Hogan - Well, it's awesome in your own world, right? - It is, it is. Chris Hogan - [Chris] It's awesome in your own world. - Expect the first version and the second even to be crap, and you iterate, but you get to take that feedback and go from there, but just touching on a couple things you mentioned there, mate, is there's this phenomenon called proximity buyers, and that's what we observe, is that, as business owners, we've got so many ideas, and particularly someone who is highly creative like yourself, you have so many ideas, and where it could be going, that stuff. Chris Hogan - Yeah, that wake me up at 3 a.m. in the morning. - Exactly, right. And 'cause you've been sitting on these ideas for so long, and sometimes it could be months, sometimes it could be years. I just worked with a client recently, who's been saying, she's literally just gotten out of financial planning, and she's been wanting, she's exited a business, just joined us, and you know, I've been wanting to get this idea off the ground for like years, but has just been not able to do it yet. You know, so sometimes these things get so close to us and there's so many elements to it. So the phenomenon of proximity buyers is effectively, it's hard to delineate the things that are closest to us, which are the ones that are valuable and which are the ones that are crap, basically. Chris Hogan - True, true. - So, basically it's almost like we devalue and we underappreciate the things that are closest to us. Like, if you just ask most spouses that question , it's a phenomenon, your partner was like, "Honey, you be doing this and this." as she keeps mentioning this a few times, you're like yeah, yeah, okay, and all of a sudden somebody else says it, and then you go, and then you come back, "Hey honey, guess what?" she's sitting there like, "Mate, seriously?" . You know. Chris Hogan - I think it's hilarious that you brought that example. 'Cause it's exactly what's happened in my life. I have a mentor that says a lot of the same stuff as my wife, and took a little bit of time for me to actually recognise that and go, you know, I'm just gonna listen to you. - You're one of the best mentors, right? Chris Hogan - [Chris] Yeah. - Completely. You're not alone with this, you're not alone. And it's one of the things that for a lot of our clients is some of their biggest insides is that they're already sitting on, like, a huge mountain of value, and it's just, I've got a knack and our organisation has just found this knack of just teasing that outta people effectively, so you can just, we've already crossed over 60 different industries, it's not about the industry, it's about the lack of visibility and influence in the industry. And so the reason why this is so important, is that, you know, Pareto's law, 80/20 rule, is that, like, 20% of your clients generate 80% of your revenue, 20% of your clients generate 80% of your frustration. And likewise, for income distribution inside any industry is that typically the top 20% share an 80% of the spoils, you know, the revenue distribution in any industry, so the goal is to really get into that top 20% and the way we do that, is we have to become differentiated and the things that allow us to become differentiated often are the things that are closest to us like your story, your philosophy, your values, your ideas around this. And it's sometimes, is just having somebody else like myself and people and their mentors and our accelerator just get, whoa, hang on, get back to that, tell me that again. That's frickin' valuable. We need to package that up, you know. And so, it's easier when you get to sort of do that across a lot of different businesses like we do, so. Chris Hogan - Yeah, now I still remember, you know, it wasn't that long ago that we sat in your office at your house there, and my disparate thoughts and all of these things really close to me, and just being able to dump it on someone that was strategic and could see, you know, I guess similar things to what I can see when I'm talking to other people, so it was like, you were me for me. And, and, I... There was so much value in that. - Awesome, I really appreciate it. Chris Hogan - And you know, we uncovered, the values that are closest to me and why I do what I do, and it was a pivotable point. - Yeah, that's awesome. Chris Hogan - For not only me personally, but I believe here at MeMedia, you know, we've actually really discovered our true why. And it's actually changed our culture internally, and and we're applying, I guess, what I've learnt through that story and codify it, you know, what we do here, so our methodology, and our why and our purpose, you know, for our clients now, and have seen amazing results, like only in several months of changing up our strategy for them. - That's awesome. Chris Hogan - Yeah, it's pretty fantastic. - Can I just mention something on that, because I think this is really key, and it's what I'm really passionate about, is that what I've seen through working with literally thousands, tens of thousands of businesses, like, when we got to the UK, we were running events, I mean, at some stages 16 to 18 events in a week. It was just full on. I was living in this bubble for about, literally about five years were just eat, sleep, breathe, workshops, events, programmes. I didn't know any, I didn't have any friends over there so all the clients became friends, so it's just like this bubble of entrepreneurship that just was like intense. Chris Hogan - Wow. - And so, what I've seen over the years and what I've observe is that, a bit of my pet peeve around certain ways, that certain businesses are marketed around, getting people to lean out of their business, someone says hey, jump onto this funnel system or this tool and technique around, sort of just increasing your visibility. And the fundamental premise with someone that it's about building a system where you step away from your business. But it's not what I've seen to be true. What I've seen to be true is that business owners that love what they do, they lean into their business. You know, they lean into it. You don't have to lean into it forever. I was just hanging out with a guy last night, he's built up a phenomenal business here in the Gold Coast, and now he's got a management team, and you know, it is one day a week on that side, but he leaned in heavily, he leaned in for like 20 years, you know, and it was his passion, and the reason I share this is because I think, what I love saying and what I... I love hearing that story man, because, about what you just shared now, because a lot of times business owners, they can go through their business and then they've tried lots of different things and they just get a little frustrated sometimes just, a bit jaded with things and really part of what we're about is just helping business owners to peel back those layers and just to reconnect like, why are you doing this? What's the real purpose, and I'm saying this quite a bit at the moment, I will create a video on this soon but, is it I've really, I love it when business owners, their business becomes an expression of what they wanna see in the world, you know, it's not about leaning in and trying to build a system while you're stepping away from it. It's actually about building a business you want, is leaning to it further and build that up, and then an event in time once that's really up and humming and you then had executive management teams so it's then when you can step back from it a bit, right? But first and foremost, you've got to just lean in and just be, reconnect the passion, on why you do what you do, and it's awesome to hear that, like, you're then sort of helping your clients to reconnect with what they're doing. Chris Hogan - Well, it's not unlike Simon Sinek's story which I reheard again just two nights ago. - Oh, cool. Chris Hogan - He actually developed his, you know, start with why, you know, codified, you know, why, how, what. Why, what, how, sorry, might forget his golden circle, but he actually, that came from a story. And so to is as yours, your experience and many of the people that you work with, it's all your personal story, and that's what we're doing too, we're helping, we're taking people on this, you know, personal discovery journey, and you know, discover your personal values, your personal purpose and then your business just becomes a vehicle for that. - Spot on. Absolutely. Chris Hogan - Because if it can't be a vehicle for that, then it's being something that you're not-- - Exactly, you know you can grow it, right? Chris Hogan - Yeah. - It's sorta like you're tryin' to build something like that is, you know, I wanna have a successful selling but I don't really care about it. Chris Hogan - Yeah. - It's like, that never really works as a strategy. There are exceptions of the rule occasionally, right? But for majority of people that is not a good approach. Chris Hogan - I wait in borders, you know, a Subway or a McDonald's franchise, you know? Because they make money. But I don't really believe in that. I don't really, like, the food's gross, you know? My reason for being here is not actually helping people be healthier, you know, like, I'm just feeling their gut on their way to their next, you know, gig, you know, sort of things, so-- - And that's one of the confusing thing is there are some examples like I can't even think of my mind when that has worked for certain people but I think that for majority, as a rule of thumb, like a general rule of thumb, it just, it doesn't work, you know? And there are some exceptions to it, without a doubt. But, I just think that you're gonna have a better reality of the world, like, for me I keep coming back to this thing around, what's my ideal day? What does my ideal day, what does my ideal week, what does my ideal month, what does my ideal year look like? And that's what I'm shaping, you know, so part of like, what I'm doing now, my thing is business and human potential, and this, you know, entrepreneurship and human potential and boom, that's me and my core. Anyone who knows me throughout my life would say that's true. And so, this is an expression of what I'm doing. I often say this, I love my clients, I love what they're doing, and I can see myself doing this forever, you know? Maybe not as intense as what I'm doing now, but, you know, so and I just think that a lot of business owners that, like, your point around building business that isn't something you want to be, you know, seeing in the world, is it, there's always tough days in business. That's the thing, like, and if you're doing something where you're not really that passionate about it ends up becoming something which you just, you gonna check out when it gets really hard. And so, whereas if you love it, you know, it's ingrained of who you are, you see the tough days through. So, it is, you know, essential in business. Chris Hogan - Well, there's a whole, I guess it is the whole of a story behind that too, you know, when you're in the you're in a hole, there's a reason why you're in the hole and you've done several things wrong, and Jim Carrey actually, and passion, you know, passion actually only gets you so far. - Yeah, without a doubt. Chris Hogan - Because, Jim Carrey actually described it really well in, I think, a quote that goes around the internet quite a lot at the moment, that he believes depression is absolutely real, but he also believes that people aren't getting enough sleep, they don't have their nutrition right, they're not hydrating properly, they're not getting enough sunlight, they're not exercising, and so, you know, if you're in a hole, just look at all of those five things. How many of those five things have you actually done right in the last three days? Like, three days, seriously, you can be impacted heavily just awful last, right, or alcohol, you know, what's your alcohol consumption like? Are you having enough sex? You know, are you actually, you know, like, are you actually having enough human interaction, right? So I've just added three more, but-- - Yeah, your passion, just live in your passion too. Chris Hogan - But, yeah, but, I'm with you on the passion thing, but I think if you don't have these things-- - Yeah, a hundred percent. Chris Hogan - These things, then effectively you're not going to be able to function, and you're not going to be able to actually live your purpose. - Yeah, a hundred percent. Chris Hogan - And so, I had that experience recently where, a pressure cooker situation I'm so thankful for, very grateful for, but I hated going through it, was almost living an entire year and so out a week, and at it was all because basically I had four out of five of those major things all wrong, as if I was going to be able to be passionate and, you know, and live my life on purpose, if those things weren't correct. But coming back to being passionate-- - It's almost like having a vehicle, if you were a car , and it's almost like your car was driving around with-- Chris Hogan - Flat tyres. - Flat tyre, oil's down to you know, close to empty. Chris Hogan - Nothing in the radiator. - Like, what, I'm not feeling so well. Yeah, you know, wanna top some things up. Chris Hogan - Yeah, your windscreen's fogged. You can't see. - I've got no idea what's wrong, maybe there's a-- Chris Hogan - We've hit dark, you know, we're lost somewhere. - Yeah, exactly, yeah. Chris Hogan - So yeah, being passionate. So what those personal, you said something earlier, and I think it was about, I guess, I heard, 'cause I'll change what you said, 'cause I do that all the time, I heard, you know, sorta human performance optimization or building human resilience. You and I have something very much in common there. How did you discover that you were very passionate about that? - Good question, great one. Over time... It's one of those things sort of like, you know, proximity buyers, you know, like, when I played in my football years, my soccer years, I call it football, come from the UK obviously, that's, you know, as always the motivator, the captain of the team, trying to cheer the team up and then a good mate of mine that has got a brain business round the corner here in Burley, you know, we would always, even when we lived together in union we started studying personal development books, and always I remember I was creating these, like, Mike success systems, haven't thought about this but I actually, when I was in union, I actually had this desk and I had this little mapped out little system, on Monday I'm gonna do this, on Tuesday I'm doing that, here's my goals, and, then I got into what was that, Amway, Amway, in Network 22 or 21 or something it was called at the time, and that was the best decision I made that year was getting in, the second best was getting out, so I've got complete respect for people who are in the industry, who do that, but it was a real, it really just taught me anything, I'm gonna make anything of myself in this world, I gotta work at it, you know? And so, you know, and I was constantly listening to all the CDs and then back in those CDs obviously , and I was just trying to apply everything, so I just naturally, I think intuitively I was just going down this path, at just trying it as of self discovery and then, when I met Dan and the guys, I just got out of university, was HR Manager for a boat building company, and this guy was doing pretty much everything opposite that I was learning of best practise of HR in the business, and he was in everything opposite to that. I thought, okay, this guy has got 60 people in his business, if this guy can do this, surely if I apply best practises I could do something better. So, then I just came across Dan, and Glen Carlson is my counterpart in New South Wales, and there these 22 year old kids running workshop for adults on how to run a successful business and create wealth, and I thought, what the heck? What gives these guys the right to do that? And so that was when I first met Dan actually here on an event on the Gold Coast, and then I just ensured we joined, you know, I just, I pitched them for a role, I created the role for myself, pitched them for it, so I'm coming to work for you, 'cause I was really reached at, poured at, and he said, "You know, "if you want to become a world-class entrepreneur, "you gotta learn to sell.", so I thought, great, this is my opportunity, you know, and I literally hit the phone sometimes 16 hours a day, 'cause we call, we do running events in Perth, so I get up at eight, start calling eight in the morning, and I'd be finishing up sometimes calling up until nine o'clock in Perth that night, so it was just a baptism of fire. I thought I was good at sales, I realised I was shit. That's what you talk about when you got this for 10 thousand hours mastering you craft but also, you know, do a thousand pitches, 'till you get it right, and anyway, long and short of it is, we ensured we ran our events the first five, six years when we were promoting speakers, and when we went into the UKs, we were literally promoting people who we just were passionate about, we were studying their material, and we wanted to share them with the world, so John Demartini was one of the guys we promoted at the time, Roger Hamilton, "Wealth Dynamics", you know the wealth dynamic system was phenomenal. So those are the two speakers we launched into the UK, and then we promoted people like Bob Proctor, and then we also ran some events with a guy called Mike Harris, who'd build three billion-dollar companies, T-Mobile was one of them, and so we just had, like, we were promoting people who we just thought were awesome . So that's what I mean, and sort of, we intuitively stumbled across is, we were always looking for speakers, and that's where the methodology came about, 'cause we were looking for people who could stand up and who had a pitch, and we even had an email template, and this is where the constructs of the book came from, because we had so many people approaching us, saying, "Can you promote us?". And Dan and our team were reading these emails and well, can you stand up and do a pitch tomorrow, you know, do you have published content that demonstrates you the authority on this topic and the industry, do you have a range of products, you know, from CD products on the front end, so chunky stuff that we could share on the back end, do you have a good profile if I googled you and checked you out online, we're gonna find some things in, can you bring some partnerships that would leverage your trusted scale? If someone could tick yes to all of those boxes, we were like, well, let's talk, because potentially we could have done business. You know, one of the guys we were this close to sign a contract with, was Tony Robbins. You know, so we were literally, there was the potential change of hands, and we were considering whether we should promote him or not, and that was around the time where we've realised that the reason why we didn't do that one, sort of answers the question actually, I haven't thought about it like this before, is that, that was very much, very heavy around the personal development angle, and we were promoting speakers that were sort of in that line, but the inside for us was that what we really were passionate about, all of us in team was actually entrepreneurship, and moving in that direction more. So although that was, you know, exciting for us I think where we wanted to take the business, and where Dan and Glen and the entire team took it was down on the entrepreneurship angle, and that's where we've been in the last 10 years, but I think that's why it sort of, just following your passion early on, just following like, intuitively, where are you gonna take it, 'cause I was always one of those guys in school where, I never, it's not like I went oh, I wanna be this, I wanna be that, you know, I didn't really know my path. It's why I went sort of backpacking as soon as I finished high school. I was trying to find myself and I think I just gradually over time of just following the internal needle on my compass I in fact, stumbled across it, and then on point reflection, like, I love the Steve Jobs Stanford presentation he give to the graduates of Stanford University and this is great talk, if you just google Stanford address by Steve Jobs, you'll see this brain talk, where he talks about, you know, life is about figuring out, you know, it's the way you wanna go, and its hard to connect the dots going forward, but it's easy to connect them going backwards. And so, often, sometimes you have to, if you're not sure on what you wanna do, you just sort of follow your passion and follow your interest, of where that takes you, and you know, I also surrounded myself with a lot of mentors who have given me some advice. One of my first mentors just said, "Work to learn, not to earn.". Which is why when I pitched the sales role, I was earning like I think my basis, few hundred bucks a week , which I spent more, drive at it, drive at Brissy everyday. But I was just, literally learning, you know, had to get in there and sell. So anyways, and it's the point of reflection looking back, then when, hang on, this is my thing. Now I'm crystal clear, you know, I have to play in the game for so long that this is just what I wanna see in the world and help entrepreneurs who can maybe sort of speed up that journey for him. Chris Hogan - I think you're absolutely right. And that's, I think, what's been my pivotal point too. Is actually age. You know, I follow my compass similarly to you and and it wasn't until sooner than my 40th year where I reflected on my life and what I was passionate about. And went, oh it's this, this, this, this and this. And I have plenty mistakes of course, I've learnt a lot, a lot. - There is always a shit tonne of mistakes. Chris Hogan - I've made, I think I've made more but I know I haven't. - More lessons to come. Chris Hogan - Yeah. Oh god, here we go. But, yeah, it's, you know, whatever I'm passionate about, what things have I done right in my life, and that I have to continue doing, or do more frequently, who have I surrounded myself with, what types of people, and who should I not surround myself with. - Completely. Chris Hogan - What types of people, what are their activities that, you know, I know that screw me up, what's the things that I eat or drink that I know that totally screw me up. - [Mike] Completely. Chris Hogan - And so, you know, I've gone plant-base to several years ago thanks to my sensei's advice. - [Mike] Yeah. Chris Hogan - I frequently do martial arts and because I discovered that to be super important, you know, increased my exercise output, found that Grant Cardone, super-high energetic guy, you know, 60 years old. - He's 60?! Chris Hogan - 60. - I didn't realise. Chris Hogan - But he's jacked. - Wow. Chris Hogan - He is jacked for 60. - I didn't realise he was 60. Chris Hogan - Yeah, man. And like, he's a hot man, you know, like-- - Good, got to be the bromance going on there. Chris Hogan - Oh, for sure, for sure. But he's an alpha dude, right? - Yeah, completely. Chris Hogan - What I saw about him was, why is he so successful, and this was just from studying him on stage, I was two seats back from, you know, the stage, and I was like, more energy out, the greater the energy out, the greater the return on energy and alphas need that, you know? And I think, well, business owners actually need that, especially if they are the alpha. They have to put out heaps of energy because they get it back. So I discovered that too and energy equals, you know, that energy output can be exercise, you know, and you don't have to be talking to people all the time, but those things are really important. And then things that I have to cut out. Alcohol, forget about it, you know, like, just cannot touch this stuff, because it sends me in reverse, you know, it's dehydrating for one, it's a depressant for another, and, you know, I've discovered through talking to my clients, who are supplement retailers, good day Todd at Sporty's Health, what some of my nutrition mistakes are, you know. - Beautiful. Chris Hogan - Surrounding you puts-- - Yeah. Chris Hogan - Jeez, I need these, really need these, all of these people in my life, and it's like who's the, I guess, what's the round table, what's my advisory board actually look like? Just for me to operate. And my wife's essential, understand that, mentors, you know, nutrition, okay, I need my training coach, and I need my business coach. I guess there's just five of the essentials right there. - [Mike] Yeah, absolutely! Chris Hogan - And then Jim Rohn's quote, you are the average of the five people you hang out with most. If I can hang out with those people every week, then I'm on point. I don't know how it got there, but I think it was just lots of things you said resonate-- - Yeah, a hundred percent, what you mentioned earlier about being really mindful who you choose to spend time with and choose not to choose time with, it's a conscious choice around things. Chris Hogan - Of course around this sense and I wasn't in there, six. - Yeah, and I absolutely think that this, that's what I've done throughout my whole life, it's consistently, I'm just trying to hack my body. I'm trying to hack, hack, hack for the one that's a bit of an overused term, you know, I mentioned before over in the health, health sort of programme we're doing at the moment, I've got a coach who's advising me, Cody McCullough, he's from the Gold Coast, he's phenomenal, with just helping you understand these 360 different types of body types, and knowing your body type is instrumental, getting back to like, how do you-- Chris Hogan - I know Cody. - Yeah, so Cody. So, he's one I'm working with, and he does a phenomenal job of just analysing, he gets into like, measuring your bone density, like, your brain circumference, length of your fingers and just because the length of your fingers, I was looking at being one body type, but because of the size of my knee that completely put me in a completely different category, and it was just phenomenal, the level of detail we can now go to to then understand what your ideal... As an example, this one I'm big fan about, sort of getting into these daily habits and routines, you know, and I've tried for many years to get up nice and early and I've got friends who often laugh at it like, if I heard this I'd be chuckling and go, oh, they're up naturally up at four, five o'clock in the morning, and it's just like, poof, and they're awake. Man, that has never been me, and I've forced myself, I've literally done it for months, to force myself to get up five, six o'clock, but I'm just dead tired in the morning. And so doing this analysis was really fascinating, as we mentioned when we came in. I am a fan of this routine, I don't really feel hungry up until lunch time, so I used to force myself to eat, but then I felt uncomfortable about it and now I sort of have my shake, my wheatgrass in the morning, been doing that for about 15 years about a litre and a half of that, as my wake up, and I don't eat about, easily, like, yesterday I didn't eat until 2:33 I think it was, that was the first time I ate, and now I'm taking ownership of that, because now my body is all about digestion and, you know-- Chris Hogan - But it comes back to the individual, doesn't it? And that's what's the importance in it. - 100%, this is exactly right, this is-- Chris Hogan - Everybody's saying you have to get up early and you have to eat breakfast, you have at this time da, da, da. No, no, no. - You gotta listen to your body, you gotta listen to it. And then things what we're talking about here overall is about just tune in to yourself, if it's not clear for you, understand, just listen to your body, but also just be proactive. I love what you were talking about, surround yourself with people you want to be surrounded by. Put yourself in the environment, I love the Warren Buffet quote, which is simple but it's really true, 80% of success is just showing up, and just put yourself in an environment where others are gonna be around, where you can't stand to meet those type of people. So, huge advocate of all that sort of stuff. Chris Hogan - Awesome. Mike, thanks so much for your time. It's been a great chat. In fact, we've gone over my usual, but it was so good. How do people stay across, what it is you're up to and what can we expect from you over the next sort of 12 months, say. - Oh, that's an exciting one. Chris Hogan - What's one of the highlights or what's one of the goals that you-- - A couple things, a couple highlights. We were only running events in Brisbane when I first came in then I expanded us into Gold Coast and then Toowoomba and Sunny Coast and so on, and Mackay, and now I'm expanding us to around 11 regions around north as that was Byron, Ballin, and nine regions in Queensland, so running events all over Queensland too, so if you want to just check out Key Person of Influence workshops, you can go find one of the events, come along with my guest to one of those three-hour workshop, and the other thing I'm about to be launching is a Podcast. Chris Hogan - Beautiful. - So that will be coming out soon. If you wanna stay in touch though, just feel free to google me, just type in Michael Clark Key Person of Influence, or Michael Clark Dent, you'll come across my LinkedIn profile, and then if you wanna get access to a free copy of our book Key Person of Influence, I'll be happy to send you a copy, literally just type in dent.global forward slash start. So dent.global forward slash start. Send you a free copy of the book. Chris Hogan - Beautiful. - But mate, thank you so much for having me here. It's been fantastic. I love working with you, buddy. I look forward to seeing you just continue to expand, and your influence as you play this game even more, and thanks for the opportunity. Chris Hogan - I appreciate your time and energy too, mate. So, thanks so much for watching, guys. Plenty more coming to you on memedia.com.au and we're sharing across all of our socials as well. Cheers.
Published Nov 4, 2019 VIDEO TRANSCRIPT Chris Hogan - G'day world, Chris Hogan coming to you live from MeMedia studio, here with Burleigh Heads for episode 110 of Get Fact Up. I have with me today this beautiful guest, Larissa Rose. Who I met probably only two weeks ago, from a LinkedIn little message and we realised we were pretty close to one another geographically. Larissa's from Glowing Green Australia. I'm gonna attempt an intro here on what Larissa's all about. Basically sustainability and measurement, is what I think Larissa's all about. If I can sum her up in two words, is that sustainability and measurement. Now if you're a company going for those sustainability values, or organisation for that matter and you need to measure the impact of what your doing, then Larissa's your woman. Larissa Rose- Well done. Chris Hogan - [Chris] Is that all right? Larissa Rose- Yeah, I think you've capped that up pretty well, for sure. Chris Hogan - [Chris] Cool. Larissa Rose- I can put some frilly lace around that as well. Chris Hogan - Lets do it. So can you explain, firstly Glowing Green Australia, what it is you do. Or maybe what qualifications you have. Just pad that out a little bit for us. Larissa Rose - Yeah, absolutely. I'm an environmental consultant and director for Glowing Green Australia. We do two different parts in our business model. One is the environmental consultancy, all the stuff you just talked about. In respect to companies and businesses potentially looking at how they can progress with their sustainability. Their operational cost and what that means environmentally. Also, a lot of companies that need to ensure that they're meeting environmental legislation rules and regulations so we do that side. The other fun side of it is doing the environmental education. We go in and embed environmental initiatives and programmes a lot in schools, but also with a lot of businesses as well. You wanna teach about environment. Chris Hogan - Okay, so when it comes down to the rules, who's setting the rules here? Is it the company saying we wanna be 100% sustainable, or zero carbon footprint by 2050, and that's the rules they set for themselves? Or is it more so, they've got an environmental impact study that's been done for their mining company and they have to make sure they're not leaking any ugly stuff into the creaks? Larissa Rose - Yeah, absolutely. So there's two different ways people define their wanting to come to us, and the services that we have. A lot of that is their self-ownership within the company or the firm might want to look at the operational cost. What is that? What does that mean? How do we pull down and get less waste, less water, less energy? So lets look at that and we do a bit of an audit, an assessments. That really helps support them with their future potential to do branding and market that. So we might get some base line benchmark numbers for them. Then we start progressing across over the years, then they can relay and talk back to that. So that's really great to see and that's a really big shift in the culture around people understanding and identifying every move and choice that they do has a significant impact. Then there's a normal regulation part, like legislation and law as per Australian Environment Regulations, And also Queensland. What we need to do here locally on building codes and that sort of work as well. Chris Hogan - Cool. Larissa Rose - [Larissa] Yeah. Chris Hogan - I really like the first part, where your saying your analysing, or doing an audit on how they might be using or overusing some of their resources and not being 100% sustainable. That really fits into I guess corporate values and sustainability values and also what we're involved in. When we're going into a place trying to understand their values and their purpose and define that purpose with them. So I can see a real good fit there. Okay, you have sustainability as a purpose or a value. Me personally, I do analytics online. Digital analytics and data. I don't go and capture those touchy feely sort of data. That would be where you come in I imagine. Larissa Rose - Yeah. We really do, when we go in and see a business that wants to start making a shift and change- Self-ownership one, not one that's been driven by regulation or some sort of rule. It's really important to get into the crook's of who they are and where they're at and building that ethos and that vision. Looking, every business is different because they have a different narrative that they want to attach to it. Some are a little bit more economically orientated. Look, how do we start finding solutions that do minimalize some of the cost that we're spending on certain parts. One of that might be simply on paper. We're not doing to much on paper or how do we reduce our water? Then there might be other businesses that look at it, well they're going driving purely on an environmental perspective straight away. For them the economic benefit's are a secondary level. Because their ethos resonates quite a lot on that environment component. Yeah, it's really great. It is like you, you know just shaping out and manoeuvring it. it's like a piece of Play Dough and contouring it and how they want it to move and progress forward. Every job in business is different. That's what I so love about it, is that capacity to really create that hook and that space for that business and that client to be able to take a really good ownership around what that is and what that means to them now but also in the future. Yeah. Chris Hogan - Fantastic. Are you seeing sort of wide scale adoption here? What sort of phase of the bell curve are we in? Are we in early adoption? Innovation early adoption? Early majority? Where are we in the bell curve? Larissa Rose - Yeah. With a big trend that I'm noticing lately within our business model and the environmental education side, which does pull down a lot on a lot of the schools. We've done a lot of progressive work, some of the biggest schools here on the Gold Coast, really going in the back hand and kept very quiet on it because setting their bench marks, doing all that auditing work plus embedding programmes into the schools. To make change because it's all behavioural. Were noticing that trend. So we've had a fair push probably over the last six months from referrals from the other schools, to go we've heard about the work you did with this school, we would really like to be able to do something. We're sort of at this stage so it might be small. So I'm noticing a lot with the schools taking- Chris Hogan - State or private? Larissa Rose - Both, we've had both. Chris Hogan - Wow. Larissa Rose - Yeah. Would be even kill, absolutely for that. Yeah. Chris Hogan - That's progressive in itself. - Yeah absolutely. Chris Hogan - I would expect private to be progressive but not no where near as much for states. That builds a little bit of confidence doesn't it? In your . Larissa Rose - Yeah. To see, sometimes it's really teacher driven and it's teachers in the school are like we want change, it really upsets me we don't have recycling bins anymore. Or something basic, that's how full on it is Chris. There are schools who still don't have recycling bins. Chris Hogan - [Chris] Okay, that's a little bit sadder. Larissa Rose - Yeah. Well there's parts on the Gold Coast that don't have recycling bins, just as sad. Chris Hogan - Or bins. Larissa Rose - [Larissa] Or bins. Yeah, it's really good to see that shift and that culture. Especially that's teachers anywhere from the ages of you know 30 to 50 who are approaching. They go hey we heard about the school that you did. Could you do that? Then there's a lot of principles that maybe sort of look at it economically and what's it gonna cost for someone to come in and help a third party come in and really help us take ownership on that. When you start showcasing the narrative of what you can embed and the message you can embed into the community and that duty of care the schools have, to the community as well. Their footprint sometime is like a small community, some of the numbers of pupils that are at these schools. When you start shaping that and then start talking about the opportunities that come from taking this change and making this change. Weather that's you know, they can talk about I did this and then they can vouch for the local politicians, stuff that they want more funding to help support and enable greater outcomes at the school. That is how we do and mostly work a lot with that. Chris Hogan - [Chris] Amazing. So given that industry, the education industries on fire at the moment for you. What's business life like on the Gold Coast? What's the sentiment like? Larissa Rose - Well, in environment it's been up and down, I guess at times. I guess that could be where I'm going in my business as well and stuff like that. As everyone knows it's one of those fun rides when you start your own business. You do that whole entrepreneur scenario kind of dialogue. It's full on and it's foul and it's hard. Chris Hogan - But it's fun too? Larissa Rose - And it's fun if you chuck another f in there. My business has ebbed and flowed a lot. I was more of a mature aged student doing my environmental studies in my late twenties. I started when I was 29, 30. Already had two children at that stage. When I got through to my masters I had my third, so I sort of did a year or so break in the middle of my Masters and then realised I wanted to hurry up and finish it. Through that period of time I started my environment business Glowing Green in 2010 and then it took of pretty quick actually. While I was at university doing a few contracts that I gained and then a lot of the school work came on board and I really started shaping out that model and approach of what I do in schools. That sort of cultivated quite well. You need to keep a lot of stamina and momentum keep on going on it. I've done this space of feeling like sometimes I'm crawling in the trenches and the next minute I'm like okay I'm sort of in the meadow a little bit more and is feels great. Then the next minute, all of a sudden crawling through the trenches again. I've made some decisions through that time as well to branch out and do something I really had my teeth into, which has been the renewable fuels space. Something I specialised a lot of my research in. That differed away from glowing Green to some degree as well, and running another industry association, starting another industry body was absolutely huge thing to do. I was thinking well, it'll be fine. I've got my environmental consultancy business. It's kind of good, I've got the flow. At that time I was in a partnership and then that fell a part. I was like wow, I have to earn minimum two grand a week now to make amazing stuff happen in my life and to keep a business going. Plus I'm running an industry association on the smell of an oily bar fuel rag. Then I was like wow Larissa, you've really not thought about some of these things that your doing. Keeping that whole boat afloat has been massive for me Chris. It's been such a space of self-ownership and ego and pride. And then realising that self doubt and anxiety and thought process and thinking your not good enough or not doing. I should be somewhere else, I'm 40 now I should be at a different level than what I'm at. Chris Hogan - Oooohhh. Larissa Rose - [Larissa] All of that kind of head funk, which I like to call it sometimes. I've transitioned and understood that it's time for me, I had to move away from the industry association and put full focus on Glowing Green Australia. Because that is mine and that is it. The energy embedded in the other one was not gonna have as much return on investment as Glowing Green. I've been in the last year, feeling like it's time to crawl out of the gravel and trenches again. The valley of darkness as I call it. Shoot through the other side. Really pull down on everything. I read and see and I know it's okay to know all this great amazing stuff that you and I would be listening to all the time, but putting it in your tool belt and actually using that tool. Larissa sort your shit out today, you've got to make some really great stuff happen this week. Swapping that narrative in those times when I felt like oh my god what am I doing? Chris Hogan - [Chris] Yeah. I can totally empathise, had similar challenges in my life. I think your trying to ride two horses. As my mentor Lee kelson and business partner in Beach City would say, "To ride two horses you need two arses" and he doesn't know anybody with two arses. it's proper difficult, your swapping from one horse to the other constantly. That means your distracted 50% of the time. How's that going? How's the bio-fuels thing going and how's Glowing Green going? Larissa Rose - Yeah good. I had to do a transition with that and you just nailed it. I kind of thought that it was possible to do. I finally had to hit the bottom, for me because I'm so stubborn sometimes. I'm like no, I can do it, I'll make it happen. Can be really great at that and I'm so optimistic. Yep, I can just manoeuvre this, but really at the end of the day that wasn't serving me well. I was actually not working to my full capabilities and my best that I could. In turn it caused a significant detriment on my own personal business model that I'd been doing since 2010. At the end of the day you don't own an industry association. You could have started it, and you made it look great and it's pretty and you built the business model. But at the end of the day, I am just a director and I can fall of that and that's it, and then it's gone and I've got Glowing Green. I had to just get back to basics and look at that and realise what you said, can't ride two horses. I did that and it's been over the last six months, that transitions occurred. I've stepped away from the directorship in the industry association and went Larissa it's okay. It doesn't mean your not good enough. Just all that crazy narrative that goes on sometimes. I didn't think I had, I didn't think I was harsh on myself but It really surfaced a lot through that experience. Stepping away from that directorship, taking on something that was more digestible, a very small leadership role to look after renewable fuels in Australia and went yep that fit's much better into my capacity. Being a single woman with three children and tryna punch and push and do all the work building profile building business, then pull back to Glowing Green. I can tell you right now, probably the month before I met you, I was doing the I feel like I'm losing my shit. And I'm crying and it's hard work and fire anxieties like all time high. Shit I used to wonder, many years ago you hear people say their depressed and I'm like go sort your shit out. Go do something great and rad and happy. Go for a surf, go to the beach. I couldn't understand why you would be depressed, couldn't understand it. Chris Hogan - I'm so with you on that one. Larissa Rose - And now I've been, okay, yep, universe just slapped me in the face so I can understand all these little things surface up. Chris Hogan - [Chris] Yeah. Larissa Rose - You know. Yeah, it's been really hard. I've just kind of really punched through a lot the last few months, with understanding what I needed to do a little bit more. it's one of those things, sometimes you've gotta go through those really foul, tricky times. Chris Hogan - [Chris] 100%. Larissa Rose - Then you just pop out the other side. Not meaning as you got millions of bloody jobs that are coming through and you're killing it. Just something shifted. I'm really grateful for it. Those little cogs, that felt they were so not even moving anywhere, and literally I feel like I swear I've got gravel scars from crawling through that trench. Feeling on my legs because at times I would just be like I don't know what's gonna go on. Maybe I just need to do this. Maybe I just need to do that. All this effort and time I've put into building a business, you wonder how much further along you can go. Your draining your pond to survive, the business pond that you keep on going. Then your just doing so much good stuff, to a point where I was like okay universe, I've done full on frigging everything now. I don't know what to do for you. I don't know what else to do. I'm trying so hard here, I'm applying everything and anything I need to do, I'm not being a slack arse. Not being lazy, I'm engaging. I'm doing everything, I'm trying to push and be on the forefront and engage. What are you gonna do for me? So that ultimate space, then I noticed over the months after that I started to pop out of it. Chris Hogan - [Chris] Yeah. Larissa Rose - Yeah. Chris Hogan - [Chris] 100% there. I empathise with the whole scars thing. It's funny to maybe it's the 40 thing too. it's the maturity that comes with the age of 40. Probably would have said I was this mature at age 20, but no I wasn't now. Wonder what the next 10 years is gonna bring? Then the business maturity too. The whole experience of being in business. I've been a sole trader since 1998 then had to hold down various employment, employee roles and all of that sort of stuff, to try build a business on the side and then start this business. That being said, just the scars, the adversity that you have to go through I think. That really changes the way you think about business and about life and what's important and what isn't. To be honest, I don't think I could have read that in a book. I couldn't have watched a movie about it and got it. No one could have told me, and I actually would have gone yep okay, I take exactly what you said and I'm gonna implement that. You have to earn those scars don't you? It makes you a better business person. Larissa Rose - Yeah, absolutely. I've got staff and my office at Palm Beach, just to have had all of that and taking quite a lot of interns. I know I can pull down on those scars to help instil confidence in them. I have this big drop line all the time that I say about building the leaders of the future and stuff like that. I can't say that unless I've actually felt what it was like to have scar tissue. The evolvement for me through this last year or so has been massive. I actually give so much gratefulness and thanks to the fact that I transitioned out of that role. Chris Hogan - Me too. Larissa Rose - And that space and understanding to let go, and it's okay. It doesn't mean that you failed Larissa, that you've not in that association isn't what it is. It's no reflection. There was a stupid funky criteria, not even a criteria. Just judging sheet that I had on myself because of that or this or that or- Chris Hogan - Was it social expectations? Larissa Rose - Yeah a little bit. A lot of pride as well was attached. I didn't think I had that much pride, but whoa by dang did I have a lot embedded in that role and that profile and that space and stuff and work. Chris Hogan - Would you also term it ego sort of a little bit too? - Absolutely, yeah ego, absolutely. I've been actually learning how to process and digest that over those months Chris. That for me I think, is what has been it. The big one to go it is okay to let go. You know what when I finally did let go, I had to go through that grow space, I released and then I allowed more amazing rad stuff to happen and come in. Chris Hogan - Open mindedness right? Larissa Rose - Absolutely, thinking much more limitless. Oh if that goes that's not gonna happen and that but Larissa your not even thinking abundantly and limitless like you say that you doing all the time. Your not even applying that principle right now because you know that when you stop and let go and release and understand that's it, it's served it's purpose, it's done what it needed to do, it shaped me to be the human that I am right now in the present moment, that's amazing. That is great. That is good. Stop looking at things like okay it failed, you don't have that any more so it's not good. What about the 100 other rad things that you learned from the experience and who you met. You taught yourself how to do this type of reporting. You learned how to have really great conversations with politicians. You learned how to lobby or negotiate, navigate through that corporate stuff that I could have done five MBA's on that and still I'm way better that doing five MBA's. Go thorough that chunky stuff, break it down, think it, lean on people, have good sounding boards around me to help chunk it out. Then yeah, release and in it flows. Chris Hogan - [Chris] Beautiful. Larissa Rose - Fresh air, open up that door. Chris Hogan - [Chris] Beautiful. Was there any book, even though I said it, one book couldn't have changed me but was there? Was there maybe a combination of books or podcasts or something that helped you realise the funk that you were in, or maybe some way to step out of it? Larissa Rose - [Larissa] Yeah. There's two really great podcast's that are great, which I love. One is, Mark Rhodes, Mark Rogues, he is in relationship- A gentlemen in Canada. Amazing, and it's just not skill setting you for your relationships and your capabilities to be able to be reflective and understand and do that growth and acknowledgement. You can apply that principle to everything. Another one is Brandon Dawson, who is in the states. He has built some major big businesses all the way from him being on a farm, a walnut picker. I've really valued those. One book that's pivotal for me, that I always go and grab all the time is called Feel The Fear And Do It Anyway. That book for me probably about 15 years ago was a catalyst. I can't remember the authors name but please google it and find it, you'll see it. it's Feel The Fear And Do It Anyway. It really just shakes you and challenges you. I use that statement and saying of that book all the time. It's so true. Larissa, feel the fear and do it anyway, go. I'm grateful that I don't get to scared to do things but I don't get to scared when I know they're gonna be fun and exciting and good. When you have to feel the fear anyway, make a decision that you know that's got some detrimental level to it, that takes full conviction and action in the moment. Weather that's with closing something down or acknowledging your business models not working anymore or letting go of a relationship that you just realised is so toxic to you, it's not serving you well at all. Yeah. Chris Hogan - Yeah, that's maturity in it'self right? Larissa Rose - Yeah, self worth and value I think really at the baseline of that isn't it? Chris Hogan - Understanding your values has been a massive journey of mine. Probably over the last few years and a few years back if you had of just said to me what's your purpose? I probably wouldn't have been able to answer that. I ask people that a lot now. I get blank stares and open mouths, the silence is deafening. When you work that through and talk that through and we do work shops on it of course, but it's so exciting for me to be actually able to share the journey that I went on, and the process that I went on to discover that. What my purpose is and how that aligns with my business. My business is a vehicle for my own personal purpose. Breaking out of the trenches like you say, can- I refer to Lee Kelson all the time, I talk to him all of the time, it just beats me up and it's beautiful. He will do this big sigh and go um, and I go what Lee, what? And he'll just tell me how it is and it hurts like buggery but I love it. I was like, I'm getting the real story here, there's no glossy, living up to expectations or telling you what you think you wanna hear kind of stuff. Getting that real truth actually really helps. He says, "get out of the trenches, raise your gaze." "Stop being so tactical and be more strategic." When your going though those trenches, your probably in it. You can't do anything else but be tactical and put one foot in front of the other and just keep going. Or crawling, whatever it feels like right? But eventually when you come out of it and you raise yourself above it, that's the breakthrough isn't it? Your almost like your sitting above yourself or where you were, looking down and going, right. See all the errors of my ways, I see some positive stuff to. it's like your looking down on top of a maze or something. You go , oh yeah, instead of turning left there I should have turned right. That's what strategy is for me. Do you feel like you've been more strategic in your approach to business now that your someone out of those trenches? Larissa Rose - Absolutely, the universe has completely bitch slapped me. I needed it. I needed one on each side of the cheeks. Now, oh my goodness, my ownership around that and my attentiveness to thinking like that and being conscious of that and not being maybe sometimes complacent at times. I'm like yeah it's all good. That's not served me well. That's a great attribute to have, however that needs to turn down the dial a little bit. And you need to turn the dial up on this one Larissa. So yeah, for sure. Definitely have felt for myself over the last 6 months. I've had a lot more better with strategy and embedding that more and looking at it, but also going back and having a look back and going make sure you learn and reflect on that space or that process. Because remember Larissa, what happened last time. Chris Hogan - I'm sure there was some really good stuff that you can go, that was great, that was great. That was great but there was just some valleys of death somewhere in the middle or mixed up between them. You picked the best parts of all of them and that's what makes you the best human you are now right? Larissa Rose - Yeah. Chris Hogan - You have much more empowering conversations with clients and people, like we're having now. I think adversity is so important and to be honest I lived a blessed life growing up and I think if I hadn't gone through business challenges. Life's beautiful. But if I hadn't gone through those business challenges and that adversity, the self-reflections and anxiety. I found anxiety at 4am one morning and went what the hell is that? Larissa Rose - [Larissa] Hello. Chris Hogan - Someone told me about this. I did the whole laugh and went whoa! I can't breathe. I was like that was crazy. Didn't think that was ever gonna hit me. Because it has, I feel like I'm a much better person for it and I bet you are too. Larissa Rose - Yeah absolutely. Just feeling really content and being in that present moment knowing that it is what it is and everything has had a process to serve you well. Chris Hogan - Yeah, fail forward is something I like to say. Apparently it's a book title, I've never read it. Maybe I'll have to. Larissa Rose - Maybe. Chris Hogan - Larissa, thank you so much for your time. I love the journey of that conversation. How do people stay across what it is you're up to? Because I know you're going to be doing some cool things coming up. Where's the best place to follow you? Larissa Rose - Yeah absolutely. Probably everything on any social media handle except for Snapchat because I'm not on that one. Chris Hogan - Are you on TikTok? Larissa Rose - No, not on that one either. So there's two that I'm not on and the moment, who are predominantly dictating. I'm on LinkedIn as Larissa Rose, my personal profile. Everything else is Glowing green Australia, so you can see where we're at and what we're doing. So yeah, it's great. Chris Hogan - Thanks very much Larissa. Thanks for watching guys. Plenty more coming to you on memedia.com to you and check out the socials as well. Cheers. - Cheers.
