Your Digital Marketing Coach with Neal Schaffer

How to Pivot Your Digital Marketing Strategy for 2022

February 08, 2022 Neal Schaffer Episode 246
Your Digital Marketing Coach with Neal Schaffer
How to Pivot Your Digital Marketing Strategy for 2022
Show Notes Transcript

With all of the changes that society, technology, and social media undergoes at a frenzied pace, have you taken a step back to analyze your results from the previous year and use that insight to pivot your digital marketing strategy?

This podcast provides you a living example of how I balance my own digital marketing channels, what I learn from the data, and how I plan on applying it to all of my digital marketing this year.

I hope this episode both inspires you and provides you with a concrete example to help you truly Maximize Your Digital (and Social, of course!)

Key Highlights

[02:34] A Little Personal Story

[08:06] How to Pivot Your Digital Marketing Strategy For 2022

[10:04] Looking At The Output in 2021

[11:26] Blogging As Part of R&D

[12:33] My YouTube Output

[13:44] My Podcast Output

[14:52] Rebranding My Podcast

[15:45] My Email Marketing Output

[17:05] The Big Three Areas of Digital Marketing

[17:53] Initial Results for my Blogging

[19:40] Initial Results for my YouTube

[20:07] Initial Results for my Podcast

[21:21] Initial Results for my Email Marketing

[22:26] Conversions On My Website

[25:11] My Fractional CMO Services

[25:34] My Mastermind Community

[26:12] Plans for 2022

[28:15] Outlines

[29:31] Giving Social Media Algorithm What They Want

[30:50] Summary

Notable Quotes

  • But for me, this is the output I needed, I'm not going to go overboard and say I'm going to blog twice a day, I think blogging four times a week, over the course of a year, says that in my library of content, I have 200 pieces of content. And for most companies that that is enough, you don't even need to blog four times a week. That's just me.
  • And you know, the goal for 2022 is to stay consistent.
  • For me, it's really about building that strategy. And making sure that the content has impact. There's a lot of different directions I can go.
  • As I learned early on in my career, part of a strategy is also deciding what not to do. You really need to stay focused.
  • What I want to do this year is really be more strategic, and raise the quality of both my own content, and those guests that I invite to be on the podcast.
  • I like to keep things really, really simple. I like to provide you clarity, but clarity with impact.
  • To me, it's all about conversions. It's all about getting people on my email list, so that I can communicate with them a little bit more frequently, and promote what I'm doing a little bit more frequently as well.
  • And it really mimics the advice that I've been giving you on this podcast is to focus on non-social evergreen content outlets, my blog, my podcast, and YouTube.
  • But it's also about giving social media algorithms what they want, and they want video.

Learn More:

Neal Schaffer:

