editor, Author at Mediastreet

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Elon Musk’s 7-Word Rule for Working Remotely Is Better Than You Think. Every Leader Should Copy It

July 18, 2022 No Comments

At Tesla, the bar is very high.

Elon Musk finally sat down for a question and answer session with Twitter employees. Considering the overall level of drama surrounding Musk’s deal to buy Twitter–including whether he intends to complete the sale at all–the meeting comes at a particularly tense time for those employees.

Then there are Musk’s controversial views on everything from free speech to spam bots to–well–everything. You might imagine it was quite an interesting conversation. It turns out, you don’t have to imagine.

Vox published a leaked transcript of the 60-minute conversation, during which Musk shared thoughts on a range of topics. One of them, in particular, caught my attention.

You might remember that earlier this month, Musk sent an email to his executives requiring them to show up to the office for “a minimum of 40 hours” a week. At the time I wrote that it makes sense leaders should be expected to lead by example.

“The more senior you are, the more visible must be your presence,” Musk wrote in the email, which was shared on Twitter. Still, I got a lot of emails along the lines of “remote work is the future, and any company that doesn’t let everyone work from anywhere they want is going to surely fall apart and lose all of its employees,” and “you have no idea what you’re talking about, you’ve obviously never worked remotely.” Which, I guess is entirely true, except for the part where I’ve been working remotely for years.

Also, Tesla makes cars, which is fundamentally different from an accounting firm or an independent software company, or every other company that doesn’t require building complex products in giant factories.

During the town hall, Musk elaborated:

There are some roles at Tesla where the work can be done remotely, like, say, software or design. I think that’s still a case where you want to aspire to do things in person, but if somebody is exceptional at their job, then it’s possible for them to be effective, even working remotely.

That makes perfect sense. Let’s call it the Elon Musk Rule. How do we decide if it makes sense to let someone work remotely? It’s only seven words: If somebody is exceptional at their job.

The bar, according to Musk, is whether they are “an excellent contributor.” If so, “they’re allowed to work remotely,” he says.

If your job doesn’t require your physical presence, and you’re really good at your job, it’s worth it to everyone to let you continue working remotely. If not, or if your role is, say, working on an assembly line, you’re probably going to have to keep coming to the office.

Of course, that begs the question of why the people who still have to come to work in the office have a job at all. If they aren’t excellent contributors, I’m not sure why any manager would want to keep them around.

I suspect, however, that the real key is whether the benefit to the company outweighs any possible drawback to not having that person in the office. I think that what Musk is saying is that they have to be one of the very best contributors.

That’s actually a really useful rule for every leader to consider. If you haven’t already figured out where the balance is between the benefit of letting your employees work remotely and the cost in terms of collaboration, you’re doing it wrong.

Let’s be completely honest–working remotely is a luxury. It just is. To have a job that you can do from anywhere you have an internet connection isn’t normal. It’s an incredible benefit. It means you have more flexibility and choice over your work environment and schedule. It means you don’t have to spend time commuting to an office. It means you get to have a desk next to a window looking out into your backyard where your kids are kicking a soccer ball into a net.

At the same time, for a lot of companies, allowing employees to work remotely is a net positive. They are more productive, happier, and more loyal to your company because they have more control over how work fits into their life. There’s also the fact that you broaden your talent pool dramatically when you don’t require people to move to Texas or California, or wherever your office is located.

The point is that every leader should be considering the trade off between the needs of the business and the desires of their team to have flexibility over their work environment. All of those things are important to consider against what you lose in the ability to build relationships and collaborate.

For Musk, that’s a high bar to pass. It might be lower for your company, but the point is, you should know exactly where it is.

Feature Image Credit: Elon Musk. Photo: Getty Images

By Jason Aten

Sourced from Inc.

In News

Why experiences are the future of brand marketing

July 18, 2022 No Comments

Sourced from Creative Review

The marketing world is always evolving with new ways for brands to differentiate themselves. The importance of brands being proactive online is vital – but what can brands do offline to help their company stand out?

Experiences offer a brand the opportunity to elevate themselves beyond two-dimensional entities, allowing them to articulate personality and emotion in different ways. Through experience design, brands can take their visitors on an immersive experience that reflects their values, mission, history and so on.

At the forefront of this movement is Mather & Co, an agency that helps commercial brands across the globe to hoist their offline presence and overtake their competitors by creating experiences that showcase a unique brand story. Established in 1995 by Chris Mather, Mather & Co’s work includes the Gretna Green Experience; Downton Abbey: The Exhibition; Silverstone Interactive Museum; the R&A World Golf Museum; and The Royal Mint Experience.

Many of the best brand activations sit at the cross-section between creativity and technology, using the latter as a tool to bring great ideas to life. So, what’s the secret of successful experience-based marketing?

MAKING A GRAND STATEMENT

Projection-mapping technology can transform any irregular surface, such as the face of a building, into a canvas for breath-taking audio-visual experiences that may extend a brand’s reach. Through next-level design and production any surface may be augmented and transformed into an exciting and immersive display to communicate a story or showcase a product.

Successful examples of immersive projection mapping technologies include Wear the Rose, a 360-degree sports experience that took over London’s O2 Arena, as well as a giant installation in Saudi Arabia using the Tuwaiq Mountains as its canvas.

A recent project for the R&A World Golf Museum saw Mather & Co produce the Celebration of Light projection-mapping show across the famous Royal & Ancient Clubhouse building. This extension of the experience allowed the iconic golfing brand to reach millions of people worldwide, narrating 150 years of golfing history to mark the occasion of the 150th Open.

CONNECTING WITH YOUR HERITAGE

Sometimes it is the history and heritage behind a brand that steers the type of experience you need to develop. The Famous Blacksmiths Shop in Gretna Green is legendary for runaway marriages stretching back hundreds of years, but the legend is in danger of being forgotten altogether with the ageing demographic of visitors.

Here, the Mather & Co team recognised the need to reinvigorate the brand in new ways to connect with younger audiences – creating a new experience on site telling the story of romance, rebellion, and unstoppable love since 1754. The shop has been transformed into an immersive, storytelling experience at the heart of the iconic Gretna Green destination. The experience takes visitors on emotional love story and highlights the business as a whole – a family run business. It is a modern and contemporary take on a 200-year-old history.

“Before the redevelopment, Gretna Green was already a significant destination in British history – the new experience still holds the original magic and romance of the site,” says Sarah Clarke, managing director at Mather & Co. “The experience now allows visitors to delve into the heart-felt love stories and also explores Gretna Green as a brand itself.”

Gretna Green Experience; Photo: Chris Humphreys

CREATING INTERACTIVE MOMENTS

The way people interact in experiences, and what they want from them, has changed dramatically over the past decade. With technology at everyone’s fingertips, people are now looking for more participatory and physical interactivity that they cannot do at home. Creating immersive and interactive experiences allows brands to connect with their audiences in different and more memorable ways.

At the home of British motor racing, the new Silverstone Interactive Museum tells the brand story of the circuit and its place in British motorsport in a fully interactive way. From taking part in tyre changes and sitting in an iconic historic F1 car, to getting involved in the tech lab and designing your own vehicle, this Mather & Co project immerses visitors in the experience – not only enhancing their understanding of the brand, but making them a vital part of it.

RELIVING MEMORIES

For TV programmes and films, iconic moments are there to draw on in extension experiences. No-one can deny the success of offers such as the Harry Potter Studio Tour, Game of Thrones Studio Tour and the Doctor Who Experience which are sweeping the nation and extending connections with fans of the shows.

“When it comes to designing a visitor attraction, we must understand what makes the visitors want to keep coming back for more,” continues Clarke. “It should be an extension of the brand, so the values must be translated in the experience.”

Mather & Co worked with NBCUniversal and Emmy-winning writer Julian Fellowes to create an immersive experience for the internationally acclaimed TV programme Downton Abbey and created one of the most successful studio tours in the UK around the original Coronation Street set.

For both, the key was to authentically recreate the sets, immerse ourselves fully in the brand and select the memories that resonated the most with fans. It was about taking visitors on an emotional journey beyond the fourth wall right into the beating heart of their favourite shows.

To discuss how your brand could unlock the full potential of experience design, contact Mather & Co; matherandco.com

Sourced from Creative Review

In News

How Startups Can Leverage SEO to Drive Customer Growth

July 18, 2022 No Comments

By Jeremy Moser

If you’re dumping all of your startup’s funding into paid ads, you’re missing a massive amount of SEO-driven customer growth opportunities.

In 2021, $621 billion in venture capital was deployed to startups raising funding. More than 50% of that funding went straight into ads.

The problem? People hate ads. Ad blocking technology usage has increased dramatically year over year. Even worse, 68% of online experiences start with a search on Google, Bing or another search engine. Only 6% of those searches result in an ad click.

If you’re dumping all of your startup’s funding into paid ads, you’re missing a massive amount of SEO-driven customer growth opportunities. Here are three ways to drive customer growth for your startup using SEO.

1. Publish keyword-driven content often

The key to driving organic traffic from search engines is to provide content that is genuinely helpful to readers. That all starts with identifying what readers are searching for, understanding their problems and providing information they can use to solve them.

Most startups publish random content on their website that isn’t optimized for what their target market is actually looking for. Blogging isn’t the same as it was 10 years ago. It’s not meant to be an online diary. It’s meant to target specific searches that your ideal customers are typing every single day.

Keywords are the lifeblood of SEO, as they help you understand existing and future opportunities for traffic around topics and phrases that relate to your product or service. For instance, someone searching for a do-it-yourself guide to building a bookshelf is probably going to convert on recommendations in the article for products. If it’s too complex, they may even book a contractor instead.

Creating keyword-driven content that targets your ideal customer profile is how you win in SEO. Use tools like Ahrefs and Semrush to research topics that your typical customers might search. Then, create blogs and pieces of content that address those problems. Publish at least five to 10 pieces per month and you’ll start seeing traffic flood to your website.

2. Optimize your public knowledge base

Creating more new content as a startup without outsourcing can be difficult. After all, you’re already wearing too many hats at a startup and your job description grows by the day. If you run a software or tech-based startup, an easy win for SEO is optimizing your public knowledge base.

Your knowledge base contains vital information about your industry, how to use your product, and how to solve key problems in your space. For instance, maybe your software helps companies with logistics management and warehousing. Within your knowledge base, you already explain key information that can pick up organic traffic and searches. And best of all, it’s directly related to your product or service, meaning the potential to convert traffic is huge.

In your keyword research tool, plug in topics that your knowledge base already covers. See if you are missing any keywords and topics that you can expand on to go further in-depth on the content you’ve already published. On your knowledge base, make sure it’s set to index in search engines rather than being content locked away in a user portal or back-end system.

Your knowledge base shouldn’t be exclusive to customer service or users looking for support. Make it public, indexed in search engines and reap the rewards of organic traffic that are hyper-relevant to your business.

3. Generate niche digital PR coverage

Doing digital PR for your startup is critical for SEO. Digital PR includes things like getting mentioned in relevant publications online, podcasts where you share industry advice as an expert and so much more. Digital PR serves multiple purposes, and can directly enhance your SEO and ability to rank for organic search terms.

When doing digital PR initiatives like podcasts or interviews in written publications, or being an expert source for journalists, you earn a brand mention and backlink that directly improves your website’s authority. In simple terms, you can rank better organically and drive more traffic.

In addition, these efforts will build brand awareness and drive referral traffic to your site. The trap that most startups fall down is not niching down enough. PR isn’t just getting mentioned in TechCrunch and getting 30 under 30 listings.

You can also go straight to niche sources where your ideal customers hang out, consume content and connect. Start searching for “best blogs in [industry]” and “top [niche] companies.” Identify a list of 50 to 100 of these websites, media companies and startups that you can cross-promote.

