We would like to thank all of you have listened to one, 3, 30 or lots of our episodes. Hopefully we entertained for 20 minutes and taught you something along the way as well each week for the past 4 or so years.

We would also like to thank the awesome 47 guests that we had and even those we tried to have on and just couldn't make schedules work.

Again to all that shared our tweets, listened, told others about the show, or supported us in any way over the past four years:

We Thank you.

Dave & Mat

Full Transcript

Mat Siltala: Welcome to another exciting episode of the business of digital podcast, featuring your host, Matt and Dave roar. Hey guys, excited to have you join us on this, uh, business of digital episode, uh, grateful for you all. And, uh, Dave, I don't know if I just jumped right into it and uh, let let everyone know, but, uh, yeah.

Hey guys, we want to let you know that, uh, episode 200 that you're listening to right now is our last and final episode of this podcast. So we just want to say thank you all until further notice. Yes. And we can put that little asterisk in there.

[00:00:43] Dave Rohrer: Site's going to remain up. All episodes will remain up for at least a few years.

I'm going to host them. It'll all be up. So,

[00:00:52] Mat Siltala: and speaking of a few years, it's been a good few years. We were talking about it. It's between four and five years that we've been doing this. And, uh, you know, you were

[00:01:00] Dave Rohrer: April, 2017. I think it was when we uploaded the first.

[00:01:03] Mat Siltala: Oh, wow. So yeah, it's been awhile. And uh, I thought you, you know, with what we were talking about before we started recording, I thought that was interesting about, you know, like, let's go and check out some of the major shows that we like or whatever, like how many episodes have they done or whatever.

And a 200 is a pretty good run. And, uh, I just wonder

[00:01:23] Dave Rohrer: TV shows. We're not a TV show or at all at all.

[00:01:28] Mat Siltala: Oh yeah. But, uh, but yeah, I just wanted to, you know, thank you Dave, for, you know, you and I had a conversation about this, uh, many years ago and we both kind of agreed that we, again, anyone that has been listening to the show forever, they know that we hate writing and that's why.

Started this show, but so much easier, so much easier rate full this way. Oh, it is. I love it. And I'm grateful for you that you kind of pushed me into, into making it happen as well and doing this. And so thank you, sir, for all that you've done for this podcast and all the effort that you put into it to make it what it was.

It has been my pleasure being a co-host of the show with you.

[00:02:09] Dave Rohrer: So thank you, sir. And thank you to all the guests we've had. I don't know the number off the top of my head, but I can probably figure that out as I'm rambling about how many guests we've had from our first one to our last one, which who was Mr.

Cushing? I think, I think any was technically our last guest then. And our first guest was, um, Allison.

[00:02:38] Mat Siltala: Hm.

[00:02:39] Dave Rohrer: I think it was well, this and Stratton I think was our first guest. Oh, wow. I believe,

[00:02:45] Mat Siltala: um, my guess would have been Melissa, but you're probably

[00:02:48] Dave Rohrer: right. I think Melissa was one of the first it's like one of the first, but so far, we've had 49. That includes us. So 46.

[00:02:57] Mat Siltala: So, you know, as I was thinking about this, like I knew that the show was coming on and, and I got to say, it's been kind of bittersweet for me.

Um, you know, I, I definitely know that it's time for this and you're busier than ever. And, uh, things have definitely changed on my end. And so like, um, it's definitely the right time, but it's bittersweet because I really have enjoyed this, but it got me thinking back about just all the different episodes and

After 198 episodes over the past 4 years we thought we should do something of a roundup on what we have learned about having guests, sound, tools, format, style, and also a few things that we would have done differently.

Past Podcasting Resource Episodes:

E43 – Podcasting Best Practices & LessonsE85 – How to Get Booked on PodcastsE94 – What are the Best Podcast & Site Hosting OptionsE120 – What Goes Into Making a Podcast EpisodeE172 – What is the Best Transcription Service?E192 – Redundancy. Redundancy.

