Podcast News: What are the Latest Tips to Stay on Top of New Technology?

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Hi everyone. Welcome back to Feed you'd Brand. I'm Tom Hazard, your host and I'm going to do this episode solo today because Tracy is a bit under the weather and she's been losing her voice and it's been very rough and it's okay actually, because what I want to share with you today is some of what I experienced at Traffic and Conversion Summit 2019 in San Diego this week. I'm recording this very fresh right after it's ended and Tracy didn't go to that. It's sort of my role in our business is to stay on top of new technological things, although she did go with me last year. But this year we had to divide and conquer. Tracy's been speaking on a lot of other stages and then got run down a bit with a cold. And you just have me today. Tracy will be back on a future episode, but what I'm really excited to share with you today is just for those of you that don't know just a little bit about Traffic and Conversion Summit, and then I really want to share with you the story of the opening keynote to the conference because it directly applies to the podcasting industry and I thought that many of you who couldn't attend the conference would enjoy that. So for those of you that don't know, the Traffic and Conversion Summit takes place in San Diego every year, although now they're actually expanding it to other dates. They're going to do an east coast one and they're going to do some in other countries. It's going global. The conference has been around for about 10 years. This was their 10th anniversary and it is a massive, just massive conference. It's one of the biggest ones that I attend each year. I think the only bigger conference that I know of or that I attend, and I'm sure there are others, but I'm talking that I attend is the Consumer Electronics show in Las Vegas. That's probably the biggest one I attend. I know there's some other big ones in Chicago and some other cities. The Consumer Electronics show takes place over massive amounts of buildings and it's really more of an exposition of companies showing off their latest technology and innovations and is less of a show where you would go to learn things, although they do have some of that. Whereas the Traffic and Conversion Summit is definitely more of a place for anybody, especially any marketing professionals. People that have digital marketing agencies especially are probably their primary focus of who they attract and who wants to attend. But there's also a lot of business owners that just have to use digital marketing as a part of their every day doing business to try to succeed in business. Because I don't think there's any business today that doesn't touch digital marketing in one way or another. Even if you're not actively realizing that you're doing digital marketing, if you have a website, if you have social media feeds, if you have any kind of email outreach you're doing, you're doing digital marketing in one way or another. So it is something that every business needs to pay attention to. And in our business, it's my role to go and stay on top of the latest techniques and technologies. And I'm not what I would consider to be a digital marketing expert, per se. I mean, I'm certainly an expert in certain aspects of digital marketing, I think, especially as it relates to podcasting. But I am not this overall global expert in digital marketing because I don't have an agency and I don't know all the tech. But I need to stay on top of things as much as I can so that I can make smart decisions for my business. And I think that's true for a lot of other attendees as well. Certainly a lot of people I know who went. And there were a lot of podcasters there. I saw a lot that I know, either ones that I work with directly or ones that I don't. There were a lot of podcasters there. And there was a big podcasting meetup on Tuesday night, the 26th of February, which was the middle day of the show. This went from the 25th to the 27th of February in San Diego. A huge podcasting meetup.