Write a guest post for their blog. Feature them on your podcast and get featured on theirs. Tap into their niche relevant audience rather than going for the biggest publications you can find. You’ll get more pitches accepted and the traffic you receive will be highly relevant to your product or service.

By Jeremy Moser

Sourced from Entrepreneur

In News

Metaverse could reach $5 trillion in value by 2030, McKinsey report shows

July 15, 2022 No Comments

By Aron Chen

The market size of the metaverse could reach $5 trillion in value by 2030. according to a new report from international consulting firm McKinsey & Company.

Based on this projection, McKinsey indicates that the consumer spending in the metaverse will most likely be divided into five fields: socializing, gaming, fitness, commerce and remote learning.

E-commerce will be the primary cash generator in the metaverse, McKinsey predicted that consumer spending in this sector could reach $2 trillion to $2.6 trillion of by 2030. Virtual advertising will be another major sector, with relevant revenue expected to make up another $144 billion to $206 billion.

Gathering survey from 3,104 consumers across 11 countries, McKinsey said that early 60% of all consumers surveyed prefer at least one activity in the virtual world compared to its physical alternative.

Among those consumers that are currently active in the metaverse, 79% of consumers have already purchased virtual goods in the metaverse. 78% of consumer have already attended virtual social events or playing social games.

The report also highlighted that companies, venture capital, and private equity firms have invested more than $120 billion in the metaverse in the first five month of 2022, which is more than double the $57 billion invested in all of last year.

The report also showed that 25% of all executives on survey said they expect the metaverse to drive 15% of their organization’s total margin growth in five years.

Metaverse is a technology term originally from the 1992 cyberpunk novel Snow Crash by science fiction author Neal Stephenson. The term describes an all-encompassing virtual world where people can play, socialize and interact with one another by using avatars.

The idea behind it is that people can walk around and inside of virtual world where they can interact with one another in real time.

The metaverse is the convergence of lots of technologies and express how they all interconnect.

As 5g and even 6g rolls out, it’ll increase internet speed, which could enable a seamless link between our real world and the metaverse. Software, device makers, tool builders like game engine companies will benefit from Metaverse going forward. These companies are typically fast followers on the latest trends as they raised large chuck of company from venture capitals and big tech companies.

By Aron Chen

Sourced from PINGWEST

In News

In Advertising, Like Art, a Bigger Canvas Makes a Bigger Impact

July 15, 2022 No Comments

By John Long

To create emotion, you’ll need more than a postage stamp

What do Picasso’s Guernica, Michelangelo’s frescoes on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, and The Godfather have in common? Enormous scale.

Guernica is 11½ feet tall and over 25 feet wide. The Sistine Chapel covers over 12,000 square feet. The Godfather is three hours long. And a big part of their emotional impact comes from these mammoth dimensions.

Sure, you can pull up a snapshot of these masterpieces on Wikipedia or watch a few clips of The Godfather on your smartphone. But you don’t experience them viscerally—not really—until you see them in their original format. And when you do, you never forget it.

So what does that have to do with advertising?

Too many brands today rely too much on media formats that make it difficult, if not impossible, to connect emotionally with their audience. We spend a lot of time worrying about craft and storytelling, as we should. But we should start paying more attention to the mix of media we’re investing in, because it’s hard to inspire emotion when you’re working on a canvas the size of a postage stamp.

I’m not saying it’s impossible, or that art has to be big to have impact. If you’ve ever seen it in person at the Louvre, you know that the Mona Lisa is surprisingly small. But with apologies to Marshall McLuhan, the media is the message. And some media are better than others at stirring emotion.

Here’s why that matters. Emotion sells. It’s science—decades and decades of data and research prove it. According to Psychology Today, brain scans show that “when evaluating brands, consumers primarily use emotions (personal feelings and experiences), rather than information (brand attributes, features, and facts).” Another study found that the most-shared articles from The New York Times are emotional stories. Still another found that ads with emotional content are twice as effective as purely rational messages. And so on.

The bottom line is, we’re all focused on media formats designed for scrolling and browsing and swiping. But brands should also be investing in media that are more conducive to emotional impact.

Here are five:

Out-of-home

It’s hard to imagine Wieden+Kennedy’s Kaepernick campaign without the billboards. Almost all the media I saw about the campaign were actually photos of the out-of-home. W+K could’ve simply posted the image in social—and they did. But a massive billboard in the right place immediately says: “This is important. Stop and look.” And people did. The big canvas mattered.

Longer ad formats

Take a minute to watch this spot for Virgin from Lucky Generals. It’s worth your time and it makes a key point.

Virgin Atlantic: I Am What I Am CLICK HERE TO VIEW VIDEO

It makes you feel something, doesn’t it? And that feeling wouldn’t be the same if it were a :05 or even a :15. I’m sure the talented creatives at Lucky Generals have a :30 in the hopper, and as good as it will be, it won’t be quite as good as this. Every year, the Super Bowl spots that stand out are the ones that are a minute or longer. So if you’re going to take the time to craft filmed advertising, go long.

Long-form films

Branded entertainment is another good vehicle for connecting emotionally with an audience. At LG’s in-house agency, rather than rely solely on short-form ads, we’ve produced a six-part documentary series about some of the most intense—but less well-known—rivalries in college sports. It’s a lot more work to make half a dozen 20-30 minute films than a 30-second spot. But you can tell richer, deeper, more impactful stories when you’ve got more time.

LG Presents: The Rivalries “Melee On The Bay” – Episode #3 :60 Trailer

CLICK HERE TO VIEW VIDEO

Immersive or bespoke digital ads

Digital publishers are getting better at incorporating ads into the flow of content. Here’s an example unit from The New York Times app. Rather than cram the ad between paragraphs, it exploits the entire screen—just like a full-page ad in a magazine.

Podcasts

I’m not sure what it is exactly about this medium, but podcasts have proven remarkably effective for brands. Maybe it’s the intimacy of audio, or perhaps it’s because they’re tailored to people’s interests. But this nascent media is creatively coming into its own and presents another way for brands to forge emotional connections with an audience.

By John Long

John Long has held creative leadership positions at Ogilvy, The Economist Group and Huge. He is currently executive creative director at LG’s in-house agency, HS Ad.

Sourced from Muse by Clio

In News

The Art and Science of Filling a Sales Funnel With More Leads

July 15, 2022 No Comments

By Nate Nead

One of the biggest mistakes I see young or inexperienced entrepreneurs make is having no defined sales process. More specifically, there’s no funnel in place for walking people from awareness to purchase. This is highly problematic and typically holds a business back from achieving any level of noteworthy success.

In this article, I want to show you some of the art and science behind how you can architect a sales funnel and, ultimately, fill it with more leads who become qualified prospects and, eventually, morph into customers. If that sounds good, keep reading.

A Breakdown of the Basic Sales Funnel

There are plenty of different creative acronyms and funnel illustrations out there, but it’s easiest to think about your funnel in three main stages:

Leads (Top of the Funnel)
Prospects (Middle of the Funnel)
Customers (Bottom of the Funnel)

The goal, obviously, is to turn leads into prospects and prospects into customers. But in order to do that, you have to understand the emotional state of each prospect in each stage.

When a lead is in the top of the funnel, the goal is to move them from awareness to interest. That’s it. You’re not trying to make a sale.

Once a lead becomes interested, they become a prospect. At this point, they slide into the middle of the funnel where they actively evaluate options. Your objective is to engage them and show them why your solutions are a good fit for their problem, pain, or desire.

Finally, when a prospect is engaged enough, they become a customer. This is the bottom of the funnel. The objective is to nurture, satisfy, and cultivate loyalty.

Entire courses have been developed about architecting sales funnels, but that’s not the goal of this article. The purpose of this article is to show you how to fill your funnel with more leads. In other words, how do you fill the top of the funnel and make people aware of your business and products? (Because if you can do that, you have a good chance of eventually turning a percentage of these leads into prospects who become paying customers.)

Powerful Ways to Fill Your Funnel With Leads

When it comes to filling your funnel with leads, there are thousands of different tactics you can use. I want to discuss what I believe are some of the easiest and most effective in 2022 and beyond. Let’s take a look:

Write Guest Blog Content

Depending on how you approach this first strategy, it can take some time. However, it’s almost always worth it.

The idea behind guest blogging is simple: Write content for someone else’s blog and get exposure with their audience. (As an added bonus, you also pick up some SEO “juice” in the form of backlinks to your own domain.)

In order to be successful with guest blogging, you have to do your research and be persistent. For starters, look for blogs that have a high domain authority and possess a site readership/audience that overlaps with your own audience. In other words, if you’re selling fitness coaching services, you want blogs that are focused on healthy eating, natural medicine, weight loss, and positive self-image. However, you probably don’t want to guest blog on someone else’s fitness coaching blog. (Or, rather, they won’t let you.) There should be some overlap, but it should not be a direct competitor.

When writing guest blog content, it’s important to have by-lines and/or include links back to your website. This helps you gain maximum exposure.

Does guest blogging seem too time-consuming? Thankfully, you don’t have to do guest blogging and link building on your own.

There are content writing services that will do all of this on your behalf.

Develop Sticky Lead Magnets

Generally speaking, the easiest way to add a lead into your funnel is to gather their contact information. This typically means their name and email address. But here’s the deal: People don’t just hand this information out for free. They expect something in return. And this is where lead magnets come into play.

A lead magnet is a free piece of content that you give away in exchange for a lead’s email address. It’s typically something like a PDF, report, eBook, checklist, video, or demo. When creating lead magnets, you want them to be sticky. In other words, you want your ideal customer to feel like they can’t say no.

Lead magnets are usually delivered as part of a simple opt-in process. You drive traffic from a source to a landing page. On this landing page, the lead is shown a simple one-or-two-field opt-in. They input their information and automatically receive the resource. On the back end, you send them an automated drip email sequence that sells them on your products and services.

Use Quizzes

One of the most popular lead generation methods involves the use of quizzes. However, most marketers are missing out on this option because they incorrectly think it’s too complex. (Hint: It’s not.)

As ConvertFlow.com explains, “The right quiz can grab someone’s attention and keep them highly engaged. Not only that, but it gives marketers a chance to listen to people’s problems and prescribe a particular product or piece of content as a solution—all on autopilot.”

When we use the term “quizzes,” we’re not talking about a test you took in high school. We’re talking about Buzzfeed-style quizzes that are fun and engaging. Popular ones include:

Which character/person are you?
What’s your personality?
What are your strengths/weaknesses?
How proficient are you?
Which solution is right for you?

Obviously, the precise quiz name and question types are highly dependent on your brand, audience, and conversion goals. However, this gives you an idea of which approaches work.

Be a Guest on Podcasts

Podcast hosts are always looking for good guests. Yet most business owners aren’t willing to go through the effort of reaching out and looking for opportunities. That makes this a sneaky powerful way to generate hungry leads.

Guest podcasting is a lot like guest blogging. The same audience rules apply. The key here is to negotiate with the podcast host on the front end to make sure you’re able to include a call-to-action during your interview.

The best way to do this is by sending listeners to a targeted landing page and giving them a free resource that was discussed on the podcast in exchange for their email address. The great thing about this is that you can create custom tracking codes for each podcast you’re on. This will show you how many leads come from each podcast (so that you know which ones to return to in the future).

Form Joint Ventures

Perhaps you’re seeing somewhat of a theme here. One of the best ways to fill your own funnel is by tapping into someone else’s funnel in a completely ethical way by adding value to their audience. Joint ventures are another way to do this.

With joint ventures, you find other entrepreneurs and business owners and partner with them to create a joint product, project, or partnership where you both bring valuable resources to the table. In this case, they might bring the leads and you might bring the content or value.

