Social Media Influence: Is It Helping or Harming Your Business?

Social Media Influence: Is It Helping or Harming Your Business?

Social media influence is one of the most powerful tools available to a business owner in 2026. It is also one of the most misused. In this episode, Sooz Young takes an honest look at what influence actually means on social media today, how business leaders are using it for good and for harm, and what it takes to build the kind of influence that lasts. You will learn how influence works differently across Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok and LinkedIn and what that means for your strategy, the dark side of online influence including bots, cancel culture and performative outrage and why business owners need to be aware of it, and the six practical steps to building lasting, trustworthy influence in your industry starting from wherever you are right now. 🎉 Join the Digital Dominators community and build your influence with integrity at technologycoachingonline.com/digital-dominators 🔑 IN THIS EPISODE YOU'LL LEARN: - What social media influence actually is, and why it's not about follower count - How influence behaves differently across Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok and LinkedIn - Why business leaders are influencers whether they choose to be or not, and what responsibility comes with that - The dark side: how platforms are being used to pull people down, manufacture outrage and weaponise audiences - Bots, fake engagement and why engagement numbers on social media are not what they appear to be - The real-world impact of toxic online culture, particularly on young people - Daniel Priestley's Key Person of Influence framework, plus a sixth element Sooz adds: your values - Six practical steps to building lasting, trustworthy influence in your industry - Why employees are brand influencers and how to use that well - The challenge: how to audit your last 10 posts and get intentional about what you're building ⏱ CHAPTERS: 00:00 Introduction 02:19 What social media influence actually is 07:31 Platform by platform: Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, LinkedIn 13:19 Business leaders as influencers 17:10 The dark side: cancelling, pylons and performative outrage 23:18 Bots, fake engagement and the reality of your feed 26:34 Young people and the real-world impact 29:36 How to become a key person of influence in your industry 36:53 Employees as brand influencers 40:10 Conclusion: positive or negative? It depends on you 42:34 Your challenge and where to find us 🎓 RESOURCES MENTIONED: Key Person of Influence by Daniel Priestley: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01N6V4V4Q [https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01N6V4V4Q] * Digital Mindset Quiz: https://technologycoachingonline.com/quiz/ [https://technologycoachingonline.com/quiz/] * Digital Setup and Systems Health Check: https://technologycoachingonline.com/digital-health-check [https://technologycoachingonline.com/digital-health-check] * Digital Dominators Community: https://technologycoachingonline.com/digital-dominators/ [https://technologycoachingonline.com/digital-dominators/] * AI Prompting Fundamentals Course: https://allmylink.me/aipromptingfundamentals [https://technologycoachingonline.com/digital-dominators/] 🎧 POWERED BY ELEVENLABS Bring your words to life with AI-powered voice.👉 https://allmylink.me/tcelevenlabs [https://allmylink.me/tcelevenlabs]

Inside the AI Summit: Key Lessons on AI, Automation and the Future of Work in 2026

What are the smartest organisations in the world actually doing with AI right now? In this episode, Sooz Young reports back from the European Chatbot and Conversational AI Summit in Edinburgh, where she moderated the Future of Work panel alongside experts from Vodafone, Fix School and the University of Bradford. You will learn the five most important themes that emerged across two days of conversations with AI practitioners from Booking.com, Vodafone, Lloyds Banking Group, Uber and the EU Publications Office, why 90% of companies have invested in AI but fewer than 40% are seeing measurable results, and what the organisations getting it right are doing differently that every business owner can apply regardless of size or budget. This is one of the most substantive episodes on the show. If you want to understand where AI is actually heading rather than where the hype says it is going, this is the episode to listen to. 🧠 Take the free Digital Mindset Quiz to discover your digital strengths and AI readiness at technologycoachingonline.com/quiz FIVE STANDOUT MOMENTS FROM OTHER SESSIONS Omotenashi and what AI still can't replicate. Daniel Orenes Fernandez (Uber) opened with Japan's net promoter score: negative 52. In a country where the standard of service is so high that merely meeting expectations doesn't move the needle, the lesson for AI design is that you cannot just think about whether the system works. You have to think about what the cultural and emotional expectations surrounding the experience are and what the person on the other end actually needs. Booking.com's five principles and the closing line. Raquel Serrano (Booking.com) walked through their five principles for human-AI collaboration: seamless integration, AI for speed and humans for trust, learning with every interaction, intent-driven anticipation, and ethical transparent guardrails. Her closing line: "The best customer service experiences are not the ones with the most AI. They're the ones with the most alignment between people, purpose and technology." Raiffeisen Bank and the organisational design problem. The Raiffeisen story (covered in Thread 4) carries a lesson that scales to any business, any size: the problem is almost never the tool. It's the structure around the tool. The value of design. Ray-Allen Taylor (IdeasBay): "The common illusion is that AI replaces design. The reality is that AI makes design more critical than ever." AI can generate, iterate, produce. It cannot decide what good looks like. It cannot weigh trade-offs between efficiency and integrity. Human judgment about what to build and why becomes more important as AI gets faster and better at the building. The growth mindset shift and AI Scotland. Christoph Eslinger (IdeasBay) on the mindset shift organisations need: stop asking "where can AI cut costs?" and start asking "where can AI help us do things we couldn't do before?" Cost-cutting thinking makes you leaner. Growth thinking makes you different. On 20 March the day after the summit the Scottish Government launched AI Scotland, a new programme to help Scottish SMEs implement AI with ethical and legal frameworks built in. More details to follow as Sooz researches further. --- 🎓 PRACTICAL AI PROMPTING FUNDAMENTALS COURSE Real business examples. Prompts you can copy, adapt and reuse straight away. 👉 https://allmylink.me/aipromptingfundamentals 🧠 FIND YOUR DIGITAL STRENGTHS — Take the Free Quiz Discover your digital persona and get a personalised action plan in under 3 minutes. 👉 https://technologycoachingonline.com/quiz/ 🎉 JOIN THE DIGITAL DOMINATORS COMMUNITY — Free Access Toolkits, templates, a Social Media Prompt Calendar, and a community of business builders who get it. 👉 https://technologycoachingonline.com/digital-dominators/