Full Transcript

Mat Siltala: Welcome to another exciting episode of the business of digital podcast, featuring your host, Matt and Dave roar. Hey guys, excited to have you join us another one of these business of digital podcasts. And today we decided it would be good to just jump into some podcasting lessons lessons a day when I've learned over the.

Um,

[00:00:25] Dave Rohrer: literally years years

[00:00:27] Mat Siltala: now. Yeah, we were talking about it four to five years now. But, um, the thing that you said that surprised me was the last time we did, this was episode 43. If you guys wanted to check that out, but this is episode 1 99. So it's been a while, Dave

[00:00:43] Dave Rohrer: it's. Yeah. Uh, we did it to look back on our first 42 episodes kind of, I think it was like the end of the first full year we'd been doing.

Yeah, it was like a plus or minus. But it was after our first year. So we kind of talked about the format guests, first note, guests, frequency, podcast gear, set up recording tools that we kind of used. Um, and I still think that's the biggest question is always, um, and I saw someone say that there's, there's still 300 million podcasts out there looking for you.

On any given day, um,

[00:01:16] Mat Siltala: just think of the amount of spam that you and I get on the daily. What are they wanting? Yeah,

[00:01:21] Dave Rohrer: well, yeah. Number of people that applied to be guests on the show, um, the number of people that were emailing us and pinging us with horrible pitches and we've, there's a w w uh, speaking of, um, episode 85, we did how to get booked on podcasts and basically talked about all of the bad.

And the horrible outreach examples we have. Uh, and that was, and that was what in the two years. So we still had another two or three years of examples probably right now, if I was to go digging in emails. Um, yeah. So I think if you have never, I think my first lesson would be. We sat down and talked through what we wanted to do.

And we actually basically were like, well, we, we chit chat about kind of this stuff anyway, why don't we just record it? So I think for us, it was a little easier. Um, we've never really had a crazy format. We've never, um, I know there's people that have, um, scripts for their podcasts and literally just read the script.

[00:02:27] Mat Siltala: But what you're touching on. I think that's the most important thing. And I'll let you finish your thought, but like, I think the, the thing that, uh, stands out the most is figuring out what works best for you specifically. And for us, that's what worked well between us, because you and I could have amazing conversations all the time.

And again, like you said, that's why we decided, Hey, let's just start recording this stuff. But I think. If we tried to do it any other way, like it might not have been as well. Like this is the style and this is the method that worked for us. And I think that's what people have to figure

[00:03:02] Dave Rohrer: out. And I think it also depends on what you're, how you're approaching it.

So ours was to be a conversational discussion, deep dive into one topic per episode. Now, if you were to listen to marketing, no clock, their format is completely different. They have to have some sort of basic outline. Research, you know, with a list of resources that they always kind of talk about type of thing.

Um,

[00:03:28] Mat Siltala: and don't get me wrong. That's totally fine. I'm no

In Episode 191 we talked Making Your Own Career With Duane Forrester and covered a ton. There was something that came out of the conversation that we wanted to dive a bit deeper into and thus this episode does just that.

In our daily work lives we get focused on some project, report, deliverable, request, launch, product, and so on. Or something new comes out and suddenly everyone just cares about Schema, Canonical Tags, some new social media network, a new type of PPC ad type or maybe site speed.

Sometime ago we did a show about When Best Practices Aren't Best Practices and while we aren't saying that again here - we are saying that you need to be doing all of the things for the business that make sense all the time.

If you are an SEO and suddenly care about site speed have you never looked at conversion rates? Why didn't how fast or slow a site load matter 3 years ago, 5 years ago or even 10 years ago?

If you do PPC and suddenly care about some social network why? What changed? Is your budget stretched already? Why aren't you looking at the landing pages and creative?

Now go give a listen to the episode and as you do think of these things:

What will move the needle for the business.What low hanging fruit is out there in my channel?How can I work with other teams/channels and help raise all of them?What will generate the most revenue for the business?

Full Transcript

Mat Siltala: Welcome to another exciting episode of the business of digital podcast, featuring your host, Matt and Dave roar. Hey, you guys excited to have you join us on another one of these business of digital podcast episodes. And, uh, today we're going to kind of, I guess you would say piggyback off of an earlier topic that we had discussed, discussed disclosed with Mr.

