Episode 176: 2021 Social Media Year in Review With Jeff Brown

Show Summary

Rob Cairns sits down to talk to Jeff Brown to talk about the year 2021 in Social Media.

Show Highlights:

The Year in review.
Social Media Trends.
Free Speech on Social Media.
Our thoughts looking forward to 2022.

Show Notes

Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. We are live this morning on with Mr. Jeff Brown of Alpha Social Media Inc. and we are going to talk about the year 2021 Social Media in Review. Good morning, Jeff.

Good morning, Robin. How are you doing?

I’m doing well, considering all things going on in life. And how are you this morning?

Well, let’s just say that there is a abundance of activity happening. And I hate to use the word busy, but it is just just like that good things are happening. But no free time to be idle. That’s for sure.

Now, I know, I want to take a moment and dedicate this live broadcast to my Uncle Mac in Tallahassee, Florida, we’re thinking about you. And that’s all I can say on that front at this point in time. So no, life gets in the way sometimes doesn’t.

Absolutely. And it amazes me that it’s constantly moving and changing had a participant one of my programmes her dad just died, and just out of the blue, and boom, so stuff happens. And we, we encourage them, we hug them, we embrace them, we help them to continue to move forward. But you know, life happens.

Yep. Yeah. So let’s jump into the biggest story of the year. And that’s called what I call the friends or the not friends at Facebook, slash meadow, whatever you want to call them. And let’s start with the name change. Personally, I don’t think changing the name of the parent company does anything to change the brand, or the brand’s reputation thoughts on that one?

Well, you can put a lipstick on a pig, but it’s still a pig. Changing the name doesn’t change practices, it just doesn’t change the policies, it doesn’t change. A lot of things that people really are not superduper happy with. Now, there are things that on most social networks, things were happy with. But there are some real key points that even in a name change, it can’t fix that.

Now, it’s so true. And I we before we went to air, we were talking a little bit as watching the news last night reading social media, and Facebook has now jumped in and trying to make Instagram kid friendly. So a couple things they’ve put in is the ability for parents to track their kids screen time, the ability to monitor what two kids are doing. And we have a mutual friend who unfortunately couldn’t be with us here today, Scott Mills, and the bulk of us will tell you that if you start putting in monitoring tools for your kids, they’re gonna find a way around it. They’re smart. What are your thoughts on this whole mess that’s come to light in the last day.

In our original conversation, Rabbi, I originally went to this thing could be used for even greater imagined bosses, monitoring employee, social medias content, stuff like that. Kids will always find the way around a lot of parents lot of ways just don’t care about their kids, and they’re not going to really go for this some will, but some won’t. But my biggest concern is now that you’ve introduced a new technology into the platform, question is, it can now be exploited? Where will the exploit be? I just think about law enforcement. I think about any of the work that I’ve done for Crimestoppers and I think about what’s literally happening with all the security issues, and I’m just thinking that then they’ve now created a way for one individual to monitor another imagine a hacker monitoring a victim for instance, he’s the worst case scenario where this could go if someone could get in and then begin to open the door to God knows what on where this could go and the intentions of the social media network may be somewhat favourable, but at the end of the day, you can’t parent You know, from a phone, you need to parent face to face, you need to be there day to day and having conversations and then as much as possible being part of your kid’s life, if your only monitoring is in on a phone, that’s kind of sad.

Yeah, I would agree. Um, we’ll take that one more. We know in the last year that Apple has its quasi as social media problem, but I might just won’t bring it up here. They introduced the ability to scan iCloud. And what they did was they say they’re scanning for sexually explicit pictures of underage kids. And they’re doing this without a search warrant. And this is the key to me. And I keep saying, I’m all for protecting underage kids. But the problem is, once this technology gets out there, what’s to say they don’t use it to search for other things that weren’t part of the original mandate. And that’s always my concern about things like that. Right.

As we continue to enable more and more things, we become more of a How can I say it? It’s almost like, we become 1984 all over again, so to speak, in reality, when you think about all the stuff that we’re now enabling, and and the question is, why do we want it? For instance, now I know when it comes to exploitation of kids and that kind of stuff, we really need to be diligent, and catching the bad guys, and discouraging that activity. I’m all for that. I mean, I live in an area here where one end of the road to the other end of the road from Halifax to monckton’s called the Highway of Tears, and more young people are abducted than a lot of other places. And it’s, it’s, it’s sad. But at the end of the day, they’re opening up the door for things that even bad guys could use to potentially cause harm. This technology can be once it’s out there, it can be used by anybody.

