Blythe Brumleve:
0:05
Welcome into another episode of Everything Is Logistics, a podcast for the thinkers in freight. We are proudly presented by SPI Logistics and I am your host, Blythe Brumleve. We got another edition of the Freight Waves Now Roundup talking all things logistics, marketing. And in case you're new to this format, here's a little bit of the backstory. I make a guest appearance every Wednesday at 10am EST on Freight Waves Now.
Blythe Brumleve:
0:31
These conversations are typically around 10 minutes, so in an episode like this, which you're about to listen to, I'm going to play the audio version of each of those appearances so you can hear them all in one jump.
Blythe Brumleve:
0:43
So when you hear that whoosh sound, that means that the new episode, and thus the topic, is shifting gears a little bit. So for this particular episode, there are four main topics that we're going to be covering. And first up we have what should your marketing department look like in 2023 and beyond, and this one is really especially helpful for the founders and the CEOs looking to structure their marketing initiatives for now and really in the future. And then future topics in the episode cover AI tools such as chat, gpt and a personal favorite, water dot AI, before diving into some of the non traditional means of marketing and talking about the kind of content that you could be making on a time crunch. It's a lot of ground to cover in these episodes. Thankfully the Freight Waves Now hosts with Kaylee and Anthony and Bill. They all round out the conversation really nicely with some fun back and forth, so I hope y'all enjoy.
Bill Priestly:
1:44
This is Triggin with our next guest, one of my favorite people. We get a chance to talk to Blythe Brumleve, CEO of Digital Dispatch, as we get a chance to talk a little bit about marketing and what your marketing department needs to look like in 2023. Blythe, thanks so much for joining us.
Blythe Brumleve:
1:59
Thank you for having me, happy to be back here and hopefully a good internet signal.
Bill Priestly:
2:03
Hopefully good internet signal this week as well. So let's look at this from, say, for the CEO perspective, as you look forward, in terms of what does the marketing department need to look like? Does this need to be a one person job? Does it need to be a two person job? Hopefully, as you're in this particular time right now, you're financially strapped. How low does it have to go? What you're feeling right now is how marketing departments need to look and function to get through this until, of course, the market turns and then you get an opportunity to perhaps spend a little bit of money, if you want to, to make your marketing department a little bit bigger.
Blythe Brumleve:
2:36
So, in my opinion, it should start from someone who is in charge of what's called marketing operations, someone that can understand what's driving revenue, be able to have those conversations with the CFO and with the financial team also with the executive team of what's driving revenue as well, and so be able to put those two together so then that way they can work with the sales team in order to make content that is resonating with the audience that they're going after.
Blythe Brumleve:
3:00
And the only real way to do that is by having somebody that's familiar with marketing operations, so, at a high level, you understand what's driving revenue, you understand what impacts revenue, you understand what customers are concerned with, what kind of questions that leads are asking, and so if you have that good framework of what is at the surface level and what ultimately is driving revenue, then you can start to fill in the gaps of what makes sense for you, your team, your limited budget and probably a limited team. And so if you have somebody that is focused on marketing operations, then it frees up the rest of sort of their bandwidth in order to go after the specialists of the things that you really want from a strategy perspective, of what you want to focus on.
Bill Priestly:
3:40
I know you're a big proponent of using AI tools and in terms of trying to use those and move forward. Let's look at the size of the marketing department in terms of personnel and their own capabilities. Let's say, for instance, would it be better in a situation to have two people with maybe not as much familiarity in AI and some of these newer tools that will allow them to kind of cut down on their not-present productivity but in terms of what they're able to put out, or would you rather have just one person who's really good at it? Is that good enough to get through if you can find that one person that can do not necessarily everything, but basically be able to be as productive as possible, given what they know and how they can use AI to their advantage?
Blythe Brumleve:
4:23
I think AI is. It's really important to know that these tools are still so new, and so if it still feels new to you, then it is very much new to the rest of the industry. The rest of that just role in general, from from marketers. We're all trying to figure out how this is going to impact our roles, and it's not just going to impact marketing. It's going to impact every facet of your business, but in a positive way, where it's going to increase your productivity. So if I were the leadership team, if I were in charge of hiring somebody that is familiar with marketing or maybe you know to kick your marketing up a notch, I would be focusing on someone that has a proven track, ability to be able to adopt new technology, be able to experiment with them, because that's essentially what these tools are is that you're figuring out how they can fit into your established processes and how it can help you transcribe a video much quicker, how it can help you create videos much quicker, how it can help you turn a meeting notes into actionable takeaways. All of these different tools are powered by AI and so you can be that person that's going to figure out how it's going to fit into all of these existing processes. So that's where I would focus on.
