September 10, 2024 • 31 mins
Unlock the secrets to growing your social following with digital marketing expert Matt Diamante from HeyTony Agency! Matt takes us on his journey from a referral-based business to becoming a social media sensation, all thanks to the wisdom from "The One Thing" and "Jab Jab Jab Right Hook." Get ready for some actionable tips on content writing, blog posts, and effective keyword utilization to boost your Google rankings and enhance your social media game.
Join us for this episode packed with practical advice, real-world examples and Matt's story that will transform your approach to creating content for your social media.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is Small Business Big World, our weekly
podcast prepared by the team atPaper Trails.
Owning and running a smallbusiness is hard.
Each week, we'll dive into thechallenges, headaches, trends,
fun and excitement of running asmall business.
After all, small businesses arethe heartbeat of America and
our team is here to keep thembeating.
All right, welcome to SmallBusiness Big World, our weekly
(00:23):
podcast, where we talk about allthings small business.
My guest this week is MattDiamante.
Sorry to interrupt, matt is anSEO expert.
He's a wizard at SEO searchengine optimization from hey
Tony Agency.
So thanks for joining, matt.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Absolutely, Thank you .
Thank you for having me.
I feel weird.
People ask me to be on theirpodcast.
I'm like yeah, I guess I could,you know, talk about SEO.
You're really some people out.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
So this is just like you get 195,000 followers on
Instagram.
I don't know.
It's like you're an influencer.
I'm just a guy who makes videosabout SEO and digital marketing
in my office and yeah, I guess,before we jump into a good
conversation here, don't forget,please like follow share rate
review.
We are all the podcastplatforms, all the social media
platforms, and those really helpus continue to grow and get
(01:10):
more listeners, just like you.
So, Matt, talk to me about whatyou do.
What, hey, Tony, is a littlebit.
What SEO is?
I think it's one of thoseforeign topics for a lot of
small businesses of thoseforeign topics for a lot of slow
businesses.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
Yeah, so I run a digital marketing agency called
hey Tony.
We primarily focus on SEO,which, in short, is just helping
people show up higher on Google.
Seo stands for search engineoptimization and really at the
core of it, it's just contentwriting, blog posts, making sure
that Google can find yourwebsite.
It's all words on the page.
For the most part, you can dovideo and images and stuff too,
(01:47):
but the primary thing that we'redoing is using keywords and
making sure that they're on yourwebsite, I know, so you make it
sound so simple.
Speaker 1 (01:53):
That's SEO.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:55):
Podcast over.
It's so simple but, as we'velearned.
There's a lot of elements tothat and we're kind of disciples
here of Yates and learned a lotfrom him.
Which is what we're going tokind of dig into today is how
you market your business really,and SEO has a lot to it.
I mean there's on-page SEO,there's off-page SEO, there's
all those different things which, again, you can see the results
(02:16):
.
We were just talking about that.
We've seen great trafficincreases on our website.
We learned from you the thingswe had to do.
We had to do a website audit,seo audit.
We learned the tools to use, uh, you know, and how to kind of
do that, which has been reallygreat for helpful for our
business.
So we really appreciate that.
So I know, I think it was lastyear you started doing, you know
, your crazy little videos right, uh, in in Instagram, you know,
(02:38):
like we all try to do uh, butyou kind of took off.
Talk to me about your as welland, as you might know, as a
(03:06):
referral business.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
Or if you're a referral business, the good
months are really good.
You're working really hard,long hours, making a lot of
money, and then you know, thenext month or the next six
months, or they could be reallylow times where you're not
really making that much money.
You're making maybe enough tosurvive and you know, you don't
know where your next client'sgoing to come from.
And that was a big struggle forme and I was like I need to
(03:28):
change this.
So in January 2023, I decidedyou know what?
I'm going to start postingevery day on social media.
I'm going to post videos.
I'm going to try to help peopleand just genuinely, you know,
try to help people.
So I had read two books.
One was called the one thingand the other one was called jab
(03:49):
jab, jab, right hook.
Um, reading both of those kindof like within the same week.
Um, and you know, like I, mybusiness was slow at that point.
So I had time to like read, andwhen I say read, I mean listen
to books.
Um, cause my retention isabsolute garbage when I'm
actually reading.
Um, like what did I just read?
But if I'm listening to a book,I'm like okay, like I, I get it
.
Um, so I'd read those two booksand, um, basically, the one
(04:11):
thing is about what's one thingyou can do every single day that
will contribute to your I don'tknow one year, five year, ten
year goal, whether it's personal, whether it's, you know, health
, whether it's wealth, uh,relationships, business,
whatever it might.
And my goal has always been,you know, I don't want to be a
referral business.
I want people knocking on mydoor, and so I was like I'm just
going to.
(04:32):
You know, take the lessons thatI learned in these two books.
And sorry, jab Jab Jab RightHook is a social media book
about how we live in thegreatest time ever to be
business owners, because you canliterally post a video on
TikTok or on Instagram and goviral and, you know, make your
business basically from there.
And it's free, you don't needto pay to do any of that, which
(04:53):
is absolutely insane.
So I started posting everysingle day for three months and
I committed to myself to do itfor a year just to see what
happens, and I was like if theif.
I do this for a year and Iprove these myself.
To do it for a year just to seewhat happens, and I was like,
if the if I do this for a yearand I prove these guys wrong,
like screw them.
I tried, it didn't work.
All this kind of stuff I wantto prove them right or prove
them wrong.
And on the flip side, I waslike, if I prove them right,
(05:16):
this is going to be very goodfor me.
So I was.
I was really hoping that thatwould happen.
Um, so, three months in, Istarted with, like with zero
followers.
Uh, three months in, I had, uh,I don't know, maybe four or 500
followers, like nothing reallycrazy.
Um, and I was.
I, uh, at that point, I wasposting one video every single
day.
Um, and then I was like youknow what?
(05:36):
I read a quote somewhere.
It was like you need to takemore swings.
You know MLB players, theydon't learn how to hit a home
run the first time they everswing a bat.
They've swung that thing 1000sor 10s of 1000s of times and
then they still, evenoccasionally, just hit a home
run.
You know what I mean.
So I, three months, and I waslike I'm going to start posting
three videos a day because Ineed to take more swings.
(05:58):
I need to learn this stufffaster.
I need to, you know, startachieving my goal, and it took
another three months of me doingthat.
So that's 90 videos a month, uh, for those three months,
basically.
So I was close to about, youknow, 300 videos all in, uh, and
nothing was happening.
I had like 1500 followers.
I should say not, not, nothingwas happening.
(06:20):
Like I had 1500 followers,right, um, nothing too much to
write home about, but I, likethis is crazy, like am I gonna
be an influencer.
And my wife had like a couplethousand followers as well.
I'm like are you gonna be aninfluencer family?
Is this gonna be a thing?
Uh, and she's like you're suchan idiot, no, um.
So I was like okay, you know,I've been putting in all this
(06:40):
work and even my brother textedme.
He's like what are you doing?
You're posting videos.
Like what are all these videos?
Are you getting paid to dothese videos?
Somebody paying you?
I'm like no, he's like well,why are you doing it?
Because I'm like I will getpaid, I hope yeah like that's
and that's being a businessowner.
Right, that's being a businessowner, I will be paid eventually
, I hope.
Um, so uh, yeah, I just keptpersisting.
(07:02):
And then, about a week later sosix months and a weekend, so
June 2023, I had my first videogo viral, got like a million
views on Instagram and I waslike, oh, holy shit, something's
happening.
I don't know this is crazy.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
So that was when you went viral.
It was great.
And what was the topic of that?
Do you remember?
Speaker 2 (07:26):
uh, it was seo.
I just said it in a differentway, or I just did something,
something different.
Um, that resonated with a lotof people and I went from 1500
to 15 000 followers in about aweek and I was like, okay, I
made it like I have morefollowers than any other agency
in the city that I live.
Um, you know, people should beknocking on my door anytime.
