Business Built Freedom

How to Teach Staff Members About Data Security

I've just been talking to a business owner and we put them up to the "Let Us Hack You" challenge. Yes, it is exactly what it sounds like. We're the good guys and we jump in and try to hack your systems like the baddies could and see if we can get in. Now, okay, much to their dismay we got in, and they were not impressed.

To read the full transcript, visit the Dorks Delivered blog.

Ugly Apples Selling Cheap

Last week, we covered apples and oranges and how they can't be the same price.

If you've made it clear that you've got a B-grade product and you're charging an A-grade price, that's not very fair. If you have a product that sells for $10 and you're charging $6, but there's no service and support, that's not very fair. That's when it becomes quite hard for people who are trying to compare apples and oranges.

How is that going to work? Obviously, you can't compare apples with oranges, but this comes down to another big problem, and that's having your price as your identifier. 

To read the full transcript, visit the Dorks Delivered blog.

How Can Apples and Oranges be the Same Price

You can't compare apples with oranges and that's what it comes down to. We've been told this time and time again, don't compare apples with oranges. But the problem is people know what an apple looks like and people know what an orange looks like, but people don't know when they've bought a lemon. Pretty clever what I did there, I thought. Anyway, what are we going to be talking about is removing and unveiling what's behind the curtains. This comes down to any service that isn't really tangible and you are led to believe that the person that you've got doing the service is doing a good job. Now, these can be bookkeepers, accountants, solicitors, lawyers, or anything like that. IT people, marketers, SEO people, SCM people, ad-words people, all these people. Unless you're in the industry and you can double-check and cross-check what they're doing, you don't really know if the voodoo that they do is any good.

To read the full transcript, visit the Dorks Delivered blog.

Tips to Stop Customers Cancelling

As time goes on, different trends appear to emerge. One of the things that we've been seeing is people cancelling a lot. I've got someone here that I'm going to be talking to from Perfectly Beautiful. Her name's Sarah and I'm going to be talking about if she has any customers and if she's frustrated with them cancelling on her. So Sarah, have you ever had anyone cancel on you?

To read the full transcript, visit the Dorks Delivered blog.

Improving Productivity Through Workplace Design

If there's anything you've ever learned from Ray Kroc, it's that there's always room for improvement in efficiency. The way that your office works and the way that you design your office around efficiency. Workspaces for improvements are always required to increase productivity. The reason these are really important is that you want to be the person that brings out the new McDonald's and I know that sounds corny, but ultimately when it comes down to it, if you're running an inefficient design, you're not going to be doing things anywhere near as quickly as you can. If you have to walk 10 steps to the printer instead of two steps to the printer or go up a flight of stairs to pick up a piece of paper and there are multiple problems with what I just said there. Why are you using paper? But unless you're trying to get your steps up and you're trying to be more efficient by exercising at work, you shouldn't be travelling that far and it comes to all different aspects of the way that you set up your office.

To read the full transcript, visit the Dorks Delivered blog.

Project Management Software

If you don't like project management software like Trello and Asana, you probably just never used it properly. There are lots of different project management tools out there, and you've got to remember that the mileage varies. In this episode, Josh shares why we love Trello so much.

To read the full transcript, visit the Dorks Delivered blog.

Risk VS Reward in Your Business

If you can't measure it, is it worth doing at all? It's a great question. The way I sort of look at it is there are a lot of different people and everyone's tolerance towards risk is different. You have these different people that come up to you and try to express the way they're going to be doing their businesses better. They don't have to go to university and get an education. They might not have any experience or anyone to really coach them through, but they are going to risk it all. They're going to do it because there are 70 other people out there that did it, that didn't go through university. So because they didn't do it, I don't have to do it, and that's a risk that they're taking.

To read the full transcript, visit the Dorks Delivered blog.

Tips for Creating a Social Media Calendar

As you carry over from our previous podcast, today we're going to be talking about tips for creating a social media calendar. As you you know, there's always new social media types of things coming up and disappearing. We know that Instagram is the running horse. It's shooting up, down and centre and it's absolutely overtaking some of the others and annihilating them. We also know that Google Plus has disappeared and is no longer a thing. So you need to make sure that you have a multi tier approach whenever you are going to be marketing through any social media, and marketing in general. You don't want to rely upon any one technology because when it disappears, you'll burn and you will disappear as well. So there's these tools that come out for managing social media calendars.

