Why should you should be wary of marketing strictly on social media + Latest updates and features on SmartPostApp

OPENING - BONUS EPISODE 29 PAUL WRIGHT Hello, everyone, and welcome to episode number 29, a bonus episode. Well, on today's show, we will have our first return guest, Mike Kuczynski from Smart Post App is here, and he will join us in a little bit. But that's not all. We will also welcome Mark Newsom, also known as Mr. Marketing, who's going to talk about strategically increasing both your first-time customer-based and new market penetration without additional credit or cash from the banks. We'll get to both those guests after this brief message. SPONSOR MESSAGE - TICKETPORTX SPONSOR MESSAGE You've worked hard to build your audience. Increase brand visibility, create a stronger connection with your customers, deliver a seamless user experience, and monetize your brand with high-converting pages powered by TicketportX's secure hosting, payment processing, and event technology. Perfect for festivals, conventions, classes, retail storefronts, charity events, sporting events, and even free events. But that's not all. Introducing TicketportX multi-day events. Hosting a festival, seminar, conference, tournament, or event series. No more manually sending tickets 24 hours later. No more scrambling to issue comps and catch up with attendees. With TicketportX, everything happens in real time. Sell tickets for multiple events on one page. Create ticket packages across different dates. Manage entire event series from a single storefront. And spend less money marketing multiple links and event pages. One platform, one link, endless possibilities. TicketportX, powering your brand, your events, and your growth. INTERVIEW 1 - MARK NEWSOME / MR. MARKETING PAUL WRIGHT & MARK NEWSOME Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the Link Thru Social Podcast. Well, we have an amazing guest for us today, Mark Newsom. And Mark is also known as Mr. Marketing, and he specializes in helping small to mid-sized business owners and service providers uncover and monetize what was once previously considered debt assets or resources. Mark, welcome to the show. My friend, thank you so much for inviting me. It's my honor and pleasure to be here. Oh, well, feelings mutual. Mr. Marketing, why don't you before we get into our interview, why don't you give us a little bit more information about your background? Ladies and gentlemen, I originally started out in a niche area, pardon me, of the real estate industry known as owner finance notes. we call it paper, just debt. And the way it would work is this gentleman would sell a house. His buyer couldn't qualify for traditional bank credit, credit union financing. So he would put it down, payment down, and then whatever equity he had, if there was no first mortgage, he'd take a first mortgage, if there was already a mortgage in place or trustee, whatever the you know the terminology is in your part of the world, he would finance his equity and in essence be the bank. Well, these people who would and normally you would get monthly payments, you know, unless it's some exotic payment structure. But what would happen is nine times out of ten, somewhere down the road, six months, a year, five years, whatever the term was, the owner would decide, you know what, I don't want these payments anymore. I want to cash out. And the big institutions, rather than be bothered trying to find these things, they would, in essence, pay people like myself, we were commission only referral uses. They say, Hey, this is what we're looking for. Go find it, bring it to us. We're gonna give you a price, then you give a lower price, and that difference or the spread that's yours. And they paid all the closing costs. This is this is a multi-billion dollar industry, as you know, right now, all over the world. But again, they may have different terminology. But I said all that to say this the issue was for me was, and a lot of other people who took these fancy courses, no one taught us how to professionally market, advertise, or promote. So the stuff they were teaching us was so antiquated, and out of frustration, I started looking outside the industry, and that's when I came across legends like direct response legend, Jay Abraham, the great Seth Gold, and the late great copyright legend, Gary Howard, Dan Kennedy. I learned about direct response marketing, how to write what's in it for me headlines. Long story short, I started writing about this stuff in different industry magazines, and people started reaching out, wanting consulting. And so I realized hey, I got something here. So I wrote a book called How to Make a Marketable Difference, a self-published book, now, ladies and gentlemen. You were not, you won't go to Amazon and find this book yet. But here's my point about all that. I'm saying that to say, as a result of that, a good friend of mine, Bill, who was in the car paper business, in other words, they were doing this with cars in his local community, and he and some other private investors would buy those financed notes that the car company took back. He said to me one day, he said, Listen, Mark, I know you think this paper thing is the bomb. He said, But I'm telling you, small businesses in America, probably all over the world, and service providers need this information you're sharing because they don't know the basic fundamentals. And I'm telling you, when he's I it hadn't even darted me to go in this direction. I started to notice when I would interact and go into businesses, he was spot on. Like, wow, he is correct. They're not doing any of this stuff. So I just sort of slowly pivoted, started