Podcasting Secrets

Facebook used to dominate as a social media platform for advertising. Though it has more active users than Instagram, the stats show that the median Instagram engagement rate per post is 1% across all industries in comparison to a 0.08% median engagement rate per post on Facebook (Source: Rival IQ). When it comes to influencer marketing, 90% of US marketers consider Instagram the most important social media platform (Source: Sprout Social).

In today’s episode, I talk with Jeremy McGilvrey, the bestselling author of “Instagram Secrets”, about why he believes Instagram dominates every other social media platform for marketing. He explains which Instagram strategies are the most important to know.

Jeremy is a Harvard-educated marketing expert.  He helps business owners leverage the power of the internet to transform their businesses through innovative traffic strategies. He didn’t get where he is today by preaching what he doesn’t practice. Jeremy is the winner of the ClickFunnels Two Comma Club Award for generating more than $1,000,000 in a sales funnel. He is in fact his own best customer. That’s what makes him credible and reliable. He knows exactly what it’s like to be risking his money and his livelihood. Just like anyone else, Jeremy has had his share of setbacks but his enthusiasm has always kept him going.

“The ability to bounce back after a setback is the single most important trait an entrepreneurial venture can possess.” Sir Richard Branson - Business magnate, investor, and author.

Progress is in the Process

Jeremy started his entrepreneurial journey very early on when he was just a kid. When he was a child, he started shoveling people’s walks for just $2. He then took what he earned and invested it in baseball cards. It’s very similar to what he’s doing today in his business: building his brand and investing most of the revenue back into growing his business.

Jeremy believes that many of us have a job for the safety of the paycheck. Working for an employer is easy at the beginning but then it gets hard. When we work for a company, we just need to do what they ask us to do because they have systems and processes in place. This is very unlike entrepreneurship, which is really hard at the beginning but then it gets much easier.

When we understand that anything in life is really just a process, it’ll help us build successful systems. This is one of the things I like best about processes. They help us to consistently do the same thing over and over again. When we put a process in place, we don't have to be waking up every day and wondering, “What am I going to do today?”. 

“It seems like the greatest victories happen when we consistently implement effective processes to help us accomplish the things that matter most.” Nathan Gwilliam

Why Instagram Dominates Every Social Platform

In his book “Instagram Secrets”, Jeremy talks about 12 reasons why Instagram dominates every social platform. He believes that one of the best things about Instagram is that it’s an extremely affordable place where entrepreneurs can connect with influencers in their niches. When influencers endorse our products or services,  the influencer recommendation can increase our credibility and conversions much better than paid ads.

Jeremy tells us how to connect with influencers on Instagram. Whether it’s through Telegram or reaching out through the contact information in their bio, there are many ways to catch influencers. He advises keeping it simple and friendly. We need to express genuine interest in their work and what they do.

Influencers usually have a lot of people trying to connect with them. They get tons of messages so entrepreneurs who want to connect with them need to get their message across in as few words as possible. It’s good to tell them how our product or service is going to elevate their brand. What’s in it for them?

Jeremy also says that while it’s extremely affordable to work with influencers, we can’t expect them to work for free. These are people who invest a lot of their time and put in all the hard work to build their following, so it’s only fair to pay for their services.

Strategy 1:  Select a Great Instagram Name

Jeremy believes that when thinking of an Instagram name, we need to begin with the end in mind. This means deciding on the direction the business will go before we pick a name.

It’s important to think about the benefit that people would get from engaging with this name. Jeremy explains that Instagram is moving more towards search engine optimization. This means that a great Instagram name must be concise, clean, and benefit-based.

Strategy 2: Instagram Bios and Profiles

Jeremey told me that a bio needs to be concise and clear as well. If someone is going to promote affiliate products, they shouldn’t be using those ugly affiliate links that look spammy. Instead, for just $8 or $9, they can buy a benefit-based domain name through GoDaddy.

Jeremey pointed out a great resource, leandomainsearch.com, to find a domain name based on a certain keyword. The website digs up available domain names that have this keyword in them. The next step would be to go to GoDaddy and buy the domain that looks most clean.

