Here's my advice on how to reach out to bloggers, influencers, and anyone else you want to talk about your company. It’s important to remember that bloggers and influencers are busy people being pinged by lots of other brands, so if you’re asking them to take time to use your product, and maybe even post a photo or blog about it - time isn’t free! Listen in to learn how to build a connection, what you can and should offer them, and how to make the relationship last by involving them in your...
Dec 07, 2015•17 min•Transcript available on Metacast Neal recently visited South Africa and was interviewed on South Africa FM. Last week, you heard the first half of that interview. This week, listen in to hear a continuation of the conversation about social media for business, and what it might be like if we could start over with social media. What would we do differently? Would we change our priorities? You’ll also hear more about Neal’s story and how he got to where he is, as well as an entertaining countdown of questions. Key Highlights [01:5...
Nov 30, 2015•19 min•Transcript available on Metacast Neal is back! You’ve heard him talk about keeping it real in your social and your content, and he wants to keep it real. Neal’s goal is always to do this podcast regularly, but everyone’s busy! Since the last podcast, he’s traveled a lot, successfully launched the second Social Tools Summit in San Francisco in October, and spoken at a conference in South Africa. This episode is part one of a radio interview he did while he was there, and focuses on the value of social media and taking a step bac...
Nov 23, 2015•20 min•Transcript available on Metacast Today Neal is coming to you from Clearwater, Florida, where he actually did this podcast episode as a Periscope broadcast. And while he does talk a little bit about Periscope in this episode, what he’s mostly discussing is his new ebook which just came out on Kindle. It’s called Maximize LinkedIn for Business, and it came about from his visit to the LinkedIn Headquarters over a year and a half ago. Listen in to today’s episode for a rundown of what you can find in the ebook, and where you can ge...
Nov 16, 2015•20 min•Transcript available on Metacast Neal has been in Japan these last few weeks, and he’s been thinking a lot about the power of mobile. This week Neal is talking about the social network that you can only engage in from mobile: Instagram. It’s important for businesses to find their visual voice and be original and organic on this platform. The beautiful thing about Instagram is it’s power to connect with people. So remember, don’t go for the hard sale on Instagram - instead, focus on personality, engagement, and authenticity. Key...
Jul 31, 2015•22 min•Transcript available on Metacast This week Neal is coming to you from Japan, and he’s talking to Dennis Owen, from Cathay Pacific. The two are talking about Cathay Pacific’s extremely successful employee advocacy program, which Dennis launched simultaneously with their brand campaign “Life Well Traveled.” Dennis explains how he got the higher ups behind him, the platform they use, what kind of content is successful, and the rewards they give for engaging in the program. This is a great episode to listen to if you’ve been trying...
Jul 06, 2015•24 min•Transcript available on Metacast When Neal first started speaking and blogging about social media, he focused on LinkedIn. But the platform has changed so much since the beginning, and of course the interactions and recommended use of it have evolved too. Today, Neal is talking about editing your LinkedIn connections. Not only is it important to comb through your current connections to edit out people who may not be relevant for you, but it’s also good to have some guidelines for accepting new requests. You want your LinkedIn t...
Jun 30, 2015•18 min•Transcript available on Metacast This week on the podcast, Neal is sharing a new project with you. In his social media consulting business, he gets very broad and occasionally vague requests all the time, and there’s just no way he can help every person that reaches out. So Neal has decided to repackage the content he creates for trainings and make it available to more people. The first version of this is a 9-day online video workshop, complete with videos, worksheets, and a forum where you can chat with Neal. In this week’s ep...
Jun 25, 2015•12 min•Transcript available on Metacast Neal is at the Corporate Social Media Summit this week, speaking and leading panels on all things social media and content creation. In this episode, he chats with Saul Leal, the Director of the Family Share Network, a group of Facebook pages, websites, and other social media accounts. They discuss how to create engaging content, how to monetize social media content and drive traffic to a website, and why publishing is more of a dialogue now than a monologue as it used to be. Key Highlights [01:...
Jun 18, 2015•12 min•Transcript available on Metacast After talking with people all over the world about social media, today Neal is talking about content. Yes, content is important, but with an oversaturated market, it’s important that the content you are creating and sharing is legendary! So why not leverage successful content you’ve already created and used in the past? This week is all about why you shouldn’t be scared to repurpose old content, and how to best go about using what you’ve already got. Key Highlights [03:51] The Traditional Approa...