Published Oct 28, 2019 VIDEO TRANSCRIPT Chris Hogan - Good day world, Chris Hogan coming to you live from MeMedia Studio here at Burleigh Heads for episode 109 of "Get Facted Up". And I have with me Tegan Boorman from Social Law Co. How are you Tegan? Tegan Boorman - Good, thank you, how are you? Chris Hogan - Excellent, thanks so much for coming in to the studio. We had a chat a little while ago out and about on the Gold Coast and it was quite interesting. We were talking about influencer marketing and I guess the contractual arrangements that maybe they're not doing. Tegan Boorman - [Tegan] Yes. Chris Hogan - Or some of the pitfalls that are happening in influencer marketing at the moment. Tegan Boorman - Tricks and traps, yep. Chris Hogan - Yeah, so we did touch on some of the things we need to say around, you know this is sponsored content. Tegan Boorman - [Tegan] Mhm. Chris Hogan - Can we just reiterate that again for the audience? - Yeah, so basically it needs to be apparent and clearly distinguishable as being sponsored content when they're posting it. So that may be they do the #add, or #sponsored, or some other way to actually endorse the fact that it's a commercial arrangement and the reason why they're actually posting it. It doesn't necessarily have to be that every time. In my opinion, risk wise you would be better off to do it because, then it's obviously, absolutely clear that's it's an ad and everyone seems to know if you use #ad it's very clear that it's a paid endorsement. You are better off to do that, however, it's not in every case necessary. Chris Hogan - Right, so that's a great DIY thing that influence marketers should be doing right now. Tegan Boorman - Yes. Chris Hogan - Off ya go. Tegan Boorman - And a lot of them are doing it. More and more I'm seeing you know the big brands that have started not so great in terms of their disclosure. I'm seeing changes and they're starting to implement some more of the DIY stuff, so that's fantastic to see. Chris Hogan - Great, so what are the some of the pit falls that are happening beyond, you know like-- Tegan Boorman - Disclosure? Chris Hogan - Yeah, and why do they need to engage a lawyer? Tegan Boorman - I guess without a commercial agreement, you don't really know what they terms are between you, and you're leaving it open to a court to determine what the intention of the parties were when they actually entered in to that arrangement. So by having an agreement, you can actually turn your mind to the facts and what you want from the content that are creating and what's expected of the influencer. And for the influencer in return what's expected of them and how that content's going to be used. You really are taking it out the realm of, you know, we think we can use it like this and let's just grab it and run with it to a more commercial approach. And this is become a business now for people. They need to be clearer on what they are paying for and what they can do with it and by having commercial agreement in place, it takes them a long way to actually be able to say, this is what I paid for and this is what I should be able to do. Chris Hogan - So for example, we might be taking a photo of somebody showing a product and that it's meant just for Instagram alone. Tegan Boorman - Correct. Chris Hogan - Maybe their brand goes, oh no we want to use it on all of our packaging or a billboard or something along-- Tegan Boorman - That's right. Chris Hogan - Those lines. And that's not what the influencer signed up for. Tegan Boorman - Well that's right because an influencer might have a different fee that they would charge for that. And they might have a you know a package of services that they offer. And it might just be for a one off post that it's a small fee however if you want to use that content and create a huge big campaign around it, then that's an extra fee they could be earning extra money for that. And that may not be what they've considered to be you know what they were doing for that fee. So yeah. Chris Hogan - I'd say influencers starting out as influencers might be like, open to that, yeah, happy to be-- Tegan Boorman - Absolutely. Chris Hogan - Anywhere because that helps-- Tegan Boorman - More exposure. Chris Hogan - Raise their profile right? Chris Hogan - So where are we seeing, I guess these contracts coming in. Is there as, you know, is it based on followers? Tegan Boorman - It's a tipping point, it's a risk consideration that needs to be thought through by both the brands that are engaging the influencers and the influencers themselves. So the real legal risk in terms of failing to disclose and what not comes from the A triple C's ability to be able to enforce the Australian Consumer Laws. So under that you need to make sure that you know you're disclosing things properly and as part of that the A triple C have put out guidance and said that they're more likely to investigate things where you know there's widespread detriment or risk of detriment and that these are you know blatant disregard for the legislation and particularly if you keep coming to their attention, it's going to be an issue for you. Chris Hogan - Sure. Tegan Boorman - You know it needs to be a risk assessment that the brands and the influencers are making at the time of you know thinking through their campaign as to whether or not we need to go and get an agreement or you know is it sufficient for us just to sort of make sure that we're agreeing on terms. Or is it just a let's just grab it and run with it because we think the risk is low here but the thoughts around disclosure should always be there from the start. Chris Hogan - Great, and so what are some of the other pit falls that are happening before, during, after influencer engagement? Tegan Boorman - I guess for fees so there was an example recently in Victoria, where it actually went through the courts whether or not she was entitled to a certain fee. So it was an ongoing sort of arrangement and you know posts were sort of added at her discretion but there was no influencer agreement in place and at a later date she decided to archive a lot of those posts and then go and collect her fee and you know rightly so. The brand said well where's the posts? I can't even see them. I haven't got the value that I thought I was getting by this being on your Instagram page. So you know that's an that's an example of you know a consideration if she had an agreement to say these are the posts. I'm entitled to archive them after this date. You'll pay this fee for individual posts and in that specific situation as well they had agreed to revise the fee halfway through it which overly complicated it as well. Whereas that should have been in writing from X date these posts onwards are you know subject to the higher fee and this is what we expect from it. So it really takes out the uncertainty and the risk of a dispute arising by having those agreed terms and setting out what you're doing for the fee that you're getting. Chris Hogan - Sure, so people charging fees based on maybe just a post to their wall or newsfeed for argument's sake. Than a story and then maybe getting extra for if that particular piece of content gets a certain amount of engagement. And then are they also discussing the fact that well that was all organic. We want to put a boost budget behind that now. Tegan Boorman - Uh huh. Chris Hogan - You know, can we can we discuss that and-- Tegan Boorman - [Tegan] Yeah. Chris Hogan - And clarify what that is and what that means in terms of dollars and cents. Is that sort of stuff happening too? Tegan Boorman - I mean how they charge and what they charge for is so dependent on the influencer. Chris Hogan - Sure. - So I guess they charge what they can get, right? So the more followers they've got the better the brand alignment is going to depend on what they're going to charge. So they're each free to charge whatever fee they like. What becomes standard market practise, you know they might have a one post fee. They might have a you know a campaign fee. A brand ambassador fee. It can be any number of structuring in terms of how they charge it but yeah if it's the intention to actually sort of expand that campaign beyond the initial thing there should be some sort of mechanism and the agreement to sort of determine what fees if any are adjusted in that situation. And you know what further input the influencer might have. Chris Hogan - Great, so are brands getting themselves in trouble more than the influencers, like for example, are brands you know sort of you know we'll just use that image on our packaging or on a billboard or something like that. Are they been a little bit sneaky and and pushy here or? Tegan Boorman - You probably seen in the news recently there's been complaints about various different teeth straightening companies for example. So it is ultimately going to probably fall back more onto the brand. Because like all traditional forms of advertising you know it's where the brand is placing their product and there's an obligation to make sure that you know they're following the self regulated guidelines in that process to make sure that you know they're compliant with all the codes et cetera and in this case you know your clearly distinguishable provisions now and sewed it into the code of ethics. So yeah it is gonna fall mostly back onto the brand. That's not to say that the influencer doesn't have their own exposure and risk in the situation because you know they're a party to it and also the agencies connecting them so that's also you know they can be an accessory to this and it's a whole other landscape for them. Chris Hogan - Yeah, agencies, I know a couple. Tegan Boorman - Yeah. Chris Hogan - I was going to ask about the, I don't know what it was actually. Tegan Boorman - Lost your train of thought? Chris Hogan - Yeah I did, sorry it's a really great conversation and oh, unfair contract law. So does that sort of come in to where the brand might be going, hey we want you to do all of this for this. Tegan Boorman - It's always a consideration whether or not you know those provisions are you know enforceable, absolutely. But it's a commercial deal. So if they've agreed to you know provide the services on that basis, then that's the commercial arrangement that they made. Chris Hogan - So suck it up princess kind of thing. If you write or sign the contract. Tegan Boorman - You should be getting legal advice on your contact to start with. But yeah there's always you know mechanisms to protect in certain situations, so yeah. Chris Hogan - Yeah, okay, well. Where does it go from here? Is there is there more pitfalls that are happening that? Tegan Boorman - I think there's going to be a little bit of an onslaught of more awareness around you know content rights and usage and you know who owns what piece of content and what can be done with it. Specifically because we're about to see a new code come in in relation to influencer marketing that's going to make this more apparent to everyone involved. So you know influencers who might not have otherwise been aware that how that content can be used or that it can't specifically just be used and you know the influence that brand runs with it and then owns the content. Once that awareness comes in there's probably going to be more disputes that arise I'm expecting. But on top of that it's probably going to be clearer that they need to have an agreement. So I'm expecting this is going to be a bit of a game changer in terms of regulation. In terms of growing the industry up a little bit and in terms of you know turning it more into a transparent business transaction and needing the contract that goes with that. Chris Hogan - Sure, where does copyright come in? Because a lot of people would say, hey if it's on social media it's free from copyright so I can use it anywhere I like. Tegan Boorman - Not correct. So you know there's always the ability to share content and the platform's create the mechanism for that so if you're on Facebook and you know, you share a piece of content that's different than saving that content, and then posting it to Instagram for example. That's different and especially if you're passing it off as your own work at that stage. Chris Hogan - So you citing the resource, you citing the-- Tegan Boorman - That's right, you are citing it because you're actually sharing the piece of content that the owner, hopefully the owner, of that content has posted. If you're sharing it and when you share it you can see that person has posted it, and you're just commenting on you know, what a great piece of content it is or that it's useful that it might be something that your connections might find interesting, it's very clear that that's, you know they're actually citing that that's not their content. When you actually copy that content and you know go and use it to create your logo or whatever, then that's that's a problem. Chris Hogan - What if a influencer is shooting some content for a particular brand. - [Tegan] Mhm. Chris Hogan - And the brand is in shot, and there happens to be another brand like in the background or emblem on the shirt or something like that, that doesn't want to be associated with that brand. Tegan Boorman - Can be a problem. But I mean they're in a photo and it's difficult because they've created, the owner if the copyright is the person who brings that piece of content to existence. So it might be the photographer's taking the photo. They own the rights in that photo. If you've got an issue with being in that photo. I mean these guys could have a problem with this. Like it's you know-- Chris Hogan - They don't. Chris Hogan - Livin rock, if you haven't heard of them, livin.org mental health, charity. - So yeah, I don't think there's much behind that in terms of issues. I mean there are businesses and we have a client for example that is in the business of creating content that uses multiple brands. So it's a, you know, it's a situation where she will have five brands approached her and they're related products. And that they, you know, work well. They will cross promote each other and she will take images and those images are then shared by each of those brands which increases, you know, it cross pollinates their audience and increases their followings. Chris Hogan - That's why we love collaboration. Tegan Boorman - That's right. So it's all about collaboration and then you know having the agreements, we did all the agreements for her that underpinned all that to make sure that she could do that and that, you know all the parties are on board with that. Chris Hogan - That's a very good example when you need to contract. Tegan Boorman - That's right. Chris Hogan - Yeah, real real important. Tegan Boorman - [Tegan] Yeah. Chris Hogan - Excellent advice Tegan. So how do people stay across what Social Law Co are up to? What's the socials and what's the web address et cetera? Tegan Boorman - So where we've got a business profile page on LinkedIn. All of the socials, so TikTok, Instagram, Facebook all the usual ones. So it's actually a division of former lawyers so when we spoke last time I mentioned social lawyers, this is a specific sub-brand for that firm that caters specifically to this market. We made the decision that it really needed it. So in branding around it and it's got a very specific audience. So that's the rationale behind the change of the names in that scenario. Chris Hogan - Cool, so we have no contract with Tegan. So you could use this content. But Tegan has-- Tegan Boorman - Voluntarily. Chris Hogan - Voluntarily, sat herself down and spoken on camera for MeMedia and for you. So thanks very much for your time Tegan. Tegan Boorman - That's okay. Chris Hogan - I really do appreciate it. Tegan Boorman - No problem. Chris Hogan - And we gonna share this out across the social. So keep sharing guys. We've got plenty more coming to you from MeMedia Studio. In fact we're ramping up again. We've been a little bit quiet if you've hit our website. But there's actually some excitement in the air so. As it heats up for summer, woo-hoo. Chris Hogan - Cheers. Tegan Boorman - Thanks.
Published Oct 30, 2018 Mental Health is a topic which is very close to MeMedia's founder and CEO, Chris Hogan's heart. Why? Because the increase in mental health incidents is clearly on the rise. Many would say that raising awareness of an issue helps people become more educated and potentially more willing to take positive action when it comes to helping themselves or others. We hope that this episode of Get Fact Up helps create further awareness of how to combat mental health, in your school, your family and friends and your workplace. MeMedia have recently adopted the Livin.org clothing range as a part of our work uniform. Putting the Livin brand and message before our own. We hope that others will join us in this change, which also encourages more open communication within the office which really does promote a positive company culture. Take care one and all. Much love from the MeMedia team. We hope you enjoy the interview with Casey Lyons, Co-Founder of http://www.Livin.org
Published Oct 8, 2018 TRANSCRIPT Chris: Hello world! Chris Hogan coming to you live from MeMedia studio here at Burleigh Heads for episode 96 of 'Get Fact Up'. And today there is a explicit words warning, okay. Something's happened to me this week, and I know I'm not alone in this situation. And I have the absolute need to share/rant and–here you go. So the title is 'stop fucking up LinkedIn' people, stop it, okay. Now I know that's not all of you, but there're many of you that are going to share my sentiment here. So this week, just to frame, it I've had nine inbound connection requests, which is good I suppose. And every one of those connection requests has been a pitch–a sales pitch–straight off the bat. So I'm gonna start with–I'm just going to highlight three. Okay that should be enough. I don't need to go through all nine and send you sleep, but let's start with number three. Patrick actually reaches out to me he says, 'hi Chris, I can see you're passionate about what you do and would like to invite you to connect with me and share my connections. If there's anyone you're interested in meeting, let me know so I can help. Regards, Patrick.' Beautiful! On its own, you would think that is absolutely, you know, a nice way to do an intro. And look, he wants to help me–he wants to connect with new people. Fantastic, that's what good networkers do, right? But straight away–connection–and, you know, I accepted this connection request, and then boom! In my LinkedIn message inbox I get the, 'hi Chris, thanks for accepting. I appreciate, you know, having you in my professional network. Then there comes–basically–one, two, three, four, five, six–six paragraphs of everything about him. There is a question in there, but to be honest–you know–we'll talk about that in a second. And then, basically, I'm out. If anyone sends me one of those messages with six paragraphs–one question in it, and it's all about them, obviously heavily weighted about them–I'm out. I'm done. You've absolutely screwed up your relationship and your reputation with me. First impressions count. You're out. So, not to mention, he sends another one. Patrick says, 'hi Chris, this is–what–a week later. Haven't heard back from you in a while, it tells me one of two things: 1) you've already chosen a different company for this, or– 2) you're still interested, but haven't had the time to get back to me yet.' Okay, you know what? Sometimes these softer messages can actually be really helpful because I can just go 'boom one' or boom two'. You know what? We are all very busy people, but in the context of–I guess–the relationship that we've had. With, you know, Patrick and I having developed over three messages. It's been all about him. The majority has been heavily weighted about him. Now, if you haven't learned anything in sales, then the number one thing that you need to learn is, 'build a relationship, never sell on first interaction'. Never. And, 'why do we have two ears and one mouth? It's so that we listen twice as much as we speak.' When you listen to somebody speaking, don't just use that opportunity as soon as they have a break in conversation, then start talking about yourself. That clearly shows that you do not give a crap about me and what I just told you about. All you were doing was waiting for a break in conversation. So, you could have the chance to tell me about your life problems, or your sales problems. So, let's let's look at 'direct connection requests: fail number two'. Working backwards here. Deb says, 'hi Chris, I can see you're passionate about what you do, and I would like to invite you to connect with me and share my connections. If there's anyone you're interested in meeting, let me know so I can help. Regards, Deb.' Whoever heard that before? Oh, that's right–that came from Patrick. Oh, hang on a minute. Oh, there's something going on here. Bit of a cookie-cutter approach, do you think? Oh why's that? Oh that's the corners of the internet to help you create leads–build leads–for you. And they're all using cookie-cutter approaches. So, how is this going to help me, and make me want to use LinkedIn? If I'm getting all of these inbound messages–all cookie-cutter approaches–am I going to even want to stay on this network? The answer is pretty clear, isn't it? One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight paragraphs in her message–inbound message–straight after the connection. And there was one question in there, but obviously she was just waiting for her opportunity to speak, so that essentially, you know, it could be all about her. And then the follow-up message is 'I wasn't sure whether you received my message below. If you are concerned that old-school bookkeeping is putting your business at risk, we need to talk. Again, it's all about her. I do not care–no one cares–about your business. Why? Because you haven't shown that you give a crap about mine, okay. You haven't done any research. So let's go on to 'direct connection requests: fail number one' now. This is my absolute favourite. This is pure gold. And Jason says, 'I came across your profile and noticed we both have mutual interests. I loved love to connect if you're open to it. Thanks in advance, Jason.' You know what? Great! He's done–he's actually looked at some of my activity. Oh boy, oh wow, he's showing he really cares. That's really nice. That's cool, I'm getting noticed. He's stroking my ego. Beautiful–nice one Jason. Straightaway connection. No problems Jason–nice to meet–nice to connect with you. You know, that's my sentiment. But no message back to him I haven't sent anything back–and bam! 'Hey Chris, I just had a little deep dive into your profile and noticed you were doing e-commerce,'–okay, yes, looking through my previous thoughts. And then he's going in to the sales pitch. One, two, three, four, five, six paragraphs–all about how he's got all these proven–you know–methods on–you know–increasing sales and guaranteed money back. All this sort of stuff. Sell sell sell. Clearly his own cookie-cutter message approach to actually connecting with people. And how is he doing this? Well, there is such a thing as LinkedIn sales navigator that's–you know–being pushed very hard by LinkedIn at the moment, albeit, everyone can sign up for a minimal amount per month, and they be they can become their own lead generation–you know–experts and use their cookie-cutter approaches to gather more leads on LinkedIn. Guess what? You're fucking LinkedIn up. LinkedIn–you're fucking it up too, by allowing everybody to do this. So yeah, guess what? I'm starting to opt out of LinkedIn, and more and more people are doing that. So I hope you're listening. So I just write back, 'I've had enough by this stage, this is the ninth one this week. For a second there I thought'–this is what I said–'for a second there, I thought you actually had done your research and then I read your cookie-cutter copy. So sick of these bullshit intros.' And then his helms back, 'ah come on man we all have hundreds of lead generations–doesn't mean I ain't going to pay proper attention when we chat. I apologise if this upset you dude.' You know–he's using soft language–friendly language. That's really nice of him, but you know, mate, you've already screwed up the relationship. You can't back(track) now–no–first impressions count, right? And anyway, he goes on and he appreciates my frustration, but basically, he's an agency. I expected him to be better than these cookie-cutter approaches. So peeps, if you're gonna use LinkedIn–simple thing–simple tasks to do–is to actually do some research on people's activity, their bio, what the content they've been writing is, what they've been commenting on. And maybe actually reach out based on those things–produce some content. Absolutely make sure your content on your profile is awesome and you are going to have a much better time on LinkedIn. If you're like me, tell the people who are putting out these bullshit cookie-cutter copy intros–what you think. And let's clean up LinkedIn together. And LinkedIn, maybe you need to do some work yourselves. Thanks for watching. Sorry for the rant. I'm, Chris Hogan from MeMedia. We're a content marketing agency that absolutely cares about how your reputation is online. You can contact us on memedia.com.au and check out the rest of 'Get Fact Up'. Cheers for listening.
Published Sep 6, 2018 - [Chris] G'day world, Chris Hogan coming to you live from the Gold Coast, and I'm here with Jack Corbett, who is co-founder of ISR training, and we're here for Get Fact Up!, episode 94, on why, focusing a disproportionate amount of energy on sales and marketing is critical to your business success. Thanks very much for joining me, Jack, how you going man? - [Jack] Really good, really really good. Thank you for inviting me along. - [Chris] No worries, mate. So why is it important that companies focus a disproportionate amount of energy on sales and marketing? - [Jack] I think the reality is that in all facets of business, without sales, you are scheduled to fail. I think that a lot of small business owners, especially people that are in that seed or startup phase, think in the first 12 to 18 months, it's all about R&D, it's all about product development. It's all about message to market. But the reality is that, if nobody wants to buy your product from you, because it's not either fulfilling a void in their life, or alternatively it's not meeting the budget they've got available to creating a solution to that problem, then you've got something that looks beautiful, but you're really the only person that's having a chance to use it. - [Chris] Perfect, so you guys have a sales system, you call it SWISH. - [Jack] We do. - [Chris] And what does SWISH stand for? - SWISH stands for selling with integrity, and selling honestly. After arriving here on the Gold Coast 10 years ago, from Birmingham in the UK, I found that unfortunately we don't have the greatest stigma in terms of the ethics that we have, and the customer-centric approach to our sales mechanisms. I saw that firsthand when I began to recruit salespeople around the Coast, most Gold Coast boiler rooms is the term they like using in mass media at the moment. Had one focus, which was how much money could they make and how quickly. And what I, I'm very much somebody who has the opinion that if you can solve a problem, a lot of money is the natural byproduct of doing so. - [Chris] Absolutely. We have a big belief at MeMedia that we need to create value for our clients. - [Jack] Yes. - [Chris] So we are all about creating value. - [Jack] Absolutely. - [Chris] And solving, I guess, global problems on a local scale. - [Jack] For sure. - [Chris] Global minds is super important. So, what's one tip that people need to do, maybe, I guess in those very early stages of starting a company. - [Jack] - Yep. - [Chris] And, we'll start with that one. - [Jack] For me, I'd really focus on understanding your own price point. A lot of the times, I meet and I train an abundance of entrepreneurs, that have designed a product that fills a void in their life. One thing I will tell you, as entrepreneurs, is you are unicorns. You're very unique. We're not logical people, you know. We're somebody that's given over, 60, 80, 90, 100 hours of our week, to potentially never get paid for doing so. So I need you to appreciate you're not like the average Joe. Now if you want your product to be able to achieve global scale, then it needs to have mass appeal. So what I would do, first and foremost, is take my product to the market, I would give it to people who are not in my friend or family groups, because they will always have a biassed opinion, give it to your demographic of people you expect to purchase the product from you, for free, or for the bottom line expense, and ask them how much would they be willing to pay you for it. How often would they expect to purchase it from you, or with what regularity. And then I would scope my revenue model accordingly. Once I knew that, then I would say to myself, okay, if sales are what are going to help me to achieve growth within my business, how much time should I put aside, or should I actually assign to that task, for me in the early stages, follow the Pareto principle, 80, 20. If you're going to work for 10 hours a day, eight hours of those should be spent in revenue generating activities. - [Chris] Okay. And how does marketing tend to fall in to the whole sales and marketing process for you? - [Jack] For me, it's salt and pepper. They don't belong, either of them, on the plate without the other. So, you can have all the sales skills in the world, I've met these people. I've trained these people. They are guns. But they don't have a single customer's name, email address, or phone number to utilise or to engage conversation about the product or service. On the other side of that, there have been an abundance of businesses that generate high volumes of leads, they have to switch off their digital marketing, because they can't even communicate with the volume of people that are wishing to engage their services, yet, they don't have the customer communication skills, the rapport building skills, to make sure that they turn that lead into dollars in the tin, or dollars in the pocket. So for me, one cannot exist without the other, and there is really no value in disproportionately applying your time. I think they really are salt and pepper, 50, 50. - [Chris] Okay so, you've brought up a lot of points there, which is somewhat overwhelming for many people out there, especially when they're thinking about their marketing. - [Jack] Yep. - [Chris] So, we at Me Media, we're focused heavily on content. - [Jack] Yes. - [Chris] Distribution. - [Jack] Yes. - [Chris] Staying in constant contact, communication. - [Jack] For sure. - [Chris] Which one has the highest priority, there, do you they come in that order, or? - [Jack] I'm about to answer this question like a politician, and I apologise for that, because there isn't a one size fits all answer there. I believe you need to be both recent and frequent, I think if you look at most consumer activity, you will purchase a product or service that was either made available to you most recently, i.e., I've walked through a shopping centre, oh, there you go, there's somebody that does what I need. Go in and purchase it. Or alternatively, you will do it with a company that has communicated with you most frequently. So, I believe you should be adding value to your database, with some content, approximately every three to four days, just to stay recent in their thinking, remain in their conscious thoughts, and therefore they're more likely to take activity against your product or service. But, the other side to that, is, content for content purposes is the quickest way to lose an audience. So, if that content in context to why they contacted you in the first place, or the problem they're experiencing, then you could lose me very quickly. You know, I won't name a business, but, I subscribe to a lot of development and building material, because I like to know, what big buildings are coming up in my city, and how I might be able to invest in them. And when a company then sends me information on their newest retirement village, you have immediately disconnected me as your audience, I'm probably not going to open their next email. - [Chris] Fantastic. So, that can actually come into tagging in sales and marketing automation systems, - [Jack] For sure. - [Chris] So you're only sending out content that's of interest to that audience. - [Jack] For sure. - [Chris] And also, we have the content types. - [Jack] Yes. - [Chris] So, video, obviously text. - [Jack] Yes. - [Chris] Imagery, being photographs, or infographics, case studies, all of those types of things, all of huge value, but if they're out of context. - [Jack] They serve no relevance. - [Chris] Yep. - [Jack] Yep, absolutely. - [Chris] Fantastic. What would be one of the things that, you've had a tremendous growth trajectory in probably the last quarter of this year. What would be one of the things that maybe you would go back and change about your sales and marketing, sales and marketing, that maybe would have made this last three months even better? - [Jack] Yeah, I mean look, we've been quite fortunate in the fact that we've had an abundance of PR. And for me, true public relations are really the most powerful form of marketing, 'cause it's not you telling the world how good you are, from your first-party, biassed perspective, it's somebody else writing a news story on you or having an opinion that solidifies the services or the quality of the service that you're offering. But if I was to rewind the clock three months ago, and we aired on our episode of Shark Tank, aired on the fifth of June, so that's coming up in and around that two and a half month mark, what I probably would have done is been a little more tactical in my spend in the pay-per-click space. I very much targeted the major key words, such as sales training, business coaching, very competitive, very expensive, and hasn't shown to have the best conversion as there's a lot of window shopping in that space. So what we would have probably done is focused more on long tail key sentences, and definitely on search that's done in the spoken word. We're becoming aware that roughly one in every five searches on Google is now done through Alexa, through Google, through Siri, and the average person will speak about 17 words. Whereas when we type, we'll only type 3.4 to 3.7 words, before our Neanderthal impatience causes us to go, I need to search! - [Chris] With that noise. - [Jack] Yeah, I need answers, now! We will get very granular on our spoken search, you know, who are the best sales training organisation in and around the Gold Coast, that can support my call centre of 25 people in the insurance industry. Now what I've found, is that only gets searched three times a month, but there is nobody bidding on that search. So instead of paying 10 to 12 dollars, I'm paying 10 to 12 cents. And my conversions are probably three times greater, because I'm speaking to someone who actually knows what they're looking for. - [Chris] Fantastic, so data backed research, super important, something we absolutely focus heavily on as well. You're looking for those shoulder searches, shoulder niches, in and around your key service offerings. Fantastic advice. Thank you very much for your time, how do people stay across what ISR is up to? - [Jack] Look, with myself personally, I'm not huge on social media, which Chris is riding my back for, but you can always find me on LinkedIn, Jack Corbett, alternatively we're across all social media handles just at ISR Training.
