Rediscovering the Value of Social Media for Business - in South Africa - Part 1

Neal Schaffer: 0:04

Welcome to maximize your social actionable 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, to Social Media Center of Excellence, and the social tool Summit, Neal Schaffer. Hey, everybody, this is Neal Schaffer. And welcome to another episode of maximize your social Yes. Back for those of you that might remember that, hey, it's been a while. And it reminds me of a blog post I did some time ago where I talked about blogging for content and not for comments, and wanting to keep it real. And there have been times where I haven't blogged for few months, or podcasts for a few months, because, well, we're all busy what we do, and I'm no different. And even though I do like to keep certain things at a regular basis on a daily basis, or weekly or monthly, sometimes the podcast for whatever reason, just falls behind. And this is the case, but my commitment to you whenever I restart is really to be committed to continuing long term. And well, because I speak a lot and I speak a lot of conferences, always looking for interesting people to interview, as well as provide you my own inspiration based on my own experience speaking and consulting and coaching and training. So I'm pretty confident, I got some great content lined up for the next few weeks, at least. But obviously beyond that, as well. So since we've last chatted, have traveled to a few different countries in the world, I had an extended stay in Japan. Over the summer, I was successfully launched my first social tools Summit in May. And then my second one, just recently in San Francisco at the end of October, I also had the chance, you know, I've spoken in I believe 10 different countries around the world, North America, Europe, Asia, I finally had the chance to speak in South Africa last month. So I can say I've spoken in four continents. And indeed, when I was in South Africa, I had a chance to be interviewed at South Africa FM, right there in the heart of Johannesburg. And it was quite an honor as I landed on a two night flight. Basically, I had to take an overnight, you know, red eye flight from LA to New York to catch a morning flight the next day, which was 15 and a half hours from JFK to Johannesburg, one of the top 10 Longest flights in the world apparently. And it was long, it was actually at an amazing flight South African Airways if you've never flown them, you should give them a chance if you have the they have the opportunity to so what comes now is this interview I did at South Africa FM. And this is going to be a two part episode. So you're going to hear the first part. And next week, you're gonna hear the second part, this first part really, you know, the South Africa is in most of the world is behind the United States. There's some countries that some aspects of what they're doing social media marketing might be ahead, like with mobile and social media marketing, we see the Asia and Japan with Lion and China with WeChat have clearly taken the lead. But in many instances many countries are behind and South Africa is is you know, they're even behind Europe as as my driver said in South Africa, they get iPhones like six months after they're released in Europe. So this gives you an idea. But yeah, I mean, there's social media marketing was behind and I spoke at a conference there I was the keynote speaker of companies, you know, financial services industry, IT industry that wanted to stay at the cutting edge of what is possible. And indeed, there are many in South Africa that are doing that. But this interview that I did, or at least this part one will focus on, hey, what's the value of social media? What's your advice for using social media, it's almost like with everything that I've done, let's take a step back and take a holistic 36,000 foot view, and try to re understand the value of what we're doing. And in fact, that's going to be a theme you're going to hear me talk about a lot in 2016. I'm actually going to be speaking at Social Media Marketing World again, fourth year in a row. I spoke there every single time and this one is going to be re understanding or revaluing the importance of the value that Twitter has as a specific social network. I'll talk a lot more about that as we get closer to Social Media Marketing World in April right now. Have fun listening to this episode. And I hope it gives you a few golden nuggets that you can use for how to utilize social media for your business.

Interviewer: 4:44

In the Spotlight, and is Neil Neal Schaffer. So he's gonna tell us who he is because he's clearly not South African, but is in South Africa is ahead, talking to us a head of a conference, where he'll be talking to everybody as the main man tomorrow, we'll be chatting to you.

Neal Schaffer: 4:57

Hi. Oh, good afternoon. It's a pleasure to be here.

Interviewer: 5:00

So filling the blanks you year why not? Because you like me here because a conference tomorrow

Neal Schaffer: 5:07

it's going to be the it web Social Business Summit. Right. And it's going to be one day full of great content speakers on social business.

Interviewer: 5:16

Alright. And and the Senate you have this you this is what this this expert in what you call social business because we've been talking entrepreneurship, you're probably picked up the tail end of it, right? Indeed I did. And what are we saying that there's business to be made from going social? Am I reading that correctly?

