World Certification Week [HUBHEROES, EP33]

Do you live in a world filled with corporate data? Are you plagued by siloed departments? Are your lackluster growth strategies demolishing your chances for success? Are you held captive by the evil menace Lord Lack, lack of time, lack of strategy, and lack of the most important and powerful tool in your superhero tool belt knowledge. Never fear, Hub Heroes. Get ready to don your cape and mask, move into action, and become the Hub Hero your organization needs. Tune in each week to join the League of Extraordinary Inbound Heroes as we help you educate, empower, and execute Hub Heroes. It's time to unite and activate your powers. Before we begin, we need to disclose that Devin is currently employed by HubSpot at the time of this episode. Recording. This podcast is in no way affiliated with or produced by HubSpot, and the thoughts and opinions expressed by Devin during the show are that of his own and in no way represent those of his employer.

Welcome back to another episode of the Hub Heroes podcast. As always, I am Liz Murphy, content therapist extraordinaire. Hub Heroes Wrangler and George.

Yeah.

I know you're here. I don't care, because you know who is here. Yeah, we'll suck it.

Sheesh. That's a way to start.

Let us know how you really feel.

Yeah.

Is that the voice I have been waiting for? Devin. Bubby, you're back.

What's happening? It's good to be back. It's so good to be back.

Left me alone with these crazy people.

I have full faith in your ability to manage the asylum in my absence.

She wrangled without you. Don't let her get, like. Don't get it twisted. She wrangled with.

I wrangled, but under duress. Anyway, how's it going, gents? Fantastic.

Wonderful, now that I'm doing this, because it's this and then, like, one more meeting and it's the week.

Ow. What do you got going on this weekend?

None. Absolutely nothing. The wife and two daughters are gone, which means zero honey. And it's me and my son, and I think we're going to, like, eat a lot and watch a lot of movies and TV and stuff. That's what this week.

I can send you a honey do list if you'd like.

No, I'm good. What? Wait, we're breaking up. I can't hear you.

Oh, good. Now that George is gone. Just kidding. Devin, what are you doing this weekend?

I am watching all the shows that I have been neglecting for the past few weeks, starting with the Mandalorian. So hopefully by the time this episode Drops. I'll know exactly what's gone on with the season.

Yeah, you'll know that the one guy did the.

Stop it. Cut it out. I will go over there.

Spoiler alert. Pedro Pascal is still stupidly hot. That's really all you need to know.

Wow. Okay.

That's right.

He's decent.

I don't need you to agree.

I'm just saying.

Decent.

Yeah.

Okay.

There's another show. There's another showy. Something about, like, zombie people and something last of us. Oh, yeah. So good. So saving all the kids. Yep. Yep.

Good for him.

That's what we do. We're doing. We're doing the Hub Heroes podcast. All the kids. Yeah.

We're saving the children.

Yeah. Educating people one child at a time. I don't know. I'm making stuff up right now.

Connect that dot for me.

I can't.

Oh, I can. I can. Don't forget, coming May World Certification Week. You're gonna have an opportunity to earn certifications for a good cause. May 15th through 19th. Make sure you set aside time on your calendars to expand your professional horizon. And for every certification that we get, we're going to be donating up to, I believe it's $50,000 to charities that, in part, are helping the kids. I made the connection. Let's go.

There we go.

You know, that's the kind of energy we needed.

I know. I'm just going to serve up volleyballs for Devon to spike the entire rest of the episode.

Not at my face. I want to keep this perfect piece of art intact.

Well, it's not dodgeball. I said volleyball.

If you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a ball.

Oh, there you go.

Anyway. All right, cupcakes, are we ready? We have stuff to talk about. We have stuff stuck. Are we ready? Yeah.

Let's do it, gentlemen.

Let's do it.

All right. We're talking about social media this week. That's right. I don't care if you love it. I don't care if you hate it. I don't care if you hate to love it or you love to hate it. It does not matter, because it is absolutely essential. Now, some of you may also consider it a necessary evil, considering we're all raging against the algorithms every single day of the week. But it does not matter, because social is that gateway to online conversations which can inform all parts of your flywheel.

Right?

