Good Day Google+ - Marketing and Branding your way to Success

Good day, Google+. Hey there, I'm Chef Dennis Littley and welcome to Good Day Google+. We're here with some very special guests, but since one of my guests let the cat out of the bag, I'm afraid I'm gonna have to start the show just a little differently with— I can't get no satisfaction. I can't get no Facebook reaction. I've tried and I've tried and I've tried. Sorry folks.

That's fine.

You tried, Seth. I tried.

I think Mick's got to start getting worried a little bit.

I know, but yeah, the secret is out. Shannon let the secret out. I was the double for Mick Jagger back in the '60s.

Hey, Anna was the one that provoked that conversation.

I just like to ask questions.

I blame Anna because Anna was the one that was provoking everything on the feed.

And none of you saw my comment about my swag carpet. I was like, oh my God.

I did miss that.

I thought I was so cute doing that. Well, we're here for Good Day Google+ and we've been having a little bit of a mess but things seem to be working today. My sister Mia has been having a little issue too. It may be Google just changing things around like they always do. Let me just say hi to everybody. We have Shannon Hernandez here from Arizona. Hello everyone. Good to have you here, and like I said earlier, your hair is looking wonderful.

Thank you.

I remember the days I could do that. Now I do that, and it won't even flop over.

Well, mine's going gray, so—

Those days are long gone for me.

Long gone, long gone. Them and the Stones. Hey, Nazim, great to have you here today coming from Milan.

Thanks for the invitation. Love to be here.

I was watching Betty earlier in Mia's show, and she was doing really good.

Yeah, first Hangout on herself. You can kind of see me on the side there once in a while going like, with cue cards, you know.

I thought so. I thought that was you. So Mia popped her cherry, so to speak, on Hangouts by herself.

Exactly.

All right. And we have Ben Fisher here from Steady Demand. And you're not a— what did I say, founder or whatever? I know I misspelled it.

Founder? Yeah, you called me a fop-ounder.

Papander, there we go. That's what happens when Chef doesn't have enough coffee.

Thanks for having me back again, Chef. I remember, what was it, a little bit over a year ago, this was one of the first shows I was ever on, and I was nervous as all get-out, and Chef just made me feel like a nice little baby. Oh, that's so comfortable.

Now you're an old pro at it.

Hey, dude, well, look now, Shan Man, okay, let's talk about fights, alright? Come on.

Number 1, Phoenix's representative representing in this Hangout.

Yeah, that is true, that is very true.

And let's get this straight for the record, I didn't start the fight, the bar owner started the fight.

Yeah, right, yeah, that's not what I heard.

That's what they always say, that's what they always say. Alright guys, let's put the testosterone aside for a minute and welcome our very special guest from the Traffic Generation Cafe, Anna Hoffman, and I think we're all a little bit in awe of you today. Today?

Oh, how sweet. I thought you never invited me.

Well, always, but—

And I'm pretty sure you only invited me so that you don't come across as gender-biased guy. I'm the only woman around here, come on.

Well, it's usually the other way around if you ever notice my shows. I tend to have a lot of women on my shows because I like talking to them more.

Smart man, smart man.

So much praise for his hair, I feel a little left out. Not that I have as much or nearly as beautiful, but you know, hey.

Oh, stop it.

I'm ahead of most of you.

Well, out of the 4, you're still more my pick, my style. Sheffy doesn't go the other way, so it's good. Not that I haven't been invited to bat for the other team, I just have put in pinch hitters instead. Not for me. But today we're here and we're going to just talk about everything we do on Google+ and Life, general, you guys are all kind of marketing and branding people in your own ways. I had listed it as a marketing and branding thing today. I always give it some kind of a name just so I can keep track of them more than anything else. If you want to go in that direction, that's fine. If you have projects you want to talk about, that's fine. If you just want to chit-chat, that's fine too. I guess out there, if you have questions, put them in the comment tracker. We did get that working, so we'll pop them up.

So I just want to say one thing. Anna, that post that you did yesterday, a class. Yeah, truly an awesome post.

Yeah, I also, very impressive, very long post but very precise and concise on all the points.

Love it.

Thank you, I appreciate it. And I was also, Ben, right at you, I was watching your hangout that you did almost a year ago with Hulk Hogan. I was thinking, this is great, but who else could get Hulk Hogan or someone like that to get invited to their show? So that was good work. I was really impressed.

You know, I'll tell you the secret behind that. It was very purposeful why I did that. I did it for a couple of reasons. One was to get the word about Google+ out, outside of Google+. But it was actually through relationships. So that's how I got Hulk Hogan. Number one, I am part of Screen Actors Guild, but that actually didn't play a part of it. So back in the day when I had my marketing business, we had to work with some Hollywood actors, voice actors, so I had to become a Screen Actors Guild basically member producer. And it's about a 600-page contract. I do not suggest going through it. A lot of stress. Anyway, but in the hosting industry, one of my good friends has a company called Hostamania, which is Hulk Hogan's representative. I figured, hey, why not? This is a cool way to make a big splash. Let me bring GoDaddy and Hulk Hogan and a bunch of awesome people from Google+, Mark Traphagen, Ron Binzer, David Amerland, Josh Berg. Let's all get together and have a Hangout. But that was the way of making a big splash and also kind of really introducing myself to Google+.

Let me ask you a question about that, Ben. How was his reaction once the whole event was finished? What did he think about the whole thing?

He loved it.

There you go.

He was awesome, brother.

He loved it. The engagement on his Google+ profile once it got unbanned was totally off the hook. I mean, he literally went from having 7 followers in the morning to having around 30,000-40,000 followers.

Wow.

By the end of the day.

Unbelievable.