Read more about social media calendar at dorksdelivered.com.au

We Love SocialBee

One of the fantastic ones that I've been looking at and playing around with recently is SocialBee. It is absolutely incredible. What it can do is far superior than any of the other different calendars out there. Now I've used Buffer, I've used Sendible, I've used Hootsuite and by far, SocialBee is the tip top best that there is. Best bang for buck. Nevertheless, I'm digressing. If you want a free trial, send me a message and we'll get it sorted for you, or just jump across our website and ask me for a link. I'll give you one that you can just play around, trial for a month or two. However long you want, we'll give it a go. See what you think. That's how passionate I am about the product. Nevertheless, I'm not associated with them, I just really love the product.

Think About the Future

What you want to do is make sure that your social media calendar is set up in such a way that you're able to send the posts out at an appropriate time that help your end users see them when you want to see them. There's this compounding effect whenever you put a post through to any of the social sites. What happens is originally back in the day, and I'm talking like back in the day, eight years ago or so. I know. You used to be able to send out these posts and everyone on your list, everyone that have liked your page, everyone, all of your friends would see this post and be like, "Okay, that's pretty cool. Awesome, awesome."

Facebook Today

Then what happened was Facebook decided now we want to make some money out of this. So we're going to give you a little taste tester of your audience, so if you've got 1,000 people that have liked your business page on Facebook, they're only going to show your page to 100 people. Those 100 people, when they look at this link, if their engagement levels are high, so they're sharing it a lot, they're commenting a lot, they're liking it a lot, you then have a carry on effect and they'll show it to a larger subset of your audience. So instead of 100, they'll then show it to 200 more people. So then 300 people and only a third of your audience have seen it. As time has gone on and your News Feed has become more and more valuable to Facebook, what they've done is they've cut that 100. So originally 1,000 were seeing it and they cut it to 100, and now they've cut it down to like 10 to 15 people. So as a percentage, next to nothing. One and a half percent of your visitors are seeing this traffic. When they see it, if they have high engagement, they then start pumping it through.

You Need Engaging Posts

The problem is unless you're paying to boost all your posts, which can cost a heap of money over time, you need to make sure that when you have an engaging post, it's seen at a time that puts it close to the top of the News Feed so at least the people that it is being shown to are engaging with it for you to gain more organic reach.

Example

A great example would be photographer from the last example, from the last podcast. You might have a thought and go, "Okay, we have this beautiful deal that we're putting through. A really funny, engaging post that releases dopamine, makes people chuckle, and we want to have this post released on Instagram, on Facebook and on LinkedIn."

Choose Your Site Wisely

So what you do is you think, "All right, I don't want to release on all these things at the same time because as we're already discussing, if you have it going through to Facebook, although it's a fantastic medium, it's going to be when people are more in a relaxed downtime mode, or they're at lunch or they've just finished, or they're picking up the kids from school or something like that." So when you're advertising this post, and you can have the same deal, let's call it six portrait photos for 60 bucks or something like that. Okay, you have this great, awesome deal. When you sell the six portrait photos for 60 bucks and you'd do it on Facebook, you'd be wanting to make sure that the audience and the way that you're wording all the information is more around six family photos for 60 bucks. Cherish the memory of your kids at the age that they are, and have this last forever or whatever. Then when you're putting it through on Instagram, six portrait photos to boost your business profile. Make sure you get that job and you're paid what you're worth, and then you have that post go through. Then Instagram you'd have a more generic one that would apply to both audiences where possible.

When to Post

Now the release time of this, when people are looking to get another job, can you guess which day they do that on? It's the days they have their shits, after they've been away on holidays, days after public holidays. These are huge days for people to want to change jobs because they're coming back in, they've got to fight this fire where normally it's a Monday of two days of problems. Now instead they're fighting this fire when there's three or four days, or if it's been over Christmas, sometimes two weeks to a month. That's right, and if you're overseas listeners, we get a lot of time off over Christmas. How good is Australia? Yeah, Aussie, Aussie, Aussie. Oe, Oe Oe. Nevertheless, when you come back, people want to change jobs. They might've had a new year's resolution to earn more money, or walk their way up the ladder or whatever it is. Then they get taken down a peg when they realise that they don't really have the capacity to do that. Nevertheless, advertising at appropriate times in some of these different channels is a great idea, and using a social media calendar automation tools such as SocialBee will allow you to do that with ease.

