Grow The Dream Show | Podcast Archive

What comes to mind when you think of email lead generation? “Boring?” “Old news?” As part of a holistic approach that includes social media, blogging and video to generate leads, email may be even more relevant than ever. Tom Tate, host of the “Ask Me About Email Marketing” podcast from industry pioneer Aweber talks with us about how email has evolved along with the times, covers all the essential concepts so you can make sure you’re covering the important bases where email marketing is concerned, and even gives us a sneak peek at some of their newest upcoming features: tagging contacts and click-based triggers.

About Tom Tate, Jr.

Tom is the Product Marketing Manager for Aweber, a long-time leading email service provider and early pioneer of autoresponder technologies. With a strong background in project management, Tom spent a chunk of his early career working for a digital marketing agency. Today, in addition to his primary work at Aweber, Tom hosts the company’s “Ask Met About Email Marketing” podcast and publishes the Weekly.Coffee newsletter (check it out!).

Show Notes

* The show is never the same without Josh — maybe a Twitter shout-out to let him know you missed him?

* Don’t miss Tom’s tip for the “Information Gap” between your subject line and the content to help drive interest.

* Here’s the Kissmetrics article on UTM parameters that Rod & Tom discussed, but don’t miss Google’s URL builder for actually helping you create your UTM links.

* As a complete aside: here’s the cool email trick Aweber used that featured a live Twitter hashtag feed in the body of the message.

* For more on how to get results with your email marketing, check out the Aweber blog.

* If you’d like to support Grow The Dream Show when you sign up for your 30-day Aweber trial, use our special link: https://growthedream.com/email. Here’s a non affiliate link if you’d prefer: http://aweber.com.

Also, don’t forget to follow Tom on Twitter.

Video

Click here to watch this episode on YouTube!

A little different episode today, but critically important for all of us. Apple is fighting the FBI’s demand that the company create malware to break into the iPhones of the San Bernardino killers. A judge has ordered the company to do it but Apple is looking to appeal that and Google is publicly siding with Apple. It’s important to understand that the government cannot simply obtain a search warrant because Apple itself doesn’t know, or have the ability right now to know, what data its customers store in the private areas of their iPhones. This is a straightforward constitutional issue and comes down to this question: Do we want to exchange essential liberties for a little safety? Benjamin Franklin gave us insight on that question. This is an important episode.

Show Notes

* According to Forbes, the FBI is using the courts to force Apple to write malware.

* Seattle Times editorial: this is a slippery slope.

* Apple CEO Tim Cook’s letter to customers.

* “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.” —Benjamin Franklin, in a letter from the Pennsylvania Assembly to the Governor, November 11, 1755

* “Freedom is a fragile thing and is never more than one generation away from extinction. It is not ours by inheritance; it must be fought for and defended constantly by each generation, for it comes only once to a people. Those who have known freedom and then lost it have never known it again.” —Ronald Reagan, Inaugural Address as Governor of California, January 5, 1967, echoing certain sentiments from John F. Kennedy’s Presidential Inaugural Address, January 20, 1961.

Video

Watch this episode of the Grow The Dream Show on YouTube.

 

The world across traditional and new media is exploding with various forms of influencer marketing and native advertising, where paid advertising and content are blended so closely into the content — from blogs and podcasts to newspapers and radio — that consumers often do not recognize it as sponsored material. It can fool consumers into accepting paid as earned, and it can bypass ad-blockers. However, the Federal Trade Commission has issued guidelines now that give specifics regarding how this should be done. We also discuss the use of the digital Brushy Bear character as an influencer in a video that has gone viral on social media. And, finally, Josh went all “Instagrator” and David and Rod because the duo were off topic…again.

Show Notes

* Brew of the Day: Death Wish Coffee, a small business whose ad was aired in the Super Bowl, thanks to Intuit.

* FTC issues guidelines for native advertising (New York Times article)

* Tom’s of Maine achieves a huge success with influencer marketing

* Is ad blocking the biggest boycott in history?

* FTC indicates that enforcement will be focused on advertisers and their agencies more than bloggers/influencers. Full FTC endorsement guidelines here.

