Protecting Your Privacy on Social Media with Lanie Lamarre

Intro (00:11):
Welcome to The Savvy Social Podcast, the show that blends stories and strategies to help businesses create engaged and profitable online communities using the unique power of social media. And now, your host, Andréa Jones.

Andréa Jones (00:29):
Lanie, welcome back to the podcast.

Lanie Lamarre (00:33):
It's always you're one of my favorite people to talk to, which is why I harass you on Voxer all the time about gossipy stuff aboutt the RuPauls and the tarot cards and stuff,

Andréa Jones (00:43):
<Laugh>, oh, yes. We get into it. I love it. I love it. And I'm super excited to have you here today because, you know, if social media changes so freaking fast, and I have a lot of questions that I wanna just pick your brain about very publicly with our 10,000 listeners. So here we go. Here we go, here we go. So a question that we've been getting is all about social media and how, you know, it's this free resource, but does that mean we are the product? Like, how, how is that possible? Can you tell us about how social media sites use us as the product?

Lanie Lamarre (01:23):
Right. so absolutely, yes, you are the product. We all are the product. For companies like the Facebook, which owns Instagram, the, the Meta Universe, there's a reason why they have the highest sort of revenue of, of other companies and the Googles and all the people who are collecting information about you and then reselling it to advertisers that makes you the product.

(01:49):
Now there's a lot of changes happening right now. You've probably noticed, you know, every website you go on has these cookie banners now. And if you're running ads, for instance, on social media, you notice that you are targeting has become less specific perhaps, or maybe options that you had before aren't available anymore. It's because we are starting to put regulation in place. I say we, the, the whole world <laugh>. But depending on where you're coming from, there are different data regulations and privacy regulations that will govern how data should be treated. But the overall consensus is that we need more boundaries. We need to be able to have a little bit more control over our personal information and identity online. And so you're starting to see these sorts of changes take place where these companies aren't able to access as much information as they could about you before.

(02:42):
The same thing goes for you, by the way, as a marketer, you Andrea, but also you, the listeners anyone who is involved in marketing, you'll notice that, oh, my numbers aren't as accurate. My open rates on my emails aren't you know, clocking the way they used to. My analytics aren't the way they used to. Things aren't as accurate. It's not so much that things aren't as accurate. It's that there's more awareness around how much data is being collected, and there are boundaries being put in place and legislation protecting people. And also people are just sorting to take control of their own online identity. So you have more people blocking ads, you have people blocking tracking cookies. Cookies are are what allow people to be tracked online. People are using VPNs, things that just block being able to see where people are going online, how their behavior is where they came from, things like that.

(03:36):
So you can expect to see a whole lot more boundaries being put in place, which is why it's all the more important for all of us as marketers to take more control over how we are tracking. Because to a certain extent, we've all relied on the Facebooks and the Googles and whatnot to actually put the tracking in place for us. So we're able to go into our reports and see, oh, this person came from this link and this person came from that link. Those sorts of not freedoms, that's the wrong word, but are those sorts of privileges that have been granted to those companies to be able to put that tracking in place on your behalf because they're benefiting from it. Right. that's going to be minimized, and you're going to have to take more control over how you're tracking your promotional efforts.
Andréa Jones (04:29):
Oh, interesting. So as a user then, how do I kind of protect myself? Is it like, like, like, like you said, blocking ads and things? So how do I, how do I know what data is being collected from me by the social media sites?

Lanie Lamarre (04:47):
Isn't like that. Term is one of my pet peeves with the, like, users we, it it's maybe drug dealers and you know, like who calls? I get it. It's someone who uses a product. I get it. Yeah. Yeah. And it's just the kinda slimy to me, I'm always like, when you have, so there's privacy compliant analytics software that you can use things like plausible or Fathom, and they refer to their users as visitors, and I like that so much better because it just kind of, it's a little bit more human right, as opposed to being user.

(05:23):
But that's, that's totally a pet peeve of mine. And it's not it's not a real problem, Liz. We, we, we call each other users online, but it kind of removes the humanity of things, right? Yeah. And I think that's at the core of what you are saying in terms, how do you protect yourself from being treated as a statistic, being treated as information that can be exploited, essentially. One of the top things I would say, before you even look at the companies themselves who are collecting your information, please turn on your two-factor authentication because it's not just the companies. It's being able, the being the bankers who can access your accounts, who can start charging things to your accounts, who can be collecting things like email addresses and phone numbers, and all kinds of stuff that you may have stored in your social media accounts.

