In this video, I speak with Ashley Ward who is currently the corporate speaker for SEMrush, the well known and loved SEO and digital marketing toolset. I wanted to catch up with Ashley because she has years of social media marketing and digital experience, but really focuses on how social media can move the revenue needle for businesses.

I don’t know about you, but I have always been quite skeptical of social media for business. We’ve all seen it done very wrong by brands trying to insert themselves into conversations where they don’t belong. We’ve also all seen it done very right by big brands like Arby’s and Wendy’s who have a specific voice and people love.

So in this video, we dig into organic (as opposed to paid) social media marketing strategies for brands and what it should actually look like, as well as how to get there.

You’ll learn:

  1. Why the story matters so much in organic social media;
  2. How your story changes across different platforms;
  3. Why data helps you know exactly what your audience wants;
  4. and more

Transcript

John: All right, everyone. Welcome back. Today, I have with me Ashley Ward who is a corporate speaker at SEMrush. So SEMrush is an SEO, digital marketing tool that I use, I’ve used for a long time and that I love. It’s a company that I’ve really come to like and respect over the years. There’s different Twitter chats and that sort of thing. They’ve done a lot for the community. Ashley joined them in September or so of 2017. So not too long ago. We’re recording this at the beginning of October 2017 and so she was… We were connected up by a mutual friend via Twitter and so today, we’re gonna be talking about organic social media. But before we hop into that, Ashley, welcome. If you would, just give us a few words about yourself, about your experience in digital marketing?

Ashley: Totally. So before SEMrush I owned a digital marketing agency for a little over five years. Dabbled in everything except for SEO and then really put the social media hat cap on. That’s where I got started way back when I was in college, started with Tumblr, and then watched social basically transform into what it is today and all the various channels that it is now. So I worked with larger corporate companies, smaller mom and pop shops, everything in between, helping them really get a social media strategy as well as posting calendars, tools, all of that going, and then pretty heavy into the content aspect of it. So e-mail marketing, blogging, infographics, things like that.

John: Awesome, awesome. So you’ve had a wide range. I mean, except for SEO you’ve had a wide range of different skills that you’ve acquired over time.

Ashley: Yes. I even thought at one point I could be a website developer and create WordPress websites, but that was short lived.

John: Haven’t we all. That’s awesome. So why social media? Why are you focusing on social media these days?

Ashley: So it’s actually kind of funny how I got into it. I went to school to be a journalist and my dream was to be…journalism like, hard hitting news, journalists who like worked for NatGeo or something at that end. And while I was in school the whole digital, no more print things started happening. So I was like, “Okay, how can I figure out a way to still connect with people and deliver a story?” And then that’s when social media started booming and it literally started from a university reaching out to me and asking if I could take over their Tumblr and I was just hands, feet on the ground kind of like a journalist, just going around taking photos, documenting things, and then putting it on…instead of in a print magazine or a newspaper, putting it inside of the social media network. And I loved the interaction that that created. And so when I started doing that for businesses and found a way to basically tell a business’s story and create engagement… So you’re not two separate entities, you’re not a business and here’s the customer, you’re able to actually combine those two together and create conversations using social media. That just blew my mind and I fell in love with it, and haven’t it left it since.

John: Yeah. That’s awesome. I love it when I talk to people that they’re like, “Yeah. I started off doing this one thing and then I found this and was like, this is what I meant to do.”

Ashley: Totally.

John: That’s my own sort of SEO. Like you go, you know, pull down into it. That’s super, super, super cool. So obviously, social media has changed quite a bit over the years, right?

Ashley: Yeah.

John: I mean, I signed up for Facebook I think in 2004, something like that and like, there was no Twitter. I mean, I think Tumblr, you know, was around. I think Reddit was kind of around, but it was kind of 4chan at that point. Right?

Ashley: Yeah.

John: So like, but now we have who knows how many social media networks, right? I mean, and it seems like there’s a new one that launches and then goes away every, like, you know, year or so. But I mean, there’s definitely the big ones, Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter.