Marketing your sales, your service, how you attract, how you engage, how you delight. And it's also how you can amplify the content you're creating and you can foster relationships. There's just so much potential within social that I think gets lost in the narrative of why we're mad at Facebook this week. Right. Like, that's the kind of stuff, the true purpose and the true capabilities behind what these platforms provide is lost in that negativity. Which is why I wanted to have this content conversation today. Because, George, you created a piece of content not too long ago about all of the different things about the HubSpot social media tool suite that most people don't even realize. I mean, when I read it, I remember thinking, oh, I just thought it was a scheduling tool and nothing more. And I have never felt like such a big ding dong, which is why we are here today. We're talking about what social strategy actually looks like. We're not talking about social strategy if you're like Duolingo or Coca Cola. We're talking about what real revenue driving social strategies look like and how you use HubSpot to get it done. What do we think?

I love it. And I will say one thing, Liz, that all of that stuff that you rattled off about, like, distribution and like, the things, the positives out of it, this whole conversation, this whole conversation that we're moving forward with, all of that is true. If you make sure when you get ready to hit that submit button, that you are coming from a place of being a good human. Okay, there we go. Right in the beginning of the. Done. I don't have to do it for the rest of the podcast episode. All right, let's go.

You know what, George? New rule. When you actively insert it like a shoehorn into the intro going forward, that no longer counts.

Oh, dang it. Okay. All right.

Nice try, buddy. Nice job.

I do what I can. But. But I am super excited to talk about this. And what's crazy, Liz, and I think you mentioned to this to me when we were talking about, like, what do we want to bring to the audience is that we've done over 30 episodes. Wow. And haven't talked. Yeah. And haven't talked about social media yet. Which is crazy. Like, it's just crazy.

It makes sense, quite frankly. This goes into my first question, which is like, what do most folks get wrong when they think about social media's role in their Inbo strategy? I think the challenge is that there are so many platforms, Right. And we see the Duolingo owl duolingo ing everywhere. We see all of these big, robust social strategies that I think it can feel really daunting if you're in that more maybe you're in B2B. Maybe you're an SMB sized organization. It. I think there's some sort of disconnect where social media is great for the and not for for me. And thus people tend to put edit an arm's length. They already struggle to calculate the ROI of their content. Imagine trying to calculate the ROI of social.

But that's actually easy anyway. We'll get there. We'll get there. That's, that's easy with HubSpot, but, and I'm not talking about the content part because that's still somewhat kind of pseudo difficult, but social media wrapped into your content actually becomes really easy. I know, we'll get there. So what was the original question again, Liz?

What do you think people are getting wrong when they think about the role of social media in their inbound strategy? Don't all jump in at once, fellas.

Oh, I thought George was about to start.

Yeah, but I was, I was going to try to give Devin not doing.

His awkward pacing where he's glaring at me through the screen, begging to give him a lane.

Listen, we started, we started this podcast out that you were glad to hear Devin's voice. I was trying to give some space for Devin's voice to answer the question and actually just come in afterwards.

I mean, I got one in the chamber. I'm ready. Let's do it.

Well then let's do. That's roll seven. All right, bring it.

So people, I think when you look at like social media giants like Wendy's and how they manage their Twitter or how Ryan Reynolds masterfully handles social media, you don't have to be that. If you look at some of my favorite influencers in the space like Max Cohen, who is doing phenomenal job with the HubSpot related things that only HubSpot users will get, like the workflow one that he just did was I was crying. But also you look at people who are just sharing information and thought leaders in that space like Kyle Jepsen or Sherry Otto who are talking about the why behind what it is that they're doing and the importance of what it is to be better at what you do, the kinds of things that their audience will nerd out about. And I've said this a few in this series that everybody nerds out about something and that thing that you're doing, someone's going to nerd out about it and you can go there and talk about the challenges, be more relatable, more human if you will, in your social media. You don't have to be super witty posting all the time. At the end of the day, if you are creating brand awareness, you're creating problem awareness and you're driving people back through the occasional, not the heavy handed every time. Go to our website, check the link in, the bio, links in the comments kind of thing. You don't have to do that every time. You can just be yourself and it'll, it'll drive traffic. So I think the thing that people get wrong about social media, one, they think that they don't need it because of the vertical or industries that they're in. Completely false. You can sell toilet paper and you're going to find somebody who's really excited about whether or not someone's going to invent 4 ply that's not going to destroy their plumbing system. And you can just do that. You can, you can have fun and just speak to the handful of people. And the last thing, this is the last thing, I promise. You don't have to have millions of followers to be successful on social media. Your audience ain't that big. Spoiler alert.

