118. Bypass the Algorithms: A Blueprint for Authentic Content Success with Roberto Blake

00:00:00

Do you ever feel like the platform algorithms are ruling you, ruling your life? Whether it's a typical social media platform like Facebook or Instagram or a hybrid one like YouTube, no matter what you do and what content you create, it always feels like it's never enough to please those algorithms, to get those platforms to actually push your content out, to get the views and the engagement that you're actually looking for. Well, as a few weeks ago, I caught up with Roberto Blake, and we had a pretty deep discussion about what he found was working for him on YouTube right now and the algorithmic less strategy that he's been implementing as we speak. And I remember saying, OMG, we have to stop the conversation and get you in the recording room, because everyone who is creating content, especially on YouTube, they need to hear this. And so that is exactly what this episode is about. It's about actually having an algorithmic free strategy. It's about the four factors, what Roberto calls the four S's, that no matter what the algorithms or the platforms might think of you, these four S's will ensure that people will see your content, that you will get discovered. So are you ready to dive into what these four factors are? My name is Deidre Shan Nassir and co founder of capture. And this is win the content game.

00:01:34

The algorithm for people becomes this, like, big, bad boogeyman. It's the thing lurking and going bump in the night.

00:01:41

Yes, it's exactly right. That's exactly right. So this is what we want to do. We want to kind of like, you know, make sure that we're opening those cupboards, we're looking under the bed, that, like, we're flushing out the boogeyman because we can actually operate and we can actually market and do content marketing and win the content game without having to be scared of the algorithm. And what you talked about with the four S's is how doing that. So let's get into it. And I know that you were saying specifically, cause you're. You're a YouTube guy, Roberto. Like, if anyone does not know you, go, definitely go check Roberto's channel out, because he has done. You've been. You're an Og on YouTube. I would say that. Right? Like, how long have you been on YouTube for?

00:02:21

With my friends. I originally started YouTube back in, like, the end of 2005, early 2006. Like, super OG there. None of that content exists anymore then. I've been on the platform, on my main channel now since 2009. But I didn't really do anything and take it seriously until 2013, which still is well, over a decade of active doing content, over 1600 videos. So it's. Yeah, it's been a lot.

00:02:45

It's. Yeah, you've been around. This is not your first rodeo. Let's just say that on YouTube. Okay, so I want to talk about this. How do we start to break away from the shackles of the algorithm? So let's, let's dive into it. The four S's. And can you just preface it with like, this is kind of how, you know, what experimentation you've done and the experience and how you've actually figured out that this stuff is just, just holds true?

00:03:06

Well, I mean, for one thing, with me, the reason that I understand why I know is one, I have an unfair advantage. I came from a background of web hosting and SEO and web design, and so I understand how platform systems and things work. I also was Google Adwords certified. Google bought YouTube after like YouTube existing for about 16 months. YouTube was founded in February 2005, Google acquired in November 2006. So again, if you understand things from Google's perspective, then that feeds into your understanding of YouTube. And I had a job for a living where my job was to get onto the first page of Google. And I still actually do a lot of SEO and stuff today. I mean, if you even look up in Google, how many YouTube channels have 1 million subscribers? How many YouTube channels have 10 million subscribers? I'm the first ranked search on that with my business awesome creator academy, that blog I rank for those things. So, you know, number one in Google for a lot of that first page. So when you understand those type of things, it gives you an advantage in YouTube. And the four S's is actually just really practicality and common sense. I'll give you a primary example. Unless you're outrightly truly being shadow banned or your content is being deleted or suppressed, if you make something that is specifically searchable, the algorithm can't really hurt you, can it? Like if someone is searching for a very specific thing and you are making exactly that thing very hard, that you aren't going to come up at some point. So you have a source of traffic. When it comes to search. If people watch your video and they're sharing it in their DM group, they're sharing it in discord, they're sharing it on Reddit, they're sharing it somewhere, then those are views in traffic. And the algorithm can't do a blessed thing about it if people want to share your content. So if you build content and it can be searchable on specific things, I'm not guaranteeing you viral views. This is the problem, is that people say, well, if it's not giving me a million views, I don't care about it. No, this is real. It's like something is better than nothing. So if we think in an algorithmless world, when you want to find something, back in the day, before, we were all on for you pages and algorithms, what we were doing, we were searching in directories. We were searching on the online yellow pages. We were searching forums online for social media. We had forums and digital bulletin boards, and we would search for specific things. We'd also share specific things, and that all still holds true today. So search and share. And then here's another one. If people know who you are, and you always say, show up, same bat time, same bat channel, you're scheduled in your time slot, and they always know, oh, it's 530, you're posting the video today, it's Monday, it's 530. So whether it's the same day or it's every day, then all of a sudden, oh, I know there's a new video, I'm just going to go and go to this person's channel, or I'm going to search their name and I'm going to find it because it's scheduled, because it's like, hey, it's 530, they're on, and that's that. So you have, you know, shoutouts, you have search, you have shares, and you have your schedule. So you can have that time slot, you can own that. So those are your four s's. And the thing is, the algorithm can't really do anything about that. They have to literally shadow ban you, or, or they have to literally delete your content. That's it. And so when you think about it from that perspective, what's really holding you back? You just have to make quality content that makes you a scheduled destination. It's like, if you're posting, I'm there. So that's a scheduled thing, destination channel. Then the other thing is, it's like, hey, make something that's so good that people with a platform will want to shout you out. Make something so good that people feel they have to share it and make things that, you know, someone might eventually search for and care about. And if you did that, there's no way really, for the boogeyman that is the algorithm, to really hold you back. Now, is that necessarily the absolute? Like, that's not going to make you go viral, but that's a guaranteed threshold of some traffic to your content.

