Social Media Marketing | SEWEDA Sponsored Workshop

Adam Jones 0:00
My name is Adam Jones. I’m on the owner of Pullman Marketing. Alyssa is with us too, she’s our brand strategist. It’s awesome, because a lot of brand strategy funnels right into social media marketing, and we’ll see how that plays out today. Alright, so what everyone ought to know about social media, discover the right way to find, engage and delight your customers on social media! We’re actually very particular when we say what everyone ought to know about social media. And that’s because people already know about social media, right? Social media is not new. It’s been around for as long as I can remember, I’m technically a Unicode a digital immigrant. Kids that are under 20 are true digital natives. They’ve never not known the internet, they’ve never not known social media, they’ve never not known access and data like we’ve had to experience or grow into. And so we know about it. And Congress is starting to know about it more. There’s a lot of things that are still developing in it. I think the Instagram CEO is about to go before Congress this week. I’m talking about kids and safety. Right? There’s a whistleblower A while back, safety, which back in MySpace days, it’s like, okay, don’t talk to strangers, right. But then we have a whole new context that was able to grow out of it. And that is how it relates to your business. And how does it interoperate with the business, that’s what we’re going to be really talking about today as business owners, what you ought to know to move things forward. And so how it works is actually really fascinating. I, there’s a lot of ways that people have tried to describe it. Really, social media is just an aggregated audience. Right? It’s everybody is in this space, this fear this community, this context, and it’s an aggregate audience, just in the way that Etsy or eBay has an aggregate audience. Sometimes it’s easier to sell product on those platforms, because people are already there, they’re already searching, they’re already engaging, versus trying to build your own platform, build your own website, or do your own in person event or all these other things. It’s already there. It’s already an aggregate audience. And there’s the thing that Facebook was really good at harnessing was what we call a win win win in terms of advertising. Because, and feel free to throw it in the chat or show of hands. You know, if you’re hanging on Facebook, and you get an ad for iced coconut lattes in Hawaii, but we all live here in Washington. Well, that’s not a relevant ad. And actually, I don’t want to be reminded that I could be enjoying that. When I’m here. Right now, I would really love an advertisement on a snowplow company. Right? I really want someone to come clean it all salted all have it clean and ready, because I don’t have my snow tires on yet. Right? That’s because we all wanted to wait, just one more day, just one more day before doing that. So as a user, I want ads that are relevant to me. As a business, I want to show ads to the relevant user. Facebook helps to make that occur. And that’s what we do a lot of Pullman marketing is we work with business, we work with Facebook, find the right audience, target the right messaging, target the right ad, so that your business is growing, the end user is happy. And of course Facebook is happy at the end of the day, because we also give them money. Right? So there’s a win win win in terms of advertising. Advertising doesn’t have to be this. Sometimes perceived manipulation. It’s a curation of experience to actually help people. That’s our heart. That’s our spirit as we approach a lot of it. And if a new end user has a good advertising experience, it’s a lot better, it’s just a lot better. You know, what is it for at the end of the day, we really believe that it’s for brand awareness. at bare minimum, it’s saying I exist.

And not every business needs that right. Not everyone needs it. I have a couple clients that are in the construction niche. In some ways, they really don’t need it. They’re more than busy. They stopped taking phone calls, they’re overloaded on their work. So there’s a little bit of airplay at bare minimum, it is brand awareness. At the high end, we want it to be a way for you to delight your customers through your brand Right. And that’s what we talked about last time. We did a webinar last month, feel free to go check it out on our YouTube, we also have the downloadable resources for it. It’s about creating that reputation, that gut feeling that you’re left with, you know, when I leave McDonald’s, do I have a great gut feeling? Depends on the day, right? And, you know, they even say, like we talked about last time, okay, we’ll see you next time. I don’t know if I feel happy when they say, we’ll see you next time. Right? Because I don’t want to think to myself, I am going to be here next time. This, this was just a one time thing. I’ll go back to my healthy food later.

Alyssa Mullins 5:39
You get the salad from McDonald’s- then it’s healthy, right?

