Your Digital Marketing Coach with Neal Schaffer

LinkedIn in 2026 isn't social media — and if you're still treating it like Instagram's boring cousin, you're leaving the biggest opportunity in B2B marketing on the table. Four out of five LinkedIn members drive business decisions, but only about 5% of them post strategically. That's not a crowded room. That's a wide-open one. In this episode, I share the most engagin...

Most businesses treat social media like a task to check off. Post something, hope it performs, repeat. But according to today's guest, that's exactly why most businesses are getting mediocre results — because social media isn't a task. It's a craft. I sit down with Jon-Stephen Stansel — social media manager turned entertainment industry freelancer and author of The 10 Principle...

Two years ago, 60% of consumers said they were fine with AI-generated content. Today that number has dropped to 26%. Consumers are rejecting AI content faster than marketers can create it — and the brands that ignore this are paying a steep price. In this episode, I'm sharing the full breakdown of the keynote I delivered at DigiMarCon West in Hollywood — a presentation called People, Not Prom...

I've been saying for years that marketing is increasingly visual — whether it's social media, YouTube, websites, or even AI-generated content. But most of us aren't designers, and we're winging it when it comes to visual branding. My guest today is Jim MacLeod, author of The Visual Marketer, and he's someone I've known for about a decade — back when I co-founded the S...

You're using AI every day — but is it actually getting smarter about your business? For most marketers, the answer is no, because they're treating AI like a search engine instead of a workspace. In this episode, I break down the AI Workflow Flywheel that I have developed for my own business — a compound-momentum system that makes every AI conversation build on the last, so your output ge...

In a marketing world increasingly driven by AI-generated content and data dashboards, it's easy to start treating customers like data points instead of people. Phil Treagus-Evans — founder of UK social media agency Giraffe Social and author of Human First Marketing: The Art of Being Seen, Trusted and Remembered — makes a compelling case for why human-first marketing isn't just a philosop...

Note: This is Episode 442, published January 6, 2026. You published a book, it hit #1, and the reviews were phenomenal. In the digital marketing world, that’s usually where you take a victory lap. But then the AI revolution happened. Over the last year, the fundamental ways we build relationships and create content on LinkedIn have shifted so dramatically that I knew a simple "tweak" wou...

Most people are still "chatting" with AI. They put in a prompt, they get an answer, and they move on. But while the rest of the world is dabbling, the top 1% of marketers are building Agentic Workflows . They aren't just using AI to write; they are using it to act. Today, I’m joined by Matt Collette, founder of Sequencr.ai. Matt has a background at Ogilvy and Edelman, and he’s here...

Most marketers and creators agree on one thing: “AI slop” is bad for the internet. From hallucinated facts to soulless clickbait, low‑quality AI content is blamed for ruining search results and polluting the web. But what if that narrative is missing the bigger strategic picture—and quietly putting your business at risk of becoming invisible in an AI‑first world? In this solo episode, digital mark...

Most marketers and experts don’t have a conversion problem—they have a messaging problem. Their websites, emails, and content are packed with facts, features, and “I help…” statements that never touch the emotional brain that actually decides to buy. In the age of AI-generated content and endless noise, it’s the human story behind your offer that cuts through and converts. In this episode of Your...

Is your business ready for a world where 50% of search queries involve AI? The digital landscape is shifting fast. We are moving from a world of traditional Google rankings to a "Zero-Click" environment dominated by AI Overviews, ChatGPT, and Voice Search. If you are still relying solely on old-school SEO playbooks, your content is at risk of becoming invisible. In this episode I break d...

Are you feeling the pressure to build a "Custom GPT" for every aspect of your business? You might be wasting your time. While the hype cycle tells us we need complex bots, the reality for most small business owners is that we just need better organization. In this episode, I sit down with Phil Pallen, Brand Strategist and author of AI for Small Business . We strip away the enterprise-lev...

