Right About Now with Ryan Alford - 2021 Marketing Trends: How-to Involve your Audience

Episode Date: November 3, 2020

Happy Tuesday! For today's episode, host Ryan Alford interviews Josh Hill, Radical's very own Digital Marketing Manager.Ryan and Josh discuss the marketing trends they think could be big in 2021. They highlight ways to bring your customers into your marketing strategies, how to leverage your e-commerce tools, and more.Tune in to Ryan and Josh as they dissect the rapidly changing marketing landscape. We'll have a part two soon!Subscribe to THE RADCAST for marketing strategies, marketing and pop culture news, and more! | Follow us on Instagram @the.rad.cast | Follow our host @ryanalford | Visit our website www.theradcast.com  If you enjoyed this episode and want to learn more, join Ryan’s newsletter https://ryanalford.com/newsletter/ to get Ferrari level advice daily for FREE.  Learn how to build a 7 figure business from your personal brand by signing up for a FREE introduction to personal branding https://ryanalford.com/personalbranding.  Learn more by visiting our website at www.ryanisright.comSubscribe to our YouTube channel  www.youtube.com/@RightAboutNowwithRyanAlford. 

It has to start somewhere. It has to start sometime. What better place than here? What better time than now? You're listening to the Radcast. If it's radical, we cover it. Here's your host, Ryan Alford. We cover it. Here's your host, Ryan Alford. Hey, guys. It's Ryan Alford. Welcome to another episode of the Radcast. It is really nice to be joined by our digital media manager here at Radical, Josh Hill.

Josh, good to have you on the Radcast. I feel like you're a part of, like, you're an ongoing member. We're all Team Radical here. But good to have you back on the show and uh dropping knowledge so good to be back you're always you're never more than you know we record here in my office slash makeshift studio and uh you're never more than eight feet away so you're really always kind of a part of it oh yeah i'm always ready to like run in just in case just get that text message. Oh, get in the podcast. Yeah, we had a guest not come on today. Josh, come in. All right. But no,

but resident digital media guru and knowledge base. And I think it's good. We were talking pre-episode, what is this about? But I think we just felt like there was a need to have both an early look at 2021 and kind of a state of the trends of marketing, you know, with everything going on. So we won't call this our absolute final trends of 2021. We'll call it the way too early preview of 2021. And really kind of just the state of where marketing is headed and kind of its role in the funnel of sales and everything else. Because marketing is wearing such a heavy load these days for what it's supposed to carry.

I talk about this a lot on LinkedIn. The expectations of marketing have grown. But no, it's good to be talking. Yeah, definitely. It's jumping the gun episode one. Exactly. We'll make this a four-part series on 2021 in case we want to change our minds on anything. Oh, yeah.

Because things are changing so quick. I mean, we've got an election coming up in less than 10 days. It's less than two weeks. My days run together. Is it two weeks from today or is it a week from today. It's less than two weeks. My days run together. Is it two weeks from today? Or is it a week from today? It's a week from today. We're one week away.

Wow. It's close. So Tuesday's election day, right? Right. So a week away from election. We talked about another thing pre-up, so the macro trends don't necessarily change. The platforms aren't going to change because a different president gets elected.

But it's hard not to think that there's some amount of charge and or things that can happen. Right. Given the tenuous nature of our presidential election and just the overall aura that's carried this election cycle. Yeah, and a lot of big changes happen just because of the fact there is an election period. Regardless of the outcome, a lot of things change in many ways. Yeah, exactly. And we're still dealing with COVID, unfortunately. And so you have these outside influences that I

think that are weighing on business leaders, businesses, and brands as a whole. Where's the economy going? Where's consumer confidence going? Is there going to be a vaccine? Is there going to be a faster return to in-person, in-store experiences. There's all those things, which I know we have perspective on, that I think it's good to kind of get out there. Is there anything pressing before we kind of start diving into some of those macro trends? Anything that's been kind of catching your eye lately? Anything that's been kind of catching your eye lately?

