Episode 123: Year 2020 in Review Talking Social Media With Jeff Brown

Episode 123 Year 2020 in Review Talking Social Media With Jeff Brown

00:00

Good morning, everybody. And welcome to the SDM Show. I’m your host, Rob Cairns. And in this week’s episode, I sit down with my good friend, Jeff Brown friend of the show, where we talk about social media trends, what happened in 2020, and where we see things going in 2021. So do me a favor, grab your favorite, drink your beverage, sit back, relax, and enjoy this week’s podcast.

00:37

My good friend and friend of the show, Jeff Brown. And for those who don’t know, Jeff, and my circles, doesn’t need any introduction, but I’ll give you one. He’s a workplace education trainer. And I thought we’d sit down and look, especially some trends out what social media did in 2020, where it’s going in 2021. Throw some other insights in for you. So you can learn a little bit. Jeff, How are you this morning?

01:04

We’re doing great. Rob, I’ve been looking forward to this talk for a while. It’s always great to gab with you and discuss where things are going. Because you and I, generally speaking are fairly ahead of the curve.

01:19

Yeah, I think in this business to do well, you actually have to be ahead of the curve. And you’ve got to work it so that you’re ahead of the curve. So that’s like the real key? I think so you don’t you don’t get ahead by being behind it. Certainly, right, Jeff?

01:36

No, you don’t, you’ve got to necessarily try to stay ahead, take a look at where things are going, look at how things are responding and then make some really good calculations as to how to move ahead. And I do that for a lot of businesses and workplace education, do a lot of social media training, and try to give them information that’s going to help them be ahead of the curve and literally create visibility for them in their business.

02:02

Yeah, and unfortunately, could be ahead of the curve is changing every day. I mean, I don’t know I said to somebody the other day when I started in technology, and this is going back to about 1990 things changed once a year. And now we’re seeing things change daily, if not by daily if not weekly, it’s it’s quite the astronomical mess, don’t you think?

02:25

Things are changing very fast. It’s it’s difficult for a lot of people to keep up literally with all the things have changed where they’re going. But the good thing is that literally the very fabric of business continues to remain the same. And what I mean by that is the business one on one principles, that still you can count on those, even though the where the customer is, is changing how the customer responds is changing how our social networks are changing, and what they allow, and what they don’t allow is changing.

03:00

Yeah, before we get to the 2020 stuff, I’m gonna throw two stories out there. I think we should talk about one, let’s talk about our favorite US President Donald Trump. Because I can, and it’s my show. So, um, there was an article recently that Twitter came out and said that as of inauguration date, they’re going to reset the followers on the president of the united states that count to zero. Did you catch that article?

03:31

I missed that one. But that’s, that’s just petty. You don’t I mean, it’s just, yes. Just move on. You know what I mean? Yeah. He didn’t love him, or you don’t like him? Either way. The the fact that social networks would even be thinking about doing that, that because if they could do that to him, they can do that to you, Rob,

03:58

of course, and I’ve got $18,000.

04:01

How would you like to start off at zero? Again, I mean, the thought that they would even do that to someone. That’s scary. And that’s it, whether you like them or not, that doesn’t matter, the fact that they could set anybody’s followers to zero, that would should be alarming to everybody.

04:20

Yeah. But what it comes down to, again, is a discussion that you and I have had time in and time out. Social media is what I call rent headlines. So it’s not your space, it’s other people’s space. And, and frankly, everybody keeps saying to me, all social media is free. Well, we all know, if something is free, the user is the product of this. Absolutely. Absolutely. The user data is the product. Yeah. And and there’s no rhyme or reason I have a good friend of mine. Shout out to Ryan. And he, he actually had his facebook account. He was running political ads. I’m sure we think a competitor complained And Facebook shut down this ad account for 30 days because they can with no rhyme or reason. No investigation no nothing.

05:07

Yeah, that’s at the end of the day is rented land. But what should our expectations be? We all know that they these social networks have their terms, their their policies, but what happens when they go beyond that, and they start arbitrarily shutting people down because they can. That’s kind of scary. It’s actually censorship in the worst way as bad as China or the Russians. As far as I’m concerned. You know, it’s a it’s a dicey one.

05:40

The second thing I wanted to touch upon is, we know the world has changed. We know we’re in the middle of a COVID pandemic. We know in the GTA, we’ve now seen two strands from a couple from the UK, of new strand, as of yesterday, confirmed by Health Canada. So we’ve got some issues again. But what I really want to touch on is more people are at home, more people are spending more time on social media. And is that really good for their mental health?

06:15

Good question. At the end of the day, Sue and I are going for a drive because we’re getting out of that house and screen time. To some extent, it’s necessary. But it comes a point where you just got to say, I’m shutting all this stuff off, and I’m gonna focus on me time or family time, whatever time you need, we need time to literally step back and think and literally just not be influenced by social media, we need to be able to think for ourselves and to have that break. It’s not good to be on all the time.

