Free Webinar Wednesdays Recaps the #SMMW18 Conference

Greetings everybody, welcome to the Wednesday, March 7th, 2018 episode of Free Webinar Wednesdays. This is Eric Cook with WSI Digital Marketing, where we work with businesses and organizations on helping them better understand and leverage the power of the internet as a strategic business tool. You can learn more about me and all the fun stuff we get to do here at WSI online at www.poweredbywsi.com. It appears as if my good friend and Free Webinar Wednesday partner, Mr. Jeff Simpkins, is either going to be a little tardy or unable to join us today for the show. So if he hops on, I will make a point of having him give you a hello, but it looks like he might end up being AWOL. But the good news is—

He's not.

I have a co-host who is joining us today who also was a co-traveler of mine and happens to also be a coworker, um, for the, uh, Social Media Marketing World event that we're going to talk about today, as well as within the WSI business. So, um, Ellie, I'll let you say hello to everybody. So this is Ellie Humphreys. She's on our team.

Hi, everybody.

And has been with us now for a little over a year, and I've asked her to be on the show. This is her first time on Free Webinar Wednesdays, and she is much younger than I am, so we're going to get a millennial's perspective on the show. So I'm excited that you're joining us today, Ellie.

Hello everyone, I work with Eric and I do digital marketing and project management. And he asked me to talk a little bit about the conference we just went to. This was my first conference postgraduate of college, and I had a lot of fun and learned a lot and met a lot of new people. I finally learned what it was like to network in real life and not just over a computer screen. So that was cool.

Yeah.

And so we got to sit through many sessions every day for about anywhere from 8 to 10 hours, I think. and learn about every kind of social platform that exists and about how to market better as individuals for personal brands and for company brands. So it was very interesting. It's probably the most useful event I've ever been to at— for only being 23 years old, and I learned more information than my brain can handle, but it was very fun. And, um, Are you gonna talk first about it, or do you want me to?

Well, yeah, we'll jump into it. And I promised not to share the picture that I took of you sleeping in the Jeep on the way home because I could tell she was pretty much wiped out, and I could tell that her brain was full. We had a pretty big 3 days in San Diego. And yeah, she mentioned fun. One of our other colleagues from the WSI world who's also a co-author in the Digital Minds book with me, Chuck Bankoff, was also there. So there were 3 of us, and between the 3 of us, we still couldn't cover everything that was going on in the world of social media marketing world. So I skipped over the housekeeping items. I just want to make sure I go back to those. If you have a question, if you're listening live, if you're joining us for the live show, first off, thank you for joining us live, and we, we appreciate you being here. If you've got a question or you're wondering if something was talked about, 'Cause chances are it probably was, but we may not get to it in the hour that we've got. Please feel free to use the chat functionality in the GoToWebinar panel and let us know. And we always love hearing from people that are attending live. And if, if you want to relive this or share it with a friend or a colleague, today's show and all shows are recorded, of course, and made available at freewebinarwednesdays.com. So you can check it out there. And then pick around and maybe see what other shows we've talked about in the past that you might be interested in. So, so as Ellie said, this was not only one of the better conferences, although I would have to say you probably don't have a whole lot of conference experience under your belt yet just being a recent graduate, but I knew that this was going to be an awesome event for her just from a millennial's perspective because, you know, this is kind of how that generation has grown up. And with me being more of a digital import than a digital native, you know, I've had to learn some of these things that have come along. And we work a lot with banks that tend to be a little bit more conservative in nature and might not be interested in being the first adopter of a lot of things that are going on in the world. But yeah, so, you know, I'm trying to figure out, and it's been a couple of days since I announced the topic, of exactly how we wanted to structure today's conversation. I think what I'll do is maybe, Ellie, you want to just maybe start off with a couple of the big things that you took away from the event? You mentioned the networking with other people, the conference sessions, you know, maybe start at a high level of the big things, and then I'll mention some of the ones that I took away, and then we can maybe get into some of the particulars on a few of the sessions that we sat in on.