Just to give you an idea of how big and how many people were at this conference and how big it was on the first day. This is just a short little story to give you an idea of this. Okay, the first day, toward the end of the day was a interview with Sir Richard Branson of the Virgin brands. You know, Virgin Records became Virgin Airlines, and, you know, all these different Virgin companies, including his one that's doing what Virgin Galactic, I think, is the space thing. And Sir Richard Branson flew directly from his island I think it's near between the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico, something like that, all the way to San Diego just for this end of day interview with Roland Frazier, who is one of the, I think, co founders of the Traffic and Conversion Summit and Digital Marketer. And we all had to wait. The previous session happened in the main hall, the main ballroom, I guess, is what you would call it. And they had everybody exit. So they got set up for this. And there are so many people at this conference. There was more than 6,000 in a venue that can handle that much, but boy, not much more, I'll tell you. We all got put outside that main ballroom and we had to wait. And so many people kept coming up and packing in and piling in, waiting to get in to get a seat to hear Sir Richard Branson speak that it was unlike anything I've experienced in, I want to say, 15 years or maybe even 20 years, where for about 20 minutes we were packed in like sardines waiting to get in. And I only experienced that kind of confinement for a period of time once in my life. And it was in New York City, going to Times Square on New Year's Eve. And it's the only other time I've been in that sort of situation and I've never done it again because it was while it was something to be experienced. That kind of confinement is not necessarily a fun thing that you want to repeat a lot. Spend this time, all of us, waiting to see Sir Richard Branson got thrown into that accidentally. So anyway, I'm just trying to give you a mental picture of what this was like and how many people attend this conference. It's very popular and it's been increasing in popularity, but that's not really one I want to spend this whole episode talking about. I really want to share with you the overall, I want to say, theme or tone and intent of this year's conference. I mean, certainly Traffic and Conversion Summit is a place where you can go and learn from experts that are implementing all kinds of strategies and have had great success in digital marketing and are doing it today. And they're sharing tactics, they're sharing successes, they're sharing cautionary tales. You want to know what's working today and some of the tips and techniques that can help you succeed. It's a really good place to go. Now, I'm also, for full disclosure, going to say that Digital Marketer, which is the company behind Traffic and Conversion Summit, and I've already mentioned Roland Frazier and Ryan Dice, is the other gentleman who are the co founders of this, they have their company Digital Marketer and they are also selling trainings and services for Digital Marketer. So there is that aspect of it, but it's not a heavy push salesy kind of feel. It definitely is a place where they've got four to six sessions going on simultaneously throughout the day where you can go and listen to an expert and learn something on the different areas of digital marketing that interest you. But there's also sort of the state of the union, if you will, in digital marketing. And Ryan Dice, who I just mentioned a minute ago, is one of the co founders of Digital Marketer and Traffic and Conversion Summit, gave the opening keynote on Monday morning, the 25th of February. And this is really what I want to talk about and share with you today because it has direct relevance to all of us in the podcasting world. And of course this podcast is focused on all sorts of things, trying to help you market and grow your brand, but using podcasting or video as a tool. So didn't expect this from Ryan Deiss opening keynote, but I was pleasantly surprised. So I want to share this with you and because I think you really enjoy it. So Ryan took the stage and started to talk about history. He started talking about five phases of technology and through some stories, some examples, I'll just share briefly two of them with you. He started with the invention of the steam engine in the early 1800s, very early. And he said every technology goes through these five stages and the first being discovery, usually the invention of something, something completely new. So when he's talking about the steam engine, early 1800s, the discovery phase, inventing and perfecting the steam engine, then fast forward a decade or two and the technology gets into the proliferation stage where it's been invented and now it's being adopted by more and more companies and individuals. It's in this rapid growth phase. So that's what he called proliferation. And that happened in the railroad industry. After the steam engine is invented, there were many, many different railroad companies regionally throughout the United States. Then it gets to this stage of standardization where, okay, it's more mature. It's trucking along, or in this case, I guess, steaming along on the railroads. And it's now the standard mode of technology or for whatever it is in this case, you know, if you're going to travel long distance, yes, you're going to take a railroad and you're transporting cargo and it's going to go on the railroad. Well, then he continued to go through history and showed how then within another Decade or two. It goes through this phase of consolidation where there's a lot of mergers, acquisitions, and a lot fewer companies participating or serving the community, serving the market, if you will, with their technology. And it can get to a point where it gets sort of monopolized by fewer companies. And then the last stage, which he called innovation or disruption, and this one's a little counterintuitive, so I'm going to explain that. So he talked about how when a technology goes through that consolidation phase, then there are fewer choices in who provides the service or the technology, that then every technology gets to the point where there's sort of this