Data-Driven Marketing Tips w/ Rachael Woods
What could Instagram 9-grids & SEO possibly have in common?
9-grids & SEO are both things a fractional CMO can help business owners with! With a variety of marketing channels, tools, & platforms available—how are you supposed to know where you should be & what to say?
Rachael Woods joins me on this episode to talk about data-driven marketing. We go deep into what that means, how to analyze your marketing data, & what tools & support are available to you. No matter if you call yourself a solopreneur or supported CEO—this episode will help you make smarter marketing moves in 2024 & beyond!
Topics covered in this podcast episode:
What a fractional CMO is & what they can do
What data-driven marketing means
How to use marketing data to grow your business
How to find your competitors online
Which business owners should have Instagram 9 grids
What to include in an Instagram 9 grid
Rachael & I share a love of SEO, 9-grids, & coffee—so I decided to ask her about all 3. 😂
Rachael’s freebie about how to create a 9-grid for Instagram helped me create my 9-grid for The Basic B Podcast Instagram profile. It was so easy to do!
My podcast producer, Leah Bryant, also downloaded the freebie, put it to use, & just LOOK at her beautiful Instagram 9-grid! (Leah even messaged me to tell me she had a client reach out just days after she posted the 9-grid to her IG profile. Whoa!)
Don’t forget you can submit a question that will get answered in an upcoming podcast!
Rachael Woods loves marketing data almost as much as she loves coffee. Rachael is a marketing strategy expert with 20 years of experience building marketing infrastructure for small and medium-sized businesses and organizations. Her boutique marketing agency, Woods MarCom, specializes in data-driven marketing strategy and innovative digital marketing tactics.
Mentioned Resources:
DIY Static 9-grid for Instagram
Connect w/ Rachael:
Connect w/ Brittany:
This episode of The Basic B podcast is brought to you in partnership w/ Leah Bryant Co.! Help me reach more service providers like you by following the show & leaving a rating or review on Apple & Spotify!
The unedited podcast transcript for this episode of The Basic B podcast follows
Welcome back to the Basic Bee Podcast and thanks for joining! Whether you're watching on YouTube or tuning in from your favorite podcast player, I'm thrilled to have you here. And today, I'm joined by Rachel Woods. We're going to be talking about 9grids, SEO, and coffee. And I'm really not sure which one I'm more excited about. But a quick intro for you. Rachel is the brains behind Woods MarCom, a marketing agency based in Northwest Washington.
She helps small to medium sized businesses create data driven marketing strategies. And fun fact, I recently, as in this morning, learned that we both have a background in health and science. And yet we both now find ourselves in this digital marketing world. Life is just wild. Rachel, I'm so excited to have you here!
Rachael Woods | Woods MarCom (00:46.518)
Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited.
Brittany Herzberg (00:48.991)
Oh my gosh, me too. Okay, I'm going to kick this off with a very subtle, not loaded question whatsoever. So, which do you believe is most important for sales? SEO, storytelling, or social proof? And why is that?
Rachael Woods | Woods MarCom (01:04.93)
Goodness, it's like one of the answers, like all three. Can you put those all together? Well, I think there's just not one bucket that you can put all of your eggs in, right? You have to kind of think about different people and your audience and people come across your content in different ways and there's algorithms that change and things. And so I think the combination of the three is really where you're gonna get the.
Brittany Herzberg (01:10.439)
You can't. So far that's the popular option.
Brittany Herzberg (01:19.951)
Mm-hmm.
Rachael Woods | Woods MarCom (01:34.322)
most out of your efforts.
Brittany Herzberg (01:36.555)
Yeah, I agree with you. I mean, that's why we're here on this podcast. Yeah, well, I teased a little bit about us having the shared background with science and health. You want to elaborate on that a little bit and maybe tell us how you found your way into marketing?
Rachael Woods | Woods MarCom (01:41.243)
Exactly, right?
Rachael Woods | Woods MarCom (01:53.602)
Absolutely, absolutely. Well, I actually started way back in my high school days, just really into the science track, taking the AP classes. And I actually had an AP class at like 7 AM for chemistry, which is before school even started. And I was that committed. I was up at the earliest hours of the day. And I went to college and actually was having my degree in chemistry or getting my degree in chemistry. And.
Brittany Herzberg (02:08.675)
Ha ha!