Strategy 3: Drive Customers to Free Offers

When I asked Jeremey about which rules he thought were the most important, he told me that it no longer works to drive people directly to paid offers. We need to give something for free. For example, this can be a free PDF or an ebook that offers valuable content to customers. This will drive the leads to leave their email to get the free offer. Free email traffic like this will continue to grow the email list that we can market indefinitely. 

Strategy 4: Model Successful Instagrammers

I asked Jeremey about how to learn from people who have already done that and who have been quite successful at it. Jeremey explained that this was how he built everything in his life; by modeling what successful people have been doing.

Jeremey believes that we should never take advice from someone we wouldn’t trade places with. So when looking for a successful model to follow, we first need to make sure they’ve been successful at achieving what we are trying to achieve. We don’t need sophisticated software to figure that out. Jeremey says that some common sense can go a long way. We need to measure the number of followers someone has on Instagram up against the level of engagement (likes and comments) they get. If someone with 600,000 followers and they have 2000 likes on their account and only four comments, this can’t be a real following. 

Jeremey recommends doing a little research first. It’s quite simple. Just document a 15-day average of what those Instagrammers are posting, their likes, and comments. This will show if they’re authentic or not.

 “Successful people don't fear failure but understand that it's necessary to learn and grow from” Robert Kiyosaki - businessman and author

Connect with Jeremy McGilvrey

If you enjoyed this interview and want to learn more about Jeremy McGilvrey or connect with him, you can find him on LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/in/jeremymcgilvrey, or visit his website  www.jeremymcgilvrey.com and subscribe to his blog.

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Jeremy for sharing your stories and knowledge with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

1. Practice what we teach so we have “been-there-done-that” credibility.
2. No matter how many setbacks we face, never lose our enthusiasm to keep moving forward.
3. Working for an employer may seem easy at the beginning but then it gets very hard, while entrepreneurship will seem hard in the beginning and then get easier.
4. The greatest victories happen when you are able to consistently implement effective processes to help achieve the things that matter most.
5. Customers are no longer being driven effectively on Instagram to paid offers.
6. A great Instagram name is concise, clean, and benefit-based.
7. Before we model successful Instagramers, we should do our research and model the most successful ones.

Did you like today’s episode? Then please follow these channels to receive free digital monetization content:

1.   Get a free Monetization Assessment of your business
2.   Subscribe to the free Monetization eMagazine.
3.   Subscribe to the Monetization Nation YouTube channel.
4.   Subscribe to the Monetization Nation podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher.
5.   Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram and Twitter.

What strategies have you used to promote your brand through Instagram? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/55-4-strategies-to-grow-our-following-on-instagram/

Welcome back to episode 2 with Damon Burton. Damon is the founder and CEO of a highly successful SEO agency. In the previous episode, we discussed how Damon is able to set effective boundaries to balance work and family life. We also talked about Damon’s journey to become a successful SEO expert and entrepreneur. In this episode, Damon will be debunking three common SEO myths, and he’ll share a few tips on how to improve our SEO.

Here are three common myths about SEO (search engine optimization) and why we shouldn’t believe them.

Keyword stuffing is when a webpage attempts to rank higher on a search engine by filling its page with hidden keywords. This used to be extremely popular, and for a while was effective. Damon still gets clients who ask about it, but Google has eliminated this tactic’s effectiveness. Now a website earns its rank only from what a real person would be able to read on the site. 

In fact, attempting to hide keywords can now do more harm than good. Google pays attention to a webpage’s bounce rate, which is the percentage of site visitors who enter and then leave without continuing to view other pages within the same site. If a site has poorly written content or it’s stuffed with keywords and doesn’t read well, people will abandon it. If a site’s bounce rate is too high, Google won’t direct viewers to it because they want to create the best experience for their users.

Another common SEO myth is that we should try to get as many backlinks as possible, regardless of the quality of the source. Backlinks are when another website links to our website. Those links count as votes for our site in a credibility-building popularity contest. These links do have value and they always will, but the goal is not to get as many backlinks as possible from unrelated sites. Google gives much more weight to backlinks from the high-quality, related content. 

