Heads In Beds Show - Celebrating The 100th Episode Of The Heads In Beds Show [LIVE RECORDING]

Episode Date: August 28, 2024

In this episode Conrad and Paul take a bow to celebrate the 100th total episode of The Heads In Beds Show! Joined by Conrad's marketing coach of Wunderstars - Nicole Osborne - who takes the hosting chair and turns the questions on the duo. THANKS for listening in over the past 100 episodes. Here's to (at least) 100 more... Enjoy!⭐️ Links & Show NotesPaul Manzey Conrad O'ConnellConrad's Book: Mastering Vacation Rental MarketingConrad's Course: Mastering Vacation Rental Marketing 101WunderstarsNicole Osborne🔗 Connect With BuildUp BookingsWebsiteFacebook PageInstagramTwitter🚀 About BuildUp BookingsBuildUp Bookings is a team of creative, problem solvers made to drive you more traffic, direct bookings and results for your accommodations brand. Reach out to us for help on search, social and email marketing for your vacation rental brand.

Hey, Conrad here. So a bit of a unique situation today, not our typical sort of Conrad and Paul show, as you may have been used to over the past so many episodes. This is in fact our 100th episode. So to celebrate our 100th episode here on the Heads and Beads show, we went live and we did a recording with Nicole Osborne, who's the coach that I've been working with for about two years. She was gracious enough to host kind of a live recording from us and not necessarily all about marketing on this one, kind of go more behind the scenes of kind of how the podcast got started, you know, Paul and I's dynamic as kind of co-hosts together,

what he's been working on or what he's kind of hoping to advance in his situation, in his career, what I've been doing on my side of things with respect to marketing, and just kind of a mishmash of questions and ideas from Nicole. So we'll go ahead and roll the recording here. This was our 100th episode recorded live hosted by Nicole with kind of myself and Paul here as the sort of guests more so than anything. So please enjoy this 100th episode and we look forward to hopefully 100 more. Maybe Nicole can come back for our 200th episode of the Heads in Bed Show. But yeah, thanks for listening and we super appreciate it. I didn't ask for reviews at the end of

the recording, so I'll ask for a review now. If you've appreciated or listened to any of the past 100 episodes, first of all, thank you'll ask for a review now if you've appreciated or listened to any of the past 100 episodes. First of all, thank you. And second of all, if you could leave us a review on your podcast topic choice, that would be super duper appreciated. But yeah, here's the recording and enjoy. Hello everyone.

Welcome to the fourth episode of Linkedin Stage for Digital Agency Founders. I am joined today by Conrad and Paul, the podcast host of the Heads and Bats show. Guys, I am joined today by Conrad and Paul, the podcast host of the Heads and Bets show. Guys, I am so excited if you could take time out of your busy diaries. Before I mess this up, I'm going to hand over to you for the best introduction ever. Paul, would you like to go first? Hi, I can. My name is Paul Manzie. I've been in the hospitality,

vacation rental marketing space here now for a little over 10 years. I've been working with a variety of different companies, both on the B2B side and the B2C side. Worked with probably over, I think we've done the math now, it's over 700 hotels, resorts, inns, B&Bs, vacation rental companies. So I've been around, I've been in some markets, I've seen some different companies, but you you know, it's just a joy being in the space, enjoy doing digital marketing. And

that's, that's about what I've got right now. So amazing from one digital marketing expert in the vacation rental space to another one, Conrad, who are you? Tell the world life on LinkedIn, All our live viewers, as well as our replay viewers, go on Conrad. Yeah, so, you know, although I don't have the same experience Paul does, I guess I'll get there one day. I started buildup bookings back in 2016.

So like Paul, I kind of have an history of working in agencies. Really, since I left college back in 2013, I worked at two agencies and then I started my own in 2016. We specifically focus, as Paul mentioned, on the buildup side of things, on search social email marketing for vacation managers. That's kind of been our focus.

I think I did the math recently. I think my number was closer to 300. So as Paul was leading to, he's got a little bit more experience than I do at times. But now it's all good. I think we've been able to do a lot of positive things. And we've been, I think, fortunate to work in this industry over the past few years

where there's been a lot of transformation. And I think we've learned a lot from it. I think a lot of our clients have seen a lot of positive lift from it. So running an agency in this space, I think has been interesting timing. And I think I've been glad to be a part of it. And I think there's got a lot more growth that we can do in the coming years for sure. Excited. And you know what, I'm just so happy that you both are taking time out of your busy schedules, because obviously, you're working loads, you've got your own agency and it's never easy to dedicate time to do content marketing, right? So before we get into the questions, I just wanted to show a quick hello from Imogen Allen. Hi, Conrad and Paul, great to see

you all, looking forward to this interview. So everyone who joins us live, please feel free to add your questions and comments. I will do my best to show it and as well on the replay. Please share your questions. But let's get into it straight away. So your podcast, Heads and Beads show, the 100th episode is coming up very soon this month. Congratulations. How did you come up with a name? And you know, Conrad, you and I have been chatting since 2022. You always make me think of the most amazing holiday destinations. But how did you come up with a podcast name? It's very cool. Yeah, it's, it's kind of slang. So it's a term that I originally heard at the last agency that

I worked at. And it was, I don't always remember exactly the context it was set in. But usually, it was like, we were sitting in meeting, or we were looking with a client or talking with a client. And we had this one account executive that would kind of just say, we just got to put heads in beds. Like that's always what she said. And I feel like unfortunately, some people use it in negative connotation. They use it to think like, oh, we're only focused on occupancy, or we're only focused on getting people in there. And we don't care about the guest experience, which of course is not true at all. If you listen to any episodes, you understand kind of the things we cover are often about both sides of the equation, how you run the business and then how you market the business. But the term stuck with me like heads and beds, because it is kind

of what we're after. Like at the end of the day, we can have a lot of philosophical goals or what we want to achieve with a, you know, any sort of lodging accommodations business, whether it's a vacation rental resort, whatever the case may be. But at the end of the day, the only way the business works long term is by putting heads in bed. So I didn't want to call it like the vacation rental marketing podcast. Like that just didn't feel right with me. Like I just, there was something I thought that could be more clever from it. So, um, yeah, that heads and beds kind of name stuck with me and luckily no one is really using in this context. So that's often the problem, I think, when you come up with names is that if you come up with a name, it's likely someone

else has come up with that name before. There's a previous episode, maybe I could toss in the show notes that Paul and I did on Hello, My Name is Awesome, which is a book about naming and branding. Um, we love that book because it's so hard to do it. And so many people are in our industry, I think do a bad job of it. They call themselves like area name vacation rental company or something, which isn't always the best. So yeah, it's just kind of a slang term. And I thought it was a fun kind of co-op of that term into a positive light. And ultimately, it's what this business is all about, you know, putting more heads in beds. And the goal of our podcast is basically to talk about how to do that with marketing techniques.

beds and the goal of our podcast is basically to talk about how to do that with marketing techniques. And you know, I love that story. Now, Paul, I've listened to a few of the episodes. And the one thing I've really sort of noticed straight away, you have this brilliant chemistry with each other. And all three of us came on a little bit earlier just to make sure everything is running technically. And there's no kids in the background or husbands or anything like that. But we had such a laugh. Paul, do you know, one of the challenges is always with an ongoing content project like this to stay in touch with what your audience would love to hear from you. And I know this is something many people really struggle with on LinkedIn

is knowing what to post, knowing what resonates. How have you guys considered what topics to discuss in your show? What topics are likely to spike some interest for? Yeah, I mean, I think because we both live it every day, it's kind of easy to pick up just from what we do on a daily basis. Oh, there's people who are struggling with email marketing right now. There's people who are struggling with paid search right now with Facebook, with all these little things.

