Are you ready to up your game in social media? In Episode 44 of the Business & Life Conversations Podcast, Stevie Dillon from Stevie Says Social joins us today to talk about how to take your social media strategy to the next level. Stevie will share 4 key elements on creating an effective social media strategy and will walk us through how we can apply these in our own businesses.
This episode is sponsored by Angela’s 4-day, 3-night Women in Business Retreat happening in Australia on October 24-27, 2019. Click here to learn more.
Important Links Mentioned in the Show:
Join the FREE Social Media Bootcamp Training
Australian Business Collaborative Facebook Group
Finding Balance in Business Women’s Retreat
Angela Henderson Active Business Facebook Group
Angela Henderson Facebook Business Page
Prefer to read How to Create an Effective Social Media Strategy? Here’s the transcript:
ANGELA:
You’re listening to the Business And Life Conversations Podcast with Angela Henderson, Episode 44.
Hey there, you’re listening to the Business and Life Conversations Podcast. My name is Angela Henderson and on this show, we talk about improving your business, life or both. By having amazing and rich conversations with brilliant guests who will inspire you and who will give you tips and tricks to help you grow both in life and in business.
Hey there, Angela here from Angela Henderson Consulting and welcome back to another episode of the Business and Life Conversations Podcast, and as always thank you so much for tuning in today. I’m pumped to have the amazing Stevie on the show where she’s going to be talking to us about how to create an effective social media strategy and the four essential elements that you need in order to create the strategy. Super excited to have her, and she’s the owner of ‘Stevie Says Social.’
But before we jump into this episode, I just want to let you know that this episode is sponsored by my 4-day, 3-night exclusive Women in Business Retreat where we focus on women, having the chance to connect, refocus, learn and grow, in order to grow both in business and in life. This particular retreat is going to be held from October 24th through October 27th, 2019 at the Gold Coast in Queensland, Australia, and it is an exclusive event where I will only be selling 50 tickets. From having 8 of Australia’s top female entrepreneurs speaking, to surrounding yourself with amazing people that will lift you up both at the conference and after the conference, to daily masterminds to get individual help on your business from both your peers and the speakers, to amazing food, being able to sleep in, and eat a meal uninterrupted; you’re not going to want to miss this amazing 4-day, 3-night Women in Business Retreat. To learn more about this event, head to and or to purchase your ticket, www.angelahenderson.com.au and simply click on Retreat.
Now, let’s jump into the show with Stevie. Welcome to the show, Stevie.
STEVIE:
Hello.
ANGELA:
How are you today?
STEVIE:
I’m good. How are you?
ANGELA:
I’m good. We both live in Brisbane so we are enjoying some beautiful weather at the moment which is always good.
STEVIE:
Yes. I’m just on the road on the Gold Coast, but you know…
ANGELA:
Why do I think you’re on Brisbane?
STEVIE:
I just lived up to the coast.
ANGELA:
That could be it.
STEVIE:
It’s a little bit of an adjustment.
ANGELA:
Are you liking it though?
STEVIE:
Yes. It’s good to be close to family. It’s so funny; people are like, “Look, Brisbane is just an hour up the road but I never got down and so my mom etc. and all. So it’s good to be close to them but I miss the city life.
ANGELA:
You miss the city life. And it is, the gold coast at the weekend, it is very relaxed, very touristy for a lot of part of it. And Brisbane definitely has a little bit more of hustle and bustle, you could say.
STEVIE:
Yes. It’s nice though, we’re right kind of near the beach. It’s about a hundred-meter walk so I can’t really complain.
ANGELA:
Oh gosh. That, I can’t complain about that.
STEVIE:
Yes. Yes.
ANGELA:
Now listen, before we hop into the episode today, I always like the audience to get to know our guests that are coming on and so I just wanted to start with, tell us your favourite movie and why it’s your favourite movie?
STEVIE:
Oh my God. I don’t even know the last time I’ve watched a movie. But I’ve watched Netflix in the last week. And like, it’s a complete revelation. I can say I’m completely unproductive because I’ve gone down the rabbit hole of like a thousand different shows and movies, but let me think. What did I love? I actually loved Almost Famous; like I love all of those, the band movies where it’s fun.
ANGELA:
Do you like the movies that take you out of reality for a little while that you get lost or what do you like?
STEVIE:
Yes. But I don’t love; okay, so I’m not a Game of Thrones person.
ANGELA:
Me neither.
STEVIE:
I don’t like anything that’s like medieval, set back in the day, like, I like knowing, I don’t know. I like the more modern ones.
ANGELA:
Yes, you like the modern ones. Yes, and I’m with you, the Game of Thrones, I’ve never watched an episode.
STEVIE:
I’ve never watched it and I say that to somebody that watches Game of Thrones and they’re just like, “I don’t understand.”
ANGELA:
I know, like death stare, it’s like, “What do you mean you’ve never watched it?” I’m with you. Alright, so Almost Famous, you liked it, you know, the reality, and you’ve just become, you’re no longer a Netflix virgin.
STEVIE:
I know. One time I went to a rabbit hole of Animal Kingdom. So literally watched, I think there were 3 seasons and I watched it over 2 weekends and just was completely horrified that I’d been so unproductive.
ANGELA:
Yes, and you’re like, “And I’ve just watched 84 hours. All back to back. What business do I have?”
STEVIE:
Because like a show finishes and then it just automatically goes to the next one and you’re like, “Sure. I’ll just watch one more time.”
