Hey everyone, welcome back to The MindShift Podcast. Guess who I am? Yep. I'm Darrell. I'm the host. Let's get started. Listen, have you ever struggled if you're a business owner to get exposure for your business to really grow your brand awareness, and the status that you have in the marketplace, sometimes people use the word thought leadership, the authority, the trusted adviser. Why is it important? Well, you need to streamline
your marketing efforts. So you can bring in more customers, increase the returns of your publicity, your media spend, your paid advertising, really all of the effort of your campaigns so that you can maximize the return on investment, right. Return investment in marketing seems to be the biggest challenge that I hear about in my agency. So what I did today was I decided to invite a friend of mine named
Anika Jackson to the show. She is the founder of Your Brand Amplified, which is a marketing and communications firm dedicated to helping small businesses and entrepreneurs maximize their budgets and achieve their goals with now over a decade of experience in experiential marketing, public relations, digital marketing, and influencer relations, Anika
is an expert in this field. In addition to her professional pursuits, Anika is also a philanthropist, community volunteer and founding board member of Learn, Grow, Lead. She's also a part time graduate school professor at USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism.
This is The MindShift Podcast where we share real stories, real strategies that will help you find real success. This is the place to hear from people just like you who've taken their ideas, goals, and dreams from a point of inspiration to realization, or when life knocked them down from a point of breakdown to breakthrough. I'm your host, Darrell Evans. Let's get started with today's episode.
I am excited to have Anika here on the show to talk more about how you can amplify your brand. And I want to thank her in advance because I had been on a couple of shows that she produces in the past. And so the shoe is on your foot Anika, welcome to The MindShift Podcast.
Thank you so much. Pleasure to be here. I always love talking to you, Darrell.
quick, Your Brand Amplified is your business. And you have a new program coming out where you are going to be helping businesses in an entirely new way. Let's start there. And then we'll unpack everything.
Alright, yeah, so the new program is called The Brand Amplifier. It's essentially there's three parts, there is the part for people who really want to learn all about branding, and how to use their brand messaging for their PR messaging and their PR pitches and their marketing messages how they want to handle their social media. So it really takes it back to that that core foundation work of who are you? How do you show up in the world?
What is your superpower? What do you do differently than every other company like you in the world? And then how do we take that and turn it into really compelling messages that audiences will respond to. And so there's, there's the online part, there's the part where we also do coaching sessions and group sessions. So somebody doesn't have to feel like they're doing it alone. They're
doing it on journey with us. And then there's also the kind of complete package, which is, and this is because a lot of people have come to me for PR and they don't even they have their idea for their business, but they might not have the logo that they want. They might not have a website, they may not have all the other stuff that they need.
Because not only are customers going to be looking at your website, at your social media for that social proof that you do exist, but journalists also look at those things to make sure that going back to your words about being a thought leader and having that presence in the marketplace. So the complete package, we look at your branding, we do overhauls,
we'll create new logos. We work with some of our partners to build new website, make sure we have SEO content running for you those important backlinks that I know you do a lot of work with Darrell. And then we do two months of PR and also help with social media. So what are your content pillars on your social? How are you using them effectively? And we help create a content calendar and then some templates that somebody can use.
Sounds pretty comprehensive, right?
We try, we try. It's and it really did come out of when I started my agency, realizing, wow, we have clients who don't have all these steps in place and for us to do our job properly, they really need to understand who they are as a brand and as a business and they need to be able to speak to that the same way we're going to be pitching it to journalists. So it really started out of that and the fact that my background was marketing before I went into the world of PR.
Yeah, let me ask this question. Yeah, define in your words, a brand.
A lot of people think a brand is a logo. It's not, a logo is just a representation a mark of your brand. Your brand and compasses, yes, the logo, your brand colors, your identity, that piece of things so that people recognize who you are and the feeling the colors that you use with using color psychology can evoke the emotions you want. But the brand really is, who are you in the world? What are you doing differently? What problem are
you solving for people? So it's really fun to get into these exercises and really dig into this. And people have these big aha moments when we go through this process. And they're like, Oh, I didn't think about myself like that. And you're like, Yeah, you really are amazing. And here's why. And this is what I heard you say that you don't even realize that you're saying.
When someone is sitting awake at night, 11 o'clock at night, they'd rather be asleep., they're not asleep? What is that one thing, or what are the top two or three things that you've seen, in your experience tend to be what's keeping them awake? One of them you might have alluded to, but it's 11 o'clock, they'd like to be asleep. And they're like ugh it's just on my mind. What are those top three problems that they're thinking about?