I mean, I think the nice thing about the marketing space is that it is always changing. It is always evolving. So there's always something new to talk about. As far as like, when we get into, I think there are times where kind of just jump into a topic, start talking about it and figure that, you know, we're kind of in it. Let's keep the conversation going. But there, I think it's really understanding that there, especially in the vacation rental space, there are a lot of different things that you're doing marketing with. I mean, you are marketing to guests, you are marketing to owners, you know, talking about the, the name of the podcast,

the heads in bed show the heads, well, those are the guests, though the beds are those owners that you're trying to bring in. So we do we, I think, just by the nature of the complexity of what we do, the all different areas of travel that we're working in and things like that, I think that's just the reality is that we get a lot of topics that kind of fall into our laps and we try to have, I think, a little bit of fun with them and certainly discuss them in a way that's not talking over people's heads.

When I listen to a lot of marketing podcasts, that's what tends to happen is I get lost and I think I know quite a bit about marketing. So that's the last thing we want to do. We want to make this approachable. We know that a lot of people in our space aren't marketing people, aren't marketing experts. So let's bring it down to a level where you can use it in your daily operations and kind of make it more tangible than just, oh, it's this high overarching idea that, oh, if you do all of these things and all these steps, yeah, it's this high overarching idea that, oh, if you do all these things and all these steps, yeah, all those steps are important. But we can take it down to a micro level where you can make actionable, take actionable items and

put them into your daily plans and kind of go from there. Do you know, I love that answer, Paul, because what you said then, in essence, is about being an approachable expert. So you two are such passionate marketeers and I hope you don't mind me saying you know you two can get really excited about metrics because that's the essence of what you do so well for your clients. But it's really thinking about in the location industry so we've got the property owners, the brand managers, the marketing owners, they're not such experts. You've got to make it relatable. Such amazing insight. Thank you very much Paul. Con experts, you've got to make it relatable. Such amazing insight. Thank you very much, Paul. Conrad, anything to add to that on how you guys pick

topics? I know earlier in the year, you also went live from a conference where you recorded your first live episode and you had some extra questions from the audience members. Did that work really well for you? Yeah, so a few things there, I think. I think getting questions and both these things are related in my mind. But I think Paul and I are very like in the weeds on things. Like we go down into the low level of detail and we are the ones who are often in these accounts. And luckily now sitting in the seat that I'm sitting in, I'm able to sort of, we have people on my team now who can, you know, help with a lot of the account management setup and things like that. But personally, I don't want to lose that, you know,, that touch that I have on some of the accounts

and some of the things that we're doing day to day, because that's where a lot of our content ideas come from, to be honest, right? It's actually talking or chatting with a client or seeing a project that's not going the way maybe we want it to, or maybe something's going very well, we want to share that or talk about

what that particular person is doing. So I think it's like observation, I think is like one of our key kind of like principles that we look for people on our team. And I think that's one thing that Paul and I are very keyed in on is we're observing, we're seeing what's going on, we're looking and we're very tactical. There's you know, I think what Paul's loading to there's people in our space that want to have these strategic discussions all the time, which is great. I mean, we did an episode recently on like strategy versus tactics. And basically, like, we tend to be a little bit more like, let's try this one thing. Let's do this one tactic, we're going to see some benefit or lift from it. And I'm all for like starting with an awesome strategy, but a lot of people just need kind of the same thing. They just need to do more, less thinking, more doing.

And so hopefully the show is more about that. Like someone can finish an episode if they had that particular problem, whatever we were talking about that, that particular episode. And they go, oh, wow, like now I understand the volume of content that's required to rank in SEO. Now I understand link building better. Now I understand what type of offer to put on a homeowner newsletter or campaign or direct mailing campaign, excuse me. So hopefully people come out with it with things that they can actually do. And I think the feedback we've got in the past has indicated that. That type of show appeals to me a lot more. And I guess I'm kind of doing what I want to do. Maybe I don't know if it's perfect for the algorithm or perfect for, you know,

getting more clicks or more downloads or whatever. But I think people listening will get legitimate ideas from it, take action on those things, see a benefit. That means we're doing some things right if we hear about that. I couldn't agree more with you. It's the same with LinkedIn for digital agency founders. I'm doing this to create value for agency owners who struggle on LinkedIn, who struggle to be that visible face of their company, being that leader in their team. So with actionable advice, hence bringing in real people like you and Paul to really chat these things through. Just a quick tip I want to share, which Imogen made so well,

such a great tip to use content from everyday things. It's so easy to overthink it. And I think that really builds on what Paul and Conor both are saying. So sometimes even behind the scenes content, right? Now, I know you both are pretty experimental. I love that about your podcast, but also about your LinkedIn activities. You like to think out of the box, try out new things. Paul, you've been particularly active. I'm going to bring it back to the podcast show, obviously, but you've been particularly active on LinkedIn with video. How have you found that?

Again, we have 30 to 40 minutes a week here of content that I can just kind of repurpose. It's, it is it's, it's the value of having the podcast. And because we, we talk about it, that is vacation rental specific information. That's, that's, That's what a lot of it boils down to, but what we're talking about is just general best practices in the marketing space. So I can clip very easily and have, find these just general, more generalized clips of, okay, this is a marketing best practice.

This is a marketing principle that everybody should be taking into consideration there. I love video just because it doesn't need to be perfect. I think what we found is that, you know, if it's not perfect, if it's imperfect, it usually not necessarily does better, but at least it gets people's attention. And I think that that's one thing with video that everybody is, I think, slow to actually jump into it because you do you want it to be perfect. Just jump into it with video is the one thing that I've seen more people be effective with it if they just jump in because they're not

thinking about making a mistake or making it perfect. I mean, everybody's got we used to need a handheld camcorder with the big VHS disc and all that. That is not the necessity anymore. We've all got high definition cameras right in our phones and the ability to use the vertical video visual. That's something that people have gotten used to with the TikTok and with Instagram and all these stories and things like that. So it is.

