Announcer: 00:00:00 On this episode of EDGE of the Web.
JD Prater: 00:00:06 Everyone is in the same boat, empathy, empathy, empathy. Have a little bit more patience this week. Have a little bit more feelings for your small businesses, for your co-workers, for your boss. That’s my two cents is just… And a little bit of empathy can go a long way this week.
Announcer: 00:00:27 Your weekly digital marketing trends with industry trend-setting guests. You’re listening and watching EDGE of the Web. Winners of best podcast from the Content Marketing Institute for 2017. Here and see more at EDGEoftheWebRadio.com. Now, here’s your host Erin Sparks.
Announcer: 00:00:52 Your weekly digital marketing trends with industry trend-setting guests. You’re listening and watching EDGE of the Web. Winners of best podcast from the Content Marketing Institute for 2017. Here and see more at EDGEoftheWebRadio.com. Now, here’s your host Erin Sparks.
Erin Sparks: 00:01:15 All right. So this is EDGE of the Web Radio episode 347. I’m your host Erin Sparks. Every week we bring you amazing guests to chat about trending digital topics in the digital marketing news space. We unpack a key marketing topic for our digital audience each and every month, whether or not you’re part of an agency, a freelancer or part of a firm, this show is for you. Thanks for joining us. Thanks for listening to our podcast, as well as joining us live here on YouTube. Be sure to check out all of the shows over at EDGEoftheWebRadio.com. That’s where we host all the information, all the show notes, videos, and transcripts of the show. Certainly, have a look there.
Erin Sparks: 00:01:57 If you’re new to the show, welcome. Thanks for joining us. We certainly appreciate the opportunity to be able to give you some great information. You’ll need to know the ropes of the show, however. So each and every Monday at 3:00 PM, we actually go live, live stream, with video and audio. It is YouTube. We’ve been doing this for a little while so we’ve got this stuff pretty well down. We’ll go live with our interview, as well as have our news desk actually produced during this period of time. And then we’ll take everything to audio podcast the very next day. So Tuesday’s, usually, we pop both podcasts out there. Then we post everything inside of EDGE of the Web, show notes and all the links that we talk about on the show. Take the transcripts and write additional blog posts for all the different content that we explore during the show. So we try to make this as valuable to our users as possible. So go over to EDGEoftheWebRadio.com and check out all that.
Erin Sparks: 00:02:54 EDGE of the Web is actually sponsored by Site Strategics, the title sponsor of the show. We’re pioneers in the agile digital marketing front, specializing in SEO, technical SEO, content SEO, semantic SEO, SEM, social media, conversion rate, optimization, and the like. So have a look at what we can do. We also do these types of things. We broadcast from our studio, EDGE Media Studios, on a regular basis for podcast production, as well as webinars and the like.
Erin Sparks: 00:03:22 So if you’re interested in what we do, give us a shout at (877) SEO-4WEB or (877) 736-4932. I’d like to introduce to you the producer in the booth who’s also quarantined in there. How are you doing Jacob?
Jacob Mann: 00:03:36 I am loving this glass here. I mean…
Erin Sparks: 00:03:42 I can’t read you, you can’t-
Jacob Mann: 00:03:44 It’s safe. It’s a safe way to work.
Erin Sparks: 00:03:46 Absolutely.
Jacob Mann: 00:03:46 Everyone should get glass between themselves and their boss.
Erin Sparks: 00:03:48 For the most part, everybody work inside of a fish tank. That’s what you’re saying?
Jacob Mann: 00:03:52 Well, you know, it would work. I’m not sure about how food and bathroom breaks would work from here, but I’m safe for now. Right?
Erin Sparks: 00:04:00 For right now, absolutely. Anything that happens below the desk, I’m fine with. You just take care of that yourself.
Jacob Mann: 00:04:04 I’m only wearing the jacket today.
Erin Sparks: 00:04:06 Okay, that’s creepy. All right. I think we need to invest into the cone of silence and just go a little bit further. Just have our own individual pods that we can walk around in right now.
Jacob Mann: 00:04:18 I’d be curious to know how many of our listeners and viewers know what the cone of silence is. I do. I do, but I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s-
Erin Sparks: 00:04:26 Am I dating myself?
Jacob Mann: 00:04:27 I don’t know.
Erin Sparks: 00:04:27 Am I showing my age there?
Jacob Mann: 00:04:27 I don’t know. When we get the guest here later, you’ll have to ask him if he knows what the cone of silence is. Of course, this gives him time to Google it. So I’m not sure if I trust the answer when he comes back.
Erin Sparks: 00:04:33 Exactly. For guests, we do want to make sure that you know who’s going to be coming up on the show here. Aaron Levy from Tinuiti, that’s on the 23rd of March. Amy Bishop talking about PPC on the 30th. John Hensaw is coming on from [inaudible 00:04:51]. That’s going to be the 6th of April. We also have Lily Ray coming back around 4/20/2020. So if you’re interested in being part of the show or if you’d like us to talk to somebody who you would want to have on the show as well, just drop us a line over at info@EDGEoftheWebRadio.com and we can certainly find out if that guest matches what we do on a regular basis. We’re always looking for new people to talk to. So set your reminders on YouTube. Make sure you get notified whenever we’re live with that show.
Erin Sparks: 00:05:20 All right. EDGE fans, we certainly do want to know a little bit more about what you’re wanting from this show. So if you go over to EDGEoftheWebRadio.com you can actually join our anonymous poll and just let us know what would you like to hear more of on the show. It’s completely free and sans email. So you don’t even have to put that in there. Just let us know how we’re doing and give us some input because we love to be able to steer our content directly to what you’re looking for.
Erin Sparks: 00:05:48 All right. So that’s all the show housekeeping notes. Let’s deep dive with this week’s featured guest.
Announcer: 00:05:55 Now it’s time for EDGE of the Web featured interview with JD Prater. Quora evangelist at Quora.
Erin Sparks: 00:06:00 All right. So JD Prater’s in the house. He’s the Quora evangelist. This is his third time on the show. Boy, I’m getting old because I literally forgot he was on the show before. Does that tell the story for me? Am I getting that old?
Jacob Mann: 00:06:23 No comment.
Erin Sparks: 00:06:24 No comment. All right. So JD is a keynote speaker and a regular at conferences across the globe, such as Inbound, brightonSEO, SMX. He’s voted number four of the most influential digital marketing experts. He’s also a podcast on Grow With Quora and The PPC Show. So a fellow podcaster. Welcome to the show, JD.
JD Prater: 00:06:47 Hey, thanks for having me.
Erin Sparks: 00:06:50 More than welcome. More than welcome. We certainly want our listeners to check out the news podcast that we did live here today. Had a lot of really good discussions regarding some of the coronavirus news articles as it applies to digital marketing. So check that out as well. Hey, we saw you at SMX.
