MICROLEARNING & GAMIFICATION = SUBSCRIBER ENGAGEMENT
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Tips from Isaac
- Microlearning & gamification = subscriber engagement
- Engaging online microlearning is a more effective way to teach and deliver content
- Your online learning content needs to be accessible and look good on mobile
- Keep your online learning content videos under five minutes long
- Keep it simple. You don’t need to spend a lot of money to create effective learning content videos
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Engaging online microlearning is a more effective way to teach and deliver content
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Doug Morneau: Well, welcome back listeners to another episode of Real Marketing Real Fast. I’ve got Joining me in the studio today, Isaac Tolpin, and he’s got some super exciting information to share with you as a disruptor and an expert in human behavior. Isaac is one of the founders of conveyour. com, the number one micro-learning platform for influencers and companies around the world. He is a tech entrepreneur and a futurist at heart, on a mission-enabling brand to authentically connect and inform at scale, with over 105 million in combined revenues from the companies that he has helped to build to date.
His success comes from understanding the relationships between human behavior, business, and technology. This expertise has helped celebrity influencers and companies to transform their knowledge into humanized digital training. His recent background includes cultivating a vineyard. We’ll have to learn more about that. Keynote speaking, he’s a digital marketer and edtech disruptor through the pioneering micro-training technology. Conveyour. com, the platform that’s improving the way that influencers and organizations connect and train their people.
He brings a visionary mindset to his family by creating a legacy and raising and educating their seven children with his wife, Angie, and their website, courageousmom. com. He refuses to waste his life achieving the world’s definition of success that leaves so many empty, but instead, he does what matters to the projects he’s involved in, with those he serves and the family he leads. So, welcome to the Real Marketing Real Fast Podcast.
Isaac Tolpin: Hey. Great to be here, Doug. Thanks for the awesome intro.
Doug Morneau: Well, hey. When I looked at your site, as we were talking about offline, I was just super impressed with what you’re doing. So, why don’t we start just by you giving us an overview of what you’re doing in terms of your training?
Isaac Tolpin: Oh sure. Yeah, I mean, ConveYour, it’s a SAS company, selling software as a service, and it really enables companies and trainers to create digital training at a fraction of the cost, and it actually create something that the end learner actually enjoys and wants to come back to.
Doug Morneau: So what’s the big difference then between your platform and the many other platforms that are in the same space, where there they have digital training or some platform for people to load content?
Isaac Tolpin: Yeah, there’s lots out there, like, Thinkific, Teachable, Kajabi, or there’s all the LMS platforms that corporations use and so forth. But you got to remember … I mean, think about anybody listening here. How long did you last in the last online course you took that was optional? And then think about times where you were told to maybe in a corporate environment or something like that. Those experiences are not usually something you look fondly on. There might be good information there, but content is no longer king. I mean, it’s commodity. There’s content everywhere at our fingertips — YouTube, whatever.
But content delivered in a way that aligns with where human behavior is, in a curated way, is king today. And so, we built something from the ground up that really looks at, okay, where is human behavior today? What retains people? And what matters? We brought those different pieces into a platform and then made sure it works for the market or the HR department.
Doug Morneau: So one of the things that we talked about just briefly before we turn the microphone on here and that was … One of the notes I made was your platform speaks one-to-one versus one-to-many. So, do you want to expand a little bit on that?
Isaac Tolpin: Yeah, no, that’s a good topic. I mean, so much of our marketing can hit to the masses, but really, your product or service, you know, there’s competitors out there that do the same thing in most cases, right? So the differentiator is how you make people feel in that experience, at customer service, sure. But also, from the first marketing efforts, through the sale, through onboarding, through retaining your client and whatever you’re doing, it is so important that they’re there beyond the service or product you offer, and that has to do with the relationship.