Jun 10, 2015•22 min•Transcript available on Metacast This week, I am coming to you from Victoria, British Columbia, in Canada where I keynoted Social Media Camp . At the event, I ran into my friend Mike Gingerich of TabSite . TabSite is a great tool that helps you run contests and capture leads, mostly on Facebook, but also on the web. It integrates with tons of common platforms like MailChimp, Infusionsoft, Canva, and Hootsuite, and it’s so easy to use. It’s a great way to grow your following, get shared on social networks, and engage with people...
May 26, 2015•15 min•Transcript available on Metacast Coming to you from the Women’s Business Symposium, sponsored by Comerica Bank , and benefitting Girls, Inc ., this week Neal is discussing when to listen to advice, and when to ignore it. Last week, he held the event that he’s been talking about for months, the Social Tools Summit. It got him thinking about why it’s important to be unique in the world of business and social media. When planning the summit, Neal got lots of advice from his peers about how to run the event. Yes, it’s good to liste...
May 19, 2015•12 min•Transcript available on Metacast Today Neal is talking with Pawan Deshpande, the CEO and Founder of Curata . They discuss Curata on the eve of the Social Tools Summit in Boston. Curata provides tools that help marketers curate content and publish it many channels, as well as provide analytics, best practices, and machine learning to make content curation and creation easier and more effective. Curata can schedule content, build posts from relevant metadata, and even suggest images. Pawan also discusses the company’s history, th...
May 12, 2015•25 min•Transcript available on Metacast Neal talks with Glenn Gaudet, the CEO and Founder of GaggleAMP. This tool helps companies and social media manager create employee advocates within their companies, and makes it easy for employees to share company-created social posts. They discuss how employee advocacy has grown, and how you can get started doing employee advocacy if you haven’t tried it yet. Glenn will be present at the Social Tools Summit in just a few weeks and also hosts AMPlify , the employee advocacy conference, directly ...
May 04, 2015•25 min•Transcript available on Metacast Neal discusses an amazing tool that is used by serious social media marketers everywhere, Simply Measured . He’s talking to Ron Schott, the Director of the Professional Services Team at Simply Measured. This tool helps big brands and small companies alike reap the benefits of social media by understanding their analytics and planning future social media campaigns based on the measuring and reporting that Simply Measured provides. The tool also has the ability to track competitors and market sect...
Apr 30, 2015•14 min•Transcript available on Metacast Today Neal is introducing you to another social media tool that can help you reap the benefits of the wide world of social: Likeable Local. He’s talking Nicole Kroese, the Director of Marketing and Partnerships, about all the things Likeable Local can do and how it’s growing and changing. Likeable Local’s mission is to help businesses, especially small businesses, grow with social media. How? It makes it easy to create content with post templates and timely content at your fingertips. It also ha...
Apr 27, 2015•16 min•Transcript available on Metacast This week, Neal Schaffer interviews Chad Abbot of Abbson Live . Chad will be joining the Social Tools Summit next month, and Neal wanted to talk to him about the powers of video. We know that video is an incredibly powerful marketing tool, and we know that live streaming can be helpful for events, but Chad shared some other ways that live video can be used in your marketing strategy. Use of video across platforms is growing, and now is the time to jump in and try it for yourself! Learn More: Buy...
Apr 21, 2015•18 min•Transcript available on Metacast This week Neal Schaffer introduces you to Oktopost and the man behind it, CEO and Founder Daniel Kushner. Oktopost is another great social media management tool that specializes in B2B services, tracking relationships and helping you target your marketing. They’ll soon be launching an employee advocacy program as well, helping companies simplify the advocacy process. Learn more about Oktopost, and where Daniel sees social media being used in the sales process in this week’s episode. Key Highligh...
Apr 13, 2015•19 min•Transcript available on Metacast At the Social Media Marketing World event in San Diego last week, Neal Schaffer met all kinds of great people, one of them being Emeric Ernoult. Emeric is the CEO and Co-Founder of Agora Pulse , an engagement dashboard tool for Facebook and Twitter. Agora Pulse allows you to track the most important fans and interactions on social, gathering data unlike any other tool. Luckily, Emeric is going to be joining the Social Tools Summit in Boston in May. Listen to learn more about this great tool, wha...
Apr 07, 2015•25 min•Transcript available on Metacast This episode brings you into the atmosphere of the CeBIT Global Conference, where Neal Schaffer met Steven Zielke, who helped found the Rock the Blog event. But that’s not the only thing he’s founded: enter Blappsta, a new app that can turn your blog into its own native app. Neal is very excited about this app, and even more excited to share it with you. Blappsta provides yet another medium to access your readers in this increasingly mobile world, holding your hand through the registration, allo...
