Welcome to the we are slam show where we share marketing agency, insights, best practices and ideas to help your business grow. My name is tyler kelly, i’m the co-founder and chief strategist right here at slam agency we’re a small but mighty full-service marketing agency that helps marketing directors, like you execute on your vision, execute on your strategy, just think of us, as the outsourced marketing department, with a Specialty really in digital marketing, and today I want to talk to you about social media now a lot of times when we think about social media.
We just think about the Big Five Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube and LinkedIn, but here’s the thing social media is so much bigger than that and as a marketing director, you really have to understand how big it is so that you can take full advantage of every aspect Of social media, okay, so social media is composed of four equally important parts. These are social, listening, social influencing social networking and social selling, and in this article I’m going to go through each one.
Social media allows us to social, listen, ok, social listening is tuning in to the needs and to the wants of our customers and social media gives us the platforms, the tools that we need in order to do this more effectively in the olden days we used to Do focus groups we used to do polling and all these types of things, but, as we know, these things aren’t really as effective as they used to be polls used to be the gold standard for determining elections.
Well, now polls aren’t written worth their paper that they’re written on right and focus groups used to be. You know the thing it used to be like: let’s go in, let’s talk with some people, that’s asking questions, but the dirty little secret. Is this people? Don’t tell you what is truly on their mind in a focus group situation. They tell you what they think you want to hear. We’ve known this as marketers for many years, there’s been a lot of studies, a lot of research that say for focus groups, just don’t give you the real information.
So how can you get the wrong information? Well, social listening is the way to do that. So how do you do it? Well, you figure out where your customers were your prospects, where your potential customers are okay online, whether it be Facebook groups, LinkedIn figure out where these conversations are happening, whether it be a forum or you know, on a blog comments. These types of things, wherever it is figure it out and then begin to listen, hashtag following on Instagram on Twitter.
This might give you some insight into what types of things your customers are talking about, and this is where, if you’re doing you’re listening right, you can really begin to tap into what their pain points are. What they’re psyched, what the psychographics are like, what their attitudes interests and opinions are, and this will give you insight as a marketing director into how to approach them through advertising and marketing real quick, a few of my favorite tools for listening in social media, an oldie But goodie HootSuite really great way to set up what you want to pay attention to and then go back to that daily and kind of see.
What’s new, what’s happening, HootSuite is an oldie but goodie a few others that I, like I like mention. I, like Agora, pulse and I like brand, read now the second part of social media that you need to be aware of and know how to tap into is social influencing. Now, when you think of social influencing, I want you to think really about influencer marketing. Okay, influencer marketing is something that has come on the scene.
You know in a big way the last couple years and there’s some really good uses of influencer marketing. There’s some really horrible examples of influencer marketing as well. Now, here’s the thing: if you go: google, influencer marketing or social influencing what you’re going to find is you’re, going to find lots of blogs lots of lots of articles that are all about how wonderful influencer marketing is, but for the majority of people reading this article, It’s probably not going to work for you.
Here’s the thing there’s been a lot of research recently that has that has shown that influencer marketing does not provide the ROI that it has promised that it would provide there’s a really great episode on Noah Kagan presents, which, by the way, is one of my favorite Podcast, if I tuned in to a podcast, I’m tuning into Noah, Kagan’s podcast, and this podcast was all about influencer marketing, the ins, the outs, what works, what doesn’t it was with a guy named Josh snow, who has really approached influencer marketing in some unique ways, and He shares his experiences and his data in influencer marketing to tell you what works and what doesn’t and for the majority of you reading right now, I guarantee that it’s probably not going to give you the results that you expect that it should all right.
The number three part of social media – it’s the big one, social networking now, when you think about social networking, there’s there’s some really big ideas, and I want you to. I want you to grasp the first is this likes? Don’t matter likes, do not matter. Okay, there’s an article, it’s called a thousand true fans, and it’s just it’s all about how just in life in business in the creative world that you can accomplish so much more with a small group of devoted followers raving fans, then you can, with a large group, Perfect example: Priceline, if you go to their Facebook page you’ll, see that they have millions of followers and their interaction rate.
Their engagement rate is so low, less than 1 %, and it just blows my mind that they can invest so much in this likes game. In this likes number and so little in engaging content, the secret here is social media. Networking is all about that devoted group of fans of followers who will buy everything that you put out that will engage with every post that you put out. This is what social networking is truly about, and if you lose sight of that objective, then you’re going to just be in this rat race that continues and continues and there’s no winning the better way is to mobilize the audience that you do have and not to Focus on all the numbers not to focus on all those people that aren’t going to become customer now, there’s a couple other things I want you to be aware of when it comes to social networking and the first is seeker versus engagement.
