Bryan is the CEO of PureMatter, an award winning global digital agency based in Silicon Valley, a social strategist, TED speaker and recent author of the acclaimed book: Human to Human #H2H.

For more information on Bryan Kramer: http://www.bryankramer.com/

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Transcript:

 

Kevin: This episode of The Crowd is brought to you by Near Me. Connect buyers and sellers with the all-in-one Near Me platform.

 

Hi and welcome to The Crowd, a podcast by Near Me. We’re talking about peer-to-peer marketplaces. We’re talking about collaborative economy. We’re talking about thought leadership. We’re talking about all these things, any and all of them with some of the best minds in the field. And of course, I’m your host, Kevin Cohen.

 

Hi. I’m your host, Kevin Cohen. I’m super excited about today’s interview. Today, I’ll be joined by Bryan Kramer. Bryan is the CEO of PureMatter, an award-winning global digital agency based in Silicon Valley, a social strategist, a TED speaker and a recent author of the acclaimed book, Human to Human. Bryan, welcome to the show.

 

Bryan: Thank you. Thanks for having me.

 

Kevin: Of course. Before we jump in to our discussion, I’ve got some rapid fire questions for you. What book do you recommend most often?

 

Bryan: You know, one of my favorite books is actually Reinventing You by Dorie Clark. It’s about how to build your personal brand and actually it’s a wonderful book. And she’s a great lady.

 

Kevin: Awesome. What peer-to-peer marketplaces or on-demand services like Uber or Lyft, Airbnb do you like to use?

 

Bryan: Yes to all of those and probably the most would be Uber but I also use Zeel which does massages at home. My wife and I love that and then we also like using – let’s see. There’s another one that we love and the name is – I can’t remember. It delivers food to you from all the stores and then there’s another one that delivers food from all the restaurants and everything happens – DoorDash.

 

Kevin: Nice.

 

Bryan: It’s a wonderful app.

 

Kevin: Nice. So give us your back story. What did you do before you started PureMatter?

 

Bryan: Before PureMatter, I worked my way up in the agency life. And one of the original owners of the very first agency I joined, he started a consultancy out of the agency, the first agency I worked for. And he asked me to join in at his consultancy and so there were three of us that started within a much larger company. It was kind of like an Andersen consulting model but we’re sort of the marketing firm within it. And we grew it to about 75 people and sold to another public company. So it was really cool because I got a chance to build a company on somebody else’s dime and learn all the ins and outs of what it was like to grow a company. And so that was now 15 years ago that I left that company.

 

Kevin: And then did you go directly to PureMatter after that?

 

Bryan: Yeah. I started PureMatter 14 years ago with my wife, Courtney. And she and I run PureMatter and own PureMatter together.

 

Kevin: Great. Who are some of the clients that you guys work with that we would know?

 

Bryan: We work with IBM, Cisco, Plantronics. We’ve worked with MasterCard, mostly enterprise companies, mid-market enterprise companies that focus on a lot of the technology obviously because we’re in Silicon Valley. But then also, we have some mid-market companies that we like to work with as well. So those are a few of the companies.

 

Kevin: And do you have a specific specialty that you guys are known for within the world of agency work?

 

Bryan: Yeah. We’re very pretty focused. So we work on – we’re a digital agency so we work on digital, anything that is digital which includes websites, building websites. And we also do digital demand generation, really kind of intricate things, not just an email program but very intricate demand gen program. We do content marketing and then social marketing. So those four pieces are pretty much the core of our business.

 

Kevin: Great. So your signature phrase which is also the title of one of your books is Human to Human. Can you break that down for our listeners?

 

Bryan: Absolutely. So Human to Human is something that happened, that I’ve been talking about for the last 10 or so years. And all of a sudden on stage when I was giving a presentation, I was giving a keynote at Bloomberg West, one of my friends, Ted Rubin, took a picture of the screen and everybody else raised their phones and took a picture of it as well. And it went viral. Over the next 48 hours, it got over 80 million impressions and was – I think I found it in at least 15 different languages and it was in over 2000 blogs over the next two weeks after that. And so we then worked on pulling all my content which had been written about Human to Human previously for the previous two years and pulled it together into a book which is what you’re referring to which is there’s no B2B or B2C. It’s Human to Human. And then, that did very well that it was #1 on the business books in Amazon for a couple of months.