Damon helps his clients focus on creating high-quality content that will attract backlinks naturally from high-quality related sites. These kinds of backlinks will be much more influential in Google’s search algorithm than the backlinks from low-quality, unrelated pages.

Many people worry every time Google makes changes to their algorithm. Damon, however, never worries himself with the intricacies of Google’s new algorithms and he has still been able to drive tremendous SEO success for his clients. He thinks that if someone has to worry that much about a Google algorithm change, then it means they’re cutting corners, and it’s going to catch up to them.

With his clients, Damon focuses on the core concepts and principles of SEO, such as site speed and creating great content that people want to consume and share. Because of this strategy, more often than not, his clients aren’t affected too badly by Google algorithm changes, and if they are, it usually impacts them positively.

“I actually don’t get too worried about the intricacies of Google’s new algorithms because if you have to care that much, then it means you’re cutting corners, and eventually it’s going to catch up to you. So, I focus on the core concepts and principles of SEO, and we’ve never had a client get a penalty.” - Damon Burton

Let’s talk about a few of Google’s major algorithm changes and how they focus on quality. 

In 2011, Google came out with the Google Panda Update, which focused on the uniqueness of content, not allowing content scraping or stealing content from other sites. 

The 2012 Google Penguin Update focused on backlinks. Prior to this update, it was all about the number of backlinks over the quality. Immediately after Penguin, the relevance and quality of backlinks became a lot more important than quantity because Google had recognized that people were abusing it. That is another reason why Damon doesn’t focus on backlink quantity.

Mobilegeddon was another algorithm update. It focused on emphasizing the value of mobile-friendly web designs.

These updates were about improving the quality of the websites that Google recommends. It all comes back to a good page look, a good user experience, and good content. If we deliver good content then our site will rank well.

“Long story short, I don’t care about algorithm updates because as long as you’re not trying to game the system, you’re always going to be on the upside.” - Damon Burton

As we’ve discussed, having quality content is essential for SEO. Good content has a good site structure where users and Google can find everything easily and identify the product or service that we offer. Good content is also unique, not the same as what everyone else is doing. It should speak to our readers' problems and pain points and put us in a position of authority to speak to those things.

When Damon was working with the Utah Jazz team store, they were thinking about what their campaign could monetize. They didn’t want to rank number one on Google for random word bragging rights; they wanted to rank for something they could profit on.

So they did keyword research, starting with relevancy and looking for what people were searching forーwhich keywords were more relevant to their audience for their product or service. 

The Utah Jazz’s retail division needed to attract buyers for newer players like Donovan Mitchell, but they also wanted to sell merchandise for legacy players like Karl Malone. They looked into what people were searching about these players, and through the research found something that they never would have thought about. People were searching, “how did Karl Malone die,” but Karl Malone isn’t dead.

It was a great find for them because no one else was going to be writing about that. It didn’t matter that the customer was wrong, that’s what they were searching for. That was an opportunity to consider unique topic ideas like “10 Myths of How Karl Malone Died” that addressed customer’s concerns, and it was the only thing that directly addressed the customer’s intent. 

Just because a word has high competition or low search volume doesn’t mean we should say no. In fact, quite often, the words that have little search volume are the best ones to target because they are the most immediately relevant to our product or service. Would we rather have a word that people search 1,000 times and get one conversion from it, or would we rather have a word that people search 100 times, but we get 10 conversions? The payout is what matters.

We are constantly bombarded with influencers showing us their spotless houses, perfect bodies, and expensive cars. We’ve become numb to this stuff, which is why it can be very rewarding to be human and vulnerable. It really stands out when someone posts something in their messy house where their kid just broke something. It feels real and we’re able to connect with that person because they’re being human.

Damon always tries to keep his posts relatable, so that his followers will trust him. He talks about real problems people face with SEO or with being a parent, which helps in building his expertise. Then when they are ready for the product or service he offers, they come to him and say, “how do we get started” because they already have that relationship.