You don't have to be for everybody. You just got to be for the right people. There you go, George, because I also love you equally. All jokes aside, what do you want to share with everybody?

Yeah, so I think people, and I love everything that Devin said. I think people have to realize that like what Devin said, you got to be you. Boo. Right? Like just go and be you. I don't think that they understand the idea of scalable conversations over social instead of tactics that they think they have to try to pull off. It is about the humans, it is about connecting, it is about conversating, it is about having a brain of curiosity. Earlier today I literally put out a post that was like, hey, in two lines. By the way, no big strategy. When you're talking to humans, what do you think the number one benefit that you talk about most is? That's from a place of curiosity, right? I want to know why do people think HubSpot is valuable? But I also think that because of this like thought of, it has to be about a tactic less about conversation, less about human. I think too that they don't realize the power in which lies in their hand and the ability to actually track that power. And I'm gonna like open up the kimono for a second here so people understand what I mean by this. If I go into HubSpot and I go into my traffic analytics and I look at my traffic analytics, I can see the source of people coming to georgebtomas.com and I can see it by direct traffic, organic social, organic search, referrals, email, paid search and other campaigns. And so you have to be able to look and see over time. Are my efforts in social media worth the wait that I'm putting in? Are the conversations that I'm having worth it? Is the brand that I'm building worth it? And I'll tell you right now, actually I'm going to, I'm going to put out a little thing. I'm curious. Do you think that my organic search, my organic social or my direct traffic has created the most sessions on George B. Thomas over all time?

I can't answer that because I know the answer.

I mean, anyone who knows George should know the answer.

Answer. Okay, okay. Are you gonna go out on a limb?

I'm gonna say your organic social, your LinkedIn jumps, bro.

So it's interesting. Here's what's fun because it's, it's somewhat shocking. But organic search, organic social more than doubles the organic search, okay? In sessions. Now here's what's fun. In the amount of contacts created, organic social triples organic search, okay? Now in, in the amount of customers, in the amount of customers, organic social is at least eight times the amount of organic search that brought me customers. So more customers from social, more contacts from social, more sessions from social than organic search. But here's the mind blowing thing. I won't even tell you how much more direct traffic does than organic social, but why is that? Because people know about me on social and just come to the site, right? Because if I actually do like real self attribution, a lot of the direct traffic says Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, somebody sent me an email, whatever, those types of things. So they don't understand the power that great connection, great conversation. Social media as a human instead of social media as a robotic tactic has in store for their business.

That's freaking wild.

That is nuts.

What's interesting about that too is I think, you know, I don't want to divert us down the path of content too greatly, but this is where I think people can sometimes get tripped up with content ROI reporting. Because the reason why people are coming to your site is because you have a robust social strategy to share your content. That is the mechanism by which people are getting to you. Most of what you're sharing is not like here, come to this landing page for this thing. It's like, this is an article, this is a podcast, this is a thing. But you do it with such intention of how you share it.

Yeah. And what's funny is I'll even take another crack at this. And again, not to go down that, like, rabbit hole around content that we could, but I'm not even really sharing it as part of a content strategy. I'm sharing it because I want to help educate the to the things that they could be doing for their business. It just so happens that the world has wrapped that up into content marketing and a content strategy. Listen, businesses that realize they can use their social channels to be a dope educator. Yo. Off the charts.

Oh, yeah, absolutely. So this segues in nicely to the question. Right? So we've talked a bit about how people are getting social media wrong in terms of how they approach it with their Strategy. Most likely B2B, depending on who's listening. How should inbounders and hubspotters alike be thinking about social media then? If we're telling them you're looking, you got this all wrong. Right, George, you started tapping this vein a little bit with your last answer. What should they be thinking about instead? You two are so polite today.

You just said, George, that's like.

All right, I'll go, I'll go. And it's going to be like a real short. What might sound like a dumb answer. And then Devin can go right after that. But I've said it at the end of 90% of the videos that I've created on the Internet. If you go to social as a happy, helpful, humble human that is trying to add value into the world, you will have dramatically more success than if you're trying to sell a product, service, sound smart, or think that you need to be the next freaking Oreo. Viral, blah, blah, blah.

