My Introduction to Digital Threads: A New Playbook for Marketing Success

Ever wondered how to master digital-first marketing? Join me as we explore the transformative world of digital marketing in my latest episode! This week, I introduce my fifth book, Digital Threads: The Small Business and Entrepreneur Playbook for Digital-First Marketing.

I literally do a reading of the introduction and first chapter of the book to help set the stage of how the Covid-19 pandemic reshaped consumer behavior, pushing businesses to adopt a digital-first approach. I help you unlock insights on navigating the new digital landscape, with a special focus on creating genuine connections online.

Grab a free preview of my new book here: https://nealschaffer.com/free-preview-ebook-digital-threads/

and join my Kickstarter campaign for exclusive rewards here: https://nealschaffer.com/kickstarter

Stay ahead, stay digital – check it out now!

Grab a copy of Digital Threads during its Kickstarter pre-sales campaign here; https://nealschaffer.com/kickstarter

Learn More:

• Join My Digital First Mastermind: https://nealschaffer.com/membership/
• Learn about My Fractional CMO Consulting Services: https://nealschaffer.com/cmo
• Download My Free Ebooks Here: https://nealschaffer.com/freebies/
• Subscribe to my YouTube Channel: https://youtube.com/nealschaffer
• All My Podcast Show Notes: https://podcast.nealschaffer.com

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:54

Digital Threads the small business and entrepreneur playbook for digital-first marketing. This is my next, fifth book that I've been working on for several months that I'm excited to introduce to you on this special edition of the your Digital Marketing Coach podcast.

Speaker 2: 1:13

Digital social media content, influencer marketing, blogging, podcasting, vlogging, tiktoking, linkedin, twitter, facebook, instagram, youtube, seo, sem, ppc, email marketing there's a lot to cover. Whether you're a marketing professional, entrepreneur or business owner, you need someone you can rely on for expert advice. Good thing you've got Neil on your side, because Neil Schaefer is your digital marketing coach, helping you grow your business with digital first marketing, one episode at a time. This is your digital marketing coach and this is Neil Schafer.

Speaker 1: 2:01

Hey everybody, this is your digital marketing coach, neil Schafer. Welcome to episode number 372 of this podcast. I'd like to begin with the latest in industry news, a few interesting things going on vis-a-vis Google. For those of you that don't know, google has reversed their stance on third-party cookies. So originally, cookies that allow us to retarget around the web via ads and be able to use cookies for other purposes. There was going to be a move by Google to really stop using these altogether, which would have made it really hard to do a lot of things that we're used to doing in digital advertising, but Google has now reversed their policy. So it's still important to stay compliant with privacy regulations like GDPR and CCPA, and obviously you want to continue to collect first-party data, but this means that life will continue as usual for those of us that are doing digital advertising. So I think that was very positive news. In other, I believe, positive news, google saw their search revenue grow by 14% in Q2 of 2024. They saw just increase in search ads in both mobile and desktop and in YouTube ads, so I think this is a very strong number. That shows that there is still a lot of businesses advertising on Google for a lot of good reasons. Right, there's tremendous ROI that could be had through digital advertising and, despite the emergence of generative AI, the fact that Google is still able to serve ads and benefit the businesses that are advertising there. I think that's a really positive sign for the industry.

Speaker 1: 3:45

On another note, there was a very, very interesting article from Marketing Charts that really detailed this report from an organization called YouGov. Now, obviously, depending on the generation that you want to reach, you need to choose the right social media site. So it should come as no surprise that only 13% of weekly Facebook users in the US are of Gen Z. I was actually surprised to hear that there were that many. On the other hand, baby boomers and Gen Xers make up 56% of its weekly users, and Snapchat and TikTok amongst younger users comprise 75 and 71%. So very, very interesting to see that there's actually more younger users on TikTok than there are older users on Facebook. But if you want the latest data in terms of demographics and social networks, make sure you check out marketingchartscom. Obviously, if you sign up to my weekly newsletter, neilschafercom slash newsletter, you will get all the links and information included in this latest news. These are just some of the things that I am looking at Some of the other things that I talk about in the newsletter this week are Google sharing tips on improving SEO through internal links. I think that this should be common sense, but if not and you're looking for some SEO advice, I found that to be solid advice. I am very big on internal linking for a lot of reasons and I do it religiously at my own site, neilschafercom.

