Get More Business From Social Media In 2022 – Episode 36

What we thought we'd talk about today is social media. We're going to talk in grown up terms. I think one of the biggest things I've come across is that people don't know what to say. They haven't got a content plan. So for my money, if you're not blogging, if you're not creating videos, if you're not producing a podcast, you are limited in what you can do with social media because you've got nothing to say, nothing to point people at.

Again, it depends on your objective. The main objectives would be either generate leads, create awareness, or build a kind of loyal community. My way of thinking of it is that you sort of look at the things you do, and then you look at the people that you're targeting and what they're interested in. You need to know who you're targeting. You need to know which network you're using to target which group of people. And then you need to plan your content so that you're putting out regular content that's actually relevant to the people on that network.

Okay. So, um, Digital Marketing From The Coalface podcast, first podcast of 2022.

Was this the first one? Oh, I'm honored. Honored.

It is the first one of 2022. And most people are kind of still trying to figure out which way is up because it's early January. It's always a bit of a strange one, isn't it? Decompressing after the, uh, after the Christmas hiatus. But anyway, what we thought we'd talk about today is social media. And it's me, Dave, and Julie.

Hello.

Now, Julie's just gone through her recertifications for things like Google stuff and HubSpot stuff.

And I've been sitting lots of exams, um, doing lots of sort of catching up and updating knowledge and that sort of thing. So yeah, I think I've done the HubSpot marketing software, the Google ads, the HubSpot digital marketing and HubSpot social media certifications in the last month or so. Okay, so I should know everything about everything.

Yeah, well, that was one of the reasons you wanted to talk about social media. Now, you know, we're going to talk in grown up terms about social media, because I think there's a lot of nonsense spoken around social media. And people seem to think that it's a, you know, using they're using social media to grow their business is going to be easy because people are readily going to listen to what they've got to say and all this kind of good stuff. And it's not really.

How it works.

Is it?

I mean, it's kind of fun sometimes to begin with. And, you know, yes, it can have amazing results, but you can also spend a lot of time on it and get absolutely nowhere. And I think we were just talking earlier, you know, you can find a lot of people doing kind of random acts of social media just doing stuff, but not knowing why they're doing it. Um, not really sort of knowing what's coming next, just sort of randomly sticking up pictures of cats and things, which is fine. And that's what Facebook's for. Pictures of cats, pictures of pandas falling off logs. That's what it does best. But you know, there if you're using it for business, you kind of need a plan.

Yeah. And so question you know, first question is, is it realistically something that all businesses should be looking at?

Not necessarily.

Okay.

I mean, I'll come back to sort of how to put together a plan, but every business is different. You don't need to be on Facebook because somebody said you need to be on Facebook. You don't need to be on Snapchat. If, um, you know, your audience are all sort of sixty year old males, then there's no point. You know, you have to go where your audience is and I'll come to that later. But, um, you've got to make sensible decisions. You don't have to do any of it. Um, you have to do what's right for your business.

So you're doing what's right for your business. So first question really, is it actually worth doing at all? Are there, are there lots of other things you could be doing. Would it be a priority is what I'm saying.

Um, for some businesses, absolutely. Yes. Some no.

B to C or B to b.

B b to C. I think you'd struggle without it. I think you kind of need to be there. And I think people expect to see you there. B to be on the whole, people will expect to see see you somewhere because some people, some people don't look on Google. Some people look first on social media. They'll search some, you know, they'll search in their social networks first and then search on Google. On the whole, we find for most of our clients, the vast majority of traffic to the websites come from Google and a little bit comes from social media. But, you know, there are people who, who use social media first and then Google. So if if your customers are that sort of person, then you have to be there. But I think most customers would expect to see some sort of presence in social media, even if it's just LinkedIn.

So commonly in, you know, conversations we have with customers, maybe at an early stage in the relationship we're having with the customer. We'll talk about social media. They'll either be wildly excited about the prospects of using social media, or they'll say something like, well, we won't be bothering with that because that's a complete waste of time because maybe they don't use it themselves. The actual person we're talking to.

That's right. Yeah. Some people are like, well, I don't use it. Therefore, clearly none of my customers use it, which isn't necessarily true.

It's a bit like we're not going to use Google ads pay per click because.

I don't click on.

Ads and therefore nobody does kind of thing.

