Ten Social Media Tips!

Transcript for Ten Social Media Tips!

To learn more about MeetEdgar's webinar schedule and to catch us streaming live, visit MeetEdgar Live Webinars.[01:03] Hey, hey, everyone. It is Megan coming at you today. I am just getting ready to get started on our third Ten Tip Series here at MeetEdgar in a few minutes. We are so excited to have you join us today. Thanks so much for taking 10 minutes out of your day. We'd love to get to know the community, so go ahead and look at that chat box over on the right-hand side of your screen. Let us know what business you're in, let us know what goals you guys are working on so we can make sure we're all supporting each other here. We will get started in the next few minutes.[01:36] My colleague Kristina, our wonderful head of customer experience here at MeetEdgar is actually going to be the one hosting that chat. So feel free to ask her questions. She is a wealth of knowledge. If you guys do have any feedback about this webinar or about anything MeetEdgar related or you want to chat with us, our Twitter handle here is @Meetedgar. Go ahead and join in the discussion now at any time or you can, of course, always comment on this video with what you want to learn for the next 10 Tip Series, anything you might want to focus on. If you do have questions about how to use these tips within MeetEdgar software and make sure that you're taking the most advantage of these tips, go ahead and email support@meetedgar.com. We have a really awesome support team here who'd love to connect with you.[02:21] So, as I said, go ahead and hop on in the chat box there. Let us know who's here, where you're coming from. We'd love to connect with you. We will get started here in the next few minutes.[02:58] All right. We're seeing a few more people trickle in here, which is awesome. Hope you all had a really great Labor Day and have gotten back into the swing of things on Tuesday. So happy, again, that you took 10 minutes out of your day today to come in and join MeetEdgar on this webinar. We're going to go ahead and get started here. Like I said, my colleague, Kristina is actually going to be the one manning the chat today. So pop in there, let us know what's going on. Let us know if you have questions throughout this webinar, we'd love to hear them.[03:25] If you are new and you do not have a MeetEdgar account yet, we also want to make sure that you're able to take these tips and really start to motivate yourself and get the most out of social media. What MeetEdgar is is an awesome automation tool where you're able to pop on in, build up your content library, set a consistent, weekly schedule to make sure you're showing up for your followers at the right time. If you wanted to test it out, to see if it's right for your business, go ahead and snag a free month at MeetEdgar.com with this coupon code 'octopuswebinar18'. If you have any questions about signing up or if Edgar's right for you, let us know. Email support@meetedgar.com.[04:03] If you are an existing MeetEdgar subscriber already, welcome, welcome. You know how much we love our community. Go ahead and email support@meetedgar.com too and we'll hook you up with some awesome MeetEdgar swag, and definitely, as I said, let us know at any time if you guys have questions. How to take these tips, how to put them into use and really get the most out of social media.[04:24] Cool. So now that it is 10 o'clock Pacific time, one o'clock Eastern time, we're going to jump right into these Ten Tips Series. Go ahead and reach out to each other, support each other in that chat, and lets know if you have questions along the way.[04:39] So we'll go ahead and get started. First and foremost, which is essentially something that is about laying the foundation of your whole entire social media strategy, and that's going to be centered around finding your why. Now, finding your why becomes really important so you're able to communicate why your business exists to your followers. Simon Sinek is actually someone who created this whole system, and this bullseye here is going to be a great way for you to develop your own why. Essentially, if you're operating out of this place where every single update and every single thing you do in your business starts from the inside out, that is going to be where the magic happens. So if you have a why, if you have your purpose behind your why your business exists, this actually has created a ton of social media content for you already, and we at MeetEdgar really want to encourage you to share that content with your followers to make sure you're giving them that awesome behind the scenes look and to make sure they're connecting with why your product exists.[05:39] Now that doesn't mean that you can't share things or you can't operate from a how and what process either around your status update you're putting out there. If you're filtering it behind that why and if you're adding those awesome values within every update, you're going to see an amazing amount of engagement and an amazing amount of feedback from your target audience. Your niche really connecting with you.[06:04] So today as your action tip, tip number one here, sit down, get out a piece of paper, and start thinking about why you created your business. It can be something as simple as, "I didn't want to report to a boss anymore." The founder of MeetEdgar herself wanted to be an entrepreneur so that she didn't have to have a boss. She could set her own schedule and she could really focus on the things that she knew marketers would really appreciate. She wanted to educate about social media and create an automation tool. That can be part of your why, and that can be something you share.[06:34] Another part of our why is to support small businesses so you guys have free time and actually get to engage with your business and not spend time posting on social media all the time. Rather, you can talk to your followers a little bit more and get a little bit more structure. Then our what, the result of that, is our automation app, MeetEdgar. Again, you can share these things, and the why behind it will be a much stronger story to tell to your followers than that just the what about what your SaaS product is or what the actual physical product you're sharing is.