Transcript for Create and Automate “Shareworthy” Social Media Content with MeetEdgar
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[00:00] … you’re putting into it, is going to be something that they are going to get value out of. Again, we’re going to talk a little bit more about content creation, and how to create content that your community knows, likes, and trusts, but most importantly that they share. This is such an important topic as you all know that marketers and your teams do spend so much time creating this content, so we want all that valuable time that you’re spending to be able to really make sure that it’s getting out there into the world. We might not be able to predict that next viral video on YouTube or anything like that, but if you are creating actionable and engaging content, it’s going to be a vital part of any marketing strategy.
[00:39] First and foremost, get your questions ready to participate today. My colleague Jes will be answering them over in the chat box on the right there. She’ll go ahead and get some Edgar swag out to those of you who do have questions, and who do participate in the chat today. We’ll be picking a random person to get some of this awesome swag you can walk around with, so you can be reminded of the Edgar wherever you go. Make sure you get those questions out there. We do love to hear from you, as well as if you are following along with our webinar series. We’d love to hear what you want to hear about. Make sure you do let us know any topics or any goals you guys are working, so we can create content that’s really going to help you guys out.
[01:17] All right, so let’s get right back at it. If you’ve been following along like I said, we do a webinar series here at Edgar. You know that creating valuable content for your community is going to really get you more views, more likes, than anything else. Creating content is going to be that first step to getting those shares. It can kind of seem like this massive, never ending, Jenga game that you see here, trying to think about what content people are going to pick, and choose, and like. It’s great to have all these blog posts, and quotes, on Canva backgrounds that you’ve created, stuff like that, but there’s really zero value in all that hard work, unless it gets shared out online. Making sure that we are getting that content out there is going to be the goal of this webinar today. One easy step I really want you to keep in mind is that if you can solve a problem for your readers, you are one step ahead of the game. Think about a topic that’s laid out in front of you, and how you can turn it into something that’s really going to help your readers, something that’s going to add value to their day. If it really helps them, then they’re going to be more likely to share it with their community. We’re a social species, and we love to share, and help each other out. Sticking to this basic mindset is going to be a perfect tool for a way to win at getting people to share your content. One of the things that we really, really like to think about here at Edgar is forget about promoting and selling for most of the posts you’re putting out on social media.
[02:39] Focus instead on educating your readers with useful industry relevant information that they’ll be inclined to share with others. Your content isn’t going to be all about you, it’s going to be all about your community, so remember to ask questions of your community to really get it out there. To make sure that you’re learning the things, the problems, the pain points, that they want you to help them solve, and you have half the battle won, and you have half of your blog posts already written for you if you are making sure that your content is community focused.
[03:10] One of the things we also like to harp on is that it’s about niching your content down. If you do try to appeal to everyone, you’re probably not going to appeal to anyone at all. Making sure that your shareable content is providing your audience what they’re looking for, you know, what’s the goal of your content, what is the feeling that you’re trying to evoke from your audience? It’s important to answer these questions if you are trying to niche down how your voice, how your unique perspective within your industry, can really help make sure that your content is adding value.
[03:42] One of the coolest things here at Edgar is that Laura, our founder, had this educational business around social media. She saw a need for small businesses, for entrepreneurs, to really have this idea of getting content out there, of making sure that they’re connecting with their community. She was able to learn that not only do they need to acknowledge, they need a product, like Edgar, in order to help organize social batch their shares, stuff like that. Edgar was actually born out of this idea of listening to your community, and generating these ideas of what they want to hear. Again, if you’re appealing to everyone, it’s probably not going to be something that a ton is going to come out of, so niche your content down.
[04:22] Every blog post you write also doesn’t have to appeal to everyone within your community. If you have a blog post that reaches 10 of your members in a strong way, and they go ahead and share it, but the rest of your community doesn’t exactly latch onto it, those 10 shares are going to be so strong. You’ve created 10 brand advocates who are so excited, who are going to be able to share that content out, and really have it say something about themselves. You know, there is so much noise out there. There is going to be so much that you can do to make sure you’re cutting through that noise. Again, just thinking of your community as that algorithm buster.
[04:57] As you are doing this we also want you to remember that you don’t have to be an expert right away. What you do have to do is have an openness to make sure you’re connecting and going along this journey with your followers. If you love the topic, and if you’re really passionate about learning with your followers, this is going to really help quite a bit in the process of you continuing to generate great content. When things are rough it’s that passion, and it’s that enjoyment of the journey, that’s going to make it really easy to continue to come up with great content to inspire your members. Make sure that if you are doing things like you run a parenting blog, or something, but you only have daughters, make sure you’re reaching out to your community to ask how it differs with sons, or get their perspective of how they are dealing with the same subject of the different gender. Stuff like that. Really engaging your community, having something passionate that you can learn from them, and they can learn from you.
