Transcript for: Ten Social Media Tips in Ten Minutes
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[01:00] … Hey guys, thanks for joining today. We will go ahead and get started here shortly.
[01:38] … So there is a chat over on the right on your screen that we would love, love, love just to hear from you. Here at Edgar we love to get the community involved, just to get to know who you are, what you’re doing here. Chat amongst yourselves, so be sure to use that. At the end we’ll answer any questions you have. You can of course always e-mail [email protected] at any time as well. We love to hear from the community. We will, like I said, get started here in a couple of minutes. We know your time is valuable, and we’ll just let the last few people kind of trickle on in. Like I said, say, “Hey” to us, let us know what you’re working on, what kind of goals you guys are working on over on the chat to your right. All right guys, it is coming up here on 10:00am Pacific Time, 1:00pm Eastern Time. Wherever you’re joining us from, we are so excited to have you, like I said. We are doing a Ten Tips in Ten Minutes webinar today. We know you are all so busy getting started creating all that great content, engaging with your communities out there, and taking 10 minutes out of your day to connect with us here at the Edgar community really does mean the world to us. So say, “Hey” in the chat. Let us know. Reach out to us on social media. @MeetEdgar is our handle on Twitter or connect with us on Facebook. Let us know what else you’re interested on learning on. We want to make sure this webinar series is 100% chatting to your guys’ needs, and really adding value to your day. So be sure to say, “Hi,” connect with yourselves.
[03:34] My name is Megan, and I am an onboarding coach here at MeetEdgar, which means I do have one of the coolest jobs in the world, because I get to chat with all of you on a daily basis who are working so hard on your small businesses to make sure that you’re helping your community succeed with your service, your product. And through chatting I hear a ton about how there’s just not enough time in your day to do everything you need and keep up with your social media. So this webinar today is aimed at giving those quick and dirty tips and tricks out to you. We hear you. We know there’s so much going on in your lives, so we will respect your time and get started here. And this webinar is really going to be focused on giving so much information, but we also want to make sure that you’re getting all of the information you need to set your Edgar account up properly, as well as be successful with your social media goals right now.
[04:18] So if you do have any follow up questions, be sure to reach out to us: [email protected]. Tweet as us. Anything that we can do to help, we’re always here.
[04:27] So as we’re waiting for the last few people to join us today, some things that I like to just kind of chat about here, is having this kind of pencil and paper out, writing down these tips and actionable points that you can jump in and start doing this today. There is no time like the present.
[04:42] So let’s cover some basics of what you can do with these tricks and tips once the webinar is over. You know, just like you as a business owners, and your followers are so busy, that every status update you deliver we want to make sure is quick and to the point, and delivered on a regular basis. Automation tools like Edgar can really help out with this to make sure your followers are going to have that consistency from you, that they know you’ll be delivering them immense value in a short concise time period. And they know that attention they’re spending watching your brand, and that attention they’re spending following your brand on social media is not going to be detracting from that other time they could be connecting with their friends. They could be entertained by others.
[05:20] So make sure that you are knowing that every status update you’re putting out there is adding to their life. And this is going to be that magic formula that we all appreciate and that we all get that quick nugget of value. So making sure that you have your pencils out ready to go, and we will go ahead and jump right in.
[05:39] So starting out, the number one tip we’ll start on is building trust. You have heard us say it before, and we will say it again. Social media is the best place to build trust with your community. We believe in this so much that we wrote a whole blog post on this, and you can see on your screen to the right here, it’s titled, “Humans Will Always Win on Social.”
[05:57] Because you can open up and you can share your personality. You know, that human to human connection can go so far and build so much more trust than just that computer screen in front of your followers. So make it a goal today to add personal content into your social media strategy. Open up and share your story with your community, and they’ll open up and share theirs with you. You can gain insights for their pain points. You can gain insights from any feedback they give you, but you have to start first, giving them that permission.
[06:24] So think about one personal thing you can add to your MeetEdgar library of posts today. Is it a tip from a lesson you learned on your earlier business days? Is it some hack for a way that you’ve established a really solid work/life balance, and you enjoyed the day at the museum with one of your children? These things, while they’re not directly related to your business, go so far in building trust; humanizing yourself and really building that transparency within your company, so you seem like a really open and honest workspace that people want to bond with and work with. Sharing these personal touches on social media so people can get to know you is so important. Your followers want to join you on your journey in your business. They want to be a part of that, so allow them to come in.
