Ep. 284 - Ask Us ANYTHING❓BORING Company Tactics! Employee Social Media Takeover CRUSHES IT!➕ ADVICE on Issues with FRIENDS!

0:08Welcome to Do This Not That, the podcast for marketers. You'll walk away from each episode with actionable tips you can test immediately. You'll hear from the best minds in marketing who will share tactics, quick wins, and pitfalls to avoid. We'll also dig into life, pop culture, and the chaos that is our everyday. I'm Jay Schwetelson. Let's do this, not that.

0:40We are back for Ask Us Anything from the Do This, Not That podcast presented by Marigold. This is our short episode where all week long we get in questions. We get in work questions. We get in really ridiculous questions. We try to tackle one of each. And if you want to submit a question, you would be extremely cool. You go to jschwedelson.com. There's a button that says podcast. Another one says ask us anything. And we love getting questions. So we're going to do the work question first. Something a little bit different, though. In the last 30 days or so, we've gotten basically the same question from five different people, and it's a question that really wasn't even on my radar in terms of a topic.

1:14So we're going to address it now. So this one's for George, Rachel, Trent, Valerie, and Robin, and they all basically asked the same question. Jay, I work in a boring slash conservative industry, and my hands are tied on being able to be overly creative. What can I do to drive engagement because the regular stuff just doesn't do it for my company? So it's this idea of boosting engagement while playing it safe. And I think marketers make a mistake. And here's what happens. So let's say you're running marketing at a manufacturing company, at an accounting firm, a legal services company, a consumer health care company that's really boring, you name it.

1:55And you've tried to fight the battles to test fun stuff. And you can't get the buy-in because it's off-brand, that's not okay in our industry, whatever the nonsense is that they're telling you. But here's the issue. The issue is that you're fighting the wrong battles. Trying to get the okay to use an emoji in your subject line or to use a funny meme or to organize an April Fool's campaign, these are a waste of time when you work in a boring or more conservative company because these are one-offs. Even if you get the okay, it's like, who cares? You're not building a program around this. You want to use your let me test this capital, okay, on something that could be a winner long term, which can be a winner for you.

2:40So, for example, let's talk about your email newsletter, and then we'll get into social media. You have a horribly boring newsletter. You do. I mean, is wallpaper on a good day? And for some of you, you can't abandon that newsletter. Your company wants that newsletter to go out. and needs to go out in that format, you're not going to win the day in terms of changing that newsletter. But what you can do is say, I want to send out another newsletter, a second newsletter to our database, okay? Let's say your newsletter goes out right now on Thursdays. You can send this one out on Mondays or Tuesdays or even Sundays, and you do a radically different format.

3:17So the recipients don't think it's, you know, oh, they're sending out two newsletters now. It's something different. One of the best ones that you could do is insider secret formats. All right. And this is where it's literally called, you know, the insider secret or the insider tips this week. And this is where you can focus on things that are for people that really know what's going on in the industry or should know these things and they don't. So let's say you're in a boring manufacturing sector. Your insider secret tips this week could be, you know, most manufacturing professionals don't know this hidden production line bottleneck.

3:50And then you can get into those details and it could be a really short form newsletter. and it's a way to get people engaged. And what we're seeing from these insider format newsletters, specifically insider format newsletters, we've done a lot of testing. They get a 30 % lift in click activity versus the regular newsletter format. Or if you want something besides the insider one for a new newsletter format in a boring conservative industry, try the everyday MythBuster format, right? Again, you call this this week's MythBuster and then you do things like whether it's consumer or business, you do things like, you know, does drinking more water actually clean your skin?

4:30Let's settle this. You take whatever are the myths, the most common beliefs every week, and then you talk about them and it makes your company seem like a thought leader, which you are, right? And it gets people engaged. It's so much more engaging than the regular boring nonsense. Now, let's move over to social media, okay again boring conservative industry you're using these horrible templates nobody cares it's wallpaper what can you do to stand out a little bit that you can get the okay on right instead of just saying i want to put an emoji in the subject line no sorry move on one of the best formats that's working incredibly well is employee takeover days on social media it's when you let an employee run your social media for a day and it's announced that way so they're going instagram hi i'm sarah i'm in the pr group whatever uh i'm in this division of i'm in accounting i'm in the i lead the marketing team and i'm i'm doing the employee takeover today of our social media you can do this on instagram stories you could do this on linkedin you could do it everywhere and then that employee takes them through their day and does all these posts all day long this is what i do and they post questions ask me about my day and the engagement is off the charts Employee takeover days, which we've all seen, have about a 40 % higher engagement rate than regular social media posts.

5:52And the massive win, it's a big internal morale booster. Everybody internally starts to get excited. They see that friend of theirs that's doing this. They feel like they're a part of it. And it gets them more engaged with the social media that your marketing department is doing. So employee takeover content is absolute gold. I saw this other one that I actually want to do. I think it's so cool, which is this AI generated industry predictions. And I'm seeing these formats where you go on whatever you're in, consumer business, whatever. You ask ChatGPT or Grok or whatever. What are your predictions for the third quarter, for the fourth quarter and whatever industry you're in?

