[Music] Welcome to On the Offense, our bionly

award-winning, we think we think it's award-winning worthy podcast um

that we uh have now brought to you. This I believe is the 18th on the Offense

podcast brought to you by Jeff. Hi Jeff. John, how are you?

I'm good. And yourself? Good. I haven't seen you at all today. So, this is strange.

Exactly. On the offense is where we take something typically take something in the news and apply it to our world of

marketing and communications. And uh it didn't take long to determine

which newsy thing that we were going to leverage at least for the introductory

part of this podcast. And that is the inf the now infamous situation known as

cold plague gate. We've all seen it. Uh the the CEO of astronomer caught

red-handed and I suppose Jeff what we'd call a compromising position.

I I think so. I think so. It was fairly bluntly compromising. Uh

even though they were in public uh at a cold play. Uh but the person with whom

he was caught in the compromising position just happened to be the head of human resources. I you can't say this

with a straight face. That makes it even more absurd. It does. Uh the head of HR for his

company caught on the kiss cam, if you will, at whatever stadium they were at,

Gillette Stadium, I think where the Patriots play. Mhm. Call it 65,000 people to whom they were

exposed. When Chris Martin, Coldplay's frontman, uttered the fantastic one,

little did he know, either they're having an affair or they're just really shy. Really shy.

Um, so we've talked offline before we turn the button on here. Well, how much

should we get into this? And we've determined that we're going to leave it for introductory comments. We could do

an entire podcast on Coldplay Gate. Oh, I I agree with that. It's a

I mean, it's so absurd, but such a great example of something going viral so quickly.

Out within two days, so quickly. So, the focus of this podcast is social media. The power of

social media. Uh, it is a monster. It is a monster and it will eat you if you're

ready for it. and it consumed these two people at least professionally fairly

quickly. So, let me give you a couple of numbers just to talk about the speed of

social media, the the footsp speed of this so-called monster, right? The original video was posted by a one of

the 65,000 people who went to Gillette Stadium on Tik Tok.

That one post has now earned more than 10 million likes on its own. To the

point where, and I don't have any notes on this, but I saw something the other day that implied that that that that

person who was the original poster may have a business opportunity for

themselves to somehow monetize the post. now different podcast not sure how but

it just I mean it's just that that person has become almost a celebrity to themselves right so more than 10 million

likes on Tik Tok alone but thanks to Tik Tok's algorithm it went beyond Tik Tok

and got reposted across various platforms if you roll it all up there's

more than 30 million likes across all of the different social platforms

yikes 30 million and um and then you know of course again different podcast uh but

maybe just a mention of Gwyneth Paltro. Right. Well that that is one of the most brilliant PR related things and

marketing escapades I've ever seen. It was brilliant on the part of astronomer.

It it really was. And and Gwyneth Paltro being the exwife of the Coldplay front man's

Chris Martin. Yeah. This this is a great uh quoting our old boss's boss Jeff.

What a great way to turn chicken you know what into chicken salad salad. Right. I saw right I knew you'd like

that. I saw a great uh comment on LinkedIn the other day. The value of the

earned media alone that forget about the Gwyneth Paltro

post itself. the value of the earned media on the post alone makes it worth

their while having done that. I say good for them. It's not like again we could get so into this. There is a school of

thought that says says the company is culpable. Uh clearly this couple was not in private with this alleged affair, but

in reality it's not like the company really did anything wrong. It's not like there was a problem with one of their products uh or somebody was caught

embezzling money from the you know right so why not be creative and try and turn

it into a great opportunity to build awareness and definition of of your company especially if you're a company

that is not overly wellknown and many of us know about this company had

it not been for Coldplay you know so I'll bet I have to have to assume that their demand generation

funnel has gained a few has gained a few trust. Yeah.

I suppose the moral of the story is be careful who you go to a concert with.