Speaker 1: 5:14

Also an interesting article from SEMrush on AI for Facebook ads. I have been doing a new campaign for Facebook ads for the special preview edition of Digital Threads. That is a special free preview that you can download, and I'll make sure to include that link in the show notes as well. And I could go into ChatGPT, upload the creative and say please make a title description and all in the headline and all the other things that you need for Facebook ads, and ChatGPT thought they did a really good job of doing that for five different variations based on the different visual aspects of each of those five ads. This is using ChachiBT's latest 4.0 version. The article actually goes into a tool that I have mentioned on my own blog called adcreativeai that actually will go ahead and create the visuals for your Facebook ad using AI as well. So this is how far we've come with AI, as you can imagine, and I thought it was a really, really great article from SEMrush. Once again, all this is saving us time and potentially improving quality so that we can invest our time and resources in maybe more important things for us as marketers and as entrepreneurs and business people. So those are the highlights for this week. Once again, neilschafercom slash newsletter if you're not part of my newsletter subscribers.

Speaker 1: 6:40

On personal news, I just came back from a week in Tokyo. I did a presentation on digital threads for the first time, and in Japanese, no less, but that went over really well. It's very interesting to see how certain chapters resonate with certain audiences. This was a B2B marketing group people in the software industry. A lot of people in SaaS marketers were there, and Japan is still really far behind when it comes to digital marketing in B2B and the chapter that really resonated with them was actually the one on own media, on creating a library of content. Really really interesting to hear people talk about that. After that event, I also did a guest lecture at a university there, and it's a unique university filled with students that really take four years of entrepreneurship classes with the idea that after four years they're going to launch their own company. So very excited to speak in front of young entrepreneurs, went through digital Threads and also introduced my next book after Digital Threads, which is going to be on LinkedIn, and as part of my time there they actually had to create a LinkedIn profile from scratch. So really good to see them progress on that. I also met with a potential Japanese publisher for Digital Threads and that was very positive as well.

Speaker 1: 7:57

So, all in all, a very, very targeted few days in Tokyo, but time well spent Back here, a little jet lagged but excited to be moving forward with my own book. And if you are subscribed to my newsletter, you will know that the Kickstarter has officially launched. So if you go to neilschafercom slash Kickstarter, you will be forwarded to the Kickstarter that actually has already been funded. So I set a fairly low goal of $500 because to me it's not about the amount of money, but really getting this book into the hands of my fans as soon as possible, and that launched on my way to Tokyo, literally at the LA airport, and I'm really happy to announce that five days ago it already reached this $500 goal and we're now above $600. I have created what are called stretch goals, so if we reach a thousand dollars, I am going to be including a free one hour. Ask me anything, zoom call. That is just for the backers of my campaign. So if you haven't backed it yet, there's never been a greater time. It ends on August 8th, but once again, this will give you a chance to get this book in your hands, in your ears, in your Kindle device or any other ebook device before anyone else does, as the tentative date for selling this on Amazon and worldwide is going to be October 1st. So head over to neilschafercom slash Kickstarter if you want to back the campaign and, with that said, today's episode, just like I did.

Speaker 1: 9:27

Well, it's been four years since I introduced you all to the Age of Influence. I wonder how many of you were listening back then, in the midst of COVID, when I introduced that book. I want to give you a formal introduction to digital threads by actually reading you some portions of it to give you a feel for the book. So, as I've mentioned before, this book really is about my experience as a fractional CMO since the days of COVID, really since publishing the Age of Influence. So I'd like to read to you the introduction and then chapter one of part one. This book actually has 20 different chapters in it and the chapters one and two are really setting the stage for what the book is going to be about. If you go to my Kickstarter page, you can actually see the table of contents to get a better feel, and actually on that Kickstarter page there is a link that will allow you to download the free preview. So make sure you check that out.

