Conference Planning for 2020 - Join me in San Diego for Social Media Marketing World

Greetings everybody, welcome to the Wednesday, October 9th, 2019 episode of Free Webinar Wednesdays. This is Eric Cook with WSI Digital where we work with our clients to help them connect and engage with their customers online. You can learn all sorts of good stuff and more about us over at poweredbywsi.com. Also, a little warning across the bow, Powered by WSI.com is in the process of getting a facelift. We're very excited about releasing the new version of our website. Our corporate mothership in Toronto released a new version of WSI World back in June. Actually, they launched it on my birthday. So that went live and we are following suit and going to embrace the new look and feel. So keep an eye out. We've got all sorts of cool things organized for it. We're going to be bringing in some really cool testimonials and customer stories and lots of interesting hands-on kind of validation information, especially focused in the banking vertical, which is where we spend a lot of our time, but in other areas as well because we do get to do some cool stuff for other types of businesses outside of the world of banking. So not exactly sure when we're going to release that because, as you can imagine, it's a pretty significant undertaking, especially for those of you that have ever gone through a web development project. and we spend a lot of our time focused on our customers' websites and not maybe as much on ours, but we're hoping to fix that as well. So pretty excited about the new arrival of Powered by WSI, so stay tuned. Today's show and all shows are recorded, as a reminder, and if you are one of the folks joining live, certainly appreciate you showing up and joining us live, and if you have questions, comments, feedback, just want to say hi, feel free to use the chat functionality in your control panel, likely hovering over on the right-hand side of your computer screen, and let us know if you've got any questions. Would love to hear from you. So we've got last week's show is up. We talked a little bit about, I guess a little bit more about hashtags and the Graduate School of Banking Sales and Marketing School, where I had the privilege of being a presenter/instructor. That now makes my 6th banking school that I get to be a part of, and I've met so many awesome bankers from around the country. Those are certainly exciting times. And so as part of my typical presentation, normally I get into digital marketing and social media and talk a lot about that. There's one conference that stands out, and it's not a banking conference, but there's one conference that really stands out in my mind, as far as being like, if I were to go someplace and be a kid in a candy store, as it relates to social media, that would be Social Media Marketing World out in San Diego. The folks at Social Media Examiner, Michael Stelzner and his crew, put on an awesome show. If I were to think kid in a candy store as it relates to banking conferences, I would have to say the Financial Brand Forum, which is out in Vegas every year. I got the opportunity to go to that last year, and that was just mind-blowing. Everything from Gary Vee, the infamous Gary Vee, Gary Vaynerchuk, VaynerMedia, the man. I was right front row when he kicked things off and gave his keynote to just really get everybody jazzed up and excited. And I would say some even scared a little bit about the future of digital, especially as it relates to banking. But those are 2 events that I'm pretty much guaranteeing myself, and I'm building it into my budget that I'm gonna go to those every year from this point forward, just because there's so much really good information there. But I wanted to kind of frame it up a little bit. So I've got some like formal slides here. I don't know as if it's necessarily warranted, but I figured why not? Let's put a slide presentation together because I've been doing so many slide presentations. I figured I would throw one together for Free Webinar Wednesdays, but I'm going to talk specifically about Social Media Marketing World. I've just got a couple of things that I want to share, some fun pictures. Um, full disclosure, I only endorse and recommend and/or even do affiliate links for events or activities or services that I truly believe in, that I'm buying myself. And so there's a requirement that anytime you talk about affiliate links, which means If you use this registration link, which if you decide to— whoops, there we go, got a sensitive mouse. If you decide that you would like to join me in San Diego in March and be part of Social Media Marketing World, and you would like me to get a little something-something off the back end, I am an affiliate with the Social Media Examiner. If you click on this link, this will tag your registration to us here at our office, and Social Media Examiner will thank me. For helping to spread the word about their event, and they provide us with a little bit of monetary compensation. It's nothing that I'm going to retire on, but it might help me buy an extra plate of sushi when I go to San Diego in March. So it's full disclosure, it is an affiliate link. That's a requirement