All Social Y'all Podcast

I tell my personal story experiencing my family (immediate - who I live with) getting Covid 19.  I also share examples of brands that are sharing content on social media relevant to Corona Virus!

Regarding concerns and US users use of TikTok,

There is a value based belief system in the US that social media is an avenue for free speech (it's not just the US either).  The President and the White House Administration is contemplating banning TikTok from American users due to national security risks and collection by the Chinese Gov't of United State users personal data, as explained in my previous episodes.   I will be breaking this down much further in this episode.  I will help you think further about what it means if TikTok is banned – what it means to you and your business, what is trending in response to the looming changes and what it could mean to Facebook and other social media platforms?

On Friday, an alternative solution was announced and that is for Microsoft to purchase the American entity of TikTok.  Huh??   I had the same reaction in 2015 when IBM purchased The Weather Channel. But then I realized it was for data!  Microsoft has the same interest.  Their future business is more and more focused on consumer services data to support advancements in their products like Xbox and future game streaming services.  Furthermore, there are future generations moving up into the workforce and with Googles Gmail for instance, they understand that consumers have other choices today, once they hit the workforce they may not choose Microsoft products. They're going to become business decision makers as well.  Once they hit the work force they may not choose Microsoft product.s

It's a constrant branding, innovation, differentiation, software as a service company.

Microsoft is also serious about AI (Artificial Intelligence) and because TikTok has AI built into it's tool it could accelerate AI initiatives centered around consumer data.  Same goes as with augmented reality (or AR)….TikTok has filters and ads that are powered by AR.  Their mobile focused capabilities is not something that Microsoft has had success in to date.  And because TikTok is mobile, well they are ahead in that regard as well.

Microsoft is not unfamiliar with acquisitions;  Skype, Nokia and LinkedIn to name a few large complicated acquisitions in recent years.

There still lies the question of the algorithm tho.  Who's going to own that?

The White House has given TikTok until Sept. 15th to sell or it will ban it's service to US users.  The President met with Microsoft's CEO, Satya Nadella.

And then out came Microsoft's formal statement which said,

Microsoft fully appreciates the importance of addressing the President's concerns. It is committed to acquiring TikTok subject to a complete security review and providing proper economic benefits to the United States, including the United States Treasury.

So Microsoft is considering purchasing TikTok not in it's entirety, but in the US, but also 3 other countries and those are Australia, Canada and New Zealand which is 30% of TikTok.  

In an article in chinadaily.com, it said that TikTok denied it could be a tool for Chinese intelligence. In a statement on Saturday, (so I'm recording this on Aug. 5th) TikTok US General Manager Vanessa Pappas said the app is staying in the US and is "not planning on going anywhere".

The article then goes on to say, "ByteDance (TikTok's parent co) founder Zhang Yiming also said on Monday in an email to staff that TikTok has always been committed to user safety, platform neutrality and transparency, and the company has initiated preliminary discussions with a tech company to help clear the way to continue offering the TikTok app in the US."

He continued by saying "We do not yet know the exact details of what our end solution will be. Candidly, it is unlikely that the level of interest and speculation around TikTok will cease in the short term, and I recognize that this can be very distracting," and he is talking to his employees.

In an article by Forbes this month, linkedin the show notes to all these references,

That dataset, in the hands of an adversarial foreign government, is a risk—a very serious risk, in a world where social media is used to push propaganda out to users who tap those platforms as a primary source of news. When TikTok is described as a national security risk, that is essentially what those governments mean.

It goes on to say , "The more insidious view," Thornton-Trump says (no relation to Trump, as far as I know LOL), "is that TikTok and other apps present a danger of mass manipulation and social control and disinformation. The danger may be minimal to the individual but serious for society and democracy."

TikTok is at pains to stress that it has not provided user data to Beijing, that it would not do so if asked. See I wanted to give you perspectives from TikTok, from Microsoft and from the White House Administration.

She goes onto say, "TikTok is led by an American CEO, with hundreds of employees and key leaders across safety, security, product, and public policy here in the U.S.," the company told me (author of this Forbes article) in response to talk of that U.S. ban. "We have no higher priority than promoting a safe and secure app experience for our users. We have never provided user data to the Chinese government, nor would we do so if asked."

As to how to potentially the monetary exchange will look like,if some kind of acquisition does go through, Trump stated in the last week, "But the United States should be reimbursed or should be paid a substantial amount of money, because without the United States they don't have anything, at least having to do with the 30%."

Now - how this might be possible is very uncertain at this time.

I'm not going to speculate.  It has to do with exchange of money between the US Gov't and a software co inside an acquisition at global scale.

In a press conference on Tues. Aug.4th  https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/press-briefing-press-secretary-kayleigh-mcenany-8-4-2020/  , a question was posed of Press Secretary, Kayleigh Mcenany – the question was, "the President has argued that the United States should receive money in return for a potential sale, but he hasn't really explained how. Under what authority could the Treasury collect fees from China, from Microsoft, or from any other U.S. buyer to get this done, as the President demanded?"

1. MCENANY: Okay, so I'm not going to get ahead of the President on any official action, but he has made that point. And he and both Secretary Pompeo have said that the U.S. action — that the U.S. will take action in the coming days on Chinese apps, including TikTok — TikTok, excuse me, due to the national security risk. And we all agree that there needs to be a change, especially with TikTok collecting significant amounts of private data on users. It's unacceptable, but I won't get ahead of the President on what those actions look like.

Another question was posed,

Q Thanks very much. I wanted to ask, also on TikTok, about — Beijing has said that it may hit U.S. firms as a response to sort of slammed — this sma- — you know, smash and grab of TikTok. What do you say to that, in regard to China?

That was the question.  This is from the press conference notes.

He asks also, "And secondly, China has not complied with its commitments under the U.S.-China phase one trade deal. We're reporting today that, you know, they've only completed 5 percent, for instance, of the energy purchases in this first half of the year. Can you just sort of say?"

1. MCENANY: Yeah, we encourage China to fulfill their obligations in the phase one China deal and to fulfill their end of the agreement.

But the President remains keenly focused on TikTok and protecting the private data of millions of people in this country. And PRC's, the People's Republic of China's, laws require Chinese companies to cooperate with PRC's security and intelligence services, enabling the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) to access foreign-user data. And what this means is that these entities ultimately answer to the CCP, which actively undermines U.S. interests and is hostile to American values and the rights of individuals. And the President will stand firmly against China on this.

So much of what I want to offer you here today with this information and back ground,

What if TikTok is banned?  What if TikTok is sold? But what if TikTok is banned and let's start with that?

I never urge businesses to put too much stock or reliance into one social media platform.  Many digital marketing and social media marketing leaders say that same!  Don't put too much stock into one social media platform because it could go away.  We are seeing it unfold before our eyes!  We don't own our followers.  That's another reason why you should take building your email list!  Email remains one of the highest, if not the highest, converting method. 

Instagram released a feature that competes with TikTok called Reels on Wednesday, last Wednesday, so you can now create 15 sec. short form videos with many of the same features available on TikTok.  Many TikTok Influencers are downloading other apps like Byte, with the unfolding of all of these events and announcements, and or they are putting more investment in Instagram with Reels.

It could be viewed as a short term win for Facebook, but look, if it can happen to TikTok (despite the fact they are Chinese owned) it sets a precedent that nations have the power to ban or attempt to force a sale, which would be overall negative for Facebook. 

We are in a new era of complex data and privacy considerations, and it's somewhat of un-chartered territory.  So I hope this helped.  I know sometimes you see news announcements and ask yourself, what is that all about?  Why would Microsoft want to buy TikTok?  Are they just doing this for governmental reasons?  So I wanted to just put together a top level progression to date of information for you to just let you know what's happening today and how it might impact you, your business and your social media efforts.  Have a great day.  Thank you for being here with us.

Music: https://www.bensound.com

Carey (00:07):

Hello, and welcome to Carey Sperry, All Social Ya'll podcast. I'm your host, Carey Sperry and All Social Y'all. We discuss how to employ social, to become truly customer centric. We identify how social is a fuel for business growth. And we talk with some of the best and brightest business leaders, entrepreneurs, and digital marketers, our guests, Sarah inspiring stories and effective tactics to discover, interact, and emotionally connect with customers where they are on social platforms.

Carey (00:45):

Hello, and welcome everyone to episode 31. And I have such a special guest today. I've been so excited to connect and speak with her. Name is Catherine Caldwell-Harris. She is professor of psychology at Boston University. One of my favorite cities. She specializes in cross-cultural psychology and bilingualism. She was trained at the UC San Diego until 1991 has been a faculty member at BU ever since.  But I want to also quickly thank the very talented musician and singer Gustavo Trebien for sharing his gorgeous singing of Alanis Morissette's song, You Learn, played in the middle of this episode.  For the full version I strongly recommend you go to his YouTube Channel via this link!  https://youtu.be/3K64yY8OLi8

Welcome Catherine. Thank you so much for being with us today. Thank you, Carey. Pleasure to be here.

Carey (01:26):

Can you tell us a little about yourself and your work in your own words? A little more than I I described? Oh, well, I've been, I've done a lot of research on cross-cultural psychology and along with cross cultural psychology comes the issue of what happens when people immigrate to a new country. There's interesting issues of acculturation.

Dr. Caldwell-Harris (01:52):

There's interesting issues of learning a new language. One aspect of learning a new language is that when you become proficient, you still can feel like you're missing nuances in the language. And bilinguals often report that humor is a real challenge and especially difficult. So that was a topic I was drawn to and has led me to learn more about how humor works in the brain.

Carey (02:20):

Very cool. And that's what we're going to talk about today is incorporating humor into your social media content strategy and advertising strategy. But as I mentioned, well, I don't know if I mentioned it here to our listeners, but I discovered you from an article in the Boston Globe, you are quoted that "humor is used a lot during war time. For one reason, it has a lot of power to bring people together." And I just thought that was such a great way to put it. Can you tell us kind of what makes you say that?

Dr. Caldwell-Harris (03:00):

Well, a big theme in human evolution is how we can bond with members of our in group, but also be skeptical and wary of our outgroup. Certainly historically outgroup members would want to exploit us, even enslave us, go to war against us. And a whole group is needed to be united in order to win these battles. So how can you unite people? There's lots of different mechanisms for uniting people. One of them is religion. We can talk about it -- that's a whole topic of itself....sort of feelings of nationalism, anything that can bring you together as a group, but it seems that when you're in your group exchanging jokes, there's this real feeling of bonding and group cohesion and exactly how humor causes this isn't completely clear, but there is evidence that humor generally does something kind of interesting. It does two things at the same time, that sound kind of opposite

Dr. Caldwell-Harris (03:54):

It activates us; wakes up our autonomic nervous system, so that we're alert. And then it also relaxes us in the sense of making us feel secure and calm. So it's actually a lot like one of our favorite drugs, coffee, which both stimulates us and also makes us feel relaxed. So when we're using humor, it basically helps regulate our emotions. It makes us feel good when we're feeling good, we're starting to feel good about each other. And that leads to the pleasant feelings and a banter that people can have in groups where each person's playing off another person's prior remark. And there's a feeling of good cheer among everyone.

Carey (04:33):

Awesome. Yes, that is so true. And I didn't thought about it that way, but you know, I always say that social media is a way that people and companies can really just extend the face to face conversation. And that humor is also something that can be found outside of face to face interactions. It isn't just the kids who are making, like in saying funny things on social media to capture the attention of many. I think this might be a shift in culture here in America where we're responding more now than even in 2019 to funny content. And so I urge businesses to think about incorporating it into their strategy where it makes sense. And like the big insurance companies are doing a great job. I've noticed in the TV ads and many other industries as well, but like Jake with State Farm and Progressive with Flow and Allstate has their Mayhem commercials. What are your thoughts kind of around that?

Dr. Caldwell-Harris (05:33):

Look, I think it's fascinating that humor is such a recent addition to the arsenal of advertising tactics. Why haven't advertisers years ago, figured out how well humor can capture attention, galvanize us and make us think, make us pay attention? I think historically what happened was when advertising began --widespread mass advertising, with radio first, and then soon after in the early and mid 20th century, it was very important for businesses to convince people that advertising was acceptable, that it's actually acceptable to get information from someone you don't know, from a strange leaflet or radio message. And so it was important to be very authoritative and to focus on content, to get people to even accept advertising. Well, that's a century ago now. And of course advertising is part of our everyday life. So it's actually a little surprising that advertisers didn't discover humor until recently, but I kind of understand the historical background to it. That authoritative aspect was so important.

Carey (06:40):

Yeah. Cool. Yes. And it really captures the attention, which is so tough to do on social media. So that being said, what should businesses keep in mind when they're trying to figure out how to incorporate?

Dr. Caldwell-Harris (06:57):

Well, I'm a huge fan of using humor and advertising because it is a natural way to get people's attention and humor. So interesting that it rewards us. One problem with a lot of ads is they're annoying. They're just a drag on our attention and we regret and are kind of angry about the time that our brains are captured by advertising. People want to fast forward through, as you know, don't want to pay attention, feel manipulated. The great thing about humor is that humor is inherently rewarding. There are -- one of the main theories of humor involves reward . The idea that during evolution, our brains needed to detect errors in information processing. This is the theory that when our brain detects an error, it's is a mistake in the conclusions that we've come to. We actually reward -- our brain rewards itself with a squirt of Dopamine into the nucleus acumbens or the reward centers of the brain.