JD Prater: 00:07:09 Yeah. So excited to meet in real life. We actually shaked hands because this was before we had the full shutdown. We’re hiding behind glass and hiding behind screens now.
Erin Sparks: 00:07:21 Right.
JD Prater: 00:07:22 Yeah. We actually go to say hello [crosstalk 00:07:24]. It was good.
Erin Sparks: 00:07:24 Those were the days.
JD Prater: 00:07:25 I know.
Erin Sparks: 00:07:28 We had a good conversation and we wanted to get you back on the show. Obviously, you are focused on Quora, raising visibility of Quora amongst brands and marketers. You’re also the head of product marketing and brand communications there. That’s pretty cool, man.
JD Prater: 00:07:44 Yeah. It’s been a lot of fun. It’s been a really great rollercoaster ride within Quora. It’s been a fun career experience as well getting to go and start off with this communications [inaudible 00:07:58] background that we’re all familiar with. And then move into this product marketing, this brand communications titles and everyday functions, if you will.
Erin Sparks: 00:08:09 You’re certainly getting the word out. Your cohort in crime, Joe Martinez, he’s a constant, constant advocate of you and Quora. I don’t know what you did. It’s almost cult following, if I could be so bold. The guy is just always about what you’re doing over there. And I don’t know why.
JD Prater: 00:08:30 Yeah. We just pay him in swag. It’s amazing what digital marketers will do for some swag.
Erin Sparks: 00:08:38 Give him some pens and notebooks and he’s happy.
JD Prater: 00:08:42 That’s right, that’s right.
Erin Sparks: 00:08:43 Well, JD, give us your backstory again. Let us know how you got to be a brand evangelist for Quora.
JD Prater: 00:08:53 Yeah. That really started off with a blog post. Kind of crazy to think about, but my last three roles can all be tied back to a blog post that I wrote. So that’s kind of crazy. So I’ll walk backwards. We got involved in the Quora ads beta when I was a director of marketing at AdStage. Wrote about my experience, pretty in-depth post right around 3000 words. That got the attention of Quora. They were like, “Hey, do you want to do a webinar?” And I was like, “Yeah, let’s do a webinar.” And then they were like, “Hey, do you want to do a case study? Do you want to do a podcast? Another podcast?” Eventually it became like, “Hey, do you just want to do this full-time?” So I was like, “Yeah, let’s do it.”
JD Prater: 00:09:36 That was pretty cool to kind of see how that started, and then in the last year and a half being able to just really grow into this role and ultimately define how we go to market, really thinking through that positioning, through that messaging. And the great part about it is actually being an advertiser beforehand, being someone who’s done PPC, I fully am aware of all of our pain points. Being able to kind of write to those, it’s kind of unfair, but I really like it.
Erin Sparks: 00:10:10 It’s the choice job because you can actually fuel product innovation by boosting the ground experiences. It’s a rarity. You don’t get to have that particular decision making power, but how long did it take from your blog post to actually getting fully employed with Quora?
JD Prater: 00:10:29 That was, man, right about a year and a half.
Erin Sparks: 00:10:33 That was probably the longest interview you’ve ever had.
JD Prater: 00:10:38 Yeah, yeah. That’s a good way to think about it. Yeah. We were getting to know each other a little bit better to see if this would be something. Yeah. That’s a good way to look at it. I like that.
Erin Sparks: 00:10:50 What an incredible dating period for a job.
JD Prater: 00:10:52 That’s right, that’s right.
Erin Sparks: 00:10:54 All right. Obviously, we’re in the throes of a major crisis here. On your podcast, PPC Chat, you and your cohost… What is it? Paul, right?
JD Prater: 00:11:08 Yeah, Paul.
Erin Sparks: 00:11:09 Yeah. You guys started to talk about a number of things that are changing in the ad space. Facebook and Google are actually banning the use of corona and coronavirus terms. I mean, I wanted to step into this space first and foremost. What are you seeing on the ad platforms? Who do you want to lift up as companies that are actually doing the best?
JD Prater: 00:11:35 Yeah. I think Google is doing a really good job. I like that they are banning the use of saying coronavirus. I think that’s a really good stance. I’ve been really impressed with Twitter. Not so much on the ad side, but they were one of the very first platforms to have coronavirus front and center with information that was reliable and credible, whether that’s coming from the WHO or coming from the CDC. That’s really to help mitigate the spread of misinformation. I’d say that was really good. And then we’ve seen everyone else kind of follow suit between Facebook, Instagram, Google, Reddit. So I think that’s kind of key as well.
JD Prater: 00:12:16 I really how they’re banning price gouging. So this might be Amazon. I think Amazon is really… I think maybe they were a little bit late, but once they figured it out, they took divisive action. So that part was good. If you haven’t heard, that was when people were price gouging for toilet paper and for masks and hand sanitizer.
Erin Sparks: 00:12:37 Hand sanitizer. Yeah. Those are the three right there. What the hell is it all about regarding the toilet paper? I just don’t understand.
JD Prater: 00:12:47 I don’t get it either. I’ve been at a loss as well, but I’ve finally clicked on one of these headlines that was like, “What is the deal with toilet paper?” I think a lot of it was that consumer purchasing in a time of crisis goes back to more utilitarian types of purchase. I think that’s one. And then two, we associate being clean and sanitary with toilet paper. It’s something that most of us haven’t ever had to go without since being born. It’s been with us, if you will, since the very beginning. Those are the main reasons that I read.
Jacob Mann: 00:13:24 And then I was going to add to that, I think the big fear is also where is toilet paper made? And are those factories being shut down? And will there be a shortage of toilet paper?
JD Prater: 00:13:32 That’s good. Yeah.
Jacob Mann: 00:13:32 It’s a legit fear.
Erin Sparks: 00:13:34 No, it is. And it’s about safety. You’re absolutely right. It’s about those most personal of items and making sure that you’re squatting on a nice hill of it. I’m sorry. I’m sorry everybody. YouTube has demonetized the videos that are sensationalizing any type of corona awareness. That’s very good as well.
Erin Sparks: 00:14:06 So in this space, and this is why I wanted to bring this subject to bare, we’re also dealing with a lot of challenges in the workplace itself. Google, on Tuesday, asked North America employees last week to work from home, and work from home until April 10th. Google, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon have all gone remote in a number of fronts and implemented the remote working policies for many or all of their employees around the globe. So there’s a mass shift in the culture of support and communication in all these different tech giants, but there’s a lot of companies. All of Seattle, all the tech companies of Seattle, have gone to remote. We just talked to Britney Muller from Moz last week. Everybody has gone remote there. There’s a huge challenge here. JD, we talked before you came online. You’ve been doing remote for five years or so. Can you tell us about your experiences there?
