Blake Beus  0:00  All right, so I sent you a text while you were vacationing,

Greg Marshall  0:03  I was at my mountains, I

Blake Beus  0:04  didn't even I didn't even know you were up in the mountains. But it was just a random text that I sent you about a thing that which

Greg Marshall  0:10  is why my response was so delayed. I got it. Like, I remember getting like, at a random time when I had searched for like two seconds.

Blake Beus  0:19  But I thought it was super, super, super interesting. And it was about tick tock and an internal practice they have called heating, like heating something up, right, bringing the heat, bringing the heat and, and my initial thoughts of this is, and we talked about this all the time. But my initial thoughts were this is why you shouldn't try to go viral. Yep. You shouldn't even put any effort into that. Because you may have literally zero control over you could be have, you could create the best content, most entertaining, whatever. And you just might not be one of the chosen few who gets slow, who was allowed to go viral.

Greg Marshall  1:02  When you sent me this. And I took a look at the article. I was like interesting that they actually do a practice like this. Because I feel like off camera, we've discussed how these algorithms seems it's like there's it's almost like no rhyme or reason, in a way and organically to like, go viral member and we've done a podcast we were talking about going viral. And it's like, why going viral doesn't automatically increase business. And if you think about it, if platforms, I'm sure tick tock is not the only platform guaranteed, that does heating, right. And if you think about it, they're not going to pick stuff to go viral that has anything to do with selling anything, right? They're gonna pick stuff that gets more visibility, that can drive more behavior for the audience that they want to stay on the platform longer. Right. And so that's why going viral doesn't automatically translate into sales. And that's why if they do heating up, what do you think they do about sales type videos that are promoting Friday holding them down? Probably?

Blake Beus  2:09  Right? Probably cold. Yeah, cold. So let's talk specifically about what heating up is, and this particular article, and this article was all about tick tock, but I'm sure there's something similar, maybe not so blatant in the others, but essentially, internally inside tick tock. They would have meetings where they would choose which content and which creators, they wanted to heat up, aka, go viral. Yeah. And they made those decisions purely based on how it would benefit the platform itself, and how it would benefit the growth of their own platform. In general. Now, if we take a big step back, and we talk about algorithms, right, a lot of people talk about algorithms as this like, cold calculated computer software, whatever algorithms are built and tuned by humans for the benefit of the parent company. Yeah, like, that's the whole point of them, it's not to benefit you and me, is to love us. Right? And I'm not. I mean, there's a lot of things we can say negative or positive about social media companies or large businesses, whatever. And I have a lot of strong feelings on that on that subject. But the point is, is having a good understanding of the incentives, why they're doing what they're doing whatever can help you in your marketing efforts play in their sandbox, because for the benefit of you know, you and your your business, but essentially, they would choose which content which content, they wanted to go viral. Yep. And so you could create great content, and it might even be better than the content that's going viral. But if you weren't noticed by the heating up team, and you weren't one of the Chosen of the heating up team, your content can fall flat could just never go anywhere. It could never get

Greg Marshall  4:03  anywhere. Well, you want to know some interesting is? Do you listen to the podcast value? tainment at all? No, Patrick, I always say PVD. Patrick, but David, he actually had an episode. You guys should check this out on YouTube. He tested this. He said that on tick tock. He said that he figured out that there was some level of this happening when on his content when he started sharing things about US government that opposes the Chinese government. His content started to get he was normally averaging I think he said a couple 100,000 views on like every video and then he said all of a sudden his account like went from that to like 1000 views like significantly smaller and he shares the exact numbers. But he did actually say it's like they tested it within the team to figure out what types of content gets the most views and he noticed kind of this He grew, and then it didn't like a shark fin. He grew and then it liked his tank. And it never has really, like, come back. You've got a black mark. Yeah. And he discuss how he believes that in the background. This is happening. And so what, what do you do with this information? Number one, you have to understand, don't take it personally, if your stuff isn't going viral, or just because a video is going viral does not mean it's actually better content, or that they're doing a better job. The other thing is to not use the views or engagement purely as a vanity metric to think that the content is working or not. Because you and I have shared before Remember, I said, some videos that I make will make me money, and it has barely any views. But it goes to the right person, right. And so you want to base if you're using, you know, we're talking about marketing, right? You're using content to build a business, always keep the main thing, the main thing they say right, which is focus on how is it helping you generate your business versus getting caught? I think in the going viral trap, which is, let's be honest, the stuff that's gonna go viral, usually has nothing to do with building or growing businesses. And it's usually kind of seal your content.

