Social Media 101

We’re going to open up this episode with a video that Zachary put together back when social media was brand new, it’s called is social media a fad. Then we hope you’ll join in as we go through the basics, social media, one Oh one on today’s straight shop marketing podcast.

Wow. You like that, that little blast from the past there, with all the social media fad video, I remembered that so well an organization association had asked me to develop a keynote to explain social media for business, to present to a group of business owners, way back in the day.

You’ll notice in that video. There’s. Much lower quality than what we have nowadays. Lets you know how far back it was. So that was the number one question back then is social media fad. Yeah. In a way. There was an awful lot of confusion about what it was and if businesses should engage with it, which of course falls in line with our history and the adoption process.

Accepting change episode for a month ago or so. So I decided to show the history to them by collecting those clips of where people had difficulty accepting change in different areas. So I’ve been doing that bit for quite a while. I particularly liked the baby commercials. Yes. That was one to illustrate specifically how rap music, which was marked as a fad in the eighties how it was being used by big corporations in their marketing, the ultimate sign of acceptance.

It really shows us the shift that moves in acceptance by its adoption into use. Wow. I just thought it was super cute. The little CGI ally McBeal babies dancing around now that great as a refresher. And because I know we just did an entire episode on businesses except for change and. I put out that accepting change.

And then we started promoting it and then this election fiasco happened and now every time I see our promo, you know, promoting, accepting change, I’m like, how do you feel about changes? The timing might be a little rough for some people, or it might be brilliant for others. Yeah. There’s probably getting eyeballs anyway.

I digress. As a refresher for those that might not have seen it. First of all, shame on you. We know that our world continues to change. Over and over again and again.

so why is this important to deal with, and to handle correctly, marketing is about meeting the public, where they live connecting with them in lifestyle, emotionally, meeting their needs, et cetera, changes in society. Behaviors technology, et cetera, directly impact our efforts to do that. As a business, but there is always pushback businesses, fight change.

Corporate ships are hard to turn, so we believe that knowledge is power. Right? So let’s start there. What is social media? Well, you deal with social media quite a bit, both professionally and personally. So why don’t you throw out some things, what do you think that social media is before I give the clinically, you know, The fancy yes.

dictionary.com. Just tell me what’s what do you think it is? Okay. Well, social media encompasses a lot of things, so I’ll just give you some rundown. It’s basically, you know, given the T spilling the tea, the given the gossip, the tea, the tea word of mouth, you know, it’s just sharing different things with different people, reviews about things, keeping in touch with your family and friends.

Fan clubbing. If you want a fangirl or fanboy out for different books or movies of celebrities, things like that. To post-emergency announcements or any kind of announcement, for example, with COVID happened, people had to announce, Hey, we’re not open. We are open. Yeah. Emergency announcements and news.

And the thing that makes it great on social media is that it is very timely. So, I mean, it’s, what’s happening right now. It’s also a place for people to post things like that. They like, you know, like, look at me like I’ve got a new swimsuit or whatever, but the Instagram look at me, look at you, look at me and, you know, and also just to post, you know, how they’ve been doing lately, how their house renovation is going you know, What they’re, what, what they’re interested in also, right.

You know, also to show you who’s connected to whom, like, I didn’t know you and I have the same Facebook friends. I didn’t know. You knew this person. And, and also is there a really great place to put reviews and recommendations for different things, but that’s just like, A few things. Yeah. It’s all that all via web 2.0 sites and mobile media, and there are tons of them out there and they come and go all the time.

You know, there’s my space. Do you remember my space? You know, it’s still alive. I know you still have one. I do have one. I don’t know how to access it anymore. But they’re MySpace Friendster. Oh, wow. There’s I mean, there’s just so many other than, you know, the main ones everybody knows Facebook, Instagram, there are tons.

Matter of fact, this last weekend, there became a huge, huge movement on Facebook of people leaving Facebook and going to. Parlor, which is a lesser-known one maybe is the other one. Yeah. So there’s, you know, there are different scales to varies, but there’s, there are all kinds of these sites that are out there.

So anyway, your bag back up, you had said something about Website 2.0 or web 2.0 site. What is web 2.0 sites web 2.0, refers to websites that emphasize user-generated content and participatory interaction. So you liked the big words. These are facts official. I’m double-checking in my head if you said that, right, but you did MySpace, Yelp, Google reviews.

Reddit flicker medium. YouTube even Wikipedia is a web 2.0 site web 1.0 was from the onset of the internet through the time of the.com boom. And into the late nineties, that time sites were simply informative and they didn’t allow much in the way of you know, participation from users. But. Just like with the.com boom.

Once my space was popular, there was a surge of social media web 2.0 sites that came out there were instilled ours, several startups, social media ventures. Again, parlor, BB. They’re very young. If you go look at those right now, they’re not as robust as Facebook is. They, we meet, we use all these social media startups.

It’s a business, just like any other. It has its ups and downs. You know, everybody starts young. Yeah. But in the way of definitions, let’s talk about social media. Is not, you just spend a lot of time talking about what it is. It’s everything. It’s not everything. Let’s talk about what it is not.

Cause this is the area where business owners get confused. The number one misconception about social media is that social media is not designed to be a sales platform. If you thought it was. Rethink it, it is not a sales platform. It is a social platform. Now sales will happen, but it is not designed to be a quick fix for sales.

