Hello, everyone. My name is Deborah Alferon, and I'm a TV anchor, on-camera coach, and keynote speaker. Thank you so much for joining us. I'm also your moderator for today's global innovation through science and technology or GIST, TechConnect conversation on how to grow your startup through digital marketing. So creating an effective digital marketing strategy, it's so important. In fact, one of the most important parts of building a successful startup. And you know, there are so many tools available. How do you know which ones are best for you? Understanding options and choosing the right marketing tools can help position your startup in front of potential customers and partners. So it's really important. Before we begin though, a quick announcement on how you can play a role in discovering new solutions to some of the biggest challenges we face today. I want you to do this. Visit gistnetwork.org to cast your vote in the GIST Tech Eye Pitch Competition. Your vote helps decide which science, technology, or startup idea deserves a chance to go global. Again, just visit gistnetwork.org to learn more and cast your vote today. We want to hear from you. We want your questions and your comments. So remember, you can join the conversation by sending us your questions and your comments through the chat space that is right next to the video player, or through Twitter at hashtag GIST TechConnect. So do you want to get started? I think we should. First of all, I want to welcome our panel of experts. Joining us today, Scott Sorenson, President of Compete Agency. Great to have you here. Thank you so much. You're so welcome. And also, Andrew Nelson, President of Silverback Strategies. Welcome. Thank you for having me. You're so welcome. It's this is going to be awesome day. Joining us in the chat space to help answer your questions and share links to resources is David DeAngelo, a program officer at VentureWell. Oh, this is going to be a great hour. Are you guys excited? Absolutely. Woo, okay. So thank you for joining me today. And as we wait for viewers to send us their questions, I want to kick off the discussion. I just want to ask you guys to explain the value and the purpose of digital marketing for a startup. Very important, right? So, Andrew, let's start with you. What why is so important? Sure. So I'm sure as many of our viewers already know, digital marketing brings some unique challenges to a startup, specifically with a lack of resources, especially with time and money or budget. So with that in mind, I think that it is so important in the purpose of digital marketing for startups is to really lay the foundation upon which you're going to grow your marketing strategy and marketing plan. Specifically, I think it's important to take the time to understand how to really convey the value of your product or service to your target audience. And the reason this is so important is because when you get to the point where you need to start promoting yourself and investing in promotion, if you haven't spent the time on building this foundation, you're potentially going to do it inefficiently and ineffectively, essentially losing your most valuable resource time and money. Yeah, and if you're doing it ineffectively, I mean, nobody in a startup has time to waste. Exactly. Or money to waste. And your thoughts on this, Scott? I think the biggest benefit to digital marketing is just the, for the first time ever, anyone can reach anyone.  Like TV and magazines was it. Now anyone with $10 can go get 10 clicks, 20 clicks, 100 clicks, people that really are going to your website. You can reach, we can be here in DC and reach anyone anywhere in the world, just because they're all on the digital space. And so, like Andrew said, it's a fantastic way to get these efficiencies. But for me, it's just this groundbreaking voice giving platform where anyone can talk to anyone. And so, if you have something to say or if you have something you want to share or you're testing something, like what an incredible tool to share with people. Hey, I've got this new idea. What do you guys think? And then you get feedback. That's what I love about digital marketing is that how many people read your magazine ad? You have no idea. Right. But how many people clicked on your ad and what did they do with it? I mean, it's all spelled out for you. So, that's why I love digital marketing and why I use it almost exclusively is because of real-time feedback. And I mean, there are what? A couple billion people on Facebook? Oh, yeah. A lot. Right? Probably a lot of our audience is on Facebook. Yeah, exactly. And how they're even watching us right now, right? You can have ads and do all sorts of marketing. You don't have to do big company. And you're going to help decode some of that for us. Yeah, we'll try and break it down. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and so it gives everyone a voice. Everyone gets that. That's awesome. Okay, we're going to dig into that and you're going to make me real smart. Yeah, we'll hand it over. I also want to quickly go over some of the different digital marketing tools that are available to startups. So we're going to talk about this. Organic and paid social media, paid advertising, content creation and curation, search engine optimization. I really need to understand this better and data analytics. So what are your experiences in using these diverse tools for promoting a company's product or services to different audiences? Make me smart, Scott. Well, that wasn't quite the list. It was, it was. And it was kind of all over the place. If you can think of it like a funnel, okay? And at the top of the funnel is where just the most general... I mean, think about everyone that's on Facebook. Let's call that the 3 billion people whatever is on Facebook. That's the very top of the funnel. And as you use your marketing, your targeting, so if you use pay per click was one of them. PPC is the acronym for that. But if you put an ad up, you pick a segment of that group. And you say, I want to advertise to people. Let's say I want to sell, I don't know, what's something fun to sell? Let's sell shoes. I can see my shoes. Oh, did you? Okay, great. Let's sell some shoes. I'm in. You like shoes? Sure. So, of all these people, everyone wants shoes, but specifically, we can drill into are they male or female shoes? Are they high-end shoes? Are they disposable? Like what types of things do these people like? And so you can drill in a certain segment. And then as you put the ad out, so the PPC side, we have to... Pay per click. Pay per click. So that means somebody has, when you put an ad on Facebook, somebody clicks on it, then Facebook charges you. So let's say it's 10 cents. So there goes 10 cents for someone to click on my ad that says, hey, these shoes are for sale. And then they go to my website. And so the other side of the tools you were talking about was like Google Analytics. Right. So this is a free tool. And you just have to put a little snip at a code. There's some great YouTube videos and things like that. I can walk you through it. It's pretty simple. But if you have that code on your site, then as people start visiting your site, Google Analytics watches them. Scary, right? What? They're being watched right now. Yeah, exactly. But it looks at how long they spend on your website. What do they click on? Where are they going? An important metric on there is where do they leave? Right. Right. So it's like, oh man, every time someone gets to this page, they leave. This page seems to be more engaging. Maybe I need a call to action button here or a different picture. And so for me, the advertising side, the advertising tools like PPC and SEO get into that search engine optimization. Maybe you can touch on that. It's a little bit of an art more than it is. Like don't buy an SEO book because the moment it's in print, it's out of. Yeah, it needs to be updated. It changes so often. But anyway, so as you do the advertising to get people to your site or wherever you're trying to take them. And then you have analytics tools. So those are different. So you have marketing, which is basically the point is to get people to your site. And then once you're at their site, what are they doing? And then that's when you'd use a tool like Google Analytics to analyze what they're doing. And figure out where they're dropping off. What's working. So what's wrong with that page or why didn't they not purchase or go to the next page? Exactly. Yep. Okay, so that's one of them. And so SEO, I hear about it all the time, right? Search engine optimization. Maybe you can make me smart about it and make our global audience smart about how to use that effectively. Sure. So SEO is at its core, the notion of optimizing your website, whether it's in the technical coding or in the content on the website, to put you in the best position for a search engine like Google or Bing to rank you at the top of the search results for a particular query. So it requires a number of skill sets. First and foremost, it's very technical. The coding on the website needs to be done in such a way that it's friendly for Google to be able to read through your website or to find your website. Google actually has a great resource on their own website in their Webmaster Tools that talks about the basics of SEO and the right way to do SEO on your own website. So I recommend checking that resource out. You get all the technical aspects of your website correct so that Google can see your website. But then equally as important is the content on your website. If you want to rank for a particular keyword, let's say it's running shoes, we'll keep going with that example, you better be talking about running shoes on your website, right? Because if Google is going to read your website, you want them to have a clear understanding of what you're talking about. So you need to make sure that you optimize the content, whether it's putting the keyword in the content itself in what's called the title tag, which is the text that you see in your browser when you're on. Yes! Yeah, so that's all the coding, that's all in the backend. So you know what?  But if you can use, yeah, Squarespace is great. One that we use a lot, we built a lot of WordPress websites. WordPress, I think WordPress is the biggest, right? Exactly. It's most universal. That's right, and they have a tool, I'm sure many of the viewers watching us are using WordPress or thinking about it. There's a tool, there we go. Yeah, I'm using WordPress. Yeah, here's the notification. There's a tool called Yoast. Y-O-A-S-T. Y-O-A-S-T. I need a piece of paper, but I'll rewatch this. Right, and it's a free tool that enables you to modify maybe the title tag that I talked about or make sure that the coding is in proper order for Google or search engines to go to read your website. So there's a lot of science to it. There's a lot of technical aspects to it, but you also need to have that creative content aspect as well to make sure you're optimizing that. I have so many questions, and so do our viewers. So let's take a couple of them right now. A viewer in Kampala, am I saying that correctly, asks, how can someone use digital marketing in a place where there is no internet access? That's a valuable question. Oh, man. I don't know that I have the... How do you do that? I think you need the internet for this. Yeah, let me think through that. We have experts here, but sometimes we have to think about this. Can you do digital marketing? So some tools can be used offline, but every now and then you're going to have to be able to access the internet in order to be able to update it. I think about even just Google Drive is a tool that we use at our agency often to be able to put together marketing plans or to do keyword research, for example. So you can work on those documents offline, and then when you're connected to the internet, eventually it can get all synced up. You are severely limited, though, in terms of your ability to communicate with people on social media, for example. You'd have to be connected to the internet to actually be able to do that. So... One thing you might want to do is that you can create a marketing plan offline. Right? Sure. You could say, what are the keywords I want to use? What are the images I want to use? You can do a lot of prep work, and so that you can have it all set up so that when you do...  