06:56

Yeah, they actually say the reason we’re, we’re seeing an increase in the morning I was in depression is because of that screen time. And I know, I’ve got to the point. And I’ve been pretty public about my fight with depression in previous podcasts and things like that. And I actually go for a walk a couple of times a day, I don’t spend as much time on social media, I basically lurk and kind of talk to the people I want to talk to, if you know what I mean. Like the people that matter, the people that matter. The people like you, the people like going to people like my friend, defender, or Todd or Ryan, I’ll have private conversations, and I’ll stay out of a lot of the, what I call the garbage fluff on social media, because frankly, it’s not worth it. One of the one of the problems with social media, and you know, this is people either bring the best forward or the word forward, they don’t bring me in between. and life is just not like that,

07:53

right? No, it’s not it’s we’re losing the ability to, you know, listen, and we may agree or disagree to agree, but the conversations tend to be less civil than they would have been years ago. And at the end of the day, we can always learn things from other people. We’re having a discussion of, well, why do you think that we can’t have that discussion anymore? Because people just aren’t willing and a lot of cases, I’m just, you know, just a broad brush right now, there are great people that will literally Yeah, converse with you. But I find that far and few between.

08:28

Yeah, I do, too. I mean, it used to be the topic she never talked about where politics and religion, right, talking to conversations you and I talked about all the time?

08:38

No, I know.

08:40

Maybe because we we can converse, but now it’s politics, religion, money, health, it doesn’t matter what you say. Because in the old days, when I used to call people, what you call airline magazine, people, meaning you’d go on a trainer, an airline, you read the quick page in the seat pocket about how to be an expert in finance, and they were an expert. Now they’re headline. People. So they react on a headline, and you know, they haven’t read the story, because of the comments. Now that shows you the value of a headline, but it also doesn’t help the discussion. So

09:17

well. Not only that, but we’re no longer a nation of readers. We’re a nation of scanners. It’s to the point right now, we’re not reading the articles, we’re reading the headlines.

09:26

Yeah. And I’m what I would say to anybody is if you say to me, you don’t have time for reading, give up a half hour TV or an hour of TV a day, and read instead. And you’ll get through a book a week, which makes you 52 books in a year, which makes you smarter than most people. So try that if you if you give me this, I don’t have time excuse. Okay, here all the time. We

09:48

all have the same amount of time and if people are finding time to read, and they can do it in their busy schedules, we can all do that. Yeah, because one of the philosophies I have is readers are leaders?

10:02

I would agree. I would agree. I tried to read, I probably am reading a couple books a week right now. So I agree with it. So let’s go to 2020. What did you see in social media this past year as a trend or something new. As they’re trying,

10:22

the fact that

10:23

people were now I’m talking about from the workplace education angle, they were now more focused on using social media for their business and ever before. And what was really exciting is the results they were getting, if they were, and this was not just, we talked about building community, we talked about increasing your reach through building your community, we talked about engagement, when people are doing things that really make smart business sense, you know, things we would have done before the internet. Then we were seeing exciting things, people talking about extraordinary riches in my programs, and, and people just connecting with people that really helped their business or getting into places that really took their business to the next level, these were the extraordinary things. And it COVID kind of forced us there. But just because we were forced, there doesn’t necessarily mean that we were all doing it right. so to speak, we saw some incredibly great moments were just like a proud parent, I was absolutely pleased with the outcomes my workplace education participants had a was really sometimes it almost brought me to tears, the fact that they were doing so well.

11:49

Yeah. And I think I think there’s value in working social media and what people need to understand. And I’ve kind of stressed this over the years that social media is a two way conversation. It is not a television conversation, but it’s also about consistency, and about helping people. Because remember, folks, you can find any information you want on this wonderful tool called Google if you haven’t heard of it, but people guys solutions, and by the people they work with they do not buy the information anymore. And that is so true.

12:25

Absolutely. Because when you think about it, people would prefer to work with someone they know, than a stranger.

12:32

Yeah. And so one of the things that social media, we’re seeing a big increase in this year is video like ever before. Do you have any thoughts on that?

12:42

The that’s the one thing that I push in my workplace education programs is that literally people want to see you, they want to see what you sound like what you look like they want to go there just like me kind of deal. And video really accomplishes that, where I just tell people just be yourself. Don’t worry about getting in Hollywood looking. Just be use the term rough and ready. And what I mean by that is just be yourself. Because that’s when people can relate to you. Because they they know that, hey, they’re just like me kind of deal.

13:16

Yeah. And frankly, if you turn on your six o’clock newscast, and I don’t care what city in North America you’re in, there’s going to be a weather person or a news anchor from home. And their lighting stop perfect, even though they’ve tried and their camera angles not perfect. And what we’re starting to see, and and we saw this even back in June, as people are accepting me imperfect, because of the world we’re in. So I think there’s some reality to authenticity and people just doing their thing now.

