Podcast:


Transcription

Hey there, internet fans, it’s Ryan Perry, Simple Biz Support. Today is Wednesday, May 4th. Therefore it is Social Media Wednesday and as usual I have Sarah Giometti with Provaro Marketing. Good morning, Sarah.

Sarah Giometti: Good morning, Ryan. How are you?

RP: I’m doing good but I flew back in from Cabo last night so I’m not really excited about the weather here in Northern California. But other than that…

SG: It’s a little on the gray side.

RP: It’s a little on the gray side, but it’s all good.

SG: You look nice, tan and rested.

RP: Yes. Yes, definitely. We have skipped the last two weeks. You were on vacation, having a great time up north. And then I was gone last week and I thought about doing the show, but the internet in Cabo is not that strong. So we opted not and that’s why we’re here today. So we apologize for the two-week pause. Hopefully you’re still rested from your vacation though.

SG: Well, I wasn’t overly rested probably. There’s a lot of activity. However, shortly after we got back, Tom, my husband, went on a fishing trip so I actually got the weekend to just be an introvert and veg. So I caught up on a little extra relaxation after the fact.

RP: All right. Very good. But we are back in it today. We have five tips to really make you more efficient, make you more productive when engaging your social media marketing. This is really targeting the small business owner, wearing a lot of hats and efficiency’s really critical if you want to be successful because, as you all know, there’s only 24 hours in a day, and you want to spend some of them with your family. So we have five tips that are going to make you more efficient, more productive when it comes to managing your social media accounts.

SG: We are. I was… How I thought about this, I know we’ve touched on efficiency before being productive, but I was meeting with a prospect recently and they were just so overwhelmed with the concept of doing their social media on their own that I thought it was a good opportunity to revisit this topic and give some useful tips where it’s not as bad as you think. Yes, you will have to allocate some time to it but it’s not as bad as you think it’s going to be. I wanted to dive into tips that small business units especially on sole entrepreneurs can just step in and you can implement all five of them today.

RP: Yeah, and what… The reality is from the small business owner who’s coming in, who’s maybe starting the business for the first time and they feel pressure that they need to be on Facebook. They have to be on Twitter. “Oh, now there’s this Blab thing that I need to do.” There’s Periscope. There’s just so many…

SG: Snapchat.

RP: Yeah, Snapchat and Instagram and Hooligans and Gizmos and gadgets and all that stuff, and it’s like, “Oh, my goodness.” So I don’t know if this is one of the five tips but just figuring out where your audience is, is really a good place to start because you don’t need to be over here if your audience is over here.

SG: Right. And it actually wasn’t one of the tips but you definitely want to know who your target audience is and where they’re playing. And that same prospect that I was talking to, I’m like, “I’m not on Snapchat as a business because my target market’s not there. It’s a younger audience and that’s typically not who my customers are.” That’s not one of the ones that I utilize for my business. Am I on it personally? Sure. It’s fun. But no, I am not on it on a business standpoint even though that I advocate social media for businesses, even I don’t need to be on everything.

RP: Right. Okay, perfect. Well, let’s go ahead and jump in to the first of five tips.

SG: So the first one is to schedule time. The person who masters their calendar masters their time. Otherwise, your calendar just masters you if you don’t organize it, if you don’t have it well planned. But you also have to honor it and that’s part of mastering your calendar and as a business owner your time is very precious. So you want to make sure that you honor your calendar and you master it and you respect it and do what it tells you to do at that time. I even schedule in my exercise. My eating is scheduled in there because I have been known to accidentally schedule right through lunch without even thinking about it. So I’m like, “Oh, open slot on my calendar. Sure, here you go.” And so blocking out simple things like eating, driving in between appointments so you don’t mess up things, every little basic thing should be in your calendar but so should your social media work. Once you get really efficient you can probably do it with only one or two hours a week to get all of the work done you need for that week, maybe get a little extra in for a couple of weeks but block it out and do the work to make sure that you’re ahead of the game and not playing catch up throughout the week.

RP: Yeah, definitely. And then one of the previous episodes we actually talked about how you can post on Facebook in five minutes a day.

SG: Right.

RP: But you have to actually calendar it and do it consistently in order for any of this to be effective.

SG: Right. And you need a little extra time in that for research, for brainstorming, for figuring out what you’re going to do. A lot of this we have in there so calendaring is the very first step. Put it on your calendar and honor it to get the work done. Then you also won’t accidentally spend ten hours when you could get it done in one or two. So you’re saving yourself time right there. So once you’ve got a calendar, the next step is, what are you going to post? If you have a team, during that hour… Make sure that hour then is on their schedule as well and use a part of that time to brainstorm content ideas, promotions you might do, looking at what they’ve seen as working, not working, ideas.