It's very apropos that we're on the mind shift podcast, because mindset is that number one thing, a lot of people like, well, I want to start the business, but I don't want to represent it. I don't want to talk about it. I don't want to be the the forward facing person of my company. And for big companies that Coca Cola's, Pepsi's, you know, the big brands of the world. Sure,
you don't need to do that. But if you're like most of the companies, nonprofits, organizations that I work with, you are an individual entrepreneur, you are you have a small to medium sized business, it is so important and so vital that you're willing to step into that role. So it takes time to
change. You know, we take baby steps, sometimes when we're starting people on this journey, maybe we'll start them out with some small podcasts and smaller interviews blogs before, so they get comfortable talking about themselves. That is the number one thing. They're, they feel like they can have a brand but hey don't want to represent it. And they don't feel that they have the confidence and the competence to correctly speak. And we know that public speaking is more people's fear than
death. Right? So it's a big thing for people to overcome. So I think that's the number one thing making sure they're really clear on who their customers are. And this changes all the time, right? I mean, you and I were just talking about how we're both niching down in our businesses, to really make sure that we're reaching the people that we want to work with, and that we know we can have the best results for. Right? It's a
constant process. But you really have to know who your customer personas, everything from, what do they wear? What kind of music do they listen to? How old are they what foods they like to eat? Do they have kids? Where do they go on vacation? All those details can help you figure out how to message to those customers better. And it's not only to the customers or clients for your business or service.
But we also take that stuff and that's what we present to journalists, because journalists are also consumers, and they want to write about things that they get excited about and brands that they believe in. So I'd say the mindset, really making sure that you know, your customer base and who you're targeting. And then I mean, just really knowing who your brand is, if you don't have that elevator pitch, if you don't have that brand statement, if you're not working on refining
that. It's really hard for us and I've had many people come who are like, Okay, I'm in HR right now. But I really want to be a mental health advocate. And they don't understand how they can use one to transition to the other, they just want to immediately go into the mental health side. I'm like, but you've been asked to speak on HR stages, you can talk about the importance of employee benefits for mental health when you're talking about HR and then you
transition it right. So that's another big issue that I sometimes see.
Gotcha, I want to actually then actually a different side of this, which is the PR side of it. I grew up in I share with you that I've grown up in the direct response aspect of marketing, copywriting, advertising, can I place words, on a page, that to your earlier point, meets the buyer or prospective customer, where they are such that if it resonated, they would take a step towards the business, the brand, the
product, the service. It's been one of my superpowers since my 20s, I was very fortunate to get taught how to do this. And I've been fascinated by it. I said to you also, that I've never I've disrespected the idea of personal branding, to the point that you described it where you said if you're a sole provider or smaller business, you are the and you resist being the face of the company and I know this it
finally set in with me. And that is that when you're a smaller business, you're not a Coca Cola, big brand name, big box store company, you are the brand. Yeah. So if you don't embrace that sooner than later, I mean, you can't outsource your expertise is another phrase that I say on a regular basis. You can put all the systems in place structurally, but you can't outsource your expertise. And to me, that's what I what it feels like when I think about branding. But I want to ask
about PR. Can you contrast and compare PR, with this aspect of branding? Or how do those two
Yeah. So when I work with a client, and this is play together? why I'm so excited about the brand and fire as well, just to give it when we're, you know toot, is that when I work with clients who come in for PR, we always walk them through branding exercises is step one. You know, unless they have something, they're like, I need to launch this right away, I am only going to hire you to do this event, which we don't do a
lot of just a one off stuff. But we always we have extensive information that we ask for, so that we can really synthesize who you are, who you say you are. But then we also go through an extensive online meeting, go through a lot of questions, talk about your SWOT analysis, who's your competitive set? How do you
show up differently? We ask a lot of these questions, because the answers that people will tell us are sometimes very different from what's on their website, or what they who they think they are, or they're, they'll use words that were like, oh, yeah, that's the phrase. And we'll add that, we do their bios, you know, we'll do we do extensive upfront work. And then the branding work is so important, because that is really the foundation for the PR messaging and for the marketing
messaging. And what I want to share also is that in this day and age, you know, it used to be siloed. And I think we've talked about this offline before, perhaps on my podcast when you were on there, but it used to be okay, marketing is over here, PR is over here, you can't do that anymore, because everything has
to be part and parcel. When we get a PR hit, and I'll and this is not something that I used to be able to quantify, but we have a client, in one month of working with us on PR only, we saw her website traffic increased 243% based on the articles that we got her in. She had 30 messages waiting on from one specific article. She's a gardening company, and she has two partners, but she decided, Okay, I'm going to test out PR, so we only do PR for her under
the brand still. And her partner's, like why are we getting all these requests for information on this service, and this and this and this? And she said, Oh, that's because of this article that I got in.
