News & Updates

According to the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) Research Center:

  • Currently, 76% of small businesses are negatively impacted by the outbreak of the coronavirus,
  • About 5% are positively impacted experiencing stronger sales due to a sharp rise in demand for certain products, goods, and services.
  • Of those businesses negatively impacted, 23% are experiencing supply chain disruptions, 54% slower sales, and 9% sick employees.

However, in our digital world, there are plenty of ways to stay connected to your customers through this pandemic and keep your business going through it:

  1. Let customers know what you’re doing to prevent the spread of COVID-19
  2. Update your online channels
  3. Offer online deals & community building content
  4. Be responsive with proactive community management

In this episode we talk through some strategies and examples for your business to keep in mind as you navigate the COVID-19 world right now.


Shownotes


Episode Transcript

Missy 0:00
Welcome to The Social Feed Podcast. I’m your host missy. Thank you for listening. In this episode, we chat with Jayna Wilcox, our senior digital sales strategist here at Hubbard. She really works with all of our other markets and has learned so many valuable things when it comes to, you know, connecting with customers around the coronavirus and things that are happening in the country. And then we also have with us Adriana Velez who works with clients on a daily basis really focusing on community management. And so she has some really great tips and tricks that she provides on putting together a plan to respond to all those comments that are coming in with everything going on. So with the digital world changing and a lot more people spending time at home and on social media, we wanted to put together a list of some different things that you as a business owner should be aware of, and that you can do to make sure that your customers have the most information they can get throughout this outbreak. So let’s get in This week’s episode number 102, Staying Connected with Customers Through the Coronavirus Outbreak.

Pat 1:05
And I just want to put a little disclaimer out there. We’re obviously practicing some social distancing at Hubbard as well. And so we’ve got Jayna and Missy and Adrianna on the phone. So the audio quality is not what we normally have, but right now, it’s all we got. So enjoy the episode.

Missy 1:22
According to the National Federation of Independent Business, they did a survey, this actually was updated as of yesterday. And they said currently 76% of small businesses are negatively being impacted by the outbreak of the Coronavirus, which totally makes sense. It’s gonna probably be 100% eventually, and about 5% of those businesses are positively impacted, which I thought was interesting. They’re really talking about like, you know, stronger sales to some businesses due to like the sharp rise in demand for products like toilet paper, which I was trying to find this weekend, things like that on that list. But really what I want to focus on with those stats in this episode today is how businesses can stay connected with customers through this outbreak. And by doing that, we’re going to kind of really focus on four different pillars and sections of this podcast, the first one being, you know, letting customers know what you’re doing to help prevent the spread as a business, how to update your online channels the way the most effective way to make sure your customers can still communicate with you. Offering online deals and some community building content ideas we’ll talk about and then the last one will be community management, so being responsive in this time of crisis. So the first one we’ll jump right into is letting customers know what you’re doing to prevent the spread of COVID-19. So one thing that I thought was really cool press releases are obviously I don’t say they’re old school marketing, but they’ve been around a very long time and at&t, released press release. That was they posted on their website and on their blog and everything like that. But it was, I’m just gonna read it because it was just like a really great way to showcase like what they’re doing to help their customers during this time. And it says we’re committed to helping our customers and our communities get through this crisis. That’s why today we’ve also announced an addition to our keep Americans connected pledge. For the next 60 days, we will waive domestic wireless plan coverage charges for data voice or text for residential or small business wireless customers during this pandemic, we’re here with you and keeping you connected. So just thought that was a really great way for a company to you know, take that initiative and help people during this crisis and using their their business for good in that sense.

And then, have you guys seen other businesses doing some cool stuff like that, too?

Jayna 3:54
Yeah, I think that it’s it’s really cool how just from what i’ve Seen or even talking to all of our clients or prospects or talking to or, you know, they’re wondering how they can be a part of this conversation or what they can do. And it’s really just talking about what product or service Do they have that can maybe help in what’s going on or How can they align with COVID-19? Do they have a community partner? Is there something that makes them unique? I know, like, with distilleries, and things like that, with the hand sanitizers, no, they’re just looking at their businesses in a different way that maybe they’d never would have looked at it that way. Or it’s just something new or you just have to go spend time thinking more creatively. So I think the distillery one is definitely a really good example of that with the hand sanitizers.

Missy 4:53
Yeah, if anyone’s been to like Tattersall from Minnesota or Norseman, which has amazing cocktails. What they’re what’s cool, they’re like basically Using their alcohol to make sanitizer because it’s running out, obviously. And Norseman even took it a step further because they’re obviously trying to help help their business continue to grow. And so if you buy a cocktail kit from Norsemen during this time, part of those proceeds will go to help fund sanitizer to give to health care workers on the front lines of the outbreak, which, you know, it’s what do you think about it? Like how can a distillery help but there’s just so many opportunities that these brands are tapping into, to help in whatever way they can?

Adriana 5:32
Yes, that’s such a good idea. I recently saw on Instagram that Allbirds will send a pair of their shoes, to healthcare workers. So if you just like send them this Instagram post, they can email Allbirds and Allbirds will just send them a pair of shoes to wear while they’re working or not working. So I kind of thought that’s kind of a good way to give back. So I’ve seen a lot of brands just kind of stepping up and You know, making it known that they want to give back to all of these, like frontline response workers during this time. So yeah, anything that’s creative like that, I think is just really impactful. And it shows people that that brand really cares about what’s going on.

Missy 6:14
I love that I would never even thought about like shoes for the healthcare workers, you know,

Adriana 6:19
yeah, ice, I sent it to my dad so that he can get himself a pair of shoes. And I was just like, I don’t know if you want them. But you know, here’s the option if you just want something for free.

Jayna 6:32
That’s super cool to see that and I saw something sort of similar. I follow Christian Siriano on Instagram. He’s a fashion designer. He started his career on Project Runway and I just love him. But he had posted something on Instagram too to say, you know, I know a lot of people are out of work right now but let us know if you need masks. We sew for a living like that’s what we do. We can start making masks like let’s Help out And I encourage people who do so Or you know, if that’s your expertise and people aren’t buying a bunch of clothes right now for themselves, given the economic circumstances and just we can’t be shopping in store and things like that. And, you know, let’s take our talents elsewhere and start sewing masks for people in the healthcare field, things like that. I think it’s just, it’s really great again, like I said, to look at a business and watch them just look at things from a different perspective. And it’s really quite amazing.

Missy 7:34
I love that. The other thing too, is just to let people know like when I went, I ran to Costco the other day because you know, low on supplies, and they’re the workers like once you get into the door, they have hand sanitizer, they have they’re like, dousing down the carts with paper towels and cleaner. So just making sure that if you know you have a business that a lot of people have to go to like grocery stores. gas stations, those necessities that you’re promoting on social media that, you know, if you if you do need something and you need supplies come in and but we are doing these specific precautions to make sure everyone is healthy and safe.

Jayna 8:13
Mm hmm. Definitely. And I think it gets into the conversation about just how to be prepared in the digital space as well. You know, you want to be prepared if somebody comes into your store. But if you don’t have that as an option for your store or your restaurant, you know, you’ve been seeing all these places close, temporarily. It’s really important now to consider having an e commerce website or being able to shop for a gift card online or through social media, or how can they still get your services or products for a later time or for now just do it in the digital or social space. I think it’s also prepping for that too. which we’ve all been super just involved in on our ends and having clients come to us and ask us the best approach to that

Missy 9:03
I’ve seen like a lot of because obviously like hair stylists and nail salons and the service industry is all really taken a hit right now. And so yeah, promoting those gift cards I think is huge. And I know some hair salon owners that I’ve seen the stylist posts on Instagram or even saying like if you buy a gift card during this time 50% of that will go straight to the stylist right now to help them during this time of need.

Jayna 9:29
So cool.

Missy 9:31
So we talked about so the first thing you want to do is obviously let customers know what you’re doing to help prevent the spread of COVID-19. But the second thing is updating your online channels to make sure it reflects things like if your hours of operation have changed. I think that’s one thing a lot of people don’t think about is you know, going to your Google My Business and updating all those things so that if someone does need something or they’re trying to contact you for a product or service, they are they know what to do. So I think the biggest thing is, you know, making sure that your hours are updated on, you know, Facebook, Instagram, if you have two hours listed in your bio, making sure those are all updated. I’m trying to think of other places that people might not normally think to update. A Google My Business is probably one of the biggest ones. Oh, Yelp be another one as well.

Jayna 10:21
Mm hmm.

Yeah. Yeah, I would say you know, all the basics like that Google, my business, all your social channels, put it in your bio on Instagram, you know, make it as easy for your customers as possible to see it understand what’s going on with your business specifically, and then have that also just listed on your website. I know when we’ve done some takeout options for food just to support local businesses and restaurants. I’ve gone straight to the website and there typically is something right there on that first homepage.

Missy 11:00
The other thing so option three two is to offer online deals to keep engaging that community online, but then also building some really great content to keep those conversations going during this time. So a couple of things that have come up. These are just a couple brands that I follow that I thought of that have bee doing a really phenomenal job at this. Chipotle is always does a really good job in their marketing. But I don’t know if you guys have seen these but it’s always been hosting these series of daily Chipotle together sessions on zoom. And essentially, you can like you they tweeted out at Chipotle tweets.com they’ll tweet out a link and I think the last one that they had was with I don’t watch The Bachelor. I don’t know if you guys do but Colton Underwood. Do you know who that is?

Jayna 11:45
Um, is he a bachelor?

Missy 11:47
Some guy on the Bachelor.

Jayna 11:50
Okay. But I know like the two people on the planet

that don’t watch it.

Missy 11:56
I know I feel like I say this out loud.

But, uh, but yeah, he actually hosted one of their last Chipotle togethers and just you know, talked about just kind of kicked it off and had fans talking about different things. And it was, it was kind of a it’s a cool way to get people together and promote the social distancing. But Chipotle was obviously the one backing all of it and promoting it through their channels.

Do any of you guys follow alchemy? 365?

Adriana 12:28
I do.

And okay, there. Yeah, all of their classes are online now through YouTube. So it’s been really helpful for me to just like wake up in the morning and workout. And I know core power, I believe is doing online classes as well. So still promoting like social distancing, but getting active instead of just watching Netflix all day like I want to be doing but yeah.

Missy 12:54
Yeah, alchemy’s been doing a phenomenal job of just posting like inspirational quotes. Like do what you can with what you have where you are, and then directing people to go to like their YouTube channel. And one of their goals. They had posted about how they needed to grow their YouTube community to 1000 subscribers in order to be able to do the live videos. So they were encouraging their community to subscribe to YouTube. So it was not only helping grow their channel, but also once they were able to do that they were able to access different functions of YouTube to do the lives and things that they wanted to do. So that was just a cool way that they use social to grow that and then offer all those classes to everyone from home.

Jayna 13:36
I’ve also seen this happen with the music industry and concerts, just with again, the nature of all these events being canceled and not being able to gather at a concert. I don’t know if you girls have seen that but the celebrities that have gone on. john legend

who also has done it Oh, the Coldplay guy. What’s his name?

Pat 14:05
Chris Martin

Jayna 14:08
Pat I knew you’re gonna answer that.

Pat 14:11
The first time i’ve chimed in on this, this episode of it’s to tell you who Coldplay is.

Jayna 14:15
Yeah, well, Chris Martin did the same thing. And I just know, there’s been a lot of really positive response with that, too, because I think a big thing right now is and what I know for sure with, you know, reading about this so much, and we’re online, and this is our jobs, it’s really important for us to understand how to best approach this, I think, approaching it with empathy and having that empathetic tone is is really important because it is it’s difficult and people are confused and they’re anxious and it’s a really hard time so I love like, you know, Chris Martin and having a concert or john legend is just that small outlet of positivity. throughout that as well, so the music industry has definitely been doing that too.

Pat 15:04
Can I ask you guys how, how, how best to balance that tone like obviously this is people are anxious about this and worried about things happening. And so life is not very much not normal right now. But at the same time, we still need to go grocery shopping and we still need to go to, you know, restaurants that eat food, we still need to interact with certain businesses how, how does a business best balance that the societal cultural tone that we have right now and still promote their business without, you know, taking advantage of this?

Jayna 15:41
So I read an interesting article this morning, actually on this topic, and, and we’ll, we’ll link this it was in social media today. And it was about it’s called beware of virtue, you wear a virtue signaling and brand communication about COVID-19 and It talks about avoiding virtue signaling, which is when your brand is expressing a value without actually taking an action towards that, in living those values. So right now, and even before this, the big trend on social media, specifically in online is authenticity. And that’s so key right now people crave that, and especially the younger, you know, Gen Z and millennials that everyone’s always trying to reach, they want to align with a brand that they feel, you know, is in line with their missions in life. So virtue signaling would be something like a business that maybe it’s in the mortgage world, and I think that that’s listed in the article starts to, you know, go full force into talking about COVID and all the actions they’re taking, when in reality, the consumer might actually just want an email from their mortgage company about You know how this might affect them financially as opposed to, no, I don’t care what precautions you’re taking at the company, I’ve never stepped a toe in there, I do all my payments automatically online. Instead inform me about how this is going to affect that. So I think it’s also just looking at the category in which you are in the vertical in which your business is in, in the case of fitness in music, yeah, that makes sense. And you know, core power going online absolutely makes sense and taking healthy precautions that way, because you’re actually going to the studio, but again, for my automatic car payments, and I want to know if my interest rates are being affected or what this means economically through this COVID crisis, as opposed to what they’re doing at wherever they’re processing my auto loan or something like that. So I think it’s just about thinking, you know, when it’s right to talk about something and align yourself with why you’re Audiences truly coming to you what your message should be. It they use this example of there was like this COVID denial at first and now there’s this COVID FOMO happening right now where people are just posting about it because they feel like now everybody is I think it’s just about being empathetic towards the fact that people still want to be educated. They want to know what to do when to do it. How because there’s a lot going on. A lot going on in general. So

Missy 18:29
that’s interesting. You bring up that part too, because I was doing a bit of research on like, because I’ve seen so many brands doing it like the right way and responding and helping, but then there has been a few brands that have done the wrong thing. One of them was and this wasn’t too I’ll say extreme but it’s just something to be aware of. Hershey, very large brands, they kind of learned the lesson the hard way they were sharing different social media images that had people you know, hugging and giving handshakes Which, as in normal society, that would be a totally fine image to use. But they got a little bit of backlash because people are so focused on social distancing right now. And they’re using that type of creative in their imagery. So they actually end up pulling those ads because they got so much flack for it. So something to just be conscious of when you are posting content and stuff like that. That might be something, you know, just something to think about. Also, Coors Light, had to stop a campaign that they had called the official beer of working remotely, because they thought that it was taking advantage of the situation and kind of the mandating work from home. So they thought it was taking a little bit too, too lightly. So they pulled that campaign as well.

Jayna 19:46
Wow. Yeah. Yeah. I think those are two really good examples of kind of the, to go back to your question Pat just went in. When’s the right time? You know, what type of content are we putting out it’s it’s really just thinking strategically, like we always do. It’s just looking at it from a much different angle this time.

Missy 20:08
And the last thing I wanted to talk about on here was community management. Because as you’re putting out more content, and just in general, as things are happening, there’s going to be a lot more people spending time online, and therefore commenting and asking questions. So making sure that you’re being responsive at a time of crisis is really, really important. So, Adriana, I know that since you do a lot of time management for your clients, you’ve run into a lot of this recently, and you actually have an entire like PR plan for each of your clients on how to respond to those things. Can you tell us a bit more about you know how you did that and give some and some recommendations you give to other businesses that are experiencing that?

Adriana 20:47
Yeah, so especially the start of this week, everything kind of hit the fan is how I like to say it, where people are spending a ton of time online and at home, and a kind of Like, you know how we have those people that we assume are going to like yell at managers at the store when they’re unhappy. So I just like to phrase it as those people are coming out on Facebook now. So they’re kind of doing the same thing. But just like behind the screen instead of like at the checkout or like register. So right now, it’s like really important to be direct with your messaging and like taking the time to make sure that you have your plan and everything in place, because people are going to be asking questions. So a lot of the time I’m seeing, you know, if these local small businesses are closing their doors or their retail locations, a lot of people will ask, okay, well, how are you compensating your employees or your employees, you know, having to file for unemployment, they want that plan kind of laid out. So I saw a lot of the clients that I work with just not having a plan, but a lot of consumers asking what the plan was, so I kind of just developed these messages that are pretty generic and just saying, you know, like, we’re working on this internal plan of, you know, a time of action and everything is moving fast. So kind of, you’re putting out this message of like things that you’re doing. But if you don’t have those details laid out, people are kind of coming out and asking you for those details. So it’s just being timely and responsive and kind of giving them the information that you have and not giving them the full plan. So things like press releases, you know, I’ve had some clients release those, here, our stores are closing in, and you know, these employees aren’t working but this is what we’re doing to kind of help the employees that lost their job or, you know, whatever that might be. So I kind of went through for each of my clients, they range from, you know, a food brand that’s in a grocery store that right now their sales are going up as people are frantically buying food to kind of stock the fridge in case we go in a lockdown situation. To You know, services that now have to kind of pivot and instead of entering your home to get things from your apartment and service you they have to do curbside. So promoting those things differently. And then, of course, the local businesses that we work with that are closing their retail locations, we’ve changed their messaging into just how are they continuing to support other small Minnesota brands as well. So I think all of that is very important, but people are coming out asking those tough questions. So instead of being frantic, have that messaging laid out ahead of time, and kind of like slowly walk these consumers through what you’re doing and making that public people want that information? They’re going to kind of figure out if you’re, you know, putting out false information that you’re doing X, Y, and Z, but then someone that works there is coming out on comments as well and saying, actually, you guys aren’t doing any of this. So just be careful about the content that you’re putting out and making sure you actually have a plan of action to follow that content.