Adam Jones 5:47
And so, social media works to delight the customer to take it that one step further of, you know, maybe you really like this type of coffee. We’re gonna make it even better. We’re gonna extend it more maybe there’s a deal. Maybe there’s a sale, maybe there’s now pumpkin spice. Maybe there’s now gingerbread. Maybe there’s gingerbread eggnog lattes. I don’t know if that sounds good. I’m pretty plain what comes to my coffee. But social media works to improve and increase and innovate this process of brand awareness and delighting your end users. So how to pick your platform. That’s something that we get asked a lot. And I would say, it depends on the subject matter. It really, really, really depends. What’s up. Can you please Defined Platform? Yes, yeah. So Facebook is a platform. Twitter is a platform tic TOCs a platform? It’s just kind of a generic term to describe the social media websites. Thank you. Yeah, no, that’s a great question. That’s a great question. So yeah, yeah. So the different engagements, communities, social medias, they all have different audiences and different ways to run through it. And I don’t even like all social media. Like, I’ll be really frank, Twitter is not my favorite. Although recently, I’ve started getting back into it. Because for search engine optimization, which is one of my skills that I really enjoy. There’s a lot of SEO people there. There’s a lot of search engine optimization, people that are in Twitter with a lot of good information. So I’m like, Okay, we’ll do that. My my business coach, he’s on Twitter a lot. So I’m like, Okay, well, if I really want this extra engagement, this is where I have to go to get this type of information. Right? If you’re a retailer, or a coffee group, coffee, house, coffee, roaster, anything dealing with that, well, then Twitter’s not going to be the right spot. It’s gonna be more of your Facebook or your Instagram, possibly a little bit of tick tock, if you’re wanting to show some of the process in a really quick and easy way. Those social media platforms do significantly better. The the big thing is, you don’t have to use them all. Please, please, please never feel like you have to use every single platform. It really doesn’t. If your audience isn’t there, there’s no point to use it right. If the people who would care about your product or business are in Instagram, go to Instagram, if they’re in Facebook and Instagram, then pick the one that you actually like using, right? A lot of times when we get overwhelmed, or we don’t understand a platform, it’s because we don’t really like the platform, or it’s not very engaging or enjoyable for us. And so we then makes it very, very difficult for us to create content, or think it for content and a platform that we’re not actively enjoying ourselves. Right? Tick tock has been a really big, big, big shift in social media for our nation in general. It went from hardly any users to over 100 active users, which means that one in three Americans has a tick tock. Now, when we look at Instagram, Instagram, I think is a little bit under 50% of Americans. So almost one in two Americans have Instagram. So there is a bit of a homogeneous, just homogeny that occurs. But you have to know where that audience resides. Right? Or depending on your business model where your potential audiences have your audience then shifted Have they gone somewhere else? You know, with Facebook’s changes Twitter’s changes, and we’re expecting a lot changes from Twitter. The new CEO has very, very different mind very different perspective than Jack Dorsey did. And so we are expecting massive changes in Twitter over the next three months. So then my audience might be currently in Twitter. But you know, there might be some nuances where I could say, you know, they’re actually going to go somewhere else. And so I want to start going in that direction with them. Right, and, and going and where they are, which passing it over to Alyssa, our brand strategist.

Alyssa Mullins 10:31
Social Media is a lot of things, and complicated can be one of them. And so I’m just going to go over a few signs on maybe why you shouldn’t do your social media all by yourself. The first one is going to be that there’s no time, we get busy, we have full time jobs, part time jobs, maybe we’re a parent or grandparent, and we don’t want our time to be consumed by staring at our phones, or even at a computer all day. And, you know, sometimes, like you just want to go home and relax and not worry about taking care of other things for your business on social media, especially, you know, when there are so many new things happening in that world, it almost becomes like, well, I don’t have any time. So how am I going to keep up, which kind of brings me to the next bit, which is that coming up with content can get very overwhelming. I feel it and my job is in social media, I barely have time for my own personal stuff. And when it comes with up to creating content and coming up with those ideas. It can, it can be difficult, you get stuck between? Well, this is what I see people posting. But that’s not what I do. And then how do I get what they’re doing that works to work for me as well. And, you know, maybe you sell a product or a service, but you don’t know how to fully communicate that to people. And so then you get stuck. And then the things that you have tried just don’t work. And that and social media is one of those things where it takes a lot of trial and error and time to fully get to that point where you have a constant following where you have people interacting with you back and forth. And creating new content with what seems to be almost like every day on certain profiles and platforms can be a bit much, especially if you have other priorities and other responsibilities in life. And then the third point is going to be that honestly, technology gets complicated. I still struggle with it. I use an iPhone for pretty much anything and everything, mostly Apple products. But also, there are some people who weren’t used Android, and that’s fine. But when you go on to a certain platform, so Facebook on iPhone, kind of formats things a bit differently than Facebook on an Android. And if you’re going from one thing to the other, that can get super confusing and complicated. And I feel that a lot of my parents are Android users. And so when I’m trying to help them find stuff on their phone, I’m like, wait, hold on, I don’t know where anything is. And it happens. And then as they keep coming out with new, whether it’s new social media platforms, or new things they’re doing on the platforms, or they’re coming up with a new cell phone, I think iPhones up to like 13 No, I don’t know how they made it that far. But they’re on the 13th phone. And some things are just a bit different. And they operate just different enough to where you almost can’t find what you need. In that moment, and adding social media and all of the settings and the privacy’s and posting in different terms on that, it just gets so much more confusing and complicated. And, you know, it’s it can be overwhelming as well. And then the fourth point is, you don’t like social media, but also maybe you know, you need it. Like how Adam said earlier, there are some platforms that you’re gonna like and some that you don’t. And sometimes unfortunately, the one that you don’t is going to be where your audience is. And sometimes it’s tick tock, if I’m being honest, and tick tock is just a whole new platform when it comes to the way Facebook and Instagram have operated, it’s different. But then the unfortunate part is with social media, you see other businesses and other people thriving and doing so good. So you know, in the back of your mind that you need that platform and you need to be on social media. But in all honesty, you just don’t want to touch it. You don’t want to deal with it. You don’t want to touch it. You don’t want to look at it, and that’s fine. We have clients that are like that and they just don’t want to deal with the social media, and so they let us take care of it, and it does pretty good. And then the next point is going to be that you don’t know what to post where.