How are you going to pivot your digital marketing strategy for 2022 I know it's already February, but I am going to share with you my process and actually my own results for my own business. So that hopefully it inspires you to look at your numbers and your strategy a little bit more strategically. Stay tuned for this next episode of The your digital marketing coach podcast. Digital social media content influencer marketing, blogging, podcasting, blogging, tick tocking, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, SEO, SEM, PPC, email marketing, who there's a lot to cover, whether you're a marketing professional entrepreneur, or business owner, you need someone you can rely on for expert advice. Good thing you've got, Neil, on your side, because Neal Schaffer is your digital digital marketing marketing coach, helping you grow your business with digital first marketing one episode at a time. This is your digital marketing coach. And this is Neal Schaffer. Hey, everybody. This is Neal Schaffer. I am your digital marketing coach. And I know it has been a while and I wanted to offer you my sincere apologies. I like you. I'm also an avid podcast listener. I believe that podcasts are BrainFood. Hopefully this podcast provides you that food as well. And well over the weekend, I listened to nine different podcasts I did my own. That's 10. And I got all caught up on all the episodes of all these other nine podcasts, I'll put a link here of my top social media marketing podcast that I recommend to you. It's on my Neal schaffer.com blog, so you get an idea of who I'm listening to. But I know that feeling when you're done listening and you want more, and there's no more to listen to, what are you going to do. So it was a reminder to me that I really got to get out there again. And this episode is going to begin with a very, very personal story. I know that you're here for digital and social media marketing advice. But I also know that this is a very, very intimate medium. And by getting to know a little bit more about me, hopefully it gives you a little bit more information about my perspective, and it makes this podcast more impactful. So some of you might have only started listening to this podcast recently. Hey, welcome, you're never too late to start listening. But it was back on episode number 157. This is back on April 30. In 2020, when I told the world that my father who was 93 at the time had passed away. So on January 3, my mother January 3 of this year, my mother who was 94 passed away, I have not posted anything on Facebook about this on Instagram about this, I have not recorded a new podcast episode. Since that happened, I have been somewhat in a I don't know, needed my own time to sort of process things. And I think that with my mom, it was different than with my dad, because my mom was married to my dad for 74 years. They got married when she was 18. And he played this huge role as you can imagine, in her life. And when my father passed, my mother also had some short term memory issues that happened when you're 94. And although she lived at a senior living facility, I was sort of her caregiver, outside of that, taking her to doctor's appointments, making sure that all her needs were met, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So perhaps it's because of all that time, I spent together with her since then, in these last two years, which I am grateful for thankful for. I'm so glad I actually was able to do that, and get to know my mother better and get all of her wisdom sent on me. Nevertheless, it's really, really hard to say goodbye at any age, but she lived an amazing life. She was healthy to the end, she asked quite a story. And I know this can be a little bit different. If you want to skip ahead, you can. But you know, we all have amazing stories to share. And I just want to share with you a little story about my mother. Before we begin, I hope that's okay, like I said, feel free to skip ahead. But I hope that you find this of interest and it gives you a little bit more understanding to myself but also helps you appreciate all that we have a little bit more so my mom was 94 when she passed away. This is an obituary that was written by my brother, who is a great writer, but really encompasses all of the feelings of her other children. And hopefully this is inspiring to you as well. But she was a woman of great heart and inner strength who surmounted unbearable tragedy to create a warm household for her large loving boisterous family, alongside Frank her beloved husband 73 year saris at 7473, gifted with a keen mind and as a flair for numbers. She freely lent her time and bookkeeping extra to countless volunteer organizations, she helped kept the books manage the finances of my father's a small business that he created. She was a generous supportive education, the performing arts, numerous charities and moved by an ever deepening well of compassion and important benefactor of children's hospice care. She was a kind woman, a loyal friend, a loving mother and a caring grandmother and great grandmother. She grew up in the Bronx in New York City. I do have New York City roots. That's where my parents grew up. In fact, my mom met my dad at the 92nd Street Y. For those of you that are familiar, interesting point that when I was at Amherst College, my freshman year I did an internship at the Whitney Museum of American Art and I actually stayed in the dormitory there for two and a half weeks. They used to be a bowling alley in the bottom of that, or the basement of the 92nd Street y where they met my father went off to war, World War Two came back, they ended up moving out here in California. My father was a special educator. So he began his teaching career in a small town near San Diego. I don't think I need to go through all of this. But, you know, when I was young, or I should say even before I was born, even before