Published Sep 6, 2018 - [Chris] G'day world, Chris Hogan and Andrew Groat coming to you live from MeMedia Studio here at Burleigh Heads for episode 93 of Get Fact Up! And today we're talking about Research Backed Content Creation. So, Andrew, why are we talking about this? - [Andrew] Well, basically, this is how everyone should be creating content. And we talk about this a lot, like, why are you even bothering creating content if you don't know what you're doing it for, if you don't know what keywords you're going for, if you don't know what your competition is like. If you don't know if it's going to contribute towards sales or just people visiting, like that sort of thing. That's kind of what I want to talk about today. - I think this is also putting the consumer at the central part of the conversation. - [Andrew] Mmm. - Around content creation. They are the ones that are going to be your customer. They are the ones doing the searching. They are the ones consuming the content. - [Andrew] Yeah. - And if you don't actually know what it is they're searching for? You're just, pissing into the wind really. - Yeah, effectively, yeah. And talking about what they're searching for, that's basically where you start with all this, so, on this next slide here, I've got a bunch of keywords, and I'm using AdWords data here, so it's pay-per-click info. But it also shows the average monthly searches. So I decided we'll use home insurance as an example, here. Because it's competitive as, I mean if you look at the keyword bidding range over there, your minimum you're going to spend on a cost-per-click is 12.67, maximum about 40 bucks, so. - I love home insurance, or I love insurance as a test case. Because realistically, it's a boring topic, and I think we can take this somewhere, so let's have a look. So home insurance top, - Yeah, so. - What top of page bid range, what's the top bid there? - [Andrew] Okay, so that's to get to the top of the first page. - [Chris] Of course. - [Andrew] The low range is sort of the minimum you'd probably be spending to get there. Obviously different times and when different competitors are active, it's gonna change. And then the top of range, sorry the high range, is the most you'd be spending. I would suspect it's probably higher than that as well. - Yeah, so interestingly, $48 per click, on homeowner's insurance. - [Andrew] Mmhmm. - For that keyword, but has a relatively low average monthly search, so that's quite interesting, that that's the most expensive keyword. - It either means people are really not being smart with their ad spend, or that's a really high buyer's intent sort of keyword, so maybe that particular keyword tends to convert better. - True. - It could be one or the other. Probably a bit of both. - Or, or the campaign managers for the insurance company advertising are bidding heavily on the wrong keyword. - Yeah, could be asleep at the wheel. Could be just a bidding war for the fun of it, you know. My point is, it's crazy amount of money you'd have to spend to rank for this, so what do you do next? - Exactly. - What's a better place to look than keywords? Because if you haven't got your funnel tight, and, you know, all the leaks patched up in here, you're basically wasting money here, so, what's a better place to look? - So using, we use this place, this tool as a starting point for our research, and then we take it to a whole another level using various other tools, and our own smarts. But it is an interesting conversation starter for this type of research. And you know, it gives you, just some ideas around average monthly searches, and which keywords are more popular than others. You know, homeowners insurance quote, 30 average, 30 searches on average per month. Homeowners insurance, 140 searches on average per month. Home insurance, 12,100 searches per month. Now these are-- - [Andrew] Australia. - Yeah, these are for Australia, and they're also very high level keywords. - [Andrew] Yeah, yeah. - So let's keep diving in, because-- - So, yeah, moving on, like, obviously you could spend money to rank for these, but you prefer to get organic traffic for these, - [Chris] Hmm. - But, with that level of competition, and if we go to the next screen, we can see the organic competition as well. With that level of competition, I mean, how would you get to rank there? The difficulty here is 60, and that's just looking at the page authority and the main authority for all the competitors on the first page. Which is extremely high. I mean, you're going up against Allianz and Budget Direct and things like that. - [Chris] Compare the market, yup. - Also, if you wanted to rank organically here, obviously you would want to get maybe like your service or listings page, like the page with all your products, to be on here, not an article or something like that. So, how do you make that interesting? How do you get that on there? Well, you kind of can't. - [Chris] No. - You have to think outside the square, and I know that's where we kind of want to go here. - Well, sorry, let's rephrase, because you can, we know you can, but-- - You can't just make that page get there, you have to, just like a-- - Do a lot of stuff around it. - Call it like a hot air balloon method, where you're sort of using a lot of stuff around it to drag it up. - [Chris] Yup. - With everything else, so, the next thing you want to do is find related keywords, related long tail keywords to home insurance, and also what we call shoulder niches, which is more generalised verions of the same keyword. So I collected up a a whole bunch of different keywords that sort of fit in that category, they were related, or you know, very similar category to that but tied in, like someone that's looking for home insurance is also thinking about this. And amalgamated them, and we have a look here. So what we're trying to do next is find opportunities. First thing we see here is the difficulty is much lower for all these keywords. And you can see there's a couple examples down at the bottom I just sort of pasted there. - [Chris] Yeah. Organic click-through, right? Which is the purple one, is pretty high. - [Andrew] So that's good, so low difficulty, high click-through rate for all of these sorts of topics. And then the next thing we want to do is look at SERP features. And it's a little bit small here, but basically what that is, is I've analysed, what, other than just simple text results are there. So is there images, is there videos, is there local pack, is there maps? - [Chris] Yeah, so what are we seeing on those SERP features there, the first two, they're really high. - [Andrew] Okay. - [Chris] Competitiveness on content. - [Andrew] That's AdWords. - [Chris] Yup. - [Andrew] So basically, everyone's fighting in the AdWords space here. - [Chris] Yup. - [Andrew] The next one is there's a lot of maps listings, which obviously, everyone is gonna have Google My Business set up. - [Chris] Of course. - [Andrew] In this industry, one would hope. And then the other two bigger are shopping related. So obviously buying policies directly on Google. There's not an awful lot in the way of imagery. There's not an awful lot in the way of, like rich media articles, which is the one in the middle, that's dead flat. And there's not a lot in the way of video, so, this is where we can see there's some opportunity here. - [Chris] Yeah. - So rich media content, and we always talk about this. - Yeah, absolutely, we do always talk about this. And what we mean by that, is that obviously text content is where we all start. Our previous videos have indicated that a video, a two-minute long video, can actually cover about a thousand word article. You know, you can fit a thousand words into a two minute video, pretty much. - And best of all, it's high engagement, but I'm coming up to this soon. So, some pretty good related keywords I found here, like home insurance tips, why have homeowners insurance, that's not the exact keyword, but it's related enough, and then looking a little bit outside to broader sort of categories, how we calculate your insurance policy, and I like this one, how building materials affect your premium. - Yeah, that's really interesting. - I thought that was really cool, like, that's something people would probably want to read before buying a house or-- - Building a house. - [Andrew] Building a house, yeah building house. - Absolutely. So that's really interesting and I guess this is what I was talking about earlier, is putting the consumer at the central part of your content marketing strategy. What is it that they're interested in? What is it they're searching? You know, I know we didn't put it in here, but I started thinking like, well, the biggest thing that I want to know is how to save money on my home insurance. - [Andrew] Hmm. - You know, how do I hack, hack my insurance to-- - [Andrew] Yeah. - To get the biggest bang for buck. - [Andrew] Mmhmm. - Not just home insurance, insurances across the board, health insurance, am I wasting my money? Or how do I get the most out of it? If I'm gonna pay for it, how am I gonna get the most out of it? And funnily enough, I think maybe, insurance companies might be thinking, no, we, well at least me as a consumer, I think insurance companies are thinking, no, we don't really want people to get the most out of their insurance, because that's gonna cost us money. - [Andrew] Mmm. - Well, regardless of what you think, insurance companies, consumers do want that. - So if you actually deliver content to them that they're really interested in knowing, then essentially, you're going to attract them through organic and not have to pay per click. - Yeah, and something that people are probably wondering is, so a lot of these topics don't necessarily mean somebody's immediately about to buy. - [Chris] No. - So how do we get to that? - Don't worry about that for now. That's sort of in the last step here. At the moment we just want to get highly engaged traffic, relevant traffic, to your website. And then we sort of tie that back in. But moving on, I'm looking at okay, so just a slightly more related keyword to home insurance. We've got home insurance tips. Big difference here, difficulty to rank this organically is 27 as opposed to 60. You're going up against some, just slightly more general stuff, so you can fit in quite easily when you look at you're up against insurance council and finder.com.au. And best of all, organic click through rate for that is 100%. So people looking for home insurance tips are guaranteed to go into something on the first page. And that they're doing their research. - [Chris] We can't get better than 100%. - [Andrew] Yeah. - [Chris] Yeah, this is really interesting, yeah so, insurance council, finder, iselect, all non-insurance companies creating content which we know full well they're making money out of because they're probably doing affiliate marketing or something along those lines, and getting a clip of the ticket when people actually do sign up. But they could actually be selling advertising to those insurance companies or whatnot. - Mmhmm. - Now, insurance companies shouldn't be relying on these third parties. We're speaking-- - [Andrew] That's right, yeah. - About insurance companies as any business. Any business shouldn't be relying on third parties creating a bucketload of content about their industry niche, to then drive traffic to them. - As much as affiliate, an affiliate channel is a good income stream, and channel in its own right, if it's too big, it floods the market with content that just pulls people away from you and your direct brand, so it's an issue. So, slightly better difficulty, slightly better competition here, like it'd be easy to rank for home insurance tips. But how do you do that? So, we have a look at what obviously everyone else is doing. And we've seen that they're not doing much in the way of rich media content, so go for that sort of thing. Video, with subtitles, podcasts, relevant interesting images in your content, infographics, subheadings and sections to your content divided up so it's skimmable, and combine it all together, basically, like-- - [Chris] Combine all that content together. - Video, blog, images, all that sort of thing. Basically, you're looking for engagement. Interactions with your page, time on site, low bounce rate, pages per visit, that's what will get you above finder.com.au for home insurance tips. - And then, as an insurance company, if you actually surpassed all those third parties. - [Andrew] Mmhmm. - And they click directly on your content, you've saved yourself that affiliate marketing. - [Andrew] Yeah, they're not taking your clip at the ticket there. - [Andrew] So. Coming right back to that, how does that relate to you getting your service page, your home insurance page up? This last step is what everyone forgets. That's, - [Both] Internal linking. - [Andrew] So all of this awesome content that you're putting out there, it's getting you ranked for all these relevant terms to your industry, make sure you're linking back. In your content, inline your content, and in the footer with a call to action back to your home insurance service or catalogue page, I guess you'd say. Because all of these well-ranked articles that you're putting out there, they're all going up the Google ranks. They're all linked back to your main one, and that gets dragged up with it. Whoa. It's a little bit hard to do these movements. Your main page gets dragged up with it. So that's how you, basically, would rank a page that's difficult to rank with really high competition. - [Chris] Yeah. - And that's also what other people aren't doing, yeah. - Yeah, so this is tip of the iceberg, I guess, snapshots, of where we would start with our keyword research, you know the actual, I think the half hour prep time that you put into this, we didn't dive into all of the opportunities that would come out. - Aw, yeah, it's huge, and just the research phase in itself, you could do an entire three or four episodes on. - Absolutely. - You know I just, - Got the data ready. - Well, maybe we're geeks, maybe we're not, but I know there's high fives get thrown around the office when we find the, this awesome piece of gold, which is a keyword or phrase that is being searched, thousands of times per month, tens of thousands of times per month, and has super low competition, and/or has no competition for that rich media content. - [Andrew] Mmhmm. - And guess what, we're going to overtake you, as the competitor every time when we see that, every time. - Yeah, like we always say, we find and go for the low hanging fruit first, get results quickly. And we've seen some clients have, like one piece of content drives 50% of their traffic to the website now. - That's the role that-- - Hundred hundreds a week. - Well, that's right, but that's because we haven't just stopped at creating one piece of content. - [Andrew] Yeah, yeah. - We've created bucket loads of relevant, engaging content, yeah? Related to the keywords. - Mmhmm. - That have high search terms. - That we know people are looking for in. - And we're internal linking. And we're driving traffic back to those important pages. What do people want to know after they've started reading every piece of content? They want to know how much it is. If you know, even if they're not ready to buy, they still want to consider it, right, that's really interesting, how much? Wait, what? Okay, is there an opportunity to buy now? Well if I was going to buy now, how much is it? So, what's the details? How do I go through the process, if I wanted to? Tell them that. Link them back to that page, that conversion page, that you want to rank really well. People may not buy now, but they still want to know the process. And in an insurance case, just for example, it's going to be a year-long consideration, or at least half a year. Maybe halfway into the year, I'm going, hmm, where's my health insurance or home insurance sitting at the moment? Where could I save money on that? How can I maximise those costs? - And there's going to be a lot of searching, in between there as well. They're going to be researching a lot, so I'd say this is probably a niche that needs a lot of content out there, and I'm not seeing enough of it out there, to be honest. - Super slow burn, and again, we're just using home insurance, and house insurance, and health insurance, and car insurance as one example. This is the same case for everybody. Everybody is taking longer to consider what their next steps are. They're doing a lot more research. They're getting more educated. They got the resources. - Mmhmm. - You know, are sitting there. The internet is sitting there, giving them those resources as and when they want them or need them. And so, having all of that content, if people are constantly hitting your website on the topics that they're searching, and not somebody else's, for the course of a year, guess who gets considered, is the highest to be considered when buying. - Mmhmm, and who gets ranked the best. - That's the obvious sideline benefit, yeah? And we all know that Google organic traffic converts best out of all traffic. The pay-per-click stuff, it hurts. It actually hurts to pay that, geez, $48 per click. But the reason why they're doing it is because potentially, it's a high converting keyword. But if you get that for a lot less, as in free through organic, you'd take it every time, wouldn't you? But it does take an investment, a front-loaded investment. - Yeah. - To get it to that point. Cool. - Time. I hope everybody got some value out of that. Data-backed research on content creation is super important. If you're not doing it, like we said, you're just pissing into the wind. If you don't understand that, basically you're throwing money away, on your content creation. - Yeah, it's not worth, it's not worth doing it. - Yeah. - [Andrew] Because you could actually be having a detrimental effect to your brand and SEO. - Yeah. - [Andrew] If you don't do the research. - Yup. And you're just putting content up for content's sake. If you're not putting up rich content now, in this 2018. Forget about it. - Basically Google doesn't like trash content. Google is a garbage collector. - [Chris] Yup. - It has to clear out the crap constantly, so. If you're making Google's job harder, then it's going to consider you basically a pollution. - Yeah, and if you're not structuring your content to be skimmable, and you're just dumping that content on the page, copy-paste out of your word processor, with no formatting whatsoever, then essentially, yeah, you're going to lose me as well. You're going to lose the consumer. Yeah, I might come to the page thinking I get this awesome article, and all of the sudden I just see paragraphs of, you know, 12 point text, with no bolding, no headings, no images, no infographics, no video, nothing for me to share, nothing for me to take away, no reason for me to bookmark it and want to come back again. - [Andrew] Mmhmm. - [Chris] See ya later, I'm out, three seconds, you've got three seconds to keep me on that page. You'd better make that content look awesome for to start with. Anyway, let's wrap it up. Thanks for watching guys, MeMedia, Get Fact Up! We've been running this for a little over two to three years now. Two years, a little over two years now. And it's proof that content marketing works. If you want to talk to us about content marketing, you can tell that we've got the smarts, the know-how, and definitely passion to drive your business above and beyond on Google organic search search results, which is what converts the most, so give us a call. Thanks, and see ya next week. - [Andrew] Thank you.
Published Apr 19, 2018 Chris: G'day world, Chris Hogan coming to you live from MeMedia studio here at Burleigh Heads and I have with me today our usual suspect, Andrew Groat and a guest, Brendon McAlpine from Internet Removals. How are you going Brendon? Brendon: Good morning, thank you for having me, I'm great. Chris: How are you going, Andrew? Andrew: Yeah good. Chris: Awesome, so today we've invited Brendon in because Internet Removals is a company that we believe every business out there needs help from and one of those reasons is because it's all well and good you marketers like us, driving traffic to websites and pages and improving conversions and all the rest of it but it's no good if your reputation is sub-par. Brendon: Correct. Chris: So, Brendon, do you want to tell us a little bit about Internet Removals? Brendon: So, hard to believe, but I am an online content removalist, we help businesses remove content from the internet, quite simply. When you have a negative online footprint, the misdirection's horrendous in the sense you could spend hundreds of dollars, thousands of dollars getting directed to website, on Google, we're talking about Google's platform, but it's just bombarded with some negative content from the past or new or for whatever reason. And it's our business to help people let the right platforms know that the content is either misleading, untrue, false, defamation and getting the content down. Google Reviews is a platform that I don't think anyone want to be on sometimes, it's not initiated by the company in themselves, it's just you get an email saying, "Yeah, "let's become Google Reviews." but unfortunately it opens up a can of worms in a sense, simple as a customer not getting her dog cut correctly and they've got a platform to just put a barrage of negative reviews and you're measured on it unfortunately with Google Stars. People, their online footprint's pretty important, it has to be now more than ever. So yeah, that's what we do, remove content from the internet for corporate as well as public and public's more the bad side of the internet in the sense of image-based abuse as well as revenge porn unfortunately that's where you've lost content between yourself and a partner and they post it online, we do our best to let the people know to get it down quick. Chris: What was that term? Brendon: Revenge porn? Chris: I've never heard that one. Brendon: Oh wow it's big Andrew: Yeah it's huge. Brendon: Yeah it's a name now that's, I mean the government's spending millions of dollars on different commissions to recognise it and to get it prosecuted as domestic violence, which it is. As you know, domestic violence isn't just measured by fists and that sort of stuff, it's the mental abuse. Chris: Yeah, it's cyberbullying. Brendon: Yeah, look we've been doing it six years, so we've been at the coalface if not the leader in a sense, getting content down and recognising it but now new laws are coming out and people are starting to recognise that it is abuse and that's as simple as breaking up with someone and sending a barrage of messages threatening them, saying, "I'm going to post this stuff of you," we monitor it and then if it goes online we do everything we can as quick possible to get it down. Yeah that's the nasty side of it unfortunately but in businesses you've just got to look at your footprint and see if there's a problem. Chris: What have we likened having bad reviews to before? Andrew: It's similar to if you had a physical business and you had a whole bunch of people protesting out the front you wouldn't get an awful lot of people through the door and this is basically the digital version of that, the online version of that. And what I found was interesting, what you were saying before is that a great deal of the reviews and stuff, the negative reviews are bogus. Brendon: Yeah, a lot, most of them, I mean you can see it in the review, companies engage us to find out what the problem is and where it stemmed from as well as to remove it, put all our means possible to get the content down. And I've seen cases where, I'll give you an example of a real estate agency had a rental property with a person and that person obviously had a-- whatever happened between the person renting it from the real estate went pear shaped. Which is normal. And in Queensland property laws are pretty strict, you know, there's guidelines on how to do things but either way that person that was renting it didn't like what happened, had all the right procedures in moving them out, they weren't paying rent or whatever but decided to take their grievances online so they found out the person who owned the property had a business. Barraged it, put a massive amount of content on there, where they could, Google Reviews, saying stuff that was really relating to their business but they had no identity with them, they didn't know these people he just wanted-- he was calculated and said, "This is how I'm going to ruin it." And then he found out the daughter had a business, did the same thing and unfortunately that daughter's business relied heavily on the way she's looked in the market, it was all lies. And unfortunately what we've got to do is get that message and that story to Google through all their means and that's exactly what we do. Chris: Which is a full time job, I'm sure. Brendon: Yeah, it is. Chris: So, essentially, it was really a good point that you made there about practically every business out there on the internet, even if you're not on the internet, you can have a Google My Business page which is capable of having anybody from around the world post a review on it. Brendon: Correct. Chris: And you may or may not know it. Brendon: Yeah. Chris: And most people don't, in fact we had a client recently that signed up for our marketing services and the first thing we did was an audit based on all of their channels that they either knew about, owned or didn't know about, unowned. Brendon: Correct. Chris: And found that basically their reputation was quite bad. And that was actually through no fault of their own in some regards, there were some really good ones and really bad ones, so their star rating was sitting quite low under the threes, due to the fact that they've had some people out there post some negative stuff that just either wasn't true or there might have been an element of truth in it and the rest was crap. The interesting thing about that one is they weren't even aware of the Google My Business page being set up and they weren't aware of the Facebook page being set up. Some had been set up by staff that had since left and some of it was just set up by people doing the reviews. They didn't know even know it was there Brendon: That's very common. Setting up fake profiles to discredit a business is huge, there's that many businesses out there I've seen that have had fake profiles up and they've gone, "Wow." And it's explained their reasons for drop offs and turnover and their volume's still good but customer callings have changed and stuff. Yeah attacks like that, it's more common than you can imagine. I mean, let's put it in perspective, let's say there was an employee of a floor shop who was rude. Who was really not a good customer service person, so that business owner's gone through the process of employing this person, he's now recognised that, not just through Google Reviews, but through customer's saying, "This guy's not good for my business," and he'd take the means either of training him or moving him on. Fair enough, the guy's moved on. On those reviews they'll state the name most of the time, that, "This guy, this and this," and should those reviews stay if the business has fixed the problem? Andrew: No. Brendon: Correct. That's a big part of what we see, most businesses fix a problem but unfortunately the bad name stays for good. I look at Google like this, and I probably changed this story a few times, but let's say we back in the Mediaeval times and they used to have billboards, big billboards, so you walk down the village street and there's that sign that has blacksmith, so-and-so and that's Google the billboard. Now if someone put up there the blacksmith and really nasty content, what would happen? The village, I guess the king would come along and pull it off. Chris: Or the guy would go out of business. Brendon: Correct or either way, the village would get together and say, "That shouldn't be there because it's against the law," all these different laws. And that's how it should work, we should be able to pull it down if it's illegal. Unfortunately with Google, there's a long process to let them know. Their problem's bigger than it is, I mean they get a quarter of a million flagging every day and what people don't realise is Google do take content down, it's just the way you take it, you make sure that the content's correct. You've got to look into each review and make sure that it's strength in what you're telling them and then it ticks all the boxes to get it escalated to a moderator, that's that person in whatever country that's got six seconds to read it so you want to get everything correct to there for them to go, "Well I believe everything "at the front end is correct, "so I've just got to read this and yep, "if it seems legit we'll get rid of it." And that's how primitive it is, it's primitive. Andrew: It's an incredibly easy process to set up an account and leave a review or set up a Google My Business page for another business, but it's much harder to get it down, I think that's half the problem here. Brendon: It shouldn't be. Andrew: You don't need any form of identity or anything to be able to leave a review on a business. Brendon: Correct, no qualifying really. I mean, I see reviews, they show you the location where they leave the reviews and you have to scream, "Bots," you have to scream, "It's computerised," or, "Someone's done this." This is on positive reviews, I'll just tell all of the viewers out here, do not engage in companies that give you positive reviews, okay? Because if the ACCC rings up and says, "I want to know that guy's name and I want to speak to him "and I want him to sign a stat dec saying "that you wrote the review," It's a $22,000 fine if you're wrong. And people engage these, I think they call it brushing, these bot companies to increase Google Reviews. Unfortunately the reviewer's not as dumb as you think. They'll look at it and go, "It's a guy's name that I can't pronounce "and then there's another ten of them." And you see different locations all over the world and you put two and two together and go, "No, it's not true. Andrew: Yeah and you're a local Gold Coast business. Brendon: It's the worst thing you can do. Never put false content up in the sense of positive reviews. Chris: Yeah so there you go, you can get stung both ways. I think it's great that Google reviews and the ability to get reviews from people exists because it's important as business owners that we keep our customers centric to the operations of our business. They give us insights to our business that we otherwise just cannot see, you know? And there's a fantastic interview that my co-founder for BeachCity just did with a gentleman by the name of Nicklas Bergman, best-selling author of The Tech Storm, great book, you should go and read it. Nicklas interviewed the chairman of Ikea. Now I'm not going to reveal what the chairman said, but you need to go and watch it. In a nutshell, be consumer-centric. And the way that he did that was fantastic, go and watch the video, we'll link to it in these comments. But that was a really valuable lesson from that chairman of Ikea, that they keep, or he in particular, keeps his customers at the centre of their operations of their business and knowing what they want is valuable for the future growth of the business, it's valuable for the current operations of the business, it's valuable for knowing how to deal with your current clients and what they expect from you and if you can't get around to a lot of your customers yourself, you do need to take heed of the potential that they have already gone and commented online and if they haven't then you should be talking to them anyway you should be talking to your customers. Internet Removals sounds like a fantastic business for my mind and I'm not saying this to butter you up or to tell people to go and get business from you, but I know in everyday operation of running businesses that shit can happen, yeah? Yeah I might deserve some of those bad reviews but if they're managed correctly that potentially I could get them removed, resolved and therefore improve my reputation and because I've improved my systems or I've changed something in the business or I've got rid of that person as you mentioned earlier. So I think it's a fantastic business and service that you're offering because I don't have time to do that. Brendon: That's exactly it and the time it takes for you to go and research the policies of a big provider and find out what's the process to get the content down correctly and be in that part of 150,000 applications, of which ours are coming up front because we're doing it right, is key. Every business owner I know and dealt with respect the customers and listen to them because it's their business, they wouldn't be in business if they didn't understand customers. They would prefer that the reviews are controlled in a sense of it goes to their website, all these big companies have these processes of letting them know there's a problem. The problem is, when you have something like Google Reviews, that it become a mob mentality when someone puts a review up and then you get some disgusting content that just has no relevance and that's where our customers feel it's completely unfair and it shouldn't be their biggest measure really. I mean, Google's it, guys. Google is it. I mean, what else do you use to find content? Andrew: Yeah and your reviews appear before everything else. Brendon: Correct. Andrew: It's the most prominent thing on the search result. Brendon: I had one customer who was going to spend lots of money on advertising and that particular advertiser gave me a call and said, "Man, can you look at this guy's footprint, "this guy's about to dump a tonne of money." I looked and I said, "Man, I would wait six to twelve months "until we can get some results before you even invest." There's no point making that redirection. And the customer stood back and I got to mediate with him and said, "Have you looked at the concerns?" He said, "Yeah," and again, that was about an employee. He said, "We got rid of him, he's gone. "We've done everything that we can "to resolve that issue, we saw." It just didn't need to be made public and stay there and just drag all these customers away. Andrew: The big problem there and we keep saying that you need to take Google My Business and Google Reviews seriously, is people think that they go away eventually because, I mean the old mentality was, if you have a bad name out there and you turn things around that eventually word gets out that you've improved your business. It doesn't work like that on Google, they stay there forever unless you do something about it. Brendon: Correct and it's important, there's no doubt about it. Not only for the corporate world but for the public, as I said, we help the public more than anything with getting content down. I mean, education's a big thing on us, for schools we're about to do education pieces for year eleven and twelve, for me to sit there and say, "Hey guys, "you're about to step into the corporate world, "I just want you to step back and look how you "present yourself online. "If there's any issues, clean it up now." Because we have employers call us to check out people's online-- Chris: I've done that myself. Andrew: That's certainly something that's happened here. Chris: So if you're ever going for a job interview beware of Google because I've done it, I've just Google searched people's names and funnily enough, I still employed someone, even after I saw all of the crap that they were writing on social media channels. But I took it for what it was, they just didn't think. They just went, "Ah you know, "I'm just having a conversation with my friend, "it's only me and my friends that can see it, "we're having a bit of banter." And, you know, lots of swearing and calling each other names and all that sort of stuff. "That's just fun banter, that's what we do in our lounge room." Yeah, that's right. Brendon: It's not in your lounge room, man, it's in a stadium full of 1.5 billion people. Andrew: Yeah, but when one day you're going to be managing business social media profiles and things like that you need to be aware that people need to be able to trust that you're not going to have it come back to you. Brendon: Ever since I've been doing this I've deleted a lot of posts of mine that weren't that bad but I've looked at it and gone, "What's the perception another person's going to take of it?" And go, "You know what? It's not worth it." You know, it's not me, I'm only saying a joke between my mates, yeah plenty of times I've deleted posts, because I've thought about it, only because I know about it. Chris: Well, I've been sued for making a comment on a Facebook group. Because I basically said something about somebody that maybe I thought would have been true but it wasn't. And I was just trying to be a helpful citizen. It turned out to be, you know, if I had my time again I wouldn't have written it. Brendon: It's funny you say that because we have people that ring us to help them, because they're being sued to get content down from a provider. We've actually had people that have rung us quite a few times that have said, "I've said something, I want to get it down." And we go, "Okay, what did you say?" And then we look and it's, right, same process. So there's people out there, a lot of people going, "I wish I'd never said that. "I can't get it down." I talk to my daughter about this every day. How you present yourself online is how you present yourself on the market. Andrew: Yeah it might be just a matter that you got hot headed about something but the problem is it stays there forever now if you don't take it down. Brendon: Yep, and content is a lot harder to take down and a lot easier to put up. I mean I tell businesses, I had a guy recently ring me and ask me about, "Google Reviews, Google My Business sent me an email saying do I want to register." I said, "Don't even bridge with them, "I'd prefer you didn't. "Establish your business now, iron out all the kinks, "all the parts that could go wrong "where people could write a review "about you making a mistake." I said, "Wait twelve months and have a look at your business "and then decide if you're prepared to go on Google Reviews. "Because those twelve month periods are the periods where "you're going to have ups and downs in your business "and you're going to open yourself up "so just wait twelve months." I just said, "Don't, don't open Google Reviews." Google Business, do not, my opinion. Unless you're ready and your business is safe, it's one of those areas where you can't. Chris: What do you mean? Sorry, what do you mean by that? Don't open Google Reviews? Brendon: So Google Business will find out about your business and they'll let you know. "Hey, do you want to be on Google Business?" And you go, "Yes, of course." Details, where your address is and that sort of stuff. Chris: But anybody can go and create one of those. Brendon: They can but they also promote it. Do you know what I mean? We've had them call us quite a few times, saying, you know, not call us but notify us. But I say either don't or just check out your business as a high-risk area where, you know, if you're in the car industry, reviews are are, you know. I feel sorry for those car dealerships because really, all they're doing is selling a brand new car, okay? And you decide to buy it or not. And they invest a lot of money, those people that own those businesses, millions of dollars and the land to store the cars. If you have a pleasant experience coming in. And I don't want to name these particular hashtag because it could promote the thing, but there was one particular hashtag where a guy's bike got damaged and he decided to hashtag with a group of Australian larrikins who had no idea of the context of what happened, and barraged this social media with hundreds of content. And that's terrible and this business owner's invested a lot of money, spending with the Mercedes and the BMWs to get the licence to be part of their website, they pay a lot of money for that just like McDonald's does, to own a McDonalds. And now he's got a one star and there's 300 reviews, because of the hashtag. And these guys had no idea. And the simple thing that happened was yes, they did drop the bike and they scratched it and they fixed it. But the guy wasn't happy, for whatever reason, so he decided to hashtag it. And there was 300 terrible comments. Andrew: From people who had nothing to do with it. Brendon: Nothing to do with it. No idea, don't even know the person it happened to, it was just part of that group. And we spend a lot of time fighting those groups too. Those social media pages, unfortunately Facebook's honestly gone to ground right now and our response time back from is just pitiful. Chris: Yeah shutting down pages is probably easier. Brendon: I mean, yeah, it's all about the numbers, there's 100,000 people on their Facebook page. Pretty bad stuff, it's either got to have terrorism or child or sex related before they'll take it down, if it doesn't, they can do what they want. Chris: So I think we should probably pull it up there, we could go into some really great stories. Brendon: Maybe another time, love to have a chat. I'm pretty sure people want to know more. Chris: Absolutely, Brendon, how do people reach out to you? Brendon: Yeah look, our website as well as we've got a 1300 number that we can-- Chris: What's the website? Brendon: www.internetremovals.com.au If you type in content removal Australia it'll pop up on Google's search words as well. As well as I've got a Twitter page which is @contentremove, I think, I can't remember the exact-- Andrew: We'll put all the links in the bottom. Brendon: But yeah, just be aware of your footprint is all I'll say and have a look, if you watch this, step back and go, "I'll just have a little look." Any issues, let me know, if not, education is to be good. Chris: Don't drink and review, don't just think that you're in your own little lounge room when you're reviewing. And I know I've learned some lessons, maybe the hard way. And it's best not to. Brendon: Thanks for having me too guys. Chris: Thanks for watching guys, that's episode 84 of Get Fact Up, you know where we're at but I'll tell you anyway. We're on memedia.com.au you can watch the full episode there, also on YouTube and on Facebook, just search for MeMedia on Facebook. Thanks for watching, we're back next week for another episode of Get Fact Up.
