So strategy podcast episode 71. Welcome to the social strategy podcast, where it's all about making the most of your business with smart tips on what's working now in social media, online business, and good old fashioned network. And now your host was also known if you're Ross Quiara on Twitter, Vernon Ross. Hey everyone, this is Vernon Ross, and welcome to the social strategy podcast.
We're gonna be the best in online business, social media, and good old fashioned networking. Today I've got Perry Drake with us. And Perry is the professional digital and social media marketing at the University of Missouri, St. Louis.
You guys have heard me talk about this before. This is the digital conference. And Perry is responsible for putting that on the map. I mean, he's been responsible for creating this program.
He's been responsible also for some of the first courses in digital dealing with web analytics, social media analytics, SAS data mining. He's got all kinds of certificates and certifications at the university level. In addition to that, he's the first professor, I think to use Adobe Sidecast in the classroom. He's done all kinds of innovations in social media marketing.
He's a former professor from NYU, and we're just lucky to have him in St. Louis. On top of all of that, he runs a marathon and is like an exercise for Natix. We're gonna get into all of that stuff.
Perry, welcome to the podcast. Hey, thanks, alright, I appreciate being invited. No problem, man. So how did you get started in digital from NYU?
Wow, yeah, well, I was originally an executive at the Readers' Digest Association. I left there in 97, and NYU had just started a master's degree in integrated marketing, which was really cutting edge. Now, Affin integrated was bringing direct mail and telemarketing into the mix. That was the most part, but that was kind of integrated, which was still cutting edge.
You know, other curriculums were really incorporating that into the traditional marketing, mass marketing mix, sort of programming. And that's really what got me kind of pulled into it in 97, and then, you know, being in New York obviously. Right, right. Well, I'm sorry.
97. Yeah, and then being in New York was right in the heart of it, and we started a certification program in digital and social media marketing in 2003, and I think you alluded to it at the start. It was probably one of the first professors to ever create a web analytics class back in 2005, where Google Analytics wasn't even around then. I was using QuickTrex, which was a Canadian company, which a lot of people have heard of them.
They were kind of big back then. You know, you pour the log files in and get your really crude dashboards, and it goes all the five metrics or whatever that it would give you. Right. And I just think it was awesome connections.
In 28 years, I was in New York, and one of my students now are executives at Pinterest, or Twitter, and Facebook, and it's just made it really nice, kind of coming here and being able to bring those resources to St. Louis. Right now, when you start talking about digital and social media, I think there's some confusion, especially when you go from what big companies do to what small businesses do. And there's a lot of stuff on the market where people are talking about, well, yeah, I know I need social media from a business, but I don't think they understand exactly what that means.
From a university perspective, when you talk to students, how do you position that for them as far as what their focus should be? Yeah, well, it's a couple things I have to do with the students, especially if it's undergrad. I have to kind of go into a discussion of kind of personal branding and personal use of it to kind of grow their own network and their own connections and abilities to do things. So that's kind of one thing I have to do.
I don't really have to do that much with the MBA students because most of our MBA students are working professionals already, because it's an evening program. But that's kind of one of the first things we kind of get into is just kind of talking about using it, the power of it, what it can do, how it can connect you up with people, how you can, you know, what needs to be an advocate for a brand and maybe what you're gonna return for that. So like one of the first things I do to my undergrad students is I have them, if they don't have a Twitter, they have to set up a Twitter and those do, now I would say 95% of them do, but not a lot of them know how to use it. So one of their first sort of challenges that they have to do is pick a brand, any brand, no matter Coke, Taco Bell, they have to be a Taco Bell, you know, having a Taco Bell, whatever, and they're joining and I want them to tweet to the brand and try their goal is to get the brand to tweet back to them, respond after them.
This year was kind of interesting this semester because I would say six of the students out of my class of about 45, which a lot of times brands don't tweet back coupons, they were all excited because they were getting coupons and free law schools. And you know, it kind of made them kind of excited, you know, they kind of understand the benefit of that. So, you know, that's kind of the one, you know, the one thing I have to be, basically ground them with kind of to start it, that makes sense. No, it makes perfect sense.
It makes perfect sense, totally. So, you know, with this Midwest Digital Marketing Conference, the Unsill Digital Conference, this has been amazing. This started, the conference started with three years ago, right? Yeah, this is our fourth or fourth year.
