Your Digital Marketing Coach with Neal Schaffer

Description:  What sets successful businesses and professionals apart? One might argue it is all about being able to innovate. Fortunately for our podcast listeners we have a very special guest, Carla Johnson, who has written a few compelling marketing books and will soon release her newest book, RE:Think Innovation. This podcast will be a sneak preview of that book, in which you will learn why: 1...

Social networks come (TikTok) and go (Google Plus), and some merely borrow the best features of other social networks to continue innovating (Instagram). The one thing about social media that has NOT changed since I began my career in social media marketing is that LinkedIn continues to be the best place for professional networking and B2B social media marketing. Every year or two "newbie&quo...

While the current coronavirus pandemic has provided us some urgency in which we need to tweak our marketing, the fact of the matter is that anyone in charge of marketing their business always need to pivot amidst the constant change that existed before we first heard the term "COVID-19." I can't think of anyone better to help guide us through this change than Ken Fitzpatrick, CEO of...

I often get asked by marketers in transition or recent graduates how they should navigate the job market as a digital marketer. Whether you are looking for more ways to make yourself more marketable (pun intended!), gain more experience, or yield more influence in digital and social media, I believe the solution is one and the same, and the answer to the problem is often staring you right in the f...

In crisis there is opportunity, and for those who understand how media consumption has changed during this coronavirus pandemic, there are distinct opportunities for your business to appear on the radar of more people organically earned media. Learn all about this opportunity straight from the PR expert and thought leader Valerie Christopherson, Founder and CEO of the PR agency Global Results Comm...

According to my brand affinity model for influencer marketing, your employees are those that naturally have the most brand affinity for your company because they are an organic part of it. How, though, do you activate your employees as influencers? How does this relate to the concept of employee advocacy? How would this work in regulated industries? And are there any analogies to leveraging employ...

Instagram has become a critical piece of the puzzle for most businesses because of its popularity and high engagement, but not everybody succeeds on the platform. There's a lot of noise about what you should and shouldn't do on Instagram, and some of that advice is either outdated or might lead your account to getting banned. Let's change that. From the importance of niche branding...

How do you know what impact everything that you do in digital and social media marketing has on your business? The secret comes down to what I call the PDCA approach to marketing that my agency is named for, but more importantly, it comes down to visualizing your marketing funnel and aligning everything you do with a part of that funnel. After that it comes down to measurement and truly geeking ou...

John Lee Dumas is one of the most influential rockstar entrepreneurs out there, and it was an honor to interview him for my podcast. You will learn a lot in this episode on John's story as to how he became an influencer through podcasting but also his recommendation for you if he were to do it all over today. Key Highlights [02:32] Introduction of Podcast Guest, John Lee Dumas [05:49] Why Joh...

You might be wondering what impact COVID-19 might be having on influencer marketing. After all, you can't fly freely around the world to take pictures of product in exotic locations. But, as you know, travel influencers only represent a small portion of the influencer marketing pie. Here is my advice for businesses trying to navigate the current uncertainty to figure out what role, if any, in...

For many businesses, their primary source of digital influence doesn't necessarily come from their social media presence but from their website. How to increase the digital influence of your website in the eyes of Google and generate more qualified organic traffic leading to more business through "free" advertising is what every business owner wants. Today I interview Farzad Rashidi...

One of the goals of influencer marketing is to incite the word of mouth marketing that organic social alone can't, but there are times that we will still pay to play and employ Paid Social as part of our marketing. How might we be able to use Paid Social as part of our influencer outreach? This is a case study from my own influencer marketing program for the launch of my new book, The Age of...

You've probably heard the advice that if you want to become an influencer, you need to niche down. This podcast is going to be all about why the riches are in the inches and what you can do to take advantage of that. I interview the CEO and Founder of MiloTree, Jillian Tohber Leslie, and we discuss: Why drilling down in your niche can help you explode your business Why using Instagram and Fac...

1 of the 6 pillars of digital marketing is email marketing, but it's often the one easy to forget as most talk about more trendy topics such as social media marketing, content marketing, or influence marketing (I'm partly to blame!). Based off of webinars I provided for both the University of Jyvaskyla in Finland as well as the email marketing software company GetResponse, learn all you...

What is the connection, and even the similarities, that marketers who want to improve at both SEO as well as social media need to have? Join me in this interview with one of the world's leading experts, Cyrus Shepard, SEO Advisor for MOZ, as we discuss: Why SEOs and Social Marketers both need to have a wide breadth of skills for writing across social pages, metadata and more The way in which...

Why does influencer marketing and collaborating with influencers regardless of industry have such incredible promise for businesses now and well into the future, even during this coronavirus pandemic? This episodes focuses on why I wrote my recent book, The Age of Influence, by reading you the actual Introduction from the published copy. By hearing my perspective through this episode, the way you...

This episode features an interview with Kate Bradley Chernis, Co-Founder and CEO of the content marketing tool Lately , which helps you automatically turn your content into dozens of social media posts in one click.  Some of the topics we cover include: Why writing is the most important skill in your toolkit as a marketer or a salesperson How any marketing person or tool can't help you if you...

Today is a very special episode dedicated to a very special personal, my father, who recently passed away at the age of 93. By sharing his life story, not only will you better understand my DNA as an educator and entrepreneur, but you will learn how to take the same holistic approach like I do to influencer marketing so that you can find influential collaborators and distributors that can help you...

This is the 3rd in a series of episodes helping you make sense of what the coronavirus pandemic means to your business. This episode will be focused on the marketing aspect of your business. Is it OK to publish content on social media now? Is it OK to advertise? What should I be posting about? What marketing activities should and shouldn't we be doing? These questions will all be addressed in...

Today's episode is a special interview I had with a special friend, Mark Schaefer. Mark is one the true few thought leaders in the marketing space, whose most recent book Marketing Rebellion talks about how the most human companies will win in the marketing of tomorrow. While we planned to talk about a lot of issues, as you can imagine the current coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic weighed over ou...

Today's episode is a special edition broadcast because so many clients and others have asked what our businesses should do in the midst of the current coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic. I want to offer my own perspectives not because I am an expert per se in managing pandemics (I don't know of any marketers who are!), but because you need to listen to a lot of different perspectives to navig...

Instagram requires a very different strategy compared to other social networks in order to be successful. I had the pleasure of interviewing Christy Laurence, CEO and Founder of the leading Instagram scheduling app Plann, to discuss all things Instagram and how you can best create and implement an Instagram strategy to grow your brand.  Some of the things we discussed include: - Instagram content...

Today I want to share with you a real-life example of how I am rationalizing my client's marketing spend and the different options we are considering for B2B influencer marketing. If you are looking to create fans for your business, why wouldn't you reach out to influencers in your industry and try to recruit them through the spirit of collaboration like I teach in The Age of Influence?...

Are you looking to do more with video in social media? Join me for this interview with video marketing expert Jayson Duncan as we discuss how can businesses get into a groove of creating video on a regular basis, how to get people to watch your videos on LinkedIn, Facebook and YouTube, how to create successful video ads, and more! Learn more about Jayson and his company Miller Farm Media here: htt...

As you try to build more digital influence, you might start wondering when and how to begin monetizing your efforts. This episode provides you a number of different scenarios for both the different triggers which might indicate why you should begin to ask for compensation as well as calculating what sort of remuneration you should begin to ask for. This episode also includes advice for marketers w...