targeting small business owners and service providers. And since my first name was Mark, I just went with the Mr. Marketing. But truth told, there are a bunch of people out there calling themselves Mr. Marketing. Yes, I gotcha. Well, we're we're really happy to have you on the on the show today, Mark. I want to ask a few, because it's it's very exciting to me to have you on the show. First of all, why should startup and aspiring entrepreneurs be wary of marketing on social media? You know, I'm a social media guy. I'm curious to know your your your thoughts on this. Well, first of all, if you're gonna be on social media, you listen to this gentleman because he's an expert. But let me warn you about something, especially you millennials. Yes, if you are only 100% trying to build your business or service on social media for a couple of reasons. Number one, I have a self-hosted WordPress blog, and as soon as people hear the word blog, they go, Oh, that is so awesome. Yes, right? I get it. And and the other thing is I have my own opt-in email list, and they go, email, oh, that's really old. Let me warn you about something, ladies and gentlemen. Two things. First of all, if you are only rocking social media, I'm not against social media. He's on social media, I'm on social media. You should be on social media, but if you're 100% relying on it, your Titanic is headed toward an iceberg. Oh no, good person. Let me tell you why. You may have a half million people on TikTok, a half million people on X, formerly known as Twitter, a half million on LinkedIn, a half million on Facebook, Instagram, and you wake up tomorrow and your account shut down. Wiked up. No reason. Maybe you get it back, maybe you don't. Now I I'll bet you this gentleman will tell you, and I'm gonna tell you, I've been on these webinars, and these guru and guruets will admit they had their account shut down. Yeah, one of their accounts, they had to re-open the account. Some of them never got it back. I'm gonna make, ladies and gentlemen, I have no empirical evidence about this, but I am going to make a statement that is very bold. By the time you listen to this episode, at least twice, or any of his other excellent episodes twice, somewhere in the world, somebody got their account shut down for the first, second, third, or permanent time. Guaranteed. But I like to say it like this if you're only using social media, that's the equivalent of sleeping on your ex-in-law's couch. You never know when she's gonna come home and say, I love you, but you gotta go. Yeah, where's it gonna leave you? Homeless. That's why you need your own opt-in email list. I didn't mean to be long-winded, my friend, but this is critical. Don't rely 100% unless your last name is Zuckerberg or Hoffman, fine. Otherwise, we're glorified tenants on those platforms like you know, don't ever forget that. You're definitely right, Mark. You're definitely right. Now, one I want to touch on something else here. How do full or part-time employees consistently generate more income without getting a raise or getting a second job? Now, actually, let me let me let me because that's an excellent question, and maybe we'll cover that in part two. But I was gonna say what I really meant by that was how business owners can grow their business without spending more money on ads. Now that sounds because most people, and here's the other thing, too. I like to say, ladies and gentlemen, I'm full of analogies if you guys have to figure that out. But but here's the other thing. I like to say the big corporations are like Mike Tyson and his prime. You're not gonna try to go head to head with them. That's not smart. Okay. What you and I are gonna do is we're going to pivot and we're gonna leverage different things. Like, let me give you a simple example. Let's suppose he and I, and I know he's really going to appreciate this one. Let's say he and I are in a mini strip mall. I have a mom and pop, not you know, an independently owned mom and pop bakery, and he's seven sweets down, and he's got an independently on a retail appliance store. So he comes into my shop every Monday to get his for his monthly or his morning meeting, weekly morning meeting. He'll get a gallon, depending on if it's summertime, he'll get exotic lemonade or or iced tea. If it's wintertime, he'll get exotic cocoa or coffee. And you know, we're men, so we're gonna chop it up about women's sports, politics, and all this stuff. And one day he's standing there waiting for his chance, and he noticed I sell this big, it's a big plastic mug. I call it the big gulp. And it's it sales for $11.99. ladies and gentlemen, please don't get caught up on the math here. Think conceptually. If I if he said eight plus two and I say seven plus three, and you say six plus four, mathematically, that's all ten. And then a lady comes along, she says, Well, what about 20 divided by two? That's 10 as well. Get the concept. So he's standing there and he's watching me sell this big gold. And when it's his turn, you know, we meet each other. He says, Mark, let me ask you a question, man. He says, Have you ever thought about taking that big gold drink and turning that one-time sale into a perpetual repeat customer gold mine for pennies on the dollar? And you know, I'm I feel like I just got hit by Mike Tyson, his prime. I'm like, he says, Man, listen, try this. The first time they buy the cup, you charge them retail. So you can keep the lights on, pay for the employee and the taxes for the day and all that. I'm like, yeah, he says, but now you tell if you're working at cash register or one of your employees, tell them this from now on, when you bring the cup back, you