I just finished watching The Social Dilemma on Netflix, a dystopian view of how social media has evolved and its impact on society. It includes commentary from some of the brightest innovators from the major social platforms. Fitting into this cohort as one of the industry's great thinkers and contributors, my guest today, Dennis Yu of Blitzmetrics, takes a different perspective of how social media is influencing our lives. His view is that it is a positive and beneficial force and you are going to come away from the podcast today pondering more deeply the role social media plays in your life and how you can leverage it not just for your business but for the general good of society.
Dennis is, without doubt, one of the brightest guys I've ever spoken to. I was totally taken by surprise, actually, by the direction of our conversation and so I've also included some of the pre-show chat that Dennis and I had, as it was so interesting. Plus it tees up the insights that he shares with us today.
This is one of those rare episodes you will probably want to listen to more than once.
What You're Going to Learn
How to Understand the Strategy behind Digital Platforms and Get More Deals
How Algorithms Are Working behind the Scenes to Influence What You See Online
How to Feed the Algorithm and Get What You Want in Business
How to Amplify the Connections You Already Have to Get More Real Estate Deals
Why Advertising Is Just a Tax You Pay to Use a Social Media Platform
How to Amplify Your Advertising Using Social Media
How to Build Social Media Content in Three Simple Steps
How to Feed the Social Media Machine to Amplify Your Business
Why If You Are Not Producing Social Media Content, You Are Not in the Game
The One Mistake Everybody Makes in Podcasting
How to Short Circuit the Algorithms to get More Engagement on Social Media
How to Get a Free Ride and Win on Social Media
Which Social Media Posts Create Highest Engagement
Understand the Strategy behind Digital Platforms and Get More Deals
Adam Gower: I got my undergraduate there, at LSE, in Political Psychology, of all things, actually. London School of Economics and Political Science. The stuff that I was studying then is extremely relevant today as well, particularly in digital marketing. It's actually interesting how it plays over.
Dennis Yu: I find what's very valuable now, maybe just because I'm getting older and it sounds like you're more experienced than me, although we have about the same amount of hair, is understanding some of the strategy behind digital platforms and really, it's an extension of our networking. It's not about tools or programming or the latest fad from whatever pundit that you hear. What I found in the last year in understanding the "algorithms" that power Google, Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, YouTube, Spotify. When we understand that, then it's almost like karma where the deals come to us. Where the relationships are drawn to us because of what we put out there.
Algorithms Working behind the Scene to Influence What You See Online
Dennis Yu: Have you seen the movie Inception?
Adam Gower: Yes.
Dennis Yu: And what is the key point for you about that movie?
Adam Gower: The key point was the idea that there are multiple layers of the subconscious. That you just go deeper and deeper and deeper to implant ideas that then manifest in the conscious world.
Dennis Yu: And I find that it's even deeper than planting an idea. It's that if we understand who we want to reach and they already are predisposed to something that we would like them to believe, we can elevate that all the way up into a relationship where they already want to do business with us. And that sounds esoteric and certainly you understand political psychology all the way to a PhD and I didn't go as far as you did, even though I love that you and I both went to the LSE, which means we are mathematically inclined to be able to solve proofs of things that we know are true, but have to algebraically solve down. And it's this: the algorithm today is a singular formula that will decide what we need to see and what we do. It's constantly making recommendations. It's technically a collaborative filter.
So that when you are on Spotify and you're listening to songs, it's making pretty good recommendations of what you might like. When you are on Netflix and you watch a show — Adam Gower likes this, here are other shows he might like. When you're on Amazon — I just bought that missing cable that I couldn't find on Amazon. It's coming tomorrow morning. When I bought that, then on the side it said, you might also like these other items. When you're on Facebook and you're scrolling through the news feed, based on your engagement and who you are and what you've liked and other things that they know about you — they know everything about you — they're making recommendations that you find interesting to make it stickier for you to stay longer, to serve more ads and buy more products and so forth. We agree that it's the same thing across every one of these sites that are free to use, but they monetize based on your activity.
