Discussing it all about Social Media & Content Marketing with Alan See

Welcome to the podcast. I am Shane Barker, your host of Shane Barker’s Marketing Madness Podcast. Today’s episode is about social media and content marketing. We’ll discover how to leverage social media and content marketing to grow your brand, and I have with me Alan See, an expert in both content and social media marketing. He’s the Principal CMO of CMO Temps LLC. He’s also been recognized as one of the 50 most influential CMOs on social media by Forbes. Listen as he reveals the secret sauce behind his massive social media following and how he gained authoritativeness. You’ll definitely find Alan’s journey to becoming influential very interesting.

Alan, give us a little background about yourself. Where did you grow up? How big is your family? Give us a little insight into how Alan’s life started off.

That’s awesome. Boy, you’re coming with some facts. I like that. So, you have every right in the world to be proud of that. That’s kind of awesome. I never knew that. You know, you never know the background of colleges and how things start off, and you know who’s graduated from them, but it’s always kind of fun to hear because you never know.

Yeah, no, it absolutely is. So tell us a little bit about your family. So how many brothers and sisters, mom and dad, all the fun stuff.

That’s awesome. And you have, is it a brother or sister, one younger sister, one younger sister, gotcha. And what did she do out of curiosity?

She’s getting paid to tour the country. That doesn’t sound like too bad of a deal to me. I try to do that with my speaking stuff. I always try to get international speaking gigs. And people go, “Isn’t it harder?” And I go, “Yeah, but then I gotta travel. I gotta go there, you know, the culture and stuff.” I mean, I just talked about this in one of my last podcasts. I was just in Singapore a few weeks ago. I mean, it was a 17 and a half-hour flight, so it’s not close by any means. The food and everything else was just amazing. So, anyways, I love that kind of stuff. Anytime I get to travel, I lie to people and tell them it’s just to speak, but there are actually other secret motives behind that—still, traveling the country, sure. So, not a thing at all. So, give us an interesting fact about, when we talk about growing up—what would be something that nobody would know about? I mean, obviously, give us some interesting facts about the college there locally. What would be something that people might not know about you? Like, obviously, you’ve been in marketing for 30 years, which we’ll touch on in the podcast. But give us another random fact that maybe nobody would know from your background. Like, I had one of my guys, Aaron, on the podcast, and he used to be a fireman. He randomly brought it up, saying, “Yeah, I used to be a fireman for 24,000 people. 24,000 people applied for this job, and only 24 people got it. I became a fireman.” So, is there any cool, fun, interesting facts you’ve got?

Yeah, yeah. You’ve got to be careful with football, where it doesn’t necessarily need to be a division one college to know that it can be painful. That’s cool. So, you were looking at being an astronaut, which is awesome. When I was younger, I wanted to be a fireman. I don’t know why that was. I always liked fire trucks and thought they were cool. But I’ve realized that my issue with it is that I’m not a huge fan of blood, and as far as I know, firefighters are usually the first responders on those types of situations, so it probably wasn’t the best fit for me.

Well, they’re definitely a different breed. I mean, you know, they obviously keep people protected, and it’s an awesome profession. Everybody looks up to firemen, for sure. Yes. And then, so where do you currently live? Are you still in Ohio now?

Yeah, that’s awesome. So, you seem like you’re kind of big into history too, huh? You a little bit of a history buff?

Yeah, it’s funny. My biological father is really big into history and stuff, so understanding your family and the heritage, really interesting to me. We have a Facebook group where everyone posts about that. It’s always nice to see the old pictures and not forget that, especially in the U.S. I know a lot of my friends, who are Hispanic and Mexican, have these large families, and they’re always talking about that, and my family didn’t do that as much. I’m glad to see that we’re bringing that out. I’m learning more about history. I think it’s the kind of thing we miss—over time, you forget about the past, and it’s important to think about that.

So tell me about, I mean, obviously you have a lot of history, right? And with social media and marketing as a CMO, you’re also an instructor at the University of Phoenix. How do you like that?