ANGELA:
Exactly. You’re like boom boom, thanks for coming. Yes, speaking of businesses which again, you’ve been slightly unproductive now due to your Netflix binge-watching, but tell us a little bit about your business so the listeners could get a little overview of what you do before we jump in today’s episode.
STEVIE:
Sure. So my business is Stevie Says Social and basically, I teach people how to live to their social media game. So anyone that is looking to DIY their socials basically and understand the strategy behind what they’re doing rather than just kind of randomly posting and all of the tactics, I basically teach people how to do that. So I’ve got a podcast, a membership, and I also have a shop with a whole heap of templates and resources.
ANGELA:
Fantastic. And we’re just talking before we record, obviously, there are big changes as we know, constantly changes are happening with social media collectively.
STEVIE:
Yes.
ANGELA:
But Mari Smith just released over the last few days some changes that are coming again with Facebook groups, so how important now, do you think, than it has ever been before to have a solid social media strategy?
STEVIE:
It’s so important like it’s really hard I feel for people that are just kind of diving in and kicking off now because I even think of, I kicked off two and a half years ago, and the algorithms and the way that kind of reach was, the content that was being shown to your audience was completely different then to even how it is now. So the things that worked a year ago don’t work now. Like there’s a lot of principles that are still the same, and they’re timeless. But the features and the tactics change and it’s only getting harder. So you can’t just open an Instagram account or a Facebook account and start posting and cross your fingers and hope for the best, which is a social media strategy a lot of new businesses roll out. So it’s really important to have a plan, know your business objectives and know how you’re going to get there as well.
ANGELA:
I couldn’t agree more with that because I know when I first started Finlee and Me, 9 years ago in September, it was literally, you could post anything and the reach was phenomenal. You were getting likes left and right, the engagement was crazy and you weren’t paying anything. You don’t have to post your blog posts; the days when we were like Thermomix giveaways, it was crazy, what we used to be able to get away with.
And now though, one of the things that Mike Steltzner talk about in another one of my episode from Social Media Marketing World this year, is you know, though the changes are coming, how important do you think it is, and again we are talking about this earlier too, is that there’s going to be a large percentage of the audience who’s going to go, “Oh, great. There are more changes. What are we going to do?” They’re going to spend more time complaining about it versus more time trying to be productive and proactive around just figuring out what they need to do to change their strategy. And again, if you look at what my strategy was 9 years ago compared to what it is, it is completely different but I’ve had to adapt based on what Facebook says, what Instagram says, LinkedIn says, do you think people just need to learn adapting?
STEVIE:
Yes. Definitely. A hundred percent. And it actually makes me a little bit grumpy when I see people, whenever there’s a big change, so there was a big change, the beginning of.. was it this year? I can’t even remember.
ANGELA:
This year or last year.
STEVIE:
It was last year? There was a massive change around the reach on Facebook for example, and I remember looking in Facebook groups and everyone was like, “When are we going to get off social media? This is ridiculous.” And blah, blah, blah; and it really makes me a little bit grumpy because, at the end of the day, social media is an amazing platform. There is no doubt, regardless of who your ideal client is, that there is a social media platform where they are hanging out. And it’s a matter of either spending time and/or spending money; and yes, you do need to invest in one or both to either learning or paying for exposure to those people. And if you do that it 100% works. There is absolutely no question about it.
ANGELA:
And that’s the thing, some people will put time and energy into say magazine publications, and I’m like, “Really? How you even measuring what that is?”Like Facebook is actually giving you tools to be able to measure your reach, your engagement.
STEVIE:
Yes, that’s what I’m talking so specifically like you might pay, and I still think of this, because I used to work as a Marketing Manager and I used to put the budget into billboards and things like that. And when you think of that, you’re paying a big chunk of money for whole heap of people to drive pass your billboard, when maybe, 5% of those people are your ideal clients, and you’re paying a whole heap of money for the wrong eyeballs to see your content. Whereas if you invested the same amount of money into a Facebook or Instagram advertising campaign or a really targeted influencer campaign where you are actually able to pinpoint who your ideal client is and serve ads just to those people, so 100% of the eyeballs of the right people, the potential is huge.
ANGELA:
It’s massive. And I also wonder sometimes, are people scared or the belief systems or what is it a combination that sometimes I think maybe people like them, “I don’t actually want to get this big.”
STEVIE:
Yes.
ANGELA:
Or what it means for my business if I do get these eyeballs going and I don’t have the systems in place.
STEVIE:
I actually think that’s such a good point. And you probably see this in your business coaching Anj, but I see it, where I see that it kind of manifest the most is when people go from, okay, they want to learn the organic social media strategy, and they want to learn what works in terms of using social for free. But they’re scared to invest and believe in themselves by actually spending money on things like paid campaigns. That’s where I see that it really kind of comes out the most.
ANGELA:
Yes, and because there are always some douchebags that don’t know what they’re doing and do take people’s money. I was part of that when I did my last launch, there was a disaster I interviewed 15 of the top Facebook Ad Strategists from around the world and the one that I chose was horrific. That was like, they were targeting third world country, people from my likes campaign, my account got blocked. It was a disaster; and I was paying them thousands and thousands of dollars just to manage my account, not to mention my ad spend. So there are douchebags out there, so all I’m saying is when you do look at getting your Facebook ads campaigns up, reach out to people who are credible and that will link you to the right people. Now again, you will probably always have to pay for management fee for things to be done well, now you can invest in running Facebook ads yourself and there’s a variety of different courses that you can do that with, however it comes down to your timeliness and use a little genius. So for me, I was happy to find someone else and we’ve been doing really, really well and all that has worked out. It’s never a safe proof either, I always say, but when you can do it, absolutely.
