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Micro Influencers with Elijah Whites
We’re excited to have back our good friend and rockstar marketer, Mr. Elijah Whites from Serving Social. I didn’t have you last time because I was too busy at the Bahamas.
I wish we could all be going through those struggles.
The struggle is real. I would rather be here. It’s a whole lot cheaper than the Bahamas. We wrapped up our first workshop of the year. We had 510 people on there. It was a good time. I’m a little worn out that’s why I called Elijah like, “Come and save me. I’m going to have you carry this show for the most part.” Share a little bit of who you are and what your focus is.
My name is Elijah. I am the COO at Serving Social. We are a social media marketing company, content creation. In fact, that’s changing a whole lot right now. For now, we’ll stick with that. I’ve been in the marketing business since 2008. Serving Social started in 2014 and ever since then, we’ve been all about showing people how to use social media and how to market your business online. Also, the tools and resources that are out there that you can utilize in order to do that. We also offer all of those services in-house. Whatever you don’t want to do, we want to do that for you. That’s us in a nutshell. We’re focused a lot on Google local and Google Search and Maps marketing especially. There are a lot of changes out there going on in the digital realm of online internets. We just try to educate and teach people what they can do, how they can do it and when they should do it.
Let’s talk about it. Everybody has a focus for their first year like, “I’m going to do this. I’m going to start rock and rolling.” One of the things that we wrapped up is our workshops where there’s a fifteen-point plan. You can see the whole plan written on the wall for everybody. One of the biggest things is always about getting your social media up and running, whether it’s Facebook or your LinkedIn, BiggerPockets, Twitter, YouTube, meetups and also going out to the REI clubs that a lot of people are at. One of the things that you mentioned was social communication.
When you’re looking at social media, there are a couple of things you’ve got to pay attention to. Now that we’re at the first of the year, if you did social media last 2018, take a deep dive into your analytics. What worked? What didn’t work? How much growth did you have? Did you have the growth that you wanted? Did you even make goals to grow or you’re just throwing stuff out there to see what sticks? At that point in time, you need to see what worked and what didn’t. Looking at 2019, what did you not like? What did you like? What did you find challenging? Pull all that together and make a plan.
One of the biggest things is you’ve got to make a plan. If you want to have a successful vacation, you don’t just buy a plane ticket and go somewhere. You’ll get a hotel room, you’ll rent a car, you’ll look at some of the things that you can do while you’re there. It’s the same thing with social media. You want to have a plan. You want to make sure that you look into the type of social networks that are available to you. You don’t want to go after every social media network. You have to have an audience, demographic, the type of people that you’re marketing to. You want to make sure that that social platform caters to the people you’re marketing to. Having a plan is important. Being able to see what you did last year and then put together the plan this year on, “Can I do more video this year? Can I be more consistent this year? Can I talk to people?” Engagement is a huge thing too. A lot of people are getting something out there. “We’ve got to have something out there.” Yes and no. Quality and creative content are going to perform way better than just overall and getting more and more out there. You see a lot of these big companies and they’re diversifying the way that they’re marketing because there is so much noise online.
Let’s talk a little about communication. Somebody reached out to me and said, “I’ve been doing what you taught me. I’ve got a ton of new LinkedIn connections with bankers and asset managers. Should I reach back out to them?” I was like, “Yeah, say hello. Say thanks for connecting.” He was like, “Should I ask them if they’ve got notes available?” I was like, “Yeah, sure. It doesn’t hurt.”
You’ve got to start the conversation somehow. Even if you have all of that information on your LinkedIn page and it tells people all about what you do, what you offer and everything from there, that’s one thing. How many of us go through and read everything that somebody does on a LinkedIn page? Compared to somebody who instantly engages you and says, “Are you looking for this? Can I provide you this? If you need this service, I have it.” I get that happen all the time. Take in mind that when I put myself out there on social media, I get tons of LinkedIn connections. Kristie gets even more than I do because I think it’s because she’s female, but she’s out at the same time. She has a lot of diverse expertise, especially with social media marketing. On LinkedIn, everybody is looking for the CEO or the COO. With that, you have to reach out to people. You have to talk to them. You have to engage.