Missy 24:08
Well, and that totally goes back to Jay know, you had talked about, like being authentic when you’re communicating with with your clients and your customers.

Jayna 24:15
Mm hmm. Yeah. People just want to know the truth they want to be. And I think right now people, it’s, they feel uncertain. And people don’t know what’s next. So if they can know, you know, the information that they’re looking for in the moment, I think it’s just about making our customers feel comfortable and like they have the information they need.

Pat 24:40
I think right now is an interesting time to going back to kind of what Adriana said about, you know, it’s some of the people online are the people that you would characterize as yelling at a manager at a store, but even even the opposite is true right now. There’s so many people that are in the same boat, and everyone like it. Everyone feels extra for everyone right now. And we’re just worried about how other people are getting along. Like if if somebody loses their job there, all of a sudden they’re they’re obviously worried about their job, but they’re worried about other people who are in their same situation as well right now, because we’re all in this together right now, it’s not just an isolated incident where one company isn’t doing well or, you know, for economic reasons has or for low sales has to let people go. There are a lot of companies and a lot of workers and a lot of industries that are in the same boat and so people care about other people like them. And so it may not be I want to know this for me. I want to know this for other people who are in the same boat as us so that we all can get better and we all can get through this together. it’s it’s a it’s a cool interesting kind of feeling right now. I think.

Missy 25:54
I’m like sometimes Am I is a social experiment like

Jayna 25:59
it’s crazy.

I was having that same conversation with my dad. He’s in the hospitality industry. So of course they’ve gotten hit very hard with all of this and he had this weird though calm, just demeanor about him. And I’m like, how are you being so calm? You know, he’s losing clients or clients or pausing or canceling all the time right now, because the hotels are closing. And she said, You know, it’s just this weird. Yeah, of course, I’m stressed and whatnot, but people aren’t really. I’ve I’ve watched so many people step up and care for others and other small businesses. First more than they care about themselves. And he’s like, that is just such a, it’s it’s a really good feeling. And he said, I’ve had general managers on the phone with me cry, and just like, how can we help you or no, how can you help us and it’s a very interesting thing. So again, just going back to that authenticity, and how can people communicate that first and help others and I think We’re seeing a lot of that with the small businesses. It’s something that we see all the time at Hubbard, just with our local radio stations and the work we do on the digital side with local clients. And so to see it really just elevate has been just a it’s an interesting time. That’s all I can say.

Pat 27:17
What is the best messages that I have seen over the past couple weeks was from the CEO of Marriott Hotels. He put out a video on I saw it on LinkedIn. It was like a seven, eight minute long video where he detail a lot of what Marriott is doing around the world to deal with this. And it was it was a lesson in fantastic leadership and getting the right message out there. Everything from he’s not taking a salary for the rest of the year messages to we’ve got some corporate policies that we’re putting into place to help with people who are, you know, having to work less right now because nobody wants to stay in a hotel or go out. It was it was a very well done video announcement and just a lesson in leadership and the lesson going back to what Adrian was saying, just about letting people know what you’re doing to help other people or help your people as they’re affected by this.

Missy 28:27
Oh, I’m totally gonna watch that. Now. That sounds amazing.

Jayna 28:30
It does.

Pat 28:31
It’s so inspiring.

Jayna 28:32
Im’ a Marriott member, So I definitely need to.

Missy 28:35
Yeah, well, we’ll definitely link in the show notes we find out. Mm hmm. Yeah. One other thing that I wanted to jump into because we’ll play a couple of the episode segments, whatever you want to call them after this podcast, we’ll insert them into here, but one thing out radio stations have been doing over the past couple weeks is a segment called Open for business. And Pat, you probably know more about this than I do. So have you had explain the concept to intro into that.

Pat 29:02
Yeah, it’s it’s basically I mean, as a as a media company as a set of radio stations, we rely on advertisers. And that relationship isn’t one sided. Those advertisers rely on us. And it extends to the listeners as well. And the listeners rely on us to get them information about certain advertisers and companies. And so this open for business idea across our three Minneapolis radio stations really came about because, like I said earlier, we’re all in this together trying to figure out what we can do to help each other out. And as radio stations, we have the platform to let people know what these businesses are doing. So obviously, these businesses are on their social media channels, and they’re updating their website and they’re doing all this stuff to let people know how they’re coping. But as a radio station as as people who have a relationship with these businesses, we can broadcast that relationship and let listeners know how Kris Lindahl real estate is dealing with this and helping their employees or little blind spot or, you know, all of these different local companies who small businesses who are, you know, hit pretty hard with with some of this stuff. It’s an opportunity for us to tell their stories and for them to get their message out in another platform, not a different message than they’re already putting out. But it just provides them a little bit more security in their relationship with us and it lets the listeners know what they’re doing and how they can continue to support these local businesses. Everything from you know the curbside pickup at these restaurants to however these different companies need the need the support right now and so myTalk 107.1, KS95, and SKOR North have all been talking and interviewing these business owners that they have a relationship with Putting them online through the PodMN platform. And so if you’re local here in Minneapolis and want to listen to some really good interviews with with DJs, from the radio stations talking to these business owners, you can find that information. We’ll put a link to that in the show notes as well. But it’s just a really well done. And it spans so many different industries and businesses too, and just provides just another connection point for these businesses and for us as a radio station with listeners who are wanting to help right now.

Announcer 31:33
I’m glad you’re still open, loving,

helping support our local businesses through the corona virus crisis. We are open for business this is open for business still open. Yeah,

yeah. On my talk 1071.

Julia 31:48
And we have David lozinski with us who is first equity mortgage and David has been a dear friend and partner of my talk. So we’re

just wanting what what is happening in the mortgage Timing

Lori 32:01
must be busy is what I’m thinking.

David 32:03
Nope, it’s really not. It’s really frantic right now. Okay. In in the last two weeks, we’ve seen 30 year interest rates as low as 3%. And as high as 5%. Wow. All in the last two weeks, again, with the same turmoil that we see in the market, as people don’t know what’s happening, then everyone panics. And what they’re doing is they’re selling everything and by taking cash, right. We do believe that that’s going to calm down, because it always does. Yeah. On the mortgage company, through the 911 crisis. We’ve owned the mortgage company through the 2008, Great Recession, okay. And we see this happen for a few weeks, it’s going to be very, lots of turmoil, okay. And then we’re going to create a new normal at some points. And when the new normal happens, one of the buyout things that the government And does it starts buying what we call mortgage backed securities, which will cause interest rates to settle back down to a really good low rate that a lot of people can refinance. Okay. Yeah. And just so in the end, I think they do that to help people because people are losing jobs and they’re losing income. Right. And so that becomes a way for people to be able to afford this. At that time,

Ryan 33:25
it’s ks

95. Today’s variety from two k two today with Chris co Dez. And Ryan, you know, through this crazy time through COVID-19. A lot of people are wondering what’s going on in the world what’s happening, especially right here at home, you watch the news, and you’re thinking, Man, so many things are closed. So many people are out of work. You know, it’s good to check in with people that are important to KS95 listeners and we’ve got one of those guys on the phone right now. Right? Dez,

Dez 33:48
yeah, we do. Somebody who’s a friend of mine, somebody who helped us out with a really nice donation during KS95 for kids and you’ve probably seen this face everywhere. Kris lindahl

Kris 33:59
What’s going on?

Dez 34:00
How you doing?

Kris 34:01
We’re doing well. Thanks for having me. Obviously, we’re in interesting times right now.

Ryan 34:05
And how are you being safe yourself? Chris? Are you doing a self quarantine from home? Or what are you doing?

Kris 34:10
Obviously, that changes from day to day with the different CDC recommendations. We’ve just been as a company following all of their recommendations. One thing that we stopped implementing is open houses because of the recommendations. And and you know, I mean, it started at groups of 250 people, it went to 100, it went to 50 went to 25. Now it’s at 10. And that could change at a moment’s notice. And so we’re following that closely. We want everyone to be safe and healthy. The other thing we we did as well as we launched live stream showing.com because right now what we found is that there are a lot of people that are home but they’re still searching for real estate because we watch our analytics and our website traffic is up, because a lot of people are at home. They want to see homes, but they prefer not to go there physically. So they can go to live stream showing.com and they can schedule a virtual showing one of our agents will go to the property with our technology and they’ll To show them the property and if you know if they want to go look at the kitchen twice or whatever, you know, we go back with our phones and our cameras, and we show them those areas. And so it allows consumers to still take advantage of the historically low rates, but never having to leave the comfort of their own home.

Ryan 35:15
That is so cool. What an awesome way

of doing that. And I heard that every home you buy, you’re supplying them with a year supply of toilet paper, is that true?

Kris 35:26
Courtesy of KS95.

Missy 35:29
So all the ones we talked about today’s podcasts, we’ll make sure to include in the show notes. And, you know, as this continues, and each week, each day, something new comes up. We’ll continue to use this channel of the Social Feed podcass to update businesses on everything that’s going on and things that we learned and just really trying to make sure that everything we’re learning across the country that other people are doing to get get that information to you as quick as we can so that you can utilize that to help your business too.

Announcer 36:00
The social feed is a production of Hubbard Interactive with music provided by Minneapolis based artist john atwell


On This Episode

Missy Young

Social Media Services Manager

@miss_shredbetty Missy Young

As the Social Media Services Manager for Hubbard Interactive, Missy Young’s position entails working with clients and team members to drive social media strategy and lead initiatives to identify new technologies and digital best practices. She develops customized micro and macro campaigns that drive online interaction, promotes and creates content that enhances the customer experience and creates lead generation for medium to large-scale companies. She regularly speaks at local and national events on a variety of subjects including: social media, PR, analytics and content strategy.


Jayna Wilcox

Senior Digital Sales Strategist

@jaynaanderson_

Jayna Wilcox is the Senior Digital Sales Strategist at 2060 Digital. Along with a degree in Strategic Communication, she studied Fashion at the University of Minnesota, which makes her an avid trend seeker across a variety of industries. She is able to see the importance of digital media converting into sales and has an understanding of both a big and small brand standpoint, as she did social media for Mall of America, prior to joining the Hubbard Interactive team. Always interested in the latest and upcoming trends in social & digital media, fashion, and health, Jayna has a very futuristic mindset and is always seeking “what’s next” to improve her clients’ needs. Jayna is a Hubbard NextGen, a group that was selected within the company to come up with ideas for the future.


Adriana Velez

Social Media Coordinator

@sincerely_ami Adriana Velez

With a career path that has so far been more confusing than the plot line of a Telenovela, Adriana brings knowledge from multiple areas of digital marketing. She graduated from the University of St. Thomas with a degree in Business Law and was a cheerleader during her time there. As a Social Media Coordinator at Hubbard Interactive, she brings company voices to life through social media content. With multiple HubSpot certifications and knowledge in Inbound Marketing, she knows the importance of lead nurturing. With passion for all things email, she is able to take a hands-off approach to engaging with customers and nurturing leads as they go through the buyer’s journey. When she isn’t geeking out over digital marketing you can find her blogging about mental health, capturing her trendy life living in North Loop, and taking pictures of her dog and cat.


Pat Laeger

Digital Content Specialist

Pat Laeger

Pat has over 10 years of creative production experience and has produced radio shows, video campaigns, podcasts, and other digital content. Pat is an outgoing introvert, a spreadsheet lover, an Oxford comma advocate, and an avid Mountain Dew drinker.


TikTok is a social video-sharing app where users can share short videos cell-phone videos. Users can utilize filters, music, animation, special effects, and more. Like other social media apps, users can also follow, like, and comment on everything they watch, so what makes TikTok so special and why is it so hot right now? In this episode We talk about the basics of TikTok and get some first-hand tips from Izzy Lundquist – who has gone viral with her ACT prep videos on TikTok.


Shownotes


Episode Transcript

Missy 0:00
Welcome to the social feed podcast. I’m your host Missy, thank you for listening. In this episode, we get into the mind of Izzy Lundqvist, who is a Tik Tok superstar influencer.

Pat 0:10
Oh, what superstar?

Missy 0:12
Tik Tok, you heard it right. And this episode we dive into everything from what is Tik Tok who’s on it, what can brands be doing on it? And Izzy gives us some really great insider information on how she beat the algorithm how to beat the algorithm and how she creates content for Tik Tok. So let’s get into this week’s episode number 101. What is Tik Tok and how can marketers use it with special Tik Tok guessed the ACTA girl.

So, Tik Tok, um,

where can we start? I’m obsessed. I know. Pat doesn’t have Tik Tok.

Pat 0:51
I don’t have Tik Tok.

Missy 0:53
Why?

Pat 0:54
Because I’m old. So help me understand this thing.

Missy 0:59
We will catch you all up on everything you should know about Tik Tok to make you are enjoying.

Pat 1:04
Okay. All right, if you can get me to download Tik Tok reg. That will be a good episode.

Missy 1:08
Oh, Challenge accepted.

So to start, if you those of you who have maybe never heard of Tik Tok or maybe you’ve heard of it and like what the heck is that? Essentially, it’s a another social media platform just like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter. It’s another one out there. However, this one has been picking up a lot of steam lately because it’s really generated by video content, which is huge. And this was really interesting as I was doing more research, so it’s owned by a company called Bytedance, which is based out of China. And essentially, they bought the rights to musically Do you guys remember that? Yeah,

Anna 1:43
yeah. And I never conformed to music.

Missy 1:46
I didn’t either. I was not it was weird.

Anna 1:49
But here I am today. Tik Tok.

Missy 1:50
Tik Tok. He was like a resurgence. Yeah, basically. But what’s cool about it, is that how they basically took the music concept, but then they added a few other things. So the statement says they combine the power of artificial intelligence, with the growth of mobile internet to revolutionize the way people consume and receive information. So what the heck does that mean? Basically, they use artificial intelligence, like some facial recognition, they have a lot of filters on there. And they fill everyone’s feeds with highly customized, content based off of that. And it is interesting, because I have noticed, like on the for you page when you’re looking through that, I’m like, how do they know? Like, I don’t follow that person. How are they filtering that content?

Anna 2:05
I get so many like Wisconsin ones, like where they are. They’re like Wisconsin check. And I’m like, whoa. They’re following me.

Missy 2:46
So that’s the platform is it’s super addicting from a user standpoint. I mean, I could sit on here for a couple hours.

Anna 2:52
Well, you don’t even need to have an account. You could have the app and just scroll through the for you page. And yeah, you sit there for hours. They’re so funny.

Missy 3:01
And it’s just random stuff like people from all over that. I explained like how unless you have to, like download it to see it. But essentially, is people just picking funny songs, not songs just talking to. And it’s really creative.

Anna 3:15
The best are the 30 plus club is what they call it. It’s a hashtag. And they’re like moms who are like, oh, gosh, there was one because I’m going to try to do it. I close the door, and I don’t let anyone in the room until I finish it. But they always joke about how they shouldn’t be on here, but it’s funny being on here and it’s fun and they should be on like it shouldn’t be just a younger platform because it really is 24 years and younger.

Missy 3:44
So the main demo on tech talk right now. Anna, tell me how you got this deck again because this was like

Anna 3:52
I like to creep on LinkedIn and on Add age because I like to see what other company bunnies and big brands are doing for advertising. And somehow I ended up on someone’s LinkedIn page that had access to this. So I downloaded it. So legally.

Missy 4:11
So I’ll put this deck that Anna found. It’s like a Tik Toc deck and it has everything from the downloads compared to the other social networks, the age range, what Tick Tock is how it’s been growing. And it’s from Tik Toc and adage itself. So some really good info. So we’ll put a link to that on the site so you guys can download and check it out to

Anna 4:30
my favorite is that they say we don’t spark trends. We set them on fire, which is so true. Because it’s hard to figure out like, funny organic content by yourself. Like you’re more inspired by like what other people are doing and what’s on the for you page. But sometimes you’re like, Oh, I could do something like this, or I could twist it and that’s why the funniest ones come from like, their organic.

Pat 4:54
So speaking of organic and just funny content, what is it about Tik Toc that makes these So like is if somebody posted the same thing on tik tok versus Facebook or to their Instagram? Would it be the same? Is it? Is it the content? Or is it the way the content is consumed? What What is it that makes Tick Tock so special?

Anna 5:13
Like, you know, when you’re on the Facebook app, and you see all these funny videos, and then also you start scrolling through, it’s kind of like that, but it’s more accessible. And Tick tock, I don’t

Missy 5:24
know. I like that. What’s funny is I’ve noticed now when I’m on Facebook or Instagram, a lot of people will share their Tik Toc videos on there. So it’s starting to integrate into those other platforms already. But with Facebook, I mean, there’s the videos on there. They’re a little bit and this is gonna sound so millennial of me, they’re a little bit longer. We’re like the Tik Toc videos. It’s like, Okay, cool. How’d you do that project? Three seconds later. I know how it’s done. And they showed the process. Yes. Where it’s, it’s a lot shorter content. Sure. Or,

Anna 5:53
yeah, we have short attention. Yes.