“You have a scalable, quantifiable return, and you have a better client because they know what you do.” - Damon Burton

Damon made a post on LinkedIn that resonated with a gentleman who reached out to Damon. He said he was considering SEO, and he’d like to meet with Damon. They met about a week later, and shortly after the meeting, the gentleman called Damon and said that most marketing meetings he leaves more confused than when he came in. With Damon’s meeting, however, Damon explained why he should and shouldn’t work with SEO National. 

The gentleman ended up becoming a client, and two weeks later, he introduced Damon to his neighbor, who worked for a law firm and also became a client. Shortly after, the attorney-client asked Damon if he could introduce him to the Utah Jazz because he was the exiting vice president of the retail division responsible for filling the marketing roles before he left. Damon ended up getting the contract with the Utah Jazz.

So within the span of about a month, he got three new clients all from one authentic post on LinkedIn. Because of quality content creation and credible authenticity, Damon was connected with Jazz. He never would have been able to do that even if he had spent $1,000,000 on paid ads.

“Highly engaged teams show 21% greater profitability.” (Source: Forbes.com)

Damon has a remote team of about 30 people that he’s been working with for about 14 years. Most of them he has never met in person. Despite that, he has very close connections with all of his team members. 

Two of them have asked him to be the godfather for their child. One almost named their kid after him. When two of them were getting married in the Philippines and Damon couldn’t make it because his wife was pregnant, they ordered a 6-foot tall cardboard cutout of him. Cardboard Damon was in the wedding pictures and stood in the line behind the bride and groom.

The emotional ties and connection Damon has with his team aren’t possible without being vulnerable and being human.

Damon believes that whatever the future holds, virtual reality, augmented reality, or something that doesn’t exist yet, it will rely on the same things it does now: trustworthy, unique content that’s accessible quickly and easily. As long as we understand the importance of establishing ourselves as credible, we won’t have to care too much about the future.

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Damon for sharing your stories and knowledge with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

1. Don’t attempt to use keyword stuffing.
2. Seek after quality backlinks, not the quantity of low-quality backlinks.
3. As long as we are creating quality content people want to read and link to, we probably don’t need to be worried about Google’s latest algorithm.
4. Good content is unique, easily accessible, speaks to our readers' problems and pain points, and puts us in a position of authority to speak to those things.
5. Be human on social media and with our teams to establish strong relationships.

Connect with Damon

If you enjoyed this interview and want to learn more about Damon or connect with him or his business, you can find him at https://www.linkedin.com/in/damonburton/ and SEOnational.com.

Want to be a Better Digital Monetizer?

1. Get a free Monetization Assessment of your business
2. Subscribe to the free Monetization eMagazine.
3. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation YouTube channel.
4. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher. 
5. Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram and Twitter.

Share Your Story 

What are the best SEO strategies you have used? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/57-3-seo-myths-debunked/ 

Technology has enhanced the business world in innumerable ways, and it is largely because of technology that many businesses were able to stay afloat after the COVID-19 pandemic started. However, while technology can do good, it can also hold us hostage. Most people nowadays are constantly checking their email and social media. 

“Technology should be your servant, not your master” -Ludovic Tendron

Damon Burton is the author of the book Outrank, which focuses on search engine optimization. Damon is the president of an SEO agency called SEO National that he has run for about 14 years. He writes for Forbes, where he serves on the Forbes Council. 

In today’s episode, Damon Burton and I discuss how we can use systems and processes to our advantage by controlling technology and not letting technology control us.

Damon used to work for a man, who was pretty successful but not the best to work with. One Friday night around 7 pm, Damon was out to dinner with his wife, and his boss called him. Damon didn’t answer, so his boss then texted him. Damon didn’t respond. This was at the time when email was new on phones, and his boss also emailed him. Damon decided right then that this was never going to happen again. He deleted email from his phone and has never gone back.

As technology and social media have evolved, Damon has made sure he limits what is on his phone. He is very active on LinkedIn and Facebook, but he only uses them on his desktop. He’s also disabled automatic downloads and dock notifications on his desktop email, so the only time he gets emails is when he manually presses the button. This prevents him from getting distracted by the flood of notifications.