my oldest brothers were born, it turns out that my mom had three other children. They had a son, they moved to Porterville. Doug, age six succumb to kidney disease. It's when my dad in 1956 started to work with the new palates verde school district here in Southern California, moving first to LA and Anaheim. They had a daughter Carol, a son, Ira who has my oldest brother. They have two more sons, Michael and Kenneth in late summer 1962. KENNETH died in infancy and then in December, Maryland lost her only daughter, eight seven Kara, who passed away from leukemia. Despite deep sadness, Marilyn was resolute and unwilling to dwell on tragic misfortune, she persevered and bearing three more sons, Larry, Gary Neil, on the youngest of five, she gave them what all five fondly remember, as a warm, secure and carefree childhood. My mom never gave up. And it's because I am here. And I know that my mother would want me to move on as well with my life with my business with helping others as she helped others. So like, my father was an educator, I feel like I'm following his footsteps. I feel the same with my mother. And here I am today, I thought that I was gonna start crying here. I didn't, thankfully, would have been an awkward podcast episode if I did. But yeah, I was thinking the whole time, how am I going to talk about this in my podcast, I think this is the perfect way to begin this episode. And you know, I'm not putting this behind me, my mother and my father are part of me. I think of them all the time, I miss them all the time. And it is their spirit that will keep guide guiding this podcast and indirectly guiding you as well. So maybe it was appropriate that you got to virtually meet my mother, May her soul rest in peace in heaven together with my father. Wow, okay. You know, part of this is also sort of bereavement therapy for me, believe it or not, and now that I'm beyond that, I feel I feel a lot better. And I'm able to move forward. So thank you for listening. And even if you fast forward, well, thank you for indulging me, and giving me even that time to do that. So the topic of today is how to pivot your digital marketing strategy for 2022. And as you know, social media marketing is a solid part of digital marketing. And a lot of you have followed me for my social media marketing device, so I'll have that as well. But this episode is also going to give you a little look into this digital first approach that I take to marketing, my digital first group coaching community, this mastermind that I have, as well as this book that I've been promising you, that I really hope to get back to in the very, very near future. But regardless, I want you to see the way that I see things because I think it's gonna provide extremely impactful advice for you and your business, no matter where you are on your digital social media marketing journey. beginning of the year, I know we're already in the February, I apologize, I was a little bit late, like I said, my mother passed away on January 3, right at the beginning of the year, when you have all these plans that you want to kick start and jumpstart. And, you know, sometimes, as Mike Tyson says, you open up your front door, and someone punches you in the face. And that's exactly what this felt like. But regardless, I take a look at these things, right. And you can do this in a quarterly basis. You can do it on a monthly basis. I think it's a little overkill, but definitely on an annual basis. And if you haven't done this, I want you to do exactly what I'm going to do. First of all, what was your output, this is your marketing output. Okay, I'm going to talk about my marketing output, I'm going to talk about the initial results. These are sort of in the funnel. They are not above the funnel, but they're sort of at the top of the funnel. And then I'm going to talk about the middle of the funnel with strategic results. I'm gonna talk a little bit about sales, and how I processes all into a simple plan for 2022. I don't like to get too much into details, but I do like to have the data that supports my ideas and supports why I'm telling you what I'm telling you and I think no matter what podcast you're listening to Want you to also ask for the data that proves what they're saying. So let's first take a look at the output in 2021. I would say that blogging is the thing that I was most consistent at, believe it or not. I have been publishing for pretty much four blog posts a week since Coronavirus, started, I really double down on this. You'll hear the results later. But I blog, I create two unique blog posts a week. Those are Mondays and Tuesdays because the transparency Wednesday's is Republic content. Yes, it's okay to republish content. And yes, if you haven't been republishing content, you probably shouldn't have talked about this before on this podcast as well. And then I have one guest post a week. So no matter how many people reach out to me that want to be part of my platform, and I'm all about collaborating with other smart people with smart advice, and providing my readers, multiple perspectives, it is no greater than 25% of my content, I am actually really passionate about this concept of guest blogging, and I am working on a lead magnet or an e book on that topic. Stay tuned for more details on that. But for me, this is the output I needed, I'm not going to go overboard and say I'm going to blog twice a day, I think blogging four times a week, over the course of a year, says that in my library of content, I have 200 pieces of content. And for most companies that that is enough, you don't even need to blog four times a week. That's just me. And for me, blogging is also r&d. As I write this new book, I am a social media marketer turned Digital Marketer does a lot of traditional digital marketing things that I don't have the deep experience and other experts in. So my blogging in many ways, is part