JD Prater: 00:15:09 Yeah. Quora is a big company where we like people in the office. I’ve always worked remote two days a week. And then before coming out here, agency world and getting started in my career, I actually started off remote. So I’ve been remote for about five years of my career. I actually really enjoy it. I’m way more productive at home. I like no visual distractions of people walking by all the time or going to the bathroom, getting snacks, talking in the hallway. I find that very distracting. I’m happy to share some of my tips. I just put together some for Quora. We’re now on our second week as well of going remote. So I’ve put together, let’s see here, I’ve got a doc open here with 18 of my tips.
Erin Sparks: 00:16:00 Holy crap.
JD Prater: 00:16:00 And then I worked with a few of my friends and bosses who have kids. We came up with an additional six. So I guess that’s 24 total of tips for working remote.
Erin Sparks: 00:16:14 Wow.
JD Prater: 00:16:15 That way our team, who’s never really done it, at least has some ideas on how to be productive.
Erin Sparks: 00:16:20 Absolutely. So we’re certainly going to grab those. Let’s go through a few of those tips, JD, if you wouldn’t mind teeing up a few.
JD Prater: 00:16:27 Yeah. I mean, I think there’s some that are super easy. I think the most obvious ones is a defined workspace, but I’m going to skip the less obvious and go into the ones where I think if you’ve been doing this for a while you can relate. One of them is, let me see here, don’t forget to eat. I know this is weird.
Erin Sparks: 00:16:47 That’s true.
JD Prater: 00:16:48 Whenever food isn’t readily available, or a lot of times people have the work culture where you go out to lunch, you forget to eat. It’s easier than you think. Same with hydration. I’ll just forget to drink water or I drink too much coffee all morning. I think that’s a really big one. Second one is also make time for lunch, which means getting away from your computer, getting away from your screen. Give yourself that mental break, also your eyes need a break as well. So take some time, even if it’s only 15 minutes. Walk away, get some food. I also like to use this time to go walk my dogs. So I try to get outside just for that mental break, get some fresh air in my lungs, and just let the sun hit me. It’s just so refreshing to have.
Erin Sparks: 00:17:34 What you’re doing is really disrupting some level of, not only your psychology, but keeping things moving and moving away from complacency or moving away from [inaudible 00:17:49] or whatever you want to talk about. But you also lose efficiency if you’re in the spot at the same time.
JD Prater: 00:17:55 That’s right.
Erin Sparks: 00:17:56 There is that workspace where a focused good amount of effort is around two and a half hours of good strong focus on a particular execution. But after that, you can lose focus. So you’ve got to be disciplined to be able to disrupt this, what do you want to call it, the biorhythm that you’ve got. Right?
JD Prater: 00:18:16 Yeah. It’s 100% true. I mean, even just standing up. It just feels good. I’ll give you two more that I’ve found. So that extra time that you would use commuting. 20 minutes, 15 minutes, could be an hour commute that you may have. Use that time to tidy up the house. This is a great time to feel productive. It gets you into a productivity mode, but also clean. I’m much more, I’d say, productive and efficient when my workspace is clean, when my house is clean. I’m not constantly thinking about it. I could be starting some laundry.
JD Prater: 00:18:50 And then the last one is this feeling of guiltiness. So if you’ve never worked remote, you will probably, I think, over index on being tied to Slack or being tied to your email because you want people to think, “I’m working. I’m here. I promise.” Don’t feel so guilty about that. I think this is where you want to work with your boss, work with your team. But having immediacy may not be always true because if I’m in the office and I let a Slack go and I miss a message or I don’t respond right away, no one cares. But all of a sudden if I’m at home, you think that people are going to care, even if I’m just walking to use the restroom or having some lunch. I would say be careful with that guiltiness.
JD Prater: 00:19:35 And then this brand new for me. So I have a year and a half old. Now parents. I don’t know if you’re like me, but my daycare is shutdown. Now it’s my wife and I. She’s also a full-time remote worker. So now we’re going back and forth on who can sit where. But I think a couple of things that are key here is work when the kids are asleep as much as possible. Maybe getting up before them, during nap time, post bedtime. These are all good times. Also, setting that expectation maybe with your colleagues. And then try to stagger a schedule. So this is day one. Meg and I are testing this out. I hungout with our kid, Jude, this morning. Now he’s at nap time so I’m here on the podcast. And now she will then take the afternoon shift. So we’re trying to split the schedule and see how that works. I’d love to hear from you guys though. If you guys have great work from home tips, please let me know, especially if you’re a parent because this is beyond uncharted. This is literally the first we’ve had to actually deal with this.
Erin Sparks: 00:20:41 There’s a lot of undiscovered country, especially for companies that have not experienced this before. There’s a number of challenges that they’re going to be having with management of their employees because it’s always been in-house. So it’s not just the worker, it’s also the management of the organization. The challenge is not to expect the same, potential, things that you’ve expected in-house. I mean, there’s certainly at home challenges, but honestly it’s about work effort.
JD Prater: 00:21:14 Yeah, that’s right.
Erin Sparks: 00:21:14 It’s not about the clocking in. It’s not about that time keeping nearly as much as is everything getting done.
JD Prater: 00:21:20 Good point, good point.
Erin Sparks: 00:21:22 Those are some great topics there, but some of the challenges that are in the space of a remote worker are managing projects, the remote collaboration. Does tracking the tasks end productivity? Everyone is assuming that, for remote work, that they’ve already had Slack. Or they already had CRMs or, more importantly, some project tools to be able to track the performance or behaviors. Sometimes, whenever this is foisted upon you, you haven’t explored what tools are out there, especially if you’re doing global type of remote work. You’ve got language and cultural changes. Those things are pretty darn important. At the end of the day, you’ve got to build and maintain trust with your colleagues and with the group that you’re working with. Yeah?
JD Prater: 00:22:12 I think that’s key. That’s spot on is trust. It’s like we hired these people to do a job, I’m going to trust them. I’m going to give them the autonomy to do their job. Of course, I’m also going to lean on them for deliverables. If the work isn’t getting done, that’s a different conversation. I think I don’t want to start the conversation with I don’t trust you. I want to start the conversation with how can I support you? What tools do you need? What things are falling off in order to help you be successful during this time?
Erin Sparks: 00:22:45 Absolutely. So we’re going to get into a few of those tools, but before anything, I just wanted to park ourselves in understanding that dealing with distractions is a huge factor. When you’re at home, you are wired differently than what you’re expecting to do at work, obviously. That goes without saying. But you’re conditioned. You’re conditioned by having fun at home, cooking at home, eating, cleaning, watching TV at home. Those are all habitual things that you’re doing at work. So now you’re in a whole different space that you weren’t really prepared for is those things are still there and everybody’s binging on Netflix, right? It’s a click away. If you’re actually running a Netflix show and trying to do your job, it’s not going to happen. It’s not going to work.