Rachael Woods | Woods MarCom (02:21.758)
I absolutely, I was excited about, I took a minor in human anatomy and I was excited about maybe going into healthcare, maybe going to medical school, or I also was thinking about forensic science. So I was kind of on, you know, looking at different things. And it turns out that I pass out around blood and needles. So that pretty much changed all of that. And so, but I have this great scientific background with Excel spreadsheets and we used to, you know, we used to...
Brittany Herzberg (02:37.583)
Hehehe
Brittany Herzberg (02:42.561)
Eheh
Rachael Woods | Woods MarCom (02:48.59)
titrate little drops of liquid into having the equations and the chemicals change. So that's just kind of how my mind works. And it really applies nicely into marketing now because everything that we do is so data driven and everything on the digital side is trackable and there's analytics and you can measure trends and look at all those pieces. And I feel like we're going more and more in that direction where there's more to track and more data.
Brittany Herzberg (02:55.855)
Yeah.
Rachael Woods | Woods MarCom (03:14.406)
Um, so as I've gone into this creative field, I really focused on that scientific analytics, data-driven perspective. And I think it, it really goes well together. It's an odd pairing when you look back at my history. Um, it's a little odd. It always makes people kind of chuckle, but it works well. It works well. And it just kind of aligns with kind of how my brain works on tracking all of that.
Brittany Herzberg (03:38.231)
Yeah, I don't think it's odd at all. I mean, if I did, then we would both be in trouble because I, you know, call myself a massage therapist turned marketer. I mean, it worked for us, right? Like, we're here. So that's actually a really good segue into, I think I'm going to go out of order with, like, the questions that I had in mind to ask you. But to give a little context for why you're here for anyone who's listening or watching, I think you were on my email list and I'm not sure how you found me, but I remember us having our initial conversation.
Rachael Woods | Woods MarCom (03:41.678)
Mm-hmm.
Rachael Woods | Woods MarCom (03:46.398)
Exactly. Yep, yep, no, definitely.
Brittany Herzberg (04:07.823)
conversation on Instagram and if I remember you were like, I don't know if this is weird but I just thought I would come over and say hi. Was that you? It was the sweetest. And for anyone who doesn't know me, I love having conversations in the DMs. Like, I will live over there if I am, if I'm avoiding anything or if I'm just like looking for community at any point during the day, I can always hop over to my DMs and like have conversations with people. So.
Rachael Woods | Woods MarCom (04:17.076)
Yes.
Brittany Herzberg (04:35.523)
I remember having that conversation with you, we got on Zoom after forever it took me to book with you. My fourth calendar gets so slammed. But that's, I remember you telling me about passing out with needles and things and how you became a marketer. But I would love to, like I said, we're going to go in a few different directions, but SEO, 9grids, coffee for sure, we're going to end with coffee questions. But when it comes to data-driven marketing...
Rachael Woods | Woods MarCom (04:41.347)
Ha!
Rachael Woods | Woods MarCom (04:48.435)
Yes.
Brittany Herzberg (05:04.607)
What does that look like in your world when you're working with a client? Like, what are you tracking? What's informing the recommendations that you're making?
Rachael Woods | Woods MarCom (05:12.914)
Yeah, absolutely. Well, the first thing I do whenever I talk with a client is I always really encourage them to, you know, before we put together a pay-per-click campaign or before we look at a social media strategy, to pause for a minute and really gather that data. I think the data collection research step, I think it can feel overwhelming. I think it can feel potentially like you don't know where to start. Do you have tools that are accessible to do that research?
And so it's easy to just say and comfortable to say, okay, everyone is on this platform or everyone is doing this. So I should do that too. That herd mentality, we feel a lot of pressure from everywhere probably in the world. And so I always caution everyone say, okay, let's step back a minute and let's, and I like to look at three different things. First, who's your target audience? And not just age and gender or maybe their income level, but really looking at
Brittany Herzberg (05:55.496)
Hehehehe
Rachael Woods | Woods MarCom (06:10.57)
What are their wants and needs? Where are they going for information? Who do they follow on social media? What are they like about your products? Who are they? You know, if they're maybe a customer who's using a different product or service that you can talk with them about, you know, what are they like about those services? What are your current customers thinking? You know, trying to look at that piece of it. The second piece is what are your competitors doing? One of the things that's really...
really great to do is look really deep into what does their SEO look like? What are their paid ads look like? Are they doing paid ads, for example? What are their keyword strategies? And you can do one of two things with that. You can either be inspired by it and go, you know what I love, this company is just doing fantastically, I love it. I wanna look at what they're doing and learn to be inspired. I think being inspired is fantastic. The other thing you can do is say, you know what, they are...
