The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – The Age of Influence: The Power of Influencers to Elevate Your Brand by Neal Schaffer

Episode Date: July 22, 2020

The Age of Influence: The Power of Influencers to Elevate Your Brand by Neal Schaffer NealSchaffer.com Neal Schaffer is a recognized leader in helping businesses Maximize Your Social as a global keynote speaker, university educator, social media agency owner, author, and social media strategy consultant. From Fortune 50 enterprises to Grammy Award-Winning musicians, Neal has helped leading brands reach their next level in social media marketing, and he is available to bring this wealth of knowledge and experience to both educate and entertain your audience at your next event, workshop, or training.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. This is Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com. The Chris Voss Show.com.

Hey, we're coming here with another great podcast. We certainly appreciate you guys being here. Oh, my gosh. We've got a guest on the show that is amazing. He's brilliant. He's the author of four books. We're going to be talking

about his latest book. It's been years since we've been on the show. In fact, I was chastising. We need to get together more often on the Chris Voss Show podcast. And you're going to want

to check him out. You're going to be able to see the video version of this chat on youtube.com for Chris Voss. So make sure you go over there as well.

And you know where to go, chrisfosspodcast podcast network.com or for your friends neighbors relatives uh neil schaefer i'm sure you heard about this gentleman he's been around forever and he's a brilliant he's the leading authority on helping businesses through their digital transformation of sales and marketing through consulting, training, and development, and execution of social media marketing strategy, influencer marketing, and social selling initiatives. Chief Fractional CMO of the Digital Marketing Agency, PDCA Social. Neil also teaches digital media to executives at Rutgers University, folks in Ireland, and the universities in Finland.

He's also fluent in Japanese and Mandarin Chinese. That's pretty darn hard. Neil is also a popular keynote speaker and is invited to speak about digital media on four continents. He's been in more than a dozen countries. He's also the author of four books on social media, including Maximize Your Social, and the recently published The Age of Influence from HarperCollins. We'll be talking about that today.

It's the definitive data-driven playbook for influencer marketing that marketers have been waiting for. And you can also check out Neil's Maximize Your Social Influence podcast for weekly marketing inspiration. Welcome to the show again, Neil. Thanks, Chris. It's an honor to be here and always a pleasure to chat with you. And likewise, sir. So you've got this great book out. And I think it's probably been like three, four, maybe five years.

It's been a long time since I've had you on the show. I know. It wasn't personal. We just, I don't know, so many people and everything else. But you've got this great book out. This is kind of an interesting book. Give us some plugs on where people can find you on the dot coms. Sure.

Well, I am Neil Schaefer, the real Neil, N-E-A-L. And there's a lot of us Schaefer's out there, but it's spelled as it sounds, S-C-H-A-F-F-E-R. So I'm Neil Schaffer everywhere on social. I probably still have a Google Plus profile somewhere if you search for it. My StumbleUpon profiles, it's just you and me, Chris, right? They're probably out there still. And I also have neilschaffer.com. And I have a podcast called the Maximize Your Social Influence Podcast. I'm pretty much out there. Obviously, my books are available on Amazon or wherever fine books are sold. You're becoming quite the prolific author now.

Four books. Oh, my gosh. I'm still trying to write my first one. Yeah. I did my first. You put out CDs, right? I'm a big Elvis Costello fan. This guy put out 11 or 12 CDs his first decade. I wrote my first book in 2009. Then every two years, I'm a big Elvis Costello fan. This guy put out like 11 or 12 CDs his first decade. So

