HeyTony Unplugged: Matt's Story and Insights

Welcome to another episode, where today we dive deep into the realm of digital marketing with the incredibly knowledgeable Matt Diamante. As a digital strategist and entrepreneur, Matt has mastered the art of leveraging SEO, social media, and comprehensive digital strategies to not just grow businesses, but to revolutionize them. If you're ready to discover the secrets behind exponential social media growth, the critical importance of a strong online presence, and actionable SEO strategies that really work, you won't want to miss this episode. Press play to unlock the potential of digital marketing for your fitness business and learn from one of the industry's best.

Timeline Summary:

• [00:00:23] Matt's Background and Journey
• [00:02:15] Starting Juice Box Advertising and Plaid Zebra
• [00:14:56] Explosive Social Media Growth
• [00:30:26] Embracing SEO for Business Growth
• [00:31:09] The Synergy of SEO and Social Media

Key Takeaways and Insights:

1. Consistent Content Creation is Key: Regular posting on social media can dramatically improve your online presence and brand recognition.
2. The Crucial Role of a Website: Having a home base for your business online is the first step toward establishing a solid online presence.
3. SEO and Blogging Aren't Dead: They remain powerful tools for driving traffic and improving Google rankings.
4. Diversify Your Digital Strategy: A mix of SEO, social media, and email marketing can safeguard your business against algorithm changes and market shifts.
5. You Don't Need to Start with Everything: Focus on building one aspect of your digital presence at a time for sustainable growth.
6. The Importance of Internal Linking: Properly linking content within your site can significantly boost your SEO efforts.
7. Branding is Overrated for Small Businesses: Focus more on delivering value and being consistent across all platforms.

Websites and Links Mentioned:

• HeyTony
• HeyTony's Instagram
• Strength Matters

Quotes:

"I'm putting my money where my mouth is. I'm going to start doing my own SEO." - Matt Diamante

"If you want a sustainable business, it's not just SEO or social media or email marketing. It's kind of a combination of everything." - Matt Diamante

"Blogging is dead, blogging doesn't work, that strategy from 2007, they're wrong." - Matt Diamante

"Branding doesn't matter as much for like a local, smaller business." - Matt Diamante

"You need a home base, right? If you don't have a physical location slash website, then nobody's going to be able to find you." - Matt Diamante

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FREE Downloads
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Chapters

• 0:23 Matt's Background and Journey
• 2:15 Starting Juice Box Advertising and Plaid Zebra
• 14:56 Explosive Social Media Growth
• 30:26 Embracing SEO for Business Growth
• 31:09 The Synergy of SEO and Social Media

Transcript

[00:00:00] James Breese: Strength Matters Media. Video. Print. Podcasts. This is the Strengths 

[00:00:06] Josh Kennedy: Matters podcast. If you're new to the show, thank you for tuning in. Please make sure to subscribe and review. We really appreciate all your comments and feedback. With me as always is my cohost, James Breeze. And our guest today is a digital strategist and entrepreneur with expertise in SEO, advertising, and marketing.

[00:00:23] Integrated marketing and web design. He began his journey at St. Clair college, specializing in advertising and marketing communications management, and as head of digital operations at juice box advertising, while still a student, which is pretty impressive, uh, where he honed his skills in website building, design, and SEO transitioning into the.

[00:00:41] Professional landscape. He made notable contributions as head of digital operations at the Plaid Zebra, which I think has got an awesome name, a lifestyle magazine where he played a pivotal role in creating the online publication, managing content, marketing, and website design in 2018. He founded Hey Tony, a growth ad agency where he serves as [00:01:00] Digital strategist focusing on improving customer acquisition through SEO, analytics, and media buying, and is widely recognized as a thought leader in the industry.

[00:01:09] If he does say so himself, I imagine it is a pleasure to introduce Matt Diamante. Matt, welcome to the Strengths Matters 

[00:01:16] Matt Diamante: Podcast. Hi, thank you for having me. Um, just hearing my, uh, bio kind of read back to me. I was like, oh, yeah, like, I've, I did all that stuff. Um, and I just wanted to touch on 1 thing that you said, uh, 1st of all, you got the name of the program.

[00:01:29] I took in college. Correct. It's a very long name. Uh, and I even mess it up myself sometimes. Um, and then the, the next thing was the juice box advertising. That was actually, um, um, So, um, the So a quick story about that. Um, I was in third year and, uh, three out of three years, the third year. And, uh, I was talking to some friends in my program and I was like, Hey guys, there's a lot of shitty ads around the city here.

[00:01:55] Um, and they were like, yeah. And I'm like, that could be us. We could be making those ads. [00:02:00] Uh, and then, uh, I was basically like, we could be 

[00:02:04] Josh Kennedy: doing shitty ads. Is that 

[00:02:05] Matt Diamante: what you're saying? Yeah, that could be us. Like people could be paying us to do that. Um, so I think a group of five or six of us kind of started an agency called juice box advertising, which terrible name in hindsight.

[00:02:15] Um, but we started that and we did end up doing it. Like we didn't get paid for anything, but we did like a couple pro bono things for like not for profits and stuff like that, which is really cool. And that was kind of the start of, you know, hey, we could just do this on our own. Uh, which was really, really fun.

[00:02:30] And then touching on the plaid zebra, um, Actually, me and a couple other guys convinced, uh, some investors, I don't know how or why, you know, we were young and dumb and we just were like, yeah, I guess people, we could ask people for money to start a publication, uh, which we ended up growing to like 4 million people a month, which was insane.

[00:02:47] What? 

[00:02:48] Josh Kennedy: Wow. Where did you come up with the name Plant Zebra or Zebra, as you say? Cause that's a great, great 

[00:02:53] Matt Diamante: name. Yeah. So I'm going to do, you are, you asked me earlier, um, where the name, Hey, Tony came from. So [00:03:00] there's a very creative way and it always tends to happen while I'm walking. Um, so we were walking for the Plaid Zebra.

[00:03:06] We were walking and, uh, we had been trying to come up with a name for like two days, like notebooks, just like so many, you know, different names and like ideas. And we're like, no, that's taken that domain's taken. There's already a big business called that this, that whatever. And, um, So we're walking, we're like, let's just go to McDonald's.

[00:03:22] We're going to grab a coffee or something to eat. And, um, we're walking there and I was like, we already kind of had the, you know, let's do something with an animal. Like there was bored Panda and all this kind of stuff, like something with an animal kind of works and we were walking and I was like, I saw this guy wearing, um, like a flannel plaid jacket.

[00:03:41] It was like, uh, you know, middle of summer or whatever. I don't know why he's wearing it. It's kind of warm, but anyway, so he's, he's raking his leaves and we're walking by and I'm like, guys, the flannel zebra, and they're like, what are you talking about? I'm like the flannel zebra. And he's like, That's plaid.

[00:03:56] You mean the plaid zebra? I'm like, yeah, that's the name. And, [00:04:00] uh, we were like, if we're still thinking about it, by the time we get back, we'll, we'll see if it's taken. And, um, you know, we'll go from there. And, uh, it wasn't taken the plaid zebra. com wasn't taken, but somebody owned plaid zebra. com. Um, and nobody would sell it to us, even though they didn't use the domain.

[00:04:15] Nobody would give us the Twitter slash X handle, uh, for it, even though they didn't use it. Um, which was very annoying, but that's how the name came about. Walking. Love it. James, I 

[00:04:25] Josh Kennedy: think we need to take some of that tactic for our, uh, some of our programs. We need to go for a walk. Go for a walk, actually. We can't, we can't say we can go to McDonald's as a health and fitness company, of course.

