Key Takeaways Covered In The Podcast
- Find a social media platform and not matter what people say, use it. Find your niche and know where your audience are.
- The world of voice is barely beginning, and we still don’t know what’s going to happen. As things develop, voice activated devices will become smarter and will be able to suggest things to you based on your habits and conversations. Whilst it’s not for everyone, it is going to grow to become an incredible tool.
- Flash briefings are effectively mini podcasts that you can set up to play each day, depending on who you’re subscribed to. All you need to listen is the Amazon app. Effectively, it’s a quick and easy way to hear news, quick tips and advice.
- Flash briefings are designed to be daily, but you can record them in batch and schedule them to go out.
- As flash briefings become more popular, they’re going to become an incredible source of content for people that want short-form information that they can listen to daily.
- No matter what industry you’re in, you need to remember that there is a human being at the end of your sale.
- When it comes to being first to market, it’s important to remember that you can be great at any platform no matter when you join. Whilst there are benefits to being one of the first, you need to think about what works best for you.
- Does your brand have a sound? Whilst you will have already focussed on the look of your brand, focussing on the sound is also important.
- When you start doing flash briefings, let people know why they need to listen and how they can listen. Although they can’t engage with you directly, you can lead them to a place to interact in you briefing.
THE ONE THING YOU NEED TO REMEMBER ABOVE ALL ELSE…
There are a lot of things that you won’t understand yet, and that’s okay. There’s beauty in learning how to do something for the first time, no matter how hard it is. Know no matter what, you can take the lessons you’ve learnt from other aspects of your life to help you grow.
Highlights You Simply Can’t Miss
- Introducing Chelsea – 08:24
- Using Technology to Grow Your Business – 14:00
- How to Use Voice Marketing – 21:00
- Flash Briefings 28:05
- Tips for Adopting New Technology Early 35:30
- Analytics for Flash Briefings – 39:30
Links to Resources Mentioned in Today’s Episode
Transcript below
Hello and welcome to this week’s episode of the podcast. How are you today? It’s been quite a week for me. Almost like a few things have been happening over these last few weeks where it’s really helping me focus and think and think about the direction I’m going. There was a couple of updates I want to let you know about before I head on in today’s podcast. So the first thing is, I talked to you previously about how I really enjoy talking around all aspects of digital marketing and how you can market your business and how you can grow a business and what it’s like running a business and just all that kind of side of it. And I really enjoy talking about it and I got some good feedback where people said yeah great. They liked the episodes where we check in some different things as well as obviously the episodes around social media. So I have a question for you and I’d really like your feedback so come on DM me over on Instagram or Twitter or wherever you want to find me.
Teresa: I’m thinking now, do I need to change the name of the podcast? I know that the name in some cases is not the be all and end all. So when I think about the podcast that I listen to I don’t even think about the title. I just know that I like them or I like listening to what they’ve got to say or they do get information so is it really that important or do you think I’m putting people off who think I’m literally just sat here talking about what to do on Facebook or Instagram when actually we talk about so much more of that and so much more about selling online. And that’s really kind of where my focus is going and where I really want to do more work in. I spoke Atomicon a few weeks back about selling on a webinar for instance. I did a talk back gosh I think a month or so ago in Dublin right talked about how to build an email list. I’m doing talks later in the year again around selling but maybe using social media as the kickoff. So I feel like there is definitely a bigger wider subject area that I’m covering and my 15 years worth of experience in marketing is hopefully helping me cover that well. But I just I don’t know do I need to change the name of the podcast? I would love to hear what you think. I’ve toyed with a couple of ideas things like digital marketing that converts I thought was fairly self-explanatory but you let me know what you think. Do I need to change it? I need to look into what effect that will have on my podcast because obviously I don’t want to lose people that I’ve already got. And also I want people to continue to find me and if they’re looking for social media marketing made simple then are they going to find me. Anyway, probably overthinking this. It’s something I do a lot.
So that was the first thing that was interesting this week. The second thing that I’ve done this week is I’ve decided that if you’re on my email list I’m actually going to email you. What a shock! This is ridiculous. Honestly I am such a fool to myself. So obviously I talk lots about make sure you get people off social media and onto your own email list because basically there’s no algorithm in your email inbox is there now? And also we can’t guarantee what these platforms are doing they’re changing all the time. So for me it’s a really really important thing that everyone should be doing. However I had been collecting all these lovely email addresses and then doing nothing with them and my friends and colleagues who know me and know what I do and obviously what I’m good atthought I was literally crazy like they were literally like you didn’t email anybody. And I just didn’t know why, I can give you probably a million excuses as to why I hadn’t got round to it but they will just be excuses say last Wednesday I sent an email to my entire list and said hey you know what I’m going to start emailing you now and I don’t want to be one of those emails where I’m just filling your inbox a load of rubbish.
Also some people that I get emails from I follow, I only ever get an email when they’re selling something and I don’t want that and I don’t want to be like that. And I want to be really genuine and honest. I also talked in this email about the fact that I considered having one of my copywriters write my emails for me and then I decided that actually if you wanted to hear someone else speak you would be listening to someone else. So really it was really important for me to be authentic and have my tone of voice. Now I’m going to promise you, it is not going to be the most beautifully written thing you’ve ever seen. And also I am a much better speaker than I am a writer. I’m not a big fan of writing. So I’ve just written the second email to date this coming Wednesday and which obviously won’t be this coming Wednesday for you because on recording this way before it comes out but anyway so yeah I’ve put together this email and I’ve really struggled straight off you know without even starting but I can only imagine it’s going to get easier and hopefully people are going to enjoy them. I’m going to give them tips and tricks and strategies and all the kind of stuff that I can help them with and hopefully for 3-4 minutes once a week it’s not going to be you know a pain in your neck and you’re gonna enjoy it. So if you are on my email list hopefully you’ve seen that if you’re not, then head over to teresaheathwareing.com and please come and join me as I will be hopefully every Wednesday dropping into your inbox and giving you some words of wisdom. And it’s not just even a repeat of the podcast sometimes I might mention the podcast but really it’s more about sort of giving you other stuff as well so I can give you links and stuff like that in emails as well so. So yeah it’s been a bit of a busy week and I’m off to L.A. again. Or it’s California again on Thursday this week which again likes it won’t be by the time you hear this because I’m going to do two more conferences and actually I’m really excited about these conferences because the one I’m going to Impact Summit which is in Irvine in California has got some of the most phenomenal speakers. I’m really really excited about that one.