I wrote my first book 2009. And then every two years, I published a book 2011, 2013. Then there's this big gap. Like, do I really need to write another book? And I really came to the conclusion that it's a good thing to write books, and there's a lot of benefits. And even though this last one was published, literally, you know, March 17, two days before we go on lockdown in California, there has been tremendous benefits. And a lot of us in marketing have gotten really busy in digital marketing. And it's actually, I think it's even been better received now because people actually have downtime and, you know, they want to learn, they need to figure out digital marketing. So I have no complaints whatsoever. It's been kind of nice. Like people

have been really, you know, you and I have always lived online for a long, I don't know how long, but a long time. Um, and so, you know, we fit into this mode of staying home and, and, uh, and, you know, working with computers and, and dialogue such as this that we're technology. Um, but it's it's uh it's definitely interesting time like people are still getting used to it people are still gonna use to zoom like i feel kind of weird because like i was i was into zoom before other people were into zoom it's kind of like when you have that band like metallica with the black album or some people say uh the battery album uh no justice

for all where where when they go mainstream you know like you're like hey man that was my band before they were popular now you guys all ruined it so anyway enough about zoom like those indie bands and then they become big you're like yeah screw this thing and it's funny because chris you're probably like me like you i know you did a lot of traveling as well like the conferences and such so without the travel and a lot of people i know it's like we're having like a renaissance moment in terms of like content creation and you know blog posts and podcasts and books and uh it's a great time yeah it's i've enjoyed it because i've been able to focus on the podcast and I

have like a captured audience. Thanks to quarantine. They got to, you know, between your book, they got to read my podcast. They got to half listen to, uh,

you know, the way they go. So let's talk about this book. Um, I think you've always been a quote unquote influencer. I've had my years of being an influencer. I mean, I'm still an influencer, but I've, I've kind of moved of being an influencer. I mean, I'm still an

influencer, but I've, I've kind of moved away from calling myself that I call myself more of as a consultant or ad sales. Um, basically I tell people that, you know, you're, you're, when you pay me, you're getting access to my audience. Um, but so let's talk about your book. What's the, what's the broad reach overview of what your book's about? Yeah, Chris, I think you hit the nail on the head or the head on the nail. I'm a little tired right now. That nail goes in either way. You have businesses reach out to you, right?

They want to appear on your podcast or they want their author or whatever, right? That is a sign of influence. You have an audience that someone with less influence in your audience wants to tap into. Note to self, Neil Schaefer says I have influence. Add that to the email signature. I kid you not. When someone reaches out to your blog and they're trying to get a backlink from you, you are an influencer.

And when someone offers you $100 to post something on Instagram, you're an influencer. That's really – or they want to offer you a free tool to get feedback. You have influence. So I always – like you, Chris, I'm about serving my audience audience and my community and I'm always looking for ways to do that. So normally when I speak, I get asked questions and they give me a hint as to what people are thinking. So over the last two or three years, just tons of questions, not just about influencer marketing, but hey, how do I become an influencer? Because a lot of marketers like us have some skin in the game and you see people you know all of a sudden like blow up and it's like,

what's going on here? So I went out on a mission to really try to figure this out and read between the lines and not listen to all the bs that you hear in the media um or in the blogosphere about just talking this very very tiny portion of influencers that are pretty much celebrities right and trying to uncover what's going on and And Chris, like you, I mean, we have historical perspective. So when we got more and more followers on Twitter, yeah, I get it. And then when Google Plus starts, a lot of people have a lot of followers. It's like, okay, we get it. They're big on Twitter.

They're big on Facebook. They're big on YouTube or Facebook. But Instagram just created this whole new generation of people. It's like they have 20 posts and 100,000 followers and no link. You've never heard of them. It's like it's WTF, right? What's going on here? So I was sort of on a mission to uncover, okay, you know, who really has influence in here and who doesn't? And I mean, the good news is there certainly are a lot of people that I've influenced, but Instagram really democratized the companies offering like fake influencers and fake engagement at scale. Right. I mean,

it was always available on other platforms, but Instagram was just the place where people took it to another level. But you know, when, when you look around and when I was growing up, you know, I mean, my kids are 15 and 13 now.

Right. So when I was growing up, I mean, I remember, you know, top gun, one of my high school friends, you know,

the next day he's wearing a leather jacket on a motorcycle trying to be Tom Cruz. These days, I look at my daughter, she's imitating charlie on tiktok like every dance move she does or she's working out the chloe ting on youtube and my son is a gamer so he's always on twitch and right and so it's a whole bunch of people that are influencing them just like the celebrities of past influenced us if you're a gener. So the notion that there are people influencing on these platforms exists just like there are people that influence on podcasts, right? Pat Flynn, I'm a podcaster, and he has tremendous influence.

