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Content Creation with Serving Social’s Elijah Whites
We got our guest, Elijah Whites from Serving Social, to talk about some of those good things that come along with marketing.
Thank you.
We hear a lot of questions from people like, “How do you come out with so much content? How do you identifying what you should be talking about to your audience, to your tribes, to your marketing and to your email?” We spent a little bit time talking about some of the ways to curate content on there. I know you’ve got some pointers, some things, some items that you can discuss and put together on paper to talk about. Why don’t we go from there first?
When you’re looking at content or what type of content that you need to create, you’ve got to know who you’re trying to sell to. That’s that one thing everyone always tells you. Figure out who your audience is or who your customer is. Once you figure that out, then it’s all about looking at maybe their interest and what they’re into and the channels that they’re using. Then you can start figuring out what topics you want to talk on based on their interest and maybe how that correlates with your business. From there, it’s important for you to figure out what you’re capable of as well. You want to get stuff out there, but you also don’t want to start something and just quit. Do something that you can be consistent with because you can always grow, but you’ve got to start somewhere.
You’ve got to plant the seed and then you go into something that’s better than what you’re doing now. For instance, if you want to do video but you’re not capable of video. The video is a popular content type; live video, promotional video, anything video because we’re very visual people. That’s popular but if you don’t have the means to do that then you might want to think like, “Can I take a good photo?” Maybe you’re good at Photoshop or you realize that you should be using Canva and you’re creating some fun and cool graphics in Canva. You’ve got to start there but at the same time, know your audience and that’s how you’re going to know what you want to start creating for them.
Content Creation: We all need to start somewhere and you can begin by identifying your audience.
You said something valuable there about planning in the long run. It’s not a short sprint. This is like a 100-mile marathon. You have to pace yourself. We’ve seen people that come gangbusters right out of the gate and something they’re all excited. Talking about everything and then a week later they’re doing something else. Another week later, you can’t find them anywhere. They disappeared like smoke rings in the dark.
They’ve put too much feel in the beginning and they burned themselves out. Then there wasn’t anything left. That’s why we always tell folks you’ve got to build that narrative. You’ve got to tell a story. Tell a story about maybe you’re just getting into a business or you’re just starting something. You tell that story, mixed with your marketing and what you’ve been up to. It’s something that you can create content on a regular basis with. You have to be consistent. If you’ve just come out of the gate, you hit everybody and then people might think you’re cool. If you can’t stick around, then you’re clearly not trustworthy or you don’t know what you’re doing and then you couldn’t maintain it. A lot of times you see some of these companies that do these big marketing pushes, but then you never see anything about them again, clearly it didn’t do that well of a job. The brand isn’t there anymore and they’re not being able to hit those channels anymore.
I was talking to a couple of guys. I call it a tale of two investors and he was like, “I’m just lazy. I won’t do anything. Instead of me going to my computer and market, I want to take a nap.” You can continue to do that, but not getting more than that. Then I talked to another individual who’s closing a couple deals like the other guy. He was like, “I want to do something but I’m not sure. I feel like I’m over-analyzing that I have to do all these things.” Find out what you are most comfortable initially, whether it’s doing a live video or a live selfie or doing an infographic in Canva or some other thing. Doing it consistently whether it’s once a day or once a week. Definitely more than once a week it would be better but a lot more than once a month.
A good goal would be to post at least three times a week. If you’re going to start out, three times a week is ideal. Based on three times a week initially starting out that’s something that’s manageable. You can figure that out. Then when you’re posting on those, being able to find a good photo, it’s very visual. Don’t overanalyze it. I’m creative. I look at these and I’m like, “We could bring in these elements. I could do this. Then I could fade this out in the back.” It’s a simple graphic. Stop overanalyzing, “This is too much text. This is too much this.” It’s almost like the graphic is even though there’s no sound, it’s too noisy. When I could have had that one good photo and maybe you said one word across it. Nike does it all the time, Just Do It. It’s a bunch of inspiring footage. Maybe they’re not the best example to use, but they’ve got great messaging with that. Don’t over analyze it. Don’t look at all the things that you should be doing with social media like, “I don’t you know if I can create a good enough piece.”