Let's talk about that really quick. Let's get tactical for just a second because, you know, we got to, you know, high level. So now there's these third party inquiries coming in, talk tactically about what you guys did. You got her placed in,
We got her placed in well, Washington Post was a big one, in the first month, Real Simple, Homes and Gardens, Martha Stewart Living, Washington Post, these are big publications, Apartment Life, which is an online publication and a few others. And we've gotten her now I think in Real Simple twice, and Martha Stewart Living between online and print over four times. In just a few months of working together.
I got to ask then. So you know, I grew up on the sports, I'm a superhero fan. So I gotta ask, do you guys have a special bat, bat line back? How do you get into these big brands like that?
You know, it's relationship building. We are following the journalists that we'd like to work with, we're building relationships with them. Sometimes it's not a personal connection. Sometimes it's just that we are pitching correctly to somebody we have all these resources that we use, we have journalists, sub stacks, a lot of journalists have their own substack newsletters that will tell you, what they're pitching, what articles they're looking for, what sources they're looking for, and how to
pitch them properly. So we subscribe to all of those. We have journalists request databases that we submit people into, and with the keywords that show up under your profile. Journalists will say, Oh, I need a source for this article and they'll ping us, Hey, I'd love to interview your person, or can they? Can they send over the answers to these questions?
So you're like their agent? Yeah, that's in a way. Yeah. I mean, in a way, like you're, you're like you, you're like, Okay, I've got things to do in my work. Like, I got to go run the business. Yeah, I gotta manage hire, train cashflow. I gotta do all that stuff. But in the meantime, you're over here, your team's over here, looking for opportunities to match what they need. Yeah. In their publication to an expert that you represent. Is that a way of looking at it? That's a great way to look at
it. Okay, because I do sports like so I think sports agents like the athlete goes and trains and the agent gets them team interviews and workouts and helps negotiate. Got it. Okay.
Yeah, we also look for other things that somebody can speak about. So our gardening client, she also loves interior design. And she also does a lot of other things that kind of go with her core business, but are a little bit separate. But we can also get her interviews for those things. Because again, it's all going to lead back to her main website.
It's all gonna lead back to Garden Girls, it's all still going to show that she's an expert inside and outside of your home, in designing the ideal space for you, the ideal comfort, bringing health into your life through the power of beautiful gardens, you know, they're all these things. And then we have another client we work with. He's a former athlete, he is a doctor of chiropractic and sports medicine. He's a serial entrepreneur. He has a few
different businesses. He has one that we're not focusing on right now, because we're really trying to build his thought leadership up. So we're focusing more on his sports medicine side, even though that's not the business that he's wanting to promote, eventually, we know that we need to get him out there as an
expert in his field. And then we can tie it in, because we can show how his new company is a sustainability company that's providing better health outcomes, better environmental outcomes, and how that is stemming from everything he's learned as a doctor. And then he also is he works with Nigerian Olympic teams and national teams, and he's worked with different sports teams, so he can bring all that expertise in.
So that's right now what we're focusing on is his entrepreneurship, his backstory, and his sports and his doctor side, and then eventually, we'll bring in the other side of his work.
I get it, you're building the audience before you launch the brand or the product, right? You've got to have someone, it's almost like book deals today, right? It's almost like gone are the days when you go find a book publishing deal if you want to be a thought leader. And you're getting fronted not to say they don't happen, but and you're getting fronted millions of dollars of royalties to go write the book over, there are some of those
things I still hear about. But today, it's almost like to get a book deal, you better have a following, you better have a way to sell books on your own, and be able to prove that to the publisher. And I've only heard that from other people who've gone through the publishing process. I haven't done it myself. And so it seems like that's kind of the strategy, right? Let's build this audience. Let's start making sure your expertise is known. I
got to ask this question. Those of us who are not working with you, those people listening who are not working with someone like you, can you give us some practical steps? Because PR, you know, a lot of what you do is very similar to some of the things we do in the agency in the area of getting our clients published on getting backlinks from publications to their content, similar but different, but similar structure, right? We're trying to grow the brand authority online, you're trying
to grow it directly. And you're getting backlinks as well, let's be clear about that. Because when they get mentioned in the article that named mention could be linked or unlinked. If they put a link to it, then it becomes a backlink. So it's the same conversation. For those of you that are not experiencing what we just described, don't worry about it, check out Anika'll explain it to you, backlinks and all this stuff, she'll explain that to you when
you call her. But let's talk about really where does someone start listing this? And I admittedly, admittedly, I discounted my I did what you did, I stayed behind the face of our digital marketing, I stayed behind the brand of our digital marketing agency for the better part of 10 of our last 12 years.
