Beyond Influential

Mikhail Alfon is the CEO of Blue Light Media, a full-service digital agency in Orange County, and also the host of A Day in the Life Podcast. If you ever wondered what it’s like to be friends with me or what I talk about in my free time, it’s honestly topics related to personal branding, influencers, and the social space.

Mikhail and I have some awesome conversations and we decided to  record one of them for his podcast. Not only did I enjoy the conversation, but there were so many valuable takeaways & insights around brand building and influencers that I had to share it with my audience too! 

--------

I am currently working really hard on some resources for you and my email subscribers will be the first to know! If you haven’t signed up for my email list, head on over to brittanykrystle.com.

*FREEBIE: For those who don’t know, I’ve been hot on building brand on LinkedIn for pretty much every industry. If you haven’t been on LinkedIn in a while or if you just haven’t updated your profile, I created a free checklist to make sure you’re up to date and answering the right questions with your LinkedIn bio. You can get it at brittanykrystle.com/linkedin

---------

To connect with Mikhail:

Website

Instagram

A Day in the Life Podcast

To connect with Brittany:

Instagram

Twitter

LinkedIn 

Website

Sign up here if you want to receive the latest news on growing you industry influence!

#beyondinfluentialpodcast

After 30 straight weeks of interviews, I thought it was about time to do a solo episode! This episode is dedicated to the topic that I’ve built my business on: personal branding online. I asked my audience on LinkedIn & Instagram to  “Ask Me Anything” about personal branding and they delivered with some great questions.

If you’d like your questions answered on a future episode, the next round will be sourced from my email list & from iTunes reviews. If you haven’t already, head to brittanykrystle.com to sign up for my email list OR you can leave me a review on iTunes and include your question.

I tried to choose questions that had a lot of overlap to other questions that were submitted.

Topics covered include:

• My personal branding ethos
• Personal brand vs. Business brand or both?
• How to grow a personal brand around a podcast
• Instagram growth tips
• Which platform if I could only choose one
• Approaching multiple pillars in your messaging
• Why I love podcasting (& more!)

*Please excuse the two portions where the audio sounds a little funky.

*FREEBIE: For those who don’t know, I’ve been hot on building brand on LinkedIn for pretty much every industry. If you haven’t been on LinkedIn in a while or if you just haven’t updated your profile, I created a free checklist to make sure you’re up to date and answering the right questions with your LinkedIn bio. You can get it at brittanykrystle.com/linkedin

Show Notes & Timestamps

2:34 INTRO - My 3 C’s to Personal Branding: clarity, consistent content, and community

3:50  Q1 - ‘Personal brand’ vs ‘Start a company with its own brand’, or both?

5:49 Q2 - How do you build a personal brand around a podcast?

8:45 Q3 - “Tips for building a personal brand around content creation on Instagram — I’ve cleaned up my aesthetic a ton and I’ve been consistently posting daily the past few weeks with no net change in followers. I’m really interested to crack that code.”

12:22 Q4 - How can someone approach multiple pillars to their brand without seeming scattered in messaging?

15:18 Q5 - If you could only be on one platform, which one would it be?

17:10 Q6 - How do you approach brand strategy differently for a thriving business as opposed to a start up?

19:45 Q7 - Do you have criteria for a post before you share it?

20:22 Q8 - What do you love about podcasting, if you do, and how has podcasting changed your life?

Instagram

Twitter

LinkedIn 

Website

Sign up here if you want to receive the latest news on growing you industry influence!

#beyondinfluentialpodcast

Sunny Lenarduzzi is a former broadcast journalist turned YouTube and online video for business expert. From developing a YouTube series for Hootsuite that increased subscriptions by 75% to hitting 1 billion impressions in 1 day on a live-streaming campaign with Applebees, Sunny knows how to create content that works for your business.

Sunny’s YouTube channel has amassed an audience of over 160,000+ and growing. But more impressive than her subscriber numbers are the number of businesses and entrepreneurs she is helping with her courses - like her signature training program YouTube for Bosses.

I really resonated with her methodical research based approach to YouTube because it’s very similar to how I approach personal branding. It’s a science and an art, but for both of us content creation is a method to help others grow their businesses, which is very different from the “content creator” first standpoint that is usually discussed.