Scheduling is Key

You'll be able to set it up and schedule certain posts to go through at certain times when you know they're going to be looking at it. You know on that Tuesday after a Monday public holiday in Australia or anywhere else, at around 12:30 maybe 12:00, if you put up a post about enhancing your LinkedIn profile on LinkedIn, people are likely to see it because people are looking around thinking, "I'm not interested in this job anymore. Let's make sure my resume is up to date." Then they jump straight across to LinkedIn, make sure that LinkedIn is up to date, and then they see this post in their News Feed and they think, "Shit, I need to make sure my photos are up to date." So that is where you can really capture a lot of audience. Now imagine the flip side. Yeah, advertise is same wonderfully crafted piece of image that you chuck up there, and you put it up there on a Thursday at 4:00, just after they've had lunch before they're coming home. They don't want to be looking at LinkedIn on their way home. They're going to be in traffic for the next couple of hours, they're going to get home. They're going to crack open a beer. They're going to be talking to their Mrs or their husband or whatever it is, and they're going to be in disinterest. That post is going to be seen to have lack of hits, lack of results that are coming through. When that happens, your post is not going to be promoted organically. So you want to make sure you continue to have that organic reach, because if people are clicking on that post and they are engaging with it, you're going to reach more people with less effort and less money. Ultimately, all it came down to was a very simple social media calendar automation tool like SocialBee.

The Final Word

Hope you've enjoyed this and if you have, make sure to jump across to iTunes, leave us some love. We're doing some pretty good deals at the moment. If you wanted to leave us a review on iTunes and then jump across to leave a Google review, search for Dorks Delivered. If you're local to around South East Queensland, I'll personally come out and drop a six pack of beer off. We can meet in person, and talk about your business. Stay good.

Building Your Business Through Social Media

Let's talk about building your business through social media. Now, as we all know, social media is changing the way that we communicate and market business, so we're going to be talking today about how to utilise social media to grow your business and being in closer touch with your clients. We're going to give you a few tips and hopefully you'll be able to take them as a plus.

Read more about building a business through social media at dorksdelivered.com.au

Back to the Beginning

To understand social media, let's rewind 15 years. Yes, you heard me right, 15 years. How quickly has that flown by? We've been there with social media for 15 years. Now, if we have a look at how social media started out, forums on the internet gained a lot of social traffic, a lot of traffic from real people where content was being created all the time. It was a content-churning instrument, these online forums where people were able to put up posts about different things that were happening, but normally always very, very content-specific. There was never a forum where you could go to talk about life's problems and chuck up a photo of what you had for lunch.

Are They Really Social?

Ultimately though when you think about it, social networks are not social networks, they're anti-social networks. When you have a look at most businesses, most of the time what they have on their label is not what they are when it comes down to what they're doing. When you look at good food labels on things and you get crap food and you use social media and social networks, yet they promote being by yourself and not socialising. It's quite interesting, very, very silly really, but here we are, and everyone loves them.

Choose Wisely

You don't want to be promoting something that doesn't have a visual cue on LinkedIn. For instance, the latest and greatest in antivirus now seen to you on LinkedIn, makes no sense. You're seeing this product that doesn't really have a face, it doesn't make any sense, but if you operate a hair and makeup salon or you do something like that, very, very good. You operate a restaurant and you want to showcase how awesome your food is, then that's a great spot to be able to put that sort of information in. Either way you look at it, building your business through social media has changed. Social media has changed the landscape of how you build your business. Social media for the better or worse has become an intricate part of your marketing stack. You have to be on social media. If you are not, your competitors will be and they will blow you out of the water. Here are these amazing stats, there's over 1.2 billion people on Facebook, and you have to be on there if you want to be where the people are, you need to be advertising where all the people are.

It Can Be Very Helpful For Your Business

Social media is a great tool when used properly. There's so many times we see it used poorly, you're not engaging with customers and what the message is you're putting through are not going to be shareable, sociable messages. You want to make sure people, when they're seeing this stuff, are engaged and interested to continue following your brand.You should make sure that you've got multiple feeds that are coming in and you've got multiple angles with the way that you're doing it. Any one technology will change, and this isn't a new thing from a social media era onwards, this has been happening for years, for years, probably thousands of years. I haven't done the research, don't hold me to that, but probably thousands of years. You had the business through social media Yellow Pages and it was the medium to be able to advertise in. They would charge $20,000 or more for a single-page ad in the Yellow Pages, and that's a full page, a single page, I mean the whole page, but $20,000 and people were paying it. People did it because it brought in customers, and that is where people were looking. Now people are looking through multiple different streams. A great example of this would be if you're a photographer and you want to put your brand out there, you might think, "Oh, I don't know. How am I going to do that?" Yes, it's a very visual thing, so Instagram is sensible, but other people that are on Instagram are going to be the type of people that are going to be engaging your services. If you're a photographer, obviously you can do lots of different stuff. Let's stay with people as the core objects that you're taking photos of. You can take photos of families, weddings, portrait photos, business photos, all sorts of different things.

