As-Salam-Alaikum Wa-Alaikum Wa-Alaikum Wa-Alaikum Welcome to the virtual University of Pakistan. We are getting into lecture number 16 of Marketing for Non-profits, MKT 628. The topic of learning is going to be the remaining part of the organizational level of brand raising, the part which falls within the realm of marketing people. You will recall that in the previous component, I talked about all those elements which fall within the domain of the top management, meaning vision, mission, values, objectives and goals. And in this component, I'm going to talk about things like audiences, the positioning and personality because these three are the ones which are typically the marketing centric elements and jobs and therefore have to be taken care of by the marketing people. First of all, audiences, no question about the fact that we need to have a very precise understanding of the audiences that we are dealing with. And we also know the fact that basically there are three classifications of audiences that any non-profit deals with. The first is the fundraising audience, consisting of individuals, groups, corporations, foundations, governmental as well as international agencies. Then we have program audiences. Any audiences that are connected with the program, either they execute to the program or they are at the receiving end and they are the subject of that particular program. It could be communities and we also call them clients. The third classification is advocacy audiences. Here we have people like community leaders, volunteers, activists and all those people and sponsors who really advocate over cause, not only advocated, just advocated, rather advocated with the uniqueness that we have. Since all these audiences are very different in nature, they have the different profiles, different personalities and the different character. It is for this particular fact that the experts seem to believe that we need to look into all these audiences in a more insightful way so that we really can draw lines between different subsets of these audiences. So this basically takes us back to the segmentation exercise and we have to take a very close look at that exercise, not from the point of view of the motivations that we made the basis of while we looked into segments as to what really it is that motivates people to donate towards a certain cause. Now what we can do is we can take a look at the same research design and results and come up with certain more findings by taking a look at our results of psychographics, put together demographics and then come up with those segments which we think are just about appropriate in terms of reachability through different communication tools. There are segments who are more reachable by the internet kind of supports and then there are segments who are more receptive to traditional way of marketing things. But here what experts also profess is that we develop different personas for different segments. So in other words, one particular group of people, whether we are talking of donors or we are talking of other audiences, program audiences or advocacy audiences, we have to draw lines in terms of creating different segments and those segments, the ones created have to be labelled in as precise a way as they can reflect the personality of that particular segment or that particular sub-segment or that particular group. In other words, experts say that the broad terminology like donors is not good enough when it comes to dealing with different audiences with the help of different kinds of communications and different tools that we have at our disposal. And I have given you the example because we have a mix pack of IMC, meaning Integrated Communication Marketing Campaign and depending on what really triggers the mechanism at the receiving end, we describe the persona of different segments. Now, if we again go back to the example of the marketing research program that we carried out in order to unravel the motivations behind donors to the making donations, we also, like I said, can take a look at the psychographic and demographic findings in terms of defining their personalities. For example, donors who are very regular and they are regular because they are convinced on the basis of certain evidence that our program is very effective and that we are a God-fearing company and whatever we do, it really improves the social welfare and takes care of, forget so many poor downtrodden people and so on and so forth. We've got to give a certain personality trait or personality label just like we describe one person as hardworking, as honest, get the full of integrity and so on and so forth. Once we have labeled different groups with different personas, we can come up with the right communication campaigns. To elaborate further on that particular research design and findings, we also can surmise a very important point that we can come up with the most appropriate communication campaigns in terms of our priorities or in terms of our changing priorities. For example, if there's a change of priorities in relation to our objectives, then we've got to see which communication campaign is more appropriate in this particular situation because we here are dealing with this particular audience which happens to be a segment or a sub-segment of donors or of advocates or of program executors. So the appropriateness of the communication campaign depending on drawing these segmental lines is the essence of taking an insightful look at the audiences. It is not just the context of the changing priorities because we can take a look at the appropriateness of communications in so many different ways. For example, again, going back to the segments that we drew up in relation to the motivating factors, we can concentrate on those segments that happen to be regular donors only because we know the kind of personality that this segment has. And don't forget that the personality of the overall segment has to be looked at as the personality of one particular person. I'm going to throw some more light on the personality side of the element, but here in terms of creating personas, we have to look at the appropriateness of which communication is going to be the most suitable to which particular audience. So if it is a question of shifting motivations or rather strengthening the motivations of the donors from their being casual to their becoming rather regular, we can come up with a different communication campaign because the objective is to strengthen the motivation. Whereas we may find ourselves in a situation where the people have started having negative motivations in the sense that they now have started donating to some other cause. For example, the people who say they donate on religious basis may start experiencing certain shifts in their behavior because somebody else has approached them and their motivation to start donating to another cause is still the same, meaning religious reasons. But they think that the other cause is more pressing and therefore it warrants that their attention more than it does for your program or your cause.  Go back to the tools of communication at our disposal and you will realize that personal spaces is one of the tools. We can have personal meetings with such donors, face to face conversations. We can get into small seminars where we can reinforce the importance and the uniqueness, so to say, of our program and they may succeed in convincing those people that they still have to continue donating toward our cause. The point here is that different communications are needed for the different kinds of audiences. Audiences have to be divided into different groups and subgroups as long as they contain the essence of their being mutually exclusive and their being entities and groups that will give you differential responses. I mean, the divisions have not to be carried out just for the sake of it. Divisions have to be carried out because you're looking for differential responsiveness and this differential responsiveness is the denominator on which you base your decisions on the way you communicate, meaning the appropriateness of the communication tools and then the communication campaign that you put together to reach different people who you think are going to come up with different responses, they will behave in a different way and therefore they've got to be reached in a different way. Another important feature of this particular element is that the persona that you have given to the different groups has got to be looked into and studied on an ongoing basis because there could be changes in the personas depending on changes in the environment and therefore whenever a change takes place you've got to bring about a corresponding change in your communication patterns and the ongoing study with the help of small surveys, interviews and focus groups that could also be instituted. It is not always that you come up with a very comprehensive and complicated or sophisticated kind of a quantitative research design which should be the basis of your research but once you have carried that out it should remain valid for quite some time to come and you can always supplement that with the help of these aids that you have at your disposal because we never lose sight of one particular reality of nonprofits that they are always hard pressed for funding and it is the job of the marketing people to do more in less. This is the essence. With that let's now move on to the next element of this portion of the organizational level and that is positioning. Here I'm not going to talk about what positioning is. We all are kind of experts on what it really is. We know it is the point of differentiation and the essence is to go to the home into the minds of our audiences with that simple uniqueness. We know all that. Here we've got to take stock of the interpretation that goes into the communicative process and we've got to see to it that we can develop the right links between our positioning and the vision and mission statements and also our personality. This is basically the job of positioning which gets highlighted in terms of our communication campaigns and the level is very important in the sense that it really lays the ground for the next level which is about identity. In other words it is the point of differentiation and our positioning which becomes the basis of creating the visual identity and side by side the messaging platform. We know as part of the messaging platform the vision statement and the mission statement or if we have just one statement which is a combination of vision and mission is extremely significant and is very critical and the positioning flows out of the mission that we have created and established for the organization and therefore positioning becomes the basis of all that which follows the point of positioning meaning the basis of the personality and the basis of the identity level and of course the experiential level because it is a positioning which makes its mark and plays its vital role when we pick up the right tools of communication and put them together as part of the integrated marketing communications. Here one question might pop up in your minds what really is the difference between positioning and the mission? Well it's a very sensitive kind of question and the answer lies in there being not really a great difference between the two. The only thing is that the positioning is internally focused whereas mission is externally focused. We