The Social Shift, with Katie Brinkley

Glenn: Social media can serve as a vibrant community space for genuine social interaction where consumers feel valued and businesses boost engagement and sales. Okay. That picture may not be anything like the reality of social media as you know it today, but our guest will remind you. Things haven't always been this bad.

A short glance back at the internet shows that in the year 2000, the Internet's governing body actually looked at using a model where individuals could come together and form a social contract where each member had a vote on the kind of internet that we would all have at their peak. 158,000 people had joined the voting roles. This was a radical global experiment in direct democracy and it flopped. Hey Glennn here.

Welcome to Funnel Reboot the show for data based marketers. Part of why that model didn't take off was partly because to be a voting member you had to upload some identification and internet users were not comfortable even temporarily with giving someone that data, especially when they didn't know who would have it. What happened instead was the rise of social networks that eventually consolidated into the hands of just a few owners and they conditioned those of us who are sellers to content out, promote it, make it attention grabbing salesy, clickbaity.

Why? Because that is what their algorithm found would entice users to stay on the platform. And I've gotta call out that those of us who are consumers on the platforms, are also complicit because we gave those platforms the data with which we could be targeted with those ads. More data ever than that internet governing body would ever have asked for.

How ironic. But our guest maintains that we still have the ability to regain an equilibrium. While we're all collectively responsible for how we communicate. That being the case, marketers can be the ideal catalyst for change.

We can make content that prioritizes authentic interaction over consumerism, be it on the current platforms or ones yet to exist. We should remember the saying of the American philosopher Thomas Payne, 'we have it in our power to begin the world over again'. My guest has been leveraging social media to grow audiences and income since the days of my space In that 20 year period, she has leveraged her social media knowledge, both working for sports organizations, folks like at and t, DirecTV and iHeartRadio, as well as running the agency, NeXTSTEP Social that does this for health and wellness businesses, and she's also a speaker and a podcaster.

She lives in Colorado with her husband and daughters. So let's go now to speak with Katie Brinkley. Katie Brinkley, welcome to Funnel Reboot. Katie: Thank you so much for having me.

I'm excited that we are finally having the opportunity to sit down and talk. Glenn: Yeah, I love it. We're mainly gonna be talking about a book that you wrote. What's the name of the book, Katie?

Katie: The name of the book is The Social Shift, the Road Back to Community. Glenn: Okay, so, spoiler alert. I think there's, a message that we might have lost our way, from community. So take us back and let's even go before social media existed.

Heck, let's even go before maybe the, browsers existed and the worldwide web. What is this community that you speak of, Katie? Did people ever actually talk with each other when they were trying to do commercial things with each other? Katie: We've all always longed for community and we've, we've always wanted to find our people, to find where we belong.

And with the internet. It's, the world has just become a lot easier to make friends and to find our community. And it was interesting. I was, my daughters, we drive to a charter school.

There's a reason I'm telling you this, and they have a bunch of friends in the neighborhood. But they have a whole bunch of friends outside the neighborhood and I was telling them, I was like, man, if there wasn't cars, you would still, you would be going to the school in the neighborhood. That would be our community. That would be where we, you know, we'd be going to this grocery store.

I wouldn't be working at this office. Everything would be much closer because we'd be walking or taking horses. We wouldn't be driving everywhere. And because of technology.

We're able to meet a lot more people. We're able to expand our community and it's exciting, but we also. I think kind of get confused and lost along the way of how we're supposed to use some of these tools, to really foster community. And so that's what, the social shift is, is about.

We're trying to kind of find ways to build that community online. 'cause some, sometimes, you know, you can make amazing friends and build incredible relationships with people and never even meet them in real life. Glenn: It, we are living in cool times that we can do that. Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Right. But there's been, a couple of things that have stepped in that perhaps. Make it a little harder for us to have that genuine connection.