Virality is. Is not roi.

No, no, no. Don't go viral, go value. I'm just gonna throw that out.

Oh, I'm sorry. Say that one more time and maybe add some fancy voice speaker effect behind that.

Yeah.

Don't go viral, go value. Okay, that was not.

Not at all what we were expecting to happen.

No, you. You were expecting to be like, don't.

Go viral, go value.

The vibes are off, man.

I did it on purpose. You know, people will talk about it, maybe.

Let's talk about the chaotic energy of this episode. Sh. Devin, you were meant to restore order, my sir. Actually, go ahead. What do you got to share, Devin?

Nothing. That was it. That's what I would have said.

He.

End of podcast.

Yeah.

Boom.

Mic drop, clock out for the day.

All right, so then why don't we shift gears a little bit so we've talked a bit about how people are thinking about their social media strategy, maybe through a distorted lens. We've talked about what they should be thinking about it instead. Now let's take a look. Let's pivot from strategy. Let's talk about the tool, because I think we have a similar situation here. Right? We. Everybody's in a situationship with HubSpot social media tools. They do not understand what it is. Let's fix this. Let's start with what they're thinking incorrectly about the tool. And I'll just be explicit this time. Either of you can jump in at any time.

Sure, I'll go. This time. People are stopping with scheduling and treating it like it is 2012 Hootsuite. And it is so there. It's, it's significantly more robust than that. I mean, the scheduling tool is fire and it's fantastic and I love it. But there are, there are other things that you can do with it. Some of these things I wish that were more robust, but you can dive more into the features. Like, for instance, the Twitter features are bananas. The social listening on Twitter is second to none.

So first of all, it might not be in your portal, it might be in your portal, I don't know. But I was messing around with monitoring inside of my portal the other day and there's now Instagram streams. Shut up. Not only, not only can you do Twitter streams, but you can do Instagram streams as long as it's unlocked in your portal. I don't know what's happening with it floating out there. Maybe ask your rep, ask somebody that knows or whatever, but I'm literally, literally looking at it right now. Instagram streams inside the social tool. Here's the thing though, Devin, I'm glad that you mentioned scheduling because the number one thing that I have like put a stake in the ground for years ago to try to battle against is when, even when people think about scheduling, they think that I have to log into HubSpot, I have to go to marketing, I have to go to social. I then have to hit the orange button on the right hand side, that is create social post posts. I've had HubSpot employees tell me, dude, until I watched your video on the HubSpot Social Chrome extension, I didn't know we had one. And so I'm just gonna throw out there if you are rocking out HubSpot Social or not rocking out HubSpot Social because the barrier was you felt you had to log in, go get the extension and be able to post from anywhere. And we'll probably talk more about the extension as we move forward because there's some dope things, but that's the thing. You've got to make it easier, easy for you to do the thing that you want to do. And whether you're inside of HubSpot or you're using the extension again, I'm going to tease out, we're going to talk about how you can tie the ROI of social media to your actual business and what you're doing.

Mic drop, kaboom. Well, let's dig in a little bit more here, fellas. Let's talk more about the different ways you can use and maximize HubSpot for social media. I want us to, I would. We've talked a lot in recent episodes about big, high level concepts and ideas. Right. I want you guys to rattle off all of the different ways in which HubSpot is being neglected from a social media perspective.

I got one, a big one.

Let's do it.

Attribution people. When you share links on HubSpot through the social media tool, it's automatically creating tracking, tracking URLs. As a marketer, even if you're not using HubSpot, every link you put out there, be it email, whatever it is, should have some sort of UTM tracking associated with it. And that is something that is native to HubSpot. You're going to keep kicking out these Hubsley links and they allow you to see exactly where, when, how people have come into your site so you can have attribution. And because all of your reporting is in one system, you're not able to not, you're not just able to see, oh, someone came in from my site. You're able to look at the numbers that George was talking about where he can talk about how many customers have come in from social, not just how many customers have come in from Social, how many customers have come in from a specific post on Social, how much money you are making. And if you, if you get deep into conversion path analytics, you can do the math or you can just have it all in HubSpot, which just does the math for you. That is one of the biggest things. Oh, here he goes, here he goes.