[05:51] You know, promoting your business, again, it’s not all about self promotion, it is about other people. It’s about making them feel good, making them feel a part of a tribe and a community, and it goes a long way in making sure they’re coming back for more, and really knowing what to expect when you do share something on social. You know, here at Edgar, you can expect from our posts that we’re going to be nice and casual. We’re going to bring you a funny tone, we’re going to really make it easy to understand the great value that social media can provide to your business. How we’ve developed this is actually, again, making sure we understand our audience. One of the things that we really, really like to think about is can we offer actionable advice? Can we say, “Hey, this is what you should tweet out. This is how you can get engagement.”
[06:34] Tutorials are awesome, whether it’s something on slide share on Linked In, whether it’s something like making sure you’re providing a checklist, something easy and actionable. Any of these common challenges that you faced in getting your business up and running is probably something your community is interested in hearing about too. Making sure this content is always getting out there, is always getting seen, is making sure that you’re connecting on a really personal level with your community. Your company should not only have its own voice, but the content that you’re producing, it really needs to be human, relatable, and thought provoking. Again, here at Edgar, we’ve developed a really strong and consistent voice of our brand over the last few years. You, again, know what to expect when you share one of our blog posts to your wall. You know that good content is going to be awesome and valuable, but it’s also going to be relatable, because we add in humor, we add in our own struggles as we’re developing this. We have this great freebie blogging formula, if you guys are bloggers out there, make sure to reach out to us, and we can get this ebook to you. All of this content has been generated out of our own kind of process, and getting Edgar up and running, and our own social media efforts. Again, it’s creating this community with our followers, making sure that we are learning from what you’re doing, and you guys can learn from what we’re doing.
[07:51] One of the coolest things about developing this is that you can do something like creating personas. A buying persona is actually something like a template of a person. In your case, you know, business customer, thinking of that persona is kind of like a 10 second profile of one of your typical customers. For example, a buyer at Edgar might be an independent entrepreneur who doesn’t really know what to do on social, but is frustrated that it’s so much time it takes out of their day. If you’re someone who is selling a clothing company, making sure you’re understanding is your person really interested in making sure they have outfits for work, or for style, or school. Getting these personas down is really, really important in order to make sure the content you’re sharing is speaking to your audience, and really getting into their hearts, and really making sure that your producing content that they can see themselves in.
[08:45] One of the things you can do is create a spreadsheet. Make sure that persona is really defined. You may think this exercise is going to be something that’s just going to take time out of your day, but it’s really not going to take time out of your day as much as really provide value for your entire team. It’s not only going to be the social media team who’s able to use these personas to really up level their work, it’s going to be your biz dev team, it’s going to be everyone along the way, who is able to get these ideas of, “Oh, this is who our customer is, this is who we’re really speaking to.”
[09:16] One of the cool things too, is you can get this information right from Facebook Insights and Twitter Analytics. There’s a demographics tab in each of these sections of your … there’s a demographics tab in each of these sections of your insights on those platforms that will tell you things like how many TV shows your followers like, or sports your followers like, stuff like that. This can really help you create this persona, and that’s where that sweet spot of getting shareable contents really comes into play. Some people might be more altruistic in what they want to hear. Others might be more career oriented in what they’re going to hear.
[09:53] You really want to make sure that everything you’re giving people on social media is something they say, “Huh, I learned this cool thing today. This is really valuable and interesting to me and I share this with someone in my community. I want to click that share button to give them this information too.” That’s going to be that guiding principle that gets your audience to trust you, that what you’re sharing is always going to be high quality, is always going to be speaking right to them. Get on creating those personas and make sure that every piece of content that you’re creating is filtered through that persona lens.
[10:25] This is just another thing that you can really make sure that the content you are creating is speaking to that persona after you get that awesome information from your demographics, and your Twitter Analytics, and in your Facebook Insights, go back in there making sure the data is really talking back to you. You know, in Facebook Insights if that orange line of engagement is really long, keep on producing content like that. If that orange line of engagement is really short, move away from that sort of content. You don’t have to over complicate analytics as much as you might think to get those kind of quick leads of what’s working on my blog, what’s working on my social media accounts, to really make sure that you’re following along with your followers, and getting that content out there.
[11:10] Cool, so jumping back into this idea of why people share. We don’t have to leave this to guesswork, luckily we have the handy dandy New York Times who have done some research here for us. Once you have your persona down, here’s some reasons that they’ve really given us of why people do share. 94% of people carefully think about the information they share might be useful to people reading it, before they pass it along. Making sure that it is useful information that people are really latching onto. Almost 7 out of 10 people share things specifically for the purpose of cultivating an image and defining/reinforcing their own identity. Again, if you’re speaking to their identity, they’re more likely to share it, because it says something about themselves when it appears on their wall, or on their Twitter feed, or on their Linked In profile.