You need to find a way to connect to the internet, but you can do a lot of work just on a Word document or something like that where you're saying, okay, these are the phrases, these are the paragraphs, so that then when you're connected to the internet, you go to internet cafe or something, you can just copy and paste in all the work you've already done, and so you don't have to waste that time that you are connected to the internet. You are paying for the internet. You've already done all the time-consuming work. I'll give you one other interesting tidbit here. There's another free tool called Hootsuite that can help with your social management. You can monitor all the chatter out there on a particular topic or on a particular feed, and one of the things you can do is schedule out social posts. So ahead of time, you know you need to be posting fairly regularly on social media, but ahead of time, if you can map out the things you want to say and when you want to say it, you can set that all up ahead of time if you know you're not going to have internet access for an extended period, and it would be essentially posted for you while you're not there automatically. So you could do some of these things ahead of time to help you. I think natively within Facebook, you can schedule as well, but Hootsuite is a lot easier, I think. I think they do a good job. But yeah, so in an hour, you can put together the next 60 days of posts, and then you just push go, and then every day at 10 o'clock, you're not connected to the internet, but Hootsuite or Facebook, whatever is scheduled, that's a great suggestion. Excellent. I knew you guys would come up with Hootsuite for this, and that's brilliant. And even if you have access to the internet, Hootsuite is... Absolutely. And that's what I'm doing when I leave here today. So let's talk about things that are free, too. There are effective digital marketing tools that are free, and what would those look like? Which ones are they? Which ones are the ones that are really worth it? Because I know as I'm building my business, I'm like, this is really cool. Okay, that's $4 a month. And then this one over here is $7 a month, and it does add up. And I'm finding that as a small business owner, too. So what are the ones that are free that you would recommend? So there's an entire category that is just paid marketing, and that's just his own thing. And then you have the organic side, which I would say is probably more, let's call it sweat equity, right? It's like the grind, and that's free. That's your time, but that's still free. It doesn't cost you anything. Ultimately, the idea with search engine optimization, SEO, Google, at the end of the day, is a robot, right? And it's crawling your site. It's looking at your content. What are you writing? What are you saying? And it's trying to decide is this, when somebody searches for good running shoes, right? Good running shoes. Does the Google machine think this is a good site for that? And so that's the idea behind it. So that's why writing a blog as often as you can is important, is because your site then is consistently being updated with, look at this article after article after article of free running shoes. And so eventually, hopefully Google sees that and if people start referencing it or visiting it, all of a sudden you can start organically climbing the ranks. And hopefully the golden grail, I don't know what to call it, is the front page, right? The top 10 results of Google. You want to be in the top 10. That's the goal. I mean, think about it. When have you ever clicked next page after a Google search? Only when you Google yourself. Yeah, only when you, yeah, yeah, yeah, I could write. That's about it. And we do need to be careful what content we're putting out on ourselves too, for that reason. But yeah, so that's free. That you can always be working on your SEO, talking more, sending out tweets. I mean, every time you're pushing that content, talking about the subjects that are important to you, in the internet, SEO machine will eventually recognize that. And so when people do search for your specialty or something you're doing, they'll be like, well, you know, the AI, Google is like, well, I don't know what you just asked me, but this person over here keeps talking about that. So how would I show them on the search results? Gotcha. And I don't think that we realize that sometimes, that all of the content that we put out really can be free marketing. Yeah, we sometimes look at it as work. Just work, and it can really do that. Some entire agencies, all they do is content marketing, because it is, it's so important. We have a content marketing department, that there's two core principles that I think entrepreneurs or startups or small businesses really need to keep in mind as they're trying to get into digital marketing. And before they even get to the promotion piece. I talked about that foundation earlier. Yes. And some of those things are getting a good website, which does cost a little money, unfortunately. It doesn't have to be much. Making sure it's good on mobile, making sure that it has a good user experience. But the other two that are critical, I think, are good content, not just optimized content for SEO, although that's very important, but quality unique content. You want to give people an engaging experience when they get to your website. And I think that sometimes we undervalue that we are the expert in our product and service, and we are our own best source of content. You might be tired of talking about your expertise, but they are dying to hear about it. So there's a free resources yourself and your own expertise. And then the second one, Scott, you mentioned it earlier, is data and analytics. I think that that has to be set up on day one. Data from day one through the rest of your marketing experience is going to be your anchor, your Sherpa, through everything you're testing and trying, because that's what's going to let you know if what you're doing is working or not, and if you should invest more. So before you even ever get to promotion, I think there are some low-cost resources to really help get that foundation set. Excellent. We have some more questions. And here's one. Are influencers on social media effective in getting good publicity for your startup? What do you guys think of that? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah? Absolutely. I'm sure. Okay. Influencers. I mean, and this is actually, sometimes when you're in a certain, I don't know what to call it, I mean, like circles are small, right? Right. Like if you're into shoes, you're hanging out with people that are also into shoes. If you're into coaching. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sure. And so hopefully the circles you're in, someone of your friends or someone knows someone who is connected or is an influencer and has an Instagram following. And so, yeah, that could potentially ask a favor. You know, say, hey, could you have so and so take a picture and show my shoes? So influencer marketing, I mean, eventually it gets very expensive, right? To have, I don't know. I feel like I should list a celebrity, but pick your favorite celebrity, right? That's millions of dollars, right? So it goes all the way from free to your friends posting about you. Yeah, everyone posts about you. Everyone start talking about you. Those are great influencers. And then eventually you get to the point where this is their job. These people have millions of followers and they want to talk about their new shoes.  Let me know what you think. And they might post about you. So you just hit the nail on the head and it's the challenges that people aren't going to give you a plug for free necessarily. And so that's a big challenge with influencer marketing. You need to give them something of value, which can range from money to maybe trading a link. But what we have found at Silverback Strategies works really effectively is getting them involved in the content creation itself. Yeah. Making you a part of the team. Exactly. So if they're creating a piece of content, keep going with shoes. Let's say there's some fancy new shoe technology and you bring them in as an expert on your blog post. Oh, yeah. Now they're incentivized to share that content already. You almost don't even have to ask them to share the content at this point. Because they want to say, hey, look, I was involved. That was part of this from the beginning. Exactly. You're giving them credit. They feel ownership about it too. Yeah, they actually have credit. They're like, look, I'm so into shoes that the shoe company asked me to develop these shoes for them. Right. So no cold call. Get involved and try to find creative ways. Make them a part of your marketing team. That's right. To try to establish those relationships. People are loving this conversation, by the way. We have so many questions. Michael, from our online audience, is asking, based on your experience, what are the most common mistakes made by startups in their marketing campaigns? I've got a good one here. OK, you take it. I'm going, I got this theme going here of getting the foundation right. And it's when you don't. And I've seen this a few times is a small business will start spending some money on something like Google AdWords, pay for click marketing. And they'll see that it's driving traffic and driving conversions or sales. So they'll want to do more of it. And they'll do more and more. And eventually, their entire marketing budget is going into this one paid channel. But they never took the time to get a good website or good content to begin with. So now they're in this position where they can't afford to spend any less on their paid channel, because it'll impact their bottom line, to go fix what they should have done in the first place. It's a really hard position for a small business to be in. So the mistake in this case is not spending the time at the beginning to get a good website, good content, and get your analytics and tracking set up. That's huge. And I'm learning so much. We have so many questions. A viewer at the Salvadoran American Cultural Center is asking, how can the best elements of a business be identified for inclusion in a social media strategy? Do you want to take this one, Sam? Sure. That's a great question. Again, social media is a little bit of an art. I like to think. I think people forget that social media is social media. Right. Like, think of it like a party. So if we all went to a party, would you want me to walk up and say, hi, I sell insurance. Nice to meet you. Yeah, it's like chill out a little bit on the sales side. And let's think of it like a party. Like, make your social media. Think about it. Literally, what would make you go to this page? Why would you want to go to this party? Right? What's there? What are they talking about? What are they showing? And so when you're looking online of what to include in your social media mix, look at what other people are talking.  