Small Business Spotlight with Mosaic Marketing

Who doesn't love FREE? Marketing is made easy, fun and concrete.

March 31, 2022 Marcel Blanchet Season 1 Episode 7
Small Business Spotlight with Mosaic Marketing
Who doesn't love FREE? Marketing is made easy, fun and concrete.
Show Notes Transcript

What do you do when you want to understand how the game of SEO or AdWords or Social Media Marketing is played? You educate yourself. This Episode #7, Spotlight on Small Business with Mosaic Marketing and Advertising, "Who doesn't love FREE. Marketing is made easy, fun and concrete," you will learn some of the behind scenes of marketing, and advertising on social media and the internet and self-publishing.

Join Marcel Blanchet and his guest, Dr. Jason McDonald, as they talk about his free downloadable book "The Marketing Almanac" and his other publications on SEO, Social Media Marketing, and AdWords. Including the popular SEO Fitness Workbook and both the SEO Toolbook and Social Media Toolbook. These top-rated books are available on Amazon. Best of all, you can get the Marketing Almanac FREE by visiting Dr. McDonald's website https://www.jm-seo.org. 

Dr. McDonald also talks about how he published his books and turns them into audio books. Best of all how to get FREE information on marketing.

Dr. Jason McDonald, a teacher, corporate trainer, and SEO / AdWords / Social Media Consultant, and is the Senior SEO / Social Media Director for his company, The JM Internet Group. 

The JM Internet Group publishes books on SEO, social media marketing, Google Ads, and marketing. Considered among the best social media marketing books as well as top books on SEO and best books on marketing.
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From Mosaic marketing, this is a Small Business Spotlight, a podcast show that gives small businesses a spotlight on what they do. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Thank you very much. Thank you, everyone. Welcome to another episode of Small Business Spotlight with mosaic marketing. And I have a fabulous guest today. This gentleman, I'm going to call him the internet guru, because, you know, I read something, and I'm going to ask him about this, that he was like, right there in the beginning 1994 when the Internet was made public, and I find this amazing because when we're talking about small business, and what we do today, the Internet is the place to be and there are so many different multi-channels and things that we need to talk about. And this gentleman, he is a Ph.D. doctor. He got his Ph.D. in California at California, Berkeley. And he is the founder and senior editor, SEO, and social media director for his own company called J. M. Internet Group. This gentleman, his name is Dr. Jason McDonald. And I'm going to ask him if I can call him Jason, or if I should call him Doctor. Dr. McDonald is also a fantastic book publisher, writer, and internet guru, as I say, on everything social media. So Hi, Jason. Dr. McDonald. Should I call you Dr. McDonald? Jason?

 

Call me Jason. Just don't call me Dr. J.

 

Call you Jason. My mom used to say just called call him Marcel. But don't call him late for dinner. There you go. So. Jason. All right. So you're the senior editor in charge of the JM Internet Group, is that right?

 

Is that correct? Yeah, that's my own little biz. Yep.

 

And so tell me a little bit about JM Internet Group and some of the things that it does. But before we get into that, you started in 1994. Yes, again, so. And I see by your bio that you graduated from Harvard University in 1985. So you and I were in Boston at about the same time. And I went to Berklee College of Music down the street from Mass Ave. Oh, okay. Yeah. So, you probably hung out at some of the places where I was playing music at that time period. So you got your BA from Harvard? And then you went on to get your Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. And what is that Ph.D. in?

 

That Ph.D. is kind of interesting. It's technically in political science. But I wrote it on economic policy. So actually, it's kind of a circuitous path. But in my mind, it makes sense. I wrote it on how ideas influence the political system in Hungary. Basically, it was kind of marketing in a sense. It's kind of like how economists market their ideas. And then those ideas get picked up and implemented into policy. So I've always been interested in how ideas spread, like how ideas and concepts spread, you know, and then after I finished that, I was like, Oh, crap, I need to get a job. I'm like 30 years old. And I was like, Oh, wow, I've postponed a really long time. Now I have to get a real job. And I didn't really want to be a professor. Didn't I just kind of have an epiphany. I was like, I don't wanna do the professor thing. So then I was in the Bay Area, obviously. And what do you do in the Bay Area? You do Tech, even back then? Tech, you could see Tech was the future. So I started working in San Jose and started working at media companies in San Jose. And then one thing led to another. And then I realized I really like marketing because it's like practical social science. I think marketing is like how do people think? How do people act? How do you influence them? It's very applied social science is really what you think of marketing. So it does, in my mind, it makes sense. I don't think it always makes sense to other people. But I'm really fortunate that I had that experience.