That's awesome. And you know, it just goes to show, which is very important, and I'm sure Chef can chime in on that, Google+ is not just for techies, you know, that's sort of the reputation, unless you are in marketing niche, unless you are in tech-related niche, there's no place for you on Google+. And that's so not true. And I actually meant to ask Chef Dennis, how did you start? How did it ever occur to you, hey, I'm a chef, but I want to be on Google+ because that's the place to be? How did you make yourself in that space?

Well, I started out on Google+. I'm a food blogger. And I was a chef first, but I was at a school, the only school I ever worked at., and I started a culinary program. And I had my girls would come in after class, and I didn't always have time. I mean, I did everything. I was a one-man show there. I made all the food. I did all the paperwork. And I didn't have time to print the recipes up, so I went to one of the IT people and said, "What's this thing, a blog, called? I want to start a blog because I want to put the recipes there." So I started becoming a food blogger. None of the girls ever went there, and I ended up really getting into it and having readers all over the world. I was on Facebook, and I was on Twitter, and I always seemed late to the party. It was like, "I have a couple hundred followers there. My friends have 10,000." I'm like, "I'm never going to make a level playing field." Google+ started that year, that summer. I've been blogging for about a year, and Google+ started. We also had a void came up with one of my favorite spots shut down because it got bought up. FoodBuzz, it was in San Francisco, got bought up by— I forget the name of the media company that bought it— Federated Media. I had a void, so Google+ started. I got on July 23rd or something, right after it— a couple weeks after it opened up, and I loved it. I just loved it. Then it was kind of a ghost town, but I would sit there all night laughing and just loving things. I started gaining some traction. I was talking to people like Joshua Berg and the ones that started in the beginning. I have friends that have been on since the beginning that are huge. We formed these relationships early on, and I didn't have any food bloggers, so all my friends were techie people at that point. At one point in it, I got this message from some guy in Texas saying, "I'm starting thechefhangout.com." We're going to have 24 chefs from around the world that are going to be teaching classes in their homes via Google Hangouts. So that pushed me right into Hangouts. Up to that point, I didn't know what they were. I had to get the camera, I had to get the headset. I had to, you know, I could teach cooking, but I'd never done it live before. So that's really what started me as being a chef on Google Hangouts, and then Google approached me to do some stuff for them. It just worked out really well for me. I started dragging my food blogging friends over so we could provide everyone with this delicious food porn in our streams. They've been coming kicking and screaming though. It's been a hard transition for most food bloggers.

I don't think I've ever heard that story, Chef.

That's it. That's it. There's a lot more to it, but I gave you kind of the condensed version.

Great story. Wonderful.

But so another question is, on your blog you have sort of two sections. Obviously it's a food blog mostly, but then you also have a subsection for Google+. And usually in the blogging circles, the advice is keep your focus narrow so that you don't dilute your audience, your readers. And yet you seem to work out both pieces very well. How's that going for you?

When I blog more, it works out pretty well, except every time I do a Google+ post, I lose some subscribers. It's not always many, but I'll lose 1 or 2 subscribers. I'll see people dropping off when I do post something other than recipes. It's a different kind of an atmosphere, but I'm not blogging for other people. I'm blogging for me. I took the ads off my page because I wasn't making that much to really have it be a factor. If I was making a lot of money, then they'd go back on, but it wasn't enough to make it a factor. I'm not really worried about that. In fact, I'm starting to move more towards social media now than food. I got kind of dog-shamed into cooking again live on Google+ because they kept saying, "Well, your name is Chef Dennis. Why aren't you cooking?" I started the cooking show up again. I'm having fun with it. I'm glad I did. It's not easy as a blogger to be diverse in that. The good thing is that everyone eats, so the people that come to me just for Google+ will often look at the recipes too because they do eat. It's the ones that come just for food that don't always stay.

Right, right.

I saw the picture of that cake that you put out there the other day, Chef, and I want to know how to make that thing. That's all I can say.

Can you share one?

Yeah, and my wife wants to know too, so you have to tell me.

That's not a problem, that's easy. Actually, I think the last thing I made that my mother ate that I made too, so that was kind of a special cake. Didn't turn out— I didn't know it was going to be that way, but it was.

Do you take your own photos for each piece of food that you make?

Yeah.

Wow. You know, in the days of film, I was a photographer. I was a fashion and black and white fine art photographer.

Sweet. Isn't that part of you we don't know of?

You know, I was a musician. I did commercials. You know, it was kind of a strange— I was a jack of all trades but a master of none until I became a chef, and that was really my niche.

Sweet. So what's the future for your blog then? You know, I know you're passionate about both things. Are you thinking of separating the two?

No, that's my brand. I am fully invested in the fact that I am my brand. Even with the shows, I don't separate the shows. They all fall under my header. I am my brand, and that's who I am, and it'll either work or it won't. When you get older, you're like, who cares anyway? When I was younger, it might have made a bigger difference, but now I'm going to be 61, it's like, screw it. It will either work or it won't.

That's a good point. Chef is a brand, right? You've got Good Day Google+, you've got quite a few other shows that you're working on. Some of them, like you've got the Food and Booze Show, for instance, that you're doing now, which is taking HOAs to the streets. With Mi Voz. The thing that I think is really cool is as a brand is that, and because you're staying true to yourself really, is that one day something's going to happen here with Google+ and Google is going to be— it's going to happen. Google's going to be the television stations, I should say, right? One day, as soon as they get to the 24-hour recording window. When that happens though, who knows? Somebody from Hollywood might come and say, "Hey, Chef, you've got this food and booze show, or you've got this Good Day Google+ show. We just want to buy you." This happens to YouTube stars all the time.

Oh yeah.

It's funny you say that, Ben, because we just did a shoot, a photo shoot with a gal for— one of the radio station's calendar things, and she says that she has been hired out by certain brands to Vine for them, and she has something like some ungodly number, like 500,000 people who follow her on Vine.

Wow.