Like, you should be able to feel out. I do like that subject. Or my audience would love that because I love that. So I'm going to share that. I'm going to put that into my social media mix. So I think it's important to not just look at it as a sales channel, but it really is a conversation. It's this. It's engagement. And so as you're looking to figure out what you want to post, what would you want to read? Like flip it on its head. Why would I go to my page? And people also want to get to know you as the expert sneaker, developer, whatever the thing might be. They want to know what drives you? Why did you do this? Yeah. Anyway, going to a next question, we have a viewer in Monrovia asking, how can you secure your intellectual property while doing digital marketing? What do you think, Andrew? Hire a good lawyer. I was going to say, I was going to say, you can't. Right? Foundation. Right. It's not easy. And I don't have much experience with international intellectual property law myself. But I think that it is important to have some legal counsel early on. I don't think you need a lot of it. And I'm not talking necessarily about the intellectual property of your product or service itself, more so on your marketing and on your content you're putting out there. It's important to make sure that it's not being stolen. And one easy way to do that actually is there's a number of tools out there, but you could also just Google your own content and see, are people copying my content? Is my content being used elsewhere? It might not necessarily be illegal, maybe it is, but Google will punish your website, actually, if your content's being copied, if they're seeing duplicate content. So I think it's you, maybe, trying to cheat the system or something. Exactly. Yeah, so you do want to look out for it. It's important to be vigilant about people copying your marketing content out there and hire a lawyer. That was the first thing I learned in starting a business and one of the things, and not necessarily digital marketing, but it's get a copyright or a trademark on your name because you don't even realize that someone else could be using the same name. It was a long process. Yeah, that's a good point. Yeah, it really is. The other thing just small, maybe a little too deep in the weeds is just put little marks on your images. And so put your, I'm losing what they call it. A watermark. A watermark of your logo or something like that. So someone can Photoshop it out or something, but it makes it just one step harder to use your image somewhere else. Don't make it easy for them. Yeah, don't make it easy. And then if they do, there's your name on the image. So it actually might help out. That's good. Okay, we have a viewing group in Namibia asking, what's the one key tool to ensure that your website appears first on any search engine? Obviously, there are ads that will be up there. That's right, it's good way to get into it. So there is that. And I always see the little ad and go, no, I'm not going to click there. I'm going to look down a little bit more. You know, everyone says that, but- But someone clicks. Yeah. Someone clicks. 95% of Google's revenue is people clicking those ads. Yeah. So I know and everyone, it blew my mind the first time. I kind of realized that. 95%. Well, they're an advertising company. It makes sense. So it surprised you. Wow. I'm sorry, we just went off on that. Yeah, that's okay. So how do you get to be one of those first non-paid people? How do you do that? That organic win. So for tracking it, other than just googling the keyword that you want to be ranking for and checking who's on top, there are tools out there that range in cost. I know Moz.com has a tool. Moz is on base. Ahrefs.com is another one that can help you. Or SEMrush is another website that can help you monitor who's ranking for certain keywords. And it's changing all the time. So you can't worry too much about one ranking on one particular day. You have to watch it over time. So there's a number of ways that you can monitor. And then there are larger tools like Accuranker where you can monitor thousands of keywords in real time and see how things are trending. So there's a range of tools to help you monitor that outside of just googling yourself. Yeah. Gotcha. One more question from our viewing group in Liberia asking what's the benefit of creating a business website and what's the risk in managing a business website? Do you want to take that one, Scott? Sure. So I guess you could look at it two ways.  Right. Then you need to have that website to process the order and take their money and get the shipping details and things like that, right? So you do need a website for that. For maybe consulting businesses, service-oriented things where you're not necessarily the actual transaction isn't happening on your website, I still think it's incredibly important to have what I would call a digital business card. Right? I mean it's if people search for, they know your name and they search for your website and you don't have one. Then the first question is, are they still in business? Is this legitimate business? Is this legit? And that's actually a good piece on the social media side as well. Some people will just set up their social media page and then leave it. They're in business and they're doing things, but if anyone goes to their page and it's dead, it's like are they still in business? Yeah, can I call you? Will you answer the phone? Like they don't even know. So it's almost like the other way I compare it to is an Amazon review. Okay?  What is better than what? It's based on the reviews. So how much money is one more five-star review worth? It almost would be impossible to calculate that, right? But we do know that it's essential. You need good reviews to sell on Amazon. And that's how your digital footprint is. Is if you're not present, if you don't exist, then people offline are going to question doing services with you because it's like, well, if I look for you and you don't exist, then I'm all of a sudden less sure about doing business with you.  Yeah, right. They're here. The car isn't here. The car isn't here. The driveway, maybe it is. Yeah, yeah, this house looks empty. There's no furniture. There's no, do you live here? What's going on? Yeah, yeah. And then you leave, hmm. I don't know if I want to hang out with you anymore. Yeah. Right. We have a question from Twitter. How effective is it to do advertising on your own website? What do you think, Andrew? It depends on your business model.  I mean, that's how every news organization is making their money, right, is on the advertisements that they sell. If you aren't though, it's planning on having ad revenue be your key monetization strategy, I would typically recommend against it. If you're trying to sell shoes or you're trying to do, you really want people focused, I think, on your services and what you're trying to convey to them. And those ads may be disruptive in that user experience on your website. So it's tempting because you can make money from it, but you have to be very careful not to disrupt the user's experience on your website with those ads. And if it's not going to be a primary source of revenue for you, then I would typically recommend against it. Yeah, it's about opportunity cost, right? It's like, okay, we can put these ads on the side of my page, but I'll get 30 cents if someone clicks on that ad, but if they buy my product, I'll get $10. Right. And so it's like- You need to focus them. Yeah, it's like less is more when it comes to websites. I have lots of clients that say, oh, I want a website like Apple's. And it's like, okay, do you have a billion dollars? First off. But the other thing is to take cues from the big dogs. Google's Nexus products and things like that. The sites are so simple. Like your website does not have to be complicated. In fact, the biggest and best websites out there are very simple. I mean, Google, it's a search bar, right? There's nothing else going on, right? You know what they do. They could add all sorts of stuff there, right? They could add all sorts of banners and things like that, but that's a distraction. All they want you to do is search and that's it, right? I mean, they want to do other things, use their maps and among other things, but google.com just a search bar. You need to provide value to the user. And to them, the value is that search box. On your website, it's going to be something different. And ads don't always add value to your website, but they can if that's how you're doing it. And again, if that's your business model, if you're providing content to sell ads on the side, then yeah, go for it. That's an entirely different thing. Exactly. So what's your strategy? What's your goal? You do need to pick. Okay. This or that. A question from Mike in Columbia on Twitter. Are there specific social media strategies certain businesses should follow? And how can I best decide where to invest my resources? Every business should follow certain strategies. The hardest part is figuring out which ones, right? Scott mentioned earlier though, with a few bucks, you could get up and running. The bar to entry is so low to these. So assuming you have your foundation set and you're ready to start investing in promotion, you just need to start testing. There are some clear winners and losers. If you are a B2B product or service, LinkedIn is a great place to start. That's a network for business professionals. So you can do a little bit of audience research ahead of time to understand where is your audience engaging? Where are they going? Where are your competitors finding success? Or where are they promoting to help guide you? But it's pretty easy to run a test. Keep your budget low. Have your data and analytics set up so that you can see if it's working or not. And then let that data really guide the decision on if it's the right strategy or not. Yeah, that really is the right answer. Everyone, and I think as entrepreneurs, we get stuck in pretending. It's almost like we can lie to ourselves that our assumptions are reality. We're like, oh, so and so this type of person is going to buy my thing. Or this type of person, my target audience is going to love this picture. But that's an assumption. Based on everything that we brought to the table and where I was yesterday. Yeah, it's a best guess. Which is a good place to start. Yeah, it's a great place to start. But if you're not testing two images at the same time to figure out which one's better, because ultimately, I have to tell this to this client sometimes, I'm like, your opinion doesn't matter, right? You're not your audience. That's why the test is so important. Yeah, that's why the test is so important is because we want them to decide for us what phrase or what image to use. So testing that's absolutely. And test all the platforms. Yeah, exactly.  It's not going to take your business down. And that's what's great about digital marketing too is you'll know pretty quick. Exactly. You'll know like, hey, when I'm on Twitter and I do these things, is it working for me? I mean, you do need to give it a fair shot. But at the end of the day, you can see pretty quickly, wow, when I talk on Twitter versus when I talk on Facebook, a lot more people are talking to me on Facebook. And if you have to pick between the two, then now your decision's made for you, right? Absolutely. So for those of you just joining us, guess what? You're watching the Just Tech Connect conversation on growing your startup through digital marketing. And I am joined by panelists, Andrew Nelson and Scott Sorensen. And we really appreciate you being here. And of course, David DiAngelo, who's our chat expert. We're currently taking live questions from viewers and you can submit your questions through the chat space. It's next to this video or you can do it on Twitter using hashtag Just Tech Connect. So here's a question I have for you. Some startups don't have large marketing budgets, right? So let's talk about some affordable yet effective strategies to leverage tools that are available. What do you think, Scott? There are a number of things. One is content. So you got to start that right away. The thing we didn't talk about SEO is it's a long game. Six months minimum, minimum. I mean, probably a year before your ranking, really, in the top 10. That's great information because you might get disappointed. Yeah, don't expect any organic traffic from your blog posts in the first couple of months. You really got, and I don't want to call them throwaway blog posts, but you really just need to start producing content. That's a free thing, right? You just post it on your blog or I'll be updating, depending on how your homepage is set up, but be adding things to your page, talking on social media. All of that can be incredibly powerful in the long term. And you do need to have that foundation. You do need to have, I mean, for the first time in history, brands can be people, right? Like I call brands our bros.  