Tag: artificial intelligence

EPISODE 1 – Side Hustle Secrets: Unknown Tools to Skyrocket Your Startup

00:01 Imagine a world where your business grows itself while you sip on margaritas on a beach. Sounds like sci-fi? It’s not, I promise. Today we’re uncovering four insane tools with an app, know it all, that will make your business growth feel like magic. What you will learn from Jensen Gleer, who’s the guest, how to leverage SideHustleStack.com for new business ideas and strategies, the benefits of using Digital Defend for free online courses on marketing and business fundamentals, The advantages of SpokeApp for remote team management and meeting summaries. How AppSumo can help you find affordable lifetime deals on essential business tools. I just found out what AppSumo is and more on this episode of content on the go. Hey, everyone. I’m Darren Lake and welcome to content on the go a podcast by podcast. Each episode we answer questions or talk about one specific idea to help you market your business or brand better. And we do that by making them easy to digest short and concise, because we all have a business to run. Let’s go. Remember the saying, there’s an app for that? Well, Jensen is the guy that can rattle off an app or plugin solution for any business anywhere in the world. Jensen Gleer is one of the most knowledgeable, well-versed human beings I personally know. With over 10 years in marketing experience, Jensen has been head of growth for various startups here in Australia and worldwide. He’s also co-founded AI AppTactic, as well as a few other companies. Let’s get into it. Not even a number, just simple tools to help you grow your business fast. I think we’ve got a list of about four here. Let’s get on the first one, which is sidehustlestack.com.
01:39 Yeah, so here’s just a handful of business schools that can help you out. So sidehustlestack.com gives you a whole list of different side hustles and how to start it. Now, how this is going to help new and emerging businesses is they’re actually going to see the strategies that most other companies are taking to launch, but also like current businesses to get an idea of what’s required and what’s changing in the trends. as well. We also have Digital Defend with a Y. So if you want to learn anything, this has an archive of every single online course. So anything from like Google Fundamentals, Facebook advertising, TikTok advertising, you name it. They’ve got certificate courses, all online, all free. So if you’re worried about like output, cash, this is kind of the place to do it. I’d also recommend Spoke App. So if you want to create, you know, you’re managing a remote team and you want to create simple meeting summaries, as well as sort of like transcriptions and video summaries, really easy platform to utilize. And for any business starting out, I’d definitely recommend AppSumo. So the reason why I’d recommend it is you can find lifetime deals on this platform of new emerging SaaS platforms, which you can actually hack together to create a full service business stack. Most of these you can actually white label as well, which means you can just sort of, in fact, generate your whole business operations from some of these services.

03:17 All right, so those four are awesome. Are there any costs associated with them, or is there any, like, steep learning curve? I mean, I feel like you’re all about hacking. It’s a bad word nowadays, but let me know, yeah, cost and actual time commitment cost.

03:32 So, less around, like, growth hacks and more growth tactics. So, looking at systems and how you can actually automate and scale some of your current operations or additional services. So let’s say Side Hustle Stack, it’s entirely free. It’s community generated, so new items actually come on the platform. And think of it like an archive of new business ventures that get generated, like, you know, steps, how-tos, all of the guides that you need to actually do that. Digital Defend, entirely free. The only sort of steep learning is there for really your time and how much time you have to dedicate to it. Spoke, I think it’s just a pay subscription fee. I think it’s about 20 or 30 bucks a month, nothing crazy. And AppSumo, if you get a good lifetime deal, you’ll only pay once off. You get a couple of tiers and stack the codes. You can often get, let’s say for example, a CRM equivalent or starting off company. like HubSpot, you know, they might be providing the same services as HubSpot, I should say. They might be selling their offering for about 700 bucks USD, but you won’t have to pay for anything else ongoing, so it’s a once-off flat fee. So it’s better for the long term, it might hit you a little hard if you’re just starting out, but it’s pretty straightforward.