Brittany Herzberg (07:01.866)
Mm.
Rachael Woods | Woods MarCom (07:04.61)
killing it over here. So I'm gonna go this way and try to build a niche this way and really kind of differentiate myself. So having that information is really helpful so that you can make some of those decisions for your own business. And the third one I think is probably the most important is getting a really solid database look at your own digital infrastructure. I do a lot of website audits. I'm sure you do a lot of those too. Look in the deep in the SEO.
Brittany Herzberg (07:27.515)
Mm.
Brittany Herzberg (07:30.668)
Yeah.
Rachael Woods | Woods MarCom (07:32.618)
And there's so often there's things that are standing in your way as a website, as a digital platform. You're thinking I'm gonna run this ad and my customers are gonna my website and they're gonna buy the thing. And then when you actually do the data and you look at it, your website may not be loading on mobile. It might be way too many clicks to get them where they need to go. You might be having issues with a variety of different things and...
If your website looks beautiful when you load it on your desktop in your office, but it's not showing up in search, it's not loading on mobile, the images are shifting around. I mean, whatever those things look like, got things, you know, maybe on a mobile or a, um, iPad that are like overlapping text or something like that. Those are things you're not aware of and those are standing in your way. So getting a really solid look at, you know, back to the SEO, what needs to happen to make sure that your digital infrastructure is really solid.
And once you have those three pieces, what I have found is typically your roadmap for next steps is really, really clear. And I would say probably nine times out of 10, it needs to start with your own digital infrastructure before you run ads, before you spend a lot of time out, you know, marketing. You need to really button up your customer journey and make sure that that's working for you. And so I just found that every time I have that conversation, we pull that data, we look at that report, then we're like, OK.
that is a very clear pathway of where we need to go. And then we can build on that and do these other campaigns once we're really solid in our own space.
Brittany Herzberg (09:08.075)
I love that and I love that you start with your world because in my world when I work with clients I pretty much always start with social proof. Hence, like at the beginning I talk about SEO, social proof and storytelling, but social proof, if you can go and by that I mean what are your clients saying? What are even people who are just in your world? Maybe they're on your email list, maybe they're followers on Instagram. What are they saying? How would they describe you?
Rachael Woods | Woods MarCom (09:17.442)
Mm-hmm.
Rachael Woods | Woods MarCom (09:27.818)
Mm-hmm.
Brittany Herzberg (09:35.383)
When are they sharing your profile or your email with someone? Like what is happening? How are they saying things? So I love that you're starting with the data because it can be, yes, overwhelming, but it is super necessary to help us get where we want to go. And one kind of follow-up question that I have from that is because I get this a lot with clients, how do you find your competitors?
Rachael Woods | Woods MarCom (09:58.13)
Yeah, absolutely. Well, a lot of times when I work with businesses, they typically have a list of folks that they view as their competitors. And I typically start with them. And I use a variety of different tools to look at their performance, both on what are they investing in digital search, what are those keywords, what are their ads look like? There's some different tools, and I could share kind of what those are, that you can look at those different pieces. But one of the other things I do is I take kind of their list and then I start.
going out from there. So I'm working with a restaurant right now that's really a fine dining restaurant here in, I live in a rural kind of smaller town in Northwest Washington. So it's one of very few fine dining establishments here. And they gave me a list of who they saw as competitors. But then I also just went out and started looking at kind of the range of places of kind of within a, you know, 20 to 25 mile radius.
Brittany Herzberg (10:28.02)
Mm-hmm.
Rachael Woods | Woods MarCom (10:53.642)
what else is coming up for the type of food that they're serving, for their type of ambience, trying to kind of look out. And I came up with a more broad list. And so some of it is definitely starting with where they're seeing, but then looking out. I mean, Google is obviously one of the best places just even to start up. Who else is coming up as a steakhouse? Who else is coming up as having fine dining? Where are these other places coming from? And then starting to look there, they're...
websites pulling those keywords in? Are there Google business profiles optimized? You know, what do those pieces look like to kind of see who else you need to be, who else you'd be looking at? And then also how are they doing? Because if there's, if other places in your niche are not optimizing in some of these key areas, that's an excellent way or excellent opportunity for you to just dial it in and be gangbusters in some of these places where your competitors are maybe not paying as much attention or not.
