Your Digital Marketing Coach with Neal Schaffer

How Human Writing - and AI Content Creation - Will Help You Scale Your Digital Influence [Kate Bradley Chernis Interview]

• Neal Schaffer • Episode 158

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This episode features an interview with Kate Bradley Chernis, Co-Founder and CEO of the content marketing tool Lately, which helps you automatically turn your content into dozens of social media posts in one click.  Some of the topics we cover include:

  • Why writing is the most important skill in your toolkit as a marketer or a salesperson
  • How any marketing person or tool can't help you if you start out with crap: "you can't polish a turd"
  • How AI can help your content creation process
  • How humans and Artificial Intelligence can work together

Thanks for listening, checking out my Age of Influence book, and subscribing and reviewing on whichever app you use to listen to this podcast!

Key Highlights

[01:43] Introduction of Podcast Guest, Kate Bradley Chernis

[06:56] What Is LatelyAI?

[08:44] What LatelyAI Does

[10:52] Why Writing Is The Most Important Toolkit?

[16:29] One Of The Problems People Have In Writing Marketing And Sales

[19:43] How AI Help Fix Potential Writing Issues

[23:59] You Need To Tweet Like A DJ

[25:40] How AI Content Creation Is Time To Throw THe Lead Generation Playbook

[28:36] 2 Best Examples Of How TO Better Access To Your Customers

[33:04] How AIs Can Make Our Jobs Easier

[37:49] Connect With Kate

[38:53] Final Thoughts

Notable Quotes

  • Really just taking a second to think about what you're writing, and then understand who you're writing it to.
  • That's what storytelling is really about. It's about like making sure that somebody cares at all what you're saying. And the way to get them to care is to be human, and to inject that personality and persona in it. And a great way to do that is to think about how things look on the page.
  • If you really want to resonate with your audience, that that tone of voice is critical. But just making sure that your writing is is powerful, in a way that conveys the message, the way that you want it to be conveyed is something that you really can't take for granted.
  • Your network is always your most important thing.
  • So with marketing, especially marketing is a human affair. It's very emotional, you you buy something from me, because you like me, or you like my product, you have this emotional reaction to it, right? And robots can't replicate that.
  • People remember you when you make that personal connection and often that's based on mutual personal experiences and if you don't bring those things out in your content, this is something that AI cannot teach you right?
  • So leverage as much as you can about you as a person or about the people inside your brand. and you're going to be much better for that. 

Learn More:

Neal Schaffer:

This is the maximize your social influence podcast with Neal Schaffer, where I help sales and marketing professionals, entrepreneurs, and small business owners, build, leverage and monetize their influence in digital and social media. This is Neal Schaffer. And welcome to episode number 158 of the maximize your social influence podcast. Sorry for the slight delay between this episode and my last one still trying in many ways to recover from the void that is now in my life, but doing my best to get revamped, and to keep going forward on my mission, and I know that that is what my father would have wanted as well. So today, we are going to talk about how human writing and AI content creation will help you scale your Digital Influence. When we talk about maximizing our social influence. There are a few different types of content mediums that we have to play with, we have audio, which is this podcast, actually, even audio has some text components to it in terms of the shownotes, right, or if we want to repurpose this into a blog post, we have video, but even video has some text in terms of the title and the description we use on YouTube, as well as if we use that inside a blog post. And then we obviously have text, which is a blog post a website, what have you or a book. So there are many, many different reasons why writing is so critical to what you do if you want to yield more influence for yourself or for your business in social media. So today's episode is a special interview with Kate Bradley chemists man, I hope I'm pronouncing your last name right. She is the co founder and CEO of the social media tool lately. She is a friend a really awesome person. And I think you're really going to enjoy this interview where we talk about a number of things, obviously, the importance of writing, it might just be the most important skill in your toolkit as a marketer, we look at, you know, no matter what sort of social selling social media marketing, management or analytic tools you're using, you can't polish a turd in Kate's words. So if you start out with a bad input, you're always going to get bad outputs. And then we're going to look at how AI and humans must work together. And this episode covers a lot of AI because lately is a tool that actually is at the forefront of leveraging artificial intelligence to help you create more content or to repurpose your content so that you can share it more and more on social media. So I think you're really gonna love this episode. Before we start a reminder that this podcast is currently being sponsored by the age of influence my new book, which has now been out for about two months, I want to thank everybody that's already picked up a copy, and the reviews have started to really come flowing in on Amazon, I want to give a special shout out to some of those that have already reviewed the book on Amazon Tim Hughes. Tim is a thought leader in social selling. He is also a co instructor with me in the Rutgers business school social selling in a digital world executive education program. If you are into sales, you must follow Tim Hughes, and you must buy his book on social selling as well. So Tim's review actually starts out with full disclosure. Just be aware that I was a part of a program that Neal Schaffer produced at Rutgers business school while I gave you that disclaimer as well, a knowing Neil I purchased a copy of the age of influence as soon as it appeared on Amazon. Neil has been in the influencer marketing space as long as I can remember and being an influencer himself, he can speak from both the brand side and the influencer side. In this book, he does both. So what is the book like? Neil gives a great background to influencer marketing basics, from what it means from both the business to consumer and business to business point of view. He describes how social media has changed society and change the world of business. He then goes on to describe how you can create your own influencer marketing campaign from working out which influencers to target, how to contact them, how to work with them, and how you should measure the influencer program. For me, the important point that Neal gets across is that through the whole process, the influencer if they're any good will be in charge. If you think that an advert will be created and put through an influencers network. That is an influencer marketing, that's advertising. He finished up with explaining how you can become an influencer. If you're in marketing, thinking about influencer marketing, or any to be an influencer. It's well worth the read. Thank you so much, Timothy. I hope that on the next episode, I'll be able to read your review here. So without further ado, let's get on to the interview with Kate from lately. Hey everybody, this is Neal Schaffer. Welcome to a another episode of the maximize your social influence podcast. Should we call this the special Coronavirus episode? I don't think so. People life goes on. Okay, we're gonna get through this. So I'm not going to put out a blog post saying how to survive this pandemic, because that's not my expertise, right. But what I am good at is finding great people out there to interview and bring on this podcast to help you build, leverage and monetize your influence. And today, we are going to be talking about contents, we're going to be talking obviously, with content have to do writing. And we're also going to be talking about artificial intelligence or AI, as it's commonly known, and how all these things together can help you yield more influence in digital and social media. So today, I have a very special guest. If I had a drum snare drum set in front of me, I do a drum roll right now. But we are amazing. Kate Bradley Chernus, the CEO and founder of mayfly Kate, welcome to the show.