All right. Well, to start, for networking, there was events every night that we got to attend and meet people from all over the world, from Australia, Russia, basically everywhere. So that was a cool thing. And I got to meet marketing directors of companies that I've heard of, but I've never really known the background. And I've made connections on LinkedIn now with a bunch of people. That, that was cool. And for other networking, sitting in each session, we were asked to do like examples or activities and do stuff to perform, like to give input to the speaker. So I was taking videos of me and random people sitting next to me, just getting to know people to practice the different social networking and platforms that they were having us use. So that was really cool. But for 3 takeaways that I found out of— I mean, we could be here all day. So I have 34 notes of takeaways, but 3 of the main big ones that I thought were really interesting and mind-blowing was, well, first I'm gonna start with LinkedIn. We do a lot of LinkedIn training for banks right now, so I tried to sit in as many LinkedIn sessions as I could. So my first aha moment has to do with LinkedIn content revolving around video. I learned that the native video for LinkedIn is one of the most important types of content marketing on the LinkedIn platform, and the content is referred to as the buyer's journey. That's what the speaker of this session said, in that basically the content leads the buyer down the road of getting them to either buy or walk away. So the interesting facts that supported the statement of it being the buyer's journey was that 78% of the videos are watched every week. And if you think about it, that is a lot of video content and a lot of time taken out of an individual's week just to watch videos. And another 55% of the videos are watched every day, which is also very high considering there are only 24 hours in a day. So 78% of videos in a week and 55% in a day. So I thought that was a very high percentage. for just one platform being LinkedIn. And the last stat that they gave us was 69% of internet traffic comes from video. So that's about 70% of all internet traffic coming from video and it's increasing every day. It's becoming one of the most popular ways to advertise and market your business and yourself. So, and the next fact that I have that was from LinkedIn Was the top three call to actions that seemed to be getting the most clicks and conversions. They claimed that LinkedIn has the top three call to actions as download now, dive in, and learn more. Contact us and other call to actions that we used to think were very effective are now becoming nonexistent, and they're not receiving as many clicks. So I thought that was very interesting, as most people's social platforms and forms on their website are just Contact Us, but I learned that that's not very effective anymore and that you're better off using a creative slogan or a button like Dive In Now or Click Here to Learn More about whatever you're trying to get across. So that was really interesting to me because I'm used to just seeing the very obvious click this or click that. So that was very cool, and I think we'll be able to implement that. on a lot of our stuff we do for our company and our clients. And my last takeaway is more of a fun fact. I sat in a Snapchat session just for fun to see what it was all about. I've never learned anything about Snapchat on the business side, only the personal side. So I just thought, why not give it a shot? So I learned some crazy statistics though. Like I was mind blown. So I have to share them. 40% of Snapchatters do not use Facebook on any given day. And another 60% of Snapchatters are not using any other platform on a given day, meaning they're not getting on Facebook, they're not getting on Instagram, they're not getting on Twitter or anything else besides Snapchat. 60% of people. That was crazy to me. And then the last one was people open Snapchat 25+ times a day. 25 times daily. That is a lot of time being spent on one app in one day. And I found that to be one of the most shocking stats, as I'm a big Snapchat user in my everyday life. So now I catch myself, I'm like, is this, is this number 5, 6, 7, 20 that I've logged into this app today? So it's pretty crazy. But that's some of the more surprising stuff that I took away. And like I said, we would be here all day if we talked about all of it, but You can go now, Eric. I think that's all I have for now.

Yeah, well, that's awesome. And I will, I will give you and your friend Lexi a hat tip to my utilization of Snapchat. We recently went on a trip together last year and kind of gave them the directive that I had been one of those guys that has installed and uninstalled Snapchat probably a dozen times because I just couldn't get it. I didn't understand it. It wasn't comfortable to me, and during that time together, I finally understood how Snapchat worked and how it could create connectivity. Still trying to figure out how it would work necessarily from a banker's perspective, although if you're from a bank, if you're in a college town, if you're doing events and activities that are attracting a younger population, if you want to position yourself as having some fun, Realize that you're probably not going to get a gigantic mortgage out of it, but that could be a way to reposition yourself as a little bit more hip and cool. You just want to make sure that if you are going to do it, that you don't put somebody like me in charge of what hip and cool and fun is on Snapchat. I watched Ellie as we were traveling to the conference, and she hopped on the in-flight Wi-Fi and was taking pictures out the window and using little emotion icons or whatever they're called, emojis, or what are those little The little version of you that was in the paper airplane. What are those called?

The Bitmoji.