And if you don't listen to podcasts, you may not know that, but people that listen do know him. And it's just an example of people that are content creators using different content mediums on different platforms that over time and hard work and listening to their audience and creating great content, they've been able to build bigger and bigger communities of people that listen to them. So how do they monetize that?

Well, some people have their own product already. Others develop product. They do affiliate marketing. They do brand ambassadorships. But at the heart of it, they're number one, a content creator. And number two, they have an audience. And the influencer marketing industry, which is very Instagram centric, used to say, oh, there's celebrities and macro and micro. And now they say nano influencers have over 1,000 followers. So look around you at the people you know that have 1,000 followers, right?

Look at people that work with you. Look at your customers. Look at your social media followers. There's a lot of people out there that if you change your mindset, that you could be collaborating with. And that's really the heart of influencer marketing. Yes, one type of collaboration is giving money in hopes that they post something, right? But another one is just giving away free product in hopes of feedback. Another one is giving away product so that they do a lifestyle,

great looking photo shoot. Another one is maybe hiring influencers to create content for you because they're much better. I'd rather have, you know, if I'm a brand, why do my own podcast when I can hire Chris Voss to do everything for me? So that's the type of influencer market that I'm talking about. It's as relevant for B2B as it is for B2C. It's as relevant on LinkedIn as it is on TikTok. It's as relevant on YouTube as it is on a podcast. It's just where is your audience and who do you want to collaborate with to tap into those people? And that's it.

It's just a very holistic view of it, but I think it uncovers. It's like, oh, I'm a B2B brand. I've been doing blogger outreach. I've been doing influencer marketing. Yes, you have. So I sort of redefined the concept because I think it makes sense. And I think when you look at the other trends of like social media becoming pay to play for brands, if you want to be heard, you almost have to collaborate with people to be heard in social media or you pay a lot of money on ads and ads are ads. I mean, they suck, right? So, and, you know, I think what happened with Instagram and YouTube and TikTok is that brands just, they suck at creating lifestyle-relatable visual content. So, you know, the notion that an influencer would take over a social media account, I think it really started with Snapchat. You know, we see it on Instagram and TikTok, but it makes sense because visual content,

you know, people can see if it's an ad or if it's coming from a person. And I think this is another reason why it's pushing more brands to just say, you know what, we're not going to create content. We're just going to work with influencers to create content for us. We're just going to leverage user generated content. And I would argue, you don't have to create your own content anymore. You could have 100%, you know, podcast based on interviews, blog posts based on interviews and, you know, roundup posts, user generated content of, you know, photos. And it might actually be better because let other people talk about your brand instead of you trying to talk about your product, which is tends to be self promotional. So that's sort of the, you know,

the big overview of the direction and really wanted to sort of blow people's minds and do a complete reset on this thing called influencer marketing. And just, you know, I don't, if I say reeducate, it sounds like I'm, you know, like who the hell is Neil to say that. But I do think this is an angle that really hasn't been talked about. And the funny thing is, since I published this, there's another book coming out in another two months. And then another one coming out by a guy named Jason Falls, who's also, he wrote no, no bullshit social media. And I was on his podcast and he's, he, his book is coming out like January talking about the exact same thing. Right. Or, I mean, obviously it's different than my book, different perspective,

but a lot more people are coming to this conclusion that influence is a lot broader and it's applicable from anyone to a startup B2B as it is to a big consumer brand. So I'll stop there. That was great. So do you feel, you know, there's some people that argue that influencer marketing is dying or do you feel it's just being repackaged or restarted or rebirthed? What's the truth of that from your research? I think with COVID-19 that when we see the people, that stereotypical picture of the influencer in an exotic place with a certain angle, you know what I mean, right?