only pay $399. I'm like, oh, and he says, now let's take it a step further. And I'm like, you know, what do you what do you mean? He says, now don't forget, Mark, you're gonna sell your pastries, your your pies, your cakes for the first childborn, high school graduate, law school graduate, chiropractic graduate school, grandparents, retirement. You're gonna sell all that stuff on the back end, birthday parties, barbitures, the whole nine. He says, What you're using that is as a carrot, a lead magnet, if you will, to get the people back in the store. He says, and here's the other thing they're gonna take that cup back to their circle of influence, aren't they? I say, yeah. He said, What do you think when they put that on their desk? Somebody's gonna have the question. What's the conversational piece? Yeah, yeah. Conversational piece. He says, and they're gonna hashtag you and they're gonna jump on social media. And I'm like, Oh man, he says, and here's something else, man. This is this is the gold mine sitting right in front of you. I said, What are you talking about? He says, All these businesses in the strip model with us, the ones you already know, start with them. Go in there, talk to the owner, find out how many employees they have, how many of them like gourmet, whatever, because they they can buy whatever they want with this car. Sure. He says, and instead of selling them to him for the first time, 1199, just give them the cup and tell them to bring it back and they pay less. And he and then here's the final thing he says Mark, go out in the local area, find the best consensus-wise gourmet coffee you can find. Don't sell anything else. Now, would the people rather come get this great taste in gourmet whatever from you or go to the franchises and pay retail? I love it. After he's turned me on to that, I say, Man, from now on, when you come in and you buy your stuff, the first hundred dollars is on me. Anything over like, okay, so he makes sure he goes up to 99 and that's it. The point is, he's just shown me how to create repeat customers and then sell them more on the back end, ladies and gentlemen. If you do the math, your business is growing exponentially. If we had time, because we don't, he said, but this might be incentive for you guys to say, hey, bring this guy back. But the point is, there's a couple other things we could hook with that, at least test that would explode your profits. Love it, love it, love it. Oh man, I I I I I'm gonna I'm gonna rename you, I think. I think that it's it's the your your energy is Mr. Energy, I think. I love your energy, Mark. Oh, thanks. I'll I'll take that. I'll take that. You really do. So let's get into a couple other things here before we have to go, Mark. challenge business owners or service providers. It can generate a flood of referrals for literally pennies on the dollar. What what should what should what should these these small business owners or service providers the economy is really bad here in Canada and of course in the US, we're going almost through a recession right now. What what what tips do you have for these cash challenge business owners or service providers? As far as marketing scratch, my friends. Ladies and gentlemen, I'm gonna say this one quick because I want to get in one more if we can't. First of all, two things. He's gonna tell you this, I'm gonna say this. The biggest challenge you have is right here. The moment you say I'm cash strapped, you're putting this in your mind, you're limiting yourself, stop doing that. I don't care what you have in your bank account. What's important, I call it idea leverage. If you got the right idea leverage out here, you can attract what you need. In fact, let me let me prove a point. I don't care how poor a good-looking woman is. If she steps out showing some cleavage and the shirt, she's gonna get some attention from men. You understand what I'm saying? It's not about what she has in her wallet. So, as a business owner, let me show you something. Two things I hope I can get in real quick. Let's go back to this example where he's the the retail appliance center. He comes in the store one day after every everybody's going. He says, Mark, man, do you realize those same people who come in here and buy a big GOAT, even if they pay retail, at some point they're coming down there to my retail shop. Man, they're buying stuff that's four or five thousand dollars, eight thousand dollars. And I'm like, Yeah, he says, Well, why don't you do this? You put up a sign that says spend over X, in other words, I'm he's trying to raise my average customer order value. He says, and when they you give them this sealed envelope. Now, this is what the sealed envelope says on the outside, ladies and gentlemen. In big red letters, music legend Stevie Wonder couldn't miss it. It says, You YOU definitely deserve this exclamation point. What how long do you think it's gonna take inquiring minds to rip open that envelope to see what's inside? Exactly. It's an extremely time-sensitive discount coupon to his store. And since he and I are joint venture partners for now, I guarantee him I won't put any other vendors in there. They're gonna high a percentage of them are gonna hightail it to his store. Side A is gonna tell them to enter his free drawing because every month, ladies and gentlemen, he gives away a seven perceived value, seven thousand dollar deluxe home entertainment system. Only he knows what that entails, but his retail costs they have $3,500. That's his hard cost. Here's the point. He's been doing this for years, and not just doing it with me, but he's been doing this for years. So he's got a list now of locals, say 