The Bitmojis. See, that's why you don't have somebody like me taking charge of your Snapchat. But she was doing little images and Bitmojis, which are little replicas of her flying in an airplane, and there was a filter that said the Rocky Mountains. And it was, it was interesting to watch her do that because she put that really cool picture of her flying over the Rockies Together on her phone while we were in an airplane in about 30 seconds, and that would have taken me probably half an hour to figure out, and it still wouldn't have been as cool. So, so for businesses that are out there that are interested, this is a, a lifestyle that this next generation of consumers growing up with and communicating with, and it's important to kind of keep that in mind. Um, A couple of the observations on the things that you talked about, Ellie, and that was an awesome rundown. The native video for LinkedIn, I think, is an important thing to note, not because it's just video, but because native video is captured on your mobile device. And it's, it's, it's— so if you open up your phone and you have the LinkedIn app, you can always upload a YouTube video or create a link to a video in LinkedIn. You know, a lot of people have done that. But when you think about native video and being able to take a picture, take a video while you're out and about, and then share that instantly, one of the things that I'm going to talk about as far as my takeaways is, is being comfortable with creating genuineness, authenticity, and maybe even a little bit of vulnerability as either an individual or an organization to humanize your business or you as a person so that people really feel like they get to know you, that you're not just, you know, everybody likes to put perfect pictures on Facebook and Instagram and they're filtered and they're touched up. So the whole world is only seeing kind of through rose-colored glasses what you are. But being able to go live and share that information or capture video right from your phone and then post it right there immediately. that has to be done on a mobile device, and certainly the influence of mobile was huge as part of this conference. And then what else was there? I think that was probably the main thing, just the importance of the mobile device. So a couple of my takeaways as part of the event. So Michael Stelzner, and I've got Social Media Examiner here, he has created Social Media Examiner. Social Media Examiner is the organization that puts on Social Media Marketing World. He kicked off the conference with kind of an opening keynote, talked about the Facebook January 11th post that Mark Zuckerberg put out. And if you've not heard of that before, just do a search on Google for Facebook January 11th, Facebook Armageddon, Facebook Apocalypse, Facebook Zero. Facebook, as being the world's number one social networking platform, is changing the way that they are allowing businesses and brands and even individuals to connect with one another. And he shared some really scary statistics about the number of people that were surveyed that are focusing on Facebook as being one of their primary means of distribution of content. They're going to push out information there. But yet Facebook has come out and said, you will see less information from brands and organizations. We want to create engagement and interactivity between Facebook users, which is going to mean less information from brands. It's going to be more of like live video where you can create conversations and you can interact with one another in longer-form comments. And so the survey that they did at Social Media Examiner around what people want to do is almost 180 degrees in the other direction of where Facebook is shifting. And so thinking about either getting a lot more comfortable in telling stories and being on live video so that you can build engagement right in the moment, or you're gonna have to get better at advertising and pay Facebook to put your stuff out there. And then you're gonna have to think about things like list targeting and audience segmentation and thinking about demographics and who, who you really want to put your message in front of. So that was a pretty substantial thing for me, because some industries are going to have a challenge getting people to have conversations about what they do. Again, I go back to the banking sector. People might not want to have big conversations about their banking account information because that's probably a pretty sensitive topic. So do you need to start thinking about what you represent as an organization, and can you create conversations around other things like community events and activities, financial literacy and education, or whatever industry you're in. If it's not banking, think about beyond just your own organization and what you stand for and how can you build some, some conversation around that. The other thing that I've started doing some research on, and now it's going to be even more so, is the whole concept of chatbots. And a lot of us have been on websites where a little chat icon shows up in the bottom, Facebook Messenger is a standalone program now. You don't even need to have a Facebook account in order to have a Messenger account, which is basically like text messaging. Chatbots are positioned to become the next engagement customer interaction tool, and we saw a lot