Blythe Brumleve:
5:30
As far as a new hire is concerned, or an existing hire, are they comfortable with getting familiar with these tools?
Blythe Brumleve:
5:36
There are a lot of them are free chat or chat Gbt is, especially the pro version chat Gbt for is only $20 a month, and if it can help you increase that one workers productivity, then it is going to be well worth the investment from a variety of standpoints where these platforms are just going to continuously get better.
Blythe Brumleve:
5:55
And so if you have somebody that is anxious to learn or probably excited to learn is the better way to phrase that if they want to learn these different tools, then give them the freedom and the patience and the creativeness to be able to use these tools to their full advantage.
Blythe Brumleve:
6:10
Because you're not going to be able to know the ROI immediately. The ROI is going to be seen more on the administrative, on the productivity level, and then that way it can supercharge your existing processes that you have. It's not going to be sort of this magic wand that you're going to wave over your marketing and all of a sudden, you know five leads are going to come through the door and they're going to you know, additional 20 leads next week. That's not how it works. It's going to help your marketing department, your whoever is handling, whether it's one person or an entire team. It's going to help them as far as productivity is concerned, but you really want to focus on somebody that is going, that has a willingness to learn and a willingness to use these tools and figure out how they can play a role within the organization.
Bill Priestly:
6:51
And obviously that's extremely important because if you get someone who doesn't have that willingness to learn, then all of a sudden you find yourself maybe in the stage of a dinosaur, where you're not willing to evolve in those particular ways. But let's say that you've got someone there. You're a cash trapped institution, you don't want to spend a lot of money. You made a hire and a person who wants to learn. How long of the learning curve, given your experience with some of these tools? How long of a learning curve do you say, okay, we need you to kind of get something going here in the not too distant future. What's the kind of timeline or runway you have with a person who you bring in kind of right there and you want them to obviously hit the ground running? But how much lead time do you get?
Blythe Brumleve:
7:28
So I would. If you're not willing to give your marketing rep at least six months of a lead time, then don't even bother hiring them, because you're not ready to invest in marketing yet. And so, from a marketers perspective, you need to be able to have that breathability to be able to use these tools but also know that you're not going to get fired in two months if you can't start producing leads, and so, from that perspective, it should be number one priority for any marketer that is entering into the industry in order to set up quick takeaways. How can you get involved in the sales meetings? A quick way to do that, using AI tools, is to get some kind of a meeting note taking tool. I feel like a broken record at this point that if you are not using a tool called otterai, that you are missing out on some of the best insights that your sales team could be providing to the rest of the executive team and the marketing team. So just by using these note taking tools, they'll be able to automatically join meetings, create takeaways and then be able to send those takeaways. So the marketer has some kind of an idea of where they need to start and what are the customers asking what are the leads asking?
Blythe Brumleve:
8:31
And then you can start to revamp your website, you can start to create email campaigns, you can start to create social campaigns and you create it based on those conversations that your sales team is already having.
Blythe Brumleve:
8:41
And so then you can start to lay that groundwork of measurement of what kind of content you're going to create as far as expectations. Is the executive team going to get involved, as far as founder driven marketing or thought leadership driven marketing? That's sort of that next phase of what. After you establish that ground level of measurement and what you're going to create, then that next level is getting the executive team, getting the founder team, involved in regular webinars, regular customer interviews, and so then that way you can use those video interviews. You can use those as your marketing campaigns, as what you send out to those future customers and to those leads. Even if you don't technically can use the customer side of those answers, you can still use the executive and the founder quotes from those interviews and you can use those as social media clips in order to drive more awareness to your brand and to the services that you're trying to sell to your customers.
