Neal Schaffer - What Is Digital Influence?

Neal Schaffer - What Is Digital Influence-

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Chris Stone: [00:00:00] Are you ready to grow your digital influence? On this episode of Deal Casters, we talk with the leading social media strategist in the digital space, Neil Shafer.

Jim Fuhs: Neil has written four books, including his latest, the Age of Influence. He's a keynote speaker and consultant, university educator, and a fractional CMO.

He works with influencers and companies to help them elevate their brand.

Chris Stone: So get ready. And prepare yourself to jump into the future of influencer marketing. What's

Neal Schaffer: up Neil? Guys, first of all, thank you for your service to our country and, uh, it's an honor to be here.

Jim Fuhs: Awesome. It is so good to see you, Neil.

And so Neil, how, how have things been going? Are, are you, are you getting to travel again? Are you getting out and, and about, are you still doing a lot of, uh,

Neal Schaffer: virtual talks? Yeah, you know, it's funny, um, I remember, 'cause Jim, we met at Social Media Marketing World. This is literally March. Uh, beginning of March of 2020 [00:01:00] and I was coming out with my book, it published on, uh, March seven, I think, on St.

Patrick's day of that month. And uh, yeah, I had a bunch of people coming up to me like, Neil, like, what's gonna happen to your speaking biz? And the funny thing is that I also do a lot of consulting, right? And I write books and do a lot of stuff like, like you guys as well. And what happened in that month was that the consulting, I call it a fractional CMO service, it's like virtual marketing consulting that just blew up.

So the speaking gigs were replaced with, you know, long-term retainer contracts without travel. So I had my most profitable year last year, and I've really built on top of that. Um, that being said, for one client, I did do a video shoot in Dallas man, uh, back in February this year. I was in Japan once in the fall of last year when we were peaking with Coronavirus and it was very low there.

I think the, uh, the size of switch now, and I'm actually going to my first in per in-person conference next month podcast movement. Uh, really looking forward to that in Nashville, Tennessee. [00:02:00] Oh,

Chris Stone: going

Neal Schaffer: to Nashville. Yeah. You know, I do podcasting as part of everything else I do. I don't, you know, I'm not someone who's spoken on the public stage about podcasting before.

I've only been to one podcasting conference that was podcast like literally in Orlando right after, uh, we did that social media marketing world. But it's something that I think that there's a way of, of reimagining podcasting with this lens of influencer marketing that I think if podcasters knew they'd be a lot more successful.

And that's sort of the, the advice I'd like to share. So we'll see. It's called the Influencer Marketing Approach to Podcasting. That's the name of the talk. So we'll see if I, uh, end up being on stage or not.

Jim Fuhs: I know you've

Chris Stone: got Chris now I'm interested in talking. I was gonna say you have Chris injury. That, that's, that's like, that's my lane, man.

That's, uh, that's absolutely my lane. So, so if we could, if can, can we start there? I mean, I know, you know, I don't wanna give away the, the, uh, the secret sauce. So when, not if, when you speak at podcast movement, so. Video, obviously right now we're, we're in a conversation. We're in an interview and this is, this is, this is not just video, but it can be [00:03:00] repurposed into audio and a lot of people, there's a lot of lines blurred right in in terms of podcasting and, and what is considered a podcast.

And I used to, I. It used to make me twitch whenever somebody would say, Hey, go, uh, go watch my podcast on YouTube, right? I'd be like, Ugh, that's not a podcast. It's just, you know, a podcast is supposed to be on demand audio, right? It's RSS feed, you know, all of that, you know? And finally, I just gave up on it and realized, you know, people, they don't like, it doesn't matter.

Those, those kinds of details don't matter. And so now with so much video involved in, in, in Everything. How are you seeing that in terms of where maybe podcasts are are going and how video is affecting it, and how those that maybe, uh, were inherently and predominantly just audio podcasters, how they might start to integrate that effectively going forward?

Man,

Neal Schaffer: these are really like solid bang on questions that, uh, I'd like to ask the experts as well. Uh, [00:04:00] my own take. Is that you only, you know, getting back to sort of influencers and influencer marketing, how do people become influencers? They create content and they build community around that content and around that expertise, and there's many ways to do it.

Back in the day, it was all about blogs and bloggers. We had mommy bloggers. Then there was this shift to sort of Instagram and Instagrammers, and now we have TikTok or what have you. You also have YouTube, right, which is video, which is still. Fricking huge, pardon my French. And then you have podcasting and with the emergence of like clubhouse and Twitter spaces, podcasting and, and you know, Spotify's big investments, it's also been on the rise.

So basically if you wanna influence people in digital media, those are the four ways. It's either through social media, which today that's going to be really, really short form video. Like reels, YouTube, shorts, TikTok, basically, right? You have blogs which are still effective. I've been really focused on my own blogging the last year or two.

I've really doubled down on that. [00:05:00] You have podcasts and you have YouTube videos, I'd say there's opportunity everywhere, but if there's one that's a little bit harder, it's blogs because you're going up against big companies depending on your niche, right? You might be in a niche where the companies don't get it in my niche.

I mean, I compete with like HubSpot, sprout Social. I mean, these guys are, I. Pouring lots of money at creating content in SEO, but you know what? I, I can still beat him in my own niche, and I have been, and that's really the attitude you need to have when if you listen to podcast, you think you can do a better job.

You do it. If you watch YouTube videos and the number one result, something from four years ago, that's outdated, that is not compelling, you can do better. You do it if you, you know, if, if you look at the Google search results for the top 10 things you're an expert in, or what your business provides and you see nothing but just stupid content.