Put me in, coach. I'm ready to rock and roll. Devin, I'm so glad you mentioned that because you mentioned the Hubsley link. One of the things that you can do too is you can actually publish with custom short links, meaning you can get your own link and you can go into the settings and you can have the whatever Makes sense to have your brand but still get those utms. And then I'm glad that you started to talk about reporting and it just automatically happening. Because if you are using HubSpot and you're using HubSpot campaigns and you're not making sure that you're actually associating your social posts to the campaigns that you're actually sharing around, shame on you. Because that's where the ROI of social media comes from. Listen, you've got ebooks guides checklists. Each of those ebooks guides checklists are a campaign. Each of those ebooks guides checklists should have blog articles associated to them. When you're sharing out those blog articles, associate it back to the campaign. When you're sharing out that landing page, associate it back to the campaign. Now you're literally going to have a campaigns dashboard that you're gonna see what your articles did, what your emails did, what your workflows did, what your forms did, and more importantly, what your freaking social media post did specific to those individual campaigns that you have. It's like the holy land of oh my gosh. And by the way, you can't associate to a campaign in other social tools like hootsuite or Agora Pulse or I could keep going, but with the HubSpot Chrome extension and doing it inside HubSpot, you can tie to those business focused lead conversion campaign areas.

Let me jump on that hype train, the campaign train real quick. The thing is with campaigns that you also need to realize is that the important thing is you'll be able to see how much money that campaign made you. You'll be able to take and you won't need to do. You click, oh, there's the dollar sign. That's it. That, that's it. You don't need to bust out a Google sheet or an Excel sheet. You don't need to do it. It's just says it right there. All, all of it just lays out everything that's associated with this campaign. This is how much this campaign made this company. And if as a marketer you want to justify your existence in a sales org, all you gotta do is show them the money. That's it.

That.

Yeah baby.

So wait, I have a quick question. Do either of you care about HubSpot social media tool? I really just feel like you guys.

Are not bringing it just a little.

Listen, the thing is, is that the social media tool, the problem with being a marketer is being able to show that if the sales team isn't winning, it's not just Your fault thing is like the number one. And I'm actually, I'm going to be in Wisconsin next week or when this episode drops, going to be this week at Experience Inbound. And I'm going to be talking about this exact topic. Using financial metrics in the conversion path to justify your existence to get that bigger budget. That's what all of this is about. So if you're telling your company, like, let's say that George is mid level manager@georgebthomas.com, right? And George is like, hey, we, we need to get a social media manager. They're like, I don't know. That seems like we'll just get some kid to come in and post and memes and. But then if you're able to show the numbers and the percentage of the revenue that came in from this campaign, the significant amount of revenue that came in through social, then they're like, oh, we need to double down and get somebody with an MBA and a sense of humor who can do this. That's the difference from getting an intern and getting a specialist being able to show them the ROI of a particular channel. So with, with the social media tool, it makes it so unbelievably easy because with HubSpot in general, one of the, the major superpowers is being able to track revenue from the moment it comes in the door before it even is revenue. And you're able to say, okay, so this is where this money came from with the social media tool. It's that on steroids with no additional effort on your part. As long as you're using the tool correctly. If you're not associating everything that you're putting out with a campaign, you're losing.

You know what I hear when I hear MBA with creativity and social media in a campaign? I simply hear, oh, no. I simply hear, oh, oh. Anyway, I jacked that up. Whatever it was, it was so, it was so. It was so there. It was like I was just gonna be like, george, I got you anyway.

George, I got you. Look at me. Do you know what? Tell me. Just say, cue me up. What does that sound like? Liz?

Liz, what does that sound like when you hear that?

Cha ching.

There you go. See, we could just do that.

Look at that.

Who needs a sound?

We're doing great today, everybody. We're doing great. So what are the most powerful ways a company can start using HubSpot for social media? And what I'm, I really want to emphasize the same starting piece. Like there. We've talked about a lot of different capacities and capabilities that you can maximize. But I could imagine walking in there and being like, where do I start? What do I do?

Oh yeah.

What is happening?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, we already. Starting point one is definitely download the Chrome extension. Did I mention that HubSpot has a social media Chrome extension anyway?

What? For what? What was it again?