And uh, then the next week Ihad another video go viral as
well, like a million or a couplemillion views, and that just
(07:46):
started like moving the needlemore and more and more.
Uh, fast forward to December2023.
So, just about a year in, I hada hundred thousand followers on
Instagram and about 25,000 orsomething on Tik TOK.
And uh, I just kind of satthere and I was like, dang,
these guys were right.
If you just put in the time,put in the effort, learn how to
do this, take more swings, likethere's no reason why you won't
(08:10):
be successful.
And I've since been on thepodcast for the one thing that's
cool that book.
I messaged the author.
He's like that's an incrediblestory.
So I got to go on their podcast, I got to have conversations
with the author, like all thiskind of stuff and I'm like I'm
just a guy in this room, trappedin this room.
Uh, you know making sillyvideos.
(08:32):
Well, not silly videos, butlike making I'm calling them
silly videos, but helpful videosum teaching entrepreneurs yeah,
and that's so.
Speaker 1 (08:38):
First of all, thank you for the book recommendations
.
I wrote those down.
Those are going on my stack.
Amazon, here we come.
So that's it, you know it's.
It's really interesting thatyou know that approach that
you've taken to your videos isnot, you know, doing stupid
dances and, you know, trying tograb attention.
You're trying to educate youraudience and that, for me,
really resonates, and we do alot of that ourselves.
You prescribed to the theory ofthey ask you answer.
(09:01):
I don't know if you've everread that book, uh, but it's
kind of the same thing, rightlike it's.
It's making sure you'reproviding answers to your
customers before they ask them,right, or you know, when they
ask them, you have an answerready to go, yeah, uh.
And so we do a lot of the samekind of educational content.
We have not gone viral like youhave, unfortunately, yet, but
we're working on it, so honestly, just keep doing it every
(09:24):
single day, If you do threevideos a day.
I guarantee you it's funny.
Some of the videos that havegotten a little bit of traction
are totally not what you wouldever expect.
You do a really good one.
You're like, oh shit, that wasawesome, that was great
information, I was spot on, Idid a great job.
And then like, oh, 35 peoplewatched it.
And then there's some that arelike, well, that was.
(09:50):
We had one that we did over ayear ago that all of a sudden
got picked up by the algorithmand got I don't know 40,000
views or something.
I mean, for us it was a lot,yeah.
So it's kind of crazy.
That that's amazing.
I know we kind of deal in theworld of the algorithm the
Google algorithm all day, butthese social algorithms are the
same things Trying to figure itout.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
God, I'm an algorithm architect.
I guess no, architect's not theright word.
Archaeologist what's the guywho digs up the bones?
That guy Archaeologist?
I was close.
I'm an algorithm architect.
I'm just constantly digging itup.
Speaker 1 (10:20):
What did you glean from the big leak a few months
ago, the Google leak about?
Was it everything that wealready knew about SEO, or did
you find any hidden gems inthere?
Speaker 2 (10:30):
Yeah, there was a lot of things that like SEO, people
you know in my kind of circlethat we all like, really thought
and we're like, yeah, this issomething that Google does, but
they say that they don't.
So one backlinks do matter.
Um, and anybody listening, ifyou don't know what a backlink
is, it's just a link fromsomebody else's website back to
your website.
It's essentially a vote saying,hey, these guys have great
(10:52):
content.
Speaker 1 (10:53):
John, are you listening here?
Speaker 2 (10:55):
Right, I like on social media we were just
talking about that we got towork on our back no-transcript.
(11:29):
They never publicly said thatthey had a score for those, but
in that leak, as far as I cantell, they have some kind of?
Speaker 1 (11:37):
Well, they must, because that's how the backlinks
work, that's how qualitycontent works, all that stuff,
right?
I mean they must have some sortof score.
Yes, we, that's how I thinkquality content works, all that
stuff Right?
Speaker 2 (11:46):
I mean they must have some score as we show up first
on some things and not otherthings.
Right, so exactly, yeah, andone thing that I like I always
kind of thought this, but it wasnever like a proven hypothesis,
and it was if you want to rankon Google organically, you need
to send signals to Google thatyou are a legitimate business,
right, so yeah, you can writeblog posts, you can, you know,
have a store on your site, youcan have service pages, contact
(12:08):
form, all that kind of stuff.
But one of the things that theywant to see is that you're
getting traffic to your websitefrom multiple different sources.
Right, you're not just tryingto game, you know, organic
Google and show up on, you know,higher in the listings, but
you're getting traffic frompeople typing in your website
directly because maybe you justtold it to them, or they came
into your business, or maybethey scanned a QR code on a
(12:30):
business card, or maybe theyclicked on a Facebook post and
came to a blog post or booked acall, or you're running some
kind of Facebook ads orInstagram or TikTok.
You're getting traffic frommultiple sources.
I, like I I was just looking theother day I'm like all of our
client sites that are doingexceptionally well have traffic
(12:50):
from multiple sources.
It's not only from google, um,and the try this.
The websites that did getpunished when they do all these
like big algorithm updates arethe ones that are like affiliate
sites.
Um, they don't actually sellanything.
They just do like quote-unquotefake reviews or they talk about
that.
Speaker 1 (13:07):
you know the topics, um, but they don't have an
online store, they don't havephysical location, they're not
driving traffic from multiplesources, um, those are the ones
that have got hit the hardestwhen google did their so these
kind of things that we'retalking about right now, these
are what you post on right andthat's what people like me geek
out on, and I'll send one ofyour reels to John, our
marketing guy, and say, john,you got to look at this.
(13:28):
Are we talking?
We're not doing this?
And he usually responds back.
I already saw that one and I'malready doing that.
Chris, doing just the snippets,doing the reels, doing
Instagram and TikTok to reallycreating online classes and
(13:50):
checklists and guides, andyou've used the platforms to say
, hey, leave me a comment belowand I'll send you a checklist
that you need to go do an SEOaudit.
What does that process looklike for you in terms of
creating that educationalcontent and building those,
those, quite frankly, lead forms?
Speaker 2 (14:08):
right, yeah, so honestly, uh, before I started
blowing up on instagram, I wasalready making all these
training videos to useinternally, because I'm like I'm
going to be getting moreclients at some point I don't
know how or when.
Um, I'm gonna have to hire somepeople and I need to train them
and I don't want to sit withthem for like eight hours or 12
hours and like show them how todo all this stuff and you know
(14:30):
what if they mistake a note andthey do something wrong or you
know whatever it might be.
So I started, I startedcreating all this video content.
So the first thing I did was,if I'm bringing somebody onto
the team and they don't reallyknow anything about SEO or maybe
they're a content writer or ablog writer or a journalist or
something, somebody who writesthose are the best SEO people,
(14:52):
by the way, people who can writecontent.
I'm like, if I'm bringingsomebody onto the team, I want
to catch them up on five yearsof SEO or three years of college
in a couple hours.
Here's everything you need toknow about SEO.
Here's the most important parts.
There's no sugarcoating.
Well, I'm not talking aboutstuff that's irrelevant.
(15:13):
It's like a two hour thing andI give that away for free now,
right, so I was already filmingthat and I was like I need some
kind of lead magnet, which,basically, is just something
that I can provide to, you know,a business owner or a person in
exchange for their emailaddress so that I can email them
later.
Um and uh, yeah, I startedgiving that away for free and so
far, I've had, I think, over 30, it's like 13 or 15,000 people
(15:37):
go through that free trainingand that's like yeah, and it
really just like boils down SEOinto here's's the you know the
10 things on your website.
There's more than that, butlike here's the 10 things on
your website, um, that areactually important, that google
actually looks at or search andyou use what's the tool that you
use?
Speaker 1 (15:55):
we've used as well that.
Basically comment here itautomatically sends you a dm
yeah.
Speaker 2 (16:01):
So I'm sure everybody listening has seen that at
least once on instagram, whereit's like hey, if you want this
free download or if you want meto send you the link, uh,
comment this word below, commentviral below, and I'll send you
a link to my instagram trainingor whatever it is, and you
comment and then all of a suddenyou get a dm like right away, a
direct message, and it's justyou're saying where's the free
download?