You're going to be on the kiss cam. And it's also true. I mean, you can't go to a sporting event these days. The kiss

cam like it's it's always there. Um, all right. Social media, the monster

of social media. We're gonna start. I'm gonna turn it over to Jeff here to talk about the evolution of social media. It

really has been fascinating to watch it uh go from something that was, you know,

kind of under the radar and uh at one point to the point now where it is

literally the number one source of news in the United States. So tell us about

that, Jeff. Okay, so the early days, let's go back to the early days. And it doesn't seem that early, but it's the

pre-200s. You had the early networks. You had a rapet, which was actually a government network within the US, which

kind of formed the whole infrastructure for the internet. And then you got to instant messaging. You got AOL instant

messenger and Microsoft Messenger and all that stuff that started in 97. And

then you got the early online communities, Geio Cities, Live Journal.

Um, you know, it let the users create their own personal pages and blogs. So

that's the early history. Then you get down a little bit further. You get to the rise of social networking. That

would be from like 2000 to 2010. The first of the fairly big ones was

Frenster, which was one of the first recognizable social networks particularly in Asia.

Then you come over to the US, we had MySpace, which has pretty much faded away or I don't even know if it's still

in existence, but it became the biggest site globally by 2006.

And then you had Facebook and any of you who saw the movie. Um it started at

Harvard and it was kind of a kind of a weird premise. They were rating the

attractiveness of individuals and then somehow it switch in switched into what

it's become and by 2009 it was the most popular social network worldwide. And

they would frankly it still is. They would never do such things at Harvard. Please. No. No. No. No.

Oh my god. Um, and then you had YouTube which was 2005 and that revolutionized

video sharing and consumption. And then you got Twitter in 2006 which you know

now has transitioned into X under the guidance of Elon Musk. And then finally

I and it was here before all that 2003 was LinkedIn which is certainly

something that John and I rely on and it's focused on professional networking.

Then let me just premise this by saying blah blah blah. You've got the mobile

and app era from 2010 to 2020. You got Instagram, you got Snapchat, you got Tik

Tok, which is huge. And you've got influencer culture. That's when the

influencers came to the four, as well as algorithmic feeds, which if you've been

out there shopping for a job, you know how algorithms work. And that really is

the basis behind a lot of the social platforms that we use today. So,

finally, here we are at the current era. and what's driving things. You got AI,

artificial intelligence integration and the platforms that are being used for that. Um, you've got decentralized

platforms like Mastadon and Blue Sky which promote federated non-corporate

alternatives to Twitterx. You got video dominance. You've got Tik

Tok, huge Instagram reels, YouTube shorts, and they continue to dominate

attention spans, which I would say if you go way back, um, you know, I think

attention spans were a lot longer. They were a lot um, they've become very

short, let's say. I always used to call USA Today Paper McNuggets because it kind of cers to that with small stories,

instant news bites, all that good stuff. They were ahead of their time. They were ahead of their time and it

kind of ushered in a whole new era of, you know, kind of short pathy newspapers

that rely heavily on graphics. And then you got the creators in economy

maturity. That's not those aren't my words, but they have more tools like Patreon.

Um, Caroline, do I have that right? Is it Patreon? Yes, Patreon is the name. And then we

got NFTTS and we got direct fan engagement. And then we got misinformation and

regulation. You got governments worldwide are cracking down on harmful content, deep fakes, and foreign

interference. And then finally, you've got uh you've got, you know, Twitter and X, which are

interesting, but you can see how dominated they are now by by political opinion. And I've got to say, it's

really interesting. If you go on to YouTube, there are certain videos that you can identify just by what they're

about and by their length as being overly bot- driven. You'll hear common

words being mispronounced, even the names of the subjects being mispronounced.

Yeah. And uh and there are certain voices you'll hear over and over again. So, finally, what's happening today?

