Making the most of social media marketing, with Dan Peterson, FlipSwitch Marketing

Gary Pageau of the Dead Pixels Society talked with Dan Peterson, founder of FlipSwitch Marketing. In this interview, Peterson talks about strategies for small businesses to use social media marketing, tactics to determine the most effective social media platform, and methods to improve search results using social media.

Peterson grew up in central Illinois in an entrepreneurial family. He started his career in management before quitting to tour with a band in the early 2000s. After getting married in 2008, he worked in sales and sales training. He founded FlipSwitch, his digital marketing agency, in 2012.

Get ready to unlock the secrets of small business digital marketing success with our special guest, Dan Peterson, founder of Flip Switch Marketing. His journey from growing up in a family business to becoming an entrepreneur offers valuable insights on how to make an impact in the digital world. We promise that by the end of this episode, you'll have a roadmap to elevate your digital marketing strategies and make your business thrive.

Join us as we uncover how to create engaging content for various social media platforms, such as TikTok and Reels, while also discussing data privacy concerns and how to market effectively despite them. Dan's expertise in reverse engineering audiences to tailor strategies will change the way you approach digital marketing. Additionally, we explore the significance of Google and content marketing, and how AI is shaping the industry.

But that's not all! We'll also dive into the importance of creativity in both digital and real-world marketing, utilizing the power of personal branding, and building a strong business brand to stand out from the competition. Learn from Dan's experience and advice on how to navigate the ever-changing digital landscape while making the most of your marketing efforts. Don't miss this information-packed episode that will set your small business on the path to digital marketing excellence.

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Transcript

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Erin Manning  0:02  
Welcome to The Dead Pixels Society Podcast, the photo imaging industry's leading news source. Here's your host, Gary Pageau. The Dead Pixels Society Podcast is brought to you by Mediaclip, Advertek Printing and IP labs.

Gary Pageau  0:18  
Hello again, and welcome to The Dead Pixels Society Podcast. I'm your host, Gary Pageau. And today we're joined by Dan Peterson, the founder of FlipSwitch marketing in the Chicago area. Dan is a small business owner and a marketing expert. Hi, Dan, how are you today? Good. How's it going, Gary? Doing great doing great. Before you got into flip switch marketing, you were heavily involved in fat and your own family business for a lot of years. Can you talk a little bit about your experience growing up like that?

Dan Peterson  0:50  
Absolutely. So it's actually one of my favorite things to talk about. I think I did like, as you said, I grew up in small town, small business. My parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, they're all entrepreneurs. And for the most part, and I practically lived in the retail store that they owned back in the day, which was the Ben Franklin store. I speak very fondly of these Ben Franklin stores because for the your listeners that may or may not know what that is, it was a precursor to Walmart, it was a small variety store had everything from toys, to crafts, to stationery and everything in between. So I've practically lived there, until I was in high school, worked in the same town in the lumberyard industry for five, six years, and ended up managing and basically running the entire building center yard part of that, which was my first real chops in management, and then went into the pizza industry and manage that for a couple of years. And that gave me that side of kind of retail restaurant space, you know, quick service stuff, and then got out of the business world. In more of the managerial side, I was in a rock band for like five years, met, my wife ended up moving up to Chicago. And that's when I got my first taste of entrepreneurship in the door to door industry actually. And I did door to door sales for a couple years and escalated very, very quickly in that within a matter of like six months I What was the product that you're it was originally was the at&t legacy stuff. So phone, internet, Dish Network was their partner at the time. And then I was part of that transition into fiber when they went Uverse went to universe and all of that. So I ended up having a party in three different offices, I managed one and own two between Chicago, Central Illinois and Houston. And did that until I got kind of sick of it, the industry kind of dried up, there was a lot of issues with markets and this and that. So I worked a couple of private jobs with people and then realize that I've wanted to go back into ownership again. And that's when flip switch came around in 2012. So I founded that ended up building it into now a nationally recognized agency with clients in like 14 states at the moment or something like that. We focus on small business. So to the original point, I carry that passion that I had from growing up in small business where I saw the struggles and all the the pitfalls of trying to buy ads at a certain price or at the time of his yellow page ads, of course, and newspaper ads and things like that. But you know, the pricing was ironically, it's about the same as what you would pay for some of the digital stuff now, or at least from a monthly reoccurring plan with an agency like ours, you know, like four or 500 bucks a month, something like that. So, and that's where that pricing comes from. When I look back on what you know, my family paid for and ads in certain cases, like let's say a 400, ollar newspaper ad, I tried to kind of keep that pricing the same now in the digital space where we provide that same level of service on as the big agencies, but at a much, much more affordable price. So it's been a fun ride. It's been. I mean, obviously, I've worked in tons of different industries, I didn't even mention probably 10 Different things I did in that time, as well. But But I have a lot of knowledge and background in small business. So flip switch has that now, you know the capability to help that same industry of small business owners, but at scale.