of information. I sat through several sessions about how, you know, instead of going to a site like this where I have to put in my name and my email address to send me a copy, A button could show up here and says, you know, get the, uh, get the guide, or as Ellie said, you know, download now or learn more or dive in. Um, I could click on a button and that would authenticate me against the Social Media Examiner site with my Facebook account because I'm already logged in as Facebook. And so Social Media Examiner would get better data about me as an individual, and it makes it easier for me. And then if I go on to social— media. Social Media Examiner can continue the conversation at my approval because I can control who can and can't contact me through the messaging application. But it allows businesses to communicate with their customers outside of email and all these other channels that are starting to get clogged up. So one of the little takeaways— and I've not had an opportunity to go through this course, although I have signed up for a free account and I'm giving it a shot and doing some testing— but one of the speakers that was on a panel and I actually got to sit in on a session as well, is a platform called ManyChat. And this is a chatbot technology, which is essentially software or a service that sits inside of a messaging application like Facebook Messenger. And you can go through this video training course if you're interested in how the heck to use a chatbot, what it is, and understand how you could use this as a way for customer service, as a way to answer questions or provide education, and And it doesn't have to be a totally automated solution where you can have it kick out to a human being in your organization. I think the one thing that scares a lot of people when they think chatbot or artificial intelligence or automation is that it's gonna be the same experience that we had years ago when telephone lines were being answered by robots and you press 1 for this, 2 for that, 3 for something else, and you never got to talk to a human, but there wasn't any value as part of the process. And so the chatbot technology is really taking that and upping its game and giving customers the ability to get great information, but also businesses to serve more people more efficiently. And all of the conversations that take place in these little chatbots are ones that get retained. You can do data mining. If you find the business that a lot of people are asking you the same question, that might be a cue to you as a business that maybe you should either do a better job of making that information available on your website. Maybe that's an opportunity for you to produce an interesting guide or some sort of a resource that educates people more about those questions, and you can, you can build that content strategy to differentiate yourself and make yourself more valuable. So I think chatbots is certainly one of the other areas That I think I see some real good opportunities on, in setting the expectation of what you can and can't get out of a chatbot. So, you know, with our work in the banking industry, I think a lot of people are going to immediately have the concern, well, somebody's going to go out and they're going to put in their account number and that's going to be a privacy concern or whatnot, or they're going to think that they're talking to a human and they're really not. Start the chatbot off with a, Hey, I'm XYZ Bank's chatbot. I'm here to help, but I can't talk about account numbers and all sorts of other sensitive stuff. So you have a little fun, you set the expectations, but I'm here to answer questions about general banking, you know, different sorts of things. So right off of the bat, you're not positioning this to be a human. You have some fun with it. And one of the things that I thought was interesting is there are now agencies that are being formed that specialize in nothing other than writing copy for chatbot conversations, because it's different than writing emails, it's different than writing website copy, because you have to think about ways to build conversation and interactivity and, and make it feel like they're having a conversation so it's comfortable and almost human-like. But, but, but run by technology. So, so I guess the Facebook shift, being genuine, authentic, somewhat vulnerable, and then the, the chatbot. This is kind of really a way of reaching more people, working smarter, not harder, but also extending office hours and service availability. Those were a couple of huge items that I also took away from. So, Ellie, I guess from maybe a secondary item, and you talked about the value of networking as well, because I think that's one of the things that I really like, because I've been going to conferences for a long time, and it was cool, you know, to see you pick up on that, that a lot of times people go to a conference and they'll think that the only thing they're going to get out of the conference is the material that the presenters are sharing with them. And I know, and I learned kind of quickly on that, a lot of what you get out of a conference is, is going to be the people that you meet. And while it may not necessarily have any business advantage to it, do you want to maybe tell the wine glass story and how we made that connection at that cocktail party on Wednesday night?