Are you frustrated that your AI-generated content sounds robotic, generic, or just "off"? You might be suffering from the "Vending Machine Syndrome"—feeding ChatGPT a coin (a prompt) and hoping for a gourmet meal. In this episode, I share the insights from my recent workshop at Chapman University, where I taught future entrepreneurs how to create targeted, compelling content in...

Are you stuck on the social media hamster wheel? Most entrepreneurs feel the pressure to post constantly, chase trending audio, and "feed the algorithm" daily—often with little ROI to show for it. But what if you could cut your content creation time by 80% while actually increasing your leads? In this episode of Your Digital Marketing Coach , I sit down with agency owner and strategist K...

Most marketers treat YouTube like Facebook or LinkedIn - posting content and hoping to drive traffic back to their website. This approach fails because YouTube is fundamentally different. It's a recommendation engine, not a traditional social platform. In this episode, you'll learn why successful YouTube creators think differently than marketers, discover the research strategy that revea...

Ever wonder how someone goes from frustrated agency employee to building a trusted content empire? Derek from NapLab shares his remarkable journey of turning a terrible mattress shopping experience into a business that replaced his salary in just two months. In this episode, you'll discover Derek's "create what you wished existed" approach to content strategy, why he started te...

Tired of spending hours researching agencies only to end up more confused than when you started? In this episode, I reveal my solution to one of marketing's biggest time-wasters: finding the right agency partner. After years of getting asked "Neal, who would you recommend?" for everything from SEO to video production, I decided to do something about it. I partnered with Clutch, the...

Sales and marketing teams at war? You're not alone. While most companies treat these as separate functions fighting for resources, the winning businesses have cracked the code on true revenue alignment. In this eye-opening episode, I sit down with A. Lee Judge, author of "CASH" and founder of Content Monster, who reveals the uncomfortable truth about why some companies are eliminati...

Struggling to compete with content creators for attention on social media? What if I told you that one innovative company decided to turn their entire team into creators instead of hiring expensive influencers? In this revealing episode, I break down how Buffer revolutionized employee advocacy by moving beyond "please share our company posts" to "please build your own personal brand...

Tired of cold emails that get ignored? What if I told you that sending gourmet cookies could be more effective than your entire digital marketing budget? In this eye-opening episode, I sit down with Corey Quinn, former CMO at Scorpion and author of “Anyone Not Everyone,” who reveals how gift-based outreach became their company’s #1 sales channel - outperforming a $6 million marketing budget that i...

Are you getting generic, robotic outputs from ChatGPT that sound like everyone else's AI-generated content? You're not alone—and you're definitely using AI wrong. In this episode, I'm revealing my ASKNEAL™ framework, a revolutionary 7-step system I developed while revising my bestselling book "Maximizing LinkedIn for Business Growth." This isn't just another AI h...

In today’s show, we’re going deep into one of the hottest topics for any entrepreneur right now: how to really use AI to grow your brand and business. Many of us know the power of AI, but we don’t always know where to start or how to keep our work from sounding robotic. That’s why this talk with John Suarez, co-author of The Marketer’s Manual on Generative AI , is so important. You’ll hear simple...

Today we’re going to talk about something that can change the way you grow your brand — how you follow up.  So many people focus on getting new followers, but the real gold lies in the people you’ve already talked to.  It’s easy to lose track of warm leads, superfans, and partners when your messages are buried in your DMs and emails, which is why organizing your contacts and creating a system for...

In this episode, I’m bringing you an eye-opening conversation with Bruce Clay, the man many call the Father of SEO.  We explore how search engine optimization has evolved over nearly three decades and how AI is changing the rules once again.  Bruce shares why SEO is more than just keywords — it’s about owning your place on the search results page, understanding intent, and working across teams to...

Welcome to a very important episode of the Your Digital Marketing Coach podcast. Today I’m diving deep into one of the biggest changes happening in digital marketing right now: the silent collapse of traditional SEO. For years, search engines—especially Google—have been a major source of traffic for businesses. But with the rise of AI tools and new ways people search for information, that traffic...