Kate Bradley Chernis:

Hello, thank you. That's an amazing introduction, Neil, and I'll do my best to live up to it. So hold on to your seat belts, people.

Neal Schaffer:

Yep, I'll ride. So I've known Kate for a while now, lately is not a lately as a social media tool, a content marketing tool, we can put a lot of labels on it. But I'm going to have Kate introduce my lady as herself to give you an introduction. There's lots of different tools out there, right. So you have like your general social media dashboard, like a HootSuite or an Agora Pulse, or you know what have you. But then you have platforms that really help you from the content publishing side. And these are things that you might be using HootSuite or you know, what have you. But you might not be using these other auxilary types of tools that can really help you amplify your influence in social. So lately represents one of those types of tools, we're gonna talk a little bit more about the tool itself, we're going to get into, you know, other things. But you know, before I go on cake, can you just give a brief introduction of yourself and lately so that people can better frame our conversation going forward?

Kate Bradley Chernis:

Yeah, sure. So I'll start with lately, and then me, because that's maybe, you know, more, more Wilder ride. But, but one thing, in fact, that we've learned about lately, and we learned regularly, as I know many small businesses and entrepreneurs do is that the way that we define it actually evolves on a regular basis, because we're listening to how our customers are constantly defining us, defining us. So in the last few months, we we learned that we're bigger than we are now, like, I don't know if this has ever happened to you. But many people kept saying to me, I don't think you understand how big this is. And I'm like, well, maybe I don't, what do you think it is. And so what we've learned how to describe lately now is as an AI content writing tool that writes social media messages for sales and marketing teams. And what it does is it actually learns what content your customers want to read. And then it creates it for you, it builds a writing model for you, right to your point. So there's a lot of different kinds of marketing tools out there that will manage your content, or maybe help you manage your analytics. But if you don't have something from the beginning, that's actually creating content that that works. Like you can't polish a turd, as they say, right. So like, that's the point is to get you started with the with the best possible content and using AI to help you do that, in writing it not just recommending, but actually doing the writing for you. And Kate,

Neal Schaffer:

correct me if I'm wrong, but you know, I talked to someone yesterday, I was actually on his podcast. He has like 500 episodes in content, but he's not leveraging the content. So I assume the more whether it's blog posts, whether it's podcasts, whether it's YouTube videos, the more content that you have, the more you know, exponential value that your tool house, correct.

