Episode 79: A social media marketing masterclass

Sophie Peterson 00:03

Welcome to the CIM Marketing Podcast. The contents and views expressed by individuals in the CIM Marketing Podcast are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of the companies they work for. We hope you enjoy the episode.

Ben Walker 00:17

Hello, everybody, and welcome to the CIM Marketing Podcast and today we are talking about setting up a successful social media account. And with us, we have Julie Atherton, who is a founder of Small Wonder, and Mr. Henry Purcahse, many of you will remember from a previous podcast this autumn, who's founder of course of Rough Water Media, Julie Henry, how are you?

Julie Atherton 00:43

Good. Thank you.

Henry Purchase 00:44

Brilliant. Thank you.

Ben Walker 00:46

Great to have you on the show. And as a debutant, Julie, can you tell us a little bit about what you do at Small Wonder?

Julie Atherton 00:54

Definitely. So Small Wonder is a social media advisory and marketing consultancy. And we work with organisations really from the boardroom, right through to the delivery team. Thinking about how these communication channels these social communication channels have changed the way we have to do business as well as marketing and communication strategy. And as well as that I write books on social media and social media marketing.

Ben Walker 01:22

What about you Mr. Purchase for those those few of our audience that don't remember you from your earlier appearance? Can you remind us what you do?

Henry Purchase 01:29

Sure, I'm going to, there's three main things I made sure I'll keep it short. So as as you mentioned, Ben, founder of Rough Water Media, SEO and content marketing agency primarily focused on tech businesses. I also then run a travel blog with my girlfriend and probably most relevant to the topic today, because we went from 13 followers on Tiktok to over 130,000. In I think it was about seven days, very new account, making it go viral, and getting to do some cool stuff off the back of it. And then also founder of SEO space, the world's leading Squarespace, SEO experts. We've got the SEO plugin for Squarespace, and currently used by almost over 700 businesses. And we also offer SEO Services, etc. So thanks a lot for having me on. Again, Ben. And I'm looking forward to chatting more about this topic.

Ben Walker 02:19

You're walking the walk as well as talking the talk, but go on then you're gonna have to help us some insight. So if we're going to get that sort of ramp up in our engagement, you can kick off, what are the things we need to do to get that sort of ramping our engagement through social.

Henry Purchase 02:35

No pressure, I think it's probably good to premise it. So in that case, it was completely by luck. It was our sixth video 13 followers, my girlfriend messaged me said Henry, we've just we've just got over 1000 views on the video went over to over 30 million. So there is always going to be an element where you have to accept with social media that you have to let your creative juices flow, you have to do things that are a little bit different, you've got to accept that it's not always gonna go to plan. But by going out of your comfort zone, you can do things that maybe you wouldn't imagine which leads well onto the third thing, which is I would say, leave your ego and preconceptions at the door, what you have done before, is probably not going to be what's successful on social media, try things that are new, do some research on businesses that are already successful in social media in different niches and apply that to your own. And thirdly, again, probably on the same topic, speak to people that are natives on these platforms speak to people that have grown up with TikTok grown up with Instagram, that are used to the video, particularly video formats that you may not be used to. And do not be scared to try some of the ideas that they come up with.

Ben Walker 03:53

How easy is that Julie to actually get in there and dive and sort of reverse the polarity, as Henry says so you're actually going out to the audience and finding out from them?

Julie Atherton 04:01

I think that audience is is absolutely the key insight that you have to have, you have to really know what that connection is going to be between your audience and your brand or your business. And I think you know, Henry's saying is is absolutely spot on. Because what we find often is there's a huge volume of content that people create, which ends up being mediocre in quality, and therefore doesn't have that resonance. You know, if we think we're trying to be the best of the internet, aren't we we're trying to come to the top every time. We don't want to just create shedloads of mediocrity. And I think you'd be spared take the time to really understand your audience really understand how your brand might resonate with them and what that personality is going to be, which will be a different manifestation depending on what channel you're on. You then got a chance of creating those kinds of connections that Henry was talking about.

Ben Walker 04:56

Do you think that marketers are sometimes rushed into acting too soon, they don't do that groundwork, they don't necessarily have the time to do that groundwork. And therefore what they come out with is something close to mundane and mediocre too often?