Yeah, like beef. It's really funny, too. Right, it's hilarious. It's where fights that go on, yeah. And all of a sudden, these brands are being personified. And so it's important for you to be out there. And you can, I mean, before when you had a company, you had this long time between, do people like my product or not? Oh yeah. Now, after the first review comes in, right, you're like, oh shoot, that's broken. We need to fix that on our product. Like your feedback loop is so powerful. So I would start there with the content. Start with the content. Start producing as often as possible. I'm going to say once a day, probably be publishing something.  If you can keep that up. Keep it quality. Yeah, see with quality. Start with maybe once a month if you need to do something, but work on your cadence. Make sure it's consistent. People need to be able to count on you. Right, because they know to go there. Yeah, every Tuesday, it's Tuesday tech talk. And there we are every Tuesday, right? And you might think that no one, well, the first Tuesday tech talk, no one's there. And that's okay. Pretend they're there, yeah. They're building an audience. And I say this to some of the people who I work with, because I help people with their strategies as well on Facebook Live, because as a news anchor, I did a lot of that. And sometimes they'll say, I only have four people there. And I say, if you could change four people's lives, wouldn't that be worth it? Yeah. You've got to not get caught in those little numbers at first and do it. What do you think about this? Well, you can't promote until you have content. Because otherwise, you're sending people to a poor user experience. And what are they going to read when they get to your website? So an empty box. If you can create. If you ever want them to think of you as the leader of your particular niche, or if you ever want them to come back, you better have that quality content ready for them, even if it's the very first viewer of your website. So look at it as you're building an archive of quality content to really fuel that promotion that you'll eventually be doing. And just a quick note on the foundation and make sure you're everything in place. It honestly really is a stumbling forward. It don't get caught in perfectionism. It's much better, not always. Sometimes your website's terrible. But it's almost always better to have something out there. It's iterative. You know, but it's iterative. And so as you learn that, oh, people aren't liking this or I need a change. This is a bad user experience. But you can't learn that that's a bad user experience until someone's had maybe a bad user experience, right? And so you got to just stumble forward with it. Don't hold back and wait for everything to be perfect. And I don't have the perfect picture. It's like start with the OK picture. And let's start getting some feedback. Get those analytics coming in. Start your year trek on the SEO climb today. And so really, I would say you just get started. I mean, that's probably the hardest steps can be the first one. And learn. Be open to learn. It is. It is a learning process. It really is. And don't take it, you know, if somebody makes fun of your first video or whatever.  You learned something that was valuable and it cost you nothing. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, it cost you a little bit of ego. But we have enough of that. That's OK. Let's get back online and see what our viewers have to say. Online viewer Rony Rivera asks, would you recommend using a blog in my social media strategy and what would be the benefit of that? And we talked about that a little bit. But do you want to take this one Andrew? What do you think of this? So every industry is a little bit different. Every audience wants to read different types of content. But we at our firm have found that blogs are a great archive of content to base your social media off of. You could write one great high quality blog post and have weeks worth of social media content to refer back to that blog post just based off of that one. So the challenge with social media is that when you post something, how quickly is it at the bottom of the feed and people aren't going to see it anymore? I mean, it's really fast moving. Hours within minutes sometimes. Right. And you need to fuel that beast with quality content. So I think a blog can play a critical role in housing the content on which to source your social media post. It's a nice long term anchor. And I liked what you suggested as well as your blog post can be a couple of pages. But then you just take pieces of it, smaller snippets, and that becomes your Facebook posting feed. I never thought of that. When I post my blog, it's one and done. Yeah, no. Come back, revisit it, pull a quote out of it. The next a week later, pull a different quote out of it and always referencing back. I have a client who we've been posting three or four blogs a month for a couple of years. So they have 20, 30, 40 blog posts. And just recently, just one of those. So thinking about that, they've got 40 blog posts and just recently one of them was picked up on the front page of Google. And so their website went from a few thousands and literally overnight, it doubled. And so now it went from like a few thousand people a day to two, three, four thousand people a day. And that's our new standard. But it's because of a blog post we wrote in August. Really? And so it's that quality content. The blog is a great place for fresh because you don't want to be necessarily changing your homepage every day. And so the blog is a great place. Google, all the crawlers are set up to know what a blog is and treat it differently and understand that some blogs are set up. You just keep scrolling and it never stops. It just keeps loading the next blog post. So yeah, definitely have a blog. I think it's a great place. And like you said, it depends on the industry, but in general, people want to talk about what you're doing or what you're saying and they want to hear what you have to say about it. One final note, talking back to the question with social media and a blog, a great benefit of the blog is by using that to fuel your social media. You now have a way to bring people back to your website. So another challenge with social media is if all you're doing is posting, that's great that you're engaging with people. But what are you doing to get them to your website? To get them to learn more or purchase or convert whatever that means to your particular business. So by posting on social media and referencing your blog posts, you're now bringing them into your blog and you're starting to bring them into that marketing funnel. I'm learning so much here today, Jennifer. Thank you. And I know so many people at home are too. John Howard on Twitter asks, what's a strategy to get more views on your website without spending a lot of money? What do you think of this, Andrew? Yeah, so a couple of times ahead, a blog on social media is a great way to get that started. And then that blog can serve double duty with organic search or SEO. So it's really about having quality content on your website that is optimized for social channels and optimized for SEO channels. It takes time. That's the problem is when you spend money on promotion, you get that instant. You can get that traffic to your website. If you have the luxury of those budgets, then great, that should be a part of your strategy. But if you don't, you need to settle in and start that long work of posting quality content, optimizing it for SEO, posting it on social media. And if you do that consistently, just like your client saw, it will build on itself. Eventually one of them hits. And eventually it even gets exponential. It's amazing how fast it grows. Based on stacking on each other, absolutely. And further to the blog posts, you might think it's a good headline, but you might want to switch it out and try a different one as well. Because it might just... Okay, I got a couple of clicks. Well, let's change that out because you might be speaking differently to different audiences. Yeah, that's true. I would make sure that you don't necessarily change a historical blog post because you're trenching in the historical... If you change it, then Google has to re-crawl it. And so I would suggest actually just doing a new article that's similar with a different title later. Or test two social media posts. Or test two at the same... Yeah, exactly. And see which one does better. Right. The other thing to add to the conversation here about content, that we just kind of use that word generally, but it's important to understand, like don't get stuck in a rut where you're just posting pictures or just posting text. Video is extremely powerful and extremely underutilized. And there is a war right now going on between YouTube and Facebook. And they are discounting and promoting videos. They're trying to own videos online. And so when you post a video, they are pushing it for free to your audience because they're trying to beat out the competitor's website. So don't just get stuck on, oh, this is a pretty picture. But like do a Facebook Live, do a selfie video. Talk it. I had a client who... She was a limousine company. And I'm just like, you should... Once a week, get in your limousine and, you know, and sit there and talk about the business. You know, and she's, well, no one wants to hear from me.  