Stitches & Picks S1:Ep 3 - Definitions and Tangents
Watch the YouTube video version above or listen to the podcast below!
Stitches & Picks Podcast - Episode 3 - Definitions and Tangents Video Transcript
[This transcript has been lightly edited to ensure readability]
[Intro]
Dave Dougherty:
Welcome to episode number three. I’m Dave.
Kristen Juve:
I'm Kristen.
Dave Dougherty:
Today we are going to be living the Murphy's Law of entrepreneurship where, you know, we had the best-laid plans. We are a little less structured than we would like for going into the episode. But we're here. We're showing up. We're doing the work and that's 90% of it.
I was saying to Kristen before we jumped on here that…If you guys are on YouTube and you see me like really squinty, I had an eye appointment and these lights are way brighter than they would be normally. So, if I look weirder than I usually do, that's why.
Kristen Juve:
We're both in great shape today because I did not get a solid night's sleep because I have a teething one-year-old.
Dave Dougherty:
Oh boy. Yeah. So aside from the one-year-old, what was going on in your world last week? The last two weeks?
Kristen Juve:
Uh, so I feel like last week I was able to accomplish a lot. It definitely was like little tasks like things for my Shopify website. The background stuff, doing some research, understanding how I kind of want to set that up. Because crazy enough, Shopify is its own whole ecosystem, which I'm learning very fast.
Then this week it seems like I can't seem to do anything, but that might be teething…slash my own...I don't even know what, to be honest. I'm looking back going:
I don't know how we got to Thursday and I haven't really accomplished anything other than a little bit of knitting.
I mean, I've accomplished stuff. I need to look at it that way. I have continued to work on my sample for the pattern that I'm writing. And then I've done a little bit here and there that haven't really accumulated to a full checkmark of having something completed. But it's there. It is. I have to give it its gratitude, its weight.
So, yeah. What about you?
Dave Dougherty:
Plugging away on video editing and trying a new transcription tool. Getting used to that and seeing the pros and cons of it. Maybe in a later episode, I could do a one-off thing on the tools. If anybody's interested, hit me up online or drop a comment.
Kristen Juve:
Speaking of tools. I did do that. Now you're reminding me. This is my, this is my sleep. I was using the SEMRush social posting tool and it has yet to work. Not that, I'm not trying to bag on the tool, it's just things have not gone right. I'm sure it's, I know some of it is user error. I'm sure. I hope because that would make it easier.
Dave Dougherty:
I love that tool for social analytics, but I haven't ever used it for posting things. Just because of the penalty that Facebook puts on you. I just do everything natively, which is kind of obnoxious, but…
Kristen Juve:
Well, I'm looking to see if Instagram does this too since it's obviously owned by Meta. Do you get as penalized on Instagram as you do on Facebook?
I know for a fact about Facebook. I've seen it in real life when I worked at a couple of my past jobs. I'm interested about the Instagram part, but I have yet to execute it that way. So we'll see what happens.
Dave Dougherty:
I've been using Creator Studio. It's limited features. If you don't do it via Instagram on your phone. I mean, it's fine. There are some optimizations, but it's like anything there's always going to be something you need to do slightly better. But it's good enough for now.
The only other thing with me is... Well, any of the astute viewers will notice that I got a new background. I have a new studio shelf. Let's see what direction? There we go. Got a new shelf. So some more storage. I'm working on redoing the studio a bit and plugging away on that.
I guess, yeah, we'll jump into what we had planned for today. I'm going to let you introduce it since it was your idea.
Kristen Juve:
I feel like it was originally your idea, but I might have co-opted it.
Dave Dougherty:
Whoever says it last is who wins right?
Kristen Juve:
Or the loudest? I don't know.
Dave Dougherty:
Well, we can go into the metaphysics of business politics if you’d like…
Kristen Juve:
Um. Oh my God. I don't know that that's a good use of anyone's time though.
Business Jargon Definitions and How You May Experience Them
Kristen Juve:
So one of the things that we wanted to talk about was the definitions of business terms, marketing definitions in particular, and how In our current digital age, especially when it comes to digital marketing, I think there are so many ways that you can talk about one particular thing. And we use different vocabulary for it that it ends up being mind-boggling and frustrating at times. Especially for people who don't have a marketing background or don't have a business background.
For example, when you're trying to learn from someone else and they keep calling something an email campaign. And you're like “I do newsletters,” or “e-blasts” or whatever, from a generation or from whatever chronology you want to use. How was that different? How is that the same?
And what level of - this will be a real fun one from corporate jargon - “digital maturity” are you at? Where are you actually? Like, you're not in a phase where you're going to have a full drip email campaign, you're going to have an e-blast, or a newsletter because of where you're at currently. Then translating those to your business.
