Rev & Reach by PopSpeed®

In this episode of Rev & Reach, Lori shares marketing predictions for 2026 rooted in the everyday realities she sees with clients and across digital channels. Instead of speculative forecasting, Lori focuses on shifts already reshaping the marketing landscape—highlighting authenticity, creativity, and platform strategy as the keys to brand success in an increasingly AI-driven world. With candid real-life examples, she reveals how marketers can cut through the clutter, build real trust, and make their brands memorable in the new year.

00:08 – Lori introduces her three marketing predictions for 2026, emphasizing real shifts over generic industry forecasts.

01:06 – Prediction one: authenticity emerges as a critical brand asset amid AI-generated content fatigue; Lori explains why audiences crave imperfection and truth.

02:27 – Real-world example from dental marketing: ads that feature genuine patients and voices outperform generic stock images and copy.

05:05 – Prediction two: creative strategy becomes the new competitive advantage, with platforms rewarding engagement and relevance over quantity.

06:58 – Lori explains the power of strong hooks and direct messaging, and shares a client case study that demonstrates the difference between “relatable” creative and strategic, standout content.

09:14 – Prediction three: social media fragmentation and bot proliferation mean brands must focus, adapt, and build deeper communities through email lists and owned channels.

11:07 – Strategies for choosing the right platforms, building email lists, and safeguarding brand assets against algorithmic or account risks.

13:32 – Closing advice: focus on fewer channels with better content, double down on your human voice, and build trust through clarity and authenticity.

01:13 – “How much AI slop are you seeing in your social feeds these days, as AI content floods our feeds on all the different channels, human signals are going to become even more important.”

01:46 – “Imperfect, specific human stories are going to outperform those polished generics every single time.”

02:10 – “Don’t write testimonial quotes or quotes for your founders or your leadership team that sound like AI or sound like corporate speak. Don’t do that. Legit, authentic human connection and conversation are what’s going to sell in the new year.”

16:15 – “2026 favors clarity over chaos. So whatever you’re doing, be clear. Be clear, be brief, be engaging, be different, be unique, and most of all, be authentic.”

00:08
Hello. Thank you so much for joining me for this episode of Rev & Reach. What we are talking about today is marketing predictions that we’re putting on the record for the 2026 new year. There are three things that we are seeing that we think will help marketers do better in 2026. These may seem to be obvious, but if you pay close attention and incorporate these into what you do in 2026, I guarantee you will see better results. One of the things that happens this time of year is everybody starts coming out with their marketing predictions—”You know, we’re going to see more of this, less of that…” I really don’t want to do that as much as I want to tell you what we’re already seeing, so that you can take advantage of the trends that are going to make a difference. And these three shifts, I’m pretty sure, will separate brands that grow from the brands that fade.

01:06
Prediction number one: authenticity becomes a differentiator in an AI-heavy world. How much AI slop are you seeing in your social feeds these days? As AI content floods our feeds on all the different channels, human signals are going to become even more important. So let’s talk about that. AI makes volume really easy, but it’s generic in most cases. Audiences are actually developing AI fatigue, so your audience is already tired of seeing AI slop out there in their feeds. Imperfect, specific human stories are going to outperform those polished generics every single time. So in your marketing, you want to use faces, voices, opinions, lived experiences, testimonials—but you want to record those on video or take photos that are really natural and authentic and use the real quotes. Don’t write testimonial quotes or quotes for your founders or your leadership team that sound like AI or sound like corporate speak. Don’t do that. Legit, authentic human connection and conversation are what’s going to sell in the new year.

02:27
And I’ll give you an example. We’ve had several different types of dental clients on our roster, and because of that, I get a ton of dental ads that are geographically targeted to me because I obviously have an interest in dentists. There was a time a few months ago where I was getting three ads from three different practices—and they were probably part of a Dental Group or something—three different practices with the same stock image, the same generic copy. And it was just not compelling in the least. Wasn’t their patient, wasn’t their person, was staged, wasn’t authentic. What we do with dentists is we serve up the real deal. We take pictures of patients. We get that little boy at the toy cart who’s getting the prize for behaving really well and having a great dental hygiene checkup. We get the dentist talking about why they’re passionate about Invisalign and how easy it makes it for them to help correct your bite or really enhance your smile. Those are the things that get people to click and say, “I want to go to this practice,” not generic stock images of a family grinning—and no one knows who they are—and it’s obvious that they’re not real. So more founder voices, more experts, more real employees, more real customers, less stock, fewer vague claims. Say less and mean more. Because another thing that we see with AI is people I know who are not writers—and that I know don’t speak in corporate speak or flowery language—and they’ll be on LinkedIn with a three-paragraph flowery post, and it’s just inauthentic and it’s kind of offensive—like, do you think we’re dumb, that we think that’s you? It’s not, and we know it. So it takes away your credibility when you are inauthentic because you’re relying too heavily on AI. So stop it. Don’t do it. AI is great for ideation, but authenticity rules, and that’s always where you should start: with the real deal. Bring in AI as a tool to help you with titles and maybe series and things like that, but not to create the content itself. It’s just not a good idea. AI is actually raising the floor of content quality and will completely expose anybody who doesn’t really have anything real to say. So keep that in mind. Put a pin in that one.

05:05
So our next prediction: creative will become the new competitive advantage. What I mean is platforms reward engagement. So if you’re creating generic content, it’s not going to work. And then you’ll come back to an agency like mine and say, “Well, we tried social media. It didn’t work.” You know, social does work, but you’ve got to work at it. You’ve got to put the time and effort into it to figure it out. The same tools, the same output, is not effective. Creativity, human interaction, human ideas, human ideation—that’s what really gets great creative to come, and it’s not always pretty, but I can guarantee, if it is effective, it’s clear, it’s a little surprising, and it’s relevant to the audience. It’s the most important thing. Boring brands will pay more for worse results, because we see a ton of really bad creative because somebody says, “Get that out on social.” Don’t ever do your social in a way that’s just “put something out there.” Be strategic—and strategic creative, even better. I have a client that we’ve already decided for next year, a series that we’re going to do that’s going to allow us to cover six different topics with three different posts each. We’ve got 18 posts with a really cool series slogan that we’re going to use next year. And it’ll allow us to be creative, you know, and we can use this campaign—we can have video, we can have carousels and all kinds of different things and put it up on YouTube, and it can be, you know, very YouTube-oriented. It’s important that you spend the time to plan out your creative so that you know it’s what your audience likes, and you know it’s something that they’re going to react to.

06:58
The other thing I will tell you, as far as creative, is strong hooks matter more than perfect funnels. If you can’t get the attention of your consumer right away, I would tell people one of the best ways to make sure that your marketing is clear is to be very brief and to the point; tell them what you want to tell them right away. Don’t bury your lead three sentences down, because you’ve already lost your consumer by then. Tell them what’s exciting immediately. And creative isn’t something that’s just nice to have anymore; it’s a lever. It’s what’s going to help your content perform. Does it stand out in the feed? Is it colorful and unique? Is it—You know, is there a person talking and they’re emotional? Is it, “Guess what? You’re never going to believe what we learned about that”? I mean, is it some kind of hook like that that makes people want to keep listening or keep reading? So creative is not a nice-to-have; it’s a performance lever. Pay attention. I’ll give you one more example before we move on to the next one. Met with a client, and we were talking about all of the different tools that they use to promote the content of one of their clients. The client is very tied in to making sure that they identify with their target audience. The client and the agency know how the audience uses the product. They come into the office, they sit down at their laptop or their computer desk, and they drink their coffee and they log in and they start their day. Well, they created creative for their social content that was like a computer and a cup of coffee, because that’s where they thought the audience would see themselves. Well, they’re not selling computers and they’re not selling coffee, and nowhere in their creative did it say exactly what they did. So you really have to look at your creative, pay close attention to it, and make sure it’s not just “here’s what my audience identifies with,” but here’s something my audience identifies with—it’s really cool or really interesting or really funny, or makes them want to learn more about us. So creative is really important this year.

09:14
Prediction number three: social media keeps splintering, and brands need to adapt with bots. I’ve been on social a lot. I spend my personal time there too. I’ve got lots of friends all over the place, and what I’ve noticed is that there are a lot of bots out there that will come onto a post, attack you or somebody else, and when you go look at who they are, it’s obviously not a real account. It turns off a lot of people, and people are actually kind of signing out—not being on social quite as often. Broken algorithms—algorithms these days are more likely to grab a hold of a post through a filter and say, “Oh, this promotes violence, so we didn’t let you post it. We took it down,” or, “this promotes violence and we shut down your account.” And it’s happening to people that aren’t promoting violence. I mean, we had it happen to a dental post. Dentistry is not violent; we were not saying anything violent, but one of the words we used was in their filter in a totally different context, and it grabbed that post and took it down. So it’s kind of making people angry. I know, as people get restricted on the Meta platforms, they may become more likely to go over to YouTube or to use TikTok or to pay more attention to LinkedIn. So feeds are becoming less personal and more targeted—so there’s a ton of promotion. So, believe it or not, some people are actually going back to the OG platforms like Tumblr. Tumblr is still out there; still got a lot of users. Pinterest is still out there, got a ton of users. They’re targeted to different aspects and different types of consumers, so engagement can be a little harder to read.

11:07
The other thing that’s happening is the platforms are shifting how they reward the content creators: how many likes, how many shares, that kind of thing do you need before you actually get some ROI on your content? And what that means, basically, is the one-size-fits-all strategies just do not work. It never works to take the same content and throw it up on seventeen different social platforms; it’s just not something that’s effective. Pick the social channels that you know your audience is more likely to engage with. If Facebook and Instagram and LinkedIn are it for you, stay there. You don’t have to be on Snapchat and, you know, Tumblr and Pinterest and YouTube. Pick a couple of great, really engaging audience platforms that work for your target, and then also build owned audiences. And what that means is your mailing list. Any opportunity you have, take advantage of the ask of “Sign up for our monthly missives,” where you can find special offers and helpful information and news about our industry, or whatever it is that you’re doing that would help people be able to do their jobs better or help them engage with your product better. Get that email list going. If you have twenty-five people on your email list, awesome. You gotta start somewhere, so start your list—and that’s your own list. Those are your people. That’s a list that you can use to send emails out, as long as you’re not crazy and sending them two and three times a week. You can build an audience that’s really impactful for yourself and your brand. YouTube is another great place to build a community. Get some subscribers going, get in there with some really solid content, a lot of really good shorts. Before you know it, you’re going to see comments and your channel grows, and you get more shares and comments and engagement and things like that that you may not have been able to get on, let’s say, Facebook or, you know, Twitter—right? Or X, they call it X now, but we still call it Twitter. But it’s one of those things that you can’t chase every platform, and you really need to pay attention to the idea that you don’t own a lot of the social platforms.

13:32
You can get kicked off the platform, make a mistake and get cut off that channel forever. I’ve had it happen—not to me personally, but I watched a client go through it. She never got her 3,500 followers back, she never got access to all her photo albums that she had on Meta. She fought for months and months and just got no response at all. It was gone. Don’t let that happen to you. Make sure you’ve got an email list and a couple other places that you build strong communities, because that’s what’s going to keep you going if one of your platforms goes sideways. Focus on fewer channels, better content, and build deeper trust. That’s how you do it. You don’t just throw your content out there. You put your content up intentionally, strategically, and you look for ways to engage. And I’ll give you another example. We have a client that promotes to engineers, and in the last six months, we have started doing more really engineering-specific technical information, and it’s targeted to young engineers. We didn’t know really what was going to happen, but we started digging deeper into the technical instead of more generic posts that led them to the article, we started pulling those technical details into the content and then leading to the article. And what’s happened is we’ve gotten lots more comments, lots more engagement, lots more click throughs. Now if we weren’t getting those results, we’d stop doing that. We’d start doing something different. But since we’re seeing that they’re reacting to it, we’re going to keep doing that and keep doing more of it, and that’s going to help us become more memorable on LinkedIn. And that’s what it’s all about—is making sure that people look forward to seeing your content. They know what to expect. They can identify it when they see it, and that it’s human. It’s one of the most important things that you can do these days is be human.

15:32
So what should you do with these predictions? I’ve already told you some of it, but I would suggest you double down on that human voice. When you’re writing your content, read it out loud. Would I say this to someone if I met them on the street? If it’s corporate speak when you talk it out loud, it’s going to sound really awkward. Speak your content so you can determine whether it’s actually something you would say, and if you do find it something that you would normally say, I’m willing to bet it’s more authentic. Keep working on all the different social platforms and build your audience, but also make sure that you’ve got an email list going, because that’s one of your most important assets as a business, and 2026 favors clarity over chaos. So whatever you’re doing, be clear. Be clear, be brief, be engaging, be different, be unique, and most of all, be authentic. So that’s what I’ve got for you. Thank you so much for joining me for this episode of Rev & Reach today. We will be back in a few weeks, but if you are watching us on YouTube, do me a favor, hit that subscribe button, give me a like, ask a question. We’d love to hear from you. I’m also on LinkedIn as Lori Jo Vest. I’m an open networker there, would love to hear from you. So let me know that you listen to Rev & Reach and head on over to LinkedIn to connect with me. I’d love to hear your ideas on what kinds of content we can provide for you to help you get more ROI from your digital marketing efforts. So, signing off—Lori Jo Vest will be back again soon with more helpful information. Take care.

In this episode of Rev & Reach, Lori dives into the realities of digital marketing performance, debunking the myth that “pretty” or clever creative always leads to results. Through real-world examples, Lori explains why clarity, authenticity, and genuine audience targeting consistently outperform polished but empty campaigns. She shares her framework for creative that actually converts, offers practical advice for tracking ROI, and issues a challenge for marketers to look beyond beauty and focus on what actually moves their audience down the sales funnel.

00:00 – Lori introduces the problem: beautiful social content often doesn’t convert and only a slim majority of marketers truly measure their ROI.

01:24 – Debunking the “pretty equals effective” myth, Lori explains why authenticity and real connection matter more than visual perfection.

04:41 – Lori shows how to leverage data, analytics, and AI tools to uncover what audience and messaging actually produce results.

05:54 – A case study demonstrates that unconventional—and even “ugly”—creative can outperform polished campaigns when it resonates with the right audience.

08:55 – Lori shares her “4Cs” formula for marketing that converts: clarity, credibility, contrast, and a strong call to action.

00:48 – “Did you know that only 57% of marketers actually measure the ROI of their work? Truly measure, like the results they’re getting? Are they hitting the intended targets at the very end of the sales funnel?”