And then I have my event that I do with James Wedmore which is his next level coaching. So I am part of his next level group. So I have a two day event back in Irvine again strangely enough at the end of this trip I’m doing so it’s gonna be again a full on learning curve for these next few weeks which I enjoy. It’s great. And seriously, like there could be totally worse places have conferences couldn’t there? Like the most amazing places. California is so beautiful. So I’m really looking forward to that one. Anyway onto today’s episode. So today I am interviewing my very lovely friend Chelsea Peit,z who I met over social media. I hates saying stuff like that, makes you sound like a little bit of a weirdo I promise you I’m not. But I used to follow her or I still follow her on Instagram. Love her stuff, we’ve interacted loads of times and we just got chatting about something and I said you must come on the podcast and have a conversation with my audience about some really smart future marketing.
So in this episode Chelsea talks about voice marketing and she talks about how you do Alexa briefings and why you would do an Alexa briefing and what’s really nice is she comes from it at a different angle so Chelsea has a really interesting take on the effect that marketing has on our brains and also the effect of hearing someone’s voice and how that comes across. She’s also written a book all about camera first social platforms. So what she means by this is all those platforms where the main function is using a camera. So for instance Snapchat and Instagram. So she actually wrote this book called Talking Pictures which like I said talks all about how our marketing and how we build our personal brands through these type of platforms. But this was a really really interesting chat. It was really great to hear her take on how voice can possibly take over and how and why we should be paying attention to things like Alexa briefings. So hopefully this is going to be a good one. Oh hopefully run got an Alexa in the background that is going off every time I say the word Alexa. That would be hilarious. I apologize if that’s the case. But anyway Chelsea is great fun.
You’re going to really enjoy this episode so I hope you like it.
So it gives me so much pleasure today to welcome the lovely Chelsea Peitz to the podcast. Welcome Chelsea!
Chelsea: Oh thank you so much for having me. It’s my pleasure and I’m so excited to be here. I have been looking forward to this forever so thank you so much for the honor of being with you today.
Teresa: Oh no thank you. I’ve said in the intro that we literally met just following each other on Instagram and I feel like I know you so very well and your husband and your son and your life and it just proves to me there’s always so much like bad negativity about social media and by how awful it is and how damaging is to our health.
Teresa: But then when I think how you are in.. you’re in Arizona arent you?
Chelsea: That’s correct.
Teresa: Right. So you’re in Arizona. I’m here in the UK. We’ve never physically met. And yet you can just get to know someone and feel like you can have a conversation with them. So I just think it’s amazing. And of course I do love an Instastory and you are very good at Instastory. Very entertaining. It’s brilliant. You know when you were watching Instastory and you can’t play the sound and I’m like scanning through them and I get to yours and I’m like oh swipe off because I need to listen that.. Whatever it is. I do think it has to get away until I can hear.
Chelsea: I agree. I agree with you on everything you said. I actually just had lunch with a wonderful Snapchat friend that I met for the first time and she’s from Australia and travelled her to Arizona. So you’re totally right. My best friends I’ve met through through social media.
Teresa: I think it’s amazing the world is turned into a very small place to reach each other hasn’t it? It’s just wonderful. I love that side of it.
So for my audience if they don’t know you I would love you to just give us an idea about who you are, how you got to where you be where you are now and also presumably you want to drop in the fact that you’ve just been asked to speak or you’ve just spoke at the event with Gary Vee which is pretty amazing.
Chelsea: So that was a highlight of my life. Yes there’s a bucket list and well my specialty is in the real estate industry. I am a social sales coach. I am a content creator. A keynote speaker. I have authored books and I teach social media skills on personal branding and also how to use social media to sell effectively not spammy. Not spamming people in the DMs but how to really build your brand and attract your ideal audience, identify your niche and I specialize in that real estate industry. Whether it’s real estate agents or mortgage brokers or title insurance executives. And so I’ve been in that industry, that space for about 20 years and I was in it before Facebook existed. I did not grow up with any of that. I didn’t use it in my business. So I am living proof that somebody who is of a certain age is able to you know learn and embrace these incredible free distribution platforms where I can share my story at scale, have one to one conversations with people, create relationships as somebody who didn’t grow up with it. Who didn’t have that. Who didn’t have an iPad like my 6 year old son has. Didn’t understand you know direct messaging and social media. So that’s what I do every day and yes thank you for mentioning my idol is I’m bowing down to the one and only Gary V. I was asked to speak at his conference which is called Agent 2021 and going there speaking.. You know making connections through social media. I had been talking to several of the people that I met there for years and some of them I had just connected with via Instagram Stories. And what was really amazing was like you said you knew them already going into when you got to kind of actually physically meet them and then seeing them share their view of the story that you were also sharing, you got to see all these new perspectives that you. I was there but I was watching their stories I got to see even more perspectives of what I missed.
So that was a really beautiful experience for me and such an honor to work with them. You know Gary’s team on that and wow do they put on an incredible event. They know how to do it.
Teresa: Oh I can only imagine.
