FULL TRANSCRIPT BELOW:
Aaron Konzelman: Hey, everybody, welcome to American Small Business Institute. I’m Aaron Konzelman, and I am here today with Sarah Klenke. Yeah, good to have you today in the studio.
Sarah Klenke: Thank you.
Aaron Konzelman: We were talking actually earlier at lunch about social media and social media campaigns and how good, how bad do they need to be? The differences? How do you judge that? Kind of expound on what we were talking about a little bit earlier.
Sarah Klenke: In this day and age, any social media presence is a good social media presence. That’s one of the things I hear a lot from clients, potential clients, is, “I would be into social media, but I just know I would suck at it.” The thing is, you can’t suck at social media. The only way you can really suck at it is if you’re using it for sales. I wouldn’t be putting just every single day posting a new sale. It’s social media, not sales media. There’s a lot of people that just don’t have the confidence in their social media ability, and really if you’re posting anything that’s engaging or interesting, that’s good social media, especially for your business.
You could be posing articles that pertain to whatever you’re selling. It doesn’t have to be an article. It doesn’t have to be a blog from your website. It can be from any sort of personality in that industry that’s not a direct competitor. You can also do, I’ve seen good results from, testimonial videos, reviews. Then that’s a different voice. That’s not even your voice, so you’re not tooting your own horn. You’ve got someone who’s literally experienced what it is, whether it’s your services or your products, and so it’s a very genuine opinion. People take that really close to heart.
I’ve got a story that kind of goes along with that. I had a client who he just felt completely incompetent in social media and was absolutely against it. I was like, “No, we’re going to do social media.” He didn’t have a huge budget, so we went with video because video’s only about five to six percent of all the content, say, Facebook, but it’s 60 to 80% of the engagement. I mean, that’s worth the investment. We ended up doing these videos, and the best one he did, and I knew … I was like, “This is gold.” He did not like it, and it’s because he looked a little nervous. He did. He did look nervous, but in all honesty that vulnerability was part of what had made that video so great.
Sarah Klenke: He did this video, and he was nervous about putting it out there because he looked a little anxious. It’s just he had never been in front of the camera before, but that vulnerability really helped relate to the clients. This guy is a big burly dude. He looks like a football player, but he’s so sweet. It’s just one of those things. He’s a doctor, and choosing a doctor and allowing a doctor to work with you is a very intimate thing.
Aaron Konzelman: It absolutely is.
Sarah Klenke: Him showing that softer side along with his personality being able to be displayed in a video rather than just through pictures really, I think, drew a lot of that engagement to where we saw likes on some stuff, but once we got those videos out there, people were commenting. People were actually really interacting with his Facebook. He was surprised. I wasn’t as surprised, but he was surprised. It was really cool too to see his confidence grow over time and to see him get more involved in his own Facebook social media presence. There’s something about actually interacting with the business owner. He started taking on the messaging and replying to comments. I thought that was really great.
Aaron Konzelman: If you’ve got somebody who falls in that category, and they’re like, “I suck at social media. I’m just not even going to do this …” Because it seems like everything, a lot of what you see and a lot of what the push is, “Everyone’s so polished, and they said it needs to look good and shiny and pretty.” You’ve got somebody who comes to you as a new client, and they said, “I suck at this,” is there a way to evaluate or what are the beginning stages of how someone can go, “I just need to start doing this? What do I start doing? I’m not good at this, but what kinds of things can I start posting, or how can I learn how to do this better”?
Sarah Klenke: I would say, if you’re someone that doesn’t have a lot of time, and that’s what’s holding you back, just start doing two, three posts a week. Spread them out. You can even schedule them in advance. I recommend that for people who have time commitment issues as far as being able to commit to it. Schedule a couple out in advance. You can start with pictures that are related. If you’ve got a specific product, take a picture of the product. Explain a little bit about it. People who’ve used the product, they’ll probably end up coming in and liking it. Talking about it. If you have video content already, put it up there. If you have a radio content, you can use that to create a video. Put that up there. You can even do a live video. I know a lot of people kind of shy away from that because it’s new, and it’s extremely vulnerable, but it’s actually really powerful. You can see it across all sorts of social media both with large companies, small companies, celebrities. That’s definitely something I would consider if you’re a first-time social media page user for businesses.
Aaron Konzelman: Awesome. I love what you said at the beginning about the whole point is there’s a reason it’s called social media, because the point is to get people interacting and talking and conversing and going and commenting.
Sarah Klenke: I think that’s the one mistake that businesses make on social media. It’s a big mistake, and I think it’s the only big mistake you can make on social media is just putting way too many salesy, advertise-y pitches out there, because at the end of the day people are either going to scroll past it, they’re going to unfollow you, or they’re going to unlike your page. We don’t want any of those things. Social media.
Aaron Konzelman: Awesome. I love it. Great. Great info.
Sarah Klenke: Thank you.
Aaron Konzelman: Thanks for hanging with us. All right. Cool. We’ll see you guys next week.