(16:22):
um, so, yeah, no no, no, god, no, you have no life right yeah,
um, so the the tools yeah, oh,my god, I've I've seen some
people do that and they didn'tknow about this tool and I'm
like, are you sending these outmanually?
Like yeah, I'm like what ifhundreds of people do this, like
that?
That's insane.
Um, so the tool is called manychat.
(16:43):
Um, I think it's the only toolthat is like an official partner
or official vendor or somethingwith, uh, with meta, to do that
.
So if you comment on something,you have to set it up,
obviously in advance, andthere's like a little bit of a
process, but it, honestly, itworks because you send.
Speaker 1 (16:57):
Here's the link.
It brings you a landing page.
You put your name, emailaddress in, and then, hey,
there's the course.
So there's a checklist, there'sthe guide yep so that's kind of
.
I mean again, we do a lot ofthat hv show content too.
We've john and I have beentalking about trying to create a
course.
I will say seo.
I think is a little moreengaging.
Payroll and hr are you joking?
Speaker 2 (17:16):
are you joking?
Seo is not engaging, seo ispayroll and hr.
I always it's like the sameshit.
Speaker 1 (17:22):
We're boring.
We live in a boring world.
It is Do you think SEO is sexy?
It?
Speaker 2 (17:27):
makes people money.
It is not, no, it's not.
I mean payroll, yeah, maybe.
Maybe it causes people money,that's true, but HR can also
save you a lot of money too.
So it really depends on how youframe things.
You frame things, which is onething that I learned by posting
so many videos.
It's like I can't just say youknow, make sure you're doing
internal linking on your website.
(17:47):
I have to say, like Googledoesn't want you to know the
secret they like, but youactually, if you do this on your
website, they'll love you forit.
Right, that's a terrible way tosay it, but, like you know, I'm
not just saying it in thetraditional way that I had been
saying it for like 10 years.
I had to switch it, switch upto make it a little bit more
compelling, which you couldeasily do too.
Um, there's a woman I follow oninstagram.
(18:09):
She's like an hr specialist, um, and she has like a couple
hundred thousand, three hundredthousand followers, four hundred
thousand, and she just talksabout like small little niche
things.
I'll send it to you after this.
I don't know exactly what her,uh, her handle is, um, but like
hr, you know, it can beinteresting.
We get, we get a lot of peoplelast week.
Speaker 1 (18:30):
Well, two weeks ago, uh, the department of labor
changed their uh salarythreshold for salaried employees
and of course we're havingconversations with all of our
clients about it.
And I swear to god, that weekevery single one of my clients
was freaking out about it, Oneand two was trying to make up
their own labor laws.
So we put it could have done anentire week videos just
(18:51):
answering all these questionsabout what if I did this?
And are you sure you can't dothat?
And why not?
It's an um, so I could.
Speaker 2 (18:57):
I said and I could, I could, I sure done videos for
an entire week.
Speaker 1 (19:05):
I didn't know.
See, the one thing you didn't,I didn't, I know.
So you got.
Come on, I'm gonna write thatdown.
John, you're not helping mehere, you're supposed to be
pushing me.
Let's go, john, that's what Igot you.
Um, yeah, no, that's great.
So I mean I'd certainly, youknow, use those tools that are
out there.
Like you said, social media isfree, um, and as far as I can
tell, I mean I'm in my littlepodcast studio here.
We've got cameras and lightsand all that stuff, and when we
(19:27):
do our videos, we doprofessional videos, but you
just set your iPhone on the desk, right?
You don't do anything fancy.
Speaker 2 (19:35):
Yeah, if, if anybody's watching, like I'm
holding my phone and just like I, turn on the front facing
camera not even like the fancyback facing camera, turn on the
front facing camera.
I sit right here, the sameframe that I use.
If you're watching this, youcan see the same frame, same
background, which might bedetrimental sometimes, because
people might be like, oh, I'vealready seen this video,
(19:55):
especially if it sounds similarto something I've already said,
and then they won't like it,they won't watch the whole way
through, they won't share it andthe videos don't get that much
reach.
So sometimes I try to switchthings up.
If I'm in a hotel room, if I'mwalking down the street or in
the car, in the living room, inthe backyard, walking the dogs,
just try to change up thecontent a little bit and yeah,
(20:15):
but anyways, I don't do anythingcrazy.
Like I do have lights and stuffin here, but like nothing, I
don't use them unless I'mfilming like a YouTube video and
it's at night, like that's theonly time I use it?
Speaker 1 (20:26):
What did you use to film the classes, like Canva or
something like that?
Literally your head, and you'rejust going through a slideshow,
right?
Speaker 2 (20:33):
Yeah, I use something called Loom L-O-O-M.
I think it's like 10 or 15bucks a month, but, like I just
recorded my screen, it puts likea little circle at the bottom
left or you can put it whereveryou want on the screen, you drag
it around, but for me it's atthe bottom left and I legit for
the understanding seo.
Like I'm going between slideson a presentation and showing
(20:56):
real world examples like withinmy browser, because I'm
recording my screen.
So I'm like leaving thepresentation being like okay,
here's a perfect example of that.
We'll go to google, we'llsearch something and I'm like
here, here's the thing thatwe're looking at right now.
So it's a great, you can reallysee it in real time.
Speaker 1 (21:10):
I think you can do the same thing with canva.
I think we've used it in canvaas well, but, um, you know,
gotta use those tools and mostof them are pretty expensive.
So, yeah, what, what?
Um you?
Yeah, so you've had somesuccess here.
Right, you've growntremendously on social media,
but your business has benefitedtoo, right, I mean, you've done,
you know, you've added newclients and new staff and and I
(21:30):
think you posted something aboutthat just recently what's,
what's that look like?
What's all this hard work,how's, how has this hard work
paid off?
Speaker 2 (21:36):
So last year at this time we're filming this, in July
2024.
So last year July 2023, I had ateam of three, and now I have a
team of 10 plus some otherfreelancers that we bring in,
and revenues have basicallydoubled or they're on track to
double.
Something could happen, andthen I'd make $0 for the rest of
(21:58):
the year.
I don't think that's going tohappen.
It's not likely that thathappens, but you know,
anything's possible.
Speaker 1 (22:02):
But you've been really creative about that too,
because I think you know, I cameout this time last year, last
fall, we reached out to him andsaid, hey, help us, we're seeing
some changes.
We need to learn, and you knowlike I'm very fortunate to have
a John on my team who can domost of the work Um, maybe just
(22:25):
had some questions to bounce off.
And you just law group whereyou charged a couple hundred
bucks a month and you know youwould do a once a week zoom call
with everybody you know 10 or15 people, and and you, you know
, get smart about it, right.
You kind of manage your growththat way.
Speaker 2 (22:38):
So that's one thing that I do want to mention is I
didn't know what I was doing interms of, like how I was going
to monetize things, whether Iwas gonna sell courses or two
groups or a membership or thisor that.
So I just started trying thingsbecause that is the best way to
figure out if something isgoing to work or not.
And the small groups that I wasdoing with Chris or sorry, not
(22:58):
Chris John on your team and acouple other people it was great
because I was making, you know,two $3,000 a month and I was
showing up for one hour a weekand I know a lot of people were
like that's great, that's like alot of money and like all this
stuff.
But it wasn't exactly the mostbeneficial thing because people
still had to take courses andlike buy other stuff or, you
(23:20):
know, if they had questions,they were waiting a week to to
get an answer for it, um.
So I ended up closing that down.
I think I did it for like sixmonths or so, um, I ended up
like stopping doing that, um,and that I didn't really have
anything besides a course that Iwas selling.
That showed you my entire seoprocess, and it's okay to make
mistakes.
(23:40):
I make mistakes publicly.
All the time.
I try things out, like evenright now.
I have a website audit toolthat I'm developing and my
developer I sent him likescreenshots of, like here's what
the new website is going tolook like at.
Designer, make it.
It all had like filler text onthere and it's not going to be
live.