Carey (07:55):

So humor, when you detect a mistake, you actually get a little jolt of Dopamine. So the way humor takes advantage of this is it sets up a context using just automatic associations where you're going to think that the, the whole meaning is going one direction. And then all of a sudden the script switches, and you realize that your prior assumption was wrong and you have to reconceptualize. The whole idea of what's being said to you being purposely miseading, this is called the incongruity resolution theory of humor. And the idea is that when your brain resolves that mistake you get that burst of Dopamine. So the point that I want to make here is that there's a key theory of humor is that we get rewarded with Dopamine. So to get back to advertising topic, I said, advertising is often exploitative and manipulative when we, we don't like being manipulated, having to watch ads, but when ads use humor, they are giving us a reward. And in way, it's of like this introduces some equality into the interaction. Hey, if you pay attention to me and record my product name, I'm going to reward you with a little joke that will give you a burst of Dopamine.

Carey (09:07):

Yeah. Sometimes my husband comes up to me with his phone and says, watch this. He replays it. And I mean, you know, cause he wants me to laugh, right? So, so Catherine, that's very interesting. What, what should businesses keep in mind then?

Dr. Caldwell-Harris (09:24):

Well, as I said, I'm a fan of businesses using humor in their advertising. But one thing to keep in mind is that a key part of humor, one of the key theories of humor is called derogation theory. This is the idea that we get, we feel extra pleasure, an actual award when the joke being made is at the expense of a member of an outgroup, a stigmatized minority or someone that we don't associate with. And that the function of humor in this case is making the in group look good; the idea of putting down the outgroup. This is the basis of ethnic humor. A lot of sexual jokes draw upon putting someone down, which makes ourselves feel good.

Dr. Caldwell-Harris (10:03):

And because these aspects of humor areso deeply intertwined, all of them are in the works. I want businesses to being very careful when they use humor to avoid falling into the trap of getting, adding in some of the outgroup, - the denigration aspects.

Carey (10:22):

Hm, yes. Super important. So what, what are some ways to avoid that then?

Dr. Caldwell-Harris (10:29):

If advertisers can just keep in mind that the main way that humor works is first group cohesion, making people feel good about being member of group, but also keep in mind, incongruity resolution, just focus on the reward aspect of bringing together two opposing scripts and pointing out an incongruity and letting people laugh over them - focus on that. And that can keep advertisers away from brushing up against the putting-people-down aspect of humor.

Carey (11:15):

How have you noticed with COVID-19 has affected people's sense of humor?

Dr. Caldwell-Harris (11:21):

Well, early on in the COVID epidemic, it was observed that South Korea was trying to post some humorous ads and actually trying to get teens and young adults to go on social media and use humor to do things like mask wearing and social distancing. And then the teens started picking up on it and making some humorous TikTok and other posts that were actually kind of mean, and that weren't so nice. And there was a lot of discussion over this saying, isn't it bad that these teens are making fun of some aspects of COVID? However, most of the (in my observation), most of the jokes about COVID have been pretty positive and it seems to serve the purpose of bringing the group together and actually encouraging good behavior like the mask wearing and social distancing.

Dr. Caldwell-Harris (12:14):

So while teens and young adults have been so good at trying to use humor in the COVID epidemic, it's been really important too, to try to find a way to increase group cohesion and make everybody feel like we're all in this together and we all need to work together. But second, when you use humor, you really get people's attention and you're relevant. So when people use social media, they want to get eyeballs, they want to feel relevant. So if COVID is what everyone's talking about, then humor about COVID is going to be a natural outcome.

CareySpeaker 1 (12:50):

Yeah. I follow this guy on TikkTok that it's more subtle. He is - it's obvious that he's quarantined. Cause he films all his TikTok videos from his home and he's a young adult. I think he's in like his early thirties and he's he plays a dad and he makes funny dad remarks and talking to his kids. And in real life, he's not even a dad, but he it's hilarious. And it just it's like, like you say, it's relevant, but it's around COVID but it's not necessarily in your face, COVID, it's more subtle. So it's done in a lot of different ways. So what you know, around emotion - humor being one emotion. But what are some important aspects of emotion that comes from using language to make someone laugh? I think it's important for business owners and for them as marketers to remember that when advertising or branding it elicits emotion in a buyer and that's really important.

Dr. Caldwell-Harris (13:51):

So key thing about humor is that it gets us aroused and it wakes us up and makes it alert, alert, and it's pleasurable. So the emotion is basically one of pleasure. Researchers use the word "hedonic" state meaning a pleasurable state. Even even when the humor is denigrating others. You know, if we're in the in-group, we still feel good and we feel good about ourselves. So the emotion of humor actually – hm, let me switch gears. One of the useful things about the emotion that goes along with humor is that it helps our memory. So humor and laughter activates the autonomic nervous system, that's the fight or flight response, and we kind of wake up and we're alert whenever something arouses us whatever's going on then is more easily remembered. So the one thing to keep in mind for advertisers is that humor is a a good way to get memories laid down and strengthened and solidified. There was actually one funny study that my thesis advisor did back in the nineties where a researcher wanted to find out what do students in college classrooms remember from a lecture? Do they remember the main ideas or do they remember the actual literal words? It's like referring to  a surface content versus where the deep content. And so when I asked my advisor about that famous study, she said, you know, we didn't really write this in the results, but the actual main thing that students remembered was the jokes.

Carey (15:29):

Wow. That was going to be my next question is about learning ....that funny teachers get kids and people more engaged, but there is a lot of social media content that is to teach people things. Right?

Dr. Caldwell-Harris (15:43):

Right. So humor is going to help with that because humor rewards us. It keeps us staying with the material and wanting to learn more. I mean, so much of the way we learn things today draws on this. The last 15 years or so these political shows, for example, a lot of people's news and information about the world actually comes from learning from John Oliver or Stephen Colbert or some of the other famous talk shows.... People who incorporate so much humor into their content, but actually give you good information at the same time.

Carey (16:20):

Absolutely. Yes. I've seen some, even financial industry people and other more serious industries, I guess you could say that do short form video - like less than 60 seconds and they are teaching like how to save money or how to make a side hustle and they put it in a light and kind of humorous way. And then not in a way that, like you said earlier, that will annoy people. So it's very creative. There's a lot of ways that if you really sit down and think about it and you map out what is it that challenges my customer or my prospective customer? What is it that I want to teach them and what message do I want to get across to them? And, you know, breaking it down. Some people might say, you know what, I'm not funny, or I can't be funny.

Carey (17:16):

And I want to help you dismiss that and open up your mind and try to not judge yourself and your team and consider this, consider it because if you don't consider it, other people will and your competitors might get ahead. So, and you might even get (this is kind of a whole nother episode), but I've been reading that corporations are incorporating humor, exercises, team building, and creative sessions to stimulate helping people during their employees during COVID, relax; maybe not feel so stressed at work, maybe being more receptive to teamwork. There's all kinds of stuff that's being done in the corporate world now in the big corporate world. So that's another thing that you might hit two or three or four birds with one stone. So yes, I think it's so interesting. So, we're out of time, but Catherine Caldwell Harris, you have been amazing.

Carey (18:24):

I can't wait to get the show notes typed out and kind of reread over because you know, you're so knowledgeable. And I think that if people do refer to the show notes as well, that I post with every episode, it might kind of help you have some of these concepts sink in and kind of reflect on them to help you. Thank you so much for being with us today. I so appreciate your time. I know how busy you are. Thank you so much. It's my pleasure. Okay. Have a great day, everyone. Thanks for listening to the All Social Ya'll podcast. For free resources and materials, head over to all social y'all dot com. That's all social Y a L L.com. Also we'd love to hear from you. What subject areas would you like to hear about in future episodes? You can share that with us, by dropping me a comment on our website or in Instagram at all social y'all.

In this episode 30.2, 😉 I'm going to elaborate on what is going on with access to the TikTok application or platform and make sure you are aware of the knowledge that we have access to understanding so that you can decide for yourself whether to use TikTok today/for now, or not until more information comes out and I am also going to talk about what other apps are getting more downloads since this news came out and what's happening there so you can think through what it means to you and your brand now and in the future.

TikTok is owned by the Beijing-based technology company ByteDance. In last week's episode I shared the news that India had banned the TikTok app by requesting Google and Apple take it off their stores for the country of India because of recent military clashes involving soldier deaths in the Himilayan mountains.  The apps have been banned not only as a punishment to China since India is TikTok's second largest user base, but because of threats to security and privacy.  TikTok might I mention according to analytics, hit the highest number of downloads for any app ever in a quarter – more than 315 million installs globally, so it's no joke.  TikTok makes a LOT of revenue and India users contribute greatly to their income.

Why is TikTok so successful?  Well, people love video, there's a lot of humorous, yet informative at times content, and it's user generated which means you don't have to be famous or be any sophisticated videographer to make videos that people watch, like and engage with.  Then it's algorithm denotes which videos are getting traction and pushes them out to more people through it's "For You" feature which I explained in the previous episode 30 -TikTok for Business – Steps and Platform Nuances

Don't mistake this message as political, rather I want you to know so that when you do – if you do – decide to invest further or invest at all in creating content to share on the app that you are aware of this impending possibility. As of today, July 14, 2020 as I record this episode, there remains significant opportunity to reach the younger demographic and some older as well. 

That being said, there are valid concerns that TikTok is using data on there to share with the China government.  TikTok has denied this.  TikTok wrote on a blog post published online, "We store all TikTok U.S. user data in the United States, with backup redundancy in Singapore. Our data centers are located entirely outside of China, and none of our data is subject to Chinese law."  Their CEO is an American hired and out of Disney, Kevin Mayer, where he was head of streaming services.  His first day with TikTok was June 1, 2020.

TikTok's policy says, "We may share your information with a parent, subsidiary, or other affiliate of our corporate group."  Similar to information that Facebook, Google, and Twitter can collect from you using their apps…..which videos you watch, your location, what you're searching for…that data, they have access to.  It's how they help make their app better and learn what you like and what they should feed you.  If you give the TikTok app permission it might get your usage and location, say. But know that apps can only access their own data.  It's not like the data from using the app will open up your other content such as email ok?  A lot of people are freaking out because they think the app can get access to your health data, or your financial data on your phone. No.  That's technically not how it works.

It's another point to appreciate that Unlike in the US, for the Chinese government to demand data from a Chinese company, they have to give it to them.  Whereas in the US, there are regulations that organizations can fight to refuse to give the government certain information if protected by distinct regulations. 

I'm still on the TikTok app.  I'm not an alarmist….but I'm saying we should be paying attention to this.

The Gov't of India published a Press Release stating that

"The Ministry of Information Technology has received many complaints from various sources including several reports about misuse of some mobile apps available on Android and iOS platforms for stealing and surreptitiously transmitting users' data in an unauthorized manner to servers which have locations outside India. The compilation of these data, its mining and profiling by elements hostile to national security and defence of India, which ultimately impinges upon the sovereignty and integrity of India, is a matter of very deep and immediate concern which requires emergency measures."  They are not talking just about TikTok but about 55 other Chinese owned apps.  The two countries also compete for leading innovation "in tech advancements and a primary market in the digital space."

So in our country, here in the US, Now Pompeo has stated on national television that the US administration has confirmed that it is "considering" not decided yet but "considering" whether to do the same in the US and that they are "looking" at the app..  Adding that it is just one of the several options that the White House is considering to "punish China over the pandemic."

So I mean, Of course they have to consider it.  OF course they have to look at it.  It's a privacy situation but we also have free speech here.  It's like balancing it is new, not brand new but we are in a privacy, security volatile environment like never before.  That's what is happening.  It's just the FACTS!

Since all of these announcements have been released to the public, US included, the apps Byte and Twitch are seeing an uptick in downloads. Have you heard of those? Hmm?  If not I'm going to share with you more of what they are.  Gaming is going up as a trend anyway.  Big content creators who have multi millions of followers and engagement on TikTok and YouTube are being formally approached by gaming management companies like one called TalentX Gaming to capitalize both for themselves (these management companies) and for the creators, to move into gaming. 

The creators play the games and share them on video, with dialog and sometimes music on the apps.  This is why it's important for brands should know:  These gamers, YouTube/TikTok stars - They will be able to advertise as such the games that they play and show ads when they live stream their gaming.  The agencies or gaming management companies need MORE big creators – there's a shortage - to get into gaming because there is a shortage so if they already have the following and it's a huge opportunity for brands to reach their – really like a cult-like audiences very quickly.  It is also significant to the creators because the pay is higher due to the shortage.  So they can sometimes literally and more and more often make a very high paying career out of it.  This is being done today on Twitch and YouTube and now TikTok is developing gaming capabilities, Xbox is getting tied in and I'm sure many other companies that I haven't named here.  It's the new thing.  It's coming if you don't know! 😊

So what are Twitch and Byte?

Twitch is a live broadcasting platform where people can get together to watch eachother by streaming games.  Streaming can also include talk shows, special events that they make, music events and more.  So people watch eachother play while they can socialize – there's a chat capability that makes it more social; more so than YouTube because it's a live streamer with live chat.  Streamers that put up content and grow it creatively make money. On Twitch.  Twitch has it's own monetary program where creators can receive donations or get monthly subscriptions.

Now The Byte app is fairly new- It's come out Q1 of 2020.  It's a huge competitor of TikTok.  It allows to share 6 seconds long (similar – in fact a sequel to Vine –it is a sequel to Vine -  in fact the cofounder of Vine Dom Hofmann is an exec with Byte) and the Byte app also allows you to loop together these 6 second videos.