talk about the same things as part of the positioning statement and we talk about the same things as part of the mission statement. However, there is a difference and that lies in the complexity and the details of the mission statement which are not written as part of the statement per se which are written as detailed messaging about which I'm going to talk later as part of another level and as part of another element. But the point is that positioning is something which we talk about in superlatives like we say this is the best program that anybody has seen on the non-profits side. I'm just giving one example. We might say that we have the highest level of qualitative expertise professionals who work for our organization. Now these are the kind of statements which are extreme statements and they are laced with superlatives. This is not the kind of approach that we take when we talk of the mission statement or when we talk of anything that we say in support of the mission because mission is externally oriented and it is externally focused. It is supposed to be read by anybody meaning by all the audiences who come into contact with the organization. Again, it is not just the external audience or audiences it also is the internal audience. Remember I talked about the fact that in the absence of formal expression of the mission statement two or three different people from within the same organization may talk about the same mission in two or three different ways and that's where the disaster may lie. That is why this concept must not be oversimplified and everything has got to be detailed in writing with the help of your seniors and even outside sponsors. The audiences that happen to help us with advocacy, with fundraising and with provision of all that human resource that we do not have at our disposal and that they render that service through the staff members of their own organizations which may either be on the private side or which rather are mostly on the private side including commercial enterprise or any part of the agencies. It is the help which people are more than willing to give wherever they can be supportive. So back to the point of the positioning. It has to be very succinct. It has to be internally focused and it has to lay the ground for everything that follows the positioning, the meaning while describing the personality of the organization and while developing the visual identity of the organization and while expressing all the elements of the messaging platform because everything has to revolve around this pivot. This is the key. Positioning also is the key against which we can assess our organization and against which we can assess whether we are following the right course or not. You will recall that we can do that with the help of small surveys, focus groups, et cetera, et cetera, just to stay on course and make sure that we are following ourselves by the nose and not really drifting right or left just because somebody from within the organization thinks that we've got to be little adventurous and that we've got two monotonous and that we've got to experiment a few more things. The answer is no. Again, whatever you decide at any point of the strategic process, meaning at any juncture which you can relate with one of the elements of the brand-raising process which basically is a translation of the strategic process, you've got to relate that particular juncture or situation with the element, the most appropriate element on that particular grid or on that particular spectrum and then see where is the relationship and what is it that has gone wrong if something really has or if something has not gone wrong just the whimsical thinking or advocating things which do not really have a strategic solid basis and should not make sense to you in terms of making any changes. There's so much for the positioning side of the organizational level of the brand-raising and don't lose sight of the fact that this is part of the marketing realm and with this we move on to the next point or element which is the personality. Any organization has a very distinct personality and personality basically is a function of so many different attributes and organization thinks it has so many different attributes for example it is very hard-working, it is very competent, it is a matter of fact, it is God-fearing and so on and so forth but what is important about all these attributes in the context of personality is that all these attributes have got to be perceived by the audiences in the same way. So this again is a question of perceptions. There is something which you think exists and there is something which the audiences do not seem to think does exist and therefore there has to be a total coherence and rather congruence of the two factors meaning what the reality is and what is being perceived by the audiences. There are so many different ways of finding out the personality of the organization which you are trying to create does match with the perceptions of your audiences or not. You know you can carry out research and I don't really have to elaborate on that the kind of research which you have to carry out just to make sure that the attributes which you think you are enriched with also are the ones which are perceived the same way but the important point here is you create a personality which basically flows out of the vision of the organization. The reason I talk about that is because this factor is kind of inherent just try to look into any of the very well-known established and respectable non-profit institutions in this country like the Cancer Hospital in Lahore or the Geology Institute in Karachi or the Ikea Center, the Hospital in Karachi and all over the country as a matter of fact because you will realize all these institutions have different personalities. Now the personalities which they have or which they have developed have not been developed by an accident. They are not the result of ad hocism. As a matter of fact you see that that is the result of a certain vision. The founders, whoever founded these organizations had a vision and while envisioning what they wanted and while looking into the future they certainly had certain personality traits in their minds of the organizations which they were just about to create or which they have created and therefore the personality is something which flows out of the vision and it gets the developmental increments as the process goes from one stage to another meaning with the flow of the strategic process. Let us take the example of the Cancer Hospital in Lahore in Shaukat Hanum and take a look at the attributes of personality which the people perceive. In other words, which are believed by the audiences who come into contact with that hospital or even those people who do not really have anything to do with the hospital and they all believe in the hospital being a place which is honest, which is modest, which is methodical and systematic. It is state-of-the-art facility, it is competent, it is God-fearing, it is meritorious. So these are the kind of attributes which are part of the list which characterizes the hospital I am talking about and same goes for institutions like SIUT, the Udology Institute in Karachi and LRBT, the ICARE, the Trust Hospital in Karachi or rather all over the country. The personality or the personalities that these institutions have have not been developed by accident. As a matter of fact, they must have been part of the vision of the founders. They wanted their organizations to be like that and then you see they have worked hard through commitment and with a sense of purpose to bring the mission of the organization to life. How do you bring the mission to life? Well, by following all the steps of the strategic process or brand-raising. You may not call that brand-raising within your organization, but the fact still remains that you do something very similar to the process and you do that in a formalized way which institutionalizes all the steps and all the links that present themselves in an integrative fashion and give us the results in terms of very consistent communications. We have these consistent communications because we have the right positioning and we have the right personality. The point that we need to ponder here is that different institutions have different personalities and the personality also is a function of the purpose of the organization and that is how an organization develops itself.  You are tasked with developing the brand name, the tagline and the personality of the organization. You will like to have a brand name which is expressive of a friendly attitude because you really want to be helpful to all the victims of different sorts of accidents. You would like to come up with a color, the palette which is expressive of passion and you in all probability would like to go for red color because that is the kind of service you are providing and that in most probabilities seems to have the best match with the passion with which you have created the organization and when it comes to developing the tagline about which I am going to talk in a short while you would like to have a tagline which is expressive of efficiency and which also may have life-saving overtones because you are trying to save the victims of accidents you have to take them to the hospital at a very quick speed and you have to offer paramatical services on the way and therefore efficiency is the essence of the purpose of your existence and since you work toward saving their lives if the tagline also has those connotations so much the better. Another hypothetical situation could be that of an organization that is operating to conserve certain environmental features and you again are out to develop a brand name and it's the tagline and of course other features the question here is how do you do that? Well when it comes to picking the brand name it has to be the one which is expressive of serenity, tranquility and peace but when it is a question of picking the color palette I think we've got to go for all shades of blues and greens that express nature's colors and when it is a question of picking the tagline we have to go for a modern sounding kind of a tagline which carries a strong appeal for all those segments of population that are lovers of environment and prefer to have very neat and clean surroundings So with these two hypothetical examples I think it becomes clear that it is a function of the personality of the organization or the institution which basically lays the ground or the tone and the mood of communications in order to reach our targets more effectively. One with the word of caution here just like I said in relation to a couple of other elements we've got to be conscious about attributes also the meaning attributes of personality we've got to make sure from time to time that the attributes that we think are perceived by our audiences are the ones that are still relevant to our communications because if something has gone wrong with the culture of the organization or a change has taken place in terms of external environment that has bearing on our communication campaign or our personality in one way or the other we've got to look into all those factors and bring about adjustments so that we stay relevant Relevance and consistency are two words which are extremely important when it comes to putting together our communication campaigns with this our elements of the organizational level