Speaker 1: 10:21

But let me give you a little taste of what this book is going to be about and hopefully just this reading alone will serve you in other ways, without your even needing to potentially buy the book, which obviously I hope you do. But that is optional. So here we go. I've yet to record the audio book for this book, so this is going to be good practice as well and really give you a feel for what the audio book is going to sound like. So introduction how the heck am I supposed to promote my new book from my home office in lockdown? Like you, I also struggled with juggling all the aspects of digital marketing to grow my business. My journey of writing this book began when my last book, the Age of Influence was published on March 17th 2020. Perfect timing, right that week, for those that don't remember saw most of the world grind to a halt with the pandemic Two days later my hometown and all of California would go into mandatory lockdown.

Speaker 1: 11:16

Our post-pandemic lives will never go back to how they were. One lasting result has been the acceleration of the digital consumer. This brings new challenges for established companies. It has also led to a landscape full of opportunities for those entrepreneurs and small businesses who smartly pivot. The COVID-19 restrictions affected companies and consumers in different ways. Companies could no longer count on people to come to their stores and were forced to shift more to the digital realm. Communicating with customers and potential clients became a purely online, digital-first proposition. On the other side of the transaction, consumers were engaging with companies in new ways while turning their time and resources to be more present online. These shifts in consumer culture won't go back into the box. They're loose. They're already spurring the next change in culture.

Speaker 1: 12:07

Social media had been around for well over a decade before the pandemic lockdowns. As people, we had already become accustomed to communicating there. As companies, we had acclimated to it. The lockdown came at the time of TikTok's emergence, perhaps playing into it. Now we become used to consuming what marketers commonly call short-form videos. Authentic and raw content is in. Aspirational content is out. Influencers like to be called content creators. Now those shifts in the culture presented challenges to every business, including my own.

Speaker 1: 12:41

Because of the emerging lockdowns, I had to find other ways to promote my new book. Book tours were out. My usual speaking engagements were canceled. Some moved online, but the engagement and ability to connect with attendees was just not the same. At the time of that first lockdown, I had advised and taught others for over a decade on how to use social media for marketing.

Speaker 1: 13:02

The pandemic, coinciding with the release of my book, meant I had to re-examine my own marketing strategies. I realized I hadn't covered my own digital basis. In fact, apart from social media, they've been long neglected, without the ability to meet people face-to-face and engage with them at conferences. I had no choice but to adopt a digital-first approach myself. I defined the concept digital-first marketing as a mindset that forces us to think about how we can build and grow our businesses. If we had to do it 100% digitally In a virtual world with a virtual store which is what some retail outlets felt like during the pandemic how would you promote your business? You would primarily, if not solely, conduct your marketing online. This places digital marketing as the first step, not an afterthought. To adapt to this isn't to prepare for another pandemic. It's about adapting to the digital reality of today.

Speaker 1: 13:58

From my home office in Southern California, I had no choice but to explore other strategies I hadn't seriously considered before to promote my book. This gave me a chance to see the world of marketing in a new and refreshing way. While some marketers might have been jaded by old school digital marketing, such as search engine optimization and email marketing, I found a value in them that had been forgotten with the emergence of social media. Clients that I worked with over that time were in a similar position. After reading the Age of Influence, they wanted to reset their own marketing to capitalize on social media and leverage the power of influencer marketing. In many cases, they were not in the position to do that. They just didn't have the marketing infrastructure in place with the other essential tools of a strategy to deal with a digital first world. Some were playing, or I should say some were using old strategies to play catch up. It was like trying to build upon an already unstable Jenga tower, trying to throw a rope across a river to make a bridge without making sure the footing was secure. The foundation was simply not there to make a powerful push with newer strategies. The new landscape doesn't allow that.

Speaker 1: 15:07

This is when I also realized that there was an order of digital marketing tactics that would allow for the greatest growth. There was an inherent synergy, when one step was taken before the next, that they naturally prepped the next stage for success. The concept behind digital threads and how the chapters would be laid out in this book in a certain order, was born. Now businesses, on the other hand, were looking for a shortcut to a digital presence. They wanted to build up one marketing channel while locking presence on other essential channels. This would only lead to imbalance and hurt the overall effectiveness of their efforts.