Pat 5:56
Certainly.

Anna 5:56
We need things that are Go go go.

Missy 5:59
So too. Tik Toc was the most downloaded app in the world in 2018. And in q1 of 2019, in this deck that Anna found, they have like the overall downloads compared to the other platforms. I will say that that’s a little bit of an ego number because Facebook Instagram have been around for a long time. So of course, to touch the new hot thing, it’s going to be a lot more downloaded. But the fact that it stayed that way, and people are enjoying, that’s something to be aware of. Yes,

Anna 6:29
people are spending 46 plus minutes on the app each day in the US. like, That’s nuts.

Missy 6:37
So the biggest demo on tech talk right now is people between the ages of 18 and 24 42% of those users are on Tech Talk. And then next is ages 13 to 17 27%. And then above that it dwindles significantly. But I think one thing that’s coming into play is the privacy policies with Tic Tok because young people are on it. So they’re really cracking down on. I know, just a couple days ago when I was on the app and made me verify the terms and conditions again, oh, yeah, update all of that. So they’re really cracking down because it’s a lot of younger audience on the app.

Anna 7:14
Yeah, but I feel like I mean, I was never on MySpace, but I was on Facebook and I felt like that was kind of the same thing where Facebook had kind of an age thing but people might have lied about when their birthday was.

Missy 7:26
Yeah, and that’s the thing like anyone

Anna 7:28
save their butts. And I can say that on here?

Pat 7:31
Yeah.

Missy 7:40
I think the cool thing too about tech talk and maybe this is just because I’m kind of a creeper is it’s like an inside look into like the gen Z’s world. Yeah, you can like see all these things and like I’ve learned about trends and we even had like we had someone we’re talking about with Tick Tock and little bit and just like learning about different like So

Pat 8:01
it’s changed language like-

Anna 8:04
Visco girls!

Pat 8:05
to this girl named Izzy, who has a viral video through tik tok. And she threw out words that I didn’t even know were words. And she did a good job of explaining them to us. And so I feel much more hip now. And the fact that I used the word hip much. But yeah, it’s just I mean, I’m sure that happened with Facebook. And I mean that the term hashtag was wasn’t a thing until, you know, Twitter picked it up and made it a thing. So that’s happened before, but I was always young enough to be on the cutting edge of it, and now I just feel old.

Missy 8:38
The other thing I think getting into like, so we’ve talked about, like what Tik Toc is, but how can marketers use it? We’ve actually launched a couple Tick Tock campaigns with some of our clients. So and you want to talk a bit more about what that all entailed?

Anna 8:50
Yeah, so one of our clients is a mall and we were kind of trying to figure out how we can get that younger demographic in the mall. Actually, physically And one of them was we found that a lot of people were actually Tik-Tocing while in the mall. And so we were like, Okay, well, I never thought I’d see the day that we would pitch Tik-Tocing to people. Um, but it’s been super fun. We’ve used a brand ambassador and who’s a dancer so it keeps it even more fun because that’s what a lot of them are, too are people doing dances? And then of course for the holidays, doing different stores, the turning Mariah Carey songs. Yeah, it’s fun, but there are a lot of work to make it takes hours.

Missy 9:37
That’s what like what some of these videos people will post like don’t let this flop this took me two days to find it. It’s like, Oh my gosh, like just the work that they have put into this stuff. I

Anna 9:47
mean that energy of like, and then what if it does flop?

Pat 9:51
They’re short videos too. So put spending two days to put it together for a short video right? It’s not like it 10 minute video for Facebook or YouTube or something?

Missy 10:02
It depends. So I follow like a lot of like artists account so they’ll show like actually like maybe building something or like yeah, painting that might take 48 hours to do. They’ll speed up really quickly so you just see the beginning and the end of the painting. Yeah, so it’s more products like that that are there

Anna 10:16
was one guy yesterday I was watching he did it to a song that named the days of the week. And so each day he took a video of him at work and he was like a doctor or something. And I was like he’s another he said he’s like this took me a week to make Don’t let it flop or whatever.

Missy 10:31
what I’ve noticed and maybe this is just because it’s targeting me I’m not sure what’s going on here. I get a lot of plastic surgeons that are on Tick Tock. Have you seen that? No. Yeah, there’s all these doctors and they’ll have like, there was a few plastic surgeons and they give you like tips on like, oh, like celebrities have had plastic surgery and just different things like that. Because one of the trends right now which and this gets you into the Gen Z world is hashtag nose job check. Oh people who get nose jobs and stuff. I have not been a doctor. met their process on Tic Tok. It’s really it’s a strange world but this is

Anna 11:05
fun because then I always read the comments on some who do like famous or famous celebrity famous relative check yes famous relative check, and then they do Oh gosh, oh, they do it like a weight loss check or something else. And then they I read the comments and some of them will be like, that’s not even true. You just did this your last video and I’m like, Ooh, I like that. that’s I live for.

Missy 11:31
the other thing that’s crazy too Is anyone who goes on Tic Tok you’ll notice a couple people that are constantly on everyone’s feeds because they’re like the Tic Tok influencers a girl named Charlie is one of them and Ali’s another one and what’s crazy and what’s it I think kids they’re just think so, so fast and put this together is they created a tipped a Tic Tok hype house, which essentially these tech tech influencers go to It’s in LA. And their main goal is just create crazy amounts of videos and content for Tic Tok. And if you if anyone follows like the makeup community like James Charles goes there and he’s been featured in videos with these Tic Tok influencers. And they’re basically trying to use their influence of influence of power together to do cut like combo videos with each of them and each and each of them. So it’s been really interesting to see how they’re using that to build

Pat 12:27
so tik tok set up the hype house?

Missy 12:29
oh, just a Tic Tok kid. Like I want to rent this room, a bunch of tech talkers. Let’s get together and let’s make it and let’s beat this algorithm and keep it running and make us move to the top. And that’s cool hype house. Wow. It launched in, they start talking about it in November. It launched in December and they started moving out there. And a couple of the girls cuz a lot of them are under the age of 18. We’ll fly back and forth to bypass on weekends to record videos.

Anna 12:56
Well, Pat, what do you do with your free time?

Izzy 12:59
What were you doing when you were I’m

Pat 13:01
not flying back and forth to LA creating videos that’s for sure.

Missy 13:05
Yeah, it’s just amazing Gosh, um Tic Tok is also released Tic Tok advertising that brands can be you know, just like any other platform go in and hyper target the areas they want to focus on and target them. But it’s only two specific brands right now. Like I think HBO is a partner the really big ones. But I know that in the next few months are talking about releasing that to more brands. So if you are business and you’re trying to reach that younger audience Tic Tok advertising can be really effective for that.

Pat 13:34
So since you can’t get like traditional ads, or most brands can’t get traditional ads or any ad on Tic Tok, what are we doing for our mall client? Is Is it the mall clients social or Tick Tock account that we’re posting on?

Anna 13:48
Yes. Or is it utilizing like influencers to kind of get that reach and then having them reported on their Tic Tok accounts and then kind of trying to get noticed that way? Because that’s what’s the hard part. It’s like, oh well how can we, you know, it’s not like Facebook or Instagram where you can just place an ad. And some of the ads are like super intricate it’s like a whole new video. It’s like a TV commercial that they do for some of the ads and I’m like, Okay Pat get to work.

Pat 14:16
Is that part of the reason why Tick Tock is so big right now? because there aren’t ads on it?

Anna 14:21
I think so. I think so too. That’s why I’m a little nervous for it to get super ad heavy because you never know.

Missy 14:30
yeah, they’ll eventually try to monetize it, obviously just like every other platform but I do think that one I think it’s really fun how it’s like integrated and that short Yeah, that show it it’s like it’s a cool new it’s like how Facebook was back in my day. Facebook was like the cool thing and you know, now we’re on it yet and now it’s just become part of my daily life. But I don’t Tic Tok gonna be like that for

Pat 14:52
for these kids. It kind of reminds me of vine, the way you’re describing. videos and stuff. Yeah, and vines no longer a thing. So Tech Talk is just the new vine basically,

Missy 15:02
kind of I think it’s a good mixture of like vine and musically would probably be the best way because they’re combining like the music and everything. I wasn’t a big vine user though, either.

Anna 15:09
Oh, I loved it. It was so fun.

Missy 15:12
When did it Why did it go away?

Anna 15:15
I thought it just I think it flopped. I

Pat 15:17
think it nobody just nobody used it enough anymore. And so

Anna 15:21
maybe think about it, it probably didn’t make any money. So probably didn’t I don’t remember it having ads or anything?

Pat 15:26
I don’t think so. I think once Snapchat and Instagram Stories came along that kind of stole the thunder from vine.

Anna 15:33
Yeah, well, I got an article in my email today saying that Snapchat and tick tock are both reportedly working on new deep fake type features, which I know Snapchat just rolled out with like new features. So you can just it’s like those, those musical elves that you can do around, but I don’t know what that’s called. Oh, yeah. Around the

Pat 15:54
holiday. Talking about you put your face on it. Oh, yeah,

Anna 15:57
yeah. And so something like that. But the Snapchat ones are so real, that now Tick Tock and snapchat are kind of supposed to be I mean, that’s the the new mainstream thing in 2020. That’s supposed to. I mean, I’m just here trying to be hip. But, um, I don’t know, it’s just super interesting to see how all the features that tik tok will come out with because they’re obviously going against Snapchat. And now Instagram Stories are trying to keep up with the times but Instagram stories, I don’t really. I don’t really post about them.

Missy 16:35
I’m huge on Instagram stories, but I think just depends on the person.

Anna 16:38
Yeah, I mean, I’ll sit there and watch everybody’s, but I don’t know. I might take that. It’s just funny. It’s like a feel good thing or you’re not like, I feel like sometimes you get sucked into everyone’s business on Instagram, and then Tick Tock. You’re just like, oh my god. I don’t even know this person, but that’s hilarious.

Missy 16:53
I feel like the best way to describe it is like Instagram is a lot more curated content and tick tock is a lot more like off the cuff like you’re not seeing that. Someone who’s done like a full glam makeup. Perfect pose background. It’s like I’m sitting in my dark room dancing being a total weirdo. And that’s my tech talk video. Yeah seems a lot more like natural and organic, which I think social media needs a little bit more up. Well, that’ll be interesting to once ads start popping up on Tick tock, because I’ve now reduced add in that environment is going to look very weird.

Yeah, yes, hundred percent. There’s also I just saw this article that was posted 22 hours ago, that tik tok has silently partnered with Google.

Anna 17:31
So it says that why There’s more Android users?

Missy 17:34
I’m not sure that they might be but one thing that did you do this pat? Did you have this happen?

So one thing that they are doing is because what’s really interesting about this is when you like when we interviewed Izzy, when you search her, typically when you search someone’s account, you can see it but you can’t see everything because you have to be logged into the app when we search our account. You See everything through the Google platform.

Pat 18:02
So you don’t have to have the tick tock app to see people’s content.

Missy 18:04
Correct. So is that because of that, and this partnership with Google, if you have a tick tock account, and you’re posting content that’s using specific hashtags, keywords, things like that, it helps with your SEO for ranking Open

Pat 18:19
Google searches up. Wow.

Anna 18:23
So that’s a lot.

Missy 18:24
So if you search any popular person into Google, you’ll see their knowledge panel, and within that panel, you’ll see all the social icons, so there’s all these things, the tick tock influencers that helps to. what else…

Pat 18:36
that changes so much with privacy and stuff though, too, because Facebook or Instagram, you have to be logged in to get all that stuff. But now that that’s just like public data and information.

Missy 18:46
I’ll link to the article in the show notes. But there’s a whole Yeah, article about the partnership, which that’s a whole nother thing to think about. from an SEO perspective, SEO already freaks me out.

Anna 19:01
Yeah, oh my gosh. I know one of my homework assignments tonight is to go through Tick Tock for our clients and figure out which ones are going to be like great to do in the mall and things and so I’m just like, headphones in and I’ll be I’ll see if I

Missy 19:17
market research- Yes!

Anna 19:19
yes. I know my fiance was like, I wish I got paid to be on Tic Tok. You snooze, you lose.

Missy 19:27
The other thing too, that I’ve seen a bunch of articles around is can you get famous on Tic Tok and essentially you can but the biggest thing because because the app so new, like Instagram is really hard to be an influencer because it’s been around for a while there’s all these people who are way ahead of you. But with Tic Tok because the algorithm hasn’t I’ll say been as active as like a Facebook and Instagram yet. It’s really easy to get your videos featured And Izzy actually gives us some really good tips. Yeah, and the next part of this episode, that We’ll share on how to beat the tick tock algorithm. Yep, and get to the front page. So I’m really excited to jump into that part to

Anna 20:07
the so interesting like, people are googling that and like spending their time where we would be like how to post a good photo on Instagram and they’re like how to be Tic Tok famous. How to beat Tic Tok how to beat the Chinese government.

Pat 20:24
That’s the title of our episode.

Missy 20:26
That a clickbait. Most download episode done. The last thing I want to touch on is the Tic Tok challenges. Oh, yes, because the One really cool night that they did was hashtag create for a cause where people create specific Tic Tok videos and then there can be a donation component to it for the for nonprofits. But then there’s on top of that, there’s tons of other ones, too. I’m trying to think of like my

Anna 20:58
brother and I did one that were You actually had to have strength to do this, but we tried where you’re like, one, it’s kind of like, You’re like a tabletop pose. That’s like, my brother put his feet up and I like, put down and then you both were like kind of floating.

Okay.

Pat 21:20
I want to see this.

Anna 21:22
You have to see it.

It took us like an hour though to make at Thanksgiving and it was like a workout of the first battle.

Missy 21:32
The crew for a cause one invited craters to help raise funds for do something.org Best Friends Animal Society. They ended up with $2 million in donations. And then obviously the it was great for brand awareness of all those as well.

Pat 21:46
Is that an ongoing campaign or is that just a short term focus?

Missy 21:51
so basically, they’re having these creators create cool content and it’s the other thing too is if you are ever feeling stuck or in a rut with like, what did you Create creatively with any campaign. Tic Tok is like just such good inspiration. Because people think of things you wouldn’t even think about. Like the plastic surgeons or you know, things that aren’t even that should have no business being on Tic Tok and you’re like, Wow, that’s really freaking clever. That totally makes sense why you’re on Tic Tok for that. So I would highly recommend if you’re listening and you’re like, you still understand what the heck we’re talking about. Just download the app because you can’t explain it until you see it visually.

Anna 22:28
Or that cheer challenge that people did. So like men. Men aren’t able to do this pat.

Pat 22:35
Oh, were you like bend over you lift up? I didn’t try. It was a Tic Tok thing, but I’ve played that game before and you’re right. I can’t do it

Anna 22:44
Yea it’s weird

Missy 22:46
tributed right. Yeah. men versus women.

Anna 22:49
The future as women.

Missy 22:53
We can look chairs.

Pat 22:56
Can’t argue with

Anna 23:00
So I like are some challenges and this is why social media can be used for the good. And not just all the negative because they can use it for nonprofits and stuff. Yeah. Love it.

Missy 23:10
So in this next part episode, we are going to chat with Izzy, who became tik tok famous and she’s from Minnesota for getting the perfect ACTscore.

Pat 23:20
Yea she’s one smart cookie. That’s for sure.

Missy 23:22
She’s amazing what that’s like. And so she basically create a tic tac account that gives tips on how to be a better test taker. Yep. And she’s also a tutor, which is a whole other thing. She is just amazing. So we dove into really like her teenage Gen Z mind on how she beat the algorithm, how she came up with content, how she got Tic Tok famous. And it was so funny because in certain parts of this episode, she’s like, she’ll be at like something for school. And so like, Wait, is that the tick tock or the aect girl from Tick Tock. She’s like yeah, that’s me

So we’ll dive into all that and more about the hype house as well.

Izzy 23:57
All right. Hi, my name is Izzy. I’m senior in high school, and I am a tutor I tutor kids in a variety of subjects. Kids can be as young as like, I work with a third grader and then I work with a few high schoolers as well.

Missy 24:13
And you posted this video on Tik Toc that has gone pretty much viral. Tell me how Tell me more about the video describe it to me, we’ll post a link to it as well, but so the audience can hear about it.

Izzy 24:25
Yeah, so the video was talking about how I got a perfect score my ACT

Missy 24:31
Which congrats That’s amazing.

Izzy 24:35
Thank you. Yeah. So I was talking about that and tricks that I use that weren’t necessarily study tips, but more about how to work with the test to improve your score. Not necessarily by learning more material, but knowing about how the test is structured and how to use it to the best of your advantage.

Missy 25:00
Just ACT hack. Yeah.

Pat 25:03
Love it. Was this all after you got the perfect score? Did you? Did you post anything leading up to taking ACT or anything?

Unknown Speaker 25:10
No. So I got that score in April. And I didn’t join Tic Tok until around like June. And then I didn’t. I probably didn’t start posting until August and then this one went viral in September. So what made you like 2019?

Missy 25:26
What made you decide to create that tik tok video?