Neal Schaffer: 5:32

That's correct. Social media has become a major communication channel. Now I come from the United States where we might be a little bit more advanced than some countries. But now social media, you have a website and digital, you have TV, radio, and you have social companies investing a lot more in it, because it is the public voice, you have the ability to reach out on a one to many scale that you just couldn't do until now.

Interviewer: 5:52

Okay, so you're delivering the keynote, the keynote address, current lights tomorrow, where's this going to be? You know, much of the details? If you get it wrong, I'll find out exactly what it is.

Neal Schaffer: 6:00

I think it's a place called the summer house.

Interviewer: 6:02

Okay, we like in fact, I get to pelitic provide all the information. We're not here to test your geography understandably so. Right. But but that's in Johannesburg tomorrow? That's correct. Okay, we'll get all the details in a minute or so. And that has been driven by it web. So that's important, too. Right? So give me you know, so you probably USA let's talk about about what is it that you do? So your title says editor in chief of maximize social business? That's what is it a is it a magazine, an online site maybe or

Neal Schaffer: 6:27

what? Correct it's an online site, I do a few things. So basically, I help businesses with their social media. So sometimes it's writing books, I've written a few books, including one called maximize your social, which is you know how to write your own social media strategy. I do a lot of speaking at conferences like I doing tomorrow, as well as internal corporate events, as well as training for employees and how to better utilize social media and people

Interviewer: 6:48

listening because we on the tail end of this entrepreneur talk. So it's possible we could be getting a marketer for a big brand listening. But it's also possible that we have someone in Halle Shui who runs a a one person business, who's been told by you that in fact, you can you need to use social tool to grow your business. And the person say, like, Excuse me, how isn't social? just posting pictures about my family on the beach? Can you do that? I mean, that's I'm really talking small business. Now. For starters, we'll talk about the bigger ones in a second, how do you how does a small business use social to grow their business?

Neal Schaffer: 7:23

Wow, a great question. And by the way, I think everybody started off with, you know, what, you know, social is not for business, it's for people, right? And they're true. But what's happened over time is that, you know, now everybody, or everybody that's online, is basically using social media. And there are ways for us to engage with them on a one on one basis. So really, you know, how do you develop business, that small business owner, where are your customers, if they're all local, it might not be as important if they're national international, you now have the ability to reach out to them with social media, right, which you couldn't do before social media, you couldn't find them. You didn't know their phone number, you didn't know their address, but

Interviewer: 7:57

they're all local in the same community. But you can't knock on all their doors, you say you can knock on the doors through social media, it's all in the same social media space, you can do that. Absolutely. And that's really the essence of it.

Neal Schaffer: 8:07

Yes, exactly. So you know, you can find what they're talking about, try to engage with them in conversation, you know, the Facebook, Twitter, they provide you advertising platforms, which allow you to really micro target those people in your community that you think would be buyers of your product.

Interviewer: 8:20

Okay, so so you're not the first person has told us, in fact that you can use social to grow your business. But the question that is, is the how will we get to your journey just now. But let's talk about the how do you do that?

Neal Schaffer: 8:32

Well, it starts with, like I said, understanding who your customer is, are they even using social media. So for instance, was once talking with a company that basically runs senior citizens of the United States, the senior citizens are probably not the most active social media users, but their children are. And in fact, it's their children that are often making the decisions about putting their parents in these homes. So you know, who is the buyer, right? And what social networks on the active on. So if they're very young, in the United States, it might be Instagram, if they're a little bit older, or if they're very businesslike, it's more like LinkedIn, or Facebook. So once you know, you know where they are, and now it's just a matter of, you know, establishing an outpost, which is your own social media channel, your own, you know, Twitter handle, whatever it might be, and starting to, you know, really talk about things that they would be interested in, start to follow them, maybe put a little budget in advertising to get some people you know, to get your fans or your customers to follow you. And that's really where you start at the basic you need to be, you know, everybody knows the media, you need to be publishing content, because that's how you engage in social media. But you also want to be reaching out to people. You know, social media allows you to have contests with with hashtags to help spread the word about things. You know, if you had a good experience, post your photo on Instagram, hashtag it, so many ways of using we call UGC or user generated content. And maybe this is very advanced for that very small business owner that we started talking about. But really, that's that's the basics. And I tell people, it doesn't have to take up your whole day. You're on social for business, you know, five to 10 510 15 minutes a day. Create a routine right and find out Whether you're successful or you're not successful, so if you're on Twitter and Facebook and Facebook is really where is driving the most inquiries driving most business, you know, go full on on Facebook, forget about Twitter for now. So that's really, you know, we

Interviewer: 10:11

want to say, I mean, I've got a book in front of me about entrepreneurship. And it's certainly five of the other top young entrepreneurs in the country, one of them called Rosita mkhaya, who made a, he spoke at an event that I emceed a few weeks, a few months ago, and in fact, he said something like, and he's on social media, let's get that, right. He's on Twitter, he's on Instagram, he's on Facebook, and everything. And he said, find me one person is made become a millionaire, by spending all his time or her time on social media suggesting Come on, that's been rather naive.