Yeah, it’s so true. I just wanna stop for a sec. I know, we have a number of live listeners, which is great. If you have a comment, you want to make sure no, I show just insert into YouTube chat. And we’ll bring up bring some of those comments up on screen. So feel free to for use that if you want to. That’s always a good way to converse and enjoy the life. So the biggest problem going back to this mess is, you know, we need to use these platforms appropriately. And I think we’ve seen it a little bit with free speech in the last year it started off. And we did, you and I and Scott did a show about a year ago where we talked about it started off with Donald Trump and censoring him. And then it’s gone into it went into the Canadian election where there were posts pulled down because they didn’t meet standards, then we have all the issues with political ads on Facebook and Google Now. And it’s getting to the point where they’re even censoring business owners like myself, who cannot post my own domain on the Facebook platform, because somebody marked me as spam. And my stuff is so above board. Past belief. What do you think about all this censoring going on?

I’m not a fan period. I mean, we’ve got social media networks with community standards, and I get why they exist. But the it’s almost by go rule for the but not for me kind of deal where it’s the meeting out of how things are done is not equitable, in many ways. And so you end up with one group getting penalised over another group, so to speak, you get what the latest kind of chocolate I had was with the the new CEO of Twitter. Literally, the first thing out of out of the gate was, hey, we’re going after memes. And we’re going to disallow things for private individuals and specific pieces of content. Now. I’m all for making sure that it’s safe. But at the end of the day, we need to make sure that we’re allowed we need to have the conversation twit was based on a conversation and whether I like what the other person says on the other end doesn’t make me go home crying like I’ve got broad shoulders. I can handle it, but so many people literally can’t handle the smallest of conversations. And if we’re gonna go to continue Newly stopped people from you know, freely conversing. And in whatever format, we may not like what they’re saying. But that’s where we start to become almost like a police state, so to speak and social medias? Well on the way to do that.

Now we’re already there. Actually, it’s gotten to the point where you can’t even we’re in the cancel everything society. We can’t even say anything without ruffling. I know from people I’ve talked to with Fortune 500 companies, HR departments are at the highest end of complaints and they’ve ever been because people think they can complain about everything, instead of developing what I call big balls, sorry for the language and just kind of say, just doesn’t affect me. So who cares and let it roll. Now everybody’s complaining about everything. And I’m not a fan of that, because we’re what we’re actually creating is a more isolated siloed society. And social media is part of this problem than we ever have before. I was in a conversation last week with a journalist on Twitter. His name is Devin LaRue, he CBC journalist, again, who covers curling shout out to Devin, he covers it really well. And he was covering team bochur. And they had kicked her third off the team. They said the third was taking time off for personal reasons. The third said, No, I’m not. I was removed from the team. And so Devin does co hosts a YouTube show at four o’clock on Saturdays called the dots curling show, which CBC sponsors. And somebody piped up and said, Why are you continuing with this drama? Why not just leave it on? And Devin, very politely said, and I should add, I added to the comment and said, By the way, I’m having both sides on separately to tell the story. That’s good journalism. Absolutely. And we shouldn’t be cancelling stuff out. I went through it again recently, where there was a gentleman in the NHL called the vendor Kane, and he’s well known. He’s gone through some, you know, bad divorce, it’s been public. And then what he did was he falsified his vaccine records. So the NHL in the right way suspended him for 21 games. And Steve Simmons of the Sun shared the story, a shout out to Steve and on Twitter, and I commented and said, you know, this was the right decision. And somebody commented and said, The only reason why they suspended the vendor was he was black. The reality of it all was he broke federal laws and both Candide us by falsifying vaccine passports, whether you agree with passports or not, that’s the law. He falsified them. I don’t care, frankly. And this is gonna ruffle some people, if it was black, white, Chinese, Italian, Yugoslavian, Mexican, and so on. He broke the law. And we need to stop on social media, quantifying everybody by race by where they’re from, and look at what we’re actually talking about.

Yeah, we need to start treating people just like people.

You have. Yeah, it’s a big issue. Let’s jump into Twitter, Jack Dorsey. He decided in his whim, he was going to step down. I don’t believe he was pushed out. He owned that company. He grew it. He’s also the co founder of square. And anybody that follows Jack knows he’s fallen to cryptocurrency as well, which isn’t my choice. But that’s up to Jack. Do you think he was pushed out? And I’m not sure I like where this is going. But your thoughts?

Well, at the end of the day, we weren’t there. We don’t know. It was. Twitter has it? By the way, Twitter’s my favourite social network. My kid has had challenges, the product releases, failures, more releases, some things work. Some things didn’t. And it was time for, I would say a new head at the helm. Anyhow. Yep. Because Twitter really. Twitter really, I would say, needed to change. Parag is it’s probably not superduper crazy about his first day out on the job. But he’s right that Twitter does need to advance it needs to get more aggressive in this in the social media platform, and, and maybe more hopefully more aggressive in going back to some of his grass roots as to why Twitter really started. What are the things that I really enjoy about Twitter? Is the conversations with people, regardless of what I think what they think I enjoy the conversation, it would be nice to get back to someone at the helm leading that and not, you know, really focused on making sure that they don’t upset one political party over another or one group over another. It’s it’s time to get back to the conversation, because there’s no great people here that we haven’t had a chance to talk with or meet. And I look forward to that part.

