Entreprenista & SEO with Newsworthy Founder Stephanie Cartin

Episode 30 –Entreprenista & SEO with Newsworthy Founder Stephanie Cartin- Podcast Transcript

 

 

SPEAKERS

Lexie Smith, Stephanie Cartin

 

Lexie Smith 

Hey guys Lexie here, travel enthusiast, lover of puns, pizza and wine connoisseur and founder of THEPRBAR inc., and you’re tuning in to the Pitchin’ and Sippin’ Podcast, from behind the scenes interviews with the media to honest conversations with other PR pros to a look at inspiring brands and entrepreneurs that are rocking the world of PR. In this podcast, we talk tips while taking sips and talking about all the things that make those in the world of PR tick. Let’s get started. An Entreprenista at heart, today’s guest, Stephanie Cartin, walked away from her corporate career in 2012. To follow her passion to launch SocialFly, a leading social first digital and influencer marketing agency based in New York City that has been named to Inc. 5000’s fastest growing private companies two years in a row. Stephanie is also the co-host of the Entreprenista Podcast and the co-founder of Entreprenista, a platform to highlight successful female founders. Also a co-author, Stephanie has shared her knowledge and expertise in Bloomberg, Forbes, Entrepreneur, Refinery29, and CheddarTV. She is also a recent recipient of the SmartCEO Brava Award, which recognizes the top female CEOs in New York and a Stevie Award for Women Run Workplace of the Year. In today’s episode, we dive into the world of entrepreneurship, how she recently launched Entreprenista’s newest membership community, the role PR has played in her career, how press affects SEO and much more. Her beverage selection is a total burst for the show. So without further ado, let’s get started. So three things happened that told me today’s guest was meant to be. One, I started listening to her podcast Entreprenista by fluke. Two,  I then immediately reached out to her publicist and wanted her to be on my podcast. And then three, about one week later, just by happenstance, I heard her as a guest on my friend show, shout out to Emily Merrell, which also double shut out she’s on this show, season one episode two plug. And upon talking to Em and hearing her personally vouch for Stephanie and how awesome she is, I just triple knew that she had to come on my show. So all that being said, Thank you, Stephanie for being here today. Clearly, I feel like it was meant to be

 

Stephanie Cartin 

it was definitely meant to be I believe in all of the science from the universe that bring people together. So I’m so excited to connect with you, Lexie, and thank you for having me on your show.

 

Lexie Smith 

Of course and I have so much I want to get into you with today but first I like to always start off the show with hearing a little bit more about you outside of work so when you’re not running your multiple empires, what is it that you do for fun?

 

Stephanie Cartin 

Oh my goodness I am a mom to a now two year old little girl, Molly Hope and I’m actually used to say almost two year old, she’s two now, she turned to this past weekend so when I am not working which I feel like you know we’re all connected to our phones now, working around the clock, but when I’m focused on not working it’s spending time with her and we recently moved to Florida last year and just spending time outdoors, getting to know our neighbors, trying some new restaurants out here, going to the beach, and just really getting to enjoy life outside. So that’s pretty much what I do for fun every moment I can with her

 

Lexie Smith 

And getting your cardio in because I know two year olds… quite a lot of chasing,

 

Stephanie Cartin 

Chasing and then the core work lifting them up now, she’s always saying mama lap mama lap, she wants to be on my lap all the time.

 

Lexie Smith 

Oh, it’s so cute. I have three nephews and niece and then a soon to be either niece or nephew on the way so they’re all within that young age. A lot of energy just went on a family vacation last week and was reminded how fun they are. But also you get your steps in that is for sure.

 

Stephanie Cartin 

Oh yes. It’s exhausting.

 

Lexie Smith 

Oh, so co founder, co host co author, you do so many things. And I know in many ways everything that you do today has been or is in some way connected. But I’d want to I want to start by going back. So before you were this badass Entreprenista, what were you doing and what happened to make you flip the switch and officially take that leap?