03:07 – “In today’s AI-fueled online culture, authenticity is truly what sells. It’s—and it’s going to, I predict personally, that’s going to get more and more prominent that if you can put real people in front of a camera and show them warts and all, you know, imperfections and everything, that’s where you’re going to get your success, because that is, you know, part of what’s driving customer confidence.”

09:04 – “There’s a 4C kind of thing that we look at: clarity, credibility, contrast and a call to action.”

13:19 – “Remember, cute gets attention, but clarity gets sales. So if you can keep that in mind, that’s going to really help you.”

00:00

Hello, I’m Lori Jo Vest, and welcome to this episode of Rev & Reach—a podcast created by PopSpeed Digital Marketing to help you get more ROI from your digital marketing efforts. So, getting started: you spent hours making that reel really pretty and crafting a wonderful message that you thought was just perfectly written, and you posted it—and nothing happened. Nobody bought anything. Nobody signed up for your course. Nobody filled out the lead form. Did you know that only 57% of marketers actually measure the ROI of their work? Truly measure, like the results they’re getting—are they hitting the intended targets at the very end of the sales funnel? It always surprises me, because honestly, it’s not that hard. It just takes a little bit of effort and some information that you can get your hands on pretty easily. So we’re going to be talking about why good creative or pretty creative or cute creative isn’t always effective, and how to fix that.

01:24

So there’s a myth that I would love to crush if we could: that marketing has to be pretty. A lot of people in marketing design for other marketers, not for their customers. Many of us are surrounded by people in marketing, so we see marketing, we see visuals that are beautiful, we hear a soundtrack that sounds really good, we listen to a script or read a script and it’s wonderful. But when it comes to digital marketing, that esthetic doesn’t equal performance—it doesn’t equal ROI. You can have the most beautiful setup on your Instagram account. People used to really look at how their wall looked, how it lined up, if the visuals all made sense, if it tracked well. Now they’ve changed the shape of those visuals, and now it doesn’t matter. When people go to your page, they just see a bunch of images and there’s really no rhyme or reason. In fact, for a while there, they were using both square and vertical rectangular as the standard. Some accounts had square, some had rectangular, so it was kind of a mess. The brand perception argument that beauty always matters—it doesn’t. Sometimes the weirdest visuals, the most bizarre messaging, is what will get you results, which will actually get you what you want. In your effort to pretty something up or make it perfect, you might be losing effectiveness because you’re losing authenticity. In today’s AI-fueled online culture, authenticity is truly what sells. I personally predict that’s going to get more and more prominent, that if you can put real people in front of a camera and show them warts and all—imperfections and everything—that’s where you’re going to get your success, because that is part of what’s driving customer confidence.

03:33

So what actually drives conversions? A couple things: Do you have an offer? Do you have something that you’re giving that consumer? Is your audience spelled out? Do you know who you’re talking to, and are you speaking their language? Are you expressing your message in a way that’s really clear, quick, and easy to understand? Here’s a quick example: if you have three sentences before you get to the part where you share the benefit to your consumer, then you’ve got to get rid of those first three sentences. You have to be direct. So is your message not only clear and direct, but is it emotionally relevant? Is there something in it for them? Does it speak to their heart or their need or something that’s lacking that they’re looking for? And your creative—does your creative amplify those first three things so that you’re getting maximum impact for what you’re putting out into the digital ecosystem? Testing beats guessing, and if you have an actual marketing initiative running, testing is pretty easy to do.

04:41

You’re going to start by looking at your back end and seeing what’s happening—digging in and seeing what happens when the traffic goes from your email to your social media, or from your social media to your website, and then what does that consumer do when they get to your website? It’s not that hard to get the data, and with AI tools, you can process the data in a way that is simply amazing. I’ll just give you a quick example—this is a sidebar—but you can upload an audience from LinkedIn. Let’s say you have 10,000 followers there. You download the audience. You don’t get the contact information if you’re a company page or showcase page, but you do get their job positions, their industries, their seniority levels, size of the company, type of company—really good data. You upload that into an AI tool, and it will tell you who your messaging is resonating with, who’s responding the most, where your opportunities are, and even provide some strategies to help you improve on those opportunities. So data is out there. You can set up tests, or you can actually just look at your data and figure out what works.

05:54

I’ll give you an example. This was great. I have a client that targets automotive engineers. What I see with this client is the weirder the creative is—like if it’s some strange diagram that only makes sense to engineers because it’s so technical and has little symbols and things, or it’s a photo from a laboratory that has some weird piece of metal doing something and then something else over here—it will get incredible engagement. I mean, amazing engagement that you would not normally see with organic content that’s not promoted. It’s really interesting, because you start paying attention to that and you do more of that, and your page becomes more valuable to your audience. So you can test, you can look at your data. It’s really important to know the type of content your audience responds to, so that when you have an action you want them to take to move them down that sales funnel, you know what it is that moves them. Metrics that matter—like saves, reach, impressions—they’re great numbers.

07:03

But the things you want to look at even more closely are the click-through rate—how many people are actually choosing to take action, like click through to see the website, or go visit or download some type of a white paper or PDF booklet. What is the cost per lead? If you’re promoting, you really want to make sure you’re following that cost per lead and measuring it against your competitors and your past efforts. The conversion rate—what percentage of people actually decide to make the purchase or submit the lead form or the contact form. And then your ROI, true ROI. We spent this much money, we got this many leads. You divide one by the other—the money by the number of leads—and it gets you the cost. You don’t have to be a data scientist to read the data. 

You need to be able to look into the Meta Ads Manager, the Meta back end. If you’re not a Meta back end person, there are very basic courses out there you can take. I don’t have any—I work in it, so I don’t look into the courses, but they’re out there, I assure you. Look on YouTube. Google Analytics 4—you have to know about UTM tracking and CRM tie-ins, how email can tie into social metrics and website metrics, so they’re all working together. So there’s a little bit of training you might need if you’re going to be doing this yourself, or you hire the experts, which is what we like to do when we get deep into something like SEO for local businesses. To get into the map set and things like that, we call on an expert who does that all the time to do that for us. So you can try to do it yourself, learn—there are tools out there that will get you started—or hire it out. You’ve got to figure out what works for you.

08:55

So, how do you make creative that converts? A couple things. One of the things we see all the time is a lack of clarity. There’s a “4C” kind of thing that we look at: clarity, credibility, contrast, and a call to action. Clarity says you want one message, and you want that consumer to do one thing. Do not put two or three things in one piece of messaging in digital; if it’s a newsletter, maybe you’ve got two stories. Don’t try to cram ten stories in, because one goal, one message is what’s going to stop the consumer from getting overwhelmed by you trying to shove too much down their throat. Clarity is really important. Get to the point quickly. Consumers don’t have a lot of time these days. They don’t take a lot of time to read things that come their way.

09:47

Credibility—real people. I mentioned that earlier: authenticity, real quotes. If the grammar’s not great, that’s okay. If you have a consumer who will go on camera and say, “Oh my gosh, say you’re a dentist. My new smile has me grinning all the time. I got a new job and I have a new boyfriend now, too.” If you can get a testimonial from someone on video, take it. It doesn’t have to be perfect. It has to be compelling. And, matter of fact, imperfections help ensure that your content mimics what their friends and family share. I love to remind people that when you’re out on digital—whether it’s emails, your website, or your social media—most importantly, you want to be authentic. People do not want to read business language about a service or product that is used by them personally. They want you to talk to them like they talk to each other. On social media, what resonates is content that mimics what their friends and family share. We do not go to social media to see ads, so when ads pop up, we keep scrolling. Think about that. Be real. Share real results, testimonials, real people.

11:03

Contrast—you want to stand out from what’s out there. So I’m kind of telling you to fit in and at the same time stand out. What I mean by that is, by being really authentic, you will stand out. If you can add color—bright color—if you use text, make it bold and easy to read, few words. Make sure it stands out in their feed in a way that’s compelling and not too commercial. It can be a balance, but there is a way to find that balance. The call to action—always include a call to action. That is a personal preference. You will talk to marketers out there who say you shouldn’t ask for something from your consumer every time you present communication to them. I would say you want to allow those who want to go further, to go further. So if you don’t include a CTA and a link or a way for them to connect to you, you’re taking away the opportunity from those who may want to move forward. So always have a call to action in your content. 

I would actually say, before you launch an ad or piece of content, ask: Is it clear? Is it credible/authentic? Does it stand out—does it have contrast? And is there a CTA? What do you want them to do, and is that CTA really clear? Some of the things you can do in email to test conversion is subject line testing—a lot of the platforms do that. You can do A/B testing with creative. You can do multiple pieces of creative and test them against each other on most of the platforms. That’s another way you can figure out what converts, and make sure your money is going behind the content that converts, not just any content.

12:59

So anyway, that’s what I’ve got for you there. That’s a lot to digest. We typically turn these podcasts into blogs on the website at popspeeddigital.com, so you’ll also find the transcript on our website, and I believe on the podcast platforms as well. So remember: cute gets attention, but clarity gets sales. If you can keep that in mind, that’s going to really help you. I would love it if you would go back to your top-performing ad—this is a challenge for those of you who are actively promoting on social media. Go back to your last ad and ask yourself, Which ones are highest performing, and was it your favorite, or was it your best-performing? Or were they the same thing? Because sometimes what you find is the one you think would do wonderfully fails miserably, and the one that you least expected—in some cases. 

I just had this happen—the ugliest visual. I had the ugliest visual, and I thought, these engineers are going to go wild. We had hundreds of likes on the LinkedIn post from this, what I thought was a rather unattractive image, but they loved it. So, take a look at your ads. See what you think. Give some thought to what we’ve talked about here today. And if you want to know more about PopSpeed Digital Marketing, you can go to our website at popspeeddigital.com, and I am an open networker on LinkedIn, and would love to hear from you. So mention that you listened to Rev & Reach, and I would love to connect there, too. Take care. We will be back with more helpful information to help you get more ROI from your digital marketing very soon. Take care.

In this episode of Rev & Reach, Lori dives deep into the real-world mechanics of building a Social Sales Funnel that moves audiences from unaware to loyal customers—without resorting to pushy sales tactics. Lori breaks down each stage of the funnel, explains why most brands get stuck in the “awareness” phase, and shares actionable strategies for driving connection, trust, and conversion through purposeful social content. Real-world examples, measurement advice, and practical challenges help listeners rethink their social media approach to truly drive ROI.

00:00 — Lori explains why viral content is not the goal, emphasizing that smart brands use social media strategically to move users from total unawareness to loyal customers.

01:33 — Breakdown of the four stages of the sales funnel: awareness, interest, decision, and loyalty, and how each stage functions in building customer relationships.

02:58 — Insights into how different types of content (such as short videos, testimonials, and educational posts) match specific stages of the funnel, and why a single approach isn’t enough.

04:47 — Strategies for building loyalty, including utilizing user-generated content and running engaging social media contests to increase excitement and customer appreciation.

06:17 — Discussion on how fun and interactive engagement tactics, like contests and giveaways, can enhance connection with followers and incentivize participation.

07:37 — Guidance on measuring funnel effectiveness using analytics, tracking movement among funnel stages, and identifying potential “leaks” in the process.

11:21 — Common mistakes with social media strategy, such as posting only awareness content without including clear calls to action, and not providing opportunities for deeper engagement.

12:49 — Advice on trust-building, the importance of respecting where followers are in the buying journey, and not rushing the sales process with aggressive messaging.

13:48 — Lori’s actionable challenge for listeners: analyze your last ten posts to ensure a balanced mix of awareness, interest, decision, and loyalty content.

00:49 – “Most people think social media is about going viral, but the smartest brands use it to guide people step by step, from complete lack of awareness of your brand to becoming a loyal customer.”

02:21 – “In simple language, awareness means, ‘Hey, I’ve heard of you.’ Interest means, ‘Huh, I might need what you have.’ Decision, ‘I’m ready to buy, make it easy.’ Loyalty, ‘I’m telling all my friends about you, and I know if something goes wrong, you’ve got my back.’”

12:52 – “You cannot treat every follower like they’re ready to buy. They’re not. And if you do that…That’s like expecting…to have sex on the first date. I mean, it really is. You can’t skip foreplay and expect commitment.”

13:48 – “So I’m going to give you a challenge. Check out your last 10 posts. Label every one: Is it awareness, interest, decision, loyalty?”

00:00

Hello, I’m Lori Jo Vest. Thank you so much for joining me for this episode of Rev & Reach by PopSpeed Digital Marketing LLC. We are pulling back the curtain on how we do things to help you get more ROI from your digital marketing efforts. So today I want to talk about the social sales funnel and how to build one that actually sells. Because one of the things that we notice is that a lot of people that are using social media are stuck at one place. They’re just out there telling people what they’re doing, and you’ll ask them, “So what do you use social for?” “We tell them what we’re doing.” So most people think social media is about going viral, but the smartest brands, they use it to guide people step by step, from complete lack of awareness of your brand to becoming a loyal customer. So today I’m going to break down how to build a social sales funnel that actually sells without being salesy, because nobody wants to be salesy. I spent 30 years of my career in sales. I do sales every day. I never sell. I simply build strong, positive, connected relationships with people who need what I have to sell, right? What I’m offering, they need. Sales really aren’t necessary. Just awareness and taking them through this funnel is what helps them make the decision to buy.

01:33
So social media isn’t a magic slot machine. You don’t just stick posts in and clients start coming, or customers start coming immediately. That’s not how it works. There are stages to the relationship: awareness, nurturing, conversion—and by the end of this episode, you’ll know how to turn likes into leads and leads into loyal customers using social media. It’s not that hard, but you do have to be strategic about it. So the funnel—defining a funnel—basically, it’s the path that a consumer takes from being completely unaware of you to becoming a loyal fan that recommends you, that engages with you on social, that says, “I tried that, and it was great,” that kind of thing. So in simple language: awareness means, “Hey, I’ve heard of you.” Interest means, “Huh, I might need what you have.” Decision: “I’m ready to buy, make it easy.” Loyalty: “I’m telling all my friends about you, and I know if something goes wrong, you’ve got my back.” So those stages are completely supportable on social media. You can actually bring people through that funnel. By simply going out there and just pushing content out, you won’t be as successful. You will not be as successful.