(06:21):
Being able to access your ad accounts that has your credit card attached to it in spending. This is not an unheard of thing to do. So the best thing you can do for starters, is the big picture of things. Turn on your two factor authentication to protect your identity, your, your account, your actual profile from being hacked. The other thing would be to minimize how much personal information you're actually putting on there. So if you don't need your credit card put into your account, don't put it anything that you don't need to be putting into to a platform, don't do it. I mean, it's one of those things where it can be more convenient, but you also have to mitigate the risk, especially the more accounts you have, the more risk there is of having that information accessed.

Andréa Jones (07:10):
Yes. I think sometimes we think that we're protected because, you know, we had to create an account with a username and a password so it's safe, you know?

Lanie Lamarre (07:20):
Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>.

Andréa Jones (07:20):
And if we sent our, you know, personal information through a direct message, but if a hacker gets that information, like a credit card or like a social insurance number I don't know if direct messages are that safe because anybody can access that information. It's actually quite scary. I've had several clients who've been hacked. One of my mentees got hacked. Someone instagramed her as her client asking for information, and she didn't realize her client's account had gotten hacked. So she gave them that information, thinking it was her client, and yeah, then her account got hacked. It was a whole mess. It was a mess. It's wild how this can happen to people.

Lanie Lamarre (08:06):
It really is. And you can acc access, if you get into an account, you can access and download all of the conversations that happened in those DMs.

(08:13):
So if you're doing something like sharing a password with your va, for instance, in your dms suddenly people would have access to that information. Anything like you said, when you have a client who's asking for information, any of those sort of personal information sensitive type things should never be shared in those dms. Share it on another platform that's a little bit more secure than your social media. Keep in mind also that all of the information that you're inputting into your DMs is being harvested and used by that platform to better target you or other people who are in your in your circles. So anything that you are posting on there is what you are being essentially targeted with that. I mean, I, I like targeting as much as the next person when I'm looking for a white tank top and I'm wanting to see the white tank tops that are available to me, I sure do like that targeting, right?

(09:11):
But there's a time in place for what you want to be targeted for. For instance, you don't wanna be putting health information, you don't want to be putting too much. You know, when the, the, the prompts of who was your, what was your grandfather's name and what, like those sorts of things. You can, you, you wanna minimize how much of that type of information that you're sharing.

Andréa Jones (09:34):
Yeah, I've seen those posts. I mean, you know, there the certain demographic of people on Facebook who love to, you know, share like the address that they grew up at or their first car. And these are all like, security question answers. Like, do not share this information? Yeah. Anywhere. Yeah. but it, yeah, it's, so, it feels fun in the moment, but it could be really dangerous. So you mentioned too looking at the sites themselves.
(10:02):
I know how you personally feel about TikTok, but can you share with our audience, you know, some of the challenges, especially with data and TikTok?

Lanie Lamarre (10:11):
So, TikTok, I love TikTok. It's a great way to sudden wonder where the last hour went, right? And that's how I got sucked into it. And I like everybody else, and then I started using the platform to post, and I started educating myself as to how the information is being used. I don't wanna put it out there like scary oogie boogie stuff that it is the the end all and be all of the worst, you know, platforms with how they're using your data. They are not, they're using your data the same way everybody else is. They're not any worse than Facebook, but I got off of TikTok again to mitigate risk. I don't need more out there.

(10:55):
I'm just going to live it. My, I'm going to limit my exploitation to just one platform, please, and thank you. So it's just Instagram for me for now because I don't feel that it's worth it for me to be on TikTok. That's my personal choice. However, the conversation around this right now is around the fact that the company is owned by Byte Dance, which is a Chinese owned company, which means the Chinese government, based on their legislation, would have access to all of the data. That means all of your dms all of your videos, whether they're drafts and or not, there's some argument as to whether TikTok actually has access. And they have done, they have had this in the past. So just because they say they're accessing one thing doesn't mean they might not be sort of pushing that boundary a little further.