 

Well, you know, that is also the beginning of the Internet. 1994. And so, how did you experience that? Beginnings of ? Yeah. Yeah, you

 

know, let me tell you sort of funny, and the advice and the angles and you talk on a podcast, but this is sort of a funny story. You know, people say I never forget your first love, I never forget the first time I saw my wife, right? Remember that? I'm actually one of those people. I remember the first time I saw her, I fell in love head over heels. I tried my best to resist, but it didn't work. So I got married. It's been great. So same kind of thing. In a way. First time I saw the internet sites was while working at a media company in San Jose. And we were arguing over CD ROMs, right. This is like, boom, show my age. We were like, well, who are CD ROMs? Right. And we were a kind of a print distributor for Intel and Motorola, and AMD. So this guy comes to our office. And he's trying to pitch us on converting our print publications to CD ROM. And I'll never forget, he goes, Oh, gosh, I forgot, such 'n such at my office. And we have one computer that had a connection to the Internet over dial-up. And he said oh well, we said he said, Oh wait, I got his computer. So we went in this office of the boss, I think, and we telnet it or really use ancient term telnet and Gopher, and things like that, that just dropped out of young people don't even know what those things mean. So we tell kneaded to his office in Mountain View. And he pulled the files that he wanted to show about the CD ROM onto this computer, and he was trying to pitch us on CD ROMs are the future. And I'll never forget watching this going. Well, this is cool, right? We're accessing this computer over in Mountain View. And we're pulling this data to our office in San Jose, and you have this epiphany that this is the future. This is the future, not a stupid old CD ROM sorry, this isn't Encarta that came out, right. And then the company had a lot of problems, very poorly managed company. And they were going bankrupt. And they started to have a lot of troubles. And they liked me because I managed their computer system. And they said We don't know what we're going to do. But for six months, we want you to stay employed at the company, and you kind of do whatever you want. And I started an email list. I started the email. It was an engineering type of media company. And I started the email engineers in Japan and Germany. And they were desperate to get this information from Intel and Motorola AMD, and they would beg me to FedEx these books to them. And I started an email list with updates about these books. And so, I started emailing people about these updates. And that's when you know, the cogs started going in mind like, this is the future of publishing, not FedExing physical books. And that was really where this all started in 1994. And then I quit, and I started my own company. And I remember starting my own first website, and I remember it's like a crazy experience. I remember driving in my car from Fremont, where I lived to San Jose to Fry's Electronics. There was one book on building a website, one, and I got the one book, I built this website, and I remember like, trying to do this and this and this and then turning it on and getting it to appear like hello world, and just the joy of like, wow, I had done that. And that's how I got started in 1994. Making a website for engineers was the very beginning of all of this very beginning of the commercial, you know, content on the web, and it was great. It's fantastic. So that's how I got started in this whole mess.

 

So let's fast forward. Okay, so 94, You start with your first Mozilla. Yeah, right.

 

Netscape and all that.

 

Netscape young people don't even know what that means. Dial-up.

 

300 baud 8-bit transmission of data. Ah, yeah. I mean, ah, it was crazy back then. Really learning HTML and hyperlinks and so on and so forth. Ah, All that stuff, all the early beginnings. So now, this is 2022. And could you imagine that CD, CD ROMs are dead? You know? Yeah. I mean, there's just starting to get back again. Just like vinyl, it's starting to get back again. But um, yeah, I mean, we're all looking at, you know, USB sticks and SSD drives and, you know, information that's being stored on, you know, not megabytes, not gigabytes, terabytes. Terabyte, just imagine that 1994 Somebody said, right, you know, yeah, so Okay, so this is 1994. Then you started another company called EG3.com, which is no longer in business. So people don't go to EG3com. I mean, I think there's a page there. You can.

 

Yeah, there is that. That's a really old domain. Very old. And it's, I still own the domain. I haven't sold it. 

 

But it is for sale, though. So anybody wants it's for sale? Because I went right, right. Yeah, right. Right. Right price.