Online events are a great example of this. You can host a free masterclass, live webinar, or virtual summit. Your joint venture partner (or partners) brings the registrations, while you create the actual teaching and set up the back end. Online courses are another example.

Give Your Sales Funnel a Boost

If you want to elevate your sales funnel, increase sales, and build a self-sustaining business that continues to grow over time, you need to fill your funnel with more leads – and more qualified leads at that! Hopefully, this article has inspired you with a few ideas. You don’t need to use them all, however. I’d recommend picking one and implementing it this week. Then, once you feel like you’ve mastered that strategy, choose another (and so on). When combined together, these techniques can have a compounding result at the top of your funnel, which results in exponential increases in revenue at the bottom of the funnel.

By Nate Nead

Nate Nead is the CEO & Managing Member of Nead, LLC, a consulting company that provides strategic advisory services across multiple disciplines including finance, marketing and software development. For over a decade Nate had provided strategic guidance on M&A, capital procurement, technology and marketing solutions for some of the most well-known online brands. He and his team advise Fortune 500 and SMB clients alike. The team is based in Seattle, Washington; El Paso, Texas and West Palm Beach, Florida.

Sourced from readwrite

In News

5 Trends Shaping the Future of Digital Marketing

July 14, 2022 No Comments

By Ashlee Sierra

Here’s a little-known secret about the Brafton content marketing and strategy teams: We can see the future. That’s because our company car is a customized Delorean and we have regular training sessions on navigating the space-time continuum.

Obviously, that’s not entirely true. It’s actually a Camaro because we couldn’t find a Delorean.

Regardless of how we get there, what matters is that we’re here to help you see into the future of digital marketing. Come with us on a journey to tomorrow, where we’ll explore evolving digital channels, new applications of automation and a customer journey defined by your ever-changing target audience. Just remember not to run into your future self along the way!

The Current State of Digital Marketing

Before we jump into our time-traveling Camaro, we need to have a clear view of the present. That way, we can be sure we return to the proper timeline.

The same is true for digital marketing: You always need to know what’s happening in the industry before you can make any predictions.

With that rule in mind, let’s take a look at the current state of digital marketing campaigns and their target audiences:

Social Media Habits

Social media platforms are effective distribution channels for your brand story — mostly because there are 4.65 billion social media users worldwide. That’s almost 59% of the global population.

But platforms go in and out of style depending on all kinds of factors, from local trends to mobile device software updates. According to an Semrush ranking of all websites, the most popular site overall in February 2022 was YouTube. Here’s how it and other social media platforms stacked up when compared to websites of every kind:

YouTube was #1, with 50 billion total visits.
Google was #2, with over 39 billion total visits.
Facebook was #3, with 9.34 billion total visits.
Twitter was #6, with 5.62 billion total visits.
Instagram was #9, with 3.19 billion total visits.
Pinterest was #18 with 1.43 billion total visits.

Utilization of Artificial Intelligence

Artificial intelligence (AI) may still sound like something out of a science fiction movie, but it’s a huge part of today’s digital marketing landscape. Check out these AI statistics that prove it:

40% of marketing and sales teams prioritize AI for success — more than any other department.
34% of marketing leaders say AI is the biggest game-changer in the industry.
71% of marketers say AI could help personalize the customer journey.
Chatbots were responsible for 85% of customer interactions in 2020.
Experts predict AI will lead to a 26% increase in the global gross domestic product by 2030 — an estimated $15.7 trillion.

The use of AI in digital marketing is already pretty impressive. Companies like Magnolia Market, the retail destination operated by Chip and Joanna Gaines, use augmented reality to let customers virtually place products in their homes. It’s like a test drive for home décor. Meanwhile, Unilever used AI to uncover the connection between ice cream and breakfast, leading it to develop a line of cereal flavours for Ben & Jerry’s.

Personalization Preferences

Another reality in modern-day digital marketing is the preference for personalization. Citizens of the online world are tired of cookie-cutter experiences, and now they’re demanding tailored, interactive content that appeals to their unique perspectives. This is especially relevant for your content marketing strategy, including video content, social media posts and more.

Take, for example, YouTube recommendations. With a little help from artificial intelligence, the #1 site in the world (at least according to Semrush) keeps its competitive position in the social psyche by constantly providing 2 things:

Video content we’ve already expressed interest in.
Video content we didn’t know we were looking for, but that aligns perfectly with our tastes.

Say I’ve been watching videos about the new Ford Bronco (which may or may not be true). If you were a Ford dealer, you’d be able to use this preference and YouTube automation to provide video content that caters to my off-roading daydreams. I’d be more likely to interact with this than, say, a video about a minivan.

Many social media platforms play by similar rules. Using automation and algorithms, these sites recommend content users are likely to engage with — including your brand’s social media content (if you have the right digital marketing strategy, of course).

3rd-Party Data Regulation

Although personalization is an increasingly important part of content marketing, it’s also an increasingly difficult one. That’s because consumers are taking control of their data in new ways.

A good example of this is the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), which gives people more power over what they do and don’t share with a digital marketer or other 3rd party. The CCPA can be summed up in 4 basic rights:

The right to know what personal information is collected and why.
The right to delete this personal data.
The right to opt-out of the sale of data.
The right to non-discrimination when exercising the other 3 rights.

Tech leaders like Apple and Google are following suit, implementing stricter limitations on the kinds of data that can be collected, the methods that can be used and whether consumers have direct control over this.

While increased privacy may be great news for those of us who don’t want to share the number of times we’ve searched basic slang to make sure we’re using it right, updates like the CCPA are not so good for content marketing. That doesn’t mean the future of marketing is hopeless, though — your personalization and targeting techniques just need to get creative. (More on that later.)

The Future of Digital Marketing: 5 Trends To Watch

Now that you have a firm grip on the present, it’s time to take a trip into the future. Let’s hop into our time-traveling Camaro and get ready to see some of the innovative marketing techniques, trends and ideas that we expect to shape tomorrow’s digital marketing campaigns:

1. Smarter AI

As artificial intelligence gets smarter, so too will digital marketing campaigns. You won’t just find new technology — you’ll also leverage familiar tech in better, more effective ways.

For example, by 2029, search engines are expected to be capable of fully understanding the underlying meaning of queries instead of just analysing keywords. As a result, your content marketing strategy can focus more on addressing searcher intent, providing answers to implied questions and ultimately addressing a user’s real needs.

Of course, the future may also hold systems and solutions we haven’t even begun to dream of. Who knows — maybe your social media marketing will someday be run by the same automation strategy that identified the “ice cream for breakfast” trend.

2. Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing is already a big deal, but we’re pretty sure it’s going to become even more critical to your digital marketing strategy.

That’s because influencers help create real connections with your audience. Users show interest in an influencer’s opinions, commentary or even just their top-notch jokes — and when you leverage that interest by teaming up with the influencer, you’re delivering personalization on an entirely different level. As consumers show increasing interest in the humanization of their favorite brands, influencer marketing is likely to become key to boosting engagement.

This works in both the business-to-consumer (B2C) and business-to-business (B2B) landscapes. In B2C, consumers want to know that people like them can trust your brand. B2B buyers want the same assurance, but they also need to see that you’ve served their industry before, worked with teams resembling their own, delivered on key performance metrics (KPIs) and more. That means B2B influencers can be anyone from industry leaders to up-and-coming players in the landscape.

It’s also important to recognize that influencer marketing goes hand-in-hand with video content, especially on social media platforms like TikTok and YouTube. Here, you can take advantage of artificial intelligence and automation to get your videos in front of the right people, all while catering to an audience that’s already looking for this specific type of engagement.

3. Thought Leadership

Thought leadership has an important role to play in any content marketing strategy, but it’s only going to become more valuable to your target audience.

Why? It’s simple: As time goes on, our favorite digital channels will continue to be inundated with content that feels repetitive, unimaginative and just plain boring. Thought leadership will stand out as something fresh — a new perspective on a familiar topic, a valuable approach to an industry challenge or even an open conversation inviting your audience to chime in.

Plus, thought leadership gives you yet another opportunity to connect with consumers on a more personal level. When you post a blog written by one of your expert employees or let someone from a different department take over your social media for a day, your audience gets to see the people behind the brand — and these days, that human connection is more valuable than ever.

4. 1st-Party Data

Remember when we talked about privacy updates wreaking havoc on traditional marketing campaigns? There’s good news: The end of 3rd-party data doesn’t mean the end of life as we know it. Instead, things are likely to get even better.

That’s because the future is likely to bring opportunities for 1st-party data — information willingly and knowingly given by your target audience in exchange for a highly tailored experience. You can gather this data through surveys, focus groups, informal chats and more, meeting customers where they are to find out what they’re really feeling and thinking.

This approach has 2 big benefits:

It gives you richer, more valuable data to guide your digital marketing strategy.
It shows consumers you’re taking an active interest in their preferences and responding to their needs.

Long story short, we expect you won’t even miss 3rd-party data once it’s gone.

5. Creative Digital Marketing Campaigns

The final — and perhaps most important — trend to keep an eye on is the progression of digital marketing campaigns themselves. As companies get more comfortable with new technologies, they’re likely to come up with new ways of leveraging those solutions to tell bigger, better stories.

The key is to embrace your role as a consumer. What social media post are you talking about with your friends? Which digital channels are you drawn to when shopping or researching products? Where do brands succeed in making you feel like you’re the only customer who matters to them? Questions like these allow you to use your own experiences as a digital marketing experiment and decide what might work for your approach.

As you explore other brand stories, don’t forget to look outside your industry for marketing inspiration. For example, maybe you have no idea what SaaS marketing even is (hint: it’s all about software-as-a-service offerings like Slack or DropBox), but you can still learn from the techniques and approaches being used in this space.

Shape Your Own Digital Marketing Future

You don’t need a time-traveling muscle car to see the future of digital marketing. In reality, that future is coming up fast, which means you have 2 options: sit and wait for it, or start shaping it yourself.

If you’re anything like us, you’re probably leaning toward the latter.

The first step in creating your digital marketing future is to understand the present. The next step is to keep an eye on trends like those we’ve covered today. But from there on out, it’s up to you — which means you’re free to blaze your own trail, tell fresh stories with new technology, try out the latest marketing strategies or change them up to suit your needs.

And if you need help along the way, just keep an eye out for a Camaro driven by a content writer — and don’t forget to subscribe to our newsletter to get the latest on digital marketing today, tomorrow and beyond.

By Ashlee Sierra

Ashlee Sierra is a writer and editor from Boise, Idaho. When she’s not buried under her giant dogs, she can be found playing video games, telling ghost stories and having passionate discussions about the Oxford comma.

Sourced from Brafton

In News

The Miraculous Journey of the Walt Disney Logo and its adventures Over the Years

July 14, 2022 No Comments

By PJ Hoogendijk

The Disney logo is one of the most celebrated brand logos in the world, with a heritage as rich and intricate as its design. The emblem that we know today is entirely different from the one that was created in its initial days. This blog is all about the Disney logo and its journey over the years.

Whether you’re a 90’s fellow, a millennial or somebody who’s into the world of dreams, fantasies, and comics, it’s also impossible to have missed the aura of Walt Disney. Weaving magic since 1923, the Walt Disney Pictures Company is the undisputed champion of the global entertainment industry. Founded by the two brothers, Walt and Roy Oliver Disney, the company was initially a small animation studio that gradually grew to be the largest media house with its huge broadcast networks and theme parks.

Amongst other things fun and fascinating, the brand is famous for its striking visual identity and a unique brand position. From TV shows and movies to merchandise and entertainment parks, Disney has had a hand in almost every field, and it all began with a cartoon mouse. Below, we’ll take a look at the birth of the legendary Disney logo, and its role in the company’s unbeatable success.