[07:07] So sit down today, develop your why starting from the beginning. It oftentimes changes from when you first sat down and created your business or created your product to what it is, and that's going to be a great story to share to your followers too. Share your journey. Once you have your why it will have created a ton of status updates and a ton of brand voice for you to use in each of your updates. Cool. So going along with this as well, we already talked about speaking right to your audience with your personas. Now, what a persona really is it's an archetype of the different types of people that you're going to want to speak to and who your product is made for. When you're doing this and when you're creating your status updates for social media, your brand ... to make sure each of your followers is latching on in a really personal way. So when you're going to sell on social media and when you're going to make different value updates on social media, I want you to really focus on the features and benefits that your product or your service can offer your followers. Now, these might not be the same features and benefits that you latch onto in your business. So take some time to have a picture in mind of who your ideal audience is.[08:17] So action tip number two here is to sit down and actually create a person, name that persona, come up with a name. You can name them Mark, or Emily. Create an age around it. Create as much detail to bring that person to life so that when you're actually selling, you know exactly the benefits and the features that they would be interested in hearing about and it's going to guide your promotional posts on social media in a way that it really touches people and it really compels them a little bit further.[08:45] So also going along with this, we want to make sure that you are selling lifestyles and experiences on social media as well. It's much more compelling to think about, "Hey, this is the lifestyle that you can achieve with my product," or if you're a lifestyle brand yourself, try making yourself really personable, a real personality filled person who's on social media and is relatable. You want to share how you got there. You want to share all that journey and storyline and experiences about what your product can do for someone afterwards as well. So think of the storyline and it's not always just going to be about this feature or that feature. You've got to wrap in these lifestyles and experiences and knowing the lifestyles and experiences your core audience wants to have is really going to be the best way to develop your brand on social media. Being consistent about it and really making sure people see you as an expert in your industry. Pumping out really unique content on a consistent basis will have people stop and listen and will have your name be at the top of mind when they think about needing your product or service in the future. So take some time, sit down, and really name that audience persona.[09:55] Next, as we're going along here, as you know, we talk about this a lot on these webinars, social media is really about adding more value to your followers than asking for anything in return. So being promotional and a little more salesy on social media can be hard to find that perfect balance. So I want throw out there to consider using what we call desire words to lead people to that sale rather than the salesy words that are actually going to be seen as a little bit more intrusive in someone's social media experience.[10:26] So you want to kind of think about this, think about the things you want to say like, " Hey, you're going to want to buy this product because you're going to love the results," rather than saying something like, "Hey, you need this product because you have to have this in your life." Speak to people's wants and desires, and they'll be much more likely to stick around and realize that you are there showing up for them because your product can solve a pain point for them. So filter every single status update through that lens to produce that emotion behind any promotional post you're putting out, and your followers will be much more likely to see those promotional posts as value added ones. So think about getting those desire words in there, those wants, those loves rather than those have to's in order to lead people to that elegant sale on social media so they can self select in and know that they trust that your product is going to solve their pain point in a really awesome way.[11:20] Onto the next, we've talked a lot about behind the scenes content here on these webinars as well, and I want to stress that as well as we're starting to talk about personas and storylines throughout all of this. You're behind the scenes content is going to be huge for getting people to know, like, and trust you and really latch on to your story. So as we like to say, keep social in social media. Listen and see the little trails of success that your status updates are leaving. Hop into your Facebook insights, hop into your Twitter analytics, and start seeing the types of posts that really speak to your followers. This can be seeing how many likes or shares or comments you receive or how much reach that post did receive as well. Remember, social networks have a really huge stake in wanting to keep people within their app. So if they're seeing a lot of engagement on these posts, then they're going to show it to more people.[12:11] So this idea that success follows passion really means that if you're putting your passionate self out there and you're showing your followers who you really are, you'll see this really great spike in engagement. So don't be afraid to experiment and try this out, and listen on social media. Listen to those little clues whether they're those shares, comments, or likes to know what content your followers like and using an automation service or any sort of automation in social media makes this easy too because you can start to see what categories your actual followers want to see, what categories they really latch onto, and if you use these clues to actually say, "Oh, these posts are more successful," you're actually saying, "Oh, my followers want to be successful in these realms," so listen to them to produce that awesome content.