Ashley: Instagram.

John: Instagram, right. Yep, see, you’re the social media expert, right?

So social media has changed a ton in the last 13, 14 years, right, especially the last decade. I graduated college 10 years ago and it’s changed, you know, in just an incredible amount. Our world is so much more connected now and it’s moved so much from the organic side of like, this is my own personal Facebook garden to, now businesses are there, right? It’s a huge channel for people. But everyone these days talk about paid, right? And paid advertising. And the search engines have, or not the search engines, SEO mind, the network, the social networks have done so much to reduce our reach, right? Or our organic reach. So today and, you know, I discussed this, I already said it at the beginning of the show as well. Today, I actually wanna talk about organic social media in 2017 going into 2018. Is it even still a thing? And if so like, where are you seeing, you know, success, where are you seeing success for clients, you know, and businesses that you talk with and business owners that you talk with? Like, where should I put my time as someone that doesn’t…if I didn’t want to put any like money into, you know, promoting stuff?

Ashley: If you don’t wanna put money into promoting stuff and that’s a whole another argument on why that shouldn’t even be made, but there are businesses that literally just don’t have budget to it, but they have time. They don’t have the money, but they have time. So if you have time as a resource then you really need to think of how to tell your story through social media. So there’s so many different social media platforms. Figure out which platform your demographic is on first. Obviously everyone needs to have a presence on Facebook. Past that, you’re looking at Instagram and Pinterest are the next. If you’re B2B then you’re looking at LinkedIn, then you’re looking at Twitter.

But once you narrow down your demographics, you need to start working on the story, and the story needs to be crafted different for each of those social media networks. So for example, a post on Facebook could be more informative. Say you have an event coming up or sale coming up, you’re trying to tell a story of upcoming news, things that’s happening, you can do a video for that on Facebook and there’s ways to go within the algorithm to help make your organic post still be shown in competitive nature against paid. It’s very similar to SEO in the sense of it has to be great content and it has to be targeted and meant for your exact demographic for the algorithms to be like, “Okay. Even though you’re organic, we’re gonna put you up higher than paid or we’re gonna put you up with the paid people.” Something on Pinterest, that needs to tell a completely different story because that needs to be 100% creative within either a graphic or an image, and then it needs a link to a landing page. So there’s still a lot that you can do with organic, but you have to have time as a resource to better dedicate what kind of story you’re telling and how you’re telling it, and what methods you’re using.

John: Right, right. So it’s less of like, I often think of social media as being like a, kind of a fire hose, right? Or, I mean, like a feed, right? So like, I mean I’m a heavy Twitter user and it’s just like, you know, constant stuff. And yeah, you know, you can curate the stuff that you share and you can schedule it using a, you know, a Buffer and Edgar or, you know, something like that. But, you know, in keeping with like the general theme, but it seems like these others are more like… Facebook, etc. are more strategic and maybe I’m just not thinking about, like, Twitter strategically either.

Ashley: Yeah. Well, I mean, Twitter is its own strategy entirely. So every single one of these networks really are its own strategy. So for Twitter, it’s its own strategy because you have lists and you have hashtags. And so you’re constantly trying to monitor your own brand on Twitter, but you’re also trying to monitor conversations in order to keep up with your story and embed your story into conversations that are already trending. That’s something that you can’t really do on Facebook. Hashtags, they tried, people still use them, businesses need to stop using them, but.

John: So talking about that, why do businesses need to stop, you know, using hashtags and trying to insert themselves into those conversations on Facebook?

Ashley: It’s the same reason Google+ isn’t a top priority anymore, because people aren’t using it. So our customers aren’t using it. Businesses-to-businesses are using it because we’re told we’re supposed to be using it, just like when hashtags came out with Facebook. It was the new thing, you got to try it, everyone tried it. It didn’t stick, it didn’t work. So now, just kind… Especially for like an enterprise company, it can cheapen your posts. And it can make your brand look bad because you’re a little bit outdated, you should know that Facebook isn’t for hashtags anymore.