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MICROLEARNING & GAMIFICATION = SUBSCRIBER ENGAGEMENT
Engaging online microlearning is a more effective way to teach and deliver content
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And so, that has got to be one of your big points of differentiation, and you’re not going to build a relationship unless you’re connecting people in a very personal level on a one-to-one manner. Now, the question becomes, well, how do you do that efficiently? You’re in a scalable way, and that’s one of the things that we built the foundation of our platform on, which, you know, just one of those things is leveraging text messaging. Now, you’re not going to use text messaging in the same way you would use email. There’s different social norms for that.
But, if you can connect and communicate with people with bite-sized pieces of content, with their name in it through text message, and they’ve already opted into that relationship and communication with you, have the potential to really create a lot more raving fans faster.
Doug Morneau: One of the things I heard somebody say, I think it was an earlier guest … a bunch of episodes ago, and he basically said, “It’s my responsibility for my customers to learn what I’m teaching.” When I started unpacking that a little bit, I thought about, “How many people have online courses?” So we go through all this effort to create ads and create sales funnels and drive people down the sales funnels and get them to sign up for our online course. And then at that point, I think, and I’ve been guilty of this, thinking, “Well my job is done,” and I think the way that he pushed back and then he said, “Your job’s not done. It’s your responsibility to make sure that your subscribers or your customers actually get what you’re teaching them.”
Isaac Tolpin: I completely agree with that and whoever that was is a very smart person. Listen to that episode again. So here, I completely agree, because if the people who take responsibility for the things that most don’t are going to be the most successful. It’s like when you take … Think about this. When you take responsibility for the experience someone goes through after they purchased from you, what does that say about you in how you’re going to carefully put that service or that information together? See, it’s not just the quality of your information; it’s that your information actually gets digested, and then that people actually implement from that information and it impacts their lives or their business.
If you want people to come back and buy more from you and your brand to expand, you want to make sure you’re creating things that are in alignment with the part of your brand that’s you when you’re in person or the other great aspects of your brand. And so, if you put something out there and package it in a way where hardly anybody actually consumes it, then are you actually fulfilling your calling to have the level of impact you feel inside your company’s supposed to have? And I think it’s so important to take responsibility now that there’s solutions out there, where you can actually create a better experience that’s humanized and people feel connected to one on one, and it’s running in their mobile device, and it’s micro.
So, they accomplish something within five minutes, and these kinds of … It has gamification and these kinds of aspects. When now that that’s actually easier to do than whatever’s been done before, then it carries a whole new level of, yeah, it’s your responsibility, but now, there’s also an easier way to do that.
Doug Morneau: No, that totally makes sense. I mean, especially if you’re selling a membership, if you think about it, and maybe I’ll just pick on the gyms for a minute. I have a gym membership, and I don’t think they really care if I show up. What they really care about is that every month that my credit card clears and that they get their $29 or whatever it is they charge every month, as opposed to having some way to engaged and make sure that I’m having success. I think that’s kind of a long-term approach. I mean, if I’m having success then I’m likely to stay. And if I’m not, at some point, I’m going to go, “You know what? I’ve been paying for this thing. I’m not using it. It’s not working, and I’m going to shut it off.”
Isaac Tolpin: Yeah, absolutely, and I mean, Gary V comes to mind, right? He’s just been driving this for years, but he lives it. I mean, I remember a time I interviewed him when he was launching his Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook, and he was so accessible. Connected with him on Twitter. He was doing a book signing up the street from our agency office. I said, “Hey, I’d love to interview you for your book.” He goes, “Great.” After the book signing, jumps in my car, and we drive down there, and we interview, and it’s late at night. It’s like 9:30 PM, and then he hangs out for 30 minutes afterward. It’s just me and my business partners there.
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Engaging online microlearning is a more effective way to teach and deliver content
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And then he drives up to Seattle to be on Chase Jarvis’ CreativeLive show the next morning. So, what did I see out there, you know, it’s like, “Wow. That left an impression on me.” This guy’s busy. He really is connecting with people and making him feel heard and listening to people, and he follows through on that promise, and I think there’s a good example of that.