The copied clouds from the last 10 pictures. It's completely freaking artificial, right? And that's why you see celebrities doing live streams in pajamas without makeup, right? It's, it's relatable. It's real. That's what people want. Those are, when you look at the influences really, I need to change my PJs now, but it's, it's real. And there is definitely, we've seen that, you know, we have seen the industry go smaller into micro and nano. And especially after COVID-19, because the celebrities tended to focus on those aspects that are just removed from reality.

And now brands, you know, in line of what I wrote about, brands are saying, you know what, instead of looking at number of followers, let's look at who actually uses our freaking product. Let's tap into those people first. We don't have to say copy and paste this caption to talk about our product. They know our product. They're going to talk about it in their own words. They're going to give these people the creative freedom and it's actually going to be better content because they already know, like, and trust the brand. So we're definitely seeing that. We're seeing less of the short-term one-night transaction to more of a long-term brand ambassadorship. So a lot of the things that I talk about in the book, I do think slowly are becoming a reality,

and those are the trends that are now permeating the industry. So influencer marketing is not dead by any means. I think that if you're a travel influencer, you've sort of got to pivot and reinvent yourself. But the fact that brands still and and brands are even more digital now than ever they have to be and looking for different ways to engage and there's no better way to engage than to use a real person's content it's just we're people we relate more to other people than to brands right so um i think that the trends

actually push to more influencer marketing then you look at b2b brands that are used to doing the big conferences like you know ces what have you they can't do those now they need to generate leads man yeah they're doing virtual webinars and guess who they're inviting to speak at those virtual webinars right or doing summits yeah it's it's the same thing so i i think it's actually a bigger push for influencers a little bit different than it might have been a year or two ago. But I think the trends are still very strong. Yeah, I mean, I'm getting more outreach from people that want to be on the podcast.

They're like, hey, our CEO wants to talk to people because, you know, normally they would be at shows and I'd usually be interviewing them at shows. So influencers instead, what's your opinion on, um, you know, these different, I don't know if you talk about this in the book, but like the spectrum of influencers, cause there's like, you mentioned some of the micros, the nanos and, and, and there's always arguments of, of, of who actually truly can, you know, deliver on the bottom line of influence? Yeah. So, you know, I actually start in the book talking about influencer marketing before social media. So, you know, you had TV ads, you had Michael Jordan with Nike, you know, Michael Jackson with Pepsi, Shaq O'Neal with Buick. And then you go back a little further, the TV ads were radio ads. And then the radio ads were,

you know, newspaper ads. And you have Charlie Chaplin, you know, silent film ads. And if you go back in history, sort of that celebrity endorsements always been there. It's just new now. So when I see people, you know, like Charlie on TikTok, when you're doing a Super Bowl commercial, you're not a social media influencer, you're a celebrity, right? And that's, first of all, the Kardashians are celebrities. I mean, if you're on TV, you're not a social media influencer you're a celebrity right um and that's first of all the kardashians are celebrities i mean if you're on tv you're not a social media influencer when i talk about social media influencers i'm talking about they get influence from social media so then it's like okay well how do we categorize them and a lot of people in the industry categorize them by number followers so you're gonna pay more based on number of followers and you got the celebrities you got

the macro influencers that you know have over 500 000 followers you And you got the celebrities, you got the macro influencers that have over 500,000 followers. You have sort of the mid-tier influencers that have maybe between 50 and 500,000. Then you got the micro, which they called at the time between 10 to 50,000. And then you have the nano influencers that go on to 10,000. But I think it's really an artificial way

of looking at it because influence isn't just about number of followers, it's all about who they're influencing, what sort of engagement do they get, what sort of action can they inspire and is it relevant to your brand? I mean I give the case study of my own book. I could have reached out to like a celebrity influencer on Instagram

and they may have held up my book. You think I'm going to get any sales from that? I don't think so right? I'm probably going to get more sales being on the Chris Voss podcast than doing that and you know not wasting all that money working with someone that I don't think so. Right. I'm probably going to get more sales being on the Chris Voss podcast than doing that. And, you know, not wasting all that money working with someone that I don't know. And that's really what it comes down to. And, and therefore, you know, in the book, like I said, I said, well, let's, let's not look at, you know, influence in terms of that. Let's start with the people we already know. Let's look at influence in terms of brand affinity. So let's start with

