Welcome to episode 378 of Hit the Mic with The Stacey Harris.
Three things you must know about social media, December 2017, our final month of 2017. I’m actually really amped for 2018. Yesterday I did a full day planning session with my Biz Bestie, and the person wholly responsible for making sure my site stays secure and backed up, and running, Brandy Lawson, over at FieryFX. I’m stoked. It’s going to be a good year guys. It’s going to be some cool stuff. I will also say, I’m kind of overwhelmed. So one of the things I’ve been doing this week now, is breaking down that sort of big picture thing into our actual next steps for right now, and then January, and the one foot in front of another kind of thing.
I want to talk today about the three things I want you to know. We do have some planning topics, because I know, you guys are sending me questions all the time about planning your social media. We’ve got the workshop we’re doing. If you haven’t signed up for that yet, be sure to sign up for it. It’s tomorrow if you’re listening to this today, the day it went live. So December 6th? Yes, December 6th. I had to look at my calendar. December 6th we’re doing a live, live workshop, running out your strategy for social media in 2018. Including, live on the workshop, putting together your January session.
This is not me sort of teasing you with getting excited about having a strategy, and then selling you something. We’re going to actually do this. Now, full disclosure, there will be an opportunity to take some next steps with me at the end of the call. You guys should be used to that from me by now. There’s always an opportunity to keep moving towards success. But it will be after we do some real-life work on the call. That’s why we’re not calling it a webinar. It is a legit workshop.
You in it to win it? I’m in it to win it. Let’s do it.
2018 Means Video Is More Important Than Ever
Number one, you guys have heard me say this, you’re hearing it from a lot of people right now, but it’s worth repeating, video is not going anywhere. So if you are really nervous and uncomfortable with the idea of video, you needs to gets over it. Find a way to make video work for you. It doesn’t have to be you on camera. It can be a screen share. It can be an animated thing. It could be slides. It could be graphics with some video over it.
Start paying attention to the kinds of videos of some of the major brands, and really a lot of the major marketing, or I’m sorry, media companies, are using for their video stuff. A great example is BuzzFeed. If you go to the show notes page, I’ll have links in the text for these things. But BuzzFeed does a great job of this. Food Network does a great job of this. A lot of the news, the Today Show, Refinery 29, the media companies are doing a great job of giving you video that A, audio doesn’t have to be on for, and B, doesn’t always involve someone being on a camera. I know, it’s crazy.
Check those examples out in the show notes. But don’t think it has to be what you see everyone else doing, which is getting on, and doing a live, and saying, “Hey, here’s a sales pitch,” and running away. Or here’s a 20 minute blurb of content, and then running away. It also doesn’t have to be brand new content. This is a great way to repurpose your old content, your old blog posts. Pull a tip from one of your most popular blog posts. Create one of those videos out of it. Next thing you know, you’ve got some killer video content, for Facebook. Here is the other side of that. It’s not just Facebook that is loving the video. LinkedIn is getting on board, Instagram.
Video is much more eye catching, engaging, it’s just plain doing better than anything else is. Now with that said, this doesn’t mean every piece of content you put out needs to be video content. Use responsibly. You still see links from me. You still see plain text stuff from me. You still see straight graphics from me. With that said, there is some regular, consistent video content happening, mixed in with that. I’m a big proponent of not putting all of your eggs in one basket.
I’ll be honest, a couple of years ago when Facebook announced that they were going to give priority to graphics, which feels like a lifetime ago now. I’ll be honest with you. I had some of the biggest success with plain text. No link, just an engagement kind of post with just text, because guess what, literally no one was doing it. So it stood out amongst all the graphics. Find your blend, but you can’t deny video anymore guys. It’s gotta happen.
Really cool thing, speaking of this, is next week … I can’t remember the date off the top of my head. I want to say it’s the 13th or the 14th. I will figure it out and I will let you know. If you haven’t yet, like the Facebook page, because that’s where this is going to happen. But I’ve got Holly, of Holly G Studios joining me for a Facebook Live. I recently got here video planning workbook, and it’s amazing. It’s so fantastic. We’re going to talk about basically why you need to stop doing video, if you’re not first clear on some very specific stuff. Because she’s all about you not wasting time, you not wasting money on video that’s not going to work for you. She’s put together this killer guide. It’s a quarterly planner with a video focus. It’s amazing. I’m super stoked about it. But next week she’s going to join me on Facebook, and we’re going to talk about that.
We’re giving you the tools to get started with video. On top of that, Holly joining me, I think last year in Backstage, another killer video training, from a gear perspective, what you actually need. Guess what? It’s not all that complicated. It’s less so complicated if you start with Lives or something. So check those resources out, but you got to pay attention to this guys. It’s not going anywhere. In fact, it’s becoming more, and more, and more important, that you’re paying attention to this video stuff. I will get off the video soapbox now.
Social Media Strategy is a Part of a Bigger Picture
Let’s talk about our second thing. You social media planning is not separate, is not isolated from the rest of your planning for Q1, January, 2018 as a whole, however you structure your planning. It needs to be thought of alongside of everything else. For me, I work from big picture to small picture. Big picture meaning, what am I selling, what is the content I’m producing to sell that thing? Awesome. That breaks down into, what emails do I need, what social media content can support it? So that these things are really working together, and not just sort of tracks running alongside each other that have different destinations, or completely different purposes. They need to be intertwined. They need to work.