13:50

Absolutely. And we can all model that in our own businesses, where we don’t have to be perfect. But be prepared, be professional, and that spirit of excellence, but don’t be so lost in the overall production of it that you literally missed the message. So what’s the important thing?

14:12

So true. The other thing we’re seeing with video even more now is increasing live streaming. And I think and there’s a couple times that have happened where coding Twitter’s announced or if it’s hasn’t happened, it’s going to happen periscope has gone Finally, very do like which is no surprise in my opinion. Everybody’s making a big to do about it. But I don’t think it’s as big a deal as people think personally. We know that Facebook Lives still have some reach. We know LinkedIn lies if you can get access ups has some reach. We know video up on YouTube has some reach and then there’s platforms like stream yard V max, an E cam on the Mac that make life easier in setting up. Instead, the old days where we had to put string keys in and do all that mess. And, you know, I mean, you can use something like OBS, but I gotta tell you, I tend to use schrinner than OBS personally,

15:21

that allows us to focus on the content that we’re producing, as opposed to the software that produces it. I mean, I use vMix a lot, you know, and I’m always looking for the next best shot, I’m always trying to work my cameras. So that literally, I get a really great shot, because that’s at the end of the day, live streaming with one camera. And that camera never changes is not going to be as enjoyable as something that is very similar to TV where screens, change, different angles, that kind of thing. That’s what literally makes it more enjoyable, more watchable. And Robert can’t tell you how many people comment on the fact that they like the changing screens. It’s amazing. The comments that I hear.

16:13

Yeah, and I would agree with it. And the other thing I would say to people is if you’re an entrepreneur and you want to shoot video, the camera in your phone is probably really good to get started. So you know, my tip always is get the camera in your phone. I’m using now a pixel four a which has probably the best camera. Yes, iPhone people the best camera out there right now, the iPhones are close. Second, I have to throw that jab in there. So yes, you do. And for pictures, that’s phenomenal. For video, it’s phenomenal. And just do it. And you know, if you want to take your game up a level, go buy yourself a tripod, go buy yourself a mount, and go buy yourself an external mic that will sit on top of the phone that setup on top of the phone you already have. It’s going to cost you 100 bucks. And it’s a good on Amazon. And it’s a good way to get started. Right? Absolutely. So start there and then and grow from it. And you know, people say I don’t want to shoot video. Well, I think you’re at a mistake. If you’re not shooting video. Well, the

17:21

photos, the Facebook Live has tremendous visibility out of the gate. It’s probably one of the most visible post types period. And when I do workplace education, I literally take people from the place where you have not doing video, okay, well, let’s do video of yourself. Don’t post it the internet, but get used to seeing yourself and hearing yourself. And then we up to a degree. And I always tell them be more concerned about the message than the messenger. That doesn’t mean we don’t dress nice and you know, calm our hair, that kind of stuff. But we absolutely cannot allow the messenger to stop the important message that needs to go out.

18:01

No question. Now, this year, we’ve had some tough times with COVID. The US election we touched on that a little bit. It really was the year where a lot of the US election seemed to have been fought on social media wasn’t not like,

18:20

absolutely, absolutely. This will be the excuse me, if there’s ever been a year that says this is not how you do an election. We can just look so I mean, it would have been much simpler if we had just had paper ballots, you walk in you vote. People are getting ballots they didn’t ask for it’s just it was just a mess. And so like I’m either way, whichever side? I’m not the outcome is the outcome. But at the end of the day, what a mess. I mean, yeah, thank God the Word of business because that would be horrible.

19:01

Yeah, I would agree. And, and I mean, even, you know, the showed you the emphasis, candidates spend a lot of money on social media ads, especially on Facebook to attract people. The numbers that I read were astronomical, and it’s growing by the day. I think we’re gonna see when Canada goes to the polls, and I think we’re going to the polls in 2001.

19:28

I think Justin Trudeau kind of made a suggestion that our slip will say, I think this year he’s going to the polls.

19:37

Yeah, I do too. And I think what’s going to happen is that battles going to be fathering social media. There’s less and less people that have traditional cable TV. So they’re not seeing the standard TV ads we see for election. So the ad money has to go somewhere. Like Absolutely,

19:55

absolutely. And my greatest hope and aspiration is that All sides get fair treatment, when it comes to the social networks as far as their political ads, I mean, yeah, that’s what has should happen.

20:10

I know when the US election, one of the things they did was they cut off, I believe, and Ryan could tell me, but the exact date, but I think it was two weeks or four weeks before the election. They said no more than social media ads on Facebook and Twitter, the network’s actually cut it off and said, we’re not anything you’re running up until now you can continue to run, but you’re not going to start to stuff at the last minute just to keep the crap in the mess, so to speak out of it. So they actually did that and said, we’re not we’re not going down this road, which I think was a really smart move action

20:47

to be on because they still have recourses. So should we still have live stream you can still live stream and event? Yeah, you can still people speak to your your communities literally through live streaming, for instance. So they weren’t handicapped, just because they couldn’t run an ad.