You can beat them, right? 'cause at the end of the day, the algorithms and the people will find the good content. So getting back to your question, I look at audio and video as being two distinctly different things. I've tried. We all try to do repurposing, right? I think the best repurposing that you can do is sort of in between the [00:06:00] short form video.

Like take a TikTok, repurpose the Instagram reel. You got Pinterest idea pins, you got YouTube shorts. That's sort of easy with a few tweaks you can do it. But in my experience, I tried to first repurpose my blog, my podcast, into a blog post. The SEO sucked it got little traffic. I deleted them all because with blogging or speaking to search engines, with podcasting, you're speaking into the ears of people with video.

They're watching you. So I do know that, you know, there are some people who will go to YouTube and listen to podcasts. So yes, there are people out there, but I think if you yourself watch a lot of YouTube videos. You would understand that if you really wanna be successful at YouTube, you need to have a YouTube video.

Similar to, I've done podcasts where I repurpose live streams. Now you guys probably have this down to an art. I didn't, but my editors like Neil, you keep on mentioning like taking, you know, comments and questions and when people are listening on the podcast, it doesn't make sense. So if you figure out a way to say, hey.

Ladies and gentlemen, we're gonna do a live stream. Then after [00:07:00] that, I'm gonna take your questions and you just repurpose that beginning part to a podcast. That's perfect. So there are ways around it, right? But I, I see them as different. I see YouTube videos for me more like blog posts. I. Unless I have a big, unless you have like a big community where you can do live streams and make a lot of money, like a lot of Twitchers and YouTubers, I'm not there yet, so I just look at them differently.

There are people that are able to repurpose it. All right, take one live stream, you know, video, you got the YouTube, you got the snippets for YouTube, you got the podcast, you got all these, you know, you got the YouTube shorts and everything and that's great. Um, I just don't know if that would be, it's more convenient and efficient.

I just don't know if the end product will be better if you were to create them all individually. Right with that platform in mind. And that, that to me is really all of us marketers, we're smart. We wanna get the most juice out of our content. That's the challenge. And at the end of the day, if it sucks, you're not gonna build a community.

You're not gonna move up in the rankings. And it's sort of, it seems like it's a, it's a low risk thing to do, but you're actually eating up more resources. Maybe you should have focused on doing [00:08:00] something else with that time and money that, that's my play.

Chris Stone: Yeah. God, that's so money. And you touched on, on two things that I, I.

Got it till I'm blue in the face. I've, I've said this and the number one thing you talked early in, in your answer was niche. And people are afraid of being too niche. And that's really like the cardinal rule in podcasting is, is niche, niche, niche, niche down, and. It's just people are so, they, they wanna be all things to everyone.

And the, the pool is such so large that you just can't make that impact if you have broadened, uh, yourself, uh, uh, just, just way too much. And, um, the other thing, uh, that you talked about is know your audience, right? So if, if, if you're a YouTuber and you do YouTube really well. Don't think that you can just take that and make a carbon copy of it and use it for every other platform or a podcast or whatever.

You can repurpose it, but you've gotta understand where you're [00:09:00] repurposing it. I, I don't know how many times I've list, been listening to a podcast and they talk about something they're looking at. Oh, oh, look here. This is that. Yeah. And they're describing something and you're com you're, you're, you're, uh,

Neal Schaffer: you're gone.

And because they're not consuming a lot of YouTube videos themselves, they miss out on things like YouTube cards and end screens. Right. Or chapter cards, or really leveraging that introduction and the whole SEO of tagging and hashtags. It just, so then it's like, well, why don't I just create the video just for YouTube?

Right. So it's, it's definitely, um, I see a lot of people waste a lot of time and resources on it. It sounds good on paper. In reality, I just don't know how much extra juice you're gonna get for that investment.

Jim Fuhs: Neil, what, what are your thoughts, you know, since we are talking about podcast too, but this whole, the growth, if you want to call it in the audio space with the clubhouses and with the Twitter spaces, and now there's, uh, the green room and, you know, we hear LinkedIn and, and Facebook are gonna roll out their own audio rooms.

I think Facebook's is in beta. How do you see that as a, a, as a, a possibility for influencers or, or. [00:10:00] People that wanna become influencers, do you think that's something that's gonna stay? Or do you think it's uh, one of those, it's gonna be kind of like blab it. It was great while it lasted, but people are off to other stuff.

Neal Schaffer: Yeah, I was gonna bring up bla um, the question is, when Coronavirus is over, what is the landscape gonna look like? Clubhouse served a really, really, I. Um, role in sort of bringing this up to the forefront. So now the Twitter's and Facebook, you know, I look at it more as like a podcasting. It, it's livestream podcast, right?

Livestream audio. So I really don't know if we want to be tied to a clubhouse room for an hour when we are able to go outside again. We're able to go to conferences. We're able, able to meet people, you know, in real life. I, I do believe that social apps or audio, social audio apps like that, that clubhouse, they're a great place.

To meet new people and learn new things and they will always be that way, right? For developing business, I have gotten [00:11:00] business from it. I know a lot of other people that have gotten business for it as well, but the people who seem really successful are investing a lot of time there. And so I tell people what, if you were gonna invest that same amount of time on on any other given social media platform or in content creation, what would that look like?

What would success look like? It's almost like I remember and YouTube gentlemen will remember as well, when Google Plus came out. It's like, okay, we find, okay, social media, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, done, and then, oh my gosh. And Google Plus will eat away at time. And there are people who went all in and they did really well.

There are others who only went halfway and maybe didn't do so well. But it every, every new platform cuts away from the time you could be spending on other platforms. So that's really the big thing. If you wanna go full in on social audio, and I know some people are doing it, they can go full in. But understanding if you were to spend that same time on another social media platform or creating content.