are complete and we now can say that it is not just vision and mission which should be publicized and propagandized by the organization it also is a function of so many other factors which are equally important and it is the interplay of all these elements that we complete the strategic process and in other words this strategic process for brand raising consists of vision, mission, values, objectives, audiences, positioning, personality now there are certain sub-elements which I'll be talking in the following components but these are the major ones that from the constitution of the organizational level and you will agree with me with no hesitation that these are the elements that really drive the organization they're responsible for deployment of different resources they're responsible for putting together different programs responsible for execution of those programs and involvement of all the human resources and financial resources and therefore they've got to be very consistent they've got to be linked with each other in an integrative fashion and only by doing so we are going to make our communications very consistent and we are going to keep subjectivity out of our communications and we are going to keep them very objective in other words in very plain words we're not going to be influenced by those stakeholders or even people from within the organization who may like to bring about a whimsical change toward any element of the whole process because until it is supported by a change in one of the elements it does not really warrant any implementation and you should not be influenced by anyone who does not think in a strategic way now this is not to say that we as marketing people have to be rebellious which generally people think we are but the fact is that we've got to be very systematic and orderly and logical in terms of following all the steps so that we can keep our communications very effective, very consistent very relevant to the point and the test of our communications for being consistent and logical and so on and so forth lies in answering some of the questions the one is we take a look at our communications in a very introspective way the meaning that we carry out is self-examination by looking into the factor of positioning and personality is it that our communications reflect the right positioning do they reflect the right personality for which you see that we have learned quite a bit so far and are our communications engaging and to what extent they really are motivating different audiences to take the desired action as long as we get answers in an affirmative to all the questions that I have talked about and we are convinced that we have consistency of communications our positioning, our personality are well represented and vision and mission of the organization are also very well expressed and there is no ambiguity about the interpretation of the mission of the organization we should be well content with the communication campaign that we have put together with this I now would like to say thanks and on to the next topic of learning we are now getting into the next level of brand raising which is the identity level this level has the two sub levels the one is what we call visual identity and the other is the messaging platform visual identity consists of things like logo, color, images, topography, etc and images of course are inclusive of pictures and any graphics which we may think are relevant to the visual identity of the organization the messaging platform consists of things like the name of the organization vision, meaning vision statement, mission statement, values statement and then key messages and then a few other elements which I don't really want to bombard you with because they sound very strange kind of terminologies but what we have to keep in mind is that anything that we need to communicate in order to build our brand and communicate through different materials may those be brochures or flyers or advertising campaigns we've got to have different communication supports and we've got to have all these things ready so that we very succinctly and clearly can communicate with the target audiences now it is very interesting here that this is the level of brand raising which basically is associated with the building of a brand because it is logos, it is colors, it is images, topography and of course expression of all the relevant statements which are very supportive of the brand building process here we've got to understand what a logo is as part of the visual identity well the logos could be of different kinds but before I start talking of different kinds let me tell you here that logo by itself is not as powerful as it is while it is supported by other elements for example along with the logo we have for the name and we also need to have the tagline and the certain other features, all creative features so logo does play a very important role, it is something very powerful but it is not extremely effective just by itself until the time it becomes so popular it becomes so highly visible and knowledgeable that the whole world knows what this is all about then just the logo is going to do the trick for your organization here we are talking about a situation in which we are still in the developmental phase so that we can understand the essence of all these concepts logos could be like I said of different kinds the one is just the abbreviation of a name and this abbreviation is not supported by any other feature it is just a few letters and that's the end of it for example if we say LRBT and we do not really support that with the tagline or with the full name we say that this is the logo I'm not saying that it is the logo for that particular institution what I'm saying is that a logo could be just the abbreviation of a full name and a logo could also contain some images some photograph or some graphics or some icons and when that happens logo becomes even more stronger because of the imagery and icons and photographs are things which go across all literacy lines and especially when we are trying to reach audiences who are not really highly educated we need to have logos which are supported by these features and therefore the people on the creative side not all of them are sitting within the organization and the fact is in the context of a non-profit most of the creative people are from outside they are from advertising agencies or consultants who specialize in doing creative work to seek for brands I'm not saying brand building but creative work for the brand building and you can always hire those consultants to carry out these jobs and all the more reason that you need to have clear messaging platform meaning very clear positioning for the organization and vision and mission statements and so on and so forth so that you can provide them with a brief that explains the essence of the whole organization so while developing a logo which may sound like a very small thing or a small article of a big element it still carries a lot of importance in terms of what is it that we need to generate in terms of creativity in terms of resources and in terms of the logical sense that we have to put together a couple of words about the logos that are just abbreviations because the well experts seem to think and there's a consensus on that that those logos are not really effective as a matter of fact they are not the ones who really can engage different audiences you may be thinking at the moment and a counter argument maybe flashing into your mind is when you think of LRBT or SIUT or the abbreviated name for Shakath Khanum you might think to yourselves why is it that these abbreviations are so well known well for the simple reason that a lot of effort a planned effort and investment in terms of time and money has gone into the whole brand building exercise and it is over time that they have become very catchy and that's the difficult side of abbreviated names because you really have to work a lot before you start having your logo acknowledged as something immediately recognizable and that is the downside of abbreviations however once you have the logo supported by a full name then it makes a better sense and the reason the abbreviated names do not make a lot of sense to our audiences because experts again seem to think that those seem to be confined only to the understanding of those who created them and those are not really meant to go across the internal organizational lines into the realm of all those audiences that you need to reach and that makes those lines kind of fuzzy in order to keep them very crystal clear and in focus you need to have names which are expressive and that's why while giving you examples of the two different personalities of two different hypothetical institutions I talked about names expressing particular purpose of those organizations or institutions and therefore it is more sensible so to say to have a name which is complete or it could be just one word which is expressive of the purpose of the organization in other words we are looking into this exercise of logos from two different angles the logos that are just typography meaning just a name it could be an abbreviated name or it could be a full name and logos which also carry some images and photographs or some artwork some creative artwork the essence of a logo whatever the form is meaning just typography or with icons lies in answering a couple of questions and the question is does the logo really reflect our positioning it's the same question that you have to ask about positioning in terms of your personality and so on and so forth does the logo reflect our personality if it does why if it does not why in both the situations you've got to be very insightful because this kind of information is going to reinforce your confidence if you are on the right lines and it is going to allow you to take some corrective action if you think you need to revise your logo and you also need to answer the question whether the logo is engaging does it motivate different audiences does it integrate those audiences and last but not the least is the logo expressive of the vision statement and the mission statement if the answer to all these questions are in affirmative then you are on the right lines in terms of putting together your communication campaign or in other words in terms of creating your logo whatever logo it is it has been created based on certain strategic considerations and it answers your questions in terms of other important elements which have to be considered and not lost sight of when you do this creative work let us now move on to the next element which is about typography typography basically is a matter of style and the type of print it basically is a function of font and size and we all are accustomed to those elements typography has a lot of communicative power when it is a question of reaching our target audience the different kinds of typographies have different levels of characteristics in terms of their communicative power why? because different typographies represent different personalities or different dimensions of personalities of the different organizations where the help of typography you can express the modernism you can express traditionalism and you can express something which is formal and you can express something which is informal now let me give you an example here we are doing a kind of a typography that will be more suitable to the environment