Gary Pageau  4:17  
So what are some of the preconceptions people have in a small business about getting into digital marketing, like everyone says they gotta have a website. So they usually have a website of some sort. And obviously, in the in the photo printing industry or photo, or the camera stores or people like that, that we've talked about, you know, they all have a website built in, but what are some of the first things they should be looking at in digital marketing?

Dan Peterson  4:42  
So one thing would be to kind of and I talked about this a lot to reverse engineer your audience. So who are you trying to sell to? And where are those people at because one of the questions that we get and one of the preconceived notions that we hear a lot is that they either have to be on the feel like they have to be on every channel, every platform, or on the flip side of that they kind of have over the years stuck their head in the sand and not wanted to be on any of them. Right or not, we still see people, especially older business owners, you know, that are maybe in their 60s or 70s. Now that have still to this day not come up, you know, created a Facebook page or Instagram accounts or things like that. It's like, where's your money going? Where you got to be advertising somewhere? Where's that happening? So? So we kind of see

Gary Pageau  5:32  
it on both sides, the Pennysaver. They put it in the Pennysaver? Yes,

Dan Peterson  5:36  
we, you know, it's funny, we hear all the time about a resurgence of print. And yeah, there's time and space for printed mailers and things like that, obviously, but you have to build brand around multiple angles, it can't just be one or the other. And that means digital too. It can't be just digital, right? You have to be able to print digital, in person events. I talk a lot about that, you know, building community. So yeah, I think the preconceived notions about digital that we see are that it's too much work. I can't get started and ramp it up fast enough. And I'm just gonna forget about it anyway. So why start? Right, a lot of that kind of mentality of not having the time.

Gary Pageau  6:15  
So how does someone determine what is the right amount or the right platforms, like you said, you reverse engineer from the audience. So let's say for example, you're a photo store, and you're trying to reach the young kids who are now getting into shooting film, right? So you're talking probably 25 and younger? So what would be a digital platform that they're on? Because they're probably not on Facebook?

Dan Peterson  6:45  
Not as much? No, they're, they're still an angle there. Facebook is kind of seeing a resurgence as at the time we're recording this year, in early 23. There is kind of a comeback of Facebook to a certain degree. But no, it's really for that age group, if I'm trying to reach that 25 and under or even 30 and under demographic, I'd be heavy on Tiktok, and Instagram reels, and Snapchat. And there's obviously different ways to use utilize all three of those. But I'll tell you, Gary, the the crazy thing about like tick tock, for example, is the largest growth segment population on there is the 30 to 50 year old range 33 to 55, something like that, we're seeing a huge increase in that because it's the parents and grandparents getting on there to see their kids and grandkids do things, right. So it's aging out just like Instagram to Instagram used to be teens and 20s. Now it's 30s 40s 50s 60s.

