Podcasts about rev ciancio

Are you struggling to balance value offerings with premium items in your restaurant? In this episode of the Local Marketing Lab, Rev Ciancio, a 20-year veteran of the restaurant industry and head of revenue marketing at Branded Strategic Hospitality, reveals the power of the barbell marketing strategy for restaurant growth. Rev shares invaluable insights on leveraging technology, enhancing customer experience, and implementing innovative marketing tactics to drive revenue in today's competitive landscape.Here are some topics discussed in the episode:Implementation of a successful barbell marketing strategyEffective use of gated WiFi for customer data acquisitionComprehensive restaurant techPersonalization in customer interactionsTips for increasing customer lifetime value (LTV) and average order value (AOV)ResourcesConnect with Rev Ciancio on LinkedIn.Check out Rev's restaurant, Handcraft Burgers and Bew.Learn more about Branded Hospitality Ventures and Yeah! Management.Sign up for Rev's weekly newsletter.Other shout-outsGregg Majewski for his marketing expertise.Condado Tacos for their marketing targeting.Ferazzoli's Italian Kitchen for excellent customer experience.Restaurant techVivaSpot – gated WifiToast – POS (Point of Sale)MailChimp – email and CRMBikky – CDP (Customer Data Platform)Marqii – online listings and reputation managementOvation – guest feedbackSpendgo – customer loyaltyGuru Club – reward customers for posting on InstagramByte – ordering kiosks

In this episode of The Local Marketing Lab, Justin Ulrich is joined by Zack Oates, founder and CEO of customer experience platform Ovation, for an energetic discussion on leveraging online reviews and reputation to unlock revenue growth. Zach provides valuable insights into transforming online reviews to revenue and the strategies businesses can employ to improve their online reputation. You'll learn about the importance of aiming for a high rating of 4.7 to 4.8 with numerous reviews along with the need for a convenient feedback process.Here are some topics discussed in the episode to transform reviews to revenue:The power of online reviews and why 4+ star ratings are critical for discoveryElevate your local marketing game by mastering online reputation managementTactics for soliciting authentic feedback and reviewsTry new marketing strategies to expand your business horizonsZack's favorite pizzeriasResourcesFollow and connect with Zack Oates on LinkedInLearn more about Ovation and how they make online reviews easy for businessesCheck out Rev Ciancio's episode on the Local Marketing Lab to learn more about driving ROI by focusing on the customer experienceOther shout-outsFollow Shawn Walchef and Rev Ciancio on LinkedIn for great social media content.Learn more about San Diablo ChurrosOrder a churro kit called Churro Fiesta in a boxGreat pizza, The Good Pie, Via 313, Andolini's Pizzeria, Sophie's Pizza, and Sauced

Joining us on the Local Marketing Lab is the “godfather of restaurant marketing” and expert, Rev Ciancio — founder of Handcraft Burgers and Brews, Head of Revenue Marketing at Branded Hospitality Ventures, and founder of Yeah! Management. In this episode, Rev shares his innovative local marketing strategies to help drive ROI by focusing on the customer experience.Rev shares examples around 5 local marketing tips to drive growth for your business to thrive, including:Optimizing your online presenceCapturing customer emailsCrafting targeted promotionsBuilding customer personasCreating consistent valuable content

Scot Turner, the Chief Ambassador at The Burnt Chef Project and the founder of Auden Hospitality, draws from his 20 years of experience in the food and beverage industry within the hotel space to share insights on local marketing strategies to create raving fans in your local community.In this episode, you'll learn: Why tailoring marketing strategies to specific locations can revolutionize your outreach.The art of building and maintaining loyal fans in your local community.The potential of LinkedIn in your B2B marketing endeavors.Tips for using TikTok in personal branding and boosting audience interaction.How to take user-created content in your local marketing campaigns.Resources:Follow Scot Turner on LinkedIn or TikTok.Learn more about Auden Hospitality and how they help food and beverage entrepreneurs succeed.Check out The Burnt Chef Project — a community to burn away the stigma surrounding mental health within hospitality.Zack Oates from Ovation: check out his webinar “Leveraging the power of a local growth flywheel“.Shawn Walchef: Follow him on LinkedIn and watch his recent podcast episode.Follow Troy Hooper on LinkedIn.Consider following Rev Ciancio on LinkedIn.Follow all the great content of Dominique Ansel.

#227 - Lightning Interviews at Bar & Restaurant Expo ***** This week's episode is brought to you by: MARGIN EDGE Take control of your costs with using MarginEdge. Best of all? No contract. No setup fee. Free and unlimited training and support. VISIT: marginedge.com/chip ***** This week's episode is brought to you by: 7SHIFTS 7shifts is the team management platform for restaurants. From hiring, to scheduling, training and retaining, they’ve got the tools you need to help you run your business with ease. Better understand your restaurant, hit your labor targets, and keep your entire team connected. Plus, 7shifts integrates with POS and payroll systems you already use and trust! Join over 30,000 restaurants using 7shifts today. Restaurant Strategy listeners get 3 months free. VISIT: https://www.7shifts.com/restaurantstrategy ***** Bar & Restaurant Expo is one of the biggest industry trade shows of the year. Attendance at this year's event was close to 12,000, and the energy was electric. I was out there in Las Vegas giving two talks to the crowd... but I also had the opportunity to podcast live from the trade show floor. I did a series of lightning interviews with some vendors, sponsors, and operators in attendance. If this episode gets you excited for next year's show, then GOOD! I'll be there and I hope to see you there as well. If you have any questions, then please reach out. It's one of my favorite trade shows of the year; an event I love returning to time and time again! IMPORTANT LINKS: SpotOn - https://www.spoton.com/chip KickFin - https://kickfin.com/demo/ Uptown Hospitality Group - https://uptownhospitality.com/ 7Shifts - https://www.7shifts.com/restaurantstrategy Pursuit of Hoppiness - https://redmonkeydowntown.com/ Base Camp Pizza - https://basecamppizzaco.com/ Rev Ciancio - https://www.linkedin.com/in/revciancio/ ***** What would your life look like if your restaurant could generate consistent, predictable 20% profits? My guess is it would change everything for you. If you've been open

#217 - How to Market Like a Beast with Rev Ciancio ***** This week's episode is brought to you by: KICKFIN Thousands of restaurants across the country use Kickfin to send instant, cashless tip payouts, directly to their employees’ bank accounts, the second their shift ends. Get in touch today for a personalized demo and see how restaurants and bars across the country are tipping out with Kickfin. VISIT: kickfin.com/demo. ***** This week's episode is brought to you by: POPMENU If you’re a restaurant owner you need a great website that not only looks beautiful, but helps drive more traffic and sales. Use POPMENU to take your business to the next level. Best of all, listeners of this show can lock in one, set monthly rate… and get $100 off their first month. VISIT: https://popmenu.com/restaurantstrategy ***** Rev Ciancio is one of the most brilliant restaurant marketers I've ever met. He works with hundreds of different concepts all over the country, and is here to share his perspective on the easiest ways that operators can level up their marketing. Do not sleep on this one! Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/revciancio/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/revciancio TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@revciancio Fun With Fries: https://www.instagram.com/funwithfries/ ***** Same results, with a new name: The P3 Mastermind ProgramThe 3 Ps stand for PROFIT, PROCESS, and PROGRESS -- our 3 pillars! Learn more by setting up a FREE 30-minute Strategy Session: https://www.restaurantstrategypodcast.com/schedule

Robert Guarino is the Owner and head Coach at 5 Napkin Burger in NYC. Robert started in the industry as a teenager bussing tables. He then went to the Cornell Hotel School. In 2001 he met his long-time partner Simon Oren, who took him on as the GM at Marseille. In 2007 they opened Nizza together in 2007 and then in 2008, 5 Napkin burger was opened. 5 Napkin Burger scaled up to 7 locations, but has since scaled down to 2 core locations in NYC. Robert has also been a part of other concepts in the same neigborhood as 5 Napkin Burger, such as Playa Betty's and Schmackary's Cookies. Please use this link if you are interested in Ovation based on recommendations in today's episode: www.ovationup.com/unstoppable Check out episode 799 with Rev Ciancio as mentioned in today's episode. Unstoppables! Please consider taking this survey about our listener demographics so that we can better determine how to best serve our listeners. Less than 10 simple questions. Here is the link: CLICK HERE Show notes… Calls to ACTION!!! Join Restaurant Unstoppable Network and get your first 30 days on me!  Connect with my past guest and a community of superfans. Subscribe to the Restaurant Unstoppable YouTube Channel Join the private Unstoppable Facebook Group Join the email list! (Scroll Down to get the Vendor List!) Favor success quote/mantra: "If you're not getting better, you're getting passed." "Greatness is many, many small acts, but each one is doable." In this episode with Robert Guarino we will discuss: Opening and closing restaurants How to create a great casual dining experience, a "meeting place" Systems Training Scaling forward and scaling back Today's sponsor: At Popmenu, we know that in today's world, a great hospitality experience usually begins online. Keeping the conversation with guests going beyond the meal also requires simple, powerful, fun technology capable of expression through all kinds of channels. Our team takes pride in helping restaurants put their best foot forward digitally so they can focus on what they do best. We think PDF menus are super boring, we believe 3rd party platforms have had too much say in how consumers find their next dining experience and we deeply feel that sharing your beautiful menu doesn't have to be so difficult, time-consuming and expensive. As a listener of the Restaurant Unstoppable, you'll receive $100 off your first month of Popmenu! Join the 60-day Restaurant Systems Pro FREE TRAINING. This is something that has never been done before. This 60-day event is at no cost to you, but it is not for everyone. Fred Langley, CEO of Restaurant Systems Pro, will lead a group of restaurateurs through the Restaurant Systems Pro software and set up the systems for your restaurant. During the 60 days, Fred will walk you through the Restaurant Systems Pro Process and help you crush the following goals: Recipe Costing Cards; Guidance in your books for accounting; Cash controls; Sales Forecasting(With Accuracy); Checklists; Budgeting for the entire year; Scheduling for profit; More butts in seats and more… Click Here to learn more. Knowledge bombs Which “it factor” habit, trait, or characteristic you believe most contributes to your success? Natural empathy What is your biggest weakness? Wanting to do everything What's one thing you ask or look for when interviewing/growing your team? Are they excited? What's a current challenge? How are you dealing with it? Staffing Share one code of conduct or behavior you teach your team. No assholes What is one uncommon standard of service you teach your staff? Say yes What's one book we must read to become a better person or restaurant owner? In Search of Excellence by Thomas J. Peterson and Robert H. Waterman, Jr. GET THIS BOOK FOR FREE AT AUDIBLE.COM  What's one piece of technology you've adopted within your restaurant walls and how has it influence operations? Say thank you What is one thing you feel restaurateurs don't do well enough or often enough? Bikky If you got the news that you'd be leaving this world tomorrow and all memories of you, your work, and your restaurants would be lost with your departure with the exception of 3 pieces of wisdom you could leave behind for the good of humanity, what would they be? Be kind to others Have fun doing what you do Find great people to love and work with Contact: Instagram: @restaurantlifer Thanks for listening! Thanks so much for joining today! Have some feedback you'd like to share? Leave a note in the comment section below! If you enjoyed this episode, please share it using the social media buttons you see at the top of the post. Also, please leave an honest review for the Restaurant Unstoppable Podcast on iTunes! Ratings and reviews are extremely helpful and greatly appreciated! They do matter in the rankings of the show, and I read each and every one of them. And finally, don't forget to subscribe to the show on iTunes to get automatic updates. Huge thanks to Robert Guarino for joining me for another awesome episode. Until next time! Restaurant Unstoppable is a free podcast. One of the ways I'm able to make it free is by earning a commission when sharing certain products with you. I've made it a core value to only share tools, resources, and services my guest mentors have recommend, first. If you're finding value in my podcast, please use my links!

In this episode of ShandeeLand, Shandee interviews Rev Ciancio, the Cofounder and CMO of Handcraft Burgers & Brews. Together, they discuss Rev's upcoming Restaurant Growth Summit, his extensive experience in marketing for hospitality and technology companies, and some lighthearted stories from his time in the music industry. Rev shares his top tips for marketing in the hospitality industry, as well as some key things to keep in mind when launching a restaurant business. This episode offers great insights into the hospitality marketing world, as well as the fascinating stories and experiences of a veteran behind the scenes.

Dave "Rev" Ciancio joins Shark Bite Biz's David Strausser to chat about marketing & branding for the food & hospitality industry. Check out Dave "Rev" Ciancio's business here: https://yeahmanagement.com/ Get Dead House Coffee to support our podcast by using code SHARK for 20% off here: https://bit.ly/3tjRbD8 Watch us on YouTube: https://youtube.com/c/SharkBiteBiz Make sure you visit David's article on Forbes.com: https://bit.ly/StrausserForbes Visit our NEW Merch store: https://store.sharkbitebiz.com  Join our Reddit Community: https://www.reddit.com/r/SharkBiteBiz/ Donate to our Patreon to SUPPORT this channel and get some BENEFITS and PERKS: http://patreon.com/sharkbitebiz Subscribe to the audio podcast on: http://www.SharkBiteBiz.com Find out more about the host, David Strausser: http://www.davidstrausser.com Follow David Strausser on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dstrausser83/ Follow us on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/SharkBiteBiz Follow us on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/SharkBiteBiz Listen on Apple iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/shark-bite-biz/id1522304651 Listen on Google Podcasts: https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuc2hhcmtiaXRlYml6LmNvbS9mZWVkLnhtbA Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1CZh0QdNr5Nn8CD8kInMAJ Listen on Vurbl: https://vurbl.com/station/shark-bite-biz/  Listen on Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/shark-bite-biz Listen on iHeartRADIO: https://www.iheart.com/podcast/269-shark-bite-biz-68819872/ Intro music courtesy of Stationary Giant: https://instagram.com/stationarygiant?igshid=1mf4umgejvpgi Connect with David Strausser on LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/DavidStrausser Produced by: Francisco Strausser: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC82qlvfm4mXg3C3AzqPHthw Visit David Strausser @ Vision33: http://vision33.com 

Owning a restaurant does not only mean you need to deliver high-quality food with passion, it also requires you to do great marketing. And, nowadays, that means you need to have some marketing technology in place as well! In this episode, Elias has a chat with David "Rev" Ciancio, who owns a restaurant himself in New York City and is a consultant to a lot of restaurants. He gives a lot of hands-on advice and tips for restaurant owners today. Topics we discuss: The best martech stack for restaurant owners (7 technologies) The customer journey of restaurant guests Marketing channels for restaurants LinkedIn Rev Ciancio: https://www.linkedin.com/in/revciancio/  Website Branded Strategic Hospitality: https://brandedstrategic.com/    The Marketing Technology Podcast is brought to you by Marketing Guys, the #1 Martech agency in Europe. If you want to be on this podcast or would like to know more about Marketing Technology, visit our website at marketingguys.com or contact Elias Crum at e.crum@marketingguys.nl

Quick highlights on Rev!Rev is a former New York City bar owner and knows exactly how hard it is to operate and brand a hospitality business.Hey is a Hospitality Marketing Consultant and Demand Gen and Tech EvangelistRev has more than 20 years experience in B2B digital marketing and business development, specializing in hospitality marketing, content, local SEO, reputation management, and influencer marketing.He helps technology companies, brands, and restaurants to acquire and retain customers.Rev is also known as an “expert burger taster,” pens hospitality and marketing tips on his Instagram @revciancio, as well as his LinkedIn Profile. He believes that Pizza is a religion.

