#007 How Can I Make An Impact On Social Media With Only A Couple Of Hours A Day?

If your business has a marketing team of 1-3 people, you need to use your time wisely. CEOs, business owners, and entrepreneurs often have a limited amount of time to spend telling their stories on social. When you’re starting a business is arguably one of the most critical times to get involved on the platforms. Beth Trejo and Taylor Grote, both CEOs and Founders of their agencies, share where you should spend your time on social if you only have a couple of hours a day.

Biggest Takeaways From This Episode

Don’t get intimidated by the platforms, they’re here to help. The easiest place to start is to take a quick photo on your cell phone showcasing your people and your journey and post it! Your fear of “breaking it” or posting something that’s “bad” is more than half the battle.
An authentic photo and video go a lot further than a commercial. Too polished content can really hurt your business on social.
Dedicate the 15-minutes it takes to respond to 100% of your messages. It’s incredibly powerful.
Take stock of what’s working best for you when trying to figure out what platform or strategy to go all-in on. Taylor’s podcast generates a lot of leads for him so he spends more time curating and producing that content than other strategies.
Reviews are the currency of the future. It doesn’t matter what industry you’re in; product, service, manufacturing, hiring, etc. Reviews matter.
Your easiest opportunity to resell is to respond to positive reviews and keep the conversation going.
Genius idea for restaurants to generate great content at 00:09:53

Want your question to be answered on the generation social media podcast? Tell us what it is here!

Transcript

This text below is a straight up audio transcript of the episode. In our humble opinion, we think the audio podcast sounds much better in its original form. We have not edited the transcription below so there are indeed some grammar errors (some quite funny, in-fact).

Well today we have Taylor Grote on our podcast. I was on his about a couple of, year ago, maybe about a year ago his podcast called The Sioux City Show. And Taylor, do you want to give people a quick introduction about yourself and just your business? Yeah, so I run a business called Honeywave Media and what we do is content creation for small companies and I guess like public figures who want to increase the level of what they're doing on social media. A lot of times they have an in house team or they already know that they need to be making content on social media but don't have the time to do it. And we kind of come in and just help them solve all the problems with content creation. Yeah. And Taylor is awesome and his team, they do a some really great video work and really take that video work and make it social friendly I guess in many regards.

So today we're going to talk about, this is a question that I got at one of my speaking events and I think, you know, you started the business how many years ago now? Two years ago, two years ago, and you have a team of one and a half. Okay. So, so you're obviously doing a lot of different things in your business, especially when you start. And so the question was how can I make an impact on social media with only a couple hours a day? And so I think I just wanted to kind of explore this question because people don't have a lot of time and especially CEOs are people starting businesses, but that's when it's super critical. So let's talk a little bit about it. If you were telling someone, especially a business owner, they're busy, they have a million different things going on, you have one hour today, what would make the most impact and how should they spend it?

Well, I think first and foremost, you know, like a lot of people get intimidated by the idea of content around their business or posts around their business. When it really shouldn't be all that much different than just like a casual post about what's going on in your life anyway. And most people are using social media in the first place. So you know, just taking a quick photo on your cell phone and like you've said before, like showing smiling faces and showing the culture of your company or finding what's actually going on and not having to like stage an event or put a lot of thought into one big photo, one big video. I think that you'll find over time taking 15 minutes a day to take a photo and post that across platforms is going to give you more bang for your buck in terms of the time you're spending on social media.

Yeah. And don't you think that people's fear and maybe just the maybe it's just they don't want to look bad or they don't want to say something wrong or they don't want to spell something wrong. Like that barrier and hesitation is half the time because it really doesn't take that long to take one picture and post it. Absolutely. It's when you're trying to do 35 different things to that picture, then we get a little bit more complicated. Absolutely. And I think that overthinking it is the biggest barrier that gets into everybody's way. And I think that you know, people, people really overthink what they're doing to the point where they kind of want everything to look like a polished

TV commercial. And I think that that's like almost working against them if they get too polished because people at this point are so attuned to what a commercial looks like or what an advertisement looks like, that when something is really polished and over-thought that it comes across as an advertisement or a commercial. And that's why people are on social media is because they don't want to watch TV commercials. Right. So they're really working against themselves if they go that direction.

Yeah, I agree. So, okay, so you have an hour. So how long do you think that just taking a PO photo in the moment for someone, let's say like yourself, who doesn't have a lot of hesitation or fear? How long does that take you take a photo posted on maybe Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn.

I mean, I did it earlier today, so I can say that it took me about three minutes to do that total and I, and it's gonna get a fair amount of engagement. It's going to do just as well as any other photo I would have taken, so.

Right. Okay, great. So then what else? What else? They have an hour. So let's say that takes somebody who doesn't really know what they're doing. 15 minutes maybe.