So how does he manage a highly successful business and retain relationships without these forms of communication? Damon says it’s simpler than we might think. From day one, Damon sets expectations with his team and with his clients. In client contracts, it says SEO National is not available after 5 pm on weekdays, they’re not available on weekends, and they don’t do launches on Fridays because if anything goes wrong they won't be working on the weekend.

“I’ve made very clear, hard boundaries, and I’ve never had a problem with it because I set the expectations with the clients.” -Damon Burton

Damon has set boundaries without having issues because he established the expectations with his clients, telling them, “we’re not available at these times but that’s okay because we’re proactively doing other things to make sure everything works.” Because Damon has systems and processes for effective communication, he doesn’t have emergency communications at undesirable times.

Damon grew up in a lower, middle-class family, and they didn’t have many luxuries. So, when Damon took a typing class in junior high, he loved having access to a computer. He embraced all the opportunities he could to learn about technology. When Damon was in 9th grade, he was in an “exclusive class” with just six or seven other students. Graphic design and website builder technology had started to come out, and the class was able to use it to design things such as the school lunch menu. 

In high school, Damon was learning HTML for the first time, and he loved it. He had the opportunity, with half a dozen other students who all knew HTML, to do the school district’s website.

In college, Damon took a communications class that had a project where students had to build an HTML website. Damon didn’t want to work hard on this website only to have it deleted off the school’s server later. He asked his professor if he could buy a domain and do the project there. Damon’s professor said that was fine, so Damon set to work creating this website. 

At the time, he was a big car enthusiast, so he would stop nice cars he saw while driving and keep a little info sheet in his car. He’d ask the owners about the car, the make, model, and what modifications they’d made. Then on his website, Damon created little bios for the cars. The site started to pick up traction, especially when he added a message board. Damon wanted to make it better, and that’s when he took an intentional interest in design. As the site continued to grow, the movie The Fast and the Furious came out, which grew the market more. Damon thought. “how do I monetize this” and that’s what led him to marketing.

For the next couple of years, Damon began building websites on the side. He got better and better at it, to the point where he was spending about 20% of his time on it, while it brought in 50% of his income. He decided to leave his day job and start doing websites full time. Within 3 months of devoting all his time to websites, he was able to make more than he had made in his previous job.

Damon grew the business, bringing on an employee. A company asked him if he would consider consolidating with their company, and Damon learned that if he wanted to sell, buyers wanted a business with documented processes to take the keys and drive. He declined the offer and spent the next year documenting everything. After that, his company was immediately scalable, as it brought on more people and signed bigger contracts.

For Damon, being an entrepreneur is what he’s passionate about. He has other interests, but entrepreneurship is what he truly loves. Because of this, he is able to divide his time between his family and his work. He puts his family first, setting aside time for them. 

Now, it’s been about 14 years since Damon started his business. He is at the point where he could leave the business, but he doesn’t know if he wants to. He is still passionate about the business he’s built. He loves networking, building relationships, and finding opportunities. However, part of him wants to take a break to find himself again. Entrepreneurs can often lose themselves a little bit in the process, and Damon wants to reconnect with himself. Another part of him wants to try something totally different, a new adventure.

One of the things Damon is most proud of in his career is that he can separate his work and family life and not feel like he is missing out on one while he is doing the other. He is able to block time out from about 7:30 to 8:45 every morning to eat breakfast with his kids or walk them to school, depending on the weather. He is also able to do the same thing from 3:00 to 4:00 in the afternoon when he walks or drives to school to pick them up. 

Damon was able to work with the Utah Jazz team store and help the NBA team increase their merchandise sales. This was special for him because when Damon was a kid he was a part of the Junior Jazz, a youth basketball league. He also remembers going to his first Utah Jazz game when he was young. 

Shortly after Damon finished his process documentation, the company got its first 5-figure monthly recurring retainer. Damon wouldn’t have been confident bidding on that client if he hadn’t done his process documentation. Because he had done that, he could confidently bid on it, knowing he would be able to fulfill that promise and build a good reputation.

