Your Digital Marketing Coach with Neal Schaffer

Party Your Way to Success: Practical Social Media Marketing Strategies with Jason McDonald

• Neal Schaffer • Episode 325

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Imagine attending a party that teaches you the ins and outs of social media marketing. That's exactly what we explore in our conversation with Jason McDonald, best-selling author of digital marketing and internet marketing workbooks. Jason shares his expertise on SEO, social media, and ads, as well as his journey from working in the embedded systems industry to helping small businesses succeed online. Plus, we dive into his fascinating experience creating a coloring book about Donald Trump.

We discuss Jason's party analogy and how it can be applied to both B2B and B2C marketing strategies. Learn how to approach social media marketing like attending a party and figure out what kind of party you should be throwing. We also break down the complex world of technical analysis, making it simple and accessible for small business owners. Discover the importance of understanding the big picture, sequencing tasks, and translating tech jargon into terms that make sense to marketers.

Finally, we chat about promoting Jason McDonald's books and how businesses can find success in digital marketing. Jason shares some valuable resources for those who may not have the means to purchase his books, and he invites you to join his Digital First group coaching membership community. Don't miss this engaging and insightful conversation with Jason McDonald that will surely spark some new ideas for your marketing strategies. Join us and get ready to party your way to social media marketing success!

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Speaker 1:

If social media is the party, what is your role? What is your business's role? Can you answer that question? Well, this is going to be part of a great discussion today that's going to offer you some very, very practical tips on social media marketing, but I guarantee you you're going to have a mindset shift that's going to help you become better in everything you do in social media. It's all part of the plan that's going to be unveiled in this next episode of the Your Digital Marketing Coach podcast.

Speaker 1:

Hey everybody, neil Schaefer, here, i am your digital marketing coach, and I am proud to be your digital marketing coach. Please try and find information, try and find special guests that can help both you and me learn. So today is no exception. I will often, in order to find guests that I want to learn from, i'll go on to Amazon and I'll look for books in the areas that I do work on or areas that I help clients on, and this is no exception of how I found this author. Now, the author's name is a very standard name Jason McDonald.

Speaker 1:

You may have never heard of Jason McDonald, but I bet you if you were to go to Amazon and do a search for social media marketing workbook, google ads workbook, seo workbook. You will find his work and see that every year, year in, year out, he has published these best selling workbooks out of hundreds, sometimes thousands, of five star reviews. So I couldn't resist reaching out to Jason. He's actually one of the coolest people you'll ever meet. You can go to youtubecom slash Neal Schaefer if you want to see the video of this interview, but some of the things we covered. Obviously I talked about that party analogy, but also we look at the technical analysis, the technical infrastructure and framework that you need to know to best leverage social media marketing, as well as the future. Where are we going? Hint, it's all about recommendation engines. There's a lot of really, really practical know-how that, even if you think you're an expert, i think you're going to learn something here. So keep listening to the end and I really hope you enjoy this interview with Jason McDonald.

Speaker 2:

You're listening to your digital marketing coach. This is Neal Schaefer.

Speaker 1:

Jason McDonald, welcome to the your digital marketing coach podcast. Hey, glad to be here. Thank you so much, Jason. I know we tried back and forth finding the time. I know you're real busy and it's almost like every day.

Speaker 1:

I'm on Amazon looking for a marketing, digital, social media marketing related book. Your name pops up in like 2023 revision, So I know that you are extremely active in many, many ways And, in fact, in my digital first mastermind community actually a reader she's actually reading the book we're going to be talking about today, which is a practical or social media marketing workbook. I'm still working my way through your Google ads workbook 2023. And, yeah, I love just you're bringing this like very, very practical education to so many small business owners and practitioners around the world that need it. So, before we get back into that, though, Jason, I know you teach at Stanford. I want to know just how all started. Now You know I already have a clue after you know reading your book and understanding you actually have a very, very long history in what we would call internet marketing or online marketing, but I'll let you take it from there. Yeah.

Speaker 3:

So I go way back. So I built my first website in 1994 and I had a tech company and that's what got me into websites and SEO and how websites become popular through search engine optimization. And then I'm a recovering PhD. I have a PhD from University of California, berkeley, so Go Bears. So I think that's where I get a lot of my like kind of like intellectual, philosophical vibe to what I do.