It's not going to be like thiswhen, uh, you know, this podcast
(24:01):
comes out.
But if you go to it right now,like chris, if you go to it
right now, uh, it'll I thinkjohn's a bunch of filler text on
it, like it's a live page.
Yeah, so it's a live page.
Like the home page is allfiller text, like it doesn't say
anything and I'm like, cool,like we are actively sending
people here.
So, um, you know, just makemistakes, show people the
(24:21):
process along the way.
Like people also love to seethe process right.
They don't want to see somebodywho's just like, oh, I'm
standing next to my ferrari kindof thing, not that I have a
ferrari or anywhere close tothere, but uh, you know those
guys, uh, or those people onyoutube where it's like, yeah,
if you want to be rich, like me,blah, blah, blah blah.
But they never really explainedtheir process and you know the
hardship that they went throughin their business or life
struggles.
Speaker 1 (24:42):
This isn't.
This isn't TikTok's not realworld for the most part, except
for you.
You do a great job with it.
Speaker 2 (24:46):
I mean, I try.
I'm just a guy in a roomposting videos, that's it.
Speaker 1 (25:02):
Some days I have good days.
Your content has really helpedus and we talked about this
before that.
You know we've seen, you know,dramatic advances and we learned
, you know we did all the easystuff that you, you know.
You basically said, hey, theseare the top five things you need
to do, and then we reallyneeded to dig into the structure
of our website and see some ofthe architecture and the back
end things which we've beenworking on and we've been seeing
those results.
And you know things like pageload speed.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
So do you know why?
Do you know why you've beenseeing results, chris?
No, because we did one.
It has nothing to do with me,because all the information, all
the information that I share,you can find online.
You have to do some digging andstuff like that.
I just put it all in one place,but you guys are actually
showing up every day and workingon it like you're actively
(25:45):
working on it.
It's, yeah, it's the one thingthat you're doing.
Um, and I mean John's doing alot of different stuff and I
know that it's not just SEO but,um, he's work, he's actively
working on it and it's not anovernight thing.
It's been about probably a yearsince I met john on your team
and like he's he's was probablythe most diligent person in like
(26:05):
hey, here's all the work I didlast week.
Like can you look at this andtell me what else needs to be
done?
Or did I do it right?
And I'm like you did all thisin the last week.
That's like that's incredible.
Um, so like it's activelyworking on it and giving it time
, being patient.
Speaker 1 (26:20):
I will say that is our biggest challenge is the
patience piece, particularlywith the STL, because it is not
something that happens overnight.
And I talk to peers in ourindustry and they say, well gosh
, you do all this work andyou're seeing these great
results.
Well, I'm trying to do the samething and it's been two months
and nothing's happened.
Well, we're two years into thisjourney, two plus years into
(26:40):
this journey of really focusingthis and taking the time and
putting the effort in, and we'rejust now seeing results.
Now, I don't have the budget ofa Fortune 500 company to hire a
team of people like you tohandle that, but it definitely
is something that takes time andI tell clients all the time if
they ask me about it, orpartners, peers, whatever.
It takes time, but you're goingto start, you're going to be
(27:00):
consistent.
The content strategy, whetherit's putting out educational
content like you do in socialand classes and things like that
SEO, it's things like thispodcast.
Right, Our goal is gosh.
We're a payroll HR company, butI want my clients to succeed
all around, because when they dobetter, they hire more people,
they pay me more.
And life's great clients tosucceed all around, because when
they do better they hire morepeople.
They pay me more and life'sgreat, right, um.
Speaker 2 (27:21):
So you know, this is a form of that kind of content
marketing and so really reallysuccessful, but possibly and so
I was just gonna say one of thethings that I do is like I price
everything like as low as Ipossibly can.
It's not free, like I'd stillneed to make money, and like pay
bills and stuff, but, um, like,my audit tool is 10 bucks a
(27:43):
month and like it's the likelegit, the cheapest audit tool
you can get that I'm aware ofthat is this good.
Um, you know that exists andI'm just like I want to
legitimately help small businessowners.
If they can pay me 10 bucks amonth, get access to this tool
that they can't get access tofor less than like, let pay me
10 bucks a month.
Get access to this tool thatthey can't get access to for
less than like, let's say, 50bucks a month somewhere else.
Um, like I will help them growtheir business.
(28:07):
Um, you know and I'm not tryingto listen there's like I think
in the united states alone,there's like 30 million small
businesses and I'm like if evena fraction of a fraction of a
fraction of those people buy mycourse once or subscribe to a
program I'm doing or whatever itis, I will be a very rich
person.
(28:27):
So I'm not trying to gougepeople, I'm legitimately trying
to help as many people aspossible, and that's, I think,
the secret to success.
Just help as many people as youpossibly can and don't try to
gouge people.
Speaker 1 (28:38):
I think that's a great place to wrap it up, thank
you.
So how do people get in touchwith you?
Where do they follow you onsocial?
What's a good way to find youand learn and take advantage of
everything?
Speaker 2 (28:49):
So on Instagram it's heytonyagency is my handle, I
guess, or you could look up MattDiamante, which I'm assuming
it's going to be in the shownotes or the title of this video
spelled that way, and you couldgo to my website heytonyca.
I'm in Canada, in case peoplehaven't recognized the accent at
all.
There's a couple words.
(29:09):
There's a couple words that Isay like if I say out or about,
then it really comes up.
The Google machine works thesame.
But yeah, most of the time it'strue.
Um, so yeah, heytonyca is thewebsite.
Um, and if anybody is listeningwho does seo or has a
subscription to hrefs or semrushor anything like, feel free to
put in my website in there, andyou know, I actually put my
(29:32):
money where my mouth is.
Um, yeah, we're getting a bunchof traffic to the website,
multiple sources where didheytony come from keywords?
Speaker 1 (29:38):
my curious question I'm checking it.
Speaker 2 (29:40):
What's the story?
Oh god, yeah, you know what.
I need to do a video on this.
Maybe I'll just take a clipfrom this podcast and post that
as the uh, as the video.
Um, so, hey, tony, my name ismatt, so people are like why is
your business called hey tony?
It doesn't make any sense.
Uh, so, basically, when I wastrying to name the company, I'm
like I was thinking ofsituations where I'm like that
(30:01):
was like a, that that would be agood name and I.
So, years prior, I was, uh, Ihad an office downtown toronto
and I was walking to lunch and Ioverheard these two big, burly
construction guys, like the bigmanly men, you know, not like me
who sits in an office all day,but like these guys are lifting
like railroad ties over theshoulder and like that kind of
shit.
Um, I overheard two of themtalking and, uh, the one guy
(30:24):
goes hey, tony, you always wantto put a smile on my face and I
just thought what a genuineexpression of emotion that you
wouldn't expect to hear fromthat type of person.
Uh, it was just like.
It was very transparent.
It was very much like hey, man,you put a smile on my face.
You make me happy, you made myday better.
Obviously he didn't say allthat, but like that's the, the
(30:44):
emotion that you know was kindof coming through there and I
was like that's the transparency, the vulnerability and the
openness I want to have with myteam, with my client.
That's a really cool brand.
Speaker 1 (30:53):
Smiles on each other that's authentic and that's a
whole different.
I'll say see it.
But that's a good thing, right?
There's a story behind it andit's authentic and it helps
build your business, which youknow we all talk about.
You know brand identity and allthat stuff.
That's a different video.
Well, awesome, well, thank youvery much.
I really really appreciate it.
This was great.
I hope our listeners Don'tforget if you are here still
(31:16):
like follow.
Share rate review.
We are on all the podcastplatforms.
We are on all of the socialmedia platforms at Small
Business Big World and we willsee you next week.
Thanks for listening to thisweek's episode of Small Business
Big World.
This podcast is a production ofPaper Trails.
We are a payroll and HR companybased in Kennebunk, maine, and
we serve small and mid-sizedbusinesses across New England
and the country.