02:58
We’ve worked with clients where the entire campaign was all about closing, converting, converting, converting. Well, if you show a conversion ad to someone who doesn’t even know who you are as a company or a brand, it just goes right past them. They don’t even bother. So what you need to do is pay attention to every stage of the funnel. Match your content to your intention, and I’ll tell you what that means. Awareness is those “stop the scroll” posts—those little short videos, relatable insights, shareable tips, things that get attention. It might be your CEO, it might be one of your customers sharing a testimonial about how happy they are with your product. It may be a testimonial that’s treated in a really interesting way visually. So awareness is the stop-the-scroll posts. Interest is storytelling and education. At this point in the journey, the customer is not really interested in buying from you. They might have heard your name, they know who you are, but you need to tell them—show them and tell them—why your service exists or your product and who it helps. And the goal of this stage is to build connection. Helpful information is really good here. For example, if you are a dermatologist and you’re targeting women in their 50s who are worried about wrinkles, share skincare tips that really work, not the ones that don’t work, but the ones that you personally recommend to your patients. If you are a social media agency, share tips on how to get better ROI from your social media. It works, let me tell you.

04:47
So at that point in the interest stage, you are building connection and creating a relationship, right? The next stage is decision, and that’s where you’re going to provide proof—proof that you are as good as you say you are. And that can be case studies that have really great results, before and after photos, testimonials—even special offers. If you have, you know, a new customer 40% off deal, that can help people make a decision to actually buy from you. So the decision-making stage is where you’re going to build confidence in that consumer’s mind about you and your product, right? So now, loyalty is after they’ve bought. There are all kinds of things you can do for loyalty. For example, reposting your customers’ content, which we call UGC—it stands for user-generated content. Reposting, paying attention to what’s going on out there, and when you see a customer actually mention you, share it and thank them. Show them that you are paying attention and that you appreciate it. Use those really happy customers as testimonial visuals or testimonial videos. That builds loyalty because it tells the client or the customer that you think they’re so awesome you want to put them in your advertising, and people love that. They really do. Maybe not everybody, but a lot of them do.

06:17
And what it does is it keeps them connected to you. So you want to keep people connected to you. Social media contests can do that. You can run contests with your current followers on social. It’s Halloween time around now—it’s October 27 when I’m recording this—put a big thing of candy up, take a picture of it, let your followers guess how much candy is in the bowl, how many pieces, and send out a $100 Amazon gift card. Generates a little excitement, might get you some new followers, and helps customers understand that you appreciate them and that you’re not, you know, not above a little bit of bribery, right? I mean, people love winning things, so that’s something you can do on a regular basis. So when you are crafting a social post, you should be asking yourself: where are we in the funnel, and what’s the next step I want this consumer to take once they’ve read this? And that’s how you’re going to craft your call to action at the end. So give it thought. Be strategic. Really think while you’re writing your copy and creating it, putting it out on the Internet—give it some serious thought on what sales funnel stage you are in with that particular post, and what you want that consumer that’s in that stage to do next.

07:37
So let’s talk about how to measure your funnel. Every funnel needs data, not just guesses. You don’t just put it out there and say, “Oh, there’s an awareness post, we’re good.” No, you want to measure on your awareness posts. How many people did they reach? Did you get any new followers? Cost per click if you’re doing ads can be really helpful—you know people who are starting to get aware of you will actually act on that awareness with a click, in many cases. The interest stage of the funnel is when a customer saves something. A consumer on social—and a lot of the channels can now save your posts. If they send you direct messages, if you see they’ve spent a lot of time on your website page, you’re getting email opt-ins, then you know people are starting to get interested. You know you’re doing something right. Now, the decision-making stage: when you’re doing those decision-type or conversion posts, you’re going to pay attention to how many times people continue to purchase your product, which would be a repeat purchase rate, you’re going to look for referrals, and you’re going to look at your community engagement. Are people commenting and sharing your content? Loyal customers will share your social and help you get new customers. And one of the things that we’ve learned is that the most effective form of digital marketing is a share from somebody who loves what you do on their personal social media accounts, because that credibility of someone you know—if you’re a follower of that person and you see that post—you know them and they’re really happy with that company or product, maybe you should give it a try. It’s a lot more effective than anything you could do.

09:26
So you want to spend some time, you know, figuring out how to keep that loyalty going with your customers. And there’s a lot of reasons to do it that I don’t need to get into here. Customer service is another one. Referrals—loyalty can bring you referrals. Good customer service can bring you loyalty and referrals. So those are other aspects of your business that you obviously want to pay attention to. So customer service is a part of social too, so make sure your social customer service is really strong. You’ve got community managers checking on content to make sure that any comments get responded to, any complaints get addressed—those are really important. So the tools that you’re going to use to get into the metrics for those sales funnel stages are Meta Insights, Google Analytics; if you’re using MailChimp, Constant Contact, one of the email clients, you want to look at your email open rates, your click-through rates, and your CRM data. Any CRM data that you have that tells you what your customers are doing, how they’re engaging with you out there in the digital ether, are really important. And if you can’t see movement between the stages, if you don’t see more people converting after you’ve gone through and made these kinds of adjustments to your content—your funnel is leaking somewhere. You’re not doing something right. So you want to go back to the beginning, look at all these stages, and see what you can do to optimize for that stage—whether it’s be a little more friendly, whether it’s shorter copy in your content, whether it’s, you know, thank you emails that go out right after someone makes a purchase. You’re going to look at those funnel stages, the content you created for those funnel stages, the metrics that that content creates, and make adjustments for improvement, which I’ll tell you you should be doing anyway.

11:21
I mean, you really should be constantly analyzing, testing, and learning to see in order to get better ROI from your social. So a couple things that people do that are mistakes—mistakes that people make on social when they don’t pay attention to the funnel as much as they should—are posting too much awareness content and actually never giving the consumer the opportunity to learn more. We see a lot of social media content that doesn’t include a CTA. We always put a call to action and a link in the content that we do for our agency clients. And I heard someone with a nonprofit once say: “Don’t make the decision for your consumer. Let them make the decision by giving them the option of learning more,” right? So always include that little step that they can take if they want to move forward. Some people expect followers to buy without trust-building. If you never share testimonials, you never share case studies, you never share anything that really demonstrates the quality of who your company or product is, you’re not going to get followers to buy. It just isn’t going to happen. If you are ignoring remarketing and retargeting—where you’re retargeting people that have gone to your Facebook, then clicked through, gone to your landing page—if you’re not retargeting them, you’re losing out, and you cannot…

12:49
One of the most important things is you cannot treat every follower like they’re ready to buy. They’re not, and if you do that, you’re in your face, you know, in the customer’s space with the sales message—Fast and Furious, coming at them. That’s like expecting, you know, to have sex on the first date. I mean, it really is. You can’t skip foreplay and expect commitment. I mean, you just can’t. So think about that; make sure you’re addressing the stages of the sales funnel in all your social content. I just can’t say that enough. People don’t do it, and then they don’t get the good results that they could get. So, quick wrap-up for you: social media is not about shouting louder. It’s about guiding the consumer through the stages. And when every post has a purpose, your funnel will fill itself. And I know it’s hard to believe, but we are starting to see it ourselves.

13:48
So I’m going to give you a challenge. Check out your last 10 posts. Label every one: Is it awareness, interest, decision, loyalty? Are you balanced, or are you stuck in one particular stage? So that’s something you can do right now, and it can help you do better, more ROI-creating social media moving forward. So that’s what we’ve got for you today. Again, my name is Lori Jo Vest, I’m with PopSpeed Digital Marketing, this is Rev and Reach. And if you are looking for a digital marketing agency to help you with your social media ROI, please look me up on LinkedIn. I am Lori Jo Vest, an open networker there, so just let me know you listened to the podcast and you can reach out to me there. I just had a potential new client reach out to me after hearing the podcast episodes, so it does happen. We are an active agency, accepting new business and growing, and we approach every single client with a mindset toward ROI and giving them our very best, most enthusiastic efforts. So that’s what we’ve got. Thanks so much again, and I’ll be back to share more great information on digital marketing very soon.

In this episode of Rev & Reach, Lori dives into the ever-evolving world of local SEO and how it drives real results for businesses of all sizes. Discover why showing up in local search is mission-critical, how social and AI channels have become the new front doors for discovery, and what actionable steps you can take to boost your local visibility.

From Google Business Profiles and NAP consistency to the power of reviews, influencers, and authentic engagement, Lori explains the strategies that help both small and growing organizations get found by ready-to-buy customers exactly when it matters most.

01:53 – Why local search intent works and why “near me” queries signal imminent action

05:36 – Why your Google Business Profile is the critical starting point for showing up

06:08 – How to generate more reviews and respond to both positive and negative feedback

07:20 – What NAP consistency is and why it matters for search engine trust

10:00 – If you’re doing everything right, how AI-driven searches and assistants can start featuring your business

11:14 – Why AI, social, and Google now all matter for being found—and how they work together

12:31 – “Showing up isn’t luck, it’s strategy”; how to audit your digital presence and next steps

02:38 – “If you are the one that has the best local SEO, you’ll be the one that is not the best-kept secret. You’ll be the one that grows.”

05:40 – “Your Google business profile is the best place to start. Very, very important. You want to claim it, you want to verify it, you want to add photos, products and services and at least weekly updates.”

07:27 – “What NAP consistency means is, you want your name, your address and your phone number to be identical everywhere it appears.”

10:11 – “If you’re doing everything right before you know it, you will get picked up by ChatGPT, Perplexity, you know, the other AI chat agents.”

13:05 – “Showing up isn’t luck, it’s strategy, and you want to be strategic with digital marketing that you do for your business.”

00:08
Hello, I’m Lori Jo Vest. Thank you so much for joining me for this episode of Rev and Reach where we go behind the curtains and share our secrets on how we get digital marketing ROI for our clients at PopSpeed Digital Marketing. I am the founder and one of the partners at the agency, and let me tell you, there is a lot to know. So we never hesitate to bring in the experts, and I would encourage you to do the same, especially when it comes to local SEO.

00:41
So I’ll tell you what we’ve learned. Most smaller businesses would, and when I say smaller, I mean maybe they’re in one state or they’re in one city, maybe have three or four locations. A lot of small businesses underestimate how much local search can impact your bottom line. And what I mean is, when people are searching for HVAC companies near me, tacos near me, siding companies near me, those people are ready to buy when they put that search in. And it’s not just on Google anymore. It’s across all social media. It’s on maps, voice assistants, AI, all kinds of places. So when someone searches for best whatever service you offer near me, who comes up? The business that does is the one that’s making the money. So will your organization be the one that shows up in that search? Because local SEO is about showing up when people are looking for you geographically.

01:53
So local SEO matters more than ever, and here’s why. Forty-six percent of all Google searches are looking for local information. Not just, you know, how to plant a tree or what to do if my scrambled eggs are runny, but 46%. That’s a huge number, and when people search “near me,” it’s high intent Marketing Gold. I mean, it really is something that you want to focus on to make sure you’re in that search. And it’s not just for restaurants or nail salons, dentists, auto shops, fitness studios, business-to-business organizations. If you are the one that has the best local SEO, you’ll be the one that is not the best-kept secret. You’ll be the one that grows. Because a lot of people don’t understand SEO, and they think they can just put up a website, and poof, there you go, everybody’s going to start searching for it. They’re not, and if they do, they won’t find it.

03:04
So there’s a lot of things that are important. We’re learning this just like everybody else is. I mean, we’re always learning. We have consultants we work with that focus strictly on local SEO to make sure that we’re providing the best, most knowledgeable approach to the business for our clients. When it comes to local SEO, there’s a lot that rides on it. Little things like making sure that every business listing is exactly the same, same address, same name. If one has Inc after it and another has Inc. with a period after it, they all have to have that. If one spells out “Road” in your address listing, they should all spell out “Road.” One shouldn’t use an abbreviation while the other spells the full word out. They all need to match. That’s just one little thing that can happen to mess up your local SEO. So consult the experts, like PopSpeed Digital Marketing, when you’re doing this kind of work, or if you have a company that you know local search is going to be important.

04:06
Now it’s also changing. Google is always going to be important. I can’t see Google going away anytime soon. However, what is happening is the rise of local search on social. So people will go on TikTok, people will go on Facebook, they’ll go on Instagram and look for hashtags like #DetroitEats or #BirminghamMIStylist, and those are now search keywords that people are using. You want to be sure that you’re using searchable, local hashtags in your content. Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn posts are now actually indexed for interests and reviews.

04:45
So if you look at local influencers, great advantage to your local SEO to put some local influencers into your digital marketing. They can get so much good attention from the people that you want to reach locally. It’s a really great approach there. A lot of them might be micro-influencers, where they’ve got, you know, they don’t have 100,000 followers, but they might have 10,000 of the right followers that are interested in your restaurant or your business. So influencers are really good key to local SEO. It might not seem like they would be, but they really help when it comes to local. So your customers are searching in new places, you want to make sure that you’re there where they are, and they’re everywhere, so you need to make sure you are in all those places as well.

05:36
So how do you win at local search? Your Google Business profile is the best place to start. Very, very important. You want to claim it, you want to verify it, you want to add photos, products and services, and at least weekly updates. And when I say update, you can actually put a post up on Google Business now, like you would on Facebook or Meta, you know, any of the Meta platforms or LinkedIn, and that’s a really good thing to do, because then you’re actually feeding consistent new information to the algorithm.

06:08
The other thing you want to do is make a huge effort to get reviews from your people. So you may create a little business card with a QR code on it, and when you do business with someone at that last meeting or at your front desk, or you might send a thank you note, you want to put that little card in there and ask them to give you a review. And when they do, you reply to everyone and say thank you. So reply on the Google platform, the Google Business platform, reply to them and thank them for taking that time and pay attention to your reviews. And when bad ones come in, that’s another topic that we can’t talk about now, but when a bad review comes in, make sure you respond to it in a way that is polite, compassionate, and engaging, and actually asks the person to get on the phone with you. Because what happens on a Google review if it’s negative, it can often be managed and the consumer may actually take it down eventually if you handle it properly. So we give that kind of advice in some of our customer service materials that we provide to our clients, but you want to make sure that you ask for those reviews.