Gary Pageau  7:40  
What about some of the concerns people have about data privacy with some of these apps? I mean, obviously, there's some concerns with tick tock being allegedly Chinese spyware, but people have concerned about Instagram, they have concerns about Facebook. Right? Should that's something people should be concerned about, as a marketer, who want to use these platforms.

Dan Peterson  8:00  
I think as a business, marketing it, marketing yourself. I don't see the concern. I really don't I put a lot of thought on this. I've been asked a million times about it. I always kind of my wife and I've had these conversations, and I always kind of talked to her about it. And she kind of says the same thing. Like we you know, if you don't have anything to hide, what is the big deal, I guess is easy, you know, put it simply, yeah, there's some privacy stuff with everything. But I mean, you're on the internet all day, every day, everybody's using it for everything. These are just one more platform that it's one of the million that people are using, such as booking flights, booking hotels, shopping on Amazon, right? They know about it, you know, everybody knows everything about everybody anyway. So what's one more platform?

Gary Pageau  8:48  
Obviously, if you're trying to reach those people, is there any is there like a bullet point, checklist of appropriate messaging for for that sort of thing for those platforms? Because you don't want to just sit there and record a 42nd video of yourself of your face looking at the camera talking about your film processing, right? I mean, there's a visual language that you need to adopt for these platforms.

Dan Peterson  9:13  
Yeah, there is. So what I would say is to look internally at your brand, you know, whatever store you own, whatever company you're running, look at it from a 30,000 foot view and say, okay, not only who's my audience, but how do we want to be perceived by that audience? What do we want to look like, as a business? Do we want to be the fun, kitschy, kind of, you know, targeting kids kind of thing? Do we want to target middle aged people that are already in the industry? And it can be one it can be both it doesn't have to be one or the other, but then create your content based on that. So if you're trying to reach the younger demographic, and you're trying to be fun and interesting and really drag that, you know, teen 20 Something audience along for the ride and get them into film. I think the biggest thing Then I could say would be telling your story and doing it from a fun, interesting, engaging method. So when you create those tic tock videos with those reels, make sure that they are on brand and that you're showing your audience the fun side of why you kind of like the why behind the what, why would a 20 year old, for example, want to get into film when they grew up with digital? Right? What's the interest there? What makes it sexy? How do you get them involved, and then backward, you know, reverse engineer that story and start telling that story. So from the processing on, all the way through.

Gary Pageau  10:36  
So one of the things I think is different with younger video type consumers right these days, is they are very interested in knowing how things are done. They do want to see the behind the scenes. Yes. Well, how would you recommend someone do that? I mean, what do you actually take them back and show them how the film was processed? Is that something that yes, I'd be doing?

Dan Peterson  10:57  
Yes, i The answer to everything you're going to ask is going to be? Yes. So there's, there is nothing really off limits, as long as it's appropriate. Obviously, things like that. Everything else should be a yes, I would, I would create three or four videos a day, for different platforms, even if it's the same video and you repurpose it and you've cut it differently, and you you know, edit it differently or whatever, I would use the same process across all the platforms of right again, you're going to you know, people get sick of me probably saying this, but reverse engineering, the whole process backwards. So, Tik Tok, I'm trying to hit, let's say, the 2030 year olds, I'd show a fun, cool, edited thing to get kids. It's all about attention. That's the whole thing. People forget that. Everything that these platforms do is designed to keep you on the platform. Right? So how can you reverse engineer that and think, okay, tic tock wants to, they want me to have a million view videos, right? They want my videos to go viral, right? I'm the one that has to create the viral video. So when you look at it through that lens, as a business owner, and you start coming up with fun, cool, engaging ideas that get the algorithms to pick it up, get the audience involved, the more the audience watches you, the more the algorithms show it. And it's a it's a cycle. And now you're getting I mean, I've seen clients of ours even that go from 200 followers on Tiktok, or reals to 10,000. literally overnight, my daughter did my four year old daughter locked herself in the bathroom. We recorded it because it was really funny. And she's got her little voice talking through the doors. I'm trying to talk her out of how to unlock it. And it's the cutest thing ever. And I went to bed that night. I woke up in the morning, she had 12,000 followers, and those videos had 1.6 million views. Wow. It's audience attention.