And that can be, maybe you own multiple businesses, and they all kind of intertwine. And so you don’t know if you should post this thing that could work for both businesses on what page or maybe, you know, owning a business, you kind of want to promote it on like your personal Facebook page or profile. But then you also want to put on your Facebook page, but you don’t know if that’s okay. And posting between accounts, whether it’s business and another business, or business and personal, it can be a really weird line to walk, you don’t know what to promote, maybe you are kind of like, well, I don’t want all have, like, my family and friends, you know, feeling like I’m trying to sell them on something constantly. But I also don’t want all of my clients to see all my personal stuff. And that’s privacy and everything on social media is a really big thing. And so it’s okay to be a bit wary of that. And, and not know exactly what’s okay and what’s not okay to post, because that’s something that we can help you determine, but also something that, you know, you kind of go with what’s what you’re comfortable with. And so if you’re not comfortable with posting something about your business, on your personal page, you don’t have to that personal page can be just for you and your family, and what you’re going to do for Thanksgiving and how Christmas is going, it doesn’t have to be all about your business on your personal page. And your business doesn’t have to even have anything about family in it. And that’s all really up to you. And I have a couple case studies that we can go over. And so the first one is going to be beetle bug. So the owner of Vinoba beetle bug, she is the sole owner, she is the business owner, she does everything on her own. She, if you look at the photo, she makes these adaptive socks with embroidered pulleys on the sides, so that anyone with any disability can easily pull them up and get dressed on your own. And it’s a really, really sweet story. The rest of it is amazing. But she that’s all her she’s the one who came up with the idea. She’s the one that owns the business. And for a while she was the one who was kind of like owning the social media accounts. And when she came to us, she was struggling with posting on social media and a couple other things, excuse me. And she just wanted help, and knew that she couldn’t do it all on her own. And keeping up with the trends because you had Facebook, that plays nice one way and then you had Instagram that played really good another way when it came to certain kinds of content. But then now you have maybe Tik Tok, or maybe LinkedIn to make connections and and kind of like not knowing where to go and where to start. And so she came to us and we start her off on Facebook and Instagram. slowly started putting her on Pinterest as well. That’s another platform that does really well, which is really weird, because you don’t think about it. But Pinterest is another place where she went and people loved her stuff. And we were able to take that load off of her shoulders, all of the social media, we helped create the content. And we helped, you know, manage the accounts and everything like that. And she was able to focus on her business. And so now she has partnerships and deals and wholesale deals with JC Penney, and she’s just continuing to grow. And you can find her socks on the JC Penney website, or you can go to Zappos and you can find her socks there. And she was able to grow and expand in that direction, because of the fact that we were able to help take social media off of her plate. Another case study that we have is speech sounds visualized. They’re owned locally here in Pullman. And it is a it’s an app that you can download on your phone or on a tablet. And it’s for speech language pathologists or English language learners to kind of, like learn how to pronounce different English sounds from this letter from how the sound, the letter s sounds to how the letter R sounds, and it’s a tool that Speech Language Pathologists or even just someone interested in learning English language sounds can use. But the three wonderful women that you know, created this app and own it.