Yeah, I think I think it's commonly known as chairman's wife syndrome.

Oh, is it.

The chairman's wife doesn't like the color green. Therefore we can't use green in any of our marketing materials. I see the chairman's wife isn't the target market, but it doesn't matter. So. Yeah. Okay. You've got to be careful to think of it from your audience's point of view and not from, you know, the person, you know, the, the client's point of view.

So quite often when I'm talking to people about social media and it's not necessarily my area of expertise. I mean, I'm a fan of social media. I suppose the platform I use the most is Twitter because I'm interested in politics and I have conversations with people. Well, sometimes I have conversations with people. Other times you just listening to people ranting and shouting.

Yes, very shouty at the moment. Twitter, I've gone off it. It used to be my favourite, but it's so shouty. I'm probably. The thing is, Twitter is is who you follow. You can go, go and unfollow all the shouty people and follow nice people and then it's fine. But, um, it is very shouty at the moment, I think.

So if we're thinking about our client base, which is predominantly B2B, the thing that I'm thinking straight away is LinkedIn is any, you know, is, is it the go to platform?

Can I take, take it back a step and sort of go through maybe the process before you even think about, is it LinkedIn or not? Sounds good. Um, the thing, the first thing I think is to, when, you know, when we're sitting down with the client, you'd ask them what their business objectives are and what their marketing objectives are. So part of it comes from that, you know, are, are they just sort of full on going digital marketing? We need leads. We need leads, we need leads. So you would use something that's going to kind of make sure that you get clicks through the website, get people to engage, get people to get in touch, something where you can have a call to action. So you'd probably would use LinkedIn for that.

Um, LinkedIn ads or LinkedIn organic or both. Okay.

Um, LinkedIn ads, if you want someone sort of to generally generate leads and someone to kind of go straight through and fill in a form. LinkedIn, if you're, if you're wanting them to sort of find out a bit more about you, maybe for if your objective would be awareness or brand building, you might just put like some really great thought leadership stuff up and some great videos and things that make you look amazing and just catch the attention. People go, oh, that company X oh yeah. Oh, I hadn't heard of them. Oh, there they go again. Look at the great stuff they're doing. And just like building your brand, building awareness of like PR.

Really?

Yeah. So, you know. Yeah. If it's an engineering company, you'd probably do that on LinkedIn. Um, other types of company you might use, you know, something equally visual. Instagram, Facebook even because you're trying to sort of put, put your brand out there and, and get people to sort of understand what you represent and just, you know, and get people just to have heard heard of you. You'd also want something that was very shareable. So, you know, things that people go, oh yeah, wow, look at that. And it makes them laugh maybe. Or it makes them think or it's really pretty or whatever it is so that people want to share it. So that's great for brand building. Or you might just want to kind of look after your existing customers and provide customer service, in which case Twitter is great. Okay. And you might sort of just have a customer service, um, Twitter account. So or you're building loyalty, or you might want a Facebook group because you want to build a community and get all your customers to talk to each other and go, oh, wow, you know, we really belong to this little tribe. And so you'd probably use Facebook for that.

So if we got.

Any totally depends on the objectives where you're going.

With it. So if we got some examples of, um, objectives, I mean, you know, like just some kind of generic.

Well, yeah.

Thinking.

The main objectives would be either generate leads, create awareness or build a kind of loyal community.

Okay. Find your tribe.

Yeah. Customer service, community loyalty, existing customers, basically, or yeah, you're either looking after existing customers. You're trying to find new customers by generating leads, or you're just sort of at the early stages of, look, here's, here's who we are and this is what we do. So just very much awareness. I would say those would be the, you'd pick one of those as a main objective.

From the finding new customers point of view, which is something that really interests me because I predominantly focus not so much on social media, but more on organic search, for example, search engine optimisation and so on. Um, how do we find new customers without simply like, interrupting them. It sounds a bit like old school marketing. Like, you know, it has to be. Interruption marketing, doesn't it? Like you.

Necessarily.

Like on LinkedIn, you can send, you can advertise to a very specific audience.

Yeah.

But you've no idea whether they're actually interested in what you're trying to sell them. Whereas with like PPC or organic search engine optimisation type work, you are only appearing in front of them when they've actively searched for that subject.