Julie Atherton 05:10

Well, I think, in the early days of social and probably still, lots of businesses do operate this way a pressure to have volume over quality. So the amount of volume that people create in, you know, saying they've got to have X number of posts a day, or X number of posts a week. And I generally think, you know, we've got this quite big difference, haven't we, between paid and organic, social, and you can create that intensity through paying for social advertising. But what you're really trying to create for people who follow you for people are things that are going to go viral for things that are going to be the, you know, the cream of the internet, they're really quality content that you need to have on your organic posts. And I think that that means being really innovative, taking the time and not and recognising the amount of time it takes to do quality work on social media, you can everyone can do mediocrity, but that actually isn't really going to benefit you very much.

Ben Walker 06:18

It's sort of dangerous, Henry, if you do end up with the sort of slightly sort of routine stuff mundane, mediocre the words, reviews, you end up with lots of passive followership, but very low levels of engagement. And that's not where we want to be in social.

Henry Purchase 06:34

Yeah, there's definitely an element of you can gather. And that's actually the the main problem that I had with my TikTok account, we went insanely viral. But it meant that it was actually quite detrimental to what we wanted to achieve, because we built, we had a following that a lot of brands were impressed by. But we were there. And actually, the people didn't follow us because of us, they followed us because a one video that went very well. I may be in the middle ground at what Julie's saying, I definitely agree on the quality, I would say that, I would say there's definitely a case sometimes where you want to prioritise quantity a bit more, so that you can learn and almost force yourself into acting and getting content out there. Because I've seen a lot of people get scared and they want the quality to be bang on. But the only way you get the quality bang on is by practising or bringing someone in that's done it before, I guess. But definitely you want to get that what Julie's saying about getting that message, right? And knowing you're targeting, that's going to build up a higher quality following over time, which is going to be more valuable for your business.

Julie Atherton 07:51

And Henry, can I just add to what you're saying, by quality, I don't mean that everything has to be super high production values, and all of that kind of stuff. I'm talking about the quality of the network that you're creating that then is relevant to the content that you're gonna have. And also the quality of the creative idea, whereas the execution can be super rough and ready, because that's kind of what you want. But the quality of the thinking that's gone into that idea and why you're doing it is absolutely spot on.

Henry Purchase 08:20

There's a brand that does that very, very well at the moment. Check out Ryanair. Oh yeah, Ryanair, social media is a perfect example of that rough and ready sort of thing, the stuff that, you know, maybe I hate to stereotype, but maybe the older generations would look at and think what the hell are they putting on their social media, but then playing on the brand that they've sort of built and built on being a budget budget airline and getting the insane reach that they're getting, I'd imagine has been fantastic for their brand, because they're all over social media at the moment that do much better than a lot of the airlines that I've seen in the demographic that's going to be buying budget Airlines. So that's maybe a good example of what Julie means around the quality.

Julie Atherton 09:08

Yeah, and I think also, I was talking about this the other day with a colleague of mine, Ryanair, you know, we're trusting our lives when we put go on a plane. So you know, when somebody's going through that kind of safety card, we don't want them mucking about like they are on TikTock. But the way that they present themselves on TikTock, Ryanair, present themselves on tick tock builds trust, because we see the personality, the humanity, the people that work there, and we feel a connection with them, which is much better than kind of blue and grey, corporate speak kind of information, which, you know, might be the old way to build trust, but that isn't the way that they're building trusts, you know, with we're in them and you know, we're going to trust our lives with them and we get on a plane with them. So they really it's an important relationship, you know, but I think that's quite, you know, I think Ryanair is a great example,

Ben Walker 10:06

is a brilliant example you pops up on this podcast very often but in this debate it's quite interesting because it seems to me that when we're talking about quality, in this sense, we're talking about the quality of being on target and being able to build trust rather than being polished. You know, it's not, these aren't polished sort of BA style, beautiful films, beautiful soundtracks, etc, etc, etc. They're just on target. They're going out to do what they want to do, which is to build trust. And of course, as we know with O'Leary, endlessly remind his customer base, that they're cheap. You know, we, you know, he uses every opportunity to remind people that the reason we fly with Ryanair is one reason and probably one reason only in is that they are cheap. So there's a difference isn't there there is a dichotomy and an important dichotomy to understand when we're talking about social Henry Purchase between what quality that is means that it's well targeted, and quality, that means it's polished, it can be very well targeted, and very effective. While as JuLIE says, being rough and ready and not polished at all.

