The Business of Digital Podcast

Who knew there was so much to asking a question. A 7 year old article spurs a debate on how to better ask questions and improve the answers we get.

Did you listen to Do You Deal in Trust? How to Unlock it for Your Business W/ Jay Sofer? If you haven't do check it out as it was the first time Dave took what he learned from the Time article and tried to apply it.

The article from 2013 of all things that was shared is called This Post Will Make You A More Effective Communicator In 90 Seconds that you really should give a read. Go. We will wait. So if you were to interview Elon Musk would you be like Charlie Rose or Kevin Rose?

Kevin: What led you into entrepreneurship? Was it something that you always knew that you wanted to be, an entrepreneur on your own? Or did you stumble into it?

Charlie: What are you doing in terms of planetary exploration?

Kevin: Where do you come up with your best ideas? Are you on vacation, or do you wake up in the middle of the night and draw things down?

Charlie: How did you go about the design?

Kevin: When did you decide to get into computers and technology? Did you start coding? Or was it a lot of…?

Charlie: What do you think?

Most of us would likely conduct the interview like Kevin Rose. Matt and Dave both discuss during the episode the challenge that it is to really nail a question and keep an interview to a conversation. It. Is. Tough. So again, how did Dave do?

When Can Asking Better Questions Help?

Job Interviews (either side)Talking with ProspectTalking with CoworkersSales and Customer ServiceAccount Managers talking with clients

If nothing else, when you are asking questions just stop at the (?) question mark. Don't keep going, don't give options. End at the ? and let someone answer you. Don't give options or multiple questions and parts.

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 business of digital podcast episodes. And today we are just going to jump right into it, Dave, how's it going, man?

Dave Rohrer: [00:00:20] It's going, it's a crazy end of the week for us.

Not when you hear this, but you know, for us, it is

Matt Siltala: [00:00:27] that's right. Exactly. So. What we're going to talk about today, guys is we're going to talk about how to ask questions and how it can impact your business. And, um, we just got done doing a interview with a friend of ours and, and it may or may not. I don't know when the,

Dave Rohrer: [00:00:49] this is a couple of weeks after.

So if you did not hear our interview with Jay on unlocking trust, then you should go look us into it

Matt Siltala: [00:00:59] so people [00:01:00] can critique us and you can tell us how good we did or did not do on this. But, uh, this is an interesting one. And, and I guess I'm just going to turn it over to you and share what you want about the article that, uh, you mentioned, uh, Or that you, that you've put here that nobody else can see, and you can talk about it and just jump into that with this.

Dave Rohrer: [00:01:19] And this is actually, I believe I might be wrong because I didn't write it in notes when I found it, um, will Reynolds fault. Oh yeah. For the better, I believe it was him and I might be mistaken. I'd have to look at LinkedIn to be sure, but he posted this link and I thought it was interesting as I read it.

It's the title of it is it's a seven, almost seven year old post on time. This post will make you a more effective communicator in 90 seconds. Well,

Matt Siltala: [00:01:49] he's really good at having that evergreen time.

Dave Rohrer: [00:01:51] I know. Yeah. It's like, Holy cow. Talk about an old, um, post that's actually really interesting. Yeah. And [00:02:00] as I read it, I thought about every time we interview someone, How are we doing?

Yeah. How did I do? And it's usually I actually fall into this trap and what it is, what the trap is. Um, it's summarized it quite well towards the end is a, there it is. Usually pe

This episode digs into the idea of creating or doing things offline and then bringing it back to your online channels. In the past we talked about some online product marketing examples but that isnt quite the same, that really is more link bait type items.

This episode digs into the idea of creating or doing things offline and then bringing it back to your online channels. In the past we talked about some online product marketing examples but that isnt quite the same, that really is more link bait type items.

The examples today really focus on doing things IRL and offline and then filming or documenting it to some degree.

Offline Social Media Marketing Examples

Below are the examples that we referenced during the episode but also for past episodes we mentioned that you should revisit or listen to if you havent:

Link Bait Product MarketingMaybe Digital Marketing Isn’t the Answer

On Twitter is https://twitter.com/griner/status/963540295832014848 this great example from Arby's but it could be any outreach to those fans that you find on Twitter or Facebook or even on a forum.