Gary Pageau  12:44  
So here's so here's the question, though, you know, this is all well and good for the platforms, because like you said, their best interests have read the eyeballs. But how do you activate somebody to actually engage and transact? I think that's where a lot of the people in my audience struggle with is, you know, that's great. Tiktok ads, I thought, you know, a million views for something I did. How do I get people to buy something from my store.

Dan Peterson  13:11  
So once you've built up that brand recognition, and people see it, and they're familiar with it, even on a small scale, you're you know, we're not talking like a national chain of stores here, you could be ABC photo in Podunk Illinois. And if you've got the top account in your area that's driving, you know, fun, engaging videos and recognition and things like that brand recognition, people are naturally going to share it, they're going to search for you more. And and this is what we're seeing, for example, with restaurants. Here's a great example. Google did a study that said that, you know, they were looking for how people in there, I think it was Gen Z, they looked at how does Gen Z find restaurants? So I think, Oh, you just Google it. No, they didn't Google a 45 or 47%. Look for a restaurant inside of Instagram and Tiktok using Instagram and Tiktok search capability to find a local restaurant. Wow, the Google freaked out because now half of their Gen Z audience is telling him that they're not googling stuff results. Google wondered from it study, it goes to show you where things are headed. You know, these younger people are are going on the platforms like Tiktok like Instagram reels, and they're searching for businesses within those based on interests based on hashtags based on other things. And here I think is another answer to your question. These new platforms especially like Instagram, and Facebook reels, they came about because of tick tock. Same thing with YouTube shorts, right? It's the Tick Tock ification of everything, the short form video of everything right there all based on the interest graph. Meaning that you see videos videos are pulled into your feed by the algorithm based on what you're interested in, not based on just to your connected to or friends. So when you're small company, and you're putting out content that is interesting and fun and relevant and engaging, and all these other things, and people start liking it, sharing it, that builds your brand to a point where you can then monetize it. And you can you give value, you show your story, you talk about how to do things, you know, the activation, so to speak of like, How does somebody get into this, all of that. And then it's, oh, by the way, our stores located at 123 Main Street, and Podunk Illinois, you should stop in, we'll put you on a video ourselves, we'll make one with you come in, like there's so many creative things you could do to take it from the screen to real life,

Gary Pageau  15:39  
because I think that's one of the industry challenges we have, because, you know, the number of pictures taken this year is gonna be on 1.3 trillion or something like that. That's crazy. And getting people to engage with that content and create a physical product is just an ongoing challenge, right? Because it's I mean, there are people are super photoactive, who know how to use various print apps or their local store something or the kiosk at a CVS or something like that. And that's great. Right? That market is always moving, because people are aging into it. Right? Yeah. So you mentioned earlier Google, I was going to ask a question about Google. And then you brought up Google, how important is Google these days? Because no one seems to be talking when they when you read marketing speak or any of the new business news, no one's really talking about like, optimizing for Google Search anymore. Is that passe?

Dan Peterson  16:40  
No, it's still a thing. It's just the way that Google has changed their methods and their and their structure. It's much more organic based from a content standpoint. So like, for example, if you're a small business that has a website, you need to be creating a website that provides value in multiple ways, it could be having that written kind of updated blog or news section on there. But you know, embedding video and really making it a one stop kind of shop for people, you know, just anybody whether they're a shopper, or they're just looking for not entertainment, but looking for information. Google wants to give you still the best bang for your buck when it comes to search results. As a user, when I search something, I want the best three websites to come up or whatever, right? So it comes down to the business having to figure out how to make their site work in that realm. The AI I mean, we haven't talked about that yet. But artificial intelligence is playing big into this stuff, too. Because that's how a lot of these sites are starting to be found. That's how that's always worked. But it's definitely now Google and Bing, and these other sites are starting. I mean, look, they just acquired chat, GPT, or partnered with them or whatever. So that there's artificial intelligence, at scale within Bing, so that they can compete against Google, right? Everything's going that route of trying to get ahead of the curve, trying to figure out what the customer wants before the customer even knows what they want. So you have to think in that, in those terms, when you're doing anything content related. That sounds

Gary Pageau  18:07  
like a lot of mental work.