 

Stephanie Cartin 

Yeah, that’s a great question. And I’ll share with you, you know, Courtney and I have both done so much over the past almost 10 years in our Entreprenista journey. But, you know, I don’t believe there’s no such thing as just an overnight success. This has been many, many years of hard work in the making, and, you know, little things over time have multiplied and led to the next event. So if I, if I take you back to how it all started, I was a sophomore at Cornell University when Facebook first came out, and I remember logging on and getting this Facebook account, and back then it was called thefacebook.com. And thinking, you know, this platform is going to change everything I’m learning about in college, and I was studying sales and marketing in the hotel school at Cornell. And I just remember, like realizing like this is this is all going to change, this is going to be different. So I stayed on the forefront of everything that was happening with social media. But I went to work full time for big companies like Marriott, and then went on to work for Hilton before we started our agency SocialFly. So I did sales and marketing for Marriott down in Florida, and then was recruited by Hilton and moved up to New York City in 2000…oh my gosh, I’m losing track of this year, I’ve really lost track of time and dates. 2008 is when I moved up to New York City. And it was, you know, while I was working full time, I had friends who were starting businesses and because of my background in sales and marketing, they were reaching out to me for help with sales and marketing strategies. And I started sharing with them, you know, you have to start using social media. This is going to be the way that your brands and business is going to be able to connect with real people to grow your business. And fast forward, Courtney, my business partner and I met through a mutual friend, of course, also an Entreprenista. And we decided to partner together to start our company SocialFly, but it was initially on the side of our full time jobs. So we were running SocialFly a side hustle for about 10 months, working nights and weekends before we said, okay, if this is going to be a real business, we either need to go all in and do it or not do it at all. So we quit our corporate jobs on the same day, which was May Fourth of 2012. And we never looked back.

 

Lexie Smith 

I love that you have that date written down. That’s amazing. Such a milestone, also. The Facebook I think my mom still calls it The Facebook and The Tweeter, she can’t get Twitter down but Instagram so that’s that’s funny that that actually was what it was called.  Yeah, thefacebook.com. Yeah,  thefacebook.com. Okay, so it’s, you know, 2012 or sometime between 2008-2012 SocialFly is born May 4. No, that’s when you went full time. So born before that to side hustle, SocialFly, what is SocialFly?

 

Stephanie Cartin 

SocialFly is a full service, social media marketing and influencer agency. So we specialize in creating social media strategies for brands and then executing those strategies to help those brands achieve all of their specific goals. So we do everything from the strategic framework of the plan to creating the content, photography, video, influencer marketing, buying the paid media for brands, and we really specialize now and working with brands that are looking to reach an audience of women over the years you know, we have had mostly I would say, women employees who have gravitated to want to work for our company not all but but mostly and you know, we feel we just really know what women want and know the voice and know how to reach these women on social media. So a lot of the brands that we’ve worked with and the brands now that reach out to us to to work with them are brands that are looking to reach this specific audience.

 

Lexie Smith 

Are they pretty industry agnostic? Or do you lean towards you know, tech or hospitality? Do you have a vertical?

 

Stephanie Cartin 

Yeah, I mean, right now we actually work with a lot of brands that are looking to reach parents. So one of our clients is a company called MAM Baby, so moms and dads might know this brands they have bottles and other other other feeding products and me being a new mom and actually Kaitlyn on the SocialFly team who works in new business and marketing. She’s also a new mom, we have a lot of new moms on our team and the a lot of these brands have just organically reached out to us because as you start working with one client, I think brands see that you’re working in that industry and then they reach out and then see your expertise and and want to be part of that as well. So a lot of family focus and and mom brands,

 

Lexie Smith 

I love it. It’s kind of grown with you as you’ve grown. Which is a cool thing about being an entreprenista that is having the ability to mold your company, to the lifestyle that you’re currently in. So that’s super fun. So now we have this other thing. We’ve said it a few times. And let’s address it head on. We keep saying entreprenista. So Socialfly, did it inspire Entreprenista and what is Entreprenista?