And the example found in a Facebook Group was this great one about a florist that created content yes but really gave back and helped many people on a day that they might have been down.

So if nothing else just remember that you can create content offline or in other non traditional ways and share it online and in your social media accounts. You don't just have to create some animated gif or some static image but think about going beyond that and really reaching out to people when you can.

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 everyone join us for another one of these business of digital podcast episodes. As always. We've got Dave a re ready to go. How's it going, bud

Dave Rohrer: [00:00:20] is going in, is going in, is going

Matt Siltala: [00:00:22] awesome.

So today we're just going to jump right into it guys. We are talking. We're gonna start talking about taking social media offline and we may or may not, uh, massage that title a little bit. I don't know Dave, but, uh, just jump in and, and sheriffs your thoughts on this one. I know that this is one that's been brewing for a while and there's some tweets or some Facebook posts that have sparked this, but, uh,

Dave Rohrer: [00:00:46] On this one only for two years is only two years.

I guess that's part of the, I guess, good or bad that we've been podcasting that long, then we can have ideas that we just don't get to for two years. Um,

Matt Siltala: [00:00:58] very true. It,

Dave Rohrer: [00:00:59] yeah, [00:01:00] it's like, um, But, yeah, I know we actually just double check, check to make sure we hadn't covered this before. So episode 41, we did link bait, product marketing, product marketing, where we talked about, um, like the Australian tourism ad that they did a long time ago.

Yeah. Um, Adidas when they were selling the October Fest, um, O'Reilly auto center when they did the, they still have it, the flux capacitor, is it on their site? Like that kind of stuff, but that's

Matt Siltala: [00:01:28] all on,

Dave Rohrer: [00:01:30] you know, that's all online stuff. And then more recently we talked about the maybe digital marketing isn't the answer.

Yeah. Um, which of course, you know, we talked digital marketing. That was how I think we kicked off this year. I'm with Volvo and a couple of other places, basically talking about how they do their KPIs. The focus for this one though, is a couple of examples I found a while ago. And there was some other stuff that happened more recently that I saw, but one of the examples is a [00:02:00] florist for weddings or for like, I think it was for Valentine's day, he had leftover flowers.

So she took all of that leftover flowers. Created, I think it was like 10 or 15 additional bouquets and then went through drive-throughs at 10 or 15 different places ordered like a water or something. Um, and just gave a card and handed those flowers to whoever was in drive through.

Matt Siltala: [00:02:29] Oh, that

A question about outsourcing links sends the guys down a rabbit hole of recent articles and digging into link building basics that can help any website.

Somewhere at some point Dave came across a question around link building. The thing about this question is that it could have been asked this week, earlier this year, 2 years ago, 5 years ago or even 10 years ago.

If there is a Google Chat or Twitter chat with someone from Google you can almost guarantee that a question along the lines of the example below will be asked.

Am I crazy? I have a job up on (site X) for back links. I have no linkable assets or that offers any value, how is someone going to get links for me?Also where should they link? I have different pages like money pages and my home page, where do I want the links to go?I’m new and confused? What is the correct way to get links or is this the way to do it?- The Internet (edited and paraphrased from a few original questions)

The goal of this episode was not to answer everything about link building but rather to try and dispense as much information as we could for those just getting started. Here are some additional resources and episodes you may want to check out:

Link Building Resources

How to Identify Site Quality for Link Building100th Episode With Debra MastalerOur episode from last year that gives a history of link building that breaks down what people have done over the years.E40 – Link Building is NOT DeadGoogle Says Don’t Focus on “Link Juice” Focus on this InsteadGoogle: You Don't Need A Good Distribution Between Followed & Unfollowed LinksGoogle: Guest Blog Post Links Have Zero ValueGoogle: Links From Wikipedia Does Nothing For Your Site & Has No SEO Value

Additional Link Building Topics

The episode digs into a number of micro topics around link building. If you want some better ideas of what else we covered, here you go:

Work in boring industries? Mat walks through some things he has done in the past.What is a good link? How should I think about what sites to target?Reasons to link build - not just about "pushing link juice".Why should you be number #1? Why should you be on the front page of Google/Bing? If you can't answer that you likely have more work to do (besides worrying about links).Is your content the same as 50 other sites? Would you pay to advertise on a site? This is one of many ways to judge and "score" a site to help understand if you want links from a site.If the link is something you can scale there are likely risks and downside to it - are you okay with taking on that level of risk?Do you actually have something worth linking too?