Published Mar 23, 2018 Chris Hogan: Good day all, Chris Hogan and Andrew Groat come to you live from Me Media studio here in Burleigh for episode 80 of 'Get Fact Up'. And today we're talking about... Andrew Groat: The new mobile update for Google, the Google search. Chris Hogan: Look out peeps. Are you in for some trouble if you don't get this right? Andrew Groat: So last year Google rolled out what everyone affectionately named "Mobilegeddon", where it started marking down people's websites, or penalising people's websites that didn't have mobile friendliness. So that's been in effect for probably a year now I'd say. And the way that worked, it would check your website, see if it was mobile friendly. If it wasn't mobile friendly, you would be pushed further down the results. So that's been going for a bit and we've said that before, that you really need to take that seriously, because they're only gonna get more heavy handed with that. The mobile usage is growing. It's not changing, it's growing exponentially and now we've got like Google voice search, iPhone voice search, Siri voice search ... Sorry Alexa voice search. Chris Hogan: Yeah. Andrew Groat: And all of that is only showing mobile results, so it's only going further that way. And now Google have gone a little bit further with that new indexing strategy, and they're about to roll out a new thing called Mobile First Indexing, where they only check the mobile version of your website. Only index the mobile version. If you don't have a mobile version, they don't even look. Chris Hogan: You will not be on Google's search results, if you don't have a mobile website. Andrew Groat: So it's only something that they're slowly rolling out now. They're testing it on a couple of websites, but they will be rolling it out, they're 100% confirmed on that. So, that is a problem for people that don't have mobile friendly websites. Chris Hogan: You're warned. You're warned. And there's still people that don't have mobile websites. Some of them have by their [inaudible 00:02:10] credit a really dodgy version of their desktop version, and said, "This will do." And what's that gonna do for them Andrew? Andrew Groat: Well that means only that dodgy version will be in the search results now. Chris Hogan: Yeah. Andrew Groat: So, if you have a really, really good desktop site, doesn't matter. So the big thing here is, you shouldn't have a separate mobile version of the website. And I've done a bit of research this morning and we've always said responsive web design is the way to go. 100%. So you... To explain that a little bit better. If you have a mobile version of your website, that's when you have ABC.com.au as your desktop website, and then maybe M.ABC.com.au as your mobile only website. That's the only thing that's gonna be indexed now, is the mobile website. Chris Hogan: Yeah. Andrew Groat: So if you've got a kind of crappy version of your main website as your mobile site, then kiss the good one goodbye. Chris Hogan: And responsive websites are the ones that basically resize. So, they should be designed to resize from a desktop view, down to an iPad view, down to different width iPhone ... Sorry, phone widths, mobile phone widths. And it should show the same content. Andrew Groat: The same information, yeah. It should. Chris Hogan: And that's great and the reason why people should have done it that way, or should be doing it that way, is because it means that when you update your website, which might be from a laptop computer, most of the time... Or sorry, a desktop computer. Then what you're seeing on your desktop is what you're also gonna see on your mobile. And then it's just a quick check, "yep, displays fine." Done. And the content is exactly the same. So, you haven't had to do it in two places and be all tricky. And yeah, now if you don't have it, you're not gonna show on Google's search results, so. Andrew Groat: So you have to sort of ask yourself... You may not know if you have a responsive website or you just have a mobile version or something else. But you have to ask yourself, "When I look at my website on the phone, is it a different experience in terms of the content and information to someone on the desktop?" If it is, that's a problem. So Google's only gonna be reading the mobile version. Google is only checking your phone on a mobile, and it's only using that content to put it in the search results. So that could have a huge impact on your SEO. If you have cut down versions of all your text or you have cut down versions of anything. Or you just literally not showing certain pages, they're gone. Chris Hogan: Crazy. Andrew Groat: So there's a couple of ways you can check this. Chris Hogan: That was my next question. Andrew Groat: So Google has the mobile testing tool, we'll put a link to that down at the bottom. Now one thing about that, it's about to be updated. So when Google releases this update, they're also gonna have an updated version of this mobile friendly test. So you can check that now, and it might say it's okay, there might be a couple of things you need to fix up. As soon as they re-release this indexing update, you can guarantee they'll have a new version of this mobile testing tool. So keep on top of that. But the best way to test, and this may be a little bit over people's heads, and we can put some links in to get this setup. You need Search Console, that's Google Search Console, and that's what all of us webmasters use to keep on top of errors on a website. So if there's any errors showing up on a website, Google's crawled a page and then suddenly change the name of that page and it can't find it anymore. Search Console will send you an email for that. So inside Search Console, there is a dropdown called Search Traffic. At the bottom of that there's one called Mobile Usability, and they've said the best way to guarantee that you're gonna be okay for this new Mobile First Indexing change, is to check that page. So if you have any errors on that page, which means that Google can't check some of your pages because it's not mobile usable, then you need to get on top of that. And if you have anything on there that says it can't crawl your website, on the Mobile Usability page, you need to get on top of that, because that's Google trying to check your website as a mobile phone. So that's the best place to look. Chris Hogan: Cool. So, to recap, when does this come out? Andrew Groat: They're already rolling it out. Chris Hogan: It's now. Andrew Groat: They're testing it ... They said they're testing it on a select few websites right now. Chris Hogan: Right. Andrew Groat: And then it's gonna be rolled out country by country, so. Chris Hogan: Heck yeah. Andrew Groat: Even as we're saying this, it's probably already starting. Chris Hogan: And what's our average across our clients, what's the average number of searches via mobile at the moment? Andrew Groat: It's about 50%, it's probably more like 60 to 65%, is mobile traffic. And depending on what industry you're in, it's probably higher. Like we have some clients that are up to 80% mobile. Anything that involves ticketing for some reason, is always a lot higher. Even these days, e-commerce is a lot higher. E-commerce used to only happen on desktop, it's more that 50% on mobile now. People are becoming more trusting to putting credit card details through mobile. It's getting easier, there's better payment systems now. Chris Hogan: You can save your credit card details on your phone, just like you can on your laptop. Andrew Groat: Your AfterPay, PayPal, it's a lot more secure now so. Chris Hogan: Yeah. Andrew Groat: Yeah, very serious. Chris Hogan: Very serious guys. So if you aren't taking this seriously, then say goodbye to 60, 80% of your traffic from Google search results. Andrew Groat: If not all of it. If you don't have a mobile version, you're probably gonna be gone. Chris Hogan: Give us a call if you need help, we're here to spread the love. Andrew will give you a big cuddle. Andrew Groat: Over the phone. Chris Hogan: Consult, console you. Andrew Groat: And then we'll figure out a solution. Chris Hogan: Yeah. Andrew Groat: After the cuddle. Chris Hogan: Yeah. We do virtual cuddles. Thanks very much Andrew, that was very insightful. Thanks for watching guys. 'Get Fact Up' is available on MeMedia.com.au, also available on our Facebook page and on YouTube. You can subscribe there and get notified as soon as we go live with that vid. Stay tuned, and we'll see you next week. Andrew Groat: Thank you.
and if it does and you don't know who owns it or what's going on there, then you've got to claim it, right? Andrew Groat: Yeah, because if you haven't created one and someone comes to your business and they have a good time or a bad time and they want to leave a review, they can create one like that and then, you have to make sure that you get on top of that and own that. Better yet, you should already have a Google My Business created so that they can find you and do the right thing. Chris Hogan: Claiming is easy, yeah? It's well- Andrew Groat: Provided no one owns it, yeah. Chris Hogan: That's right. What do people do if they need to claim their business listing? Andrew Groat: They just go to business.google.com and from there, they can either create one if there isn't anything yet. It's a really, really quick process. All you need is a Gmail account for that, or if it does exist and no one has verified their ownership of that, then it's the same process. You just claim that, no questions asked. It's yours now until further notice, but a lot of the time, people will create one for you and then they'll say that they're the owner because they may not realise what they're doing or maybe your competitors just decided that they want it, or maybe someone that worked for you created it and now, they don't work for you. This happens all the time. Then, the next step is you have to go and request ownership. That's where a lot of people just give up because it's a really ambiguous process. There's no explanation of what happens when you do that. It feels like there's no way to contact Google, so you have to … It's the same website. Go to business.google/ad and then you enter the name of your business or your address, I think, as well and you'll see if it's already there. You click on that. You go through the steps, and then, if someone's already got access, it'll say someone already … or ownership, someone will say, “Yeah, it's already owned by someone else.” Then, you can go through their request access process. What that does is send an email to the person that created that and then, they have seven days to either approve or deny the request or maybe they just won't even see it or maybe they'll ignore it. Once that process starts, you're kind of waiting for them to do the right thing. That's not a really good place to be. Chris Hogan: Especially because you don't actually know who it went to. The email address for who owns it is actually masked, so you can't even determine what domain it's been owned by or anything like that. Andrew Groat: It's hard to say, “Oh, wait. That was someone that worked here or that's someone I know,” so it just kind of goes into oblivion and then you have to hope for the best. Every now and then, if someone gets one of these requests, gets one of these emails from Google saying someone wants to take ownership and they ignore it, Google will say, “We didn't get a response,” so they'll just give it to you, that almost never happens. I've never seen that happen myself but apparently, that can happen. Here's some kind of steps to actually do that and how it really works after that. After the seven days is up, Google will send you an email saying either it was approved or denied or there was no response. Then, that's the second place a lot of people give up. They say, “Well, nothing I can do about it,” but right then and there is where you should be contacting Google. If there's a reference number in that email, just write that down because you'll need to talk to them about it. Contacting Google is one of those weird things. It's like if you search how do I call Google, you will spend an hour and find nothing, but there is a way to call them or request a callback and we'll put the link down the bottom here because it's a big link, but basically, you just go through the steps where you say, “This is my business name. This is the business listing that I'm trying to claim,” and you put your contact details and website, that sort of thing. Submit that. Submit your phone number and then they'll call you, and it says here that they call back within 60 seconds. Chris Hogan: Yes. It's normally an automated call and … Andrew Groat: Then, you just explain what's going on. They'll probably ask if you've done the ownership request first, so if you haven't done that, don't bother calling them. They'll just make you go back and do it, but if you have, you've got that reference number there and you say, “Look, I've gone through the necessary steps. This person's not responding or they've denied it and I'm the business owner,” and then they'll follow it up from there. They might ask you a couple more questions, maybe ABN or something like that so that they can go and check that. Then, they'll take it from there, but it's really important that you actually get on top of Google and call. Then, if it doesn't work the first time, call them again. Call them again. We spoke to someone recently and they said it's just a matter of really sticking to it. Chris Hogan: Yeah. There's a whole other realm to managing bad reviews that we probably won't go into today. That's another Get Fact Up, but one of the benefits of Google My Business is that there is actually an app out there for iOS and Android. It's Google My Business app. Once you've claimed your business, you can log in on that app and you can get notifications as to when people actually review, so you can get the notifications on the app. You will also get notifications via email as well, which sometimes go into the ether. Getting at notifications to the app, you can respond straight away and that's really great customer service. Even if you are getting bad reviews- Andrew Groat: Yeah, it's important to respond because that's- Chris Hogan: Absolutely. Andrew Groat: That's how you show that you're there and you can turn a bad review into a good review just by doing the right thing. Chris Hogan: Sure can. Absolutely. Andrew Groat: People see that you're responding to everything and they say, “All right, cool. That business is doing the right thing.” Something that we noticed today when we were playing around with the app is you can actually see insights of your own Google My Business. You can see how many people have viewed it for the month. You can see how many people have called, how many people have gone to your map listing, asked for directions. Something I thought was really cool is you can see how many people have viewed specific reviews, so you can see which reviews, which specific reviews are driving decisions. If you have a bad review, a one-star review that's getting hundreds and hundreds of views, you may want to do something about that, or there may be a good review that everyone's looking at and you can say, “Well, that's awesome. I should make sure I follow that up and thank them all,” or something along those lines. Chris Hogan: Google also wants you to upload photos. There are actually professional photographers that exist out there that will come and take photos of your business and just do the Google upload process. They do exist but you can actually do it yourself, of course, so snapping photos of your business, your premises, people in your business. We've said once before about personal branding and all that sort of stuff and make your brand more personable is what the result of good personal branding is actually making your brand more personal, so putting photos up of the people there … Chris Hogan: You should do that because if you don't have any photos in there, the people that review have the ability to add photos as well, so if they add some dodgy photos in there, that's the first thing that's going to come up, so you got to make sure you have at least five in there to push out whatever you don't want. We saw recently that there's people that are even doing 3D walkthroughs of your business now that can be put into the Google business listing, so if you want to have the ability for someone to click and walk into your premises and look around, you can have that now. That's a feature on there now. It's pretty cool. Chris Hogan: Don't freak out. They're not actually in your business, but it's a photograph or it's a 3D walkthrough and that gives you the opportunity to maybe tidy up the shelves a little bit, clean up a little bit. If people can see or look at the amount of stuff that you're holding or if you're a shop, for argument's sake, look at the beautiful foyer you have, look at the- Andrew Groat: Yeah, it kind of breaks down that barrier of people being unsure about what they're about to walk into. I think a lot of people would try it if they saw it. Chris Hogan: Absolutely. I think we should probably wrap it up with you. Andrew Groat: Yeah, there's too much already, I think. Chris Hogan: Guys, thanks very much for watching MeMedia's Get Fact Up series. We are at episode 79, and we do this every week, release them on Monday mornings. You can also find them on our YouTube channel. Just search for MeMedia and also on Facebook, facebook.com/memedia. You can subscribe via email to get those notifications of when we go live with these episodes in your inbox. If you have any questions, by all means, reach out. We're on nearly every social media platform. Send us message. Give us call. If you want some specific questions answered, you want us to do some digging and find out how you should be doing something, we'd gladly help out. Sometimes, gathering content can be a little bit difficult or time consuming for us and most of it's sometimes just adlib in our head. If you've got a hard question that you need us answering, bomb away and shoot it in. Thanks very much, Andrew. It's been great. Andrew Groat: Thank you. Chris Hogan: Cheers.
Published Feb 25, 2018 If you've ever wandered what the difference between boosting your Facebook posts via your business manager / ads manager and boosting posts via your standard Facebook interface is then you need to watch this vid. Watch this episode of Get Fact Up for an awesome breakdown by Andrew Groat from MeMedia, on what advantages exist when you use Facebook Ads Manager to boost your Facebook posts. If you have no idea what boosting posts on Facebook even means... well basically it means that you're "boosting" the reach of your Facebook post from reach a very small organic audience to being able to reach very large specific target audiences.
Published Dec 1, 2017 Chris Hogan: Good day world, Chris Hogan and Andrew Groat coming to you live from MeMedia studio here from Burleigh Heads for episode 71 of Get Fact Up woo! How you going Andrew? Andrew Groat: Yeah, pretty good, I'm not quite that excited but I'm fairly excited about this episode. Chris Hogan: I'm gonna do the rest of the podcast in one breath. No. Andrew Groat: So what are we talking about today? Chris Hogan: Well you ... Andrew Groat: You don't even have a laptop in front of you. Today we're talking about guarantees of ROI. Chris Hogan: Yeah! Andrew Groat: Marketing agencies making guarantees of ROI. Chris Hogan: Yeah, we seen a bit of that. We see that in emails sent from all corners of the globe into our clients inboxes, our own inboxes and recently we were seeing a lot of Facebook advertising around ... Andrew Groat: Yeah, there's some crazy stuff being said on Facebook, like for example, 300% increase in leads, we'll get you on the first page of Google. For what? Chris Hogan: Yeah. Andrew Groat: Yeah, it's insane, like for starters, how can you possibly guarantee ROI when you haven't done background research on a company, a marketplace, industry, a client base. There's so many ... Even objectives is different in each campaign. There's so many variables that you can't ... How can you possibly guarantee absolute claims like that? Chris Hogan: Yeah. So why do you think they're doing it first of all? Why do you think those agencies are doing that? Andrew Groat: Well, I think if I'm being honest, they understand the lifecycle of the client and they know that they can get a client in on these claims maybe for three to six months until they realise that the claims are bogus and then they've at least got them for that long. Chris Hogan: So they're definitely gonna be churning clients then and then refunding. Andrew Groat: Refunding potentially, yeah. Chris Hogan: Being a marketing agency, actually churning clients and giving refunds. Andrew Groat: I would hope they're refunding, but I know a lot that don't. It just fades out, kind of the relationship fades out. Chris Hogan: Well it'd be a big massive killer to a business anyway if you had to churn a heap of clients and give out a heap of refunds. Andrew Groat: Well, everybody I know is a little bit jaded about some SEO agency or something at some point, so yeah, there's a lot of it out there. But I was talking with someone about this yesterday. Imagine if doctors made these sorts of claims. Chris Hogan: Woo! Andrew Groat: Said "I 100% guarantee I will cure whatever you have. Don't need to tell me your symptoms." Chris Hogan: Yeah, yeah, definitely. Andrew Groat: That'd be shut down in flames. Chris Hogan: Yeah, everything. Every ailment. Andrew Groat: And it's kind of the same thing, there's like a thousand reasons why that's not possible and it's the same in marketing, there's 1000 reasons why you can't guarantee 300% increase in leads or something like that. Chris Hogan: Yeah. So what can we do? What do we do here that maybe I guess clients should expect from an agency or a marketing partnership? Andrew Groat: Well, if we're talking about things you can promise, I think it's everything around the integrity, you can promise integrity around all of your marketing practices, you can promise that you'll be transparent when doing your marketing campaigns, you'll be transparent and communicate the entire marketing process to clients, teach them a long the way. You can guarantee that you'll do everything in your power to find a solution. Chris Hogan: Yeah, on that one, on that one, so I like that one because we don't like to be exacerbating the problem by highlighting that that problem means that we can't give a solution for that problem 'cause of this problem. So always giving a solution is really important, and that might mean making some tough calls or being quite nimble and changing up the strategy slightly. Andrew Groat: Potentially putting on different hats and just marketing. So for example, we've seen a lot where the marketing might be great, but the sales are still not getting through because the post sale follow up process is no good, and sometimes we have to advise on that, and that's outside of our marketing obligations but if overall, we're not getting success, then you should talk about that with the client. Chris Hogan: Absolutely, and that's obviously for service based businesses. Excuse me, my voice went a bit weird then. And then for the eCommerce businesses, it's important to highlight well "Hey, your website's not actually generating sales because the add to cart page cannot be found, the add to cart button's the wrong colour, the checkout process is clunky, so we do actually need to look at that side of things, and in our case, we've had to pivot away from "hey, we need to hold off on the marketing until such time as those that that sales funnel is fixed. Andrew Groat: Yeah, and even outside of that, doing the background research to see if there's actually a viable opportunity there, 'cause some people will think "Oh great, I'm gonna market this product." But is there a demand for that product? Is there a marketplace for that product? Is the product any good? Chris Hogan: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Andrew Groat: So there's a certain obligation there for a marketing company to actually do that research as well, rather than just going straight in with the marketing campaign that falls over then maybe the research should have been done before hand to see if there really is an opportunity there. And I think accountability is something else that should be guaranteed. You can say "Well we're not gonna guarantee a 300% success rate, we'll guarantee that we'll stay the entire way through this campaign to ensure success. Chris Hogan: Yeah. Andrew Groat: There's a guarantee. Chris Hogan: A guarantee that will do all of these tasks, which we know and from previous case studies, work, works, and we're going to undertake all these tykes, so in our case we'll do ... That's some crazy hair you got there. You're on camera. That will undertake all of this content creation and that we'll distribute it through social and then we'll put an advertising spend associated with that and drive traffic back to the website. We'll guarantee we'll do all those things. Andrew Groat: Take responsibility every step of the way. Chris Hogan: And guarantee we'll do the research around before even creating that content, so we know exactly who we're targeting, what we're targeting 'em about or for, why they're actually gonna be interested in this content and that's a good guarantee, I guess provides. Andrew Groat: I was thinking about this though. If you can make these guarantees, can you actually guarantee improvement for a client? Chris Hogan: Absolutely. Andrew Groat: Not saying specific improvement, not we'll get you 110% ... Chris Hogan: Absolutely. Andrew Groat: Return on investment. I think you can guarantee improvement. Chris Hogan: Everybody needs to keep an open mind here, don't they? 'cause like we just said, X client might come to you for "Hey, I want all this marketing and advertising services, but we need to keep an open mind." And say "Well no, we can't do that until we do this." So everybody has to keep an open mind, but yes, guaranteed improvement. Andrew Groat: But I think, yeah, if you've done all the background research and you're accountable and responsible, then yeah, you can guarantee improvements. Chris Hogan: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Andrew Groat: It might be a hard battle sometimes, but yeah, you can guarantee improvements, and something that people often say to that is "What about big industry changes?" And we were talking about this last week with Facebook just turning itself on it's head. So what do you do there? Chris Hogan: Yeah. Andrew Groat: If you're making guarantees, what if the industry just turns upside down overnight? And then like, last year, we had mobilegeddon, the Google algorithm updates and penguin and panda just taking people off the map. Chris Hogan: Yeah. Andrew Groat: Can you still guarantee improvements around that? Chris Hogan: We'll guarantee that yes, you can, because you can guarantee that when dealing with the correct agency that you pivot, you will be nimble, and therefore your strategy, because it's so nimble, that it's capable of jumping onto another channel or distributing that content through a different channel, so yes. Andrew Groat: Yeah, I agree I think if you're a smart marketer, you realise that these setbacks are also opportunities. I mean if the entire marketplace has been flattened then there's an opportunity there as well to find another way of doing it. Chris Hogan: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Andrew Groat: So yeah, these big industries set back. Big industry changes are setbacks and opportunities and I think if you're accountable, then you'll say "Alright, we've just taken a hit but we're gonna figure out what to do next." Whereas I think some agencies may just hang up their hats when these things happen. Chris Hogan: Sure. So what's the benefit for everybody out there listening to this? I guess it's that be benefit is that they, in the content that we've just shared right now, they need to ... When they're being offered these exciting offers, they look fantastic on paper. They need to really question them, right? So the benefits for everybody out there is we've offered you plenty of fodder for questions. Andrew Groat: Yeah, so it's like if someone's making an absolute guarantee, but they know nothing about your company, I'd be asking questions then. If I say "Yeah, we can get you a 200% increase in sales." Or "We can get you an X increase in leads." But they actually haven't asked you any questions or done any research in our business, how can they actually say that? There's too many variables and if you really think about it, there's a million reasons why your own company's gonna be different to a previous thing that they've done, so yeah, I think that's when you need to ask the questions is when there's absolute claims like exact figures of improvements and things like that, and when they haven't done the background research on you. Chris Hogan: Mm-hmm (affirmative). And of course, all the marketing in the world can bring in all the traffic in the world and all of this fantastic social engagement, but unless you're capable of selling ... Andrew Groat: Yeah, exactly. Chris Hogan: Your business is gonna be kaput. SO bare in mind that sales training for your team members or improvements to your eCommerce platform, imperative. Andrew Groat: Yeah, that's true, and that comes back to that first page of Google claim. Someone might be able to get you on the first page of Google, does that mean you're gonna get more sales? Not necessarily. There's a whole lot more that needs to be thought of. Chris Hogan: Yeah, for what keyword? Andrew Groat: Like for what keyword and can your website convert? All of this sort of stuff, so if someone's not gonna commit to the entire process to a sale, be weary of any claims there as well. Chris Hogan: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Interesting. Well, I've certainly been enlightened by this conversation Andrew and you're listening to MeMedia's Get Fact Up. There's heaps of episodes on our website, this is episode 71, anything else to add Andrew? Andrew Groat: No, I think I'm all talked out. Chris Hogan: Good. Alright, good. Thanks, goodbye. Andrew Groat: Thanks guys.
Published Nov 28, 2017 - G'day world, Chris Hogan and Andrew Groat coming to you live from the MeMedia studio here at Burleigh Heads on the Gold Coast. How ya goin', Andrew? - Yeah, good. - Awesome. - How're you? - Yeah, I'm good. I hear you had a double strength real coffee. - Yeah, I'm shaking a little bit right now. - Good, let's get started. Today we're talking about multichannel strategy and what people are really doing in their short-term, long-term strategies, and we've just had something huge dumped on us in the last week in terms of changes in the marketplace. So do you wanna share what's happened? - Yeah, so Facebook recently went, underwent some pretty big changes, and it's not all set in stone just yet, but it's caused huge problems for a lot of people. I was talking to a friend of mine recently who, she runs an e-commerce business, really successful, and these Facebook changes has like dropped her organic reach of that 1%, and if you think like, what's the point of even having a following if you're only reaching 1% of them? Sales dropped by 30%, ad costs have doubled. It's, yeah, it's crazy. You add all that together, that's a big problem. Luckily, she's one step ahead with that, and was already building up an AdWords channel, but I mean, that's not like for like. The viral strength of Facebook can't be replaced by AdWords. AdWords is like a regular stream of ROI, but, yeah, the product releases you do on Facebook would just explode and get a lot of business in, so, yeah, it's a big issue and there's a lot more hustle and ad-spend to have to make up for that. - So just on that. Basically this huge change has happened on Facebook. People don't know what's going on. I think you mentioned that their help section on the help forum-- - Yeah, yeah. 'Cause it's not just that, like, all sorts of ad formats have changed, and settings have changed, and things just don't work quite so well anymore, and I was researching something, 'cause we had this change in ad formatting happened, and I went to find out why, and their entire help system had gone down, like the knowledge base and the support website, so, yeah, it's crazy, and the lesson in all this is don't put all your eggs in one basket really. - Yeah, exactly. So essentially, this massive change has happened, people's businesses and their sales are being affected massively because they've been using Facebook as a source of traffic, which is obviously equated to sales for them, and yeah, like you just said, if Facebook was your only strategy, even though as much as we love Facebook for its power or virility and its targeting capabilities, when they implement a change like this with no explanation, which they can do, they don't have to explain to anybody-- - They don't answer to anyone, it's their platform, so if they just change stuff and people don't like it-- - Yeah, and so then we're left sitting here potentially with no sales coming through the door, or a fraction of the sales coming through the door, and because we relied on one single channel to bring those in, we have to diversify, we have to move very quickly and jump onto a different channel. And just like you said, putting all your eggs in one basket, potentially isn't the right strategy. It's not a good strategy. - Even if it's going quite well. - [Chris] Exactly, and-- - Well, almost especially if it's going quite well, 'cause guaranteed something's coming. Always seems to be like that, like ad policy changes, feature changes, reach, audience, just without warning can change, especially with Facebook, they're quite reactive. If someone complains, they're just like all right, that feature's gone. - So putting all your eggs in one channel, or source of revenue or traffic, is a bad idea, and we have spoken about before that one reason why it's a super bad idea is because people out there, you guys don't own this channel. You've got no say in what happens on this channel, so whether it's Facebook, whether it's YouTube, whether it's Google advertising, whether it's Instagram, LinkedIn, you're renting space. - Yeah, you may think it's yours, especially if you're building a following, you may think it's yours, but reach changes, and you realise, okay, this isn't mine at all. - Yeah. - You know? - And the only thing that we've said that people own is their own website. Okay, I'll say this, but it still doesn't apply. The only thing we really do own is the organic traffic to our website, and obviously yeah, we can't dictate what's happening in Google land either. Search engine results and pages can change, and algorithms can change on Google, and your SEO ranking could tank, yeah, but, if you've got a very strong Google organic source of traffic, and versus having a strong paid traffic, then your business is gonna be far more secure, just using those two examples. - I would say you need both. - Of course. - And sort of beyond that, not just one pay channel. I'd probably look at having Facebook and Google. I'm not so sure about any of the other paid channels, but you wanna have both of those just in case. You should be working on the organic just in case. Protect yourself even further from there, build up a mailing list with everyone that's coming in, collect details, maybe an MMS list or something like that as well. - MMS messaging is massive, yeah. - Yeah, always keep on top of SEO. There's a lot more to it that you need to do. - So you build up a database, own as much of that, those people's details as possible, and don't just rely, like you just said, don't just rely on email, have MMS and SMS as a backup, and if comes down to it, maybe we need to go back to snail mail. There's always that, yeah. - There's always that. - Another one, remarketing should be in there as well. You should have remarketing cookies. That's one people often overlook. 'Cause that gives you more control over your paid channels, if you are building up like an audience as well. Building up your own audience, rather than just using targeting. - Yeah, so, and then just today, it's been announced here in Australia, so we're actually filming on a Thursday, you'll see this Monday, but, today Amazon Australia goes live, and I believe it's for a select few people, it's gonna happen in a couple hours, I believe, and there you go, there's another channel that people could be tapped into, products, selling your products on Amazon, and, whoa, have I got some predictions around what Amazon's gonna do to retail here in this country. - Yeah, get ready. They're scared, like if you've seen, what's the guy from Harvey Norman, the guy that owns it? It's not Harvey Norman, but anyway, he's terrified of Amazon because it's all these sorts of old retail companies, they're just not gonna be able to cope with it. - Gerry Harvey, yeah. - Yeah, that's him. - Yeah, absolutely, and jeez he's changed his tune. He didn't believe in e-commerce at all several years back. Yeah, so Amazon is gonna make a huge difference, and if you don't understand the model of Amazon, so essentially what can happen is brands, manufacturers, can put their products there, retailers can put their products there, as a source to be a distribution agent for any sales that happen there on said product. Amazon can actually distribute, so they have a thing called fulfilment by Amazon, so they have warehouses that they've created throughout Australia, or sorry, creating throughout Australia, and so therefore, people can actually have their product shipped by Amazon, and so Amazon also have indicated that they will potentially go into bricks and mortar retail so people can actually walk into a store. Now, that hasn't happened yet. And when we start to talk stats and things like that, a lot of us are super scared in the retail space due to the fact that one in two online sales are happening on Amazon in the USA, but something to be very considerate of is that the USA is a massive country and the distribution networks are far better than what we have here in Australia, so we do need to probably liken ourselves more to what's happening in Canada when it comes down to Amazon. And so Amazon, I don't know the stats of what's happening out of Canada, but one of the difficulties they're having in Canada is the distribution networks. Everybody's almost just as spread out there as they are here in Australia. So, what does this really mean for, basically retail here in Australia? Well, I have a prediction that, basically, those big shopping centres that we love to visit here on the Gold Coast, they're gonna basically turn into distribution centres. They're gonna turn into maybe restaurants and cafes, more so than your shops, which we'll go in and try stuff on. Stuff is gonna be delivered by drone, it will happen, and I predict that in five years, we will be seeing that stuff happen throughout the world. Now, whether it happens here first or whether it happens somewhere else, Amazon said they wanna do it, and it's gonna happen. - They've got too much money. No one's gonna be able to stop them from doing this stuff. - Yeah, so, there's a whole other conversation we could have around Amazon, but I think, just to get back to our point, that a multichannel approach is best. Distribute your following, your audience, your sources of traffic, across multiple channels. While we love Facebook, putting all your eggs into Facebook, that Facebook basket, is not necessarily the best choice. Instagram, same deal. And so we do come back to what is the best thing that we can do as a short-term strategy and as a long-term strategy, and what is that? - Content marketing, yeah. - There you go, yeah. - And then use all your pay channels and your following and all that sort of thing to buffer and strengthen that via promotion. Obviously, yeah, you wanna get some regular income from these as well, but, also keep a portion of that budget for growing your content marketing channel, because that's the only one you really own. Even then, you don't own it but that's the one you have the most control over, and that you find the most strength from long term. - 'Cause push comes to shove and you've got a heap of content that you've created, it's taken you years to create that content, and you've got it all housed on YouTube or Vimeo, and they start to do something. - Yeah, next minute algorithm change, yeah. - You can pull it all down and upload it to your own website. All that content can still be available that you've created, but if you didn't have the content to start with, you're behind the eight ball, massively. And so then on your own channel, your website, is still the most reliable channel that you can put money into and invest in, and I think that everybody needs to really start now, start yesterday, doing that content creation, and it's good to have this kind of conversation, and look at it from a different angle, isn't it, because essentially, we talk about it all too often. If you go back through our history, you'll see that we talk about content marketing, produce content, do it all the time, distribute through social, all the time, but we're talking about from case studies, and this is another case study, and this is another angle to look at it from, isn't it? It's just a super compelling reason to do it. And that way, your short-term goals, your short-term marketing goals can be bursts of goals. Oh, look, Facebook's got this happening right now. Their algorithm's doing this right now. They've got fantastic ads right now. Great, let's use it. - Yeah, how can we use it, but it might be a flash in the pan, it might not. Especially with Facebook. They release all these new ad formats, next week, they're gone again, 'cause it doesn't work, so, yeah. - So Facebook have also started bringing out a Facebook creator app, encouraging-- - Oh, Creative Hub, yeah. - Encouraging, well, yeah. I personally don't know much about Creative Hub, because it's not really fleshed out yet, right? - No, it's far from fleshed out. - Okay, so, but the creator app that appears on the App Store, basically encourages people to create more content for Facebook. Now, they've done it specifically for individuals. Last week we spoke about personal branding and how it's not really an awesome strategy, and that takeaway was make more your brand more personable. Well, Facebook's bringing out a Facebook creator app to basically get people to create more personal content, so you cannot use it for your brand pages, and the reason why it was brought out is so that those people that are doing Facebook Lives on their own profiles can get some analytics, can get some insights into what's happening on that content that they're sharing through their own personal Facebook timeline. What's the message there that I'm trying to get to is that content is king. Content, comes back to content again. Facebook are doing this, it comes back to content. Yeah, okay, they're not letting their brands to utilise that Facebook creator app. Brands don't need to. They already have their Facebook insights coming through many other sources, whether it be their own insights or third-party apps. So, yeah. It's just very clear to me and yourself, and when this happened just this week, this massive change, this blowup, in terms of Facebook algorithm changes and ads not working as they were the week before, it was just, we had to talk about it, even though we don't know what's going on. We're just like everybody else out there. We're actually sitting here going, um, so, Facebook ads stopped working and our sales plummeted. Would we sit around and wait? - No, no. - [Chris] For Facebook to come good again? - No, well, it may not. They may not even release an announcement. I mean, they've done this before. So, yeah, could be one step ahead. - Yeah, absolutely. I think that's all we've got time for. I did a lot of talking then, and you had the coffee. So thanks very much for watching Get Fact Up. As you know, we like to bring to you you know, what's happening right now, keeping ourselves on our toes, keeping you on your toes. Keep listening. All of our episodes are hosted on MeMedia.com.au, or we can just Google Get Fact Up, and they're also hosted on YouTube, so you can go through all of those there. We're using YouTube, yeah, not Facebook. We upload to Facebook as well. - Yeah, it's everywhere. - Yeah, it's everywhere. So thanks very much for watching, guys, and stay cool, appreciate your time. - Thank you.
Published Nov 17, 2017 Chris Hogan: G'day, world. Chris Hogan and Andrew Groat coming to you live from MeMedia studio here at Burleigh Heads, and it's episode 69 of Get Fact Up, and we're talking about ... Andrew Groat: Personal branding, today. Chris Hogan: Personal branding. Well, this is going to turn into a rant. Pre-warning, this is one we're probably going to rant. Andrew Groat: We're going laptop closed today. All right. Let's do it. Rant mode. Chris Hogan: So, I guess I want to preface it by saying that I see a lot of experts out there, in the world, that are going to teach you and I how to build your personal brand. How to become a personal brand, and they are personal branding experts. So, drives me nuts. Absolutely drives me nuts. Andrew Groat: Yeah, because it's, let's be honest, it's fairly narcissistic, the idea of personal branding. I think, why would a person want to be more like a brand? It should be more like brands should become more personable, that's kind of the first thing I- Chris Hogan: Couldn't have said it better myself. That's beautiful. Yep, and that's exactly right. Brands do need to become more personable, because people like to deal with people, versus dealing with a logo. Knowing the people that work in a certain company is actually really good for business. Andrew Groat: Yeah, and just knowing who you're communicating with, and knowing that the people behind the brand are going to be really personable, and communicative, and all that sort of thing. I think that's really where the whole idea of personal branding, is where it lies, is putting your face to the content marketing and communication that you're having for your business. It shouldn't be the other way around. The idea of personal branding, it's about, basically, quantifying that growth thing. It's about instant gratification and the ego factor that we get with all those social media celebrities. But it doesn't necessarily tie into business success, and that's kind of the wrong way to think about it, I think, there. Chris Hogan: Yeah. You just alluded to, it is content marketing that needs to be produced by brands. We talk about it all the time, we're very passionate about it, ourselves. But, it's the brand being personable, and you're giving value. We always say, "Make it entertaining, educational, or inspirational, the content that you're creating." If you do tie yourself- Andrew Groat: Your personality. Chris Hogan: ... to the content that you create too much, and basically say, "Oh, look, it's Chris Hogan's media," Then you've basically built a rod for your back. You're going to have to do it forever and a day. Andrew Groat: That's right. You brought up a good point with Gary Vaynerchuk, before. Everyone think, "Oh, yeah, the personal branding king." But that's not how he started. He didn't just, he wasn't just born as the social branding king. He built up an awesome content marketing channel. He worked tirelessly on it for a long, long time. Then, once he got success, he started to go into more of the personal branding field. Chris Hogan: Well, yeah. So he built a wine library into a very successful business. It was his father's business. He built that from a $3 million to a $60 million business. Then he was creating content doing that. He had a YouTube channel on wine tasting. And then he decided, "Well, I'm going to start a media company," and turned that into a $100 million business, throughout the US, in multiple states in the US. It was only after many years of doing that, then he decided, "Oh, yes. I'm going to hire a full time videographer to follow me around the world." Andrew Groat: Yeah, before it really became about the personal brand. Chris Hogan: And he does sign everything off, "Gary V." It's all about the Gary V. Show, and whatnot, but he himself, admits that, that's how the story went. He built substance behind his self through having business success. Andrew Groat: By that point, too, everybody knew him, so why now just making it a little bit more about him, obviously, there. But he earned that by that point. I think that's the problem, is people, when they think about personal branding, they think they're entitled to some kind of growth there, which you kind of know what, you have to earn that. Chris Hogan: Yeah, so even myself, if I was to say, "I did 58 Get Fact Up videos last year, so all of a sudden I'm a personal branding expert. So, I'm going to teach you how to create your own personal brand." Because I did 50 videos? Or I posted everyday on social media? I did a selfie every day, or photo of what location I'm working from, today? Andrew Groat: But what would people achieve from that? People should really be focusing on building up a really good content marketing library, well before they think of that. Like you said, delivering substance before then. Chris Hogan: So much about substance. You cannot create, oh, sorry. You cannot build substance behind yourself, a successful business or whatnot, overnight, it just doesn't happen. You can't do it in a year. Even those successful people out there that have created businesses in record short time frames, lot of luck involved. There is a lot of luck. I talk with some of my mentors about that sometimes, and we just go, "Yeah, wow! Hat off to him, or her. But I think there was a larger element of luck." And if you actually talk to those people, sometimes they admit it. "Yeah, there was some luck involved." Andrew Groat: It's not their personal brand that did that. You have to have a hell of a lot of success before your personal brand can carry you into business success, I think. Chris Hogan: Really, what we're saying is, "Can people stop creating a personal brand? Can people stop focusing on personal branding?" And what should they be bringing it back to? Andrew Groat: Well, content marketing, obviously. The problem is, content marketing is thankless, tiring work. It's a long term strategy, and people don't really like that. People like the idea of building a personal brand, because you get that instant gratification from all the likes and all that sort of thing you get. But that's not how it works. Focus on content marketing, and if you want to have your face on it, take personal responsibility for your content marketing. But don't expect people to like it because of you, you have to actually have substance. You have to have substantial content coming out before people will even consider you as an expert. At the end of the day, that's what people will start to think, if your content marketing's good, you're going to become an expert on that content, and that's what's going to tie in your personality there. It'll be Chris Hogan, content marketing expert. Or Chris Hogan- Chris Hogan: And I would never call myself an expert. Andrew Groat: You can't just say that. Chris Hogan: I would never do that, because I hate experts. Just so you know. Andrew Groat: But before you can say that, everyone has to be calling you one. You can't just claim that. Chris Hogan: We are students. We are students. We are just always students to an ever evolving technological space, the world, the marketing that's going on. Be a student. Be a student to change. Andrew Groat: Yeah, I think we'd be crazy to call ourselves experts. We're figuring out what we're doing as we're going. Chris Hogan: Isn't an expert a drip on the pressure, or something like that? Andrew Groat: Yeah. Chris Hogan: So, I don't know. I don't know if we've brought any value to anybody out there, talking about this, but I hope we've given it some context in maybe how it's viewed by just two people in the room. And Steve is actually behind the camera, there, and he shares similar views. That's three of us, and I know some of my mentors actually think the same way, so that's four, five. I think maybe we have given you some context, and some value around personal branding. Anybody that wants to sell your personal branding, or wants to talk to you about personal branding, maybe consider this video as a way to maybe change your mind, and change your perception on what it means. Andrew Groat: Yeah, I think the important thing is focusing on producing good content. Focusing on producing good content marketing, I should say, and if you want to take personal responsibility for it, comment, personal message people, email, call people, all that sort of thing. Just work on being more personable. Chris Hogan: Exactly, so make your brand more personable, don't focus on personable branding. Andrew Groat: Because the growth doesn't mean anything. It's the quality of your communication. It's what's important there, and if people like you, people like you. Chris Hogan: Perfect. Andrew Groat: But you have to have good content, first and foremost. Chris Hogan: Yeah. So on that note, I think we'll wrap it up. You're listening to Get Fact Up, I'm Chris Hogan. This is Andrew Groat. That's our personal brand, haha. So bad. And, we're here at MeMedia, our integrated digital marketing agency on the Gold Coast. We produce plenty of content for our clients, and we can produce it for you too. So, get in touch if you can. Cheers. Andrew Groat: Thank you.