 

Stephanie Cartin 

Yeah. So this is how Entreprenista started. The success of our agency led to so many women founders and leaders starting to reach out to us, myself and Courtney asking for advice and feedback, people wanted to go out to coffee with us to pick our brain really to learn how we were able to grow and scale our agency business. And what you’ll learn about myself and Courtney, is that we are both the type of people that like to help absolutely everyone. But we started to realize that if we were to go out to coffee with every single person that reached out to us, we would never have time to run our core business. And at the time, it was just SocialFly. So we started thinking, you know, how can we help as many women as possible, and not just share our story over and over again, over coffee, but share all of these incredible stories of women like yourself, Lexie, who are building these incredible businesses and have so much insight and advice to share. So that was our Aha, I would say, like our Aha-Oprah moment, right? Like, Oh, my gosh, we need to start a podcast and we can share these stories. So we launched our first episode of the Entreprenista podcast in November of 2018. So right at the end of the year, and it really took off from that first episode, I think for a few key reasons. I joke about the first one, of course, it took off, we run a marketing agency. So of course, we knew how to market the podcast. But really, you know, it was the story as you were sharing the content we were sharing, people wanted to consume this content and share it with others. So the first year, when we released the podcast, it started like kind of similar to how we started SocialFly, right? It was, it was on the side, we wanted to just create this platform to help all of these women, and it took on a life of its own. So last year, when everything happened with a pandemic, so many women were reaching out to us and needing more help and advice and guidance. So some women were reaching out because they had lost their jobs during the pandemic. And they wanted to start a business and be in charge of their own future and destiny and wanted some tools and resources on how to start their business. Some women are reaching out to us because they already owned a business. And now they had a storefront and needed to close their storefront needed to pivot their business to set up online shopping. And they needed help and guidance and resources. So Courtney, and I said, Oh my goodness, we need to help all of these women, we’ve already created this platform, they’re coming to us, and they’re looking to us for advice. We need to create something for them. So last year, Courtney and I decided to do what we do best, which is dividing and conquering. And we decided that I would focus on growing and scaling Entreprenista and building our community into a business that can help other business owners and have a you know, more formalized structure. And Courtney would continue to focus on growing and scaling SocialFly. So in the past year, we’ve now launched our entreprenista.com website, which is a full media site, where we feature and profile women entrepreneurs, and founders and leaders, we also have a whole resource hub on there with tools and solutions that everyone can use to grow their business, specifically with all the tools and resources that we’ve used to grow our business. And we have preferred rates at some of these companies and discounts which is really exciting. And then we launched our membership community, The Entreprenista League last month because women were reaching out looking for more connections and you know, no one was meeting in person anymore and the people wanted to network. So it’s been an exciting ride and and journey with Entreprenista, and it’s just evolved over the past few years. And I’m just so excited to be in this position to be able to help as many women as possible looking to grow and scale their business.

 

Lexie Smith 

So many things. Okay, so it sounds like it started first with the podcast. Okay, so from the podcast, then came the website and media company. Yeah, I know you also have an e-commerce branch on there. Was that kind of at the onset of the media company as well? Or when did that come?

 

Stephanie Cartin 

Yeah. So on our entreprenista.com site, we have, we have our own shop where we sell a branded merge like entreprenista swag on there. We also sell our Entreprenista DigiCards. I know for those listening, you can’t see what I’m holding up. But I’m holding up a year on each side and our other classic DigiCards. So yes, this was another business we created last year during the pandemic because we were trying to solve the problem of making our team Zoom meetings more fun and engaging. And we created these for our team and now they took off for other businesses because everyone wanted them so we sell those on our site. And then we also have a shop on our entreprenista.com  site where we feature other women founded businesses and direct to their websites and then offer promotion or discount codes to their companies as well as Entreprenista.

