Tow Professional Podcast
Tow Professional Podcast
Are Towing Professionals Misunderstood? Here’s the Truth!
Ever wonder what lies behind the towing profession's often misunderstood reputation? Join us for an engaging episode that delves deep into the complexities faced by towing professionals. We welcome Matthew Fuston, an experienced writer and marketer, as he shares insightful stories that challenge the negative perceptions about the industry.
During our heartfelt conversation, we explore the initiative aimed at highlighting the dedicated work of towing professionals who serve their communities with compassion. Matthew emphasizes the significance of storytelling as a crucial marketing strategy, helping to reshape the narrative surrounding towing.
We also discuss the utilization of various marketing channels, especially social media, to reach wider audiences and promote positive stories. With engaging anecdotes and practical insights, Good Neighbor or Predator, this episode inspires listeners to reflect on their perspectives and encourages them to share their stories with local media and legislators.
Whether you are in the towing industry or simply curious about the true heart of those behind it, this episode will leave you enlightened and inspired. Join us to elevate the conversation and celebrate the unwavering commitment of towing professionals everywhere. Don’t forget to share this episode, subscribe, and leave a review!
Welcome one and all to the Toe Professional Podcast. This is your podcast. It's for the pros that have a need to know, that are on the go, the true voice of the towing recovery industry. I'm DJ Harrington, better known as the Toe Doctor recovery industry. I'm DJ Harrington, better known as the Toe Doctor, and the real host of this program is the president and publisher of Toe Professional Magazine, a good friend of the industry and a dear friend of mine, darren Weaver Darren, how are you today?
Speaker 2:Well, man, dj. I tell you, like I said, this is going to be a great one today. Today I've got Matthew Fuston on and let me tell you Matthew spent his first half of his career selling mission-critical communication systems to the police, fire, federal agencies, including emergency dispatch centers, and in the second half of his career he's been working in marketing, exclusively in business-to-business work, for heavy equipment manufacturers, and, after working at an agency for more than a decade, he opened his own agency and has been writing stories for our industry as a freelancer for the last four to five years, and now he's working with me directly on a series of articles that we are absolutely excited about for our industry, called Good Neighbors Are Predators, and let me tell you this is something that's going to address the industry head on. Matthew is a phenomenal writer. You've seen his editorial in the publication many times before, with some fantastic stories and, matt, I'm glad to have you on here today and welcome to Toe. Professional On-The-Go Podcast.
Speaker 3:I appreciate that. Thank you very much for those kind words.
Speaker 2:Man, you're certainly welcome. You're certainly welcome. Well, as you know, we've talked in in the past and I wanted to shine a spotlight on one of the serious challenges to our industry that you know people thinking are our top professionals out there, are they predatory, and so on, when we all know that we've got a lot of great neighbors that are out there, that are top professionals, that are out there with a servant's heart. So that's what we want to do is tell that end of the story. So, matt, I want to throw it to you and just uh ask you know, where did this series come from for you?
Speaker 3:well, you know, as a, as a freelancer who, at you know first, was new to this industry. Uh, you know, I just started doing doing interviews and, to cut to the chase, over the last 40, a little bit more years I've written 50 to 60 stories, probably talked to 100 to 150 owners, actual operators. Some were small operators, some were giant, some were new, some were multi-generational, some were tow and recovery, some were purely repossession. After a while, the picture of these frontline people became pretty clear in my mind. I'm going to tell you something. It made me think of my days working with first responders. Now, I enjoyed that job as much as anything I've ever done in my life and if I could, I'd still be with that, you know, selling to the first responder community, because what they did made a difference and when I sold them something it had to work or people would die. So it was a tense situation but it was fulfilling and I saw that same thing. You know what you call a service heart. I saw that same thing in these people that I talked to.
Speaker 3:And then after a while obviously you know I'm reading all of the magazines and all the industry news and I realized I wasn't really understanding this predatory towing legislation thingamajig that everybody was upset about. So I got a hold of a couple of industry experts I'll leave their names out of it to protect them, that way nobody knows that they did it. They stooped so low as to talk to me but you know they did a great job explaining it. And then I thought to myself I've talked to well, you know by this time, but you know I've done stories on about 60 stories. I haven't run across any of these and I just don't feel like everybody's getting a fair shake. So my normal response because I am, I'm in content marketing, which is we'll talk about that later which is a little bit different than other kinds of marketing. But you know I got a little bit, you know a little bit hot under the collar. Coming from Feud and Stock in Missouri, you know that's pretty easy for me to do.