Let's talk about ads, right? Mm-hmm. So the early days of the internet were largely just text-based forums and chat areas and you could, connect with people. However, back to things like ads, when everything went graphical, we had a few platforms that decided that they would insert themselves into the middle of those moments where you could meet someone or that.

You would be maybe trying to read your email, but interspersed with your emails was spammy messages that made you so frustrated you just didn't even wanna look at your inbox. What do you think the impact of that has been on trying to keep genuine connections there? Katie: It we're, we're constantly vying for attention. How can you.

Attract someone to paying attention to you long enough to hear what you have to say. And with all these flashy ads, I mean, marketers were getting pretty clever, with hooking you in. And if you, if you think about it, we went from, with the Facebook and MySpace, we were showing up and creating content. We were writing on each other's walls and saying like, Hey, do you wanna get together?

For dinner? Or do you want like what, how was whatever. Yeah. We were posting our favorite music on, on social media and now it's completely transformed into an attention based.

Atmosphere. Like who, who can get the most attention the fastest and keep it the longest? And there's times where I, I just will open up my phone and say like, Hey, I actually need to respond to this email. And before I know it, I turned to my husband.

I'm like, why did I have my phone in my hand? I don't even know what I was doing here. But I mean, yeah, that happens with everything now, whether it's social media, email, we're constantly getting distracted and people vying for our attention. It Glenn: not only is in the background of what we're doing, but it's right in the center of where we're trying to focus.

I loved a place in the book where you were talking about. In the 20th century, one of the main forms of advertising and communication was radio, mass media. Yeah. And radio was good because in your community, maybe there's a strawberry social or a neighborhood barbecue, a block party, a some kind of summer day outing.

Radio would be how you would find out about it . Then you would go to that thing, and maybe there's even radio playing in the background, but it's not intruding into you getting together with neighbors and friends and chatting you're having to look at a pre-roll. You're having to Yeah. Sift through something on your, phone that is barging its way into you.

Katie: Radio is where I come from, so I come from radio. I love audio. I think it's one of the truest ways to really build connection and get to know somebody is, I think podcasting is one of the, is a wonderful marketing tool and it's really interesting to see because we went from radio, killed the newspaper. And because it was faster, you could get information faster.

Then TV killed, you know, TV killed the radio star Glenn: as the song goes. Katie: And then internet. Yeah. And then internet killed the TV star.

But then AI, I think has killed the internet star. But here, stick with me here. Yep. And this is, this is not in the book because this is all within the past like three months.

But. I believe that radio has killed, or podcasting has killed the AI star. Because there is nothing that can compare to what we're doing right now. Yeah.

Having a conversation, , sharing ideas that have never been written down before or said before. That's something that a computer can't do. Yeah, and so this right here, I think audio is going to be that secret. Weapon in 2026.

If you are using audio, you are going to be light years ahead of anyone that's just doing, you know, we're talk, and I know we're talking about the social shift today, but at the same time, I do believe that the audio is the one thing that will put you and your business ahead of those that are doing all the other things. Glenn: We have to step back and say, there's a notion of discovery. Social networks are normally where that has to happen because unless we're super lucky, very few of us have a ready instant audience, add water, platform that we can just go and use.

So we have to use other people's properties and we have to contend with the fact that those other platforms are ad funded. They're doing it, but it's a like a rent to own strategy. Katie: Yeah, you're playing on rented land, right? Glenn: But you're doing it with intent.

You're not just there to keep dropping 60 seconds shorts and do that forever, because the minute the algorithm chooses not to show that short to your target, you're cooked. But if you do say to them at the end of every short, Hey, if you like this, there's a lot more of it. Come over on my site, come and drop me a subscribe on your favorite player, use this low tech version of speaking to each other on a very high tech platform to still, cut through. Let's talk a second about the framework that you put in the book.

You talk about how we need to not just post the same thing over and over again. You have a couple of different posts that you like to do. Take me through that. Katie: Yeah, well I think that there's a lot of noise out there and especially with all the ai, yeah, it can be really easy to create social media content now, and you can create a lot of it with just a simple prompt and it's like, Ugh, I don't need to see more junk and more garbage.