Kate Bradley Chernis:

Yeah, so what so what lately does is it actually goes back when you create an account, it goes and learns everything you've done for the last year, everything you've published, it examines it, and it looks for the highest engaging content that you've created. And then it builds its writing model based on that, and then it helps you upcycle whatever long form content you have, so whether it's a blog, whether it's a podcast, like this, a webinar, you literally put it into our AI push a button and the AI will instantly produce like 3040 60 social posts based on the writing model it has and so the idea is to make like many movie trailers out of your long form content, pushing people towards it with like a teaser, right? Because otherwise, this just collect us You and I are working really hard to make some valuable content here for half an hour then you're going to go fiddle with it for another half an hour or more and then you have to think of how you're going to promote it right and you're a human and so chances are but your your top quality human here in marketing so maybe you'll come up with let's say 1015 messages, right to promote it, whereas lately could do literally 60 in 1.8 seconds. All right, that's really powerful, but I think you to nail sorry.

Neal Schaffer:

No, I think that you know, let's take a step back because I think after we discuss some of these issues about writing and content and AI, I think it makes the potential for everybody listening here. I think it makes it even more powerful. So let's you mentioned that you cannot, what did you say? You cannot shine a turd?

Kate Bradley Chernis:

Yeah, you can't polish a turd this is. So I'm so tactful.

Neal Schaffer:

Let's start with writing. Right? Again, I suppose that you know, when I talk about content creation, and if you want to yield influence, you need content, right? So it's either going to be audio, video, or text. And even if it's audio video, you're probably going to have a transcript made, and then it becomes text. Right? So based on that, you know, writing, would you say it is the most important toolkit, and let me grab, I would actually, skill in your toolkit. If you are in marketing or sales, or you're an entrepreneur, you're a small business owner.

Kate Bradley Chernis:

Absolutely. I mean, so I was a fiction writing major in school, I don't know, no way. fellow English majors, if you're listening member of people told us we'd have no jobs like you could be a teacher or writer, good luck. Turns out like we're the most important people around these days. Which is amazing. And it's because people hate writing, or they're very bad at it. And even this goes not just to regular people, but to marketers as well, right? And so honing that particular toolkit, so So think about it like this, I you and I all of us have to get what's in our heads through the screen, or piece of paper sometimes into the other head, right? And how can we do that best. And so what we find is that people constantly skip many steps. And so the way that they're understood on the on the other side is is, you know, poorly. And let me give you some examples of how bad it is really. So right now, companies waste upwards of $4 billion due to poor writing. So it's not just about what how, how bad, you might be communicating something to your to your customers, for example, but also internally, right? So if I can understand what your email says, and we're having all this go back and forth, just about what time the meeting is supposed to be at, for example, then like that wastes so much time, or if you have engineers that like speak a different language than your product team, or your sales team, and no one is really understanding each other. So that's, that's a huge reason. And so we find that companies are then spending $3.1 million dollars a year just teaching remedial writing courses. I mean, this is 101 stuff, right? Yeah, so So actually, Neil, like, I actually made a list for my internal team on writing for each other, because they were driving me up a freaking wall. And, like, so I have this thing we call them, my team calls me, Kate, Liam Keightley from lately, so they're called Kate Lee's writing tips. He's writing rules. And here's one of them, for example, which is avoid the phrase check out as a call to action. Because check out means nothing. It's it's vapid, it's lazy. It's a verb that has no actual meaning, right. So pick a verb that has meaning, which is, you know, have your mind blown or, or even just read and learn, like some more more effective call to action verbs are your friends, they're there for a reason, to really, you know, cut to the chase, right? So really just taking a second to think about what you're writing, and then understand who you're writing it to, like, I mean, I'm going off a little bit, so sorry. But like, there's, it's a whole psychological thing here, my job is to get you to do what I want you to do. Period, whether it's through writing, whether it's through a podcast, or whatever it is. And so you constantly need to think about that objective and the audience you're talking to. So the way that, like, if I'm trying to get my husband to do a chore for me, it's gonna be a little bit different than the way I'm telling my sales team to hit meet their numbers this month, maybe maybe I might turn on my radio voice and try to try and both of them right. You get the fine.

Neal Schaffer:

Yeah, and I mean, it's interesting, because a lot of what you talk about, there's a lot of classes in like blogging, or in content marketing that will say the same thing, like just a study in blog post titles. Make sure you use power words, right? Make sure you use you know, certain adjectives instead of saying, you know, the top tools, say, the top mind blowing tools or things of that sort. So it's, and also instead of saying, check out Download Here, sign up here, be more specific. It's funny because like today, so I get pitched off in like as an influencer, right? So one company pitch me, and it's this long email and I wrote them back saying number one, thank you for your interest and honored. Number two, can you please explain what exactly you want me to do? And number three, how, what is the incentive for me to do that? That time wasted, and now they're gonna have to write an additional email, right? And that being wasted leads to extreme inefficiency and it sort of leaves a bad taste in your mouth as well. So was yeah, that was not one to one but one to many over social digital media. And I think that that gets the point you're talking about, right?