If you found this podcasthelpful, don't forget to follow
(31:37):
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As a reminder, the views,opinions and thoughts expressed
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The material presented in thispodcast is for general
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By inviting this guest to ourpodcast Paper Trails does not
imply endorsement of oropposition to any specific
individual organization, productor service.
This is Small Business Big World, our weekly
podcast prepared by the team atPaper Trails.
Owning and running a smallbusiness is hard.
Each week, we'll dive into thechallenges, headaches, trends,
fun and excitement of running asmall business.
After all, small businesses arethe heartbeat of America and
our team is here to keep thembeating.
All right, welcome to SmallBusiness Big World, our weekly
(00:23):
podcast, where we talk about allthings small business.
My guest this week is MattDiamante.
Sorry to interrupt, matt is anSEO expert.
He's a wizard at SEO searchengine optimization from hey
Tony Agency.
So thanks for joining, matt.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Absolutely, Thank you .
Thank you for having me.
I feel weird.
People ask me to be on theirpodcast.
I'm like yeah, I guess I could,you know, talk about SEO.
You're really some people out.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
So this is just like you get 195,000 followers on
Instagram.
I don't know.
It's like you're an influencer.
I'm just a guy who makes videosabout SEO and digital marketing
in my office and yeah, I guess,before we jump into a good
conversation here, don't forget,please like follow share rate
review.
We are all the podcastplatforms, all the social media
platforms, and those really helpus continue to grow and get
(01:10):
more listeners, just like you.
So, Matt, talk to me about whatyou do.
What, hey, Tony, is a littlebit.
What SEO is?
I think it's one of thoseforeign topics for a lot of
small businesses of thoseforeign topics for a lot of slow
businesses.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
Yeah, so I run a digital marketing agency called
hey Tony.
We primarily focus on SEO,which, in short, is just helping
people show up higher on Google.
Seo stands for search engineoptimization and really at the
core of it, it's just contentwriting, blog posts, making sure
that Google can find yourwebsite.
It's all words on the page.
For the most part, you can dovideo and images and stuff too,
(01:47):
but the primary thing that we'redoing is using keywords and
making sure that they're on yourwebsite, I know, so you make it
sound so simple.
Speaker 1 (01:53):
That's SEO.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:55):
Podcast over.
It's so simple but, as we'velearned.
There's a lot of elements tothat and we're kind of disciples
here of Yates and learned a lotfrom him.
Which is what we're going tokind of dig into today is how
you market your business really,and SEO has a lot to it.
I mean there's on-page SEO,there's off-page SEO, there's
all those different things which, again, you can see the results
(02:16):
.
We were just talking about that.
We've seen great trafficincreases on our website.
We learned from you the thingswe had to do.
We had to do a website audit,seo audit.
We learned the tools to use, uh, you know, and how to kind of
do that, which has been reallygreat for helpful for our
business.
So we really appreciate that.
So I know, I think it was lastyear you started doing, you know
, your crazy little videos right, uh, in in Instagram, you know,
(02:38):
like we all try to do uh, butyou kind of took off.
Talk to me about your as welland, as you might know, as a
(03:06):
referral business.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
Or if you're a referral business, the good
months are really good.
You're working really hard,long hours, making a lot of
money, and then you know, thenext month or the next six
months, or they could be reallylow times where you're not
really making that much money.
You're making maybe enough tosurvive and you know, you don't
know where your next client'sgoing to come from.
And that was a big struggle forme and I was like I need to
(03:28):
change this.
So in January 2023, I decidedyou know what?
I'm going to start postingevery day on social media.
I'm going to post videos.
I'm going to try to help peopleand just genuinely, you know,
try to help people.
So I had read two books.
One was called the one thingand the other one was called jab
(03:49):
jab, jab, right hook.
Um, reading both of those kindof like within the same week.
Um, and you know, like I, mybusiness was slow at that point.
So I had time to like read, andwhen I say read, I mean listen
to books.
Um, cause my retention isabsolute garbage when I'm
actually reading.
Um, like what did I just read?
But if I'm listening to a book,I'm like okay, like I, I get it
.
Um, so I'd read those two booksand, um, basically, the one
(04:11):
thing is about what's one thingyou can do every single day that
will contribute to your I don'tknow one year, five year, ten
year goal, whether it's personal, whether it's, you know, health
, whether it's wealth, uh,relationships, business,
whatever it might.
And my goal has always been,you know, I don't want to be a
referral business.
I want people knocking on mydoor, and so I was like I'm just
going to.
(04:32):
You know, take the lessons thatI learned in these two books.
And sorry, jab Jab Jab RightHook is a social media book
about how we live in thegreatest time ever to be
business owners, because you canliterally post a video on
TikTok or on Instagram and goviral and, you know, make your
business basically from there.
And it's free, you don't needto pay to do any of that, which
(04:53):
is absolutely insane.
So I started posting everysingle day for three months and
I committed to myself to do itfor a year just to see what
happens, and I was like if theif.
I do this for a year and Iprove these myself.
To do it for a year just to seewhat happens, and I was like,
if the if I do this for a yearand I prove these guys wrong,
like screw them.
I tried, it didn't work.
All this kind of stuff I wantto prove them right or prove
them wrong.
And on the flip side, I waslike, if I prove them right,
(05:16):
this is going to be very goodfor me.
So I was.
I was really hoping that thatwould happen.
Um, so, three months in, Istarted with, like with zero
followers.
Uh, three months in, I had, uh,I don't know, maybe four or 500
followers, like nothing reallycrazy.
Um, and I was.
I, uh, at that point, I wasposting one video every single
day.
Um, and then I was like youknow what?
(05:36):
I read a quote somewhere.
It was like you need to takemore swings.
You know MLB players, theydon't learn how to hit a home
run the first time they everswing a bat.
They've swung that thing 1000sor 10s of 1000s of times and
then they still, evenoccasionally, just hit a home
run.
You know what I mean.
So I, three months, and I waslike I'm going to start posting
three videos a day because Ineed to take more swings.
(05:58):
I need to learn this stufffaster.
I need to, you know, startachieving my goal, and it took
another three months of me doingthat.
So that's 90 videos a month, uh, for those three months,
basically.
So I was close to about, youknow, 300 videos all in, uh, and
nothing was happening.
I had like 1500 followers.
I should say not, not, nothingwas happening.
(06:20):
Like I had 1500 followers,right, um, nothing too much to
write home about, but I, likethis is crazy, like am I gonna
be an influencer.
And my wife had like a couplethousand followers as well.
I'm like are you gonna be aninfluencer family?
Is this gonna be a thing?
Uh, and she's like you're suchan idiot, no, um.
So I was like okay, you know,I've been putting in all this
(06:40):
work and even my brother textedme.
He's like what are you doing?
You're posting videos.
Like what are all these videos?
Are you getting paid to dothese videos?
Somebody paying you?
I'm like no, he's like well,why are you doing it?
Because I'm like I will getpaid, I hope yeah like that's
and that's being a businessowner.
Right, that's being a businessowner, I will be paid eventually
, I hope.
Um, so uh, yeah, I just keptpersisting.
(07:02):
And then, about a week later sosix months and a weekend, so
June 2023, I had my first videogo viral, got like a million
views on Instagram and I waslike, oh, holy shit, something's
happening.
I don't know this is crazy.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
So that was when you went viral.
It was great.
And what was the topic of that?
Do you remember?
Speaker 2 (07:26):
uh, it was seo.
I just said it in a differentway, or I just did something,
something different.
Um, that resonated with a lotof people and I went from 1500
to 15 000 followers in about aweek and I was like, okay, I
made it like I have morefollowers than any other agency
in the city that I live.
Um, you know, people should beknocking on my door anytime.
And uh, then the next week Ihad another video go viral as
well, like a million or a couplemillion views, and that just
(07:46):
started like moving the needlemore and more and more.
Uh, fast forward to December2023.
So, just about a year in, I hada hundred thousand followers on
Instagram and about 25,000 orsomething on Tik TOK.
And uh, I just kind of satthere and I was like, dang,
these guys were right.