Yeah. LinkedIn's great. If the people that you're targeting don't necessarily know about the thing that that's out there, so they're not going to be searching for it because they actually don't know it exists. Might be a new product or a new service that that they're not looking for because they don't know about it, but it would be really, really useful to them. So we've had clients who've done like Google ads and Facebook ads for, for a specific service. I'm trying to remember what it was. It was like free webinars for teachers and people like that. And they were promoting these webinars, but the teachers didn't know such a thing existed, so there was no way they were searching for it on Google. But you put it, you go into Facebook and you target, you know, teachers, special needs teachers, um, in a specific geographical area. And they filled their courses with that because they were putting it in front of people who went, oh, wow, I never knew that existed. Brilliant. Just what I need.

Okay.

So it's being able to target specific people rather than specific searches has its uses there.

Okay. Um, is social noisy? Is it a noisy environment?

Totally. I mean, organic, organic social is very difficult to actually kind of get much engagement at all because of the algorithms. You've got to have it really only your posts only get shown to people who kind of already are interested and already engaged with you. Mhm. Um, and there's so much stuff out there that, that you really reach a tiny fraction of your audience unless you're absolutely nailing it. So it's very difficult to do.

You would have.

To be, but it's very difficult to do well.

Okay. You would have to be doing a lot of activity on social media to be heard.

Yeah. I think.

In.

Amongst.

The.

Organic, consistent, you have to be regular and consistent with what you post and what you post has to be very engaging. Mhm. Um, so that, so that so you kind of keep showing up in people's feeds.

Yeah.

I mean, very hard to do.

There's a lot of businesses show up in my feed on Twitter and majority of the time I mute them. Yeah. Um, sometimes.

We talk about adverts.

Yeah. Sorry. Adverts show up in my Twitter feed. Yeah. And and that's, you know, they use those adverts where when you try and scroll past them, the advert scrolls across instead. So it's just.

Really annoying.

Whoever they are, even if it's a brand, I'm Positively predisposed towards. That's it. I just mute them because it just annoys me. Yeah. So I guess what I'm driving at is like a lot of social media is not quite leisure activity. Um, but it's where people go, like if you're at work, you might go on to LinkedIn at lunchtime just to see what's going on in the world, like what's going on in your industry or what's going on in your network. And we're trying to market to people as they're having their sandwich and relaxing and doing that. Is that is that right? I mean.

It's that that's ethics. I don't know, I don't necessarily want to get in the ethics of it, but, um.

I'm thinking more about the, the, um, the efficacy of it. Is it, is it actually worth bothering that, you know.

It does work.

Yeah. Okay.

Um, I think you've got to be careful because like you say, it's social media. It's supposed to be social. It's where people are going to relax. So I think if you're putting an advert in front of them, it still has to be, well, like either educational. You're telling them something they didn't already know and it's useful, or it has to be entertaining. It's like it makes them smile so they don't mind being interrupted or it's really engaging. And they're like, oh yeah, I want to comment on that. Yeah, I've got an opinion. So I always say, you know, if your social media is not engaging, educational, or entertaining, then don't bother.

Basically, I think, do you not think that the engagement piece is often missed by organisations? They actually someone asked them a question or someone's rude or, you know, somebody starts a conversation which you can see is going to be adversarial and they shy away from it. You know, they kind of don't engage. You have to be, I think you have to be prepared to take on all comers if you're going to.

Raise your hand. I think that it's probably for another podcast, but I think that's why companies that get agencies to do all their social media and don't do it themselves, they miss that engagement thing. If they're posting themselves, if the MD or whoever is like doing the posting or somebody you know, who's got some authority to have conversations is actually doing the posting. Yeah. Then they're more likely to have the conversations that ensue. But if you've got an agency sort of posting stuff to your social media, but not monitoring it, monitoring it, and they're not really qualified to have the conversations because they're not, you know, they're not at the coalface. Mhm. As it were. Yeah. Um, then the conversations don't work. And, you know, that's the whole point of social media, which has been lost a lot is the conversation.

Lack of authenticity as well?

Totally. Yeah, totally. I mean, we, we try not to do people's social media because it's always better if they do it themselves. I mean, well, okay, not always.

But you could take care of the mechanics of, of it for them, but make sure that they, they are getting the monitoring emails so they're being pinged or somebody responded to a.

Post.

Go and talk to them, engage with them, etc.. Yeah.