a minimum because you got to start somewhere. So if nano influencers, a thousand followers, let's start with a thousand followers. Okay. So let's look at the people who know, like, and trust our brand the most employees. Yeah,

there you go. Right. Your own corporation. Yeah. Well, I mean for, for, you know,

for solopreneurs, it's sort of tough to do. It's a lot of soul searching, but you know, the bigger the company you have, the more, you know, and,

and we've had these things called employee advocacy programs and they failed because employees weren't treated as influencers. Right. They were just expected to share, you know, crappy content. So when you consider them as influencers, it's like, well, where do we go from there? Well, what about your customers? Right. What about your followers and social media? I mean, what about like a social listening tool that picks up mentions people talking about you you may not have caught your crm but somehow they already know like and trust you why don't you reach out to these people and say we want to we want to open up a program for our fans you know we want you to just keep talking about us on social

we'll send you a free product we'll do do annual events. How can we help you? You know, I know businesses now that are training employees, that are training nano-influencers in how to take better photos, how to shoot better video, how to start a podcast, how to write better captions. It pays dividends, right? So those are the types of programs that I'm talking about that I see as the wave of the future. This long-term, so you build your own little army of influencers. and it's not artificial, like reaching out to someone you don't know

and paying them for a one-time thing. These are people you don't have to convince, right? There's no negotiation here. The only thing is how are you going to collaborate with them? And everybody's different, right? You know, Chris, you may say, Neil, I'll have you on my show, but if I was a CEO of Starbucks, you may have charged me $2,000 and you may have gotten that $2,000. And it's just different, right? It's different for every influencer and it's different for everybody that they speak with in every business, right? And that's the fact that, and in fact, I think, Chris, what we've gone through as being influencers and content creators is we really understand this really, really well, Whereas brands just

have no clue. So they freak out and they're like, I'll send you a $25 Amazon gift card. And I'm like, dude, I'm blocking your email. I never want to hear from you if that's the value you put on my community. And brands just make really bad mistakes. And then you have agencies in the middle that exploit the opportunity to just make as much money. You know, you need to be working with macro influencers and celebrities, and you're going to get this much likes. I think that there's going to be a big shakeout in terms of influencers and the industry,

and I think you're going to have a lot more brands that are just going to go direct to consumer, man. Just directly reach out to them and collaborate. Yeah. I mean, I... And maybe that's why that's going on. You gave me a really good idea to start my own school,

influencer school to charge people, start my own army of people. It's interesting to me, but you bring up a good point about how a lot of now I see why a lot of agencies have pushed the nano and the mini

stuff because they don't have to pay to do it. I get these podcast agencies, and they want to put people on the podcast. And I'll, like, look at them, and I'll be like, wait, you're charging a fee to that guy to put them on my podcast? Well, great, you can give me a cut of the action. Yep.

Especially when usually they're not you know they're not a b c d you know there's some obscure ceo which is you know fine but um uh yeah and they'll be like no we don't we don't pay to get people on the thing and sometimes i've gotten out with pr agents i work with and i'm like hey man you don't you don't understand you know the money goes around but uh what's funny is i'll google who they're trying to put on my show and they put them on you know every tom dick and harry podcast that has three episodes and won't be around next year uh and they've you know they've charged them a ton of money and that's what's going on with those agencies and why they're willing to work with nano uh things because they come to me and you and we're just like no man you're insulting my audience so i built this thing that's for real um yeah and you know what it's like chasing after the vanity the vanity of

likes on instagram they're just chasing after okay i got you on this podcast this podcast that regardless of like you said are they going going to be around? Or maybe they publish five episodes in one month and they've gone crickets for a year. Or maybe they're just irrelevant because I get irrelevant pitches to my podcast. It's like, are you sure? Why would I want you on my podcast? You don't talk about anything that my podcast, have you ever listened to one of my episodes? It's crazy, right? But it's because there's agencies, whether the PR marketing or influencer marketing that push this and the businesses don't know better, right? But it's because there's agencies, whether they're PR marketing or influencer marketing, that push this. And the businesses don't know better, right?