Chelsea: I bet I won’t tell you a quick tip I mean so every year his team are listening shout out Gary V. They were so good that a girlfriend of mine who was coming we had been on a call with their team some weeks or months prior. The gentleman who was checking her in and she said something to me. He said oh you’re so-and-so I recognize you by your voice. And I was like Wow. Amazing what you talk about a customer experience that amazing is that customer experience when you are able to not only know who is attending your event but by sound because this person may have been on some call or with your team or whatever. I was like already impressed. I was like take a page out of their book and know what is going on.
Teresa: That is amazing. And of cause that’s kind of what Gary V is all about. It’s about the whole making that connection, making it personal, getting using this amazing technology to get closer to people to understand people better and to hear them you know so many businesses and you must see this all the time make the huge mistake of just shouting at the world.
They think social media is purely an advertising platform where they can go by my stuff and obviously it’s not. It’s a listening and a conversation and an engagement thing.
So I’m so glad that he is able to follow that through to his own event because that is amazing.
Chelsea: He did not disappoint at all.
Teresa: So one of the things that he does and you do which is one of the reasons I wanted you on the podcast is you are a true embracer of all the latest technology and it’s interesting that you said.. You know people.. over even got 20s or 30s thinking I can’t do this because this isn’t my era. It’s not natural to me I don’t understand. I can’t get to grips with it and actually you I mean I’m not cool enough to be on Snapchat. I’m telling you I use Snapchat for the filters if I want to take a nice photo and that’s there. I do wish Instagram would get better at the filters.
Chelsea: I really want them to get better with filters. I mean let’s be honest I’m going to actually have to send a real picture of myself songs filter to anyone that I actually meet in person. I mean you know I’m like oh it that what you look like?
Teresa: The skin is not as perfect as I thought it was seriously. Snapchat was so good but Instagram hasn’t quite got it. Like Kylie Jenner one is my favorite because it’s quite a nice one. But yeah, you need to get better. But anyway I’m not cool enough to be on Snapchat. I know my children and my stepchildren use it and I sound like I’ve got the Von Trapp family. No I have one child and two stepchildren and they use it and likes it. I only use it for filter but this is the whole thing you embrace new technology to try and prove to the world that they don’t have to be a 18 year old teenager to kind of get these things. I mean how do you how do you manage trying to keep up because it’s hard.
Chelsea: Well I will tell you I was sort of that person at one time who was like oh that’s not for me. I mean that’s for the young kids and that sort of thing. And what I did as I said you know I’m just going to figure it out. I’m just going to test it out. And once I had such an incredible life changing and career changing experience by testing out something like Snapchat which I actually built my brand and my community on Snapchat. A undiscoverable you know only millennial or younger. All of these myths that were around it that said you can’t use it for business. And I what I learned by doing that is that now I don’t have a fear of trying something new because there’s a lot of things that we just don’t understand yet and you have to look at that when I when I can share with people like an analogy that we can all sort of relate to. So I know we’re going to talk about voice today and that’s something that people really have difficulty wrapping their head around because it’s not something we’ve ever had before. It’s kind of similar that if you’re a parent which I know you and I are ,you have an idea of what it’s going to be like to have that baby and let me just share your story with you. I had I was on a schedule. Everything was great and it was going to be easy and I was going to feed the baby at 12:00 and they were going to take me for two hours and then reality happened and I was like.. What just happened? And you know it’s because you don’t know what you don’t know yet. So you know people do this do this all the time in the real world having kids know when people are aunts not having children because they’re afraid that they’re not going to be able to figure it out right. People have figured it out for millions of years. But when we come to technology and social media, we forget about those things and we forget about the beauty of being human and the the idea of learning something or doing something for the first time. There’s such a beauty in that. So when I wrote a book now it’s me harder to write the second one which I am going to be doing because I know how hard it is when I first delve in. I mean really ignorance is bliss. There’s a beauty in trying something for the first time and having zero idea how it’s going to work out because you also have zero idea if you’re going to fail or how hard it is and all of that.
So for me I embrace things because I know that no matter what it is going to be like I can take what I’ve already learned from the other thing whether it’s another platform or something that I’ve done in my job. I mean we’re talking about voice. We got to go back to radio days now. We’ve already done it all. We’re not thinking about applying it to that particular realm. So I’m not afraid to try new things anymore because I tried something. So my my short answer is you actually have to try it. You have to experience it and see if you learn something from it and then you won’t kind of have this fear going onto the next new in the now. But it is a lot to keep up with. And you know that’s my job. So that’s what I focus on.
Teresa: Yeah. And how do you choose? Because like there are many new things that I know the big platforms. You know we have the main ones but I get e-mails that aren’t about you all the time try on new system. We’ve got a new system to do this week. How do we know that this is gonna be the next big thing? Or how do you think yourself right? I’m going to try that but I’m not going to try that.
Chelsea: You know I think you should always honor your gut to and what you’d like to do. Like if if you love let’s say let’s just throw out like a social media channel that a lot of people our age or not. Let’s talk about tick tock right? Which is you know Musically. If you love it and you have a passion for it then go for it. You know kill it on that. If you love writing then do that traditional new. It doesn’t matter what it is. You have to go with what you like first because there’s nothing worse than feeling like you have to do something. Oh I have to go Facebook Live today because they tell me that’s what the algorithm wants that’s going to translate and you don’t want that to happen. And so you have to find something that you like and then you know. Yeah. Do I follow trends? I do because that’s what I have to do for my job. And I also believe in being a practitioner. I mean I’ve got to try stuff out and I don’t teach anything that I don’t try out. That’s why I don’t talk about Ticktok. And I’m just a voyeur on there. I’m not actually doing anything so I would say you know and also could Facebook and all the big ones go away tomorrow? For sure they could. I mean you know we always think oh that’s not possible. It’s never gonna happen. Well guess what? Everything else that we thought was never going to go away went away too. So. So I think you kind of have to find your niche. I think you have to know where your audience is. I mean particularly my audience tends to be Facebook and Instagram. Now I went heavy in the Snapchat and it was really great for me. But I also would say you need to be where your people are that you’re going to be doing business with for sure.