Dom Hofman created a monetary system for creators, more lucrative than TikTok's.  TikTok has those token exchanges….if you go live on TikTok you can get Tokens from your Live attendees.  And the creator is like Oh my God thank you!  Shout out to whoever gave it to them. But it's not as lucrative and TikTok stars make their money in other ways.

So that's it!  I know, I get excited.  This is not something I saw coming withTikTok and India – no - and I hope the conflicts get resolved soon. But I wanted to share with you.

I see this type of security and privacy seeping into the social media and network platform world impacting us more- you know whith the bots and the trolls and it being an election year…what's real and there's so much happening in the world we have to decipher what is real and what is not.  But it seems highlighted socially, culturally and globally. And it is so tied into our lives.  Remember you never own your followers on a social media platform so it's best not to put your eggs all in one basket so to speak in the social media digital world and it's all moving along so so fast.

I hope this was helpful.  I wanted to call it 30.2 because I didn't want any news to come out that the US has banned TikTok and I didn't give you a heads up as to what is going on.  It's important to know what's real and what's out there. But I also know TikTok is a huge super amazing platform that has a ton of opportunity and the other platforms are going to come out with their own versions of it so if you are on it and you're familiar with it, - the other platforms are probably going to come out with their own versions of it and these recent developments have probably accelerated that.  I was just talking to a business owner today who told me they just got on it – they have posted a couple few videos and I applauded them because even if they don't focus on it as a part of their social media strategy, they will be ahead of many other companies because they already know the TikTok – LIKE features and capabilities.

Let me know your thoughts on Instagram or Facebook!  Thank you for being here with us.

Hello, and welcome to Carey Sperry, all social Y'all podcast. I'm your host, Carey Sperry. On All Social Y'all, we discuss how to employ social, to become truly customer centric. We identify how social is a fuel for business growth. And we talk with some of the best and brightest business leaders, entrepreneurs, and digital marketers, our guests share inspiring stories and effective tactics to discover, interact, and emotionally connect with customers where they are on social platforms.

I want to share with you all, we're almost to a thousand downloads subscribers on Carey Sperry, all social y'all. And I just wanted to thank you from the bottom of my heart for listening, for sharing this, these episodes, for being with me through since we've launched at the very end of November of 2019, and here we are 30 episodes in, and we're almost to a thousand. Then our goal is to grow to 5,000 and then 10,000 and help more and more people and spread the word with more and more people about how their business can be helped by, you know, futuristic looking ways of doing business with social media and other digital ways to interact with customers. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Hope you enjoy this episode.

TikTok

Currently ticktock has over 1 billion users and has been downloaded over 123 million times in the United States alone. It has surpassed Twitter and Snapchat and popularity yet it's less saturated with ads. 60% of ticktock users are gen Z, but a ton of people and other age groups are now spending time on TikTok to explore, be entertained or to learn over 36% are over the age of 30, according to Statista in less than 18 months. The number of us adult TikTok users grew 5.5 times and 90% of TikTok users visit the app more than once a day. TikTok's business page says , "don't make ads, make news, make it interesting. Make a new trend, make a connection, make someone's day." They say, "TikTok for business is where you can unleash your brand's creative side. A fully immersive, no judgment world where there's an audience for every voice, no matter how big or small your business, no matter what you're making or selling, we believe your brand deserves to be discovered here."

They state that their users are one, - at the forefront of the latest trends and movements. So if you want to be relevant, this is one way you can express that relevancy is more important than ever. Consumers really value that personalization. A study by Accenture showed that 91% of consumers are more likely to shop with brands that recognize, remember, and provide them with relevant offers and recommendations in the past. Messaging was more general or, you know, basic by observing your customer data. You can understand what is relevant to them and curate a content and video marketing strategy around what their likes and preferences are. These will make your brand able to connect with people where they are,

And innovation - It is reported by Salesforce in their 2020 marketer survey, as the number one top priority. Number two is engaging customers in real time. Their survey showed a flip in marketers top challenges with number one, being engaging with customers in real time. And number two innovating. They state that today, customers seek more and new types of information from businesses through more and new types of channels. When Instagram Stories took hold, people got used to short form video content. People started preferring it at times to consume short form messaging. The great thing about tiktok videos is you can save them to your phone and repost them on other social media platforms. So what I mean by that, short form content that we've gotten used to is when you sit down and you know, in your dentist's office, your doctor's office, wherever you might be waiting for an appointment, you've got a quick car ride where you're the passenger, you know, you can consume and be entertained or learn something.

It's easy to figure something out in a very short period of time now because there's more short form content. It's not like you have to sit down for 30 minutes or 20, even five minutes, right? Chipotle ran a hashtag challenge. The brand launched the challenge on TikTok, created a video and chose a song to go along with it. Then they challenged users to produce their own version of the same video and song with that hashtag. So Chipotle did one #guac dance that went viral. They timed it around the national avocado day in 2019, and ended up being the highest performing branded challenge in the United States with over 250,000 video submissions and 430 million video starts during a six day timeframe, holy guacamole y'all! What did this result for them financially? Well, they served 802,000 sides of guac. Chris Brandt their chief marketing officer said we were blown away by the passion people have for our guac and the enthusiasm for national avocado day.

He said, "the overwhelmingly positive responses as seen in both our digital orders and the 430 million hashtag guac dance, tiktok videos confirm our fans real appreciation for Chipotle's handmade guac." That's what he said. Collaborations with influencers is super helpful to boost views, engagement and conversion. Guess, the clothing brand, collaborated with a YouTube star, Brent Rivera. He has (Brent) has 13.1 million subscribers on YouTube. Guess, plus Brent did a 15 second video around Valentine's day of Brent in Disney world with one of guesses tee-shirts on holding a bunch of heart shaped balloons with a young lady licking ice cream. The tiktok video got 1 million views over 881,000 likes and hundreds of comments and shares. Of course, it's important to remember to collaborate with influencers who match your jibe with your demographic. Don't just go with those with millions of followers. That's not just about that and give the influencer some creative input to the piece because it'll come out way better, more authentic and recognizable as them not just like acting for the brand so that their followers will know. You know, they're not just acting like someone else. Hope that makes sense. At Emily.Capshaw, she is a writer /Filmmaker - wisdom made simple. Um, her company is called CEO of good vibes is what she calls herself. She has almost a quarter of a million followers on tiktok. She teaches people how to find happiness, overcome anxiety, and a link in her bio takes you to a free anxiety, survival guide. It takes you to her podcast and a club membership that has a $5 member per month option. And then a $250, $500 sponsor options. She uses that as an influencer, pretty smart, huh? Another one doing a fantastic job has over 1.6 million followers on tiktak is a colorblind artist at Roni Langley, R O N I L A N G L E Y. She features her art projects, but she also makes videos that help people to get to know her.

Some are funny and others are just her talking about her values and beliefs. Another one is a travel planner, Dina green Beana. She highlights deals, hotel do's and don'ts safety while traveling, et cetera. So how can you get started on tic-tac or consider it as a social media platform for your business?

1 - One, ask yourself, what do customers value in your brand and list out those reasons?

Number two, aligning to that... What can you entertain or talk about or teach them?

Number three, make a sensible order. Like there's a beginning, middle and an end and in the different stages of their journey with your, with your brand. So what I mean by this, as, you know, you might have a week of a theme or you might kind of take them from the beginning of the journey with you kind of like some common questions that people have or needs that they have and kind of map out like some kind of a sensible order that you can post your first set of series of videos on, but just think about what the first one, this will help you determine what the first video will be.

Number four, script out what you want to get across. So you've got kind of what you're going to talk about, but then script out, um, a 60 second or less like a 59 second or less message to get across. Or if you want to do your first one in the 15 second slot, you can do that too.

Number five is get on the tiktok app. This is really important. Spend some time on there to just see what other businesses are doing. Use hashtags in your industry to see what others are doing. And this will really help kind of break down in your mind. What kind of formats and humor and different ways you can go about getting your message across. So some people spend more time than others doing this. I recommend spending as much time as you can, because the more time you spend on tiktok, the more exposure you'll get.

Trust me. It's not going to be a waste of time because I can promise you you're going to laugh at least once. And, it's pretty neat how different individuals come across in different ways with their brands. Also observe how people are setting up their bios. Think about using linktr.ee. It's spelled L I N K T R dot EE to give users the ability to go to multiple pages, to take action with your service or product offerings. So linktr.ee is a website / application that you can subscribe to. It's very inexpensive. I want to say like seven to $11 a month. And then this allows you to put the link in your bio. When people click through to it, there are options for you to customize the different buttons that users can click on to take them.

Like I was saying, the one lady that has the guide, the free guide, you know, things like that. If you have a podcast that service can take people to your podcast for them to listen, it can take you to a landing page to sign up for X, Y, or Z. That's what that is.

Number seven, when you're ready to create your first video. I do most of mine longer than 15 seconds. You can go up to, like I said, 60 seconds on tiktok but in plain video mode, I do it on my iPhone camera. And then I piece them together on an app called Splice. Then you save the video to your phone and tap the black plus button at the bottom of your screen on tiktok and find your video and just add it. Tiktok number eight is choose your music song or audio by clicking on the sounds button near the top of the recording screen.

This is optional. I have noticed that they get watched and picked up and more views when I add music. But it's not required and not all of the videos on tikTok have music. So in that portion of the App, it will show you new releases and different genres and trending playlists. You can adjust the original sound and the music sound as you want it. So let's say you're talking in your video and you want people to hear what you're saying. Then you can put music in the background of your voice quietly so that they hear your voice more. So you just move the, um, I forget what it's called, but you just move your finger to like increase the volume of your voice. And then you move your finger to decrease the volume of the music. So you can completely customize the sound in the app.

There are a bunch of effects that you can use to in your content, but I'm not going to get into that in this episode. Number nine, tap the red circle with the white check Mark at the bottom, and then tap next, right? What you want to say at the bottom of your video and put a few hashtags and you can also tag people or add links. So this is just the same thing guys, as it is on other social media platforms, you know how you write with your post, you write something in the field of writing and you put hashtags and you tag people.

Number 10 post 'er up and let the views come in. That's the fun part. There's something called "for you", quote unquote for you on TikTok - the videos at TikTok places in your feed with the videos of those who you follow that aligned to the preferences that you have demonstrated in your behavior on the app.

Okay. So what this means is the algorithm takes those preferences and finds videos of users who are, you are not following and suggest or reveals them to you. So if you find you love someone's content, then you can like and decide whether or not to follow up, follow them. So for you users, abbreviate, quote unquote, "F Y" is short for, "for you". And sometimes if they find you via F Y - for you, they will let you know, in the direct message portion - the direct message portion of TikTok. So I'm just going to kind of break this down visually for you, if you're not on TikTok yet, is that the way TicToc works is that it'll feed you the videos of the people that you're following. If it's the first time you can just go into like a main feed and just scroll through content.

And then once you're following a bunch of different people it will connect to the algorithm as you're behaving, like watching videos all the way to the end or watching videos more than once. Like you'll just let it go and go and go a few times or you're liking it, or you're going into the comments and commenting on it. It's going to learn like all the other algorithms do what your behavior is and what your preferences are and such. So if I'm doing a lot of activity around dogs, cause I love dogs and I'm following a bunch and I'm commenting and, making, likes and stuff, it will put videos in your feed for you. It will feed me new dog creators videos. And so that's what all that's about. So if someone does that and they put F Y in your direct message, that just means, they're trying to tell you, Hey, I found you on "for you", like other platforms.

You always want to check your direct messages and respond to people because it's all about, you know, supporting each other, relating to each other and communicating. There's also a discover feature. The eyeglass icon that opens a field that users can plug in search terms and find your content. If they know your brand name, they can also plug it in under users. So that's like if they're looking to learn more about finances or they're looking to learn more about travel or whatever it is, you know, home organizing, they can put that in there and then you, your video might come up for them to discover there is a live feature of tiktok it's different than Instagram and Facebook live in that it's more a like conversational and purposeful. Um, and I'll explain what I mean by that in a second. And B it's to help creators earn what's called tokens from other other users.

And I'll explain a little more about that too, in a second, but I'm not going to deep in it. Um, what I mean by that is like on Instagram and Facebook live, it's more, um, like that the creator, the owner of the live, right, your life has more of like a formatted, um, purpose to the live. Like usually just don't go online and be like, Hey, what's up, man? You know, you have like, okay, I'm going to go on live and talk about this. W it, it often isn't scripted. It's just from your, your mind and your personality and everything, but there still is in business, especially a purpose to that live like that, a value that you're going to deliver on tick tock. It, yeah. There's sometimes a message being delivered for sure. But it's also a lot just like you go on to give people a chance to directly have exposure to you and talk to you and give you feedback and, um, see you more in like an, an prerecorded environment.

Um, there's a lot of questions on the ones that I've been on. There's a lot of just like support. Um, like I love you so much. You make my day, Oh my gosh, I'm so glad you're, you know, you're you do this? Um, they ask questions like what's coming next, stuff like that. It's like kind of just really conversational like that. Um, and with the tokens, they have the system where, when you're on tick-tock for awhile, it rewards you with these tokens. They have different names for them that you can give to creators when they go live and it can translate to money. Um, and that is a whole, it, in my opinion, um, quite detailed and extensive, um, subject in and of itself to learn how all those tokens are are used. Um, so I'm not going to get into it today, but I just wanted you to know that that's one unique feature of tic TOC is these tokens and part of why some of the big creators go on to live, to earn tokens over time.

