39. A guide for Startups. How do I explain what I do on social media?

There was a time not so long ago when everyone used to listen to the radio for their news and entertainment. But with videos, photos and other conversations on tap 24 7 these days, the modern equivalent would probably be seen as social media. The media may have shifted and many more people have the opportunity to broadcast their content. But the one thing that hasn't changed is the way people decide who to tune into and who to engage with. In our last episode we looked at how to explain what you do when you meet people in person. This week we look at how to use your story to communicate with followers on social. and how to keep your audience active and engaged. So let's get started. Hi there, I'm your host Simon Harvey and welcome to the Authentic Marketing Podcast in association with Demodia. Where we give you actionable advice that will help you create marketing that works. So, I must admit that when it comes to personal communications and promotion, I'm not a great user of tools like WhatsApp, Instagram or Facebook. You know, they're things that I dabble in from time to time, but I just feel like I've got too much else going on in my day to spend my time flicking through photos and messages. I know it's probably a generational thing you're going to tell me, but you don't have to get much younger than me and you'll find people everywhere that just can't extract themselves from these places. You know, social media is everywhere and it's fast become one of the most effective ways to meet people and to create a community. While I don't spend hours each day on social, I do admit that I do have a few channels and groups that I join from time to time. These are the ones that talk mostly about things that I'm interested in, I guess. They're the ones that talk about stuff like, for example, running, or gardening, managing a business, or, yeah, marketing perhaps. Some of these channels I join purely for entertainment value and others I participate in because I want to learn, you know, I want to get better, I want to be more than I am at the moment. In fact actually I find it quite interesting when I go back and look at the way that social channels have evolved over the time and I do see a lot of parallels with radio stations of the past. You know, we used to listen to radio stations that played the style of music that we liked, or we joined in and listened to conversations that were about topics that we were interested in. And actually, other than the medium itself, I think that little's changed in that way. In fact, the same is true with podcasts like this really, isn't it? People join when there's something that they're interested in being involved in, when there's something that helps them or entertains them. The thing is Most of those stations, you know, the ones with the largest audiences and most dedicated audiences, they're the ones that have stayed true to their purpose. They came up with an audience that they were targeting, and they provided content that that particular audience wanted. They just play one style of music, for instance, or they just focus on sharing local news and stories. And that's the same as social channels should be. So many companies that I've worked with have invested hours and hours at the beginning of our time together each week, creating content and pushing out content to the social channels. But unfortunately it's typically proved to be things that their target audience just don't care about. You know, they. Do things like pushing out pictures around the company who's joined the company when it's somebody way in the background that nobody ever talks with, company photos, dinners that they've been to, events that they've been at, constantly promoting blog posts or something. You know, they jump between lots of different themes and they leave their audience confused and ultimately uninterested. So as a small business owner, The question is, you know, what is the most important thing and what can you do to build an audience that will connect with you? So in today's conversation, Daniel has exactly those questions. So why don't we go and we continue our chat with Daniel and see what he's got to say. Hi there, Daniel. How's you? Thanks for joining us again.

Hello Simon, I'm feeling great. Thank you very much. How are you?

Yeah, that's good. Good to see that you're a bit more recovered after the the last couple of weeks.

Yes, definitely. It was a hell of a time. Yes,

that's good. Yeah, I'm keeping fine. Thank you very much Enjoying the finally warming up weather. So

nice. Yes. I'm also happy about the weather getting better

So we've been talking about social media today So really just looking at how to use social media to promote your business, whether it's a small business, a large business or anything.

I think that's good because I also thought about promoting my friend's business that we talked about last time. Also on social media, you know, and, uh, not very too familiar with promoting businesses on social.

Yeah, I know you do quite a bit of social stuff yourself, but, uh, Yeah. Yeah, it's a little bit different doing businesses to doing personal social posts in there, definitely.

Yes, I think so. And also, that's why I want to learn something today.

Cool, good. So yeah, far away, what sort of questions have you got? How can I help?

So, I think the most important question here is to ask which channels to use.

Yeah, okay. So, by channels, you mean which of the individual social networks that you can use in that?

Yes.