Well, you've got um you've got Tik Tok, which is still dominant in youth culture, but it's facing scrutiny here

and in the EU. You got threads by Meta, which is gaining traction as an

alternative to Twitter and X. Um AI avatars,

AI generated influencers and avatars are going viral and some have millions of

followers. You got Meta Push, um, which focused on extended reality, XR, uh, for

social interaction, though hype is cooled. You got privacy tools, things like Signal, Telegram, WhatsApp. I I

really didn't know too much about Signal until I was just doing a little background research for this, but it but

it's kind of fascinating. Use email to push around content and you've got complete control over it. So, very

interesting. And then you've got niche and private communities um like Discord

um Geneva Substack and um which Substack uses that same

method of using emails. And they got digital wellness um so you know conscious of screen time

misinformation dopamine loops and offline is making a comeback. So

loops loops. Wow. Yeah. How about that? So you know it's

it's it's pretty interesting. Pretty interesting. What was the first one you said? Frenster.

Frenster. Yeah. Way way back. And that was most popular I think I said

in Asia. Oh, okay. All right. Um Asia I think China. Um so

well there you go. You got you got the whole history there. I'll let I'll let you dive in here,

John. But last one last thought is these

viral things that happen. It's kind of like the old Andy Warhol saying that everyone's going to be famous for 15

minutes. You know, you're famous or infamous for 15 minutes.

Well, and these people from Astronomer, I mean, I'm not sure how many people know their

names, but people are going to remember their faces for a lot longer than Absolutely.

and the backs of their heads. And they're going to remember their reaction to the realization that they

were on camera, right? It's one of those things that's going to go down in social media history, in pop culture.

Absolutely. Absolutely. It is one. It's just one of those things that you just know immediately. It's kind of like, you

know, oh, you watch a game that's an instant classic. This Absolutely. This was a milestone moment in social

media and pop culture history. Uh it's uh you know that's the case when it's

already being me'd and and stuff like that, right? So anyway, in fact, Jeff

and I tried to arrange a in advance a photo shoot where I could stand with my

arms around him. No, I'm kidding. We weren't gonna So, um, but let's

That's what we do weekly, John. It's nothing new if we did that. Yeah. Like any other, right? So, all right. Let's talk about

this. Like I said, that what you just described is the evolution of a monster, right? This thing, this is a bowl of

spaghetti. Like, where do you even begin? If you're a marketer, right? You're a company who needs to get the

word out to your target audience. Where do you even begin with that ball of string? Right.

So, no. So, I mentioned earlier that social media is now the number one source of

news in the United States. Probably true globally. This is um was not news to me.

Um but it did come out in a Reuters study earlier this month. Um and I say

this month, we're recording on July 31st. You'll all see this the week of August

whatever that is 4th. Um so uh by the

time you see this it will have been last month but a new study from Reuters saying and these numbers are fascinating

54% of US adults get their news from social media per Reuters the Reuters Institute

2025 digital news report 54% social media sites not entertainment news right

um Second source of news according to this study is TV news 50. Now I'm

assuming that's national TV news which still has a lot of numbers. People say, "Oh, that's old news." I mean,

it does. There's still a lot of people watching it. I'm sure it includes local news as well though, right?

Well, absolutely. Probably less so among Gen Xers now. Probably. Good point. Yeah, there's a

whole demographic subset to this discussion, by the way. So, you'll have

to take this with a little bit of a grain of salt depending on who you are, your age, your station in life, etc.

Because there are demographic cuts that make things a little different here. But, right, 54% news from social media, 50% from TV,

and 48%, and I'm actually frankly surprised that this is third behind TV

news. 48% of people get their news from news websites and apps.

I would have thought that that would be above TV news at this point, but I use we talked about it before. It's

not really a social network, but I use Google News as an aggregator to get my news every day.

Sure. Yeah. I mean, and that's a good example of I'm surprised it's not higher than TV news. Um now, okay. So if you

have news to report, you as a marketer, you as a communicator,

you have to get you have to understand that this is where people are going to get their news and information, right?

That's fine. What's the other side of that coin? The other side of that coin, and I I think we talked about this on a

on a different podcast, Jeff. It's one thing to say, "Oh, nobody trusts traditional media anymore."