SG: You and I were in the office, just having a conversation sometimes sparks ideas in our own brain of something that we’re stuck on. So talking to other people if you can during that time will help you come up with ideas. If you’re a solo entrepreneur, if you’ve got somebody you collaborate with, see if you can finagle them into that hour and it’s their social media hour also. And part of it is you guys collaborate, brainstorm, come up with content ideas of what you’re going put out on your social media networks.

RP: Yeah, ’cause you can come up with some great ideas that you can take that one concept, reuse it in multiple different ways and that’s content that you can create every single week, that’s ongoing forever. Just that one little idea can create new content for you which is going to make you more efficient ’cause you’re not thinking about, “Ah, I gotta come up with the new best thing.”

SG: Right, right. When you do it in a chunk, you’re not worrying about, even if you’re trying to do content for video and blogs, you’re not worrying about writing it at this moment. You’re worrying about coming up with just the title, ’cause once you have the title, I know this even from my college days, once I had the subject matter, it was easy to write the article. It was coming up with the topic, and so utilizing just one to two hours a week to come up with just a list of topics that you can write against makes you more efficient. Again, ahead of the game. So you’re pre-planning your strategy.

RP: Yeah, one of the things that I do that I find beneficial is when I am coming up with content ideas, is I like to categorize everything. So it may be for Facebook, for Twitter, and for me, it’s educational stuff. So what can I talk about that’s educational, about Twitter, about Facebook? I just have an Excel spreadsheet for all the different ones. Then, I can see if I’ve duplicated that idea because sometimes I forget that I’ve already done something, so having a central location where you keep all your notes is very beneficial also.

SG: Absolutely. And then, the number three plays into that, is Facebook has a save feature that you can save links and you can go back and look and so if you come across an article that’s interesting that you liked, maybe you don’t have time to read, you can save it for later. This is really great for part of your content strategy because if you come across an article that you think your audience will find interesting, maybe you’re not in a place to post it. Maybe you’ve already scheduled out for that week, so you want to use it for next week. Use the Facebook save feature to save it for later and then during that one or two hours you’ve scheduled, go look through that list and see what’s in there that you can incorporate into that coming week’s strategy.

RP: All right. And that save feature, is that available on mobile?

SG: Yes.

RP: Okay.

SG: It is. It’s the upper right corner… Like, of a post, the upper right corner, there’s a little dropdown caret. If you did drop down caret, you can choose to hide a post, it’s not relevant to you. But in there is also save the link.

RP: Okay. Perfect.

SG: So you can save it for later. ‘Cause a lot times, yeah, you’ll be skimming through it on mobile, maybe you’re sitting in a waiting room, waiting for an appointment and you don’t have time to read the article but you want to. I love this feature, ’cause before they enacted it, I was so… So many times I was like, “Who had that post? Where was I?” I know I saw the title for it but I can’t remember, and I want to go back and read it and then you have a heck of the time finding it. So this makes it a lot easier to be able to just bookmark it for later and go back and read the article.

RP: All right, perfect.

SG: It takes us to number four, and we talked about this in the past too, is monitor your competition. Look and see what they’re posting. You can see publicly, especially on Facebook, on Twitter, on Instagram, you can see publicly the interaction that they’re receiving on their content. And so, you don’t want to plagiarize and you don’t want to copy but it can help with your brainstorming. What are they putting out there that their audience is liking? ‘Cause they probably have a similar audience as you if they’re your competition that might trigger some ideas of content that you can put out or tweaks to your content strategy. So watching but not copying them is really useful in making your social media more efficient and more streamlined.

RP: Yeah, and kind of in that same realm one of the things I like to do is I like to Google newsletters. And so if I’m looking for information for a client, let’s say they’re a bookkeeper as an example, I’ll do a Google search for newsletter bookkeeper, newsletter or newsletters for bookkeepers, whatever. And because newsletters are typically content rich, they’re not sales material and content material and that’s really what we’re looking for. And I find that newsletters have a lot of great information. And typically, I’ll find one or two that seem to be doing a really good job and I like the way they put a spin on the content. Because there’s so many newsletters out there that are very generic, that’s one of the downside, you got to filter through a little bit of the garbage. But once you find a good one, either sign up for it or tag it so you know where it’s at. You can go back to it and get new content ideas on a regular basis. You’re muted. Either that or we lost your volume. One of the two. I have no idea. You can start doing the pantomime thing though, like you’re in a box, yeah.

SG: There we go, I fixed it.

RP: There we go, she found it. Woohoo.