And just in the last two years have I begun, because I was the strategists like I was some I was, I'm calling the plays, I'm running as you know, I'm the tactician like I was running teams, it wasn't that I was never out front, but I did spend 10 years out of the 12 behind the scenes for the most part. And now I'm just starting. So let's either talk to me or talk to someone else who's been running their business the same
way successfully. But they really are like, okay, yeah, I need to take this level of public thought leadership, I need to really get my expertise out there, there are people getting my business, and I'm better than them. And I don't mean to say that with braggadociousness, but it's true. I talk to people all the time. And they're like, we're one of the best in the business. And then we look at their website and their social and their online presence, and
there's nowhere to be found. So I was a little bit guilty of that. So talk to me talk to the listener who is just coming to the brand game. And maybe we can talk about some practical first two or three, four steps that we could take immediately today to start because building brand don't happen overnight.
No. And there are so many people in your position, Darrell. I have talked to so many. So many business owners who have been in the background are like, oh, man, if I want to take the next step in my business, I have to start being
out there. Or I've even worked with people who've been doing digital since Google first started and went through, we did a little test version of The Brand Amplifier and they went wow, I completely changed who I want to target, how I'm going to target them as my clients because they went through that exercise. So it's something that we all have to do as well. We're guilty as much as anybody or maybe even more because
We're in the game all day. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. It's like the cobbler who the cobbler who helps people wear shoes, but don't have no shoes or whatever they say, right?
Yeah, that is exactly what I was just gonna say, I think in your step ahead, because you are you have a podcast, you do many things that do put you out in front of people and I think that's part of what we have to do to brand ourselves even as agencies who help other people with their branding, their marketing, their PR, is we have to show our own thought leadership, which is why we go on podcasts. But if somebody is starting their journey and they say Okay, I'm ready to get out in front the
public. Do you have some good high quality headshots? Does your bio say everything that you want it to say about who you Are what you're interested in, maybe a little bit about your personality too. I mean, you see mine, mine always starts like, I'm a mother, community volunteer philanthropist, and I'm a marketer. And I do XYZ.
But you know, people want that authenticity, they want to really know who you are as a whole human, not just the little segment that you're Darryl and amazing digital marketer, right?
As a whole human. Yeah, it's true, though. Let me I mean, I don't mean to interrupt you, I will get you back to your points. But it is true, right? I mean, and I don't, I've learned that years
and years ago. So one thing I've always done is, while I wasn't necessarily the face of all the marketing, or face of the brand, or whatever, standing on the stage with the mic, I always made sure that in the last couple of decades, as I've grown businesses, to build that personal relationship to really be trustful that to really show that personal side of myself, once I was in interactions with
our clients. What I don't think I did a good job of was allowed my some of those things that would be a little bit personal to make it out to my social media. And I've gotten better about that the last several years. I mean, you can go for seven or eight years on my social and you could say, well, Darryl, I've seen you posting for years. Yeah, but you never saw anything about what I like you never saw me on vacation.
You never saw me at the beach, you never saw me eating food, you never saw me at a sports event. Those are all parts of my life. And now that I've gotten to the point where I'm okay publishing that content, even familial content with my family, with my grandkids, here and there, from time to time, everybody gets to choose that on
their own. But I do believe, to the point, even on my personal about page, on my personal website, I list that I'm a foodie, a traveler, a sports fanatic, a motivational, quote, personal development guy. And I think to your point, as what you're saying is like people want to know the whole of you, not just that technician, in you for your craft, is that right?
It's that know, like and trust factor, they know more about you, they find other ways that they connect with you. They might be Oh, I'm a foodie to let me look more into what he does. And if he's the right company, for me to work with, right. You'd never know, and I'll be honest, my social media I've taken it from it was personal. And then I was doing some influencer work and got really great responses. And then I started turning more to a
business profile. And the people resonate better, not with as much of the business stuff on my, you know, they resonate when they want to see video, they want to see pictures of you in action. They want to know those little snippets of your life, that you are traveling, that you're doing other stuff outside of work, too. And I just had a piece of content go viral on Facebook, it was like a crop, one of those word search things.