If you just put in the time,put in the effort, learn how to
do this, take more swings, likethere's no reason why you won't
(08:10):
be successful.
And I've since been on thepodcast for the one thing that's
cool that book.
I messaged the author.
He's like that's an incrediblestory.
So I got to go on their podcast, I got to have conversations
with the author, like all thiskind of stuff and I'm like I'm
just a guy in this room, trappedin this room.
Uh, you know making sillyvideos.
(08:32):
Well, not silly videos, butlike making I'm calling them
silly videos, but helpful videosum teaching entrepreneurs yeah,
and that's so.
Speaker 1 (08:38):
First of all, thank you for the book recommendations
.
I wrote those down.
Those are going on my stack.
Amazon, here we come.
So that's it, you know it's.
It's really interesting thatyou know that approach that
you've taken to your videos isnot, you know, doing stupid
dances and, you know, trying tograb attention.
You're trying to educate youraudience and that, for me,
really resonates, and we do alot of that ourselves.
You prescribed to the theory ofthey ask you answer.
(09:01):
I don't know if you've everread that book, uh, but it's
kind of the same thing, rightlike it's.
It's making sure you'reproviding answers to your
customers before they ask them,right, or you know, when they
ask them, you have an answerready to go, yeah, uh.
And so we do a lot of the samekind of educational content.
We have not gone viral like youhave, unfortunately, yet, but
we're working on it, so honestly, just keep doing it every
(09:24):
single day, If you do threevideos a day.
I guarantee you it's funny.
Some of the videos that havegotten a little bit of traction
are totally not what you wouldever expect.
You do a really good one.
You're like, oh shit, that wasawesome, that was great
information, I was spot on, Idid a great job.
And then like, oh, 35 peoplewatched it.
And then there's some that arelike, well, that was.
(09:50):
We had one that we did over ayear ago that all of a sudden
got picked up by the algorithmand got I don't know 40,000
views or something.
I mean, for us it was a lot,yeah.
So it's kind of crazy.
That that's amazing.
I know we kind of deal in theworld of the algorithm the
Google algorithm all day, butthese social algorithms are the
same things Trying to figure itout.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
God, I'm an algorithm architect.
I guess no, architect's not theright word.
Archaeologist what's the guywho digs up the bones?
That guy Archaeologist?
I was close.
I'm an algorithm architect.
I'm just constantly digging itup.
Speaker 1 (10:20):
What did you glean from the big leak a few months
ago, the Google leak about?
Was it everything that wealready knew about SEO, or did
you find any hidden gems inthere?
Speaker 2 (10:30):
Yeah, there was a lot of things that like SEO, people
you know in my kind of circlethat we all like, really thought
and we're like, yeah, this issomething that Google does, but
they say that they don't.
So one backlinks do matter.
Um, and anybody listening, ifyou don't know what a backlink
is, it's just a link fromsomebody else's website back to
your website.
It's essentially a vote saying,hey, these guys have great
(10:52):
content.
Speaker 1 (10:53):
John, are you listening here?
Speaker 2 (10:55):
Right, I like on social media we were just
talking about that we got towork on our back no-transcript.
(11:29):
They never publicly said thatthey had a score for those, but
in that leak, as far as I cantell, they have some kind of?
Speaker 1 (11:37):
Well, they must, because that's how the backlinks
work, that's how qualitycontent works, all that stuff,
right?
I mean they must have some sortof score.
Yes, we, that's how I thinkquality content works, all that
stuff Right?
Speaker 2 (11:46):
I mean they must have some score as we show up first
on some things and not otherthings.
Right, so exactly, yeah, andone thing that I like I always
kind of thought this, but it wasnever like a proven hypothesis,
and it was if you want to rankon Google organically, you need
to send signals to Google thatyou are a legitimate business,
right, so yeah, you can writeblog posts, you can, you know,
have a store on your site, youcan have service pages, contact
(12:08):
form, all that kind of stuff.
But one of the things that theywant to see is that you're
getting traffic to your websitefrom multiple different sources.
Right, you're not just tryingto game, you know, organic
Google and show up on, you know,higher in the listings, but
you're getting traffic frompeople typing in your website
directly because maybe you justtold it to them, or they came
into your business, or maybethey scanned a QR code on a
(12:30):
business card, or maybe theyclicked on a Facebook post and
came to a blog post or booked acall, or you're running some
kind of Facebook ads orInstagram or TikTok.
You're getting traffic frommultiple sources.
I, like I I was just looking theother day I'm like all of our
client sites that are doingexceptionally well have traffic
(12:50):
from multiple sources.
It's not only from google, um,and the try this.
The websites that did getpunished when they do all these
like big algorithm updates arethe ones that are like affiliate
sites.
Um, they don't actually sellanything.
They just do like quote-unquotefake reviews or they talk about
that.
Speaker 1 (13:07):
you know the topics, um, but they don't have an
online store, they don't havephysical location, they're not
driving traffic from multiplesources, um, those are the ones
that have got hit the hardestwhen google did their so these
kind of things that we'retalking about right now, these
are what you post on right andthat's what people like me geek
out on, and I'll send one ofyour reels to John, our
marketing guy, and say, john,you got to look at this.
(13:28):
Are we talking?
We're not doing this?
And he usually responds back.
I already saw that one and I'malready doing that.
Chris, doing just the snippets,doing the reels, doing
Instagram and TikTok to reallycreating online classes and
(13:50):
checklists and guides, andyou've used the platforms to say
, hey, leave me a comment belowand I'll send you a checklist
that you need to go do an SEOaudit.
What does that process looklike for you in terms of
creating that educationalcontent and building those,
those, quite frankly, lead forms?
Speaker 2 (14:08):
right, yeah, so honestly, uh, before I started
blowing up on instagram, I wasalready making all these
training videos to useinternally, because I'm like I'm
going to be getting moreclients at some point I don't
know how or when.
Um, I'm gonna have to hire somepeople and I need to train them
and I don't want to sit withthem for like eight hours or 12
hours and like show them how todo all this stuff and you know
(14:30):
what if they mistake a note andthey do something wrong or you
know whatever it might be.
So I started, I startedcreating all this video content.
So the first thing I did was,if I'm bringing somebody onto
the team and they don't reallyknow anything about SEO or maybe
they're a content writer or ablog writer or a journalist or
something, somebody who writesthose are the best SEO people,
(14:52):
by the way, people who can writecontent.
I'm like, if I'm bringingsomebody onto the team, I want
to catch them up on five yearsof SEO or three years of college
in a couple hours.
Here's everything you need toknow about SEO.
Here's the most important parts.
There's no sugarcoating.
Well, I'm not talking aboutstuff that's irrelevant.
(15:13):
It's like a two hour thing andI give that away for free now,
right, so I was already filmingthat and I was like I need some
kind of lead magnet, which,basically, is just something
that I can provide to, you know,a business owner or a person in
exchange for their emailaddress so that I can email them
later.
Um and uh, yeah, I startedgiving that away for free and so
far, I've had, I think, over 30, it's like 13 or 15,000 people
(15:37):
go through that free trainingand that's like yeah, and it
really just like boils down SEOinto here's's the you know the
10 things on your website.
There's more than that, butlike here's the 10 things on
your website, um, that areactually important, that google
actually looks at or search andyou use what's the tool that you
use?
Speaker 1 (15:55):
we've used as well that.
Basically comment here itautomatically sends you a dm
yeah.
Speaker 2 (16:01):
So I'm sure everybody listening has seen that at
least once on instagram, whereit's like hey, if you want this
free download or if you want meto send you the link, uh,
comment this word below, commentviral below, and I'll send you
a link to my instagram trainingor whatever it is, and you
comment and then all of a suddenyou get a dm like right away, a
direct message, and it's justyou're saying where's the free
download?
(16:22):
um, so, yeah, no no, no, god, no, you have no life right yeah,
um, so the the tools yeah, oh,my god, I've I've seen some
people do that and they didn'tknow about this tool and I'm
like, are you sending these outmanually?
Like yeah, I'm like what ifhundreds of people do this, like
that?