Henry Purchase 11:13

It's incredible alignment between your strategy, how you want to come across to your target customers, and aligning that with the content that you put out. You feel it when businesses do it well. And you also feel it when businesses don't do it well.

Julie Atherton 11:29

I love Gregg's social media, I think they, you know, they kind of make a Gregg's moment out of everything that's going on in the world, don't they? So whether that's you know, the vegan sausage roll or like an iPhone or kind of their kind of romantic dinners on Valentine's Day, and Gregg's you know, I think they just kind of take that moment very tongue in cheek and they like to kind of have a bit of banter with people like, you know, Piers Morgan and things like that, which kind of helps them. So I think they, you know, they've built their brand, I think on that personality, and they're, you know, a real challenger a brand, you know, in that sort of space where they compete with McDonald's and Subway and all these big global businesses. And they've managed to really grow that organisation and grow that business and on the back of, you know, digital marketing, but a huge amount of that is down to their social media activity.

Ben Walker 12:24

It's interesting, isn't it, though you if you get this right, if you get the targeting, right, if you get the way to engage your audience, right, if you understand what your audience wants as the examples we've given, there's still some technocratic stuff that you need to be able to sort of assess and typically volume. So how frequently we're posting is a question that marketers are faced with daily, you know, what's too much? What's too little? What's just right, the Goldilocks question if you like, and also where are we posting? You know, what platform Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, Tik Tok? How do you go about making those assessments? How do you work out where that the location and the frequency that is right for you?

Julie Atherton 13:04

So we might disagree here. So this might be quite interesting. Where which platforms do we go on? Many organisations are on too many. And then they don't have the resources and the budget to do them well. So first of all, I think you have to decide what your goal is, and then you need to decide where your audience is in volume, but also where they're behaving in a way that's going to be beneficial to your goal. So you know, loads of people are on Facebook, but whether they do anything there that might be useful to you or not is questionable for many, many brands actually. And, you know, if you're trying to raise brand awareness, then perhaps you want to be on a channel like Tik Tok or on Instagram, but you need to have an audience there who are engaging and active and you know, and helping you spread the word. If you're trying to build community engagement, you're going to or do customer service, you're going to be on different channels, and people are behaving very differently in those spaces. So it goes back to that audience again, how are they behaving on that channel? It doesn't matter if they exist there. But are they doing something that helps you achieve your objective in their natural behaviour, because it's really difficult to change people's behaviour, you can only facilitate them behaving how they naturally would do in that environment. So the channels pick less and make sure people are actually doing what you want there, they're not passive there.

Julie Atherton 14:38

And then the second question was around how often? Yeah, so basically, you're gonna have to test what's a good level for you. But I would suggest that there is a difference between kind of social graph type platforms and interest graph type platforms so where things can come come up on your Tik Tock in for you that are quite old. But because they are exactly you know the right keywords or they fit with the kind of interest that you've got, then you might see those, even though they're, they're quite old posts, the same will happen on LinkedIn, it's not really going to happen that way on a platform like Facebook. So I think there is a difference between the kind of longevity that some of your content might have, and how frequently therefore you need to post, depending on the platform. And I think you can dial up and dial down some channels depending on you know, the kinds of campaigns that you're doing. So you might be very low level on Twitter, but use it really actively while you're running an event or running a campaign that you you know, around, say, a sporting event or running a campaign around an entertainment or a news event where people are doing Twitter alongside what else that wherever else they're doing. So I think there's no no right answer. But I think I think we don't shouldn't feel pressured that we have to be in this rigid system of X number of posts a day or X number of posts a week.

Ben Walker 16:12

Yes, so Henry, marketers are these sort of built on or they're targeted on doing X amount of posts per day or X amount of posts per hour or whatever it have billed per as a team per week. And what Julie Atherton's saying is that's probably wrong, it's unwise one needs to be flexible, and agile in the way that we vary our output.