 

Yeah. So it's a it's a good domain, because it's short and sweet. No, it's funny

 

I was looking through your listings of certain things. Because one of the great things that we're going to talk about is your books. And you have a new book called The Marketing Almanac, right? The marketing, digital edition, new edition 2022. Digital Marketing Almanac, right?

 

That's what that's correct.

 

And in there is a is all these great ideas a toolbox. So let's just talk about that book for a second. So my background is sort of in this sort of tech journalism stuff. So I've been a good like little accumulator of information. So one of the things that I produced is this book called The Marketing Almanac, which is a free book, you can get it for free on the JM internet website. 

 

And, let's make sure we get everybody to understand what your your URL is, for that way. Yeah.

 

They can just google Jason McDonald, they can Google JM Internet Group, it's J M dash seo.org. https://jm-seo.org And you'll see it and it'll say Marketing Almanac and get it for free. What is it? Well, there are all these cool tools for SEO, search engine optimization, social media marketing, Google ads, and some basic marketing. And I collect all these tools, there's maybe 400 of them. And they're my favorite, like free, weird, interesting, fun tools. And I compile them all. And I go through this book, every year, delete the ones that are dead, put in the new ones that are cool. And there's a lot of really fun, useful tools in that book that I think are kind of provoke you to think a little bit as a marketer. And they're also useful, a lot of them are very useful, free tools that you would never find if you didn't get this book. And I've just been accumulating this forever. 

So I update it. And it's a great little resource and, and people love it. So it's set my sort of self promotion. But I do give it away for free. So it's on my website, and it's a good, everybody loves a free tool. So I produced that book. And it's a lot of fun. It's a lot of work to produce, but I just literally fixed it yesterday. So it's completely I'm late. It's like it's March, but I did the other books first.

 

I found it fascinating. There's some great information, great tools there. If you want to get into any type of digital marketing or marketing, advertising, he's got all these great links and tools and information. So one of them is a company called, it's an advertising company called the drum. And funny thing, because I'm a drummer. I told you, I went to Berklee College of Music. And I've had a website since 1994, called the drumnetwork.com . And I have owned the domain drumnetwork.com. The drum has a podcast called drum network. Isn't that funny? It's very, very funny. So, um, when I saw that there link in there, which I've known about and everything else, I was like, Ah, interesting. So um, I've got to go listen to some of their podcasts too. So and earlier, Jason and I were talking about you know how people find podcasts. And you said something interesting about YouTube. Can you? Can you elaborate?

 

Yeah. So like I said, I'm kind of an information junkie. So I always go to this social media world, which is Mike Seltzers convention in San Diego. And they run Social Media Examiner really, really highly recommend the Social Media Examiner website https://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/. And he does a survey every year of consumers and marketers how they find information. And one of the little takeaways from his talk this past March in San Diego. How do people discover podcasts and something like 56% of people said, they discover podcasts on YouTube. So they don't go to Spotify. They don't go to Stitcher, they don't go to Apple Itunes, you know, iTunes, they go to YouTube, then they find the podcast, and then they subscribe. That's pretty interesting. The other part of that I think, is very interesting as a marketer is repurposing content, right? So you can if you're going to produce a podcast, you might as well produce on YouTube. Now you've got a video format, and then you have an audio format to so you hit two birds with one stone. I always tell people in my classes, I teach for Stanford continuing studies, I try to make jokes, I say, Hey, who is lazy in the class, and no one raises their hand. And I'm like, no, no, I'm lazy. I'm looking for the easiest way to get this done. That gives me the most bang for my buck. And I want you to proudly be lazy marketers. And that's an example where you can produce something for YouTube. It's also good for podcasting. There's a lot of repurposed content. So that's a cool thing. Another weird and interesting angle that's in my new book on social media. Is this idea of, and I don't think enough people have emphasizes this difference between a recommendation engine and a social media platform. It's really critical, I think, for people understand this. So what's the difference? So, you know, this is a great thing about getting older, right? Besides losing your hair, right? Besides looking at maybe I will get Social Security before goes bankrupt? You, start to have some perspective, right? Well, you know, gather around children back in the day, Facebook was a social platform, which meant I'm your friend, you're my friend, you post to your timeline. I see it in my newsfeed I only see content that comes from people that I have said, Yes, I like you. I want to see your content, right? I've connected with you. That's a true traditional social media platform. Tick tock is not a social media platform. It's a recommendation engine. And what happens you go to tick tock you like dog video, you see dog video, you watch it, you're going to get more dog videos, right? The more dog videos you watch the more dog videos, you see, you're not necessarily connected to those people on Tik Tok that you see video content from so Tik Tok has a kind of a discovery angle to it. That can be very exciting as a marketer because you can reach people you've never connected with before. And they don't have to connect to you to see your content. And social media in you know, Silicon Valley. A lot of it's very imitative, so YouTube, YouTube shorts, Instagram reels, tick tock, these are all becoming recommendation engines. And that has is interesting. That means we don't necessarily need to get people to like us on YouTube, but subscribe to our channel, we need to create yummy, yummy content that people will discover. So YouTube, tick tock Instagram reels, Facebook reels, to some extent, those are all becoming recommendation engines, which really are different than true social platforms. And I think that that's really something to kind of spin your head around as a marketer and look for opportunities there. And I don't think people have clarified that as much as they should. So I'm a huge proponent in understanding that concept, and a content marketing that comes from that we can dig into that if you want, but I think that's something of like, that's a new way to reach some new people. Yeah,