Published Nov 13, 2017 Chris: Good day, world. Chris Hogan and Andrew Groat coming to you live from the MeMedia studio here at Burleigh Heads for "Get Fact Up" episode number 68 - on important marketing metrics to track. How you going, Andrew? Andrew: Good. How are you? Chris: Good, mate. So website traffic is probably the number one metric that people tend to track when they're looking at - obviously their marketing reports. And we know that being that high a level probably isn't good enough. Andrew: Yeah, traffic's not really that important. There're other things that you should be looking at. Chris: Cool. So we've got some example Google Analytics snapshots that we've got here from the Interwebs. And we wanted to just have a look over those and break some of them down. So here we have the Google Analytics snapshot of acquisitions and channels, it's real easy to find. And it's breaking down that high level traffic into multiple different channels... Andrew: The different marketing streams, yeah. So this one's eCommerce business, and straight off the bat you can see that something's wrong here, ‘cause you've got paid searches as the highest traffic. But, you need to circle a few things here, so the problem here is the bounce rate is massive. Paid search, high bounce rate, a lot of money's gone down the drain quite frankly. Chris: So let's talk about bounce rate while we're on that. So between 55% and 70% bounce rate is considered high. Anything over 70% is considered pretty much extreme. So it's time to bring that down. Andrew: So just to explain what a bounce is, it's when someone comes to your page - doesn't click on anything and then they leave. So someone that didn't interact with your page at all. Chris: And bounces can happen a lot. Especially in search and social - ah sorry, in paid search and social, because people have searched for a particular product. Andrew: They may not necessarily wanna see it. You might have put it in front of them when they don't want it. Chris: In paid search they've searched for a particular product, they've clicked on that link to that paid page and they've seen what they wanted to see - probably priced, they're shopping around, boom they're gone again. If you didn't entice them to click through to another page, then essentially they've bounced. And they could've been sitting on that page for a long time. In fact, they could've been sitting on that for hours, all day, reading all the content that you had to offer, but if they didn't click through to another page it's called a bounce. So the same thing can happen in social, right? Because... Andrew: Yeah, we say this all the time that social's people's down time. And if you're putting ads in front of them and they don't realise it, they've clicked through to an ad, they're often just gonna bail back out of that. Social traffic tends to have high bounce rate and lower engagement metrics because of that. But, it's a great branding opportunity, it's not a right off there. You just have to be showing the right sort of content, maybe not necessarily trying to get someone to buy something straight from Facebook. Chris: And then we've got on that same slide we've got their conversion rate, and 3.11 conversion rate. Conversions categorised as 2% as average, 5% is good and 10% plus is great. So they're sitting between averaging good. Now if we were going to say, for example if the client said, "Hey, while I'm getting lots of traffic on paid search, that's great, I'm gonna increase my spend." Andrew: Well I would say don't even bother. Especially when you have a little bit further down that email traffic is a 10.24% conversion rate. I would be saying do more email campaigns, 'cause that's obviously working really well. And then maybe have a look at bringing this bounce rate down, put a bit of work into that. Make some more relevant content, have a look at your page load potentially and have a look at your targeting - maybe you're showing your ads to the wrong people. Chris: There's so much you can do in eCommerce. Show that there's a sale on and that it's a limited time. For example, there's a counter there just above the "add to cart" button that says buy now or you'll miss out. For instance... Andrew: Get some more testimonials. Get some more reviews and writings and things like that. Chris: More content on that page essentially. So that is called conversion rate optimisation. Improving your page to improve conversions. If you can improve those conversions then potentially go back and invest more dollars into that paid advertising. Andrew: I would also say maybe get a heat map or a screen recording software installed on the website and actually get some hard data - hard evidence about what's going on there. It might just be as simple as there's no calls to action above the fold, it might be a real easy fix. Chris: Could be an error. Paid search - don't forget if you've got so many heaps of campaigns, that's a very high level view. You could have one campaign that's absolutely tanking because for whatever reason your products are no longer available, discontinued or something like that. Andrew: Yeah, that's right. Especially with AdWords, it could just be one keyword's just ruining your entire campaign. It's really important to be looking at those metrics as well. Chris: So let's move on to slide 7 where we've actually got a different eCommerce business where their highest traffic source is organic. Andrew: Whoa, yeah, they're doing really well. 11% conversion rate. Chris: And they're converting 11% on that organic traffic. That's really good. Essentially then we looked at paid searches, their second biggest paid channel. And they've got a 7% conversion rate there. And so therefore they're advertising campaign on AdWords needs tweaking and improving because obviously there's a good conversion rate happening in organic. There's not a lot wrong with their pages, but that conversion rate indicates to me that maybe their actual advertising campaigns wrong. Andrew: Yeah, that's what I think. Maybe they just needed to tighten up what they're targeting there. Another good thing that I've seen with this one - we've got a great ad, but they've got their revenue filled in there. So they're actually pushing data of all their sales back, which is awesome because that means they can actually measure ROI properly, so you can have a look at your AdWords page and analytics - you can see how much you spending and what you're getting back for it, then you get that ROI metric. That's awesome if you can actually get that, it's not possible for everyone. Chris: Which comes down to cost per acquisition. Andrew: That's right, so if you know that then you can scale as far as you want. Chris: So cost per acquisition is basically cost per sale. Andrew: Mm-hmm (affirmative) Chris: Instead of tracking cost per click, track cost per acquisition. If you bring that down... Andrew: Yeah, exactly. Also, here their bounce rate is incredibly low on this one. Chris: Yeah, 19.43% on organic search and 14.78% even on paid, which is just awesome. Really good. Andrew: Two other metrics I think worth mentioning here because this is so high on this one I just want to say. Under behaviour on here, you've got bounce rate, pages per session, average session duration. Pages per session is really important, that's how many - for each person that comes to your site, that's how many different pages they go on there. And if you're above 2.5% that's pretty good. Their average pages per session across all channels is 6.89%, that's great. That means people are really searching around going through everything. Chris: Yup. Andrew: Also, the session duration: 3 minutes, that's great too. If you've got above 2 minutes that's awesome. People spending a lot of time on their website. They've obviously got a lot of really good related content, a lot of good internal linking. I'd say they've got a really good interface there as well. Chris: So, on product pages you may also be interested in if they're doing blogging then potentially they've got interlinked pages. Here's the product we're talking about - go and check it out in the cart, all that sort of stuff. Andrew: They've got a great funnel, that much is obvious. So yeah, they're doing great. Chris: Slide 8, we've got a service based business, and obviously which means no eCommerce tracking on the site. And the highest channel - highest volume of traffic coming through is via organic for this one. Now, they've got a 56% bounce rate on their organic and 2.12 pages per session. Andrew: It's not bad. Chris: Yeah, that's right. Andrew: But there's room, room to improve, that's for sure... Chris: There is room for improvement. So, with bounce rate, like we said, that people are coming in and their not exactly seeing what we wanted them to see and they're leaving. But with 2.12 pages per session on organic - they kind of are finding what they are wanting to find. They're not really that eager to make an inquiry because their actual conversion rate is low, in the 2%'s, so it's an average conversion rate. Andrew: Yeah, so maybe there's a trust issue there and that's where I'd say probably maybe looking at getting some reviews, testimonials, that sort of thing - maybe having a look at the form, reducing the amount of fields in the form. Just to bring down all the barriers, make it easier for an inquiry to happen there. Chris: Really good point you've made there, Andrew, about the barriers to inquiry and completing a form. Those - Don't ask for too much information, what do you really need from people? Name, phone number, email address - that's pretty much it. Andrew: Yeah, like that's it. Even have a request to call back can be a better option than having an inquiry. Sometimes people don't feel that comfortable about filling all that information in. Chris: An optional message field is good. I think leave that one optional. So the top 3 required and an optional message field, boom. And then that could absolutely increase the conversion rate on those inquiries. Andrew: If I was to give these people any advice, though, it would be look at they're social campaigns, though here. Cause you can see there that their conversion rate is .9% on social. Bounce rate's 84%, like obviously they're sending the wrong message out there or maybe just reaching the wrong people. There's massive room for improvement there. Chris: Yeah, hard one, I'm with you on that. There's definitely some improvements that are needed. I mean, what are they sending people to this site for? Is it to consume content? They're not really clicking through to other pages on the site. It's - pages per session 1.6, time on site a minute ten. They really do need to reconsider why they're sending people there and... Andrew: Obviously sending them there for maybe promoting blogs or something like that. But then you just have to look at what they're doing next. Chris: They need to encourage and click through... Andrew: Calls to action in their blogs. Chris: Yeah, super important. Cool. Slide 9, we've got another service based business. So again organic search is the highest traffic source. Bounce rate is lower, 48%, that's great. It's good, rather. And 2.39 pages per session, which is pretty much average there. And a conversion rate of 4.84%. So, their conversion rate's obviously better than the last. And that means that their calls to action are much better and their barriers... Andrew: Mm-hmm (affirmative)... Chris: Their forms are probably better. They potentially got testimonials or some kind of - they've developed some kind of trust with the audience to encourage that inquiry. Maybe there's some sort of free offer, potentially round that... Andrew: Yeah, their funnel could just be better overall. And it might just be a type of service that people are more interested in, in general, you never really know that. Chris: Industry comes in... Andrew: That's right, yeah like some people just have a tough industry that you always have to consider. Chris: Exactly. So apart from website traffic sources we wanna focus on what's happening out there in amongst the other - I guess campaigns that we could be running. So, obviously social is probably the most popular and most common activity that people are undertaking when they're doing marketing. I think we've spoken about this before, but just to recap, what's some of the metrics people need to be tracking when they're doing social campaigns? Andrew: Okay, big thing for me is always engagement, especially the social. You wanna say that people are actually interacting with your content. Clicks through the website not always that important, 'cause you can see that they might be doing nothing when they get to the website. Most important thing is that they're having a good time on the social platform first and foremost. And then something that people don't often look at is one called "social clicks", which is a sort of like the viral effect. It's when someone's interacted with your content and then their friends doing it or maybe they've shared it to someone else. That's that sort of roll off growth effect that happens on social, that's a really important one, cause that means that the community's accepting it. It means it's getting shared around. Chris: And another really important metric that people need to be targeting - I'm sorry, monitoring when they're looking at their reports, their monthly reports, is search into results pages. So the results of their ranking of their keywords in search. Andrew: That's right. So you can look at your traffic for organic and that's great but you really wanna know where it's coming from, because you wanna know what you wanna optimise for on what you should be creating more content for. If you're not using a software for tracking your search engine results, you can go into search console and everyone should have search console. Google search console set up. You can have a look at your keyword report in there and that'll show you all the traffic that's coming in for different keywords and it will also show you the impressions for different keywords. So you can see who's seeing you for different keywords. And that at least is very important because that data's not in Google analytics anymore. Chris: It's not a complete picture because Google has wiped out a lot of the keywords that people actual typing in under a category called, "not provided", but... Andrew: It shows a lot more than Google analytics at least. Chris: Exactly. Andrew: So you get something there. Chris: Yeah. Is that all we got time for? Look I think this is a very high level view. Still, we've sorta dived in a little bit. But, with eCommerce there's so much more you could be looking at. Once you've got some of that conversions - what's happening with the conversions? Well potentially people are getting to the cart, and they're abandoning cart. So you need to look at the exit pages and what can you do there? Well you can be running automated email campaigns. You can be running remarketing campaigns on Google AdWords and social. There's lots of opportunities there. But again we said we're gonna have a high level view, and I think we've done that here so hopefully that's - I guess helpful. Anything to add, Andrew? Andrew: You know what? We could just go on forever. But I think maybe we'll do one on each specific channel, in the future, I'd think it'd be good. Chris: Yeah. Great! Well, thanks very much for your time. That was "Get Fact Up", episode 68. And you're here with Andrew Groat and Chris Hogan from MeMedia, here at the Burleigh Heads Studio's on the Gold Coast. Cheers.
Published Oct 20, 2017 Andrew: G'day world. Andrew Groat and Chris Hogan coming to you live from the MeMedia Studios here at Burley Heads for, Get Fact Up! And today we're talking about? Chris: Podcasting. Andrew: Podcasting. Chris: Podcasting as a marketing tool. Andrew: Absolutely. Chris: Or a content marketing tool, yeah. Andrew: Are we podcasting? Chris: We are podcasting right now. We're doing a podcast about podcasting. Andrew: We are. We're more vodcasting, so video on demand casting. Chris: Is that what it is? Andrew: Yeah. Chris: Oh, okay. Of course. Of course, it is! Andrew: I actually don't know what "pod" means? Chris: It's just from iPod, it's just stuck around since then. Andrew: Excellent. Cool, let's get cracking on! So podcasting as a marketing tool is actually really effective and I think there's plenty of high profile entrepreneurs that have been alluding to podcasting as a great way to get out to your audience, and that audio is a great way to engage with your audience, especially during those down times that people have. Those mundane tasks that people have throughout their day. Some of those might be driving to and from work, some of them might be walking to and from the post office, or while you're on lunch walking to and from the café, or sandwich shop where you're getting your sandwich. And the other ones are on the weekends, so mowing you know, I have to mow lawn so- Chris: So you listen to a podcast as well. Andrew: ... I listen to a podcast. Chris: I mean, you can listen to a podcast while you're working, you can ... yeah, driving, driving's a big one yeah. Andrew: Yeah, so some people I know that have pretty lack lustre jobs, actually do have a earpiece in one ear, and they're not that engaged with their work, it's packing boxes or something or other, and that's how they get through their day. Chris: Yeah, and stuck on the train, there's heaps of times when- Andrew: Exactly. Chris: ... when you need something like that. The thing is, the reach of podcasting is huge at the moment. There's so many platforms out there that you have access to and everyone's looking for this sort of content. And it's strange, I was talking about this today, like the success of podcast, it's a little bit surprising when you think the format would've died out by now. But I think it's because it's so personal and endearing, and when someone's done it professionally, it really gives you a window into the people behind whatever industry you're talking about. What it's like to be in their shoes and their world. And you learn really vicariously through podcasts I think, so it's a cool format. Andrew: Yeah, a lot of people that I listen to. So one of my good friends got me into listening to podcasts only a few years ago, and the first one I started listening to was Joe Rogan. Now, he's not for everybody, he swears a lot, and he's very opinionated on certain topics, but he'd get some really interesting cats on there, and they have great conversation and tell life stories that are just fascinating. Or they're researchers, they're authors, and they're sharing how they came to write about the book that they wrote, and man, there's some amazing stories that come through. Chris: It's funny, because if you think about these podcasts, and you just feel like you're getting smarter listening to them, it doesn't matter what they're talking about. You're like, "These are smart people talking. I'm getting smarter listening to this." It's just how you, especially Joe Rogan, you feel that way about him, but most of the time he's just talking about crap. Like he's just, he's waffling on about stuff. Andrew: He really is. Chris: But you genuinely feel smarter listening to it. Andrew: You do. You absolutely do. So some of the podcasts that I love is Joe Rogan, London Real was the next one that I think I got into, which is fantastic. Then there's Ben Greenfield's Fitness, which is awesome. Doctor Rhonda Patrick, she's a research scientist and goes heavily into nutrition and is big on mental health and how to improve mental health. Doctor Michael Greger, I'm not sure that he actually has a podcast, but he has appeared on many podcasts and he's also a researcher on nutrition. I'm heavily into nutrition, I love nutrition, so I listen to a lot of those types of ones. But then there's the business ones like Tim Ferris, he's got a great podcast. He's always talking about optimising time and stuff like that, and the guests that he gets on, he's talking to them about how they made the best of their lives and stuff like that. So I guess there's lots of different niches where people can actually plug into with podcasting. Like there's already heaps of podcasts out there worldwide. Chris: Yeah, that's it. A lot of people might think, "There's so much there, is it saturated?" But it's not really. Andrew: No. Chris: The amount of people watching and listening to podcasts doesn't mean saturation, because if you got a unique podcast, you're not really competing with anyone else. If you have a really general podcast, then maybe you're gonna have problems. But yeah, if you have something unique, you're only really creating some space for yourself, and if you're committed to it, you're gonna get an audience, because what you're saying is gonna be interesting to someone. Andrew: So let's get onto ... If you're not listening to podcasts and you're happen to be watching this video because you came to it via our YouTube or Facebook channel, then obviously, we are producing the video version, which I call vodcasting, and that's great. But if you wanted to listen to the podcast, there's heaps of channels to do that on, and I think there's a whole world of discovery out there for you that you're gonna be totally blown away by, once you start tapping into those podcasting channels. Chris: So yeah, I've put a couple of the big ones here. Like the obvious ones. I would say you don't want to be on all of them, just find one or two that work well. iTunes is the most obvious one, because you say, "Podcast," people just immediately think iTunes, so you kind of have to have a podcast on iTunes if you want to be in podcasting. Andrew: Yeah. Chris: It's not easy to get on. It's a bit of a weird service, so there's all these things that sort of facilitate getting onto iTunes. We can talk about that some other time. Andrew: Yeah. Chris: Stitcher. So only eight million registered users on Stitcher. It's by far the smallest, but it's only for podcasting, so if you have a podcast on Stitcher, the audience there is there to listen to a podcast, that's what they're hungry for. So if you want to be taken seriously, you should probably be on Stitcher. You got SoundCloud, which is sort of pitted as the "YouTube of audio." It's definitely the biggest audio streaming site. Andrew: 175 million unique listeners, yeah right. Chris: Yeah, there's a lot of features that are really good about it, like the inline commenting, and you could do a lot with the artwork, and there's messaging and things. My problem with SoundCloud, I've got personal issues with SoundCloud, because I used it for a while, they killed all of the community features. They pushed the pay too much, so they've really dampened their growth and they don't get taken quite so seriously now. It's good to be on though, it's good to be on. It's easy. Andrew: And there have certainly been rumours about their financial difficulties as well. Chris: Yeah. Andrew: And potentially shutting down, so yeah. Chris: Yeah, they're running a massive loss. Andrew: Don't put too much effort into that one maybe. Chris: It's there as an extra thing to be on, because it's not that hard. But the big one is YouTube, and I've put some stats here. You got 13 billion registered users. Andrew: 1.3 billion. Chris: 1.3 billion, yeah. There's a dot between those numbers, yeah. Andrew: 1.3 billion, yeah. Chris: Five billion videos viewed a day, so there's some serious reach and serious traffic happening on there. And out of all the platforms that we've spoken here, that's definitely the one to be on. It's free, user base is huge, you don't need to be registered or even logged in to watch the videos. Like all the other ones, you have to have an account, so it's really, really accessible. And also, YouTube's owned by Google, so you're exposing yourself to search engines and stuff like that. Yeah, it's got the biggest- Andrew: And just to touch on YouTube for a second, because most of you, we alluded to, "Hey, you're listening to something while doing a mundane task," whereas YouTube's a video platform and, "Well, I can't watch the video while I'm doing that mundane task like driving, or mowing." But I actually do, so if I can't actually find the podcast that I want to listen to in iTunes, I'll actually start up the video on YouTube, and ... I've got an iPhone, so I don't lock my phone, because once you lock it, it turns the video off. So then, I just chuck it in my pocket and yeah, it gets a little bit warm, because it's using a lot of battery power and bandwidth, but so what? Chris: ... But their answer to that is YouTube Red. YouTube Red's like the next version up. You don't get the ads and you can lock your phone while listening to it basically. So that's where they've turned it into an actual streaming service. Everyone's like, "I'm not paying for YouTube," well everyone pays for Sound, everyone pays for Spotify, everyone pays for iTunes and stuff, like that's not really that much of a jump there. Andrew: Cool. So I mean, there's heaps of niches out there that are probably undiscovered that absolutely anyone could start up a podcast on. I think one of the biggest downfalls of podcasts is the fact that it does cost a little bit of money to get started, and it does cost money and time to keep operating, so absolutely we need sponsors. So Joe Rogan, I feel, is probably one of the best examples for sponsors, and Tim Ferris. These guys, when they deliver a sponsorship message, it's always at the beginning, and they always do it from their own personal experience. So that- Chris: That's right. It's in line with what they're doing and it's very honest as well. They're like- Andrew: It's authentic. Chris: ... "So here comes a sponsorship message." And it's always about stuff they use, like for us it's Rode, but we're literally using the Rode microphones right now, so what's the big deal saying, "We're sponsored by Rode?" Right in front of our faces right now, so. Andrew: Exactly. So those guys, when they actually do deliver their messages, they're absolutely saying, "From personal experience I love this product because ..." And then they tell their own story. They put their own flavour in it, they put their own language in it and if they want to swear, that's what their audience wants. Chris: Yeah. Andrew: So I think, if you are gonna make the decision to embark on a project, make a decision whether or not you're gonna swear or not, who's your audience, and then match your product to fit that audience. Hardware. Getting started, we want to just break into it really briefly. We've got some kit here that actually allows obviously the two of us to talk to one another in the same room. We can have up to four and I think even six people in the same room with the kit we've got, but most of you are probably gonna start out either on your own or with one other person. So, let's just cover some of that gear. Chris: So, you've got your Rode Podcaster Mics. They're good because they're USB powered, it can go straight into a phone if you don't want to have the whole mixing desk set up. Pretty cheap. How much are they, because we got a couple of those in there and they're like 160 or something like that? Andrew: Oh, so the Podcaster Mic is different to what we've got here. It's actually a white version and these are the Rode Pro-Caster. The Podcaster will plug into a USB on a laptop, so that's really good if you're a one-man-band. Chris: Yeah, it skips all the extra hardware and stuff. Andrew: Absolutely. Then, if you do actually go to multiple mics, then you'll potentially need a mixer, or sorry, you will need a mixer. So there's different cabling and stuff. Not too hard to figure out once you've got the mixer, because obviously you just match that hole with that hole on the mixer. And one of those great mixers is a Yamaha. Chris: Yeah, they're cheap. Andrew: Yeah, they're pretty cheap. We've actually got a ... What do we got? A Zoom H-6, which is six channels, it allows up to six channels, but it's just a little bit more investment. So close to, I think, $700. Chris: Well, the good thing about those is they're super portable. The idea of that is to be able to podcast anywhere and do live video and all that sort of stuff we do. Then the next step is if you want to go video, you're obviously gonna need a camera. So you start with the Sony Handycams, they're like 500 bucks each to 4K, they're great. Andrew: Yeah. Chris: Next one up is you got the Sony NX. I'll probably stick with Sony for this sort of stuff, but you got the Sony NX range, which is what we're using right now, but that's a bit of a jump up. If you're gonna go with video, you also need lighting. Stick with LED lighting. It's cheap, super bright. It's what we use here. And then you got boom arms as well, which is, they're just handy to have. It's really good because you can manoeuvre around and things like that. Andrew: They're Rode boom arms as well. They either clamp directly onto the desk or they actually give you a plugin if you want to drill a hole, you can fit them directly into the desk. There's heaps of videos on how to set up podcasting studios. Actually, Rodes got some good ones on their website. This is just meant to be, I guess, an introduction as to why we think it's good. Yeah, a little bit of kit, and get out there and have a crack I reckon. Chris: So why would you do it? Honestly, it's one of the best forms of content marketing. It's why we're doing it. We're literally doing a 15, 20 minute video just showing our expertise in podcasting. It's a great way to showcase yourself in the industry, isn't it? Andrew: It is. It is. Chris: And people like listening to it. It's great. It's not often you get a captive audience and you get to showcase your skills. Andrew: Absolutely. Chris: I think that's where it's good, yeah. Andrew: And of course, I mention it every time, if you do want MeMedia to help you with your podcasting, or vodcasting for that matter, we do have all the kit here, so absolutely you can hire this space, or hire us to even set you up. Why not? We can give you plenty of tips and tricks around actually doing that, because once you embark on the video space, then how many cameras are you gonna have? Then it's a matter of editing and all that sort of stuff. There is cheaper ways to do that, and we've spoken about that before, that's live video, yeah? Chris: Yeah, for sure. Andrew: We've spoken about that before, so go back and review that episode, it's really cool. I think that's all we got time for today? We're trying to keep it a bit short. Shorter? We won't even go into predictions. Let's keep it nice and neat. Thanks very much for watching Get Fact Up! Thanks very much Andrew. Chris: No worries, thank you. Andrew: And keep watching. We are on YouTube, Facebook and our website is memedia.com.au. Cheers.
Published Sep 29, 2017 Chris: Hey world, Chris Hogan coming to you live from MeMedia Studio here in Burleigh Heads for 'Get Fact Up'. The new and improved version, delivering more content to you regularly, is in our vodcasting studio or podcasting studio. You can hire it out at Burleigh Heads as well, just enquire on our website. So here we are. Hanging on, Andrew? Andrew: Yeah, I'm good. Just had a double strength decaf. Chris: That did nothing. Andrew: Sorry, I was sitting on that one for a bit, sorry. Keep going. Chris: As you can see, we're keeping it light and humorous. So today we want to talk about the transition that's happening from broadcast, or traditional media, to online media. Basically, the millennials are moving away from traditional media and moving to social channels and whatnot for entertainment. Andrew: Well, the interesting thing about that is how we're delivering this today which, in my opinion, is shifting more towards live and daily content, and those sorts of things are happening on social. So what better way to deliver 'Get Fact Up' than through live video? Chris: Cool. Andrew: And that's what we're trying. Chris: So what are the channels that are actually performing best when it comes to live video? Andrew: Well, it's Facebook, YouTube, and then you've got other things like Instagram, which is obviously Facebook as well. It's like Facebook in your pocket, I guess you could say. And then, what else have you got? You've got Periscope. No one really uses Periscope. Chris: And also LinkedIn is coming out with their new update to allow you to shoot live video through their mobile app, and upload videos through the desktop. Andrew: Yep, LinkedIn always liked to party. But they're doing their thing. And then you've got things like Snapchat and all that, but from what I've heard, Snapchat's not gonna be around much longer. So let's not worry about that too much. Chris: Yeah, but those stories that are up there for 24 hours, they just aren't that interesting to anybody anymore. Especially the brands, I think, because ... Andrew: Yeah, it was a toy. People are getting past it. I don't know anyone that's really using Snapchat in that way anymore. And now there's also Instagram which has the same feature. Facebook has the same feature. It's really devalued that whole disposable story thing quite a bit. Chris: So with Facebook owning Instagram, we've seen a lot of changes in Instagram as well. They've actually brought in a lot of the features, their filters and all those overlays that Snapchat ... someone invented. And Facebook have kind of integrated those into both Facebook and Instagram. And Instagram have also updated their app, or their algorithm, to decrease the organic reach that people are getting to grow their channels. What problems does that present to newcomers to Instagram, do you think? Andrew: Well, I think when it went at a really saturated ... I don't want to call it a marketplace, because Instagram's not a marketplace. Chris: Channel. Andrew: It's a really saturated channel now. When I first started using Instagram and things like that, you could really grow a channel. You could easily get to two thousand followers, is that what we call them on Instagram? Yeah? Two thousand followers, just through organic means. Just through interacting with other people, and stuff like that. You just can't do it now. You don't get that sort of traction with posts and things like that anymore. You used to be able to put a post up and get two hundred likes, just by getting the right hashtag. That just doesn't happen now. You don't get that increase of followers, or that sort of thing. It's really just a feed now, and it's so saturated that if you're coming in with a unique idea, everyone is sort of doing that same thing. Everyone's coming in with a razor-sharp unique idea. You know, like the yoga paddle boarders and stuff like that. Everyone's coming in with something like that, it's just hypersaturation in there now. That's just how I feel about Instagram. Chris: We've talked about this many times, but I'm challenged by using Instagram due to the fact that when you're actually posting something, you can't actually put a link in the post, therefore not being able to redirect people off the channel onto your own. And here at MeMedia, we do a lot of content creation. We do a lot of marketing for clients. We call it integrated digital marketing. So essentially what we're doing is we're creating that content, we're using the social channels to distribute that content, and get traffic back to the website. That's an awesome indicator to Google to boost your SEO, boost your Google rankings. If you can't do that post on Instagram and actually put a link in the post and get the traffic to your website, the only way you can do that now is through using their advertising. Andrew: Using it in the profile, which is not helpful. Yeah. Chris: Or tell people to click on the link in the profile. Exactly. Not helpful. So to me, Instagram's not a great thing to use for SEO, for promoting people to come to your website, which is the media that you own. Obviously, when you're on these channels, you're only renting space. You know? And with Facebook updating algorithms, it's ... Andrew: You can't really turn that into leads, per se. You can use Instagram to get direct messages and stuff like that, but who wants to be walking around with their phone all the time replying to messages and things like that as a form of inquiry? You can't get calls and things off Instagram the way you can, unless you're doing ads and things. It's not getting it back to your website. Not in a meaningful way, anyway. Chris: They're actually using ads. Andrew: But it is a brand tool. And the people that do it well, the industries that do it well, things like cafes and clothing and things like that. But you know, they're getting their brand out there, and people see this, and they're like "I want that," and then they can go and find it. That doesn't work for everyone, that sort of effect on brand awareness doesn't work for everyone. You can't see a picture on Instagram of, for example, laser eye surgery, and think "that looks good. I'll just go and get that today." It doesn't work for everyone. Chris: So let's talk about what's happening with the aspirational youth and the Gen X, Y, Z. Basically, how they're becoming disengaged with traditional advertising. 99% of millennials are actually disengaged with traditional advertising. So trying to replicate traditional advertising methods on social channels isn't really that effective. Given that 55% of people watch videos online every day, there is this huge, I guess, shift from everyone to produce videos. Once again, they're trying to take that traditional ad that they've done previously ... Andrew: Ah, we're talking about traditional media, yeah. Chris: Yeah. They've done in traditional media ... Andrew: They're failing so hard. It's like they're jumping on these social channels and they're like "Great. So we use the TV formula on social media." And everyone goes, "I don't want to watch TV on Facebook. Goodbye." Or "I don't want to watch TV ads on Facebook, see you later." Chris: I don't even want to watch ads! Andrew: Well, yeah. And that's the thing. You have to be very creative with these new formats now. You have to really think around, okay, the people that are watching these formats, they're escaping TV. So if we come at them with ads, they're not gonna react well to it. Because they're ignoring TV and they're going to Facebook or Instagram or YouTube or something like that. Last thing they want is TV ads coming at them, because that's what they've come from. Chris: So yeah, cutting to that "Proudly brought to you by your sponsor, let's listen to a message from our sponsors," all of that type of messaging just isn't gonna work. And the reason why we're focused on millennials and these aspirational youth is because the global workforce by 2025 is gonna have 8% baby boomers, 28% Gen X, 33% Gen Y, and 31% Gen Z. So that's our audience. Andrew: It's all social media generations now, from here on in. Chris: Absolutely. Andrew: They're not going to react to a straight up sponsorship message, or a straight up advert. But the thing that's happening now is like these online sponsorship messages that happen in podcasts and things, where they just say "hey look, our podcast is funded by Rode Microphones or something like that." And people expect that. They know that you have to be able to make money out of these things. Chris: That's right. Then it comes down to authenticity. And one thing that you'll notice when you, or that we definitely notice, is that with advertising that's used in podcasts, the host of the show is actually delivering the message from their point of view. So like Andrew just said, we are proudly brought to you by one of our sponsors, Rode Microphones. And this kit is Rode Microphones kit. And it's bloody awesome! So we can actually say that, because we've used the product. Andrew: And we're literally using it right now. Chris: That's right. And just out of nowhere, we actually have extra kit if you want to do more podcast from this studio and have more people sitting at this table. So where to now? We're seeing these massive shifts to video, massive shift to live video, and what do we want to see when we're doing that? What are some of the ... we want to see reach, we want to see video views, and we want to see engagement. Andrew: The funny thing there is where it comes back to promotion. So we already know that people like live video. But you don't get an awful lot of rich engagement when the live video's happening. So with everything, eventually, it inevitably comes down to the paid promotion. Facebook used to be great. You put something on your Facebook page, or your Facebook page, followers saw it. Now, what percentage is it now? Chris: One? Andrew: It's like 1%? Chris: Organic, yeah. 1% organic. Andrew: That's so weak. So all of these new formats, they're great while they're happening and people think they're exciting, but then it becomes commonplace, and we need to look at the promotion side of things. And that's where it's a real problem. The two big contenders right now are YouTube and Facebook for the live video, and both of them had terrible paid promotion. It doesn't even exist, really. They both kind of, in their help, I'll just bring it up now. YouTube, for example, says during your event, yeah, you can create a highlight clip after your event. Or before your event get your followers excited, etc. But there's nothing for promotion of a live stream. I think you said Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg mentioned something at their F8 conference? Chris: Don't quote me on this, but it is a rumour that promotion of live video during the live stream is going to be available sometime in the not too distant future. There's a whole realm of issues that could present. Andrew: Yeah! Like, obviously it needs to happen because it's what people are getting excited about. It's where they're moving, so we have to be able to promote it. But what happens then? Because Facebook are kind of liable. They review ads, so we put like 200 ads up and they'll go through them and sixty might get through because of various reasons. How do they monitor the live video? So if someone says "I'm gonna do a video about this," but then it's about something else and it offends everyone, it looks bad for, say, Facebook or YouTube, so. Chris: Well that's where I think their feature that they've got now for videos that are uploaded is that they do have the ability for Facebook to process your captions. So for those that don't know, captions mean subtitles that appear at the bottom. That's pretty amazing technology. Obviously, that's done by a machine. And it's not 100% accurate, in fact it needs a lot of work. But if they have the ability to do that live, then potentially they can kick out those profanities and ... Andrew: Flagging things, and then someone comes in and manually watches it. Because Facebook already do that. What I've had explained to me by someone that does the forums on Facebook, there's an automatic review process, and that's what determines if your ads go live or not. And then if things get flagged, someone manually reviews it, so it's like a two step process. I think it'll be something like that. They're looking for profanity or things like that, and then someone will come in and check out that stream, maybe they check what the reactions are because people can react as they go, they can say "Like this, hate this." Maybe if it's too many people disliking it or having negative reactions, then someone jumps in. They'll have to find a solution around that if they want to monetise it, but they will monetise it because they love, especially Facebook, love monetising things. Chris: Of course, of course they do. Andrew: YouTube I'm not sure exactly how they're gonna do it. Chris: One of the most amazing things is, when we're actually creating content for our clients, is the reach and engagement that we get, and the video views that we're getting for our clients here at MeMedia. But one thing that's been amazing, and that's in a new venture that we've co-founded with two other directors, Leigh Kelson and Scott Burke, for Beach City, is amazing reach. Which is 1.8 million reach, 434,000 video views, and 109,000 post engagements on those videos. Andrew: And that's mostly with live video? Chris: Yes. All live video. Truly spectacular engagement, and that's the key metric that we're looking at there. Supposedly, 10% is excellent engagement, and we're actually getting over 20%. Given the multitude of places where we can post video, which we spoke about before, Facebook's an awesome place to get reach and engagement. People are spending less time actually viewing the videos on Facebook than they are on YouTube. Andrew: Definitely, significantly less. But YouTube's a video platform, so people are expecting it. There's still this sort of interrupted feeling for the live video on Facebook, because you get that notification saying "so-and-so's live." Some people just don't react so well to it. Some people are into it. Facebook's a feed of the content you're interested in there. So sometimes, "so-and-so's live" could be disruptive to someone just wanting to look at memes or something like that. But YouTube? Definitely, people are ready for live video on YouTube. Chris: There's a huge reason to post on YouTube, as we've discussed many times, and the reason why we post on YouTube is that obviously, Google doesn't crawl through Facebook's content to list it in the search engine results pages, which is the Google listings when you do a search. Whereas when you do post on YouTube, then there's an opportunity for those videos to appear in the search. Andrew: And that's something we often say to clients, it's like if you can't get a page rank for something because your competitors have great content for something, do they have videos? Probably not. Google's gonna favour videos, because they own YouTube. So that's a good way to sneak past. It's always a good reason to be putting videos on YouTube. Chris: And there's so many different ways you can create videos, whether it's slideshows or chats or podcasts. Andrew: Exactly. The other thing that's good about YouTube is it's always been a video platform, so it's more like a library than Facebook. Facebook's a feed, so things get lost if you post a lot. Things'll just disappear back. And people don't really go backwards through your feed too much. They might see something they like, and then they'll think "okay, let's look at old videos." It's not as easy to do with Facebook, but if someone sees something they like on YouTube, they can subscribe to you. They can get all your new videos. They can look at all your archived videos. It's a lot more organised for that sort of thing. But, the connectivity of people's not there on YouTube. Chris: No, that's right. Because I mean, there's just not as many people there. With Facebook having two billion plus monthly users ... Andrew: Yes. Let's bring that up. Chris: Over two billion monthly active Facebook users, with ages 25 to 34 making up 29% of those users worldwide. Andrew: Yeah, so this is all the people we're talking about. They're Gen Y, X, and millennials. They're all there, and they're online all the time. Something like 28 times a day someone checks their Facebook, on average. Chris: Of course. Andrew: In these generations. Chris: We're highly addicted beings and we really had no chance when the smartphone came around, to not be addicted according to Simon Sinek, the famous author. Some other stats. Like we said, the decline of broadcast TV. 24% decline in live TV for 18 to 24 year olds since 2016. There's a clear shift to social. There's a clear shift to YouTube. There's a clear shift to online. There's a clear shift in your very home, watching multi devices being used in the same room while the TV is still on, but just playing some average stuff in the background, to put it nicely. Andrew: That's, yeah. That's on a timeline that you can't really control. Chris: Yeah, so everything's on demand. 65% of global media consumers choose video on demand. Far out. Andrew: We're not even considering things like Netflix, the actual streaming TV services. Half the time when someone's saying TV, they actually mean Netflix. "I watched TV last night." They watched Netflix last night. That's another thing. But I suppose what we're getting at here about all this shift is what can you do about it? How can you leverage this from a marketing perspective? And that's where it gets interesting, because everyone's still trying to figure it out. How does this work? We're still trying to figure it out. And we're finding things that work, but how far can you push that before people start to get annoyed because you're in their personal downtime? If you're annoying someone on Facebook, you're in their downtime and people don't like being annoyed in their downtime. That's where it's leading edge right now, we're trying to figure out how to make this work. But the thing is, the big difference between traditional media and this new type of media like Facebook and YouTube and all this live video stuff is, you've got analytics, you've got metrics, so you can actually see the data behind this. You can see publicly accessible data about what people are reacting to, the results you're getting, and all that sort of thing. You're never gonna get that with TV. If you approach a TV channel and say "I want to put ads up," they'll tell you "You're gonna get so-and-so people, this many people watching it today." Chris: This is what our reach is per month and how many people we're reaching, this demographic. But you don't actually know what your specific ad or mention in the show, how many eyeballs it hit and how many people actually liked it. Andrew: And even if a TV's on, if there's a TV on and there's a family of five watching the TV, four of those people are on Facebook at any given time. So they can't really prove that. You see those, cinema advertising, which is probably even a step down from TV. You're watching a movie and it says "Cinema advertising works!" And you'll be the only person in the cinema. There's something wrong there. How can they prove any of this anymore? Chris: So clearly we've got a shift to social media, online media, and on-demand media. And we can actually give valuable ROI in terms of statistics and metrics of who viewed your particular piece of content, brand, you know, ad. So there's no time like the present, obviously, to make these shifts. And there's plenty other ways that are happening right here right now that ... you know, like, influencing marketing is another way to ... Andrew: Ah yeah, that's a mince higher with your podcast. Chris: Yep. I think we're gonna have to talk about that another time. So thanks very much for listening. Like we said, we hope you like Get Fact Up. The new way we're delivering, it somewhat helps our production time, helps us produce more content, and you can hire this studio too. Simply inquire on memedia.com.au. Thanks, and thanks to Rode Microphones for helping deliver this vodcast.