Yeah, so it’s funny. I teach at UCLA right now, and it’s funny when you talk about being an instructor. This has started for me in the last two years. When I found out about you, I thought, “Oh, we probably have a lot to talk about, just because of what it takes to be a teacher.” I never realized that. I never realized what it takes. When I was a student, I thought, “Oh, they’re teachers. They go and they know what they’re talking about. You get some curriculum together.” My classes at UCLA are on Tuesday nights, from 6:30 to 9. There’s a personal branding and influencer course. The amount of prep that goes into it is crazy. And then the students as well. You’re trying to educate the youth, and, as you touched on with the University of Phoenix, a little older demographic, but definitely probably more real-world experience. They’re not just going to take what you’re giving them. They’ll say, “Okay, get you saying that, but this, this, and this, right?” Not just, “I’m ready to soak everything in.” It’s like, “I might pull your card and ask you some questions about that because of this.” As they should, right?

Well, I think what happens is, and not to put all professors in one category, but there becomes a situation, I think, when they know that if they don’t have the real-world experience, and when people start to question that by asking questions, and sometimes that can be uncomfortable for them, right? So, it’s like, when you’re asking something, you’re like, “God, I don’t know the answer to this, and I’m supposed to be the All-Knowing instructor.” I’m like you. For me, it’s like, if I don’t have an answer, I’m going to tell you what my experience is, and I’ll tell you what I think, but I’m not the end-all, be-all, right? I mean, just because I’m here in front of you, I mean, I do have the experience for they brought me in. So UCLA brought me in because of my experience in personal branding and influencer marketing, so I was very fortunate in that sense. But I’m not to say that I’m, you know, I’m not the pinnacle, like, I have more knowledge than most, but I’m, you know, if you have something that you’re going to bring to the table, I have no problem with saying, “Hey, yeah, I agree with that,” or “I don’t agree with that,” or whatever. So for me, I’m very more open to constructive criticism if it’s there. And once again, I’m okay with that. I don’t want people to think that I think I know everything, because I don’t right; every we’re all students of the game, and every day we’re learning.

Yeah. Well, you seem like that type of person though, you know, and I can’t imagine you shutting down and not going to learn anything else. That’s what I like about our profession. So I like about social media and content marketing and SEO, all that fun stuff. There’s always new things to learn. So it’s kind of, I enjoy that kind of the hustle of that there’s always with clients and stuff like that. It is fun. You know, I have a great social media following, right? So I think you’ve got, what, almost 80 or 90,000 on Twitter, you’ve got a, and then on Instagram, you’ve got, I don’t know, 5000 followers, which is obviously phenomenal numbers. Like, when did you start on Twitter and LinkedIn? And, like, what are your strategies for growing that? Because obviously you have a great following, any some fun stuff that you can give the audience about how you did that?

So, you were talking about 2002-2003. You’ve been doing this for 30 years, right? So I know you started when you were four years old, right? Four or five, right? Take a few years. I know you were a very early adopter, even in diapers. I think at that point you were doing some marketing stuff, but, like, what made you jump into, obviously, said, “You’re, you started off in sales,” which I always think is a good thing to understand, because, you know, sales and marketing are always these two different departments that are trying to figure each other out, right? Like, sales are always like, “Oh, we’re not going to get enough leads.” And marketing is like, “Oh, they’re just not closing them, right?” Not always. But, you know, there’s always that friendly little thing that goes on. And so I think having a background in sales is definitely beneficial. But how did you what? And so 30 years ago, when you started, was that when you started doing sales, or you don’t have to fully disclose if it was later than that, and if you were two years older, everyone you started?

Well, that’s especially if your dad had a radio shack franchise. Like, that’s like for most kids. My dad was a counselor, but he was a teacher too, and so I remember we were one of the first to have one of a Mac computer. And this was, you know, when they were the big old Macs. And remember, like, was it Pioneer Trail. There was some other stuff I remember playing. And so I kind of felt like I was not an early adopter, but it was nice to have access to a computer because they were expensive, you know. And obviously, your dad having a franchise or, you know, having some radio shacks, you were one of the first people to be able to try out a computer, and you kind of, once again, early adopter for sure.

Yeah, yeah. Well, usually that takes, and usually comes with wisdom later down the road that you realize, wow, if it’s the same amount, same amount of energy, but it sounds like you got a early dose of that early on and said, “Hey, let me think here, same amount of energy or commission, or whatever that is.” It’s like it’s a no brainer.

Well, it sounds like you’re a nice combination of both. So that’s good. Tell me about CMO tent, like so we’ve got, obviously, it’s your company. You’ve had it. How long have you been the owner?