They think, oh, I'll pay you $5,000 a month. I'll get on five podcasts. Awesome. Yeah. And it's interesting to me. And the other thing is brands really just don't pay attention to results. You can't just go for numbers. A really great example is one of the things

that I do is if I love a product and I have to love it, I incorporate it and I talk about it because I'm a big mouth and I'm an influencer and I'll just talk about it because I got paid to, or I got something for free. I'll talk about it because I genuinely love it. And when you're a review blogger, like we are, we have a lot of reference. Like if you want to say, Chris, I don't really trust your opinion on your wonderful master and dynamic headphones, plug, do you really know that those headphones are really the best? I mean, no, I may not have the best ears in the world maybe, but there's like at least 10 headphones sitting here

that are reference headphones that are high quality to put them up against. Anytime I get something new, I have a chance to do them. And I've tried to raise an authentic brand, which is important. But I continue to talk about stuff. For you or me, our content, our videos and stuff are still being consumed like 10 years later. Like I look at the stuff I did with AT&T and Asus and all the brands that I've worked with over now almost 11 years. There are people still watching those videos. Like I still get emails from YouTube going, hey, man, the battery doesn't work in this anymore. And I'll look at the video and be like, that electronic product from 2012 you're commenting on or they'll ask me they're like i like one of my popular videos that i get

so much stuff on is like some xbox 360 video i did in 2014 like it still just goes crazy with comments and likes and and so people a lot of people don't even realize those are some of the cheapest ads you can buy. Holy crap. They've been there for 10 years. And then, uh, you know, one thing I see from a lot of influencers is they go, okay, you pay me, I make a post and then that's it. They don't, you don't ever hear them talk about that product ever again, unless there's some sort of deal where for the Chris Foss show, we recycle a lot of content. Like we put stuff out. We we've, I've pulled stuff from years back to recycle and put on social media. If I make it, man, I beat it to death.

Like after this, after this podcast, this podcast that I'm doing with you right now, this is going to appear over like a week's time. It's going to appear on probably about four of my podcasts, including this flagship, The Chris Voss Show. On top of that, the first day I'm going to tweet out this show's podcast, The Chris Voss Show, and it's going to go to three LinkedIn accounts,

a company account on LinkedIn, and $130,000 group on LinkedIn that I built myself. It's going to go out to eight different Twitter accounts. And it's going to go out to, you know, all my Facebook crap, although Facebook is pretty worthless for distribution, unless you pay. It's going to go out to all those. And then we're going to bang the YouTube video the next day. And that's going to go out to all those accounts. And then there's going to be the Book Author Podcast. There's going to go out to all those accounts and then uh there's going to

be the book author podcast there's going to be the chris voss podcast and then i don't know if there's a fourth we'll put it on but it's going to go out to all these different mediums and so this thing's going to be banging around this single podcast right here for about two weeks and then if i just get bored one day and i go yeah eh, we need to put some content up. I'll go grab it out of the file and put it up. Um, and so a lot of, a lot of influencers I see, they just do a, they'll just do a one-off where a lot of great influencers will keep banging it. Or if I love the product, I'll keep talking about it. It won't shut up, but audience always is an indicator. Uh, another example that that lays into uh there was a water generating

machine that was given to me about eighteen hundred dollars water machine and um one was given to the guy who's got like two million followers on youtube guy who does all the youtube videos um he does the kind of funny ones and whatever uh but the time he got they got 12 million views on it didn't move a single unit, single water unit. Didn't move it. Because 10 to 15-year-olds on YouTube don't buy $1,800 water generator machines. There's the case study of the female bodybuilder on Instagram. Well, it's like 100,000 followers.

