Transcription:
– [Announcer] Welcome to Sarah Squared, the podcast for all things marketing, business growth, branding, and social media. Sara Leisinger is the owner of Who’s Lance Digital Media, serving start-ups and solopreneurs. And Sarah Banowetz owns Banowetz Marketing, a full-service agency located in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Together, they make up Sarah Squared, dedicated to the inspiration, motivation, and education of growing companies.
Sarah Banowetz: Hey, hey, hey.
Sara Leisinger: Welcome back.
Sarah Banowetz: Welcome.
Sara Leisinger: We’ve been waiting for you.
Sarah Banowetz: That sounds a little creepy, Sara.
Sara Leisinger: I know. Totally, you should’ve seen the look on my face. Went wide eyed and everything.
Sarah Banowetz: You can’t look creepy, though. It wasn’t creepy.
Sara Leisinger: I kind of look-
Sarah Banowetz: Your voice was creepy, but your face is not creepy.
Sara Leisinger: That’s really nice. I can make my face look creepy. Anyway, today’s topic. So you joined us on a very good day, because we are going to get controversial up in here. Hopefully not too controversial, because hopefully this is just common sense.
Sarah Banowetz: I think this is going to be new information for a lot of our listeners.
Sara Leisinger: Maybe. I could see that, I could see that.
Sarah Banowetz: I get this a lot. I feel like this is one thing that I have to mention to people a lot.
Sara Leisinger: It’s the difference between a business owner who is really nervous about increasing their bottom line, and a business owner who is maybe a bit more seasoned. Why are you looking at me like that?
Sarah Banowetz: I just spilled water all over myself, but then also, I just like talking with you, Sara.
Sara Leisinger: Oh, that’s really nice. I drooled a little bit, if you want to know the truth. I’m drinking coffee. This shouldn’t be a surprise by now, I mean, you guys should just know that I’m drinking coffee.
Sarah Banowetz: We record these on Friday afternoons.
Sara Leisinger: Yes, and so it’s super impressive that I’m drinking coffee.
Sarah Banowetz: We have a little too much fun over here at the Sara(h) Squared studio.
Sara Leisinger: We do.
Sarah Banowetz: I hope that translates to our listeners, that they’re like, “Oh yeah, these people are fun.”
Sara Leisinger: Yeah.
Sarah Banowetz: We’re a little crazy.
Sara Leisinger: I think that’ll translate, too.
Sarah Banowetz: That definitely is going to translate.
Sara Leisinger: [inaudible 00:02:07]
Sarah Banowetz: If it doesn’t then there’s issues.
Sara Leisinger: Big shout out to our editor, Ian, because he helps us convey the crazy. Thank you, Ian.
Sarah Banowetz: We should give him a shout out here. Do you know that Ian Crumley, and Akash, they are Gold Revere, so it’s a local musical … I don’t know how they describe them, but go to SoundCloud. I think it’s SoundCloud, and look up Gold Revere.
Sara Leisinger: Okay.
Sarah Banowetz: That’s Ian and Akash.
Sara Leisinger: I’m going to do it. I’m going to do it.
Sarah Banowetz: Go give them a bunch of likes, subscribes, everything that you do for those kind of things on SoundCloud, or whatever it is.
Sara Leisinger: They’re better than us.
Sarah Banowetz: They’re awesome. Ian does our editing for us. Hi, Ian.
Sara Leisinger: Hi, Ian.
Sarah Banowetz: Whenever we have a part that he needs to cut out, we kind of talk to him a little bit.
Sara Leisinger: Yeah.
Sarah Banowetz: I wonder if he laughs?
Sara Leisinger: Probably. You said he thinks we’re funny.
Sarah Banowetz: That is true, he did say that we’re funny. I think he thinks that you’re funny.
Sara Leisinger: I mean, looks aren’t everything.
Sarah Banowetz: Have you even met Ian?
Sara Leisinger: No, I’ve not. No, I’ve not. I just talk to him through the microphone, talking to an invisible person.
Sarah Banowetz: And you talk to him on Messenger.
Sara Leisinger: I do. I talk to him on Messenger, so, so far, Ian is completely an enigma. It’d be nice to meet you someday, Ian.
Sarah Banowetz: Some day, you guys will meet.
Sara Leisinger: Thank you for making me sound okay and less crazy.
Sarah Banowetz: He’s so busy with show choir right now.
Sara Leisinger: Show choir.
Sarah Banowetz: Back to … what was our topic today?
Sara Leisinger: Our topic today is the social in social media. Sarah came up with this topic, Sarah Banowetz, so this is Sara Leisinger talking. Sarah Banowetz came up with this topic. What made you want to talk about this?
Sarah Banowetz: The reason I want to talk about this is because I talk with a lot of business owners who have been in business for a while, and they are used to old, traditional media, and by the way, I am a marketing director across all avenues of marketing, so I’m not bashing traditional media at all.
That said, I think that they really focus on … when they hear the words social media, I think they’re really focused on the media part, and they try to do, or they think that they need to do social media the same way they did traditional media. For example, a video that you would put on social media needs to be designed and produced the same way that a commercial would.
Sara Leisinger: No.
Sarah Banowetz: And you don’t.
Sara Leisinger: No, no, no.
Sarah Banowetz: And it’s focused on what? What I say is focus on the word social in social media, not media in social media.
Sara Leisinger: I’m with you there, so we can dive in there. I see that too; it’s not just with established owners. A lot of times when people are diving into the social media thing, they kind of view it as a technological coat of paint to their current traditional media.
I am not bashing traditional media. I think it’s got its time and its place, but just like the carrier pigeon went out of style, some of this stuff will die, and there will be moving toward more digital fronts, but right now, those medias are still in play.