of my r&d as part of my own learning. And what I learned, I share with you, as you know, from this podcast, and for everything else I do on the internet or what have you. So that's blogging. And you know, the goal for 2022 is stay consistent. I used to have a three month pipeline, a blog post that's been cut down to about two months because of my mother's passing away or what have you. I knew I want to get that built back up. And I want to stay consistent. Is there enough for me to blog about four times a week? Yes, for 2020 to 2023, maybe not, maybe the republishing becomes twice a week, maybe new content becomes once a week. But for those of you that have listened my earlier podcast episodes on building the library of content, I need to build a library content, I need to have a blog post for every unique keyword that I'm targeting. It's not as simple as that. But that's the gist of it. And that's why I maintain that schedule. And like I said, I'm going to talk a little bit about those results in a bit. Okay, so that's blog, then we have YouTube. Now YouTube is the area that I promised myself or I committed to doing more strategically in 2021. Sad to say that, although I did a lot of r&d on it, my output, I only was able to increase my total videos, my Neal Schaffer YouTube channel from 14 to 16. Okay, that is not very impressive, you know, publishing 200 blog posts a week, and I'm only able to do two videos. And I know, it's hard. I feel what a lot of you feel, I am happy to say that I've already published two new videos in January. And I have two more in draft mode, I would like to get to a point where similar to this podcast, where on average, when there's no big gaps, like I had recently, I podcast weekly, I'd love to be able to do the same on YouTube. I'm trying to get there. I have an infrastructure in place. And for me, it's really about building that strategy. And making sure that the content has impact. There's a lot of different directions I can go. So you'll probably hear me talk more about YouTube this year, because it's something I want to do more of myself. And I want to share with you that experience. But yes, I need to do more on YouTube. And yes, it is something I'm strategically working on. Now my podcast. So I launched a second podcast for some of you that knows some of you may not know, called the School of influence. This podcast launched in January of 2021, I believe. And at the end of q3, I decided to stop collaborating on it. And I really feel like most marketers, we enjoy shiny new objects. It's like, Yes, I can do that. Yes, I can do that. I can do that. And not and not but you can't do everything. And perhaps some of the reasons that I wasn't able to implement some things that I'm talking about, specifically, my YouTube strategy, and specifically my digital first book was that I was just too spread out. So I know that Amanda and I love Amanda, she is awesome. I highly recommend that you subscribe to the podcast, I know that she's going to carry on and and I'm happy to support her as we transition that over but that's the reason why you haven't seen any new episodes. And that's sort of a strategic decision that I had to make. Because as I learned early on in my career, part of a strategy is also deciding what not to do. You really need to stay focused. So with this podcast, I rebranded from maximize your social influence to your digital marketing coach because that's what I do now. It made total sense. I ended publishing 49 episodes in 2021 that I'm, I'm proud of, I think 50 episodes a year is what I want to do so launched a new subdomain for the podcast, a new website, podcast dot, Neal schaffer.com, you should definitely check it out. You can find shownotes transcripts, and a player and listen to every single one of my episodes straight from that website. So I want to continue on. I think I did a lot of a lot with podcasting in 2021. And I know when I have people that come to my membership reached out to me as a fractional CMO. A lot of them have heard me on my podcast, so I know it has that impact. What I want to do this year is really be more strategic, and raise the quality of both my own content, and those guests that I invite to be on the podcast. Now, email, I have a weekly newsletter, I have a monthly newsletter. And I would like to say I was fairly consistent in 2021. Yes, there were some times where I was a little bit later missed. But I think overall, I did what I wanted to do, I also have three different lead magnets, I updated my digital marketing tools lead magnet, I'm gonna put the links to these because I also have a great maximizing LinkedIn for business ebook, which I last updated in 2020. I'm going to be updating that shortly as well. And then finally, I have obviously my preview of my age of influence book. And what I want to do with my email, though, is even a weekly newsletter is really hard to maintain. So I want to leverage sequences more, to free up more of my time. And I want to create more lead magnets on a variety of subjects to help build my list. I'm going to talk a little bit about this in a bit. But this is sort of my strategy because I know the impact that email has. Now social media is sort of the other big group of channels of regarding my digital marketing, social media, I've had stable growth and stable growth in conversions from social media, not so stable. On the website, traffic generation. I'm gonna talk about that shortly. So that's the digital marketing, blogging, YouTube podcast, email, social media. Yes, there's other things. But in a nutshell, that's it. And in my digital first book, its search, email, social, right? Those are the big ones. And in search, you have blogging with Google, you have YouTube as a search on your podcast, Apple podcasts. There's other search engines like Amazon, if you're an E commerce owner, there's YouTube, people search for podcasts