Speaker 3:

And then in 2008, i started teaching SEO, social media and AdWords for a company in San Francisco sort of kind of reconnect with some friends of mine from Harvard. And that's how I kind of got re-back into this. And then what I realized is like you know, what I really liked in graduate school was I liked the teaching and the discussion and the explaining things, and what I hated was like the petty politics. So I was able to kind of pull that part of my career back in. And then since then I've done really well. I have really popular books, i teach for Stanford Continuing Studies, i meet a lot of people and I enjoy just kind of taking the concepts of digital marketing and explaining them and helping people sort of have a framework to understand them. And then I'm also very kind of practical. I like to actually do it and get it done, as opposed to just like ivory tower pontificate about it. So that's kind of how I got into it And I and that's that's kind of my career path.

Speaker 1:

So before this started, you mentioned PhD at Berkeley. What subject matter was that in? I'm assuming it wasn't directly related.

Speaker 3:

No, this was kind of before the internet, right? Yeah, it's funny how things work, though. So I finished my PhD in 1992. And if you really want to know the the the idea, i wrote my PhD on economic utopianism in Eastern Europe, so it's really very academic, very weird It does.

Speaker 3:

I could explain why it relates to what I do today, But here's sort of a funny story. I did a little book in 1992, 93 on doing business in Hungary. I did it with a co-author and we emailed copies of the book between Budapest and Berkeley Through and this is right at the beginning of the public internet, and we were able to use email to send the book back and forth. So I go way back on the internet to like the really early primitive days And I think I started to like have the cogs in my head like this is going to be really cool for business, right, And so that's kind of my backstory and how, how I got interested in this.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, i was in college in the late eighties and I remember going to the computer center where we had our printer that we printed from our room and there was something I believe it's called Usenet. I had friends at Berkeley at the time and we that was like email right.

Speaker 3:

Correct, So kind of there. I mean, I would not say I created the internet with Al Gore, but I was kind of there at the very early stages And I worked subsequently. I worked at a media company in San Jose and started to see, like that the internet was going to have a huge impact on media and publishing. So I have a lot of background in media, publishing, advertising and obviously this has been a revolution in all of those areas. So that's my background and how I got into this And I love it. I love it for that reason, I think.

Speaker 1:

Well, i want to ask you when you took on your first client? so I began more as an intellectual networking get to know people, share my knowledge, and then I these companies, reach out to me. This is January 2010,. Completely different industries. They knew they needed to do social media, but they didn't know what they needed to do. They didn't know what they didn't know And they just wanted my help and how I could help them. And I'm assuming that you probably got in the same way. Yeah, these companies reaching out to you. They knew you were knowledgeable about it. How did you like, how did that first start for you?

Speaker 3:

So my first relationship was with companies in what's called the embedded systems markets. This is a very techie. Now there's this thing called. IoT embedded internet of things.

Speaker 1:

Did you know Jerry Fiddler by chance?

Speaker 3:

The name rings a bell Yeah.

Speaker 1:

I used to work at Wind River Systems.

Speaker 3:

There you go. Okay, yes, i know the market well. Yes, there you go. So that was my original group of people that I worked with Small world And sort of I don't even remember the name of the woman, but when Wind River launched their first website, i was launching my first website And I remember working with her and we were really excited when we got a graphic image to show up on our website. Okay, that's like that very small community. And then those people some of those people helped me sort of transition into search engine optimization and were some of my first clients in helping them with all aspects of digital marketing, advertising and, ultimately, social. So that's my background.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, jerry Fiddler is a CEO and founder WinRiver. And yeah, i mean, they added TCPIP to an OS and it could network And that was the beginning of IoT And I worked for them back in I want to say 2001, 2002, 2003, and we were talking about it then. Right That, all of these devices, they advertised on the website that I ran.

Speaker 3:

So I ran a web portal for embedded engineers And they were one of our advertisers before they were fired by.

Speaker 3:

Intel. So yeah, yeah. So I was really lucky that you know it's kind of the Bay Area community, the embedded systems community, and then that part of the business kind of went under in 2008. There was a lot of like transformations, obviously, and then I was like you know what? there's a lot of other industries that need this information and this knowledge. And then I basically kind of abandoned the embedded systems industry And now my clients are largely small businesses at this point who need SEO, social media, ads, a whole kind of kit and caboodle of internet marketing. And then I write books on the topic and teach classes on it.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that's really interesting. You know, i'm going back. It was actually 2001 when I left Wind River and it was right when Linux was coming out and embedded Linux was coming out And I thought that this is going to transform the industry and it may not be may not be in a good way for Wind River. That's when I went to a embedded Java middleware company called SBL And then I as well, in 2008, said you know what? there's got to be more industries, bigger, bigger fish in the sea. And I left that as well. So it's interesting how the yeah yeah, the crew is by.

