Grow The Dream Show | Podcast Archive

Influencer marketing is rapidly growing as another way to get a form of “earned media” for your product or service. And Kristen Matthews, one of the leaders in the emerging methodology, knows how it’s done. As Marketing Director at GroupHigh in Colorado, she is at the forefront of both doing and training how to reach out to, connect with and work with influencers in your industry — as often as not bloggers. This adds an entirely new level to your marketing opportunities and may be just what you need to reach your most targeted customers.

About Kristen Matthews

Kristen Matthews is an expert on Influencer Marketing who serves as the Marketing Director for Group High, an influencer outreach platform. She’s a frequent contributor to the Convince & Convert blog, the creator of the Outreach Marketing Summit, and works regularly with brands as well as influencers and bloggers to produce creative ways to get messages out about brands. When not creating content, Kristen can often be found outdoors… exploring the Rocky Mountains or otherwise adventuring in the outdoors.

Show Notes

* Our Brew of the Day for this episode: Santa’s White Christmas from Barnie’s Coffee

* Check out past presentations from the GroupHigh Virtual Outreach Marketing Summit

* The Convince & Convert post we discussed: Why Your Brand Should Create Less Content

* One of the brands we discussed: Prana

How does the brain decided what to remember and how can we use that to ensure that our core message is remembered by our audience? Dr. Carmen Simon, a cognitive neuroscientist, explains that your audience will forget something like 90 percent of what your content within two days. So the key is to control your 10 percent and make sure that using content, color, anecdotes, fact points and so on in the 90 percent is always pointing back to the 10 percent. No wasted rabbit trails!

About Dr. Carmen Simon

Dr. Carmen Simon is a cognitive neuroscientist and co-founder of RexiMedia, a training organization that helps presenters achieve better results. With two doctorate degrees—one in instructional technology and the other in cognitive psychology—Carmen brings a scientific approach to her work, which she used to develop the Rexi Method™. When she isn’t working with clients and training audiences, you may find Carmen keynoting for a conference or working on her forthcoming book for McGraw-Hill, due to be released in mid-2016.

Show Notes

First up: Dr. Carmen Simon’s presentation at INBOUND2015: The Neuroscience of Memorable Content:

 

New York Times best-selling author Dan Pink explains why the real differences in motivation aren’t just the carrot vs. the stick, but controlling vs. not controlling (or autonomous). So the carrot-and-stick approach is like an if-then formula, and it is a form of control, Pink said. But what it means is we essentially comply or we defy, but we are not engaged in a creative, problem-solving, outside-the-box approach to the job. He doesn’t say that if-then does not work, but only in certain, specific tasks. Deploy if-then rewards where they work, but use something else where they don’t — which is most of the time in the modern economy.

About Dan Pink

Daniel H. Pink is a 5-time New York Times bestselling author whose provocative books have sold more than 2 million copies worldwide. A former political speech-writer, Dan’s curiosity and compelling writing have challenged readers to rethink business methods, personal motivation, and the nature of their own work. His TED Talk, “The Puzzle of Motivation,” remains one of the top 10 most-viewed TED Talks of all time, and his books have been translated into 34 languages.

The Books:

* To Sell is Human: The Surprising Truth About Moving Others (2012)

* Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us (2009)

* The Adventures of Johnny Bunko: The Last Career Guide You’ll Ever Need (2008)

* A Whole New Mind: Why Right Brainers Will Rule the Future (2005)

* Free Agent Nation: The Future of Working for Yourself (2001)

Show Notes

* TED Talk: The Puzzle of Motivation

* RSA Animate video clip: Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us

So what happens when your company Facebook page is damaged by a malicious competitor? That happened to a Boston jeweler whose competitor went to Fiverr and paid $5 to cut their rating in half. They turned it around, but it was an amazing road — and great lessons. We also discuss Apple’s amazingly successful retail stores. They strategically turn every detail into a customer spending opportunity. Starts with a great product and customer relationship, but it also turns on the layout of the store.

Show Notes

* Seth Godin’s Black Friday blog post.

* Check out this video about Apple’s store design & retail success

* Here’s the full write-up from the jeweler whose competition bought 200 1-star reviews on Facebook.

Facebook introduced Facebook Authorship to help promote your Facebook page from your web content. Is it like Google’s failed experiment? Well…not really. Speaking of Google, it has released a full version of its new search quality rating guidelines, which takes a somewhat non-obvious tack in determining those ratings. It’s not about the algorithm, it’s about the searcher. And we also discuss the value of creating networking relationships and marrying old-school shoe leather with new-school digital platforms.

Show Notes

* Happy Thanksgiving! (for our US listeners!)  We’re thankful for YOU!

* Rod gets older

* Google released its entire Search Quality Rating Guidelines for the first time ever. (H/T: SearchEngineLand)

* Josh relates the story of redirecting thepitch.vc to thepitch.fm, including some of the concepts we discussed recently on our Webmaster Tools (“Search Console”) webinar. Sign up to gain access to the replay at BaconAndCats.com.

* Rod gives an account of recent local EDC efforts to bring the “life sciences” industry presence to the public eye, and all the benefits it brought to the 100+ companies involved directly and indirectly in that sector. If you want to check out the campaign, visit the Health Innovation Project website.

* You may not yet be using Facebook Authorship, but if you implement it, your Facebook page (or profile, if you choose) will always accompany your content when it gets shared on Facebook (even if it wasn’t shared from your Facebook page.) Instructions to set it up on multiple CMS systems here. If you use WordPress, Yoast SEO already supports this.

* Facebook’s official announcement about author tags (on its WordPress-based blog)

* WordPress now powers 25% of all websites. Full Content Management System rankings here.