Awesome. So, it’s cool. The company is you, so that’s what they’re going to be getting, which I think is great. I’ve seen your website and I like it. It’s funny, because we kind of look at ourselves similarly, not exactly like what you do, but there are definitely similarities. We look at ourselves like, if you don’t have a marketing department, we can come in with two options: we can either work with you to help train your marketing department, or we can come in as your marketing department until you get that department. You kind of do the same thing—if you don’t have a CMO right now, or you know you need one, but you have the budget for it and just aren’t sure how to get things going, why not bring me in? If it’s a long-term project, that’s great. If it’s short-term, that’s fine too. Let me keep everything moving, because the idea is that you don’t want to stop for months, but marketing needs to keep going. So, you come in and take that position. I think that’s an interesting place, especially when you think back to 2007-2008. There were CMOS, but I’m not sure if that was a common idea back then. And especially being able to play that out 12 years later is impressive. A lot of companies miss that opportunity. It’s nice to have someone who can say, “Hey, I have the experience,” which obviously you do. I’ve seen your resume with Fortune 500 and 1000 companies like AT&T and others. I think it’s interesting that you can come in, take that position, and help right away. It’s not an overnight thing, but it’s something where they can say, “Hey, we need you now.” You come in, figure out what’s needed, and then either stay in an interim role until they find someone, or maybe it becomes a full-time position. That’s cool. I like that.

That’s awesome. That’s great. So you call yourself a digital Rainmaker, and it’s funny. I’ve heard the term Rainmaker so many times, but I’ve never looked it up. I actually looked it up because I was like, “I have to know what a rainmaker is.” I had an idea of what it was in my mind. But could you give us a little definition of what that means for you?

That’s interesting. Yeah, your description is exactly what I looked up. I thought, “I have to look this up,” because, like I said, I’ve seen it but never actually looked up the true definition. It’s so interesting. That’s kind of cool. We’re in a CMO for companies, and obviously, some of it is fractional, and some of it depends on what they need. You probably work for multiple companies at different times, and it looks like you don’t have a huge staff. So, that’s one thing. You don’t have to manage tons of people—it’s all you as an individual. There are definitely some efficiencies there. But how do you manage that if you have two or three gigs, and you’re only one person? How does that work for you when it comes to managing those types of projects?

Nice. This is what I was thinking, cloning people. This is the reason why I want to interview. I knew that you were going to come with something that was just going to blow people away.

I can make double the income for with one person. Why not, right?

That’s interesting. I’ve been in digital marketing for 20 years, and I’ve definitely seen a shift in how my company approaches things, especially what you just mentioned. When I started, I’d take on any client—if you had an idea and $1, I’d be like, “Let’s go for it.” You know, I felt like I had some expertise. But now, we’re really selective about who we work with. We have specific qualifications for potential clients, and we’re seeing more extreme expectations. For example, people will say, “We want to give you $10,000, but we expect to make $5 million.” Of course, everyone wants to make that kind of money, but we need to be realistic. We assess if it’s a good fit for both sides. A lot of people forget that when you start, you’re often willing to take anything. As you grow, you start becoming more discerning. I now look at projects differently—I see through certain things and can quickly tell if it’s a good fit or not. I’ve had clients who’ve been offended when I’ve told them they’re not a good fit. I’ll explain that it’s not personal, but taking on a project that’s not a good fit won’t work for either of us.

You mentioned a bit about Twitter, LinkedIn, and blogs. When it comes to companies, what’s your secret recipe for success? I’m sure it’s not anything too secret, but could you talk about how you use social media marketing and content marketing? How do you make these platforms work smoothly? For example, you mentioned posting a blog on LinkedIn and Twitter. How does that process work? How do you produce content, either for yourself or your clients, and distribute it through social media channels? It doesn’t have to be a “secret sauce,” but could you give us an idea of how you put it all together?

Love it. I love that equation. That’s me—I’m a very visual person. Obviously, they’re not going to be able to podcast, but putting that together with the risk underneath it makes total sense, right? The idea is, you want to be out there in the space. You want to educate people, give them good value, and then, you’re obviously going to break down some of those barriers to working with you because you’re educating them. They’ll see this must be the right person because they’re putting out valuable content. And obviously, this is someone I’d want to work with. So I love that.