50,314 people, but he's already had seven seven percent already unsubscribed for whatever reason. Here's the point every month when he sends out that this is what the subject line says. Get this late down. Congratulations, exclamation point. That's the subject line because he doesn't what you're gonna click. You click and says, Hey, Joe, Mary, whatever. Hey, congratulations. Unfortunately, you weren't this month's grand prize, first grand prize one. However, you won an extremely valued, time-sensitive concept, second prize valued at X. Oh, what is this? He says, Come to my store before this date, and you give them a short window, ladies and gentlemen. You give them 72 hours, even if the third day is a national holiday in your country. It doesn't matter, we'll create urgency, right? You want them jumping off the fence. Here's 10. You get 10 off. Listen to me now, 10 off up to 100. What? That's not sexy, Mark. It's not supposed to be. He says, however, simply for dragging a friend who's at least 18. That 10 jumps to 40. Remember, he's a retailer now, up to $1,500 or X. That's the concept, ladies. X and X. Don't, you know, oh, $100 or 10. No, no, no. X X, if you can get help, you reach out to him or me, we'll hook you up. But here's my point just like an iconic fast food restaurant that's all over the world, when you and I walk in there and say, I'll have the strawberry shade and the quarter pounder with cheese, the cashier, all of 16 to maybe as high as 30 comes back and says, Can I share eight of the most powerful words in sales and marketing with your audience? I would love it. Tell me, ladies and gentlemen, I graduated from public school, but follow this now. I'm gonna count them off. The eight most powerful words in sales and marketing, and it doesn't matter what your budget is. Follow us, they say, Would you like fries with that? Bam! 10 to 40 percent of those people say yes to that transaction all over the world every day. And I they did not have to go back on outrageously expensive local radio, outrageously expensive local television, outrageously expensive newspaper, outrageously expensive billboards to get you and I spend a lot more money. But wait a minute, hold it, Mark. You said eight of the most powerful words. Let's try this again. Maybe I missed something. Yeah, would you like fries with that? No, that's six. Well, what are the other two? When you and I say yes to that, they come back with two words supersize you, and bam, another 10 to 40 percent of that 10 to 40 percent say yes. Now, ladies and gentlemen, the owners of those franchises, this is why they live in some of the most palatial mansions. Notice I said S plural, meaning more than one. They drive some of the most expensive exotic cars, S, and their kids and grandkids attend and graduate some of the most prestigious institutions in the world. Now, please don't insult the host myself by saying, Well, Mark, I don't sell hamburgers. My friend, this has nothing to do with selling hamburgers. They have a very successful company online called Amazon. Have you ever noticed when you buy something before that shopping cart closes, they put a little thumbnail up there and say, Hey, if you like that, you might like this. That's an upsell, my friend. And they're gonna get a percentage of us to to to spend a little more money, but to answer his question directly so we don't get lost in sauce, he says for you to drag a friend. And just like when that iconic fast food restaurant says, Would you like fries? They don't get everybody, pardon me, they don't get everybody, but they get enough that they add tens to hundreds of millions of dollars to their bottom line. And notice when you get that first time customer statistics segment, it's gonna cost us 500% more than the first time. And 80 to 90 percent of it is cost, and you and I get what's left, right? But when you do this, drag. A friend is 80 gross friendly in his pocket now. 80. You I could be doing five million, he's doing five million, but he's putting four million in his pocket. I'm only putting two and a half because it got cost, and I don't know how to decrease it. He does. So I don't know if that makes sense to me. And if we had time, like I said, you guys, you tell him you want me to come back, we'll share the back end of that. If you just do that, I promise you, you'll start making money. Mark, you can market online.now dot sorry you can market onlineow.com. You can market onlineow.com. Yes, Mr. Marketing, Mr. Analogy, Mr. Energy, Mark Newsome. You will definitely be coming back on the show. We'll talk off air and set up another date. We really appreciate you taking the time. And I encourage everyone, all our listeners, all our viewers to go to you canmarketonlineow.com, see what Mark Newsome has to say, and reach out to him on LinkedIn or through email. Mention his name, and I'll give you an extra 30 minutes, right? There we go. So mention Paul Wright from Link Thru Social, and you're you're already getting a deal. There you go. Mark, it's been a pleasure, and we will definitely see you again on our show. The pleasure was all mine, my friend. Thank you so much for having me. All right. Well, the Link Thru Social podcast will be back right after this short break. SPONSOR MESSAGE - SMART POST APP SPONSOR MESSAGE Tired of stressing over what to post on social media? Meet Smart Post App. Your all-in-one solution to create, schedule, and grow your content effortlessly. In just a few taps, you can generate engaging posts, stay consistent, and keep your audience coming back for more. No more guessing, no more burnout, just smarter content faster. Whether you're a business owner, a creator, or