Teresa: Yeah absolutely. I mean you completely lost me on the Ticktok. My daughter.. this is so ridiculous. This is why you know you’re getting a little bit old because my daughter tried to get me to get her because we have the Apple family thing. So if she wants an app for her iPod, I have to prove it. And she has some absolute trick of trying to get me to approve iPods apps that are over her age. I think Ticktok is a 12+. And she sent me I get this automatic request so every time she tries to get something and I have a message about getting something you can’t have that. It’s twelve plus it’s just so it’s like it doesn’t matter. I’ve said no. So yeah that’s the only reason I know what Ticktok is. It’s not like because I’ve been on it I can assure you.
So OK let’s get over to the voice site may we all have to this quietly but in case you’re listening in the house Alexa’s. I don’t say that too loud because a little wakeup. So we will have this, we’re getting more used to the fact that we can talk to our phones and I don’t know what I would do without my friend in my iPhone whose name I’m not going to say. So those I’ll wake him up, To spell things that is probably the main I think I use it for because my spelling is horrendous and if I can say it and they can tell me how to spell it which is awesome. So I’m getting much more used to, as consumers, using this but I’m fascinated to understand what it is, why you putting time and energy into it and where you see it going. How is it going to help businesses going forward? There’s a lot of questions there so…
Chelsea: I think you know to know my answer to just you know let people know a little bit more about me and where I come from. So my background’s in Psychology I have a degree in Clinical Psychology. I was gonna become a therapist but I did not. And so I’m always looking at things through the lens of science, neuroscience science, psychology. Products psychology and so I always bring it back to that because I’m fascinated about how as human beings we behaviorally are being trained by certain things and how our brains work how they react to things.
And so I’m coining this term called “sensory social” and that and then we really talked about the visual side of it and the stories and why that’s taking on and how that affects our brains and our communication. But now it’s also this idea around voice too and that could be podcasting, could be the flash briefings, it could be any of those devices on your phone and it’s becoming much much more important because as people have discovered podcasts, you know I’m a podcast listener obviously you are. We both have our own podcast. You know we find that this is kind of nice. We can do something else while we’re listening to it. Or I can be you know hearing your voice while I’m driving my car or cleaning my house. And so we feel that we can kind of multitask and passively listen and take in information. And I think people to you know they’re there they’re thinking about the Lexie device sitting on your kitchen counter and you’re asking it to spell things and what’s the weather and what’s two people spoons if I have to get a cup or whatever your recipe is. You think well it’s kind of a dumb device right it’s just sort of this thing that I ask questions too. But what we’re forgetting or what we’re not really thinking about is that it’s not just these standalone devices they’re building that technology into things, your refrigerator Facebook portal has Lexi built into it your car. I think if you go buy a new Ford or a new BMW going forward it’s all gonna have Lexi built into it. And you might be asking: Give me directions. Order pizza to be delivered to the house I’m on my way whatever it might be and it’s not really going to just be us asking questions in my opinion where I think it’s going is if you can imagine standing in your kitchen and maybe you and your husband are standing there and you’re having a conversation not with the device but just amongst each other. And you say you know we should really repaint this house. You should really repaint the inside of this house. And maybe because everything will be connected at that point it will know that maybe you’ve also stopped and looked at a few you know furniture places or things online and it might start picking up those behavioral signals. And I know this sounds kind of creepy but let’s be real: Facebook does it all the time. Yeah it’s predictive analytics. We love it on Amazon and Netflix and it’s good to start putting these pieces together and then serving you up suggestions and you’re going to love it because you’re gonna say like oh my gosh it’s like you’re reading my mind. Yes I would like you know it’ll say, Would you like three painters to come over and give you a you know an instant quote on everything and by the way did you know your neighbor three houses down just sold their house last week for X amount of money.
It’s almost like they’re going to start serving up these things as they’re listening and you know I think it’s gonna be considered fairly helpful. A lot of people I think will like anything. I think right now people are like “Oh that sounds creepy.”
Teresa: Yeah.
Chelsea: But it’s just because we haven’t had it yet and it sounds really convenient to me if I don’t have to search for something. So I think the world of voices is barely beginning. Yes. We don’t know what’s going to happen which again goes back to what we were talking about is we like to move away from things that we can’t solidify or make a concrete example in our mind because we haven’t done it yet. And so that’s where where it’s going with voice and podcasting and all of that. So I think it’s really interesting to hear how people’s voices activate different areas of our brains and how we feel connected to very emotionally to someone’s voice or sound and that’s what I talked about today was this idea of like sound branding. And it was funny because I had all these different examples and people were like Oh I know what that is. And they would name it like yes I know what that company is based on that sound and that’s fascinating to me.
Teresa: I know it is fascinating and I love the approach you’ve taken to it in the sense that the voice in general and I haven’t put things like podcasts together with it. You know I’d seen that as another thing. But you’re right and funnily enough how podcasts also sit with convenience because I do exactly what you do. In fact normally getting ready in the morning I have my phone propped up putting my make on in the car, cooking dinner, whatever it might be because it’s that whole “I want to do a million things at once we’re busy we need to do things quickly.” We constantly ask and I love that you call it Lexie because that it doesn’t wake her up. I constantly ask like how old so-and-so or you know what film so-and-so in or whatever is. We’ve got new sky sky cue I don’t know if you have over that because you have like cable so we have Sky cable and we have voice activated stuff so my if I want to watch anything, if I know an actor’s name, if it’s anything I can just voice it into it and I’ll find it for me. And like I said the convenience factor is massive. And I do agree that there are going to be some people listening to this going “Uh, I do not like this. I don’t want people in my house. I don’t want them listening.”