05:00 All right, so those are your four simple tools to help you grow your business fast. We’ve got SideHustleStack.com, DigitalDefend with a Y instead of an E at the end, Dotcom. Is it dotcom? Yeah, or dotco. Dotco. Spoke.app, A-P-P, and AppSumo, which is the only one that I actually have heard of out of all these. But I’ve not used it. I actually never knew what AppSumo did. So I have actually learned something today. And thank you very much. Happy to be here. 

EPISODE 2 – Follower Magic: Secrets to Gaining Your First 100 Fans

00:01 Imagine unlocking the secrets to your first hundred followers with just a few simple steps. Today, we’re diving into the ultimate strategy to build a loyal audience from scratch. Get ready to transform your business and your marketing efforts. what you will learn from Jensen Gleer, our guest, how to use Reddit and Kyoto, I think that’s how you say it, to identify and engage your target audience, effective strategies for leveraging micro influencers to boost your brand’s visibility, techniques for creating compelling opt-in landing pages to build your user base and more on this episode of content on the go. Hey everyone, I’m Darren Lake and welcome to Content On The Go, a podcast by Podpaste. Each episode, we answer questions or talk about one specific idea to help you market your business or brand better. And we do that by making them easy to digest, short and concise, because we all have a business to run. Let’s go. Remember the saying, there’s an app for that? Well, Jensen is the guy that can rattle off an app or plugin solution for any business anywhere in the world. Jensen Gleer is one of the most knowledgeable, well-versed human beings I personally know. With over 10 years in marketing experience, Jensen has been head of growth for various startups here in Australia and worldwide. He’s also co-founded AI AppTactic, as well as a few other companies. Let’s get into it. And this one is all about how to get your first 100 users slash followers, whether you’re a personal brand like myself, I’m a running endurance sports brand, or you’re a business, you know, like business that Jensen has, whatever you’re doing, working for a company, your first 100 users followers is key. So let’s start on point number one, use Google to do a site wide search on Kiora or Reddit? I can never say Kiora. Is it Kiora? Kiora?
01:49 I don’t know. It sounds a little Maori. Yeah, basically, like the main key is to, you know, make initial hypotheses around who your users would be, what sort of topics and concerns they’re thinking about, really, and then looking for validation. Now you can find validation in the questions that they ask. So looking at Kiora, or looking at Reddit and the topics they’re discussing there, and really to get an understanding of their insights, their pain, and so forth. And actually, it’s more about facilitating and starting a conversation with these users so you can get more feedback and validation on whether or not they’ll actually use your product or service or their interest in your brand. Then looking at the engagement. what type of feedback they give to you. And then finding further examples of this, maybe presenting them with an offering and seeing, you know, what’s the uptake. Like easy ways to just simple, you know, opt-in landing pages, you know, getting them to join your community, whether that be a Discord community, whether it be a Slack community or whatnot, or even your own sub stack to get them to subscribe. Really it’s about that user validation more than anything else.

03:06 So how did you actually go about getting your first hundred or thousand users. Did you use this method? How did you use this method? I know there’s a lot of questions.

03:19 Yeah, so to get our first 20,000 users on our waitlist for Together AI, we initially started doing outreach. We started with micro-influencers on, say, platforms like TikTok and Snapchat and Instagram, and then we just de-ended them, really, to see if they were interested, if this was something that they were keen on.

03:40 All 20,000?

03:40 A lot, like a good chunk. We looked at like subreddits because we originally started off as a social media monitoring platform. We wanted to monitor children’s social media and flag any sort of you know, worrisome topics and then send it to the parent. We realized that looking at, like, subreddits and actually having interviews, like Zoom calls with parents, we were inquiring about, like, what were their challenges. And the biggest thing that came in was not understanding, like, how to communicate to their kid. So therefore, we changed our ideation and pivoted.

04:19 That’s a great example of, you know, the companies kind of core objective, core focus, you realizing like there’s more to it. Was it, going on a bit of a rant here, but was it not working, the original social media monitoring for children? Was that not working? And then you’ve realized that this was a better angle? Was there any like proof? And if we do this, was it a risk?

