S5 E14: Mari Smith’s Human Design
When one hears the name “Mari Smith,” the natural word association is usually “Facebook.” But after this interview, it may well be something different. Perhaps “relationships,” “connection,” or “Human Design.” Because as you’ll see, there’s so much more to Mari than just Meta mastery.
Anytime there's an update to Facebook (or even a rumored feature!), thousands hightail it to Mari Smith's profiles to see what she has to say about it.
But how did Mari establish such authority in the world of Meta marketing? How did she build her name professionally to become “the” Facebook guru? Why was Facebook the platform she chose to build her career on?
What did she do before Facebook—and what might she do after?
As with all good, aligned personal brands, the same motivating forces have guided Mari throughout her journey. Primary among those forces is her fascination with human relationships.
Relationships got her to the United States to begin with. Relationships enabled her to explore a variety of career paths. Relationships have always been the core of her interest in Facebook; she does love tech, but the thing that has always fascinated her most about Facebook is its power as a connection tool.
But as you'll hear, Mari's also looking more at the impact of social media on mental health, relationships, and society—for better and for worse.
This is definitely an interview that you have not heard Mari give before. We delve into her personal story, her varied professional background, and her unfiltered takes on Meta, marketing, and what’s next.
In this episode:
Leaving Scotland for San Diego (with no money or job)
Saved by the Cake!
Bartering for legal help
“From cakes to lawyers to a mobile disc jockey…”
SEO Master
“My love and my tech”
“Mari, you can't be Miss Email Marketing, technology, internet and relationships—you gotta pick a lane!”
Discovering Facebook
Her first Facebook Marketing for Professionals course
The power of early Facebook networking (and the DMs!)
“I just love to teach and to explain!”
Human Design and 10-year cycles
“I'm going all in with this.”
Mike Stelzner and Social Media Marketing World
Why Mari has remained focus on organic social media
Facebook vs. other platforms
Mari’s current career transition
“Mental wellness, mental health, and specifically, ironically, social media's impact and isolation and loneliness and depression…”
“I just know how to market!”
What has driven Mari in all phases of her life and career
Why people trust her
The public, the personal, and the private
Find Mari:
❤️
Get Started on Your Personal Brand Journey with a sampling of Christine's Personal Branding Questions here: https://www.gritmon.com/talkaboutmybrand
Subscribe to theLet's Talk About Brand Newsletter that goes out weekly to ensure you don't miss a beat!
S4 Ep12: Let’s Talk About A Personal Brand Journey with Michael Stelzner
Some brand journeys are worth taking a look at to see what we can take away from them to build our own brands. And no one is a better example of that than this week’s guest, Michael Stelzner. In today’s episode, Mike is going to walk us through his brand journey from being the white paper guy to the social media guy and into his newest mission. So many great lessons to be learned!
Some brand journeys are worth taking a look at to see what we can take away from them to build our own brands. And no one is a better example of that than this week’s guest, Michael Stelzner.
He is the reason that many people have gotten into social media marketing as he is the ringleader behind all of the education that Social Media Examiner brings! However, his personal brand started well before he stepped into the social media industry.
In today’s episode, Mike is going to walk us through his brand journey from being “the white paper guy” to “the social media guy” and into his newest mission. So many great lessons to be learned!
Tune in as we talk about:
[00:00] Welcome Michael Stelzner
[04:28] How white papers launched Mike Stelzner's personal brand
[10:25] How did Mike pivot from being "the white paper guy" to social media?
[14:30] How did Mike build up his contacts in an industry he was relatively new to?
[16:45] How did Social Media Examiner Start?
[18:47] How did Mike move people from online content to an in-person conference?
[22:42] How does Mike balance three brands?
[25:37] How does Mike find up-and-coming industry voices?
[29:33] What should you do if you are asked to be on stage?
[30:25] What characteristic does Mike think makes someone successful?
[32:00] What is Mike's current mission?