Get a good-looking photo. Post that photo and then copy down below where you type out your thoughts. Tell a story. Give some context behind that photo and why it pertains to your business or maybe it was something inspiring that you saw. Getting something out there, you’ll start to be able to gauge what people are liking and what they’re not. If you don’t have a cool graphic, then don’t post it. Get a photo. Go out there and take some photos with your phone. That’s something too if you realize, “I’m not capable of creating maybe a graphic on a regular basis. Maybe it’s a video but I can take photos on my phone.” Every time you’re out and about remember, “I want to take a photo. I want to make sure I take at least one or two photos of something that maybe is a part of my content categories.” Knowing your content categories will allow you to understand what photos you should be taking or what you should be looking for.
One of the things you and I talked about was the easiest time. Between now and the end of the year the first year, now is the easiest time to post something that people are going to look at. You can be the least creative because you have so many things going on. We’ve got Halloween coming up, Thanksgiving coming up. You’ve got Christmas and all the Christmas parties and New Year’s. All those things. Many people are used to getting those Christmas cards with the one-page story about your relatives’ family. The annual 401 like, “Hi, I hope you all are having a great year. Bob’s still unemployed for five years looking for that management. Little Susie is still cross-eyed from the mule kicking her in the face. Little Johnny has a very bad case of a rash we can’t identify. I’m still depressed and drunk half the time as I write this.” They share this story about the year. People are like, “What do I say?” Just start.
I had a gentleman I talked to. He was like, “I’ve got these two deals that we run in a family situation with my parents.” I said, “Chill out. Don’t be hard on yourself. You’ve got two assets. You’re working on the third one. Tell those stories about the three deals. You don’t have to do it all at once. Pick one property. If you have a good photo of it, great. Let’s do an email out to your database talking about that deal and where you’re at. Next week, it could be deal two and the third week could be your third deal. Then you can talk about what else is going on. Share your journey because it’s what social media is all about sharing the story. Especially as an entrepreneur, you’re taking steps or taking action separates you from where everybody else is too scared to take action.
That’s where people lose focus to is they think because it’s not happening now, maybe it’s something I can’t talk about. Social media is about connecting, especially with Facebook and everything that’s their whole thing. It is connecting to the community and sharing that story. Being able to take these things as they develop like I’ve got three houses. You could probably divide all three of those up into even long story and each one of those assets could take care of the next three months’ worth of your content if you plan it out correctly, and you know exactly what you want to do. A newsletter I’ve seen has been one of these pieces that people started out with. They started out with a newsletter because there’s more like this long form piece of content where we’re giving you an update on what’s happening now and what’s in the future. Then, “Here’s a recap of what we talked about last week and I wanted to update you on that as well.” You’re keeping people on and even talking about the struggles. You’re talking about how maybe that deal that you almost lost but last minute you were able to save it, and how great that was.
Halloween is coming up. Let’s talk about spooky deals. We’ve got an entire 30 days on spooky deals and that’s the whole thing. You play it off like what a lot of these bigger mainstream media are doing with TV shows and 31 Days of Fright or whatever it is. You build this something to continue to bring people. You’re telling the story. I thought it was funny, I was doing a video with a guy and he’s remodeling the inside of his shop. I was in there and was like, “What are we doing here?” He was like, “We’re remodeling.” I was like, “What are we remodeling?” He was like, “We’re remodeling the countertops. I can get into this.” He was like, “We’re remodeling the countertops and all these kinds of things but then it faded off.” He did a good job but then he faded off. He was like, “Putting on the spot I don’t know what to say.” What I find funny is that when people act like somebody else, like you take on a persona. You know that persona so well because you see it on TV all the time, maybe it’s a comic character in most movies. You can say what you have naturally should have said, you, being yourself and you can be this other person and do it.