[00:04:35] Matt Diamante: Yeah. 

[00:04:35] Josh Kennedy: I mean, the coffee's good. organic, organic food, the coffee is good, actually. Yeah. Yeah. Go to an organic food store or something like that and, uh, people watch. Come up with program 

[00:04:45] James Breese: names. But it's, but it's, it's funny how, like, because names, let's take Strength Matters as an example. So, before Strength Matters, we were a company called Kettlebell Fever.

[00:04:54] We were specializing in doing e commerce, selling kettlebells all over Europe. We brought them into the UK, shipped them around, selling [00:05:00] tons of the stuff. You know, every, every month. And then we sold some t shirts, but they weren't selling that well. So I remember we put a t shirt with kettlebell fevers strength matters at the bottom that we sold more of those t shirts in a week than we had done the whole previous year.

[00:05:15] I want me to ask people, why do you want this? Why do you want this t shirt? Because we love the word strength matters. That's some crazy rhino picture with like strength matters on the back of it to go with it. We love the name strength matters. And I was like, Aha, that's what we're going to do with it.

[00:05:27] So we had to, uh, we then, well, we had to, well, haggle with a domain name. The guy had, who had strengthmanage. com wasn't using that. So we had to haggle for that. We got it in the end and then here we are 10 years later. So, uh, yeah, it's funny how names come for companies, right? 

[00:05:43] Matt Diamante: It's also so annoying people just sitting on domains.

[00:05:45] Like I was talking to a guy recently, I can't say what the domain was or, um, you know, what it does, like what the, what the website is, but he paid, he told me millions of dollars for a domain. And I was like, holy, like that is insane. Cause people just [00:06:00] buy them and sit on them, right? They don't do anything.

[00:06:02] That's 

[00:06:02] James Breese: crazy. Well, it's, it's, and what's, what's he going to do with it? Is he trying to sell it or is he going to keep it for his own business? 

[00:06:07] Matt Diamante: So what's the, I can't say anything else, but, um, yeah, it's. It was, it was wild. I was like, I've never met somebody, first of all, who had that kind of money. And second of all, somebody who paid that much for a domain, like it's crazy.

[00:06:19] So 

[00:06:22] Josh Kennedy: Matt, um, or Tony, which we'll see which one we call you. Um, tell us a little bit more. Yeah. About your, about your backstory then and how you came to found, uh, Hey, Tony. 

[00:06:31] Matt Diamante: Yeah. So even when I was in college, I was, uh, always kind of freelancing. I always had a client and I was, uh, I was always like, uh, I need to come up with some kind of scheme to make money.

[00:06:40] And I was talking to a friend of mine and he's like, these schemes that you're talking about just sound like legitimate business ideas. And I guess, and he's like, I guess. You're just like, you're a businessman. Like you just want to be an entrepreneur. And I'm like, yeah, I think that's it. They're not schemes.

[00:06:55] They're like, you know, legit business ideas. Um, so [00:07:00] I, I, at the time when I was in college, I had a client, um, they were like a local bin rental company and I basically, they didn't have a website and it's the only cold call that I've made to date myself. Um, they had their number on the side of the bin and they were like, Like I called them up and I was like, Hey, I noticed you guys don't have a website.

[00:07:18] I'm a student at St. Clair college, you know, I'd love to help you out for really cheap, you know, kind of cut my teeth kind of thing. And, uh, they were like, oh no, we don't need a website. We don't need a website, all this stuff. Three weeks later, they call me back and the guy's like, my wife says we need a website, so we're going to hire you.

[00:07:34] And I was like, smart woman. Um, so they're, they're, uh, been rental company. I took from this and money. This is my first client. I'm still like, At the time trying to figure out WordPress and this is, uh, 12 years ago, 13 years ago. I don't know. Oh, a long time ago. Um, and I basically built them like a 5 page website, like nothing crazy.

[00:07:55] And it was all about their bins and bin rentals, and they got ranking, I think, for like [00:08:00] 150 keywords, like in the first. Top 3 positions. Um, and I, over the next year, I watched their business go from like, they had like 10 bins for rent to, and like, when I say been rentals, I mean, the, the stuff you have at like construction sites, or if you're doing like a home reno, like those big ones, skips in the UK, skips.

[00:08:18] Yeah. Skip rentals. Um, so, um. Yeah, they went from 10 skips to, uh, I think now they have like 120. Like it was, and that happened within like a very short period of time. Um, you know, from one truck to two or three, like it was, it was really crazy. Um, and I always kind of had them as a client slash, they paid me like 500 bucks to do all this work, which like at the time I was like, I am robbing these guys, like lock me up, throw me, put me in jail.

[00:08:45] Like I'm stealing money from them. Cause I'm like, I made. Something I've made 500 bucks out of literally nothing. Like what all the work that I did doesn't exist physically in the world. Um, which is another big hurdle to get over as a digital marketer. Like nothing you actually create [00:09:00] exists until you like convert it into money.

[00:09:01] And then you buy something with that money. Um, So I always kind of had that client and then I did a couple internships at like traditional media companies or agencies and I was like, this is really isn't for me. I left that. I actually went to work in film for a while just as like a production assistant, like, you know, 12, 14 hour days loading trucks up, unloading trucks, driving trucks around, basically doing anything that you needed to do.

[00:09:25] Um, and then after that, I was like, I don't like, what do I want to do with my life? I took a trip to Cuba for like a week and I was like, I would, I have nothing lined up after this. What do I do? And that's when I, when I came back, I had met one of the guys from, um, that became an investor in plaid zebra.

[00:09:42] He had another online publication. Um, and I was working there. I asked him, I was like, yeah, like 400 bucks a week, you know, Kind of thing. And he was like, that's way too much money. We have 125 bucks a week. And I was like, damn, okay, I'll take it. Like, I need money. I need something to do. And that [00:10:00] led to the plaid zebra, which that's a whole other story.

[00:10:02] We can save that for another podcast basically. But, um, there's a lot of ups and downs there, but I always kind of had clients on the side while I was doing all of this stuff full time or whatever. And, um, The Plaid Zebra started winding down in like 2015, 16 kind of thing. Um, again, that's a whole other story.

[00:10:21] Running a publication is hard and it requires a lot of capital. Um, James is about 

[00:10:26] Josh Kennedy: to show you our magazine, which we take a little hiatus on at the 

[00:10:29] James Breese: moment. 

[00:10:30] Matt Diamante: Oh, a print magazine. We do a print magazine every month. That's dedication. Holy. Um, so yeah, with that, like, I'm sure you know people like when you're sending any kind of invoice for, uh, ad revenue or, you know, even most businesses, like, we did a bunch of stuff with Labat.

[00:10:48] Are you guys familiar with Labat in the uk? Mm-Hmm? . Yeah. Like the beer company. Beer company, yeah. Yeah. Ah, right. So, and they changed their payment, uh, for us, this is with hey, Tony. Now at this time, they [00:11:00] changed their net payment period from 30 days to 120 days overnight. Um, and we were like. Great. So now we have to wait four months from when we submit our invoice.

[00:11:10] So once the work's done, we have to wait another four months to get paid, which was a cashflow nightmare for a little bit. Um, but, uh, yeah, I'm kind of going all over the place. I've always had my own clients and, um, It wasn't until 20, I believe it was 2016, end of 2016. I got my first like monthly recurring client who was paying me like 1500 bucks a month.