[34:11] How to connect with Mike
Contact Michael Stelzner
Website: Social Media Examiner
Twitter/X: Michael Stelzner
Facebook: Michael Stelzner
Linkedin: Michael Stelzner
-
Christine Gritmon:
Hello, I'm Christine Gritmon, and this is Let's Talk About Brand, my weekly show where I interview a guest expert every single week about a different element of personal branding. Please make sure that you subscribe on your podcast player of choice and leave a review if you like it and come back every single week where we'll be interviewing fantastic guest experts.
Today's guest expert is actually someone whose work really got me into the social media industry. Mike Stelzner is the founder and CEO of Social Media Examiner, which also runs the Social Media Marketing World event.
And so really when I first started getting into social media, it was very self taught, you couldn't study social media in school when I went to school. It didn't exist. So when I got into it, I really said, you know what? I want to geek out on this. I want to learn all that I can, and I want to find out who the right people are to learn from.
So Social Media Examiner was there for that purpose. They get the best experts to provide the best information on the best topics. Lots and lots of friends of mine now have written for Social Media Examiner. Of course, I didn't know them yet. And when I went to social media marketing world for the first time in 2017, it just blew my mind wide open.
I still use things every single day in my work that I learned at that very first event and a lot of the most valuable relationships. that I have in my industry, a lot of which have turned into very close friendships, can be traced back to people I met at Social Media Marketing World. So I'm very excited for today's conversation.
Mike Stelzner himself, he's very clearly the man running the show. He hosts his own podcast, the Social Media Marketing Podcast, of course, which informs Social Media Examiner content. He always opens up the Social Media Marketing World event. He's very, very actively present in his business.
So today we're going to talk about how he became the Mike Stelzner. It's not the way you might think. There's actually a pre story that he's going to get into. So his own personal brand, how he leveraged that to build Social Media Examiner and Social Media Marketing World. And the building of those properties also were helped out by leveraging the personal brands of experts in the social media marketing field. So we'll talk about that.
And a lot of people's careers have greatly been like launched or accelerated as personal brands by appearing on Social Media Examiner and at Social Media Marketing World. So we're also going to hear from Mike, a man who has seen a lot of personal brands grow over the years about some tips for growing your personal brand.
What's going to do it for you, how to make the most of opportunities that you get, and really what goes into a strong personal brand.
All right. So without any further ado, let's bring him on. Mike Stelzner, come on down.
Michael Stelzner:
Hey, I wasn't expecting that applause. Great to be on the show.
Christine Gritmon:
We like making our guest stars feel like rock stars here on Let's Talk About Brand. And you know all about that because actually one of the big things about Social Media Examiner and especially social media marketing world, both brands that you have created and that your personal brand has almost become synonymous with at this point.
One thing they're great at doing is really creating a great experience and making even first time attendees or readers feel like they can be rock stars too. So today we're going to dig into how that came to be. So just to start things off you don't get to start an industry juggernaut, like Social Media Examiner, out of nowhere.
And you actually had built a personal brand before. All of that. So I'd love it if you could kind of guide us through your, I know about one of your earlier personal brands, perhaps there are more, I don't know, but I'd love to hear your experience. The first time you really knew, oh, what I have here, even if you didn't use the words personal brand, you knew you were you had something going.
[04:28] How white papers launched Mike Stelzner's personal brand
Michael Stelzner:
First of all, thank you for having me on the show. I'm super excited to be here and talk about this topic. I had an agency, a creative agency in the early two thousands, I was helping tech companies with all things related to logo design, corporate branding, trade show, displays, white papers product materials themes, messaging, research, all that kind of stuff.
So I was kind of a full service creative agency in the early 2000s. And then I wrote this little thing called how to write white papers, a white paper on white papers, and it was mostly a lead generation mechanism. And it was a 10 page PDF. I had the first couple of pages available, and then you could fill out a form and get the rest of the PDF email to you.
And in that document, I outlined all the things to think about. And who to look for and when looking for someone to hire and so on and so forth, turns out that that little thing was downloaded 75,000 times. And as a result, writing that resource that ranked in Google search, number one on how to write white papers, I ended up ultimately crafting a book called writing white papers.
Christine Gritmon:
You see what works and you blow it up. You follow what's working.
Michael Stelzner:
And that book got me a lot of notoriety. I was already speaking at events and stuff, but the moment that that book came out, all of a sudden, everybody wanted to interview me on their shows. Eventually I started securing spots one, two, three, four, five, six, eight, nine, and 10 on Google search for white paper.