And these companies pay her, they pay her per Vine something like $1,000, $500, I forget, something like that. To do Vines for her. I'm sorry, to do Vines for them. And she— that's what she does. That's all she does. And I'm just kind of like, that is mind-blowing. So I think what you're saying, Ben, is exactly— that could happen exactly for something like Shep. I mean, I mean, I don't see why not. Someone just has to get a hold of this network and get on here and start seeing that every Friday that there are some quality— this quality content coming out on Fridays. Not just on Fridays, but pretty much every other time. I'm sorry to cut you off though, Ben.

Oh yeah, no problem. You're right though, Sam, but there are people who are in this very specific group in Hollywood, I can't really say too much about it, but that are looking at Hangouts, they're looking at Google+, they're still very skeptical about it because they don't care about the engagement. Right now it's they care about the numbers. What's really funny is you speak about the Vine thing, the same group that I'm talking about They had Starbucks sponsor a guy who did a 6-second Vine. They paid him $12,000 for one Vine. And this guy, it's a total of maybe 3 shoots. 3 shoots strung together. He's dancing inside of Starbucks, he's crawling into Starbucks, and he's dead. That's it. Just has a Starbucks logo as he's going into Starbucks. I mean, $12K for a little bit of video editing?

Yeah, well, the interesting thing about Vine though, that there are some people on there that are really amazing and they do some really incredible stuff. Like, for example, Betty Furlan is one that— she's all over the place and she's been going at it. Now she's been highlighted and interviewed all over. She's a star. She's a star on Vine. So she's ready to, you know, position herself wherever she wants. And a lot of these kids, and also, you know, the age frame we see here relatively high school, early university type, but they're going all over the place and companies are looking at that and saying, wow. So imagine if they're looking at a platform like that, as you're saying Ben, what they're looking over here is kind of like, wow. And I'm pretty sure, but you're right, I do encounter here in Italy with my clients the issues about, well, how many people watch the show, how many people 'But are the numbers—' and they're like, 'Mm, it's not even worth it.' And then they also kind of— the fear factor of having to sort of do a new type of marketing, which is engaging with people, which is like engaging with clients. Because companies, you know, most companies— and they're going to have to learn, as David Hamerlein says, they're going to have to start learning that, and they're already positioning themselves to do that. So it's a matter of a couple of years when this thing is going to definitely— and the great thing about this platform is that, as you were saying, talking about the food and booze and stuff that everybody else and you guys at City to and everybody's doing different types of things, you can really think outside of the box. You can take it to other levels that we're starting to see that are finally happening. And I think the TV people are starting to look at it and going, wait a second, what's going on over here?

Go ahead, Shannon. Go ahead, Ben.

You're it, go.

Yes, sir. But I was just going to say, I agree with you. I lost my train of thought. I agree with you, and you're right. I think that the engagement right now is the barrier. They're still very much so trained to see the numbers. Public relations people are trained to look at reach. Marketing companies say, well, why should I spend $1,000, $2,000, 5,000 whatever dollars it is to produce a Hangout that's going to go on one time. They don't understand the SEO implications of it at all. They don't understand that somebody like Chef or any one of us or any influencer that's out there, maybe some executive from Pepsi, you know, could be in that audience, you know, who could be a potential client of theirs. Like, you know, let's say we work with hosting companies and they're going after their enterprise clients. They don't understand that even if it's only 50 people that attend, one of those 50 could be a million-dollar client. That's a very, very good point.

I was talking to somebody about that the other day, saying like, you know, in the spectrum here, what you were saying is one of these people can be that go networking person that gets you in touch with a whole different series of possibilities. So You know, it's kind of their mentality of what you're saying about the numbers and marketing and the ROI and all that. It's crucial for them, but they're going to have to start thinking a little bit different, and I think, you know, we're getting there.

Well, I think you also kind of have to look at it from like a Jay Baer standpoint. I absolutely subscribe to the Jay Baer—

Huge, huge fan here too.

Yeah, and you know, like Ben was saying, you know, the SEO implications behind doing these Hangouts are huge. I mean, you know, you could go many, many steps layers forward and deeper with that, you know, you can— you're not only recording these, but you can also pull them off of YouTube and then put them as snackable content that could go on Instagram or on Vine or go on iTunes. You know, I know there's people doing that already, and so I don't see why you wouldn't want to try to build a brand. And granted, you know, I have never worked for Pepsi, I've never worked for Coca-Cola, Coca-Cola, but those people like that snackable content, and if it is useful at points in time, then I think that they would subscribe to something like that, especially if it was of use. You know, everyone's always trying to do something of a how-to these days. You know, there's a difference between being entertained versus learning something, so I do believe that there are are layers of utility that go there when it comes to the Hangouts. And of course, you're just building that brand up, you know, even more, more enormously than what people could even imagine. But the key is, I guess, is trying to draft behind someone who is, you know, who you, I guess, would look up to, I guess, and try to follow along with them. And, you know, like going behind Jay Baer and trying to trying to help promote the idea of utility and then people start seeing you as an authority that way and then they go on your website and they see that you're linked to those other websites like Instagram and Vine and whatnot and then maybe they say, "Oh hey, I like that so much." I think the ultimate thing though is to get them on the list and Anna probably could be the first person to tell you that that's one of the most important things. Anyway, those are my two cents. That's my two cents.

Yeah. I was actually going to say to— to bring this actually straight back to Anna, because again, that post that you did was wonderful. You're doing something different as a brand, and you're building that brand. I think the beauty that we have with Google+ today is that we can reinvent everything from the early '90s forward. Everything can kind of be reinvented, and they're doing that like with the game shows that we're seeing now every single weekend, you know, which are being attended by 20, 30 people that are pretty active. I was skeptical at first. I mean, I wanted to try one myself, and I saw somebody else started up— I forget who it was— but he started it up, and I'm like, went and attended, and I stuck around for the whole hour. But, you know, I think that people right now have this great opportunity to become influential. And to that, I throw it straight over to you, Anna, because— go talk about that.