Sure. So Basically, we were at a conference or a, um, like reception banquet dinner type thing on the USS Midway. So that was cool to begin with. And then we were just sitting around with a bunch of people eating and talking, and I overheard this lady say that she worked for Govino Wine. And I was thinking, I was like, I know that brand. And it's because it's the wine glasses that my mom and my aunt buy. So of course I asked for her business card and told her how much we loved her brand. And she was like, oh yeah, just email me and I'll send you a 4-pack of wine glasses. So a few days ago, after we got home, I sent her an email and I told her to add me on LinkedIn and to connect with me so we could stay in touch. So she ended up emailing me back and adding me on LinkedIn. So it was really cool because I— it's just cool to be able to have connections like that. It's not like I know her very well or anything, but I got to learn more about her company. Now I get to connect with her on LinkedIn, and we both share a brand that we both think is awesome and one that she works for. So it was just cool. And for her to just say, oh, I'll send you some, like, that, that was just really cool to, to be a part of that because I never would have thought she'd be like, oh yeah, I'll just give you some for free. So it was— that was cool.

Well, and the power of LinkedIn and what we talk about in our LinkedIn training program is, you know, the value of making connections with other people, because in LinkedIn you've got 1st tier, 2nd tier, 3rd tier connectivity. This is likely an individual that's probably well connected, and by Ellie reaching out to this individual and getting connected on LinkedIn, she has increased the size of her potential LinkedIn influencer network by hundreds, if not thousands of people, because now everybody that this gal that works for that wine company, the wine glass company, is connected to is now bumped into second-tier connectivity status with Ellie. And, and so when we talk with folks about LinkedIn and the value of networking, You know, a lot of times they say it's not, it's not what you know, it's who you know. But you even take that a step further, it's who that person knows that is also beneficial to you, particularly from a social networking perspective. So I just thought that was really cool. I know I was in a session on analytics, and Mark, who works for us, is a big fan of Purple, which is the mattress And the pillow company, if you've not heard of them, check them out. They're doing some really interesting things around video advertising and whatnot, but they've got a pillow that weighs like 10 pounds. It's crazy. But it's not exactly a cheap pillow either, but it's one of these pillows that has been completely re-engineered. It's all gel-based. And, and so he's a huge fan. And so during one of these after-session question and answers, the gal that was with Purple who was in charge of their data analytics stood up and was asking me a question. So I made sure to get a selfie with her in the background and I sent a little picture to Mark and I said, by the way, this is the gal that does data metrics for Purple. And he thought that was pretty cool. So, you know, the exposure to all of these different industry people, we were there. We did have a question that came through. I just want to make sure we answer this for everybody. So Ellie, do you want to maybe go through the top 3 LinkedIn call to action And I don't know if these were necessarily for LinkedIn or if these are just for all websites in general, but the 3 call to action phrases, you want to go through those again?

Yes. Yeah, I learned about those in a LinkedIn panel from 3 LinkedIn experts, and I can't recall, but I could have swore they were just talking about 3 call to actions that seem to be popular with whether people post them like on as forms on LinkedIn or Whatever it may be, but they were download now, dive in, and learn more.

Cool. Good, good, good, good. Thanks for repeating those. Um, yeah, one of the other things when we talk about Social Media Examiner and Michael Stelzner, we were lucky to have run into him at the Marriott while he was probably busily trying to get back to the conference, and I yelled his name and he turned around and we were able to get a selfie with him, which is pretty cool. But in the effort of this whole kind of let people get to know who you are and, and be comfortable with being vulnerable and sharing successes as well as failures, because that helps people relate to you better as an individual and as a brand. One of the things that I started watching early on, and he talked about this as one of the strategies that was pretty successful in his getting the conference to where it's at today. I think this is the 5th or the 6th year, but he put together an episodic video blog called The Journey. And so I just want to post this. If you go to journey.show, this will link you directly to the YouTube channel for Social Media Examiner, and it'll pull up that actual content. But what Michael started doing is really allowing people to come behind the scenes at Social Media Examiner, which is a company in San Diego that specializes in social media training and putting this conference on. He created this, and it started about 4 months ago with episode 1, of allowing people to come behind the scenes and really follow his journey. You can see they've got 21 videos now, so if you're looking for a fun little binge watch But he talks about the successes that they experienced leading up to the conferences, when something didn't go right, shares challenges and how he overcame those as a business. There was one episode that I remember that he was actually in his car and the video started off with him just talking into his iPhone and he's like, this is the worst day of my business career. And so you're just watching it, you're just like, holy crap, what just happened? And then he goes into the video and he talks about how something really bad happened. One of his employees did something accidentally, did a big no-no that could have had a potentially, you know, catastrophic impact on the brand and how they recovered from it. And so as we talk about different ways to create this connection with your customers and getting beyond just being their service provider for whatever it is that you do as a business. The journey is kind of his putting his money where his mouth is, basically, of the things that they've done trying to get to the point of being a successful conference. And I suspect that this will continue even after the conference with observations, things that they've learned, you know, what else is going on. But while the subscriptions and whatnot probably aren't as astronomical as some of the other YouTube stars out there, the engagement and the repeat watches are all signals to the world of social media and Facebook and others that this is content that people are interested in, and that's what you're wanting to do. I can't remember if it was one of the other keynotes, was a guy by the name of Brian Solis. And, uh, and his, one of his big takeaways was we as marketers have been focused on the numbers for too long. Grow— growing, you know, how many fans do I have on my site and how many subscribers do I have on my channel and how many likes do I have? And, and looking at the numbers as, as the primary, uh, driver instead of looking at the engagement and the interactivity and getting businesses and even marketers that work with businesses, convincing businesses To be comfortable with, you know, rather than 1,000 fans, it's okay to have 100 fans if those 100 fans are truly the ones that are interested in, you know, 90 out of 100 of those people. When you send a message out, when you post something, when you share content, they are interested versus trying to just go after the whole world. It's the old adage of quality over quantity. You know, going after and going back to that quality experience because there's just way too much quantity out there to cut through, to cut through just by going after it from a quantity perspective. So that was another, another item. So, as I've been rambling on, Ellie, is there anything else that's popped into your head about the event? That you feel like sharing? I think you're on mute. Oh, there we go.