As I mentioned earlier, the ads are not saturated at all on tic-tac. There are four ways that ticktack offers their ads as with others, just social media ads. You can target, of course your audience by gender or age location, what their interests are and other unique, um, variables, but for more advanced users who want to take their ads to the next level, you can create custom audiences and you can create lookalike audiences to reach more people similar to your existing customers like Facebook. You can use the tick tock pixel to monitor your ad performance, of course, and to measure your results by tracking users' behaviors on your landing page or your website from your ad. So depending on the placements that you choose, your ads may appear in four places in feed, um, the detail page, post role and story. Um, but here are the four offerings.

There's one there's brand takeovers, and these are placed. As soon as the user opens the app, the users can go to the brands, advertising landing page, only one ad shows in its category per day. So every time I open up the tick tock, um, app, I see an ad and either I can watch it, I can take action on it, or I can, um, sometimes it shows me that I can skip it. I don't know if it always allows you to skip it, though. That might be a couple of different levels. Number two is native ads. These are nine to 15. Second ads played between user content or videos, and they can be scrolled past if the user does not want to watch it. Number three is sponsored hashtag challenges. Your brand can pay to sponsor a hashtag challenge, and you'll get a unique banner across the discover page. Users can tap on that and it will take them to your videos that you make doing the challenge yourself while generating awareness of your brand and offerings. So that's like what Pulte did, but this is sponsored.

And, um, for is branded lenses here. You can design a ticktack filter, that's associated with your brand and users can choose the lens when they're looking for a lens for their content for a 10 day period. So tick-tock puts your lens in the top 10 trending. And it also is offered in 2d, in 3d and augmented reality, AR it'll be called it's coming. Something like air brand effect is what I understand. It might be called a, our brand effect. That version will be out later this year, sometime in Q three, partly in effort to compete with Snapchat's lenses. So probably more important if you're going after that demographic, that's on Snapchat. Cause if they like it there, they're going to like it on tick tock. And you just want to kind of appeal to that audience. But if your, if your people are older, um, it probably will garner more attention quicker. Um, but since it's not out yet, I don't really know. The lens will allow users to interact with the physical environment around them, which is kind of cool. I'm excited to see that as for add pricing, to sure that your ads have sufficient budget. The minimum budget at the campaign level is $500 on tick tock. And the me minimum budget at the ad group level is $50

Or a bid. A bid indicates much you're willing to pay

For the actions that you want users to take after they see your ads and tick tock ads manager offers you different bidding methods to select from just like with Facebook after you submit your content it's reviewed and approved by ticktock before it will go live. And some sidebar news, I didn't want to skip just mentioning this because it's kind of major, but it may or may not be something that you choose to, um, stop you from getting on tic-tac and using TechTalk. Um, you know, I do believe that the other platforms are going to come out with tick tock, like feeling features. I'm sure they're all thinking about doing it. Tick tock is owned by a Chinese company, so it's headquartered and owned in China. Um, and this is the news that came out this past week resulting from a crisis that has been going on for a couple of months.

India just banned Chinese apps. So I'm gonna read you this quote from the wall street journal, India banned dozens of Chinese mobile apps, including widely used tick-tock. And we chat after a border clash between troops from the two countries left 20 Indian soldiers dead this month, new Dell high cited cyber security concerns and blocking the Chinese apps from one of the largest and fastest growing markets in the world. A senior Indian government official said the band was imposed because the apps might have been used to harm India's defenses, as well as to send a message to China rising tensions. Since the clash between the Indian and Chinese armies along their disputed border in the Himalayan mountains has been accompanied in India with calls for the government to retaliate against China. It, the raw street journal continues to go on by saying research from sensor tower estimates that the 59 band apps have accumulated 4.9 billion downloads from Apple inks, India app store and alphabet Google play since January of 2014, including 750 million.

So far this year of the top 25 most downloaded apps on India's app store and Google play since April eight were for, from Chinese publishers. Take talk is bigger in India than anywhere else outside of China, owning to the South Asian natives, massive population and legions of young and largely unemployed fans in that, in that country. Um, so, you know, end of quo, um, there's also some speculation that China is using tick-tock to gather data for their own benefit for their country's benefit and not for other countries, but that's like another tangent. Um, I just wanted to mention that because it is in some people's, you know, dialogue about other things that are behind tic-tac, but you know, the bottom line is, you know, just know more about it to at least consider so that in a couple years you don't look back and regret that you didn't even pay it one bit of attention in your business. I also, again, if you're used to it on, um, the app itself, when the other platforms come out with it, you'll already have your game on, um, it's not for every business by any stretch, but it may maybe great for you. I know many people that are doing awesome with it, besides the ones that I've already mentioned. So let me know what you think about tic-tac for your business. Hope everyone has a great week.

Thanks for listening to the all social ya'll podcast for free resources and materials, head over to all social y'all dot com. That's all social, Y a L l.com. Also we'd love to hear from you. What subject areas would you like to hear about in future episodes? You can share that with us by dropping me a comment on our website or in Instagram at all social y'all.