Forbes named her one of the 20 must watch channels that will change your business, Entrepreneur named her as one of the top 10 channels every entrepreneur should follow and she’s spoken internationally from NATO’s Headquarters in Brussels to Social Media Marketing World in San Diego. She has also recently started producing a podcast called The Sunny Show!

On this episode we talk:

• Sunny's transition from broadcast journalist to online video for biz expert (& she tells us what's next!)
• How to grow your business using YouTube
  • Content Strategy
  • Distribution
  • Optimization
• Sunny's VIRAL process
• Her online "competition" (& more!)

-------

Show Notes & Timestamps

[00:01:33] My Intro - Who is Sunny? 

[00:03:00] So for people who don't know you, can you give a little bit about your background before you got into this current business?

[00:07:55] What Sunny learned from her journalism background & some bad habits people get from "hosting"

[00:11:52] So, when you were just done after the Olympics, had you been posting content online? Where were you in the online space at that time?

[00:13:55] How traditional media views "personal brand" building

[00:14:52] So the online magazine what kind of magazine was it, and did you have money saved? How did you actually turn this into a business?

[00:17:11] When Sunny transitioned from online magazine to consultancy 

[00:20:04] Consulting: How do you figure out what to charge, and then when do you realize you need help?

[00:24:09] Finding Sunny's 1st employee

[00:25:38] Consulting business vs. Current business

[00:27:41] Talking Sunny's courses: When did you actually develop these courses? How have those evolved from the time that you started to what they look like now?

[00:29:27] What are the biggest hesitations and fears that you see when it comes to video?

[00:31:20] So getting into the tactics a little bit, when people are getting started trying to figure out what they should be talking about, where do you direct them?

[00:33:12] Now that you mentioned the vlog thing, are you a fan of people starting vlogs, or if they are going to start a vlog, only after they've built up an audience?

[00:36:49] SEO talk

[00:38:31] Sunny's Content strategy. Are you batching, and then how are you thinking about distribution, and which metrics are you looking at, and what's that cycle look like?

[00:38:52] Sunny's Audience: who was your audience then who is it now, do you have a specific person in mind when you think of this?

[00:42:22] Sunny's distribution process: So what does your distribution process look like, and should it always include paid advertising?

[00:43:30] Optimization process: How long should this optimization process take? What's somebody who buys your video or buys your course, figures out what they want to do, makes the video, how long are they taking to optimize?

[00:44:04] Is there an optimal video length then?

[00:47:13] Sunny's "VIRAL" strategy

[00:50:29] Relationships with competitors in the space

[00:52:33] Podcast: Can you talk a little bit about why now is the right time for you?

[00:54:34] In terms of YouTube, whose content are you consuming just day to day?

[00:55:49] What do you think the secret to influence is?

[00:56:04] So what's next for your business? 

[00:57:43] Given that our brands are essentially ourselves, how have you been approaching scaling when the business is you?

[00:58:59] Where you can find Sunny's content!

------

To connect with Sunny:

Website

YouTube

Instagram

Twitter

Facebook

To connect with Brittany:

*Free download: Here are my Top 5 Tips for New Entrepreneurs based on the very real lessons I learned in my first year of business. It also includes a free Business Checklist for New Entrepreneurs that I made in partnership with my attorney Nico Becerra (Ep. #14).

Instagram

Twitter

LinkedIn 

Website

Sign up here if you want to receive the latest news on growing you industry influence!

#beyondinfluential

#beyondinfluentialpodcast

Tom Bilyeu is the co-founder of 2014 Inc. 500 company Quest Nutrition — a unicorn startup valued at over $1 billion — and the co-founder and host of Impact Theory. Impact Theory's mission is built around the creation of empowering media-based IP and the acceleration of mission-based businesses

Tom's mission in life is to free people from The Matrix, but changing their limiting mindsets. How is he going to do this? By building Impact Theory into a Disney-sized machine. If any of that that sounds crazy to you, Tom takes a lot of pleasure in proving you wrong. 

Tom regularly inspires audiences of entrepreneurs, change makers, and thought leaders through his weekly web show Impact Theory - where clips regularly go viral. A few notable pasts guests include Tim Ferriss, Seth Godin, Michael Strahan, and Gary Vaynerchuk. Tom currently reaches 100s of thousands of people through his social channels and it won’t be too long until it’s millions. 