No, no question about it. Twitter’s all about the conversation. And you and I both know, the best way to manage Twitter is to get something to manage it. I have in the last couple months, gone back to an old friend called TweetDeck on my PC, so I’m using TweetDeck. And I managing it with Twitter lists. And what I usually do is, honestly, I throw Twitter up Twitter and LinkedIn up and I’ll get to LinkedIn in a moment, up on the screen all day. And I just kind of let them run. And that’s kind of the way I manage Twitter. So I think it’s really important. I also, while we’re talking about changes, I don’t know if you caught and I’ve, I forget the gentleman’s name. So for listeners, I’m really sorry. Facebook just changed the heads of their messaging department, a Facebook Messenger just left as well. So Facebook’s also going through some internal management changes. Interesting.

Yeah, there was a another thing that’s new and breaking in Twitter is the fact that these verified accounts and I’ve got a good buddy in Fall River named Pat. And he will probably thank his lucky stars that he did not get verified, because there are now scams directly pointed at Twitter users that have been verified, we’ve noticed that Twitter has been pulling some of these verifications down. But literally, scammers are sending them phishing schemes, trying to get logins, they’re specifically targeting people that are verified. So that’s late in breaking and just if you’ve been verified, you need to watch what communication comes your way and don’t reveal your, your information.

I think the way does stop some of these scams. And I hate to say it is to turn to FA en I like to do to FA with the Google Authenticator app. So that’s the way I run mine. But you can run the Microsoft one, which I actually do for Microsoft services, or the other choices, go get an Uber key. But if you’re going to go to an Uber key, get a couple of them, don’t just get one. And, frankly, use a password manager. And I’ve I’ve got a guest coming on in the New Year Ritesh, who’s a well known security expert in Canada, he’s been on national TV shows, and we’re actually going to sit down and break down what you should do for security and social media as part of that. And people need to start getting serious and saying, Okay, how do I protect my accounts?

Right? Absolutely. The and I saw an interesting video on to FA and it’s it’s how it’s used, because we know, a certain IP network that shall remain nameless, that begins with a G is doing a lot of two factor authentication. With within their own app, I like to keep two FA with different parties. In other words, you’ve got your, your social network, and you’ve got a third party authenticator. And you’re not using that social networks method of authentication. That way you keep everybody out of the loop, so to speak, because I’m starting to notice now, when I do use the authenticator be good begins with the G. They’re going time, web browser location, they’re cracking a lot of information. And so they’re beginning to put every device together that you are connecting to that specific account, for example. So a little bit of wisdom, I love to two factor authentication, but you need to be smart, and how are you using it nowadays so that they’re not tracking the living daylights out of you and your devices?

Yeah, and if you’re and if you’re all able to do it, and you have other options besides text messaging, two factor authentication, I would suggest to use something besides text messaging, because SIM cards can be stolen, spoofed obtained, whatever you want to call it. And text messaging is an old way of doing things and I would really suggest if you can move away from that, please do like if you have option sometimes No, not the option. And it’s better than nothing. But I, if you have the option move away,

in a lot of people I see are moving away from text. And they’re going to platforms like signal for instance.

Yep. Signal is actually my default SMS messenger on my phone because it’s encrypted. And then for people that aren’t signal members, it will just say it communicate regularly. So there’s more of that. And the big one that’s taking your head and all this, of course, is WhatsApp. Because WhatsApp is part of the monster Facebook ecosystem. And a lot of people in Europe actually prefer Telegram, which I like for trench, if you’ve got to send somebody a quick file, telegram is by far the way to go. It makes it easy, it’s easy peasy. And it works well. And a lot of Eastern Europe is all telegram. So it’s really interesting, watching that breakdown, what’s jump into social media control. And by that I mean companies like China, companies like the Middle East, I was talking to a good friend’s brother the other day, and he couldn’t communicate with a friend of his in Saudi Arabia for about a couple of weeks. And there was some concern there. And the reason I mentioned it is these countries turn on and off social media, like we turn on and off a tap, depending on the mood during and they’re really trying to control what their people see. And the internal dissidents are always finding ways around it. Will that ever end icon?