Speaker 3:But I feel like taking all these stories I'd written and grabbing them and, you know, running up to a legislator or whoever the heck, and just waving them in their face and saying you read this. Well, you know, a lot of them can't read, so they would have to give it to their staff people to read. But anyway, yeah, you know, but just shaking their face and say you read these stories and you tell me which one of those people is a predator. Now I came up with the idea for the series and sadly, I couldn't find anybody that was interested in it until I thought you know what I'll call Darren about this is something he'd be interested in, and you know he was on board right away. Now the thing that I want your people uh listening to understand, uh, is that no manufacturer or distributor is paying me for this series. None of them are paying me to make them look good.
Speaker 3:Um, you know that's one of the things that you and I talked about, that we we realized. You know it's got to be independent of that kind of thing for it to work. No company outside company is going to have control over the stories. And then then what do we do? You know we tell stories in the magazines. Now are these just stories in a trade magazine? Preaching to the choir? Because I got a feeling everybody reading your magazine and really any other of our trade magazines they already agree with that. So, to make a difference, this has got to be different. This has got to be different.
Speaker 3:So what I'm going to do, darren, if this is okay, I'm going to read that sidebar that Darren and I worked together to make sure. We're going to put this sidebar explaining the series in each one of the stories that I do. And this is what it says to all the men and women in towing who are making their communities better places to live, even while they're under attack from various political and business interests that try to characterize all towers as predatory. Our objective is to provide stories that show that the overwhelming majority of our people are good neighbors who do not engage in predatory towing practices. Rather than reporting on one or two individual acts of charity, a couple paragraphs here and there, we will share a life or career story that shows why you want a neighbor like this in your town.
Speaker 3:We urge our readers to share these stories with their legislators and local news media to demonstrate the true character of towing professionals. Now here's the part of this that is really different and I'm going to give. I have to give Darren credit for being willing to go along with this, as a man that makes money running a magazine man it makes money running a magazine. The last part of the sidebar says Toe Professional Magazine will waive copyright restrictions if, number one, these stories or even portions of these stories are used to call attention to these good neighbors in our industry and, number two, if Toe Professional Magazine and the article's author are credited and then we tell them for more program details and copies of these stories, please email and blah, blah, blah. That is what is different about this series.
Speaker 2:Definitely. And, matt, I tell you that just gives me so much pride just hearing you read that again. I know we read it together and talked about it, but just to be able to put out there because, just like you said, there's so many times they're painted in a bad light and we know ourselves from dealing with them, man. I hadn't found a bad one yet man yeah.
Speaker 2:All I found is just more extended family in this network. So this industry has really been a blessing and I want to tell our listeners man, if you want to see our first one we put out, we put out one that we just put out called the Joy of Towing. It's a story that Matthew put out and it's on a medical worker's second career, on Cynthia Jenkins I'm sorry, christina Jenkins, I apologize for that, but it's about her career, how she took this on as a second career and her passion for the industry, and that will give you an idea of Matt's editorial style, the focus he brings in on our industry and the passion he puts behind it. So there's one you can start with, but our first series for this will start with the Florida Toe Show issue. So that's volume 14, issue two. That's our upcoming issue. So we're currently working on these stories and we're going to have it out there and, like I said, it's awesome that we're going to be able to allow our readers to take that story, print it, reproduce it, take that to your legislators, take it to the association meetings and use it to build growth in this market as well as to overshadow the bad stigma we're getting and put out these heartwarming stories of what you, men and women, do on a daily basis.
Speaker 2:Well, listeners, what we're going to do. Real quick, I want you to hang with us. We're going to take a quick break for our sponsors and we're going to be right back with more information from Matthew. Hang in there. You're going to want to hear this next time. We'll be right back. You hang in there. You're going to want to hear this next time, we'll be right back.