Izzy 25:30
So, it’s actually kind of funny. I saw a video of someone like so people will do stuff that like, it’s kind of weird, but though there’s this thing called like, inspect element, and people will like make joking videos about like, Oh, I got a 36 on my ECP and there were a bunch of people in the comments. And they’re like, what? That doesn’t look right. And then I was like, Yeah, I know you can do at it. So like, you’ve been Your video showed next to theirs. And then I showed mine and I was like, do you see how it says that? It says that you, when you don’t get like a really high score, it says you can still improve these skills. And I was like, look at the scores. That’s not what it looks like. And then I posted as like a tweet from my school district about it as like more proof. And like videos like that are pretty common. Like not like exposing people but just showing. Like, like, this is cap, which is like slang for lying. Yeah, so it’s kind of like, I don’t know, everyone just jokes around with that. So then people were in the comments like, how did you do that? And I was like, all right, well, I can like I tutor kids. Like I can just make a video posting my best tips and like, so my Tik Tocing has kind of gone from exposing people to helping people which I think is pretty funny.

Missy 26:55
Like, plan out the idea or did you just like I’m just gonna hit record and some hacks and go from there.

Unknown Speaker 27:02
Yeah, I just decided to I did each category and I was like I’m just gonna list as many easy tips as I can in 60 seconds.

Missy 27:13
So So and then what made you post it on Tic Tok versus like Instagram or Snapchat you’d mentioned that like to do at thing kind of inspired you for Tic Tok.

Izzy 27:21
Yeah, so with Tick tock, your videos are really easily seen by people who don’t directly follow you. There’s a feature called the for you page where I don’t know when it starts. But after you’ve posted a few videos, your videos start getting sent to the for you page to about 40 different people’s feeds. And if they like watch your video all the way through like it, comments on it or share it, it gets boosted to more people’s pages. So the main way people get popular on there, like other people watching it. So it’s a lot easier to reach bigger audiences by creating engaging content.

Pat 27:56
So how many people have watched your ACT video so far?

Unknown Speaker 28:01
Yeah, so it’s a 1.6 million.

Pat 28:03
Oh, wow.

Missy 28:04
Just a casual 1.6 no big deal.

Pat 28:08
Have you been recognized outside of Tik Toc, by anybody? Really? Yeah.

Izzy 28:18
Yeah, I was at a Quiz Bowl competition and you see you sit right across from the team, or the other team and the key was like, You look really familiar. Do I know you from somewhere and of course, my teammates gonna love to give me crap for my tik tok just because it’s like, some it’s funny. And they’re like, she’s viral on Tick Tock. He’s like, Are you the tick tock ACT girl? Yeah. And then I work as a receptionist at a Tennis Center and we do you tournaments a lot and a lot of times of high schoolers. And one time this girl came up to me She’s like, or do you make tik tok videos about the ACC and I was like, maybe it’s kind of fun. When I get recognized because like it for me tic tok is just like social media I don’t like I say like, Oh, my video got 1.6 million views, but it’s hard for me to picture in my head, like 1.6 million people watching it. So when I like, not when I’m out, like, not necessarily confronted with it, but when I faced like people who recognize me who I don’t know, it’s kind of just like, Oh, well, man, this is big. This is big.

Pat 29:27
Is it? Yeah. Is that something you want to do more of is create content that a lot of a lot of people see or is it really just something you’re doing for fun for right now?

Izzy 29:36
It’s something that I’m doing for fun right now. I’ve always really liked helping people with academic stuff in school, how I feel like I grade all my friends. And I grant I proofread on my friends papers, and one of them was like, why do you do this? And I’m like, because I like helping people. And it’s fun for me. And I think right now, that’s kind of my motivation for it. And like, I’ll get DMS on Instagram and it’s like, I watched your Tick Tock Your videos help me bring my score up three points, which helped qualify me for a scholarship. And I’m like, Oh my gosh, like, like someone got like a $6,000 scholarship because of me and I’m like, dang, I’m like, really changing people’s lives here, at least Well, part of their lives, not their entire life.

Missy 30:18
So if someone were like wanting to be like, tick tock famous, let’s say I’m like trying to be trying to be a tick tock star here. What do I have to do just hashtag the for you page to get on it or you’re just or just post constant content consistently.

Unknown Speaker 30:32
I am not sure if like the hashtag for you page thing works. I know a lot of people do that. But I mean, I never ever looked at hashtags. I only really look at my for page. So a lot of people have tried using that hashtag. And I’m not necessarily sure if that boost your chances of getting on the for you page bit. Because like I said, the content only goes to like 40 people stages and then if they like it, then it goes to more people. So the biggest thing for like getting viral on Tick Tock is creating content that people want to see. And sometimes it’s just getting lucky like, are the 40 people my video gets sent to going to enjoy this like funny video or because there are a lot of different kinds of things you can make on the platform. So like if you do a dance video, are the people going to be interested in watching you dance for 15 seconds? Or like, are they going to like this video of you making brownies for your cousins? So I would say that if you’re trying to get viral on Tick Tock just trying out different things and finding a niche Yeah.

Pat 31:41
Have you have you had success with any other videos that you’ve posted? Big time like that?

Unknown Speaker 31:44
Yeah. Not none that have reached the million views like the other one, but that video kind of started me on making more and more videos about the ACT and I’ve started working with like advanced placement classes now to. I posted one of my first AP videos a few days ago and that one’s been doing pretty well. But so one thing about Tic Tok is that when your video that’s on there for you page you might not necessarily gain a lot of followers from it. But because I make it clear in the videos that I post more content like that on my page, I have a really high follow engagement from my content on the for you page. So a lot of people will have like 5 Million Likes, but like 40,000 followers, and I’m at around 500,000 likes, but I have I think this morning I got like 30,000 so it’s

Izzy 32:40
with my content I get more followers from that and that and then having more followers that also means that more people will see your stuff which sends your stuff to the for you page more so smart. That has certainly helped

Pat 32:54
look at you game in the system.

Missy 32:56
Do you think that brand should be on Tick Tock and if so would you follow them

Izzy 33:01
It’s, that’s an interesting question, because so part of me, like enjoy seeing branded content, but then part of me is like, I also just like watching other young kids making funny content. And like, there’s kind of a discussion that people are posting videos about right now. It’s like, Oh, we missed the old tic tok were, like audio, we’re trending instead of people and celebrities weren’t on the app. So I think it would really just depend on the brand and how they’re using it. And maybe if the brand were to incorporate themselves in their image into trends on the app, rather than just putting their stuff on there and kind of changing the culture because I think a lot of people are kind of noticing that happening and becoming. I don’t know how to really phrase it but getting smart not enjoying the trillions. Yeah.

Missy 33:58
So what do you I want to ask You are you familiar with like the hype houses and all that stuff?

Unknown Speaker 34:02
Oh, the hype house Yeah.

Missy 34:04
you what are your thoughts on that? Do you think that contents kind of like fake because they’re like purposely creating it for a reason or what are your What do you think? What’s your thoughts?

Izzy 34:13
Well, one of my biggest issues with the hype house is there is a really big lack of diversity with it. And I’m someone who likes to see a wide variety of content from different people and it’s I knew like three of the people in the hype house when it when I first started seeing those videos and like, I mean, if these people have built and developed their following that makes sense to teach for them to like, collaborate with each other on videos, but I think a lot of people kind of see it as something fake so I have mixed feelings about it.

Missy 34:52
Awesome. Thank you so much. Thank you. All links we talked about in today’s podcast will be the show notes at social podcast.com/EP101. Make sure you subscribe to the social feed podcast with Apple podcasts or your favorite podcast player to get a brand new episode delivered right to every Wednesday. Don’t forget about our Facebook group. We’d love to get your feedback. Tell us more about Tic Tok what you thought of the episode. You can search that when you go to Facebook and just search for the social feed podcast and click to join. Thank you for listening and we’ll be back next week.

Announcer 35:23
The social feed is a production of Hubbard Interactive with music provided by a Minneapolis based artist john atwell.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai


On This Episode

Missy Young

Social Media Services Manager

@miss_shredbetty Missy Young

As the Social Media Services Manager for Hubbard Interactive, Missy Young’s position entails working with clients and team members to drive social media strategy and lead initiatives to identify new technologies and digital best practices. She develops customized micro and macro campaigns that drive online interaction, promotes and creates content that enhances the customer experience and creates lead generation for medium to large-scale companies. She regularly speaks at local and national events on a variety of subjects including: social media, PR, analytics and content strategy.


Anna Johnson

Social Media Coordinator

@the_butterflypath Anna Johnson

A recent college grad (University of Wisconsin-River Falls) in marketing communications with a minor in business communications, Anna Johnson started her own brand called Just Anna. She also branded her non-profit, The Butterfly Path, that launch this past November where she helps others in her community with mental health. If Anna’s not at work, talking social media, or helping others brand their business, she can be found drinking endless cups of coffee or shopping at local businesses.


Pat Laeger

Digital Content Specialist

Pat Laeger

Pat has over 10 years of creative production experience and has produced radio shows, video campaigns, podcasts, and other digital content. Pat is an outgoing introvert, a spreadsheet lover, an Oxford comma advocate, and an avid Mountain Dew drinker.


Izzy Lundquist

Izzy is a high school senior in Minnesota. She also tutors other students as they prepare for the ACT. Her video on “How to get a perfect score on the ACT” went viral on TikTok.


To celebrate our 100th episode, we hosted a show at our Hubbard Digital Academy and looked back at how social media and digital marketing has changed in the 3 years we’ve had our podcast.


Shownotes


Episode Transcript

Missy 0:00
Welcome to the social feed podcast. I’m your host missy. Thank you for listening. This is our 100th episode.Pat 0:08
Audience with us today. We’re at we’re at our Hubbard digital Academy recording live on stage during lunchtime. And so everyone else is stuffing their faces. And we just get to watch them eat. hungry.

Jayna 0:22
We have some popcorn up here.

Pat 0:25
We’re celebrating 100 episodes. I mean, what three little over three years ago, we started this thing. It was kind of a, hey, let’s just have some fun and do a podcast. And here we are successful hundred episodes later. We’ve come so far we have. So I think today we just want to talk about what’s changed in three years and go back through some of our early episodes. And talk about what’s changed since then, because we talked about some weird stuff at the beginning. I mean, we still talk about weird stuff. I mean, our last episode was on meth, so But I mean the very first episode of is September 2016. And what what was our first topic that we kicked off?

Missy 1:08
Okay, I have to read the title of this the Pokemon GO craze, Instagram stories and the Olympic lockdown which does anyone here still play Pokemon Go? I never did one year when I was like No, it’s not really.

Pat 1:24
Yeah it was for like a month or two it was gigantic and so we’re like let’s talk about it.

Ruth 1:31
Was that like the new Tick Tock?

Missy 1:34
Tick Tock is like the cool new thing now. Well, it’s so funny too, because we have Instagram stories in our first episode and now Instagram Stories are just like there every day. Yeah, your

Pat 1:45
Yeah that was like the beginning of Instagram stories. I think they had just come out, like month or so before we started this and we’re like, are they gonna be gonna be a thing because at that point, Snapchat was still the only one doing stories like that and So you’re like well as Instagram gonna take over are they gonna do well or is Snapchat gonna you know and as we found out over three years Snapchat still there but Instagram Stories definitely.

Missy 2:11
They definitely. Yeah yeah Instagrams King now, yeah. Another episode, which I thought was so funny is why influencer marketing is the next big thing.

Pat 2:23
We were right.

Jayna 2:25
We’re on the cusp of right thing. Yeah.

Missy 2:29
Which is so funny because Megan, you’re actually teaching today at Hubbard Digital Academy about influencer marketing.

Meghan 2:33
Yeah. timely. So the presentation probably looks a little different than what you guys talked about back in What 2016? Was that what it was?

Do you remember how you talked about influencer marketing three years ago?

Missy 2:45
I think it was very much like just this is something you can do like some brands are starting to use it but it was it was nothing like it is today. Like Tell me a few things like your presentation today. Well, for example, it’s new for our presentation today based on what I presented on it. June is that Instagram is starting to remove likes. So that’s definitely going to change the whole scope of Instagram of influencer marketing now. So, I mean, who knows what’s going to happen there, but I know for sure that influencers are going to be focusing more on organic quality content, since they can’t use likes as a selling point to brands anymore. So brands now are going to evaluate based on what their content looks like and the conversations around their content.

Meghan 3:24
It’s crazy just to think about how much and influencer marketing is blown up. Like you

Ruth 3:29
You know what I know about their presentation is that Farrah Fawcett isn’t Nike. The OG- yeah. It’s it’s amazing that really, influencers have always been a thing. It’s just the way that it gets presented is so different. Yeah. Yeah. I was brilliant to put her in there. Well, again, I know who she

Meghan 3:55
Well, it’s funny as Ruth and I were talking a week ago to about influencer marketing, just talking about my presentation and she’s like, honestly, influencers exist in the high school like the cool kid wearing the brand new jeans, you know, it’s been around for a really long time. It’s not just an Instagram thing. However, Instagram has blown it up like crazy influencers can make a lot of money doing this. It’s could be their full time job now, it’s just grown so much

Ruth 4:20
Well, and I think what’s cool about it is that a local business has access to an influencer. Now. You know, nobody had Nikes budget, you know, right, Farrah Fawcett to be their influencer. But now that’s more accessible than it ever has been. So that yeah, that’s so cool.

Meghan 4:36
Well, more customizable to I mean, even even thinking about, I mean, we’re at Hubbard broadcasting, radio endorsements have been basically influencers for radio personalities have been influencers for a long time, but that’s still more along the lines of a big brand sort of thing that you’ve got to be able to spend money to advertise on the radio and pay a talent to talk about your brand and stuff and it’s it’s worked but now social media has made it much more affordable for small businesses and there are just so many more influencers out there in specific niches where you don’t have to hope you get some traction based on big gigantic radio or movie star x.

Missy 5:15
Just gonna say that about the niche audiences that influencer marketing brings, you know, you have like, go after gamers you can go after the like the foodies, the stylist, like there’s so many areas. And that’s the cool thing about social media influencers.

Meghan 5:26
Yeah, and honestly I include this in my presentation too, but an influencer can be anyone. I even say it could be your neighbor because for example, I am just a regular old person on social media and I actually got reached out to a partnership for a brand recently. I’m not an influencer I don’t call myself an influencer, but I think

Pat 5:44
Wow I didn’t know we were talking to a celebrity right now

Meghan 5:45
famous, I’m just trying to say that but no, I’m just a normal person. And now brands are really starting to tap into that because I have friends and I can talk to my friends. So I think that it’s changing even more like that these nano influencers are really growing.

That’s interesting that you took that Instagrams taking away likes because one of the first episodes we did Episode Four I think it was was on social media stats and and measuring social media. Like how is that changed like even for us as an agency how has that changed in three years? Oh my god, how are we measuring stats three years ago?

Missy 6:24
We were probably using like Sprout Social or some tool to measure all of that and now it’s really like all the platforms like think about even Facebook like the data the reporting dashboard and just Facebook alone How much that’s changed over the past three years and Instagram reporting and now we’re moving likes and oh, man, it’s it’s come a long way.

Meghan 6:43
Yeah, what’s funny about Instagram removing likes to is that I think it’s, it’s removing the vanity aspect of Instagram yet, for people that have huge following that gets thousands and thousands of likes, doesn’t it now say like so and so liked it and thousands others or something Like that, and if you have less than however many likes, it just says so and so liked it and others liked it. So like, there’s still a separation of this person super, super popular and this person doesn’t have that many likes, you know?

Missy 7:12
And I’m kind of curious, like, why Instagram is going that route. I was wondering what we think they’re going to be coming up, because there’s no way they’re just gonna take the notes. Yeah. And I’ve always like, we’ve talked about this in past episodes, but will platforms eventually start to charge to use social media. I mean, that’s always in the back of your head, especially businesses like to have a business account. So as every time they do something, I’m like, are they gonna start now? I don’t think they will. But it’s always in the back of my head.

Meghan 7:41
It’s Yeah, I mean, there’s a reason that they’re doing it. Oh, yeah, they’re there I’m sure part of it is is the all the backlash on mental health and what you know what that like stuff does to our brains and everything, but there’s, there’s no reason that’s the only way the only reason for them taking it away. There’s gotta be something. They’ve gotta have something

Ruth 8:00
Yeah, like, just

Unknown Speaker 8:02
like it was just thinking

Ruth 8:05
back.

Missy 8:09
It’s funny too, because we actually did a social feed podcast episode on mental health and social media with adrionna. Just talking about how you know, taking a break from your phone, especially working in social media every day. It’s it’s a lot, I mean, just socially in general is a lot. So working in it is a whole other level. So we had a whole episode about that. But I thought that was really fun. And that’s actually one of our top downloaded episodes to the podcast.

