0:00:00 - Introduction: Meet the Geekspeak Team
0:00:22 - Current Trends in Social and Website Sectors
0:01:47 - The Closing of CDAP Grants for Canadians
0:06:22 - Grow Your Business Online Grant Overview
0:07:00 - Discussing PHP Issues and Website Security
0:10:30 - Updating PHP Versions and Plugin Advice
0:13:30 - The Shift in Hotel Bidding Strategies and Google Ads
0:14:00 - Dealing with Fake Accounts in Local Service Ads
0:15:39 - Recent Algorithm Updates and Their Impact
0:16:00 - TikTok's New Video Format Preferences
0:19:51 - Snapchat's New Partnership and Digital Measurement Tools
0:22:12 - Introduction to Blue Sky as a Twitter Competitor
0:23:51 - The Quirks of AI in Video Creation with Sora
0:25:00 - Cautionary Tales of AI Misinformation

[00:00:00] There we go. Oh, did y'all See that? It's so organized. We are here today. It is Geek Speak this month in the world of marketing. Search social and websites. Oh, and AI. You know me. I'm Pip. Over there's Phelan. There's Rina. Everybody wave. And Greg. And their little business names are there. We'll work out introducing ourselves at the end better.

[00:00:22] We'll do a sign off. But I wanted to get right into it and start the discussion about all the great things happening out there. How do [00:00:30] y'all feel about what's going on in the social sectors and the website sectors? Do you want to know how I feel or are we getting into our content?

[00:00:38] I'm confused. First let's talk about how we feel and then let's talk about content. Alright I feel okay! I don't really know what to say other than that it's I'm not particularly optimistic about things, but there are some fun things that have happened, and And it's social.

[00:00:55] That's interesting. Interesting. Yeah. It's a [00:01:00] lot. So search social websites and AI is a lot right now. I think everything's really changing. Greg, are you finding you're really busy right now? I'm fairly busy maybe more because of this new Contact is calling me constantly with emergency things, but yeah, for the most part, I'm still staying level and it's up and down, but it's never very down.

[00:01:28] And it's never I never [00:01:30] take too much work. Yeah. You're really smart about that. I know that I know Phelan and I have been. Busy. Rina's been busy, but there are some people out there that aren't busy. And I think that leads us right into the first topic, which is weird because it's for Canadians.

[00:01:47] And it's not website search or social, but it has to do with marketing, which is the CDAP, which Rina, I'll get you to mention before I drag Phelan into something, has closed for Canadians, hasn't it, Rina? What's that about? It [00:02:00] sure has. So and with quite it's always the same with these grants, though, is that they close quickly.

[00:02:06] We ask business owners to get on things quickly because because of this fact, especially between January and the fiscal fiscal year, which is April. Things tend to shift during that time. And so the CDAP grant, which there are two of them actually, but only one of them got closed. That is the one for the companies over 500, [00:02:30] 000.

[00:02:30] It created quite the spear. It's really interesting cause the PR. Company that I follow the PR woman that I follow on TikTok saying the government does this particularly where they announce bad news or news that they think isn't going to play very well on Fridays at the end of day, because people aren't paying attention.

[00:02:50] And that's exactly what they did. They announced the CDAP. Grant was going to be closing over the next few days. And this is another tactic that they do. It's not really a tactic in the sense [00:03:00] that they do it purposefully, but they certainly don't choose to do it a different way. But because the grant runs out when it runs out of money, they don't really know when the cutoff end date is.

[00:03:10] So everybody gets upset. They're like, I didn't know the deadline. Nobody told us the deadline. It's that's because they do it until the money runs out. So if there's a surge, which happened on the weekend, when they announced it on Friday, a lot of people were contacting their clients to move their applications through faster.

[00:03:28] And that meant that there was a whole [00:03:30] lot of New applicants happening over the weekend and it got closed. I can't remember though, if it was Sunday at noon or Monday at noon, it was a long weekend. So I get the Monday and Sunday mixed up, but it did close on the weekend. And there's some pretty unhappy people out there, especially there's some pretty unhappy people out there.