 

Lexie Smith 

Hey guys Lexie here interrupting the show really quick to drop a note, did you know that in a study produced by Nielsen, it was reported that PR is almost 90% more effective than advertising? Well, it is, I swear, Google it. So if you’ve been enjoying learning about all things pitching in sippin, I wanted to give you an official invite to visit my website, theprbarinc.com spelled t h e p r b a r i n c .com, to learn even more about how you might be able to work with yours truly to increase your influence, impact and revenue with PR. If you’re not sure where to start on the site, consider booking a free consultation. Alright, I’m done back to the show. I guess the question I have is, did all of these different branches kind of come about organically? Or was there a start from the beginning? Like we’re gonna do the podcast phase one, then we’re going to do the media company. Talk me through kind of that evolution? Was it organic? Was it planned? How did that kind of come about

 

Stephanie Cartin 

A combination of both, you know, the start of the podcast, it was very organic, how I shared you know, we literally couldn’t go out to coffee, physically go out to coffee with everyone who was reaching out to us. So we needed to create this platform to be able to share not only our story, but all of these stories in one place. So that’s how the podcast started. And then when things started to pick up, we knew there was something there that we would be able to build into something bigger. But Courtney and I were so focused on SocialFly and growing the agency and I was overseeing sales and marketing, Courtney was overseeing operations and finance. So it was always like this this side thing, you know, trying to build Entreprenista, but we didn’t have like a formal business plan or, or structure in place to do that, because we were so busy with with the agency. So it wasn’t until last year when there was just this real need, where women are reaching out and we’re like, okay, let’s actually stop and problem solve and brainstorm how we’re actually going to be able to, to build this and do this. And that’s when we actually made a formal plan for what the plan was going to be for Entreprenista so we could formally help more women. You know, the podcast is and was great too, as as this inspiration and tool and resource for women. But all of these women reached reaching out needed so much more. And they really needed that hands on connection and touch and, you know, direct contact with us and other people in our community. So we put together a business plan last year, and Courtney and I worked with our business coach Leslie, who has been our, our coach for many years. And we figured out how we would divide and conquer and Courtney would continue to focus on SocialFly. And I would work on building everything out with Entreprenista

 

Lexie Smith 

I think it’s very helpful to hear the breakdown of the evolution because it is just that it’s an evolution. And, you know, specially in 2020, virtual membership and networking communities are big. They’re huge. And what I’m noticing is a lot of newer business owners or people wanting to get into the entrepreneurial space, just starting there, like I want a membership community. These are big. But I think it’s important to hear that you had a lot of other things going that led you or put you in a unique position to be able to create a community. So let’s talk about the community that you created. What is it called? And what makes you a bit different?

 

Stephanie Cartin 

Yes. So our community is called The Entreprenista League, which is a private membership community for Entreprenista who are growing and scaling their businesses and are looking for a few different things. And this is where we help. So first, some and everything that we built all of the features and benefits of being part of the league. We heard as feedback from Entreprenista as of what they were looking for. And then we also combine that with all of the groups and organizations that Courtney and I had been in over the years, we took the best parts of what worked and brought that to to our community. So the first benefit is the opportunity for Entreprenista to get featured on our Instagram and also on our entrepreneurs to.com website. So something that we heard over and over again and you know, this Lexie working in the PR field as a PR coach is that it can be really hard to get pressed on your business especially when you’re first launching and to be able to you know, cut through the noise that’s out there and get in touch with the right editors and has to be the right timing and a lot of startup founders also don’t have budgets to hire you know an agency to do PR a freelancer to do PR and have to be you know, as scrappy as possible to to find those opportunities to get featured and we really want all of these women to be able to be celebrate it and have a beautiful press piece on their business because their feature on our Entreprenista platform could be that tool to help get them that next additional really big piece of press to help take their business to the next level. So all of our members get a beautiful feature on our .com website on our Instagram, they’re able to do lives with myself, and we’ll all do lives and q&a, his LinkedIn lives, whatever’s going to help grow their business. So that’s the first benefit from a PR perspective. The second is we have a private chat community. So we have a back end platform that we use for all of our members can log in and make a profile and connect with one another in our chat community. And we have different sections there. So one of the sections is in search of one of those sections is where hiring section people know people that are looking for roles and can help find people, if you’re looking for an accountant or an attorney, people can make recommendations, and then all of our live events that we’re doing our virtual live events. So a lot of the experts that Courtney and I have worked with over the years are speakers that are coming in to help guide all of the entreprenistas. And then we also rely on the Entreprenista to share with us what type of programming would be beneficial to them. And we’ll create programming around that as well. So lots of exciting things, and always developing new events and initiatives for The Entreprenista League. And I’ll conclude this by saying something that was very important to us was making a price point that was extremely accessible to entreprenista, especially those that are new in business, you know, one to three years in business and might not have, you know, large budgets to join some of these other communities that are very expensive, we did not want to be a community that people felt like they couldn’t join because of financial constraints. So right now our founding member pricing is $27 a month, which is 324 for the year is our founding members special, it might go up just a bit after that, but it will never be at a price point that will that will break the bank. And the final tip I can share is it’s a business expense. So everyone can write it off.