Bill Priestly:
9:34
I remember Grace Sharkey, not too long ago, had mentioned a survey among lots of different companies to say do you intend to invest in freight tech over the course of the next 12 months? And a vast majority of answers came back yes. Even though we're in obviously tougher economic times right now, they still want to make that investment. How would you advise companies in terms of making investments in technology? Regarding to marketing, obviously there are lots of options out there. Some cost money, most cost money, some do not. But what about that investment on the marketing side and trying to basically make your marketing department as good as possible, even though you may not know necessarily what this technology does?
Blythe Brumleve:
10:14
So the first thing I would get is a pro chat GPT subscription. It's $20 a month. Then I would get an auto AI subscription it's like $130 a month. Those are really the only two software tools that you need right now in order to get the job done today. Anything else you would be overwhelming yourself. You would have.
Blythe Brumleve:
10:31
There's a learning curve for a lot of these different software tools and with a lot of the enhancements that are coming out from not just chat GPT, but Claude and also Google is working on their personal duet tool I think is what they're calling it. They're Gemini. That's going to be out later this fall, and so all of these tools are already. These big technology vendors are already building these tools into your existing tech stacks, and that's where you could be looking towards the future, where, okay, if they're going to incorporate this into your Google docs, for example, or Microsoft with Bing and chat GPT, they're already incorporating these tools into your existing tech stack, then that is your. That is the situation where you're not going to waste a ton of money on trying to buy 15 different tools that do all of these different things. You're probably going to have stuff for a learning curve.
Blythe Brumleve:
11:19
If you do that, you're not exactly sure where they're going to fit in as far as your process is our concern. So get the Otter AI subscription. Get a pro chat GPT subscription. You'll save a lot of money. You can figure out where it fits into your existing processes and then, when a few months these companies keep battling it out, then you can be the ultimate winner as far as who is going to be incorporating the best tools into each of your existing tech stacks. Where it doesn't. It doesn't require a huge like change order where you know the executive team has to get involved because you want to spend $20,000 on software that's probably going to be replaced in six months. So I would get those two pieces of software and then everything else.
Bill Priestly:
11:55
Just kind of wait and see real quick If you're a CEO perhaps. Maybe this has been technologically challenged and you're not up to snuff on everything that's going on as far as this is concerned, Maybe you came into the game 10 years ago. How much different is the marketing team of 10 years ago going to be the marketing team of today?
Blythe Brumleve:
12:12
It completely different, 100% different. You're not going to be focusing on SEO, which is what the focus was, you know, 10 years ago blog driven content. A lot of that is going to be easily replaced, and is already easily replaced, with a lot of these tools. You need to have somebody that's familiar with marketing operations and AI to really have a clear sort of picture as to how these tools evolve and how it's going to shape our future of work.
Bill Priestly:
12:33
And if you don't change, oh well, platt Platt, thanks so much for joining us, and I will look forward to you coming out next week as well.
Kaylee Nix:
12:42
We're going to welcome in our next guest. We've got Blythe Brunnelly joining us today for a conversation a little bit about AI tools, how to use them to actually create some decent content. Blythe, thank you for joining us this morning. As always, it seems like AI is something that we are continuing to talk about. It's becoming pretty useful, especially in a marketing standpoint, but how do we make sure that that content is actually useful? Are we asking you the right questions and asking for the right types of things to be produced?
Blythe Brumleve:
13:09
Absolutely. This is one of my favorite topics. I feel like I haven't gotten a chance to talk about it on FreightWaves now, so I'm excited to dive into this with you all today. You're right With content marketing, ai has just essentially taken over the entire conversation. That's all that.
Blythe Brumleve:
13:25
These tools, your traditional tools such as Google and Microsoft, plus HubSpot, all of these different platforms, are starting to incorporate AI into all of their existing tools. It makes other tools that have been built up on their own, such as Jasper or even copyai Some of these tools that have existed for a few years now. They're starting to have that competition from the big players, who have been a little bit of a sleep at the wheel, or a sleep at the wheel to the extent that, like Google says, they didn't want to release some of this technology for fears that it would be too far advanced for the majority of the public to handle. Now we're at a difficult fork in the road of how do we incorporate AI into our workload responsibly Then. That way, we can produce more of the great work faster, but also not suffer at the loss of the human element, which is really still important and impactful with the content that you're making.
Anthony Smith:
14:25
Blythe. One of the big things I'm trying to see lately on a site that I don't frequent too much at, c has really starting to launch a lot of AI style prompts to be sold. Can you talk to what some of those are looking like, when people are just looking at how to use things like chat, gbt or how to use AI to really get the most out of it or answer questions?