What would the results look like? And I think that's what a lot of people miss out on. They go for the shiny new thing. Without realizing, dang. I mean, Facebook groups are [00:12:00] still goldmine. I, you know, I finally got into the podcast movement groups. Now I'm going to the, to the conference for the first time, and it's just, you know, I'm not there for business.

I'm just here to help people. I've already made amazing connections in, in 24 hours, and I've only spent like 15 minutes. Imagine for that one hour I. Clubhouse if I was there, uh, just in Facebook groups are relevant to my community, how much I can get out of it. So that's really the mindset I want everyone to have.

Definitely check it out. If there are people that you follow, get notified when they appear so that you have a chance to like, listen to them speak. That's great. If there are topics you're interested, you wanna network, great. Right? But it's not the only game in town. And uh, and therefore, you know, at the early days before Twitter spaces, before Green Room when Clubhouse was all the buzz and nice and fresh, it was really active.

I don't find it as active. In fact, the other night I went on just looking for something to listen to, like it was the radio. I could not find one room that interested me out of all the rooms that in newsfeed. So to me. It comes down to the supply demand. Right. And that's why YouTube is amazing. 'cause [00:13:00] I don't think for the demand, I don't think there's a supply of great videos for Clubhouse.

You know, they're just, I don't, I don't think the demand's there, I don't think the supply's there. I think it's sort of dwindling down. I might be wrong. I hope I am. But that's my sense. I mean, YouTube gentlemen have seen, I think over the last few weeks, clubhouse has really. Really quiet it down, and maybe it's Twitter spaces, maybe it's, um, you know, green Room, uh, Spotify and I, I would say Spotify probably more than anyone, but I don't know how much of a future it really has.

It, I, I think it becomes a part, like a story becomes a part of Instagram. Even though reels is probably where the money is right now, it becomes another thing that can just add to their platforms. It's a no brainer, right? Whether people use it or not. So that's my take.

Jim Fuhs: I, yeah, I think that's, that's some amazing, uh, you know, way to look.

You know, and I think you hit on something too, when you go on these places like Twitter spaces or, or Clubhouse and probably even more so Clubhouse, you're not necessarily creating content that you can do anything with. 'cause it's like. Once it's over, [00:14:00] it's over. Because the whole, you know, issue with recording stuff.

I know like with Twitter spaces, they're allowing people to record stuff. I know Madeline Sklar does a Wednesday thing with audio, um, with, uh, you know, with, uh, Susie, uh, I, I'm blanking on Susie's name about, about audio, but it's set and people know. And because it's open to, you know, the 300 plus million people on Twitter.

If they're following Madeline, they can see like, oh, Madeline's on where? Like with Clubhouse, like you said, oh, I gotta go into this app that's not part of my social platform. Am I gonna remember if I don't get a notification? I know Chris turned his notifications off a while back 'cause he was getting tired of his phone constantly pinging that.

Somebody was on Clubhouse,

Neal Schaffer: and Madeline is a great example because that's her business is Twitter. She is a Twitter marketing expert. She does Twitter chats. She's been doing them weekly, you know, multiple Twitter chats weekly for years. So for her it makes sense to go all in, right? That that is a great example.

But does it make sense for your business or not? Madeline would say it does. I think you [00:15:00] really gotta weigh all the options. 'cause now you have people that evangelize clubhouse. It's, it's very much like the Google plus days. You had all these people that put all their eggs in one basket. You gotta be on Google Plus and where are they now?

Right? I mean, I had like 50,000 followers. They're worth nothing. So you just gotta, you know, it's called historical perspective, right? It's like all the wars we fought. Hopefully we get better at our defense the next time we have to go to battle because of what we learned from the past. Right? It's the same sort of concept.

Learn from the past and adapt. Just don't put all your eggs in one basket and understand that if you do A, you can't do B. Right. Time is a limited resource.

Chris Stone: You brought up another good point is like you went there expecting to listen to it, like the radio and maybe you would find something and maybe you would jump in and maybe you would contribute, but it's not like, uh, there's content that's waiting for you to press play.

It's all happening in that moment. It's not like YouTube, right. So, or podcast. You remember the early days or po. Exactly. And so back in the early days of YouTube. Content was not that great, right? It was just sort of until people started to [00:16:00] learn to how to put together really great content that was accessible and that you could learn from, and all of this that turned into this, it's like, you know, Amazon, Amazon Live right now, we think there's maybe a thousand or less actual content, uh, creators on the platform, and there's live, like we're doing right now, but there's also evergreen content.

So there's a combination. Of that. So I think, you know, the more great content that resides on the platform, I think that, you know, will help build that, that credibility that you can, you can kind of go back to. But when you've got something like Twitter spaces and Clubhouse, like you're, you're not gonna, it's not like you can go and listen to, you know, Neil Schafer's keynote that was in somebody's room from three weeks ago.

You just, it doesn't, uh, it doesn't exist. It's all live it, it's the

Neal Schaffer: concept of temporary content versus. Content that gets indexed in search engines. It's like, you know, it's funny, podcasting. Gotta be consistent. Agree. Last week I didn't publish an episode, you know, stuff happens, life comes up, sun's team won, you know, championship soccer tournament.

Didn't get time to turn around that podcast. It's all [00:17:00] cool. Right? But yeah, I mean, my rankings went up even though I did not publish an episode last week. And that's the thing that once you have content in the search engines, like a YouTube, like an Apple podcast. It works or a blog in Google. It works for your benefit 24 7.

That's why, hey, you can spend an hour creating that reel. It's lost after 24 hours. Yes. It's in your profile. People are not searching for your reel, like they search for podcast episodes in a subject, or they search for YouTube videos or they search for, you know, website content. And that's why I really, you know, I invest in those three areas.