entrepreneur, Smart Post offers both premium and pro plans. In addition, we have new features that have been recently added that include instantly viewing public links to your posts on any network, weekly view allowing you to plan hour by hour, account groups, group your accounts to save time and simplify your workflow, and a desktop version, which offers a simpler way to stay consistent. Start posting smarter today at SmartPostApp.com. Smart Post App because your content should work for you. INTERVIEW 2 - MIKE KACZYNSKI / SMART POST APP PAUL WRIGHT & MIKE KACZYNSKI Hello everyone, and welcome back to the Link Thru Social Podcast. Well, we have our first returning guest today. That's right, Mike Kaczynski. He's from Smart Post App and also happens to be one of the sponsors of the Link Thru Social Podcast. And Mike has built a platform designed to make social media management simpler, faster, and much more effective. Mike Kaczynski, welcome back to the Link Thru Social Podcast. Thank you, Paul. Happy to be here. So you know, you are our first guest. I think it was in episode six or seven. And since then, we've been inviting a lot of business professionals and experts on the show. And we obviously really appreciate all of your support and Link Thru Social Podcasts is totally behind Smart Post App, which is a great tool that I use every day in my Link Thru Social business. And I encourage everyone to check out SmartPostApp.com and it's available on Instagram, Google, Apple, and recently a revitalized desktop version, which we'll we'll get into in a few minutes. But in case some of our viewers and listeners haven't seen the original episode you appeared on, Mike, maybe just give us a little brief background about yourself and how you what inspired you to create Smart Post app. Yeah, yeah. I've been you know doing software development for a while now. Smart Post App started a long time ago. I I think it's it's over 10 years now, maybe 15. I don't know. It's it started a long time ago, put it that way. basically the idea was you know, a couple college buddies, when we were in school and all that, we kind of had an idea, you know, and this is going back you know 2012-ish time. So, you know, like I said, it's over 10 years ago. You know, we we liked an app called, I always tell this story, we liked an app called TweetDeck, if anyone's used that since been consumed by Twitter and X a long time ago. And but essentially, you know, that was an app that you could connect multiple Twitter accounts, right? But it was only for Twitter, right? So you could add multiple Twitter handles essentially and pull your feeds in. And I I think at the time you could maybe do some lightweight scheduling, but it was a pretty simple app focused on Twitter. So we saw that at the time, and you know, the market for social media scheduling apps was not where it is today. there was definitely not as many apps. So we saw that we're like, that's really cool. We're like, well, what if like we could do that for other networks, right? Like Facebook pages, and at the time, maybe Instagram, there weren't a lot of networks, right? A lot of the networks that are out there there, like TikTok and all that, none of that existed back then. so we started with kind of just a web app essentially that kind of pulled in your feed, and it was similar to TweetDeck, had multiple feeds laid out, and we kind of ran with that for a while, saw some good adoption. and then later on, like around you know 2020-ish, we really pivoted to focus more on the scheduling aspect, right? So we kind of we dumped the feeds and we kind of were like, well, because it it a lot to be honest, a lot of the the networks, the lot of the APIs, they became fairly restrictive in what kind of data you could pull. So being able to pull you know your full feed and you know what everyone's posting across your feed, it just became almost impossible for some of the networks, right? So to have a more complete solution and just a more focused product for smart post, we switched over to this just basically focusing on scheduling, right? So, how can we build an app that you know is has a simple interface? we're very very big fans of native, so you know, we have native iOS and Android applications. We pivoted over to native and just focus on how can we support scheduling and make it as simple and as reliable as possible. and that's kind of the the rest is history, that's where we are today. We've been we've really been focusing on like I said, just building an affordable, reliable product. that's kind of our our mission statement. Because to be honest, if you look at a lot of the other competitors out there in this field, they're very expensive and they they scale very very expensive very quickly, right? So like if you you know you want to add three, four, or five accounts, which I don't think is that uncommon anymore, right? Like maybe back before Threads and TikTok and YouTube Shorts, you know, when those weren't as popular going back five or eight years ago, having two or three accounts wasn't a big deal. But nowadays, to build a really have you know a full reach across you know blue sky and and all these different networks, TikTok, you know, you really need more than two or three or four accounts. So that's kind of our our idea, right? To have a simple plan. We don't charge you per account, it's it's very much just a flat rate for you know, we have a free plan and a pro plan that offers more features. We can touch on that. But that that's kind of our our idea. That's that's how we got here today. So it's it's it's absolutely wonderful. And you're right, there are so many options now. And if if you want