Episode Transcript

[00:00:00] Kevin Dieny: Hello welcome to the Close The Loop podcast. Today we’re going to be talking about everything social media. And today we have a very special guest, a familial guest, joining us. Today’s episode is going to be on, “Why should your business use social media?” Our guest is my sister, her name is Jessica Dieny. She’s the social media specialist at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, where she manages the marketing channels and is the resident social media expert of the University’s Communications Department.

[00:00:29] Kevin Dieny: Her content has been ranked highly by Meltwater, which is a crazy tool if you’ve ever heard of it or know them, and it has been featured in their five of the best university social feeds. So she gets in there and she’s gotten content that everyone is interested in and she enjoys photography and hiking the central coast. So she’s just up the way in California here, so welcome Jess!

[00:00:52] Jessica Dieny: Hi, great to be here, thanks for having me.

[00:00:56] Kevin Dieny: And I also have our two amazing guests, we’ve got Matt Widmyer here with us again.

[00:01:02] Matt Widmyer: Hey guys great to be back.

[00:01:03] Kevin Dieny: And Ronn Burner.

[00:01:05] Ronn Burner: Hey gang!

[00:01:06] Kevin Dieny: Thanks for coming and attending this guys and for helping us get into this topic. Because this is a topic that whenever we talk to small business leaders sometimes it’s at the higher levels social media is sort of that like oh that’s for the millennials. That’s for those young people. How’s that going to help me with my business?

[00:01:26] Kevin Dieny: Right? I have limited resources why should I spend a thousand dollars over here when I could spend it over there. And just whenever we talk about social media whenever we talk about email whenever we talk about channels.

[00:01:41] Kevin Dieny: Channels are just a pathway that your audience finds your business. That’s it. That’s what a channel is. And social media is literally just one of those many channels. So it’s a lot like lines at the grocery store or lines at a Walmart, if someone opens up a new line the crowd goes over there because they want to go through they want to get to what they want to get to.

[00:02:00] Kevin Dieny: And so the same works with the business your audience is out there. And usually when you start a business you kind of know which channels you need to operate in. You know where you need to go and what you need to do. Social media has come out of something totally new and different and added a totally new channel.

[00:02:17] Kevin Dieny: A way for your audiences to find you. And that’s discovering you. Getting to know you better. It gives the business another channel and opportunity to communicate and build relationships with its audience.

[00:02:29] Kevin Dieny: So to help us unpack this a little bit more, Jessica I have a question for you. So why do some businesses love social media and say, oh this is the greatest thing. And everyone’s writing all these articles online and saying everyone should be doing it. Every type of business ever should be doing it. And others think no, this isn’t for me or social media is just for a special crowd, that can’t help me sell or move my business along. Why do you think that is?

[00:02:54] Jessica Dieny: So that’s a great question, and of course I think social media is important because it can boost your brand awareness and help your community grow. And companies who love social media are seeing that return on investment on it. However I do see many in all too often small businesses wasting their time and frequently money on it because they aren’t utilizing it properly.

[00:03:17] Jessica Dieny: And I get it, it’s hard, social media is a moving target and it takes a genuine effort to understand it and get into the flow of it. And what worked last month may not work this month. So it takes a lot of refining and flexibility in that way. So, if you’re not seeing the return on investment you all too often see people that stop making content or like leave a page blank and then come back to it months later something like that. And it just it makes your pages and your company look worse than it actually is. In that way I see that you have to be really committed to it to have this return on investment and to make it worth it.

[00:03:59] Kevin Dieny: Right, I think of how every channel, let’s say it’s selling through the phones, let’s say it’s direct mail, let’s say it’s social, it could be SEO, it could be paid advertising, the radio is a channel. Let’s say in each of those channels there typically emerges a marketing expertise in that field.

[00:04:18] Kevin Dieny: And they are usually the ones that are doing the work each and every day. For someone who’s wearing a lot of hats, they might be like, okay, right now I’m going to put on my email hat. Okay, now I need to take it off and I need to put on my direct mail hat. And they’re doing a lot of things.