[00:11:31] And I was like, I am rich. I can pay my rent. I can eat, you know, I could go out and grab a couple of beers, you know. And, um, I was still like, I was so in debt from running that publication. I was just like, I'm not even going to pay my debt. Like I'll do the minimum. I'll do like 50 bucks a month on that.

[00:11:47] And I had this client. And then eventually I had so many clients, um, cause it was all just referrals. Um, I had so many clients that I was like, I need help. Like at the time where I was making like 10 grand a month. And I was like, this is so much money. [00:12:00] But then I was like, it's not enough money at the same time.

[00:12:02] And it's, yeah, that's a whole other thing. Because as you start making more money, your expenses get higher. As a result of doing more business. Um, so anybody listening, if you're like, if you feel like that creep coming up all the time and you're like, I'm not spending money personally. It's like, it's very real with business owners.

[00:12:19] Cause you have to pay for more server costs or employees or this or that. Um, so then, yeah, I hired my first employee that was 2018 and fast forward to now we're a team of 10. And I'm like, I don't really want to grow the business too much bigger because it's, you know, it's a lot of work and the work will suffer if we, um, you know, take on too many employees and too many clients and there's not enough, uh, quality control and quality, you know, just looking at everything.

[00:12:45] Um, so yeah, that's kind of the journey. Um, I don't know. What else do you guys want to know? Ask me, I'm an open book. Is that good? Is there anything else 

[00:12:53] James Breese: that was good? No, it's great. It's getting idea into your insights cause I'll show you how I come across you and how you've ended up in the show here today.

[00:12:59] Because [00:13:00] obviously I said off air that what happened last year was we built a website for one of our clients. One of our coaches, Sasky, she ranked number one in a week. I then got into the world back again, into the world of SEO for other people. Whereas I've been in the world of SEO for myself. For those who don't know, SEO is a search engine optimization, otherwise known as ranking higher in Google.

[00:13:18] Okay. For slaving terms or like Josh, there you go. Keep it simple, Josh. That's what we always say. Keep it simple, Josh. 

[00:13:24] Josh Kennedy: Hey, I know some of these terms now after doing so many podcasts with 

[00:13:27] James Breese: you. I'm, I'm so proud of you. I'm so proud of you. You have no idea. No, but like that side of our journey in that the split was strength matters.

[00:13:35] Now we were also testing the theory out with cricket matters where we're gonna have health and fitness training for cricket players because in the world of health and fitness, it's just abundant. Everyone's doing everything now. There's no one's targeting specific niches. We want a specific niche. It wasn't like it was in 2015, 16, when we were doing online coaching, we had to niche down and get really good at a specific area and that's where we're playing around with Cricket Matters launched kind of went well, so we kind of dug around this [00:14:00] and I was going more into SEO, learning, learning SEO for other people, how to manage SEO, what's tools I need to use for other people.

[00:14:06] And lo and behold, one day your face popped up on Instagram. I think about September, October. It's like, Oh, this guy's pretty cool. He's like the, my words, my words to Josh were like, Hey, He's making seo easy for people like where can I do fitness easy for people like this? So I started following you so I started watching all the other videos and it's like hey I like this.

[00:14:24] I really like how he's doing it and how he's delivering it And I obviously learned more about your journey. So I think i'm going to start with the question of Let's talk about your social media journey, because I think a lot of people can learn and benefit from this. So I believe, just over a year ago, you had almost zero followers, and then fast forward to today, you're up 100, 000 plus.

[00:14:46] So let's just talk about your lessons and what you've learned along the way, and how it felt at the start. And how it feels now. Is that a good enough question? 

[00:14:56] Matt Diamante: Yeah. Um, so just an FYI last year at this time, I just saw a [00:15:00] video come up. Uh, TikTok emailed me being like, Hey, a year ago, this is the video you posted.

[00:15:04] And I watched it, you know, cause I'm curious, just be like, how much worse was the video a year ago? And it was me talking about like, I don't care if I, you know, have a hundred thousand followers right now. I only have 500 followers. And that was a year ago. So that was April 1st, 2023 at 500 followers. And, uh, now it's up to, I think, 171, 000 I checked this morning, which is absolutely bonkers.

[00:15:28] I'm like, how many people want to know about SEO? I guess that many people, um, and hopefully more. Um, so with, yeah, sorry, with saying all of that, I forgot your initial question. Uh, I completely ignored everything that you said. That's 

[00:15:43] James Breese: perfect. That gives people an idea of like where you were a year ago to where you are now.

[00:15:48] So the question was that what, What have you learned along the way? What was the thing? What were you doing at the start that you changed? What was that? What was the change in the shift that won't need to go to like two thousand [00:16:00] followers plus what was the shift? What was the change in how you did the videos or what you 

[00:16:02] Matt Diamante: did differently?

[00:16:03] So I think I need to take a step back and say why I was making videos and like why I started doing all of that. And then I'll get into, you know, what I learned and what that shift was. So initially, like, uh, as I kind of alluded to earlier, I've been a referral business, you know, my agency, Hey, Tony, we've been a referral business, uh, since 2018.

[00:16:22] And with that, there's really high highs. If you get a lot of referrals, then you panic and you have to freak out. Then the lows went, you know, clients drop off, you finish projects, you don't have new stuff coming in. And, uh, I was just getting tired of constantly dealing with that. Like, you'd be like, okay, I'm I'm so rich this month.

[00:16:39] This is great. And then the next month you're like, okay, we got to make sure, you know, is that on sale this week? You know, at the grocery store, we need to make sure we're doing like, maybe let's not eat as much. Like, but can this meal be two meals? Um, anyways, so. I was a referral business and like, even personally, like I didn't use social media, I hadn't [00:17:00] posted on social media in like five years.

[00:17:02] But like I helped clients with like their Facebook ads or Instagram ads, stuff like that. So like, I knew how to create all this stuff. I used to do like a YouTube show back in the day, it's not online anymore, is really like, not great content, but I learned how to do video editing and all that kind of stuff.

[00:17:16] So I already had all the skill set to do this, which you don't actually really need because, um, I'll, I'll get into this a bit later, but my wife is like killing it on Instagram right now, and she didn't do any of the stuff that I did. So it's very, very easy to do video editing and all that stuff right from your phone, uh, like on Instagram or on Tik TOK.

[00:17:35] Um, so that's kind of the reason why I started posting every day. Um, but I had actually read two books early in like January of 2023. One was called the one thing. And to sum up the entire book, it's like, Oh my God. What's one thing that you can do every single day to achieve your one year, five year, 10 year goal, whatever that goal is.

[00:17:55] Um, you need to keep contributing to it in small increments. And for me, I was like, one [00:18:00] thing that I could do every single day, like I can post a video and like help educate people on how to do SEO. Um, and at the time I had read, I'm sure you guys all know who Gary V is, Gary Vaynerchuk. I read his book called jab, jab, jab, right hook.

[00:18:12] And it's all about social media content. And I was like, cool, free, free, free, free, free. And I'm finally, when I'm ready, I can, you know, hit them with the right hook and sell them something. I don't know what that something is going to be yet, but I could sell people something. Um, So anyways, I started posting every day in, I think it was like January 13th or 14th or something, uh, 2023.

[00:18:33] And then for six months, I was posting every single day and about, sorry, about three months. And I started posting three times every single day in videos that I recorded on my phone. Yeah, it was a lot. Uh, business was really, really slow at the time. So I had all this extra time and I'm like, I need to fix this.