Published Feb 1, 2017 IS EMAIL MARKETING DEAD? Once we start having this conversation about any form of marketing (eg. SEO, SMM, Google Advertising) I believe a method of marketing has reached a level of maturity that it's no longer able to be used as a separate strategy to all your marketing activities due to it being overused and abused by marketers. This same conversation happened with SEO approximately 5 years ago and while SEO is still used as a term it has been integrated into marketing activities like what we do here at MeMedia and somewhat re-branded as Content Marketing. But what do the statistics say? According to Hubspot: - Three-quarters of companies agree that email offers "excellent" to "good" ROI. - 86% of consumers would like to receive promotional emails from companies they do business with at least monthly, and 15% would like to get them daily. - Two-thirds of emails are read on either smartphones or tablets. So email marketing isn't dead but the way it's now being used is less about direct marketing and more about nurturing potential customers and communicating with existing customers via email automation. This sentiment is also shared by Blogger Aaron Agius who shared in his article late last year that; EMAILS EFFORTLESSLY NURTURE LEADS. A nurtured lead increases sales 20 percent more than a cold lead. At 33 percent less cost than other lead-generating mechanisms Aaron says that nurturing via email follows a simple strategic formula: - First, raise awareness. (Inform customers about a product.) - Second, stimulate a desire for acquisition. (Tell them where to get it.) - Third, guide the reader toward conversation. (Transform prospects into customers.) - Fourth, create customer retention. (Sell them related products.) So you might be asking. How am I going to do all that with every potential customer I deal with? ENTER: EMAIL AUTOMATION. If you've been keeping a close eye on email marketing software and the proliferation of products to hit the market then you may have noticed that email automation has become an essential feature when choosing your software. AND IF YOU HAVEN'T BEEN WATCHING… PC MAG HAS. PC Mag lists a comparison of The Best Email Marketing Software of 2016 When we're looking at this table we find here is that all bar one of these applications have custom auto-responders capability. Which is an indicator that this software might be what we need to help us nurture leads. But many of you may still be asking: WHAT IS AN AUTO-RESPONDER? The first use of an Auto-Responder email is normally when a new email address has been subscribed to an email list. This is when a pre-created email template automatically sends a response to the subscriber saying thank you or welcome. Auto-responders are used in many scenarios like joining up to a website and paying for a product or service online - not just when the subscriber specifically subscribes to an email list. But not all Auto-responders are created equal. In-fact there is a next level solution called Email automation. AUTO-RESPONDERS VS. EMAIL AUTOMATION Email automation is commonly referred to as an auto-responder but it's important to note that a one-off auto-responder isn't really what we would call email automation. This is really only the beginning of the automation process. Email Automation is when an organisation crafts a series of response emails that activate based on particular actions by the email recipient. Triggers which might fire off emails might include: - Signing up to a website - Buying a product - Not buying a product - Navigating particular areas of a website - Responding to an email - Not responding to an email - Opening and email - Not opening and email The list can go on and on! And Like Aaron Agius said: "A NURTURED LEAD INCREASES SALES 20 PERCENT MORE THAN A COLD LEAD." So if we want to use Email Automation to Nurture Your Customers we need to do a quick rundown on which software applications you might need to compare before making a start. EMAIL AUTOMATION WITH INFUSIONSOFT Infusionsoft has become the software most well known for email automation, in-fact they may have even invented the term. Promoted as a THE software for marketing automation, sales automation including ecommerce sales it's easy to see by looking at screenshots of it's campaign builder interface that Infusionsoft is a force to be reckoned with. Getting started with any email automation campaign requires setup of not only your templates but also your campaign workflow. This can be a little daunting for the uninitiated which is why Infusionsoft offer various services via the partner network such as; - Training/Coaching - Access to Infusionsoft Partners; - and even the Infusionsoft marketplace where you can search and install FREE pre=configured campaigns to help you get started. Infusionsoft pricing is based on contacts and the number of emails you wish to send per month and ranges from $199/mth for 2,500 contacts to $599/mth for 20,000 contacts. You can also request once of custom startup packages or discuss custom plans. Infustionsoft integrates with many of the most popular ecommerce and website platforms which allows for you to leverage all types of customer engagements. EMAIL WORKFLOWS WITH CAMPAIGNER Campaigner refers to their email automation as workflows which are not unlike those we showed for Infusionsoft. Workflows enable you to setup conditions. Services which are also available from Campaigner include: - Custom Template Design - Email Marketing Strategy Development - Campaign Implementation - And you can even request a Dedicated Client Success Representative Campaigner pricing which gives you access to workflows starts from $549.95 / mth for up-to 100,000 contacts. Higher volume pricing plans are also available. Campaigner also integrates with many of the most popular ecommerce, website and CRM platforms. EMAIL AUTOMATION WITH MAILCHIMP If you've been playing around with email marketing for sometime you've surely heard of MailChimp. If not it's widely known for making email marketing easier and more cost effective and it also integrates with all of the most popular ecommerce, content management system software and CRM software like: - Shopify - Magento - Neto - Wordpress - Salesforce - And more Mailchimp also has email automation as part of it's features but put plainly it pales in comparison to the capabilities of Infusionsoft and Campaigner. In saying this it may be the perfect entry level automation for your business given that it's set up with several preset options for you based a variety of industries and events. If you're already using a program like Campaign Monitor then there is no reason to jump ship to try MailChimp's automation capabilities, because they are much the same. Pricing for MailChimp's automation features incur a monthly $199 ProMarketer subscription on top of your number of subscribers you may wish to send to. For example if we look at 100,000 subscribers you can send up to 1.2 Million emails for $475 / month plus a $199 / mth. EMAIL IS FAR FROM DEAD So email is far from dead when it's being used for good and not for evil. And being a good marketer means you're nurturing. If you have an advanced problem to solve then Infusionsoft would be our recommended email automation software. If you're problem requires a less complicated solution then MailChimp or Campaign Monitor would be a good place to start. And if you're looking to get subscribers to actively signup to your newsletters then please don't stick popups in their face. Just create amazing content and explain what people will get and when they can expect to get it when they subscribe to your emails. SEE YOU NEXT MONTH!! _________________________________________________________________________________________ Subscribe to our Get Fact Up series for regular updates: https://www.memedia.com.au/get-fact-up Like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/memedia Join us on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/memedia Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/me_media
Published Dec 12, 2016 You might be thinking I have a one track mind. Content content gotta create content. Many of you numbers focused peeps out there just want to know, “Does content marketing actually work?” I'll tell you the answer to that in just a minute. But let me start by sharing a quick story. It's October 2015 and MeMedia have been operating for 9 years as a company. I've been in the game since 1998 and well... you could say there was change on the inside but on the outside not a lot had changed. At this point in my career, back in 2015, I'm thinking of quitting as I threw a little entrepreneurial hissy fit. Why aren't we more well known? Why don't we rank in page one of Google for generic search terms? Why hasn't our revenue increased year on year? Why haven't we seen growth and success like other Agency's I see around me? The answer was we didn't deserve it. We were full-filling on Einstein's definition of insanity. Which is; “Doing something over and over again and expecting a different result.” While I knew that we had grown as a company to offer an amazing integrated service that no other agency could match we had not really proved to ourselves that we were capable of doing amazing things if our own website, marketing, SEO and video content was any indication of our self proclaimed stature. Clients marketing was good. MeMedia's marketing sucked. I told myself I've never been a quitter and I'm not about to go down without a fight. I decided to back myself and my team and prove to ourselves and the world that we're damn awesome. Here I discovered an Ah-ha! moment. We've got to go back to the beginning of the entrepreneurial journey and take risks like we did when we first started this company. We've gotta set ourselves apart and we have to embrace author Daniel Pink's quote: “If you do more than what you get paid for then eventually you'll get paid more for what you do.” Keeping our clients up-to-date about things they can do to help themselves through this marketing maze has always been a huge passion of mine. And it has always meant we've had long standing clients. So some of this quote was already producing results. But attracting new clients seemed difficult. I tried running live events,webinars, and speaking at local networking breakfasts to attract new business...but still I wasn't getting the reach and results I was looking for... And so I decided to go all in and create a positive outcome for our entire community. I decided that if we were going to exist, it better be for the betterment of not just our company but for everybody who comes into contact with us, regardless if they do business with us or not. And what better way to reach an entire community of entrepreneurs than via a weekly Get Fact Up video series released every Monday morning and broadcast socially. And it is because we created the best content any of us had seen, educating and entertaining our existing network and then growing our reach to influencers we effectively did our own PR, SEO and Social Media Marketing. I've mentioned the results in episode #50 of Get Fact Up but one thing I didn't mention was the ROI. WE ACHIEVED 100% ROI. We got back everything we spent on Get Fact Up plus that same spend on top. That's what we got after 12 months of awesome content marketing. So I just want to say that if you think Tis the season to create content then you're damn right it is, but more importantly 'Tis the season to create change. Don't just change for change sake make sure you change for the better! I'll leave you with one last quote by Henry Ford; “If you do what you've always done then you're going to get what you've always got.” Speaking of change. We here at MeMedia are following our own advice and changing up how we do Get Fact Up! Next year we will be cutting back to doing our videos just once a month, but stepping them up to a whole new level. We're taking the time to jam pack them with awesome information, interviews, tutorials and much more. And don't worry - on the other weeks we will won't be slacking off - we'll be creating Get Fact Up infographics, articles, blog posts and more. I'm Chris Hogan, Founder and CEO of MeMedia. Thanks for an amazing 2016. I look forward to partnering with you in 2017 and making a real positive difference in your company and our community.
Published Dec 5, 2016 For anyone that runs an online business, you probably have asked yourself this question many times: HOW DO I GET MORE WEBSITE TRAFFIC? We've covered plenty of topics like improving Rankings, Click Through Rates and Page Engagement, but we've never tackled this question directly before. So let's get started. We at MeMedia want to share with you one of our favourite methods for creating and promoting content that gets you traffic. It's simple, but it requires you to think outside the box from how you currently do your marketing. HERE'S THE MIND BLOWING SECRET: DON'T CREATE CONTENT TO ATTRACT CUSTOMERS! Now don't get me wrong - the goal here is to increase business. But if you continually try to attract the same crowd of people, your website traffic probably looks a bit like this. Flat as a tack. STEP 1: FIND THE INFLUENCERS IN YOUR NICHE “Influencers” are the people that already have the attention of crowds of potential customers - you need to keep an eye on them as they hold the keys to your industry. Are there any well known bloggers in your industry? Newsletter creators? Publishers? What is it that they are discussing in your industry? Make a list of all of these influencers, and the topics they discuss. If your industry doesn't have many influencers, find some big names in a related niche. For example, if nobody is blogging about chainsaws, look for influencers that write about gardening or hardware. STEP 2: CREATE CONTENT THAT APPEALS TO THESE INFLUENCERS, NOT YOUR CUSTOMERS Take your list of topics that influencers like, and turn it into awesome content. These topics are what your influencers care about, what they want to read about and what they want to talk about. And if they talk about it - everyone in your niche will listen! If you write an article on a topic that in influencer wants to share and discuss, you will be reaching an audience far bigger and more engaged than what you could reach on your own. STEP 3: PROMOTE TO INFLUENCERS USING THE POWER OF FACEBOOK TARGETING We have discussed it before, Facebook advertising is seriously powerful, thanks to the targeting options you have available. Share your content to your facebook page, then use Facebook's “Audience” tools to boost it to the interests, behaviours and demographic that match your group of influencers. Even if your content doesn't make it in front of all of your influencers, you will be circulating it in the right group of people. This step helps to kick start the momentum and get your content noticed - everything else happens organically! That's about all we have time for today ladies and gents - to quickly recap: you need follow the influencers in your industry. Market to them, and get access to a much bigger audience of potential customers. If you need help with creating a marketing strategy like this - just give us a call, send an email or hit us up on social - we're here to help. Thanks for watching Australia! References: 4 Steps to increase website traffic: http://backlinko.com/increase-website-traffic Guide to influencer targeting: https://blog.kissmetrics.com/guide-to-influencer-targeting/
Published Oct 31, 2016 G'day Australia, I'm Chris Hogan, Founder And CEO of MeMedia. Let's Get Fact Up. A few months back we did a comparison ecommerce suites. You might remember that Neto, the homegrown heroes, took the trophy as the hottest platform for online business. Signup for Your Free Neto Trial Today Since then we've used Neto for a number of our own clients, and even some projects of our own. The feedback we've had about the system has been great, and gotta say that we just love being able to work with locals! So we thought it was about time we did an update on Neto and shared what's new and improved, and what's on the horizon. Firstly, Neto has added a comprehensive Point of Sale system to the suite, that completely integrates with the eCommerce features. This means you can now process physical sales from the same platform that manages your online business. It's really easy to setup and works with a variety of hardware, from mac/pc/tablet to cash registers, barcode scanners, payment terminals and more. The POS system lets you navigate your product range and quickly add items, process refunds and returns and even discounts right from your store. Receipts and order history are all backed up online, and your clients can even log in and see their purchases from your website. What's great about this, is that Neto is now a complete sales solution - allowing you to run sales through your ecommerce site, mobile, eBay, and social media, and now even your bricks and mortar store. Signup for Your Free Neto Trial Today This point of sale system is available standalone from just $9 a month AU. Speaking of pricing, Neto have updated all of their pricing packages to now have no transaction fees - meaning you now only pay your standard monthly subscription, without worrying about scaling costs. Neto now also integrates with a tonne of different accounting, shipping and payment systems. MYOB, Sendle Shipping, Stripe payments, Braintree and eWay Payment gateway and much more are now all able to be plugged-in to Neto. There's also a bunch more already available in the add-on store. The backend UI has been overhauled since our last Video about neto, including a new look for the control panel. There is also now over 50 free and premium themes available. We could keep talking about all the cool new stuff at Neto all day, but we thought it might be better to go and visit them in person. So next week we're heading up to the Neto office to do our first off-site Get Fact Up episode. We'll have a chat about what's on the horizon for the eCommerce platform and hopefully get a demo of some of the cool new features - so stay tuned! Thanks for listening Australia. We'll see you next week.
Published Oct 24, 2016 G'day Australia, I'm Chris Hogan, Founder And CEO of MeMedia. Let's Get Fact Up. Well we've now passed 50 episodes of Get Fact Up, so time to take a bit of a break right? Wrong! There's never been a better time to create amazing content instead of wasting time on dodgy linkbuilding tactics. Here's why... In the last few years you may have heard a thing or two about google algorithm updates. We've even done a few episodes about them. There was Panda, Possum, Pidgeon and even one called Pirate. But the latest update that's had people talking is Penguin. In the last few weeks Google has been rolling out Penguin version 4.0, and it's caused quite a stir. You might have noticed a change in your traffic that looks like this: Or if you're not a MeMedia client, it probably looks like this: In their defence google doesn't have an easy job. Fighting spam at a global level takes some pretty heavy handed tactics. Unfortunately for marketers, this usually meant headaches. In the past, Penalties hit website owners hard: Sudden drops in traffic with almost no explanation, then waiting months for reconsideration requests once you fixed things up. But what about this new Penguin update - what's so special about it? Let's take a quick look. If you want a in depth analysis of Penguin check out Rand Fishkin's video on Moz. The purpose the Penguin updates has always been about fighting spammy links across the web. Previously this was done with large scale rollouts that did get rid of spam, but also crippled a lot of innocent websites in the process. Penguin 4.0 is the first update google has done that is able to check for website spam in realtime. What this means is that while crawling the web, google will pass holy judgement the moment it sees a new content. Now you might be thinking - how is that a good update? Well the flipside is that it Penguin 4.0 can take away penalties and reward in realtime too. This means that you can address problems quickly go back to producing awesome content. So if you're one of our clients, you can rest easy, as we have only seen traffic improvements across the board. Woohoo! We stand by our strategies, and guess what - google does too! But, If you're not one of our clients, the first thing you need to do is check your analytics - have you noticed a change? Have a look at your referrals. You may need to disavow some of these, or if you did something bad like created a bunch of microsites, a link network, or even worse - bought links - just do everyone a favor get rid of them ASAP. And of course the best way to “earn” good links is by regularly creating awesome content. Do this well and you'll never have a problem. We could go on about this, but we've already covered it a lot in previous episodes, you'll find links to them below. https://www.memedia.com.au/blog/why-you-should-jum... https://www.memedia.com.au/blog/content-marketing-... https://www.memedia.com.au/blog/get-fact-32-winnin... https://www.memedia.com.au/blog/get-fact-24-conten... https://www.memedia.com.au/blog/get-fact-episode-3... A lot of SEO agencies and Marketers might be hanging up their BLACK hats over Penguin 4.0, but we couldn't be happier. We know there are no shortcuts to growing your business online, and finally we're moving into a time when hard work is really being rewarded. And that's all we have time for today ladies and gents! Thanks for listening Australia. We'll see you next week.
Published Oct 17, 2016 G'day Australia, I'm Chris Hogan, Founder and CEO of MeMedia and it's time to Get Fact Up! But firstly I'd like to interrupt this program to thank everyone who has helped MeMedia reach our 10 year milestone this October 2016. With an Especially massive thank you to all of the clients and team members past and present. It's been such an awesome journey. Today's Get Fact Up is the case study that is Get Fact Up and Wow what a ride business has been in the last year. I think it's very easy for us Marketers to learn and sell the theory behind all the biggest marketing trends which exist to build your brand and your business but it's another thing to have the practical knowledge behind content marketing and testing these theories with our own campaigns. And here we have it. Get Fact Up episode 50. That's 2 episodes shy of an entire year and after 10 years of running this company I can honestly say the last year has been The most amazing! :) So I want to share with you what we did and how those actions reflected on our KPIs which were Produce Content Weekly without fail Increase our reach via social & email. Improve our Google Ranking and Website Traffic Increase our Leads and our sales. As you know. Get Fact Up is a weekly video series designed to provide high-quality helpful content regularly surrounding topics which associate with our services - Strategy, Development and Marketing. Wow what a great idea right? Of course it is, but it's not our idea… It's Google's. So the theory was that in order to get a better SEO ranking and more traffic to our website all we had to do was https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/40349... Listen and follow the “Steps to a Google-friendly site” by Giving visitors the information they're looking for. Google continues to explain that we should: Provide high-quality content on your pages, especially your homepage. This is the single most important thing to do. If your pages contain useful information, their content will attract many visitors and entice webmasters to link to your site. Damn that's some awesome advice. And we knew it which is why we did something about it. Was I just a little bit scared of doing this? You're damn right! But we did it anyway and the results speak for themselves. So what did we do? We followed Google's and our own advice and created Video content, weekly. Get Fact Up is hosted on YouTube and embedded on the MeMedia website, in a blog post. We broadcast every episode to our entire email database and social media audiences being Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn As a result we've reached 10s of thousands of people over the past year. Our rankings for targeted keywords like: Digital Agency Gold Coast and Marketing Agency Gold Coast have gone from positions 13 and 51 to 2 and 6 respectively. Our overall Website traffic has increased by up to 300% And our brand has never been stronger with direct traffic and searches for the word MeMedia indicating an all time high. Now of course it's easy to get caught up in search statistics hype but here's the kicker… MeMedia have received requests for quotes on some of the most exciting and biggest contracts ever and as a result sales are up 20%. So what does this mean for you? Content Marketing is not hype it's real and it works. In fact it works so well I'd have to say out of all the marketing we've ever done for our own brand that this has been the best time and money spent because we get told everyday that our videos just rocked somebody elses world and that has translated into a few but awesome PR mentions and accolades as well. No matter how much you doubt yourself sometimes the best way to get over your fear is to go through what I refer to as the baptism of fire. It can hurt at first but damn you feel invigorated and awesome after you've come through the flames :) The learnings from Get Fact Up has of course meant that our clients marketing is even more amazing which is why I've included a link to one of our most recent case studies with Gold Coast Surgical Hospital…. It also has a really nice little word from our client as well :) So check that out. So what does the future hold for Get Fact Up? Well the way we see it, the only way forward is via you - our audience. So we just want to make sure we're consistently helpful and hopefully entertaining. We can also see huge opportunities to grow our distribution channels and most of all our YouTube channel. So if you haven't already subscribed on YouTube. Please help us out and follow the links in this post. Thank you once again to all of our amazing clients and team past and present. You all rock and we will in turn continue to rock your marketing world too. See ya next week Australia for episode 51 of Get Fact Up :)
Published Oct 6, 2016 HomeBlogTwitter Takeover, AMP Pages and Facebook @ Work | Get Fact Up #49 1300 MEMEDIA HOME AGENCY YOUSTRATEGYDESIGNDEVELOPMARKETINGINTEGRATE WORK BLOG CONTACT FEED CONTENT-MARKETING TWITTER TAKEOVER, AMP PAGES AND FACEBOOK @ WORK | GET FACT UP #49 Posted: Oct 6, 2016, 3:28 PM This week we want to take a break from the world of video marketing, and look at some of the big changes that are happening in online marketing. Firstly let's take a look at Twitter. It's no secret that Twitter has struggled with revenue and growth over the past few years. Even the introduction of ads has not really helped, as it's far too easy to skip past them in the platform. Monetization has been a struggle, and now there's a lot of talk about a takeover in the pipeline. Salesforce, Microsoft and Disney have all expressed some interest in buying Twitter, but none of these companies want it as badly as Google do - and here's why. Google has not had any real success with it's own social platform, Google+, I think we even called it the living dead in a previous video. We said that the best course of action for Google would be just buying a successful one. You know, just casually buying a social network - Google certainly has the funds to do it. It looks as though Google is intending to use Twitter to revitalize engagement on Youtube. Recent updates to the Youtube platform such as the new “community” features show that google is testing different ways of getting more activity engagement. An integration between Twitter and Youtube makes a lot of sense. Twitter would be the perfect place to share video content, and Youtube would finally have the engaging social features that would see video platform buzzing with life - the way that videos do on Facebook. What this means for you, is that you should be looking to get video content up on YouTube ASAP, as there may soon be a lot of opportunity in this space. At the very least, create your Youtube and Twitter accounts so that you are ready, and begin brainstorming your awesome content. Next let's look at AMP or Accelerated Mobile Pages. [Cutaway - chris on postie bike with web pages flying out the back like mail?] We said before in a previous video, that you didn't need to worry about AMP until you saw them appearing in search. Well guess what - in the last 2 weeks they've been appearing for all sorts of search results, and always - right at the top. It's time to start taking this seriously - AMP are officially happening and it looks like Google is giving a big boost to those who are using it. The other advantage of AMP is that they are lightning fast and highly relevant for mobile - this obviously will have a positive effect on bounce rates and engagement when being used on a phone. Considering that mobile usage has well-and-truly overtaken desktop usage, everyone should now be optimizing for mobile. The problem we have found with AMP is it's not easy to setup. Simple platforms like Wordpress have a few Plugins for AMP, but they are far from foolproof - it really does require the help of a developer at this early stage. Especially if you are wanting to do AMP on a large website or ecommerce store And before we wrap thing up we wanted to take a quick look at Facebook's awesome new product called “Facebook at Work”. This is a new development, that allows you to create a private social network for your company, with all of the facebook features we know and love. The Facebook feed, comments, Messenger, video chat and everything else is all now available for your company to use as a collaboration tool. The advantage of this is that almost everyone knows how to use Facebook, so it's going to be a no brainer for your staff to start using this. Also, you don't need to create a new account to connect to a Facebook @ work group. And that's all we have time for today! As you know the team at MeMedia are always here to help. If you need any assistance creating content for Youtube, or any other type of marketing give us a call. Also if you need assistance with web development such as setting up AMP on your website - we can help with that too! Thanks for listening Australia. We'll see you next week.
Published Oct 3, 2016 Given our recent discussion around video marketing we thought this was an ideal time to bring you up to speed with some of the YouTube advertising available to help you increase your reach. YouTube allows for a several different ways to advertise your videos. But First you need to define your goals such as; Are you looking to get people to visit your website or do you want them to visit your YouTube Channel and maybe increase your views and subscribers? Video Ads are those which appear while people are on YouTube and are watching a video. You may have seen them come up at the beginning of a video or throughout a longer YouTube video. Skippable ads (or True-view in-stream ads) are a way of using YouTube IOS and Android apps plus Google's vast display network to advertise your video. These ads give viewers the ability to skip the ad after 5 seconds. View counts of your video ad increment only once the viewer has watched 30 seconds or when the ad has been watched completely. Skippable video ads can be a maximum of 60 seconds long. Non-skippable in-stream ads generally appear mid-roll while viewing partner content. They can be up to 15-20 seconds long and viewers must watch the ad before they're able to continue watching the video. Interestingly, non-skippable in-stream ads tend to have higher video abandonment rates than skippable TrueView in-stream ads. One other way we love to get more views on videos we've produced is to use the TrueView video discovery ads. TrueView video discovery ads can run across YouTube and Google Display Network. On YouTube they can run on the search results and watch pages for both desktop and m.youtube.com, as well as the homepages for desktop and YouTube mobile apps on days when the video masthead is not sold.. The ad unit consists of an image thumbnail and up to three lines of text. Clicking the ad will deliver a user to the YouTube watch or channel page to view the video. Thanks to the power of targeting and managing your daily adspend YouTube video advertising is now much more accessible to every business not just big brands. So “How much does a YouTube Ad Cost?” Well Youtube have a handy little cost-per-reach tool you can view on their website which allows you to slide your daily spend amount to see what you're expected reach will be when paying for Video ads and Trueview in-stream ads. And when you setup the advertising you can dictate what you're willing to pay per view. Which could be as little as $10 to reach 200 views but when you're setting up your ad YouTube does give you a recommended daily budget and minimum cost per view as a guide. Please note that you can have complete control over your daily budget, so you can spend what you're comfortable with. Plus, you only pay when someone engages with your Trueview Instream Ad. If they skip it before 30 seconds (or the end) you don't pay a cent. As for TrueView video discovery ads they are on a pay per click basis. Of course we would encourage you to consider YouTube video advertising as soon as you have some video content worth discovering but please make sure you have taken the time to analyse your target audience persona before creating an ad, as your ad performance will maximised only when you use the demographic and affinity targeting effectively. As you know the team at MeMedia are always here to help. We love discovering new client personas with all of our clients and And we hope that one day we can take your psychographic targeting, video production, marketing and advertising to the next level!