[00:03:48] That is for sure. And that's disappointing because it came with a good package. It did. And that was the reason we bring that up is that was for companies to spend money on marketing [00:04:00] and up their game. I thought it was mostly not necessarily. So it was a booster technology grant. So it could be any technology within your business.

[00:04:08] So for example, one of my clients, we did do some marketing And it's no. Okay, let me rewind that. The grant portion was to cover strategy only. So there was no money, grant money to implement the strategy just to get the strategy. The implementation came from this grant portion. Bye. The 0 percent loan that you could [00:04:30] also apply for, but you didn't have to.

[00:04:31] So you could just walk away with a strategy piece. There were also some employee employment grants to cover workers who were going to be doing the technology if you were going to be implementing, but it's a technology that was way bigger than just the marketing. It was to include any kind of technology CRM.

[00:04:49] If you are. Like one of my clients was getting using the strategy and funding for x ray machines to find tanks in the ground. So that also [00:05:00] counts too. So it was well beyond marketing to be honest. So that's the, that's the gist of that grant. I can't hear you shine.

[00:05:10] How, Oh, Pip, I don't know. You call me shine. That's nice. You better love him. Like you like me. China is traveling to Germany today. So I think he's on my mind. I'm like, Ooh, what's he doing in Germany? Yeah, that is exciting. And okay, I'm gonna, I'm gonna take it [00:05:30] out of your hands now. And we're going to talk websites cause that's more fun than grants.

[00:05:34] Who doesn't like a grant? I like free money, but I don't like going after the grants. And I don't know, Greg, do you go after grants? Phelan, would you? No, you haven't. No, we generally don't. But that's because we've had bad experiences with clients who get the grant money. So I did just finish a site that was for a client that Got the grant but [00:06:00] it was through a third party.

[00:06:01] I did the work for someone else. Oh, so that would be the booster. That would be the grow your business online, correct? Probably. That grant. Yeah, most likely. I don't think I know which one they got. I just got a call saying, hey. I need you to build a site for a client that got a grant.

[00:06:18] We got a hey beautiful and handsome man. Yay.

[00:06:22] Yes, that's fun. Grow your business grant online. Grow your business online grant is [00:06:30] still available to Canadians across the country. 2, 400 towards marketing and website upgrades. Nice. If you haven't gone for that and you're Canadian. Go for it. And this is Karen saying hi, Karen. Yay. Glad you're here.

[00:06:44] And okay, let's move into all the other fun marketing topics. Cause I don't know about you guys, but I've been doing a lot of SEO and Google ads and using some AI stuff. But there's a lot of marketing news. Let's start out with websites and there's some PHP [00:07:00] issue failing. Did you tell us about that?

[00:07:02] Tell me. Yeah, so there was a, one of the block builders really popular, supposedly, I'd never heard of it. It's funny how there's all these they're like really popular and I've never heard of it myself. It's called RCE Block Builder. I don't know. I haven't heard of that either. I've not heard of that one either.

[00:07:20] That didn't make it on our top popular list. Greg did it. Oh, is that interesting. I wonder where. I only mentioned [00:07:30] two or three maybe. Yeah. Or four, I don't remember. But the four most popular ones. Ooh, what are they? What are they? You'll have to go back. Rattle the, yeah. Damn. We're staying focused on topic here.

[00:07:44] Okay. Okay. We're staying focused on topic. Okay. And so the PHP issue means what? What does that mean? So what it does is it's doing cross site scripting, meaning like it's sending the code. I'm not gonna get into the technicals, but basically it sends the code and in [00:08:00] transit someone could then put in their own code while it's in transit.

[00:08:04] It's a gross oversimplification, but I'm. Yeah so basically yeah, basically it's a way that someone can hijack your website. And which is definitely not good for a block builder. And that would probably be really painful, actually. So it's not good. So there I'm going to assume that they're working diligently on finding a a solution for this problem and look for an update pretty soon.

