Jeff Bullas Interview - Podcast Transcript

Mellissah:

Welcome Jeff to the podcast it’s so awesome to have you finally on the robotic marketer podcast and being able to hear some incredible insights about how you went from being unemployed to being one of the world’s biggest people on social media. You are up there with big superstars so welcome.

 

Jeff:

Thanks Mellissah it’s great to be here.

 

Mellissah:

So Jeff, for the audience members who don’t know you, and I don’t know how that would be possible, given that you have the highest profile that I know on social media. Tell us a bit about your story.

 

Jeff:

It started in 2008 when I noticed people’s obsession of Facebook and twitter. The other thing that inspired me was a book by David Meerman Scott. It said if you create content online you can actually track the audience. Being in sales, we actually had to chase customers. The idea of actually having customers come to me was very attractive. So along with the 4 hour workweek, which kind of opened up an idea of opening up a business around a blog. The observation and inspiration that made me start a blog in March 2009 came when I was between jobs, unemployed. So in March 2009 I hit the go button and started writing, really badly, but we learn along the way. So it was one observation about the nature of social media and a couple of good books that really got me to hit the go button and just start.

 

Mellissah:

I remember hearing about you many, many years ago and I think it was in your early days being on social media and in particular being on Twitter. You were this person that came out of nowhere. I’ve been in the marketing industry for a long time as you know and I hadn’t at that point heard of you and all of a sudden you were everywhere and everyone was talking about you, everyone was talking about your blog, everyone was talking about your social media presence. How did you start that whole wave where people became so familiar with the Jeff Bullas brand?

 

Jeff:

There was 3 things that I believe made that impact globally. Number 1: I created content regularly and consistently. Number 2: I realised that to get my message heard and my voice out I needed to build distribution and that was the power of social media, especially from 2008 through to 2013 when it was very organic. So I built a huge following on Twitter, so I realised that that was really important. And the other thing is I made sure my content was put out on as many platforms as possible. So when we wrote a blog, it was put on Linkedin, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Instagram. So that’s really the three ingredients to getting my voice heard globally.

 

Mellissah:

So often people write a blog or write a piece of content and they only share it on one platform and I think from a lot of perspectives it really isolates the amount of people that actually see that piece of content. If you share it on multiple platforms, there’s obviously that bigger audience that is out and more opportunity for it to take off. I remember you saying a while ago that you did a blog that was really quite famous and you shared it both on your own blog and social media. It was about Facebook. What made that piece of content so special and what was the headline; the clickbait that made that awesome?

 

Jeff:

Yeah so the headline was, ‘Why you should forget Facebook’. So, controversial – that was the headline direction. And on my blog the actual post went well, but it wasn’t until it hit Linkedin that it really took off and it was actually the top article on Linkedin for an entire week globally. So I think we had a thousand comments and 400,000 views and that was back in about 2013. It’s about knowing what will resonate and what wont. Controversial topics certainly can go viral.

 

Mellissah:

Yeah absolutely and how many people actually saw that piece of content?

 

Jeff:

I would say most probably between half a million and a million people I would say.

 

Mellissah:

Wow.

 

Jeff:

So it was a very successful piece of content.

 

Mellissah:

Yeah, I remember writing many years ago a blog ‘How to make your man more successful.’ More than a million people read that blog and obviously it didn’t have enough to do with business as I would have like or marketing. But it was really about, you know, how do you make someone in business more successful. Very tongue in cheek and it was very powerful. But I feel sometimes that type of content is not as strong as in your case, your writing about Facebook, Zuckerberg and you’re also writing about something we all need to know about.

 

Jeff:

Yeah I think the main aim is to educate and inspire people. So I suppose the metric used about creating content is to educate, inspire, inform and entertain. So they’re the 4 different angles you could take. If its just boring information written badly, I think that’s not going to help you get your voice out.

 

Mellissah:

And when you’re looking at social media for a B2B business, which many of our listeners work in that field, what would you say are the best platforms from a social media perspective and from a digital perspective.

 

Jeff:

The best platforms now are essentially Facebook; it’s not for B2B. Gains from social change is very much 2013-14, which a lot of businesses don’t understand that and its now pay to play. You’ll get a reach of the social media platforms that are close to single digit percentages. I remember I was getting 15-30% of traffic from social media platforms a few years ago and now I’m barely getting 2-3%. So the reality is that businesses need to get really good at Facebook ads. The cost of those is going up but that’s the reality today. It’s become a very corporate and industrialised sector of marketing; yes, very powerful, but the reality is it’s no longer very organic unless you are playing in the B2B space and get viral whether it’s a video or something like that. So, B2B, not as exciting, so you have to be a lot more savvy about it and also build an e-mail list and also a Messenger list.

 

Mellissah:

I totally agree with you and I think so many companies forget those basics. You have over the years used a lot of hacks to be able to really catapult yourself and your brand out to the broader market and for some of your clients that you’ve worked with, what are some hacks that you think are really important for marketers and entrepreneurs to be aware of?