In fact I watched a fascinating TED talk. You have to seen it. I’m going to have to link to it in the show notes. I’ll find it and I’ll link it to the show notes but basically it was a lady who was working cyber security which is interesting. She decided to basically create the technology home and she had all her devices hooked up to everything. So she had the bed that was connect the Internet, the toothbrush that you connect to the Internet. She’d had everything and then she got a tech guy to watch how many times it was bouncing zoom back to the server. Now obviously you didn’t know what it was bouncing back. And I’m fairly sure I could be making this up but I’m fairly sure that Alexa was bouncing back every ten minutes like regardless of whether you’re speaking to it or not. It’s bouncing something back and we don’t want to think about it but how many times have we had a conversation over Facetime Or Facebook video call and then mentions something. And lo and behold in our ads just so happens that thing comes up. So like you said I think at the moment there’s an element of fearfulness of it but actually going forward the convenience factor is huge. Explain to me one of the things that you were doing at the moment is flash briefings.
Chelsea: Yes.
Teresa: So explain for me and my audience what a fast briefing is and how we first get hold of it in case you wanna come to listen to it.
Chelsea: Yes. So a flash briefing is a mini podcast. It’s it’s think of it as a daily micro byte of content that where instead of headline reading which is what I do now. I have my blogs that I like to scroll through and read the headlines, you might be getting ready in the morning and you could say Lexie play my flash briefings and anything that you’ve enabled which is their word for subscribe so if we go to YouTube, we’re subscribing to channels or we’re going to podcast players were subscribing to different podcasts and it just rotates through. So if you had one it would be your voice doing your whatever information for that day then it would be my voice doing whatever information for that day. And at some point I believe that it will obviously be monetize. There will be ways to advertise. There will be weights to leverage keywords, very much like Google search. And so right now we don’t really know what we’re doing we’re just sort of putting content out there. And you know if you if you want to enable or subscribe as long as you have an amazon app or go to Amazon’s Website you don’t even need the device. You can actually listen to all of these through that and they will improve the interface and probably even have something separate at some point. So there’s the Amazon app. There’s the Alexa app itself. And there you can you can enable and subscribe to those different flash briefings and then it’s just a quick and easy way to kind of hear the news of the day and you can have genres like mind social media tips and updates and certainly if you like news or sports you could go into those genres and listen to it as well. And so you know basically people are like well how do you get your voice from the recording into the thing. And so that’s you know that’s the part that’s a little not tricky but again this is something that we haven’t really done before. So it’s a little clunky it’s a clumsy that is nearly as easy as making a podcast.
But the essentials are there you know recording your voice and then setting up the connection to actually Amazon and their device. And then once once you’re off to the races you’re you’re going to go you’re just making content. I do mine on a weekly basis. I do a two minute or less quick little update Monday through Friday and then I batch it out and publish it for the next two weeks.
Teresa: Okay. And you’ve done a YouTube video haven’t you? On how to do this. So again the link to that shows because I did look at that and just to give me an idea and then I tried to work out how to get the flash briefing. It failed dismally.
Chelsea: Yeah and my first briefing in case you’re looking for you can just search by the name or if you have a device you can say Lexie enable whatever name of the flash briefing but my flash briefing is called the voice of social sales. So if you type that into Amazon you should pop up and you can see a button that says enable and then it’s ready to play. So you just have to give what they call the invocation which again why do we have all these crazy words? Why don’t we just say command or statement you know it’s like all these hacky words of say your invocation which basically means you’re telling the thing what to do. Hey bring me my stuff.
Teresa: I’ve never even heard of that. Yeah. I’m going to be using that now. I’m so cool and know what I’m talking about.
Chelsea: Okay I love it.
Teresa: So I’m not actually thinking about the type of content it is especially in our arena because it moves so fast. So doing a daily two minute quick something easy that suits this really well doesn’t it? You know whereas it’s not necessarily going to get headlines as news and things but obviously some things it is not necessarily going to suit as well as all kinds of content. So do you think that this. Do you think this is gonna be a thing that lots of people are going to go into lots of businesses like podcasting where you can have a podcast on literally anything. Do you think this is going to be a content creation tool for marketers and business people?
Chelsea: I do. I think again because I don’t have anything to compare it to. I think it’s going to be like reality audio version where I can find any show on any topic that I want to watch and I can educate myself. If I want long form I can listen the long form. If I want two minutes I can listen to two minutes of speed through and on you know double time someone’s podcast, I can. I think that it’s it’s going to just be all around us, whenever we want it. And what’s interesting to me is that the behavior part of it the behaviors are absolutely going to change. So like industry is irrelevant but behavior isn’t.
And if I can stand in my kitchen and ask for anything that’s what I’d rather do than type it in 50 percent of our searches by next year are gonna be touch free. It means they’re asking something to serve up an answer. And so I think as people catch on to that I mean I look at my son who’s 6. He talks to Alexa all the time. He just like… It blows my mind. I never had a conversation with him to say Okay here’s what this is. Now if you talk to it it’s going to be able to answer questions. He just knew it and experience and also I never taught him about iPads or what star ratings are but he knew at four years old that if he saw a cartoon that had four stars out of the five he would rather watch the one with five stars. That me right there shows that we have no fundamental change in human behavior and that we’re not teaching the kids this. They understand it. And so I think that’s why it’s going to be a big deal.
Teresa: And the technology builders are getting smarter and more intuitive like you said. None of these things are taught. You give a child an iPod and they know it instinctively they know what to do. My daughter for a long while used to come up to I have a big high Mac that obviously I work from and my daughter would come up and instinctively touch the screen to move things and do things. It’s like no it doesn’t work on this one yet.