You wouldn’t take a newspaper ad, and just tape it, and put it on the television, so you can’t do the same thing on social media.
Sarah Banowetz: That’s a great analogy.
Sara Leisinger: It’s not mine, it’s actually Gary Vee’s.
Sarah Banowetz: Perfect.
Sara Leisinger: What I am looking at with the social in the social media, so you know how big of a proponent I am for considering the person on the other side of the screen.
Sarah Banowetz: Yeah.
Sara Leisinger: When it comes to your social media, I am all about providing that value for … I’m sitting on my hands, because I’m about to pound on the table, and it makes noise.
Sarah Banowetz: Sara is a table pounder.
Sara Leisinger: I do, I pound on the table all the time.
Sarah Banowetz: [crosstalk 00:05:52].
Sara Leisinger: I’m just like … I have to sit on my hands. I see the look, and I’m like, “Okay, I’m going to sit on my hands.”
Focusing on the person on the other side of the screen. You know how big of a proponent I am of that, how I really think that the only thing people are giving you when they focus on your social media, they are giving you the only thing in life that they cannot get back, which is their time.
I understand that people waste time, but that’s not really any of my never mind. I can’t control what they do with their time. What I can control is am I putting quality for them to consume? Is it valuable to their life? Does it make them smile, does it make them inspired, does it help them feel smarter? What does it do for them?
That way, with creating across however many platforms that you’re creating, the goal would be to keep you top of mind, tip of tongue, and to keep you trusted, so that when it does come time to make a buying decision, your name is right there.
Sarah Banowetz: It’s about building relationships, which is the social part.
Sara Leisinger: Absolutely, and there’s the relationship part of it, if you were to compare it, like I said, very loosely to a current sales cycle, to me, social is all about retention of a current audience that you have, and also building a rapport with a new audience, because it’s all referral based.
Sarah Banowetz: I’m sitting here thinking about what business owners … what is the actual feet on the ground implementation steps of the social in social media, versus the media in social media? The actual implementation, just like FYI, this is the way you need to be going.
If you were to take an advertisement, a 30 second advertisement that you were going to put on Channel 9, and you took that, and you put it on Facebook, I believe that you will not have strong ROI, because everyone on social media is going to grab on, and know that is an advertisement.
So you don’t want your social media ads to look like ads, you want it to look more like a social interaction, correct? So a video for social media would be more, well, it would be less produced, or at least look less produced, be more engaging to have conversation, right?
So I feel like that is the implementation. The take away from this podcast. The social in social media, instead of the media in social media, is that the way that you communicate on social media needs to be highly relational, and highly social, and not focused on really strong, old media techniques.
Sara Leisinger: With the old media techniques, it was basically … the audience had no way to interact with your message, and they had no way to take ownership in your brand, which left you kind of powerless. It left you hoping for ROI, whereas now, you can do some social listening, and actually see the ROI.
Because you’re checking the engagement, and so what I do is, again, I create a vortex around a brand using three to ten platforms, and what we’re looking at there, is again, keep you top of mind, tip of tongue. We’re building relationships with these people, so people are buying into the brand.
They trust the brand, they’re willing to interact with the product, because you gave them enough solid value that they want to purchase the product or the service. It’s very much on the giving end. I would strongly and highly encourage you to have an abundance mindset.
It’s like, “Well, I’ve experienced a lot of loss.” My question there for you then, is were you checking the things that needed to be checked? Were you just throwing some stuff out there, and hoping it would work, or did you have some key performance indicators that you were looking for?
What were you looking to accomplish with this specific ad? Was that the fifth ad that you put out that week about trying to get somebody to buy something, because if that’s the case, you’re wrong.
Sarah Banowetz: This needs to be a whole other podcast, and we do need to add this to the agenda, because you really touched on this, and I think this is a big deal. For people who have tried social media and it has failed for them, and then to think that it doesn’t work, we really need to have a whole entire podcast just dedicated to that.
Sara Leisinger: Maybe we’ll write that down, and talk about things like, okay, change copy, do things like AB testing, so see if the video works better, or if a comic strip works better. Obviously within the context of the brand and the platform, but if you put a 50 minute video on IGTV, that might not perform as well as if you put it on Facebook or YouTube.
And depending on your audience, too. So if you have a-
Sarah Banowetz: Did you say 50 minute?
Sara Leisinger: 50 minute, yeah.
Sarah Banowetz: Okay.
Sara Leisinger: Some people do. They’ll put a 30 to 50 minute talk on Facebook, and then they’re like, “I don’t understand why people don’t want to watch it,” and I’m like, “Well, are you that popular? Can we start with a three minute video, and see if people will watch it for just a second? Just a hot second.”
Then they’re like, “Well, I think people need to know what I have to say.”
And I’m like, “Okay, true, probably, unless what you’re saying is hot garbage.” The thing about it is right now, a lot of the companies that I work with are building awareness, and people just need to know who they are, and what they do. So putting a 50 minute video on Facebook is completely counter-intuitive, because people don’t know them enough to watch them that long.
But a three-minuter, and kind of building that up over the course of time, that could work.
Sarah Banowetz: Let’s wrap this podcast up for the day. If you want to get in touch with Sara Leisinger, how would we do that, Sara?
Sara Leisinger: Www.whoslance.com, or check me out on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, and LinkedIn.
Sarah Banowetz: And I am Sarah Banowetz, and you can find me at banowetzmarketing.com, or [email protected], and we’ll talk to you later. Bye.
Sara Leisinger: Sara out.
Sarah Banowetz: Sarah out.
Let’s try that again, and we’ll talk to you later. Sarah out.
Sara Leisinger: Sara out.
Sara Leisinger of Who’s Lance Digital Media can be found on LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram.
Sarah Banowetz of Banowetz Marketing can be found on LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram.