Taking that concept into your social media could help when you build out these personalities of like, “I’m going to tell this spooky story.” For the next 30 days, I’m going to be that spooky guy who sits there and reading the horror stories. That’s how you put all your content in there because you want to get people talking. You want to get them more interested than maybe the same old stuff that’s usually out there. It’s not even your stories, maybe you start finding a bunch of things that went wrong on the Internet. You just showcase something that’s happened to somebody else and then you give your two cents into how this could have been avoided or whatever. There are all these different opportunities in there. Thanksgiving, that’s a lot of days to talk about thanks for referrals and thanking people for gratitude. Showcasing different ways to develop your community your business relationships. By showcasing different ways of maybe you can be appreciative or better ways for people to work, maybe how you’ve been generating business through this relationship style marketing.
Content Creation: Sometimes the minor things make the big changes.
There are layers to every story like peeling back the layer of an onion. Everybody is like, “I’m happy.” “What are you doing exactly right now?” Then we move on step-by-step of what you’re focused. Like in our note case, “Here’s how I found the asset. Here is how we raised the capital for the asset. Here’s the workout strategy that we’d like to do. Here’s what happened and here’s how we sold the asset.” There are so many parts but it’s so scary like a deer in the headlights when they’ve got to come down to create something. I’m a big proponent of taking a second and call somebody. Pick up the phone or see what other people are doing and put what they’re doing into your story. One of the guys that I know out of Atlanta for years has built this huge database by simply identifying four or five stories, like USA Today or DS News or something relevant in his line of real estate. Those five stories they like the most. He sends an email through his database with links to those five stories and he gives like a paragraph of his thoughts on each one. Recycling other people’s content but use it in a creative way to put a different spin on it.
That’s also a good way to become a thought leader and an influencer in your market as well. Because you’re not just somebody who’s actively doing business in the area, but through your social media you can showcase your influence. You mentioned that he’ll send that out to all of his people. Was that through a newsletter or through social postings?
When he shared, it did help him create an audience because everybody would share it with other people. He would also share the articles on the social media site as well, individually. If he found a story, he would post it for the day. It was Monday through Friday stories and he was emailing one on Saturday.
He created the whole recap of the week type of deal. That stuff is killer, especially news. Everyone is so busy. When you’re that one person who can give them the most pertinent information that’s happening in the industry and then maybe give them a little CliffsNotes to it. That’s a solid piece of content. It’s something that he didn’t have to go out and write this entire big piece. It was shared content. A shared content is a good way to expand that reach because you are sharing somebody else’s stuff. You’re engaging and interacting with others online when it comes down to the different types of video content but just content in general. You have a video and you have newsletters as we’ve been talking about. We have a blog. Your blog and your newsletter can almost be a lot of the same type of content but you might set it up a little bit differently. Even with a blog, a blog can be something that is chopped up and you talk about different points that you’ve made inside the blog. Each of those are those on social postings and whatnot. GIFs, those are solid because they’re funny. They’re good ways to show something that’s entertaining. Then you throw a question in there, some thought around all of that. Look at your content categories. We talked about your audience and the type of people like, “Let’s figure out who you’re selling to.”
Where are they at? What platforms are they into?
They’re on Facebook, they’re on Instagram and what channels say they are. For instance, if you realize that most of the people buying from you are on Instagram, you need to look at the best way to start generating high quality photos, graphics and videos. Then think about the type of layoff that you want to have. I know that’s easy especially for us on Facebook, we post a photo one day and then a graphic the next day. Maybe a couple more photos throughout the week. When it comes down to Instagram, the way that people view your Instagram feed, how it’s designed and the filters that you use in that type of thing, that can get complicated. If you are getting into Instagram because that’s where your audience is, then there are going to be some things like that where you’ve got to think about, “I’m going to need to have a way to take some good photos. I’m going to need to be able to create some nice graphics.”