Yeah. Yeah. 15 minutes. Yeah, I think that and I, I, I mean every business, every industry and your personal network on social media is going to be different across everybody. So I'd say put priority into what works best for you. Weirdly enough for my business, I found that my podcast has generated the most like actual leads for me and is like really turned into revenue. And so I probably put more effort into my podcast and I put into anything else across social media. And I think that each business owner, anybody who has, was promoting a business on social media needs to take stock of what's working best for them and then kind of just attack that channel more so than the others.

Yeah, I agree. And so what about responding? I think that's one of the other things I would say for let's say another 15 minutes, maybe 30, depending on your type of business, but just answering the questions, the direct messages, the comments, the, I mean even just LinkedIn connections. How often do you try to do that? And is that part of kind of a daily routine that you would recommend to people?

Yeah, I think that this is, you know, I guess kind of the theme is overthinking things here. And I think that this is the thing that really people overthink is that it could be like, Oh, I need to craft a response to this. I need to craft a perfect response. But I think that responding like you would to a friend is what works the best on any type of comment that you're getting on social media. And obviously you want to respond to the negative ones with a little bit lighter touch. But just the acknowledgment and the response does a lot for the person who posted the question or the comment. So just taking the time to like take the 30 seconds to type something out quick I think. Does everything that you needed to accomplish?

Yeah. You know, I was at a I was on I was moderating and panel not that long ago. And we had a couple of panelists, they were in the music industry and this one gentleman had a huge following on Instagram specifically and he was saying that like, he's literally now, you know, he was the brand guy was the marketing, but he's the sales guy because he's constantly asking questions about guitars and about music instruments and he's literally like selling through Instagram direct messages. And I think that people forget that that's an option. Like, people are asking these questions on the platforms and sometimes I've responsible sell.

Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Like the easiest sell that you really ever have is to people that you have like a casual connection with. You know, anybody in sales is like, Oh, who are my friends and family who could benefit from this? You know, so like just take Kate, take that same concept and move it over into like the DMS on Instagram or the DMS on Facebook and kind of treated the same way if somebody's asking you about their products or about your products on there. And I think that those are the easiest ways to really close things. And what have you found like for chatter cake in terms of the best places to spend your energy and what type of content works best for you guys?

So I think we're not unique in this, but I really believe that like reviews are the currency of the future. I just, I know that there is technology being developed that sources reviews, whether that's on Facebook, whether that's on Google, and then they're just, they're not just for products anymore. They're for service-based businesses. They're for industrial businesses, they're for hiring and employees. And so I think the thing that drives me crazy across the board with reviews is that if someone gives you a gushing review, like you should acknowledge it and like that's your easiest opportunity to resell, right? Like so respond back to those. So if I had only a certain amount of time, I would make sure that I got back to all my people that left really good reviews. And if there was negative ones, especially negative ones that carried some weight meaning they weren't just like people venting or ranting and I wanted to address something, Oh, I would be right on that.

And I will check that every single day. And I think people forget that reviews don't just come in the form of like quote-unquote reviews. Like they come in. Yeah, they come in comments, they come in indirect messages. They come in, chats all over the place. And I think just, it's one of the best pieces of advice that I got when I started my business was if someone calls you, call them back. And I think that needs to translate into social and every other channel like as much as you possibly can. Obviously there's always going to be that, you know, one phone call that you forgot to respond to, but just making sure that you're getting back to people and helping them out even if you can't help them, but just acknowledging like, thank you for your message. We don't do this or this isn't a great place for us.

Definitely. And I think that, you know a lot of like retail businesses or restaurants or coffee shops or whatever the case may be really under utilized. Like how you say that reviews aren't necessarily

The stars they leave on your Yelp. It's also in a situation like, Oh, these people posted a photo on Instagram today and tagged their location as my coffee shop. Like taking the opportunity to reshare that or whatever the case may be, or credit them with the actual photo and reposted to your account. I think is going to go a lot farther than, you know, worrying about coming up with your own content for that day. That's like another way to utilize like I guess a soft review stuff. Right. And I think too like spending your time training the masses and like a restaurant for example. I, when I go to restaurants, I always look at the Google images for food. Like I want to see visuals of the real food. And so if I was a restaurant owner, I would be putting stuff at the tables to show people how to take good pictures.

Like giving them the apps to you is like, here's a foodie app. You should try to take it and post it on our Google page. Like just that little thing could change their sales trajectory. And it's just me printing out something, putting on a table or talking to the guests about, Hey, if you guys are taking pictures of your food, we'd love to see those on our Google page. Because that's going to get you're, you that exponential impact as opposed to just like you taking a picture. That's a great point. As well too is like, I think that when people start looking towards social media and digital media to promote their business, they just kind of go all in and one track mind on that and forget everything that's worked historically for them. So the idea of printing out something that you can actually hang up on the wall in your business or even you know, table tents for your tables is going to you know, that tells people, Hey, post about us on Instagram if you enjoy your meal.