Dwayne us. And, um, we're going to talk about digital marketers and what they need to stop ignoring. And this got me thinking day when I, you know, I'll let you do your little, um, you know, your little thought process on this and the direction that you want to go. But, um, this got me thinking about how you remember the fight forever.

Like the old school . Um, I remember we used to have to fight to get like, uh, businesses to even take SEO seriously. Now it seems like most of them are actually, you know, they have it mark, you know, they have it budgeted in and it's not, not a final. No, not at all. No, I know. Not all, but you have to use much better.

Yes, it is much better. And that's my point. And so like with that, You know, there's always new things that are coming up. There's always new techniques. There's always new tools that can be used. There's new things that Google are being, or whoever offers us. And so anyway, I just thought that this was an interesting, you know, way to lead into it, but, uh, you know, why don't you share with us kind of your direction of what you wanted us to, to talk about with this, but, uh, I just, don't, that's just a random thought that I had as all.

Well,

[00:01:42] Dave Rohrer: and I don't remember I'll link to it. Um, cause it was a good long conversation with Dwayne, but one of the things he was just like, I think the example and I, in my notes, it was something about, you know, SEO is fixating on certain things or over and suddenly. And like, I think, you know, like core, core web metrics and site speed and that kind of stuff right now is like, that's all everyone cares.

Um, where were you five years ago? 10 years ago. Like why, why didn't if your host was slow 10, 15 years ago, matter if your page, you know, loaded really slow, especially then when everyone had slower internet and it took, you know, longer to download that MP or that MP3, that PDF that had those ridiculous images that, you know, no one should ever forget.

That was a bad user experience that you could hurt your conversions. It mattered to SEO. It mattered to the business. Then why suddenly in 20 21, 20 20, does everyone suddenly care abou

Oh sorry, we know Google has the wrong hours - so why not fix it? Oh sorry, that schedule/PDF on the site was from Spring Break and not Spring 2021 - then why is it still on the site and why wasn't the dates clear? Why are there no hours or photos (mini golf course on hotel's website) - hotels are awesome examples of doing this poorly. Dave found so many "bad" examples while on a recent trip.

Outdated Info = Loss of Business

You could be losing short and long term business based on how people react with your site, social profiles and more. It can be a pain to keep things up but for a user the goal is to make it easy for consumers to spend money with your business.

Photos, addresses, hours, etc. - this isn't about Local SEO. This is about having someone trust the information and understand what is open, where you are, and just what is going on. People want to get out, they want to travel but if they go out of the way to visit you and you are closed. Why would we try again?

Make it Easy

Show photos on your site. Let people see the seating, hours and just the most basic information. Hotels and Casino's are notoriously horrible about this. They tend to have one page "microsites" that give no information or help. Think about what questions visitors have and make sure your pages answer them.

Be customer service without having to be customer service!!!

Plan out Profiles

For whatever websites and profiles you have for your business, create a list. Not just one of social profiles but anything that has your hours, information, and reviews that you care about. Have a list and keep it updated so that you can easily go through a checklist to update hours, menus, and so on.

Full Transcript:

Matt Siltala: [00:00:00] Welcome to another exciting episode of the business of digital podcast, featuring your host, Matt  and Dave roar. Hey guys, uh, excited to have you join us on another one of these business of digital podcast episodes. Yeah. I know that you have a, uh, you know, you have a reason why you came up with this one, but, uh, as we were chatting, as we tend to do before we wrap up.

Uh, it got me thinking about how important this topic was. And basically, um, it may be tedious for business owners to go in and make little updates, uh, to Google with the correct hours, or if they have wrong hours and fixing it, you know, you know, what are your hours for spring break or this or that or whatever.

And I know that, you know, this idea came to you from a recent vacation that you were on, but it got me thinking Dave, about how, you know, I recently. Uh, took a trip to the big island and, uh, um, this was like, uh, uh, towards the middle of may I think. And, um, you know, there were still a lot of COVID well, I mean, there's still to this day, a lot of COVID restrictions going on on the Hawaiian islands.