 

that brings back up another theory of mind and that is with social media, and the different platforms and different channels that you have, um, the algorithms which have been designed, which I call like back office types of computer programs that are looking at data and filtering it and coming up with ways of then saying, Okay, you're my friend. You like me, so you can start seeing stuff and people don't really understand that. When you post something to Facebook, not everybody's gonna see it. It might say go public. but it's not gonna not gonna go out there. Some of the algorithms that are out there sort of filters information. And same with some of the others, Instagram, but they're starting to get that that same mechanism that tick tock is using were correct discovering they're trying to build some of that stuff in into this stuff. Because they see that people, well, not only people, but people that want to advertise. So you have a couple of different levels. What is your thought on paid advertising? With Facebook?

 

Yeah, so on any of platforms, Facebook, tick tock, Instagram, LinkedIn, whatever, you have to like, look at the opportunities, right. So there are opportunities that are organic, right free stuff. There's opportunities that are paid advertising, paid stuff. Different platforms are different. It's an open secret that organic reach on Facebook is terrible. Its Facebook pages basically have no organic reach at this point in time. Facebook is a platform, which on traditional Facebook, right, so not Facebook reels, not Facebook stories, but traditional. I have a Facebook page and I'm you know, Jason's pizza, you know, Greenwich, Connecticut. You pretty much have to pay on Facebook to reach people. Now. That's not terrible. It's not the end of the world. It's not like oh, my god, storm out and be outraged. But you do have to pay to have any serious reach on Facebook. Okay, now, that's not necessarily true for Facebook reels. Anytime there's something new Facebook reels, right? They tend to let you get organic reach, they're a little bit like drug pushers they get you addicted to it. And then they take away that candy. And so now you need to pay, you know. So yes, Facebook, you pretty much have to pay to reach an audience. So on the list of things that I would say, as marketers we need to get good at and I'm, you know, everyone's can stake out their territory. I manage a lot of ads. You know, I manage ads on Google, I manage us on Facebook, I manage those on tick tock, I am not anti advertising. I think advertising has a real role to play. I think there's a lot of advantages and advertising. I as a marketer, I want to get technically skilled in how advertising works. I'm the kind of person my approach is best tool for the job. So I don't start my marketing project saying, oh, ads are terrible, I'll never pay. And I also don't start my project saying organic is terrible. I think that's stupid. Either I look for where the opportunities are, and the highest return on investment. So for instance, on Facebook, rather than beat your head against a dead wall and say, I'm going to try to do organic, you may just do better with spending $500 a month, $1,000 a month, whatever your budget is, and being skillful, right? That's important thing be skillful, and how ads work on Facebook, and you can do pretty well on it. So I'm not I'm not anti advertising, you will meet people in this industry, who will just be like, I hate ads, ads are terrible. Well, are they I mean, it just depends what you're trying to accomplish.

