Get High at Work!

Author: Kevin Sandlin

  • 5 Ways Instagram Is Different

    I started using Instagram in late 2014 for the simple purpose of learning how it works and why it’s become so popular. What got my attention is that Instagram passed Twitter for the number of monthly active users (MAU) using the service. Along the way, through teaching the Digital Marketing class at GA and using Instagram almost every day, I’ve found that Instagram is different in some very specific ways from other social channels like Twitter, Facebook, Google+, and Linkedin.
    Here are five ways that Instagram is different than other social channels.
    1. Instagram starts with the image, obviously, since it’s an image sharing service. But this distinction makes Instagram stand out, because on any other social network you can share all you like without any image (not recommended). But on Instagram, it’s all about the visual. That’s the reason Facebook paid $1 billion for Instagram: the killer app within Facebook is – and has always been since it was “The Facebook” at Harvard – the images.
    2. The key to getting engagement on Instagram is to share an exclusive image that nobody else will be able to see, as opposed to a meme that’s raging around the interwebz. That’s part of the impetus for Instagram’s #WHP weekend hashtag projects. They’re prompting users to find and take pictures of things that are unique, that most other people would never see, except on Instagram.
    3. Twitter, Facebook, Google+, and LinkedIn all recommend that we keep our posts short, specifically under 100 characters, because people don’t read long form social media posts (generally). On the other hand, Instagram recommends that users tell a brief story using about 200 words, almost a mini-blog post, about the image that you’ve shared.
    4. Twitter has many studies showing that using more than 2 hashtags sends your engagement down the tubes. Instagram recommends that we use at least three hashtags, though they do limit you to no more than thirty (30!) hashtags.
    5. While it’s ok to tag people tag people on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+ (I’ve inquired with LinkedIn as to why they don’t have a method of tagging people…no reply), there are limits to the number of people you can tag on Twitter (10) and Facebook (50), there are no limits to the number of people you can tag on an Instagram post (if you can find any, please ping me, because I couldn’t).

    I’m still using Instagram, along with 300,000,000 millenials who are no longer using Facebook because their parents (that’s me) are on Facebook. What I like best about using Instagram is the simplicity of sharing an image, and also sharing that image across other social channels. I do wish that Twitter would allow full integration of Instagram photos, but alas…

  • Knowledge vs. Understanding

    If you know about and already use the Google URL Builder tool, you can stop reading and move on to the next blog. If you’re still with me, wondering what the heck a URL builder is, then the next 3 minutes belong to you.

    One of the major components of digital marketing is measurement and metrics. The best thing about digital marketing is the ability to conduct small, measured experiments that take just a little time, but teach us so much about what will or will not be effective. The experiments usually involve driving traffic to a web property, and behind that web property should always be an analytics tool. The biggest, baddest, and most free is Google Analytics (hereafter referred to as G.A.). G.A. allows you to see, track, and measure every activity on your website, and most importantly who arrived there, how they got there, and where they came from.

    That said, many people are only getting the knowledge that comes from seeing that you got X number of visitors from Twitter and Y number of visitors from the email newsletter, etc. What that looks like is you see a bunch of traffic from “t.co” or “email” or “Google organic”. That gives you the knowledge, generally, of where your traffic came from. But you have little or no understanding about how that visitor’s journey took them to your web site.

    Here’s a very short exercise to demonstrate what I mean.  First, Google “Atlanta Tech Blogs”. Since you’re Googling the name of my website, it’ll come up first on the search engine results page. If you click on the link, you’ll get to http://www.atlantatechblogs.com. Simple, right? No. Not simple. At this point, you have knowledge that you searched for Atlanta Tech Blogs and when you clicked on that link, you got to atlantatechblogs.com.

    That’s not good enough to have a deep understanding of your web audience traffic. So go back to that results page, and right click on the link to Atlanta Tech Blogs, then “copy link address.” Then paste what you copied into your browser or even just into notepad or whatever you take notes on. It’ll look something like this:

    https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CB8QFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.atlantatechblogs.com%2F&ei=KANUVcRJiL6CBOjKgOAK&usg=AFQjCNHi-IdD2nILrIOojDCH6YjDO0dR8w&sig2=N-Ews1iaKjmVcc93V9rcjw

    See all that junk in there? If you look closely, you can find your website’s URL in there. Everything else is what we call “UTM Parameters”, which is a big fancy technical term for “all the other data you need to track this campaign.” And you have the power to track every click from every campaign just like Google does.

    Here’s how. It’s a simple, free tool from Google called Google URL Builder. Using this tool, you can (and should) enter, and then track every aspect of each and every campaign you run. Simply fill out these fields with terms that you understand, and hit “Generate URL” at the bottom.