Yeah, yeah. It was the fourth year. Yeah, April the 2013. How many people did you have in attendance?
I've had 425 in attendance the first year. Which is amazing in and of itself. Yeah, I mean, there was no advertising and I had only been in St. Louis since the 15th of January.
Right. So, again, just working, working power, social media, which you get, you know, those connections and plugging into people like you and, you know, making new friends that way. So, yeah. Where'd the concept come from?
Well, I think it's, I don't know if I told you this story before or not, you know, I was contacting some of my old students and connections from New York and saying, hey, would you kind of come in on a Google Hangout and guest speak to some of my students? And a couple of them said, well, you know, I'd be happy to fly in and talk to your students in person. And I thought, oh crap, if you're gonna do that, I'll put you in front of more than 30 students. I'll start 100 and then let's make you think about a conference.
So, that's kind of where it kind of developed from. And as you recall, it was just a half day event. But I still had about seven or eight people. I pulled up there.
I had Nickelodeon, I had Google, I had Nielsen, I had IBM. And again, it was kind of a rapid fire, kind of a textile, but not ten facilitated sort of talks. Yeah, but it was the last. And I did that whole thing myself, which was crazy.
Right. Yeah, I remember that. I mean, it's crazy, of course, every year. And it's even crazier this year.
And this year, as you mentioned, the first one wasn't ten facilitated, but this one actually is. Yeah. So I'm really excited Steve Summers and Ted X-Day and Ray Arch has agreed to help facilitate the three keynotes. And so I've got a really good team helping kind of do that.
And we'll have a morning keynote, afternoon and evening keynotes. And hopefully they will be all threaded nicely and kind of handing that off from one to the next to kind of carry that story through. So, yeah. Now, I mean, you've got Google and BuzzFeed and Under Armour and Adobe and Yahoo and Salesforce.
I mean, there's so many big companies coming to this conference. What do you think this is going to do for like St. Louis and the brand of St. Louis, especially the downtown area?
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I'm Michael is, I think, as many of us and you probably included it. I mean, I just really want to try to put the spotlight on St.
Louis and help that GLOW is as much as it possibly should. And I think we're all trying hard with all startup community and the nation's space and maker space. And I think this is just one more thing we can do. And I'm really hoping that this year we will trend nationally on Twitter.
I think that would be to be all of our goal. And I think we want to make that clear everybody as they come through the doors. Yeah, we trended locally every path. But I think we should definitely make sure we do it nationally.
Yeah. Oh, yeah. South heard a lot of comparisons when I'm talking to people about South by Southwest. Well, this is sort of like South by Southwest.
Well, I mean, we're not a music festival to start. But I know for a fact, this is the biggest conference locally and in the Midwest period. What do you think about, and I know you may have gotten this question already about making this a multi-day conference that is not just digital but it covers a few other things in the whole new media space. Yeah, no.
I mean, I would love that. I do kind of have a vision of that where maybe there is a little more of the tech that kind of folded in, maybe even kind of on the education side as well, just like have a South by Southwest. I think that would be great to have a multi-day sort of venue. And that is kind of where my focus is down the road of trying to get this to be that.
Right. That's here. We are going to two days because we just can't try to do it all in one day again. This is going to be so jam-packed.
And just so you know, there will be a live band on stage in the morning. Nice. And Red Bull will be outside with the GJ. That was awesome.
Day as well. So yeah, we've been bringing the music a little bit. Right. Yeah.
Little of the South by Southwest. Right. Right. That's right.
So I was going to ask when you were thinking about this whole conference and bringing it to St. Louis and doing this whole concept, how does a business justify going to a conference like this? What are they going to walk away with? Because I've gotten that question from a few people.
It's like, well, I want to go to the conference and a couple of them were too late because now it's sold out. You know, 1,200 plus people. So whoo. We were setting actually, we were setting, I just did because I printed all the name badges.
And right now we were setting it 13.32. Oh my god. That is awesome. Yeah, a little scared.
That was awesome. I cannot wait to see what happens. I need to have volunteers support from the board. Like you and the rest.
Oh, yeah. I'll definitely be there all day from probably 5.30 AM until I pass it. I take it to your point over and I try to make sure, which I think is critical, that I've got topics that are going to focus on the small business owner. That I kind of, and I'll be, and you guys will have to help me.