Blake Beus  6:20  Yeah, it, it's, it's super interesting, just how, I mean, you talked about it before, with the addictive behaviors, right? This is not news. There's a lot of Addictive Behaviors built into social media intentionally, intentionally to try to get people to spend more time on the platform. And we talk about from the marketing perspective of part of your marketing efforts is to get people off of the plateau. Yeah, into your email list or into your shopping cart or onto your purchase pages. And so you have to overcome some of these addictive behavior, barriers. But in addition, that you need to really understand how a lot of these things work and how you might feel amazing that you had a piece of content go viral. But that went viral, maybe because you got heated up. Yep. And you didn't get any sales from that. Yep. And so you've got to balance that and really think about what your oops, I hit the table that I think about what you're doing, and, and why you're doing it. But the platforms are doing this because they want I mean, all of these platforms have a cycle, right? So Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter are are all huge. They've been huge. And then tick tock came in, tech came in and they needed to get adoption. So one of the ways they decided to do that was through this heating up, someone could show up, they could choose they liked that their content works, and they make them explode. And now this person is essentially a goal or we talked about a little bit earlier. A rabbit Yep. Right. So like the Greyhound races, they have a rabbit that goes around the track. And that's what they're all chasing. And well, now everybody's like, I want to be like this person. Look how many views they got and everything. So I'm hopping on Tik Tok. This person got that many views and, and so they were able to get just a ton of viewership and pull people away from the other platforms. And that's how, that's how they did it. But that doesn't necessarily translate over into money. And we're a we're a business marketing podcast here. And that is our goal. And so having something go viral and tick tock might equal $0 I know you this wasn't tick tock, but you told me and we talked about this on the podcast, you had someone that had I think they were on Instagram and they had 600,000 Plus Oh, yeah. followers and, and you had reached out and they had reached out to you for marketing. And I think your quote was they had made zero sales. They literally zero they were getting comments and engagement, likes followers were growing. But zero sales. So they did all of this stuff. And they weren't literally weren't making any money,

Greg Marshall  9:11  which basically tells you that, be careful what you're measuring as success, right? Like, make sure you're keeping, the main thing is you're trying to either generate a lead or generate a sale. If you're using these platforms for that reason. Make sure that's what you're measuring, and not getting caught up in like, how many followers you have, or, you know, how many likes or comments you have, because, you know, I can tell you like, I run ads for myself I you know, put content out myself. I don't have nearly the engagements, the comments, the followership as some other businesses Yep, my stuff works and does translate directly into business. And so I'm okay with that. Like, initially I wasn't I'll be honest, like initially I'd be like, Man, I'm only getting so many views. No one's gonna take me serious because everyone's judging on how many people are following and engaging and all that. But I finally got over that and pass that where I said, but it's generating me business. So why am I not excited about that? Because at the end of the day, that's the goal is for it to generate business, not just to get reach.

Blake Beus  10:21  Yeah, right. Yeah, well, and think about it this way, depending on the nature of your business. And let's talk about maybe a coaching or coaching or a consulting type of business where you're, you have a simple funnel, where you have some sort of way to generate interest and get your name out there, then people sign up to book a call or something like that. And then you sell them a service. And if it's consulting, could be something that's like maybe $1,000 Consulting package or, or $1,000 a month, or $200 a month for XYZ, whatever, depending on what your business is. But let's just say it's, you're selling $1,000 Consulting package, which is a very low price consulting package for a consultant. You have a video that gets 20 views, someone sees it. They're interested, they book calling you make a sale. That's $1,000. Yeah. That's completely feasible. That's the kind of stuff you do with with your marketing. And in your sales. I think he told me once you had a video that had 20 views, someone approached you and ended up being a client, they said, Well, that's the video of yours that I watched.