But they have gates set up, gating systems for truth set up and accuracy

that social media does not. Maybe it will someday. It ain't there yet, folks.

Right? This very same study from Reuters says about three quarters, 73% of people

surveyed are worried that they can't distinguish via social media news, via

news they get through a social media platform. They can't distinguish between what's false and what's true. That is

ridiculous and pathetic. The number one source, this is a

problem. the number one source of news. Threearters of the people who are going

there don't know what's fake and what's not.

Well, the problem is if they don't care. That's problem.

Many maybe don't care because they trust the source and that's the source from

which they get their news. Many just don't have time. Right. Attention span.

You're right. attention span has shrunken big time over the last what call it generation or whatever. But

that's that's really a problem. And so I've said this so many times and and um

and Gellman, our producer here, has heard it from me in our personal lives as well. Gilman is my daughter. I think

you all know that. But all I'll one of the kids will say she's she's sending us notes. Haha.

A lot of times one of the kids will say, "Did you hear about this?" And the first question I ask is always, "What's the

source? What's the source?" People may not trust the New York Times or the LA

Times or whatever it is, but it's still true, whether you trust them or not,

that stuff's going to be more uh accurate from them more consistently

than it it's going to be from a social media site. It just is. But regardless, I'm just saying that's the other side of

the coin. That's where people are. That's where the eyeballs are. Period. Full stop. But you just have to really

work hard sometimes to distinguish between what's real and and what's not. So, all right, that's fine.

Social media. What is the key to social media? If you are a marketer, you're a

communicator, you're a company who has decided, okay, number one source of news and we're putting a lot more of our

marketing budget for advertising and other things onto these channels. Okay,

what channels should we be using? Where where should we be putting our content? Right? Um what types of content should

we be putting out there to get the best bang for our buck? Right? Mhm. I argue this that the key to your social

strategy needs to start with a very basic question. Is our goal here in

using social media as a channel for news and information?

Is it primarily awareness or is it acquisition? Awareness or acquisition?

If it is acquisition, meaning your primary goal, not your only goal,

but your primary goal from putting all this content on social media is

acquisition, meaning you want to sell stuff. You want this content to result

in sales. Um, you typically, well, couple of things. One is the

content needs to be acquisition focused.

And there's certain types of content that is much more acquisition focused than other types of content, right? Um,

if you are wanting to get people to your website and into your funnel to become a

prospect based in part at least on your social media content,

solutionoriented information is the most important thing you can get

out there. right now. If your goal is awareness, you just you're

trying to build your reputation, get more notice, get more noticed for being a company that cares about X or Y. Um,

that's different. That's different. And companies that want to focus on that

don't need to focus so much of their content on acquisition focused content around solutions or products. It's

actually an easier thing to do. It's the basic stuff, right? We have a new CEO.

We have a new astronomer. We have a new CEO. We have a new head of human

resources. It could be communitydriven stuff, you

know, and the the more the lighterhearted it is,

the more likes you're going to get. People want authenticity. They want to

see that a company cares, right? All this kind of stuff. And

that's the kind of content almost regardless of the platform it's on that people do respond to. Like, like, like,

maybe even get some shares, right? Communityoriented stuff. So, if your

goal is awareness and reach and followers, hey, have fun. Go nuts all

day long. this community thing. Look at this employee event we did. Look at how

much we care about the community. Look at what good people we are. That's all really great if acquiring followers is

your primary goal. But if your primary goal is to get sales or at least people

to your website, that stuff doesn't drive people to the website. They like

you more, but they're not doing much about it. Right? Let me give you an example. I was at a company in recent

years where we had done what we thought was a pretty darn good job at getting a

lot of social content out into the market. And this is a company that needed to build awareness,

was trying to build more definition of what it's about. And so we were

essentially flooding the market with positivity, with good stuff, right? And

this is, you know, content that nobody would really have an argument with, right? And our followers were going