They’re busy, they work at the hospital, they are constantly working with people, they’re in meetings, there’s no time for them to create and post and schedule the content and fix the website and do other things that they’re doing to continue to grow and maintain the app that there’s a lot on their plate there. And so they came to us. And they were like, well, what what can we what can you do for us, and so we met with them. And their biggest struggle was social media. Because it takes time to sit down and come up with content ideas, then create them, if you kind of I’m sorry, you might have to squint a little bit I am too. But you can see a little image of like a mock up of a phone and their Instagram there, those images are all made on a software, or on a program where you have to make the graphics. And that takes time, I do that. And that takes a good chunk of time out of someone’s day, especially if you’re putting out content ahead as well. So from doing all of that they needed help. And so they came to us, and we were able to again, take over their social media accounts on Instagram, and Facebook. And we were able to create the content for them. And then because it’s more specific and niche stuff, I sent it over back to them, then they’re able to approve it. And that’s another thing you can do, you can actually have someone make the content for you, and then have you know, then you can go in and be like, Yes, this is correct or no, please change this, this and this, this is a bit wonky, or can you reword this, send it back to or they send it back to us. And I go in and make the changes, and usually schedule it out for a week, two weeks, or three weeks, depending how many bits of content we had there. But we were able to help them and they’re moving up in their jobs. They’re doing amazing stuff. And it’s because now they have more time to focus on their jobs, and on the app and on doing other things to advance just themselves. And speech sounds visualized as a whole. While we take care of their shows their social media.

Adam Jones 22:37
Yeah. And the the big thing there that we’re trying to illustrate is, you know, whether whether you’re working with a company or you have an employee, we want we’d rather a business owner, be passionate about their business, and focusing on driving their business, because there’s things that only you can do. And if you don’t even like social media in the first place, allow somebody else to do it. Right. As much as we’re going to teach people how to do things. It’s hard to teach when there’s already some resistance there. And you know, maybe you’re passionate about a social media platform, maybe you just love Instagram, there’s some business owners who do or Tik Tok or others, then go ahead, go do it, go run with it, go run full speed ahead, then we’re gonna show you a few things of like some do’s and don’ts, and some more tools to help you prepare long term, right. Like Alyssa was saying, you know, it’s Christmas coming up, we have three to four weeks of content prepped and planned for most of our clients, because we don’t want to be working on Christmas Day, right? We want to take a few days off if we can. But that means we have to plan for multiple clients, making sure that everything’s posting everything set up, everything’s approved, where a lot of business owners may that might slip that might be put off towards the end of the month, slash in the moment. So top five mistakes most businesses make you’re perfectly set up for the results you are receiving. That sounds harsh. That hits me here. Because I’m like, wow, why? Why are we doing better? Well, we’re perfectly set up to receive the results that we’re receiving. Right. Had to look at it from a big picture point of view, but then also narrow in. So I have some do’s and don’ts that we’re gonna roll through together. The number one mistake that we see is that profiles are not filled out all the way. Especially with Google My Business. A lot of people don’t fill that out all the way. And it’s we’re making a video for that. It’s on YouTube. Subscribe, it’ll be cool. There’s a lot of nuances that are there and here. Here’s an example. So this is a coffee shop in Spokane. They have 20 followers. They have 69 people that have checked in I have a phone number and an address. It might be a little bit hard to see. But if you pay attention, the photo at the top is pretty much almost the exact same photo as their profile. So there’s no branding, there’s no logo. I have no information. Right? There’s there’s just nothing here for me to engage with. versus another coffee shop. This is Woods coffee. They are on the west side. But I have a plethora of information. Right? These people have 26,000 followers and likes, instead of Facebook. And I have a website, I have a phone number, I have an email address, I have a there’s a Send Message button. So they’re open to engagement. And then they have an about section that says family owned and operated local coffee channel Pacific Northwest. Oh, okay. When I was finding them, I didn’t know that they were a chain until I dug a little bit deeper. I was like, Oh, wow, this is actually really cool. They actually are very family oriented. They also have their own roastery. And actually, some of their locations also have a bakery. That’s, that’s awesome. That’s legit. And then I have an Instagram, and then I have a Twitter.

Alyssa Mullins 26:16
…a coffee shop with a Twitter. That one’s kind of new in my mind.