07:20
Now, I mentioned this earlier, but they call it “NAP” just in case you see this acronym anywhere: NAP consistency. What NAP consistency means is, you want your name, your address, and your phone number to be identical everywhere it appears. It’s really important for Google, because, again, Google is, you know, zeros and ones. It’s going to just see what it sees, and if it sees a different address, it may not think you’re the same business. So you really want to be consistent, identical across all the platforms that you’re on. You’ll also want to make sure you have local content on your website, things that are blogs and videos, articles that mention the city or the neighborhood. So for example, you might say, “Top five roofing companies in Chicago” or “Top three family activities in Troy.” Now, one of them might be yours, you know, the other two might be friendly competitors. Or maybe you are giving, you know, really helpful, useful information that isn’t just valuable in your city, but you still include that city so that Google sees you as a local resource for those people that are in that geography. Now, your on-site SEO is also really important. So you want to, you know, if you’ve put together your own website or you’ve had, you know, one of your friends or relatives put something together for you on Wix, you might want to rethink that. Because the professionals, when they’re doing websites, they’re actually setting your website up with SEO keywords and descriptions, meta descriptions, all kinds of things that make it more palatable to the Google search algorithm. So consider that if you’re putting up a website, make sure your SEO is done and done well. It’s really important.

09:09
So the other thing that I would do is encourage people to check in and to tag you on their social media, because those types of things actually—the algorithms on all the platforms—if you’re getting, you know, check-ins and tagged posts, you’re going to be seen as having a more active, engaging profile, which helps the algorithms show you to more users of the platform.

So finally, things are changing. We know things are changing, and the future of local visibility is going to be AI driven. People are often getting on their phone saying, “Hey, Siri,” or they’re at home and they say, “Hey, Alexa, find a nearby taco shop.” Now, we always want to think about tacos. I don’t know why, but we’re big on tacos in our family.

10:00
Finally, so, you know, find a taco shop near me. Are you in the AI Discovery Channels? And that can be a challenge, but if you’re doing everything right before you know it, you will get picked up by ChatGPT, Perplexity, you know, the other AI chat agents, so that when someone goes in and does a search on their ChatGPT account, they may come up with your business, and in AI searches, they favor businesses with updated info, with reviews, and a lot of engagement. So all the things that we’ve already talked about are what’s going to help you win on the AI search channels as well. So just remember, local SEO isn’t only about the algorithms. It’s also about being visible, being everywhere, being reliable, and being human and authentic. Because the more authentic you are, the more likely people are to engage with your content across the board. The more they engage with your content, the more the algorithm sees that you are a credible business that they want to send consumers to check out.

11:14
So let’s talk about the big picture. SEO is about being found. Search engine optimization, it’s about optimizing Google’s ability and the other places people search, the ability to find you and your content. Local SEO is about being chosen as a preferred, you know, place they’re going to go for their tacos or to get their vacuum cleaner repaired. And social and AI search are the new front doors. Don’t give up on Google. Google is really important, but social and AI are right behind it, and it’s a triad that you’ll want to make sure you’re feeding all three of the beasts. I know it can be hard, so just remember you cannot sell to people who can’t find you, and if you’re not there, they won’t be able to find you. So I would suggest right now, you Google your business’s name and see what your customers see, because that is going to help you determine how your business shows up locally. And essentially, you can do a really quick SEO audit. How well are you doing? So seriously, think about that. Take some time. I would love to hear from you.

12:31
So if you could DM me or comment on the video, how does your business show up locally? What does it look like? How many search results do you get from your business? And do you show up in any of the searches for the general, like, tacos near me? And if you don’t now, you’ve got some marching orders. Go back and look at the transcript on workmomsays.com, pull out the things that you should be doing, and start doing them. So basically, what I would also say is, remember, showing up isn’t luck, it’s strategy, and you want to be strategic with digital marketing that you do for your business.

13:13
So that’s what I’ve got for you today at PopSpeed Digital Marketing. We are here for you. We specialize in social media, SEO, content, website builds and maintenance, and email marketing. And if we can help you get more ROI, we are here for it. If you want to listen to the show and get your ROI that way, we’re happy to see that as well. If you’re watching this on YouTube, please do me a favor, hit the subscribe button, hit the like button, maybe even leave us a comment and help us grow our following there. We are really trying to get the word out about really great ROI tactics in digital marketing, and we’re here to help. So we will be back soon with more great information. Take care, bye.

In this episode of Rev & Reach, Lori explores how building a true sense of community around your brand is the modern marketing superpower. From iconic brands like Peloton, LEGO Ideas, and Glossier, to small businesses and local practices, Lori shares the practical strategies and real-world examples that make community more than just a buzzword.

It’s the key to enthusiastic customers, organic referrals, and resilient brands. Discover how to activate loyal ambassadors, foster authentic engagement, and why showing up online with a two-way conversation, not just content, changes everything.

00:36 – The secret sauce of community: “There’s no better marketing for loyal customers and a loyal source of referrals than creating a community.”

03:12 – Peloton’s “Together We Go Far” culture and how feeling accomplished drives connection.

06:15 – LEGO Ideas—crowdsourcing products and “inspiring loyalty, because when your consumer feels seen, it draws them towards you.”

08:33 – How local businesses (like dental practices and yoga studios) can build Facebook groups or ambassador programs around shared experience.

13:28 – Step-by-step guidance for identifying your “tribe” and choosing the right platform for your online community.

01:52 – “They repeat-buy from you, they refer other people to your company, they share your content on social media, they share their experiences with your brand on social media, and they give you real time feedback.”

07:19 – “Encouraging beauty enthusiasts to talk about the product and letting that be a huge chunk of the content that they share with unboxings, with, you know, just reviews, testimonials, things like that.”

12:40 – “Community is not about pumping out promotional content to the audience that you build. Community is about creating that commonality in the people that buy your product or service.”

18:06 – “You can’t have a community if you’re not out there in it, engaging and commenting and talking to the consumers who post about you or who put things on your content…”

00:08

LORI: Hello. I’m Lori Jo Vest. Thank you so much for joining me for this episode of Rev and Reach from PopSpeed Digital Marketing. I am here today to talk to you about community. I am actually wearing my Peloton shirt, because Peloton is one of my absolute favorite communities, and I really love what they’ve done with their brand, and how they use social media and digital not just to sell but to build community.

00:36
Because when your brand becomes a place where people feel like they belong, they’re comfortable. There’s no better way to market. There’s no better marketing for loyal customers and a loyal source of referrals than creating a community. So we’re going to talk about Peloton, we’re going to talk about LEGO Ideas, and we’re going to talk about Glossier and, you know, also some ideas for small local businesses.

01:00
So let’s jump right in with why is community a brand superpower? Well, we are human beings. We have biological needs for connection.People have never been a solo survival, you know, type of being. We have always lived in groups, in tribes, in collaborative efforts. And so community is important to us, even though we don’t really realize it anymore. We kind of, we think we’ve evolved past our biological instincts, but honestly we haven’t.

01:37
And so in marketing terms, what we’re talking about with community is that you’re building a loyal follower community of your customers that have a shared identity, they have a really strong connection, and they love your brand. And the reason that matters is because they’re loyal. They repeat-buy from you, they refer other people to your company, they share your content on social media, they share their experiences with your brand on social media, and they give you real time feedback. They’ll tell you what they like and don’t like, and honestly, it’s really great to hear what they don’t like, so you as a brand can know what you need to change.

02:20
So I would look at it from a traditional marketing lens. There’s what they call push marketing, and what that is is when you take your product and its benefits to the consumer and you push them out there via messaging platforms like broadcast television, billboards, magazines, where you’re basically putting the message in front of as many people as possible, hoping that they will engage and buy your product.

02:46
Now with social media, digital marketing, community… it’s a two-way street. It goes back and forth, and you can connect with that consumer personally pretty easily through your social media team. If you’ve got a strong social media team, which you should have, or if you’re doing it yourself, then you’ve got to be the one to do it. But that two-way engagement is really, really wonderful in the world of marketing, and it’s an easy way to do it on social.

03:12
Let’s talk about a couple of big brand examples. I am huge on Peloton. I think I have now a 250-week streak on the bike. I have always loved their brand. I love the product. It’s beautifully made. I’m not being paid by them—I’m not—but it’s near and dear to me, because when I went through breast cancer treatment, and when I was going through treatment, I was working with this awesome guy, Joe, and Joe’s wife was having a baby, and he was getting her a push present, which was a big piece of jewelry, because, you know, you go through a lot when you have a baby. And I was going through chemotherapy at the time, and I was like, huh, if she can get a push present, then I should be able to get a chemo present, right? And I took that to heart. And I got my Peloton in 2019, and I became a part of a community. I became, you know, somebody that was almost infatuated with the brand at first, wearing the clothes, riding the bike, had my favorite instructors on Instagram, commenting on their things. I mean, I was just really, really into it, and I still am, but just not quite as infatuated as I was.

04:26
But what they have done is, they keep people riding by keeping it interesting. It changes day to day. There’s always new content, there’s always new instructional material for you to engage in. They come at you from a couple different ways. They have the traditional rides with the instructor. They have rides where you go through the countryside in different countries. They have, you know, video game style rides. The instructors are all different kinds of people, from, you know, traditional conservative to, you know, a little wild and, you know, New Age, punk kind of people.

04:58
So it’s a really wonderful, everyone is accepted, you know, “Together We Go Far” community, and they’ve done that in a lot of different ways. When you get the bike and you get into the experience, you start riding, you find your instructors you like. They start telling you, hey, I asked a question on Instagram the other day. Go answer it. And so that pushes you to Instagram to engage with that instructor who is a representative of the brand. They have amazing clothing. So the Peloton community, if you’re a huge fan, you can basically wear all kinds of wonderful clothing that they have released. And when you do your 100th ride, your century ride, you get a century ride t-shirt. I mean, it’s just a nice t-shirt. It has Peloton on it. It feels like you accomplished something when you rode 100 rides when you first get the bike.

05:50
So all those things really pull people together in a community kind of feeling. And even on the rides, if you’re riding, you see everybody else that’s riding at the same time you are. So you can give them high fives. So you’ll go on the bike, and you’ll have 10 people giving you high fives. You can ride with other people, you know. I mean, there’s just all kinds of interesting things you can do there. So, community: Peloton is a stellar example.

06:15
Now, LEGO Ideas: another product, letting their fans take the lead, and what they’re doing is they’re really listening, and they’re allowing the fans to build products and then taking those products and selling them and packaging and making them a part of the line of what they sell. So when you’re listening, and they know you’re listening, not only are you getting incredible market research to help inform your product line, your all of everything that you do, basically, but you’re inspiring loyalty, because when your consumer feels seen, it draws them towards you. I mean, it’s just inevitable.

06:54
Another brand, we’ll just touch on really quickly, is Glossier. They have built their brand around beauty enthusiasts, so enthusiasts and influencers talking to each other about their products, demoing their products, unboxing their products. You know, engaging and actually using the products is much better and much more credible these days, encouraging beauty enthusiasts to talk about the product and letting that be a huge chunk of the content that they share with unboxings, with, you know, just reviews, testimonials, things like that.

07:33
It’s not just the company putting out the story. It’s the consumers putting out the customer experience story. And it’s so much more powerful than anything polished that a brand can do. For example, with AI getting more and more prominent, I don’t know about you, but I’m getting used to seeing AI images in my feed regularly. And when I go to stock image houses, a lot of the places that we get stock images from, they’re using AI. Fortunately, there are some that are dedicated to not using AI, so you can count on whatever it is that you’re showing being actual, real life. AI is going to cause people to not trust what’s perfect and polished, and that will push them more toward what’s authentic and real. And what’s authentic and real is your consumers talking about your product with each other, or, you know, in your content that you put up on the digital platforms.

08:33
So now let’s talk about this: How does this translate to small to mid-sized businesses? Good question. You really don’t need millions of customers to create community. I’ll give you an example. We’ve had a dental practice and have dental clients in our on our client roster for a while now, and there’s one practice out there—I don’t know how they’re doing it, because it’s really hard to do—that actually has an online community on Facebook that’s all about full arch dental implants.

09:03
They’re not dentures. They’re very small bridges. And they are actually—they use posts to put them into the jaw, and they’re very much like your natural teeth, but it’s a huge surgery. I mean, some people end up having all their teeth pulled, or maybe 10 or 12 teeth, which is a lot, and then, you know, you don’t really know how they’re going to feel or fit, and they’re expensive, so is it worth the investment?

09:28
So this one practice that was a competitor of the practice that we were serving about three or three years ago, I think, had the most engaged Facebook community I have ever seen, and they had brand ambassadors that were in there. So what they would do is, when someone came in for a consult, they would say, “Hey, join this Facebook group, and you’ll be able to talk to people who have had this done, and, you know, get their experiences and let them answer your questions.” And in that same group, they had ambassadors, they had five or six people that, to me, were very obviously paid to be there. Now, they were actual patients of the practice, but they were attractive, they were, you know, photogenic, they were outgoing and positive. Well, guess what? Most practices have those people. Most practices have dental patients that are really enthusiastic and really like them—take advantage of that and pay them.

10:29
You can pay them $250 a month for maybe one post a week, or, you know, sharing your content out to their feeds. You can make whatever arrangement you want with them to be ambassadors of your business. So find those happy customers. Ask them if they’ll participate. Ask them if they’re willing to help you in your marketing by sharing their experience on an ongoing basis. And you can do that in Facebook groups. It would be great for a local yoga studio. Maybe in that group, they could share playlists and recipes and just encouragement and oh, if a class got canceled, that could all go into a Facebook group that has all of those yoga studio clients knowing what’s happening and feeling more connected and actually getting more from their experience as a customer at that yoga studio than they might otherwise.

11:19
Another thing that I thought was a really cool idea is nonprofits using Instagram stories to share rituals in their specific area. For example, if you were a, you know, you support cancer patients, maybe you have a weekly gratitude prompt or a weekly health tip or a weekly fact on cancer, something like that that you could put on Instagram, and it becomes something that everyone that follows you relates to, or you ask your audience on Instagram, or whatever channels you’re using, to provide their own rituals. What do you do to get out of a funk when maybe you’re a cancer patient, you know, and you’re just feeling really crappy? What do you do to get yourself back in a better mood, maybe feeling better physically, and get people to share the conversation there on Instagram. And you may have to seed it a little bit. You may have to reach out to some of your fans and say, “Hey, would you mind commenting on this? We’re trying to get some good conversation going so that, you know, there’s some activity.” So again, ambassadors are amazing for doing that. You hire an ambassador for $250 to, you know, $350 a month, you can get participation from them that will really help the effort.

12:33
So it’s about facilitating conversation and belonging. These kinds of things. Community is not about pumping out promotional content to the audience that you build. Community is about creating that commonality in the people that buy your product or service. So how do you build a digital community? This is a kind of a process you’ll need to go through. So you’re going to define your tribe. Who do you connect with? Is it parents? Maybe it’s moms of, you know, kids who play travel hockey? Is it fitness enthusiasts? Is it, you know, 50-year-old women who need to lose 30 pounds, and they’re just so disgusted by menopause. I know someone who serves that audience. Is it people who, you know, their smile is just not making them happy. It’s not white enough. It’s, you know, they have some work they need done. Who are those people? Write that down.