Kate Bradley Chernis:

Yeah, totally. And you know, one of the things I mean, we're so we're doing a podcast, and you know this about me, but your listeners don't. So in my other life, I was a rock and roll DJ, broadcasting to 20 million listeners a day for XM and elsewhere. And so I'm really into the theater of the mind. And there's a parallel layer with with writing as well, like, so writing like audio requires us the human to intervene and have some imagination, right. And so that's why they're very, very powerful mediums. But that's why they could also be confusing mediums, because there's that component that has to happen in there. So one of the things I think a lot about when I'm writing is, you know, what, what is so powerful about the theater of the mind? And what why is it your listeners trust you right now? Right? So you build this trust with them? And what are some tricks that I learned from video that I can take into writing? So one of them is silence? Yes. Because what happens when you're silent?

Neal Schaffer:

You actually stop and listen.

Kate Bradley Chernis:

Mm hmm. People turn,

Neal Schaffer:

right. I try that when I speak as well on stage to have those silent gaps.

Kate Bradley Chernis:

Yeah. And so how can you do that visually in your writing? Right? Is it literally leaving space? Is it making short sentences? And then long sentences? Is it using capital letters all to describe something like what's your visual kind of space happening. And what this does is it can communicate emphasis, of course. But one of the number one things people have problems that people have in writing, and marketing and sales in general, is communicating that persona, that voice, right, I hate the phrase storytelling that makes me want to just cut my head off. But that's what storytelling is really about. It's about like making sure that somebody cares at all what you're saying. And the way to get them to care is to be human, and to inject that personality and persona in it. And a great way to do that is to think about how things look on the page. Because it's like eating you eat with your eyes, you read with your eyes, same kind of deal, right? So one of the things I like to do a lot is and I'm sure you do this is I read what I write out loud before I write it, right? So I'm because I'm an audio person. So I'm I'm hearing, how is it? How are you going to hear this? Because you do read it in your mind out loud? Everybody does, right? And so I'm constantly thinking like, what, what's that sounding like to you? When you do that what's great is you'll instantly start tripping over your own words, because those words are not natural for you to say, and then they're not natural for someone else to read. So when that happens, it's a quick cue for you to be like, Oh, okay, this is gonna not work out. Like it's, it's anybody can run that test in themselves.

Neal Schaffer:

Yeah, can smell funny. I do that with my kids. You know? They're, they're seventh grade, ninth grade, but especially like, in the early years, when the Gaddy Can you tell me, you know, what, how do you what do you think about my essay, and there's tons of grammatical errors, right? I'll say, Dude, read it out loud to yourself. If it doesn't sound natural, you got a problem. And often, that's definitely a killer way of just improving you know, what you write and and that could be used for for blogs and stuff, because what we're getting on here is, in 2020, content is, is a frickin commodity. It's everywhere, right? So if you really want to resonate with your audience, that that tone of voice is critical. But just making sure that your writing is is powerful, in a way that conveys the message, the way that you want it to be conveyed is something that you really can't take for granted. And that can really, if you're trying to yield influence for your business that can really make it or break it. So on that note, and by the way, note, you did not tune in to maximize your English. I know we all feel like we're back in English class. The I should say, but it is all good. Because these are these are critical, what I would call infrastructure skills, because content is the currency of digital media, you cannot yield influence without content digitally. And if there's anything that's going to come out of this pandemic, it's that we're going to be doing more digitally. Definitely for the short term, but I believe for the long term, and I believe that companies are going to shift even more their budget to digital. So So because we cannot I've never met Kate. But we have this great rapport from the conversations that we've had and from the messages that we've had between each other. But as I mentioned, with that other company trying to pitch me it can also go the other way. So with this in mind, right, I want to get back to you. So we talked about the importance, the critical importance of writing your next ticket. Now, how does AI potentially fix if we're not if we weren't born great writers? And let's say we outsource some of that writing? Right? And we find a great writer. Okay, so what else? How does AI help fix potential issues with our writing? Yeah,