Yeah. You miss a lot of that if you're just outsourcing it and not paying attention to it because it can, it can be really useful.

And you mentioned the, you mentioned HubSpot earlier, you were doing some HubSpot certifications because we're HubSpot partners. Um, does HubSpot have tools built in that will monitor engagement and actually ping you and say, hey, you know, someone's engaging with this post, they've asked a question, that kind of thing.

It does. Yeah. You can, you can set up sort of streams. So you monitor different, um, kind of bits of your social media. So yeah, it's all in there. We do all our posting to social media from HubSpot because you can, you can set it up, you can schedule it all, all in one place. So it's brilliant. Absolutely love it for, for posting. But yeah, the, the monitoring and the analysis as well. You get we get a monthly, uh, monthly or weekly. I think it's a monthly, um, email that tells us sort of how much engagement, new followers and all that sort of stuff. So, um, yeah, it's actually a really good resource, the HubSpot social media bit.

Okay. Do you think there's a sort of reticence among people to, to get into social media because of their concern around engagement? And do you think it's more relevant with bigger organisations where they can't actually say anything without it going through the legal department and all that. I mean.

There are some companies who are just like, well, we can't do it because yeah, we don't have the authority. We're not allowed to say anything. Mhm. Yeah. So some companies sort of shy away from it. Um, I think the biggest problem with social media is that people set up accounts and then do nothing with them. They just don't stick with it. They, they set, you know, they post a few pictures and then they're like, oh, we've got a new website. And then they kind of forget about it.

And this is because as with most things connected with digital marketing or actually promoting your business online, um, a lack of strategy, if you haven't got a strategy, if you haven't got a reason for doing it and a plan for doing it effectively, then you are just going to be staring at a whatever software you use, Hootsuite or HubSpot or anything else saying, oh, I don't know what to say.

Yeah. I mean, if you don't know your, you know, which, which of those objectives you're doing, am I doing it for awareness? Or am I doing customer service? Or am I actually trying to get traffic? And if you don't know actually who you're speaking to, you know, if you haven't got, you know, buyer personas, which again, is another podcast we need to do. But, um, if you don't know who, which particular kind of groups of customers you're actually targeting with, you know, you might have different people you're targeting with Twitter and different people with LinkedIn. So, you know, you need to post the things on the right network for the right people. And if you don't know what that is, then you're, you're floundering to begin with. So you need, you need to know who you're targeting. You need to know which network you're using to target which group of people. And then you need to plan your content so that you're putting out regular content that's actually relevant to the people on the, on that network.

So you mentioned earlier and said, oh, we'll maybe do it in a different podcast, uh, buyer personas. Yeah. You know, ideal customer profiles, you might say that would seem, you know, you can't do any social media unless you get that right. Unless you figure that out.

I know, because you don't, you don't know who these people are. So, you know, you're putting stuff out there and people aren't going to engage with it at all, or even even see it unless it's actually going to sort of resonate with them. So you totally need to know that. I mean, otherwise just, you know, how can you craft a social media post if you don't know, you know, who you're speaking to, what age they are, what you know, what sort of language they use? Do they use emojis or not? Mhm. Um, just things like that. You know, you've got to get it right for that audience. And if you don't know who it is, then, then it's very, very difficult to, to get anything right.

And I think one of the biggest things that I've come across is that, and we've already mentioned it, is that people don't know what to say. They've got, they've got, they're looking to staring at a blank screen because they.

Haven't got a content plan.

They haven't got a content plan. So for my money, if you're not blogging, if you're not creating videos, if you're not producing a podcast, you are limited in what you can do with social media because you've got nothing to say, nothing to point people at, nothing to try and encourage engagement and comment on you.

Again, it depends on your objective. If you're looking for awareness, then you can create nice, pretty videos and just things that that sort of say who you are. But if you're trying to generate leads, then you've got to give people a reason to get in touch either to, to read a blog post on your website, which then encourages them to get in touch, to ask a question, or you've got an offer where they go to a page and they fill in a form or, you know, maybe you're trying to fill a job, job, um, ad, you know, so you want people to go and actually go to a page and apply for a job. You know, social media is great for that. But, um, yeah, if you're trying to generate leads of any description, then you've got to have some somewhere for them to go. So you need a really kind of integrated content plan where you're blogging, you're probably got some sort of offers or webinars or something else you want them to do after the blog post, which all need to be in place before you put that one tweet out. So it's not even a case of just like writing two hundred and eighty characters. You've got to, you know, have something you want to sell, have a forum on that page so they can get in touch. You've got to have a blog post to send them to so that they know that you do it and they're interested enough to go to the other page. So you've got to have all that in place before you write those two hundred and eighty characters. So the planning is really important.