No, it won’t. And VPNs will become even more important to skirt these iron curtains will say, to keep the information coming out. Because at the end of the day, not every countries like Canada, honest to goodness, some countries are better, some countries are really repressed, and their people are looking for help. So they want to reach out and get the stories out that are literally happening in their countries and a VPN and certain specific social media apps that aren’t going to be blocked by the wall, for instance, can be the way to get the news

out. Yeah. And I’m one of those one of those examples going on right now, a family’s been following the story with the Chinese tennis player in China. And that one’s all over social media. And she had a video call with the International Olympic Committee a couple of weeks ago to say, Oh, I’m fine. There’s nothing going on. Well, you know, the anybody knows the Winter Olympics are in China in two months. So why would the International Olympic Committee cut their own throat off and say, Oh, we think this is bad when it could cost them billions of dollars. And it’s gotten to the point where, because of social media and other things, the US has taken a very strong approach, that they’re not sending any diplomats to watch the Chinese Olympics. So you know, there’s another example of a story where a government is still trying to control social media to the west, and people just are buying that one. On.

It’s a whole can worms. What do you do Canada is in the process of deciding whether they’re going to send them all or not? Yeah. But you can look at it a different ways. You could have them all walk in with specific T shirts with a specific saying on it, for instance, I will get the message across. I am not good with countries or pressing groups of people that’s just not cool. And any, any book. And so for them to act like nothing’s happening, that everything’s fine. While people are literally suffering, that is not cool at all. So it is a can of worms, that doesn’t have an easy solution. I saw two, three people on the news last night talking about it. And trying to in some ways, you know, kind of put the thing off to the side, maybe there’s a bigger picture. Another person said let’s deal with it right now. I mean, there’s there’s a lot going on, there’s no easy solution. And at the end of the day, these are people in communities that I would love to have conversations with, and I can’t because they’re just not available, we’ll say,

Yeah, I would I would agree with you. So let’s jump to one of my favourite networks lately, and that’s LinkedIn. So I’m going to disclaimer here those who have been kind of following me around the social space Mike No, I’m the co admin of a new Facebook product community. And we have, as we were working this morning, just over 1000 people in that community, combination of people that LinkedIn invited and that myself and my co admin, Courtney Robertson, shout out to Courtney invited. And we’re growing our community. And LinkedIn, for those who don’t know, is owned by Microsoft. And one reason why it’s taking off is LinkedIn is trying to regrow some of the communities right way and get away from all the spammy stuff, knowing what Facebook’s doing on the other side. What are your thoughts on that and how that approaches going?

The simple fact that LinkedIn is now going to community that’s one of the things that I have been literally hitting in all my social media training, when I train business build community around your business out when I see a network really focusing on really building community, that is a real big feather in their hat, so to speak, a really great bonus that it’s, it looks good on LinkedIn. And that’s a very, a very smart move. And I think they’re gonna really benefit from really changing some of the impression that people may have about LinkedIn as far as the spam as far as some of the things that like didn’t use for the shouldn’t be used for, for example, that remain nameless. There hit LinkedIn is heading in the right direction on building community supporting community, really encouraging engagement. I think they’re doing a great job. And that’s where Facebook is heading in the other direction, for instance, and I think that LinkedIn is going to benefit from that.

Yeah. And the other thing they did recently, last month, is they opened up Lincoln live to a whole pile, more people. So that’s starting to happen, too. So they’re starting to say, Okay, let’s move it along with our platform. And let’s keep the conversation going. And, and that’s the biggest thing. I mean, I, you know, we and I don’t care what the platform is, whether it’s Facebook, whether it’s Twitter, whether it’s LinkedIn, we all wake up to the messages. Oh, you just connected with me. Here’s the list of the 20 million services I offer. Let’s chat. And I always say to people, really, and I’ll tell you, that goes in my unconnect with list or unfollow Lister unchecked, which was quicker than possibly happen. And they obviously must be working, or they wouldn’t keep doing. And then the other one that’s even more prevalent on Facebook is the old what are called pretty woman syndrome scam. So somebody puts a post of a pretty woman up, and you look at her profile, and all that is there is the link to sexual related sites. And it’s clicked care. And all I want to be your friend. Yeah, I’m sure you do. And you don’t even know what’s behind that photo that picture that person. And honestly, people just need to wake up. And the reason these scams keep going over and over and over again, is actually working.

Yeah, and that’s a sad statement on human nature pretty much. Mm hmm.

Let’s jump into another favourite subject of mine. Tick tock. We all know if you know anything about the ownership of Tik Tok is partially owned by the Chinese government. They are very sensor related. But there’s a lot of influencers making all kinds of money off that site. And what’s your thoughts on Tik Tok as a platform?