So I would say for the purposes of most business transactions, there's probably three or four main ones. So the big two is certainly Facebook and LinkedIn. Mm-Hmm., um, with Instagram being pretty close up there as well. Then the other ones I guess people would think about would be maybe TikTok or Twitter X, whatever that's called these days. Mm-Hmm.. Simon Harvey: Yeah, let's So I think Facebook, you know, that's the first one that a lot of people think of as a network. And I think that's got really a lot of value for consumer type products. So if you're selling to a consumer, if you're a small business that's selling artistic supplies, you know, courses to consumers, gardening services, or products that people would buy straight away, you know, things like makeup, for example, or clothes, Yes. Mm hmm. I think Facebook is fantastic for, you know, that's where consumers hang out. Basically, that's where you're most likely to find the right sort of person. The second one that I mentioned was LinkedIn. And I'd say pretty much exactly the opposite for that one. So LinkedIn is where you get professional people hanging out. So if you want to try and sell a business service or a product to a corporation, Then LinkedIn is the place that you should be posting. You should be talking about what you're doing in there, talking about what you're doing at work professionally, talking about what your company's doing, those things. Then the one I know you're most familiar with is Instagram. I think really that's, Taking over a lot of space that I think really covers all of the different grounds. You know, there's a lot of good business cases there for doing consumer focused advertising. They're definitely, but I see more and more businesses actually promoting and doing really well with Instagram. You're using it much more as a visual medium to get across what they do. So I think

You mean B2B businesses?

Absolutely, yeah, yeah, B2B stuff as well.

Oh, okay.

So, um, yeah, I would definitely say Instagram is one that everyone should consider, maybe not necessarily as their primary platform, but certainly as one of their platforms that they support.

Alright.

Then, yeah, I mean, the other two I mentioned, TikTok, I think really that depends as to who your generational gap is, you know, the big difference between, say, TikTok and Facebook, uh, or even TikTok and Instagram, you know Facebook is used by Gen X, Gen Y, Instagram is probably used more by Millennials, TikTok is used by, what is it these days, Gen Z, Gen Alpha, I don't know where they're going now, but, you know, the sort of the teenagers basically in there. So if you're after the younger generation, TikTok is where to go. If you're after middle aged people, you know, Instagram is probably a better place to go. If you're targeting older audiences, then maybe Facebook is more what you want to be looking at.

Yes, I can confirm that.

Yeah. Um, the other one I mentioned earlier, Twitter or X as it is these days, I don't know. We used to talk about that a lot from a business perspective, but I think generally from business side of things, it's losing a lot of relevance these days. You know, we're seeing a lot of advertisers pulling out of there. So unless you've got a specific case for it, I would say probably that's not one that most companies should be focusing a great deal of effort on.

You think that has to do that it changed its name?

Um, I don't think it's to do with it changing its name particularly in there. I just think it's just the focus of the content in there, you know, it's becoming more, I suppose, radicalized content or whatever in there. And I think companies are objecting to some of the removal of filters and some of those things. Yeah, I don't know. Maybe it'll come back. We'll see.

Okay. So those are the channels So you say instagram is all in one? Yeah, facebook is more b2c LinkedIn is definitely b2b.

Yep,

and tiktok is also more like instagram or More b2c.

Yeah, exactly. But for the younger generation, precisely. All

right. And knowing that the next question that comes to my mind is, uh, what should I share?

Yeah. So, I mean, this just goes back to everything that we talk about all the time. Story, I think is the most important thing here. Definitely. You need to be telling a story and you need to be doing that consistently. The biggest problem that I see When any companies share stuff on social media is just the random nature of the content that they post. They don't have a consistent type of content they post. They don't post consistent messages in there and they, they mix and match all sorts of different things. So, you know, I'll see one minute on Facebook, somebody posting about a company party or some dinner that they went to, and the next minute they're posting up a link to some case study or white paper on there. Be consistent. So I think that's the thing in there and use the brand scripts. That's the absolute most important thing. You know, your brand script will give you seven really good, clear talking points, and you can use those right the way through your social media. And if you use them consistently, then that's when you'll build a following because people associate with you. They recognize you for talking about certain topics.

So you're talking about the seven step story brand framework.

Exactly that, yeah, mm hmm.

Okay, alright.

So, what you can use those for, I think, is examples to you. If you're thinking about social media, you know, whether it's LinkedIn or Facebook, your primary thing is to stop people scrolling. You know, the first thing you need to do is to actually capture their attention and make them sit there and think, oh yeah, I need to read this particular post. And the way that you do that is And the things that you can use from your brand script here, you can use a problem. You know, if somebody sees a problem that they can associate themselves with or that they have, they're going to stop scrolling because they want to know how they can potentially solve that problem. So the problem section of your brand script I think is really important when it comes to titles and headlines in your social posts, when it comes to the text that you put in, the big text in banners and images for example. The next thing is, you know, People, particularly again on Facebook or Instagram, they're aspirational, you know, you can post about transformation elements of your story. Now, what will somebody become if they use your services or if they use your product? So use aspirational elements from the brand script to be able to explain things or use that as a style within your visuals when you explain and when you post on there. And then the third thing I would say is talk about something that they want. If someone sees something that they want, they're going to stop and say, Oh, how do I get that?

Okay. I understand. So when it comes to what I should share, the content itself, I rely on the story brand.

Absolutely. Yeah. If you use your content from your brand script, take the ideas that you've got in there and expand them, but use those as your themes, then I think you can't go far wrong.