Henry Purchase 16:33

I agree 100%, particularly with the first point around, I call it your target customers watering hole. So where do they spend their time online? And I think what Julie touched on is also super important, around, you know, what activity, are they doing very much so, you know, the watering hole, if they go to that watering hole with all their friends, and they're just there to socialise, you probably don't want to go to that one, you want to go to the one where they're ready, they're ready to consume information, and they're more likely to be ready to engage with your brand. On the numbers point, I think it's I am as a, you know, many people listening to this, are going to be very busy, they're going to be people that I've got a lot on their plates. And that is probably why numbers is what people typically go to, because they see they know they've got to do social media, and they'll just say, Oh, I can just post every day or posts every two days, then at least I'm doing something and at least I'm going in the right direction. I am very much of the, for my businesses, I post as much as I can, on the platforms that I want to be on. Not worrying as much about quality. In the typical sense more as as we've spoken on this, this podcast, just I know what my customers pain points are. And I'm trialling and erroring all the time to see what I can get to stick. And actually Facebook is one of the platforms that I do that the most on because most Squarespace users tend to be on Facebook, and there's big groups on there. So it's maybe an example of Facebook can also be a great platform. It can also be a rubbish platform. And it is about trial and error in my opinion.

Julie Atherton 18:25

I've got another great example actually, b2b clients who work with b2c organisations, so they're selling their services to clients who then sell on to b2c customers. So as a b2b organisation, LinkedIn is probably their primary channel to market through social media in terms of building those relationships, doing b2b, social selling, and all of those kinds of things. But actually, they're their customers like the those betas, the businesses, don't go on LinkedIn very often, you know, they might go on once a week or twice a month or something. They're not on there all the time. And that's fine. Because of the way LinkedIn works in times of longevity of content and things. But where they are, every day all day is on Instagram, because that's where they're looking at what they're doing with their own customers. And they're looking at what their competitors are doing with their customers. So actually, a channel like Instagram is really important for a b2b business who sells to a b2c customer to be on to be regularly in front of them, reminding them who they are, and perhaps giving a different perspective on their business. And they would do through more of that thought leadership content that's going out on LinkedIn,

Ben Walker 19:49

Fantastic, you know you've mentioned LinkedIn, we've just done a LinkedIn poll actually. It is on CIMs LinkedIn page with 915 votes this week on this polls has captured the imagination. And we asked CIM members CIM subscribers, CIM LinkedIn followers, what they found most challenging about social media marketing and his results. 14% said replying to comments and direct messages so quite low, relatively. People find it challenging, obviously, but not not that many writing engaging captions 34% so around about a third said that, but here you go, nearly half 48% said keeping up with trends was the hardest thing that they found as marketers when working in the social media arena. And it does seem to change does it not add it alarmingly quick pace, landscape and social media? We've got a day job to do, how on earth Henry Purchase? Are we supposed to keep up with what's going on with the trend?

Henry Purchase 20:56

Putting me in the spotlight first. I also saw it says in the show notes as well, but in the comments most people said working with algorithms, which you know, is it's keeping up with a trend, it's how to keep up with the trends and be promoted by the algorithms. And it is super hard, it is really challenging. And that is where businesses that do have the budget, and know that they need to be found by their target customers on social media, I would look at hiring either a person you know, a Gen Z'der you may call them that is native on these platforms, and is keeping up with the trends. And the example that we're looking at is Ryanair, they will take wild and wacky trends from spaces that you wouldn't even associate with airlines and apply it to their space. Now, of course, it doesn't have to be a Gen Z person, I'm sort of generalising there, but it needs to be someone that is native on these platforms, and understands what trends are. Because the businesses that I speak to going viral isn't something that they've ever done that they've ever experienced on social media, it didn't exist 10-20 years ago, so you need someone that has grown up with that that's a normal and that able to identify things? But it's super hard.