Remember this seeker versus engagement when it comes to social networking. There are two types of social networks. The first is seeker networks. Okay, a seeker network is it’s it’s kind of based on this idea of search; okay, it’s where you as a user, will go to that network and you will type in a search and you’re looking for something you’re seeking out information. Okay, a perfect example of this is YouTube.
People go there to seek out the majority of people, go there to seek out information. It’s the second largest search engine in the world, just behind Google, and so, if your goal with YouTube is to build like this massive network with these fans that are engaging, then there’s a super high bar to make that happen and more than likely you’re going to Have to invest a lot of money into making that happen, and the reason why is because you’re going against the flow you’re going against the current the current when it comes to YouTube, is as a seeker Network.
So what you should do on a secret network? Is you should build content optimize it for search optimize it for SEO so that when people go and they type in the search, your content is going to pop up on that first page of results? Okay, so on a seeker network, it’s all about! How can I optimize SEO optimize my content to be found to be discovered later on down the line? It’s not about building this massive blog, where you have a ton of followers and there’s just massive amount of engagement.
That does happen on YouTube, but that is those are the outliers. Those are the success stories. Those are the unicorns okay, the majority of YouTube and the majority of the people using YouTube, use it as a search engine. Now the flipside is engagement. Engagement is where you do have networks where people are engaging where there’s conversations where there is community being built. Perfect example: Facebook Instagram.
These are perfect examples of engagement networks. Now, what I want you to realize with an engagement network like Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin Instagram, is that these are the networks where you can do social listening, because these are the network. We’re conversations are actually happening where there’s groups where people are, you know breaking off into groups of similar interest. Okay, this is engagement networks, and this is where social listening happens.
This is also where you can social influence behavior by way of becoming part of the conversation by becoming a thought leader on the network and by generating and creating content, that’s captivating motivating inspiring that that drives action. Now. The second big idea that I want you to get today is this idea of opened versus closed networks. Okay, YouTube is a perfect example of an open network.
What does YouTube do when you search it, takes you to other people’s content and that most likely links out to the web very similar to Google right, Google, which is not necessarily a social network? Although many SEO s would argue that it is when you type a search into Google, what happens? Is you get a list of results on your search engine results page and when you click the link, it takes you to another site off of Google right same way with YouTube.
It takes you off of YouTube and then there’s no penalty there. Okay, this is actually encouraged. It’s the way that the open network is built. It’s built to lead you to content that doesn’t exist on their site. However, when it comes to closed networks, this is not always the case. A closed Network really penalizes you when you post content, that is not part of its network that is not hosted on its network.
Okay, Facebook is a great example. It’s a closed network. How can you identify a closed Network? Well, the first thing is in order to access most of the content. You need to be logged in okay. It’s a closed network YouTube. You don’t need to be logged in access to content, Facebook LinkedIn! You need to be logged in to access the content, so these are closed networks anytime. You have to log in to access to content.
Then what I want you to think of as a marketing director is, I don’t want to post third party links now. The first question I always get when talking with a marketing director is well Mike, my site’s, not really a third party link, because it’s my site, it’s my page and it’s my site, but you guys think about like this. It’s your brand on Facebook’s, page! Okay! It’s it’s on facebook.Com and because it’s on facebook.
Com, if you put a link to your site in the post to your site, that’s a third-party site, meaning Facebook doesn’t own your site and because of that, and because Facebook is a closed Network, then what’s going to happen. Is Facebook is going to penalize you? I know they say that they don’t, but they do. Experience shows that they, just they don’t show content when it’s when it’s a youtube link, they’re not going to show it to very many people.
You can test this on your own pages when you post a link to your website, they’re, not going to show it to very many people and because Facebook is really built on this snowball algorithm, which is like the more people that like and engage with your content. The more they’re going to see your content and the more they’re going to introduce your content to new people and then on the flip side, if you post a link, no one sees it.
No one engages with it, then what you’re doing is you’re digging a ditch for yourself anytime, you post a third-party link on your site, so be very wary of any time. That might be the case when you want to do that when your boss is like. I want to post a link to you, know our products page here on the site. The reason why Facebook introduced shops is because they don’t want you to go to your website to shop.
They don’t want your customers to go to your website to shop. They want them to shop on Facebook, because Facebook is a closed network and they want everything that happens with their traffic to happen on facebook.Com. If it’s not happening on facebook.Com, then guess what very few people are going to see it they’re going to push it to the side and they’re not going to show it to anyone. So as a marketing director anytime, you have a third-party link on a closed network.
Realize that it’s not going to get very far, the fourth part of social media is social selling and I’ll. Let you in on a little secret. It’s not selling at all, rather social selling is all about building a brand. It’s all about becoming a thought leader. Building familiarity, we’ve talked several times over many episodes that people buy from those that they know like and trust, and the quickest way to drive an increase.