 

Lexie Smith 

Great, right. Yeah, no, it totally is. $27 is incredibly accessible. So I think that’s amazing. And there’s so much value. One thing that I’ve talked about on this podcast, and I talked with my clients is the power of community, and how growing your community and tapping into communities and networking is a form of PR. So that’s how it kind of relates to what we talked about on the show. Because you are an entreprenista marketing, social media genius guru, I’m curious, you know, and you just launched this community, was there any kind of fun or unique ways that you launched that has helped you kind of stand out? And you know, a market that is, is getting increasingly more saturated?

 

Stephanie Cartin 

Yes, absolutely. Well, I think everything comes back to real, meaningful personal connections. So we know when we launched, of course, you know, we already have a nice audience on Instagram, on our Entreprenista’s Instagram. And also Courtney and I have been, you know, building our audience over the years, and we build like real, meaningful, genuine connection. So I share a lot of what’s going on in my life, behind the scenes in my business, my daughter, so and I genuinely enjoy connecting with people. So when we shared like a teaser that we were launching, and I asked people to, you know, DM me if they’d be interested in being the first to know when we’re officially live. So we cultivated that initial list of people who were going to be like our initial members and brands of ambassadors and evangelists. So that was something that that definitely helped. And then another another strategy, we’ll talk about, like tactics on social media that works for for audience building. And also if you’re, you know, selling products on on Instagram is dming people. So if someone follows you sending them a DM, after they follow you and actually build meaningful, valuable real connections and get to know people, I can tell you a lot of our new members had, you know, just started following us. And we started a conversation in DMS, and then they joined The Entreprenista League so you can really build real meaningful connections through Instagram and through DM,

 

Lexie Smith 

yeah. Are you guys predominantly as Entreprenista on Instagram, or is there another, you know, are you doing the Facebook thing, clubhouses a thing now? Tick Tock?

 

Stephanie Cartin 

we’re doing we’re doing it all. I mean, our Instagram audience, I would say is our largest audience, but we do have a public weekly Clubhouse room that we do call The Entreprenista Lunch Bunch Club, and it’s funny, like, I’ll tell you how the name came. I was. I remember like in fourth grade, being the school guidance counselor had something called lunch bunch and I always wanted to be to get picked to be in lunchtime. Go to her office and have lunch there. And that has always stuck with me over the years. So when I was thinking of a name for what our entreprenista club would be called, I’m like, oh, why don’t we do something during lunchtime? We’ll just call it like, oh, the Lunch Bunch Club.

 

Lexie Smith 

I love I love that. So good. I mean, you’re talking to someone whose entire business is one big pond pretty much any play on words. I am here for it. And I think it’s fun because as I’m doing air quotes, adults, right, we use the word lunch and learn a lot. Let’s go back lunch bunch. I think that’s

 

Stephanie Cartin 

A lunch bunch. So yeah, we have entreprenistas and founders on every week, and we do a q&a with the founder. And then we invite everyone who’s in the audience and Clubhouse to come on stage introduce themselves, even if they don’t have a question like, just come up, introduce yourself, this is a great place to network, make connections meet each other. So that’s been super exciting. So you can find us over on Clubhouse at Entreprenista and, and join our lunch bunches.

