The Marketing Companion (Mark Schaefer)

Is social media turning into a three-horse race? New research by Edison indicates that Americans are starting to migrate to three big social media platforms, while usage and preference is flattening out on secondary platforms. In this scintillating, 99th episode of The Marketing Companion, Tom Webster reveals a study 2o years in the making: The Infinite Dial. Some of the highlights of this show:

• The social media shake-out: Why Snapchat will last and Twitter is in trouble
• Emergence of smart speakers (like Google Home and Alexa) ... and why Apple is falling behind.
• The profound implications of the extraordinary growth in video subscriptions
• The decline of advertising opportunities and the impact on marketing
• Surprising listener trends in podcasts (and why young people aren't going there)
• The rise of YouTube as a music channel

In this episode, Tom and I also read our spam, because we can. Who's ready to rumble? Resources mentioned in this podcast: Edison's Infinite Dial Report Norm McDonald's Moth Joke.

Please support our extraordinary sponsors. Our content is free because of their generosity.

Many thanks to our friend Scott Monty for the awesome show intro. Be sure to check out his amazing newsletter The Full Monty and his new podcast available here: fullmontyshow.com.

BuzzSumo is the world’s best way to discover, analyze and amplify your content. Run over to BuzzSumo today for a 14 day free trial. Beyond data, BuzzSumo offers priceless insights into content discovery, monitoring, influencers and outreach, content research and planning, and competitor research. Find out why so many Marketing Companion fans are now hooked on Buzzsumo. Check out BuzzSumo’s powerful technology to look at the hottest content trends down to the hour!

This not your normal 2014 forecast post about Facebook advertising and "the year of mobile" (yawn). Tom Webster and I put our heads together to really think through some of the implications of what we're seeing out there and the six projections we developed are not exactly run of the mill social media fare. I think you are going to really enjoy our latest Marketing Companion podcast. It is going to surprise, and perhaps even startle, you.

The podcast starts out with a visit from Arnold Schwarzenegger and Christian Bale (you have to hear it to believe it!) and then untangles six marketing mega-trends:

1) Malignant complexity

2) Re-aggregation of audience

3) The cost of security

4) The death of "last touch" attribution and implications for search and offline marketing

5) Dis-intermediation of manufacturing (the biggest impact on marketing since the Internet?)

6) Atomization of content This podcast is guaranteed to get you thinking about our marketing future in new ways.

What's that you say? You can't wait to dive into it?

Well I certainly can't blame you so here it is in stunning high-definition technicolor:

References in this podcast:

The password management tool is Dashlane.

Like many of us, Mark Masters struggled to build his marketing agency. His own marketing and advertising weren't creating momentum for his business. And he felt rather empty with the transitory, transactional nature of marketing. So he tried a bold experiment. He started a learning community that revolutionized his business. This is a bold discussion that may point to the future of marketing.

Mark Schaefer and co-host Brooke Sellas talk about a ground-breaking new book that covers the essential online customer care strategies. They discuss the elevated emotional furor on the web today, the risk that comes with taking a stand, the impact of Web3 on customer service, and practical strategies for nurturing meaningful customer connections. 

Social media marketing has been the hottest marketing concept for the last 10 years. Is it losing steam, or just taking off? In this episode, hosts Mark Schaefer and Tom Webster look at the data and reveal new perspectives on where social media fits in the marketing mix. The fellas also reveal a new premium service to sell fake followers so you can become an influencer in record time!

Advocate marketing is getting a bit ... prickly. While there are undoubtedly some wonderful programs out there, and many brands are doing it well, there is a rising tide of weird stuff going on in the influencer space, as we explore on the latest episode of The Marketing Companion. The ability for anybody to publish content and gain an active audience has transformed the media world and democratized influence. Many companies are becoming aaware of these "citizen influencers" and how they might be impacting the attitudes and buying behaviors of a target audience. Connecting to these trusted influencers and advocates and their engaged audience can provide an effective and rapid opportunity for content transmission. In this edition of our Internet radio show, Tom Webster and I crack open a case of advocate marketing topics such as:

• How companies are gaming influence and cheating brands blind.
• The advantages of advocate marketing
• Influence marketing done right -- What make an effective campaign?
• Examples of brands using influencers to successfully connect to new audiences and new platforms
• Why influence marketing is becoming a gamble
• The burned-out influencer
• Becoming a human NASCAR jacket
• Authentic Advocacy versus celebrity endorsement
• The model for influence marketing, Bethany Mota

Pretty amazing discussion, right? Let's do this thing! Resources mentioned in this podcast The book on influence marketing, Return On Influence Crowdly The book The Content Code: Six essential strategies to ignite your content, your marketing, and your business Augustine Fou's Slideshare channel on ad corruption New York Times article on why brands and influencers are getting picky

Please support our extraordinary sponsors. Our content is free because of their generosity.

gShift’s Web Presence Analytics platform provides agencies and brands with search, social and mobile content marketing data in one place. Monitor and report on an entire web presence. Create smarter, faster content through gShift’s proprietary data. Report on the engagement and performance of your content marketing investment.

Our podcast is also brought to you by Voices Heard Media. Please check out this tremendous resource for scaling social media engagement. Take a look at building an engaged and relevant audience through innovative new games, contests, analytics, polling platforms, and other innovations.

• His surprising take on "quiet quitting."
• "You don't have to like your employees, but you have to love them."
• Why great speakers act out of a sense of desperation about their message
• Why "business is community, period."
• Your job as a leader is to "hire well and promote."
• Why he is perpetually pissed off
• Why we need to hire "the quiet ones."

Have you considered how brand and marketing messaging evolve over time? Have you noticed a trend from product attributes to values? Mark Schaefer and Keith Jennings offer a new way to think about marketing in a changing world with implications for how you and your business can stand out in a noisy world. 

Values-based marketing is a hot topic. Aligning with customer values is an important consideration but what happens when a company starts to act more like a non-profit? A fascinating discussion! Hosts Mark Schaefer and Brooke Sellas also demonstrate ASMR live, look at the retail apocalypse and show why Dell CCO Karen Quintos is a great marketing leader.

Trolls seem to ruin everything good about the web with their persistent, hate-filled ranting. But there is a fascinating psychology behind what they do and why. Mark Schaefer and Brooke Sellas examine this topic, as well as the case against influencers and a scientific proof of content shock. The hosts also consider the art of spam.

In this limited edition series, Mark Schaefer introduces two of the innovative marketers featured in his book "Marketing Rebellion." Steve Rayson, founder of BuzzSumo, contends that the biggest problem in our field is the over-use of technology and automation. Marketing icon Philip Kotler urges marketers to adopt a more human-centric approach that emphasizes emotion and experiences.

One of my great marketing heroes is Tom Fishburne. Not only is he a brilliant innovator and marketer, he is THE WORLD-FAMOUS MARKETOONIST: On the new episode of The Marketing Companion, Tom Webster and I had the great fun and pleasure of interviewing Tom about humor in marketing including ...

• The "slow revelation" that made him realize humor could be a key part of his marketing future
• The connection between "story" and humor in corporate communications
• The process companies go through to add humor to their marketing communications
• Why the best humor starts with pain points
• What happens when you get it wrong
• How you consider humor, cultural references, and the international audience
• Tom discusses his new book Your Ad Ignored Here: Cartoons from 15 Years of Marketing, Business, and Doodling in Meetings

And Webster and I challenge each other to a joke-off. I won. You won't want to miss this interesting (and funny!) episode about humor in marketing ... 

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• Find the podcast on Stitcher

Please support our extraordinary sponsors. Our content is free because of their generosity. Many thanks to our friend Scott Monty for the awesome show intro. Be sure to check out his amazing newsletter The Full Monty and his new podcast available here: fullmontyshow.com.

88% of Consumers check online before making a purchasing decision. Brand24 gives you instant updates about what your customers are saying about you. Now you can give them timely responses and give your customers peace of mind. With Media monitoring you can search the web for key topics, trends, or discussions. Brand24 enables you to reach customers, so you can react and engage quickly to real-time comments made about your brand. Imagine having all your channels in one place – that’s Brand24. Plus, with Apple and Android apps, you can track customers, trends, and insights on the go. At Brand24.com/companion you’ll receive THREE MONTHS FREE, just for our podcast fans!

The results don’t lie: Typeform has a 57% completion rate on surveys, against the industry average of 20% (according to Survey Gizmo). The difference? Typeform’s one-question-at-a-time interface creates a memorable user experience. Use images, animated GIFs, and even video to express yourself more fully. And Typeform integrates with your favorite tools including Google Sheets, MailChimp, Airtable, and hundreds more. Remember: What you ask matters. How you ask is everything. Try this extraordinary application today and go to Typeform.com/companion for a special 30 percent off discount for our podcast fans! 

SoloSegment’s Site Search Inspector illuminates a huge blind spot for marketing teams and helps them unlock the revenue trapped there. If you’re like 85% of companies, you have no idea what’s going on in your site’s search engine. You either don’t have measurements or you ignore what you have. Up to 30% of your visitors search and they could be your best customers. Site Search Inspector targets the site search customer experience with a set of proprietary measures designed to improve success. They’re so convinced you’re going to improve your success rates, they’ve tripled the free trial period to 45-days and they’re offering 10% off an annual subscription. You can find this special offer on solosegment.com/companion

In this free audio chapter of Mark Schaefer's book LESSONS, Mark provides you exclusive insight from studying under management and marketing legend Peter Drucker

Mark Schaefer and Mathew Sweezey apply a rapid-fire approach to marketing trend analysis in this fast-paced show. What's hot, what's not? Is it social media, content marketing, podcasts, web3? You won't want to miss this expert analysis. 