And I've seen a lot of other people post it and it said like, the first four words you see are your mantra for 2023. I don't know what happened. But on my Facebook page, I haven't even looked in probably five days because I get scared every time I look at it again. But it had over 150,000 comments, over 2.5 million, you know, views what that yeah, the shares, likes, and it had nothing to do with my business. But it really resonated. And I saw again, I saw other people post the same
thing. But for some reason, this is the one that got shared. And not all those people are going to be my ideal clients, of course not, but I still want to capture. I mean, if I get 1% of the people who made comments alone to start following me and interacting with me.
To be a businessowner. Yeah, that's incredible. By the way, can you share what that was? Because I want to see if I could try it out. Yeah, I will send it to me after we're done. You know, it's interesting. And that's really the power of where we're going with this, right? Because back in the day, it was a mono y mono business, if you will offline networking, you know, chambers of commerce, speaking at conferences, going to conferences. And by the way, I
love, love some conferences. I'm glad we're back to conferences after the last couple of years. I've got several planned this year, which I'm excited about. Not to mention, we're going to be hosting our very first conference later in the year.
Well, yeah, we're gonna have to talk about that I want to come out for it.
Yeah, oh, no doubt. I mean, I really I feel, I love the energy of the room. And sometimes when you're entrepreneur, or your leader, you can be isolated, not sometimes, many times, because the problems you're going through as a leader out front, whether you own the business or not. But when you're responsible for people, places and things and outcomes, the strategy and execution falls on you. And I posted something just this morning on social and it was basically, failure isn't the
opposite of success. It's a part of it. And the reality is not everybody can stomach that. Right. And I know you know what that looks like. Because as an entrepreneur, you are not only in acquisition of new customers, but you're also being trusted to get the strategy that you put together for this brand to work. And so I love conferences for that reason, in the sense that at least I have a genuine understanding that almost all the people in the room are there for one energetically common
reason. And that's what I love about it. And for me, I'm an energetic, spiritual person. So for me, that's what I've missed the last couple of years. But getting back to brand, let's get back to your tips about how someone gets started to think about it today. Going viral is obviously one of those things you can't plan for. So let's give them some more practical. I'd love to go viral every time I push, send, or post.
Well, I, yeah, I we could I go off on a tangent on that because I'm like, I wouldn't even know I was going viral. And then I was like, Wait, why are there some? And I was like, Oh, my gosh, crazy. Now, how do I capitalize on this? But getting back to the practical. Yeah, you need to have some great headshots, you need to have high res logos and product shots or service or, you know, all the things,
testimonials, whatever. You can gather to show people the proof from other people that you are who you say you are, and that you really can deliver what you say you're going to deliver. So I gather all those things.
Do you recommend people go off if they don't have professional headshots, you recommend they go get a really professional headshot set done? And it's that important to you? Yes. Got 100 no iPhone stuff?
No, do we need a professional headshots, and then we like businessy ones and then we also need sometimes need some fun ones, right, depending on what the article is. Or maybe when with your family, or whatever, or shots of you in action if you have a big warehouse full of great merchandise, those kinds of things. So we're like I worked with, with a real estate developer. And she is one of the very few black women real estate developers who is highly sought
after completely self made. She hates getting her picture taken. She does not like to do interviews, but we got her some really good press, and I made somebody come over and we did some pictures with her, you know, in her like her branded construction shirts and with their hard hat on looking at blueprints and things. So they were action shots to try and make it a little more comfortable for her since she didn't really want to be in the focus, but she knows she has to
be. And so those are things you can start getting ready for yourself. So the headshots making sure you have the right bio, making sure that you really know who your company is and what you stand for. And then there are some easy resources that you can put yourself on.
There's a ton of podcasts guesting websites, some are free, some are paid, you can put your profile on there, or you can just peruse and look for podcasts that you think might match what you want to talk about and what your expertise is. Help a Reporter Out. So it's
//www.helpareporter.com/ They send out three emails a day that have Okay, here are some things that different reporters are looking for. Now, some of its iffy, but a lot of them we have had a lot of success on. So you just have to. Yeah, but you do have to follow through.
I've heard of that I've heard of Help a Reporter Out and then the podcasts guesting for sure. And well, I'm sorry, what was the next one.
And the next one is a website called Qwoted, it's Q w o t ed.com. You can also build a free profile, and put in the keywords, your topics, your bio, your pictures, and journalists will email you if they're interested in talking to you for a story. So those are three things that I know people can do on their own, even just look around, look, you know, look at these resources to try to get a feel for them. And then when it comes time to start doing interviews, a lot of journalists now will send
written questions. So it makes it easy for that person who's not quite ready to be out in front, they can just write their responses, email it back over. But to that point, it's really important if you're not used to public speaking, to have at least a one sheet with your main topic areas, things that the points that you really want to drive home when you're doing an interview.