That’s one of the biggest things that most people miss out on when it comes down to marketing online, especially through social media’s engagement. I post a photo, a great photo. I post a video, a great video. People comment, are you responding to those comments? Are you keeping the conversation going? If someone says, “Thank you so much. I appreciated this post that you put up. I like this aspect of it.” Do you say, “Thanks so and so, me too?” Then you continued the conversation. If you sit there and you talk with somebody in real life, let’s say person to person you meet Scott. If Scott keeps on saying things to me and I’m just telling him thanks or I’m not responding at all, Scott is not going to be inspired to continue the conversation.
Imagine how difficult that would be. We see a lot of people doing that these days, especially in teens. They’re on their phones and they say, “Hi.” For them, it is a conversation.
That’s what we’re looking for here. It’s important to understand your audience. If you’re going after teens and stuff like that, you want to be hitting the engagement online hard. From there though, you want to be engaging people enough to get them to do something. Do you want them to sign up for your webinar? Do you want them to sign up for your newsletter to keep up with more information? The only way that you do that is by engaging them and informing them on what they can do and how they can engage you even further. Once they engage you, what can come from that? What benefits do they get?
Micro Influencers: One of the biggest things that most people miss out on when it comes down to marketing online is to reach out, talk, and to engage to people.
It’s the same thing as having a website. A lot of people believe that they have a website and they’re like, “All this business is coming in because I have a website.” That’s not the case. You have to go out and hunt down your potential clients. Refer them to your website or give them something to go back and click back to your website. I have a meetup group, I’ve got a Facebook group, I’ve got a few opt-ins, but the biggest time I got opt-ins is when I went on myself and went into and found Austin Podcasters and send a message to them like, “I think you might enjoy this.” On Instagram, people responded, “I can’t make it.” I was like, “Go ahead and sign up for the group. It’s free. You’ll be alerted of everything else going on.” We had 30 people show up too. We’re working on one as well for South by Southwest. We’re kicking into a heavy gear here to drive people to that. A lot of people are like, “I’m going to throw something up there and that’s all I’m going to do.” That’s the first nugget that you’ve got to have done. You’ve got to constantly be reaching out. It transitioned to becoming almost like a micro influencer.
Micro influencers are people who have authority. Scott Carson is a micro influencer. You have the audience, you have the downloads. You have success with the podcast. You have a lot of individuals wanting you to be on their show to share your content. You have a lot of users engaging you. Being a micro influencer is a great way to tap into other audiences to build brand trust, especially if you’re getting started out. You find somebody who already is working with the type of people you want to work with. Take in mind that they’re not your competition. You’re an individual. Not everybody is going to like the way that I say things compared to another guy that I don’t like the way he says things. He clearly has other clients and we both do the same thing. We’re able to work with each other and understand that. Being a micro influencer, there are all these individuals that you can engage with and you can involve yourself with. Even if you feel that you’re competing with them, you’re not. The world is a big place. The pie is big. You’ve got to find out where your piece is and take a bite.
You have to go out and carve out your own piece. You can’t wait for it to be hand-delivered to you on a platter.
When you start engaging with micro influencers, you’ll find that they can work with you and show you that path to be able to get there. Especially if you’re already very knowledgeable in your industry, but you don’t have the audience. You have the knowledge but you don’t have the audience. What you’re looking for is somebody who has that knowledge and has that audience that you can start working with and start sharing information. If you’re going to engage a brick and mortar with a micro influencer, what they’re looking for is individuals that have a lot of influence that can come inside that business, experience their product, experience their services and be able to tell their audience about that. On a local level, a micro influencer could be that local person in your community on Instagram that has above 2,000 followers. Just because somebody has a lot of followers doesn’t mean they’re an influencer because I can buy one million followers all day long. I’m looking for engagement.
I have a buddy that’s got 500,000 followers on Instagram. I love the guy. He’s been influencing. I sign up for my guy to help me out with it. I get the guy on the phone. I know what my avatar is. Instagram isn’t the best avatar for what we do in the note business because our primary audience is 35 to 65. They have people at 35 to 65, but it’s not quite the best way for real estate or real estate investing and things like that. I get to talk to this guy and this guy is like, “We’re going to make it go viral.” I’m like, “Is this going to be viral that I can somehow dictate towards the right people or this can be some seventeen-year-old Bangladeshi kid across the world that has a link in Instagram profile who is going to follow me out of the blue?” That’s not an effective use of my time in marketing that.