Hi everybody. Thank you so much for being here today. I am so excited to introduce you to the owner of The College Investor. His name is Robert Farrington. He's with us today. Robert, you want to say hello? Robert Hey Carey and Everyone, thanks so much for having me. I'm excited to be here. Cool. And you're, you're out in sunny, Southern California. I'm here in Atlanta. So, um, it's nice place to be during this time of year, especially. No, it's great. I I'm blessed to be able to be here. Awesome. Well, tell us a little about yourself and how you got started with your company, the college investor. Definitely. So I started the college investor, honestly, as a side hustle. When I was finishing college, I had always been passionate about making money investing and, uh, you know, I wanted to share my random thoughts on the topic with people. And I, you know, I really love technology and websites and I saw some other bloggers starting and I was like, you know, I can, I can start a blog and share my thoughts as well. And so that's honestly how it started over 10 years ago now at this point in time. And it's just really grown into a full on, uh, you know, media company at this point in time. But it started just as me wanting to share my random thoughts and kind of evolved quite a bit from there. Wow. That's amazing. And are your customers teenagers, college students, parents? Can you tell us a little bit about who, who, um, you help? Yeah, Definitely. So I started really just wanting to share my thoughts mostly with young adults, right. But at this point in time, I would say most of the people we help are anywhere from college graduates to families, to people approaching retirement. Um, you know, we don't get too many young people and we don't get too many retirees, but everyone in the middle there, um, seems to be who we help. And sadly, I think that kind of reflects more on how who's dealing with student loan debt. Who's trying to get started in life. Who's trying to get investing than anything else. So, um, yeah, we have a really broad range of people we help. That's awesome. Such a needed thing. And I don't think people really know where to turn. So your blog helps with discovery online. Right? And that's it? I mean, So student loans is one of our bread and butter topics and, uh, it's hard because there are so many options out there and there are so few tools out there to help people and the tools that we have, like they don't, people don't trust them because it's like our loan servicers, and they're the ones that are part of the problem. And so, you know, it's really hard for people to get an independent resource, to help them navigate their student loan debt. Um, and then in turn, you know, start building wealth and navigating personal finance because, you know, sadly it's not something that's usually taught in school and, you know, a lot of people's role models might not have been the best in terms of showing them how to do it. That's so true. Yeah. I've heard that, like kids have to move home after college and, um, gosh, with the, with that pandemic now it's even harder to find a job. So can you tell us yeah. What, what services do you provide and can, can you kind of take us through like the buying journey online? Like where did they discover you and kind of, how does it go from there with the various interactions? Yeah, definitely. So, I mean, we're a traditional media site. So the services we really provide are just trying to provide the best in depth, comprehensive knowledge that you can have when it comes to personal finance topics. Um, we do a broad range of editorial content. We also review as many products and services as we can find to give people an honest opinion on, you know, what's legit, what's not legit, what's the best, what's not the best. Um, you know, we do have some products and services as well. We have lone buddy, which is our DIY student loan software. You can put all your information in and, you know, it'll tell you the best outcome for your student loans. Um, but really like, I really want to educate and that's really the bread and butter of what the college investor is. It's designed to educate people on their student loans on their money. And, you know, we really try to be top notch and search we're on social or on video or on audio because I'm also a big believer in meeting people where they're at. And, uh, you know, if people really listen to podcasts, like listen to this show, right? Like they're listening to audio, so can we connect with them there? But you know, there's also a good contingent of people that love YouTube and love videos. So how do we connect with them there? And then of course there's always the traditional reading and searching for things on Google and we want to connect with them there as well. Yeah. Awesome. You sound really savvy like, because you've been and also have been in business for 10 years. That's funny. Yeah. You know, it's, it's hard. I mean, we didn't start there though. I think it's important to, if you're starting out like pick one lane and then iterate as you go forward, because it's a lot of work too. That's right. And you really want to listen to your customers and find out what they're needing and kind of pivot from there. Would you say you're like, are you finding that people are having a harder time now managing their college debt and earning income? Like have you shifted at all since COVID has hit Oh yes. A hundred percent. So it's sad because, you know, there's just topics now that we didn't touch on until now. So unemployment stimulus checks, uh, how to navigate some of the small business loan programs. Um, what's out there for side hustlers, people that were driving for Uber and door dash. How did that, how does that work in the new unemployment system? Um, and these are topics that historically, I mean, in 10 years, we've never really had to dive in and talk about, and, you know, people don't really care so much about other things when they're like, I don't have a job today and I don't know when I'm going to be working again, like what can I do today? And so it's really been important for us to put out the best content we can as fast as we can, but it's also been challenging because I mean, it's been a fire hose of information coming out of Washington DC. And it seems like these programs are changing and shifting and, you know, new proposals are coming out all the time. And so there's also a ton of misinformation out there. And so for us, it's really cutting through all that misinformation, trying to get people what's accurate and timely, um, so that they can, you know, help themselves today. Yeah. That's, that's really so important. And also with mental health now that, you know, they, the reports are saying that mental health in the world really is really getting worse and worse because of the challenges that people have financially, you know, with the relationships that might not be so great at home and stuff like that. So I would think like you providing support and some reassurance that there is a way there are there answers, you know, would probably help a lot of people. Do you have, do you have any stories? I know that's not like something we necessarily talked about, but I was just wondering if any good stories or examples? I mean, it's, it is sad. I do see a lot of it. I mean, sadly, one of the things that has increased in trending a lot is suicide and student loan debt. And a lot of people see that as the option. And it is really heartbreaking because there's a lot of options out there that is definitely not a good option. And, but people don't know how to navigate it. And when people are in such desperate straights and there's not a lot of answers out there and there's definitely no one to help you. And now in this remote day and age where like, you can't necessarily have like someone with you, like it's all virtual, it's even more challenging. So it is definitely challenging. It's sometimes sad to see, but that's why we also try to be there is that source of education be there as those tools and resources so that hopefully people find the answer before it's too late. Yes.... Do you have a Facebook group? I know I went on all your social media. You're on a lot of different platforms. Do you, do you do help people connect with each other? So they don't feel like they're alone?  We Do have a large Facebook group, ....probably about 24,000 people in it.  you know, I keep it pretty vague cause it's, it's the investing and personal finance Facebook group and it's all for people that are interested in money topics. And so yeah, we do find a lot of connection and things in there, but it's hard because, you know, it runs the gambit of people's personal financial situations. I mean, you have to have so many people and so many diverse perspectives that even in a Facebook group type setting, it's hard to foster connections. And then the other challenge with money topics is that there's a lot of people that prey on other people, insurance salesman or, you know, unscrupulous financial planner. And so sometimes when people do open up, I mean, they just get unsolicited, you know, direct messages and, and things. And you know, so it's, it's very challenging to, you know, make sure people connect, but you know, you have to remember you're online and people try to take advantage of that as well. I hadn't thought of that. That's so true. And then it's just the main maintaining it, like, and making sure as the owner of the group that you like, see if there's any inappropriate comments and stuff like that. Right. Yes. So, I mean, we're very vigilant. We're very vigilant on it.  We do. We have a good moderator team and, you know, we have all the Facebook alerts set up. So when people comment certain things it flags right away, but where they get around it is through those direct messages. So I would say like every two weeks we have to remind our group, if you get an unsolicited direct message, please let the moderator team know so we can take action and remove it. And I've been known to publicly shame some of these unscrupulous insurance salesman. I'll reach out to their companies and organizations and say Hey, you need to follow up with this individual.... Who's violating your company, social media policy, and you need to follow up because it drives me nuts. Especially I rag on insurance people a lot, but it really usually is insurance salesmen, not financial planners. And they do not have the best interests of you at heart. They are trying to sell you on a product that you probably don't need. And it drives me nuts. Yeah. Well, I have a friend that is in that industry and she said that, and this isn't true for all., but she said that the management was still kind of pushing the salespeople as if it weren't like COVID and like just like pushing them so hard. And so you sometimes kind of wonder like how much of is coming from the leadership and doing the right thing for the customer and having the salespeople be the, the interacting face and yeah, it can, it can be so easy online and can be kind of dangerous to people if they're in a vulnerable situation as to what's real, what's not real, what should I pay attention to?  Yeah, my rule of thumb though, is, you know, no one in this world is going to care more about your money than you. So always go into every conversation with that in mind, you know, anyone that's out there trying to help you probably isn't going to care as much as you do because they have no reason to.  Yes!  And start young and they're always there. Time is on your side when you're younger, I can attest to that. So what, what are some of the most important things you think that the younger generations need to know about personal finance? I think the biggest thing for me is that it starts with getting organized and this might sound counterintuitive to like a personal finance conversation. But honestly, there's just so many moving parts today to everyone's money. Right? You have different incomes, you got side hustle, income, your job income, you have multiple accounts, probably got a bank account, a savings account. You got maybe a 401k. Maybe you have an IRA. And then like you have a bunch of expenses. You might have a credit card or a debit card and you're charging. So it starts with just getting organized with your money. And the other thing that's hard about this is everyone's different. So like I'm an app guy, right? So I like to have my finances on an app on my phone. And that's where I'm most comfortable, but I'm not everybody. Some people really like Excel spreadsheets. Other people really like planners and pen and paper and writing stuff down on like a paper calendar. So the real thing is, is find whatever style works for you and get organized with your money because you can't make an informed decision about what to do. If you don't know where everything is, what's coming in, what's going out. Like, should you budget better? I don't know. Are you organized? Should you try to get a side hustle? Like, I don't know. Do you need to earn more money? Like if you're not organized, you can't make the next financial decision. Hm. Good point. Yeah. And just not putting it off, like, there are different types, like you said, it's individual and there's some different types of people and some people avoid, some people worry, some people don't, you know, they're so generous. They give, give all their money away to other people like theirs. Yes, totally. And if you put, if you don't know what's happening, like you can't even make the decision. And I, and I will tell you that in 10 years of working with people, helping people, talking to people that 99% of people that are struggling, it all goes back to this organization. And well, if I ask I'm like, well, like what's your budget look like I don't have one. Or, or like, what's the shortfall? Like, are you short a hundred bucks a month in your monthly expenses? Like where do you, what, what is it? And they couldn't tell me how much debt do you have? I don't know. When are you going to pay off that debt? I don't know. Um, you'd just be, it always starts with knowledge. Like if you get organized, you know, where everything is, then you can decide like maybe, maybe all you need to do is cut $50 off your monthly expenses and you will be in the black and you'll be rocking and rolling, and you can do that easily, but maybe there's a bigger gap here. Maybe it's a $500 gap. Maybe you need to look at getting a second job or a side hustle or asking for a raise at work. But like, we can't even figure that out if you don't have it all laid out and organized and know what's going on. Yes. So knowledge is power and reality as well. Like when you get organized in whatever way that is, like you said, it's a variety of different ways to get organized, but then you have it in front of you. And, you know, you have that knowledge which has power to move forward and then take steps that, you know, really help, help get to the next, next level and security financial stuff. Exactly. And that's the thing is, you know, personal finance is personal. Right. And so I can't tell you, I can't just say it's a blanket, one size fits, all thing. Like it definitely is a personal conversation And accountability. Would you say that, like your services kind of help people with any accountability at all? Or do you not really track that? Yes, we don't really track it because it's hard. I don't also want to get in the business of being the data collector. Um, you know, it is personal, right. And there's also a lot of laws and regulations and rules and other things around all that kind of stuff. Um, but really it's about, you know, getting organized, but then we can take the next steps and I love being there to guide out. Like, let's, let's talk about budgeting and let's talk about earning more. I'm a big believer of the earn more mindset, like, uh, you know, yeah. There's probably some fat, we can all cut from our budgets, but like, is there a way you can go out and side hustle and earn a little bit extra and then live a lifestyle you'd like to live more of instead of like really cutting down to nothing. I love that. That's huge right now, like on, on tiktok, do you, have you ever gone on ticktock ? I'm a fan of tiktok. We were really doubling down on tiktok and I follow a lot of the financial influencers and others and, I'm all about, I'm all about tictok! Speaker 1: (16:19)All right. Let's talk tick tack for a little bit then, because I actually have not touched on this yet in our series. And so this would be a great start since you're a fan. So how did you get on, when did you get on and kind of what, what is, what are you finding as far as like what people like? So, I mean, I've been, I've been on the platform since last fall, so probably about nine months now, but we didn't start creating content until earlier this year. I really just like consumed. I just consumed a lot of content seeing what was working, what's not working and I'm still figuring out I'm not by an expert by any means. But the one thing I love about tiktok is that even if you don't have a huge following on tiktok, your posts have a very good chance of going viral. If you're following trends and talking about interesting things and, or just being interesting. And so a lot of people think tic talk is like about dancing to music and, you know, yeah, that's a good chunk of it, maybe 50%, but I would say the other 50% is, you know, just people talking, being interesting, being funny, being entertaining in some way, shape or form. And, and for us on talking about money on Tech-Talk, it's the same concept. It's like, how do we make something short, sweet, interesting, and entertaining in a, you know, 15 to 60 second video. And so, you know, we try to use some of the music sometimes, or some of the trending themes, because some of them are kind of like jokes effectively, but you have to kind of know what's going on, on tiktok to follow the joke and you integrate your own concepts into it. And so I find it to be a lot of fun and you can go down a rabbit hole of watching tiktok videos for like an hour. And you're like, Oh my God, where'd my afternoon go?! For sure!  I've heard people say that they've gone even longer, like three, four hours. Yeah. And then sometimes like it just this morning, as a matter of fact, it was early and I love Italians. And, there's a Italian guy and his mother and they are so cute and funny and I'd realize, Oh, I haven't been on tiktok for a few days. Maybe I missed some of his, their videos. And so you can click on just like with Instagram y'all if you're not on tiktok yet is you can click on their bio, like ontheir name or whatever it shows their channel. And then you can go and see all of their posts just like Instagram. So I consumed like six or seven of their videos that I had missed,.... which, ticktock for business as something that's real, you can use hashtags, you can, like Robert was saying, do things that are trending, make it entertaining, also educational. So it's to attract the attention of, like Robert said earlier, where people are. so that's cool. And, and I think a lot of people have this misconception that tiktok is all teenagers. And, you know, there is a lot of teenagers on there, but you know, your content and your, whatever you are will attract your audience because there are over 60, there are a lot there's I think a parent's over 30 hashtag. Like there are a lot of adults on the platform as well. And there are so many different industries and niches, and here's a great example. Um, we're thinking about redoing our backyard and it's kind of like a dream board wishlist kind of thing right now. Right? Well, I'm scrolling on TechTalk and I found a local landscape designer on tiktok. I loved his work. I reached out to him and he's going to come out and we're going to talk about things. And so like, I don't know, result in any business, but when you're thinking about it for your business, whatever your business is, there is things on there that, I mean, your business should be on tick talk. If you want to connect with people that are engaged in that audience. And it's a huge audience. I mean, I don't know, you can kind of talk about all kinds of things. I see woodworking, I see a lot of construction. We're doing remodeling stuff. So maybe that's my feed right now. Right. But I see a lot of those kinds of trades showing up in my tiktok feed. It had, the algorithm definitely picks up and how you went about it is exactly what is recommended and what we recommend to get on the platform first and just start discovering what other people are posting and what people are doing, and kind of just get familiar with it. And, you know, if you start now, if, if you can make it relevant to your business and make it relevant to your customer is that, you know, it's going to benefit you a year or two years from now. And you can also share the videos on other platforms so you can save the videos and then post them in, on another platform. Do you ever do that, Robert? Oh, yeah. And I mean, that's the thing is like, if you're already kind of doing short format things, if you're on YouTube or Instagram using Instagram stories, like, I mean, it's like a natural repurpose bit and, uh, you know, you might as well be there for minimal extra effort, but, uh, you know, when you look at the growth of things, you know, tick talk is definitely on the growing end and you know, some of these other platforms are not growing as much anymore. And so, you know, it's get there early claim, your stake, be one of the early influencers in your space. And, you know, maybe it fails, but you will have learned something because I think video, however, its purpose is going to be around forever. So Absolutely. Yeah, I think that will happen was when stories came out, people got comfortable and then started really liking the short form. And, you know, you're just sitting, waiting for an appointment. So, you know, for them to call you from the lobby or whatever, and you can just real quickly go online, be entertained, discover something, learn something, whatever it is. And then, you know, we got used to that. And then now that tiktok's you can post a 15 second video or, or a 60 second video on tiktok. And,so yeah, we're at, and I love your enthusiasm about it, Robert. So before we wrap here, what other platforms are working well for you? Like you mentioned YouTube - what is your favorite, would you say? Or is it tiktok? Well, it's hard. I don't know, like my personal favorite social media platform right now is Reddit. I would say Reddit is my home base of not necessarily for my business, but as a personal social media consumer, I I'm a Redditer and I love it.  I think every business should be on Reddit. You should own your own subreddit. And I think you need to engage where your audience is. So the one thing about Reddit, right, is it's, it's, it's made up of subreddits, which are kind of akin to Facebook groups, right. Um, and there's groups on every single topic under the sun. And it's, I want to say that Reddit is, I am betting that within the next 12 to 18 months, Reddit is going to surpass Facebook. I think it's already like the now it's like, I think it's tied or just beat Instagram in terms of monthly visitors per month, uh, in terms of traffic. And so it's just, it's just continuing to grow. Whereas some of the other platforms are declining, but, uh, there's, your, your audience is on Reddit. You can subscribe to subreddits and you can become, you know, a voice on there and your things. And I just think it's, it's got such a better user interface. It provides a better curated content than it does for like Facebook and other things. So I am a huge Redditor. That is so interesting. I I've not heard anyone else say that. So I think that is just awesome. And it reminded me when you were saying that this weekend I Googled something and the answer was on Reddit. Yup. And that Reddit comes up in all the search results. And I would say that, you know, and granted it is my primary social media platform. But if you look at my social media referrals to my website read, it's usually fourth. I'm right there. You got the, you got Facebook, you got Pinterest, you got Twitter. And then read it, usually beats all the other ones. Um, and it's usually, it's very quality traffic because I'm talking about things that are related to what I'm doing. Right. And so it just all works out. Nice, great information. You, you seem so savvy. I love it. I'm so happy that you joined us today and I'm sure you inspired a lot of people. where can people find you, your website, social media, wherever you want to send people? Yeah, definitely. So our website is the college investor.com. If you like to listen to podcasts, we have the college investor audio show, and then we're on pretty much every social platform out there at the college investor. So whatever is your favorite, maybe you're not a Redditor like I am, but we're out there on pretty much everybody's social media platform. Yay. Awesome. Thank you so much, Robert. This was a thrill and I really appreciate your time and, hope you have a great rest of your week.

Episode 28:  6 Facts, Industry Trends & Predictions to Help Inform whether your business should start a podcast

The simple concept of the ability to stream content like talk radio on demand on any device over the internet is gaining mass market appeal or what's also referred to as "Mainstream".  The podcast industry is becoming more mature and inevitably is seen to take over radio since 90 to 100 million Americans listen to a podcast every month.  Podcast shows are being made into television, movies and books and the distribution channel lines are being blurred with the evolution of video and audio consumption options.

Said by, Cara Meverden of Scout.fm, "Our user studies have shown that tons of people who don't listen to podcasts listen to YouTube while they drive. YouTube will help this market listen in their cars without breaking the law, and podcasters will start to aggressively jump onto YouTube."Cara Meverden, Scout.fm

1. Podcast discovery is much easier and widespread

After the concept of podcasts being a reality now for 10 years, now the technology companies that are hosting and distributing podcasts, like Stitcher, Castbox, iTunes, and Google Podcasts, are paying attention to discovery like never before.  Google is placing podcasts in search results in effort to reach the 51% of American's who have never listened to a podcast.  They have rolled out a feature where it will make search placement based not only on the episode and show title, but also the content itself.  In other words, based on exactly what was said in the episode.  From there, Alexa (and Siri?) will read extensive paragraphs from podcasts from audio search technology accelerating.

"The market for shorter, bite-sized podcast content will grow, as will podcast consumption on smart speakers." Tom Webster, Edison Research

"More shorter-length sub-five-minute podcasts will be made — these work well on smart speakers, and respect listeners' time. Expect not just news updates in this format, but others, too." James Cridland, Podnews

1. Podcasts are Reaching brand new audiences every day

32% of US population listen to podcasts (its was 26% in 2019)

iHeart Radio is putting up podcasts every Wed. onto 110 radio stations in effort to reach more people who have never down loaded a podcast app on their mobile device.  Alternatively, radio station NPR launched a podcast early on in effort to reach the 25-34 age segment who tend not to ever listen to radio.

A Westwood One 2019 study showed that listening time increased 19% for ages 50-64 between the July 2017 & July 2019 two year time frame.

Industries are more often now helping customers by making podcasts available. Last Sept. Delta Airlines made Spotify podcasts available in flight 700 planes. According to Delta, the partnership with Spotify is an effort to bring new offerings to customers so they can make the most of their "me time" in flight. 

Right before the busy holiday travel season, Jet Blue expanded its in-flight entertainment options with the addition of podcasts. The podcast content will come as part of the airline's alliance with Spotify, which will put shows created by its Anchor, Gimlet, Parcast and Spotify Studios into the in-flight lineup.

1. Growth Opportunities

Financial Times has an average listen-through rate of 75% and its 2019 audio ad revenue from podcasts tripled in the past year.  They are expanding their audio podcast programming by testing a subscription only podcast rolling out this month, to see what the market will pay for exclusive subscription only content (kindof like a Loyalty Program).

The first show in this wave is The Rachman Review, which premiered earlier this month. The program is hosted by popular FT columnist Gideon Rachman.

"Consumers start paying for podcasts in a more meaningful way. From Luminary to Stitcher Premium, from Wondery+ to Patreon, consumers will increasingly come to accept that there's a place for ad-supported and a place for ad-free, consumer-supported podcasts, as they have in nearly every other form of media." Hernan Lopez, Wondery

1. Gender Opportunities - A 2019 study by Edison Research

% 36 women have listened to a podcast in the last month, compared with 39% of men.

women are more likely to be currently defined as 'rookie' audience members, or people who have listened to podcasts for six months or less. Women account for 53% of that group, compared with just 37% among the 'veteran' group, defined as listening to podcasts for three or more years.