It's more so like an overarching trend that's kind of carried on from this past year and into the next is just the more personal marketing as a whole. Like you're interacting with customers more and listening more and letting them be involved in your brand. It's not, I think think the days of the like oh we're the we're this brand and you're gonna accept it are over it's kind of like

letting people make it your own yeah besides that all the other micro trends they kind of come and go i mean if you're on tiktok you know a trend lasts for about 12 hours and then it's over and that's what's so funny it's like you know, everybody wants to grab on to something, and it seems like by the time you grab on, other than maybe the platforms themselves, it's just the fleeting nature of things. Right. You know, it's both wonderful

because you have this real-time feedback loop going on, but it's also terrible for me that's kind of like the brand steward guy of all time, like having worked on large brands and things like that. You know, the campaigns, the brand campaigns of old don't seem to have the juicer legs I used to because our attention spans are just fleeting. Yeah. There's just too much out there. Yeah, I know. It's like, yeah, we're going to stick with this tagline for all of two days. Unless you're like Kraft, and Raleigh and I talked about this in one of the news segments with show us your nudes.

It lasts about a day. I was so excited to send people some nudes, but I guess it's over. I wonder if people are still sending nudes, even though they're not really, you know, like, is it working? I don't know. Even though they canceled the campaign. If you still want to send me some macaroni and cheese, just DM me later. We'll work that out.

Send it my way. And just if you're listening to this and didn't hear the previous, you know, Kraft ran a campaign, show us your nudes and share your nudes and different things like that. They wanted people to share macaroni and cheese. And they had it blurred out, pictures of the boxes. I thought it was brilliant and in the politically correct environment that we lived in. All the soccer moms canceled it.

I'm just kidding. It probably wasn't just them. All the conservatives out there. No. Anyway, did you like that campaign? It was good. It probably wasn't just them. All the conservatives out there. No. Anyway, did you like that campaign? It was good. It was good. I liked it.

I was excited for it. Exactly. So as we kind of transition, Josh, what are some of those macro things that, as we're getting closer to the holidays and into 2021, are there macro things, macro trends that you're kind of seeing, that you're watching that you think might be impacting, you know, maybe even some of your decisions as working with our clients

and some of the things that we're doing? You want to talk about a few of those? Yeah. A big thing that kind of happened over the year with quarantine and stuff, people were at home, and so you kind of had to help get people interacting with your content more, and you had to kind of guide their imagination, especially if you're a retail client. If they're not coming in and sitting on your couch,

you need to help them picture it within their own apartments, their rooms and stuff. Um, so we really leaned into using a lot of more interactive formats of like, um, Facebook, Instagram ads, especially we had, we started really utilizing the instant experience ads, um, doing a lot more kind of like interactive stuff of like using Instagram story ads that had the polls, had the responses, even just straight-up posts, just inviting people to interact and make it their own, getting customer feedback, getting them involved with what products they like more, which ones they prefer,

and then helping people visualize where things are. I know people keep talking about ar and stuff like being able to have your couch floating inside of your room on your screen like i don't i don't think that's gonna like catch on but just seeing pictures to like have inspiration at least that's been huge um that's even big on TikTok of people showing the things in their house that they like, like how they style things, how they hate certain styles and stuff. And what's interesting about that is you have this, and that's a big one. One of my big ones for next year is social selling. That's been on trends list.

You could probably find seven years of the last seven years, someone's had social selling probably on there. But I think we're finally coming to critical mass of both a desire to social sell by brands with the capability to do it on the Facebooks and the Instagrams. Because if you've done any level of small business e-commerce marketing, it's been painful setting up an Instagram shop. Linking those products is still not as easy as it needs to be. How many brands we've worked with where firsthand we're trying to get the page to sync with Shopify, with this and that and the other. It's not as easy as it's needed to be.

And I think you're meeting this critical mass of the opportunity, the desire for brands to do it, the desires for consumers to do it, and the platforms delivering on the ability to do it at scale. Right. as you plan and manage all of our digital media, you manage our team doing that, you have this interesting point like you described where you're creating for our brands that we work with interactive content. You have consumers that are doing things on their own, like user-generated. You have an interesting middle there where you have both sides kind of doing the same things, and I think that's going to deliver these premium experiences next year because you have both sides kind of doing the same things and i think that's going to deliver like these premium experiences next year because you have consumers doing it you have brands trying to do that and i think you have this perfect opportunity for i