And so it was no different when we were there. And so this was a big deal because, um, when we were going to make, um, reservations or we were seeing if certain things were open, Um, you know, it, it made a difference of where we booked or where we ate or what we did or who we called, because, um, if I could see that a business owner hadn't really touched their accounts in a while, or didn't give any kind of COVID update or is there any kind of outdoor seating area?

Are we still open for outdoors? Uh, take out or we, you know, like exactly how are we doing it all? Um, you know, those businesses got passed up and they got overlooked. And then also it was frustrating. Cause there was some where, you know, they would say one thing on the website and then, then we did get to their place and, um, it was completely different or you had to have a reservation, but they didn't say anything on their listing that you had to have a reservation or you'd be turned away.

And so that's the kind of stuff that frustrates people and that's kind of stuff that gets negative reviews written, uh, about you. And so th

If you are looking to up your reporting and dashboard game this is the episode for you. With Annie leading the charge we cover a large number of tools, chart types and ways that we digital marketers are not helping ourselves.

We need to go beyond the same 3-4 chart types and do better and be better. So dig in with us as Annie drops knowledge for almost 45 minutes!

Data Studio vs Excel vs Google Sheets vs Tableau

Annie takes us down her path of finally out growing Excel, finding Google Sheets but also growing past that.

Eventually Annie fell in love with Tableau (this was before Google Data Studio was even available). That said if you want something with a low learning curve that allows you to create elegant visuals, Google Data Studio can be the solution you need.

Data Studio though doesn't offer histograms and lacks the ability to do deep statistical analysis.

Histograms & Box Plots

If you get nothing else from this episode we hope you take a look at these two chart types and look to use them more for your marketing analysis and reporting.

Annie does walk through the upside and when to use these so be sure to listen (starting around the 12 minute mark).

Want some ideas? Crawl data, Web Core Vital Data and other examples are given by Annie.

Note from Dave & Matt

As what happens with guests from time to time we run into sound issues so as you will be able to tell Matt and Dave are turned down and Annie is highlighted. We always try and avoid this but sometimes it happens and we apologize!Dave & Matt

Data, Reporting and Annie's Resources

AnnielyticsMaking Data Sexy BookExcel Chart PickerRegex for Marketers: Plain English, Real World ExamplesBox Plots: The Unsung Heroes of Data AnalysisWeb Analytics 2.0 Book

Full Transcript:

Matt Siltala: [00:00:00] Welcome to another exciting episode of the business of digital podcast, featuring your host, Matt  and Dave roar. Hey guys, excited to have you join us on another one of these businesses, digital podcast episodes. And today we have a fun one. Um, I would like to welcome any crushing, any thanks for joining us.

Annie Cushing: [00:00:23] Hey guys, it's a pleasure to join you.

Matt Siltala: [00:00:27] I normally do like an intro or whatever, but like with you, you're an old friend. So, um, it's kinda hard to like put everything that I know about you and then like a five minute or a five second intro as to, uh, you know, um, who you are and what you do. And so maybe just to take a few minutes and just like, so our listeners can know who you are, at least what you want them to pull out you, and then we'll just jump into it and go from there.

Annie Cushing: [00:00:57] Yeah, that sounds great. So I had an interesting journey to the digital marketing world. I actually started way back in the day in editorial and I was working for a publishing company and we just started. Of asking kind of big questions about where the traffic was coming from. And this was back in 2006 and there wasn't an established, uh, analytics field, especially not web analytics.

It was the wild, wild west. So I just started learning everything I could. Like at night and just kind of, you know, experimenting and after about a year or two of doing that, I thought, oh, I wonder if other people have the same questions because there weren't that many blogs at that time. And the ones that were out there were very technical, much more written for developers than marketers and analysts.

And so I decided to try a different approach and it kind of gained traction and. Yeah, my, my brand analytics has started as a joke on Twitter and became a brand, you know, quite accidentally. So, uh, and now, you know, I really focus on data. My tagline is I make data sexy. I wrote the books, making data sexy.