00:06:50

Okay, this is the thing. It's like too many times. You know, whatever, whichever social media platform where we're on, we feel like we don't have control. And I think this is a great thing about what you're saying is, yep, let's acknowledge that this is, this is stuff that's not going to immediately catapult us into being the top most viewed channel, let's say, on YouTube. But as you said, this is going to get us some traffic. And, you know, some traffic, let's be honest, is better than no traffic. So at a very minimum, we should be really covering these four s's. All right. I want to go into specifically, probably into a couple of them more. So about how you like to think about it. So I feel like search and schedule schedule, most people, by and large, kind of know what that is. So I really want to pick your brain a little bit about the share, the shares part, the share and the shout out part. And how do you think about it when you're creating content or when you're, you know, when you're like concepting up what it is that you're, you're going to be talking about, maybe who you bring in, how all of that, like, can you share with us how it is that you try to boost these couple of s's as much as possible?

00:07:57

Sure. So, like, for me, like, the way I do YouTube content wouldn't necessarily be suited to this all, you know, beyond like schedule and search. That's the thing that's suited to my YouTube content because I'm a consultant, I'm a coach. So my stuff is very educational. I'm not dabbling in the viral videos. I'm not trying to go viral. I'm not trying to get mega views. I'm a utility channel. However, I'll tell you how you do this, because I actually, one, my clients, this works for my clients. And then number two, this works other platforms like X.com, formerly Twitter. This actually works there. And that's why I'm almost at 100,000 followers in Twitter, which almost nobody is at 100,000. I do it without rage farming and without clickbaiting. But the way that you approach this is what works for me, is in X, for example, I create things that are so incredibly valuable sometimes that people absolutely have to share them, bookmark them, retweet them. And the thing is, I actually get shout outs in news media publications from X all the time, which is that shout out portion of it. And that helps me out quite a bit. And so the thing is, you want to be in a position. It's not just because I have a big follower account, it's because sometimes I will do things that are so like too good to ignore. And that's how I get like 2000 bookmarks on a tweet. You know, if I get 2000 bookmarks on a tweet, that's people bookmarking and then subsequently sharing this thing and then running up the engagement. And so you can do that in other ways, though. You could do this on YouTube as well. There are people who make videos specifically for the purpose of other people reacting to their video. And so that then means that if you make videos that you know, that somebody could react to, there's a larger channel that could platform your video. That's ideal. So videos that you know will get a reaction, will get a response from people who do that, who their content is. To make content about other people's content. You can reverse engineer, then say, I'm going to put myself in a position. So that big reaction channel, like Asmund Gold, for example, he is a YouTube and Twitch reactor and react streamer, and he also cuts up videos and his stuff gets hundreds of thousands of millions of views when he reacts to it. You could make something that, you know, based on what he's reacted to in the past that he absolutely would react to and kind of put yourself in that position. You could also have your fans share your content and try to get you platformed by a reaction channel and say, hey, engage in our comment section and be like, hey guys, I really want so and so to see this. I want them to react to it and your audience will do that. This happened even, for example, for a friend of mine who used to be a very small creator, she's almost at a million subscribers now. She got to about 100,000 overnight because Casey Neistat shouted her out. Her name is Sarah Deitchi. She is a tech creator. At the time she was doing combination of tech vlogging and also doing a docuseries called Creative SpacesTv. She wanted more attention for this stuff. She made a parody video of how to vlog like Casey Neistat. That was a tongue in cheek parrot of him, but she actually executed it extremely well as a young filmmaker and showed that she actually could replicate a lot of the signature things that felt like a Casey Neistat video. He reacted to her video, shout her out, blew her up. She basically went from having 4000 subscribers to 100,000 subscribers in like two months. And that's your community sharing something. That's an example.