 

So I think the reason that it resonated so loudly is because everyone really kind of veers towards you know, us going back to needing that human interaction. For the last couple of years, we’ve been starting to go digital. We’ve been trying to – it’s been shiny penny, this whole social digital era where we’ve been focused on how we can automate relationships. And you can’t. You can automate messaging. You can’t automate relationships. So the whole key to it is lowering things, making things into what I call the three pillars for human, to being the best human brand or best human you can be. And that’s simplicity, empathy and imperfection. So if you were to think about a brand and you think about which brand is the most simplistic, you’d probably come up with an answer like Apple because you could tell me all their products, probably anybody could.

 

If I were to ask you who is the most empathetic? You may say like Amazon because they will take back your product without asking any questions where you don’t have that with other even local vendors. And then imperfection is a really big one. You can even look at like the NFL as pretty imperfect brand. They got football players that aren’t exactly operating at the highest level that they need to in their personal lives. They create stories for them that they don’t necessarily want. The key to the whole thing is how you embrace all three. It’s not just embracing one or two of them. It’s embracing all three of them. And when you embrace all three of them, your brand or you as a person can be the most human possible.

 

Kevin: Very good, very good. So your latest book is Shareology. For our listeners that haven’t had a chance to read it, can you give us a few nuggets from that book as well?

 

Bryan: Sure. Yeah. So the recent book Shareology is an extension to Human to Human. It’s how sharing empowers the human economy and it was for me the – actually, it was more of a focus for me in terms of the amount of work and research that I did than Human to Human was. Human to Human or H2H was 80 pages. This was a 200-page book and it was done with over 250 interviews with sociologists, anthropologists, linguists, high-powered executives, some well-known people. So I really just interviewed a lot of people in all walks of life that helped me did boil down to one thing. What’s the sharing formula to be successful? And how do you share in order to be the most human possible so that things can you know – as everybody wants, they want everything to go viral. So how do you do that?

 

So I broke it down into a book and it’s divided between the art and the science of sharing, the share and the ology in the book. So you can jump to either section and actually read it, which one you’re most interested in or read it all the way through. But it all goes back to my TED talk that I gave called How Sharing Can Re-imagine Your Future because sharing re-imagined my future. I talk about it in my TED talk how it helped me to reinvigorate my career because I was at a low point in my career and I wanted to and needed to make a big change if I wanted to continue to work at PureMatter and succeed and what I was going to do with life, those kind of big questions we all ask each other when we get to that point. Sharing really kind of changed all that for me. When I say sharing, I mean social sharing.

 

So the book really branched off from that TED talk and then went into a ton of research based upon that one question of how do you share? It’s something that we really have never taken a class on, right? In school, you don’t get a class on how to share although maybe in kindergarten we’re all taught how to share. It might be the last time that we learned that. But it’s more of a learned skill. It’s less of a taught class. And so I wanted to write a book that help to feature and highlight what I think everybody was missing and needed.

 

Kevin: So what were some of the things you were doing when you had this light bulb go off? What were some of these campaigns or things that you were sharing on social media that really had a profound effect on what you were doing?

 

Bryan: Yes. So, one of the biggest things was just writing a blog. Sitting down and actually writing was really a big deal for me. I haven’t written since, I mean, in blog format for a long time. And so doing that was really, really helpful and still today I blog all the time and sharing in a blog format was helpful because everybody can see a little bit faster who I was and what I thought. So that was really good but then it kind of started to escalate into how I could share more information. So I wanted to share other people’s information, their stories, who they were, what makes them tick, what made them successful, what held them back from that success, how they market, what they market, all that kind of stuff. And so I pursued it in a video format and put people on to video.

 

So I have a video series called Substance. And that video series is focused on people that have extraordinary stories. So I’ve interviewed a lot of really cool people like Blair Christie, a CMO of Cisco and even Ted Turner from what he used to own CNN and a whole bunch of people again from different areas, CMOs, CEOs and VCs that really kind of helped to tell their story and that really helped me to also learn from them. So as I was interviewing them, I was also learning from them and I was connecting with them because I was sitting there for 30 minutes looking them in the eye. So we got to know each other pretty well when you do that kind of thing. So it was really just about storytelling. It’s what helped me to change the course of re-imagining my future.