That's, that to me is where the long-term ROI is. It takes time. People get impatient, but think about it, you know, talking about building influence, you were asking me what's changed since the age of influence. I mean, if you wanna build influence. I, I look at HubSpot just making this incredible investment in building a podcast network, right, of investing in the likes of John Lee s and uh, the marketing technology podcast.

I. Um, you know, brands wanna get in on your blog, brands wanna get in [00:18:00] on your YouTube channel. Brands wanna get in on your podcast. And I think as a content creator, yes, there's a play on TikTok and all that, but I think, you know, the, the other areas actually is the longer term ROI. And it just, it's you're building asset with every time you publish.

It's just another one that might be download when someone subscribes to your channel, what have you. So. That's, you know, these last two years, I've really realized that and I would push more people to that influencer model. Rather than the TikTok model, unless you can build a really, really big community, which takes, you know, takes creativity, um, it, it also requires a bit of luck, right?

A bit of timing, a bit of all these things. I just think the other areas are, are actually, I think, I'm not gonna say easier, they take a longer time, but I think more predictable. Than these newer platforms.

Chris Stone: Right? And it's better to have some content that, you know, could live forever, live past you. Um, and so you almost take on this, oh God, this is, this, this is more important than, um, just like clicking on the camera and just [00:19:00] chatting with, with people.

This is, uh, this is so, you, you take it more seriously. You, you, uh, you work harder on it. You, you put together the graphics, you, and you know that it's going to live forever, and you may only get. 20 views in the first couple of months or whatever, but you never know, um, how that might, and you hear the stories all the time, but if, like you take, uh, six hours to put together a, a, a piece of content that lives for 24 hours, like what are we doing?

You know, it's, it's, uh, you gotta be able to, to create something that, uh, that could impact someone you don't know years from now. I think it's a, it's a different mindset. Totally.

Jim Fuhs: Too. I think, you know, Chris, we talk about this all the time. We, we struggle with that whole thought of like, and you hit right on it, Neil.

It's like, do I spend all this time to create something that's gonna disappear in 24 hours? Uh, or do I produce content that I know people are gonna see potentially, you know, daily, weekly, you know, people know about our show. They can, they can watch our show where, you know, I made a, you know, said something great for 30 to 60 seconds.

It's [00:20:00] gone. I, I would almost be better off, you know, taking that clip and making it a tweet to take people back to, you know, the full blown version of whatever we were talking about. Um, and Neil, I, 'cause I know you spend a lot of time knowing with like, as an example, what's going on around the world, but, you know, Chris and I recently learned about, like in Asia now, it's become really big with the, if they're, they're actually not even calling 'em influencers now.

They're, uh, key opinion leaders and it's kind of that whole growth of. Of of the marketing of where like, you know, if Neil Schafer says, you know, Hey, this is a great book, everybody's gonna buy it. Do you see that? And I think that's what Amazon's trying to do. Do you see that growing in the, in the western world at this point?

Or what, what's your thoughts on that?

Neal Schaffer: Yeah, I think, you know, this, they come calls or, or key opinion leaders, it's just a different word for maybe the same thing. Because I think that when, uh, really, really, you know, big influencers when they, [00:21:00] you know, talk about a product that that product sells, it's, it's a natural occurrence.

So, um, and, and I mean, there's reasons why they put a different name on it than influencer marketing, but yes, influencer marketing is way bigger in Asia than it is here, uh, for, for a variety of reasons. But, um, I, I think that what you see now is that, you know, influencer marketing or just, you know, social media is just very fragmented.

So people are finding. Their own people to follow. Right. And for some, you know, it might be Pat Flynn. For others it might be deal casters. For others, it might be Neil Schafer. There's so many choices out there of content creators that they don't all necessarily gravitate to the same people. I. I think that when the key opinion leaders came out, it was more, you know, at the very beginning there's a few people who like have a lot of followers that everybody sort of gravitate to, but then over time you have more micro influencers, you have more nano influencers and people just naturally, and you have more people that have more niches.

I. You just more naturally gravitate to people that are more authentic, right? Uh, that are more [00:22:00] approachable, that seem more real. And we've obviously seen this accelerate over the last two years with, with Coronavirus, what have you. So I, I think at the end of the day that, um, I know that, you know, I consider myself like a nano influencer, but I know sometimes I've said something and people have said, Neil, thank you so much.

I bought. That after seeing that, right? Or if you do affiliate marketing, you can see the clicks, you can see the commissions come in and you can see how much ROI you're getting from recommending things. So yeah. Um, I do think that that is the value of brands finding people to collaborate with. In an authentic way.

Like give them your pro, let them use your product. Let them become a fan of your product. I don't know about you guys, but you know, I, I do affiliate marketing as well, but I have all these companies reach out to me, but it's like, I don't use your product. I can't do it. I, I, I can't promote it. I can't talk about it without being a natural user of it and being able to teach people why it's so good.

And therefore that's really the key thing is I believe that brands need to create relationships with influencers, and influencers [00:23:00] need to deeper relationships with their community. So yes, if you have a community, do a clubhouse. Do a live stream. That's tremendous. RI of getting to know your community better.

Right. That's cool, right? I just don't think that those things are, you know, are gonna be the end all, um, of, of everything that you do. But there is a role for short form content like that. If you're already doing your weekly blog, your weekly YouTube, your weekly podcast, great. Do that short form content to engage in a daily basis and keep top of mind.

But the main ROII don't think is there, if that makes sense.