Then we realized when we go one level deeper into the Matrix or into Inception, that it's actually the same algorithm that drives all of them. And that's when we realize that when you take the red pill, that it doesn't really matter whether you're a fan of Instagram or YouTube or Facebook. Every day there's another digital marketing property. Now everyone's talking about TikTok. You know, TikTok is the same algorithm. Based on your engagement and what's hot in the community, they're going to show you more of that to keep you there longer, to be able to show ads because they don't monetize based on subscription. They monetize based on your behavior.
Feed the Algorithm and Get What You Want in Business
Dennis Yu: We need to feed the algorithm the things that we want, because the algorithm is the multiplier. The algorithm is neither good nor evil. Some people love to talk about how AI is going to be evil. It's not. It just wants to give you more of what you want. If we know that there's more information out there than we could ever possibly consume exponentially because of the rate of production — the population that's out there, there's more people than we could possibly talk to, there's more content than we could possibly create, there's more tools and social networks than we could possibly ever be on, which creates FOMO — then we know that the more stuff there is out there, the stronger the filter power has to be of the algorithm to serve us what we want. Therefore, if you're a real estate investor and you're looking for deals, you're looking for other people to be part of your syndication, you're looking to find properties in LoopNet, you're looking to speak at an association, you're looking at the National Real Estate Forum, if you are not feeding the algorithm — and I'm going to say the algorithm with a capital A, kind of like Adultery, Hester Prynne. If you're not feeding the algorithm who you are and what you care about, the algorithm cannot make recommendations for you.
Dennis Yu: Thus, I believe that if you are willing to accept that we are in a Matrix and this thing here knows what you're doing, it doesn't matter whether the phone is on or off, it doesn't matter whether you're, "Well, I don't like Facebook and Instagram. I'd rather be on Twitter." It's the same algorithm. The point is, if we give Google and Facebook and Apple and these other guys what they want, take your tinfoil hat off, then it will give us what we want. It will give us relationships and deals. And I know that's kind of like a karmic secret manifesting, "If you just believe in the energy crystals that the world will feed you back." That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying the mechanics of the algorithm are: it's looking for the signals of what you're putting out there.
Amplify the Connections You Already Have to Get More Real Estate Deals
Dennis Yu: A lot of people talk about SEO and maybe you've interviewed people about how do you get better rankings on Google based on things that you do. It's the same thing. You've got to put content out there reflecting who you are, which increases your credibility in things that you care about, in where you live and the deals that you've already done, which drives the right people, builds social proof, makes it easier for people to reach out to you to do deals. Which is different than you reaching out to them, it's a different level of credibility. You're able to close more deals. Banks are more likely to finance you even though they're looking at certain criteria. The relationships we know you can't discount, it builds and amplifies the relationship that you have. So if you're a successful real estate developer or financier and you have a track record, then that is going to help you because there is content and targeting. In other words, there are things that you've done and there are people that you have done it with that allow the system to figure out other people that are like you. If you're on LinkedIn, it'll say people who look at Adam Gower also looked at these three other people. And if you produce a lot of content that's topically relevant, LinkedIn, for example, will show you other content from other people that you probably should connect with. That's the exact same model on every single network that has more information than you could possibly consume. That's how the algorithm prioritizes search results, prioritizes what you see as you scroll through Twitter, prioritizes what you see in any algorithmically driven network. What you see on eBay or when you're on Amazon looking at products, it's the same algorithm.