Jaime Oikle from RunningRestaurants.com interviews David "Rev" Ciancio of Branded Strategic Hospitality for the "Cracking the Restaurant Labor Crunch" program. Rev dishes out tips on what are the best things to do with your restaurant's marketing during the labor crunch. Do these things and I promise it will have an impact. 20+ more episodes at https://restaurantlaborcrunch.com/

December 6, 2021 - Lions Fuel Darren Lopez and Restaurant Marketing Rev Ciancio

Marketing Technology with Rev Ciancio https://restauranttopia.com/episode-87-marketing-technology-with-rev-ciancio/  https://restauranttopia.com/text/   Join other independent restaurant owners and professionals on our VIP Text Club and get access to exclusive content, industry news, deals, insights, announcements, pro-tips, and more! join our mailing list and get our newsletter: https://lp.constantcontactpages.com/su/dojKlZ5    Enter your email and get the very latest from Restauranttopia - marketing tips and insights, announcements, pro tips, and more! And don't worry, we hate spam too! Check out the show notes at https://restauranttopia.com/category/podcast-episodes/   Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Restauranttopia/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/restauranttopia   Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/restauranttopia/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9aRVuDUYsV370Rfh-QxDag Brian Seitz https://www.linkedin.com/in/brian-j-seitz-j-d-19863616/ David Ross https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-ross-b6b39175/ Anthony Hamilton https://www.linkedin.com/in/anthony-hamilton-5805013a/ 

https://restauranttopia.com/episode-85-marketing-for-customer-retention-with-rev-ciancio/    

Episode 83 Marketing for Customer Acquisition with Rev Ciancio Read more from our show notes: Show Notes:  https://restauranttopia.com/episode-83-marketing-for-customer-acquisition-with-rev-ciancio/  https://restauranttopia.com/text/    Join other independent restaurant owners and professionals on our VIP Text Club and get access to exclusive content, industry news, deals, insights, announcements, pro-tips, and more! join our mailing list and get our newsletter: https://lp.constantcontactpages.com/su/dojKlZ5    Enter your email and get the very latest from Restauranttopia - marketing tips and insights, announcements, pro tips, and more! And don't worry, we hate spam too! Check out the show notes at https://restauranttopia.com/category/podcast-episodes/  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Restauranttopia/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/restauranttopia   Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/restauranttopia/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9aRVuDUYsV370Rfh-QxDag Brian Seitz https://www.linkedin.com/in/brian-j-seitz-j-d-19863616/ David Ross https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-ross-b6b39175/ Anthony Hamilton https://www.linkedin.com/in/anthony-hamilton-5805013a/

Matt Plapp is an AVID Marketer, CrossFitter, Author, Speaker, Consultant & Business Coach.  He's owned his marketing firm since 2008 and since then he has helped hundreds of companies market with a purpose, that purpose is ROI!  Since 2016 they've changed their focus to restaurants and today they help restaurants all over the world with their ROI Engine marketing platform.  Matt's two books in the restaurant marketing field are, "Don't 86 Your Restaurant Sales" & "Sell More Slices" and his third book comes out next week, titled "Restaurant Marketing That Works." Today we're here to talk about using marking to build a customer database. Check out Matt's previous workshop 811: Leveraging Your Marketing To Build A Database Of Customers Episode 799: WORKSHOP-5 Ways To Turn Instagram Followers Into Orders with Rory Balkin and Rev Ciancio was mentioned! Episode 820: Business Planning Workshop with Stephani Robson was also mentioned! Show notes… Calls to ACTION!!! Join Restaurant Unstoppable Network and connect with my past guest and a community of superfans. Subscribe to the Restaurant Unstoppable YouTube Channel Join the private Unstoppable Facebook Group Join the email list! (Scroll Down to get the Vendor List!) Favorite success quote or mantra: "The hardest part about writing your own story is knowing that you're worth the ink." Today's sponsor: Restaurant365 is a cloud-based, all-in-one, restaurant-specific accounting and back-office platform that seamlessly integrates with POS systems, payroll providers, food and beverage vendors. It generates accurate real-time reporting and analysis in user-friendly dashboards, facilitating immediate, data-driven decision making. Restaurant365 eliminates manual, error-prone processes and is designed to help restaurant businesses grow with functionality that helps optimize labor costs, reduce food costs and increase revenue. Ecolab: Streamline your clean with Ecolab's new EPA-registered 2-in-1 solution, Sink & Surface Cleaner Sanitizer. It will help reduce risk, simplify your procedures and help ensure compliance. This solution cleans and sanitizes hard non-porous surfaces with a single product, eliminates the rinse step and equips your staff to clean more efficiently. Clean simplified, confidence delivered. BentoBox empowers restaurants to own their presence, profits and relationships. The hospitality platform disrupts third-party services that come between the restaurant and the guest. BentoBox puts the restaurant first and offers tools that drive high-margin revenue directly through the restaurant's website. BentoBox is trusted and loved by over 5,000 restaurants worldwide including Union Square Hospitality Group, Eleven Madison Park, Gramercy Tavern, Lilia and more. Contact info: www.mattplapp.com Email: matt@mattplapp.com Thanks for listening! Thanks so much for joining today! Have some feedback you'd like to share? Leave a note in the comment section below! If you enjoyed this episode, please share it using the social media buttons you see at the top of the post. Also, please leave an honest review for the Restaurant Unstoppable Podcast on iTunes! Ratings and reviews are extremely helpful and greatly appreciated! They do matter in the rankings of the show, and I read each and every one of them. And finally, don't forget to subscribe to the show on iTunes to get automatic updates. Huge thanks to Matt Plapp for joining me for another awesome episode. Until next time!   Restaurant Unstoppable is a free podcast. One of the ways I'm able to make it free is by earning a commission when sharing certain products with you. I've made it a core value to only share tools, resources, and services my guest mentors have recommend, first. If you're finding value in my podcast, please use my links!

David “Rev” Ciancio has prior experience as the Chief Marketing Officer for a SaaS company and has transitioned into a hospitality marketing consultant helping both restaurants and tech companies with demand gen and customer retention.  As a former New York City bar owner himself, Rev knows exactly how hard it is to operate and brand a hospitality business.  With more than 20 years' experience in B2B digital marketing and business development, he works with SaaS founders, CEOs, restaurants, brands, and consumers in the hospitality marketing and technology world. Rev works with his clients to acquire and retain customers through demand generation, funnel acceleration, and content marketing while recommending the best technologies that will improve their results. He specializes in hospitality marketing, content, local SEO, reputation management, and influencer marketing.  As a technology evangelist for the betterment of restaurants and their guests, Rev helps: Restaurant owners, operators and marketers: to master their acquisition and retention marketing so they never have to worry about revenue again. Technology and software companies: increase their demand generation and accelerate their funnel with content marketing. Brands: to gain awareness from consumers and restaurant operators.  Consumers: to find restaurants, food and beverage brands that deliver an incredible experience.  Fun facts: Rev is known as an “expert burger taster,” pens hospitality and marketing tips on his InstagramBrought to you by - https://senditrising.com/

In today's episode we're covering 5 Ways to Turn Instagram Followers into Orders with Rory Balkin and Rev Ciancio Rory is a donut blogger turned restaurant marketing coach and event organizer. She helps busy donut shops and bakery owners create compelling marketing so that they can turn followers into customers. Rory also connects donut lovers with the best artisan donuts across the country. In Texas, she co-hosts the annual Dallas Donut Fest, transforming the 2020 festival into a drive-thru version with a Halloween theme. Rev is a former New York City bar owner and knows exactly how hard it is to operate and brand a hospitality business. He is now a hospitality marketing consultant, customer, and technology evangelist with more than 20 years of experience in B2B digital marketing and business development, specializing in hospitality marketing, content, local SEO, reputation management and influencer marketing. He helps technology companies, brands, and restaurants to acquire and retain customers. Check out episode 793 with Rory Balkin as mentioned in today's episode! Show notes Calls to ACTION!!! Get the E-book The Expert's Guide to Converting Followers Into Orders Join Restaurant Unstoppable Network and connect with my past guest and a community of superfans. Subscribe to the Restaurant Unstoppable YouTube Channel Join the private Unstoppable Facebook Group Join the email list! (Scroll Down to get the Vendor List!) Favorite success quote or mantra: "Be awesome at 2 things and outsource everything else." 5 Ways to Turn Instagram Followers Into Orders- Get the E-Book Optimize Your Profile Use Order Now Buttons/stickers Make Instagram Shoppable Create a Guide of Products Use Strong Calls To Action Today's sponsor: 7shifts is a modern labor management platform, designed by restaurateurs, for restaurateurs. Effectively labor management is more important than ever to ensure profitability and restaurant success. Trusted by over 400,000 restaurant professionals, 7shifts gives you the tools you need to streamline labor operations, communicate with your team, and retain your talent. Best of all 7shifts integrates with the POS and Payroll systems you already use and trust (like Toast!) turning labor into a competitive advantage for your business. Restaurant Unstoppable members get 3 months, absolutely free. Meez One platform to organize, cost, scale, and share your recipes. With a built in database of thousands of ingredient yields and unit conversions for laser accurate costs.  Train your teams with step by step video and image slideshows that live right alongside the recipe.  Build ops guides and SOPs, create and upload content in seconds.  Never let anyone make the wrong outdated recipe again, all the while keeping your IP safe and secure. At Popmenu, we know that in today’s world, a great hospitality experience usually begins online. Keeping the conversation with guests going beyond the meal also requires simple, powerful, fun technology capable of expression through all kinds of channels. Our team takes pride in helping restaurants put their best foot forward digitally so they can focus on what they do best. We think PDF menus are super boring, we believe 3rd party platforms have had too much say in how consumers find their next dining experience and we deeply feel that sharing your beautiful menu doesn’t have to be so difficult, time-consuming and expensive. As a listener of the Restaurant Unstoppable, you'll receive $100 off your first month of Popmenu! Contact info: Rory Bulkin @donutdigest Donutdigest.com Rev Ciancio @revciancio @funwithfries Thanks for listening! Thanks so much for joining today! Have some feedback you’d like to share? Leave a note in the comment section below! If you enjoyed this episode, please share it using the social media buttons you see at the top of the post. Also, please leave an honest review for the Restaurant Unstoppable Podcast on iTunes! Ratings and reviews are extremely helpful and greatly appreciated! They do matter in the rankings of the show, and I read each and every one of them. And finally, don’t forget to subscribe to the show on iTunes to get automatic updates. Huge thanks to Rory & Rev for joining me for another awesome episode. Until next time!   Restaurant Unstoppable is a free podcast. One of the ways I'm able to make it free is by earning a commission when sharing certain products with you. I've made it a core value to only share tools, resources, and services my guest mentors have recommend, first. If you're finding value in my podcast, please use my links!

Like many people in the year of 2020, Rev Ciancio had some life changing moments when he found himself without a job. While serving in a senior management position in the company he was at, he was unfortunately let go and knew he had to do something with the skills and knowledge he had acquired over the years. He began taking action as a consultant, even created a webinar and was working through things, when he was introduced to Russell Brunson’s “perfect webinar” on YouTube. After making adjustments to his webinar, he knew just how far he could go so he continued working hard and was introduced to the One Funnel Away Challenge! Find out today what type of platform the One Funnel Away Challenge built for Rev and his business and what he intends to continue working on moving forward! We’ll hear some amazing stories from him, and I know you’ll resonate with him as well!You don’t want to miss out on what he learned through One Funnel Away and how it changed the trajectory for his business! This is a SUPER inspiring story today! Make sure to follow Rev over on his social platforms. @revciancio  And make sure to check out his funnel:https://www.restaurantsgrow.com/bootcamp

In an episode aimed at helping chefs who suddenly find themselves managing their restaurant’s Facebook and Instagram accounts following the pandemic, social media giants Rev Ciancio and Ben Hon stop by the studio to chat with Bryan and the brand’s social media guru Paige Clayton to talk tips and tricks on what to post and how to get the best images to engage your audience.