People want to hear from you. They do, no matter what you're doing. And so it's important to get out there, have that voice, and you'll find yourself, I think, in your brand. And not always does the president of the company need to be the voice, right? You can have someone who is loud and fun and whatever. And so, you know, will you talk about my product? Once a week, you know, let's just do it for whatever reason. And so when we say content, it's pretty wide. Exactly. One other note on video, because I think that's a huge topic right now. We were just working with our Facebook reps yesterday, and they let us know that they're expecting by 2023, I think was the date. 80% of all engagements on Facebook will be video views. We'll be with video. Video is going to become, if it hasn't already, the number one source of engaging with people on Facebook as a platform. And it's quickly becoming standard. The standard. I don't know, you know, text is still very important, but it's going to become the most effective way here pretty soon of engaging your content with people online. So that's really important. Think about how video needs to fit into your strategy. And if you don't feel comfortable on video, and you're thinking to yourself, people don't want to hear from me. Actually, you're wrong. People want to hear from you. You really should try. Everyone. They really do. This is a question from Twitter and from Elaine in Beirut. What's the best way to generate business to business meetings from digital marketing activities? That's a great one. I'll throw that to both of you. Whoever talks first. Yeah, I think we referenced it earlier with LinkedIn. That is an entire platform dedicated to B2B. It's kind of annoying a little bit. Actually, every time I'm on there, I'm like, I don't want to buy your services. But find those platforms. I don't know what else. I mean, be there. Well, one of the other things with LinkedIn that you can do, other than the feed, the news feed, which is a good place to be. Right. Another place to be posting content. Right. Exactly. Is a LinkedIn email is a place where you can send. It's almost, if you haven't seen it, it's almost like a little email inbox within LinkedIn. So whether you're sending someone a direct message or you can sponsor message and pay to get it out a little bit more. It's an opportunity to directly engage with a particular industry or someone of a particular seniority. And you're able to talk to them just like you would on Facebook. It's harder on Facebook. You don't know what their title is necessarily or people aren't always there for work. But the world, are they a decision maker? Right. But LinkedIn is just a great place. People go to LinkedIn because they're in the mindset of wanting to further their career or make connections. And they're in that business mindset already. So it's a great way to engage in those types of conversations. The other way that just came to me is education. So start a video school on your subject. Right. Share how you do what you do. And you'll be surprised by people reach out to you. Oh my gosh, you're an expert on this because you have a class on it. Right. But they don't necessarily know that unless you're out there teaching. So I would say start some type of content whether it's on YouTube or Facebook or something. You need to be kind of kind of. Yeah, there's some great platforms that are literally just for trainings and things like that. But start a course. Start a course on your subject. I mean, even if it is tying shoes, like you'll be just blown away by the niches that are inside niches. I guarantee you thousands of people of a month search how to tie shoes. Or unique ways to. I bet if you should go look up there. Go look it up right now. Someone is doing this. Someone let us know. Yeah, go find the coolest how to tie your shoes to cool us. I bet that's a thing for sure. Or maybe make a video on that. And then see if there's not. Yeah, you should make a video and then you can own that free advice. There you go. Yeah. So we have a viewer from the U.S. embassy in Monrovia, Liberia asking, what's the best way to use digital marketing to rebrand your business? Rebranding is hard. Yeah. And I think it's great that we have entrepreneurs and startups thinking about rebranding because it's a lot easier to do at that point than it is once you've invested all this time in building brand equity. Right. Yeah. So obviously, you can redesign your website and I think that you have an opportunity to get some free PR, a little bit of publicity here. It's an exciting thing. You're rebranding. Why are you rebranding? Yeah. It's this new message, this new look and feel you're getting across. It's better than it was before. So you have an opportunity, whether it's on social platforms or it's a little more old school but even press releases are places where people still pick up press releases. You can go get that message out. You know, we're excited, we're rebranding and this is the new direction we're taking things.  Exactly. And you see this all the time with, again, I like to call them, I just lost it, but mentors, right? So look at Apple, right? How many times their logos basically stayed the same but it has progressed, right? Used to have the rainbow in it, used to have this, now it's really simple. Microsoft, same thing. The squares used to be all wavy and flag format and they've rebranded as well to stay up with the times. And so that's a great question and that's great forward thinking. I don't know if you need to rebrand because of something bad that happened or it's just feeling tired, but the digital platform is the best for that because it can change. You can take off your logo, although it will be forever on the internet, the old one. Right, everything lives forever. But you, at least on your page, you can have your new brand up and ultimately that's what people are going to reference is I know when I go looking for what logo does this client want me to look for, I always go to their homepage and say, okay, which one are they using? Right. Okay, this is their most up-to-date brand. So it's important to be consistent here too. There's SEO implications here, which I'll get to in a second, but if you are going to rebrand, make sure that you, all at once, change everything that you've done online, all your social profiles, your website, obviously. You're talking just on the contents, on the imagery and things like that. Yeah, so exactly, your profile photo for your business on social media, for example, I see people rebrand, but then they have a bunch of old logos out there. It's confusing for a user, first of all. And it takes you out of the experience. Exactly, which is the right company. Do I really, is this a legitimate company? I'm not sure what's going on. Is this the right, this pay format has the old logo, are these pay, is this up-to-date, are these prices correct? And then thinking back to SEO, this is actually also incredibly important. Google's going to trust your website a little bit less if they're seeing that your address is different in different places and your logo is not lining up or the name of your company is not lining up. They'll actually notice that.  So there's even SEO implications on being consistent and thorough on that transit. Even Google will see that you're having an identity crisis. Wow, everyone sees that. You can hide it. Which is your real address. Who are you? You're going down in SEO. And one other thing to add because you were talking about press releases, I can tell you from being a reporter that don't give me your press release as an attachment because you're asking me to do one more thing. Oh, that's smart. Put it in the body of the email. Yeah, it's already open. So I can forward it to someone, I can look at it right away, but if you ask me to take one more step, I mean, we're just so busy. You're lucky I even opened it, right? Right, so many emails. Yeah, smart. So we have an online guest who's asking, what are the business risks for changing a website from one domain to another after a year or two? And what are the ways to avoid having problems? This is kind of connected in a way to the last question. Major, major risk. Yeah, I was going to say a nuclear bomb. Right, yeah, catastrophic. There are smart ways to do it, and ultimately, almost in all cases, you take a hit for a few months, but then once Google or whatever search engine comes back and says, oh, okay, this is who we used to have as number one. Let's put them back. So it doesn't have to be catastrophic, do plan on taking a hit, but I would do some research, a lot of research. There's a right and a wrong way to do it. That's pretty black and white, and there are steps that need to be followed that are frankly over my head and very, very technical. You need to tell Google this is going to be happening, and you need to add certain code to say the old website is the new website. And then you need to make sure and kill all the old stuff, otherwise you get the duplicate content, and you start getting punished for that. So find a checklist. There are checklists out there. We're going to call them website migration checklists. Okay, good information. That you need to follow, I couldn't even attempt to try to list them all out right now. And if it's done wrong, if it's done properly, you might see a little bit of a dip in a recovery within a couple of months. Exactly. If it's done wrong though, you're completely removed from Google. Like you're completely removed. So you have to be very careful. That is very important information. Thank you for that. Great question. Yeah, absolutely. And we have time for just one more question. Wow, this hour flew. We have one more question from Ahmad in Jerusalem on Twitter. So how should I go about creating a low budget marketing campaign for a website in something such as e-commerce? What platforms should I use? So it sounds like he's asking about paid. I think so. Would you assume that? So I would bust out the Excel spreadsheet. This is what I do. And I say, okay, what are my costs? What are my margins? Okay, so every time I sell one of these, I make $10. So now you know, make sure you include everything you can and say, okay, if I sell one of these, I make $10. So now you know what your marketing budget is. It's $9.  So plan on that. Oh, it should always be better. My go-to in terms of platform, I think that's about platform, is just Facebook. Just because it's so universal, the most users, it does a great job with text. It does a great job with images. It does a great job with video. So all types of content. And they have the shopping ads nowadays, too. Yeah, yeah. Marketplaces, Sharpian ads. And they have lead generation as well now. So you can actually, it's actually great because you already have your information on Facebook and someone says, hey, do you want to add your email to this email list? Your email is already populated. So that's a fun new thing. So yeah, so I would start there. But I would start with the big picture of, okay, what is a successful cost per conversion? You need to know that. Otherwise, you're just spending money and then at the end of the month, you're like, do I have more than I started with? Or do I have less? And then testing, it really isn't, and when you know that margin you need to hit, you'll know right away if this is sustainable or not. And if you're in the ballpark of it sustainable, then I would say you'd probably be able to cut that cost in half over testing. Yeah, by optimizing. Another tool that we've found success in with e-commerce websites in addition to Facebook is, again, Google AdWords, they have an entire suite of advertisements specifically for e-commerce. I think back to that shoe example. Have you found Google AdWords to be more expensive in general than Facebook ads? It really depends on the industry, but the costs have definitely gone up. There's a lot, I think you're onto something there. I do think that in general, Facebook can be cheaper. I do find though that for now, Google has so much experience and so much reach in developing these ad products that they can really go toe to toe, which is surprising. Two years ago, Facebook could not go toe to toe with Google in terms of their performance, but over the past year or so, they've really... Their targeting is incredible. Their targeting, the cost is lower, their ad formats are better. So there are definitely times where you can beat out Google. The nice thing about Google ads as well is you don't necessarily have to set up a Facebook page and do all this work. You can just throw up two banners and see which one gets more clicks. Exactly. And so it's actually a great way... Like if you're starting from nothing, that's a great place to say, do they like it blue or they like it green? Do you like this logo? This way, and look at your click-through rates. That's what you want to look at, your click-through rates. That shows for every 100 people that see it, five people clicked versus one. You're like, okay, that one's better. That one from there. This has been so much fun. It really has. I've learned a lot. We're getting to the end. We're almost out of time, but before we get to saying goodbye to everyone, I just want to ask you both. What would you say the most important takeaway is, Scott? Oh, jeez. Yeah, I honestly would... As an entrepreneur, I say what I see hold most people back is the fear of failure. So all of this stuff, probably this last hour sounds very overwhelming. We've been doing this each, I think, close to a decade. So it takes time to get here, but I would just say just get started. Post something today, talk about it, get your brand foundation, figure it out, figure out what you want to do, and then test it and try it. Find a way to go probe somewhere, somehow. Do people like this? Are they going to engage with this? And so that would be my best summary. I think probably where the audience is at is, don't be afraid to get started and start right away because it's going to be a long road. Don't expect success right away. I feel like a lot of those big, giant success out of nowhere stories do a lot of harm to the entrepreneurship community because it is a roller coaster and it goes up and down, up and down. And so I would say my number one takeaway, most important thing is it really isn't... Is it going to be Facebook or is it going to be Twitter? I mean, that's nominal. It really comes down to getting out there and being present, having content exist. That needs to be your first step. Love it. Excellent. Biggest takeaway, Andrew. So I'm going to give two, I might be cheating, but... It's okay. Okay. It's okay. Number one is learn to love data. Maybe Excel spreadsheets don't excite you. Maybe data does not sound very exciting, but making data-driven marketing decisions is the key to staying cost-effective, efficient, and to optimize and grow things over time. It takes the emotion out of bad decisions. That roller coaster. That people say, but I really like this image. Irrelevant. Yeah, it is. It's like, look at the data. Yeah, great suggestion. The second, I think, it just gets back to that foundation.  