[00:04:32] Kevin Dieny: For someone who has limited time do you have some pointers. Should they go and get an expert? Or is it something that someone could do with some of their time?

[00:04:41] Jessica Dieny: I think in the beginning having that knowledge of an expert is helpful. I would agree with that but I oftentimes tell people that if you make the commitment even once a week to set aside that time in those, even just a few hours, and then once maybe a half an hour each morning you can make it work.

[00:05:04] Jessica Dieny: You can still be relevant in part of these in part of the channels and everything like that and do it well. But I always think it’s best when someone is committed to that social media role. At least one person, it’s gonna it’s gonna pay off for itself. And if you’re trying to do an email, trying to do direct messaging, trying to respond to direct messages and things like that and trying to make content it’s a lot.

[00:05:30] Jessica Dieny: And I am just one person who does it and it’s a lot. So having a dedicated person or a team I think is the best way to do it.

[00:05:38] Kevin Dieny: You make a good point. We’ve always called it here these three guys know this the content tidal wave. Which is like, okay we’re going to do something. We’re going to go into a channel! Great…. Now what do we have, what’s required by us to pull that off, and it’s a lot of content.

[00:05:51] Kevin Dieny: Ronn I see you shaking your head too. So, Ronn how does social media in your eyes, contribute to building a relationship with let’s say the audience or consumers?

[00:06:00] Ronn Burner: You actually took the words out of my mouth because for me one of the main, main criteria, is that relationship. And social media does something very unique. The only thing that’s comparable to that would be the website, which is it humanizes it.

[00:06:14] Ronn Burner: Emails, we try hard, I try very hard to have a conversational style of writing. Because we want to tap into them and an in a humanized way. We want to understand them and we’re not there to sell them something we’re there to help them. We’re genuinely offering something of value that can help a problem that they have.

[00:06:33] Ronn Burner: Social media does a tremendous job of showing that the company is not a corporate machine. There’s actually a person there. And there’s actually somebody that can assist you and utilize it in certainly in promotional things and sharing the message. Cause I’m one of the believers that your message should be consistent across all platforms.

[00:06:52] Ronn Burner: Meaning that you’re giving them the information at the location that they’re consuming it. And then they’re responding to that, at that same location. So if they have customer support issues or something… now all companies can’t do this.

[00:07:07] Ronn Burner: However if you go directly to customer support, with an inquiry and it’s being monitored and they get back to you that is a tremendously valuable for your company because of course there’s the demand gen. Which is the awareness, and Jessica mentioned it earlier, brand awareness and those type of things.

[00:07:23] Ronn Burner: Bad stories travel quickly and far. But so do good ones. So you absolutely want to be on top of it in a very helpful manner and show that you’re not just a machine pushing product. You’re there to help, you’re a community.

[00:07:38] Kevin Dieny: I wanted to touch on a few things that you said just so everyone keeps up to pace. So when we say social media, we’re talking about networks. Networks are sliced out, carved out areas, where your audience is.

[00:07:51] Kevin Dieny: Think of it like people who follow a newspaper right. Your network is everyone that subscribes to that newspaper. Who’s going to get it when they distribute their newspaper. Who’s going to be reading that? What does that demographics look like? What kind of people are reading that? What are their behaviors, are they going to be interested in what you have to say if you put it in a newspaper?

[00:08:08] Kevin Dieny: Those are the really important questions. But when we say social media there’s a lot of platforms, a lot of networks. So Jessica, can you throw out there some of them and for any of them would you highlight what are the various essential building blocks that are required by a business to just be in there?

[00:08:26] Jessica Dieny: Yeah So I think some of the heavy hitters, instagram of course number one. The largest group of people who are on Instagram are ages 25 to 34 and that’s 33% of people. So I always tell people in the beginning, know your audience. So know your audience and know where to hit them at.

[00:08:47] Jessica Dieny: So if Instagram, if you’re trying to target this audience perfect. The millennial, the Gen-X, this is where you’re going to go for that. This also includes what tends to work best: beautiful photos, and right now it’s these interactive reels because they’re trying to compete with TikTok.