John: Gotcha, gotcha. And so your audience is gonna pick up on that. And also Facebook… Facebook knows that Facebook isn’t for hashtags anymore. So they’ll actually, like, not show it.

Ashley: Well, 100%, and it’s even more than that. It’s 100% your audience. But [inaudible 00:09:23], they may throw a hashtag in there because it’s the end of their joke line that works for their audience, because their audience is witty, humorous type of audience. Those are the posts that they do.

John: Millennials.

Ashley: Yeah, exactly. For 1 sentence to have 20 hashtags underneath of it, like, a Twitter post or Instagram post would, it’s just inappropriate for Facebook.

John: Gotcha, gotcha. Interesting. So should… I guess one question that’s been in my mind for a long time is should businesses actually be, you know, doing like text posts and that sort of thing on, you know, on Facebook like, “Hey, we have a sale coming up and here’s our…” You know, “Here’s the link to it.” You know, that sort of thing. Which is like, I mean, isn’t really like the point of social. That’s using it more as like a broadcast channel. But like, should businesses be doing that sort thing at all or really should they be, you know, going all in on video for organic stuff?

Ashley: Yeah. It’s all about video right now. If you have video, the algorithms are automatically going to choose to rank your content higher than something that’s just text. If we look at Facebook’s history, the posts started with just text posts and we were all good with that. That was fine. And then images started happening, and then links started happening. And then you could customize the links, now you can’t customize links. Now video is everything for Facebook. It makes sense to why video is everything for Facebook and Instagram because it gives this fresher user experience and it offers this level of engagement, this, like, behind the scenes type of look. And that’s the whole point that Facebook and Instagram and these social networks want to do, is they want to combine the business and customer relationship and make it more of a knock on the door type of a thing versus I’ll call you Monday through Friday.

John: Sure, sure, totally. That makes sense. So I’m gonna turn on my SEO mind a little bit here. Let’s talk about, I mean, so Facebook obviously owns Instagram, right? And so, and obviously, those are two very different platforms, Facebook and Instagram. But, you know, they both have their own, like, ranking algorithm, just like Google has a ranking algorithm. Can you talk to me…give us some insight into, you know, if I’m like… So my business Credo, very B2B, right? But, like, I do have, you know, people following me on, you know, Facebook. LinkedIn is way better, you know, for my business. But, you know, how can I… Give me, like, assume I know nothing about Facebook and, like, ranking or organic content, which I don’t. Like, how do I think about that? How do I think about getting, you know, my content showing, you know, to my target audience organically in Facebook? And also in Instagram I think would be interesting to talk about too.

Ashley: Yeah. I almost think Instagram’s a little bit easier because you have the hashtag opportunity and you also have the places opportunity. So with your Instagram posts, if you’re like a brick and mortar or if you have lots of locations, you can add your location onto your post. And if you think about your own user experience… So, someone like myself, when I’m going to a new country, a new state, a new city, I’ll actually go to Instagram and I’ll look at the place, I’ll look at the post because that’s showing me what it’s really like versus the stock photos that are on the websites.

John: Interesting.

Ashley: Yeah. So if you think how you use Instagram and Facebook and if you’re at all like your demographic, you need to start crafting things for that. And regardless of whether it’s Facebook’s algorithms or Instagram’s algorithms, if you’re creating content that your users actually wants to see, like, not stock photo content, actual behind the scenes footage, in the moment type of capturing, here’s our staff at lunch type of idea, you know, getting at that edgy feel. If you’re targeting towards millennials you need geometric shapes somewhere in there or wood or something like that.

John: Yes, totally. Coffee.