[12:57] As you're going along too, you really want to make sure that you're thinking about your storyline and sharing that with your followers because they want to feel like they have something that other people might not have or know about your brand. So they want to be a part of this tribe in saying, "Huh. This is what I'm receiving by following this brand. This inside knowledge, this really great connection with other humans in this industry," and it creates a really awesome bond and trust. So share your storyline, where you're coming from, and share where you're going to and it really gives a reason for people to continue to follow you on social media. Video, video, video, guys. Make sure you are focusing on video as you're going throughout your 2018 and 2019 social media strategy, and really focus on what the networks are showing you is working too. Stories these days, whether they're on Instagram or Facebook, are one of the strongest ways people are connecting with their audience. The newsfeed, especially on Facebook, has gone down quite a bit with organic reach. But stories are a way a ton of members are able to click onto it and it's a way that you're able to connect with your followers in a sweet, six to 15 second videos, and pay attention to this timeframe because the social networks are telling you, "Hey, we've done a lot of research and we're seeing people are watching six to 15 second videos in a much stronger way than these longer ones." So pay attention to these things and realize they're not arbitrary numbers, but they're actually research numbers by the network that you can use to gain a little more insight on what type of content you can create.[14:31] Also, make sure you're experimenting with vertical video. I know a lot of the time in the past it's all been about horizontal video. It's been all about those square videos. But especially for stories, vertical video is becoming huge and seeing a ton of engagement. So listen to that too and start experimenting with that to show your followers that awesome authenticity about who you are and who your company is.[14:53] As you know, what is going to drive the most shares, it's probably going to be that humorous content. So if you're creating a little behind the scenes commercial or if you're creating a little bit of a tip about your product or service, adding a little humor in there really compels people to share that content out and to create a lot of optimism on social media. There are so many studies that say really positive emotion, really positive humorous videos are going to be the ones people share the most.[15:22] Moving right along. Know, like, and trust. You hear that buzzword all the time on these webinars, and I wanted to touch on the fact how know, like, and trust can really connect with your community through questions. So people really like to take an interest in who others are, and the best way for you to do this and to build trust is to get to know your followers. So beyond getting to know your audience on a personal level, make sure you're also bringing your followers into this content creation process. So what I'm going to action item for this tip is sit down and create some questions you can ask for your followers, not only about their personal level but also about your business. Now, if you're a little weary about doing this, I threw out some ideas here that Nick Notas does actually, who's an awesome thought leader in the social media world. Talks about how to get to know people and the best way to get people to know and like you is to ask questions around these four things. Ask questions about their family, ask questions about their occupation, their recreation, what they like to do for fun, their dreams and aspiration. And this is a great way to create that connection and it's an awesome way to get people to like you right away because you're showing an interest in them.[16:31] The Ikea Effect right here is also going to be what I want to encourage you guys to ask people questions about the content you're producing. So this tip is actually from another thought leader in this industry, Kathy Kolts. She has an amazing way of framing this, saying ask your team or ask your audience what they would improve about a piece of content. Post that content and ask them what they want to see, or create a story with a beginning and a middle and an end, and ask them, "Hey, followers. How would you end this story?" People love to participate on social media and feel helpful. It's actually proven that if you can create something that people are actually taking time to also create with you, like Ikea Furniture, they're going to take much more pride in it, and this is going to be great user-generated content.[17:18] If someone sees a piece of content that they had and then in actual time they added in something to actually make this story go further, or if they produced a photo that you're using on social media, the Ikea Effect is then going to create a lot more pride in them, and they're going to have a much stronger reason to stay with your brand, to keep following you. Remember, your producing this content so your followers keep following you. So why not take some time to ask what content they want to see to make sure you're speaking to them and always producing that awesome content for them. So take a peek at that Ikea Effect. Think about what you can ask your followers about the content you're producing so you can make sure they have a reason to come back for more.[17:59] Pre-populated tweets here, guys. The harder it is for people to share things, the more barriers there are, the less likely people will do it. So make sure as you're blogging and you're creating your evergreen content, you're adding social media actually into your blog. So we all know you use social media in order to share your blog and status updates out to your community. But if you're actually reversing it and putting social media into your blog, you can get so much more traffic to your social channels as well. So if you've never created a pre-populated tweet, you can reach out to support@meetedgar.com, and we'll definitely let you know how. But this is going to be the framework for your URL here. Twitter.com/home/?status=. Now here in the middle you can see some of our pre-populated tweets and how we've added them into alistical on one of our blog posts. We've hyperlinked this little status or this URL that you see here right into that tweet, the stat button. If people click on that stat, it'll populate a box where they're actually able to then just click to tweet it out to their own Twitter, basically becoming a part of your marketing team, which is such great exposure. So if you have all this great blog content and all of this great value you're offering to your followers, make sure you're not making it hard for them to share on social media.[19:17] So following the equal sign in that URL up there, all you're going to do is you're going to add the text that you want them to tweet. So you can add in a headline or adding anything else that you think would be helpful for them to share our your link. All you're going to do is add a plus sign for any space you want between words. If you want to do something like add a hashtag, you're going to go ahead and replace the hashtag sign with a %23 there, and you can see at the bottom this longer URL here is going to be something that we could share if we were sharing one of our social media eBooks here. We could say, "Check out our social media eBook #socialmediatricks," and then we have a trackable URL with our Meet Edgar URL here, and we've actually added in our handle too, this @meetedgar. So when someone clicks on that, it's going to be a great way for them to share it right away. So add these into your blog posts. Make sure that you're not only sharing blog posts on social media, but you're sharing your social media within your blog posts too.