Meghan 8:31
Another one of our big episodes was we did a panel discussion earlier today at HDA was turning your location into a destination and just talking about and it was probably different a couple years ago when we did that episode than it even is today. But talking about what it takes to make people want to come to a retail store. And as digital becomes more and more entrenched in what we do, and we don’t leave our house to shop hardly ever, hardly ever. Like what do you do to make people want to come see you and going back to Instagram it’s make a lot one of the big things is making your store or location visually appealing so people want to take pictures and you know they can can wander lands of the world we had Karen Bachman from Bachmann’s here today and Wolfington was here. And then Rosedale center. Yeah, talking about what they’ve done to make people want to shop at them all and come by their flowers at a at a store and you know,

Missy 9:30
creating that more experiential destination versus just I’m gonna pop in and grab something like whats going to a draw people to come in versus ordering online. You know, if you don’t create it make something cool, then why would I just order it online? Right? Yep. So Pat episode six was using video and where it fits in your social media plan. Has video changed over the past three years

Meghan 9:51
that’s pretty much exactly my presentation that I’m giving. But in 2016, I think At that point, Instagram had just introduced video onto their platform like, up until to 2015 or early 2016. It was just photos on Instagram. And that seems weird to think about now because there are videos all over the place, and video ads on Instagram. But at that point of video was a video and you would just record a video and post it everywhere like you’d put it on your Facebook page, you put it on, if you had a YouTube channel, you’d put the same video everywhere. And I think the biggest thing that we’ve learned in you know, three years of social media video is that everything has to be customized to where you’re publishing the video. If you’re publishing a video on Facebook, it’s got to be different than a video you’re putting on YouTube, or a TrueView ad campaign that you’re doing. The video needs to be structured completely different, let alone if you’re filming it vertically for Instagram stories or you’re making a square version for Facebook or Instagram, right. There’s just there are so many places that videos can go. And same thing with influencers. It’s so, so much more cost effective to do a video advertisement than it was three years ago five years ago. You can production companies aren’t charging as much because there’s it’s easier access to the equipment that you need to make a video businesses can make their own videos, or

Ruth 11:20
And with the technology of a phone for sure can. I mean,

Meghan 11:24
can you imagine doing a video from your phone three years ago? publishing that as a as an ad? I mean, sure, you could post it on Facebook to your profile, right? But no way but you could easily do I mean, Apple does this their shot on iPhone TV commercials where they’re filming like, it looks like a movie scene like I just saw one the other day It looks like it’s like a paint ball. Oh, it’s a snowball fight. Yeah, there’s all these crazy action shots and cinematic movements of cameras and actors and everything and if they didn’t say shot on iPhone on it, you would have no idea

Wow Yeah, there’s so many tools out there now to and just your accessibility to all these things with your phone in general it makes things things can be done a lot easier than probably three years ago now. Oh for sure. Yeah.

Missy 12:15
My other question for you is because because there’s so many different ways you can now resize video like Instagram stories, Instagram feed, Facebook, YouTube, like, how much more time does it take from before like three years ago, like you make the video and you distribute on the channels that next that next set?

Meghan 12:31
I do, I wouldn’t say well, it’s, it’s it’s both faster and it’s more work now. Because now we can with with 4k cameras and even higher resolution cameras and 4k, you could really film once and then crop the size down to whatever network you’re you’re using. Because 4k is so big, you can crop it to vertical and still have it as big of resolution as Instagram stories will allow. So in that sense, you don’t have to necessarily film things multiple times. To get it on multiple channels, but at the same time, that is more editing to be done later, most likely, I’m not taking a video that we have filmed landscape and just cropping the middle out of it for because you’re going to miss some things. And so you’ve got to take into account where the camera moves where the actors move where the, you know, talent is. And so there’s a little bit more finessing of it to go on these multiple different platforms. But you can film it once, which is kind of nice. Yeah.

Missy 13:28
So one of our other most recent episodes, well, in the beginning, Episode 14 was everything you need to know about Google Analytics. So Ruth, how much has Google Analytics changed over the past three years?

Ruth 13:41
I mean, there’s so many additional things that you can track and learn about the audience that goes to your website, that it’s insane. And then there’s multiple additional things that are coming that are just in beta right now that, you know, it’s on one hand, it’s getting creepier and creepier. But from a marketing standpoint, the ability to really know your audience and be able to market to them specifically, like you were talking a minute ago about the niche audiences. We’re getting closer to being able to do that from a marketing standpoint to and only only market to people who like to travel, for example, or just, you know,

Missy 14:20
so another Episode Episode 12 we did was politics on social media, which

Ruth 14:24
I was wondering if you were gonna bring this one up

Missy 14:31
Obviously, that’s happened in the past three years on Facebook specifically, and oh my gosh, think about that with Mark Zuckerberg and court and all of that

Meghan 14:38
and Cambridge Analytica and all that that all happened in the last three years.

Ruth 14:43
That’s crazy. Yeah, that seems like a lifetime ago. Yeah, guys.

Missy 14:49
So I know I’m like now especially when you place ads on Facebook, if you have anything to do with a political affiliation, you have to mark yourself and be verified as that business account to place ads. And they had they have to be completely transparent. So Facebook has an entire section. I just talked about this in my presentation on Facebook advertising, Facebook ad library. You can see other pages and what ads they’re promoting. And they’re specifically a political tab. So you can see how much they’re spending on and what ads they’re using to promote it.

Ruth 15:20
I don’t know how I feel about that.

Meghan 15:22
As a competitor, that’s great. I mean, you can you can look at what other

Ruth 15:25
If I was the business owner though I’d be pretty concerned about that.

Meghan 15:29
Yeah, transparency. That’s what I’m trying to introduce more of it.

Missy 15:32
Yeah. Okay, another episode we recorded was how hashtags can make or break your brand. Do you guys still hashtags are just as relevant as they were three years ago.

Ruth 15:42
You guys probably do. I don’t really pay that much attention to them.

Meghan 15:45
I mean, we still use them on Instagram all the time. I mean, Facebook, not yet. But

Ruth 15:51
a lot of people that use them on Facebook to me, it’s just like, why would you like you don’t know what you’re doing. I didn’t want to say that, but Meghan I’m glad you did.

Missy 16:02
On Instagram is so relevant and I’m really curious, like, I want to go back and like listen to that full episode on what we talked about. But I mean, like, tick tock is like the new thing right now. And there. It’s all hashtag all using hashtags like it’s not hasn’t gone anywhere. So that’s kind of interesting. Now hashtags have stayed true. Through all three of those years.

Meghan 16:21
I mean, we have a hashtag for Hubbard digital Academy today. I mean, Hubbard Academy is our tag. It’s a great way. I mean, I remember using it early on, for like conferences and stuff that I couldn’t attend. I would just pull up Twitter, and read through hashtags of people going to the different sessions and quotes from presenters and stuff that other people attending the conference with post and, you know, it wasn’t just like being there, but you could still get a lot of the information from being there. You know, the bigger it is, the more tweets and stuff you have to comb through, but it’s a great way to an end for us Hubbard Academy. We’ll look we’ll look back later this week, and go and wonder. Wonder what people posted and how they felt about it. It’s a great way to recap stuff and we do it for influencers we do other events and stuff that we do. We create hashtags and ask people to use it so we can go back and look at how it did.

Missy 16:24
Yeah, yeah Say to like, since this is our 6th Hubbard digital Academy, we’ve definitely been better at finding those Instagram moments. So like, like even our the social media podcast today like we have confetti poppers, we have the hundred like gold balloons behind us. You know, it just having those things that people want to take photos of. I think in our first Academy, we noticed everyone was taking pictures of their name badges, because there was nothing else really sexy in the room. So now we have like our big Hubbard Digital Academy sign.

Meghan 17:41
My presentation was super

Missy 17:44
obvious. So I mean, just having you know, creating that really cool experiential space to get people to take photos of the event or business. Yep. One of our very top one of our top episodes was Episode 15 how to create an integrated marketing campaign. And we actually have a presentation today where they’re talking about how to create an integrated marketing campaign.

Meghan 18:07
It’s still a thing.

Missy 18:08
Do you guys think that that has changed a lot over the past three years?

Meghan 18:13
I would say Yeah. Just because of the amount of channels always changing. Yeah, there’s so many things that are new now that weren’t around at that point. But I would say it’s even more critical now than it was before just I heard Elizabeth Reese say on the panel earlier today that one of the things she’s been surprised to find out is that even her personal I mean, she’s a TV celebrity. So personal is a weird term, but her personal social media channels that have different audiences, like her Facebook audience isn’t the same as even her Instagram is so she’s gotten more comfortable posting the same or very similar content on Instagram and Facebook, where for a while, she was like, I can’t post the same thing in both places. But But the more

Ruth 18:57
people aren’t seeing them is what you’re saying. Yeah.

Meghan 18:59
The more channels that are the more that’s going to segment audiences and so you have when you’re doing a marketing campaign you have to be on all these channels even if it’s the same or very similar messaging with the same hashtag or with the same video or creative concepts you you have to reach a wide audience at this point yeah,

Missy 19:17
I think that goes back to what you talked about video to like we’re just gonna shoot a video you have to size it for all of the different areas that you need to go and so whatever creative you have, you have to make sure you think about what areas does that apply best to you whether that’s video content for I’m gonna keep bringing up Tik Tok because I’m so obsessed the right now. I’m like 15 years I you tweet that I know what is wrong.

Meghan 19:39
You tweeted how much you love tik tok?

Yeah, she did.

Ruth 19:42
Why am I so obsessed with this?

Missy 19:48
integrated marketing, personal brand, so I have

Ruth 19:50
I was thinking that like just video on its own in the last three years, we weren’t doing TrueView campaigns three years ago on YouTube. It’s crazy.

Meghan 20:03
How many ads you see?

Missy 20:08
Do you think it’s harder for marketers now to do integrated campaigns because there are so many options. I feel like it gets expensive. It’s like, Okay, well, I’m going to start on YouTube and then I’m gonna have you know, radio and TV and then my you know, tik tok. And it’s almost spread yourself too thin. I think it’s just having to be more educated than we’ve ever had to be before. Because really, not every platform is appropriate for every brand. So, and Monitoring, how, what am I getting out of this? You know?

Meghan 20:41
Yeah, knowing where your audience is. I mean, it puts more pressure on marketers to do more, but it’s also pushing us all to be better too. But yeah, it is more work. I’d say.

Missy 20:53
Okay, Jayna you have to come up here because you are on our second episode. I’m going to pull you into this right Now. So Jana Wilcox, which she was originally Anderson, she got married over the past three years. So that’s another life change. She was on our second episode the makings of a perfect social media contest. How much has contests changed with social media over the past three years

Jayna 21:18
a ton! I was actually joking about this earlier. Because I feel like we I had this as a podcast topic, we used to have it as a Hubbard digital Academy topic as well that I would speak on. And more recently, we’ve changed the way we sell it and how we leverage our radio stations and this so that’s really interesting to me. It’s still relevant and it’s still a thing. I think it’s switched a lot more to comment contests and Instagram and things like that. And absolutely, I think you can still run a sweepstakes that generates leads and things like that, but you’ve just had to think about it in a totally different way in the last three years. We sorry, Pat. Sorry, Pat. I just And I knew that I wanted to talk about this.

Missy 22:05
Okay, so we also did a podcast on podcasting, which I think is so funny. How is podcasting changed in the past three years? insane? Gosh, I mean, oh my gosh, it’s just exploding right now. Like, we actually have someone from pod mn here. And if you guys are from Minnesota listening, I would highly recommend checking that out downloading the app. And it basically combines all of the Minnesota podcasts ours is on there too- shameless plug. which is which is cool. Like you know, it’s basically pulled in Minnesota brands that are on podcasts

Jayna 22:38
Missy and I were in washington dc in the fall and one of our markets so DC, they created a podcast and we kind of we peel back the layers of what it took to create that podcast and what’s it called it 22 hours- American nightmare yeah matter mystery stuff. This will good. so good. Yeah. And they had such great success, but to look at everything that was put into it all the thought and the strategy behind it was really, really, really interesting. But even they said, you know, what they used to do with podcasting had totally changed and even what their success was then has now even evolved and really evolved as they continue to do more.

Missy 23:19
So I feel like that should be one of our future episodes is talking with them and DC about how they built that. That would be really amazing. Really interesting. on there. Yeah. Okay, so I’m just like reading through these episodes, and some of them I’m like, What were we like we did an ASMR podcast that was great, which so much crap for he can’t talk right now. So I’m totally going to like blast him. So it’s actually a lot of good downloads. It was one of our top for a while. Another one we had was the good nuggets, the bad PR and the ugly airways. What was that? What was know what that was, but it Sounds I’m sure you know. What’s an ugly airway? Pat, do you remember what ugly airway was shaking his head? No, it was a long time ago. Oh my gosh, these are just these are gold. It’s It’s weird. Like when I first started, I was very intimidated by it. Because talking into a microphone, it just seems so like, whew, official. You know, if I swear, yeah. And it’s been it’s been a journey over these hundred episodes. I feel like I’m just more casual with and you know, it’s, it’s not as intimidating. You just you just gotta do it. So if anyone wants to use like, I think I’m gonna start a podcast. Just frickin do it. Yeah, start. Because now we’re at 100 episodes, which I never thought we’d had a lot to do with it just pushing me like missy. We gotta get it on the schedule. Be consistent, have cool ideas, pulling awesome people like you guys that like have fun things to talk about. Just do it. Because you have all been on different episodes. Do you have any favorite episodes What you’ve done?

Jayna 24:35
I think for me just watching you guys, it’s almost become, you know, more creative or you look at different topics in a different way where you think, well, that could be a podcast episode and instead of I think before we always thinking, Okay, so what’s the new trend right now? The big like, changing Yeah. And now it’s like, hey, let’s talk about this campaign they ran in South Dakota that everyone else is talking about, and just join me as I’m yeah, like, whatever that is it. I feel like, yes, we still think about it, but it comes more organically to you guys, at least when I’m seeing the topics come out.

Missy 25:00
Yeah, I think that’s a really good point. Like, we’re not just focused on like, the big hot, new, exciting updates. It’s like, really what are those campaigns, getting into the details of them? And then also talking about, you know, weird stuff along the way.

Jayna 25:53
And I think it helps you guys just with your work, to looking at what’s out there and evaluating it and thinking, Oh, our work Could be on someone else’s podcast? Or how would we look at this? And I like that too. When you bring it back to you, well, this is what we would do instead or so being the thought leader.

Missy 26:08
What always amazed me. So I actually spoke on a panel about podcasting a couple months ago. And they talked about like your audience and how to cater the content to them. And one thing I thought was really interesting and Pat and I noticed we’ve done a few episodes were on Twitter, all of these students start tweeting about our episodes. And so I had tweeted back a couple of them be like, how did you find out about us? They’re not even from Minnesota. They’re like, all over the country. Teachers at different schools, like professors are having the students listen to our podcast episodes, and having to write like papers and talk about them. That’s so cool. I was like, that is I mean, you really made it.

Ruth 26:47
can we ask to see some of the papers?

Missy 26:54
we should!

Ruth 26:55
If it’s a critique I don’t want to see it.

Missy 27:01
But it’s just cool. Like, you know, thinking about this would be more for business owners but marketing professors teaching people how to do this is a whole era we never thought of yet because we didn’t learn about podcasting in school. No, that’s half the stuff. I didn’t learn about social media at all in school to be honest.

Ruth 27:19
You guys can’t even believe that can you kind of looked up at the ceiling?

Missy 27:33
So what do you guys think about so obviously, we’re into 100 more episodes. So we’ll be doing this in three more years for our 200th What should we What do you think are 200 episode will be about? You think we’ll be talking on the moon? Oh, my gosh, where’s the world going to be in three years? We will have just gotten back.

Jayna 27:52
I agree with you. I can’t look. One of our markets is now on the moon. out there.

Missy 28:09
I think influencer marketing will still be here. It’s just going to be transformed in a different way to be insane how that changes. Yeah, video content, it’s always gonna be you’re just gonna get more, I think, like things like Tick tock, we’ll we’ll look back into it.

Jayna 28:23
Oh my gosh, you remember when Tick Tock was just starting and when Missy tweeted about it, and I don’t know what it looks like, but it was

Ruth 28:34
What about artificial intelligence? So I think that’s gonna be talking a lot more about.

Missy 28:41
That’s gonna be huge. That would be a great future episode. I think it would we got to get into that a little bit more and just motivation and how that’s gonna work with your marketing in general. What kind of what platforms do you guys think won’t be around anymore? in three years?

Meghan 28:58
I don’t want to call me out right now because I don’t want to be wrong- that’s the thing.

Missy 29:07
are you thinking the big one? I think it has to be right now. No, I wasn’t gonna go that far. Oh, I think it’ll still be around. I think it’s going to be transport. Yeah, like they’re gonna have to figure out while a lot of regulation going on like way more than now.

Meghan 29:19
I was gonna say Snapchat. I don’t know. That’s what I yeah, I think Snapchat. Yeah, I know. Sorry.

Jayna 29:26
Those Gen Z. Is it Gen Z? Yeah, yeah. They’re still on it a lot. But it’s like their form. The way they communicate the way they do it is if you were they take a picture of their forehead and always send back and forth it’s so funny.

Ruth 29:42
Are they like screenshot something and then yeah, they just the facial expression that they send. That’s my question to you and you should know how to answer that. Yeah. Weird. And they do. Yeah, they know how to respond.

Jayna 29:54
Do you think it would go away or anything. It might be something in school, another language option you have like cursive writing

Spanish I’m in French I’m in Snapchat. That’s my prediction that right there will have Snapchat teachers who’s gonna teach ads?

Missy 30:19
Yeah, that’s a good point. Like the thing about the teachers like, yeah, they’re gonna be teaching this more in school. I mean, high school is already starting to teach social media.

Jayna 30:28
Did you bring up How? So? Brandon? From brandography is that his name? Okay. Brandon from Nairobi. Wait, are you talking with Jason or Jason Albert?Wow. Okay, so Jason from brandography. I’m sorry. He was saying that his good friend is a psychiatrist and a big topic right now is Tick Tock addiction. Yeah, it’s an addiction. Oh my gosh, they’re working was Because my dad was on it, yeah, but they’re like using artificial intelligence to predict what you want to see. So that’s how they’re getting these young people just literally addicted to it.