How many times have you led a business failure? Do you have to experience catastrophic failure to be successful? If I fail more than you, will I ultimately be more successful than you? These are some of the questions and topics creeping into the blogosphere over the past few years as the notion of failure seems to take on an almost romantic quality. I find this strange.  As an entrepreneur, I want to do everything I can to AVOID failure. Sure, if you are trying something new, you are bound to fail. I fail in some way every single day. But I never want to fail in a way that prevents me from getting back up again.  And yet, I have this feeling that if you've never been part of an entrepreneurial wipeout, you're not considered "legit" these days. There seems to be a growing acceptance of The Failure Manifesto. My podcast partner Tom Webster and I explore this interesting idea on the latest episode of The Marketing Companion. I really think you'll like this edition, as we explore:

• The romance of catastrophic business failure
• Why Seth Godin's "Just Ship It" mentality leads to problems
• The true source of business innovation and progress
• The untold side of the Apple story and survivor bias
• The strategy paradox --why we don't learn from failures
• Why you can't be Zappos
• Is technology an enabler or a leveler of business innovation?

Do you need to be "all in" to be successful in business today?  I hope you'll listen to the podcast and tell us what you think!

Mark Schaefer and Tom Webster discuss revealing new research that may indicate a tipping point for social media, video, podcasts and smart speakers like Alexa and Google Home.

How do we break through the noise in industries that have normalized dull? You're about to embark on a crazy journey of misfit Barbies, back alley tee shirts, and criminal wine as Mark Schaefer and Carla Johnson explore the crisis of imagination in marketing. We all want to do better work ... what is holding us back? Plenty, as it turns out! 

It's not often that you see a blog post that makes you think, discuss, and maybe even a little sick to your stomach but that's what Steve Rayson of BuzzSumo achieved with his controversial post "The Future is More Content." Steve has put out some thorough, well-developed thought leadership pieces over the years and this post is among his finest because he brings up an ugly topic we choose to ignore -- that swarming the web with content -- maybe even crappy content -- is a legitimate strategy. It's a topic I've covered in The Content Code book and in a recent podcast episode -- when you get it down to it, the best content marketing strategy is to create "Content Shock" for your competition by finding an unsaturated topical niche and then thoroughly dominating it to the point that you attract most of the Google juice. If you don't believe me, try competing with Hubspot in the content space. In a follow-up post, Chad Pollitt of Relevance goes a step further to explain that Google actually encourages quantity over quality. Perhaps their algorithm is hurting their own customers! Steve Rayson's article points to several examples where the "quantity" strategy is occurring. He points to the Washington Post strategy of increasing their publishing rate to attract more views. He furthers his argument by noting that cost of content is coming down which will rapidly enable a "quantity" strategy. We'll soon have computer algorithms creating loads of crappy content for us at very low cost. In fact, it is already happening. Steve mentioned to me that companies like Automated Insights are offering to produce 1,000 blog posts for $250. Are the posts any good? Maybe they don't have to be. Steve argues that the future of content marketing is quantity, not quality. Of course this goes against the conventional wisdom of almost every content marketing guru around these parts, but here's the truth -- Steve has only revealed the dirty little content marketing secret everybody knows but doesn't want to acknowledge: quantity can beat quality. At least in some cases ...

Quality still matters, mostly

When you have a business model that depends on "eyeballs on ads" then driving page views at any cost may make sense. But if you are a business (like mine) that is trying to attract loyal customers who stick around and actually do something, then the quality  model is probably the way to go. Let's use Steve Rayson's posts as an example. I never miss his articles because he always delivers in-depth, data-driven content. And he usually writes long posts -- but not too often -- so I can keep up with them. If Steve started posting 250 posts a week, the first reader he would lose is me, and that would be a shame because through his content, I have become friends and a collaborator with Steve ... which is how content marketing is supposed to work when you are trying to establish thought leadership. When I get people unsubscribing from my blog (it DOES happen!), the reason most often provided is "too many updates," and I only publish 3-4 times a week. Even if I pushed that to 6-7 posts a week, I know I would lose a LOT of readers ... even though I might get a lot more "views" because the sheer volume is going up.

Viewers versus readers

There is one other very important dynamic here. When people do click through to a corporate site, the average time on a piece of content is 15 seconds. So do you really want views ... or readers? Nevertheless, Steve is mostly correct in his analysis and I think the only ones who protest the truth of what he is writing either skimmed the post or are in denial. In fact, in the near future most content marketing may be turned over to the machines. I have this image in my head of those swarming bots in the The Matrix Trilogy hunting down unsaturated long-tail niches and then overwhelming the little opening with thousands of pieces of content. Of course this will happen. Rather depressing to think about, isn't it? I suppose at the end of the day the only "Neo" hero we have in the content marketing world is either to be the content curator or to be the brand trusted above all others. If we can create content that is un-missable, unmistakable, and un-copy-able we might have a chance ... but let's explore this idea a little more, shall we? Tom Webster and I dive over the crappy content waterfall in our latest Marketing Companion episode. We punch holes in the quantity versus quality debate as well as revive our plans for CompanionStorm, a listener conference featuring Kanye West (kind of). You'll have to hear it to believe it!

Please support our extraordinary sponsors. Our content is free because of their generosity.

Many thanks to our friend Scott Monty for the awesome show intro. Be sure to check out his amazing newsletter The Full Monty and his new podcast available here: fullmontyshow.com,

BuzzSumo is the world’s best way to discover, analyze and amplify your content. Run over to BuzzSumo today for a 14 day free trial. Beyond data, BuzzSumo offers priceless insights into content discovery, monitoring, influencers and outreach, content research and planning, and competitor research. Find out why so many Marketing Companion fans are now hooked on Buzzsumo. Check out BuzzSumo’s powerful technology to look at the hottest content trends down to the hour!

In this final bonus episode, Mark Schaefer gives away another free chapter from his book LESSONS: Essays to help you embrace the chaos. In this installment, he provides his best tricks to help you get ready for an important presentation.

An early Google Pants sighting[/caption] Companies like Forrester and Gartner -- who used to make their money providing expensive and exclusive research reports -- are finding it impossible to "contain" the data. If somebody buys just one report, it's likely to very soon be distributed widely on the web for free.

As a result, there is a very subtle but important change going on in the world of research with profound implications for what we can see and believe on the social web. In our latest Marketing Companion podcast, Tom Webster and I explore some of the implications of this as we look at a case study where Forrester recently skewered Facebook with some provocative, but not necessarily accurate, claims.

A company VP added fuel to the fire with an "open letter" to Facebook Founder Mark Zuckerberg. Facebook called the claims "irresponsible." Why would a company built on providing dispassionate data and insight make a sensational move like this?

Data and research are certainly taking on an interesting new role in the field of content marketing. Some of the ideas we discuss in the podcast ... If companies can't make as much money from their research, are they using their data as a content marketing promotional tool?

If businesses won't pay for research, what happens to the quality of the research? What can we really believe right now and how do we know if the claims we are looking at on the web are to be believed?

Most important of all, how is Tom Webster getting rich from Google Pants and Smithfield Hams?

At this point, you might be asking, "How can I listen to this gem of a podcast right now?" I'm happy to report that all you have to do is click this button:

By the way, if you are enjoying our podcast, why not let others know by leaving a rating on the iTunes site. It's so simple and much appreciated!

Fake news is just the beginning. New technology will allow anyone to create Hollywood-quality effects and replicate humans with uncanny accuracy. What are the implications for society, business and marketing?

Mark Schaefer and nonprofit marketing authority Keith Jennings unwrap new ideas in nonprofit marketing, including a new way to segment audiences, why a focus on "product" enables better nonprofit marketing, and why nonprofits should consider community-based marketing. 

Snap seems to be making all the right moves. The stock is soaring and so is revenue. But their latest move is confusing. Or, is it bold and ground-breaking? Mark and Brooke debate the prospects for Snap as well as trends in emotion detection, Gen Z career choices, and Mark's issue with Resting Bitch Face.

As many of our channels for reaching customers are getting strangled, brands are turning to new ways to connect and communicate with customers. One natural opportunity is to align with the authentic advocacy represented by bloggers and other powerful content creators. In an information-dense world where it is more difficult to become the signal instead of the noise, blogger outreach is escalating, providing both financial opportunity and ethical dilemmas. This dynamic provides fascinating and entertaining fodder for the latest Marketing Companion podcast. Tom Webster and I dissect some of the most important issues in the field today like:

• Flout: The New Standard for Influence. Really.
• Why bloggers are trumping mainstream media
• A first-hand account of escalating influence marketing
• Why 95 percent brands are stumbling in the influence marketing field
• Stepping over the line -- Influencer or infomercial?
• How to create raving advocates the right way

Hey! I'm ready to listen to this all over again! Are you ready?

Mark Schaefer is a strategy consultant, college educator, keynote speaker, and the author of 10 books including "KNOWN," “Belonging to the Brand,” and "Marketing Rebellion." His annual marketing retreat is The Uprising.

