Pete Crowley 59 min

Shitposting

Shitposting on LinkedIn with Adam Robinson

EXCLUSIVE

Personal Branding with Jessica Zweig

Pete Crowley | 59 min

EXCLUSIVE

RB2B + Clay

Pete Crowley | 60 min

0:00

I kind of like this topic.

0:02

Two o'clock, let's see, we haven't really figured out

0:08

how to get, how to get calendar invites

0:11

in people's calendars.

0:12

And you know what, on this one I forgot to even send out

0:16

a reminder over our email newsletter 20 minutes before.

0:20

But on the other hand, we did actually promote it on LinkedIn.

0:24

We're just trying to figure out that basically

0:26

the whole workflow around running an event effectively.

0:31

We're gonna make some, so we prepared Santo Shania,

0:38

a lot better than former weeks,

0:40

which we're very excited about.

0:41

Santo Shazakaram, he's gonna have a mic next week.

0:43

Pretty soon he's gonna have a dope background.

0:46

In terms of Q&A, we're gonna try to leave a half hour

0:50

for Q&A, raise your hand if you wanna ask a question

0:54

on either LinkedIn or Zoom, and we'll get to you.

0:59

And yeah, I mean, I'll turn it over to you Santo Sh.

1:05

Let's do this.

1:07

- All right, let's do it.

1:10

All right, so welcome everyone to today's episode

1:13

of Inbound Lead Algon.

1:15

We're gonna dive into this world of shitposting

1:18

and how we should post your way to growth

1:21

and attention and prosperity.

1:25

So we're gonna have a slightly different format.

1:27

I'll be a host, Santo Shared,

1:30

and no points for guessing our guests today,

1:35

my favorite CEO, Adam Robinson.

1:38

All right, Adam, you're gonna be--

1:39

- Hello everybody.

1:40

Hello everybody, I'm ready to do this.

1:41

Let's jump into it.

1:43

- All right, so Adam, I went to Oxford dictionary

1:47

to look for what shitposting meant.

1:50

Can you define for the rest of us?

1:53

If I did better, I would think it's taking a dump

1:56

before making a post.

1:58

- In my opinion, a shitpost is kind of like,

2:04

when you are intentionally being inflammatory

2:14

and speaking kind of like overly negative

2:19

about someone, something, some company or whatever,

2:24

kind of like with the spirit of trying to troll

2:28

a response through being negative.

2:32

That's what I think shitposting is.

2:35

- Raw, K-12, post.

2:37

So it turns out that the word shitposting

2:41

was invented in late 2019.

2:44

So you just may have invented this category.

2:49

The reason is, you know, this, Adam started shitposting

2:56

late 2019.

2:58

So let's set the stage.

3:02

So the either is early 2020, COVID has just happened, right?

3:07

And you are starting off with this venture.

3:09

It's probably looking bleak.

3:12

Nobody's buying the world's coming to an end.

3:14

Your business is doing 20K, 30K a month,

3:17

not making enough, not profitable certainly.

3:21

And you want to grow, right?

3:23

You want to capture attention and times are changing.

3:27

So with that backdrop, tell us,

3:31

how did you even think about like starting the shitpost

3:35

on like Facebook and let's dive into one of your videos?

3:40

- Yeah.

3:40

First thing I will show you is we're now looking at,

3:45

I'm actually, I'm tracking the week by week growth

3:52

of RB2B versus get emails, which is now retention.com.

3:57

And I did this Facebook ad that was not shitposting.

4:07

Like around week four, and then I ended up turning it off

4:12

a couple of weeks in.

4:14

And then the shitposting stuff,

4:16

I sort of, it's around week 12 that I had the epiphany

4:21

that this was possible.

4:28

And I ended up running those ads for basically

4:33

until week 44 from week 12.

4:37

So probably like 90 days of intense sort of like

4:42

shitposting oriented ads.

4:46

And then the business did something strange.

4:48

It was like stuck between 200 to 250K for like nine months.