Dan Peterson  18:08  
It's a ton of work.

Gary Pageau  18:10  
So when you're talking to clients, what are you suggesting to them? To what places to start? Well, so

Dan Peterson  18:17  
two things. One is to not over judge and overextend yourself, you know, if you can't get it done, you just can't get it done. Right. But at the end of the day, the reality of small businesses, right, right. But if we were all truly to be honest with ourselves, myself included, everybody's got an extra 10 or 20 minutes a day. Everybody, I don't care if you're working at 19 hours a day, you've got 10 or 20 extra minutes, you cut your lunch break by 10 minutes, you take a shorter bathroom break, you you find 10 minutes in there, and the in that 10 minutes, what can you accomplish, or you do 10 minutes in the morning, 10 minutes a night. And that's when you take a quick 32nd video, you post it, you put some caption to it, there's always some extra time in there. And I think that it's more of I don't wanna say the willingness, but it's the the tired kind of mindset that small businesses carry because you are so we are so busy. As business owners, we know we have that extra 10 or 20 minutes, but it's like, I'd rather just sit down. Rather just breathe, I'd rather have a cup of coffee. Right, though there's a little bit of discipline involved with some of this stuff for some people. And then there's a lot of business owners that don't work as much as they think. I mean, I know some of our clients, like they stand around their shop for two or three hours a day, really not doing much more, they have an employee that certainly needs to do something and they can only sweep the floor so many times, right. And that's where you build culture around marketing so that in downtime, you've got that 20 year old employee who's making that content for you internally and they're doing a 10 times better job than you or I could do because we're you know, 4056 years old or whatever. So,

Gary Pageau  19:54  
So simply put, what are some of the top line metrics like You said that older business owner may use to gauge whether that 20 year old employee is actually doing something effective or just building a portfolio for their own use. Right?

Dan Peterson  20:14  
Yeah, great question. I think it comes down to having a strong brand message upfront. So knowing who you are, and all of that and making sure that they're on board with that. And then tracking, there's basic numbers, you can look at all these platforms provide them very easily. And you can look at reach, you can look at engagement. So how many people are seeing your posts? How many people are liking, clicking, commenting, sharing, taking action on your posts. And then if you've got some kind of call to action built in, like a coupon or a sale, or just anything that's clickable, for lack of a better word, you can track that of course and say, Okay, well, we sent, you know, this ad had 120 clicks on the website link. So they know that 120 people potentially went to the website, well, what did they go there for? And this is where a little extra effort picks, and you got to have like Google Analytics, and you got to be running something on your website that tells people, it tells the business owner like, what are people doing, when they get to my website? Are they buying something? Are they signing up for a newsletter, whatever the call to action is so but basic metrics can go a long way. I think people try. I had this conversation this week, actually, I think people try to overcomplicate social media sometimes and think like, oh, I need all this data and all these metrics and all this stuff. And when in reality, like, if you're reaching 1000 People now and you put the pedal down, and next month, you reach 10,000 people, and the month out that after that you reach 20,000 people, then you start putting in some calls to action and getting into clicking convert over to your website and this and that, like, within six months, you can easily watch the progression of A to C or A to D, as it goes through phases of reach, conversion, and then sales in real dollars. And it doesn't take any extra programming or anything like that. It's all built into these platforms. So it's quick and easy. But one thing I want to talk on really quick that came to mind a few minutes ago is, you know, you mentioned like, how do we take this digital world, whether it's creating videos on Tiktok, or reels or whatever we're doing, and get people to take action and become actual customers and a physical Mom and Pop brick and mortar. Right? Right. And this is where creativity comes in. This is where you've got to figure out how to break that wall between the digital and the real world space and get people to walk through the door. Whether that is and I mentioned the beginning, you have the real world side of things the in person side, whether that's having something that carries over from a marketing standpoint where like a contest, for example, here's just a quick off the top of my head thing, have a contest for people that want to be involved in this thing, print off your favorite photo from you know, it could be your silly photo contest or something, whatever, like they printed, they get it on their tangible thing in their hand that is printed on. And then they have to come into the store, or come to the store to pick it up or whatever. And they you get them out of the digital space. And we get into walks through the door. And then you create a video with that content. And you show Hey, we got 10 people that came in with this Christmas ornament in their hand that has their funny dogs picture on it or whatever. And then you vote and have everybody vote. And if they vote, they get a entered into a $500 gift card. Here's something you put a prize that's actually worth getting. Right and you you have a process and you do this. And we have planned to do this on a monthly basis, right? Every month, they have something like this where it takes them digital in the door, they win a prize, and they have to share it didn't win it and they have to win it share it like it's this whole ecosystem that they built. And it works wonders. It's huge.