And a lot of people think it is. And that’s partly because of all the charlatans that are out there trying to sell you something. On using Facebook to sell you their service on social media for business, social media is a group of socialized marketing tools, but it is not sales, but it is still important because marketing is imperative to success.

Again, knowledge is power. It’s true though. People are always trying to make everything sales that’s because sales are tangible, you know, with something that everybody can understand. Again, another area where we see a misconception is when we hear some people. Talk about marketing. Yeah. Marketing is this very much the same way?

Marketing equals business communications. It does not equal sales again. If you thought marketing and sales were the same things, you thought wrong, it’s time for you to recalibrate. Rethink what you’re doing. Sales are a result. Of marketing. Isn’t a replacement for sales marketing simply makes sales jobs easier and more productive?

Go and do that a lot in your book. Married to marketing how sales and marketing are not the same and get the. Function together. Yeah. But let’s stay here for, that’s very true, but let’s stay here for a moment longer. People don’t understand marketing or where marketing is. So let me explain it to you.

I miss Bay. No, there is too much. Let me sum up marketing is the act of proactively communicating for awareness sales fame. Raising funds or bringing celebrities. Those are the goals and the measurements of its success. The who, what, why, when, where, and how are, where the psychology strategy and creative tools of marketing all come together.

Marketing is first impressions. It’s your web presence. It’s consumer relations. It’s loyalty. Product packaging. It is an advertising and social media, but it’s also public relations, sales relations. It’s, you know, displays its promotions. It’s the uniform that people wear when they’re at you know, a restaurant or coming to your house to spray for bugs or whatever it is.

It’s also recruitment, right? It’s what you say as a business. It’s how you say it. As a business and it’s managing the expectations of others as they interact with your business. Marketing is a lot of things, but it is not simply sales in the business world marketing. Is everything. Ah, and everything is marketing Regis, McKenna smart man.

He was like, we use him a lot. We talk about him a lot. Marketing is about bringing your product or service to market, to your public social media. Is a marketing tool, but to the earlier point, it is not a quick fix sales tool. We use social media together, awareness, preference, loyalty, all of those things that we kind of, you know, mentioned before.

So let’s talk about the understanding of social media outside of its definition. Let’s discuss how social media channels are being used, why they are being used, and what they can do for businesses. Well, we’ll get into the details for sure, but for now, let’s just understand that each of them has its own.

The purpose each of the channels has their own function, their own thing that they’re after, you know, some are for events, some are for photos or music or reviews or networking. Whatever they meet about maybe social media channels will fit into strategies based on. Purpose. So they are not one size fits all.

I think that’s really important for, people to remember it. Now I’ll throw up a graphic onto the screen. Those of you that are watching on YouTube or Apple podcasts or anywhere that has the video component of this outro graphic that I’ve used to show the complexity of what this kind of looks like.

But before we dive into which platforms do what, let’s talk a little more about the basics. Principles behind social media in general. Oh, okay. I love the analogy that you use about the house. Okay. Wait, I think I actually have that in a clip from one of your speaking engagements. So let’s play that and then we can discuss it after.

Okay. That’s good. Good. So one of the things that I want you to think about with this exercise is that when you’re doing any sort of marketing, social media, It’s important to look at things from a different perspective. So it’s not just the society, but also the seeding and the research that’s behind it.

And we’re going to spend a lot of time talking about that. They know most of you exceptional. You. I have to say I did this exercise all by having my own set up this way. Which really both Spanish, which is mostly who draw on the front of their house. I’m going to go into the house and this way.

Which is exactly how she does hers. So these are blue tricks of what a business, most like as a house. What is that it acts as if it’s your front lobby. If people come in they’re new, new customers, they look around your website, they go through your retail space that though. You’re able to live basically the time with your sales staff here finally decided that they’re going to become a customer and they hang out in your living room, doing what it’s like to be a lifestyle customer.

And then if they’re good to end up on your back deck, social media is the back deck of your business. It’s all centered around the existing customers. And yes. So not new customers is not where social media was designed. Now it is social, not retail. If you act like a used car salesman on social media, people will leave you.

It’s supposed to be social media, a social platform, and a reset. It’s about building relationships with people more than just straight-up selling them. It’s about interaction. Have you actually interacted back and forth with people? If you go to COVID Cola’s Facebook page, you can talk with someone at Coca-Cola.

Nowhere else do you do that? But because this is social, you can actually interact with the brand. For any number of other people, you might not be able to interact with them in your daily lives. You go to their website, you’re going to see the fall off. Do you call them? You’re going to get a receptionist because you can actually interact with them via social media.

It’s about insider information in opportunities. Let’s say, as you would do your phrase, right? So you spent all your back there. You’re drinking for yourself. Some Brewskies. You get some, some hot dogs on the grill. You’re hanging out with your friends and you’re saying, Hey, this deal is going on. Done it.

Other than that, that’s, that’s what social media was designed to be. It’s about sharing, doing theaters for each other. Your friends can do favors for you and you can do friends do favors for your friends. The problem that you have is if you do it wrong, it’s offensive and that’s, it just not offensive is considered amateur and you don’t want to come across as amateur.

So I think that basic understanding of where social media came from. Is very important to know you know, how to use it properly. It is now things change all the time and this original purpose has shifted somewhat over time, but it is a safe place. To start nowadays, social media marketing has become more proactive and less passive, but then, you know, the main underlying theme that everybody understands as a user is still there.