4:53

And then we started prospecting e-commerce stores

4:55

and it got bigger again.

4:57

But basically from about week 43 on,

5:02

we stopped doing the sad campaign.

5:05

And I'll get into some of the reasons why later,

5:08

but let me just show you this ad

5:11

and show you some of the comments that came from it.

5:14

And by the way, this was just like on a whim.

5:16

I was like, Helen and I, this is my current wife now,

5:20

she was my girlfriend at the time.

5:22

Like if you had a 60 amusing ad

5:25

that answered the sales questions and used props

5:28

and there was like a different background on every one of them,

5:32

it would seem like it was like Snapchat

5:35

or an Instagram store or something.

5:36

So this ad totally, it made me aware

5:40

that shitposting was possible.

5:41

I'm gonna play it.

5:42

- It's Adam and Helen again, week five of quarantine.

5:47

The first question everybody asks

5:49

when they figure out what GDMLs does is.

5:51

- How is it legal?

5:52

- So we're gonna tell you.

5:53

So in the US, is it Can't Spam compliant?

5:57

The answer is yes.

5:58

There is a huge misconception that Can't Spam in the US

6:01

is opt in, it is not, it is opt out.

6:03

So long as there's an opt out link on your email, it's a okay.

6:06

- What about California?

6:09

- CCPA only applies to businesses with over 40.

6:13

- Yeah, exactly.

6:14

- So if you had a question,

6:15

I would say that we would have a question,

6:17

but I would say that we would have a question.

6:19

- I don't think we would have a question.

6:21

- We would have a question, we would have a question.

6:22

- I think we would have a question.

6:24

- I think we would have a question.

6:25

- I think we would have a question.

6:27

- I think we would have a question.

6:28

- Yeah, we would have a question.

6:29

- I think we would have a question.

6:29

- I think we would have a question.

6:30

- So if you have to ask businesses

6:31

with over 25 million a revenue,

6:33

if you have under 25 million a revenue,

6:34

there is no CCPA.

6:36

If you have over 25

6:37

and you make the appropriate privacy policy adjustments,

6:39

it's A-okay.

6:40

- Great.

6:41

What about Canada and Castle?

6:44

- Castle is opt in email marketing only.

6:47

You can't do it in Canada.

6:48

But Canadian companies can still use get emails

6:50

because we do not have any Canadian citizens

6:52

in our database,

6:53

so you can still use it for US customers.

6:56

- Okay.

6:57

What about Europe and GDPR?

7:00

GDPR is opt in email marketing only.

7:02

Can't do it in Europe.

7:03

But again, we don't have any Europeans in our database,

7:05

so European companies can still use get emails

7:08

because it is US can't scam compliant.

7:11

Click through to learn more.

7:13

Click through America.

7:16

- Okay, so you get the idea there.

7:19

And...

7:21

- It's out of my mind again, week five.

7:25

- Sorry, let me just...

7:27

So what this did...

7:30

is if you read these comments,

7:34

this might detract a normal human being,

7:39

but I read these and I was very encouraged by this, right?

7:44

So what I'm hearing is that this is just another example

7:47

of a shitty US law and you unabashedly decided to exploit it.

7:51

Just because it's legal doesn't mean it's right,

7:53

it's an awful business model.

7:54

The only people who think email marketing,

7:58

you get the point, seems intrusive,

8:01

like all of these.

8:03

And by the way, I'm like firing back from the brand account.

8:08

It's not spamming, it's targeted emails.

8:10

We're providing huge value to small business.

8:12

I'm just going to write back at these people.

8:14

So...

8:15

Where this ended up is like,

8:19

I would take each one of these comments

8:22

and make an individual ad about each of them

8:26

to just rile these people up

8:28

because when they wrote a novel

8:31

about how much they hated me and the ad

8:36

and what we were doing,

8:37

it just made the ad work better

8:38

'cause that's the nature of social media, unfortunately.