Speaker 3:

I don't have any of those clients anymore.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, i'm completely out as well, but still keeping some friends there, but all right. So, moving from embedded operating systems to helping the small businesses, and obviously right now you're a proficient writer of books. When did that start to happen for you? When did you write your first book?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, so I was. So I'm a big believer in what's called like I think it's called. It's not called habit stacking, but it's like skill stacking. So if you have a skill in one area and you add on a skill in another related area, you tend to get more. You know more value than just two acts. So, for instance, i have a lot of knowledge on these key pillars of digital marketing search engine optimization, google ads, social media And I think, because I have a PhD and I have a background in academia, i have the understanding and the skill set for how to publish books, how to create like long form book content.

Speaker 3:

And so when I started teaching, i kind of looked around at the available like materials to teach a class with And I was like you know, these suck right, they're just dumb, right, they're useless, or they didn't exist either, or you know. And so I basically realized you know, i could take my class notes and write a book and that would help me teach my classes. And then I put that up on Amazon really without thinking about it. And I, you know, everyone has their own skill set. I suck at accounting And my bookkeeper said did you know that you made $30,000 on royalties from your book last year, i'm like what?

Speaker 3:

So then I became much more serious about it And realized that there's a good, solid market for people that want workbooks on these topics And that's how I got it. So among my skill sets I understand like how to write a good book, how to put it on Amazon and how to influence Amazon in a positive direction to kind of showcase my book. So there's a lot of skills involved in book publishing And I am lucky and fortunate to have had good experience there And people like my book. So, fortunately, a lot of positive reviews and positive feedback and they're far from perfect, but I do find people enjoy them and get a lot out of them. So that's kind of how I got into the whole. My little niche is like these workbooks.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, no, it's awesome. And so what was the first book you wrote? And then do you even remember all the different books you have out there?

Speaker 3:

Because you have, so, yeah so the first book I wrote was the SEO book. I wrote a book on SEO called SEO fitness workbook And it was kind of on the I like analogies, kind of analogies like getting physically fit. That book has since become the SEO workbook. That was my first book I published And I think my second book was on ads And then I have my social media work. Those are my three books And I have a book on just marketing to just generic marketing and sort of funny story.

Speaker 3:

I wrote a really weird coloring book on Donald Trump And right when he first became president And that book bombed and I spent about $3,000 promoting that book in my daughter, who is a super lefty And it was a politically agnostic book. So you know, trigger warning, it's not like pro Trump or anti Trump, it was just like how is this weird Trump phenomenon, you know? so I think it was me processing like how did this guy become famous, right, and that book completely bombed And that was sort of a fun little story And my daughter always gives me a hard time like Hey dad, how'd your Trump book do? Like it really happened with nowhere, it was a really stupid, embarrassing book that I published at the time.

Speaker 1:

So three main books and you keep them well revised. And you know, when I wrote my first book back in 2009 on LinkedIn, it's like I'm done that, that was like my like, like a university thesis, right. And then I saw people coming out with books like always revised, always up to date, and that concept of revising books is so important. Obviously, the book is going to run. It's not evergreen. Even though the content might be, there's always going to be newer books. What have you? So? at what point did you realize that you should probably upload a revised version? And then what is? are you basically these three books? you spend the year updating.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, so I revised. So now I revised the books twice a year. I do a quick revision in the summer. I did a big revision in the fall and it is a massive pain in the rear end, right. So everything changes. You know, the superficial level sort of changes. The deep, kind of philosophical like why are we doing this level doesn't change. But, yes, i do update the books and it is a huge amount of labor And there's some strategy which I think about, like what is kind of evergreen and what is changing.