David “Rev” Ciancio, cofounder of Yeah! Management (also  Lucky Diem, Branded Strategic Hospitality, and Driscoll foods) is a legend and a rockstar! He and I talk marketing, the restaurant industry, and how we use LinkedIn to position ourselves as thought leaders in the F&B space.LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/revcianciohttps://brandedstrategic.com

The first time marketing maven David "Rev" Ciancio married a couple was on stage at a GWAR concert, the iconic heavy metal band known for their outrageously obscene stage show. "As part of the finale, I pronounced them "Scum and Maggot," they then took the bride and the groom and fed them to the meat grinder underneath the drummer and then fed me to it," recounted Rev Ciancio, a branding and marketing expert (who was ordained online by the Universal Life Church), about his fascinating career path on the Digital Hospitality podcast. "So my mom was real proud that day." When Rev was ordained by the viral online church in the 1990s, people didn't realize the Rev that was now at the start of his name on legal docs and checks wasn't his real name. So they naturally started calling him by that moniker. "People just started calling me Rev and I went with it. I was like, OK, well, you know, my mother doesn't call me that. My wife doesn't call me that, but everybody else does." See? We told you Rev was a branding expert. Digital Hospitality Podcast Featuring Rev Ciancio: Before founding Yeah! Management in 2009, which consults with hospitality businesses about how to market with best practices, Rev Ciancio previously he had a career in the music business. He then successfully shifted into hospitality, food and beverage marketing. Along his inspiring path Rev has evolved himself and his career to adapt to the changes around him. Now he wants to help others on their own path. "I like to tell people I failed at owning a restaurant, but I got really good at marketing one," said Rev Ciancio on our Digital Hospitality podcast about co-founding and being chief of marketing for the Idle Hands Bar in New York City from 2010-2016. "And so I dedicated the rest of my career to helping other restaurants be as good as I was at marketing a restaurant." *** Some of his many areas of expertise include: Hospitality Marketing Digital Marketing Influencer Marketing Localized SEO Methods Marketing Technology Brand Engagement Social Media Marketing   Web 1.0 to Web 2.0: Rev has worked online since the early days of the Internet and has personally experienced the major shifts from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0 and beyond. He is on an important mission to help restaurant businesses and others learn the necessary digital skills to be a thriving online business. "I like to joke that for years, customers have been on their iPhones and now restaurants are ready to be on them, too," Rev said. Many years ago Rev had an 'Oh Shit! Moment' epiphany about his former Blackberry device: "I realized that I could literally create and write a whole blog from a mobile device." From then on he became more and more adept at publishing content online using the tools available to us all. "What am I going to put on Twitter and a blog?," Rev thought years ago before finding a huge (and hungry) audience online. "And I was like, 'oh, I'll start writing about hamburgers.'"   David "Rev" Ciancio David "Rev" Ciancio is a Senior Marketing, Branding and Digital Strategist. He has 20 years of experience in digital marketing and business development, with specialities in hospitality marketing, content and local SEO.  Rev has led many clients to new levels of success on local, national and international levels in the hospitality, financial service and entertainment industries. He is also former agency owner and a former bar owner in New York City.  Rev Ciancio is also an “expert burger taster” and shares tips for hospitality and marketing on his Instagram @revciancio as well as his LinkedIn Profile.  He is author of 6 Recipes for Restaurant Marketing Success, an ebook detailing best practices for restaurant marketing online.  website@yeahmanagement.com LinkedIn Profile Rev on Instagram Rev on Twitter Rev on Facebook @funwithfries on Instagram  

What role should marketing play the sales cycle? “Every role,” says David "Rev" Ciancio, Head of Revenue Marketing at Branded Strategic Marketing. Rev and host Chris Smith take a new approach this week and look at sales leadership from a marketing perspective, exploring how marketing and sales can work together to acquire and retain customers.  Rev realized sales wasn't his calling early in his career. He wasn't a bad salesman, but much preferred coaching other members of his team and looking at the big picture. He used his experience in sales to jump into marketing strategy, and has been working to integrate the marketing and sales departments in every company he's worked for since.  Rev offers actionable steps to build a strong relationship between marketing and sales teams, with a focus on every step in the process from lead generation to customer retention. From co-writing sales sequences to encouraging sales teams to guide marketing content, Rev has solutions that you can implement tomorrow to get great results.  Quotes: “I'm a believer in understanding the customer journey and aligning all of your efforts towards that” (11:06-11:18) “Any department that touches revenue... should have a dotted or even a direct line to marketing” (18:27-18:35) Links:  https://www.brandedstrategic.com/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/branded-strategic/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/revciancio/   Empellor CRM Website chris.smith@empellorcrm.com Empellor CRM LinkedIn   Podcast production and show notes provided by FIRESIDE Marketing

Rev Ciancio, a digital hospitality and customer marketing expert, covers the crucial components of the customer journey/sales funnel and how to drive more frequency, revenue, and retention. Passionate about “awareness, acquisition & retention marketing” -- Rev and Jen explore the increasingly important concepts of Revenue Marketing, the Sales Funnel & Customer Journey, Search Optimization, Digital Table Touches & Guest Feedback.Key Takeaways: Reverse Engineer the Funnel: Top of the Funnel (TOFU) awareness marketing does not drive revenue, according to Rev. Restaurant marketers need to start at the Bottom of the Funnel (BOFU) to understand what’s converting customers. SEO & Search Optimization - brands need to own Search with unbranded keywords relevant to their menu and products. (2 out of 3 searches are unbranded).Single Menu Management drives improved efficiencies for managing SEO and Search. Digital Table Touches - are key to retaining customers and getting feedback. Operators are overlooking this valuable step in the customer journey (esp w/delivery orders) and losing revenue if not asking for feedback from each and every guest. Redefine Loyalty by “Frequency” and “surprise and delight” - not points.Improve New Customer Retention - with 7-touch email onboarding flows.Resources: Company: Branded Strategic HospitalityWhere to Find Rev: LinkedIn

My guest on this episode of the podcast is hospitality branding expert, David "Rev" Ciancio. Together we chatted about burgers & fries, Rev's background in music management, and his current business that services the Restaurant and Hospitality industry.Rev is a brand marketing executive, customer, and technology evangelist with more than 20 years of experience in B2B digital marketing and business development, specializing in hospitality marketing, content, local SEO, reputation management, and influencer marketing. He helps technology companies, brands, and restaurants to acquire and retain customers. He's also an "expert burger taster" and a former New York City bar owner.Connect with Chris!Website - https://rockitgrowthagency.com/Merch Store - Rock It Growth Agency Merch - ALL PROFITS DONATED TO CHARITYYouTube - Rock It Growth Agency ChannelInstagram: @chrisvaglio and @rockitgrowthagencyLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrisvaglio/  Connect with REVInstagram: @revciancio @funwithfriesTwitter - @RevCiancio LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/revciancioWebsite: https://linkin.bio/revciancio Email - therev@yeahmanagement.com

For a long time there has been a conversation about the high rates that third party ordering apps charge restaurants. With the added financial stresses caused by COVID-19 and rapidly dwindling revenue for operators, this issue has been brought to the forefront. In this episode David “Rev” Ciancio of Branded Strategic Hospitality shares strategies to make third party, first party, or last mile delivery solutions work for your restaurant. He discusses what to consider if you're building a digital ordering suite for in-house delivery in addition to sharing other options to save money on delivery while still creating a branded experience for the consumer. Find Rev's free webinars on Youtube, like this one and this one about delivery. And Rev's bootcamp will pick up again in the fall. To get in touch with Rev and keep up with upcoming events and additional resources, visit his website here or find him on Instagram and Facebook.Have a question you want answered? Email us at question@heritageradionetwork.orgThis project is funded in part by a Humanities New York CARES Grant with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the federal CARES Act. This program is also supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council.The Big Food Question is powered by Simplecast.

Ovation CEO, Zack Oates, and Rev Ciancio, Founder of Yeah! Management, an independent marketing consultant agency, discuss how COVID-19 will ultimately change the restaurant business as we know it today. Listen to learn how you can come back from the pandemic ahead of the competition

Episode 2 is all about burgers in NY and NJ with burger lover and NYC content creator, Rev Ciancio. Download & Learn More: Download To Eat List: https://apple.co/39aFTrT Learn more: https://www.toeatlist.co/ Follow Rev: https://www.instagram.com/revciancio/ Follow Us: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/toeatlistapp/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/toeatlistapp/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/toeatlistapp/ --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/toeatlist/support