We can and I’ve discussed this for quite a few years, the fact that who wants it is a big major statement. But there is still some good coming out of this. I see a lot of people creating great videos. With great appeal and great usefulness, despite the fact that certain country owns it. I do see that it’s wherever the bodies are, that’s where business has to go. And tick tock is literally becoming a reality that people really can’t ignore. And yet at the end of the day, if if your as a business, you’re going to go there, you have to create a viable race on the extra reason to be there. So that your brand can benefit from there. But the fact that it’s it all comes down to again, have the conversation we lean into, it’s rented land, you don’t own it. And so one moment, tick tock can be good next moment. Maybe the next president United States says hey, none of this kind of read off, she’s gone.

And that’s it. But the problem with doing that is it’s back to the whole censorship problem again, right? It’s like, we don’t want censorship on social media. But then we say, Oh, it’s okay that the government censors, it’s the same age old problem, right? It’s, we’re back to that hole. How do I, how do I get? How do I censor? How do I control? How do I do this? And if anybody out there thinks that North American or European governments do not censor, they have a rude awakening? What would typically the differences we elect our leaders, the Chinese don’t, they have what I call quasi elections. So they perceive they’re electing leaders, but they really don’t rush us the same way. And then once these governments get in power, and I don’t care if it’s in China, the US and Canada, they basically do what they want anyway. Right? So

yeah, they pretty much there. And they’re more similar. When I think about the different parties is just different shades of the same colour kind of deal, in many ways that they have not. Lately, in my mind proven that they’re that distinct enough that the policies they have won’t be a continuation of one government from the other one party from the other party. Somewhat of a sceptic, right now at the moment,

me too. And then the big company around which you alluded to earlier in chat about the G word. And those who don’t know the G word stands for Google sash alphabet. And it’s funny, they haven’t really ventured into the social media space, since they closed down Google Plus, they’ve got all kinds of other business offerings, but they haven’t entered back in. And there as far as I’m concerned, their last two good entries in that space were when they bought what’s now Google Photos, which came out of Picasa. And when they bought YouTube, and that’s going back, oh, probably 14 years. And I remember when the two were disconnected, because my business YouTube account is actually separate. Because it’s a it was one, it was a legacy account brought forward. But Google has never done well in this space, when they’ve actually developed something themselves. And the question becomes, is Google poised to buy something, or because of all the any trust competition and regulation going on, is a just space that they’re gonna stay away from?

One of the things I’ve noticed over Google for many years is they’ve always made things way too complicated. I remember Google Wave, it’s great product, loved it. It was one of the first products where you could literally co author documents simultaneously online, great ideas. But the technology was really too tough for the average person. Now Google has done a great job, I’ll give it to them at Google workspace, keeping their products really simple, user friendly, and easy to use. They’ve done a great job there. But when it comes to social network, they have really, really struggled to get anything rolling, that gets general acceptance. And that’s always been one of the issues that Google has had. I mean, they they make great Office apps. But when it comes to social networking, applications, they’ve really struggled. They’ve not really hit it off. If anything, probably maybe their best bet is to buy something that’s already working. That already has broad acceptance. Maybe Google should buy Twitter.

Oh, I was thinking worse. Maybe she should buy Facebook, but that’s, that’s not gonna happen.

You don’t want to buy a sinking ship.

No, no, no. But But it’s interesting, and I don’t think Twitter’s up for sale. I really don’t. They’ve done some things. They have a new 499 Canadian a month one that gets you some extra features. They’re doing really well with Twitter spaces. So much so that I no longer have clubhouse on my phone. clubhouse was a dead dead dead idea from the start. Because you knew the minute they went separate audio all the big networks. We’re gonna import it. I’ve been on some WordPress Twitter spaces. chats are really fun, actually. You now have Facebook who’s in the process of entering into podcasting. So when us not available in Canada in Europe yet, you can actually share your pilot gesina, podcasts RSS feed right to Facebook now. So there’s some of that going on. There’s all kinds of stuff going on. And what the small companies don’t get is the minute they developed something, one of the big companies gobbles them up somewhere.

Yeah. And that’s happening more than not because there was a lot of companies, you and I’ve had over the last year has had so many conversations around how many companies have been bought up by bigger tech companies to literally get what they do. And it’s just amazing. It’s where we end up with just a few companies owning everything. That becomes the question.

Yeah. And I think the company that’s been poised for bio for a couple of years to Snapchat, I really do. I don’t use them. They’re mostly a kids playground, per se. But if that’s your market, then you have to go after it. And I know Facebook, in Snapchats, infancy, offered them money, before they really put a lot of effort into Facebook Messenger. So I, I think they’re poised to be bought. I don’t think there’s bigger players, they were a couple years ago, nobody’s talking about them. And that’s the problem with this stuff. What people don’t realise, if you have a group of 50 friends, the name of networks, guess what? You’re moving networks.