STEVIE:
Yes, and I would say like in terms of, because it can be really hard for a small business, right? They’re like, look, and especially for someone that doesn’t have any background in digital at all, like the Facebook ads manager is overwhelming. But what I would say is that there’s a lot of benefits, in at least learning the basics, getting in there and being familiar with how it works.
ANGELA:
Yes, one hundred percent.
STEVIE:
And I would say like up to about $500 a month ad spend, you would need to do it yourself in order to make it viable because you’re going to pay an ad management fee of generally, throwing a number out there. And obviously it can be less and it can be more depending on whether you’re going to use a freelancer or an agency. But at least kind of $600 for a small basic agency a month to manage your Facebook ad, so you need to be comfortable in investing enough into Facebook and Instagram advertising to cover that management fee.
ANGELA:
And then your AD spend.
STEVIE:
The AD spend is on top. Yes. Hundred percent. Absolutely. Yes.
ANGELA:
And that’s where some people get confused, “Oh, ok. I’m happy to pay that,” but then they’re like, “What do you mean I need to pay ad spend? You mean the management fee to set everything up?” And then the AD spend is very different. The other thing that people forget too, is that e-commerce set up is very different to service-based setup.
STEVIE:
Very different.
ANGELA:
It’s ton times you will pay even more for an e-commerce set up strictly because of the complexities that go with having an e-commerce business. It is important. Now I don’t want to get into all the nitty-gritty’s about Facebook ads because you and I can probably have an entire episode about that, but I think it is important to let the listeners know about the importance of Facebook ads and the opportunity you have regardless of the algorithms in Facebook making those changes. And again ultimately, your growth is in your hands, you can either whine about the changes or you can take action and be proactive, but you are the one driving the seat.
STEVIE:
Yes. It’s so true. And one thing, final thing I’ll say about Facebook ads is it is getting more expensive. Like I remember, 2 years ago, I pay $100 and get 300 leads. Now I pay $300 and lucky to get a hundred leads. But, that is still if you can kind of do the math, and you can work out your numbers and things, it is a scalable kind of thing. So you can actually get to a point with your Facebook ads, once you know what your numbers are, where you can put a certain amount in, and have a certain level, it’s never a hundred percent sure and things will usually fluctuate. But a certain level of certainty that you’re going to get a certain reach in on that spend, so it’s hugely valuable if you get past that small business start-up point and you can invest the money and it can really scale your business.
ANGELA:
And I think you raised a very good point there again and something that I do with my own coaching client is that it’s important to know your numbers.
STEVIE:
Yes. It’s powerful. And I think that’s where the nervousness comes from if people don’t understand that they feel like they’re just throwing money into Facebook and it’s like throwing money on black in roulette in the casino.
ANGELA:
Yes. It’s like, here we go. Roll it out.
STEVIE:
But once you actually kind of get, and there are some core numbers you need to know, and that’s a whole different podcast episode, then people will have a lot more certainty around your spend and things like that.
ANGELA:
I couldn’t agree more. So now listen, today we are going to talk about how to create the effective social media strategy.
STEVIE:
Yes.
ANGELA:
And for you, I know that we’ve talked about it that you believe that there are four key elements. So are you able to kind of give us an overview about how to create the effective social media strategy? What those four elements are? And then will dig down a little bit further to each element once you give us that overview.
STEVIE:
Yes, for sure. So basically, the frustration that I was planning, so I’ve come up with a bit of a framework for putting together a killer social media strategy. But just to give you some background on where it’s coming from, I had a lot of clients and customers who were coming to me and they were kind of like, “Stevie, I’m not having any success with social media. I need help with <insert thing here>.” And it would generally be like, “I need help with my hashtag strategy,” or “I need help with the best times to post on social media.” And what I found is that they were kind of like super random tactics that people are going down a whole lot of an overall strategy, right? And so like 99.999 percent of the time, they come to me and say, “I need help with my hashtag strategy,” but that was never the root of the problem.
ANGELA:
Right.
STEVIE:
They didn’t realize, they didn’t have the full strategy sorted. Even before, so the four elements I’ll go into, but even before then, like you need, as a small business, getting on social media, to know why you’re doing it. So you need to be really clear, and I like to do this in 90-day kind of periods of time. So I feel like it’s kind of achievable; you can see the finish line, period time to shoot for. So what are your business objectives in the next 90 days? What is it that you want to achieve? Do you want to increase your market share by 10%? Do you want to increase your leads by XYZ? Do you want to make XYZ more profit? Do you want to bring on to whatever it is, right? Then from there, you can actually start to set social media goals that are aligned to achieving that.
And so, when I say social media goals, what I mean, and it generally kind of goes in order, so if you’re just starting out, you’d start at the top and go on. But it’s building an audience; so growing a following then it’s making sure that that following is engaged and they’re liking what you’re posting. Then it’s actually getting people off social media into a platform that you own; so building things like your email subscriber lists and building your website traffic. And then this leads in sales and it kind of goes in a little bit of a flow from start to finish.
So you need to set, number one, your business objectives. Then you need to set some social media goals. Once you have that, then you need four elements in order to succeed. And so basically those four elements are brands. So before you even post on social media, you need to know what your brand is. And when I say brand, I mean you need to know things like your points of difference. What’s your brand personality? How you are different to every other <insert business here>? And then representing that kind of visually and with your words on social.