fork in the road and they're either going to innovate and further evolve the technology and give it new life. Where it gets out of this sort of consolidation phase and goes into a new cycle, beginning again with more discovery, more proliferation. And it goes around this five stages, which is kind of like a wheel or a circle again. And I actually have a couple of photographs of this diagram that he used on the stage, and I'm going to have it in the blog post at FeedYourBrand Co, so make sure to go and check that out if you want to see this. But the other option is that the technology goes through disruption. And here's where it's counterintuitive, because disruption today is a word that is often seen as a positive thing. It may be an overused term where it's seen as positive, like, oh, wow, that company's really disrupted the industry, like Netflix disrupted the video set industry, you know, the block posters of the world. And now we don't have to go out to the store anymore to get a movie we want to watch on Friday or Saturday night. Right. It can be seen as a positive thing or as certainly an innovative thing. But in this case, Ryan Dyson, it was his talk, and he could do whatever he wants. He used disruption as sort of a negative, that if the technology gets disrupted, it gets obsoleted and it ends up on a path to dying and to being overtaken by a new technology. So he was talking about and used a couple examples in history, the steam engine and the railroads was one. He used another one of the telephone industry, starting with Alexander Graham Bell inventing the telephone, which in the later 1800s, he did that. And for roughly 20 years, while his patent was still in effect, his company was really the only one. He was definitely the discovery phase that invented it. And then he had a legal monopoly on it while his patent was in effect. But once his patent expired, all Of a sudden there were hundreds of companies that got into the space of telephone and communications. And that was the proliferation phase, all these different new entrants and then they saturate the market over the entire United States with different telephone companies and it becomes standard, is goes through that standardization phase. And then fast forward a few more decades and then you get into this consolidation phase. And I'm sure there are many listeners of this show that will remember when ATT dominated the market. And I'm sure there are maybe some that are not young enough to really remember that. But you go through the 1960s, 1970s, AT&T was gobbling up every other telephone company around the country. And they ended up, and it may even have been earlier than the 60s, I don't remember it because I was not alive even in the 60s. But there over the 20th century, AT&T dominated the market, acquired every other little telephone company that existed and had a virtual monopoly on the telephone services market. And then it came to a point In I think 1983 or 1984, I forget exactly what year it was, but in that early mid-80s time period where the government came in and disrupted the telephone services industry by breaking up AT&T into many different regional telephone providers all over the country. Because it was determined by the government that AT&T was a monopoly and it wasn't in the best interest of the consumers. And the government had the power and they did break up AT&T into all these regional carriers, which of course today are all but extinct with modern mobile telephone service.

It really shows how the industry went through these five phases and got to that point of either innovation or disruption. And in that case it certainly was disrupted and broken up. And then eventually a different technology came in and made landlines obsolete. I mean, how many households today still have a landline? I think it's decreasing tremendously. It's not completely dead, but it's definitely not what it was. I don't think landline telephone companies are what you want to be investing your 401k in these days. So I found actually this stories that Ryan was telling about the steam engine technology, telephone technology he wanted went on and also referenced the automobile technology, which went through the same sort of five phases of technology. And I'm not going to go through all the nitty gritty of that one for you, but I was actually surprised to learn that, that in the 1920s in the United States there were over 460 Automobile manufacturers in this country. That is amazing. Almost a hundred years ago there was 460Summit Automobile companies during the proliferation phase. But then today it's definitely gone through consolidation and maybe it's gone around the technology phases a couple times. But Today there's only 14 major automobile manufacturers worldwide. So talk about a change in technology. So he was giving us all a history lesson and making some good points which then he related to the digital marketing industry, his primary industry and what traffic and Conversion Summit is all about. Talking about how digital marketing in early Internet became a new thing. And he showed the very first banner ad that ever existed on the Internet. He actually was able to find that and trace it. The very first banner ad that ever existed was the birth of digital marketing. And of course it had an amazing conversion rate because it was the very first banner ad ever. So Ryan Deiss went on to say how in his opinion the digital marketing industry has gone through the discovery phase of being invented and coming to life. Going through proliferation as more and more people get into it and start doing it for their own businesses or become agencies servicing others to do it. Went through standardization being that hey, if you're not at using digital marketing in your business, you're losing in the market then going through consolidation. And he was of the opinion that they're really at that point of at that innovation or disruption phase and that digital marketing is either going to innovate and evolve and start going around the five faces of technology again or it's going to be completely disrupted and be yesterday's news. And he personally is of the opinion that it is going to continue to go around the phases again. But he also was talking about how it has really changed and this is where