anytime you offer any sort of affiliate links in the world of digital marketing. So I want to make sure that you understand, if you don't want to use that, you can just go to Social Media Examiner, and there is advertisements and information plastered all over their website about the program. And you can register directly if you so choose. But either way, if you're looking to up your game in the world of social and digital, this is the place to go. This is where the experts are hanging out, and you get face time with all of them. It's pretty awesome. The other thing that I just want to mention real quickly, and then we'll jump into the rest of this: the WSI World, which I am a part of, has produced two books, and we are just about ready to release our third edition of Digital Minds. All three of which I've been fortunate to have been asked by corporate to be. Author. The first 2, I wrote chapters on mobile and the power of the mobile device. The 3rd book, I actually wrote about artificial intelligence, chatbots, and the whole concept of conversational marketing as it relates to customer engagement and the conversion process. So I would be willing to bet, and maybe a show of hands from those of you that are attending live, most of us are now becoming very accustomed to going to websites and having chat as an option, whether or not that business is using chat appropriately. As far as proactively asking you if you wanna talk or just making it available, whether it's bot-driven and there's not a human involved until you actually ask for a person, or if it's actually human-driven. But the capabilities and the preferences of consumers of bots and being able to just ask questions and help it get you where you wanna go, people are preferring bot transactional, conversational, whatever you wanna call it, activity beyond email, phone calls, It just seems to be the way that we're communicating. And if you think of how many text messages you get versus phone calls you make these days, the bot really just kind of falls into that messaging area. And so pretty excited about the new book coming out, and I've seen the other 11 chapters as well. I've got a pre-release version of it that I'm in the process of retooling our Digital Dozen presentation and all the awesome things that consultants within the WSI world are talking about. So until then, if you are interested in checking out the current book, you can visit us at that WSI Book 2. That'll take you directly to our website, to our white papers page. You can download any and all of the chapters from our second edition at no cost, at no obligation. There's no like gateway to trick you into giving us your name or email address. They're all just freely available for download. So if you'd like to check out 12 chapters from the second edition, you can hop over and do that and then stay tuned to Free Webinar Wednesdays. Because we're going to make an announcement when that is available. And what I'm thinking we'll probably end up doing is inviting all of the other authors to join me on future shows and specifically talk about their chapter and some of the things that they learned as they were doing their research. And so it'll be— I think it'll be a really, really exciting 2020 as we pull in some other guests. And for a change, you don't have to just show up to Free Webinar Wednesdays. And listen to yours truly jaw on the phone for, you know, 30 minutes or 45 minutes. So pretty excited about that. Social Media Marketing World, March 1st through the 3rd, 2020, San Diego. Blow in a little early, stay a little late. If you're from a northern climate like I am here in Michigan, it's a good opportunity to get someplace where you're probably not going to see a whole lot of snow. It's at the convention center there. There's a number of hotels within walking distance. Like anytime I've ever visited San Diego, it is likely going to be beautiful weather and sunshiny and warm, but not too hot. But that is the date for this year's event. So mark your calendars and hopefully you'll be able to join. One of the things that I thought was pretty funny as I was doing some of my pre-research before the show, I was scrolling through Social Media Marketing World's website, which we're going to hop over to in a little bit and just kind of show you some of the presentations and the sessions that are available. In case we've not met in person, that goofy-looking bald guy with a little bit of gray in his beard is yours truly. The other gal there is Cheryl Baldwin. She is our Director of Marketing for WSI Corporate in Toronto. She attended this past year. You'll see some pictures here in just a little bit. Ellie from our office and myself and one other colleague of ours, Chuck Bankoff. from California actually attended Social Media Marketing World 2018. We came back and bragged about it so much that we ended up putting together a pretty good-sized contingent of other WSI consultants, and corporate made sure that we sent somebody there. And Cheryl's been talking with some of the vendors that we met at 2019 Social Media Marketing World. Some of those have been released into the WSI network as new strategic partners, which we're really excited