on YouTube. So we can go talk about Spotify, I Heart Radio, but in a nutshell, that's what it is. I like to keep things really, really simple. I like to provide you clarity, but clarity with impact. So let's now go down and look at the initial results. These are more of well, we're not top of the funnel, but we're sort of moving down the funnel, the top of the funnel is people people are finding this stuff, all this output that I'm doing right, let's move a little bit further down. And look at each one of these channels. In more details now blogging. Man, I had an amazing year, my pageviews increased my by 50%. My total sessions were up 54%, I was already starting at a pretty high level. What's really interesting, though, is my sessions via social referral, this is all Google Analytics, we're down by a third. Okay, I was able to increase by 50% Because my traffic from organic search increased by 80%. Even traffic from email from my list was up 38% Social media was down 32% Even my direct traffic was down 11% I think 2020 was a big year when I launched the age of influence. And a lot of people, you know, directly coming to my site that went down 11% That to me when I work with my clients is indicative of your brand awareness. And my brand awareness took a little bit of a hit 11% I'm okay with I didn't put out a new book. So I get it. But I'll take that 80% increase in organic search. And you know, interestingly enough, the bigger generators are traffic from Twitter, Pinterest, Facebook, these all went down between 30 and 40%. Pretty big drop, LinkedIn actually increased 9% Instagram, believe it or not increase 35% YouTube increased 254% the Instagram and Twitter or YouTube numbers are pretty small to begin with. But nevertheless, you get a sense that and I didn't really tweak my strategies for those networks. And on every network, I'd seem to be getting more and more followers and I do try to tweak the content strategy to try to get more traffic. Needless to say that obviously something has changed in the world social media. I'm gonna talk a little bit about that. But that's the blog. So the blog page views up 50% To me, that's all that matters in terms of like top of the funnel, YouTube. My YouTube views even though only published two new videos YouTube is huge, and very few people are publishing content on YouTube compared to blogging. My views were up 68% The amount of hours spent with those very few two videos I had were up 56% My new subscribers were up a whopping 163% So this is all very grateful. Positive, I know that there is huge potential, like there's huge potential with search engines. There's huge potential with YouTube as well. My podcast, my annual downloads increased by 7%. Now I'll take an increase. But well, I think it's someplace that I need to improve. And I need to up my game, there's various ways to grow a podcast, maybe that's a subject for a very, very different podcast. But this is something that I need to improve if you publish cumulatively. And if you have new subscribers that download old episodes, then the annual download number increases by a lot more as you can imagine, because you have more episodes over time. So I consider a annual download of increase of some percent as flats, and not enough new subscribers, and I need to improve that. And one thing that I am doing is being more productive and being on more other podcast guest podcasting, I get asked to be on a lot of podcasts. And now I'm actually color coding an item on my Google calendar. And basically, if I'm going to do 50 of my own episodes a year, I want to be on 50 episodes a year, I think organically, I'm able to do it. It's not like when I released the age of influence, I was on like 100 episodes in 90 days, but just once a week, I think is very reasonable. I think it's achievable. And it's something that I want to do. And I think that's hopefully going to help. That's one strategy, among others, I'm thinking, now my email marketing, I made a big transition from Active Campaign to ConvertKit in q1 of 2021. Since q1 2021, in queue two, three, and four, my subscribers actually increased 31.5%, despite the fact that I am very, very aggressively pruning, even like I said, email to my website, or people that came from my email to my website was up 38%, I'm very happy with that, I know that I can increase subscribers even more. And once again, I'm going to talk about that in one sec. Now, as we move down the funnel, right? To me, it's all about conversions. It's all about getting people on my email list, so that I can communicate with them a little bit more frequently, and promote what I'm doing a little bit more frequently as well. Because you never know when they're going to search for me or go to my website, you never know if they're going to be following me on social or see that particular tweet in their newsfeed at that particular time. But email is going to get to them, or it gets to most people, I know I have very high deliverability deliverability, whether they watch it or not, or I should say whether they read it or not, is another story. But hopefully that makes sense. So I had an increase in conversions on my website, which are through these primarily these lead magnets of 288%. So I'm really happy about that 80% I'd say 50% increase in pageviews 288% increase in conversions, I will take that I attribute this mostly to three things more search engine traffic, when I look at the sources of these conversions, actually more from direct traffic, even though direct traffic fell, I got more conversions. I think even though it fell, I'm getting more targeted people over and webinars, I didn't do many webinars, but webinars have impact when you are able to get really good guests together. And one of the things I wanted to do in 2021, which I didn't do was to have a virtual my own virtual Summit. So hopefully I'll be able to do that in 