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Damon for sharing your stories and knowledge with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

1. We can be the masters of our technology instead of allowing it to master us.
2. Take advantage of opportunities in school and other places to learn about your passions.
3. Process documentation is a key to being able to scale the business. 
4. Process documentation can save you time and make your business more appealing when you are ready to sell.
5. Build your life to make time for the things you love as Damon has done with his family and business.

Connect with Damon

If you enjoyed this interview and want to learn more about Damon or connect with him or his business, you can find him on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/damonburton// and SEOnational.com.

1. Get a free Monetization Assessment of your business
2. Subscribe to the free Monetization eMagazine.
3. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation YouTube channel.
4. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher. 
5. Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram and Twitter.

Share Your Story 

How have you used systems and processes to effectively manage your business? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

Historically, businesses would focus on purchasing advertising and reach and then use that reach to tell people how awesome they were. That model doesn’t work very well anymore. If I want to buy a new SUV, I’m not going to go to a Toyota salesperson and ask them what the best SUV is. I’m going to go to credible sources such as review sites or safety rating sites to pull incredible data to help me make a decision. 

One of the credible sources people go to now are influencers, experts in the field who have a wide audience and a lot of credibilities. 49% of consumers depend on influencer recommendations (Source: digitalmarketinginstitute.com). In today’s episode, Josh Albrechtsen and I talk about how we can leverage influencers and other strategies to boost our credibility.

Josh Albrechtsen graduated from the BYU Marriott School with a BS in Management Information Systems. He started his full-time career at Entrata as a development project manager, and he was promoted to lead different parts of the company over his 5-year tenure, including the development, services, and product management organization. Josh left Entrata to become a Licensed Nursing Home Administrator with the Ensign Group. He met Riley, his partner and the founder of Cortex, while running a Skilled Nursing Facility in Orem, UT, and eventually joined Riley as a co-founder of Cortex. Josh has accepted a spot in the MIT Sloan EMBA Class of 2023.

Entrata was Josh’s first job out of college. He started doing development project management for them and was eventually promoted to lead that team. While in that position, Josh had the opportunity to work with developers in India and travel there. He transitioned to a services leadership role for about two years. Then, he moved to project management as Entrata was growing there.

Early on while Josh was working at Entrata, the company’s sales began to grow. But, they were growing fairly linear. Josh was a part of the executive team when they made the decision to connect with some industry consultants in the multifamily space. These consultants were highly regarded at trade shows and were there on the panels talking about multifamily. Entrata did a consulting arrangement with each of them, and ultimately the arrangement led to more conversations that would not have happened, otherwise, because the consultants had the network and credibility that Entrata could piggyback off of. Entrata grew exponentially purely because of that change.

Influencer marketing can lead to a lot of success and growth. Entrata found people that have influence in the space, and they positively associated themselves with those influencers and leveraged their credibility.

Josh left Entrata and became a nursing home administrator. He did that for two years and then co-founded Cortex.

When Josh was describing Cortex to me, he said Cortex does follow-up phone calls for healthcare providers to patients recovering at home, employing registered nurses to make the phone calls. Then he said it’s kind of like Uber for nurses doing in-home health care.

This “kind of like” strategy of describing a business is one of the secrets for credibility. This strategy is a great element of credibility because we can take something that is credible― something that everybody knows is credible and knows how it works―and associate it with ourselves but with a small twist. If we were to describe Airbnb this way, we’d say it’s kind of like Uber for homes. 

One of Josh’s mentors and associates is Johnny Hanna, the CEO, and co-founder of Homie. Recently, Johnny has become more prolific on LinkedIn, and he’s been doing mental health Monday posts. He is being very vulnerable on LinkedIn about mental health issues he has struggled with or that he’s helped other people with, inviting them to be more vulnerable and open. 

Initially, these mental health posts had some traction, but now they have massive followings. In the comments, people repeatedly say that when Johnny pulled them aside or sat in their car and talked to them about this topic, it really resonated with them. These individuals have since been seeing a therapist, working on their mental health, or doing something else to address this issue. 

Being vulnerable with our associates is a huge aspect of credibility. One of the secrets is the secret of imperfection. When we try to be perfect, we’re not real. But, showing the scars we have actually gives us credibility. It allows people to connect with us in a way that is otherwise difficult when we are trying to be “perfect.” Perfect is not relatable because nobody is perfect.