about. MobileMonkey, for example, which is a Facebook Messenger chat service. We met with the folks at MobileMonkey while we were out there, and we now have a corporate partnership. And the folks at MobileMonkey, Larry Kim, who's the founder, very influential individual within the social media world. He's actually going to be at our global convention in Cancun in a couple of weeks, and we've had webinars and just all sorts of really awesome stuff. That's just one example of the things that we've been able to take away. But a few of these pictures, the first year that we went, the USS Midway, the aircraft carrier, they actually had their opening reception on the aircraft carrier. I had so many pictures to pick from that I could have put into the presentation. We were in the belly of the aircraft carrier, having cocktails and eating hors d'oeuvres and standing next to fighter jets and helicopters. It was pretty amazing. Uh, the gal down in the bottom left is Viveka Van Rozen. She's like the LinkedIn Pied Piper. She is like one of the go-to gals, one of the trainers. She's been part of social media marketing world. She speaks a lot. Uh, the cool part about this program is you get like right up next to the experts. It's like going to an NBA game, and I'm gonna date myself, but back in the day, and being able to walk right up to Michael Jordan and get a picture. The gal in the bottom middle is Mari Smith. She is pretty much the all-knowing empress of anything related to Facebook, so she is unbelievable. Did the keynote this year and was, was great. Right above her, Ellie and I actually got a picture with Chewbacca Mom. So she was there in 2018, just kind of recounting her story of how Her video of her putting on that Chewbacca mask went freaking viral in all of the views and visibility and just the story. She was such a lovely woman and was very gracious, and her story was hilarious, and we took pictures. Top right, we were actually sitting there having a drink at the end of the day, digesting everything. And the man himself, Michael Stelzner, who is the founder of Social Media Examiner— I listen to his podcast every week. Um, he walked by and I just blurted out, Michael! And he turned around and came up and talked to us. And I said, could we get a picture? And he's like, absolutely. Just, just an awesome guy. And then down in the bottom, this is just a sampling of a few of the consultants that we were able to send, um, to San Diego this past year, 2019. And I suspect we'll have even more joining the event. So really excited about attending. I already bought Ellie and I already have tickets for 2020, and pretty much every time we go, we know we're gonna buy tickets for the following year, and our calendars are just cleared off. So again, as a reminder, if you'd like to support the affiliate link here and register, or just hop over to their website and browse around— if you use this link just to get to their website and browse around, it'll drop a little cookie and just kind of tie you back to us. But you certainly don't have to do that if you choose not to. That's no big deal. I just wanted to throw that out there. So I'm gonna go ahead and flip over to the actual website of Social Media Examiner and the Marketing World. Now they also do a lot of other really awesome events as well. They've got a Google Analytics Summit that we participated in, they've got a Facebook Ads Summit. I belong to the Social Media Marketing World Society, which is a private paid-for Facebook group where I can go in and communicate with other digital marketers from around the world, literally. And ask questions and feedback. They do office hours. So if you're even remotely interested in upping your game in the world of social media and digital, it's a really great place to go. Or if this is too much information for you to comprehend, the good news is there's geeks like me that tap into this stuff, and we can just provide you with all this great information if, if you want to work with us. So either way, It's a pretty exciting time to be a digital marketer and be able to go through. So I'm just looking quickly at a couple of the questions that I didn't see when I was in the PowerPoint. So the gal's name in the bottom middle, yes, that was Mari Smith. Yeah, she's the Facebook guru. So definitely Mari is awesome. M-A-R-I, Mari Smith. If you do a Google search for Mari and Facebook, you will find way more information on anything and everything that you'd ever want to know about Facebook. So she's awesome, and I specifically asked her before I actually took that selfie, is, as I told her, I do a lot of work in the banking space, and what's one of the tips that you would have to community bankers that are interested in getting more engaged and being better at social media? And she said, just be real and go out and share your experience and not talk about products and services, but just go out and use it as a relationship-building tool and And just be accessible. And oftentimes that's some of the stuff that I talk about when I do my presentations is if you— and again, I know this is a little banking heavy, so those of you that aren't bankers, I apologize— but you may come from a regulated industry like