[00:09:06] Jessica Dieny: So if you can do the videos, the short little 30 seconds reach out to your customers, and do something like that, perfect. Something else I recommend is responding to DM’s, having a personal connection with your consumer will go a long way.

[00:09:20] Jessica Dieny: Also taking that time each day to engage So if someone has a comment on your picture you respond to it. What did you like about it. Keep that thread going. Reach out to other people that may not be following you, that are liking things that are similar to the content you’re putting out there.

[00:09:38] Jessica Dieny: So follow hashtags, follow geotags, and things like that. Instagram is a big way to stay in the loop because people are spending so much time on it. Facebook is of course another big one I could go more into that on each of these but Facebook has 2.7 billion users monthly. The average person sending spending 38 minutes a day on it. So how can we reach out to them?

[00:10:00] Jessica Dieny: I don’t know anyone in college who’s on Facebook. So if your audience is this older generation maybe you have a plumbing company, maybe you’re trying to reach homeowners. That would be where you’d want to go with that. Again videos are gonna do great.

[00:10:12] Jessica Dieny: This is gonna be the horizontal format not the vertical format as before and then creating content that is relevant to that group. If you’re going to be on Facebook it’s going to be different but your messaging is going to be the same and your strategy is going to be the same.

[00:10:27] Jessica Dieny: One big one that I do want to bring up for small businesses would be Yelp. Because it is emerging as the leading consumer review site for many types of businesses, and this is where I think small businesses should first get their foot in.

[00:10:42] Jessica Dieny: Reviews are going to be such a big part of your business and whether or not it floats or sinks. So I recommend being on Yelp, filling out your profile completely, having your hours, having your website on that it’s free. It’s great SEO and just a free way to do it. It’s critical for your reputation.

[00:11:04] Jessica Dieny: A lot of people are going to Google you, it’s gonna be one of the first thing that comes up and how you respond to any negative reviews and positive reviews will say a lot about your company and a lot about your brand. Gen-X and millennials are 70% of the users.

[00:11:18] Jessica Dieny: Knowing that going into it and then creating your content around that is just really important. So I think those would be for like small businesses my top three heavy hitters.

[00:11:28] Kevin Dieny: Yeah those are the ones we hear about a lot too: Google My Business, Yelp, Facebook’s, Instagram is a good throw out there I know Twitter. The thing is a business maybe like, well I don’t know where my audience is and that can be a one of those questions where to figure that out I think the best advice is go put some posts out there.

[00:11:49] Kevin Dieny: Keep the channel going for a while. You can figure it out or let’s go look at someone in our space who’s doing things really well. Who’s very successful. Let’s see what kind of a social media presence they have. Do they have a social media presence?

[00:12:00] Kevin Dieny: Sometimes they’ll point and say, hey look that company has never needed social media and they’ve been around for 15 years and they’re crushing it right now. That might be the case right now but the power of social media to shift and be able to interact and engage with an audience I think is that the reason why people are touting it so much.

[00:12:17] Kevin Dieny: And that brings me to the next question I have and this one’s from Matt. Matt, we’ve been talking a lot about the marketing side, which is like, marketing Team’s going to get a message out there it’s going to be our message to many people. Social selling is a little more one to one.

[00:12:31] Kevin Dieny: The review leaving a review for that one reviewer who left it for us reaching out direct messaging one person. Building a follower so that you can then transfer them from social media followers to buyers. Social selling is emerging. This is a tough thing to crack. So I was wondering if you had any insights into this Matt?

[00:12:52] Matt Widmyer: Yeah, I would say that if you want to see what a business is doing you’re going to go to their website, right. What they actually do for a living. The social media is good for us, every sales cadence we have starts with a research step.

[00:13:04] Matt Widmyer: So part of that is going to their social sites and looking and seeing not necessarily what they do because you know that half the time just from the name of the business but what’s new with them. What are they going through. What new products or services are they offering. What positions are they hiring for.

[00:13:20] Matt Widmyer: You’d be surprised what you can pick up just by going to Facebook or LinkedIn or Instagram or whatever. At the very worst case scenario it’s just something to talk about, if you end up reaching a decision maker. People can appreciate the fact that you’ve went out of your way to do research rather than just call down a list.