Kate Bradley Chernis:

so great point, right. So a couple things probably as people were listening to us talk about some writing tips. They might have been already feeling overwhelmed because it is overwhelming if it's not your natural skill, and that's understandable. So the way we use AI is to work on In tandem with the humans, so humans have the potential to be great writers, AI does some amazing stuff automatically. And both are great on their own. But together, that's when you get the exponential magic. So at lately, we use our AI to start you at third base. So to remove the fear of the blank page, because that alone is like this paralyzing thing for everybody, when it's taking this podcast, for example, and turning it into social posts, and it's pulling together, what it believes are going to be the best quotes from you what you and I are talking about, it then gives you the option to pop in and edit them as well. And at the same time, there's an engine that starts to recommend to you phrases and keywords, that is learning what your audience resonates with what resonates with them. So there's two things happening, like it's setting you up with what it believes is going to work, but it's also prodding you the human to like use your own instinct and intuition and whatever else, you know, to kind of help it along. The reason that we need AI to do this is because, number one, it's learning what people want to read and recommending that back to you. But number two, it helps you scale. Right? So you and I could write all day, and we can't be everywhere all at once. It's impossible, right? Especially these days, because you do need to be on so many channels just to make an impact. I'm going to answer your question in a backhanded way. But just for folks to understand this point, more succinctly. So there's an old marketing adage that goes, if you're not marketing, you're winking in the dark. So everybody is wink for a second. And imagine what that's like in your closet, and no one can see you. Right, there's no pun on the joke there. So you don't want to be winking in the dark. Now these days, if you're broadcasting once a day on, for example, on Twitter, no one is reading that that's like you're winking in the dark. It's pointless, right? So you have to have multiple messages, you really 10 or 20 a day, like you need to have a lot because of the chances of when when are people gonna be passing by radio was the same way for those of old people like me who listened to radio, like you, we would play you the same song 300 times a week, just to hope that you would hear it once, right? So what the API does is what Rei does is it pulls together, let's say 30 different messages. So different unique kinds of messages, all driving traffic back to the same place. So that you have 30 different acts, access points, because people respond to different things. And also, then it's not annoying, because it's not the same thing over and over again. And then we recommend that you schedule those posts out over time. So like, I'm a big believer, Neil, in planning. And planning ahead. And that social is not does not have to be immediate at all. Of course, right? And planning ahead. In a way though, that feels immediate, right? So like when I was at XM, we would record shows, weeks in advance, but leaving all kinds of mistakes. So it would sound live, right? Because that's the only way we could possibly scale our human selves. And it's the same thing here. Right? So you, and we all know this idea of scheduling advanced, but I think people still don't understand like what evergreen mean. So evergreen doesn't mean the same, the exact same message over and over again, it just means an idea that still fresh when I Google it two years from now, right?

Neal Schaffer:

Yeah. I mean, if you write a blog post that says the best something tactics for 2018, because you published it in January 2018. Guess what, a few months later, Google stopped serving that up because people are already searching for 2019. So that's a great example. But if you were to leave the 2018 out of it, or if you were to put your put a reminder that deletes it out 90 days later, that then becomes evergreen forever. Yeah, exactly. One example. Yeah. So and you bring up a lot of great points. I think, Kate, that's how like, we hit it off when I was on your podcast or live stream, you know, my DJ experiences, I got Amherst College at nine points. You know, the chip and Neil show from five, eight in the morning where I did, I am proud to say that when the Joshua Tree came out, I literally played the entire CD, awesome here for 45 minutes a bit. But um, I said, and I said, as a social media marketing, we're like five or six years ago, when I talked about Twitter, you need to tweet like a DJ, right? And, and radio station analogy is really powerful, because radio stations have ads, but they have a ton more content in between those ads that you listen. And then when you hear the ad, you're more, you know, you're gonna keep listening and listen to the ad knowing that there's more great content after that. And that's really, you know, you can't just hit people over the head with your promos all the time, need to intermix it with content and a lot of content. And that's where, you know, the AI using a tool like lately that that AI really kicks in not just to become the daddy that corrects your English, which is what you were talking about, but also making variations of that content. And that's something that I struggle with as well. I know, I have not been hopefully after this podcast, I'm gonna take another deep dive into lately, but I know that lately users are not just they may be repeating a tweet, say once a month, but they're repeating it with unique language, not the blog post and I fall You know, I'm a victim of that as well. A lot of people listening to They aren't even there yet. They haven't even cued their content up yet. Which is why looking at it to like lately makes it even more powerful to scale from from the get go. But let me ask you something, you said something very controversial in our emails back and forth about what we're going to talk about today. And you said, quote, it's time to throw out the lead generation playbook, how AI content creation is up ending the status quo and quote, so let's move on to that subject. So I think we've gone through the writing and how the AI serves the purpose of scaling, as well as improving the quality or right into its recommendations. And you know, AI doesn't lie, right, assuming that the smart people lately set it up correctly, which I assume you did. So tell me about how AI consecration is time to throw the lead generation playbook. Tell me about that. The thought there? Yeah,

