Live Streaming, Influencers, and Social Networking

This is Building Better Developers, the Develop-a-Noor podcast. We will accomplish our goals through sharing experience, improving tech skills, increasing business knowledge, and embracing life. Let's dive into the next episode. Hello and welcome back. We are continuing our series of interviews with DP Knuten. We are in the middle of a season of interviews and we're really getting to the thick of it this episode. We're going to be talking about live streaming. We're going to be talking about influencers and social networking and a lot of the things that are hot topics right now and what this venerable master of the art has to say about them. And there's some really good information that he has. We will end up sort of cutting this one in the middle because we have like a nice stream of consciousness slash discussion that goes on. So we'll just go through this one. We'll pick a point to sort of wrap it up, leave you with a cliffhanger and then we're going to come in with part four and drive it all home. Again, this is a great conversation I had with him. I hope you enjoy it and we'll get right back into it. Let me give you another example that may resonate with your audience. There are probably some people who listen to this podcast who are fans of wristwatches and I'm not just talking about, you know, Apple watch or some type of notification style digital watch or anything like that, but they might be into the Swiss handmade mechanical watches with the glass back that you can turn over and you can see all the jewels and all the movement and all that stuff. And they love it not because it tells time, but because it represents who they are in the form of a physical object that they can put on their wrist and people who know what that is go, is that really a Rolex Submariner with a chrome wristband and oh look, it's got the oyster perpetual day date. Well, you know, and all of a sudden it's not for everybody. I witnessed the fact I got an Apple watch right here. Why? Because it's got everything short of nuclear codes on it. I love it because that's of value to me and consequently I find tremendous value in what it offers. However, if you are, let's say a C level executive at a company, the highest value that a wristwatch might have for you is a signifier that you are a member of the cognoscenti that deserves it. And I noticed, you know, it's like some people have a Tag Heuer, which happens to be a very popular watch with a lot of developers or kind of in the tech space, but other people will go with the Hublot because that's a little bit more refined Swiss timepiece, you know. So people associate with brands because they're trying to communicate something about themselves and consequently those brands are fulfilling a need the same way that a personal brand can fulfill a need for a HR department in a larger company. Because here's the thing, HR people, they know the buzzwords and they search for the buzzwords on LinkedIn. So if someone tells them they need a developer who knows this specific stuff, they're going to plug in those buzzwords. But once they see that you've passed that kind of basic level of brushing your teeth and tying your shoes when it comes to that functionality, they want to know, do you play well with others? Can you communicate with people who don't know as much as you do about what we want to hire you to do? Are you the person we can trust or are you the Scotty down in engineering who says, I kind of do a captain until it has to be done in two hours, otherwise the Klingons are going to kill us. And then you go and of course he saves the day because of course he could do it in two hours but he didn't want people to know that. Well, some people can get away with that because they have a personal brand that allows them to. The other ones typically get sidelined or pushed off onto another team and eventually fired or let go. It's great that you've been through many, many iterations of platforms since you started out and particularly actually with your starting out in copywriting in that area. How do you see social media and particularly using social media for personal brands? Social media is a set of power tools, just like a chainsaw, a circular saw, a sledge hammer or you know, like a pneumatic hammer drill, stuff like that. Like any set of power tools, they can be great for building a house or taking off your arm and it's all a matter of how you use it. The thing I love about social media is that it's 24-7, 365, it's always on and someone can understand who you are, what you do and how you do it, can understand your brand, someplace, any place in the world as long as they're online for the first time. Think about it, I'm old enough to remember when if you were in a band, the best thing you could do is try to get signed by having an agent walk into the club you're playing and they think you're good and they hook you up to a label or something. Now you can post your own stuff up on YouTube, the second largest search engine in the world, and people can discover you not unlike Justin Bieber, this 15-year-old kid who's now worth more than, I don't know, God. And he was discovered with a crappy, and by the way you can still find it, with a crappy video that was shot in a church basement of him performing a song at kind of a youth teen night thing at that church. He was discovered there? Yeah, why? Because social media, always on, if people start seeing great content, all of a sudden things start to snowball and the cost of it is really just the cost of your time, effort, and