Blythe Brumleve:
14:46
Yes, a lot of these tools, a lot of these existing platforms, are starting to implement AI For better or worse. Etsy is one of them. Linkedin is another one, where they're helping you create these different captions, create these different post ideas. Where AI really shines, though, is the ideation, or with using your own content in order to craft new posts, new articles, new video ideas. That's where it's extremely powerful right now, where it gets into be a little bit of the muddy waters or just content that isn't going to make much of an impact. That's where you fall into the trap of a tool. Using an AI tool like Etsy, or using AI tools on LinkedIn. Some of these things are just very early. They're a little too early, and you run the risk of using these tools and sounding like everybody else.
Blythe Brumleve:
15:40
What I always suggest is to use these platforms. There's Claude, there's Bard, there's chat GBT. Of course, we have three really main players as far as the large language models that you can go and you can play with right now, so testing those repeatedly, not just maybe. You tested out Bard a few months ago, and it wasn't the best, because it probably wasn't the best. Chat GBT and Claude have really taken the throne as far as data creation is concerned, one is really good for ideation.
Blythe Brumleve:
16:13
I use chat GBT for ideation or to summarize things. I also use Claude for data analysis. You can upload documents and data up to 7,500 words up to Claude AI and it can take a podcast transcript, for example, or a video transcript, like what we're having now. You would be able to download that transcript, upload it to Claude and then it would be able to give you a summary, give you tweet ideas, give you LinkedIn post ideas. That, to me, is the better use case, because you're using your own data and you're using the power of these large language models in order to create content, versus just trying to use the autofill suggestions of what some of these different platforms are trying to get you to use.
Kaylee Nix:
16:54
So Blight. I think this begs the question when do we see some of these platforms who maybe aren't so AI friendly or who aren't so accepting of technology like this, start to put blocks in their algorithms that detect if things have been written by AI? So it's something that we can expect to see like, say, you have an Instagram caption per chance that you took and you said, okay, chat, gbt, here's my blog post. Give me an Instagram caption and then copy it and paste that into. Is there? Do we run the risk of the metadata transferring over and Instagram maybe picking up on that and then putting it down in its algorithm because it wasn't human written, or is that something that is maybe far down? Did I just give Mark Zuckerberg an idea?
Blythe Brumleve:
17:36
Well, it's challenging right now because anytime one of these AI detection tools come out, they're largely inaccurate and they're never going to be able to keep up with the current technology. So it's always this thing of just chasing the continuous next phase, the next phase, and a lot of these software tools are not going to be able. A lot of these AI detection tools are, just, frankly, not going to be able to keep up with it. Now, you did mention something interesting where the metadata from that post could likely be embedded into whatever text that you're creating. But anytime something like that pops up like, say, for example, the TikTok watermark on a video, that is a perfect example of the TikTok watermark showing up, instagram starting to realize that, hey, people are just repurposing videos from TikTok on here. We're going to develop a piece of our algorithm in order to detect that and we're going to downplay that content in our feed because it has the watermark. Well, there's already a tool that will remove that watermark for you and you'll be able to do the exact same thing. So for the savvy tech folks out there, you'll be able to get around this pretty quickly. I think a lot of teachers experience that.
Blythe Brumleve:
18:42
Last year when, during school that students would be creating different chat, gpt related content or research papers, and they would have these AI detection tools that would show that, oh, 80% of this content was created by AI, but you have some instances where it wasn't created by AI, because that's where the ultimate problem comes back to is that these large language models are being trained on our own words, our own data, and so you have to just accept that this technology is here. The genie is out of the bottle. There's no putting it back. So how do we use these tools with our own data in order to take our content to the next level? And I think that that's a situation where we're at now, where, if you're trying to chase, you know, with the AI detection tools and things like that, it's just, frankly, it's going to be a waste of your time.
Blythe Brumleve:
19:30
You need to start thinking about new ways of using these kinds of tools already in your existing workflows, because your existing tech stacks. You know things like that. They're just going to keep incorporating new AI technology. You know Google is another one. Just this week, they release their platform called Duet, and so you can go into your Google account, you can activate the license and you can start using these different co-pilot style tools and your Google Docs and your slides and your sheets and in your emails. It's coming for every part of the written word online and I think it's best to learn these tools. Use it to your advantage, or otherwise you're going to suffer the negative consequences of falling behind, lack of productivity and possibly having your job replaced.