Yeah. Yeah. That was. Bucket list item for me, that was something I had wanted to do for years. And I just wanted to be able to give people kind of a desktop

For a quick primer on some Amazon marketing (SEO and PPC) you can go check out the episode What is Amazon SEO and Amazon Advertising? which we did with Ginny Marvin in the past.

There is also a video primer from Robyn that she did for SEMRush that can give you some quick bits too.

Still with us? On to the show!

Ways to Sell on Amazon

Amazon Merch SellerAmazon Seller CentralAmazon Vendor CentralKindle Platform

Amazon & Rules

One of the big points that Robyn talks about is how you really need to follow the rules. Whether you intend to have your mom or family review your products, that can get your product removed. If you "optimize" your backend to target some copyrighted terms can also get you in trouble.

In short, you need to keep a positive experience for users and Amazon or they will kick you off the platform.

Additional Resources

If after this you still have questions you can visit Robyn's profile or go join her FB group.

AZListingSupport

Full Transcript:

Matt Siltala: [00:00:00] Welcome to another exciting episode of the business of digital podcast, featuring your host, Matt  and Dave roar. Hey guys, excited. You'd have everybody join us on another one of these business of digital podcast episodes, and we're just going to jump right into it today, Dave. We have special guest Robin Johnson with us, um, founder, CEO of marketplace blueprint, and besides being an Amazon expert and a listing optimization expert.

Central and all that good stuff. If I missed anything, uh, Robin, please feel free to jump in and correct me, but, uh, welcome, uh, to the, to the show. And thank you so much for joining

Robyn Johnson: [00:00:42] us today. Well, thank you for having me. I always love getting to like nerd out about marketing stuff and sharing a little bit about Amazon because it's this backwards, upside down crazy place, but it's a fun place to play

Matt Siltala: [00:00:54] indeed.

And, and yes, and I I'm actually, you know, I'm looking forward to hearing what you have to say. Um, you know, this is, this is stuff, obviously that's super interesting. So I'm glad that our listeners are going to get a chance to, uh, to listen. And so again, thank you for joining us now, Dave, I'm just going to go ahead and let you, uh, uh, kick it off with, uh, where you want this to start and we'll just, uh, we'll go from there.

So

Dave Rohrer: [00:01:17] gracias. I think we decided we actually planned this time, which is. Um, shocking for us way to organize today. The, I think Robin, just the, what did you see in the last year, year and a half from just before COVID we were just talking about it to today. Like has Amazon and just what you've been seeing, gone crazy.

Is it finally settling down? Is it dealing even crazier now? Like what have you kind of seen from the number of people coming on? Yeah. You know, in general on Amazon.

Robyn Johnson: [00:01:51] Well, you know, COVID was a really good time to be an Amazon seller to be having your products on Amazon. We, of course, you know, as an agency that specializes in that we got really busy.

Uh, you know, there was a definite increase in the amount of people who were on Amazon, just because people were trying to get products. People were, you know, locked down for awhile. Uh, but we also saw. Team the way that brands were looking at Amazon. Um, before in fact there were several brands that we had talked to before and they said, uh, before COVID, they said, it's just not a priority for us.

Amazon is not where we're really focused. It's not really important to us. We don't really care what happens on there. And then just a couple months later, Amazon was for some company. Only real distribution channel, depending on what kinds of stores. So especially products that were made primarily in like specialty gift stores or, you know, me stores that weren't deemed essential.

Uh, we kind of became their only a distribution point for a

The following data you see is from 53 responses captured via a survey that we promoted the last week of June 2021. We had hoped to get 100 responses but a late start to getting it out there and the fact that lots of people were out of office or working towards the holiday weekend was just bad timing on our part.

That said we DID get just above the minimum we required and we know the data is still interesting to see for us - and hopefully you as well.

Please also note that when we recorded we had 50 responses but between then and 24 hours later when Dave started putting the write-up and files together a few more had trickled in (there were 53 in final count).

What type of company are you responding for? In-house or Agency?

The breakout was 60/40 for the most part with 60% of those responding working or leading agencies.