Without those, you are going to have to end up spending even more going back and fixing it later. Yeah. So important. We are so lucky to have both of you here. Really, you're doing such a wonderful service to people all across the country and the world. Yeah, I hope we helped. Amazing. So thank you both. And also a shout out to David DiAngelo contributing in the chat space. Hey there, Dave. Before we go, we want to mention an exciting opportunity for entrepreneurs. The 2019 Global Entrepreneurship Summit, it's going to be held on June 4th and 5th in the Hague in the Netherlands. The GES Summit will bring together more than 2,000 participants and they're from all over the world. This is a marketplace for new deals and partnerships and also a forum to really discuss the larger context of technological change. So if you want to learn more and you want to apply to participate, we want you to go and visit the summit website at GES2019.org. And a special thanks to everyone watching today, especially you're the host of the viewing groups around the globe for bringing entrepreneurs together to be a part of this vital conversation. I mean, we had audiences at the Lead Africa iHub in Pretoria, South Africa. The U.S. Embassy in Esmara, Eritrea. I'm sorry. A lot of names here. The American Cultural Center in Namibia. The American Spaces in Brazzaville and Pointe-Nor, Congo. U.S. Embassy in Lometogo. The American Center in Uganda. The Youth Network for Reform in Liberia. The L Space iHub in Tunisia. The Barritech iHub in Beirut, Lebanon. The America House in Jerusalem, Israel. U.S. Embassy in Quito, Ecuador. The Costa Rican North American Cultural Center in San Jose, Costa Rica. The Benjamin Franklin Public Library and Cultural Center in Honduras. The Public Library of Sula. Valley Autonomous University in San Pedro Sula, Honduras. The Network of Nicaraguan Women Entrepreneurs at the U.S. Embassy Binational Center in Nicaragua. And the U.S. Embassy in Tegucalpa. Tegucalpa. Honduras. I don't know. Teguc... It's gone. Yeah. In Honduras, we love you there. Yeah. You're wonderful. The U.S. Consulate General in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. And please continue the conversation, even though I may have messed up the name of where you are. Because it doesn't mean that I don't love you. Anyway, please continue the conversation on Twitter at hashtag GIST Tech Connect. And check back here on gistnetwork.org for information about other upcoming GIST events, including programs just like this. I hope you enjoyed your discussion today. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you to all my guests. I loved being here. Goodbye. Goodbye.


Are you asking yourself just, how does makey makey work? And wondering how to use makey makey with scratch? Well stick around, because then this makey makey basics tutorial will cover things like circuits, which materials conduct electricity, compatible operating systems, and more. All this, come in your way. Hello world, Serving Scratcher here, teacher-surfer programmer bringing you the goodness of learning to code through video tutorials. If you're new around these parts, consider hitting that subscribe button to stay in the loop. Educators, be sure to check out the show more button down below in the description for a link to the Serving Scratcher mailing list. That's where I'll send out some monthly news that'll contain some resources to use with your learners. But hey, let's makey makey this tutorial. So where can you use your makey makey? Basically, any device that connects a keyboard or mouse into it, you can use makey makey. It's not officially supported on mobiles and tablets, but you might get lucky. Before we get our hands busy with scratch, we're first gonna have some understanding of what a circuit is, so let's go check that out. So just what is a circuit? Let's get a battery up to help us understand. So think of this battery as storing some potential energy. It's stored in the form of volts, but it doesn't do anything. In order for us to convert this potential energy into work, we need to complete a circuit. Got a light bulb here on the screen and I wanna use this battery to power this light bulb. So what I can do is I can get a wire and I can wire that up to the light bulb, but that's not enough because our circuit is not yet complete. So what I'll need to do is get another wire and round off our circuit and as soon as I attach it, our light bulb turns on. Now we can introduce the idea of a switch. You would have used a switch to power a light bulb at home. When the switch is flipped to off, then the light bulb circuit is incomplete. We've broken the circuit. And when we flick the switch to on, we've once again completed the circuit. Now when we're thinking about makey makey, we can replace our battery with a laptop and our switch with a keyboard key. We don't need our light bulb anymore. So when the key A is pressed down, that will complete our circuit and that's when we get the A displayed on the laptop. We can now replace that keyboard key with the makey makey board. We can then associate something like the left arrow press with some bananas. So now our bananas mean left arrow press. Then we can get involved. And if we attach ourselves to the earth connection and then we go ahead and we touch the bananas, we should complete a circuit and we should simulate a left button press on the laptop. Now we know what a circuit is. Let's jump over to scratch. Right, here we are in the scratch project editor. I'm just going to have a few sprites down here that will help us demonstrate a couple of the buttons that are here on the makey makey. The first thing we need to go ahead and do is connect our makey makey. I'll just bring up a modal overlay to show you that now. Go grab the red USB cable, connect it to your computer. Then grab your makey makey and connect the back of it. And you'll see all the lights light up including the red power led. If you get bombarded with a whole heap of pop-ups to install stuff, because it's your first time connecting the makey makey, just close it all down. You don't need to do any of that. Cool, now that we've got our makey makey connected, let's just demonstrate right away how we can use it. So if I take my right hand here and I connect it to the earth pin, and I can use my left hand here to complete the circuit because the flow electricity will pass through me. And if I go ahead and press the space, you'll see on the screen that we'll get a space between the T and the capital C. And there we go. I can use the down arrow and the right arrow to get to the position between the Y and the capital M and then I can make another space just like that. So that is how our human skin can connect a circuit. All right, that's the basic stuff, but how do we get makey makey to do some scratchy stuff? Remember the makey makey is just a keyboard. We've got the keyboard arrows here and we've got a space and a click at our disposal. We've got those events in Scratch's hack blocks. So we can head on over to the events and we can listen for when these events happen. We can also jump into the extensions to find the makey makey extension. We've got two hack blocks here at our disposal. You'll see that we've got one that mimics the event hack block, all the same business that is going on in there. And we've also got another one here that is specific to makey makey. So there are some specific combinations that you can listen to. I've just clicked on the connection sprite and I'm here in the costumes. What we're gonna do now is go ahead and check out some conductive materials. And we're going to display these costumes when a press is detected. The first conductive material I wanna demonstrate is copper tape. So when the left arrow key is pressed, I want us to switch to the costume copper to show that we've got a connection. I'm also just gonna play this sound connect effect when done. So what we can do now is grab some alligator clips and connect these to the makey makey. I'm going to connect one to the earth pin and I'm going to connect the other one to the left arrow key. Just like that. Here I've just cut out some copper strips. I'm gonna stick these onto the paper and connect the alligator clips to them. As you can see here on the clipboard, I've now stuck those copper strips onto our paper. I'm gonna now connect up our alligator clips. I'm gonna use the black clip to connect up the ground and I'm gonna use the white clip to connect up the left arrow. Here we go. Okay, now our two clips are connected. Remember before how we conduct electricity as well? Well, if I place my thumb and I put it between these two copper strips, I'm gonna complete the circuit. And you'll see in the scratch, we should see a display and a sound. And we do success. The next type of conductive material I'd like to demonstrate is graphite. Now graphite is great for art projects. You'll see here I've got a 2B pencil and a 6B graphite pencil. I'm gonna draw two lines across our page, one 6B and one 2B. Then we're gonna get our alligator clips and connect them to either side and to a different button. Okay, now we're gonna get two more alligator clips and connect one to the down arrow key and one to the earth. Over in scratch, we need to set up the conditions to handle for our pencil connection. So let's go ahead and duplicate this code block that we have here. Instead of a left arrow, we're gonna go for a down arrow now and let's switch to the costume of a pencil. We'll play the same connection sound. So what I've got ahead and done is connect up those alligator clips to our 2B graphite line. And just like we did with the copper tape, I'm gonna get my thumb and put it in the center button here because we'll complete this circuit. Okay, so nothing's happening there. That's interesting. So what I've gone ahead and done now is connect our alligator clips to either end of the 6B strip. I'm gonna get my thumb and put it on our button. And boom, we have a connection. So you may have noticed that this line is actually slightly darker. It didn't work for me the first time. So the point I'm trying to highlight here is that you need a dense coloring of graphite for this to work. So the 2B, no good. And a really dense 6B is good.  