to be effective across all these social media platforms, you have to be active on them. And I think that we are spending too much time when I say we social media managers or content creators, we're spending a lot of time you know, developing posts, organizing your post, and anything to save those valuable minutes because time is money, right? And that's why I felt that it it's very, very useful for me. And I love some of the features and and you know, let's let's touch on some of them. We'll talk about some of the ones that currently exist and some of the ones that have just been released within the last few months. first of all, what I like about when we're when I'm developing a post, and I'll upload the media and I'll come up with some sort of written text to add to it, you can differentiate that between different social media platforms. Why don't you tell us a little bit about that? I love that feature. Yeah, that was something we added very recently, in between actually the last time we were on this podcast and now about a month ago or so. But yeah, the idea there is that you can essentially customize different messages for a post and additionally post settings, right? That's kind of a big one for different accounts. So the the rough idea is let's say you have you know two X accounts, right? Two different X handles, but you want the message to be slightly different for one, or you want a setting for that account to be slightly different. Maybe you want one post to be public, one post to be private, one post to be for friends only. essentially any of the settings you can modify, or or the message, right? Maybe you want to send it with a link on one or slightly different hashtags, right? That's another big use of the thing. Because then you can kind of try, kind of A-B test different posts, right? And see, like, hey, this is the same post, but maybe we slightly tweak the hashtags here, right? The other big benefit that people don't think about too is some of the newer networks, specifically like Blue Sky, I think the the character cap is only like 300 characters or something on a post. Yeah. And same with X, like non-premium X users, I think it's still 280, right? So what's nice is if you have like a longer post, right? You could post the full text on like a Facebook page or TikTok, but then for let's say X or Blue Sky, same post structure and everything, same media, but you could shorten the text for that specific network. And you don't have to make two separate posts, right? It basically just worked with one post. So yeah, that's the that's the wrong video. So you know, and as a as a social media guy, I have a pet peeve when I see a post, because we know that on Instagram and TikTok, it limits you to five hashtags. So if someone is posting on Twitter where you can actually have more hashtags or on your Facebook page, they just send it to all the different networks, and then you see on the bottom of your Instagram these these little keywords we'll say because they're no longer hashtags. And I don't know, it's just a little pet peeve of being a social media geek, I guess. But you know, it it it just makes it look more professional. Like, why would I post something like that? And like what does it tell the actual viewer about me that I don't even know that I'm exceeding the hashtag limit on say Instagram or TikTok. So, anyways, just a little thing like that. So that's another reason I I enjoy that you can modify the the post itself on the different platforms. Absolutely. Yeah. Now let's talk about the desktop version. And and before we get into that, I I I want to commend Smart Post App because they're always reaching out to professionals like myself and and putting content out there asking the people that use these types of apps what they'd like to see, how they would think that this particular feature might be beneficial and and adding to saving time. So I must commend you for always trying to stay up to date with all the latest and new trends and to continue to ask the questions to the users. I I find a lot of the bigger companies, they you know, you just they just put out what they want and and they're not they're not engaging with their actual customer base, and I must commend you on that. And because we we talked about this before you came out with this new version of the desktop app. So why don't you tell us a little bit about how that works? Yeah, yeah, thank you for that. And then to touch on that, well, you know, I that's something we we do really focus on. I just want to hit that home that we we really do listen to our customers. So if you email us, we will reply back within a couple hours on any request, right? So we really take that seriously. And like like Paul, like you're saying, you know, the the desktop app, before we even actually restarted on the new version, I reached out to you and I was like, hey, what do you think about like a desktop app? You know, like I you know, I because I've I talked to some other folks in the field and they were like, yeah, like a lot of these content creators are you know, they're they live on their Macs or on their desktops, right? They're not you know, they use phones, but they're doing most of the content creation on desktops. So I was like, man, we might have missed a market here of you know, you use base and user base there. So you know, we had a desktop, so we give a little bit of backstory. We had a desktop, I think two years ago-ish, we decommissioned it. Right. And unfortunately, that version just never never got enough attention from us. You know, we're a very small team, so we have to kind of pick and choose where we put our power at essentially. so