Adam Jones 26:23
It is. But the fascinating thing is, they are located in Bellevue. And their local clientele actively uses Twitter a lot. They know where their audience is. They know who their customers are. And they’re actively engaging with those customers. And one thing I would say if you’re wanting to get into it more, or research how other people are doing; go look at regional chains. Don’t look at like McDonald’s, or Jimmy John’s or some of these others. But look at your regional chain and how they’re operating. Because odds are, they’ve already spent a lot of money making this work, they’ve already spent a lot of money, figuring out the right system, the right language, the right types of pictures, and the right types of engagements. Because the mistake with just having a presence just everywhere, is it’s difficult to post consistently to all of them. And and so using this example of the cedar coffee shop, this coffee shop, it says that there’s posts about cedar coffee. What that indicates is that they’ve actually never even posted they created it, they put their phone number there, and then they left it. And so other people can tag and say, Oh, hey, we checked in here, oh, hey, we’re at the coffee shop, and their information will pop up. However, at that point, you’re allowing the community and Facebook to curate content for your audience. Or in this example, also showing, oh, this only has 20 likes, and they don’t really post consistently, even though there’s a presence there. I don’t even know if it’s open, just not even business hours. Right. And on this one, if you scroll, there’s some there’s there’s some things that I might call inappropriate or inappropriate. That I don’t appreciate. But because the owner said, Hey, let’s have a presence. But I don’t have enough time to post somebody else’s in control. And it reflects poorly. And so we always had to be a little bit careful that if we do choose a platform that we are all in, because sometimes just having a presence can backfire on us pretty bad. As a contrast of posting consistently, ladder coffee, they’re also in Spokane. They have they post content all the time. And even not all of it’s like, oh my gosh, look at this cup. But they’re also saying, Oh, hey, our winter stuff is coming. Our winter menu starts next week. Our winter stuff starts tomorrow, come get a sneak peek. Hey. And they even did like a soft launch. Right? Hey, come come at the end of the day. We’re going to do some of our winter menu ahead of time for you guys to try it out only for the two hours that people come and show up. And so then what that does is that creates kind of an exclusivity because only the people who know no and without posting consistently and with that all in attitude. They have some super fans. They have people who are delighted to be a part of Lador coffee, who are delighted to be engaged with them on a regular basis. And that’s when you’re all in. It’s a lot easier to create that type of momentum. The other thing we see often is not posting relevant content. This is this is one example. This is on Instagram. Can you guys tell me either if you unmute yourself or if you type it in the chat, what is this person sell? What is their business?

Guest 30:23
Looks like jewelry and shirts, I guess.

Adam Jones 30:31
Yeah, ish. It took me a while. It took me a while to figure it out. It’s a online jewelry boutique. But I guess they have some shirts, I guess. I guess they go to some in person events, which is weird that you’re an online jewelry boutique. But you’re also going to in person events too. If you’re scrolling and you’re engaged with them, or even if you’re trying to discover them, it’s actually really difficult. Right? So these examples are really easy to find. And then sometimes they’re really hard to find bad examples. Because then sometimes they’re really hard to find. She she had, she mixes a lot of family into it, and a lot of like home life. And so if you’re just scrolling through, you’d really don’t know if she is a business or personal. Another example, is sugar Bay vegan bakery, which is over in Colfax in the mercantile. If you scroll through their stuff, it’s fantastic. I know instantly. Oh, you’re a bakery. Right. And they did make some seasonal things, some holiday greetings in there. So I know okay, well, there’s gifts, I can buy gifts if I want to, oh, they do have chocolates. I didn’t know they had chocolates before. But it’s still in the vein. I know at a glance who they are and what they’re about. And that that is imperative. Like that’s half the battle for showing up to the show. Right? hashtags. You’re asking about hashtags earlier, using hashtags inappropriately is a big mistake that we see or even not using hashtags at all. So if I click Next, click Next. There you so this is cute. I like chinchillas I think they’re cool. I’m not a big like hamster or guinea pig or ferret person. I don’t I’m not about those. But chinchilla, those are cool to me. If I adopt a chinchilla I don’t even know if a normal veterinarian looks at chinchillas. Right? Like I have no preconceived notions on that whatsoever. But there’s this veterinary clinic that I guess specializes in exotic or unusual animals. But if we look at their hashtags they have later kriega and later Creek, a family

I don’t know what those are. I would not know what those are ahead of time or even know to click or search for them. Hashtags are a way for us to categorize conversations. So if you use hashtag Spokane, Washington, I can see all the postings all the Instagram related to Spokane, Washington. Anyone who tagged a photo as hashtag Spokane, Washington will show up when I research that. And for a lot of restaurants and food industry. That’s how the younger generation is actively finding good food is through Instagram. Twitter has the hashtag system they curate there’s a little bit differently. They have some different ways that they provide the information. Instagrams pretty open of just, hey, here’s the most recent posts with everything related to Spokane, Washington. Twitter says, here’s the most popular related to that. And whether it was recent, it could have been two years ago. Their their stuff isn’t always as fresh and the way that they run their hashtag system. For local businesses, I really do recommend using localized hashtags. And Instagram will show you how many people are using the hashtag or how many posts might be related to that hashtag. And it’s really, really important because if we want to do like a Colfax Wah, you can’t, for our area you actually can’t just use Colfax because there’s a Colfax, California. So if we do just normal Colfax Our stuff gets muddied really quickly with the colefax in California, but if we do hashtag Colfax, wha, then you can be integrated with the rest of the Colfax, Washington conversation in area. And a lot of tourists will do this too. If they’re new to a region, or if they’re exploring in a region. They hop in, and they’re like, hey, what goes on in this town? Let’s go find the hashtags related to this area, and go shopping, hiking or do other things. So like that, who is it possible to create one? It is it is. And that’s what they did with Lita kriega. That’s what they did with that. But only the company itself knows that that is in use. And so then, it’s difficult to use that and be discoverable is the better way, I would say that. And we saw an issue with Facebook years ago, where people were just making up hashtags. And it actually really destroyed the Facebook experience. Because you click something, oh, this is the only posts related to it. Oh, you click that there’s maybe two posts from the same person related to that, that that it’s not very enjoyable experience. Another another example, right, of like not filling out the rest of your profile. Say I found that chinchilla, I’m like, Oh, my gosh, this is cool. I want to learn more I go there profile. I don’t have any other information. Right, I don’t have a phone number, I don’t have a website, I don’t have anything to go off of. And so then I’m stuck getting out of the app, going to my web browser, typing in the name, hopefully I’m remembering the name. And then find it that way. The problem when you do this is Instagram will not like downright your profile. But Instagrams not going to show your profile as often because you forced a user to leave the platform. When you don’t have engagement or you even discourage engagement by not having enough information, Instagrams not going to boost you or help you in any way. The goal of all social platforms, Facebook to tick tock, everything in between is to keep you on the platform, they do not want you to leave. And so if there’s not enough information, and you’re forcing them to take other actions and engagements, they’re, they’re just not gonna promote you, they’re not gonna work with you. They’re not gonna say that this is valuable content. And you can see that this person has 422 posts. That’s a lot. They only have 139 followers. That’s really small for how much content that they’ve been putting out. And part of that is the lack of hashtags. Versus versus this group. They’re another Spokane that hospital.

