Transcript for Show #10 Below:
David Foster is with GeekBeats. And of course once again we’re here with Kimmy.
Hi everybody!
The social media puppet and if you haven’t here before I just want to explain a little bit about Kimmy first and then I’m going to talk to you about David’s background and then just get into the conversation. Kimmy is a salon owner, she’s a small business owner and she is pretty smart in social media. She has been working on her Facebook, she’s even on all these hangouts, Google+. So Kimmy is pretty smart in the world of social media and she loves learning and so we’re going to teach her as a small business owner, at the same time. And who is David Foster? Well, personally I’m super excited to meet David because we have been chatting back and forth on Google+. I think our main medium was on Google+ even though I was part of the hubze network before and I’ve followed you for a long time with Scott Ayers and so it’s me to come face-to-face, I mean it’s like meeting somebody when you’re doing this hangout so it’s really cool.
Yep.
So I’m going to read a little bit about your bio and then we’ll chat about what you’re doing now. So he is an experienced social media consultant, digital product innovator and blogger. He has been a social media marketer going on 5 years. And he’s been an internet marketer for over 15. He was a spammer back when…
Oh, black hat one huh!
I think we’re all guilty at one point. And he’s always worked hard for what he’s done and never went to college, and that’s whole lot of conversation.
I like you already.
He did, however, tours of colleges just out of high school played music so he guess to live a life without the large loan. He never liked working for other people. He loves taking shiny gadgets and he writes with the GeekBeat team is a dream come true. So welcome David, super excited to meet you and let’s talk about what you’re up to now because, tell us a little bit of your background we’re chatting about.
Okay, yeah. Actually when I’d say the spammer when I was an entrepreneur that’s like back in the days when you could build an email list and sent an email. Everybody was so excited getting emails so this is like the late 90s. So you can pretty much send what you wanted and people will just go like, ‘oh I got an email’, you got mail. You know we had those notifications. So I built houses, did construction and just didn’t like the hard, physical labor. I knew that I could be doing something that was easier on my body that wouldn’t kill me later in life because I saw my grandfather have arthritis and can’t do things with his hands and all that. So I started learning web design because computer were something that just kind of made sense to me, not repairing them but just getting on the internet and building websites and stuff like that so I got a couple of big clients. I actually did Sharon Osbornes’ first website before she was like with the talk show and all that stuff, which that’s a whole story. They came after me for her domain name and everything. So I had a pretty nice little clientele and just kept going into that market, got on myspace and was promoting myself there and got a lot of clients for myspace to do when you can do custom myspace profiles and worked into starting the fan page engine with a friend. I had seen, he sent me a link to a page he had done in Facebook that was completely custom. It looked like a website inside Facebook and I asked him I said, ‘is there any way you can automate this process?’ And couple of days later he sent me a link and that was our first version and I knew a couple of marketers, I asked them if they can promote it. They did and we launched on April 1st, 2010 – April Fool’s Day and we did $7000 our first day. And then it just blossomed from there so I had put every other project I was working on hold to focus on that because that’s where the income was coming from. And that’s just about it and just market that for 3 and a half years and that whole industry is suffering because of the changes that Facebook has made, that continues to make so I was looking for other things to do because of Google+ and the relationships I built there I was able to hook up with the GeekBeat team and now I’m writing with them and been a fan of theirs since back in the early 2000s so it’s a dream come true because I live tech, I’m a geek.
Yep, all the little gadgets. Everything that make your life easier but then you have to figure out how to untangle them.
Yep exactly. That’s one thing that I don’t know how I have this gift but I can get any gadget and just figure it out within minutes how to use, how it works.
Well I have an x-box to send you. We’ve taken it it out of the box 10 times. That’s great. Well talk to us a little bit about Google+ and what you’re doing there now, what you’re writing the topics writing about with GeekBeat also.
Okay, yes. I was pretty big on Facebook. When I was on myspace I swore I was never going to Facebook because it was what college kids did back then and just never saw it being anything. I just thought myspace was going to continue but myspace just became a spam farm, it was all ads, those flashy graphics, just the platform completely fell apart. So I have a couple of friends inviting me over to Facebook and I decided I’d go over there and check it out. I started a profile and then some of my old high school friends that I liked and didn’t really want to stay in touch with started adding me as friends so it was a pretty cool experience and then of course, I have the fan page and enjoyed that for a long time but I’m a Google guy. I started back with Google adwords when they first came out. I’ve used gmail since it was still in beta, when it was first coming out. I just always been a fan boy of Google and when Google+ came out I went over there and I just love the platform. The only thing was I just didn’t have anybody that I was connected with over there.