Well, that’s what I think is valuable—if you put out great content, a lot of the time, it can be evergreen. The more content you put out, the more real estate you have on Google, and that’s important. I’m a huge content fan because I started my blog about seven years ago, and everything I do now is inbound. So I really understand the value of it. I also understand the level of commitment and the financial investment required. I remember when I first started my blog, I began paying writers to help me with some of the content. My wife asked, “So you’re paying people to write for your blog. How many leads is that bringing in?” I said, “None, right now, but I’m looking at the long-term play.” I spent a lot of money on writers because I didn’t have the time. She asked, “Is that making money?” I replied, “Not yet, but it will.” Now, with all the inbound leads, I can say, “So, leads today,” and she gets it. I just wanted to bring that up with her real quick. Good for me, right? So, it’s nice to see the results when the machine starts working and people are coming through the funnel. It’s rewarding once you hit that point. So, absolutely—what are some companies, in your opinion, that are really crushing it with social media or content marketing campaigns? Companies that you look at and say, “Wow, they’re doing a phenomenal job”? These could be bigger companies with big budgets, or even smaller local companies. Maybe you’ve worked with them or helped them put together their campaign. Who would you say is doing a great job, and why?

When you touched on the thing, I think there’s one aspect—the negative side is that they don’t follow you, right? Then, you’re like, “Wow, there’s rejection there.” But the upside is that if they do follow you, like you said, I mean, you could lose your mind if, once you say, “I’m a 49ers fan,” and the 49ers follow you. I’d probably talk about it for two weeks, three weeks, and it would solidify my dedication to that brand, to that company, right? So, I see there’s huge value in that. I think social media has always had a learning curve for a lot of brands, and I think we, as marketers, have learned how to leverage it correctly and understand the value of that conversation and engagement, which is, in reality, not even engagement—it’s literally just following somebody back when someone can. I mean, I don’t. I’ve done that when I was starting my career. Like, if a celebrity or something followed me, I would screenshot it and post it on Facebook. “Oh my god, you know, x1, person.” Now, I look back at it and think, “Wow.” It’s kind of like, I don’t know. I was like, “Ah, I don’t know, like, I don’t know.” It’s kind of a fanboy thing, I guess, with some of these brands. But it was exciting when they would do that, you know? And I remember people posting on Twitter, “Hey, followed by…” They’d put, “Followed by Nike,” and we’d be like, “Oh my god, that’s awesome!” So, I think there’s a lot of value in that, and it doesn’t take tons of work, right? Especially if you find that super fan, you want to find that evangelist who already loves your product. You go and follow them back, like they’re gonna go get the tattoo. You know, now it’s really going to be solidified.

Yeah, I like that. And it’s not that big of an effort, right? The ideas really follow back. It doesn’t need to be anything too crazy. So, what do you think are some of the biggest misconceptions about social content marketing? Like, when you read a blog and think, “Oh my God, if somebody brings this up one more time, or talks about it one more time, these misconceptions,” because obviously, everybody has the right to write about anything they want and not say that people’s opinions aren’t true. But the thing is, what are some things that you know firsthand, you read it, and you go, “Ah, if I see that one more time, I’m gonna lose my mind”?

Yeah, I look at it the same way. I think software helps with some efficiencies on certain things, but it’s not going to replace the individual. I get this question a lot: “What do you think about artificial intelligence?” People say it will be writing soon and doing this and that. I’m not too worried about it yet. It’s not going to replace us. AI can write, sure, but a long time ago, they had tools where you could flip scripts, put in some information, and it would generate an article for you really quickly. It never really took off, unless you were doing some spammy stuff. I think it’s the same with AI. There’s always going to be that human touch that can’t be replaced. We might not see it, but it’s not going to replace us. I don’t think it will. Maybe it can help with some things and make things more efficient, but it won’t lead to people losing their jobs, not in what we do. In other industries, maybe, where there are efficiencies, but in our industry, I think there will always be a need for humans. Of course, when they listen to this podcast in 30 years, who knows?

But no, I mean, today, I think we’re still in the clear regarding anything like that. But I do think the thing you touched on is important—it’s not a fast process, right? Anything we do, whether it’s SEO, content, or even social media, it doesn’t happen overnight just because you started sending out tweets or writing content yesterday. If you’re looking for something fast, that’s a PPC play, and even then, it’s going to take some time to find a working funnel and the right audience. Everything takes time, and I think that’s one of the things. That’s where my qualifying questions come in, and I’m sure you ask the same for potential brands. We talk about what would be a home run, how quickly they’re looking to get this done, and what they think the expected results would be. We’re kind of making sure it’s a good fit. Because if you’re out there in the clouds and want 80,000 followers on Twitter in the next month and a half, well, you’d probably have to have started about 13 years ago. It’s not impossible, but you’d need to put in that investment. Let’s set some realistic goals or KPIs internally and focus on achieving those realistic results rather than aiming for something crazy that isn’t going to happen. And that’s really the truth.