 

Kevin: Nice, nice. So in a recent article on your blog, you talked about being a mindful marketer. Explain what being a mindful marketer is all about to our listeners.

 

Bryan: That’s a good question because being a mindful marketer is up for interpretation and opinion. There’s no set definition. I’m not sure I can say my way is going to be the way that everybody needs to do it because we’re all mindful in different ways. So just take marketer away for now and just look at the word mindful. Being mindful is just kind of – and by the way, I’m not the most mindful person. So here I am telling everybody what mindful is and I’m working at it myself. But mindful is where you stop and you breathe and you take things in and you’re almost empathetic towards the situation or towards the person. You can be empathetic with nature. You can be empathetic with a specific person or just people in general. And that’s where then you start to attach the word marketing in and say okay, how can we be mindful in the way that we market?

 

Because oftentimes, we’ll just send out an e-mail blast to a lot of people. And that’s why I hate the word blast because it really is just that. It’s like this spammy e-mail that goes out to everyone and then everyone hates it. We get like less than one percent click through. Everyone is like, why did you send that to me? And you get lots of unsubscribes and then you hopefully get more subscribers so you can do that again. It’s just an annoying process. So I think being mindful is really kind of taking that spammy process away just as an example.

 

And just looking at it and saying, okay, how can I be more personalized? How can I personalize this experience so that they know that I’m talking directly to them, that I’m giving them exactly what they need or what they want to be educated on? Being mindful around you know – maybe even calling them out by name in certain aspects in a non-creepy way and helping them to see that I care I as the brand and I as Bryan whether it’s one or the other. So that’s one way of looking at it. There are so many different great people out there talking about mindful marketing and they’ve all got their own definitions but that’s kind of how I look at it.

 

Kevin: Yeah. It’s a very interesting question. I think when I look at it through my lens, I ask myself, am I serving my target market? Am I really honoring them and serving them in the best way possible? Or is what I’m doing self-serving? When I think of it through that lens, it usually is pretty clear to me whether I’m being mindful or not. That’s just kind of my own little twist on it.

 

Bryan: Yeah, yeah. I like that. I like that a lot.

 

Kevin: So many of the companies that we work with are just starting their online business, their marketplaces. They’re small. They’re trying to figure it out. What would be some tips that you would have for them as they dip their toes into the social media marketing world?

 

Bryan: For one, don’t not do anything. Do something. I know that there is so much out there. There is Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Instagram. And you look at all that and you say, okay, where do I begin? Do something. Start somewhere. If your business is in a certain area, then you really need to figure out what’s the one thing that you should be doing on social media that really gets you kind of underway. I would even take a step back and just say if anything, blog. Blogging is not dead. It’s not going anywhere. And it’s the one thing you can own no matter what. When you look at Facebook or Twitter, all those other social platforms, they own your content. So when you post all your stuff up, then they have the right to not only own it but do anything with it that they want which is perfectly fine because that’s you want. You want them to take your content and use it and hopefully it goes viral.

 

But if they do something one day, shut something off or take off or who knows what, they own your content. So, I always believe that you should really operate by the hub and spoke model where the hub is your blog, platform or your community and then the spokes are the social media. It’s not the other way around. Don’t use Facebook or Twitter, any of those as the place where you’re going to keep your content and host it as the hub because you will – it’s a place that goes really fast. You could lose it or you don’t post it. So, I definitely think that the hub and spoke model is the way they go.

 

Kevin: Totally. Yeah. At Near Me, we use an inbound marketing methodology where we produce 7-10 unique pieces of content per week on our blog and then we syndicate those to various social media sites including LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Goggle Plus. And it’s interesting. The conversation that occurs on each of those different platforms is totally unique and different but I couldn’t agree with you more. The real challenge is you just can’t control what’s going to happen on these different social media networks. Certainly, there are people there that you want to connect with but it’s really just the lack of control that you have as a company and a brand. So, what we do is we use that as an amplification strategy. We use social media as a place to have a real meaningful conversation but ultimately we want those clicks to come back to our blog where there are places where people can find out more information and interact more with us as a company.