it got really interesting for me and I think you will see that as well where when he was talking about digital marketers, they're generally really data hungry people, very analytical people, people that run digital marketing agencies for a living. You know, things are pretty absolute. Either techniques work or they don't work. You're getting conversions or you're not. Your ads are getting traction or they're not things that are working real well right now but might not work very well next year or things that worked amazingly well last year are really in decline and not working as well this year. They're data hungry people that like don't like to make decisions on gut feels or on assumptions. Generally digital marketers don't like to make guesses. They like to follow models and innovate and find out a new trick that works and then capitalize on that. But it was very interesting where Ryan Deiss was saying what they've done in the past is not what they're doing today and not necessarily what they're recommending doing today is that as a company, digital marketer is starting to do things differently, in some ways completely opposite to what they used to do in the past. And when you think about digital marketing and all the data, you think about tracking, right? You think about analyzing the numbers. And what he was saying is, whereas they in the past never would have done anything unless it was trackable and justifiable, definable, today they're doing more and more things that are untrackable. These untrackable ideas is what he was talking about. And he gave some examples of, I think five or seven or so examples. I'm going to share most of them with you here in just a minute. But he really stated that he's gotten to this comfort level, and he thinks that digital marketers in general need to get comfortable with the idea that not everything they should be doing should be absolutely trackable, should be justifiable, have necessarily a specific ROI or result that you can point to. And it has to do also with how markets have evolved and consumers have evolved. And obviously there are variations to this. Whether you're doing more of a business to consumer marketing or a business to business marketing, there's going to be, I'm sure, varying stages or levels of this that are going to apply to your business. But again, there's a point to this and it comes back to podcasting, which I was so excited to hear. He went through all these different untrackable ideas and examples. One of them was for marketing your business and getting the word out. Go on to quora.com and answer 10. He called 10 stupid questions about your niche, your area of expertise, your market, whatever that is, a sort of a 101 series of questions, because a lot of people go on Quora and search for things of their areas of interest or their pain points when they want to learn something. And if you answer 10 questions on Quora, while there's not an absolute trackable result to that, you're probably going to get quite a bit of traffic from people that go on there, read the question you've answered, and then seek you out as an expert in that field, I thought that was actually a pretty brilliant idea. It certainly doesn't cost much to do it, and I thought it was great. Obviously, another untrackable idea is to write a book. Now, certainly that's not a new idea. And he obviously was quick to say that. But books are still relevant today and they provide a lot of value. It's a way for you to serve and to get your name out there. And it's still valid today. Another interesting one was send emails with no links in them. I found that kind of fascinating because anybody who has an email list and you send a newsletter or you send marketing emails or solicitations, I probably can't even remember one that I have not sent a link in, in months and months. If it's truly to my email list, like a newsletter or some other, I would say part of a email marketing campaign. I think everyone has a link in it. I'm not talking about the unsubscribe link. I think you always have to do that. But in terms of. In the message of the email, he was saying, hey, serve. Send an email with no links. Don't be so overtly selling or marketing in your email and it will have increasing returns to you. Another one was, it may seem elementary, but I think it has a really good point. He said, send answer emails. Personally, a lot of us have email sequences that have automated responses or we're sending mass emails to a list or even if it's not a huge list, instead of having it be a more personal email that you're sending and they're saying, hey, consumers like more individual attention and more engagement with real people that is working, getting more traction today. So answer emails. Personally, the next two, I think are the most important and starting to get, I think, more interesting. And one was the second to last. It was foster and manage a community on Facebook.

I think many of us have certainly social media profiles. A lot of us have Facebook groups or certainly Facebook pages. And you know, we're trying to build a lot of people that like our business like Page or that are a part of our group. But I think very few of us actually foster and manage a community. I mean, how many of us actually have hired a community manager that's actively participating and engaging with your community on Facebook? I think large companies do probably, and a lot of smaller business and individuals probably don't. But it is one of those opportunities. I think the more you engage with that community, manage it, participate in it, or hire someone on your staff who can do that. The more you'll get out of it, build a community of raving fans that want to hear from you, that are interested in your show or your company or your products, your services, the more you can do that, it would be more successful for you. It seemed to make a lot of sense to me. But the most exciting part of this opening keynote of Traffic And Conversion Summit 2019 was when Ryan Deiss said his final and what he seemed to be emphasizing as one of his most important suggestions for digital marketers today was to start a podcast, publish a podcast. And he gave some examples. Digital marketer has a podcast. And he kind of was telling this, trying to be a little funny