So I don't forget this next year. I need to also have a couple sessions focusing on nonprofit, which I don't think I did this year. I think it's late. Right.
Not intentional. It's just a lot of stuff to try to remember. But I do try to deal with that sort of issues as well as kind of the bigger issues like campaign attribution, which, you know, just not even, you know, can't address that. So I try to cover the gamut and I, you know, I email with some gal from a nonprofit saying I'm from a nonprofit.
I'm seeing nonprofit sessions there. Well, I still benefit. It's absolutely still benefit. There's going to be deep discussion on strategic ways to use Facebook and Twitter and with which will apply whether you're in a nonprofit or for a profit sort of environment.
Right. Right. So now when you're talking about students and I know you have a digital agency that you run at the Cortex Center. Right.
People know to CIC, Cambridge Innovation Institute, that whole complex of buildings down there in the city. How do you find people or companies that you're going to work with? Right now a lot of it's really just kind of word of mouth or if I connect up with somebody, you know, I'm always doing networking. So I'll meet new nonprofits all the time or social entrepreneurs and then, you know, if I assess that they kind of could use some help and I've got the bandwidth, you know, I'll tell them to kind of apply in our agency, which again, we're kind of rebranding that as well this semester a little bit.
It's a little bit of the ads would be called the lab. And for those that aren't aware of her and are really aware, we only assist St. Louis nonprofits and St. Louis startups.
Those are the only clientele that we take on. Although this semester we did make one exception burn. I also felt like I wanted to start taking on businesses in Ferguson that were hit and hurt by all of the issues that occurred last August. So this semester we picked up one business, which is 911 hair salon.
Just kind of assisting her with her. She was okay on Instagram. We really didn't get her. Now how do you use Facebook?
Which is kind of critical for her. Right. So for working with getting her kind of set up on Facebook and getting that whole side of it started. That's interesting.
So what does it look like from the, I guess, the university standpoint? I think a lot of people, they see the university there. They know that all these programs are going on. And I'm sure that there are people that feel like, well, maybe the community's not included in everything that goes on.
How is that communicated throughout the community that you guys are doing this? Because I mean, that's a wonderful program to have and I'm sure the businesses don't have to really pay anything for that. Yeah. Right.
Yeah. There is no payment now. My goal might be down the road to impress one of them so much that we assisted a couple of semesters and say, hey, we're glad to continue for a small donation of a few hundred hours. Right.
But not there yet. But yeah. So what I'm starting to do with rebranding, we're building a website. So at the Miguel, the one student that helped me rebrand the conference is a website as well for the agency and trying to, again, get it polished up a little bit so that your point can get word out a little bit more and kind of tell the story of what we do.
Because I think it's a great thing that we do and the students enjoy, you know, helping those social entrepreneurs, especially in the graph that's rewarding. And it's really just a win-win. So we will showcase a new commercial at the conference as well. It'll be about a 67 commercial just kind of showcasing and telling the audience about the loud kind of.
Yeah. Right. Now when you dig into the whole conference and you're talking to people and you're telling them about the reasons that they want to come and the things that they should be getting out of the conference, I've gotten a few emails from students. What my daughter was actually one of them.
And this was just a conversation. She goes, well, I'm going into my senior year. I'm interested in digital media, but I have no idea what I should be looking at in the field. How do you how do you answer that question?
Because if their students ask that question, I know that there are businesses that are still also confused about what they should be focusing on. What should be the focus in 2016, 2017 for students that are maybe coming out, things that are interesting to get into that are actually, you know, they could actually find work in and that same vein businesses also focus on where they should be. Right. Well, I think with students or maybe your daughter and, you know, one of the things I could always do to try to understand the space because it is, I mean, that's complicated space anymore.
Right. I mean, it's just so many components and levers. You know, you got the tech side, you know, which has constantly changed when you got the mobile, the, you know, it's just it's overly complicated. And you know, maybe one of the great places to think of start is to volunteer in a nonprofit.
You could always use a little bit of help even if it's doing simple posts or tweets or putting stuff out there on their LinkedIn page, just so they kind of start understanding that whole landscape and kind of how it works and how you can garner PR and, you know, the advocacy and influencer marketing the whole thing. So that's one way to do it. I mean, obviously the kids are getting this in high school and assuming that amount of colleges, the amount of colleges even have it at the college level. We're kind of unique and I'm sold that we've got actually 12 credit hours for MBA students.