* Tool of the Week from Josh: Waiting list app that allows people to bump ahead in line to get access to your product by sharing it: Maître

* Killer Content of the Week: Video: Brushy Bear says, “Brush your tongue, it smells like bum”

* Another tool from Josh: Music for Programming.

Video

Is it possible that demographics are not as important as marketers have always thought? Could be. Particularly with mobile searchers. Think With Google reports that marketers who try to reach their audience solely on demographics risk missing more than 70% of potential mobile shoppers. People check their smartphones 150 times per day, make decisions quickly and for reasons you might not expect. And Facebook adding emoticons to their “like” button was top news on… terrestrial radio. What?

Show Notes

* Rod talks about the Facebook change that made it to the top of the newscast on the news talk powerhouse station in Tampa Bay

* Speaking of radio… should your marketing plans include radio? Nielsen reports that radio is reaching more than 90% of US adults weekly.

* Are demographics failing you? A recent article from Think With Google (and the underlying study on “micro moments”) explode some of our theories about which demographics might be doing what in terms of searching from their mobile devices. Among the findings: we’re spending 177 minutes per day on our phones, an average of 1 minute, 10 seconds at a time. The implications for how mobile users will experience your brand are enormous!

* Annnnnd it’s our first video podcast episode! Now you can watch! (see below) We’re also testing out live streaming again this Friday. Visit GrowTheDream.com/live to be notified of your opportunity to join us for the live show!

What’s the most common complaint for people clicking on a web site? It loads too slow! Well AMP is looking to change all that by creating a master library of java scripts that will avoid constant re-loads among other things. It’s an open platform and sites using it do load very fast. But is there an issue with AMP being Google, which is always playing the long game? Also, we discuss the top news sites that are just killing in market share, which you may never have heard of.

Live streaming of our show coming soon this Friday, February 5th! Visit GrowTheDream.com/live to get notified!

Show Notes

* Facebook released new numbers last week  – quarterly revenue (Q4 2015): $5.84 billion (up 52% from the year before), profits: $1.56 billion (up 122% from the year before). More importantly: Monthly Active Users: 1.59 billion, Daily Active Users: 1.04 billion. Mobile Monthlies: 1.44 billion, Mobile Dailies: 934 million. HUGE growth in mobile.

* David laments ever signing up for Facebook Business Manager (great idea in theory, but it’s a decision with consequences that should be thought through first!)

* We discuss various efforts to speed up the web — especially for mobile users — including Facebook’s Instant Articles (limited opportunities so far for smaller content creators like small businesses). The response from Google and a consortium of publishers: Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)

* Sidebar: Forbes requests people to turn off their ad blockers, then serves up a “pop-under” ad promoting malware downloads

* Google announces that they’re planning to incorporate AMP pages into search results, and will “reward” sites that load faster (even more than they have before) with higher rankings.

* Nuzzel shows you content that people in your social graph are sharing most often

* Automattic has spearheaded the creation of a WordPress plugin for AMP, but it’s still very early.

* Rod points out that 10 Publishers Account for Half of All Online News (MediaPost)

* Josh introduces us to social media graphics tool Photype, somewhat similar to Pablo (for Buffer), but with integrated image search.

* Josh also introduces us to Advsise, which provides up-to-date image sizes for ads on every platform you can think of.

* ….and finally, Josh also introduces us to Statsbot, which will message Google Analytics info (of your choosing) directly into Slack.

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Celebrating the one-year anniversary of the Grow the Dream Show, we look back at highlights from the three of us and from some of our guests, including Dan Pink, Jay Baer, Larry Kim, Tom Ziglar, Jonah Berger, Dr. Carmen Simon, Chris Goward, Marcus Sheridan, Joe Chernov and Kristen Matthews. These guests cover everything from content marketing to the science of memory and motivations to making social media posts work, and so much more. A valuable look-back for those who want to review or listen to some of these shows for the first time. If you are in marketing, you will find value throughout this show.

Show Notes

Brew of the Day: Josh uses Dark Roast beans from Koffee Kult to prepare a special cold brew.