[00:18:49] Fill it. I need to do that one thing every single day. Um, so six months I posted about 300 videos on Instagram and I posted the same content on tech talk as well. [00:19:00] And, um, nothing I was getting like, I think I grew from zero to 1500 followers during that time, which 1500 followers is nothing to sneeze at.

[00:19:08] That's like people make big businesses out of 1500 followers. Um, and then it was like early June. I had one video. Start taking off. I woke up in the morning. I was like, Allie, I'm at like, sorry. Allie's my wife, Allie. I'm at like 5, 000 followers. Now this is insane. Like what is happening? And I look at the video stats and it's like going up a couple hundred thousand.

[00:19:31] I'm like, this is incredible. My entire goal with doing this is I just wanted to be the biggest person in my city in digital marketing. Like I wanted that clout. So, uh, so I could have that trust and authority kind of thing locally. And then, uh, that same week, a second video that I did just hit the algorithm and people liked it and started watching it.

[00:19:52] And, uh, you know, I think between those two videos, it was like two, 3 million views, you know, in total. And I was like, Holy, and I [00:20:00] grew to like 15, 000 followers. And I was like, That's it. I'm famous. This is awesome. Like I've made it, I've made it on Instagram. I figured it out. Mic drop. I'm done. Yeah. And, uh, that was, so that was 1500 or 15, 000 followers in, um, you know, that I got within that month of June, I think.

[00:20:17] Uh, and then from there, I was just like, let's just see how big we can, you know, blow up this balloon. And by the end of 2023, I had just hit the hundred thousand. follower mark on Instagram. And I was like, like, this is insane. Like, I don't even know what to do with myself. And now I'm at, um, you know, that we're, we're filming this April 2nd.

[00:20:43] Um, I don't know if you want the timestamp on this filming this April 2nd, but I like it's 170, 000 followers. And like, I, I don't answer my phone anymore. My number's on Instagram. My email's on Instagram. I might take it off. I don't know if I should or not, but I don't answer my phone. People text me [00:21:00] like every single day.

[00:21:00] I get five to 10 inquiries every single day through the form on my website. And I'm not even pushing people to work with us. I'm legit, just straight up educating people about SEO and digital marketing on Instagram, TikTok, all that stuff. And people are coming, going out of their way, googling us. typing in or going to the contact page and filling it out and saying, we want to work with you.

[00:21:25] Here's their budget. And like we have a waiting list for the next couple of months. It's absolutely insane. And you know, it's, it's great. I love that. We're no longer a referral business, which is great. Um, and if I want to take on more clients, I could hire more staff. But again, as I was saying, I don't think I want to necessarily do that because I want to, Be able to service the clients that we have as best as possible and actually help them get tangible results.

[00:21:49] Um, so one of the things that I realized, I think this is going back to your question. Uh, one of the things that I realized, uh, with Instagram and creating content is that you can't just [00:22:00] start, you should post the worst thing that you ever could, because everybody needs to start somewhere. Like if you scroll back on my Instagram.

[00:22:08] There's like 700 videos at this point, scroll back and watch the first video. For the first 300 videos I did, they are terrible. And the reason why I started doing three every single day is because I was like that learning curve. I wanted to cut that learning curve, like the time for me to get from here, like here, like start to, you know, we're actually get it.

[00:22:27] Um, I want to cut that time is as short as possible. So that's why I was doing three a day and it really got me better at. Coming up with ideas at recording, at editing, um, at posting. Should I use hashtags? Should I not use hashtags? All this kind of stuff. And then, um, it was basically, I, and I had figured this out early on, but I just didn't realize it.

[00:22:48] Cause I'm dumb. Um, that like the, the format that ended up working for me, I think I did a video in that format, like week three of me doing these videos and I posted on Tik TOK [00:23:00] and got a lot of views on Tik TOK, but I was like, this is about AI. It's not necessarily about SEO. Like I don't want those kinds of followers.

[00:23:06] So I stopped doing that style of video. Um, But that style of video actually really works well with, um, SEO and what I was doing. And it's basically like the style of video was, Hey, if you want to show up higher on Google, but you don't have any money or time, just do this. And then I actually take my phone out and record my computer screen, like very lo fi, like low quality shit.

[00:23:27] And those are the videos that have performed the best for me. And I was like, okay, I just need to do more of that. And then I think I overdid it on that. And now people don't watch those videos as much. But yeah, it's uh, that's one of the one of the things that I learned is like find what works for you and like The quickest way to find that is by posting As much content as you possibly can on a daily basis I say as as you possibly can two to three reels per day is like where I would limit that I've tried doing five a day.

[00:23:58] Um, and that's just [00:24:00] like One, it's not sustainable. There's burnout. You run out of ideas really quickly. And, um, you know, the algorithms don't like, like if you're posting a hundred posts a day on Instagram, nothing's going to do well. Right. But if you post two or three posts a day on Instagram, you leave four or five hours between those posts.

[00:24:15] Um, I, I haven't seen it really impact the algorithm negatively in that way. Um, 

[00:24:21] James Breese: yeah, that's what Neil Patel said. Their study came out, didn't it? It said one to two posts a day on Instagram leaving at least five to eight hours apart. That's what he said. So it's, that's great. Well, there's so much to unpack that on that little bit.

[00:24:33] So first of all, I'm going to go back to that. It's very simple, right? You said that you're, you're basically creating awareness and social media, but people are Googling you and going to your website to fill out the form. All right. So I'm going to make this, make this very clear to a lot of people out there, particularly in the world of health and fitness.

[00:24:50] Who still believe they don't need a website. What we seeing is time and time again, the health and fitness spaces, they want to create a social media profile, [00:25:00] but they have nothing for them to go to. So Instagram, TikTok, they want to keep you on their platform. They don't want to take you anywhere else. Am I right?

[00:25:09] They want to keep you on their platform. So therefore the user journey is awareness on social media. They then go to Google to find and learn more about you. And if you don't appear on Google, well, there's nowhere for them to go. So that journey is broken. Is that, is that about right? You kind of what you, what, what you're seeing your 

[00:25:24] Matt Diamante: end?

[00:25:25] Yeah. And I do see it with a lot of people. So I'm part of a group of a bunch of Canadian creators on Instagram. And a lot of them don't necessarily have a website. They're like, I'm just making money on brand deals. I'm like, do you have an email list? Are you, you know, showing up on Google? Like, are you, do you have your own ecosystem?

[00:25:44] I'm like. No, how do I do that? What is that? And I'm like, okay, so, you know, you could start with something simple like Squarespace or Wix and like throw up a website within a couple hours. You know, at least here's about me. Here's what we do. Here's the services or the products I sell. Um, and case [00:26:00] studies, or, you know, you could even showcase some of your videos there.

[00:26:04] But yeah, a lot of people are just like, yeah, I'm just going to do something on social media. I'm not going to think about a website. I'm not going to go further that way. And one of the things that I'm seeing is like every month I'm getting hundreds, if not thousands of people searching, Hey, Tony, my agency name.

[00:26:18] Uh, and coming through clicking on our website and filling out that contact form. And again, I'm not posting that link anywhere on social media. I'm not telling people go to my website, right? It's really insane. And I think one of the things that that does, um, for Google is it shows that you're a legitimate business because people are looking up a specific name and you're coming up for that name.

[00:26:41] And if they're clicking through Google's like, Oh, these guys must be, you know, legitimate business. And we should maybe Drive more traffic there. You know what I mean? Yeah. 