I don't know, we can probably jump into some examples like that or other things…This is where my brain is getting fuzzy. I'm just like…Oh man, I need more sleep.
Dave Dougherty:
Yeah, no, I think there are some really common ones. I know 10 years ago, when I was teaching myself on the marketing side. I was the musician, I knew I needed to get stuff out. I had heard of copy editing, but what does that mean? Or copywriting? You know, I know copyrighting in the legal sense, but not in the business world. What does all this mean?
Leveraging the different platforms and seeing what and how people use it. How people talked about it. And it really depends on what sort of marketer you want to be, right? I think that's the one thing where you talk about digital maturity is once you have a certain level of experience, you know how you want to niche down and you know where your skill sets are.
I think for the sake of this conversation let’s focus on somebody who hasn't necessarily matured into what they're good at. Because there are definitely people who do email things really, really well, and that really fits their personality. There's other people…
Kristen Juve:
Right. And their business. The branding of their business.
I think to your point of keeping us in a conversation where someone's not necessarily digitally mature or they're just starting out and they don't necessarily know what their brand voice is yet or what their branding feel or whatever is going to be.
You still have to start with something, right? You can't just be like…I used to get into this situation where I would read all about these things, right? Like, okay I need a business plan. I need all of this vocabulary where it's like, I need them all in place to run my business.
And then I would have my branding voice: the colors, the logo, the business plan, and then I would not do anything because I was like: I just did all this work and I have nothing to show for it.
So it's almost like you could build it as you go and just evolve. Evolve your voice. There's nothing wrong with that. Evolve your learnings to your vocabulary.
Dave Dougherty:
Right. Yeah. I think there is a bell curve to that too because you know, as your business grows and as your business evolves you end up using more and more of that jargon. 1) Because it's safe and legal will approve it, and 2) you have an out when what you say is so generic nobody knows what you're talking about.
So, yeah, I think for me…Let's talk about copywriting, SEO, as we've talked about…What kind of platform are you using?
Well, the platforms relate to the tools or the ecosystems you play in. Right? So YouTube is a platform. Adobe web hosting or IBM web hosting or any of those types of things are platforms. Shopify is a platform.
So then one that's commonly misunderstood is channels. Especially when you get into Google Analytics and you start seeing questions like: How's my performance? You're going to run into things like: What's your channel performance?
Well, that just means the various platforms [or channels in Google Analytics] that are sending things over to you, right? So you have a social media bucket. You have your organic [traffic] bucket.
3 Different Media Types in the Digital Marketing Landscape
Kristen Juve:
We have to talk about owned versus not owned. You have your own website. Like that's your domain, that's your territory.
I feel like you are one of the biggest proponents of this too. When we've talked about this. Like if you are setting up your entire business to be just on Instagram or just on Facebook. That is fine to start and that is valid and there's a lot of reasons why you'd want to do that. But at some point when you hit a certain point, you're going to want to go: I need to own this.
I mean, case and point when Facebook and Instagram went out and people could not communicate or run their businesses. You need to have your owned media, your own platform and then the channels that come into it that you're directing to it.
Dave Dougherty:
Yeah.
For anybody who's not familiar with this idea of the different media types…Typically there are three different media types. There's the owned. Which are things that you own: your newsletter, your website. Typically it’s your website any kind of like brochures or anything you'd have with that.
Then you have your earned media, which is it's typically the PR stuff. People are talking about you because of the things that you do. And that's worth a certain dollar amount of ad spend [equivalent] and yada yada yada.
Kristen Juve:
I think we see that one a lot nowadays. Sorry to tangent on this. Also not sorry. In Instagram, when you see companies send influencers their products and they're writing that off as like:
This is a spend to try to get earned media, even though I'm not paying these people to talk about my product, I'm hoping that they're gonna like it and talk about it anyways.
Dave Dougherty:
Right. Right. Yeah. So an interesting…Okay, so I'm going to put a pin on that one and we're gonna come back to it. To throw out even more jargon in our definition episode.
So you have the owned and the earned and the final one is the paid media. So what's your advertising? Whether it's Facebook, Google ads, display ads, billboards, you wrap a bus with your face on it. You know, any of the park benches that insurance agents and realtors put their faces on. Any of that kind of stuff.
The modern web tactics is a really interesting thing. And this might be something that would be worth a debate somewhere. I typically slot in my mind, the influencer piece, right in between the earned and the paid [media types]. Because on the one hand, there are some influencers who will talk about your stuff because they absolutely love it. Regardless of whether or not you're paying for it. So that would be the earned.
But then if you're paying them to be a spokesperson for you, that is very much paid media.
Kristen Juve:
Where would you put collabs?
Dave Dougherty:
Collaborations? That would be... Well, it depends on how you execute it. Right?