Yeah, very much. Hours for undergrads to just in these focused topics. So, you know, that's one way, you know, just to dabble in it and see what it is and what it's all about because it is complex. Right.
Now that's awesome. Yeah. So, I'm going to talk about the book that you published. It's part of University of curriculum.
Tell me a little bit about that because I was curious. I saw it a couple of times, but I want to know a little bit more about that. Yeah. It's a little more of a traditional database.
I published in 2001, which I was built to be a published author by a legitimate publishing house stage publications, which was great. And again, you know, what gave me all the credibility was the readers digest, the readers digest again. I know for the millennial generation, they don't really understand the readers digest, but they were kind of a premium database marketer. I mean, you know, how to build a database that you had to retain up, sell, cross-sell.
I mean, it was a phenomenal marketing machine. And so, yeah, I mean, the book is still around. I still get a royalty check every year. It was back in 2002, which I still do get a small royalty check every now and then.
Yeah, it was quite an undertaking. It was a two-year endeavor, which definitely took over my life for a few years. Oh, sure. Yeah.
Well, you know, the reason I asked because you're a big data guy. You like to use big data to quantify things, grab data points for research for social media. And that's so important. And your background readers digest being that it was database-driven marketing.
That's really called today is inbound. I mean, that's what people are doing. They're all, well, we use inbound. It's really just database marketing, right?
Right. Yeah. So how do you tell people, or how would you recommend that people focus on their inbound marketing? Because I think there's so much focus in social media and so much of it can be push-marketing still, either you know, you talk about content creation and bringing in people and nurturing those people come in.
How do you recommend that somebody get into working on their inbound or their database marketing? Yeah. Again, it's one of those things that's thinking from it academically. There's not a lot of curriculums that are even kind of covering that either.
Our integrated marketing master's degree program at NYU, obviously one of the classes was database management modeling, which I taught. So it was helping the students kind of understand those skills, which I kind of consider. And I think you've got it for the foundation. You know, and I think that's kind of what sets me apart a little from those that are a little bit younger is I've got that really strong foundation of understanding the database or the inbound components and targeting and testing, sort of, which is, I think a lot of the younger students kind of miss that a little bit.
We've had discussions here at the university. We really don't have anything focusing on database itself. But you know, also the other problem in academia is it takes just because you think of a class and you can get it to happen next semester. It takes a while to get it through Senate, especially if you're at a public university and it's got to go through votes and all of those sort of things.
So it could take a year to get a class put in place. So yeah. Right. Do you think that's why so many businesses have problems justifying using social media and the ROI that comes from social media because they don't understand the integrated database portion of it?
Yeah, I think that's part of it. And they just don't understand that, you know, I mean, some of it is trackable and can't be understood. They don't understand how simple that might be. Just through doing unique tags or URLs or, you know, in the whole Google Analytics component.
I mean, my wife who teaches a web analytics class here at the university, you know, the whole purpose of that class. And I was thinking of the students Google Analytics certified. And so in the very last day they all jump in and they register and they spend an hour and a half and take Google Analytics now, which is really cool. But, you know, some of them had said to me before, you know, they kind of came into the class and they already knew Google Analytics.
And they thought, wow, man, I really didn't know it. And I learned a lot of unique sort of things I didn't even realize in terms of getting to the tracking, setting up your filters and things along those lines to really clean as much inside out of the data. That's very cool. So just to switch it up real quick before you, I wanted to talk to you a little bit about how did you get so into exercise and fitness?
And I want to know how that plays a role into what you do on a daily basis. Oh, God, it was just it was a life. So it was actually it all occurred when I was I say I will be 55 this coming July. I shouldn't admit that.
You're looking good, man. That it all happened when I really had 41. I used to be a runner in high school. So I was country and track really all happened when I turned 41.
My dad had this very first heart attack when he was 41. And I went after that and he died at a relatively early age. And I just when I hit 41, I thought, you know what, I'm just not going to go through this same thing. I know how this is kind of around the family.
And I just totally changed my lifestyle. It was almost just a pivoting moment and just got back into running, eating really healthy. The running community in New York City is like really vibrant. You got the New York Runners, which is a huge organization.