[07:07] And even if they’re not ready to buy right now, and that day one of your followers does need your product or service, or hears one of their friends talking about something they know your product can help them solve, they want to be valuable to that friend. They want to tell them about it. So who do you think that’s going to come to mind first? That brand that they trust so strongly on social media. So make sure every status update you’re adding that personality in to really build that trust with your community.
[07:33] Number two, categorize your updates. So when you categorize your social media updates, you can crank our a whole bunch of different updates for a single piece of content, and you don’t have to worry about posting all of them back to back. It’s kind of what we call upcycling your content, so thinking how you can get the most out of that blog content, whether it’s posting the blog, a tip from the blog, a quote, a question about it, there are all things that can be related back to that same link or that same topic and concept. And being able to categorize them really allows you to spread it out over the week to get that robust following out to your followers.
[08:09] So the cool thing about doing this within Edgar, is it really allows you to take your timeline on your social media accounts from looking what’s here on the left, just random social media update after social media update, and shifting it to something that looks like on the right here. You can get a blog post, a quote, a video, something inspirational, an infographic; all of that within the same day, having this variety and having that sense that you are providing value with these update.
[08:35] And again, the great thing about using Edgar to do this, is we have this built right into our system. So be sure you’re customizing your categories to really allow for you to get the most out of the content you already have, as well as building in a lot more quotes, a lot more fun, entertaining stuff for your followers to see. You know, these category folders in Edgar, as I mentioned, can be customized to the extreme level. For example here, that we’ve created different categories for some of our different webinars, per network even. So we’re spreading them out for promotions across all the networks, controlling the message, and the type of content that goes out. So really make sure you getting nitty gritty and staying true to these categories to provide that valuable, robust posting schedule to your networks.
[09:18] Number three, commit to a posting schedule. Guys I cannot stress this enough. It’s that old thing that if you fail to plan, you plan to fail, and it holds so, so true on social media. If you jut leave social media as a task to be filled in during your down time, it’s not going to be as effective, and you will not stick to that posting schedule that your followers deserve. So schedule your updates and make sure that you’re time blocking it out. Make sure that you’re not just willy nilly filling it in with these five minute blocks of time between meetings. This isn’t going to provide as much value as if you were able to time block it out, scheduling it out, and it’s also going to make sure that you’re posting when your audience is online, not when you’re online.
[09:59] So make sure you’re using your Twitter analytics, your Facebook analytics, to gain insights when the majority of your followers online. And use a scheduling system as you can see over here on the right, like Edgar’s weekly schedule, to have this all set up so you can go out and have that important business meeting, and rest assured, your posts are still going to go out. And you know, for example, if you know you have a lot of quotes going out during the week, this can also help you delegate to your staff, delegate to your social media VAs, what they need to start creating if you have this schedule set up by categories. You can see how many quotes are going out in a week, and really map this out to make sure that every post that you’re adding to the library is going to be time well spent. So make sure that you’re using this to really help make sure that your audience is getting those posts when they’re online, and the type of content they want to see on the days that you know work best.
[10:53] Number four, engage with hyper-personalization. Guys, social media’s such a crowded space right now that you need to find a way to cut through that noise and really speak to your followers and not just be another post that they’re able to easily scroll past. One way to do this is to use Edgar to prompt that discussion, post questions to your social media community, engage with them, and then take 15 minutes out of your day to go in and talk to your members. Make sure that if they shared one of your articles, you are thanking them for it. If they comment about your brand anywhere, use those listening skills that you guys have set up, and make sure you’re writing back to them.
[11:29] Having something like a brand guideline or style guideline set up in your business, also allows you to delegate this out to maybe a VA, or hope in there and rest assured that everything you’re doing is speaking your brand to you followers. You can see here everything that we get on Twitter is so matched to our brand. We love being playful, we love connecting on such a personal level that any moment we get to show off that humor, that personality, that awesome MeetEdgar vibe, we do here on a one-on-one basis, and this is what’s going to really help future proof your social media. That human to human connection, that one-on-one touch, is the best way to keep clients knowing you are there for them. You are watching out for their success. You and your product are going to be there no matter what happens in the market, no matter what happens with social media algorithms, that you guys are there for them.