Absolutely. And that’s the thing that any social network has to watch out for, is that I remember, years and years and years and years ago, when I was a young lad, we used to go bar hopping. And one month, one bar would be the place the next you could go next week. And we’d like dead as a doornail. Nobody’s there, because the crowded moved. And this definitely applies to social networks. I mean, literally, if Facebook doesn’t smarten up, it could literally be a ghost town, not sure it has a lot of bodies in it. People are kind of get in the habit of using it. But it’s something bigger and better and shiny or comes along. People’s loyalty to Facebook is very questionable, they could literally make that jump.

Yeah, the only thing that really keeps me on facebook these days is a sharing my podcasts which I have to do a workaround for and be there’s, we have an endless family messenger chat that goes on all day, every day. And I could actually stay totally off the platform and just sit on Messenger. And I’d probably be happier. So I’m just, I’m not there. And I’m been there for months. I mean, I have family complaining at me that I don’t share pictures or other stuff. And they say, you know, I do have a personal website, you could go here. And they’re like, I don’t want to and I said, Well, that’s your loss, because I don’t want to sit with the Facebook privacy mess. I mean, I’m not even running a Facebook pixel on my website, because you can’t run ads to your domain. Why would you think think about it, right?

Yeah, that all comes back to a compensate. We started about literally censorship, and I’ve known you work for good heavens probably gone back a long time. Your abode is controversial is uh, I just can’t imagine just. And now you can’t even post a thing to your domain. And you can’t even get help. I mean, one of the things that I really dislike about Facebook is if you have a need, there’s nobody to call, there’s no email. A lot of the help articles are circular references to the same thing. So if you can’t find a solution there, and if you try to go and ABS Facebook groups and talk about Facebook person, there’s a whole bunch of spam in there where people are trying to get tricky to go to somewhere else. Yeah, until the whole system is literally falling apart.

Yeah, I’ll share with a story that goes back about this goes back about eight years now. I had an axe who played Facebook games. And she used to buy extra credit for those games on their credit card. And Facebook actually shut threatened to shut down or Facebook account for breaking the terms of service of the game. And she said to them, wait a minute here. I’m doing exactly what you’ve set the system out to be and that’s the problem with it. They can at whim say yeah, no, we’re not gonna we’re not gonna do this and but and feed you one way. And then when they’re done with it, they just kind of spit you out like you’re yesterday’s trash. Instead of saying, wait a minute, we did set this up this way. So why is it happening and that stuff is just getting worse and worse by the day. The algorithm I can’t even figure out anymore. It’s gotten that bad like it used to be Facebook pages are basically useless. Now, groups are almost useless. Now. If you’re not paying for ads, trying to get traffic to a post on the Facebook platform is impossible. It’s just gotten that bad.

Let’s put some stuff out to the listeners and stuff that works. Now, garden, I continually harp on my workplace education participants, build a community around your business. Don’t worry about numbers worry about working and adding great people to your community, because they’re the ones that are going to like, and share and comment. But not only that, you really got to start thinking very heavily about how you build your post, what do you want out of it? Is it clear does the person that’s looking at it understand what you’re presenting before them. And so the simple idea that, hey, I haven’t posted in a while I better put something up there, doesn’t cut it anymore. It may be for much, not your brand. And the community is looking for certain things around what you’re doing. And so if you’re not going into that, that direction, then your voice becomes diluted. So go ahead

and think about how you do it. And by that, I mean, maybe a written post isn’t the only way, maybe doing something like we’re doing now alive, that we’re streaming to multiple platforms alive that when I’m done, I’m actually going to repurpose the audio into my podcast feed. Let’s think about doing that doing voice. Think about doing video, think about if somebody posts, they’ve got a problem, try and help them. But the problem with that is, and I found that in the Facebook groups, sometimes they’re looking for validation, and they’ll say, tell you to go away. And that doesn’t foster community, and try and try and educate people. And that’s the problem like, or reach out to somebody you know, who you haven’t talked to in a while and say, Hi, I’m just thinking about you. That fosters community in a big way. And I did that this morning, I try and do that every couple of days with three or four people I haven’t talked to in a while. And I’ll just send a DM whether it’s on Facebook, on Twitter, on LinkedIn, and said, Hey, hi, how are you? And it’s not I’m not working for sale, I’m just fucking to see how people I care about are like,

Well, the big thing is, if you help enough people, your business will take care of itself, if you’re smart in how you run the thing, but literally, when you think about social media post example. There’s like, share and comment on it on most the same networks. If you and I tell people, your social network is not for you, it’s for your community, like, share and comment because that’s, that’s how that thing gets visibility. And so if you can’t put something out that relates to your community that doesn’t help your community doesn’t promote community, for instance, then those are things that aren’t going to get shared. And you can have a hard time creating visibility in your network. And this is going to be a theme that’s going to go across all the platforms, and it will have a consistent stickiness to it over time. Everybody’s looking for the latest and greatest tricks. But the hard work is building community the hard work is building relationships with people and customers that will help you run your business how promote your business help talk well about your business, for example.