What type of marketing roles are you hiring for? Full-Time or Part-Time?

The final number came in with almost 75% hiring all full-time employees. If we split the rest that puts it around 85-87% of the roles hired or that companies are looking to hire for are FTE and not part-time roles. The one question we would have liked to ask was around contractors vs employee but we were trying to keep the survey short!

Where are these roles going to work? Will they be Remote or In-Office?

The result here did shock us a bit. While not 50/50 we didn't expect more people to be hiring for Remote than In-Office. As not all states/countries are 100% open maybe some of these remote roles will move to in-office later this year or next year. Maybe we really are seeing a move to full time remote roles. What do you think?

What is the size of the company you are representing? 1-3 (startup), 4-7 (small business), 8-10, 11-25, 26-50, 50-100 (midsize business), 101-500, 501-1000 (large business), 1000+ (enterprise)?

Almost 1/4 of those that responded are at Enterprise (1000+) type companies. When we combine that with the number of full-time roles that are remote that is interesting (to us at least). Another great question would have been to look into the industries that these companies in but alas we will have to let one of you do your own survey!

Looking at even more of the data we have some 45% of the respondents working for companies with 500+ employees. On the flip side we had just 4% (2) that work at companies of 1-3 and when we combine all the responses from 1-10 employees we got 25% of the respondents. We were actually happy as even with just our 53 responses we had a nice mix of company sizes represented.

How many roles have you filled or are you looking to fill this year? 0, 1-2, 3-4, 5-6, 7-10 or 11+?

Just under 50% are looking to fill or have filled 1-2 roles, 23% are looking to or have filled 3-4 and 15% are looking at 7-10 roles. The high percentage of companies with so many roles did shock us as we really didn't expect companies to be adding so much headcount so quickly this year. That said, we are really happy to see it!

What marketing type teams are you hiring for or hired for this year? Paid Team, Social Media Team, PR Team, Events Team, SEO Team, Analytics Team, Dev Ops Team or Other?

For those looking for a job or if you are looking to fill roles this chart is all about the competition. There are lots of new hires for SEO and Paid Teams which is good for those looking to move or find new roles. If you are hiring for SEO or Paid know that it is going to be a fight for talent!

Once past those a good number of roles for Social and Analytics are out there with PR and Dev Ops close behind.

We also had some interesting write-ins that could fall under some of the breakouts we had but gives some additional detail into jobs: Marketing Automation, Demand Gen, Editorial, eCommerce, and Email.

As Dave looks back he realizes that roles around eCommerce, Email, CRM and Demand Gen could have also been added! In the end it is tough because everyone calls things someth

Dave has participated in panels on this topic and the guys have hinted or talked about data, analytics and even Google Analytics but never done something like this. So join them as they walk through 7 of the more often mistakes they see when it comes to Analytics and Google Analytics.

Past Episodes About Analytics

All our shows that have touched on the topic of Analytics aka Analytics Podcast which goes well beyond just Google AnalyticsWeb Analytics Basics For Every BusinessThe Digital Marketing Checklist for 2019 & BeyondWhy your Analytics Conversion Data is TrashSigns That You Need to Audit Your Lead ProcessWhy Your Marketing Team Needs Documentation and Processes

#1 - Redundancy

We just talked about it the other day in our Redundant Redundancy episode. Does more than one person have access and skills to navigate and use your Analytics solution?

Do you have more than one person that knows how to use Google Analytics, Tag Manager and any and all of your important Analytics solutions.

#2 - Lack of Attention

We all get busy with work, life, kids, friends, broke down car, errands, etc. Do you ever look at your analytics? Does anyone? What insights are you missing out on? Could your content be better? Could you be getting more conversions?

If you are the owner/boss and simply do not have time to ever look at your web analytics you need to appoint or hire someone to do so!

Would you know if someone wiped your analytics tracking code from the site? How long could it be off the site before you would notice? What if your site is down for hours/days - how long would it take for you to notice?

#3 - Goals

Look at goals and event tracking but at the very least look at the Goals that are setup in your Google Analytics. Are they setup? Are they still relevant now from when you set them up years ago? If your site is focused on generating leads or calls, review what you are tracking with Goals and ask the questions about your website.