Greg Marshall  11:26  Exactly. And I was shocked, because I'm like, that's when the light ball hit, you know? And I was like, Oh, it doesn't matter how many views you get.

Blake Beus  11:32  Yeah. And but you have this person over here with 600,000 followers posting content two, three times a day putting all of this effort into that with zero sales. Yep. Which strategy is better? Yep. The one where you're getting the actual sales, but you don't, you don't feel cool. You're I mean,

Greg Marshall  11:51  bingo, you just hit exactly what I'm gonna say is that one looks cooler than the other. Right? It looks cooler to say, hey, I have 600,000 followers, you know, 30,000 likes, you know, 40,000 comments. And then the flip side is, yeah, I have 400 views. Two comments. And again, one fall right, buddy, in the last,

Blake Beus  12:14  I lost a follower. But I got two new clients for like a monthly, you know, monthly consulting, or something like that. And that's obviously way better. But it's not. It's not cool. And I think, trying to put words to what I'm thinking about here, I almost feel like the social media platforms have intentionally or unintentionally got us all to buy in to the followers views, all of that as being this really, really, really important, like, life changing thing for our own, like personal life and everything. And so that's why I'm sure you get this. That's why people that are making sales and making money with their current strategy still feel like they're failing. Yep. Because they aren't getting hundreds of 1000s of subscribers and they're not getting those million views on Tik Tok. Yep, yet they're running a profitable business that's growing yet, but they still feel like they're failing. And I feel like the social media companies have imprinted that concept into our head.

Greg Marshall  13:27  Yep. I agree. I think that's, it's obviously it's something that is consistently post, right. It's all about engagement. It's all about this, sorry about that. And they're like, but if you chase that, you'll start doing things for the wrong end goal. Right? If you want to get more engagements you can do go jump off a really high building that will get unbelievable engagements or do bungee jumping or go swim with a sharp, that will get you a ton of views. But how does that translate into actual like growing your business, right? I mean, it doesn't. And so that's where that it can be a trap, because it can drive your behavior. That's why you see so many crazy things on social media, because it's like, it drives that behavior because other people see, look how many views and likes, this got this crazy material that I did. Let me put a bunch of tattoos on my face. Let me try to smoke five things instead of one. Let me try to, you know, and you're doing like this really crazy behavior? Or what do they call it all for the cloud, right to get these likes, and these follows? And it's like, what is that actually? It's like, we've been duped by the social media companies to think that all that actually matters. And in fact, you know what, here's another example. There's a rapper that I remember seeing has millions of followers, okay? And he's, he's very well known people will know who he is. But He's younger. He's The younger demo coming up anyways, he has all these followers. And he found his his record sales were extremely low. And his social media following is all about the sensationalism he's doing. You know, he's doing these crazy things on there. And it gets all this Hey, man, look how crazy he is. He's so cool. But then his record sales were almost non existent. So what does that tell you? That tells you just because you have this following, and you're acting the dancing, monkey or whatever, doesn't mean you're going to actually translate to sales. And that to me is like the perfect example. Because this guy has tons of reach tons of notoriety, no sales.

Blake Beus  15:44  Yeah. And I guarantee you in you know, we're in Utah right now, I guarantee you in Utah, there is a business that has maybe two or three employees that no one's really ever heard of. Yep, that is making a million plus dollars a year. Yep. Because they're focused on business principles as their focus. They're focused on business principles and delivering product or service that might be boring, but it's super useful. Yep.

Greg Marshall  16:14  And they're making,

Blake Beus  16:17  they're making great money, but they haven't had to do all of this crazy stuff to get notoriety, because it just doesn't always translate over. And that's why that's why you really got to think about a plan and think about your strategy for getting out there. Because we're all about getting out there. We're all about running the ads, having a presence on social media, even if even if you're not focused on organic growth, just showing up there. But yeah, because that adds some authority, but having a plan to align the content and the people that are following that content, align that with an offer. Yep, that is maybe either either book a call or check out this purchase, or check out this product or whatever. And then getting them on an email list and start building that relationship of a cost a customer for life.

