Digital Rage

On this episode of Digital Rage we speak to Brian Wood. Brian is a training consultant, author, developer, and father who tells us about how to stand out in a crowded market, launch courses online, and one of new favorite video tools from Adobe.

You have to be able to do more than just your one thing.

Brian Wood

Show Notes

• Loves teaching!
• Has worked with Starbucks, Adobe, REI, Nordstrom and a bunch of other companies.
• Has courses on Lynda, Creative Live, How Design University, Curious and Peachpit
• Is also a developer
• Author of more than 10 books
• Speaks at conferences: AIGA, How Interactive, Adobe, etc.
• Spends majority of time on training these days - speaking, writing, producing courses
• Talks about how to get into the training business these days - in short start doing it. Get on YouTube & Udemy and start putting up training videos. Adobe does keep on eye on what people are up to.

Show Questions

• How did you get started in software training?
• What resources do you use to identify trends and create new courses?
• Do you need to be an expert in order to teach?
• Are you an expert before you start writing a training article, or do you become an expert while writing?
• Do you have any courses on Adobe CC Process Automation (I need this)?
• What is the difference in revenue between web development and training?
• How’s the online training landscape shifted over the years?
• What’s your favorite adobe program?
• What advice would you have for someone trying to get into speaking?
• What are some of the challenges you face with your training business?

Show Links

• Brian Wood Training
• Brian Wood on YouTube
• Brian Wood Courses on Lynda
• Brian Wood Courses on CreativeLive
• Zapier
• Twilio
• David Blatner on Twitter
• AnnMarie Concepción on Twitter
• Dan Petty on Dribble
• Premiere Rush CC
• Adobe XD
• Adobe Spark

On today's show we have Pierre Zarokian, Founder of Submit Express and veteran search marketer. We get into SEO, reputation management, how the SEM industry has changed, and more! 

More on Pierre: Website - Twitter - LinkedIn

Reputation management is 10X SEO.

Pierre Zarokian

Show Highlights

We asked Pierre the following questions:

• How did you get started with SEO?
• How important are backlinks today?
• What are some of the challenges today in running Submit Express?
• Tell us more about reputation management and what type of clients you typically work with in this space?
• What type of marketing do you utilize for your own companies?
• Where do you see the future of SEO going?
• What is the process for repairing an online reputation?
• Will voice search be important?

More from the show:

• $500/month won't get you the results it did 10 years ago - now $2 to $3K/month budgets
• SEO as a service has gotten competitive - offshoring, local, more agencies, freelancers
• SEO has gotten a bad rap due to people getting burned
• Reputation management is a really involved practice - lots of work to suppress rankings - building assets, link building, reviews, blogging, social media posts, optimizing existing content, etc.
• 10 properties at minimum for reputation management
• Wild west in reputation management as far as paying people to remove content - its recommend to go through a reputation management company to handle this
• On Yelp you can flag a negative review
• If it's not a first hand account you can ask Google and Yelp to remove (chances of getting removed are less than 5%)
• If this doesn't work you can try sending a legal letter to Yelp
• Can go straight to the person but don't offer money - if Yelp finds out your business could get flagged with a warning at the top of the page for 6 months letting people know you tried to pay to have a review removed (nothing in writing - if you do reach out do so verbally)
• Ripoff report doesn't remove anything unless you opt to pay through their paid program
• Best thing to do when you've got a bad review is to increase the good reviews
• Pierre has a program that will send a survey via text or email to your customers asking for a review - if it comes back positive than they get a followup asking to write a review on Yelp and Google and if they are not happy you can reach out before they write a review
• And more!

Show Links:

• Submit Express
• iClimber
• Web Design Express
• Reputation Stars
• Ripoff Report
• The Hoth
• Complaints Board
• Pissed Consumer
• Scambook

Today's show features NO guests because we're too cool for school. ;)  Jeff & Matt dive into topics that are top of mind in their agencies.

Show Highlights

Domain Whois Privacy

Some registrars are starting to comply with EU regulations in not displaying domain information to the public. In the past if you did not pay for the privacy feature your domain information was available to the public through a “whois” search.  