Gary Pageau  23:43  
You know, and I think what's important in that type of offering is to actually follow through and mention the winners. I can't tell you how many times I've seen people promote photo contests and and they never announced the winner.

Dan Peterson  23:59  
Yes, you're 100% Correct. It boggles my

Gary Pageau  24:03  
mind because I think yeah, it's like, hey, we Hey, we did a photo contest. We check that box. But it's like, well, no, you haven't actually capitalized on making your customers a hero. Right? To their to the audience, right? Because who doesn't want to see their if they're enter a contest to see that rewarded and shared and recognized?

Dan Peterson  24:23  
Right? And another type of tree to think to is to get involved in the community with this? How can you as a small business that does photo printing and photo creation processing all this? How can you get into other organizations, maybe not for profits or somebody else that you can partner with? And then at you're basically leveraging those businesses and those organizations to help promote you because now the school district or somebody is utilizing you for a giveaway that is benefiting people with Alzheimer's or Down syndrome. I mean, there's this it's the creative thing that I think a lot of have small businesses in every industry, lack, they lack ideas because they're they've been in their business for so long, they can't. They're just burnt out to a certain degree. And they just can't come up with new creative ways to integrate digital in real life and put it all together and make it fun and engaging.

Gary Pageau  25:17  
Which that may be the time you look around your store and you find the 20 year old guy who's leaning against the counter.

Dan Peterson  25:24  
That's a organ. So those those kids yes, those kids have more creativity in their little finger sometimes then we middle age and on up people have ever had in our party, because they see it everyday. They live in this ecosystem of tick tock videos. And when I say that, I mean everything YouTube shorts, Instagram reels, it's all the Tick Tock style, short form video, right? And getting those people to produce stuff for you, and attract their age group is the number one way that an ageing up industry like film, can crack that third wall and get down there to that younger generation. So yeah, there's a lot of it. Again, to not to beat a dead horse, it's creativity, in the process, and the mindset all the way through to execution, you just have to be creative. So that you're not the same as every other business. And don't feel

Gary Pageau  26:15  
like you have to do it all yourself, which I think is very typical of small business owners, right is, I'm gonna get there early, I'm gonna sweep the floor, I'm gonna do the cash register, I'm gonna unlock the door. And now I have to do videos, it's just too much.

Dan Peterson  26:31  
It is it's it is too much for a lot of them. And not to make this any kind of commercial for flip switch, good. Just so you know, this, I had to change my business model because of this exact thing. So we've always done social media for businesses. And we still do, right, the posting the monitoring all of it. But we've recently in the last 910 months added a heavy level of coaching for a lot of clients, where they have that 20 year old in staff, they that needs direction, they need some kind of management, that's what we do, we provide a blueprint, we give it to them, they execute it for the month, the next month, we come back, go over by you know, rinse, repeat. And that's going over gangbusters because it's providing not only the level of direction, but it's also all the it's all of it. It's a creative, it's, it's everything. So I had to add that just because of exactly what we're talking about.