Back to the Basics – How it all began for Disney

The Disney Corporation is the leading entertainment conglomerate, making over $60 billion annually through movies, publications, Touchstone Pictures, and theme parks around the globe. Nevertheless, the company had a rocky beginning and was affected by young Walt’s failure to trademark his work. Walt Disney, the company’s founder, who is now hailed as one of the most successful artists, film producers, and entrepreneurs of all time, wasn’t always so.

The first business venture of Walt Disney, Laugh-O-Gram Studios, was bankrupt in 1923. Disney took a second attempt at Hollywood with just $20 in hand. He, along with his brother, started producing two animated short films, Alice and Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. During this time, he also created a series of cartoons starring the latter.

Although these short movies were a big hit with the audience, Disney forgot to copyright his illustrations. Consequently, as his contract with the studio expired in February 1928, he also lost his rights to the characters. Disney took a lesson from this incident and was quite cautious about copyrighting everything he created thereafter.

However, he never gave up and after much struggle, started his own studio in Hollywood. He wanted to relive the success he enjoyed with Oswald and created a mischievous little cartoon mouse called SteamBoat Willie. The first film starring Mickey was released in 1929, which was a big hit and motivated Walt to launch his own production house, Walt Disney productions, in 1929. This was just the beginning and several other Mickey Mouse movies were released later.

From thousands of films and TV shows to merchandising to running two of the world’s biggest theme parks in Disneyland and Disneyworld, there was no looking back for Disney. Their success grew by leaps and bounds, and in 2016, Disney bagged a whopping $9.39 billion, a steady revenue escalation for the seventh consecutive year.

The Birth of the Disney Logo

Being an artist himself, Disney drew the initial versions of the company’s logo. In the early days, he started working as a designer in an advertising firm, and eventually became a cartoonist, which gave him a brilliant artistic future. Although the Disney logo features on the entrances to their celebrated theme parks and is an important part of their branding, it did not have any particular sign or emblem for the first 48 years.

The audience saw “Walt Disney Pictures Presents” or “Walt Disney Presents” on the big screen. At times, they were accompanied by the Mickey Mouse figure, which was encircled and portrayed in a different colour in the animated version. In 1937, “Walt Disney Pictures” was used as a logo. While it’s still applicable in some cases, the designers have made some changes to it.

The present Walt Disney Company logo design was introduced by the company in 2011. It is an abbreviated version of the previous designs, where there’s only one wordmark “Disney”. It is also adorned by decorative towers, windows, balconies, flags, and a star that leaves an arc in the skyline.

Disney Logo from 1929 – 1937

The very first official logo was a clear picture of what the company was into. At its center, you could spot Mickey Mouse as it was drawn back then. The name “Mickey Mouse” was split into two and placed on either side of the mascot. Some of the other elements of the logo were the company name ‘Walt Disney Productions’, its location, etc.

Disney Logo from 1937 – 1948

This logo design featured the name of the founder, Walt Disney, in a creative script. It is one of the personal signatures of the founder and artist himself. An excellent combination of upper and lower case letters, the inscription was stylized and enlarged to match the level of branding.

The twisted and stylized “W” and “D,” as well as the lowercase “i” and “y,” are visually suggestive of the tail and ears of Mickey Mouse – the main cartoon character of the logo. Although the wordmark “Walt Disney” looked like a handwritten note, it did not feature an italic slope. Perhaps the only problematic element is the logo is the “t” in the “Walt”, which could be easily interpreted as “y.”

Disney Logo from 1948 – 1979

Ten years later, the logotype was modified a little to give it a cleaner, more realistic look. Unfortunately, although it looked like an autograph, it was hardly legible.

Disney Logo from 1972 – 1983

This time, the designers chose to go with the original Disney logo style. While the logotype was modified to make the wordmark legible, the word “Productions” was added in a basic sans serif font.

Disney Logo from 1983 – 1985

This time, the wordmark “Walt Disney” remained untouched, whereas the word “Productions” was swapped for “Pictures.” Fontwise, the designers chose a serif type (similar to the classic universal) and made the letters larger. However, the top inscription remained intact- it still used the Waltograph font.

Disney Logo from 1985 – 2006

The much celebrated Cinderella’s castle was first seen in the 1985 logo. Positioned above the wordmark “Walt Disney”, the castle was used as a fairy-tale icon. The palace featured multiple horizontal stripes and was enclosed by a solid arch. Each tower held a triangular flag at its top. The word “Pictures” was still written in serif font and grew in size compared to the previous version.

Disney Logo from 2006 – 2011

In 2006, the designers came up with a revised version of the emblem – a clear and refined depiction of magic castles. Here, the stripes vanished, the gates opened, and more realistic details came in, such as a shooting star. The towers, glowing rooms, and the star in the full-colour versions look very appealing and depict the most fabulous fairy-tale desires.

The text “Walt Disney Pictures” grew smaller in size compared to the castle. The word “Productions” got smaller featuring a new uppercase font, and the lettering “Walt Disney” became slightly thinner.

Disney Logo from 2011 – Present

The present version isn’t much different from the previous one, save for the wordmark. This time, an abbreviated version is used in place of the full one – the word “Disney ” replaced the “Walt Disney Pictures”. Adorned with windows, towers, flags and balconies, the emblem is full of intricate details.

The shooting star of the Disney logo leaves a long arch in the skyline. Some clouds and fireworks are also added to express the magical realism of the brand. The castle stands for love, romance, fairy tales, and everything magical. However, with the launch of Toy Story, several changes ushered in the cartoon arena. Designers started accompanying different cartoons with their version of the logo, so the picture looks in sync with the theme of the movie.

For instance, it looks a lot like a city of lights in Tron and like Cliffside Castle in Maleficent. The outstanding animation of the castle and its surrounding details show the incredible advances Disney has made in graphics, detailing, animation, audience appeal, and branding techniques.

Endnote,

The Walt Disney logo holds a rich and magical history. Since the company has released an exciting range of mythical and fairy-tale movies and cartoons, the logo rightly depicts the excitement of the fairy-tale realm. Walt Disney has always aimed at the effectiveness of the logo by constantly updating it with the changing times and developing animation technology. The company’s branding team has exhibited an outstanding capacity to adapt in the face of change without the basic concept.

By PJ Hoogendijk

PJ has a background in management consulting and software development. At DesignBro, he combines both. Personal favourite brand of PJ is Jeep.

Sourced from DesignBro

In News

5 Steps to Crafting an Authentic Social Media Presence For Your Business

July 14, 2022 No Comments

By Jonathan Riff

Here’s how to curate a unique brand identity and social media presence that will help your business stand out online.

When it comes to social media marketing, authenticity is key, but curating an authentic brand identity that helps you stand out online, helps you build trust and helps you gain visibility on social media platforms can be quite challenging.

From choosing the right platforms for your target market to posting content that starts conversations to engage with your customers, here’s how to curate an authentic social media presence.

1. Choose your social media platforms wisely

While being active on all social media platforms can help to increase your organic reach, spreading yourself too thinly is a major social media marketing mistake. So rather than attempt to post across multiple platforms, choose one to three places to promote and post and keep your activity consistent.

For example, if you’re a small business targeting local customers, focus on crafting high-quality content for one to two platforms, such as TikTok and Instagram first, before trying to expand to Pinterest, Facebook and LinkedIn. You can also repurpose content from one platform and use it on another, which will save you precious time as a business.

2. Create an authentic brand identity

Your brand identity must resonate with your unique target audience, so it’s important to get clear on who your dream customer is and what needs or pain points they have that you can address. Once you know this, consider how you want your brand to be perceived by your target market. Do you want to come across as friendly and approachable or professional and trustworthy? This will help inform the language you use, the visuals you share and the overall tone of your posts.

Post content that your customers value and reflects their existing ideas to build an instant connection with them. By showing that you understand their point of view and have common ground, you can build up a mini-community online and show more of a personality as a brand than a corporate tone of voice. You should also build trust by providing a behind-the-scenes glimpse into the daily running’s of your business. This helps to break down barriers between your business, your team and your target market.

3. Show what your brand represents visually

Colour combinations and video content can be used to reflect your brand’s values and goals online visually. Suppose you’re an outdoor/adventure brand. Your social media marketing strategy should evoke emotions of freedom, fun and excitement. Your content should energize your audience and encourage them to grasp every opportunity to explore and travel. Colours should be bright, bold and compliment the idea of outdoor adventure. Whereas a luxury spa retreat should incorporate gold, silver, bronze and ivory within their social media posts that bring to mind luxury, glamour and relaxation. This concept should be used across all social media activity and guide your choice of graphics, colours, video clips and music.

4. Start conversations online

When it comes to authenticity, you’ll need to actively engage with users online. And one easy way of doing this is by posting content that requests a response. From polls and questionnaires to debates and hosting livestreams, social media marketing can quickly become your most powerful tool to gather insight and information about your customer’s likes and dislikes. With this data, you can make better decisions as a business, tweak your social media marketing campaigns and demonstrate that you value their input.

5. Give your brand a face

Adding a human aspect to your social media presence is a smart move and can help transform your entire social media marketing approach. After all, social media is meant to be social, and your customers will appreciate engaging with another person, rather than reacting to scheduled social media posts. To give your brand a face, introduce one or two members of your team and allow them to “go live” and talk directly to your followers, answering questions, providing information and adding value.

You could also host regular webinars or podcasts and invite industry experts to collaborate with you, which will not only add value to your brand but help increase your reach online. Why does this build trust and authenticity? Well, people naturally trust other people more than they do a company, which is probably why many corporate accounts find organic growth difficult. When your brand identity includes a real person, this makes it far easier for users to trust you and connect with you.

By Jonathan Riff

Sourced from Entrepreneur

In News

How Brandon Saltalamacchia Earns $15k Per Month Using A Video first Approach For His Website

July 13, 2022 No Comments

By Colin Linnett

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Today’s guest on the Niche Pursuits podcast is Brandon Saltalamacchia. Brandon is a website owner and video creator who owns the brand Retro Dodo.

The conversation starts with Brandon explaining his background and how he built a website on the back of a successful Facebook group, which he sold for six figures with an impressive 55x multiple.

This led him to Retro Dodo (his current project), which he started two years ago.

Fast forward to today, the project receives page views in the hundreds of thousands, makes around 18 thousand dollars from display ads, and between 14-30 thousand dollars per month from affiliate income.

The interesting thing about Brandon’s approach is that he does things a little differently by taking a video-first approach to building a brand, which he explains during the interview.

You don’t get a step-by-step approach to launching a Youtube channel or any other basic stuff, but rather advice on thinking about video and adding it as a component to your website.

In addition, Brandon Saltalamacchia talks about how he is future-proofing his brand to last the test of time and offers lots of pearls of wisdom for us all to benefit from.

Some of the things discussed By Brandon Saltalamacchia include:

The types of videos he creates
Things that make his videos unique
What makes videos successful
Understanding the Youtube & Google algorithm
His website and how it gets hundreds of thousands of page views by using video
How to rank videos
Keyword research
How he got 250k followers on his Facebook page organically
His Backlink strategy, which is different from the norm
Building a brand that people trust and eventually want to purchase
The mistakes people make when launching a video
Ranking on Youtube for a product you don’t own
Building a community with video
Plus more

If you ever wanted to add a video component to your website and your online brand and discover the best way to go about it, this interview is perfect for you and will answer this and much more.

As always, sit back, take notes, and enjoy the episode.

Links & Resources Mentioned During The Interview:

This Episode is Sponsored by: Rank IQ and Ahrefs.com

Watch the full interview:

Play episode

Read the full transcription:

Jared: Welcome back to the niche pursuits podcast. My name is Jared Bowman. Today. We are joined by Brandon Saltalamacchia.

Brandon: Hey, how are you doing? Thanks for having me on Jared.