(11:42):
And it's been shown that it appears that they are tracking all of what you're typing into your keyboard. Apparently that's not happening anymore, but, so any text message you sent off of the TikTok platform, for instance, was being tracked by the TikTok app. This is according to all these different researchers. So I encourage you to do your own research as to what is being collected and what you're comfortable with. But there is, I don't think there's a lot of talk about TikTok being banned. Some schools are banning it and because of, well, and a lot of federal entities are banning it because of this Chinese owned issue, let's call it. But I don't think it's going to be banned. I really think that it's going to further push the regulation necessary for all of these apps. What are you collecting being transparent about what is being collected?

(12:37):
Because there's a significant lack of transparency and you keep finding all of these apps, not just TikTok. I know it's the easy one to pick on right now, but if you start doing your research, a lot of these apps are collecting all kinds of information that they're not being transparent about how they're collecting it, what they're doing with that information, where it's being stored, how long it's being stored who it's being shared with. You're even seeing companies right now, like the Bay and the, there's a big thing in, in the news right now where these companies like is it Petco or something like that, where they were actually sharing customer information with Facebook, not just the email addresses that we have been putting into Facebook, but actual spending habits and things along those lines. So transparency, I really do see that this is going to be the year, or at least maybe it's just hopes, but I, I feel like this is going to be the year where we're gonna start understanding a lot more and seeing a lot more about how our information is being used.

(13:36):
Those cookie banners I mentioned earlier that, you know, you have to keep, manage my preferences as to how I'm being tracked on this website. We're seeing those because it's an awareness thing of being like, oh, you are entitled to knowing how you're information is being used. When I say you're entitled, it depends on where you're from. If you're European, Europeans have more privacy and data, privacy rights than the rest of the world does. But I really do think everyone's sort of playing catch up to, to that and advancing the cause of knowing what's happening to your personal information.

Andréa Jones (14:12):
I find it so fascinating, the liberty some of these apps take, I kind of get tunnel vision sometimes. I'm like, it'll work itself out. That's my toxic positivity shining on through. Yeah. but it, it's scary sometimes, like the amount of data, and I know TikTok is taking the heat right now.

Lanie Lamarre (14:33):
Absolutely.

Andréa Jones (14:33):
The shiny new thing. But I like that you mentioned that other apps are doing this too. And we just have to be mindful and the awareness piece of like, how are these apps using our data when them being in the news is kind of forcing them to be more transparent with what they're doing. Like tracking our text messages. That's wild. That is not okay for any app.

Lanie Lamarre (15:01):
Wait, you're giving them access to your photo album? Are you just giving them access to the photo that you select, or is it your full photo album? It's your full photo album. So it's everything that's in there. Yeah, it's, it's so big, you know, but I thi I feel like we're gonna be looking back a few years from now being like, oh wow, we were rookie mistakes, huh? Just because you don't know what you don't know.

(15:27):
And things started moving forward so fast and companies started taking the liberties that, let's be honest, nobody was stopping them because we didn't know any better. And I really feel like as we the public know better I think that we will demand better. And people who are listening to you, they're marketers, so they are people who know better than just the general public. And even there, it's a huge education part of, of just bringing awareness and transparency to people who are already in the know. So what is happening, you know, a level below where people who may not really understand how the online world works in terms of tracking and apps and accesses how it all goes down.

Andréa Jones (16:13):
Yeah. Oh, fascinating. Ooh. Scary and fascinating. I love this. Alright, <laugh>, we're gonna take a quick break. When we come back, I wanna talk a little bit more about looking at social media data and then also I wanna ask a few questions about ChatGPT cuz that's a hot topic. So we'll be right back.

(16:34):
[Podcast Ad break] This conversation about artificial intelligence is just the tip of the iceberg, my friend. And in the Savvy Social School, we're going deep into all things AI. So I wanna give you an invitation to come on in and join us. For example, if you wanna learn more about the different prompts that you can give ChatGPT so that it gives you more and more refined content ideas. That's a resource we're adding into the school as I speak. And also, if you wanna learn more about how to input data into ChatGPT and have it spit back out the exact things that you want it to, that's also a new resource we just added in The Savvy Social School. We also have so much more support in the school from our weekly co-working sessions, our trend reports, our live classes, tons of courses on topics like TikTok, Facebook, and Instagram, and so much done for you. Content, captions, written for you, graphics designed for you, videos edited for you, all included in your membership at the Savvy Social School. So come on in and join us. I'll see you there. Bye for now. [Podcast Ad break]

(17:49):
Okay, we're back. Stop. Tell me Lanie, you know, you're like the data person. I was actually talking with one of my mentees recently and she name dropped you and didn't realize that we know each other. She was like, you've gotta listen to Lanie. Oh my gosh, I'm suffering up for your name. <Laugh>. She was like, you gotta listen to Lady Lamar's podcast because she goes into all of the details about data. Did you know all of this about Google Analytics? I was like, oh, I know <laugh>, I know <laugh>.