and tongue in cheek. And it was where, or I guess lighthearted for the audience, get some laughs, where he said, we started a podcast. I have no idea how many people listen to it. And he was making the point that, and it's true, I think any of us existing podcasters know and any of you potential new podcast listening will learn that while there is a lot of data available regarding podcasts, there's not the kind of data we would all like to have. Itunes does not share with you how many subscribers you have. In fact, no podcast distribution network does. Those are closely guarded as their proprietary information. They know how many people listen to your podcast and they're not really going to tell you. You can make a close estimate based on the data that's available, but you really never know. So as podcasters, we're always trying to find ways to drive traffic to our own websites, to our social media channels, places where we can engage with them and encourage, invite them to become a part of our community, our email list, or like us on Facebook, so we know who they are and things like that. But there isn't the kind of hard data of a podcast like many digital marketing things are, that are like, well, how many people are searching on this keyword in Google search today? And oh, I can go advertise to people that are searching on that keyword. You don't know who the people are who subscribe to your podcast. That's just the way it is. But he talked about becoming very comfortable with that, that again, untrackable ideas are something that he and he believes the digital marketing community in general should be embracing, that it can't all be about the hard data and the absolute right and wrong, yes or no, win or lose, that serving, providing value to your market will produce increasing returns and make people want to buy what it is you have to sell. And I agree with him. And so he went on saying, and this is where it sort of got funny, he's saying, and in fact, I know so little about my listeners on my podcast that I started a second podcast and everybody chuckled a bit. And then in that one, he continued to not provide him A lot of empirical data. So much so that he started a third podcast and everybody laughed a bit more. And so here is Digital Marketer, this company that has grown and lived based on marketing success in the digital world, and that's largely based on absolute data and results that are definable and trackable. And here he's recommending that every digital marketer should be engaged in podcasting, whether they have their own podcast or they're recommending podcasting to all their clients as a way to create content that is going to produce very good returns for building a community, having an audience to market to, establishing authority and expertise. All the things really that we have talked about on Feed you'd brand for years, ever since we started this podcast. And the fact that he emphasized that as the last and most important untrackable idea, and he really did emphasize that all digital marketers should be using podcasting, that was very exciting to me on day one of Traffic and Conversion, the opening keynote, first thing in the morning, it was 8:30 to 10:00am and I just was so invigorated and pumped up. I was like, all right, I'm really happy to hear that and happy that all 6,000 plus people, because this main ballroom was packed first thing in the morning, all heard that. And I think it's very exciting for the podcast industry, for marketing and growing brands in general, and set the tone for all of Traffic and Conversion Summit. So I'm not going to, in this episode, really get into a lot of tactical things. Certainly over the course of the three days, I went to a lot of different sessions, got a lot of great tips, learned a lot of things. This is not one of those episodes that's like the total summary or I'm going to give you some nitty gritty tips. There may be some deep dives I take into a couple of those subjects that I thought were really important and relevant, especially for us podcasters in a future episode. So make sure you're subscribed to this podcast and you will have some of that in the future. But to me, this is just wanted to share with you. First of all, if you don't know what Traffic and Conversion Summit is a little bit about what it's about, and share with you about that opening keynote. And if you have the ability in the future, there's another Traffic and Conversion Summit that's going to be in New York this year. That's the first time they're doing one on the east coast. And maybe you live closer or are able to go to that one, you might consider it. There certainly is a cost to it. These tickets to the show are not free. But if your business is relying on digital marketing in any way, and if you have a podcast, it probably is. And if you have a business at all, as I said earlier, it probably is, you might want to consider going. I certainly learned a lot was well worth my ticket and I thoroughly enjoyed it. And it's starting to go global this traffic and Convergence summit that the organizers again are Roland Frazier and Ryan Dyson. They actually sold a portion of it. They're still owners in it and involved in it, but they sold a large portion of it to an event company out of the UK and so they're taking it global, putting on a lot more events. So there's probably going to be a traffic and conversion summit in your country or in your area soon. Or of course they have it annually in San Diego. They're going to do it again next year in the February timeframe in San Diego. So I really enjoyed it. I would recommend going to it and I hope you've enjoyed hearing this little story about this opening keynote and sort of in general the tone and spirit of what it was this year. So I will have some photos that I took from that presentation from Ryan in the blog post at FeedYourBrand co. So be sure to go check that out if you want to see that. And there will be some links to some of the things I talked about as well there. And of course you can reach out to us anywhere with any comments or questions that you have on social media anywhere. Edyourbrand. So thanks so much everybody. I'll talk to you next time. This has been Tom on feed. You'd brand Sam.

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