Speaker 3:

And this sort of brings me to one of my frameworks that I try to get people to understand. So I try to explain to people who are doing digital marketing at a technical level. If you know the question, you can find the answer. And here's what I mean by that. You can have a technical feature such as what? Something super simple, how to pin a post on Facebook. Once you realize there is a technical feature how to pin a post you can Google the answer. And with a few good Google tricks, like looking for content in the last year, you can find articles, youtube videos et cetera that will show you how to do it. So one of the frameworks I try to convey to a small business owner, marketer is become aware. I have a question and now I want to know the answer, and this is a really useful tactic.

Speaker 3:

So right now I think we're all suffering through the transition to GA4, which is dog do in my opinion. So we're all being forced into GA4 and there are lots of GA4 questions like how do I set up a conversion in GA4? Or how do I create a report in GA4 for zip codes. Once you know these questions, you can Google the answer And God bless each and every person with a YouTube channel and a blog. They're often answering those questions. So some of the technical features.

Speaker 3:

It's more important to just realize what are you trying to accomplish, and then you can find these answers through the internet. But what I find is a lot of people don't even formulate the question, so they're stumped right. They don't even have, they don't even understand the question. Now there's a whole other backstory as to what are we trying to do with Facebook? What are we trying to do with GA4? And that's where those are evergreen concepts. So, to take GA4 as an example, which is Google's new version of analytics, what are things that marketers wanna know? I wanna know how many phone calls did I get last month? I wanna know did these phone calls originate from organic traffic, from SEO traffic, from ad traffic, from Facebook? And once you know those questions, you can start down the rabbit hole of how do I use GA4 to answer these important metrics for marketing. So that's a skill I try to teach people.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it's a skill that I think most digital marketers and content creators have, but probably outside of that sphere it's not a skill that a lot of just normal people have, and it'll be curious. I mean, i don't think we need to go into the chat GPT rabbit hole, but it's just easier to. I don't know if the answer is gonna be correct or not. We do have hallucinations and I don't wanna get lost in that. But I agree 100%, and Google is really great at these featured snippets of giving you the answer without even having to click a link. for SEOers, that might be another debate, but anyway, i wanna focus on the social media marketing advice bestselling. author of this social media marketing workbook, and before we started this interview, there were a few things that we wanted to make sure that we talked about. One was this conceptual framework of social media being the party, so I'd like you to sort of cover that and why that's important to understand.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, so I think it's really important. So one of the afflictions of modern marketing is people are just running around doing all of this crazy stuff. They're tweeting ad infant item and they're posting stuff on Facebook and they feel like, oh my God, here's TikTok and we've gotta be on TikTok. And they're just in this kind of content rat race where they're just like creating content and doing all these insane things And they have no strategy, they have no vision of what they're trying to accomplish. And I'm trying to get people off of the rat race and into some kind of a framework. So I find that if you say to the marketing manager which could be the marketing manager, could be the small business owner you say, hold on a second, what are you trying to do? You are trying to create a party on social media and it's a party with a purpose. So you're trying to create a fun event where people are gonna show up spontaneously, have a good time and while they're having a good time, you're gonna kind of mention hey, by the way, this is our brand and it'd be really cool if you bought our stuff. And to go back to embedded systems, right, sort of funny. That used to work for Wind River. So I was at a party once from Wind River it was back when I was more of a journalist and they had introduced some new product and this is burned in my head and they had a party. They had a party at the embedded systems conference and it was kind of in the peak, like peak euphoria, like 2000, like 1999, right, their money was just flowing like water And so they had curacao martinis and I love to drink, right, not an alcoholic drinking is bad, you know all that kind of stuff, but I love a good martini. And they had a curacao martini. And you went to this party and they had really expensive liquor and it was like their tornado product and they poured the curacao martini down an ice sculpture that spun the curacao martini and they had this nice, beautiful blue martini that you drank. Okay, so they provided a party with liquor and food and entertainment and good times. And then, about, you know, midway through they're like hold the presses, the CEO or marketing manager, product marketing managers get up and they say here's our spiel about our new product, right, and so they were using the bait of liquor, food, entertainment, curacao martinis, ice sculptures to get people to come in. But it was a party with a purpose, right.

Speaker 3:

And that analogy, i think, is very helpful to people when you're thinking why the heck am I on Facebook as a marketer, why am I on Instagram And what am I doing? I'm, i have invitations, i have content which is like food and entertainment, i have a brand identity and I have a purpose build my brand, create some buzz, ultimately sell my stuff. It helps orient people so they don't get lost in this blizzard of technical stuff on social. So I use that framework in the book.