Missy 31:11
I wonder if there’s going to be like, like, you know, like, stop smoking campaigns is gonna be like, stop using social media. It isn’t probably

Ruth 31:19
I read an article from I don’t know who the author is, is terrible. I can’t quote it, but he did a study of your brain. And when you are when you post something, and then somebody likes it or responds to it, that same center in your brain that responds to heroin, lights up

Meghan 31:38
That’s insane.

Missy 31:39
I can’t argue with that. Because I def, you know.

Ruth 31:44
So let’s end on a serious, that’s heavy stuff. Hopefully.

Hey, you know, talk about the good, the bad and the ugly.

Missy 31:56
We’re covering all of it. Yep. Well, I’m So excited to see what our next hundred episodes bring. So everyone, thank you for listening and enjoying the ride for these past three years. Pat, This is nuts. I think we can accomplish 200 sooner than Yes, don’t you? Yeah. Oh, yeah, we’ll keep it consistent. Well, we’ll get there any parting words? Pat, how your journey has been on the social feed podcast?

Meghan 32:23
This has been a lot of fun. I mean, as a as a former radio producer getting getting to do a podcast is it’s my first love. I mean, I love video and everything but but being a part of this has been a lot of fun. And like, like Missy said earlier, it’s just it’s so not threatening. Yeah,

Ruth 32:40
it is really fun,

Meghan 32:42
easy and fun. And we started off wanting to talk to business owners. And I think we still speak mostly to business owners and marketers, but we’re just having fun and talking about stuff that we love and trying to make the world a better place. No, we don’t really care. Let’s try to end on a super positive note. No, but we’ll Link- I’ll try to remember all the episodes we talked about, and link to those. But yeah, just thanks for listening. For those of you who’ve been around if you’ve been around for an episode or 400 episodes, thanks for listening, and we’ll keep going. This isn’t this isn’t the end for sure.

Missy 33:23
And it will again, I always pitch this every time at the end of each episode, but check out our Facebook group, social feed podcasts and let us know if you want to any future episodes that you have ideas for. fresh new ideas. We have a lot of great brains in the building, but we can always use more so let us know what you think. You just got to join socially podcast on Facebook to join. Thank you guys for listening and we’ll be back soon. Bye bye.

Unknown Speaker 33:50
The social feed is a production of Hubbard Interactive with music provided by Minneapolis based artist john Atwell.


On This Episode

Missy Young

Social Media Services Manager

@miss_shredbetty Missy Young

As the Social Media Services Manager for Hubbard Interactive, Missy Young’s position entails working with clients and team members to drive social media strategy and lead initiatives to identify new technologies and digital best practices. She develops customized micro and macro campaigns that drive online interaction, promotes and creates content that enhances the customer experience and creates lead generation for medium to large-scale companies. She regularly speaks at local and national events on a variety of subjects including: social media, PR, analytics and content strategy.


Meghan Bergman

Social Media Strategist

@meghanracquel Meghan Bergman

Meghan joined the Hubbard Interactive team as a Social Media Strategist in 2018. She leverages her background in marketing, content creation, and blogging to make a digital impact for her clients across many different brand categories. Hailing from the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Journalism, Meghan capitalizes on her writing and communications skills to produce creative campaigns, build meaningful relationships with others, and work effectively with her clients. Fueled by coffee, she finds herself consistently staying on top of the latest social media trends and always looking for her next project. When not scrolling through her many social feeds, you can most likely find Meghan working out at the gym, or whipping up a deliciously healthy meal. She is passionate about health and fitness, and recently became certified as a personal trainer.


Ruth Tambornino

Digital Brand Strategist

Ruth Tambornino is the Digital Brand Strategist at Hubbard Interactive, Hubbard’s Digital Agency. Prior to joining Hubbard Interactive, she Senior Manager of Field Strategy at Dex Media. Her role at Dex included bringing new digital products to market, training marketing consultants and working with key client accounts. In addition to Dex Media, Ruth spent a year working with a start up software company as Director of Sale Enablement. Ruth has over 10 years of experience in digital marketing. A former small business owner and Real Estate professional, Ruth understands the challenges business owners face. Her professional focus is to educate business owners on the importance of digital marketing. With solid understanding of messaging and digital platforms, Ruth has worked with 100’s of clients locally and nationally, impacting their business in a positive way. Areas of expertise include PPC, SEO, Digital Display, Websites and Mobile platforms. Over the course of her career, Ruth has received several awards for sales and training. She is certified in Google AdWords and is currently completing her business degree at Saint Mary’s University. She is also on the Board of Directors for Alliance of Women in Media.


Pat Laeger

Digital Content Specialist

Pat Laeger

Pat has over 10 years of creative production experience and has produced radio shows, video campaigns, podcasts, and other digital content. Pat is an outgoing introvert, a spreadsheet lover, an Oxford comma advocate, and an avid Mountain Dew drinker.


Jayna Wilcox

Senior Digital Sales Strategist

@jaynaanderson_

Jayna Wilcox is the Senior Digital Sales Strategist at 2060 Digital. Along with a degree in Strategic Communication, she studied Fashion at the University of Minnesota, which makes her an avid trend seeker across a variety of industries. She is able to see the importance of digital media converting into sales and has an understanding of both a big and small brand standpoint, as she did social media for Mall of America, prior to joining the Hubbard Interactive team. Always interested in the latest and upcoming trends in social & digital media, fashion, and health, Jayna has a very futuristic mindset and is always seeking “what’s next” to improve her clients’ needs. Jayna is a Hubbard NextGen, a group that was selected within the company to come up with ideas for the future.


Getting Google to see you and rank you high in search results is a tall order, so are there tools and tricks to make it easier? That’s what we discus in this episode. Ruth Tambornino and Sam O’Byrne are digital strategists at Hubbard Interactive and offer some tips on getting ranked higher on Google for businesses who are just looking to discover and expand their online presence.


Shownotes


Episode Transcript

Missy Young 0:00
Welcome to the social feed podcast. I’m your host Missy, thank you for listening. In this episode. If you are a business owner and you’re wondering how the heck do I get Google to see me? We’re going to tell you all about what you should be looking for online. We give you tips, tricks, and some really great advice from Ruth Tambornino and Sam O’Byrne, who are a digital brand strategist at Hubbard Interactive. So let’s get into this week’s episode number 98. Auditing your online brand. So what’s the first thing you should be doing when you are auditing your online brand?Ruth Tambornino 0:31
I would say the first thing that’s that you should do is use an incognito window. A lot of people think that they’re coming up really well in search results for their business. But the reality is that they go to their website 12 times a day. So Google just keeps bringing them up at the top of the search result go I’m doing great. Yeah, yeah, it’s a false sense of vanity actually. So what you want to do is in case you don’t know what a incognito window is, is at the top right. corner of your screen, there’s like three dots, you click on that. And there’s an option for a new incognito window and the screens going to be black, so you know that you’re in the right spot. And that has zero cookies, no save data or anything. So it’s going to be a true search result. So you want to start there and just google yourself and see what happens. or Google your industry, maybe not your own website. And then also, maybe have some friends or you can do it yourself, but you want to search from different locations as well. So searching from the same location that you’re sitting in, is obviously going to bring up a search result. That’s because that’s near me, right? So that’s number one. That’s where you guys start. Yeah,Sam O’Byrne 1:43
I couldn’t agree more with that. giving yourself a search and to ruse point search both for your name and you know, possibly your name in quotations, maybe even your phone number or address, um, see how those things pop up or somebody might be searching for you, as well as searching for some of your top products. Top products or service lines, see if you’re showing up in some of those searches that you expect you should be. See where you’re showing up if it’s page two, or three or four might not necessarily be so valuable. And once you kind of can get to that, that basic, you know, how do I feel about my my search rankings or where I show up, then you can get into this a lot of tools that we use to really identify how many keywords are ranking for what those are and things. But oftentimes, the best place to start is just give yourself a Google search. Yeah,Missy Young 2:26
what’s like a good report card? Like you type in your name incognito mode, and you’re in the top 10? Or maybe your list says five? Is that good? Is that bad? Obviously, there’s room for improvement there.Ruth Tambornino 2:36
I would say that you want to be on page one for sure.

Sam O’Byrne 2:40
Yeah, I’d say if anything, if you’re searching for your own name, you want to have multiple listings on page one, you want to show up multiple times from different ways. One might be your website. Another might be a social property, or even depending on your industry, you might want your Yelp reviews to show up or your reviews from another another location. So it’s all those things where if you’re searching for your own branded name, I hope that it There’s multiple results that should show up on that first page. If you’re searching for your services, your main service lines you want those be first page, but you should expect to have more competition there too. So you might be, you know, two or three, even if somebody else is number one, that’s not the end of the world. But if you’re searching for your own brand and name, I’m definitely hoping you’re showing up right away. And again, multiple times

Pat Laeger 3:21
what’s what’s more important searching for your own name or searching for products or services that you offer?

Ruth Tambornino 3:27
That’s a great question. And it all depends on the business. And I would say as well, you want to be googling your competitors to to see how they’re coming up, because it isn’t just about how you’re showing up. It’s what it’s what are they doing, which also can give you some strategy on Hey, they’re doing this maybe I should be doing that too.

Sam O’Byrne 3:45
Yeah, and I would say that what tourists point one is it more important than the other. If you have a lot of brand recognition in the space, if everybody knows your name, then you definitely better be showing up for your name. But if you want to be reaching out to people who never heard of you before, then Those services are your product lines are going to be extremely important because if they don’t know your name, and that’s the only way you’re coming up in search, then you’ll never be able to expand your audience through searches on Google Yahoo. Bing,

Missy Young 4:12
so I searched for, like car dealer near me. And I get, you know, auto Mart, Sally’s automotive, Metro motor sales. But those are all in the map section, right? And then Luther auto, which is a pretty big dealership and town is down. It’s still on the first page, but it’s in the in the more organic section. How do you get in the map section? And how important is that?

Ruth Tambornino 4:32
Well, it’s really important, especially as we’re seeing more of those car dealership near me searches. So it’s actually become a lot more important than it even was maybe a year ago. But it’s important to remember that the map section and the organic section both have their own algorithms. So just because you’ve mastered one or the other doesn’t mean you’ve mastered both of them. So I will also say that you’ll see those rotate, just like the organic search Does so just because you’re coming up on the first page of the maps, you might not be tomorrow or next week or whatever. So this is an ongoing process that you want to be monitoring all the time.

Sam O’Byrne 5:09
You bet. I would say that as far as making sure you do show up in the map section. First thing is most businesses that have a physical location probably already have a maps listing, it’s important to make sure that you control it though. If it’s if it’s your business, you find yourself in maps, but you don’t actually have control of that, you will actually have the ability to go in there and say, This is mine. Google will go through a process to confirm oftentimes, they might send a physical postcard to the address listed things like that with a code on it. But it is important that you have control of that and that you use that to the best of your ability, add images that that you’ve added in, make sure that all of your about information there is accurate and optimized, make sure that your hours are accurate. Another thing is just like you can place ads and organic or above organic search results. You can place ads in the maps as well. So if you’re not showing up there, it’s important to Find a way to I guess that brings in another point of reviews on Google Maps are extremely important. No matter how great you feel like your web presences. If somebody’s going to find you a maps, a lot of times, the only thing to look at is that that those review numbers, and then they’ll they’ll decide what business they’re going with. If you have a 2.5. And you’re right, next, someone who’s got a 4.5 chances are, they’re gonna go see your competitor there.

Ruth Tambornino 6:23
Yeah, that brings up another good point about conversion. So coming up on the first page is great. But if people aren’t compelled to select you for various reasons, having the right content, having an SEO strategy, those are all really important, just to make sure that you’re actually getting people to engage with you. The other thing too, as far as placement goes, is we see a giant jump in conversions if you’re in the top three to five positions versus those five to 10 positions. So and it’s it’s harder for us to get a client when we’re doing SEO for them from page it’s harder for it’s easier. For us to get them from page to page one or even page four to page one, that it is for us to get them from position eight to position for that. So getting moving up that first page is is quite a challenge.

Missy Young 7:11
When you guys have talked about reviews, does the number of reviews you have factor into that algorithm? Like the more reviews, the higher you’ll show up? Or is that more just a vanity thing? So definitely, yes.

Sam O’Byrne 7:25
Yeah, so the number of reviews definitely matters. Google wants to make sure people are having a positive experience. Yeah. Because if people are using Google search, and then they find a business on Google search and have a terrible experience, some people might actually blame Google on Google does want that to happen. So yeah, if you have a larger number of reviews that are all mostly positive, Google is more likely to show you than a competitor

when they have the opportunity to show both of you.

Missy Young 7:51
So let’s move to the clients websites. So if you’re listening and you know you have your website, what are some updates or teach me some cheat tools you can use to make sure that set up for success. To be shown on Google,

Ruth Tambornino 8:02
one that I really liked, because it’s super easy is just think with Google, just, you know, you can just literally Google that. And you can do a speed test. For those of you who need a little help, that’s okay, if you do. But you’re just going to put your URL in there, and it’s going to run a report card for you. And it’s going to give you some information that may not make sense to you. But it’s going to make sense to a developer. If your site’s really slow or whatnot, it’s going to give you a picture of things you can do to to improve that, that you can share with the developer. That’s an easy first step.

Sam O’Byrne 8:32
Yeah. And I really like that because making sure that you have a good mobile sites feed in particular, is a big ranking factor for Google. So if you run one of those speed tests, like Ruth said, that should give you both a desktop and mobile score. And even if it does spit out a lot of recommendations that you might not directly understand. Hopefully, you have a web developer who can help you out and make some of those changes. Another tool that I might recommend right away would be well, when we’re talking about free tools, would be spy food spy FQ I’m sorry.

But anyways, it is a great tool because it can allow you to see up, you know, the number of the volume of organic keywords that you rank for, where those are within those top 50. As well as what some of those keywords are. The other big benefit, despite who is you can run your competitors websites through there too. And see, if there’s a big competitor in your space. And they’re doing things better than you, you can start seeing what areas they might be edging you out on. Now, with the free version, you only get some results. And if you want to pay for I think they might even do 30 days free trial, which might be enough for a small business, not for an agency like us. But for small business that might be enough. That kind of tool can give you a lot of great ideas on what you’re doing well, and if there if you’re not ranking for your service areas, maybe you better start writing some content about those and getting them online. What kind

Pat Laeger 9:57
of what kind of stuff is Google Looking for, like you said, page load speed? Like, is it number of pages on the website? Is it amount of videos, texts? Like what? What sort of stuff is Google really looking for?

Ruth Tambornino 10:10
It’s all of those things. I was just gonna say that another tool that that would be really invaluable to pay attention to is just your Google Analytics. Because user experience is where I mean, it’s probably in the top, you know, to Yeah, of what Google’s gauging. So those page views, the bounce rate, how how long somebody stays on your site, do they come back, all of those things are playing into it. And Google Analytics is free, for a reason, because they’re also capturing all your data and probably using it but but you still, that’s literally the richest information you’re going to get as far as how people are engaging, and how are they finding you?

Sam O’Byrne 10:47
You bet. And as far as the, you know, what ranking metrics are most important Google, there’s some, you know, well over 200 different items that they that they take into consideration with those rankings. And you have to remember that those are they’re taking those into consideration for both you and every other of those, you know, 3 billion listings that come up when somebody searches for something. So it’s important, they do take care of some of those big ones that are, you know, like page load speed, is it mobile friendly. Also, as far as the content goes, you want to make sure it is readable by Google, a lot of times people will upload an image their site, and those uploaded as you know, jpg 7438 dot image, or whatever. And if they do that, then Google when it’s reading through the site will look at that image as as blank space. And the only information it has is, you know, image 143782. jpg, or whatever I just said. And it won’t say that this is an image of, you know, a family in front of a home. So oftentimes, making sure that you feed that information to Google is really important. Which brings up another point of ADA compliance if you have a website that somebody who’s blind couldn’t use, for example, that can also have have impact. So you need to make sure that something like a screen reader Somebody who’s blind is using your site, it’s gonna be able to go through and read all the content to them. And Google Doc you if it’s not if it’s not a DA compliant, or if you’re trying to trick Google, they’ll also dock you for those things to how does

Missy Young 12:12
Google is there like another cheat tool that you can use to make to see if your site is a DA compliant or anything like that.

Ruth Tambornino 12:19
So

this is going to become a huge focus of conversation in the next probably, I mean, it already has become more and more but I would think in the next 18 months, we’re going to be hearing even more about it. And and the requirements are so vague, that it’s really difficult for just about any business. The first businesses that have been affected really by it, I would think are the health care industry and also legal, those are the ones that have been, I think making a huge migration to become a DA compliant. Whereas some of our you know e commerce and things like that are a little slower on the on the adoption rate there

Sam O’Byrne 12:59
you Yeah, if you for what it’s worth, there aren’t a lot of super easy tools for checking everything with ADA compliance. There are some for checking certain areas. For example, if you’re, you know, for users who are blue, green, or if sorry, red green color blind, eight, Adobe offers tools that allow you to make sure there’s enough contrast between your color and the backgrounds, the text color in the background, things like that. So that even if you are colorblind, it would show up appropriately. What I would recommend for that is a Google WCAG. Two point O those are the web access or website content accessibility guidelines.