Do you watch your Google My Business account? Do you respond to reviews on Yelp and Google? Do you look at the data of visits and conversions from those and other places?

#4 - IP Filters

Do you have an office with lots of people often visiting your site? Do you have consultants/contractors or a number of people remote somewhere often hitting the site? Do you have their IP addresses filtered? DO IT!

If you don't have that traffic filtered out it could be making you think you have more traffic from certain cities, metros or states/countries that really you don't.

#5 - Proper Installation of Google Analytics

If you use Google Tag Manager, Tealium or some other tag manger to add Google Analytics to your site you DO NOT need to also add Google Analytics in your site's code. This most often happens when a site is on WordPress and someone installs the GA code into the WP theme but then someone else installs Google Tag Manager and adds the code there.

When you move a site from Dev -> Staging -> Production or Dev -> Production you can wipe out your GA or Google Tag Manager code. If you update the Theme or don't realize that the GA code was in a theme and you get a new one or update it - often the site's GA code gets wiped and no one notices. This often impacts Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster as well.

#6 - Most Often Missed Settings

Exclude Robots/Spam and Track Site Searches - these two settings in Google Analytics are the ones Dave most often sees missed by sites. Check your settings now if you aren't sure if they are both configured.

#7 - Set Time on Calendar

This is a bit of a solution to #2 but even if you hire someone or have someone that is looking at your Google Analytics, you should too. If you are listening to this episode or reading this write up you likely care enough about the business that you should dedicate 30 minutes a week to dig into your data and Google Analytics. At the start of each block of time ask yourself a

This episode was not planned but after a run-in on our own mission critical solution (online podcast recording solution) we thought it was a perfect time to dig into how companies need to think about having redundancy of skills and solutions that are mission critical to them.

Tool Finding & Selection

If you missed our episode with Kevin Mullett go listen to Tool Discovery and Selection Tips W/ Kevin Mullett as we really dig into how he goes about finding options for X online and keeps a long list. Now you don't need 10 alternatives for something but having 1-2 that you have already tested, vetted and shortlisted may not be a bad idea.

Transcriptions

For this podcast we use a few hardware and software tools. One that we talk about is Trycast and Zencaster but there is also the transcription service we use.

While again we love the one we use what if it went away? What if there is something better for us we just didn't know about? So for an episode but also for our knowledge we did What is the Best Transcription Service?.

Keep Short Lists

Keep aware of what solutions are still active, winning awards, adding features, and just staying updated. Maybe every X months or once a year take a look at your shorts lists and just quickly check on them. Over time that "short list" may evolve or change and you need to make sure that when the time comes that you need to use a service/solution from that list if it is outdated it might be useless. Companies are sold and close so keeping a loose list of updated services for mission critical services for your business is paramount to you staying in business.

Redundant Skills aka Cross Train

No matter if you are an agency or in-house you also need to cross train. It is likely that you have one person that owns X where X could be a vendor relationship, knowledge of tools or services or just the keys and logins to something. What happens if they leave, something bad happens and they are out of work for awhile or maybe they just go on vacation. If they are on vacation and you need access to X RIGHT NOW, what is your plan?

Think about cross training and creating internal backups. Have Suzie train John on how to use a tool. If there are webinars or new feature meetings with that vendor, have them join and just listen. Maybe even assign them a small task every now and then just so they can stay updated on how things work. They don't need to be experts on it but should have a basic understanding of how to log in or fire it up and do some of the basics. This way you are also having your staff and skills shared and not locked into one key person.

Mission Critical = Find Backups

If something is mission critical to your business make a backup. Whatever the skill, service or whatever - make sure you have a short list of backups for it so that your business is NOT crippled by one thing going down or closing.