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Speaker 2:All right, thanks for hanging in there, guys. We are back, and what I want to do next is I want to go to you, matt, and I want you to be able to tell our listeners what you think is the most important marketing tool for our industry, of course, besides print. We're so professional, but I want to leave that open to you and let you tell our listeners about this, because I think it's very important and it's very from what I've seen for our advertisers, it is crucial and it really makes a difference. So you go ahead.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and, just as a little side point, you mentioned the magazine. I mean, I just recently did a couple of videos, and one of them for my LinkedIn account, but I put longer versions of those on my website and that, this particular video I just did. I think it's only about two minutes long, but it addresses that question. You know, is old media dead or is trade media dead? And, um, I encourage people uh to to take a look at that, because what I came up with is ain't dead, but there's some reasons for that. But anyway, to get to what you said, you know, the first thing that we talked about obviously was this new series, because that's what we're most ramped up and excited about. But you notice that we've got a problem in the industry, and problem in the industry, and you know part of the solution I mean, it's a bigger problem, but part of the solution, we believe, is telling stories and then getting those stories outside of our little circle of people in the towing industry who already agree with us, all right, so industry who already agree with us All right. So we've already established that one of the ways to attack a problem and this can include business problems and issues and so on as well, is storytelling, and I'm not talking about writing an article, I'm talking about storytelling. Storytelling Storytelling has a narrative. But before I do that, I know a lot of the listeners out there. They hear so much about marketing and if I was them, I would have turned it off in my head by now too. But I'm going to try to simplify stuff. Well, these aren't buzzwords, they're just technical jargon from my industry, the marketing industry. But it is important for them to know about it because people that will be trying to get them to do marketing will bring it up and it is kind of important to know. Now, I have mentioned you know, a few times here that I do content marketing. Now, this is a short little definition of that and your listeners, darren, will have heard this and will hear it in the future and so on.
Speaker 3:But what content marketing is, according to the Content Marketing Institute, is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating valuable, relevant and consistent content. So they're saying we're putting together valuable and useful content to attract that's, new people that aren't doing business with and retain, hold on to our current business a clearly defined audience which we've got we know who that is and ultimately to drive profitable customer action. Well duh, we all want to make money, but I like the last part of this. It said you know, so what we're doing is we're trying to communicate with these people to attract them and retain them, but we're doing that instead of just pitching products. So marketing is not just pitching products. So you know. I mean that's like I said, that's a quick definition, so you know some of the things that are related. I'll just very quickly I mean public relations, media relations.
Speaker 3:Those are auxiliary services that most content marketers will bring in, but there's an importance to quality writing and interviewing. You've got to be able to get the story out of them. You've got to be able to do technical research, because, I mean, I've been to a few rotator schools and we started getting into the math and I say, hey, this is why I had a childhood dream of being a scientist, until I found out I sucked at math. We're doing too much math here, boys, for me, so I have to do on some stories, I have to do a lot of technical research. That's part of it.
Speaker 3:And content's more than the written word. I mean it includes photography, videography, graphics, just so many things, and I have, you know those people in my. I don't have a huge agency, but you know I got artists, videographer, photographer. I got a technical writer. I also have consultants in coding and AI. I got a guy that's a consultant in coding and AI, a consultant in visual arts broadly, a consultant in music, and that's all in my little shop. But you know a lot of those things like the graphics and so many of those things you know Darren's own company provides.
Speaker 3:So for this project, I'll just be providing my. I will just be providing my. What am I trying to say here? I'm just I'll be providing the writing part of it, you know. And that that's really where we're at now. What content marketing is. I've just described what content marketing is. I've just described what content marketing is. Not is saying you know what? Nobody reads anymore. Nobody reads magazines anymore. Trade press is dead. You know what we need to do. We need to go and just do everything on social media. Think how much money we'll save. That's not content marketing, that's well, you said it's a family broadcast, so I can't say what it?
Speaker 3:is Darren.
Speaker 2:We call it spaghetti. It's throwing something against the wall and hoping it sticks. You're actually right.
Speaker 3:That's a very good. That's a good metaphor, and you and I was going to use that later. You robbed it from me, man, but that's okay. That's okay, we'll work something else out, but anyway. So I'm going to just run down these real quick. These are some things that you know.
Speaker 3:The people out there will have heard marketing seminars and so on that they go to. They hear about earned, owned and paid media. Now those have a place in telling your story. For example, the first thing here earned media. Now that refers to publicity or exposure that you get through non-paid means. You know everything from word of mouth and social media sharing to news coverage, opinion pieces and feature articles in magazines.
Speaker 3:Now I will point this out, that some sources say this only applies to content that's created outside your company organically, and that's true in a lot in the customer, in the consumer world and if you're a giant company like Ford or Cat or whatever. But in business to business and in the trade media, opinion pieces and customer stories or job stories that you create are earned, in that the company does not pay the media source. In other words, you get a story, darren, you decide whether you're going to run it or not. They don't pay you to run a piece of junk, and so that is counted, and I've always counted that as earned media. One thing you know when award, people are about to think that they want to write stories and submit them. There's a reason that people are called editors.