[00:13:43] Matt Widmyer: It’s like reading a newspaper, staying up to date with whoever it is you’re talking to. Shouldn’t take more than a minute or two and it’ll pay off in dividends for sure.

[00:13:53] Kevin Dieny: Yeah that’s a really good idea. And that doesn’t sound like you have to do a ton to get started there. And that brings me to the question I always have about the content that tidal wave of oh man how much stuff do we need.

[00:14:05] Kevin Dieny: There are a couple of ways to make it, there’s one side which is highly produced. We’re talking we need the most high quality videos, like director shot, produced, edited, extremely professional looking stuff.

[00:14:19] Kevin Dieny: And then on the other side, I’m just going to scribble something down very quick to snap a quick shot, very low production, but to me more human sounding a post. But maybe not for everyone. So there’s a spectrum.

[00:14:31] Kevin Dieny: There’s the extremely high quality high costs stuff. And then there’s the, I just whipped it up stuff, it just took me about 10 minutes or something. So how much content and what kind of content within that spectrum needs to be used Jessica? And put out there by a business. Do they need to be thinking man, everything I do has to be highly produced or are they on the side of oh man everything needs to be thrown off the cuff?

[00:14:56] Kevin Dieny: Where does the range of content need to be for some businesses to succeed on social media?

[00:15:01] Jessica Dieny: Yeah I would say thinking about the curated content is such a great idea. When it comes to Instagram, specifically, if you think about what you put in your feed versus what you put in your story. So the feed is going to be something that lives there, it’s something that comes like people can come back to and check out.

[00:15:20] Jessica Dieny: And so to me that needs to be more polished, this glamorous look of what you’re doing and where you’re gonna spend your money. But the every day, the behind the scenes look, I utilize that for Instagram stories.

[00:15:37] Jessica Dieny: It can be a little choppier. It can be a little more fun of like, oh we’re out here having a good time. This is what like a Monday on campus looks like. We’re going to walk through and give you a little tour of the library. Things are gonna happen, but a feed post it’s going to be the most beautiful picture of the library.

[00:15:53] Jessica Dieny: This is going to be marketing and you’re going to see exactly what we want you to see, exactly how we like this image of our brand. But I do I think the importance of having that human touch to it. And that’s why you see Instagram takeovers like a student will be on campus today and they’ll show you a day in the life and people like that because it humanizes you.

[00:16:14] Jessica Dieny: I think there’s a great balance that you can find between being this presidential beautiful look and also being relatable and actually talking to your consumer and your audience. I think that also relates back to direct messages. Whether you’re on Instagram, Facebook, whatever you’re going to be on.

[00:16:31] Jessica Dieny: Actually having that human touch signing your name to it of this is what’s going on and this is how I can help you it goes a long way, so I agree with that.

[00:16:39] Kevin Dieny: Let’s say you’re deciding to take a shot at this. You’ve you’re going to create a couple of posts, a dozen or something and you’re going to throw them out there. And some of them are going to have some highly created, very picturesque kind of stuff going on here. And then some other ones you’re going to try to be a little more off the cuff, a little more I don’t know… humanized.

[00:16:56] Kevin Dieny: You’re just you’re going to say exactly what you think or in that moment you have some opinion. How do you, Ronn, in terms of evaluating contents performance. Social media has different metrics, different types of stuff you’re looking for, but generally in content you are throwing stuff out there not entirely perfectly sure that this is going to work amazingly every single time.

[00:17:17] Kevin Dieny: There’s an element of experimentation involved. And while this has worked before I think this is work again. Or this is a little different I’m wondering if this will be more relevant. And this is answering the question for a business, what kind of content is going to be relevant. And they may have some idea but they may not know exactly what it’s going to be.

[00:17:34] Kevin Dieny: So what’s the process look like of getting content right?

[00:17:38] Ronn Burner: The process is knowing who you are because that’s important because that tone is set by your website usually as the mothership but your tone and your message. So sometimes people or businesses come across very disciplined, very strict, in their communication, very professional.