For more of Mark’s insights every week, subcribe to his award-winning blog.

Mark also offers classes in personal branding and professional speaking.

Amanda Russell is the founder of the Global Center for Influence (C4In), launching (2023) at the University of Texas at Austin with a mission to help brands & people learn how to position themselves and their companies for success, bridging the gap between academia and practice. Amanda's mission is to enhance how we do 'higher education. 

Former Olympic-level athlete, Founder-to-sale Entrepreneur and Marketing Consultant who still loves the brain gymnastics of helping people and companies become more influential among their desired audience. Professor, Author "The Influencer Code", Speaker, Board Member and Director of C4In

It seems everywhere you go these days people are talking about Disruption as the next big business "thing." There are packed disruption conferences, disruption books, disruption consultants. But here is the nagging question I've had tumbling through my mind. Is it really possible to be strategic around disruption?  Is it possible for disruption to be a plan ... or is disruption the explanation of what happened after the fact? I've been conflicted on this because it runs counter to what I've learned and experienced. In graduate school I had the amazing experience of classes from Peter Drucker just as he completed his book Innovation and Entrepreneurship. In my mind this is the finest book on innovation ever written! Some of main points of the book include:

• Effective innovation is continuous, not disruptive
• Almost all innovation aimed at disruption fails. Let others fail and then pick up their pieces (Apple has been brilliant at this)
• The most effective entrepreneurs manage innovation in a way to minimize exposure and risk.

Obviously these lessons from the master have had a big impact on me. They formed my key approach to innovation for more than a decade. This is why it has been difficult for me to jump on the disruption and Cult of Failure bandwagon. Of course disruption happens. But can you really MAKE it happen any more than you can MAKE "viral" happen? So it was timely when my friend Billy Mitchell of MLT Creative turned me on to an article in The New Yorker called The Disruption Machine by Jill Lepore. In this brilliant piece Lepore dissects the famous The Innovator's Dilemma (an argument against continuous improvement) and makes a compelling case against Disruption as a strategy. This article became the cernterpiece of the latest Marketing Companion podcast between myself and Tom Webster. The synaptic connections were really humming on this one as we debate the idea of Disruption Strategy. I think you'll love it:

Other resources mentioned in this podcast:

The Strategy Paradox: Why Committing to Success Leads to Failure (And What to do About It)

Podcast on 3D printing as a disruptive technology

Competitive Advantage: Creating and Sustaining Superior Performance by Michael Porter

Book links are affiliate links.

MLT Creative is an occasional business partner and an advertiser on {grow}.

Many businesses are being disrupted by new digital entrants. Perhaps the only way to fight back is to add emotion. Mark and Brooke look at a new retailing case study, the end of likes, and a new marketing platform from Amazon.

In this new episode of The Marketing Companion, Tom Webster and I cover some of the highlights of the 2017 Content Marketing World. It was the first conference Tom and I attended together for some time so it was a good opportunity to compare notes on the content marketing spectacular. We discuss:

• Why Tom faced a nearly empty room for his politics-related talk
• Why Mark thinks "loyalty" is a fading marketing idea
• Content Marketing World hits and misses
• And as a bonus, we announce new plans for Companion Storm 2!

Check it out! 

Please support our extraordinary sponsors. Our content is free because of their generosity.

Many thanks to our friend Scott Monty for the awesome show intro. Be sure to check out his amazing newsletter The Full Monty and his new podcast available here: fullmontyshow.com.

The results don’t lie: Typeform has a 57% completion rate on surveys, against the industry average of 20% (according to Survey Gizmo). The difference? Typeform’s one-question-at-a-time interface creates a memorable user experience. Use images, animated GIFs, and even video to express yourself more fully. And Typeform integrates with your favorite tools including Google Sheets, MailChimp, Airtable, and hundreds more. Remember: What you ask matters. How you ask is everything. Go to Typeform.com/companion to receive a special 30 percent off discount for our podcast fans!

Between 30 percent and 50 percent of your online visitors use your website’s search function. But analysis proves that customers rarely see the precise content that leads to a sale. Why leave this conversion opportunity to chance? Deliver search results that create sales conversions by deploying the powerful machine learning intelligence of Site Search Inspector from SoloSegment. Site Search Inspector can be set up quickly and continuously “learns” how to improve your search conversions. Visit the SoloSegment discount page to get 10 percent off your order for Marketing Companion fans!

There has been nothing short of an intense debate about the marketing skills needed for career success today.

• Gurus like Gary Vaynerchuk have decried college educations, claiming they are a waste of time and money.
• In an excellent and thought-provoking post, the brilliant Christopher Penn scolds the profession for falling behind, and warns that we need to keep up with topics such as cloud computing, mobile development, and integration software to be relevant.
• Unilever CMO Keith Weed claims there is a "lost generation" of marketers in their 30s and 40s who are unprepared to lead digital brands and are faking their way through.
• Still other marketing leaders such as Allison Dew, a senior VP at Dell, references a new workforce study when she says the 400 people on her marketing team better be steeped in marketing fundamentals and possess an ability to solve problems, not be masters Snapchat.

It has been more than two years since Tom Webster and I discussed this topic on our podcast and with the rate of change in the industry, we thought it was time to bring some attention to the issue. In the latest episode of The Marketing Companion we dissect the state of the marketing nation and explore the marekting skills needed to prevail in our field today. Ready for this? Here we go! Disclosure: Dell Technologies is mentioned in this post and podcast. Dell compensated me to attend its Dell World event in 2016 but exerts no editorial control over content I post.

Please support our extraordinary sponsors. Our content is free because of their generosity.

Many thanks to our friend Scott Monty for the awesome show intro. Be sure to check out his amazing newsletter The Full Monty and his new podcast available here: fullmontyshow.com,

BuzzSumo is the world’s best way to discover, analyze and amplify your content. Run over to BuzzSumo today for a 14 day free trial. Beyond data, BuzzSumo offers priceless insights into content discovery, monitoring, influencers and outreach, content research and planning, and competitor research. Find out why so many Marketing Companion fans are now hooked on Buzzsumo. Check out BuzzSumo’s powerful technology to look at the hottest content trends down to the hour!

Affinio is now offering a FREE eBook co-authored with Mark Schaefer called How to Identify, Understand and Grow Your Ideal Content Audience. Check it out, as well as their new free audience Discovery tool. Affinio is an advanced marketing intelligence platform that leverages the interest graph to understand today’s consumers. Affinio believes that if we can understand individuals at a deeper and richer level, then we can fundamentally change the way people relate to one another. By understanding the interests and cultural DNA of key audience segments, marketers are empowered to take an audience-first approach to making meaningful connections with ideal consumers. Find out how at Affinio.com.

The number of consumers refusing to participate in research has quadrupled since 1990, imperiling some marketing efforts. Mark and Brooke look at the problem, ding Instagram on a weird strategy, and agree with Amazon's tough stance on employee productivity. They also sing.

In this episode, Mark and Brooke discuss the vital topic of staying relevant in a fast-changing world. There are some surprising insights here as they tackle strategies on trends, skills, technology and even the impact of your personal appearance.

Mark and Brooke discuss an explosive revelation from the Facebook strategy playbook: The company is mindfully encouraging extremism, ignoring warnings from 2016 that the platform was contributing to hate and polarization. The hosts also discuss the emerging importance of corporate communities and the post-pandemic normal.

I go to a lot of marketing conferences and they are undeniably a great way to learn, network and stay up to speed on the human and technological breakthroughs that are transforming our business. But how are they changing? How important are they? Does it make sense to attend? To sponsor? This is probably a topic on a lot of minds as our personal time is compressed and travel budgets are slashed so Tom Webster and dove into this topic on our newest Marketing Companion podcast. Some of the topics we cover include:

• The truth and myth of SXSW
• The "beating heart" of great conferences and the one thing that can kill an event
• Conference networking strategies
• Large - regional - local conferences .... which are thriving, which are dying and why?
• The conference "glass ceiling"
• The minor leagues and the major leagues of marketing conferences

• Conferences and content strategy

• Are conferences becoming elitist?
• Does it make sense to sponsor a conference?

Ready to learn more? Of course you are! Here we go!

People mentioned in this podcast:

Jay Baer

Mitch Joel

Gini Dietrich

Jason Keath

John Jantsch

Scott Monty

Mark Schaefer and Jay Acunzo break down their creative journeys and the relationship between money and creativity. This episode is full of unique insights as they talk about resources versus resourcefulness, the bane of money, the future of creativity, and the poetic inspiration of "Rocky."

On the latest edition of The Marketing Companion, Tom Webster and I get personal. Between us, we have more than 50 years of marketing experience and we've learned many important lessons along the way. In this new episode, we look back and discuss the advice we have received from mentors along the way that changed the course of our careers. We also take Bollywood by storm. More or less. I think you will really enjoy this one ... Please support our extraordinary sponsors. Our content is free because of their generosity.

GoToWebinar – a leader in online events - is one of the easiest and most effective ways to connect and convert your target audience. You can generate qualified leads, establish thought leadership and build brand awareness for up to 1,000 attendees. Trusted by start-ups to global organizations worldwide, GoToWebinar helps businesses reach over 40 million people each year.