Kate Bradley Chernis:

thanks for the softball. So a couple of things. So so we decided about a year and a half ago to like really put our money where our mouth is at lately and to full on go into organic social marketing, which is what we believe in to market ourselves. So I stopped all of my paid ads. And I also stopped the the typical sales funnel, right? So in my world, in SAS, startup world, the idea is you get an SDR, who makes a bunch of cold calls and sells sends cold emails for you. And then you move them through the funnel that way. Now, I don't know about you, but I'm on the receiving end of those calls and emails, and I hate them. Walk, walk, walk, block, block, block block, forget it. So I was like, why are we doing this. And so I was actually meeting with Gary Vaynerchuk. And he was sharing an idea that he had, and I was like, Oh, my God, I can apply this to lately. And I, what we do now is, so I don't have time to create any content, because I'm too busy. But I get a lot of inbound. So I'll get podcasts like this or other interviews. So I'm going to take this podcast that we've done, I'm going to run it through the auto generator, it's going to give me 60, or social social posts, I'm going to print them up, add my special human touch with, you know, whatever, a little extra stuff I want to do there. And then I'm going to take them and I'm probably going to schedule them to run like maybe every few days over time over different channels, and I'm going to tag you in them sporadically so that you'll reshare them, but not too often. So you're not annoyed. And what we do is we start to look for for people who are liking, commenting, or sharing on our content, and we consider them to be leads, we consider them to be warm leads because they know us. And then we create conversations and we push them into DMS and then we convert them at a rate of 50%.

Neal Schaffer:

Wow. Right? No warm, right. But you know, in social media, I suppose you're gonna have content creators, that the sole objective of engaging with that content is just to curate it, but not necessarily wanting to do business with you, guys 50% That you eat out?

Kate Bradley Chernis:

Yeah, I mean, so it takes a salesperson just as much time to analyze if a cold lead is qualified versus a warm lead, right? So they can they have a list of qualifications that our customers have to meet, you know, what we're doing is we're also able to do this at scale. So here's the other part there. So it's not just our branded channels, where we publish our content, all of my employees participate in employee advocacy on our behalf as well. And so this is the engine that we've also built lately, where and this is a little bit for bigger companies. But just think about what what network do you have in front of you, right? Your network is always your most important thing. Whenever you leave a company, bring that Rolodex with you, right? Does anyone know what a Rolodex is anymore? But, and so I've looked at a lot over the years, when I had my marketing agency of helping small businesses access larger networks that had, you know, better access to customers. And let me give you some examples of what those might be. So number one, they're your employees, your employees are your best, most trusted voice, they work for the company they have inside scoop, friends, family, customers are going to listen to them more than anyone. If your customers don't like where they're working, or your employees, you have another problem. But like, let's assume they love you, and they want to champion you. So that's your your best asset. Number two, you also have your current customers, right, that's a network you have built in you want you want to leverage their voice, you could also have channel partnerships. So a lot of companies are set up like that other networks could include sales teams, right? So a sales team is a different kind of network, you might also be a franchise. So if you're a gym with five locations, or a bank with 200 locations, or here's a great example that I love, which one apply to COVID time. But let's say you're a little town and you have a First Friday where like, everybody, all the little stores do something every Friday together. There's a network, right? So you have to really try to think with these networks are at lately. You can take lately accounts and stack them together, like in a bicycle spoke. So there's one, say Mother account and say 10 Children, maybe the children are my employees, for example. So I'm the mother, I can create content, push them out to my children accounts, and my children can opt to publish it to make it their own or not to publish it. It doesn't really matter. But I've given it to them. I didn't email it to them. Remember the old way and I could also use the AI to learn And when certain networks publish on your behalf, like who's doing it better? And I can take those learnings and translate it. So that's a little bit hard to describe. And

Neal Schaffer:

yeah, so you have yet listeners this podcast know that I refer to employ advocacy as an employee as influencer program. Yeah knocked about those are instead of going out and try to buy people on Instagram, those are your influencers and anyone that has read the age of influence, I go into detail about that concept. So 100% agree with you. Okay. So basically, your tool, which is really interesting, because I hear LinkedIn, either polar is pulling the plug in Elevate, which was their employee advocacy tool. So you have in addition to all the great things, your tool, has you also have that employee advocacy functionality built in, is that correct?

Kate Bradley Chernis:

Yeah. Because once the AI is creating awesome social posts for you want to do as much as humanly possible with them, right? robotically possible?