The second thing is social media and content; so having a really strong social media presence and also kind of optimizing your accounts and having a strong content strategy. So most people start here; they just like go into the social media vortex and start posting, and just keep posting and posting and posting, and they don’t get the other 3 elements right. But it is still obviously a social media is still a really important element, right? And that’s kind of the brand side of things. So a lot of people say that’s the fluffy side, brand in social media. But I built an entire business with it so it absolutely works; it’s just a slower burn. And then the two, you’re looking at it as a quadrant, the two on the bottom end, their kind of the business end. And so the third essential element is a sales funnel. So a simple funnel for getting people off social media and actually selling to them. And then finally, traffic. So proactively getting off your own social media accounts, going to where your ideal client is hanging out on social media, letting them know that you exist, and then bringing them back into your kind of sphere.
ANGELA:
And do you think it’s important for those that are starting out, this is something that again I hear everyone, like, “You need a social media strategy. You need a social media strategy.” But again, I believe it’s best to choose one or two platforms and do those really, really well, than to try and do Snapchat, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, Newsletters and everything else. Because I find that small business owners are already so overwhelmed, overworked and over consumed with like what they should be doing, then it’s just another thing. And then I find that they’re stretching themselves so thin that they might only post once every 4 months on LinkedIn, and then once every 2 weeks on Instagram, and then they’re not actually getting any attraction with any platform. What are your thoughts about that?
STEVIE:
Yes and that kind of that is having a social media strategy, like if you kind of go, “Okay, so what are my available resources? What are my business objectives?” And then from there you can go and say, “Okay. Cool. What can I reasonably achieve in the next 90 days that are going to help me move towards whatever my business objectives are?” So a lot of the time, developing a social media strategy won’t be this like big beast of a thing that includes every social media platform out there and every strategy out there because it’s overwhelming. But it’s like, “Okay, so my ideal client is this person. Here’s two channels where they’re hanging out. I can reasonably, with my resources, have a good presence on both of those channels. And I can implement a few different strategies in the next 90 days that are going to move me closer to my goals.” So having a social media strategy doesn’t need to be a big beast. At the end of the day, it’s just a plan to get you to where you want to go.
ANGELA:
Perfect. Do you think that different people, how would they best know their ideal client? Because again, I also think that it’s important that they’re choosing the platforms where their ideal client is sitting on. Do you have any tips about how people should be assessing where their ideal client is actually sitting so they can narrow down to those two platforms they have to start with if that’s where their available resources are?
STEVIE:
Totally. Ask them. So I know it’s groundbreaking and there’s definitely other ways that you can go about it. So knowing your ideal clients is, it’s kind of like one of those marketing things. And I remember before I got into marketing, I’d hear people say, it might be like, “Yeah, yeah, yeah, you’ve got to know your ideal client. I get it.” Like, let’s get on to the fun stuff, right? So it’s so important for everything, most importantly, where they’re actually hanging out online. So once you know who that person is, and I always like to think of that specific person, you can actually go to them and say, “Hey, what social media platforms are you using? Where are you hanging out online?” That’s the best way to go about it.
There’s also a really good resources, if you’re in Australia, used to be called the Census Report. I believe it’s called the Yellow Pages Report now. But it’s a really comprehensive yearly report that comes out that basically tells you which different demographics are hanging out on which platforms, how they’re using those platforms and a whole heap of useful information for helping you out with your strategy.
ANGELA:
That’s fantastic. I’ve been thinking like those of you are simply going, “Oh, yeah, I keep hearing about this ideal client. I don’t really know where to start or what to do.” On my website, www.angelahenderson.com.au on the home page at the very bottom, you can download a 10-page free e-book that goes into knowing your ideal client more. Because often I hear, “Oh yes, my ideal clients are between 40 and 80,” and I’m like, “Wrong answer.” You really need to be thinking about your ideal client, you can have multiple or liked tiered ideal clients, right to the one person that you’re speaking to. And of course, you’re going to have other people you’re speaking to, but ultimately, it’s like, “Would Johnny want to be seeing this on social? Would Johnny be finding this helpful? Would Johnny be engaging with this particular content? Or would Johnny hate this content?”
You really need to be thinking about naming that person, I know a lot of people go back to, let’s just say Johnny is a 38-year old male who likes fishing etc. They’ll go to whatever was 38 years ago, I think that would have been 1981. If we went to 1981, then they’ll actually choose one of the top favourite names of the people that were born in this particular year. And they’ll name Johnny or Susie or whatever based on the year that they were born. And I also know a friend of mine, James Hugh will also go in; he worked with the company and they have like mannequins. And when they would go to work every day they would see their top 2 ideal clients and they were dressed in a particular way and they would high five them as they were going into work. So again, I know it sounds very cliché but it is super important to be able to know when you’re looking at creating a social media strategy, that you know who you’re creating it for in order to get the most out of that particular strategy. If not, you’re just throwing spaghetti against the wall.
STEVIE:
Oh, speaking my language. I couldn’t agree more. So it’s not just important though for what content are you going to serve than it’s actually super important for knowing, like for informing a strategy in your social media strategies. So for example, if you know that your ideal client is 36 and female and she has 3 kids, you can find the influences online that that person follows, and you can look at joining an influence marketing campaign. Or you can go into Facebook audience insights, and I highly recommend that you do this because it’s a gold mine of information. And you can put in 36-year old female, Australia; and it will give you honestly, like 30, 40, 50, 60 businesses that most of the people within that demographic follow. And you can look at doing sort of collaborations with them or a competition feature with one of their products. It’s just so, so important because it will inform literally everything that you do.