Podcast Media Hosting

• Libsyn - $15/mo with limits, bad UI, not integrated
• Castos - $190/yr ($15.83/mo) Integrated, easiest, free month, no limits
• Simplecast - $162/yr ($13.50/mo) not integrated, easy, no limits
• Buzzsprout - $12/mo 3hrs per month, otherwise unlimited
• Podbean - $108/yr ($9/mo) unlimited, monetization tools

Google My Business

• Ties your address to all of your accounts
• An employee claimed a business listing for his shared office, then listed the location as closed, now in the SERP it shows a big red Permanently Closed
• I went to GMB to see if I could reclaim the business, made me request access from the employee
• Once I had access, there were 2 accounts with the same address, one was suspended. I changed the address to try and unlock it
• The Youtube channel is associated with the suspended address, so if I remove that listing they will remove the youtube channel
• Now I have to request that the youtube channel be associated to the other address before I can remove it
• Google telling me to get reviews and optimize my GMB page
• 3 different support reps hung up on me

TAYL T)alk A(t) Y(ou) L(ater), pronounced "tale", is the service that gives your Internet content a voice. It uses state of the art A.I. and machine learning to sound (almost) human. Send TAYL anything you want read. Listen in the TAYL app, or by using Podcasts.

Dux Soup Back to our conversation about LinkedIn platform annoyances, Dux Soup is a platform that invades LinkedIn profiles and spams the messenger bots. It automatically adds people to your CRM, and automates “top-of-mind” communication.

Content Marketing with Kindle

Matt shared about his experience with getting a book approved on Amazon for resale as an ebook for Kindle users. Once the content was written it took 2 hours to format the pages, create the book cover, and add all the book details to Amazon. Kindle provides free software to properly format your book and also an online tool to create your cover. The book was approved within 24 hours and is now showing up in an Amazon search for the title: Do i need rehab?

Notion

A productivity app that allows you to store notes in an innovative way that allows for a lot of customization. Mentioned on previous shows this app is still relatively new to the tech world.

Proposals

Matt & Jeff talked proposals for a bit and will most likely do a future show on this topic. In short both have been in the business for 20 plus years and have come to a point where both are not interested in creating the fanciest proposals. Speed is of the essence in getting future clients the scope and if agreed upon more details and a contract follow.

Show Links:

• Domain Whois Privacy
• Kindle Direct Publishing
• Do I Need Reahb?
• Libsyn
• Dux Soup
• TAYL
• Notion
• Castos
• Simplecast
• Buzzsprout
• Podbean

On today's show we have Esteven Gamez, a social media marketing expert and founder of Keen Social. Lets get into it!

We have this new experimental department that we're just trying out; it's called social media.