You know, we used to have to drive people. To our social media for them to interact with us. And you still should, don’t neglect to do that, but we also have the opportunity now too, you know, since this becomes so popular, we can kind of mind from the people that are already there because there are so many people that are involved in social media, that piece has kind of.

Have changed. So now we just kind of present our message and build awareness, pushing them to find out more information about our business, as opposed to leaving them to social media and then doing that. So it’s a little bit different, but it’s still social media use by the business. Again, marketing is business communications and taking your business to the marketplace.

The people of the marketplace are on social media. So should you, you should be there too. Right. So let’s take a minute and let’s look at it visually again, visually for those of you that can see it. So for those of you that can’t see it, I’m going to kind of talk through it and kind of narrate. So hopefully you can visualize, visualize what I’m saying.

All right. So, Ooh, let’s do this on here. Or like, what was that? This is your town, your city. Right. Okay. Here, this is the marketplace. This is your marketplace within whatever that geographic region location that your town, your city is. Okay. This, you now you have to interact with your businesses, public, your audience, okay.

With every opportunity in every interaction. Now, some people will be close to you. Some will be amongst your competition, you know, with the internet competition is just one click away all the time. You know, just go back to Google and click the next one. It’s very simple. So you’ll have to be mingling up with, you know, bringing the ones in from your competition.

Some people will be out traveling around right during the little cars here. Others are working or they’re going to school, or maybe they’re, you know, at home, we want to intersect their lives, where they are. So that’s a big piece, of marketing in general, social media, or otherwise, your company needs to interact with your public, where they are not where you are.

Where they are a large part of being in business, more than 50% of your efforts as a business are going to be spent in communicating your business through seeking out these opportunities in a very strategic manner. All right. Proactively influencing your target audience to choose you in the marketplace.

And you do that by going to where their attention is grabbing someone’s attention. That’s the trick, right. But it’s not new. Again, if we look at our history and the way that businesses have been communicating over the past several decades, we can kind of see this over and over again. Right. Kind of reiterate.

What we went through in the adoption process episode. If you guys didn’t see it, but you know, if you remember we started off communicating as businesses and I’m not going back to smoke signals again. If you didn’t see that. Yeah. If you didn’t see the episode that’s she brought up stuff anyway.

So we’ll start with the town crier. Okay. The town crier would stand in the streets, crying out to the public, letting them know what was going on. Then we had the printing breasts and the newspaper where we would run ads in between the articles because people were reading the newspaper, reading the articles, finding out what was going on.

So we went to where their attention was. In the articles to reach them that way. Then billboards were there too, you know, engage you with the business message while you were on your commute too, and from your home or work or whatever. Radio was also very much the same thing. We use it a lot even now for DriveTime, for commutes, but radios also back when I don’t remember what year this was, but back when women were mostly.

In the home, they had the stories. My grandfather used to call them stories that were on during the day, the day, the days of our lives. And we would run ads for soap. This is where soap propers got their nickname. It was a soap opera because these operas, these stories were being told and they were always being, you know, ivory soap brings, you know, whatever it is, the Housewives, the name of Dr.

Hewitt's child psychologist is the reason for a heated argument between Maita and Ted in the next episode of the guiding light. Brought to you by the new does. Well, it does. And you’re watching, let’s see, see you the doc, everything. This is Clayton. Cottier wishing you a good day. And good. Does he. Then of course we had motion pictures, which brought us cinema advertising and product placement.

Eventually, those motion pictures were brought into the home via the television where businesses would run commercials in the middle of your favorite programming. Now everyone’s attention. Is on the smartphone truth. This is where people bull live. Again, if you continue in the traditions of business, you have to follow where people’s attention is, and you should be creating content for this little device right here.

Okay. And what’s even better. You can carry this little device with you. The previous methods. We didn’t, we couldn’t do that. All right. This is always on your consumer. Yeah. Have you guys ever tried to get your teenager to look at you when you’re talking to them, but they’re like on their phone, so they don’t even like to look up and you’re like, excuse me, I’m talking to you.

And they’re like, no, I hear you. And you’re like, yeah, well, I don’t know that you hear me. Cause you’re not looking at me. Ma I can hear you stop mom, God, that business people try to start a meeting and watch what happens before you call the meeting to order everyone is buried in their television.

Right? So instead of trying to pull people away, From the phone, just be on the phone, be where their eyes already are. I mean, for most people, I mean, the smartphone is the last thing they check, but when they go to bed and the first thing that they check when they wake up in the morning it’s the versatility and the convenience of having the internet again in your pocket.

Let’s, let’s look at it this way. The internet is the newest broadcast frequency. Okay. Like TV broadcast took over a radio broadcast. The internet is now okay. Businesses used radio and TV to get people’s attention. Now it’s the internet. So dig this. Facebook is the new ABC. Okay. LinkedIn is the new CBS.

Instagram is NBC, but they’re even called channels. These are social media channels. Social media is a way for anyone to put infrequent content. On the internet right on this new broadcast system. So in that way, it’s kind of like cable access. So I want you to make the next Wayne’s world of miniature big bang or friends or.