Speaker 1: 15:44

Now, all of my fractional CMO clients are different. They range from solopreneurs to small business owners to executives at larger companies. Some are content creators looking to expand into entrepreneurship. Others are established industry leaders looking for a way to expand their reach and understand that what worked yesterday won't work tomorrow. There's no cookie cutter approach to such a wide range of needs over a wide range of industries and audiences. What is common, though, is the need to communicate effectively on many levels with their customers and prospects. Through this varied work, I realized that executing these things in a specific order is crucial for maximum effectiveness.

Speaker 1: 16:24

When clients came to me, I felt like a doctor, diagnosing what was missing, what was causing the imbalance and illness. I would prescribe the course of action to take. There was an engagement deficiency when they thought posting more would help. The proper solution was working more in integrating their message across platforms, or they could engage their email list, or perhaps they had neglected building an email list. I would find these sorts of gaps in what the clients wanted to achieve and the digital avenues they were using to get there. Many would come to me with a desire to do influencer marketing. They'd read my book and seen the power it could generate. But when we dug deeper into their objectives, I could guide them to other digital marketing channels that would get them quicker to their desired reach and audience.

Speaker 1: 17:10

There is not one quick fix solution to all your marketing problems. By just working with influencers or engaging on TikTok or injecting more ad spend, you will only address one part of your issue. To be most effective, there are multiple digital threads that need to be understood, implemented and, ideally, woven together for maximum impact. When you engage all of them meaningfully and with intent, then your digital marketing strategy will be strong. Doing them in the correct order will make your strategy even more impactful. The world and consumers have changed. The channels for truly communicating your message have also changed. These are the digital threads that hold the secrets for growth through digital marketing.

Speaker 1: 17:52

This book will focus on the specifics of each digital thread that will determine the destiny of your digital-first marketing. While you might be tempted to skip ahead, I urge you to read in its intended flow so that you also make sure that you don't have any gaps of your own in your marketing infrastructure. And, by the way, I have also invested the time to put together a companion workbook featuring over 70 exercises that will help you brainstorm ideas, internalize what you learn in this book and ultimately effectively implement what I teach you so that your business can reap the benefits of digital threads book. You will get access to this workbook, which I will be providing the ebook version of for free. The paperback workbook will be for sale on Kickstarter and on Amazon, so that introduction should give you a feel as to why I'm writing the book and the background.

Speaker 1: 18:46

I now want to read you just this very first chapter to give you a feel on where the book is going to go. So this is my part, one which I call begin, and what I'm trying to do is really create a playbook. If you're a startup, or starting from scratch if you go in order, but if you already are established in marketing or with your company's marketing, this book is really meant to be a refresher or a way of thinking about resetting what you're doing, to try to glean new knowledge and really go to new heights with your digital marketing. So that's why part one is called Begin, and I begin with a quote, and I begin all of my parts and chapters with quotes. This one comes from JP Morgan. The first step towards getting somewhere is to decide you're not going to stay where you are, and this is very much one of the themes of digital threads is that you want to change, you want to implement positive change and you want to think about these old technologies and old strategies in a brand new way. So chapter one is called the new digital landscape of today, and I go a little bit further into defining what this is. The quote to begin this chapter, one of my favorites is the boxer, mike Tyson. Everyone has a plan until they get. So I'll begin reading this chapter.

Speaker 1: 20:02

The marketing landscape is always in motion. It is always shifting. Sometimes these shifts move slowly like tectonic plates New media, new platforms, new strategies and new audiences are always emerging. Other times it's faster A complete ground shift that causes us to reconsider our footing and the wider landscape we stand on. Businesses are always playing catch up with the needs and habits of their customers. Without aggressively and constantly changing your approach, you leave money on the table and risk losing share to your competitors. This is as true for marketing as it is for other aspects of business. These digital threads are not an option in modern marketing. They represent the new playbook that empowers successful businesses today.