through the roof, right? But all of a sudden, the uh the leadership of the company was looking at me going, and I

was still fairly new at the time. In fact, I was brand new. And they were looking at me going, "Well, this is great, John, but are we getting any

business out of this?" Right? Well, we worked with an outside agency and we

changed and what we did was based on research and data. We changed we evolved

our content fairly significantly to be much more acquisition focused and less

focused on what I'm calling somewhat generically community stuff. Right? So,

it wasn't like we were saying we don't want to build followers at all, but we were moving the pendulum to the point it

was about 20% of our content when I got there was again generically speaking

community focused, more focused on building followers. Um, I'm sorry, 80%

awareness driven. We switched. We didn't go 8020 to 2080, but we got it to the

point where about 60% instead of 20 was really more acquisition oriented as

opposed to community oriented. Right? That was very much done on design because we realized that okay, if this

is the goal, if this is what the company says it wants, we have to shift our

content accordingly. Does that make sense, Jeff? It does, John. I It makes perfect sense.

Um, yeah. But the other other thing I throw in there is it also matters who you're

trying to appeal to. If you're trying to sell to a younger audience, maybe you

want to focus on getting influencers and tick tockers out there and and using

humor, you know, some some quick-hitting ad. Yeah. But it doesn't might not even look like

an ad. Um, and that may attract that group of uh of people uh to to buy your

product. You know, it when you're older, more mature, more weathered, I don't

know what you want to say, but you know, you're going to you're going to grasp on to traditional advertising more than

younger people who are um just kind of coming up in the world. So, um it it's

all about your demographics and the communities you live in. No question about it. That's a great

comment. By the way, what do you is there a group of people out there who

are uh what' you say? Older, more weathered, and less mature because

that's kind of us. Well, that would be me. I'll tell you I'll

just quick aside to our loyal listeners. We're perfectly mature. We're we're somewhat weathered,

okay? And we're somewhat mature until college football starts.

Well, that is true. And guess what, Jeff? One month from yesterday, college

football starts. I know. Are you Are you ready?

I don't know if I'm ready, but you did see me. We We were doing a couple conference calls yesterday, and I

had on my authentic Penn State football jersey. I thought that was impressive. Little did you know you were doing that one

month from kickoff to the day. I'm ready. College is life, ladies and

gentlemen. Well, and tonight tonight they made a big deal out of it. Is the uh Hall of

Fame NFL football game which is in Canton, Ohio.

Really? Now, no one of note ever plays in it because they play all the rookies, but that is tonight.

Who's playing? Um, it is the Detroit Lions against the Los Angeles Chargers,

who will always be the San Diego Chargers. Give me a break. Oh, I know. I know. Their fan base is

there. I know. I know. By the way, did you know that San Diego now LA Chargers started

out as the Los Angeles Chargers? Yes.

So in a way they've actually kind of gone home, right? That is true. Anyway, the other comment I'd make, this

is another uh example from my personal experience with social is that even if

let's say your goal is building awareness and now I'm giving you an example from a a different I was set in

in recent years. Um let's say your goal is building awareness and this was our

goal was to build the brand in this part of the marketing mix through social media. Okay,

we started getting uh diminishing returns.

Hey, we've our followers have gone up and up and up and now they're kind of going up and it's the rate of

acquisership is really slowing down and and we we had

a new firm at that point that we worked with and we really dug into it. You know what we found out? We found out we were

actually put and this is still shocking in hindsight but it actually makes sense if you think about it. We were actually

putting out too much content. Too much content. And it's so it's easy to think

that let's just your your strategy is correct. You're aligned. The type of

content is the right type of content for this in this case building followers.

You can go too far and you can Oh, yeah. You can right you can get to the point where it's starting to become wallpaper

for people, right? And it's kind Okay. ing your audience post another post, right? And um so they

counseledled us and and we were all in on pulling back and I want to say we

pulled back about a third. We pulled back about a third of our content. Again, it was the right type of content.