Yeah, Social media Chrome extension. You should download that. Yeah, but. But here's the next. Next thing. Here's. Here's where I see people go wrong and they forget that they need to do a little research and put in some good information into a place in HubSpot social media tool. Meaning before you get all excited and just start spreading your social media goodness all over the interwebs, you need to go into your platforms and find out when are people actually active on the channels that you're going to be posting? Is it when people. Wednesdays and Fridays from 12 to 4? Is it like Sundays and Tuesdays from 8am to noon? Like, what is it? Because when you first open up the HubSpot social settings, you're gonna have these dumb default times that they're gonna like when you use the Chrome extension or try to schedule a post. Those times don't mean jack squat for your business or your community. So do some research and modify the schedule times in your HubSpot portal so that you're actually posting when your audience is going to be most engaged.

I love that. I was trying to think of something quippy like, don't just ask where your buyer Personas are, ask when are they. But that just.

Yeah, that was pretty quippy.

Yeah, that was.

Yeah.

But that's a little like for my Doctor who people. That's a little wibbly, wobbly timey wi me. Like, it's kind of like, are they. Yeah.

Registered on the quip meter? Definitely.

Yeah.

Well, thanks, buddy.

Yeah, that's why she likes you to be around, by the way. Just that right there is. She's like, I need Devin, man.

Is it really that bad that I get some sort of validation for what I bring to the.

Give the drummer some. That's it.

You're good. Yeah, there you go.

Yeah, definitely that. But I would also take a step back and think about your content strategy. Don't just be posting a post unless you are really in tune with the needs and the voice of your customer and you're able to speak directly to like, basically, unless you're ready to get in that pulpit and start reaching and you know that you're going to hit somebody with a message, start With a content analysis and breakdown. Start repurposing what you have. Think of ways to present your content in a way that fits your social media. Because again, HubSpot social media tool is just that, a tool, not a magic wand. You can schedule crap all day and all you're gonna get back is crap. If you come correct with content. Putting out quality information and, and adding value above all else, everything you should be doing should be adding value, value so that interaction, they're better, better people than before, are better people now than they were before when they met you. So you should always just focus on that and then use the tool in order to make that happen and be able to handle your ROI revenue attribution.

All right, I need to double down on that. I need to double down on that. And I need to tell you, ladies and gentlemen, you are not the only human who provides value on the Internet. And I want to tie into. Devin, you mentioned strategy. And this is, is something, by the way, that I've preached for a long time, but I'm relatively bad at. But I know moving forward I want to get better at. So I'm, I am sharing my own shame on the podcast here. And that is you should have a happy mix of talking about yourself and talking about other people. Now, of course, not direct competitors, but something in your space. One or two blogs, one or two podcasts, people that you learn from, that you admire, that you know are adding value to the world. There should be a happy mix of those humans and your content going out. Because nobody likes the guy or gal at the party. That is just like all talking about themselves all the time. And you're like, oh, God, how do I exit stage left already? Don't be that person. Don't be that business. On social. Take some time to figure out what else could we be sharing that our audience would find value? And maybe it's like a 70, 30% type thing that you come up with. I don't know. You do your own math of what you want to do, yours versus theirs, but definitely don't always talk about yourself.

Yeah, we don't want to go to parties with them. We don't want to be friends with those people. We don't want to date from those people. Remember, I think I gave. You were there, George, when I gave that talk at a conference last year when I said there is a startling parallel between men I would never give a second date to and businesses I would not buy from. And one of those things are, do you just talk about yourself all the Time, like, out all the time. Yeah, no, thank you.

Yeah. Speaking of which. Speaking of which, that was the B2B forum last year that you spoke at. And people should pay attention. Yeah, and people should pay attention because maybe. Maybe they want. If you're a B2B business listening to this, of course, be it inbound. My gosh. But after Inbound, there's the B2B forum that you might want to check out as well.

After the party. It's the after. After party.

It's just my second, like, excuse to go to Boston because I love Boston so much, to be honest with you.

Are you literally, like, going to Boston, coming back and then being like, well, gotta go, kids. And then back to Beantown, you go.

Exactly. That is my. September, October is Boston. Boston.

That's outstanding.

Which. And then I listen to the band Boston as I'm traveling to Boston both times I go to Boston. So, by the way, if you took a shot every time I said Boston in the last five minutes, you might be seeing Boston soon. Good luck.

Don't drive, please. Thank you. What are we advocating on this podcast? All right, you know what? All right, we're.

We're.

We're landing the plane. Okay, guys, final. It's. It is. Yeah, we've been going.

