Ep.26 – Why Being Social Stands Out with Chris Bruno

Intro [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 [00:00:43] Hi, everybody. I’m Chris Bruno and I’m your host of the All About Digital Marketing podcast. And also the CEO and founder of Social INK, a distributed digital marketing agency. Today, I’m really excited. I get to record another episode from Bali, where I’m currently remote working from here for a few weeks, and I wanted to talk to you guys a little bit about something that I do go on and on about. But it’s what I call the attention war. Right now, I believe that everybody is in one of the biggest attention wars that you could ever imagine. And it’s all comes down to social media. The simple amount of content being created on a daily basis, even on a minute by minute basis, is absolutely crazy. But something that I noticed when I arrived here in Bali is that actually it’s happening all over and we see these patterns again and again. And I wanted to talk to you guys all about it a little bit today and also talk in a sense about what you can do differently and what some people are doing differently that helps to make that difference.

Chris Bruno [00:01:55] When I arrived in Bali, the first thing you get is you’re bombarded at the airport by taxi, taxi driver, driver, taxi. And then fair enough. You understand these things happen, but it’s quite a pushy kind of atmosphere. After that, I made my way to an island called Gili T, Gili Trawangan. And the same thing happens as soon as you get off the boat. You’re bombarded by taxi, snorkelling, diving, hotel, restaurant, bar, day trips. What do you want basically, and what people don’t realize is just like we’re doing online, people are just constantly in your face fighting for your attention. And they’re doing it in a way that doesn’t necessarily bring the results that you would hope. It’s like a war of attrition rather than a cleverly crafted attack or even a strategy.

Chris Bruno [00:02:42] What’s interesting for me when I watch this is I realize the similarities, how quickly we can flick through on social media and not really care about certain bits of content and also how quickly people can literally just barge past the people that are constantly pushing and constantly banging into people trying to say sell, sell, sell, sell, sell, sell all the time. When I talk about this a lot. When I’m doing a talk, whether I’m doing a coaching session, whatever it might be, I often bring up the idea of in retail, for example. You don’t go into a store and get told by somebody 20 percent off, buy now! You walk into a store and most good retail experiences will start with. Good morning. Good afternoon. How can I help you today?

Chris Bruno [00:03:26] And that simple social element of asking a question is so much more rewarding than trying to sell somebody on the first instance. Examples of trying to do the sell, sell, sell, and we’ve all seen it.

Chris Bruno [00:03:41] And yes, there is a time and a place for it sometimes in terms of offers or whatever it is, but it’s basically the equivalent of somebody who throws flyers in your face on the street corner or the person who literally walks up to you in the street and says, do you want to buy something? It doesn’t have that impact and it doesn’t have that ability to start and build a relationship. So what are the sort of things that people do here on the island, for example? Well, instead of sell, sell, sell all the time. Some of these guys are quite clever. What they do is they know it’s a small island and they start recognising people, if you’ve been there for a while. And they always ask you, hey, boss, how you doing? Where are you from? Is this your first time on the island? And they just keep that kind of conversation going and they start building something.

Chris Bruno [00:04:26] Now, the next time you walk past, you’re almost looking for him to say, hi, good morning, how are you? But what happens is that by seeing those same faces, by slowly having those conversations, when you then think about, OK, I need to actually book a tour, I want to book a snorkelling day out or I just need to change some money withdrawn back to that person who actually didn’t push anything on us, who didn’t make us feel awkward and tried to desperately sell us something that we weren’t interested in, but the person that we’ve actually started building a relationship with and a bit of trust with, because he hasn’t tried to push anything on me. That’s the person I go back to now, because I know that I can go back.

Chris Bruno [00:05:04] I know the guy, sort of. And actually I know that he’s not there, just trying to hammer everybody each way. Now, again, this is a bit of a technique. This is a bit of a trick. But here’s the main thing that I’m talking about when it comes to your social media, the exact same is true. People are forgetting to put the social back into social media. When social media platforms started, they were called social networks. The idea was connecting people. What happens today is people are literally like those guys waiting for the tourists to get off the boat. To then go sell, sell, sell, sell, sell. And that’s all they’re doing. They’re just pushing, banging, banging, banging. Hey, hey, hey. Buy buy buy. And what’s realistically happening is online, it’s an absolute attrition war where conversion rates are under 1%. So it means you’re just having to keep throwing stuff out there to hope that enough people see it to keep banging into those people to just get that one or two sales. But what happens if we did like some of the guys on the island and actually we started to establish those relationships. What if we actually created real interaction online, started conversations, asked questions, got to know our community so that when they are ready and when they want to have something, they know exactly who to come to because they do have the start of a relationship and they have started to build trust. This is one of the biggest opportunities that I can see right now for businesses of all size, whether big or small. Social media represents an opportunity to have two way conversations, to engage in conversations, to better understand your existing customers, your prospects, or even the target audience that you think is right for you and to find out what that actually looks like.

Chris Bruno [00:06:48] I think we all need to find more ways to engage in and start conversations online. It’s how we build relationships. It’s how we build trust. And ultimately, it’s how I believe more leads and more sales are created. Let’s face it, it’s all about making more money and increasing revenue. But there are multiple ways to skin a cat. If you’re looking for real guidance and help to actually get those conversations started to build that relationship with your audience, then feel free to check out more on the Social INK website or even on the All About Digital Marketing podcast, where I do talk about the attention war that we’re currently going through. And I also talk about why I believe social media is still one of the biggest opportunities right now for businesses of all sizes. Thank you very much for your time, everyone. If you like the episode, please feel free to leave us a comment on your favourites or your favourite podcasting app. We’re live on now on Spotify, on Google Play store, and of course, the Apple Podcast store. Or if there’s anything that you’d like us to talk about, feel free to hit us up. It’s www.AllAboutDigitalMarketing.co.uk.

Chris Bruno [00:07:57] And you can pick out anything that you’d like us to talk more about. Thank you very much and have a great day.

Outro [00:08:04] The All About Digital Marketing podcast is brought to you by Social Inc. 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