JD Prater: 00:23:32 Not going to happen. It’s not going to happen. Yeah, yeah. Going back to my first tip, defined workspace is key. Meg and I have a defined office that we use. It’s just the guest room. It’s where our desks are, our extra monitors are. Again, we’re lucky enough to have this muscle that’s been exercised and been developed, whereas I know a lot of people are coming into this brand new. I think any way that you can separate yourself. So definitely don’t use your bed. Don’t use the couch. I’m more okay with the kitchen table. It’s maybe not as ergonomically correct, but at least you’re on a harder surface and you’re using this space. Hopefully there’s a window nearby so you’re getting some natural light. I think those things are all key.
Erin Sparks: 00:24:25 Absolutely. I mean, avoid the places in your home that you directly associate with comfort. Right?
JD Prater: 00:24:33 Yeah. Bed isn’t going to work. Also, I know some people love having a movie in the background or TV in the background. That’s never worked for me. Meg and I have always found that to be distracting. I even find music in the background distracting. If you come to our house, it sounds like a library when Meg and I are working just because neither one of us like background noise.
Erin Sparks: 00:24:56 Right. Right, right. Absolutely. So from a resource standpoint, those are some of the challenges, obviously. Companies need to be aware it’s not only comfort, it’s not only distractions. It’s also morale. Morale is going to suffer, unless you have a counter balance of connectivity and communication like that. For example, there is something that’s starting to grow right now that we’ve never seen before. There’s a remote work, not only hashtag, but there’s a remote work support system that’s organically being created. We want to tip the hat to Aleyda Solis because she’s actually running with this and opening up for visibility. There’s a Discord channel for remoters that you can jump into. It’s been set up by Aleyda Solis. There’s a number of channels inside of that. So go look for remote workers… I think it’s remoteworkers.net. No, no. It’s the remote water cooler is the conversation. That’s pretty cool.
JD Prater: 00:25:54 I like that.
Erin Sparks: 00:25:55 And there’s so many channels inside there. For example, remote with guides. A number of different links and references to some of these tools that we’re going to be mentioning. Remote jobs. Even work from home remote job availability inside that Discord channel. Also, helping businesses to get online, like we talked about earlier on the news. SEO’s are actually in the channel creating a resource for companies who aren’t online. That’s helpingsmallbusiness.co.uk. There’s some really cool things out there. We do want to reference some of these remote working checklists. There’s a couple really cool links out there that we’re going to put in the show notes. One of them is the new work from home worker checklist. JD, your checklist is fantastic. We’re going to be putting that online, but just some brief things that Aleyda actually wrote about. You need to have a fast, reliable and secure internet connection.
JD Prater: 00:26:49 Yeah. Absolutely.
Erin Sparks: 00:26:49 Absolutely. A specific, quiet home office space with comfortable furniture to work in. That’s exactly what you’re talking about as well. Invest in gadgets to help you focus and communicate with your team, like sound isolating headphones with a quality mic and camera. That’s actually a really good idea because you’re in the environment of home, especially if you have kids and schools are shutdown, is that you are prone to distraction just because of all the noise. Canceling out that sound is probably a really good step. Set clear communication protocols with your team for remote interaction. That’s what you’re talking about, JD, is making sure that you’re not over zealous and constantly pegging people, but you actually have check-in times and whatnot. Yeah?
JD Prater: 00:27:33 Yeah. 100%. I think I’ll add to that one because I think it’s a good point. Social Zooming. So if you have Zoom. I’m a big fan of Zoom. We use Zoom at Quora. Setting up time. If you’re working from home and you’re not used to this, meeting with your team. This is literally just a BS time. Take 20 minutes and just check in. How’s it going guys? Just have some time, just like you would in the office to check in with your friends.
Erin Sparks: 00:28:01 Absolutely.
JD Prater: 00:28:02 You can also do it for lunch time. I’ve seen some people doing is, “Hey, you want to grab some lunch?” “Yeah, everyone join this chatroom at lunchtime. We’re all just going to sit here, hangout and have lunch and just talk.” I think it’s a great way to stay connected.
Erin Sparks: 00:28:14 Absolutely. Use the technology that we have. I am concerned about the Zoom servers and the Skype servers.
JD Prater: 00:28:21 I know. I’m impressed.
Erin Sparks: 00:28:24 [crosstalk 00:28:24] going to have a weight on it, right?
JD Prater: 00:28:26 I’m impressed with Zoom. They must have opened up some new servers or done something with AWS because it has been flawless. I give them so much credit for handling this so well uninterrupted, because the only time I ever complain is when it doesn’t work and I haven’t complained yet.
Erin Sparks: 00:28:44 Yep, yep. Absolutely. We’re really excited about that infrastructure being in place because we wouldn’t have had it 10 years ago.
JD Prater: 00:28:52 That’s right.
Erin Sparks: 00:28:53 We wouldn’t be able to do what we’re doing here on the show. Have a look at that checklist. There’s a lot of really good points to secure your consistency, your work atmosphere. But on top of that, companies, business owners, need to look at that checklist as well because you need to know what you’re about to get into and how you can set expectations and boundaries as well to get the most efficient work out of your employees.
Erin Sparks: 00:29:21 With that said, there’s certainly a good deal of opportunity to learn and listen in this new space that we’re in. JD’s been reaching out and being able to really share some great points there. We want our community to go check out those posts. So we’ll certainly get it on the YouTube channel, as well as the EDGE notes.
Erin Sparks: 00:29:44 So for everybody who’s listening in, be sure to jump into the YouTube channel that we’ve got. Hit the bell so you can actually get reminded whenever we go live because we’re talking about very topical things just like this, especially if you’re working from home. Right? Because… Well, I guess I was championing not getting distracted, but this is a good distraction.
JD Prater: 00:30:08 This is learning.
Erin Sparks: 00:30:09 This is learning.
JD Prater: 00:30:09 It’s not a distraction.
Erin Sparks: 00:30:10 Exactly. So let’s pivot around to start learning about Quora. So let’s get into some information about this. It’s a great advertising opportunity with Quora. But for our audience members that don’t know what Quora is, can you briefly describe the platform?
JD Prater: 00:30:26 Yeah, for sure. A lot of people know Quora as the world’s largest question and answer website. Hands down, that’s the quickest way to understand us. It’s really a place for people to go to learn more about the world around them. That’s the best way to think through it. And we do this, again, through either asking questions or answering. We believe everybody, you, me, everyone listening, is an expert in something. All of that knowledge is inside your head. We want to make that available to the rest of the world. That’s how we do it on Quora is by coming in, answering those questions, sharing that knowledge and really helping other people elevate their game.
Erin Sparks: 00:31:05 It’s on any topic in any industry.
JD Prater: 00:31:08 Any.
Erin Sparks: 00:31:08 I mean, there are questions and answers that range all over the place. Joe and I are always going into Star Trek and Star Wars. He is such a deep Star Wars geek.
JD Prater: 00:31:21 I know.
Erin Sparks: 00:31:22 Man, it is scary. It is scary.
JD Prater: 00:31:25 It is. It’s 100% scary. Yes.