Full Transcript

Matt Siltala: [00:00:00] Welcome to another exciting episode of the business of digital podcast, featuring your host, Matt scintilla and Dave roar. Hey guys, excited to have everyone join us on another one of these businesses, digital podcast episodes as always Dave, how's

Dave Rohrer: [00:00:17] it going, bud? It is. It is. Yes. Hey,

Matt Siltala: [00:00:26] as of right now, there's none. There's no noises in my background anymore. So I probably shouldn't have said that. I just changed it, but you did. Um, so funny enough when, uh, Dave and I had planned to record this episode, um, or the series that we're doing right now, um, I get a little ping from Dave saying, Hey, our normal.

Uh, service that we used is down. And so I'd sit in there for a while and he didn't say anything else. And then pretty soon an alternative way to record these episodes popped up. And Dave and I started chatting about it and we said, Hey, you know what? This would make a great idea for an episode about making sure that you have redundancies.

And so that's k

A special thanks to Duane for hopping on and talking with the guys and sharing his wisdom. The episode digs into the growth of digital marketing, carving out your path, avoiding getting stuck in your career and much more.

What's Eating Duane Grape?

The alternative title was coined by Duane and really is how this episode came to be. The guys had planned to cover this in the coming months but when Duane went on a FB messenger rant to Dave it was easy for the guys to think - WE ARE TALKING ABOUT THIS NOW!

And that is what we did.

What Does Growth Look Like?

If you only know SEO, you can and will be stuck. Are you a T shaped marketer? If not you need to think beyond just Social, just Paid, just Email, just Technical SEO, just Organic Social, etc.

Are you worried about Core Web Vitals? Why are you suddenly caring now when you had a year? Why did you wait years to suddenly care about how fast your site is?

So you solve Site Speed. Do you think you will get a promotion? Will you get more head count? More budget? Did conversions increase? Did you drive more sales?

So you have something Deep for that T - now expand. Learn how the other teams work, the other marketing departments, the other departments and learn to work better with them and help them. If you want to move up, move beyond where you are - avoid Silos and get out there.

Leadership & Shout-outs

Some special shout-outs from the team during the show go to:

Cam BalzerSteve KrullRae HoffmanPJ FuscoBill Hartzer

Do You Know the ROI?

Pay attention to what is driving leads, sales, and revenue. You have to be focused on UX, bounce rate, revenue, sales, all things money.

As Duane says (paraphrased) - you can't throw that over the fence, you need to know what the impact of what you do is.

Intent & The User

If you take nothing else away from the episode take these things to do to help you move up in your career:

Worry about the user experienceWorry about the cost/revenue associated with projectsWorry about intent

Full Transcript

Matt Siltala: [00:00:00] Welcome to another exciting episode of the business of digital podcast, featuring your host, Matt  and Dave roar. Hey guys, excited to have you on another one of these business of digital podcast episodes. And today we definitely have a fun one for you deli Dave. Yes. So without further ado, I'm going to make you wait anymore.

We have a good friend of both of ours, Dwayne Forester. He is the vice president. Uh, industry insights with Yext and Dwayne, thank you so much for

Duane: [00:00:32] joining us. My friend, a gentlemen, always a pleasure to be here with you guys. Thank you. So

Matt Siltala: [00:00:38] we decided it happens every time we do something like this, but we decided we should probably start recording because like the last 30 minutes that we've been talking about, we're like, Hey.

You know, most of that stuff would be good to have on our recording stuff. I want to jump into it. But, uh, before, before we do, uh, you know, I know I said that the whole VP of industry insights expert, if there's anything else that you want people to know about you, Dwayne, um, feel free to jump in and just let us know.

And then we'll just go from there.

Duane: [00:01:09] Okay. So look, I, you know, I, I'm not going to assume that that, uh, anyone recognizes my name. So I'll give you guys a quick rundown. Um, hopefully this will give you a bit of a backstory and some of the, what I'm about to talk about or rant about might have a little bit context.

Um, I, uh, uh, started my career in gambling way back when, uh, worked for a gambling site in Canada. Um, ended up with Microsoft after that wrote a couple of books. Um, I, uh, launched webmaster tools when I was with Microsoft at being, um, you know, help the team with schema.org, that kind of stuff. Um, you know, conference speaker, all of that background, um, ended up running an agency for a little while,