Kristen Juve:
Nuances.
Dave Dougherty:
I think the other thing too, to throw in there is, a lot of times…A lot of the different Web 2.0 influencers that you'll, you'll see like Brian Clarke…
Kristen Juve:
What does Web 2.0 mean again?
Dave Dougherty:
I'll get back to that. You get the web… So you have Brian Clarke from Copyblogger, Joe Pulizzi from Content Marketing Institute, now The Tilt...Those kinds of guys...You'll see them often say, especially Joe Pulizzi: Don't build your house on rented land!
Don’t build your content house on rented land.
— Joe Pulizzi I joepulizzi.eth (@JoePulizzi) August 20, 2021
What he means by that is you put in all of the efforts into having the email newsletter lists that you own. You own the relationship. You're not dependent on the algorithm or the platform like YouTube or Facebook to continually send people your way.
Like we've seen with Facebook and anything that Facebook owns, they will lure you in and then they'll change the rules of the game on you.
Kristen Juve:
And get you to spend money.
Dave Dougherty:
Yeah, and then that promise where you're like:
I built out my business page. This is great. And oh, now I'm only getting 1% of the 10,000 people that like my stuff.
Kristen Juve:
We could do a whole episode on Facebook itself. And I can tell you all of the things that I've learned of, how everything is revolved around them trying to get you to spend money with them. For ads. That's it.
Dave Dougherty:
Because they have to go to the shareholders. To then say, this is doing this and…
So I'm a big fan of saying you have the three main media types, but then there's this sort of like fourth stepchild one, which is rented land.
The organic side of social media, which some people like to argue is dead, that organic earned stuff, that is very much rented land. But then social media is also very much paid media because you're boosting your posts on Facebook [or Twitter, etc.]. You have sponsored reels on Instagram…
Yeah, I think as of this recording [February.2021], I think Tik Tok and YouTube are probably the only ones where you get any kind of organic reach still. But it's very much algorithm dependent and how well are you good at optimizing for the robots?
Kristen Juve:
I might make a case for Instagram on that as well. Based on a few different things. One being hashtags. I still very much think that Instagram is reliant on hashtags and their algorithm as well.
Quick Discussion of Web 1.0 Through Web 3.0
Dave Dougherty:
Okay, so circling back to the Web 2.0 thing, which you asked…
Kristen Juve:
I always bring this up. I always ask you. You always tell me and I always forget.
Dave Dougherty:
Well, I mean it is sort of that gotcha kind of a question, right? This is one of those things where people will comment or email in like “You guys are totally wrong!”
So the way that I think of it. You have Web 1.0 which was very much email newsletters, forums. This is kind of like pre-Google.
Kristen Juve:
Is this pre-Vine?
Dave Dougherty:
Oh, god. Yes.
Kristen Juve:
Had to throw that in there to show my age. Sorry.
Dave Dougherty:
If we get into the sort of history of it. You have early to mid-90s, the internet becomes a thing. Where the early adopters are using it.
Kristen Juve:
In eighth grade, I built my first webpage.
Dave Dougherty:
Around 1997, you have the introduction of Google. I think it was ‘95, ‘94 for Yahoo!. They were the kind of the first big one [search engines] in the US.
Kristen Juve:
You're a nerd.
Dave Dougherty:
I cannot remember important things in my life, but I can remember these things! I've also had this in a couple of my public speaking presentations.
Kristen Juve:
Oh, yeah, that's fair.
Dave Dougherty:
So you have Web 1.0 which has people who are interested in a topic, they engage in a forum. Because you're not going to talk about model airplanes unless you're interested in model airplanes and you seek out that group. Right?
Then Web 2.0 really becomes this like “reach the community.” You have your own platform where “if I build it, they will come kind of a thing.” That was the promise of Google and Facebook early on.
Then now we're kind of in a thing where a lot of influencers are saying that we're transitioning to Web 3.0. Which okay. Early adopters, maybe. Right? So like Gary Vaynerchuk is doing a lot with it.
Kristen Juve:
Early adopter. What's the “it” in that sentence?
Dave Dougherty:
So Web 3.0 is more of this NFT…basically creating your own economy around your content rather than…
Kristen Juve:
I'm not gonna lie. That doesn't interest me.
Dave Dougherty:
Right. Well, it's funny because I listened to it just to keep myself educated about it and I'm like:
How is this any different than band fan clubs from way back when?
Like Kiss Army in the 1970s or Metallica had a Met Club that you could mail a check in to get your annual subscription and…
Kristen Juve:
It's almost like Patreon. Like you're what you're talking about, the bands is like the first version of Patreon. Now there's a Patreon and then there's going to be a future version of Patreon.