I think just kind of jumping into video and not worrying about it being perfect, I think, is going to allow you to experiment and really get your name, your voice and your brand out there in a way that you can, you can, then you can work with it. I think that's the big key in the video side of things for me. Love that insight. I love that insight. And absolutely it doesn't have to be perfect. And Conrad, this is going to make you laugh. I actually clicked yesterday on your built up bookings, amazing newsletter. So Conrad says in touch with his clients by sending out marketing tips on a regular basis and you

link to client questions you got all the time. How do I know if my SEO is working? How quickly can it be working? And all you did at the time was actually doing a wonderful screen share and talking people things through it and answering these questions. And how powerful is that? That's really, really, really authentic. Conrad, thinking now to your audience for the Heads and Beats show, what do you reckon is the potential of video? Because I guess when we look at different holiday homes, different hotel properties, locations, we want to get a feel of the atmosphere, right? Is it going to be family friendly? Is it going to be an amazing beach for our restaurants? What do you see the potential of using video for both things? Yeah, I think going back to what Paul said a second ago, I think they overthink it or they think it does have to be perfect.

Or in many cases, we've had clients that have hired professional videographer crews, which, you know, no disrespect to them. So those people have done a phenomenal job and they put things out that are very polished, they look awesome, they're using all the best to pulse point camera technology and that sort of thing. And I think the trouble there is quantity, right? So the average small vacational manager doesn't have the budget to have a videographer out every week. So they sort of put all their chips in the table with one or two videos that they pay thousands of dollars for.

And then it's like, man, now we're out. Where I think actually they're going to see a lot more success over time. And many of the clients we've worked with have seen a lot more success over time. Stamina with very good videos seems to work better than occasionally putting out like an awesome or quote unquote, a perfect video, that sort of thing. So yeah, I think I think it dovetails perfectly into what Paul said, we've had clients that have used an iPhone and a stabilizer, you know, that's the only piece of technology using just so it's not shaky, right? That's it. And they've filmed, you know, these walkthrough videos on their phone

They've edited through what I say is like the boring parts of the house you go slow So like the hallway or excuse me the boring parts of the property you go slow So you speed through the hallway and then the nice parts of the property you go slow so the view in the back of the property or maybe the way the Layout is of the pool or obviously depends on each market kind of what that looks like But just simple editing tips and we have people that have gone from like no followers or like no meaningful video engagement on these social platforms to getting thousands of views.

And it's often just through the simplicity of, you know, sharing a lot more and realizing that it's okay to share, you know, on social, I think it's actually okay to share a lot of B plus content as opposed to trying to occasionally put out A plus content because things don't last very long in Instagram anyways, for example, right? You post something in Instagram and it's gone in a few days,

maybe at most anyways after that. So you kind of have to be on that treadmill a little bit, whether we like it or dislike it, that's how the platform works. So you're better off doing something that's sustainable that you can manage over a long period of time versus doing something that you can only do once or twice a year and then only post a few clips

and not see meaningful traction on video. So yeah, I think people just wanna see the property. I think they just wanna see what's it look like. How do I, when I walk in, what's there, you know, what's, how's it decorated? The photos are great. And all the clients we work with invest a lot of time, effort, energy, and money into awesome photos for their properties, for their listings. But I think video can be a nice compliment, particularly on social. So that's kind of what I would encourage people to do. Just like Paul was saying, like don't overthink it or don't feel like it has to be flawless. There's a few small things you can do to put out really good quality video

and you can do it a lot more of it, which I think you'll get better results over time if you embrace that. I think that's really solid advice, right? Because when you're buying a holiday, it's the feeling you're going after, right? How will my family feel? Will I be chilled out?

And yeah, video is really powerful. And going back to video on LinkedIn. Now obviously on Instagram, we've got reels and stories. On LinkedIn, I see a huge trend now of people going live, of people posting short videos for more reach. What's your take on that for the use of video on LinkedIn? I know Paul, you've already mentioned that. Conrad, are you seeing, I know you have a very varied

content strategy, which I think makes it more fun for you personally, which actually it's a really big insight. You need to have some fun to continue to do it. How do you see video evolving on LinkedIn? Yeah, it's like you said, there's things that I like doing on LinkedIn, which I don't know if they're always optimal, but it's like, I want it to be, like you were saying earlier, too authentic, like what I believe I'm thinking at the time, usually when I'm thinking something, I find it easier to put it down and to write it down and you know, have those kind of posts. But I've had I've had posts of all types do well, as you know, and you and I worked together for some time, we've had plain text posts

do well with no image, we've had posts that with an image do well, we've had a post with a video do well. So I've seen a lot of variety. I think that's what is interesting about LinkedIn. Whereas these other places like Instagram, if you're not doing video, you really have no chance, right? For the most part on Instagram of getting any significant reach. But as far as marketing like us, like marketing buildup and my agency specifically,

I find video is a good compliment. I don't tend to find it to be the number one thing that I find myself wanting to post on LinkedIn all the time, but I think it's awesome to kind of mix in some clips like Paul does from the podcast. And I think it's been helpful for people to kind of see what we were talking about in the podcast so they understand what we're thinking and those videos are a great way of doing it. I'll probably continue to mix in more video. I sort of will

have to, whether I like it or not, sometimes you have to skate where the puck is going. If LinkedIn becomes more and more focused on only video, I will likely publish more video. I like the fact that LinkedIn will support the fact, you know, I'll get reach on plain text posts with no images or no links or anything like that. And then sometimes I see a lot of reach with other things, too. I think people are linked in are open to both, whereas other platforms are really only meant for one thing like Twitter, or I guess now X is really just for

writing. I mean, can you post videos on there? Yes. But it's really just for more for writing. LinkedIn is more in the middle. And then you've got other platforms like Instagram that are really video only. And of course, tech talk being video only. So those are kind of the ways that I see it as far as marketing build up and what we're doing. No, fantastic. And definitely the uptake of video and the significance of it is totally increasing. Going back to build up bookings then. Now, you're celebrating your hundreds episode, which is amazing, because you know, let's just highlight this most people give up really, really early in their which is amazing because you know let's just highlight this most people give up really really early in their podcasting journey and you know it episode 100 so that is huge and I know your

subscriber numbers are steadily growing so well done both of you. What do you ever do in these cases because you're both so passionate about the tips you can share with your audience because you really want them to be actionable and helpful. What do you ever do if you have a disagreement? What do you do when that happens on the air? Do you edit it out? Do you leave it in? What's your dynamic in both case scenarios? Well, Paul's often wrong. He's wrong about a lot of things.

So that's not really a problem for me. I mean, he's got some bad take on some things. Now, I think the truth is that we do agree most of the time, the majority of the time. And when we disagree, I think that's healthy. I think that's good. We do come at it from a little bit of a different perspective.

