The Business of Digital Podcast

Tips for Starting an Online Business

As always - Mat and Dave are not lawyers. Unlike Ruth who is one (but you still need to hire her to get your questions answered). We are also not your accountant. So when you are starting a business or digging into some of these questions, seek out experts on tax law, business law and everything in between to help you.

What we do know and can help you with - setting up your digital presence!

Get Legal & Protected - Talk to a lawyer and account - get legal and get things set up correctly the first time. From tax benefits to writes offs to make it easier to sell, there are a number of reasons to make this your first step.

Stake Your Claim - Before you fill out final paperwork around a name and logo, claim your domain and social profiles. Go out and control your brand but also before you pay for a logo and file paperwork make sure you can get a domain and social profiles. For those that don't think they need a domain because you have social networks, Etsy/Ebay or some store setup - still go and get that domain!

Branding - Websites can range from simple to crazy custom. If you know or have a designer, awesome. For those that don't - you don't have to freak out as there are ways to "cheaply" get a site together and live. While we don't love solutions like Squarespace and Wix, but they can help you get your site live quickly and pretty cheaply.

Marketing - start letting your friends, family and anyone you talk to know about your new business.

We didn't get to talk about hosting too much but we did recommend that you DO NOT use free hosting type sites. There are many hosting providers for even small (wb) projects that won't break the bank each month. We HIGHLY suggest you go with a real solution and not host it free as a subdomain on a service that doesn't let you control anything.

Episode 80 Mentioned Tools & Resources

Legal Zoom

Canva

Knowem

Domainr

Management Styles of Teams & The Super Mario Effect

This episode was most recently inspired by Mark Rober's (aka Glitter Bomb/NASA Guy) TED talk that Dave happened to find (thanks to the YouTube also). The TED talk is called the "Super Mario Effect" - we won't go deep into details but a link to the video is below so that you can watch it all.

The Super Mario Effect - Tricking Your Brain into Learning More | Mark Rober | TEDxPenn

When 50,000 of Mark Rober's 3 million YouTube subscribers participated in a basic coding challenge, the data all pointed to what Rober has dubbed the Super Mario Effect.

Do you know what motivates your team members and teams?

Advancement?Starting their own business?Money?Praise?Learning?Being Challenged?Team Members?

Think about what your style is for managing teams and people. Does your team respond? Do certain people not respond? Start asking why? The goal is to get and keep your team and employees motivated, happy and challenged.

Lastly, think about how your company treats "failure" and projects/campaigns that fail. Work on making them learning experiences more than something to fear.

Episode 79 Mentioned Tools & Resources

YouTuber builds glitter bomb that farts on unsuspecting package thievesSeer Salary Transparency & Compensation Strategy

Dig into the complex topic of Google, Antitrust, EU, and more with special podcast guests Elmer Boutin and Steve Cernak.

Google and Antitrust

In the episode, the nonlawyers Dave and Mat (and Elmer as well) are joined by a real lawyer. As we stated in the past, Steve is a lawyer but not your lawyer! The notes below are a fairly high-level summary so while we try and break things down here this is one of those topics and episodes where you really need to listen to it yourself.

What is the difference between Antitrust (US) and Competition Law (EU & Most of the World)?

Just because a company is large does NOT make it an antitrust or competition issue. A company must not only be large but be a "bad actor" as well.

Monopolist - you can be at 60, 70 or even just 80% of market share, not 100% to run into antitrust and compeition rules.

Monopoly - big actors taking bad actions.

What does a "bad act" look like?

Does it hurt or help consumers choice?

Does it directly exclude competitors and do so in a non-competitive way? An example of this is the Google Shopping case in the EU currently happening.

One of the examples given is when you search for the weather (example below).

Google Shopping Case

The show digs slightly into the current Google vs. EU case in regards to Google Shopping. For more, you can leverage the links below.

Antitrust: Commission fines Google €2.42 billion for abusing dominance as search engine by giving illegal advantage to own comparison shopping service

Google hit with record EU fine over Shopping service

EU regulators receive second Google report on shopping case

In response to EU antitrust ruling, Google Shopping now shows ads from competing shopping engines

Google vs EU Android Case

Again we encourage you to listen to our discussion but also look at the resources below for additional context. Is Android good for the ecosystem? What about Apple and their gated system? Is Google being a "bad actor" or are they protecting the consumer? What do you think?

What about Google Dominance?