Dave Dougherty:
So. Well. It's also kind of like if you create your own economy for it, and there are a lot of resources. I'm by no means an expert in this. I'm just, you know, willing to say what I've learned thus far and it very well may be wrong.
Kristen Juve:
Um, I mean, I don't think anybody can predict the future.
Dave Dougherty:
No. And if they can, they're wrong. You shouldn't listen to them.
Kristen Juve:
I was going to say if they can, they should buy a lottery ticket, but you're right.
Dave Dougherty:
I mean, it's really around this idea that we're heading back to the community function of it. So we're going back to where people are interested in this particular topic and they’re helping each other out…
Kristen Juve:
Yes. I do agree with that.
Dave Dougherty:
The thing about Web 3.0, as it stands now, is that with this idea of crypto and NFTs and anything else, you basically get rewarded for the more you interact within that community. And as more people interact within that community, the value of it increases, so it ends up being kind of like stock valuations of a particular community within its own economy.
So it's not just the content and the services and whatever else, but it's everyone's experience with it and the value that's created from that experience.
Kristen Juve:
Yeah. Okay so sans the value and evaluation type piece. There is this crafting website and I'm not going to list it because I actually think what they're doing - and I don't think they're US-based so - there are a lot of crafters in various areas that are producing
content or patterns or whatever and then people who purchased them [the patterns or designs] - so a random person then post that [pattern] on this other website. Let's it up for free for everybody else. So essentially like copyright infringement, IP infringement, and there's nothing anybody can do about it.
So it's interesting that's like the nefarious route of what you're talking about. Because they get coins and stuff for doing it! The more actions you're taking on this website, you get more credits, and then you can use those credits to do other things.
I don't know exactly how it works. Like I said, I think it's horrific, but it's interesting. I mean, we could probably go into a whole conversation about how there's good things and bad things with the same exact tools, i.e. Facebook.
Dave Dougherty:
I think in order to bring it to something that some people are familiar with and it's not a perfect one-to-one but it's like, loyalty points on air miles.
So those things that you subscribed to only have value within the ecosystem that they are in, right? Unless the company has set it up where you can cash out your air miles for a certain amount, you're stuck. You've earned 20,000 miles and you have nothing to spend them on? Cool. So they don't mean anything because you don't have anything to spend them on.
So like I said, I am by no means an expert. Research your own thing. I'm interested in the kind of blockchain elements of it only in the fact of how it relates to smart contracts.
Kristen Juve:
Smart contracts?
Dave Dougherty:
So one of the, one of the interesting things that some people have talked about, or some people have actually implemented, is if you buy a ticket to an event, via one of these platforms.
Kristen Juve:
Is that the official terminology, is a smart contract? I feel like we talked about it before, but I don't remember hearing smart contract.
Dave Dougherty:
Well, so, this is where it gets all nuanced and I hesitate to say it.
In the old normal world, you would have a contract that is on paper and it says you have to abide by these things, yada, yada yada. Right? But that document lives where? It's not actually accessible via all these other things.
Like I said, the thing that's interesting to me, especially as, a musician and a performer, or somebody who is interested in live events. One of the things that people are using these smart contracts for is that if it's on the blockchain, you cannot edit it. So baked into it Is you can buy this ticket now, you can buy access to it, but then if you resell it then the artists, the promoter, the whoever who released the ticket gets a percentage of the secondary market.
So then you basically, as an artist, you're no longer screwed by the robots buying out your entire performance because if it gets resold to a human being. You're still getting a piece of that and then you're actually playing to a venue full of people instead of seeing on your sheet that, “Hey, I think I sold out Tulsa!” Then you get there and it's 40% capacity.
Kristen Juve:
Applies to knitting too with patterns. You sell a pattern and someone wants to share it with her friend. Instead of sharing, they have to be forced to sell it, and then as a pattern maker, you get some of those. It makes sense actually paying the creator for their work.
Dave Dougherty:
One of the things that Brian Clarke and Joe Pulizzi did, I mean, they just announced they're doing a creator economy live event down in Arizona. But as part of that, they sold a limited number of tickets via this kind of model where you get lifetime access to any event that they put on related to this thing. You'll get special VIP access, you'll get all these other extra perks and, you know, if you can't make it you’ll have the ability to sell your access for a year or whatever to somebody else, and then they can go.
So there are a lot of opportunities there, but it is so wild west right now. With any of that, that it's…
Kristen Juve:
Corporate buzzword!
Dave Dougherty:
There are no regulations around crypto or NFTs or anything like that. So don't do anything that you're not willing to lose completely.
Kristen Juve:
I think this is all super interesting and I think as entrepreneurs, we have to keep an eye out. I mean, not just for entrepreneurship, I think in general, like, my husband and I kind of joke like adapt or die. And that's a really extreme, quick way to be like, things are going to change. It is in our best interests to adapt to the world, at least to some degree so that we can continue to make money and survive. But I think…
Dave Dougherty:
Yeah, I say it all the time, too.