The Inbound Success Podcast launched on August 28, 2017 and today marks the 100th episode, and 100 straight weeks of publishing interviews with high performing marketers. On this week's Inbound Success Podcast, I'm taking a break from interviewing guests to share with you 13 trends that I've observed from the 99 interviews I did throughout the last two years. Listen to the podcast to learn more about the 13 things that the world's top-performing inbound marketers are doing, and get links to the specific episodes where you can dive deeper into each topic. Transcript Welcome back to the Inbound Success podcast. My name's Kathleen Booth. I'm your host, and this is the 100th episode of the podcast. I thought this was a great opportunity for me to take a break from the usual routine of interviewing some of the incredible marketers that I get to speak to every week and look back on the last 99 episodes and try and digest some lessons learned. I've had the incredible good fortune of speaking to some really amazing marketers in the last two years as I've done this podcast. It's given me an opportunity to meet people I otherwise never would have met, to learn some things that have really kind of made a difference for me in the way I think about marketing, and have prompted me to take a second look and reevaluate the way I've been doing some things. So, thought it was a great opportunity to share some of those lessons learned with all of you. How The Inbound Success Podcast Got Started But first, I wanted to just take a moment and tell a story about why I started the podcast. It was about two and a half years ago that I had my own marketing agency, Quintain Marketing. I had had the agency for 11 years. I'd gone to a lot of marketing conferences and listened to tons of podcasts, and watched webinars, always looking to make myself a better marketer. I had a lot of clients that I wanted to help. I also wanted to market my own agency and do better every day. I always would listen to these folks talk about the marketing work they were doing and the incredible results they were getting, and so infrequently felt that there was anything really tangible that I could take away from it and immediately use to improve my own marketing. This podcast was really an attempt to solve for that. It was me trying to scratch my own itch, and in doing so hopefully helping some of you. The interesting thing about this has been that it has certainly done that for me, and it has also done so much more. I already mentioned that it's enabled me to meet so many people I otherwise would never have met. There are a lot of people in the marketing world that I really admire and respect. And having the excuse of saying, "Hey, would you like to come on a podcast?" is a great way to meet someone new and to meet and to form that relationship, so that's been great. I've also met some really incredible people that I didn't know about through my guests when I ask them who else is doing a really great job with inbound marketing. And those relationships have been amazing. One of the most amazing and incredible things about this is that it changed the entire course of my career. One of first people I interviewed when I started the podcast was Bob Ruffolo, who is the founder and CEO of IMPACT. Now, I work at IMPACT. The reason is that before we started to hit the record button for the podcast interview, we were just talking about how things were going. I was telling him that I thought I might be ready to make a change, and that led to me selling part of my company to IMPACT and joining the team. That's been a really major shift in my life and a great one. I've learned so much. I get to work with some really smart people every day and do very, very interesting work. All this has come out of this little podcast. And most importantly, I've learned a lot about marketing. As I said, that was my original goal. 13 Lessons From Interviewing 99 High Performing Marketers So without further ado, I looked back through the 99 episodes I've done before today and really saw 13 themes emerge. That's what I'm going to share with you today. 1. There Is No "Secret Sauce" The first one ... And some of these, by the way, are going to seem like no-brainers, but they're important because it's important to remind ourselves of the things that we kind of already know. First one is, in most cases there really is no secret sauce to being an amazing marketer. The folks that I interviewed who were the most successful have a few things in common. Number one, they are voracious learners. They're always trying to improve their knowledge. They're always hungry for more. And they're consistent. That's huge, the consistency. A great example of that is Goldie Chan. I interviewed her. She's often referred to as the green-haired Oprah of LinkedIn. She has the longest running daily channel on LinkedIn. She's posted a new LinkedIn video every day for I think it's about two years. It's incredible. It doesn't matter where she is, what's happening, whether she's feeling well, whether she's traveling, what her access to Wifi is, she finds a way to do it because consistency is so important for her. And it's really paid off. They also do a few things and do them really well. A great example of that is Rev Ciancio who I talked with about Instagram marketing. Rev has an incredible Instagram presence. Which by the way, do not look at it when you're hungry because his pictures are all of mouthwatering hamburgers, french fries, pizzas, chicken wings, nachos, essentially everything that's bad for you, but that tastes so good. But, Rev has a fascinating strategy for how he approaches Instagram and has built an entire business around it. He does one thing, and he does it really well. Alex Nerney talked about Pinterest similarly, just a platform a lot of inbound marketers overlook, but he's really figured out a way to make it sing for him. The hungry learners who are consistent and who pick a few things and do them really well, that's really the secret sauce, which essentially isn't so secret. That's number one. 2. Listen To Your Customers And Prospects And Use What You Learn in Your Marketing Number two is they really listen to customers and prospects and use that in their marketing. Again, sounds like a no-brainer. We always talk about the need to do persona research and to build buyer personas, but I think what happens is we get very often so caught up in building the actual persona that we forget the big picture, that it's not about having this fictional profile of a person. It's really about understanding the way our audience thinks, what their real pain points and needs are, and the language they use to talk about that. A couple of the interviews I did were great examples of this. Barron Caster at rev.com who uses their own transcription product to transcribe all of the conversations they have with customers and then pull actual words that customers have used out and feed that into the copy on their website and landing pages, and that's gotten them amazing results. Val Geisler and Joel Klettke, two of the most accomplished conversion copywriters out there, both also talked about this type of research and understanding deeply, deeply the needs of customers and prospects. Paul Blamire at Atomic Reach, who is head of customer success and makes it a point to speak to new customers shortly after they've onboarded and really understand what brought them to the company and how the product is solving their needs. And he feeds that back in not only to marketing but to product development, to every aspect of the business to deliver a better customer experience from first touch in the marketing process all the way through the experience of using the company's product. 3. You Don't Need Fancy Tools Or A Big Budget Number three, you don't necessarily need fancy tools or a big budget to get incredible results. There are some really great examples of this. Oli Billson who I recently interviewed about the small events he's doing that are delivering tremendous amounts of revenue to his business. Chris Handy who talked about marketing for a Pre-K school, really small campaigns, but they just really ... They understood their audience, and they used the available tools that they had and got terrific results for the school. Adam Sand, who's using direct mail in conjunction with inbound marketing, super old school, but very effective for him. And Harry Campbell, who's The Rideshare Guy, and he's probably the top content creator in the ridesharing space. So think Uber, Lyft, Lime, Bird. He just started blogging and has created some great content and a big following. You really don't need fancy tools or a big budget. You can do it on your own with what you've got, if I go back to the first thing, if you're consistent, if you pick a few things and do them really well, and if you're a hungry learner who is willing to roll your sleeves up and apply what you're learning. 4. Connect With Your Audience On An Emotional Level Number four, the best marketers connect with their audiences on an emotional level, another thing that might seem obvious but that I think a lot of marketers get wrong. We tend to put our marketing hats on and make our marketing all about ourselves or we fall back into that comfortable place of corporate jargon, and kind of robotic speech, and use words like leverage and synergy. Nobody talks like that in real life, or not at least the people that you want to hang out with. The people who talked about this were Kieran Flanigan of HubSpot who shared their hearts and minds strategy for creating content with two types of content, content that solves a person's problems and tells them how to do something, that's really that mind's content, and then the heart's content, which taps into a pain and emotional need that the audience has. Then, Katie Stavely from Mautic. This is ironic that these are the two examples I'm giving for this one because HubSpot and Mautic could be considered two different sides of the same coin, HubSpot being a paid marketing automation, CRM, customer service platform, and Mautic being a completely free open source alternative to it. Katie talked about how important it was to be authentic in your marketing, especially with their audience, which it's all about community. It's opensource software, so your community is helping you develop your product. But regardless, the idea is to really make that emotional connection. 5. Sometimes The Biggest Wins Come From Content That Is Not Related To Your Products Or Services Number five, with content marketing, sometimes the biggest wins happen when you don't create content about your products or services. We as marketers, as inbound marketers, think a lot about top-, middle-, and bottom-of-the funnel strategies. We're always brainstorming what are the questions that our audience is asking as relates to our product or service. That often leads us to create content that is very much about us and not so much about our audience. But, I had two interviews that I thought really highlighted how successful you can be if you flip that script and talk nothing about yourself. What I mean by that is ... I'll start with Stephanie Baiocchi, who was actually Stephanie Casstevens at the time I interviewed her. She hadn't been married yet. And funny enough, she was not working at IMPACT. That's another great outcome of the podcast. Now she is. But, she talked about a campaign that she was running for a client that sold solutions for medical waste from physicians' practices. Originally, they were creating a ton of content around medical waste, and it just wasn't working. The reason is that their audience, which is really the office managers for physicians' practices, already has a medical waste solution. You can't be in business if you don't, so they weren't out there searching for any information about medical waste. They didn't even realize they needed to switch providers or that they had a problem. It was when she kind of took a step back and thought, "What are the biggest problems that office managers have? It doesn't need to have anything to do with medical waste," and she realized it was patient no-shows. They created a patient no-show policy template that office managers could use. That was a total home run. What it did was it opened up the conversation with their audience so that eventually they could begin talking about medical waste. But at that top-of-the-funnel level, they needed first to really open that conversation, and product- and service-related content wasn't going to cut it. Another person who did that really well was Ryan Bonnici, who is now the CMO of G2 Crowd, but at the time was working at HubSpot. HubSpot's a company that has a huge audience. Of course, trying to broaden the top of the funnel at a company like HubSpot is challenging. All the low-hanging fruit is gone, and so you really have to get creative. He was trying to target a small business audience. He really asked himself, "What are the problems that small businesses have?" And, again, doesn't have to have anything to do with HubSpot. He realized when you're starting your business or when you come to work at a small business, one of the first things you have to do is come up with an email signature. You're usually either copying one that somebody else in the company has created or you have to create it from scratch, and it's kind of a pain. He built an email signature generator, an online tool where you could type in some information about yourself and it would spit out a really nice-looking email signature. That tool generated a ton of traffic, leads, and revenues for HubSpot, and it cost them only $6,000 to build it, but the impact was enormous. So, great lesson learned about getting out of the habit of creating only product- and service-related content and thinking bigger. 6. Paid Ads Are An Essential Part Of Any Inbound Marketing Strategy Number six, the old myth that paid ads are not inboundy is dead, or it should be dead. This one was woven throughout almost every interview I did. It's funny because when I first started working with inbound marketing, it was back with my old agency. I had discovered HubSpot. We were following their original methodology of attract, convert, close, delights, for those of you who've been in the HubSpot world for a long time and all. I remember many times going to INBOUND and seeing Brian Halligan stand on stage and talk about how the old way, the old interruptive way of marketing was paid ads, and people didn't like being interrupted. I think we all read that as, well, paid ads are not acceptable if you're an inbound marketer. That myth started dying, I think, several years ago, but it's worth repeating that paid ads are, I would say, not even just inboundy, they're essential to an inbound strategy in this day and age. I'll just list off a bunch of names of my guests who've talked about it. This isn't even a complete list, but Mark Rogers, who at the time was with Carney and grew The Daily Carnage newsletter using Facebook ads; Sterling Snow from Divvy who's used ads to drive leads for their platform; Moby Siddique who has his own inbound agency and does some incredible Facebook ads work with Messenger bots; AJ Wilcox, who is a LinkedIn ads expert; Ali Parmelee, who's one of my coworkers here at IMPACT who does incredible things with Facebook ads; Anthony Sarandrea; Rick Kranz. The list goes on and on. All of them attribute the success that they're getting and the incredible results to some form of paid ads. Let that be the final nail in the coffin of that old myth. Let's really embrace ads, and not just checking the box with ads and promoting our posts, but really taking a full funnel approach to advertising. Because that's the other thing that these folks talked about is it's not about boosting something on Facebook. This is about really digging in and getting good at ads and thinking how ads can be used at every stage of the funnel. 7. Content Distribution Is Critical Number seven, it's not enough to create and publish your content on your website. You've got to promote it and distribute it. This is one that I've heard time and time again. A lot of the best marketers I've spoken to say you should spend twice as much time promoting and distributing your content as you do creating it. I think for a lot of us that equation is backwards. One person who talked about that was Kipp Bodnar who is the CMO of HubSpot, probably one of the companies that is the best at inbound marketing. He talked about what a game changer it was in the last year when HubSpot really threw some muscle behind content distribution and how that impacted their traffic. This is a company that already had amazing traffic, by the way. Then, Phil Singleton. I loved my interview with Phil who is an SEO expert and an author. Phil talked about this great strategy he uses for clients where he's creating e-books, just like lots of inbound marketing agencies do. But then he takes the e-books that he makes for clients, or he takes a collection of blogs, for example, and compiles them into any book, and he publishes them as Kindle e-books on amazon.com, and also in some cases as hard copy books through Amazon direct publishing. It is so simple, and straightforward, and inexpensive. It blows my mind that more marketers are not doing this. It was a cool episode, so definitely check that out. But yeah, the lesson is don't just like write those blogs, create those e-books. Think about what are you going to do with them once they're published. How are you going to get them out in front of the world? 8. Original Research Can Drive Tremendous Results Number eight, original research can have amazing results. I had several interviews where people touched on what has come of original research. One of the people I think that that is most famous in the marketing world for doing this is Andy Crestodina. He has been doing a blogging survey for several years and really credits that with bringing a lot of attention to his agency, Orbit Media, out of Chicago, giving him a ton of backlinks and press. It's a pretty simple survey. He does put quite a bit of effort into promoting the survey itself so he can get a lot of responses, and then once he gets those responses into packaging that content so that he can turn it into things like infographics and articles, et cetera. But, it's not just Andy. Michele Aymold from Parker Dewey uses original research and data to boost her marketing results. Clare Carr from Parse.ly, they actually don't even have to do that much research because simply by the nature of the product that they sell they have access to a lot of proprietary data. She's really productized that and used it to get a tremendous amount of press. In fact, she was able to dramatically cut back the amount of content she was creating while getting better results because the data itself was so attractive to their audience, and it also helped her reduce their PR spend. Then, Rebecca Corliss at Owl Labs. They produced the state of remote work, and that's gotten them quite a bit of traction. 9. Community Is A Powerful Tool To Fuel Growth Number nine, community is such a powerful tool for marketing. This is an interesting one because here at IMPACT we've been working really hard over the course of the last two years to build our own community called IMPACT Elite, which is on Facebook. We've learned a lot about community in the course of doing that. I would say it has been a game changer for our business, certainly. We now have over 5,000 people in that community. It's a delicate balance how you run it. You can't make it all about yourself. It has to truly be about helping the members of the community and getting them to the point where they're almost running it, if you will. I spoke to several other people who have built communities and had similar experiences in terms of the community being a fundamental tool in the growth of their business. One was Bill Faeth who is a marketer who specializes in the limousine and transport business. He has Limo University, and he has a big community around that of limousine companies. Frank Gruber, who started Tech Cocktail in the beginning and turn it into Tech.co, which was then acquired, he now has a company called Established. But, he began this grassroots community all over the country of startups and people interested in the startup ecosystem and wound up building a tremendous media business from that. Nikki Nixon who at the time I interviewed her was running the FlipMyFunnel community for Terminus. Ameer Rosic who has a community focused on blockchain called Blockgeeks. And Mark Graham, who is an old friend of mine doing amazing things, he's up in Canada and has a software platform called Commonsku and has built a great community around that. All of these folks doing incredible things with communities in very different niches, I should say. For Bill, it was limo companies. For Frank, it was startups. For Nikki, it's people who are ABM practitioners. For Ameer, it's folks in the blockchain community. And for Mark Graham, it's people in the promotional products world. All of these different niches need communities and people are hungry to connect with others who have similar interests as they do. 10. The Quality Of Your Content REALLY Matters Content quality. I had a couple of great interviews on this. This is one that I'd love to talk with more people who are focused on this. In this day and age, you can't just be creating content and checking the box. You have to really create great content that is better than anything else out there if you really want to get amazing results. One person who talked a lot about this was Oli Gardner and how he is putting a lot of effort into really making the content that they create be the best that's available on the Internet. Emily Maxie from Very talked about this, too, really digging deep and creating unbelievable resources for your audience. Both of these folks are getting great results in terms of traffic, and that traffic ultimately turning into leads, because they took the time to create in-depth pieces that really added value for their audience. Seems like it should be obvious, it's another one of these, but it's really not too a lot of us. I mean, you might think your content's really good, but is it the best? When you Google that topic that you created content about, is your piece the best thing that you can find in the search results? If not, go back and spend the time and make it better. I think one of the lessons I've learned is it's better to make less content that's better content than it is to create a high volume. 11. Creating A Podcast - Or Being A Guest On One - Is A Good Way To Build Your Brand Another theme that came out was podcasting. It's sort of ironic because we're on a podcast talking about podcasting. But a lot of my interviews, as I went back and reviewed, had to do with podcasting, beginning with George B Thomas, who I've had the privilege to work with over the years here at IMPACT. He's now at Impulse Creative. George is a prolific podcaster, and he's ... It might seem easy when you listen to him. It just seems like, "Oh, there's a guy that just has a great rapport with his audience," but he puts a ton of thought into how he does these podcasts, how he structured them so that they not only deliver value for the audience, but that they have naturally built-in incentives for people to share them and to grow his audience. That's really worth listening to if you're somebody who wants to start a podcast. Andrew Dymski is another person who's been podcasting for a long time and who I've been a guest on his podcast. He's been a guest on mine. He's got some great insights. Ryan Hawke, who has The Learning Leader podcast, Ryan blew my mind just with how prepared he comes to everything. He talked about this, too, how before he does an interview the amount of preparation he does, the amount of preparation he does when he even just invites somebody to come on his podcast. This guy is serious business, and that's why he's so successful. He really has put the thought into it and turned his podcast into a business. Dan Moyle came on the show and talked about podcast guest interviews. So not necessarily starting a podcast, but if you want to get the word out, going on other podcasts as a guest. At the time, he was with a company called Interview Valet. What's been really cool for me is seeing the other side of that. I get pitched a lot by companies like Interview Valet, and there are certainly other ones as well. They'll send me an email and say, "Listened to your show. Thought it was great. Here's a guest that I think would be really good for you." That's how I've gotten a lot of my more interesting guests. There's something to that podcast guesting strategy that really I think can help you get traction and raise your profile if you're trying to build a personal brand or trying to get the word out about a product or a service. There are plenty of companies like Interview Valet that, for a fee, will take care of that for you. It's kind of like having a talent agent. I also talked to Jay Acunzo about podcasting. He is actually a consultant to other companies and helps them create, produce, and get the best results out of their podcasts. One of his clients is Drift, which comes up a lot on my show. People love Drift, always cited as one of the best examples of a company doing inbound marketing really well, and they have a couple of podcasts. Then, Jeff Large of Come Alive Creative. Lots of folks talking about podcasting. It really stuck out to me that it's not just about, hey, everybody should have a podcast, and I don't think everyone should. It's not right for everybody. But, podcasting can play a role in almost everybody's marketing strategy for sure. 12. Video, Video, Video Number 12, video. Can't have a list of trends and things that are important in marketing without talking about video these days. Some of the guests that I've had that have spoken about this are some of the more impressive people that have been on this podcast. In 2019, I opted to kick the year off with an interview with Marcus Sheridan, who is an amazing man that is a big role model for me. I currently get to work with him at IMPACT. But, he's somebody that I followed for years and I have so much respect for because he sees things about marketing and about customer behavior that a lot of other people don't, even though they're staring us in the face. One of the things that he has really seen and committed to is that when it comes to marketing and selling, we can't just tell people something. We have to show it to them, too, and we show it to them using video. He talked about how important video was going to be in 2019. I know that he's out speaking at conferences and talking about video all over the world. Also, Eric Siu. I kicked off 2018 with Eric Siu doing predictions for last year. He talked about video as well and was like, "Video's going to be huge in 2018." So in both of my kind of yearly prediction episodes, the guests that I've had have cited video as one of the biggest things we should be paying attention to. And then, of course, I already mentioned her, but Goldie Chan, who is a LinkedIn influencer and creates a new LinkedIn video every single day, has made a career around those videos. She's amazing. She travels all over the world and is sought after as a speaker because of the LinkedIn video she creates. And Dennis Yu who has turned video into a formula for building people's personal brands. It's really impressive what he does. They're these short little videos that he films. Using that medium has helped countless people create brands for themselves. 13. Lead With Brand Which brings me to my 13th and last lesson learned from 99 interviews with incredible marketers, and that is that all of these strategies, and tactics, and approaches are powerful. But at the end of the day, the most important thing in marketing is brand. Brand is paramount. Without it, you can have some quick wins but you'll never have a true success that will last over the long term. I'm only going to cite one example here because it's the one that comes up the most. And if you listen to this podcast with any degree of regularity, you know that at the end I always, always ask my guests, "Company or individual, who do you think is doing inbound marketing really well right now?" There is one company/individual, the company and the marketer who's spearheading it for them, that by far comes up more than anybody else, and that is Drift and Dave Gerhardt, who I was very fortunate to have as a guest early on. I can't tell you the number of times people have mentioned Drift, and it's not just people from the marketing world. It's folks that have come onto this podcast from all different industries, and they all cite Dave Gerhart and his work building a brand at Drift as the one succeeding the most with inbound marketing. It's not for me to say what that brand is or to really try to encapsulate what Dave has done, but I think it's fair to say that they've built a brand that's incredibly authentic. There's no artifice. There's no fancy tricks about it. They, of everybody, really reflect everything I've said about the past, you know, this list of 12 to 13 trends I just spoke about today. When I look back through this list, they are doing a few things and doing them really well. They really listen to their customers. It's not about fancy tools or a big budget. The things that make them successful don't have anything to do with that. It's about connecting on emotional level. It's about creating content that sometimes doesn't have anything to do with your products or services. They do paid ads. And it's not enough to create and publish your content, you've got to promote it. They are so good at that. They've got a tremendous community, really high-quality content, a bunch of podcasts. They use video better than almost anybody else, especially on LinkedIn. Checkout Dave Gerhart's LinkedIn presence. And they just have a really strong brand. So my hat is off to Dave Gerhart and the team at Drift for ... If I had to give out an award for top inbound marketers, I think it would go to them. Thank YOU For Listening But really, everybody that I've interviewed over the course of the last two years has been so impressive. It is just my absolute privilege to get to do this every single week. I also wanted to say thank you to you for listening. Podcasting is a funny exercise. As I record this, it's Sunday morning, and I'm sitting in my home office, which is a tiny little room that actually had to be permitted as a closet because it's so small. There's chaos happening around me in my house. I'm by myself talking into a microphone. I'll go away, and I'll turn this into an episode. It'll go live tomorrow. You'll be hearing this Monday, if you get the episode right when it comes out or sometime after, and you're out there listening. But when I create these things, it's just me in a room. To know that there are people who choose to listen to this every week is just an unbelievable honor and a privilege to me. So, thank you from the bottom of my heart for listening to this content. I hope so much that you've learned something from it and that, even if it's in a small way, it's helped you get better results from your marketing and feel like a smarter marketer. If that has happened, then I feel like I've succeeded. With that, I will say I would love to hear from you. It's been a hundred episodes. If you are a regular listener, please take a moment and contact me. I always say at the end you can tweet me @workmommywork, which is my Twitter handle, but you can also message me on LinkedIn. You can email me at kbooth@impactbnd.com. You can send a carrier pigeon. However you want to do it, I would love it if you would get in touch and let me know what you like about the podcast and what's something that I can improve because I'd love to make the next hundred episodes even better. With that, I won't belabor it. Thank you again for listening, and I'll see you next week. Or not see you, I'll be talking to you next week for episode 101.  