From interview in 2009

Show Highlights

• My background is pretty unique because I didn't really start off in social media or really in marketing.
• I ended up in hospitality for about five years trying to do marketing because I did an internship with Hilton going through college.
• I've always loved marketing.
• We have this new experimental department that we're just trying out; it's called social media. And I was like, what is that? They said, we use Myspace to be able to reach out to new audiences. And I was like, Oh, well, I'm on Myspace.
• My job was to reach out to people who might have influence in entertainment to let them know that there're all these new pieces of content online and possibly share it on their own portals.
• After my internship ended, I still worked at the Hilton and I decided this is what I want to do for my career. This is super fun, it’s new, nobody's really doing it, I kind of want to be at the forefront of it. And so I decided to create a proposal for my GM at the Hilton where I was at. And he actually didn't like it. He thought it was silly and just a fad that is going to go away.
• I decided it's time to go on my own and my partner pushed me off the cliff and I decided to create my own agency and that's where Keen Social came about. And it's just taking all of my experience and bundling it up into one agency.
• We’re a small agency at Keen and we've only dealt with influencers about twice because it's a lot of work to create contracts with these people and get them to actually do what you want them to do at the right time and create the right content. It's a lot of orchestrating, but if you do it correctly, and you have a good team, then it could lead to big results.
• I know everybody in social media gets asked this question a lot and there's not really a consistent answer, but is there a magic frequency for each one of the platforms that you post for?  
• Honestly, I don't live by that rule. I know everybody lives what is the proper amount of frequency.  To me, it's finding a balance between paid social and organic social. And let me just explain to the audience what the difference is - organic social is basically leveraging the platforms as they've been created. So, it's just creating a post. Paid social is when you actually take that piece of content and turn it into an advertisement.
• When you have a strategy that is thinking of both - organic and paid, that's what's important. And when you have a budget for paid for your clients, then it really balances it out. If you're only doing dealing with organic social, then I guess frequency becomes more important.
• My rule is as many as possible, but most of the time that comes down to resources. Do you have the resources to actually have somebody posting three times a day? If you do, great. If you don't, then maybe you should do four posts a week.  That's when strategy becomes really important just trying to figure out how many resources do I have, how much time do I want to commit to creating content, how much content I need to actually produce. So, those are all the questions I kind of get spun into that decision.
• Our golden rule here at Keen is consistency across platform is imperative.  Consistency in your messaging should look holistic across all platforms, but every platform is different. So you need to tailor that message to that specific platform.
• Video is essentially everything.
• Video is great for awareness. Whenever people just want to create an awareness campaign, just introducing them to a new service or a new product or even the fact that they exist.
• Consistency in messaging once again is also important. So if you have a video that you want to publish to Facebook, then I would recommend publishing across all platforms at the same time, but also putting in on the landing page that they land on. Because once again, somebody might click on an ad and go to the landing page and if they don't really see the same messaging on the landing page, then they get confused and they might drop off and they might not do the action that you're trying to get them to do.
• The reason I am in social media is that you could do so much with it. You can stay relevant with conversations that are already happening.
• And more!

Show Links

• Keen Social
• Hootsuite
• Buffer
• Allstate Mayhem
• City of Long Beach
• Skittles on Instagram
• Oreo Cookie on Twitter
• Coca-Cola on Instagram

Today we have Neal St. Clair on the show who's the founder of East of Western. We dive deep into software, running an agency, and he asks the hosts some questions as well. 

What I love the most is just building and developing. I think there's nothing better than designs get approved, handed off, and I have sort of a clean slate to say, okay, let's start building this thing

Neal St. Clair

Show Highlights

• Neal St. Clair's background - didn't originally go to school for programming - went to school for business and marketing at Boston University
• So for about a year and a half in Boston, I just worked with this guy, kind of learned some html, CSS, real basic stuff. This was back in probably like 1999, 2000. And from there, kind of loved it.
• In 2002 moved out to California with the goal of let's see if I can do this without getting a real job and try to freelance and code and make websites for way too little money at the time.
• Over the years it was me, solo coding kind of in my bedroom. And then it evolved into me and a couple of people in a small office. And just kept evolving until where I'm at now at East of Western world. We're this digital agency, there's five of us at the company, and sort of now finally believe I don't need to get a real job.
• So switched over to Linux and PHP, but our CMS now is a very similar to a WordPress set up. So, MySQL database, PHP five or seven, pushing towards seven now and very similar setup, but that's what we're working with now.
• We provide some of the basics for SEO. What we always like to tell people is we want to set up a site with best practices and the best structure. Our CMS does include some meta editor tools so clients can be in control of their page titles, descriptions, keywords.
• We really fell into the world of photography. So, years ago we had one of our offices with a gallery in Los Angeles.
• In the beginning, we were building this stuff on WordPress and it was working, but we would kind of struggled with building the site, handing over the WordPress admin and sort of watching people's eyes glaze over because all they really wanted to do was drag and drop and move photos and videos around and they didn't care about the hundred other things that WordPress is really good at, but not really necessary for a portfolio site like that.
• We never start with pick layout A, B, or C. We always work with the clients and make something unique and oftentimes that will mean tailoring our admin or CMS to work with whatever the front end needs to do.
• I wear probably way too many hats. What I love the most is just building and developing. I think there's nothing better than designs get approved, handed off, and I have sort of a clean slate to say, okay, let's start building this thing, whatever this project or this site is.
• And more!