Anthony Smith:
20:14
Blythe. I think that is excellent. Well, put the genie is out of the bottle Real quick. Before I let you go, are there any applications that you are most excited about that are being used for AI, or any things that you haven't seen just yet that you think might be a possibility?
Blythe Brumleve:
20:28
I think that a lot of the creation tools, especially for, like Google slides, it's just not there yet, but when it does get there it's going to be really incredible. A couple of tools that I really love to use is Claude, just because I can upload transcripts, I can upload spreadsheets and it can give me an extra pair of eyes on that content. And then I would say, between Claude, that's the one that I primarily use every day. Another one for video and creative folks out there is runway. They can help you create videos really from the text to prompt, and it will. If you just input text, it'll be able to create a video for you. Still very early stages for that, but exciting nonetheless.
Anthony Smith:
21:05
Exciting indeed. Blight, thanks so much for joining us this morning.
Blythe Brumleve:
21:09
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Kaylee Nix:
21:58
Right now we're going to welcome on our next live guest. We've got Blight from Leap joining us. Host and creator of everything is logistics. Blight, thanks for being here. We also know that you love to both moonlight and daylight as our social media content queen, and today we're talking on using social media specifically to market to particular demographics. I love this because I think what you and I have talked about before is so nuanced but so important, because you have to find a voice for every social media platform and it can be difficult to find the right one, and if it's not right, it's not going to work.
Blythe Brumleve:
22:31
Absolutely. You really have to start off with the end goal in mind of what you're trying to do. Are you trying to build brand awareness? Are you trying to get some ROI? Are you trying to generate leads? Having all of that in mind first can help you reverse engineer of what you want those goals to ultimately be.
Bill Priestly:
22:49
As we look at it in terms of, obviously, different platforms get different demographics, but if you're looking for a specific demographic, how do we depict one? And then, all of a sudden, how do you make sure that the content that you're creating is hitting the right note that you want to get to the person that you're trying to get to?
Blythe Brumleve:
23:06
So I think we have to back up almost just a little bit, because for a lot of freight marketers they are one-person operations I think we talk about that almost every time I'm on freight waves now is that these one-person marketing operations, they don't have a lot of time on their hands. They're more often handling other tasks in addition to the marketing requirements. And so, when you think about it from that lens, is that you're only really going to have time for one or two platforms. And so, thinking about those goals of what you want to, what you want to, maybe it's recruiting, maybe it's attracting, you know, in-house brokers, maybe it's attracting drivers, and so having that in mind first can really help you really streamline a lot of your different marketing efforts. And so, thinking about it from that lens, you really want to think about well, what do?
Blythe Brumleve:
23:54
Who's going to be creating this content? Who is going to? Are you going to be doing video? You're going to be doing audio? Is it going to be influencer led, where you don't actually hire someone within your company to create this content. But then who is going to be the face of your company? Maybe it's founder led, or maybe it's employee led, where you encourage your employees to start generating content on LinkedIn, on Twitter or X or you know whatever it's called this week I it's going to take some time to get to get used to that, but knowing that you have that in mind of who's going to be on camera and then plus what the goal is, then you can figure out which platform makes the most sense for you.
Blythe Brumleve:
24:30
If you're trying to do recruiting efforts, tiktok makes a ton of sense because a lot of drivers are on there and a lot of young people are on there.
Blythe Brumleve:
24:36
So making TikTok relevant content for that specific goal, for that specific audience, makes a lot of sense there. If you're trying to reach shippers, if you're trying to reach other tech providers, linkedin makes a whole lot of sense because that's where that audience hangs out and that's where they really gravitate towards that kind of content. You could also consider newer type platforms, especially newer for freight, such as using the platform X, formerly known as Twitter, or using the platform Discord. There are growing freight communities on these platforms, especially Discord, and especially Twitter or X. I'm good, it's going to take a while to get that one right, but they're growing freight marketing platforms that are on the, that are on these audience or audiences that are on these different communities, and so having that goal in mind, having that audience in mind, and then who is going to be on camera, if you package all of those two together, or all of those three together, then it will have a higher likelihood of reaching that goal.