[00:17:56] Ronn Burner: That might be a good thing for a bank for example. But then it’s a different thing that might be a B2C like somebody from Etsy who has their own business or something they want to seem more human and their tone might be funny. You can see that in their font you could see that in their avatar.

[00:18:08] Ronn Burner: So that should also be a reflection in their messaging. So the first thing I would do is make sure that I’m speaking honestly. I’m speaking as to who I am and how I want to represent the organization, my company, or whatever it is. Size doesn’t even matter because large companies can send funny emails and social media and so can small ones or vice versa.

[00:18:30] Ronn Burner: So the other thing is value, I always go to value and perceive value is value as well. So, I want us to be speak honest to who I am, knowing my pillars of success and what I want to do. Then I want to provide value. What is beneficial to them not the features and not how great I think this thing is but how valuable I think it will be for them and what they might be missing if they don’t have it.

[00:18:55] Ronn Burner: The beauty of social media and is really that it’s not obtrusive. You are the people come there to observe and to read and to do their research do their homework. So in a way I would work that in an email fashion is I would try I would let them know that and I would send them you know follow us to find out about all our promotions or whatever the case may be where it’s a conversation.

[00:19:19] Ronn Burner: Where it’s directing that I might not be selling them something I just want them to stay informed. I just want them to know what we have and then they can go there and look it up. I know Jessica mentioned it and Matt mentioned it as well where there’s SEO and they’re searchable things.

[00:19:30] Ronn Burner: I know on my tweet deck, I’m a massive social media fan and I have a massive tweet deck with more channels then you can imagine but a few of them are search. I have key things in there that are interesting to me on a personal and professional level that it’s a constant feed.

[00:19:46] Ronn Burner: So I just go look and see what those searchable words are to see when they come through in marketing. Of course as a marketer there are definitely things that I’m interested in. So that applies here as well, the analytics on that type of stuff you nailed it.

[00:19:57] Ronn Burner: You do have to play with it but you’re playing with it with level of knowledge going in. You can make assumptions, like Jessica said the Facebook audience is 40 plus at least that’s definitely your older audience and I wouldn’t limit myself as an organization.

[00:20:17] Ronn Burner: At some point you gotta draw a line because there’s a lot of social media out there but I certainly wouldn’t limit because of the reach, don’t assume where everybody is you put every single thing out there and you try the best you can to speak specifically to the demographic that you know is populating that platform.

[00:20:33] Ronn Burner: You’re just trying to see what works and you’re trying to stick to your tone and offer value, don’t be salesy, don’t be pushy, just be you and offer value. That’s always a good rule of thumb.

[00:20:44] Kevin Dieny: Okay so if you were to go Matt, to a business and tell them, here’s why you should use social media. Coming from what you know and on the sales side, what would you say to them? How do you go about saying to them, you should do social media, here’s why, what would you tell them?

[00:21:03] Matt Widmyer: I would say you know it’s really has to do more with your reputation right. People know what you do. People want to see what you’re up to. People want to get the personal touch. So we want to know not just what products and services you offer. We want to know what’s going on. What’s new. What type of business you are in terms of like, are you connected to the community.

[00:21:23] Matt Widmyer: It’s a ton of opportunities just to keep people updated. But why should they have it, it really depends on what their goals are. So if they’re if their goal is to drive more business that can be done either by being able to sign up for something directly from social media or being able to nurture people.

[00:21:39] Matt Widmyer: I feel like also that’s the reason why a lot of people don’t go all in because they don’t see quick results. They think it’s like a one and done thing. And then they’re just, they’re over it. We didn’t get any new sales from it even though I’d been doing it for two weeks.

[00:21:51] Matt Widmyer: A lot of people don’t realize it’s like a much further longer drawn out process. I would say you need to do it because you should always be experimenting and testing if you’re trying to grow your business. You also do have to define your success before going into something like this.

[00:22:06] Matt Widmyer: I would know what I’m getting myself into but it’s just another avenue to generate revenue. Sometimes you will see quick gains but most most of the time it’s the longer term play, so it’s just another arrow in their quiver essentially.