Jared: I was so nervous about staying here last day. I forgot to, to say hi and welcome after

Brandon: that. yeah, I bet you cut out the, uh, the snippet before this practicing.

Hey.

Jared: Yeah. Well, we didn’t record the practicing. I was sitting here going through it, like I was going to my ABCs.

Brandon: you, you nailed it. You nailed

Jared: it. I D nailed it, but, but Hey, you know, 80% is good enough. Right? So, um, Hey, I’m really glad we’re able to do this. I’m really glad to have you on today. We have a live website we can kind of talk about in the flesh and go through how you’ve built it.

Your success is, is really great. So, um, I’m really excited to hear all the details about how you built this brand that, that you have right now, before we dive in. Of course, though. Can, can you just bring us up to speed? Tell us about who you are and your backstory.

Brandon: For sure. Um, I’ve only really been doing this for three years, three years ago.

I’m still working full time for a media company in the UK. Um, but it all started with my love of, uh, campervans. I started a, a van life Facebook page, so to speak. I always had a background of creating video and social stuff. That was always what I was paid to do. Um, and so I worked with a lot of startups doing that and I decided to, you know, try it for myself, try and build something that brings in.

I think my target was something like $300. I was just like, you know what, 300 quids to spend on some beers, go out with friends. I’ll be happiest days with that. And, um, I started with a Facebook page. I knew how to grow that. I quickly grew it. So I think something stupid, uh, like a hundred thousand followers in six months, organic, just using video.

Uh, and when I got to that point, I was like, okay, I let’s look at some strategies on how to monetize it. So I came down the, the niche blog route, uh, and that’s when I started just creating small, uh, blogging content on there. And I was really, really bad at it, really bad actually, um, to a point where I didn’t even know what keyword research was.

So I had this really powerful Facebook page that got to. Quarter of a million followers on Facebook. I started creating the blog and then I started doing YouTube content and the YouTube content picked up. I think that got around 50,000 subscribers in about a year. So I would fly to America, uh, because you guys have incredible expos over there with huge four by four rigs.

So I went a bit gorilla. I just, I just said, you know what, I’m gonna take my camera, go over there, get a $500 return ticket and just film as much as I can. And I remember filming like maybe 15 to 20 rigs. I would just go up to people and say, Hey, I wanna film your, your rig, your camera van. Can I do a tour?

This is my blog. And it’s got like 30,000 visits a month and that kicked off the YouTube channel. So after about a year and a half, two years, I had this cool little brand basically. And, um, the pandemic hit, I was a bit strapped for cash and thought, you know what? I’ll see what I can sell it for. And the multiples were.

Ridiculous. This is the first time I started looking into how you could sell niche websites. Mm-hmm , you know, it was a typical, I think, like 30 to 40 times multiple. Um, and I managed to get around about 55 X because of the, the whole social branding and the whole, you know, the Facebook following the YouTube account.

I think our Instagram had maybe 60,000 followers because that’s what I was always good at the social side, growing it, doing a bit of growth, hacking collaborations, and it all tied into a really cool brand, but the SEO strategy was, was Bo. So it was terrible. 30,000 visits a month was, was pretty bad after a year and a half doing it.

But, um, I managed to sell it for six figures and that is what launched me to leave my full-time job and start what is now known as retro, which is my only website that I’m currently working on. So that’s basically it in a nutshell, really.

Jared: I have so many questions, uh, and I don’t wanna spend the entire episode on your backstory, but I, I, I have to ask a bit and I, I think it’s really relevant because so many people listening might have the opposite story of you.

They focus entirely on SEO. They spend all their early days, maybe keyword research, picking the perfect topic, writing the perfect article, all that you went about the exact opposite. I mean, you mentioned that your Facebook page was kind of your launching point and got to about 250,000, uh, followers organically.

And that was just three years ago. I mean, the algorithms had already changed pretty dramatically. At that point. It was really hard to get organic reach with, with Facebook. What was, if you could just give us a little, a little insight into what caused it to be so popular so quickly.

Brandon: It was quite simply snackable videos around about 60 seconds.

You probably remember, but like a couple years ago, your feed was constantly, you know, 60 seconds square videos with text over it, crappy music, maybe a little bit of a storyline. And that is what drove the, the, the growth really. I think I put out, uh, three to five videos a week to, to, to gain the, the follow followership.

And then I kind of force fed the articles through that. So I think it was somewhat silly. Like 80% of my traffic was social. Um, so I’ve kind of seen both sides of the fence, how you can build a brand without SEO. And now I’m on the, the complete opposite. I’m trying to build a brand with SEO now. Um, and social, as you can see.

Yeah.

Jared: Yeah. Well, clearly you had a, you said you had a background in video and you used video with the Facebook page. You used video then on the YouTube side of things, and then translated that into some, some of the, uh, some of the SEO traffic, they ended up getting what was successful from an SEO standpoint on that van camping life.

Like, was it, um, one to one, like some of the YouTube topics that did really well organically also did well organically or did, was it completely different? Were you writing completely different topics to get those 30,000 pages a month?

Brandon: Yeah, because of the large following I had to force. Social based articles on the Facebook page.

I did the typical, you know, you’re affiliate at your best X of 2020, um, your best van life products, the kind of, you know, the basics to getting the money. But what was big was the, the social side of it. So check out this $1 million rig that you can buy, check out this handmade campervan, uh, from someone who had only had $500 that kind of, uh, force feeding of traffic through social is what made it very popular.

And it did get some good links because of the YouTube channel growth. Um, I think we had a few big back links of people, uh, embedding the video, which was yeah, the, the million dollar camper van, uh, which were like huge RS with like six, six wheels and two living rooms and then three bedrooms. It was pretty crazy.

So that’s what kind of drove the brand and did a bit of SEO in terms of back links there. But in all honesty, I was pretty terrible. SEO back then.

Jared: So I’m curious. I actually, um, uh, bought a trailer within the last year for my family to go, you know, I’m wondering if I’ve watched some of your videos without even knowing it.

maybe, maybe I, I have to admit though I was not searching for million dollar trailers or a van . Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you talked about how the site ended up selling for a really great multiple, like he says, like 55 X, I mean, could you give us a ballpark in terms of the, the rough dollar figure you end up selling that for.

Brandon: Yeah, it was over a hundred thousand dollars. So I think I sold it for around about 120 grand, um, is what I is, what I got for it being open. Yeah.

Jared: That’s thanks. Thanks for sharing. That’s great. Your first, uh, your first project ended up in a six-figure exit that’s that’s I think anyone would take that at this

Brandon: point.

Yeah. yeah. In honesty, I didn’t know what I was building. I was just having fun and pissing about and getting to travel. We had a few big sponsors, uh, because we built a big social brand, um, and it all just kind of combined into a really cool side hustle. Um, but when I sold it is when I really saw the, the, the, the opportunity of niche websites and how to build a niche SEO powerhouse alongside.

A really cool social brand and that’s what I’m kind of building now. I’ve kind of, you know, put them together to, you know, invest in writers and really cool written content where I do the whole social side. I’m on the YouTube channel. I’m managing, I’m doing the Instagram stuff, so I haven’t outsourced everything.

So you’ve kind of caught me in a weird time where growth has been good. Um, but I do need to outsource everything. That’s on my plate. I still do a lot, unfortunately. Um, but I guess that’s the next step, isn’t it from turning it into a hobby slash so that you piss about with, to a sustainable passive business, I guess.

Yep.

Jared: Yep. Yeah. It’s you don’t just wake up one day and it’s, it’s just snap your finger and everything’s running itself and. And whatnot. It’s a process. So, well, let’s talk about that, about that those early days of this site. And again, you shared the site, retro dodo.com. So if people are watching or listening, they could follow along.

If they’re not, you know, in the car at the gym, bring it up or, or bookmark it and come back to it. Um, and it’s, it’s a side back about gaming. I, I did my homework a little bit ahead of time. nice. But yeah. So what was the impetus for this site when you exited your last project and then focused on this, how did you settle on the topic?

How did you settle on what you wanted your next, uh, project to be?

Brandon: It was simply passion. I’ve always been highly passionate about games. I’ve been working in the gaming industry for. Probably five years. And that was my full-time job before, uh, retro Doda. I would work with big companies, uh, big brands like PC gamer games, radar tech radar.

I was doing a load of video stuff for them. Um, so I just naturally had a, a passion for gaming and more specifically retro gaming. So like the old classic game boys, one that I’ve got here for those watching on video, you know, the old game boy advance that kind of stuff. And I thought, you know, what the dream would to be, to, to piss about with game boys and get paid for it.

So I decided to create retro Dodo. I did have a personal YouTube channel that I was playing around with this stuff, doing unboxings. Um, so I thought, you know, if I can build a website. Growing traffic. I can then kind of interlink and rebrand my personal YouTube channel into that to create a social brand.

And, and that, I think I launched the website maybe two years ago. Um, and now it’s sitting around about half a million page views a month. Uh, and the YouTube channel just after the YouTube, channel’s probably a bit older, maybe five years. That’s at about quarter of a million subscribers. So it’s got a substantial following now on Instagram, we’re at about 60,000.

Um, so I’m kind of trying to grow the SEO side of it. And in honesty, I’m quite new to the, to the, the SEO side of building niche websites. Um, so it’s all very new to me, keyword research and stuff, but we’ve been doing that for about a year now, like proper keyword research and we’re seeing some, some decent growth.

Jared: Ah, so. Those numbers are, are, are, are amazing. They’re mind blowing. Um, and it sounds like you, you know, continue to bring your, your video excellence or your video background to the table with this site. Um, did, did, when you started this project years ago, was it another, another play, like the last one where you were focused on the video side of things and then looking to slowly build out the website in the SEO components, or did you take a different approach two years ago when you went into this from an SEO standpoint, as it, as it kind of relates to video.

Brandon: Yeah, my, my strategy is always, um, work on your advantages. However, you can have an advantage on anything. If it’s building a niche website or a social brand, do what you’re good at to, to hopefully beat the competition. And me working in the media industry with websites that have tens of millions of visits a month, I saw a, a, a back door to, to, and I saw what they’re not doing very well.

And that to me was community in the video side. So I just thought maybe I should try putting video first in everything I do now, uh, because not only is it my advantage, it’s what a lot of these media companies aren’t doing in my personal opinion. And that was the back door to grow traffic, grow community.

And hopefully get ahead. And I’m not saying, you know, retro is this huge website because it’s got, it’s got a lot more growth to, to do, but I really do think that me putting video first and building a, a social brand it’s what’s catapulted. Back links, awareness. A lot of people that want to work with us.

And, uh, recently we’ve, we’ve launched a book. So it’s, it’s all it’s I, I guess it’s not your typical SEO strategy that you you’re probably used to on this YouTube channel. I, I’m not very good at it. So I’ve kind of relied on my other advantages, but now I’ve over the last year, I’ve seen the, the advantages of putting SEO second, I guess.

And then seeing how that goes. I

Jared: was gonna say, seems, seems to be working let’s you kind of, you, you, you teased it perfectly. Let’s say that the typical person listening right now has a website and is looking to start to build out the video side of that. Mm-hmm , they’re looking to add video components for engagement, for social, build out a YouTube channel, et cetera, et cetera.

What are some of the mistakes you see people making when they are adding video on to a we’ll call it a niche website or an SEO focus website.

Brandon: Oh, that’s a good question. Mistakes. ,

Jared: I’m trying to think of, you know, launching that, launching that video brand and getting things wrong. And what are some things that people do wrong that they might be able to learn from you on that, that, that they can avoid?

Brandon: I think having a personality in a, in a video is, is undervalued. There’s a lot of, you know, text based videos. I see on these niche websites with, you know, your standard music, maybe nobody’s talking over it, you, you have to take a step above what the average person is doing. In my opinion, that’s something I’ve always done.