Anybody to talk to?
Yeah, it was like I’m standing on a sofa and saying hey everybody I’m here, where you at? Everybody is around Facebook still so I started a profile but I never really moved over there. Then finally when I saw some people that I knew in the industry that were getting some action over there I decided that the way that I did Facebook was I just dove in and just did it. So I knew that if I have the distraction of Facebook that would be harder so I literally put on my profile, I’ve moved to Google+. I started just auto posting my posts, which I taught people do not auto post from one platform to the other but my justification was that the conversation style on Google+ and Facebook are similar. They’re more in-depth conversation so I didn’t auto post to Twitter because that to me is a completely different conversation.
Okay, and what are you using to do the auto posting?
Friends+me. Well anything that I post on Google+ that I tag with a certain tag would go over my Facebook page and my Tumblr blog and things like that so it’s a really cool tool to do that because I can control what’s going where and what isn’t going somewhere.
Now do you use the paid version of that because I know they have different levels on it? I’ve tested it once at one point when it was free.
Well the free version is good but it’s like $4.99 a month I think for the Premium so it’s well worth it because I get scheduling and stuff so I can do something and have 15 minutes to go in and edit my posts on Google+ to make sure that if I misspelled anything before it shoots it out. But you get faster sending so if I post something it’s literally sometimes not even 2 minutes before it’s already out on Facebook and all that stuff I use a certain hashtag. So I can control by hashtag where stuff goes. So if it’s something I post on Google+ and it’s not really relevant to Facebook so I just put a hashtag for Twitter and it goes to Twitter and that’s it. So I can really control where things are going and I like that because I don’t like everything to go to every place.
Yeah, yeah, I really like that idea. Now, would you suggest for somebody like Kimmy to Facebook like that might get her on to Google+ more if she just..
Yeah what I started doing, and this would work for small business owners, like what I started doing is initially they have a settings in Friends+me that you could link back to Google+. So what I was doing was I was sharing on my Facebook page but linking back to Google+ which ended up bringing some of my fans from Facebook over to Google+ because a lot of times what happens is if somebody just gets to see Google+ and see that there actually is something going on in there then they’ll be more apt to take some action over there because I really feel like with local search Google is the place to be because like for me, if I go to or I’m out in the city I’ve never been and I’m looking for a place to eat, I do a Google search and I go by the reviews and look for local places – man and fox, because I’m not into the big corporate franchises. I like to look for the little guy and help the little guy and that’s I love Google for that reason but a lot of small business owners don’t realize that there that whole aspect, too. So if you’re not claiming your local profile on Google then you could just be messing free traffic.
Yeah, I’m amazed at how many people don’t realize that the Google places is ends up inside the Google+ when it’s clicked on it and people haven’t even set that piece up.
That’s the last thing because it’s like in that instance you have just a short time to make a first impression and that’s our new first impression is not face-to-face like this. Our new first impression is where they land when they click a link. So you have to grab their attention in that short amount of time to let them know hey this is the place that you want to go. But for me, if I go to a site and they have not done anything to keep that up, that makes them not credible to me because I cannot read any reviews, I can’t see their menu, I can’t see anything that’s going to pull me in as a customer.
So what do you suggest?
I always think of it as a wow factor.
Exactly and that’s what it is.
And what do you suggest for them to do like what would be some specifics, name a couple.
Well specifics would be great images of, if you’re a hair salon for instance, I would have a way that people can submit photos and tag themselves of their before and after pictures maybe. Or you know just something that is very visual and fill out your profile information – your phone number, your email address, how do I contact you, what are your prices, what are your hours? Because on Google a lot of people don’t even realize that they put in their hours when I do a search it says whether you’re open or close at the time I’m doing the search. So it’ll say they open in 8 hours so I know based on that search okay they’re close, I cannot but in 8 hours I’ll be able to go there because they’ll be open. So there’s a lot of information because we are information-based society now so if the information is not there we’re just going to leave and just how we’re programmed…
Just move on to the next one.
Exactly. I’m going to see a profile that’s been filled out. That somebody’s taken the time, they actually care to get my business, that’s people’s thinking. And so I’ll go with that based on their reviews I will go with the next best thing.
Completely agree.
When I probably could have ended up having a great experience at the place that didn’t put their profile up there but, you know, I don’t know. And the reason I base everything on reviews is because I’ve had some very bad experiences before when that didn’t exist and so I take that seriously. I want to see a 4 or 5-star review. I don’t want to see a bunch of 1-stars, oh my silverware was dirty, there was hair all over the floor when I walked in, you know that kind of thing.