All right. Well, that's good. That clears a lot of questions. So, After answering that, you know, there's also different types of content on these different social media channels, for example, there's reels, there's regular posts, you can also drop stories, which type of those contents would you recommend to share?

Yeah, okay, I mean, maybe I can give you a couple of LinkedIn examples in here.

Mm hmm.

So, I would say on LinkedIn, common things that people use are personal posts, so you can post text inside there, and I would say those need to be a reasonable length, you know, people will read those articles. You can use the visual posts, so again, sharing photographs or sharing an image in there. Images typically stop people scrolling. If you can capture somebody's attention with a headline in there, that's great. Or even better than that, putting a short video, you know, I'm seeing more and more people, particularly on LinkedIn, and even on Facebook and Instagram as well, using just these, you know, low cost iPhone filmed videos of themselves, just talking and explaining something or showing something. Those, I think, are now really effective as a way of stopping people scrolling. The other one for LinkedIn and companies that are using that, I definitely recommend you looking at their newsletter service, so that's something that they've introduced or at least updated recently. So you can now create a newsletter on LinkedIn, which is basically like your blog, but you post your blog articles onto LinkedIn and then LinkedIn will automatically share those with all of your followers. It's something that you can post your article on your normal blog, but you can also reshare it on LinkedIn and increase your audience and your followers through that. So there's a few examples, I think.

That's interesting, yes.

You know, you're probably the bigger expert than me when it comes to Instagram, though. That's your area, so.

Instagram, yes, I mean, I use it for my personal stuff. But what I've learned in a lot of years of using Instagram is that Since reels have been introduced, the best way to gain traffic or get people that don't follow you yet onto your page is using reels because the algorithm is built in a way so that when you post your reels, it doesn't just get shown to the followers that you already have, but also to other people that don't follow you based on their interests. Okay, that's. Partly based on the hashtags that you're using, of course, on the type of content that you're posting and also the caption that you use with your post. Based on that stuff, it will get presented to people that the algorithm thinks is interested in seeing your reels. And if you post reels regularly, you can get a good amount of people that don't follow you on your profile. And if your profile looks nice, maybe they will hit that follow button. You know, that's how you can increase your followership, but once you have a lot of followers, you can also start to post regular posts, which will not go viral in the means that they will get shown to people that don't follow you yet, but That's the type of content that you produce only for your followers. And also your stories mostly get only shown to your followers and not a lot of people that don't follow you see your stories.

Okay. Interesting. Yeah. So reels are the ones you want to go for. If you want to grow your base, posts and stories are the ones that you want to go for. If you want to engage your existing customer base or existing follower base.

Exactly. Yes.

Interesting. Yeah. I didn't realize that in there. So I've learned something as well. That's good. Okay. Actually, just another thing you mentioned, how often do you reckon you should be posting on Instagram?

I mean, I'm not very familiar from a business perspective But I see a lot of channels that are growing very fast because they're posting regularly every day And I mean they're posting like up to five to ten posts a day.

Wow. Okay, that's a lot of posts Yeah,

what I can see they're very effective

Yeah, I would say from a business perspective. Yeah, you probably don't need to post that many per day. But yeah, regularity, I guess on that channel is one of the key things. If you're posting up a real every day or every couple of days as a business, that's probably where you need to be. Actually, speaking of. Posting frequency, you know, LinkedIn, for example, that's another one that likes people that post regularly. So, you know, LinkedIn, what I would say on that is if you've got a company channel, you should be posting on that two or three times a week. But then the other thing that's actually probably way more important is again, On LinkedIn, people connect with individuals. They connect with people that they know rather than connecting with brands. So it's actually far more important to get your staff to post on a regular basis or your staff to comment on your company posts on a regular basis, because that will actually get you far more engagement and far more interactions than having just a corporate post go out once per day.

Okay, I didn't know that. That's very interesting.

There you go.

So maybe I should go on to the Demodia page on LinkedIn and like some stuff. You

should be doing, yeah, not, not just liking, actually, that's actually important. Liking is a good sign, but it's actually when people post comments, that's the stuff that really the algorithm likes. Yeah, when you actually interact, you ask a question, and then I maybe respond and answer that question. That's the sort of stuff that the LinkedIn algorithm definitely likes.

Okay. Well, that's interesting. Then I have to go and produce some comments for you. You do indeed. Yeah,

go for it if you're not already.

I mean, that's good. That's the question about how often I should be posting on different channels. And then I have one last very interesting question. And that is Is it always better to have a bigger audience or is it sometimes also better to have a smaller audience?