    • Website URL (the page you want the visitor to end up on, aka “landing page”)
    • Campaign Source (where is the campaign taking place?)
    • Campaign Medium (what kind of campaign is it?)
    • Campaign Term (Google assumes you’re using Adwords, so they ask for your key word)
    • Campaign Content (Name the content that’s driving the campaign)
    • Campaign Name (what are you calling this campaign?)

    Here’s the “hard” part. I quoted “hard” because it’s just manual, not hard. When you create one of these long UTM parameter URLs, it’s ugly, long, and you don’t want to paste that into Twitter or any other medium, so you use a URL shortener (Google has one of those, too), or make that the link behind your call to action button.

    When visitors click on that link, you have knowledge of where they came from, but more importantly you have understanding of what brought them there. Instead of “t.co” when a visitor arrives from Twitter, you’ll see the entire URL that you created, and now you can track as part of measuring the effectiveness of a campaign. Every campaign. Ideally, every campaign you run has it’s own unique URL with UTM parameters, and perhaps even multiple URLs, if you run a single campaign across multiple digital channels like Twitter and Facebook.

    That’s the difference, in digital marketing anyway, of knowledge vs. understanding.

  • What’s your zone?

    Yup, another Michael Jordan post. Way back in 1992, the Bulls played the TrailBlazers in the NBA Finals. In game 1 of the series, Jordan decided to start shooting three-pointers. He hit six threes in the first half, and ended up scoring 35 points just in the first half. After he hit number 6, he was running back down the court, and looked over at the scoring table to the announcers and shrugged his shoulders as if to say, “beats me!” Jordan was not known at all for being a 3-point shooter, so the Blazers had no answer for this brand new threat from the player that nobody could guard anyway.

    After the NBA Finals were over (Bulls won), Jordan was asked in an interview why he was not regarded as a great three-point shooter. His reply was epic: “I’ve never shot the three before.” In other words, Jordan wasn’t known to be great at it because he hadn’t yet tried it.

    In that same interview, Jordan said he was “in the zone.” He said the basket looked like a swimming pool and he just couldn’t miss and he knew it. I can recall a half dozen times or so when I was playing competitive soccer when I was in the zone. I couldn’t see anything around me. No distractions. Like I was wearing blinders, and yet I couldn’t miss.

    Have you ever been in the zone? You’d know if you had. Well, that’s a really long intro to a meeting I had today. Thanks for sticking with me here. :-)

    I met with an experienced entrepreneur today to talk about his business. The business is very much product centered at the moment, and they have several add-on products that they are planning to launch very soon. That’s what he was very excited about as he described the great experiences their customers are having using their product. As he talked about his products what they have built and are building, he was in his zone.

    Throughout the discussion, we talked again and again about how they’d like to engage in content marketing, but they didn’t know where to start, and their entire team is made up of engineers. Creating code for them is child’s play, but blogging and creating a content strategy? Nah. They could do it, if they were horse-whipped daily, but they would never get near “the zone.”

    But when he’d ask me questions and get me talking about content and strategy and telling your story…that’s when he looked at me and said, “You’re really excited about this stuff.” I didn’t even realize it. That’s a great feeling: loving what you’re doing and being able to evangelize about it without even knowing you’re doing it.

    What’s your zone? What are you really excited about? That’s what you should be doing. Go do it.

  • More Speaking & Teaching In May

    We had so much fun last Saturday offering the Digital Marketing Bootcamp at General Assembly that we’re going to do it again in June! It really was a great class, thanks to the 14 future digital marketers who attended and shared their visions for what they want to do in digital. We’ll be offering that same Saturday class again on Saturday June 20 from 10-4pm.

    But before we get to that, here’s what’s coming up in the next two weeks:

    • Advanced Social Media Strategy – Wednesday May 13th from 1-4pm – Social media marketing is an extension of content marketing. In this half day class, we’ll walk you through practical best practices for each social marketing channel, what not to do on each channel, and how to really engage your customers using simple techniques that anyone can practice on a daily basis.
    • Blogging Bootcamp – Need to blog? Silly question. Everyone needs to blog, especially startups and small businesses. But not everyone has a WordPress developer at their disposal. The good news is, you don’t need one. In this Saturday bootcamp, you’ll start with nothing, and leave with your own domain, a fully functioning WordPress blog with all the necessary plugins, a content strategy just for you, and your first three blog posts ready to go.
    • FailCon – You read that right: FAIL con. A conference about failure, because we all fail, have failed, are failing, or will fail at something. If you’re not failing, you’re not growing. I’ve failed a lot, so this one’s going to be just a little more personal than a bootcamp. If you’re up for some heartbreak, some joy, and some fun, please attend FailCon Atlanta on May 21st.
    I hope to see you at one or more of these events. They’re all going to be lots of fun. Thanks to GA for hosting all these great events.