What?

I know.

It can't be. That went too quick.

I know.

Holy crap. There's so much more to talk about. Social.

All right, you get. Okay, here's what we're gonna do. I have one more question. You each individually get one more lane for a hot take of your choosing.

Oh, just right out there. The gate. Just whatever our hot take is.

Right out the gate. Hot take. Let's do it.

All right, well, my big thing is spend more time focusing on what you need to do for your content strategy. The algorithms have changed, the landscape has changed. Be ready to talk and add value. Don't just exist on social. And also make sure you're leveraging social media as a opportunity to interact, not just present. Social is just that. It's social and it's supposed to be a two way street. And feel free to do social listening. Comment on things that are relevant to what you do. Don't just post into the ether. Respond to people who talk about things that are important to your customers. Note I didn't say things that are important to you and the problems that you solve. Talk about the things that are important to your customers. Be available. You don't just have to be proactive with content. You can also be reactive with people's problems.

Yes. Yes, I love so much of that. Like put down the megaphone and actually have like valuable conversations for them. What's, what is it with them? What's in it for me? Like that philosophy. Here's what I'll say, since you're talking about putting down the megaphone is I would say also put in your hearing aids needs. One of the things that you need to do more with social media is actually shut up and listen. And so one of my wish list items for HubSpot and I got excited by the way, when I was talking about the Instagram Instagram streams because I can't wait till there's like LinkedIn streams and Facebook streams and all the different streams that we can actually listen to. Because the fact of being able to listen to the conversations and engage when appropriate to conversate and communicate when needed versus this just blah blah, blah, blah blah blah blah, over and over, putting stuff out I think is super valuable. So being able to listen and then engage the other thing I am, I know you said one thing, but hey, it is what it is. The other thing I would say is I wish more folks as I look around the social channels would understand the valuable power at your mental ability to ask questions. Think about this. Social media is all about engagement. So maybe ask a question or two along the way so that they actually have something to engage around. Because like not everybody's just gonna be like great post, bro, amazing thoughts. You know, by the way, I know you could be listening this and not be a bro or bro ad or guy gal, whatever. It's great post. And not that you're not going to get a ton of engagement, but if you actually harness the power of question and also then when they actually answer or if they give you a be careful George, a not so great answer, hit that reply and ask them for specifics. I, I great example of this. You can go look at a couple my posts and I like engage with people and be like, well what specifically do you mean? Or what's a layer below that? Or like again, open ended kind of statements based on the original question. Anyway, listen and ask more questions. There you go, Liz.

I love that. And you know what? You actually teased the final question.

Oh geez.

Which is with you going back and forth to Beantown with I know it's April right now, but I have this. The way this year is going, I feel like we're gonna blink and it's September and we are there scares the.

Crap because I gotta talk to create. By the way, I.

What?

Yeah, I mean, it scares the crap how fast it's going to go because I have to. I have to create my sales enablement talk that I'm giving it inbound this year.

Is this. Is this. Are you just low key, like sliding in a news flag?

Don't tell nobody. I'm speaking it inbound this year.

I'm not supposed to tell anybody that. You're talking about why their sales enablement strategies are failing.

Why? Six reasons. They're BS reasons. Yeah, don't tell nobody. All right.

Hey, Devin, keep it.

I'm going to. To completely put under my hat that George is speaking at inbound this year. So if you know that, keep that to yourself. Don't tell everyone. You know. So, yeah, don't. There you go.

Top secret.

Thank you.

I mean, and let's not tell anybody. Anybody that we're likely going to have some sort of hub hero shenanigans. You can't. You can't tell anybody.

Don't tell nobody.

Okay? Don't tell nobody. In fact, why don't we do this instead? Let's dive into attention away from us and throw it back to HubSpot. Yeah, HubSpot. My boys, George and Devin, they have some wish list items for you.

Oh, yeah.

What would we like to see? Come to the HubSpot social media tool suite?

Oh, I want stronger listening tools. That's. That's my big thing. That was the one thing.

What does stronger look like?

Kind of like hootsuite, when I used to use it, had phenomenal tools for listening, for demographics. And I understand the APIs have changed, especially post Cambridge Analytica. It's harder to do these things. But if we were able to, you know, glean more information from the platform instead of, you know, just generic mentions and topics and stuff like that, I think that would be dope, like prospecting stuff, you know? Yeah, I love it, but somebody's gonna ruin it as soon as that happens. So.