With that, you can create two or three different layouts and recycle those through as long as it’s not too overwhelming. Maybe change some color here and there but it’s great. Facebook is definitely going to be different from Instagram, for instance. I don’t share other people’s stuff usually on Instagram. Unless I have my own custom photo to go along with their link and stuff because I want to sure that I keep consistency. I’ll easily share something on Facebook because that’s how the feed looks. It doesn’t look terrible, it doesn’t look bad, it doesn’t necessarily take away from what I’m posting. I want you to find your audience, where they’re at, what channels they are on. Think about a couple of categories that you could start talking on consistently. We talk about content. We talk about building this narrative. We talk about all this stuff, but what does that look like?
One of our companies is a moving company. The owner of the moving company is young. He wants to be very innovative in technology with inside the company. At the same time, he does a lot of health-related stuff. He likes yoga, working out and eating healthy. From there we think for a moving company, we want to diversify and talk about some other things. Reach out to other people in the industry and try to get involvement from the community. We’re not going to get there by just talking about moving. We’re going to talk about living well and living healthy. Since it’s a moving company, the guys are out there sweating and they’re lifting heavy things. We need to think about how we eat healthy and how we keep our bodies hydrated when you’re moving. “If you’re moving, here are some tips for staying stress-free during your move. Did you move in and now are super sore? Here are some tips on being able to relieve muscle fatigue or inflammation in all-natural ways.” I started to identify a couple of different categories of content that we wanted to talk on.
From there, it is easy because we talk about moving and we talk about packing. Then we’ll do healthy recipes, stretches and workout. This is stuff that we’re starting with because we have a whole video campaign we’re going to be getting into, where we’re going to start taking these categories and developing them. We have to start somewhere so we identified our audience, the type of people we want to get in front of, the large homes, the parents with young kids. Then we started to get into those categories on what those people would be looking for, so we could start getting brand awareness. Trust with our audience. Then at the same time have some more interesting stuff than talking about moving all the time because people hate moving in the first place. If you start talking about moving all the time, it’s like keep on poking the wound.
There also great things you can throw in there too. What do you need to do to prepare for your movers? What should you expect? The top six things you should consider when picking a mover. Pictures of the guys moving stuff in and out. It’s the last thing a lot of people think about; pictures with the homeowners beforehand and afterwards and timeframes, how big a house, what you should expect. The thing is you throw it up on the board. You do a brain dump with all these different creative ideas for different things and there is your content. There is what you focus on. It’s the same thing with what we do with real estate. You get a deal and story, everything on the board. There’s nothing bad.
Content Creation: Helping others succeed helps you succeed as well.
Share it because if you’re thinking that somebody else is probably rethinking it, that’s one of the biggest things that I hear from people all the time. Somebody asked me, “How do you keep coming up with the content?” I see what people asked me questions on, “Can you talk about this?” “We’ll dive into that or here’s a question I’ve got from somebody.” Let me talk about that. Let’s go this route with the new deal we’re going. We sent an email. We’ve got a list of assets we’re going through. We call it the Halloween Assets because they want to close by Halloween. Pull the pictures of the house and throw a pumpkin on top of it.
That right there, you’ve got this list and they want to do it by Halloween. Because you don’t know anything about it and you’ve got this list, this is those 31 days of spooky deals because you’ve got to do it quick. That’s fun stuff right there. Rank them in order and go from there. Sometimes they’re videos, sometimes it’s email. We’re not talking that you have to write a novel, sometimes the shorter the email, the better. A lot of times you might decide, “I’ve got eight different topics I want to talk about or eight different categories and I’m going to start creating content on.” Throw eight of them out there. If you’re capable of it, do it. Then look at the results and see what happens. You might look at all eight and be like, “Only three of these are performing. We want to make sure that we’re not wasting our time.” We’re putting our resources into something that’s returning an investment for. We’re going to get rid of all those others and we’re going to look at these three and make these freaking good. We’re going to hone in on those. If you start taking on too much, you start talking about too much.