I own, you know, I had people from overseas thinking I sold white paper, like rims of white paper. Cause they didn't know, obviously things, but I grew my brand pretty rapidly. And before you knew it, I was working with some of the largest businesses in the world, like Hewlett Packard, Motorola, Dow Jones, Microsoft, Qualcomm, and.
Just tons of huge companies, FedEx, and I was known as the guy and and then eventually I ended up experimenting with social media and I started writing about it, and I grew a newsletter, 20, 000 people, by the way, and I started.
Christine Gritmon:
Was this newsletter about white papers?
Michael Stelzner:
It was, yeah, and I started a website called white paper source and I curated people in the industry. It was all about bringing together. And then started talking about social media from the lens of how it could be utilized. In the 2007, 2008 time range
Christine Gritmon:
Very early days.
Michael Stelzner:
To help marketers get exposure for these things that they created called white papers.
And all of a sudden it just blew up and then, the rest of this history, I started a social media examiner. I wrote a book called launch. Which was my second book. and there was a whole bunch of principles that I'll potentially talk about and go on a little bit today. But yeah, I was really well known as a writer and then I went into the social world and I was not known at all.
And everybody knew my brand because this time around, I didn't want it to be all about me. I want it to be about something I created. And eventually when I went to my publisher and said, I wanted to write this book called launch with Wiley, they said, who are you, we don't know who you are. And I said well, I self published my first book and sold 10, 000 copies on my own.
And that's pretty impressive. And I have this website over here and I got all this. Hundreds of thousands of email subscribers. And eventually they said, okay, we'll do it. But it was an interesting journey.
Christine Gritmon:
Yeah, I'd love to dig back and and just so that white paper on white papers was downloaded just so many times how did people find out about that to begin with because you just had a small agency you were probably known, you know within Certain industry clients whatever industry you worked with. What did you do to even get that white paper to make that kind of impact to begin with? Was it your personal brand?
[08:22] How did the white paper get so much traction?
Michael Stelzner:
Because I was a writer, I knew how to write good, things if you will. Like I know how to write good stuff. But I knew I needed to start dominating search. So I went to Google pay per click back in the day is what it was called. And I, I paid the top amount of money to have my white paper be the thing that everyone clicked on.
And then eventually what ended up happening back then. Is there was a lot of bloggers out there and they started referencing it and linking to it. And before you know it, it ranked number one in Google search for how to write a white paper. And there was a lot of people looking to write white papers because in the early two thousands. Prior to the two thousands, there were big media companies that controlled all the eyeballs, right?
And this was an era when you could self publish information, and it was disintermediated media companies and a lot of big tech companies back then had to go pay magazines while they were seeking to learn how to create these things called white papers, which were like informative and persuasive.
And it was a hot thing and it was growing. And I just happened to be the only guy talking about it. And then eventually I became the lead guy talking about it. I mean, there were other people talking about it, but what they didn't understand was the value of creating something free and valuable so that ultimately, you could separate yourself from the pack.
Christine Gritmon:
So now, as a marketer, we draw lines and connections between things for a living, in a sense. It's a big part of the job. White paper. It's very corporate background, all of that. And it makes sense to me. how getting your white paper seen involved leveraging social media.
And as you said, a white paper is ultimately a valuable piece of free content, which is also how you could describe some good social media content. So the line is clear to me, but I imagine your audience maybe didn't see the line as clearly necessarily. So you have this strong personal brand, you're a white paper guy, now all of a sudden you're talking about social media.
So how did you communicate that switch? And how was it taken by people who followed you as the white paper guy? Like how, how would you describe, you know, what some people who came along on your journey perhaps didn't in terms of making that brand pivot?
[10:25] How did Mike pivot from being "The white paper guy" to social media?
Michael Stelzner:
First of all, part of the story is that there were thousands of out of work journalists who were looking to get into corporate business writing that were amongst my followers. And this is an important part of the story. I helped a lot of journalists figure out a new career because they were losing their, their business because traditional magazines and newspapers were going out of business.
