Last night she was home with her hairless cats. Today she walked through the doors at VidSummit. Here's what happened after that phone call. The night before, I called Emily, my director of sales, at 8:30 at night. "Pack your bags, my friend. I think you're coming to Dallas." Her version: "I was sitting in my chair with my hairless cats in my lap when my boss texted me and said, hey, do you want to come to VidSummit?" "And he said, I have this crazy idea. Get on a plane." She got on the plane. Then I sat down with my buddy Cliff Ravenscraft and asked for his honest opinion on this series. "I love the authenticity. I love the transparency. I love the vulnerability. It's something about just checking in, seeing somebody who's working towards a goal and being open about the process." We don't know where this show is gonna go. But we're on a road, and hopefully it leads to 3,000 people at our conference. Emily worked the conference. Hopefully we'll get some great sponsorships out of it. Here's to spontaneous adventures. Then at dinner a crazy idea came up: what if we sewed a bunch of these Road to 3,000 episodes together into one longer video? Is that even worth doing? Reply "Yes" or "No" and tell me why 👇 The weekly number is at the end. Press Start: The Road to 3,000. #SocialMediaExaminer# #SMMW27# #RoadTo3000# #VidSummit#

"Are you positive these referral tools can't track a sale?" I asked Jon that twice. Here's why. We want a referral leaderboard to help get Social Media Marketing World to 3,000 people. Jon ran deep research with Claude and Gemini, plus a playbook Rob Ainbinder sent me on Messenger. It came back as two options. Option A: reward sign-ups. Somebody shares an invite, a friend enters a free contest, one point. That's what the leaderboard tools do. Option B: reward ticket sales. Somebody shares an invite, a friend actually buys a ticket. That's what we've always done. Jon: "You get a point per referral. It doesn't matter whether the person signs up or not." Jessica: "Some of those platforms feel sketchy and spammy. It feels a little off from our branding." Jon's hybrid fix: at checkout we ask one question. "Who's your Player 1?" Then we know who referred them. Jessica thinks that's the best option on the table. But I'm not ready to give up on the tools. If one of them can drop a piece of code on our site and count an actual purchase, everything gets simpler. Jon's honest answer: "I'm not positive." So that's his assignment. Rule it out, fast. Because the one thing we all agree on: it's got to be easy, or nobody will use it. If you ran this leaderboard, would you reward sign-ups or ticket sales? Reply with one word: sign-ups or sales. 👇 Press Start: The Road to 3,000. #SocialMediaExaminer# #SMMW27# #RoadTo3000# #ReferralMarketing# #EventMarketing#

"I don't think it's enough for us to get to 3,000 alone." That's what Jessica told me about our new invite. We built it so the people already coming to Social Media Marketing World can invite their Player 2. It's fun. People will use it. But Jon said the next part is the incentive. Something you can't buy. You only get it if you refer somebody. And that's where it got hard. Jessica: "The hardest part is tracking who referred who. What if somebody already bought a ticket that their friend referred?" I told the team whatever we do has to be simple. Jon had an answer: "We have our referral affiliate program. We can track it through the affiliate referral." But Chad Petersen's idea was to reward people with things, not money. Jon agreed: "We have a system in place that has the infrastructure to track everything, but we're using it for something else." My instinct says the tools are out there. So Jon's running deep research with Claude and Gemini to find a way to track it. If you've ever run a referral program, you know the reward is the easy part. How would you track who invited who? Start your comment with "I'd..." 👇 Press Start: The Road to 3,000. #SocialMediaExaminer# #SMMW27# #RoadTo3000# #EventMarketing# #ReferralMarketing#

It looks unbelievably simple. It was unbelievably complicated. A while back, Jon asked, "Why couldn't we just build a tool that people can use to refer people?" So I built one. You put your name in. You put your friend's name in. It finds their photo and drops you both into a retro video-game invitation. Player 1. Player 2. Every click plays a little 8-bit sound. When I showed my coach Angus, he said those sounds are "kind of like dopamine hits." Then Sandra Newson left a comment: let every attendee add one personal sentence to their invitation. So now you can add a personal note. Thank you, Sandra. I made the art and the little avatars in ChatGPT. I knocked out the photo holes in Photoshop. I started coding in Codex and moved over to Claude Code. About five hours. But the line that stuck with me was Angus's: "It becomes a contagion. If somebody gets this, they want to be a part of it." That's the whole idea behind getting to 3,000. The people already coming invite the people they'd want next to them. Want to try it live? Tell me in the comments and I'll send you the link. 👇 Press Start: The Road to 3,000. #SocialMediaExaminer# #SMMW27# #RoadTo3000# #AIinMarketing# #EventMarketing#