Kaylee Nix:
25:29
Oriented content, so of course, as you mentioned, we talk about the fact that a lot of these operations are one person marketing teams all the time, and their time is valuable, and having to devote their time to seven to eight to 12 different social media platforms is absolutely not feasible.
Kaylee Nix:
25:45
But for a lot of legacy leadership I'll use the word legacy I don't want to call them old they have this idea that more content is better. Right, pump it all out, doesn't matter, you can just toss it out there. You reuse it across platforms, and that doesn't quite work. So for folks who are maybe a little bit more social media savvy, if they are handling this content production, how do you go about talking to your legacy leadership and really saying, ok, you know what? No, I can't be on all nine different platforms putting out the same stuff, because you're not going to get the end goal in mind. Here's the two to three that we need to focus on, and this is what I expect to see in return out of that focus 100 percent, because you really need to set the expectations very clear.
Blythe Brumleve:
26:24
I think a lot of legacy employees let's just say it that way have an idea that you could just, oh, just go do the, the X thing, go do the Instagram thing, and it'll just take a little bit right, it doesn't take that much time and effort when, in reality, each of these platforms have their own nuances, have their own language, have their own content style, and so you need to invest in each of those styles for each of those things. If you've ever asked an executive to try to start posting to LinkedIn at least once a week, you can see the groans on their faces and they're just very visibly like I don't want to do this. Well, if you think about it from that lens and it takes so much time and energy for you to post one thing on a platform once a week Now try to think about the responsibilities on that one person, marketer, who is trying to do all of those things every single day, multiple times per day. So the reality is that you pick one, maybe two platforms, and those are the ones that you double down your efforts on, depending on the goals of what you're trying to do with that content. And then you have to also ask yourself of who is going to be creating that content, because that is a big deal that you need to consider. If it's going to be influencer led, if it's going to be employee led, then you are essentially handing the keys off to your brand awareness to another person.
Blythe Brumleve:
27:36
So you really want to make sure that you vet those people and that they're doing things the right way, but also with a creative lens, like you don't want to sort of put handcuffs on them to where they're not going to be able to be creative. So you want to encourage creativity, but you do want to have some guardrails in place to protect the company, to protect the brand, and so as long as you have those realistic standards set up and set in place, then for social media you can take it that approach. But then, on the other hand, you can use all of these different AI tools a writer, you know, jasper all of these different tools that will help you target some high intent keyword phrases, especially from the SEO side of things, and you can, you know, focus on the blog for those high intent phrases. And then you can sort of marry that legacy content, that legacy marketing plan of having that you know SEO focused blog in addition to the social media presence. So if you can really find time to focus on those two things, I think that's a home run for a lot of marketers in this space, where you can maximize your time, maximize efficiency and hopefully be able to show a little bit of ROI.
Blythe Brumleve:
28:40
But also, don't forget your customer interviews, because that will help fuel all of that entire ship, whether it's social media or blog content. If you're sitting in regularly on customer interviews. And if you can't sit in regularly on customer interviews, then use a tool like Otter AI or another transcription meeting notes tool that will be able to join those meetings for you and give you the data that you need and the takeaways that you need to create that content on social media or the blog or email, whatever. Pick your poison, but don't pick too many of them.
Bill Priestly:
29:09
That's right. We've got about a minute left here, blav. Is there any connection or any research into what medium use being audio video blogging images in terms of the age of, perhaps, of the person that you're trying to go after, or the type of person you're trying to go after, because obviously some will cater to some better than others?
Blythe Brumleve:
29:31
Yeah for sure, tiktok is definitely one of the younger audiences. I would argue that Discord is also a little bit of a younger audience too, but then when you think about Facebook and Instagram, those are more of like the legacy type platforms, where everybody is on it, from your grandparents to small children essentially have Instagram profiles. So it really depends on the demographic that you're trying to reach. Linkedin is the safest bet for the majority of our industry.
Bill Priestly:
29:56
That's going to be interesting to watch, as this can use to kind of feel our way through the social media maven that it is. Thank you so much, blav, for joining us.
Kaylee Nix:
30:05
Right now we're going to welcome in our next guest. We've got Blythe Brumleaf joining us for our weekly update on content marketing in everything logistics. Blythe, thanks for being here. Last week we talked a little bit about what to do if you are a time-strapped marketer. Today we're going to zoom in a little bit more and figure out what content to focus on if you only have so many hours in the day. Let's talk about it.