Despite often being newer to the format, women listen to more podcasts per week on average than men. Women spent an average of 7.3 hours listening to podcasts per week, compared with 5.9 hours for men.

Women were more likely to take show recommendations from their friends and family (25% compared with 18% for men). About a fifth (19%) of women found shows based on social media posts, while only 14% of men did. There was also a marked gender divide in discovering shows through Internet searches: 34% for men and just 18% for women.

1. Advertisers are increasingly putting more ad spend to podcasts.

Forrester: Data shows Podcasting Could Hit $1 Billion In Ad Revenue In 2020.

A May 2019 study by Westwood One called Advertisers Perceptions shows steady growth of Advertisers increasingly putting their dollars to podcast audiences which means there is an audience and targeting is there.

39% are currently advertising in podcasts. That total has grown 2.5 times greater from the inaugural September 2015 result of just 15%.

"The audio industry continues to innovate in response to consumer needs, habits and preferences," said Frank Papsadore, EVP of marketing for Advertiser Perceptions. "Podcast growth is a clear-cut example. Add to their wide range of topics, new media superstars, and provocative, unedited content – the unprecedented growth of new listening platforms like smart speakers…"

1. Ability for Podcast to help achieve business Goals: BBC StoryWorks, the branded content division of the BBC Global News, commissioned a study by Neuro-Insight researchers into the power of sponsored shows to connect with listeners and achieve business goals.

The Audio:Activated study found that the tendency to engage in other tasks while listening to a podcast increased receptiveness to the company's messaging. The results showed that nearly all (94%) listeners consume podcasts while doing other activities, with chores at home (61%) and driving (55%) the most common tasks. The active group outperformed its counterpart on all engagement measures, including a 40% higher score on emotional intensity related to the branded show.

The research observed that brand mentions delivered 16% higher engagement and 12% higher memory encoding than the other content in a branded show. These programs also saw an 89% boost in awareness, 57% increase in brand consideration, at a 14% boost to purchase intent. The study noted that branded podcasts posted better metrics in reaching "ad avoiders" than television…..(a category that go out of their way to NOT watch ads).

Hi Everyone,

Welcome to Episode 27 – Hiring a Drone Pilot – 9 Basic but not so Basic Things You Need to Know to Save You from Potential Big Business Mistakes

This is a continuation of a series (previously episodes 15 & 24) on the many many opportunities with drone videography ad photography with Drones that can be shared on social media, while I share with you my journey to earn my FAA Part 107 Remote Pilot License.  I'm still in study and learning phases!  I've competed 25 modules so far and passed all my quizzlets 😊

So! When you decide to hire a drone pilot to capture video and photography for YOUR business.  It's a great time to do that for some businesses right now or at least to start planning so let's get right to it.

#1  The FAA looks at drones as a small aircraft and the operator of the drone, the person or co you hire, as the pilot.  In selecting them, of course first and foremost confirm they are licensed or FAA Certified!  The drone also needs to be registered with the FAA and the license needs to be applied to the drone itself.  Then, like any other pilot you would put your hands into, you'll need to feel comfortable with their professionalism, their aptitude, and even their decision making process.   The FAA does provide a free online portal that you can go to to confirm the pilot you wish to do your job is indeed in their certification database. You can just put their name into the fields and the system will tell you whether or not they are certified.  I'll put a link to that for you in the show notes. https://amsrvs.registry.faa.gov/airmeninquiry/

#2  There are risks the pilot you choose will undertake and because they are working for you, you take on at least a portion of these risks.  Such as the drone hitting a person, damaging property such as a window or a car which leads to #3 -

#3 Ask if they're insured.  If they do have liability insurance, it should be at least a $1 million and cover bodily injury and property damage. Even to the a highly skilled remote pilot, there are many factors that can contribute to the loss of control of a drone!  For instance, an aircraft part or software malfunction, signal interference (there's been documented security systems or wifi routers can be strong enough to interfere drone operations), or a strong wind or other crazy weather occurance.

#4  Related to #3, It's kindof a random one, there is a chance that the drone battery could start a fire.  The batteries inside the drones are quite large – they're anywhere believe it or not, between 6 pounds and 55 pounds.  Drone batteries are LiPO batteries or lithium polymer which are rechargeable and the have a fully charged voltage of 4.2V. And their weight is pretty heavy, it can be equivalent to like 5-10 cell phone batteries

They have advantages of ways they can be shaped and sized into different aircraft. There's different manufacturers that make these drones.  Another thing about them is their lifetime is quite long and they put out a lot of power.  There needs to be care in how they are handled and stored.  The drone pilot has this responsibility as well.  In the event of an accident and the battery gets punctured or crushed, it can start to heat up, it can then smoke, and even flame and start a fire. So it's good to be aware of!

#5  The FAA Part 107 License expires every two years.  So afte I pass my test -  I haven't set a date – with the terrible stuff going on in the world today, I sometimes get temporarily distracted – do you? Phone conversations with friends or business associates and stuff, and if you go out to run errands it takes a lot longer than you used to do really quickly.  So anyway, I need to set a date that I can aim for when I will take the test but after I pass I will need to re-take the test in two years.  So you don't want a lazy guy or a lazy gal that is flyin' around and is like oh I'll take that test later and doesn't have their license current. the drone pilots need to keep their licenses current by taking the renewal test and having the certificate current with the drone itself.  Make sure you get proof from your hired operator.

#6  The FAA outlines five hazardous attitudes that can compromise a pilot's decision-making: they name them anti-authority, impulsivity, invulnerability, macho, and resignation.  The reason you will want to feel prospective pilots out for these is because it could hamper the outcomes (potentially extreme) if they tend to have these personality and decision making characteristics.

In something known as the DECIDE model with decision making, we first detect a change or deviation from our planned action. We then estimate the correction required. We choose a desirable outcome, initiate change by doing something, and evaluate the effect of this action on correcting the deviation. Under normal circumstances our decision making system works seamlessly and without error. But when things go wrong or not as expected, it puts stress on the human operating the remote aircraft.

1. Antiauthority – The words in the pilots head here are "don't tell me". this is the attitude of well, the rules don't or always don't apply to me. For instance to save a few minutes of time the pilot could cut corners, or violate airspace.
2. Impulsivity – or "do it quickly" These people need to do something, anything or immediately and so they might abandon any rule or checklist preparation
3. Invulnerability – or "it won't happen to me" they never really feel or believe that they will be personally involved. Pilots who think this way are more likely to take chances and increase risk.
4. Macho: "I can do it." Pilots who are always trying to prove that they are better than anyone else think, "I can do it—I'll show them." Pilots with this type of attitude will try to prove themselves by taking risks in order to impress others. While this pattern is thought to be a male characteristic, women are equally susceptible.
5. Resignation: "What's the use?" Pilots who think, "What's the use?" do not see themselves as being able to make a great deal of difference in what happens to them. When things go well, the pilot is apt to think that it is good luck. When things go badly, the pilot may feel that someone is out to get them or attribute it to bad luck. The pilot will leave the action to others, for better or worse. Sometimes, such pilots will even go along with unreasonable requests just to be a "nice guy."

#7  The location of the shoot, there are several factors your pilot will need to consider –

1. The precise location and span of airspace he or she will need to file a request and gain formal approval known as a "waiver" to fly in restricted airspace zones sometimes 90 days (at least) in advance of the video shoot. There are several classes of airspace that have different rules – Class B near big busy airports, Class C near smaller airports like Jacksonville Fl or Flint Mi for instance, ClassD Airspace which is smaller tan B7C sch as The San Bernadino International California Airport;

And Class E.  There's also MTR or Military Training Routes that have their own regulations, of course.

1. The time of day – I explained in an earlier episode that it is illegal to fly at night and what is the definition to the FAA of "night"
2. The duration of the flight. Many commercial drones cannot fly more than 30 minutes at a time.

#8  A Pre-Flight Checklist  Your pilot should be able to fluently discuss how he will go about creating a pre-flight checklist for your mission, let's say, to capture incredible video to feature your business or to make discoveries for your business – and then be able to share that with you pre-flight.  For instance if you are a realtor or a restaurant let's say, it may include temporarily turning off electronic security systems in and around the building, home or commercial property that is being captured so as to limit interference.  This pre-flight checklist will give you reassurance that your pilot has prepared, is professional and will limit both of your risk.  In the event something does go wrong, the checklist will also aid in the investigation.  Any time a drone crashes or collides with something a report needs to be filed with the FAA by the pilot.

#9  Fees  Ask your potential pilots if they have a contract with fees fully outlined, whether they offer any packages

Thank you so much for hanging out with me.  If you liked this episode, please leave me a review and if you post a comment that you did on Instagram and share with a friend – someone you feel that would benefit, I will give you a shout on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, where everywhere we are on SocialMedia!

It's very stressful world out there June 3, 2020 so if you are listening close to the drop date of this episode please take care – all of you.  No matter where you are in the world….  I am hoping and praying for positive change, unity and peace.  So peace to you – thank you.

Sound effects obtained from https://www.zapsplat.com"

Find a Pilot with these established firms:

• Precision Hawk: https://www.precisionhawk.com/
• SkyTango: https://skytango.com/
• UpSonder: https://www.upsonder.com/

Welcome to Episode 26 How to Incorporate Humor in Your Video Content Strategy and What Humor is Making People Feel and Do in 2020

Open with a played joke from TikTok @careysperry

That is a wildly viral and trending audio on TikTok's social Media right now of people who put dogs around their dining room tables.

Laughter is a universal language and although there are cultural Emotional connection with humor.  Humor is everywhere today because there is fear everywhere too and laughter binds us together.  During the pandemic, we see jokes about the frustration with quarantine, family dynamics, exercise, food and drink indulgences, political animations or voice overs….it goes on right?! 

In your business it can be aligned to this cultural relevancy either directly or indirectly and this episode I hope will help you piece it together as you think through or include more humor into your video social and advertising strategy.

Humor thought of as entertainment, but it can leverage your message.

Audiences need to be considered.

And it's worth noting that Not every video benefits from a laugh

It makes sense to consider brand advertisements as a backdrop to your video content strategy.  We know that some of the best brand advertisements, such as during the Superbowl, are funny! 

Now in a global pandemic, young generations and sometimes all are turning to TikToks of political impersonations, rhythmic dances and adorable child and animal funny instances!  The Boston Globe writes, "…young people are using social media platforms to channel their energy into something a little less serious: creating content that finds the humor — silly or grim as it may be — in the midst of the pandemic."  The piece points out Catherine Caldwell-Harris, an assistant professor of psychology and a faculty member at Boston University since 1991, she says, "Humor is always going to be pushing the envelope, and we've got to kind of give it some leeway for that," Caldwell-Harris said. "I actually think it's a neat phenomenon where people are pulling together and having a national conversation about something that's actually important. Maybe there can be more conversations, you know, income inequality or other things,…."

So What is it that Makes Something funny?

Well, usually it's universal in that it goes against what we expect to happen or what we expect someone to say.  I love Bloopers!  I laugh and laugh – why?  Because they aren't how I expect it to go for whatever they are doing!       

There is sometimes a gender difference in "taste" shall I say in humor.  Some women may appreciate what is referred to as a "guy joke", but some find them annoying.  They usually have a shock factor – or a more sexual nature, which isn't going to fare well in the business world anyway.  But when you are of a certain gender you probably have a tolerance for things that the other gender does not.

Culture is another area that will make humor resonate in differing ways.

I have to acknowledge there is sometimes Fear in using humor in your content or advertising

If used wrong it can offend.  When it is either hostile, degrading, overly aggressive, righteous, of course any of these can be a turn off.  Or like a joke that goes too far – it can do more damage than good.  You'll hopefully either know where to draw the line because you are vetting out the delivery or you will share it with people on your team or people you trust to share their professional opinion.

Remember K-Mart's ad, "I Shipped My Pants?"  They took a lot of criticism for it sounding like a certain expletive.  Many people thought it was funny and repeated it to their friends and family….others – too much.

There are academic Studies out there to help us inform this subject:

Recent Studies show that a good laugh can instantly improve mindset and put us in a better mood.  According to Psychology.org, "human emotions such as anxiety, depression, fear, joy, and laughter, profoundly affect psychological and physiological processes.  It goes on to say, "Ronald A. Berk, a pioneer of humor research, from Johns Hopkins University (1976–2006), has published more than 150 articles regarding humor, laughter, and learning." He proved that "humor can bring dead, boring content to life." To overcome the challenge of teaching "dead, boring content," 

Might you think if you're honest with yourself that any of your content, products or services may be perceived as a bit dull at times?  Consider taking a funny twist!  If you are selling something that may have some anxiety associated with it – and there are many – think of financial services, mental health help, relationship related companies like dating or counseling, medical….I could go on…anxiety is at a high level right now with the Pandemic anyway….

Even mild Humor may lower defenses and establish rapport which can increase your persuasive effects.

According to a recent Nielsen study on social behavior as it pertains to the TV, as consumers keep close to home and to their TV sets, they're using social media to stay connected now more than ever.  It further found that, "As more consumers shelter in their homes, they're turning to social media to pass the time."  The study was focused on TV, but this closely parallels social media video content and Social Media Lives or Live TV.

Neilson also reports that Humorous Advertising themes resonate highest of 16 categories!  They go as follows (and I put the graphic in the show notes)

1 – Humorous 50%,

2- Value Oriented 38%,

3- Real Life Situations 35%,

Family Oriented – 33%,

5- Pets/Animals Centered 27%. 