2022. Interestingly enough, even though social media traffic fell by a third conversions from social media still increased by 11%. So once again, as I target my content, in hopes of getting more website traffic to more relevant topics, I think that I'm getting the right people to my website, and therefore those conversions are increasing. If you're curious, as far as conversions go, I still get the most from Twitter, I had a 2% increase in conversions from Twitter. Interestingly enough Pinterest, who generates the second most traffic for me after Twitter moved ahead of Facebook in terms of conversions to number two, fit Pinterest conversions actually increased by 135%. It's still why I am active on Pinterest because even though my traffic dropped by 42%, I'm reaching the right people, my conversions are increasing. Facebook and Instagram conversions both fell by 11 and 12%. But LinkedIn conversions grew by 32%, YouTube fell, but YouTube is a very, very small number. So that gives you an idea. So here's the thing, right? You have networks that you got more conversions on, or you got traffic, you got, you know, networks, where the conversions declined, where the conversions decline, I could spend more time there and try to fix that. Or it could be the sign of something more prevalent that's going on with the algorithm or what have you. Whereas the things that increased I feel I can increase them even more. And that's sort of the strategy I take now if I feel that I shouldn't be increasing. It's not that's another thing but the fact with declining organic reach that traffic generation and therefore conversions are decreasing across any social media should come as no surprise to anyone of you. Now want to get to the bottom of the funnel, the sales. I'm not going to go through the details and all the numbers but it was a very, very good year for me Both 2020 and 2021 were very, very good years. And now in 2021, I rationalize my product offering. Obviously, I have speaking. And I've teaching, I've always had that. But I've always offered various consulting, various coaching. And I have rationalized that into a fractional cmo marketing. I've already published some videos about that I have more coming. And I finally redid my product page. So go to Neal schaffer.com/cmo. If you want to check out the video and more details of what I do, that is the marketing consulting that I do. And then I have it started as a group coaching membership community, which now I basically call mastermind community because I have a lot of marketing experts like myself that are members, and it acts more like a mastermind, where it's not just me coaching everybody, it's everybody coaching everybody. So now I have a rational funnel, I have rational products, they're both my website, the meme, the mastermind community application process, that's still not the best buyers journey, actually revamping that I hope to have that up in the next week or two. But now, I'm in a different situation. Now I have all this traffic, right. And I do have these two digital offerings, or I should say, digital services. But I want to create more digital products, more digital services this year, to be able to capitalize on all the increased traffic that I have, if they're not, if they're not converting here, I need to create other things, other ways of serving people and helping businesses that will convert one of those things I'm looking at doing is a workshop that I've talked about for some time, that got pushed back, but I hope to implement that as well. And obviously, this year is the year that I really want to finish publishing Digital First, which I hope becomes the definitive digital marketing playbook for 2022 and beyond. So the plan for 2022. And it really mimics the advice that I've been giving you on this podcast is to focus on non social evergreen content outlets, my blog, my podcast, and YouTube, the blog and podcast pretty stable, I want to obviously increase the quality of my podcast be a little bit more aggressive in terms of trying to grow my podcast numbers, but YouTube, it's the output, I need to get out there. And I need to create more videos I have a lot of I have a lot of things to talk about. I have hundreds of blog posts, and a few 100 podcast episodes that I can now repurpose the concepts, the ideas, the content into videos. That's what I need to spend more time on in 2022. And I'm committed to it. And now that I have improved my SEO significantly, I need to create more lead magnets to get even more conversion. So I have a definitive guide, email marketing lead magnet that is hopefully going to be released in the next week or two. And I'm also working on another one all about guest blogging. We'll talk about that maybe I'll have special episodes when I release these. But these two are basically in the pipeline. And I hope to publish both of them in February, not only to serve you but also my visitors on my website, and hopefully to build up my list even larger. Now that I have a large now that I have more website traffic, I want to get more conversions with more lead magnets. And now that I have more conversions, I want to provide a larger list more products to buy. Thus, I want to provide more digital services and products. Finally, and this is a topic of my digital first mastermind today, we talked about outlines. And it was one of my members who provides financial advisors basically gets them clients. And he gets them clients two different ways, either organic LinkedIn messaging or paid Facebook ads. And he says Neil, we need to use social media was what it was meant for social media was about real time engagement. And he's like, I look at my my daughters. And I look at how they use social media. And that's how I try to use social media as well. And it's funny, he mentioned that because I look at my own children, and they're on Instagram, but they're not posting all