Chris Stone: It does, it does. Yeah. Yeah. It's a, um, it's a fine line being, you know, it, it's even weird calling myself an influencer. Right. But it, it, it's a fine line of, and Jim and I have always talked about this. I'd love to hear your thoughts 'cause I, you are considered an an, an influencer nano or whatever, uh, you wanna call it.

But it's, it's that fine line of credibility. And, you know, prosperity, right? So, you know, if you want, you wanna become an influencer and if you want to talk about something and you wanna get paid for talking about something, [00:24:00] um, you wanna believe in that. Something you, you know, um, you know, we talked about, uh, at the top of the show, we talked about, you know, uh, name.com/live.

It's probably no secret. That, that, uh, you know, that's, that's something that, uh, we have an agreement with someone to talk about, but Jim and I decided that we are not going to get paid for anything unless we absolutely believe it, that we absolutely use it. We used, we've, before we talked to anybody, either, we have already used it, already believed it, and actually approached that company or companies, and, and we get, we get hit up by companies all the time and we're like, well.

Send it to us. 'cause we are not even familiar with the product and we don't even know anyone, you know, that has it. So send it to us and if we like it, we'll talk we'll, we'll, we'll talk to you about it or send it back to you, you know, on, on your dime. Um, but, you know, what's the, how do, how do influencers that may be listening and, and or watching, uh, right now.

When, if, if they're in that place where it's like, you know, there's, there's a bunch of companies talking to them and you know, how do I, where's my [00:25:00] value? 'cause we, you know, we have a number of people that are in the Amazon Live influencer community. It still is new. And so there's a lot of people that are put being ported over that were influencers maybe on Instagram or YouTube or some other places.

And so they're being hit up by all of these products. What would you say to someone who's kind of in that space and trying to figure out their way and balance their integrity and their prosperity? You know, at the end of the

Neal Schaffer: day for, for me, it's a little bit easier because you know that sort of revenue from affiliate marketing or influencer marketing is not a major revenue stream today, right?

So I don't have to accept anything if I don't feel comfortable with it, because I know I have these other revenue streams. But if you're really trying to make a full-time job out of this, I think at the end of the day, it all comes down to serving your community because if they leave you, you're nothing.

So you have to serve them, and if you serve them, you will profit long term. So does that product serve your community? And if the product serves you, then it probably serves your community. So at the end of the day, that's what it comes [00:26:00] down to. Yes, you, you have to be convinced of it. You have to wanna use it, and you have to be able to tell your community why you're using it and why it makes sense to use it.

So, you know, think community first and then utilitarian for yourself second. To me, those are the two big things that whenever you know, like, Hey, I wanna do a sponsored, you know, buy Instagram followers blog post on neil shafer.com. Ain't gonna happen. I don't condone it. Right. I'm not gonna take your money.

It's not worth it. And, and, and therefore, that's the thing. If you do something, what would your community think? What's really interesting is that I don't really use Instagram for marketing. I post a lot of private stuff there. The reason is that I have this big following in Japan of people that I've like met.

A lot of them are like, we're, we're fanboys of the same musician there. Others like I've known through, you know, networking there and business there, they don't wanna see like business stuff. They wanna see personal stuff. So to me, I'm always thinking, you know, if I post us on Instagram, what would those people think?

And they're not really interested in like me [00:27:00] speaking on influencer marketing, which is why I post very little of that stuff. So it's very similar, right? What would my community think? If I talk about this product, is it relevant? Is it irrelevant? So, and you're treating

Chris Stone: each platform like, like a community.

You have to, your, your Instagram community is different than your LinkedIn community is different than your Pinterest community or, or YouTube.

Neal Schaffer: Yeah. On Amazon. People want the deals, they wanna know the products, right. It's, it's completely different. If you're doing an Instagram live or YouTube, you know, YouTube live, it's howtos.

I mean, it's a lot more than that, but it, it, it's very different versus, you know, an Instagram. So, yeah, I mean, more than ever you gotta, you gotta be a user of the platform. You gotta understand why people are on it and you need to adapt to it. And, you know, for whatever want you want to talk about, there's probably a more ideal platform than others.

And that's really, you know, what, what, what I would do, there are certain things because I keep it personal. I can talk about lifestyle things on Instagram. Versus doing it on like a LinkedIn, although you could do more lifestyle stuff on LinkedIn these days. So, [00:28:00] um, yeah, that's what it comes down to.

They're all different communities. I used to say like LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, it's like China and Japan, Korea, they're all, they have their own unique languages, their own unique cultures. And I think if you think of it that way, even though there's a lot of similarities, there's a lot of crossover. But if you think of it that way in your mind and you try just a little bit to tweak your content in that way, and you know, for some content, it's like, you know what, I'm only gonna post this on LinkedIn.

It doesn't make sense elsewhere. That's fine. You have to post everything everywhere. I wish if more people did that then, you know, I think our news feeds would be a lot cleaner and a lot more relevant. Right.

Jim Fuhs: That, that is so true, Neil, and I think you hit on something as well. And I, you know, of course, I, I sometimes, uh, bash, uh, you know, bash Facebook in, in general because I feel like they want to be all things to all people.

You know, as an example, like you brought up Amazon is where people go shopping. I don't usually go on Facebook looking for somebody's live stream to shop on, but they're like, oh, well we've got live shopping now. And it's like. But then you make it so hard for people to find the content in the first place unless they [00:29:00] throw all this money at ads.

And, but these businesses and these people that are wanting be, oh, I've gotta, I've gotta go all in on this platform or that platform. And I think, you know, the, the other thing too, to your point with the, you know, with the content is like, oh, well I'm just gonna take this one post and put that same post on every platform.