Doug Morneau: I think it’s funny. I mean, I’ve just done a podcast episode and a blog post on my social media isn’t working, and basically, standing on the pulpit, my message is that, because you’re using it like radio, and you’re just basically puking your message out on everyone, and they really don’t … They don’t see it. They’re so busy. If you take some time to engage people and talk to them, you’ll get a response, and you’ll build some relationships, and from relationships, you may find a customer or a referral.
Isaac Tolpin: Yeah, absolutely. Yep.
Doug Morneau: And he’s right. I mean, I took his suggestion of reaching out to people using Instagram direct message, and there are lots of people that I wanted to talk to on various projects, and I found that people were accessible and not all of them responded of course but some did. And so, would they have liked the pictures or whatever I put up on Instagram? Probably not, but they did respond to a direct message. So, you’re right, if you reach out to those people like Gary Vee. And one of my other guests [dye-manu-uels 00:10:07] that way, where you send him a tweet, and he’ll respond back. You’re like, “Dude, how do you have time to do that?” But he does.
Isaac Tolpin: Yeah, absolutely. No longer are we in a world where you can be too good for your fans and/or for your customers. I think the moment you start getting that ego and moving in that direction is the moment your brand’s dying and you don’t even realize it.
Doug Morneau: Absolutely. Yeah, we don’t need to look far right now. The department store businesses, they’re closing up. Big companies like Sears, they’re just going away, because they’ve become not relevant when they really clearly had a leadership position at one point.
Isaac Tolpin: Oh yeah. Great example. Absolutely.
Doug Morneau: So do you want to share a breakthrough or a success that you or one of your clients had using this approach to kind of micro training where you’re engaging?
Isaac Tolpin: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we have a lot of companies using it for internal employees. So that’s less on the marketing side of things. But what we’re seeing on that … I’ll give you an example. Capital One used it with a group of managers, and they created an optional 30-day course with 30 videos, very short, delivered daily with a text message notification. And again, they made it optional for 30 days, with a middle management team that was sizeable, and they got 100% retention of everybody through that 30-day course. Marriott and Coke did the same course. This was via their consultant, and 76% and 77% were the completion numbers on those two, groups of middle managers from those other companies.
And so, what we’re seeing is unheard of, retention and engagement, when you use the right kind of microlearning, and it’s personalized on a really personal level. So that’s an example where it’s just a massive win. I mean, think about … Companies might get a high completion of their courses when they force their employees to do it. But when you make it optional, what would actually happen? And the truth is, it’d be subbed 15% completion or something.
Doug Morneau: Well do you have a minute just to share with us some of the … You’ve got some checks and balances in place. So, when people go in and they join and take part in that, there’s some tracking and there’s some rewards for them. So we’ve just joined a relatively new program here and it’s actually, you know, all the times that people knock our government and the government for not doing good things. They’re actually doing some good things, and they’ve got a new program called Carrot, and what Carrot does is it hooks up to whatever apps you’re using, and it tracks your steps, and you get rewarded. You get rewarded for meeting your fitness goals.
Isaac Tolpin: That’s awesome.
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Doug Morneau: And so, I noticed on what you’re doing, and hey, there’s a reward. So, how does that work for the companies that have been using it?
Isaac Tolpin: Yeah, so, there’s a few principles that are very basic. When you hear these, you’re like, “Oh of course. That makes sense.” Well first of all, if you’re deploying training to somebody, it needs to be beautiful in a mobile device. I mean, that goes without saying, right? The world we’re in now?
Doug Morneau: Yeah.
Isaac Tolpin: But how many platforms are built for the PC first and then kind of also work for the mobile? And so, that’s a big game-changer. When you build something for the mobile and then make it also work for PC, it’s a really big difference. So that’s important. It’s got to be easy and simple in the mobile. Also, if you’re emailing people notifications around new content, you’ve kind of already lost. And so, one thing is what’s not working out there is creating a repository of content or a course that you go log into whenever you want to get more information from. But, it gets out of sight out of mind. People are busy and they’re not going to go back to that.