21:05

It’s so true. Um, and Twitter seems to keep chugging along. I mean, there’s been people have been calling for the demise of Twitter, in 2020. All over the place. So it’s not doing anything. Oh, it’s not anywhere. But where do you think people go to hear depression in the US? Where do you think people go, they hear the news story, where the VP

21:27

always makes me think you can love him or leave him President Donald Trump, but I tell you, Twitter was going down the toilet well before Trump and Trump reinvigorated Twitter. I think so. And that’s where I mean, Twitter is my favorite social network, and it’s just how I use it. But imagine Twitter gone for it. Yeah,

21:51

it’s my favorite social network to and I looked at the people like you that people like olan Greaves or mutual friend, I look at people like Bob Dunn, Bob WP shout out to Bob. I know Bob and I have more conversations on Twitter than we do on Facebook. It’s just the nature of how Bob uses it. If you want to get a hold of them, it’s easier to dm him on Twitter. Shout out to a company I have a love hate relationship with and that’s called Rogers. They’re out there. But But to be fair to Rogers, social media team at Rogers helps is very good. When he so they have powers that regular reps don’t have so they and the reason just laughing on that one is I’ve had my fun in the last year

22:43

again. So we have stories. Yeah.

22:48

Yeah, for those who don’t know, there was a time when I wrote a blog, going back about 10 years ago called the customer service how the shaman Belen Rogers and tell us, we’re always at the top of that pluck. Yeah, yeah. So there’s some of that but but I honestly think like for for clients support and immediate access, Twitter’s a good way to go to be honest. I don’t it’s quick. Yep. And on my phone, I tend to use the Twitter app I don’t use Hootsuite is I have Hootsuite on my phone. But I don’t use it as much. I prefer to Yeah, to be honest,

23:26

I like the app because even my in a moment where I might get tired, I always make sure that it goes to the right account. Because social media is replete with stories of people sending a off colored tweet to the wrong account. Maybe it’s Chrysler USA, or maybe it’s just trying to think of the there’s so many great accounts where people literally, people have

23:55

goofed, and they don’t pull back the tweet. Yeah. Been there, done that. Yeah. Now let’s go on to another site. And we need to touch on this one, and that’s called Tick Tock. And the reason we need to touch on Tick Tock at 2020 is we know those who don’t know Tick Tock is big investment from the Chinese government. In the Trump era, there was suggestions that might shut Tick Tock down to the point they were looking for a buyer for Tick Tock North America I don’t think that ever happened to be honest with you. So that was on the go. And then we kind of say is Tick Tock relevant it seems to be in the younger generation I have I personally have a tough time getting my head wrapped around it. Do you have any thoughts feelings about the politics the shutting it down or even is around? Well, the

24:51

young people are going to Tech Talk. That’s just reality of it. My concern is like any social Network, could it be shut down? If I put equity in building a community there? Could it be taken from me? And Tick Tock seems to be one of those ones that it might very well, it depends on what happens in the next. I would say so many days. Yeah. It depends on literally, who owns it, what they do, what are they doing with it? For instance? Yeah,

25:31

yeah. There’s so there’s a lot of that concern, no question.

25:35

There’s a it’s, it’s a risk of being on there. But like risk cost benefit, we need to analyze, is it a place where we can build value, because at the end of the day, social media is boat is building a community around your business that will support you will share your stuff with comment? Well, like your stuff, for instance? And is there a place where this thing could be taken from us? I mean, even we want to just think about social networks period, where Mark Zuckerberg, they were talking about potential like Microsoft breaking the company up?

26:12

What does that do to a company, for instance? And so, at the end of the day, it all comes back to it’s rented land. So no question on that one. Remember to rented land. And also remember, the only two things you own is your website, and your email list. And I’m going to come back there. And I’m going to come back to and I’m going to come back there. And you don’t own the email platform. But you’ll know list. So you know, you need to think about that, too.

26:41

Absolutely.

26:43

So, you know, we talked about that. Let’s go to Facebook. And I want to talk about an interesting trend. We knew a couple of years ago, pages started to have visibility, and everybody started to move to Facebook groups. Now the trend I’m starting to see is people are moving away from Facebook groups and moving, believe it or not, all things become the same. Back to forum software, excuse me. So we’re talking things like discord mighty networks, circle. And so what people are doing is they’re taking the forums and getting them off Facebook, because of Facebook’s convoluted algorithm, and Facebook’s convoluted discussion in saying to the tribe, if you want to converse, what’s good on Facebook, and let’s go to a forums, software, and forums were all the rage on websites a 10 or 15 years ago. And that’s how the original internet was built was on forums, and web. So thoughts on that.