And in some cases they don't even adjust the tags and it. You know, for people like us that do this all the time, we're like, well, I can tell what

Neal Schaffer: they're doing. The easy way to explain this, so as part of my marketing consultant, I have one client who's an e-commerce client. They have an Amazon store.

They're sold in like, you know, CVS and and Walgreens and Walmarts, and the whole bit, right? For every 25 cents of advertising Amazon, we make a dollar for every dollar of advertising in Google. We make a dollar. For every $3 of advertisement on social media, we make a dollar. And that numbers come down from like seven, eight, $9.

So, and, and we're showing product, right? So that's the thing. People on Amazon looking for things to buy, people [00:30:00] on Google, they're researching. They may buy, they may not be ready to buy, but they're trying to look for what's out there. People are not on social media to buy, and I think those numbers. With very, very similar creatives, right?

They, they speak to the, the strengths of each of these platforms and, and you know, you're not gonna get the same results. Of, you know, when you think of it that way, why would you get the same rules with your, with your content, same content on all these different platforms? It just doesn't work that way.

Jim Fuhs: That's a pretty amazing, uh, numbers there. I, I had never really thought of that. I mean, I, I'm a big fan of, you know, Google because obviously it's the, what, the biggest search engine. Uh, but I had never really thought about that. Yeah. People might be searching for something on Google and might buy, and that's actually not a bad ratio of, of a one-to-one.

Uh, you know, yeah. Add dollars to sales. That's

Neal Schaffer: pretty. Yeah, because it's about search intent, right? Mm-hmm. I mean, I have one client where. Their business is based on search intent. So social media just doesn't work 'cause people aren't searching for it and they're not, it's more of a B2B sale it, so they don't have an Amazon store.

So for them [00:31:00] Google is, is like everything. And it makes sense and they do very well.

Chris Stone: Yeah. It goes back to, it goes back to knowing your audience. I mean, um, you know, like you said, I mean, we're here on Amazon live right now, and so we're in one of the biggest malls in the world. And people have come here, um, you know, to maybe buy a microphone that Neil, uh, Neil is speaking into right now.

But, uh, you know, we just happen to, uh, we just happen to be talking to him and perhaps someone's fed by this, uh, information and would, you know, potentially buy a book, which is, you know, uh, you know, one of the intents of, of this show. But I think so often people will, if they're involved in affiliate marketing, and you've seen this in, in, um, you know, for yourself and for other businesses that you work with, they'll take that affiliate link.

Uh, because they happen to have talked about something on their YouTube, um, on their YouTube video about a particular product, and then they bury it in the show notes, or it's in their podcast. Uh, you know, on Apple Podcasts, it's buried in the show notes. There's a link and you hope and pray that, that someone will click on it and one day you get, you know, 14 cents [00:32:00] for somebody buying, you know, whatever it is.

And, uh, when you're in Amazon, it's like you're actually in the mall and people have come. To buy. It's, you know, I, I equate the burying a a a affiliate link in your podcast is similar to if you're driving down the road and you see a, a billboard for pizza and you're not hungry, you're not gonna pull over and buy a pizza.

It's, they're, you're not, you're not speaking to that person, um, necessarily. You might be. Um, but you're just, you're, you're much better off focusing, like you're talking about on your audience and where they're at, and knowing, knowing a little bit more about these platforms that you're utilizing, not saying, well, Facebook is the same as Twitter, is the same as Pinterest is the same as YouTube is the, it's, it's like you gotta, you just, like you said, just lean into it a little bit more and it could be, you know, maybe a little bit more effective, uh, for you or focus on just one thing.

Right. I mean, sometimes people are afraid to focus on just one thing, like LinkedIn, for instance. Yeah. I think there's, you know, I know you've written books on, on LinkedIn, [00:33:00] um, and so now LinkedIn is very different than it was heck, two years ago. Yeah, agreed. Um, you know, with with live video and, and all of the changes they're making, making on the platform, what are, what are you seeing, um, lately on, on LinkedIn that.

That has, uh, either, uh, you know, is, is working well for you or some things that, uh, you wished were working better for you?

Neal Schaffer: Yeah. No, before that, I just wanted to say that as you were speaking, I'm like, well, you know, Twitter space is, is going to be very different than clubhouse. People are used to Twitter chats, so, you know, converting a Twitter chat into a Twitter space is a no-brainer.

I actually did a Twitter chat this morning with American Marketing Association in Boston. They said they were doing great on, on Clubhouse. I'm like, well, we should have done Twitter spaces. Right. That might have even made more sense, um, versus Clubhouse versus, you know, I listen to Spotify religiously myself, I.

Listen to music on Spotify and there was an ad recently for Anchor fm and they're like, yeah, you can now make your own music podcast where you can easily share music from the Spotify library onto your podcast [00:34:00] royalty free. I'm like, well, that is, that is freaking cool, right? Spotify, if I ever, 'cause I love music.

I have a, a rack of like, you know, hundreds of CDs behind me. Um, if I ever wanted to do that, which like a personal project, I've always thought about doing it, I'm gonna do that on Spotify. Right. That makes total sense. So if you're a musician, dang, uh, you know, Spotify Green Room is gonna be a great place to be.

And I know there are some musicians in Clubhouse and Twitter spaces, but, uh, once again, getting back into how those platforms are used. So LinkedIn, LinkedIn has become really interesting. And it's funny because if you listen to a lot of podcasts like I do, you sometimes, especially in marketing, you get these people that appear, oh, so and so is like a LinkedIn guru.

What happens is it sort of reminds you the early days of Instagram where there were a lot of automation tools that would help you sort of scale your marketing. LinkedIn, I think we're in a very, very similar stage. I think those that are doing a lot on LinkedIn are using, I. Various automation tools that LinkedIn is trying to get better at, but really hasn't cut down.