[00:22:20] Kevin Dieny: So, in terms of measuring the performance of this you’ve say we go back to that original example, you come up with a dozen or so posts you create your profile the correct way like Jessica mentioned, you get into a couple of networks. Enough platforms that you feel like you can manage like Ronn mentioned. There’s a lot of them.

[00:22:38] Kevin Dieny: So you go out there and you give your best shot at this. You throw some posts out there, you start seeing things come in like likes, followers, reach, impressions, shares, tweets, retweets, clicks, views, video view clicks, plays, there’s a lot of metrics in this space.

[00:22:56] Kevin Dieny: Jessica do you want to comment a little bit on what some of these things are and what is important for a business to track or follow to know, okay, was the effort worthwhile? And that we’re talking the entry metrics that top level ones like likes and shares and stuff.

[00:23:10] Jessica Dieny: It’s really important to set goals like this so you know. If you’re just getting your feet wet I think one of the easiest things you can look at is the engagement rate. This will be across the board on every platform you’ll be able to see within your insights who’s engaging with your content.

[00:23:27] Jessica Dieny: The differences between each post that you do. How many people, the number of people who land on your website because of social media another one you want to track. And the virality of your posts, the impressions, and the reach.

[00:23:39] Jessica Dieny: So to break that down I always go with the number one engagement. So that’s comments, the shares that they’ve done. Reach tends to be anyone anytime it just came across anyone they didn’t have to do anything to it, they could just pop up on their screen.

[00:23:55] Jessica Dieny: Engagement, they actually did something with it. They liked it or they paused on it and they watched the video that you’re doing. So engagement to me is a lot more important. Right now on Facebook, shares are the number one and then comments and then likes and the same goes for Instagram.

[00:24:12] Jessica Dieny: So you want to really make something that’s shareable that people want to send to their friends that they want to connect with their community about. When you’re just looking at those numbers see what posts did well what posts actually had that engagement.

[00:24:26] Jessica Dieny: And maybe it didn’t get the most likes but maybe it actually got out to the most people. And that’s really important because that will translate to how many people went to your website. How many people then bought the thing that they were looking at or interacted further with where you wanted them to go.

[00:24:42] Jessica Dieny: There’s like you said, there’s a lot of numbers out there but I would say number one engagement and then click through rates. Anytime you can just at least have those numbers to build off of in the beginning that’s going to help you because then you’ll be able to analyze that data and redefine your strategy.

[00:24:58] Jessica Dieny: Like we said social media is a moving target. So it’s just this constant thing of oh that actually didn’t do really well this month. So we’re going to use these numbers to push us towards where we actually need to go and redefining our content.

[00:25:10] Kevin Dieny: I really liked that because I’m always in analytics and they have a whole section in there, Google Analytics I’m talking about right now that they have In there to tell you here’s stuff coming from social.

[00:25:22] Kevin Dieny: And that leads me right into the next thing I was hoping to talk about which is if we were to take all our channels and we were to group them into three categories, this comes from Avinash Kaushik.

[00:25:32] Kevin Dieny: If you had to group all your channels they are usually they usually fall into three categories. The first one is the paid channels and that’s usually okay. I have no followers. I just started my business. I have no following. I have no brand awareness. I have nothing. How do you go from nothing to something right. It’s either a lot of sweat blood and tears or you are going to have to pay for it which is another way of sweat, blood, and tears.

[00:25:56] Kevin Dieny: So if you’re paying for your audience to get there, constantly, always doing that a business is at some point going to be spending too much in its marketing. Because it can’t keep recuperating simply off the paid leg alone. A business has to transition its paid channels paying money advertising channels anywhere you’re spending money like that from the paid to either an owned or an earned channel grouping.

[00:26:24] Kevin Dieny: So an owned channel grouping is an email list. If we have an email list Ronn’s going to shoot emails at it and we have more engagement potential. They’ve given you the ability to contact them, reach out to them, they’re in your database you’re putting them there for a reason because they’re valuable.