How to Get Great Results from AI Tools: Prompting Frameworks That Work

Knowing that prompting matters is one thing. Knowing exactly how to do it is another. In this episode, Sooz Young walks through the four most common prompting mistakes she sees in training sessions and workshops, and shares four specific frameworks from the Practical AI Prompting Fundamentals course that you can start using straight away. You will learn the four prompting mistakes that are quietly limiting the quality of every AI output you produce, the Act As method, the Ask Questions method, the PTCF framework and the Primer method, all explained in plain language with practical business examples, and how to build these frameworks into your daily workflow so better AI results become the default rather than the exception. This episode works best as a pair with episode 42. Listen to that one first if you have not already. 🎉 Join the Digital Dominators community for free AI resources and tools at technologycoachingonline.com/digital-dominators THE 4 MOST COMMON PROMPTING MISTAKES 1. Being too vague — asking for a blog post or some ideas with no context, audience, goal or format. The AI fills the gaps with generic information and the output reflects that. 2. Expecting AI to know your business automatically — unless you provide the context, the system has no idea who you are, who you serve, or how you communicate. This is especially common with free tools that don't retain memory between sessions. 3. Stopping after the first answer — the first response is a starting point, not the final output. The most effective users refine, iterate, and add more context. They treat AI as a collaborator, not a vending machine. 4. Searching for one magic prompt — clever formulas shared online create the impression that prompting is about memorising special phrases. In reality, effective prompting is clarity, context and iteration, built around reliable methods you can return to. THE 4 FRAMEWORKS COVERED IN THIS EPISODE Act As Method Give the AI a role before it starts the task. Instead of "write a social media post about AI tools," try "act as a social media marketing strategist and write a carousel script for Instagram aimed at small business owners who feel overwhelmed by AI." Role, task, audience, purpose — that's what changes the output. Ask Questions Method Instruct the AI to ask you questions before it does the work. Ask it five questions about your audience, your offer, and your call to action — then answer them. The output is built on your actual context, not its best guess. It mirrors how a good consultant works, and it reduces the back and forth significantly. PTCF Framework The four-part structure behind any strong prompt: Persona (who the AI should act as), Task (what you want it to do — use specific verbs), Context (who is this for, where will it be used, what's the goal), and Format (bullet points, word count, tone, table). Most weak prompts are missing at least one of these four things. https://allmylink.me/aipromptingfundamentals Paste in your existing content — blog posts, emails, transcripts — and ask the AI to review your tone of voice and writing style before it starts. The new output picks up your rhythm, vocabulary and structure, and feels like you rather than a generic draft. Combine this with setting up dedicated projects in your AI tool (one for the podcast, one for proposals, one for social media, etc.) so the context carries across every conversation. RESOURCES MENTIONED 🎓 Practical AI Prompting Fundamentals Course 👉 https://allmylink.me/aipromptingfundamentals [https://allmylink.me/aipromptingfundamentals] 🔍 Digital Setup and Systems Health Check 👉 https://technologycoachingonline.com/digital-health-check [https://technologycoachingonline.com/digital-health-check] 🧠 TAKE THE FREE DIGITAL MINDSET QUIZ 👉 https://technologycoachingonline.com/quiz/ [https://technologycoachingonline.com/quiz/] 🎉 JOIN THE DIGITAL DOMINATORS COMMUNITY — FREE 👉 https://technologycoachingonline.com/digital-dominators/ [https://technologycoachingonline.com/digital-dominators/]

Why Most People Get Poor Results from AI Tools (And How to Fix It)