Mar 31, 2015•14 min•Transcript available on Metacast This week is a special episode, recorded at the CeBIT Global Conference (CGC) in Hannover, Germany. Neal Schaffer spoke and participated in this great event, and had such a good time sitting down to speak with Ingo Stoll about the role information technology can play in social media. This episode takes a step back from the usual more applicable advice and looks at the bigger picture, including the current state of social media, and the future of the industry. Key Highlights [00:25] Introduction ...
Mar 25, 2015•25 min•Transcript available on Metacast Many companies invest in using a customer relationship management tool, or CRM, such as Salesforce. But there’s a free tool at your fingertips that you need to take advantage of: LinkedIn. LinkedIn has plenty of functions like searching and tagging that allow you to keep track of and maintain your professional relationships, sometimes better than CRM tools that are already out there. After collecting boxes of business cards for many years, Neal Schaffer decided it was time to take the plunge and...
Mar 06, 2015•23 min•Transcript available on Metacast Some people say that guest blogging is dead, but Neal Schaffer disagrees. Content curation is a great way to have enough content to share, and it’s beneficial for both business and the content creators. How? This week, Neal talks about the importance of building those relationships between brands and influencers: how organizations can strategically partner with bloggers, and work with them to create a mutually beneficial relationship that leverages each of their networks. Key Highlights [01:40] ...
Feb 23, 2015•18 min•Transcript available on Metacast I get a lot of requests from various businesses saying, “We’re behind on our social media, and we need help.” A lot of these calls for help are coming from people with small businesses, so today I want to discuss some of the options that are available for you, such as working with consultants, agencies, and virtual assistants. We know that social media requires its own set of skills, so it’s important to be willing to dedicate the time to educate and the money to get you access to resources that...
Feb 11, 2015•17 min•Transcript available on Metacast Neal has talked a lot about the benefits of social selling and some of you are farther down the road of creating a successful social selling program than others. Social allows you to create connections faster and contact prospects you otherwise might not have been able to. If you haven’t started your social selling journey yet, this week Neal wants to help you begin. It can seem overwhelming, but Neal breaks it down, starting by creating the infrastructure and leveraging LinkedIn profiles, conne...
Feb 04, 2015•18 min•Transcript available on Metacast You’ve heard about Neal Schaffer’s Social Tools Summit that he’s launching this May in Boston, but maybe you haven’t heard why he’s creating this event. Aiming to educate organizations about the social tools that are available, the goal of this event is to close the gap between customer understanding and company potential. By bringing vendors, CEOs, and potential clients into the same room, everyone can gain insight into the value of these tools and how to leverage them. In this episode, delve i...
Jan 30, 2015•20 min•Transcript available on Metacast What is the relationship between social selling and employee advocacy? Neal goes deep into describing the evolution of social business and how it is bringing sales and marketing together with the emergence of these new trends, together with practical advice on how to align your sales and marketing departments for social selling success. Key Highlights [01:01] Different Types of Convergence of Trends [04:19] The Evolution of Social Media [05:41] What We See Now [06:01] Where Employee Advocacy Beg...
Jan 26, 2015•23 min•Transcript available on Metacast Where should you focus your social media efforts and budget in 2015? In this episode, Neal Schaffer encourages you to start the year by analyzing your content and process. This means helping you find more places to share your content, explaining the importance of internal education and ownership, and advocating for systems that help you amplify your strategies, like paid social and automation. Key Highlights [02:01] My First Social Media Conference -- Social Tools Summit [03:10] My List of 9 Thi...
Jan 13, 2015•20 min•Transcript available on Metacast Is your social media strategy stuck in "2011 social media?" Let Neal help guide you through how to re-measure your social media ROI and reallocate your precious resources for your social media program in 2015. Key Highlights [02:53] The Market Is Becoming More Fragmented [03:20] Think ABout Your Social Media On A Channel By Channel Basis [03:50] Calculate Your ROI From Each Platform [04:24] Simple Exercise to Calculate Your ROI [05:57] Start Reaching Out To Other Networks [07:30] Top 1...
Dec 24, 2014•14 min•Transcript available on Metacast Neal introduces the how, what, and why of the first social media event in which he will be curating and co-producing to serve the social media industry: The Social Tools Summit in Boston in May, 2015. Key Highlights [02:05] An Announcement of A Big News [03:23] Why I Enjoy Speaking [04:08] My LinkedIn Group [04:33] Social Media Conferences that I Have Attended [07:33] What Is My Favorite Tool? [08:18] Tools Are Important [10:08] First Social Tool Summit Notable Quotes But I'll talk about th...
Dec 16, 2014•16 min•Transcript available on Metacast 