[11:58] 78% of people share online content because it gives them a reason to stay in touch with others who they might not stay in touch with. You know, email, and calling, texting, these things are going to be a little bit more time consuming if you do have a ton of friends that you’re trying to stay connected with. Clicking that share button on social media is something that you’re saying, “Hey, I found this valuable, I think you will too.” It gives them that connection with their community as well.
[12:25] Cool, so social media is not just about all of this sort of numbers game, all this selling game, stuff like that. What we really want to stress is every update is that social media is not just business, it is an emotional experience. Beyond the numbers, if you can connect on an emotional level, you’re practically guaranteed to more shares. Shareworthy content often plays on these emotions, whether it’s fear, humor, excitement, sadness, any other sense, or feeling. You know, you really want to dig down and connect with how your readers will relate to your words. Things like a little curiosity gap can go a long way too when you’re trying to get clicks. Getting emotions right within your headlines can be a really strong thing you can do. When you write to promote a tweet, if you give people a clear idea of what to expect, they’re going to want a little bit more from that headline, click on it, maybe share it, so anything you can do to make sure your blog post headlines, your quotes, stuff like that, are producing emotion, that’s going to get you those great, great shares.
[13:26] Another thing for emotion, it doesn’t always have to just be humor, or curiosity. It can be nostalgia, you know, those throw back Thursday posts, those remember the time posts. Nostalgia is really one of the strongest things people hold on to because they love remembering their good times, they love remembering what’s happened in their life, so think about how you can kind of harken back. Whether it’s a really great classic TV show that you know your audience would like, stuff like that, can also go towards producing emotion. Don’t think you only have to play on those ha ha, happy, fun, funny, humorous ones, you can also play on things like nostalgia, and curiosity, things like that, throughout your posts.
[14:03] Cool, so once you’ve added in all that awesome emotion to your posts, it’s time to start thinking about stories as well. You know, sometimes the content that really go well with story telling are things like thinking about how the brain is going to process their selves as the hero in your story. How can your product help elevate your customer to that hero status, to make sure they’re really feeling like they’re connecting with your content, to really make sure that they’re processing that information, and connecting with it in a digestible way. You know, segments of text that are really saying, “Huh, I connect with this story, I want to share it with my friends.”
[14:43] Cool, so what type of content works well for this too? You know, behind the scenes content. Anything that’s like a business tip or trick that you guys have learned, anything that’s going to show your tribe, hey, you’re following me, you’re going to get this quick special little behind the scenes thing. That’s great content. That’s going to keep people coming back for more and to share, because that’s not content that’s out there everywhere. That’s stuff they’re getting because they’re following you and they want to kind of seem like, “Hey, look what I know that you don’t about this brand,” and they might be more compelled to share it to their wall. In the know content, so anything relevant going on in the world, think about trendy topics that are happening, and make sure that you’re keeping up with the news. People like to be relevant as well, so trendy topics are a great thing to be able to get people to share more as well.
[15:26] One of my favorite are those would you rather questions. That can be something as simple, like say here for a social media company like Edgar, you know, would you rather share on Facebook or Twitter? Those things are so easy for your community to answer and start to talk back to you on social media. They’re also just really fun for your community to see, and think about, and spark a little fun in their day as well. Again, coming back to this idea of can they see themselves in your story? Can they really feel like they are engaging with you on a level that they understand. High quality content is first and foremost going to be the thing that’s going to get your followers coming back for more. High quality content is really going to make sure that the human brain is latching on to it. You know, viewers worldwide they watch so much video, they watch so much … they read so much content out there, that everything that you’re creating does have to provide that value. Smart structuring, so this is one of my favorites as well. You don’t want to send someone to your blog and get hit with a wall of text. Make sure within your blog post you’re leaving a lot of white space, you’re leaving a lot of photos, stuff like that for people to be able to easily glance, to be able to take maybe two minutes to scan an article if they don’t have time to read the entire thing. Trendy topics, again, huge for sharing. People like to stay up to date.
[16:48] Be funny in your posts. If someone is looking at your brand and they get that funny emotion, they’re laughing about it, and all of the sudden they’re like, “Oh my gosh, this is so great, my emotions are so high,” later when they see your brand that same feeling is going to come back to them. It’s going to really associate in a positive way for you. Video content, this is one of the hugest things that can go for sharing as well as engagement, but it’s also one of the strongest ways you can stay authentic. You know, businesses have an opportunity to connect with customers and prospects using live video these days. You know, websites, social media, video portals, stuff like that can go a long way in making sure that you’re right in front the camera, showing your audience who you are. There’s no way to really fake video engagement, so it’s a great way to connect with your community.