Ashley: Yeah, coffee. If you’re targeting to an older audience… Facebook give a fantastic example of this. There’s one restaurant, I can’t remember if it was in Virginia or whatnot, but there was a restaurant and they have a wide demographic. They have a young demographic, a more millennial demographic, and then they have an older demographic. So they did different posts for each of those demographics in order to hit and communicate with both of them. The one for the older demographic focused on the food that the restaurant serves. It wasn’t anything crafty or anything like that, it just was a nice photo that showed their food. And then for the millennial demographic, featured their happy hour specials. And so that’s just photos their drinks. And then the one for the youngest demographic focused on desserts.

So thinking that through, it doesn’t matter is your demographic isn’t trendy and millennial and all that crap. You just have to basically think like your own demographic does and what do they enjoy seeing, what do they actually enjoy engaging with, and put yourself in their shoes. And then it doesn’t matter with the algorithms say or what the algorithms do.

John: Right. Yeah, totally, totally. That’s absolutely right. And then the, I mean, the thing is like with SEO it’s, you know, create stuff people actually wanna see, right? I mean, the story goes that, you know, you’ll earn links to it and then it’ll rank because it’s, like, actually stuff, you know, people want to see. So in SEO it’s links, but it seems like in social it’s engagement, right? It’s, like, it’s people seeing it, it’s people double tapping on Instagram or liking the post or liking your update on, you know, on LinkedIn or whatever. Is that fair to say?

Ashley: Oh, yeah. And if you encourage sharing, so a lot of businesses in their posts will be like, “Tag three friends who wanna do this or tag a friend you wanna share this moment with.” Just by doing that you’re increasing the engagement and so then you’re telling the algorithms, “This is popular and my demographic likes it because they’re tagging their friends or their family member, similar like-minded people.” So if you can figure out a way to integrate that into one or two of your posts a week… I mean, definitely not every single one because then people are just gonna stop tagging, they’re gonna stop hashtagging, they don’t wanna engage with you anymore. So it needs to be minimal, but that’s a good way to get your important post in the algorithm’s eyes if we’re not as focused on the user story.

John: Totally, totally. Do you, I mean, I personally and, you know, I’m not my audience, right? Marketers, we’re not our audiences, but like, that stuff really works? Because I see this, like, “Tag two of your friends.” I’m like, “Go away.” I’m like, “No, I’m not gonna tag two of my friends.” But like, people actually do that?

Ashley: So I’m not my demographic either, but I totally do it and I do it all the time. And when it used to be allowed to. I did it the most when it would be like, “Tag three friends, add this hashtag, repost this image and be entered to win a $25 gift card or be entered to win with this.” I would do it left and right.

And then I’d basically get strings and strings and strings of people. Now you can’t do that much. So now you have to find more creative ways on why you would tag them, and it’s really cool what businesses are doing now and they’re literally doing things like, “tag someone that you would wanna share this memory with, or tag someone who needs to hear this today.” So it’s not direct about their [inaudible 00:16:46] for their service, it’s more of this, like, inspirational, motivational piece. And it doesn’t matter what industry you’re in. Like, you can find a way to make that work.

John: Gotcha, gotcha. Interesting. Yeah. I mean, it’s content marketing is what it is. Like in social media, it’s social media content marketing. Like, you know, if this is the 0 to 1 of people that are actually gonna buy, and it’s a spectrum to 10, like, how can you get out to 9. It’s like something that’s, you know, related to your business. It’s not like, you know, if it’s an auto repair shop or something like that. Like, there’s so much they can do around it that’s not just like, “Come in and get your oil changed for 20% off today.” Right? Like, I mean…

Ashley: Yeah. We’re seeing that. We wanna see the cars of the before and after. We wanna see a video testimonial happen. We wanna see what you guys do on your lunch break. And holidays are coming, what’s your holiday party look like? I want to go to someone that’s family owned, that’s not a corporate company. So what makes you different, what makes you unique? You have so many opportunities with organic social to show that.