 

Bryan: There you go. You guys are – you’ve become my prime example.

 

Kevin: Wonderful, wonderful. Are there any tools as a marketer that you like to use on a daily basis? So, are there any tools on your phone or any tools on your desktop that are really critical to what you do?

 

Bryan: So, Evernote is my go to for everything that I keep so I don’t forget, something I need to do, anything I’m writing. I wrote my outline for my book and I collected all my research from my book there. I use it for blog post. I write all my blog posts into it. And the reason I like it is simply because I can pick up where I left off on any device because I’m never just around my laptop or I’m never just around my phone. And I like starting – I never start something in one place and I should say never. But most of the time, I don’t start something that’s content driven in one place and stop it at the same place. I might be at home when I finish it or whatever. So, I like it for that reason because I can just kind of build it as I go.

 

And then I use – I hate to say I use TripIt a lot. It’s a travel app that keeps all of my travel. I travel a lot. So having all of my airline and hotel and everything, all of my information there is great. The thing I like about it the most is I can just forward the email receipts to TripIt and it just pulls it all in automatically. So, it makes my life so much easier. And then on a daily basis, I also use like Buffer. I Buffer and I’ve even used HootSuite but I use that more at events. But I use Buffer for sharing so that I can see what’s going on. With like analytics-wise, I can see what kind of clicks I’m getting and what kind of reshares I’m getting and that kind of thing.

 

So, I know it’s resonating or not and if I should share it again or not. And then also I’m not – I can’t be at all places at once. So, Buffer allows me to just kind of share things while I’m doing other things. And I do believe that you can automate your message but you can’t automate engagements. So, it’s a great way to automate everything that I want to share out. And then when people respond, then that’s where my human approach takes over. I engage with everybody. So, those are a couple of key ones that I use every day.

 

Kevin: Great. So, do you utilize a virtual assistant or an assistant who can help you Buffer for you in terms of keeping you organized? Because you have your hands in a lot of different areas. I mean, you’re obviously out on the road lecturing. You have clients all over the world and then you have a busy personal life. How do you keep it all in check? Do you have a resource that you utilize?

 

Bryan: Yeah. I have three resources dedicated to me. I’ve got one that is an assistant, an executive assistant that helps me too with scheduling and email sorting and just making sure although I don’t tend to be, I didn’t tend to be on time with you a couple of times but normally being on time with certain things and just trying to organize my life around my schedule. I have another person that’s Lisa who manages all of my incoming speaking requests and she manages all the contracts and everything that goes with all the speaking events that I do. I did about 50 or more speaking events last year. So, it’s gotten to the point where I needed somebody to help me manage that.

 

And then I have somebody that helps me with all of my other businesses. So, I’ve got four businesses. Actually, PureMatter is one of them. But then Substantium is an eBook publishing company that we have about two authors a month that we publish their books on. And then we have H2H University which is an eLearning platform to help people learn social media and marketing. And then I also have my own company under my name Bryan Kramer that actually is just around content writing and speaking. So, I have a lot of help there, in those areas as well.

 

Kevin: Great. So for our listeners who want to learn more about you, where’s the best place for them to go to learn about you, PureMatter and all your other projects that you have going on? Do you have your one site that you like to send people that then they can use as the hub? Or tell our listeners where they can find out more about you.

 

Bryan: Sure. Yeah. Well if you go to bryankramer.com, that’s – so my first name is with a Y, Bryan Kramer, Kramer with a K. That will point you to PureMatter. That will point you to all the things I just talked about, all the businesses I talked about, speaking, books. Everything is there.

 

Kevin: Great. Well, Bryan, thank you so much for joining us here today. You’re doing great work. And there were some really good nuggets that you shared with everybody. So, thank you very much.

 

Bryan: Yeah. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

 

Kevin: Of course.

 

So that’s it for today’s show everybody. I’d like to thank Bryan from PureMatter for joining us here today. They’re doing awesome stuff so check them out. If you want to learn more about PureMatter, we’ve got all of their information in the show notes at www.near-me.com. Click on the blog and then go to the podcast listing. Also, if you like today’s show, we’d really appreciate it if you could go to iTunes and give us a five-star review. It helps us out. Also, make sure to subscribe to the podcast while you’re there. Make it a great day and thanks.