That’s why sharing content’s good because maybe you can find stuff that you’re aware of or maybe you have an opinion on, but you don’t have the time to write something big. You write your little blurb and you push it out. Then you focus on your good pieces. Try to keep those slim in that sense until you get more comfortable and you’re like, “I got a hold on this. I want to move into this next area.” Take in mind you don’t always have to create the same type of content because these are campaigns. We’re talking about here we are coming in all these holidays. It’s super easy because I can do a campaign in October, I can do one for November. This is stuff that you’re doing organically, it’s solid stuff. If you’re putting ad dollar behind it, I would make sure that you have a good game plan for how you’re going to spend that money over the next three months because this is going to be a competitive time. I want to throw yourself into that unless you had a professional on it.
There are tools out there too that a lot of people don’t realize. I’ll give an example. There’s an article about how thousands of people lined up in Miami to get pre-approved for subprime mortgages. I saw that somebody was sharing it. I saw four or five people who shared it. I took it a little step further. I went out to Sniply, which is a great little tool that creates custom links for an article. I dropped the actual link to Sniply. It creates a custom link that allows me to advertise. If somebody clicks on my Sniply link when they click to the website it shows the article, my logo pops up. I have a banner that pops up across the top left, the top right, the bottom right, the bottom left. It looks like I’m advertising on DS News.
I got 990 clicks in my link. Five people shared my link across the board. I shared it once on Facebook, and then once on LinkedIn. I got almost 1,000 clicks on my advertising for the podcast. I pay $20 a month for Sniply. I had to copy a link in there. Then where do I want my banner to show up on the screen and share it out there. That’s sharing content. It wasn’t difficult at all. Friday afternoon is a great time to post on social media because a lot of people are killing time. I don’t usually send email after 3:00 PM because they are usually out in the office. I don’t want to read their emails until Monday.
Those are little things that that can make the difference. Companies, when we come in and we make some of the slightest changes and they’re seeing 500% to 1,000% increase in user engagement and search traffic that comes through. Those are something that maintain at those levels because we made some minor and big changes to where it allowed them to finally make those connections where the traffic was coming through. The ones that we’re looking at they’re starting and they’re trying to make those little changes, but they’re staying consistent. You’re going to see those initial boosts engagement, where your ranking is and all that good stuff, but you have to stick with it.
You have to stay consistent with it. This isn’t about an SEO factor. Let’s rewind on this and make sure that you understand that we’re not talking about putting a bunch of content out there to rank. You’re talking about putting content out there to get user engagement. People need to talk with you and you need to be available on a regular basis to maintain that conversation and foster the conversation to achieve those goals that you want. The content that you’re putting out there, for instance. If we are talking about healthy food recipes, the conversation for us is we need to eat healthy to stay healthy, so we can work hard, and make sure that we have a quality service when we’re moving somebody. On a regular basis, if we’re out there having that conversation, people can come back. They can ask us about it, “I had that meal.” Then we can ask them, “Do you have any healthy recipes that we could have and send to our guys?” You’re getting people in that case. Now, we’re asking questions.
We’re doing postings but it’s all about being consistent and trying to foster a conversation online and get people engaging with you, subscribing to you. They’re watching your videos. They’re reading your stuff. They’re downloading your stuff. All of that is what you’re trying to do. If you haven’t started anything, think about, “I’m going to start posting three photos a week. I’m going to start talking about maybe it’s every week. I’m going to post three assets that I’m looking at or I’m buying or maybe these are all past deals.” Maybe you’ve been in the business for a while and you’re trying to figure out how to reinvent yourself. Look at everything you’ve already done. Think about how you could tell the story about all those past deals. Because if you can talk about maybe even your past and then bring that narrative all the way up to your current day where you are now, you’ve built this whole narrative for yourself. Which then shows that people in your industry, the authority that you have in the industry, and the influence that you have. You’re able to then continue your campaigns in the different types of content after that.