And what do I mean? What So, so what do I mean by this? [00:35:00] So there was, I don't wanna name names, but there was someone who was talking and they said that they built this, they started from scratch and they built this huge following because there was a, a thought leader in their industry who was posting a lot on LinkedIn and getting a lot of comments.

So they were sending out invites to people who commented on that post. Making a little personalization that was related to that thought leader. I'm thinking, okay, this, that's completely automated, right? So there, there's, I, I don't wanna get into the technology here. Maybe you two gentlemen have talked about it before, but you have very, very LinkedIn specific tools and then you have general data scraping tools.

It's basically saying, okay, here is the link of the post. I wanna scrape all the people who like that post, and some posts get tens, hundreds of thousands of likes. And then I wanna automate the, sending them the imitation to them. And then I want to personalize that with these, you know, personalization features.

I, I firmly believe that's what this person did. Over two years to go [00:36:00] from zero to 30,000. Now they have gone well beyond that. Now they also had good content and they were starting to create content related to what that thought leader was talking about. So it's like, Hey, if you like that thought leader's content, love for you to check out what I'm doing.

And they were doing a podcast. So there are some use case scenarios where LinkedIn becomes a lot more easier. Now, if you're on LinkedIn, you've probably seen these invites that look personalized, but they're really just spam. So you need to be aware of that. But I do think if I was starting from scratch today, that that's sort of a way of, of you know, just being able to reach out to people.

Now, LinkedIn has limited the number of invites to like a hundred a week now. I think it used to be a lot more than that. So you're sort of limited, but there's a lot that you can do on LinkedIn because it's the supply demand. There's way more demand for content than there are people that are supplying the content.

My one trick, if you haven't done anything, they're annoying as hell, but polls on LinkedIn will get you hundreds, if not thousands of impressions over the course of a week. I don't know why, but LinkedIn is just favoring polls in the newsfeed. It, it's almost a [00:37:00] joke actually, how much they do it.

Chris Stone: Um, we've seen that and we've seen, uh, Jim, uh, Jim would at times, uh, post a PDF.

Yep. Um, and, and for whatever reason, like the view count was, was like inordinately, uh, higher than he normally would get. Yeah. So, on on anything else,

Neal Schaffer: LinkedIn is interesting because think about it, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, how do they monetize their platform a hundred percent. Ads. LinkedIn isn't a hundred percent ads.

They have LinkedIn recruiter, so, or talent solutions for recruiters, right? They have LinkedIn sales navigator for, you know, B2B salespeople and, and you know, financial services insurance. So they have other streams of revenue where it's like, you know what, we can give a little bit more native content organic.

We can give that more impressions in the feed. We don't have to rely a hundred percent. On monetizing the feed. And that is a huge difference. And we've seen LinkedIn play around with this, like company page posts on LinkedIn will tend to get more impressions than Facebook page posts. At times, they've sort of scaled that down, [00:38:00] but they're always tweaking that algorithm.

And if you, you know, look in your feed, right, and if you start seeing a trend, then jump on it. And I think you're gonna get a lot more impressions now. You have to have something to say. You have to have connections that are gonna help comment and everything. But once again. Do I spend an hour hoping to get on stage in the clubhouse room or do I spend an hour just like, you know, hacking away at LinkedIn, that hour on LinkedIn might be a lot more valuable.

E especially considering the demographic that we know are LinkedIn users.

Jim Fuhs: That's a great point. Yeah. I love that. Yeah.

Neal Schaffer: Or yeah, one of, one of my son's friends, brute force, just like hack, hack, brute force, what was the word? It's like a gamer word. I'm forgetting the word right now, but, uh, anyway, you get the picture.

Level up. Was that it? That's the game. No, that's, yeah, that my son would say that's a boomer word. Even though I'm Gen X, not a boomer, but um, I'm trying to remember the trying to, anyway, um, it's all good gamer word, but, right. But yeah, I mean, that's the whole idea. So yeah, there's a lot. LinkedIn's really different, these new content formats.

I reformatted an Instagram carousel post. Of 10 square [00:39:00] images into one of those PDFs, which are based on square images, you know? Perfect. Right? So that, that's really good. Repurposing when the content's relevant for, so anyone listening, if you have an Instagram carousel post immediately re we repurpose that in A PDF.

Just, just literally save it as a 10 page PDF and then your content's ready to go there.

Chris Stone: Yeah. And to your point, the lines are a little blurred now. It used to be like LinkedIn was like, you know, button up and put on a tie and, and uh, you know, getting ready, you know, for, you know, your job interview. And I mean, there still is a lot of that right there still, there still is a, uh, a business, uh, social networking and there still is a lot of that.

But boy, I see some stuff on LinkedIn, um, now that I got the word grinding. That's the word.

Neal Schaffer: Grinding, grind. Grind. Which comes from before gaming. But anyway, my 14-year-old son using that,

Chris Stone: it's all good.

Neal Schaffer: The

Chris Stone: grind, he's grinding on game the grind now. Probably the grind, the LinkedIn grind. Yeah. So Jim, I know you're, you're chopping at the bit here, um, uh, to, to, you know, and we've been talking about the book and we're, we're running up close to the top of the hour, so [00:40:00] I wanna, I know, um.

Jim's a big fan of the book and, um, you know, I wanna, I definitely want to make sure that those that are listening and watching, um, check out the age of Influence. Um, I can't believe the deal that it's on right now on Amazon. Neil? Yeah. Did you set that up, Neil? You brought the, it must, it must just be for us, right?

You, you just because you were on our show, it's like, uh, the special deal on, on Age of Influence.