* Josh recommends the Autoptimize plugin to speed up WordPress

We’d like to thank Audible for their support of the Grow The Dream Show. You can get any of the Harry Potter titles absolutely free (or any other audiobook of your choice) absolutely free by visiting http://audibletrial.com/dream.

What does one of the foremost experts on search say about strategies going forward? Plenty, and practical. Danny Sullivan, founder of SearchEngineLand.com and more, has been writing and building search engine businesses since 1996. His philosophy for today: Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Search is not going away; social media is not going away; mobile is growing rapidly; be nimble. Be free to experiment with new platforms, but if they are not working feel comfortable pausing and moving on.

About Danny Sullivan

Danny Sullivan published A Webmaster’s Guide to Search Engines in 1996, and has been a widely cited expert ever since. Founding editor of SearchEngineLand.com and, more recently, MarketingLand.com, Danny not only covers search engines and all things marketing, but as an owner and executive, understands the execution of digital marketing strategies.

Follow Danny on Twitter.

Show Notes

 

It’s no secret that Twitter engagement has jumped from retweeting to favoriting — or what Twitter now calls “likes.” Anyone can see that in their feed. But why? There are actually several strategies, and some silliness, behind how people are now using the “like” button, and we discover that the three Grow the Dream guys somewhat represent that diversity. Plus Facebook just keeps growing and growing and growing. How big can it go? How many people are on the planet? Plus the importance of creating relationships with influencers, using 301 redirects with the Yoast plug-in and using Schema.org markup.

Webcast this Friday, 11/13/2015: How to Use Google Search Console

Formerly known as Webmaster Tools, Google Search Console is a very important dashboard which Google uses to communicate urgent warnings and other critical information about your website to you. In addition, there’s a wide variety of useful info in there which you may not know about, as well as some ways you can provide Google some information that can have a big impact on your site’s visibility.

This Friday, 11/13/2015, we’ll walk you through how to use Google Search Console on our first-ever live webcast! Reserve your seat here for this live event. We’ll use a webinar platform to facilitate screen sharing, live Q&A, and more. It all gets underway on Friday at 11:30am EST / 4:30pm UTC. Check that time in your time zone here.

Remember: you must RSVP to attend. If you can’t join us, we’ll make sure you get access to an on-demand replay afterward, but you must RSVP to be notified. RSVP now.

Show Notes

* Thanksgiving is coming up! (In the US, at least… you Canadians beat us to it.) Here’s the Charlie Brown Medley by The Piano Guys for your holiday listening pleasure.

* Rod brings us a fun article from The Wire on all the various uses of the Twitter “favorite”

* Of course, Twitter no longer has “favorites.” They’ve ditched them in favor of “likes” and “hearts.”

* Facebook announces big numbers, including 1.55 billion users, $4 Billion in revenue this past quarter, and now 8 billion daily video views, which is double the number from April, 2015.

* We have a brief discussion about how schema.org markup works, why you should be using a current WordPress theme to handle it for you, and how this type of markup can help (or hurt!) your SEO.

* Speaking of great SEO plugins for WordPress, Yoast pulled a stunt recently and hid the 301 redirects box from us.

So Buffer, whose business is to drive social traffic for others, lost half of its referral traffic from social media and they are scratching their heads over it. They are refreshingly transparent about the cratering and seem unsure what has happened. But that is helpful for the rest of us. We discuss what that means for all of us using social media to drive traffic. The sands are always shifting. Also, we look at a strategy for quickly growing your Pinterest following. And Google combines machine learning with “artificial intelligence” to add RankBrain to its search algorithm.

Show Notes

* Josh wrote a post on Sitepoint sharing his struggle as a startup guy.

* Buffer admits to losing half of its social referral traffic in the last 12 months.

* Josh’s tool of the week: find Pinterest group boards to join with PinGroupie.com

* RankBrain, Google’s new algorithm tweak that uses Machine Learning, or Artificial Intelligence, or something. FAQs here from Danny Sullivan, who’ll be a guest on our show in 2 weeks.

On today’s show we highlight Mitchell Harper, BigCommerce co-founder and CEO at Capital H Labs, who got 50,851 views on Slideshare & 706 email subscribers for $350 and a fair bit of labor. Very effective strategy… and one you can probably duplicate! We also talk about Larry Kim and Udacity’s killer content and Michael J. Fox’s self-lacing, the-future-is-now shoes.

Show Notes

* Stay on top of upcoming social media “days” with the National Day Calendar (or Forekast, if you’re into a geekier, crowdsourced version with an email update every Monday)

* Josh shared the technique that Mitchell Harper used to get 50,851 views & 706 opt-ins using Slideshare for his pre-product launch. He created a closed beta with a finely targeted audience, and used a nice Twitter hack to get Slideshare to promote his content.

This week’s show is off the cuff! We talk about a very clever Facebook social proof hack that can ramp up your targeted advertising value — maybe to one-cent click-throughs. And there is a super-easy web site, basically one-click using your LinkedIn site, Facebook emoticons to get beyond just the “like” button, a brief conversation about interviewing Ronald Reagan and, yes, G-strings…

Show Notes

* Josh shared the story of his incredibly inexpensive Facebook campaign that generated great engagement at a very low cost per click. Here’s the blog post he referenced on the show.

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* A huge “thank-you” to Audible for helping make Grow The Dream Show happen! Download the audio book of your choice and receive a 30-day free trial of their service with absolutely no risk! Click here to get your free audio book.

* [VIDEO] How to Create Graphics for Social Media Using Free Tools

* The 1-click website tool Rod used to create a site from his LinkedIn profile: Branded.me (Here’s Rod’s example)

* David mentioned a WordPress plugin which pulls reviews from Amazon to display them on your website: ScrapeAZon