Rev Ciancio is a Senior Marketing, Branding and Digital Strategist with 20 years of experience in digital marketing and business development, specializing in hospitality marketing, content and local SEO. He has led many clients to new levels of local, national and international success in the hospitality, financial service and entertainment sectors. He is also former agency owner as well as a former New York City bar owner. Rev is an “expert burger taster” and pens hospitality and marketing tips on his Instagram @revciancio as well as his LinkedIn Profile. Resources Foodie Tribe: An Influencer Talent Agency That Believes in Honesty Rev Ciancio's Yext Profile Rev Ciancio on Instagram Rev Ciancio on Twitter Rev Ciancio on LinkedIn

What are the best practices for using Instagram to market your business or brand? This week on The Inbound Success Podcast, author and Instagram marketing expert Rev Ciancio pulls back the curtain on how he's built up almost 80,000 followers on Instagram and breaks down exactly what marketers need to know to master Instagram marketing for their own businesses. Rev covers both the high-level strategy that will help you win at Instagram, as well as the nitty-gritty tactical details you'll need to know to look like an Insta pro. Some highlights from my conversation with Rev include: Rev is a food blogger and Instagram influencer focused on the restaurant and hospitality business. He has taken a very intentional approach to what he posts on Instagram and specifically shares things related to his passion for food and how to market restaurant and hospitality businesses on the platform.  Rev says there are really only two reasons that a business should be on Instagram. Either a portion of their target audience is already there, or they have the ability to build an audience where nobody else is. Instagram is a very visual platform, so if you can't express either the values of your company, or the solutions your service or product provides, or you can't speak to your audience through a visual medium, it's the wrong social network to be on. It's a particularly good platform for conveying corporate culture through photos of employees, office environments, team outings, etc. Instagram has both very casual users who just look at photos and videos but don't read captions, and intense users who go deep on a topic. Rev says to design your Instagram presence for the intense user by sharing striking images and videos, and then going deeper in your captions. Because Instagram only shows a limited amount of text from the captions before making you click to read more, when you're crafting the message to your Instagram post, think about what's going to happen in the first six or seven words that's going to make somebody want to tap more to see what else you wrote. Photo quality is critical on Instagram and apps like Snapseed make it very easy for even a layperson to create professional looking photos very quickly. Consistency is also very important, so Rev says to determine how often you will post and then stick with that scheduled to develop a habit amongst your audience. One way to get discovered by new audiences on Instagram is hashtags. The platform allows you to use up to 30 hashtags, and Rev suggests taking a "content mix" approach by combining some more popular and widely used hashtags with some more niche terms to find your audience. There is a debate going on right now about whether it's better to post hashtags in the caption to the post or in a comment. Rev is testing both approaches right now and suggests that others do the same. Instagram doesn't allow you to use hard line breaks when posting captions, and will actually remove hard line breaks when they are put in. Rev suggests using a third party tool such as a notes app to create captions and insert a period in between paragraphs to get around this. Doing so makes caption text easier to read and also lengthens the amount of time your audience interacts with your post, which Instagram's algorithm really likes. To make it easier to format and schedule out Instagram posts, Rev uses Later, a third party software tool. Photos and videos posted to the Instagram feed are a great way to capture a moment in time, whereas Instagram Stories are more effective at digging deeper into a topic and weaving together a narrative. If you're posting a large volume of content to Instagram and one of your goals is to get people to visit your website, or click through on something, then putting a link in your bio can be a great way to accomplish this. Resources from this episode: Save 10% off the price of tickets to IMPACT Live with promo code "SUCCESS" Follow Rev on Instagram Connect with Rev on LinkedIn Follow Rev on Twitter Check out Rev's website Listen to the podcast to hear how Rev approaches Instagram marketing and learn how to apply those lessons to your business Instagram strategy. Transcript Kathleen Booth (Host): Welcome back to the Inbound Success Podcast. I'm Kathleen Booth and I'm your host. And my guest this week is Rev Ciancio, who is a hospitality and digital marketing consultant. Welcome Rev. Rev Ciancio (Guest): Hi, thanks for having me. Rev and Kathleen recording this episode Kathleen: I'm happy to have you here, especially because we're going to talk about something that we haven't talked about yet on this podcast. But before we get to that, you have a really interesting background. What you're involved in now is really interesting and kind of different from some of the other guests I've had on. Tell my audience a little bit more about yourself and your connection to delicious looking food. About Rev Ciancio Rev: So I used to be in the music business, and I owned an independent agency that did marketing promotion on behalf of record labels and publishers. I got this in my head one day that working for a small amount of time on a band, or an album was fun, but I really wanted to get in deep with bands, and I become an artist manager. So I was managing rock bands and touring the world and all that fun stuff. What I sort of learned over time in that business is that the majority of band members who pick up an instrument don't do it to start a business, they do it because they want to play guitar, or they want to sing a song. I found that over time, my ability to teach people in that industry to think about business first, or think about business as much as they do their creative aspects, just wasn't providing the results I'd hoped it was. And I was like, "Well, I bet I can apply these same principles to food and to restaurant marketing." So I made a leap from doing independent marketing and consulting for basically rock bands, to chefs and restaurants. You'd be amazed at how similar those two things are. Kathleen: I feel like the same thing could said about doctors. Don't they always say doctors make the worst business managers? Rev: Probably, but I feel like the art of health is less art and more science. So you'd be surprised the similarities in rock and roll, and in food and hospitality. But I kind of quickly learned that you can't download a hamburger, and that if you have a favorite restaurant you might eat there again as opposed to you're not going to buy an album twice unless you're converting from album to CD, or whatever digital. Anyway, I started to apply the principles I had learned in the music business in marketing, branding and promoting bands to restaurants and food and it worked. So that was it, I was done. I was done with the music business and from that point forward I sort of focused on hospitality marketing in the forms of local search, social media, menu management that kind of stuff. I actually went and even owned a bar for awhile. So, not only have I consulted, not only do I like eating, but I've actually been in the trenches and run a bar and restaurant. The most important lesson I learned in owning a bar and restaurant is that I'm really bad at running a bar and restaurant. But I'm pretty good at the marketing and branding piece. So, I sort of got out of owning and just focused the rest of my career on helping location-based businesses, primarily restaurants, to be successful with digital marketing, and digital marketing tools. Kathleen: You've spent some time also at Yext, correct? Rev: I was there for two years, yep. Kathleen: They're a big player in the local marketing space as well. I've actually had the CMO of Yext on the podcast talking about local search and SEO and optimization. So, it's an interesting background, a mix of things that you have from working at the smaller level with those local businesses to working in a larger SaaS company that's aiming to help those kinds of companies at scale. Then, one of the things I found really interesting about you, and that was kind of a fun side rabbit hole that I went down, was your Instagram. Warning to anyone listening. Do not look at Rev's Instagram if you're hungry. It's kind of like going grocery shopping when you're hungry. It's really dangerous. But you have this really interesting Instagram that's attracted quite a following. Can you talk a little bit about that? Rev on Instagram Rev: Sure. Well, first of all I don't make any apologies for causing hunger pains. So, no apologies happening there. If you happen to go look at my Instagram screen name, which is just my name Rev Ciancio, I post what a lot of people call food porn. So, I used to write a lot of content when I was in college and whatever about the music business, about music. Then I got in the music business and I didn't want to have my passion and my job sort of be the same. So, when I started in the music business I still wanted to write, so I started writing about food. Back in like it must have been in '99, 2000 food blogs weren't really a thing. So my first real food blog was in 2003 and I've just sort of kept creating content since then whether it was a blog or Pinterest, or Snapchat or whatever. Instagram, I've been on since 2006 so quite a while. But, that I think is the first social network that really lended itself towards the visual nature of food in terms of it being appealing and looking. I really think only in maybe the last three or four years has that channel really become what it's become in terms of growth, and influencer marketing as it appeals to food. So, how did I get there? Well, I used to treat my Instagram just like everybody else. Pictures of my daily life, and shaking my fist at an angry bus. Or, here's a really poorly lit picture of a salad. You know, just a snap shot of my life. I made a decision that if I was not only going to lead digital marketing for other businesses, but if I wanted to sort of attract a bigger audience, then I needed to practice what I preach. So I was like, "Well, I'm not going to look at Instagram as being a yearbook, or a photobook of my life. I'm going to use this to prove that I am who I say I am to reach a broader audience." Then actually be able to use it to learn so that I could transfer that knowledge to my clients. So, all those great looking photos you see up there were intentional. I decided what was my reason for being on there, what theme did I want to have, why did I want people to follow me. So there's a lot of thought and a lot of curation into sloppy looking cheeseburgers is what I'm trying to tell you. Kathleen: I mean, the food is insane. I am now deeply regretting the healthy kale salad I chose to have for lunch right before I did this podcast interview. I'm looking at the pizza, the burgers, all of it. It all is everything that I would eat if I had no limitations. Rev: Well, then it's doing its job. It got your attention. Kathleen: Yes. It did. Now, this is exactly why I was interested in talking with you because I really haven't had anybody come on the podcast yet, and I think I'm at about 80 episodes, and talk about Instagram. I talk to a lot of B2B marketers. Certainly B2C as well, but I think particularly in the B2B world, everybody feels like they need to be on Instagram, but nobody can quite figure out what to do with it. I think B2C is doing a little bit better, and I think some Instagram ads are helping. But, I feel like a lot of the people that are listening really don't have a deep knowledge of Instagram. Maybe I'm making an assumption. I don't have a deep knowledge of Instagram. I mean, I use it. We use it for our business. I wouldn't say it's a major driver of traffic to our website, or leads, or even brand awareness for us. So, I really just want to pick your brain for marketers who are listening, who are maybe grappling with "How should I use Instagram for my business?" How would you suggest they get started today, given where Instagram is now? And then we can maybe dive a little bit deeper into very specific tactics of ways to do it right. How To Use Instagram For Business Rev: Cool. Well, I would say this really about any social network but specifically as it relates to Instagram. There's only two reasons why a business needs to be on Instagram. Either a portion of their target audience is already there, or they have the ability to build an audience where nobody else is. If you can't define either of those things I would tell you not to use Instagram or any social tool. Where it gets specific with Instagram is, this is like a "duh" moment of course, but it's a super visual format. So, if you can't express either the values of your company, or your interests, or the solutions your service or product provides, or you can't speak to your audience through a visual nature, it's the wrong social network to be on. So, is it a powerful platform for B2B? Well, yeah, I would say it is. But then it's how are you using it. So, what I think the problem with a lot of businesses when they approach Instagram is they approach it the same way they might approach LinkedIn, or the same way they might approach Facebook or Twitter. They're just copy and pasting the same format, and they're using it to broadcast whatever it is they're broadcasting. Because Instagram is pretty visual I think it makes a great play for it being a great way to brand your business. So it doesn't necessarily have to be promotional based, "Buy our product. Use our service." But it could be about your people, it could be about your brand, it could be about your customers. So, I think Instagram is a great tool for expressing either who you are as a brand, or who are the customers you help. Kathleen: It's interesting that you say that, because I think to date ... Again, we haven't put a lot of resources into our Instagram. But, I feel like the one area to date where it really has produced results for us is with recruiting. Because people do ... We tend to recruit a lot of younger marketers, I say younger but that's younger than me. Which is a lot of people. People who are in that Instagram demographic, and they do tend to look at our feed and see the pictures. We post a lot of more kind of cultural things -- our employees out having fun together, stuff happening in our office. It's been really great for that. We really haven't put a lot of effort into it as far as attracting a customer, a subscriber audience. I think that there's probably a lot more we could be doing to be quite frank. Rev: I think you hit on it. I think a lot of, especially in 2019 the way the work force is going, people choose where they're going to work. Not just on the availability of a job or not, but what is the culture like. I think Instagram is a great tool for expressing the culture of what it's like to be a part of your brand from the inside. So, I would agree that, that's actually a really great use of Instagram because you can take pictures of, or videos of people and moments and show what it's like to be a part of your team. So from that aspect it's actually a really great recruiting tool because it gives a vision into what it's like to be there. Kathleen: So, fair to say that the key differentiator of Instagram, well key differentiators, one is that the platform is really built around pictures and video? Then, I know the other one is that you can't put links in your posts. You can put a link in your bio, but not in your post, correct? Rev: That's correct. One of the things with Instagram is because it's sort of an open format and it's very heavy in the influencer world and there's a lot of brands trying to figure out what to do there, I think you get a lot of casual audience. So, just because somebody liked your picture doesn't mean they read your text. So even if you did attempt to put a link in your text, which doesn't hyperlink, or you were smart and put it in your bio and told people to go there after they read the post, it doesn't mean they're even going to see that text. Rev: So, the problem, or maybe the challenge, with Instagram is that you get a lot of intense users. If you want to go deep as a fan on any subject, cars, education, food, swim wear, vacation you can go super deep by following super deep oriented brands, or channels, or influencers. But you're also going to get the bigger you get a lot more causal of an audience. So it's a lot harder to get them to convert from being causal to intense. But, it's a great place to drive intensity. So, you see that picture and if it really speaks to you, then you might click more, then you might take my call to action. You might go to my story. So, I tell people to design their content for the intense experience, not the broad audience. Kathleen: Okay. So, it sounds like focusing on videos and images that can stand alone without any supporting copy? Rev: Well, from an attraction standpoint. I'll use my account as an example because thats honestly the best one I have, or maybe the one I have the deepest lens into. So, if you go look at my Instagram account without clicking deeper, it just looks like cheeseburgers, french fries, steak and barbecue. But if you start to go read the captions, or you read the stuff I'm putting out there, you check out my stories, a lot of them have not just where should you get that pizza, but how you should manage your reputation online if you're a restaurant. Or, the importance of impression metrics in Instagram. So, the actual text is a bit deeper. I do that by design. The picture of the cheeseburgers is there to get your attention. It's my headline if you will. Then the text drives a deeper intention. So, I've sort of designed it that if you want to casually like burgers, you can, and if you really care about what I have to say or my thoughts, you can go deeper. I think the sort of a great way to look at how Instagram can work for a brand is that the pictures have to be appealing about whatever it is that you're trying to spread. Like we were talking about recruiting. What's it like to work here? Then the text, and the links, and the calls to action can be how to take that next step, how to find out more. How that brand can appeal more to the intended, or target, audience. Kathleen: We talked about the pictures, and it definitely sounds like, if I'm hearing you right, that that's about the first attention grab. We'll call that almost like the top of the funnel. How do you real them in? Then, as you're describing, there's what you put in your caption to the picture. I mean, even as a casual Instagram user I've noticed there are certain little tricks people use, hacks, et cetera in terms of formatting their captions, how they want hashtags to show up. Can you talk a little bit about the different ways that you can use that space to your advantage and to help you get found? Rev: Sure. So, one of the things that you need to keep in mind when you're building the text for your Instagram posts is that they do cut you off. So there's only a certain amount of characters before you have to tap more to see it. It's almost like an article versus going deep into a blog. So when you're crafting the message to your Instagram post, you got to think about what's going to happen in the first six or seven words that's going to make somebody want to tap more to see what else you wrote. So, I know again this is going to sound like a "duh" moment. But you got to think in terms of story telling. The photo gets your attention, that first line needs to make you want to click to read more. So you have to think about, when you're crafting an Instagram post, how intense is the message? If it's not super intense, you can sort of give it away before the fold. Like if it's ... Let's say it's a giveaway. You're going to run a promotion on your Instagram. I would tell you that the first word in your post should be "giveaway" so that I know, "Hey, that's a giveaway. If I want to participate in a giveaway I need to tap more." But, if it's more of a story that reveals a point or needs to drive something, you need to almost treat it like it's a headline to your photo. I hate to use the words "click bait," but really you got to think about what's going to drive that tap for more. If you're going ... Look, I don't tell brands to get on Instagram and think about growing your follower base. It's pointless. You want to grow engagement. So I don't care if you have 100,000 followers, or 10. How many of those followers are hanging onto every word and photo you say? So when you're writing that text, and you're thinking about "How do I get them to click more?", you got to think about what's the best story you can tell? What is the highest value you can have and get them to click more? Anything else, Kathleen, that I'm going to go through today is completely tactical-based like where to put your hashtags, which hashtags to use. If you can't sort of perfect the image, the call to action and how to get click more, none of the other advice I would ever give you has any relevance whatsoever. Kathleen: So, have you seen any examples of brands that are doing this really well that have that deep level of engagement and that passionate following, if you will? Brands That Are Crushing It On Instagram Rev: Most of my examples will be food, that really shouldn't be a surprise. But I really like Taco Bell. I think all their images look great. So they've taken the time to make sure they captured your attention by having a really interesting image. Then if you go look at their photos the first line of text, that pre-header to the more, is always something that makes you sort of want to know more. It makes you want to tap more, it makes you think. You can almost decide in the instant whether you need to know more or not. They're a really good brand to follow. I kind of also really like Food Beast. I don't know if you're familiar with Food Beast, but they're a media channel. So they're kind of an agency and they do some influencer marketing stuff. They have a podcast or whatever, and a blog, blah blah blah. But their whole thing is about really intense food experiences. So, they don't post a picture of burgers at In 'n Out. They post a picture of a stack of 17 patties on a bun. So, it's really intense but then you'll go click it and they'll be something about how you can order that burger. Or why you should tap their bio to go listen to an interview with somebody who figured out how to gain the secret menu system at In 'n Out. But, anyway. The content's super engaging. So the photo will draw you in, the text will make you want to tap more and then there's usually some sort of call to action that makes you want to go deeper. So, those are two examples of brands I really enjoy following. Kathleen: Okay. We'll definitely have to check those out to see how they're crafting their captions. Now, as you mentioned there are tactical elements to this. So, shifting from the strategic, which is how do you tell a great story, how do you craft a great first line to get somebody to want to hit that more button and dive deeper. Then there's the very tactical elements of formatting these things. Again, the hashtags. Can you get into the tactical side of it a little bit? The Nitty Gritty of Mastering Instagram Marketing Rev: Sure. So, let's start high level. The first is photo quality. It's so hard for me to tell people to not edit their photos. There's some really simple, simple easy to use apps you can use on your phone. I happen to like Snapseed, it's available on both iOS and for Androids. I mean, I've got it down where I can edit a photo whether it's a picture of my kid in the backyard, or a stack of french fries I can edit it in under 30 seconds. They've made it super easy to just adjust the white balance, up the structure, add a little saturation. The difference between a crappy photo and a much more engaging photo is much lower. There's a much lower barrier for entry than you think there is. Kathleen: Now, do you have to know much about photography or graphic design to do this? Or is this something that anybody could figure out using Snapseed? Rev: I have been doing some sort of photo content since 2003 and I know nothing. My photoshop skills are about as good as I can cut and past a taco into somebody's hand. I have no photoshop skills. I mean, you said earlier that you really liked my pictures. That's something I could teach somebody in a matter of minutes. It's much easier than you think it is. So, number one, edit your photos. Don't assume that just because it looks good on your phone it'll look good on mine. Run it through an editor. Do a little white balance, a little contrast, play around with it. But number one, definitely edit your photos. Don't think your handheld device is good enough that you can be a master. Number two, a really good, and important, tactic is consistency. So, if you're going to post every day on Instagram, then post every day. Don't post every day for a week and then stop doing it. If you don't have the bandwidth to post every day, post every other day, or post just on Saturdays. But you want to build an expectation with your audience of how much content to expect from you. Don't put anything out there that doesn't help ... That basically doesn't help people. So, if you're like, "We're going to post every day," then you better make sure that every day you have something that's valuable to people. If you can't possibly put up something of value every day, then lower your cadence, right? It's okay. Instagram's not going to hurt you if you only post on Sundays. Have that consistency, let people expect to know when somethings going to ... They're going to get something from you. Kathleen: Is there anything you can do in the way you create your post to increase the odds of it getting found by somebody who's casually looking through Instagram? Because there are your followers, and then there are the people that are going to stumble upon your content. Rev: Sure. So, I'm sure everybody's heard of this but one of the best ways to attract new audiences on Instagram is with hashtags. I'm going to break down something really important here in a second about hashtags. But, the thing to know is you can have up to 30 different hashtags. So, I suggest that people use a content mix of hashtags. So, again, I'll use food as my example, of course that's my lens. I wouldn't share a picture of burgers and then have all burger hashtags. I'll have some location hashtags, I'll have some branded hashtags, I'll have some more cheap food type hashtags. But you want to get a mix of hashtags that appeals to different levels of your audience. Some hashtags are going to have millions