Those type of customers aren’t going to engage you on the level that you’re looking for. You’re looking for a quality connection. Having 500,000 followers that don’t contribute to anything that you’re doing, they don’t watch your stuff. If they’re following you, that’s great but they’re not going to your website. They’re not visiting the links. They’re not engaging on your posts. They’re not liking and they’re not commenting. Yet, you could have 2,000 followers and you get a lot of comments. You get a lot of likes. You get actual true engagement from other human beings that are enjoying the content that you’re bringing to the table.
Instagram is one thing and you’ve got Facebook and you’ve got LinkedIn. You’ve got a lot of these people that you can do these cross-promotion programs with that can bring the audience. It can give you the exposure that you need, but you’ve got engage them. You’ve got to work with them and know that those are the types of influence you want to be a part of. Start talking to them and figure out, “What can we do together? What kind of programs can I put together that you would want to be involved in?” Most people are always interested in collaboration. As long as it’s collaboration and it’s not a one-sided thing, it has to be a win-win. People love win-win because we all want to win.
Instagram scrubbed a ton of bots and fake accounts off of people’s profile.
It’s a rip-off. At Serving Social, we consult with people who are looking for influencers to try to guide them down the right path on this. You could sit there and say, “I’m going to pay this person $5,000 for this one post because they have all of these followers.” When we truly dive deep into that account, you can tell quickly if that $5,000 is worth it. Somebody who’s like Kylie Jenner, they get a lot of interaction, not only from their fans.
They get paid $1 million for an Instagram post.
Because they have the audience there. She’s worth $100 million.
They did a crowdfunding page to get her to a billion. Let’s talk about micro influencers. Here’s one thing that I did with the podcast. I’m able to go back in and see each episode. We went over 250,000, which is a big milestone for us. I went back in and looked at each episode and see how many downloads I’ve had. It’s a direct proportion. I wanted to see who shared the episodes because I would want them to share. If they didn’t share, we’ll put little stars. We probably won’t have them come back on because part of the goal is not just good content, but to share. That’s one of the things I like about podcasting. The way I look at it is I’m helping that person who has a podcast with good content. I’m helping to influence their audience and vice versa. Even if I only have 100 downloads in an episode, it’s as if I’m in front of 100 people. If they’ve got 1,000 downloads, that’s even better. Part of that has helped me influence my schedule. If I could stay home and I get booked five or six podcasts episodes in a day and if it’s me traveling to one event, it makes more sense for me to do that. It’s a win-win across the board for the most part.
Micro Influencers: Most people are always interested in collaboration. As long as it’s not a one-sided thing, it has to be a win-win.
When you start doing that stuff too, it gives people more of that opportunity too. Engagement is something I’m going to drive home because everything that we do online is all about engagement. Do our social postings engage you? Do they spark some questions? Do they spark interest? Does it give you enough information that makes you want to go and click the link and go to my website and find out more? Do you want to reach out to me? Do you want to sign up for my newsletter, subscribe to the podcast, subscribe to my YouTube channel? It’s such an important piece. One thing I’ve always hated is when you’re in business and you’re working with others. You find some companies where they’re like, “You’re just too small.”
I could be one of the strongest partners in the future that they could ever have but at the same time, having that opportunity to have them engage with me and see what I can do. All of us would want to be in a room full of 100 people. From there, being able to not only have a room full of 100 people but make sure there is a camera in the back that film the whole thing and then we could use that for later on, a podcast is able to do that. Not only am I getting in front of your audience, but you’re also getting in front of my audience. Anything that I do from then on out is going to be awesome. It’s giving you more exposure.
Being able to figure out who those people are and who’s complementary to you. It doesn’t even have to be somebody in your industry. It could just be a complementary industry. With real estate, I’m part owner in a moving company here in Austin called Simpler Moving & Packing. We have a podcast that we’re working on. We’re looking at the type of content that we want to put out because moving is boring. People hate moving in the first place. It’s stressful and it’s expensive. There are so many things that go along with the moving industry. You’ve got realtors, you’ve got cleaners, you’ve got construction. You’ve got everything to do on the outside of the house and interior of the house and anything in between investment. There are so many things that we can look at. All these different avenues that we can go down and find those influencers in those industries and engage them on the right level. Make sure it’s a win-win and watch your audience grow.