ANGELA:
And it’s also when you get to paid advertising that you no longer want to be testing the organic?
STEVIE:
Yes.
ANGELA:
You don’t want to just be throwing thousands of dollars hoping you know who your ideal market is, that are going to buy your course.
STEVIE:
Yes, and it can be an expensive mistake to make. Like I just know, I’m personally running some Facebook ads at the moment for an upcoming launch. And I can actually dive in like I originally set 27-54 year old females; and as those ads started to run, my costs for those ads were triple for anyone that was over 45. So they’re clearly not resonating my content, and if I didn’t know that, then I would keep running those ads and that would be expensive.
ANGELA:
Yes.
STEVIE:
So it can be a really expensive mistake once you actually start investing in your social media marketing strategy.
ANGELA:
So yes, the importance of knowing your ideal client. Now let’s dig down a little bit deeper into each of these four elements that you talked about on how to be able to create an effective social media strategy. So element number one on how to create an effective social media strategy; do you want to talk us through a little bit more about that?
STEVIE:
Yes. Brand. I have loved hot eyes branding.
ANGELA:
Amazing. Amazing.
STEVIE:
I always think that if I wasn’t on social media I should have been a branding speaker to see how important that is and what I have found is that it’s often the missing element because it’s such sometimes an intangible thing. So people would come to me and they’re like, “I’ve been posting on social, I’ve been doing this, this and this…” and it actually comes back again to your ideal client. It’s very, very closely aligned. But you need to make sure that your business resonates with your ideal client and basically, the way that you give your business a personality is by branding it.
So one of the cool little exercises that I like to get people to do in this kind of section of the four essential elements is to think about three words that when they close their eyes, what are three words that really sum up the way that you would want your business to be seen by other people? And so, like for me, I’ve got fun and intelligent. So I have two; and they’re kind of like opposing words that are both really, really important to me. And so what I do is I kind of close my eyes and then I think about, “Okay, cool. When it comes to my brand, how can I visually and with my words represent those two words on my social media channels?” So for me, the fun side is everything that I do is like pink, and tropical, and bold, and out there, and that’s the fun side, right? But then what my brand trainer’s for is it’s also really conversational. But I make sure that everything that I write in my captions, for example, is really intelligent and that people get something from it. So that’s like a really simple of way of kind of working out how your brand actually aligns with what you’re doing on social. You need to know who your client is and you need to know what sort of personality you want to represent that would resonate with that person. And then you need to go, “Okay, cool. How can I visually end with my words and I keep saying words, because it’s actually one of the most forgotten but important elements of social media, how can I actually represent that in a way that kind of speaks to my ideal client?”
ANGELA:
And words again, I think for example, on Instagram, people think that it’s just a pretty picture. But actually, with the changes in algorithm, it’s the words that are going to get people over the line for you and potentially into that funnel. And so it’s no longer again what used to work is no longer working. People are actually reading these and that’s where you need to be super mindful about. What are you actually saying, the images just there kind of as a buffer. People want to get to know you, what you stand for, how you are helping them, how you are solving a problem, and also you wanting to able to help them and get them into that funnel.
STEVIE:
Yes, absolutely. And it just comes down to, because I know that a lot of people, for example, with their words and their captions and things, they struggle. But it just comes down to, like if you’re clear on your brand and you have those three words and you constantly keep that in mind, you’ll be really clear on the way that you want to speak on social media. It’s not just your captions, it’s also how you speak and things like your Instagram stories. Are you fun and conversational? Are you really nurturing in the way that you speak? Like all of that is made so much easier when you understand the brand piece; and I say people get so confused with brand, like they confuse it for a logo or whatever.
ANGELA:
Yes.
STEVIE:
But it’s actually really understanding the personality of your business and it just makes everything you do on social media so much easier. Because you’re not questioning, should I write like this or should I write like this? Or should I use this picture or does this photography’s so much? Because everything will be consistent; and that’s the other thing, once you have it, you need to be super consistent about rolling it out consistently across all of your social media platforms.
ANGELA:
Yes. And I think again brands, your logo and your colour palettes are part of it, but that is only a small percentage. But like you said like, if you’re looking at the words, you’re looking at the pictures, again the colours too; like I love the colour pink, people know that about me. I also love Nutella, it’s a side note. But I do love the colour pink, and it is; it’s something that is very dominant in my stories. It’s very dominant when I do my presentation, my webinars, usually because that’s also part of my brand identity. And people can start to identify me legit; like people send me bottles of Nutella because they’re like, “Anj, I was at the supermarket and I thought about you.” It’s also about how you’re leaving that memory within your audience so that when they do need you or want to draw on you or listen to your podcast whatever; that they’ve got something embedded in their brain that stimulates them to think about you.