6:32Then you show that in a social post. This is what AI said is going to happen. And then you have your take on what you think is going to happen. And that is awesome. The last one, which I don't care how boring your industry is, okay, you can do this one. This is not that hard. And that is, you know, a would you rather post series, meaning like you can do posts with big headline, would you rather. Everybody knows what would you rather is. Pick one or the other. But you have it be intelligent content. So it could be things like let's say you're in financial services. Would you rather invest$10 ,000 today or get$50 ,000 in 10 years?

7:10I don't actually know the answer. And then you detail out what the right move is. And it makes you, again, seem like a thought leader, highly engaging content, or, you know, would you rather get 20 % off every purchase for life or one time 90 % off your biggest order? Or would you rather reduce machine downtime by 50 % or increase, increase production speed by 30 %? A would you rather series on social media crushes it because it gets everybody thinking and giving their two cents. All right. So before we get into the ridiculous question, I want to let you know this podcast is exclusively presented by Marigold.

7:45Marigold is my email sending platform. They're awesome, but forget about the fact they're an awesome email sending platform. They just released their best piece of content that they release every year. It is their consumer trends index. They surveyed 21 ,700 people and they asked them specifically, why do you like this brand? Why do you like this loyalty program? Why do you spend more on products? Why do you do this? Why do that? And the data is bonkers. I mean, usually here, these surveys, they survey like 200 people, they surveyed over 21 ,000 people, and you can get this for free. And it's ungated, you don't even have to fill out a form.

8:19You just go to meet marigold. That's meet marigold.com slash CTI meet marigold.com slash CTI. The consumer trends index is an incredible piece of free content. All right, let's get into the ridiculous question. All right, so we've actually, keeping along the theme of multiple questions coming in on the same topic and crushing them, let's crush these. We got in a bunch of questions about advice related to your friends and how to interact with your friends. Again, I have no basis. I am not smart on any level about any topic, but certainly anything related to advice for your relationships or your friends.

9:00So whatever I say, you should probably do the opposite and you should ignore this portion of the podcast. But I'm going to rip through some of these questions that we've gotten in related to people writing in and asking for advice for their friends. So we have four questions. So here we go. And I have not seen these. So this is my instant reaction. Here we go. Jay, what's the best way to tell a friend they owe me money without making it awkward? Well, I mean, I don't even know that's a question. Hello, you owe me$40. Can I have my money, please? Like, it's only awkward because you're making it awkward.

9:34If somebody owes you money, hello, whatever, it only gets awkward if you wait a long time. If you wait six months, you're like, remember when you owe me$40 from six months ago? Then you're like, loser. Why did you say something six months ago? It's been on your mind, obviously. So it's a fail by you if you wait and don't make it awkward. All right, what else you got? Jay, how do I deal with a friend who only reaches out when they need a favor? All right. Well, newsflash, that's not a friend. Okay. That person's a clown because they're using you. They don't actually like you. They don't want to hang out with you.

10:05That's not actually a friend. So I would ghost that person and say, smell you later. Me, my advice is horrendous. I mean, everyone's probably listening. I'm going to get like 4 million negative reviews. What are you going to do? All right. Next one. Jay, how do I handle a friend who brags about their life nonstop while ignoring mine? You know, that is actually super annoying. I encounter this a lot where people are hopelessly not self-aware and they just go on and on about how awesome they are and who cares? It's like, great, dude. You're doing great. Whatever. But to tell you the truth, they're really not doing great because if you just run around telling people how great you're doing, you're actually having a problem.

10:44You're insecure. You're a weirdo. You're a nerd. You need friends. I'm not going to be one of those friends. So yeah, I try to avoid those people and everybody has those people in their lives. And I just try to limit my encounter with them. Wow. I'm really mean today. All right. Last question. Jay, how do I save friends with someone who's changed a lot and now feels like a stranger? You know, that actually is something that's super interesting because I say this to my good friends all the time from college. And I tell them, I said, you know, if I had met you today and I didn't know you, I don't think we'd become friends.

11:17I don't because we're so different. You know, some of us, you know, I don't agree on anything that's going on, you know, in the world or whatever. Uh, we don't like the same, you know, sports stuff or whatever. I don't know. We don't like doing the same stuff. We're not people that if we met today, we'd be friends, but because we have so much history, you know, it's fun to be friends with them. And then we make fun of each other and whatever. So I guess you have to see, is it worth it? Is it worth it to try to stay in that friendship for you because of longevity and because of history and all that?

11:51And if somebody's really changed a lot, you've changed also. Screw it. Move on. There's a lot of people, 8 billion people out there. Make new friends. Everybody's overrated. I'm overrated for sure. Listen, I appreciate you being here. What would be amazing is if you left this review. I say that often and then everyone's like, who cares? I don't want to leave a review. I don't even know how to leave a review. It's not hard. You go on, you press a button, hello. It really does help circulate the podcast and we're trying to grow this crazy thing. So I appreciate it for real if you do that. And also go to jshwellson.com, leave us questions and yeah, hope you make new friends because everybody out there stinks.

12:28Later. You did it. You made it to the end. Nice. But the party's not over. Subscribe to make sure you get the latest episode each week for more actionable tips and a little chaos from today's top marketers. And hook us up with a five-star review if this wasn't the worst podcast of all time. Lastly, if you want access to the best virtual marketing events that are also 100 % free, visit guruevents.com so you can hear from the world's top marketers like Damon John, Martha Stewart, and me. Guruevents.com. Check it out. Thank you.