But instead, if you can drip content to people, with text message notifications that are personalized with their name in it, and then there’s a link, and they go into a portal, a beautiful portal right on their phone, you’ve completely changed the game, because now, you’re dripping it right to them and they actually enjoy it. Why? Because, well, first of all, you can’t break this rule. This is a very, very important rule that you cannot break, which is learner trust, and that learner trust means that they need to be able to accomplish something within ideally five minutes, but five to seven minutes, learn and accomplish something, get recognized for it on their mobile device within five to seven minutes.
And if you go beyond that, you’re breaking learner trust. What happens then, even if they loved the content, had a great experience, the next time you text them with information that there’s new info or new lesson there, they’re going to think to themselves, “Do I have five minutes right now, do I have ten minutes right now, or do I have fifteen minutes right now?” If you win over much over five minutes, they’re not going to come back. And so, it’s really important that you don’t break that learner trust. If you stay with that, that’s a really powerful thing. And then the content’s got to be … can be just a basic video. That’s what’s beautiful about this.
The shorter you make your videos, the easier it is for production, and the easier it is for production, the more relevant you can keep your training, because you’re not spending all this money in producing this stuff. Okay. And so, now, you rely on the micro-learning software to actually bring that video to life, and what I mean is, they need to … and you can apply this to many things you’re thinking about, definitely not just our platform. But, people need to interact with the learning process. Nobody anymore wants to be just talked at.
So, it’s fine if your video teaches something, but then after that video, an engagement or some experience needs to pop up for them to respond to a poll question or open-ended question or social learning, where they can see everybody else’s results after they type something or rate themselves one to ten on something. So there’s some engagement, and then there needs to be a reward to your Carrot thing that the government’s doing, which I didn’t know about that. That sounds fascinating. But there needs to be that that social recognition of, “Hey, I accomplished something. I achieved an achievement currency for it or points, and I’m on a leaderboard next to my peers or other people.”
There’s such a powerful draw when you have all these mechanisms working in concert together. That’s very simple. You can take these principles to other projects and things you’re doing, outside of our software of course, but these things are working.
Doug Morneau: I like the online tracking. I mean, I use an app called MapMyFitness. It was bought by Under Armour, and I don’t like to go into public competition. I mean, I’m an older guy. I just want to go out there and work really hard, but it’s super exciting to me to get into a group where there’s two or three hundred thousand people and finish up in the top 10%. Nobody knows who you are and it’s just between me and Under Armour. I made sure Under Armour and the sponsors know, but it’s cool to have that leaderboard and say how am I doing, what’s the average age of the participant. So, how am I doing across a broader audience at whatever the task is — trail running or hiking or cycling or weightlifting or whatever the goals are?
And they get massive, massive numbers, like hundreds of thousands of people who get into their app and compete this way, and it’s just like you said, it’s a leaderboard. There’s no guarantee that you’re going to win a prize, but the prize really is just tracking your own personal development.
Isaac Tolpin: No, you’re right on. I mean, it reminds me of a project right when we launched two years ago with ConveYour. I did a project where I said, “Okay, with my iPhone, I’m going to produce an 11-video course, and I’m going to give myself two days,” and I have other stuff going on, so I for sure didn’t work full-time on this for two days. So I shot it. I put my iPhone on a tripod. I had a decent background and I shot it. No special mic or anything, although I have that, I wanted to do what anybody could do. And then I put it together in our ConveYour platform, and then I put points to it, and I left no reward, and it was an experiment, and this was for business owners.
So, people, the average age was probably … I don’t know. Definitely, everybody’s over 40 in a lot of cases that took this thing at the end. I made it free, but every time they answered something as they went through this, and it was an 11-day challenge. So, every day, they get a new piece of content. They would get points. And then on the fourth day, I invited them to share this to their social media, a message, and I said, “Oh to make it fun, by the way, I’ll give you an extra thousand points.” And that was the first time I even mentioned points in the whole thing. There was no reward, and over 207 … no advertising. I just posted this on my Facebook and it kind of took off.