So you mentioned three resources, three different angles to approach it. And again, I'm familiar with two of those three. So number one, you said podcast booking sites where you can sign up, some are free, some are 15 a month, some are 40
bucks a month. And the goal there is you're getting your professional expertise and profile there and you have the opportunity for people to reach out to you and ask you to come on their show, which what someone asks someone would think, well, why would I want to do that? Well, because you are actually speaking on someone else's stage. And whoever is being interviewed is the expert.
Right? Yeah. So no one's ever questioned when you sat in a room who was the authority in the room when the person was on stage with the mic? Yeah. Right. And so that's kind of number one. And there's both that kind of let it happen and then there's the outreach side of it, which I'm sure you guys do a bunch of the outreach because it works better if you just go reach out to the shows and say, Hey, we've got this expert, and we think they align with your message would you like to have
on the show. The next one was Help a Reporter Out and Haro for short. Haro is both free as well as paid as well. We've tried it on the free side. We've actually tried it on the paid side did not have great experience with it. But you mentioned and I know what happens is every day, I think three times a day they send out they send out inquiries and so tell us what's the best practice there.
It's really hard to manage it on your own If you're managing any other part of your business, you have to have somebody who is on top of those emails and looking at each one of them as soon as they come out to find the right things for your business, your service or for me, in my case for our clients. Or sometimes, you know, my team will send me Hey, can
you answer this thing? Because a lot of them are very timely, like they need an answer back by the end of the day, or in two hours or the next day.
Yeah, yeah, what I learned about it as a Yeah. Three to five, you know, a short paragraph three to five journalist has deadlines. They're not they don't care about you, they care about getting their query answered by someone of authority, and one that they feel is acceptable for the piece they're working on. And they're under massive
pressure for deadlines. So you definitely have to be monitoring it because it comes in three times a day, is there a certain way, and I know we're getting a little bit in the weeds here for those that don't know, sign up for Help a Reporter out.com, you'll know what we're saying, because nothing happens. You
don't have to do anything. But you'll watch three, you'll watch the three emails come out, they do a morning, afternoon and evening edition or something like that, then you have to go search for your specific industry and niche, then you got to read the question that the journalist wants answered. But I did hear that brevity is key. I
could be wrong. But I was told that you don't want a long winded answer, you want to give them a short, succinct, concise answer, because they're just trying to find, what's your take on the best way to respond to those? sentences, if possible. Usually, they'll specify if they need more than that, or less than that. If you, if they like your answers, though, or your short answers, and they want more, they'll ask you. Is it true that you should be on
the paid plan? I think I heard that if you're not on the paid plan, you don't get priority, your response doesn't get prioritized or it doesn't get seen most of the time. Is that your recommendation to be on the paid plan?
I'm not on the paid plan and we do get good responses. Oh, I think it's really about your content. It's really about how you're pitching it.
So my responses sucked is what you're saying? No, I mean, I've had some success. But again, it was at a time when we were just beginning to play with the aspect of what your, I would now be able to say we were playing with some PR. This is a couple years ago, and it just didn't feel like it was effective for us. And we didn't have the right strategy probably. That being said, I guess podcasting has worked pretty well for us in our side of it. And but I think there's a
blend of mixing it together. So Oh, and then Qwoted Qwoted, I'm going to definitely look up quoted, that one looks exciting. What do you recommend for because there's an aspect of the, you know, things that you guys do to do the outreach and get them placed, which, by the way, is the biggest amount of energy and effort to take to do PR and to do branding properly.
You're posting on social media all day, with your 200 followers, or your 12,000 followers is not what it used to be, because of the algorithms because of the organic reach going down. And listen, we can't be mad, because these are businesses that are growing their businesses. And if you really want to be effective with it, you got to learn how to run ads properly, which is what we do in our agency is what I teach
my clients. I'm not saying don't post but a lot of people are frustrated, because they post on LinkedIn and it gets 88 impressions. But we got 2000 followers, how come I only got 88 impression, not your fault. We post on Facebook or Instagram and it gets reached by 14 people. But I got 12,000 followers, how can we only went to 12 people? Not your fault, you didn't do anything wrong.
It's just the game. So the game that Anika plays in her business and what agencies do to do PR to get backlinks to get you exposure, it's the heavy lifting, and is what most of you as small business owners don't want to do. So just got to play both sides of it. But it is a holistic game. Speaking of which, how do you recommend your clients interact with social media from an organic or content because all of this is content, right? The expertise in their
head has to come out. And so how do you recommend your clients interact with social media who are just getting into the Okay, Annika? I gotta be the brand. How do you recommend that they get started?