and millions of uses. If you have 100 followers there's little to no chance that you using a #Life, or #Happy that you're ever going to score with those. You need to find things that are a little bit more deeper down the funnel in terms of getting an audience. But you need to think of that mix in terms of tiering your hashtags. But the other thing to note, and there's sort of a conversation happening out there in Instagram land, you can either put the hashtags in the caption of the text, so along with your call to action and your description, your story. Or you can put them as a comment. So they're separated. There's a conversation out there happening, and nobody's sort of landed on which side of the coin is better. But I would tell you to test it. Kathleen: That's really interesting. I haven't heard about this. So, I would love to get your sense of when you might use one versus the other. Rev: Well, I have been religiously posting the hashtags in the text of my content for three years. So, I'll write out my post, I'll pick out my 30 hashtags. When I go post it up I've included the hashtags with the text. Somebody recently told me that they're having success with using it in the comments. So I'm actually in the middle of a seven day test where the prior seven days I only did in the text, these seven days I'm only doing it in the content. Then, I'm going to measure what the differences were in those. When you're going to run a test like that, and I would tell everybody to test this. Everybody. Know what you're testing. So me, right now, I'm just looking for a signal. Do I get more audience, do I get more followers, do I get more engagement? What do I get more of? I'll then take that information and then do a second deeper test. So, right now I'm just looking to see how it affects my impressions. Do I get more or less impressions by putting it in the text versus the comments? Then once I have an answer on what I think it is, then I'll test the next thing which is "Okay, if I continue to get higher impressions will I then get more followers?" See what I'm saying? Kathleen: Yeah. Rev: So, Instagram doesn't give us these answers. You kind of got to out there and test them. I'm not exactly sure based on what Instagram has put out there whether there is a difference. I do know that the algorithm works different for every single account. So that's why it's important to have a theory and to test it. Have a control, that kind of thing. Kathleen: Okay. Rev: I would tell somebody to always use some hashtags. Never to not use a hashtag. Even if you don't score for the Explore page, which is when you go to search in Instagram and you see recommended things, you should go look at hashtags are how you get there. But, even if I post something ... Like, every Monday I post a marketing tip. In that I always use #Rev'sMarketingTips. So let's say you happen to find the post I did this Monday. You think that's a valued tip. You see that I'm using that hashtag, you can then just tap that hashtag and find other posts related to that subject that go back years, and years, and years, and years. So, the value of the hashtags I think most people would look at as, "Oh, that's how you hit the Explore page and get a bunch of followers and likes." It's also good for research. I did a thing last year where I was trying to categorize all the types of fries. There are 21, by the way. I needed a photo visual of smiley fries. I didn't know how to find a picture of smiley fries so I just typed into the Explorer S-M-I-L-E-Y-F-R ... And guess what? People had used the hashtag, so I found the things I needed. So, hashtags have a double value. It can help you be found sort of in the immediate, and also in the long run. But I would tell everybody to use at least the most relevant ones to the content every time. Kathleen: Okay. Now, I want to come back in a minute to the Explore tab but I don't want to get distracted from this and lose track. So, I notice when I look at your posts you have a very particular format that's almost paragraph style. In between your paragraphs you have a period on the line break. This is getting very tactical and technical but it's something that I'm interested in. I see a lot of other people do their initial caption and then five line breaks with little periods and then their hashtags. Can you talk a little bit about that and also for the newbie to Instagram, because I remember when I had this question, how do you do that? Because you can't do a hard return from your phone. Rev: So, we'll start with the why, we'll talk about the how, and then I'll go into why you would do each one. So, first of all you can't do a line break when you're typing in Instagram. Typically they'll just pull it back anyway. They'll delete the line break. So, I put a period in between paragraphs or sentences so that it's essentially a line break. It just so happens that there's also a visual to my line break. They don't allow you, so that's why you would do it. Now, why do I particularly do it, or why would I recommend you do it? Well, I think if you take five sentences and you put them together they're much harder to read than five sentences with spaces in the middle. So I'm trying to make a really fast moving social network a bit more digestible. If you see what I call "word vomit," you just see five sentences all smashed together on Instagram, your brain's not going to register that as fast as if I have one sentence, a line break, one sentence, a line break. It feels more digestible and easy. So I'm trying to get my content to be a little more easy to digest and I would tell that to anybody. But, now to get into the super, super, super deep part. So the Instagram algorithm rewards the accounts by users who spend more time. So if you come to my content and you spend one second that's worth X amount of algorithm. If you spent two seconds that's worth X+. If you spend five seconds X++. If you spend a full minute on one of my Instagram posts the algorithm is like, "Wow, this must be a pretty awesome post." So, why would you put in line breaks, or multiple line breaks is you're trying to get people to scroll and interact. So it's a little bit of gaming the system, you know what I'm saying? But, truly Instagram does value time spent on a post. So that's why you would might see somebody has a sentence and then five line breaks. They're trying to gain time on the post. Kathleen: Now, the technique I've always used to do that, because you can't do it in Instagram, is to open up the Notes App on my phone and type it in there and then copy and paste it over. Is that pretty much what you do, or do you have some other secret sauce behind how you're doing this? Rev: I used to use Notes on my phone. I just don't like that app. So now I use Simple Notes. Simple Notes also has a super easy desktop format so it's easy to go back and forth between, which Notes doesn't really. So, but essentially it's the same thing. I write it in the text based notes and then cut and paste it in. Instagram Software Solutions Rev: But there are a number of software solutions out there that will let you do that where you can actually write it in the software and have it push it. I just don't happen to like them. Kathleen: What are some of the more common ones? Rev: Later is probably one of the biggest ones. I really like their analytics, I just don't ... I'm not a scheduler. I don't like scheduling software, so. Kathleen: Got it. Those are some of the details that I think if you're not a heavy Instagram user can really trip you up. Being like, "How are all these people adding these line breaks and periods? Why are they doing that?" Rev: But I could see for a ... You know, I'm a user in that regard. But for a brand or business if you're managing multiple social channels and you have content going out everywhere having a software that schedules could be super, super helpful. Kathleen: Yeah. Rev: Don't take me saying I don't like it meaning it's not good. It's just not what I need. Getting Into Instagram's Explore Tab Kathleen: Now, back to the topic of the Explore tab. So you mentioned that is how you can get found in Instagram by an audience that may not already know about you if you land on the Explorer tab. Can you talk me through how does that happen? How does Instagram decide what to put there? Rev: So, the answer is "I don't know." Anybody that has the answer either works at Instagram or is lying. Like I said, I'm in the middle of the test and I went and actually analyzed my last 14 days worth of content, so 14 posts this morning in preparation for this conversation. I realized that in the last 14 days I made it to the Explore page twice. It was only worth about 400 total impressions. So, how do you hit it? I don't know. Ways that you can sort of try to get in the surface of it is having better engagement. One of the ways to send a signal is through hashtags. So the way ... Let me see if I can explain this a different way. So, here's how the algorithm works. If you, Kathleen, post X type of content and I, Rev, happen to like your content and then I go like content that's similar to Kathleen's content, it will send a signal to me and to Instagram that your account should be shown more to me. Does that make sense? Kathleen: Yeah. Rev: Then as long as you continue to post similar relevant content, it's going to be shown to me. So my algorithm is unique, and your algorithm is unique. Where they match is where the magic sort of happens. The Explore page is where your content and the general populace, so the ven diagram of interest, that's where the general algorithm and your algorithm meet. So, everybody's like, "Oh, hit the Explore page. Hit the Explore page." People think, "Oh, if I get 10,000 likes in the first 10 minutes I'll hit the Explore page." That is not how the Explore page works. It used to but Instagram's gotten a lot smarter. So now, again, it's going to take into effect your Explore page, and my Explore page are going to be totally different. It's going to show me things that are relevant to me based on other posts I've engaged with. It's going to show you relevant things based on what you've engaged with. Hashtags is just a way for you to send a signal that your content might be relevant for X type of category or content. Kathleen: You said that you knew two of your posts had landed on the Explore page. How did you know that? Rev: So, if you have an Instagram account and you have, I forget, over so many followers you can change it to a business account. I have a business account and one of the advantages to a business account is Deep Insights. So you can pull up your Insights on any post and you can see what your reach was, you can see how many followers you got because of that post, you can see impressions and then you can also see how people found that post. So you'll see something like from home, or from hashtags, or from profile, location, Explore, and other. So, like I said, I went and looked at my last 14 days of content and only two of my posts had impressions from Explore. So if you just view Insights and then you can see. If it doesn't say from Explore, that post did not hit the Explore page. When To Post to the Instagram Feed v. Create An Instagram Story Kathleen: Interesting. Now, changing gears for a second, Instagram has the feed and then it has stories. I would be really curious to get your take on when a brand should use stories versus when they should use the feed for something. Rev: There's a great question. When to use stories, and when to use feed? I read a poll the other day, and after the interview I'll send you the report so that you can link it up if you want. But basically a company went out and did a bunch of research on Instagram the other day and found out that people don't look at stories. Not nearly as much as people thought they did. I think the reason for that is people originally assume that stories didn't screw up their algorithm for their feed so they were like ballot stuffing, and box stuffing. Like, "Oh, I can put anything I want in my stories. It doesn't hurt my algorithm." Almost like, "Oh, it's going to delete in 24 hours. It's throw away content." So, you might have an influencer or a person that would go put up 14, or 15 story posts in a day and I think what's happened is as people have started to actually look and play with stories, they move through it even faster than the feed. So, if you have 20 live stories it feels like homework for me. I don't need that much vision into your life. Unless you're somebody who I really look up to, or you're a celebrity I'm really interested. Or, I don't know somebody you're stalking. But, when to use them, and I think is really what's good here, is I think that they have to be a part of the overall content plan. The feed is intended as a snapshot. Here's a moment in time, it's super curative, we thought about this, we put time into this post, it's meant to represent us a certain way. So I think people look at the feed as having a certain value because they know that you have to work to have a certain quality post. They're expecting a certain level of quality. Where the expectation with stories isn't the same. It's more people are looking for "How do we get here? What's the story behind the story? Is there really a Wizard of Oz behind the curtain?" So, when would I tell somebody to use a story? When you need to tell deeper parts of a story. Or, when you need to show a side of the brand that's a bit more snackable, right? Like, I'll give you an example. I know that my content is photo-based around food, and then provides restaurant recommendations and hospitality marketing tips. If I put a picture of my kid in my feed it doesn't deliver against either of my brand goals. But, I might put a picture of my kid in my stories because something funny happened and it shows you a little bit more about my brand, or my personality. It doesn't necessarily have to interrupt the broadcast of Rev Ciancio. It's just "in addition to." So, is that a really, really long way to say use it to tell the high listing stories? Kathleen: No, that's perfect. The other thing I think is so interesting, though, is that feed and stories have very different functionality. Stories has dramatically enhanced tools when it comes to your ability to edit. I want to even say, like, add bling, or bedazzle your images. There are so many things with text overlays, and animated GIFs, polls, and questions, and music. It goes on and on. So, that's one of the things I think is really interesting, is the way that you can manipulate the images and the video on your stories is very different then what you can do in the feed. Rev: Yeah. I think that's one of the fun parts about stories is there's more you can do. You can actually put a link that people can click, and you can have a call to action. You can put fun animations. That's why I think stories are sort of more the behind the scene thing. You can definitely have a lot more creative fun with them. It's easy to add a GIF, it's easy to add a link, it's easy to add a geo locations. From a business account aspect, one of the things that I love about stories and that was really helpful from a branding and marketing perspective is you can actually calculate sticker taps. So, a sticker tap is anything that you add to the photo that leads somebody to another destination. So, it could be a geo tag, it could be another screen user name, it could be a hashtag. You can look back and see how many sticker taps. So, if you're a brand and you're using influencer marketing, you're paying influencers to post sponsored content about your brand you can have them report back, "Hey, how many people saw your story and then tapped to my page?" That's a super valuable metric because it shows high intention. So, I mean that is one of the great things about stories is there's a lot more fun and a lot more tools. What Is "Link in Bio" And When Should You Use It? Kathleen: Yeah. Now, the other thing that I'm really curious about is the whole "link in bio" thing. You see a lot of, particularly news organizations do this a lot where they then maintain dedicated pages on their websites that are just collections of stories that you get to from tapping the link in their bio. Then you tap on that and it takes you to another ... That's sort of their way of getting you to come back to their website. Any thoughts on should brands be using that? Is that just for bigger companies? When does that make sense? Rev: I love telling people to always take another ... I'm sorry. Let me put that another way. I love calls to action. Even if the call to action is, "Like this photo." It's a call to action. So, to me, if you have something really valuable, or really funny, or really important to share telling people, or asking people to click the link in your bio to learn more, to read more, to get something for free to download is a great use of it and shows high intent. So, I published a book. Well, actually my former employer published a book that I wrote earlier this year. I know that I've driven almost 600 downloads to that book from my Instagram bio page. In the grand scheme of thing if I'm getting 2,000 likes a day 600 isn't all that much. But, to me those 600 taps are more important to me than any other content action, or engagement action that's happened on my profile. How do I know that? I track that link. I make calls to that link. I look at that link. So I think it's a super ... Putting a link in your bio and drawing a call to action to it is a great way to give customers another reason to be deeper involved with your brand. Or to reward them, or to help them, and I think it shows a really professional way, even if it's just entertaining, to use Instagram. Give me a deeper experience. If you want me to follow you and engage with you give me lots of fun stuff. Give me lots of value, give me lots of information. So, I'm a huge fan of the call to action. Set a quick link in bio and I'm a huge action of people measuring it. Kathleen: There are two different ways you can handle that link in the bio. There's the send them to a page on your website where there's a thing, whether that's an offer, or a book as you have. Or there are these third party tools that are specifically for the link in bio feature that allow you to create almost a dynamic page that has multiple offers, or multiple gateways to other things. Have you used any of those, can you speak to are there any of those in particular that you recommend? Rev: Sure. I've tested a couple of them and they didn't really deliver against my goal so I kind of stopped. But I can tell you why you would think about using something like that. So, the way the algorithm is working currently with Instagram is the life of a post, they've extended it. So if you put something in your feed it typically performs about for three to four days. Meaning it's going to continue to get activity, maybe somebody came to Kathleen's page, they start up following you, it throws a couple posts up and they like it. They realize you like it. Three days later they'll test another one from four days ago. So, anyway, the life of a post is a little bit longer on Instagram than it used to be. It's certainly longer than the life of a Facebook or Twitter post. So, how does this relate? Well, if I put up an article on Monday and say, "Hey, go click the link in my bio. You should read this article." But then I post another article on Thursday and tell you do to the same thing. If you see that one from Monday you can't interact with it again. So, that call to action kind of dies the minute you switch your bio. If you are a brand, or a business, or a person that has lots, and lots of media content to share, that's where those tools are really, really helpful because then if I missed the ability to click the link that was directly to the contents that you told me to link to that landing page still gives it to me. Like, I didn't miss out on it as a brand, or a marketer, I didn't miss out on that tap. I didn't miss out on driving that value. So that's why you would use it. Kathleen: I see it a lot with media organizations. I follow The Today Show on Instagram and they do a really good job with the link in bio thing. Then they have their page with a million different things you could go off and look at. So that's a good example for anybody who wants to see that. Rev: Yeah, anybody who's producing a high amount of content like a news channel or media outlet it's a super valuable tool. If you're just sort of writing a blog here and there, producing a monthly video, maybe not a tool that's going to deliver as much value to you. But still something to look at. Kathleen's Two Questions Kathleen: Yeah. Well, I could talk about Instagram with you forever. But, we are running out of time. So before we wrap up two questions I always ask everybody. The first one is: company or individual, who do you think right now is doing inbound marketing really well? Rev: I'm going to answer that question from an Instagram content perspective, how's that? Kathleen: I love it. Rev: I love Later. Later is an app that helps you sort of manage your Instagram content. But, I love that their content is a mix of thought leadership, product attributes and branding. It's super specific to Instagram marketers and people who need Instagram solutions. But it helps people think about the space, then they tell you a bit about why their product could help you. Then they also do some branding moments. So, they're truly using content in the way it should be used, to get your attention, to get you to consider their solution, to understand the problem. Really that's what inbound marketing is. It's about awareness and conversion down the funnel. Kathleen: They are @LaterMedia on Instagram, because I just went and followed them as you said that. Rev: They have a good content mix too, I tell people if you want to learn more about how to do good Instagram marketing, actually check out Later. They have some good marketing and some good branding. Kathleen: Boy, just casually glancing at their account one thing the very interesting that they do well is all of their images kind of thematically hang together, like from a color standpoint. They're all very pastel and bright and happy. So, that's really interesting. It takes a very keen editorial eye to carry that consistency out throughout everything. Rev: They have clearly thought out what their Instagram marketing ... Why they're doing Instagram marketing. It's one of the great reasons to look at their account. Kathleen: All right. Second question: the world of digital marketing is changing really, really quickly. It can be very hard for marketers to stay up to date on the latest developments. How do you handle that? How do you keep yourself educated and on top of everything? Rev: Oh, boy. Well, you have to want to learn. That's the first thing. Me, I listen to, there's probably three or four podcasts that I really, really recommend that I'll listen to every single episode on. Because they've consistently delivered value and the types of things I want to learn about in marketing. But then there's also a couple media sources that I really like. So, it's reading, it's listening, it's educating, it's asking questions. Then my favorite part about marketing, and the most important one, is testing. So even if you learn something new, or somebody listening to this interview today is like, "Oh, that's really cool." Don't take my word as bond. Let it inspire a thought and then go test it. Maybe some of this works for you, maybe it doesn't, maybe you come up with something better than what I've thought of. That's really ... How do I stay educated and keep abreast? I learn, ask questions, and then test, test, test, test, test, test. Kathleen: All right. You got to spill the beans on what your favorite podcasts are. Rev: So one of my favorite podcasts is Social Pros with Jay Baer. What I love about Jay is that podcast has been around for many, many years and they sort of started it to talk about great solutions and great ideas in social media. But it's really come about digital marketing. On one episode you might get some great thought leadership about how people need to think about marketing tomorrow, then the next episode you'll get super neat tactics on how to master HubSpot. So it's really good if you like inspiration and tactical information, which is like some days I don't need inspiration I'm just like, "Tell me how to change my day-to-day." That's a great one. My other really favorite one is The Marketing Companion podcast with Mark Schaefer and Tom Webster. It is entirely thought leadership. So they're not going to tell you, "Hey, what's the best way to get more engagement on Twitter today." But, they truly, truly care about marketing and like to think deeper. So if you're a really heady marketing nerd like myself, and probably a lot of people that listen to this show, The Marketing Companion podcast is a really great podcast for inspiring you to want to think differently, and to be ahead of the curve and be a better marketer. Kathleen: I was just listening to their episode on Mark Schaefer's new book Marketing Rebellion this morning. Rev: I'm obsessed with the concept in that book. I believe that reputation management and customer success is the most important form of marketing, that's kind of what that book's about. So, it's speaking to a lot of the values I hold. Kathleen: Yeah. Very cool. Well, thank you for sharing your insights on Instagram, that was really interesting. I feel like I know a lot more know than I did when I started. I am self-admittedly not an Instagram pro. So, that was really helpful. How to Connect With Rev Kathleen: If somebody's been listening and wants to reach out and learn more from you what's the best way for them to get in touch with you? Rev: Well, again, thank you for inviting me out today. I truly enjoyed this conversation. People say to me all the time, "Oh, I should be like you. I should be on Instagram." If you don't know why you should be, then don't. Take the challenge that works for you. But if people want to ask me more questions, or get more information my screen name is the same on every LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook. I'm @RevCiancio. If you're like, "I don't know how to spell that, or I can't remember." Just Google "Expert Burger Taster" and I should be in the top seven results. Kathleen: Nice. Rev: Yeah. Kathleen: You can also visit the show notes and I'll have links to your Instagram, and your LinkedIn, and any other place that you reside online. Rev: Thanks so much. I'll tell you what, obviously anybody who's listening to this after its been recorded you'll already have known this, but I'm going to put a link to this podcast in my bio once I have the link. Kathleen: Love it. Excellent. Link in bio, check it out. Very good. Well, thank you so much, Rev, it's been fascinating. If you are listening and you liked what you heard, as always, I would really appreciate a review on Apple Podcasts, or the platform of your choice. Really, I would appreciate it. If you know somebody else who's doing kick ass inbound marketing work tweet me @WorkMommyWork because I would love to have them as my next guest. Kathleen: Thanks for joining me Rev. Rev: Thank you for having me.

