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Jason Debacco

Todd Wilms: Championing Startups, One Founder at a Time

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Are you a visionary? A trailblazer? A founder? Or maybe you have dreams to become one and are just looking for the right encouragement? 

As a CMO-turned entrepreneur, Todd created FoundersPlace.co to champion startups. Hooray! He also podcasts, speaks, and consults with companies around the globe to help founders find their market, grow, and add value. Todd’s first book, Beyond Product, an entrepreneur’s marketing handbook, is a true layman’s guide with insights and best practices from over 70 founders… including Kately! 

Is Bad Writing Costing Your Business Big Bucks?

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Chances are, the answer is HECK YES.

In fact some experts say that bad writing costs businesses nearly $400 billion each year.

Why? Let’s do a quick run-through of the skills you need to run a successful business – project management, financial know-how, sales, marketing… You know, stuff folks get degrees in.

But writing? That’s something everybody can do, right? It’s one of those ‘soft’ skills people talk about. I mean… English majors? What a joke!

Erm, except that this joke’s on you :-).

Because good writing is faaaaaaaar from easy. But it’s also the one skill that every single employee needs to do well – not only to do his or her job well, but so that others can do theirs well, too.

It’s all about communication. And these days, communication mostly happens in the form of good ole writing (texting included).

Which means that whether you’re communicating internally to colleagues or externally to customers, being understood and getting people to do what you want them to do, is critical.

Then why are so many people so bad at writing?

The good news: you’re NOT alone. Companies spend more than $3.1 billion each year on remedial writing training for employees. Obviously, that’s also the very bad news.

Because that’s just the basics. Forget the crafty, purpose-driven, high-quality writing required for marketing and sales teams to be even remotely effective.

Whether it’s basic writing or advanced, overwhelmingly, folks just plain HATE doing it.

Partly because we’re all a wee bit lazy. Writing takes time. It takes work. You have to practice at it.

But also, writing is hard. English language grammar rules are exceedingly unclear, with so many exceptions that one wonders why there are any rules at all. And as technology has morphed the way we communicate and the way we write, the rules have evolved in practice but in a way that no one actually teaches.

Then there are emojis. Love them, admittedly. But let’s be frank… Thanks to emojis, the majority of our communications have been reduced to a one tap, pictorial “grunt,” which often boils down to:

  1. patronizing dismissal (thumbs-up = no thoughtful response required),
  2. disingenuous expression of affection (c’mon, who doesn’t “heart” everything?) or
  3. over exaggerated reaction (really, are you really crying with laughter?).

3 Ways to Improve Your Writing Right Now

1. Do Unto Others

For gosh sakes, have a little compassion. Remember that the person on the other end of that email or Slack thread is busy, like you. They don’t want to spend a long time reading and trying to figure out what you’re really saying.

Take, for example, meeting scheduling convos with team members in other time zones… Do them a favor:

WRITE THE TIME IN BOTH THEIR ZONE AND YOURS.

Save them the confusion of calculating (c’mon, we’re all crap at math, too). Even better, preempt their response and prevent additional back-and-forth. Chances are, they’ll accept. Like so:

Hey Jim! Would 12 PM Eastern/9 AM Pacific work for you? I’m sending along a calendar invite now. If that doesn’t work, let me know what does and thanks!

2. Don’t Bury the Lede

In school, we a were all taught to warm folks up with a long preamble, setting the stage for what would come next.

STOP THAT.

Because the more time peeps have to spend reading, the less time they’re spending doing work.

Get to the point faster by merciless editing. Start by writing as you normally would. Then, go back, read everything you just wrote and identify the extraneous. Hack the fluff. Get ruthless! You can do it.

#ProTip: Look for passive voice and rejigger to active, i.e., “The bone of the dog” becomes “the dog’s bone.”

See?

3. Write with Your Eyeballs

The same way we eat with our eyes, we read with our eyes; it’s a visual experience. Which means how what you write looks, matters.

Think spacing. Think, bold, italics, all caps. Think numbers, exclamation marks, question marks, percent signs, semicolons, colons, en and em dashes, parenthesis, ellipses – and yes, even emojis. Anything that stands out from the norm, that breaks up the text… that shizzle is your friend!

Make smart use of this tool kit. Because how you arrange your words can make what you’re trying to communicate more, erm, digestible.

For example, see all of the above :-).

Most importantly, loose the jargon. Acronyms, cliches, biz blab… BLEH. That stuff is a communication killer. Your readers will thank you.