There’s no other way to do it.

Exactly. That’s the value. That’s the point of being a CMO or a consultant. The idea is, you don’t want to make the same mistakes I made. You already paid for them. So now, the idea is, I’m paying for your time so you can teach me how to avoid those same mistakes. That’s why I think the value of a mentor, or someone like that, is so important. People don’t understand the value because they see it like consulting—”It’s too expensive.” But I’m like, you have to realize what it cost me to learn this. These can be $100,000 mistakes that we’ve made along the way. And I’m telling you these lessons for my hourly rate. If you look at it, I’m never going to break even on the mistakes I made. But the idea is that I’m educating you so you don’t make the same mistakes. That’s where the value is. Some people don’t get this, but the ones who do understand it. They reach out, and they don’t even flinch when I tell them my hourly rate. They understand because they realize it would take them years to learn what I’ve already learned. If I could tap into your knowledge, get all the good stuff in a couple of hours, that’s a great deal. And then I can move on to the next person. People don’t understand why I charge what I do, but there’s a reason for it—I’m giving you the goods.

Yeah. Well, it’s, you know, it’s funny. The way that I’ve dealt with those over the years is that, you know, depending if it’s a really easy question, what I’ll do is I’ll go to my website, and I’ll say, “Hey, this is where I wrote about that.” So I have a nice little repository of content. If it’s a big one, like, hey, I want to learn how to do social media marketing for this client. Then I’m like, then what I’ll do is I’ll send them something and say, “Well, obviously, are you looking for consulting hours, or how did you want to structure this? Yeah, and, you know, I’m not that. I’m not here to help people. But when you ask me these crazy questions, like, literally, how do I put a strategy together for this? Like, that’s not a two-minute, three-minute answer of, hey, let me help you out. You’re literally trying to—the way I look at it is you’re trying to grab all my knowledge, and you’re really not offering me anything for that, right?”

Yes, yeah. It’s funny. I just had a company reach out to me. And the thing is, if I had $1 for every company that asked me to be included on my blog, I’d be rich. It happens every single day. We have different ways of working with companies now, such as sponsored posts and other things, and we’ll see who’s serious about being included. I had a gentleman from a company I spoke with this week, and what I liked about him was that he came in and said, “Hey, how can I help you? This is what we do for you. You can write for our blog. This is what we do. This is how many people it’ll reach.” And what we were looking for on our side was wondering if you could do this. And for me, that’s when it clicks. You’re offering value. You’re making it a win-win. You come with a plan that makes sense to me. It’s not just, “Hey, will you help me out?” The problem is, in the beginning, I didn’t have an issue with it. But the problem comes when I get to a point where I’ve had 1,000 people ask for help in a year. At that point, it becomes a situation where it just has to be a win-win for both sides. You need to explain how both people can benefit. And when that happens, you really start to value people’s time. I know a guy, Dennis, and if you ask him questions, he’ll say, “Sure, go here and pay for one hour or two hours of consulting.” He’ll tell you how long it’ll take and get it set up. He’s getting rid of the tire kickers—the people who are just going to ask endless questions. And that’s fine, but when you’re getting 10 to 15 to 30 questions a day, it starts to take up your bandwidth quickly.

Absolutely, absolutely. So, we’re about to wrap up this thing. Boy, we knocked through this today. It was awesome. If anybody needs to get in contact with you, where can they reach you?

Awesome. And I’ve got one more question for you. If money wasn’t a concern, what would you do every day if you didn’t have to work? I can’t imagine you not working, just judging from this last hour. I think it would probably drive you crazy, because it would drive me nuts. But let’s say money wasn’t an issue—what would you do if you weren’t working?

There we go. Well, shoutout to Alan’s wife. Boy, I’ll tell you, that’s awesome. Well, good deal, Alan. Hey, thank you so much for taking the time today. Have an awesome Friday, and we’ll let you guys know when the podcast goes live. I’ll definitely be tweeting about it. Thank you, sir. Have an awesome day.