You, you see what the average niche website is doing and to succeed, you need to be one step ahead of them. And I think in video, if you can get your face on there, if you can get your voice or your hands, something along those lines to give it some personal touch, I would say that’s a good advantage to, to start with.

But it’s hard because a lot of niche website operators are quite introverted like myself and they kind of don’t want to do that, which is fair enough. But I think, uh, doing so with your voice or your face puts you one step ahead of someone who isn’t doing it, does that sense?

Jared: It does make sense. Yeah. I mean, that’s, that’s, that’s the, the blessing and the curse of, of, of building websites is you can hide behind them if you want, but yet at the same time, it’s also perhaps the greatest limiting factor you might have with your website’s growth.

Brandon: For sure. You know, it’s, it’s a scary thing, but bigger, the risk, bigger the reward sometimes. And I think if you are planning to launch, um, you know, a YouTube strategy, yeah. Try, try your face, try your hands to start with. And it’s always, YouTube’s good because it’s another, um, income, you know, on top of your, your display advertising and it’s also, uh, another place to hold your community.

If something ever happened to your site, God forbid you’ve then got YouTube to, to fall on as a, as a, is a yeah, it’s a backup.

Jared: Talk about how you’ve built community inside of video. And I don’t wanna jump, say community inside of YouTube, but maybe that is where your community lives. Mm-hmm , what’s, what’s, what’s different about building a community with video versus just publishing maybe really good or really relevant videos.

Brandon: It’s definitely the, the personal touch. I think what takes, I always see when you build a website is what does your average page look like? If it’s, if it’s all text, you know? Yeah, that’s good. It will rank. But then if someone, even just two, um, sections down from you has a video of them on it. I feel like you’re gonna remember them more than the previous one.

And over long term, perhaps you’re doing this, the building the website for five years, and you’ve got a couple hundred videos they’re gonna come back. And I think there’s that brand awareness, which video gives you an advantage in, and we’re in this time now where your, your typical article doesn’t really need a video, it probably doesn’t need a video to rank.

Well, we’ve seen it on, you know, the top, top results that a lot of these don’t have videos, but I feel like in the next five to 10, it’s gonna be quite important and giving it that personal touch is it’s just a human interaction, which causes a small bit of dopamine, which. Hopefully will help. Yeah. As long

Jared: as you, long as you’re a personality that, that, uh, that, you know, you present

Brandon: well and whatnot, as long as you’re good at it.

And it’s not like staring at a rock , that’s the

Jared: secret that, you know, maybe we don’t mention sometimes when we talk about these things, but you have to be somewhat mildly interesting, I suppose.

Brandon: yeah, yeah, yeah,

Jared: yeah. So you launch this brand and, uh, certainly brought a video focus to it, but also a, a SEO focus.

How quick was the ramp up? I mean, we’re two years in, you’re already getting 500,000 page views, which by the way, you’re downplaying your SEO skill sets, but. That’s phenomenal. You’re I took notes 250,000 subs on YouTube. You’re already at 60,000 subs on Instagram. What was the ramp up like, did this just hit right away or was it a slow build?

Um, talk about that first year,

Brandon: uh, the first year was really hard. Like I think like anyone launching a niche website, it’s just crickets, isn’t it? It’s, you’re just throwing darts, a dart board and nothing sticking, but that’s, I see it as that’s Google’s test that’s that’s Google’s test to get rid of 99% of the people that are just doing it for profit.

They want to get rid of the lazy people. And the 1% that, that get through the Google sandbox, uh, they’ll reward you with rankings. And the first year was terrible. The second year it ramped up considerably, uh, the recent product reviews, uh, update did really well with us because I’ve always been quite white hat.

I always think what. What I’m doing needs to please Google now. And it needs to please Google in five years. So I do everything. It takes me a lot longer. I’m probably paying a lot more protical than your traditional person. Um, but I feel like in the, in the long run it’s, it’s worth it. And the product reviews update did great things for our website because we had, you know, authentic video with the product and I’d rip.

Uh, the, the, the voice over for that to create an article, I do custom images. I would link it to not only, uh, other competitors, um, comparisons, but also ours, internal linking as well. Uh, just to make it look like, well, just to please Google quite simply. And I think the product reviews with the custom videos and the custom, um, images, Google read that and was like, Hey, this is authentic.

This is natural. They’re, they’re doing some good internal linking. They’re doing a lot of outbound linking as well. Um, I just think that that’s what helped us over the last probably year, I think.

Jared: So you gave us some snapshots of where the traffic is at, um, with whatever you’re comfortable. Can you share, um, some revenue numbers, and then maybe I can ask some follow up questions about, you know, what types of articles you have and, and, and, you know, the size of the website and whatnot.

Brandon: Yeah, for sure. So typically, so in October, I moved from Azo to media vine, which was quite literally life changing. I document it, documented it on my YouTube channel. Um, that took my blog from about $5,000 a month to, you know, five digits. So over the last six months, the average has been around about $18,000 a month just through display advertising.

Um, a lot of our revenue is affiliate stuff as well. Cause we do a lot of product based reviews and comparisons. And the video side, the YouTube side’s so good at driving affiliate commission so much better than your traditional article, in my opinion, or if that’s the, that’s the data I’ve seen, just cuz of the personal touch we were, we were talking about there and it gives us a bit more of a honest vibe in my personal opinion.

So, you know, the best month over the last six months been around about $30,000. The worst was in like February and I think overall it was about $14,000. Okay. So we’re in that, we’re in that ballpark,

Jared: in that ballpark? Yeah. What kinda affiliate relationships are you engaging in? Is it Amazon? Is it private affiliate?

Um, do you have a lot of private affiliates or maybe just one or two that drive the bulk of it?

Brandon: Um, it’s a bit of everything. Um, because we traditionally it’s eBay actually. Okay. Uh, just because of the niche I’m in retro gaming, you can’t go and buy Pokemon red. You just can’t. If it’s just impossible, you can’t go into a store and buy it.

So the only way to buy it is second hand through eBay. So a lot of our, uh, Philip stuff is through eBay. We do have a handful of partnerships, um, but I don’t tend to have any more than five just cuz it gets complicated and I can’t be bothered to, to track all that. Um, and then yeah, another large part is Amazon.

So I’d say Amazon eBay and a couple of custom, you know, third party affiliate stuff.

Jared: And you, you, you said YouTube drives so much better affiliate conversions than a website. Talk about that a bit more cuz I don’t think people maybe are attuned to that.

Brandon: It’s a, uh, yeah, so it’s a lot more of an investment for sure.

Um, traditionally, you know, SCA, you’ve got your long term kind of growth of traffic where YouTube’s typically this huge spike for maybe three or six months, and then it’s, it’s, it’s dead. But, uh, one of our biggest drivers is, you know, 10 best retro handhelds. I get them all in. I’ve kind of made the brand an authority on that, you know, game boys, anything new, um, and people will literally wait for the video.

They, they, they count down the days we’re doing premiers. They’re waiting for, you know, the, the half year, best retro handhelds that I do in June. And they all kind of wait for it. We’ve, we’ve kept like this almost like FOMO. Um, I dunno how I’ve done it in honesty but people will just, just wait for the videos to come out.

And I don’t know. I think a lot of my community are more video driven than, than. Reading in my personal opinion or the ones that stick around the ones that follow you, traditionally, you stick around with video and then you get the odd, um, person that comes in that have just kind of stepped through your door through SEO.

Um, the benefits there in terms of video, I think is just you, you have a higher click through rate in honest opinion. Um, and it has that, you know, personal, honest touch to it.

Jared: Yeah. It seems like if, if you’re, if someone’s watching you with a personality and you’re actually holding the product, it’s just gotta, it naturally makes sense.

It’s a better experience than someone reading text on a page, not necessarily seeing the product, not necessarily seeing the interaction with the product. It just makes sense. People are gonna be more engaged with what you’re doing and then the follow up action they want to take then maybe reading it on a, on a piece of paper.

Brandon: For sure. Yeah. It backs up your, your opinions of it as well for like, if I had this, if I was reviewing this handout here, and this was a bit too cliquey, it’s hard to show that in an article, whereas a video, I just did it then even in audio format that your audience probably heard that it’s just you, you’re giving people a more honest, authentic introduction to your review, which I think drive, well, I know it drives more clickthroughs and more affiliate commission.

Jared: You made me think of a quick little story. I took my car into the shop the other day. Just, I just picked it up yesterday. My, and one of the things that was wrong with ’em my seat was stuck. Just wish they wouldn’t make these automated seats. So I could just move my seat. Oh God. But yeah. Hundreds of dollars of LA later, but, uh, the mechanic who I’ve been taking my cardio for years, I, I actually trust.

And he, he said, yeah, I didn’t have to take the seat out to fix your, um, switch for your seat. He’s like the manual says to take it out. And I was reading a little bit online. It says to take it out, but then I just decided to pop over to YouTube and I watched a guy change the switch without taking the seat out.

So I just

Brandon: did that. There we go. There we go. I bet that save that’s my mechanic.

Jared: This is what he does for a living. Yeah. But he saw someone do it without him to take out the seat. And so that was engagement for him to do it that way.

Brandon: For sure. And YouTube’s coming out with chapters now. So what, whatever he was searching now, like how to, how to change a seat in the Google search engine.

Now they will literally take the snippet, the 32nd snippet of him taking out the chair. And sometimes that’s like the first snippet you see when you search these things. So, uh, YouTube and Google are definitely pushing video first for certain terms. And that was probably a, you know, a good example. Mm-hmm of how, how to take out the chair, bang, just some Geer on YouTube, slide it out.

And you, you don’t have to read the manual and find the bloody page. It’s it. All Google wants is to please the user, whether that’s videos, snippets, uh, audio, or written, and it’s our job to find the easiest way to do that through any terms and any pieces of content. And sometimes I think video is the best way to do that.

Yeah.

Jared: Yeah. Like you said, it probably did chapterize it probably went straight to it. Probably popped up 45 seconds later. Who’s probably like, oh, I know exactly what to do versus the, yeah. We all know the experience of trying to find something in a manual. Sure. When your dishwasher breaks or whatever. But anyways, so now that we’ve talked about video and talked about how great it’s, let’s actually do a little bit on your SEO strategy and what you’re doing with SEO, you said it was a slow build into SEO and you’re still kind of getting there, but what does the SEO component of, uh, of retro Doto look like?

Um, and, and maybe talk about how you find topics, how they relate to the topics you, um, you make videos about, uh, keyword research, those sorts of topics.

Brandon: Yeah. So as mentioned, I’m still learning. So everyone listening, please take this with a, a pinch of salt because, uh, just recently I decided to change the change, the homepage of our site and Jesus Christ.

We dropped about 20% traffic and we’re still sustaining that. So not sustaining, um, picking up the mess, uh, so to speak. So I do make a lot of mistakes. I’ve gone through life, you know, failing many times, but you learn from your mistakes. Mm-hmm . But traditionally my keyword research is, uh, and for my writers is to do 20% of what they want to write about.

And then 80% of the stuff I want them to write about. And all that is typically a lot of, you know, keyword research using a HFS, um, a simple Google search will give you lots of terms to write about. So it’s, it’s a mix of stuff I’m seeing, you know, a HFS, typically their digits are. Over exaggerated. So sometimes I want to target something.

That’s, let’s say a thousand searches a month and it comes in, you get place one and it’s a hundred. Um, so typically it’s quite simply that for the writers to have a bit of fun with what they’re writing, but then my keyword research is do this, do this, do this using HFS, and also being on reps. And also, you know, being honest is looking at competitors and simply finding a way to write better, even if that’s simply, you know, doing a similar structure, but embedding a video or a podcast or custom images.