[12:18] Number five, halfway through guys, guest posting, start power, and and influencer marketing. Guys if you’re not using influencer marketing [inaudible 00:12:27] out. Make sure you’re reaching out to the voices within your community, within your industry, that you know people respect, and start to try to work with them. Make sure you’re adding value to their sites and creating that connection for the long run of building up this great connection with influencers. So that if maybe their product is not right for one of their followers, they can suggest your product. They can know that, and build your audience on the back of these really awesome star power influencers. Get them writing guest blogs for your site, and create a community with your industry so you are seen as an expert and a respected voice.
[13:03] You can even do really awesome things about using Edgar when you’re live. If you’re doing a podcast, go ahead and jump on into MeetEdgar’s schedule at a specific time feature, and you can schedule specific times to send out on your Twitter account saying, “Hey, guess what, I’m going live over here on Facebook right now. Jump on over to see me.”
Megan: 13:24 What an awesome way to cross promote across networks. Maybe someone’s following you on Twitter, they haven’t discovered your Facebook page. Schedule that Twitter out through Edgar while you’re doing a Facebook Live broadcast, you’re essentially doing two things at once, maximizing your time, and really shifting more and more people on over to each of your networks. So make sure you’re using Edgar in that special way to get people from one network to the other while you’re doing things. It’s an awesome setup. If you’re not sure how to set this up, let us know and we can definitely give you some advice; [email protected] will be the best place to get that.
[13:58] Going a little bit further on this idea of that live video, that is definitely something we want to make sure you guys are utilizing. You know, visual marketing is where it is all at. If you’re not doing how-to videos for how to use your product successfully, you’re missing a huge opportunity to keep your clients successful. And keeping clients successful is really keeping clients within your service and coming back to buy more of your products. Video is a great way to get people to get to know you and get that eye contact, that authenticity that works so well on social media. So even if it isn’t live video, you can go ahead and schedule out videos within Edgar’s scheduling system too. You can add in YouTube links if you’re wanting to direct people and gain more followers on YouTube to send out to your Facebook and your Twitter. You can upload direct videos within Edgar to send to Facebook and Twitter as well.
[14:48] And this really is a great place to also take readers behind the scenes of your business, and it can really help you strengthen that bond. The better they know and understand you as a person, it goes back to that first slide, all about trust, all about gaining that awesome vibe with your community. And the more that they can trust you, the more likely it is they’ll convert. As a little extra pro tip here, know that about 70% of video is watched on mute on social media, so make sure you’re utilizing things like Facebook’s built in captioning to caption your videos to really get the most out of them, and provide all of that great feedback to your followers.
[15:24] Number seven here, get your team involved. Guys, when your team feels like they’re involved, and they have some piece of ownership that they have within social media, they’re going to be so much more likely to share your status updates with their community, increasing that spread of your brand to their personal networks. And you can find a way to involve all different departments in your community, you’ll get a much more divers audience. If your product manager can speak to something better than one of your content managers, give him that opportunity to write that blog post and collaborate with your teammates. Maybe that’ll be something that speaks to another product developer who will pass it on to their marketing team, and it’s just this great, great way of getting your team out there.
[16:05] And this doesn’t just have to be your CEO doing things like being on podcasts too. Our team here at MeetEdgar is so involved in this idea of influencer marketing and sharing all of our status updates, because we believe in our brand, and we are all bought into so much. You can see here, one of our copywriters, Jen, is really great at getting out there and guest posting on other blogs, getting our name, MeetEdgar out there, and establishing herself as a front leading authority in the social media sphere.
[16:34] Over here we have our customer experience lead, Kristina, who is awesome at being on podcast, talking about our business, giving that behind the scenes look into why we care about our customers, and what we do here a little bit different for customer support at MeetEdgar. And these things are awesome not only for getting your name out there, but again, your team will feel such a sense of ownership and wanting to share this on their social media, that it opens up your networks. And make sure you’re using your team for warm leads too. If you guys are sharing updates, empower your team to go out there and Like it, to give the algorithm what it wants by having your team Like those updates really quickly, showing Facebook, showing Twitter, “Hey these updates are awesome, show it to more of my community.”