So the bikini manufacturer reaches out to her. Let's do a collaboration, you know, where are bikini, you know, when you do your bodybuilding and it failed because 90% of our followers are male. I mean, it's the same thing. You got to understand the audience. And if someone, and if people tune into the YouTube channel for comedy, they're not, you know, they're not tuning in to purchase. I mean, regardless of the age, I mean, that's a whole other issue, but you you know, you've got to align with the right people. Yeah.

There's a copyright term that I have that's going to be talked about in my next book, and it's going to be called the Pants Down Audience and what it is. And that's kind of what we refer to as the Pants Down Audience. I mean, you're looking at YouTube, 10- to 15-year-olds. Do you think they're looking for YouTube, 10 to 15 year olds. Do you think they're looking for bikinis on YouTube? Chris, you bring up two really important points that I talk a lot about, which is the first thing is you ideally want to convert an influencer into becoming a brand advocate who talk about you without you're asking them

to do that. Cause people will do that if they love something. Right. And that's the ideal. And that's what I preach. That's why you need to have a long-term relationship to make that happen. But the other thing, especially on YouTube, and I'm just writing a blog post about YouTube influencer marketing because people forget about it. But when you do a traditional ad campaign, you do it and it's done, right? Now you talk about influencers that post once and run. But when you work with YouTubers, for instance, that influencer content lives on for a long time and it keeps on reaping dividends. Now, every network is different

in terms of how long the shelf life is, but certainly YouTube, without a doubt, and blogs as well. You see blogs, number one search results, blog posts from like a decade ago sometimes for certain keywords. So that's where that Instagram, yeah instagram yeah maybe with certain hashtags maybe if it trended maybe you'll still get some but not like youtube videos and blog content and podcasts i

would add when people listen to a new podcast when they find someone they start downloading from episode one listen to them all and just you know the more you have the more downloads you get and it's pretty incredible so you know and the funny thing is i've had this discussion with uh blueberry and todd cochran who uh you know hosts the chris fosh show um and uh you know i see people they only put up a few of their podcasts we put up all 300 i'd have all 500 almost 600 now podcasts up if i if if it would let me but itunes and people they don't want that much up um but no there's 300 podcasts and i'm always astounded in fact that's one of the things that brought me back to podcasting i'd kind of taken a vacation for a couple years back in 2014 or

something and uh suddenly i was getting these reports from blueberry it's like dude people are down on this thing. And I'm like, is there like one in particular? They're like really interested in like, you know, like YouTube. I have a couple,

you know, hot videos that go through the roof and no man, they were just consuming it all. And I was like, what's going on, man? I haven't done any new content over there. And that's how I kind of knew podcasting was coming back.

But there are still people consuming that stuff. And, um, see, that's how I kind of knew podcasting was coming back. But there are still people consuming that stuff. And, yeah, it's interesting. A lot of brands have to get smarter about relationships they deal with people. You know, I've got relationships now with great companies, AT&T, Asus, Acer, Master and Dynamic. I love their headphones. You know, I have a lot of headphones from Master and Dynamic and I really promote them over the years. They never paid me. But I love the product.

It's just such a good product. And they're nice enough to give me extras, but you know, there's a set that looks just like this they gave me like five years ago. And I loved it. I never shut like five years ago and I loved it. I never shut up about it. And I talk about it.

And, and probably for the amount I should have charged them. And, you know, I'm just thinking, so I've had this thing about podcast microphone. So I'm on a Yeti nano right now. And I just got a road podcaster.

My, my podcast center says you got to get a road and it's dynamic instead of condenser. And I'm sure you have your own recommendations, you know if i was a micro from it i would be all over the podcaster market i'd be sending out microphone you know the podcasters i don't know why none of them do it they ignore the market yeah and then you got like you know audio technica this hundred dollar people still recommend it here and there and they do zero marketing um anyway it's it's an interesting market.