On this episode we cover:

• How Tom went from not having an entrepreneurial bone in his body to co-founding a billion dollar business
• Why his life's mission is to free people from the Matrix 
• Impact Theory: How he prepares for his interviews & what are the common themes among the most influential people he interviews
• How he's approached building his content & personal brand  (& more!)

To connect with Tom:

Facebook

YouTube

Instagram

Twitter

Impact Theory Website

To connect with Brittany:

*Free download: Here are my Top 5 Tips for New Entrepreneurs based on the very real lessons I learned in my first year of business. It also includes a free Business Checklist for New Entrepreneurs that I made in partnership with my attorney Nico Becerra (Ep. #14).

Instagram

Twitter

LinkedIn 

Website

Sign up here if you want to receive the latest news on growing you industry influence!

#beyondinfluential

#beyondinfluentialpodcast

Danielle Prahl is digital marketing strategist turned business coach, a best selling author, a mom, and an online course launching queen! She is the woman behind many of the biggest 6 & 7 figure course launches online. She has worked with names like Jasmine Star & Jenna Kutcher to make sure that their launches go off as smoothly as possible. 

She loves to help women BE, DO, and HAVE it all. Helping generate over 22 million in sales for her clients since 2017, Danielle loves to use automation to help her clients leverage their skills online.

This episode also has some *bonus content* at the end. There were a few topics that we weren't able to hit during our time together. So Danielle graciously offered to record those answers. They are right at the very end of the episode after she tells us where we can find her. 

For people who are considering the online course route for their business, this is a MUST listen. 

On this episode, we talk:

• Her process for 6 & 7 figure online course launches! The tips, tools, automations, and strategies she uses to get results!
• How Danielle built a 6 Figure Virtual Assistant business after a conman left her broke (and then how she went on to build her current business)
• What makes a great VA and how to find a good one when you need one
• The biggest mistakes she sees when people are launching (and more!)

To connect with Danielle:

Website

Danielle's CRM Quiz

Instagram

Danielle's Book

To connect with Brittany:

*Free download: Here are my Top 5 Tips for New Entrepreneurs based on the very real lessons I learned in my first year of business. It also includes a free Business Checklist for New Entrepreneurs that I made in partnership with my attorney Nico Becerra (Ep. #14).

Instagram

Twitter

LinkedIn 

Website

Sign up here if you want to receive the latest news on growing you industry influence!

#beyondinfluential

#beyondinfluentialpodcast

*It's officially been a year since I left VaynerMedia: here are my Top 5 Tips for New Entrepreneurs based on the very real lessons I learned. It also includes a free Business Checklist for New Entrepreneurs that I made in partnership with my attorney Nico Becerra (Ep. #14).

I feel particularly passionate about this topic because most entrepreneurial content online is motivational and not about what you genuinely need to do in order to create a legitimate business. That's why Nico and I are working to provide you with valuable resources to make sure, if entrepreneurship is actually the right path for you, you can set yourself up for success right out the gate.

------------

"Ideas are shi*t, execution is the game." -@garyvee

Big ideas aren’t enough to sustain a business. You need executors - James Orsini is an executor.

This week’s interview is with VaynerMedia’s Chief Operating Officer and Gary Vaynerchuk’s #2, James Orsini.

James has more than 30 years of finance and operations experience. He has held high level positions at global agencies like Saatchi & Saatchi & Interbrand. He was a global CFO overseeing 31 offices in 26 countries before he was 30. James has held most C-Suite executive roles from CEO to COO to CFO to CIO (and he’s also a CPA!), which makes him beyond qualified to speak to what makes some of the biggest agencies in the world run successfully.

On this episode, we talk:

• His process to bring Garyvee's business visions to life
• What makes a good COO
• Scaling a business the right way
• How new divisions at VaynerMedia are created
• When it's time for divisions to be dissolved
• How VaynerMedia thinks about fees & pricing
• Why James is not interested in being a CEO again (& more!)

-------

SHOW NOTE TIMESTAMPS

3:42 - James' background before Vayner 

6:24 - So you said you were a global CFO before you were 30- how were you able to rise through the ranks so quickly? Can you explain even the difference between the role is as a CEO vs a COO vs a CFO (and which of those is the most stressful)?

8:14 - So when you started at Vayner you came in as Chief Integration Officer. What was your decision to actually join Vayner, and why that role? Did you know that was going to ascend to COO later?

 11:10 - How has your day to day role changed in the move from Chief Integration Officer to COO?