John: Totally, totally. I mean, so one of my challenges with the organic social is that it feels very, like, soft. That it’s like, “Give people what they want.” But I’m like, “But how do I know what they want?” I mean, obviously part of it is, like, talking to your customers, right? Is there like a data driven way that we can go at figuring out, like, what kind of content should I be creating for my audience on, you know, Facebook or Instagram or wherever? Because it’s kind of a chicken and egg thing, right? Like yeah, you can create it, but if you don’t have anyone to promote it to, no one’s gonna interact with it and you’re not gonna know if, like, people will interact with it in the future. So how do I solve that conundrum?

Ashley: So one way to do it and you could totally do this on social, but most of everything else for digital marketing you can’t unless you have tools like SEMrush to get competitor data, but…

John: Shameless plug. I love it. I love it.

Ashley: I had to. I had to. With social you could actually go to your competitors and see what they’re posting and see what people engage with, what do they like. So your direct competitors. Why don’t you go to their Facebook or Instagram page and see what they’re doing, see what’s not getting any likes, really analyze it, what day was it, what time did they post, what kind of caption, did they use a filter. Analyze the crap out of it and then either duplicate it or don’t duplicate that. Like, make a list of do’s and don’ts based on your competitors. Why not? They’re already posting. It’s public.

John: Right, right. That’s actually really, really smart. Is there a way for me to download all of my competitors’ followers and then target them on social? Or is that getting a little bit like gray hat?

Ashley: No, I don’t think… I mean, in my opinion I don’t think it’s it’s gray hat by any means. It’s public knowledge, everything’s out there and there’s no way bigger corporations aren’t doing the same darn thing. But I don’t think, and I could be completely wrong so if there’s a tool out there that’s watching, like, drop it down, let people know about it. If there was a tool for it, that would be great because it’s really hard to find competitor data on social and unless you do brand mentions and track your competitors’ brands. That’s a great way to do it, but aside from that it’s kind of more of a manual process as far as what I’ve always done. And it’s not so much that it’s time consuming. It’s not that hard to just… It’s not like you’re googling your competitors and you’re doing site audits for every single one of their sites. You’re going to their social media profiles, you’re looking at their last 10 posts and what worked and what didn’t.

John: Right, right. Totally. No, that makes.. You can do that in 30 minutes or, you know, an hour easily and have a really good idea of, like, what you should be doing and not be doing.

Ashley: Even check out, like, so holidays are coming out. Even check out what they did for last year’s holiday campaigns.

John: That’s smart.

Ashley: That would be so interesting to see what kind of promotions they did. If you’re always offering the, like, free shipping or buy one get one half off, if you need something really unique lots of times I’ll just start going to social media for my past clients and I would just look at what people did for previous holiday campaigns to see how you can change it. Is there one creative word that we’re missing, basically.

John: Interesting. Yeah. That’s super smart and that’s definitely way more, like, in the research phase of, like, what strategy should we be employing, but that drives so many things and that can drive your strategy across a lot of platforms as well, right?

Ashley: Yeah, 100%. Because then that basically also tells your content team, “Hey, we need to produce this kind of content because this worked great for them.”

John: Right, right. Totally, totally. Yes, this worked great for them so, you know, let’s see if we can…you know, see if it makes sense for our own business. Yeah, totally, totally. So is there a magic, like, formula? And I hate it when people ask me these sorts of question about SEO, but I’m gonna do it to you with social media because I can. Because I don’t know anything about organic social. What’s your, not a magic formula. What is you, as Ashley, what is your rule of thumb when it comes to, like, you know, when you’re doing stuff for organic? Especially like, and I’m especially thinking about Instagram, because Instagram has blown up in the last year, two years. I remember when Facebook bought them five years ago and I was like, “Holy crap, Facebook just paid a billion dollars for this photo app.” And now it’s like, “Wow, they got a phenomenal deal on that.” Right? They almost have that many users which is insane.