bandwidth. I mean, and that can be a challenge, but if you do it smart, you can still do it. And let me give you an example. I have a friend here where I live and his name is Trezzi. He goes by one name, T-R-E-Z-Y, and he goes on Twitch and codes live, I think probably once a week or so, and he'll go on and he'll code live for about anywhere from two to eight hours and people will watch him code and he'll talk about the code he's doing. Someone will ask a question, he'll respond to the audience and all that stuff. And he told me this and I'm like, oh, that's pretty cool. And he said, yeah, and people tip me. And I'm like, what do you mean they tip you? Literally, people, if I solve a problem for them, I've gotten 50 bucks for a solution I gave them or a thing that I taught them. And I'm like, seriously, dude, people are coding on Twitch? And the answer is, yeah, Trezzi Codes is coding on Twitch. And that actually inspired me to write my book live 300 nights, 301 nights in a row on Twitch, even if I could only be on for 15 minutes going, you know what, guys, I don't really feel it tonight. Just doing it got me to get the book done. And 301 days in the midst of COVID, I got a book and it's done and it's ready up for anyone to buy on Amazon. And by the way, my podcast, which supports it, and by the way, they have the same name, Nonfiction Brand. Who's my advertiser on my podcast? Oh, it's the book, Nonfiction Brand, Discover, Craft and Communicate. You're completely true, completely you brand. You already are by DP Knuten. So is that a little bit of circular back rubbing going on? Yeah, absolutely. But that's what social media allows you to do. So let's play this out and say that you got a side gig. You want to do a game app or iOS. You have collaborators who work with you. Maybe you're the coder, but you need a graphic artist to create the sprites and the images and the stuff like that for your game. What if you guys do that live on Twitch or another live streaming thing? YouTube Live is actually very popular as well. And people actually see what's going on. Every time you do that, you're advertising who you are, what you do and how you do it. You're advertising what the game you're creating is about and your thought process about it. And people are being invited into that relationship to the point that you don't know who they are. But let's say that you go to a local networking event and someone comes up to you with a smile on their face and go, Trezzi. And you're like, who are you? It's like, oh, you don't know me, but I watch your live stream all the time. And, you know, my handle is Llamaman. Oh, Llamaman. I don't know who Llamaman is, but I know that Llamaman comes on my Twitch every now and then. And we talk and now you have a relationship. And that's how things happen. And, you know, so digital is great for making that happen, but the big key is converting it to meet space, to real world, because even you and I right now, the amount of time we're spending talking to each other, we now have an understanding of who each other are, what we do and how we do it. That transcends any relationship we could have had at a simple cocktail party before a conference or something like that. You know, there's a depth of human relationship that's been developed that can't be replaced by anything digitally, other than this, the fact that this is being mediated by Zoom. Thank you, Zoom, for making this all possible. This brought to you by Zoom. Yeah. How do you see the difference of or maybe the similarities, I guess, with influencers versus personal brands? Oh, this is a good one, because influencers, in my head, I break things down to kind of first principles. So what's the first principle idea of what an Instagram influencer is? 20 year old, great body, wears a bikini, always on the beaches of Santrope or something with hair blowing and a beauty shot. That's an influencer. And they tell me about the probiotic shake they had or the the suntan lotion they use or the lipstick and all that stuff. That's an influencer. Well, not really. Influencers can be everything. I mean, let's face it, Rob, you're an influencer. You have a podcast. People who listen to it will be influenced by what you say, the guests you have on the fact that you have guests on your podcast. There's a subtle endorsement there. So I'm happy to be on this podcast because I'm being endorsed by Rob Broadhead to all the people in his audience. And by the way, the nice thing about a podcast episode is it sits up in podcast heaven and it can be pulled down anytime anybody wants to learn something about it. And it has a shelf life of, I don't know, as long as I pay the hosting fees, which are typically somewhere between five and ten dollars a month. So until I'm dead in a pine box, my podcasts are going to exist available for people to grab any time they want. You know, so that's I don't know. Did I answer your question? Yeah, I think that was influencers. That's the difference. OK, so Venn diagram, big circle brand in that circle is every brand within that circle. There's a smaller circle and that is influencers. But in reality, every human being is an influencer, but the ones who call themselves influencers, the ones who are trying to get the mega deals with whoever to wear shoes and go, oh, I love these shoes. You should get them. That's a very small group. But all the personal brands out there are the people that you know and you don't know why you know them. For example, in the personal finance space, specifically the geared towards women, there's Susie Orman. You may or may not know