It’s the small things which will just slowly, slowly add up. Um, I dunno if that’s the most authentic way, but I can imagine, you know, it’s as a strategy to see what your competitors doing, see what they’re doing poorly and just, just do it better. Mm-hmm

Jared: a typical article. Is it going to be kind of a, a buying guide, a Roundup review?

Is it, are you going after more informational topics? How, how, how long does these articles end up being when you kind of write them and create them the way you talk about.

Brandon: Typically, we always aim for about 1500 words. Uh, a lot of it is best X of 20, 22, you know, best PlayStation games, best Nintendo games.

But, uh, I really do think there’s this fine line of pushing too much affiliate content in Google, not liking it. So I try and go like 50, 50, maybe. So if, if you, if you post 10 affiliate articles this month, make sure you get it out. You know, a handful of news posts and then a handful of info, um, posts too.

Yeah.

Jared: You, you mentioned, you talked about how the affiliate updates, uh, the product review updates by that Google’s made have been very kind to you. I was gonna ask you if you thought it had anything to do with the amount of affiliate content you have compared to the amount of non-affiliate content, or if you think it’s just significantly more related to the type of affiliate content you’re producing.

Brandon: I think it’s a bit of both. I think Google does not like a website that’s 80% plus affiliate driven. I just think they, they, Google will look at that and know exactly what your intention is for that brand. It’s not to really help it’s to drive revenue. So you need to find this middle ground of being informational and, you know, driving your revenue up.

So I think there’s definitely a middle ground for that. In quality, it comes down to, you know, you, you, you could have two websites that have very similar written content of a review because typically reviews are quite similar. It comes down to personal preference, but when you get down to the tech specs, it’s pretty similar.

But the, the niche website, you know, creating custom images, maybe embedding a YouTube video, maybe even creating a YouTube video, they’re the ones that are gonna, they’re gonna flourish in my opinion, just because Google’s gonna see that, Hey, they’re taking the step extra there’s authenticity here. They’ve got the product in their hands.

They’ve got their watermarked images. It just makes sense. And maybe now we’re not seeing that, but I do think in the next couple of years, Google’s gonna push these review updates even further, and they’re gonna want authenticity.

Jared: Well, clearly you’ve done it well so far with the type of affiliate content you’re producing.

Um, let me ask you a question for someone who is looking to bring the same type of approach that you. To building a brand, I’ll say a brand because it’s more than a website. Like somebody wanting to build both video media content, along with a web based, um, article style content. Mm-hmm do you think it’s better is a really high level question.

You think it’s better or easier to kind of start with the video in mind and then pull the concepts of the article from the video? Or do you think it’s better and easier to start with the article in mind and then build a video from the concepts that you wrote about?

Brandon: So that’s great. This is, this is how I’m trying to work.

I’m trying to be more or, um, what’s the word efficient with my reviews and I actually start. With a video in mind, but I’m writing the script. For example, if I was reviewing this, I’d write a, a video script. Um, and then I’d basically turn that into the article. I’d also read it on the, on the, uh, the video.

So it’s almost, you’re killing two birds of one stone. Not only is it your video, uh, article your script, sorry. You can also convert that into word and you create the video. And then from that video, you take screenshots for the custom images. So you it’s, it’s very efficient when you get down to it and you start getting into the, into the, into the flow.

Um, but I always put video first, if I’m reviewing, for example stuff,

Jared: this might sound like a dumb question, but I’m wondering if people listening might have it in the back of their mind. Can you just take a transcription from a really great video you make and publish that and will it rank, do you think, or does it need that as maybe the outline the basis, but it really needs to be cleaned up and made into an actual article.

Brandon: I think you can. Yeah, I think we’re gonna see more of this over the next few years. People are gonna just make a video off the whim. Like this one, for example, you could take the transcript, but you will need to, you know, put the headers in the right place. Uh, put the images in the right place. Maybe do a bit of.

Clean up. And I think this is gonna be the most efficient way of creating both video and written format. And we’re gonna see this more and more. And I think the ones who really get into the flow of it, uh, are gonna master, you know, both a written article and a video that combined together are gonna rank really, really well.

Jared: that’s. Yeah. You’re right. You and stuff.

Brandon: What’s that it’s time consuming. It’s, it’s expensive. Like the camera equipment here. I know you can do it on your phone. Uh, but I do always, uh, mention to just, but put a little bit of money into like audio quality in a, in a cheap light, just to give it that, that little upgrade that it needs, but it is an initial expense for sure.

And that’s why a lot of people don’t do it. They would rather just, you know, write wherever they want and, um, doing video and written format together does keep you less nomadic for sure. If I wanted to create a video, I have to be in my office. I can’t be nomadic at all.

Jared: Right. Yeah. You can’t be sitting in a, a loud coffee shop with, uh, no, unless you’re a, a, a coffee brand, I guess.

yeah, yeah, exactly. That maybe it works. Um, Hey, so here’s another question. I I’m wondering if people have, um, mm-hmm do you think it’s possible to rank well on YouTube to, to, to have a video that both drives, uh, engagement and conversions, do you think it’s possible to do it without buying the act, all the product that you’re reviewing say, or that you’re making a video

Brandon: on?

So you want to rank for a product review without having the product? Is that what I’m hearing? Yeah.

That’s a tough one. I think now you could, in a few years time, no, you could, you could talk about it. You could do like a news update post that, go through their website and show ’em what you think of it. Yeah. You could rank there, but Google’s quite smart. Knowing in, in reading the frames of a video to, to understand what it actually is.

So I would say yes, you can now, but I think if, if you, we hop on a podcast again in a couple years, probably. Probably not. Yep.

Jared: Okay. Yeah. Yeah. And obviously, I mean, we all know that, you know, clearly it’s, it’s easy to see if you have the product in your hands, you’re talking about the comparison or the specific product itself.

It’s gonna be better. Mm-hmm but I think people still grapple with the fact of, you know, um, do I need to actually buy the product, use the product before I make a video on it. And, uh, and whether even though it’s meant not be the best scenario, is it practical or is it an approach that could even work? So,

Brandon: yeah, I think.

I think people need to start putting longevity into the mix when they create a piece of content we’ve seen time and time again, people, uh, you know, write articles that rank well for, let’s say six to 12 months. And then all of a sudden an Ango update comes and all of their product reviews are gone. You know, you, you, I always advise doing content.

Well, yes, it might take bit of extra time. Yes. You might have to create a video, but I’m certain that if you’ve done everything, honestly, you’ve got the product in. You’ve done everything. How Google wants to, they’re gonna keep your, your article in the search results for far longer than these people using stock product images and stock tech specs, all that kind of stuff.

So mm-hmm, I always recommend always go one step further than the average person in your niche and you should, should be okay.

Jared: When it comes to the, um, when it comes to the content on your site, you talked about a community that you created with video. Has that video, or has that, uh, community translated over to, uh, anything on your website or is, is it harder to create community on your website, at least specifically with your brand?

Brandon: Oh, it’s really hard to build a community just for written format. And I understand why a lot of, uh, niche website builders struggle with it because it is hard. There’s, there is a connection, but a lot of people come to, to just read and, and they chip on, whereas video, you know, Instagram, they, they are there subconsciously to build a relationship.

And a lot of things have come from me doing or building the YouTube channel to core of a billion subscriber. It’s not just, you know, brand awareness. It, hasn’t probably really driven a lot of traffic at all, really. Um, but things come from it like a lot of back links, a lot of really good back links, a lot of connections.

I’ve met a lot of people in the industry, in the gaming industry, just through the YouTube channel, you know, I’ve been to their offices all around the world. I’ve, I’ve, I’ve shaken hands with some of the, some of the people behind the biggest gaming website. So there’s, there’s. That side of it, which builds connections and grows your business.

Um, and a community, obviously like we’ve just launched, we crowdfunded a book. Um, yeah. With what I ask you about that. Yeah. This was, you know, I’ve always wanted to build a book for people that are into, to retro gaming. And I didn’t think we’d be able to do it, but because of the community, we’ve actually driven over a hundred thousand dollars of, of backing before we’ve even made it.

So now that’s going into production. I personally put that down to the community. I could not have got that funding just through written format. I don’t think I, I can just, not that skilled. Um, but the, the pros of building a community through video and on socials, that there is power in a sense that you can do other things like build a physical product, like meeting people in the industry, um, that doesn’t necessarily equals dollars.

But I, I think in the long run, it probably probably will.

Jared: You mentioned that YouTube has been a great source of back links to your website. Now I’m curious how that works, cuz I mean, again, just I’ll I’ll, I’ll be the one to ask the, the questions that might come across as being a little dumb. But it seems to me like if someone is going to link to my video, won’t they link to the YouTube link, which doesn’t necessarily help my actual website or do I have that wrong or how is that play itself out in terms of back links to your.

Brandon: You’re right. It’s definitely not a dumb question. Cuz typically you just put in a, a YouTube video, but you want to create a VI and it’s hard. This is what we’re getting into. Like the expert video content. Now there’s your traditional

Jared: left. That’s fine. Field’s we’re 40 minutes in here. We can go a little expert.

That’s fine. Hell yeah.

Brandon: The, the people here are staying on now are definitely, yeah.

Jared: Anybody’s left. Wants to hear this kind of stuff.

Brandon: Yeah. Yeah. Uh, so that you’ve got your YouTube strategy of building content for your articles in hopes that it, it ranks for. But there’s also this side of YouTube where you just want to create a buzz.

You want people to talk about something? So for example, oh, I don’t, I can’t think of as, yeah, I can, there was a fake PlayStation that I found on a, on a Chinese marketplace for $10 and I simply titled. I found a $10 fake PlayStation. Holy shit. You have to click that. Right? You have to $10. I want to give that to my uncle or my brother just to piss him off so you get that initial spike of people coming in and then your, your hope and your, your goal is for these other gaming websites or other people in your niche to link that and create a whole article on it.

That’s where you get the back link traditionally. Yeah, I would say 80% of people that embed your AR your video. They’re not gonna link to you at all. They’re not gonna. Add your video and then hyperlink to your website. But if you’ve got a really, really cool video that it is just a, an opinion or a talking piece, sorry, they’re likely going to, um, uh, link to you.

And that’s why I’ve had success. Some of the crazier videos that just don’t make sense. They’re a little bit click B. Yeah, I I’ll I’ll admit that. Um, but it gets people talking and hopefully it gets people, uh, linking to you. Cause all you really need is one person to share that on Twitter. And it just go to the right person who writes for the right website and bang.

You’ve got a 80 Dr. Link. It’s that simple. And I would, I would keep doing that. Just keep making cool videos in hopes that one day someone crazy at Huffington post will see it and link to you, you know? Right. Cause it’s worth, it’ll be worth it.

Jared: Oh, for sure. For sure. The, um, the approach you take the video is, is it a little bit like article writing where we, we know.

Generally speaking that say 80% of the articles we write won’t drive the majority of traffic, but one in five will hit, will rank number one. And so the majority of our traffic will probably come from 20% of our articles. I’m being very, very, uh, you know, kind of stereotypical here or very top of the funnel.

But with video, when it comes to your, your views, your watches, your subscribers, and how you grow that channel, is it similar? Are you just hoping to crank out some videos and, and one in five will just will hit? Or is it much more, uh, average in terms of the topics and the amount of, uh, views and subscribers?

They, they generate.

Brandon: Yeah, it’s definitely hit and miss. So I’ve been doing YouTube for, for, for six years now, probably. And I would never rely on it. I would never rely on it as an income just because their algorithm, it changes more than I have hot dinners. It’s all over the place. One week, something works next week.