Lanie Lamarre (18:20):
Did you know? Yeah, <laugh>, that's the thing about it too, kid. Like, I don't want this to be an oogie, boogie, scary conversation. I know. I keep sort of harping on that. It, this is doesn't the things that you don't know are scary. When you know them and you face them, they become a whole lot less scary.

(18:38):
So I don't want it to be data is, it's great, it's great to use to make informed decisions, but you don't need all the data. All the data doesn't matter. Like Google Analytics is a great example where it clicks something like it, oh, it's like over 500 data points. I can't name 500 data points, right? But it's collecting all that information. Now I know what information that I would need to make a decision, a data-driven decision. You can think of some data points that you would need to make a data-driven decision. You know, did they land on this page? Did they do this when they got there? What happened next? Those sorts of specific questions in, in understanding what data you actually need as opposed to just collecting and hoarding all the information. Is, is the key to being properly data driven in a responsible way?

Andréa Jones (19:29):
Yes. And I think that too. Like I look at something like Google Analytics and I'm so embedded in it that I'm probably gonna continue using it. And also I'm gonna educate myself on what, what are the downsides? What, what risks am I putting my clients at by continuing to use this data, you know, what are the implications? So I do think it's important to know all of that so that you go into it with eyes wide open, so to speak. Yeah, <laugh>, mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. but when it comes to social media data, I find that my conversations with my clients and students, it can be challenging to actually know, you know, how is this successful? How is this actually impacting my business? So from a data expert perspective, can you talk a little bit about that?

Lanie Lamarre (20:19):
Yeah, it's great to frame it the way you have as well.

(20:23):
Where, how do I know if it's working well, you have to back it up. And you don't start by looking at the data, you started looking, what are you doing? What are you focused on? Are you like, let's say reels for instance is where you've been investing your time. You really wanna know if that's working. You hone in on those data points, you hone in on your reels data and you start looking at those numbers specifically. Again, all the data doesn't matter all the time, it's just the data that reflects where your efforts are at right now. So you might have some overall data points that you look at those, just keeping your eye on those followers and, and seeing sort of what that growth rate is. Just keeping track of that. But when you're actually going to make a decision as to what you're going to do, honing in on the actions you've taken, what your expectations are from those actions, and then looking at the numbers that will reflect whether your expectations were met is how you can not feel so overwhelmed with all of the things you could be looking at, just looking at what you're doing.

Andréa Jones (21:30):
Yeah, I like that. And I think it starts with the social media platforms. I know sometimes we go straight to, you know, sales or website traffic, but going straight to the source Instagram reels data. Are you doing this yourself? Cuz I know you're kind of, you're playing around with Instagram reels. I see you're, you, you're getting creative with it. I love it. Talk to me about like your whole process in this.

Lanie Lamarre (21:53):
So I have a membership membership to get data driven, but I use that's what I'm really creating most of my content in right now. And I'll take little snippets of the content that I'm creating for my members and create reels or stories out of those so that I'm not reinventing the wheel, trying to create all kinds of different content. Look, I'm already creating great content for my members, so why don't I just show the people on social media what's happening over there?

(22:22):
That's my thought process behind it. And that's how I wanna treat social media. I see social media the expectation with social media is that you're going to have all these conversions coming from social media. And in my experience, this is not what I see. It is, social media is rarely going to be your top converter to sales. But it is where you build that awareness. It's where you build that engagement. It's where you make people aware of what you're doing. It is your billboard of what your offers are essentially. So I've really reframed how I'm using and seeing social media as being that it's just a billboard for what is behind the scenes of what I actually have to offer. So that's my content strategy right now, just taking what I'm already creating and making little billboards out of them.