Kristen Juve:
…and I think that's actually a lot of like entrepreneurs mindset too, is like, I will adapt for that. I have to do this. There's no other option.
I find that sounds really interesting. I have a lot of hope for the future, that there will be some really positive changes because of that. I know that there are some negative drawbacks. I'm not going to go into them right now, but I do have to admit, I really love the Web 2.0 that we're in right now where people are starting to shift back toward community.
Especially because we're in a pandemic. We don't have community. Like literally, I think that's why we started this was, we were like, “We want to hold ourselves accountable for the stuff that we're doing.”
We're on these journeys that are separate, but somehow weirdly parallel sometimes and really similar. And we want to discuss it and why not open it up to other people so that they can come along on the ride with us and maybe learn something or maybe just not feel all alone.
Finding or Building the Community Around What You Do
Kristen Juve:
This is why I think I actually love this aspect of my Casting Knits stuff is community. And I'm not looking to purely capitalize the community. I'm actually looking to enjoy it as well as see if I can make something of it for myself.
Dave Dougherty:
And that was definitely one of the reasons I started the Beginning Guitar Online was very much this. Okay. I sidestepped to do this marketing thing to figure out how that works to better promote the stuff that I write and create. And then, you know, life happens and whatever else, but I realized that some of the best memories I had were at the local guitar shop that got sold and knocked down. You know, you could go in and you could just chat about really nerdy stuff that nobody should care about.
Kristen Juve:
Yes! Geek out on your niche!
Dave Dougherty:
Yeah, exactly! There are still good mom and pop shops around, but you really have to search for them and you really have to go out of your way for them now. If you're just walking around a Guitar Center it doesn't have the same vibe, right?
And so it really was this I want to, I’m going to put myself back out there just so that I can be a part of the guitar community. Because that's what I like and that's what I want to be around. I don't mind a half an hour debate on whether or not The Beatles or the Rolling Stones are better. I think there's a clear answer to that, but yeah, to your point niche down and geek out on it, and don't be afraid of that. Enjoy that.
Kristen Juve:
I think that's actually really well-placed in this conversation because like in everyone's individual niche, there's going to be a whole other culture and textbook definitions of things that you're going to encounter and learn if you don't already know. Or you already inherently know them because it's your specialty and embracing that culture and that community is just literally something I feel that you have to do. And if you don't enjoy that, that is not your business model.
Your business model is something very different and I think maybe this is a really good point too. Like that's [the community around interests is] more of our business models. So if that's not something that you're vibing with, we totally get it. But if you are then stay here with us because we have more coming on that theme.
Dave Dougherty:
Yeah, and I think there is an interesting piece here that is an assumption that is just baked in. Right? I think you see that with a lot of stuff online, you know, “Turn your hobbies into your dream job!”
No. There's a lot of work there and some hobbies you just can't monetize. I'm sorry, there’s just not big enough markets for that.
Kristen Juve:
And they should be hobbies. Yes. Thank you! I don't even care about the market sometimes, but like, as Millennials we were brought up…When we graduated the height of the Great Recession, everyone's like: “Okay you need to make a living. You need to survive.”
So we're all like, okay, I've been told in my life, I need to go to college to get a good job, but that didn't happen. Then I was also told that if I love what I do, I'll never work a day in my life. I’m going to make my hobby my job. Then you ruin your hobby for yourself!
There is nothing wrong with keeping your hobby as your hobby. There's nothing wrong with that and then finding a different business for your entrepreneurship. Something you find interesting.
Dave Dougherty:
Yeah. One of the key things that we talk about in terms of, you know, if you're going to market something successfully you have to segment your audience. One of the ways that you do that is through your word choice. The language that you use to signal that you're a part of a particular set of people and a particular headspace.
You see that if you're in live streaming and your t-shirt is all Avengers and you have a bunch of Legos behind you. That is a very particular person. Right? And that's great! I'm totally down with Legos and Avenger movies.
Would I publically display all those things? No. Because I'm not that far into it, but I don't hate on it. Find your own thing and be about it. You know, like the amps in the background for me and the producer desks that say something about me and what I enjoy doing. And you know, for me, I'm in this room…too much each day, but it's fine because I am around the things that I identify with and that make me happy.
Kristen Juve:
So you're bringing up a really great point right now and I have to do a plug because I really, really enjoy this woman. She goes by the Tidy Rebel on Instagram. I highly recommend checking her out. Her whole thing is like, your space should be a reflection of what you value. And like, we're getting on a wholly different tangent, but she's amazing. Check her out.