00:11:24

Wow, that's awesome. So everyone who's listening to this is an entrepreneur in some way. So they most likely are a coach, consultant, a service provider. And so probably a lot like you, you know, have probably more of a utility channel. And so I want to talk about this, this concept of value, because I know that even in our conversations, this word just came up time and time again. You know, like you were talking about these three hour lives that you do, which, by the way, man, there's got to be a few bathroom breaks in there for sure. But you always talk so passionately about, I just want to show up and I just want to give value. And you said the same thing about, you know, what you posted x, and that's how you get yourself shared. So now we all have different thresholds of what value means. And this is kind of what I wanted to get your thoughts on. What does value mean and actually look like? Like, how specific do you go into knowing that it is that what you're talking about is actually of value? Because I think a lot of times even I go through this struggle where I'm like, I feel like I'm giving value, but then it ends up not really hitting because I think, and I look back in hindsight and I'm like, oh, I think it was too general or whatever it was. So how do you go, oh, okay, this. I know that I'm giving value.

00:12:36

You have to really consider what value is from the perspective. I mean, this is a tremendous question. This is a great question. You have to consider your audience or customer avatar and what value is or what tremendous value is from their perspective. What's something that people will not do, cannot do? Look at who you share an audience or customers with. Look at your competitors. Now think of the thing that would terrify them to do. Primary example, one of the reasons that I end up, especially with a lot of some of my live streams or three or four hour live streams, unprecedented. They have 100,000, 400,000 views on YouTube, you know, and get views months and months after the fact. Now, that's not every single live stream I do, but it's quite a few of them. It's a shocking amount of them. And they get more views than a lot of my 20 minutes videos. You would think that brevity would be the thing, but the reason is these things are too good and too valuable for a lot of people to ignore because they represent what they would pay for in a $500 course given to them for free. And so they're positioned in that way. And one of the things I do that other people don't do as my competitors is I am incredibly and absurdly transparent. I was one of the first to creators like me to start showing my real ad revenue in real time in my YouTube dashboard and exposing all of my own data, all of my own. Here's my full analytics dashboard up and I'm not covering up or hiding my ad revenue. Here's exactly how much money I make an advertising and then I'd open up other dashboards. Here's exactly how much money I'm making in affiliate marketing. Hey, without breaking NDA, here's all of the money combined on sponsors. So I'm not breaking NDA by showing you individual sponsor paychecks. Here's all of it. Here's how much. So for me, it was transparency and it was my revenue reports. That was one aspect of it. It was also my analytics. So transparency to an absurd degree, extreme, radical candor and transparency could be something that is incredibly valuable. Because I'll tell you one way we define value by scarcity and rarity. So doing what other people won't do and what other people are scared of is seen as tremendous value because, oh, wow, that's so straightforward of you, or oh, wow, you know what, I can trust that, because you're incredibly transparent to an absurd, ridiculous degree. I would never ask that from you and everything like that, I basically show everything but my bloody tax transcripts. So, like, there's, that's something that nobody is often willing to do. It's very rare for people to do. Scarcity and rarity are things that are valued. And also courage is valued. So something that requires an act of courage is valued. Sacrifice is valued. Giving, generosity is highly valued because again, these things are incredibly rare for people to put forward, especially in business. So. Yeah, though, so when people are like, wow, you're taking three, 4 hours out of your day, you're going deep, you're answering almost every single major question that you get answered. That's a good, valid question. And you're doing this multiple times a week. This is incredible in terms of just how much of a commitment is being made. So people like, okay, like, who else is committing, you know, 1012 hours a week just straight up live to this? Yeah, behind the scenes is one thing, but live and is with us and is spending that time with us and is giving us that kind of access. So it's been incredible. And then for me, for anyone who's a coach or consultant out there, that sort of thing gives people who could otherwise be on the fence with you. A glimmer and a taste of how you will commit and treat them, and they already have a way to get value from you very quickly. Live in real time that is specific and meaningful to them, or they're seeing you do it in a specific and meaningful way to other people. That builds confidence and trust that leads to a transaction. Wow.