Gary Pageau  27:20  
No, the other piece of this, though, is the you know, sort of the discipline piece to know you can do everything. Right, right. So can you talk about recognizing that?

Dan Peterson  27:33  
Yeah, it's having self realization of what you're good at and what you're not. And this is a big issue with all industries, for small, especially for small business owners is trying to wear all the hats and doing so with ego, not letting go not letting that 20 year old do the do the thing that they're good at, and not having some trust factor there. Because at some point, you have to let go of things. And that revolves around trust, and it revolves around the ability to oversee it without micromanaging. Right. And that's a hard thing for a lot of business owners to do. Yeah. So once you can master that, and you can realize, like, Hey, I'm going to trust Sally to do this video. And she's, and I'm going to task her with doing five videos a week, one every business day. And at the end of the month, if she does it, I'm gonna bonus her. If we hit certain metrics, I bonus her again, and like creating a fun, but also profitable environment for her to be able to execute on the creative. And at the same time build in all honestly build a portfolio because she probably won't work their whole life. And maybe she wants to go or maybe she is going to college for something and she wants to go to the next executive level and be the CMO someday of somewhere, she can look back and be like, hey, look, when I was only 20, I elevated this place from this to this. And they the revenue increased by this percent, right? I mean, these are real life, things that can happen. And they do happen every day. They just don't happen where you and I hear about them. Right? You know, it's not something you hear on the news.

Gary Pageau  29:06  
So do you have any like tips or suggestions for engaging through this concepts you're walking through maybe like some, you know, a checklist?