04:47 Yeah, so we actually had a whole bunch of competitors in the space. Bark, FamilyZone, and all that. And we realized that the big kill switch was they were heavily reliant on social media APIs, which can change so quickly. So we decided to really focus on something that was a larger problem with greater impact that we could actually change. Yeah.

05:15 Cool. Well, that’s a great lesson learned on, you know, how to go from zero to a hundred or in your case, 20,000. And I’m sure there’s a lot of points in there or, you know, a few that you can take. I really like the angle on using Kyoto and Reddit because that’s a way that’s where people are really talking, you know, and depending on your, your brand, like. I actually have found a lot of hardcore runners speaking in these these quote-unquote forums or these platforms and you get great opinions you get great insights and for you to jump in and see what actually is happening and then use that you know to help with your engagement when you’re commenting etc. you can easily get 10, 20, 50, start with one. It’s best to start with one. Oh, 100%, yeah. Because 100 is a lot if you’ve got zero. So I’m going to end it there. Any final thoughts, any final words?

06:09 Well, just one, really. Make sure you’re having a conversation with users. They’ll appreciate that authenticity.

EPISODE 3 – SEO Simplified: The Power of Branding

00:01 What if I told you there’s a secret arsenal of tools that can handle your marketing while you focus on the big picture? Buckle up, because today we’re revealing the top automation hacks that will take your business and your marketing efforts to the next level. What you’ll learn from Jensen Gleer, our guest, how to leverage tools like IntegraMAT and Workflow86 for automating various marketing tasks, the benefits and ethical considerations of using gray hat tactics in social media marketing, practical tips for integrating automation tools to streamline your marketing efforts without compromising authenticity. That is key. And more on this episode of content on the go. Hey, everyone. I’m Darren Lake and welcome to content on the go a podcast by podcast. Each episode we answer questions or talk about one specific idea to help you market your business or brand better. And we do that by making them easy to digest short and concise, because we all have a business to run. Let’s go. Remember the saying, there’s an app for that? Well, Jensen is the guy that can rattle off an app or plugin solution for any business anywhere in the world. Jensen Gleer is one of the most knowledgeable, well-versed human beings I personally know. With over 10 years in marketing experience, Jensen has been head of growth for various startups here in Australia and worldwide. He’s also co-founded AI AppTactic, as well as a few other companies. Let’s get into it. With this episode, we are talking about using tools to automate your marketing. We’ve got a list of tools here. I want to jump in and rattle them off. Techsau.com, gpzweb.com. You know so many of these. It is absolutely amazing. I have never heard of most of them. I want to Google them. But tell me more about these actual tools to automate your marketing efforts. So this isn’t for, we touched on actually getting to your first hundred users. We touched on content creation. this is actually automating marketing. And that’s a different kind of filter, a different kind of lens hat that you have to put on. So I guess let’s start from the beginning. What is automating your marketing before we get into the tools?
02:06 Yeah, sure. So you’re never going to 100% automate everything, but there are certain things that you can automate. So this might be certain growth tactics, as we discussed in a previous episode of like content generation, or this might be the automation of posting. or this might be like additional plugins and connections to remind you or automate some services. It could be as simple as creating a drip campaign and an email flow. It could be as easy as that, or it could be something a little bit more complex, such as creating artificially organic social media engagement. Platforms we can use for, let’s say, the former, would be like IntegraMap. So this is a Zapier equivalent. Now, IntegraMAT allows you to create sort of digital workflows to, let’s say, schedule, post, scrape information, enrich data. The options are completely limited to your own imagination. Now workflow 86, this is say like an automated scraping tool. So you might, say for example, want to scrape a whole list of companies that you want to reach out on LinkedIn. You would use a tool such as this. And then of course Airtable, you could plug it into Google Sheets, but then You might want to use Airtable where you can just connect via an API. So these are going to automate like 80% of your marketing activities, but you’ll still have to import, say, the creative side or choosing which, you know, images that you’ve generated that you want to post or understanding, like, it allows you to dedicate more time to the creativity or the authenticity part of it and not have to worry about, say, the operations or the internal workflows. If we’re talking about Texau or Phantom Buster or GPZWeb, these are more like platforms where we can automate artificial social media engagements. So let’s say, for example, you want to target your competitors’ audience lists. You might scrape their Instagram following and then on that following you might connect your own Instagram account. and then set it so you’re auto-viewing, you’re auto-liking, you’re auto-commenting on your competitors’ followers. So then, in fact, you’re piggybacking off their success and they’re getting exposure, their audience is getting exposure to your brand or your product or your service. Say, for example, you can scrape Facebook groups, This is all like gray hat tactics, where anything in the public forum, you have access to utilize. When you start commercializing on it, that’s a different scenario.