Speaker 3:They have the right, and I have been in many different and I am still in many different other industries. I'm going to tell you something Editors decide what the final words are going to be. You don't get to write off on every word.
Speaker 3:If you do, that's called an advertorial, it's basically an ad that looks like a magazine article, so we're not talking about that now. Paid media it does include advertorials, you know if they're running them, uh, but paid media refers to anything you paid for and you know, I guess, uh, I'm looking at this long old definition and, um, I guess I would just call it advertising. That's paid media. Everything I'm looking at here is some kind of advertising.
Speaker 3:And then you hear about owned media and that's stuff that you own, you and your company own. I mean it's digital or physical content that you create. That's your website, your blog, your social media posts, and it also includes the stuff you put on paper. I mean there's still stuff you put on paper and hand out at trade shows and salesmen use it, you know, leave behind sheets and brochures and all that kind of thing. That's owned media. So those are the things that those are the things for you to keep in mind, and the thing is, all of these apply as much to a big manufacturer as they do to a small, local business. I mean, exactly, and I don't think everybody thinks about that.
Speaker 1:I'm sorry, Go ahead sir.
Speaker 2:No, I was going to say, matt, you're 100% on that. Whether you're a vendor in this industry, that's selling product to our owners in the industry, or whether you're an owner of, let's say, bob's Towing, marketing matters and it's whether you went out there and pulled a car out of a ditch after a large accident and the local news covers you. That helps out. But, just like you said, matt, one of the best ways is storytelling and that really sets it in the mind and brands you, whether you're a vendor or whether you're a tow company of two trucks or 200.
Speaker 3:That is a very good point and really, when you look at that, you know let's take the example that you just used Okay, so when you do this recovery and it's just something bizarre and your local TV station covers it, okay, that's earned media. But you know what? You can go to them, get a few clips from that and you can use that in paid media. You can put it in a YouTube ad, you can put it in anything you've got online. You can put it on your website. Well, now, that's owned media. So you know, you see, people can see how that works and you know.
Speaker 3:Just very briefly, I'm not going to go into this in any kind of detail, but I mean, branding is important too. I would probably have marketers out there calling angrily and talking about what an idiot this guy is if I didn't mention branding. But it is the. It's the process of creating the brand identity of a company and delivers materials that support the brand, like logo, tagline, visual design, tone of voice. And tone of voice means, you know, like there's some guys that have a business and you know they have a kind of a cartoonish thing on the side of it and you know they're joking around. I mean they're serious businessmen, but that's their personality. And then others, you know, go the other way and so on. But I mean that's what they mean by tone of voice, and so I mean branding is important, if you know, if they know your company, they should be able to look at anything you own. And oh yeah, that's Joe's sewing, because I know that's his livery. Or your uniforms, or you know all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 3:But to get back to what you were saying earlier about storytelling and setting us apart, this is something that applies to manufacturers, distributors and business owners end users, like I think you mentioned a little bit earlier on. You've got to tell stories, man. I mean one of the things that I've always kept in mind I don't even remember who said it, so I apologize about that but good communication is how would you say it? It's rooted in empathy, that's the ability to feel what others are feeling. Now, if you have that, you have a connection. If you have a connection, you can create influence, and the most effective way to do that is always through telling a story, because I'm going to tell you, I've looked at thousands of fact sheets, probably in my time.
Speaker 3:I don't remember any of them. Somebody said one time you know, facts and figures are forgotten. But here's the beautiful thing to remember Good stories are always retold. So if you tell a good story, it doesn't just sit there, bam, it's gone, it's retold. Now there's a story story a man named Jesus. We're still telling stories 2,000 years later. There's a fella called King David. We're still telling his story 3,000 years later.
Speaker 3:That's right there's a fella called Abraham. We're telling his story 4,000 years later. And heck, there's a Greek fellow called Homer wrote the Odyssey. Well, he didn't actually write it, they say he was probably illiterate but he remembered that whole thing and repeated that big old poem. And we're still telling that story today.
Speaker 1:That's right that story today.