So go ahead and duplicate our code and we're gonna be focusing on the right arrow this time. And let's switch the costume to the orange. They can go ahead and stick an alligator clip directly into the orange, but a nice little hack is if you attach a paper clip to the end of it and then you can just insert the tip of the paper clip into the sticky material. The cool thing about that is you won't need to clean your alligator clips when you get into some other conductive materials that I'll show you in just a sec. All right, firstly, go ahead and connect your two alligator clips to the makey-makey. Okay, so I've gone ahead and stuck the alligator clip and paper clip into the orange. I could just connect up the other alligator clip to our orange, but instead I'm gonna hold it. I'm gonna hold this end that is connected to the earth. And then what I'm gonna go ahead and do is tap the orange and hopefully we'll get a connection. Boom, and there's our connection. All right, let's check out water as a conductive material. Let's duplicate this code block and we're going to focus on when the space bar is pressed. Now we wanna switch to the costume water when that happens. You'll see here, I've got a glass that I've set up and I've just got some paper clips on the edges of the glass that you can see here that I'll connect the alligator clips to. And on the inside of the glass, we've got an extended part of the paper clip running down. So I'm gonna fill this glass with water and when we get a connection, when the water level reaches the height of the two pins, we should get a connection. All right, it should be pretty comfy with these alligator clip connections now. I've got the yellow one here connected to the space bar and the other one connected to the ground. I've also connected them to the ends of paper clips. And this is interesting itself because you'd think if glass is conductive, we should have a connection here, but glass is not conductive. What I'm gonna do now is pour in some red colored water and we should get a connection when the water level rises to the height of the paper clips. And there we go, connection. We've just about used all of our arrow presses and the space press, but now I wanna go ahead and demonstrate this click press. So how are we gonna do that? Well, in scratch, we've got the access to when this sprite is clicked half block in our vents. So what this will refer to is when the connection sprite is clicked, set off a sequence of instructions. So currently, if the water glass is clicked, so we can just go ahead and duplicate the same couple of instructions that we're using for the others. And we can now set this to Play-Doh because that's what we are going to demonstrate now. Now it's very important that we leave the mouse over the water, otherwise this will not work. All right, so everything said, our mouse is on the water glass and now we've got our Play-Doh character here with a white alligator cable connected to the click connection of the makey makey and our other character is connected to the earth connection. So what they can go ahead and do is if they go in and hold hands, they should result in a connection. So here we go. And there we go. Connected. Notice here that we've got lots and lots of cables everywhere. We can sort of simplify what's going on here by removing all of these earth connections and leaving one. What we're going to do is use some foil which is also a great conductor and I'm going to wrap this piece of foil around my wrist and connect myself to that earth connection. So I've got my tin foil bracelet connected with my alligator clip connected to it. I'm going to go through and touch all of these connections and see if they work. Let's try the copper tape first. Cool copper tape. Now let's try the pencil. Oh, we're on the, I just nudged the play-doh there. Let's touch the pencil. There goes the pencil. Let's touch the orange. Orange. And now I'm going to dip my finger in the liquid here and we're back to the water. So there you go. That are all the connections there with one connection to the ground. Let's review where we've been. Recall that makey makey is just like a keyboard or mouse. So you can use it with any device that supports a keyboard or mouse. Makey makey's work by completing circuits. Remember that you can just hold the ground pin, the base one down the bottom and touch any of the pin connections to complete a circuit. We can extend this idea of a circuit by connecting some wires or some alligator clips to it. We can then introduce multiple alligator clips or wires and connect those to conductive materials. If we touch one end of the conductive material and the ground, we should complete the circuit. It's time for a scratchy question and I want to know what crazy materials and objects did you use to complete your circuits? Drop your answer in the comment section down below. Thanks for checking out this makey makey tutorial. Be sure to smash that like button and check out some other content on your screen right now. If you want to show your support to this channel then you can head on over to my Patreon page. Check out some of these funky red bubble teas or consider joining the mailing list. All links below in the description. But until then, I'm off to go find a wave. I'll catch you in the next one.


What's up everybody? Jason here for jasperjasecasebreaks.com running a quick little R&B randomizer for picketing number 4 of 2020 Panini 1 football 5 box break. This random number block break includes the Chargers, Bangles, Dolphins, Packers, Seahawks and picketing number 4 of Panini 1 And again, you get a piece of all of these teams for a fraction of the price So for example guys, well first of all, you get a spot You get a random number from 0-3-9 and as an example if you get randomized block 3 You will get all cards with 3B in the first number next to the dash on the left side of the dash So for example If the card number is 0 number 243 out of 299 since number 3 is the first number on the left side of the dash that'll go automatically to block 3 13 out of 99 is another example 3 out of 25, 43 out of 49, 93 out of 99 and so on The number 3 block would get that card. If we pull any redemptions for these teams listed above It'll automatically go to spot 0, even if we know it's a 1-1, it'll still go to spot 0 So Joe Burrell, if you get randomized block number 1, we pull a 1 of 1 NFL shield like that when you see pictured there, that'll go to block 1 for being a 1 of 1 So here you go guys dice roller here. Here's the customer names and the numbers from 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 Let's roll the dice and we got ourselves a 4 and a 2 for 6 times. Good luck 1 2 3 4 5 and 6 6 times Hans down to Hans So this would be part of the LAC round on our block 6 times here now on the numbers 1 2 3 4 5 and 6 6 times 3 down to 8 All right, so Hans, you have block 3, Hakim with block 7 Gregor with 6, Gale with 9, Brian Frank any 1 of 1s would be yours Gary with 4, Hans with 0, Annie 1 on 1, Gary with 5, Hans with 2 and Hans with 8 So again guys, these are only for these teams in the specific break round number block style We have one more filler We need to unlock to break open that up anyone and it's this break here We have nine left same style guys actually much cheaper for more teams of course Eagles Cowboys Vikings Patriots 49ers Ravens Raiders Steelers Cardinals Bears Saints You get a piece of all these teams for that price of 108.99 and it's right on number block style So appreciate you guys Jasper's case breaks.com


Hello everyone, this is Mr. P. Today's lesson is on used-to habits in the past. Like my example, I used to study Italian when I was at university. So let's look at our timeline first. We have the horizontal line and the vertical line. The horizontal line on the left we have the past, and on the right we have the future. The vertical line represents now. So we have three yellow stars in the past representing used-to. That means that it happened many times in the past. So when do we use it? First of all, it is a semi-model verb. This means it needs another auxiliary or helping verb to create questions and negative sentences. We use used-to to talk about things that happened regularly in the past, but no longer happens. So it is a routine in the past. There is a lot of confusion between the past simple. I will try to explain as best as I can. In some cases, the difference is very subtle, so very minimal. The most important thing to remember is to ask yourself, did it happen many times? Then use used-to. Do you know the number of times that happened? Then use past simple. Let's compare. He used to go to school. He doesn't go to school anymore. But if I said he went to school twice last year, this means that because we have a number of times, we need to use the past simple. Let's look at other examples. I used to go to the library last year. It was my routine, but I don't go to the library anymore. Instead, if I say I went 10 times to the library last year, obviously we need the past simple because there is a number of times, 10 times, and there is a possibility I still go to the library. So in the first one, I don't go anymore. In the first one, I still go to the library. Let's look at other examples. I used to walk to school last year. I walked to school every day last year. Has the same meaning, so what is the change? The change here is every day. I wrote every day on the second sentence, and I created the same meaning with that used-to has. I walked to school last year. I do not know if this was a routine, as I don't know the number of times. So how many times? I don't know. So how is it formed? First of all, we said used-to is a semi-model verb, and so it needs a helping or auxiliary verb. In this case, the auxiliary verb and the helping verb is did. So in this case, I mean used-to, means did. So we have the formula. WH question word, how, where, when, etc. If you have them, HV means helping verb plus subject plus used-to plus verb. Like in the example, did you use to speak English 10 years ago? It is the same thing as did you speak English 10 years ago? It has the same meaning. Negative. So let's look at the negative sentence. Subject plus helping verb, not obviously plus not because it's negative, plus used-to, note that there is not D there in use, plus verb and plus whatever it is. It didn't use to speak English. It's the same as he didn't speak English. Now what about positive sentences? Well, we need the subject, then we need here, yes, used-to plus verb plus maybe object and plus maybe time expression or whatever it is next. I used to study Italian at university. I don't study Italian at university anymore. This is what it means. So let's do some exercise. You need to rewrite these sentences with use-to where possible. I'm going to pause the video for five minutes. You need to make changes or leave the sentence as it is if you think it is the right sentence. So five minutes, pause the video. Now that you pause the video, I'm giving you the key. Now the first one is my brother used to keep snakes when he was younger. So use-to. Number two, he got his first snake when he was eight. So here is not possible to change to use-to. Number three, here we can choose. He used to keep or kept them in a box in the garage. Number four, yes, we need to change. He used to look after them very well. Number five, they lived there for almost six years. Number six, then he lost interest and he took them all to the local zoo. No change there. Number seven, he used to visit them there once a week. Yes, it's possible to change it to use-to. Reference number eight, I think he went about nine or ten times. So reference of the number of times before he forgot about them. Not possible to change to use-to. Well, if you have any questions about this lesson, please type them under this video. I hope you enjoyed the lesson. If you haven't subscribed to my channel, please do. Like the video, please, and share the video if you liked it. See you next time. Take care. Bye-bye.