conservation cause the one I talked about then a human service for a human service you are going to need to have a typeface which is very serious it may be very bold and it may have colors in a way which allows a passion like I indicated earlier but the fact is the bold typeface and its seriousness can convey the one thing while the flowing typeface on typography express something entirely different and that is why we seem to think as marketing professionals that we have got to standardize the typography of our programs experts could go on to say that all communications within the organization meaning the internal communications and also external communications have got to have the same typography so much so that you know standardized kind of templates for those communications which happen on daily basis are uploaded on websites of different organizations of which you may be familiar and you download one of the template because the organization doesn't really want to make any mistakes when it comes to using the right font the right size and the right justification on the right and left side so on and so forth the trick here is or rather the problem here is trying to standardize the typography when you upload your content on the website when you are dealing with websites and blogs and you are sending email blasts you know you cannot really maintain that kind of consistency of typography and you've got to find yourself in a situation of tradeoff meaning if you try to standardize things you may not get the results at the receiving end because when they download the content it is a question of what is the font and size that happens to be the default of that particular computer and it is because of that reason that people like to go for picture images like in JPEG for example of the matter or the content which they put in the cyberspace but like I said there is a tradeoff it becomes slow in terms of downloads so the organizations have another alternative and that is they like to go for the picture form of just about the logos and taglines and the remaining content can be uploaded in the form of a standardized kind of a font which is the routine standard among so many different audiences all over the world other for example Arial or Times Roman so you have to be very selective here I would like to go back to the tradeoff if you like to maintain the consistency on the net also then you lose in terms of the time pertaining to downloads if you bring about a change in terms of making the download more efficient then you've got to change the font and you've got to keep it as close to your standards as could be and I think with this you are fully in the picture as to what it is that I'm trying to communicate standardization of other typography is something which organizations really pay a very heavy weight to people should get accustomed to something which is extremely consistent in terms of not just the expression not only the expression of the intent meaning the strategic intent they should also get consistent images at every point of exposure at every point of interaction so that they develop and form very consistent images in their minds and it is that consistency which makes our communications effective let us now move on to the remaining two elements and I would like to be very brief on these two, the one is the color and the other one is the photographs and imagery. Well it goes saying that the color palette has got to be the most appropriate and what you have to keep in mind is that basically there are two color palettes every organization in particular nonprofits use because the one is the primary color palette which is just about the two colors generally it is two and the secondary color palette is the one which consists of rather neutral colors which can be added to websites as well and which have the cover and the ability to keep things rather consistent in terms of the photographs and imagery I think it is very clear to all of us by now when we use these elements along with our logos and the taglines and the brand names so to say that we really inject a lot more communicative power into the content because pictures speak volumes and that is what you know what I am talking about and with this we are done with the visual identity of the identity level of brand racing.


Okay everybody, I'm really excited about our next speaker who I've introduced many times Dana de Tommaso Dana is far too modest about herself. I think this is because she's Canadian I'm not sure her bio her official bio bio says she's president and partner at kick point and she helps people do better marketing She is so underselling herself So Dana is a frequent Mozcon speaker where she consistently Surprises and delights us with her insights in the marketing local SEO analytics She's virtually an expert on everything She also just recently released a new course on LinkedIn on technical SEO if you haven't you should go check it out Now Dana's title talk today is titled build for search modern web dev that puts SEO first now Why is this important? I'm sure we've all been in this situation where we built a new site and we're think we're building for SEO I've done it with every side. I've ever worked with myself So I'm looking forward to what Dana has to say. Please welcome my friend Dana de Tommaso The best and worst thing you may ever hear in your career as an SEO is we've decided it's time to redo our website Very exciting also a little bit terrifying because finally you can be free of that terrible website that drags you down causes you all these issues But the reality of the work involved in creating a whole new website can really set in and feel really intimidating The other question you might want to be asking yourself is is it actually time to redesign your website? maybe you know the CEO says I want to change not a great reason or You have a new director of marketing and they want to leave their mark on the site also not a great reason, but Maybe it is a good time to make this change And so good reasons are say you're making a lot of concessions in terms of the stuff that you can or can't Blow to the site because it just doesn't work Well, or maybe you're spending thousands of dollars a month on management because you can't change anything without involving a developer Or maybe you can't measure anything which maybe that's an analytics problem But it could also be a website problem too Or you just can't make the changes to your site that you need to in order to present information to your clients or customers in a Way that they prefer so for example Maybe your sales team is doing a ton of the heavy lifting your call center in terms of getting information out to customers When in reality it might actually be easier for them to just I don't know to see your website Those are good reasons to change Now the other half of this question of course is when somebody says to you when should SEO get involved And I've heard this question a lot in my career I think it's a really common question that comes along with the website redesign process I think because fundamentally SEO is seen as something you sort of sprinkle on top at the end like it like a nice garnish as opposed to something that should be baked right into the product all the way through and Obviously, this is a huge misconception that we work against constantly in SEO. It's still there This presentation is not necessarily going to fix that But hopefully I can help you sort of be less of a garnish and more of a main dish and that's enough for cooking metaphors I'm not a cook so The worst thing you could ever be asked is the website's almost done and can SEO take a look at it this definitely means you're in the garnish category and The worst part of this is if somebody says we're launching tomorrow. Can you take a look? You've never seen this site before that's the worst thing to have happened Hopefully you're involved in a position with the site redesign that you're not stuck at this point Hopefully you're earlier in this process Because one of the problems that we have as SEOs is we aren't necessarily in the room with the decision-makers, right? Sometimes we're locked out. We don't seem as important enough. So we can't get involved in the process as early as we should be as SEOs we really straddle the worlds of content technical knowledge and conversions all things that are really important to have at any part of a website redesign process But maybe you don't consider yourself to be an expert at all these things. That's okay as you go through your career You're definitely going to get a depth of information on a lot of different topics so there's a theory of a t-shaped marketer and I actually tried to find out where I originally read this forever ago I don't know if it was distilled or I think Rand Fishkin shared it at one point But the idea of the t-shaped marketer is that you should know a little bit about everything and then dive really deeply into one Of the disciplines in digital marketing So if SEO is your discipline for example, maybe you dive right into on-page technical and off-page or Maybe you know off-page is really your jam. Maybe you're a great link builder But that means you should still know a little bit about technical and on-page And I think that as you grow in your career, especially if you're new in your career Maybe you don't feel confident about these things yet But this is going to become your wheelhouse and it's okay if you realize you know technical SEO Not my calling, you know, I much prefer working on page or off page That's fine But you should still know enough about it to speak intelligently to it and to help me people make good decisions about it And so I think a good well-rounded digital marketing and particularly the SEO education should involve learning a little bit about all these things and Then diving in where it really matters The other problem that we have as SEOs and why we don't necessarily end up in the room when the decision-makers are It's because we're really terrible communicating what it is that we do, you know, if I say to you Hey, can you make me a report on something? I bet you the first thing you're going to turn to is a table or Excel and Well, that may be how SEOs brains work. We like numbers. We like data. We like to look at spreadsheets Lot of people aren't necessarily built like that spreadsheets are not many ideas people idea fun And so I think we really need to get away from tables and start presenting things in a more visual fashion Right because that is one of the reasons we bore people, right? We're like, look at this exciting spreadsheet spreadsheet never exciting Okay, so I think you should really think about how you can present your data to make it just a little bit better There was recently a great article from Tom Critchlow That talked about how you can talk to execs about SEO and I'm going to link to that in the reading Additional reading at the end of this presentation. So I think it's a really important read So talks about how to present SEO in a way that isn't just like look at this nerd stuff We need to do but actually thinking about outcomes and no tables involved. I promise So now that I've talked a little bit around the website development process What should the website development process actually look like last year at Mozcon? I talked about a discovery process for marketing projects And this year I'm going to be talking about our discovery process for website projects And sometimes these things work in conjunction. Sometimes people just need marketing or they just need a website But we have used a discovery for both and we found it to be really successful So hopefully I can impart some of this onto you So back in you know, ye olden days of kick-point the way we used to do things and the way you might still be doing things And the way really common way that people manage website projects is called the waterfall method And a waterfall things move from one step to the next can't really go back, right? Waterfall is a one-way trip And you can't really go back without some serious significant effort. We use this for a long time It's not for us. And if you are using the waterfall process, I'm going to tell you why it isn't great It really isn't a good fit with modern web development projects And I think it's a holdover from again yield and days of the internet when waterfall did make sense, but It doesn't make sense anymore So one of the big reasons that we find is that Because in waterfall all design is done before development starts all the designs have to be complete Approved done and dusted before they can move on to development And then a decision maker might say just as the designs are done or just before they move into development Oh, you know what?  