Breaking bad. If that’s your target

we’re watching cable 10 Aurora, Illinois community access channel with me as always this Garth party on Garth. Okay. All right. Well, let’s take a break right now. And then when we come back, let’s talk more about those channels, the top channels of social media. How about that? Okay. A straight shot is brought to you by reformation productions, a full-service marketing agency in Atlanta, Georgia, helping companies promote and communicate their business in the most efficient and effective ways possible through straight-line marketing.

Welcome back before we get started again with our conversation. Let me remind everyone that’s been here before, or if you are new first, welcome next, please. Everyone likes, and subscribes to this episode.

If you haven’t already click the little bell for notifications, it really, really, really helps our podcast out a lot. Okay. My business is done now back to the conversations. Social media one Oh one. So that Curry, which channels should a business use in social media? Well, that’s going to depend on who they are trying to reach.

In Y but the top social media channels, right? So Casey Kasem started as opposed to the top 40 counts down the 40 most popular songs in America. Beacons in a moment. Hi, this is Casey Casey, the number one, two, three, four. The top social media channels are Facebook, Linked In, Pinterest. Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, and yes, take talk.

Oh, and YouTube. Yeah, people don’t, I don’t know if people think of YouTube as being social media, but it really is. It is a web 2.0 site that encourages you to search and then to comment and to subscribe and to et cetera, that interaction is what makes it a web 2.0 site. Yeah. Now each of these channels is going to be different.

Okay. They use different user interfaces Tik TOK and IgG reels are for short-form video. Instagram is visually focused. Twitter is short posts, focused, Twitter, angry, political focused that’s content. That’s not, that’s not the interface. Pinterest is a, it’s like a scrapbook. Or a recipe book. And they all have different demographic targets too.

Right. LinkedIn is for business people. You know, different ones have different age brackets, different genders, different lifestyles. So you really kind of have to you know, know who your target customer is so that, you know, Which platform you should use. That’s why having a targeted consumer profile is so important.

It tells you what of these channels. You should be using the heaviest as a business. So let’s talk about the business, the benefits of businesses using social media on the whole. I feel like today, we’re going to say, on the whole, well they are good for search. Right. We used to say SEO SEO is just about dead as the way that people know it.

So now we just say search. So but it is good for search. It is good for viability as a business. And I’ve talked about a lot of this stuff before, but if you don’t have a social media presence as a business, people now want to know why. Why not, do you not care about talking to your people? And if you don’t have, Oh, they don’t even have Facebook, they must be new.

So to be a viable business, you have to have a social media presence. It can also help you to establish your digital presence again it shows that you’re not antiquated, that you’re not ignoring social media. And it shows that you care about talking to people because again, that is the purpose.

Of social media. So it’s good for casual communication with your customers and your prospects. It’s good to, you know, give them the inside scoop, right? Let them know, you know, do, because you’re my friend, you get 10% off or, but you know, you get early notice about this or, or whatever. So it’s really good for that.

It’s good for soliciting help. From your public, you know, these people that are your friends and social media, they’re like, they’re like your brand ambassadors that are really out there. Right. So you can ask them to help you share this with your friends, right. A bunch of unpaid employees. Their interns though must be more than, much more important than the intern.

They, they are your gold. But it’s also good for increasing brand awareness. Okay. It gives you a place to build an audience where you can talk to them directly. You know I used, to talk about this, you know, a long time, but before a lot of this basic stuff I’ve covered my times, but you know, Average Joe person.

Can’t just call up Coca-Cola and talk to them, but you can talk with them on their social media. It is an opportunity like we’ve never seen. So you want to talk to somebody at Nike, right? Well, most people don’t even know where their headquarters even. Right. But. You can’t just walk in there and knock on the door, but you can go to their social media and you can talk to them.

Right. So it’s a very rare opportunity and people like that. Okay. It also goes a long way with increasing brand loyalty. Again, we want to repeat customers, right? So it goes a long way for that. Another benefit is that it gives you a way to showcase. Your messaging. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve talked to a business and they say, well, we’re about this.

And I go, you are rarely because it was not, you know, it wasn’t showcased in anything that they had done. This gives you a place to tell people what you were about, right? What the heart is of yours, of your company. Yeah. It also gives a way for your customers. To pass along information, right. To, to send referrals.

So especially this is great, small businesses, right? People will say, Hey, do you know anybody at that bar? And they’ll tag you? Oh, plumber X is great. You know, or so-and-so just power wash my house, whatever it is. It’s a very easy way for people to pass along referrals. And if you don’t have a social media profile for them to pass along, though.

Yeah. They can’t, they can’t link you to something. If you don’t already have we had somebody, I looked for a recommendation we’re building A video rig and I needed a piece of pipe actually. And for me to order it, it’s a 15-foot piece of pipe, right. To make this overhead video rig anyway. And I, I get it via e-commerce cause I do everything on the internet now to get it via e-commerce shipping was going to be three, four times the amount of the actual product itself.

And I was like, I’ll just get it locally. Well home Depot and Lowe’s, don’t have 15-foot poles that you can buy. So I put it out on social media because Atlanta is a big Hollywood town. I figure somebody has to know what speed rail is and how to get it. And so they said, this one guy said, Oh, call this person and this person and gave me their phone number.

And I said to people still use the telephone. So let me guess what you would do normally is you would Google that. I did. I Googled them, went to their website because well, one, it was Sunday, people were really, places are close, but so yeah, you have to have a social media presence for that reason.