But they also have many Ozzy’s many Australian shepherds, hashtags puppies of Instagram. Hashtag Spokane hashtag Spokane Valley hashtag Spokane doesn’t suck. No one’s really oddly popular. A lot of people do use that. And then hashtag Pacific Northwest. If I’m even outside of the Spokane area, maybe I’m into Isla, which is a little bit further north of Spokane. And I say oh, hey, they have Aussies and they work with puppies? Well, I actually have a healer, I have something very similar. They would understand my breed. If they understand my dog, they understand my breed. And they’ve worked in my regional area, hey, I shouldn’t I should go check these people out. And they have their hours when they’re closed, a phone number, and their website, all available. Now this account is really new. And they have 14 posts. And they’re already at 30%. The level of the other one. Right. It’s a little funny when we look at these kind of stark contrasts. But at bare minimum, this vet clinic is going to do significantly better in the long run, just because that they’ve taken care of the basics. They’ve taken care of appropriate hashtags, and appropriate information. Now there’s ways they can optimize it. There’s ways they could grow it. But that just showing up and just showing information in your profile is half the battle. The other thing is not engaging with followers. And I don’t have any good or bad because those can get really bad really fast. But we do say you know if someone commented and said, hey, oh my gosh, I love this picture. Go in and say awesome. Thank you so much, you know, what do you like about it? Or hey, do you want to see more stuff like this? Oh, hey, are you interested in these types of products? Oh, hey, would you like a free sample? Oh, hey, would you, there’s all kinds of ways as a brand that you’re able to once again, the light, that user delight and build that brand awareness and build that just brand reputation. By having that engagement with your followers, especially if they comment, especially if they leave a review, like Facebook reviews, Google reviews, and so on, gives you a five star go and say thank you. I have businesses that would love more five star reviews, Google will also rank you higher, Facebook will also rank you higher, when you go in, and you have that interaction, that engagement because it shows that you are an engaged owner. And if you have an engaged owner, that means you’re going to have a better Facebook experience, you’re gonna have a better Google experience, which keeps people on the platform longer. So those are the types of things to keep in mind that a lot of what Google Facebook and others push for is good customer service. Good customer experience. So throwing it over to Alyssa.