Brittany Herzberg (11:46.375)
Mm-hmm.
Rachael Woods | Woods MarCom (11:50.922)
you know, investing as much in their infrastructure.
Brittany Herzberg (11:54.227)
Yeah, for sure. Oh, that's so wise. I love that. Okay, so you call yourself a fractional CMO. Will you tell us what that is and how someone like you can support business owners with things like SEO?
Rachael Woods | Woods MarCom (11:57.622)
Ha!
Rachael Woods | Woods MarCom (12:07.526)
Yeah, absolutely. It's funny, when I started my business, I've been in marketing for 20 years, and the last eight of them were in healthcare specifically, so building healthcare infrastructure for healthcare systems. And when I decided to go out on my own, and I was talking with some colleagues about, this is what I wanna do, blah, and someone said to me, he goes, oh, well, that's fractional marketing. I was like, oh, I've never even heard of that term. I didn't know what that was, and so I started kind of digging into that. And fractional, C-suite, kind of fractional,
um, leadership is becoming more and more popular, particularly with startups and thinking about if you are, if you're wanting to really leverage the expertise of a, of a pro of someone at the top of their game with the experience, you know, having that expertise, um, that's fantastic, but typically then you're going to be looking at a six figure salary. And if you're looking at a
fractional CFO, or I'm sorry, if you're looking at us getting a CFO, which you probably need, thinking about a chief operations officer, a chief marketing officer, you know, suddenly you've got this slew of, you know, this giant salaries that you're trying to manage. And as a startup, that can be really unattainable or as a small business, that can be really challenging. And so this fractional concept is really strong because what you can do is hire somebody who's got these.
Brittany Herzberg (13:24.184)
Mm-hmm.
Rachael Woods | Woods MarCom (13:31.394)
the great expertise that knows exactly what you need, that can build teams or launch products or help you build infrastructure. And then they can say, okay, we can do that for X amount of hours a month. You're paying for that versus trying to say, okay, I need to find a six figure person that's gonna come on my salary full time. It can be really flexible depending on what you need. It can be someone who's longterm there on your, you know, they're working with you for.
monthly for a year or two years. It might eventually be someone you want to bring on. But it also could be someone saying, hey, we've got, we really just need some help getting this project management system up, or we need some help getting our digital marketing structure built. You know, we need some help building a marketing team and a marketing strategy so that then we can, we can fund that later on. And so what I like to do is come in and say, okay, where is it, what is it that you need? And how can I be flexible and meet you where you are?
And I have one client where I'm doing fractional CMO work and we've literally gone kind of rode the seasons. They have a model that's very influenced by different parts of the year. And so thinking, okay, in the fall, we were really focusing on some Black Friday pieces and spent a lot of time building out campaigns, building different pieces of that. I built an online store for them and just looking at what that looks like. And then now we're looking into the spring and...
It's a slower time for them. So how can we work on some of their infrastructure and their baseline so when they get busy again, we have all of that in place. Because when we came in and they had this really busy period, we didn't have a good email marketing infrastructure, we didn't have welcome sequence, we didn't have some pieces in place. And so we kind of tried to do the best we could, but what can we do about taking those lessons and then building them across for when they're less busy?
Another thing that someone mentioned to me that I thought was brilliant is if you have a marketing director or a marketing leader that's going on maternity leave, a fractional CMO can come in and just keep everything running for three, four, or five months. They can even stay on a little bit longer to help with any kind of handoff and things like that. The fractional, that really flexible piece is really what's helpful. And there's a...
Rachael Woods | Woods MarCom (15:47.174)
a variety of I've seen fractional CFOs and fractional COOs on LinkedIn. And I think it's really gaining traction of allowing businesses to stay lean and stay nimble and access the services that they need at the expertise that they need. You don't have to have, you don't have to commit to someone who maybe doesn't have the expertise that you want because you can afford that. You can invest in a really high expertise professional and just look at what
look at what that is, specifically what you need from that contract. So it's kind of exciting. I really enjoy it. It's some fun work. I get to do all kinds of in the weeds stuff and working with teams. And it's been a really fun journey.