Neal Schaffer: No, I wanna say, I think, Jim, you might have been the first person. I gave my book too. Like Wow. Literally, I, it just came right before Social Media Marketing World. I brought it down. I I think you, yeah, we, we met, we

Jim Fuhs: met in the networking hall and we were talking Yeah.

'cause I was introduced you to the folks from Metrical and Yeah. That's that. Yeah. So, well, trust me anyway, I treasure it.

Neal Schaffer: No, but yeah, it's the, the book industry is really interesting. Right after it came out, you know, it, it would take weeks to get the book because the whole Amazon warehouses distribution.

Now, um, yeah. I mean, heck, you know, if I need to send out a book to a client, I'm just gonna go through Amazon. It's that cheap, you know, free shipping, [00:41:00] right? So, yeah, anybody, this is really, it's not gonna get any cheaper than this, so just, just do it. Yeah.

Jim Fuhs: Neil, what do, what do you see, uh, you know, you talk about in the book, do you continue to see the growth of influencer marketing as as valuable to companies?

And I think you hit on it too much more important, like, I would say for the folks that are Amazon influencers or wanna become that, making relationships with these companies and not so much focusing like, oh, I, I wanna get a product. You know, 'cause I think that's where you gotta draw the line. If you don't believe in the product, don't, don't do it.

'cause your reputation's at stake.

Neal Schaffer: Yeah. You know, I, I think that if I am, you know, since coming out with that book, I've seen just, and I saw the beginning of it around the time I was writing the book, but just a shift in looking at influencers. Not just people that can amplify your message to a larger number of people, but people that are great content creators.

So it's like, dang. I wanna get on Amazon, but [00:42:00] most brands aren't doing adventure stuff like that. They don't have budgets to, to start a live stream on Amazon, right? Like what's the ROI? They're not gonna do it. But teaming up with people that do that is really, really smart. So what I would say, and when I wrote my book, I realized that a lot of influencers get deals, like I think this number was one third of the influencer deals came from them proactively pitching brands rather than waiting for them to pitch them.

I would absolutely, you know, reach out. Because here's the thing, more and more brands now look at influencers just for their content creation. So, well, we need TikTok, right? We need to speak that generation, but we don't have the creativity. We don't, we don't know what we're doing. Why don't we just hire influencers?

We don't even care what following they have, if they make great content. Let's just outsource our content creation to people that are really good at using these platforms. And that's been a significant shift. We've seen mainly visually, like on Instagram with photos and stuff, we, we now call this leveraging user generated content when a lot of that is done by just shipping out free product to these people.

I would reach out to brands and say, Hey, you know, I wanna feature [00:43:00] you on my Amazon Live. I want to, I wanna do a special hour just talking about your products. Can you, can I interview someone from the company or can you share with me some stories that I could share? Right. Um, you know, there aren't that many people that do what you do now, so go out there.

Pitch And worst thing is they say no. Maybe they go, you know what? We're not interested in Amazon, but do you do like TikTok or Instagram Live? It may start a completely different conversation, but I would definitely go outta my way, you know, use LinkedIn to find these people, um, you know, direct message them on Instagram, which a lot of people do.

You could give them on Twitter if they're B2B, but that would be my best advice to give you today if you really wanna start to proactively get things going.

Chris Stone: That's great. I hope, I hope, uh, those that are, that are listening and watching are, are, are hearing that, uh, from one of the foremost authorities on influencer marketing.

Neil, this has been awesome. I know you've got, uh, you've got a hard stop and another interview back to back to back to back. So we don't, we don't wanna make you late, uh, for that one. Um, but I know, uh, neil [00:44:00] schafer.com is, is the website and if you haven't pick, uh, picked up, uh, age of Influence. I mean, what are you waiting for today?

Because he was on deal casters. Um, his, uh, his book is, is On sale? No, uh, is on sale. Plus, uh, while you're there, pick up a few more books. Uh, well, you've got three or four. This your fourth book? Yep.

Neal Schaffer: Four, two books. And I'm really close to releasing a free preview of my. Fifth book, which I've been working on and I should have gotten out at the end of Q2.

But, uh, yeah, my next, my next book's gonna be like a digital marketing playbook. Very much inspired and influenced by how my business has shifted after Covid and how I've helped all these other businesses. Really shift their business into digital first gear or fifth gear, I guess. So yeah, I'm looking forward to that.

Chris Stone: Awesome. Yeah, looking forward to that. Definitely. When,

Neal Schaffer: when will that be out, Neil? You know what, it's still very, very early. It's gonna be a good, you know, five, 6,000 word ebook. It'll be completely free. You'll have to download it on my site. So make sure you go to neil [00:45:00] shafer.com, sign up somewhere. Um, that is really gonna start the book proposal stage.

So. I am hoping, I mean, I would love to have it out for social media Marketing World 2022. That would be my, my ideal scenario, but I'm already starting to talk about it, and I think that the, uh, the ebook will hopefully enlighten a lot of people.

Jim Fuhs: Awesome. Great stuff. Neil, thank you so much for joining us.

Uh, I'd love to have you back sometime if, uh, if you've got time, 'cause I know you're a very busy guy, but it's been an honor to have you and, uh, look forward to hopefully seeing you again in person soon. Podcast movement, baby.

Chris Stone: See you in Nashville. See you. Nice. And to everyone else. As always, don't fear the gear.

Jim Fuhs: Thanks for listening to deal casters. Congratulations, you've taken another step forward in your content creation journey. Please don't forget to hit the subscribe or follow button here in your favorite podcast player so you can be reminded every time we drop an [00:46:00] episode,

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Thanks again for listening and you know the deal. Don't.