Let's just slow down. Like what if we just focused in on maybe one or two platforms, did a really good job on them and posted the content that our ideal clients and customers wanted to see. Before they even knew that they wanted to see it. And that's where the four post strategy comes into play.

So, it's, you can do these four posts. Four posts a day if you want to, if you're crazy and you wanna post four times a day, you can do it. But if you wanna post four times a week, that's, manageable. And I think that that's a very easy way to check the boxes of creating good social media content that's gonna attract the right audience and bring them into your sphere.

And that's the four post strategy. Glenn: So another one is a tutorial type. Katie: Yeah. So the, the, the first post is the awareness post.

Yeah. So making people problem aware and, using the platforms all, if all these platforms have different ways to create content. Yeah. So if you think about it.

On Facebook, there's reels, there's those, big posts with like the different colored backgrounds. There's, you know, you can share your, your pictures on there. You can go live. There's so many different ways just on Facebook alone.

Then we're talking Instagram and then you start talking TikTok and all these platforms have different ways to create content and spoiler alert, they wouldn't give you these options if they didn't want you to create content. All these different ways. So you kind of have to check the box that way too right. The awareness post is creating a, the content, the way, that the platform is pushing content out at that time.

At the time of this recording right now, working really, really well on Facebook, are those, single sentences with the different colored backgrounds and then kind of the, the thread style posts where everything's in the comments. But those are working and those get a lot of reach. Those are awareness posts. Those are getting pushed out into the algorithm to strangers.

On Instagram, it's a reel, on LinkedIn it could be a, a LinkedIn poll, so right. All these different ways of creating the content to make people problem aware. And the next post will be an elaboration or a tutorial post. So elaborate on the problem that you made people aware of.

So, hey, remember how I asked, are you tired of posting on social media every day? Or asking them, Hey, how often do you post on social media every week? And just asking that question. Now in the next post, I can elaborate on it and show some thought leadership, maybe turn.

A podcast into a long caption post or a blog style post, or a LinkedIn newsletter. Yes, that's where you show your thought leadership. The third post is the community post. How did you overcome this problem?

Or how did you, face, you know, help a client overcome this problem? Putting yourself in into your ideal client or customer's shoes and making, or trying to spotlight on them. Yeah, exactly. And saying like, Hey, I know what you're going through.

I've been there before. I've helped someone with this, I've faced this, whatever. And, so I can relate. And then last but not least, is the action post.

Asking people to go one step further with you, maybe leave social media to book a call or listen to your podcast or whatever. But if you think about it, people aren't going on to Instagram to leave it. They're going on there to kill time, to be entertained, and to, mindlessly scroll. If they wanted to go on to a website, they would've just started scrolling through Google.

So that's where you have to make sure that you're bringing the right people in, attracting them the right way before you ask them to leave. Glenn: And I want to touch on that a little bit more about what numbers we should be expecting, but I really wanted to underline that one point you said about each one of the platforms expects their in, expects their own type. If I could flip it around, I think one thing that you would definitely tell people not to do is not to, for example, design a piece of content for TikTok and then immediately try.

Shoehorning it onto other platforms because that'll actually backfire. Katie: Well, and and I get it, like I love social media schedulers. They're metrocool, Agora Pulse. I love Katie: the two incredible tools.

We use them every day at my business, and we'll put them in the show notes. When you go to just cross post a whole bunch of your content. The community, the culture, the way that people show up and consume content on these platforms is different on each platform. If the way that.

People consume and show up on TikTok. It's very raw and authentic. Just, Hey, look at me. I haven't put, get ready with me today.

Those types of posts on TikTok. Yeah, over on LinkedIn, they're way more polished tutorial, Hey, here is how to do X, Y, and Z. They're not gonna be able to, cross post as well and communicate as well. You could still share the same sort of information.