healthcare or insurance, or maybe you just want to be sensitive to things related to customer privacy. If you stay away from product-related information, which first and foremost most people really don't want to hear you talk about products. Imagine if you had a banker that jumped on social media and all they did was talk about mortgage loans and interest rates and closing fees. Yeah, that might be interesting if you're right then and there thinking about applying for a mortgage, but the audience that would be interested in that is very, very, very small. It's much better to hop on and talk about big picture things and maybe stuff that doesn't even have anything to do with mortgage loans. But it has everything to do with what the bank is doing in the community. We participated in the local fair, and here's a picture of us with the prize steer that we went in on with several other businesses. And this is what, you know, Joey's gonna do with the money. He's gonna put it in a savings account, and he's gonna, you know, he wants to go to college when he graduates. Or those are the types of things that are more about just you as an individual and your organization from a big picture. And when you stay away from all that product-related stuff, The audience is likely going to be more interested because now it's more about them and what they want to know as opposed to you talking about your products and services. But if you've got any sort of compliance or privacy issues, they're not going to be concerned as much about that because you're not talking about products and rates and fees, which in the banking world trigger things like disclosures and all sorts of disclaimers and whatnot. So, um, Yeah, so great chat with Mari, and she's just a real gem, super open. I've actually emailed her a couple of times and she gets back to you, which is, you know, just one of the perks of being part of this. I've emailed Michael Stelzner a couple of times and he gets back to you. So it's, it's just a great little community to plug into. So if you click on the link or you just go to socialmediaexaminer.com over to SMMW World, you can, you can actually get access to the information. One of the things, this is where I caught the video preview that I was just kind of scrolling through and I was like, oh, wait a minute. Hey, I recognize that dude. I haven't watched the video yet, so I don't know if there's other WSI consultants because I didn't want to run the risk of the screenshot or the thumbnail actually disappearing because I thought that was kind of cool. But I did get a screenshot of it, so I guess I can save that for posterity's sake. But if you hop over and just kind of take a look at some of the stuff, The way that it's organized is like the first day they've got longer format workshops, which are pretty cool because you're actually in there for like an hour and a half each. They go a little bit more deeper dive, a little more hands-on. And then you've got the actual sessions themselves that follow up on the next couple of days. If I just pop into the session list, some of them are recurring. Which is, uh, which is okay because in the world of social media and digital, things change. You know, Facebook is, uh, not drastically different, but certainly different than it was when we were there in 2018, and it's going to be different by 2020 than what it looks like today, or even what it looked like back in February and March of 2019. Um, but if you go through, you can kind of get an idea of the categories that people have it in. So Instagram, a lot of buzz about that. Subi Zimmerman is really one of the top-level speakers in that area. But stories— Facebook came out in their F8 conference earlier this year and talked about stories being huge. Stories, groups, video, and Messenger— those are the 4 real pillars that Facebook is relying on. And we're even seeing, you know, we talk about groups, they're doing television, nationwide television advertising to promote groups and how groups are being used and Facebook to pull people together of like-minded interests. There's the latest commercial that's hitting the airwaves now is one on basset hounds. I wish they would have picked golden retrievers, but you know, beggars can't be choosers, I suppose. But it is a cool little commercial about pulling people together that share a common interest, and that being basset hounds. So that's pretty cool. But Instagram, you can just get an idea and look at all of the information that's Instagram related. Every single one of these, you can go in and you can kind of get a little bit more information when you get to the specific details. You got Facebook advertising. As organic visibility in Facebook continues to be a challenge, you can either empower your employees and train them and let them be a part of your social initiatives. So as an organization, you might post something to Facebook and then your employees Could be provided the link, and if they so choose— you can't mandate it— but if they so choose, they could share that information on their own Facebook, which will help. But if you're not able to do that, or maybe you want to get even more of a bump, advertising is a way to do that. They've