Yeah. And bit of a blunt question. Is it actually worth it?

It can be it, it varies. It varies by company. It varies by how well you're actually doing it. But you know yeah, you can, you can.

Is it one of those things that's difficult to attribute? Is it, is it one of those things where it might actually be a, a, a tweet or something on LinkedIn that linked to a piece of content that somebody saw three months ago and that that sowed the seed that you got those guys might be the guys to speak to when it comes to this.

I think with with anything like that, it tends to be a combination of different things. Yeah. Maybe they've seen a tweet. Maybe they've also seen a LinkedIn post. Maybe they've also seen an advert. Maybe they've also read a piece in a magazine, a PR piece that you've created, and then they see another tweet, which then they go, oh, I've heard of them. Then they click on it and then they read the blog post and then they go away, and then they come back to the blog post, you know? Yes, it can be very hard, but you know, it, it can add to it. Um, and I think if you're not doing it, then you might miss out.

Yeah. So it's the fear of missing out is, is, is a one of the main one of the big drivers.

And I think it's, it'd be difficult to have a sort of proper marketing campaign without social media. I think it has to be one of the, one of the blocks that you've got in place.

Yeah. I mean, I'm asking these questions because it is it is something I struggle with despite being a fan of and user of, you know, quite a small number of social platforms. Um, I'm not saying I've never finished up clicking an advert or researching further on an organisation because of something I've read on social media. I know I have done that. Yeah. It's um, I don't know, maybe I've done that as many times as I've responded to a TV ad or something. You know, it's, it's infrequent.

Yeah. But, but it happens. Um, and the, the better your targeting is, the, the more likely you are to get the right people who are in the right, you know, place to, to actually respond.

Okay.

Um, so I mean, if you're seeing stuff that's not relevant, maybe, you know, the, the targeting is not right.

Mhm. Okay. So thinking back to, um, you know, when you were doing the certs and things, um, over the last few days, what else? Um, from your notes, what else should we be discussing when it comes to social? We've talked about the, the overarching thing is like understand your ideal customers where they hang out. Yeah. What social platforms they're using. And then figure out a strategy i.e what do you want them to do? Do you simply want to raise the profile of your organisation by providing non salesy, completely non salesy, really genuinely useful, helpful videos, content whatever you want to produce. And that's just to raise your profile a bit like companies that pay for PR for example, they simply just want to appear in the newspaper so that a seed is sown. That's it.

TV ads. Well, I mean, yeah, TV ads don't have any button to press to make you do something. It's just, you know, to say that, um, you know, John Lewis have nice product. John Lewis are a nice people, you know, it's not telling you to go and particularly click here to buy something. It's just reminding you that if you're going shopping, you might want to go there.

But Michael Parkinson offers you a free pen if you just for just only for applying. All you have to do is apply for life and life insurance and you get a free pack.

Are you watching?

Maybe it's a while since I've seen that advert, but I'm sure that they do try and entice. Okay.

Some do. Yeah. That's direct response ads versus awareness ads. Again, it's it comes down to objectives. Yeah. I would just say you need to you need to know what your objectives are for using social media. You need to know who you're targeting. Probably the most important thing, once you know who you're targeting and what your objectives are, you choose which networks and you don't have to be on all of them. You can't do all of them well. You have to pick a few and do them well, rather than trying to spread yourself too thinly and doing all of them badly.

Okay. And talking about doing them. Um, I'm writing thinking that you should get John, the office junior who joined the business five weeks ago to actually handle all the social media. Is that right?

Yeah, the youngest person in the office, because they probably know how it works. Yeah. No, don't know exactly. Get somebody who actually knows what they're talking about. Get somebody with the authority to respond. I mean, you know, some B2C companies, the people doing the social media are brilliant because the apps, you know, they respond, they use humor. They're clever. And they, you know, they can do really good things that could go totally viral and get mentioned in the news and everything else, because they've got really clever responses. So yeah, I think really carefully about the person that's doing your posting. They need to be able to spell, they need to be able to respond thoughtfully. They need to not say anything stupid, basically. So yeah.