Published Aug 21, 2016 Thanks for joining us for the episode 42 Get Fact Up! Millennials are a hot demographic to target. Described as "a person reaching young adulthood around the year 2000" - finding the right way to market to this group seems to have a lot of people confused. So we're here to help! Let us break things down for you... Subscribe to our Get Fact Up series for weekly updates: https://www.memedia.com.au/get-fact-up Like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/memedia Join us on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/memedia Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/me_media ______________________________________________________________ MARKETING TO MILLENNIALS | GET FACT UP #42 - Good day, Australia. I'm Chris Hogan, founder and CEO of MeMedia. It's time to get fact up. Today I want to focus on who you're targeting, and millennials are hot on my demographic audience that I want to discuss today, so let's get started. When speaking to the local community about your target audience and talking about demographics, there seems to be some confusion around who are gen Y, gen X, and gen Z, and then thrown in millennials, so we want to cover off who they are. Millennials are born between the early 1980s and the year 2000 and are between 15 and 35 years of age. According to Deloitte Australia's millennial survey in 2016, the millennials are generation Y and also known as the digital generation. And according to Roy Morgan Research here in Australia, millennials make up around 4.9 million Australians. Gen X make up 4.8 and baby boomers 4.1 million. In that same report from Roy Morgan Research, it goes on to explain that the title millennials, really all it describes is their age and that all millennials aren't created equal. But throwing back to the study from Deloitte Australia on the millennial survey 2016, they describe millennials as the values generation. While this study focuses heavily on employment of millennials, it also tells us a lot about how this generation functions in everyday life. Millennials want business to shift its purpose. While they continue to express a positive view of business's rule in society and have softened their negative perceptions of business motivation and ethics compared to prior services, millennials still want businesses to focus more on people, employees, customers, and society, products and purpose and less on profits. So what does this tell us about how millennials choose brands? Essentially, we need to have a purpose beyond profit, and we need to clearly articulate why our business exists. So how are you going to express all this in your marketing? Let's have a look. As we said before, millennials are the digital generation, and of course that means they're using their smart phones to communicate via Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, LinkedIn, and YouTube. If we dive in and have a quick look at the stats from Facebook, there are 5.8 million millennials on their platform and 2.2 million on Instagram. Snapchat's consumer research source tells us that on any given day Snapchat reaches 41% of all 18 to 34 year olds in the United States, and a Business Insider article earlier this year recorded that there were just over three million Australians on Snapchat in February. If we jump over to the business focus social media platform LinkedIn, we can see that there's 1.5 million millennials using this platform, but all of these statistics on how you're gonna reach your target audience mean nothing unless you've defined your brand's purpose and can communicate that via storytelling or through useful content that is gonna bring a change to the world, which brings us back to why content marketing is the best type of marketing that you need to be focusing on, and YouTube is definitely a great place to do this. In 2014, Google partnered with TNS and Ogilvy to answer our burning question about what brand advertisers can do to connect with these new consumers. The study revealed that consumers choose the brands that engage them on their passions and interest 42% more often than they do those that simple urge them to buy the product being advertised. As a result, their path to purchase is actually their path to purpose. In the same study, it was revealed that consumers are 70% more likely to purchase something with a brand which engages people on their purpose and their passions. YouTube analyzed that users 18 to 34 years old are four times more interested in watching a video ad on YouTube than in viewing any other platform. But to be clear, we don't all need to look and act just like Gandhi to make sure we attract the right type of consumer. Be the change you want to see in the world. It's clear from that last bit of research that content marketing via video and uploading to YouTube could be a perfect strategy for everybody, but it's not just video that is working out there in the marketplace. Look at infographics and photographic-heavy blogs. Absolutely get visual. So instead of me telling you that you have to go and produce this amazing content right now, I want you to come back to some of this absolute grassroots preparation that I think everybody needs to do before entering into a content marketing campaign. Number one is define and document your core values, your purpose, and your why. Number two, understand why your existing customers do business with you and how this relates to your values. Number three, discover what secrets you hold in your head or your company that could truly make your industry a better place to work with if they were shared openly for the uninitiated to learn from. And, number four, what valuable lessons can your clients teach the world and how did you work with them to make their business a success? While going through this process, you'll begin to structure your business in a way that focuses less on your profits and more about the change that you bring to the world. And on that super positive note, I just want to say thank you to all of you who have been listening to get fact up, and we hope we've been bringing value to your work life. And if you need help with producing any of that content for your marketing, you know we're here to help. Hey, we make pretty good videos I hear, and we just so happen to be a Google partner as well. So keep making a difference, Australia. We'll see you next week
Published Aug 15, 2016 Thanks for joining us for the 41st instalment of Get Fact Up! Wow - 41 episodes. Today we interrupt this program for some important announcements. Google Maps Updates Breaks Websites Worldwide! And Instagram Shamelessly takes on Snapchat. How do they do that you ask? Find out what has Snapchats authorities so up in arms. And just quickly we thought we'd add in that we love the new Facebook Update to their Business Page layout - We'll show you a few pics! Please, grab your coffee and enjoy the 41st week running of Get Fact Up! Subscribe to our Get Fact Up series for weekly updates: https://www.memedia.com.au/get-fact-up Like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/memedia Join us on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/memedia Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/me_media ______________________________________________________________ GOOGLE MAPS UPDATES BREAK WEBSITES WORLDWIDE AND INSTAGRAM TAKES ON SNAPCHAT | GET FACT UP #41 - Good day, Australia. I'm Chris Hogan, founder and CEO of MeMedia. It's time to Get Fact Up. Today we interrupt this program for some important announcements. A Google Map update breaks websites worldwide, and Instagram shamelessly takes on Snapchat. In a recent Google Maps API update to version 3.3.1, many websites worldwide started breaking with their embedded maps plugins, which meant some rather ugly and unhelpful error messages were appearing on websites worldwide. Pretty sure this is where I'm supposed to be, but doesn't look right. Google have buried some important information in their developer's blog about this Maps update and how you might be affected in the not too distant future. When you're re-embedding your Maps API, you may need to understand that it will only be free if your page is seeing 25,000 visits or less per day. That is for the map views on that page. Anything more than that, and you could be up for paying for the Google Maps API service. Yoast have come out with a great article which helps every Wordpress user understand why it is your maps may have broken and how to fix it. And if all this is too confusing for you, well, you know we're here to help. Now let's jump onto Instagram. This August, Instagram introduces Instagram Stories, a new feature that allows you to share everything that's happened in your day, and not just the photos that you want to appear in your profile. You can bring your story to life in new ways with text and drawing tools. The photos, videos will appear after 24 hours and won't appear on your profile, grid, or in feed. You'll see stories from people you know in a bar at the top of your feed from your best friends to your favorite popular accounts. When there's something new to see, their profile photo will have a colorful ring around it. You can even choose to feature a particular part of your story by posting it on your profile. Instagram Stories will be rolling out globally on the iOS and Android platforms over the next few weeks. Wow, that was such a cool idea, Instagram! In fact, I think we may have seen that before. Oh yeah! It's just like Snapchat. You guessed it. And they've received a bit of backlash about it, too. A lot of people are saying, "Take it down! "Take if back!" We'll, we at MeMedia actually applaud Instagram for having a crack and integrating a new feature into a platform that people are already very familiar with. That's actually gonna make a huge difference to the amount of users they keep on their platform. Instead of them having to feel like they need to experience this Snapchat-like feature on Snapchat, they can experience it on a platform they're already familiar with. And above all, the navigation and usability is actually a little bit better on Instagram according to the video that we've just shown. And also, CEO of Instagram, Kevin Systrom actually gave Snapchat all the credit for the idea publicly in one of his posts. Good on you, Instagram, and we'll see what happens when Instagram Stories come to you. And just quickly, we thought we'd jump onto Facebook, where they've updated their business page layout, which, we had to say, we absolutely love. It's far more user friendly for business page managers, and navigating the business page while you're not in business manager mode is so great as well. What up, Facebook? I think you've made usability much easier for our admin teams. Well, that's all we got time for this week, Australia. Thanks very much for listening to Get Fact Up. We'll see you next week where we get back into our usual program and deliver some awesome marketing or web development advice just for you.
Published Aug 1, 2016 Thanks for joining us for the 39th instalment of Get Fact Up! This week we wanted to talk to you about Content Marketing - and more specifically, your motivations behind content marketing. Why are you doing it? This conversation came up in our office this week while we were conducting content research. Or as we like to call it sifting for gold. Now instead of going on a rant, we at MeMedia would like to offer some simple ideas to help you, based upon what we know actually works. Please, grab your coffee and enjoy the 39th week running of Get Fact Up! Subscribe to our Get Fact Up series for weekly updates: https://www.memedia.com.au/get-fact-up Like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/memedia Join us on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/memedia Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/me_media ______________________________________________________________ CONTENT MARKETING KARMA | GET FACT UP #39 - G'day Australia, I'm Chris Hogan, founder and CEO of Me Media. It's time to get fact up. Today, we're gonna talk about content marketing, and why you're actually doing it. This conversation came up in our office this week, while we were conducting some content research, or, as we like to call it, sifting for gold. We've mentioned, many times before, all of the tactics that you can use to make your content more engaging, reach more people, and convert better. But all that content creation can mean nothing, if the motivations behind creation of that content are wrong. Think about this for a moment, how many times have you shared content which is super sales focused? How often do you stop reading or watching a piece of content if there's a request to sign up. Do you skip ads? So are you creating content that is truly gonna help your target audience? Or are you creating it for selfish reasons? What is the purpose of your content? Is it to get more sales? To create more leads? If the number one reason why you're creating content is to get more traffic to your website, get people to buy more, or get more people to sign up, then I'd say, we think that chances are you're slightly off track. Your visitors, who are supposed to be engaging with your content, instead of finding gold, they're finding fool's gold. Now instead of going on a huge rant, we at Me Media would like to share some ideas with you that can help you improve your content value. Telling your existing client's stories is a great way to engage with new clients, by relating those stories to each other. Who are your clients really, in their day to day lives? How do they come to find you? What problem did you solve for them? And how can others relate to this benefit? We've said this before, but we want you to make your clients look like rock stars. So when you target that piece of content, to people just like your existing clients, then you're sure to relate to new clients. And, guaranteed, they're gonna think it was just for them. Now that kind of content goes a long way to being shared. Reviewing products and services that are valuable to your existing clients, is a great way to keep your existing clients engaged. Maybe they'll share it with their friends, which could mean more new clients for you. Your motivation behind creating that review is to be truly helpful. And as we said before, mentioning somebody else's product is a great way to potentially create a new partnership. Just make sure, you send them a link, tag them in social media, maybe they'll share it to their audience as well. You could increase your reach dramatically. You may get asked the same question a lot from your existing clients. Well it's about time you turned that question into an awesome piece of content. That being a blog, info graphic or video. Questions get asked on the internet all the time. How? Why? Where? Who? So be sure you title them similar to a FAQ, or frequently asked questions. Creating a library of commonly asked questions on your website, is gonna be just like creating a gold mine for your customers. And if your customers are asking questions, many others might be too. And of course, where do we go when we've got a question? Yep, you know it, Google. So to sum things up, number one, tell your client's story. Number two, review other people's products. And number three, answer commonly asked questions. Create actual content that connects with your customer. That will give back true value, in the form of solid gold. So you won't be adding to the pile of fool's gold. There's plenty of that out there already. That's all we've got time for Australia, so we'll see you next week. When, hopefully, my voice is a little better. So be sure you title them silimilar So be, Be sure, Be sure, be sure, be sure, so be sure, my voice is going this is crap, man.
Published Jul 25, 2016 Thanks for joining us for the 38th instalment of Get Fact Up! This week we're talking about what's in store for the future of Google+ Some of you may have received an email a few days ago saying: "Google+ soon to be a core service for your Google Apps domain". You might have thought to yourself - what the hell does that mean? Well i know we did. So we decided to do some research and try to explain the change in more detail. Please, grab your coffee and enjoy the 38th week running of Get Fact Up! Subscribe to our Get Fact Up series for weekly updates: https://www.memedia.com.au/get-fact-up Like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/memedia Join us on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/memedia Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/me_media ______________________________________________________________ GOOGLE PLUS THE BEGINNING OF THE END? | GET FACT UP #38 - Good day Australia. I'm Chris Hogan, founder and CEO of MeMedia. It's time to get fact up. This week, we're talking about what's in store for the future of Google+. Some of you may have received an email this week, just like we did, which said "Important. Google+ soon to be a core service for your Google apps domain." You may have thought, what the hell does that mean? Well, so did we. So we thought we'd make today's video about that very e-mail and educate yourself while doing some research of our own. To decipher this e-mail, Google had decided to plug Google+ into their other suite of Google apps services including Google Docs, Google Sheets, Slides, Drive, et cetera. This means three things, that obviously Google+ will appear more prominently in Google apps. Your license agreement will also change, and the user experience will be streamlined to fit into other apps and services from Google. So why does any of this matter? There's no denying there's been plenty of talk about why Google+ is important for your business. And many of us have thought, eh don't need it. But a lot of us have actually signed up because, you know, Google, SEO, Marketing, Maps. That's right, you do need it. While Google+ hasn't really made a very popular social network like Facebook, for instance. Well, they sure have a lot of other services that we really do need and use for our everyday business purposes. Specifically, like we just mentioned, Maps. Google may have made this update possibly due to this negative PR they've received from Marketing Land, TechCrunch and Mashable. It's kinda like they all thought it was something like the Walking Dead. As part of this Google+ integration, we're seeing other services slowly disappear from Google+ like Events, Hangouts and some other functionality that really isn't getting used. So you're probably wondering, is this the beginning of the end for Google+? Well call us optimistic but we believe it's the start of something new. Actually, plugging Google+ into Google apps means it could become more business-integrated. And obviously we're all about integration so we kinda like this idea. But what does this mean for your business? What do you have to do? Do you need to worry? No, not at all. Just let it happen. Nothing's really gonna happen, as mentioned. So welcome the integration. Honestly, having a Google+ profile hasn't meant a hell of a lot for SEO and Marketing. So on its own, it's not really that valuable. But integrated, it could be. We've said before that Google+ is 100% necessary to properly connect your Google My Business page and website specially talking about your local and map listings appearing properly in search. This Google+ update is not expected to change any of your features to do with your existing listings. Nor should it cost you any more as part of your Google apps subscription. You will however need to agree to use the new interface next time you log in. Obviously, until this change has actually taken place, we won't know exactly how it's all gonna play out. But like we said, MeMedia are being optimistic and hoping that Google+ integrated with Google apps actually means better social networking for businesses or better access to your existing property listings on Google. And one thing is for sure, if **** does hit the fan, then we're sure to report on it. And we'll come back to you with some necessary updates. Thanks for listening Australia, we'll see you next week.
Published Jul 18, 2016 Thanks for joining us for the 37th instalment of Get Fact Up! This week we want to take things a bit further and show you some other premium tracking tools that will help you take your conversion optimization to the next level. Honestly these tools give you such a clear insight into behaviours, it's creepy. It's almost like you're watching over the shoulder of your visitors while they use your site. Please, grab your coffee and enjoy the 37th week running of Get Fact Up! Find Out More About CrazyEgg: https://www.crazyegg.com/ Find Out More About MouseFlow: https://mouseflow.com/ Find Out More About SessionCam: https://sessioncam.com/ Find Out More About ClickTale: https://www.clicktale.com/ Subscribe to our Get Fact Up series for weekly updates: https://www.memedia.com.au/get-fact-up Like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/memedia Join us on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/memedia Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/me_media ______________________________________________________________ HEATMAP ROUNDUP: CRAZYEGG, MOUSEFLOW, SESSIONCAM & CLICKTALE | GET FACT UP #37 - G'day Australia, I'm Chris Hogan, Founder and CEO of MeMedia. It's time to get fact up. Early in the year we did a two part series on Google Analytics, so today we wanted to cover in a little bit more depth, some conversion tracking tools which will really help you understand behaviours of people on your website. These tracking tools can seem a little bit creepy. It's almost like somebody's watching over your shoulder while you're navigating a website. Hmmm. Uh, are you watching me? Go away. So let's discuss some of the tools that you can use to help with your conversion optimisation. And heat mapping is high on the list. So our first cab off the rank is Crazyegg. Crazyegg is a great tool that we use here at MeMedia and is fairly well known in the industry. If you don't know what a heatmap is it's basically an overlay on your website that shows hot spots of visitor activity. Each click is recorded and will increase the heat of a particular area. After a while you see popular parts of your website light up a little bit like fireworks. Crazyegg has other tools other than just the heatmap. It has the scroll map. Scroll maps actually help you understand where on the page people are scrolling to. This helps you identify whether or not your pages are too long, or whether or not the majority of the users are seeing those really important items that you want people to click on. Crazyegg also has a feature called confetti which is just like a heat map but it also shows you where each of the clicks has come from. Which is really cool if you wanna see what a particular type of visitor is doing. For example, you could see if your paid advertising visitors interact differently than social traffic. Starting at just $9US a month it's really quite a no-brainer to plug crazyegg into your website. All you have to do is plug a bit of code in and away you go. Next tool is mouseflow. It's a little bit like crazyegg but you can probably get from the name it follows the mouse through the webpage. So if you have a very visually intensive website and you're wanting to know how people are interacting and considering clicks then mouseflow's right for you. Heat maps obviously, show you where people are clicking, mouseflow can show you where people are considering to click. Mouseflow also has another feature which helps you understand user flow through your website. So how people are clicking from page to page. This can help you understand where people are falling off and where they are maybe being redirected. It's a great tool to increase time onsite and engagement with your audience. Additionally mouseflow has a great feature which helps you understand users and their interaction with registration forms and contact forms. You can't see exactly what people are typing into the forms it's just an indicator as to how they're interacting. That's really important for keeping up privacy. Starting at just $24US a month mouseflow is another great tool that can help you understand and improve your conversions. Next up we have a super cool tool that we absolutely love here at MeMedia. And it is called SessionCam. Being super cool means it kinda is a little bit creepy as well. Hey, hey, hey. But seriously SessionCam is absolutely awesome. It helps you understand exactly how people are navigating your website because it records their activity in a video. So you can watch through how they're considering to click, where they're actually clicking, and how they're entering forms. Once again privacy is a concern so just so you know that field data that people are typing in is all hashed out and you can't see it, it's not recorded. And that makes sure that everybody's happy. To find out more about SessionCam you can actually sign up for a free trial. It's pretty easy to install and you can get recording straight away, so you can see how effective it is for your website. So I hope you got a lot out of those three tools and understand the importance of user testing. User testing can help you understand your user interface design and how to improve it. This live type testing obviously tests your actual user on your website, your actual potential customer. Privacy is obviously important and it's well taken care of. So there's no reason why you shouldn't be using it. Get on board with crazyegg, mouseflow, or SessionCam today. We've included links from the blog to get you started. Have fun with those guys and we'll see you next week.
Published Jun 27 , 2016 ike past episodes of Get Fact Up, Chris has been inspired by his recent trip to Sydney's Search Marketing Summit. One of the speakers Chris met with was Tim Ash, author of the bestselling book Landing Page Optimisation, and CEO of SiteTuners. Conversion Rate Optimisation may sound super techy and boring, but let us tell you....it's far from boring. It's what online business is all about. Optimising your website to encourage conversions, who isn't on board for that? Tweet Tim here: tim_ash Tim's book is available on Amazon Subscribe to our Get Fact Up series for weekly updates: https://www.memedia.com.au/get-fact-up Like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/memedia Join us on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/memedia Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/me_media ______________________________________________________________ GET FACT UP #34 TRANSCRIPT - Good day Australia. I'm Chris Hogan, Founder and CEO of MeMedia. It is time to get Fact Up. Today, I want to cover up some of the stuff I learnt at the search marketing summit 2016. Yeah we've been through that, but there's some awesome content that I still have to share. Today it's going to be about conversion rate optimisation. Conversion what? Of course it's a cool name that we've created in agency land for some of that technical stuff that we do. So what's it all about? Conversions right. Really quickly what is cost as a conversion? Well of course a sale class is a conversion, a contact form is, but maybe just getting people to navigate to where you want them to go on the website could also be classed as a conversion. Conversions rock. So, today I wanted to share with you, who I met there was keynote speaker, Tim Ash. He is also the author of the best-selling book, Landing Page Optimisation and CEO of SiteTuners. Tim presented bundles of awesome information on how to improve your website so that it, ideally, converts more people or guides people better throughout your site. He had some great content, I'm only going to share one little piece and I hope I do it some justice. So, let's dive right in. One of the most important takeaways that I got from Tim's presentation was that choice kills. Reduce complexity with a series of simple selections. Tim shared an overview of strategies which will assist you in guiding your visitor to either buy on your website or to land on those pages where you want them to go. So, let's have a look at those. We need to limit choice. According to Tim, we can only keep up to four items in our non-rehearsed memory, which means that you need to limit the amount of choices available to your users when they're visiting your page. This could apply to absolutely anything on your website. From selecting the right section of your website to navigate to, or selecting which product category you should choose, and maybe even which price package might best suit you amongst what seems like a sea of pricing packages. Cutting the selections down on your website to be no more than four will help funnel those users into the areas you want them and create more conversions. Which brings us to our second point, where we want to make those choices absolutely obvious. This can be done by adding a sash to one of the four pricing options or even increasing the height of the one you wish the customer to choose. Alternatively, for navigation through to parts of your website or shopping cart, you might have all black and white descriptive photos and one full colour promoting visual bias. So now, let's take another look at the price packaging options and show how manipulating context and order can help increase conversions for what you want your visitors to click on. So, if we take a look at your four package options all priced up, then changing the order of them from highest on the left to lowest on the right, this can give your middle or basic packages a psychological edge. Similarly, if we look at category and navigation structure pushing your most popular on page visual buttons around so that they are visible in one view without scrolling, and not exceeding four options, you can once again, assist the visitor. The last point we wanted to cover is that we need to understand that prices are pain for our website visitors. If we look at our price packaging options, simply removing the dollar figure from your price packages, but maybe include the currency you're trading in could give those packages another psychological edge. Well, if Tim Ash is listening, I hope we did his presentation or at least a small part of it, some justice. Absolutely, we would recommend, getting Tim's second book, Landing Page Optimization: The Definitive Guide to Testing and Tuning for Conversions, which we've included in our blog. Thanks for listening, Australia, we will see you next week, so that we can get you all Fact Up. I'm converted, I believe, praise it, praise it, baby.
Published Jun 20, 2016 This week we are bringing you the highlights of what's often referred to as the 'Internet bible'. Written by market analyst Mary Meeker, The Meeker Report is delivered annually at the Code conference in California, recently held on MAY 31 - JUNE 2 2016. Check out the full 200-page Meeker Report for 2016 here Here are MeMedia's top 5 pages of this years report: Page 11: Global Smartphone shipment has slowed dramatically Page 45: Advertisers are spending too much money on Legacy media Page 73: Social Networks are growing because of Page 99: Messaging continues to grow rapidly Page 198: Data is more powerful than ever Subscribe to our Get Fact Up series for weekly updates: https://www.memedia.com.au/get-fact-up Like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/memedia Join us on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/memedia Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/me_media
Published Jun 6, 2016 Chris is away this week gathering some epic content for future episodes of Get Fact Up. So we are bringing you some laughs this Monday morning in the form of bloopers! What a great way to start off the working week! Episode 1 - Online Advertising Episode 2 - Online Advertising Part 2 Episode 3 - Content Marketing Episode 4 - SEO & What it Means for your business Episode 5 - Online Marketing Industry Updates Episode 6 - Mobile Marketing Trends Episode 7 - Website Optimisation Episode 8 - Website Development Improvements Episode 9 - Christmas Wrap Up Episode 10 - Preparing for the 2016 Google Penguin Update Episode 11 - New Twitter, Google & Facebook Features for 2016 Episode 12 - Getting Started With Google Analytics Episode 13 - Overlooked Features of Google Analytics Episode 14 - Social Media Livestream Showdown Episode 15 - Virtual Reality is Now a Market Reality Episode 16 - Micro-News: Twitter & Instagram Episode 17 - Google & Facebook Updates Episode 18 - Digital Marketing Strategy Episode 19 - Web Design & Development Episode 20 - Integrated Marketing & Your Website Episode 21 - Importance of Landing Page Design Episode 22 - Top 7 Marketing Lessons From MeMedia Episode 23 - Google Adwords Updates Episode 24 - Content Marketing Through Podcasts Episode 25 - Recent Facebook Updates Episode 26 - Shopping Cart Software Review (Part 1) Episode 27 - Shopping Cart Software Review (Part 2) Episode 28 - Shopping Cart Software Review (Part 3) Episode 29 - Neto vs Shopify vs BigCommerce Comparison Episode 30 - New SMS/MMS Marketing Technology Subscribe to our Get Fact Up series for weekly updates: https://www.memedia.com.au/get-fact-up Like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/memedia Join us on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/memedia Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/me_media ______________________________________________________________ GET FACT UP #30 TRANSCRIPT - G'day, Australia. I'm Chris Hogan, founder and CEO of MeMedia. It's time to Get Fact Up. We're sure you've worked long and hard to get your email database up and running, and working for your business. But there are some frustrating stats that have come about that basically mean maybe it's not working for you as well as it should. So, this news probably is a little bit frustrating. Email isn't working as good as it used to. It's possibly due to the saturation in the market. Really, we need to start looking at other ways to reach your target audience. Or, essentially, your existing customers. Might be nice to actually talk to them once in a while, right? And obviously this isn't about you, so don't take this personally. Everybody is in the same boat. So today we wanna share with you some exciting technology that's come out of our very own backyard here on the Gold Coast, and is making waves in the digital marketing arena. First, let's cover off on some of those facts we highlighted just before. Last year in direct consumer products, the volume of emails went up by 23%, whilst at the same time revenue per email decreased at a whooping 42%. It turns out people are switching off to emails, and again, it's not your fault. Email marketing noise has increased dramatically, and people like you and I are turning more and more to devices like these to get our updates on what's happening in the world. Deloitte's mobile consumer survey from 2015 shares some of these harsh realities. Nearly 80% of Australians now own a smart phone, and we're almost never more than three feet, or three minutes, away from our phone. According to that same study, some of you even almost sleep with your phone, or look at your phone before you talk to a real person in the morning. Come on, people. So we keep on going on and on about how much you use your smart phone, right? Well, here's the trick. Mobile Digital, headquartered here on the Gold Coast, is allowing you to reach your customers via the device they're habitually choosing. Yeah, the smart phone. And, wow, the results are staggering. Take a look at your last email campaign. What were the stats? 15% opens, 2% clicks? Hey, if they're getting 23% opens you're dancing around the room. Well, hate to tell you, Mobile Digital Solution is a little bit better than that. Mobile Digital have just published results from a recent promotion campaign using their straight to mobile promotions engine that delivered, ready for this? 98% open rates, 60% click-though rates, 16% sales conversions, for a whooping 4,830% return on investment. No words, none. Just rewind and go over that again. The platform is called Promote Digital. Let's have a quick look at how it works. Knowing that Australians check SMS messsaging over any other priority on their phone means that the message inbox is obviously higher priority for you. The text messages don't really offer that much wow when it comes to giving back to your clients, or advertising some promotions. So Mobile Digital have taken it one step further by offering rich media to your customers in their SMS inbox. So the rich media is personalized image and text content trackable to the individual user sent via MMS, or as we may know it, picture messaging. The message arriving grabs their attention. The image builds that interest, the explaining text sparks desire, and delivers clickable links for immediate action. A seamless process from start to finish. This method of reaching your customers is all about ROI, because every message can have a trackable coupon code or bar code, so it can be used online or in store. This type of communication can be a nurturing type relationship, where you could be reigniting the relationship with your clients, get them back and purchasing. Also, it can be used as a rewards program. It's great for e-commerce stores, but also great for retail bricks and mortar. If you're looking to add this to your marketing mix, sales and promotions work really well, but personalized gift cards are the bomb. That's all we've got time for today. I hope MeMedia have presented something new for you to consider so that you can break through that marketing noise. See you next week, Australia, for Get Fact Up.
Published May 30, 2016 We all know that email marketing is no longer as engaging as it once was. As marketers, we are constantly keeping our eye out for the next best way to engage with our existing customer base. Enter: MobileDigital. They provide the means to reach your audience in their back pocket - literally. Through engaging & personalised picture messages, there is an immediate connection between business and customer. Experian Email Benchmark report on marketing trends for 2015 forth quarter. Deloitte's Mobile Consumer Survey for 2015 shows nearly 80% of Australians own a smartphone, and we're rarely more than 3 feet from our phone. If you are interested in MeMedia's Design and Development for e-commerce websites, or need any assistance - Contact us to discuss your project. Subscribe to our Get Fact Up series for weekly updates: https://www.memedia.com.au/get-fact-up Like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/memedia Join us on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/memedia Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/me_media ______________________________________________________________ GET FACT UP #30 TRANSCRIPT - G'day, Australia. I'm Chris Hogan, founder and CEO of MeMedia. It's time to Get Fact Up. We're sure you've worked long and hard to get your email database up and running, and working for your business. But there are some frustrating stats that have come about that basically mean maybe it's not working for you as well as it should. So, this news probably is a little bit frustrating. Email isn't working as good as it used to. It's possibly due to the saturation in the market. Really, we need to start looking at other ways to reach your target audience. Or, essentially, your existing customers. Might be nice to actually talk to them once in a while, right? And obviously this isn't about you, so don't take this personally. Everybody is in the same boat. So today we wanna share with you some exciting technology that's come out of our very own backyard here on the Gold Coast, and is making waves in the digital marketing arena. First, let's cover off on some of those facts we highlighted just before. Last year in direct consumer products, the volume of emails went up by 23%, whilst at the same time revenue per email decreased at a whooping 42%. It turns out people are switching off to emails, and again, it's not your fault. Email marketing noise has increased dramatically, and people like you and I are turning more and more to devices like these to get our updates on what's happening in the world. Deloitte's mobile consumer survey from 2015 shares some of these harsh realities. Nearly 80% of Australians now own a smart phone, and we're almost never more than three feet, or three minutes, away from our phone. According to that same study, some of you even almost sleep with your phone, or look at your phone before you talk to a real person in the morning. Come on, people. So we keep on going on and on about how much you use your smart phone, right? Well, here's the trick. Mobile Digital, headquartered here on the Gold Coast, is allowing you to reach your customers via the device they're habitually choosing. Yeah, the smart phone. And, wow, the results are staggering. Take a look at your last email campaign. What were the stats? 15% opens, 2% clicks? Hey, if they're getting 23% opens you're dancing around the room. Well, hate to tell you, Mobile Digital Solution is a little bit better than that. Mobile Digital have just published results from a recent promotion campaign using their straight to mobile promotions engine that delivered, ready for this? 98% open rates, 60% click-though rates, 16% sales conversions, for a whooping 4,830% return on investment. No words, none. Just rewind and go over that again. The platform is called Promote Digital. Let's have a quick look at how it works. Knowing that Australians check SMS messsaging over any other priority on their phone means that the message inbox is obviously higher priority for you. The text messages don't really offer that much wow when it comes to giving back to your clients, or advertising some promotions. So Mobile Digital have taken it one step further by offering rich media to your customers in their SMS inbox. So the rich media is personalized image and text content trackable to the individual user sent via MMS, or as we may know it, picture messaging. The message arriving grabs their attention. The image builds that interest, the explaining text sparks desire, and delivers clickable links for immediate action. A seamless process from start to finish. This method of reaching your customers is all about ROI, because every message can have a trackable coupon code or bar code, so it can be used online or in store. This type of communication can be a nurturing type relationship, where you could be reigniting the relationship with your clients, get them back and purchasing. Also, it can be used as a rewards program. It's great for e-commerce stores, but also great for retail bricks and mortar. If you're looking to add this to your marketing mix, sales and promotions work really well, but personalized gift cards are the bomb. That's all we've got time for today. I hope MeMedia have presented something new for you to consider so that you can break through that marketing noise. See you next week, Australia, for Get Fact Up.
Published May 16, 2016 This is the final review of our special 3 part series on e-commerce platforms, and we are rounding it out with a worldwide leader - BigCommerce. Now you may be wondering, how can something with the word 'big' in it's name be useful for your small business? It all comes down to customisation and support. Watch this week's video to find out how BigCommerce sizes up to the others. BigCommerce App Store for customisable plugins. Check out their pricing plans here to see if there's an option to suit your business. If you are interested in MeMedia's Design and Development for e-commerce websites, or need any assistance - Contact us to discuss your project. Subscribe to our Get Fact Up series for weekly updates: https://www.memedia.com.au/get-fact-up Like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/memedia Join us on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/memedia Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/me_media ______________________________________________________________ GET FACT UP #28 TRANSCRIPT - Good day, Australia. I'm Chris Hogan, founder and CEO of MeMedia. It's time to get fact up. Today we're gonna be continuing our quest to find you the best online shopping cart solution, between Shopify, Neto, and Bigcommerce. So if we look at all three of these platforms, Shopify is making waves in this industry, Neto is the new kid on the block, the Aussie kid, and Bigcommerce is a worldwide leader. So let's look at Bigcommerce. With over 95,000 live sites currently using Bigcommerce's system for selling items and processing online payments, there's no doubt in believing that Bigcommerce provides a viable and powerful interface for all of your eCommerce needs. But is Bigcommerce easy to use? You bet it is. Fast selection of apps and integrations help for easy customization and their offered website themes are pre-built and plentiful to make it look like you hired a pro to design your website. This is great news for the less techy people out there, you'll be able to get away with having an awesome website without having to contract designers and developers to customize it too much. The product management in Bigcommerce is both clean and unique. It's also customisable to any type of product that you can imagine putting on your online store. First thing we need to look at though, is how much is this platform going to cost you? For small businesses, Bigcommerce's standard plan offers heaps of convenient features. Coming in at $29.95 US dollars a month, which is approximately $40.60 AUD per month, this plan offers you unlimited products, unlimited storage, unlimited bandwidth, credit card and payment acceptance, and no transaction fees. Note however, there will always be third party transaction fees with any third party payment platform. That also includes the credit card fees that you may incur. Bigcommerce's standard plan at $29.95 will allow your annual turnover to be up to $50k US in sales per year. That's approximately $68,000 Australian dollars. That's before you need to move onto the next plan. Next plus plan comes in at $79.95 US dollars a month, which allows up to $125k US in annual turnover, or $170,000 Australian. This plan gives you access to extra features, such as vast pricing and segmentation tools, and an abandoned cart saver. And in case you're not aware, abandoned cart is a huge plus when running an online shopping cart store. And the next plan at $199.95 US dollars per month, currently converts to approximately $275 AUD per month. This allows up to a million dollars US in annual sales per year, but with a cap of $3,000 orders per year. This plan also gives you access to additional features such as fraud monitoring and store-wide HTTPS. Basically, your site is secure 100% of the time. Last but not least is Bigcommerce's enterprise plan. This plan has no set price, instead Bigcommerce states that the price for a month is tailored to your business. This plans gives you an unlimited amount of online sales, and access to every feature that Bigcommerce has to offer. So looking at Bigcommerce's plans, you're basically paying depending on how successful your store is.That kind of sounds like a little bit native. To me, anyway. But when it comes to features, Bigcommerce pack a big punch. Bigcommerce seem to be focusing on SEO. They're doing this by providing a faster website platform, which is great for users, and also a good thing for Google rank. You can also integrate with Google shopping and eBay buyers to grab shoppers who prefer to use those platforms. Bigcommerce's marketing features include running promotions, offering coupon codes, shooting out email blasts, and also integrating with social media, pretty real. Bigcommerce supports over 60 payment gateways, meaning that you can choose to process payments through your store instead of sending them away to somewhere like PayPal. This platform offers many other cool features, like support for multiple currencies and customizable shipping rates, you can also plug in great features which help you automate that shipping process. So let's have a look at that. It immediately suggests that you plug into integrations like Australia Post that allow you to quote real-time shipping prices to your customers. With the Australia Post app, when you log your products into Bigcommerce, you supply weight and dimensions so your customers will always receive exact shipping costs based on delivery post code and shopping cart contents. And our favorite third party shipping fulfillment app is ShipIT. ShipIT allows you to somewhat automate a lot of the order dispatching, ShipIT allows you to print labels, peeking slips, and invoices. Allocate orders to carriers, and track packages from within your site. At an additional $50 US per month, we know this is money well spent. Thanks for listening for our review of Bigcommerce this week. We had to keep it brief and couldn't do the comparison, so next week we'll do the comparison on Neto, Shopify, and Bigcommerce for you to get online shopping soon. Thanks for listening Australia, and keep the feedback coming - both online, email, or simply give us a call.