Brittany Herzberg (16:27.451)
That is really cool. And I remember one of my friends, I can't remember if she came in as a fractional CMO as well or what, but I know I've seen the fractional term coming up a lot, so not everyone is familiar with it. So that was a really great breakdown. Thanks for sharing. Yeah. I also really like the idea, too, of, like you said, if someone's going off on maternity leave, that's a really wonderful time to bring in.
Rachael Woods | Woods MarCom (16:37.375)
Mm-hmm.
Rachael Woods | Woods MarCom (16:43.301)
Oh, thank you.
Rachael Woods | Woods MarCom (16:50.392)
Mm-hmm.
Brittany Herzberg (16:53.067)
a fractional CMO. That's just super smart. So, okay, let us, let us, you know, subtly wiggle over to 9grids because I, as soon as I heard that you did these, I was like, what? This is fascinating. So there's a bunch of questions that I have around this, but first off, would you say that there's a type of business or business owner that 9grids work best for? Like who should consider this and who should just be like, oh, that's a cool thing, but that's not for me.
Rachael Woods | Woods MarCom (17:19.61)
Yeah, absolutely. It's such a great question. So I would say, so to kind of in case anyone's not familiar, so a nine grid is when you take your Instagram account and I sometimes do a 12 grid. I don't know if I, I'm a little bit of a rule breaker. So sometimes I do 12 grids. So get a little mavericky there. But it's when you take your Instagram grid and you put, you create a graphic out of nine or 12 of the squares.
And they can be cohesive so that they go, you know, it's kind of fun graphically, you can kind of start having pictures that kind of go over the lines and things. But basically you're taking nine or 12 static images in Instagram and you're using that strategically as basically creating a page from your Instagram. So where traditional Instagram is, you add posts occasionally and you're posting once a day or once a week or whatever your cadence is.
This is you create that grid with the intention that it does not change. And the benefits of that is that one, it allows you to kind of reduce the updates. So you wanna think about if someone comes to your Instagram, you wanna think about building that grid in a way that they can capture any information that you want them to capture from your Instagram pretty quickly. You wanna think about that really strategically.
But then once it's there, you don't have to continue creating content. And so that really comes down to who should have a nine grid. It really needs to be a company who is not relying on Instagram for sales and conversions. I think you can get some sales and conversions potentially. But updating Instagram is where you're getting that.
visibility and that traction, right? So it's always about new content, fresh content. That's how Instagram is, you know, kind of pulls, gets in front of people. So when you create a static grid, that freshness, that renewed energy is not coming up in your feed. The point of that is really, if people are looking for you, they come across you elsewhere and then they wanna go to Instagram too. They find you maybe through a search.
Brittany Herzberg (19:09.195)
Mm-hmm.
Rachael Woods | Woods MarCom (19:32.286)
They are wanting to learn more. I had a client once who we, when we did their data, we recognized that they weren't posting at all, but their visibility was actually going up significantly. And so people were clearly looking for them and other place or coming to them either to validate or searching for them. It clearly was not coming in through their posts. And so thinking about if they're coming to you from another way, what would you want them to see or.
have access to in terms of information as more of a page. I would not recommend this for someone, like you said, that was wanting to really drive conversions from Instagram because there's gonna be a lot of time that is just sitting there, but it's really, really fantastic for people who are businesses that are investing in other spaces and they just wanna have a presence. They just wanna have the availability for people to access the information when they go there.
Brittany Herzberg (20:29.58)
Mm-hmm.
Rachael Woods | Woods MarCom (20:29.694)
We have a rental cabin in Mount Baker. And I started an Instagram page for this years ago, terrible at updating it. Creating content for it was just not something on my radar. And so we created a 12 grid for that page. And then we also used highlights. There's a number of different things you would want to do with your Instagram page. So the whole thing is really strategically built. But now I don't have to update or try to create content.
You won't see the Christmas tree from last year because I've now made it really kind of an evergreen graphic in a static grid. And if I do want fresh information, I can post stories or reels or things like that. So it gives you some options, but it's really, really great for someone that basically is investing their marketing efforts in other places and just wanna have a presence on Instagram for people to find them and then.
And then it would be to jump into your website or your sales landing page or wherever else you want them to go. It's really a jumping off point.