 

Lexie Smith 

Lots of different ways to to join. And don’t worry, everyone, I will ask her in a bit where you can go to find all the information. And of course, we’ll link everything in the show notes. But I do want to talk, I want to shift gears a little bit. And talk about press a bit more. And specifically, the role press may or may not have played in your journey. So you’ve been featured as an expert in many places, such as Bloomberg, Forbes, Entrepreneur, Refinery29, CheddarTV, amongst others, my question is, have been able to list these outlets, you know, in your bio, on your site, done anything for you in your career? And you know, yes or no, and if yes or no, you know how so?

 

Stephanie Cartin 

So I wouldn’t say it’s the fact of just being able to list them and our bio, that’s, that’s done anything. It’s actually the power of SEO, when you and also the power of perception too when you are featured in some of these outflow outlets and what that does to your credibility. So if I take you back to, I think it was 20. Was it 2012 or 2013. And like, right, when we first started the business, that’s actually when Courtney and I were featured on Bloomberg. So we had made a connection through another Entreprenista of course, to a PR firm that was in Texas. And again, this is going back many years, Courtney and I are just starting out, this PR firm was just starting out and we said okay, why don’t we see if we can help each other we’ll help you with your social media, if you can help us get some some press. And within that first week, she landed us a spot on Bloomberg live TV, and we’re like, oh my god. And it was like our first live TV interview where they’re in the studio it was with take Taking Stock with Pimm Fox, but actually he was out so it was a someone who was was filling in Courtney and I are in this live studio. Like I remember our hearts are pounding like what are we doing when we literally just quit our jobs? Like, should we like, you know, you have imposter syndrome? Like should we be out there like talking about all this stuff that we’re doing and you know what you do it because it’s not that I want to say like fake it till you make it. But kind of like you have to position yourself as a thought leader, you have to put yourself out there, when things are uncomfortable, like keep going like that’s when you’re learning and that’s when you’re growing. So and this is coming from someone with a theater, musical theater background used to performing and big onstage, but boy was I nervous in that production studio at Bloomberg. And just being able to, you know, have that clip and show we’re on Bloomberg gave that instant credibility and validity to what we were doing as social media experts. And then from there, you know, over the years, a lot of our press happened organically. Through SEO people would find our website and would just reach out to us for quotes or to, to come and talk on shows and a lot of our like pieces on Refinery29. I remember an editor reached out to us and some other some other media platforms as well. We have worked with some PR firms and freelancers over the years who have helped us to, but a lot of what we have done has really just been organic by one thing leading to the next

 

Lexie Smith 

Amazing. SEO. Let’s dig into that a little bit more. And this actually is going to bring us back to DigiCard. Let’s start there. What is DigiCards so that everyone knows what we’re talking about before I get into the nitty gritty question.

 

Stephanie Cartin 

Yes. Okay, so DigiCards are these colorful cardboard cards we’ll call them with different sayings on them like your unmute, yes, no Thumbs up, thumbs down brb. 10 minutes left. And these cars… and they come in a pack of beautiful little pack and they can actually be branded now with with different companies and cards can be customized for your company or for yourself. And these came to be because last year when we pivoted our agency and started working remotely. Our we noticed that our teams Zoom meetings with like 30 people on them Courtney and I would ask a question and no one would ever respond. Everyone was on mute, and no one wanted to jump in and have a conversation. So Courtney and I got off a Zoom call, I think it was in early April. We’re like, what can we do to make these meetings more fun? And Courtney was like, this is all her idea. She’s like, what if we had these like colorful, like cue cards for meetings to make people want to interact with each other. And that’s when the brainstorm started. And we worked with one of our team members on our team to help design all of these cards. And then we called our friend and Frank who actually gave us our first free office space in Manhattan, because we bartered for space with him when we first started. And we didn’t get into that story. But all roads lead back to your initial connections when you first started business. So Frank, is a printer, and he has an awesome printing company in Manhattan. So we sent him the files, and he printed the cards and made all of these packs of cards for our team. And we tested them out with our internal SocialFly team. And they were working our team meetings got, you know, super fun, we were laughing, they were more engaging. And we started showing these to some of our friends who have businesses. They’re like, Oh, I want those for my team. And then we show them to someone else. I want this for my team. And then we had an order from AT&T, we had an order from other big companies, and it just started to, to take off. So that was another business that kind of again, like, happened organically, but then we actually had to put together a real plan.