  • The [DGM] Breakfast Club

    No, this was not us this morning, but I did spend an entire Saturday with 14 future digital marketers at General Assembly.

    The genesis of this offering was the 10-week Digital Marketing class that I led from Jan – Mar of this year. In the final session before Demo Night, we did a complete review of the entire course in a little less than three hours. That went so well that we decided to create a one-day “DGM bootcamp”, and that’s what we delivered today.

    First, thanks to everyone who attended and participated. It was a great group, with lots of unique marketing challenges, opportunities, and questions, and I thoroughly enjoyed leading this unique offering.

    We broke down the 10-week DGM class into 6 parts, walking through the nuts and bolts of each section, as listed below.

    1. Brand creation – starts with your core values; brand is everything you do; we used Atlanta Tech Village as an example of intentional branding & culture, and showed the Simon Sinek TED Talk on “Start with Why”.
    2. Measuring & metrics – measure everything, focus on 2-3 KPIs, analytics tools; we introduced the Google URL Builder as a very simple way to track each click in each campaign to have understanding vs. having only knowledge.
    3. The marketing funnel – reach –> CTR –> landing page –> conversion –> revenue –> loyalty loop; we watched the short Dave McClure (500Startups) video on “AARRR!“
    4. Owned content marketing – everything we produce is content; social marketing is content; we looked at Salesloft’s success in content marketing to build their company from nothing to $6M+ ARR in 2 years.
    5. Paid content marketing – Adwords and ads on social media channels are inexpensive, highly targeted, and powerful; we investigated how simple it is to advertise on Google Adwords, Twitter, and Facebook to conduct fast, cheap experiments to determine where your audience is and the best use of your digital marketing ad dollar.
    6. Marketing calendar – nothing hurts like a date and nothing helps like a plan; a plan implemented with a marketing & content calendar like the Insightpool freebie gives you freedom to win like Arby’s and Oreo and countless others.

    GA served up Chipotle for lunch, and we had a couple of minutes left for Q&A discussion. I think this offering is a great way for new marketers to get a solid overview of the digital realm, for those considering a career in digital marketing to see what they’re getting into, and for managers and leaders to understand the basic ideas and functionality behind digital strategy.

    I look forward to leading this class again on Saturday June 20.

  • Buffer, Kabbage, and Suster agree: blog.

    I preach every day that every company should blog, especially startups and small businesses with limited marketing budgets. Pushing your content out via your blog is the starting point for your entire digital marketing strategy, which encompasses your content marketing strategy. Blogging requires only your time, and your organized thoughts put to keystrokes that tell your company’s story as it unfolds.

    But don’t listen to me. I’m just a lowly blogger who preaches and teaches this stuff. Listen to the people you’re already listening to, or you should be listening to them anyway.

    Buffer, a leader in social media marketing tools, had this to say about their social media presence:

    Our blog content is a key component to our social media strategy. Ninety percent of our social media updates are based on content we’ve written on the blog.

    Ninety percent of all of Buffer’s social media updates come from their blog. Like I said above, the content of your blog is the lifeblood of your digital & social strategy. If you don’t have a blog, then what are you posting to your social media channels? Yes, there is a whole internet full of stuff that’s relevant to your business that you can share, but it’s not yours. Do you want people to trust you for original thought in your area of expertise? Then you have to create content.

    Side note: what’s in that other 10%? Personally, I think it’s the freedom, mindset, and brand to pay attention to the world around them and make ultra wins like Arby’s and Oreo have done simply because they can.

    Still not convinced? OK, let’s bring it a little closer to home in Atlanta with Kabbage, a rapidly growing small business loan source. In a blog post earlier this month titled, “5 Steps to Outpace Your Competition in Google Search on a Shoestring Budget,” the author of the post put it more simply than I ever could:

    First and foremost, you should have a blog on your site where you create compelling content.

    Couldn’t agree more. Kabbage has been very successful, and they have a very strong content marketing team and plan. Another Atlanta startup has taken a turn towards very aggressive content marketing by teaching their audience how to use their product, from beginning to end. Codeguard’s latest series of blog posts is driven by video content on how to use their product.

    Finally, from your startup turned VC hero Mark Suster, you get a one word response to the question, “should you actually write [a blog] if you’re a startup?“

    “Absofuckinglutely.”

    Any questions? Survey says you need to blog for your startup.