05:03 So just before you… Yeah, go for it. So gray hat, there’s white hat and there’s black hat, and white hat is fully morally legal things that you can do. And then there’s black hat, which is the hackers that are trying to steal your credit card information, et cetera. Grey hat is, yeah, a little in between. Is it morally wrong? No. But will the platforms like Instagram and Facebook and, you know, probably TikTok, will they be happy about this? No. So what you’re doing, it’s not legally wrong, it’s not morally wrong, but it’s more like you might get banned if they somehow find out.

05:38 Yeah, so you’ve got to be really aware of platform limits, like how many posts you can like in a day, how many times you can interact with certain individuals. Say for example, LinkedIn has a cap of 50 connections per day, or if you’re paying, you can do up to 400. It really depends on the platform, understanding the platform, understanding how you can sort of manage said platform in a way that’s, you know, within limits. Yeah.

06:12 All right, so we’ve got all those cool apps and tools. Any cost associated with them? These sound like, even though I love my technology, these sound like the learning curve for some of these might be a bit wacky. In particular, the ones that are scraping. And it’s not like this super robust software that is built for everyone and has been tried and tested with millions of users. I feel like things are gonna get a bit icky in the middle. So what would you say, maybe pick a couple as an example for cost and time.

06:42 Each one’s going to have a variety of different learning curves. So the cost will just be a standard monthly subscription. Nothing crazy. You’re not talking like hundreds. You’re talking like, you know, 10, 20 bucks here and there. But it does add up the more you build your stack. So you got to be aware of that. With platforms such as Workflow86 and Phantom Buster, they’ve got great tutorials. So, you know, it’s easy to learn. It’s just more about the time and dedication. Worst case scenario, you can actually find someone on like freelancer, Upwork or even Fiverr that’ll have this sort of skill set. So if you need to like, you know what, shit, this is like too heavy for me, not my vibe, just get someone else to do it, delegate, fucking great. But like IntegraMAT, you will want to invest time initially, but then that’s going to save you so much time long term.

07:35 All right, so I’m going to end it there, because we have learned a lot. I’ve learned a bunch. Hopefully you viewers and listeners out there have, too. You can pull these off the top of your head like no other person that I’ve ever met. But since some of these are gray area, gray hat tools, platforms that you’re using, please tread lightly, as Walter White Heisenberg says from Breaking Bad, because you don’t want to ruin your brand from a, you get banned on a platform that’s really, really powerful. Let’s say you get up to 10,000, 100,000 followers, and then you get banned because you use one of these, so maybe use it a little bit, and also, you don’t want people to see that you’re doing some spammy bot stuff, because even if it’s one out of 100, people are gonna be like, Oh, you’re whack. You know, like, oh, you’re using that thing. You’re not authentic. Not a fan of you.

08:26 Any final words? I’d say a caveat with that. You can easily use these and, you know, not be flagged or within the limits of each platform quite comfortably. A lot of people do. But this is actually going to help you generate, like, a high volume of activity if you have, like, a limited budget or, like, limited resources within your company. These are good tools to automate as much as you can with them. Some of the stuff like artificial organic activity on social media, just take it with a grain of salt. Do you know what I mean? Set it up so that it looks like someone’s just doing it organically, because then you don’t have to do it, you don’t have to dedicate the resources to do it, but just don’t take the piss. You know what I mean? You’re not going to grow immediately. And think about the long term.