“You have to think of your marketing on every channel today. If you're a restaurant, you can't just put a picture of garlic knots on Instagram.” This week on the On Brand podcast, we got to talk about food and marketing — specifically content marketing in the food and hospitality industry — with the one, the only David “Rev” Ciancio. About Rev Ciancio Rev Ciancio is a Senior Marketing, Branding and Digital Strategist with 20 years of experience in digital marketing and business development, specializing in hospitality marketing, content and local SEO. He has led many clients to new levels of local, national and international success in the hospitality, financial service and entertainment sectors. He is also former agency owner as well as a former New York City bar owner. Rev is an “expert burger taster” and pens hospitality and marketing tips on his Instagram @revciancio as well as his LinkedIn Profile. Episode Highlights What's Rev's deal with burgers? As I answered Rev's call on Skype, I noticed that his handle was 'burgerconquest.' Rev's history as a marketer began by writing food and hospitality content.  What about restaurant content marketing? Rev shared the three times of year that online menus get the most views and what you can do to create more content around these critical times of year. “You have to think of your marketing in every channel.” As Rev noted on the podcast, two thirds of your marketing is not controlled by you. Think Google Reviews and Yelp. Rev advises businesses to make sure your info is up to date — everywhere. And don't forget the three factors that drive local search —  distance, relevance, and prominence.  What brand has made Rev smile recently? “Jay Baer at Convince and Convert. His content ensures my future as a marketer.” However, he had to throw in a burger brand as well — White Castle! To learn more, check out his Instagram @revciancio as well as his LinkedIn profile. As We Wrap … Did you hear something you liked on this episode or another? Do you have a question you’d like our guests to answer? Let me know on Twitter using the hashtag #OnBrandPodcast and you may just hear your thoughts here on the show. On Brand is sponsored by my new book Brand Now. Discover the seven dynamics to help your brand stand out in our crowded, distracted world. Order now and get special digital extras. Learn more. Subscribe to the podcast – You can subscribe to the show via iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn, and RSS. Rate and review the show – If you like what you’re hearing, head over to iTunes and click that 5-star button to rate the show. And if you have a few extra seconds, write a couple of sentences and submit a review. This helps others find the podcast. OK. How do you rate and review a podcast? Need a quick tutorial on leaving a rating/review in iTunes? Check this out. Until next week, I’ll see you on the Internet!