It should be possible, essentially, for your client to move from your Facebook page, to your email list, to your website, your podcast, or blog post, whatever your content is. Back to your emails, back over to Twitter, your Instagram, whatever social media channels you’re using, and no matter where they are, they have a clear sense of what you’re doing in your business right now. Whether that’s selling a course, whether that’s coaching, whether that’s supporting an affiliate program, whatever the thing is, it should be clear, no matter where in your marketing I am, what’s happening. That happens when you don’t think about your social media planning as a completely isolated thing, but you think about it in the context of all the other planning you’re doing.
Yes, absolutely your social media is its own thing. It’s not your whole marketing plan, but it needs to be a part of your marketing. It needs to be a part of your larger planning conversation. This is something that gets confused a lot, and so I wanted to make sure we brought that up. A, because it’s kind of a relief. You’re planning your content. You laid out your editorial calendar, killer. You’ve done a big step towards your social media planning. We’re going to talk about that on the workshop tomorrow. Don’t think of it as separate. Don’t think of it as a whole other thing you have to do. Think about how it falls into places with everything else. Cool? All right, now we’re buzzing right along.
Setting Your Social Media Budget
The last thing I want to talk about, and I’m just going to get the soapbox back out, you also need to be planning your social media marketing budget for 2018. Now, next week we’re going to talk about a really important conversation. This actually came up on a coaching call with one of our band members recently. What is the difference between a social media manager, and a social media strategist? Tuned in for that one next week. It’s a really important conversation to have, because the two things are not the same. They don’t function the same way. They’re both completely important and relevant, but they’re different jobs, and they’re different budgets. I want you to pay attention to that, because if you’re looking at outsourcing some of your social in 2018, setting your budget is going to help you decide who you can hire. Also, hiring one may help make the other one a better ROI. Pay attention to that one.
The other part of your social media budget is going to be your advertising budget. Too many people are running Facebook ads with no concept of how that budget impacts their larger marketing budget. Too many people are thinking that Facebook should just be promoting your business for free, because it’s social media, and that’s free. We’re their customer, and so they should be taking care of us. Here’s the reality guys. Here’s the honest to goodness, no BS, no nonsense. You gotta get this. You are not Facebook’s customer. I am not Facebook’s customer. The people who we’re selling to, their general user base, that’s who their customer is.
The version of you that is sitting on your phone, or your iPad, at the gym, or on your couch, or wherever, is scrolling and just consuming content on Facebook, hanging out with your friends, chatting in groups, clicking ads, that’s when you’re the customer. When you are somebody who is promoting your business, and trying to get those people who are scrolling to click on your content, you’re no longer Facebook’s customer. It doesn’t matter that you are the one that pays them. Ultimately, you are not going to pay them if they do not protect that user experience. To protect that user experience, they have to make sure they’re presenting people with the best experience they can. That means, your ads might get more expensive. Your organic reach is definitely going down. That means you need to start investing in putting that content in front of your ideal clients.
You have to start investing in clients, and potential clients, seeing your stuff. Especially your stuff that’s straight promo. For your workshops, your webinars, your coaching programs, your free consults, whatever the thing is that you’re selling, you need to be setting a budget for that. Now, this budget should not be made up of, “Oh, I’m going to boost every post for $5.” No. It’s going to be, “I’m going to spend X amount on Facebook ads in January.” Okay, now as we build out what your plan looks like for 2018, or for January rather, it’s, “Okay, we’re going to run a campaign here that’s going to be for X amount of dollars. We’re going to have X amount of dollars that’s just supporting content.” You’re going to break that up in different ways. We can talk about that more on our Facebook Live, maybe in the next few weeks, but you’ve got to set a budget. You have to start investing.
Here’s the deal guys. Never ever, ever in the history of the world, has it been less expensive to advertise. Especially when you consider that I can target the exact audience I want, and then track and see what they did, and follow up with them. You can’t do that with a billboard. Think about Mad Men, the show, the era, all of it. When they’re running magazine ads, and TV commercials, and radio commercials, and billboards, there’s no tracking on that. There’s no targeting on that.
We have a huge advantage with Facebook, and LinkedIn, and Pinterest, and Instagram, and Twitter, these paid advertising opportunities will have through social media, because we have things like targeting. We have things like retargeting pixels. We have things like conversion results, and analytics, that are going to actually give us numbers, and give us the ability to put the exact right ad, in front of the exact right person.
Don’t feel like we’re being [shystered 00:15:09]. It’s the way marketing works. There’s always been a paid component to it. It’s gotta be about investing. The cool news is, it doesn’t have to be a million dollar Super Bowl ad that you’re running. No. It can be $100 a month budget. It can be a $500 a month budget. You can start where you’re at, and grow from there. But you’ve got to have a budget, when it comes to your social media marketing in 2018. Again, that budget is going to be made up of a couple of things. It’s going to be your paid advertising budget, so whether that’s Facebook ads, or LinkedIn ads, or Instagram, or whatever it is that you’re using, some combination, awesome.
That’s also going to be, who are you having on your team help you with this. If this is not your area of expertise, this is not where you want to be spending time, then hire somebody, like a social media strategist, or a social media manager, or a Facebook ads expert, to help you with these jobs. You need to be budgeting for that as well. All right, I will put the soapbox back away.
Be sure to join us tomorrow for the workshop, because that’s where this stuff is going to get a lot easier for you to figure out, as far as who you need, what you’re doing, how you’re going to spend, and how you’re going to see the results of those advertising dollars. Or, the investment of your own time. Or paying someone for their time, for the organic stuff. All right, thanks for hanging out with me. I will see you tomorrow. Again, show notes for everything I mentioned, and you’ll find those show notes at TheStaceyHarris.com/episode378. I will see you soon.
Connect with Me
Connect with me on Facebook
Tweet with me and include #HittheMic
Be sure to leave your review on iTunes or Stitcher for a shoutout on a future show