Some of that can get in-depth. When you start getting into it, you will have to start looking at these layers and how you want people to perceive you and everything from there. Just deciding three photos or maybe I don’t know how to do good photos, but I’ve been a killer on Photoshop my entire life. Let’s pump out three badass graphics on Photoshop every single week but start somewhere, start consistent. See what people like and see what they don’t like. If no one’s clicking on your stuff and you’re clearly putting yourself out there, you’ve got a thousand friends already on Facebook and you’re still not getting any likes, your content’s probably not that good. Look at your monitor. Never take it hard on yourself that people don’t like your stuff. If you’re going to start marketing online, you’re going to find a lot of different disappointments in areas where you thought was going to be a killer. You thought everyone’s going to love it and they didn’t. That’s okay. These are what you learn from. You don’t do that again. You put something else up and you continue to see what people say. That’s what worked for us.
Let’s go through and give some folks some ideas between January, February with things to do. We talk about how Halloween coming up. We talk about the 30 Scariest Deals or the Ten Scariest Deal. Then we have Thanksgiving. People talk about the things that they’re thankful for. They could talk about their vendors. They could talk about their educators or their mentors.
Content Creation: Don’t just post crap. Post something that actually brings value to your audience.
This is even where you can start recapping the year. A lot of company courses focus towards family, giving thanks. Gratitude, having some of these buzzwords. Those are good focuses. Doing that whole recap towards the end of the year. You’ve got to think by the time you hit December, this is where it’s getting too late for things. It gets busy with a lot of holiday promotions and things like that. Even in December you still want to be talking about what’s coming up in the New Year.
You don’t do like a Twelve Days of Christmas thing? The twelve different things for the year? New Year goal resolutions?
The New Year’s resolutions. You mentioned events and parties. These are good opportunities to either take photos or do small videos when you go to these events and these parties because then you can start talking about those other groups. Any time that you’re with a bunch of people in public, those are great opportunities for some good cross promotion. Especially for companies that are having events that want to be promoted. They’re begging you to like them and share their stuff online for the party. Those are all great stuff to be aware of and think, “If I’m going to be doing a lot of networking this holiday season, how can I maximize the time that I’m spending doing that?”
There’s one thing too if you’re out networking and you’re asking people everybody has their New Year’s goals and New Year’s resolutions. I always like to ask, “What are your goals for the next year?” I’m not a big fan of resolutions, goals are the big thing. Resolutions, we give up on by January 3rd because we’re hungover January 1st. January 2nd we go to the gym then we’re too sore on January 3rd to do anything. Thinking about how you can best align or help the people that are important to you your vendors, “How can I help send them business?” because in turn, they’re going to be very thankful for you. Turn around and want to send you a new business as well. It’s a very nice symbiotic relationship of you helping others succeed and they’re going to help you succeed as well.
There’s so much opportunity that people are missing out on, especially when it comes to the folks who we’re already doing business with. Sometimes even in people who aren’t in our industry, they see something that’s like being competition. I’m not quite sure even what it is but it’s ridiculous because there is a great way for us to share a business back and forth because we don’t specialize in things. We can share each other’s audiences. Like what we’re doing here, host things where two people can get on here and talk about different topics. There is a lot of stuff like that they can do. I know some of the plans that we have. I’ll share some of this because I do think this is stuff that people should be doing. It’s that community aspect in my opinion of the internet. For Facebook, you’ve got community groups, people sharing ideas and stuff. What about bringing on people and doing those little short Facebook Lives about, “What are your business New Year’s resolution this year?” Showcasing like, “This guy right here, he does great work and he’s looking to grow. Let’s do it this year.” We’re getting together and aligning goals.