Blythe Brumleve:
30:26
So a big case that's going on right now is for a lot of marketers trying to look for an edge, and they're also trying to balance everything else, all of the other job responsibilities that they are tasked with, and a lot of the times, in the freight industry especially, you're probably handling other tasks other than just marketing. So what do you do if you're in a time crunch? What do you do if you have a skill gap where you can't get things done internally? Well, you have to start turning to the gig economy, to freelance workers and AI in order to empower the operations that you already have, to get great work done faster and to turn no ideas into a string of ideas that you can then begin to capitalize on if you have that limited time and limited budget.
Bill Priestly:
31:12
And looking at some of these ideas, especially, like you said, working in logistics. You're busy, you barely have time. Is there anything you would recommend by content or format? Should I get an AI chat about to blur them out like 300 words, or should I do a little quick TikTok video? Or should I do a cut of someone else's video and then just talk about it? Is there any kind of quick wins from a content or format that may be getting the job done and then, when I have more time later, I'll switch to a different format?
Blythe Brumleve:
31:40
100%. So for a lot of folks, they find video very intimidating. So if you find video intimidating, you don't want to start there, even though I would make the argument that it's so easy just to take your cell phone and do a quick five minute recording and then you can have some content that you can share with your customers and with your leads. But if you're looking to sort of just dip your toe in the water, then you need to start with being a commentator. Being a commentator means that you are taking new stories that are published to platforms like Freight Waves or maybe some other independent creators that are making content out on LinkedIn and a variety of different social media platforms. They have opinions on the industry and, guess what? You have an insightful opinion on the industry as well.
Blythe Brumleve:
32:21
So you could be a commentator at first, where you are reposting LinkedIn.
Blythe Brumleve:
32:25
I don't know if people are aware, but LinkedIn now has a repost feature where you can just simply repost an article, very similar to Twitter slash exes, retweet function or repost function, and so when you are using that function, you can either just straight repost it or you can add your own commentary to that repost.
Blythe Brumleve:
32:44
That's a really easy way to start dipping your toes in the water and then, if you want to kick it up just a notch, I was part of LinkedIn's podcast Academy over the last eight months and when you, they taught us that when you're on the homepage of LinkedIn, look at the upper right hand corner of that LinkedIn news feed.
Blythe Brumleve:
33:00
Those editors are looking for people to commentate on that news, and so you can build it into your daily habit that you're going to check out that little LinkedIn news tab, that little news feed, and then if you see something that's related to your industry, your area of expertise, then you can be a commentator on that and have a chance to reach a far, you know, far wider network on LinkedIn that includes people you're already connected with and people that you may not be connected with. So being a commentator or a commenter will really help take you to the next level, from thinking about being a content creator to actually starting to create that content. And then, once you start to create it yourself, then you have a pretty good idea of what your audience is going to be interested in, and then that makes much more sense to take it to the next step to start investing in video, maybe audio blogs, things like that.
Kaylee Nix:
33:48
We talk a lot about. You don't have to be great at content creation to start. You literally just have to start, because your skill and your quality builds as you continue to develop and just post more right. We've seen the rise of a lot of folks, especially in the logistics space, who really just started just kind of posting and it wasn't necessarily super detailed, it wasn't super kind of like intensive, I guess, with their content.
Kaylee Nix:
34:13
I think about people like Frank Caviar. I think we got like a read last a lot with lost freight. Right, they just go and they just post and people now interact with it because they see it on their feed. That's one of those ways to kind of hack the algorithm is the more that you post sometimes, the better that it gets picked up right, and that's a good place to, I think, go if you are really strapped for time is maybe just a blurb here, a blurb there, right. And the other thing is, too, is that you don't have to be on every single platform. If you are strapped for time, you can pick and choose.