Speaker 1: 20:48

The cost of not adapting is the risk of being left behind in what worked yesterday. You might maintain your sales volume, but that often comes at a cost of losing market share and visibility. Sometimes it's a setback, sometimes it's bigger. Even famous empires have fallen this way. Sears, for those that remember the American department store, ruled the mail order world to where their name was synonymous with catalog ordering. When the internet wound its web everywhere, sears failed to shift to the online world, leaving the space where Amazon took root. Blockbuster suffered a similar fate when they failed to adapt to the possibilities of online streaming. Consumer preferences and new technologies also caused Kodak, a once household name synonymous with cameras, to be barely remembered today. Remember how dominant Motorola, nokia and BlackBerry were in cell phones. The list goes on and on and on.

Speaker 1: 21:43

The acceleration of change. The COVID-19 pandemic saw an acceleration to the shifts that were already underway in modern consumer culture. Technology was in place for more remote work and online meetings. The shift to online shopping over the previous two decades meant that infrastructure and consumer trust were both in place for the shift to a larger digital economy. Over the pandemic, trust in online research had grown on the back of the shift to being comfortable on social media With so much time in lockdown. People shifted to consuming even more online content, and there was more of it in more engaging formats to consume. This shift was already on the way. It was in 2019, the year before the pandemic, when digital marketing spend overtook traditional marketing spend. In just five years, from 2017 to 2022, the percentage of marketing budgets spent on digital advertising globally increased from just under 40% to almost 54%. Part of the shift was the change in budgets during the pandemic, but it was a movement that was already happening Over the first two plus decades of the 21st century.

Speaker 1: 22:49

We have all changed how we communicate. We have changed what content we consume and how we consume it. In the wild days of the dial-up internet in the 1990s, we were told to be careful what we shared. Online, we hid our addresses and real names. Now we openly share every moment of our lives, while online we upload photos, share our opinions, tell our friends all we are doing, we order everything from groceries to clothing and electronics to be delivered right to our friend door. We use apps to pay friends and often share our transactions in public, like we do on Venmo. The infrastructure was already in place to make this future viable. The pandemic made it a necessity for the present. The speed of change and of transition, of acceptance in the digital world doesn't even touch on the tremendous growth of generative AI.

Speaker 1: 23:37

Since the lockdowns have ended Opportunities and challenges. Like any other time in history, changes bring both challenges and or opportunities, depending on if you see a glass being half full or half empty. This changed landscape means that you can now communicate with and ship directly to customers, but it's not so straightforward. Consumers are now more skeptical. 99% of consumers today research products before buying them and 87% do so regularly or always, a number that has actually increased compared to pre-pandemic behavior. Consumers find more information through reviews online, through social media posts, youtube reviews and, yes, even TikTok videos, rather than going to stores to look at a product. The post-pandemic consumer will engage other digital and online avenues to make their decision. And even when they are in a store, a majority of shoppers will go online to read reviews. The consumer's approach has truly become digital first. Our online presence persists even when we are offline. The opportunity to engage in a digital first approach puts your brand or business in a strong position right in front of the consumer. The challenge is to do this in an authentic and meaningful way that actually engages your customer. If you are still doing things in the pre-pandemic way for no other reason that that's how it's always been done then you're already behind.

Speaker 1: 25:02

Jumping into social media marketing or relying solely on influencers to transition into the post-pandemic reality is simply not enough. You need to establish a solid foundation in this new landscape. Just throwing money at it won't suffice. The argument parallels the shift to working at home. Nimble companies will take advantage of the shift. They will find opportunities to enrich their team. Some will take longer. Others will lack the imagination to make this new reality part of their infrastructure and they risk losing their workforce to organizations able to engage in the new reality for their employees.

Speaker 1: 25:37

The new landscape is unfamiliar. It takes a new outlook to adapt, but therein lies the opportunity. Outlook to adapt, but therein lies the opportunity. You need a digital-first approach to leverage all the different opportunities that the digital threads give you to engage in the buyer's journey. Don't throw it all out. Building new infrastructure in an unfamiliar landscape should still follow the principles that have proven effective in the past. They just won't work in the same way as before.