Yeah. So what are some of the other things we can look forward to in picking up the book and opening that baby up? Well, hopefully, like I said, you just think of a new way of marketing, right? And instead of investing money into Zuckerberg and ads, you invest it into people, and you reap the benefits that you get from relationships to your business. Right. So I believe that, you know, after you read it, you'll, you'll look at your digital and you go, okay, we have a website check, SEO check, email marketing, marketing automation. Well, after coronavirus, everyone's doing email now, but they should have been doing it all along

check, you know, blogging, content marketing, check social media, you know, check. And then they'll see, you know, influencer marketing as another major pillar of what they should be doing. And they start measuring it as such. And, you know, compare your, your Facebook ad spend with, you know, the ROI of spending that money on product with influencers, for instance. Yeah. That's, that's sort of, and just the different ways you can work with influencers in every, whether it's events or new product or you know just getting feedback or you know whatever it is content creation content amplification i have a chapter on like the 16 17 different ways you can work with influencers so um yeah i'm really you know i'm excited to to finally get it out there things like you and me

it's natural to us but to a lot of marketers, if they're not, if they're not content creators, they just don't know how this all works. So, and it's data driven, so you can show it to your boss. And I sort of wrote it so that people could show it to their boss and, and, and get budget. So, but it's funny because, you know, I wrote that book, the way the publishers work, I wrote the majority of the book back in 2019. So I'm already working on my next book. And this is like- We should have scheduled you for the show now. Yeah, this is like a post-coronavirus book. So it's like a book that's really relevant

for where we live today. And in that book, I mean, I hope to bring together everything I've done because influencers are part of it. Content's part of it, right? Social media is part of it. There's all these little things that if you put them all together,

you can create sort of what an ideal sort of, you know, a digital marketing program would look like. So that's my next. Well, I'm glad you're betting we're going to make it out the other side of this thing alive. We might be down to five followers, but anyway. No, I don't know. I'm just being funny.

But, no, you're giving me a little bit of hope, which I need every day. So there you go. Dude, in crisis, there's opportunity. And I interviewed recently Joe Polizzi on my podcast and Jay Baer. They were all saying the same thing. There's tons of opportunity to get market share, collaborations, content, companies buying out media companies. Yeah, there's a lot going on

right now i want to go back to to what you and i touched on because this is a really important lesson for brands they really got to be careful when they approach influencers not to treat us all the same and not to just look at audiences because like one of the problems i have is people look at me and go oh you only have like a hundred thousand plus twitter followers no i don't i got a lot of accounts yeah between twitter facebook and everything else it's 400,000 plus and i can drive millions back in the old days i used to write 10 millions of impression rates you know 18t did a did one of those radian six on me back in the day and they're like holy crap you pull more impressions and eyeballs than the LA Times.

And I'm like, yeah, so they quit giving the LA Times phones and started giving them to me. so one of the problems is they come to us like you say and they'll offend us with a cheap offer. And maybe, I don't know,

some idiot in budgeting went, we should do that. You know, I've had times where they'll go, well, we have a $200 product we want to send you, but we're going to have to have you send it back. And I'm like, you really don't understand that if I fall in love with this product, I'm going to promote it and talk about it, even though I'm not paid. And I think that authenticity is even more important because if you know someone's an influencer and they've got to get paid to just say the words on everything, there's kind of a little bit of issue with authenticity.

Where most people know with me, and I'll even disclose, they'll be like, I have not been paid for this. I have something that I recently fell in love with, and it's been my favorite toy since the thing. And it's, I think the company's name is iCan. The X-Can. And people see me plug it, but it's a DAC that's built into a thing. It's got X-Base on it.

I normally have the box up here so I can grab it. It's like a $200 DAC that's running for my thing. I love it. And they sent it to me and they go, hey, well, we want to take that. We want to get that back. And I'm like, dude, I really love this thing. And if you leave it with me and I keep loving it, I'll keep talking about it. And they're like, okay.

And what's funny to me is when companies, and I'm not saying they're being cheap, they're very gracious, they left it with me, they got the vision. But a lot of companies, they get cheap where they go, oh, we don't want to leave them that product because we don't want to, you know, I don't know what the hell the deal is. They think of it as a fee. They're like, well, these products are expensive.