We sample moments from these past episodes:

* #44 Dan Pink on Motivation, Moving Others & Adapting

* #21 Jonah Berger on the Science of Word of Mouth

* #12 Jay Baer: Using Content to Grow Your Business

* #33 Larry Kim: One Metric to Rule Them All!

* #31 Chris Goward on Squinting, Button Colors and Testing for Optimization

* #45 Dr. Carmen Simon on Creating Memorable Content

* #1 Content is King and Always Will Be (as long as there’s coffee)

* #2 How to Start Growing Your Business with Content Marketing

…and we discuss some of our most memorable moments from some others, including:

* #6 Tom Ziglar on Growing Your Dream

* #23 Marcus Sheridan: The Sales Lion on the Value of Giving it Away

* #22 Joe Chernov: HubSpot Content Marketing Secrets for Everyone

* #29 How to Write Blog Posts that Just Keep Getting More Traffic

* #28 How To Customize Google Analytics for Your Small Business

…and a whole lot more! Enjoy!

Andrew Torba of Automate Ads explains why launching Facebook Ads and then just letting them run is hurting your performance and costing you more. He talks about how their targeted advertising platform works on Facebook, Google Adwords, Instagram and Twitter (Beta), how to maximize your ad campaigns and free you to spend more time focusing on the content of the ad. It’s probably the future as these ad campaigns become more complicated — and important — to get the most out of.

About Andrew Torba

Andrew Torba is Co-Founder and CEO of AutomateAds, a marketing automation platform that programmatically optimizes ads in terms of bids, A/B testing, freshness, etc. on Facebook, Google AdWords and other advertising outlets. He and his Co-Founder were part of the Y Combinator Winter 2015 class.

Follow Andrew Torba on Twitter

Show Notes

* Learn more about the seed accelerator / Silicon Valley incubator Y Combinator

* Check out AutomateAds

 

 

The death of the press release has been greatly exaggerated. A well written and targeted press release is invaluable. But too many are written for the client and not for the targeted journalists and bloggers. That just kills the value. We explain how to do them right, evolving with various media while maintaining necessary quality. Plus Twitter is floating a trial balloon on allowing up to 10,000 characters. Would that kill Twitter or will we all except it like we did auto loading pictures and links?

Show Notes

Up-front stuff:

* iPhone 4S owners file suit against Apple, claim iOS 9 made phones unbearably slow

* Star Wars now the top domestic grossing film of all time

* Ewan McGreger, RAF pilot, call sign: Obi Two

* We talk about 2 Tampa Bay-based coffee roasters: Kahwa Coffee and Buddy Brew

* The cortado (latte with less milk and more of a coffee flavor)

Getting Exposure for Your Business:

* Hosting your press kit on Medium: good content marketing for the author’s startup

* Tech Crunch journalist Mike Butcher says the press release is dead (worth the read even though Rod disagrees somewhat)

* Here’s where to find the AP Style Guide (online subscription: $26 annually for individuals)

* Will Twitter expand its 140 character limit to 10,000 characters?

* How many people use Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, and so forth? Here’s the most recent data from Pew Internet on US social network usage by adult internet users. (2014 data here)

Bonus pic from Kahwa

We take a look at the highlights from 2015, including Dan Pink on the failings of the If-Then reward system, Google’s mobile friendly update and Narrow for Twitter. For 2016, we look at the increased use of influencer marketing, serious challenges to the search dominance of Google by giants such as Facebook and Penguin’s expected real-time search updates. We also reflect on the personal successes and failings our own businesses and what we will be working to improve in 2016… and a whole lot more!

What do Star Wars and The Donald have in common? They know their audiences (different, overlapping audiences), they connect with them on an emotional level (different emotions, presumably) and they deliver on what their audiences expect (entertainment and fixing frustrations.) Star Wars and Donald Trump are omnipresent and successful in all three elements.  And we talk about Christmas presents, science fiction, the Beard Club’s sexism, daring greatly and more. Perhaps our most ADD episode ever!

Show Notes

* Rabbit trail for Star Wars geeks: Is Jar-Jar Binks a Sith Lord? (8-minute YouTube video)

* Home media server: Plex

* Documentary: Helvetica ($.99 rental on Amazon)