 

Jeff:

The hack that I introduced very early on, because I realised I couldn’t be online all the time and just Tweeting or posting on social media, because I had to get other things done like creating content and running a business. So, early on I decided to automate Twitter. There were very blunt tools back then and I used a pretty ordinary tool. It actually got me suspended from Twitter for a few hours and I remember I was given a hard time by my audience since social media is for people and not machines. So we shouldn’t be using automation. Fast forward to today, guess what? The only way to scale is through automation. That was one of my first hacks and I realised early on automation is going to be key to getting my voice out there and really amplify and scale me.

 

Mellissah:

I remember also walking through the Adobe Summit in Las Vegas last year with you and every time we came up to a stand that was about video marketing, you stopped and you were inquisitive. Obviously videos are a big area of marketing these days as well.

 

Jeff:

Yeah, so the challenge with video, is that it’s hard to scale in terms of production and especially quality. I think that what is happening in this area is that there’s technology that is arriving with a company owner that I know and worked with and am part of is Shuttlerock. Shuttlerock basically discovered about three years ago that you could actually take still images and turn them into short videos that could look very professional. And there’s other platforms that are around in video that use clever technology and also they’re starting to add things like AI and machine learning to actually improve content. So that’s the challenge with any content creation; actually scaling it.

 

Mellissah:

Yeah definitely, and Jeff, you know, you play with a lot of different social media platforms. You’re certainly an early adopter, you experiment a lot. What you’re doing and how you do it is really something that all marketers are watching and me included. So when you look at things like TikTok or Snapchat, how do you see those platforms rolling out. Do you see them as being bigger than a Facebook for instance, or a Twitter, or a Linkedin? Or do you see them moving in and out of fashion?

 

Jeff:

Well Snapchat was hot for a while. It still is quite a big platform. So that was like trend of the day. It’s still around, its more B2C. TikTok I’m watching with interest. It’s just 15 second video clips created by people aged between 10 and 20 almost, but what happens mostly with platforms, is they grow up and evolve as technology improves and so the audience gets to understand it more. The average age and the demographic actually get older. I think TikTok is certainly in early stages. I’ve actually created an account, I haven’t posted anything there yet. I really think that you can’t just assume that something’s going to be used for teenagers forever. The reality is that some platforms go out of fashion for some demographics and I think we’re seeing a bit of a move from Facebook to Instagram and guess what, Facebook actually owns Instagram. But I’ve seen a lot of people sharing much more on Instagram than Facebook. You’ve just got to be aware of it and get in early-ish – you don’t have to be the first. But I certainly think you have to be watching it.

 

Mellissah:

And so are we going to see you in the next few months doing dances on TikTok or singing a few songs? What are we going to see from you on TikTok?

 

Jeff:

I’m starting to practice my moves right now.

 

Mellissah:

I look forward to seeing those. So Jeff, any advice to marketers or entrepreneurs out there that are a bit slow on the uptake of social media, and are all of a sudden going, ‘Hey, I need to really do something big here, or my brand is gonna fall to the wayside.’ Do you have any tips or advice for companies like that.

 

Jeff:

I think that its only part of the equation. I think the best thing that companies can do to really accelerate is actually either develop an internal team or have resources internally to do Facebook Ads because they’re so targeted. Facebook has collected the most data about people and can be really, really clever targeting. And I think if you want to reach an initial audience, especially globally, Facebook is the go; but getting more expensive. So Facebook is one, but asides that you should not be ignoring optimising your content for search engines (old-school SEO). It may be boring, but the reality is that search engines generate 70-80% of my traffic. Basically its earned attention – other words we build authority under the user the user by creating a lot of content. So yes, learn social media and get really good at targeted Facebook Ads and other targeted ads like Google Ads. Don’t forget things like search engines.

 

Mellissah:

Yeah definitely. With one of our own accounts, we have a business that’s online and 92% of the traffic is just through Google – through organic growth. I think that is both a blessing and cost saver, but it’s also a bit scary, I don’t know if you recall maybe 6 or 7 years ago when they changed their algorithm and a bunch of businesses went out of business because of it, because they no longer had traffic and I think that it’s something to be mindful of. You need a combination of various omnichannel marketing platforms and ways in which you can communicate your brand to be able to be effective. Now you’re an avid reader. Something I always find fascinating about smart or successful people, is that they all tend to read a lot. What’s your favourite book at the moment?

 

Jeff:

A really fascinating book I’m reading at the moment is called ‘You’re Not Listening: What You’re Missing and Why It Matters’. A really, really deep dive into one of the most powerful aspects of communication. You know we’re taught a lot about how to speak but we’re not very often taught how to listen. It’s been a favourite topic of mine for decades, but this book is a really deep dive into the nuance and some of the really insightful research and experiences of people that have incredible and powerful listening and make people feel special. So that’s my current book I have open.

 

Mellissah:

Awesome. Well thankyou so much Jeff for being on the show. We really appreciate it. We know you get asked on a lot of podcasts and a lot of television shows and radio shows, etc. So to have some of your time we really appreciate it. Thanks so much.

 

Jeff:

Thanks Mel and great to be a part of the show.

 

Mellissah:

Thankyou.