STEVIE:
Yes. That’s really smart, Anj. Like that actually comes into the next element. So once you’ve got your brand sorted, having social media and content, like having a plan basically that incorporates three elements, and so what I always say is you need value content. So if you’re a service-based business, it’s really valuable, educational, inspirational, whatever suits your brand content that makes you the go-to person in your field. If you’re a product-based business, it’s about providing value and selling the lifestyle. But the second element, which is really relevant to what you just said, and it’s super important when you’re putting together a social media strategy and a content plan, is you need to have, especially with the algorithms and the way they work these days, an element. And so for service-based, I would say up to 75% of your content is this and value content; and for a product-based business, about 25%, but it’s connection content. So it’s content that isn’t necessarily directly related to the service or the products that you provide. But it’s things like, your love for Nutella, or other connection points that you can make with your audience sort of a little bit more personal. That digital storytelling works really well as well, the behind the scenes; that is the content that people resonate with. And when people resonate with it, it gets engagement. Content that gets engagement gets shown to more people with the Facebook and Instagram algorithms and how they work and that is ultimately how you succeed at the end of the day.
ANGELA:
And also in regards to getting shown and working with the algorithms, to me, it’s the credibility, trust and authority. It’s like they get to know that you’re treating them, I’m really, really big about human to human marketing; that again you’re treating them like humans and not just numbers.
STEVIE:
Yes.
ANGELA:
You’re showing up and that you’re being present on an ongoing consistent basis. And that you’re not just there when a launch happens. You’re not just there because you’re trying to sell something. You’re not just there to blow smoke up their asses; that you’re genuinely there because you want to be there, and that you’re happy to share all elements within reason. Doing shots of tequila off of a naked body, not so much.
STEVIE:
But if it’s your brand personality, go for it.
ANGELA:
And if it’s your brand personality and you made to, I don’t know, I don’t relate to the pole dancing for exercise, that does fit into the brand. But probably the majority of us, probably not so much, right? So you still need to be checking your boundaries and does it fit within what needs to be a good representation of who you are and your brand, yes. You don’t have to over complicate it. Just treat people like humans and not numbers. And you’ll actually be able to create that connection content.
STEVIE:
Yes, and not that actually like people will work with you. Like you could be, this is particularly relevant for service businesses or anywhere where you’re kind of selling your expertise. But if somebody is deciding between two, for example, really qualified lawyers, and you’ve been providing really great educational content on your social media channels, and they’re like, “Okay, cool.” Both of these lawyers potentially, they know their stuff. The difference between whether someone’s going to work with you or with the other lawyer, is whether they like you, and if you don’t have that content on your social media channel that basically showcases a little bit of your personality and makes that person that’s following you kind of go, “You know what, I like that person, I resonate with them, and I’d like to work with them.” Then ultimately, they’re not going to go with you, they’re going to go with the other person. So it’s really important to have that mix; like you’ve got to have the value content, you’ve got to show that you know your stuff, you’ve got to have that connection content. And if you’re a service industry it might be the more personal stuff. If you’re a product-based business, it’s your brand, story and things along those lines. And then that needs to be the majority of your content. Then you can promote a little bit because you’ve earned the right to do that.
ANGELA:
No. I couldn’t agree more and I just think it’s something that people are overcomplicating and they don’t need to be.
STEVIE:
I couldn’t agree more.
ANGELA:
Like really, “Oh my goodness. What am I going to post?” And again content is everywhere. I could post the picture of my plant right now and still bring it back to my brand. Like I think people are overcomplicating because they’re seeing everything picture perfect. But if you look really closely, the brands on Instagram anyways and on Facebook who really start to tell a story, they’re the ones that actually have the most imperfect images but have the best engagement. So you know, think about that.
STEVIE:
Yes, totally. I could not agree more. I mean there are other things that you can do in that social media or content element of it, and this is probably where people fall down the rabbit hole a little bit. So once you’ve got your content sorted, it’s things like having a hashtag strategy that is bringing the right people in. It’s things like making sure that you’re checking your analytics and you’re only replicating your content that’s working well. It’s things like posting at the right times. But all of those things are important but move the needle a little bit, but if you don’t have your brand sorted and then have a killer content strategy, operating that value, connection, promotion, then you’re not going to go very far when it comes to that side of things.
ANGELA:
You may be banging your head against the wall, wanting to drink. That’s the line, which I want to do.
STEVIE:
Maybe a vortex.
ANGELA:
So now, element 3 on how to create an effective social media strategy, do you want to talk us through that one?
STEVIE:
Yes. So this is another one of my favourites. It’s because it’s the one thing that I think is often missing. So the thing with social media is at the end of the day, it’s a conversation starter. So it’s where people are hanging out, right? It’s not the deal closer. So it’s not generally, or this is changing a little bit, especially we’ve checked out for Instagram coming in and we’ve talked about that, but generally, people are not selling directly from Instagram. So you need to have any other social media channel, I’m just using Instagram because we’ve been talking about it, but basically you need to have a way to get people off your own social media channel. So you develop the relationship on social media. You get people to know you, to like you, to warm up to you. And then you take that relationship onto your website and ideally into your email list because it’s an asset that you own and because I don’t care what people say, email is still the highest converting marketing channel out there.
ANGELA:
Amen. Amen.
STEVIE:
I have businesses; million e-commerce and service-based businesses, and there is absolutely zero exception to that. Yes, so you basically need to have a simple sales funnel. So it’s called a selling system. And a lot of the time, this is offering something of value in return for an email address. And you need to have that as a way of basically channelling people from social media where they don’t want to be sold to, to ultimately making the sale.
ANGELA:
And again, so the selling system, sales funnel, etc., what is that, it can be different for everyone. The top of funnel to the end of the funnel, right? So the bottom of the funnel. But for example, in Instagram, I was at Social Media Marketing World, and Tyler McCall, a good friend of mine now, was talking about the power of the DM.