Erin Sparks: 00:31:27 But if you want to see something that’s even more scary, so to speak, dive into the Quora Q&A’s on Star Wars. Some great, great communication there and a lot of subject matter experts. Just passionate, passionate fans. It’s not just industry. It’s not just professional concepts. There’s all sorts of interests in this space. Right?
JD Prater: 00:31:50 Yeah, 100%. I think that what you hit on is some reasons why people come to Quora. Some people come to be inspired, they come to be entertained. I can read someone’s answer and be entertained by that. I really like that. I think a lot of times, I also go to evaluate products. If I’m on the B2B side, I might want to go hear how actual customers and users of this product are talking about it and answering questions about it. Right?
Erin Sparks: 00:32:15 Absolutely.
JD Prater: 00:32:15 I might want to go conduct some research. It’s a great place for market research to better understand your audience, to get content ideas. Honestly, sometimes you just come to be surprised because you never know who’s actually going to answer your questions. Don’t be surprised if you see some celebrities in there sometimes.
Erin Sparks: 00:32:36 That’s what amazing is they’re answering a lot of questions. So Quora has evolved, obviously, over the years. It’s certainly a Q&A environment, but there’s a lot of professional titles that are getting in there. It’s someplace where you can really groom and display your subject matter expertise. It’s a fantastic way to align yourself with brands as well. You can create new audiences via Quora emails as well.
JD Prater: 00:33:06 Yeah, 100%.
Erin Sparks: 00:33:06 So let’s shift into what the platform is evolving right now is Quora ads. It’s a very loyal audience that’s inside of Quora. For those participants, they’ll come back daily to the Quora space. Kind of similar to Reddit in that way. There are a lot of good tribal followings inside of Quora. So let’s talk about the ad platform for a second. It’s a self-service ad platform and advertisers can create native text space ads targeting users by interest, geography and platform, both mobile, desktop or both. Right?
JD Prater: 00:33:43 That’s correct. Yeah. I think that’s what’s really cool. We just talked about why people are coming here. In the question answer, and what they’re doing is, they’re actively learning. So you’re able to reach a highly relevant and high intent audience. I think that’s what key. There’s over 300 million people coming every very single month to Quora.
Erin Sparks: 00:34:05 Wow.
JD Prater: 00:34:07 We don’t really get a lot of press or talked about a lot, but yeah. Whenever you compare us to Facebook at three billion, yeah, we’re a drop in the bucket. We’re only 10% of that audience. But when I say 300 million, that’s only English. That’s English only. We just launched into 24 different languages over the last year and half. So we’re hoping to be sharing some updated stats. We’ll see if we can convince the exec team to let us reveal some of those.
Erin Sparks: 00:34:36 That’d be awesome.
JD Prater: 00:34:36 But I think it’s really cool. You were talking about some of those different platforms. One of the key benefits of Quora ads too is you’re actually reaching an unduplicated audience. What I mean by that is 54% of our audience is not on Reddit. 49% of our audience is not on LinkedIn.
Erin Sparks: 00:34:57 Oh wow.
JD Prater: 00:34:59 That’s huge.
Erin Sparks: 00:34:59 Interesting.
JD Prater: 00:35:00 So if you’re only doing B2B marketing on LinkedIn, you’re missing 50% of the audience by not even coming to Quora. Or Instagram. Instagram, hugely popular. Only 34% of our audience is on Instagram. I don’t know who this 34% is that isn’t on Instagram, but it’s one of those things where you have to think about, “Am I actually reaching my audience? And am I reaching them only in places that are extremely popular?” Facebook, Instagram and Google, they’re also getting more expensive.
Erin Sparks: 00:35:34 Absolutely. Yeah.
JD Prater: 00:35:34 I think we can all agree with that. I think it’s time evaluate, maybe diversify some of your ad budgets, and take a look. I mean, go take a look at Reddit. Go take a look at Quora because we do have very dedicated audiences, and we have very different offerings as well. So, as you were talking about with our targeting. Our targeting is top notch. We can drill down to a specific question someone may have. We can target the last 30 days of people who read that question. We can go backwards in time, which is also key. If you guys have listened to Joe Martinez talk, you know that Joe loves putting on that Quora Pixel. It’s free. Getting audiences to understand how many people visited my site are also on Quora. That’ll give you a really fast indication to see if your audience is on Quora. You can also upload those email lists and we can do some audience match.
Erin Sparks: 00:36:29 Absolutely. It’s a very robust platform. It’s certainly evolved here over the last couple of years, but here’s the thing about Quora that no other platform, save Reddit, actually does is that this is an active pursuit of answering a question. It’s a loyal environment where there’s lift of great answers.
JD Prater: 00:36:53 That’s right.
Erin Sparks: 00:36:54 It’s not a casual environment like Facebook or Twitter in that respect. This is people on an active pursuit of a question, and multiples questions sometimes, regarding a solution. So this actually gives any brand that’s actually providing services a great opportunity to demonstrate their subject matter expertise. Not exploit the space, but actually give a very good qualified answer. JD, I think you mentioned when we were over at SMX that the founder of DuckDuckGo actually-
JD Prater: 00:37:32 Yeah, DuckDuckGo.
Erin Sparks: 00:37:32 … answered a particular question. Tell me about that particular question and how many views of that question they’ve had.
JD Prater: 00:37:41 Yeah, this is insane. DuckDuckGo, you guys are familiar with them, probably don’t use them. Right? I think they have 1% of market share, but they’re a privacy first search engine. So they’re not actively tracking you. So everything that they’re doing is contextually relevant. Well, their CEO noticed there’s a lot of questions about them and about their competitors on Quora. So what does he do? He jumps in and he starts answering questions. This is the CEO of DuckDuckGo. What ended up happening was his organic lift just took off. So people started up voting, people started liking it, because he came in with a really high value answer as the CEO. So he talked about thought leadership, you’re talking about that domain expertise, and he’s able to establish it.
JD Prater: 00:38:32 But then the second piece to that is he now is promoting that answer. So he can promote that answer with one of our ad units called Promoted Answers. So he’s actually taking that answer, putting money behind it, and pushing it out to a highly relevant audience that he wants to reach. His next phase of advertising is actually all of his ads, so his Twitter ads, his Facebook ads, his Reddit ads, are actually all going to that Quora answer because there’s so much social proof now on that answer. Now, they’ve racked up over 1.8 billion views. Billion. We see case studies all the time where people are like, “Yeah, I reached 50 million people with my YouTube video.” I’m like, “No, no, no. 1.8 billion views.”
Erin Sparks: 00:39:24 You just want to do the little Dr. Evil at that point, right?
JD Prater: 00:39:29 I know. It’s like, “Billion.” I know.
Erin Sparks: 00:39:30 That’s amazing.
JD Prater: 00:39:31 You can’t even fathom. It’s such a big number. I literally can’t even fathom 1.8 billion. So kind of crazy.