There was just too much. So that's another thing, you know, um that I'd

offer to our listeners is make sure your strategy is right. Are you primarily

awareness focused or acquisition focused? Depending on the answer to that, your content needs to align with

that. But even if that's all set up, be careful of too much content because people only have so much time and God

only knows how many different companies are coming across on their scroll. Right. Yeah. I I I can see where certain things

will tire you out. Here's a thought though, you know, as a precursor to

viral activity on social networks. Can you tell me, can you identify who this

person is? Steve Bartman. Steve Bartman. The Cubs.

Exactly. The Bartman ball. Yeah. People remember him to this day and they still resent him now. He's he's

kind of improved his his um appeal to folks because of time most likely. But

if you don't know the story, this is when the the Cubs were still sad sacks.

They hadn't won anything, right? And uh there was a ball that one of their guys was pursuing in foul

territory and he reaches up to catch it and this fan Steve Bartman sticks his

arm out there and grabs the ball. um that was viewed as this heinous

activity, this crime, you know, denying the Cubs of a probable victory and, you

know, all of a sudden he was a villain. A villain in Chicago. Well, and there you go. Social media,

right? It just And that just spread. You You didn't need the internet for that to spread. Yeah, absolutely. Uh, by the way, I

mean, in defense of poor Steve Bartman, okay, I don't think he did anything that

any other fan wouldn't do. He reflexively, yeah, if you look at where his hand was, it

was barely, if at all, over the edge of the stance, it's it's not like he

reached out like those Yankee fans did to the Dodger guy in the world. True.

Big Yankee fans. Um, actually I can think of one specific Yankee fan, and you know who you are out there who

listens to every podcast, and I think I may have just offended him, but let me just say aggressive Yankee fans, but it

the the Cubs guy put his mitt into the stance and he was going to catch the

ball, but I don't think Bartman did anything that any of us wouldn't have

done, right? The other thing that has helped him over time is, let's face it, they finally won the damn series.

Absolutely. Once that happened, the shackles were off. Exactly. So, all right. So, um let let's

keep moving through this. Um this is a fun conversation. Social media has just become this huge I keep saying monster,

but it it's not all monster in a bad way. you know, power the power again as most recently

exemplified by cold blood um has it just in our lifetime, I'm not sure if it's

ever going to do anything but continue to go up. But let's talk about YouTube for a minute. We haven't talked a lot

about YouTube yet. We also haven't talked a ton about Facebook. Facebook is the number one if you if you're talking

pure volume monthly average users monthly a active monthly active users

Facebook is number one at about three billion three billion right um what's

that's a significant percentage of the population of the earth I think we're 8.8 8 billion now.

Exactly. 8 billion is a big chunk. A third of the people on the planet Earth um are visiting Facebook on a

monthly basis, right? It's just and th those are actually more than that

because those are the monthly active users. How many times each, right? What's

number two though? YouTube is now at two and a half 2.5 billion monthly active

users. And one of the things and um we want to talk about examples here and we

clients first actually has our own we actually have our own examples in real

time on the value of YouTube. The algorithm the YouTube algorithm rewards

volume um the more you post uh and long form

video content is is what you YouTube is all about. You can do shorter form, but

they can they're really good with long form video content, which a podcast essentially is. Um, their algorithm

rewards volume um by exposing your content to more and more users all the

time. And that's what based on our own numbers exactly what's happening with

our own podcast. the last two in a row um actually the last podcast we did um

has set the record for the most number of views at about 2,000 after a week. We

were really happy with that. Thank you everyone. Thank you for doing that. Um

and the one before that was at 1 point one,

1700. And um Gellman, who's our resident expert, has is convinced, and we tend to

agree that it's because I mean the content has to be good.