Yeah, I mean, thinking about that, do you think social media is an environment where you, you can be a little less guarded? I'm not saying you should be offensive, but, you know, I think that is that not one of the problems with it, is it not one of the reasons that some companies come across as as dry because, you know.

Businesses.

Businesses are people, you know, whether whether it's a serious business, like an engineering company or, you know, a very serious business like a funeral directors or whatever it is, you know, it's people run businesses and, and, but yet they can come across as totally faceless, totally, you know, lacking in humanity.

There's nothing wrong. There's nothing worse than just the sort of bland posts that have no personality in them whatsoever. I mean, the person running your social media should be allowed to have a personality to, to kind of use a bit of their own voice, or you should decide kind of the voice of the company. Are you, are you kind of funny and cheeky or are you like deadly serious or whatever? But, um, you know, decide what sort of approach you want to take and stick to it. But I think there's, there's room for humor and I think it's sort of bland corporate tweets or corporate messages are just completely pointless, really.

Mhm. So when we're thinking about, uh, bland, how do really dull businesses and I don't mean the people are dull, but, you know, businesses that do really dull things, necessary things, how do they utilise social media? And that's a really difficult question, but if you if you're a if you clean offices, I mean, it's vital that offices get cleaned. Yeah. You're an office cleaner. All right. Maybe that's a bad example because you could you could, you know, talk about the, you know, the craziest thing that you emptied out of a bin or something like that.

There's probably quite a lot of scope in that.

But that's not going to happen very often, is it? I mean, what, what how do dull businesses.

I my, my way of thinking of it is that you sort of look at the things you do, and then you look at the people that you're targeting and what they're interested in. Um, I like a sort of Venn diagram thing where you've got two circles. Um, so in one circle, it's the what, what your audience is interested in. And I'm waving my hands here. This obviously doesn't really work on a podcast, but.

I'm enjoying.

It. Left, left circle. What your audience is interested in. Right circle. What the boring thing that you do. There is an overlap there somewhere. So, um, some, some of what you post will just be like what you do. Some of it will be okay. This is what what the audience is interested in, and it's vaguely related. So I'm trying to think of an example.

Not easy.

If you're God, you know what? Gone completely blank there.

But I can understand it. Are we saying that even dull businesses. There is potential. I mean, it's like a challenge for a company like us. Somebody came along, asked us to look at it for them and help them with it. It would be an enjoyable challenge.

Absolutely. I mean, it's great fun to actually try and explore that. But also, you know, you don't have to post all your own stuff all the time. You can share other things that you. It's called curated content, but you share things that other people have put up that you think your audience might be interested in because they're vaguely related to what you do. So it's, it's basically broadening your topic out wide enough that it's related to what you do, but it's also interesting. And for, for every customer, for every business, that'll be different. But yeah, you can sort of look in it and just try and find where that overlap is and kind of just broaden out what you do. So it's not just we do this, but you're putting up stuff that's related to what you do that your your customers will find useful. So if you were an office cleaning company, you might want to sort of put like hacks for cleaning your sink at home, you know, because it's related, but it's not, it's not what you would do. But you, you know, you put all these like ten uses for lemon juice for cleaning your home, you know, that sort of thing. So it's sort of in the same ballpark.

Okay. Um, okay. What are we not talking about that we should be talking about with with respect to social media, is any, anything that, um, that's a burning issue that we haven't yet covered.

Um, I think there's just that obviously the legal side of like, you know, don't, um, don't do anything illegal in terms of like libel and stuff, you know, you've just got to be careful. So the person you've got doing your social media needs to understand where the lines are. Yeah. You know, you can give them some scope and you can be a bit funny, but, you know, don't slag people off and, you know, don't break the law. That's the thing. Don't you know, don't purposely get into some sort of slanging match with somebody. So I think there's just that sort of element of caution.

Unless you're really, really clever. I can't remember which brand it was, but I remember there was there was a brand, quite a well known brand, and somebody had said something and they were, they were trying to have a go at them. They were trying to be nasty. Yeah. And instead of just going, oh, you know, we're really sorry you feel like that. And, and we'd like to have a chance to, you know, blah, blah, whatever. They actually just attacked back. And it was, it was brilliant. I mean, they went right up in my estimation, but it's, it's a really you've got, you need to have somebody, it's almost the sort of thing that you would need like a stand up comic, you know, people who are used to dealing on the hoof.