Andréa Jones (23:13):
I love the billboard analogy.

(23:14):
I think it's great. And you know what same things for my business, y'all. I know I say this a lot, but I, it, it bears repeating in that most of my sales come from email marketing. Like even though I am a social media person I also repeat, I'm a repeat outfit person on social media. Like there's nothing new there. I've said it all somewhere else before. And it's a great awareness tool for me. It helps grow my audience, it helps me meet new people, but most of those new people sign up for my email list and then hang out with me for six months before they buy anything. And I think that's important to know from a data perspective as well. You know, what role does social media play in your business so that you can effectively use it as a tool, grow your business instead of expecting things that it's not, you know, going to give your specific business model.

Lanie Lamarre (24:10):
Do you feel that people's ex how do you feel about what people's expectations are of what their results will be out of their presence on social media?

Andréa Jones (24:22):
Yeah, I think it's a little bit like the person who like goes to New York City to make it big. You know, like they're like, I'm gonna be a Broadway star and they're working at Chili's, you know, like nothing against or Chili's. But sometimes we think that we're going to be popular, right? And that's the expectation instead of growing our business and making money. Yeah. and so social media can make you popular and it can grow your business. And sometimes those things happen at the same time, but most times most of my clients are, you know, Broadway star level popular. They're your average person using social media as a tool to grow their business. I think sometimes that little dose of reality is helpful, but most people think they're going to go viral and going viral doesn't necessarily mean it's gonna help or hurt you.

(25:15):
And can, but doesn't necessarily mean you're gonna have the best business ever if you do. And I think chasing that can be very dangerous.

Lanie Lamarre (25:22):
Going viral also doesn't mean sales, it just means you're popular. Like, there's a difference between being popular and making sales. And something I think that people forget when they're using social media is they're, you have people complaining, oh, the algorithm and then people aren't seeing me. And you know, the social media platforms are screwing us over. I'm not screwing you over. They're monetizing you. That is their business model. You are there to make them money. They are not there to accommodate you, to promote you, to grow you. They are there to make money off of you and your followers. And it's, it's a business just like you're running a business. So to maybe not take it so personally when you're not doing well because it's, it's all, it's just business.

(26:06):
It's not personal at all.

Andréa Jones (26:08):
Yeah. Yeah. Have you heard this update where TikTok manually inflated views of like certain influencers?

Lanie Lamarre (26:17):
Yeah, I heard that. I heard that.

Andréa Jones (26:20):
So what it's like reinforcing what you just talked about, like their goal is to keep certain people on the app so that they can make more money at the end of the day, like yes, the, the algorithm wants attention and the average person, if you create great content and it gets attention, it, you will get more attention, the better the content is and what resonates with people. And also we can't forget that we are playing in someone else's playground and we're playing by their rules. So Absolutely. Their rules go unfortunately.

Lanie Lamarre (26:50):
Absolutely. And when you find it difficult to be exporting data, for instance, from these platforms, that's the reason why it's their data. It's not yours.

(26:58):
They own that data. Yeah. Not you.

Andréa Jones (27:01):
Yes. Definitely. Oh, I wanna talk about exporting data because you have a very interesting use case of this using artificial intelligence specifically ChatGPT. So you export data and then you get AI to like work its magic. Tell me about it.

Lanie Lamarre (27:18):
Yeah, it's what all the cool kids are talking about, right? ChatGPT. And the first thing I wanted to do when I started playing with it is like, how do I train it to tell me what my best data driven decision is? Because that's sort of the hangup I see with people a lot where they, they're like, okay, all these numbers, now what, what do I do with them? How do I know where the trends and patterns are? How do I figure out what to do next? And I've, I've found some fun use cases where you can download your YouTube data or this isn't social media, but Google search console, anything where you're using a title and importing that into ChatGPT now you can't import spreadsheets.

(27:59):
So it is a little bit of a, a workaround, the copy and paste, but you put that in there and the magic happens in the prompts. I always say that the creative business owners are the ones who are the best at getting data driven because they ask the best questions, they come out with the most out of the box kind of solutions to things they think way more creatively than, than analytical people do. And therefore the results, the expectations, the solutions they come up with are so much better. So with chatty pt, the magic really is in the question asking in the prompts that you give it. So you know, you upload your information, then you start with, okay, give me 10 topics, 10 new topics to create videos on or whatever it is. And then it'll give you 10 topics and then you can say elaborate on the second one cuz the second one looked interesting to you.