That's insane.
Um, so the tool is called manychat.
(16:43):
Um, I think it's the only toolthat is like an official partner
or official vendor or somethingwith, uh, with meta, to do that
.
So if you comment on something,you have to set it up,
obviously in advance, andthere's like a little bit of a
process, but it, honestly, itworks because you send.
Speaker 1 (16:57):
Here's the link.
It brings you a landing page.
You put your name, emailaddress in, and then, hey,
there's the course.
So there's a checklist, there'sthe guide yep so that's kind of
.
I mean again, we do a lot ofthat hv show content too.
We've john and I have beentalking about trying to create a
course.
I will say seo.
I think is a little moreengaging.
Payroll and hr are you joking?
Speaker 2 (17:16):
are you joking?
Seo is not engaging, seo ispayroll and hr.
I always it's like the sameshit.
Speaker 1 (17:22):
We're boring.
We live in a boring world.
It is Do you think SEO is sexy?
It?
Speaker 2 (17:27):
makes people money.
It is not, no, it's not.
I mean payroll, yeah, maybe.
Maybe it causes people money,that's true, but HR can also
save you a lot of money too.
So it really depends on how youframe things.
You frame things, which is onething that I learned by posting
so many videos.
It's like I can't just say youknow, make sure you're doing
internal linking on your website.
(17:47):
I have to say, like Googledoesn't want you to know the
secret they like, but youactually, if you do this on your
website, they'll love you forit.
Right, that's a terrible way tosay it, but, like you know, I'm
not just saying it in thetraditional way that I had been
saying it for like 10 years.
I had to switch it, switch upto make it a little bit more
compelling, which you couldeasily do too.
Um, there's a woman I follow oninstagram.
(18:09):
She's like an hr specialist, um, and she has like a couple
hundred thousand, three hundredthousand followers, four hundred
thousand, and she just talksabout like small little niche
things.
I'll send it to you after this.
I don't know exactly what her,uh, her handle is, um, but like
hr, you know, it can beinteresting.
We get, we get a lot of peoplelast week.
Speaker 1 (18:30):
Well, two weeks ago, uh, the department of labor
changed their uh salarythreshold for salaried employees
and of course we're havingconversations with all of our
clients about it.
And I swear to god, that weekevery single one of my clients
was freaking out about it, Oneand two was trying to make up
their own labor laws.
So we put it could have done anentire week videos just
(18:51):
answering all these questionsabout what if I did this?
And are you sure you can't dothat?
And why not?
It's an um, so I could.
Speaker 2 (18:57):
I said and I could, I could, I sure done videos for
an entire week.
Speaker 1 (19:05):
I didn't know.
See, the one thing you didn't,I didn't, I know.
So you got.
Come on, I'm gonna write thatdown.
John, you're not helping mehere, you're supposed to be
pushing me.
Let's go, john, that's what Igot you.
Um, yeah, no, that's great.
So I mean I'd certainly, youknow, use those tools that are
out there.
Like you said, social media isfree, um, and as far as I can
tell, I mean I'm in my littlepodcast studio here.
We've got cameras and lightsand all that stuff, and when we
(19:27):
do our videos, we doprofessional videos, but you
just set your iPhone on the desk, right?
You don't do anything fancy.
Speaker 2 (19:35):
Yeah, if, if anybody's watching, like I'm
holding my phone and just like I, turn on the front facing
camera not even like the fancyback facing camera, turn on the
front facing camera.
I sit right here, the sameframe that I use.
If you're watching this, youcan see the same frame, same
background, which might bedetrimental sometimes, because
people might be like, oh, I'vealready seen this video,
(19:55):
especially if it sounds similarto something I've already said,
and then they won't like it,they won't watch the whole way
through, they won't share it andthe videos don't get that much
reach.
So sometimes I try to switchthings up.
If I'm in a hotel room, if I'mwalking down the street or in
the car, in the living room, inthe backyard, walking the dogs,
just try to change up thecontent a little bit and yeah,
(20:15):
but anyways, I don't do anythingcrazy.
Like I do have lights and stuffin here, but like nothing, I
don't use them unless I'mfilming like a YouTube video and
it's at night, like that's theonly time I use it?
Speaker 1 (20:26):
What did you use to film the classes, like Canva or
something like that?
Literally your head, and you'rejust going through a slideshow,
right?
Speaker 2 (20:33):
Yeah, I use something called Loom L-O-O-M.
I think it's like 10 or 15bucks a month, but, like I just
recorded my screen, it puts likea little circle at the bottom
left or you can put it whereveryou want on the screen, you drag
it around, but for me it's atthe bottom left and I legit for
the understanding seo.
Like I'm going between slideson a presentation and showing
(20:56):
real world examples like withinmy browser, because I'm
recording my screen.
So I'm like leaving thepresentation being like okay,
here's a perfect example of that.
We'll go to google, we'llsearch something and I'm like
here, here's the thing thatwe're looking at right now.
So it's a great, you can reallysee it in real time.
Speaker 1 (21:10):
I think you can do the same thing with canva.
I think we've used it in canvaas well, but, um, you know,
gotta use those tools and mostof them are pretty expensive.
So, yeah, what, what?
Um you?
Yeah, so you've had somesuccess here.
Right, you've growntremendously on social media,
but your business has benefitedtoo, right, I mean, you've done,
you know, you've added newclients and new staff and and I
(21:30):
think you posted something aboutthat just recently what's,
what's that look like?
What's all this hard work,how's, how has this hard work
paid off?
Speaker 2 (21:36):
So last year at this time we're filming this, in July
2024.
So last year July 2023, I had ateam of three, and now I have a
team of 10 plus some otherfreelancers that we bring in,
and revenues have basicallydoubled or they're on track to
double.
Something could happen, andthen I'd make $0 for the rest of
(21:58):
the year.
I don't think that's going tohappen.
It's not likely that thathappens, but you know,
anything's possible.
Speaker 1 (22:02):
But you've been really creative about that too,
because I think you know, I cameout this time last year, last
fall, we reached out to him andsaid, hey, help us, we're seeing
some changes.
We need to learn, and you knowlike I'm very fortunate to have
a John on my team who can domost of the work Um, maybe just
(22:25):
had some questions to bounce off.
And you just law group whereyou charged a couple hundred
bucks a month and you know youwould do a once a week zoom call
with everybody you know 10 or15 people, and and you, you know
, get smart about it, right.
You kind of manage your growththat way.
Speaker 2 (22:38):
So that's one thing that I do want to mention is I
didn't know what I was doing interms of, like how I was going
to monetize things, whether Iwas gonna sell courses or two
groups or a membership or thisor that.
So I just started trying thingsbecause that is the best way to
figure out if something isgoing to work or not.
And the small groups that I wasdoing with Chris or sorry, not
(22:58):
Chris John on your team and acouple other people it was great
because I was making, you know,two $3,000 a month and I was
showing up for one hour a weekand I know a lot of people were
like that's great, that's like alot of money and like all this
stuff.
But it wasn't exactly the mostbeneficial thing because people
still had to take courses andlike buy other stuff or, you
(23:20):
know, if they had questions,they were waiting a week to to
get an answer for it, um.
So I ended up closing that down.
I think I did it for like sixmonths or so, um, I ended up
like stopping doing that, um,and that I didn't really have
anything besides a course that Iwas selling.
That showed you my entire seoprocess, and it's okay to make
mistakes.
(23:40):
I make mistakes publicly.
All the time.
I try things out, like evenright now.
I have a website audit toolthat I'm developing and my
developer I sent him likescreenshots of, like here's what
the new website is going tolook like at.
Designer, make it.
It all had like filler text onthere and it's not going to be
live.
It's not going to be like thiswhen, uh, you know, this podcast
(24:01):
comes out.
But if you go to it right now,like chris, if you go to it
right now, uh, it'll I thinkjohn's a bunch of filler text on
it, like it's a live page.
Yeah, so it's a live page.
Like the home page is allfiller text, like it doesn't say
anything and I'm like, cool,like we are actively sending
people here.