You just have to present it differently. Glenn: And this gets to the point of metrics because yeah, you've rightly pointed out that we can put a type of PO content on a particular platform, and sure it's gonna chalk up numbers. But one thing I pulled outta the book, you say quote, so many social media strategies fail because we focus on selling or going viral or gaining followers and not are on connecting or creating community. So yes, we should look at the metrics from time to time, but we shouldn't expect, and we definitely shouldn't sell to our bosses or our clients.

The notion that if I do this, it's gonna get a million impressions, and that's amazing. . Katie: And I think that it's, it goes back to that a hundred true fans theory. Okay.

You know, and for everyone's goals are gonna be different. But if I could create a piece of content, and let's say it gets 500 views and 10 likes, which now you're kind of like, oh, well, why'd you even bother? But one person went to my website and scheduled a sales call. Equals $5,000.

Oh, okay. That's pretty cool. As opposed to it went viral and it's not talking about my business at all. It went viral on Facebook.

It got a million views and it made me maybe 50 bucks from. Meta Pay and Me Yeah. With, with the me Meta, meta Creator Program, and most of the people that saw it were in a different country and they never picked up the phone. Did that really do my business any good?

And this is where I think, you know, showing up as a content creator and showing up as a business on social media. Those are different metrics to track. There's different ways of showing up and there's different ways to really have your content strategy be mapped out for you. Glenn: Like how you said that.

don't just post and run away, hang around for the comments, answer, obviously answer any dms that are coming in. Remember that these are two-way vehicles. But I want to go a bit deeper, Katie, because you actually had the courage to call out something on social media that we also need to think about, not just for our own businesses, but for what we really want out of, you know, the 20th first century and all of these tools, and that was what you call a consumption mindset. Yeah.

We can get caught up. We do get caught up in what the platforms want, which is to, we take things like, the embedding of shops into your tiktoks and your Instagram. These are, certainly very popular. There are even ad units that are devoted to them if you choose to boost posts.

And then it's measured only by that. Return on ad spend. And I guess I, I want you to weigh in on do the tools have more meaning for us? Should they have more meaning for us than just being a place to sell our stuff?

What are the problems if we, if we barrel towards that, to the negation of everything else, what could end up happening if that's all that this becomes, like, is it a race to the bottom? Katie: Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think that this is where too, if you are only, and I, I'm not, I use AI every day.

This isn't, AI is the enemy episode. AI is an incredible tool, just like social media, incredible tool. All of these are tools in the toolbox, but. If you rely on them too much you're going to lose your way.

And it's there to just be in assistance to help you. Right? With the end goal. And this is where having that full marketing strategy is so important.

What, why do you want social media? You know, what is the goal for social media? Is it brand awareness? Is it conversions?

Do you want to have. Ads run from your social media account. Do you wanna make sales? Like what?

What are the goals? Because everything is, depending on your goals, the way you show up, it's gonna be very different. We, what is, what do you wanna have from ai? How do you want that to help you?

Because if it's just, well, let's use AI to post on social media 42 times a day and we'll gain our followers and just go, you know, blah, blah, blah. It's like, okay, but why? Yeah. I, what's the point?

Because if you're just using AI to create a bunch of content and respond to comments and all this stuff, then it's just robots talking to robots and where's the human? And it really, what's the point? We've lost. We've really lost our way.

And people wanna buy from people. People want to find their. Community. People want to support businesses and creators that they feel like they know.

And the best way of doing that is by showing up authentically on your social media. Not just to go viral, but to say, Hey, here's, here's what I do. Here's how I can help you. Here's how I've helped others in the past.

Would you like my help? And it is amazing how just saying that over and over again will get the right people into your sphere to say, , , , I know somebody that needs help with their podcasting, or I know somebody that needs help with their social media. You should talk to Katie Brinkley. Glenn: Yeah.