“Trust is a product of vulnerability that grows over time and requires work, attention, and full engagement.” -Brene Brown, American professor, lecturer, author, and podcast host

Another concept of credibility is listening first. Josh’s father is a great example of this. Josh called him before the interview, asking him for advice on something, and Josh said he talked for the majority of the time while his dad just listened to him.

When Josh was growing up, his dad was the CEO of a motorhome company. Josh asked him how he managed his life with all the people in his company. His dad said he just stayed quiet and listened. People usually assumed Josh’s dad was smart, but he surrounded himself with smart people who could help him.

"Listening is a magnetic and strange thing, a creative force. The friends who listen to us are the ones we move toward. When we are listened to, it creates us, makes us unfold and expand." -Karl A. Menninger, American psychiatrist

When I asked Josh who is the person that has the most credibility for him in his life, he said first his father and outside his family, Johnny Hanna. He said they are very similar in many ways. They both always do what they say they’re going to do. They are both vulnerable. Despite having a lot of success, they both haven’t let that go to their heads; one wouldn’t know how successful they are if they met them on the street. Johnny and Josh’s father are intelligent, well-versed in business and life principles, and they rely on those principles instead of the opinions of others.

When I was running Adoption.com, I had a client that stayed with me for 11 years, the longest client I’ve ever had. This client was on a month-to-month contract with me, and I believe that is one of the reasons he stayed with me for so long. If there was something wrong, I had to fix it immediately. It forced me to try to make him happy every month. 

Long-term contracts are the enemy of successful long-term business relationships. If a customer isn’t happy, they will cancel as soon as they can. Most SaaS customers usually sign month-to-month contracts for this very reason. 

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Josh for sharing your stories and knowledge with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

1. We can connect and build positive relationships with influencers to connect with their credibility and network. 
2. To establish credibility when we’re describing our business, we can use the “kind of like” strategy to connect customers with something familiar and credible and put our own unique angle on it. 
3. When we are vulnerable with our customers, we can connect on a higher level and establish credibility with them.
4. Listening to others is a great strategy for credibility because it shows them we care about what they have to say.
5. Just like Johnny Hanna and Josh’s dad, if we are committed, vulnerable, humble, and hold strong to our principles, our credibility will probably grow.
6. Consider using month-to-month contracts to encourage us to keep our clients happy. We may be able to keep our customers for a longer period of time this way.

Connect with Josh

If you enjoyed this interview and want to connect with Josh or his company, you can find him on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshalbrechtsen/ or email him at [email protected]. 

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Welcome back to the second episode with Tim Hughes. Tim is recognized by many as the world’s leading expert on social selling. In our first episode with Tim, we discussed his career in social selling, common objections and mistakes in social selling, and how COVID-19 will impact business going forward. In today’s episode, Tim shares 3 secrets of effective social selling and examples of good and bad social selling.

Here are 3 of Tim’s secrets to social selling:

The first thing we need is a buyer-centric profile. It's not a profile where we say how great we are, how many times we've made news, etc. It’s also not a profile where we focus on our company or product. 

We need to put ourselves in our buyer's shoes and say, “Okay, if I were a buyer, what would I be looking for in a person who is going to help me?” A buyer is looking for help, not someone to sell them something. This isn’t about selling; it’s about getting a conversation. Once we get to the conversation, the person will give us permission to pitch or not.

There are three types of people. One is someone we can sell to. Another is someone we can get a referral from. So they may say, “I'm not the person you need to talk to, but you need to talk to my brother-in-law. He's actually looking for this right now.” The third person is what Tim calls someone with a big mouth, which is somebody who will take our insights and our influence and share it through the network.

For examples of great buyer-centric profiles, check out Tim’s LinkedIn profile or the profiles of Priscilla McKinney, Eric Doyle, Adam Gray, or Vanessa Gartell.

The next thing we need is a network. This is not just a bunch of contacts. These are people we don't necessarily need to have a phone conversation with, but we need to know. These are people that we could have a conversation with if they came to us.