Neal Schaffer:

I love you know, I know, we're going to go a little bit off, and I'm also cognizant of time, but for someone that has met Gary Vaynerchuk, personally, you're one of a few people of probably millions that would love to meet him. Can you describe Gary Vaynerchuk in real life repair? He's an age that we see on YouTube videos, or,

Kate Bradley Chernis:

um, he is but he's, he's very, very kind, very, very kind and patient, I was struck with how attention he was to each person like, which is I don't even do that, you know, I wish that in his, his own social, they showed him to be like, just a more of a real person. Because he is he's just really focused, kind and genuine. I've met him twice. Actually, I met him at South by Southwest about 15 years ago, which he remembered when I met him again this summer, which I thought was pretty cool, actually. And he actually started talking about just how we met, by the way. So like, on LinkedIn, he posted one day, oh, I wish there was some AI tool that would take all my long form content, and turn it into 40 social posts. And I was like, hey, this girl right here. So that's how we got them involved. And it's been really interesting, just learning from them. So it's so you guys know that Gary does what we all want to do. But he's able to do it, because he has a massive engine of people. Right? So lately a

Neal Schaffer:

lot for advertising as well.

Kate Bradley Chernis:

Yeah, for sure. And like, so lately actually gives you, you and me the ability to do what Gary does, but for like, way less with an army of one, you know, and that

Neal Schaffer:

that should be the title of this podcast right there. Right. And that's, that's really powerful. So I, there were a few other things we want to talk about, I hear that the listeners get the most of our time together in the content. So there's gonna be some people that are like, do AI not cool. It's taking my job, or, you know, how can I trust AI technology? I you know, I co wrote a book on how AI is going to revolutionize the influencer marketing industry in a good way of finding fakes and what have you. So based on your perspective, you told me that it's a one plus one equals three equation? Can you give the listener a little bit more, you know, background or perspective on AI, and why it's not something to be afraid of not something's going to take our job, it's actually going to make our jobs even better.

Kate Bradley Chernis:

Yeah, you and I are on the same page that are right. So with marketing, especially marketing is a human affair. It's very emotional, you you buy something from me, because you like me, or you like my product, you have this emotional reaction to it, right? And robots can't replicate that, in spite of what we we all, you know, might see on TV or in movies, but that that's not their job. It's the humans job. And it's the humans job to to make the mistakes, right, right to be human is to errors, as they say, and that that is the turn it up. That is the right, that's all those things that that non predictable thing that makes us human. And so that's why it's the magic. It's the it's the unspeakable undescribable thing that takes you from third based to home plate. And so the power of those things coalescing is what we believe in. And it's really simple. I mean, like that one plus one plus three equal, Cajun is the thing. The tough part is, believe it or not, like even though our AI for example, does all this work, people still want it to do the rest. And I'm like, No, you don't you guys can't be this lazy, like you have to put some effort into everything you're doing, whether it's QuickBooks or writing a novel or our educational book or homework, like you said, or anything, you know, so,

Neal Schaffer:

right. I think it's the point of you're gonna spend five or 10 minutes crafting a tweet, to give a preview of your blog posts for instance, but why did he spend the same five or 10 minutes to go over 60 tweets, if you're you know, it's just a much better you still have to spend a little bit of time but you just gonna get a much bigger bang for your buck. So I want to make sure we get through all the there was one more, I know that you have something special to say about Netflix so for you and hear what you have to say.

Kate Bradley Chernis:

I love you. You're so good, because I always forget Got this. So remember, I was saying how we've been learning how to describe ourselves better over the last few months in over the last couple years, of course. And so a customer described it this way, which was lately is like Netflix. So So you watch Netflix right now? Yep. Yeah. So the way that Netflix learned what we all wanted to watch, and then use that data to start recommending relevant content to US based on what it learned. And then it's used that data to now create original content, like the crown, for example, which has become what it's most known for. So Netflix is most watch content now is its original content. And this is what lately is doing as well. So we actually worked with Anheuser Busch InBev. And that's their, their global name. So you know, Anheuser Busch, the beer company, last summer to fast forward our roadmap where we ingested 10,000 pieces of content from one of their brands, one of their voices. And our AI brain was able to take that content in and then create original content from scratch. From a theme we told it to talk about in the brand voice. Why, which is pretty amazing. So we took that model. Now we've turned it on lately, because our customers the number one question we get is, well, how do we do it like you do? Kate, we want to mark it we want to write like you're writing for lately. That's what we want to do. So I've written 40,000 pieces of content with my team over the last four years, we're taking this model and now putting it into our own brain so that we can recommend original content to all you guys, based on what we're learning that your customers are responding to right.

Neal Schaffer:

Now, is that original content is that like, you know, these are things that you may want to create new content about, or is it actually writing?