STEVIE:
Yes.
ANGELA:
And so getting them, instead of going, “Hey,” at the bottom of the caption, “Go to www.angelahenderson.com.au,” go, “Hey, if you’re interested in XYZ, send me a DM and I’ll message you right back.” So his start of the funnel is starting in the DM versus actually getting into site. And then he gets them into the DM, starts building that human to human relationship and then will lead them into wherever XYZ. It could be the freebie; it could be the master class, etc. to get to know them a bit more. But again there’s definitely the power of the DM right now.
STEVIE:
I think that I love that. I was actually talking to a friend of mine yesterday. So when I say that you don’t sell on social media, what I actually wanted to say was there are two exceptions to that. One is e-commerce with Instagram Shoppable and checkout. The other is DM. And she’s actually a business coach, the girl that I was talking to. And so her sales funnel is essentially; she’s on stories and on Instagram lives all the time and she’s obviously developing that relationship there, super important when you’re service business, right? You want people to see you and all of that sort of thing. But then she makes office. So she makes office directly from her Instagram stories and does exactly what Tyler said. Basically invites them into a DM and basically has the sales conversation still within Instagram but in a more private platform. And once they kind of go through that, she’s qualifying them, and then literally, the last part of her sales funnel is sending them the link to buy. That is her sales funnel.
ANGELA:
Yes. And it’s like super powerful like you said, it’s not going to work for everyone. But even if someone like you, said, “Do you have a question? Hey, DM me. Do you have this?” I personally could send them to my podcast. I could send them to a blog article. I know a lot of my clients they are service-based, but they’re getting questions like, “How can I do this? How can I do this?” and she’ll respond and go, “Hey, great question. Have you read my latest blog post?” And at the end of the blog post, there’s a content upgrade to get them on the emailing list, right? So she’s basically got like all these pasted, copy and paste type canned responses that she can just pop into the DM. So your sales funnel could start in the DM, your sales funnel could be leading into your website. But whatever that is, you need to start getting clear because you don’t want to be just posting on social media and doing element number two really well without bringing them into your funnel. Because if not, you’re just having a hobby, it’s not actually a business.
STEVIE:
Yes. And honestly, that is the biggest mistake that I can see people make. They get number two sorted, and then they lack well, but I’m not selling what’s the goal and it’s honestly more than anything else that breaks my heart because I’m like, “Oh, you’re just missing a big element of it.” Like it doesn’t mean like there’s a million different sales funnels. Like if you’re e-commerce, it might literally be Instagram Shoppable, get people onto your website, re-marketing to the people that have been on your website to a sale; it’s as simple as that. For a service-based business, it might be a Facebook ad with basically sending people to a blog post. From the blog post, like you said, some sort of content upgrade, from the content upgrade a series of valuable emails leading to an invitation to book a consult call, for example. So they don’t need to be groundbreaking.
ANGELA:
No.
STEVIE:
They can be complex, but that’s where people get…
ANGELA:
Again, they overthink it.
STEVIE:
Totally. They overthink it, and they never actually get to the point where they do it. I think it’s always better to, especially with the selling system stuff, get one up and running and test from there. Literally, like use the shortest path to get it running and then you can optimize from there.
ANGELA:
And testing is something that, you’ll be testing no matter where you are in business. So you could be a billionaire and you’re still testing at all times.
STEVIE:
Yes. Totally.
ANGELA:
And so then, our last element, our number four on how to create an effective social media strategy, is your traffic, you talk about.
STEVIE:
Yes, so traffic is basically again, getting out of the social media vortex which is like posting on your own account. I always liken it to like, if you sit at home and you get all dressed up and you just like sit on the couch and wait for Mr Right to come and knock on your door. I had a friend say the other day, “Well that could happen because there’s Tinder now.” That completely goes into my analogy. But it’s basically proactive, really, really proactive about growing your audience. And so what I mean by that is going back to the ideal client; where are they hanging out on social media because guaranteed they are hanging out somewhere on social media so you need to find out where that is. And what I find, like I have a tested a gazillion different traffic strategies, the four that consistently work the best if you get them right, Facebook and Instagram advertising; collaborations, so collaborating with similar but non-competing businesses and cost pollinating your audiences; influences, if they have a genuine influence and if you have the budget and you’re willing to invest in a paid influencer campaign; and competitions can work really well as well if you do them the right way.
ANGELA:
Yes. And I know with Finley and Me, we went from like 4,500 or 9,500 and within that year we’ve gone up to like 20 something thousand on my first business through collaborations and giveaways because they have the same ideal client that I needed and they already had built and then I had a different number. Like I got mine from markets and different places. So we’re like, if we pull these two together, we actually can grow without taking away from either of our businesses and it complemented beautifully and the reward was beneficial for both parties.
STEVIE:
Oh, that’s perfect. I love that. And honestly like if you’re, because a lot of the time I hear, it’s interesting to say to hear that it worked for you for a product-based business, but I often hear service-based businesses, they’ll say, “I can’t use influence marketing. I can’t see how it would work for me.” And that’s where I would always say collabs work so well. Like it can be as simple as for example, interviewing a similar but non-competing business on your blog, or doing a joint Instagram live. Because when you do that, it shows it to both levels, both as your audiences on Instagram and its just cross-pollinating your audiences, you know, like it’s such a great organic way to grow. It’s how I grew in the early days. Like I literally went out to people that I admire that I knew had a similar type of audience and I basically said, “Hey, can I interview you on my blog?” And then I’d send them the link, and then would share it on their own social media channels. And people would come over and they would check me out. And I did that without any paid budget in the early days. So it’s similar to you Anj and it just works so well.