Thank you so much, Ben. And you know, I mean, the thing about— so going back a little bit to what Chef said, he loves what he does, and he really in so many ways doesn't care too much what other people think about it, and that works for him. Realistically speaking, though, most of us do have to think about it and do have to kind of establish the brand and where are we going with it, because for most of us this is a business. We have to pay the bills, we have to make money. But there is a fine line between analyzing it too much, like I think Shannon, you said, and going to where your passion is. So for Chef, passion works just great because he's passionate about Google+ and he's passionate about about food, and he managed to marry the two, both on Google+ and his blog, and it's working wonders for him. Now then, another example I was thinking about is Mia Foss. Of course, she rebranded her show, right? It used to be just social media, and now it's pretty much everything. It's fashion, it's food, it's horses, you name it. It's loans. For someone like me looking at that, I'm thinking, she must be nuts. She is losing her audience to the right and left, right? Because why would you want to spread yourself so thin and put yourself out there and have your listeners have to choose the topics and miss out shows and whatnot? But sometimes you can't just— as we've talked about it— you can't just approach it from a black and from my point of view of numbers, you know, how many people like this specific topic, how many people like that specific topic. She is truly building a brand, overall brand for herself, and that in the end, even if she decides, you know, a year from now, well, maybe fashion is the true passion for her and she'll go that direction only, she pretty much has got it made. And no matter what she does, her listeners do you love her. You know, so there's something to be said about both being analytical to your approach to business and going for what you're passionate about, you know, and kind of sticking with that. And the post that I wrote— and Ben, thank you so much, you just— the compliment of you going back to it is just enormous. So, but the post that I was writing was really about Making it all about other people, because that's what it comes down to. You will interest someone if you make it about them, no matter what it is that you write about. Like, I had a guy that left a comment on that post. It was a private comment, and he's a financial advisor, and he says, I'm not doing too well. I'm writing blog posts, I'm doing everything I think I should be doing, but I don't get a response. And then I go to his blog and it's a typical 5 ways you are missing out, blah, blah, blah, but no, so what do I do about it? So he's not hitting that mark for people where they benefit from what he's doing. And that's the mistake I see a lot of people both on Google+ or on their personal blogs doing. They're making it about them. I don't want to read about you, truly. I mean, I might be interested in, but then I come and I see your pictures plastered all over the place, I see you talking about how you made it, blah, blah, blah. I want to know about me. So what is it that you're writing that's about me? And that's the key, you know, because in the end, our audience is the one who should drive our content. And Shannon, again, you know, what you said about SEO about repurposing your content, it's absolutely brilliant because most people who whine about Google have never had any traffic from Google to begin with. So why are you whining about it? Go to where the puck is going. And if Google is indexing and ranking SlideShare presentations or YouTube videos or Google+ Hangouts, why don't you do more of those? Forget about the blog is not ranking on Google+. I mean, on Google. Who cares, right? So people are just so used to watching, seeing everything like this. And until you kind of start opening yourself up, your business is pretty much doomed because you can't be doing what everybody else is doing and somehow manage to do better business-wise. It just doesn't work that way.

Right, there's an interesting fact you brought up, Anna, because you can definitely get traffic from Google. I have seen it on my sister's website where she has posted something out depending on the day. It may be something about divorce, maybe relationships, or maybe it's about, you know, how to, you know, easier ways to ease the pain of divorce or whatnot. And Kurt Smith, I don't know if you guys are familiar with Kurt Smith here on Google+, but Kurt is a men's counselor and Kurt every day shares something that is very inspirational. It has to do with relationships. He also has a very large following, you know, and reaching out to those influencers just because they have, say, you know, 25,000 followers or people that are following them, or maybe it's, you know, 350,000, you know,— don't be afraid to reach out to those people. And I think we just started reaching out to Kurt and we started commenting and plus oneing a lot of his stuff and we were adding value to his posts. And pretty soon he was noticing and taking notice that we were interested in his type of content because it applied to what we were doing. And out of the blue, just a couple of weeks ago, he saw something that we had posted out and he liked it. He +1'd it and he re-shared it and man, the traffic for that day was just out of control. And so then people say to me, they say, "Well, I can't get traffic on Google+, there's no one there." Yeah, there's no one there because I feel like people who want to get on Google+ are wallflowers. They're being wallflowers about it all. They just want to stand back on the sidelines and just watch and they don't want to do anything about it instead of just getting in there and start talking and having hangouts. So, you know, there's a couple points that, like, Anna made, is that, you know, you don't always have to make it about yourself. Make it about someone else. And, you know, it's along the same lines— comment, reshare, but just don't reshare for the sake of resharing because people are going to catch on to that, and you don't want to come off as a fake. And not all the time do I share everything out for my sister's website. You know, I know in the past that I have, but I know that there are things that interest me in his posts. Um, you know, sometimes I'll see something that Chef likes and I'll go ahead and share that out. So just reach out, I think, reaching out and just being genuine to those people, because even if they have a large following, they can certainly help influence, you know, your authority in a particular niche. I'm certainly not any type of relationship person, but I do know that, you know, sometimes— you know, when I read something from Kurt, I get inspired. I go, "You know, that is very true." I don't— you know, it gives me hope. It gives me hope to continue moving forward. So I just like that aspect of Kurt and the idea of how you can gain traffic from your website if you're doing the socializing, really.

