Podcast

Life After Advertising Podcast Series

Peter · August 3, 2020 · Leave a Comment

I’ve Written About Life After Advertising Before.

I am going to accelerate my discussion about the idea that there can be a wonderful life after advertising. I will cover lots of options over the next few months because I am seeing people leave the communications marketing industry for a bunch of reasons. Many people have planned to leave, many have had it foisted on them due to the pandemic, some are leaving advertising companies to go freelance and some are simply selling their agencies. Oh, yeah, some just need some NEW!

Today I (well my artificial assistant Sara) is offering some food for thought. Here are five resources that you can use to get your ball rolling as you exit the agency world.

Head over to How to Create a Million-Dollar Business This Weekend to read how Tim Ferris and Noah Kagan think that you can start a million-dollar business. LOL, yes this weekend.

From Noah: “For some reason, people love to make excuses about why they haven’t created their dream business or even gotten started.

This is the “wantrepreneur” epidemic, where people prevent themselves from ever actually doing the side-project they always talk about over beers.

The truth of the matter is that you don’t have to spend a lot of time building the foundation for a successful business. In most cases, it shouldn’t take you more than a couple days.

Think I’m joking?

We made the original product for Gambit in a weekend.

“WTF?!” Yes, a weekend.

In just 48 hours, some friends and I created a simple product that grew to a $1,000,000+ business within a year.”

Want to run a “passive income” business? No this does not really mean just sitting back and watching the moolah roll in. This does require work. But, it may be less workaholic than writing 87 Instagram posts per week. Pat Flynn is the passive income master who can get you started and rocking. Go to his Smart Passive Income blog for years of how to. he also writes extensively about the tools that you might use – like how to build and run a podcast.

I love this one. Great daydreaming or just do it. I was just turned on to this list by a dude that lives in Ho Chi Minh City and runs a global online marketing company. Want a comprehensive list of online businesses that you can buy? The well-named Empire Flippers has that list. I’m going to help you cut to the chase. Here is an interview that Passive Income’s Pat Flynn did with Empire Flippers’ CEO.

Don’t want to start a new business? Maybe you’d rather get out on the road? Head out to Overland to hear about building a long-distance van life – anyone can do this. Sure beats being on your mom’s kitchen table Zoom calls. And, if you want to see some real-life people that are making a living traveling in their van, check out Kara and Nate’s We Bought A Van on YouTube (they will show you a great lifestyle pivot). Back to your new van… Here is the Overland site.

OK, one more. Last week I interviewed Michaela Alexis about her move from advertising agency life to becoming a leader in LinkedIn training. Head over here… How Michaela Alexis Rocks LinkedIn Learning.

Upcoming Advertising Stories episodes will cover African-American advertising and agency ownership (an the poor level of diversity in the industry); eCommerce conversion rate optimization and how to go from ad person to client-side. All of these topics will be interviews with experts.

Use the handy links on this page to subscribe.

A nice thing for me… Feedspot has recognized Advertising Stories as being a top 15 advertising podcast.

How Michaela Alexis Rocks LinkedIn Learning

Peter · July 31, 2020 · Leave a Comment

WOW. A Podcast All About LinkedIn Learning – Plus Lots Of Personality And Canadian Chutzpah.

Michaela Alexis has over 170,000 combined Followers on her company and personal pages. Compare that to the Average LinkedIn account having only 1,300 Followers. It’s all about LinkedIn learning and strategizing baby. This is both a science and an art.

With one in three professionals on the planet using LinkedIn, it would be a good idea for you to grow your Followers to, well, I am sure, a lot more than you have today. To learn about how Michaela rocks her LinkedIn universe and has become a serious player in the world of LinkedIn learning, I thought, hey let’s talk to her. This 30-minute podcast will give you insights on how to grow your LinkedIn audience and Followers; how to build Follower interest; how to use the combination of personal and company pages. And —- a really cool discussion about how a solopreneur has built a growing training business based on LinkedIn learning and that Canadian chutzpah.

I am about to sound like I am “selling” Michaela’s services (here she is on LinkedIn). Well, I just might be. You probably need her expertise and guruness. Here is an example of what she can do for you: LinkedIn learning sessions focused on optimizing your LinkedIn profile for success; on creating a powerful personal branding strategy. and, monetization, social selling, and executing a content publishing strategy that converts. Science and art.

Finally, hear how Micaela became the Muse for a brand new K-Swiss Self-Belief sneaker (check out the video below). This woman rocks LinkedIn and her life. Plus she gets to eat Poutine.

You can see the growing list of all of my Advertising Stories podcasts right here. Use the handy subscribe buttons that we’ve placed on this wonderful page.

A nice thing… Feedspot has already recognized Advertising Stories as being a top 15 advertising podcast.

How To Grow A Podcast

Peter · July 27, 2020 · Leave a Comment

The How To Grow A Podcast Podcast – Growin Ain’t Easy Folks

OK, so you are contemplating launching a podcast or already have one.

OK, your friend has a new one. Ok, the advertising agency down the street has a new podcast.

OK, I have 21 as of late May.

Cool. Now what? As in there are so many freakin podcasts, and growing daily (Apple had a record new podcasts added in June), that one has to wonder how to grow a podcast. Hmm, lots of people talking about this online. But, I wanted to cut to the chase by going to a podcasting and podcast marketing expert for her opinion. Here is the podcast plus the added energy of an edited portion of my podcast interview with Priscilla McKinney of Little Bird Marketing. My suggestions… listen and then read for emphasis.

I know you want the bottom line. I’ll give you a quickie to set this up. The answer to how to grow a podcast is that being a smart podcast publisher is so much more than just doing the podcast. Here you go…

An Expert Interview With Priscilla McKinney Of Little Bird Marketing – The Pace and Process Gems

Peter Levitan:

Priscilla, how did you grow Ponderings From The Perch – your popular podcast?

Priscilla McKinney:

Well, in my years of experience as a podcaster, I would offer this advice to anyone. First of all, if you’re going to start a podcast, really know your audience. Like you need to ask some questions of people that you think might listen and then pander to the audience, do what they want. But the biggest thing for me no matter what it is you do is pace yourself. Because it’s not as simple as you think it is. It does take longer to get to market. It can create stress if you’re saying, “Oh, I’m going to do this every week. Some people do it every day…” It took us a long time to get where we are. We went from once a month, to two a month and kept building things up from there. So I do think pace is really important.

A big part of your strategy is also being effective at search engine optimization because as you keep adding podcasts to your we [Read more…] about How To Grow A Podcast

Advertising And Marketing School Website Page Speed

Peter · July 26, 2020 · 2 Comments

A Slow Website Page Speed Will Hurt Your Google Ranking

Here are three test tools that will help you determine your website page speed.

Do you know how fast your website download speed is and how its performance ranks against your competitive agencies? Here’s the drill. If your site takes too long to download, it will lose some traffic.

Google PageSpeed Insights. Start here.

Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test. Here’s another very important test. If you are like me, over 20% of your website visitors are looking at you on a mobile device then you better make sure that they are digging how fast your website loads.

BROWSEO. We might be getting a bit geeky here. That said, BROWSEO helps you view any web page like search engines see it. The tool helps you to identify issues with your site and with your current and future clients’ websites.

Links are here on my Resources page.

You can see the growing list of all of my Advertising Stories podcasts right here. Use the handy subscribe buttons that we’ve placed on this wonderful page.

A nice thing… Feedspot has already recognized Advertising Stories as being a top 15 advertising podcast.