Our podcast is also brought to you by Voices Heard Media. Please check out this tremendous resource for scaling social media engagement. Take a look at building an engaged and relevant audience through innovative new games, contests, analytics, polling platforms, and other innovations.

So much going on today! So many changes to consider. Facebook and Snapchat and content wars. OH MY! In this new episode of The Marketing Companion Tom Webster and I consider some EPIZOODIC new ideas that will be affecting your marketing programs now and in the future. Listen in for some TREMENDIFIED new insights on:

• Snapchat rejected Facebook's takeover bid last year. Mark Zuckerberg is taking revenge like a jilted lover. Watch out for this ZUCKERFICATION of Facebook Messenger. Facebook and Snapchat ... AT WAR?
• The surprising new study that shows how people consume content in their cars. GOLLY GOSH this is unbelievable!
• Audible is seeking WORLD DOMINATION on everything audio. The Netflix of audio? WOWZERS.
• The epic battle for the content eco-system is heating up! Apple? Google? Amazon? TAKE COVER!
• Twitter's new partnership with the National Football League. A multimedia SHOCKER! Is this the salvation of Twitter or is this FOURTH AND LONG for the company?

Also, don't miss this FREE eBook co-authored by Mark Schaefer and our sponsor Affinio called How to Identify, Understand and Grow Your Ideal Content Audience. Did I just say this is FREE? Why, yes I did. Well, you're probably ready to jump out of your seat by now. Please. Stay Calm. Your podcast awaits.

Please support our extraordinary sponsors. Our content is free because of their generosity.

Many thanks to our friend Scott Monty for the awesome show intro. Be sure to check out his amazing newsletter The Full Monty, the best weekly curation of digital news.

BuzzSumo is the world’s best way to discover, analyze and amplify your content. Run over to BuzzSumo today for a 14 day free trial. Beyond data, BuzzSumo offers priceless insights to take your marketing to the next level. Check out BuzzSumo's powerful technology to look at the hottest content trends down to the hour!

GoToWebinar – a leader in online events – is one of the easiest and most effective ways to connect and convert your target audience. You can generate qualified leads, establish thought leadership and build brand awareness for up to 1,000 attendees. Trusted by start-ups to global organizations worldwide, GoToWebinar helps businesses reach over 40 million people each year.

Affinio is now offering a FREE eBook co-authored with Mark Schaefer called How to Identify, Understand and Grow Your Ideal Content Audience. Check it out! Affinio is an advanced audience intelligence platform that leverages the interest graph to understand today’s consumers. Using our deep learning and custom network engine, Affinio is able to analyze these connections to develop a social fingerprint for each user.  Affinio’s customers use this data to: Build in-depth data-driven personas; Understand their audience; Conduct competitive analysis; Identify ideal influencers and sponsorship opportunities; Build data-driven content strategies that resonate; Place highly targeted ads with data-backed creative

Marketing visionary Dana Malstaff built one of the most successful communities on the planet. With 80,000 members, it was a revenue engine and an inspiration to her enthusiastic followers. Here why Dana decided to start over. This will be one of the most moving and inspiring stories of leadership and courage you'll hear. 

In a scathing blog post, the co-founder of Ello blasts Facebook as monstrous entity dedicated to hurting people in the margins of society. In this episode, hosts Mark Schaefer and Tom Webster blast Ello back and explain why Facebook's "real name" policies provide a healthier and authentic social media platform.

This is an epic discussion between Mark Schaefer and Keith Jennings exploring 50 years of cognitive research and a conclusion that it is almost impossible to change a person's deeply-held beliefs. Certainly this is a massive marketing challenge. But at least under three conditions, change is possible. And in fact, we may be in the perfect storm of opportunity. Get out your pen and paper. You're going to be taking notes on this one! 

I had an opportunity to attend the outstanding Marketing Profs B2B Forum and witness a truly tour-de-force speech by my friend and podcast co-host Tom Webster. Although we had mentioned this talk in a previous podcast episode, I had not seen Tom's presentation and I found his insights to be remarkable and very relevant to marketing today.

I thought our Marketing Companion fans needed to hear some of those insights. Using lessons from his political research, Tom makes the case that you can't win in marketing today by staying in the "treetops," by immersing yourself in dashboards. You need to get down in the trees and get back to basics by visiting customers. He argues for radical segmentation to the point that "personas" may be out of style. In the new episode we also discuss quite a remarkable revelation made by Dharmesh Shah, one of Hubspot's co-founders.

Shah said that content marketing is now pay-to-play and that content today has a "cover charge." In addition, you'll hear these snippets:

• "I'm feeling this in my loins"
• "I've found a younger podcast host."
• "We want our freedom, we want more Mark."

You'll have to hear it to believe it, I suppose. Here we go: 

• Click here to download the latest episode or subscribe in iTunes
• Complete Marketing Companion Episode Guide
• Click here for the show’s RSS feed – for Android listeners.
• Find the podcast on Stitcher

Please support our extraordinary sponsors. Our content is free because of their generosity. Many thanks to our friend Scott Monty for the awesome show intro. Be sure to check out his amazing newsletter The Full Monty and his new podcast available here: fullmontyshow.com.

88% of Consumers check online before making a purchasing decision. Brand24 gives you instant updates about what your customers are saying about you. Now you can give them timely responses and give your customers peace of mind. With Media monitoring you can search the web for key topics, trends, or discussions. Brand24 enables you to reach customers, so you can react and engage quickly to real-time comments made about your brand. Imagine having all your channels in one place - that’s Brand24. Plus, with Apple and Android apps, you can track customers, trends, and insights on the go. At Brand24.com/companion you’ll receive THREE MONTHS FREE, just for our podcast fans!

The results don’t lie: Typeform has a 57% completion rate on surveys, against the industry average of 20% (according to Survey Gizmo). The difference? Typeform’s one-question-at-a-time interface creates a memorable user experience. Use images, animated GIFs, and even video to express yourself more fully. And Typeform integrates with your favorite tools including Google Sheets, MailChimp, Airtable, and hundreds more. Remember: What you ask matters. How you ask is everything. Try this extraordinary application today and go to Typeform.com/companion for a special 30 percent off discount for our podcast fans!

SoloSegment's Site Search Inspector illuminates a huge blind spot for marketing teams and helps them unlock the revenue trapped there. If you're like 85% of companies, you have no idea what's going on in your site's search engine. You either don't have measurements or you ignore what you have. Up to 30% of your visitors search and they could be your best customers. Site Search Inspector targets the site search customer experience with a set of proprietary measures designed to improve success. They're so convinced you're going to improve your success rates, they've tripled the free trial period to 45-days and they're offering 10% off an annual subscription. You can find this special offer on solosegment.com/companion

In the latest episode of The Marketing Companion podcast, Tom Webster and I reveal our wishlist of what we would like to see "more of" and "less of" on the web. Among the topics we explore: Brand skepticism and brand bullying -- It seems like any time a company authentically tries to be "human" on the web it attracts an attack. If we want brands to show up in a more human way, shouldn't we reward them? Evangelism -- This word is a red flag for me. When anybody describes themselves as an evangelist for ... (fill in the latest social technology) ... I immediately wonder about the credibility of the person. "Evangelism" suggests you have a specific agenda and your goal is to "convert" instead of "lead."  The web need more business leaders and fewer evangelists. Long-term thinking -- Why Uber needs to be more like Nike. A brand develops from a collection of small interactions over time. Do brands still have the patience to be great? Whining -- Let's stop whining and start taking care of each other. Want to make the world a better place? Think about how you're showing up in your little corner of the world. ... and there's much more. Also, I have been experiencing chatbot envy. Apparently this is the way to go now, according to Facebook. So Tom and I decided we needed to get ahead of this curve by introducing Slurry™, the new Marketing Companion chatbot. It's not quite ready for primetime, but it is rather entertaining! Ready for some fun? Here we go. Resources mentioned in this podcast:

• New eBook from Affinio Understanding Your Alpha Audience
• Chevrolet Little Red Corvette tribute to Prince
• The speech This is Water by David Foster Wallace

Please support our extraordinary sponsors. Our content is free because of their generosity.

Many thanks to our friend Scott Monty for the awesome show intro. Be sure to check out his amazing newsletter The Full Monty, the best weekly curation of digital news.

BuzzSumo is the world’s best way to discover, analyze and amplify your content. Run over to BuzzSumo today for a 14 day free trial. Beyond data, BuzzSumo offers priceless insights to take your marketing to the next level. Check out BuzzSumo’s powerful technology to look at the hottest content trends down to the hour!

GoToWebinar – a leader in online events – is one of the easiest and most effective ways to connect and convert your target audience. You can generate qualified leads, establish thought leadership and build brand awareness for up to 1,000 attendees. Trusted by start-ups to global organizations worldwide, GoToWebinar helps businesses reach over 40 million people each year.

Affinio is now offering a FREE eBook co-authored with Mark Schaefer called How to Identify, Understand and Grow Your Ideal Content Audience. Check it out! Affinio is an advanced audience intelligence platform that leverages the interest graph to understand today’s consumers. Using our deep learning and custom network engine, Affinio is able to analyze these connections to develop a social fingerprint for each user.  Affinio’s customers use this data to: Build in-depth data-driven personas; Understand their audience; Conduct competitive analysis; Identify ideal influencers and sponsorship opportunities; Build data-driven content strategies that resonate; Place highly targeted ads with data-backed creative.