If you’re working with other people and you’re sharing their information, most of the time they’re one of the first ones that want to refer business back to you to do business with you. I’ll give you an example. A lot of us are using LinkedIn and BiggerPockets to connect with other asset managers. Our topic is creating the perfect pitch book using a short video to help get your message out in a LinkedIn comment. You don’t have a lot of real estates there, but it gives you enough room to put a link to a video or link to something about what you do to get the word out and encourage conversation. A lot of people are going to be, “What do you have?” People are like, “You’ve got good glamor headshot. I’ll take a look at it.” You want to encourage those conversations and those are some of the best things that you can do besides just commenting, share something. There’s a guy that comments everything at my podcasting post like, “Follow my podcast.” I’m like, “I already did. We’re friends. I follow you.” The third time he did with the same message, I’m like, “Never mind. I’ll unfollow.”
There is a way to piss people off. Here’s the thing about that engagement. I’m in the Google Street View program and because of that, I have a lot of companies that reach out to me. They’re like, “We’re looking for photographers in your area. We’d love to connect with you.” I’m like, “Let’s do it.” Not only could I fulfill the job for them but at the same time, I can also see like, “Your company have resources and I have needs as well. We could partner up on something. We do stuff nationwide.” What I end up finding is that two days later, I get the same email and I’m like, “I already responded to your first email telling let’s set up a time to talk and now I’m getting that second email. At this point in time, you’re spamming the company.” I’m telling them that, “I’m blocking everything.” That relationship is over. It’s the same thing with my social media. I have people that reach out and they’ll ask me like, “We have this and this. We would love to get with you and talk to you about software development.” I’m always up to talk to people about software development or social media or your next best service. If you’ve got something cool that you think is great, let’s talk about it. Let’s see where I could implement that into what we already do. Technology moves so quickly. It is hard to keep up with all the new products.
We make an effort to try to find those new products. I already said yes. I already said, “Let’s schedule the time,” and then I get that same message from you again on LinkedIn. You’re either a bot or you’re trying to take some cheap way out of getting in contact. That’s not how I do relationships. That’s not how I’m interested in building relationships. Automatically, that opportunity is gone. Pissing people off acted as if you were somehow personally reaching out to them and then they realized that they were just a part of some mass message, it’s disappointing.
You can customize it even if you’re doing a mass email out to somebody. You can even put their first name in the title or something, that helps. It ends up being the same canned response. You can tell like, “We talked about that. What can I help you?” It’s a bot. Someone asks a question here, “What’s the best way to aggregate all those interactions with all the platforms? BiggerPockets is not being the most exportable.” BiggerPockets is not exportable at all. The whole goal with BiggerPockets is to get people to go over to the website going to opt in there. Then carry on the conversation on my platform versus BiggerPockets because it will stop you if you’ve communicated with more than twelve people in a day. If you post more than two things in their marketplace, they shut you down. They’re Nazis over there, but it’s such a great platform because there are so many real estate investors. You can’t send the same private message to the same individual because they’ll start recognizing it. You can’t post the same thing in different groups.
Even though maybe you have a deal in Tampa and they want to go to all four or five of the meetup groups and post a deal, you’ve got to change it up and switch the paragraphs around so it doesn’t fit in there. Communicate on a regular basis and taking the time, whether it’s through you or an assistant to log in. Communicating with those people individually or grabbing their info, whether it’s their name, email, phone number and then putting that into your system, it’s a bit of a tedious interaction. One of the funny things I always crack up about is when people go to LinkedIn and they put something like, “I’ve got a list of deals.” Then there will be 100 people like, “Send me it.” They put all their emails in there. I just chuckled and be like, “Copy paste.”
A lot of times, that’s what you end up doing. The reason why people love using chatbots is just that. One, I’ve never tried to act that my chatbot was an actual person. I always wanted to make sure people knew that it was a chatbot. From there though, as long as you can get them to subscribe to your chatbot, you open up this line of communication. You might send out a mass message but as soon as they respond, you’re talking to them individually. Now you’re able to sit there and do instant messenger with those people on a regular basis. Google My Business has that messaging feature that people can message you through and you can sit there and talk with them through your Google My Business. Local businesses compared to somebody working within the real estate industry who’s looking for investors is going to be different. Being able to utilize those types of resources can help you out there.