The rest of the categories are Health themed, High-Energy/Action, Aspirational, Sentimental, Sports Themed, Celebrity endorsements (which is only 8% in the US), Sexual, and Athlete endorsed.

I found A new study by researchers at the University of Michigan and Stony Brook University found that 20 minutes of improv experience causes people to feel comfortable and more tolerant of uncertainty.  In one experiment, improvisation activity was to a control group with social interactions where people picked a friend to talk about, a movie to discuss and physical actions to demonstrate.

The improv group improved more in divergent thinking, but both groups increased in feeling good and comfort with uncertainty.  This goes along with the point I highlighted earlier that funny things are what disrupt what our minds and emotions expect.  And it in a very short period of time makes us feel better.  I put a link to this study in the show notes as well.

Strategies for incorporating humor into your video content –

word play, timing, visual, self-effacing humor or humbling yourself so people feel you are real or authentic/  Also, humor aids in the attraction first of all (just getting their attn in the first place) then sustainment of attention when you are trying to teach someone something. So many brands ARE trying to teach people things and the consumer will execute on learning more or buying the service or product just because you got their attention and kept it – while they were laughing at your message.

Let's highlight some Brand Examples

            In Insurance:

State Farm – "Who are you talking to?"  "it's Jake from State Farm" "What are you wearing Jake from State Farm?"  "Uhhhh Khakis?"

(laughter)

Geico – with the lizard

Progressive with Flo and also the half man half motorcycle dude – being a Motaur

Product:  Old Spice with Isaiah Mustafa

Dollar Shave Club did this ad on a dime….it's on YouTube and I put it in the Shownotes. The CEO is riding around their ware house…it's hilarious.  This same also talks on CNBD at iConic Conference in 2017 about how he came about with the co., the ad and how it led him to a $1 Billion dollar acquisition by Unilever.

Video:  So we all know hopefully by now that a video strategy will serve your content and marketing strategy well – your viewers/followers and customers want it in short form and long form at times, but so do the platform algorithms.

Now How can you Incorporate Humor Into your Video Strategy

Here are 6 Steps You can take Today:

• What will be relatable to your target customer? For instance, I did a video series broken down by ea "episode" targeting authors.  Before Covid, I had a program to help authors with their social media strategy to market their book that included capturing video content for them, editing it and delivering it either straight to their social walls and stories, OR storing it all in a Drop box for them to post.
• Step 2 – Make a list of challenges or situations that your target customer has. So, using the author persona again – my list included writers block, play with words and I did a meaning of slang word video, sleep apnea…..laying in bed thinking about the book and finishing the book.  Do you follow me?
• Step 3 – Don't need to spend a lot of time on this step, but definitely helps to spend a few minutes searching for videos that are targeting the same target as you are. Is anything trending?  Did you find a video funny and now you can make it your own?
• Out line a script. Depending on who will be in your video(s) besides yourself, you may or may not need to get ultra specific.  The new style of video first revealed in YouTube and now TikTok – I'm referring to the "style" of video, not the purpose of the videos….is multiple quick cuts – back and forth with little delay time if any inbetween.
• Edit it together – use an app like Slack to merge the clips together and write text over the
• Add music and even captions…depending on where you are going to post it. On LinkedIn, you really need to have captions on your videos. A bit less important now that people are working from home, but if they are bored in a meeting they often will scroll away on LinkedIn and read the text while watching your video with sound down or off all together.

I'd love to hear what's made you laugh lately?  What brand caught your attention?  What questions do you have about how to formulate a video series?  DM me on Instagram or Facebook @allsocialyall

(Audio from @careysperry TikTok Video #1 on What is an Influencer Anyway??)

Welcome to episode 25 – How 1 Restaurant sold out in 3 hours online using social media and a committed digital strategy;  What hospitality brands need to do to win in this digital environment.

You'll hear me interview bbq restaurant owner, Shawn Walchef of Cali Comfort Barbeque.   Shawn emphasizes how important it is to have your leadership and employees engaged and contributing to your brand's social media conversations,

We highlight text messaging as the "next" effective way to delight your customers and give them instantaneous 2 way interactions allowing you the ability to convert orders AND! how humanity can be a winning factor in post modern branding;  when you show and express kindness, and you participate with your community it will build connections that go a very long way.