Hear me now?

Yep, we got you.

Hmm, maybe stuff about the superfan. So the last session we sat in by Pat Flynn was all about how to build superfans. for your company and for yourself. So he basically took us on a journey about a story of how he started out and who he is now. And he showed us this pyramid. He calls it the engagement pyramid. And it starts with having a casual audience of people that know about you or like you and working your way from the bottom up. So going from casual audience to an engaged audience, and then you become connected with them, whether that's LinkedIn, personally, over social platforms. And he calls them the connected community. And then all the way at the top is your super fans. And he described the super fan as your free marketing team. You basically— the super fan is someone that feels like they belong and someone that roots for you because of what you do. So Pat Flynn showed us different ways he connected with the community and different people. And he said individuals started to get like obsessed with him and would follow him around. And he would post that he had a podcast and people would instantly get on it and just all sorts of crazy stuff. And he became this famous person, but he said, I'm just a regular individual. So, but to other people, he's famous. And so he told us that was important to find people and give them a reason to root for you. Give them that P2P, person-to-person connection. Put personality in your brand and in yourself, and you will give yourself small, quick wins more and more. And it will create more customers for you, more clients, more friends, and just overall people that are going to market your brand, not just because they like your brand, but because of who's behind the brand name. So I thought that was really cool.

Yeah, so, um, too bad Jeff's not here because I would certainly give him a hat tip to the Rocketbook Everlast. Because, um, those of you that, uh, were on prior shows, uh, you may recall Jeff sharing one of the new little tools that he was using, a system called A Rocketbook Everlast. If you don't know what that is, look it up on Amazon, and, and I would just say buy one, right, Ellie? Because they're awesome.

Yeah.

Yeah, so it's a little notepad that gives you the ability to take notes, but you can scan and it comes in, and I've synchronized this. So Ellie took so many notes, she actually ran out of paper and ended up having to use my Rocketbook. And so she took notes for Pat Flynn's session, so I've actually got her notes for this individual item. But you can jot down notes. Anyway, I'm chasing a squirrel. I gotta come back on topic. But Ellie drew basically the pyramid that Pat talked about. And what was interesting to me, because we even talked about this in the LinkedIn training, is he originally just put up this pyramid that went from fat to skinny at the top. And ultimately, you've got people that have heard about you, then they might buy your product, then you might pull them in and maybe they buy other products. But you ultimately want to get them to that superfan status where it's like a Harley-Davidson. They're actually tattooing your brand on their body. I don't know if he mentioned if anybody has any Pat Flynn or Smart Passive Income tattoos, but when you do that, you've got the marketing team. Think of Harley-Davidson. They're walking around with the Harley-Davidson logo. That's banner advertising right there on their arms or backs or faces or wherever they decide to put the tattoo. But then what he did is he put up the typical conversion funnel and said, but the way that we normally look at this— and this is where I had kind of an aha moment— was we focus so much as businesses and as marketers about getting traffic into the funnel. How do we attract more eyeballs? How do we get more people? And so we're going after— this is our primary goal of getting more people into the funnel, because then maybe it will They'll subscribe, they'll visit his sales page, and then they'll become a customer. And once they're a customer, they've got the loan, or they bought the widget, or they've signed up for our training service. But then what do we do as a business is we go out and we try to get more traffic. We try to get more people to learn about us instead of what he proposes is take this funnel and flip it and focus on these people. Because if you do a really good job of just totally delighting the people that are already doing business with you. This arrow right here that Ellie's drawn means that they are going to go and help that engaged audience move up that, and then eventually your casual audience is just going to happen to know about you, and your super fans are going to take care of getting them where they need to go. And that's where you're really going to have, um, you know, business success. And And whether it's business-to-business or business-to-consumer, you know, B2B or B2C, a lot of people talk about that. The other thing that Ellie talked is this person-to-person. You might be selling to another business, but in reality, you're selling to a person within that business. And that person wants to know who you are as a salesperson or a vendor or a supplier or a provider. And that's where I think it was really cool that you could take this information from the conference and see how it could relate to your brand as an organization, but also how you could use it internally to be able to brand yourself because P2P is really where that person-to-person connectivity is there. So, yeah, it, that was good. And I'm, I'm glad that you brought that out and just quickly did a search and Was able to snag this out of my Evernote. So thank you, Rocketbook. So Rocketbook, little advertorial there for you for Rocketbook Evernote. So good, good stuff. Cool. Yeah, I mean, I'm looking at my notes and there's so much more that we could probably dive into. I know there was a lot of sessions That talked a lot about digital advertising and different ways to be comfortable with spending money and going out and, and trying to get in front of people, because there are a lot of businesses that are going to be hesitant to creating this type of experience for their customers. And so they're going to have to pay to get in front of those folks. Whether that's good or bad, I don't know. I mean, it's, it's kind of The reality of where we're going to be if, if you can't create the interesting connection with people and give them a reason to be interested in you. So, cool. Um, as a reminder, I know we've got that one question that came through. If there's anything else that you are curious on, I know one of the questions that I got the other day was what was defined as social media out there. And I guess I'd like to get your take on this. So after you went through this conference, if somebody were to ask you, Ellie, what is social media now that you've been at this, how would you, how would you define social media?