12:01 - To give people a little background what is Vayner X?

13:45 - When Gary acquires a “Pure Wow”, do you oversee the operations of “Pure Wow” or does that operate completely independently?

14:42 - Gary and AJ have business experience but not traditional operations experience from the magnitude that you're used to in advertising. What operating systems were not in place at Vayner that you helped institute?

16:19 - How is Vayner the same as agencies that you’ve worked for and how has it been different? 

17:00 - A COO’s responsibilities are so dependent on the CEO you work with, and one of the things I loved about working with Gary is that he's not a micromanager. I don't know how your relationship goes in terms of decisions; does every decision need to run through him? Are you allowed to execute on ideas you have or is it him coming to you with ideas and then you just have to execute on those?

18:00 - How has Gary been different from other CEOs? Is it just his vision or has it been something more than that?

20:34 - What makes a great COO?

21:53 - Gary is famous for saying ‘ideas are shit, execution is the game,’ so obviously you have that background. What’s your decision making style then? How do you logic something out? If he comes to you and he's like, ‘I want to build a Twitch studio tomorrow,’ where do you even start?

23:29 - You're obviously a financial mind, too. So let's say he comes to you with an idea, where do you start? Do you start with the financial aspects, do start with trying to understand it as a general business, do you try to understand it as a process that doesn't maybe exist yet?

25:18 - Because you do have this financial experience I'm sure you're looking at profit and loss statements. How does your job interact with the CFO world? How do you and Alan work together?

27:23 - So a big part of your role is efficiency. What are the metrics to gauge efficiency? If something is not efficient, where do you start looking to streamline it?

28:12 - So then how do you think about the strategy - in general for growth and expansion, is it usually coming up with new offerings, is it about bringing in more business for the same offerings?

30:55 - We’re definitely going to talk about Vaynermentors, but even just talking about the 4 D’s and other offerings like AI and voice services, how do you guys figure out what to charge? I know with at least the 4D’s you can maybe ballpark like what Gary would get for an hour or whatever, but if you’re implementing a completely new service…?

32:12 - So is that when you decide if you should raise rates? 

34:00 - You’ve worked for a ton of companies at this point. What are some of the biggest mistakes you see when people are trying to scale and how can you avoid them?

35:24 - So I know Vayner has the London office and that there’s always been talk about a Singapore office or some kind of Asian hub (who knows if you'd expect the Latin America) --  What are the important elements to look for in terms of global expansion?

36:29 - Speaking of things that might not work, when it comes to divisions of the agency that end up getting dissolved, how do you gauge when it's time to call it quits?

39:08 - So then what's the rotation for you on checking in on departments? Like you said, now you have the experience aspect, you have the studios, you have a Vayner Talent, and a Vayner Beta, and all of this stuff happening…

 40:37 - What aspects of Culture do you need to take into account? What are you guys having that kind of conversation about?

41:34 - So I'm always interested when Gary introduces a new offering. We touched on it earlier, but I know you've been particularly excited about Vaynermentors- can you tell me a little bit more about who this is for?

45:45 - So how much growth can these companies expect, or is there no expectation put on that?

47:02 - I know this is new but how long does it take to really deep dive and truly understand one of these businesses? It seems like it would be very time-consuming.

47:50 - Is there anybody that you look to for business advice, and how do you stay up-to-date on trends?

48:49 - You've been really active on social media now- were you active on social media before you joined Vayner?

49:22 - So are you working on building your personal brand? Is that actually a goal of yours or is it more just for fun?

50:30 - What do you think the secret to influence is?

51:55 - You mentioned that social and digital is the last piece that you didn't have on your resume- what's the dream for you at this point?

53:07 - You have been the #1 and right now you’re Vaynermedia’s #2- when did you realize you didn’t want to be a #1?

 55:53 - Where can people find you?

-------

To connect with James:

Twitter

Instagram

LinkedIn

Snapchat

Vayn

If you didn't grab it last week, click here to download your free Pinterest Cheatsheet! 

This week, my guest is Sara Dietschy (rhymes with Peachy), who is a full-time creator and YouTuber based in New York City. If you want to get a sense of how loyal her fans are, you just have to look up #PEACHYFAM. Sara posts regularly to her YouTube Channel about tech & creativity and she also has a new podcast/ video series called The Creative Exchange.