You’re talking about your New Year goals for 2019 that you should have a plan for what you want to accomplish by this exact same time next year. At that point in time here we are getting into October, we got campaigns that are going to be fizzling out. We’re going to get ready for the New Year. We need to have all these New Year campaigns, a whole new vision, a new us, a new you going into the New Year. These are going to be those times where you look back at what you did this year and say, “Did we achieve that goal? Are we able to do what we said we were going to do?” As far as your content goes from there, the New Year has a lot of opportunities. If you look back at this past year and think about all the events, all the holidays, all the funny things, and you’re talking with your friends like, “I should have posted that. That would have been a great time.” All those things that you didn’t do this past year that you thought of, write them down and do them this coming year.
When you’re going to conferences or events put them on your calendar, preplan out some of the things that you should have done. I went to Traffic & Conversion and I was a speaker there. I pre-planned it where I used the whole thing like my head is exploding thing. I knew I was going to find a nugget so I wanted the right time to use it. Then I shared, they used it at the event in front of 6,000 people. Then they shared it to the newsletter and Christie starts, “Call me. They used your image in the newsletter.”
It’s positioning yourself. That’s what people forget with marketing that it is like, “Let’s put some plan into like what’s happening.” We use Sprout Social and some other automated marketing services. There are ways to post online that you can do it all at once and schedule all your postings, go out at a specific time on a specific day. Some of them are free and some of them you pay for, but all of that is out there. If you’re not taking advantage of that and you’re dying by your own social posting structure, then that might be something that you’d want to look at. If you’re going to an event, automatically you do all of the pre-social postings for you at the event. You’re not even there yet but you’re already talking about you being at the event. You can have it to where you’re notified before something post.
You’re at the event. Your phone goes off, you look down, “It’s time to post.” You go through there. You make a couple little edits because now you’re at the event. A beautiful photo with a great posting, hashtags, links. All that’s all done taken care of for you, but it’s because you planned it out. There are a lot of holidays that happen on a regular basis. I’d recommend that if you’re on a day and you don’t know what to post, jump on HolidayInsights.com and look at all the weird things that people have national holidays for. See if there’s something happening that day that pertains to you. Who knows maybe it’s National Buy Your friend a Hotdog Day. You do a little video where it’s like, “I’m here with my good buddy so-and-so who’s an investor. Today’s a National Buy a Hotdog Day so I’m going to buy him a hotdog. We’re going to have a conversation about investing.” Then you sit there and it’s like comedians drinking coffee. It’s two investors eating hotdogs.
That’s a great thing though, HolidayInsights.com; National Hotdog, National Lemonade Day, National Margarita Day. All those little things you get to throw in your market. Usually, the holiday movies there are going to be new releases, talking about that and identifying what’s coming out. There are a lot of things out there. It’s about what people will do. Take action, do some things, start sharing three times a week Monday, Wednesday, Friday or Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday. Start sharing it and then pre-plan it out. Whatever you’re a fan of, it’s okay to be personable. Add a little bit of your passion into your marketing and share it across the board. I try to time my email to go out as the game ended to everybody’s inbox on my Sunday night email that are sent out. We’re trying to but there are a lot of tools. You and I, we go down some dark hole sometimes with the market, with some rabbit hole for sure, which is great. The thing is we’re doing it on a daily basis. We work with people on a daily basis. It comes naturally to us. Most people don’t have that muscle developed to begin with. That marketing muscle to take a little bit of time to start sharing some things. You’ll develop things. You’ll walk into the building and start seeing messages, “I’m going home to do that. I’m going to add that to my message.” It will develop over time. If you never do it, you’ll never get any further off and you’ll be sitting here at the end of the year, “What do I need to do to market?”
I would say this is the one that I have been trying to express to everybody is if you’re going to start posting and you do start running into those, sometimes it can be as easy as sharing again a photo. Maybe you don’t even say anything because you don’t even feel like you’ve got anything to say. You share a photo and say, “I like this image. What do you think?” That at least gets people commenting and coming in there. If it comes down to that time, there are things you can do. Take in mind, don’t just post crap. I’m not telling you to post something because you want to post something or because you feel like you have to post something. If you don’t feel like it’s going to bring value to your audience, then don’t post it but if you’re trying to build something that’s consistent.