Yeah. And one of the one of the things that I’m I’m really big on is sharing stuff. So like for example when we get off

Oh, Rob, we just lost your audio. And I see we got a question from Laura there too, as well.

Okay, thank you for that question, or great question. The 30 to 65 You’re You’re literally covering and I know your business and you’re very much business to customer. With the fact that Facebook pages reached this is tanking, that’s anonymous on any social network that can happen. Instagram is going to give you a little bit more. But again, it’s how you build the post. It’s how you appeal to the audience. It’s how you get it out to them as to whether they’re gonna literally like share comment, for instance, because that’s what gives you visibility. That’s what We always want to try to build a post that’s going to persuade, and always have a call to action, regardless of what network you use on. And the big thing is, I love my grandfather, he was smart, man, it’s not what you know, too, you know. And on any social network, as you start to build relationships with people, they will help promote you, so to speak, regardless of where you go. And reach is getting hard on all the networks. That’s why really, you’ve got to spend, whether it’s online, at the grocery store, when you’re out with people, it’s as a business owner, entrepreneur, it’s go time to make somebody smile, make somebody’s day, so to speak. So,

so true. I mean, 10 years ago, you could take a blog post and throw it on Twitter, and that would translate to 1000s of pageviews. And now, it doesn’t even put a dent in, like, yes, things have changed big time.

And we’re still gonna have to, like, I still believe in in ads and doing that. But also, you can’t live on paid ads, you have to have good content, especially afterward. So if you’re going to do an ad, say on Facebook, for your Facebook page, I would like for you to have two or three great organic posts to come right after that. So that you’re going to capture some of the new folks that are seeing your stuff for the first time. And then really work at making them feel like they’ve joined a great community, which means bringing value to them. That’s not always want to buy a house sale kind of deal. But hey, I’m glad you’re in the community. This is kind of what you can learn. And by the way, I’m a business too. And if you need something, I’m there for you. But here’s what we can learn together kind of deal. That’s kind of like winning the hearts and the minds of people, regardless of what social network, some of them like, go ahead and Rob

and the other. And the other thing is, if you’re going to run those ads, or run those pages, and run these campaigns, think about what your analytics are most small business owners that I talked to, and I was having a discussion with a friend of mine who’s a jewellery store, and I was running, ramming it into his head again, saying, Okay, what are your numbers on Instagram? Oh, I don’t know, people like our page. And I always say, you know, that’s nice. But how many of those people that liked your photo, picked up the phone and called you? How many walked into your store? How many bought from you, and you got to know your numbers. Because if honestly, if you don’t know your numbers, or you’re shooting blindfolded at a dartboard, and you if you’ve ever tried that, that’s almost impossible. So like, you got to know analytics, because one of the things analytics will tell you is how you can improve too. It’s not just about justifying the current campaign, it’s how do you improve in the future. And if you don’t have that basis to improve, then you don’t have the basis to do it, it would

be like taking a bow and arrow and shooting at a target but closing your eyes and walking away. And never knowing if you hit the bull’s eye or not. And one of the best pieces of advice I tell people always have a plan, a purpose, a call to action for every post on every network that you have. That way you have an idea of whether Hey, I hit the bull’s eye or a didn’t. And so because if someone’s viewing your post, and they’re reading through it, if you don’t have a call to action, they don’t know what to do next, they’ll go Wow, great post great information. Next, give them something to do. And it doesn’t always have to be one to buy a house. It could be let’s learn more, or what you think because you want to comment, or let’s get the word out and help other people learn this has something for them to do that’s clearly understandable and actionable. And I’m not a big fan of let’s do 10 things. Give them one thing to do, so to speak. Because if you give them 10 things you absolutely paralyse them with what do I do next?

Yeah, and write those posts for your community don’t write them for you. That’s the biggest thing people miss. And it’s not just about social media, it’s about all marketing, the right to marketing for them, not for who they’re trying to serve. Because what you got to remember, Laura, is people can get the information anywhere. Google is the biggest encyclopaedia in the world, Google and Wikipedia. And you can go there and search and find out anything you want. And people truly don’t buy information anymore. They buy the people they trust, who they want to work with, and who makes their life successful. So that’s what you got to think about.