Dennis Yu: And I think, Adam and everyone else here, once you understand that, you're no longer distracted by the tools and the technology and the feigned complexity of digital marketing. You'll have people like me. I'm an engineer, I built the analytics at Yahoo! 20 years ago. After I went to LSE, I did some stuff at American Airlines and then I went to Yahoo! when it was a search engine. And you might think, "Look, look at all this training. These are all things I need to try to understand." But really, in most cases, it's the mechanic trying to B.S. you about the complexity of something that you don't understand, taking advantage of your ignorance. For us to be successful increasingly in the modern world, to get the deals that we want, to be able to raise money, to build our brand, to make it so that people are aware of us and our company, you really just need to know that you want to amplify the connections that you already know. You want to amplify the deals that you already have. You're sharing your expertise. The algorithm is so smart, the algorithm will find people in your network that you don't know. That's the thing, Adam, I want everyone to understand before they jump into the latest fad, because they read an article about how this one tool is amazing.
Advertising Is Just a Tax You Pay to Use a Social Media Platform
Adam Gower: Turn around what you were talking about in terms of give the algorithm information so it can give you what you want. Coming from a political psychology background, so very different from your background, particularly when you're talking about advertising and the power of being able to communicate with people to get them to do something you want them to do, which is to buy your stuff, isn't that really, ultimately what the algorithm is about? Is not giving us what we want, but giving us what they want with a capital T.
Dennis Yu: Well, you could go into a Black Mirror type situation where all those shows have the same theme of the crowd in sociology because what happens at the group level affects behavior at the individual level. You could be cynical and say advertising — whether it's through someone like Facebook, because we think Mark Zuckerberg is evil or Google, where now they're evil, too — they are just trying to get your money. And it's the things that the advertisers want because these are all publicly traded companies that have shareholders. I get that argument. However, there is an enlightened capitalism angle here because we collectively, as in the entire ecosystem, are here to build relationships over time. So if a YouTube or a Facebook or a Google — YouTube is part of Google and Instagram is part of Facebook, it's Coke and Pepsi, okay. Let's just be clear. That's 80% of advertising in the Western economy is Google and Facebook — they could do things that are manipulative, but it is a short term play. If we believe in game theory, which is relationships staged over many, if you burn that person, you are forgoing all of the future stage earnings and relationship moments that you could have. So they actually have an incentive not to do that.
Dennis Yu: I've had lunch with Mark Zuckerberg and we've discussed this very topic. As you may know, I was a big spammer on the internet 12 years ago or so and he was not happy with me. Those ads you saw, "Who has a crush on you?" and "What's your IQ like?," a lot of those were run through our ad server. So I know a little something about this topic. I can authoritatively talk about this topic. He told me that he believed that advertising done properly was not an interruption that was necessary to be able to fund this environment that the users get for free. See, people who believe that say that advertising is a tax you pay to be able to use a platform. That's what Jeff Bezos said. Or they also believe that you are either the customer or you are the product being sold. Yeah, you're using it for free, then you're the pig getting slaughtered at the slaughterhouse. That's funny and that does play into what people want to believe, which is the big algorithm is nasty. In fact, if you look at this, my shirts says "disrupt." Disobey big technology. Because we need to swallow the red pill and go into the Matrix and defeat Agent Smith. And the idea of Black Mirror is this negative utopia where the machines are so powerful they cause all kinds of negative things to happen because the crowd is, what's the word, vulgar. The word vulgar, it comes from the Latin word vulgaris, which means of the public. It doesn't mean foul language. It means we devolve into this common denominator.
How to Amplify Your Advertising Using Social Media
Dennis Yu: So advertising now, factually, based on what actually is occurring in the last couple of years, is an amplifier. So we want to think of advertising as amplifying what we selectively want the algorithm to put forward. So, we are paying the algorithm to prioritize something that we want. We want to drive a deal. We, as an advertiser want people to buy our products. But, everything we talked about before is absolutely true. The algorithm still seeks to give the user what they want because these systems monetize by advertising, not by a monthly membership fee. So, content that's working well, it's engaging, people are staying on the platform, they're not having negative feedback, is good for the ecosystem because those people will continue to stay on Facebook, will continue to use Google as their search engine. If they have a bad experience, whether it's from an advertiser or not. An advertisement, we want to think this is going to change everyone's minds, even people who think they're professionals. Advertising is paying for delivery. It's social postage. Now, what's inside the box doesn't have to be something disgusting. But oftentimes, when people say advertising, it assumes that they're merging and confusing the vehicle as well as what is being delivered. So, I think of advertising as a postage stamp. You go to the post office and whatever it costs to mail the package, that's what we're paying. So, if we decouple the message and the delivery fee, then we realize advertising is an amplifier of the things that we already are putting out there.