09:19 And to you Americans and non-Australians, don’t take the piss means… Maybe know your limits. Know your limits, yeah. Know thyself. 

EPISODE 4 – Smartphone Cinema: Mastering Mobile Video Creation

00:00 Want to know what the secret to making killer short videos that grab attention instantly is? It’s all about using your phone. Yes, your actual phone. Today, I’m actually recording on it. Today, we’re unveiling the step-by-step process to turn your smartphone into a powerful marketing tool. what you’ll learn from our guest Jensen Gleer. The importance of starting with a strong hook to capture media and attention, how to incorporate SEO within your video, hooks for better visibility, practical tips for using trending sounds and managing lighting to enhance video quality, and more on this episode of Content On The Go. Hey everyone, I’m Darren Lake and welcome to Content On The Go, a podcast by Podpaste. Each episode, we answer questions or talk about one specific idea to help you market your business or brand better. And we do that by making them easy to digest, short and concise, because we all have a business to run. Let’s go. Remember the saying, there’s an app for that? Well, Jensen is the guy that can rattle off an app or plugin solution for any business anywhere in the world. Jensen Gleer is one of the most knowledgeable, well-versed human beings I personally know. With over 10 years in marketing experience, Jensen has been head of growth for various startups here in Australia and worldwide. He’s also co-founded AI AppTactic, as well as a few other companies. Let’s get into it. So you’ve got a nice little process system here, kind of like takes you through sequentially, boom, boom, boom. Let’s talk about the first one, which is start with a hook and then move through.
01:32 It’s absolutely paramount to start with a hook. And moving forward, also include SEO within your hook. So say, for example, you’ve got like less than a second to capture someone’s attention. So, it’s got to be immediately what they want or what they’re looking for or what you’re assuming that they’re looking for.

01:53 Sorry, less than a second. I thought it was three seconds.

01:54 It’s less than a second now? You got to be quick. Well, three seconds, sure. And then just add value, really, because the goal is to provide more service and be authentic. And then finally, a call to action. Just keep it super, super clean and simple. This is why you need to watch this video. This is how this video will add value. or this is how your products service literally the problem solution framework. And then what you want them to do, like, subscribe, download, install, sign up, doesn’t matter. But you got to be succinct. And it’s more about like giving that genuine sort of value. Then of course, when you’re recording the video, depending on which platform you’re looking at, you got to look for trending sounds. So what’s something that’s going to blow up? Now to find trending sounds, easy way is kind of like TikTok or Reels, there’s going to be about a two week delay between a trending sound on TikTok and a trending sound on Reels, because everything gets repurposed from TikTok to Reels. But look at like, what’s up and coming and how you can sort of challenge or change that. Also think about the music in terms of like, is there anything explicit? Or is this, does this have like creative common usage or anything like that? Just gotta be aware of it. And when you’re cutting it, make sure that you’re changing the actual cut. So a prime example is using like, TikTok ad creative platform. It’s one of TikTok services. They show you the trending ads and how they record it and literally just mimic. Look at anything that’s got like a really good click-through rate and then duplicate it. And most of the time it’s really simple stuff. It’s like just some video footage with like a really good story or, you know, some call to action or some solution. And just get it out there. It doesn’t have to be great, it doesn’t have to be polished, it just has to be adding that value and that authenticity.