 

Like Google ads, very important. People love searching with Google,

 

very important, a similar dynamic, you can get free reach on Google through SEO, search engine optimization, I know it, I do it, I use it, I teach it, you can also get a lot of traction on Google ads. In all of these cases, this is where marketing has changed over the last 20 or 30 years, right? You're back in the day, right? I'm old, I'm old enough to remember, when there was no internet, I always tell my kids, right? I'm old enough to remember when there were no cell phones. And guess what people still came home from Disneyland and they were able to meet up? It was crazy, right? But we did it somehow without the cell phone? Well, the same thing? Well, that marketing really changed right before the Internet. Marketing was not very targeted, you would just like, hey, I'm gonna put an ad in a trade magazine, I'm gonna put a yellow page ad, I'm going to do some maybe direct mail had a little bit of targeting to it, you know. And as a marketer, you are concerned with the visuals? Like does my ad look pretty? You are concerned with a copy? Does my ad read well, and as far as it goes, now, as marketers right now, 2022 you need to be good at the technical aspects of marketing, you need to understand how does Google ads actually work? And what are the technical skills that you need to make that ad function and not get ripped off that get kind of screwed by Google? That's a sea change and marketing because you now need to be technically competent, as well as the old stuff. You need to have some visual sense you need to have some copywriting sense. You need to understand like the basics of marketing but back in the day You didn't need to have a lot of technical skills. But now you do, it's become a more technical endeavor. And this is that sometimes a lot of small business people pull their hair out on this because you need to get a you're running Joe's pizza shop, you also have to have some technical knowledge about, say, Facebook, organic, or ads. And without that technical knowledge, well, you're just gonna get abused. So you have to either get that knowledge, or you have to be smart enough to say, I don't know that. So I'm going to hire someone who does know that there's only two options. But the option that doesn't work is put your head in the sand and pretend it's 1972 That doesn't work. And just be an idiot and just go do stuff on the Internet that just wastes your money I'm doing I deal with accounts all the time. I'm doing the account today, I told my wife I said, Oh, my Lord, easily 100,000 In wasted spend in the last year easily 100 grand, I was the expert witness in an AdWords case, over one and a half million dollars in wasted spend per simple stuff. Because people don't understand very basic technical concepts. So I'm a big technical person, you have to know, some technical or you will get eaten alive in the current market.

 

And one of those ways of getting some of that knowledge is actually getting some of your books. I mean, you have the marketing book, you have the marketing Almanac, AdWords workbook, SEO fitness workbook, social media marketing workbook. That's how I discovered you. All these are all these are available on Amazon or right at your website. Again, what is that website again?

 

So J M dash seo.org.  https://jm-seo.org Or you just go to Amazon and put in Jason McDonald, you'll find it you can Google me, I'm very proud that I beat up the baseball player, you can Google Jason McDonald. And you find this in the books. This is like how your background works in life, because I'm a Ph.D. and I was an educator and all this kind of stuff. I teach for Stanford Continuing Studies. Now I thought, well, I should write a book about this, I have a special advantage. Having an academic background, I know how to write a book. So I've wrote books on these and I have, my books are really aimed at very basic knowledge. They're not like, super, super sophisticated, they're like, here's the basic stuff that you need to know. So they've been really good for me and very popular. And I just love explaining stuff to people. And I'm a huge believer in the basics, right, you have to know that like, take AdWords, if no keyword match types, there's absolutely basic concepts in AdWords, you have to understand that, technically, Google ads, they've renamed it, because they're crazy. You know, and Ditto with other you know, other issues, whether it's Facebook or whatever, you have to understand what a branded hashtag is very technical, important things and I try to help. My target for books is small business owners, entrepreneurs, you know, people that are that just want to know the basic stuff that's really going to have a lot of ROI. Versus super, super technical. And I get criticized, because a lot of the super esoteric people will say, Well, this is so basic, everybody knows that. You're like, no, everybody doesn't know that you're wrong. What it doesn't know that, you know, I'm not trying to speak to the the high end crowd and these books, I'm speaking to the down and dirty, get it done on a business person crowd. That's what the target of the book is?