And 207 business owners took this challenge. I couldn’t believe how much they loved it. I knew it because I would get messages back from them. And then I saw how many of these business owners actually shared it on their Facebook just to get another 1000 points. And then there was no reward on the leaderboard. And so, it was just fascinating to see just the hook and draw this kind of stuff.
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Doug Morneau: Well I’ve seen like you said, the rewards before we’ve done re-engagement programs for people, where if they re-engage and then share in social media, we’ll give them points, and the more points you get, the more chance you get to win. But it’s never been around training. It’s always been purely a marketing focus to move the sales dial or increase open rates or increase referrals. So, I think this is … This sounds like a very cool platform, an opportunity for people. I like the fact that you said you can shoot this on your iPhone.
I don’t know if you’ve heard Kevin Harrington speak before, from Shark Tank, and he talks about his infomercial days when he first started. He goes, “You guys have more technology with your iPhone today than we did when we were shooting TV commercials. So there’s no excuse for you to not to shoot video.”
Isaac Tolpin: You’re exactly right, and I encourage it. I mean, I have better cameras and stuff, but you know what? If there’s any friction in your production, what do we tend to do? We tend did not produce. And again, back to guys like Gary Vee, does he create any high-end production? I mean, I’m sure he does for some things, but most of his stuff is like getting the phone out and shooting something and sharing it out there. I think there’s also a draw to that. I think people care about really good content. They’re straight and to the point, and that they get to be part of something bigger than themselves, and they’re connecting with other people as they’re doing it.
I think that no longer do we need to get the Captivate and Articulate and do all these highly-edited voice-over videos. In fact, I think when there’s not a human being looking at you too, you’re missing something. I think if it’s only voiceover and highly-edited videos, you’re missing a draw. Imagine a world where it was so easy to get best practices from around a company and put it together in an engaging course really easily and launch that out there and drip content like a normal rhythm of learning in a company that never ends. How do you create a learning culture? You never stop driving learning, and you never stop dripping out content to people, but how do you do that if it costs half a million dollars and six months to make?
By the time you’re done producing that thing, there’s parts of it that they’re already outdated, and you’re not going to update it because it’s too time and expense, right? Now, you put your millennials in this course, where only one lesson is a little bit outdated and they know it, they’re going to look with skeptical eyes through everything else. And so, we’re in an age with the speed of change, that actually, Kevin Harrington is exactly right. We got to get rid of the friction in our production. We can’t be perfectionists. There’s a big problem with perfectionism today, and we’ve got to go … And you know what?
I can shoot this, but then, now, if you have the right software, you can bring those basic videos to life, and I think that’s like the perfect combo.
Doug Morneau: Well the way I heard it described was we need to take imperfect actions, and I think that’s part of it. The other part is, my tendency … I don’t know about you … is that if I’m going to edit it, now, I’m going to really start to heavily critiquing and wordsmithing, and then it’s really not authentic. What it really becomes is a polished marketing piece or a polished piece with an end goal in mind, so it’s a lot less authentic. If I want to deal with people who are like me or like my personality and style, that all goes away I think as soon as you start heavy editing.
Isaac Tolpin: Yeah, and it’s less personal, isn’t it? It’s kind of like, if somebody shot a video message to you and texted it to you and they could tell you just shot that, that is far more moving and relationally connected and more interesting than some highly polished video you spent $5,000 to create.
Doug Morneau: And took how long to do it, right?
Isaac Tolpin: Yeah, yep.
Doug Morneau: So what do you think are the biggest myths about this type of tactic? So you’re saying, hey, you can take your smartphone. You can create a video. You can create this engagement immediately.
Isaac Tolpin: Well it depends on who-
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Doug Morneau: So, where are people going to push back?
Isaac Tolpin: Yeah, they’re going to push back and go, well, here’s one place, microlearning. How can you train on complex subjects deep information and put it into microlearning in five-minute pieces? I mean, that’s not long enough to get my thoughts out.
Doug Morneau: That’s funny. Let’s sit there for two hours and let you drone on till my butt totally falls asleep and my bladder’s full. Yeah, how much am I learning then?