Jon Ferrara: Putting the Social in Sales

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We were stoked to be joined for Lately LIVE by Nimble founder and one of our fave people, Jon Ferrara. For Nimble novices out there, it’s a super sales app that helps you manage customer relationships and grow sales – we use it right here at Lately. In fact, Jon says using Lately and Nimble together is just like peanut butter n jelly, yum 😊

Jon’s a pioneer in CRM tech, so we sat down and chatted about start-up life, Nimble and what’s important in life.

Helping others grow

Using your energy to grow others and help lift people around you is what it’s all about, according to Jon and we whole-heartedly agree.

When you’re present and truly connecting with others in business, there’s no better high.

Listening, learning and adding value doesn’t happen in an instant – committing to conversation and the long-haul with someone is how you can both grow. During our chat, Jon got his smartphone out and said that we feed more and more into our phones to generate validation when we’re starved of it elsewhere, but that shouldn’t be what life’s about.

Idea behind Nimble

99% of CRMs aren’t built for the user, it’s basically for the person that manages you, cos it mainly acts as a reporting tool. So, Nimble is more of a contact management tool to get you connecting with customers, which should be at the heart of CRM!

And that’s why Jon built Nimble. To help people connect and dream-build. Nimble’s philosophy is very much built on the power of people – heck yeah.

People buy when they trust people and that’s at the heart of the company. Nimble is fixing CRM.

Because Jon has “suffered” through being a salesperson, he knows what’s important. Most CRMs are a dead database and make you do the hard work anyway – Nimble helps you foster and build thousands of connections and gives you that nudge to reach out.

It unifies business apps into one system and gives you a 360 view of your contacts, wherever they are in your business.

“Money ain’t it”

Jon takes us back to the beginning. He worked in aerospace tech after graduated in computer science. He didn’t enjoy it much, so started working at a start-up and quickly moved to sales, where he’d cold-call IT professionals to sell software and would make detailed notes about customers and schedules along the way.

Jon spotted a gap in the market for a CRM and quit his job to start up his own company, Goldmine. Jon likens launching a business to jumping off a cliff and building an airplane on the way down! He was pretty good at it though and Goldmine got super successful and bought out when Jon was 39, but he’s passionate about the fact that money isn’t what fulfils you, it comes back to helping others to grow.

And being in the moment and present is a big part of being happier too. If you accept that life has highs and lows, you won’t always be “winning or losing” then you’ll be happier.

Social Selling

If people are gonna buy off you, they need to trust you. Jon always taught salespeople that if they want to know about someone, look at their walls. And in 2019, that means your digital footprint – someone should be able to see what you’re like and all about from a quick check online.

Social selling is really just selling. “When something becomes ubiquitous, it disappears”, so social selling will be a bit like the internet…it’s so big, it’s everywhere and loses its definition.

“Life is social and business is social” and everything’s still based on the promises we make and the experiences we deliver.Make sure you listen to the end of the talk as well and you might be in for a super cool surprise from Jon 😉

Small Business Confidential: Calling All Marketing Armies of One…

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Are you a marketing army of one? Just a wee bit short on “army”?

Chances are, you’ve got a thousand things to do (due yesterday) and admittedly, social media marketing – which you know is super important – is, at best, an afterthought.

Besides, where to even start? I mean, creativity is for people that have serious time on their hands. Not to mention imagination, cleverness, originality and enviable wordsmithing-skills.

Let’s be honest, writing just isn’t your thing. (Truth be told, you hate it.)

But don’t worry. You are NOT alone.

Did you know that, on average, it takes a marketer 12 minutes to write a single social post from scratch? 12 minutes!

Ever watch water boil? Writing a social post takes longer.

How Marketers Write Social Posts Now

Raise your hand if this sounds familiar…

  1. Stare at blank screen
  2. Get coffee
  3. Stare at blank screen
  4. Read other people’s posts for ideas
  5. Stare at blank screen
  6. Scarf leftover Easter chocolate
  7. For gosh sakes, write something already
  8. Stare out window
  9. Type half-assed sentence that probably starts “check out…” [see Marketing’s #1 cardinal sin]
  10. Publish single half-assed post as though flushing a toilet (good riddance)
  11. Repeat

A Slightly Better Way

What if you could use longform content, like blogs or newsletters, as a starting point? Scroll through each sentence, find the most compelling quotes, add a shortlink on the end of each one and maybe a couple hashtags and… BOOM.

You would have a whole lot of sweet social posts that you didn’t have to pull out of your, ehem, arsenal.