13:28
What is the right platform to interact with them? Our dental clients—Facebook is fantastic. Facebook and Instagram pretty much puts us in the feeds of younger people, older people, and when you do it right, you can kind of customize your message a little bit for one or the other and get really good results with similar content. So pick the right platform. Are you going to be using Facebook groups? Discord is an option. You can create a community over there. The downside of that is that people have to consciously create their own Discord account to participate. Then they have—some of them may have to go there regularly, and they may not go there for any other reason but your community, and that could be a heavy lift. If you have a real techie kind of audience, that may work really well because everybody’s using Discord, maybe an audience of moms, not so much.

14:23
So LinkedIn polls are another way to, you know, continually serve a series-oriented content to a specific audience and get them to engage with you and tell you what they think. So there’s a lot of different ways to do it. You want to encourage participation in all of your social. Ask questions, make challenges, ask people if they will, you know, share a photo of their dog eating your—you know, dog treat that you make at your bakery.

Send people surprise and delight kits. Now, this is really fun. If you have somebody who is always out there sharing photos from your restaurant, or, you know, in the lobby of your dental practice, saying, “Hey, it’s where I’m getting my teeth done today,” you know—people that are there, we call them your top fans, engage with them beyond just, “Oh, thanks for commenting,” or, “Yeah, we really like that you like us.” Go beyond that. Private message that person and once they’ve commented on your content on Facebook—and I think most of the other channels, you can private message them—and ask them if they would mind if you sent them a package.

15:32
I used to work for a bigger agency, and we worked on Kimberly Clark products, and a lot of the products were in the health and wellness space. So when we had five or six people that were always sharing our content and always answering our, you know, polls and everything, we knew who they were. We would put together just, you know—it was very grassroots, it was nothing fancy—buy some fancy boxes off the internet, some that were in the brand’s colors, I think we had pink, and then we would get some nice, you know, film, different colors that matched the brand’s colors, and maybe it’s, you know, the product, some coupons, some related things, like if it’s a fitness brand, maybe you put a fitness band, and you put your product, and some coupons, and some sunscreen, and maybe one of those cooling towels, you know, that also is branded. So—and we call it a surprise and delight—you just reach out to that really intense fan and say, “Hey, we think you’re awesome. Can we send you a little package for how good you are to our brand online?” They will go wild. They’ll do opening videos. They’ll do those unboxing videos and put those up. All their friends will see what you did. A lot of times, people hang out with people in the same demographic that you’re trying to reach.

16:52
So, if you’re trying to reach teachers, and you send a really cool package out to a teacher, she’s going to open it, she’s going to unbox it on her social media, and a lot of her teacher friends are going to see it. So it may be a small thing. It’s not hard to do, it’s not expensive. It takes some effort, and it’s huge when it comes to building community online.

Be present always. Be on your social channels. Be on them at least a couple times a day, drop in and see what’s happening. Is somebody, you know, getting into a little spat over something? Did somebody make a nasty comment? Do you need to answer a complaint about your product? Doing that publicly can be really good for the brand, because it shows that you’re responsive. You can straight off bat say, “That’s not what we want to have happen. We’re so sorry. Can we private message you so that we can get more information and make this right?” And when a consumer sees that and it comes in, you know, half an hour after they posted it, you’re responsive. You’re also showing that that’s not usually how things are done, and that you’re willing to go the extra mile to make it right.

So that’s a really important part of it is community management. You can’t have a community if you’re not out there in it, engaging and commenting and talking to the consumers who post about you or who put things on your content, you know, who post comments and things like that. So always be present. Make your people feel seen. Make those people that comment feel like you appreciate them and you understand and that you’re happy that they decided to take that extra effort to engage with you.

18:34
And the last thing we’ll say about building a digital community is to make sure you reward your community. Make sure what you’re sharing with them is helpful information. Early access to deals: if you’re a dental practice and you have a special offer going out, announce it in the community and give them a couple days to set up their appointments to take advantage of it before you put it out into the general public. And it really does help the people feel special when you share, you know, insider tips, when you give them early access to discounts and special things, and when you simply say, “God, we love you guys. We’re so happy that you have stayed connected to us instead of being a one and done customer, and we’re going to do whatever we can to make sure that our relationship continues to be positive.” Put those kind of gratitude messages in there.

Engage. Start conversation starters that let you and your community get to know each other a little bit better. Try those—you know, “Have you ever, you know, have you ever done this? If so, tell us about in the comments. We’d love to hear.” If you can make it fun, make it funny, that’s even better. New moms—oh my god—new moms are just a huge marketing audience for a lot of different companies, and they have a ton of questions. So if you are a company brand that serves new moms, get into those groups on Facebook. That’s the other thing you can do. Get into those groups and participate as an individual, and you can say, “I represent a brand,” but don’t sell. Just be there, share useful, helpful information and go from there.

Just recently, we took on a project, matter of fact, that was for a resort in Florida, and they’re a—what do you call it? They’re a co-op, I think—no, they’re a timeshare. And as a timeshare, they rarely have openings, and it’s this really cool part of the beach, it’s very, you know, very quiet, and the sunsets are amazing, and you just can’t get in because they’re a timeshare, and the weeks are all purchased by the owners. So they have, I think, a bunch of units coming available in September, October, for just two weeks. And so what our client paid us to do was go in and join all the groups related to and surrounding the city that this resort is in.

21:00
For example, I love Sarasota. The resort is in Sarasota. I love the Lido Keys. You know, there’s all kinds of different groups related to those two topics. And I went into the groups and said, hey guys, as myself, just want to let everybody know, if you have guests coming down or you’re interested in spending time, it’s—they had these two weeks open. It never happens. Get your reservation in now, and posted some beautiful sunset photos. I mean, these photos themselves were worth the look at the post, right? They were stunning. And we got 99 people to go to that resort reservation page, which was pretty impressive for, you know, maybe an hour of work. So you can take advantage of communities by actually creating one. You can also participate in them for more promotional opportunities, as long as you’re not selling too hard.

So to wrap this up, communities are built when brands create a space for people to connect with each other and to share their experiences. It’s not you pushing out content, it’s you interacting and engaging, and it’s a two-way conversation. So I’m going to encourage you to take a look at your own social media, and are you just posting content and just shoving things out there? Or are you creating a two way conversation? I’d love to hear about it. I am an open networker on LinkedIn. If you would like to communicate with me and answer that question—are you just posting, or are you building a place where people want to hang out, where they want to meet other people that are brand enthusiasts?

If you’d like to answer that question, please engage with me on LinkedIn. I’m an open networker there, so thank you for joining me for this episode. I know Kiley is not here. Kiley Metcalfe is usually my partner in crime on this podcast, but she just had a baby. Baby was born healthy. Mama’s healthy. Everything’s fine. It was about a week ago. Everything’s good, and so I’m going to be by myself for as long as she decides she needs to take for maternity leave, which however long that is, I get it. So again, Lori Jo Vest, Rev and Reach. We really appreciate you being here to listen to our marketing tips and the helpful information we share to assist you in getting more ROI from your digital marketing and social media efforts. I’ll be back soon with another episode. Take care!

In this episode of Rev & Reach, Lori and Kiley walk through what small businesses really need to kickstart digital marketing without feeling overwhelmed or overspending. They share honest insights from their own journey as a marketing agency, why it’s okay to start small, and the importance of realistic goals, consistent content, and a strong website.

If you run a business that’s under $3 million (or even just starting), this episode is packed with focused, actionable advice made just for you.

1:08 – Kiley describes how even digital marketing agencies struggle to prioritize their own marketing, especially when client work always comes first.

3:22 – Lori explains why referrals are great—but not enough—and how potential customers will always Google, check your website, and your social before reaching out.

4:30 – Kiley shares how a manageable posting schedule—like two times a week—is realistic for most small businesses, and that it’s better to focus on consistency.

5:43 – Lori recommends starting with social and a monthly blog, then establishing marketing routines, and describes how even simple, regular newsletters can spark unexpected business.

7:56 – Kiley emphasizes why investing in a modern, user-friendly website is critical; a neglected site reflects poorly on your brand, no matter how skilled you are.

03:48 – “As soon as you get a referral, what is the first thing they do? Go look at your social media. Go look at your website. Go look at your—look at everything. Your presence online. What does it look like? Are you on Google Business? What do your reviews look like? So there’s a lot of things that people are checking digitally before they even call you.”

04:37 – “You have to keep it manageable, right? Because, especially depending on what your business is, you’re not going to have the time—especially if you have a small team, if you don’t have an agency at the moment, if it’s just simply not in your marketing budget—you have to stay realistic. And I think that two, sometimes three, cadence is good.”

06:12 – “…when we started, we started small. We started with social media, we started with blogs. And the blogs were maybe once a month. Social media was, you know, not as frequent as it could have been. And then we added—we used that time with those things to just get into a rhythm, get into a groove. Make it part of your day. Make going to social part of your day. Make creating content a part of your week.”

08:17 – “But if you’re not investing in your website—for me, this is not research-based, this is personal—but I do think a lot of people would agree, just in the digital age that we’re in, if you don’t have a website that looks somewhat modern, at least a little bit like you took the time or invested in it, or made it a user-friendly experience, it will just instantly turn people off and away from your brand.”

In this episode of Rev & Reach, Lori and Kiley break down the compound effect of digital marketing: why showing up in multiple channels is essential for strong ROI, and how brands can efficiently build layered strategies without becoming overwhelmed.

The duo shares real-world examples from agency and client life, especially focusing on nonprofits, and covers how to keep your audience engaged, protected, and growing by avoiding reliance on any single platform.

00:36 – Lori introduces the “compound effect” concept in digital marketing, explaining that success depends on being visible across multiple channels—not just one.

02:06 – Kiley explains that audiences live in different places—email, social, website, search—and reaching everyone means being present everywhere your audience might be.

06:14 – Lori warns that relying solely on social platforms is risky, sharing how businesses can lose everything if they’re banned or lose access, and makes the case for owning your website and email list.

08:11 – Kiley illustrates with a nonprofit example how different channels (social, email, events) reach different target groups, showing how multi-channel strategy supports complex ROI needs.

00:55 – “Should you just do social media? Should you do a newsletter? Should you do a blog? Should you update your website regularly? And the answer to that is all of the above… you need to be in lots of different places because you need to continue to show up where your potential clients are.”

02:13 – “Your audience lives in various places, right? So you’re never going to reach every single possible customer in one segment. The best way to really reach everybody and keep your brand top of mind is to be everywhere.”

07:15 – “We don’t own the social platforms… If all you’re doing is Facebook and Instagram and they boot you off for some unknown, weird reason—which does happen—you’ve lost everything at that point.”

10:54 – “It doesn’t have to be overwhelming, and it really isn’t if you keep it simple.”

00:08

LORI: Hello, everybody. I’m Lori Jo Vest. Welcome to this episode of Rev & Reach, where the team at PopSpeed Digital Marketing LLC pulls the curtain aside and shares with you what we do and how we do it. So I’m here today with Kiley Metcalfe.

KILEY: Hi, everybody.

LORI: Kiley and I are the chief client contact project managers. What do we do? I don’t even know where to begin. So many different things—anything from, yeah, like all of the nitty-gritty in social to a little bit more client-facing to the project management. We wear a lot of hats over here.

KILEY: Yes, absolutely.

LORI: So today we’re going to talk about the compound effect, and what that is: what should you be doing in your digital marketing? Should you just do social media? Should you do a newsletter? Should you do a blog? Should you update your website regularly? And the answer to that is all of the above. This topic reminds me of a call I had the other day with a guy who has an agency—started out in television production, and just has grown and grown and grown. And he said, “I don’t know much about marketing, but I tell my clients, ‘You need to be everywhere because that’s what works.’” And it’s so simple, such a simple way of saying it: you need to be in lots of different places because you need to continue to show up where your potential clients are. Back when all the promotion was done via television commercials, radio spots, billboards, newspapers, and magazines, they said someone would have to see your brand five times in order to remember it. And that’s a big deal, and I don’t think that statistic has really changed. So, Kiley, what are your thoughts on this one?

2:06
KILEY: I think that what you just said is excellent advice, in the sense that your audience lives in various places, right? So you’re never going to reach every single possible customer, client, prospect, lead—you know, whatever the case may be—in one segment. You know what I mean? Everybody lives in different places, whether that’s Google Search, or social media, or different channels on social media, or email, right? So, the best way to really reach everybody and keep yourself—your brand—top of mind for everybody in your audience is to be everywhere. Is it more of an effort? For sure. But a lot of content—and I think a lot of brands maybe don’t necessarily realize this—is reusable.

2:59
LORI: But, you know, it’s really interesting because I do know that some clients either don’t want to spend the time, or don’t want to spend the money on all of those things. And what I would encourage you to think about is, would you cheap out on your dental care? Would you cheap out on painting your house? Would you tell the guy to go ahead and paint it but don’t bother power washing it, don’t bother, you know, pre-coating it? Just, you know, just throw the paint on there and we’re good. You want to do a thorough job to maximize the sale. And you can look at it like, if you were to sell one, you know, client in for a year—say you’re a dental studio and you’re selling one client in for a year—how much money is that? And how many clients can you get by coordinating and putting your efforts together and having multiple touch points, right?

3:59
KILEY: Absolutely. I think, again, we go back to the dental industry a lot. I think it’s such a good category for really talking about all of the ways that the pieces come together. You think about it in terms of—even word of mouth, too, right? In the sense that, if you have a lot of your past loyal patients, and you’re a dental practice, on your email list, and you send out an email about, “Oh, this month, if you book your full arch dental implant procedure or your consultation, we’re taking X amount off of the total price,” right? Of course, somebody that you’ve worked with in the past—that’s not going to appeal to them—but they’re on your list, and they know somebody that might be in the market, they’re going to pass that along. And then again, there’s no guarantee with any social post that one person will see it, right? Or maybe that person’s not on social, or maybe you’re doing something website-specific.