Yeah, So I don't. I don't know if anybody has heard lately, but. Well, video is kind of a real big thing on the Internet.

Did you Hear that in 2017, 80% of the content we consume, Video.

Yeah.

That's one out there for all my inbound marketers. We know that statistic and they update it every year.

Yeah. So, man, it really burns my butt that if I go into the app marketplace, that I can search for YouTube and I want to be able to connect YouTube to my HubSpot portal. And I, I get real excited because I see YouTube and I'm like, yeah, let's go, party time. Because by the way, YouTube analytics are, well, kind of confusing to mere mortal humans. And so HubSpot has been really good at like, taking confusing data and simplifying it. And then I go to install the app and I realized that I have to to have an enterprise version. Come on. So can you, can you please bring YouTube reporting down to at least professional? Because video is important, right? That's a wish list item. But the other thing too is can I please be able to, like, upload my videos to my file manager and then disperse them out to like, multiple, multiple locations with ease? Like, that would be great as well. Anyway, in other words, social media and video is more and more and more and more becoming important. And anything that you can do to, like, bring those two together in a very easy way. Your boy, George B. Thomas is down with all of that.

Agreed.

Devin, what you got?

Didn't I go first?

Yeah, he started that party. Oh, yeah. Liz is. Liz has Friday brain.

It's cool. It's Friday. Hey, I just want to jump on.

The you had a Doctor who moment.

I did have it. I went timey wimey, wibbly, wobbly. I literally have no idea how that happened. George, I'm blaming you. It's your fault.

Always my fault. What were you saying, Devin?

I was going to say anyone who sees me on LinkedIn or social media or anyone who will see a screenshot from this recording, they know I love my video content. So anything to like for the. You're listening right now. You can't see it. I got a neon HubSpot sign in my office right now. Like, I am living the dream. And everything about my office. It's about two things. Well, technically three things. My personal comfort, my man Deadpool, and making sure that everything is camera ready all the time.

That's it. That's it.

I love it.

Camera ready at multiple like areas and.

Absolutely.

Oh my gosh. Yeah. Yeah. I, Anyway, I, I, I won't beat a dead horse. Video, please. Video.

I was about to make a joke and George, what's your answer? But that's, yeah, that's a little.

That's my answer. Yeah, you went all sorts of Dr. Hoo, Hoo, Wibbly, wibbly, wibbly.

I literally was nodding along going like. And what do you mean specifically by social listening? So I can do not know where my brain went. You know what?

It's all good.

Maybe I just haven't done enough shopping.

Liz, just so you know, just so you know, we still love you.

Oh, good. I'm so glad. Didn't realize I had to worry about that. No, it's like when you go home and my husband's like, don't worry about the lamp. I wasn't worried about the lamp. And now I'm worried about the lamp. Thank you, George. I am now. You know what? It has been an excellent episode of Huff Heroes. Devin, I am so glad you're back because clearly this nonsense cannot continue. I'm just kidding. I love you both. I love everyone listening. If you love us, leave us a review. We would love to hear from you. If you have ideas or you are still chafing from the giraffe issue from last week's episode, you can still reach georgebtomas.com oh well.

Well, thanks for that.

Well, I'm also. This is me trying to connect the dots between episodes so people are like, what's your rap thing? And then they go back and they listen. That's called content amplification and distribution, George. Look it up.

Great job. Great job.

Happy Friday, everybody.

All right, we made it out without a poem or a limerick. Yes. Okay, Hub Heroes, we've reached the end of another episode. Will Lord Lack continue to loom over the community or. Or will we be able to defeat him in the next episode of the Hub Heroes podcast? Make sure you tune in and find out. In the next episode, make sure you head over to thehubheroes.com to get the latest episodes and become part of the League of Heroes. FYI, if you're part of the League of Heroes, you'll get the show notes right in your inbox and they come with some hidden power up potential as well. Make sure you share this podcast with a friend. Leave a review if you like what you're listening to, and use the hashtag hubheroes podcast on any of the socials and let us know what strategy conversation you'd like to listen into next. Until next time, when we meet and combine our forces, remember to be a happy, helpful, humble human. And of course, always be looking for a way to be someone's hero.