Dennis Yu: And, if we are not performing well organically, then why would you think that advertising is going to improve that? So, if your car is already broken, stepping on the gas harder, you know if the e-brake is on, stepping on the gas harder, doesn't work. If something is working organically, we can use advertising to throw fuel on the fire, which is to amplify a winner. So that is a key distinction in advertising because a lot of people think, "well, it's a pay to play game and Zuckerberg and Google and these guys, they won't give me any organic distribution. I rank on nothing because they force everyone through ads." That's a common preconception. It is incorrect. Think of it this way: if it is working well, I want to use ads to get more out of it. And if it's not working well, putting ads on it....if I send out something, a product that people don't like, do you think if I send it out to ten times more people, I'll have ten times more happy customers? Not really. So all the people I know in real estate, which is one percent of the people that you know, the ones who are really successful in doing large, large deals, they all are relationship builders first. They certainly have the competency and all the vernacular in doing deals and contracts, but they understand how to build those relationships. So when they advertise, they get a multiplier.
Building Social Media Content in Three Simple Steps
Adam Gower: So how does that work in the digital realm? You've talked about advertising as coming after organic, so what does one do? Describe that to me. What is developing relationships organically?
Dennis Yu: Forget about the internet. The people that you are having lunch with, the people that you're on the phone with, the people that you know, that you've sat down across the table and done several deals with and you've syndicated together and you're the lead, I'm the lead on the next one. We go in together on this commercial office building or we want to build a mall together or whatever it is. Or hard moneylending, that's our area. You couldn't finish it. We're 80% done and the hotel is stuck or whatever. All the different situations. Forget about the internet. You have expertise and you have relationships. That's content and that's targeting. Inventory your expertise. Most people never do this. Inventory your relationships. Look, I know all people are valuable, but some relationships are more valuable economically than others. Inventory both of those. That's two columns. Then figure out where the intersection of those are. That helps you prioritize where you want to put your time. I imagine you might have quarterly planning or annual planning with your team to figure out what deals you want to go after and how much money you've got to raise and who are your lenders and how are you going to syndicate? And I'm making stuff up, I have no idea what you do.S.
Adam Gower: Straight down the fairway though, you're doing very well.
Dennis Yu: Those are all based on relationships and knowledge. Here's one stupidly simple thing that I see real estate investors and even just business owners in general missing. If you have knowledge, turn the phone on and record it in one minute snippets. I'll literally take a Post-it note — and I love little Post-it notes because you can't put 50 things. You can just write maybe 10 things — and these are topics that I know something about or maybe I want to elevate, edify someone in my network who's done something great. I want to talk about a customer. I want to talk about a particular person. I want to talk about someone in my community that has nothing to do with my particular field. It could be a pastor, it could be my chiropractor. It could be a friend that just sent me a cup. It could be this other friend, Jim, who runs Internet Marketing Ninjas. He sent me a cup, I got this thing in the mail. I'm just exposing who I am as a person, exposing my relationships. Of course, you decide which things you're comfortable exposing on the internet. And when I make that content, I then cross-post it to Google, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, blog. And I have a virtual assistant do that for $3 an hour full time. Five hundred dollars a month full time, I have someone doing all this for me so I don't have to mess around with social media. I don't have time to be on social media. I don't think you do either. All our preconceptions about social media I agree with. I don't spend much time on social media, but I am producing content.