Most people who feel frustrated with AI tools are not using the wrong tool. They are using the right tool in the wrong way. In this episode, Sooz Young breaks down the real reason AI outputs so often disappoint and the one skill that changes everything about the results you get. You will learn why switching between AI platforms will never fix the problem most people are experiencing, what prompt engineering actually means in plain everyday language and why it matters for every business owner, and the simple framework you can start using today to get dramatically better results from whatever AI tool you are already using. 🧠 Discover your digital strengths and find out where AI fits into your business. Take the free Digital Mindset Quiz at technologycoachingonline.com/quiz Since partnering with Facebook in 2019 to deliver AI and automation training to 3,000 people across Scotland, one pattern has shown up again and again: people are given access to powerful AI systems with no instruction on how to communicate with them effectively. So when the outputs disappoint, they blame the tool. Then they switch tools. And the cycle continues. This episode breaks that cycle. KEY TAKEAWAYS FROM THIS EPISODE - The "AI tool wars" explained — and why the debate is missing the point entirely - Why most people treat AI like a search engine (and why that limits every result they get) - The data and IP risk of using free AI tools — and why investing in the right tool matters - How to choose the right AI tool based on your existing business ecosystem - What prompt engineering actually means in plain, everyday language — no coding required - The PTCF framework: Purpose, Task, Context, Format — how to structure any prompt - A real example from a live training session: how changing the prompt (not the tool) transformed someone's output completely - Why AI outputs sound generic: it's not hallucination, it's missing context - The phrase to add to the end of any prompt: "ask me questions until you are 95–100% sure of the task and output" - The "top 1% in my industry" prompt technique for more strategic, elevated results - What you put in, you get out — the core principle behind every great AI interaction - Why prompting is fast becoming one of the most essential skills in any job or business RESOURCES MENTIONED 🎓 AI Prompting Fundamentals Course — Technology Coaching Lab 👉 https://allmylink.me/aipromptingfundamentals [https://allmylink.me/aipromptingfundamentals] 📅 Next episode: Common prompting mistakes and how professionals structure their AI conversations 🔍 DIGITAL SETUP & SYSTEMS HEALTH CHECK Identify the gaps in your digital infrastructure before they start costing you. 👉 ⁠https://technologycoachingonline.com/digital-health-check⁠ [https://technologycoachingonline.com/digital-health-check] 🎉 JOIN THE DIGITAL DOMINATORS COMMUNITY — FREE Toolkits, templates, a Social Media Prompt Calendar, early event access, and community. 👉 https://technologycoachingonline.com/digital-dominators/ [https://technologycoachingonline.com/digital-dominators/]

New Level, New Devil: Why Your Business Model Must Evolve as You Scale

The strategy that got your business to where it is right now is probably not the strategy that will get it to the next level. In this episode, Sooz Young speaks with Kristine Monaghan, founder of the Class Business Academy, about why your business model must evolve as you grow and how to know when it is time to make the shift. You will learn the warning signs that your current business model has taken you as far as it can, how Kristine went from franchisee to franchisor to multi-six-figure online business owner and what she learned at every stage, and the practical steps for redesigning your business model so it supports your next level of growth rather than holding you back from it. If you have ever felt like you are working harder but not getting further ahead, this episode will show you why and what to do about it. 🎉 Join the Digital Dominators community for free business resources and support at technologycoachingonline.com/digital-dominators Krissy's journey is remarkable. In the space of two years she went from being a parent at a toddler class, to franchisee, to buying the business entirely and building a franchise network of 40+ across the UK. She exited post-COVID, rebuilt online, grew to multi-six figures as a solo operator and is now building a first-of-its-kind industry platform and awards ecosystem for class-based business owners across the UK. She has lived every stage of business growth and knows exactly where the growing pains hit hardest. This conversation covers the full picture: strategy, systems, mindset, content, community, tech, and the honest reality of what levelling up actually feels like from the inside. KEY TAKEAWAYS FROM THIS EPISODE - Why your business model must evolve — and the warning signs it already has - The "new level, new devil" principle and what it means in practice - How Krissy scaled from personal brand to ecosystem (and why that shift mattered) - The role of systems, SOPs, and processes before you scale a team or franchise - Content repurposing: how to make one piece of content work across multiple channels - Community vs. content — and why you can't really have one without the other - Why personal brand is more important than ever in 2026 - The mindset shift required every time you move to a new level - "Money loves speed" — what that actually means and how to apply it - Why WhatsApp for Business is Krissy's go-to tool for connection and conversion - The one thing class-based business owners consistently undervalue (hint: it's themselves) RESOURCES MENTIONED 🌐 Class Business Academy: https://theclassbusinessacademy.com 📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamkristinemonaghan/ ▶️ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@UCdVQpNKVfP7wjkMdesf40iw 💼 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kristine-monaghan/ 👥 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/krissy.monaghan.7 Also mentioned: Penny Hopkinson's Manual Magic AI tool (Episode #40), Lisa Johnson's One to Many programme, Ideas Fest, Claire Mitchell 🧠 TAKE THE FREE DIGITAL MINDSET QUIZ Discover your digital strengths and get a personalised roadmap for growth. 👉 https://technologycoachingonline.com/quiz/ 🔍 DIGITAL SETUP & SYSTEMS HEALTH CHECK Think your challenge is marketing? It might actually be your digital infrastructure. Find out. 👉 https://technologycoachingonline.com/digital-health-check