You’re trying to build something that you want to start getting something moving in the right direction and at least start cultivating your current audience. There are ways. I mentioned Canva and also Adobe Spark. Adobe Spark has a lot of stock photos that are part of that. If you’re already using any type of Adobe Suites or I don’t even know if you have to pay for the services itself, I’m not quite sure. There are a lot of services out there. You can get beautiful stock images that you could use. I’m not saying that those are the best types. There are options for you to at least have something that goes out.
Let’s talk about something faster June 30, 2019.
I believe that’s Social Media Day.
I don’t know if we’re going to be doing a whole 27-hour live stream. We could knock it down in half a little bit.
I’ve already been thinking about that because I don’t think 27 hours this year is going to be ideal. Unless we’re in different locations. That could be cool. I get to meet a lot of the speakers that we had in there. I know that’s definitely more challenging, but that’s a good thought. There are a lot of cool things that we’ve been working on that I’m excited about being able to roll them out for National Social Media Day. Once we start looking at all of those and we figure out, “How are we going to do it?”
Twelve hours would be fine this time around. We could squeeze 24 to 30 people into something like that. Maybe make it like a TED Talk or rent out a movie theater and have them on the big screen.
That could be called because then we can have the servers and everything there too.
We’re thinking Alamo Drafthouse. We’ll bring food in. That might be something to think about this year on the big screen.
Social media like you’ve never seen before. Bigger is better.
We should do a small workshop and we rent out a movie theater. It’s on the big screen. People coming to eat and chilling, learning personally, watching across the board. It’s still cheaper than doing it going to a big hotel conference.
I’m a Google partner with Google’s Get Your Business Online, that whole movement that they do. There are a lot of courses and presentations and classes that Google provides us that we can use. We’ve been looking at that like, “The information’s free for us. Why can’t we start to find a better way to start sharing this with our audience? They can get some great information coming directly from Google.” Not to say that some of the information still isn’t a little bit vague for some of those that are starting out, and maybe not as fluent in how to do all this stuff, but that’s why we’re here. We fill all the little gaps and make sure that you truly understand what it means. The word posts, that’s three different things now. You start using it as like a general term and everyone’s getting confused. They’re confused on what that post is. It would be cool. If we could do some light on a movie, that would be awesome. Especially if they serve food because then we don’t get to worry about it. Maybe we can do the after party there then.
Do it exactly right there afterwards. Some great ideas that I’m thinking ahead. It’s circled in the calendar. It’s a Sunday, June 30th. Thank you so much for joining us here on the show.
I appreciate it.
Hopefully, it was valuable. Some of you need an invigoration meaning to resuscitate a shock to the system to reset your marketing things to get things rock and rolling. I can help you with anything and I can recommend one thing. Start planning what you want to do. Start taking a little time during the week, “What do I want to focus on? What do we need to do? What’s coming up on the calendar?” Start planning things out. It’s not going to be the easiest thing. It’s like time blocking. Everyone loves talking about time blocking but we all fail at it. The more that you plan or the more that you can and can plan ahead, if you forget and fill half of them, at least you’re getting half of it done or getting half of it out there. That’s better than none of it. Take the time. Go make it happen. If you start marketing on a regular basis, putting content out there and creating content. It won’t be very long before we start seeing you at the top.
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About Elijah Whites
Elijah Whites is the CTO and executive of Google partners programs at Serving Social LLC. Elijah has had the opportunity to work with highly influential companies across numerous industries. His work discovers new and creative ways to incorporate marketing strategies through technology to gain brand awareness and increase market share.
Having worked with small businesses and national brands to reach a broader audience. Elijah’s work engages users across multiple platforms and increases online as well as in-store traffic by using Google‘s Street Views 360-degree immersive Technology.