So a lot of them had pivoted into writing white papers and they were followers of me, right? And they were listening to all the things that I was talking about in my newsletter that went out every week to 20,000 people. As I started noticing social media was emerging. I started putting more content into that newsletter and more and more people started to be curious about it.
And then I launched an online event. And I recruited this relatively unknown guy who headed up this thing called wine library TV, and his name was Gary Vaynerchuk to be my opening keynote.
Christine Gritmon:
Oh, wow.
Michael Stelzner:
And, and I also had Mari Smith and a number of other people that were emerging stars in the world of social media. And we did an online event. And I charged for it. And this was before I started social media examiner and it blew up. It was a huge success. I interviewed Gary and and it was just early days of social media.
And I started to see the opportunities and I should mention, I launched social media examiner in 2009, but I did this event in 2008 ish, 2009 during the great recession. This was a time when there was a lot of people out of work. They were looking for the next big thing. And social media was it, right?
So I was there, I was early. And I think the key thing that I did in the world of social, that was the connection point that allowed everything to pop in the white paper world. I not only wrote a book, but I released an annual study called the white paper industry report, something along those lines.
So I decided to launch the social media marketing industry report. And I launched the very first one, and you may be familiar with it.
Christine Gritmon:
Yeah, that was not a thing back then. It's hard for a lot of us to remember just how recent ubiquity of social media is. There was not a social media report back then. How did you even make that happen?
Michael Stelzner:
There wasn't even industry, there wasn't even an industry. I called it an industry. So I called it the social media marketing industry report. And first of all, it went nuts. Cause I already knew if you talk about social on social, everybody's going to share it, right? That was the thing. So I knew how to do research, right?
Cause I had done that in my agency and I had done it for my white paper industry stuff. And a lot of people in the industry for white papers wanted to know what was the going rates? What were people doing? They wanted to know what the trends were. So I took that very same thing, published this free resource called the industry report.
And it was, it went nuts. It trended everywhere. Back in the day, there was these things called dig and all these other things, and it trended there and it, it got massive exposure and it helped me grow, a pretty big reputation right out of the gate. So that got the interest of the social media industry.
And then all of a sudden I'm speaking at events, I'm invited to speak at events that I've never been considered to speak at. Before, because I'm the guy that writes the white papers, I'm the, I'm a reputable source in the writing world that writes white papers, which are perceived to be these reputable things.
And here I am coming out with this industry study. And that was the catalyst that connected the dots.
Christine Gritmon:
that's huge. So first you did the social media industry report. Then you did the online event. And then you wound up launching Social Media Examiner. Is that the correct order?
Michael Stelzner: Correct.
Christine Gritmon:
For this event, you had some big names there. Gary Vaynerchuk maybe wasn't as big a name then as he is now, but you had him, you had Mari Smith, you had a whole bunch of great people.
Two fold question here regarding those people's personal brands. First of all, how did you find them? Because I think one of your great skills that most people would recognize is that you are good at identifying talent. How did you Find these people who are in this industry that you are fairly new to, who you knew would be valuable to your audience.
And then the other thing is, how'd you get them?
[14:30] How did Mike build up his contacts in an industry her was relatively new to?
Michael Stelzner:
Okay. So in my second book launch, which I launched specifically to rebrand myself as not just the white paper guy, I introduced a concept called the elevation principle. And this principle is what I employed to get what we were about to talk about. The principle is great content plus other people minus marketing equals growth. OkaY. So what I was doing is it was already publishing great content and it was well recognized by some of these people. And I was already known as a content creator that had a reputable reputation. The other people side of it was really important. In the world of writing white papers and in the blogging world, I was already known.
Cause I was writing on big blogs, like copy blogger, Brian Clark's blog. And I, I was well known in the pro blogger community, which is Darren Rouse's and a lot of these people. So I had people in my network who were active on social before I was. And I went to those people. Jason falls as someone else also who was, who, who was following me in the white paper world and was early into the social world.