Like for the past little bit, Paul's been a little bit more focused on homeowner marketing that may shift and change as he kind of goes into some new opportunities down the road. But that's kind of been more of his focus, whereas I've been more focused on the guest marketing side of the business. So it was always nice maybe to have some of the dynamic in some of the episodes we've had where he's brought me ideas that I hadn't thought of because I'm not day to day doing the homeowner marketing side all the time. And then same with Paul not doing the guest marketing stuff all the all the time day to day. But yeah, I think there's a lot of ways to success. So even if you know, Paul says he prefers to do it this way, I prefer to do it that way,

it doesn't mean that he's right and I'm wrong or vice versa. There's usually more than one way to get to the goal. And it often depends, I think, too, a lot of time on what the clients or you know, whatever the vacation company what their objective is, you know, what works well for one company may not work well for another. Just go back to the social media example, we have a client who's done unbelievably well in social media because his properties are almost made for social media. They're designed in a way, they look away that works on social media. That wouldn't work for the 50 unit condo rental manager in Florida. So if we're talking about strategies, like what makes sense, that is kind of part of the discussion. Sometimes we are going to disagree. And I think it's perfectly fine. I hope the listener gets

value out of it. And they realize that usually there's some nuance where it's like, in this situation, this may make more sense in that situation, this may make more sense. So that's hopefully what we get out of it. But I mean, what do you think, Paul? What else would tie into that? I mean, I knuckle under pretty good. I'm not gonna lie. That's fine. But no, I think a lot of it is we do, because we've seen a lot of the same things, we do have similar insights into what's happening out there. We've seen the same problems happen. We've had to fight through the same opportunities in our campaigns and stuff like that. So I can always hear when Conrad's kind of, you know, pushing my idea to the side and putting his upfront. That's good. That's part of it.

I think part of it is just the relationship that we have developed. I mean, it's kind of lucky that we met each other. We kind of found each other here. But I do, I think we do have very similar personality, just generally. So I think that when we get into this setting, and we do, we talk sports, we talk about golf, we talk about all these other things. And then we just happen to talk about marketing as well. And I think just because it's not all about marketing all the time and that it is more about, hey, we're just kind of a couple of 30 somethings that think we know about marketing and kind of know about sports. And we're going to share some of that with all of you and hope that we get some enjoyment out of it. I think that's a big part.

I really love both of your answers there because you have people at the end of the listeners, very real people that have interest outside work, right? Sometimes work can be stressful. You share tips, but you also want to make it entertaining for them and enjoyable. Now, I want to put you on the spot because we have a really good question here which I know is a question you often advise your clients on as well. So we can see what your tips are. Now question is from Imogen Allen. Imogen we really appreciate this. What would be the best tip you could give someone who's feeling stuck with their email marketing efforts? Because I can imagine someone who's like a homeowner markets and there's email might just be that additional thing they have no time for. Or if you are running a bigger marketing team, bigger set of properties, you might be running

out of topics. So what are your tips for, you know, sort of igniting that passion again, and then really getting the best possible results from email marketing? I'm going to start with Conrad. Yeah, so I think on the guest marketing side, there's moments where I think that we have run the same playbook over and over again for an extended period of time. And I think it's easy for people to maybe get a little bit fatigued by it. So maybe the question is, are we marketing to an audience that cares? Like, we can think whatever we want to think on the email and how we put it together and the content that we put inside of it, that sort of thing.

The person on the other end receiving it, are they actually interested in what we have to say? If that's not the case, then I think you're really are going to struggle or you're going to feel stuck, because the numbers are going to look bad, even if maybe you're producing the right information, just for the wrong person. Maybe that's one way to think about it. So, you know, in the past, we've had clients that have not been happy with email results. Usually, it's because the list is either too small, too old, like they have a list that hasn't really been cleaned or refreshed or added a lot of new people. Or they're just not doing anything that's

actually interesting, you know, they're just not doing anything that's actually interesting, you know, they're kind of rehashing or talking about the same things over and over again. So I would look at consider, you know, seriously, what can I do to get more people on the list? So on the guest marketing side for what we're doing typically with with buildup, usually a contest is a safe, you know, way to kind of like, build and a lot more emails addresses on the list, if that kind of has been a little

bit stale, maybe it does mean removing people that are completely inactive. It's something that I hesitate towards. We did an episode, I think recently on this, where Tyanne told a story on another podcast that I do, Tyanne Marsink, about a guest that was on her email list for 10 years between bookings. Like they made a booking and then there was a 10-year delay before they booked again. So that story actually stuck in my mind is like, maybe you don't realize that people are taking these vacations or trips or holidays, as you would say, Nicole, not very often, not super regularly. So you got to be careful about just removing them from the list, even if they you feel like they're a little bit inactive or you feel like they

don't care. In our in our space, too, I think with email marketing, people are using it for inspiration, they click over, they might kind of have a little nugget there, but they're not often booking from the email. So I think the metrics and the data can get people a little confused where they expect people to like click from the email and then make a reservation on that same browsing session. And that just doesn't happen in our experience very often. It does happen, but it's not very common.

So I think people use email very much in like the middle of the funnel experience, right? To like, oh, I have thought about going back. Let me click on this email. Oh, this property looks nice. Oh, maybe that would make sense. It's kind of almost planting that seed in their head of, I wanna go on this vacation.

I wanna go on this trip. Email is a good way to stay in touch, but it's not often that conversion channel. And I think we as marketers often tend to rely at times too much on analytics data that shows you that all that converts is search or all that converts is direct traffic. And, you know, Paul and I have talked about this before. I'm the biggest proponent of search that there is, but I also realized that a lot of search is people going into Google, searching for the name of the company, making reservation, and there was something else before that influenced them. And that email is often one of those channels. So, you know, some people, I think with email, just to kind of wrap that thought up, get too analytical and too measurement driven. Whereas like, think

about the fact that you're putting your message or you're putting, you know, your property information or your company information out there in front of 500,000, 5,000, we have clients that have 100,000 people on a past guest list, and they can market to them. And I think they don't understand the power of that. And they get too tied into the just the facts and figures of exactly how many people clicked exactly when people opened. And they realize that they just put their name in front of 100,000 people that have stayed with us before. That's really valuable. And that's why you should probably keep doing it. It's also one of the marketing channels that honestly is most cost effective over time, like your cost to send an email

doesn't really go up. I mean, marginally, as you get your list gets bigger, but it's pretty minor, but you're probably paying a few hundred dollars to send that email marketing message out, you know, collectively, and you get a lot of benefit from it as your list grows. So those are some high level things that I think on my side, but Paul may have some different takes. Love it. Paul, come on. Yeah, I would say I say more of our email efforts right now, especially on the owner's side, it's a colder, colder process there. So I think really being comfortable experimenting on that side of the