Julie Atherton 22:17

There's a couple of different ways to do it, I think so one way is, you know, good old desk research or like getting the stats and facts and things like that. So do you know what the current numbers are? Do you know what the direction is that things are moving in, and all of those kinds of things. Because often when we're justifying budget, we need to be able to back it up with some figures, though, there's a really great report that comes out every year. And I just go to stats, and they update it every year. So you don't need to worry about finding it and you want to replace it there. So I think that's a great report, my favourite social media podcast, I don't have any relationship with this agency apart from bowing down with admiration in their kind of what they do. But Social Chain and agency, they were a Manchester agency, and I think they've gone global now they have a fantastic podcast, but they also have posts Facebook group for social media marketers, and they also have a hub where you can go on and you can sort all their updates and all that information by channel or by topic or by whatever. So it's just like a database of current social media stats, facts, information, trends, all the stuff that goes on with the algorithm announced on there, they're awesome. And then I suppose my third one, I agreed with Henry about what he was saying about really listening to people who are active. And I think one of the best ways for businesses to do that now in a relatively easy way, is many, many organisations now are using micro influencers. So they're using sort of pools of micro influencers, rather than on a paid for by per post basis, but in a more longer term relationship. So they're building a relationship with them, and they are working with them as a cohesive unit to amplify each other's content. So rather than saying I'm paying A for 10 posts, and B for 10 posts, I'll have five micro influencers 10 Micro influencers, and I'll be getting them together to work on a project so they all know each other are working on it and they're sharing and amplifying content that gives you a platform for feedback from people whose job is to get those platforms to work for them. And so you can have this as part of that contract. You know, they it's a really good idea to be getting them and finding a way for them to give you that insight back into your own social team and build that through. And I think that's been my best experience I've seen businesses do.

Henry Purchase 24:59

Fantastic three points, Julie, helped me come up with some ideas as well, particularly on the first one around desk research. Social media platforms do actually make it easier for you on LinkedIn, for example, you can put in a hashtag. And you can sort by the top posts within that hashtag. You can go on, TikTok, search anything. And you can sort by the top in the past three months, which is going to allow you to find what trends have done very well, in the last three months within your niche. Social media platforms do make it easier 100% The third point I think, is fantastic. Because these micro influencers are people that are going to try new things, because they're small, they're looking to grow, they're going to be going out there, they're going to be doing more riskier stuff. And you're able to then tap into the stuff that works most we've seen it as I said, we've got a travel blogger and Tik Tok and people tend to want to work with us not because that we're the biggest, but because we've had some viral videos and we've shown that we're about able to try things that are different that brands wouldn't try. And we're willing to go outside of the box to get them exposure that otherwise wouldn't be able to access.

Sophie Peterson 26:14

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Ben Walker 26:25

What about troubleshooting? We've talked a lot about the sort of general strategy overarching strategy and how we target there is always a bit of troubleshooting and firefighting when we're working in this space. In this arena, that's called an arena because it can be a little bit of a battleground, can it not? You know, I'm going back to the polls here. 14%. And not insignificant number of our respondents said that they found replying to comments and direct messages, the toughest. And you know, somebody somewhere on our team has got to deal with negative comments from time to time and attacks and perhaps things that we'd rather not be dealing with what we have to, how do we go about it? What sort of mindsets do we need to tackle that sort of stuff?

Henry Purchase 27:05

I guess it's always in, in all cases, integrity, right? It's always deal with it with a happy face smiley. And just remembering that people have got their own stuff going on in their life. They're probably not being nasty to you, or, or annoyed or dealing with X, Y, and Z because of you. It's because of other stuff. I had one recently, where person said that my software was a piece of crap. And they wanted an instant refund. Fortunately, I got that email before a member of my team and I was able to deal with it. And in the end, it was actually because they had the wrong version of the software. So it has nothing to do because it did a testing call with them two months before. So they had our old version that I manually installed, they forgot about that, tried to use it two months later, completely forgot. And therefore thought it was a it's a piece of crap. So people have that own stuff going on. And the only thing I could do in that situation was put a big smile on my face and just roll with it. Because that's all you can do. It's not personal. Sometimes it feels like it is but it isn't. And you've just got to go into it with it with a positive attitude as you do with everything in life and business.

Ben Walker 28:18

That sounds like an enlightened attitude. Julie, is it something you manage yourself?