Hecklers.

Dealing with hecklers and dealing with situations. And you've really you've.

Got to be funny. Yeah. And you've got to be really smart. But, um, basically, if you wouldn't say it in the pub without getting punched, don't say it on social media.

Yeah. And if only everybody on social media got that. Yeah.

It's still it's public. You know, everyone can see it. It's it's not it's not a quiet conversation in your own house with somebody you trust. This is a public conversation. So it is equivalent of standing in the pub and shouting it. Yeah. And if standing in the pub and shouting, that would get you punched, don't do it.

Yeah. That's right. Yeah. One hundred percent. And I think I think over the years, I think in the past I've been daft enough to get into arguments with people. And you know, nowadays I don't, I just kind of I just try and use I'm trying, I try to be reasonable. I have a rule where I don't slag people off. I'll disagree with them and but I'll be polite about it. I mean, all right, I'll sometimes be a little bit snidey. I mean, I just can't help it sometimes, but but broadly speaking, and I'm talking about, you know, using social media in a personal capacity because I love Twitter, I love politics. I, you know, I try and engage with people and have conversations and, and I, and I follow a whole range of people. And I think that's one side of social that maybe we haven't explored. Is that is it, is it a way of using it? you know, can you use social media passively, effectively to kind of try and understand your market.

Better.

Understand your customers.

Brand listening?

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Um, salespeople use it a lot just to see what people are saying. And, and to just like look for people who are maybe thinking about you, they're looking for something, maybe they're not mentioning your brand, not even brand listening, but just social listening. So you're looking for people who have a problem that you can solve. And then don't just leap in and go by, by this, by this, you know, you can then start a conversation very subtly and be helpful and say, have you read this blog post or have you read this article, which maybe explains the thing that you don't understand right now? Exactly. So yeah, absolutely.

We've used that to good effect. And again, that comes back to having a powerhouse of a website with tons of great content on it. So when you see somebody having a conversation or you see a thread in LinkedIn, you can literally, as you just said, drop in and say, you might find this useful. Yeah. And it's.

Not.

Selling and you're not trying to, you know, you're genuinely just trying to be helpful.

Don't direct message them five minutes later and go, did you read it? Did you read it? Do you want to buy it? Do you want to buy it? Just don't do that. That's not what it's for. Please don't do it.

Well, don't you get that? You get connections. I mean, how many people on LinkedIn request to connect with you and you just go, no, thanks, you hit the cross. I mean, most of the people that try and connect with me, I don't connect with them because I know exactly you approve it and then bang, straight away, it's like, oh, can I talk to you about your phone system? Or can I talk to you about, you know, remodelling your office or something like a complete stranger?

I won't connect with people I don't know unless they give me, unless they send me a really personal message saying, look, I want to connect. I know you don't know me, but I want to connect with you because of this. And, and it doesn't sound like they're actually trying to sell me something, then fine. But otherwise, no, forget it. Don't even bother. Don't ask.

Yeah. So I mean, that's, that's social media. Like that's in a LinkedIn context. Whereas things like Twitter are completely different because people.

Can follow you. They don't have to ask to follow you. They just follow the same as Instagram.

Yeah. That's right. And so, you know, I think we've we've probably touched on it enough, but certainly, I mean, I see LinkedIn as, um, almost like what used to be and they're still around forums. I mean, when I first started using, playing around with and using the internet back in nineteen ninety five ish when I think at the, at that point I maybe connected using a service called CompuServe, which I don't know if anybody remembers, but it was a. Because at that point it was, um, it was, it was there almost like private networks, which you paid for a bit like Usenet. Now you pay to access Usenet, but you paid to access CompuServe. And then from there you could access the outside world, i.e. the internet. And like, you know, a lot of my early, um, exposure, if you like to, to using the internet was conversations with people. They were, they were, they were forums, they were self-help groups. They were general interest forums or, or not general interest. They might have been a forum about motorbikes or.

They still had the same rules. They were like, don't sell, be helpful. Don't don't go in there and go. Hello. You know, I'm new to this. Buy my thing. It was join the forum. Listen, watch what people are doing. Have conversations, be helpful. Yeah. It's the same rules.