that one for whatever reason just never got a ton of attention. And we decided at the time two years ago-ish to just decommission it and focus on the native apps. But like I said, since then, talking to you and others, we we've re you know, revitalized it. it's it's a it's a fresh new app. we and since then, you know, we've been working on trying to get it feature for feature very close to the native apps, the iOS Android app. So you know, some of the things we've really focused on for the web app, the desktop app, are having a a solid calendar view as along with a weekly view, right? So I would encourage folks to try out the desktop app, but really try out the weekly view, right? We we really would love feedback on it. it's it's in its very first iterations, but there's quite a few little intricate features in the weekly view, including like a drag and drop across the week. So essentially you'll get like a calendar view of your whole week, like Sunday to Saturday, and then horizontally vertically, it's you know the hours throughout the day, right? And the idea is that you can kind of drag posts around hour to hour within 15-minute increments. so we we feel that on desktop, right? You have a mouse and you can kind of you have a little more control than you do like on a phone, right? A little bigger screen. hopefully that helps with kind of managing and and quickly being able to reorganize posts, right? So you could come in, you could you have a block of posts that's like, hey, I want to move these to the next day, right? On mobile, you gotta open up each one, change the day. desktop, you can just grab the handle and just move them over and you're done, right? So that's something that we put some time into. We love any feedback. If anyone has any suggestions on how to make that better, that's something that you know we're we're looking for for sure. But but yeah, you know, like I said, there's not much that what's missing between the desktop app and the native app, it's it's very close, parity-wise features. it's not always obvious, is our subscriptions are still ran through the native apps. So to access the premium features, you still do have to download the native app to access those. But they sync right across all your account, across all your devices. So essentially, once you're subscribed, you can log in on web, on iOS and Android, all of them really. And it it'll all sync across all of them. So that's a little bit of a backstory on the web app. So yeah, it's it's it's so helpful because you know, if you're doing a one-off post, okay, you're gonna do it on your phone. But when you have groups of posts that you know you're planning out an entire week or month or a campaign, it definitely helps to do it on you know on your desktop or laptop. And I I'm really pleased that with what reincarnation is, it's it's it's really amazing. Now there's been a lot of other improvements and and upgrades, we'll say, over the last few months. And one that just literally this week we're recording this but this episode is coming out on Thursday with engagement. why don't you why don't you maybe touch on that a little bit? Yeah, super exciting. this is honestly kind of like a product, not a pivot, but it's like a a large product extension of smartposts, right? So what we've been working on for the last couple years are really just enhancements and features to the whole scheduling aspect. but something we're gonna start moving into more is what we're calling engagement. That's actually kind of the whole feature set. and the idea is that you can essentially start pulling in your accounts posts, right? So when you post on Facebook or Instagram, right, we'll pull the last, you know, let's say 60 days worth of data, your posts. It will pull the comments, the threads, the reactions to all those posts. And what's amazing is we've been able to get it to allow you to actually interact with those posts. So you can reply directly to a person's comments, you can comment to your own posts, you can like people's replies. Essentially, it's as if you're using the Facebook app on your you know on your page. You can reply and do everything you can to the page, the post. you can delete comments, you know. So it's essentially a a moderation type tool around engagement, right? now the first version, it's gonna be web only. So we we like Paul said, we launched it this week actually. So it's it's extremely hot off the press. but it's it's for web only. we will support iOS and Android in the future, but we're gonna just kind of feel it out on web for now. just because it it feels like a tool that's more useful on web. I think it has its place on native, but we have to think a little bit about how to make it useful on native. I think the the interaction is gonna be a little bit different than it is on web. But we're gonna start on web on desktop app, and we're only starting with the first version that rolled out this week will be for Facebook pages only. but we're gonna fast follow with other networks. So up next, we're actually starting today on Instagram. So we'll have Instagram coming soon. and then from there, and you'll see when you when you go into the new engagement page on the web app, you'll see it will show all your networks, but the disabled ones that like aren't supported yet are kind of in a separate section. and we put a link on there if if anyone wants to use it, you know, they can basically send us an email or go over to our suggestions.smartpost app dot com and kind of suggest which ones they want to see next. Because we're not gonna build out them all today, right? No, of course, yeah. we're gonna try to prioritize you know what