In this episode, we covered a lot of ground including:

• Sara's decision to drop out of college 
• How to capitalize on virality the right way
• What happened after Casey Neistat helped her go viral
• Why she ditched the daily vlog
• The benefits of the Adobe Creative Residency program
• Why she is bullish on audio & podcasting
• Competition between YouTubers 
• What will get her on Twitch (and more!)

 ------

SHOW NOTE TIMESTAMPS

2:04 - Welcome to this week’s episode of Beyond Influential. I am here today with my guest Sara Dietschy (rhymes with Peachy). She is a full-time creator and YouTuber based in New York City.

4:27 - For people who don’t know you do you mind telling the audience in your own words what you do?

6:47 - So I want to take it back to the time before YouTube, from growing up in Texas. Were you always creative? What was the dream at the time? 

9:22 - What were you studying in college?  You said you made it 3 1/2 years, so what was the impetus for dropping out at that point if you were only a semester away from finishing?

13:07 - What I think is interesting, and this something I’ve observed from the interviews and just generally, you were a great student, I did well in school, and there’s this thing where I feel like men who become entrepreneurs, for the most part their story is they did awful in school and they were like ‘screw this,’ this wasn’t what they wanted to do so they just didn’t do it, but the female entrepreneurs I’ve talked to were like, straight-A students, they crushed it, they were doing what was practical, and then later on they were like, ‘OK, now it’s time to make a move…’

14:24 - When did you first start posting content online, and how were you getting this business?

16:47 - So when did the idea for Creative Spaces TV enter the picture, and what type of videos were the first ones you started taking seriously on YouTube?

19:08 - So did you have an ideal audience in mind then or were you making content just for you at that point, and for potential clients?

21:22 - So we have to talk about the “How to Casey Neistat A Vlog” video. Obviously, brilliant, it turned out wonderful for you, but I do want to point out that I think you’d be where you are now even without that video. So, if you could tell people who haven’t seen the video what it is, what compelled you to make it…?

28:39 - So when you were reaching out to Casey, were you expecting that if you got through to him that he’d see your work and you wanted a shout out, or were you thinking that maybe you could build a relationship, what was the mindset?

32:12 - I think you have to go narrow to get big. So you went from 4K to 90K subscribers. Can you just tell me how did that change everything? Did you start feeling pressure to perform, or were you just like, if they like you they like you?

38:08 - I’ve heard you say before that the people you generally look up to are Chase Jarvis, Casey Neistat, Gary Vaynerchuk, and, they’re definitely men. And I’ve been realizing more and more that the people I’ve looked up to in business and entrepreneurship for the most part have been male… And I think it’s so interesting that I didn’t have a female role model in that way. There was nobody whose career I looked at that I was like, ‘I want that career.’

39:17 - Not to make it too male/female… women seem to have a harder time bragging about themselves and putting themselves out there in that way.

42:47 - How does Gary play into the story? After the Casey thing goes viral, could you give some background on how you ended up emailing him?

48:08 - So it goes viral, you’re on Gary’s show, what’s next for you?

50:44 - So what are the obligations for an Adobe resident, and then what are you getting in exchange? What do they hope happens to you afterwards, and what’s in it for them?

52:06 - So flash forward to now, what does your YouTube creative process look like now?

54:40 - Starting with titles, do you come up with what you want first and then come up with the click-baity title?

58:56 - So I know you got an intern, but are you still doing all your own titles, tags, thumbnails, descriptions, all of that yourself?

1:02:36 - We were talking before about this, that delegation is really hard when you’re dealing with a personal brand. It’s like, OK, what can I actually delegate?

1:04:36 - Do you batch content?

1:05:20 - So we have to talk about podcasting. You have this new podcast. You jumped on Anchor, you were doing a daily anchor piece… Give me your thoughts on audio, what got you intrigued, and, up to now.

1:08:57 - So what is the goal of this podcast for you right now? (The Creative Exchange)

1:10:56 - You talk about diversifying, you post on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, you’re doing a done of other stuff - are you just making sure to promote across all platforms or are you focusing attention aside from Twitter on any of those platforms?

1:13:11 - What’s the secret to influence, in your opinion?

1:13:57 - Is it ever super competitive around that atmosphere? Are you ever looking at what other people are doing? Do you even have time to watch content?

1:14:51 - Where can people find you?

1:15:05 - Was “Peachy” always a thing for you or is it something that came up later?