I ended up going with somebody else by the way. For those of you holding onto the saga 15-foot pole now, it also helps you to market your products and your services to a targeted audience. Now we’ll get into that a lot. When we start talking about advertising, now, those are all very. Helpful good benefits, but beyond just being helpful, why are these channels necessary for businesses?

Well, the number one reason is that those platforms live on your smartphone, where everybody’s attention is, and you want to follow the success of businesses and follow people’s attention. I tell you if you are not making content. For diesel little device you’re missing out. Okay. The next reason beyond it’s where people’s attention is actually, this is still closely related.

It’s taken over television as being the number one marketing media. Okay. You know how everybody was like, oh, I’ll get in fact could ever be on TV. Well, TV is now less important. All right. Still more expensive ditch. Oh yeah. It’s still is that takes a little longer. People don’t want to turn loose to that.

But digital media has taken over traditional media and content marketing. Has become the top-rated strategy for digital media. Now that includes foods, you know, social media, podcasting internet advertising sites, mobile apps, shortcode texting, blogging reputation sites, all of the different, you know, digital-related things because digital.

Broadcast is the new TV broadcast. Now, it took a while for that transition to happen, but it has happened. Digital media has taken over traditional media. Now social media is quickly replacing other types of media. For lack of a better term. News is no longer told. On the television. That’s not true.

It’s still told on television. It’s no longer listen to and gathered, she’ll even tell you on the television for the latest subscribed to our Facebook or Twitter. Yeah. Or go to, you know, whatever news.com. But you know, television doesn’t like it any more than radio liked it when TV did it to them.

But the news is now gotten on the digital. Broadcast. Okay. Music is the same way when I grew up, you bought music in the store and now it’s all digital. It’s all online. It’s all on the internet. Storytelling is the same thing. Again, back to the last episode that we did. One about accepting change. We went from having plays right Shakespeare, the golden day of theater.

Right to, you know, cinema and cinema went to television at home, and now storytelling happens on your phone. It’s all streaming all the time. Netflix, Hulu, you know spectrum, which is an internet provider. For those of you that aren’t from the Atlanta spectrum now have their own app on their TV provider.

They also have internet and they have their own app where they’ll show you you know exclusive content. Cause they’re trying to be like Netflix spectrum, which is a utility company that is trying to come up with content because they know that their days as a cable provider are somewhat number. Yeah.

And how space, like all of this digital platform stuff, is now freed up a lot of our shelves because how many of us have invested those in those black zippered? Binders where you hold all of your desks for those of you who can see our studio at the moment. No. You know what though? I think we’ve cleaned it up, but before we cleaned it up nice for y’all we used to have a bunch of zipper binders back there.

Yeah. CDs and DVDs. And like, you know how it’s like, Hey Zachary, what do you feel like listening to you? I don’t know. Let me get out of my head. You know, 45-pound zipper binders, then you have to go through it all. Now, your website is still your central hub for your digital presence. Okay. Social media are an extension of that hub in their areas too, you know, gain aware awareness and preference to drive people to the hub for more detailed information.

And of course, Sales again, social media isn’t sales, social media will drive people to your website. That can be where sales happen. Okay. So let’s discuss how to use social media. Well, just like all of your marketing efforts, social media should be managed. Proactively and on purpose, I am a huge proponent of proactive.

On on-purpose, if there is, a bigger conversation that I have when I get a new client on board, that’s, that’s probably the biggest one. I believe that you should lead your business. Your business should not lead you. So yeah. So proactive do things deliberately do things on purpose. Social media is no different.

You should set it up to represent your brand. First to know who your brain is, right. Set it up to represent your brand updated frequently. Right? Because just setting it up and leaving it alone will work against you. Right. So update it frequently, be thought out, and be purposeful. Don’t just throw stuff up, know what you’re doing, know what you’re saying?

Do it on purpose. It has to be maintained. They are, these platforms are changing all the time. As a matter of fact, One that I actually see coming Facebook is making a huge change before the end of the year. And we’re going to talk about it and I’m going to let you know all about the Facebook changes that are coming before the end of the year.

But these platforms do that all the time. So you have to keep it maintained and you have to keep it current, not only with the platform but with whatever’s going on with your company, because people go there to know the latest. If you’re a restaurant and you have daily specials and they’re not on your social media, you are missing the point of social media.

Because what you, right. We have, we have a deli there’s right below our building here. And she’s like, I want so much from the deli. Let me see what their specials are. She goes to their Facebook page and if they’re not there, then she goes somewhere else or door dashes. We’re big. We’re big.

I mean, I might haul my fat butt down to the deli. Chances are really good though. I go to Facebook. Facebook is a really great way for that particular restaurant to stay updated on all of their specials, things that they might be rerunning from last week, if they’ve just made sin, you know, Synod, Muffet, what do they call those cinnamon rolls?

If they just made cinnamon rolls, they’ll show pictures, all this stuff to capitalize on too. Day, what are you hungry for today? That’s the thing. Yeah, more practical than that. Right? For talking about practicality, we have a web video that we at reformation developed that goes into details of the relative social media services that we provide that we offer.

Okay. Now those will bring insight into what businesses should be doing with them. Social media. So let’s take a look at that at reformation. There are four basic levels of service for social media marketing. Let me illustrate it this way. Let’s say Facebook is a planet level. One is setting up your space on planet Facebook.