You can get stuck in early in the process Budget can get eaten up way too early, which means either taking hit on the project So for example, if you're an agency and you said it's going to cost 40 000 and then you spend 30 000 of that arguing about design You got to pay for it somehow, right? Or if you're in-house it means that they just say, you know what this is all the budget we have this year I guess we're going to see you next year and then you have to figure out what you're going to do after the fact For the website that you had no input on Related to this of course its developers come in way too late So what you don't want to have happen is a developer comes in when all the designs are done approved Everybody signed off on and it was a Herculean task and now it's done And the developer comes in and is like, oh I actually can't do that or you know a huge part of our audience uses Internet Explorer, let's hope not but you know or edge and you can't do that on that platform Or this isn't going to work on mobile or you can't do something You know that you thought you could do and now it's going to be a huge problem But you've already had these designs approved So now you have to go back again redo the design get the decision makers back on board Or you just I don't know develop and hope no one notices that's not going to work And of course problems also don't show up until coding starts and a lot of this has to do with how we present design Right a website is not a static image. It's not a brochure. We all know this but yet when we present website designs We use products like envision and I'm not crapping on envision. We use it too But there really isn't a great way to present a website design, which is static medium inherently Without I don't know showing something that isn't static But there isn't really a way to do that So while for example, you can describe the movement that an element might have or say, hey There's going to be a wavy underline here unless you can send a client a code pen Which is something that we've done to explain this in the past It's really hard for people to visualize something that isn't static in a static medium And so because of that no one is on the same page until coding happens They see it and they're like, oh that isn't what I was expecting and then back to the drawing board you go Another issue is that decision makers really struggle to visualize it and It's because honestly decision makers don't do this every day It is difficult for them to just figure out what a website's going to look like and that's okay That's that's not their job, right? So if I say to you, oh, we're going to have a drawer here This will be an accordion, you know, you might know what that means and I might know what that means But as a decision maker who thinks of an accordion is like, you know A musical thing is not necessarily going to know what the heck we're talking about and frankly that that's fine You know, I don't expect decision makers to have a fully fledged website living rent-free in their heads until it's launched I think that we have some expectations in terms of explaining things But realistically we can't expect them to have the expertise that we do we don't have the same jobs So I don't think it's fair to layer all this in decision makers and say, oh, yes, no vision Well, maybe we didn't do a great job of explaining it And also because all the design happens and then it goes off into development development locks themselves in a small Unlip room for a while and then the website comes out Development can take a long time and then decision makers can wander off and think about stuff And this is super dangerous because let's say you're happily through development The decision maker comes back and is like, oh, I heard about mobile first. Did we do that? You say, oh, well actually 95 percent of visitors to our site are desktop and they'll always be desktop And this is why I'm like, yes, but I heard mobile first was really important for google And you're like, yes, it is but this is what we need to think about for our users And then now you're back at those drawing board again horrible horrible things can happen if you Essentially leave decision makers lingering too long on iterations without getting a lot of feedback from you And then the last thing that happens before you launch the site is quality assurance quality assurance is not great in the best times And sometimes you don't really know what you're going to find especially if it's been poorly specced all the way through And that can really show and shine a light on where miscommunications happen between your team members So if you unload in all your qa the end of the project becomes horrible slog against time and budget And can really easily turn into an exercise and finger pointing not fun for anybody So now that I've told you how horrible waterfall is I'm going to talk to you about what we call agile ish Now I'm sure you've heard about agile right things that happen in two week sprints Everybody's happy and productive all the time. I'm lying. That's not actually how agile happens But the two week sprint thing is actually true We call it agile ish because we don't actually adhere to the idea of a sprint being a fixed period of time But a sprint is more something that we're achieving throughout the process agile is frankly a delight and is really transformed how we do website development And I feel like I could speak to this with authority because when I first started my career in digital marketing way back in 2000 I started out as a web developer And I hated it, which is why I work in SEO now, but I actually enjoy working on website projects again So after 21 years if I'm like, oh, actually, you know what website design isn't so bad I feel like you too may also be convinced by the wonders of agile ish Part of the reason why is because agile ish fixes a lot of the problems that I just went through with waterfall So for example, we can get developers involved as early as possible in the project But we don't really bog them down with stuff right away. They're necessarily at every meeting But their feedback is there So we end up jumping into development a lot faster, which means that we move from Idea to design to seeing it live on a screen way faster And I'll talk more about what that looks like in a moment But another big advantage of agile ish is that because deliverables are presented often and regularly There isn't a lot of dead time where someone can wander off and have those thoughts about mobile first or whatever it might be Right. You're showing stuff to them all the time. So they're feeling super involved in the process There's lots of little wins and so you can continue to get fine in the project on a regular basis So Now they've told you about the gospel according agile ish. How does this actually work? The first thing we do is keyword research, which yes A lot of things in life start with keyword research like all great things in SEO There's keyword research It's boring. I mean, okay. I find keyword research boring. Maybe you love it and good for you We need people like you in the world's don't ever give that up, but I it's not personally not a fan So you look up thousands of weird things that people typed into google that relate to what it is that your company does And then you make a spreadsheet, of course in terms of how your health these keywords are going to be laid out And then you show someone the spreadsheet and they just don't understand, right? And remember we talked earlier about how spreadsheets not necessarily the best presentation topic for everything So I learned this great trick from Rebecca bags and chris corack on how to present keyword research in a way That's way more interesting. Um, and honestly, it's so simple Use a pie chart So I mean as I mentioned I've been working this field for 21 years I cannot believe it never occurred to me To present keyword research in a pie chart form until I read their book And I'm gonna have a link to their book at the end as well It's about presenting SEO and and how SEO and content work together. It's a really great read But the number one takeaway I had from this book was You need to use pie charts when you're presenting keyword research to clients So this is an example of an actual pie chart that we presented to a real client of ours And one of the things that they were struggling with was how much do they write about the different topics that they cover? Their investment planning, which is pretty clear based on the heading you see here So they think about things like well, we really like this topic. So should we talk about it a lot? But if that topic isn't really a big slice of the pie Maybe it isn't something necessarily that they should talk about even though it's something that they're really interested in Unless they can specialize in that, right? So that's really the balance between volume Specificity and competition if they're really good at this there isn't a ton of volume It can also help you figure out, you know, okay, we're gonna write about this topic But you can't make people google stuff more. That's how advertising works more in marketing so I think That's one of the things you can think about is is what You know, what can we do to present this information in a way that says the client I know you really love this that people just aren't searching for it And a spreadsheet is not the way to do that Presenting keyword research in this pie chart format has been really Makes it really easy for clients to understand what's important And then of course that flows into the types of content you need in your website because now you understand things Like here's the major headings of your services section Here's the pages that we need to get rid of because literally no one's googling that And here's the pages that we need to beef up more because there's just not enough information on this topic So once you have the keyword research done, then we move into something that we call blueprints Each page goes into a blueprint and a blueprint is like a seriously improved site map And it contains tons of information about