her, but she's got a very kind of swept bangs haircut. She's always the one telling the conventional wisdom about using financial power to make sure you have the foundation for your life. And she does it in a way that appeals a lot to women or people with less of a financial orientation. You know, and she's saying stuff like diversify stocks, buy exchange traded funds, pay yourself first, all that kind of generic stuff. And she's a global superstar because women line up and go, I'm not buying you for that kind of bumper sticker advice. I'm buying into you because I understand your story. You were a waitress who you had no money. You were, you know, trying to buy a house. You couldn't get a loan. That's why people are attracted to a Susie Orman type personal brand. It's the humanity of her that then she can come in and say, would you like to buy my book? Would you like to subscribe to my course? Would you like to bring me to your corporate event and pay me fifty thousand dollars for a one hour speech? And she's probably higher than that, by the way. Oh, yeah, I think she's she's been doing that was years ago that she had hit the fifty thousand mark, I'm sure. Since you've done this for this goes back to the whole idea of you've gone these through all these platforms and all these evolutions as of marketing and advertising, things have gone. And I think I have sort of idea of your of your answer now, part of that relationship with probably back to those first principles. But where do you. How do you see that maybe there's some some similarities or maybe some things that are available now that weren't when you started from a branding and a marketing point of view? Well, the means of production are now in the hands of the producers or the creators. It used to be to cut video required a edit suite that basically could do everything from Hollywood films to TV commercials and everything else. Now on your smartphone, you have more power than anybody did in the golden age of cinema in the 1930s to the 19, say 40s. And it's all available for you. Twenty four, seven, three, sixty five. Like I have an app on my iPhone that I love called Spark Camera. I take it out when I'm walking my dogs and I typically I one I have a show title for the series. It's called Walk, Talk Brand. And it's about that walking my dogs, me musing on something to do with brands. It could be a concept that I want to share with people. It could be a critique of an ad that I saw or that it could be whatever I want it to be. As long as it's in the wheelhouse of my brand foundation, those key three, it's got to be about creativity, it's got to be about collaboration. It's got to be provocative. It's got to make people think, you know, it can't be conventional wisdom and it can't be strictly contrarian wisdom. It it it depends on what it is. For example, let me give you an example of what I might do a walk, talk brand about. Non fungible tokens, NFTs. Now, the I've been around long enough. I was there when Pet Rocks were a thing and it was a fad and it was incredibly populated. And it was incredibly popular and it went away. Non fungible tokens, in my humble opinion, your mileage may vary, are this year's version of Dutch tulip bulbs. If you know the history, if you know the history of Dutch tulip bulbs in the 1600s when there was a balloon and, you know, a big mess, economic mess and people lost money hand over fist. I mean, just incredible stuff. Non fungible tokens are a shiny object right now. That's a provocative take because right now everyone's telling me that NFTs are the future, to which I say, yeah, VR was the future five years ago. VR still hasn't come. My flying car still hasn't shown up. Where's my flying car? You know, all these things that were the future have not shown up. I may be 100% wrong, but I've thought it through and I've thought it through the prism of my personal brand. And this is not me faking it, taking a contrarian point of view just to be provocative. It's no, this is my considered opinion. And if you disagree, I would love to hear more about it because I'll be honest with you, I don't get it. It may seem that when we got into the topic of NFTs, we got off the rails a little bit. Maybe we did. But if you come back next episode, you'll get to see whether we do actually get back on track again and see what comes from pulling into the final station as we wrap up our journey and our discussion with DP. I hope that you return for that. Hope that you weren't offended by, you know, maybe you're a non fungible token connoisseur or something. I don't know if that's really a word yet, but somebody that's highly on the pro camp and we're offended. But trust me, if you come back, you'll be OK. It's not that it's not something you can't overcome because there's going to be some some great wisdom they're going to get in this final episode as we come back. That being said, I will let you get back to it. So you can start counting the seconds until we talk to DP again. As always, go out there and have yourself a great day, a great week. And we will talk to you next time. Thank you for listening to Building Better Developers, the Developer Noor podcast. For more episodes like this one, you can find us on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Amazon and other podcast venues, or visit our site at developer.com. Just a step forward today is still progress. So let's keep moving forward together. Hi, this is Rob from Building Better Developers, the Developer Noor podcast. We're excited to be on Alexa now. 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