Brittany Herzberg (21:32.975)
Mm-hmm. I love that so much and I'm actually even think I of course I saved the Instagram handle for the podcast name And I'm like, oh this sounds really appealing because I love doing reels I love doing stories but coming up with more of the like carousel content or what have you It feels a little bit heavier and I don't know that I really want to take that on so this sounds very appealing So with that in mind
Rachael Woods | Woods MarCom (21:45.256)
Mm-hmm.
Rachael Woods | Woods MarCom (21:51.489)
Mm-hmm.
Brittany Herzberg (21:56.623)
How would someone possibly, if they don't want to work with the great Rachel Woods, how would they possibly go about making a nine grid? And mostly I'm curious about how do you figure out, you kind of covered this, but how do we figure out exactly what to put on each image?
Rachael Woods | Woods MarCom (22:12.266)
Absolutely. Well, I have a great kind of step-by-step how-to on my website, on my blog. So if you ever wanted to pop over there, there's some steps on that. But kind of the way that we approached it when I was really starting to think about doing this, I'd seen a number of other people do it, is I try to think of, okay, what are 12 things that I would like people to know about our Airbnb? So people want to know, you know, how many bedrooms are there? And, you know, what are some restaurants in town? And
Brittany Herzberg (22:18.715)
Mmm.
Rachael Woods | Woods MarCom (22:40.886)
So you can think of it that way where every photo is, because if people click on that, then you can have the content for them to read on the caption. So we were trying to think about that. Another way to do it is to just sort of visually create one big visual graphic that is appealing, and then you can use consistent captions for each one. If it's more just like, hey,
Brittany Herzberg (22:49.585)
Mm-hmm.
Rachael Woods | Woods MarCom (23:07.638)
For the Airbnb, for us, it was like, hey, we have this great Airbnb. Look at the seasons that you have. And I took six captions that were really keyword rich and repeated those twice in each one. So thinking about search and then thinking less about having someone have to click on each one of those squares, but more about just overarching and sending them out to the website or.
we do, we are on VRBO or Airbnb. So I started with that 12 square, and then I was like, well, let's just do one giant graphic that is kind of overlaps, that gets people interested and then gives them the opportunity to go out for information. And I've seen it done both ways. I've seen it done where it talks, you know, here's our origin story. And sometimes people have kind of like some arrows or some nice kind of visuals that kind of kind of walk people through, but it can be like,
Brittany Herzberg (23:37.879)
Mm-hmm.
Brittany Herzberg (23:59.575)
Yeah.
Rachael Woods | Woods MarCom (24:03.646)
look at the podcast, read our reviews, you know, thinking about some different pieces that would be interesting for people to click on. And then that's, you know, evergreen content. And then I definitely think about your highlights because as you get new reviews and new, you know, if you're the number one podcast on, you know, Spotify, things like that, you know, keeping those pieces up here at the top or here's our hot topics, things like that, because those are things that you can add.
Brittany Herzberg (24:24.847)
Yeah.
Rachael Woods | Woods MarCom (24:31.358)
additional stories and pin those people can browse through things like that. And then of course, the making sure you're really strong on your keywords and you're in the bio at the top. That's always a hot one to make sure that you're doing that one well. So
Brittany Herzberg (24:33.216)
Mm-hmm.
Brittany Herzberg (24:44.095)
Yeah. Oh, for sure. I'm really glad that you pointed that out because that I still, I constantly, almost every week, definitely monthly, almost every week have someone find me on Instagram and they have said, I searched Instagram for SEO copywriter or case study copywriter and you came up. I've had podcast invites that way. I've had people ask me to come in and guest teach. I've had a number of things happen like that. So it is, it's huge. Do not sleep on that, people. Do not sleep on that. Oh man.
Rachael Woods | Woods MarCom (24:55.81)
Mm-hmm.
Rachael Woods | Woods MarCom (25:01.279)
Yep.
Rachael Woods | Woods MarCom (25:08.011)
Yeah.
Mm-hmm. Well, that's the thing with those captions too, is think really strategically, especially since you're not going to be updating that, be really thoughtful about what you're putting in those captions because that's the same kind of stuff that's going to get pulled up. So yeah, the keyword strategy is strong in Instagram.
Brittany Herzberg (25:15.19)
Mm-hmm.