How to Feed the Social Media Machine to Amplify Your Business
Dennis Yu: And I said technology is neither good nor bad. It is an amplifier. It is the machine. It's like fire and fire can be used to burn somebody or to cook a delicious steak. I'm sorry if you're a vegetarian or anyone who doesn't want to eat meat. That's the analogy I like. And he said, "Yeah, yeah. It's like fire, man. Fire is like neither good nor bad. It's technology. All the tools are fire. All the social networks are like fire." And I said, "Yes, that's exactly it." And thus, most people make the mistake thinking digital marketing is about technology and programing and tools. It's amplifying what you already have. If you're brand new in real estate crowdfunding and you don't have a network, you don't have a history of deals, you don't have people who vouched for you, then you're going to find that digital marketing didn't work. "It was a scam. I tried digital marketing, it didn't work." If you're successful already and you're applying these techniques, you're sharing your knowledge, you're using advertising to amplify it out there for a dollar a day. You have a virtual assistant who is out there pushing your content out there because you don't have time to post all this stuff and be on the social network. That's for children. Someone else is...they're the postal worker, if you will.
Dennis Yu: You're buying the stamp, but you're paying for the distribution too. Then you're going to say, "Wow, this is amazing. I'm getting more deals, I'm getting better partners. The banks like me more. I'm getting to speak at conferences. My brand is growing. So-and-so is introducing me to so-and-so. I keep getting more and more referrals. This is working really, really well." So you hear people that have completely disjoint experiences. So the question is, why is it that these people are having a great experience with digital marketing, saying it's building their brand and all that? And then these people are like, "Yeah, I tried it and it didn't work. It was a waste of time." Why is it? It's because their starting point, what they're putting into the machine is flawed and/or they're not using the machine properly.
Dennis Yu: The machine doesn't hate. The machine isn't a discriminator. It doesn't hate black people or favor people. The machine is the machine. If we take the ingredients of who we are, content and targeting our knowledge and deal flow and our relationships — in one minute videos, by the way — that's the ingredient. We feed the machine one minute videos of combinations of what we know and who our relationships are. Usually just edifying other people. If you just literally edify other people, then they're more likely to see it, they share it, they build your network. Now, you've created Inception. When this podcast episode goes out, I'm going to take that link and I'm going to share it and tell everybody it was such an honor to be with Adam Gower and to be able to teach other people in real estate investing how to use digital marketing the right way when they understand that the machine is here to amplify what you have and how do we use the machine the right way. I'll share that. I'm edifying you so that my audience knows who you are. And in my audience there are real estate developers among all the other people in my network. Then you share this and you say, "Hey, if you're in an National Real Estate developer forum, then this is something that you need to hear from my buddy Dennis Yu." Now you're edifying me and we bring that connection together. Is that going to drive direct deals? Probably not, but it certainly creates Inception because now people in my network who otherwise wouldn't know who you are, they realize that we have a relationship and vice versa. Then our information is more trusted. That first touch creates an initial level of awareness, which makes it easier to progress further.
If You Are Not Producing Social Media Content You Are Not in the Game
Adam Gower: So there is a competitive advantage being able to communicate. So you've given two examples. You've got somebody with no experience in real estate, and I just gave a slightly different example. But somebody who has no experience in real estate might have excellent communication skills and actually be quite effective at gaining traction online, at amplifying that message in order to draw people in. And yet, you also have on the flip side, you have people who are supremely expert at commercial real estate development, but for whom, what you're talking about now is extremely interesting and compelling, but who have zero clue how to step into the Matrix, if you like.
Dennis Yu: Right, right.
Adam Gower: So how do you balance these? How does somebody who is listening that thinks, "Yes, I get it, sounds fascinating, but...record on my phone? Where's the button? I don't see a button on it for that."