Neal Schaffer: 10:39

I agree with that. And I like to say social media replaces nothing but compliments everything, right? So it's, it's a new tool, but the old rules of business are still in place. So however, you used to make money, you're still going to do it. But now social media is a new channel, and more and more people are using it. So it's going to be important to keep an eye on and understand how you can use it and to help complement whatever else you do. So you still need to have a website, you still need to have, you know, search engine optimization strategy, and what have you. But social can be very, very powerful force. And you know, right now, in the United States, CMOs are investing about 20% of their marketing budget, in social media.

Interviewer: 11:15

And that was, I mean, from from zero, what, 10 years ago.

Neal Schaffer: 11:19

Exactly. So, you know, from my own perspective, I don't prospect for business, all of my consulting, business, etc, has come through primarily through social media, but a lot of it is also I blog, I consider blog part of social media. So I have a website, people find me on Google search, right? Or word of mouth. So it doesn't just come from social media, but it is an important component. But

Interviewer: 11:38

that's interesting 20% of, of marketing spend on social media.

Neal Schaffer: 11:42

Right. And I should point out right now in 2015, let me correct myself there. It's probably about 14 15%. I'll be sharing this statistic tomorrow. 2020 is the year they say it'll get

Interviewer: 11:52

that's four, five years down the line. Exactly. Okay, interesting. 10891104 to seven. So Neil Neal Schaffer, with me editor in chief of maximize social business is year, and I will get apella to get all the details of the event that he's talking at tomorrow, because he's the keynote speaker then. Okay, so if you say it's, well, 15 to 20%. Now fine. The question that is wondering is getting on social media, but but the other is, how did you get the balance, right, and I'm talking about the social, the owner of the company that is speaking in his or her own capacity, having a public profile, versus speaking through the brand. So you may you may just want to throw up an example of a brand. And I'm wondering, how do you get the balance? Right, between? Who talks? What and what do they talk about?

Neal Schaffer: 12:38

That's a great question. I like to call that the voice of the company. So if a brand and you know, let's pick Coca Cola, whatever it might be, if they're going to be tweeting, what is the tone of voice going to be? Is it going to be a male voice, a female voice is going to be one person, several people, that's an important decision that companies need to make. Because, you know, in the old days, you have just websites, it's basically static, social is very dynamic. So the same Tony, using your website is going to be different than using social media. And I think that companies are still trying to figure that out. It gets even more complicated when we talk about visual voice. So on Instagram, it's all about photos, what what's going to be the look and feel your company, right? If you're a b2b company, how do you represent yourself visually, something I'm going to talk about tomorrow as well. But you know, the the talk about who's going to represent your company is very interesting, because right now, in the United States, we're seeing the advent of something we call employee advocacy, where companies are actually urging their employees to talk about their company, in their personal social network, but on a public platform, on a public platform. It's and we talk about, they come to talk about, what about their company, we don't like the company, I feel like quitting why Oh, no, no, no. So for instance, you know, hey, we have a new job opening? Would you mind sharing this with your network? Or we have a new campaign going on? Would you mind sharing it with your friends that might be interested in it's all you know, 100% voluntary, but obviously, if you have 10,000 employees, the power of even 10% of them, posting on social media on your behalf is a very, very powerful one.

Interviewer: 14:03

Let's talk about so so your your talk tomorrow. What's it about?

Neal Schaffer: 14:06

It's called the evolution from social media to social business, really looking at how companies start, we're using social media for marketing purpose, but because it's a two way conversation, they suddenly find themselves having to do customer service over social media. And really what we're seeing United States especially with bigger companies, is now every single department in the company in some way or another is using social media, so that you've really become you know, you're on your way to becoming a social business.