think you're going to see it you know whatever that percentage of social selling is uh for brands i think it's going to 10x next year. Oh, definitely. And like, it's kind of, it's always been content is King, but now it's like contents required. Like if you're, if you're online, you have to be doing this. Otherwise you're,

you're behind or you're close to being out. You're on your way out the door. Yeah. Um, the, I mean, the really cool thing happening is since a lot of people kind of got a lot of more free time, they kind of explored all these creative things and with iPhone, like

cameras getting better, like more tools becoming readily accessible, like in cheaper and stuff, people are creating more music. They're creating their own footage, camera and stuff. And then people are really liking to, especially like the older, like Gen Z and the young millennials who are like, like it's like 20 to 30s. Like now it's, they're kind of taking kind of big brands and then making it their own. It's all very DIY. Instead of pushing out content for them to interact with, invite them in. Send them your stuff. Let them make content based off of it.

Promote them. They'll promote you. If people love being involved and collaborating on stuff, might as well lean into it. You can get some really great content you may never have even thought of that other people make for you. Just kind of this way of like really getting expanded into like the community and kind of supporting like young creators and stuff. That is the word I wrote down. I take notes when Josh talks because he says smart things. And, you know, I wrote down that was the one word you got to at the end there. I feel like if it's the year of social selling, it's the year of brand community, like the ones that do it well. It's almost like this, you know,

I'm going to either date myself or I'm going to say this wrong. And someone's going to go, that wasn't really Web 2.0. But like 15 or 16 years ago, you kind of got to what we called Web 2.0, which was when social media came into play. And you had the opportunity for people because, you know, 20 years ago, websites were brochure sites. You didn't have interaction community going on. Then you had social media come where you have people inputting information, sharing pictures, sharing footage, sharing text. I think we're getting to this mass of, I don't know if it's Web 3.0,

I'm not trying to create technology terms. But this brand community era where the ones that do it well have this two-way channel of communication. And it actually bleeds into a bigger, it's a very micro trend. But social media messaging is booming. And you have this integration. You've seen it now. If anyone's been on Facebook or Instagram trying to message, they've blended the inboxes. And so you have a lot more acceptance of social media messaging across platforms.

You have Facebook, Instagram, all that integrated. So you have this feedback loop. And I think the brands that can really channel all this to building their community, accepting user-generated content, accepting user feedback. Again, all of this stuff has been out there the last 10 years. But I still feel like we're hitting this magical moment of capability with desire. Right. If that makes sense.

Oh, for sure. Like a lot of the big interaction things have always been a thing. The messaging has always been there. Comments have always been there. And live stream responses has always been there. But people are using it in a different way now, where being at home and being so digitally native for the last year, people have gotten really comfortable and a

lot of really successful brands have kind of let down i guess their guards in a way and so it's more of like oh we're just a bunch of people working together like um you can send us a message we'll reply like like tiktok has the ability you can reply to comments with a video and like all the top, like YouTubers are, they're talking about actual comments and their video, like on their videos, they're doing responses and stuff. It's hilarious all the time. Um, and people who do live streams, it used to be like, you get on Instagram live, you talk, or you kind of treat it like a webinar. Now it's like, people are treating it like they're FaceTiming. I've seen companies get on and they'll show their process of making coffee or something,

and they're just chatting with people in the comment who are saying messages and stuff. It's like a public interaction, which I think is really, one, it's really fun. I feel like it takes pressure off people who are like, how am I going to look professional and stuff? It's like you don't have to just do it like just yeah just start doing it and interacting with people that's the biggest thing is like we talked about this on an episode and i've another big one on linkedin like the democratization of content right which is what you're talking about which is it used to be this accepted for brands and even people. The brands all thought it had to be 1,000% polished and beautiful and lovely and all that.

Those guards have come down. And people were scared if their own stuff wasn't amazing. And I think TikTok has helped with this. I think Instagram, all the channels have helped. with this, I think Instagram, all the channels have helped, but you've got this less pressure for it to be perfect and more for it to be moving. Whether it's funny, hilarious, stupid. Stupid's moving in its own way.

I think that's a great place to be in from, again, accepting that content isn't optional because all those expectations are removed. Yeah. You know? And it's like just being real. Yeah. I think that's a huge part. And it helps.