  • Got Presentations? Create Blog Content.

    The average American reads approximately 300 words per minute. The average time that a speaker talks per slide of a presentation (one with slides, of course) is at least 30 seconds, and, depending upon the complexity of the content, up to three minutes per slide.  For the purpose of this blog post, let’s assume it’s 2 minutes per slide, so for a 30 minute presentation you would use approximately 15 slides.

    Now let’s do the math. If you talk for 2 minutes per slide, that’s approximately 300 words x 2 minutes, or 600 words, which is longer than the optimal length of a short, SEO friendly blog post. The image at the top of this post is a good example.

    The image is one slide out of 45 slides that I used to deliver a 3-hour seminar on “Advanced Social Media Strategy” at General Assembly last week. (Shameless plug: the class is offered again Wednesday, May 13 from 1 – 4pm). From this one slide, highlighting best practices for using YouTube videos to market your business, I was able to create a 622 word blog post, which is a 2-3 minute read.

    Unfortunately, I can’t make a blog post from every single slide in that presentation, since some are topic introductions, session dividers, examples, etc.; however, if I can use even half of those 45 slides, that’s a series of 20+ posts on one subject, each post a short, easily-digestible chunk of usable information.

    This technique is what’s commonly known as re-purposing your content. I spent about 3 hours creating the slide presentation, and about 20 minutes creating this first blog post, which can be shared over and over and over, not to mention I’ll be teaching this session again.

    If you or someone at your business presents slide presentations regularly, you already have TONS of content, and that doesn’t even include video of the presenter in action!

    How much content do you have? More than you thought.

  • 1-Day Digital Marketing Bootcamp @ GA

    Next Saturday, May 2, we will be hosting a 1-Day Digital Marketing Bootcamp at General Assembly in Ponce City Market from 10am to 4pm.

    After leading the 10-week part time Digital Marketing class this winter, we decided that a one-day, fast moving but hands on primer would be valuable to those who either (a) need to understand the language (e.g., talk the talk) about this juggernaut called “digital marketing” or (b) are considering a career as a digital marketing practitioner.

    During the 6-hour class, for which lunch and snack will be provided, we will spend approximately an hour on each of the following topics.

    • Brand – If you aren’t intentional about defining your brand, the market will define it for you. Your brand is where your digital marketing strategy starts.
    • Metrics – If you don’t measure it, you can’t manage or change it. You can track just about anything in Google Analytics, and we’ll get you started.
    • Funnel – To measure your ROI, you must create a visual marketing funnel, from total reach to total revenue, set goals for your click and conversion rates.
    • Content – Every word you type, image you post, audio you podcast, video you stream, wherever you post them, is your content. Your content should reflect your brand and engage your target audience.
    • Ads – Buying Google Adwords or Facebook & Twitter ads is easier, more efficient, and more powerful than ever. Regardless of your budget, you should give these traffic-makers a try.
    • Calendar – What sets you free from the daily stress of social & digital? Your digital marketing and content calendars. Plan your campaigns, work your plans, and free yourself up to experiment.

    At the end of the day, in addition to a well-deserved beer, you will have a full understanding of how to go about creating a digital marketing strategy, from brand to plan. You’ll definitely need to bring your laptop and be prepared to take lots of notes, so you can apply each of the lessons we’ll cover in these topics to your business.

    Whether you’re working towards a job in DGM or need a solid understanding of the elements involved, the DGM Bootcamp will be a great investment of your Saturday, and you’ll be home in time to watch the Kentucky Derby!

    Sign up here, and we’ll see you next Saturday.

  • The Interview

    When I’m not creating content (aka writing), I’m getting content from those who know it best: entrepreneurs. That’s the heart of the routine as your content creator & strategist. I ask you an open ended question, you tell me your entire story, which then becomes blog fodder for your content marketing calendar.

    If only it were that simple. That’s what it looks like from 100,000 feet, but down here on good ole terra firma, it’s a little different.

    1. Introduction (email, phone, LinkedIn, Twitter)
    2. “Who are you again? Oh, ok.”
    3. Set the playing field: content is king and you must blog.
    4. Arrange the first session.
    5. Reschedule first session due to conflicts.
    6. First session. Light bulbs go on.
    7. Create one-page strategy doc.
      • Content buckets
      • Voice, Message, and Mix (60-20-20 rule)
      • Schedule / Frequency
    8. Set interview schedule.
    9. Interview.
    10. Blog.
    11. Repeat steps 1 – 11 until success
    So, like most professions, there’s a lot of other stuff that has to get done and surrounds the best part of the entire process: interviewing and blogging. Or, said another way, learning your story and telling your story. That is the joy of this business. That’s what doesn’t feel like work. The interview is by far the most fun, because I’m learning something brand new. I may have an insight or two from a business or experience angle, but nobody knows your stuff better than you.
    The interview. It’s kinda like going back to school every day to learn something completely new.

