One of the first questions in building a marketing campaign and or connections within business is where does my audience congregate? How do I connect with individuals in my industry. Unfortunately, there is no clear platform that answers this questions. We meet with Tim Kubiak as he chats with us about his experiences on two of the hottest marketing platforms LinkedIn and Facebook.
Tim has actually been running for about 60 days now an experiment on using Facebook, watch as he shares his experiences and what he has found out.
Video Transcription
Harry Brelsford 0:06
Hey, Nation Nation back with Tim Kubiak, who is a well known player in the SMB Nation community from his time in the security realm. So welcome back, Tim, how you doing?
Tim Kubiak 0:18
I'm great. Thanks for having me back. Good to be with you again.
Harry Brelsford 0:21
Yeah, yeah, we're starting that we've been able to kind of let our audience know a little bit more about your entrepreneurs side, your security side, your startup side, do you kind of Oh, and most importantly, the Bow Ties in Business podcast side? Oh, no, I love that format. And it looks like you're really consistent. I'm on the page over here. And that's the thing about these podcasts and content is consistency. Nothing worse than seeing like a seven month gap in an interview, right? Because it's like, well, where were you? So you know how it goes? Um, wait, let's just jump right into it. I really liked the one you did, early March 2021, on leveraging other people's audiences, because a lot of my conversations in the different entities I'm involved in is about ecosystem that's sort of the new buzzword, used to call it community. So Deirdre Tshien , you say she's a Australian out in New York, and she talked about leveraging other people's audiences. So what's the story? What's going on there?
Tim Kubiak 1:27
So she's got a really fascinating backstory. And it's not in the industry that we're all in. But it actually translates really well. She started in brick and mortar in a local market. She came out of finance, hated her, hated her career, and opened a sweet shop in Sydney, and said, amazing molten chocolate things. We've nailed it, everybody's just going to show up. And her first lesson was, no matter how good your stuff is, even locally, you need to draw people in. So her first experience leveraging other people's audience, really was learning to use influencers before we call them that local food bloggers and whatnot to spread the word for because she didn't have a major advertising budget. And from there, now she's got five brick and mortars, a couple of burger joints. And then she runs a series of seven figure online businesses as well.
Harry Brelsford 2:21
Man, yeah, that's, that's really something because yeah, it's just it's interesting that evolution, as business does, right, that our terminology changes, our business models change. And now, we're, we're firmly embracing ecosystems, influencers, and so on. And maybe, to some extent, we always did it, but we use different names, right? I mean, it was a combination of, you know, leveraging your friends network back in the old days, it was in person. Today, you know, there's the perception, you can do it on LinkedIn, that has its own challenges, because sometimes you're not really a friend with a connection, if that makes sense.
Tim Kubiak 3:05
Yeah, it does. Yeah. And I've actually been running for about 60 days now and experiment on using Facebook. And it's been fascinating, because you talk about not being somebody's friend, your LinkedIn, my LinkedIn, our networks are pretty healthy. But we know most people in it. So we have real credibility and real authority there. So I decided to do the same thing on Facebook and say, All right, I'm going to do this. I'm going to look for people that look like the people I do business with, and are my friends on LinkedIn. And I'm going to go add them on Facebook. And it was literally a foreign experiment. I have not been as uncomfortable as anything I've done professionally, in probably 20 years. Oh,
Harry Brelsford 3:49
well talk to me. Yeah. Did you get some flamers back from people saying who are you don't bug me. So I
Tim Kubiak 3:55
yeah, yeah, absolutely. Got the old flame war stuff, right. But the other thing is, is you don't have the same filters, if you will, if we go on LinkedIn, we look and say, Ah, you know, this person's friends of Harry, you know, by the way that they know, you know, leaf and they know 12 other people I know. And oh, they were this company that I traded with 20 years ago. All right, we got something there. I go into a SAS founder on Facebook. And there's no connection. They have no idea that I have clients in the AI ml space that I'm working with to SaaS companies. And I'm really just looking for additional perspective of what's going on in space. Like what are you trying to sell me? Dude, I want to see what you're posting.
Harry Brelsford 4:37
Yeah. Oh, yeah. A totally different approach. Yeah, I agree. I spent a fair amount of time growing my connections in LinkedIn and rejecting connections. You know, there's a downside to LinkedIn, the five or so invites a day. You know, Harry, are you interested in offshore software developers? Well, no, that's that's not what SMB nation does. idea, I don't even think you read my profile. You know, you're just kind of spamming me with some kind of LinkedIn tool. And and then when it is close to the match, more often than not the immediate reply is they want to sell me something so so maybe they are in the zone of what I do. But I always want to say, stop selling. Okay, stop selling them. Stop it. And, and then with LinkedIn, I yeah, I'm trying to keep that more personal you'll, you'll see my bike rides, you'll you'll see my, my, this my that with with Facebook is where I'm going with that. And then with LinkedIn, more professional and quite frankly, I get annoyed when people kind of cross over the they put up the political posts, the religious posts, the this the that over on LinkedIn. And I'm like, you know, that's noise, man. I don't know, I don't know how you feel. But I think they're, I think it's a
Tim Kubiak 5:58
pandemic anomaly, because I never saw it before a year ago, to be honest, right. I loved LinkedIn, because it was pure business. You know, you might be in, you know, blockchain or some fringe technology, but it was still the business.
Harry Brelsford 6:15
Yeah, yeah, exactly. And it's kind of gotten to personal. And finally, the The other thing, and this ties in to leveraging other people's audiences, you got to be careful. And I'm guilty as charged of tagging people to drive traffic, I've tagged you on a couple of things to drive traffic. That's right. But you got to be careful in my startup in the the Canna tech area, I think I made a little spreadsheet of friends to the family, I think it's over 100 names, I'm pretty quickly tagged when I put my ecosystem chart up or something said, you know, you don't want to just tag the tag. And that worked him where only one person untagged themselves out of 100 The last time I did the ecosystem chart, but I'm very thoughtful about it. And a lot of people aren't, you know, I'm tagged in things. And I mean this respectfully, but you gotta you know, a Women in Technology Council meeting, I mean, God bless them, you know, I get it, I support it. But it's, it's a little far afield from from what I do to be tagged. Right. I happy to respectfully read it and like it. But that's, that's a tag that's just trying to drive traffic to my audience. Yeah. And that's a true story. I'm not I'm not picking on women and technology. But that's a true story. Yeah.
Tim Kubiak 7:39
So you know, I'm taking a different approach, if you notice, like, if you're in an episode is something I'm doing, or to share it after thing, I'll certainly tag and I might even tag some ecosystem and but I actually am spending a lot more time when I see something cool going. Hey, and you did it actually, with a friend of yours recently. Hey, you guys have some things in common. You should know each other. I'll leave it here and just send that message and let it take. Take on its own life.
Harry Brelsford 8:06
Yeah. Yeah, I enjoy that fact. We'll talk more about that we're running out of time for for this month. But let's talk about that. And I'm going to make a note. You have gentlemen, Ron Sukenick , who did things to do on your on LinkedIn to build your business network? I'm gonna make a note of that for our next chat. Okay. We'll double click into some of that. That sounds
Tim Kubiak 8:29
great.
Harry Brelsford 8:30
All right. Thank you, sir. Thanks, Jenny. And we're good. All right, man