Oh, yeah, such a question. I mean, everyone goes for the biggest audience, don't they? I see so many people saying numbers of followers, but really to me, followers is a vanity metric. You know, it's not really something that's of interest to me. I don't care whether I've got 10, 000 followers or, you know, 500 followers. The thing that's most interesting to me is how many of those followers are actually interacting with me because they're the ones that are actually going to be helping me out. You know, they're the ones that are potentially interested in buying my services. They're the ones that are helping to expand the reach of my brand. You know, they're obviously the ones that are most interested. So. You know, if I could have 500 followers of which, you know, 90 percent of those are posting regularly or commenting on my posts regularly, I'd much rather have that than 10, 000 followers with only 1 percent of those posting regularly. That's interesting.

And that also goes back to the algorithm, right? Because you want more people interacting with your stuff, which will in the end, get you more people.

Exactly. That's exactly it. I understand. So, I mean, actually just back down to how do you get them to interact? I mean, it's another question in its own right. I mean, we talked about storytelling. So, yeah, tell stories. Tell about your history and make them personal. Yeah, build these personal stories into here as well. Talk about your customers and what they've done. So storytelling is a really great way of building an audience and getting people to interact. A second way that I've tried quite a lot and really works is helping somebody. You know, people ask questions on LinkedIn all the time. You know, what do you think of this? How do I do that? So whatever the platform is, you know, give answers in there. And the thing I would say as a company is don't be afraid necessarily to promote your own services through there. You know, particularly small business owners are afraid to actually say, Hey, this is my business. Get in touch. You know, you feel as if that's not your space to be doing it. But I say to those people, you know, as long as you're adding value and it's not just a question of, Hey, here's my blog post. I would say you're absolutely in your right to promote your services and offer yourself as an expert in there. The third thing I would say is ask a question yourself. Come up with something that you're not sure about or that you want your followers to comment on. You know, try something, you know, what do you think of our new phrase for this or our new colors or how would you do this if this was you? Ask them some questions and once your audience starts to see that you're actually interested in hearing from them, then again, they're much more likely to respond to you.

Good. I mean, that's a lot of really good information that you just provided. And I think that clears all my questions for the day, Simon.

Good. Thank you very much. Yeah. Well, good to catch up with you again. So enjoy the rest of your week and uh, yeah, we'll chat again soon.

Thank you very much and yourself. Bye for now. Bye.

Thanks for your time as always, Daniel. Just to reiterate on that last point, so many leaders focus their attention on metrics that really don't matter. Yes, the number of followers you have is important. By far the most important thing that you should care about is how many of those people are actively participating in the information and the content that you're sharing on your channel. That is the thing that you need to be spending your time on. That is the thing that's the most important metric when it comes to social. So if you're having challenges getting your social media to perform, then why not join my authentic engagement coaching community? You can go to wantauthentic. com. You'll find myself and a group of like minded small business owners helping each other to grow their businesses. You can click on the link and join there today. So for today's task, I want you to think about your social community and what makes your perfect member. Pull out a notepad. whatever it is that you write on, and I want you to jot down the answers to these following three questions. The first question is, what makes a perfect member of your social community? I want you to think about that for a minute. Think about, you know, the age that they are, the interests that they have maybe, social situation that they're in, or something like maybe their goals or ambitions. So jot all of those down on one piece of paper. As an addition to that, something else that I'd like to say, if you know somebody, you know, a real person that's out there that meets the criteria that you've written down, I want you to write down their name next to that. Four or five people. Just jot down names of the real people that you know that meet those criteria. Number two. Now, I want you to think about what's stopping them from achieving what they want. What's the problem that they've got that stops them getting there? You know, do they need entertaining? Do they need to acquire knowledge? Do they need your support? Or do they need somebody there that just understands them? That's a listening ear for them? Write those things down too. Now for the third thing. What I want you to do is to create some talking points. Write down ten topics. that you could talk about that would interest your audience and help them achieve the goals or solve the problems that you've just identified in point two. Then, I want you to go back, and thinking about the names that you wrote down next to point number one, as well as the general descriptions, I want you to think specifically to yourself, Would. Person A be interested in this particular topic or this particular question that you've come up with in quote point three here. So, for example, would Janet be interested in a way to come up with ideas for things to paint? And if the answer is yes, Then go out there and create a post about that. Talk about that. Create a banner image, create a short video, whatever it happens to be on social. If you can match a particular persona that's within your audience with a particular challenge, talk about that because that's the way that you're going to get people interested. And here's the thing, the trick that I've learnt Is that the more you can create content for real people within your community, you know, the more you can name the Janet's of the world and create content for exactly those people, if you could envisage yourself presenting that to your friend or your business connection, the more authentic your content is going to be. and the more your audience is going to engage. So that's all for today's episode of the Authentic Marketing Podcast. Thanks for listening and I hope you've enjoyed today's episode. If this is your first time joining us don't forget to bookmark the podcast and if you've learned something today then the most valuable thing that you can do is to share this episode with someone else who you know that runs their own business. If you found this helpful then they will do too. Take care, and I look forward to speaking to you again next time. Bye for now.