thing, experimenting with video, but experimenting with email is also important because when you are trying to hit these people cold, it's, it's a different conversation that needs to happen. It's different format that needs to happen. You know, that, that plain text making you feel like it's a one-to-one conversation, become a lot more effective instead of sending something that's linkful and pretty and beautiful and then certainly is going to attract eyes from a guest or something like that. But that's not what a homeowner is looking for. They really are looking for what kind of value are you going to drive me on both the home care side of things, the

maintenance side. I mean maybe I have a half a million million dollar home. I want to know that's being taken care of. So it's more of a direct conversation there. But I think in any of the, to make sure your email marketing efforts are effective, I think you have to have kind of that audience outreach, you know, testing and seeing what do they actually want, you know, running little micro campaigns and segmenting when you can to see,

okay, does this messaging work better? Does this format work better? I know Conrad's done a lot of that because he does have a lot of different people he's working with and a lot of people who are willing to try different things that feel more personalized. We know the more you personalize that marketing, the higher engagement will be down the road. So the willingness to try to experiment with those things is really important on the marketing side, especially if you're feeling stuck. Because if you are, if you're just sending out the same thing week after week after week, changing out the images, changing out the links, changing out these things, not only are you feeling that, but the people who are reading that are gonna feel that too. Your subscriber numbers are gonna be affected

and those engagement metrics, well, they can be a little, I mean, it is, it's measuring what matters and understanding what's a vanity metric and what's something that's actually driving the needle on the performance of the email. Just making sure that you're kind of keeping all those things in mind, and it's a lot, but it's gonna help you put together ultimately a better final product and reach those people

with much more impactful messaging that is gonna drive them to that call to action. Oh my goodness, that's such a good insight into the kind of expect tips you share in such a relatable manner. I was picturing myself having the most beautiful properties in Florida, let's just say Florida. And I was picturing myself, I can hear my bosses on my case

getting our email performers up. I would have sat here and just taking really practical notes. And I absolutely adore that about both of your style, because I feel this is what makes the heads and backs show so good, that it's small things you suggest, things you've tried out yourself on different accounts. It's amazing guys, thank you. I've got another couple of questions if I may. So Imogen is saying, first of all, congratulations on the hundreds of episodes. So Imogen is saying, first of all, congratulations on the hundreds of episodes. What would you say is your biggest tip for someone just starting out on their podcast journey?

Paul, would you like to go first on that one? If you're going to do it with someone else, find someone that you can get along with. If you're going to work with someone as consistently as you want to, and you want to do it for a long time, I think you have to have some type of working relationship, some type of positive working relationship. Yeah. If you're going to fight the whole time, that's your bit and your stick. Sure, why not? But I do. I think that, you know, making sure that you have a topic you want to talk about and a person you want to talk with about that topic,

I think that's super important. There's probably some more steps along the way. I mean, Conrad built a lot of foundation here and kind of let me join along. So he probably has a little better insights into beginning that podcast journey. But that's what I would say personally. Thank you. Thank you, Paul. Congrats. And I think the important part of the story is that it is the hundredth episode of the heads and bed show, but it's not our hundredth episode together because I was doing a few episodes solo before Paul, you know, I asked Paul to do the show with me or the podcast with me. And long story short, I wasn't I wasn't being consistent. I wasn't, you know, blocking out and doing the time and it

felt a little, I don't know if intimidating is the right word. I wasn't looking forward to doing those solo episodes. I wasn't recording them very often. And it was, I would argue failing or it was not working well for me to kind of feel like, oh, I need to do this all by myself. And, you know, solo episodes, I think, are hard to just not have anyone to talk to or play off of. Back to Paul's point from a minute ago. So I agree with what Paul said for sure. But I think if you're doing a solo show, or if you're doing it, you know, obviously, a lot of podcast interviews are, you know, yourself with a guest, and the guest rotates every week and that sort of thing. And I do one of those shows as well. So I kind of know

that feeling. And it's just a little bit harder I think to build that consistency and because every week it feels like you're kind of starting over you don't really know exactly what it is. Candidly I think some of those podcasts become a little repetitive over time because you're kind of hearing the same story over and over again and I don't necessarily love that format so I think we haven't done guests we're open to doing guests maybe we would do guests down the road but it wouldn't't be like, Hi, Nicole, tell us your story, that sort of thing. It would just be more like, here's the topic you're coming in because you're knowledgeable about topics, you want to dive into it. So yeah, I would say the advice there is like, do what you enjoy doing. Otherwise, you're not going to do it. I feel that's true about anything. You know, if you're doing some sort of exercise or workout, you know, you know, Nicole, I've talked about this with you on some of the things, if you find something that you like doing that is enjoyable to you, even if it's not the perfect exercise, and maybe the most optimal thing to be doing, if you could do it,

and you do it all the time, you're going to see a lot more results than doing, again, quote unquote, the perfect exercise, but not committing to it. So I think the same kind of logic applies here. And yeah, I think it's, it's also having your brain in like idea collection mode a lot. So we kind of said this earlier, but like, as I'm working throughout the week, I, I'll flag something, or we have, we use Basecamp, as we know, and we now have this board where we fill up ideas. And sometimes we actually come up with an idea and then Paul and I later spike that idea. We don't actually like it. Later on, we go like, maybe we change your mind on it. But usually it's because we found a better idea or something that we were more excited about chatting about. So, you know, that idea gets pushed down the list.

We rarely delete ideas. We've done a little bit over the last few years. But for the most part, we come up with a better idea. We go, oh, let's do that one instead, we outline it. And then we record typically on a separate in a separate timeframe now. So that's kind of been the key, I think. And yeah, putting in your in your calendar and trying the best of your ability to make it non negotiable, you know, having it locked in your calendar, Paul, and I have a time that we've agreed upon that works well on both sides here. And you know, we've had travel and I've had travel, things like that, of course, pop up sick kids, that sort of thing. But don't be like, Oh, if I want to today, we will don't leave it open ended, like you may or may not record. I think you just want to have it in there blocked in. And then I

think you're going to be a lot more successful with getting it done. You know, I think last piece there is sometimes the numbers don't look awesome. You know, we have months where things go down a little bit. It's not just been a consistent curve up into the right as far as growth goes. There's been months or periods where it's gone down a little bit. I think Candidly, Paul and I've talked about this, our clients are busy. They don't have time to listen to the podcast. Their heads are down in their business. You know what I mean? So I think there's periods where it's not great, but we keep going. We keep sharing episodes. We keep sharing stuff. And we know that a lot of stuff we're sharing, honestly, is kind of timeless and people can certainly come back to it down the road and see all these specific topics.