Speaker 1: 26:03

I've often said that social media replaces nothing, yet complements everything. This philosophy can also apply to the well-known marketing framework of the four Ps and digital media. The four Ps cover those workhorses of marketing, product price, place and promotion In a digital first approach. The first two of these pretty much remain the same. Of course, there's some changes in product when you can adapt, such as offering unique digital products like subscriptions besides one-off purchases. At their core, though, those two really don't change too much. Meeting your customers in the right place is essential. Now that place in a digital-first world world is primarily and ever increasingly online. Sure, there are more e-commerce marketplaces where you can promote your product in, but it is more than that. There are social media platforms and search engines. With TikTok or YouTube, social media is quickly becoming its own search engine and with TikTok Shop, its own marketplace, generating an estimated $20 billion in sales in 2023. We still go to retail stores or a trendy temporary physical pop-up shop, but once again, these are also primarily being promoted digitally. The biggest mindset shift for most businesses, however, must take place regarding the final P promotion.

Speaker 1: 27:23

Traditionally, people have looked at promotion as a one-to-many affair. The thinking was to blast your messages through TV, radio, magazine, newspapers and even digital ads to disrupt viewers, hoping to gain eyeballs and sales. Much has been said of how disruptive traditional marketing has been. This has led the modern consumer to fast forward where possible during ad breaks and try their best to divert their attention away from that very disruption. The message is an ad, it sticks out and it's not what the consumer willingly wants to consume. Obviously, this attention-seeking approach still works to some extent in many of the traditional channels, but in social media, which is one of the most important channels in digital marketing, this approach will often be simply a waste of your time and budget, even when it appears to be performing. Diverting your efforts into other digital threads might have yielded better results for the same budget. Not that paid social or paid media. Via social media advertising does not work. It is an important digital thread, but it is not a shortcut. Every marketer knows that promoting to your customers, or even a warm audience, will always produce better results than advertising to a cold audience.

Speaker 1: 28:34

The importance of relationship manifests itself in other ways. The most effective type of marketing for centuries has been, and continues to be, relationship-driven word-of-mouth marketing. There is no better place for that to happen at scale than in social media. While it happens on rare occasion, though, your social media ads will not generate the word-of-mouth at scale that organic content can. That was never their intention. There has always been a relationship aspect to promotion. The online world means that those relationships are now digital. It's with people who are in different places around the world, giving you the opportunity to connect and scale outside your own local influence. The promotion is done with social media, the town halls and meeting places of the post-pandemic world. New rules for relationships.

Speaker 1: 29:28

To be effective in communicating your message in a digital-first world, you need to build relationships not just with people but with algorithms, another critical digital thread to master. Search engines and social media networks are driven by algorithms. It is essential, then, to understand how to best put your content in terms that help the algorithm show it to the right people. In the 1890s, almond Brown Stroger was working as an undertaker and noticed he was losing business. He traced the cause of this to the phone operator in Indiana where he was working. The phone operator just happened to be the wife of his competitor. Anytime there was a call that came through and asked to be connected to an undertaker service, the phone operator would divert the call to her husband a town over, instead of Stroger. That would be an influential relationship to have, and it affected Stroger's business so much that he, with the help of his nephew and others, created the first automatic electromechanical telephone exchange. Now, unlike Strauger, you're not in the position to cut out the middleman, the algorithm that shows your competitors' content. Instead, you must understand and embrace the way it works Analog skills in the digital world.

Speaker 1: 30:39

Another thing that I have been saying for a decade regarding social media applies equally to digital-first marketing New tools, old rules, while the shift is to the digital-first world. Communicating to people, even online, is most effective when we communicate as people, as humans. This is even truer with the emergence of bots and artificial intelligence that can easily create content. Trying to create something that will go viral is not about making something shiny and digital for the masses. It is about wanting to communicate with one person genuinely and effectively. Naturally, we hope it goes beyond that one person to many.

Speaker 1: 31:16

During the pandemic, when we couldn't communicate face-to-face or in-person, consumers moved online, but they still wanted a human interaction. Consumers purchased more from those companies who could connect earnestly. It was communicating on a level that worked on an individual level. The numbers reflect this. 90% of people buy from brands they follow on social media. 63% of consumers state that the quality of customer service in social media significantly affects their brand loyalty. 47% of consumers state that the quality of customer service in social media significantly affects their brand loyalty. 47% of consumers have actually made a purchase through social media. 79% of people say UGC, or content generated by social media users, highly affects their purchasing decisions.