So to your point of if it makes you happy and it aligns with your values, absolutely, it should be around you. But you're right. It does also signals things and then how you talk about your community and how you talk about your niche also signal things.
This almost comes full circle to what we started talking about with copywriting. Like it's insane how the level of detail, nuance, or terminology that you use when you talk about your product, your company, your business, whatever, to your community, really says a lot. There is always reading between the lines.
Dave Dougherty:
I think that's the thing where. For us, we're not about the get rich quick piece of it. That doesn't exist.
You can, by all means, you can start a Shopify account and find some drop shippers, and have an e-commerce platform on whatever you want over a weekend. Does that mean you'll be successful and you will have a really nice small business retail shop? Probably not. Because if you're in it for the money, you're not going to do the work when it doesn't work.
Kristen Juve:
Well, that marketing is like…marketing is like literally everything. I know we're both marketers and we come from a marketing background, but marketing your product, if you don't people don't know that you have a product or what its value prop is. There’s another buzzword for a definition…
Dave Dougherty:
Eventually, we’ll have to define something and not just talk about talking…
Kristen Juve:
I mean isn’t that what we are here for? So. Your value proposition. If you actually, how do you bring value to your customer….And then I lost my train of thought…What was I saying?
Dave Dougherty:
So the thing that triggered for me, with what you were talking about was you have to market your products. And that's definitely one thing, building the awareness and putting in the work. Then even for the new job roles or the new sorts of go-to-market stuff with content creators is that you have to market your marketing.
If your live stream is a promotion of the e-commerce stuff that you have. Well, then you have to promote your live stream in order to promote the products that you're going to sell. Because without an audience, why do you even have a live stream?
Kristen Juve:
And who’s watching it? You can be live but is anyone hearing it?
Marketing Term Definitions Lightning Round
Dave Dougherty:
But if you show up consistently then yeah, they will show up, but you have to do the work and it's there. Right?
So, okay. Let's tie up some loose ends. Define value prop.
Kristen Juve:
So your unique value that you bring to your customer with your product or services or content. Why should they care about you? Why should they want the thing that you have?
I love that you're testing me.
Dave Dougherty:
Difference between products and services.
Kristen Juve:
Product is a physical good. Service is a…I can't define it without using the word service…It's something you'd do for someone. You could have digital goods too, which by the way, is what I have. So it's a digital product.
Dave Dougherty:
Same, yeah. Then you'll often hear too, you know, knowledge products! E-books, videos, webinars...
Kristen Juve:
E-books. I would still call that a digital product though.
Dave Dougherty:
Yeah, there’s a larger bucket. Right? If you have a hierarchy of things, that's the big bucket.
Should we make a game out of this? Should we do a lightning round?
Kristen Juve:
Yeah, let's try. It’s going to be interesting with my brain today with no sleep, but let's try this.
Dave Dougherty:
Yeah, this is off the top of my head too. So, all right. Define content marketing. I want to see if you get it right.
Kristen Juve:
Um, Oh my God, this is way harder when it's like, I feel the pressure. Marketing with value and substance, instead of just telling people what the product is. Educating.
Yep. Going to go with that. Right. So, yeah, for me, it's very much and…
Dave Dougherty:
For me, and I’ll link out to Content Marketing Institute which has the actual definition of it, it’s meeting the educational needs of your customers or your audience. It’s building the audience, monetizing it in some way, and addressing their informational needs. It's sort of the blend between media companies and product companies.
You see that blend happening more and more where the lines between either one of them is really loose now, over the last 10 or so years.
So a good example of that is Red Bull Media House. What's more profitable for that parent company? Is it actually the product of Red Bull or is it the media company where they have…
Kristen Juve:
I didn’t know Red Bull had a media house.
Dave Dougherty:
Oh yeah.
Kristen Juve:
I mean, I guess it lines up, I've seen Red Bull like sports and they're like how they, I just. I guess I assumed that they had product placement and logo placement and stuff.
Dave Dougherty:
It's a, it's a whole operation. Another really good example of it would be Cleveland Clinic or Mayo Clinic and the content marketing strategies that they have.
If you have cancer, you want very specific questions answered that may or may not feel appropriate with your doctor. Which, you know, that's a problem with your relationship with a doctor at that point.
But if you're like me, you're in the thing and then they're like, “Okay, cool. You feel good?”
I’ll be like, “Yeah.” Then you walk out the door and you think of 20 more questions.
Kristen Juve:
I mean, that's exactly that. They saw that problem. They were like, everybody's doing this. Let's put it out and there, and let's not let WebMD takeover.
Dave Dougherty:
Yeah. Let's get the information that is actually correct and not dengue fever.
Kristen Juve:
Are you speaking from personal experience?