Uh-huh, uh-huh, yeah. Now what about the larger companies, the entrepreneur, well or somebody like you and me and Lisa, companies that are chained up possibly, the entrepreneur that’s trying to brand themselves specifically? And I know that you had just, tell us about what your successes have been recently because I know you have 5,000 followers that circle you on Google in a very short amount of time. So what was it that helped you do that?
Well all I did was carried over the same philosophy I had on Facebook. That I decided one day when I had 600 and some odd fans that I was going to respond to every comment that was made on any of my posts so I still do that to this day. If I get a comment on my post I am there to respond. I thank them, if I get a mention I’m there, I mean I set up my notification so that anytime I’m mentioned, anytime I’m tagged, anytime somebody responds after a comment I made, I’m back there to carry on the conversation. And also what I do is I do a search for hashtags on, because you can search hashtags on Google+. And I search for hashtags that are in tech, in gadgets, in gear and then I go to that search result and I’m looking for people who are adding to the conversation. And then if I find a good conversation going on I’ll start adding to it and commenting there and that’s how I get people to add me to their circles. And I’m very picky about who I add
personally and that’s one thing that I really like about Google+ is I can completely control my experience. I can control what’s in my home stream. Facebook always tries to tell me what they want me to see and I have to always select most recent. That is the most irritating thing to me in the news feed is always having to select most recent because I will be scrolling down and then it’s set the most popular again so I have to go up there and change it. That just frustrates me because I don’t want anybody, anytime they try to put an algorithm on something, they don’t have me figured out. I’m outside of their box and so I don’t like the fact that they think just like school these days that you can just put kids in the same box and they’re all going to fit. It doesn’t work that way. So algorithms are faulted in that way as far as I’m concerned because I know what the experience. It’s like building my own playlist on Spotify. I can add my own songs that could be completely different than anybody else because I am different than anybody else. So Google let’s me customize my home stream to show whatever I want, how much I want. If I have my circle of geeks, I want that in my notification section, I want that in my home stream, I can control how much of it’s there more or less the max amount. So just overall that experience on Google+ is a lot better. In taking advantage of that I’m getting the notifications of stuff that I really want to have conversation on so I’ve got my VIP’s, they’re called. So whenever they post I’m there commenting, commenting, commenting and just having conversations then I’ve got a couple of them that actually share my stuff just by adding to their conversation. Because they’re on here trying to build things just like I am. So when you find those people that you connect with, it’s just like connecting with people on Facebook, it’s about sharing their stuff and then they’ll share your stuff, it’s give and take.
What types of businesses do you see the most, or you’re probably seen what you want to see at this point but…
Exactly.
So you’re following more the geek, the techie, the you know, which I am too, and that makes you start wondering okay. Because back when they started I called the Google+ like the techie geeks are over there and I love it. But it’s the techie geeks and a lot of the local businesses like why should I be there. And musicians were big for awhile, too, I know. That’s another category that’s large. What do you see? Do you see that completely changing or do you see that as kind of being more of a niche type?
Well I do see a change because I’m seeing real estate agents starting to do very well over there. And I think anybody who just tries to get over there and the beauty is when I do searches and things I can do it locally. Like I have a circle of local people, of local businesses. There’s a couple of coffee houses that I really like in this area that I follow and they’re trying to get on Google+ more but it’s not something like Facebook where, and if you look at the way Facebook is also, it does take time to build that circle but it’s like, or that following. But if you’re not, you just tell yourself to be there and be there. And you have to be consistent. So if you’re going to be there posting, consistently be there posting and that’s when my most explosion of growth happen is when just being there every single day. So it doesn’t matter what social platform you’re going to be on and that’s what I try to say to small business owners you can’t dabble in it. You can’t say I’m going to post once a week on this platform and then if I don’t get any engagement I’m going to try Twitter. It’s like the whole squirrel mentality – squirrel there’s a new red button, I got to get over there. You have to commit to 1 and follow through. And that goes anything with life, if you don’t commit to something you’re only going to be half good at it. If you really want to embrace social platform, and you can embrace more than just one like me I have managed my page on Facebook, I have a Twitter account, I have Pinterest, I have Instagram. So I have a daily routine that I do, it’s a list. In the morning I go do all of my, if somebody replied to stuff I go comment on everything then I check my email then I think about post or do interviews like this or do what I have to do in the middle of the day then at the end I check my email again and then I go back and post on comments. And then through my VIP list I’m monitoring that at different times of the day for mentions and stuff so I’m there to comment on those right away because those are actually engaging me. So I just think that the biggest thing is committing. Because you have, I see a lot of small business owners really wanting to take advantage but they’re not committing to it. They’re just doing it spottily, they’re there once a week and that’s not going to work.