I sent an episode the other day to someone, a client that had a question. I said, here's my quick response. But actually, Paul and I actually did an episode on this, like 45 minutes. And I sent a link to it. And he listened to the whole thing and said, that was awesome. It was an episode that we recorded, I think it was like our fourth or fifth episode that we recorded together. So it was quite some time ago, but it was exactly what his question was. So I think knowing that you're building a library, that's gonna hopefully stand the test of time a little bit, hopefully makes, you know, someone get more motivated to consistently do it all the time as well. makes someone get more motivated to consistently do it all the time as well. Wow, it's such a wealth of tips from both of you. Paul is really saying, if you're doing it with someone, do it with someone who you get on really well with because that's going to drive really positive energy. Conrad is saying experiment, make time in your diary to make things happen, and that really applies for any kind of business building activities or marketing activities. If you have a dream and you want to pursue it, turn it into actions and add them to your Canada.

And I'm so sorry I had to say that, but I am from Eastern Germany. And Conrad is also saying really finding that enjoyment and maybe also don't beat yourself up if the show isn't perfect or if numbers are going down, because really, essentially what you're doing, you're investing in building your brand equity, so the moment when you have a lead coming through, when you have a question coming up from a prospect, you can actually say, Hey, that's such a cool question. If you want to dig deeper, here's an episode on the podcast. Here's a link in video. Gentlemen, fantastic. I wanted to bring

a couple of questions from our audience. First of all, from Stefano Stefano, thank you so much for joining us today. I know we met earlier on LinkedIn, so I think it's fantastic you are here. So this is about video. Now I know Stefano is building his right level agency, and he really wants to step up his visibility as an agency owner. And we all know how daunting that sometimes can feel when you have a beginning of a journey, because the first thing we do, we compare ourselves to someone who's like 100 steps ahead. So Stefano might not be looking at you, Paul and Conrad think, Oh my God, 100 episodes, totally active on LinkedIn. How am I ever going to get there?

The answer is to start and allow yourself to learn. So he's saying, I do not see myself creating videos. So thought of recording daily activities and post them. Great tip. Absolutely. That's such a content shortcut, right? To just post what you're working on what you're passionate about. Would you agree with that, guys? Any example you can add to that? Yeah, so some of my LinkedIn posts that I've done well, I'm curious, I know Paul's done a few of these things too, is like screenshot. Like I've done screenshots from Google ads,

you know, that's not necessarily the most highly polished piece of content out there. You know, I'm not design savvy, you know, we've made some jokes about that before. So I don't have time to like open Photoshop or can't I can't even open up. I don't even have a copy Photoshop. I have Canva. So I couldn't even do some of those things on my side of things. So yeah, some of the LinkedIn posts that I've had the best are, I would say more interesting ideas or again, tactical advice or hey, catch this or those sorts of things. I was going back and reviewing some of the best episodes that we had done. I know you have quite more questions about that in a minute, Nicole. One of the best episodes we did was a three-part series on swapping from Universal Analytics to GA4. So if you sum up those three episodes, they were some of the most downloaded

because it was solving a very, very, very specific problem. People knew that it was that time. They had to go swap everything over from Universal to GA4. We released this about a year and like 13 months ago at this point, basically, because it's been about a year since that switch occurred. And we gave very specific advice and tips. And I wrote a lot of information and documentation. And we did multiple episodes on that topic. And it did really well. So I think mini series or kind

of sharing again in the weed stuff, I think is kind of what's worked best for us, as opposed to like, what should you do for analytics measurements? Like, no, it was like very practical. I click this exact button in GA4 to like swap everything over, install the script in this way, use these events, like we were very practical. And I think people, you know, respond better to that stuff. So yeah, to be, you know, to be clear to Stefano here, I don't think video is required at all. I think, again, I mentioned earlier, I've gotten posts that have done phenomenally well without video. So can it be a next compliment? Or can it be a solid thing? Absolutely. But there's a lot of people I love online that I read all their stuff,

and they don't ever record a video. And they only write and a lot of people will be drawn to that too. Because different audience members will have different preferences, right? So the idea is that you experiment with different formats whether that's polls, text only posts, image posts, videos as we just mentioned to appeal to different people. Now one thing I wanted to add to Conductor's before I hand over to Paul is it's very much, Stefana, do you know you have so much potential to also just talk about how you make your clients feel, how you make your work happen, topics you care about, what you do for your lunch break, because it is very much a people-to-people environment, LinkedIn.

Any kind of marketing landscape nowadays is a people-to-people environment. So where you can invite people in, you know, what makes you passionate? Why are you building your agency? What do you do in your spare time? What have clients said to you? So these are all great content opportunities to explore with not so much effort, actually, if you just have that willingness to show up and show personality and let people in a little bit.

Paul, I see you're nothing and I really, really appreciate it. What were you going to add to this? Paul, I mean, for me, it's not as much with the video, but I'll read a lot of the blog posts that are going on in the space, in the search engine space, and then try to duplicate them and bring them back into the vacation rental space. So that's, I mean, a lot of the things, not the screen recording, but those screenshots of what the search term was and what the search engine

looks like, because it does change pretty dramatically from search term to search term and from day to day. Thank you, Google. And thank you Bing. That's just so much fun for us to be on that roller coaster ride. But anytime you can bring something that's big industry wide story with search, the search industry and take it down to our specific vertical and whatever Stefano is doing in his space as well, just taking those things down to that individual vertical. It gives you, your followers, your audience more insights into how it really relates back to them.

Oh, like we'll get real quick, Nicole, we'll get episode ideas or topics from like Search Engine Land or Search Engine Journal, but then we modify the content, I would say pretty heavily, you know, so back to the GA four piece, we did a recent comment about that we did like recap episode. And we talked about the fact that all the terminology in GA four doesn't really make sense for our clients, like it uses the term items or it uses the term shipping, we don't ship a vacation rental, obviously, that makes no sense. But it was it was almost just our way of being like, hey, these things might make no sense. When you look at them, too. That's okay. You're not crazy. That's the interface. It's not really designed for you. Here's what you should interpret or here's how you can actually reuse some of these

fields. For example, items, we use that for a vacation on a property. Items viewed is now a number of views on a property diesel page and tracking. It's one of those things I think where it's like people, they kind of like, they may care about us a little bit. I share your vision there. I made this joke before, but two of the best posts that I've done have been when we got our puppy and I posted a picture of my puppy. And when I got a hole in one earlier this year, you know, like I did a puppy in a hole in one like things that have nothing to do with vacation marketing, right. And those things have done well. LinkedIn, LinkedIn, LinkedIn, LinkedIn, LinkedIn, LinkedIn, LinkedIn, we need to get more whole ones, which I have a decent chance at and I'm not getting another