00:16:12

It brings this to mind. I was actually recently talking to a friend, and she's a consultant, and she was actually saying that she was. She's struggling right now to actually convert. She's getting on sales calls and stuff, but just struggling to convert. And she was like, I don't. I just even sharing it with me, it was a one on one, just a, you know, a personal conversation that we were having. And she was even saying, this is kind of scary, Deidre, even sharing it with you, because as a consultant or as a coach, you know, you feel like you have to project a certain level of success, or whatever that is. So what do you say to people who believe what you're saying here, Roberto? But they're like, oh, man. But I'm not at that level. Like, I can't open up a dashboard and show that I'm earning XYZ in revenue yet. And all this, like, I feel like I need to get to a certain level.

00:16:58

So here's the thing. My revenue streams might be substantial by comparison to normal people, but they're not, like, significant to some people who. Who make millions of dollars. For me, it's like, you know, hundreds of thousands of year. I'm a six figure entrepreneur, which is great, but it's better than 90% of people in America. But I'm not seeing here making a million dollars a year or anything. And even if I did, that'd be gross. I'd still, after taxes, probably only clear, you know, at that point. Like, you know, if I was making a million dollars in gross, I'd only clear 300,000 and everything, which is still great, but depending on where you live in this country and with inflation, you know, maybe that's not so great, depending on what your lifestyle is or how big your family or household is. So the the reality is there's other ways to be transparent. Primary example is transparency. And here's what your process is. It's not only videos about my revenue that worked. And my biggest video was revealing the process step by step of how someone goes from an idea and then, like, makes merch. I got, like, I think, 600, 700,000. Just showing people the process for here's how you source graphic designers and how you would find them and how you would look at the reviews. Here's how you open up the photoshop and you design your merchandise. Here's what to look for from print on demand companies. Here's the ones I would use. Here's how you set up the accounts. Here's how you do all these things. So it was, it's, it's the, the process. The, the customer, the viewer, they're the hero, not you. So you take them on the hero's journey. What's the hero's journey? It's a call to adventure. It's the conflict that you struggle through, and then it's the conclusion. Does the Dark Lord win and is a thousand years of darkness, or did the hero triumph and they want to be the hero who triumphs. They don't want to be defeated. And so what do you do? So it's the problem, the process, and the payoff. Problem, process, payoff. Okay. So here's the problem your audience is having. You understand that better than anybody. You gotta show them a process that could allow them to move forward and that they'll be better for going through this process and understanding this thing than they were before, and that it has a reasonable potential, better outcome, a payoff that they would actually want. So those things would matter. So for your friend in particular, one of the things she could do is a primary example is behind the scenes. And the reveals of your process can be helpful. When I think one of the best things people can do is literally set up a camera rather than, you know, it doesn't have to be live. It could be edited after the fact, because you can bleep things out for NDA reasons. But, hey, give someone 30 or 50% off on an in person call. Set up some cameras, film it reality tv style, you know, film it like the Apprentice or something, and then just have a meeting in the, in your boardroom or your office or whatever it is. Set the cameras, film the meeting with permission, get them to sign the release forms and show people what their experience would be if they worked with you. And then the thing is showing people how you can come up with such great ideas and how the client feels about the ideas and about the execution and what's going to happen next. And they're like, I want that experience. We want to. We want what other people have. We're all very covetous, envious creatures of comparison. We like keeping up with the Joneses. We want what other people have. Sometimes it's not showing off what you have. It's showing off what the experience of being with you is. The experience of working with you is the experience of, like, I want the results that you got for your other clients. I want to be one of those people. I want to be one of the champions that comes out of your dojo, your stable. So I want to be in your hall of fame. I want to be in your stable of champions. So what do I like? Sign me up. What's next? But people have to see what that experience is like, because then they can trust that experience. And the thing is, it doesn't have to be some perfectly polished thing. Polish feels fake. Texture feels real. So the thing is, that's why it being kind of shot reality tv style with minimal editing. No fancy effects. No, just like, you know, cut to, oh, you said this. You say that close up of them so you can see their expression. That's all people want. That's why this more down to earth content is performing in social media. Texture feels real. Polish feels fake.