5:05
KILEY: So really, and I think we’ll get into it here, this might be a good time to start that conversation. We have one client in particular—they’re our nonprofit client, the grief support group that we’ve talked about plenty of times on Rev & Reach before—and for them, this is what we do: we are compounded in all of these areas for them, between website updates, their newsletter, and all of their social, as well as their blog on their website. It’s pretty collaborative over there, but we keep it SEO-friendly; we, at the very least, proof and edit any blogs that they give us, if not write it ourselves.
And with them, obviously, it’s a little bit more niche given the specificity of what they do over there, but we have seen the real, tangible evidence of how all of these factors come into play and work together to really secure all of the ROI that a nonprofit like this is looking for, right?

6:14
LORI: Exactly. I mean, it really does. Just to give you an example, like, we always are helping them find volunteers, and it goes in their newsletter, and it goes on social media, and there’s a page on their website. Their website traffic is really high—I mean, there is a lot of traffic going to their website—and we don’t do any Google Display or Google AdWords campaigns at all. They either come from social or they come from search, simply because the site is so dense with grief support for children content, right?
So, another reason to make sure that you are doing many different things: we don’t own the social platforms. When we use the social platforms, you can get shut down. I have seen people’s businesses accidentally get shut down by Meta. So if you don’t have a list and you’re not doing emails and you don’t have a strong website, and you’re not doing blogs, you just lost everything. Because if all you’re doing is Facebook and Instagram, and they boot you off for some unknown, weird reason—which does happen—you have actually lost more than you… you’ve lost everything at that point, if that’s all you’re doing, right?

LORI: Another example would be the way social can feed the newsletter. You can do newsletter-specific promotions to see what happens. You can do social-specific promotions to see what happens. So you can test and see which of them are doing more for you, but know that even if one of them—if social is your strong suit—your email still supports that, right? It supports it. And you can solicit for email signups on your social media. If your content’s strong, they’ll sign up. If you’re offering a gift or some helpful information, people that are your people will sign up—not everybody, but just your people, right?

8:11
KILEY: Right. I think that’s such a good point, too, because—especially, I think there are very rare cases where a brand has just one indicator of ROI, right? And I think this nonprofit we work with is a great example of that. As Lori said, we spend a lot of time on volunteers; we spend, I would say, equally as much time on fundraisers and donors, event attendees, families—families in the community to come and use their resources, campers when they have camp; the list really goes on. And all of those ROI indicators are existing in different places. Whereas finding donors or sponsors of a philanthropic nature might work great on LinkedIn for them, their email list probably isn’t the place to do it. Vice versa, where, you know, finding volunteers—maybe if it’s a demographic of alumni or older people in the community and they’re just not existing on Facebook as much—the email list might be the best place for them to stay informed, right?
So, while all of these things come together, there’s no one-size-fits-all for every single little niche market or demographic that you’re trying to hit. They play together. That’s not to say you’re never going to find a volunteer on Facebook—of course, we do all the time. However, getting really, really involved with your specific community—and that’s going to be those people that are regular openers of your email list—is just as important in that case. So really, using that content—not interchangeably; it needs to be edited depending on where it’s going and what it’s doing—but it doesn’t have to be that complicated for it to be that effective, right?

10:18
You can take a social post that you put up this month about, “This is our volunteer orientation date that’s coming up next,” and edit that post to include in your newsletter and use the same photo of past volunteers, right? There’s no rules in that sense—well, there are efficiencies, but there are efficiencies, yes, exactly. So, while it may cost a little more if you’re working with an agency to have several compounded efforts, or if you’re doing it internally, it might take a little bit more, it doesn’t have to be overwhelming, and it really isn’t if you keep it simple.

11:01
LORI: Absolutely. So, I think that’s probably all we have to talk about today. The one thing I would add, just as a reminder, is: if you’re doing social media, it doesn’t work if you don’t include an ad spend. Yes, some kind of ad spend. So social with an ad spend is what we mean when we say social media marketing, because you have to have an ad spend these days or it’ll get shown to like 10 people, right?
KILEY: Right. Exactly. Not worth it.
LORI: So, and what’s… all right. So that’s what we’ve got for you today. We’ll be back soon with some helpful, useful information on how to get better ROI from your social media and digital marketing efforts. So stay tuned, and we’ll be back soon.
KILEY: Bye, everybody. Thanks!

In this episode of Rev & Reach, Lori and Kiley walk you through their entire process for creating a social and digital strategy that drives real results.

From setting goals and KPIs to deep-dive audience research, content buckets, and competitive audits, this episode pulls back the curtain on how seasoned marketers think… and what it really takes to build an adaptable marketing plan.

05:36 – Setting goals vs. KPIs: “So the end goal is, is those leads; the indicators are potentially increased follower growth. It could be increased website clicks, or form submissions, things like that.”

09:50 – How to research your audience (tools, sources, and what to look for)

18:36 – Why useful, helpful content outperforms constant promotion

25:25 – Auditing your own and competitors’ content – being inspired, not copying

38:49 – Why agility matters, but patience is key

18:16 – “If you promote constantly in your content, you will not succeed. You have to provide helpful, useful, non-promotional content that builds a relationship with your audience and helps them understand that you are the expert, the specialist, the go-to.”

34:19 – “Just because you have a set of content buckets doesn’t mean you’re not allowed to ever stray from those. Social media isn’t that rigid—agility and flexibility are just so important.”

04:57 – “When we’re doing digital marketing or social media strategy for clients, we’re always looking to figure out what they want to accomplish, what’s their end goal, where do they want to go with their digital marketing, and then we work backwards to plan the strategy to get them there.”

18:39 – “There’s an intentional way to go about every single type of content. That helpful, useful content not only builds credibility but builds that connection between you and your audience, because you are truly feeding them the information that’s going to help them.”

00:08

LORI: Hello everybody, and welcome to this episode of Rev and Reach from PopSpeed Digital LLC. I’m Lori Jo Vest, and with me is Kiley Metcalfe.
KILEY: Hi everybody.
LORI: We’re going to talk about social and digital strategy today, and there’s a lot more to it than you might think. As people who do social media every single day—well, maybe not on the weekends—we’re deep into what it takes to create effective social and digital campaigns. I want to bring something up because I think it’s just awesome: HOP WTR. Who else has discovered HOP WTR? Kiley, have you discovered HOP WTR?
KILEY: It’s just not my thing. I’ve never been into it. It’s kind of beery, right?
LORI: No, it’s fizzy, watery… it’s just like water. It doesn’t have alcohol in it. I love it because, at the grocery store this weekend, they had the eight packs on sale for $1.47. But then they had them on the shelf for $8.99, and we’re looking in the cart going, did something happen to these? They looked fine. So I picked up five or six of them. I think HOP WTR would be an awesome sponsor for the Rev and Reach podcast, right? It’s unique, it’s different. If you like fizzy water, it’s fizzy water with an actual flavor instead of just a scent. Are you a fizzy water drinker?
KILEY: Not really. I like my lemon water and stuff like that sometimes, but I’m pretty boring with my beverages.
LORI: That’s funny. I heard someone say once that the flavored fizzy waters you get from—oh gosh, I can’t even think of the brands right now. There are three or four big brands—
KILEY: LaCroix. That’s the big one I can think of.
LORI: LaCroix is huge. That the strawberry flavor tastes like it might have spent a few hours in a room with a strawberry once.
KILEY: That is exactly how I would describe my feelings towards fizzy water.
LORI: It has a scent. Well, HOP WTR has a flavor. It was a couple of guys, I guess, that had kids, got into family life, were doing business things, and decided they couldn’t do the beer every night. So they took the hops and made this fizzy water. It’s got more of a flavor than traditional fizzy water, as opposed to just a scent. It’s not real hoppy, it doesn’t taste like beer, just a really unique flavor, and it’s got adaptogens and nootropics in it, so it’s supposed to calm you down. It’s got L-theanine and something else in it. I think they’d be a great sponsor for the podcast, so I thought I’d bring that up today, just for grins. You never know. We’ll be looking for sponsors someday—not quite ready for that yet, but we will be. So Kiley, what are you working on this week that you can talk about?

03:13
KILEY: Oh my goodness, one of the big things on the docket for this week—we kind of talked about it a lot this morning—I’m getting ready for my maternity leave. So we’re getting all our ducks in a row and figuring out who’s going to pick up my slack and where it needs to be picked up. I’m working on pulling some things together and getting a bit ahead. Hopefully, since we’re on the topic of strategy, we have some more of those coming in soon that we can dive into beforehand.
LORI: We’re going to let Kiley go off and become a mom and hang out with her baby, and then let us know what she wants to do and how she wants to come back. That’s happening in late August, predictably, but maybe… who knows, right? Two weeks early, two weeks late. If the doctor tells you it’s only going to be a few days, don’t believe them, because that just sets you up to go another two weeks. That’s how it works. So don’t get excited about it, because baby’s going to do what baby’s going to do.
Jumping into strategy—we named this one the Compass Effect because if you don’t plan the direction you’re going, you’re not going to get where you want to go. When we’re doing digital marketing or social media strategy for clients, we’re always looking to figure out what they want to accomplish, what’s their end goal, where do they want to go with their digital marketing, and then we work backwards to plan the strategy to get them there. It can take 60 to 90 days to ramp up to get real results, and we want to set expectations for that—a lot of times, things don’t happen immediately. They may happen quicker than we expect, but it’s good to be a bit patient. We usually start with KPIs and goals. KPIs are key performance indicators, and that’s what’s going to tell you if you’re meeting your goals. So your goals are where you want to go, and your KPIs are how you’re going to measure if you got there or not. Kiley, how do we usually set those goals? Tell us a little bit about that.

05:36
KILEY: The beginning of that process is really digging deep with these new clients, or even if we’re adjusting strategy for existing clients, and seeing what it is they want from digital marketing. Is it more leads? Obviously everyone wants increased revenue and profits, so it’s what does it take to get there? A lot of times, we’ll see that that’s leads, follower growth, community growth, increased email signups, donors, fundraisers, event attendees—things of that nature. It’s never consistent across the board when we’re working on separate strategies.
I’d say that’s step one: deciphering what ROI looks like for any given client, and then translating that into what that looks like from a digital marketing perspective. For us, the end result—leads—is always a great example. So what key performance indicators signal we’re increasing qualified leads? It could be follower growth, website clicks, form submissions, things like that. It’s about getting into the nitty gritty of the indicators that show we’re inching toward or meeting those goals.

07:26
LORI: Absolutely. Recently, we had an example with a nonprofit that we do social, email, and blogs for—they might write them, or we may put them up. It’s a collaborative effort. We also do their website and email, social, blogging, all that for them. Their KPIs are very different. They can be donations since they’re a nonprofit, but also program participants, even though the program is free. They’re reaching families that have had someone die, have children, and are looking for support, which is very niche. We also recruit volunteers for them. This year, we had so many more volunteers we were able to expand their grief camp for the summer, because our volunteer recruitment went so well. That furthers their mission of supporting these kids who’ve experienced loss.
Goals and KPIs usually come from the client, working with us collaboratively. What is it you want to see happen? We set that up, and it goes into the strategy document, though it might evolve over time. That can change—like, we have a client we’re working with right now where we originally had applications filled out on the website as a KPI, and turns out that’s not working. So we’re moving to a landing page and turning it into a lead gen effort, so we can actually talk to the leads and tell them more about the program instead of expecting them to just fill out the application cold. KPIs and goals can change. A strategy should be evolving, updating with new information and as priorities shift. You may have new services. But we want to start with, at least for the moment, what we want to accomplish and how we want to achieve it. From there, we go into research. Who is their audience, what are they about, and where do we get that information, Kiley?

09:50
KILEY: We use a lot of sources to collect audience information. We talk at length with our clients about who their ideal candidate, prospect, or customer is—what do they look like, age range, gender, socioeconomic status, education, geography, interests. We collaborate to get that baseline. We’ve mentioned it on Rev and Reach before: Answer the Public is a great source to gain insights on your audience, and we’ll turn to that platform every now and again to build up audience insights. General Google searches can be really helpful as well. The social media and digital marketing environment is constantly evolving, so staying up to date with studies and additional research from credible sources like HubSpot and HootSuite—those are two we use most often. Social media studies can help us see what demographics are on which platforms and how consumer behavior is changing.
We also look back at what content previously worked for the client if we’re not starting from scratch, who viewed it, when, and why. It’s about being everywhere online to figure out audiences. As Lori said, and this is true for every stage of a strategy, audiences are constantly changing, but that initial compass—the baseline and foundation—gives you direction. Then it’s continuous work to keep up with how your audiences evolve. That’s especially important if you have several different niche audiences. For the nonprofit Lori mentioned, we have some content targeted to parents and families, but also to teachers and counselors, since grief follows kids to school. Stage one of audience development is figuring out how many audiences you’re reaching, and then diving deep into who they are, where they’re living online, and what they’re doing.

13:06
LORI: I’d also throw in that ChatGPT can be an excellent source for research. For example, we have a client targeting automotive engineers, which is niche and technical. When we were researching strategy for this global organization, we found research another agency had done: a survey of automotive engineers about where they get their information. Social media was fourth. First was email marketing. Second, website white papers and reports. Third was YouTube, and then social.
So, we reprioritized and put emphasis on YouTube and website content, research papers, and we’re getting better results this year. That’s how research should work. Find out who your people are, where they’re playing online, are they on YouTube, on TikTok? I read this morning that 13% of TikTok users are over 45, so for a dental implant client with an older audience, should we focus on TikTok? Probably not. They do get some younger patients, but it’s not a priority because of time. You’re looking at all those variables, pulling them together, and spelling out your audience: Who are they, how old, what jobs, income, geography. You can reach a global audience easily on LinkedIn, especially for B2B.

As you research, you’ll see which companies are credible—sign up for their email lists. It’s really helpful. So, from there, we look at what type of content moves your audience into action. Kiley, what do they need, what are they lacking, what are they asking for on Answer the Public? I used ChatGPT the other day, asked what type of information automotive engineers need most, got a whole bunch of options and pulled those together, then checked if we had that info on the client website. If not, we create it.
It gave me a very basic chart we can now put out for engineers just entering the field—especially those under 35 who need background info. It’s fascinating how you can use these tools to figure out what your audience needs. As part of the strategy, we tell you: if you only promote your content, you will not succeed. You have to provide helpful, useful, non-promotional content that builds a relationship with your audience and helps them understand you are the expert, the specialist, the go-to. Kiley, what can you add?