property. Sorry, we've already got one. We've got the kids. It's too much. But anyways, yeah, I think I think people do like that kind of personal side to you. I feel like that ratio personally is maybe like 10 to one, like 10 to one business post versus like the personal one. I like doing them a lot. I think if your whole post is personal one, then you're, I don't know, maybe you're an influencer, you know, trying to sell something different than what you're actually, you know, supposed to be knowledgeable about. But I think people do like to have a peek behind the curtain and understand the personal a bit more. And I think people like doing business with people that they do understand, or they feel like they can relate to a little bit, even if my hobbies are not their hobbies, they like the fact that they kind of see a little bit more of me as a person. And hopefully that kind of shines through when we're doing some of the podcasts or some of the, you know, fun stuff in the beginning, it's more just to kind of let us know that we are people and this is what we focus on. But ultimately, you know, there's whatever 170 hours in a week, and this is maybe 50 or 60 of it some weeks, right? I absolutely love what you both have just said. And you know, this is a benefit for your own business, right? When people get to know you, Paul and Conrad, as people. Now, now tell me with the Heads and Bets show, so you already mentioned like one of your really successful

episodes which are on the theme about the whole G4 update, right? Absolutely. What other topics have really landed well? What do you think, Paul? What's been some of your favorites? I mean, I think personally, one of my favorites is we there's some bigger names in the vacation rental space that we are pretty negative about. We really don't like some of the big names. And we took one episode and we really pointed out and highlighted where these companies are doing amazing things. You can say that they're the dark side, they're maybe the evil overlords or anything like that, but at the same time, they've gotten there because they do things very effectively. And we wanted to highlight some of those things. And it

was, it was kind of, it was interesting to be on the other side and try to be pro Airbnb and pro Lacosta and pro some of these other companies that we're going pretty hard, or we at least bring up the potential pitfalls of really leveraging any of these areas too hard. So yeah, that that was a fun one. I think anytime we're going really into the nitty gritty, I that's what I enjoy. But that specifically that the anti the pro Vakasa bro pro Airbnb episode is one of my favorites. So what about you kind of? Yeah, that was a good one. I was actually that was on my list of ones that I thought was kind of solid. I like where you know, we've done a few maybe that are revenge against conventional wisdom, I would say. So we have

an episode about like, here's all the reasons social media won't work for your vacational business. That was one that I kind of enjoyed doing because it was like, everyone would go out there and like, every marketing person might nod their head when you say, Oh, I'm going to go post my properties on Instagram, on Facebook, and that sort of thing. And I've shared this thought many times in the podcast before. So for the listener, they're hearing something they've heard before. But any marketing channel is just that. It's just a channel.

It's just a medium. And I think people get too, I don't know if religious is the right word, but they get too tied into the fact that, oh, I'm an Instagram marketing expert, or I'm a Facebook marketing expert, or I know email marketing well. And I think the truth is that all the businesses that we work with are small businesses.

They only have so much energy, effort, resources, et cetera. And so it's not what works. Anything can work at some level of volume. If you could only market the story I've told before is if you could only run billboards, you would get some level of response for it. If you bought every single billboard in the entire country for your vacational business, you would get some kind of phone calls. It would work in some respect. Now, it would work horribly relative to the cost that it would take for you to buy every single billboard in all of America. That doesn't really make any sense. But it's an extreme example to point out the fact that any form of media, any form of

marketing advertising can work. So I like the episodes where we kind of just take the other stance. And that's kind of like what Paul's Paul like that episode to, or we take the other stance of like, all right, what would your business look like if you did no social media? How would you market the business? I mean, maybe we could do what that was in the future. I have to steel man against my own argument. What if we couldn't do search? What if Google didn't exist? How do we market the business? That could be fun too, just to go through that process. Because in that, I think you're going to find things that you like or that you enjoy that maybe you wouldn't have found otherwise. So I like those kinds of episodes that we've done. That one comes

to mind. We did one a while ago. I've sent this one a handful of times, how to become a great client for your agency. This was an older one. And we were sort of joking at the time when we recorded it. But I think it's, Paul, the company that he'd been involved with for some time uses the term partnership. I don't use that term, I use the term client, you know, but I do like the sentiment behind that word. I've shared that before, because I think that sentiment is correct. It is a partnership. It has to be we're doing this thing, you're doing that thing. And we're in the boat together kind of trying to go to the same destination. And I think a lot of clients, unfortunately, over the years, and Paul and I have kind of battled

with these thoughts, they're not kind of doing their end. They're just giving you a few, they're giving you the money and saying, you have to do everything on your side of things. And the truth is that those clients don't really see the success that they want. And that bums both of us out. We don't want that to happen. We want people to actually be successful on their own accord. So we've done some episodes like that, that aren't really marketing related, but more just about like the success of the business, you know, like what are some things that make the business successful? And I think some of those come to mind for me, or arguments and the other pieces. Yeah.

Paul, and can I ask you a massive favour? Would you be kind enough to go in on LinkedIn and add some of these specific episodes to the comments? Because I feel people will really want to check them out, particularly your specific insights, about some of the big players. I've watched some of the videos on LinkedIn and it's always been extremely humorous. So it makes me giggle. I'm sure it's really, really relevant for marketeers in your market. Now, we look back at some of the episodes you really especially laugh.

What plans have you got going forward? Come on, give us a flavor of what's coming up in the next few episodes. And by the way, everyone who's listening live and read, please check out this link, where you can find the podcast link as well as all the other links as well. And we're going to bring up Paul's thesis as well. So what have we got to look forward to for Heads and Beats? Yeah, let's see. I think we've got some branding conversations that we're going to talk about. We'll talk a little bit more about the owner side of things. This is a season where as we, there ebbs and flows of seasonality in the travel and hospitality space, certainly beach markets,

we're starting to wind down on the busy season. We're heading a shoulder season, which means it's time to be its owner season. So now we get to get more properties back on the books. So it is, we're talking a little more about seasonality, actionable items that you can do a little bit of branding. I'm going off memory. So if you got the list up. No, I do. I got the list up. So I'm reading off of it. Seeing me go sideways here. So we're actually, yeah, we've got a predictions episode we're going to do. So what're actually, yeah, we've got a predictions episode

we're going to do. So what's going to happen in 2025? Maybe we'll release that a little bit closer to the end of this calendar year, but we'll make some predictions. Then obviously we'll need to come back to it, you know, like a year later, like we do with GA4 and say, how close were we? So we'll have to make some bold predictions. I've seen that format in another podcast that I like, particularly Paul and I do talk about sports sometimes that's a common sports one. Before the season, you say, what do you think is going to happen? and then they revisit it at the off season and see how close they were at some people actually are pretty accurate. So we'll see if we can get some things right there. We've got some other pieces with respect to like Paul said shoulder season marketing.