04:00 There’s a lot of great points there. And you, if you want to go on Jensen’s Instagram account, sorry, TikTok account and Instagram account, you can see some of the examples that he’s done where it’s like, boom, boom, boom. It’s almost like a beat, you know, like as in beats, like in comedy or in acting or even music where it’s like, da-da-da-da boom, da-da-da-da boom. And that flow of Problem solution, hook, add value, call to action. You start getting that rhythm and you get better and better with it and then your audience starts liking it or they don’t like it and then you figure out what they don’t like and then you start making more of what they like. That’s another way of playing with the algorithm. But we’re talking about short video. About recording the video, would you say since you want it to look native on the platform, And native on the platform is like bad lighting, vertical, grainy. It’s all the things that, you know, these video people here with these very expensive cameras do not want you to do. What would you say is the best way to record it, actually record a TikTok video?

05:00 You can set up like a great little system where you’ve got lights from different directions, one in front, one at a 45 and like one behind to really make it a little bit more polished. But at the end of the day, it’s the content. It’s the value of the content and also that next step apart from good quality video production or any video production, it’s the intention behind it. It’s like, all right, what’s the outcome I want these guys to receive or do? And how am I going to do it in a way that doesn’t feel like I’m selling out?

05:36 But one thing about recording video I found, if you don’t have lights or you don’t feel like setting up lights, because setting up lights takes a bit, just go outside. And if you can go outside and have the sun in front of you, or even on a cloudy day, that’s fine. That’s the best light you can get, is daylight. And it’s free, it’s easy, and just record. And another thing is batch recording, I found. So do a lot of these all in a row. And yeah, you might have the same background. You know what, just change the angle, or change your shirt or something, or a hat. I like to wear hats a lot. So then you do 10 and you have different hats and a different, you know, literally if you just walk one minute, you can have a totally different background. You have trees in one, you have, you know, a park in another or a brick wall behind another one.

06:16 Well, and that could also be your thing. Like that consistency could be your thing.

06:20 Yeah, exactly. And one, I’d say a caveat, since you gave me a caveat on the last one, I’ll give you a caveat on this. Trending songs. As a musician, I am kind of anti the trending songs. It’s the artist, you know, the beard-stroking artist in me. Be careful with it because a lot of people don’t really think about sonic branding. And if you start thinking of sonic branding, your music that you use, the type of music you use, not even just the McDonald’s logo kind of splash, you know, dun-dun-dun. It’s more like, if you’re using all the different popular music, you’re kind of all over the place sonically. Some brands, it’s fine. But for me, I want people to have a certain feel with all my music. It’s like, this is the style, you know, it’s like cool music. It’s not even a genre. It’s not just always house or it’s always hip hop or it’s always rock. It’s actually just like, this is cool. This is well curated. And sometimes it’s not trending. And I’ve found that me using trending songs and me using not trending songs actually doesn’t really hurt me. It might help me, like hashtags. Hashtags aren’t going to boost you another 100%. You’re not going to get 100x more reach because you get the right hashtags. But I found if you get the right hashtag combination, you might get an extra 3% boost or 5% boost. So the trending song might give you a few percent. But if the trending song is something that’s not on brand, let’s say you have Sonic brand guidelines, You don’t have to use it. That’s my opinion. We can disagree.

07:47 You’re an expert. I’d say it’s a mix. Look at what’s getting more engagement. Is it a trending song? Is it no sound? You got to think, is this content evergreen or am I following a trend? You know what I mean? It’s okay to follow a trend. It’s okay to create evergreen content. It just comes down with how do you want to connect to your audience.

08:12 From Podpaste, you’ve listened to content on the go. Again, I’m Darren and Podpaste hopes you found more insights and tips into your business or brand. If you’ve liked what you heard, please share a link with other businesses or marketers if you think they would get something from this. And for a limited time, we are offering two special services for people. The first is aimed at businesses that have never done podcasting and want to try it out before committing to a full series. Think, try before you buy where we will edit and repurpose a podcast episode into 10 pieces of content for you for only $95. That’s 82% off our normal rate. But if you’ve already have a podcast going, we’d love to edit an episode for free for you or repurpose it into 10 pieces of content to show you what is possible. Either way, sign up at the link in the show notes or YouTube description below to jump on a quick 10-minute discovery call where we can brainstorm ideas or audit your existing podcast and help shape your next series. See you on the next episode.