Yeah, and a lot of that evolves around establishing relationships, you know, and literally just we’re just like going back into time, where the corner store owner knew everybody in the block, and they came back to him because he, he knew them or she knew them by name, knew what they did, what sport they played their family, all that kind of stuff. We’re coming back into that time where literally touch points personalised matter.

Yeah, I want to touch on one more point to while we’re on this as one of your questions was, what small business is the best return for the time for each 30 to 65? Truly, all of them? What you have to do is do some research and find out where your customers reside, where do they play where they are? And that will tell you where to put your time. So for example, for my business, you know, I’ve talked enough today about Facebook and my issues with Facebook, and I’ve talked enough, but really, Facebook’s not my market. My market is mostly Twitter and LinkedIn anyway. So does it hurt me? No. At the end of the day, it doesn’t hurt my income, it doesn’t hurt my bottom line. And that’s what you got to realise you got to drill it down and say, okay, Where? Where? Where is your stuff? And Laura posted one other comments saying she got some great info on this. And thanks. It’s our pleasure, really? So yes. So that’s kind of a look at where we are social media this year. Let’s take a minute, Jeff, if something was to happen next year, and you had a crystal ball, and you had some way of making it happen, what would you do?

Well, one thing for sure. I know, with the new CEO of Twitter, I think he’s going to make an honest effort. Despite all the the censorship issues potentially forward, he’s going to make an effort to make Twitter much more valuable, I would really hone my Twitter skills and really come to a place we really understand what that network does. I mean, I think of simply explained, Facebook’s Like a billboard that people stand around talk about, Twitter’s a telephone. And who would you talk to? Who would you build that relationship next, because at the end of the day, businesses don’t always need to have customers on Twitter, Twitter can be used for, hey, I need a business mentor. And I want someone to speak in my life. And I want to make that great connection so that they can give me some really good advice for my business, to practically move it forward. I mean, mentorship, I wish there was more of it. And so Twitter would be one of the things that I would really dig into, I would also up my Instagram skills, I would really start to look at ways to do more in that arena, I believe Instagram will have the to Facebook and Instagram will be the one that potentially has a little bit more traction. But at the end of the day, we have to watch what happens at the top. If they if our friend gets into any more muck and mire that network, he could literally sink the whole thing. So be very careful. But Instagram would be the one that I would start to focus because you’re gonna think about bringing new customers new younger customers into your business that will recognise and grow with your business. And last LinkedIn, LinkedIn is, I believe the because they’re starting to really start making a focus on community. If there’s any business, that business you would do at all, I would begin to really start thinking about how can I build relationships on LinkedIn, that can connect me with great people, and I can create a win for them, they can create a win for me, I love Angie Dixon’s expression says she never sits down at a table or a meeting with someone, unless there’s a win win for everybody. That’s great words of advice. And I think LinkedIn could literally be that. And again, every network, what you get out of it is what you put into it. And so the biggest thing I can say for the coming year, is be prepared to put great things into these networks. Get Noticed, because you’re a great business, you’re a great solution to problems that people have, and start building a whole lot of like for you, your company, in a community that you’re building, those would be the biggest things. I would say to focus on regards whatever social equity you really like to use, really start pouring more into it, especially building relationships. Because I think with the uncertainty of the pandemic, and all that kind of stuff, then we’re going to go back to business 101 And numbers won’t be a thing. People will surround yourself with great people in your community to support your business regardless what happens I think is going to be critical for success. coming in 2022.

Now I would agree with that data thing in talking about networks is look at some unconventional networks, places like Slack, places like discord. And you say, Why do I bring those up? There’s all kinds of social media communities on Slack and discord. And people don’t know they’re there. And if they serve your target market, that’s what matters. And people need to start looking about that I would certainly double down on LinkedIn. A bit of advice I have on LinkedIn is I have a good friend of mine in Australia. His name is Adam Franklin. He’s been on the show. And he runs an agency. So he’s got a Facebook group, he’s active on LinkedIn, if you want to learn about LinkedIn, hit Adam up tell my son is he’s a great guy. And he puts out a lot of really good content. So and the other thing I would, I would like to see people do in 2022 is just kind of be careful about what you post and think about others. Like, honestly think before you push that send button, that post button. And and don’t get yourself into places that you don’t need to get into. Because that just creates resentment. And it doesn’t even help the situation at the end of the day. So that’s kind of where I’m at. Hey, Jeff, thanks for joining me today. I really appreciate you as always, and I hope people actually get a lot out of this discussion that we had. So have an amazing day.

All right, thank you, everyone. And keep on trucking.

Yeah, and before I let you go, Jeff, for somebody wants to get a hold of you. Where is the best place?

The best place to get a hold of me is my email Jeff@workplaceeducation.ca. Simple, easy to remember. And I’m always got my eye on it.