18:36
KILEY: Absolutely, I think what you said is spot on. There’s an intentional way to go about every single type of content. Does straight-up sales content have its place? Yes, now and then, people get that you need to sell. But with content planning and your social strategy, everything should have a purpose. That doesn’t mean filling your feed with goofy content that doesn’t serve your brand. If something fun happens, go ahead and throw it on your story, but it shouldn’t be a key part of your strategy.
Helpful, useful content not only builds credibility but also builds a connection because you’re truly providing information that helps your audience. By doing that, you’re building a bridge between your brand and the consumer. When they have that issue, or a reason to be interested in your brand comes up, you’re the first person they think of because you already helped them once without them even asking.

20:14
LORI: Right. They used to call that top-of-mind awareness. You’d try to do it in traditional advertising with reach and frequency—they would say someone has to see something five times to remember it. On social, if you can draw them in with helpful information, you can keep them for a while and become even more connected than with print or TV ads. Social allows you to create that community connection, which is harder with traditional media.
We always love to do audits—part of our strategy process is auditing the client’s social media: what have they done in the past, what worked, what didn’t, and how could we make it better? Sometimes what they’re doing is okay, but add a few tweaks and it becomes powerful content that gets results. We always look at competitors as well. If you’re a dentist, for example, look at other dentists but also aestheticians or beauty spas—related industries for ideas and insights. Kiley, you do a ton of our audits. Tell us what you see.

21:59
KILEY: Internal audits are the most interesting to me. We see so many mistakes repeated over and over by brands doing their own social—like not using channels properly, repeating the same content, not following a brand image, not building recognizability. It’s eye-opening how many people are doing it wrong, and it allows us to come in and use our expertise to make a difference, even with small tweaks. Then we go 10 steps further and take things to the next level, aiming for real ROI. I love internal audits for that reason.
For competitive audits, as you said Lori, it’s important not to just look at your direct competition but adjacent industries. We’re not looking at competitors to copy them—we’re looking to see what we never want to do, and what we could make our own. For example, Dana Farber Cancer Center had a really engaging Instagram channel a few years ago, with happy patient faces and stories that performed well. It was something we could adapt—not copying, but inspired by seeing what works in the space.

25:25
KILEY: There’s human error and limitations in any social media marketing, because we’re all just human—you can’t possibly think of every creative idea out there. Sometimes, business owners are proud and feel like they shouldn’t borrow ideas from someone else, but there’s nothing wrong with inspiration. If we’re not staying up to date with what’s working for others, even in adjacent industries, we could miss great opportunities. We’ll always create our own ideas, but looking at how competitors and big players approach things is smart.
LORI: Right, and you can see which competitors are most effective, how many followers they have, what kind of engagement they’re getting. Looking at big players in your space is great—they have high-level, expensive marketing departments, so if you’re a smaller company, you can learn a lot just by seeing what they do. Even if you try to copy something exactly, you can’t. Different team, different brand. You’re not copying; you’re being inspired and looking to see what works.
KILEY: On the flip side, if you notice a competitor’s idea isn’t working—say another restaurant is doing a Taco Tuesday promotion or an Instagram mural and it’s getting no engagement—it’s a good indicator to avoid it. Saves you from wasting time or effort on something that isn’t resonating in your shared market.
LORI: Exactly. The next step is content planning. Once we’ve done the research and know what people need, we plan content buckets that meet those needs and support your brand. For example, if you’re selling pull-up potty training drawers, you want to know what mothers of toddlers need—maybe potty training tips, but also other topics like keeping a toddler busy when it’s raining. For an attorney, we provide tips about divorce planning or how to help family members immigrate. Your content buckets might include instructional info, adjacent how-tos, one for straight promotions, and others depending on the client.
KILEY: It definitely depends on the client, but client- or customer-led content always works—testimonials, branded graphics of positive Google reviews, or better yet, a video of a happy client or influencer sharing their positive experience. Partnering with customers to get content from them is powerful because it’s the most trustworthy. When real people endorse your brand, it carries weight.
Also, just because you have certain content buckets doesn’t mean you’re stuck. Social isn’t rigid—agility and flexibility are key. Follow your plan as long as it’s working, but layer in new content or trends when you see fit. That “fun” content should still serve a purpose. One thing we see often: brands who only talk about themselves. When you’re building content buckets, focus on your consumer—not yourself. We’ve talked about the book Building a StoryBrand, and too often brands put out content to serve themselves. In reality, going back to Lori’s example, a mom potty training her toddler will scroll right past a promo ad—but if you provide helpful tips or self-care advice, she’ll engage.

37:01
LORI: Agreed. You should always approach things with a serving mindset. You mentioned StoryBrand—the most important part of strategy is messaging: how are you going to tell your story and explain what you do and what your customers get from you? Spend time on that so you have consistent, easy-to-understand messaging. We should do an episode just on messaging and StoryBrand. There’s no excuse for unclear messaging these days. Be clear who you are, who you serve, and the benefits to customers. Besides that, we always do hashtag research, though hashtags are in a weird place right now—some still relevant, but a lot of people say keywords are more important. We’ll dig into that in a future episode. What else do we wrap up with, Kiley, or have we covered it?
KILEY: I’d say that’s the majority of what goes into a strategy. We always wrap up with hashtag research, but as you said, things are shifting. One thing we always stress when presenting a strategy: agility is important. You want to give a strategy enough time to work; when you change things—either starting from scratch or reinventing—building up an effort takes time. Increasing followers, getting ads up, all that doesn’t happen overnight. We recommend about 90 days before reevaluating. Maybe a certain content type wasn’t as strong, or gathering that content was too much for the business. You need that trial run to find out and then pivot, but don’t stray from strategy too early—that’s like shooting yourself in the foot. If you don’t give a strategy time, it simply won’t work.

40:32
LORI: Some business owners can be a little ADHD; we’ll do a strategy and then suddenly, they want to switch everything up after two weeks. Let it work! It’s like making a stew—you don’t just pull it off after half an hour, you let it go for three hours so it’s really good. Don’t turn away from your strategy after just a few weeks. It can take longer to see results.

I’m going to wrap us up on this episode. We’ve shared all kinds of information—this is one of our longer episodes. We’ll be back soon with more helpful, useful info to help you get more ROI from your social and digital marketing efforts.
If you want to know more about us, connect with Kiley and me on LinkedIn. We’d love to network with you. We also have a website at popsdigital.com where you can learn more and fill out a contact form if you’d like us to get in touch. That’s it for now. We’ll see you soon. Thanks, everyone.

In this episode of Rev & Reach, Lori and Kiley explain why posting identical content on every channel is a mistake, and what to do instead.

They dig into the unique quirks, shifting rules, and best practices for Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, TikTok, Pinterest, and YouTube.

Learn why hashtags are becoming less powerful, how vertical video is changing the game, and how to truly engage every audience where they are.

00:56 – Why “post everywhere” fails in digital marketing

03:11 – Instagram’s link-in-bio—and why links in captions don’t work

04:57 – Why Facebook hashtags don’t help

08:14 – TikTok’s unique rules and roadblocks

13:07 – Why recording vertical video is your new best friend

01:20 – “But the problem with this is, all channels are not created equal. What works on one will not, more often than not, work on another. Every channel is very nuanced.”

03:17 – “…on Instagram, you cannot use links in your copy. So they’re not paying attention and they’re putting links in the post copy on Instagram. Nobody is going to copy and paste your link. They’re not going to.”

05:46 – “Facebook hashtags are useless. They’re not going to help you. Maybe a vanity hashtag, just something that signals ‘this is our brand, this is our community’—just more for aesthetic purposes as opposed to actually increasing your reach.”

13:00 – “Honestly, I’m almost not even hesitant to recommend that whatever you’re recording, you record it vertically these days. I don’t like the vertical so much, but all the channels are going to them.”

00:08
LORI: Hello, everybody. I’m Lori Jovest, and welcome to another episode of Rev & Reach, created by Pop Speed Digital Marketing to help you get more ROI from your digital marketing efforts. I’m Lori Jovest. I’m here with Kiley Metcalfe. We are the two… I don’t know what you’d call us… the two head women in charge. We are the people that are running this agency and helping our clients on digital channels, with social, YouTube, blogs, websites, emails, creating campaigns and ongoing initiatives that actually get results. And Kiley came up with the subject for today, so I’m going to let her kick us off. So whatcha got?

00:56
KILEY: Yeah, so one of the things we see a lot, whether we’re onboarding new clients or trying to reach new potential ones, is a lot of brands that share the same identical content across the board on all of their channels. And we’ll never tell you that repurposing content is a bad thing… a lot of the time, it’s a very good example of working smarter, not harder.

But the problem with this is, all channels are not created equal. What works on one will not, more often than not, work on another. Every channel is very nuanced. So today, what we want to talk about is tailoring your content to work and cater to the algorithms of each specific channel that you’re on… whether that’s Meta platforms—so Threads, Instagram, Facebook; LinkedIn, YouTube, TikTok, Pinterest, the list goes on. Of course, a lot of brands are not going to be on every single social channel that exists, but as long as you’re on more than one, the rules of the game change. So that’s what we’re going to talk about today.

02:06
LORI: Yes, yes. And we’re on this every single day, so we hear about the changes before most people do. Just to give you an example of the kind of changes that happen on these channels: Instagram, just over the last couple of months, went from these really cool little square images that we had all adjusted to… to now, everything’s vertical, and it is a lot harder to create a nice graphic that’s vertical, tall and skinny, especially if you’re used to doing things horizontally or as squares.

So those kinds of things happen on all the channels as well: the sizes of the images that they accept, the size of the files, the video files. You might be able to put a video on Facebook but not be able to put the same one on X because it’s too big, or the wrong aspect ratio. It’s insane. But besides that, there are things about these channels that are very unique.

Starting off with Instagram, everybody loves Instagram, right? I mean, is there anybody we know that doesn’t love Instagram?

KILEY: Exactly. I think it’s my favorite besides TikTok, I guess. Yeah, Instagram’s up there.

LORI: Yeah, it’s right up there. But the thing that you’ll notice on Instagram is you cannot use links in your copy. So they’re not paying attention and they’re putting links in the post copy on Instagram. Nobody is going to copy and paste your link… they’re not going to.

So, you customize that for “link in bio,” and then send them to the bio. You use a linktree, or some type of a multi-link tool… there’s several of them, right? The person clicks on that link, and they see all your links and can go to the article you mention. Nobody’s going to copy and paste. That just doesn’t happen, right?

KILEY: Exactly.

LORI: So let’s talk about some other differences.

03:59
KILEY: I think another big one with Instagram that we see a lot is hashtags. Again, we’ve said it here before, we’ll say it again… the power of hashtags is kind of up in the air at the moment.

Some people are using them. Some people are not at all anymore, and then you’ll find a lot of people like us that have just decreased the amount that they’re using. You used to be able… I believe it was up to about 20 hashtags; was optimal?

LORI: They recommended up to 20.

KILEY: Yeah, optimal on Instagram. That seemingly overnight, maybe a year or so ago, dwindled all the way down to now, I believe, three to eight is more optimal; so that’s kind of where we’re at. The reach of these hashtags is less and less; people are just searching specific hashtags on the platform less frequently.

So, there’s not… controversy is not the word… but there’s a little bit of kind of “to each their own” with the power of hashtags right now on Instagram. However, they are still one of the channels where, you know, you see a post, you see a hashtag. It looks normal. It doesn’t look like somebody doesn’t know what they’re doing because they put a hashtag there, right?

But then, on the flip side… and because they’re both Meta platforms, I guess the misconception is, a lot of people working for brand socials think they work more similarly than they actually do. But…

LORI: On Facebook?

KILEY: Yes, exactly; on Facebook. You’ll see a lot of the same hashtags on Facebook as you do on Instagram. Facebook hashtags are useless. They’re not going to help you. Maybe a vanity hashtag, just something that signals “this is our brand, this is our community”… just more for aesthetic purposes as opposed to actually increasing your reach. It might look a little bit more normal, but that is one of the key things I would say. Similarly to using links on Facebook and then trying to do the exact same thing on Instagram… doesn’t work. Hashtags on Instagram are not going to work on Facebook.

LORI: And if you listened to our last episode, then you already know that hashtags are being replaced with keywords in the copy. So hashtags are losing their relevance for search and for putting those posts in people’s feeds that follow them.

06:59
So what you really want to look at more is interest-based targeting. If someone is interested in grief support, or they’re interested in the benefits of steel, you’ll want to use those keywords instead of hashtags to help drive people and get people to see your content when they search.

So, what other kinds of differences? One thing I see too, which I think is really interesting, is people are on LinkedIn… and I think this is appropriate… but they’re getting more personal. If you were not paying attention, you might not know that LinkedIn isn’t necessarily all business all the time anymore. I follow an influencer that calls it “LinkedIn at night,” and she posts more racy topics, and it’s super fun. And also, just a lot more personal stories… a lot more, “my father died two weeks ago, and here’s how that’s affected me in my daily performance at the office,” or using LinkedIn to let your work or business community know something has happened. You’re not necessarily notifying them, but sharing the story.

That’s getting more popular; but it’s still a place you want to focus more on business overall. And if you do write something up like that, it’s always best to tie it back to business in some way.

What other platforms? TikTok, I think, is a really big difference from the other channels too, right, Kiley? How would you describe it?

08:14
KILEY: I would say so for sure, because the vast majority is video-focused. Now, you can do the sliders, kind of similar to how you can on Instagram, but it is video, video, video… all the time… a little bit more like YouTube in that sense, except it combines that scrolling aspect of Instagram, which I think is why people love it so much, because it’s that quick, mindless scroll, but it’s just videos, and they’re almost always interesting. If they’re not, okay, let me skip it, right?

One of the key things about TikTok that separates it from other channels is, again with the links… I believe, unless this number has been updated, you can’t include links in your copy unless you’re a business page, and not until you have 1,000 followers.

So it is another one of those things where you’ve got to be focused on entertaining to build that audience first. If you’re not entertaining, you’re not going to get there… just the brutally honest truth.

09:38
Another interesting thing to point out about TikTok is that when you create videos using the TikTok app, and use all of their in-app features, once it’s posted, if you try to download that video from your account to repurpose it elsewhere… Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, wherever… it will download with a TikTok watermark, so every other channel knows where it was made and where it came from.

If you take that video with the TikTok watermark and then use it as an Instagram Reel, it will not perform.

LORI: Oh, interesting. Okay, good info.

KILEY: Yes, you absolutely get pinged in the algorithm on Instagram, specifically within Reels, if it’s not created there.

Is TikTok very user-friendly in its video creation resources? It absolutely is. It makes it very easy. If you’re repurposing that content, though, that’s just something to consider. It’s also very easy to do in Instagram or other platforms, so it might be worth it, or it might not… it depends on who’s doing your social, but just something to consider because you might not see the results on other platforms.