[00:08:29] [00:08:30] Definitely. Keep an eye on your website and make sure that if you are using that block builder that you protect yourself. Now, let me ask you this. If Gutenberg was the only block builder, there would be less of, for WordPress, less of a degree of the ability to infiltrate the PHP that way, because it's a plugin?

[00:08:51] I would, so Gutenberg is the native WordPress block builder. Builder, right? That comes out of the box. The [00:09:00] building experience is Gutenberg, which is a block builder. These additional block builder plugins that you can install just give you a lot more block options, like a more fancy, image gallery block than the default one, or so basically you're just extending the amount of.

[00:09:24] block options that you have to create layouts and things by installing [00:09:30] another block builder. So, the plugin the block layer block plugins don't have any real bearing on this issue. Really this issue is because they Poorly coded their plugin offering and have this PHP exploit and anyone that is using that one went with someone who has built this in and now needs to [00:10:00] fix it.

[00:10:01] Yeah. I would just say that you can owe it any, even the core systems, everything has the potential to have a security issue, especially if you're using PHP, which is notoriously easy to get set up, but also notoriously easy to very vulnerable to a lot of security issues that if you're not super diligent, you can easily screw up and leave yourself very vulnerable.

[00:10:24] Update your plugins, folks. Update your plugins. Update your PHP version as well. [00:10:30] Oh yeah. Is that a new update right now? I know a lot of sites are still running PHP 7. 4 and we're already at end of life of PHP 8. 0 or Possibly even 8. 1 by the end of the year. so how do people update that?

[00:10:48] Cause I don't know. Tell me, like, how would I update? Do I, besides calling you, don't be like, Hey, you would do that on your host server. That will give you a method, whether you're using [00:11:00] cPanel hosting or. It's a server related thing. So you'd go with your, go to your host and see which PHP version they're running on the server that you're being hosted on and request that be upgraded.

[00:11:15] And many of them give you the option to be able to upgrade it in your hosting admin somewhere. Okay. So call Greg Phelan Arena. That's what I heard. Call your hosting support. Call your hosting support. [00:11:30] Word for word. Word for word. Okay, and so is there any other website news? is what's a pretty common thing in the world of WordPress since the last update.

[00:11:44] Things have been going fine. There are in development for their next release. I haven't really been on top of anything special coming out of the. Next release, I did see I heard about an issue and I [00:12:00] don't remember if it was with WooCommerce or a plugin that's used for WooCommerce that had a vulnerability in it.

[00:12:09] If I can find that information, I'll drop it in the comments later. Okay. Awesome. Yeah. Cause I saw, I got an email. I don't know if y'all got this email, but it said I, a client forwarded me an email that said that Google Sites is going away, right? You're used to be able to, but so I told the client, I was like, this is nothing to worry about.

[00:12:29] Don't worry. You [00:12:30] don't have. Like a site with Google Sites, so I don't know why you're getting this, but then I went to the bottom of the email and I saw the sites that they were recommending hey, go to WordPress There was an S1 I'd never heard of. Oh, and they did mention Drupal. There was an S1 I didn't hear of, and they also had Google Sites in there.

[00:12:52] So I was like You mean something starting with an S? Yeah, it was a weird site builder thing. I'll [00:13:00] send it to you. 'cause I took a note of it. I was like, what is this site origin? Site origin? No, I don't know. I'll send it to you guys to see WordPress theme, I think. Yeah. The point, my other point was they had the Google site's still in there, so I didn't understand.

[00:13:14] That is so weird. They're like, it's going away. Yeah. Yeah. That is so weird. Why would they recommend something they're sunsetting in the email that they're telling you that sunsetting. And right, and I know you guys get a lot of the Search Console emails that clients stress out about. Yeah.

[00:13:29] We should talk about [00:13:30] that one day, about how to deal with that. That was my news for search and websites, but, Let's do this. That isn't actually a problem, right? It's so funny. So we have some search news. We got, Ooh not very interesting in that. Hotel bidding strategies are changing, but I don't work in hotel Google ads.