----

To connect with Sara:

YouTube

Twitter

Instagram

The Creative Exchange Podcast

To connect with Brittany:

Instagram

Twitter

LinkedIn 

Website

Sign up here if you want to receive the latest news on growing you industry influence!

#beyondinfluential

#beyondinfluentialpodcast

Jordan Bosstick is the President & Cofounder of InfluencerSEO, a company that offers search engine optimization services designed specifically for influencers.

Jordan fell in love with all things related to growing a blog & earning authentic influence while working for Lauryn Evarts of The Skinny Confidential. She has a background in web development & project management, specifically with building startup social networks and Wordpress blogs. Through her company InfluencerSEO, Jordan works with dozens of Influencers to help them grow their blog traffic and income through SEO. She's an SEO wizard, and approaches growing blogs purely from a data driven, analytics perspective.

On this episode, we talk:

• All things SEO for influencers - Best practices for keyword research, post length, images tags, # of posts, link building, and more!
• What Google is looking for when it crawls your posts
• How to use Pinterest content to drive traffic to your website  (FREE CHEATSHEET)
• RewardStyle vs. ShopStyle
• Good SEO vs. Common SEO Mistakes

Click here to download your free Pinterest Cheatsheet! 

--------

SHOW NOTE TIMESTAMPS

1:54 - Jordan Bosstick is the president and co-founder of Influencer SEO, a company that offers search engine optimization services designed specifically for influencers.

2:57 - Can you tell the audience a little about your background and how you got into what you do now?

4:14 - When you were working for Lauren and optimizing blog posts, when did you realize you actually knew what you were doing and that it was working?

5:29 - To take a step back, for people who don’t know, can you explain a little bit about about what SEO is and why it matters?

6:45 - Even hearing you say that, it sounds obvious, it sounds easy, but if I’m just starting coming to you I wouldn’t even know where to start. So when people come to you, what part of the blogger journey are they usually on?

8:19 - I think you made an important point, too, that it’s not just bloggers necessarily, but it’s also businesses, it’s any kind of website. So SEO is something you should be paying attention to whether you’re writing blogs on food recipes or you’re an entrepreneur or you’re selling a product.

10:30 - Say you’re in the camp that you're getting most of your traffic from Instagram and your website isn’t getting the traffic. If I come to you, what’s included in an audit? What are the first things you’re looking at, where do we start?

12:03 - How do you find these keywords? 

13:54 - So you mentioned that you use a bunch of tools to do your keyword research. Do you have a few listeners can take a look at to get an idea?

15:41- What are the components of good SEO if it’s not just keywords?

16:59 - Google is trying to pair the person asking the question with the person who has the best answer for that question. But the question is how Google registers that. You mentioned trust, authority, and relevance, how is Google, Bing, or Yahoo looking at these things?

19:45 - So, in that example, do you know what you’re looking for when you’re going through those top 20, or do you actually have to read through each component to look for patterns?

21:15 - So when  somebody comes to you and they don’t have an SEO strategy, how are they normally coming up with their topics, titles, or ideas?

22:53 - So what do you do to really understand their brand?

25:58 - So you mentioned some technical things earlier, like what platform it’s built on, the word length of a post, image placement… Let's dig in:

So what’s the best platform if you are building a blog or website to build on?

29:12 - So what would be a good price to have someone move your site over to Wordpress from a different platform?

29:57 - So going back to talking about things that affect SEO, you mentioned ‘no big block paragraphs.’ What is the ideal word length, does it depend on the topic, how many paragraphs should you have… How is Google looking at that?

31:57 - So what is it about a bulk paragraph that turns off Google?

33:06 - So what about image placement? Are there certain types or sizes of images that perform better? Do you need a certain number of images?

34:15 - So when you post a blog post, how long should you wait before you start to drive traffic to it from other locations? Or, let’s say you post a blog post and you want to repost it on Medium or LinkedIn, what’s the appropriate amount of time to be posting there so that the blog article comes up before the other ones in the rankings?

36:08 - So is the SEO strategy then the same for Google as it would be if you’re trying to SEO a YouTube title vs  trying to do it on all these different platforms?

38:47 - What are you doing to study SEO, what resources are you looking at?

41:06 - What should a person look for in an SEO specialist?

47:41 - I definitely want to hit the ‘affiliate’ topic. Can you go through the biggest affiliates in the space, especially for bloggers, and the pros and cons from a professional perspective?