You could even manually schedule them to publish once or twice a week out over a long period of time – so they felt organic and continued to drive traffic back to the original link. Talk about a great way to repurpose all that longform content!

But that would be soooooooo 2018.

A WAY Better Way: Small Businesses, Meet AI, Your New Best Friend

These days, Artificial Intelligence can write dozens of amazing social posts for you. Social posts that are smart, compelling or even a jumping off point for inspiration. Social posts that give you confidence and that take away the pressure of trying to think of what to say. Social posts that are even in sync with company keyword guidelines, so that your messaging can stay consistent. Because that’s how the big dogs do it!

In other words: Bye-bye, fear of the blank screen.

Hello, life-changing technology!

And we mean life-changing. As in, “designed to help you market your small business like a mega-brand – without breaking the bank, losing your mind or barely lifting a finger” kind of life-changing.

AI can even automatically schedule all of those amazing social posts in bulk, spread out once or twice a week over a long period of time and automatically include short links, hashtags and tags.

A.k.a., technology that turns underdogs into big dogs. Growwwwwwl.

How Marketers Write Social Posts with AI

  1. Copy and paste a link to a blog in Lately’s Social Post Autogenerator (BTW, we also do videos and podcasts!)
  2. Click “Autogenerate”
  3. Save the ones you like, edit a few as needed, trash the ones you don’t like
  4. Click a publishing frequency (i.e. “once every two weeks”)
  5. Click start date
  6. Click bulk-publish
  7. Repeat

Average total time spent for dozens of social post: less than two minutes.

Life. Changed.

You Do the Human Part. We Do the Hard Part.

Remember: the root of all marketing is emotion. If you don’t have emotion, it might as well be math (sorry, math people). And emotion is inherently human. Which means you should never take the human out of marketing. It just won’t work.

That’s why Lately’s AI always starts with 100% human-created content. Then, we use a series of keyword analysis-based algorithms to identify the most compelling components of that original, 100% human-created content.

Generally, 60% to 80% of the artificial intelligently autogenerated social posts are ready to go. (Hard part, check!) Although, some might need a slight (you guessed it) human touch – but a quick edit is all it takes, as it’s always easier to edit than to create from scratch. (Hard part, double check!)

Marketing = saved. Sanity = saved. (Hard parts for small business owners, especially, check and check!)

“Before Lately, social media was a weak point for me to do super consistently – because I didn’t have the time and didn’t want to sound dumb or boring. Now I have confidence because Lately takes the pressure off and makes me sound smart!”

– Alicia Jimenez

Set It and Forget It with Lately’s Artificial Intelligence

You can even have longform content automatically curated for you, then automatically run through Lately’s Social Post Autogenerator which will then automatically queue up months’ and months’ worth of social media posts for you. Did we mention this all gets done automatically?

Imagine… Months of work done in under an hour.

In other words, your army of one just got a WHOLE lot bigger.

“Lately’s single tool takes the place of an entire social media company so that a solo entrepreneur can do all that work without any need to hire outside help.”

– David Allison

National Small Business Month

And the best part? Underdog pricing.

To celebrate National Small Business Week/Month, we’ve made it so that small business owners can get in on the same awesomeness that the big dogs have access to – but at a small business-friendly price.

Learn more about Lately’s Small Business Week pricing here.

AI for everyone!

Now that’s something to howl at :-).

Rob Balasabas: Use Video to Build Community

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We were super excited to put the spotlight on Rob Balasabas – the latest marketing badass to take a seat and have a chinwag with our CEO, Kate.

Rob’s a video maverick and expert social media marketer for Thinkific, an ace all-in-one platform to create, market & sell online courses.

He started off very much behind the camera, playing around with a camcorder at college, then taking and making cute videos of his family. Before long he recognised the mahoosive potential in video marketing and started using it for professional gainz.

Here we talk about why Rob thinks video content is having its moment, how to get better at doing video and a few tips for successful vid marketing.

Watch this and other Lately Live vids here.

Why we <3 Video

“As humans, we gravitate towards video” and Rob believes we’re possibly drawn more to it than text and audio. They can be more authentic and build that direct connection – they’re the closest thing to looking your audience in the eye.

It’s an exciting format, it’s hot and platforms are making it easier than ever to create good videos. The big platforms have pivoted and their algorithms are helping video content get seen.

There’s also loads of cool in-built tools on platforms to help create, spruce up and deliver stellar quality marketing vids.