00:20:52

I am going to, like, tattoo that somewhere. Such a good reminder of how we get so caught up in the editing. Editing process and having to have things be, even though perfection is actually absolutely unattainable. But, you know, whatever our view is of that, that's what we feel like we need to attain. And it's just what you said. There is actually no, that's actually stuff that doesn't work.

00:21:16

Worry less about optics and more about experiences. Worry less about optics and more about experiences. Like, you know, it's more important that someone enjoys something in its imperfection than to present this illusion that can't hold up. So I would say the era. I think the era needs to come to the end of this person who wants to have this pristine image of the perfect, embodied entrepreneur. You know, I think that that era has to end. I think that, you know, there's a disservice done in the culture of hustle Bros and boss babes in the fact that it's like this pristine, perfect, polished presentation that can never stand up to the reality. I'm not saying everyone needs to be vulnerable and cry their eyes out on camera and, you know, wipe up all their makeup or anything like that. I think that's kind of a ridiculous notion, personally. I think that what it is is show us something that we can relate to that is visceral, that is real, because we might not be able to rate them about money or circumstance, but we might be able to relate to you rolling up your sleeves and you agonizing through the grunt work process of doing this thing. What we might be able to relate to or resonate with or enjoy is, oh wow, you ask such intelligent questions to your clients. You're so thoughtful to your clients. Oh wow. I like the way that you create room for them to speak a complete thought and that you ask follow up questions that show that you're an active listener, that wins people over. If they get to see that they would never know that about you. If all they do is headline reading about you on social media, or they see the edited version of you, that feels like a know it all. In particular me, like there's a I come off as a know it all. Like I'm self aware enough to know it, but. But the reality is you do know it all. Do you enjoy my life? I know quite a bit. I know. And I know enough to realize how ignorant I am. So like the I know enough to be dangerous. Just enough. But that being said, what people I think enjoy and get out of my live streams is they get to see what my facial expression is to a question, what my reaction just to a question. And they get to see that their assumption about what I would say might be very, very wrong. They might assume that I'll say this or that, and then they get to see the fact that I'm like, no, I don't think that. If you're a person working a full time nine to five job that you should come home immediately and make content. I think I tell people like people were shocked by my answer on this. I said, if you're a working class creator, after you work a nine to five job, the thing you should probably do is come home, spend all your time with your family, and do nothing else and probably make no room for content. And what I would probably do is tell you, but start to go to sleep earlier, get your full seven to 8 hours, but wake up at like 05:00 a.m. and then spend 2 hours doing a completely uninterrupted deep work session. And in that deep work session you're like maybe doing more ideation. You're going through your creative process and it's uninterrupted. No screaming kids. This isn't scraps of spare energy. After your boss is done extracting all their value out of you like this is you getting to prioritize your first energy, your peak energy, your prime energy at the beginning of your day. And then you actually can blissfully go through your day and work knowing that you got to put your dreams first, before everyone else extracted value from you. And then when you come home, you're not saying they're scrambling to try to get something out. You can be at peace. And I would say on your day off, on your weekend, you make the barter with your family that, hey, I work all day for my family, and then I come home and I'm present all day with my family. When the weekend comes, I'm still going to be with you all, but I need to square away another six or 8 hours to build a dream that gives me more options. So I stop making compromises and I can be even more present. And so then that's how I would say, okay, if you spend. If you wake up early enough and you get to do 2 hours in the morning, and then you get to do another, you know, anywhere from ten to 16 hours on the weekend, that's how you're going to get 20 or so hours. 2020, 5 hours of deep work that's more meaningful done. If you want to be a content creator, same thing. If you want to build a business online, be an entrepreneur, do a podcast, do a personal brand, whatever it is. That's how I would do it. Without hurting your family and also without hurting the job that puts food on your table. And everyone was shocked that this is my answer and how reasonable and thoughtful it is to the lived experience of. Of somebody who works all day and saying, that makes sense. And you're right. I would be better just waking up energy early with my prime energy than trying to run on fumes and be exhausted after already hustling all day. And you're really not asking that much of me, and you're not asking. And it's like, yeah, I could still, on the weekend, sleep for 8 hours. I could do family time for, like, four or 6 hours, because people are still going to want to go out and play with their friends or go do this or do that. And, yeah, I could find some more time for my dream. You'd have to give up Netflix and your other hobbies, but you could do it.