Alyssa Mullins 41:17
Yeah, so I’m just gonna go over how to kind of succeed with content creation, where, you know, there are a bunch of different styles of content out there. And so picking the right social media that works for your style of content that also kind of helps with optimizing time and your energy. So the first kind of content is going to be video content. So some of the platforms that play really nice with video and are solely video is going to be tick tock and YouTube. Tick tock is a little newer, and like Adam said, they’re still kind of going through, I’m going to call it an identity crisis, where are growing pains, growing pains, identity crisis, you know, they want to do everything. But also aren’t fully there yet, but, and you’ve probably honestly seen some videos from Tik Tok. Or if you have that one song that’s kind of stuck in your head, and you don’t know why. That’s probably what it was from. And, and YouTube, where YouTube that’s a it works with long form video, it works with even like quick short videos. And in Video content doesn’t have to be something super elaborate with different effects and transitions. And, you know, wonderful lighting, and, you know, a big fancy camera, it can be just from your phone, holding it or doing what I do sometimes where you set it up against something that’s a little high, and then you just face it towards you. Video content like that, all of that works. The next platforms that work with video content is going to be Instagram, you can post videos, you can also post on your stories, which are photos or videos that will stay on your profile for 24 hours. Facebook also has the same feature, or on Instagram reels, which is Instagrams version of Tik Tok. So it’s just basically a bunch of videos that go up to about maybe three minutes or so at the most. And then LinkedIn, you can put some of your videos up on LinkedIn. And that’s just another platform that you can do that with Pinterest is one as well. But yeah, your video content for any of them. They don’t have to be anything crazy. It can honestly just be you walking around if you have a shop, you can walk around your shop and you can say hey, you know we have a sale coming up for this particular product. Or Hi guys. It’s me and I just want to let you all know that you know this weekend we’ll be having a big sale or you know even just like your dad joke of the day yeah, I’m bad dad jokes but you know your dad joke of the day or just something and, and bits like that content pieces like that. Don’t take all that long to create. They play nice with all the platforms, and you can get to your audience in some fashion. Especially on tick tock, you can kind of just end up forgetting to your audience. Even after posting a 32nd video, they don’t have to be super long. They don’t need to be workshop webinars long. They can be pretty short. The next bit of content that you can do is going to be photos and images. And so When I say photos and images, it can be something that you just snap a quick photo of on your phone, or on a camera, if you want to do that too. Or something you made through a graphics, whether it’s Photoshop design program, things like that. And those kinds of content, those play nice, really only on Instagram and Facebook, you can get on LinkedIn. Pinterest is one of them as well, I apologize, I didn’t add that one on there.

But your photos and your images, just like the videos, it doesn’t need to be something where you kind of like, sit and you put in, you know, different gradients and backgrounds and textures, you can just I’ll use my cup as an example, you can just take a cut and set it up, take a picture, hey, we have this cup going on sale, I wish it was we have this cup going on sale, you know, this weekend, or get ready for Christmas with your Starbucks something something peppermint latte, with some kind of foam on top, Starbucks gets really complicated with their holiday drinks, but you know it, things like that. And you can just that something that even I have done for some of my clients. And you can get a bunch of photo content, a bunch of video content in like 30 minutes. And that’s 30 minutes out of your day. And then you know, you can sit and then you have this load of content on your side, where oh, yeah, I need to post about this. And then you can post it, and then you’re good. And you don’t have to worry about editing, you don’t have to worry about anything else. And it, it makes things really easy, especially when starting off your platform. Because you can grow into the more complicated things you you don’t have to start there. And then the last bit is just kind of a reminder that your content doesn’t have to be fancy, it just has to be relevant. When you go onto these platforms, you see people that are doing amazing things with, you know, their talents and everything, whether it’s a video that’s edited with different colors, and lighting, and transitions and effects, and it looks really good. And you can give them that. But also, you have there are some content creators out there that just set their phone up and talk for like a minute. And they do just as good. If not sometimes even better. It’s, it’s really amazing, as long as the content is relevant to what you do. And like we said to your audience, then you’re gonna do justified you don’t need to do complicated tic toc transitions that I may or may not have tried and may or may not have failed more times than I’d like to admit. And and you don’t need to you don’t need to know how to do graphic design. You don’t. I don’t I just got pretty lucky with with where I work in and the training that I’ve got, you know, I got lucky on that end. But if it if it’s up to me, I am content with just posting nice photos like you can stage products. You can have your, your cup and then maybe some coffee beans right here. And that’s that’s a whole photo right there. It’s not fancy, it’s not complicated. And and that’ll do just fine. People like stuff like that sometimes going, what is it sometimes being simpler and cleaner about what you do is going to perform better on your profile, especially if it’s relevant and all that other stuff. But so that’s a bit on succeeding with your content creation. And then Adams gonna go over some content funnels.