And I started talking to them and it was easy because they were within my network. They already knew who I was. And I, and I started befriending them and I started asking them, who do I need to know? And Denise Wakeman said, you need to know Mari Smith, Mari Smith. I went to an event in San Diego. I sat close. I talked to her afterwards. I offered to interview her because I was doing these little interviews before I had a podcast, which were cheesy little video interviews that I did with a portable like camera thing. And then we just became friends. And the idea here was for me to provide value to them first, right?
Which is to give them exposure to the audience that I already had. And Mari introduced me to Gary V. And that's how that happened. So it was really all about really developing key strategic relationships with people that are passionate on the rise and really excited about what's about to happen and bringing something to the table that they maybe don't have, like a bunch of people collaboratively working together to create a cool experience.
And that's that's how I did it in the beginning.
Christine Gritmon:
So then, being a writer, you of course moved this to a content creation platform, to Social Media Examiner.
[16:45] Starting social media examiner
Michael Stelzner:
When I started this social media examiner, I started as a multi author blog, which is a concept back in the day where I wrote once a week and I recruited five or six other people to write once a month. So what was happening is I was publishing a lion's share of the content in the beginning.
And because I had a really good network of people like a gal named Casey Hubbard, who wrote the book on case studies and I had helped her a lot. She agreed to write case studies for free for the first year. So she was doing case studies and we just created a movement. I called it a movement.
We all did it for free. Nobody was paid. It was just going to be like, we're going to come together. We're more powerful together than we are apart and we're going to create something that's going to be big. And you all are going to get benefits from it. And I made it clear, they're going to get exposure, which will lead to opportunities and so on and so on and so on.
Eventually it got to the point where I had so many inbound inquiries that people wanted to write that I didn't have to write anymore.
Christine Gritmon:
Now, I love that you came, you showed up in this new industry with an audience already, which is really huge. And, and you mentioned that journalists I really love that part because I'm one of the many people who came to social media through journalism. It's, it's absolutely highly relevant. It's all about communications.
So your audience came with you because it was still relevant. You brought the value of your audience with you so that those people could get the exposure, get all of that going. Now, you had the website, then the event was born.
You had already done an event, but I'm, I'm curious as to how social media marketing world itself was born. Social media marketing world, by the way, is unquestionably the main source for my connections in the social media industry. It is how I have met the most valuable people who have introduced me to the most valuable people.
It is a juggernaut, but obviously I came into it once it already was a huge amazing thing. So I'd love to hear sort of how that grew and why that grew. Why, why you decided to make it an event? In addition to your blog.
[18:47] How did Mike move people from online content to an in-person conference?
Michael Stelzner:
I had already been doing online events for years. I started social media examiner monetizing it by having the social media success summit, which was the name of the event that I had alluded to earlier. And I had a Facebook success summit and a blogging success summit and just all sorts of summits, it was all online. And I was traveling to Cleveland cause I was keynoting with Brian Clark on the stage together for Joe Polizzi's very first content marketing world. And it was at that event that I looked around and I'm like, there's 600 people there and Joe was really calm.
And I'm like, wow. I never really, I've spoken at a lot of events, but I've never seen the founders calm. And I'm like, why are you so calm, Joe? And he said well, there's people you can hire that can handle all the operational stuff. And I'm like, ching, button went off in my head, started taking pictures, started imagining what I was going to do.
And eventually really the idea was born to experiment with having an an in person conference. Now, in order for me to move people from a big newsletter and a blog to physically showing up at a conference was not going to be an easy task. So I knew that I needed to a Sharpen up my personal brand and be come up with a creative way to get people to actually be willing to travel from all over the world to come to this event.
So the first thing I did was I started my very first podcast called the social media marketing podcast. And I started that now, almost 11 years ago, I'm almost 600 episodes in. And what I strategically did was I'd already developed great relationships with people and I decided to bring them on the show and start interviewing them.
And you know this because you're a writer, but good writers are good interviewers. That's the key, right? You have to know how to get the right information out of your guest. So I started that show, that show popped. It turned out to be one of the top three business shows. I was right up there with Dave Ramsey for years in all the business category.
And the show was called, the podcast was called social media marketing. The conference is called social media marketing. So I was recruiting people on the show that I knew was going to speak at social media marketing world. And the idea here was to introduce them to my audience in this new medium called podcasting for me, at least.