Blythe Brumleve:
34:43
Yeah, you definitely want to pick and choose the platforms that make the most sense for you and your brand LinkedIn and rising up in the ranks. Linkedin makes a sense for a lot of folks, especially shippers and especially people trying to reach those shippers. Now for other platforms, like you mentioned, where you have a more casual approach, you know Twitter and TikTok tend to be more more just, real and raw versus like LinkedIn, and Instagram are typically more polished and so, thinking of it from that lens, you also want to think about it that no one else thinks about your content the way you think about your content, and so when you are overthinking things and thinking, oh, I don't know if anybody's going to actually react to it, who cares, just go for it, post it, see what happens. You never know what post is going to really rise up in the ranks and really feed the algorithm, as they say, and be able to be exposed to more people within your own network and then more people that engage with that content. It exposes them, your content, to their network as well, and so you don't really need to overthink it.
Blythe Brumleve:
35:45
The fear of perfection, the fear of equipment are both really two really big fears that a lot of creators face on a regular basis. It's never going to go away, so you might as well just accept it and just post anyways. And so having a less corporate, a less formal appeal to your content is also a strategy as well, as we've seen with brands like Think Freight, freight Caviar and Lost Read with the Please Advise hats. Those are use cases that you can create that content in a more casual environment versus some of the more polished stuff that you traditionally see on LinkedIn. There's a lots of ways to skin a cat, especially in the content game, my Please.
Kaylee Nix:
36:22
Advise hat. The dad version of it has been ordered. Also, like read, I'm wondering where my hat is. It's been like eight days. But that's a great example, right? Is that read was out at the future supply chain handing out these trucker hats and now he's got a full dad hat and it's expanding the line and it's expanding his reach, right? Who knew that hats could be a channel for you to produce content with?
Blythe Brumleve:
36:44
And now he has a growing Discord channel that that Discord channel is amazing to be a part of because you can get that firsthand experience with that firsthand insight from people from a variety of roles within the logistics field. So it's one of those things where, like hats, it sounds kind of a little kooky on LinkedIn, of course, but on Twitter and vibes really well, and on Discord is it's leading to a platform that I believe has close to 400 members now, all part of the logistics community.
Bill Priestly:
37:10
And for any tips for folks uh, myself included who's just trying to figure out how to get started in like a Twitter or LinkedIn. Do you think that, uh, it's more important to stay in terms of content, or there's another strategy where you're just putting things out there and having your personality? If you're trying to just get started and set yourself apart or even enter the space, would you recommend that someone has to go strictly by the facts, or is there a strategy involved with just posting things that may not be always in your wheelhouse?
Blythe Brumleve:
37:38
I typically follow, not super religiously, but it's called the KLT method. So it's knowledge, or it's knowledge like and trust, and so the theory is is that 70% of the content that you're publishing should be around the knowledge base of your insight. Then 10% is focused around the things that you like, maybe a sports team or you know, just a historical knowledge or something like that and then the trust, which is 10%, is really those vulnerability posts you know, I lost a big customer or some content like that. This is the lessons that I learned from it. So typically, the KLT method is what I like to loosely follow the most.
Bill Priestly:
38:12
Perfect. Well, I think so much. Always a pleasure to have you on. I'm going to try to kick up my Twitter game now as well. Not as good with the hats, though, but uh, we'll, uh, we'll, keep you posted.
Blythe Brumleve:
38:22
Heck, yes, do it. I hope you enjoyed this episode of Everything is Logistics, a podcast for the thinkers in freight, telling the stories behind how your favorite stuff and people get from point A to B. Subscribe to the show, sign up for our newsletter and follow our socials over at everythingislogisticscom. And in addition to the podcast, I also wanted to let y'all know about another company I operate, and that's digital dispatch, where we help you build a better website. Now, a lot of the times, we hand this task of building a new website or refreshing a current one off to a co-worker's child, a neighbor down the street or a stranger around the world, where you probably spend more time explaining the freight industry than it takes to actually build the dang website.
Blythe Brumleve:
39:08
Well, that doesn't happen at digital dispatch. We've been building online since 2009, but we're also early adopters of AI automation and other website tactics that help your company to be a central place to pull in all of your social media posts, recruit new employees and give potential customers a glimpse into how you operate your business. Our new website builds start as low as $1,500, along with ongoing website management, maintenance and updates starting at $90 a month, plus some bonus freight marketing and sales content similar to what you hear on the podcast. You can watch a quick explainer video over on digitaldispatchio. Just check out the pricing page once you arrive and you can see how we can build your digital ecosystem on a strong foundation. Until then, I hope you enjoyed this episode. I'll see you all real soon and go Jags.