Dennis Yu: Yeah. The big red circle and every one of these networks has it. I'm going to show you two levels of Inception. So, the first piece is that, if you're not producing content, then, you're not even in the game and you're not feeding the algorithm. Okay? So, right now I have a friend of mine who is in Seattle and he's filming a set of chiropractors and I told him, last night, I said, you can read this here: Get BTS, which means, behind the scenes footage of how you're shooting and interviewing these other people so that we can teach other people who want to learn how to film, exactly what you're doing.
The One Mistake Everybody Makes in Podcasting
Dennis Yu: So you say, "Hey, Dr. Adam, I'm doing a podcast on such and such, and for this one particular issue, I know you're an expert. I would be honored to be able to interview you for 30 minutes so that you can teach my audience about X, Y and Z." And most of the time they will say yes. Now, if you understand how the algorithm works, like we just said, and advertising is an amplifier of what's already working, then you do the interview and you ask questions just like you see Adam doing here and then, this is the mistake that everybody makes, in podcasting. Like 99% of people make this one very simple mistake and it's a fatal mistake. So there's so much effort in producing the podcast and lining up the guest and editing it and getting it up into iTunes and getting views and writing blog posts about it, and all that, and by the time you've done that, then it's on to the next guest and you're just trying to keep up with the schedule of interviewing all these other people. But what hasn't happened, is the promotion of that content. So, people don't view it. Now, we'll take that podcast, we'll take a snippet, like a highlight, some key point that you made, and we'll put it on the Facebook and Instagram and boost it for a dollar a day.
Dennis Yu: And we will target people in our community, exactly. Not the entire internet, but, just the people that are interested in Adam. Just the people that are part of our different forums. Or how to become a better investor on Lafayette Lending, or people who are on PeerStreet or LoopNet. Or people who have read a certain part of the National Real Estate Forum. I might go there, in the show notes, like you said, and look at the different people that are there and I can target them exactly by their job title. Exactly by the company that they work at. So, I'm using inception to share content from someone I know they trust. I collect that information. Maybe I don't have the expertise, so I interview the expert. I'm merely arbitraging the fact that this person has expertise to the people who need to hear that and because it comes through me as a conduit, that trust and personal brand, that audience, that authority transfers through me. And I use advertising as the conduit to do that. Now, I'm at a level two inception because I didn't have the knowledge and I didn't have the network, but I combined the two even though I didn't have it.
Short Circuiting Algorithms to get More Engagement on Social Media
Dennis Yu: You could love or hate Donald Trump, but you cannot argue that Donald Trump and Grant Cardone are experts at manipulating the media to get more attention so the organic side is so strong that when they run ads, it's a multiplier against something that's already very strong. I'm not making any political, sort of, statements. I'm just telling you mechanically, this is what happens. I like Grant Cardone because some of the things he has to say about entrepreneurship and about being a business person and about prioritizing your time. Now, do you think, me, as a guy who is decent at digital marketing or just some random guy, could go up to Grant Cardone and say, "Hey, Grant, let's make a dozen videos together." a) he would probably what, charge $100,000 or he'd just say no. But I say, "Hey Grant. On my podcast, I'd like to interview you" or "I'm writing an article for such and such magazine on this topic, can you give me a quote" or "I'm speaking at this other conference and I want to be able to show you as an example of such and such. Which piece of content should I provide?" or "Can you make a one minute video on this particular topic that I'm going to play in front of this audience?" And when I told him, "Hey, I have an audience of 100,000 people that follow me, I just need a one minute video on this particular topic." He made 12 videos for me, for free. And then what I did, was I took his videos, and I boosted them for a dollar a day, and some of them got one 100,000 views, some got 20,000 views. They got a lot of engagement. I even had Grant make a video on how to make a one minute video.