 

Lexie Smith 

Right? Okay, so I didn’t know you were behind DigiCards, but I’ve seen digit cards, which is super cool power of PR right there. So it was really fun. As I was kind of doing my background research for this show today to learn that I was like, let’s just add that to her long list of amazing things. But what I want to talk about specifically, again, shout out Miss Emily Merrell to her show, cuz I was listening to this. And you shared a story that I was like, Oh, my PR peeps need to hear this on Pitchin’ and Sippin’, and it is surrounding you getting on to a very large TV show, and the things that did and did not happen. So let’s start with what show were you on? And how did you get on that show?

 

Stephanie Cartin 

Yes. So I wasn’t physically on the show. But our DigiCards were featured on Ryan and Kelly. And this was back, I’ve lost track of time. So I forget what month this was, maybe it was May late, it was last summer sometime. So we find out that they’re interested in featuring our cards on the show. And we’re so excited. And it is very exciting, right? Because you have this huge show that has national reach and millions of viewers. And Ryan and Kelly are like actually using these DigiCards and talking about them on the show. So you would think that, okay, you have this big feature on this national show, and everyone knows Ryan Seacrest, and Kelly Ripa sales are just gonna skyrocket and go through the roof. Well, that doesn’t happen if they don’t mention the name of your product and there’s no link back to your website of where someone can find it. And because this product, like Courtney and I are always typically like ahead of everything that happens in the world, like we’re always coming up with stuff, like first, that’s typically tends to be our thing. So it wasn’t like you could go to Google and put in like virtual meeting cue cards or like that search volume isn’t really there yet, because this is such a new product. So short, did we get a couple of sales from it? Absolutely. But it’s not like you know, that Oprah moment where you get mentioned in the name of your product is mentioned. And your website is mentioned. And you have like, you know, millions of orders if they don’t mention your product name, or website doesn’t help as much,

 

Lexie Smith 

doesn’t help as much. And I know we can pull out silver linings like you can still say you’re on the show, and it’s still amazing, but it hurts my heart for you guys. I can just imagine I can very much imagine being in that that moment. And having that happen. What I want to pick out from that is backlink and this could literally be an entire episode. So we won’t stay here long. But it’s actually a topic I haven’t talked about in great detail on the show and how backlinks are a part of PR, which then relate to SEO. So maybe the question just to be wary of time is how important are backlinks to your SEO? And how can you get a backlink?

 

Stephanie Cartin 

Yeah, backlinks are extremely important. And what that means is let’s say you’re mentioned on a Refinery29 and they mentioned Stephanie Cartin, co-founder of SocialFly and Entreprenista, you want to be sure that the word SocialFly, the word Entreprenista has that hyperlink that goes back to your website because well Google is looking for is other sites signaling that your website is credible. And those type of signals are very important to Google when it comes to search engine optimization, which is we call SEO. So this is something that Courtney and I knew Very early on when we first started our agency, and why getting press and specifically, links back to our site, and on some of these outlets was extremely important. And even to this day, when we get you know, mentioned in press, we’re always saying to the reporter or the writer, can you be sure that you link back to SocialFly, can you be sure that you link back to Entreprenista? And then, of course, when the media hat comes out, and there’s not a link, they’re reaching back out again and asking again, and look, they can’t always do it. And sometimes there’s rules of editorial and they won’t do it. But you always should ask.