Dan Peterson  29:14  
Yeah. So I actually got like five different things here that I can I can say, if you want to do a quick as a business owner, if you're listening to this, you want to do a quick overview, and kind of summary of what your business is doing or not doing. Here's a quick checklist you can have. So look at number one your professional brand. Do you have and this sounds silly. Some of you're like well, of course I have this. Do you have a logo? Or are you using a 10 year old photo as your profile picture on Facebook, for example? Like you need a logo you need somebody to know who you are, you would never go to Walgreens or McDonald's or anywhere else with a different logo and every different building. Why don't you have a logo that's the number one thing and brand goes way beyond logo but it starts there and then building around a concept of what your brand is about. Right from both a A mental and creative standpoint all the way through to your product and service. Number two is the personal brand as the owner, you might need to be the face of the business, right? You, you need somebody, I'll put it this way somebody needs to be the face of the business. So you need to get out from behind the counter, get in front of the camera. If you hate doing in front of the camera, then then just talk or you know, be behind the camera and talk through it, or get somebody else. That's where that software realization comes through. And knowing what you're good at and what you're not. Not everybody's meant to be on camera by any means. Pricing, like how is your pricing and your service compared to everybody else? Sometimes we see. I mean, I see it probably 10 times a year more businesses that have a great business model, but they're either way underpriced and have no perceived value, right, or they're way overpriced and can't compete. And they have to figure out different ways to come back into the normal market pricing. Sure. platforms is next one, figure out which ones are best for your audience and go on him and go heavy, but you have to be present on these platforms. And when I say present, I don't mean posting Forget it, you need to be going in, for example, let's say I have a Photoshop in I'll just say Champaign, Illinois, because that's where I used to live. So town and let's say 100,000 people, and I've got a store there. You know, that would be like what your small business owners listening own. And I'm on these platforms, I need to be going in on each one that I'm active on. So we'll just say right now Facebook, Instagram, Tik Tok, let's just say those three, I'm going to go in every day into the comments of all of the relevant conversations that are going on, whether it's somebody post a cute picture of their dog, or it's somebody having their high school photos done, or anything that's relevant, even, even 10 degrees out, I'm gonna go in, I'm gonna make thoughtful comments, in every one of those conversations, I'm gonna do 10 or 20 times a day. So you're talking 100, probably 50, minimum up to 100 comments per week that you're doing in these threads. And they're all going to be non sales, they're strictly going to be, hey, that's a really cute picture that dog what kind of dog is that? Right, or all your son has grown up, I have a daughter who's graduating this year to just thoughtful comments, that builds your brand on especially on Instagram, what I'm talking about here, faster than anything you'll ever do. You want to build a business on Instagram, that's the first thing we do is you're you post and you're present. And you're commenting on people's posts, so professional brand personal brand, pricing platforms. And then the process itself, you got to document your process, you got to show people what your business is doing. For example, I'm 44 years old, and I don't, I have not been in a Photoshop or type of business that you're talking about in a long, long time, I grew up with it. In fact, my grandparents even had a photo processing thing in their basement, in a dark room, in our basement with all the you know, the silver and all that. And so I have a nostalgic affinity for that. But I wouldn't go out of my way to go see it, or prod or be a part of it unless I had somebody remind me of how nostalgic that is. You know, if somebody showed videos, if you told your story on tick tock or reels or whatever, and I'm like, wow, that's really cool. Like, I remember growing up in the 80s. And seeing this, I'm gonna go to that store and just be a part of this, or I'm gonna get stuff printed out. Because I just love the way that I can hold something in my hand and not have it digital, you know, 10,000 photos on my camera on my phone. Like, when you touch on the emotion, this is sales one I want, right? Like you touched on that emotional side, that nostalgia. That goes a long way. The only difference now Gary is that people can do it at scale, they can do it in mass, because of digital, they can show a million people potentially or more, the same story that you know, 10 years ago, you would not have been able to tell you would have had to have them come to your store to see it. Or be on a TV show or a TV commercial. Now you can get your phone in your hand, people can watch your process all day, every day on YouTube. We didn't talk about that. But from a process standpoint, really quick note, I didn't build a YouTube channel if I had one of these stores. And I would create How to videos on every one of these, I would tell the entire process of how to do exactly what I'm doing. I would show the process of ordering online how to get the print thing created, send it to you know, like for the older crowd that might not be good on that website on how to get their printed thing done. Show it you know, screen record and show the process I would do all of this hours and hours and hours and hours of work up front. So that it sits there for eternity on digital and people can reference it as kind of a library for years to come. What we call evergreen content. So that's a if you if you had to look at everything from a 30,000 foot view. That's what I would do the branding, personal and professional pricing platforms and process.

Gary Pageau  34:54  
Awesome. Well thank you Dan, for your time and your expertise. Where can people go to Learn more about flip switch social media.

Dan Peterson  35:03  
Well, we are everywhere at flip switch social media, you can pretty much Google that. But I also have my personal brand, which is Dan Peterson official that I'm slowly building that's in my back pocket. I don't put a lot of time like I should into it, but but either one of those you can find. He's got 10 minutes, Dan, everybody's got to and you know what I, I always say this, I tell people what I'm supposed to be doing, like, especially my personal brand, that whole personal brand is really just me talking to myself. 100% That's all it is. All the advice I give is really just for me. But no, in all honesty, like I really want to give value and anybody that's listening to this, reach out, I'm not going to charge I'm not a lawyer going to charge you by the time if you just have questions, just comments, concerns, anything you need. It would be my pleasure to have a call or chat with you and help you. You know, it's not a sale stick. It's just trying to help small business owners. That's why I started the company. So

Gary Pageau  35:56  
thank you so much for your time and best wishes on your future success. Thanks a lot.

Erin Manning  36:04  
Thank you for listening to The Dead Pixels Society Podcast. Read more great stories and sign up for the newsletter at www.thedeadpixelssociety.com

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