And then it’s funny because I don’t know about you but you get to a point about you know what are you going to get for Christmas, my birthdays and and obviously you know my daughter is she’s nine. So she’s getting quite big. And my stepson he’s 15. He has like the Alexa lights and he has all of that sort of thing so you know. So it’s going down that route where it’s more of the convenience things I’ll be buying. She’ll have her own Alexa and her own lights or whatever is given by them. Is this kind of home with the future that it’s going to create for us where we have all this convenience? But like so I think from a business point of view it’s I loved when you said that it doesn’t matter about the industry it’s the way we’re changing.
And I think sometimes people forget that we’re selling and communicating and engaging human beings that yes you might be business to business or you might be a business to consumer but at the end of whatever process funnels service whatever is there is a human being at the end of that. If that’s how they choose to engage in taking content then great.
Chelsea: Right.
Teresa: So what do you think going forward what’s what’s the plan? What if you were a business now would you be trying to get on this? Would you be leaving it a little while? Because I guess the other good thing about any new technology is it’s hardly anybody on it. And if you can get in early then great but obviously is it worth people looking at it? Is it with them waiting? What’s what’s your thoughts?
Chelsea: Well I think that you know being first to market is is a nice to have but in the end of the day you can be one of the better people on the market at any time. So if you’re if you’re late to Instagram Stories You can still kill it there with an audience just because you’re not a first adopter. There are some benefits to being first adopters you get to figure out all the quirks and the king and then share that knowledge with other people. And I’m also a big believer in again not just looking at the very narrow view of the thing. Like for example people would say to me why are you doing Snapchat? Like honestly it’s made me a better speaker. I had to be succinct. I had to be to the point. Back in the day when I had 10 seconds I had to get out of thought very clearly in a very short amount of time which actually gave me a lot of skills in the person to person interactions whether it was doing a live interview or speaking on a stage or talking in a meeting. And so there are there are things that you will learn that you can then apply to your podcasting or you can apply to your video content. Again I would say I am a big believer personally that this is where the future is. I believe that voice and audio content is critical. And I also would encourage people I mean I know this is kind of like even the next level I’m looking at Sonic branding which is the sound of your brands like you know if you have a TV show that you watch or even like a movie like Jaws you hear two notes of that song you you know what it is. And so we have to think about that is like what does it sound like because if I’m not watching TV anymore How am I going to experience your brand? And so that’s something I’m working on right now is figuring out what what what is the healthy sound like because you know it’s gonna be like that little thing if you think about Skype like think about Skype right now. You know I can I can hear it. It’s like little bubbles like you know that sound. And so that’s something that as we kind of get into this world of sound it’s you know it’s exciting to think about oh I never thought about my my sound logo before that.
Teresa: Amazing. That is nice. That’s Netherland level branding isn’t it. Yes. Logo. I already know what yours is. And I don’t think I could do it justice so I’m not even going to try. But it’s when you say amazing.
Chelsea: I was going to say is it “A-MEZING?” Yeah I thought about doing it like you know but it’s funny like that right there is is a brand. Like people associate that with you and when I was on Snapchat I had a really fast intro was a 10 second intro and that became a thing. So it doesn’t have to just be a song or a sound. It can be a modulation. It can be a speed. It can be how you pronounce something. So yes that’s exactly an evidence of the fact that every time you see me you hear that word.
Teresa: That is so funny and honestly that is that is such a hard concept and I know there’s gonna be people suddenly going “Oh man I don’t even. You know I can’t even such that the struggling with brands runs let alone with sound.
Chelsea: I get it. You know just you have to sit with it and that’s how I am as a person. Like I got to try things on in my mind. And sometimes for me that’s a longtime like you know if I’m looking for a new house I’m thinking “Gosh what would it be like to live in a new house?” Or if you’re trying something new in your work and you’re kind of like fearful because you’re like gosh I’ve never done that before. You try it on in your mind for a little while you start to find over weeks and months that you’re like “OK I’m ready to do that.” So just try it on in your mind for a little bit.
Teresa: I like that. So let’s good times like numbers. I like taking numbers. I’m a big analytics fan. I’m a big fan of like you know. So I’m currently as we record this even though by the time this comes I overcome past this. I’m currently in launch mode tomorrow. I am presenting three live masterclasses that people have signed up to and my entire launch mode. I’ve been watching you know how many people visited my landing page, how many people signed up, how many people clicked on my ad, how many people you know listen to my podcasts. So is this stats available at this point in terms of how many people are listening and is it a good stat, is it seems to be working?
Chelsea: Yeah. They do have some more basic stats. I mean they’re going to tell you like for podcasting how many downloads you’ve had, how many people have enabled your skill just to kind of get like very broad information. I’m sure that will evolve. You’ll get demographic information all sorts of things like that. So yes and as far as like is there a good number. I don’t I don’t know that we can identify that yet. I would say as long as you’re staying steady or going up, that’s great. Yeah. And you know you’ve got to market your marketing so if people don’t know about your your briefing and by the way if you are going to do a flash brief you need to also tell people how to enable it and what it is. So when I first came out with that on my Facebook post and my Instagram I had a little quick one two three go Here look for this boom because it’s a new terminology. People don’t know what it is. And so you just have to keep sort of marketing it and why, you got to tell them why just don’t throw up an image of you know here’s the here’s the logo of my flash briefing. What are you talking about on it? What is it? Why would I want to listen.? Oh it’s two minutes or less. OK. That in and of itself might be something exciting. So you’ve got to market it. You got to teach people how to do it and you got to stay with it for a long time. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. You’re going to see you’re going to see numbers probably like even double digits is great. Oh 20 people 50 people. Then you get into the threes know and then some really huge you know we talk about podcasts we’re getting hundreds or thousands of downloads every single time and that’s something that you can work up to as well. So I think as long as you’re going in the right direction.