I think it also comes down to patience, right? Because what we're talking about here with influence building making a difference, building a brand. These are all things that we all have to have patience for. And as marketers, we understand patience. As SEOers in the past, you had to have patience. You still have to have patience. When you're building an email list, it takes time. It doesn't just boom grow overnight unless you've got some magical piece of content Even then, but still, but I think the core problem that most businesses have is that they don't have that patience. They're like, I'm going to try this for 3 months and if it doesn't work, I've got to move on to the next thing because my CFO or my CEO is going to go ahead and kick me in the booty. And, you know, somebody's got to be accountable. Afford it, basically. I think that's the other problem, is patience. Let's take patience and let's grow patience. Let's take those metrics and let's try not to look at those metrics. Let's look more towards how can we build a brand and really get in touch with people who are influential, interact with them in a very genuine way, and that's where there's ROI. At the end of the day, you get that guy who's going to share your content that you've built a relationship with. I'm going to end this by just bringing up one last thing, and that is Marilyn Moore put out a post, I think it was this morning, about how John Dietrich— she had a conversation with him a year ago, and that is what brought her into the sphere of influencers.— and where she got to meet everybody that we're all friends with and which are in kind of the influencer circle here on G+. But he uplifted her, he brought her up, and that took time. It took time and patience, but it happened. And now Marilyn is now doing the same thing for a lot of other people. And that's how this ecosystem works, and that's how I think brands can really try— if they can look at it that way We're talking about it's a great place for business. Sorry, done.

Excellent, I like that closure. Drops the mic.

Yes.

Well said. And just to piggyback on what you said, Ben, do you boys think that Google+ is clicky? And is there advice, like one specific advice, because I know the listeners they're listening to this and they're agreeing with everything that we say because it sounds good, but then the how question always remains. How do you break through to build those relationships? And yes, a lot of people do think it's clicky, so I wanted to know what you thought about it.

So the way I look at it is actually, well, okay, so I say it's 40% technology, 60% human. Using tools— everybody drink now. Using utilities like CircleScope, like NodeX from Lee Smallwood, even like saydemand. Using those kinds of tools, I'm going to just say it, to identify people who are influential people who are within the brand's persona and match the brand's persona and voice. If you can find those people, you can kind of accelerate your ROI, what I would call the return on engagement, basically. But as a business, you have to have your KPIs lined up from the get-go. You need to understand what is return on investment going to mean to me in 90 days. The way I like to look at it is, is, okay, let's look at Google queries, let's look at direct traffic, let's look at organic traffic, let's look at bounce rate. Has it improved on all of your blog content? Are you collecting email addresses? Okay, so have any of those other KPIs increased your email list? Have any of your e-commerce stats, if you're tracking e-commerce, have those gone up as well while you're doing this activity? Are you tracking actions in Google Analytics? Sorry, I could go on a rant here when it goes on, comes down to ROI. But basically, at the end of the day, it's having that ROI mesh kind of set up in place and then taking the time to reach out to targeted people that you know you want to build a relationship with and building that relationship organically. If you built that relationship— and like you were saying, Shaman, that somebody shares that post, that right there is a win. It's a win, and now you can tell whether you're a small business or it's your client, you can say, "Hey, we achieved this." By the way, this is what PR agencies do every single week for their clients.

Speaking of PR agencies though, I think one of the biggest problems that we have, at least in the food world, is PR agencies that don't understand the power of Google+ and are— I don't want to say complacent, but they just don't see a reason to be on there, and they're doing their businesses that they represent a huge injustice by not taking the time to understand. I run into this, it's like beating your head against the wall trying to get sponsors from certain food people because most of the food is all controlled by certain agencies. Yeah, I see that. Yeah, and they go with the big players that have been big players in the industry all along, who most of them don't use Google+. You were talking about influencers, and one of the problems we have is I've seen Google created their list, which made people instant influencers, but then when you look at the level of engagement that a lot of these people have, it's really poor. They just promote themselves and they don't get any kind of engagement. That's something you have to be careful too when you look at it.

Yeah, PR agencies are definitely very one way. Again, sorry if I'm dominating here, but one thing that just reminds me of something that happened actually just yesterday with one of my clients. They were asking me about the value of continuing on with Google+. Their PR agency doesn't like working with us because they they feel like we step on their toes when we're actually just trying to help. And it's like, hey, look, if you want to get in touch with somebody at Mashable, let us know. We will engage with this person. And they see it as a threat, you know, to them. But my buddy was in marketing. He said, you know, he's like, what you're doing helps and complements what our PR company is doing. So when they make a win, that's actually kind of a win for you guys too. So it's where all boats float when the tide is rising.

And, uh, yeah, we're not trying to take their business away, we just want to embellish it and make it better.

And, you know, I was thinking the other day— well, not even the other day, it's been actually a couple months, especially when I was on my hiatus a few months back. Um, you know, these are all tools. I believe that you can use a lot of them you know, in correlation or conjunction with each other. I just prefer to happen to use Google+ more. I think I said this on the Social Media Hangout on Sunday, that the majority of my audience that listens to me on the radio nightly, they're on Facebook. They don't like Google+. They're just specifically on Facebook. So I communicate with them only at night on Facebook. Maybe there's one or two things that, you know, I can say in the day, but I don't get the quality of engagement. But when it comes down to marketing a business, I guess, and, you know, I can put my hand in a bunch of different areas and touch each one of those areas. I suppose that it's more of a, you know, you gotta figure out which gear is going to be rotating the right way, and you don't want to get snagged by a Facebook ad, or you don't want to get snagged by a promote a tweet or whatnot. You know, you just gotta find the one that's going to work for you. But I mean, I do know, you know, that I have seen incredible results with Facebook ads, but doesn't mean that I still can't get that same type of result over here, you know, if I'm looking to maybe possibly market something that is more universal. I think within the local market, it's really, really difficult because you're so hyper-focused on a local market that it's not entirely universal for someone, say, in Maryland, and so it doesn't make sense for them. So if you're trying to build a brand, I suppose it would be more along the lines of what can you do to make that product or that service more universal so that you can market it out nationally or globally. Anyway, sorry.