There's another tool that I'll recommend here if Without overwhelm because unfortunately, you need three it's okay. Oh, absolutely. https://simplified.com/ There are now there are many social media websites where you can program schedule, find the right hashtags, all that stuff, Simplified, takes all of that and they do have a freemium and
some paid versions. What's beautiful about this platform is that you can, you don't need Canva you don't need all this other fancy stuff, you put everything into that you can even put a video into Simplified, you can edit it right in there. It'll give you recommended captions, hashtags, all of that same data. You don't need to do Canva separately, you can create everything in one system and have it go out to the world. And this is a guy that I know AJ it's his second startup.
He's very passionate about making sure that people have access to these tools so that they can start their journey. So you know, you look at almost anything you gotta have four or five things in your pocket. And most people even most I'm a techie like I'm in the game of tech, and I don't want to learn another doggon app, right? Don't tell me this and then download that, and then I gotta do, then I gotta send it over there. I gotta send it to Google Drive,
then I gotta download it. Or if it's, yeah, so, so Simplify.com. I just pulled it up out on my end. I'm definitely going to be checking that out, especially given what we do at our agency. Yeah, I'll do a LinkedIn introduction for you and AJ to you know,
the founder. Yeah. Yeah. Love it. Love it. Yeah. If you compare it Simplified to something else out there just for the listener, what would it be compared to? Is it compared to Hootsuite? Is it compared to what is it compared? Or is it at all a combination of things? Wow, I mean, you know, Anika, you've you've kind of really
Yeah, it's a combination of Canva and done a bit of a masterclass on this conversation, including, Magisto, or Premiere plus whatever you use for video editing, plus Lumely, or Socialbe or HootSuite or any of those other aggregators. Oh, wow. So I love it. I love it. Pretty cool. And so And one thing to do in there is to think and I appreciate, thank you so much for dropping these tools about, what do you want to share
with people? What are your content pillars, so that they should all lead back to knowing and websites that our audience can take away and go right after liking and trusting who you are and what your brand is and what your company does. We work with a nonprofit, for instance, and for their social we're looking at they work primarily, it's called Best Start Communities, Best Start South LA, they're part of First Five LA. So they focus on early childhood education, but also healthy
families. And so one of the modules is on economics, and economic resiliency and how we can help families when they might be on food scarcity. And here are some resources, whether you need to get food or if you want to grow your community gardens, or if you want to learn how to grow some vegetables at home, or how to make healthy meals. Another one is on education. And then another one is other events going on in the community that people need to be
aware of. So maybe somebody else is doing a hiking event or a yoga event in South LA or a family festival. And so these are other ways that families can get out and interact together in different ways. And so those are the four content pillars we use for them. And we actually do blog posts, and we do social media, like we just do a little bit into that world, but not
hardcore. But we part of our brand work with them was talking about the need for them to okay, they're great, they're policy wonks, they are very research heavy people. And they love policy. And all the writing was on that versus the end user, the people in the community who they want to come and use these resources. So we shifted that completely. And we're not doing
PR for them right now. Because they're there's a whole bunch of and begin to look at that self discovery because there's a good stuff going on a big name change where we're about to announce through PR. But even just by starting to post regular content on their social media, changed the names from Best Art Communities to Best Start South LA, nobody cares what Region 2 is. Nobody cares what you know, they want to know, who Who are
you really. So we changed everything to Best Start South LA, we do social content, we do blog posts, and we increased their website traffic by 42% imediately because we were using accessible language, things that the community really wanted to understand and know about. And so that was that's the way that by looking at your content pillars, you really can start streamlining how you're talking about your business on social, thinking about how blog posts and everything else that you're
doing interact. And then of course, when we get PR hits, we turn that into something you put in your newsletter, we create social, you know, social media content posts, so that you can share it on your social, we share it on our social to talk
about client wins. So it's continuing to perpetuate, it's not just you talking about your brand, which is what you get when you go to a website, when you look at your email, your blog, your social media, this is third-party validation, that you are the expert that you say you are and that's why PR is so important as part of the mix. chunk of the market that I would know for sure, are going to need to start to do this journey and start to under uncover this on
their own. And then you've got the other two opportunities, where it's kind of this coaching and mentorship, and we can give you advice. And then we've got, you know, the full service agency side of it. I just want to thank you, your experience in this, I mean, from a PR standpoint, branding standpoint, some of the things I've heard about a little bit, I'm sure