the site We build our blueprints in a tool called gaffer content Which is a really useful tool for this and it's so much better than emailing links to google docs or Word documents back and forth So in each page and gather content, we lay out some basic groundwork information Like what is the point of this page? What keyword should we take into consideration of this content? What is the call to action going to be on this page? That's also a really important consideration that I find doesn't really get thought about until late in the process If you're in waterfall But because you're thinking about the call to action and at this point remember We haven't even talked about design yet We're still in the content planning phases because you're already thinking about what those calls to action are It really helps the people who are writing copy be a lot more Effective with the copy that they turn out because they can be both optimizing for keywords and thinking ahead to say Okay, so the call to action this page is to Fill out this form or sign up for our newsletter or buy this product And they can really tilt the copywriting towards that eventual goal And because as well in the blueprint you've laid out every single page on the site And I mean every page you don't just have a section of services And it's like a bunch of layered on top of pages like this is the service page This is the stuff we're covering this page I find that it's much easier for clients to be able to visualize what that final website project is going to look like And remember at this point no design only stuff and gather content And yeah, as I mentioned gather contents have been a really great tool for us to help organize these blueprints We also include an SEO section on every page and gather content with the basic stuff You know you're going to need so for example is a redirect going to be needed because the URL is changing And again, like we're not at the development stage Have you ever been in a website project where you're like we're launching tomorrow? Where's the redirects and they have to scramble and do a crawl and figure out You know how 6000 pages are going to get moved over to the new website In the blueprint process we're thinking about the redirects incredibly early in the process So it means that before when we're done we just export this hand it off development They build it into an hd access or say a plugin for WordPress and then it's all taken care of so much less stress and pain and suffering Additionally on every page we also map up what the content is going to look like This makes it really clear for the content team So we'll say things like there's going to be banner text on this page It's going to be an introduction that's going to be 300 words. There's going to be a primary cta There's going to be a testimonial. Oh, by the way, you need to start asking your clients to get testimonials because we really want to include them on the site And because we come to the content team with what we need and because we've justified why we need this Looking back to the keyword research, for example It helps them write more effectively as I said and decision makers most importantly Understand why we're asking for these things because it's really clear What the end goal is and so they can be on board with like yeah, okay You can interview our customers and find out what they what they think about us So here's an example of what I mean From one of the sites that we've done every content block has some little details on what we're looking for Does this take a while to set up? Oh, yes This is not like a super quick process with templates and gather content It can get easier over time But there's still a lot of manual effort that goes into setting the step up But it's more you do this now and it saves you time later and it saves us a ton of time It saves us time because it's incredibly clear and also limited right because you want to give people Sort of barriers to them to say you can write about this But don't write, you know a whole essay or I do need you to write an entire essay about this You can be really clear what the expectations are right? No one wants to go into something with super unclear expectations And then fail to the unclear expectations and then that really builds up resentment So by being extremely clear as to what the expectations are people can meet those without feeling like they invisibly failed on something that they didn't even know that they were supposed to be passing And there really isn't any confusion No one is going rogue and gather content as well We have a nice workflow of this is ready for you to enter content This is ready for this team to take a look at it This is ready for legal to review it for example And then you don't need to deal with docs and whatnot being shoveled back and forth Gather content is seriously a massive time saver. They're not paying me to say this I just really like their tool So because we've set everything up and gathered content It also makes the transition to the website admin easier as well Right because if we go back to the previous slide you can see it almost looks like the back end of a cms Does it not so that means that when we get into the actual cms admin itself We can really take a lot of cues from how gather content is set up And then when the client does move from gather content into the website admin They're not completely lost and how does this work because it's all set up in a lot of the same way Or if you want to get fancy gather content has an api So you can even use it as a headless cms if you want which is pretty cool. We haven't done that yet I know some other people have there's studies out there about it If you're looking into headless cms's that might be something to consider as well Something else that's really important and I mentioned this is also planning that admin Because again, you don't want to have surprises and in the admin And you may have seen this in the previous screenshots as well We have a lot of micro copy micro copy is in tiny little hints telling you what needs to be done We're big fans of micro copy because again, we want to make sure that we're clearly setting expectations And people might think oh, I don't need this. I understand what's going on But you can't assume that everyone has the same level of knowledge and understanding and memory Frankly that you do or level of focus like maybe they zoned out in that part of the meeting, right? Might as well just write it out there. No one has ever said to us. This was far too clear I'm not interested in this level of explanation. You know, I think this is always helpful for everybody You know, no one says I prefer to fly by the seat of my pants And if they do like they don't actually mean the way you think they do So this is an example of the micro copy that we included for our build for the Edmonton fringe festival website When we built this website, this was a few years ago And we knew that volunteers are going to be editing the site and they may not have gotten the same level of training But say the staff for the fringe festival had gotten so we wanted to use lots and lots of micro copy And frankly it was so successful that all of our sites now we build micro copy into what it is that they do Um, and if you've heard me talk about reports, I talk about how important micro copy is there as well Just explain stuff, right? Like nobody has ever suffered through having a little tiny bit more explanation and context as to what's going on So now as soon as you have that approved blueprint You can build the admin side right away because you already know what the admin side is going to look like And you can start loading in the pages and that means the dev is working with actual pages instead of you know dev one Test two test three in the classic developer pages foo and bar You actually have the real stuff Now finally Guess what we're going into wireframes So we've already done so much by this point. Everything is really laid out that people the wireframes aren't really a surprise At this point, there's no surprises left in the project Which means that the design process goes actually really well and smoothly because we know what the site structure is We're just pulling it all together at this point We use envision to present wireframes and I mentioned earlier that you know static representations with dynamic website can be difficult But this is an example of how that content I showed you earlier gets turned into the actual wireframes and also as I mentioned sometimes you use code pen To explain elements that are going to be moving so clients can visualize what it's going to look like For this particular client We chose to do really high fly wireframes because at this point we're pretty clear as to where things were going to go But you could also choose to do low fly wireframes And take a look and see you know, this is roughly where we're thinking about going. How does this feel? But again, you really shouldn't have any surprises at this point Now i'm going to talk agency side for a second. Just put on my agency hat at this point We actually end our discovery project and this is where we say okay It's going to cost x number of dollars to build the site finish the design And build the project because at the end of the blueprints and at the end of the wireframes We know exactly what the site's going to be and by separating the billing into two pieces We actually end up being on budget, which I know right for websites is crazy But it happens because we're able to split these processes Sometimes it can be a bit of a hard sell for clients But we find that the end products is so much stronger That over time, you know get referrals people talk about this and hopefully You too can add this into your agency's processes because I find that this is a really effective way to sell web design Anyway agency head off back to talking about the rest of us now So getting into design We don't necessarily present all the wireframes at once we break it into rounds and it isn't necessarily page based So for example, maybe the first term will be the menu the home page and the onsite search functionality And then we build up more and more as we go Since we're just showing tiny bits and pieces before we get approval and move on to the next round We never have to go back and fix absolutely everything because you know We get to the end of the entire design and they say oh this menu sucks I don't like it. Please change it and then we have to go back and change it So once the design round was approved then it immediately moves over to development while we move on to the next round of design And that means that you're moving into testing a lot faster and you can also move into SEO a lot faster Therefore you can avoid the recent horror story We had to deal with where otherwise truly delightful client was working with another agency for their website work And then they said hey, can you check out the site launching tomorrow? Guess what wasn't there basically everything we asked for right and unfortunately Like we weren't doing that process with other agency and it just was not good And it just reminded me of all the reasons why we have this process now So one of the things I would encourage you to do is to develop your own list of SEO technical specifications This is a document that we present to clients early on in the process and work with developers if we're not developing it