Show Links

• East of Western
• WordPress
• JQuery
• GitHub
• SASS
• NPM
• BrowserStack
• Photoshop
• Sketch
• Notion
• Evernote
• VS Code
• Basecamp
• Media Temple

Tom Reynolds joins us today to talk Smarketing and Accessibility. Tom runs The Reynolds Group and specializes in working with manufacturers. More on Tom: Website - LinkedIn Why do you exist? What problem do you solve? Tom Reynolds Show Highlights

• The way we sold those machines was to teach people how to write copy and communicate it at the point of sale. And I've always felt that was really relevant to the Internet world because you get about five seconds to capture someone's attention when it comes to communicating at the point of sale as they're passing a piece of merchandise.
• And so, starting in about 2002, I switched over and started doing consulting primarily with manufacturing companies helping them with new technology, which at the time was websites, but we've gone on to do apps and other kinds of software for people.
• Smarketing is a term I did steal. It is a real term out there. I think that actually the first people to use it was Hubspot. But, my interpretation of the word is that it really combined sales and marketing.
• People are so enamored with this lead machine that a lot of it is Internet driven, that they've kind of forgotten the sales side of the equation.
• I focus my marketing effort on helping people bring balance back in and bring in the sales side of the equation.
• The balance I'm talking about is that communication and support on both sides - the sales supports the marketing and the marketing supports the sales.
• You've got to be targeted with B2B a little bit more with manufacturers, then you are with say B2C.
• People’s expectations is if they call you, they'll ship you something overnight and the shipping will be free.
• You really have to go after the quality and support the dealers and help them get leads and build a website that actually supports the dealer.
• And more!

Show Links

• Not Paid Script
• WCAG 2.0
• Color Blind Chrome Extension
• Color Contrast Analyzer Chrome Extension
• Web Accessibility Evaluation Tools List

Today's show features Jeremy Rivera, an SEO expert based out of Nashville. Jeremy lives and breathes SEO and works full time for Raven Tools and also does SEO in his free-time for companies. Jeremy's figured out how to skip sleeping so he can work 24 hours a day. ;)

Jeremy Links: Website - Twitter - SEO Tool

Show Highlights

• Lots of insights from Jeremy on SEO best practices, tools, and people in the industry.
• Returning to simplicity in SEO.
• Back to the fundamental question: What is Google trying to do? Google is trying to connect the persons intent with their search with the result they get. Our job is to optimize what we're doing to fill that intent.
• Case study: Painter that didn't say what he did.
• When performing audits he checks to find out what they actually do and makes sure that's part of the SEO
• Case study: Commercial photographer with just pics and no info on what they do.
• "If you confuse you'll lose" from Donald Miller. Bringing story into our marketing strategy is key.
• A huge step is telling people what you do and what the next step is.
• and much more!!

2019 is the year of Marie Condo in the SEO world. Look at processes and ask if they bring us joy.

Jeremy Rivera

Experts Mentioned

• Donald Miller - website - twitter
• Bill Slawski - website - twitter
• AJ Ghergich - website - twitter
• John Mu - twitter
• Gary Illyes - twitter

Tools Mentioned

• Raven Tools
• Outreach
• Spyfu
• Ahrefs
• Screaming Frog
• Beam Us Up
• SEM Rush
• Answer The Public
• GTmetrix
• Outreach Ninja
• Freshbooks
• Google Drive

Welcome to the first episode of Digital Rage! On this show Matt Ramage & Jeff Byer talk shop at the virtual water cooler. You'll learn about industry news, tools being used, accessibility standards, overreach by Facebook & Google, and more!

Show Highlights

Pat Flynn successfully launches first physical product on Kickstarter called the Switchpod. Discovered the Switchpod on Instagram Stories. Then went on to see on Product Hunt and through Pat Flynn's regular email. Was able to successfully use influencer marketing by sending the product to YouTube famous vlogger, Peter McKinnon. Here's the product review:

Kickstarter Campaign Idea: Can each of you buy me a cup of coffee for the rest of my life?