[00:13:48] And then AI Google ads is not up to scratch yet. That's the news. Oh, and Phelan, you had some news about LSA and fake accounts or who whose news was that? Yeah. LSA, which is local [00:14:00] service ad, so if you're a lawyer, a real estate agent tree service. A treacher? It's like a tree service teacher.

[00:14:08] Yeah or a garage door repair. Those are the big ones. They found that apparently there are a bunch of fake accounts that are showing up. And so That Intel, which is ironic because this is the one where you get like background checks and you're supposed to submit your ID and it's like a super intensive process where they're super invasive and it turns out they still were getting fake accounts and [00:14:30] so it's somewhat ironic considering they tried to do this And they still couldn't even prevent fake accounts with others, like all this documentation is supposed to be filled out.

[00:14:38] And we struggle with LSA ads, like honestly, making them work, getting, I don't know. So I don't know what's going on there, but we have a company that's Another marketing company has told them that they can get them LSA ads or like for 200 bucks a month and do remarketing for something uber cheap.

[00:14:57] So I got to check them out and see what they're doing. Cause [00:15:00] I don't know. Do you guys work with LSA ads? Anybody? No? Oh, okay. And Pam's here. Hi, Pam. Lucky you. Yes. So we'll move on from LSA ads. Don't use them if you don't have to. I think that's the outcome there. And yeah, and then Rina, I don't know if there's any other search news. There's been an algorithm update around February 14th that I'm just learning about the outcome. And it looks like what is it? Know when you eat food and you get a recipe? Recipe site [00:15:30] carousels are, a lot of people have lost their ranking and so there's a lot of people up in arms with that latest update.

[00:15:39] So that's pretty interesting. Anybody work with people that write recipes? Oh, Glenna does! Oh, yeah, that's true. Yeah, we should let her know that. That's really important. Cause that's, that's going to drop your traffic. Know super way. I'm going to go do some recipe searches today, but I think that's it for search.[00:16:00]

[00:16:00] What do you got, Rena? You got some news on social. I do. One of the things that's come up is that TikTok is has put out information to all the creator creators that they are going to start privileging video in this direction. You don't, you, what they want is it shows in this direction and then they want you to only take up this much space.

[00:16:24] with your video. So you're not just flipping the camera, you're keeping the camera [00:16:30] up but you're putting your I've seen that! Yeah. And we think that's to do with Add space that they want. Add space. But they're also organizing. Did I say this last? No, you said you know, in our chat on I did say it to someone.

[00:16:45] So basically they think that it has to do with with add space. So if you actually filled the. Blank spots at the bottom or the blank spots at the top with text or anything else. That's not video Then you it's not going to count they want blank space. [00:17:00] I feel like they're going to put advertising.

[00:17:01] It's been suggested I didn't make that up myself, but I pretty much agree with that Analysis, and then the other thing about that is that they want long form video So it seems like they're trying to give youtube a run for their money. I'm not sure how that's going to work out It really annoys me that all the platforms Try and do what each other is doing and then they become not unique at all and it's boring.

[00:17:24] I don't like it. So i'm not sure how long i'm gonna be on tiktok because I was watching a move a [00:17:30] video the other day and i'm like Wow, this is going on forever I thought the same thing And it's oh my god, get away from me. I want the 10 minute and one minute, one minute. I love, honestly, I do love one minute content.

[00:17:45] It's so succinct. Do you know I have, this is going to sound so silly, but not only am I reading one of the best books I have ever read because of a 30 second video, but I also have a new coffee maker that I, where [00:18:00] the coffee is the best coffee I've ever had. And that was a real and they weren't selling me anything.

[00:18:05] It was just three things about this book. I love the coffee maker and bam, so it doesn't, you don't need, I think you don't need 30 minute videos to sell something. I don't think I want how to videos on showing up on Tik Tok. That's going to annoy me. Like just a little clips are great.

[00:18:21] And then go find them somewhere else if you need more in depth thing, but a lot of kids search. And it's a great video search engine. [00:18:30] So we're, we all go to YouTube to learn things, right? I think that's YouTube's big one, right? That's true. But you're right. The kids are using the search and I keep forgetting about that fact.