And I think that those are super underutilized if businesses aren't doing it already. Right. And I think people also forget like business owners forget that their businesses are not always easy to find on these channels. I mean, how many times have you been at a restaurant or at a business? Then I'm like, Oh, this was a great experience. I want to leave a review and then it takes me 10 minutes to try to find their handle or try to find their location or their name. Absolutely. You know, if they have like shop or eat or do or something in front of it or their name is very common. So if you just lay that out for people, it's probably going to help just that sourcing and searchability. Definitely. Especially like Instagram where the search can be a little funny sometimes.

Right.

All right. Well I think that that gives us some really good takeaways for if you have a small amount of time and how you can really make an impact for your business. Thanks Taylor. Thanks for having me on.

We're going to look at take stuff. Oh, okay. Well we can do that too. Let's exploit this man.

Okay. So on this podcast, one of the things that we like to do is our goal is really to break the barriers of what everybody thinks about social media. And part of that is we get questions all the time, like the young people are on Facebook, the old people are in Snapchat. Like we always get these generational conversations. And our goal is really to show one that's not necessarily what the data says, but two, we can't put people in buckets based on their age and or their jobs, et cetera. So we want to look at time reports because that really tells where you're spending time on a short amount of of days. Typically like an iPhone. It's the last seven days. So Taylor, tell us a little bit about where you've spent your time and maybe a little dialogue of is that typical or if you had a special instance this last couple.

Yeah, so I have to preface this by saying I'm coming off labor day weekend and I spent the last two days in the airports. So these are pretty inflated numbers. But you know, Oh this is horrible. Over the last week I spent 45 hours on my phone. Oh my goodness. Yeah. Horrific.

I mean airports. So I, I go through my data and my battery in airports cause it just gets so boring.

I, I think I went zero to a hundred twice yesterday on my, on my cell phone battery. So exactly the type of time I'm spending on it. But my most used app is Reddit by far, which after finding Reddit, if nobody's on Reddit yet or if you're not on it, you need to figure it out because it's honestly actually one of my best promotional tools.

Wait, can we stop there for a second? Because I think that there's some really good information that, so if people don't know what Reddit is, or can you give them one instance where they may want to use Reddit? Like tell me something interesting. Like if I'm just a general user, like what would Reddit give me.

Great. So Reddit calls itself the front page of the internet and it works by combining hundreds of thousands of communities and they all work on an upvote system to curate what posts rises to the top and what post makes it to your feed. And the communities can be extremely niche. Like one of my favorites is one called, Oh, I don't really dig the title of this, but the name of the subreddit is called amateur room porn. And it's like just people who are just average people, not like style bloggers or interior designers who post pictures of their room. That's usually like I decorated this whole room with furniture from Ikea. And then in the comments though, yeah, the, you can say, Hey, where'd you get that nightstand and the'll usually send you a link to it. And I found that like whatever niche interests you have, there's a way to find the community forward on Reddit and yeah, so being active is a huge part if you're going to, if you're going to try and promote anything on it, you want to have been active before you just went in there and dropped an ad.

Right. So yeah, and like for me, the Sioux city subreddit is actually one of the best ways to reach a community. I think that there's a thousand users in this, then the Sioux City subreddit that are really engaged every time I post something in there. And you know, like The Sioux city Show usually sees about a hundred views come directly from one posting on the city sub Reddit.

Yeah. I think it's just such a, it's like such a connected tribe around topics. One of my favorites is I love when, I can't remember what the specific subreddits are called, but when they have musicians or artists answer questions from people, like they're so authentic on that platform way more so than any other one

That, so that specifically is called AMAs. But yeah, there's like subreddits, it's called listened to this. We are the music makers audio files where, you know, each one has a little bit difference and what type of posts are accepted there. But each one of them can be like a wealth of information, interest for anybody interested in that field. Yeah. Okay, cool. So Reddit, what's the, Oh wow. And then next is Safari. Cause I'm Wikipedia and things all the time. And then we go into balloons tower defense five that I've been playing since high school. And then we get into the social media networks Facebook, two hours and 52 minutes. Twitter, Instagram, all about an hour and a half. Youtube, right over an hour. So yeah, pretty. I'm not, I'm not so ashamed after we get past that 15 hours on Reddit in the last week. But yeah.

So, you know, if businesses wanted to reach you, like you are a CEO, a business owner, a young professional a guy, obviously, what would, where would be the place where your attention is? The stickiest

My attention is definitely the stickiest on Reddit. But after that, probably Instagram, maybe Twitter, Twitter, I don't actually, I've kind of gotten my Twitter timeline to a point now where like, I don't really see any brand content, which is kind of the way I like it. And I think that, you know, that's kind of a good point that most people try to see as little advertisements as possible. So, you know so make your advertising cyclists yeah. And make it, make it suck less, but make it be like authentic something that people want to see and it's not an advertisement. Right. All right. Well, thank you very much for sharing that with us and we appreciate your time today. Thank you.

ChatterkickOctober 23, 2019social media best practice, social media tip, strategy