  • Two TED Talks That Tempered My Tongue

    When I started Pitch Practice in June of 2013, I didn’t know what it would eventually be or what value it might have to others. It was simply a fun gathering of fellow entrepreneurs to help each other answer the question, “So, what do you do?” a little better, and also help us prepare for events like Atlanta Startup Village and Startup Riot. The weekly event certainly has accomplished all those reachable goals.

    However, it wasn’t until running the meeting for a more than eighteen months that I found two TED talks that completely changed the way I lead Pitch Practice, and the way I help startup entrepreneurs (a) develop their elevator pitch and (b) tell their story.

    In developing a 30 second elevator pitch, I developed the following formula, and have used it in every pitch talk since.

    1. Name
    2. Company name (if you have it yet)
    3. Problem you’re solving
    4. Solution
    5. Customer (who pays you money)
    6. Ask

    There’s no right or wrong order, and you don’t have to use all these elements if you don’t want to, but this is a place to start, a structure, a set of boundaries that will help you get from a blank piece of paper to a very short and eloquent elevator pitch that you can say to anyone and they’ll get it.

    “Problem” is in red because that’s where your focus should be in starting a tech business today. We get this structure from the Lean Startup Methodology, codified by Eric Ries and Steve Blank. The basic tenet is that you don’t come up with great ideas. Rather, you create solutions to really big expensive problems. So, if you’re not solving a painful market problem, you might want to re-evaluate your idea. That’s where your focus is in your 30-second pitch, because when you’re talking to your proper audience, they will all get it, and immediately want to know more about your solution.

    You’ve heard the adage, “You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink,” but I say that’s a myth and a hoax. You can make that horse (your audience) drink, if you put salt in their oats. The problem you’re solving is the salt. That gets us to the first TED talk (sorry it took so long), which is from 2009, in which Simon Sinek brilliantly explains that people don’t buy your “what” they buy your “why”. Sinek refers to Apple as one of the examples of how a brand can be so good at their “why” that it doesn’t matter what their “what” actually is. Why would you buy a music player or a phone or a watch from a computer company?

    Because you know it will break all the previously defined boundaries, just like the Macintosh did in 1984, the iPod did in 2001, the iPhone in 2007, the iPad in 2010, and perhaps the iWatch in 2015.

    In your pitch, the problem you are solving is your “why”, and is the focus of all your energy and words. When you can simplify a huge market problem into just a few words so that your 5 year old kid or your 85 year old grandmother understands it, then you truly understand it and can convey your vision for solving that problem to anyone. Too often, great ideas are presented by entrepreneurs who have no desire, preparation, or structure for telling their story, so the problem goes unsolved until a “visionary” who can focus on the “why” enters the market.

    The second TED talk involves actually telling your story in a pitch much longer than 30 seconds, and is a bit more complex, but incredibly powerful when utilized properly. Part of Apple’s amazing success is the ability of its founder, Steve Jobs, to keep his audience on pins and needles. Nancy Duarte took a deep look at the speech Jobs gave in introducing the iPhone in 2007 and Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I have a dream” speech. She dissected both speeches so thoroughly as to bring out a purposeful and powerful pattern that keeps the audience thoroughly engaged and on the edge of their seats.

    The pattern itself is simple: down and up and down and up and down. But what does that mean to the entrepreneur pitching his or her startup to any audience? It really is simple, and yet so powerful:

    • Down: The market space today has a problem
    • Up: I know how to solve that problem.
    • Down: The problem is costing us billions every year.
    • Up: The problem can be solved.
    • Down: There are many obstacles to this solution.
    • Up: We have a plan to change the market!
    • Down: The competition is fierce and well funded.
    • Up: Our team is the very best in the space.

    This simple pattern of carrying the audience to new highs and new lows one after the other has an amazing effect on the listeners, mainly by keeping them thoroughly engaged until the peak of the speech in which the solution is shared and the vision cast.

    I’ve listened to and offered suggestions for more than 700 pitches from all kinds of markets and entrepreneurs, but until I heard and applied Sinek and Duarte’s TED Talks to Pitch Practice, it was based on nothing but “that seems to work better”. Now I have wonderful inspiration for positively leading entrepreneurs to focus on the problem they are solving as their “why”, and to tell a story with a pattern.
    Having a structure to anything makes it so much simpler to begin, and having a structure to your pitch and your story can carry your startup a long way towards success.