And then eventually these people that were listening to this podcast would love these people and want to meet them in person. So that was the hypothesis. And we ended up having 1100 people at our very first event in a hotel in San Diego. And the rest is history.
Christine Gritmon:
Oh my goodness. You've got three brands at this point in the story. You have the Social Media Examiner blog. And I'd actually put the podcast in with that as well. The Social Media Examiner content family. You've got the event, Social Media Marketing World. And you've got you, Mike Stelzner. So first of all, am I, am I correct that the white paper guy has totally ceased to be something that you're growing, maintaining at this point in the, in the story, where we're
Michael Stelzner:
I, I. I delete about two years into the social media examiner journey. I deleted all the websites, which I was nuts. I still get messages every once in a while from people that bought that first book saying, Hey, still helpful for writing. I will know. But I deleted everything. It was cathartic. It was amazing.
I just abandoned that brand. I have copies of it here, but it doesn't exist on the internet anymore. And and I went all in. So yeah, that's true. I am definitely that that brand is gone.
Christine Gritmon:
That's incredible. Oh my goodness. And that's something that's terrifying for people when they pivot. So on the one hand, you did it two years in. On the other hand, you waited two years to do it. So I think that's smart too. You saw that this new horse you were back and really had legs there. So you've got three brands that are all really cooking now.
You've got the Content brand, you've got the event brand, and you've got you. How did you, and how do you, sort that out? How have you decided to arrange these three brands, and was it tricky? Did you struggle to figure out how to do it at the beginning? Is it constantly evolving? How do you manage the three?
[22:42] How does Mike balance having three different brands?
Michael Stelzner:
Yeah. So first of all, obviously I wrote the book to bring my personal brand back into the equation, the book launch. And that really catapulted my personal brand. And that was about two years into the social media examiner journey. Everything happened with that. You know what I mean? It blew up everybody expected that I was a social media expert and I never really was right. The book launches really more about how to use content to launch anything. Realized that I didn't want to be famous. Despite the fact that I got calls from every news station, you can imagine every time something happened.
Wall street journal, new york times, all that stuff. I turned it all down. Some of it, I said, okay, too, but I just didn't want to get involved with that side of it. So I was careful about how to leverage the personal brand. My personal feeling is I only use the personal brand specifically if it benefits the business brand.
The big side of my personal brand is obviously my podcast. There are people that know my voice, but don't know my face. And it's funny and funny stories happen all the time, but I'm very much an operator of my business. So I'm very much an in the trench kind of person making everything work much less about the guy has to be super famous and everybody has to bow down to me.
That's not how I roll. So I leverage my personal brand to strategically get people on my podcast and I strategically get people on my podcast because our relationships with people. Cause that's strategic to the business. And I want to lift up the next generation, if you will, or the up and comers that are about to be the next Gary Vaynerchuk's and the next Mari Smith's.
So I use it very strategically to accomplish a larger business objective. Every once in a while, I come out and I try to leverage my personal brand to launch a course and I realize it's dangerous distraction for me because then it takes me away from my true mission, which is to run this company that I own.
So it is, it is one of those kind of things where we know that I am very well known. And we know that a lot of people want to listen to me. I always open my conference. I'm always the opening keynote that is very strategic. It's always research based. That is very strategic. But but really, I am first and foremost a CEO of a media company and secondly of a personal brand.
Christine Gritmon:
Love that. Yeah, it sounds pretty well sorted. And certainly, wherever the Mike Stelzner name goes, the Social Media Examiner name goes as well.
You mentioned how you also uplift other people's brands, and that is absolutely something that you're known for as well. I'd love to hear a bit from you without, without naming names or getting too specific, first of all, how do you identify those people who seem to really have the goods to uplift?
And then what have you seen from their perspective? Once you give them the opportunity, What have you seen that sort of commonality is between those who take the opportunity and are able to build something with it? They're able to use that elevation Versus those who maybe don't as much and don't really hit.
[25:37] How does Mike find up and coming industry voices?
Michael Stelzner:
In the early days, and this might've been before Christine, you attended social media marketing world. We used to have actually sessions there at social media marketing world, specifically training, teaching people what we're looking for in speakers at our conference. So we would teach them like, Hey, this is how we roll.