in house But even internally for us we have this document of all the different stuff that we're going to need So i'm going to go quickly through a little list of stuff that we would include So one of the things is you can test with the proper robots.txt file Sometimes if it's a simple site, this isn't necessarily a big headache But if you're using a fancy cms or if it's big this building these robots can be quite a process You can address canonicals and pagination a lot sooner and maybe hreflang if it's multi-lingual Developers really struggle with these items and they're difficult to explain And it's not really their fault like it's a weird seo thing that not a lot of people talk about and nobody knows why canonicals exist Or what they're for so if you can explain it early on in the process that can really help developers understand why And your recommendations can get implemented so early on that you know it's going to work right before launch You can also include site map recommendations if you're using wordpress It's a plug-in great, you know, but you then you know what site maps not to include Because obviously you may not want site maps for every single custom post type For example that exists on the site and if you're using another cms Maybe site maps aren't built in and then your developers need to build it so at least you can tell them what to include Something else we really try to nail in our technical specifications is explaining why h ones are so important because You really want to make sure that you're not using headings for presentation purposes It's headings for outlining content You don't want to have an h one than h four than an h two than an h six, right? And especially if you have to worry at all about accessibility requirements You don't want to have that situation happen So make sure to look up the rules in the jurisdiction where the company is located And know that you're following those accessibility requirements because there's very likely rules and what that website needs to have in terms of accessibility And while there's great widgets, you know, we use monsito for example a lot of the time It don't really solve the core issues with not having an accessible website And then you can also include schema recommendations because you already know what the content's going to be So you can say oh this page is an faq We're going to include faq markup on this page for example, and then that can get built smartly into the cms early on in the process Additionally, you can think about things like 404 pages We even have a round that would include a 404 page design Because you really want to make sure that these utility pages like 404s and search and privacy policies Those aren't just thought about at the end, but actually part of the actual design process So for example, this is a 404 you built for client knowing that people come to their website to find certain things But also often they come to their site to find new news articles So if you find a dead link great, there's a link to news articles Funny 404s are also great, but they're not necessarily usable 404 should take you places And of course, I want to talk about site speed I mean other speakers here are talking about site speed and I'm going to leave the nitty-gritty details to them But core web vitals has finally made it Able for us whiny marketers to get site speed top of mind when it comes to development, which is great But because again development is entering so early in the cycle You can start testing for core web vitals again so early in the process And it's not something that you're adding on to the end or saying, oh We'll just toss a plug-in on that. It'll be fine. And there's not necessarily a plug-in for really bad coding Right? It's something that you really want to work on as early as possible So agile ish means that you can speed test early and often and make sure to share the resources that you're using for testing with your developers And walk them through how you do that because I think that that would also be really helpful for them I have included some additional reading resources, etc This link that should help you with every step of the process of cover today And I really want to talk at the end here about a momentum, which is something you can't force right momentum is either there or it isn't Agile ish really keeps that momentum going throughout the entire process Because you're seeing the fruits of your labor come to life quickly or problem solving together We're not panicking about budget or timeline and decision makers can see what we're doing and are able to present quick wins Often and we're doing what we're so we're going to do This open process really builds trust because everything is visible Nothing is hidden or a to reveal you have a website you build a lot of trust between your team And you know your clients or your boss or whoever it is that you're working with in this project And you know, I realized when I was writing the slide that almost every talk I've given in mozgon comes down to trust Because that's actually how things get done, you know, not the tools we use or our processes Those are important But building trust is really the fundamental way that we get stuff done and having an open process builds trust Like Agile ish Thank you


What's going on everyone? Sam here with Layton Sports Cards. We are ripping 2021-22. Can you select basketball hobby, six box half case break, number 19, random team style. Here's a look again at your random results. As always, you can find these in the website as well as the link in chat. Sorry, I got distracted. Rory said there is something funny. Could you pull out of that? That's going to be wild. It's got to be somebody weird. Who would be a funny one? Bartolo Cologne rookie? Does that check out? He was probably later than that. Any real big rookie color, rookie autos, stuff like that I would say. More than anything savage. So any of the big rookies from this year's draft class? There's a Josh Gideon's up. Red, Demontus Sabonis. That is 2199 Pacers. And Blake Griffin from your level. Ubrei Sims. Herbert Jones. There's Jayden Springer. Tri-color. Sixers. James Bookman. Oh, Tideye coming up. We've got Quentin Grimes. Six out of 25. Nice one there for the Knicks. That's a four-colored patch. Congrats Antoine with the Knicks. A winner of a Danny Tartival. It's a 30-year-old expired redemption. André Drummond. And Rudy Gobert. Dude, that's so funny, Rory. Yo, send it in. Rory, send it in. Send it in. Just getting contact with Toss.  We guys still honor it. I'm sure they'd love that. Tony Parker. It's a Tobias Harris Blue for the Sixers. It's a 299. Harris Lover. That's wild, dude. Absolutely looks like we got a lime green auto coming up here. Ludoort. That's going to be Mitch Kupchak. Dude, that's awesome. Going to the Bullets. That'll revert to the Warriors, right? Or not the Warriors, the Wizards, excuse me. That'll go to the Wizards. Nice one there. He's got Washington. That's really cool. I like Mitch Kupchak. Eric R., Isaiah Stewart, Davion Mitchell. That's what the Wizards used to be, the Bullets. And they had to change it because it's like the Bullets. That's raw. It's kind of violent. Right. Franz Wagner, rookie. We've got Alfred Schengun. That is 50 out of 175. Going to the Rockets on a little color match. Kauai Leonard. Must be redeemed no later than 13194. Good Lord, dude. That was a Chris T'Wartse rookie. Deontay Murray and Kyrie Irving. These aren't for sale savage. These are like we're doing a group break. So these spots have already all been taken. James Harden, Silver. James Harden. Yeah. So that's kind of how that works. Kaminga Rookie. 75 years, Yanis. Tricolor, Miles McBride rookie for the Knicks. Russell Westbrook. Mimius Keita. Zaire Williams. Oh, there's a filler. We've got select scout fillers, too. Cam Thomas, Silver. And Dave Lillard on the court side. I'll get your blood focused. Oh, yeah, that'll get the people going right there. Joshua Primo. Desmond Bain on the hollow. Jared Jackson. I don't know if you guys saw what actually happened with Primo. Ooh, gold. Nice. Deontay Murray. Gold Karim Abdul Jabbar. Boom. Let's go. Congrats, Bucks. Tommy L. There you go, buddy. Dude, that is awesome. The Karim. 10 of 10. That's so sick. Got to show Caleb that. He will be jealous. Nice. Kid Cunningham Phenomenons and McCall Bridges. Dude, that's awesome. That Karim is nasty. It is Jalen Brown for the Celtics. And Campbell. Sorry, not your pilot. What'd you do? Buddy Yield tricolor. True holiday.  I don't know if it could here. Jalen Suggs. That's Isaiah Jackson on the rookie jurist card. Let's go into the Pacers. Nice one there. That is Jalen Brunson's silver courtside for the Mabs and Steph Curry. Now, reading the back. Oh, boy. Luca Bogdanovich. Cassius Stanley, $2.99 on the Inflate Signatures. Going to the Pacers. Jericho Sims, the $2.99. You're good. And Quentin Groves. You're going to want to save a box. Oh, Jerich, dang on that. Yeah, here, just throw it in the top loader real quick. Right. I'm going to send an empty box and wrapper with the Pacers spot. Good catch on that one, Diamond. See that. Gotcha. On that Isaiah Jackson card, there is a little bit of a dang right there. A little dimple. Yeah, a little dimple. So we'll send you an empty box and wrapper so you can get that replaced. Oh, Tim Wakefield and Brian McRae. Wow. Carl Anthony Towns. The Knuckleballer, Tim Wakefield. Knuckleballer, Galore. Silver, Bradley Beale. Wizards. And Bones Highland, for me a level rookie. Sticky note, not treating you well. It's the last one. Dirk, Phenomenons, the Andre Aten. Keon Johnson, Tri-Color, and Trey Young. No, that's not it. Jared Butler. That's a Jalen Brown. It's part of its green. 12 out of 99. That's going to the Celtics. And Donovan Mitchell. Got a year. Cade rookie. We've got Vince Carter. 59 out of 249. Inflate signatures. Congrats, Toronto. Chin-Tap C. Congrats, Chin-Tap. Man, this is awesome. Duncan Robinson. Dude, I am one of the biggest sports nerds you'll meet, man. It's bad. It's bad. Nicola Jokic. Zion Williamson. That is blue. 72 out of 249. Like, I'm pretty confident. Kevin Durant, I can go one-on-one with anybody in this shot, maybe minus lane in sports knowledge. Yeah, I can. What's that? I can. Yeah, because, well, you're good in football. You just have, like, other sports. But even then, like, there's a lot of stuff I don't know that's, like, you know, like, pass. Silver Mowgli. Yeah, true. Pascal Siakam. Because, like, I'm really bad at confusing seasons. Like, I'm like, one season's bad, one thing or not. Trey Young. Silver Marcus Smart. I appreciate that, Jim. Kim Reddish, for this, on the court side. For the Hawks. What's the next one here, guys? The blow to my mind is, like, how forced. I mean, I know it's your guys' job, but it's amazing how much you can keep up with so many different sports. Yeah, true. True. I think Forrest and I probably have about the same amount of knowledge. Like, I was thinking, I was like, I've got him in football for sure. He's got me in baseball. We're probably about the same in basketball.  We've got a gold coming up, guys. Come on, baby. Scotty Barnes. Mello. That is an Evan Mowgli. Nice to 249, RPA. Congrats, Cabs. Frank L. There you go, buddy. Just to put those in the silverbacks. Oh, boy. We've got a gold Usman Garuba. 