It just makes you feel more approachable. And, like, so more people are confident to get involved and then once you like kind of show that like interaction of like i mean you've seen it in real life you go to a restaurant like maybe the owner is like remembers your name like that's kind of happening in on social like you're you see you're on your favorite live stream of your favorite company and they answer your question. You're going to hang out longer. You're going to probably interact more.

If you're inviting people in, they're going to make it their own. And you will have to kind of give up a little bit of that polished, I planned out everything, every part of this brand. But if you want to resonate with more people than your perspective of your brand then you kind of have to do that it's kind of it brings me to another one we're teeing these up perfectly in the perfect order just like we planned josh uh it's accessibility yeah like it's we're at this perfect crux where you can reach out to celebrities. You can reach out to brands.

Brands are accessible. Consumers are accessible. There's this overall accessibility that never existed. In some ways, we're so non-social with everything that's happened with COVID in a way, like in a personal, person-to-person, in-person communication. But the digital accessibility of brands, people, celebrities, and everything else has never been greater. And I think people are starting to realize the opportunity and the power of that. Yeah. I think it's like, it can be really effective and it's really easy to get to i mean like it's hard to

break your own habits of like putting out like super polished stuff and like ultra planned but i think just when you're showing you're just i feel like my biggest examples are like like taco bell went from like in the 2010s like they were just kind of like sassy on Twitter and they were like, Oh, Taco Bell is a human. And then everyone's like, no, you're just a bunch of people who make like delicious food.

Yeah. We'll say big Taco Bell fan. Yeah. They were active on Twitter. So they had a personality, but their commercials were still Batman superhero, uh, explosions like big. And their commercials were still Batman superhero explosions, like big. But now it's like their social strategies cannot change.

They will reply like that, but they're not acting like they're Taco Bell the person. They're like, oh, it's just someone at Taco Bell replied to me. And then on Instagram, it's like they're sharing user-generated content. They've got influencers. They've got the micro-influencers, like actual humans they're sharing user generated content. They've got influencers. They've got the micro influencers, like actual humans they're bringing in to like help make it more collaborative. And I think that's a really powerful move. Yeah. Cool.

So transitioning. What's another one, a big one that you're seeing for 2021 or as we come to the end of 2020? come to the end of 2020? I think practically really stepping into those interactions and setting up opportunities for that beyond just your social content. I've seen a lot of people who were doing virtual classes are now offering them in person. And they never did classes before. Like you can go to a coffee shop and learn how to make stuff.

Like I think same with like that's happening on TikTok a lot too. It's people kind of opening the doors a little bit, letting you peek inside and see behind the scenes. And a lot of that is kind of what we do here in this podcast is like we're showing, telling you how to do things. It's kind of what we do here in this podcast is like we're showing telling you how to do things. And like, I mean, if you if you have a coffee shop showing you here's how to make a really great latte. The person's probably still going to go get the latte from you because they've they've seen you with the expertise and they're going to go to you versus like try to make it at home on worse equipment or something. Or that and just convenience. Right. They're not going to order from you any less frequently.

Right. And I think it's a huge thing of like you don't have to keep this mystery behind you. Like if you're a t-shirt company like showing where the shirts are made, like packaging stuff, you're like it feels more personal of like look at all these people who are working. Like all these people involved getting this t-shirt to you or like all these people involved getting like this marketing content this advertising like skills working with your business i think i think a big part is the kind of like how to's and showing them behind the scenes that just gives a lot of people like one, like background insight. They feel more to they feel more familiar with your brand.

And then three, like if they learn about it, they're going to be like more appreciative and then also understand how to interact with your brand a little bit more. Like it always for a lot of like industries, you kind of have to have a base level knowledge before you start purchasing those products or getting those services and stuff. I think that's going to be a really big continuing trend. I'm going to tee this up for you. Because it's a trend that's definitely accelerated this year. I think it's one that you and I have talked about for next year as well.

But I'm going to talk out of it through the lens of someone that we both believe in it, but I think there are doubters out there. Right. And it's this notion of purpose-driven marketing. And companies explaining the purpose of why they do it, their causes and all of those things.