gone in and actually made some changes. We talked a little bit about Facebook ads in last week's show, particularly in the areas of the extension of offers of credit in employment and anything related to housing, whether that has anything to do with like buying a house. So mortgage loans or renting, anything related to housing. Those are treated now specially under Facebook's new terms and conditions. So here's organic and there's Mari. Boom, not a surprise. I suspect she'll probably be speaking in a number of different areas as it relates to Facebook. Then we dive into YouTube, the world's number 2 search engine. One of the videos that I shared in My last social media marketing school was Socialnomics from Eric Qualman, and in that he shares this statistic that 80% of the bandwidth that's consumed, or 80% of video— I want to get it right— video represents 80% of what we're doing on mobile devices. And I might be paraphrasing that a little bit, but basically the gist of it is a vast majority of what we're doing on our mobile device watching video, whether that's on YouTube or other types of video. But certainly YouTube being part of Google, being part of the ecosystem, a lot of consumers are going directly into YouTube and they're searching there because they don't necessarily want to just read information, they want to be talked to, they want to see what's going on. So YouTube, and then how do you tie that into further video marketing? Zach King— if you've not seen any of Zach King stuff, he's the guy that does all the cool little video tricks where you'll watch a video and he'll like jumps into a piece of paper or he disappears on a wall and shows up on the other side. He's got some really, really cool things that he does. So just, you know, get an idea of where he sees online video headed. LinkedIn. So you can see here, it's kind of funny, this is a very long page. You've only seen 5 of the 16 tracks. So if you're not getting the impression or getting the idea that there's a ton of info here, You're probably not listening. No, I'm just kidding. There's a ton of info here. There's Vivica. She— I don't think I've ever not seen her with that like ginormous smile on her face. And so she's just totally bubbly. So she's part of a company called Vingreso. Bernie Borges, which is another friend of mine, works down there, and I've seen him at past shows as well. So Vivica's stuff's always great. I've sat into AJ's stuff about advertising on LinkedIn, which is starting to become a little bit of a challenge. This gal right here, Goldie Chan, green hair and all, I'll have to admit I first rolled into her session last year and she had some slides up on the screen and she's got her neon green hair, and for a minute I thought I walked into the Snapchat session because I kind of did a double take. Like, LinkedIn is supposed to be this business professional, and you know, she's got all these funny videos with filters and goofy glasses. She's been doing a video a day every day for 650, probably getting close to 700 days, and she's one of only a handful of people as a LinkedIn influencer that's been invited to participate in the LinkedIn Live private beta. And so be curious to see by 2020 if LinkedIn Live goes mainstream because it just got released. But when LinkedIn video was released a couple years ago, She basically said, I'm gonna, I'm gonna do a video a day, um, for 10 days and see what that does for me. And then she decided, 10 days came and went, I'm gonna do for 20 days, and then I'm gonna do 50 days. And then the next thing you know, she's like at 650, closing in on 700 days of a video every day. And, uh, pretty amazing what video has done for her business. She runs an agency. She works with huge brands. She consults directly with the United Nations. Certainly ate crow on my initial first impression, thinking that this was a Snapchat-y type of environment. Reached out to her afterwards and she connected right with me on LinkedIn and we've shared some dialogue. So again, this is like getting the NBA superstars to actually talk to you and give you advice and tips on how to dribble a basketball and shoot a free throw. And I played a little bit of basketball in my day, but that's about the extent of my basketball analogies. And I don't want to drop any cycling analogies because I figure a basketball analogy is a little bit more universal. Social strategy, you know, tons of really good stuff. Mark Schaefer did a closing keynote last year talking about his new book. He's, you know, an awesome guy. I heard him speak in 2018. He did the closing session. And actually, on my way back on the airplane, I was inspired by his presentation so much that I actually hopped on, on airplane Wi-Fi, started registering some domain names, putting together some mind maps and some other business plan ideas. Just totally got me excited and continue to follow all of his stuff. The cool part about all of these individuals is almost all of them have blog content. Almost all of them are doing podcasts. So if you want to dive in and get more details about any of these folks before you show up. You can plug in and get access to all of their information. Ian Clary is another awesome dude. He's out