Adam Jones 48:51
Yeah. So this is this is a content funnel. A lot of people like to call this also a sales funnel, right where the everyone is in the top part of the funnel, then they become aware of you, then they have interest, and then they have the desire, then they might convert. And that’s actually where most sales funnels end is, after that purchase. I don’t believe in doing that. I if someone buys from me, I want them to buy from me tomorrow, and the next day, and the next day. And then I want them to tell their friends about it. I really believe that a sales funnel and the way that we approach our content needs to not just go for a conversion and sale but also for advocacy, that people are promoting and actively engaging with you from beginning to the end and forever on. And so one of the ways that we help that’s helped us kind of work through this framework quite a bit, is actually just turning it on its side and being able to work through the format better. This is also based upon the writing format called Ada, which is attention Interest, Desire action. And that’s really Easy way to write out content using that writing formula of ADA. And so when we’re looking and we build these, and we build this often for a lot of our clients, we we can’t take a bigger picture view of, you know, if we’re going to be making content, what is a blog article? What is a video? What is a one off Instagram post? You know, what, where are these different elements. And so for our business, I mentioned before that we talk a lot about, you know, search engine optimization. So, these are pretend sticky notes. If we were in person, I’d be doing sticky notes. And I would say, you know, the top 10 things your website needs in 2022. Right? I might say instead of things like top 10, SEO, updates your website needs in 2022. And that’s a blog article. That’s also a video, right? So then I might say, Okay, well, what’s an easier way to break it up? So I might say, hey, you know, here’s a, a lot of our clients when we do this type of work, you know, what a 15% increase in site traffic looks like from doing step one, and two. This is a weird mouse and keyboard. So then that could be a LinkedIn post, that could be a Facebook post, that could be a one off picture, that could be a tick tock, those are all really, really kind of shorter form. And then taking it one step further, if I’m using Twitter, right? I can say, you know, number one thing to do on your website, in social in 2022. Is XYZ. And the cool thing is, I can just duplicate this, right? Because I have I started with an article that was here are the top 10 things you should do to your website, in 2022. I can just go to Twitter and say, Okay, here’s number one. Tomorrow is number two. The next one is day three, day four, day five, day six. So just writing a simple blog, created anywhere from 10 to 15, posts. Right? Like that. I start in the middle and work my way back. And I decrease the amount of time because if someone’s in the awareness phase, they’re they’re not going to sit down. They don’t know me from Bob. I know it’s usually you don’t know me from Adam. But Adam, so hopefully you know, me. We are in our awareness phase, they’re going to have a little bit of time. But I can say, hey, you know, if this was interesting, if the number two item was interesting, check out what that looked like, you know, here, here’s a link to my other article or my other post, here’s the all the 10 things you can do. Maybe you came in at Step nine, here’s all the other ones so that you don’t have to scroll through my timeline or my feed, you can just go to the blog article and see all of it together in one spot. Right? Ultimately, what I would really really like because like I want them to take an action is you know, subscribe, subscribe to our my Twitter to the YouTube. Hopefully my email newsletter, I love email newsletters that you own your audience there.

I want them to do that. And you know what if they say, Wow, this content was super legit. Hopefully they’re going to say either thank you on a post or they’re going to ask a question and as we do that as we engage in that way, there’s going to be a lot of interactions and Twitter, Facebook, etc. Thank you so much Marie i for laughing at my jokes as we engage in that way, Twitter, Facebook, etc. They’re gonna see oh, this this is engaging content. We need to promote it more. And then the algorithm is doing the work for me that that’s what we ultimately want. And I’m gonna do another short example. You know, we look at coffee that’s that’s a really easy example right now coffee is just big. It’s a big industry with billions of dollars behind it. You know? Top five mistakes people make when making coffee. Alright, so then I might also be able to write a smaller thing about. Okay, so number one mistake is usually not hot enough water. Or they’ll do not filtered water. Those things will change the, the, the flavoring and the taste very, very simply very, very easily. Right. But once again, I can now have on Twitter or Facebook or even Instagram anywhere else, you know, number one mistake want to learn more? Go to the blog to learn all the mistakes. So that’s one day of content. The next day, mistake number two, the next day mistake number three, mistake number four, mistake number five. And we’re building this awareness because they might not know about it. But if I say, Hey, if you want to know the number one issue is making coffee. There you go. I’ve grabbed someone, or maybe you know, maybe number three, number four, number five might surprise you. So there’s ways to do that. And once again, I want them to subscribe, I want them to engage with me. And then maybe, maybe I’m selling coffee, maybe I’m selling coffee, they can buy the coffee, you know, buy a filter, or buy it, buy a cleaning kit. Right? Because maybe the you have hard a lot of calcium deposits in your espresso machine, and I have a cleaning kit for that. It’s actually a really good idea. You can buy it, and then hopefully you’re going to send me a review, you’re going to engage with me, you might even ask a question of like, Hey, I bought this kit. Do I? How many times am I supposed to flush water through? You know, I flush water three times, it still tasted a little funny. Oh, well, you’re only supposed to flush it once. So maybe there’s something else that we want to talk about as a customer service experience. I can hop in and work through that with them. And that’s that’s the way that we build a lot of our content is we’re helping people become aware to build that interest, build up the desire and courage towards a conversion now that we have some trust, you are no longer an unknown person. But you’re like, Oh, I kind of liked that guy. He has some authority. He seems to know what he’s talking about. I wonder what’s this cleaning kit? I want to learn more. Okay, now that I’m kind of getting more into this coffee culture, how do I do this part. And we’re helping them through from start to finish. What all that looks like. Thank you sweda for sponsoring and putting on this event. We love being a part of this. We love engaging suite. It’s just been one of the coolest organizations for our area. And they do a lot of good work. So that’s it for today. We’ll be closing out the session. I just can’t say enough. Thank you!