This is what we look for. Cause everybody is a hundred percent recruited. There's no application process. And, and that was during the heyday when we would have 10 or 12 different tracks and there was just so much content. It was nuts. Over time I began to get to the point where this is how I roll today.
I take research. We do two studies a year. One, we publish when we don't, and we survey our audience, thousands of marketers, and we know what it is they're interested in. We actually asked them, what do you want to learn more about? What do you plan to increase in the next 12 months? Then we use that data and we look at our network, if you will, of experts.
And we say, Hey AI is hot right now. Who do we have in our network that is really, really strong on AI? Okay. Obvious choices. Paul Roetzer are a marketing AI Institute. There's obviously other people that we need, right? So then we look at who's our audience and then we begin the process of looking for talent specifically to fill that hole, right?
And that's where, for example, I'll find someone like Matt Wolf. Who's blown up on YouTube, who I recently had on the show to talk about AI tools, and now Matt's going to be speaking at our conference. It's really all about using data to inform the things we're going to write about, talk about, and speak about at our event, and then carefully finding talent that fits the criteria typically because we are an audience of mostly women, we're definitely looking for female talent. And that's one thing you'll notice at our events is we have a lot of women speakers because our audience is mostly women. And also because we want to give diversity to our audience for sure.
But we also want people who Have demonstrated publicly that they are experts. It's one thing to know you're an expert and to say you're an expert, but it's another thing for someone to go out there and see that you have launched a YouTube channel and committed to creating content around this, or you've launched a podcast or you have a blog or you've written a book.
The key to the whole thing is like people that have done those hard things like YouTube channels, podcasts, and books, they have looked at. This whatever topic from a thousand different angles, they might have students who they've taught and they've dialed in their message quite a bit. Those are the kind of people that I like to get on my show.
And those are like the kind of people that I like to bring to my audience. So it's very much a audience first approach. Our audience tells us what they want based on the research. We try to find talent. I nurture relationships with those people by getting them on my show or on our other shows, because we've got multiple shows.
We've got three different shows. And then out of that, we can assess whether or not they really know their stuff. And then we can consider them for other possible opportunities inside of social media examiner. I know you had another question in there and I probably lost it, but
Christine Gritmon:
No, absolutely. And that actually Saved me another question, which is later I was gonna ask you about the types of content that are best for building a personal brand But that is that so that's a really valuable chunk right there to know how people can get attention. You've given people, you've had someone on your podcast who's an expert, you've had them speak at your conference, that's an incredible boost to their personal brand.
But as we all know, sometimes people take those opportunities and it just really blows up after. And sometimes people, fall down on it. It falls flat after they've had that opportunity. They're not sure how to leverage it properly. to work for their brand. Again, without getting specific or personal, what are some commonalities you've seen for those who were able to really make it work for them versus those where it doesn't really go anywhere?
[29:33] What should you do if you are asked to be on stage?
Michael Stelzner:
First and foremost, general tips for everybody listening. When you get an opportunity to be on any kind of big stage metaphorically or physically take it seriously, ask the host, what can I do to best prepare actually prepare, don't. Wing it, prepare, because this is your one chance really.
And if you do a really good job, you're going to, you're going to have a lot of people ringing your bell metaphorically later saying they want to work with you. That's the first thing. The second thing is to is to. Not just reach out to all the big shows, right? But start with the little shows and refine your message a little bit.
Sometimes you'd be surprised that the people that host the big shows, listen to the little shows. And that's partly where they find talent. Just know it's not easy. It's a long haul. It's a refinement thing. You have to not want. Fame necessarily, like ideally you're in it because you have a, you want to make a difference, right?
[30:25] What characteristic does Mike think makes someone successful?
Michael Stelzner:
I find that those are real, those that are really successful. Don't hold back. They give all the gems and the wisdom and they don't say here's three and the other five are available. If you. You hire me, right? That's not, that's not what we talk about with the elevation principle, right? It's great content plus other people minus marketing messages.
So us marketers have to throw out the marketing message and just say, look, I want to give this away free to the world because there's so much more out there, right? You could write a book. And you know that there's 10 more books inside of you, the book is your ideas are always evolving.