Great, great, great. That was good, that was good. Now here in Italy, I mean, looking at— there's a huge, huge penetration of Facebook. This is a Facebook-oriented country. So when I talk to my clients about Google+, most of them, the techie guys, they're quite fascinated and interested by it. But the main core companies, they're looking at it and going like, "Uh-oh, is this another platform that we really have to engage and spend a lot of money on?" And they're not seeing the value on it. So also when they come back to me and they say, "Well, we just read on an article in the New York Times about the fact that everybody says Google is dying," or whatever, or some other reference publication, they come to me and say, Is this true? Why are we going to invest in this if sooner or later it's going to get dropped or it's going to die or something, you know. And that, you know, we've been through that whole controversy. I mean, immediately when we saw that, we're like, okay, well, let's not pay attention to it. But our clients are paying attention to it, and they're coming to me and saying, Nazim, I can't afford to have another guy doing social media in the marketing department just dedicated to Google+. I don't see the return, we don't see the return on investment.. And that's kind of very short-sighted in a sense. And then they always tell me, well, you're always on Google+ because you're American, because you speak English, you're dealing with people in the States. Here, you know, we're kind of like, you know, we don't want to be on screen. So I think that's a major drawback in location of country where I'm located at. And in fact, I did get into a conversation with a couple of people in here who say, well, why don't you speak in Italian? Why don't you start doing Google+ stuff in Italian? So you can get— and I said, well, because my town is crappy. I'm sorry. That's the way it is.

You know what I tell people a lot of times when they tell me that, especially from different countries or someone that just doesn't get it, I say, look, you don't have to be on Google+. That's fine. But at least use the Hangouts. One of the things I stress with them is, when was the last time you sat down to a meal with your entire family?— that's spread around the world. Have dinner with them. They look at me like, "What?" I said, "Set the table. Have everyone come in on a laptop and sit down and have a meal." Once you get people hooked a little bit, then they'll tend to look a little bit better. This is the one big advantage of Google+ it has over any other social media is this face-to-face way we can communicate with people. People. This was one of the things when we did the Chef Hangout, we thought it was going to fly because you could be spread out all over the place and sit down, cook a meal together, and then sit down. We would leave, and you guys sat down and ate it afterwards.

Yeah, I remember watching that way back when, watching those. It was very entertaining, to say the least.

Chef, you just brought up, I think, an atom bomb of a quote or statement here.. And that is like— and this just reminded me of something that just happened literally last night. I was on a Hangout with a friend of mine who I've known for like over 15 years. We just engaged with one of his clients. He does their PR. We're now doing their Google+. And so I get him in on the Hangout and he's like, hold on, I'm having a problem. I have to download the plugin. Right? So it wasn't pluginless. So finally get him in the Hangout. Then his wife comes over to say hi, and I haven't seen her in a couple of years. We're sitting there talking, and she's a French teacher. I was like, "You know, you could be making money by doing helpouts and teaching people French, charging whatever you want per minute, per hour, whatever." She literally went, "What? Are you serious?" She's like, "What's the link? I need to know this right now." What you were saying there about getting somebody just to get used to the technology and just say, "Just do a Hangout." Once they see Hangouts, it's magical. It clicks and gets people involved. Then they start to look at the broader ecosystem.

I think you're right about that, Ben. And also another thing that we have not mentioned is the fact that you have Google Drive and Google Documents and you start integrating all those elements together and I sat down and showed it to people and they're like, wait a second now, now this is all inside Google+ and Google, yes it is in here. Because most of the answers were like, oh we can do that on Skype, we can do Hangouts.

No, it's a little bit different.

Share screen is totally different, presentations in here. Now we got the Showcase app that just popped up and that's going to open a whole different approach to doing stuff. So I think all these things are steps forward. I think we're just, as we obviously know, we're the pioneers in here. I think we're the ones that have been going at it and going at it and going at it. My friends on Facebook are like, dude, you're always on Google+, what's with that? Sooner or later I think we're going to turn and they're going to say, oh, now I see what you guys are talking about. Now I see the engagement. Now I see the potential for our business. Now I see how we can expand, you know, via communities, via pages and profiles and all those issues that right now they're still getting fine-lined. But our contribution also and feedback in here, I think Google sooner or later is going to start, okay, let's say you know, put this back on track and put this back on track to make this the platform that is an instrument of business. It's a true—

Yeah, you know, Nazim? I think we froze a little bit. Oh, bummer, because I was going to say something. I'm back. Oops, sorry. What I was going to say, Nazim, really quickly was, you know, that awesome point right there, but just to add to that is is that when Shop the Hangout comes out, that is going to be a game changer because right there that's going to be able to prove for businesses immediately, they're going to get the immediate satisfaction of ROI. I did a Hangout, I made a sale.

Yeah, I mean, you pretty much could do that now but it's just you'd have to go around it and it's just a lot of work. Work, but I would imagine that once that comes out, it's just going to streamline the whole process. I would love to see that. I would be actually excited to see something like that because think about how many things you could actually put out there and you just sold it in your— you sold it while you were in your boxers. Even for Anna, she's wearing boxers right now.

Sweet, I'm not standing up.

I've got that mental image now.

That is just huge. I think that's huge. To kind of go back to Nazim's point, you know how you said, Nazim, that everyone over there, they're like, wow, I can't believe you do all that stuff in Google+, the Drive, everything. It's the same thing for images and pictures.— I forget his name, he's here on Google+, Mia Voss has interviewed him, but he has taken pictures with his phone and he edits them in Google Photos, inside Google+. And that was before— that is just something that I think is so huge because out here in Arizona we get a lot of monsoons, so there's a lot of amazing cloud pictures, but I know there's a lot of people out there in the UK that take amazing cloud pictures and they edit their photos in Google+ and they just come out incredible. I know. Photographers, there's a photographer friend of mine who looks at it and goes, "Wow, that looks really cool. How did you do that?" I say, "I did that in Google+." "You're kidding, right?" No, I'm not kidding at all. That was all in Google+. It's a cell phone capture of whatever it is and I just used whatever HDR function in Google Photos and it just edited that.. And those photos, they do really well. I mean, they're just amazing.