27:44

People want to see their posts and their comments, and they want to see the comments from other people. And they would like to see it as much in real time as possible. On Facebook, you might see that post and that comment Three days later. And it’s no longer relevant, because you’ve missed a moment, but in a form. It’s much more like Twitter, it’s in real time. And at the end of the day, I love the discussions. I love the exchange of the information. But can you imagine your conversation? Literally, you know, every three days you get a nugget, even though the person posted instantly after that, so to speak.

28:26

No, yeah, it’s so true. Um, LinkedIn a little bit. And and this comes from personal experience. Everybody keeps saying on LinkedIn is spammy, LinkedIn is irrelevant. where I’ll tell you LinkedIn still matters is if you’re looking for jobs, there’s still a lot of jobs that are posted on LinkedIn, I think LinkedIn is ranked right now, as the number two or number three job searching site in Canada, and probably the US, then the number one site being indeed, monster has become so how shall we say irrelevant in today’s market, the other site that’s up there’s a site called zip recruiter if you know, but LinkedIn is still very relevant for jobs. So I would say to anybody, if you’re moving forward, you should keep your LinkedIn profile up to date, if you’re looking or potentially looking, but there still seems to be this ongoing problem on LinkedIn in 2020, that Microsoft does not get ahold of spammy. So you connect with somebody. And the first thing you get is a sales pitch saying here’s what I do not let’s chat and get to know each other. And then the other problem is the LinkedIn groups seem to be irrelevant in this market.

29:44

thoughts on that? Well, the talking to the groups, let’s kind of work our way backwards. The group is only as valuable as the people that are in it, and the conversations that are being had the fact that People are spamming others, that’s not a good thing. And Microsoft does have to get ahold of that. But at the end of the day, LinkedIn is special. Because if you’re say you’re a young entrepreneur, and you’re looking for a mentor, this could be a really good place to make that connection. And in that process, you have someone that can pour into your business. And because LinkedIn is for business, those are the conversations you’re going to have the it’s on the onus of the individuals, to, if they’re going to have a group, have great questions, add great people involved, and provide value for everybody involved in the whole process. I like the idea that Angie Dixon says she won’t sit down and have a meeting with someone where there’s not a win win for both parties, for instance. Yeah. And so literally people coming into a group and just dumping their little link to their next sale, for instance, that’s just not cool. In the in the spirit of if, if we’re going to build a greater business, having those greater conversations, learn having those learning moments, contributing, literally a dump and run strategies vary on any network. It’s a very anti social kind of move, because you’re like throwing spaghetti up against the wall, and you’re hoping that it’s going to stick and last time I checked, hope is not a marketing strategy.

31:29

I would agree. You know how I feel about that. I describe it to throwing darts at a dartboard blindfolded and backwards, you know, it just doesn’t work. If you want to learn more about LinkedIn, two places I suggest people should go one is go follow my friend, Adam Franklin Adams been on this podcast and go check out the episode. He’s out of Brisbane, Australia has a really great guy. He gives away a lot of cheat sheets without an opt in. And there’s a reason he does that it’s lower barrier to entry. So check out his website at blue wire media do a Google search for any other guy. And he’ll be appearing on this podcast sometime in the near future because I’ve got a commitment out of them is my good friend Mr. Neal Schaffer. Yes, Neil’s deals, written a couple of books on LinkedIn over the years. And to be fair, it’s interesting Neal Neal’s LinkedIn guru. But Neil and I normally talk on Twitter, here we go again. Yeah, you know, and we, we’ve been friends on social media for a number of years. And in the same circles, so I, I actually got, I got commitment out to Neil, that we needed to set up a date before Christmas, when he could join us. So that will be coming up. But there are two really good resources, get on their mailing list are both approachable. They’re both very helpful. I know Adam and his group does, we could glide on how to better yourself on LinkedIn. So if you’re concerned about that goes, go check those guys out. And I have to tell you, Adam made my day last week, we were on a zoom call, and we were both having major problems. So what did you do? He picked up the phone from Brisbane and called me We finished a call on the phone. So you know, thank you to Adam. But that’s the value of a relationship. Right, Jeff?

33:15

Well, that’s just it comes back to I remember, my grandfather telling me this because he’s a brilliant business person. He says it’s not what you know, that matters. It’s who you know, who can you call, literally? And that’s why in business relationships still are King in the whole process.