11:08
LORI: I’ve seen a lot of TikTok videos over on Instagram, which I find interesting. I haven’t noticed performance on those yet, I’ll have to pay attention, because we usually create our videos in a video editing platform and then put them up. Sometimes we will use the music from Instagram, because I have heard that it will perform better if you put their music on it, and they’ve had some kind of input to that video… it will perform higher in the algorithm.

KILEY: I think that’s true for TikTok as well; the rules there are a little bit different than they are on Instagram. So I’m sure you’ll eventually run into an issue where you maybe can’t use the exact same audio on Instagram and TikTok. If you run into that, that might be an instance where it makes sense to use something from elsewhere if you really want it to be consistent.

But I think on every platform, it does increase reach to select the audio as you’re posting within that platform, because… because of TikTok, audios go viral and they trend, and if people are searching or only watching videos of a given audio, that’s just another place where your content is going to show up that it maybe wouldn’t have otherwise.

12:33
LORI: Yeah, I mean, all these little tips all work together to get you higher up in the algorithm and get you better performance. I want to talk just a little bit about YouTube, too, because we’ve been really digging in over there, and it is pretty amazing what kind of reach you can get on Shorts, which are all vertical.

Honestly, I’m almost not even hesitant to recommend that whatever you’re recording, you record it vertically these days. I don’t like the vertical so much, but all the channels are going to them. Instagram had Reels, then TikTok came along, then YouTube created Shorts, and with a good Short, you can get some really nice reach numbers organically, which is surprising.

Also, I’ve found that YouTube promotion is pretty affordable. It’s really easy to target, and it’s very affordable. So again, if you’re not on YouTube, make sure you start creating assets that can go there for your other channels, because it’s a great place as a support for everything else that you do.

So anything else we want to say about helping people understand the difference in what you post on different channels?

13:59
KILEY: I was going to say, I think just considering audiences is really important, and really distinguishing those differences. We’ve talked about our grief support nonprofit client before, right? So the types of things that work on Facebook, where it’s a lot more community-based and family-oriented, might not work on somewhere like LinkedIn, where maybe we’re talking more specifically to people of a certain career, like childhood therapists, educators, or even funeral homes. It’s a much more business-focused platform; so you kind of tailor it to who you’re speaking to.

And then Pinterest… I know we talked about Pinterest just before this, Lori… is another good example. So many moms, especially millennial moms, are on Pinterest. It’s been part of our lives forever, right? And that’s a great place for resources, family resources, journal prompts, activities to help your grieving children and things like that.

So really taking deep dives when you’re in your strategy creation phase about who lives on what platform and what they’re looking for there, and tailoring your messaging accordingly.

15:32
So once again, is that to say that you can’t post on TikTok and use the same video, if done correctly, on Instagram Reels and Facebook? No, but your copy absolutely needs to be edited to mesh with the person that you’re trying to reach on that given platform. Whether that’s removing links and using them in the bio, editing hashtags, or using slightly different language… still including those keywords, but using language that’s going to resonate with the common audience on each platform.

16:12
LORI: Absolutely. And the one thing I want to add before we wrap up is that video on all of these channels is really, really important. Yeah, specifically on TikTok, however, if you cannot feed that channel three videos a week… would you say Kiley?

KILEY: Yeah. Absolutely minimum.

LORI: Three videos a week, continually, that are meaningful. You can give really good advice, you can be entertaining, you can… okay, can I just out myself? There’s a 1990s home decor show called Design Sense that everybody’s been going bananas for.

KILEY: I love it.

LORI: It’s absolutely hilarious. People go there expecting to be entertained, to laugh, to see something that means something, to be drawn in by content… not to be advertised to. So before you make a decision to go over to TikTok, make sure you are spending some time on that channel to see what will be required and know that like three to five videos a week is what it’s going to take to hit those high numbers and make it worth your while.

KILEY: Absolutely.

LORI: And yes, you can advertise there, but your channel still has to have a lot of followers, have experienced a lot of engagement. There’s got to be strong content there to actually see results.

17:33
KILEY: Absolutely. So I think that’s really important… speaking just to wrap up specifically to TikTok. Another way that it differentiates itself is that, of course, you can advertise there, but because of including links in your bio and captions, because of that rule, it’s so important that you’re at that three-to-five-times-a-week range, and that they’re all high quality, engaging content to grow you as fast as possible.

Because Meta platforms like Instagram and Facebook have that little cheat code where you can put a bunch of money into it and build a following of real, interested audience members pretty quickly. You can do that on TikTok, but it’s going to take a little bit longer because it functions so differently.

LORI: It does. There’s not necessarily the “like my page” functionality.

KILEY: Right, exactly… exactly.

LORI: You know, it’s just not there. But if people love what you’re posting, they will follow you, so.

KILEY: Yeah.

LORI: Well, that’s what we’ve got for today. Again, Pop Speed Digital Marketing… we are here for you. We’re both open networkers on LinkedIn. Both Kiley Metcalfe and Lori Jo Vest, happy to talk to you there and also take suggestions for what we should be talking about.

We want to help you get more ROI from your digital marketing and social media efforts. That’s why we’re here. If you’d like to know more about us, check out popspeeddigital.com, and we will see you again with some more helpful advice in a few weeks.

KILEY: Bye, everybody.

In this episode of Rev and Reach, Lori and Kiley discuss the massive changes shaking up SEO, web traffic, and digital marketing strategy in 2025.

As AI-generated answers take over Google results and web traffic declines, the team shares how social channels are now powerful search engines too—and what brands need to do to keep reaching their audiences.

00:08 – Introduction: Lori and Kiley tee up the episode’s focus on AI-driven search and what it means for marketers

00:30 – Why Google traffic is dropping and what’s now showing up at the top of results

02:04 – How ranking is changing: “optimization for all channels” and the rise of social as search

03:51 – The critical importance of putting keywords into your post copy across platforms

06:20 – Real-world examples: dental practices and manufacturers adapting their content

07:59 – Using tools like Answer the Public to discover your audience’s true questions

09:23 – Don’t sleep on YouTube Shorts, Google Ads, and adapting your channel strategy

10:30 – Connecting with Lori, Kiley, and how to submit your questions for a future episode

02:08 – “So basically, what you’ve got is you’ve got a huge transition from searches leading to website listings to searches now becoming something the question gets answered by AI.”

03:54 – “One of the key ways to counter it… is to use keywords in your social, in your copy… because that’s where it’ll show up in those searches, right?”

06:05 – “…using that language in your copy extremely consistently is going to help bridge that gap with the audience members really that you’re going to start kind of missing now that AI is taking over Google.”

08:01 – “It’s extremely helpful for kind of getting a better gauge and idea of what people are actually asking search platforms and search engines when it comes to, you know, relative to specific brands, right?”

09:46 – “YouTube is tied to Google Ads, so you can set everything up in Google Ads and it will use those demographics. And we’re seeing a really nice low cost per click on Google AdWords right now for some clients and some really interesting results.”

10:02 – “Search is changing. It’s constantly evolving, just like everything else.”

00:08
LORI: Hello, everybody. I’m Lori Jovest. Welcome to this episode of Rev and Reach. I am the founder and partner of Pop Speed Digital Marketing in Troy, Michigan, and with me is our lead social specialist, Kiley Metcalf. Say hi, Kiley.

KILEY: Hi everybody, and we are here today to talk about SEO and some of the crazy changes that are happening in that space and how it might impact your other digital marketing on social media and in other places.

LORI: So, Kiley, what have we noticed?

KILEY: Well, I think, I am sure at this point, everybody’s kind of noticed when you go to Google search or even Safari, if you have, you know, Apple products, when you go to search, the first things that pop up are no longer articles from trusted websites or other sources. It is now AI-generated information that is most often, I would say, accompanied by the leading sources and links there. But one of the things we’ve really noticed with this as it continues to kind of take search by storm, really, is that pretty much across all of our clients, website traffic is decreasing because of it.

And that’s because, if you turn to Google to search for something, you no longer have to click through to any website to get the information that you’re looking for. All you have to do is read the AI response that pretty accurately, I would say most often, gives you the answers that you’re looking for, and then you don’t really have to dig very deep. So is it convenient? Absolutely. Is it good for websites and digital marketing and SEO? No, it’s not.

02:04
LORI: And it is really hard to rank on those searches. So basically, what you’ve got is you’ve got a huge transition from searches leading to website listings to searches now becoming something the question gets answered by AI. They give you the sources along the side, they’ll show like the top three, and then you have to scroll down a little bit to find other ones. So ranking is becoming a lot more difficult.

And what we do? I follow Neil Patel—I think it’s N-E-I-L P-A-T-E-L—and he sends out emails consistently and constantly. And he’s one of the few he could send me an email every day, and I would look at it because his information is so valuable. And what he says is that instead of, like, search engine optimization, now it’s optimization for all channels, so it’s search everywhere. And I thought that was really interesting, because what that points to is that Google is actually pulling up social results, but people are also using the social channels for search.

And we looked at it. We looked at a really interesting grid, right? That had all the different channels on that were searched and where they ranked for probably the last year, or something like that. And Snapchat was ahead of Instagram, which cracked me up. I’m like, “Really, what?” But people are searching TikTok, they’re searching YouTube, they’re searching Meta to look for answers to questions and to search for topics.

So how do we counter that? And Kiley, you and I have talked about this a lot, so I’ll let you take this one.

03:51
KILEY: Yeah, absolutely, one of the key ways to counter it—and it’s something that we’ve kind of been trying to incorporate more into our digital strategies for a few years now, but now it’s more important than ever—is to use keywords in your social, in your copy, in your, I would say, in your assets. It’s a little bit less important, but it helps to get the attention of anybody that might be interested, but primarily in your copy, because that’s where it’ll show up in those searches, right?

It works pretty similarly to how normal SEO on Google used to work, really, in the sense that if your copy includes a, you know, a specific keyword—we’ll go back to our dental clients once again—you know, if it includes “dental implants” or “full arch dental implants,” or “dentures,” or things of that nature that people are searching on social media, you’ll rank higher in people, you know, turning to social platforms to search for that type of content. And, you know, once again, that’s one of those things that’s really easy to kind of work the algorithm when you’re writing SEO-tailored content for Google. It’s just taking that strategy and flipping it into your social, right?

And can that get a little bit awkward if you’re trying too hard sometimes? Sure. But it’s important to get creative, especially now with how difficult, like Lori said, it’s becoming to rank in those Google searches, because I’m pretty sure, Lori correct me if I’m wrong, that in that grid that we spent some time looking at, Google is still number one, and I don’t think it’s close. So because so many websites and brands and companies are starting to lose that juice that AI is stealing, it’s really important to, even though it might get a little bit awkward and even though it might get a little bit tedious, to really make it work and find a way to fit that into your strategy, whether that’s with hashtags, whether that’s making sure that, you know, let’s say you are a dental practice, right, that’s working on dental implant clients—using that language in your copy extremely consistently is going to help bridge that gap with the audience members really that you’re going to start kind of missing now that AI is taking over Google.

06:20
LORI: Yeah, and let me give you an example of what that means. When we say, “use your keywords in your copy,” a lot of us that are creating social content will, you know, we have the phrases we use. If it’s, for example, a dental implant clinic, we might say, “Are you ready for your new smile? We can help. Start here.” Short copy. Maybe it’s a video of one of the docs talking about, you know, why they’re the best, because they’ve been around forever.

And what you would normally say wouldn’t include the word “dental implants” or the phrase “dental implants.” So you would want to include that. And we have a client that promotes the benefits of steel to manufacturers. And one of the things that we’re doing over there is there’s a product called—or a type of steel called—advanced high strength steels. And so instead of just saying AHSS, I’m going to be spelling it out, because that’s what the search is likely to be, or put them both, right? And just make sure you’re consistently using that keyword in your copy, in your posts, repeatedly, so that the search function on that particular social channel will see that you’ve got a ton of content with that particular keyword.

So it’s not hard. It just might sound nicer to just use, you know, to leave it out, or to use an acronym, but try to really look at sources like Answer the Public. Have you ever been on Answer the Public, Kiley?

07:59
KILEY: Yeah, we’ve spent some time there. Yeah, it’s extremely helpful for kind of getting a better gauge and idea of what people are actually asking search platforms and search engines when it comes to, you know, relative to specific brands, right? And that’s not just for Google. I think we’ve seen it, I would say, particularly with YouTube and TikTok in the last several years, increasingly becoming really, really highly used search engines, right? And obviously they’re social platforms.

But you know, I think we’ve said it on Rev and Reach before, that you can learn how to do anything on YouTube, right? And TikTok is really following suit in a shorter form way. So, you know, if you’re, let’s think of an example, if you’re a restaurant and you’re wondering what people in your area are looking for, like what they want to eat, and you know, what it is that’s most important to them when they’re going to spend their dollars at a restaurant on a Friday night, and what they’re searching for and, you know, like menu items and cocktails and things like that—turn to Answer the Public, because it’s a really great way, whether you’re writing for Google or your social channels, to tailor your content to what people are genuinely looking for.

09:23
LORI: Yeah, I love it. It’s a great, great tool. And you know, back to YouTube, if you are not using YouTube as one of your social channels, get on it with YouTube Shorts. You are put into the feeds of people that are following the subject that you talk about, as well as search, and it’s related. YouTube is tied to Google Ads, so you can set everything up in Google Ads and it will use those demographics.

And we’re seeing a really nice low cost per click on Google AdWords right now for some clients and some really interesting results. So search is changing. It’s constantly evolving, just like everything else. If you need a vendor or a digital marketing supplier that is on top of those changes as they occur, it can be difficult if you’re a marketer trying to keep track of all that yourself, right? You can’t be on every webinar and get every email announcement from every type of social or digital channel, right?

So we would love to hear from you. We are happy to network with you. We are open networkers on LinkedIn. If you have questions, reach out to either me or Kiley, and we are here to help. If there’s a topic you’d like us to talk about on Rev and Reach, please get in touch with us, because we’re covering all the different things that we do, how we do them, what’s hot right now, what’s working, what’s not working, so that you can be a better digital marketer. And you know, we’re here to help. So I think that’s all we’ve got for today, right?

KILEY: Yeah, kind of a short and sweet one, but one that’s really important. So, yeah, I would say so.

LORI: So we’ll be back again soon with some more advice on how to get more ROI from your digital marketing. Take care. We’ll talk to you soon.