US Search Engine Market Share - Google @ 87%, Yahoo @ 6.25% and Bing @5.5%

Europe Search Engine Market Share - Google @ 93.25%, Yandex @ 2.5% and Bing @2.25%

Worldwide Search Engine Market Share - Google @ 92.25%, Bing @2.5%, Yahoo @ 2.25% and Baidu @ 1%

Will the US start clamping down on Ad Platforms like Facebook and Google?

The short answer is of course - it depends and maybe.

Much of the growth comes from FB and Google per this article.

Bloomberg quotes eMarketer and puts the number just under 60% for Google & FB.

Google and Facebook remain the dominant digital advertising companies, with a combined 58 percent of the $111 billion market, slipping from 59 percent in 2017, according to EMarketer.

2019 Digital Marketing Predictions

Yes, we went there and this was 100% Dave's idea so yell at him if needed! The guys dig into a number of topics and give a number of examples beyond what is here so do give the show a listen.

Social Media

MS - usefulness and teaching more front and center in Social content. Mat references Photo Pils and their Instagram stories where they take you step by step on how to do things with their app.

DR - an overlap with SEO and Social content where less is more and more quality over quantity. Give demos of products, walkthroughs or behind the scenes or make more engaging/educational content.

What you need to do is create content that solves a problem – content that moves, motivates, and connects with people, said Matt Siltala, president of Avalaunch Media.

SEO

MS - if nothing else, focus on content that answers questions and solves a problem. Mat states that this isn't some groundbreaking prediction but still thinks people don't do this enough and hopes that people will make more content in 2019 do this. Mat also brings up offline and online - content promotion doesn't just have to live online. Look offline for ways to promote content.

DR - Mobile? Video? 2019 is the year of..... Think back before the internet. Businesses wouldn't just create content because it was a Monday or a Thursday or the 12th of a month. Have a purpose with the content you are creating. Start with a purpose, make your content team/people put more focus on the purpose and not just creating content.

Do you sense a theme or pattern yet?

WordPress, Angular/JS & CMS

MS - business as usual for most companies but look for more people to embrace Gutenberg and the new WordPress.

DR - thinks it will be hard to see large enterprises making the first move to Gutenberg without more testing and time. Google also recently came out with a plugin for WordPress which is interesting on many levels. Wix, Squarespace and the similar still are easier and don't require graphic designers, developers or just technical know-how.

Paid Search i.e. SEM i.e. PPC

MS - In 2019, marketers should make a push for clients to go beyond just Google Ads.

DR - Paid can mean many things. It isn't just Google Ads (AdWords) or Google AdWords and Bing Ads. There is also more and more automation, especially for Google Ads. How far will Google (and others) push automation and AI in bidding and overall management? Likely more but how much?

What do you think?

Tweet us, drop us a note on Facebook or leave a comment below with your own prediction. Winners get bragging rights in 2020!

Episode 77 Mentioned Tools & Resources

Year in Review: Top 10 digital marketing expert columns of 2018

10 Important 2019 SEO Trends You Need to Know

Tony Verre

In this episode, the guys dig into various tools to help you find influencers, reach out to influencers and all around launch an influencer marketing campaign.

Tools for Influencer Marketing

In this episode, the guys dig into various tools to help you find influencers, reach out to influencers and all around launch an influencer marketing campaign. Mat kicks things off by quickly running through a number of the tools listed and Dave wraps things up with a few others as well as some tips on some free ways to find influencers as well.

Ninja Outreach - has some 25 million influencers and can help you contact them.

Pitchbox - great for the outreach portion of influencer marketing.

Group High - Find bloggers and social media influencers, research and review websites, measure content and the results of influencer marketing and blogger outreach.

Buzzsumo - not just for finding content ideas and validating them as Dave found out. Explore the Influencer tab and find a wealth of ideas and people that you can maybe work with.

Famebit - looking for influencers on YouTube specifically? Or help with videos? This is a great place to look.

Buzzstream - another tool that Mat mentions that can be used for reaching out to influencers.

Upfluence - Has 1 million influencers and provides the leading influencer marketing tools to help you select your influencers and manage & analyze your influencer campaign performance at scale.

Reddit Search - search Reddit and find topics, threads and users.

Intellifluence - is an influencer marketing service that enables brands and influencers to connect, collaborate and reach their goals. Is a great platform (there are many others too) that can be a great place to start if you are new to influencer marketing.

There are also a number of content tools that you likely use for other things that you can also use to help with your influencer outreach, finding, and qualifying.

More Episode 76 Mentioned Resources

The Ultimate Guide To Using Influencer Marketing

What are the tools used to search for social influencer for instagram related to influencer marketing?

Siltala's Beard Twitter

Top Rank Marketing's Blog