[00:26:51] James Breese: Yeah. I love it. I love it. I think it's like, it's, it's what we're trying to teach a lot of the guys now. Cause it's how I've grown up on in marketing my business.

[00:26:58] Like we, you know, [00:27:00] if you Google athleticism in the search engines, we come up top right below the dictionary definition. You type in athlete performance period. We come up top, you know, rowing track. We've got like 20 articles, which rank number one that drive all our hits every month that we're getting leads in now.

[00:27:15] We're changing strength matters to be more digital marketing. So we're redeveloping that side of things, but we're taking what we learned to applying it to our sister company, cricket matters, which we're launching again. And like I said, do you know what we did? We built a crappy little website last year as a test pilot.

[00:27:28] I did it in the morning, two hours, we ranked for eight places. Blog posts, number one, gets most of our hits. And I went, okay, now I need to take it seriously. So I'm literally redeveloping in WordPress at the moment to have it properly done, get the speed up and go after it in a big way in terms of blogs, because that's what we're going to do.

[00:27:45] But the key thing is, is always going back to this. You need a website, you need presence on Google to be a legitimate business. All these influencers we're seeing on social media are just influencers. In five, 10 years time, they haven't got a legit business because things can change. They could [00:28:00] be kicked off of Instagram, TikTok.

[00:28:01] I've seen it all happen in the past. So we're going back to the start. 

[00:28:06] Matt Diamante: I was gonna say, even right now with, um, TikTok being banned potentially in the U. S. It seems imminent, like it's gonna happen. Like, I think there are some studies like there's 1. 5 million businesses or it's probably more that rely on TikTok to drive their revenues.

[00:28:21] And I'm like, how have you not started an email list? How have you not got people like to your website? It's really kind of like the first thing that I did, like when I started posting, I was like, I need to have something for people to sign up to my email list, because if all this goes away, like I want to make sure that I'm safe and I can still run a business.

[00:28:39] Um, and unfortunately, and I know we're talking about a lot of different things here. Um, you know, obviously like showing up on Google, having a website, uh, social media, but then also like email marketing, as much as that seems like an old school way to do things. It is the, I believe it's the highest converting marketing platform [00:29:00] that you can use.

[00:29:01] James Breese: 36 to every 1 spent. That's one. We just did a podcast about that, didn't we? Yeah, I think we did a few months ago. 

[00:29:09] Matt Diamante: And guess what? If you, if you have a social media following and you're doing stuff organically, Uh, it costs me $0 to build my email list. Yeah, right. So it's literally, it's not one to 36, it's zero to however much, you know what I 

[00:29:23] James Breese: mean?

[00:29:24] Exactly. And it's, it's cool because it's just not just that on organically, it's the fact of all your blog posts potentially as well. So if it, all that stuff coming here, and this is what we're trying to educate and this is why we brought you onto the show, is to tell the world, look, this is a real business.

[00:29:36] That's applying real business tactics in terms of SEO. It's this is how it's grown. And they're using social media with Google to accelerate their business. He's got a waiting list for God damn it. People listen to him. He has a waiting list. He has five, 10 inquiries a day to work with him. And this is a good example.

[00:29:53] So we want to learn from what the best people are doing outside of health and fitness. So we can apply it to the health and fitness business [00:30:00] world. And Matt's a really good example. It's fantastic. 

[00:30:02] Matt Diamante: So thank you. I just also wanted to mention that. You know, as an SEO person, uh, I'd never really done my SEO until I think about two years ago.

[00:30:13] I was talking to a buddy who started working for like another SEO company. I was like, how do they get all their inquiries? Like, where do they come from? He's like, oh, they get them all organically from blogs. They don't run any ads and they get inquiries every single day. And I was like, Oh my God, I'm such an idiot.

[00:30:26] I've never done SEO for myself. We've only just been doing it for our clients. So I really doubled down. I was like, I'm putting my money where my mouth is. I'm going to start doing my own SEO. We're going to start writing blogs. We're going to optimize our website, get backlinks, that whole thing. Um, And now when like some, every person I talked to, like inquiry, I'm like, how did you hear about us?

[00:30:47] And more and more, I'm always expecting from Instagram because that's where it's been coming from. But people are like, Oh, what videos were you talking about? Like, no, we found you on Google. Like we're down the street and I'm like, Yes. [00:31:00] Oh, okay. And like that has really started picking up, so you have to kind of fire on all engines on, on all cylinders.

[00:31:09] Engines. What's the, yeah. Cylinders, engines, . Yeah. Fire on all fours. Um, , if that makes any sense. . Um, where it's like, if you want a sustainable business, it's not just. SEO or social media or email marketing. It's kind of a combination of everything. And I know that sounds very overwhelming. You don't need to start with everything, start with one thing.

[00:31:32] Um, but yeah, at the end of the day, like Google doesn't algorithm update. And for some reason you were doing something shady that Google didn't like your SEO is gone, right? Same thing with Instagram. They do an algorithm update. All of a sudden the videos that used to hit. are no longer getting views.

[00:31:47] You're not getting any more followers, then your business slows down. But if you're doing, you know, if you're on multiple platforms, if you're doing SEO, if you're doing social media, email marketing, or even running ads, like you're going to [00:32:00] have a more sustainable business, regardless of the industry that you're in.

[00:32:03] James Breese: That's really sound advice. God, there's so many things. I'm going to go dive, dive down here now, but I'm going to, I'm going to quickly, I'm going to quickly go back to the social media stuff. What was the video that took off and what did you do differently? So people can 

[00:32:14] Matt Diamante: learn from that. Oh my God. I don't even remember which actual video it was because like, again, I've posted like over 700, maybe 750 videos in the last year and I actually have to go back.

[00:32:26] I'm like, did I talk about this topic? And then I'll, I'll realize I'm like, Oh, I already did this exact same video, almost with the exact same wording. And I forgot about it. Do you 

[00:32:35] Josh Kennedy: think it was partly consistency, Matt? Do you reckon? Consistency in posting? 

[00:32:41] Matt Diamante: It's the consistency is more for you as a person and not so much for the algorithm.

[00:32:45] I'm finding, um, it's if, if I can be in the top of somebody's feed every single day, every single morning, you know, when they open their phone for the first time, that's going to have a lot more weight, uh, in terms of like recognition and trustworthiness and authority. Right. [00:33:00] Um, and then they'll be like, Oh, I know this guy.

[00:33:01] I'm going to like his video before they even start watching it. Right. I'm sure we're all like that. There's, if something comes up from a creator on Instagram, you're like, I know I'm going to like this video, so I'm just going to like it right away. And then you watch the video. Um, so in terms of the one video, I don't know exactly what it was, but it was something like off the cuff.

[00:33:22] Like it wasn't something that I like rehearsed or scripted. I was just like, yeah, this seems like a good idea. I'm just going to do it. Um, and I did that a lot until I think it was like, mid November or November of last year, so six months ago, basically at this point. Um, and then I started like scripting a hook for the video.

[00:33:41] So a reason for people to keep watching something that had some kind of stakes or a promise that would be delivered towards the end of the video. And some of those videos, you know, have gotten millions of views. Some get like 20, views, which is a lot, you know, a year ago, I'd have been like 20, 000 views.

[00:33:57] Like I'm like rich. That's awesome. Um, but now [00:34:00] I'm like, it only got 20, 000 views. So your perspective changes, right? Uh, as it does when your business grows, you know, 20 grand used to be a lot more money than it is now because I have to spend that on, you know, menial things every single month. Um, but, Yeah, I just think going back to your question about the consistency, it's like, it's developing that habit or that discipline of doing it.