Interviewer: 14:29

Okay? Because because that's the point that I was gonna ask you that if you're on social media, so again, I made the point the gentleman from Hollis shoewear, or the lady from from Butterworth saying, Okay, I need to and I'm talking about rural communities, I need to get onto social media and, and market my business, if whether they're speaking individually, as as the voice or their company, if it's all sell, or good roles for sale today at two reds, freshly baked things at five red blah, blah, blah, and they say nothing else. Is that a good thing or not a good thing,

Neal Schaffer: 14:57

and that's not a good thing at all and it gets acted out. point that social media was made for people. So companies need to humanize the brand they need to talk like regular people do. And if they're not offering some sort of resource, some sort of utility, some sort of information that's useful to others, people will tune them out. And that, you know, they're just going to be wasting your time. So social is not, you know, it's a channel you do not want to sell on, it's the channel you want to have a conversation on and engage with others and really build community from

Interviewer: 15:24

and your thought about how much time should want to allocate to it? Well,

Neal Schaffer: 15:27

you know, it can be a total time suck, we know that from a personal basis, right. And so businesses should be even more strict about it. You know, I think once you have a roadmap in place a plan in place, you do not need to spend that much time, you know, for small businesses, a few minutes a day in all reality is sufficient. What takes time, though, is actually crafting that content. Especially if you want to advance and you have a website, you want to include a blog, you want to create videos or images, I think that's where your time should be spent on the content creation, because that's really what what's going to become the magnet to get people to engage with you in social media.

Interviewer: 15:59

Interesting now, not just to get to the event itself, it's called the it rep Social Business Summit. And it does happen tomorrow at some place. High parks, of course, North northern Johannesburg, and my guest deliver the keynote address the end of openness, an interesting one, just the evolution gonna survive a chance I'm going to be there, we'll see what happens about it. Right? What you know. So in that evolution, all the examples that that that one can then say that actually working through social media companies have grown, they've, they've obviously produce other things, they've got maybe a fashion range, or whatever else they do, they sell motor cars, but they can come back and say we've grown our business because of social

Neal Schaffer: 16:37

media. Oh, absolutely. There's a number of case studies that have already been published, there's one brand on Instagram. And they just started off with basically a clothing brand for, you know, teens. And they became so popular on Instagram. And I started that I don't recall the name right now. But they actually started creating brick and mortar retail stores based on their online success and Instagram. There's another once again, this is fashion company called red door out of Georgia. And they went online and really use Pinterest and Facebook and Instagram. And because people, you know, engage so much with the photos of the clothing and could imagine themselves in this clothing, they ended up you know, buy more and more from them. And, you know, they started off brick and mortar, I think 93% of their sales right now are online. And that's primarily through social media. So the bigger the business, you know, the impact of social has might be a little bit smaller, the smaller the business, the you know, the potential for impact, obviously,

Interviewer: 17:28

are even greater than that, as you've been talking. I mean, I've been looking at my Twitter feed or timeline. And I've been retweeting pictures of you and I, that is that good business? Because what I'm saying My business is broadcasting, right, right, is that good business, you and I talking? That's our primary job, that's what we're doing right now. But while I'm talking to you, I'm actually posting a picture of our conversations so that listeners can see what you look like it is, in this app was blue shirt, or whatever, you know, that comes from the UK, just give me your thoughts on that. So

Neal Schaffer: 17:56

this is where it comes down to your objective, your objective is going to be different than that small business owner, small business owner wants to sell, maybe they already have a monopoly in the market, they just want to, you know, keep mind share with their community, whatever it is. And that's really the basis of this roadmap that you just talked with the previous guest about with a social media strategy, what is it that you want to achieve? I've done consulting for, you know, companies that it's not just about marketing, they, you know, they want to do customer service over social, whatever it might be. Now, your objective, as an announcer, you know, DJs is probably, you know, personal branding, and to show off a personal side of yourself behind the scenes look, that you can't get just by listening over the radio. So I think showing photos like that is a great idea.

Interviewer: 18:33

And by shutting myself off, I show you off effectively, because like, what does he look like? I mean, that's that's what we do. So we amplifying, right, of course, we sometimes quote if I get a chance, I'll quote what you've just said, and you will save in future in sometime down the line.

Neal Schaffer: 18:47

And therefore you're using this dynamic platform called Twitter and showing something that people cannot get anywhere else. And therefore people will tune in to Twitter to find that information. And this is what we're finding with social, whether it's behind the scenes look at celebrities on Instagram, or finding the latest news on Twitter. We know when there's a disaster that happens worldwide. Twitter is where the news breaks. Thanks for listening to maximize your social. We appreciate all of 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. As well as Neil's social media conference, the social tools summit