I think a lot too, with small business owners is they get a little side-tracked not just chasing squirrels but oftentimes people don’t know how to network. They don’t know how to communicate with their audience so they’re just concerned about what pictures should I post, what quote should I post. Forgetting that it’s about the relationship vs. the content of just doing it.
That’s why I think that the social media management thing is a good thing because what I tell small business owners is you started your business to do something that you’re passionate about. You shouldn’t have to learn social media, you shouldn’t have to learn email marketing, you shouldn’t have to learn all these extra stuff because that just takes away from what your main goal is and that’s to build your company, your small business. It is hard, but in this day of social it’s a little bit different because we are our own marketing firms. Gone are the days of hiring these billboard companies and phone ads and all these other stuff. We are our own sound board so it’s something that really should take the time to try to learn and the best way that I found to do that personally, is to go find a couple of companies who are doing it right and mimic them.
Yep, look for a model company.
Exactly and that’s the best way to learn because if you can always try to do things what you think are outside the box but you never know how it’s going to be received. But if you see somebody that’s doing it that’s also local, and it doesn’t have to be somebody local to your area, the best thing to do would be to look for somebody outside of your area that’s doing it and bring it that same concept to your area and succeed at it. Do a search on Google+ for hair stylist of hair salon and find one that looks like they’re very active, has a lot of people that have circled them and see what they’re doing and copy it over. And the thing that you need to do that is the most important is don’t have really high expectations at first. It’s something that you have to build slowly and I always help people build it organically. Don’t buy followers, don’t buy likes. Build it organically because if you do it the right way, you do it organically, then it’s real. And as it grows you will have that engagement growing and growing. If you make it false, if people see you got 20,000 people that have circled you and there’s like 2 comments and 1 plus 1, that to me is not a credible company. Because that tells me they’ve done something either shady or black hat or something to get all those followers if they’ve got zero engagement. But if you go to somebody who has 3,000 people in their circles and you see that they’re getting 20 likes, 10 comments, that to me is somebody who’s figured it out.
Yep, good ideas.
Very good. Very good. Well that’s a lot of information. I think it’s so good to talk. We haven’t had anybody on yet that talked about Google+ so I think it’s a really, really good to, I mean, that’s the tool we are using here obviously to even just record. We put this on video and then it’s on a podcast, too, so we’ve got three platforms we’re able to be on in one, with one interview.
And I think that is the thing that is the scariest part of Google+ for many people is there’s so many facets to it. There’s so many things that you can do on Google+ so it’s like when you go there and you land and create your profile, okay then what? Because you’ve got circles, you’ve got hangouts, you’ve got events, you’ve got communities, you’ve got all of these things that are different little parts of Google+ and I think we’re so overwhelmed with information the way it is. So when you see something and you sit there and look at it, and you’re like holy cow I’m not going to figure this out. So what are you going to do? You’re going to go back to what you know. You’re going to run back to Facebook, you’re going to run back to Twitter and you’re like, I’m not quite ready for that yet. That’s something that I’m really trying to work on GeekBeat is I just did a video on privacy settings – setting up your profile so you’re not getting all this notifications all the time and it’s not overwhelming as you start to grow because as I grew and got like 200 people in my circles my email just started going nuts. I have and I’ve got a community that I manage now that has 30,000 members and I’m getting those comments all the time. What you have to do and the most important thing is to shut off some of that noise so it doesn’t become overwhelming because like anything else once we’re overwhelmed we shut down.
Right, absolutely.
So that’s what I’m trying to do with some of these posts in GeekBeat is teach people how to make it a better experience because in my opinion, Google+ is the best social platform as far as the overall experience and what you can do with content, with images, with these hangouts so the whole combination is just, I’m sold on it.
That’s awesome.
I love the organization of it, I wish that Facebook, like you talked about, was wish I had. I’ve 3,000 friends over there over that and I stopped. The list goes on and on for request but I just stopped taking friends because it became such a mess that I didn’t even know where my family was anymore there. So the news feed is so packed and yeah, I can sit and go through those 3,000 people and organize them now but I wish they had that in the beginning like Google+ had like where it was clean and streamlined when we came in.