8:41

Yeah.

8:47

Should I play the next one?

8:49

- Just on this one, Adam,

8:54

these comments are not flattering.

8:58

Well, let me say they just hateful

9:00

and downright condescending.

9:02

- Yes.

9:03

- But you didn't stop.

9:05

And there was then the cluster reviews

9:07

or the Yelp reviews, right?

9:09

But what do you think went through your mind

9:13

to not like start, you double down?

9:17

Is this your trader background,

9:20

your ability to take more risks than others?

9:23

- I mean, I just...

9:25

So like...

9:27

There's 595 comments

9:33

and like, I just never had any kind of response

9:36

to anything I'd ever done like that.

9:38

And I had heard that social media

9:40

is this like very divisive tool

9:42

and it has this potential

9:47

to just really amplify the negative voice.

9:52

And like my content was like,

9:54

and by the way, like I knew like tons of people

9:57

were clicking through and signing up for this.

10:00

- Yes.

10:01

- Despite the negative, that's why I kept doing it.

10:02

It's not like it was negative comments

10:05

and no business was coming from it, right?

10:06

Like it was extremely negative comments from these people.

10:11

And it was like the best,

10:16

it was like literally I was getting paid back

10:18

on these ads in a day, right?

10:20

So that was like, okay, like...

10:23

I mean, this is the animated how I was like,

10:25

how do I do more of this?

10:26

So I just like went through the comments

10:30

and there was woman about a legal loophole.

10:34

So like that was the next one I did, right?

10:38

So like this will give you an idea

10:40

of like the tone of the ads.

10:42

- It's Adam and Helen again,

10:43

get emails that...

10:44

It's Adam and Helen again,

10:45

get emails that identifies 35% of your anonymous traffic

10:48

and send you email addresses that you don't have yet

10:50

in real time.

10:52

Everyone knows it's legal,

10:54

but people say it's unethical because...

10:56

- It exploits a legal loophole.

10:58

- And my argument is that that's what

10:59

entrepreneurs do, duh.

11:01

We're gonna give you three examples

11:03

of people who have done the same thing.

11:04

- First we have Airbnb.

11:06

- Airbnb got started by spamming Craigslist,

11:08

but you didn't know that

11:09

and they currently operate in New York City

11:11

by saying that the host has to be in the apartment

11:12

when the guests are there.

11:13

Give me a break.

11:15

- Next we have good old Apple.

11:17

- Apple earned $305 billion between 2008 and 2015

11:20

and they paid 5.8% taxes on it

11:22

because of a legal loophole that has since been shut.

11:26

- Next we have Uber.

11:28

- Uber's still operating legally in many countries.

11:30

Does that make them bad entrepreneurs?

11:31

Which does that mean?

11:32

Entrepreneurs exploit legal loopholes?

11:35

I think it's the latter.

11:36

Click through to learn more.

11:38

- I mean, that's just like a straight up inflammatory ad.

11:41

You know, they kept saying the legal loophole thing

11:45

over and over again.

11:46

Like in like these people's heads would explode

11:48

when you would be like,

11:49

that's just what entrepreneurs do, you know?

11:52

So yeah, that was the next one.

11:57

And then, you know.

11:59

- Love is freedom that comes from

12:03

when you're starting small, right?

12:06

And the ability to cut through the noise,

12:08

which you're doing here so wonderfully.

12:11

As negative comment is really the fuel

12:14

that helps you cut through that noise.

12:16

- Yeah, absolutely.

12:17

And I think that's,

12:18

I think the when you're small is key.

12:23

And I think that that's something

12:25

that people don't really appreciate, right?

12:28

Like when you started 12 weeks ago,

12:31

you don't have a brand.

12:32

- Right.

12:33

- At all, right?

12:34

There's no brand to destroy.

12:36

So in the very beginning,

12:38

I think you can get away with stuff that you,

12:41

you know, there's no way we could do it.

12:43

You can get a new version of that.

12:44