[00:18:38] So maybe that is our crew that's not going to like it. Yeah, so Pam saying they're pushing us to make longer videos. Yeah. And we know that. So of course, the creators are going to follow that trend because they're going to get prioritized if they make longer content. Yeah, the algorithm is quite substantive.

[00:18:57] The algorithmic push for those videos is [00:19:00] quite substantial. Like I, there were a couple of content creators that have tested it, put the same content up in two different versions and the two different aspect ratios. And one got significantly long better, better views. I don't know, tens of thousands of better views.

[00:19:16] Was that just one test or is it several people doing the same test? one test. We'd have to look at other aspects other points. Yeah, cause that's a case study. So we'd have to look into that. But that, it sounds, the, who's going to know about the trends [00:19:30] before they're actually well known, the people doing the work.

[00:19:33] Exactly. Exactly. So that's that. The other thing that I had is that where is it here? The Snapchat is, has implemented a new partnership. They're using a third party digital measurement platform tool so that they can verify your campaign results. So that'll make it interesting.

[00:19:51] Um, This will help marketers measure the impact of and the effectiveness of their campaigns. And their emphasis is on [00:20:00] cross marketing, R O A S. ROAS. Okay, interesting. Yeah, ROAS. And So I think that's going to be quite interesting to watch. What happens there. I don't know, I'm not actually doing any advertising on Snapchat.

[00:20:13] No one else is here though, right? No. Yeah, that's an area that I've never really looked into. I'm not sure it's on, on target for most of the brands that I'm helping. But What's for kids to socialize? I haven't even, I haven't even had an account. Pam's got some [00:20:30] kids. I think we should ask her what she knows.

[00:20:32] Yeah. So yes, exactly. So we need to really look at I'd love to look at that and see what the target market is like on there. I haven't looked in a long time and I'm sure that it's changed as they all do. This brings up a really valid point though, about social media marketing and depending on what you sell is going to really depend on where you're going to be.

[00:20:53] And it doesn't mean be everywhere. That's it. That's it. So sometimes you can just find one spot. But at the same time, I also [00:21:00] don't, I believe very much in the don't put all your eggs in one basket because when an algorithmic shift happens that doesn't suit the content that you're producing, then all of a sudden you're hooped.

[00:21:12] So you have to that's exactly what happened in 2012 when Facebook did it big, this big algorithm, there were people that were operating. Full businesses on Facebook that weren't advertising anywhere and did not have a website. They could just do direct sales. I remember that. And they didn't have to pay any advertising money as [00:21:30] long as they were engaging the people correctly.

[00:21:31] They were getting like, really good percentages of their users were finding they were served up their content, which is now the problem. We're down to I don't know, like less than 5 percent of our. audience actually being served up our content to begin with. So you don't really want to put all your eggs in one basket because those businesses were freaking out in 2012.

[00:21:54] I remember that quite distinctly. Yeah, it's strange. Yeah. And and then the last thing that I [00:22:00] wanted to bring up is again, this wait before you bring this up. Cause this is funny. Wasn't there, Greg, did you mention a Twitter competitor? Who mentioned the Twitter? What was I did? Yeah, that's that.

[00:22:12] Oh yeah. I guess we're in social, we're talking about Blue Sky, which I've been on for quite a while, but I love it. You've been on it like, I hope so many Twitter people. Go to blue sky and people just continue on blue sky like it just got opened [00:22:30] up the news about it Is that it got opened up to because it was invite only and so now it's not invite only Which is the big news regarding blue sky so There is a train of thought against why people should go to blue sky, but they're not suggesting stay at Twitter either.

[00:22:47] So I'm going to drop a really interesting read that a pal of mine from Bellingham sent me over on social yesterday when I was talking about blue sky on my social site, my social account, and [00:23:00] he sent me these really great this really great sort of argument for why we don't want to, go from one billionaire.

[00:23:08] thing to the next billionaires thing. And it was quite interesting if you're interested in the politics of all that. , okay. One billionaire thing to another billionaire thing. That's really interesting. I, cause, cause I trust you, Greg. I want to check it out. I, the last note about the blue sky thing that's really interesting is the new AI that they're not letting people use.