Speaker 3:

I find it very helpful to orient people because people are very disoriented today. They're just doing a lot of useless stuff with no strategy right, and so that's the framework, that's the meta framework to the book, and it's got lots of sub items Like, first and foremost, content is like food and entertainment and you are producing content for your audience and it better be yummy and it better be good and people better like it and it better fit your brand and ultimately, it's the bait, it's the way that you're leading them to hate, get excited about this brand by your stuff. So content marketing is food and entertainment.

Speaker 1:

Well, I was going to ask you in a B2B perspective and thank you for sharing that. WinRiver, Yeah, Tornado was like this cornerstone product that they came out with that was going to revolutionize embedded software.

Speaker 3:

And it is a great company. Great company, yeah, yeah, yeah. Nothing lasts forever, but I still remember it. I still remember the Kerkow Martinis.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it's amazing. I'm just curious though So the party you know there's all sorts of different companies out there And I'm just thinking of that B2B company that how can they throw a party? I think for a consumer facing brand it's a lot more intuitive. How would that apply to, like the B2B party?

Speaker 3:

Yeah. So obviously you know in this again, like, use the party analogy. So I always say to people like there's the party, that's the drunk frat party, with the people with the things on their head and they're drinking beer and they're getting totally loaded and the police are called and it's insane, right, that's a party. But there's also the party at, you know, at Stanford, where we're drinking fancy white wine and we're dressed up in nice clothes and it's a symposium and we're going to learn something about, you know, the history of the Roman Empire. That's a party too. And so your B2B parties are just more on the side of symposium, learning, knowledge, how to professional development, and your consumer parties are more. You know the insane Taco Bell. Everybody's doing crazy things. Both of those are parties. I'm not making a judgment as to which one is better or worse.

Speaker 3:

So the B2B stuff tends to be, you know, more serious, more boring, right, but it's still party. It's just people are showing up because they are more in learn mode. So it still works for B2B. It's just B2B has the challenge of being more subdued. But hold on a second right Most of us, we live in a professional capacity where we need to learn, we need to stay up with events. People who listen to your podcasts, for instance, are not doing this because this is some crazy over the top. You know Joe Rogan podcast, right? This is for lifelong learning, professional development, and we all have that part in our career too. So B2B is more learn mode. B2c business to consumer is more crazy fun mode. Both are parties. Just know what kind of party you're throwing.

Speaker 1:

Very, very interesting way of looking at it. I love it. I want to get to another point that we were talking about, which is technical analysis, and I'm sure you find, as I do, that a lot of people get lost in the absolute weeds, that which are so thick and there's so much stuff, and people just are going after the wrong. They're looking at the wrong information, seeking the wrong truth. I'm curious, as how do you, how do you, simplify this?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, small business, again, to use an analogy, right? So, to use a technical analogy. So you, you're the party producer, you're producing the content. Content is your food and entertainment. So, let's say you're going to have a party and you're going to have a birthday party, you're going to need a cake. The cake is the centerpiece of the birthday party.

Speaker 3:

When you bake a cake, there's the big strategy Is it chocolate? Is it vanilla? Is it a wedding cake? It is a bar misfit cake, whatever, right, you have all of those big picture strategies. And then you have very, i don't know. I'm also a big cooking fan and barbecuing fan.

Speaker 3:

There are also the technical details, such as how do you sift flour? How do you, you know, whisk an egg? How do you separate an egg yolk from an egg white? Right? So there are these technical things.

Speaker 3:

Okay, so here's what people get confused about, because in social media and the internet, oh my God it's. You know it's, it's abstract, right? So we're lost in abstractions, right? You would never start baking a cake, you know, without some type of recipe, with some type of sequence. Right, you have to do certain things first, right? You don't do the frosting first and beat the eggs last. You beat the eggs first and do the frosting last. You never put frosting on a hot cake. It doesn't work. So the same, when you're looking at technical, it needs to be within a greater context of you know, pinning a post on Facebook, understanding what a hashtag is, running an ad, doing a video, doing a reel, going live. All of these things are technical and you have to know how to do them, but they need to be embedded in your larger context. And that's where people go astray, because it's abstract. People are doing all the technical things with no conception of how they relate to each other. It obviously doesn't work because if you looked in the real world, if you're doing the frosting before you do the eggs, it does not work right. You don't harvest the vegetables before you put the seeds in the soil, but in abstract things, people get confused. So I find if you give people some simple framework analogies, then they start to go oh, i get it. There's a sequence of things that have to happen. And now I don't feel so lost And my wife always makes fun of me because I get these love letters from people who read my books and they're like I was lost until I read this. And now I'm like, oh, it makes so much sense. And you're like, yeah, that's the thing. So that, i think, is a really important part of digital marketing And I think, a lot of marketing really.