Brittany Herzberg (25:27.183)
Oh yes it is. Would you also use hashtags on those captions?
Rachael Woods | Woods MarCom (25:32.366)
I used a couple hashtags. I am kind of in leaning towards the hashtags are becoming less critical. They still are a thing, but I think they're becoming less of a thing than just making sure you're really strong on keywords. From my perspective, if you see, if there's some hashtags that are really commonly used, then definitely add them, but I'm not as big of a proponent as the 30 hashtags on the posts. And I've seen, I've seen.
Brittany Herzberg (25:57.858)
Mm-hmm.
Rachael Woods | Woods MarCom (26:00.222)
I've seen articles go both ways, so I'm not the expert on that space, but I'm a pretty big proponent that the keywords in your content are kind of where we're headed in the world.
Brittany Herzberg (26:02.18)
I know.
Brittany Herzberg (26:10.723)
That is very interesting. I like using them. I used to be a consistent 30 hashtag user and then I was recently given the advice of trying seven, so I've been leaning into that more as just like a thing to try and see what happens, but then of course I did that and I didn't post for like eight weeks because I just needed to hibernate. So I agree with you, like everybody has their hot take on that.
Rachael Woods | Woods MarCom (26:14.263)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Rachael Woods | Woods MarCom (26:24.287)
Mm-hmm.
Rachael Woods | Woods MarCom (26:27.774)
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Rachael Woods | Woods MarCom (26:34.028)
Mm-hmm.
Brittany Herzberg (26:34.083)
Do what feels good for you. If doing 30 hashtags feels overwhelming, try seven. If even doing any of them feels overwhelming, then just, like you said, make sure that there are keywords in your caption for sure. And I would definitely love to grab that blog link from you where you're walking people through the nine grids. I'll make sure to grab that and then add it below wherever you're watching or listening. All right. Let us end with a fun one. So I promised coffee. So we were here with the coffee.
Rachael Woods | Woods MarCom (26:48.354)
Yeah.
Rachael Woods | Woods MarCom (26:54.67)
Perfect. Okay.
Brittany Herzberg (27:00.339)
What is your favorite coffee? Is there like a brand or a favorite type of way that you like to make your coffee? Tell me, tell me all the things.
Rachael Woods | Woods MarCom (27:07.49)
Yeah, well, it depends on it depends on where I'm at. Right. So in the if I'm at home and my leggings and sweatshirts, I'm a black drip coffee girl. Just, you know, I've got the coffee maker. But if I'm out and about, I love an Americano. And I typically go so in northwest Washington, there's a string that's would be coffee or would be coffee company. And that's my favorite, my go to. And I actually got coffee from them this morning. But the.
Brittany Herzberg (27:23.45)
Mm.
Brittany Herzberg (27:30.267)
Thank you.
Rachael Woods | Woods MarCom (27:36.818)
This is not important for your podcast, but the cup got wet in my car And so I couldn't I was gonna show it on my On the video, but the cup didn't survive the trip up to the podcasting studio, so I know so I'm in my Insulated mug now, but would be coffee company. They're my favorite. I actually get to know the baristas when I go through so
Brittany Herzberg (27:42.391)
No.
Brittany Herzberg (27:49.179)
Sad.
Brittany Herzberg (27:54.209)
Oh my god.
Rachael Woods | Woods MarCom (28:00.69)
They know my beverage, which my husband thinks is the most ridiculous thing. He's not a coffee drinker. So the fact that I know the baristas and we're all friends and we catch up whenever I'm in the line, he just does not understand that. He will never understand it. So, no.
Brittany Herzberg (28:09.028)
Yeah.
Brittany Herzberg (28:13.267)
No, that's really funny because my boyfriend doesn't drink coffee either. He's like, this is ridiculous. Although yesterday morning he surprised me. He's done this a couple times where I've had, you know, very kind friends and clients and even like people that have brought me on. I can't even think of the word, like companies I've worked with as an independent contractor. They will give me gift cards for coffee money. And so yesterday we were going grocery shopping and we like going really early. We'll get there, you know, usually within the first 15 minutes of them opening.
Rachael Woods | Woods MarCom (28:32.755)
Oh yeah!