33:36

I mean, the good the good example if and and I know you’ve shared this story with your, your participants, even recently, as you and I, I mean, we talk almost daily, if not every other day, even for five minutes, there’s texts that go back and forth. Where didn’t Jeff and I meet on Twitter. And so people who think it’s not worth it, I mean, I was on a, I did a recording and released a podcast last night with the vendor said again, shout out to the vendor. And we talked about WordPress. And before we even got to recording we spent 20 minutes just catching up and where does the vendor live? India. So the bottom line is without social media, where do you get a chance to, to meet all these great people? That’s the other side of it. Right? So yeah,

34:24

and it’s still business 101 we need to have mentors we need to continue to connect with great people where we create Win Win scenarios for both parties. That’s important for business because that’s what opens up doors.

34:39

No. Go on to Instagram. I know Instagram is to say I have a tough time with but I get really interesting reach from new places. I have never thought Gemini and I cannot get my head wrapped around stories for some reason. And I can’t get my head wrapped around. I GTV for some reason, but I do really well when I post either a podcast episode or I post something I’m thinking about Gemini talks on Instagram.

35:11

Well, the thing to always remember is Instagram is a story of your business, in pictures or video, or in the stores themselves throughout the day, interesting things that are happening, interesting Connect moments, interesting customer interactions. It’s the story not so much written as it is in a captured picture. A great video or story that’s up there. And literally, what is happening your business and why should people care? And why does it matter? I mean, this is an ideal place to bring customers in having them share their stories about how they have experienced good things in your business, for instance, as an example. And so it’s a story of your business. That way, then you start getting your head in the right spot for what do I post? What’s happening? What is what’s one thing that the business owner has learned, that could be helpful for everybody involved in that community? For example?

36:13

Yeah, there’s no question. And no, and no one side a half touched on even though we’ve talked about the importance of video is the world’s number two search engine. And you know, it’s like that is that that’s this monster called YouTube. And one of the things that I like to do with YouTube is I’ll do Facebook videos. And I’ll actually download them. And I’m big that you got to use different media for different channels, but I’ll actually put them up on YouTube. And I find a sometimes even get extended reach doing that. So I think YouTube still has a lot of value in search terms.

36:47

Absolutely. Because people are looking for YouTube and, for instance, a good buddy of mine. We are at the back of the computer, and we’re looking at what color does this port mean? So he types it literally out and there’s a YouTube video rate on it. People are literally calling up YouTube to get step by step instructions or understanding or at something it’s just it’s like, asking Uncle Buck, what what’s the answer? cut a deal?

37:15

Yeah. And a shout out to my friends. over at wordfence. They do a 12 o’clock, PM, a YouTube live on Tuesdays on their channel, where they talk about something breakdown and security. And, you know, because I’m working during the day, or I’ve got other things going on, and typically don’t see it live, but then go back to YouTube and watch it later. And that’s the value of that. And you know, the way I like to watch YouTube videos like that is if you really want to try something fun guys, go get yourself a Google Chromecast, put it on your big screen TV and then cast from your laptop to the TV. It’s it’s much better.

37:53

Absolutely. And I love the example of wordfence because they produce great videos. And not only that, they, when they do their video talk. They communicate it in a way that a lot of people can find it not only interesting, but understandable. Because the transfer of information, stocks that people can understand. And I find that those three there on the workshop deliver a great conversation that’s understandable and is actionable. Yeah, they meet every day.

38:30

They really has any and the one behind the scenes that that is my good friend, Kathy Zander, who’s also part of their podcasting. Cathy’s not on the workshop, but she’s part of the podcasts and she delivered that team delivers every day, as far as I’m concerned,

38:45

I am amazed at how smart they are, and yet how easy they transfer the information to the rest of us because some of this stuff can be really extremely technical. I’ve looked at some of their, what they’ve written and some of the attacks and some of the analysis of it. It’s fairly high level. But at the end of the day, when they do their their video lives. It’s really understandable. They explain things well, and they tell you what to do. And that is wonderful when it comes to because not everybody goes into business and they want to be a an analysis or a

39:25

security guru.

39:26

Yes, nobody’s gonna go and say, I want to be an accountant and a security guru. The security is what protects the accountants website. But at the end of the day, we need smart people around us that literally will contribute to us staying safe. They’re a great team for doing that.

39:47

No, no, no question and they understand it and they’re all over social media. So if you need anything, and and frankly I think most of them do better on Twitter, to be honest with you Kathy was saying on a podcast recently. She He’s basically left her Facebook page alone because of the Facebook rabbit hole. And I get that. So you know, that’s why a lot of people don’t go that route. So that’s the important thing. Um, one site that I’ve been playing with more and more in this year is a site called Cora. And Cora has been around for a long, long time. But I think core is a great site for q&a. Like, if you have a question, and you throw it out there and you get an answer, I think it has some value for that. Do you have any sites that you’ve played with this year, Jeff, a new medium or something like that?

40:35

I’m always looking at what’s coming. I mean, we’ve talked about other social networks that are rising up trying to get a presence on there trying to get a feel for what’s the interface? Like, is it going to be relevant for me to bring up in workplace education? I mean, when you think of, for instance, parler, for instance, is it worth going to, to, for business, at the end of the day, it all comes down to this simple fact. Where’s your audience where they

41:07

guard your tribe?