With all the changes in the world, it's a good time to pause and reflect on the ideal skillset for a marketing career. How has the pandemic changed marketing careers? What is the best way to keep your skills current? Google and other companies saying that a college degree is not important in some tech careers any more. Will that trend move to marketing as well?

Each year, Mary Meeker compiles a wide-ranging report on the top Internet trends on behalf of venture capitalist firm KPCB. The report goes on for 213 pages. And do you have time for that? No! That's why Tom Webster and I distilled the report into the profound marketing trends that will have the biggest impact on you. Some of the ideas we cover in our new podcast are:

• Why "viral" is more is more viral that ever and how Facebook Live will become the ultimate in reality TV and a revolution in journalism.
• Why self-driving cars will dramatically change our behaviors and unleash new personal productivity.
• The economic battle for your business may get down to music, movies, books, and switching costs. Will Facebook need to get into the music business?
• The game-changing technology of voice recognition accuracy.
• The malignant complexity of data and the vulnerability of a "single-source" supply channel.

Pretty interesting stuff? If that wasn't enough, it's the third anniversary of The Marketing Companion and Tom and I have a traditional gift change to remember. Let's get to it! Resources mentioned in the podcast: Jeff Jarvis Blog post on self-driving cars and the future of content

Please support our extraordinary sponsors. Our content is free because of their generosity.

Many thanks to our friend Scott Monty for the awesome show intro. Be sure to check out his amazing newsletter The Full Monty, the best weekly curation of digital news.

BuzzSumo is the world’s best way to discover, analyze and amplify your content. Run over to BuzzSumo today for a 14 day free trial. Beyond data, BuzzSumo offers priceless insights to take your marketing to the next level. Check out BuzzSumo’s powerful technology to look at the hottest content trends down to the hour!

Affinio is now offering a FREE eBook co-authored with Mark Schaefer called How to Identify, Understand and Grow Your Ideal Content Audience. Check it out, as well as their new free Discovery tool.  Affinio is an advanced audience intelligence platform that leverages the interest graph to understand today’s consumers. Using our deep learning and custom network engine, Affinio is able to analyze these connections to develop a social fingerprint for each user.  Affinio’s customers use this data to: Build in-depth data-driven personas; Understand their audience; Conduct competitive analysis; Identify ideal influencers and sponsorship opportunities; Build data-driven content strategies that resonate; Place highly targeted ads with data-backed creative.

Samsung announced a new AI technology that allows somebody to create "deep fake" videos of individuals with a single photograph. As the ease of this technology improves and costs come down, every business is vulnerable to advanced forms of deception. How do you prepare for this now? Mark Schaefer and Brooke ("Brookie Cookie") Sellas take on this critical topic.

In this unique episode, Mark and Brooke talk about the personal impact of 2020 on their lives, their most valuable lessons from a year gone wrong, and their hope for 2021.

Need a celebrity for your next event? New technology may allow you to bring Elvis, Marilyn Monroe or Elvis to your next customer meeting. Mark and Brooke look at this new trend as well as LinkedIn events, and the impact of digital detox ion the advertising industry.

Mark Schaefer and Mathew Sweezey have a wide-ranging conversation exploring the truth and consequences of crypto winter, co-creating brands, NFTs as the future of CRM and much more. This is an amazing opportunity to peer into the mechanics of Web3 with an industry futurist and thought leader. 

In this special episode, Mark Schaefer talks with Adidas global brand communications director Fabio Tambosi. We explore how the pandemic is re-defining sports, the consumer behaviors that are changing forever, the eCommerce surge, how Adidas pulled off the world's biggest social media hack, and business lessons from LeBron James.

Is the hustle culture still relevant in a pandemic era? What does gerbil food and CBD oil have to do with anything? And why are people seeing more UFOs? Mark and Brooke tackle these questions and more on the Marketing Companion's 200th episode!

New research from Ford shows that consumers are polarized, energized and a bit weirded out by what marketing is up to these days. Hosts Mark Schaefer and Tom Webster take a look at this new report and discuss the implications for business leaders. And they have a casting call for "Marketing Companion: The Movie." Who will play Mark?

For the first time since Facebook unseated MySpace in the hearts and minds of teens, ladies and gentlemen, we have a new social media champion -- Snapchat, at least if you're a young American (cue David Bowie). While Facebook continues to dominate overall social media usage, in a new report from Edison Research, Snapchat has eclipsed Facebook with social media users aged 12-24. In fact, 72 percent of them now use Snapchat and 26 percent cited this as the channel they use most often, up from 15 percent just a year ago, a mind-blowing statistic. At the same time, Facebook dropped from 43 percent to 32 percent as the most-used network for that age group. This new report prompted a fascinating discussion with Tom Webster on our Marketing Companion podcast. We also discuss:

• Why this trend is another way consumers are becoming "less available" to advertisers.
• Why influencer marketing is growing in importance and how it is transforming in this ad-free era.
• Is Snapchat social media as it was meant to be? It's unencumbered by Likes, status and brands (for now).
• New data on podcasting and why Tom Webster now believes this should be considered a "mainstream" channel.
• Why the "short attention span" view is a myth.
• The enigma of radio -- receivers are disappearing but reach is holding steady.
• Content in the future -- might be unrecognizable from where we are today.

Are you ready to hear more? Of course you are. Let's get to it. Resources cited in this episode:

• Edison's Infinite Dial research
• Mark Schaefer's review of 2016 SXSW highlights

Please support our extraordinary sponsors. Our content is free because of their generosity.

Many thanks to our friend Scott Monty for the awesome show intro. Be sure to check out his amazing newsletter The Full Monty, the best weekly curation of digital news.

BuzzSumo is the world’s best way to discover, analyze and amplify your content. Run over to BuzzSumo today for a 14 day free trial and use the coupon MARKETING-COMPANION to get 20% off BuzzSumo for the first six months. Beyond data, BuzzSumo offers priceless insights to take your marketing to the next level.

GoToWebinar – a leader in online events – is one of the easiest and most effective ways to connect and convert your target audience. You can generate qualified leads, establish thought leadership and build brand awareness for up to 1,000 attendees. Trusted by start-ups to global organizations worldwide, GoToWebinar helps businesses reach over 40 million people each year.

Our podcast is also brought to you by Voices Heard Media. Please check out this tremendous resource for scaling social media engagement. Take a look at building an engaged and relevant audience through innovative new games, contests, analytics, polling platforms, and other innovations.

In this limited edition series, Mark Schaefer introduces some of the innovative marketers featured in his book "Marketing Rebellion." Martin Lindstrom is a fascinating anthropologist who plops himself into the middle of homes and businesses to find the consumer secrets others miss. He is leading the way in a new way to view marketing leadership.

Mark Schaefer and Mathew Sweezey talk about some of the landmark marketing events of 2022 and project what might be important in the coming year. 

Mark Schaefer is a strategy consultant, college educator, keynote speaker and the author of 10 books including "KNOWN" and "Marketing Rebellion." His annual marketing retreat is The Uprising. 

Mathew Sweezey is the Co-Founder of Salesforces Web3 Studio where he helps Salesforce and their top customers transition into Web3. Mathew is also a best selling author, and avid adventurer. 

Hosts Mark Schaefer and Tom Webster tackle three huge topics: New regulations trying to get internet companies to conform globally to one country's standards, political stands in the marketing mix, and Apple's third act. Also, there is a surprise performance from Nipsey the smart speaker.

Host Mark Schaefer reflects on lesson learned in his ten years as an entrepreneur, and Tom Webster dissects why there are no new social media channels emerging.

A few months ago, my blog was a target for a denial of service attack. What this meant was that a "bot" was set up by somebody (in this case a person in The Netherlands) to hit my site over and over so many times that readers cannot access the blog. It was a random attack and this might seem like a pretty dumb business plan, but apparently a lot of companies are obsessed with breaking into my site ... and probably yours too. The result was that I had to spend many hours and thousands of dollars to recover from the problem and guard against future attacks. My hosting company set up an app that would send me an alert when somebody tried to log into my site five times in a row, I had to turn off these notifications when they started arriving every five minutes. That's right. New attacks were occurring hundreds of times a day! That gives you some idea of the relentless barrage of bad stuff coming at our websites. More seriously, some of these bad guys are getting through. You have probably read recently about a number of bloggers turning off their comments because of the new spam attacks that are getting through to their blogs. Anecdotally, it seems in the past few weeks more people are also suffering from websites that are hacked or crash under denial of service attacks. And of course, there have been several high-profile stories about companies experiencing serious data breaches that compromise their customers. All this makes me wonder ... Are the bad guys winning? In our latest Marketing Companion Podcast, Tom Webster and I explore this topic and much more. In fact, we begin with an enlightening discussion about the diplomatic opportunities for American bacon but then also get into:

• Are we seeing smarter spammers or the unintended consequences of Internet complexity?
• Does Google actually play an indirect role in spam attacks on small businesses?
• What is the business cost to keeping the bad guys away?
• Highlights from the new book Social Media Explained
• A trick to get to the heart of social media strategy
• New thoughts on measuring social media marketing ROI
• A discussion on who should be leading your social media marketing effort

Ready to listen to this discussion? It couldn't be easier to do

If you read through one piece of research this year it might just be a new report from the University of Pennsylvania on marketers, consumers, and privacy. The research is important not just for its surprising revelations about privacy but also for its unapologetic scolding of the way marketers have been mis-leading their customers. The new Annenberg survey results indicate that marketers are misrepresenting a large majority of Americans by claiming that Americans willingly provide personal information as a tradeoff for benefits they receive. To the contrary, the survey reveals most Americans do not agree that "data for discounts" is fair. The researchers say that Americans are resigned to giving up their data -- and that is why many appear to be engaging in tradeoffs. Americans believe it is "futile" to manage what companies can learn about them.