Right. So it's one that's been picking up. A lot of brands are doing it. I think there are people, both small and large brands, that look at that, and a lot of them are doing it. They either want to do it, but then I have even people that I follow that go, all that's great, but at the end of the day, consumers want convenience and price. Right.

And, you know, if you're the bag of chips in the counter line at the store, they don't give two shits if you give away three bags of chips to kids in Africa. Right. Or wherever. You know, like any kind of, like, I feel like there's those two sides of it. And where do you fall on that? And do you think that that is going to change? Do you think that every brand needs to wear their purpose on their sleeve?

Like, I'd love to get your perspective on where that's been this year and kind of that dual thought process of does the purpose matter and should every brand be wearing that? Right. I think, so if you read about it, if you read all the studies, they're going to tell you, yes, most consumers, like 70%, 80%, think every brand should have a purpose. But what they're not reporting on is if you're a brand and you take on a purpose or a good cause or something just to have the good cause, they're going to sniff it out immediately.

That is something I saw a ton this year because there's been a lot of causes this year. Like, um, people on Twitter, I've seen big brands do it and then get absolutely destroyed on Twitter by people who know they're doing it. Just jumping on like the coattails of big movements. Like if you're not like,

I think it's like purpose is really important when it's actually your purpose. I don't think there's, I guess my thing is like, if you're a chip company, I don't think there's anything wrong with you saying, we just want to make really great chips so we can make your life more enjoyable. Because people love chips. Right. That's okay. People are okay with that

it's more about if you're being genuine in your purpose that's okay if you're out here and you can tell this with a lot of even local small businesses they'll open up a restaurant and you can tell

you can go in there as a consumer and you can often tell when a restaurant's there because they want to make really great food and be a really cool space for people, or if they're there just to make money. After the first three months, you're going to see the ingredients are going to suck. Prices are going to go up, but the quality is going to go down. They're there to make money. I think if you have a purpose, if you want to include that, you don're there to make money i think i think if you have a purpose if you want to include that you don't have to make it your own thing like if you've got a purpose like make sure that it's like resonating with your employees and with your

people because it's got to be like part of the whole thing but if it's just something you tack on like just to have it and like, look like you're doing it, you're just virtue signaling and people are going to, people are going to find that out really quickly. Yeah. I think people were smarter than we give them credit for sometimes. Maybe not us, but brands in general.

What are your thoughts? You know, with, we've talked about this, this is going to be on definitely whatever our our definitive 2021 trends is definitely going to be online, which is kind of that COVID hangover, like the impact it's had on marketing and business and brick and mortar and on any commerce and all that.

What do you kind of see the carryover of a pandemic that we're still in? Right. As much as we're all tired of it it's still here um what do you what are some of those things and outliers that you see kind of uh carrying over into in the next year i think being online even if your business isn't even online is important if you're just a brick and mortar like like single restaurant, like you've got to be online sharing something cause word of mouth isn't going to like pop back in as fast as we hope it will. Um, I think, I mean definitely the content, the,

the kind of casualness of being on social media, I think that's definitely going to continue. And I don't see that ever going away either. I think that's just going to continue building. And I think the collaborative content, sorry, I couldn't think of the word. Yeah, the collaborative content, the CC, the UGC. How many acronyms do we have? Let's not create another one.

Yeah, the UFC. Yes, yeah. The ultimate fighting collaboration content. Yes. That's just going to continue. I think just being real with people, being more open and sharing your brand and your purpose with the community is going to continue.

And I, cause we saw a lot of, a lot of what happened with last year in these last few months, like a lot of these brands kind of stepped in to kind of carry the community. So we saw some local, kind of stepped in to kind of carry the community. So we saw some local, I saw some local people who, they used to be like the hangout spot at night,

but their regulars couldn't come in anymore once they shut down. And so they hosted like weekly date nights on like Instagram Live. They had like wine tastings online and you could get food ordered to go. And then you hang out together and you test, like taste it. Um, a lot of people were like, who aren't even gamers were like Twitch streaming, they're hosting like gaming parties. I think that side of like building community, whether it's online or in person, um, and as things have started reopening, like people have been building community in like a safe way, even in their in-person stuff. So I think,

I think brands and companies continuing to kind of be those community builders is definitely going to continue. For sure. Is, I feel like there's going to be this carryover though, of even if there's a vaccine, hopefully there will be before the year's over. But you never know. And I don't know that we'll know for sure until the election's over and like, you know, like whether some of these things are truly happening.