I did a post long time ago on my blog, Oh No, My Mom’s on Facebook, and like how to hide things from your mother or you’re a teacher from your students and all that stuff and it is a challenge on Facebook but on Google+ I just create a circle and if I share something I can make is so that it is not shared outside of that private circle. So I know that stuff unless somebody has a vendetta and takes a screenshot or something, it’s not going to get out to the people I don’t want to see that and so I love that aspect of Google because I’m able to have private conversations just like an email message with people on there and nobody knows about. I can’t really do that unless I really send a message on Facebook. I can’t do a post and just, unlike unless you said I can go in and create folders and break it all into groups but to do that now – after the fact, that should have been that they thought about at the beginning because that’s something that they’re dealing with now is the experience that everything is too public.
Yep.
And the mess of having the pages weren’t even there at one point and now they are and you had to set up your business as a page vs. Because I now have 2 Janet Johnsons. Lisa has 2 Lisa Saline.
I know.
We’re just like arghh.
What really frustrates me about Facebook, and this is my biggest complain. I have spent $130,000 building that fan base of 60,000 fans so now my business is going out and I’m going to start my new brand which is just branding me, I want to pull those fans over that I paid for and they won’t allow me to because they feel that people will get confused so that fan page, unless I just want to keep it hubze and keep posting, is gone. So that is just money that I spent that I can no longer use. And also I have to pay now to reach those fans because before when I would do a post, five, six, seven thousand people would see it. I’m seeing sometimes now where it’s a hundred people, 20 people that have seen that post. I understand that they are trying to figure this algorithm out to make the experience better for people but what about the people that paid that kind of money? I’m a small business. I can’t afford to just spend a hundred thousand dollars on lose it and make it for nothing. And there’s a lot of companies out there. I should have gotten my own private rep that helped me keep that going whatever but I didn’t even get that. And that’s a lot of money.
Yeah, yeah.
That’s an awful lot of money. Definitely. That’s why it’s so nice to have your email list you can take those with you.
Yep and I do have that but I still want to engage those people that liked that page with content because that’s what I like to do and I can use that page to promote the stuff that I’m putting on Google+ but now I can’t, unless I keep it hubze, which I really didn’t want to do but that’s what they’re going to make me do.
Now you’re with GeekBeat.Tv. What is that exactly, what are you doing for them and tell us about your experience with them and what to send our users to find you and everything?
Okay, GeekBeat is more or less like tech news daily, daily tech news. Daily show that comes out. I started a new show that’s on Monday called Geeks and Gear which I just interview geeks on the gear that 3 gadgets that they carry around with them at all time, like the 3 apps they use, the 3 songs on their playlist, things like that. I started because I’m going to be working on training and courses on social media because geeks kind of fit all these different categories, it’s not just tech gadgets and stuff like that. I’m a social media geek, I’m a music geek, I’m a movie geek. So trying to take things like that and have courses for Google+ to teach people how to better use it. How to have a better experience and so that’s where my role is going to be and I’m actually managing all of their social media now, as well. Anytime, anybody sees anything posted out there on GeekBeat, that’s me now – on their Facebook, on their Twitter and I started the Instagram and Pinterest and stuff like that. And actually you know just in the efforts that we’ve done they were getting between 6 and 8,000 page views a day and in just 7 days they’re up to 15 and 18,000 a day. Just in changing the way that they’re posting things on social media. So it is a very viable thing for bloggers and stuff to use social media, you just have to learn to use it the right way and that’s what I’m going to teach, as well, is people how to do that. Just go into geekbeat.tv, they’d see me over there and you can subscribe and all that stuff to the show. There’s daily shows and weekly live show and anybody who likes tech and geeky stuff.
I’m coming, I like geeky stuff.
Come on over.
Geeks are the new cool. I think we had that conversation on Google+ at one point. They’re the new hot.
It used to be a bad thing, like if somebody called you a geek it’s almost slanderous. Now it’s like I embrace it. A lot of geeks really embrace it because it’s like the new hipster.
Yeah it is, isn’t that funny. The world has changed.
Yep.
Well awesome. I can’t think of any other questions so then circle David, just David Foster.
David Foster 1. I couldn’t get David Foster. I have to compete with an author, a musician, a comedian, so anytime I want to get my name, it’s always taken and the person like David Foster the musician isn’t even using it. They’re just reserving it and won’t let me have it. If I have like 60,000 or 100,000 circles, maybe they’d give it to me but I’m not credible enough for my guess yet.
Yeah, yeah. So say that again, David Foster 1 is what.
Yep, just the number 1.
Okay. Okay, awesome. Well thanks so much for your time and I’m sure everybody’s going to enjoy and I know it’s going bring some people on Google+ definitely.
I hope so and I’m here so if anybody has any questions I’m always open to answering questions if they need help.
That’s great, thank you so much David.
Thank you very much.