Published May 9, 2016 This week we continue the 3 part series on Shopping Cart Platforms. If you're starting a new online business, or bringing an existing business to the online world, Shopify is one of the easiest e-commerce builders available to help you create a complete online shop. To make sure you select the right e-commerce platform for your business however, be sure to check out part 1 and 3 of the series. Third party email domain name hosting i.e. Google Apps Shopify pricing plans for different feature requirements. Shopify's own app store allows plugins for additional customisation. There are over 100 free and premium themes to choose from through Shopify. Need support? Shopify have FAQ's and 24/7 Support available. Ensure your online store is mobile friendly so it can be found by mobile searchers on Google. If you are interested in MeMedia's Design and Development for e-commerce websites, or need any assistance - Contact us to discuss your project. Subscribe to our Get Fact Up series for weekly updates: https://www.memedia.com.au/get-fact-up Like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/memedia Join us on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/memedia Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/me_media ______________________________________________________________ GET FACT UP #27 TRANSCRIPT - Good day Australia, I'm Chris Hogan. Founder and CEO of MeMedia. It's time to Get Fact Up. Today in our second part of our three part series on shopping carts, we'll be covering Shopify. If you're transferring from a legacy shopping cart system or starting a new shopping cart business, then Shopify could be right for you. It's been touted as being the easiest shopping cart platform to get up and running in practically minutes. So let's have a look at some of the positives of Shopify. With its Light Plan being only $9 dollars US a month, Shopify represents one of the cheapest ways to start selling using a hosted solution. Now obviously things can get a little more expensive as you want to add more features to your shopping cart platform. But, Shopify actually allow you to have unlimited products and data transfer from as little as their basic plan on that US $9 dollars a month. So, it's pretty great way to get up and running quickly and cheaply. And with the next plans costing $29, $79 and $179 US dollars per month for more features. The other clear benefits of growing are that your credit card transactions fees go down slowly and its important to know that Shopify payments credit card fees can be configured to be billed in your selected currency. Eg, Australian dollars. It's important to know that you can also choose from a Shopify payment gateway or a third party gateway. Shopify payment gateways can keep your costs down. Shopify is currently the leading online shop builder. Powering over 243 thousand online shops and it's helped businesses process over 14 billion dollars worth of sales. They have 24/7 support not to mention a huge following creating tons of helpful Shopify tutorials. Shopify is also extremely flexible and has many apps to meet your needs. And to extend the functionally of your online store, Shopify offer a large app store where you can choose from over 1000 different apps for you to plug in. Tools include accounting, customer service, inventory management, reporting, shopping, social, email automation, fulfillment and more. All of these apps can help you run a successful online store. As well as offer you the ability to plug in a point of sales solution into your bricks and mortar store. So with Neto, they had a limited amount of themes. Shopify has 100's if not 1000's of themes for you to select from and you can also customize those with your developer or get some support directly from Shopify. Please make sure when selecting a theme that you choose a mobile friendly theme and there's heaps there to chose from. So you should be all right. Now let's weight up a few of Shopify's cons. In addition to the monthly service fee that you'll be paying Shopify. There are credit card transactions to look out for and also payment gateway transactions. The payment gateway transactions can cost anywhere from point five of a percent up to two percent per transaction. That's the lowest value for the highest plan and obviously the highest value transaction fee for the lowest plan. So let's put that into context it's going to cost you 50 cents to two dollars per $100 worth of transactions. That's not too much There is however one way to remove that transaction fee. And that is to use Shopify payments there own payment gateway system. Now let's have a look at some of the apps. The Shopify Office 1000 apps to extend the functionality of your eCommerce website. A lot of the apps are not free and they charge you a monthly fee to use them, which adds to the total of your monthly bill. Some of them can get quite expensive such is the popular Instagram shop plugin adding $100 dollars US per month to your existing bill. Something MeMedia found when using Shopify is that it can be super quick to get set up. But may require a bit of technical knowledge to do so. The other thing is selecting that plan can be a little bit confusing so I hope today's presentation has helped you understand each of those costs barriers for you. So when choosing a plan, please make sure you watch which feature you absolutely need to make sure your shop is running smoothly. Shopify offer 24/7 support so that you don't get lost in that technical mine field. If you feel like you need some local support put up your hand and MeMedia can help. So if you're looking for a solution to get up and running fast and your not really sure how many products your going to have then Shopify might be right for you. That's all we have time for this week we'll see you next week Australia. For our review of Bigcommerce and we hope that you are one step closer to becoming a global local, selling your wares all over the world.
Published May 3, 2016 Today we are commencing a 3 part series on Shopping Carts Platforms. We will outline key features that are important when choosing a system and how you can set up a new online shopping cart for your business. First time e-commerce businesses often struggle to get this right, so watch this 3 part series to get your head around what is best for you. Third party email domain name hosting i.e. Google Apps Neto Pricing Options Automated shipping, quoting, labeling and manifesting with a multi-carrier shipping system. Neto have eBay integration to get products to marketplace. If you are interested in MeMedia's Design and Development for e-commerce websites - Contact us to discuss your project. Subscribe to our Get Fact Up series for weekly updates: https://www.memedia.com.au/get-fact-up Like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/memedia Join us on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/memedia Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/me_media ______________________________________________________________ GET FACT UP #26 TRANSCRIPT - G'day Australia. I'm Chris Hogan, Founder and CEO of MeMedia. Let's Get Fact Up! Today, we're going to be commencing a three part series on selecting a shopping cart for your business. We're going to cut this across three separate episodes and in part three we'll write out a comparison for all of the shopping cart software. The three shopping cart platforms we're going to cover are Neto, Shopify and Bigcommerce. So let's get started! Signup for Your Free Neto Trial Today I think it's important to note that all of these platforms can host your custom domain. For example, myshop.com You won't be able to host your emails on these platforms so they all advise you to go to a third party resource for that. Such as Google Apps. We've got a link to Google Apps here in this blog. Google Apps can host your domain name emails for as little as $5.00 per user, per month. If you need help with setting Google Apps up, either click the link in our blog or give MeMedia a call. Now on to Neto. Neto's relatively new in the e-commerce market. However, they've seen exceptional growth in the last 12 months. This huge growth is possibly due to its feature rich platform and also that it's Australian owned and operated out of Brisbane. Choosing a platform is most commonly made on pricing and features. So let's get the pricing out of the way first up. On Neto, all plans have access to choose from online store, point of sale register and the eBay marketplace. Product limit is a clear indicator of which plan you'll be best suited on as well as staff use limit, outlet warehouse limit and data transfer. By how busy your website is can determine how much data you might need. One of the most important things we have to consider at this stage is transaction fees. As Neto currently has a 2% transaction fee, over and above any other bank charges for their base level plan. It's important to note that all of these cloud cart solutions all charge some kind of transactional fees. So it's not uncommon to Neto as well. So let's take a quick look at some of the other features which are going to be important for you as an Australian retailer. One of their biggest selling points is that they have Australian shipping provider plugins. Neto allows you to automate your shipping, quoting, labeling and manifesting with a multi-carrier shipping system. Neto works with eParcel, AAE, StarTrack, TNT, Toll, I Pick, Direct Freight, Allied Express, Fastway, Couriers Please, and more. So you should be really happy that you have an awesome choice of shipping providers. There's a heap more listed on their website. We've included the link in the blog. Signup for Your Free Neto Trial Today Next, let's look at the accounting systems which are supported by Neto. Keeping your Chief Financial Officer happy by integrating your accounting system with your shopping cart solution is super important these days. So let's have a look at several of the options available to you when you plugin Neto. Neto integrates with several of the most popular Australian accounting platforms. Note that MYOB, SAASU and Xero are native to Neto and therefore do not incur an extra monthly cost. However, integrations provided by OneSaas do. Once again, this is not uncommon. But it should be noted that the third party integrations add at least another $29 Australian to your monthly subscription costs. Now let's look at getting your products out into the marketplace. Getting your products out into the marketplace is hugely important. Neto have eBay integration to solve this. eBay integration is pretty important to online shopping carts these days. So it's an important plugin that you will have to consider when choosing a cloud cart solution. Neto makes listing on eBay pretty simple. It also make the order fulfillment and shipping simple to handle as well. There's plenty of other features and plugins available for Neto. We've included a link to the features page in this blog. One interesting point which has been raised with meMedia recently, is that Neto may not have enough design templates to accommodate your particular styling. But rest assured, you can have a third party agency like meMedia custom design a template for you and integrate it into their system. So while I know that's definitely a request for your business, I just want you to feel rest assured that you can ask for help. You're not expected to tackle these new systems on your own. Signup for Your Free Neto Trial Today We hope to see your shopping cart up soon. But you might like to wait and see what we have to say when we round out these three reviews in a few weeks. Thanks for listening Australia. We'll see you next week when we review Shopify.
Published Apr 22, 2016 We already know Facebook is the powerhouse of Social Media. This week we are discussing the new endeavors on the horizon and why Facebook won't be going anywhere any time soon. MIT Technology Review outline Facebook's 10 year plan. Mark Zuckerberg at the f8 Keynote, discussing the Facebook developer roadmap. Facebook will be letting people broadcast live video from a variety of devices including drones. Facebook adds a dedicated video tab as part of a major redesign for live-streaming. Introduction of 'bot chats' via Facebook Instant Messenger Facebook launches M, its bold answer to Siri and Cortana - Wired Facebook Beta encouraging you to share more with new design. Drop in sharing of personal content by 21% across Facebook users - The Information Subscribe to our Get Fact Up series for weekly updates: https://www.memedia.com.au/get-fact-up Like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/memedia Join us on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/memedia Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/me_media ______________________________________________________________ GET FACT UP #24 TRANSCRIPT Good day, Australia. I'm Chris Hogan, founder and CEO of MeMedia. It's time to Get Fact Up. This week, we're bringing you all the latest updates from the social networking giant, Facebook. Before we get started, we wanted to just take a moment to recognize that we've created 24 episodes of Get Fact Up. That's six months worth of content. And we thought it was worth a little bit of a celebration. But hey, that's about all we've got time for, so let's move on. We're amazed at how fast time flies and we're looking forward to the next six months. Seeing what happens in the marketing world and most importantly, keeping you guys up to date. And just a side note, for all of you people that are wondering, "Hey, is that actually working "for Me Media?" Yeah, it is. Get your ass in gear and get videoing. Anyway, I think we should talk news. So if you've been living under a social media rock, you've probably missed out on Mark Zuckerberg's F8 keynote speech, which was absolutely sensational and indicates to us what Facebook have in mind for the next 10 years. The F8 keynote clarifies what Facebook has been using so far to win hands down, pretty much every relevant area they've targeted. It's a three step play, build infrastructure, build products on top of it, build ecosystems around them. One of the areas that Facebook is making a priority is live video. Facebook has even announced that they're going to allow people to broadcast live video from all sorts of places, including drones. So Facebook's really gunning for that position where people want to watch news as it happens, live in their platform. Facebook wants live video to catch on with users, so much so they're putting a live tab, front and center in their iOS and Android mobile apps, hoping that users create and view more live video. By clicking this tab, you'll see a menu of live video and can scroll through real-time broadcast from all around the world, as well as the ones your friends are making. Facebook is striving to be that social media platform that you never have to leave, not to Google anything, not to search on YouTube, not to search for a recipe, not to contact your friends. They want you to stay here. Facebook is, therefore, giving us another excuse not to leave, and they've introduced bots. Facebook is allowing companies to be able to automate bots on its Facebook Messenger mobile app that users can interact with to do things like get the weather or news, or buy things like flowers or food. Chatting with a bot on Facebook Messenger is similar to having a conversation with a friend, a friend that only wants to talk about one topic and serves up limited responses. Sounds like somebody I know, me, me, me, me. Let's talk about me. So you can see there's no time for small talk. You're asking your specific question and the bots are serving up information. Facebook's very own bot service, M, is only in its infancy, but through a natural evolution of its software, Facebook has begun intertwining with our basic wants and needs to create a powerful AI different to any other. Facebook has started out by servicing their bot by a custom service style team which are overseeing the software and somewhat training it to learn, and eliminates the need to sit on hold with companies notorious for their long wait times. M can take care of buying gifts for your friends' birthdays, and M is capable of recommending you movies or games based on your tastes. There is no official launch date for M for everybody to use. Facebook is planning on keeping this AI going and allowing you to use it through Messenger one day, and hopefully by the time shopping is available through the app. So once again, once M becomes available, you have another reason to stay on their platform. The goal for Facebook is to make M the personal assistant to 1.5 billion people, helping us all lead more blissful lives as we tap out instructions to our software companion. Every day, it picks up the slack for us in handling out mundane tasks. Having an all native interface which is overlaid over the entire world wide web is obviously Facebook's goal. And they're damn close to pulling it off. So this should be a fun watch over the next 10 years. Thanks for listening, Australia. That's all we've got time for for Get Fact Up. We'll see you next week from the MeMedia studio, here, Burleigh Heads, on the Gold Coast.
Published Apr 18, 2016 Content marketing isn't just about blogging, it's about creating different types of content for your potential customers to engage with. Today we've got some great info for you about how you can tap into Podcasting as an invaluable resource for your business. Check out MeMedia's very own Podcasts: Mentor Revolution 63% of people bought something a host had promoted on their show: Fast Company MeMedia's Top 10 Podcast Picks for Businesses: 10. The Entrepreneur's Radio Show Conversations with self-made millionaires and high-level entrepreneurs that will grow your Business. Each episode is a personal conversation that goes deep on the topic of success, failure and everything in-between. 9. Entrepreneur on Fire Each episode details the journey of a successful Entrepreneur who shares their worst Entrepreneurial moment and lessons learned, an ah-ha moment and how they turned that idea into success, and much more. 8. Profit. Power. Pursuit. This podcast explores what it means to build a business and life on your creative drive. Uncovering both the strategic and the tactical components of how creative people make money, take control of their businesses, and pursue what's most important to them so that you can too. 7. Tropical MBA Two hosts sharing the stories of entrepreneurs who are building businesses and are in it for more than bottom line profits. 6. Marketing in your Car In just 10 minutes a day this podcast teaches marketing, traffic, conversions and sales from internet marketing expert Russell Brunson. Each podcast is under 10 minutes, so you can get priceless information in bite size chunks in your car. 5. The Top Host, Nathan Latka is a 25 year old software entrepreneur who has driven over $4.5 million in revenue and built a 25 person team as he dropped out of school, raised $2.5million from a Forbes Billionaire, and attracted over 10,000 paying customers from 160+ different countries. He podcasts about the world's top entrepreneurs on how much they sold last month, how they are selling it, and what they are selling. 4. Build A Badass Business Diane Sanfilippo is a New York Times bestselling author and serial entrepreneur - for business tips, advice, and motivation for emerging or existing business owners. You'll learn practical strategies from Diane as well as hear expert interviews with those who have had similar struggles and have found success. 3. TEDTalks Business Some of the world's greatest innovators, entrepreneurs, and business researchers share their stories and insights from the stage at TED conferences, TEDx events and partner events around the world. TED is a nonprofit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading. 2. StartUp Podcast StartUp is a podcast series about what it's really like to get a business off the ground. In Season 1, Alex Blumberg told the story of launching this business, Gimlet Media, a podcast network. In Season 2, Alex is joined by co-Host Lisa Chow, to follow an entirely new company. 1. Planet Money The economy, explained, with stories and surprises. Imagine you could call up a friend and say, "Meet me at the bar and tell me what's going on with the economy." Now imagine that's actually a fun evening. That is Planet Money. Subscribe to our Get Fact Up series for weekly updates: https://www.memedia.com.au/get-fact-up Like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/memedia Join us on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/memedia Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/me_media ______________________________________________________________ GET FACT UP #24 TRANSCRIPTHi, I'm Chris Hogan, founder and CEO of MeMedia. It's time to get fact up. We've all heard about content marketing, and how valuable it is for your business. But content marketing isn't all about blogging. There's plenty of other types of content out there for you to generate and share out to the world. One of those that we're sharing with you today is podcasting. Podcasting is generally consumed on the move via a smartphone device and two major applications. One being iTunes on the iOS platform and Stitcher on Android. While smartphones allow us to stay connected all the time, they've also allowed for this huge boom in podcasting, which allows people to listen while they're on the go, driving in the car, or doing mundane tasks, like mowing the lawn or doing the dishes. This is one of the pivotal reasons why podcasting has become so popular. And also, with those niche topics out there, you can listen to exactly what you feel like listening to right now. This is the perfect opportunity to target your ideal client while you have their undivided attention. Remember, they're doing a mundane task or something else that stops them from being engaged with other human beings, or other things to distract them. So you have their undivided attention. Last year alone, iTunes recorded one billion subscribers. Wow. You can podcast from practically anywhere these days. Microphone technology has come a long way. MeMedia choose to podcast from right here at Burleigh Heads in our studio. But also out there at live events. You can mix it up any which way you choose and get some great content worth sharing. So how can you use podcasting for your business? MeMedia have found, through our research, that the conversational type of podcasts perform best. It works best when there's a conversation happening. For the listener, being part of a conversation they otherwise would not have had the opportunity to be part of, is truly awesome. So how are you going to use podcasting for your business? Obviously you can choose to shoot video and then strip out the audio thereafter and produce two different types of content, one visual, one audio. Or, you can just go straight down the audio line. MeMedia have really enjoyed creating podcasting content. And so we've created a community project called Mentor Revolution, which shares mentor stories for the budding entrepreneur. MeMedia are always looking for new mentors to share their story and help young entrepreneurs grow. If you think you've got a great story worth sharing, make sure you get in touch and become part of the Mentor Revolution. Or you can click to watch some of those podcasts here from this blog. As with all content you create, make sure your information is entertaining, educational or inspirational. Or all three, if you think you can pull it off. But don't just go out and create a commercial for your business. Or someone else's, for that matter. Offer some serious value. MeMedia don't believe there is an ideal time frame to create every podcast for. Your audiences will have different times when they can listen for longer and shorter. So mix it up a little. One additional side note is that in a recent survey of 300,000 podcast listeners, up to 63% of those listeners purchased something after listening to a podcast. Advertising shouldn't be completely removed from the podcast. It just shouldn't be the main topic. So, in that same survey, 71% of listeners said they've visited the show host website, or a referred website. And 62% said they considered a product or service that had been advertised via the podcast. As mentioned before, podcasting can fit well into your content marketing strategy. Producing video or audio will allow you to reach out into other spaces, with other types of content. As part of your content marketing strategy, generating podcasts can be done via video, audio or both, allowing to reach out into other networks with different content types. And that's definitely a good thing for your brand's reach. So of course, if you're going to start producing your own podcast, it's best to take some listening lessons from the best podcasts in the world. One of our favourites is Entrepreneur on Fire. We'd absolutely recommend you listen to that one. There's plenty others out there but it will depend on your niche. So do some category searches, do some category searches. I'm sure you'll find a podcast that's right for you. Again, you can listen on an iOS device via the podcasting app. Or on Android, via the Stitcher app. Enjoy your podcasting, and hey, maybe look up Mentor Revolution and give us a listen. So for your listening pleasure, we've listed many more podcasts in this blog. We hope you enjoyed this week, thanks for listening Australia. We'll see or listen to you soon. Ugh, valuable, valuable. And how valuable, how valuable it is. How valuable it is.
Published Apr 11, 2016 This week on Get Fact Up, find out all you need to know, for now, about the soon-to-be changing Google AdWords. Learn how Googles new redesign affects your marketing strategy. AdWords is evolving! Tune in to find out more! Want to get even more Fact Up? Come to our Google Event: RSVP Here Subscribe on our Website: https://www.memedia.com.au/get-fact-up Like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/memedia Join us on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/memedia Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/me_media ______________________________________________________________ GET FACT UP #23 TRANSCRIPT G'day Australia. I'm Chris Hogan, Founder and CEO of MeMedia. It's time to get fact up. This Monday, we'll be bringing you the latest and greatest news from Google. But before we get started, we just wanted to let you know that because MeMedia are Google partners on the fourth of May we will be hosting a Google live event, streaming from the Google headquarters in Sydney. We'd love to have you here at our auditorium in Burleigh Heads. It's a free event. Come along, learn, have a laugh, and maybe a few nibbles. You can check out the link to the event in our blog. Now let's get into the news from Google. In the past month, Google has made some updates to the search engine results pages. You may have noticed that the right-hand side ads have all but disappeared. Never fear, we're still here. Google, themselves, have tested the removal of the ads from the right-hand side of the search engine results pages extensively. And they have found that the effect is minimal. But, "What's the truth?" you ask. Well, let's dive right in and have a look. If your ads are performing well in your field or you aren't bidding high for competition keywords, you're probably not in a bad place right now without these side ads. If you're already ranking highly, you'll likely see a boost in click-through rate, and a lower cost per click, as more of your ads get that prime real estate at the top of the page results. If you're involved in e-commerce and use Google's shopping ads, this is also good news for you. The increased space will allow you to compete where previously you would not have been shown. So we recommend, if you aren't using Google's shopping campaigns, now may be a good time to start considering them. This all sounds great, but if you had an advertising campaign with Google running, and you're appearing in position four or five, then it might be time to take another look at your AdWords campaign, and make sure that you are getting the position and click-through rate you're aiming for. Google have also announced that as well as this front-end change to the advertising display, they're also improving the look of Google AdWords management. You may be wondering if there is any functionality changes going to occur to the AdWords management platform, and Google have announced that there won't be, which is great news for users. So what are they updating? Well to be honest, it hasn't had a facelift since 2008, so it's gonna look a little bit prettier. Does that look better? I look different, but I work just the same. So let's have a closer look at the new interface design. Our views will be available at campaign, ad group, and ad levels. These show a convenient display of performance, which is much like a more readable version of the account level home screen in AdWords now. There's also a top ad groups snapshot, as well as graphical view of performance shown split across different devices. You'll also notice in the redesign that all the secondary navigation runs along the left side, parallel to the primary navigation. Options such as locations, site links, and devices, are shown there, instead of being hard to find under settings. Google are set to have the redesign done by end of 2017. So between now and then, they'll be implementing some beta testing and we hope we get selected to have a go. So let's have a little look back at the search engine results pages, and what that means for all results, paid and organic. Paid is obviously getting a lot of focus now, with up to four positions present, and product listing ads visible at the very top of page. Organic rankings are being pushed down slightly, and they could feel the pinch, especially for high-commercial terms. So of course, you may have to further consider AdWords in your marketing budget. We just wanted to keep it short this week, and remind you that we will have a Google Connect event happening here, on the fourth of May, right here in Burleigh Heads. Come along, it's free. We'd love you to join in. RSVPs are via the link in this blog. Thanks for listening, Australia. Wake up. It's Monday.
Published Apr 4, 2016 Wow, we are now at Episode #22 of Get Fact Up. And if you were starting to feel overwhelmed with all the marketing activities you should be doing, now is the time to reflect. This week we collate the info we have been sharing over the past few months and give you the Top 7 Marketing Lessons according to MeMedia. If you are new to the Marketing scene, then these are must do's! And if you've been in the game a while, can you tick all of these of your business checklist? Tune in to find out. Want to get even more Fact Up? Subscribe on our Website: https://www.memedia.com.au/get-fact-up Like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/memedia Join us on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/memedia Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/me_media ______________________________________________________________ GET FACT UP #22 TRANSCRIPT G'day, Australia. I'm Chris Hogan, founder and CEO of MeMedia. Recently, we've received some feedback on just how great Get Fact Up has become, so we thought we'd take today as an opportunity to go back and look at the top seven lessons we've learned since October 2015. But please excuse how green I was presenting to camera just 22 episodes ago. In Episode 3, we covered content marketing. There, we hinted at one of the most important aspects of establishing a quality marketing strategy is: knowing your ideal client. MeMedia damn sure that you know who your ideal client is. It's just a matter of uncovering what they want, why they want it, when they want it, and how you can help them. This was the first mention of knowing your ideal client, and this theme doesn't stop. Right through all Get Fact Up episodes, and especially in Episode 18, when we got in deep with understanding how to create your digital marketing strategy. Your digital marketing strategy is meant to serve as a well-thought out analysis of how to reach out and attract your ideal client to your business. Because you've dedicated time to developing a well-thought out marketing strategy, either by yourself or with an agency like MeMedia, you shouldn't ignore that research that you've done around your ideal client. That is really going to set your marketing apart for the year to come. SEO should play an essential role in every online marketing campaign, and in Episode 4, we uncovered what SEO means for your business. Here's a few points that we'd like to cover with you. Forget keyword stuffing. No need to weave keywords into your sentences. Just write normally and Google will figure it out. Stop worrying and stop creating unnatural links back to your website. If you're building and marketing your website properly, then your search engine rankings will come, because that is the beauty of Google's most recent changes. This means that you have more time for creating engaging content, more social media marketing time, more ad creation time, and building integrated online marketing campaigns. In time, you're sure to dominate all of your online marketing channels. ♫ All of them ♫ In a recent report, Moz listed the most influential ranking factors. Number one was domain-level link quality, and quality of all inbound links to your website. Number two was page-level link quantity and quality of inbound links to a specific page. Number three was page-level keyword and content relevance. How well your on-page content is written for the keywords being searched. And number four was all of the technical, such as content length, readability, open graph markup, uniqueness, load speed, structured data markup You can test some of these technical features from the links in our blog, or get in touch with MeMedia and we can help you out. And number five, how many people are going to your site and how engaged are they? Given that you and I are separated by a computer screen, it's difficult for us to know whether or not our key messages are being received loud and clear. So in Episode 5, we covered how important it is to target that mobile user. Let's have a look. Readership is moving to mobile very fast, with PageFair now estimating that all mobile traffic accounts for 38% of all online browsing. Other insides tell us that BuzzFeed's mobile traffic outstripped its desktop traffic early in 2013. So if you're advertising online, you need to make sure that mobile is an essential consideration that you're making in your digital strategy. And don't forget that smartphone penetration in Australia has reached 75%. It's not like Aussies aren't using online phones. Some of us even have two, and we're really well-connected. We can tend to repeat ourselves on what we feel to be the most important thing for you to know and remember, and that's addressing the mobile user, so we have mentioned that in Episode 6, Episode 10, and Episode 19. Tracking the performance of your online marketing campaigns is uber-important, so we included two episodes of Google Analytics, to get you up to date with how to implement this platform. Here's a snippet right here. We've got the four most important steps to get your business started with Google Analytics. Wrong. Wake up, Australia. Google Analytics rocks. MeMedia would definitely encourage watching those entire episodes that we just shared with you on Google Analytics. And, if they're not your cup of tea, please share them with your marketing team. In Episode 20, we covered how important it is to integrate your marketing with your website. Here's a snippet. Put simply, all of your marketing collateral should never work alone. Nothing ever does work on its own. Integrating your website with your marketing activity will create a path of least resistance for people to do business with you. Essentially, we want to break down those barriers so people don't have an excuse not to do business with you. ♫ I came in like a wrecking ball ♫ Apart from creating your digital marketing strategy, we felt that the most important lesson we shared with you was in Episode 21, and that is the importance of creating your landing page. A landing page is a page that has been created for a specific marketing or advertising campaign. Creation of a landing page is super-important because generally speaking, a large percentage of advertisers send people to their homepage, and if you analyse your homepage, it probably isn't the most ideal page to send people who are searching for a specific product or service. Thanks for listening, Australia, and thanks for the awesome feedback. We absolutely love hearing it, no matter what form it takes. Next week, we'll be sharing what's happening in the online marketing arena. So stay tuned, we'll see you next Monday.
Published Mar 21, 2016 This episode explores how you can integrate different activities with your website, to make a real impact with your target audience. Bringing all this marketing collateral together allows you to acquire and nurture your ideal client. From SEO to Social Media and even PR, there should be a place for all of these channels in your integrated marketing strategy. Resources: What effective B2B Content Marketing Looks Like - Content Marketing Institute Content Marketing Statistics - Forbes.com Non-Integrated Marketing Departments = Non-Integrated Marketing - Direct Marketing News Discover 4 Key Differences Between B2C and B2B Marketers - Content Marketing Institute Struggling With Content Creation Ideas? - MeMedia Can Help ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ GET FACT UP #20 TRANSCRIPT -Good morning, Australia! Let's get fact up on integrating your marketing with your website. I'm Chris Hogan, founder and CEO of MeMedia. Let's get into it. Marketing has and always should be top of mind when designing and developing your website. The last two Get Fact Up episodes have been paving the way for today's discussion on how best to integrate all of your online marketing activity with your website. Put simply, all of your marketing collateral should never work alone. Nothing ever does work on its own. Integrating your website with your marketing activity will create a path of least resistance for people to do business with you. So essentially, we wanna break down those barriers so people don't have an excuse not to do business with you. Content marketing plays a huge role in integrated online marketing strategies, and it's how you reach out and pull your audience into your website. Then over time, nurturing them and offering the sale. So who else uses content marketing? Forbes.com recently released a summary of the latest statistics on content marketing. 88% of B2B Marketers currently use content marketing as part of their marketing strategy, yet only 32% have a documented content marketing strategy. 76% of B2C marketers report using content marketing. However, only 37% of them say they have a documented content marketing strategy. So let's take a look at how you can integrate content marketing into your integrated online marketing strategy. Whether it be creating written blog content, design infographics, photos, video, or graphic designing images, all of this needs to be accessible via website. As mentioned, the best place for this is within your blog. But hiding your blog content under your main menu link is rather pointless. Sharing your content via social network and email marketing is a way to reach out and pull your ideal client into your website. As we mentioned, bringing all of this marketing collateral together, we should never discount any earned media through PR. That needs to be mentioned on your website also. This adds a level of credibility to your company that might otherwise be missed by new visitors. So let's take a look at how each online marketing activity works to acquire and nurture your ideal client. So let's talk SEO. Organic search is often the highest converting of all channels, and adds credibility to your brand. But guaranteeing search engine results page visibility is difficult to control, which is why SEO integrates well with paid search. Now on to PR. PR is not traditionally a digital marketing activity. However, through precision, social targeting, placing precious PR content in front of influences eyeballs via social feeds is a cinch. After all, media players, bloggers, journalists and editors all use social media too, right? So let's run over paid search, otherwise known as search engine marketing or SEM. This is often used and configured to target the potential client at various stages in the buying lifecycle via their search intent. Whether they are learning, buying or using, paid search advertising allows you more control over what you appear for in the search engine results pages, including targeting geographics and device. This is why SEM integrates well with other activities such as SEO, paid social, and retargeting. Now on to paid social. Paid social reaches people early in the buyer's life cycle though psychographic targeting including attitudes, interests, lifestyle and demographics. But because you're discovered, often without buyer intent, these prospects need to be nurtured. This is why paid social works really well with retargeting and email marketing. Organic social really only works in two ways, and that's when you pay to increase the reach of your content. Community management can also be used to nurture leads that may have questions about your products online, like presales. Retargeting works well to keep your brand top of mind for those prospects which have not converted yet. Know however, this tends to only offer value when dealing with larger amounts of inbound traffic that may have been generated through the efforts listed before, and works best with e-commerce websites. So this is how integrated online marketing works to acquire and nurture your prospects and is best done by curating quality content. So you can see how without your website, content, advertising, and PR all being interwoven together, all of these efforts could be waste of your time and money. And most important of all, encouraging that sale or conversion through cleverly designed landing pages means that you are tracking your most important KPO of all. And that's all we have for today, Australia. Thanks very much for listening. We'll see you next time. Please subscribe to Get Fact Up newsletter using the form on this page. ANNOUNCING LIVE Q&A SESSION WITH FIXED PRICE CAR SERVICE CEO, EDEN SHIRLEY AND CTO BARRY PRYCE. Where: Vintage Velvet Surfers Paradise, 2947 Surfers Paradise Blvd, Surfers Paradise QLD 4217 When: Monday 21st March, 6pm til late. Cost: $20 at the door. Includes one drink and canapes. RSVP: http://www.meetup.com/Silicon-Beach-Gold-Coast/eve...
Published Mar 14, 2016 How user friendly is your website? This week, MeMedia dive into web design best practice, and key factors to keep your target market happy and coming back for more. This video is a must-watch for anyone with an existing website, or looking to get one in the future. Bootstrap Grid Template - GetBootstrap.com Social Media Report Sensis - Sensis.com Google: Webpage Speed - Developers.Google.com Australian Mobile Statistics - ACMA.gov.au Please subscribe to Get Fact Up newsletter using the form on this page. ANNOUNCING LIVE Q&A SESSION WITH FIXED PRICE CAR SERVICE CEO, EDEN SHIRLEY AND CTO BARRY PRYCE. Where: Vintage Velvet Surfers Paradise, 2947 Surfers Paradise Blvd, Surfers Paradise QLD 4217 When: Monday 21st March, 6pm til late. Cost: $20 at the door. Includes one drink and canapes. RSVP: http://www.meetup.com/Silicon-Beach-Gold-Coast/eve...
Published Mar 4, 2016We have already reached the beginning of March and it's becoming obvious that it's going to be a promising year. Thanks for joining us for the 18th episode of Get Fact Up. This week: We show you the most integral angles of what makes an effective, reliable, profitable Digital Marketing Strategy. This is a great source of information so be sure to listen carefully! Please, grab your Monday coffee and enjoy the 18th week running of Get Fact Up! Want to get even more Fact Up? Like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/memedia Join us on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/memedia Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/me_media Please subscribe to Get Fact Up newsletter using the form on this page. GET FACT UP # 18 - VIDEO TRANSCRIPT Good morning, I'm Chris Hogan, founder and CEO of MeMedia. Let's Get Fact Up! Thanks for tuning in, Australia. We're gonna give you some super powerful information. It's gonna go over five minutes, but please listen in, you'll love it. I'm sure you've heard us mention that we've been getting some great feedback for Get Fact Up. Make sure you click here to see last week's video! However, I think we've realized that we've been chasing after the shiny new things that are happening in the online marketing industry just a little bit too much. And we wanted to bring it back, and focus on our strategy, which was to educate you guys on this online marketing arena. So today we wanna cover creation of your digital marketing strategy. Your digital marketing strategy is meant to serve as a well thought out analysis of how to reach out and attract your ideal client to your business. Because you've dedicated time to developing a well thought out marketing strategy, either by yourself or with an agency like MeMedia, you shouldn't ignore that research that you've done around your ideal client that is really going to set your marketing apart for the year to come. It's like writing a shopping list and forgetting it, leaving it at home. When you're walking through the aisles of the shopping center, all of a sudden you come across the confectionery aisle, and lo and behold, you're buying chocolate. So today, I'd like to take a few minutes on how to create a goal oriented, psychographicly targeted online marketing strategy. Wow, that's a mouthful. So let's define your goals. It's super important that you're clear on whether your primary focus is on awareness, product demand lead generation, or sales. How are we going to define and measure success of a campaign? And how does this relate to revenue and return on investment? So let's calculate your marketing pipeline. It's time to analyze your top of funnel metrics and how that will get you to your end KPI, or Key Performance Indicator. By applying your organization's leads to sales conversion rates, working from the bottom of the funnel to the top, you can then begin to understand how many visitors do you need to achieve X amount of sales. This may also require you to evaluate the lifetime value of your client. An easy example would be the lifetime value of a coffee customer who spends $20 a week for three years. The value of that customer would be 20 times 48, to be conservative, times three years, equals $2,880 in total revenue, or $960 per year. Analyzing how many web visits you get for a specific location, and comparing that to how many coffees you sold, can give you your conversion rate. Next, we need to define who your ideal client is. Analyzing your clients' attitudes, interests, personality and lifestyle, as well as their barriers to purchasing, will help you best understand your ideal client. This will require you to ask plenty of questions. Often this is done via surveys, or focus groups, or you may just be marketing to someone just like you, or a family member, so less research required. Next we need to define your marketing channels and how they work together. The first place we start at MeMedia is with your website, and understanding how your ideal client is actually going to use that website. Once we've evaluated what your ideal client wants, and how they're gonna get it on your website, obviously that gives you how you need to structure your website. For example, if your client needs to find one of your stores across Australia, they may start out with needing to find the locations, seeing the opening hours, reviewing a photo of the location to check it, looks as expected, see menu or stock availability, easy access to phone number to confirm they're not wasting their time by coming to you, and gaining easy directions. All of this indicates that one of the most important channels would obviously be Google Maps. But then making sure that that integrates correctly with your website. And yes, there is a right and wrong way to integrate Google map listings with your website. Please, don't go and create multiple mini sites for every location. That's a wrong way. The right way is to create multiple pages on your website for those individual locations. In the map listings, link to each individual page. Now you need to understand your tracking capabilities. In a perfect world, we would be able to attribute all of your sales to specific marketing activities. In that online to offline mix, it does require a bit of cooperation and collaboration between physical stores, accounting reports and marketing reports, to best understand if there are improvements. Obviously Google Analytics and Facebook Insights can assist greatly, but they still can have their limits for online to offline sales attribution. As we wrap up today, I hope you've got a clear guide on how to create your online marketing strategy. But please don't forget, your marketing strategy also includes your website strategy, and should be 100% integrated together. So given our marketing landscape, our customer, etc. is constantly evolving, so too should your marketing strategy. It should be a living document that you keep up to date regularly, rather than let it go stagnant or be ignored. Thanks very much, Australia, we're glad you tuned in to Get Fact Up this week, on how to create your digital marketing strategy. If you need help, we're just a phone call away. And don't forget, that all of this great info comes from the team at MeMedia who are doing this stuff everyday. Not only are we creating the strategies with our clients, but also designing and developing the websites, and then executing the content marketing strategies thereafter. So it really does come from a place of experience and we hope that you get the most out of this video today. That's all for today's Get Fact Up. We'll see you next week, Australia, and we're gonna be bringing even more education, and hopefully entertainment to you, sitting in your chair. There's no outtakes today, 'cause I didn't stuff up enough. We got an outtake.
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