Greg Marshall  17:11  Yeah, I think that's that's the key is basically being okay. With not don't feel the pressure of hitting these big numbers, like I know, I felt I needed to do when I first started. Because it doesn't translate it to what you think is going

Blake Beus  17:27  to try. And you might not have control over those scenarios, like we just talked about with this tick tock. They literally chose which people they wanted to go viral, that would be a shining star that other people would want to be like or look at, or whatever.

Greg Marshall  17:41  Well think about that you have no control on that. Right. So since you have no control doesn't even mean that your talent alone, or the content alone actually even drove this behavior. So there you just got chosen, which that's not a long term, long term play, to be honest.

Blake Beus  17:58  But what you do have control over is putting some effort into getting some ads in front of the right kind of people putting some effort into your messaging, your first offer, putting some effort into the follow up and the actual sales process, which we talk about here, where he you know, you've talked about, you've bumped into some businesses where they are great at getting the people in the door. Yep, terrible at the close. Yep. Right. But putting, but you have control over those areas. So instead of just putting time and effort into this area of views and engagement and all of that, where you might not have control over it, put area put put the effort into the areas where you do have control over it. Now, if you're a well established business away to scoop up some more, you could hire a social media team or a full time social media contractor that could help you create that content. And then you can grow your reach org and that would make sense. But if you aren't to that position yet, you're I would say 99 times out of 100. better off putting $50 a month in ADS. Yep. Yeah, into a direct offer to call you or get on the phone with you or to sign up for something. Yep. I think you're better putting that 50 bucks a month in ads than you are trying to come up with a daily content strategy for organic,

Greg Marshall  19:12  I would agree. And I think that's it's all about investing. We all have limited time, right? So you want to invest your time in the most leveraged way possible, that will get you the result you're going after? And in this case, we're we're after business growth and sales and, and profits, right? And so you want to think what behaviors can I do now, that will give me the best chance to hit my goals, and spend all your time on that. And don't get sidetracked with going after the wrong goals? Because what you end up doing is wasting a lot of time. And if you're losing all that time, you're also losing opportunities to generate revenue. So you really have to, you know, choose wisely. And I'm just saying from personal experience, early stages I thought you had to do that. And now I'm like, I don't think it has any correlation. So. So yeah. So choose wisely, make sure you're doing things that actually drive your business.

Blake Beus  20:11  And final thought here, I just while you were saying that, I think we're seeing a resurgence of people moving away from social media platforms in the way that they've been using them in the past, I guess, I don't think social media is going away. But I think people are reevaluating what they're using social media for and how they're using it. Yeah, especially in the marketing aspect of things. And, and I think, I think now's a good time to be on the forefront of that mental shift. And it's going to be literally a shift back to the basics, where you're going to see people starting to really go back to the email lists, and that might manifest into text message lists, but with high quality, good content on text messages. So who gets spammed or blocked. But But But moving back into that kind of older technology, where you can have that conversation with people and not worry about a heating up algorithm. But people are opting in to hear what you have to say. And you're not, you don't have to worry about the weird political relationship between US and China and where tick tock sits in you don't have to put any mental effort into that because people have opted in to receive some messages from you. And you're putting effort into high quality relevant content for those people. That leads them into getting a service or a product that is extremely useful for them and high quality for them. I think. I think we're seeing the days of the garbage. Yeah, products like the hacky, the hacky the FBA businesses where you're just selling dropship kind of SCONUL garbage like and moving towards smaller businesses rails that are focused on delivering quality at a profit at a profit margin, but not exploding up to becoming bajillion airs. Exactly. I think I think that's that we're new way we're moving away and honestly,

Greg Marshall  22:13  I think thank goodness,

Blake Beus  22:15  it's it's a much healthier place to be for nearly every business and there's so many businesses out there that can do extremely well. But never explode on Tik Tok or, or Instagram and that's okay.

Greg Marshall  22:30  That's totally fine. Just build a strong good fundamental business.

Blake Beus  22:35  And yeah, focus on that. And And yep, I mean, that's all I have to say about the

Greg Marshall  22:40  subject. Yeah. So I think I mean, so yeah, as we wrap this up, Blake, how do people get ahold it's like, you start calm, and they get a hold of me at Greg marshall.co. You can book a free strategy session call. And until next time, see you later. Bye.