of Ireland. I've actually seen him do like backflips on the trolley on the way to networking and cocktail receptions, but just a total ball of energy. And he's another great one. Razor Social is his company, and he's always talking about cool tools and other sorts of platform ideas. Video creation, whether you're doing it just directly from your mobile device or you've got more of a formal setup with a camera and a green screen. Live streaming video is another big area. One of the jokes that I'll make typically when I'm in a banking event is I'll say, you want to see your compliance officer break out in hives, start talking about live video and just watch them just get really anxious. But live video doesn't have to be scary. You can do live video even from a regulated compliance-driven environment like banking. Because you can do live video at events and activities. You go back to like the, you know, we work with a lot of community banks that participate in their local county fair. Do a live video from the fair talking about just different things that you're doing in and around nonprofits, service events, community activities. That's the type of stuff that people really care about. Twitter's not going away. We got 280 characters to play with now, so there's some Twitter stuff there. Some Pinterest. Of all the social platforms, Pinterest is probably the one that I've just not tapped into. I don't know. I know there was some prediction that Pinterest would be big, and I know Bank of America kind of did some stuff a couple years ago with Pinterest to try to drive it. And I just, I'll be honest with you, I think maybe I've just reached my max with social networking platforms. Analytics is another area that I think is super important. I will admit I went through and sat through Chris Penn's session. That guy's really smart and admitted I got lost. He went really deep. Very good stuff. The other cool part about this program is when we registered, we actually did an all-access pass because, you know, it said you've got 5 out of 16. And I'll just kind of continue to scroll through and kind of show some stuff here. But the All Access Pass, when the conference is over, they send you a link and you actually get all of the recordings, you get all of the presentation files, you get transcriptions of all of the audio, and that's made available to you through a portal that you can log into and get access. So you're never going to be able to cover everything. What you want to do is either network with folks that have been and say, who are the awesome speakers? Who are the people we want to check out? Listen to some podcasts, develop some, you know, these are the folks that we really want to make sure we see live. But then when you get back, put together a plan that forces yourself to go in and review some of the other sessions. So maybe there's a session out there that you know you need to know but might be a little bit more mechanical, like Chris Penn, for example. I would maybe want to sit down when I've got a little bit better of an environment to take notes. Maybe I've got Google Analytics open in another monitor. I can pause, I can play around with some stuff, but you get full access to all of this when you're done. I know the Financial Brand Forum does the same thing because you can't simply get to all of the sessions. There's, there's so many breakout sessions with so many awesome presenters that they just give you the ability to record it and be able to pull through So it's, it's pretty cool. The other thing, and yes, we've got an option here as well, Madison from our team who is listening in and helping me with doing the write-ups after the show, so thank you, Maddie. But a little nudge, the virtual ticket is another good option because even though it doesn't get you to the conference, so you're not going to enjoy cocktails in the belly of an aircraft carrier or see Ian Clary do his inverted pull-ups on a downtown trolley, which I think might have gotten him in a little bit of trouble, but it was still pretty awesome. You can actually purchase a virtual ticket, and that virtual ticket allows for you to get access to all of the recordings. And so even though you don't get to go there, maybe you've got a scheduling conflict and you just can't travel in March, but you want to get access to all the information, you can go ahead and pull the trigger on a virtual ticket, and that gives you the recordings. So you can still get the info, you can still get access to stuff. You're not going to get to hobnob and shake hands with Mari and Viveka and see all the people, but if the content is what you're looking for, the virtual ticket is a really good opportunity. And they do offer those virtual tickets for some of their other events as well. So keep an eye on that, but that's kind of a lower-cost way where you can still get access to all the awesome information that, that exists. It's kind of funny, they've even gone through and created a do you need to convince the boss email. So you can actually go in and you can click on the email template and then they'll actually write the email that you can use to send to your boss and say, hey, I want to spend $900 in a ticket and a