The content has to be good. The content has to be good. The content has to be good. That never changes whether you're

talking about social or earned media or website content, right? But let's assume

the content is good. We hope our content is good. It's good. The algorithm though is your

friend. The more you post, the more you get exposed. I'm just talking YouTube at

this point. And uh that's pretty fantastic to think about that. Now, I'm

just realizing I'm hearing myself talk out loud and I'm wondering if I'm talking out of both sides of my mouth.

The YouTube on one hand, YouTube algorithm, the more you post, the more

people you're exposed to thanks to the algorithm. On the other hand, I'm saying at least maybe this is just a LinkedIn

comment. Don't post too much. So, I I think I think that's right. Don't

post too much. There's sweet spot. That's what Caroline or Gellman is saying to us. I suppose that's probably true. Um

I think it's true. She threw up another uh interesting stat there that we we talked about earlier

about ads and all that exposure on on the social networks.

Yeah. And here's her stat. The average person is estimated to be exposed to between

4,000 and 10,000 ads per day. And that

speaks to wanting your content uh to be intentional but succinct. So, I think

that's incredible. 4,000 to 10,000 per day.

Why are our attention spans short? There you go. Well, there you go. And uh and that's

just on Facebook. No, I'm kidding. I'm kidding. It it is true that face okay, you know,

volume is volume is volume, I guess, right? It is true that like I said, Facebook is the number one

uh platform in terms of monthly active users. It is also true there is a school of thought at least that says Facebook

is one too many ads, right? And I'm being I'm being

a lot of ads, right? Um well but why is that? Because of the volume, because of

the numbers, right? So let's think about this. So we talked about new um social

media sites as being number one for news. Okay? What about where marketers

are marketers are uh going for marketing purposes including advertising? Where

are they placing ads? Right? There's another survey that came out this month

as of today must be survey month that says that 83% of marketers

worldwide surveyed reported using Facebook for marketing purposes 83% huge

number which we also haven't talked much about here was second at 78 LinkedIn third at

69 right and Um, now that's that's fine. There's also a school of thought that

says Facebook, okay, it's got the three billion, but it's pace is slowing.

Um, largely because of demographics. I'm sure there's data on this. I don't have

the data in front of me. Uh, and some of it may be too many ads and people are

kind of pulling away from that. They want they want more authentic content.

They want more heartfelt content. They don't want to be hit over the head with ads. What' you say? 4 to 10,000 a day.

4 to 10,000 a day. That's That's amazing. Contrast that with YouTube. And

I And YouTube to me is such an interesting case study

when it comes to social media. You know, they're now number two, two and a half billion monthly active users. um they're

really good at long form content, which not every other social media channel is. Right.

Right. They have a niche. Right. But according to the same study,

60% of responding marketers intend to

increase their organic use of YouTube for marketing purposes over the coming

year. So, a lot of money is going to YouTube right now

and um that says a lot. It's one thing to have the numbers where they are, but are you growing, right? YouTube is

exploding right now, right? And we're just a good we're a small town example

of that. But I think there's something going on there. What What do you think about that? I well it's interesting

because I think yeah YouTube's traditional spot has been really good long long form videos but even YouTube

sees the need to diversify and if you go on to YouTube now you'll see a string of

short videos um good point which is really interesting so they can cater to both crowds right now and I

think they you know they they're smart all right how about some takeaways

okay number One, social media like like I said it's a monster.

It is a monster. Be smart with your decisions out there. And I'm talking primarily corporate

decisions, right? Be smart with your content. Be up todate with your crisis plans.

Oh yeah. Because the monster of social media will eat you if you are not prepared. You

know the analogy I have in my mind. just so crude. But I'm sorry. Like I said, I'm a little

bit less mature than you. Not even.

Now, if you know me, you know how absurd that statement is, but that's okay. Fair fair point. Here's my here's the

image I have in my mind in terms of how quickly social media can consume you.

Jurassic Park. Here comes the T-Rex. The man sitting on the toilet.