[17:16] Number eight, listen. Make sure that every post you’re putting out there is adding value for your followers. It can be something that’s educational, inspirational, anything you want, and the way that you find out which of these you want is by listening to them. So don’t just post to gain followers and get those Likes, you want to really make sure that you’re speaking directly to the pain points your community has. And keep is simple. Make sure that you’re doing things like adding in a link shortener. If you’re adding in a link shortener to Edgar, we have integrations with Bitly, Rebrandly, as well as our own, ed.gr.
[17:52] And this is a great way to amplify your listening skills with an automation tool. If you’re seeing more clicks on some links within your Edgar updates than others, use that to listen to your community. That is a really great sign that the links they’re clicking on, are things that are sparking their engagement, and things that they want to click over and get to your website. So if you’re not using a link shortener, consider setting that up. It’s an awesome way to gain a little bit more knowledge there. Listening in other ways, asking questions of your social media, replying to them, and really bringing and inviting your community to talk to you.
[18:25] Number nine, add value. Make sure each week yore finding one or two articles that are trending in your community, and you’re writing a thoughtful comment on what you think of this, what your brand thinks of what’s going on in your sphere right now. This is really adding your own unique voice, and adding value to the discussion within the industry. It’s going to help you be seen as an expert, and it’s going to help your community know that you are engaged and you are a thought leader within your industry. So add value, it can be you, like I said, taking a couple minutes to find that evergreen post and to get it into your library with your own commentary, curating other people’s posts, stuff like that is a great, great way to add value if you’re still building up your own content marketing as well.
[19:10] Last but not least, ask don’t sell. Guys, social media’s awesome, awesome, awesome at connecting with your followers, but you cannot forget to promote your business as well. We want you to do this in a really elegant way to empathize with your followers, and ask them, “What can we do to help you right now? When is the ideal time for you to start?”
[19:31] Maybe it’s not right now. Maybe they still want to get that knowledge and really kind of see what tool is right for them. So provide them the value of saying who you’re for and who you’re not for, so they can self select into seeing if your product is right for them. We don’t want you to just gain followers. We want you to gain brand advocates, those people who will go out there and talk up your social media as a way of saying, “Look at this brand. Look how awesome they are.”
[19:56] And they don’t want to be sold, necessarily, at that time. So you know, if you’re presenting your solution to their problem, and you’re speaking right to them, it’s your job to let them know you exist, but on social media don’t go for that direct sell, go for that ask. Provide so much value that when you ask them if they’re ready to start, or when this is going to work, to really help their business, that they have no choice but to say, “You know what, you’re right. I am removing all of my objections to why I’m neighborhood to doing this yet. Your product is right for me. This is really going to help my business. This is really going to help my life. This is really going to help provide value to my day.”
[20:33] Getting that elegant sale out there and self selecting is really great. And when they are in front of you and they authentically want to connect with you, and you have with all the integrity you have presented them with this information of who your brand is, it is going to be the most easy sell of your life.
[20:50] Guys, thank you so, so much for joining the webinar today. Like I said, we know you are all busy, so we will respect your time for our Ten Tips in Ten Minutes webinar. We know your brand is so, so much more than just a brand. It is who you are and what you do everyday, so I want to leave you with one last thought, that don’t be afraid to try new things on social and connect with your communities. Just be sure you’re staying true to that brand, speaking authentically, and you will get that awesome knowledge.
[21:17] Like I said, we are here for you at any time. If you are a new member and you do not have a MeetEdgar account yet, let’s get you on here if you are ready start automating your social media and really engaging with your community. You can use this coupon code: octopuswebinar18 to get yourself a free month if you sign up at MeetEdgar.com. There will be a place you can put that in there. Of course, feel free to e-mail [email protected] if you have any trouble setting that up at all.
[21:43] If you’re an existing member today, and you joined the webinar, go ahead and e-mail us. Get yourself some Edgar swag. [email protected], and we can get that all set up for you as a thanks for joining Edgar, as a thanks for really getting involved with our community here, and really helping each other succeed along this social media journey.
[22:02] So e-mail us, we love to hear from you. Thanks for joining, like I said, today, and get out there and get that social media working to increase the awareness on your brand, and really drive more and more traffic to your site.
[22:14] Thanks so much, guys, and see you next time.