So the people that are most successful kind of have this service mentality, this servant mentality, they just want to give and they want to give. And they know that they don't need that many people to become customers for them to be exceptionally successful. And those are the kind of people that tend to get asked back.
Over and over again on lots of other people's shows and speak on lots of other people's stages. It is work. It is never easy. You can't say because you spoke on this stage or because you're on this podcast, you made it and then you stop. It is something that you have to continue to do over and over and over again.
Christine Gritmon:
Love it. Of course, one key principle of being a personal brand is being the such and such person. You are the white paper person. Mike Stelzner. What do you currently see yourself as the such and such person? And I don't know if that's what you want to continue being, or if there's a future I want to be the such and such person moving forward.
I'm not sure what you're, what you're geeking out on right now. But Mike Stelzner, the what person.
[32:00] What is Mike's current mission?
Michael Stelzner
I I'm currently writing every week on all the social platforms about marketing topics. Entrepreneurship and also for creators. So the things that I'm excited to write about, for example, today, I just wrote about how sometimes we have to acknowledge that we don't know how to do something right.
And what do you do when you don't know how to do something right. You do this and you do that. And how I've come to the realization that sometimes you can't figure it all out and you need to. You need to, you need to bring in professional help, right? These are the kinds of things I write about. Sometimes I'll write about trends that are going on in the industry, but in the end, everything that I do right now has very much to do with marketing.
And really that is what I want people to think of me as, as a marketer, first and foremost, a marketer that helps other marketers. Other content creators, podcasters, bloggers, video creators, and entrepreneurs, right? Which could be agency owners, consultants authors dot, dot, dot helps them wrap their head around what, how, how to embrace this changing world.
That's it. I'm really, I feel like my mission is to help people wrap their head around change and wrap their head around mindset challenges and how to how to think differently to survive and thrive in a changing world, because the truth of the matter is Christine, this world is rapidly changing, changing faster than any of us have ever seen.
And you can be overwhelmed like most of my audience is, or you can actually run to the fire, if you will embrace the change. And be open to the fact that, that you could be an early adopter and there's incredible opportunities that are out there. And that's what I'm trying to help people with today is really just to wrap their head around how to embrace change so they can be a better marketer, a better person dot, dot, dot.
Christine Gritmon:
Perfect, and sounds absolutely aligned with that servant mentality. And, of course, with that elevate principle. All right, Mike, thank you so much. This has been incredible. Thank you very much for practicing what you preach and not holding back so many valuable nuggets of wisdom in here that can elevate other people's personal brands.
[34:11] How to connect with Mike
Christine Gritmon:
So tell everyone at home where they can find you, why they should find you, and what they'll find there.
Michael Stelzner:
Social media examiner has everything. So if you go to social media, examiner. com, you can find all three of our shows. You can find our conference. if You want to follow me I am active on Twitter slash X LinkedIn. And Facebook, so you can just search for my name there and you can see all the stuff that I'm publishing exclusively on those platforms.
The reason you might want to follow me is you're in marketing and you're confused and you want some access to some great stuff and you should know that it's social media examiner. We put out an incredibly rich newsletter that contains literally up to the day information about trends that are happening in our industry.
And it's content that you will not find anywhere else except in our email newsletter. And that's recently been completely revamped and people are loving it. So check it out. Social media, examiner. com.
Christine Gritmon:
Fantastic. Thank you so much for being here.
Michael Stelzner:
My pleasure.
Christine Gritmon:
And thank you for being here, whether you are listening to the Let's Talk About Brand podcast on your podcast player of choice, or if you're watching the video podcast here on YouTube. Either way, please do subscribe so you don't miss a single weekly episode of Let's Talk About Brand.
We are taking a holiday break for a couple of weeks. So please do join us in January 2024 for the back half of season four. And in the meantime, again, this is season four. We've got a whole lot of episodes that you can go back and still learn from.
One of the great things about personal branding tends to be a bit evergreen. So lots of episodes there for you to dig into. I highly encourage and hope that you will spend part of your holiday break learning about personal branding right here with Let's Talk About Brand. See you next year. Bye!