First, we build or revise your business’s social media profile to ensure brand compliance and consistency in messaging across all media. Level two is what we call foundational participation. This is basic social media. Now we create and curious about various levels of frequent content for your social media.

These could include video graphics, photos, links, relevant articles, texts, and more. We also maintain profile compliance with the ever-changing platform updates of the planet. And we handle all profile-level engagement with your audience. Once your area is buzzing with activity, we offer level three strategic engagement.

This includes soliciting growth through proactive, strategic engagement with others on the planet on a very personal level. We reach out to the other users to let them know more about you and to encourage them to visit your little space on the planet to find out more. And of course, we offer social media advertising.

This is budget-based advertising where we create and fly your banner throughout the planet to generate targeted leads, sales, brand awareness, and an increased audience for the business by driving targeted traffic to your profiles and your website. There are many platforms in the social media galaxy, which ones inhabit your potential and existing customers, where do you need to be engaging?

So here’s what I gathered out of all of that. Like the four steps, step one, set up on each of the platforms or planets that meet the criteria for your target audience. Number two starts foundational participation, which is the creation and curation of posting frequent content, numerous race, strategic engagement.

Now that is interacting proactively and strategically with others on this said planet. And for finally advertising now that’s using paid media to promote the brand. So that’s, that’s the four, four things. Yes. In addition to those, there are also influencer strategies, but those are going to be another episode.

So we’re not going to go. We’re not going to really discuss those today. We’ll get to them then. And that’s a lot of great information. A lot of details there in the overview and the basic view of social media, the social media one Oh one, understanding. Thank you for that. Okay. Now, what is your grandiose straight shot for the day?

Well, the basic functions of social media for business are as follows. If we’re going to break them down into, you know, For things with less detail, higher view than what we’ve been over. Social media is for building brand awareness, providing customer service. Driving traffic to your website or your brick and mortar location.

If that’s relative to you and then generating leads, that is the fourth aspect that social media is used for it. Now, those are all the basic purposes for social media as a business, but you, Mr. And Mrs. Business owner, need to have some goals for yourself. And for your business when it comes to social media one of which is understanding fully understanding what you are trying to accomplish.

Again, social media, social media management is not a quick tactical plan for generating sales. It is social. Platform social media, the use of social media as a communication channel for businesses is a longer-term strategy that is centered around branding with it. You should be increasing brand awareness.

Showcasing your positioning. So your messaging, your positioning in the marketplace, what makes you different? Right? You should always be using your brand voice. Right. It’s a place for you to espouse who you are, what you’re about. You should also be using it to maintain relationships and to interact with your clients, your customers, or your, your prospective customers or prospective clients.

Right. And you should also be encouraging fans to connect and help you. By telling their friends and they told two friends and they tell two friends. Right. So though those pieces. Not just sales. And I know I keep hammering this and that’s because a lot of people get it confused. And a lot of the reasons why you get it confused is because we have the charlatans that are on social media, meeting you in these Facebook groups that are telling you that they can sell stuff for you on social media.

And while sales do happen, That’s not its purpose. So people that come after you and tell you that there’s a problem. Okay. They’re not fully understanding the way that social media works. They’re not understanding the way that sales work nowadays. Gary V calls it jab, jab, right? Hook jab, jab, jab, jab.

The whole idea is that you provide value. You provide value. You provide value, then you ask for the sale. It doesn’t work the same way that it used to. Guys. It’s not going in there, grab them, pull them out. That’s not how, how sales functions anymore in, unless, you know, you have sweeties at the counter that you are trying to sell people that’s different, completely different than what we’re talking about.

Well, it’s with social media people don’t go there to be sold to. They go there to get information, to get to know you, to get to them basically what these, these people that are telling you that to sell, sell, sell on social media. And you’re not there for any other reason. It’s like you’re being told to come to sit down to one of those timeshare things.

It’s a costing like you’re like a blowtorch. You, you don’t want to go there to be sold to it’s the same thing. Now, remember again. The other things that I mentioned, the branding things have value and that long-term will lead to more sales. Then you go in, there, like a used car salesman. So an important thing to know.

And those of you that are, you know, social media managers not necessarily the CEO or the business owner sometimes, you know, maybe they don’t understand. All they know is, Oh, I hear social media check, kind of do that. And they may be on your back about selling through social media. Social media is a marketing tool, not a sales tool sales happen, but it’s not the purpose.

It’s all about mindset, right? It’s all about how you look at it. Now those of you that do manage. The social media aspects on your own. There are a lot of choices and there are lots of channels. And there are things that you also need to learn. You need to learn how the channels are being used. Why are they being used?

What can they do for you? The business specifically each one. Okay. Now we’ll get into the details of each platform very soon in the series where I’ll go through one by one by one, talking about Facebook, this entire episode, LinkedIn, this entire episode, it’s much too broad for me to go through in this one episode.

But what I do want you to know is they each have their own purpose. They’re not all created the same and they’re not all used the same. Very important. Now, what is the same? Here are three things that are the same. You always, always, always, always need to use your professional branding. Social media is not a joke.

It’s not something you play at. It needs to be professional branding when you use it. Okay. I already told you, social media has grown beyond where traditional media has been. It needs to be taken seriously. Social media is now a serious business. Okay. So you need to be professional in how you’re going to be showcasing yourself, showcase your, it could quite possibly cost you an election or something.