You know, fidget toys are everywhere. You’re just like, how do I even keep control of this? So you’re right. If I had to put a number on it, I’d probably say one in 25 is when it pops. Wow. Which is okay. Is crazy. When you think about it, the amount of time and money and effort, it takes to make a video. But those 24 are slowly chipping at building a community.

And there’s more of like a higher chance of your, your one in 25 popping off. But. Yeah, YouTube’s a different ballgame. It’s, it’s, it’s very competitive, but when done right and done consistently in, in, in a cooperation with your website, I think that’s when Google will start really, uh, pushing your website further, just because your competitors aren’t doing that.

But if you’re solely doing building a YouTube channel hopes to drive a load of revenue, it’s gonna be, it’s gonna be hard. The, the plus side of YouTube, as well as sponsorships are, are far more, um, uh, easy to come by, uh, affiliate stuff you’re gonna, you’re gonna hit the now on the head there. Um, so, you know, there’s, there’s good and bad with YouTube.

The sponsorships is definitely something. I think the traditional niche website builder overlooks, and that’s the, the pros of building a brand. You know, cuz they may want to, uh, sponsor YouTube video and then you can package that in with your Instagram and your website and then you get the affiliate commission as well.

That’s when you get some serious, uh, just extra cash really

Jared: well it’s good feedback because I think, you know, for people listening to who might kind of dive into creating a YouTube channel or maybe some people listening to have dabbled with YouTube video or with video on YouTube in general and maybe done five or 10 and none of ’em had taken off.

I mean maybe, you know, don’t get too down on yourself. You just might still need to make that one video that goes somewhere. But like you said, you don’t really know which one’s gonna go somewhere until you publish say 25 and see which one it is that, that ends up taking off.

Brandon: Yeah. It’s always the ones you least expect and this and this, the, the same goes with a YouTube channel.

You know, you need to do it for at least a year. I say, uh, to really start seeing. Traffic. Um, not that there is a good at a YouTube sandbox there isn’t, but YouTube just likes to see consistency. So even if you could do one video a month, that’s a, that’s a really, really good start.

Jared: Mm let’s say that. Um, I’m putting myself in these shoes.

I have a website that, uh, I don’t have any video content on my own on, uh, and I, I’m looking to, to dive into creating a video side of this website. Um, what’s the best place to start. Should I. Just go and, and really do my own research on YouTube for topics that I should make, or should I go maybe to my top performing posts and build videos out of, out of my top performing post or maybe a different direction that I, that I didn’t even bring up, where would be the best place to start thinking about adding a video component to an existing website.

You think

Brandon: I’d probably start with your top 20%. You, you might not wanna start on, on your articles that are ranking place one, but let’s say you’ve got a few articles that are in position two and three, and you just can’t squeeze anything more out of them, perhaps it’s best to go. Hey, I’m gonna take that written article.

I’m gonna turn it into a five minute script and then I’m gonna try and get, you know, B roll or if you’re unboxing something as simple down camera with you just reading the script is, is, is good enough to put your article that step forward in my personal opinion. So I would probably say, yeah, try and tweak your top 20.

Which might be, which might sound a lot, but you know, give yourself a good year or two to do that.

Jared: Yeah. And I didn’t even think about you’re right. All the benefits you could probably get back onto your actual article by just producing a really high quality video. That’s exactly on point for what your articles about that could be.

What pushes you from spot three to spot two from spot two, to spot one

Brandon: or something. For sure. And Google hasn’t came out saying, Hey, we know, uh, we, we link your YouTube video to your article that they’ve said they can only read if a video is in your article. They can’t technically read what’s in that video within your article.

So you could embed anything. But I really think if you want to, uh, look long term in the next two to five years, there will be some kind of connection there saying, Hey, retro, dodos written this review. And there’s a retro YouTube channel. That’s also had that review and I can see their embedded call.

That’s that’s good in our eyes.

Jared: Yep. Okay. Okay. Um, as we start to kind of come to a close here, and I’m just looking at some of my notes, um, one topic that we’ve danced around and, and, and talk, talk talked a little bit about, uh, from a video standpoint, but let’s talk about it from a more website standpoint.

That’s back links. You haven’t really talked about building back links. And so my guess is that you don’t spend a lot of time building back links. Um, how has the site grown from a link perspective? Do you spend any time on, you know, backlink building as it were, and you know, where do you think that has played into the success of the site in the last couple of.

Brandon: Yeah, good job. I, I completely missed that now. I’ve I’ve never spent a penny on backlinks. I’ve never, uh, tried getting them or outsourcing or whatever, sourcing them. Mm-hmm , I’ve never, it’s just been a hundred percent organic only because I haven’t needed to. I’m quite happy with the growth, admittedly. I dunno what I’m not doing.

If I was to, you know, source more backlink and do a strategy, maybe the website would be further on than it is now, but I haven’t needed to do it as of yet. And there’s there’s back ways like back doors to, to getting links, you know, like the book, for example, a lot of big websites picked that up and not only am I earning money from the book, I’ve got huge back links.

So don’t always think that, Hey, I have to spend X to get these back links. Think, think something crazy. You know, think like the $10 PS five or something. If you want to, if you wanna get a good backlink there’s ways to do it without. Spending your hard earned cash. I think it just comes down to quality content.

And I, I being in this niche for the past couple of years, there’s always been this, uh, thing of people, you know, trying to buy back links, but I just, I just haven’t been there. So I dunno if I’m the best person to ask that, cuz I, I dunno, I just haven’t needed to as of yet.

Jared: Well, your site is clearly doing very well and I mean, you know, it’s uh, yes, your video side is doing well, but I would, you know, clearly your, your content side is also doing well.

I mean, you’re in five figures from ad revenue alone and then, you know, you add on the affiliate side of things. So, you know, it’s, it’s a, it’s an ever evolving topic. I always like to ask about it because people have very differing approaches to it. Mm-hmm but certainly we, you’re not the first and won’t be the last guest who’s come on here and kind of said the same thing, which is.

I’m not saying backlinks, don’t help. I’m just saying I haven’t had to do them yet. And I take that time and I put it elsewhere in an area. I think maybe has higher ROI.

Brandon: It’s hard because there’s no real answer to it. People, you know, when we, when I say, and I hear it all the time. Yeah, it’s organic. I don’t do anything.

I just get these back leaks. It doesn’t really answer the poor bugger’s questions. Who’s asking how the hell do I get more back leads? And everyone says, just build great content where I think you need to go a step further, create a cool brand, you know, maybe do the YouTube videos, invest in doing some, some crazy stuff.

If it’s like launching a book or a product in trying to get it on other websites, uh, uh, content there’s there’s ways around it. And unfortunately, I can’t give you a straight answer, but yeah, I wouldn’t shell out for, for buying a ton of back links. Um,

Jared: it’s a good distinction because. And I think it’s fair to state kind of.

So everyone kind of gets their mind around it. Like you’re not investing in a backlink strategy. You’re not building backlinks actively, however you are. And this is what the whole podcast interview has been about. You are investing on a more unique approach to building content and you’re going to great links to build content that is better than what’s out there.

Right. We’ve talked about the video, we’ve talked about the custom imagery. We’ve talked about the way you review the products. You’ve you’ve so you’re building content that is better than what’s out there. Thus attracting back links. Yeah. Thus, you don’t need to build back links. So don’t just listen maybe to Brandon saying, well, I don’t build back links.

Look how successful I am. Yes. But there’s more to that story. Right. And so for someone who’s just building generic content and it’s maybe ranking, but it’s not compelling. They might not have the same backlink success or storyline that, that you do.

Brandon: Yeah. Yeah. And you, you, you, you said it perfectly, there it, the, the, if you want back links, the goal is to create a, an awesome or a crazy piece of content that gets these news outlets to talk about you or whoever, whatever that may be for, like, for example, if you are in the, the, I don’t know, you’ve got a blog about.

Dentist or keeping your teeth healthy. For example, I would create a video on buying a one, like comparing a $1 toothbrush to a $500 toothbrush. And just that in itself was gonna get people looking at it, clicking on it. And if you do a good comparison, perhaps someone on a news outlet will linked to that say, Hey, this guy has reviewed a $1 tur brush that literally breaks in his teeth, splits his gum open.

And now we’re looking at this $500 tur brush that makes you a cup of tea while you do it. Hey, let’s, let’s leak him. And all you’ve spent on that is $501. Admittedly, you’ve got the equipment and stuff, but I would put $500 on that video rather than going out and buying a back link. If you did have a back link budget, you know, there’s just, that’s me saying that because I’m quite a creative person.

Uh, and it would be hard for someone to think of that if they, they weren’t creative, I’ll be honest, but. If you want to get those back links, you gotta do some crazy stuff that gets people talking. And

Jared: now you have a $500 toothbrush.

Brandon: There we go. Yeah. Yeah. Paid for itself. And it’s making you a cup of tea.

Lovely.

Jared: And it’s making you a cup of tea. I mean, sign me up, babe. Where’s this, where’s this $500 toothbrush.

Brandon: You see, you’re clicking on the video already. I am.

Jared: I’m curious. Well, I’m just blown away by the idea that there could be a, by the way, there probably is a $500 toothbrush. I mean, used to be right.

All joking aside, but there probably is a $500 toothbrush. Well, I think that’s the perfect segue as we close out. Um, if you remember anything from today, Nope. Um, Brandon, this has been really good. Uh it’s it’s so cool to see succeeding so well in a platform that maybe we’ll call is a shoulder niche of webs, older niche of website building, right?

Like it’s everything we talked about is totally doable for a website owner as an additional strategy, but things that probably a lot of website owners are ignoring. And so, uh, this was a really fun hour that flew by really quickly. Thanks for all you had to, you brought in short, uh, Yeah, thanks for all you brought and shared.

Brandon: no worries. Like there’s, there’s definitely, you know, the time I spend on making videos and creating this content, you’re probably, if you, if your only goal is to make money and flip a website, I’ll be honest. You’re probably better at putting that into even more, uh, articles. But for me, I’m looking at building a brand that I can piss about with have a load of fun with, and hopefully it will sustain me and my lifestyle for five to 10 years.

And I think going the step forward, um, going above and beyond with YouTube and your custom images, maybe even starting a podcast that you do once a month, that’s gonna put you. In what I call a safe place, you know? Um, so if I had to give advice to anyone is just, you know, have fun with their, with their niche projects and just do something your competitor isn’t.

Jared: Yeah. Yeah. Well, the website is retro doto.com. Where else can people follow along with you? I know you’re active on Twitter. I’ve we’ve connected there, but where else do you wanna direct people to, to keep in

Brandon: touch with you? Uh, hit me up on Twitter. If they want any advice. I’m, I’m on open book, as you can tell with my earnings and my website, uh, and stuff.

I do have a YouTube channel that I just kind of document there. Um, okay. But yeah, Twitter is probably the best place.

Jared: We’ll put a link in the show notes for that. Um, and. Thank you so much for coming on. I, uh, very, uh, I’ll say invigorated is the wrong word. I’m very intrigued by the prospects of adding a video component.

And I think the most, the most intriguing thing, I think you said, and I know you’re being, uh, forward thinking it, but how it it’s really, not only do you get all the benefits of what you talked about today in the here and the now, but the future proofing concept of building a brand and the, the impact video can have on people.

I think that was my favorite part about what you talked about today. So thanks for coming on board and, um, hopefully we’ll, we’ll stay in touch and connect again soon.

Brandon: Thanks for having me. I appreciate.

Jared: Again, a big thanks to ah, refs for sponsoring today’s podcast. HFS is an all in one SEO tool set. They help you get more traffic from Google by helping you understand what you need to fix on your website.

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By Colin Linnett

Colin Linnett is a seasoned copywriter and certified content marketer who helps entrepreneurs and bloggers by creating engaging content to woo their readers. He spends most of his time writing blog posts, emails, and researching the latest marketing trends online.

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