[00:34:24] Every single day. And it doesn't feel like it's a big thing every single day, um, because you already have that habit. You already have a process or, you know, that you're doing. Um, yeah, I, I think that like the same thing with SEO, like if you're blogging every day, or if you're working on a blog post, you're so you're doing one a week and you're just working on it every single day, you know, five, 10 minutes here, or like half an hour here, there, you're gonna have a really great piece of content at the end of the week.

[00:34:51] Right. 

[00:34:52] James Breese: Yeah, exactly. Cool. I like that. So that leads nicely from that. You're bringing the blog comment there now. So, okay, let's let's digress and move into the world [00:35:00] of SEO again. Search engine optimization here now. So we're talking about social media. That's a great learning curve because I'll be honest.

[00:35:06] We're in a similar position now because. You inspired me to start posting because we hadn't posted for years. And then I started doing little videos. I was in Istanbul, Athens, posting little talk and head videos. And I'm getting views of between 500 to two and a half thousand at the moment. We've got 20, 000 followers, but we're trying to work out.

[00:35:23] Cause a lot of it is kind of like maybe old followers that we used to follow us before that we didn't cause we didn't post for four years. We're trying to re engage. You gotta engage them. Yeah. So and that's our fault and because and then because we didn't need to because we had seo doing all this stuff for us But then we've gone.

[00:35:36] No, we need to have a multi dimensional approach now And so i'm trying to figure out what works now So it's we're using a simple either iphone or my pocket osmo 3 to record a video. It's all talking head because I think I think at the moment I'm engaging in more videos with people who are being real, not these scripted.

[00:35:53] I can see all these AI scripted stuff at the moment. I can't fix them. So I'm probably as engaging as possible with a little bit of B [00:36:00] roll. That's all I'm trying to do. 

[00:36:01] Matt Diamante: So James, uh, I'll let you in on a little secret. Almost all the videos I do are scripted, although it doesn't seem like it, right? Like I, I, it's like a loose script.

[00:36:10] It's like, here's the first line I'm going to say. And that like, there's a lot of cuts in the videos, right? Sometimes it zooms in and it's like, Oh, he's just emphasizing the point. No, that's a whole different take.

[00:36:21] James Breese: Interesting. That's because obviously that's because we, I have an idea in my head and I think, right. Okay. What's I'm going to do, but maybe it becomes more scripted. But when I say scripted, what you see is, you know, everyone's copying Alex Hamozy. That's probably a good example. Yeah. Everyone's doing the same style.

[00:36:36] So you don't see what's going on here now, whereas yours give value straight away. That's why fine. It goes by how you want to do this. Do this, do this, do this. Oh, cool. Great. I'll go and try it. That's why I can attend the differences, I think. 

[00:36:47] Matt Diamante: Yeah. So one thing that I will say that I've noticed about the algorithm, uh, lately in the last like four or five, six months is they're really favoring videos that are getting higher average watch times and then higher [00:37:00] average like watch percentage and actual time.

[00:37:02] So there's, those are two different metrics. I know that it sounds like the same, but let's say you have a 30 second video. Um, you know, And people are watching for an average of 15 seconds, right? That's a 50 percent watch time. Anything to me over 50%, I'm like the algorithm likes that. And they're going to push that way more.

[00:37:20] And I've seen that with the videos that I have over a million views or a couple of million views. That's what the algorithm wants. Well, it sounds really easy. Like, Oh, all you need to do is keep people watching for 15 seconds out of 30. But that is an eternity, my friend, um, getting people to like, I, and I know, I know, like I know the formula, I know how to do it.

[00:37:40] Uh, but sometimes the value is just not there for people. And the promise that you made at the beginning of the video, um, like, I'm going to show you how to show up higher on Google. That's the promise. And by the end of the video, you need to deliver on that promise. But sometimes there's like multiple steps.

[00:37:54] People get lost and, uh, all that stuff. So they're really favoring watch time [00:38:00] right now. Um, and replays as well. That's gold. 

[00:38:04] James Breese: What's your average video time length, Matt? What's that? 

[00:38:07] Josh Kennedy: What's your average video, uh, length? 

[00:38:11] Matt Diamante: I'm like, I'm messing around with a bunch of different times. So like, I'll go as short as like 15 seconds, uh, you know, and then 30 seconds is kind of where I want to be.

[00:38:22] Uh, and then sometimes it's like closer to a minute long. Like I actually had a video that was like a minute long last year go like millions of views viral, which is crazy. Like I can have people watching that long. That's 

[00:38:34] James Breese: awesome because people want that content to learn. So it's, you're giving them step by step play.

[00:38:39] The one videos I get over, which I, I've told Josh and Andrew this, who works with us behind the scenes, that last year when I started building these websites for people, and we had people coming to us with websites 10, 000, 15, 000 on, Yeah. And they weren't working and I go, okay, cool. Let me have a look at it.

[00:38:55] And the first thing I find is that they haven't got Google analytics installed and they're not in [00:39:00] Google search console. That to me blew my tiny little mind. Why are web designers and developers and people around the world, not doing that automate? Is it me? Are you seeing that across the board as well?

[00:39:11] Or it's like, I'm finding it. Every fitness professional I speak to pretty much does not have Google search console installed. 

[00:39:19] Matt Diamante: Um, I mean, uh, yeah, a lot of the time, most of the time they have Google search console installed, but at the same time, like, that's not going to hurt your rankings, like on Google, even, um, if you have a, uh, search console, Google search console account set up, which anybody listening or watching, I don't know, is this a video to, um, anybody, anybody hearing this, um, If you just sign up with Google search console, which is the way that Google, um, it basically gives you all the stats on your website.

[00:39:49] Like here's the keywords you're ranking for. Here's what's doing well. Here's what's not doing well. Um, even if you just sign up there and you don't submit a sitemap, for example, like Google still knows about your website. Like, [00:40:00] and I've seen that with clients, like even my own wife's website, like we're starting to do her SEO.

[00:40:04] She's a wedding photographer. Um, and she's like, Hey, what's going on with my SEO? Like, are you guys going to start soon? I'm like, yeah, yeah. Okay. We'll, we'll, we'll help you. Um, like I, like I, she, yeah, yeah. I'm like, we live together. Pay me. Um, so we, I set up her Google search console and everything like. You know, a year ago and she was still building her website.

[00:40:26] So I never submitted a sitemap, but now she's still ranking for stuff. You know what I mean? Like submitting the sitemap is a way basically for Google to easily find all the pages on your website. But if you're already doing like a crazy good internal linking strategy, where that basically that's just linking from one page to your site or on your site to another page on your site.

[00:40:46] Um, if you're doing that well, you don't really need to submit a sitemap I'm finding, which. Like you should still do you should still submit a sitemap, especially if you're a new brand new website Um, but yeah, there's a lot of [00:41:00] things that google tells us like don't do this or do this that aren't correct They're they're basically gaslighting us It's it's 

[00:41:07] James Breese: interesting to say that because like I said, it's it's like yeah, because we see that so Internal linking for guys, that's a whole nother topic because again, a lot of what we see in the world of health and fitness, they believe blogging is dead.

[00:41:18] They generally believe blogging is dead. You shouldn't be blogging and genuinely. So this is, this is another thing I want to bring up now in a second, because we see blogs as a huge thing. So when we talk about health and fitness, they all think videos, Instagram influencers, all that type of crap. But what we're seeing is when we're seeing a website, you're right.