00:26:16

Zachary.

00:26:16

Wow.

00:26:17

Okay, this is. I mean, Roberto, I laugh about you being a know it all. Well, we laugh together, but, you know, you do have a lot of lived experiences. And what I really like about, I hope everyone's kind of following, following the thread here a little bit, because I know we've kind of gone in different places, but we start, and we started with the four s's, which was like, really how to not be held hostage by the algorithms. And really, the four s's, in my mind comes down to, it all comes down to this question of value, or this notion of value, which is really why I wanted to get into that with you specifically, Roberto, because, you know, if you're giving value, it's going to be shared. If you're giving value, you're going to get shouted out. If you're giving value, people are going to want to tune in on the same day of the same week at the same time, you know, whatever the schedule is. That's why I'm like, oh, I thought that, I thought that we were going to just, like, really talk about the four s's. But it's actually, this is the root of it all, is how do you just get to that point and how you outlined thinking about giving value, like, the transparency and the candor and the texture and, you know, just being like that is, I think it's nothing earth shattering by in terms of, like, you kind of intuitively know this stuff, right? Like, I think as humans, we all intuitively know this stuff. But I love the way that you frame it, Roberto, because, like, you're actually giving us permission to be like, no, this is, if we could just lean into this. This is how we can actually truly have the social media, whatever platform that we're on actually work for us.

00:27:46

Less is more. It is so more. See, we live in a world with the illusion that options, infinite options, are better. If you had, and I think I told, I had this conversation with you over dinner, is that if you have infinite options, but let's say that, like, let's say it's a thousand options, but only 20 of them are good, I didn't do you any favors by giving you a thousand options and only 20 of them are good. The rest are sub optimal, and quite a few of them might kill you. I did not do you any favors. But, you know, if I only gave you five choices and two of them are great, two of them are really bad, and one of them, you're no better off or worse off. Like, you have a really good chance of a good outcome if I limit it down to some simple options or choices. There, three to five is usually the optimal amount of choices before we get overwhelmed and before it's impossible to make choices. One of the reasons everyone who's struggling with a lack of discipline, everyone is struggling with procrastination, everyone who's feeling demotivated. You know what? The truth is, you're probably just exhausted because you have infinite choices and now you don't know what the hell to do? So the thing is, if your focus can be limited, you can have absolute clarity, and now you can be decisive and you can feel confident because you know that you're also limiting options to things, to where even if something is bad, it's something that is controllable, it's, you know, so even if something's not ideal, it's not a death sentence. If it's something that still has measures of control and decisions that you can make. That's also one of the reasons that my strategies don't revolve around chasing viral videos. They come down to conditioning reasonable outcomes that we can build upon and that we can scale. We make things that are systematic. We make things that have some structure and some boundaries to them. Just like I was talking about, the structure and boundaries you can set in your work life balance between, okay, and here's how I'm going to do things, and here's why I'm going to schedule this this way. And here are the boundaries that I'm going to negotiate with my family, here are the boundaries I'm going to set with my job and my work. And so you can look at your priorities because you can look to what you value and then assert some control over that. And so that's one of the keys, is you want control and you definitely want clarity, and you definitely want to put yourself in a position to be consistent.

00:30:07

Oh, my gosh. Okay, Roberta, I could literally talk to you all day, all night. Which is why it's not surprising you do three to four hour live streams. But I am mindful of time. So can you talk to us a little bit about the work that you do and how people can find you, follow you, find out more about what it is that you do if they, if they want to connect with you.