Speaker 3:Those of you that might be classical literature buffs go watch oh Brother, where Art Thou? Again, that's a retelling of the Odyssey. So good stories get retold, they get retold. But here's where you got to craft your skills if you're going to do that, because stories land customers, they build your brand, they drive revenue. So you got to learn how to spin a good yarn. And that goes back to what I said earlier about the narrative. It's got to be a narrative. You've got to understand what that means, and I'm going to break somebody's heart right here Darren Darren Walker.
Speaker 6:Yep Go ahead.
Speaker 3:Darrell Dawsey Going to get your eighth grade English teacher and have him write you an article. I'm sorry that ain't going to work and as much as you know it's like. Well, he, he was an English teacher. That's not the same thing as a writer, boys and girls. I'm sorry, but that that comes back to what we talked about in the very beginning. You know about the Good Neighbors are Predators series. Let's get it in local news, let's get it to the legislature. The power of a narrative story is going to have is more powerful than handed them a big list of a big list of this, that and the other thing is what's wrong?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I'll tell you, Matt, it's like it's always said If you don't like the playing field that you're looking at, the only way to change it is to step out on the field and change it yourself. So, for a lot of our folks, the only way to change some of the narratives in our industry is you've got to step up. It's going to take our men and women stepping up and saying let's shine a spotlight on Fred's business. Look what he's been doing for many years for not only our people in the industry, but for the community, for the kids' football team. For him sponsoring the Cub Scouts each year, for him also always being there for the scouts each year. For him, you know, also always being there for the parade, for toys, for tots. There's so much that are that that you men and women do as our, our toe professionals in this industry. That goes unheard and and and isn't repeated. That if, just like matt saying, if we can craft that into stories, those stories are going to be retold about you and your businesses and your products over and over again. And that's free marketing. That just, uh, that just builds longevity for your brand, your product, your business.
Speaker 2:Well, let's, let's do this before we step into this next part, because I know we want to talk about storytelling and how it works as a partial solution to the staffing problem and also how social media fits into this. But let's do this. Let's take a quick break. Let's hear from some of our great sponsors and listeners. You want to hang in there, because we're going to have more great knowledge from Matt and he's going to give you some more fantastic ideas. Get your pen and paper out I hope you've been taking notes because this will be information that will help you step forward and grow your business in 2025. Hang in there, we'll be right back.
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Speaker 2:All right, everyone, we're back. You've been listening to Toe Professional on the Go podcast with Darren Lieber, publisher of Toe Professional, and also Matthew Houston, Houston and Associates, and what I want to go back to. We're learning here the different ways you can market and the keys to it and what can stand the test of time in marketing. So let's get back to this. Tell us about storytelling as a parcel solution to the staffing problem we deal with these days yeah, yeah, that's that.
Speaker 3:That's something that you know. I deal with people in mining and construction as well and man, I'm telling you, I think construction I mean we're talking some critical, critical needs for staffing. Everybody that I've interviewed, everybody but one guy, I think it was, that I've interviewed in the toy and recovery business over the last several years every single one of them, you know, talked about staffing and you know we all know the reasons for it and so on. But that ongoing shortage of staff, man, I mean that goes across. You know what I call the hard hat and the big iron industries, and this is a pre-COVID problem. I mean some people think COVID caused it. It did not. It did not Now because of COVID. Well, no shoot, because of 2008,. A lot of guys retired early. Covid came around. It was kind of the same thing. So we were dealing with this way before COVID.
Speaker 3:But back in January of 24, I read a fascinating story written by somebody at 3M. I read it in constructionproscom, which is kind of my go-to for construction news. They ran this report about this project at 3 am and they profiled a new program at 3 am or at least it was new, the first to last year that was aimed at reversing this shortage of skilled labor. And you know, I read that and I'm like good luck, man. And then I found out that it was a docuseries that they put together called Skilled, and it purported to change people's opinions about the trades.
Speaker 3:And how did they do that? Well, they had to tell their stories. Yes, so yeah, I mean the whole thing is tell their stories. And the point was we got to get more skilled people. Well, why is telling their stories important? Well, there's one stat from this study that I'm going to quote and it just blows me away. Eighty-seven percent of Americans say that they would have a better opinion of skilled trades if those trades were better presented to the public. Now, isn't that what we've been talking about for the last 20 minutes?
Speaker 2:You know, Right on target.