I know, and the other interesting point is that with these instruments, which are web-based apps, people like Adobe start, you know, down the road they better start worrying a little bit because Photoshop, you know, we all use Photoshop, you know, I love it. I'm seeing some of these web-based apps and you can really do some amazing things, and after a while it's kind of like, why do I need Photoshop? Or somebody else might just definitely say that, you know, why do I need to be using, you know, when I can use something cheaper and just does amazing results at just about the same level of what I need.

Yeah, I think Guy Kawasaki said it best, and that is like Canva, for instance, is democratizing, but it's democratizing the way people can do graphic design, right? It's bringing it to the masses. With the Google products and the ecosystem, it's democratizing things in so many different ways, from document collaboration to communications with Hangouts to networking to getting exposure in organic search, which is basically just feeding the beast really. It's just feeding the Google database. To the photo photo editing to collaboration again. You're right, I think people like Adobe should be very scared because if you can do it for free and then let's say a year from now pay $5 for this larger editing, photo editing, video editing suite and you're paying $5 for it a year, where do you think Adobe Stock is going to go at that point?

I know, these are very disruptive technologies and at the forefront are companies like Google that can really put all the assets and the money behind it to have this happen.

Driverless cars.

That's a whole different ballgame there.

I mean, just right now, the products of everything being on Google+ being free, I like the idea of all of it being free right now. I mean, who doesn't love free? Especially if you're trying to start something or maybe you feel inspired to get like, I want to do this one thing but I just don't know how to do it. And I'm going to have to pay for Adobe Creative Cloud and I'm going to have to pay for this and pay for that and just go, oh my God. The numbers start stacking up and by the time you look at it, you're like, man, I'm about a grand in right now for all this content creation I want to do. You can start it out pretty much on Google. Especially, what was it, Ben, you probably know more about this, Google has now domains. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's pretty—

yeah. The domains right now are starting out between $12 and $20. $12 for your standard .net or .com and then $20 for any of the new .gatlds like Guru.social, I think, something like that. I put a list out there. It's .business, I think, is in there. Anyway, but yeah, and those prices guaranteed will come down, right? You know, they are a registrar, they can put those prices out there for right now, but they are going to compete with the GoDaddies and such. But they don't want to compete with them like on the hosting side or anything like that. I don't I don't think at least, but who knows, they might. But to your point there, Jeanne Mann, and that is this, is that historically Google, going all the way back, what they've always done is they've always said they had a free service that was appealable to the masses. And they've said, but if you want businesses to really get extra added benefits, you're going to have to pay $5 a user. I forget who put out the post, but somebody put it out about the business Hangouts yesterday allowing up to 15 people. I don't know why you would want to have 15 people in a Hangout. That would be nuts. That's a lot. Yeah, but 15 people in Hangouts, business Hangouts, it comes with Google Apps, Google Business Apps now.

Yeah, as of 2 or 3 days. 15 people.

Well, they've always been 15, it's just they're pushing the business now. Yeah.

I'm thinking, I'm hoping that for my party in about an hour or so that we're going to do on the terrace, I can get 15 people in there and just go nuts. Nice. Because, you know, to manage 10 people, it starts becoming quite complicated.

As long as they're well behaved, you're alright. But when you get people that aren't used to being in the Hangout, that's when it gets cray cray. Cray cray.

What's the problem with well-behaved guests? Come on, Chef.

A party's a party. Why not? A party's a party. A party is a party.

You're right, Anna. A party is a party.

I don't mean that kind of party.

He wants to wear it too.

There you go. Well, guys, we have had an incredible hour, and I'm just going to go down the panel once, and we're going to talk about, you know, where we can find you and anything you might be doing or want to share with us. So let's start with Anna. Anna, we— I saw you put your link up. Thank you very much. And everyone, please feel free to leave any links you'd like. But once you tell us a little bit about where you're doing and how things are going. Absolutely.

Thank you. I wanted to kind of circle back a little bit to what we've talked about and make it a little more personal for people who are listening. And I know you guys talked a lot about tools, and Ben, I see your side of the business is more company related. You have an actual company, clients, but a lot of our listeners are also just standalone business owners, bloggers, and I think it might sound a little too intimidating to focus on tools so much because yes, there are so many tools to control so many different things., and yet I remember, I think it was you, Shep, who said once that you would not use any tools if it interfered with engagement. You'd rather spend your time engaging with people versus learning more tools. Yeah. And I really can't help but agree, and I kind of want people to take that away from the show. Tools are great, but Google+ is human media. You know, that's All you need to do is just come in and listen. You know, if you are, let's say, if you are a food blogger or food-related industry, just go to Chef's page and all you need to do is to listen and see how he engages, who engages with him. Make a circle of people who I would call engagers, not people who have huge followings because that means nothing. You know, I I will take a person with 5,000 people who gets 10, 20, 30 comments per post any time of day with someone who has half a million followers and nothing, zip nada. So just listen to those engagers, see how they interact and step in. And you know, by the way, it pains me to admit, but Chef did not ask me to join his HOA. Ask him. So you have to remember that you have to be proactive, no matter if it's your first day on Google+, if you've been here for a year but you're not seeing results. If you're not seeing results, it means you need to change something. It doesn't mean that Google+ doesn't work. It means that something you are doing is not working. So just change that up. Ask others. See if they have suggestions. People approach me all the time, hey, I posted that, but I'm not getting any traction. Do you have any idea why? And that's OK. That's the part of networking. So just remember the human media part of Google+. And I think you're going to be OK. We're all here. We're ready to engage, whether we know your name and face or not. But that's about it. Guilty.