Likeability is by building familiarity it’s by being present by being out there. By having your face out there, the more people see you the more they like and the more that they trust you. I know this is crazy, but it’s it’s a fact. The more they see you the more they like and trust you. As a matter of fact, it’s called the familiarity bias so build it. Put your face out. There put your brand out there be out there be out there as often as you possibly can, and do so.
The step up here. The level up here is, if you’re out there with valuable content. If you’re out there as a thought leader, then people will begin to see you that way. Why do we do that? We are slam shell, so that we can share our experience. We can share our insights, our knowledge with marketing directors like you, so that when the time comes for you to hire an agency, if, when the time comes to, when you just can’t execute – and you just don’t – have the bandwidth to do everything that you need to Do you know in-house, then it’s like okay, we’re going to think about slam to be that that digital partner to be that outsourced marketing department that we can hire that that I can use as a marketing director to do everything that I need to do in terms Of like graphic design, article copywriting social media, digital advertising, I need a team like that, and rather than hiring that team one by one and figuring out, you know who’s who’s good in this position in this position and managing all those people.
Rather than doing all of that, I’m going to hire slam because by hiring slam, I get all those specialties. I get all those people, but I get a team that works well together and that I can provide vision to and strategy for and that they’ll execute on that and it’ll be amazing for my bottom line. Okay, that that’s the value there and that’s why we share content like this, to make you aware of our abilities to make you aware of our knowledge and our capabilities so that when the time comes, you already know who to call that’s what social selling is social Selling is not me hitting you up on LinkedIn and being a nuisance.
Okay, that is social spam. It’s not social selling, so you know why do i? Why am I never on LinkedIn? Why do I just despise LinkedIn? Why do I think that, like everyone in the business world, putting their time into LinkedIn is a waste of time, because it’s a spam network? You can quote me on that. It’s a spam Network and everyone, that’s on LinkedIn for the most part, is usually LinkedIn in the wrong way and just you know, rabbit trail.
If I want to engage and connect with the rail people, then I’m not going to do it on a network like LinkedIn. I’r going to do it on a network like Facebook or Instagram, and the reason why I do that is because that’s when people put their barriers down and that they’re there there they are their real selves at that point on LinkedIn, everyone just has like a mask On it’s the business, you know it’s business, business, business and everyone’s in that business mindset and it’s hard to break through that and really like what most people do to break through that.
It’s just spam, the heck out of you – and I don’t like that. I don’t like LinkedIn, you can quote me on that. Social selling is not social spam, so, rather than hitting somebody’s email, inbox or you’re, deeming them and like just bugging the heck out of them. How do you prospect well inbound prospecting is the key, and that is by putting out articles, putting out post that that provide information and value to the reader and putting that out there, knowing that when the right person comes along and sees that content that they’re going To reach out the final thing that I want you to think about, when you think about social selling is what I call trigger events this could be on.
You know one of the ways that you could use LinkedIn, it’s like okay, I just got a new job. It’s posted, like so-and-so, just got hired here. That is a trigger event. That’s an event that you should be aware of, because it marks a change in that person’s status in that person’s career, and so you know rather than you just saying, hey Congrats, take a note. Knowing that you know if your marketing director you just got hired on as a marking director, your onboarding you’re learning about your new company, there’s a lot of stuff going on, and if I were going to contact you, it’s not going to be on day one right.
If I were going to reach out to you, if my goal was to do an outbound prospecting, then I would I would look at that trigger event, and I would know that within a month and a half two months, that’s probably the time when you’ve got your Bearings and your ready to begin seeking out help, and at that point I want to make sure that you know about who we are and what we do. And so, if I paid attention, if you’re you know one of my targets, if you will, if you’re somebody that I want to work with, and I’ve paid attention to the fact that that you know you started about a month and a half ago, then now I Know that it’s probably a good time to get on your radar.
Okay, this is trigger event awareness. The other thing is just buying cycle awareness, and this is where social listening comes in in regards to social selling. You have to be in tune with those accounts that you want to work with, so be aware of that buying cycle be aware of where they are in that consumer journey, and you can do this with social selling, okay, so the four parts of social media, social Listening social influencing social networking and social selling be sure to listen to this a couple times because there’s a lot of good info in this podcast next week, we’re going to talk specifically about social media networking and how you can get the best bang for your buck.
With the big five all right, if you’ve enjoyed this podcast if you’ve been joined, this show do me a favor, and let me know anywhere where you listen or read. Leave me a comment. Send me an email, Tyler and slam. Agency.Com I’d be happy to connect with you now, if you’re looking for an outsourced marketing department, if you need help right now, give us a call shoot us an email or go to our site. Slam.
Agency.Com click on the free consultation button and we’ll be happy to chat with you. Thank you for tuning in I’ll, see you next week, thanks for reading, if you like what you just readed subscribe, then hit that Bell you’ll be the first to be notified when new content goes live. After that you can read more articles from slamming agency. We’ll pick something we think: you’ll love,
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