Speaker 3:

And the tech companies are the worst. Right, because they're. Look at GA4, right, it's Google. It's run by engineers. They have no social skills. They're all billionaires. They don't know how to explain their way out of a paper bag And there's all of this stuff coming out about GA4. And there's no coherent narrative about what it is as a product and what is it going to solve for you as a marketer. So we as marketers have to take this blizzard of tech from Google and deconstruct it and sort it out and organize it. To go, oh, i see what this does, and I'm literally trying to get my head around GA4. I'm starting to go I understand what they're doing, but they suck because they're engineers. Google is an engineering company and it sucks at marketing. It sucks at explanation because it's just, it's a culture, a bunch of people who are really smart, but they're not good teachers.

Speaker 1:

And I think, Jason, we could almost say that about any social network, And it's the reason why you had to write the books right? There's no explanations on it.

Speaker 3:

All the tech companies really have this problem, so they have that problem. And then, to get kind of metaphysical on you right, they also have the problem that they're all motivated for profit, so they're all trying to get you to average. Google thinks the solution to everything is to run ads and to run even more ads and to spend even more money on ads. And again, when you explain to people you wouldn't go on a used car lot and say, here's my wallet, sell me a car, you wouldn't expect the used car salesman to be objective. The same for Google or Facebook or Twitter or TikTok or whoever Their sales staff is geared towards ads, which are great. I love ads, you can do a lot with ads. But be skeptical. This is in my AdWords book. I say it's like liquor. Right, be skeptical about what they're trying to sell you, because they have a conflict of interest.

Speaker 1:

I was about to say that exact same word. It's a word that I use a lot. I am like you, we're like consultants, and there's a lot of small businesses that I work with. They may be going to an agency And the agency is like oh, we'll take carrier social media, but it's a conflict of interest. If you don't own that strategy right, correct, they're obviously going to recommend things that are going to cost you more money, whether or not they are proficient at it or not.

Speaker 3:

So they can't. Again, sort of funny stories. I can't tell you how many clients, readers of my book, people who've taken my class you say I had this AdWords account and then I, like Google, optimize it and it completely ran off the rails. Right, because they have a conflict of interest, like where I always think, like this is my Berkeley PhD, i'm like, until we have the world communist revolution, stop trusting corporations, right. Go capitalism, yay, but be cynical about what Facebook is telling you. Google, twitter, tiktok, whatever, when it comes to those ads.

Speaker 3:

So I try to give people a framework And then I try to attach it to the real world. Right, you would never go on a used car lot and just blanketly trust the used car salesman. You should never trust the ad staff at any of these companies, of course And I'm not saying they're terrible people Don't cancel me because I'm like, oh, google's evil, but be serious. So I think there's a lot of structural knowledge that helps people become better marketers at what they're trying to accomplish. That's what I try to get across in my books and my teaching.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, no, absolutely. So I want to talk about this other point you wanted to bring up today, which is the concept of recommendation engine, something that I think, with the emergence of TikTok, a lot of marketers have been talking about, but I'd love to hear your perspective on that and why that's really important for marketers and small business owners Huge huge transformation in social media is the transition from what I would call a traditional social media platform to a recommendation engine.

Speaker 3:

And what is the difference between those two structural concepts right? Traditional social media is like Facebook 1.0. You and I are friends. We have a friend request, you post something on your timeline that you know. You get a picture of your puppy. I see the picture of puppy in my newsfeed and off we go. So I see content because you and I are connected in a social sense. That's a traditional social media platform. A recommendation engine basically says hey, jason likes dogs, jason interacts with dog videos, jason looks at dog puppies, jason has posted pictures of his dogs. It figures out that I am a dog person and I own dogs And it shows me content, not because I'm connected in a social network sense to someone, but because the content itself is quote engaging to me.