So when it comes to a platform like Instagram which is so, like, you know, it’s still photo heavy and I see a lot of people doing, like I’m big into outdoors, adventure, and cars. So I follow a lot of outdoors adventure, you know, like Outdoor Research and REI and then like, you know, a lot of like, Ferrari and Bentley, right? So I follow a lot of car makers as well and a lot of them do some really interesting things, you know, storytelling and that sort of thing. But, like, what’s the, is there a balance there between the… And obviously it has to be beautiful, beautiful photography especially if you’re a well known brand. Like, it has to be super high quality photography or video or whatever. But like, is there ever a time on Instagram to, you know, be pushing sales and, you know, that sort of thing? And how do you do that in a, like, true to your brand voice sort of way?

Ashley: Yeah. So, 100%. I think Instagram is a great place. Facebook is the main place to promotes sales and events and things like that. But I think I just saw a new company yesterday pop up on my Instagram feed and they had just opened… They’re, like, a modern furniture company and they just did their first release yesterday and they blew up, like, their website crashed. But what they did was they posted photos of their products and they posted photos of the families using their products and then in the captions, they actually put what happened. So that’s what changed it the most is they didn’t actually put the the copy on the imagery, they put it in the caption. So as you’re scrolling, you’re attracted to the image and that’s what makes you stop.

John: Right, right. I’ve been seeing so many, like, I’ll be scrolling through my feed in Instagram. I remember, you know, a year ago they said that they were gonna start doing advertising and I was like, “Oh, no, here we go.” And now I scroll through and, like, I found myself double tapping and liking freaking advertisements. Like, “Are you kidding me?” That’s crazy.

Ashley: And that’s also partially, like, because you have the carousel feature now and you have the video feature now, so people are a lot more attracted to it. It doesn’t look so much like an ad, you’re not seeing this, like, big red bubble plastered on it saying 50% off. I mean, that’s perfect for Facebook. For Instagram it really just turns you off. So you need to be posting what you’re regularly posting and then putting the details within the caption. That’s general rule of thumb.

John: So you’re not trying to tell the story or whatever, you know, within the photo? It’s like, you’re keeping the same, like, kind of feel of your feed. And then, and so people actually do read is what I’m taking away from this. People actually do read Instagram captions.

Ashley: Yes, yeah. I don’t think there’s rule of thumb on short to long captions. It depends on your audience. So if you look at Yoga Girl who has, like, I think nine million followers…

John: A lot of followers. Yeah.

Ashley: Yeah, tons of followers. Her posts are paragraphs upon paragraphs, and it works because her demographic is following her because they’re following her life’s journey and storytelling and, like, they like that diary. For a business I would definitely suggest keeping it shorter, but some businesses, they have the story to tell and it’s interesting enough to where you can keep it longer. So I don’t think there’s a direct policy especially for organic where it has to be one sentence or five words or anything like that,

John: Totally, totally. Yeah, that’s really interesting. Interesting to know. So final question is, I mean, when it comes to under leveraged or, like, under utilized channels, like, where are you seeing business not engaging and, you know, not being on social that they should be?

Ashley: That’s a great question. Really, I think it’s all social networks. There’s so many businesses who haven’t tapped into social media at all and they’ll create Facebook page just because they’re told to do it and then they won’t do anything with it, and it just looks like this ghost town for their business. And it really does reflect negatively when people are shopping around. I would much rather choose your competitor who has some kind of presence on social and has some kind of activity, because just like an active website shows Google that you’re up to date, an active social media profile shows customers that you’re still in business, you’re thriving, you’re doing great, here’s what’s going on with your business.

John: Gotcha, gotcha. Yeah, I think that’s a great place to end it because there are, yeah, as you said there are so many businesses that, you know, they’re… Yeah, they’re not doing anything. Right?

Ashley: Yeah.

John: And I mean, they have a page and so that looks bad. I mean, I guess I have a follow up question to that, which is if they’re not gonna be willing to invest the time into doing something or hiring, you know, someone to manage it for them, should they even have like a Facebook page or, you know, a Pinterest account or something like that?