Erin Sparks: 00:39:41 So you’re not promising those type of numbers, but-
JD Prater: 00:39:44 Hey, if you want to spend, you can make it happen.
Erin Sparks: 00:39:47 There you go, there you go. But what a great scenario because I think it was like 3000 words or something like that that the post was. So it’s deep, deep, deep subject matter.
JD Prater: 00:39:58 That’s right.
Erin Sparks: 00:40:00 It was directly aligned to what DuckDuckGo goes best and what they champion themselves is not tracking you in search. So it made perfect sense to be there because the question was out there and an answer from a CEO of an organization is a huge factor of breaking that company [etiphis 00:40:20] and participating in the social engagement. So that’s where Quora really excels is that if you do it right, and if you’re not… People can sniff out spam. They can sniff out spin. But if you actually start contributing into Quora and actually start talking-
JD Prater: 00:40:37 That’s correct.
Erin Sparks: 00:40:38 … then you start building up that expertise that you’ll have brand alignment if you’re actually sharing good information. Not only about your product, but also the problems that people are experiencing and what your project actually solves. Right?
JD Prater: 00:40:56 Yeah. I think too many people try to come in and do some selling.
Erin Sparks: 00:40:59 Yeah.
JD Prater: 00:41:00 You’re 100% correct. Everyone can sniff that out. And guess what? You’re probably going to get down voted, you’re probably going to get reported for spam. Come in and provide value. Answer the question. Understand the pain points that me, as someone looking for an answer, is going to have. Right? I think one of the questions that he answered was how does Google track me? And the CEO of DuckDuckGo, he lists all the ways of how they do it. Technically… And then he just espouses at the end, “Are you okay with that? If not, check out my service.” I think that makes sense because you’ve provided the answer, which is what I’m looking for, and now you’re giving me the next step. If I’ve subscribed to your worldview, that’s the next step. The next step is go check out DuckDuckGo. It’s not DuckDuckGo this, DuckDuckGo that. It’s like, “What? No. I want to know how Google tracks me.” So explain that to me, and then sell me on something. Right? I think that’s what’s key.
Erin Sparks: 00:42:03 It’s not a hard push.
JD Prater: 00:42:04 No, no.
Erin Sparks: 00:42:04 It’s if it solves your question, here’s the opportunity to step off and be able to check the services. That is so different than omnichannel full push of all the different ads and across different platforms. This is a very delicate space. You know, and you can see when brands do it wrong, they’re falling on their face and they’re just over-reaching and it’s very rudimentary what they’re trying to do.
Erin Sparks: 00:42:31 Wanted to get into a number of the different ad functions that you’ve got in Quora.
JD Prater: 00:42:38 Sure.
Erin Sparks: 00:42:38 The promoted answers is obviously what we’ve been talking about here, but there’s also, and we weren’t able to talk about it whenever Joe was here, and that is lead gen forms. That’s so inventive.
JD Prater: 00:42:50 Nice, yeah.
Erin Sparks: 00:42:51 Give us some down low on the lead gen, man.
JD Prater: 00:42:55 Yeah. That’s coming. We’re hoping to be able to launch that probably next month. So maybe in April, if not early May. We’ve got some other things in the works like a new ads manager redesign. That ones under works. You’re going to see that one come out in a couple of weeks. That’s the first time we’ve announced that one.
Erin Sparks: 00:43:17 Okay.
JD Prater: 00:43:18 But with lead gen forms, what you’re going to be able to do is it’s going to look very, very similar to how LinkedIn does it. Copying them in a lot of ways. Hey, it’s a sincere form of flatter, right?
Erin Sparks: 00:43:31 There you go. Yeah.
JD Prater: 00:43:33 What you’re able to do is you’re able to take your text ad or your image ad, and then you’re able to then pair with a form. That’s ultimately what a lead gen form is. Your image ad, text ad, will still look the same. When someone clicks on it, it opens up a form. And then this form will auto populate the information that we have about said user.
Erin Sparks: 00:43:52 Sweet.
JD Prater: 00:43:52 If not, then they will be asked to then fill it out. So if we don’t know their company name or website, for example, they’ll fill that out. And then the next will be the third page, so it’s the image ad, text ad, then the form, and then they’ll be the confirmation page as the final step. And that confirmation page you can either then link back to your website. You can also link them to the downloadable. And then from there, we’re working with Zapier. If you’re not familiar with Zapier, it’s able to automate a lot of that workflow. In the meantime, we’re working on some potential CRM integrations. Look for that, hopefully, in 2020.
Erin Sparks: 00:44:30 Excellent, excellent. That’s the best news of all is that it’s got a full lead flow directly into different CRMs. So there’s not a manual entry. That didn’t exist a couple months ago.
JD Prater: 00:44:44 That’s correct.
Erin Sparks: 00:44:45 You didn’t have that relationship. Kudos for you on that. Now…
JD Prater: 00:44:49 We’re working. We’re getting there. We got to catch up to big guys.
Erin Sparks: 00:44:53 Well, you’re doing great. Now, at the same time, there’s a when to actually have the form and when not to have the form. You don’t want to be considered a brand that’s holding back an answer to get leads. This is really going to be a space where if you want to know more, right?
JD Prater: 00:45:11 Yeah. How I like to think through this is really thinking through your offer. You got to have a great offer.
Erin Sparks: 00:45:16 Sure.
JD Prater: 00:45:16 And then I think the next part of this is understanding Quora’s audience really is, I’m going to say, mid-funnel. That’s the best way to think about it. We’re not a Google search. We’re not up here at social where I’m just kind of passively browsing. We really are in this I’m actively learning, I’m looking for an answer, I’m researching, I’m evaluating. So make sure that your offer aligns to that in order to get the best possible result. Think about your higher funnel offers. Those tend to work a lot better because you need to be able to introduce and have that value exchange. So if I’m going to give you my information, it needs to be a high value asset, not just a webinar. We see people trying… Or book a demo. It’s like, “I don’t even know who you are. Why am I booking a demo?”
JD Prater: 00:46:07 And I know marketers, you want your ROI. I know you’ve got to get that, but you’re probably going to have a higher CPL if you’re doing those bottom of the funnel lead drivers. Whereas if you’re doing a piece of content, that thought leadership piece, you’re going to be able to get leads for much cheaper.
Erin Sparks: 00:46:23 Absolutely, absolutely. You have to be careful about what they ask you. You’ve got to give enough value there. Come on, you’re dating here. Don’t get too pushy. Right?
JD Prater: 00:46:33 Right. That’s right.
Erin Sparks: 00:46:33 You’ve got to be able to provide this information. Now, some great information you can call. First name, last name, email, business email, phone number, job title, company name, company size. As well as location information, city, state, zip code, as well. US only right now.
JD Prater: 00:46:50 US only right now. That’s correct.