 

Lexie Smith 

Yeah, agreed. And, you know, here everyone listening, my promise to you, I’m going to hold myself accountable here. I will do a full episode on this because there’s a lot of nuances I want to say, you know, make sure you also get a follow link, not a nofollow link and all the different weights of technical SEO, but I think the good takeaway for today is press can land do some really powerful backlinks. And that’s something that you should be going for, for PR. So we’ll end that note there. And I have a fun question for you that I always like to ask on this podcast. You know, we’ve talked a lot of things pitchin now I want to learn what we can find you sipping, so what is your favorite beverage? It can be alcoholic or non alcoholic of course.

 

Stephanie Cartin 

Yes. Okay. Well my go to drink now is from a place called Raw Juice. And I believe it’s a chain there’s one here in Palm Beach Gardens and I get the ABJ Smoothies. And I think it’s an addiction.

 

Lexie Smith 

Okay, ABJ Smoothies. What is the ABJ?

 

Stephanie Cartin 

I think it’s almond butter and jelly. Oh, what it stands for I believe I should look that up but I’m pretty sure

 

Lexie Smith 

that’s like a pb&j but like an ABG

 

Stephanie Cartin 

I believe that’s what it stands for.  I will I will look that up and double unconfirmed That is correct. So it is delicious. And that reminds me I’m like I have to reach out to Raw Juce and see all I do is talk about them post about them on social media. Like I need to see if they want to partner together because I am their number one biggest fan.

 

Lexie Smith 

That’s I feel you I have a seltzer company called Flying Embers. I don’t know if it’s made it out to the east coast, but I talk about them left, right and center. And I had that thought recently. I’m like, I’m like a natural hype girl. Maybe I should truly reach out to them. So

 

Stephanie Cartin 

yes, and you know what? I used to be addicted to Starbucks coffee. I don’t really drink Starbucks at all anymore. And I was always so excited. Oh, I broke my Starbucks addiction. It’s gonna save a lot of money. Then I had developed my ABJ Smoothies addiction and that’s expensive, which is not good. So

 

Lexie Smith 

Right. I Starbucks you know, I remember little Lexie living in LA barely affording rent yet she still somehow managed to buy that $5 latte every day. No sense, but the things we do we find we find the money okay, that’s that’s ABJ Smoothie from Raw Juce. Or I  holly Molly ABJ Smoothie from Raw Juce. Okay, awesome. Last question. We talked about SocialFly, Entreprenista, DigiCards, you know, you have a podcast, where can everyone go to learn about all things, Stephanie and all the amazing things that you do?

 

Stephanie Cartin 

Oh my gosh, you’re so sweet. So the best place to connect with me directly personally is on my Instagram or LinkedIn. So on Instagram on @stephjillcartin, STEPH JILL CARTIN and same on LinkedIn as well, you can definitely send me a connection on LinkedIn, I’d love to connect with you. And then Entreprenista on Instagram is @entreprenistas E n t r e p r e n i s t a s and SocialFly at @socialfly. And you can join The Entreprenista League community that website is entreprenista.com/join. And then our .com entreprenista is of course entreprenista.com and then socialflyny.com to learn more about our social media services. And finally DigiCards is hellodigicards.com.

 

Lexie Smith 

Guys, don’t worry. I will put all these in the show notes. So just wherever you’re listening, tap on the screen. And there’s all the things but Stephanie, thank you so much. I really appreciate you taking the time out of your day. I know you’ve a million things going on. But I was so excited to bring you on and introduce you to my community and I’m just Yeah, thank you for coming and I hope you have a fabulous rest of your day.

 

Stephanie Cartin 

Thanks for having me. And so so great to meet everyone.

 

Lexie Smith 

Hey guys, if you are enjoying the Pitchin’ and Sippin’ podcast, please do me a huge favor and leave a review wherever you are listening. If you want to connect with me to learn more about THEPRBAR inc., You can do so on Instagram @theprbar_inc or you can check out my website at theprbarinc.com. Cheers