Speaker 3:

Tiktok is the first recommendation engine. That's what TikTok is. It's an AI algorithm Call it what you want based recommendation engine versus traditional Facebook. Now they're blending. There are attributes of both, but the future and the trajectory is towards recommendation engines. Now flip that around. As a marketer, that means as a marketer. We are all content marketers today. We are all producing content and we are all trying to create content that's highly engaging but connects to our marketing goals. Build our brand, sell more stuff And again talk about structure. You have to understand that the future is now and it's recommendation engines. So as marketers, you need to work on content and not stress so much about like, your likes to your page or those metrics. Those are not as important as they used to be. That's the future. That's where AI starts to come in, because the algorithms slash AI are this quasi-intelligent learning, how to keep people on TikTok 24-7. So that's kind of, i think, such a key watershed.

Speaker 3:

Tiktok social media to me was so interesting because I didn't anticipate TikTok. But when TikTok came along and you start to understand what TikTok means, you realize it's like a revolution in social media and all of the platforms Instagram, facebook, whatever they're all adjusting to this recommendation. Here's a fun fact Again Silicon Valley is not very innovative. It's not. They're not innovative. Google is not innovative. Facebook is not innovative YouTube how did YouTube miss the opportunity that was TikTok? How could all these brilliant people at YouTube not understand this? And here's the dirty secret of Silicon Valley They don't innovate, they acquire. That's just the nature of the beast out there. Google was a one-trick pony and it acquired AdWords and all this kind of jazz, facebook or Instagram. So a lot of this is like you gotta be careful, because the innovation camp comes out of left field, and that's what TikTok is Now. They're all adapting to it, they're trying to adapt it, but these companies are not very innovative. They're not.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, And I think it is interesting for those that are really big in YouTube marketing and do a lot on YouTube that YouTube also has that content. Of that You don't get a lot of views from your subscribers. They tend to come from the browse and all these different features. They're adapting.

Speaker 3:

For sure, youtube and the big YouTube Instagram Reels and TikTok are all in this video AI. but all of the platforms are trying to move towards this type of suggestive structure And then we as marketers have to understand that structure and then create content within that structure. But here's the thing We're not just producing content for content's sake. We're producing content because we wanna build a brand and sell more stuff. So back to the party with the purpose, right? That Wind River party was not just because Wind River wanted to get a bunch of people drunk and give them a bunch of food. They wanted to talk about their product. Yep, we're all doing the same thing, right? So we're not like, you know, john Doe, crazy bass fisherman on TikTok, who just gets a buzz because he has 60,000 views of his video. We're doing it because we're trying to sell something at some level. So you gotta keep that orientation as you adapt to the recommendation engine world, the AI world that we're entering.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and really focusing on the content, but also obviously, most importantly, that purpose, the purpose Never losing sight of that North Star.

Speaker 3:

Right, that's North Star. It's kind of like I was thinking so funny, like there's the older you get right, The more cynical you get, the more you see there's nothing new under the sun. So this is all like if you go to the state fairer and you see the guy with the infomercial type of like it slices, it dices but waits there more, that's kind of like all we're producing as marketers, it's kind of those infomercially. That's really what we're in the business of And we're trying to get people to stop at our booth, listen to our funny spiel and environment. So there's nothing new under the sun. It just takes a new form when it's in TikTok And in a way you could think about like what might come next, or something like that. That's why I think AI is interesting. It's a separate topic.

Speaker 1:

Awesome. So, jason, this has been great And I know that there might be some listeners saying I wanted more like deep technical advice or tactical advice, but I have had clients and people I've talked to. They're going through the motion and they're like, well, what's supposed to happen next? Like why haven't I gotten sales? And you really have to have your house in order if you really want to be effective at this. And you've given us some really really great analogies, really down earth analogies that should hopefully allow everyone to refocus their energies. And the fact that the most boring industry I mean embedded software is one of the most boringness that you will ever find. But the fact that you could do it for that, i mean that's awesome. Jason, i'm curious are there any, i guess? what is your roadmap for your books? Do you plan on writing a new book or will your next book be another revision?