[00:26:39] Kevin Dieny: The last one is the earned channel. Now this is the one that everyone covets. This is SEO, organic. This is everyone word of mouth saying your business is the best thing ever. Referrals, stuff like this to get to a business being driven by earned right. Or everyone’s talking about your business and everyone’s buying it or everyone’s like oh this is the best plumber or oh yeah this is the guy I use for when I hurt my back.

[00:27:06] Kevin Dieny: To get to that point of an earned referral or SEO or organic you have to transition from the paid to get there. And social media is an amazing way to capture people from paid and slowly transition them to an earned grouping. Your followers of your page are earned and we’re talking about true legitimate followers who are interested in engaging like Jessica said in your posts.

[00:27:35] Kevin Dieny: You don’t want to have a million followers and then put out posts and get no likes, no shares, no comments. That’s how you know you’ve got an entirely fake jammed audience group. People are touted as oh they have 50,000 followers on Instagram. So now they can be an influencer.

[00:27:49] Kevin Dieny: Well we’re talking about not needing to go that far. You just need enough people in your audience that are engaging, liking, following, and to get there you sometimes have to pay for it first and then you transition.

[00:27:59] Kevin Dieny: And that’s how you’re gonna build your earned audiences. And that’s how you’re going to build if you’re wondering okay, how do I even get going with this. That would answer that question.

[00:28:07] Kevin Dieny: Jessica, now I have a question for the businesses that are doing social media. They are putting out posts. They are putting out posts of the curated and the non curated type produced and less produced. They are in a lot of channels, lot of different platforms, like Ronn mentioned and they’re utilizing their voice and tone and stuff that matches them.

[00:28:28] Kevin Dieny: Businesses that are pretty much doing this right, but want more out of it. What suggestions, tips, strategies, ideas that may be on the cutting edge of every marketers like oh what’s the next crystal ball going to the next magical thing that’s going to transform this. Do you have any ideas for a business that’s doing this pretty well that they could do it a lot better?

[00:28:49] Jessica Dieny: Being on the cutting edge is so important and so challenging like you said when a new app opens everyone rushes to go do that and to do that well is really important. I think taking it to that next level includes interactions, engagements within your communities.

[00:29:12] Jessica Dieny: So follow more people, follow the people who are following you. That’s a big one that I’ve been told that I should probably do more of as well. Interact with people. One of the fun things that someone recommended to just me in general but was when people DM you on Instagram you can actually respond with your voice and be like hi welcome to our page.

[00:29:34] Jessica Dieny: This is an answer to your question, it’s really nice to see you. You can also just go on with a video and then you actually get people who are like wow there’s a person behind this. It’s not just this like auto bot refill of DM’s that you get from a lot of different companies.

[00:29:49] Jessica Dieny: So if you wanted to go that extra mile there’s some tips and tricks within that and working with other people’s content. If a customer posted a great photo of something that they bought or they liked let’s share that content.

[00:30:01] Jessica Dieny: Let’s post it on our feed then tag them and let them know we really appreciate it. We want to see more of what you guys are liking. So interact with people maybe in your stories ask the question. What are you guys seeing. What are you liking. And then utilize that. Reach out to them a little more.

[00:30:17] Jessica Dieny: There’s nothing better than just getting that direct feedback from your customers. And I think there’s just these little tips and tricks and things you can do like that. But again it’s just such a moving target. I’m going to say this now and then like you know a month it’s going to be oh no.

[00:30:30] Jessica Dieny: Why were you on you know X Y and Z but I think now if you have the time and the energy building up a TikTok presence. It’s not just a trend It’s not going anywhere. Would be really important. That is the up and coming thing.

[00:30:43] Jessica Dieny: I recommend always having at least five TikToks just to have that voice of what your brand is before you even start to interact in launching to get to where you’re going. Yeah those are probably some of my latest and greatest.

[00:30:59] Kevin Dieny: Yeah, thanks Jess, So any other takeaways Matt that you wanted to toss out here before we get into closing this down?

[00:31:08] Matt Widmyer: I would echo a lot of the sentiments here in terms of what the others are saying but I also feel like this is all about building relationships and this is all about being part of a human voice. Everything else it can be explained on the website or walking through the door of the business.