I’m just saying I’m not, I’m seeing generally. Mismanagement of social media can be detrimental to your brand. Yes, Twitter. All right. The next thing is you have to know what your branding says about you. If you are the person that is managing social media and you don’t know what your brand is, you have a problem.

Okay. Because you cannot communicate in your brand voice using your brand. That’s been developed for you if you don’t know what it is. So you have to know what your brand is. Number third, you have to understand that everything you say on social media matters all of your communications matter, and on the interwebs, it lives forever.

Unless you’re on Snapchat. It was the case it lives for 24 hours and then it goes away 15 seconds. Yeah. So so yeah, social media is important. Social media is something to be taken seriously. Let me take a minute to kind of recap where we are. All right. Social media. Is marketing is business communications more than just sales.

All right. Marketing impacts everything that your public sees. Feels thinks and wonders, right? Marketing is a very big picture. Very important. Business communications are vital to operating your business and for your business to be successful. And social media is an important part of that marketing again.

Social media has taken over the number one marketing tool spot away from television, except for maybe the super bowl. Yeah. Yeah, but the Superbowl, but everybody just watches the super bowl just for the commercials. Anyway, that’s what we’re talking about. It’s the commercials I’m just saying, but like, you can get those on YouTube when they get leaked to you too early.

The other thing is, is even the Superbowl is using social media. A lot of times they will kick things to social media. They’ll play one version, right. And then they’ll kick it to social media. Now it’s going to take skill. And investment to do it, right? Just like any other marketing strategy. Social media is not, again, a lot of people get this confused and they get it confused because they think, well, Facebook is free to sign up for.

My space was free to sign up for Twitter is free to sign up for it. Yes, they are free to sign up and get your profile. However, they are serious. Business TV is serious business as well, but it’s still free to the public. Right? Anybody can turn on channel two. It’s free comes through there, waves the differences.

You don’t have a, you know, Company-based profile on those channels. Again, the internet frequency that social media gives you access to. They’re giving you more than what TV do you get to have your own place. You don’t have your own spot on Netflix. You don’t have your own spot on Comcast, right? I want to FACS TV show, but just the same.

It’s still serious business. It’s going to take skill. To do it correctly. It’s going to take an investment in time and or money to do it correctly. Just like anything else, seriously guys business. We’re talking here. Not kids play well. I was up against that a lot at the very beginning. It was people who thought, well, people are just playing around with Facebook.

It’s no longer a game. It’s not something people dabble in anymore. Now that being said, A lot of business owners have a hard time understanding the value of things that aren’t sales, sales, sales, and social media again is not straight sales quick and fast. Right. Sales do happen though. Particularly with advertising, which is a future episode, which we’re going to talk about later in the series, a whole episode around advertising in advertising is about sales is the goal of that.

But even still there’s a, we’ll get into it when we get into it. But so I know, so I would sit here and spend another half an hour going through sales that can happen through social media. Yeah. It’s again, your mindset. It’s the purpose. Right. The purpose is to use it for those first things that I mentioned.

You remember brand awareness, communicating with your public. Those things leads do come, and you’re doing it, understanding that you want that to happen, but it can’t be your, your upfront purpose for why you’re doing it. All right. Since we’re talking about advertising because I just gave you a little tease about how advertising works.

And then I stopped. I feel a little guilty. So I’m going to give you a going-away present for today’s episode. I’m going to tell you some of the key mistakes that people often make when using advertising. On social media. Okay. This is a little before we get to the episode, I’m sure we’ll talk about it a lot during the episode, but because they kind of teach you with it and talking about sales and, and et cetera, here’s the biggest mistakes that people make.

Key mistakes, Marilyn, you ready? Number one, you ready? I’m ready. Not using the technology correctly. That’s a big one. Okay. Yeah, there are things that these platforms give us. That makes them function more efficiently, but you have to know how to do it. Each channel has, what’s called a pixel. There are various ways to get custom audiences.

One of the ways is you can collect emails and then use those emails to make what’s called a custom audience. Again, I’m not going in-depth with it today. But I will tell you if you haven’t been collecting emails to start. You’re going to, you’re going to want to do that. Okay. The other thing that you definitely should be doing as far as the technology is concerned is excluded people that have already visited your site or your have purchased from you.

Because if they, well, I guess it depends on what your services, but if you’re spending money advertising, you don’t want to advertise to people that have already bought whatever it is from you unless they can have more than one. Then then, then that would be different. But you don’t want, you want to be very careful not to waste money, so you can’t just turn it on or Zuckerberg will send your message right.

To people, that’s already heard it. And that doesn’t do any good. So that’s, that’s one it’s a long one, but it’s one. The next one is making sure that you have your expectations set correctly. I spent a lot of today talking about expectations. You need to know that it takes six to nine brand touchpoints to make a sale.

Okay. It’s actually longer than it used to be. It used to be, it took seven. Now it takes six to nine, I guess seven is in the middle there, but it can take up to nine now. So something that you need, to be aware of is that social media sales are not a quick thing. Sales is not a quick thing anywhere, honestly, because the sales game has changed, guys.

You can’t just you know, go after, go out there, yell at people and get them to buy from you anymore. It’s now you have to provide them value because your competition isn’t across town. They’re one click away. Yeah. Think about that. Did you one click away? If all they have to do is hit backspace, go back to Google and click the second option instead of the first one, that’s all they gotta do.