Erin Sparks: 00:46:52 That’s a good set of information there that can get piped directly into CRM. So if you’ve got that over there, and everybody wants to gather around the lead gen because that’s the sexist thing in the room, right?
JD Prater: 00:47:03 That’s right.
Erin Sparks: 00:47:04 But you are also rolling out business profiles as well.
JD Prater: 00:47:07 That’s right.
Erin Sparks: 00:47:07 So unpack that for us.
JD Prater: 00:47:10 Yeah. Business profiles currently are in beta. What allows you do to… So just like on Quora, most people write as a user. You can now come in and write as a business.
Erin Sparks: 00:47:19 Cool.
JD Prater: 00:47:20 So this is going to feel and look very much like how LinkedIn does it, like how Facebook does. So where you have this high level business account, and the users are admins of it. Right?
Erin Sparks: 00:47:32 Right.
JD Prater: 00:47:32 So you can’t have one without the other. You got to have a business account, and you have to have users tied to it. But what it allows you to do is come in and answer a question as business. It also means that you, as a user, don’t necessary have to, quote unquote, write about your business and then leave your company and now all those answers are out there for no reason. Right?
Erin Sparks: 00:47:53 Right.
JD Prater: 00:47:54 We see when those are kind of the main pain points that we’re solving within the business profiles in its current iteration, there’s some talk that we may be looking at some ways to improve that with higher level analytics, being able to do then serve this content about your brand to you. So we’re coming in the next couple of months to be able to roll out a full fledged of what this may look like coming into the real world with some really cool features.
Erin Sparks: 00:48:24 And that’s really important because, you’re absolutely right, is that that equity loss when, potentially, an employee leaves the firm, you want to be able to have that value associated to the brand and not just drift off because whether or not you’re compensating somebody or not for creating good subject matter expertise content, it is related to your brand. Is it not?
JD Prater: 00:48:52 Yeah. That’s true. Some things that we’ve learned, we’ve only been in beta for roughly six-ish months, talking with brands it’s also… Understand that people are going to be skeptical of you. Go to twitter write, “I’m skeptical,” and brands jump in. So make sure that you have a unique point of view, and that I would even be more cautious in your selling approach. Really come in and provide a ton of value in order to meet me where I am to accept brand answers. Think about that. I think answers that make sense for brands to definitely jump in. And even FAQ, I think, is a great way. It’s like why use this product? Or have you ever had this experience with X? That’s a great time to jump in and say, “Hey, check this out. We have this resource page. Check out our case studies.” It’s a way for you to be authentic on the platform.
Erin Sparks: 00:49:47 Very good. Not so much utilitarian, although it is, but you’re delivering something. You’re delivering quality content. It’s not superficial in nature. It’s actually a very good value.
JD Prater: 00:49:57 Yeah, yeah.
Erin Sparks: 00:49:58 All right. So with that, last thing along the line here, give us an idea, what is the roadmap that you guys are actually working on?
JD Prater: 00:50:09 Yeah. So we’ve got a couple different things. I just sneak peeked a new ads manager. So we’re going to be pushing out a new redesigned ads manager. So everything will function just about the same, but it’s going to look awesome.
Erin Sparks: 00:50:23 Cool.
JD Prater: 00:50:23 It’s much better look. I think you’ll end up finding it’s smoother and faster to create campaigns.
Erin Sparks: 00:50:29 Cool.
JD Prater: 00:50:29 So we’re pretty excited about that. We’ve solved a few user problems, but what this new design allows us to do is iterate much faster. So I think by the end of this year, you’re going to see a lot of problems that you would like to be solved, solved. Being able to bulk get it, bulk create.
Erin Sparks: 00:50:47 There you go.
JD Prater: 00:50:47 Just like you would within Facebook or in Google. But right now it’s a little tedious right now in Quora. So we’re trying to make sure that your ROI of time isn’t a limitation for you to be seeing success on Quora. I think that’ll be key.
JD Prater: 00:51:04 We’re going to be looking at promoted answers. You’ll see us make some iterations on those to give you guys some new metrics. I think that one will be a really fun one to iterate on.
Erin Sparks: 00:51:16 Very good.
JD Prater: 00:51:16 You might even see lead gen forms in a promoted answer.
Jacob Mann: 00:51:20 Whoa.
Erin Sparks: 00:51:23 Wow. Don’t tease us there.
JD Prater: 00:51:25 It’s on the table. It’s not on the roadmap just yet, but it’s something that we’re definitely talking about internally is being able to combine two ad units outside of image and text ads. What would it look like if you had a promoted answer and at the bottom there was a CTA that led to a lead gen form? So we’re working on it. We’ve got some mock ups. I wouldn’t say it’s on the roadmap just yet, but don’t be afraid to tweet at us if you think that’s really cool.
Erin Sparks: 00:51:51 Absolutely. You guys are certainly responsive on feedback. But yeah, you’re evolving the interface to kind of these standards that we’re used to on the other platforms.
JD Prater: 00:52:03 That’s right.
Erin Sparks: 00:52:04 There’s a good deal of understanding as well. It’s one of the benefits for Quora that we kind of skipped past here. I do want to circle back around and codify this here is there’s a great SEO benefit for your organizations and good in bound authority, but here’s the deal is that you can also crowdsource understanding of answers… Understanding of questions, I’m sorry, and be able to see what people… We see people also ask snippets inside of Google. This is the stuff that is almost that on steroids plus because you got so much relevant information there, literally, from a content engagement standpoint. It kind of writes itself. You could literally roll this content out on your own site answering those same types of questions. And what a great value it is just understanding consumer intent and what the problems are they need solving, right?
JD Prater: 00:53:01 Yeah. I love that use case for market research. Understanding what your market is asking for, what are the questions they have that allows you to then take that information, write a blog about it. And then I highly encourage all content marketers now take that blog and make that your answer. Just make sure that you link it to the source, right? That’s all we’re asking for is to give it attribution and/or your title. Your title has to say I’m a content manager or whatever. Right?
Erin Sparks: 00:53:32 Absolutely.
JD Prater: 00:53:33 We also want transparency. We also want to build that trust in that knowing where this content is coming from, but there is no rule against you taking an answer that lives somewhere else outside of Quora and to put it on to Quora. Again, our mission is sharing and growing the world’s knowledge. We want people to be able to find your answer or find your unique perspective. That’s one way you guys can easily do that.
Erin Sparks: 00:53:58 That’s a great platform. It’s a great platform. Well, thank you for unpacking these. We’re certainly going to be checking back in because I think your ad platform is one of the fast movers. It’s also matching this fractionalized audience that we’re starting to see. They’re breaking away from mainstream social media ads. There’s a numbing effect that’s in the main spaces. Quora’s always been, no pun intended, answering questions, but it’s also been a very valuable asset for individuals to be able to get their expertise across. And with this new ad platform, it really does connect businesses to exactly who is looking for that solve, more so than any Facebook campaign. Let’s all be honest is that I’m not looking for a solution to my application problem on the engine that I’m working on inside of Facebook. It’s going to be inside of Quora. It’s going to be inside of areas in which I can actually get a bloody answer. Right?
