Restarting Your Social Media Marketing Strategy for 2015

Neal Schaffer: 0:02

Welcome to maximize your social actionable 10 minute advice on how your business can maximize your social media presence. Now, the host of maximize your social, social media author, speaker, consultant, founder of maximize social business, and soon to launch Social Media Center of Excellence, Neal Schaffer. Hey, this is Neal Schaffer. And welcome to another episode of Maximizer. Social. Well, I'm in Southern California today. But if you can hear what I can hear, this is not my normal home office atmosphere, you should be able to hear rain, and a windshield wiper. And that's because I'm in my car, actually in the middle of a two hour and 15 minute drive and heavy traffic that should only take 45 minutes. And as you know, I'm not only am I passionate about podcasting, but I'm passionate about podcasting in unique situations. And because I use this Sony portable IC recorder, it gives me the opportunity to do that. So today I'm coming to you from the 405, the San Diego freeway, and I'm right near the Crenshaw Boulevard off ramp in Hawthorne, California, I'm actually going up to videotape a workshop that I'm really excited about, you should see me release that in the market in the next few weeks. It's called How to Use Social Media for your content marketing, really excited about the video session that I'm about to do. But today, I don't want to talk about that. Today, I want to talk about the situation that I'm in now. And perhaps a lot of you are in with your own social media, you're in traffic, it's raining, it's dark, you can't move forward, you're stuck. And I think a lot of us get that way with our social media. Now. It's the end of the year. And I promised you on the last podcast. Although my voice did not get better, as I promised it should. I did promise you to talk about sort of auditing your presence and looking forward. And I think that, you know, a lot of people are stuck in old school social media. I call old school social media, sort of 2011 social media where it's like, okay, we get social, we need to have a Facebook page, we need to be on Twitter, you know, we need to have a LinkedIn page. And that's it. And the problem is that it as we enter 2015, you know, we just had an announcement that Instagram is past Twitter in terms of active users. And Instagram was pure mobile, or Twitter has mobile and desktop. You know, we know about the growth of snapchats of Pinterest, of all these, you know, new and emerging networks, even a network like to I see some sponsored posts that get 1000s of likes, if not over 10,000 likes from a very small niche network. So the market is becoming more fragmented. And we are spending our time on more networks. And I wish I had the data to prove it. But I think anyone you talk to, would tell you that, you know, maybe before Facebook was their primary platform, and now maybe they spend a third of their social networking time on Instagram and the remainder on Facebook, or you know, the split between LinkedIn and Twitter and Google Plus, or, you know, Facebook and Pinterest, whatever it might be. So really, when you think about your social media, for 2015, I want you to think about on a channel by channel basis, where are we spending our time, you know, take a day, take a week, and just try to calculate the time you spend on each network, because that's your expense, right? Your time. And if you have any tools that you use for specific platforms, add them in, if not, you don't have to worry about the tools. Obviously, if you've done any social advertising, I want you to add that in as well. But really take a look, you know, think holistically if you have an E commerce site, or if you have your Google Analytics plugged in with conversions, and goals, you can actually you know, calculate the ROI that you get from each platform. But, you know, I really want you to calculate what is your cost per whatever to acquisition, cost per engagement, cost per new follower, whatever it is, we can calculate a few metrics from our own participation in social media. Or, you know, we can calculate metrics for every time that we post in social media. So got a few things going on here. Your cost for each platform, you're going to divide it up and you don't have to be that exact 50% Facebook 25%, Twitter 25%, Instagram, whatever it might be divided up right? Your cost per engagement because you need to create content or you need to you know, post something, and your cost per follower to you know, expand your reach. And you know from that exercise, you're gonna get a good idea as to okay for every hour I spend, I should be able to get X number of engagements, X number of followers and or if we have, you know, based on anecdotal evidence, or if we're plugged into our Google Analytics, X number of leads X number of conversions. And that data really should be your data for 2015. And this is what's going to help you get unstuck. Because at the end of the day, your activity on social media channels should almost be like a dashboard, you're going to be raising a lever that, you know, like a mixing board at a recording studio, for lack of a better word. You know, it's I just on a side note, we all talk about how we're able to multitask. Some people say you can't multitask, hopefully, I'm multitasking correctly here, as I'm driving through traffic, and I know that you're not supposed to be on the phone. When you're driving, I'm not sure about the legality of actually recording a podcast of, of holding a IC recorder one hand while I drive. So hopefully, I'm not breaking any laws. And I absolutely encourage you not to do this, I wouldn't want anyone to get hurt. But anyway, I'm gonna get back to the podcast. That was the side note. So once we have that data, I want you to start reaching out on the other networks. If you've never been on Google Plus, or maybe you tried to network six months ago, and you didn't see any value in it, go back to it, I want you for the first few months of the year to try a new network a month, or reinvest strategically, in an old network a month, whatever it is, you have a large choice in networks. And I want you to think niche. You know, one of the companies that are interviewed for an upcoming podcast on Sue said, you know, we were late to the market with all the other networks with Sue, we don't know if it's going to be big or not. But we have a chance to be to build brand awareness with a community. I got an incoming call, I'm going to continue this podcast shortly. Well, sorry for that interruption. So what I want you to do is, as I