So, um, you know, just makemistakes, show people the
(24:21):
process along the way.
Like people also love to seethe process right.
They don't want to see somebodywho's just like, oh, I'm
standing next to my ferrari kindof thing, not that I have a
ferrari or anywhere close tothere, but uh, you know those
guys, uh, or those people onyoutube where it's like, yeah,
if you want to be rich, like me,blah, blah, blah blah.
But they never really explainedtheir process and you know the
hardship that they went throughin their business or life
struggles.
Speaker 1 (24:42):
This isn't.
This isn't TikTok's not realworld for the most part, except
for you.
You do a great job with it.
Speaker 2 (24:46):
I mean, I try.
I'm just a guy in a roomposting videos, that's it.
Speaker 1 (25:02):
Some days I have good days.
Your content has really helpedus and we talked about this
before that.
You know we've seen, you know,dramatic advances and we learned
, you know we did all the easystuff that you, you know.
You basically said, hey, theseare the top five things you need
to do, and then we reallyneeded to dig into the structure
of our website and see some ofthe architecture and the back
end things which we've beenworking on and we've been seeing
those results.
And you know things like pageload speed.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
So do you know why?
Do you know why you've beenseeing results, chris?
No, because we did one.
It has nothing to do with me,because all the information, all
the information that I share,you can find online.
You have to do some digging andstuff like that.
I just put it all in one place,but you guys are actually
showing up every day and workingon it like you're actively
(25:45):
working on it.
It's, yeah, it's the one thingthat you're doing.
Um, and I mean John's doing alot of different stuff and I
know that it's not just SEO but,um, he's work, he's actively
working on it and it's not anovernight thing.
It's been about probably a yearsince I met john on your team
and like he's he's was probablythe most diligent person in like
(26:05):
hey, here's all the work I didlast week.
Like can you look at this andtell me what else needs to be
done?
Or did I do it right?
And I'm like you did all thisin the last week.
That's like that's incredible.
Um, so like it's activelyworking on it and giving it time
, being patient.
Speaker 1 (26:20):
I will say that is our biggest challenge is the
patience piece, particularlywith the STL, because it is not
something that happens overnight.
And I talk to peers in ourindustry and they say, well gosh
, you do all this work andyou're seeing these great
results.
Well, I'm trying to do the samething and it's been two months
and nothing's happened.
Well, we're two years into thisjourney, two plus years into
(26:40):
this journey of really focusingthis and taking the time and
putting the effort in, and we'rejust now seeing results.
Now, I don't have the budget ofa Fortune 500 company to hire a
team of people like you tohandle that, but it definitely
is something that takes time andI tell clients all the time if
they ask me about it, orpartners, peers, whatever.
It takes time, but you're goingto start, you're going to be
(27:00):
consistent.
The content strategy, whetherit's putting out educational
content like you do in socialand classes and things like that
SEO, it's things like thispodcast.
Right, Our goal is gosh.
We're a payroll HR company, butI want my clients to succeed
all around, because when they dobetter, they hire more people,
they pay me more.
And life's great clients tosucceed all around, because when
they do better they hire morepeople.
They pay me more and life'sgreat, right, um.
Speaker 2 (27:21):
So you know, this is a form of that kind of content
marketing and so really reallysuccessful, but possibly and so
I was just gonna say one of thethings that I do is like I price
everything like as low as Ipossibly can.
It's not free, like I'd stillneed to make money, and like pay
bills and stuff, but, um, like,my audit tool is 10 bucks a
(27:43):
month and like it's the likelegit, the cheapest audit tool
you can get that I'm aware ofthat is this good.
Um, you know that exists andI'm just like I want to
legitimately help small businessowners.
If they can pay me 10 bucks amonth, get access to this tool
that they can't get access tofor less than like, let pay me
10 bucks a month.
Get access to this tool thatthey can't get access to for
less than like, let's say, 50bucks a month somewhere else.
Um, like I will help them growtheir business.
(28:07):
Um, you know and I'm not tryingto listen there's like I think
in the united states alone,there's like 30 million small
businesses and I'm like if evena fraction of a fraction of a
fraction of those people buy mycourse once or subscribe to a
program I'm doing or whatever itis, I will be a very rich
person.
(28:27):
So I'm not trying to gougepeople, I'm legitimately trying
to help as many people aspossible, and that's, I think,
the secret to success.
Just help as many people as youpossibly can and don't try to
gouge people.
Speaker 1 (28:38):
I think that's a great place to wrap it up, thank
you.
So how do people get in touchwith you?
Where do they follow you onsocial?
What's a good way to find youand learn and take advantage of
everything?
Speaker 2 (28:49):
So on Instagram it's heytonyagency is my handle, I
guess, or you could look up MattDiamante, which I'm assuming
it's going to be in the shownotes or the title of this video
spelled that way, and you couldgo to my website heytonyca.
I'm in Canada, in case peoplehaven't recognized the accent at
all.
There's a couple words.
(29:09):
There's a couple words that Isay like if I say out or about,
then it really comes up.
The Google machine works thesame.
But yeah, most of the time it'strue.
Um, so yeah, heytonyca is thewebsite.
Um, and if anybody is listeningwho does seo or has a
subscription to hrefs or semrushor anything like, feel free to
put in my website in there, andyou know, I actually put my
(29:32):
money where my mouth is.
Um, yeah, we're getting a bunchof traffic to the website,
multiple sources where didheytony come from keywords?
Speaker 1 (29:38):
my curious question I'm checking it.
Speaker 2 (29:40):
What's the story?
Oh god, yeah, you know what.
I need to do a video on this.
Maybe I'll just take a clipfrom this podcast and post that
as the uh, as the video.
Um, so, hey, tony, my name ismatt, so people are like why is
your business called hey tony?
It doesn't make any sense.
Uh, so, basically, when I wastrying to name the company, I'm
like I was thinking ofsituations where I'm like that
(30:01):
was like a, that that would be agood name and I.
So, years prior, I was, uh, Ihad an office downtown toronto
and I was walking to lunch and Ioverheard these two big, burly
construction guys, like the bigmanly men, you know, not like me
who sits in an office all day,but like these guys are lifting
like railroad ties over theshoulder and like that kind of
shit.
Um, I overheard two of themtalking and, uh, the one guy
(30:24):
goes hey, tony, you always wantto put a smile on my face and I
just thought what a genuineexpression of emotion that you
wouldn't expect to hear fromthat type of person.
Uh, it was just like.
It was very transparent.
It was very much like hey, man,you put a smile on my face.
You make me happy, you made myday better.
Obviously he didn't say allthat, but like that's the, the
(30:44):
emotion that you know was kindof coming through there and I
was like that's the transparency, the vulnerability and the
openness I want to have with myteam, with my client.
That's a really cool brand.
Speaker 1 (30:53):
Smiles on each other that's authentic and that's a
whole different.
I'll say see it.
But that's a good thing, right?
There's a story behind it andit's authentic and it helps
build your business, which youknow we all talk about.
You know brand identity and allthat stuff.
That's a different video.
Well, awesome, well, thank youvery much.
I really really appreciate it.
This was great.
I hope our listeners Don'tforget if you are here still
(31:16):
like follow.
Share rate review.
We are on all the podcastplatforms.
We are on all of the socialmedia platforms at Small
Business Big World and we willsee you next week.
Thanks for listening to thisweek's episode of Small Business
Big World.
This podcast is a production ofPaper Trails.
We are a payroll and HR companybased in Kennebunk, maine, and
we serve small and mid-sizedbusinesses across New England
and the country.
If you found this podcasthelpful, don't forget to follow
(31:37):
us at at Paper Trails Payrollacross all social media
platforms and check us out atpapertrailscom for more
information.
As a reminder, the views,opinions and thoughts expressed
by the hosts and guests alone.
The material presented in thispodcast is for general
information purposes only andshould not be considered legal
or financial advice.
By inviting this guest to ourpodcast Paper Trails does not
imply endorsement of oropposition to any specific
individual organization, productor service.
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