00:30:27

Sure. I mean, I help content creators who want to go full time, and this includes creative entrepreneurs. You might be somebody who isn't like me. You're a business owner who happens to be on social media. A lot of people make the mistake of feeling like, okay, everything you do is for the sake of social media. I'm no, take people off your platform, grow your email list, take people off your platform, do a transaction with them, sell your products and services. That's what I'm about. Social media tools are a means to an end. It was the same thing when I worked in web hosting. When I worked in web hosting, I was Google Adwords certified. So I was buying ads and doing direct search engine marketing. I was doing writing press releases. I was doing email marketing and newsletters. It's the same thing. I look at social media platforms as basically free web hosting with an ad marketplace built in and some social components from the good old days of chat rooms and billboards layered on top of there. So very hybrid tribrid type system there. So from my OG Internet perspective of doing this since the nineties, from that perspective, for me, I look at these things, I look at them as like stripping them down and not romanticizing them nearly as much. And I'm like, okay, the YouTube traffic. I mean, when I was first starting my intro to YouTube was, hey everybody, this is Roberto Blake from robertoblake.com, comma, helping you create some blast. I literally said and shouted out my own website at the beginning of every YouTube video back in the day. That was my intro. Now, if you want to work with me and find me, you can find me@awesomecreatoracademy.com. dot robertoblake.com is my personal website and you can get onto the newsletter. You can also find my book there that I published, Amazon bestseller books called create Something awesome. How creators are profiting from their passion, the creator economy. Get it now? Roberto blake.com go book. See, like right there, it's like, oh, drive traffic to the thing that you want to sell. So I live by example here. Right. But the goal is you should be looking at these social media platforms to drive sales to your service or your product. I mean, I'll even give you room to ask a few questions at the end. I've got a little bit more time for you. I don't have anything scheduled until six, so if you want to ask a couple more questions, lightning round, we absolutely can. But I would say, okay, drive traffic directly to your product or service. Use social media for the purpose of, okay, you build awareness through these platforms. That awareness now translates to I have authority and authenticity with you. So that should translate now to the relationship platform of my email list, my private Facebook group, something where I have direct access, my sms messenger, something where I have direct access to you physical, in person, event or workshop that you would do. So, something where you have that direct access, that relationship platform. How does that happen? That happens through that trust of authenticity and authority. I'm good at what I do. All right, you're aware of this thing or you're aware of me. So awareness, use social media platforms for awareness. Use it to then build authenticity and authority with people. That's that trust factor. Now we're going to take that and it's going to become an action. And that action is ideally a transaction. It's a sale. It is something where we move forward now. So that is going to be about what you have to offer. What you offer will be of value to those people. You've proven its value because, hey, the things that they care about, you leveraged what they already value for awareness. So you met them where they were. Then you showed that, hey, I am capable of addressing your issues. I acknowledged your issues. I can address your issues. And now I can add more value to you if we proceed with this next step. So that's how it is. That's how it is. So that's why it's awareness, authenticity and authority. And then that leads to an action. And that's how we go through it. And that's because, again, the customer, the audience, they're the hero, not you. You're the guide, you're the mentor, you're the wise wizard, you're Gandalf. You're taking them from, hey, we got to go. Take the one ring up to the fires of Mount Mordor, and we've got to defeat the Dark Lord, or it's curtains, it's over. So it's that in the call to adventure, we go through the conflict, we struggle together, and then we get to the conclusion, and hopefully it's a good conclusion and it's a better place than when we started. So that means that, hey, here's your problem. Here's the process. Here's the payoff that we wanted. And you have to be the person who can provide that. And that's what providing tremendous value actually looks like for your audience of coaches, entrepreneurs, service providers, business people. So you have to deeply understand and care about the people you serve to accomplish this. It does not work any other way. You have to be invested. No deposit, no return.

00:35:07

Okay, so who got super excited about what Roberto shared with us on this episode? Let's take our power and control back from those dreaded algorithms and actually focus on the things that we can control. The four s's that Roberto outlined in this episode. I cannot wait to start doing this with you. My name is Deidre Shen, and as always, stay intelligently lazy.