10 of 10 on the future. There you go, Rockets. Houston, Tim Jay. Congrats, Tim. And Duncan Robinson. Like, I probably got Forrest in golf. He's got me in hockey. He's got me in soccer. Siakam, Lamello ball. Tri-color, Trey Young. It's just hard to watch them in any different sports. Yeah, it's hard to keep up. I struggle with two. Santee Aldema. Jalen Suggs, rookie. Usman Garuba. That is 143 out of 149. And Donovan Mitchell. Like, then I've got him in every college for it. I've got him in college football, college basketball, for sure. It's not really a competition, but if it was a competition, that's where the stats would be. Chris Middleton and Donovan Mitchell-Court side. Tatum, there's use of Nurkitsch. That's purple to 99, going to the Blazers. And Chris Dwarza, anything you pull from select. Chris Dwarza. But I think Lane's probably got everybody beat. Lane's like an encyclopedia. Trey Mann, DeMar DeRose and Scope Bulls and Kevin Durant. There's a giddy. Sorry. JT Thor, Tri-color rookie. And Al Horf. Hollow Tobias Harris, Zach Levine Court side. Who knows more about pickleball? Probably a tie, probably a tie, Carl. Mowgli rookie. Desmond Bain, Cam Thomas, going to the Nets.  Like, I could, legitimately, I think I could, if you pulled up the 2014 NFL Draft, I can name you every first rounder. Guaranteed I could do that.  There's a Josh Jackson on the jersey card going to the Pistons. Game used. Moses Moody for the Warriors on the Scope, Quentin Grimes. Like, that's when I first started getting into collecting. Right. Like, really hardcore starting, like, not into collecting, but doing it on social media and stuff. Yeah. And that's just what really started it. Keon Johnson, was that 2014 draft class. Going to the Clippers on the rookie jersey. That was two. LeBron James, Jalen Brown. It was, it was like clowning that year. So it's clowning. The big offensive guys were the quarterbacks were Bortles, Manziel, Carr, and Ridgewater. Odell Beckham, Mike Evans, Sammy Watkins that year. Silver, Josh, Giddy. Bowen's Highland. I could probably give you, like, 90% of the colleges. I might not get all the colleges right on, but I could probably do about 90% on those. Still pretty solid.  Yeah, my brain's not good at that. Unless it's like movies that I've watched like a hundred times over. Right, exactly. That have no purpose at remembering. What's up, Shorts? Kailin Johnson. Kevin Love, it's a 299. Couldn't tell you anything that I learned in, like, my college accounting classes, but I could tell you the 2014 NFL draft class. Well, that's going to help you more here than accounting would, exactly. Scotty Barnes, that is Alex Caruso. Go into the Bulls, Quentin Grimes rookie. Silver, Josh, Giddy, Premier level. Al Horford. Sims, Jones, nice. Throwback threads to Neo Gallinari with the nuggets. Dude, that's so sick. These old nugget jerseys so far. The late, late blue mellow jerseys. Love these things. Oh yeah, light blue is a good color. Yup, absolutely. Patrick Williams to 75 for the Bulls, second year. Duncan Robinson. The less it's on Philadelphia Eagles old jerseys, those would come like this. Brutal. Those look terrible. Jailin Brown going to the Celtics in Crystal Orte. That's such a universally hated jersey, unfortunately. It's like, who thought of it? I don't know, man. I didn't even get it. Brandon Cooke went to Oregon State. Franz Wagner, name is Keita. Dennis Rodman, Miles McBride, and Jailin Brown. I don't think I could do every single pick and order, but if you gave me the team that made the selection, I'll get every single one. Ooh, redemption, nice. Corey Kispert, future, and Franz Wagner, rookie. Come on, B. Let's see a big redemption auto here. We've got, come on. X Factor, memorabilia signatures, card number eight. Anthony Davis. Boom, Jared W. with the Lakers. I don't wanna say that yet, because I don't know if he's a pelican in this. So give me one second. Let me look up the, between you and Sam. What's going on, Shortz's daughter? Select basketball, dude, come on. Basketball, cat's ball. Oh, is this, checklist is all perfect. Yeah, it's useless knowledge, but it's kind of next level. X Factor, that's court side, X Factor. Yup, that is a Laker. Card number eight, he is a Laker on this one. Nice one there, congrats on that. Jared, that one's sick, man. I'm in on Anthony Davis's photos.  Yeah, we're just, we just have different breaking styles, man. Patrick Williams. You and your alter self. Got Zyre Williams. That's Jalen Sugg, Silver, Luca. Yeah, Forrest doesn't yell as much for sure. Kevin Love. Isaiah Jackson, Silver, and Pokeshevsky. Forrest is also his never 20 minutes behind schedule of Tommy Briggs, those all give him that. Moses Moody. That's Darius Garland, scope for the caps, and Bones Highland, Premier level. Kelly Ubre, Kyle Kuzma on the Silver, and Terry Rozier, scary Terry, going to the Florence. I gotta tell you a cool story about Terry Rozier. Okay. Josh Giddy. We've got Tideye, Josh Christopher, nine out of 25. Nice one there for the Rockets. There you go, Tim. Picking up a Garuba to 10, and now a Christopher. And Shrey Young. So, Terry Rozier used to play on the Celtics. Okay. And they were playing the Bucks one time in the playoffs, and there's a player named Eric Bledsoe, kind of like a hothead a little bit. And he was defending Terry Rozier the entire game, because I think the Celtics starting point guard was out at that point. And he destroyed Eric Bledsoe, put up like 30 points on him. And after the game, they asked Eric Bledsoe, they're like, what do you think of Terry Rozier? Like, what are your thoughts on that? We've got Enos Freedom, throwback threads, that's going to the Jazz. Nice one there. Sandro Mamakashvili, for the Bucks, Kyle Lowry. They asked him his thoughts, and he just goes like, I don't know who that is. Like, I don't know who Terry, like who he thought, who's Terry Rozier? After he just got cooked. And then, wow, Damien Lillard on the tie-dye. Nice one there, Blazers. Eric on the combo spot. That is 14 out of 25. There's Weber State's finest, Damien and Lillard. No, you can recap it though. Yeah. He's like, I don't know who Terry Rozier is. So then Terry Rozier, the next game he was walking in, John and Kaminga, Jordan Clarkson, John and Kaminga, wore a Drew Bledsoe jersey, like the Patriots, Drew Bledsoe. And he was like, this is the only Bledsoe we acknowledge around here. Cause he played for the Celtics too, so it was a Patriots, Drew Bledsoe jersey. It was so funny. Yeah, I remember that, dude. Blazers, your hometown, oh yeah. Silver, Robert Williams, and OG Anubi. PDX, Bradley Beale Silver, and Jaden Springer. Keon Johnson on the scope, rookie. And we've got Scotty Barnes, premier level behind that. For the Raptors. That is Corey Kispert, going to the Wizards, and then Andrew Wiggins. Oh, anybody base cards right in the trash, Jalen. Jalen Suggs, 75 years. That is Isaiah Livers, and Malik Beese. Nimes Keita. Kaminga, 75 years for the Warriors.  And Freshers of Chua. Alms, Frans Vagna. Got nice, throwback threads. Paul George going to the Thunder. That's really cool. Wendy J. Nice one there, Wendy. I think you have 2,000 likes on your stream. You have 2,000 likes on your stream? What? How many people are watching?  You know what? Silver, Lou Duarte, and Zion Williams. I'm gonna go look at that. Dude, that's nuts. Well, I mean, they're doing the all-manecting right now.  What? Maybe that's fine. That's gotta be. Hold on, let me go on, I wanna see this really quick. Dude, that's insane. Let's go, late in gaming. Is it trending? Okay, look at that, there are 2,000 likes. Oh my God. Bro, that's insane. Let's go, dude. There goes Nick's in the back. Probably. Caleb's gonna try to take all the credit for that.  So he's gonna be hearing about that one for sure. What's up with that?  Silver, Zion Williams. How about a Cade Cunningham courtside base? Nice one there, pistons. They are cardboard deck. You don't deserve that. Clearly you don't need these if you got 2,000 likes on the stream. Keon Johnson. Trey Young, 76 out of 99 on the auto. Martin Z, congrats man, that is nasty. Dude, Selex been hitting 76 out of 99. Cade Cunningham, Brandon Boston. I don't know how Caleb got 2K. I think he's botting. He's definitely botting his likes. He's hacking. Caleb's hacking. Caleb's hacking. Keon Johnson. Going to the Clippers. Onyeko Konglin. Markel Fultz on the throwback threads. That's going to the Sixers. You know, Rich is feeling bad and making it up, dude, honestly. Kyrie Irving to 175. And Jason Theta. I'm not doing personals tonight. So we're done at like 12, so it's not gonna be his time to come in and start trolling us tonight. Anthony Davis and Jared Butler. Feeling bad and making it. That's so funny, dude. Dearon Sharp. Zion Williamson. Paul George. Thought it was a black for a second. Joshua Primo, going to the Spurs. I don't really want to talk too much about him. Trey Young and Sandro. He is 19 years old.  Joshua Primo Silver. Was the 12th overall pick in the draft last year. Got released yesterday by the Spurs. Everyone was like, why, why, why? Santee Aldema, Garza, Clay. There's a Jason Tatum, Anthony Davis. And he put out a statement that he was like focusing on mental health. So everyone's like, oh, that's good. Like, you know, do what's best for yourself. And then Kade Cunningham came out today. Got it up in jail. Kyle Kuzma, Miles McBride. He was released for multiple, multiple accounts of exposing himself to women. Bones Highland. That is tie-dye Chris D'Warze, boom. There you go, Pacers. Indiana, who's got him? Peter Amp, congrats, Peter. Nice D'Warze. All right, sorry, Matt, but I gotta time you out for a minute. I gotta keep it family-friendly.  Yeah, you're good. I know it wasn't, I'm sure it wasn't intentional or anything. I know it was, I don't think it was meant to be bad, but yeah, we are family friendly. Jalen Green rookie, what's this all about right here? We've got Jalen Green artistic selections on the super short print. There you go, Tim, congrats, man. Dude, these are so clean. So clean, congrats on that one. Pulled a Yanis one on an Elise day. Dude, these are so cool. Yeah, I've magged the door, I think I've magged that one too. Keon Johnson. Yeah, those are nice. So nice. I think those look better than the football ones. Yeah, I put it up there for sure. Wise Camp, jaw. Silver, Carl Anthony Towns, and KD on the court side. Very cool card for sure, man. It's been a great break, great half case. Cool card I didn't see in my box, D-Rod Sharp Silver, and Mo Bamba on the court side.  Let's see. I have no idea to be honest, they're very, very short-printed though, I know that. All right, quick recap here guys. Damian Lillard Tideye Blazers, Joshua Primo Spurs, Markel Fultz Sixers, Paul George Thunder, Enos Freedom, Jazz, Zyra Williams Grizzlies, Duneo Galanari for the Nuggets, that is Keon Johnson Clippers, Josh Jackson Pistons, Isaiah Jackson Pacers, Quentin Grimes to Tideye to 25 for the Knicks. Anthony Davis, Lakers, can you just tag that with Lakers, I'm sorry. Oh yeah. Just whenever you get a chance. Vince Carter Raptors, Cassius Stanley Pacers, now our Mags cards, man, what a break this was, holy cow. I guess we'll start with this. We had an Evan Mobley to 199 on the RPI, probably worth 15. We had a Chris Duarte Tideye RPI for the Pacers, 20 out of 25. Artistic selections, Jalen Green on the short-print. Lyme Green, Trey Young Autograph, 76 out of 99. And a Karim Abdul Jabbar, 10 out of 10 on the gold auto for the Bucks. That'll do it for the break guys. Thanks again for the fill, next up, more select.