The passion of how you say this comes through. And I think it is fair to say that people. We of course, have to have transactions in our life, but we aren't just. Consumers, from beginning to end.

We have interests, we have our identity, and I can't think of anybody better to speak to this. Share a bit of what you did before all of this agency stuff and where you were doing that radio and community promotion, because it speaks to an area that everybody can tap into . Yes, I identify as part of that community and I want to see those people that I am supporting and cheering for. I want to see them win and I am part winner with them.

Katie: Yeah, so I, I grew up, listening to a lot of talk radio with my dad. I grew up playing softball and traveling all over the state, and he listened to talk radio, which was fun. But at the top of the hour there was always this woman that came on and she talked sports, and I thought it was so cool that there was a woman on the radio that would come and talk sports with all the guys. And her name is Susie Wargin.

And I was like, man, I wanna do that when I grow up. And so I went to college, majored in journalism and. Actually, Suzy was the person who hired me at the radio station. My, I landed my dream job.

I was the post game reporter for the Broncos and the Rockies, at the same radio station that I grew up listening to, in the car with my dad on all those road trips. And I loved my job. I, I really did. I thought, how lucky am I?

I graduated from college and I landed my dream job and then SiriusXM came out and everyone in the radio industry panicked. And I was like now what am I gonna do? I kind of did a hybrid and I moved into marketing and I worked for the Rockies TV station. And so that's where I really dove into, the marketing side of things and still was doing my script writing and handled all the social media side of things.

And, it was, it allowed me to, to really bring what I did from radio, with podcasting, with what I do now, and then marketing at the TV station, into my social media agency, and I definitely have a different approach when it comes to social media and podcasting, but I don't think that we need to, waste our time. But why not make some amazing connections? Why not build out your community and have some fun on social media in the meantime while doing something you love, which is being a business owner.

Glenn: Very well put. So two quick things outta that. Number one, being a fan, I mean, when we use that word, sports fans, and the like, I do think that there's, an abiding, meaningful relationship that people have with a product. And.

They may not have that same level with, the insulation that they're gonna throw in their attic or toothpaste that they're gonna buy. Katie: I was gonna say, well just think about this Glenn, like. The Squatty Potty. Do you remember that thing?

Glenn: Yeah. Katie: And how many people loved the Squatty Potty? Were buying it. Watching the video on YouTube, and were just building out these raving fans of a little stool that you put your feet on when you went to the bathroom.

And you can do that if you build out. You know, a community, if you build out raving fans, your fans are gonna talk about it, and they're right. What, what is the squat? And then they'll keep talking.

They'll share it, they'll, right, and you wanna, you wanna create something that people talk about when you're not in the room. Glenn: So for, I mean, you've taken it right to the level of ridiculousness, but I guess the, but the point is still there. If Squatty Potty can do it. And you are in product X can probably do it too.

I think the platforms lull us into thinking this . They put right spec dab in the center of that plus symbol and they're like, go ahead, click it, make something. If we don't necessarily have a background in design or scripting or any of the things that you've done, we might mistakenly think that that's all there is to it. I could just make something.

Now, I'm sure what you follow is I'm gonna post when I have something to post about, and I'm gonna do it to the level of quality that. I think people need to understand and cut yourself some slack for a minute. This is something that pros do. So yeah, if you wanna get into content creation, you're welcome to, but devote the time that it takes to learn how it's done well.

Katie: Yeah, don't post just a post that's annoying. Honestly, there was a time I, I, I did a launch and, I launched a, I did an entire online summit. I had I think like 40 different speakers. It was a great success, huge success.

Loved it. It burned me out. And after it was over, I could not bring myself to create anything. Whether it was an email, a social media post, I could just, I could have just taken a selfie and posted something on social media.

Right. I couldn't bring myself to do that. Glenn: Yeah. The well had run dry.

