Ep.23 – Putting Social Back into Social Media with Chris Bruno

Introduction [00:00:02] Welcome to the All About Digital Marketing podcast. The show all about digital marketing, digital marketing, digital marketing, digital marketing brought to you by Social INK, the digital marketing agency specialising in social media and content marketing for brave brands and forward-thinking SMEs. I’m your host, Chris Bruno, and as always, we’re here to bring you the most actionable tips, tricks, tools and insights to help you achieve more when it comes to your digital marketing. Subscribe to the show and be sure to share with a friend if you found something useful or interesting. You can find all the show notes and more information on www.AllAboutDigitalMarketing.co.uk

Chris Bruno [00:00:54] Hi, everybody. Welcome to another episode of All About Digital Marketing podcast. I’m Chris Bruno. I’m your host. I’m also the CEO and founder of Social INK, a digital marketing agency that’s been around since 2008. Recently, I’ve been talking a lot about putting the social back into social media. So I wanted to take this opportunity to talk to you guys about it and to just share a couple of my thoughts on why it’s so important that you guys start looking at this in the same sort of way. Especially if you’re a small to mid-sized business, start-up, a freelancer or even a solopreneur to use all the terms that kind of include everybody.

[00:01:31] Social networking when it first started and the social networks, like Facebook, like Twitter, were all about connecting people. Over the years, we’ve kind of started referring to it a lot more as social media. And it’s this idea that it’s just about content that’s thrown up and it’s for people in general and we’re all kind of there and we’re connected. But the reality is social media has kind of taken the focus away from the connection side of things. The people to people, the idea that actually it was about coming together with your friends, your family, meeting new people, whatever it might be, and what’s happening at the moment, or at least what I believe is happening at the moment, is that too many businesses and brands are focussing on pushing out social media content, that they’re not actually enjoying the social aspect. They’re not having those conversations and they’re not taking advantage of what I think is potentially the biggest opportunity for small businesses that we’ve ever seen since the beginning of time, technology. Anything that you want.

[00:02:29] Today, you have the ability to connect to one point five billion people through Facebook and you have the ability to talk to these people, to have conversations with these people, to find where they congregate, to understand who they are and to understand what it is that they’re looking for. And you’re going to say to me, yeah but adverts and budgets and Facebook is dead. And one thing another. I completely disagree with you on all of those comments.

[00:02:52] You don’t need to spend money to start having conversations or to engage in conversations on social media. That’s free. The only thing it takes is time, effort and a little bit of a strategy to know what it is that you’re actually going for. Let me explain a little bit. When you start dating someone, you don’t kick off by saying “You, me, marriage two, kids and a house. Let’s go.” You start by introducing yourself. You start by having that initial conversation. You start by asking them about themselves. Who are they? What do they do? Where do they live? Where are they from? What sort of things they like doing in their spare time? All of those things are conversations. It’s how you start that relationship and it’s how you build a relationship. And it’s also how you figure out whether you’re a good fit for them and whether they’re a good fit for you. The same is true when it comes to any business to business relationship. And I do not like the business to business term, because people forget that there’s actually a human being behind it. So under each of the bees, as a human being, who’s going to be talking to the other human being. And those two companies might end up signing a deal together, but it’s two people that are doing a transaction. When we start talking about these relationships and when we start building these relationships on social media, brands forget that it’s not just about throwing things at them. It’s not just about standing in a corner shouting out to a big void room and hoping for the best. It’s about having that interaction and that engagement. And so what sort of things can you do and what sort of ways can you put social back into social media? Well, here’s a couple of ideas for you.

[00:04:23] Number one, if you’ve already started building an audience, how many times have you asked that audience what they actually need? How many times have you asked your audience what they’re struggling with? How many times have you asked the audience what they would prefer to understand more about or what sort of things that they’re interested in, whether it be industry news or specifics about legislation that would impact them, or whether it’s just purely about understanding how to use your product better. In terms of what you’re actually creating for the content side of things. When we start asking questions, we learn 10x what we would do if we just carried on creating content, putting it out there and then monitoring to see what actually works and what doesn’t. The second thing is it also opens up conversations. When you ask a question and somebody replies saying, yes, I’m really struggling with X, this gives you an opportunity to address that person’s issue. If it’s something that you can do and that’s something that you do as part of your company, then that gives you a huge opportunity to build that relationship by helping them with something that they’re currently struggling with. The same thing is true if you don’t have an audience and you’re just starting out, it can be hard. You know, if I ask the question nobody is going to answer, but at the same time, you can now take the initiative and instead of starting the conversation, you can go and join in other people’s conversations. Nothing is stopping you from getting involved with Twitter chats, Facebook groups, LinkedIn groups, or simply commenting on your own network of your own small connections, group of friends. In terms of what they’re writing about, what they’re talking about and how that applies and how you can give value as part of that conversation. If one of your friends is out there and you like me, for example, you’re offering some sort of a marketing service and they’re saying they’re struggling to understand how to get more people onto their web site or even if they’re just commenting on the fact that Facebook doesn’t work. That gives you an opportunity to showcase your points of view, your opinion. And again, to bring value to them.

[00:06:20] Too many people are using social media like it’s a bullhorn. They’re standing there, they’re shouting, and literally they just keep throwing stuff out there. I talk about this a lot and it really annoys me sometimes when I do see a company’s Facebook page or their Instagram page or whatever it might be. And it literally is just filled with offer after offer after offer. There is no real enticement for anybody to start a relationship with that brand. And this is something that does piss us off as human beings. We’re not immune to not liking certain things. We don’t want things thrown at us and constantly sort of thrown in our faces. It’s the same reason why handing out flyers is probably one of the most horrific jobs in the world because 90 percent of people don’t want it. And the ones that do take it because they’re too polite to say no, end up throwing it in the bin six metres down the road. We have to understand that. We don’t want to become a one way conversation and just shouting into the void. So, again, I’m bringing this back to you guys as, put social back into social media.

[00:07:20] Everything you’re doing on social media should be about having conversations, developing those conversations. And ultimately, that’s going to lead to building better relationships with your audience and with other people that are out there. It should really help you to gauge a little bit better on who your target audience is, what they really want, what it is that they’re after, and how you can bring massive amounts of value to them consistently by simply asking them what it is that they want. So guys, girls, everybody out there. It doesn’t matter what stage you’re at if your conversations aren’t happening on social media. If you’re not getting back that insight as to who your audience are and what they actually want, and if you’re not taking the initiative to get involved in conversations and to start conversations, then from my point of view, you’re doing it wrong. Thank you so much for listening. And we’ll be back soon with the next episode of the All About Digital Marketing podcast.

Outro [00:08:16] The All About Digital Marketing podcast is brought to you by Social INK, a distributed digital marketing agency specialised in delivering results through online campaigns, whether it’s content marketing, social media, marketing, online advertising or web design. We’ve got you covered from strategy through to delivery. If you’re struggling with your digital marketing, get in touch today by simply visiting www.SocialINK.co