flight to San Diego and a couple of nights hotel room. It'll give you that information so you can go ahead and send it right to your, right to your boss. So pretty cool. I'm gonna hit the pause button. I'm gonna go back to the questions and see if there are any questions from those that are attending live. We'll give it a minute. And then what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna just kind of pop over to kind of the workshop side of things. And this dives in a little bit more into workshop. We actually had Michael and Amy at one of our conventions with WSI. Interestingly enough, a really good friend of mine who also happened to be the former co-host but still co-founder of Free Webinar Wednesdays—you may have heard me speak of Jeff Simpkins—but Jeff actually introduced me to Michael Port and his book called Book Yourself Solid. Free Webinar Wednesdays actually exists because Jeff and I. We're going through Michael Port's book and we, we wanted to have, uh, it's called an always have something you can invite somebody to strategy. So as a salesperson, again, whether you're in banking or any other industry, if maybe now is not the right time for that business to refinance or to move their deposits or whatever the case is, if there's something that you can invite that business to that keeps them engaged with you, Well, that's great, but you know our bank puts together a monthly newsletter specifically designed for small businesses. Would you be interested in getting access to that? Or every once in a while we'll put we'll put on you know meet and greets at our office where we bring in people or do a co-sponsorship with a local chamber. Or you know it's Cybersecurity Awareness Month in the financial industry. We've got a number of tips related to cybersecurity. Would you be interested in maybe signing up for our security tips for small businesses. And so even though they're not saying, I want to do business with you now, I want you to do my loan, or I want to move all my deposits to you, or hire you, or retain your services as an attorney, or whatever the case is, you get the opportunity to communicate with them on a regular basis, which helps you build top of mind. It keeps you in touch. And so the whole concept, when Jeff and I came up with the idea, he actually traveled to Michigan and we were sitting down and he had just left his position at Jack Henry, and we were thinking about, well, what are some of the things that we might be able to do? And we said, well, let's do a webinar. Let's do, let's do a webinar every week. Well, when would we have it? Well, let's do Weekly Webinar Wednesdays. No, let's do it. And so after like just an afternoon, we came up with a concept, and this is back in 2009. And so the Free Webinar Wednesdays concept came out of some of the stuff that Michael Port talks about in his book. Book Yourself Solid. So anytime I talk to somebody that's thinking about either starting a business or maybe even joining the WSI world, that's one of the books. And I've had the pleasure of meeting Michael in person. And so again, just kind of a cool little thing that, that, that happens there. But these are all pre-conference, you know, deeper dive sessions that you can go into. Chris Ducker is another one that I want to make sure to mention. Because this is kind of what I preach when I talk to community bankers. And again, I know this is a very banking-heavy reference because that's kind of the world I lived in. But at the end of the day, businesses do people— businesses do business with other people, and it's the people in those businesses. So it's all— people say, well, are you B2B or B2C? Really, it's P2P. I'm person-to-person. And And so what Chris has done is he's actually got a book called The Youpreneur, and it's all about— and I'll probably get this wrong— but it's building a business based off of what you do, what you love, and the people that you want to serve, or something to that effect. But it's— you can be a Youpreneur and still work within an organization because at the end of the day, when I was a banker, one of the things my father told me, who was a 33-year banker, is he said people are going to want to do business with you because they see that you are their banker, not just because you work at the bank. They're going to call you with questions. They're going to expect you to have answers. They're going to want you to do the footwork and the legwork to find things out, because at the end of the day, it's the relationship that they have with you, not just with Marshall Savings Bank, that's going to matter most. And so regardless of what industry you're in, think about how you can build that person-to-person connection. And social media gives us the capabilities to do that. At a very powerful scale. Back when my father was having this discussion with me in, you know, the late '90s, we didn't have sites like LinkedIn where you could share articles and content, and you couldn't review, and you couldn't do blogs, and you couldn't do video. You couldn't do a webinar like this. I mean, it was unforeseen to be able to do a webinar with screen sharing and whatnot. But now we have so many technology capabilities to help us