Isaac Tolpin: Yeah, it’s like okay. It’s like the speaker. Our professor, you know, CEO syndrome. Let’s just put them all in a similar group for a second. When you have a captive audience, and let’s say your information is great, and you are a great speaker, and people are in front of you, that’s entirely different in a digital environment. Now, everybody’s like, “Yeah, I know that Isaac,” but do we live that our actions? Because realize, the digital environment is the most distracted place in the world to be. We’re getting notifications. We’re getting pinged. If something’s not interesting every 60 seconds, then we’re bailing on it, and we just have these habits now.
It’s a YouTube world. It’s a reality show world. And so, in the digital environment, you have to break it down to five minutes, and I’m not talking about … Let’s say here’s a myth. Well, I have this 20-minute … It’s going to take me 20 minutes to explain something. What I would say to that person is I’ll go, “Okay, first of all, get rid of five minutes of it, because I guarantee, you can at least get rid of five minutes of that 20 minutes, okay?”
Doug Morneau: Yep.
Isaac Tolpin: And then the next point turns into three five-minute videos, and you just string them together, because now, they can watch it, accomplish something. They can easily just watch the next little piece, but if they need to stop and go somewhere, you didn’t break that learner trust. They know they can come back and just spend five minutes and win and that’s key.
Doug Morneau: Well, and to build on your point, I mean, we’ve all been to great keynotes, and we’ve heard people speak. We’re heading down to a TEDx this week. It’s TEDxStanleyPark. We’re super excited to go. I know that I’m going to be super jazzed when we’re done, but there’s going to be like five hours of content. And as much as I enjoy it and I consider myself a pretty fast learner, I’m not going to retain it. So I love going to events and I love going to conferences or speaking at conferences, but I’m always mindful that you’re there for a day, two days, three days. You can’t … You know, how much of that do you actually take away?
So, to your point of the guy saying, “Hey, my thing’s two hours.” Well, if you speak for two hours, how am I going to take one or two actionable points that I can do?
Isaac Tolpin: Oh yeah, absolutely. And you see … I mean, I’ll just give you some stats real quick that I know just from being in the e-learning digital industry, which is Ivy League schools, higher education, are getting at most 25% completion of online classes students are going through that pay full price for those classes, the parents do. And 25%, the large MOOCs are less than that, that $100 million dollars have been invested into. What you’re looking at, they don’t advertise these things. I remember sitting with the leaders of a school in person and just dumbfounded at how low their engagement rates are, and there’s a way to solve this.
I mean, it’s like we have to be willing to switch, but you’re right. There’s still people holding on to some of this methodology of like, well, no, we use Captivate and Articulate, and we’ve always done voiceover, and we always spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to create courses. And sometimes it’s hard for people to look at themselves in the mirror and go, “We’re completely antiquated. What we’re putting out is the antithesis of the cultures and employee engagement, we’re actually driving as a leadership team in our company.” What we’re putting out is actually the antithesis of the experience we give live, if I’m a trainer.
Doug Morneau: Right.
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Isaac Tolpin: And so, we just have to be really honest with ourselves, and like you said at the beginning, actually take that responsibility for the actual experience of what we’re putting out there and speak and gear our information towards the one person listening. It was interesting. Billy Graham just passed away, and regardless of faith and things like that, one of the things that I thought was powerful that he was quoted as saying, in his later years, is, “I always spoke as if there is just one person listening.” I just think that is a really transformational approach to digital.
Doug Morneau: That’s really cool. Yeah, I mean, you can take complex topics and break them down. One of the new programs that our family’s participating in, with our local church, is a Bible reading app, and they’ve done exactly what you’re saying. It’s called Read Scripture. What it does is, every day, you just check in on that day and there’s a short video with a voiceover and animation, and then there’s a couple piece of scripture to read and you’re done. So for people to go, “Wow, that’s a lot of reading. I’d really like to do that one day.”
It’s one day, one day, one day, and this is an app, and you just click on it, and every day, there’s a new message there, and it’s really well done and it’s super easy to digest. I only wish that that existed ten years ago when I first tried to walk through that process.
