I've just launched a new YouTube channel!! The concept? I take real businesses struggling to stand the f*ck out, provide my positioning/branding/lead gen help, and record it all for YouTube. The first mini-series features three freelance marketers (copywriter Rob, ecommerce designer Laura, and non-fiction book coach Vicky).

I hope you'll set aside half an hour to watch it through. Maybe with your morning coffee? Or lunch break? Or evening onion soup? And then, the usual "Subscribe, Like, Share" would go a long, long way too.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdNXaHHVnVntg5gpveB-5_Q

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Businesses try to squeeze every lead through the funnel, get you hooked on their products, and produce garbage content to capture your interest.

Don’t feed the bears!

And by that, we mean, as consumers, don’t give away your email address. And don’t pollute the Internet with unoriginal content.

Today, I’m talking to Alexandra Samuel, a freelance writer, research, speaker, and author of Work Smarter with Social Media. She helps companies cope with the transition to a digital world. Break through the noise, and get people’s attention using the Internet.

Topics covered:

Changes and competition regarding the creation of content
Process of telling stories with data
Provide original data or repurpose it to stand out from the crowd and gain attention
Telling a good story is not a guarantee of anything; get your story out and about
Step 1: Pick a topic/objective and map out a message that you are trying to deliver
Step 2: Start with a headline and develop questions
Two camps come with data storytelling: One camp just wants an interesting headline, and the other camp needs a specific type of headline
Vast majority of social media content comes from less than ⅓ of companies’ customers
Frame questions in a concrete way to get accurate and specific results
Data-driven projects are more of an investment than other kinds of content
Step 3: Sourcing the data and evaluating the angle
Perform Google searches to determine if topic/theme is worthwhile or overdone
Single best cure for marketing is to think of marketing as a service
Is the data useful and interesting?
Step 4: Collecting good data, if available
Fastest and cheapest way to get good data depends on levels/standards that you want
Search for open data, publicly available data, and other phrases to find data
With surveys, take it yourself and ask others to take it before deploying it
Finding angles/topics using your own data (Web traffic, purchase history, etc.)
Meaningful influencers and indicators
How to present data even if you are not good with graphics or mathematics
When it comes to design, give necessary data to designer, and determine what’s your most important takeaway
Dumbing down online conversations as dollars flow in that have no purpose other than driving purchases and competing for attention; the result is an explosion of crappy content
Alexandra hopes the Internet turns into an asset; displace toxic and terminal levels of material consumption with sustainable forms of online experience and consumption
Create digital experiences that create meaning
As a marketer, what are you trying to accomplish with your talents for marketing?

Resources mentioned:

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→ Buy my book: book.stfo.io
→ Watch my YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdNXaHHVnVntg5gpveB-5_Q
→ Take my 60-second quiz: stfo.io/q
→ See my pretty face on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/louisgrenier/
→ Leave a review on Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3p4wL4r
→ Leave a review on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7iEF1qovZZiaP1iRtxGARo

🐔

Post office quarrels / Drug dealing impacts city centre businesses