said, a platform a month experiment. And with those metrics in hand, compare the potential. Now I'm gonna throw out a bunch of social network names. Obviously, you're already on Facebook, I assume. And Twitter and LinkedIn, how many of you are on SlideShare? How many of you are publishing long form blog posts on LinkedIn? How many of you are how many of you are using paid social or have experimented with paid social on any given platform? The different types of paid social on any given platform? How many of you have so much content to share? That it makes sense to start a LinkedIn showcase page, or maybe multiple showcase pages? For all the different products and services that your company offers? How many of you have been leveraging Instagram, as a business? How many of you have a business account on Instagram? Not as many as I'd like to see? Or on Pinterest? How many of you are on Google Plus with a brand page that are actively posting to it? How many of you have started a Facebook group? For your company, not Facebook page, but a group, for your fans, for your brand advocates, maybe for your employees? How many of you have started a Google Plus community or LinkedIn group? How many of you have experimented with zoo with ello, although I take a step back with ello, because it's still very, very difficult to use, compared to ETSU, even though they both got started about the same time. But hey, you never know where these platforms are gonna go? Or if you're targeting a younger demographic, Snapchat? And what about Tumblr, and Reddit, these are sites that are now you know, top 15. In the United States, in terms of website traffic, have you been experimenting with those platforms as well. So there's plenty of platforms out there. Within each platform, there's a lot of different formats, right, personal profile group page. And obviously, with Google Plus, you have things like Hangouts, and you have all the various paid options, and you need to mix it up. Because if you're stuck in traffic, that means that your audience probably has either moved elsewhere, maybe more of the competition's come in, and it's, it's getting harder to differentiate yourself and be heard above the noise, you have to do something different. And with those metrics in hand, for your ROI, and by trying out all the different communities that exist in social, hopefully, it's going to help you find a sweeter spot for what you're doing. And you're going to learn a heck of a lot in the process, about your content, about what content is resonating with who and about all these different communities not knowing which is going to be the biggest provider of ROI for your company in 2015. I'll end this podcast, and not that I'm any closer to my destination. I still got a ways to go. But I'll end this podcast. You know, that's the one thing I want you to do is really if you don't have the metrics, create the metrics. Do your audits, get some measurements done and start experimenting a platform a month, a format a month like you know, start a Google Plus community whatever it is a different type of pay thing, just do something different. Eat month of the year, next year strategically, and measure and tweak and align those levers on the mixing board. So you get the optimum mix that is truly maximizing your social, that is my vision for this podcast and for how I believe businesses should be running a data driven approach to social media marketing. Now, what is related to all this is in 2015, and I've been saying it for a while, but it's a necessity in 2015, that your company has a visual voice, a visual voice, you need to have if you want to participate in a social network, like Instagram, or Pinterest. But it also helps your content be found in social because you're whether it's a Facebook, post a Twitter, tweet, a LinkedIn post a Google Plus post, it will be shown more prominently in the feed when you have a photo. visual content is going to be key for your company 2015, to be effective in visual social networks, and to be more effective, and to be heard above the noise in the other social networks that you're in. And there's a lot of different types of visual content you can create. But you need to be thinking visual, and you need to do it now, before everyone else does it. You know, I'm really surprised, I've talked about how the success I've had with Pinterest and out of nowhere, it's now the second largest driver of website traffic for maximize social businesses.com. And I was able to do it, anyone can do it, I believe now there are some categories that are more competitive than social media marketing. Especially if you're a consumer facing brand, you have a you know, product for female demographic, it doesn't mean you can't have an impact. But if you haven't tried it, you don't have a visual strategy, you'll never have an impact. And it doesn't even matter if you have a visual product or not. Right. I've been having a lot of success recently, with quote, images, having my designer, you know, instead of reusing everybody else's quotes, make your own put your own little, you know, watermark in your photo, to bring people back to your site. But really, you know, you have your own way of looking at the world, your brand has your own way of looking at the world, you'd have to copy everyone else's quotes, find your own that matter, right? mean up and using, you know, a combination of business quotes like Dale Carnegie, I'll have some Edwards Deming quotes coming out and it resonates with the business readership that we have, as well as social media quotes from the likes of Gary Vaynerchuk and Brian Solis, that resonate with our social media fans, you need to find the content that resonates with your fans from a visual perspective. And that's another episode of maximize your social coming to you from the 405 freeway. And well, it's rainy to add Otherwise, I'd say sunny, Southern California, but the sun is coming out, as it always does here. I'm sorry, my voice doesn't sound any clearer today. My voice is going to be sorry, because it's going to have to, you know, do some video recording for the next few hours. But wherever you're on the world, make it a sunny, safe, and social Day. Bye Bye, everybody. Thanks for listening to maximize your social. We appreciate your iTunes subscriptions, ratings and comments. If you would like to appear on this show, or recommend content, please contact Neal Schaffer at Neal at maximize your social.com Please also make sure to check out Neil's new community the Social Media Center of Excellence at social media ce o e.com. Thanks again and make it a social day.