networks people want to see next, right? So we feel Instagram's a good one, and then after that we'll kind of feel out you know, maybe TikTok or or whatever people want to see next. but yeah, the idea is to kind of get through all the networks and and and kind of build them out. So well let's let's face it, let's face it that you know, some of the replies or or comments they get lost in the shuffle. There's so much going on with your phone, with your your alerts, on all these multiple platforms that you're on. I think a lot of people are are missing out on some of the engagement and activity. So to have all this clean in one spot where you can spend a couple of minutes and just quickly go through everything, acknowledge, like, re comment and and that type of thing, I think is is really important. And it's a very exciting feature. And I'm I'm really excited that it started with Facebook and is gonna continue with other other. Platforms in the near future. That's it's it's really good. Yeah, and one thing to add, something else that we we wanted to share, and I hope people enjoy this. we so keep in mind it's not only posts that you create with the Smart Post App, right? So you could go on the Facebook app, right? And like let's say you did a one-off post on the Facebook app, or it it got posted to your wall somewhere else, right? Via another app that will get pulled into our system as well, right? So I think that's pretty exciting too. So it's not only the posts that you create with smart posts that you schedule out. It will, it's it's essentially any post on your feed. Yeah, absolutely. Okay, well, Mike, we only have a couple minutes left. are there any other features you wanted to quickly touch on that have come up over the last few months? Yeah, yeah. So we've been super busy other than the engagements, which is more recent. yeah, some of the last couple months since we've talked last on the podcast, some of the exciting things we've added, TikTok, auto music for photos, right? So this is a simple one, but an effective one. Paul, this was actually your idea of like, hey, it'd be cool if you could turn on the auto music suggestion for TikTok. so we added that. and then links on published posts. So something you'll see now when a post actually completes, when it's scheduled and actually posted, when you hit the three dots, there's actually a in a menu option in there now that says view posts. So essentially we show a list now of all the public links for that post, right? So the idea there is you know, you don't have to toggle, you know, hop hop between a bunch of apps. You can essentially get the direct link to that post to get you right into if you did need to engage with it. hopefully, as we pull more of the engagement work in the smart post, you won't actually have to leave smart post. You can just require everything. Yeah, exactly. That was kind of a pre-feature, right? And it's still useful to have the public links as well, just in case you have to share them out. and then the other big one I want to touch on, account grouping, right? So this is something we added. It's it's it's a pretty simple feature, but when you're selecting your accounts now on native, you can essentially make a group, right? And put different accounts in those groups, right? So maybe you have a group for you know account one, two, three, and then you have a group for account four, five, six, and you can basically pick those groups when you go to schedule a post and it will select those accounts for you. So it's a way to kind of quickly you know pick up more accounts and all that. And then the last thing I wanted to add, drafts have seen some refinements too. We haven't shared too much about this, but if you get into drafts and play around with them, they're much more flexible now. they basically don't have any requirements. You can essentially as long as long as you have a message or a media item, you can basically make a draft now. So we're trying to make them as flexible and simple as possible to just work right. so definitely play around drafts a little bit if if anyone hasn't checked them out. We've we've done some enhancements there. So wonderful, wonderful. Well, everybody, it's SmartPostApp.com. go there and you can access the links to the different app stores where you can do it on Google, Android, or or Apple, and of course, new desktop version, which I highly recommend. It's pleasure having you on again and thank you for all the collaboration we've been doing and your support, and I'll continue to support your app as well, and of course, use it. And all the viewers and listeners, you should you should definitely check it out. Mike Kaczynski from Smart Post App, appreciate you being on the show and look forward to sometime in the near future you being on here the third time. You're gonna be the the veteran guest here on the Link Thru Social Podcast. Thank you so much, Paul. It's been a pleasure. It's awesome. Okay. Well, the Link Thru Social Podcast will be back right after this short message. SPONSOR MESSAGE - TICKETPORTX SPONSOR MESSAGE Introducing TicketportX multi-day events, hosting a festival, seminar, conference, tournament, or event series. No more manually sending tickets 24 hours later, no more scrambling to issue comps and catch up with attendees. With TicketportX, everything happens in real time. Sell tickets for multiple events on one page, create ticket packages across different dates, manage entire event series from a single storefront, and spend less money marketing multiple links and event pages. One platform, one link, endless possibilities. TicketportX powering your brand, your events, and your growth.