Yeah, I mean, enough people said they're not even going to get it. I know that's the scary part is like they're not, you know, we've gotten so polarized in believing who, you know, if you're a Republican or Democrat, it depends on whether or not the vaccine is good or not. But with that said, I think you're going to have this carryover, though, where people just are not going to do live in person shopping events, other things. It's going to carry through 2021 as much as I wish it wouldn't. But I don't fault people because I think it's a real pandemic, it's a real virus, and it has real implications. And so it's going to carry through next year into how people shop,

where they shop, all of those things that have kind of, and people working from home, like there's just trends and things that the pandemic's caused that are just not going to go away, even if there was a cure tomorrow. Right. I'm not, I'm not looking, I'm not expecting to go to any like crowded concerts or big packed out arena shows anytime soon. Like I think definitely those like industries that kind of relied on huge groups of people, they're really struggling and they're not even projected to look like it'll come back in the next year or even two years. Do you think there's virtual fatigue?

I feel like that's something that's going to have to be watched for next year. I think so. Yeah, I mean, there already was some. Everyone got tired of their friends and family going on Instagram Live and creating a new podcast every week. Definitely, you've got to kind of build up to it. I know it helps to start, but when everybody's live all at once, I remember getting notifications from Instagram like,

oh, six people have gone live. It's kind of dialed down now where I'll see two people go live maybe a week. I haven't watched a live in a while. I get the notifications, but I don't know. That's the focus group of one. I'll go back and watch some live recorded content, but I don't know, that might be just the focus group of me. I watch them when it's like a brand I'm like involved with.

And it's like a, they're like, oh, we're going on in three weeks at this time for this thing. And it's like, have a reason to do it. Like you can be casual and just do Q and A's, but like have at least have some kind of purpose when you're doing something. Yeah. I love it. So as we kind of start to close out this thing, what's like, talk to you from like the, you know, we're both kind of digital marketing nerds. I think we'll, I'll, I'll call you one. I consider myself one. You might take offense to it, but I don't think

you do. Um, you know, know getting geeky are there things or platforms like at you know getting you know specific on like the ad platforms or optimizations or things that are exciting you you know for either brands we're looking at or tests we're running or anything like that yeah there is um i know you talked a little bit about with some of the facebook type ads and things like that yeah but what else is kind of on your radar i've got um pinterest ads um that was like for a while it was like a kind of come and gone really cool thing but now like pinterest usership is like back really big and their ads are really cool um i think that's a ad the ad platform sucked as of like 18 months ago yeah you know they've got like you can like

work with them on it and so it's kind of like a dual two-way it's like half managed half self-serve so um testing that out we'll see how it goes um tiktok ads can be really cool um but also as anyone who's ever interacted with like young teens um you can get really cringy really fast right so it's like so i wouldn't go on there unless you like i would consult maybe like a young person before you go go guns blazing in there unless you want to get some nasty comments or something. Exactly. You can't just throw your 30-second TV spot on there. Right.

I think most brands have figured that out. Definitely. And then like Facebook's, the instant experience stuff has been like really fun because you can make whatever you want and get creative with it. Like I'm kind of like, we've been kind of testing out like using existing platforms, but just kind of manipulating the content within them to kind of make it look more fun and more creative. Like, um, I think that's kind of key is like,

really like learn how to use the existing things, but really dig into it. Make it work for you. But they're testing out new, targeting new features and stuff. I'm really pumped about it. I think LinkedIn's getting a little bit better. They're still kind of like, their ads platform's really niche,

but it's also kind of lacking in their setups. Yeah, well, the platform itself. Right. I'm hoping. I mean, Facebook has its plethora of bugs that they're constantly working through, but their platforms, the content and the ads capabilities coming out are really great. And they're really souping up the messaging ads. You can do chatbots within the Facebook Messenger now, which is really cool.