Ruth Tambornino 13:34
Sounds fun. Yep.

Sam O’Byrne 13:36
Super fun. If

Ruth Tambornino 13:37
you have insomnia, you just pulled that out.

Sam O’Byrne 13:40
That does give you kind of the three main tiers of ADA compliance, everything from as I mentioned earlier, making sure that somebody who has a screen reader could that screen reader could read all the content to them all the way through to the top tier Where’s if you are doing a live video, it creates closed captioning for audiences who are You don’t necessarily need to hit every single one of those. But I would say that in those guidelines, they’re broken out by a double A and triple A, if you can hit all the double A ones, which most medium and small businesses can, you’ll be in good shape. If you’re a Coca Cola of the world, you better be hitting those triple A’s too. But

Ruth Tambornino 14:17
well, it does. I think the your, your online profile does play into how important this is. We actually have a client right now who was redoing their website. And it’s a giant project because they had a person trying to purchase a ticket on their website and was unable to do so because of a site issue that they had and file a lawsuit actually one. So it’s not, it is something that matters. It’s just something we’re going to start hearing more and more about because, sadly, that community of people who’ve kind of had to tolerate not being able to, you know, read things or whatever, they’re big, they’re gaining a voice, which is a great thing. Yeah. You definitely want that. We all we want Avoid lawsuits if we can and maybe just be more proactive, but it is it’s a really it’s a hot topic that I think it’s just going to gain more momentum.

Sam O’Byrne 15:08
Yeah. Especially with, you know, people accidentally discriminating if you only allow applications online, but then you have somebody who’s colorblind is cannot can’t go through your website or a blog can go through your website, you know, are you discriminating against that person? You kind of are, you know, not intentionally, but it’s one of those things that needs to be be taken care of just like having a handicap accessible building. You should it should be something that should be thought about every time you build a new website,

Missy Young 15:30
as long as we’re talking about all these super fun, regulations.

gd PR compliance, can you talk a little bit about what that is and what you need to do? Yeah,

Ruth Tambornino 15:43
just hide.

Sam O’Byrne 15:47
So yeah, with the GDPR it’s all around data privacy, and right now it’s a it’s those are laws that really only affect users located in Europe. If you have people coming from Europe, coming to your site, be sure to either block them so they stopped coming or, or get up on those those regulations really quickly because you do need to allow them to have access to all the information you’re collecting and the ability to to tell you, they don’t want you to collect it, or what means you want to collect it for so at its most basic, that’s pretty much GDPR. But it’s one of those things where it’s, it is an extremely complex, it’s so complex that they’re currently companies that all they do is GDPR compliance, consulting. So if you do work heavily in Europe, I would recommend contacting one of them and making sure your legal team or continental lawyer about it as well, because the fines can be astronomical and forth even though right now it’s only European users. America is likely to follow suit at some point once Congress gets their stuff together. So maybe and

Ruth Tambornino 16:53
I would also say that we’re seeing more and more websites and any consumer is seeing more and more that are just that’s popping up with You know, you gotta click that I agree to your you know, except the cookie. Yeah, you know, which is just a smart thing to do. So I would say as a business owner, just go through that step so that you are just covering yourself it’s

Missy Young 17:12
not that hard to hover interactive. com and our role to help our legal team was like you need to put verbiage on the bottom of your site about Yeah, so just like, Oh, I want to bring this up during this podcast.

Ruth Tambornino 17:23
Yeah. Sadly,

Pat Laeger 17:25
it’s kind of annoying from a user standpoint whenever I go to a new way. Except I’m

Ruth Tambornino 17:30
like rebellious a little bit. So I don’t really like to click the Yes Okay, you can have my information but you do,

Pat Laeger 17:38
I guess gotta go along with and it makes sense to me like, I want to make sure I’m giving my any info that they might get to the right people and not the wrong people. But still, it’s one extra clicks

Ruth Tambornino 17:48
voluntarily saying yes, you can have all my information. The truth is they have it anyway. So

Missy Young 17:55
yeah, so we talked a lot about keywords coming up in searches, using those keywords. blogging has been a huge thing that you to talk about constantly with clients. Tell me a little bit more about how someone can start a blog. And what’s the best way to get that content out there.

Sam O’Byrne 18:10
What I always recommend for a client to start a blog is come up with your top five or 10 frequently asked questions and write an article about them. It’s the easiest content free to write because you already know the answers. But then thinking with search terms in mind, so that the art is can I write this thing where it’s going to be SEO friendly, but also be consumer friendly? And that’s not always easy to do. But that’s where I would start with blogging. Yeah, I think that’s that’s a really great point, starting with those frequently asked questions, because it’s likely that people are searching for those as well. The other thing to note about blogging is creating a content calendar planning it out. A lot of times we’ll have clients were like, yeah, I run a blog and there, they started out good and they wrote three or four topics, then it just sat by the wayside because they were busy running their business. So if you write out a content calendar and have dates with specific categories, Want to write about specific topics you want to write about, you’re going to be much more likely to follow through with that content. I’d say Another thing to note about blog writing or any you know, I guess really blog writing particular is have a mixture of content have some that’s evergreen content like those FAQs or or you know, 10 things to help your basement never flood whatever that whatever your industry is. Something that’s winning might switch at any time as well as here and now content. Like we just hired missy. Missy is the best social strategist this side of the Mississippi.

Pat Laeger 19:31
I’m lying, different,

Ruth Tambornino 19:34
different podcast.

Sam O’Byrne 19:37
But it is important to have a mixture of those content that stuff that’s going to be forever there as well as some of you know if you have press releases or new products, things that are more important today than forever. Having that mixture of content does feel more natural to people than just having, you know 40 BuzzFeed articles in a row.

Missy Young 19:53
How long should have blog be?

Ruth Tambornino 19:56
That’s actually changed it like six months ago, it was like 200 50 to 500 words. And now Google’s looking for more like White Paper Type 1500 word type blog. So we still on average are sticking to the to 50 to 500. blog or word count for our blogs. But we are seeing more and more need for that longer. But it has to be strategic. I mean, you don’t just, you know, nobody’s going to read a novel. And you have to remember that, if you’re writing papers like that, it’s literally just for the search engines. It’s not for your consumer, because it’s unlikely anybody’s actually going to take the time to read all that unless you’ve got an extremely interesting topic, which certainly there’s some out there, but

Sam O’Byrne 20:36
yeah, I would say Tachyon to that, you know, write it as long as it’s necessary for the topic. You know, don’t don’t don’t just lengthen it just because you have to link those keywords in there saying, Yeah, just do do what feels natural, because again, people need to read it, if you want them to be engaging. Or if you’re writing it just for for the search engines, then you know, you might be a little bit longer but you Then you don’t want it to be you’re around an 80 page novel, if it’s never gonna be useful to anyone that’s not a productive use of your time

Pat Laeger 21:06
is the so you say you’re writing a blog for more so for the search engines, then then the user, if that page rarely gets visited on your site, is that going to hurt you in search results at all?

Ruth Tambornino 21:17
You know, my, my thought on on this whole thing is if you’re thinking about a topic, and you’re not sure if it’s valuable, type it into Google and see what the search results look like, if there’s 3 million websites that address that content, that might be a good one to

Sam O’Byrne 21:30
write. You know, you know, that’s, yeah, you can also use the tools like Google Trends and see if people are talking about that are searching for those topics already. So I would say, Yeah, I’d agree with that, you know, writing content just for SEO, if nobody’s coming to the site, it won’t necessarily hurt you, but it’s not necessarily gonna help you either. You do want to write content that is going to generally have people coming to the site and sticking around off of based off of what they’re reading.

Ruth Tambornino 21:54
So you could start with Google Analytics First, look at your pages, figure out how much traffic goes to each page. Start with the highest traffic pages, that would be a good place to start. Yeah, which

Sam O’Byrne 22:03
of those content pieces are keeping people around,

Missy Young 22:05
we had a client that we had worked with, and they had a recipe on their site about lactation cookies for a recipe for this was for a birthing center, obviously. And it was the highest visited, like blog on their site. So then they focused on more recipes from that, but I was like, interesting that that is what people are going to, like shock factor, are they Okay, are

Pat Laeger 22:29
they the only one who has content like

Ruth Tambornino 22:33
that later? Yeah.

Pat Laeger 22:36
incognito window.

Missy Young 22:40
So the other thing that I think is a huge trend, not even a trend, it’s just kind of part of naturally what everyone’s doing now is video blogs. Yes. How does that affect search? Because it’s not actual text. And what does that look like?

Sam O’Byrne 22:54
So I will say that with video, Google is actively working on trying to get their algorithms to Pull content directly from video so they can index the video that said, they’re working on it. They were also working on Google Glass couple years ago. And here we are, I would say that the best thing you can do is if you do have a video like that, make sure that a you have closed captioning. If it’s one that you’ve pre recorded, and you you know, write out the transcript of what was there if you can, if you can take the time, and add that as a closed caption or even have a transcript of what was what was read that that’s readable by Google,

Ruth Tambornino 23:24
even just titling your content correctly, can help. So I mean, it doesn’t even have to be overly complicated. It’s just rather than video ABC. It should be titled something that someone would search for. The other thing we kind of skipped over with the blogs was the snippets and the increase of volume of leveraging that kind of content for your website. It’s a way for especially if you’re in a really competitive heading, it’s a way for you to win some SEO without having this 18 month strategy. You know, if you can write the

Missy Young 23:57
so when you say snippets, like what part are

Ruth Tambornino 23:59
you so much When you search for something like, how do I fix my sink, and then you get these results of people also searched for, and those kinds of things, if you’re writing content like that, those while we’re all doing it, we just didn’t realize what they were. But But everybody, I mean, at least me, but I mean, you start all of a sudden you’re an hour later, you’ve looked at 25 different things because it’s intriguing and it’s a right in line with what you were looking for. And you finally find what you’re, you know, what you intended for. So,

Sam O’Byrne 24:28
yeah, and those featured snippets, it’s like I just googled, you know, best TVs 2019 and an article from PC mag comes up and it shows it shows a little bit of the article right there in the snippet in the search results. And I guarantee you that particular article is you know, considerably more traffic than anything else on this page, because it has the most real estate on the page. So anytime you have a you know, to roost point, if you can write content for for example, if you have a if you have something in your industry that is regularly searched for Nobody has possession of that event snippet, write a piece, write a blog that answers that question directly. And if you can get a lot of traffic to that, you might take that event snippet spot and then boom, that’s a huge boon to your traffic. Or if you look at some of those questions, and the what’s in that event snippet is from 2014, or 2013 is an old piece of content. Right? That because Google also wants up something real relevant and recent.

Pat Laeger 25:22
That’s a huge point, Ruth, is that what gets hit when you do a voice search for something? Say, Alexa? What’s the best TV for 2019? Is that event snippet going to bed?

Sam O’Byrne 25:33
It is what Alexa is going to read to you. Yeah, exactly. Same as a, OK, Google is gonna do the same thing. So if you are the one that invents of it, that means that Google trust that you’re the, you know, authoritative source for this particular question. And yeah, they’ll it’ll get read right off to you and again, now more people will go into voice search or using those devices that’s an even even more beneficial in just in a different way. Because you know, through your Alexia not likely to come visit my website, but still a few other ones. providing that information. It’s still a

Ruth Tambornino 26:01
whole nother conversation.

Missy Young 26:04
podcast.

Ruth Tambornino 26:06
Yeah, for sure.

Missy Young 26:08
Um, go back, jump back to the video piece. So you mentioned like putting the transcript on there. So I mean, sort of to record the video, because we talked about doing that with us podcasts like we should have a transcript on socially podcast. com. Yeah.

Pat Laeger 26:20
It’s not easy to type

Missy Young 26:21
that out. There are a couple tools though they use,

Ruth Tambornino 26:25
like

Missy Young 26:26
those tools that maybe you could use.

Pat Laeger 26:29
Yeah. So otter Ott er, is a good one that I’ve used before. It’s a app you can download on your phone and just hit record at the beginning of a meeting or your video recording or this podcast. I haven’t going on my phone right now to test it out and equal, and they do that one does a pretty good job. Sometimes it misses punctuation, and it doesn’t always recognize different speakers. And so you should proofread that but for you know, half an hour podcast episode that we’re doing, how detailed Are we going to be going through everything but for Two to three minute video that you’re putting on your website. Yeah, that’s definitely something you can go through and proofread. Even if you’re using one of those free tools, but there are paid ones as well. That you could actually Rev. com is one of them that that we’ve used, and you actually send your file to someone to

Ruth Tambornino 27:18
get a high schooler to do this.

Missy Young 27:22
Like an intern for

Sam O’Byrne 27:25
you pay per minute a video basically, and then they type it and send that transcript or those captions back to you. And so you know, that a real person is seeing those, so it’s going to be more accurate, but you’d have to pay a little bit of money for it. And again, that’s that’s important because you know, as of right now, with the podcast, we’re missing an entire audience of people who might be deaf. Whereas if we have that transcript on there, they could read through what’s what we’re what we’re talking about, and they could read through that information. Same with, same with we posted a video about something and we don’t you know, if we don’t have closed captioning on there, you know, that’s, that’s a lost audience, and an underserved audience too. So doing those things right. Will will help your rankings for that piece of content.

Missy Young 28:02
And then as far as embedding that video onto your site, do you guys recommend upload it to a YouTube channel and embedding it because of, you know, Google, obviously? Or would you do it just regulate? Just upload it to the site?

Ruth Tambornino 28:15
I would usually save embed it right in the site. But that doesn’t, I don’t know that there’s a hard fast okay.

Sam O’Byrne 28:22
to that one, I’d say I’d say it depends on the content. You know, if you’ve been bedded just on your site, and it’s just yours, there’s a couple of benefits to that. One is, you know, at the end of that video, it’s not going to show somebody else’s related content. And five minutes later, they’re watching somebody try to eat his own fist. You know, whatever they

Ruth Tambornino 28:37
are, they’re on somebody else’s website. Now. I mean, you don’t control that user really, if they’re, if it’s done differently, but you know, again,

Pat Laeger 28:45
lots of questions about you just going

Sam O’Byrne 28:48
What are you watching? And the second side of this argument is that you know, it is it can be beneficial to post them on YouTube because YouTube is a searchable by Google. It’s an owned by Google Well as if somebody might stumble upon your site based on the YouTube video then if you do it that way, because somebody because it would be again, indexed by Google. So I would say it depends on the concept. You could do both.

Ruth Tambornino 29:10
I mean, it’s not like one or the other. Really? You bet.

Missy Young 29:13
Yeah, exactly. And then Ruth, and you’re talking about those column snippets? So above that, Sam when you pull that up, there’s those Google Shopping ads. Yeah, yes. So let’s talk about that a little bit cuz that’s probably holder section of that. So those who have ecommerce, tell me about that.

Ruth Tambornino 29:28
Yeah, these are extremely effective, as you mean, we all know,

you don’t even go down the page anymore if you see the pictures. So we’ve got, you know, some clients that we work with that are are doing these ads, and they’re extremely effective, but they’re also very time consuming. Depending on how many skews you have this could be not even worth it. In some cases, I would say you would probably want to start with your top sellers, maybe your 10 top sellers and experiment with those that way.

Sam O’Byrne 30:00
Yeah. And it is worth noting that those are purchased spots, you know, just like

Ruth Tambornino 30:05
part of an AdWords Can you

Sam O’Byrne 30:06
basically You bet. And to this point you might even something you might want to put a, you know, an intern on or something because you can get stuck in XL hell for a while, try trying to set all that information up and feed it directly to Google appropriately so pulls the right image with the right text with the right link with the right pricing and all that so it can be it can be a beast, but they’re extremely effective for e commerce call. Yeah,

Ruth Tambornino 30:29
the other the other caveat there too is what are you using for your e commerce or your point of sale? So you know, those all have to play well together too. So that factors? Yeah.

Missy Young 30:40
Is there any other advice? We’ve talked about a lot of different things. So so far, a lot of like free cheat tools and and tips. But is there any other piece of advice you guys would give for someone who’s just really looking to do a deep dive audit for their brand?

Sam O’Byrne 30:53
Um, I guess I would say there’s two other areas that we’ve never really talked about for your digital footprint that are Huge one being social media. Obviously you want to make sure that you have strong social channels a strong brand and can be viewed to talk about that and think you might know a little about. But the other side is your local listings for any company that’s got physical locations that can be a big piece. And what I mean by that is, if you’re on Yellow Pages com or dex calm or

Pat Laeger 31:21
wait, those are still around,

Sam O’Byrne 31:23
say, yes, they search Citysearch, yes, Yelp, Yelp, it’s one of those things where you’re going to be on those whether you realize it or not. And it’s important to make sure that information is accurate has again the right address, and it’s all listed the same way. So you’re not 123 fake st st in one, but 123, fake St. STRET. And another you want to make sure that it’s it’s all the exact same phone number, the exact same address the exact same way that they list your business name. So it is important to go through that there are some tools to do that. None of them for free. that I know of anyways, but there are some like Yext is one that jumps out at me Yandex where you could you could pull one of those audits, it’ll say Yep, you listed it correctly and 90%. But these 10% needed an adjustment. And you can auto auto push that to repopulate all those sites. So it is worth wild and are worth noting that those local local indexing is important to

Missy Young 32:14
know, how do you guys stay up to date with all the changes with the algorithm? There’s certain sites you go to newsletters, you subscribe to give a shout out to the people listening because I need it to

Ruth Tambornino 32:23
help me out here. Search Engine Land is a huge one that I follow. And I get regular updates from I mean, Google sends out great content.