50:12 - Do affiliate links dock you at all in the SEO perspective? Like, does Google know this is a paid link, so therefore, maybe it’s not as valuable?

50:41 - What’s a no-follow link?

51:53 - It’s the same principles applied there as in social media strategy and brand strategy. You’re not trying to push product on people all the time, but you need to add value. It’s about the post being valuable enough for people to want to click on it.

52:29 - So if someone has not been SEO-ing their stuff, and maybe their site’s a few years old, and now they want to go back, does it act like it’s a new post, or do you get credit for the old post and changing out the titles and all of that data?

53:55 - Regarding images on Wordpress, if it asks you for alt title or an alt description, should you always be filling out those things? What’s supposed to go in there?

56:01 - So it should be a short description?

56:17 - So what’s a meta tag and what’s a meta description?

58:01 - I hear from people who are big bloggers all the time that Pinterest is the #1 driver to their blog posts next to Google. So, can you talk a little bit about top drivers for bloggers and influencers to their blog posts? I’d also like to get into Pinterest a little bit about how to think about pinning if you want to promote your podcast, blog, etc?

1:00:11 - I’ll work together with Jordan and put something in the Show Notes so you guys can download a tutorial on creating a showcase.

1:02:39 - You work primarily with the typical bloggers and influencers. Do you think that Pinterest works as well for somebody who’s doing more the business thing?

1:05:43 - You’ve worked with a ton of influencers and big names and truly influential people in the space. Who are a few of the people you’re looking at right now who you think are doing it right?

1:08:06 - What are some of the biggest mistakes you see people making in terms of their SEO?

1:10:49 - Are there any other red flags people should be looking out for in terms of SEO or harming their SEO?

1:11:42 - Collaborating with influencers is pretty common advice. From the SEO perspective, how do you look at collaborations?

1:12:30 - How does consistency affect SEO?

1:13:17 - What do you think the secret to influence is?

1:14:31 - Where can people find out about you and Influencer SEO and all of your packages?

-----------

To connect with Jordan:

InfluencerSEO Website

Dot Lung is a Social Media Marketing Director & the founder of Barcelona's Virtual Reality laboratory, 360VR.BARCELONA. After growing up in Los Angeles, Dot traveled the world working on a variety of campaigns until she decided to call Barcelona her home. 

Dot has worked on cross cultural campaigns in over a dozen countries and has been behind the launch of social media accounts and campaigns for the world's most recognized new media design brands: Motionographer, F5 New York, OFFF Barcelona, Reasons To Be Creative UK, Sónar+D & Off Sónar. She has also worked on global campaigns & digital strategy with brands like Volkswagen, SEAT, Mattel, Fisher-Price, OCB and many many more.

Dot is also incredibly active in the design, digital, and entrepreneurial communities in Barcelona and always ready to talk food and travel.

On this episode, we talk:

• What inspired Dot to move from corporate to digital nomad
• Why Barcelona was her choice to call home
• European vs. US Trends in Social Media & Digital Marketing 
• What's next for 360 & VR Video (and more!)

To connect with Dot:

Instagram

Website

Twitter

Facebook

360VRBarcelona

To connect with Brittany:

Instagram

Twitter

LinkedIn 

Website

Sign up here if you want to receive the latest news on growing you industry influence!

#beyondinfluential

#beyondinfluentialpodcast

Download this Episode Tom is a writer & blogger best known for his work on the platform Medium. Between writing his personal Medium, his Medium publication The Post Grad Survival Guide, and also his contributions to some of the largest Medium publications on the site, Tom has amassed a sizable audience that has allowed him to write full-time. Tom has a course called Medium Mastery where he teaches people not only how to use the platform to build an audience, but also how to monetize. Tom recently put on a virtual summit called the Grow Your Blog Summit, where he had over 30 blogging experts taking you through how to brand, market, and monetize your blogging. I was very honored to participate in his event to talk about personal branding for  bloggers. :)  On this episode, we chat ALL THINGS MEDIUM:

• -Best practices
• -How to grow an audience
• -Publications - what are they and how do you write for one!
• -Titles & Tags
• -Monetization (and more!)

  Sign up here if you want to receive the latest news on growing you industry influence and get Tom's special handout when it's ready! To connect with Tom:

#beyondinfluential #beyondinfluentialpodcast