Speaker 3:Exactly so. In other words, people would respect the skilled trades more and this would make it easier for kids to want to enter the trades, and that better representation would also affect the way those kids' parents looked at the trades. So I thought that was a great job by 3M to do that. Now, in my case, I wrote several stories like this. Last year there was this one about just I mean, oh man, there were some parts of it just about broke my heart. I didn't put all them in there in the story but there was a single mom and she just wanted somebody to give her a chance. She just wanted somebody to give her a chance and uh and uh, she was not a, not a big girl, she's a little bitty thing, you know, and nobody thought she could do the job. By God. She proved them wrong and you know that's heartwarming. And then there's that one that you mentioned. That's the first one in our series. I mean Christine.
Speaker 3:I wrote a 2,400-word story about her. I cut it down to 1,500 because that's about what our stories run, you know, in the magazines. I could have easily written 5,000 words. I did not. I didn't get hardly well. I got less than half of all the things that she's doing in the community Actually, I think I'm going to do another story about her here in about a year. The community actually I think I'm going to do another store story about it here in about a year. Um, but these are the kind of people that we're talking about, yes, and they have much well, and you remember the, the, the code red story.
Speaker 3:You know that you read. You know holy cow. You know these people are amazing and, uh, they have a lot. You, these stories have a lot more effect than a sheet full of facts. Or you know a trade school video that runs an ad at 3 o'clock in the morning on local access. You know, but these are real. These stories are real. People telling you how their life not their paycheck but they're telling you how their life is better now because they're in a particular skilled job, obviously like a toer. And we want to never forget the bottom line here when we're talking about this staffing thing the company who makes their or their customer's skilled workers look best are going to get the best candidates for when they have openings.
Speaker 1:That's right.
Speaker 3:You know we do that If we make someone's skilled workers look best. The way we do that is we make the end user of the product, and by end user I'm talking about I've done stories about operators or business owners.
Speaker 6:And in those cases.
Speaker 3:for me, they're the end user, but we make them the hero.
Speaker 2:We don't make the manufacturer.
Speaker 3:We don't make the VP of who's this, we don't make you know it's that end user person, the guy on the ground or gal on the ground. Let's make them the hero because, let's face it, I mean I know I'm preaching the choir here, but all the jobs that I lump under the umbrella term hard hat industries and that includes, you know, the other industries that I'm in all of those have the potential for danger, all of them.
Speaker 3:I mean construction dangerous, mining dangerous, but there are none that have more of that potential than this one. But these people and I'm not just talking about the towers, but these people we're talking about, who keep our economy humming, at the risk of their lives and health, are heroes. I mean, look up hero definition in the dictionary. So we owe it to them to tell their stories engagingly and with passion. And here's something we got to do and we've alluded to this or we've discussed it several times, but it keeps coming back up in different contexts we got to do more than preach to the choir. I mean all of us in this.
Speaker 3:You know, everybody in this industry agrees with you know, with all everything we're saying, but I did not realize, Darren, how dire the situation was and how badly. You know we're doing in this regard and a lot of it is on the media team, frankly but I did some research, I went down a rabbit hole and I threw out all the stuff that was not backed up by serious media, but we've got to reach the rest of the country with this information. You know, in 2017, yeah, in 2017, tow and recovery folks worked out to 42.9 fatal injuries per 100,000 workers. You know, for the regular workforce, you know what it is About 3.6. 3.6? Yeah, Isn't that amazing? So that's the baseline. Now, in that same year, they do do these reports I think it's every four years the bureau of labor statistics I think, it is um but,
Speaker 2:yeah, I think the current number the current number now, I think, is one every six days um, that we're losing to a roadside fatality our men and women of towing. So that's it is. It's unbelievable. And you know, like you're saying, a lot of our community doesn't understand a lot of the sacrifice, the missed football games, baseball games, cheerleading birthdays, thanksgivings, christmas when these men and women leave their house and head out there to take care of our loved ones. So this is a tremendous opportunity to tell that story and to to get back to those and those that are highlighted will. You will see, it will also increase their effectiveness inside the company, because they will see that they're being looked at and valued for their input. Now let me ask you this when do you feel, matt, that social media fits in? Because I know a lot of folks are so wide open on social media these days and it's fantastic, but tell us where that fits in.
Speaker 3:That's a very good point, because when you talk about marketing, it's pretty nearly the first. I almost said pertinent. I am from Missouri. I told you that.
Speaker 2:We use that around here in Alabama too now.