 

Well, again, you know, we talked about this earlier, I mean, most of America, that are small business owners, that are, you know, under 100 employees, and they're making, you know, the money that everybody is spending today on all types of gadgets, to health care to, you name it, I mean, small business farmers, so everybody needs some presence on the Internet right now. And your books are straightforward. No nonsense books with, you know, information that you've compiled, and the way you've explained it. And, you know, I love the idea of, you know, the, you know, coming to the party in, you know, that whole idea. Yeah, that's right. I'm giving a party on the Internet, and how do I invite people and it works, not just in social media but on every single facet of the Internet. So I love your books. They're fabulous. And and I really enjoy you, sir. Because you are fabulous. And you've got a lot of great information in the Marketing Almanac, and it's free download. And it's it's got a least a million dollars worth of information in there, which is fabulous. So thank you again for that. One of the things I want to ask you is okay, so you wrote a book, but how did you get it published?

 

Oh, that's another kind of secret sauce. I know, another book I should write. So you know, this is just your pay attention. Right? So Amazon allows you to self publish books, right? And, you know, this is like the backstory that everyone has a backstory, right. So I actually wrote a book in Hungary in 1992, about how to do business in Eastern Europe. And that was a really critical failure, because I wrote this book, and it was very difficult to get it published. And it ended up being sort of self published with this Hungarian entity, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right was before the Internet, right, right before the Internet. Well, along comes Amazon, and you start to realize we you can self publish books on Amazon, and a lot of people. It's funny, right? I went to Harvard, yeah Harvard. But I grew up in Oklahoma, some kind of country. You know, a lot of people are very snobbish. And I kind of we have to have a publisher, well, I'm always like, what is the best tool for the job, in some situations? Absolutely. You need a publisher. In other situations, you don't need a publisher, they actually get in the way. So in my case, you can self publish on Amazon, that gives you certain advantages, not the least of which the royalties are better. But you know, what it really gives you is speed, my books are published every year and updated every six months, there is no way in hell that you could do that with a traditional publisher. And if you're covering social media, and SEO and AdWords, and Google ads, and all this kind of jazz, you can't wait two or three years. So no offense to the academic crowds, their books are garbage, because they're so outdated by the time they're print printed. So Amazon allows self publishing, and there's a whole conversation about self publishing books on Amazon, in such a way that they serve your marketing goals, it's a real opportunity. Again, some technical, you have to learn how to do the cover, or you have to figure out how to buy the service from someone. But there's a lot of things that you can do with Amazon self publishing, that can be very good for business, if you know kind of how to open up the Pandora's box and get into them. So I'm very pro Amazon in terms of what they have created and allowed. For self publishing, again, my kind of book, I mean, my books are quick and dirty and fast and up to date. They're not academic, not academic. And that's not their goal, but somewhat they're trying to be. So that's another like to your listeners. There's a lot of opportunities and self publishing books that put you as an expert out there. And Amazon has made this possible, you can just Google KDP, which stands for Kindle Direct Publishing, and that's Amazon's publishing arm that will produce it in Kindle and paperback. Again, a certain amount of skill set that you need to have to do that. But get Amazon has been very good to me. And in that way, just make create an opportunity that did not exist before. Self publishing the Internet.

 

So just a pitch here at  Mosaic marketing and advertising, we actually put together books for people on the cover designs, layout, extra photos, the way you want to be laid out, we help put that all together, we also get you an ISBN number and some of the things that you need to get so that you can do this. So we can we can do that. But one of the good things that you touched on was YouTube. So YouTube has some great videos on how to self publish on Amazon https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7NQoppS6h2A 

. And I must say your YouTube channel, https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCin6HQIuKlgBX4eWt4Gstrw 

which people can go to YouTube and also search because the second largest search engine is YouTube. Correct? Go there and and search for Dr. Jason McDonald and and look at his and subscribe to his YouTube channel. He's got some fabulous fabulous videos out there. You should definitely check him out. Also check out uritproductions, YouTube channel, https://youtube.com/uritproductions, and you'll be able to see this in other videos that I have produced. So, on top of a podcast, you can hear all these podcasts of ours on Spotify, Apple, stitch, iTunes. And, you know, in Amazon also, so check out the YouTube channel, and you'll be able to catch this again. Well, listen, Doctor, this has been fabulous, I would love to be able to do a part two with you on your whole background and, and publishing and the books and your little