So just so you know, I mean running events, which will do like every other weekend, sometimes every weekend in Central Park, they will pull in close to 5 to 6,000 people just for an everyday race. You know, we'll maybe pull in 500 or 600 people. So I had to get used to the difference in the best crowd. It's a little more competitive in New York than your corral up for all the events by your time.
So you're not even allowed to get in the crowd. I've got people who are watching the entry points of every corral to make sure on your bid. It says you are allowed in corral number one. But no, no, no, I mean, it's just, you know, what it does for me, Verne, first of all, it's, it allows me to kind of think to clear my head.
You know, I've got a lot of stuff going on as we all do. And it's kind of my therapy. And I think it helps me stay focused in, you know, thinking of the end game plan, kind of like running that marathon. It's like focusing on how I'm going to get there and, you know, kind of chunking it up in steps, you know, when we get to that for six miles and then the last of course last five, six miles are killer mentally, more than it is.
But I think that plays into kind of how I think strategically, kind of, I know I appreciate you bringing that up because it's kind of something that I'm affirming. Well, yeah, it's a very long game. Yeah. Yeah.
And there's so much of that missing in social media. What I've seen is people that generally think about the long game. The success of the conference is one of those things I think you can attribute to being focused on the long game. And with that, I know one of the focuses of the conference is innovation.
Can you tell us a little bit before we wrap it up what you want people to know about some of the innovations that are going on with the conference? I mean, I think the only thing I just want to say is and you're fully aware. I mean, the focus this year is really on innovation and bringing innovation into the discussion. So, I mean, I feel lucky to have kind of co-branded with our trance a little bit and we're featuring their startups.
And again, the whole purpose is I want our audience to kind of engage with these startups that are building out really cool apps and software of finding influencers like Swizzle and, you know, just kind of, you know, reciprocating and kind of sharing ideas. And yeah, yeah, it's just I'm excited. I can't wait to hear conversations that are going to be taking place under the roof there at Unisation. I think it's pretty amazing.
No, it is. I actually just met the CEO swizzle at a unidive event. Oh, Nick. Yeah, we were talking about what they're doing and getting comments and, you know, engaging sentiment using IBM Watson, which is, I mean, that's just amazing.
They just want an arch rant, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. And what's about Nick is he's an also alum, so which is nice. Nice. Not surprised there.
That makes that makes perfect sense. Yeah. Well, Perry, thanks so much for coming to podcast. It's been fun learning about you a little bit more and learning about the conference and I'm excited to, you know, be a part of it.
For everyone that wants to know the conference is actually on April 21st, 2016. So definitely get ready for it. If you're not registered, it's sold out 1300 plus people. So there is a wait list sign up for the wait list.
That's what all you do at this point. All right, cool. Perry. Thanks.
Thanks for having a lot of fun. Thanks. Hey, guys. I really did.
It was really hard to hear. So much fun. Not a lot of notes to go on for this one because I'm getting things ready for the conference. So this one is going to be a short outro, but I didn't want to let you guys know.
Check out the live podcast that we're going to be doing. The link is in the show notes. So depending on the app that you're listening to this on, if you're using overcast, you can find it there in the notes. You can also find it in the show notes out on the site, Vernon Ross dot com or socialstrategypodcast.com.
There is a link right underneath the countdown to the conference where you can find the show being streamed live via speaker. If you do not have a speaker account, that's okay. You can still listen to the show. And by the way, if you're ever interested in starting your own podcast, you can start one for free out on speaker.
Just check the site. It's right over in the sidebar to scroll down. There's one for pop being one for speaker. Definitely check it out.
I'm really excited. There's going to be the first time actually going to broadcast live and not be on someone else's podcast, but actually be on a podcast that I've created specifically for the conference. So this is going to be cool. We're going to be podcasting on that.
And it is probably going to be the permanent podcast for umsel digital still working on that one. But for the show, you can definitely find the link there. It's too long to give you guys. But basically if you go out to sprigger.com, forward slash midwest digital marketing conference, you'll find it.
And that's with dashes between each word. That's why they want to give it to you. So anyway, if you go out to that, you'll be able to find it there. And with that, I'm going to go ahead and get out of here, wrap it up.
And I will see you guys in the next episode.