It is really, isn't it? And I think those networks did have the same issues. I mean, they had moderators and they had people that went, you know what? That's the third time I've had to tell you. And then they just removed people because people have always found it easy to be. And I mean, the term is a keyboard warrior, isn't it? People have always found it easy to be rude and to be unhelpful, or just a general pain in the backside using the keyboard.

Yeah, they wouldn't do in real life. But that's definitely one thing about the pub. You know, if you wouldn't do it in the pub, just don't do it.

Yeah that's right. Absolutely.

Um so yeah, just, you know, be.

In the corner over there smiling at us. And obviously we're in a social network as in an actual social network. Was there something you wanted to say or are you just enjoying the chat?

I'm enjoying your chat.

Just enjoying it. It's better than working, isn't it? That's the other thing I want to say.

I'm going to be on social media. What do you mean you're enjoying it? What do you.

Mean?

You mean like I amuse you like I'm a clown? People will know what I'm referencing there.

Um, the thing about when you're you're sort of like posting social media for work, people always sort of like feel really bad if it's their own business. It's like, oh, social media isn't real work. But no, it's part of your marketing plan. It is real work. You can allocate time to it every week to do it. You don't have to like do it outside hours or whatever it is. If it's part of your marketing plan, then you do it. It's important. Um, it's just as important as any other thing.

So I think you raise a good point because I think when I have spoken to people about social media in, in my limited capacity, because I'm not a social media expert, I'm a social media user, consumer of social media is that I say to people, you know, don't decide. You do social media at two o'clock on Thursdays. Try and make it part of your life, you know, part part of what you do in BD. Business development, business growth, etc..

Once a week you can schedule all your posts for the week, but you also have to like reply to comments or um, if something happens, just, you know, be prepared to pop on and say this thing happened to us today. Or if something happens in the news, it's relevant to your customers then or our comment, our take on this is, so even if you're scheduling your posts once a week, once a month, or you've got an agency doing that for you, it doesn't matter. You still have to do the sort of in between sort of just spontaneous stuff that's relevant here and now. Yeah. Because I think you have to do a bit of both.

Yeah. It is, it is a bit. Here today, gone tomorrow isn't it.

Very much so. So here this minute gone another minute. And some of them.

Absolutely. Okay. Have we covered everything that you wanted to cover.

Yes, we have covered everything. I want to cover. I think there's probably more more podcasts to come.

This is the first time we've done a podcast just about social media. I mean, it gets mentioned in a lot of our podcasts, I think.

But no, we haven't done one on it. And I think, you know, I think people still see it as slightly sort of mysterious and, and confusing.

Um, it's a bit like public speaking. I mean, I, I enjoy standing up and talking to people who are, who want to hear about a particular subject that I happen to know about, whether it's, whether it's in a work context or in a non-work context, I enjoy that.

Yeah, some.

People don't enjoy.

That, and a lot of people are scared of social.

A bit like that. It is about raising your head above the parapet, isn't it? It is about saying stuff that potentially a lot of people can listen to, and then they might come back at you and say, oh yeah, but what about this? Or I disagree because and that that unnerves people.

It does. And that people.

Can't see it. You can't then say, well, so what I'm going to do, I'm just going to use social media as a as a push media, where I simply push messages. And I'm not interested in what you've got to say. It is social, social media.

Yeah. You've got to treat it that way. Totally.

That's right. Okay.

Yeah. The magic's in the connections, I think.

The magic's in the connections. Did you make that up?

I did, did you like that?

That sounds like from some sort of song or something like that. I don't.

Know. I think it is.

Like a Stevie Wonder song.

The magic.

The magic's in the.

Stevie Wonder song. The magic's in the connections.

Well known.

one. I think it exists. Okay, um, this is Dave and Julie on Digital Marketing From The Coalface. Uh, if you've got any comments, if you want to come on the show, if you want to ask us any questions from the coalface dot com, go on the contacts tab.

Or tweet us.

Or tweet us. Yeah. At Readyville. Um, do we have from the coalface? I think we did. I think I did grab it, but I'm not using it.

We're not using it.

But anyway, at read eval yeah. Um, is read evolutions, um, Twitter handle and then we're on.

We're on LinkedIn, we're on Instagram, we're on Facebook.

Are we?

That'll do. That's enough.

Okay. Um, thanks for listening and speak to you next time.

Bye.