In this Marketing Over Coffee: Learn about Hamburgers, French Fries, Successful Restaurants, and more! Direct Link to File Brought to you by our sponsors: ahrefs and LinkedIn The MoC Playbook is now available! Click this link and buy one now! or if you want to learn more check out the landing page His instagram accounts […] The post Talking Hospitality Marketing with French Fry Historian Rev Ciancio appeared first on Marketing Over Coffee Marketing Podcast.

Yext is the leading Digital Knowledge Management (DKM) platform. Their mission is to give companies control over their brand experiences across the digital universe of maps, apps, search engines, voice assistants, and other intelligent services that drive consumer discovery, decision, and action. We talk about the mindset of an entrepreneur and how thinking correctly is a difference maker for success. David shares with us how being a student of the game of business translates into successfully executed ideas. He also gives us insight on how pizza and burgers help bring people together. Golden nuggets: Be a student of the game of business Don’t rest on your laurels Keys to success: Always be learning Ask questions Be humble Actionable tip: Manage your digital footprint Inspiration: "Let me fall. Let me climb. There's a moment where fear and dream must collide."  Lyrics from Let Me Fall - collaboration between Josh Groban and Cirque du Soleil Resources: https://www.yext.com

“Be awesome at two things and outsource everything else.” The first part of Rev Ciancio’s career was in the entertainment business where he learned a lot about digital marketing in its early years and owned multiple agencies of his own. Eventually leaving the entertainment world, he switched to hospitality and now is the Director of Industry Insights at Yext, providing tools to help companies both large and small manage their public information online. Join us as we discuss some of the biggest mistakes he finds businesses making, three factors that generate your search results, and how to achieve more reviews without asking for them. Get the show notes, transcription and resources mentioned at https://thekimsutton.com/pp514   Highlights: 02:06 The condensed version of his journey 11:30 Don’t forget about local marketing 16:08 How internet searching works 20:44 Generate more reviews without asking for them 30:17 Delegation is important

On this episode of the Lifestyle Business Owner, Aaron and Mayumi Muller conduct a phone interview with Rev Ciancio, director of Industry Insights for Yext.  

Rev is back and talking marketing and yext with us! Marketing tips, burgers and broken bones on live on tonights show!

I truly hope you not only like this this week’s episode of Duffified Live but I hope you use some of the amazing info that Rev offers!! As a PURE social media and marketing expert, Rev Ciancio has grown three social media accounts to become the three largest followed groups of their kind on Instagram: […] The post Duffified Live: Rev Ciancio appeared first on Radio Influence.

Rev Ciancio, three-time agency owner, went from being a Yext superuser for his restaurant clients—ensuring the accuracy of digital information about their brands—their name, address, phone number, hours of operation, menu, handicap-accessible bathroom information—to his position as Director of Industry Insights at Yext (New York City). In this interview, Rev explains that, while people in hospitality knew that customer service was important, they often failed to understand the importance of internet reputation management, as is the case for many companies.   People have shifted in how they use the internet to discover businesses—searches have gone from desktop to mobile, from search bar to voice search . . . with a new dependence on AI, VR, chatbots, and knowledge graphs to deliver the requested information.   All search methods have three layers. A UI (user interface), your link into the system—the browser search bar or the receiver for voice-activated systems. AI (artificial intelligence), processes information and selects its response from the knowledge graph Knowledge graph (a comprehensive database of information)   Businesses have no control over the user interface a particular prospective customer will use . . . and no control over how that system processes information. Businesses can manage the information customers receive if they manage their information in the databases . . . and must do so if they want to ensure that their businesses meet customer expectations.   Rev emphasizes that putting effort into marketing a company does not make sense if, when someone searches for information, that information is not accurate and consistent across platforms. Additionally, he notes that ratings and reviews must be managed. Rev can be reached on Instagram, Rev Ciancio on Linked in, @revciancio on Twitter, or by email at: rev@yext.com. For those interested in food, follow him on @revciancio or @funwithfries (French fries).

There is a ton of information about your business on the Internet. By controlling the accuracy of your company information across the Internet, you get better visibility and more leads and sales. Digital Knowledge Management is the way that you can take control of your company’s digital footprint, and calibrate it across the Internet in the most accurate, cost-effective way possible. Yext’s DKM solution is so powerful that it’s become a mandatory solution for all of our new SEO and digital marketing clients. This episode with Yext’s Rev Ciancio explains why. David "Rev" Ciancio serves as Director, Industry Insights for Yext, where he works to ensure customer success as they deploy the Yext Knowledge Engine on behalf of their businesses. Over his 20+ year career, he has managed business development, digital marketing, and social media strategies for a wide range of entertainment and hospitality companies. When not preaching the gospel of Digital Knowledge Management, you can find this expert burger taster discussing the virtues of what makes a truly great hamburger on his Instagram account, @revciancio and hospitality marketing tips on his blog, burgerconquest.com.

David “Rev” Ciancio serves as Director, Industry Insights for Yext, where he works to ensure customer success as they deploy the Yext Knowledge Engine on behalf of their businesses. Over his 20+ year career, he has managed business development, digital marketing, and social media strategies for a wide range of entertainment and hospitality companies. When read more

David “Rev” Ciancio serves as Director, Industry Insights for Yext, where he works to ensure customer success as they deploy the Yext Knowledge Engine on behalf of their businesses. Over his 20+ year career, he has managed business development, digital marketing, and social media strategies for a wide range of entertainment and hospitality companies. When read more The post 170 | Why Digital Knowledge Management Matters to Hotels with Rev Ciancio first appeared on Long Live Lodging.

Episode #123 - Scorpions? Listen to the episode to find out why! If you’re running a restaurant, you have to stay relevant your loyal audience and always be reaching ahead of the curve. Today I’m talking with Mr. Lee Zucker and Mr. Rev Ciancio from Yext.com who are Digital Knowledge Management Experts. Forget the fancy title for a moment, they’re all about Maximizing your brand presence and message consistently no matter where the customer searches to find you. This goes far beyond your website. Give a listen as today we’re talking online review strategies, online ordering, driving loyalty and repeat business and most importantly marketing like a big brand without the big brand budget. And yes we’ll also talk about why scorpions on your menu will drive business. Now go out there and Rock Your Restaurant! Roger LEE • https://www.linkedin.com/in/leezucker • https://twitter.com/leezucker • https://www.instagram.com/leezucker/ REV • https://www.linkedin.com/in/revciancio/ • https://twitter.com/revciancio • https://www.instagram.com/revciancio/ • https://www.facebook.com/revdavidciancio/ YEXT • https://twitter.com/yext • https://www.facebook.com/YextInc/ • https://www.instagram.com/yextinc/

Today our guest Rev Ciancio, Director of Industry Insights at Yext, talks about digital knowledge management for lawyers, how to rank highly on the Google Map Pack, and the value of managing your online reputation. Full show notes at Good2bSocial.com/podcast

Are you properly managing your local listings and online reputation for your business? Is your business the first result that pops up in an online search? This week on the podcast, I’m joined by Rev Ciancio, burger enthusiast and digital knowledge management expert, as he shows us the keys to managing your local listings and online reputation. You don't want to miss this as we'll dive into how critical it is for businesses to ensure that their digital listings are consistently monitored and optimized. In this episode, we’ll discuss what digital knowledge management is, how to optimize a company’s local listing and reputation management, and how the world of online search is changing. Let’s do this...

Wes comes up with a plan to get into the Guinness Book of World Records, Nick talks about going to the gym for the first time in over five years and the guys welcome New York Burger Week founder Rev Ciancio to the show!

Can local homeowners find your business online? Today, every search is a local search. If your business's online listings are not 100% correct, you could easily be losing out on new customers. Watch the replay of Put Your Business on the Map & Control How Local Homeowners Find You Online to find out how the top home improvement businesses are managing their online directories and are using them to attract local homeowners. Rev Ciancio, Director of Partner Outreach at Yext, will share how to: - Ensure your business information is accurate and consistent across major directories - Optimize your business listings so they work harder to get you found in local searches - Engage local customers at the moment they are searching for you online with their mobile devices

Doc talks with God Forbid's ex-manager Dave "The Rev" Ciancio about how his artist management career got started with The Syndicate, what attracted him to want to work with God Forbid, the exciting east coast metal and hardcore scene of the late 90s and early 00s, why he ended up quitting managing God Forbid and eventually leaving artist management altogether, and gives some insight into his career path after leaving the music industry. This episode features the God Forbid song "Nothing" from the 2001 album Determination. You can follow The Rev on Instagram @RevCiancio You can follow Doc on Instagram and Twitter @DocCoyle Listen to more podcasts like this at JabberJawMedia.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

David “Rev” Ciancio is a Senior Marketing, Branding and Digital Strategist with 20 years of experience in digital marketing and business development, specializing in hospitality marketing, content and local SEO. He has led many clients to new levels of local, national and international success in the hospitality, financial service and entertainment sectors, and recently joined Yext as their Director of Partner Marketing. Rev is an “expert burger taster” and pens burgerconquest.com one of the world's top 3 Burger blogs where he provides marketing insight and tips. Follow Rev on Twitter at @RevCiancio. He can also be found on LinkedIn and http://burgerconquest.com/.   You'll Learn: How Rev transitioned from radio promotions to digital marketing. Rev sent the very 1st email blast in the history of the music business! Why Rev regrets not getting into radio broadcasting in high school. Not enough businesses realize structured data, brand knowledge and the way they're found is an issue. With Influencer Marketing vanity metrics are less important than the impact they drive to the bottom line.   3 Key Points: The singularity will happen in 2029, but there will still be a need for people to conceptualize what these robots are going to do. Local SEO is more important than ever as search transitions to voice search. Structured data and brand knowledge is integral to the way the Internet works today and is going to become more integral moving forward.   Resources Mention: LSA Bootcamps: http://www.marketingbitz.com/marketing/boot-camp.aspx   Killer Resources:   Ready to go pro but aren't sure if College is the right choice for you? Get my Ultimate Digital Marketing College Guide. Like the podcast? Then you'll love the book! Grab Beyond Buzzwords on Amazon.  In the last three months of the 2016 Presidential election fake news outperformed real news on Facebook. DON'T be taken advantage of. Our Digital Discernment course teaches you how to call B.S. online.   Support this podcast: Like what you hear? Consider becoming a patron at https://www.patreon.com/MarketingDisenchanted. I'm a small, independent podcaster so your support goes a long way in making sure I have the funds to keep the podcast going. Go to Patreon.com and check out my awesome pledge levels. You're doing a good deed and will be rewarded handsomely for it! Thanks in advance.   Like what you hear? Book me to speak!  While podcasting is a personal joy of mine, nothing beats connecting with like-minded people in person. Go to ConsultTemi.com to book me for your next conference, meeting or event.   Let's Connect!  Follow me on Twitter Connect on LinkedIn Shoot me an email: Temi at ConsultTemi.com (Sorry, had to break the email link to stymie the bots… damned bots.)

Rev Ciancio, Director of Marketing for Schweid & Sons, joins the Social Pros Podcast to discuss how his B2B2C niche company sets itself apart from the competition through social media utility smarketing. Special thanks to our sponsors: Salesforce Marketing Cloud (Advertising Studio: bit.ly/AdvertisingStudio

As we wrap up 2015, Like, Bite & Share hosts and Hamburger experts Rev Ciancio and Brad Garoon share their predictions for the Burger scene in the year to come. So come for this 20 minute conversation, and if you so choose, stay for the rest of the podcast: a retrospective of the Burger conversations […]

As we wrap up 2015, Like, Bite & Share hosts and Hamburger experts Rev Ciancio and Brad Garoon share their predictions for the Burger scene in the year to come. So come for this 20 minute conversation, and if you so choose, stay for the rest of the podcast: a retrospective of the Burger conversations […]