Katie: I was out, but, so I took the entire month of March off that month of March. That was one of my best sales months for that entire year. From organic social media traffic, the reason why I had showed my social media feed, yep, was clear as to what I did, who I helped, and who I served. So anybody that came to my page, everything that was there was good content that they could learn more about me, see what the company did, learn what our thesis were and everything.

Everything that was on the page was still relevant. My bio was optimized. It said who I helped, who, you know, what, what makes us different, how to get in touch with us. And then the last but not least thing that, that's the most important, I was still showing up.

Having conversations, I was contacting people, having conversations on their posts. It wasn't like, Hey, Glenn, looks like you need some help with some social media. You know, check out my page. It was, what a great podcast episode.

I loved how you shared this. And then you, oh, who's Katie? I'm gonna go check out her page. Look at all that she does.

Right. This is really helpful. I'm gonna follow her. I'm going to get in touch with her.

This was how I was able to generate revenue during a month where I was too burnt out to create. And I think that that's something where people completely miss the mark in their social media strategy. They think, okay, well I gotta create the content. Yeah, that's only half the battle.

The other half is the conversation side, is showing up and talking to people. Building that community, engaging with strangers on the internet, and you never know what can happen out of just a simple social media comment. There's, I've built great partnerships from someone commenting on my post or me commenting on their post. It turns into a DM conversation and the next thing you know, we're having a podcast together and then they invite me to, you know, go speak at their event.

And then the next You never Glenn: Off to the races. Yeah. Yes. I think it's so easy for us to look, in hindsight, especially if we have a CRM or some system that is capturing this, you can say, okay, that contract, let's back up.

Thank goodness you had that white space in March where you instead of spending that time fixating on making more, because the story we tell ourselves is, must make more. But you took time to instead probably activate people who were ready to be activated, but you had time for that because you had not devoted the time to more posting. Katie: Cool. Yeah, and, and I think that too, like it's, it's one of those things where sometimes just scrolling through, you're doing, most of the time we're doing it anyways.

You know, how can you do it for your business? How can you engage with the right people instead of getting stuck on I, I don't know how, but I've been in this weird loop of crazy snake videos. I think I watched one all the way through and now I, there's snake videos just fill my feet. Oh, you didn't have anyways.

Yeah, but I mean, like, how can I get outta the snake video algorithm and back into, Hey, these are my ideal client and customer videos. How can I start engaging with those? So focus in on. Where are my clients and customers hanging out?

How can I engage with their content instead of being stuck in some weird algorithm of content that you really don't even know why you are watching it? Glenn: I think that's why, a few things that you put in the book that I really got value out of were the audits on each one of the channels and, At their most basic, they're just look at what you've been doing, not with your subjective eyes, but try to look at it objectively. If I look objectively at my own feed and what I have been telling the algorithm to give me, first off, if I haven't been paying attention, shame on me.

But secondly, you get what you get, like mm-hmm. If you wanna change it, then make a change. Be the change. Yeah.

Don't just sit there, tolerating more. Katie: Yes, exactly. And if you can pick what you get in your feet. It's very right.

You just type it up into the search bar and you gotta watch some of the videos. You gotta engage with some of those videos and it's gonna start showing you more of Glenn: those. You can use that to do market research. Yep.

What would my client want, what problems are they typing into the search? Okay. I'm gonna go watch what my peers do in that area and maybe learn from a few of them, but definitely see from others what I don't want to do. Katie: Yeah, exactly.

Glenn: It's all there. Katie. There was a lot that we didn't get to in the book, but uh, if people wanna find out where to get it, how to get ahold of you, what you do, where can they go? Katie: Katie brinkley.

com. You can check out the book, check out my podcast, check out the agency. You can choose your own adventure from there. Go to katie brinkley.

com. Glenn: Fantastic. Thanks so much for coming on the show. Katie: Thank so much for having me and for, letting me me share The Social Shift.

Hopefully we can all get back to more intentional social media. Glenn: Let's hope so. And until next time, think more about what you're putting in your social and what you're doing in your funnel so that you can make it even better.