You remember that scene? I do remember that scene. He was immediately consumed and was

over. Well, that's what happened to the astronomer

CEO. He got immediately consumed, right? The T-Rex ate them all because

not all, but largely because of social media. That's number one. Number two, certain channels are better for certain

things, right? It's no different than an ad schedule, right? You typically want to have a mix of multiple outlets,

right? But it it depends on who your target user is. Absolutely. Jeff, you

mentioned demographics, right? We could do we could really go deep on putting

together a social media paid and and owned schedule together based on

demographics and user profiles and subgroups within LinkedIn and and

different platforms. That that could be a podcast and a half. That actually sounds more like a LinkedIn learning

class, right? It does. It does. But you you know these are uh channels to the

public. You have to prioritize. You have to know what your strategy is

first as we've talked about and then you can prioritize your content accordingly.

I suppose the takeaway comment on that is all social media is not created the same.

No, it isn't. You know, social media, well, they're all different, right? And then I think the last thing I'd say and then I'll

look to you for your takeaways is okay, it's a monster. It's going to eat you.

Be careful. Blah blah blah. The glass is half full here, ladies and gentlemen. It

is what it is. Social media is here to stay. It's going to become more and

more. I believe it's going to be no different than television. Right? back

in the old days and in the in the in the dark ages, you know, you just had the networks and then here comes cable and

now there's streaming and now there's this and now there's that, right?

TV and and TV type of media became more um

niched, right? And and and you could target your content much more carefully

and tightly. And I believe that's where social media is going to go. Again, like you can you don't have to if you want to

advertise on LinkedIn or if you want to uh expose organic con content on

LinkedIn, you don't necessarily have to just go to all of LinkedIn. You can go to subgroups on LinkedIn, right? And so

the glass is half full. Make it work for you. Right? This is where the eyeballs

are. And the eyeballs more and more are going where they want to go, where they're getting their specific content.

You know, that is troubling when it comes to politics and echo chambers and all of that. But we're not talking about

that kind of stuff here. We're talking about you got a shoe to sell, you got a new app to sell, you are a, you know,

some sort of IT service. Make this work for you. Bec and it's just like an

advertising and media schedule. You have to know why you want to do it. You have to align your content accordingly and

you have to go after the right channels and the right sub channels. All social media is not created equal.

Over to you. I I mean everything has changed. Everything's going to continue to change

and the better you get your arms around where things are going, the better you're going to do. Like John said, you

know, creativity is huge here. You got to figure out how to utilize these social channels. So, I think that's as

much as I can come up with. I think I've talked way too much and I need a a drink of water or something stronger. Sean,

something stronger. Yeah, sounds good. You know who has Let me just maybe just close on your last comment was you got

to figure out how to use this stuff, the social stuff. You know who's figured out how to use it more than anybody else are

the influencers, right? They have. Social media influencers are now stars.

uh they have figured out how to monetize this. Remember we talked about the person who first did the post uh at the

Patriots Stadium that started Coldplay and a lot of people saying that person might be able to monetize this, right?

So we um you shouldn't really have a podcast discussion about social media

and not talk about influencers. We decided before this podcast to not get

into that because we feel like it deserves its own podcast. So we absolutely

might do the next podcast in a couple of weeks on influencers only. Um and that

is a fascinating topic about who are the who are the influencers per channel and

why um what content is playing from them

things like that. Right? So more to come on influencers. Uh we will continue to

talk about social media as we go um over uh subsequent podcasts as well. We are

very passionate about social. We and people in our network are quite good at

taking a company andor a solution and determining what types of social media

channels are best for that solution andor that leader andor that company and

we look forward to engaging with you on that. Uh so with that um uh I I thank

you all for listening. Uh more to come on the topic. Please, please, please,

speaking of social media, take a moment if you like this content and consider

following us on uh all of our social channels. We are uh on all of the

biggest ones. We are and you can also subscribe directly to this podcast on YouTube where all of our

original content uh podcast content resides. So, we thank you. Uh, let us

know what you think and uh, keep watching. See y'all later.

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