Speaker 3:Oh, yeah, I know, I had a job in Huntsville one time, so I know how you all talk. So, no social media, yeah, uh, sometimes I concentrate so much on other kinds of content marketing that people think that, uh, I'm contemptuous of social media. But that's not true. It important. So how are your listeners going to benefit from this?
Speaker 3:Well, number one, and this is again if you're a manufacturer, distributor, end user, trying to reach your community, find out what platforms your customers are using, then use them. I mean that's the answer. I mean I don't know how many times I've had consultants come in to customer or clients or whatever trying to take business away from me, and they're talking about all the. You know you need to be in this, that and the other thing. And I'm like, okay, but in our industry there just aren't a whole lot of towers out there doing tick tocks of going dance, you know. But uh, so find out what your, your folks, are using and use them.
Speaker 3:And here's another one that uh, gripes me Don't believe the snake oil salesman that tell you Facebook is dead. They say, ah, only old people use Facebook. Interestingly enough, a lot of those old people own businesses. Just as a side point, but just from talking to people, I'll bet in this industry, about 90% or more of actual towing companies use Facebook to communicate with their community, and so if you're their dealer or manufacturer, you got to engage with them on their chosen platform. You need a company Facebook page. You need to do more than post your ads about how great you are.
Speaker 4:You got to engage.
Speaker 3:Now I mean this thing about Facebook being dead. It is a little bit of an issue out there, but the fact is they grew their user base and their revenue in 23 and 24. Now they did have a drop. They did have a drop. Its use dropped among teens. Now I'm not 100% sure we care about that but.
Speaker 3:I was just going to say. The other thing is you got to be regular and consistent. You got to be consistent. You've got to make a decision. Are you going to do it every other day, once a week? Are you going to do it three times a week? Monthly is not enough. Monthly is absolutely not enough. So I mean, entrepreneur Magazine talked about this and they said that one of your main goals in social media is brand awareness. You're fighting brand forgetfulness. Yeah, so the way you fight that is you create a constant presence in people's lives and so you increase your chance of being remembered. Now I've got a saying that I keep wanting to trademark it, but somebody else already said it, probably. But it's that repetition sparks recognition. Keep repeating it, keep repeating it, keep repeating it and people will recognize you at some point and then, all of a sudden, they won't remember where they heard about you from. They just know that you're a player.
Speaker 3:Now another type of content that's not used enough and well understood is what they call curated content. All that means is stuff that you did not create yourself, but you're gathering it from other sources and you're using it in your social media as a service to the people. You want to create stuff that they're interested in. Now people will ask, you know they'll ask what kind of content they should put in there. Actually, not enough of them do ask that question. They should ask it more. And if I was going to sum it up, one sentence don't just talk about you. Nobody wants that. Don't just talk about you. Nobody wants that.
Speaker 3:There are different ratios out there, and I'm only going to mention the one that I think is the most applicable to business to business, and that's the three-to-one ratio. Now, that's very simple For every three engagement posts, you post a promotional post about yourself. Now, an engagement post is, like it may be, about legislation that affects the towers and it's going to affect local customers, or how to stay safe while you wait for your tow, or some educational post, or the story of a local recovery, and then one promotional post that talks about why they want to do business with you. So the secret to making good social media is don't talk about yourself all the time and don't be flogging your product every time. A lot of manufacturers do that and it just makes me sad.
Speaker 3:And the last thing is use video. Use video. Use video. I mean, that's the most. I mean, if you're going to do something that you're not doing now, use video. 30 seconds or less. For those that are shy, my big problem is cutting it down from six or seven minutes to two. But if you're one of those shy folks, hey, 30 seconds or less, and then you can put more in the text part of your post. But you know, once you get a good grip on this, it might be worth it for you to get a YouTube channel at some point. But you know, practice your chops first on adding video to the platforms you already use.
Speaker 2:Love it.
Speaker 2:Well, matt, if you don't mind, I want to go back and summarize a little bit of this.
Speaker 2:Oh sure, because let me tell you this was a a lot for listeners to take in, but the the key synopsis to this is is matt, is um, is very knowledgeable on showing how we can put our products out there and how you can get your best bang for the buck.