Speaker 1: (00:02) Hello, everybody. Welcome back. So excited today to introduce you to Sean Wall shop and he is owner of Cal. Um, I wanna want to say it right, Sean, um, Speaker 2: (00:18) Cali comfort Barbecue Speaker 2: (00:32) That is correct. That is our restaurant. We're serious about media and we're serious about barbecue. Speaker 1: (00:41) Love it. So I found you on social media as I do many of my guests. And I really, you know, you caught my attention because how you are really serving, serving your customers digitally. I think you're a standout. I mean, it just really struck me. Um, you have a huge social media following and I just, I'm so excited to have you today. So thank you. Speaker 2: (01:10) Well, it's an honor to be on the show. I see the work that you're doing in Atlanta and the work that you do digitally. And, um, anytime that someone has the same DNA, I, I, I love having a conversation. So thanks for having me on. Speaker 1: (01:23) Yes, my pleasure. Well, tell us a little about yourself and Cali comfort BBQ, and how you got started. Speaker 2: (01:32) Yeah. So we've been in business since 2008. We opened, you know, kind of during the great, the great recession, which was, um, about a year after the iPhone, the first iPhone came out. And the reason I say that that first iPhone is because it was, it was very important for us as a barbecue restaurant and sports bar that was in kind of an undesired location in spring, uh, in San Diego. So when you, when you open up a business, they always tell you, you know, the mantra is location, location, location, and our location is definitely not something that a real estate expert or restaurant expert would've told us to open. Um, but like I said, it was during the time of the explosive growth of web 2.0, which was, you know, really when all these apps started their proliferation, where Facebook had turned into Facebook business pages and Instagram came along after that, but Twitter was getting popular. Speaker 2: (02:27) Yelp was getting popular, Google maps was getting popular. We could to keep people coming into our restaurant so we could pay our bills. So really the having an undesirable location forced us to be on social media in a way that other restaurants probably didn't have to because they had the foot traffic. so we learned early on that, you know, brand was very important. So we always say that ABB, which has always be branding, it's very important for us, not just to care about our, our, our name, who we are, but also what we do in our community. And, you know, we always made a point of always giving back and, you know, whether that was to a local, little league team or whether that was to a local church or the firefighters, or, you know, a local event, not only would we participate by providing barbecue or our services, we would also participate by promoting it on social media and taking pictures, taking video when we were there and, you know, sharing the village news with the internet, which was something that allowed us to really build our skills to what they are today. Speaker 2: (03:51) And it's helped us really significantly during the Coronavirus. You know, we've, we've been able to do what a lot of restaurants and bars haven't been able to do, and that's really let their village know that we are open, that we need their support. And, that we're an eCommerce company that you're able to buy a barbecue online and that you're able to buy barbecue and have it delivered to your house. Speaker 1: (04:13) That's phenomenal. And so it sounds like you got into really being good at digital because you felt like you had to, but then it's been successful for you and really, truly connecting with your community. And it seems like you, you like it and like you have a passion for it. So it's not like this huge chore. Is that kinda how you feel? Speaker 2: (04:37) Yeah. You know, I think, it's a great point that we live in a world. You know, we, we talk our, my podcasts, I have every week it's called digital hospitality and digital hospitality is it's a way of being, and that's really that in order to win as a business, a small business and midsize business, even big business, you have to put yourself on the internet, you have to share what you care about. Um, you have to sell things online, you have to talk about things, you have to participate, you have to add value to people. Um, and the only way you do that is by doing a little bit, you know, every single day and doing a little bit better, you know, whether that's learning, how to use Yelp and respond to a negative review. Um, we just had mother's day was yesterday and it was, we sold out a barbecue in three hours. Speaker 2: (05:24) It was a historic day for us. We did more in three hours than we typically would do in 14 hours. So we'd be open for 14 hours. We did more sales because of the internet yesterday. Um, then we would have in 14 hours having a full 5,700 square foot restaurant, you know, with 300 seats inside another 50 outside. Um, but we also had a lot of complaints. We had to do that kind of volume in that short of time, our infrastructure is not set up to handle that kind of volume. Um, it's certainly not set up that kind of volume in a socially distance world where we're keeping people essentially segregated from one another, keeping them segregated from our, our, our staff. You know, it's the opposite of hospitality. It is the Coronavirus has attacked the heart of hospitality, but how do you, how do you pivot you pivot by doing things online, by selling things through your website, by being active on social media, by thanking people. Speaker 2: (06:21) And when you make a mistake, you know, you own it. And that's what we've had to do. You know, for the last day I've been answering messages on Facebook messages, direct messages on Instagram. I've been answering tweets, with people that, you know, they say that I ruined their mother's day. And I know that the last thing we want to do, we didn't open this business to ruin anybody's day, let alone a special day, like mother's day. And you know, we're so fortunate to have people that want, they choose us because they know there's so many other places they could choose. They chose us and we let them down. But what do we do when you let somebody down is you apologize, you take accountability and you tell them we're going to get better. You know, a lot of the people, they couldn't believe that the owner was responding to their reviews and, you know, they, they just really, a lot of people, they have a lot going on and it's hard. Speaker 2: (07:07) Sometimes the easiest way is to let a restaurant owner know that, um, why, because we're responsive, we're responsive. And our job is to be responsive. You know, we treat anybody that sends us a message online, the same way we do when someone walks in the restaurant and the number one priority is to not be ignored. You know, the last thing you can do is ignore somebody in this day and age. And that's where the digital hospitality comes in. The businesses that will win the brands that will win, will understand that there's so many different channels that people can reach your brand. And if you're not willing to engage them, let them know that they matter. Um, then they're going to find somewhere else to do business. Speaker 1: (07:46) Oh, very well sad. Well, one thing I've noticed about you is your attitude. You have such a good attitude and positivity, but also realistic. And that, you know, you take responsibility, I'm reading a book that was just talking about that. And, you know, to truly be open to having something happen to you, but then instead of ignoring, it are these, all these different ways you can go about it. And as you and I both know as entrepreneurs, you know, there's nothing more, that's going to like make yourself vulnerable than owning a business. Cause you know, there's just so many things that happen on a daily basis. And, but you know, the other thing that stands out about what you just were talking about too is, and are you, are you a father? Sean? Speaker 2: (08:38) I'm so blessed. I have a, I have a one year old daughter she's turning one this summer. And then I have a son that will be turning three this summer. And yeah, it's getting big, biggest blessing in the world for sure. Speaker 1: (08:50) And you're in, you're in, you're close to San Diego, right? That area. Speaker 2: (08:55) Yeah. We're in San Diego County. So a restaurant is in spring Valley and then I live in a community just South of spring Valley called East Lake. Speaker 1: (09:04) Gotcha. Okay. So, well when your kids get older and you might know this through just friends and other relatives extended, but it's like they get to that age where they get their phone and then you have to teach them, you know, what you type is you think of it as being face to face like you have, it's just because you're behind a device or you're behind your keyboard. Doesn't take away the feelings. And there is a lot of hate out there on the internet and everything, but like teaching children. But you get that, like you're saying, like when you talk to your customers online, you answer to their feedback, positive or negative. You, you try to engage with them and I've noticed your engagement is really high. It's not easy. Speaker 2: (09:45) Yeah. No, thank you. And it's, it is very important, you know, especially when you're talking about children and the next generation and you know, those are the things that I think about that my wife thinks about. Speaker 2: (10:31) And it was just, you know, it's, it's so sad. And I know there's a lot of people that don't want to share things that are personal and share things about their family, but each person has their ability to make that decision. You know? And if you do choose to share that, I know that it puts, you know, my family in a position where somebody could say something negative about my son or my wife or my daughter. And, um, but I also know that they could also say that in real life and, you know, as, as much as we try to, to protect our children, we also need to let them know back to what you said is that, that there, there is hate on the internet, but there's also hate in real life. But that also means that there's love, you know, there's love out there. There's great people out there there's people that support us and, you know, letting them know that we appreciate their support by liking their posts by engaging, by saying, thank you for coming in. Um, you know, thank you goes a long way. And you know, I mean, you're in Atlanta - Chick-fil-A built an incredible business by recognizing people recognizing humanity. And, um, I think that's the, those are the brands that are gonna win, you know, not just, uh, not just have one that will continue to win in the new digital future. Speaker 1: (11:40) That's right. And a lot of it, I had the pleasure of working with Chick-fil-A corporate headquarters, when I was with Forester and I, it really opened my eyes to the people, the people that actually work for your brand and represent your brand and become this culture that then goes out into the community that you're serving. And so speaking of that, this wasn't like anything I planned to really talk about, but I'm curious about your team kind of how you guys are set up and who helps you with social media and digital anybody, or is it all you? Yeah, Speaker 2: (12:13) so I've got an incredible team. Obviously. You can't do anything by yourself. I have, you know, my restaurant team, which is led by Eric, my general manager, and they've got incredible catering manager, Steven, and, front of the house managers that really, you know, they've, they've been able to take the business and allow me to grow the media side of our business, which includes Stover my producer of my podcast and our blog. Um, he's in Portland. And then I have, uh, a writer, Ian Stonebrook, um, who's in Austin that helps me create content based off of the audio that we produce, which is our weekly interviews. And, um, you know, on all the social stuff, we were all posting as a theme. You know, that's one of the things I think gets lost is people want to hire an agency and have everybody do it, which is great. Speaker 2: (13:01) And sometimes you need that, but also just understanding that it's so much more exponentially powerful when everyone in the company has an active LinkedIn page. So if you have your page and you're liking the posts from your company and you're talking about it and you're commenting on it now, all of a sudden you you're you and the other people within, within the company become a voice, an industry voice. And it's so much exponentially powerful for the entire brand and the entire company. And I know it's hard to do. I mean, there's a lot of things that are very difficult to do, but you know, if you chip away and you know, you know, how do you boil the ocean? You know, you, you boil it a little bit at a time, or how do you eat a whale, one bite at a time? And if you do a little bit every single day on a platform that that means something for your brand or your company, it's amazing what you'll see in the longterm. Speaker 2: (13:53) You're not going to see that ROI. Everyone wants to know what's the, what's the ROI of me wasting time on a, on an app. And, you know, if somebody told me it's gonna take you 12 years to get all these, you know, incredible local press opportunities, what I do, what I did and what I sacrificed the hours. And I would have said absolutely yes, because now, you know, I can post something on Instagram that we sold out of barbecue in three hours and a local incredible hall of fame producer for QSI. Tommy blonde is going to send me a message. Hey, are you willing to be on the news in the morning? Of course, I'm going to be on the news 12 years, trying to build a business, to get people to care about what we're doing. And now if we have an opportunity to do it, what time do you need me? They're like, well, I'm going to send a reporter at six in the morning. We'll be there. And, you know, Jean, my Pitmaster, Steven, my catering manager, we were here at three 45 in the morning getting ready for the new segment. But that, that didn't happen overnight because I decided to start posting on Twitter, you know, in 2009, it happened, happened, you know, 12 years later. Um, but I'm grateful that it did happen because it's given us so many opportunities, um, moving forward. Speaker 1: (15:00) You're awesome. Seriously - what you were first starting to talk about is really employee engagement. And having employees partake in the outgoing and incoming communication and having people kind of have their own voice integrated into like the brand pillars and what you guys are all about. And, you know, I've worked with companies about with this and one of the first responses, sometimes are well, I'm afraid of what my employees might say and what they might put up there. And that's why you have to have, I mean, depending on your culture, depending on how much, you know, your leaders, you know, how close you are to your leaders and kind of the overall size of the company, it's really about like having some frameworks around it, because there are legality issues. You know, if you have young people that might, you know, have a different way of looking at things, or it could be any variety, but there is absolutely a program that you can put around it. Speaker 1: (16:06) And maybe I'll put that in the show notes. And, Sean, I love to see what you think, about it, cause there's different ways to approach it. But I do think that definitely sets you up for success, coming out of the gate and it also gives employees some comfort and the leadership, some comfort because they already kind of know what they can and can't say, and I mean, it depends on people's sort of social maturity too. You know what I mean? Like their experience, but you do get some people that really aren't socially savvy. Speaker 2: (16:39) And I, you know, it, it's very, it's fascinating because you know, at the, at the heart of technology is humanity. You know, if it's not, it's a person, there's a person with a heart. That's sending this digital communication no matter where it goes. And you know, one of the things that I firmly believe is that the brands that will win to the future are going to be the ones that understand that it's fear. Isn't going to be what wins it's going to be. What's embracing the fact that we are living in a different world and that this mobile device, this audio device, this things that are connected to our house, this internet that we're talking about is so much more powerful than we give it credit for. And we need to talk to our team, no matter if they're an accountant, if they're in marketing, if they're in sales, we all need to talk and we all need to learn and respect the device that we're all spending so much time on. Speaker 2: (17:32) We spend all this time on this device and we go home and our wives are on the device or husbands are on the device. Our kids are on the device yet. We don't think that it's important to talk about how our brand appears on this device every single day. Like it's important. So those skills that you teach, all those different people is only going to help them. And people are like, well, what if I teach them the skill? And they go somewhere else, then that's great. You've done something for them. And they will always remember that for that. But if, if they care about the company, if they care about your mission, then they should want to share, they should want to follow the company page, right? Speaker 1: (18:06) Yes, yes, totally. I love the way you put that. Well, one reason I wanted to feature you and your restaurant and your media company with our listeners is to share about text messaging as a digital strategy. Text is really the next thing, one of the next things. Um, and it's been proven to convert more and more quickly than, than some other marketing avenues. Um, you know, a lot of restaurants around us in the greater Atlanta area. And just like in our little community here in Alpharetta are not using it. And I mean, what you talked about happened, to yesterday with having such massive success and learning opportunities through, you know, some of the growth that you've had.....and just one that one holiday, you know, people, restaurant owners and just businesses period are losing out. If you guys aren't paying attention to this. So I wanted to hear and have you share why, and when did you decide to incorporate text messaging and how you all use it, Sean? Speaker 2: (19:11) Yeah. So it's a great, it's a great topic because text messaging is so important. Texting is just another digital tool, another digital way to communicate. And we're, you know, we're really talking about communication at the end of the day. And that's whether that's communication through Facebook communication, through email communication, through text communication with right in front of somebody or six feet away from them. And, you know, text messaging is, is so important because it's, it's yet another platform. It's another app that's integrated onto this voice device that we call a smartphone. Um, but it's something that people open, you know, it's something that people open and they respond to, and if you're doing it in a way that is adding value to somebody and it's not interrupting, I mean, that's the problem with marketing, right? And the power problem with advertising is that we bombard people with things they don't want to hear. Speaker 2: (20:01) You know, so it's, it's back to the Seth Goden, you know, the, the philosophy of permission based marketing and stuff. Goden, obviously he's written all these incredible books about marketing, but permission-based marketing is when you're opting in, you're choosing to like a page you're choosing to, yes, I will receive texts. Yes, I will receive, you know, your email newsletter. So if somebody's saying yes, then they want to receive something of value. So give them something of value. And then they're going to want to be a super fan of your business. They want to be an ambassador of your business. They want to share because they're proud of the business, not just the brand, but the people behind the brand that they support. And, you know, it's so important for restaurants for not just restaurants, but for all small businesses and middle, middle sized businesses, to understand how many different communication tools and techniques that people are using to learn about your business. Speaker 2: (20:53) Because, you know, the issue that we have yesterday and, on Easter with our text communication is that we live in an Amazon prime world. So Amazon prime has given us the ability to buy anything, our heart desires and have it be shipped from another part of the world and end up on our doorstep tomorrow. Um, but even Amazon during this pandemic is having issues fulfilling those requests. So things that are supposed to arrive in one day now they're arriving in five to 10 days, you know, but they are using technology texting and through their app to notify customers of when their packages arriving. Now, door dash is one of our favorite third party delivery features. The reason why we love it so much as the same reason we love Uber is that it gives you a play by play of where your car is, where your driver is when you're going to get picked up. Speaker 2: (21:46) And the things that people value the most is time. You know, so our communications failed yesterday because we have a text. We actually have multiple systems that we're using. We're using Yelp, you know, a Yelp business feature that allows us to text people to say, your order's ready at the pickup window. You know, we've confirmed your order, but we have to integrate that with all of our third party delivery. So we're working on doing that so that it's more seamless, but at the end of the day, the most important thing that we want is to never lie to a customer, which is the same thing we do in the restaurant. And honestly, we don't know when their order is going to be ready due to the sheer volume of orders that we have. I mean, we've been trying to get a package from ups, our local ups, two different packages. Speaker 2: (22:32) One was paychecks. One was rubber ducks for our fishbowl cocktail for three weeks. They've said that this package gets on it, but on the truck, that's right next to where I live and it's supposed to come to our restaurant, we call them, we wait. And we said, well, I'll just go pick up this package after 10 hours of calling and waiting on hold. They, they ultimately, they don't know where the package is until we finally realized that the woman said, you know, there's trucks in our parking lot that have so many packages and we don't have the staff to be able to go in and find your package we're starting. And that's just that, that's the honest truth, but we're living in a, we're living in a world where that those digital sales happen at a volume that no retail business set up to deal with. Not even ups, not even Amazon. So, you know, we all, as customers, as business owners, we have to see that adjust for it and then build our businesses to be successful because of it. Speaker 1: (23:26) Love it. Yeah. There's some, um, why I love it. I mean, I'm in my fifties, my early fifties and I am, I guess not, like other people, my age as love, text messaging service, you know, I guess more young people prefer it as far as the surveys have come out so far. But I mean, I like having the instantaneous feedback and having, like, if I have a dentist appointment, I know it's on my calendar, but if it comes to my texts to remind me and be able to confirm, or, or reschedule or click on a link that I could go right straight to their website or click on the link and be able to call them, you know, I just love how like instantaneous it is. So, and I think, I think as people Speaker 2: (24:10) that's a great example is, is that's just one example of many, but you're completely right. Just to a simple text notification from a doctor, from a dentist, you know, from your, your local church, whatever it might be as a reminder with a link it's the power is, is it's exponential power. Speaker 1: (24:31) Absolutely. Well, one more question. And then we're kind of running out of time and, I know you've, you've got a million things to do today, but I found it pretty simple. I just set it up for us and my firm and, you know, I found it simple and easy to manage on my, on my laptop, on my PC. I'm like, I love the interface of the company I chose. Can you share Sean, how you guys manage the set up and chose keywords and stuff? Like, do you do campaigns or is there anything around that, that you could share with our listeners Speaker 2: (25:02) as far as text messaging goes, or as far as, uh, our digital market? Speaker 1: (25:06) Yeah. Text - with a text messaging service. Speaker 2: (25:09) Yeah. The text messaging service, to be frankly honest with you. We're, we're still vetting new companies because we want an integrated solution for all of our different platforms. So because we have our media brand, cause we have our restaurant brand because we have customers that love our podcasts that listen in Australia and in Norway, what we text message them is different than somebody that lives here in spring Valley that wants to buy a rack of ribs or, you know, celebrate their local birthday. Um, so really coming up with a strategic way to not it's the same way we do email, um, segmentation, is that we don't want to send out something that doesn't get value that plugged clutter somebody's inbox. Um, so we're, to be honest with you, we don't have a platform that we've picked yet. Um, because right now we're really just trying to figure out how to not screw up father's day we're we're we're planning on we're planning on selling a lot of barbecue on father's day we're planning, where we hope to show, you know, as much volume that we're able to put out, but we're also hoping not to have any unhappy, uh, fathers. Speaker 2: (26:18) So that's our priority right now at this time. But I guarantee you texting is it's not only coming it's here and it's very important that people figure out the best platform to use for, for their business. But I would also encourage them to find out, you know, that that's the problem with the issues that a small business owner and entrepreneur has is that you need integration. You know, we need integration with just because you have a texting email, text list, you also need to have the person's email. Right. You know, and then there's always the traditional sending somebody of value in the mail that is different than, you know, a mailer or, you know, a piece of junk mail. It's actually something that's a handwritten, thank you note. Now there's a lot of power in understanding what your customer profile is, but also having a database that actually lets you know, you know, how often they've come in, how often they've received the text, did they open the text? Did they open the email? Did they click the link that was in the email? Did they buy something on the website because of the link? Um, all those things are important and you know, if people don't know how to do those things, they definitely should be hiring companies that understand how to do it. Speaker 1: (27:29) Absolutely. Yes. I just found a new developer and I'm just thrilled because you know, being able to move quickly, um, being, you know, having really a true partnership with the person that's helping you with the integration or the firm or whoever, however you go about finding that key component to integrate is critical. And I mean just doing things now and to indeed urgent and, and making, making your, your customer experience better and better digitally. So this has been great. I could talk to you all day long, Sean. Um, so can you tell everyone where they can find your podcast, where they can follow you on social media? Speaker 2: (28:06) So I think I'm going to give everyone a homework assignment because, um, I think it's a good assignment to do and that's go to Google and search their own name, so their own name and do a Google search on that and then do a Google search for Google alerts and signed up a Google alert for their name, their name and their business. So that way, anytime something on the internet is written published you or your brand, you're notified by an email through Google. It was one of the most powerful things that I've done, because it allows me to understand that there's other people that are doing barbecue. There's other events that are happening. because I get notified when the keywords that I put into those Google alerts happen. If you want to find Kelly BBQ, search Kelly, BBQ on Google, and you'll see all the different things that come up, our job as an entrepreneurs, our job as brand ambassadors, our job as small business owners is to make sure that we're showing up across all these different platforms. Speaker 2: (29:13) So, you know, what do we look like in Google images? What do we look like in Google news? What do we look like on Google maps? What are we looking like? Um, you know, on Twitter, all those things. If you're not searching for what your, what your customer, what's your potential customer. If, if they're able to find out who you are and they're interested in who you are, what you do, what are they going to do? They're going to go to Google and find out, well, what is Google going to tell me what they're doing? How they're doing it, how do they look that that's your resume? Your resume is in the search result. Speaker 1: (29:47) That's right. Okay. I completely agree. And then what's the name? Did you say the name of your podcast? Speaker 2: (29:56) It's digital hospitality and that's on all podcast platforms and you can find it on YouTube, Cali BBQ. We have two YouTube channels every week. Speaker 1: (30:16) Yeah. So I love it. I listened to a couple episodes is so good. Thank you, Sean. This is just so great. I know people will get a lot out of it. And, and when next to my, my sister lives in San Diego. So next time I'm in your neck of the woods. I'm going to come by, I'll give you a heads up, Speaker 2: (30:32) please. I look forward to that. And anybody that's in San Diego, please do the same. And any business owner, I'm always willing to have a conversation and, love finding out what people are doing, what kind of struggles they have or any, any, anything they think is, that I could be of help with. Speaker 1: (30:49) Awesome. Thanks. Thank you. Thanks everyone. See you next time!