[00:41:35] Google's we've seen no Google Search Console, no site map for those who wanna know what site map has, it's a, it's a crazy technical term that we use to help Google find you. And then there's zero internal linking, dude, we're talking bare, bare bones. If you, if you went to the average Google personal trainer in Hamilton, dude, where you live, right?

[00:41:54] See, see, see the websites a popup and you'll see how terrible linking there is. There's no H one, [00:42:00] H two, there's no nothing of these tanks. It's crazy. Yeah, it's a, it's an open kettle of fish. So we see the biggest gains that fitness professionals can make is you can get to the top of Google very quickly by creating helpful content that Google likes and being found in Google by search console, internal linking and all these different things, which you can do for free essentially.

[00:42:19] Right. Yeah. But they don't, they don't do it. They don't do it. They get overwhelmed 

[00:42:22] Matt Diamante: by it. They don't know that they need to do it. Right. And that's like, that's a big thing as well. Like, that's why I'm doing all this educational content and like, not just educational, but like how to content basically, um, showing people like, here's why a heading one tech is important, which if you don't know what that is, it's basically just the biggest text on your page, or it's usually the biggest text at the very top of your page that tells you what the page is about.

[00:42:46] Um, but. Yeah. Like they're not doing that stuff. They don't know. And then, um, yeah, it's, and like SEO tools are also very expensive. Right. And like, I, like, I love using SEMrush. [00:43:00] Um, I think, I forget who it was. I saw a video. It was like, SEMrush is so cheap. It's such a cheap tool. I can't believe everybody's not using it.

[00:43:07] I'm like, it's 129 USD per month. And like, it makes sense for us to use like that. And that's per user. Right. So like we were servicing a bunch of clients, my team uses, I'm spending like thousands of dollars with this company per month, which is a lot of money, but for like a mom and pop shop down the street, who's trying to show up higher on Google because they know the value of, um, 129 bucks is like, you know, difference between rent or not rent in a lot of cases.

[00:43:34] Right. Or like eating Um, and I just want to what you were saying about the blog posting aspect where it's like, it's actually, it's still people are, sorry, people are saying that it doesn't, it's not relevant anymore. Google doesn't want that. They're all wrong. I get those comments on Instagram and TikTok all the time.

[00:43:50] Like, you're an idiot. This is from like 2012. This strategy. Yeah. And I'm like, well, Okay. Well come talk to our clients who are getting, you know, tens [00:44:00] of thousands of visitors per month to their websites. Um, and who are getting more business as a result, talk to them. Well, I'm not going to give up any of our clients, like contact info, but like it actually still works.

[00:44:11] And the reason why it still works is because, well, there's a number of things, but if you can get people to your website, just in general from blog posts, I don't care what. The topic is as long as it's relevant to your niche or your industry, if you're getting a lot of people to your website and they're staying there and they're browsing multiple pages that signals to Google, like, Hey, these people have useful information.

[00:44:33] And that kind of like raises the level of where you're at in terms of, you know, ranking as a website in general. Um, and we've been doing tests with my own website. Recently. Hey, tony. ca, um, not that I need anybody or want anybody to go there cause we're getting a ton of traffic. Um, but if you want to see what we're doing, you can go there, uh, just, Hey, tony.

[00:44:51] ca and look at the blog posts. Um, and so I haven't touched our page that is about search engine optimization services. Like [00:45:00] that's what we do. I haven't touched that page, um, or the, our Google ads expert page. I haven't touched those pages, uh, in like maybe a year. And. They weren't ranking well, and I just like honestly was ignoring them forgot about them, whatever, but I have my team writing blog posts every week on our website, and we're using internal linking to link to those pages from, you know, blog posts, and we're using words like Google ad experts, Hamilton, right?

[00:45:28] And linking to that page. So that's. giving Google some context as to what that page is about. Now, at least, uh, I'm probably going to kick myself for saying this, but at least at the time of recording, we're ranking number one for a lot of these terms that we're not even, we didn't even touch those pages, right?

[00:45:44] It's all coming from blog post traffic. Using that internal linking and then also once your site's getting a certain amount of traffic that gives Google a little bit more trust and gives more credibility to your website and in Google's eyes. So that raises kind of like, [00:46:00] you know, all ships rise with the tide kind of thing, right?

[00:46:02] It's, it's actually insane. And like, this is a year long experiment we've been doing. And it's, it's really working out. So if anybody who says blogging is dead, blogging doesn't work, the strategy from 2007, uh, they're wrong. Um, and it's good that they think that because that just leaves room for you to show up higher in the search results.

[00:46:23] James Breese: I love it. I love it. And I love the haters. I do see the comment, which made me laugh half the time, but like it's the, the other ones I see is not just the comments of the haters saying it's 2007. It's like. The SEO expert to get mad at you for posting some of this stuff, saying it's like the secret sauce or something like that, it's like, there's two types of people, the people who will go and do it themselves and the vast majority of them who will not do it themselves, who will ask you for help.

[00:46:48] So there's far more people like that. It's like a done with you service or done for you service. And most people want to done for you service because they haven't got time for all this stuff. So I think it's a brilliant way of posting this stuff because you're going, Hey, cool. Look at this [00:47:00] stuff. It works.

[00:47:01] I love it. Brits. It's true. Is your Josh C it's not just me telling everyone about this. Come on, Josh, I 

[00:47:07] Josh Kennedy: believe you. I 

[00:47:08] James Breese: believe you. We're trying to just, like I said, our goal is, and again, it's to try and not just legitimize what we're trying to say and do, but to bring you on to show a real life case study of how you can buy an SEO with social media growth and how it leads to people banging down your door to do business with you and it's not stopping anytime soon, I'm sure of it.

[00:47:29] Cause the more you grow. The more people who find you, the more Google loves you and puts you more, the more blog posts you write. It's an ever evolving sequence. Now, the other thing I want to say is now, what do you think comes first? SEO or social media? Now, what we see a lot of people is this, is that they feel burnt out, overwhelmed with the idea of posting content every day on social media.

[00:47:50] Now, Would you, obviously, blog posts for some people can be an overwhelming thing because it takes a long time to write for the first time. Chicken or the egg, where would you suggest somebody [00:48:00] starting out with trying to get their website or their business found, where would you suggest they go first and where should they start?

[00:48:06] Matt Diamante: So the first thing that I would do is build a website. You don't need to optimize the website necessarily, but have a home base, right? If, you know, let's go back like 30, 40 years ago, you had a physical location for your business and you had a sign up front. That is your website today. If you don't have a physical location slash website, then nobody's going to be able to find you.

[00:48:27] So first thing set up shop, you know, use, this might be a terrible analogy, but 30, 40 years ago, You can't afford a sign you paint on the, on the side of the brick, right? This is, you know, my business, this is what we do. That's the same thing with, uh, having a website, build a website, use Squarespace, Wix, whatever it is, does not need to look like the absolute best thing in the world, but you need a home base, right?

[00:48:53] And you can improve it with time. And that's what I love about digital is like, nothing is permanent. You can continue to grow and [00:49:00] refine and redesign and redo and optimize. Um, Yeah, it's, it's great. So start with a website. Um, and then social media, like I'm kind of biased because like, I never did social media for my business.

[00:49:14] And I saw a lot of businesses doing shitty social media. Um, and I actually, I really dislike, uh, social media marketing agencies because I'm like, this is such a scam. Uh, a lot of times, like I did some of that early on in my career. For big companies. And like, yeah, it was fun. And I had a lot of freedom, creative freedom to do some stuff.