Speaker 3:

So I'm doing revisions, i'm thinking very hard about creating like a basic kind of primer to marketing and maybe doing a YouTube course on it. So I just think there's a real opportunity and need for kind of like a basic primer, like marketing without BS type of course or something, and I think I'm gonna do that with a. I've got to get back into YouTube, my own YouTube channel. I think it sucks. I just don't have the time to invest in it. So I think that could be interesting. Because you know, back to what you said, i'm a believer in the basics, i'm a believer in strategy, i'm a believer in structure. I'm not a believer in some weird esoteric, technical little nugget. That's not me. I think that for my clients who are small business owners, marketers, like in that small to middle size business area, i think strategy, tactic, structure is. Basics are so high value And I'm not a believer in crazy technical, esoteric, insane stuff.

Speaker 1:

No, agree, 100%, And I know you know my listeners know, talking about YouTube, that I believe that the blog world I get a master for my purpose, my strategy, podcasting I'm doing to me and with the emergence of AI and how easy it is to spin text, a little bit harder to do auto and video, but that's coming, I know. But in the meantime, before it's here, video and there's just so much opportunity on YouTube that I see And it allows us to relate as people, which is the most powerful form of communication. So, yeah, so I'm going, as I mentioned to Jason before we started. I've been spending the last few weeks really doing more with YouTube And I can't wait to do more in the future. But, Jason, thank you so much. Obviously, if people want to find out more about you, they should just go to Amazon, do a search for Jason McDonald, but are there any other websites or places you want to send people?

Speaker 3:

So they can Google my name, jason McDonald, if they listen to your podcast, if they just send me a note. I give a lot of books away for free. I just beg for reviews on Amazon. So I have a lot of people that will send me an email and say I'm stumped on extra wire And I say, hey, do you want a free copy of my book? I'll send it to you. I just please write a review on Amazon. No pressure if they don't, it's kind of on our system, but they can just Google my name, jason McDonald, send me an email and I do try to promote my books in that way And I've kind of soft hearted. If you have no money, send me an email. If you have no money, i'm just starting out.

Speaker 3:

And I try to help people in that way. I get kicked out of that.

Speaker 1:

Well, that's awesome, yeah, and you know, also for the listeners, this interview really focused on sort of that framework. You know infrastructure, but you know, case in point, jason's books go into a lot of details. I know it's hard to see here. They go into tremendous amount of details And it really is. In this workbook you can create your strategy as you read the book and continue to flesh it out over the pages. So I really love that style and I agree that that workbook is really needed for people to sort of put pen on paper as to what they want to achieve as they read your book. So well done on that. I'm sure you're going to sell millions more copies. So everybody, go to Amazon, pick up on Jason's books. If you really can't afford it, you can try to reach out and contact them and let them know that you listen to podcasts. But, jason, once again, thank you so much And I can't wait to. I can't wait to finally finish reading your book.

Speaker 3:

Thank you.

Speaker 1:

Well, that was one heck of an interview And you know there's a lot of core social media marketing content that I haven't covered in a while. So I'm really glad, at the timing as well, to have Jason accept my invite and really help all of you and me get a mind shift, or I should say a shift in mindset in how we can best leverage social media marketing. If you are looking for a shift in mindset in the application of what you do every day, not just in social media marketing, but in digital content influence of social media marketing, i would love to help you. I help people businesses in two different ways. I have a group mastermind. We are called digital.

Speaker 1:

First, we are currently at full capacity. We've been at full capacity for a while, but if you go to Neal Schaefercom slash membership, you can sign up for a waiting list and I will let you know when we are no longer at full capacity. It is limited to 15 people. I've yet to start a second one, but if there's enough demand, i will. I also have fractional CMO services. This is marketing consulting, where we work one on one over zoom, or, if you're located in Southern California or you want to fly me out, i would love to work together in person. Go to Neal Schaefercom slash CMO for more information about that, and you should go to Neal Schaefercom slash events and make sure you're on my mailing list so that when I have a new free webinar or getting closer to announce a pre-release discount for my fifth book hopefully in the next month or two I'm working on it. I know I've been saying that for a while. You will get notified of all these special offers, but only if you sign up to the list. Neal Schaefercom slash events.

Speaker 1:

All right, everybody, i hope you enjoyed this episode. As with every episode, i hope it delivered one little bit of information, one little tip, one bit of advice that help you get some positive ROI of you spending your time with me. I am grateful for your support. I'm grateful for your downloads. I'm grateful for your reviews. I'm grateful that you're here listening. That's all I got to say for today. This is your digital marketing coach, neal Schaefer, signing off.

Speaker 2:

For the 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.