Getting furious with marketers

The study reveals that more than half do not want to lose control over their information but also believe this loss of control has already happened. By misrepresenting the American people and championing the tradeoff argument, marketers give policymakers false justifications for allowing the collection and use of all kinds of consumer data often in ways that the public find objectionable. The researchers write that the futility they found, combined with a broad public fear about what companies can do with the data, portends serious difficulties for the institution of consumer commerce. This remarkable study provided a source of rich conversation for Tom Webster and I and we captured this conversation on our latest Marketing Companion radio show. You won't want to miss our observations on:

• The shocking way marketers are manipulating our personal data
• How most Americans overestimate the extent to which the government protects them from discriminatory pricing
• Why honesty can serve as a point of differentiation
• Facebook's leadership role in this issue
• How companies are using personal information to institutionalize a profound form of discrimination

I believe this is one of the most illuminating discussions we have had on the podcast and I hope you'll tune into this crucial discussion:

Please support our extraordinary sponsors. Our content is free because of their generosity.

If you are looking for a cost-effective way to reach your audience, build your brand, and develop sales leads, try GoToWebinar, from Citrix. GoToWebinar is a great way to share live presentations right from your computer, reach, and influence an audience of hundreds of people. Its button-click simple and rock-solid reliable. All you have to do is work on your presentation. GoToWebinar does the rest. Learn more at GoToWebinar.com

gShift’s Web Presence Analytics platform provides agencies and brands with search, social and mobile content marketing data in one place. Monitor and report on an entire web presence. Create smarter, faster content through gShift’s proprietary data. Report on the engagement and performance of your content marketing investment.

Our podcast is also brought to you by Voices Heard Media. Please check out this tremendous resource for scaling social media engagement. Take a look at building an engaged and relevant audience through innovative new games, contests, analytics, polling platforms, and other innovations.

In this episode, hosts Mark Schaefer and Tom Webster talk about a new Schaefer book in the works, AI, hacking, and how companies are being forced to take a social, and even political, stand in the world today. This trend is undeniable, but flies in the face of classical economics. how does a marketer sort it out?

Have you tried The Marketing Companion podcast yet? People seem to love the humor and intelligence of our audio marketing adventures. If you have not listened in yet, this would be a great edition to begin with. In this show, Tom Webster and I were far too caffeinated to stick to one subject so we decided to go through a grab bag of current topics including: Erasing yourself from Google. New European Union legislation on "the right to be forgotten" allows people to remove themselves from search results. Why hasn't this been an issue in the U.S,?  And what happens when you have the ability to remove yourself from history? There are also some profound implications for marketers and content creators. Buyer personas -- Tom and I open up a "mental can of worms" when we discuss the use and perhaps over-use of buyer personas and the difference between "audience" and "buyers." Are you sure you know who your buyers are? Are personas always necessary? Do personas kill great content? LinkedIn blogging -- An important source of business content or more Content Shock? Tom and I disagree on this topic. Content inspiration -- Tom and I share key tips for finding new topic ideas for our blogs. My goodness. It is a veritable cornucopia of marketing delight! No time to waste now, click here to dive in:

Note August 18, 2014: Since we did this podcast, Shel Holtz added this comment for clarification which I wanted to add to the show notes: "I just listened to the latest Marketing Companion (which I enjoy tremendously). I'm sure you've heard this by now, but Google does not ask anyone to remove content based on the European Right to be Forgotten. They're sending notices to people whose content is affected, but all Google does is remove the link -- and only in Europe. The metaphor: They're not asking the library to remove any books, but they ARE removing the card from the card catalog so the book can't be found. For really good, eloquent rants on this, listen to Jeff Jarvis on recent episodes of This Week in Google." 

With OpenAi's revolutionary new offering, everyone has the ability to create custom applications -- just by typing commands in your own style. You can create whatever you can imagine! Everyone can be a coder now. Let's cut through the hype and explore the possibilities and constraints of this remarkable technology. Mark Schaefer hosts Paul Roetzer, founder of the Marketing AI Institute. 

How could writing a book help you establish thought leadership, open new opportunities, and grow your business? Hosts Mark Schaefer and Tom Webster explore these issues and open the Marketing Companion Holiday Catalogue for exciting gift "ideas."

In the latest Marketing Companion, we take a "behind the scenes" examination of The Content Code, a new book that charts a course for winning in a world of overwhelming information density. But along the way, Tom Webster and I also discuss ...

• A few takeaways from SXSW 2015
• The virtures of a sub-premium dating service
• Why the four benefits of traditional publishing are obsolete, and what I did about it.
• The reason why this is the hardest time to be in marketing -- ever.
• The Alpha Audience -- Why this is the bedrock of your business.
• Why you should be writing for the smallest possible audience.
• Why it's time to re-evaluate the sacred cow of SEO.
• Why the success of digital marketing might rely on gray social media.

Wow. That sounds like one great podcast, doesn't it? Well let's stop this dilly-dallying and get right to it!

Please support our extraordinary sponsors. Our content is free because of their generosity.

gShift’s Web Presence Analytics platform provides agencies and brands with search, social and mobile content marketing data in one place. Monitor and report on an entire web presence. Create smarter, faster content through gShift’s proprietary data. Report on the engagement and performance of your content marketing investment.

Our podcast is also brought to you by Voices Heard Media. Please check out this tremendous resource for scaling social media engagement. Take a look at building an engaged and relevant audience through innovative new games, contests, analytics, polling platforms, and other innovations.

It seems like everywhere you look the news is bad for the ad industry. In just the last few weeks, the news has reported ...

• The stock value for many large agencies is in decline as company billings fall.
• Traditional ad impressions are down almost everywhere as newspapers, radio, and magazines struggle to survive.
• Many of their customers -- the big CPG brands -- are cutting ad spending as their most valuable products struggle to be relevant to today's digital consumers.
• Ad blocking continues to rise in developed nations (Ad Age called it an "apocalypse")
• Many companies are bringing the rising areas of influence and content marketing in-house to save costs and maintain direct relationships.

Like I said ... a mess. What's the future of Madison Avenue and how does it turn things around in this rapidly changing world? That would be a fun discussion to have ... which is exactly what Tom Webster and I do in this new episode of The Marketing Companion. You won't want to miss this scintillating analysis!

Resource mentioned in this episode WSJ article on advertising decine Please support our extraordinary sponsors. Our content is free because of their generosity. Many thanks to our friend Scott Monty for the awesome show intro.

Be sure to check out his amazing newsletter The Full Monty and his new podcast available here: fullmontyshow.com.

The results don’t lie: Typeform has a 57% completion rate on surveys, against the industry average of 20% (according to Survey Gizmo). The difference? Typeform’s one-question-at-a-time interface creates a memorable user experience. Use images, animated GIFs, and even video to express yourself more fully. And Typform integrates with your favorite tools including Google Sheets, MailChimp, Airtable, and hundreds more. Remember: What you ask matters. How you ask is everything. Go to Typeform.com/companion to receive a special 30 percent off discount for our podcast fans!

Between 30 percent and 50 percent of your online visitors use your website's search function. But analysis proves that customers rarely see the precise content that leads to a sale. Why leave this conversion opportunity to chance?

Deliver search results that create sales conversions by deploying the powerful machine learning intelligence of Site Search Inspector from SoloSegment. Site Search Inspector can be set up quickly and continuously "learns" how to improve your search conversions.

Visit the SoloSegment discount page to get 10 percent off your order for Marketing Companion fans!

Mark and Brooke dissect some heavy issues surrounding the legal, ethical, and political issues surrounding social media news, ads and fact-checking. Practically, what can be done? The hosts also explode the "OK Boomer" craze, marketing leadership imperatives, and the 10 words that absolutely indicate fake news.

Mark Schaefer is a strategy consultant, college educator, keynote speaker, and the author of 10 books including "KNOWN," “Belonging to the Brand,” and "Marketing Rebellion." His annual marketing retreat is The Uprising.

For more of Mark’s insights every week, subcribe to his award-winning blog. Mark also offers classes in personal branding and professional speaking.

Jay Acunzo is an author, speaker, and host of the podcast Unthinkable -- the show about marketers who trusted their intuition, not the best practices, and all the unconventional, refreshing things they did to build their brands and leave their legacies. Learn more and find a Starter Pack of episodes at https://jayacunzo.com/unthinkable-podcast

There are so many shifting sands on the marketing landscape that it might seem overwhelming. But there are two trends that deserve to be on your radar screen and that is the topic of the latest scintillating edition of The Marketing Companion. After Tom and I enjoy a non-traditional gift exchange for the one-year anniversary of the podcast, we dissect what we believe to be important trends to consider moving forward:

1) The use of "big data" to actually predict mega-trends and market outcomes

2) 3D Printing.