Teresa: I agree.
Chelsea: Up is great. But I also don’t get too involved in the numbers because then what happens is you start to say oh maybe people didn’t like my podcast I only got 300 downloads on my other one got five hundred and then you start to overthink yourself at least I do and then you get this like you know paralysis by analysis and you start to think my content’s not good. I’m not good enough. Nobody likes it. And then that really for me anyway stops that creative process. So I don’t look at metrics a lot because I know myself that’s not for everybody. But I’m also one of those people that chooses not to weigh myself every morning because I don’t want to get into the mindset of what happened or I don’t want to do this like I just know my personality. If you love data like you love data and that’s your thing and that drives you then look at it. If you are not a data person like me because either you’re sensitive you’re going to think too much on it. Don’t just you know do your thing and it will end up all working out.
Teresa: And I think you’re right. The data is great. You can’t really measure yourself against anybody because it’s just going to be against yourself and whether your improving and changing also these things take time. So my podcast in fact, I had such an interesting shift this last month. So my podcast got started last March March 18 and December 18 was the highest month I ever had. And January 19 almost doubled December 18th month. I know. Like literally you know because each month I’d look at and think Oh if I beat last month and I’d always beat it by a few not many like 30 or 40 but it literally doubled like I was just. And I’d set someone to buy it and they were like What did you do? And I was like I’ve no idea. I didn’t get did anything different. But I think these things they just take a little while to get it.
Chelsea: I’m glad you said that because when you ask when people ask me and when and if we’ve heard all the people they don’t know what happened there is no way. Very very very very few people can make a viral video or something and anything these people that say oh we can guarantee x growth and viral..
Teresa: Oh hate that line.
Chelsea: But ninety nine point nine percent of the people they just try to bunch stuff and stuck with it. And then one day they were like Oh that one works and the stuff that you think is going to kill it doesn’t kill it. And the stuff that you gave a second thought about ends up resonating and it’s just the testing and the growing so I’m glad you said that because that’s very true and very honest. We don’t know what happens like Wow a double. I didn’t know. I didn’t do anything different. It could have been that your community on Instagram shared it out a little bit more that month. Who knows. But you just have to stick with it.
Teresa: And I think the consistency thing is a huge thing. You know there are so many people might talk about this a lot on the podcast but it’s so important. That’s why I keep bringing it up but there are so many people who might look at something like a flash briefing I think. Oh yeah. Cool I’m going to do that and then they do flash briefing for a month or two and they go “uhh it didn’t work”. And they just give it up but it’s like no no no no.
Come back and see me in 12 months time and then we’ll have another conversation because these things take a while to get hold and take hold and funnily enough I did a talk recently on Instagram and I was talking about the fact of how you get followers on Instagram and it’s it’s hard going sometimes reading hard going and then you look at people like Jenna Kutcher or Tyler J McCall or Jasmine Star. But of course on day one they didn’t have those followers, they just turned up day after day after day after day and consistently posted and consistently engaged. And you know the same with the podcast people. The same with Gary V, you know just come up on video just keep doing your thing and if you’re good and people can relate to you and you’re giving good quality then people are ultimately going to want to watch you and want to hear you and want to you know engage in your flash briefing or whatever. So yeah consistency is key. So that’s just made me think of one more thing I should get flash briefings, how do.. So let’s say I’m told things are like and I get I listened to your flash briefing. How does that work from a… and it could be that I’m thinking too much since this isn’t meant for this but let’s say I need to I want to find out more about you or I want tp engage with you further. How am I going to do that? How do I know when your phone, I get it I guess because then I can be on my phone but with something like a device like Alexa, how does that work.?
Chelsea: Well it’s a little bit rudimentary. Even though we’re talking about something like in the future here it still is a bit rudimentary in the sense that I tell people where to go and I give them my handle and I say I want you to connect with me through Instagram Stories, send me a direct message. So we’re still giving a call to action of where to go and unfortunately it’s not like there’s a one button push and I’m sure there will be, I’m sure it’s going to be a voice thing go to Instagram or go to you know whatever and it’s going to you know just go right there. But right now it’s you know it’s kind of like grassroots old school, hey here’s where you find me send me whatever it’s there’s no communication really through the apps yet or through the devices but I guarantee that that will be something that they are solving for.
Teresa: Yeah. That’s such a good point because obviously you’ve got the whole key to any content is that you’re gonna take him somewhere or you’re gonna get him to do something. So at the moment who else do you know that is doing what you’re doing on flash briefings is that anybody else that you follow that is doing it?
Chelsea: Yes I actually am part of something called the industry syndicate and it’s industrysyndicate.com and that was created and founded by people like us who were doing flash briefings and podcasting who couldn’t find other people. And we were looking everywhere. We were like where do we find each other? So we created this community. It is specifically geared towards you know like I said my real estate niche but almost everybody in that group and I think we’re up to twenty five or so now are doing flash briefings. And so again most of the people that I follow are doing flash briefings specifically in real estate but outside of the industry Jen and I hope I say her last name right, Jen Lerner.
Teresa: I love Jen.
Chelsea: She does a great one. I love her flash briefing social media related and of course you know like the social media brands like Social Media Examiner has their flash briefing and all of that too. And so I’m really focused sort of in the marketing social media world that’s typically what I listen to but pretty much most people who have a podcast who are like really out there with their podcasts oftentimes they will have one, your news channels that you like to listen to will have one or you’re listening to here in the US it’s like your Fox or CNN or whatever. So you can find them all all on their impact there’s a section on Amazon. If you go down the if you look at the categories they have like clothing, homewares or whatever. The very first one says Lexie Flash briefings and you can click on it and you can sort through and kind of look at what genres you like and enable them and you know test them out.