I would define it as— You got my heart. I would define it as a specific channel that links people together no matter what your interests are, who you are, what age you are. It's something that gets people together and to talk. And what I learned most about through a lot of the sessions I've never even really heard of— I mean, I've heard of B2B, business to business, and business to consumer, B2C. But what most of them stressed was P2C, in that we're getting back to a day and age now where humanizing stuff is so much more important than just putting something out there for people to see. They want to see your face. They want you to post videos on your social media of you talking. They don't want to see just written posts and stuff like that. So it's all about connecting with people and building relationships. Whether that gets you a sale, gets you a connection, whatever it gets you, it's just another channel for people to come together and talk about business, about personal stuff. And I think that's what I learned most about social media is it's not just posting on the internet anymore. It's a way for people to personally connect. So that's what I got from it, the whole person-to-person and humanizing everything. So Yep.

And I, and I think as part of that, the, the community, the connection, the conversation I got out of that— I don't think social media is defined as much by platforms anymore. So it's not Snapchat or Instagram. Yeah. I think it's having an understanding of where your customers, your prospects, your community, the people that you want to engage with where they're located and what they're doing and, and what's of interest to them and where they're at. Like going fishing, understanding where the hotspots are on the lake and then going there and then offering the right bait, the right conversation, the right information. But your audience might be interested in blogs. Your audience might be interested in video. Your audience might be interested in podcasting. Your audience might be interested in infographics and white papers or ebooks. All of that, I think, in today's day and age is really social media, and it's no longer defining it just based off of the platform. It's understanding what your audience wants and how do you deliver it with all the different platforms that are there, which is a really daunting thing because you may not necessarily know What your— where your audience is hanging out. You might need to take some time to do a little reversal and think that, you know, you don't need a Snapchat because you are in X, Y, or Z. And you might find out some of the statistics, like Ellie is saying, that, you know, maybe there is an audience on Snapchat that you need to pay attention to. Or maybe instead of putting all of your eggs in the Facebook basket, You're better off teaching your staff how to use tools like LinkedIn, like what Ellie did with making networks and connections and growing and being comfortable using your employees better in your organization to help reach out and connect instead of thinking that just having a Facebook strategy is going to do it for you. Because unless you're paying for visibility, you're probably not being seen by very many, if at all, of your fans. And that can be a pretty disheartening thing, especially if you as an organization are spending a great deal of time investing in content and posting stuff out to Facebook. That's a big, big challenge. And I can tell you from our experience, it scares the bejesus out of a lot of businesses when we talk about making sure that they train their employees To be better at social media, because the first thing people are worried about is, at least what I've seen, well, if, if I, you know, Ellie's an employee of ours, if I teach Ellie how to use social media really well and she makes all these connections, what if she finds a better job somewhere else? What if I train all of my employees and the competitors come out and gobble them up and offer them more money and steal them away because I'm training my employees? to be better. That's going to be a risk, but you have to have faith in the benefits that your employees are going to bring to your organization if you train them. And almost even more important, what are the risks if you don't train your employees? Because then you've just got a bunch of people out there representing your organization that can't connect with other people to humanize the business. And is that going to be more detrimental to your organization long term? You know, I think I know what way I would answer that question, but that needs to be something every business really has a good heart-to-heart look in the mirror and figure out what your strategy is going to be for 2018 and beyond. And do you want your employees to be able to humanize and embrace this person-to-person experience? Because I think that can be a very, very scary thing for a lot of traditional business owners. So cool. Well, that's about all that I've got. I mean, there's other stuff, but like Ellie said, we could probably be here pretty much all day. So I'm gonna force myself to kind of ramp it down a little bit. Ellie, was there anything else that you wanted to maybe say in closing, or how was your first experience on Free Webinar Wednesdays?