Full Transcript

Matt Siltala: [00:00:00] Welcome to another exciting episode of the, the business of digital podcast, featuring your host, Matt scintilla and Dave roar. Hey guys, excited to have another business of digital podcast episode going for you. So we are going to just jump straight into this one. How's it going, Dave? It's

Dave Rohrer: [00:00:19] going, it's going.

Matt Siltala: [00:00:21] Awesome. So, so we're going to talk about, we're going to, we're going to dive into an SEO question. We're going to call this one SEO question too. Cause I, I had to ask you when we, uh, before we were recording, like have we only done one other question like this? And then yes,

Dave Rohrer: [00:00:40] I know you did a, a list of like, we were gonna, we had 10 and we covered like four.

Matt Siltala: [00:00:46] Right. We did as much as we could with.

Dave Rohrer: [00:00:49] Yeah. It was like 20, 25 minutes and we did four. So we're just going to do one today.

Matt Siltala: [00:00:53] We're going to do one today, but it is a big general discussion. We are going to dive into one on [00:01:00] drum roll. Link-building everybody's favorite topic, right, Dave now. All right.

Dave Rohrer: [00:01:08] Least favorite topic.

Matt Siltala: [00:01:09] So this, uh, and I like how you set it up. When we were chatting earlier, you know, this could have. This is, this is a question that could have been posed four years ago, two years ago, a month ago. And so, um,

Dav

This episode and interview focus on Jay Sofer of LockBusters NYC and how to unlock and build trust with people offline and online.

Jay Sofer runs a locksmith business in the New York City area where he operates in not only a big and competitive city but also a very competitive industry. Jay adopted using Yelp quickly after her started but has since branched out to focus on many other online opportunities.

Looking for the articles we mentioned?

Zooming to ConclusionsHow to Earn Customers' TrustAnd a video Jay did for Yelp recently.

Building Trust

This episode and interview however don't focus on any of that, it focuses on how to unlock and build trust with people offline and online.

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 everybody join us on another one of these business of digital podcast episodes. And we have a treat for you today. I know that we have Dave here with us. How's it going, Dave?

Dave Rohrer: [00:00:21] It's going, it's going.

Matt Siltala: [00:00:22] We also have a long time. Friend and bud of mine. And, uh, I'd like to introduce everybody to Jay Sofer, Jay, how's it going? But

Jay Sofer: [00:00:32] Hey man. Good to be with you guys. Thanks for having me

Matt Siltala: [00:00:35] now, just to give everybody a little bit of an idea, when you, when you start to talk, I'll let you share any information, URL, whatever you want to everybody.

But, uh, uh, Jay and I go back a long way. Um, Jay actually was one of my first clients way back in the day. And, uh, basically I guess the simplified way of putting it J as your a, a East village or a New York city, a locksmith [00:01:00] that the easiest way to put it, um, you know, for on, on my end. And so, uh, we were talking about just the kind of trust that it takes to be able to go into someone's house.

And when you do that kind of work and, and Dave had this idea too, To have you on and talk about them. So I kind of want to like let Dave position it, but before he jumps into it and starts asking you the questions, can I give a little bit of your background, Jane, let everybody know who you are.

Jay Sofer: [00:01:29] Yeah, sure thing.

So Yemen, we do go back a long way. I mean, you, you meet right, right. When I got my start, you know, and, and, uh, I, I love the theme of this podcast because, you know, the way I became your client was because I trusted you and, you know, I was. Trying to have better exposure on the internet via search engine optimization and the decent website.

And I was, I don't want to even say a fish out of water. I, I, I wasn't, yeah. Even a fish and I didn't even know what water was, [00:02:00] you know, I mean just a complete deer in headlights and, you know, that's how, I mean, people hire me because they don't know what they're doing. Why, why, why would I be relevant then if they did, you know, and you know, to, to gain someone's.