“You need to build a network, and your network needs to be as big, as wide, and as varied as you can have it.” - Tim Hughes

BMW is one of Tim’s clients, and they have about 100,000 employees. So to sell to BMW, we would have to be connected to 1,000 people.

Tim does risk forecasts by using social for his clients. One client was selling to Domino’s Pizza, and they said it was a done deal to happen that quarter. Tim said, “It won’t happen.” When they asked why, Tim said, “Because the salesperson isn't connected to anybody in Domino's Pizza.” The sale didn't happen. If the salesperson isn't connected to anybody in the meeting, there's no relationship there.

The third thing we need is content. Tim’s company has done the research for what content works and what content doesn't work. Unsurprisingly, the content that doesn't work is advertising because no one's interested in our products, services, or anything that says our company is great. However, people are interested in our people. 

Eric, one of Tim’s employees, posted about his family going to the beach for his son’s 16th birthday. The post got 168 likes or comments and about 10,000 views. It took him 10 minutes to post, and from that post, he got 168 leads, two proposals, and one purchase order. There is not one single demand generation method out there (cold calling, advertising, email marketing) that can generate that kind of result in ten minutes. That’s the difference digital dominance makes.

“The more humanized that you can be with your content, the more engagement you get.” - Tim Hughes

One of Tim’s friends used to work at an organization, and this organization had a poor social selling strategy. They would have someone post something, and then tell everyone in the organization to go like it. Tim said there was even an employee whose title was “social selling expert,” but they clearly didn’t understand social selling.

Tim went into a big corporate organization to help them with their social selling. In a meeting, they told Tim their social selling was going very well. They said they were sending out brochures through emails. Tim turned to the gentleman next to him and asked him what he does when he gets an email. He said, “I just delete them.” Tim turned to the woman in charge of marketing and asked her what she does when she gets an email. She said, “I just delete them.” The two turned to each other and realized that it was actually not going well at all.

Brochures don't create sales conversations or great sales. The trust and the likability that comes from conversations can cause the sale. Though, we don’t necessarily have to like someone to trust them and buy from them.

Tim was recently working with a drains company. They did a pilot program of 6 people for 3 months. In those three months, they got 26,608 likes and 2,688 comments, just about 30,000 interactions. Interaction on social media is an opportunity to have a conversation. So, even if we took out 20% of those because they were friends liking the posts, that's still a massive opportunity to have conversations with people.

Before Tim started helping them, their goal had been 4 sales-qualified leads a week. After Tim came in, they were getting 12-14. They got just under 2 million views, and they've grown their network by about 5,000 people. So think of that as increasing an email database by 5,000, except unlike an email database, we actually know the people, have had an interaction, and they know and trust us.

There’s another company Tim has worked with that got 100% ROI. That transformation is bigger than Tim’s wildest dreams. At that point, it’s a money-making machine. For every $1 they put in, they get $2 back. Because of that, they don’t need an advertising budget.

Two of the most important metrics Tim’s company tracks are revenue and inbound clients. Generally, he has his clients create a campaign code, tracking business found through social media and business influenced through social media. Business found through social media is when the company puts out a post, and they get a response or an opportunity. Business found through influence is when the company goes into a particular account and connects to lots of people, growing its influence in that particular account.

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Tim for sharing your stories and knowledge with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

1. We should humanize our content.
2. Focus on what a buyer is looking for in our profiles. They are probably looking for help, and probably not for our company, brand, products, or services.
3. Having a large network of people who like us and trust us will allow us to sell more easily. When we have connections to the people we are selling to, they are more likely to buy from us.
4. If our content focuses on people instead of products, we will have more engagement.

Connect with Tim

If you enjoyed this interview and want to learn more about Tim or connect with him, you can find him on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/timothyhughessocialselling or visit DLA ignite’s website at https://dlaignite.com/. 

1. Get a free Monetization Assessment of your business
2. Subscribe to the free Monetization eMagazine.
3. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation YouTube channel.
4. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher. 
5. Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram and Twitter.

Share Your Story 

What results have you seen from social selling? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/65-3-secrets-to-effectively-use-social-selling/