Kate Bradley Chernis:

Writing it for you? Wow. Yeah, yeah. So it's, it's in private beta. But,

Neal Schaffer:

of course, you're not going to publish as as you need. But it's going to, it's going to set it up so that it's going to make it a lot easier and more effective. And based on AI and data, it has a lot more chance of actually engaging with your audiences is the main point there, right?

Kate Bradley Chernis:

Yeah, exactly. And to help you I mean, what people just want even more is the ideas people, they I feel like they are our data shows that they like to do it, they actually like to, if they have the ideas, right, so it's just, it's like, I don't know if you guys know this, but remember, when they had the cake mix, when cake mix first came out like Duncan Hines, they actually had the eggs in there. They were powdered eggs. So all you do is add water and it didn't settle. So they removed the fake eggs had it add eggs and it sold like gangbusters because people want to feel like they're making the cake. Hmm. Right. So there's, it's true. That's what I just need to figure out what the what our eggs are, you know, what's the exact kind of component there to get everybody? Feeling just enough comfortable, but not not too uncomfortable? Right?

Neal Schaffer:

That's really fascinating. Kate, this has been really great. I think we all struggle with lack of time and content creation, unfortunately, of everything we do. In order to yield influence that's probably going to take up our most time. So you have a killer solution there. I really hope listeners will will check it out. Kate, how can people find out what what's the best way they can check out lately and as well as getting in touch with?

Kate Bradley Chernis:

Yeah, so they can learn more about lately and see a demo and have their mind blown and have their jaws dropped at trial lately calm or you can just email me. I'm Kate at trial lately calm. And I'm so grateful to you, Neil, thank you so much for really, the last thing I want to say is women CEOs have a hard time a lot of people know this. And there's, I don't know if you guys all know this, but it's 2% of all venture funding comes my way. So I have to work 98% harder for it. And one of the ongoing things that happens is that women are often over mentored and and under actually lifted up. And you I know you're not doing this because I'm a woman today but you are lifting me up today. And I am really grateful. Thank you.

Neal Schaffer:

Okay, you don't even have to say that this is a natural, you're, you know, you're a great person. You have a great company. We've known each other a while I think you know we have that, that music. Obviously you're much more embedded in music, but people that know me know that I really like music a lot and you know, play the drums and I'm a fanboy of some Japanese musicians on menu, I won't get into the details. You know, business ships, I try to catch concerts. So anyway, and that's you know, that's but at the end of the day, this if you're listening to this podcast, that's the sort of connection you need to make with people right? People remember you when you make that personal connection and often that's based on mutual personal experiences and if you don't bring those things out in your content, this is something that AI cannot teach you right? Yeah, bring up and and you know, as a person now, if you're a business, you know, Kate already talked about those networks that you have other people, but the whole concept in the age of influence as well is that people rule social media. brand logos do not write they have to take a side seat. So leverage as much as you can about you as a person or about the people inside your brand. and you're going to be much better for that. And obviously, Kate and try lately.com have a lot of great advice for us there. So, and this is not an advertisement by any way there was no, there was no money being given to me to, you know, have Kate on this show. In full disclosure, I'm just a big fan of Kate and try lately and just great technology that that helps us scale right and yield more influence. So, Kay, thank you so much. I know. And I'm not just saying this because it feels good to say it. But I know that I'm going to take another deeper look at lately, and to hopefully become a heavier user in the near future. And I hope that all of you listening, if this fits your need you check it out, as well. So okay, thanks again. Well, I hope you enjoyed that interview with Kate and you found out more not just about her, but also about lately, lately is a tool that used to have a price point that many SMBs could afford, it's clearly now at the enterprise level. So even if you can't afford the tool, though, I do think that what the tool is about and how Kate describes it really should give you some great ideas of things that you can implement to help you maximize your own social influence. So that's it, I just want to thank you all for listening to the end here. And I want to encourage you all not just to subscribe so that you don't miss out on all of our upcoming episodes. And we got some great interviews that have already been recorded that are going to be published soon. But also to ask you if you'd be kind enough, and you found value in this podcast, and you found it recommendable to others that you would consider writing a review on Apple podcasts. It's funny because I've been doing this podcast since 2013. And I currently have more reviews for my Amazon book, which came out on March 17 of this year compared to a podcast that has 158 episodes that came out in 2013. So I know from listening to other podcasters that very few people actually review podcasts for a lot of reasons. But if you've reviewed another podcast, I hope you'll take a few minutes and if you've never reviewed a podcast it's really easy to do. I hope you'll take a few minutes. If you need any help in the process. Feel free to reach out to me and I'll I'll create a tutorial for you. So that's another episode of maximize your social influence wherever you are in the world. Stay safe, stay at home and make it a great virtual social day of everybody.