 

hacks, I'm gonna call them. Now that's a good way to think about that's actually what funny that you said, That's what I mean, I always felt my YouTube channel, it's like, I think a little bit of cobblers children have no shoes. I'm very interested in short form content and short content and hack content, like this little short things. I'm experimenting, I just did a video on autocomplete. And I try my goal is to try to take a little teeny topic not like the whole marketing, whatever, just something really little, and make a short little video to help people like focus on like, what is this little, especially technical stuff? What's this little technical thing? And what can you do with it? From a marketing perspective, and it's interesting, this grew out of my Stanford class. Because in my Stanford class, I have a session for Facebook and for Instagram, where I just go through technical details, I just say, hey, this, this, this, there's this, there's this, there's this, and people love that session. And it's literally thought like the big picture. It's not like all the things you can do on Facebook. It's just like going through all the features and just rattling them off and saying to people, what's a feature? How is it used for marketing? Does it apply to you? If it does use it, if it doesn't go to the next one? And I'm thinking I need to build that out on my YouTube channel? Because that's kind of an opportunity there where I think a lot of people don't know these little tricks or hacks or whatever. And then when you see them, you go, Oh, that is really good. That isn't a good little trick. I'll use that. And I think that's kind of a recipe book, almost like a little recipes of marketing. So that's on my on my copious spare time. That's something I'm working on. is buying the car. Yeah, I think that went on YouTube is a test that I did.

 

Yeah, I think that's a great idea. Well, I went to that YouTube, today, and autofill. And, you know, I've used that concept to create keywords and ideas for customers to say, you know, I tell people all the time, you know, Google is the new Yellow Pages. In the old days, it used to be ABC plumber, you know, and that's how they started it off. Now, I mean, you can Google plumber, but you know, plumber, near me, and so on, so forth. Correct. Those are ways of getting, again, there's the local way of addressing Google, and then there's the national and international Wait, depends on what information you're looking for. Again, small business, most small businesses are local. So they have to understand, okay, how do I get my website discovered? Or my information discovered locally? Which is different than, you know, if I'm trying to look for, you know, correct, right? Local information is very important. And that's where most of your customers come from, you know, 20 to 25 mile radius of where you are doing business. Definitely not saying that, if you have a really interesting product that goes national or international, there are ways of doing that, too. But most businesses are local businesses that are trying to get discovered on the Internet, and the half the know how to do that. You have any ideas about local advertising?

 

Oh, I have a whole bunch. So in the SEO book, my book on SEO, search engine optimization, have a whole chapter on local and how local works and have reviews work and all the do's and don'ts for local optimization. And I completely agree with you most small businesses are local, very high return on investment for just knowing the basics of how local works. Google is clearly an obviously the the yellow pages of today, people go to Google they put in pizza they put in, you know, patent attorney, whatever. So absolutely. Critical, critical and and I think I always say to people like this is a good news, bad news problem. So here's the kind of bad news, right? You suck right? Your website sucks. It just sucks, right? But here's the good news, you suck so badly, that very simple things will have a tremendous impact. Like I always use analogies to people, I say, Hey, you're running a race. And here's the bad news, you're pointing the wrong direction. Here's the good news, I'm telling you the correct direction, I have just radically increased your performance, because now you're at least going the right direction. And now we can work on like, can you run fast, right? Many small businesses are doing so many things so poorly, that they just need to do a few things. And they'll do so much better than their competitors, because their competitors are really not that good. That's like back to this whole historical thing. If you had told me if you've gone in a time capsule, and gone back in 1994, and you would have told me that in 2022, small businesses would still be this abysmal at understanding the basics of how search engines work, or the basics of you know, online, social media or whatever maybe wouldn't have known it would call that I would have said no way by 2022 people would have figured this out. Everyone will know. Here's the bad news, good news. The bad news is most people do not understand this. The good news is if you just try a little bit, you're going to do so well, you'll be I get fan mail all the time, when people read books. I read your book, and I did the 10 things. Well, and it's amazing. And I'm like, I feel bad. Because I'm like, I've told you like really obvious things. Do. You know? Like, okay, but that's where the return on investment is, is this super obvious things that people are not doing something is simple, it gives an example. Reviews are critically important on Google Local to show on local for pizza for divorce attorney for, you know, massage therapist, you have to have Google reviews. Here's a mind blowing concept. Ask your happy customers. Do me a favor, can you write me a review on Google? It's that simple. And you okay, you're asking them to people, they're not gonna do it. But a lot will. And it will be huge to your performance. So simple. Absolutely simple. Just make it a policy. When we have a happy customer, hey, could you do us a favor? Could you go on Google and write us a review, we'd really appreciate it. tremendous value in that most businesses doing nothing? Zero. So they do zero, something so simple. And I must feel guilty when I take credit. And I read your book, and you said ask for reviews, I started asking for reviews. Wow, I'm doing so much better. Like well, okay, rocket science. So I get paid the big bucks.