[00:23:28] That's actually called blue [00:23:30] sky in, in, in Japanese, isn't it? And this thing can make a video. Out of a sentence. Yeah, Sora is the name of it. Sora. Of course, if you spend any it's the, yeah, it's a Japanese name for that's what I had heard. Blue Sky, yeah. But, okay, now Rina's funny news. Oh, and Les Phelan, you wanted to end it off with the Blue Sky thing?

[00:23:51] No, the Sora, because while it does make certain videos, it does not understand proportions. And has made these really horrifying videos of monkeys with four legs [00:24:00] and no arms. And huge, yeah. Sort videos and find out a whole bunch of I've seen a bunch of them. They're fairly terrifying in how far they go into the uncanny valley.

[00:24:11] Like they're not even at the uncanny valley. Uncanny's my favorite. What is your favorite? Uncanny. The uncanny is brilliant. Okay, but for more complex stuff, it's just not there yet. It's like when the AI image stuff first came out. Nice. It's [00:24:30] still, it's so bad.

[00:24:33] I can't get English and in some of my images. And I will say there's a yelling meme about make it without the fork. And then there's four forks and then there's six forks and then it's all forks and you're like, you're losing it, I think that's pretty funny. Okay. So that's interesting.

[00:24:50] We all need to keep a pulse on that. And last but not least Rina, tell us about an AI experience that you thought was funny. Yes. So [00:25:00] basically we, I'm still doing the Watch out with your use for, with AI. Don't use it indiscriminately. Pay attention to what you're doing. And this is perfect because it is a perfect example.

[00:25:12] So Air Canada was recently ordered by a tribunal to compensate a man because its chatbot bot gave poor information. I guess this man had asked the chatbot how to organize your bereavement. Discount so that's for when people need to [00:25:30] attend funerals. There is usually a discount on some airlines excuse me and Apparently the chatbot gave him incorrect information.

[00:25:39] It sounded like fine information. So from a user's perspective, you wouldn't question It was you know, send in Your information any time up to three months and get your get your get a reimbursement check and apparently Air Canada did not honor that because it was not correct. It was not the correct procedure [00:26:00] and they were ordered and they their argument that they made in court is Was that they shouldn't be responsible for what the chat bot says.

[00:26:10] But which is ironic and I think I believe that some of it was because the information on the procedure was clearly Written on the website. So that's one thing but sometimes you think you want a person to verify what you're reading You know, but if you don't realize it's not a person what are you to do?

[00:26:29] [00:26:30] Yeah, that interesting and they're responsible for it. Are they not legally? Yeah they are now. They have been. They have been made responsible. Yeah, the idea is that you would you would teach the chatbot that, Hey, don't say these things. Read our procedure manual to make sure that you're aware of limitations.

[00:26:46] They're figuring that you would have done some training of the chatbot in order to tell it what not to do so that it doesn't put you in these positions. And we are out of time. Play with AI in the next month, guys. And let's all talk about it again. [00:27:00] And I'm so glad you're here.

[00:27:01] Shailen and Pam and Carrie. And next week is anybody, it is, Email marketing web platform is right for you with real AI. I need to watch that because I'm so frustrated. And there's been a, it's with you. No, I know it's with me. Who's with me? Oh, good. Hold on. You're doing email marketing, Greg.

[00:27:24] No. This is a follow up to previous lives. We [00:27:30] did a part one. I'm going to have to go find that. It was a huge topic. And okay. I'm going to go get that. Yeah, we needed to expand on it. So we'll do that next time. So if you haven't watched part one We'll drop that in the comments below so that you can be prepped and up to speed for part two I'll put it in the event too.

[00:27:53] So and if you're joining us on any other channel We are streaming in YouTube Facebook on our business pages [00:28:00] and we're communicating inside Cyberpunk Geeks Marketing Mixer a Facebook group Today. We got to have a good day y'all and we will see you guys next time.