Brittany Herzberg (28:41.063)
and we were going to be early and Daniel was like, do you want to stop off for some coffee? I'm like, who are you? Yes. But I worked at Starbucks for about two years before I went into massage school before I became a marketer. And so I completely understand and almost get teary-eyed thinking about you talking to the baristas and them really getting to know you. I ended up nannying for people, pet sitting for them. I have LinkedIn friends that have known me forever. So those relationships are very meaningful.
Rachael Woods | Woods MarCom (28:47.08)
Yes, yes.
Rachael Woods | Woods MarCom (29:03.711)
Yeah.
Rachael Woods | Woods MarCom (29:07.846)
Yeah.
They are. Well, and especially if you, you know, I don't commute on a regular basis anymore, obviously, because they were from home. But when I used to commute in, like you get to know people because of their shift, they're always there in the morning. And yeah, I've gotten to know people. There's a barista. I used to work in Anacortes a thousand years ago, a slow waterfront town out here. And I got to know literally the barista who was always the window. And he's a, he, I don't think he works anymore, but at the time he was there every morning and he is a, was a
Brittany Herzberg (29:15.396)
Mm-hmm.
Brittany Herzberg (29:21.368)
Yeah.
Brittany Herzberg (29:30.331)
Oh.
Rachael Woods | Woods MarCom (29:40.29)
part-time DJ for parties and stuff. So then as I became working in nonprofit work, I would have him come out and DJ. So I mean, yeah, you build those relationships with people. And it's funny how you think that, you see them for a total of a minute or two in the drive-through, but you start really getting to know people and talking about where they went on vacation and how their holidays were. And it's, yeah, it's, I am a person who just, I gravitate towards.
Brittany Herzberg (29:43.724)
Yeah.
Brittany Herzberg (29:56.303)
Yeah.
Brittany Herzberg (30:01.965)
Yeah.
Rachael Woods | Woods MarCom (30:08.226)
warmth and friendliness, kind of when you mentioned earlier of just like, I'm like, hi, can I say hello? I love your content. Because I just find that is important to me as a human. And so I just places I go, I'm like, hey, how's it going? How are you?
Brittany Herzberg (30:09.89)
Mm-hmm.
Hahahaha
Brittany Herzberg (30:19.427)
Yeah.
Brittany Herzberg (30:22.879)
Yeah, oh I love that. Yeah, the funniest thing for me was that my Starbucks actually people are like what? My Starbucks closed. We weren't as profitable in the afternoon. We were slammed in the morning. It was amazing. We had the most dysfunctional like family relationship between all of the employees, but it was amazing. Like I wouldn't trade those years for anything. But you know, you see someone in an apron and a hat every single morning and then I would go into there was like one target that was really close to this Starbucks.
Rachael Woods | Woods MarCom (30:34.857)
Mm-hmm.
Brittany Herzberg (30:50.411)
and I started to go in there after our store hit close and every time I went in I would see a customer and they would be like, you know, squinting and doing that double tick like, I know you, where do I know you from? So I got to the point where I was like, hi Starbucks and they're like, oh, oh my gosh. Well, thank you so much for joining me and talking all the things. I really loved it. I'm going to make sure we put all the links in all the places for everyone so you can click and get in touch with you. But...
Rachael Woods | Woods MarCom (30:57.647)
Yeah.
Rachael Woods | Woods MarCom (31:03.662)
Mm-hmm. Yo, yo.
Brittany Herzberg (31:17.159)
where is the best place you would say for people to reach out and say hi?
Rachael Woods | Woods MarCom (31:22.222)
Absolutely. Well, I am on Instagram, WoodsMarCom. So it's W-O- You can also find me on Facebook at the same handle, but Instagram's probably more my go-to. And then my website is woodsmarcom.com. And yeah, I'll send you the blog link and that type of thing. And I just, I'd love to, you know, I'm really in a phase of building community and I would also just love to talk.
Brittany Herzberg (31:23.992)
Hehehe
Rachael Woods | Woods MarCom (31:49.274)
real deep nerdy data. If you're interested, I can just dive right in the weeds and get in there. I love it. So welcome, welcome all of those opportunities.
Brittany Herzberg (31:58.239)
Yay! Yeah, no kidding. That's so perfect. Okay, make sure you follow, subscribe, share, tag both of us so we can keep this SEO party train going. Thanks, Rachel.
Rachael Woods | Woods MarCom (32:10.082)
Thank you.
Brittany Herzberg (32:12.774)
Thank you.