The second one might seem a little strange to list as a marketing trend but if you listen to the logic on the podcast I think you'll agree that this could have a huge impact on cost and price, delivery, availability, sourcing, distribution models ... well, just about everything marketers should care about. What's that you say? You want to get to the freaking podcast and fast? Well here it is, with no further delay!

In this episode Mark and Tom talk about some of their favorite marketing stories and lessons on the marketing genius of KISS, why intrapreneurship won't work, and how singer Tom Jones is a master networker.

There is a small edit needed here. Brooke's audio weirdly cut out and then we resumed Marketing dress for success Has Zoom changed the rules for business decorum or should do the rules of "Dress for Success" still apply? Brooke and Mark debate this plus in-home drones and when the power of celebrity endorsements work TOO well!

Mark and Tom look at surprising new data on hard-to-find marketing skills, the idea of creating a career as a social media influencer, and the myth of employee advocacy.

Mark Schaefer and Amanda Russell dive into their consulting practice secrets. How do they keep the clients coming in? When do you "fire" a customer? What is their best consulting advice? All this and more in this jam-packed episode. 

If you've been following popular culture at all, you've probably learned by now of the downfall (at least temporarily) of YouTube's greatest star, PewDie Pie. PewDiePie, a Swedish gamer and humorist, is the first person alive to hit 10 billion views on YouTube. He pulls in more money each year than most Hollywood movie stars and he's the epicenter of YouTube culture. And then it all went south. The Wall Street Journal documented at least nine of his videos that had anti-Semitic messages. Two in particular went viral, one were two people in Africa held up a provocative sign and another where an actor dressed as Jesus explained that Hitler had done nothing wrong. The outfall was swift. An affiliate of Disney terminated his contract with a thud. His career was over, right? Not so fast. Here's the rest of the story.

• In his initial apology video, PewDiePie seemed stunned. He said, "What I really don't understand is how you people did not get the joke." In a second video he railed at The Wall Street Journal for not understanding new media and accused the organization of targeting him.
• Millions of online fans around the world defended him, and after the article, his subscriber base increased at its fastest rate ever.
• Several journalists also came to his defense, including a prominent Jewish writer.
• Nonplussed, PewDiePie created a video where he goes back in time and kills Hitler to clear his name. It received over 6.5 million views.

On the surface this makes no sense. How can people rally behind a person who sponsored those kind of messages? The truth is deeper, more subtle, and there is a profound message here for every company employing Millennials or selling to them. Something has changed. This is the topic of a fascinating new episode of The Marketing Companion. Any show that begins with rich Corinthian leather and ends with Hitler has to be interesting (you have to hear it to believe it). I think this is one of better shows and it pulls in some help from Chris Brogan. If you've never listened to the Marketing Companion before, give it a try. If you don't laugh in the first 90 seconds I'll give you your money back. Here we go ...

Please support our extraordinary sponsors. Our content is free because of their generosity.

Many thanks to our friend Scott Monty for the awesome show intro. Be sure to check out his amazing newsletter The Full Monty and his new podcast available here: fullmontyshow.com.

 BuzzSumo is the world’s best way to discover, analyze and amplify your content. Run over to BuzzSumo today for a 14 day free trial. Beyond data, BuzzSumo offers priceless insights into content discovery, monitoring, influencers and outreach, content research and planning, and competitor research. Find out why so many Marketing Companion fans are now hooked on Buzzsumo. Check out BuzzSumo’s powerful technology to look at the hottest content trends down to the hour!

My Marketing Companion co-host Tom Webster told me that within a few weeks, three of his clients all came to him with the same question: How do we get our content discovered? The answer you typically hear in our space is "create quality content and it will rise to the top" but that does not work any more. Perhaps it never has. There are content discovery algorithms and bots working behind the scenes that hold us in our place. The digital world is presented to us in an ever-shrinking filter. Tom uses some examples from the music industry to show how content is starting to rise to the top through a never-ending popularity "loop." This reality  -- and how companies are dealing with it -- makes for an incredibly interesting episode of our podcast.

Content discovery strategies

Tom makes the point that in our digital world so much of the content we see is issued to us based on some popularity formula that we don't have the experience of surprise and delight we used to experience looking through a record store, a book store, or a magazine stand. Our options for discovery might are more limited in the digital sphere than in the "real world!" And that makes it harder for new content, new brands, and new ideas to be discovered. What we want is what we know, what is familiar. This implies that the goal for marketing in this environment is to create "habit," more than "loyalty." We also get into a great discussion on differentiation, segmentation, and lessons from a new New York Times blueprint to get their content discovered in the future through technology, quality and new content forms and new skill sets. You won't want to miss this!

In our show, we also introduce our new sponsor CoSchedule, the world's greatest marketing scheduling utility. Ranked as the best business tool built by a startup on Entrepreneur.com, you can receive your exclusive Marketing Companion 30-day free trial by heading to www.coschedule.com/marketing-companion.

And, on the lighter side, I reveal to Tom surprising common business phrases I picked up on my recent visit to Eastern Europe. Ready? Here we go ...

Please support our extraordinary sponsors.

Our content is free because of their generosity. Many thanks to our friend Scott Monty for the awesome show intro. Be sure to check out his amazing newsletter The Full Monty and his new podcast available here: fullmontyshow.com.

CoSchedule is the world's number one marketing calendar utility, used by more than 8,000 companies. The application allows users to build out their entire marketing strategy from one master calendar, collaborate with their teams, and streamline their entire execution process in one place. CoSchedule is the web’s most popular marketing calendar and the fastest growing startup in North Dakota. Ranked as the best business tool built by a startup on Entrepreneur.com. Get your Marketing Companion 30-day free trial by heading to www.coschedule.com/marketing-companion.

BuzzSumo is the world’s best way to discover, analyze and amplify your content. Run over to BuzzSumo today for a 14 day free trial. Beyond data, BuzzSumo offers priceless insights into content discovery, monitoring, influencers, and outreach, content research and planning, and competitor research. It is an indispensable application for content research, analysis and SEO. Find out why so many Marketing Companion fans are now hooked on Buzzsumo. Check out BuzzSumo’s powerful technology to look at the hottest content trends down to the hour!

The pandemic has created an era of unintended consequences. In this episode, Mark and Brooke present 10 non-obvious emerging trends that could present new opportunities for marketers everywhere. In this exciting show, Mark challenges you to see the world through the lens of "fractures in the status quo."

New co-host Andy Crestodina unwraps the hottest topic on the web these days — the impact of AI on SEO. Most websites are starting to get hits from AI sites, and Mark Schaefer reports that he's gained new customers. But what is the secret to success? Mark and Andy also debate LinkedIn newsletters — is it too late to find success? Is it robbing readers from your website?

In 2012, I escaped the crazy crowds of SXSW to have dinner with my friend Tom Webster and his wife Tamsen. We had a magical evening and at the end of our time together I commented that I wish we had recorded the conversation. A lot of people would have loved to hear that debate! A year later, I was thinking about starting a podcast. It was a difficult decision because I didn't want to begin anything that would distract me from creating great content on the blog. I decided I needed a podcasting partner and there was literally only one person I could do it with -- Tom. When I asked him, he didn't hesitate. Would he want to do a podcast with me? "Absolutely," he said. And with that one word, we began a four-year journey together that has culminated this week in the 100th episode of our show. For 99 episodes, we have torn into marketing's biggest issues but for this milestone, we asked our friend Douglas Burdette to interview us about the process and perils of creating 100 episodes of a podcast. I think you'll enjoy a bit of reflection on our show and as always, we can't let a show go by without having a good bit of fun along the way. Thank you so much for supporting us in this journey. We never take you for granted and we'll always be committed to creating the world's most entertaining business podcast for you!

Please support our extraordinary sponsors. Our content is free because of their generosity.

Many thanks to our friend Scott Monty for the awesome show intro. Be sure to check out his amazing newsletter The Full Monty and his new podcast available here: fullmontyshow.com.

BuzzSumo is the world’s best way to discover, analyze and amplify your content. Run over to BuzzSumo today for a 14 day free trial. Beyond data, BuzzSumo offers priceless insights into content discovery, monitoring, influencers and outreach, content research and planning, and competitor research. Find out why so many Marketing Companion fans are now hooked on Buzzsumo. Check out BuzzSumo’s powerful technology to look at the hottest content trends down to the hour!

We've had a great year on The Marketing Companion podcast and Tom Webster and I thought we would end 2014 with a bit of fun. We've compiled a few of the most hilarious highlights from our podcast so you can ring in 2015 with a laugh.  Nothing But the Funny Bits features some of our most popular "products" that got us laughing the hardest, including:

• Google Pants -- The Party in your pants!
• Ass Ads -- Monetizing your wearable technology
• Mark and Tom's first movie "Drone Wars: Rise of the Machines" starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and Christian Bale as Jeff Bezos.
• Prickstarter: When the BS is Getting Thick, Come be a Prick
• Mark and Tom's Darn Good Content including Daily Affirmations, Cats & Kids, and Breaking Bieber.
• Americans versus Europeans: Who has the best underwear?
• Social media booktitles you will never see
• Get a Room, The social media platform for lovers
• The Worst Apps in the World
• Sticker Shock, our therapy program for Facebook sticker addiction
• The Marketing Companion Holiday Catalog including Social Media Action Figures, Facebelt and Magic Seth Ball

Thanks so much for supporting us and being part of our podcast in 2014. If you enjoyed our work, tell your friends, leave a review on iTunes, and help us spread the word! We enjoy bringing you the podcast and look forward to another fun and fascinating year of marketing discussions in 2015!