[17:37] Cool, so evergreen content. This is one of my favorite things that we love here at Edgar is making sure the content that you have is being used to its best ability. When you tweet something, or if you publish something on Facebook, it’s probably going to get pushed down in your timeline pretty fast. You know, one of the most striking statistics is about 6,000 tweets are posted every second a day. The odds of someone that’s going to log in just at the right time to see that tweet aren’t that amazing. Spacing out your updates as if they were to fill out this wide range of times throughout the day is an awesome way to be able to really make sure that your followers are getting this information.
[18:17] What evergreen content is, is it’s really going to be this content that’s relevant no matter what time of year your followers do see it. Doing evergreen content is awesome, because you’re able to not only produce the content in a blog post, or a video, but you can do things like have little poll quotes, standalone tips, and out to your social media, stuff like that, to really make sure the time you’re spending on all of your content creation is going to be time well spent. Evergreen content, what does that consist of? It’s going to consist of things like blog posts, tips, podcasts, quotes, links to your social media. Evergreen content is going to be living in Twitter, Facebook, Linked In, all of these different places, but if you’re cross promoting your social networks, it’s a great way to gain more followers, and let them know the value they’re going to get on Twitter versus Facebook. That can be seen as evergreen content, those social networks are going to be there all of the time.
[19:15] Cool, so rather than just creating your content from all of this great evergreen content, one of the things that you can really help to do is curate your content as well. Curating other people’s content is one of the best ways to get shares, because you can be seen as an expert of someone who they trust to cut through the noise. Think of all of the different noise that’s out there in your industry today. If you are seen as someone who is sharing the top best articles, your followers then don’t have to spend the energy to go out and find that information themselves. They’re able to really look on your Facebook page and know they’re getting the most relevant, the most timely, everything that’s going to really connect with them. One of the things that we like to say is, “Sharing other people’s content, sharing your own content, sharing user generated content, and sharing image rich content, are going to be the four strongest things you can do to really connect with your community, and get it out there.”
[20:10] Cool, so once you have your own content, your evergreen content, your curated content, it’s time to start to plan this and batch this into your social media strategy. One of the greatest things about MeetEdgar is that when you’re planning ahead, and putting so much time into these updates, we don’t want them just to go to waste. If you think you’re going to do it everyday, you’re probably not. It’s going to be something that you really want to make sure that you’re logging on, and you’re really doing this at a time you have time, so getting a couple of hours to fill up your MeetEdgar schedule and library, is going to be something you’re able to plan out, rather than just kind of haphazardly every day going in and being like, “Oh, I’ll post a randomly here or there.” Make sure you’re planning your content out and getting it out to your followers.
[20:56] Another thing, after you’ve got all that content in there, is thinking about what you can supplement. You know, automation is awesome for your evergreen content, for your curated content, making sure it’s getting out, but think about other things you can do for shareable content like contests. People are so competitive in their life, and they want to make sure that they are giving their friends that opportunity to win free stuff as well. Edgar does a lot of contests with pairing with some other social media sites, or some other really awesome companies. This is one we ran recently and it’s, you can see, you can get an awesome visual along with your contest, as well as sparking a lot of new followers and engagement, and giving that awesome goodwill of getting some of your awesome swag out there, some of your awesome product out there, for new people to try. Contests are a great way, you know, friends want to make sure their friends know about contests, know about that free content that’s out there for them to snag.
[21:49] Cool, so lastly here, small is the new big. It’s not just about a bigger audience, but a more engaged one, that we want you to focus on. You know, automating your social media isn’t about turning your nameless, faceless robot, it’s about doing more with the time you have. What that means is after you have all your great content out there, making sure you’re going in and engaging with your community. When you want to go into your group, you know, everything that Facebook and Twitter have been telling us these days is that we want to move more towards engagement. We want to move more towards longer comments on threads, stuff like that is going to make sure that their algorithm is favoring your content, so pick a thread in your group, pick a thread in your page, spend 15 minutes engaging with them. Ask real questions.
[22:32] If you’re going in there just as a task to check off on your checklist for that day it’s probably not going to do any good. Go in with the intention of truly adding value to your follower’s life, to truly connect with them, and to make sure they know that, again, you’re there on this journey with them, and you’re there to make sure that they are connecting with each other as well. That’s going to spark them on their own to create conversations between each other. Again, it can just be 15 minutes of day, of you going and doing those live chats, making sure that you’re connecting, and really learning about your community.
[23:05] Cool, well thanks so much for joining the webinar today guys. As a thanks for joining, if you are not a Edgar user yet, and you would like to become one, if you actually go and sign up for Edgar we’ll give you a free month today by using this coupon. That is, “octopuswebinar18.” If you do forget that please, please, please go ahead and email [email protected]. If you’re an existing MeetEdgar user, make sure you let us know that you were at the webinar today by also emailing [email protected], and we’ll go ahead and get you some discount on the next few months of your MeetEdgar subscription as well.
[23:40] Thanks so much for joining, definitely let us know what else …