One idea I'm excited to do pretty soon is the idea of what's foundational to your business. What do you need to set up in order to like get going and what's ongoing? So what are things that are like more one time or like how do you set up a solid foundation for the business from a marketing standpoint? And what are things that you're like doing every day, every week, every month, to make the business more successful? So that's a good one. I've kind of wanted to do that one for a little while. So I think that'll be a solid one to kind of put into the mix. But we have I'm looking right now on our list. I think we have 12 kind of pending ideas, and then we have two that we've kind of already agreed to an outline that we're going to do. So we've already got our next, you know, 14 episodes outlined. And then it's just a matter of kind of going through the process,

doing some additional outlining on those other 12 that we haven't outlined yet, and try to make them as the best we can. Well, this is such exciting topic race. Okay, I'm gonna have to pitch one idea, one idea, one idea. I want to have one idea, one podcast dedicated to behind the scenes of what it's like doing your job, supporting your clients, And some of the real scenarios you get, I think that'd be so good because sometimes, I know it shows you guys really adore your jobs, right? Otherwise you wouldn't be doing this.

But sometimes there must be like some frustrating moments which are totally normal amongst marketeers. So I want you to share some of those. How about that? There's like a thumbs up or thumbs down. Yeah, I like that one. So I can share the two text messages I've got from clients while we've been recording. That would be a good one. Yeah, I like that one. So I can share the two text messages I've got from clients. That would be good. Oh, nothing

nothing bad, but just like, hey, I'm waiting for this ad approval. And then one was about, um, yeah, I need to move my meeting today. So no, it's, it's all good. It's that's the thing, too. You know, Paul said this earlier about recording on the podcast and doing the podcast. Well, one thing that I try to screen for all the time, too, is clients that I like working with as well. And I've told this to you before, Nicole, in our sessions that we've had together, I think we're doing a good job. If I look at my calendar that day, and I look

forward to having all those conversations, there's gonna be something I can share something I can learn, something I can talk about that we did for that client, they're gonna look at a project that we did for them, right, they're gonna look at the results of something we did for them. And they say, that's awesome, or that's great. Let's do more of it. Like those kind of things. I think that's when our agency is really well run and you don't have a day. And I've had these two, you know, I'll be honest, I'm not perfect, but I've had days where I look and go, man, I'm not really looking forward to a lot of those conversations.

That's when I know we're not in the right spot. So I want the business to do well. We want to grow. We want more people to listen, that sort of thing. But yeah, I value like sort of our, uh, the happiness or if you will, or just the, the, the positive feelings that we get when we work with people, that's ultimately what this is all about in my mind. So that's kind of how I think about it.

But yeah, I'd be happy to do that episode. I think I'm up into it. Paul, yours will probably change a little bit here as we go along, but we can do that down the road. So our lovely live viewers and our replay viewers, you heard it here first. I really wanna encourage you to check out the Heads in the Bat show.

Even if you're not in the industry, just to get a feel for everything you can achieve by really getting to know your audience, by solving web problems on air, by creating content consistently, because these gentlemen's do it so, so well. Now, before we go, we are on LinkedIn, we want to inspire more people to embrace LinkedIn. Each of you, one final tip for LinkedIn, and I go with Paul fast. Post consistently because I don't and LinkedIn does not like that. And when I when I miss a day or two, oh boy, I all my impressions. So so I'm sorry, I haven't posted much recently. So my my reach is gone. So Conrad, this is this is for you there, sir. But post consistently.

Cool. Conrad. Yeah, yeah, I can't I can't disagree. Yeah, like Paul, I've had some things pop up recently in the business. Again, maybe we could do the behind the scenes episode and we could talk about that someday. Maybe it's when we're not recording, but there's been some things that haven't gone perfectly smoothly for me lately. As you know, Nicole, but I'll get there. I would say so to tie into what Paul's talking about, I think the batch scheduling has been the best, you know, hook for me. So if I could sit down for an hour and a half, I can sometimes do two weeks of content in an hour and a half

if it's focused effort, if I know exactly what I want to accomplish during that timeframe. Now again, where I think that works well is when you've been collecting ideas. So if you have a little note file, I just have an Apple Notes note file, and it's just like LI ideas, that's the name of the note file. And I'll just find something really quickly,

screenshot it, bullet point, grab it, put it in there. And then when I do that hour, hour and a half, it's really ideas I've been percolating potentially for two weeks or something like that. But then I can sit down and I can post a lot of stuff right away. So I think for me, scheduling has been the most valuable thing for LinkedIn. Not feeling like doing it every day doesn't mean doing it every day, excuse me, posting every day doesn't mean doing it every day in the sense of, you know, sitting down for five minutes every day and thinking of a post, there'll be days where you're just too busy, you don't have time, you know, life pops up, work pops up some combination of the two for me a lot

of the time. So I think having an hour where you block out and you do a lot of posts all at once has been the biggest unlock for me personally. Solid tips. One quick tip to add from my side is to find some post formers which allow your audience to say, hey, I struggle with this. You don't want them to say they have to struggle. So think about how can you ask an easy question? How can you get people who are not so confident on LinkedIn out of lurking? How can you make that really easy for them? Because it's a social platform. We want to make ourselves look good. We want to build new connections. We want to learn something new. Wow, Conrad and Paul, I am so grateful for you taking the time with today. This was such fun and I know you provided so much value to our LinkedIn audience and hopefully your

podcast audience will absolutely love this live episode. Just finally, before we go, what's the best place for people to get in touch with you and to find out more? Paul, I'm going to start with you. It's going to be paul at manziedigital.com. Email me there and hopefully I'll you know, I will respond. I promise. I will get back to you. And LinkedIn? And LinkedIn? Yeah, LinkedIn is probably the easier way. That's where you'll get me a little more consistently there.

Just Paul Manzi there. Show up for Paul. He's going to be on even more consistently. Thank you very much for Conrad. What about you and the Buildup Bookings team? Yeah, for sure. So you can definitely reach out to our team if you're interested in working with us or learning more. buildupbookings.com slash getting dash started is kind of like our best page for the podcast. It's buildupbookings.com slash show. We put all the episodes there and like a little player. You can listen any episode there.

If you subscribe that we really appreciate it. Some people just listen on the website and that's fine. But certainly if you subscribe, then you get every new episode. iTunes is Spotify where we get the most downloads. So that's where most people seem to find us in those two places. Oh, fantastic. I just want to say, definitely saying thank you very much. Great tips. Imogen is saying the same.

I just wanted to promote my next episode of the LinkedIn Live Stage for digital agency owners. I am super excited, actually, to have the amazing Chris Lemmon. Oh, apologies, Chris. I misspelled your name on that. Fancy that. The German is not doing it perfectly. It's going to be on the 9th of August, just like in this episode, we're

going to share lots and lots of practical tips. Conrad and Paul, thank you so much for today. Thank you so much for our live audience, for our replay audience, comments, questions you have, sharing here. Check out the show. The Heads and Bets show is absolutely fun. Guys, thank you so much. Bye. Bye, Paul. Bye, Conrad. Have an awesome one.