Definitely recommend getting into that. And then anything that creates that feedback loop, like within the ad, the biggest thing is like having a call to action. But if you can go straight from ad to whether it's a chatbot or live person interaction, that's the holy grail. Getting them into the funnel and keeping them in the funnel while experiencing the ad is like the holy grail. Because you want to push them down. You're pushing them down. You've got awareness, conversion. you've got awareness, conversion, you know, instead of having to see 27 ads,

if you can show them one, two, three, four ads, and then they're interacting within the ad, whether that's, again, chatbot or call to action that leads to the live person, I think you're going to see people start to really win in digital marketing that can not only – because I think, you know, add to conversion is difficult. Yeah. But if you can get add to engagement, now you're talking. It feels a lot more personalized.

And that's kind of my approach to social advertising because the algorithm is currently, this can change at any moment, as we all know, the algorithm is currently based on the individual's preferences it's not it really doesn't matter how many like interactions you're you get as a profile it's more of like the person who's interacting with you and so if you can build those like interactions on certain pieces you have you have to think of like an individual's customer journey and not think about yourself of like oh here's how this brand is looking to 50 people. It's like,

how am I appearing to Susie and like Steve over here? I think that's kind of the key and thinking through those like tactics and using the platforms and targeting that way. And then having the followups make sense and and creating those interactions where you can start a conversation either in the messengers with the bot or lead it into, get the base information with the bot and then get personal with it. Or even just get them in the comment section.

That's a huge thing I think people are missing out on is they're not diving into the comments. And that's half of thing I think people are missing out on is like, like they're not diving into the comments and that's half of social media right now. Like the half the fun is like the quote tweets, the comments, like tick tock, I spend more time in the comment section than actually watching the videos because it's hilarious. I think it's a really great opportunity for people to like really jump in and like personally interact one to one.

Yep. That's one of my tactics for growth on Instagram, actually, is I interact a lot with other people's profiles. Most of them are pretty big, but some of the more comedic ones, some of the things like that, I make comments and stuff. So it creates an engagement. I get a lot of followers from that, from people that interact with my comments. It has nothing to do with

like the brand the comment will be about whatever the content was but not necessarily the brand that posted the the content right and that's that's kind of like the fun thing about like even like gen z and like millennials they've they know like people know that if you comment on a post they're like this the platform's going to show you more like that. And so a big trend on TikTok you'll see is people are like, oh, commenting to stay on Ocean Spray, Cranberry Juice TikTok, or commenting to stay on Frog TikTok. It's funny that people that are self-aware of these algorithms

are aware, and honestly, algorithm ad-aware of these, of these algorithms are aware. And honestly, so, you know, algorithm ad aware. Yeah. It's almost like back when, what like when you're in the movie and you're acknowledging you're in the movie, you know, breaking the fourth wall. Exactly. I see you, but yeah, we're here. Yeah. I mean, it's the perfect, like they, they know you're targeting you. Like they're, they're being targeted. Like, you know, be aware of it and just be, it's all,

it's all circling back to just, just be real. Like if you're not into it, you're not into it. If you're not supporting something like, I don't know, just like, so like be real and straightforward with your customers, like creating, that's the only way you can create like an authentic community. It's all about building. You want to build a community, not an audience. That way it will resonate a lot stronger. Yep.

And I think if you're listening, we didn't get specific. We might do a segment only on B2B. But I will say this. Thinking through everything we talked about, B2B needs to do the same thing. Everything we talked about should be applied to b2b or b2c yeah it's like you're still business to human and and so no matter if it's a business on the other side you're still dealing with someone a buyer several buyers or if it's a consumer on the other end i think all of these things apply equally to b2b or b2c yeah and it's

kind of like a and that's not necessarily new it's kind of like a, and that's not necessarily new. It's kind of like an old school thing of like, before you partner with another business, you meet a few times and you get to know who's behind it. I think it's just kind of like we're kind of getting back to that, but just in a digital world. Exactly. Well, cool, man. Josh, I really enjoyed it, and I know

we'll be back with maybe our definitive 2021 list, but appreciate all that you do here and appreciate you coming on the official pre-trends episode. All right, guys.

We appreciate everyone listening. This is all for today from the Radcast. To listen to full episodes or to contact us, visit us on the web at theradcast.com. Or follow our host at Ryan Alford on Instagram. Thanks for tuning in.