JD Prater: 00:55:02 Yeah. I think that’s what’s key is really understanding that. I came across some answers over the weekend. As I was getting a little bogged down in my own social media time, I was heading over to Quora and a lot of people were answering they don’t see Quora as social media. So a lot of that toxicity that goes along with social media… So a lot of people say Twitter is very toxic. They’ll say Facebook is a lot of false news, misinformation. We hear this all the time. They come to Quora for a retreat because they feel productive. They feel like learning something. That’s something, I think, we’re tapping into that mental model is really key is people aren’t coming here because they’re bored. They’re actually coming here to learn something.
Erin Sparks: 00:55:46 Yeah, you’re absolutely right. It’s not really social. They’re looking for a Quora solution. And then while they’re there, they’ll also see associated tangential concepts next to their main pursuit. It’s kind of like you fall in the YouTube trap where you got all the associated content and all of a sudden you’ve lost time like you’ve been abducted by aliens, right?
JD Prater: 00:56:10 It’s true.
Erin Sparks: 00:56:10 It very well can happen inside of Quora. Trust me, I’ve been there, especially on the Star Wars side.
JD Prater: 00:56:15 It’s true.
Erin Sparks: 00:56:15 Literally, I’ve lost days if you compound it all. Well, JD, we thank you so much for being on the show again. Kudos for you in the evangelist space. Keep on doing the good work and raising awareness of this platform because it is a very good platform to be able to specialize your delivery of your message in. With that, we always want to ask of our guests, last points, what really bugs you in your industry right now?
JD Prater: 00:56:42 What bugs me right now is probably short term-ism. It’s how quick we are expecting results in measurement. I’m very much, even in my own personal life, a long term investor. I know the stock markets crashing, but I’m hoping in 30 years from now all my investments pay off. I think right now what we see with a lot of performance marketers is this day after day performance checking. Hour after hour, coming in and checking performance. Sometimes it just takes a week. It takes a month. There is context into everything that’s happening, whether that’s an algo change or whether that’s coronavirus in the world right now. I think just being able to take a longer term view is really important.
Erin Sparks: 00:57:28 Yeah, absolutely. We’re hyper reactionary and we’re always looking for the quick win. In SEO world, we’ve also kind of suffered from that same thing because things are moving so quickly and we can see results. I mean, literally, I used to see results in six months after the efforts beforehand.
JD Prater: 00:57:49 Exactly.
Erin Sparks: 00:57:50 Now, we’re literally seeing indexing and featured questions pop up within days. That is crazy.
JD Prater: 00:57:55 Oh wow. Wow. That’s crazy.
Erin Sparks: 00:57:58 I know. It is nuts.
JD Prater: 00:57:58 That’s crazy.
Erin Sparks: 00:57:59 Well, conversely, what excites you about your industry you’re in right now?
JD Prater: 00:58:05 What excites me more than anything right now is, I think, advertisers specifically that are understanding the inputs they put in directly correlate to the outputs. So what I mean by that is with Google and Facebook getting more algorithmically driven, using their machine learning, using their AI, what’s going to be more important than anything else is the inputs. A lot of the things that you can control specifically are the ad creative.
Erin Sparks: 00:58:34 There you go.
JD Prater: 00:58:34 I think we’re going to see a resurgence in ad creative because I think when you think about Facebook and Instagram specifically, they can’t do that for you. They can control your budget, they can control your bed, they can control your audience, whether that’s look-a-like audiences, but they can’t control the image that you select, the text that you’re putting in. The winners that I’m seeing on social right now are the ones that do creative really well.
Erin Sparks: 00:59:03 Very good. They even have the dynamic programming where they’ll try to match 4000 different permutations off of that.
JD Prater: 00:59:10 I know.
Erin Sparks: 00:59:11 That’s just scary in its own right because you can launch that creative piece into a brick wall, unless you’re actually guiding it correctly.
JD Prater: 00:59:20 Correct.
Erin Sparks: 00:59:20 But you’re absolutely right is that there’s no shortcut for quality creative, right?
JD Prater: 00:59:27 That’s right, that’s right. It’s tough because I think we’re so used to a lot of control and some of that control is being taken away. But just knowing where you can have control and focus on that, double down on that.
Erin Sparks: 00:59:38 Absolutely. All right. Well, while we say that, we certainly want to get you, as a user, in control of your Quora accounts. So jump over to Quora user and become a user and engage with the community. See how I did that? That was a…
JD Prater: 00:59:51 That was nice. I like it. It was a really good segue.
Erin Sparks: 00:59:53 Check out all the trending news over at our news podcast that we did here earlier. It’s the bonus podcast episode and the bonus YouTube upload. You’ll probably check those out here… Actually, we did it live this time, so they’re there for the taking. So jump in there. JD, we thank you so much. We want to make sure our audience knows where to track you down on Twitter. It’s JD Prater. LinkedIn, it’s JD Prater. And Quora, of course, is-
JD Prater: 01:00:20 JD Prater.
Erin Sparks: 01:00:22 JD-Prater.
JD Prater: 01:00:22 Thank you. That’s right, that’s right, that’s right.
Erin Sparks: 01:00:26 All right. Any final thoughts for our digital marketing audience and our remote working audience?
JD Prater: 01:00:31 Hey guys, everyone is in the same boat, empathy, empathy, empathy. Have a little bit more patience this week. Have a little bit more feelings for your small businesses, for your co-workers, for your boss. That’s my two cents is just… And a little bit of empathy can go a long way this week.
Erin Sparks: 01:00:54 Absolutely. All right. Well, thank you so much for your time today, JD. We always appreciate it. And hopefully we can get you round to a fourth time here in the near future.
JD Prater: 01:01:02 That’s right.
Erin Sparks: 01:01:04 We’re having a race now. We have a number of guests that have rung that third time bell. So thanks so much. JD’s on the straight and narrow. He’s always digging up some great information. Thanks so much for your time.
JD Prater: 01:01:17 I appreciate it. Thanks guys.
Erin Sparks: 01:01:18 Absolutely. Please don’t forget to like and subscribe to the EDGE of the Web on YouTube. If you’re really feeling up to it today, go over to our iTunes podcast and give us a review. We’d certainly appreciate it. We try really hard to give you some great information on a regular basis and keep you up to date with the news. So you can give us a little bit of love in that space. Remember, sharing is caring when it gets down to what we’re doing on the show. Check out all the must see videos and much more over at EDGEoftheWebRadio.com. That’s EDGEoftheWebRadio.com. Next week we’re talking to Aaron Levy of Tinuiti. With that, from all of us over at EDGE of the Web, be safe, be secure, and do not be a piece of cyber driftwood. We’ll talk to you next week. Bye bye.