[00:31:25] Matt Widmyer: I feel like this is a an additional element that people don’t even think of sometimes. So I would definitely recommend this is one of those things where yeah, you need to have it in place in most cases.

[00:31:37] Kevin Dieny: Yeah, all right Ronn any other takeaways that you had for this?

[00:31:41] Ronn Burner: I think my main takeaway is social media is a really helpful in that community building and community building is really important in Business, in podcasts even. A real pro tip I guess you would say is put pro tips. Just you’re just sharing you’re just putting a pro tip.

[00:31:58] Ronn Burner: Posing a question, having an opinion like these are the type of things that just they absolutely invite engagement and people are willing to go there and then just carry on the conversation. Respond and that is really how you build community and that, like Jessica was saying, follow the people that follow you that sort of community building really gets legs and grows and just participate. It’s a marathon not a race so to speak.

[00:32:23] Kevin Dieny: Yeah that’s really good advice I love the pro tip idea I’ve seen that used by um just to name a few right, like dermatologist’s showing people’s like biggest things that they’ve pulled off their skin or I’ve seen that in the audiology group things they’ve pulled out of people’s ear that are weird.

[00:32:41] Kevin Dieny: And I’ve seen this in plumbing and especially plumbing and home services areas because they’re like hey here’s how to here’s how to fix or clean this vent or here’s how to –

[00:32:49] Ronn Burner: Do you have any pro tips that aren’t gross?

[00:32:55] Kevin Dieny: The audience for these is humongous. They love the gross weird crazy do it yourself stuff, right. It’s just a trend but…

[00:33:04] Ronn Burner: I don’t want to see your tweet deck.

[00:33:08] Kevin Dieny: No it’s viral, it’s stuff that tends to go viral It’s like wow did you see this. Or oh man this is the thing I used to rebuild my uh you know.

[00:33:15] Ronn Burner: Right And have a call to action, that’s another one.

[00:33:18] Kevin Dieny: Yeah, yeah So Jessica is there anything we missed that we didn’t really talk about or anything you wanted to add here at the end?

[00:33:25] Jessica Dieny: I always recommend to people just these like top points you set your goals, identify your audience, create your content plan, engage with your community, and then analyze and apply data to redefine your strategy.

[00:33:37] Jessica Dieny: Those were the top points and then that next level, yeah, the call to action, and building up anticipation is a big one. We see a lot of followers that are oh I actually do want to come back and see like what the big announcement is going to be.

[00:33:50] Jessica Dieny: Or they’re going to watch this live video to see how many rubber bands they can put on a watermelon before it explodes. Things like that you’re saying build up that anticipation that gets you the viral, the viral aspect of it. Always be thinking like that that’s what I would say.

[00:34:03] Kevin Dieny: Yeah, there’s some fun stuff there. And like it was mentioned before it doesn’t have to be gross but it can be fun and it can be something that is valuable to the people at the end of the day.

[00:34:12] Kevin Dieny: Social media is a channel which means you’ve got to have goals with it like any other channel. It requires content like most channels do. And it requires being very relevant for people who are going to consume it. It’s gotta be relevant to the audience that you want to sell to.

[00:34:30] Kevin Dieny: And finally I think you can leverage social media. Every business can do this and they can reach their audience that they want. They can do it and they can do it without I would say investing a ton into this. They can have some fun with it. They can give it some human touch.

[00:34:45] Kevin Dieny: But at the end of the day could match the brand guidelines the branding and awareness that that brand seeks to do. If it’s a bank, has to be a little more curated or if it’s just someone who’s just getting started and wants to make sure everyone knows the kind of quality and service that this business wants to give so everyone can do it.

[00:35:03] Kevin Dieny: So thank you Jessica, thank you guys, everyone for contributing in. And I appreciate it, all of our listeners to our podcast, I hope this helps you get some social media ideas. So again thanks guys for coming on.

[00:35:14] Jessica Dieny: Thank you.

[00:35:17] Ronn Burner: Pleasure.

[00:35:18] Matt Widmyer: Thanks guys.