Speaker 2:And, um, there's many different ways to do it, from print, the digital, to social, to storytelling, and it's a combination of all those. They're going to make you relatable in the industry, because what we're trying to do mainly with this, the storytelling, is make you relatable to those that you're selling the products. If you can sell yourself, you can sell your product through. The biggest thing is making yourself relatable to others and social media phenomenal, great way to do it Takes 20 plus impressions to make that branding mark, whereas in print or a story, can only take two to three times to be seen. So I think, matt, like you're saying, one of the biggest keys to marketing is, besides just putting a product out there in print and hoping that it will work, is that relatable storytelling behind it? Am I correct there?
Speaker 3:I definitely couldn't have said it better myself. No.
Speaker 2:Well, do me a favor, because I certainly know this. I know we've got vendors out there that could use your services when it comes to knowing how to bring their products to the market, and I also know we've got owners out there 26,000 we hit in print, another 33,000 we dropped to on the digital format with our e-blast that have a need for marketing expertise and ways to reach the market and ways to tell their story. So for others out there, for our listeners, that have questions about their own marketing challenges and need to know more, how can they get a hold of you?
Speaker 3:challenges and need to know more. How can they get a hold of you? Well, this is something kind of new for me. I'm kind of taking a little bit of a leap of faith here on this. But what they can do if they have any questions about what we've talked about, they can email me directly about. They can email me directly.
Speaker 3:Now, that's Matt M-A-T-T at Fuston. Well, F-U-E-S-T-O-N-A-S-S-O-C dot com. That'll be in the magazine so you'll be able to find it in there somewhere. Or just or send something to Darren. He'll forward, afford it to me if you got a question about what we talked about and I'll answer you directly, free. I mean, if it's easy enough to do in an email, I'll just do it in an email. But if you need to call for a short consult, let's make arrangements for any via email and I'll do it. I'm not going to charge you for it, um, and I'm going to do that as long as I can, as long as I can afford to. But I just think it's something that is important and we've got two things here. Number one I believe in it as far as marketing is concerned. But number two, like you were saying a little bit earlier, there are so many things in this industry that you know that we need to get done to protect the people, and I really do think storytelling is a good tool to do that.
Speaker 2:So there we go, fantastic and listeners also. You can reach out directly to me, you can email directly at Darren, and my name is spelled funny. My mother didn't get the hooked on phonics tape, so it's D-A-R-I-A-N. It's spelled Darian, pronounce Darian Yep, she did that to me D-A-R-I-A-N at towprofessionalcom and you can find that in a magazine as well.
Speaker 2:Well, matt, I can tell you I mean, this is a just a absolute phenomenal podcast and I think it's.
Speaker 2:You know, we wanted to use this opportunity to to reach out to our listeners and let them know, um, our, our purpose in the industry and what we want to do as a, as a publisher in the market and working with a, a top tier editor that can stand out here, that's, that's talked with the everybody from the manufacturers to the dealers, distributors, to the owners in the industry, and knows this industry well and knows how to put passion into those stories. That so, not only will you be remembered, so that that story will be told again and again. So, uh, again, matt, I can't thank you enough for being, for coming on, and I got to tell our you've got to start watching. In the upcoming issues, you're going to see this series, good Neighbors or Predators, and you're going to see how Matt's going to put a spotlight on you men and women out there and show what a wonderful job you do and how you should be cherished in this industry. Any last words before I wrap this thing up, matt.
Speaker 3:No, you summarized it pretty well.
Speaker 2:But thank you, thank you so much for being on. Let me tell you, guys, y'all are going to really enjoy this line of edit that's coming up from this series. I know we've had so much great feedback on Matt's stories in the past, so I'm just happy to be able to work with him going forward. And, as always, I want to pray for our audience. And, dear Heavenly Father, I just thank you for the opportunity to be able to reach this market, be able to be in front of this industry and give them a voice. Dear Heavenly Father, we just ask that you bless our vendors with prosperity to be in front of this industry and give them a voice. Dear Heavenly Father, we just ask that you bless our vendors with prosperity, with knowledge. Protect them in this industry, have them bring more products and services to the industry that will promote safety. And also, lord, watch over our men and women of towing, put a hedge of protection around them, bless them for their servants' hearts, make them prosperous, bring them back home to their families with a blessing Lord and let them know how cherished they are. Amen. Well, that's a wrap for today.
Speaker 2:Listeners, keep listening. We'll be back next week with more great guests like Houston and Associates. Here we're going to have more great edit with the Good Neighbors, or Predators, editorial that's coming at you. So keep a lookout for the next copy of Toe Professional, volume 14, issue two. We'll see you next time. Thanks again and God bless.