others would agree. But it's this, this the way you attack PR and the way you go after the things that matter, right, because you can easily to post 18 times a week on Twitter, for the client and all of that stuff is okay. But it's not gonna really drive the results like you're able to you have a measurement system to see the impact of the work and I know there's no guarantees, there's no guarantee of where you're gonna get placed. There's no guarantee of how much traffic
it's going to bring. You can't guarantee they're gonna go viral. But it does sound like you guys have a keen eye to matching up the brand, the messaging, the content, the pillars to the publications, that actually might work all that works together, and you're able to deliver those results. So I knew this is gonna be a great talk and I'm glad we had it. Hopefully we can have you back on the show and go a little
deeper. I'm actually very interested to know, can you wrap this up by telling everybody about The Brand Amplifier Live, although it's not a evergreen program, but tell them about it, how they can learn more about it, and also how they can learn more about working with you with your agency. Yeah, thank you. Well, my main website is www.yourbrandamplified.co, if
you Google that, we are.co. But we are going to be a.com by the time this releases, which also we're talking about this the power of having your name out there. Somebody else had the.com, and my podcast and my name from doing interviews, and my website kept coming up, that they were kicked off of Google page one, and they finally just gave up the domain because it redirected to a totally different website anyway, on not in the United States either. So
now I have that. So yay, but um, yeah, so you can go to www.yourbrandamplified.com, there's a link to The Brand Amplifier, we are doing a series of live events, one each month, this first quarter. So we have one in January, one in February, one in March. And those are kind of four hour training sessions, that kind of walks through some of our client examples, the process of getting PR, and then branding, and why that, how they all kind of like this, how they all work together, and some
things that you can do. And then we will be officially launching the program, mid January. And so you can go to the website, get more information, email me, and then I'll also give you a link Darrell, if anybody who's listening wants to do a free 30 minute strategy session, I'm happy to do that for your
audience. Talk through any issues that you have, and just, you know, no obligation whatsoever, I'm just really excited to make sure people really understand this world a little bit and knowing that they're probably not going to want to do it all themselves, they're still going to want to hire you and me to do it for them. But it really helps when you do have that foundational knowledge.
Well, you know, when you share that link, don't be surprised if I book a meeting. You know, again, I come from a different world, I come from a different lane. I'm new to this personal branding thing, even though I mean, yeah, I've been on social since '07 and '08 and '09 but I used it differently. And then when we started the agency 12 years ago, I kind of was like happy to kind of fall back into the shadows and do the strategic work and be the, you know, one of the
strategic guys. And I realized a couple years ago that needed change. In fact, I'll tell you exactly when it was. It was about six years ago, that I realized I needed to do it. And I said I should start a podcast. Nice. And I didn't do it for another three years. Oh, okay. And it wasn't until my coach called me out. And I got convicted that day, because it wasn't the first time I'd heard him say it. But that day, for some reason, conviction fell
over me. And I went up to my room that night at we were at a hotel at a conference. And I went up to my room that night, I put up a landing page for the MindShift Podcast, and then we started recording episodes the next month. So that being said, I'm still a rookie at this branding and PR thing, I really appreciate it and some on the other side of this who follow the show and follow the brand and see all the videos right now. That's not what it was like until recently. I just hired a
video crew last year. So now if you go to my social now it looks like maybe it's kind of popping off. But listen, I just started getting serious about this personal branding thing. So I was really excited to have Anika here. Anika thank you so much again for being with us. Tell us those domains once again.
Yeah, https://yourbrandamplified.com
//www.brandamplifierlive.com/ If you want to sign up for that for our training or get the replay video and then you know somebody on our team will follow up to do a call, see if you're interested in learning more.
Awesome. Annika, thank you so much for the work you're doing thank you for also, we didn't get a chance to talk about it. But thank you for all the great work you're doing in the world of philanthropy, community leadership, teaching over at USC, you're helping the next generation. Really get a great start. And just appreciate you being a great human and all the work I look forward to supporting you. Let me ask this
last question. I'll let you run if today happened to be the last day you were here on this earth? What would you want everybody to remember you for?
Oh, wow. I would want everybody to remember me for my kindness and having a generous spirit and being a cheerleader for their hopes and dreams.
I love that. Annika Jackson. Thanks for being on The MindShift Podcast.
Thank you Darrell.
Hey, my friend. Thanks again for listening to today's episode of the mind shift podcast. Listen, let's not have the conversation in here connect with me on social at Mr. Darrell Evans on almost all the platforms. With the exception of Facebook. My Facebook fan page is at Darrell Evans fan until next week, remember you're just one shift away from the breakthrough you're looking for.