I didn't expect that we were going to have a list for one more before you leave, but I thought of it. All right. Thank you for everything. Thank you so much. Mr. President, Morton has been absolutely invaluable in our office and he's got a strong, clear voice of reason and most forceful in presenting your views to all the groups with which we deal. They love him and they will miss him. Thank you. Thank you very much. I'm glad you looked back there. That's great. Yeah, the next thing is this over the most hour. He has brought all the consumers there. Happy to see you. I want to present you with your own copy of the Consumer Resource Handbook. And this is a how to do it for consumers. And I want to, one million and a half, go out to every... and we are able to do it for free. Each of your Cabinet officers have donated some to pay for the printing. And you notice up here we tell people how to complain properly. And also we have here a listing of over 600 major companies who have their own consumer offices so that we're not trying to solve these little problems. They are. And of course we do list this state and the federal offices. Well, thank you. I think this is probably the most cost-effective service for the people who will render it. I hope so. I hope so. That was the purpose of it. Could I impose upon you to... Would we have this one for me? Yes. This one gets framed in our office, Mr. President. Do you personally or does it matter? Well, your name would be wonderful. To me it would be great. This becomes an heirloom. That's pretty genuine and wonderful. I'm going to get my glasses out so I can do this right. I just wondered why I wasn't able to see what I was doing here. Could we have a picture right over here? Would it be great? Certainly appreciate it. Thank you, Mr. President. Mr. President, how are you? Well, let me just start right now. As you know, this is the President's Council. Yes.  And I think Dick worked on a show within the polls that is appreciated across the country. Well, this is a group that's leading your charge. This is $31 billion that they've given you since we started this exercise. And they just increased their contribution, if you want to call up to your fight on this thing, by 50% in the last six months period of time. That's great. They're doing a tremendous job. Scott Dempsey, as you remember, went on to make the presentation, so I won't repeat that. This is a good group in there. Here, sit down there. This is a formal presentation, Mr. President. Well, thank you very much. And thank all of you. It's a fine way to start the new year. I couldn't be more pleased with the job that the inspector generals are doing in the continuing battle against waste, fraud, and abuse in federal operations. I was so impressed with the report that the Cabinet Council, what has been done, that I asked for this meeting to meet with you personally and be able to say to you how grateful I am. And the progress report that you've just given me, I know, tells me several things. First, that you have successfully identified the best methods to detect waste, as evidenced by your impressive numbers. And second, by concentrating on the preventing problem before they occur, you've charted a course for us. And by using modern technological tools and creatively applying older ones, you're bringing the best of all solutions to bear on the problem. Finally, your progress is a strong indication that the IG community cares about the quality of government which serves the American people. Dedicated, capable men and women like yourselves can make a difference in upgrading the integrity and efficiency of government and in the perception the American people have of that government. Just as important as dollar savings is the contribution that you've made toward restoring public confidence in the institution of government and in its public service. And again, you all have my congratulations and appreciation for achieving remarkable results, magnificent results over these past two and a half years. Not only do you have the satisfaction of knowing that your accomplishments will last through this generation, but that future generations as well will benefit from a government that's more responsive to the need of its citizens. I could go on and on, but it would always be saying the same thing. Thank you for what you've done. And I understand we're going to have a chance to visually take some pictures taken here. I'm looking forward to that. Of course. I get as much of that as I can. That's really nice. Thank you very much. Thank you. Paul Trotstrater. Good to be here. Thank you. Thanks for joining me. I'm John Martin. Yeah, Mr. President. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. President. Mr. President. My house down here is here in my youth. I'm Sam. I'm Jack. Mr. President, Jim Richards-Minerty, Time Hotel sends his best. I'll see him and give him back to me. Yeah. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you, Mr. President. Mr. President, check this. We'll do better in six months. Chairman Funk is coming. Chairman, last time you said, I don't believe it's time to go. I'll fight so much worse than I thought. Mr. President, Mr. President, Mr. President, Mr. President, Mr. President, Mr. President, Mr. President, Mr. President, Mr. President, Mr. President, Mr. President, Mr. President, I can't smile at everybody else. I'm not smiling at you. I'm not smiling at everybody else. I can't use that stuff. Just keep not making them unhappy. Thank you, thank you. Thank you Mr. President. You're the best one. Sorry that I'm late. But Dave wanted to make true changes in my remarks. Dave, this is a better sweet moment for me. I'm happy that you're going out opportunities, and we're going to miss you. These three years, this man has served with creativity, skill, and dedication. I know that your work has helped convey our philosophy and the policies of this administration, not only of the people of this country, but abroad, and I'm most grateful for that. Your understanding of the modern media, your skills as a writer, your advocacy of open government and good relations with the press, I think have played a vital role in our administration. Your letter of resignation mentioned the love of the institution of the presidency, and that's exactly the way it should be considered. It is an institution that some of us only get to custody of it temporarily, but you've served under three administrations, and you've not only served that institution of the presidency, but you've served your country and served it very well. Nancy and I know how much sacrifice that these three years have meant to you and your son, daughter, and so we just want you to know that you go with our heartfelt thanks and to you and your family, and we wish you the best in the years to come. Now at Harvard, I won't ask you to do anything so abnormal as to converting them to republicans. Just ask me one thing, could you persuade them to be tolerant of us? Thank you, God bless you and thank you. Thank you, Mr. President, as always, you are extremely kind and generous in your remarks and your thoughts. If I might say so, sir, three years ago I came here as did many others in this room because we were convinced there was nothing more important than that you succeed. It seemed to all of us that you faced an awesome task, and I was to rescue both this country and the presidency from perilous decline. I think all of us vividly remember the late 1970s when our economy was in a shambles, I think you called it the worst mess and the great depression of one of your maiden speeches. We were adrift internationally, we were uncertain of our values, and the worst of all, there seemed to be a real doubt in this country whether we could govern ourselves any longer. It was at the end of the last administration that the general counsel of that White House was lamenting that what we needed in this country in order to govern well was a total overhaul of our governmental system along the parliamentary lines. Well, in my view, the past and the needs of the next few years are very large still, and there's no flood of work to be done here in our next five years in the White House. But I have to say that in these last three years, I think what you've really demonstrated is that what we needed in this country was not a change of the constitution, but a change of leadership. In just a little over three years, you really have helped to restore that, to help both the country and the presidency. I just have to say as a, I'm very proud of the chance to serve here and to learn from you during these past three years. As an individual, as a staff member, I want to thank you for what you've done for me. And as a citizen, I want to thank you for what you're doing for all of us. If I could just follow in the footsteps of someone who served you extremely well, Ken Duberstein, when he was here for his farewell, it took that opportunity to thank some others who had been terribly important and many filled him during that time. I wanted to thank a few people here if I might. Because they've been so helpful to me. And first of all, my special thanks to our Chief of Staff, Jim Baker, who recruited me here and has been a steadfast source of support and inspiration these last three years. I think history will record that Jim Baker is the finest Chief of Staff in the modern times. I think that's a real tribute to him. I would also like to thank the many people in this room. I have friends in the White House, outside the White House and the department and far beyond, who have been so helpful in both on a professional basis and on a basis of friendship during this time. If I might, I would like to say a word too about some of the people I think are the real pillars of this place. Nell Yates who keeps helps to keep things running out here. Ruth Henry, who is head of our telephone operators unit. Ali is here, I think, representing a messenger somewhere. There are so many, George Saunders is here. There are so many people that I think really do help to keep the White House running year in, year out. You really don't know how much you appreciate them until it comes time to say farewell. Finally, let me mention two other groups. First of all, those who have worked with me on staff as part of my staff. Mike, Pam, Karna, Kathy and Alden, Debbie came up here from Texas. So many others have been. So many others, I'm sure Barbara was here with her husband who's been serving me here at night. And many others that you really have, Mr. President, a group of people that I leave behind very proudly because they are extraordinarily devoted to you, sir, and they will, I think, perform very, very well in the coming months, which is so important. And to be sure, I would also like to say a word of personal thanks to members of my family, my mother and sister-in-law come here from North Carolina today, and my mother-in-law come from Pennsylvania, and my wife Ann, and our children Catherine and Christopher trundled in from McLean through the snows. You know, working here in the White House, one of the things that happens is that the families seem to pay most of the price and share very little glory. And I just wanted to take this opportunity to say how much their love and support has meant to me these last three years. Well, a thousand thanks to you all. I tend to show up here on the penny, so I won't say goodbye. But our of ours always see each other again. Thank you.