I know. Hello. I didn't ask you first because I'm a little shy with the ladies, contrary to popular belief. So, and I was a little awestruck myself, so I'm glad you did reach out because now we have a nice relationship and we can do more together.

Anna's got a lot of fanboys, man. Oh yeah, fanboys and fangirls. Everyone loves her.

Everybody loves Anna. You see, the thing is that there is a reason why I hide behind the computer. I am an introvert, like through and through. I do not like talking to people. I do not like having too many people around me. I just feel completely— I freeze. But back in spring, I kind of decided to venture out. You know Eric Enger from Stone Temple Google Consulting, of course. He was out here in the Bay Area for SMX West, I think. And he and I kind of talked on Google+ quite a bit. We're pretty good friends at this point. And I really wanted to meet him. But that meant going into a huge room full of people I don't know, and I probably have to talk to some of them. I mean, it was terrifying. So I went. My husband was so sweet, he booked me room in San Jose so that I don't have to drive at night. So I went to that huge room, I saw the people, and I went back to my hotel room and I hid there for like 4 hours because I was too scared to come out. But then I said, you know what, I've got to do this. And most of us have to kind of step out of our comfort zone at some point, whether it's in Google+ and business and personal life, you just kind of have to do it because if you don't change things, then things won't change. So that was sort of a starting point. Eric Enger, I have you to thank for it. You made me into someone who now wants to join every single Hangout I see along the way. But it feels good. It feels good to kind of step out of our boundaries, and I I love talking to you guys. Thank you so much, Chef, for having me. My pleasure.

I'm so happy you were on today. Thank you. Ben, thank you so much for coming on. Any projects you got coming up or anything you'd like to leave us with?

Let's see. Project-wise, no. We're still fighting the good fight. We're still educating people about Google+. We're helping a lot of businesses along the way. Working with, you know, 1 to 2 people companies up to— we have a client now that's over 200 years old is how old their business is. And just doing really good. And I guess, you know, as far as a last kind of takeaway for everybody is from all this is do what you're passionate about, get into Hangouts, know that there is ROI.. But at the beginning, set up what is that ROI? What is going to make you feel good about your experience when you're doing something here on Google+? Even if it's only one little thing. Let's say you want to get on Chef Dennis' show. Make that an ROI, make it a KPI point. And if you can achieve that, you can achieve anything. Chef will never let you on his show. Just kidding, he'll let you on the show. But set up that R— but set something up as an R point because you need to have that goal. If you have that goal, you're going to feel that success. If you feel that success, you're going to keep on doing it. If you keep on doing it, you're going to be successful. If you can't do it yourself, outsource it. Don't be afraid to do that. Good advice.

Nazim. All right. Wow. I know you got something big happening.

Yeah, based on what Anna was saying, that was very interesting, is me and my wife had decided to come up with Casa Chiesi, which we are launching in about 45 minutes. In fact, she was looking over at me going like, don't we have to do like a green room? Well, we'll do it pretty soon. But I follow the advice of doing doing something with passion and something that you love. We're going to be showing most of our friends on Google+ Italy from the point of view of a couple that live here, an American and an Italian. And I think the advice about doing it with passion is one of the most key things, that you really have to love what you're doing on this platform. And yes, there is the money issues, the monetization, all that, but if you're really going ahead and doing what you love That whole portion, if you're doing it right, follows you down the road. And I'd like to invite everybody after this Hangout to come over and join our terrace party. I think we're going to do it. It was supposed to rain, but now it's looking OK.

Sounds good. Sounds like a plan. What was that, Anna?

I said address, please. Oh, OK.

Well, it's in the notes. Yeah, there is an event right after this one. You can find it on +Casa Chiesi, C-A-S-A C-H-I-E-S-I. That's Chiesi, not cheesy.

Not cheesy, yeah. I love that. And Shan Man, so good to have you back with us. I'm so happy to see you again.

Thank you, Jeff. I really do appreciate it. Yeah, I mean, I was I was gone for a little while. I had quite a few projects that I was taking care of. One in particular was a video project that I had created for my mom and dad for their 50th anniversary. And so I had to, by the request of my siblings, create a 30-minute documentary on their life. Wow. Wow. So that was something that was really, really time-consuming for me. You know, but it paid off in the end, and my dad just absolutely adores it, loves it, so that was something that was really cool. So that's what kept me back from Google+ and engaging for a while, because you just put a lot of energy into that, and then afterwards you just don't want to do anything after that. You just want to, you know, just step back. So, yeah, so it's good to be back, and you know, you can just find me at shannonjherandez.com.. There I of course talk about Google+, but I also have another side project that is in the wings. I can't really talk about it, but I know that when the time comes, I will be reaching out to you, Chef, to talk about it. It is actually a collaboration with my sister.

Cool. Anytime you're ready. Well guys, thank you so much, and I'd like to give one other quick shout out. We had so many people in the audience today that I didn't get to say hi I say hi to because you guys were so interesting and so engaging. Everyone here, thank you for coming. My sister Mia Voss was in, and I would like to say one thing. We talked about briefly about why the two of us do what we do. We've had many discussions about this, and it's all about entertaining people. It's all about bringing entertainment value. We see so many experts on here about social media and different topics. For us, it's like we never consider ourselves particular experts. I always say, "I know a guy who knows that stuff." It's like living in Jersey all over the place. I know a guy that can do that. We both take that kind of approach to it. It's like pushing the envelope. She's one of the reasons I started Good Day Google+. I saw what she was doing with her show and I went, you know, she's really on to something here. And so it goes to show you that, you know, you don't have to be an expert, you don't have to really stay in one product range if you have passion about what you do. And Anna, you talked about that, and I think everybody else talked about that. So it's about being passionate, about being happy what you're doing, and things will come to you when you do that. So guys, Thank you so much for being on today. Thank you for watching, and as always, it's a good day on Google+.

We'll see you soon. Ciao! Good day, Google+. Ciao!