Isaac Tolpin: That’s awesome. No, that sounds really cool.
Doug Morneau: So what are you most excited about today? There’s so much stuff happening online, and in social, and all the different marketing tactics that are out there. Some are working, some aren’t, and everyone’s chasing the shiny new objects. So, what excites you the most?
Isaac Tolpin: Yeah. I think we … and I told my kids this. So you’ve heard from my intro I have seven kids, and they’re all still at home, ages two to seventeen, in case anyone’s wondering. But that’s a whole nother story we don’t need to get into. Boy, I have so many kids, but you can message me if you want later. But here’s the thing. What is relevant is I’m telling my kids this is the greatest time to be alive, especially if you want to pursue entrepreneurship, and I’m sharing that here too because it is an unbelievable time. And a lot of times, we can get so used to what we have at our fingertips that we take it for granted.
One of the things I’ve also told my kids, which is similar to I think what Mike Harrington said, which is, “It used to cost a half a million dollars or more to do what I can do on Facebook with Facebook Live, and that’s free.” And so, one of the things I tell my kids, too, is that “If you’re going to be on social media, that’s fine, but you need to be a producer, not just a consumer.”
Doug Morneau: Right.
Isaac Tolpin: So, if you’re not producing, you’re just consuming, then we’ll just delete the apps off your phone and control that. And so, I think that’s really important. If you’re an entrepreneur, you got to be a producer on social media. I love the Facebook changes. They’re coming about mostly. Facebook just went through a lot of change, partly because what they learned through the political season and so forth. A lot of marketers are scared about that, but actually, I appreciate parts of it. I appreciate that if you have really authentic content, you’re going to get a favor. If you create a Facebook ad that has long-form content and really valuable content in the written portion, and then your video’s really … and you’re rich in content and people are liking and sharing it, you are going to do even better, it sounds like, with the new algorithms.
However, if you’re kind of spammy and salesy and not putting a lot of thought into it, then you’re just not going to work at all. I think that that’s a good thing. I think Facebook would die eventually unless they made these changes, and I say mostly, because one of the things I’ve noticed recently is, like my wife is, you know, I do her Facebook ads for her, and she sells courses and books and things like that. One of the things I noticed as I was doing a campaign for her is, recently, you can’t address certain groups of people. One of the things, I thought, might my ad got canceled, before it even started, because I said, “Expectant moms.”
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I’m like dumbfounded. I’m like, “Okay, the course that she’s selling is a postpartum course.” That means, for people that don’t know, after you have a baby, how to thrive in postpartum. And so, the only people that would be interested are expectant moms, and then that got canceled because I said, “Expectant moms.” So, I think on the flip side of this, there’s like this political correctness, crazy world we’re in, and I think that is going way too far, but overall, I’m really enthusiastic about Facebook. Video … I mean, you can win everywhere with video now, short video whether it’s LinkedIn, shooting video to Facebook Lives, to all that. I just think that’s just going to continue to grow.
I think audio is a really big deal, and with what … It’s interesting with what like Amazon, Apple are doing with the speakers in the house and all that. That frankly scares me a little bit, but they’re getting massive adoption.
Doug Morneau: They are, yeah.
Isaac Tolpin: So, they’re getting massive adoption, and I think that’s a whole new platform. There’ll be interesting things coming through. I think what we’re doing right now, podcasts, they’re so powerful. One of the things I’ve done is, you know, monthly, I get on several podcasts as a guest and do this. And even if I just share valuable content or wisdom, it’s winning, because how good do we feel when we’re just sharing good information to the world? I mean, that’s part of, as an entrepreneur, keeping your stamina up and excitement up is just teaching without any expectation of getting something back. I think people that do that really win in this economy.
So podcasts I think are huge, and in some ways, content marketing is evolving and becoming easier in some ways. It’s definitely noisy out there, so it’s hard to get your content looked at in some cases. And man, if you can get rid of the friction in your production, if you can do relevant real-time videos in short little piffy statements around your videos, then it’s a time you can really win.