We tested a testimonials tool. It didn't go so well. We just launched Senja to collect video testimonials from past attendees. Jon's bar: if we get 10, great. If we get 20, fantastic. Before the real ones come in, Melissa on our team recorded a test. Problem one: it wouldn't play. "Oh, it's buffering. That's weird." And we couldn't find the download button. Problem two: it's supposed to put both of her answers together into one video. It only downloaded two separate clips. "I thought you said it sewed them together." Problem three: its AI reel. It started mid-sentence with the word "Claude." At least we got a whole sentence. To be fair, those weren't real testimonials. Jessica's verdict: "For zero direction, it's not bad." And if the edit never works, Plan B already exists. Jon knows how to have Claude do it. As for the scoreboard: 949 to 950. We've got work to do. If you've ever picked a tool for the feature on the box, you know this feeling. What do you use to collect testimonials? Tell me below 👇 Press Start: The Road to 3,000. #SocialMediaExaminer# #SMMW27# #RoadTo3000# #VideoTestimonials# #AIinMarketing#

What if we ask our best customers for a video testimonial and only five say yes? That's the question I put to my team. The testimonial form is done. Jessica updated it with the new copy. Jon's plan is to start small with last year's attendees, test the messages, then expand. So I asked what success looks like. Jon said send it to a thousand people and expect 10 or 20 at a minimum. Jessica hopes for at least 20 video testimonials. Jon thinks we'd get more than that. I think it's harder than they think. You're asking people to show up on video. Not everybody's willing to do that. Then I asked the other question. How do we go from having testimonials to actually using them? Jon had a fun fact. He took a one minute and 45 second testimonial from one of our attendees, told Claude what he wanted, and it came back with a 29-second video. "It looked like it was done by a video editor." It even moved her introduction to the front and made a vertical version. Next step: the emails go out to last year's All Access customers. If you've ever asked a customer for a testimonial, you know the gap between people who love you and people who'll say it on camera. Would you record one? Tell me in the comments, starting with "I'd..." 👇 Press Start: The Road to 3,000. #SocialMediaExaminer# #SMMW27# #RoadTo3000# #VideoTestimonials# #AIinMarketing#

This is the very first time I've ever built anything with code behind the scenes. Jon got inspired by one of the ideas: create a really cool invitation our customers would want to give to someone else. Your name, the name of the person you're inviting, download it, send it. He showed me his design. My creative juices went a little crazy. I asked Joel, "Can you build something like this?" He said, "Yeah, I think it'll take a couple of hours." But he's so busy working on other stuff, so I thought, maybe I could do it myself. So I did, with Codex. I wanted it to feel retro, very '90s, and on theme with Social Media Marketing World. Then I pulled it up for Jon and Jessica and asked for their first reaction. → Pick an avatar, or drag in your own photo → Type a name and it drops right into the invitation → Zoom in and position the picture → A really long name like Michael just shrinks to fit → Hit download and the image is done Jon: "Even cooler than I originally envisioned." Jessica: "Will you be my Player 2?" While I'm trying to get 3,000 people to my conference, this is the first thing I've built myself instead of waiting on someone else. What would you build? Start your comment with "I'd..." 👇 Press Start: The Road to 3,000. #SocialMediaExaminer# #SMMW27# #RoadTo3000# #AIinMarketing# #VibeCoding#

I asked my marketing director for an invitation idea. He came back with a working prototype. While I'm trying to get Social Media Marketing World to 3,000, one idea keeps coming up: a personal invite you can send to a friend. So the last time Jon and I met, I said, let's come up with a cool invitation system. Here's what he did. He asked, in his words, "my friend Claude, who I ask for everything." You put in your name. You put in the name of the person you want to invite. You pick a background. Out comes a certificate you can download and email. "Took like five minutes, and we had a prototype." Then he told me where he needs me: the graphics. "Let's be honest, I'm the colorblind marketer." So I took a concept to Joel, my tech innovation director. Player 1 is the person sending the invitation. Player 2 is the person being invited. He liked the whole vibe of the graphics. Then I asked the real question. How hard would it be to build a little form that just renders the darn thing? I kind of think it shouldn't be that complicated. His answer: a couple hours, between ChatGPT and Claude. If someone handed you one of these, who would your Player 2 be? Tell me below 👇 Press Start: The Road to 3,000. #SocialMediaExaminer# #SMMW27# #RoadTo3000# #AIinMarketing# #EventMarketing#

Would you record a video testimonial for a conference? Or bail the second you saw the record button? My team built a way to collect video testimonials from past Social Media Marketing World attendees. Jon and Jessica set it up in Senja and used Claude for the messaging. Really simple. Then I walked through it like a customer would. And I found the holes. The first screen says "record your testimonial." My gut says people who aren't camera ready bail right there. The next page asks people to introduce themselves, but doesn't tell them how. If you don't give people specifics, they're not going to do what you want them to do. You only get one shot to make a good impression. And there are two videos, not one. Nobody's told. So they'll make the first one perfect and walk away. Jessica hit record to show me how it works, and functionally it's really cool. It's just not 100% there on the message yet. So it went back to Jon and Jessica to dial in the words. Drum roll, please. The number we're at right now: 949. If you've ever asked customers for a testimonial, what actually got them to do it? Tell me in the comments, starting with "I'd..." Press Start: The Road to 3,000. When the words are fixed, I'll show you the before and after. #SocialMediaExaminer# #SMMW27# #RoadTo3000# #VideoTestimonials#