the time on Instagram, but they're using it as their direct messages. They're not using email, they're not even necessarily using chat, Instagram to them has become a much more easy way of keeping in touch with each other. And it's funny because this sort of has synergy with what I've been talking about, which I'm going to be talking about more in this book that I'm writing is using social media what it was meant for as well, which to me, is building relationships. I talked a lot about this in the age of influence. When I talk about influencer marketing. It's about developing relationships with people. So I wholeheartedly agree with what my member was talking about in our community call this morning. But it's also about giving social media algorithms what they want, and they want video. It there is no doubt about it, whether it's short form or long form, that's what they want. And I think anybody who is able to produce video for social media is going to reap the benefits of it. And I don't need to publish any more links to my posts. But I do need to publish more visuals and more videos which I think at the end of the day might actually lead to more conversions. That is sorry The conclusion, I have come to I have seen how publishing one idea pin on Pinterest, for instance, can generate the impressions of publishing 20 links. But I know it's also going to be prioritized more in the algorithm. And I know that it's going to be featured prominently on my profile, leading to more profile visits, more followers, more visitors to my pins, and at the end of the day, more traffic to my website. So it's a little bit of a leap of faith. But 2022 is when I'm going to take that leap of faith in terms of my content that I publish. And if I'm going to be doing more YouTube videos, heck, I should be able to do more videos on social media in general, but videos and YouTube last forever videos and social, they're here and gone. That's why I'm going to be starting with YouTube before I moved to more and more visual, and more and more a video first social media strategy. So there you have it, I wanted to share that with you. Because number one, it gave me a reason to analyze all this stuff. Number two, it sort of makes me accountable. This is what my digital first mastermind community, part of it is all about, is making ourselves accountable. And when I announce these things publicly, it makes me accountable in your eyes, right. But number three, I wanted to share with you my own thoughts as to why I am recommending doing some things over others. I start with my own brand, I replicate it with my clients, I see what's working, what's not working. And that's what I talk about on these episodes. And I'm going to make sure as I try to improve the quality of the content that I'm giving you that I give equal weight to all these things that I've been talking about. But I hope this inspired you to look at your own results the same way. All of this was done Google Analytics, I did go into my podcast analytics, I did go into YouTube Analytics. And I did go into obviously, my email marketing software ConvertKit. To find this information, it doesn't have to take a long time. But really this is where you see how social media, every social networking site, they need you to stay on the site longer, they don't want to lead people off. LinkedIn is sort of the outlier because they have other products that they're selling, they don't care. If you get a little bit more or better organic engagement, you don't have as many people publishing content there. So that's why LinkedIn is very unique in terms of being able to generate more traffic, more conversions. That's why I'm still pretty bullish about LinkedIn, and Instagram. Although my views went down Instagram, I do believe I am still able to get way more impressions, my content there than I am on Facebook. But then again, on Instagram, I tend to stay more personal. And really, I'm using Instagram the way it was intended to be used as well not as this one way promotion channel. So hopefully, that inspired you to have a more strategic here. And if any of these topics seemed more interesting to you than others, I would really appreciate if you reached out to me, you can come to my website, fill out a contact form, you can email me, Neil Neal Schaffer Comm, you can tag me on social, let's continue the conversation. Let me know how I can best serve you. Let me know those topics that resonated with you that you want to learn more from. And as always, I just want to also say thank you for all those reviews that keep coming in on a consistent basis for this podcast. It really means a lot to me. It is the coffee or the virtual coffee that keeps me running. And well thank you as well for allowing me to pay tribute to my mother. And hopefully now you understand why I did that in the way I did it. And I just want to thank you for being you and for continuing to subscribe to this podcast. If you haven't, make sure you do. I'm only revving up folks with every year I challenged myself to create better and better content and provide more and more utility. I think it's the right word here for all of you. So make sure you subscribe. Stick with me. It's going to be a fantastic year. I look forward to serving you. I look forward to our businesses growing. And that's it for another episode of this podcast. This is your digital marketing coach Neal Schaffer signing out. You've been listening to your digital marketing coach, questions, comments, requests, links, go to podcast dot Neal schaffer.com. Get the show notes to this and 200 plus podcast episodes and Neal schaffer.com to tap into the 400 Plus blog posts that Neil has published to support your business. While you're there, check out Neil's Digital First group coaching membership community if you or your business needs a little helping hand. See you next time on your digital marketing coach.