Actually, one more thing.

Big old heap of awesome sauce? Yeah. Yep.

Touching on the what's social media and how to attract your audience, I sat in on this blogging session and we went over an initial strategy of how to reach an audience. And I think this could be used as a marketing strategy too, not just blogging. But we talked about the who, what, when, where, why type of thing. And what really, what really stuck out to me was about the audience. We were told that your core values and positioning of your marketing, it's about your audience because you aren't your audience. You don't know what your audience wants. So it's crucial to understand their language and understand what kind of delivery reaches them. So overall, the session was about the language of the audience and how you should feel, speak, and watch what they do so you can understand their character and understand how to reach them. So basically you're not them, so you have to do everything you can to understand what they're doing and basically become them to try to market to them. So I thought that was really helpful and they called that the language of the audience. So, and to do that you do the whole figure out your persona, their interests, and not just their demographics. They talked about and touched on how interests are becoming more important than demographic and how someone is thinking, feeling, seeing, and doing. So I thought that was really interesting.

Yeah, that makes me think, in a session that I was in yesterday, we were talking with a bunch of bank marketing directors, and I think the challenge, not just from the banking world but any business, is a lot of times senior management I don't want to say they're out of touch, but senior management might be perceiving things one way. We have to do this. And the example that came up yesterday was the desire or the necessity to continue using newspaper advertising. And I'm looking at the attendee list right now of who's actually listening live, and I suspect that there's at least one person in the audience right now that probably has a big smile on her face. But the desire, or almost the mandate, that this organization continues to do advertising in a medium where all of the data is telling us that, like you said, the voice of the audience, they're not there, they're not looking at the newspaper. And it gets very difficult and very a challenge for a marketing director to, to try to get people to think about what the audience is seeing versus this is what we've always done. I want to see this in the newspaper because to me that's valuable, but being comfortable or being able to step outside of that and go, but just because I feel that that's valuable, I have to be comfortable and understand that this is not what the rest of the world is seeing. And, and that's not something that's easily done by businesses. And so that's a really, I guess if we're gonna close on one point, that's probably a really good point to close on is put yourself in the position of the consumer of your audience. And if you can't do it, find somebody that can and trust them. Because if you're not delivering information and talking to them as the audience and all the variables that you talked about, your relevancy and your ability to play off of all these things that we talked about over the last hour of conversation and trustworthiness and transparency and engagement are gonna fall on deaf ears. And, and so that's, that's a really good, that's a really good point to close on. So thank you for sharing that, Ellie. Nice job.

Yeah. Cool.

Good deal. Well, that wraps the show, everybody. Thank you so much for joining us. We had really good live attendance today and certainly appreciate you being here. And I did get confirmation from that individual that that they are smiling, and I got a smiley face in the chat. So thank you very much. So I'm gonna— I'll send you an LOL when I'm done. So, but that wraps the show. Again, thank you to Ellie Humphreys, who isn't just an employee but also happens to be my niece and somebody that I care very much for. And it's certainly been a blessing to have you part of our organization and really appreciate everything that you've done for us here at WSI. And it was a pleasure to spend some time with you in San Diego, and I'm so excited that you got some cool stuff out of it. And I've got another Rocketbook coming in the mail so that you'll be able to take even more notes when we go to our next event together. So, but with that, thanks everybody for joining us. I will be out of town next Next week I will be headed to Las Vegas for the Independent Community Bankers Association's annual convention. I'm doing a session there on the Amazonification of community banking, which I think is going to be a pretty fun session, and then talking about all the different ways that the world has changed thanks to services like Amazon and voice and bots. And I'm busily trying to incorporate some of the stuff that we got shoved into our heads in San Diego into that session. So if you happen to be a community banker and you're going to be in Vegas at the ICBA conference, check me out. It's the morning session on Thursday. Would love to see you. And, but if not, we'll look forward to seeing you on a future Free Webinar Wednesday. So keep an eye on the site and our Facebook page, and we'll post up when that's ready to go. Until then, have an awesome week, everyone. Thanks for joining us, and we'll see you at freewebinarwednesdays.com. Bye-bye.