personify our personas and our personalities So that people can get to know you and like you and trust you. Although what Chris says is, know me, love me, trust me. Like isn't enough anymore. We have to get our customers and our prospects to love us in order to do business. And it's true because I'll roll into a conference or an event someplace and I'll have people come up and ask me about my dogs. They'll ask me when my next bike ride is. And I've not met them before, but they've followed me. They've been able to plug in and see some of the things that I've been talking about on social media. They'll ask me questions. You know, hey, you wrote that chapter. You've got a chapter coming up on AI, and our bank's been thinking about you doing a chatbot. You know, what are some of the things that are in that? Because the book's not out yet. And so it's just really cool that the, the Youpreneur capabilities are there, and digital has made it even more powerful. So Chris has got a really great podcast, and he invites good guests on. He shares some good stuff. So Chris is another one that I would recommend plugging into because I follow a lot of his stuff. But yeah, I'm trying to think if there's anything else that I want to mention specifically about this. Dive in and take a look at the speaker profiles. So you've got all the different speakers here, so it gives you a little bit more information about those folks. They're out there. Sponsors. So a lot of these sponsors are platforms that obviously are interested in selling their wares. So there's a number of platforms that are out there as sponsors that we actually use within our office. I already mentioned MobileMonkey. Our office is using Wave.video. We have moved forward with a platform at corporate called Proposify. We use a social media posting service from a company called CloudCampaign where we were able to speak and chat with some of those folks. And there's another platform that WSI corporate came on board with that does even more social posting. So lots of really great, you know, sponsors and whatnot. And then all the other stuff with conferences— there's that Convince the Boss letter, which is kind of cool, talking about everything, you know, how do you promote it. So just a really, really good event that gives you a ton of info. Again, if you're somebody that just totally geeks out on all the social media stuff, it's like a kid in the candy store. And my brain is always thinking about, you know, how do we take all this stuff and how do I translate it for my bankers? So they're thinking about things like, well, yeah, that's all well and good, but how do I do it and make sure that I'm compliant? How do I make sure that I'm not violating regs? How do I make sure that it's secure and I'm not opening up vulnerabilities in my network or potential risk and exposure from a privacy or a customer confidentiality perspective? So all of those additional layers, you can imagine I have some pretty interesting conversations with myself because I did compliance for a while while I was a banker, and now I'm exposed to all these cool shiny objects that get presented at Social Media Marketing World. But that's, I guess, one of the big reasons why I just love what I do, and I'm really looking forward to going back in March and being part of this event. So that's really what I wanted to talk about today. Really excited that it's coming up again. I pay attention to Social Media Examiner. They got 2 podcasts that I listen to almost on a religious basis, Social Media Marketing Talk Show and then Social Media Examiner. So you just do a search in your favorite podcasting application for Social Media Examiner and you'll find both of those. Plug into Pat Flynn stuff, plug into Chris Ducker's stuff. A couple of other really good ones. Pay attention to anything that Mari Smith is talking about, especially in this age of turmoil with everything that's going on in the world of Facebook. She's going to keep you updated on everything that's going on over there. And then, yeah, if you're interested in chatting or maybe you've got some more specific questions about the event, by all means, don't hesitate to reach out and let me know. But otherwise, with that, we're going to go ahead and wrap the show. Certainly appreciate everybody joining us. I was originally going to be out of town next week doing an event, and that's been pushed back into 2020. So it looks like we're actually going to have another show. So that's like, what, like 3 or 4 weeks in a row? Unprecedented in the days of recent Free Webinar Wednesdays. But we'll be back next week with another show. Look forward to seeing everybody then. But until then, we'll get the recording taken care of, pushed up to freewebinarwednesdays.com. Maybe you can use this to convince your boss that you need to go to Social Media Marketing World and learn all sorts of cool stuff on how to take your business to the next level leveraging the wonderful world of social media. So until then, have an awesome week everybody. Thanks for joining me live. Thanks for listening if you're watching this on a recording. And we'll see you at freewebinarwednesdays.com down the road. Take care, everybody. Bye-bye.