Teresa: That’s really good. And actually again great though if you’re a podcast or anyway and you’re recording things and it comes very natural to you to record things it seems like a very natural add on because I was talking to you know Andrew and Pete over in the U.K.
Chelsea: I know of them, yes.
Teresa: Oh yeah yeah yeah. So I’m I’m at the moment doing some work with them or I’m helping them out with some funnel stuff and we’re going on a call every single week to work through that funnel and we were on this call the other day. They were admiring my new space behind me. And I said Oh I’ve moved because I’m doing these masterclasses I want to have a better look behind me. I said and I’m going to start my YouTube channel and they were like You’re going to what?” And they said, “Did you know.. Because they did a presentation on basically high when you’ll really.. You should really focus on one key bit of content that you’re really good at qnd just absolutely hammered home and they were like, “Don’t you have a podcast?” I was like “Oh yeah, I love the podcast I’m not stopping it.”
And they’re like.. “But you’re gonna do YouTube as well and I was like well I’m thinking about it” And they were like, “Teresa you’re an idiot. Like honestly what are you thinking about?” Like, “No no Theresa no more. You’ve got your content.”
So that would actually be a a a nice kind of way to get that content out there. Cause I’m guessing as well as someone likes your flash briefings they’re going to like your your podcast because you know potential thing.
Chelsea: I’m going to give you a tip too. I mean because you have such great content here. I mean I love your podcasts and and you can actually turn your podcast into a YouTube video using repurposed audio and that’s a really easy way to do it. So if you do want to just add that there because there are people like me I actually listen to YouTube stuff. I’ll put it my computer on my and I’ll listen to it depending on what it is I did it today actually. So let’s not count that out of the of the voice world. But you know people do like to consume content there and there is SEO there. Much more so than I would say right now in the voice world. So you can use that and then they kind of make it like a graphic like almost like a video graphic with your voice modulation. So you know it’s not really like a video of you per say but that is something that you could use. But yeah I always get that either. I understand you know focusing on what your thing is and what you’re good at really killing that before you go wider you know deeper before wider for sure.
Teresa: Yeah yeah absolutely. So and again I just thought if you did a podcast because I take clips for my each episode, I put clips on Facebook and Twitter and whatever. So I’m guessing as well, could you effectively take clips out of the podcast in order to do your flash briefings.
Chelsea: You could definitely take clips out of it or you could take like your best takeaway. So typically what I do is so I don’t have to create recreate the wheel every time is all kind of charred out my my five or ten that I’m going to be doing and then I usually coincide that with my podcast. So my podcast that I just recorded is really about Sonic branding and all of that what we just talked about. So then I’ll go on and maybe one of my flash briefings is What is Sonic branding and that’s just all I talk about. Just one little tip and then you can take pieces out of it and just make that. I actually don’t clip because it’s honestly faster for me to just pull out my phone and just talk instead of having to edit put it somewhere and take a clip out of it. So that’s just the only reason that I do it is because I-I’m just you know I can’t even take that extra two seconds.
Teresa: And you’re just recording it on your phone? Is there an app that you’re using?
Chelsea: No, I’m just doing it on my phone. I actually you know for my podcast setup I have you know my my mic just like I do. But for my flash briefings because let’s just be honest I’m kind of lazy and I don’t have a lot of time to get things done. I use my voice recorder app on my phone. Save it to my phone I airdrop it to my Mac and I upload it to my host and that’s it.
Teresa: Awesome. Awesome. So thank you so much. Would say this has been so good. Like I said it’s been like you know and we used to have a program here in the UK but any UK license or medical tomorrow’s world.
It was cool and it used to look at like what are we going to be doing in the year 2000 and obviously we’d all be on a hoverboard or whatever. Which didn’t come true. But this is like our version of this. This is as far in the future as I’ve got I can think about.
Chelsea: I love it.
Teresa: Thank you so much for explaining to us and I’m going to hook up to all your details on the show notes and links all your stuff like that Chelsea is an absolute scream to watch on Insta story. She makes my day and my husband’s day, we’ll literally be like watching the stories it’s so cool. And thank you so much. So my voice has been really really helpful. I’ve loved something in the house.
Chelsea: Oh thank you this has been a true highlight of my week. I’m just so excited to be here with you. So thank you for the opportunity.
Teresa: Thank you.
So I really enjoyed that episode. I really like talking about future marketing stuff. I know it can be totally overwhelming and you’re sat there thinking I haven’t even got the hang of Facebook. I don’t even talk about Alexa but you know what. I just think it’s good to hear these things sometimes. I think it’s good to have it in your brain that this might be coming or this might be a possible move for the future.
Also the other thing that you have to think about is what if you much prefer doing something short and sweet and easy as an Alexa briefing compared to I don’t know doing a full episode of a podcast or going live or posting once a day on Facebook. It’s just another option out there so I don’t want you to be overwhelmed I don’t want you to sit there thinking honestly theories I can’t do anything else. I don’t to think about anything else I want you to see them as options. I want you to think how lucky we are now that we have all these amazing different options that allow us to choose how we reach our audiences.
So like I said this is really just a something for you to think about and just know potentially that it might be coming and like that I love the conversation around the effect it’s having on our brains are worlds our lives and we all do it. You know we’ve probably all got on Alexa or something similar in our house. Like I said about the sky remote you know we talk to it all the time to get up the program we want to watch and and it is just the way we’re going. I now do a lot more texts and things on my phone by just speaking into it. And and it’s great. I love it. It’s brilliant. So like I said I just wanted you to have a think about that. Also don’t forget if you’ve got an idea or thought right bout the name of the podcast I’d love to hear from you and it’d be great if you could DM and let me know your thoughts. Anyway I hope you’ve enjoyed today’s episode and I will see you again next week. Take care!