Doug Morneau: Yeah, I totally agree. There’s, like you said, you got to produce, and I’m always looking at analytics to see what’s producing. So if we’re on social, we’re using email, whatever we’re using, we’re going to say, “Hey, where’s the traffic coming from?” The stickiness on the websites, and spend more time on the stuff that’s working and then drop the stuff that’s not working.
Isaac Tolpin: Yep, yep. Absolutely.
Doug Morneau: We’re getting close to the time to wrap up, and I have a couple more questions for you. One is, who’s a guest that you think I absolutely have to have on my podcast?
Isaac Tolpin: Well if you can get … I think Gary V is awesome, right? That’d be huge. He’s just got an interesting take on things. If he could throw fewer F-bombs, but that’s okay.
Doug Morneau: Yeah, that wouldn’t cut it, because I’m a children’s approved podcast. I don’t think I could have him as a guest. I’d have to leave him out.
Isaac Tolpin: Yeah, yeah. You know, when I interviewed him, he did one. I didn’t even talk to him about it prior, but I thought it was a big win if only one F-bomb. But anyway, so that you have awesome, awesome though, a good guy. And then a guy that you might not have thought of is … His name’s Aaron Smith, and the reason I say Aaron Smith, he’s a very good friend of mine, but he’s one of the most successful self-published authors that you’ll meet. He sold a ton of books himself and does very well and he has a really fascinating and valid marketing mind. His wife has unveiledwife. com.
She’s got over a million followers and author and so forth, and they brought their books together, and his brand is Husband Revolution, and they recently launched BookWorthy, which is how to self-publish a book. But I think that he would be a great guest too.
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Doug Morneau: Well that’s what I’m looking for. I mean, I don’t think that I’m doing either Gary V. or my audience any good bringing him on air. I’m really looking to talk to people that are making significant changes, and Gary’s got enough bandwidth and enough people following him. Where, you know, I didn’t know you until we connected here, and I looked at your platform, what you’re doing. I’m thinking, “Holy crap. This is super cool. I got to find a way to use this for myself, for My clients. That’s what I’m looking for.” I think Gary’s going to be just fine without me and my audience.
We just find not having me rebroadcast Gary, but it’s really connecting with guys like you that are doing some really cool stuff, and like you said, your buddy Aaron that I think bring value to what we’re trying to do for our audience.
Isaac Tolpin: Yeah, I think he’s a great fit, and so, I’ll do an intro to you.
Doug Morneau: That’d be excellent. So let’s wrap up the podcast with you telling us all the places that we can find you online.
Isaac Tolpin: Yeah, Issac Tolpin on social, any social. I-S-A-A-C. T-O-L-P-I-N. So, connect with me out there. I’m cool with that. Conveyour. com. So, C-O-N-V-E-Y-O-U-R. com. And if we have a little bot on the front of website, if you message that and want to talk to me, it’ll get to me. So those are a couple ways.
Doug Morneau: Well, excellent. Hey, thanks so much for sharing today, I mean, that we’ll carry on this conversation offline, but thanks for sharing the information with you. And listeners, as usual, please expect a full-length transcript with all the details, and we’ll make sure that all of Aaron’s contact information and links are there for you. And make sure that if you have not subscribed, make sure you subscribe, and that [inaudible 00:37:42] Isaac’s information will be there.
And subscribe, follow us, leave us a review, leave us a comment, send us a comment, tell us what type of guests would be helpful for you, for your business and your role in sales and marketing, as you grow yourself and grow your brand. So, thanks so much for listening, and we’ll see you in a couple days.
Connect with Isaac Tolpin
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Links to other podcast and or blog posts:
Real Marketing Real Fast Podcast – host Doug Morneau – Episode #46
- WHY DOESN’T SOCIAL MEDIA WORK?
- CLIENT ATTRACTION STRATEGY MINDSET
- LANDING CLIENTS VIA CARING AND SHARING
- PRIORITIZE BY ASKING “HOW IS THIS GOING TO MAKE ME MONEY?”
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