41:08

Yeah, because you need eyeballs to market to some wherever they’re going. That’s where you need to somehow think about having some sort of a presence. And that’s the key to it, because there’s so many. There’s other networks I looked at, and they ended up being a dud, because they just couldn’t get traction, and they just weren’t bringing the people that I needed to have there to make it worth my time, for instance, and so you’re constantly trying to constantly look, you can kind of continue to survey your customers, where are you? Where are you spending your time? For instance, that’s why I was back to that tic Tock conversation. Are they aren’t they?

41:57

I would, I would agree. And I’ll tell you a company that spent down this rabbit hole twice as Google. And we all know, in 2020, we went through the demise of Google Plus. And the reality of it is the marketers role on Google Plus, but the tribes weren’t fucking the Google Plus. And that’s a conversation again, and they went through that with Google Buzz. And I think Google’s problem in the social media spaces, they do really well when they acquire stuff. So YouTube originally was not a Google property, they acquired it. Yeah, um, I have. And you can tell because I have an old legacy YouTube account that’s linked to my gmail account, which is, which is key. But I think a lot of what happened with Google is they need they do better when they acquire social media properties, and they develop. So I think they just frankly, need to stay out of that space, and do what they do best.

42:55

They have created a lot of great things. But at the end of the day, if the end user cannot easily work with it and understand it, then that’s a problem. Think of Google Wave, we think of Google Plus. If it’s not really simple to use and run, people will not go there.

43:16

The answer? And if you want to see some of the stuff that Google has killed, there’s a website actually called killed by google.com. Yeah,

43:28

well, yeah, he did produce some great stuff. I love Google Wave, they were way ahead of others, when you think about the fact that we could type together in the same spot. That’s simple. When I saw that that was ground breaking, because we know that everybody else Google and Microsoft ended up developing with their online platforms, that same principle of partnering together in developing the document, but Google brought it forth, but it was just so hard for people to be able to use it at that moment in time, they just weren’t ready. Excuse me. And so that’s where and user experience is absolutely mission critical for whatever is coming down the pipe. You know,

44:19

I’m not, we’re not here to bash Google guys. I mean, one of the things Google does really well, despite all the storage is their social sharing of say stuff like Google Photos. And if you’ve been following Google Photos, they’ve added all kinds of, you know, I mean, there’s an outcry because of the storage limits, but frankly, they’ve given it away for way too long. And there’s and their storage fees are really reasonable. And they’ve added all kinds of tools to Google Photos for sharing their in editing. So there’s a lot that Google really brings to the table and, and you know, even if I didn’t have a paid workplaces account, which is the old G Suite account, I’d be paying for storage just for Google Photos. I mean, there’s so tools are amazing. And and that’s that’s part of it too, right? So

45:05

in defense of Google, too, I think they finally get it. I mean, you look at the apps now there are incredibly user friendly. It just they just didn’t start off that way. They had to learn that, that the KISS principle, I mean, literally, I learned that principle, a long time ago when I wore green, so to speak, and keep it simple. And we’ll say it the other SS. But

45:30

I was stupid.

45:34

Well, when I wore green, there was other names there, too. Yeah. The, but it is important that, that Google has done a great job like their their sheets, their docs, their presentations, all the apps they built now are really user friendly. But it took a little while to get

45:56

there. I am such you know, we’re talking social media. But since we’re on this tangent, I’m such a fan of Google Sites like you wouldn’t believe. And there’s all kinds of free templates out there and stuff. I actually prefer doing presentations in Google Slides and moving them into PowerPoint than doing them in PowerPoint and moving on the sides that tells you something, it’s slides is my go to presentation app for a couple years. Yeah.

46:20

Speaking of that, Microsoft has to be careful with what they build, because they have to limit the distraction now that the French has teams made me go to teams, there is so much you can do the end user can get lost in what to do. It’s like the if we bring it all back to the McDonald’s menu, when you walked in the few items, the fewer the items there, the faster someone can make a decision.

46:48

Not I’ll share with you a team’s story that’s worth doing. I was sharing with my, my new manager. And I was saying I’m recording training sessions when I do training with fellow staff members, or colleagues, I always say to them, do you mind if I record the session? And she said to me, that’s a great idea. I never thought of that. And I’m doing a training session with somebody else. And she actually said to me, how do I do a recording on teams like it’s so easy, if you haven’t learned the 10 things you need to do? effectively, it’s so easy to get lost. And we even have spreadsheets in teams that point to a SharePoint portal, believe it or not. So we have spreadsheets in teams that are actually linked to SharePoint, it just makes it easier to get at them than going through the portal. But let me tell you, it’s so easy to get lost with any of these tools. And I don’t care if it’s teams, if it’s Hootsuite. If it’s zoom, if it’s me, if it’s any of these tools, it’s easy to get lost if you don’t do it.