[00:49:32] So the creative was good, but there's a lot of companies that's like, Oh, well, you need the perfect branding. You need to use our colors and our logos and this and that, and you can't say certain things. And I'm like, why? Like if you go on, you know, any influencer or like big brands, social media, their stuff is like, not cohesive.

[00:49:51] Look at their feet. It's just like, Oh, All over the place because the feed doesn't matter. People are seeing one video at a time. And at least for me, and like probably most of the people listening here, if they're [00:50:00] personal trainers, like you are your brand, right? Regardless, if you have employees or a shop or whatever, like you are your brand.

[00:50:06] And it's becoming more and more, um, you know, individual focus as like the, the brand face or brand voice. Um, and. Every single piece of content that has my face in it, regardless if it has the background that I have now, or if it's green screen, or if I'm like walking on the street, it's recognizable, right?

[00:50:23] I can wear a different t shirt color. It doesn't have to be a black t shirt. Like I wear all the time. You know what I mean? It could be a yellow one. And actually I, one time I wore a red t shirt like, Whoa, red t shirt today. Where's the black t shirt. Um, so yeah, the, the whole brand thing, like, I know we're not really talking about branding, but like that is a huge.

[00:50:42] Thing like a huge sticking point for a lot of companies, especially entrepreneurs like, Oh, I want to be professional. I want to have like all my branding together in this and that. I'm like, Like right now I'm writing a book and they're like, what fonts do you want to use? You want to use the same fonts on your website?

[00:50:56] I'm like, I don't care what fonts we use as long as it's readable and it looks good. [00:51:00] And they're like, okay, great. Do you want to use your colors on your website? I'm like, I don't really care. Like it doesn't, it doesn't matter. Like branding doesn't matter as much as people think it does. I mean, I'm going to get it probably a lot of hate for saying that for some branding agencies and, uh, you know, some other businesses.

[00:51:15] But at the end of the day, like, In my opinion, branding doesn't matter as much for like a local, you know, smaller business. And when I say small business, I mean like anybody under like five, 10 million a year. Right. That's 

[00:51:28] James Breese: a lot of money for people. There's a lot of money for some. That's huge. Life changing.

[00:51:32] Matt Diamante: Well, I talked, I talked to a guy, uh, recently he just, again, I don't always answer my phone, but he, I, this guy got through, um, and he's like, how, how much, He's like, do you work with small businesses? And I was like, yeah, like, that's like where, you know, I love helping small businesses. That's why I started this agency to improve people's lives through SEO, which I know sounds like a, a weird thing to say, but it that's, that's my goal.

[00:51:55] So anyways, this guy, uh, he's like, well, how much do you charge? So I tell him, he's like, [00:52:00] how the hell can anybody afford that? That's not working with small businesses. You work with like large businesses to be able to charge that kind of money. And I'm like, No. Well, like, you know, a small business is anybody making 0 to, I think it's up to in some industries, like 40 like, I agree.

[00:52:14] That's not necessarily a small business, but like if you're making two to 5 million a year, you're not like you're likely not rich in terms of, cause that's revenue. That's not even expenses. Um, And he was like, I'm a small business. I can't afford, you know, a couple thousand dollars a month to pay you to do this stuff.

[00:52:31] And I'm like, I'm sorry. Like we need money to do the work. Like we're not over here driving around in Ferraris. Like, uh, I mean, I wish maybe one day, but yeah, yeah, yet. Um, but yeah, it's just. It's yeah, it's crazy. 

[00:52:47] James Breese: Awesome. Cool. I like this. There's so many, there's so many ways. Matt, we have to get you back on the show at some time.

[00:52:52] I think this is brilliant. I love, I can geek out so much. Josh is probably going to tell me 

[00:52:55] Josh Kennedy: now. I was just waiting for you to geek out some more, to be honest, James, with that, with your technical 

[00:52:59] James Breese: [00:53:00] terms and stuff. Oh my, technical terms. I know, I'm so sorry. It's, but it, it is, it's, it's mind blowing to me and it's.

[00:53:05] It's fascinating. It's really good to hear other people see this and legitimize this, but also express it in a very simple way that everyone can understand, because like I said, I follow a lot of SEO experts and website experts online half the time. I don't understand them. If I don't understand them, I'm guaranteed that most of our clients, people will not understand them either.

[00:53:25] So it's about finding the balance to try and explain and convey it. So what we're trying to say is the lessons you can learn from today is this. You need a website, you need to be able to have a home base for that, you need to create some blogs to be helpful, to link to the home base and the services you offer, and then you drive traffic through whatever means, it could be social media, it could be a networking event I just went to in, in Croatia, and then Serbia, like literally, I had a phone call this morning from a guy in Croatia who went to that event, and he Googled me afterwards and booked a call in.

[00:53:57] And we, that's how it, what happens. It just, [00:54:00] traffic comes from a variety of sources, networking, referrals, social media, Google, you've got to manage all of them, but all roads lead to Rome, as I keep saying, and that is back to your website. And that is pretty much what we've kind of said today. So, uh, well said.

[00:54:15] Well said. I love it. This is great. Matt, when you come back on the show again, please, we can geek out some more. 

[00:54:22] Matt Diamante: I'll talk every, uh, every Tuesday at 10 a. m. My time for sure. Standing podcast. 

[00:54:28] James Breese: Josh, you had some questions written down. I have no idea what to be 

[00:54:32] Josh Kennedy: honest. I think we need to get Matt back on if he's, if he's happy to come on.

[00:54:35] Cause yeah, I did have some questions, but you know, not had time to go through any of them. So we will save 

[00:54:39] Matt Diamante: them for another time. We could save them. I also, like, I'm just looking at my next appointments in like two weeks. 25 minutes so I can like, we can chat a little bit longer if you guys want to. Um, if you don't, we can definitely jump, jump back on, save it for next time.

[00:54:52] We've got some 

[00:54:53] Josh Kennedy: great stuff. Let's save it for next time. Uh, Matt, we'll definitely get you back on that. We'd, uh, we'd love to, before we do sign off mate, um, [00:55:00] could you give out your social media type handles and where people can 

[00:55:03] Matt Diamante: find, oh my God, I need to actually check what he's gonna have to look at them.

[00:55:07] Yeah. I need to check what my Instagram handle is. Instrumental music while he finds it. . Yeah. No, no. I, I, I got it up. You don't think I have Instagram open on my phone all the time? , uh, it's, Hey, Tony Agency on Instagram, and I think on TikTok it's just, Hey, Tony Agency or something like, every social network is like, you can use it, uh, period.

[00:55:26] Or not a period. So, hey tony.agency on Instagram. Um, or you can just Google. Hey Tony. Oh, just Google. Hey Tony. Or hey Tony. Yeah. On it. Not that he wants any business because 

[00:55:38] Josh Kennedy: he's already got enough. We just want to point that out. 

[00:55:39] Matt Diamante: No, I mean, I don't want to sound like I'm not grateful. I'm very grateful. And I'm very appreciative of like legit every inquiry we get.

[00:55:49] Not that we can help everybody, but yeah, it's yeah. Yeah. I just love it. I love doing this stuff. 

[00:55:55] James Breese: Dude. It's awesome. It's great to have you on the show. Thank you so much, Josh. Yeah. 

[00:55:58] Josh Kennedy: James. Thank you, Matt. [00:56:00] Thank you so much. And thank you guys for listening 

[00:56:01] Matt Diamante: until next time. Thank you for having me.