Ashley: In my opinion no, because then it just looks like dead space and it really makes me wonder, are you still in business. Like, sure Google can tell me what your hours of operation are, but that also tells me maybe Google doesn’t know that you’ve closed yet, you know.

John: Right, right. Gotcha, interesting and that’s, yeah, I think that’s a really interesting place, you know, to end because a lot of businesses as I said are, you know, just coming around to it. And so I think that the real word is, you know, to kind of summarize all of this is, you know, you have to be willing to invest the time into it. Each channel is different so, you know, you need to figure out who is your audience on these different channels.

Ashley: Because you don’t [inaudible 00:28:11] on all of them.

John: Right, totally. Yeah, yeah, exactly. That’s the same, like, you know, if you’re marketing to entrepreneurs like, you know, it’s gonna be LinkedIn and Instagram, weirdly Instagram. You know, like, that’s where I put most of my company. Like, my company’s very B2B. Like, entrepreneurs and business owners and marketing managers and VPs of marketing, like, they’re all on Instagram and LinkedIn. They’re not on, you know… Yeah, they’re on Facebook, but not like in a business sort of way and they’re not gonna be, like, interacting on, you know, on my page.

So, yes. So who’s your audience and then also you can go and look at your competitors and what are they doing, what’s working or not. If they’re not doing anything ask yourself why. Is that because there isn’t an audience there or because they just haven’t done anything and that’s actually a big opportunity for you? And then at the end of the day you don’t… I think I love that. I think that’s actually gonna be the title of this, is you don’t have to be everywhere.

Ashley: Perfect. I love it.

John: [inaudible 00:29:07] one thing, it’s like, go use KnowEm and claim your profile everywhere, like… Actually, maybe not. And if you’re smart and have the copyright and someone tries to impersonate you, you can get that taken down. So, you know, they don’t really have to worry about that too much, as a business especially.

Ashley: Totally.

John: Yeah. Very cool. Awesome. Well, Ashley, thank you so much for being with me today. I know I’ve learned a ton. I’m probably gonna ping you offline and ask you questions to be totally honest with you.

Ashley: Thank you so much for having me.

John: Yeah, absolutely. So yeah, if you would, tell us where can people find you online?

Ashley: Definitely. So you can reach me at Twitter @ashleymadhatter. You can also e-mail…

John: Where did that name come from by the way?

Ashley: So my agency was called Madhouse Matters and then rechanged it to Madhouse Marketing. It took, like, I don’t even remember how many months. It easily took half a year to come up with the name and it came down to something as simple as, I loved the idea of the whole madness that came from like, “Alice in Wonderland,” the creativity and that. Like, I wanted creativity to be the front and center of an agency and really an agency is super mad when it comes down to it. There’s so many moving parts, there’s so many hats to wear.

John: Unbelievable business. It’s crazy.

Ashley: Yeah. So just kind of combining all of those things and pulling a lot of people, that’s what I came down to.

John: Okay. Awesome, awesome. So they can find you on Twitter. Where else?

Ashley: You guys can find me, LinkedIn, Facebook, Facebook profile’s public. You can message me. You can also e-mail me, [email protected].

John: Awesome, awesome. And are you part of SEMrush‘s, like, Twitter chats and such as well?

Ashley: So I don’t manage it or anything like that, but I participate in it and absolutely love it.

John: And that is when? That’s Tuesdays?

Ashley: Wednesdays.

John: Wednesdays.

Ashley: From 8:00 to 9:00 a.m. Pacific Standard Time.

John: 8:00 to 9:00 a.m. So 11:00 to noon Eastern Standard Time and figure out times from there. Yeah, awesome. And that’s just #SEMrushchat, right?

Ashley: Yup.

John: Awesome, awesome. Well, Ashley, thank you so much. I really appreciate it and we’ll speak to you soon.

Ashley: Awesome. Thank you.