Speaker 1: 31:58

Another aspect that bears mentioning here they need to be more relatable and authentic, especially when trying to win the hearts and wallets of younger customers. A viewer of one of my recent live streams reminded me of this aspect when they commented that I seem more approachable in my work-from-home t-shirt apparel than in the black suit and royal blue book. Brothers dress shirt I use on my social media profiles and website. Brother's dress shirt I use on my social media profiles and website.

Speaker 1: 32:25

When we stop thinking about social media as a place to promote, but as an excellent venue to relate, you will understand the potential that this digital thread can have for your business. The takeaway is that it is essential. We need to develop ways to stay human while being in a digital world. So are the four Ps product, place, price and promotion still relevant, absolutely, and so are the other tenets of marketing. But since the consumer and how and where they consume content has progressed, so must we. The place to meet your customers is online. It is digital first, and it is on social media. Promoting a product is not about simply putting your product online. That is not enough. You need to work with the algorithm to be found. You need to engage on social media platforms to join conversations and use social media the way it is intended to be used.

Speaker 1: 33:15

Digital Threads is about adapting these principles for the post-COVID world. It is about weaving together the tools at our disposal to make the fabric of your marketing flexible and hard-wearing. Approaching your marketing with a digital-first philosophy does not mean throwing the old marketing tenets out the window. These fundamental principles are integral, for good reason. They've stood the test of time. There are trends that come and go, but principles underpin marketing through all climates and landscapes. But if there was ever a time to pivot for the survival and renewed growth of your business, now is it.

Speaker 1: 33:50

Key takeaways the groundwork was in place for what sped up during the pandemic a move to a digital first approach. While the core principles of marketing remain, the landscape of interaction and its locations have undergone a permanent transformation. The essential ways of communicating between people have not changed, but the places and methods have. It is now a digital first world Companion workbook exercises 1.1, how much do you buy online? 1.2, how much research do you do online. And this is very much the format of every chapter. I have key takeaways at the end, a few bullet points and then an introduction to the companion workbook exercises that basically I've created for every single chapter. So digital threads is very much a tactical playbook. But just like in all of my presentations if you were to hear me speak in person. We need to reset the mindset we need. That is when we get into rethinking the meaning of search engine optimization, of email marketing, of social media and then, with that new knowledge and new mindset, we go into the remainder of the book, which are all extremely tactical, playbook style chapters and advice.

Speaker 1: 35:19

So I hope you enjoyed that preview to Digital Threads. Once again, if you go to neilschafercom slash Kickstarter before August 8th, you can back the campaign and get an early edition with special discounts. For instance, every paper book order includes a free ebook copy and you can get the Digital Threads Companion Workbook the PDF version of that for free immediately as well. So hope you'll check that out and you'll join me on this new exciting journey as this book gets released slowly into the general public. Well, that is it for another exciting edition of the your Digital Marketing Coach podcast. I do hope that you, if you haven't already hit that subscribe button to this podcast, next week I am going to be interviewing Mr Likeable Dave Kirpin.

Speaker 1: 36:04

If you haven't already hit that subscribe button to this podcast, next week I am going to be interviewing Mr Likeable Dave Kirpin. If you don't know, dave, he's written a few books with the likeable term, likeable social media, what have you? We're actually going to be talking about delegating, and from my perspective, delegating also means outsourcing. I actually have a chapter in digital threads, chapter 18, scale people, that is really directly related to what Dave and I talk about in that interview, so be on the lookout. That'll be episode number 373. And until next time, this is your digital marketing coach, neil Schafer, signing off.

Speaker 2: 36:38

You've been listening to your digital marketing coach. You've been listening to your digital marketing coach. Questions, comments, requests, links. Go to podcastneilschafercom. Get the show notes to this and 200 plus podcast episodes at neilschafercom to tap into the 400 plus blog posts that Neil has published to support your business. While you're there, check out Neil's digital first group coaching membership community if you or your business needs a little helping hand. See you next time on your digital marketing coach.