Dave Dougherty:
Everything you search is like yellow fever.
Kristen Juve:
Everything I search is cancer.
Dave Dougherty:
I banned WebMD like six years ago. No, It'll be 16 years ago. So.
Kristen Juve:
Maybe that’s why you got all the fevers and now it’s cancer because now it’s cancer.
Dave Dougherty:
Yeah. We've gotten old enough that it's gone from a solvable thing to: “Well. You're dying.”
Kristen Juve:
Yes exactly. I feel like that was the perfect summary.
Dave Dougherty:
Yeah. This took a dark turn. Okay. Um, Okay. So we have content marketing. I think let's go with an analytical bend now. So you have a traffic source...
Kristen Juve:
Yes. Where people's visitors are coming from. To your website typically.
Dave Dougherty:
Traffic medium.
Kristen Juve:
How's that different?
Dave Dougherty:
According to Google Analytics, it is.
Kristen Juve:
Well, this is how up I am on my GA lingo.
Dave Dougherty:
So you have the actual source of it, right? YouTube. Whatever. Then you have the medium of it, which is social, organic, paid.
Kristen Juve:
Oh. Social, I feel like shouldn't fit into that. I feel like it should go organic or paid. But that's just me. What do I know? I didn't create the thing.
Dave Dougherty
Well, you can custom tag everything so that your analytics says what you want it to. Then you can have all of the problems that all the major companies have with their reporting.
Kristen Juve:
Perfect for Casting Knits! Okay. We talked about SEO and for those people that do not know anything about SEO, I think this might be our biggest trip up as we continue to have episodes. We both have an SEO background. I think we need to do SEO, and then we need to talk about the various little SEO parts as a quick brief, run-down, and then we can go into more detail in the future if we would like to.
Dave Dougherty:
Sure. SEO being search engine optimization.
The main thing that you will hear us talking about is optimizing for the SERP. S-E-R-P. Which is the search engine results page. So when you actually type something in and all of the stuff pops up.
Kristen Juve:
On the first page. Not on page eight. Cause who looks at page eight?
Dave Dougherty:
Unless you’re on a mobile now, which is now infinite scroll. That was an update. Which is advantageous for smaller organizations now, because you don't have to be on the first page to get some real results. Because if people are just going to infinitely scroll…
Kristen Juve:
One up for the entrepreneurs.
Dave Dougherty:
So the SERP is made up of 16 different content types. Three of which are paid. So you have the search ads, which is the paid search piece.
There's a separation of church and state when it comes to paid versus organic search. And that is, that is something that is very strict. So one of the myths that I always have to debunk - either with previous clients or bosses during the anchor gig - is:
What you do with paid media does not influence, directly, your search engine results. Your organic search engine results. They are two separate things.
Kristen Juve:
But if your goal is to show up on page one, you can pay for it.
Dave Dougherty:
You can and you can pay out the wazoo for it. And that's cool. If you have that kind of money.
Kristen Juve:
And this is why when you’re starting your own thing, learning about the organic side of it is really enlightening.
There are things you can do and there are tools that are already in place, that you can plug into your website to simplify things for you. It will literally tell you what to do. You don't have to go too far into understanding too much about SEO in order to do it.
Dave Dougherty:
Organic used to be a really big thing. I mean, that was where all the opportunity was when blogging was the main, you know, en vogue kind of thing for people. Because you could just make a really good post and you would be ranked.
Now there's been enough updates where you have to earn it again. But this is where I've said in previous things, like last year when I did a guest lecture at a local university:
SEO work is no longer just a channel in your marketing mix. It is the sum of everything that you are doing. So it is a really good way for you to know what your digital health is.
Whether or not you're an e-commerce platform. Whether or not you are a content marketing [platform] or content creator. If you are doing things well, then you will be rewarded with a lot of traffic.
Now, it's not like it used to be. You do have to work at it and you do have to do more things correctly than you used to have to. It is things like how well are you filling out the metadata on your website?
A lot of platforms that you subscribe to, whether it's a WordPress platform website or Squarespace, Wix, whatever. A lot of them have things that will let you walk you through this.
What's the title of the page? The meta-description that you type in, which is the summary of the page that shows up on the SERP...
Kristen Juve:
And don't forget image alt text!
Dave Dougherty:
[Meta description tags] is important for click-throughs but it doesn't help you actually rank. The click-through rate helps you rank.
So fill out all of those things and make sure that before you hit publish all of those things are filled out. All of those things are important. And who are you getting links from? How did you develop your site? Is your site fast? Is it not?
3 Elements of SEO
Dave Dougherty:
There are three buckets of SEO. You have the behind-the-scenes stuff inside your site (in-site SEO). Then you have the on-page, front-end of it all. So that's the copy that you have, the videos, the images, all the page elements, the page load speed, all that kind of stuff. This is what most people think of for a website anyway.