The Final Word

Make the most of different social marketing tools and your business will grow. I hope you've enjoyed this and stay good.

Is Your Smartphone Listening to You

Today we're going to be talking about is your smartphone listening to you? The short answer is, yes, it is. How creepy is that? If you've got Facebook Messenger or any of the big apps on there, you're going to find that your phone is actually listening to you. You might be thinking, "Why? How did they know that I was looking to buy new tyres?" And the reason is they saw you make that call to Goodyear, or Beaurepaires, or Bob Jane, whoever it was, and then whoever had the highest bid on any of the different networks that are advertising to you, be it Facebook or Google, has then said, "Oh, they've got the highest bid. Let's shoot them across even if they're a competitor."

Learn more about smartphones and cybersecurity: http://bit.ly/2kpgJkx

What Can You Do About It?

So is your smartphone listening to you? Absolutely. Absolutely, it is. And what can you do about it? Not much. It's getting worse and worse each day, to be honest. You've got these different units. Alexa, Simon says, I'm listening to everything you're saying. I'm listening to everything you're saying. See? Even Amazon's agreeing that they are listening to everything that we're saying. And that goes for Google Home as well. There's more and more things all around us that are getting points of interest and points of data about us. Google, Facebook, Amazon, all the big players know more information about us than our peers, than our spouses, than our families, and most importantly, than ourself, which is some scary stuff.

Your Devices Know What You Are Doing

They know your searching habits, they know everything. And I say searching habits like, oh, I'm just talking searching on Google, but I'm not. I'm talking about searching anything and everything anywhere. If you're clicking on a certain type of video and they know that cat videos really entice you, meow, to continue through and click through, they're going to try and keep you on their channels for as long as possible by playing cat videos, more so than how-to videos. If they know that you're going to be picking up your phone at a certain time and looking at something at a certain time because that's your lunch break, they know when your lunch break is. They know when you go home. They know the path to get you home. And you know how convenient they make some of this data to you accessibly. And that makes you think, "Oh, that's really handy," but it's the data they're not showing you. Over 300 points of information are taken every single day by anyone on an Android, that's an Apple ... Stuffed up. From anyone on an Android, that's a Samsung phone, or an iOS Apple phone. There's over 300 points just from those two different main carrying networks. So that's quite incredible when you think about it, 300 different points.

They Know Who You Are

They know where you travel to. If you look up say the Google timeline, they can see how well travelled you are, how fast you travel, what you go and see, how long do you spend in that pub or wherever it happens that your night ended up. They know if you're single, they know if you're in a relationship. They know the whole lot and they can advertise and sell that information off and incredible prices. You're talking Facebook makes about $12 a month per user that it has on there. So quite a lot of coin when you think about it with how many users they have. People think, "Ah, doesn't matter. I don't mind." I've got the service and has everyone's been told in the past, if you're not paying for it, you are the product. And that is 100% and the case most all the time. And if you're not paying for it and they're making $12 and you're going, "Oh, well, it doesn't matter." It does because you're not going to be given realistic numbers with what you're working with.

Advertising is Targeted to You

You're going to be given numbers, the things and products that you're looking for. You won't know who the competitors are because you'll be shown the highest bidder only. You won't know and be given a holistic approach to what you're searching for because everything's going to be skewed in the direction that helps you find the information in a way that they want you to be seeing it. So if you're looking for something and your way of life is that you're a gambling degenerate who's addicted to whatever, you will be seeing things that are relevant to you as opposed to a church going, non-gambling, degenerate that has their life all in order. You'll be shown a sharing a different view of the world. So it really compounds down and shows you information around a skewed perspective. As I said, it's not going to give you a realistic understanding of where the world is at and what's going on with it. So that's really, really important to make sure you understand and see where you're at and make sure you're aware they are looking at us, they're spying on us.

The Final World

I hope you've enjoyed this and it hasn't freaked you out too much. As I said, there's not much you can do about it. Just jump back on the Nokia 5110. If that doesn't work, well then you obviously never love playing Snake. Having said that, if you have enjoyed this, jump across to iTunes. Leave us some love. Give us a review and let us know what you think. Stay good.