Julie Atherton 28:22

Yeah, I think I think that's absolutely the right way to talk. And I, you know, Henry's attitude is completely right. And I think what we really have to do as brands is we own is we have to recognise that customer service, through social media is primarily this customer service channel that people want to communicate through. And therefore, we have to really train up our community management or customer service teams, or whichever they are to recognise when things are difficult or when things are just a norm and where it you can handle it in the normal where it's difficult. And I think when we do it really well. It's absolutely phenomenal. So I've just been updating my, my book, first book for a second edition and I spoke to Toby Horry, who's Tui and in the UK heads up brand and content there. And he during the pandemic, you could just imagine, I mean, you know what the travel businesses like yourself, Henry, during the pandemic, you know, they had hundreds of 1000s of people over you know, 10s of 1000s of people all over the world stranded, then they had to bring them back and then the government were changing the rules on what country you could go to every five minutes. And they said that their social media channels were the place where everybody was trying to find out what was going on trying to, you know, panicking about, you know, whether they could go on holiday or whether we're going to be stranded in different places. And I think they retrained huge numbers of their staff, you know who weren't selling holidays at that time, but actually to manage those social channels, and to give a really, really good customer service through that, and doing that in a way that I could kind of way that Henry's talking about empathetic understanding, recognising that for them, it's a really important thing. But they, you know, they may not be putting themselves over in a really great way, but there's no reason for you to behave any less professionally than you would do normally. So I think the biggest challenge I think, is when you haven't got the checks and balances in place to see what the general sentiment is or to recognise when a you know people haven't got the skills or training to recognise when a comment is really is a big problem rather than a small problem. And you don't have the number of staff trained to deal with it. That's when we have problems. But I think generally, it's not a problem for most businesses, I don't think.

Ben Walker 31:05

Do you think we sometimes need to take a little bit of a step back of a break from this stuff? I mean, some of us are managing our personal social media accounts as well as our professional ones and Henry I'm going to reveal to our audience is sat here is joining us from Bali, and he told me pre pod that he's about to go spear fishing tomorrow, which sounds to me like a great idea. But is it we it's always on? Isn't it? The new that for you guys, you're always there is always on? How on earth? Do you take a break?

Henry Purchase 31:33

Yeah it is relentless constantly, you know, because it's not. It's also the personal brand side of things that I do a lot. For my personal Instagram, I have a YouTube channel where I document growing my software business. So it is absolutely relentless, I suppose, one-two YouTube videos a week, one to two shorts a day. So it is hectic. And I will just I'm trying to get better and better, but have at least four hours a day where everything is just on aeroplane mode, no notifications, nothing coming in, to disconnect in general. Because not only for mental health wise, you know, you don't want to be attached to it all the time. But also for clarity, to take a step back and talk and get clarity over a lot of the important things that Julie was talking about. What are we looking to achieve who we're looking to target, which when you glued to a screen or days is going to be near impossible.

Ben Walker 32:31

What's your final big rules then to take away Julie to make sure that we're on message we're targeted, we're not going too deep and to avoid being completely swamped. When we're going out into this arena. This space which is so important, but is as Henry Purchase tells us relentless.

Julie Atherton 32:50

So as a strategist probably is no surprise that I'm going to say something from that point of view. But I genuinely think that the hardest thing is saying no. We are always being pushed to do more and more and more, when actually, we should do less and less and less. We should take a little bit more time to make the decisions about what things are going to make the difference. And so that that means coming from a strategic point of view, really understanding what you want to achieve as a business and what you're who you're who that audience is that's going to help you achieve it. And then just do that and do that really, really well. And all the rest of it don't do. But you have to put it into a strategy probably to justify it.

Ben Walker 33:37

What's your one key tip, if you're about to make the leap into this space.

Henry Purchase 33:40

I'd say drop your expectations. Don't go into it and expect that you're going to get it right straightaway. Don't expect that you're going to get it wrong. Just going in it with an attitude that we're going to try this we're going to do things that maybe will make us feel uncomfortable to begin with. But we're doing it because we want to progress the business, reach our target customers and move into the 21st century. So a lot of it is about attitude. And in general, you'll end up going in the right direction. But of course the strategy stuff is also very important as well.

Ben Walker 34:16

Henry Purchase Julie Atherton. Thank you both very much indeed for joining us today. I hope you've enjoyed it. It's been great to have you on the show. And I'd love to get you back on the show sometime soon. Thank you very much indeed.

Julie Atherton 34:28

Thank you,

Henry Purchase 34:28

Cheers Ben.

Sophie Peterson 34:31

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