Then you have all the off-site optimizations. This is going to be more or less important for different business types. If you actually have a storefront or a physical location, offsite optimization is going to be really important for you to be in Google Maps to have the local results.
If you're a restaurant or a food truck, having those ratings and reviews on Yelp or Open Table, or any of those platforms is going to be important. Then aggregate those back onto your website.
Name, address, phone number (NAP) is going to be really important for your Local SEO stuff too, and making sure that all of those things say the same thing.
Kristen Juve:
Yeah. We could go into this and do probably four episodes on SEO. I feel like.
Dave Dougherty:
Yeah. I was thinking about that actually to have some backup episodes. I bet I could redo that presentation to be like four episodes.
Kristen Juve:
We can totally do that.
But before we sign off, to hold ourselves accountable, what are your, what's your plan for this week? What are you working on?
Dave Dougherty
New video is up this evening. So I’m doing that. Getting and finalizing all the promotional stuff and building out all the UTMs and all of that.
I'm trying to get ahead of the game so that I can have a week where I'm not doing video production every night. That's about it.
Kristen Juve:
That’s a lot though.
Dave Dougherty:
Um, Yeah, it is. I'm coming to appreciate it a bit, but I'm also thinking of…probably once a year I'll do some sort of a big release. I'm thinking.
I'm still playing around with it. But what would it look like? You know, because I have all the transcripts from the videos. Can I take those transcripts from the lesson videos that we've done? Are they good enough to maybe do an ebook or something with it and repurpose the content so I get as much mileage out of it as possible?
So thinking through those things. And that's about it right now. How about you?
Kristen Juve:
I am going to try to knit up to the armpit on my pattern by next week and I am going to do some more research on some of my Shopify website things.
In particular, since I do have a digital product I need to set up some sort of like funding thing and you can attach a bank account. But they also have something called a shop…Shopify something account.
My gut reaction is like, don't do this, don't do this and then I'm like, “Maybe this was actually not bad?” So I need to do some research on it and think critically about if it's the right move for me at this point.
And I've been in a posting challenge this month. That is a very awesome fiber world, knitting world-related challenge and I missed yesterday because of my difficulties with my posting tool. So I need to get back on that today. So I'm going to hopefully post six times by next time, roughly.
Dave Dougherty:
Is this an all-month thing or is it a two-week challenge?
Kristen Juve:
It's every day of the month and I missed yesterday. I'm mad at myself for that, but at the same time, I'm like, “Catch ‘em tomorrow!”
But today is kind of an important one. I really liked the one for today. It's posting everything that you created last year, so I have an entire list of everything that I've created and I want to put pictures up of everything so it’s all in one spot and then I can be like, “Look what I did!”
In the same vein as last, last episode. Um, I think that's probably going to be my list because it's a lot. I hope I'll get more done, but I'm going to try to be realistic as well so that I can still work out and spend time with my family.
Dave Dougherty:
Yeah. I discovered some new muscles last night and I was definitely feeling that this morning.
Kristen Juve:
Brain muscles?
Dave Dougherty:
No. With the workout stuff because I let that slip over the holidays, like many people. So I was like, “Alright! Go do it. Get it done.”
Kristen Juve:
It's good for your mental health too and not just your physical.
Dave Dougherty:
But then I also downloaded a new plugin recently for guitar stuff and I have yet to be able to really, really do a deep dive in it. So I might get some practice in.
Kristen Juve:
Which is fun for you, right? Not a work thing? Yeah?
Dave Dougherty:
Yeah, new sounds are inspiring in the guitar world where it's part of…You know, you think of practice as like: “I'm gonna learn this Bach piece.” Nah.
Kristen Juve:
Um, That sounds boring as hell. And largely, this is why I didn't stick with my instruments. Or any of them.
Dave Dougherty:
But finding your tone is sort of a big step in the guitar journey because you have to find the sound that will accurately represent you as a player.
So I'm playing around with some of the plugins and finalizing some songs.
Kristen Juve:
Not that different than branding.
Dave Dougherty:
Exactly. Exactly. Well, if you have made it this far with us. Bless you! Thank you!
Kristen Juve:
And if you have questions around definitions or certain words, please feel free to ask us. We'd love the challenge, the brain challenge.
Dave Dougherty:
Yeah, hit us up on Instagram. On YouTube: down below. On the podcast: Hit us up anywhere and rate and review. Subscribe and comment, please. It helps us.
Do all that YouTube stuff: Like, share, ring the bell, subscribe, all that. It'll help grow the channel and get more people involved so that more of us can help each other on this.
Kristen Juve:
Yes.
Dave Dougherty:
Thank you. And we will see you soon.