Overreach - Facebook pays teens to install VPN that spies on themselves. More on that from TechCrunch. And Google continues to push out new updates that keep users on Google like position zero.

Gary V, the king of social, is still big on Facebook and states that it's still the cheapest place in the world to get ads scene by the most people. Gary says we should be pouring as much money into FB as we can. And he's also big on LinkedIn right now. Both Jeff and Matt are on LinkedIn but at the moment don't spend regular time on it. Jeff is tired of the sales message he gets after a connection is made. And a Gary V maxim: always provide value first. 

Jeff Byer talks about firing a client at Byer Company, and how his time is more important and talks about the ramifications. Jeff got assigned some work while on vacation after letting the client know he'd be gone for 4 days. A good work-life balance is key in Jeff's life. Jeff talks about a podcast called Hustle & Flowchart and how they promote not killing yourself with 20 hour work days. Hustle will eventually lead to burnout, except for Gary V. ;)

Matt Ramage talks about the new Emarketed brand, repositioning, website, and services. Matt also talks about one of his latest projects with Yum-Yum Donuts and Winchell's on building new versions of both sites with accessibility in mind. Matt is working with Accessible 360 as an independent auditing company that is providing training and reviewing design and code along the way.

Matt & Jeff discuss tools they use to run their agencies. Links below for tools that both have used or are currently using.

Show Links

• Pipedrive
• Honeybook
• Bonsai
• Hubspot CRM
• Mailchimp
• Calendly
• Freshbooks

Welcome to the Digital Rage Podcast. Jeff Byer and Matt Ramage are the hosts that bring you digital marketing and internet topics every week. We have interviews lined up with leaders in the industries of SEO, Social Media, Marketing, Design and more. Here is a little more information about us.

About Matt Ramage

• Started at Earthlink in 1996 in customer support
• Started building websites in 1998 - first site was for a good friend selling karmann ghias
• Worked at a DSL provider called Zyan Communications in 1999 in the web hosting department
• Led digital at a drug rehab after the dot bubble burst but the drive to Laguna Beach was brutal - left there to go out alone in 2001
• Been running Emarketed since
• Started doing SEO & PPC in addition to building websites in 2001
• With SEO it was trial and error from the beginning and seeing what worked and didn’t work
• Adwords certified with Google
• Emarketed has been a Google Partner for over 10 years
• Notable clients: World Gym, Winchell’s, YumYum, Quick Shade, Sector 9, The Bluegrass Situation
• Started Organic CMS in 2000 which is a CMS with no plugins to manage and is super flexible
• Been working in the mental health field since 2000
• Have a 22 year old daughter
• Been meditating seriously for 10 years
• Member of Toastmasters International for 3 years

About Jeff Byer

• First basic program in 1987, 6th grade
• Started using Photoshop in 1989, got it from my cousin
• Started building websites in 1997 with a partner
• Built an intranet for Aramark
• Started at Sony producing websites for TV and Movies
• Co-wrote on 4 US patents related to digital publishing
• Produced audio and video software for Sony
• Left Sony to manage production at an Agency
• Notable agency clients: Anheiser-busch, mcdonalds, nissan, nasa, disney
• Became a partner at Dice Media in 2002
• Started DDOP and LAMP dev
• Started my quest for SEO mastery
• Started Print Fellas in 2004
• Started feeding my love for photography
• Started feeding my love for food (hah) cooking
• Started Affordable Recipes
• Joined the Stevie G Band as Bass player even though I was a guitarist
• Started hiking
• Went back to being a solo agency around 2008 as Jeff Byer Inc
• Made an album with the band
• Band broke up when by son was born
• Stopped hiking when my son was born
• Focussed my business after my son was born
• Rebranded to Byer Company, offering DDOP

Jeff Byer's Interview with Voyage LA

What is the Digital Rage Podcast about?

DigitalRage.fm is a podcast about all things internet. From marketing to technology, we will discuss the latest topics and interview leaders in the industry.