SG: I was like, “What did I press that I muted myself?” There’s a lot of different ways to find content. But having… Like you have a consistent strategy and it’s finding what works for you and duplicating that week after week after week and finding what you’re looking for. The content-rich stuff is, you can pull out little nuggets out of there and create an article out of it. There’s a lot you can do by reading other people’s content. So you don’t always have to reinvent the wheel from scratch.

RP: Alright. Perfect. And then we’ve got three minutes for number five. We’re doing good today.

SG: We are. We’re right on the money. Number five is reuse your own content especially if it performed really well. It’s something that a lot of people forget. They’re like “Well, I wrote that blog article two months ago then I’m not going to incorporate it again.” But if it was really relevant and it’s still relevant, use it again. If you ever go to a page that you like that’s got… That has a lot of followers, that’s very active, scroll through their news feed. If you scroll long enough, you’ll probably see a repeat of one or more of their blog articles. Because it’s a highly useful beneficial piece of content that you created. You put a lot of effort into it, get the maximum value out of it. There’s nothing saying you can only share it one time across your social media platforms. And so look back and see what performed really well and put it back into the rotation.

SG: The term is evergreen. You’ve got this evergreen content that people will… It’ll not maybe not always work especially in our industry where technology is constantly changing. Some of our older content may be outdated and not appropriate any more but if it’s a blog article that’s performed well, people are interested in it and it’s still relevant, absolutely put it back in the rotation. You don’t want to do it too often. So you’re obviously you’re not going to post it once a week every week for three months. But definitely cycle it back in maybe after 30 days, 45 days, cycle it back in and post it again and give it just kind of… Give it another breath of life so to say.

RP: Right, and evergreen content really should be content as you’re coming up with ideas. You need to have stuff that’s relevant today with what’s going on in your industry but then you also need to have that evergreen content that’s for a lot of people it’s that generic content when I first sit down and talk with clients and it’s like “Oh, well what are we going to talk about? What are we going to post? What am I going to make videos of?” I always go back to what are the problems, concerns, questions that your prospects and clients have because you should have maybe depending on how intricate your business is, five questions that 80% everybody always asks these same five questions. Well, then they obviously are wanting more knowledge about it and that’s an easy place to start in creating a content but it’s also evergreen content.

RP: If you’re an estate attorney, well, what is an estate plan? What is probate? Why do you want to stay out of probate? Those are all easy concepts that you can talk about that’s going to be relevant for years and years to come. On the flip side, I also use the analogy of… I can’t think of it. Cosmo, Cosmopolitan the magazine in the sense that they regurgitate the same what I call ‘garbage’ over and over every single month. If you look at a Cosmo today, a Cosmo from a year ago, and a Cosmo from five years ago, it’s still going to have the gal on a cover. It’s going to be whatever latest trend is and it’s going to be tips about boyfriends and girlfriends, and what the latest fashion trends are, and all that gossipy stuff. 80% of the magazine is probably regurgitated stuff and the other 20% is what’s currently going on with a celebrity or something. I don’t know because I don’t read it. But I’m just saying, if you look on the outside cover, they regurgitate the same crap every single month. And so you want to have your evergreen content but then also freshen up your evergreen content every year, every couple years. Again, it really depends on your industry.

SG: And especially if you’re using things like statistics that might change. Then you definitely want to give a refresh to it. But yeah, you can take the same title… Again, the same title, tweak it, give it a little bit of fresh updated content and put it back out there again. But you can also utilize the one that you’ve already done. You’re totally right with Cosmo. It’s just… Yeah, it’s about pleasing your man and/or husband in bed, or with food, or with what you wear as one concept and so you can look… And that goes back to looking at what your competitors are doing and seeing what are the things that they’re putting out there that you can possibly create content to the same concept. Again, don’t copy.

SG: That’s plagiarism. It’s illegal but you can at least look at it for your own brainstorming and ideas on what type of evergreen content are they putting out. What lead generation campaign are they running? What are they offering? You’re obviously not going to know how it’s performing for them but it could help spark ideas on your side to do it better and that’s where having that concentrated time on your calendar. I would say at least an hour, if not two hours once a month, you’ve got admin time usually, hopefully. You can just buck it on right before or after your admin time and just sit and crank it out, and get it done, and then move on with the rest of your tasks as an entrepreneur and a business owner.

RP: Yeah, perfect. Okay. With that, that’s the end of the show. We ran… We were doing so good and then we ran over as usual.

RP: That is the end of the show for today. We will be back next Wednesday with another episode of Social Media Wednesday where we’re going to be providing helpful tips and tricks to improve your social media presence online. Sarah, as always, I appreciate the time and energy that you put into the show and I look forward to seeing you next week.

SG: Thanks Ryan, it’s always a pleasure.