So you have to make sure that you understand how marketing and sales function in today’s society, and you have to make sure your website’s good. Don’t lead people to something that sucks. Sorry. That’s me that’s my little trick shot. All right. So let’s move along. All right. Now, in those six to nine steps, what are you doing?

Well, you’re building relationships and that’s the third thing. The third key mistake that people make is they don’t build relationships with the people that they run into on social media. Again, that is the way that the sales. Process works. Nowadays, you have to provide value. You have to build trust.

You have to give people a reason to buy from you. All right. Four things, lack of branding. If your branding is inconsistent, if it’s not the same, every time somebody looks at it, if it doesn’t start to look like you, then those six to nine points. Keep starting over again. Right. If I look at you one time, a great, then we are on to point number two and you look different.

Mm. You’re not number two, you’re back to number one. Again, people are going to try to figure out what looks different. What is that? Why was that? So, so, so that’s a big piece. Another thing that falls under this is your brand voice and your look and feel it has to be professional. If you look like you know, a teacher at elementary school teacher did it, or if it looks like you know, your 13-year-old niece, did it, people are going to know that.

And that’s part of your branding. It makes you look amateur. That’s not good. All right. Another lack of branding problem is if you don’t know your audience well enough, right? If you’ve done no or little customer research, and you don’t know who your target is, you’re not going to be very good when it comes to advertising on social media or anywhere.

And then the last one that falls under this lack of branding category in this, this is one that is so overlooked by people. And it’s probably the biggest issue in that is bad. Creative. It doesn’t matter how well you’ve done your consumer research, how targeted your advertising is, how everything looks like you.

Or how many relationships you have, right. Everything I just listed. None of that matters. If when you put your message in front of them, it’s bad. Right. And that happens. You didn’t communicate the message. Well, or you used graphics that were, were poorly designed, or somehow it is not attractive to them.

Then your advertising is not going to be effective. Then, the creativity that you use, that all of that other stuff falls behind. Right? All of the psychology, all of them, knowing your customer, all of that. If the flag that you stick in the ground is not something that people want is not something that makes people want to read it.

Your advertising is not going to be very good. That’s just the bottom line. So again, a lot of people often try to discount things that are artistic too. You can’t guys, you know, the design is important. It really is. And the bottom line here of all of these kinds of key mistakes that you see the bottom line is that social media works.

It’s not debatable. It’s not debatable anymore. You can see it in the books. You could see it in case studies. You can see it in our history. I talk a lot about our history, right? The question becomes, how good are you at doing it? Not just tactically. But creatively from a psychology perspective, how good are you at the craft that is marketing at the craft?

That is social media. Again, social media is a marketing tool, but your entire marketing platform and your brand have to be on point to make the most out of it. Hmm. Yours. That’s a lot of good stuff right there. That was a truth bomb there. You know, I do that. I feel, let me know what you think about this heavy-handed discussion that I do in the comments.

I feel like a lot of times I do tell it like it is a straight shot. That’s the whole point. Tell it like it is whether it’s hard to hear or not. But guys, I see so many mistakes happen. I’m just trying to warn you. Right. Trying to educate you on what you should do and warn you against the things that you shouldn’t do.

And I know that a lot of you do it and I’m the guy that’s going to tell you, like it is straight, straight to the point straight shot. And that’s the thing is that you don’t have a dog in the fight, so you’re not in to sugarcoat it one way or the other. No, I’m sure a lot of our audience is other people that are in marketing.

And so they’re just taking what I said. No. Anyways, thank you, sacri for that. And thank you guys for tuning in and watching us today. We hope you are getting value out of the series. Now, remember it’s going to be an intermittent series, so not all of the episodes are going to be back to back. So sign up for notifications on your cell phone by texting the word reformation or reformation to the number nine Oh two one Oh.

Or you can just subscribe and smash the bell there on YouTube. Cause that will alert you every single time. A new episode drops. Hopefully, you will watch every single episode in the series because you might learn something. Even if you think you already know everything. We don’t all know everything, but you know, otherwise, you can stick around and wait for some of the platform talks that we talk about, or there will be other things about the general topic of social.

Yeah. Before we get to the channels, we’re going to talk about, you know, We’re going to talk about fan foundational participation. Right? What is that? Cause that sounds obviously big, right? So what is that? We’re going to talk about advertising. We’re gonna talk about influencer strategies because those are platform agnostic.

They go across any of the channels that you use. And if I talk about them by themselves, right. I don’t have to repeat myself over and over again when I talk about it individually with the channel. So that’ll make the channel ones shorter because I’ve already talked about all the big picture stuff. So we’re really going to try to get those big, bigger picture ones done so that when you’re watching them, you you’re getting value out of each thing without wasting my time, your time, et cetera.

Yeah. You don’t want to jump right into the, let’s say. The Instagram episode, if you don’t have all of the basic stats. Yeah. And if for some reason you do know that it’s probably covered under another subject, it will probably say that in those episodes, lucky for you, our episodes don’t go anywhere. They are there for live fish for life so far for life.

So far as long as the platform exists, I guess There were, you know, though we could find our podcasts anywhere where you’re listening to it right now and on YouTube, there are parts on our social media as well. Anyway. So check us out. If you need us for any reason, let us know if you want to call us on the table.

It is (678) 825–8086 extension 300 until then guys. Bye.

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