Trust, you know, Ty for me to be hired and invited into your house where your kids live, you know, where you keep your life's work into your business, you know, where you have all your sensitive information he needs. It means a lot to me. And it's, it's a big responsibility and I, you know, not only do I want to earn your trust, you know, online, that's sort of the first that's like you kind of walking into my virtual store and, and, and, you know, being received well and, and establishing trust from that point.

But then when I show up, you know, so. I learned this job as a kid. And, um, you know, part of, part of my intro to trust was just to see how old school businesses work. I mean, my dad had a shop for 43 years. You know, in an old school neighborhood, in New York city? Um, my, my first job was actually with, uh, one of his friends who had, uh, a shop for, uh, just about the same [00:03:00] time.

I mean, I think I was about 13 or 14 years old and this guy was about 80, I think, at the time. And yeah, so like, I, you know, I got to learn fr

A thread online (as it often does) gives Dave an idea to dig into how people ask questions online, how people "help and how we can do both better.

If you listen you will realize that we had no idea what the true topic and direction was but that it was going to be a discussion on asking better questions, helping people online and in your company and really just being a good steward to others.

The initial idea came from a Reddit thread about Sitemap XML and how someone was struggling with an issue at their job. Most if not all the answers simply said X was dumb, why would you do that, and were really not productive. (Note - here is our episode on Guide to Sitemap XML and CMS)

Some of the suggestions people gave that maybe people thought they were helping but really they weren't. Some of these answers are from other questions as well!

Just change the CMSHave the developers use the API.Sorry but If you are even considering doing X manually, then you don't know what you are doing.That CMS sucks.Why don't you just use X tool?OMG I hate X!

Now there were some good and great responses but I am just focusing on those that were less than helpful.

We Need to Give More Details

If you are asking a question online somewhere (forum, group, Twitter, anywhere!!) give information. Tell us why and what and limitations and as much as you can. Digital Marketing is a Puzzle... let us know more than just one piece to help you solve it!

The more people know the more they can consider your resources and unique circumstances around your question. The more detail the more the answers may actually help you.

What brewery should I visit?What CMS should I use?What software for X should I use?Where should I go to eat in (insert large city name here)?

We Need Ask More Questions

Instead of just spouting out that X is horrible or X is a bad solution ask questions. Ask questions to clarify why they are doing something or why they are trying to get to Point B. Ask about budget, resources, what they like, where they are - ask questions.

What brewery should I visit?Where in the city will you be?What type of beer do you like?What type of beer do you hate?How much time will you have?What CMS should I use?Are you demand gen, ecom or a publisher?What is your budget?What dev resources do you have?What is your current tech stack look like?What software for X should I use?What is your budget?What dev resources do you have?How are you at using X?Where should I go to eat in (insert large city name here)?Where in the city?What time?What kind of food do you like?What kind of food do you hate?What is your budget and reason for going?

So many questions we can ask but also so much more detail people can and should give.

/End Dave Rant.

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 all join us on another one of these business of digital podcast episodes, and we're as usual are going to just jump right into it. And so, uh, this is one that, uh, that, uh, that they've been wanting to jump into and.

He loves, you know, when management is wrong, actually, I don't know that that's true or not. Uh, but, uh, we are going to be jumping into, um, a discussion today related to site maps and management. And, uh, I'm going to let Dave just go ahead and jump in and start us off.

Dave Rohrer: [00:00:44] This is, it's a weird twisty. Like how did Dave get from.

What he found in red too. What the heck? Yes. I'm

Matt Siltala: [00:00:53] still trying to figure that

Dave Rohrer: [00:00:56] to the point where I thought, um, that [00:01:00] it was just completely wrong. Like I was like, these are the worst examples and the worst things. What the heck was I thinking? Like I thought I screwed up my Excel or my Google sheets, which

Matt Siltala: [00:01:10] it was just that bad.

Dave Rohrer: [00:01:12] No, it's not that bad. Um, Cause I just thought it was like me going on a rant against, you know, site maps and stuff. But what's inter