Dennis Yu: So, I've made videos on here's the key phrases you can say to start out a one minute video. I remember when, this and this happened to me, or, one thing that really pisses me off, is when people say... There's all these different ways, these formulas, to make a 1-minute video. But, instead of me teaching you that, because you might be like, who's this semi-bald Asian guy, but instead they see Grant Cardone say, "Hey, my friend Dennis wanted me to tell you about how to make a good 1-minute video. What you need to do is, this, this and this. And then we take that video by Grant Cardone, which I can play, if you want to see. We take that video by Grant Cardone and then we target it against people who are fans of Grant Cardone. How do you think the algorithm reacts to that? I'm running a dollar a day ads against Grant Cardone. What does the algorithm have to say about that?
Adam Gower: Well, the algorithm is going to say show it, basically?
Dennis Yu: High relevancy. I'm short circuiting the algorithm.
Get a Free Ride and Win on Social Media
Dennis Yu: If I put out a video that I think is really good. Let's say I'm an expert. Let's say I really am, by whatever means of determining that, and I put out really good content, it's very informative, but people don't know who I am and I have no perceived authority, then it'll just flop because the algorithm is going to look at this and say low engagement. It's not going to punch through the noise. However, if you have someone who already has an audience. Let's say Grant Cardone. Arguably he's the world's largest social media influencer and I've got content together with he and I, and that content is already preconditioned. It's like TSA PreCheck or whatever it is, right. It gets to go through the line for free. And, it's going to automatically be amplified. I get to ride for free on Grant Cardone. Likewise, if I'm like you and I interview someone who really is an expert, but they're not really well known because they're not going to promote their brand or maybe they're a little older in social media and their phones, so I just interview them on Zoom. I take care of all the effort. I say, "all you got to do is, show up to the Zoom. I'll handle everything. Here's the questions I'm going to ask. It's only going to take 15 minutes of your time. And, I guarantee, that 10,000 people in our community are going to see this."
Dennis Yu: They're going to say yes, aren't they? They're going to say yes to that booking, even if you're nobody. So, then you record the video, you have it interviewed by your people. I have people in the Philippines, you have other people, but you have people that run your machine because you're not in your machine. You're working on your machine. You own the business, but you're not in the machine. You better not be in your machine. And, these people are doing their part and then they're boosting that post on Facebook and LinkedIn to that audience. To that person's audience, to the audience that you want to reach. They win because it helps them get more distribution, builds their brand. It's like you're doing free PR for them. And you win because it builds your authority in an area where you might not have the expertise, you might not be as eloquent to speak as well as that other person. Now you win because the audience associates that authority and that trust with you because you were the one that brought that person. Now, you and I thinking logically would think, yes, but the audience knows that so-and-so is the expert that you interviewed. Wrong. The psychology is that they associate you, like subconsciously, they associate you with that other person. Now you win.
Which Social Media Posts Create Highest Engagement
Dennis Yu: As long as I have evergreen content and I find a winner, that's just infinity money. My buddy Tristan Parmley calls that infinity content. And most people are publishers where they're like a newspaper. Every day they have to come up with new news. There's a murder, the place is on fire, you know, here's the stock market. So don't think, in the world of digital marketing, this is another big mistake, that you have to keep producing every single day. You and I, Adam, we are rock stars. Rock stars in the sense that, when there's something that worked for us, from years ago, we allow that to continue to run. So advertising is taking a hit that you had before organically and allowing it to continue to produce for you. Most people have an organic only mentality where they feel like, I have to do three tweets a day. I have to write one blog post a week. I have to do whatever. There are times, I'll go several months and I'll write nothing. And we're still producing leads, still producing customers, still producing sales. There's content that I've made years ago, from the early days when I was at Yahoo 20 years ago. I built the analytics at Yahoo 20 years ago, that still works today because people don't understand what a search engine does and how a search engine works so I break down the fundamentals of a search engine. The crawl, the index, and the ran and how those work together so you get more search results. There are people who are new to search engine marketing and search engine optimization and they're watching content or reading articles that I produced 15 years ago.
Adam Gower: That's amazing.
Dennis Yu: And they're still consuming and it's fresh to them today.