47:54

Absolutely, absolutely.

47:57

So as we go to 2021, do you see any emerging trends that are gonna hit hard to share, besides video, I think video is going to be more important.

48:06

I’m keeping my eyes on the social networks as far as what they’re allowing and what they’re not allowing. Because at the end of the day, businesses need to have visibility. And if they keep on con visibility back, they’re going to lose out in the end. At the end of the day. The when people are getting tired of COVID, we just we all know that. It’s just we wish it would just go all the way. But it’s going to be around for a while until we find that solution that works for everybody. But at the end of the day, business still needs to continue this is this is going to be the year of the pivot. And we talked about it last year that you know if if COVID is affected you you need to think about how can I change and transform my business so to speak?

49:01

Well, not and let me stop you there for a sec. Doc interrupt. You’re not just your business your life. I mean, you got it, you got to realize that there’s people around you stressed out, there’s people around you better hurting. You know, I’ve been transparent about it. I’ve gone through I went through stuff this past summer and a lot of it was already happening, but COVID just pushed it over the edge. You got to be careful of people around you. I mean, my mom’s 76 years old and sometimes has a tough time because she can’t go out. So it’s not just business. It’s life in general.

49:36

Yeah, absolutely. I’d like to think that this would be a year that we would care more, but that will. That’s going to take effort that’s going to take serious commitment to do that, despite all the circumstances. The more businesses will go online this year. More shopping carts will be set up, but at the end of the day, because there’s going to be more business is on there. We know that unless these businesses have set themselves up properly and have good security,

50:08

good

50:10

people supporting them, then it’s going to be a year where a lot of eyes open up. Let’s go with the solar winds conversation.

50:21

Oh, you had to go there.

50:23

I did. Who puts together a password solar winds 123. And is told that they need to change it, and they don’t. And it lets the fox into the big giant hen house of Oh, my goodness, what were you thinking kind of deal, because that had a far reaching effect on almost was an eight to 1000 businesses. And I know we’re running short in time. But okay.

50:51

And it’s not, it’s not just sad. It’s all the banks in Canada in us. It’s dependent on in the US. It was Microsoft, it was our friends at Google who claim that it was a typo. I don’t believe them. And it goes on, and it goes on. And it goes on. And this story has lights. And just so people know I’ve got in a future episode, I’ve got a security expert coming on with me. And we’re actually going to talk about solar winds in details. So this story’s got legs. And if you want to see a good breakdown, go check out wordfence is wordfence Live from last week at the time of this recording. And they spent an hour talking about solar wind. So

51:36

yeah, the bottom line for business is that you do what you can do. And then you get to rely on others to do what they do to keep your business safe. When someone drops the ball anywhere in that process. Things can go bad really quickly.

51:55

No, no question. So quick, Happy New Year to everybody out there. I hope you take care yourself. Do me a favor and take care of yourself and your loved ones we all know this is a tough time with COVID. Ontario as time of this recording, we’re three days into it a 28 days Southern Ontario lockdown again. So we’ll be in the area my mum’s in will be down to about 42 days by the time we’re down. Toronto will have gone through 28 plus five and another 28 day cycle. So just be safe. I know there’s problems out in Alberta and BC and Quebec as well in Canada, the US has problems all over the place. Take care of Jeff, if somebody wants to get ahold your house the best way

52:40

they can email me at Jeff at workplace education.ca I’m in the process of rebranding. I’m looking again to see if I can take a website and propel it upward just so that I can demonstrate to others that it still can be done. So Jeff and sorry, Jeff at workplace education.ca

53:00

and Jeff’s on Twitter and Facebook and LinkedIn so you can reach out to a search for Jeff Brown, you’ll find them he’s pretty approachable. You know, we as I say we’ve had many a conversation batting stuff around over the years including all this rebrand. So have a happy new year. Bye, Jeff.

53:21

Thanks for joining me be safe. My pleasure. Happy New Year to you, Rob. And all your audience. May this be a better year than 2020?

53:30

Yeah, it will be thanks so much. Have a great day. Bye bye for now. A very special thank you to Jeff Brown for Joining me to talk about social media trends and 2020 and moving forward to 2021 I always appreciate Jeff’s insights and wisdoms and he’s a great resource you need to follow him on social media because he actually brings a lot to the table. This podcast dedicated my late father Bruce Cairns and my wife Jill Mclean-Cairns, love you both very much. If you want to get in touch with me You can email me VIP at stunning digital marketing comm go on over to our website, stunning digital marketing.com slash free and sign up for our free weekly newsletter with tips tricks and help for your marketing needs into your inbox. And besides that, you can follow me on twitter at Rob Cairns. Please keep your feet on the ground and keep reaching for the stars and make your business succeed by now