 

Right? People don't realize that when they're going in searching for a business. One of the first things they do is okay, they go to a Google My Business page, which they don't really know what that is. But it's the little information on the right hand side of Google search. And when you click on it, you get more information. And on that Google My Business page, if the business created the business, my Google My Business page, sometimes they don't even know about how to do that. Right? And post photographs. It's like a mini web page

 

Yes, a mini web page. And the number one thing you want to do is encourage reviews. But you're right, then there's little nuances. Like you can post pictures in posts, announcements, you can change your category. There's all these drill downs, but I'm always like, Hey, here's the first thing, just get reviews. Right? Like keep it simple, stupid. Just work on that. That is huge. And then absolutely this. That's what I mean about marketing becoming technical. Then there's technical drill downs, too. Can you post pictures? What's your category? What's your description? What's your link? There's a little bit of a technical drill down there. That is new to marketing that we have marketers do they have to be technical. So there's a technical thing. So yeah, there's a lot of cool things that people can do. So you know, to start with this Marketing Almanac is free. That's a good place to start. I list in there I list free tutorials on the Internet by the topics now. Are they as good as my books? No, they're not. But they're free. And I list the ones that I think are pretty good. So you can start with $0 zero dollars. I list books that you can read their books besides mine on Amazon that are goods I try to I'm a teacher by nature, I try to help people get started. And I get a lot of satisfaction of people who this is my dream I have this dream business and I've been working on it and and I just want to help them, you know, push it a little bit harder and succeed. And I'd really get a lot of satisfaction out of those types of people who are building their little small business dream, and I'm trying to help them just get a little bit farther down the path of understanding and that's my goal is that person not the super expert, they can take care of themselves. It's the person who runs a small business and they need to do some basics. So the market the Almanac is a good place to start. It's free, it'll get your a little bit of your orientation. Each one has tutorials for free on the Internet identified. And then you know, you can go books, classes, consulting, all that kind of stuff can follow.

 

Right? So again, people can get your book, and the marketing Almanac and everything on your website, which is a fabulous place to start. Google Dr. Jason McDonald, Jason McDonald, the marketing Almanac, it's free on his website that downloads a PDF. It's great. I got another question in the publishing side of it. I discovered you because I bought your audio version of your book. So how did you have that recorded?

 

Yeah, so this is more of a book question. So books now exist in different formats. So you've Kindle right, which is the Amazon Kindle reader, you have paperback or hardcopy. That's the mean that can be created by Amazon, and audible and is Amazon to the world. Audible is owned by Amazon. And so that's an audio recording. Now Audible has a marketplace where you can go and find people who can record your books. I've recorded my own books, but it's like, it's really difficult to do a good job at it. So I've learned it's easier to pay someone so you can find people whose sole business is reading and recording books that are in preparation for Audible. And I have a really good guy, Mike Goodrich, who records my books for me. And obviously I pay him and he does a great job. And he's working on my AdWords book, my Google Ads book should be out in the next week or so. And every year I produce I produce some first in print for Kindle and paperback. And then he reads the book. So a lot of this stuff is like once you know, hey, I want to create an audio book. You can Audible has a marketplace, you can go to fiverr you can go to you know Upwork you can just Google people who record audio books. And you can find someone that at a relatively reasonable rate will give you the ready files that you upload to a ACX, which is the audible engine that powers it.

https://www.audible.com/contactus-acx?n2=Uploading_audio&n1=Creating_an_audiobook

 

So very, very good. Well, Dr. Jason McDonald.  Jason, thank you so much for being part of this podcast. And to my audience. Thank you for joining me today. You're listening to spotlight on small business with mosaic marketing. I'm your host, Marcel Blanchet. . And mosaic is here to help you bring your ideas to reality. Thank you again, Jason. Right. Thank you.