Rob’s thing is educational videos so that’s what he sticks to, it’s what he feels most at home. Deciding what you’re best at i.e educational/entertaining is key.

Videos catch more attention too. Rob stresses that you have to try and stop an audience scrolling past your vid. Lots of people might not even be watching vids with sound, so captions are great with video. And not everyone consumes video, people like to read blogs on their way home from work. Start with a long-form Youtube video, transcribe it and then use that as a blog post – there are lots of ways to use video content and repurpose it.

Rob is a believer in the mantra of ‘put the wow on social’ but the ‘how inside the course’. On Youtube, show cool features and effects etc, to draw an audience in but show how to do it by leading them to a resource or course. More theatrics on social, but inside course instructional, step by step

Learning Curve

For Rob, video content is a continuous learning curve. When he thinks back to early videos, he knows that there’s loads of stuff that he’d do better now.

Making your space comfortable for you and feeling good on camera is a big plus. Even if you’re doing a livestream at home – “act like you’re going to work, be professional with a good set-up”.

Another thing that jumped out was Rob’s idea that it’s easy to look at a content creator/influencer you admire and think their videos have always been slick and exciting. But he guarantees that if you go back to the beginning and take a look at early video content, you’ll find that they’re simply not the same level of quality.

And a good plan to follow: always work on how you can improve your video content.

Top Tips

A great tip that came out was creating your own fake test-Instagram/Facebook account and then uploading and looking at the content you post objectively. This lets you experiment, take a look at things objectively, learn how to communicate and see how you come across on video.

People can get intimidated by video as well and think they need amazing mics  – Rob says, not really, you can use your phone for speech and a laptop for webcam. Buy a simple headset cos an expensive mic doesn’t give you a massive difference in quality, it’s something you can look at further down the line.

And what does Rob think’s one of the biggest mistakes you can make when starting out? Not understanding your audience. Think about how your messages come across to different crowds, so you don’t create a disconnect. Put lots of effort into learning about guests and brands you’re interviewing or going live with.

Bryan Kramer: Humanize Your Brand to Grow Your Business

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We don’t use the word legend lightly, but…hey what the heck, let’s crack this blog post off with an introduction to marketing LEGEND, Bryan Kramer.

Over here at Lately, we love us some BK and what he doesn’t know about marketing, frankly isn’t worth knowing!

Bryan was at the helm of the H2H business movement, that’s human to human marketing to you and me. He starting shaking up stuffy, corporate approaches to marketing – think B2B, B2C and all the rest.

BK’s message is simple, we should be encouraging brands to refocus and remember that ‘customers’ are humans and marketing based on authentic, emotive conversation beats corporate claptrap every day of the week.

Kate sat down and talked with Bryan about all things H2H.

You can also watch this and other Lately Live videos here.

How has H2H Changed?

H2H was first used by Bryan 15 years ago and obviously at that time, we didn’t have as much capability in terms of social media, it used to be more about ‘human experience’, so how a customer interacts with a store or employee. But with social media and new comms channels, businesses were starting to see that they could get in front of the customer in a more direct way.

This was scary though! A huge paradigm shift was going on and for businesses, it was very much “omg, we can’t control the narrative anymore”. Social media was changing these tightly managed marketing plans.

And another of the biggest wake-up calls for businesses according to Bryan? Customers don’t see themselves as ‘customers’ or part of B2B or B2C. A few haters came out the woodwork when Bryan dropped this truth bomb “there is no B2B or B2C, only H2H”.

That’s what H2H is about, having an emotive conversation – it’s stronger than any ad and the strongest form of marketing.

How can Companies ‘do’ H2H?

When Bryan consults with companies, he often hears them say, “this is what you can do on social media, go do it”…but they’ve been through absolutely no training!

They’ll obviously have internal rules about sharing, but the ethos is very much “go share but if you screw up, you’ll be fired!”, so people end up not sharing online or reaching out and helping customers when they’re not solely ‘customer facing’. You can get around this by creating stuff that’s been agreed and people can share and then encourage your team to change tone to add personality.

Getting people around the table to practice is a great idea. Sales and customer support etc throw examples around – do role plays etc talk at each other and find solutions. Practicing back and forth creates more authenticity and a natural tone.

Don’t over polish too much, or you’ll strip the human out of language and messaging.

Being human is about “opening the door for people” and the more human you add to marketing strategy/ social media management, the more connection you generate. This in turn creates more $$$, more friendship…whatever it is you’re looking for in any industry or walk of life.

Thanks Bryan!