[20:15] Cross promote. Going right along with it. Make sure someone knows where to find you on all channels. If someone subscribes to your newsletter, make sure you have that pop up inviting them to follow you on social media. It's a great sing that they're already interested in what content you have there. Another thing I want to really make sure you guys are interested in doing is to when you're having a conversation maybe on Twitter or when you're producing content on Instagram, tell people about it on Facebook or on LinkedIn. Peoples mindsets are going to be different when they go to each of these networks.[20:47] When people go to Instagram, they're much more likely to want to be surprised and delighted and excited about this beautifully curated content. Where when they're on the LinkedIn, they might be in a much more focused on where they're trying to learn about their industry. But you want to make sure you're cross promoting. So creating a graphic for Instagram saying, "Hey, have some time you want to learn about X, Y, Z blog posts, check out my LinkedIn post on this here." You can link that link into your bio driving more followers to are LinkedIn. Or the opposite way, maybe on Facebook you say, "Hey, interested in learning more about this blog post, check out my Twitter chat tonight at 9:00 p.m. here on my Twitter channel." It's a great way to make sure that you're telling people what type of content they'll find on each of your channels, and compelling them to actually click through and follow that.[21:35] All right. Telling a story with consistency and social batching on social media. This one's huge, especially if you're using an automation tool here. If you want to go ahead and sit down and create updates in a way that's going to really wire people to want to keep knowing what's going to happen in your story, you need to do something, what's called social batching, so you can get the right brand voice in and you can make sure you have a through line with everything you're posting on social media. So what I suggest doing is if you're using Edgar, it's thinking about how you can use your categories to go ahead and support you in this endeavor or getting a spreadsheet or getting some sort of system where you can do this on your own.[22:13] So what you're going to do there and what I encourage you to do is do some math to think about how many updates you're sending out per day, what those updates are going to be, and create a story with each of them. Whether it's going to really compel your followers to say, "I know every Monday morning I get a motivational Monday post from this brand, and I want to see as they're going through what else their product can offer me," and it compels people to want to keep following you. Because, remember, the goal with social media or the goal of your product is not to get people to buy once or subscribe once and abandon your site. It's to keep them coming back for more and social media's the way that you can create a brand that people want to hang out with. People want to hang out with their friends on social media, and if you're creating a story and you're being really systemized in the way that you're producing content for people, they'll want to hang out with your brand and be compelled.[23:01] So take some math time to sit down and see how you can do this each month. Guys, it is not a scary process. It is pretty simple, especially if you're using our Edgar categories. This math here if you want to send out six updates five days a week, which is not that hard to produce, you're going to get a month's worth of fresh content in your Edgar account, which is going to only produce 30 updates a week or 120 updates a month. Those numbers might seem a little bit big right now, but let's break it down even further. If you use those six categories that are predetermined for you in Meet Edgar, that's only having to add 20 updates per category per month. So sit down, get those 20 updates in to really produce a consistent story.[23:43] Last one here, guys. Use social media to support your business goals. I really want to make sure that you guys are sitting down having some goals and realizing social media is going to be the best free way you can market your brand and you can really support your business goals. It's got to work for you. It's got to inspire you so you can create that inspiration and pass it along to your followers. So make sure you're putting your personality in there, what's firing you up, and all of these great social media things that we talk about. These can support your goals in a really strong way. So sit down, create a great chart. I love this one from Life Marketing here. Super simple to do. Name out your top business goals, name out how social media can support those, and make sure you're incorporating that into everything.[24:29] Having that solid content strategy, and really making sure social media marketing doesn't become a time suck rather it supports your goals is going to be the best way to connect with your followers and offer that value.[24:42] Awesome, guys. Thank you so, so much for taking time out of your day to join us here at Meet Edgar for our 10 Tip Series. Like we said before, we love to hear from our community. So please take some time today to comment on this video below, let us know what you like, let us know what you'd like to see in the future. Email us, connect with us support@meetedgar.com or tweet us @meetedgar on Twitter. You can go ahead and sign up for that free month if you haven't yet with the code 'octupuswebinar18', and if you are a MeetEdgar subscriber already, make sure you email us so we can hook you up with some swag, and make sure you subscribe to our YouTube channel here today too, guys. You'll never miss this 10 Tip Series or anything else we are putting out there to make sure you guys get motivated and get really start to get social media working for your business. So thanks so much. I am Megan, our onboarding coach. Your chat system here has been Kristina, our customer experience director. We would both love to chat with you. You can email or tweet us anytime. Have an awesome, awesome Wednesday, and hope to see you soon.