Sam O’Byrne 32:31
Yeah, I think with

Ruth Tambornino 32:32
Google, like you said with Google is a great resource. Sam’s probably got someone Yeah,

Sam O’Byrne 32:36
another one. I I go to those same two quite a bit. But another one that I go to regularly is Seo. Maz? Oh, yeah. Yeah, the Maas blog, they they even do a tracker where every time there’s an update to Google’s algorithm. They try and notate what changes they saw with their clients. So we might say this, this update had a had a strong effect on mobiles, non mobile friendly websites so this had a strong effect. sites that do with dentistry. So that can be there’s a great tracker tool on Ma’s calm that that you can use as well. But I would say Search Engine Land is a big one. They have varied opinions as to how they do.

Ruth Tambornino 33:12
They also it’s digestible. So you don’t have to be extremely techie to really understand what they’re talking about. But they oftentimes will know about things that are coming to not don’t necessarily know, in detail, but they kind of get water dropped like this is coming. And Google’s going to turn everything upside down again. So they’re, they’re a good resource. That’s my probably my big but I would also say we rely on each other, and we rely on our partners to know Yeah, because you can’t be an expert in everything. There’s just no way. Yeah, just try to stay as up to date as possible.

Missy Young 33:47
We’ll make sure to include all the links we talked about in today’s podcast at the show notes at socially podcast.com slash ep 98. Thank you guys so much for being on today.

Ruth Tambornino 33:55
Yeah, thank you so much for having us.

Pat Laeger 33:57
One thing I want to mention before we wrap this up is that we’re basically doing all of this that we talked about today on an individual level at our next Hubbard digital Academy, which is December 9 at Earl brown Heritage Center in Brooklyn center, Minnesota, and Ruth and then one of our other her interactive employees, Gina Anderson will be doing brand audits and going through a lot of these tools with specific brands. So if you’re overwhelmed by all of this and just need someone to talk to about it, as well as attend a bunch of great sessions throughout the day on video and influencer marketing and social media, and stuff that we didn’t get into today, but Harvard digital Academy is going to be a great opportunity for you to just learn in and dive into this world. And then we’re also doing these free brand audits as well. If you buy a ticket and right now, just for listeners of this podcast, we have a special discount code for you. We will give you 50% off the ticket price for HD a go to Hubbard digital academy. com Buy your tickets and use the promo code podcast 50 podcast 50 you’ll get half off your registration. And that’s December night. So we’ve sold out in the past, so don’t wait too long.

Missy Young 35:07
That sounds like you’ve done that a few times. Oh, wow, that radio is coming out. Make sure to subscribe to the social feed podcast with Apple podcasts or your favorite podcast player to get a brand new episode delivered right to every Wednesday. We’d love to hear what you guys think about these episodes, go to facebook and join our group. Search for social feed podcast and let us know what you think or give us rating and review on Apple podcasts. Thank you for listening. We’ll see you next week.

Announcer 35:31
The social feed is a production of Hubbard interactive with music provided by Minneapolis based artist john at well


On This Episode

Missy Young

Social Media Services Manager

@miss_shredbetty Missy Young

As the Social Media Services Manager for Hubbard Interactive, Missy Young’s position entails working with clients and team members to drive social media strategy and lead initiatives to identify new technologies and digital best practices. She develops customized micro and macro campaigns that drive online interaction, promotes and creates content that enhances the customer experience and creates lead generation for medium to large-scale companies. She regularly speaks at local and national events on a variety of subjects including: social media, PR, analytics and content strategy.


Ruth Tambornino

Digital Brand Strategist

Ruth Tambornino is the Digital Brand Strategist at Hubbard Interactive, Hubbard’s Digital Agency. Prior to joining Hubbard Interactive, she Senior Manager of Field Strategy at Dex Media. Her role at Dex included bringing new digital products to market, training marketing consultants and working with key client accounts. In addition to Dex Media, Ruth spent a year working with a start up software company as Director of Sale Enablement. Ruth has over 10 years of experience in digital marketing. A former small business owner and Real Estate professional, Ruth understands the challenges business owners face. Her professional focus is to educate business owners on the importance of digital marketing. With solid understanding of messaging and digital platforms, Ruth has worked with 100’s of clients locally and nationally, impacting their business in a positive way. Areas of expertise include PPC, SEO, Digital Display, Websites and Mobile platforms. Over the course of her career, Ruth has received several awards for sales and training. She is certified in Google AdWords and is currently completing her business degree at Saint Mary’s University. She is also on the Board of Directors for Alliance of Women in Media.


Sam O’Byrne

Digital Brand Strategist

@im_just_sam

Sam O’Byrne is a Digital Brand Strategist at Hubbard Interactive. Since finishing school at the University of Minnesota, Sam has become an experienced digital strategist with over 10 years of planning, creating, and executing digital solutions. Sam has extensive experience working with businesses, government organizations, public health initiatives and non-profits from fortune 500s to tiny mom and pop bakeries. Sam holds certifications from Google in AdWords and analytics as well as various other certifications from Bing, Microsoft and Hubspot.


Pat Laeger

Digital Content Specialist

Pat Laeger

Pat has over 10 years of creative production experience and has produced radio shows, video campaigns, podcasts, and other digital content. Pat is an outgoing introvert, a spreadsheet lover, an Oxford comma advocate, and an avid Mountain Dew drinker.


How To Make Everything is a YouTube channel that explores things we use everyday (and some we don’t). Host Andy George takes his curiosity and learns how to make everything from scratch. A sandwich, glasses, an obsidian sward, clothing are some of the things he’s made from scratch for YouTube. In this episode we talk with him about how he grew to over 1 million subscribers on YouTube and amassed millions and millions of views on his videos. Andy shares some tips on dealing with comments, the rigorous schedule of producing a weekly YouTube video and how to deal with the ever-changing YouTube algorithm.


Shownotes


On This Episode

Missy Young

Social Media Services Manager

@miss_shredbetty Missy Young

As the Social Media Services Manager for Hubbard Interactive, Missy Young’s position entails working with clients and team members to drive social media strategy and lead initiatives to identify new technologies and digital best practices. She develops customized micro and macro campaigns that drive online interaction, promotes and creates content that enhances the customer experience and creates lead generation for medium to large-scale companies. She regularly speaks at local and national events on a variety of subjects including: social media, PR, analytics and content strategy.


Andy George

Creator, How To Make Everything

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfIqCzQJXvYj9ssCoHq327g

Andy George is the creator and host of How to Make Everything, a Youtube channel that attempts to deconstruct the complexity of modern life by attempting to recreate every day objects, starting from scratch.


Pat Laeger

Digital Content Specialist

Pat Laeger

Pat has over 10 years of creative production experience and has produced radio shows, video campaigns, podcasts, and other digital content. Pat is an outgoing introvert, a spreadsheet lover, an Oxford comma advocate, and an avid Mountain Dew drinker.


When it comes to marketing around a holiday, there are some good campaigns and there are some questionable campaigns. For Halloween, we took a look at some really cool marketing ideas and ads for spooky season and talked about a couple campaigns that we thought could have been better.


Shownotes


On This Episode

Missy Young

Social Media Services Manager

@miss_shredbetty Missy Young

As the Social Media Services Manager for Hubbard Interactive, Missy Young’s position entails working with clients and team members to drive social media strategy and lead initiatives to identify new technologies and digital best practices. She develops customized micro and macro campaigns that drive online interaction, promotes and creates content that enhances the customer experience and creates lead generation for medium to large-scale companies. She regularly speaks at local and national events on a variety of subjects including: social media, PR, analytics and content strategy.


Katie Mullenbach

Social Media Coordinator

@katiemullenbach Katie Mullenbach

Katie Mullenbach is a Social Media Coordinator for Hubbard Interactive. She graduated from the University of Minnesota with a Strategic Communication degree and minor in Anthropology. She loves staying in the loop with current events and social media trends that are evolving daily. She thrives while collaborating with her team of Social Media Strategist’s to bring clients the very best engaging campaigns and creative content. Katie uses her experience in Anthropology to put herself in consumer’s shoes to understand what should be said or visually expressed to encourage action. Having previously worked in social media and print media, Katie is always eager to learn new techniques and tools. You can say writing and music are her “fortés.” On the weekends you can find her DJ’ing with friends or performing in Downtown Minneapolis.


Pat Laeger

Digital Content Specialist

Pat Laeger

Pat has over 10 years of creative production experience and has produced radio shows, video campaigns, podcasts, and other digital content. Pat is an outgoing introvert, a spreadsheet lover, an Oxford comma advocate, and an avid Mountain Dew drinker.


Kaylie Schmidt and Meghan Bergman, two members of the Hubbard Interactive team, went to the Rock What You Got Conference, and came back to tell us their takeaways.

YOU HAVE PERSONAL POWER

Power of Energy: Cultivate positive energy around you
Power of Thoughts: If you think you can you will!
Power of Words: Words create your life
Power of Vision: You have to see it to make it happen.
Power of Writing: When you write it down, you realize it.
Power of Action: You must take action to make a change
Power of Spiritual Creator: Find your spiritual dimension, your core space

FOUR WAYS TO USE YOUR POWER

ADDERS:
Are you adding to your life?
Are you adding to the lives of others?

SUBTRACTORS:
Are you subtracting from your life?
Are you subtracting from the lives of others?

MULTIPLIERS:
Are you creating more power with your power?
How are you increasing the positivity and power in your life and the lives of others?

DIVIDERS:
Are you using your power to create a divide between yourself and others?
Are you creating a division in this world, or using your power for good?


Shownotes


On This Episode

Missy Young

Social Media Services Manager

@miss_shredbetty Missy Young

As the Social Media Services Manager for Hubbard Interactive, Missy Young’s position entails working with clients and team members to drive social media strategy and lead initiatives to identify new technologies and digital best practices. She develops customized micro and macro campaigns that drive online interaction, promotes and creates content that enhances the customer experience and creates lead generation for medium to large-scale companies. She regularly speaks at local and national events on a variety of subjects including: social media, PR, analytics and content strategy.


Meghan Bergman

Social Media Strategist

@meghanracquel Meghan Bergman

Meghan joined the Hubbard Interactive team as a Social Media Strategist in 2018. She leverages her background in marketing, content creation, and blogging to make a digital impact for her clients across many different brand categories. Hailing from the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Journalism, Meghan capitalizes on her writing and communications skills to produce creative campaigns, build meaningful relationships with others, and work effectively with her clients. Fueled by coffee, she finds herself consistently staying on top of the latest social media trends and always looking for her next project. When not scrolling through her many social feeds, you can most likely find Meghan working out at the gym, or whipping up a deliciously healthy meal. She is passionate about health and fitness, and recently became certified as a personal trainer.


Pat Laeger

Digital Content Specialist

Pat Laeger

Pat has over 10 years of creative production experience and has produced radio shows, video campaigns, podcasts, and other digital content. Pat is an outgoing introvert, a spreadsheet lover, an Oxford comma advocate, and an avid Mountain Dew drinker.


Kemps is a big name in dairy in the midwest, and they are always coming out with new products and finding the best ways to communicate with their customers. In this episode we talk to Addie Dunker, who runs all social media channels for Kemps, about what it’s like to market in the food industry.


Shownotes


Sponsor

Popped Corn

Sue launched PoppedCorn with one goal in mind – Creating and offering the best locally popped fresh popcorn and fudge on the planet.

Sue, Anna and Marcus have created over 70 unique and delicious flavors.  Every holiday brings something special and a taste reflecting the season.

Visit poppedcorn.com to see the flavors and order yours today!



On This Episode

Missy Young

Social Media Services Manager

@miss_shredbetty Missy Young

As the Social Media Services Manager for Hubbard Interactive, Missy Young’s position entails working with clients and team members to drive social media strategy and lead initiatives to identify new technologies and digital best practices. She develops customized micro and macro campaigns that drive online interaction, promotes and creates content that enhances the customer experience and creates lead generation for medium to large-scale companies. She regularly speaks at local and national events on a variety of subjects including: social media, PR, analytics and content strategy.


Addie Dunker

Social Media Community Specialist, Kemps

Addie Dunker

After attending St. Cloud State University for Relational Communication Studies and Community Health Addie made the move to the Twin Cities to officially start her career in marketing. She began with a small digital marketing agency as a Social Media Manager. Working for a smaller agency gave her hands on experience and continual opportunities to learn and grow. After two years and one promotion she was ready to take her career to the next level and accepted a position in the marketing department for Kemps as the Social Media Community Manager. She is honored to work for such a beloved and dedicated Midwest brand. Being a Midwest girl at heart, in her free time Addie enjoys anything and everything involving the great outdoors— hiking and camping to name a couple, and exploring all that the twin cities has to offer.


Pat Laeger

Digital Content Specialist

Pat Laeger

Pat has over 10 years of creative production experience and has produced radio shows, video campaigns, podcasts, and other digital content. Pat is an outgoing introvert, a spreadsheet lover, an Oxford comma advocate, and an avid Mountain Dew drinker.


On this episode our guest host Adriana sat down with makers from the Great Lakes to the Great Plains at the recent MNBloggerBash event hosted at Rose & Loon. We wanted to know how these makers got their start and how they transitioned from side hustle to full on career, how do they advertise with small budgets, and what advice they’d give to someone wanting to make the leap to pursuing their passion projects.


Featured Makers


Shownotes


Sponsor

Popped Corn

Sue launched PoppedCorn with one goal in mind – Creating and offering the best locally popped fresh popcorn and fudge on the planet.

Sue, Anna and Marcus have created over 70 unique and delicious flavors.  Every holiday brings something special and a taste reflecting the season.

Visit poppedcorn.com to see the flavors and order yours today!



On This Episode

Missy Young

Social Media Services Manager

@miss_shredbetty Missy Young

As the Social Media Services Manager for Hubbard Interactive, Missy Young’s position entails working with clients and team members to drive social media strategy and lead initiatives to identify new technologies and digital best practices. She develops customized micro and macro campaigns that drive online interaction, promotes and creates content that enhances the customer experience and creates lead generation for medium to large-scale companies. She regularly speaks at local and national events on a variety of subjects including: social media, PR, analytics and content strategy.


Adriana Velez

Social Media Coordinator

@sincerely_ami Adriana Velez

With a career path that has so far been more confusing than the plot line of a Telenovela, Adriana brings knowledge from multiple areas of digital marketing. She graduated from the University of St. Thomas with a degree in Business Law and was a cheerleader during her time there. As a Social Media Coordinator at Hubbard Interactive, she brings company voices to life through social media content. With multiple HubSpot certifications and knowledge in Inbound Marketing, she knows the importance of lead nurturing. With passion for all things email, she is able to take a hands-off approach to engaging with customers and nurturing leads as they go through the buyer’s journey. When she isn’t geeking out over digital marketing you can find her blogging about mental health, capturing her trendy life living in North Loop, and taking pictures of her dog and cat.


Pet photos and videos are arguably the cutest content on social media. But what happens when there’s an emergency situation with a pet family member? Animal Emergency & Referral Center of Minnesota has been around for over 40 years for those situations. They care for a wide variety of animals and offer many specialists and therapies. In this episode we chat with Heidi, the marketing director from Animal Emergency & Referral Center of Minnesota about their online presence. She talks about how they balance education, awareness, cute animals, and everything that comes with emergency pet care both in person and online.


Shownotes


Sponsor

Popped Corn

Sue launched PoppedCorn with one goal in mind – Creating and offering the best locally popped fresh popcorn and fudge on the planet.

Sue, Anna and Marcus have created over 70 unique and delicious flavors.  Every holiday brings something special and a taste reflecting the season.

Visit poppedcorn.com to see the flavors and order yours today!



On This Episode

Missy Young

Social Media Services Manager

@miss_shredbetty Missy Young

As the Social Media Services Manager for Hubbard Interactive, Missy Young’s position entails working with clients and team members to drive social media strategy and lead initiatives to identify new technologies and digital best practices. She develops customized micro and macro campaigns that drive online interaction, promotes and creates content that enhances the customer experience and creates lead generation for medium to large-scale companies. She regularly speaks at local and national events on a variety of subjects including: social media, PR, analytics and content strategy.


Heidi Brenegan

Chief Marketing Officer, AERC

Heidi Brenegan

Heidi Brenegan has worked within the veterinary profession for over thirty years, and in her current role at Animal Emergency & Referral Center of Minnesota for fourteen years. AERC is the only locally-owned emergency and specialty veterinary hospital in Minnesota. In her role as Chief Marketing Officer, Heidi assumes creative control of all of AERC’s marketing – whether directed towards pet owners or veterinarians. She very much enjoys marrying the hospital’s distinct, fun brand with content and visuals to create marketing campaigns for a variety of channels that garner attention and stand out from the crowd. She loves her job and feels very grateful that she has the privilege of working with the amazing veterinary professionals at AERC.


Pat Laeger

Digital Content Specialist

Pat Laeger

Pat has over 10 years of creative production experience and has produced radio shows, video campaigns, podcasts, and other digital content. Pat is an outgoing introvert, a spreadsheet lover, an Oxford comma advocate, and an avid Mountain Dew drinker.