ANGELA:
And I also think that again for when I hear businesses, service or e-commerce, they’ll go, “Oh, well. We’ve got the same, we’re going to be competing against each other,” I always say that there’s always a room for everyone, and I always go that’s the mindset shift that needs to stop.
STEVIE:
Yes.
ANGELA:
Then I just go, genuinely, I interview other business coaches and people are like, “Why would you do that?” I’m like, “But why wouldn’t I?” They’re nice people. And I also think that some people that work with me as a business coach might not relate to them. But other way around I can be working with someone, you know, “Maybe we’re not the right fit, maybe I’m not teaching you how you need to be taught, let me connect you with such and such.” Because it should never be about me, it should always be about who I’m helping. And I’m not going to be right for everyone. And everyone is not going to be right for me. But if I’ve got a list of people I can refer to, then the world’s a better place ultimately anyways.
STEVIE:
I think that comes down to, I actually did a podcast episode about this, because I had interviewed Helen and Jacqui from Two Girls and a Laptop, and they came up in the context of the conversation, but anyway, Helen from Two Girls and a Laptop said, and it just resonated with me, and I loved it so much that I did a whole podcast episode on it, but she said, “I used to be a yoga instructor, and I met this other yoga instructor and she basically said to me there is enough yoga to go around.” And I was like, “That is awesome.” It is so good. But I think it’s really, the businesses that are scared to do it, it comes back to, you really need to be confident in your offer and your product. Otherwise, you are going to be having that, I guess it’s the non-abundance mentality, isn’t it, where you’re kind of like, “No, this is my pool of customers. I can’t share it. I can’t share it.”
ANGELA:
And again, it’s like, that you can, what is it that’s blocking you? You’ve got to figure out that block. Because to me, a good, and I say this, a good business coach will always be able to help with mindset too. Mindset to me is something that is so undervalued by so many business owners and it’s a thing again where so many of the blockages keep coming up.
STEVIE:
I couldn’t agree more. There are so many people with social media strategy, I’m like, the reason you’re not doing this has nothing to do with social media strategy. It has to do with the mindset stuff.
ANGELA:
It’s the mindset, the fears, the limiting belief, it’s a combination.
STEVIE:
And it’s a business, I always say business is like the number one, it’s like the ultimate lesson in personal development.
ANGELA:
Yes. It is, like you have to dig deep. And I find those businesses who are willing to dig deep and work on the mindset will be those that will stick around much longer than those that are here for that quick fix.
STEVIE:
So true.
ANGELA:
Because you have to work on stuff that’s been ingrained in you for many years, and your beliefs, and you better start to rotate those, chop and change those.
Now listen, what a great episode today on how to create an effective social media strategy with your four key elements which is your brand, element one; your content strategy, element number two; element number three was your sales funnel or your selling system; and element four was getting your traffic. Those other ways you spoke about that. Now for those that are out there going, “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” is there anyone that you think that this wouldn’t work for?
STEVIE:
No. It works for everyone.
ANGELA:
It works for everyone; you just have to be willing to put in again, this another thing – hard work. So many people think that stuff is supposed to be easy. Again, if it was easy to be a billionaire, there’d be more people being billionaires. It takes hard work that you’ve got to put in to, set time aside.
Now you’ve got some exciting things happening in the future, would you like to share a little bit of those with us?
STEVIE:
Yes. So I am running a free social media boot camp which is pretty much elaborating on everything that we spoke about today. It gives you the complete road map to social media success. So it’s basically the framework that I have used with clients and I was like, “Okay, should I give this away as a freebie?” I’ve waited long and hard over it, I always feel like if you’re kind of at that point you’re giving just enough value away.
ANGELA:
Yes.
STEVIE:
So it’s a three-part social media training and it’s kicking off shortly, and if you’re keen, you can join at www.steviesayssocial.com/bootcamp.
ANGELA:
Fantastic. And that’s going to be for three days, so they’re going to get all levels of awesomeness with you?
STEVIE:
Yes, there will be a popup Facebook group, and there’ll be three lessons delivered every two days to give you time to go through and actually actions throughout the workbooks and implement it into your business.
ANGELA:
Good. That is fantastic. And if other people who may not be interested in the challenge but would like to get to know a little bit more about you, whereabouts can they find you, Hon?
STEVIE:
“Stevie Says Social,” pretty much on all of the social media platforms funnily enough. I’m really active on Instagram, so that’s probably the first one to jump on, and then www.steviesayssocial.com as well.
ANGELA:
And you also have a podcast?
STEVIE:
I do. Funnily enough, it’s called Stevie Says Social Podcast.
ANGELA:
Well, listen. Thank you so much for joining us today. I really, really appreciate that. And for those of you not able to scribble fast enough, do you remember that my team and I will be putting together the whole transcriptions for this episode at www.angelahenderson.com.au. And of course, I cover also to related business and life topics on my active Facebook group, The Australian Business Collaborative. So head over there if you’d like to join an active Facebook group. For the rest of you, I hope you all have a fantastic day no matter where you are in the world. And I look forward to connecting with you on next week’s episode. Have an awesome day everyone. Bye.
Thanks for listening to the ‘Business and Life Conversations’ podcast with Angela Henderson, How to Create an Effective Social Media Strategy. www.angelahenderson.com.au