(28:51):
And you can ask it to give you eight points so that you can create a Instagram carousel out of it. You can ask it to write you a 45 second script for your Instagram reels and add a call to action to click the link in the bio at the end. Like it can do all of the work for you in terms of writing your content in your captions and your actual script. So being able to find those creative ways to use them is, is it's fun. It's, it kind of makes you more creative in a way where it gives you an idea and then you can just roll with it. Cuz it'll only do about 80% of it for you. You still have to put your own brand and your own input and your own research by the way, because ChatGPT is not, it doesn't give you the sources where it got this information from.

(29:39):
So you can't treat it like gospel. You do have to, you do have some responsibility to verify your information, but yeah, it's a fun tool to start playing with and you start thinking of other things that you're like, oh yeah, I could go down this rabbit hole that you might not have thought of on your own, which I think is really interesting. It does have its limitations to, in terms of the more you play with it, the more you see the same prompts coming up and you're like, okay, all right, I got it <laugh>. But yeah, it's a, it's great to, to explore.

Andréa Jones (30:09):
Yeah. You know, I'm actually kind of good that it has limitation. Like I'm glad it has limitations cuz my first thought was like, oh no, the robots are taking over. This is the end of the world <laugh>. Like, like this is where they go, oh, humans are bad, let's get rid of them all.

Lanie Lamarre (30:23):
Yeah.

Andréa Jones (30:24):
So I like seeing the limitations that it's bumping up against, but it's funny that you say that about sourcing as well. Like, oh, the robots can be wrong, you know, so it's just telling, it's like regurgitating information, but it could be regurgitating the wrong information anyways.

Lanie Lamarre (30:41):
And it's not making any qualms about it. Like it tells you on the first page limitations, big bold letters. Like it's not fine print. And it's like, we might be wrong. This might have incorrect or bias information. I like, I like that transparency. I'm a big fan of it. Now what they're doing with what you put into ChatGPT, again, don't ever put personal information into ChatGPT, don't put addresses and names and email addresses or IP addresses even. Like, these are not things that you put into ChatGPT.

(31:10):
And it will tell you as much to, to not be putting that sort of stuff in there. And it does say we might be pulling from people's personal information in its limitations, which I really appreciate that level of transparency because I would like to see other platforms start to follow suit on that.

Andréa Jones (31:28):
Yes. The like bold transparency right up front. Not in like a terms and condition, but we just all swipe through anyways. <Laugh>.

Lanie Lamarre (31:35):
Mm-Hmm <affirmative> Absolutely. And not the legal jargon that you don't understand. Yeah. I, I like the just, hey, here's, here are English words. <Laugh>,

Andréa Jones (31:45):
Yeah, plain English. Thank you. Please. Yes. I love that. Oh my gosh, Lanie, a wealth of knowledge as always. So for those listeners who want to learn more from me, what's the next best step?

Lanie Lamarre (31:59):
Well you can, my social, my only social platform at this point is Instagram.

(32:04):
You can follow me at oh my growth, omg r o w t h. And you can go over to oh my growth.com omgrowth.com and you can find more about me and my content. I have my podcast, the Let's Get Data Driven podcast. I have the membership, the Let's Get Data Driven membership, which is a nice low-cost membership where you can get data driven, start putting the tracking in place that you own that not all the other people own, not the Facebooks and the Googles, but you own your own, your own data, your own tracking and have fun workshops like how to use ChatGPT to do all your data driven decision making, things like that.

Andréa Jones (32:49):
Yes, highly recommend y'all the membership. It's great. I have it as part of my CEO tasks on Monday to go look there and see what I need to update for my data cuz there's always something. And I'll put all of those links in the show notes onlinedrea.com/243. That's 243 onlinedrea.com. Lanie, thank you so much for joining the show.

Lanie Lamarre (33:11):
Thank you Andrea.

Andréa Jones (33:13):
And thank you dear listener, next week I have another fantastic interview coming to you with Maggie Patterson. We're gonna dive into her no nonsense approach to social media marketing, so stay tuned for that next week. I'll see you soon. Bye for now.