Please support our extraordinary sponsors. Our content is free because of their generosity.

gShift’s Web Presence Analytics platform provides agencies and brands with search, social and mobile content marketing data in one place. Monitor and report on an entire web presence. Create smarter, faster content through gShift’s proprietary data. Report on the engagement and performance of your content marketing investment.

Our podcast is also brought to you by Voices Heard Media. Please check out this tremendous resource for scaling social media engagement. Take a look at building an engaged and relevant audience through innovative new game, analytics, and polling platforms.

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In this very personal episode of The Marketing Companion, hosts Mark Schaefer and Tom Webster reveal their own best marketing successes and failures. Learn why desperation may be a key to success, how money is made in the margins, and why a dial-up internet connection destroyed a great business. Mark and Tom also announce plans for the first human-powered self-driving vehicle!

Mark Schaefer is a strategy consultant, college educator, keynote speaker, and the author of 10 books including "KNOWN," “Belonging to the Brand,” and "Marketing Rebellion." His annual marketing retreat is The Uprising.

For more of Mark’s insights every week, subcribe to his award-winning blog. Mark also offers classes in personal branding and professional speaking.

Sara Wilson is a journalist-turned-social-marketer (former Facebook & Instagram) who works with brands, publications, and platforms like YouTube, Nike, Bumble, the New York Times and many others find, engage and grow obsessive communities across digital channels through her consultancy SW Projects. Sara also writes frequently on the subject of digital marketing trends; she coined the term "digital campfires" in the Harvard Business Review to describe the types of spaces where young audiences are gathering online today, and often speaks and leads workshops on this and other topics related to social innovation, web3, and Gen Z consumption trends to companies around the world such as Microsoft and McKinsey.

In an unprecedented solo performance, Mark Schaefer discusses his thoughts on where our marketing priorities will be in the next few years. is the metaverse still alive and kicking? Tune it to find out! 

Marketing legend Sandy Carter joins the show to talk about the hottest topic in marketing: Web3. Is it over-hyped, the future of our field, or a little of both. Tune in to hear Mark Schaefer and Sandy sort it out. 

Machine learning is entering the world of everyday marketing helping us streamline tasks and free up time for our employees and customers. The tech is getting simpler and less expensive. Mark and Brooke look at how this can be applied to our everyday marketing lives. They also cover an unexpected new retail trend and discuss tech optimism versus tech pessimism.

In this episode, Mark and Tom review new research that points to vast opportunities in the podcast world. This show goes deep into podcasting reality and unearths data-driven insights all podcasters need to consider to develop and grow their shows.

Hosts Mark Schaefer and Tom Webster have been creating written, video, and audio content for years. In this episode, they share with you some of the lessons they have learned from the mistakes and victories they have experienced along the way.

In this special episode, Mark Schaefer says farewell to Tom Webster as the long-time co-host of The Marketing Companion and announces plans for a re-boot of the podcast.

Too many times companies are saying "whoops" after introducing new ideas. Testing new ideas becomes complicated when the sample size has to be large and consumers don't want to be treated like lab rats. Mark Schaefer and Tom Webster unpack this vital issue. They also discuss the opportunity to turn Marketing Companion into a television series.

Intro music credits: Heartwarming by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) Source: http://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/index.html?isrc=USUAN1100207 Artist: http://incompetech.com/

In this special episode, Mark Schaefer discusses the stressful realities of the pandemic on his life and urges listeners to consider their historical narrative.

NFTs have been in the news so much lately, and there's so much to learn! In this show, Mark Schaefer and Mathew Sweezey talk about NFTs as a tool to build community, loyalty, and brand identity through some exciting new use cases.

In this new episode, Mark Schaefer has a big announcement about the future of the Marketing Companion. Mark and Brooke discuss the evolution of branding as well as trending news from Peloton and Facebook.

Over the past decade, companies and executives have re-discovered the power of incorporating public speaking into the marketing mix. Some of the advantages include:

• Creating high-quality content that can be leveraged in many places
• Cost-effective way to reach a targeted audience with a message
• Good PR opportunities.
• Building a personal brand that also can accentuate a product and company brand (think of Richard Branson)
• Leveraging a position of personal thought leadership to promote a company

This growing trend has impacted marketing strategies and transformed the professional speaking industry. One speaker told me that it is more difficult getting high-level paying engagements now because so many companies are willing to offer their executives as speakers for free. This opportunity is not often evaluated in terms of marketing strategy so Tom Webster and I thought it would be an ideal topic for our latest edition of The Marketing Companion podcast. We had a lot of fun on this episode and begin by rolling out a new content marketing "product" that includes "Breaking Bieber." You have to hear it to believe it! But we also roll up our sleeves and get into a discussion full of tips on how you can be more effective in adding public speaking to your marketing mix:

• Ideas on how to be a more effective and entertaining presenter
• Structuring your speech for maximum impact
• Overcoming nerves -- The introvert's guide to public speaking
• Rule the slides -- Keys to preparation
• Is your speech intellectual property that needs to be protected or do you want it to go viral?
• Leveraging speaking-related content in other marketing formats

Are you ready to rumble? Of course you are!  

Folks mentioned in this podcast:

Mitch Joel

Tom Martin

Tamsen Webster

For decades, I've been a big fan of the sports channel ESPN. They have a great brand -- serious about sports, but not too serious about themselves. Their bold style of storytelling went far beyond the cable TV channel to web, print, apps, satellite radio, social media, and podcasts. They created exceptional content, bought into premium sports events, and seemed to be nurturing their brand as effectively as any company. From a content standpoint, they seemed to be doing everything right in the digital age. And they just laid-off 100 people. It just made no sense. ESPN is an iconic standard of multimedia content excellence. If they can't make money with their content, who can? What went wrong?

The content monetization challenge

When I dug into it, it became clear that the ESPN story provides a great case study about the bigger picture of content, branding, the expense of producing content, the success of Facebook and mobile ads, channel fragmentation, the transition from advertising to subscription models, "cord-cutting" in the television business, and more. It turns out that this is not just an ESPN issue. It's a content monetization issue. ESPN's parent company Disney said that interest in the sports network has never been higher -- it's just that the subscription audience has moved online where the content is free and ads have not caught up. This ad-industry fall-out may just be the tip of the iceberg. A recent New York Times article points out that TV ad spending is still probably too high and out of touch with the reality of where consumers are spending their time -- online and social media. Exploring the problems with ESPN reveals the rifts in the dynamic world of content and business today. And, it made a fantastic podcast topic! Please join me and Tom Webster as we dissect this case study, the content monetization challenge ... and the world's worst games. Ready? Please support our extraordinary sponsors.

Our content is free because of their generosity. 

Many thanks to our friend Scott Monty for the awesome show intro. Be sure to check out his amazing newsletter The Full Monty and his new podcast available here: fullmontyshow.com.

SaneBox is like a super-smart assistant who’s been with you for years and knows what’s important to you. It moves unimportant emails from the inbox into a new folder and summarizes them in a digest, where you can quickly bulk-process them. An average SaneBox customer saves 12+ hours/month. It works with any email provider, client or device. And we have a special offer for you. Simply go to sanebox.com/marketing to receive a risk-free 14-day trial and $25 off your initial subscription! With glowing reviews from TechCrunch, Forbes, The New York Times and emailers everywhere, you will fall in love with email again.

BuzzSumo is the world’s best way to discover, analyze and amplify your content. Run over to BuzzSumo today for a 14 day free trial. Beyond data, BuzzSumo offers priceless insights into content discovery, monitoring, influencers, and outreach, content research and planning, and competitor research. It is an indispensable application for content research, analysis and SEO. Find out why so many Marketing Companion fans are now hooked on Buzzsumo. Check out BuzzSumo’s powerful technology to look at the hottest content trends down to the hour!

The blogging life used to be so easy. Just five years ago, a blog was still a novelty and if you started one, you would probably occupy a niche in your industry. But since then, the world has conspired to make blogging very difficult ... "Content marketing" also means "content overload," -- this is a crowded and noisy field for newcomers. The dynamic world of search engines and SEO has made it complicated for bloggers to become discovered. New entertainment alternatives and social media distractions have probably challenged blogging's role as the king of content. Even technology like smartphones has made blog consumption, sharing, and commenting more difficult. What's a blogger to do? That's the question Tom Webster and I tackle in our latest Marketing Companion Podcast. We explore the topics of:

• The challenge of information density
• The entertainment edge - Next big thing for blogging?
• Expertise and the content saturation index
• Content quality, optimization, or both?
• The most important blog metric ... perhaps the only one?
• How much time should you put into promotion versus content quality?

This is a fascinating topic and we cover a lot of ground in just 30 minutes! I think you'll love the podcast and hope you'll also leave a comment below. Can't wait to listen?

Of course you can't! Well here it is right now!

There are several blog posts referenced in this podcast so here are some handy links if you want more depth on this subject:

From Mark: How the physics of social media is killing your marketing strategy From Tom: When Content Marketing stops working

From Marcus Sheridan: A discussion of Content Saturation Index