As far as when it comes down to your social media, being able to see what all is coming through all at once and being able to manage that, social platforms like Sprout Social can help you out with that. It’s a social media scheduling software. You can get on there, you can schedule all your posts out for the entire month. It’s social media automation but they have social listening. In fact, Sprout Social purchased Simply Measured, which was one of the best social media analytics software out there. They would look at everything, especially with social listening. Those are features that they offer. Services like that can help you get control of the actual social media aspect of it. With the podcast, I’m going to go to Scott on this one since he’s the guru when it comes down to podcasts right now.
The beautiful thing about podcasting is that anybody can do it, whether it’s a Facebook Live video or a YouTube video that you use. That’s the little thing that I liked. Chris Krimitsos has a true podcasting track, which is the audio side. He also has a video side for those using YouTube. There’s a lot of crossover in between. The biggest thing I look at when I was looking at doing the podcast is I look at each platform as a net. The smallest net in my platform, the smallest net that we use is Instagram. It’s a small net but we still use it. We still have 2,000-plus followers or maybe 3,000-plus. I still post on a regular basis there. We’re going out and connecting with other podcasters and other investors there in doing that. Our biggest net is our video. Our biggest net is our YouTube channel because YouTube is the second largest search engine owned by the largest search engine.
Video accounts for about 80% of the content that’s being consumed.
Micro Influencers: Everything that we do online is all about engagement.
I’m a part of these different podcasting groups and there are all sorts of people. The first thing I do is I throw out a podcast up on iTunes. How come only fifteen people downloaded it? I’m like, “First and foremost, iTunes is down on the top 100 download website. It’s not even in the top 100.” If you’re starting it there and expecting everybody to fall over dead like, “I’ve got to listen to your podcast or I’m going to die.” It’s like planting seeds or planting trees. You’ve got to throw your seeds out across the point, give it time to marinate, give it time to germinate and grow and then you can see which is growing faster. Did you plant bamboo in one field that’s skyrocketing it at six inches a day or did you plant something that’s going on in bloom once a year in other parts of the area there?
All of these things that are out there, that’s the top of the funnel. This is the top of your sales funnel. Maybe if you’ve even broken that down into YouTube and Vimeo and then you’re even looking at your Facebook Stories, your Instagram Stories, your Instagram TV, you could break all those down into one video category. That’s all your visuals. You do one podcast, you take that video and then you just chop it up. Now you have all these different sizes of videos, all these different versions of it that go through all of your channels. That’s the top of your funnel because that’s exactly what we’re trying to do here. We want to try to engage people. You hear people say, “We’re going to meet them where they’re at.” They’re on YouTube and they’re on Facebook and they’re on Instagram. Not everybody is using these platforms. If you’re going to be creating this type of content in the first place and you want to engage people, you’re going to spread or cast that net. You’re going to see where some of your biggest traffic sources are coming from, but that is the top of your sales funnel. You’re at social media and all the video.
Email marketing is a little bit further down because you’ve got to get them in in the first place and you want to bring them into the website. Once they get into your actual website, you’ve got to also make sure that the website is designed to be a funnel. They’ve got to get the information that they’re getting in and you want to move them through your website appropriately. The overall user usability of the website is something that a lot of people get lost on. They’re like, “I got my website up.” We talked about that. People think, “You just get a website up and we’re going to be making money here.” That’s not necessarily the case here because we’ve got to set up all the social. We’ve got to set up all these outlining top-of-the-funnel sources that are going to bring the audience in.
Once they get on the website, does your website serve them? Is it clickbait to get to a badass social posting that then you go to the website and it’s just lackluster? It was like, “This didn’t give me any information. I thought I was going to figure out how this mom-and-pop shop into a seven-figure business.” I get there and it’s like, “Where is that information?” A lot of those things can affect the way that people engage you and how they subscribe to your content. If you could have some good content and you keep on telling everybody to go to this place that sucks, they’re not going to want to engage with you and not be a part of that because they didn’t want that version of it. That could be enough for them to wash their hands off you completely and go after somebody else.
You talk about something having everything uniform across the board. It’s the same thing with colors or the same images or logos. Have it look the same so it all blends together. I bet it would be hard for people to figure out what my favorite color is, but they see that because I’ve got two colors of green in my logo. It’s green all over my websites and all over other things we have, whether it’s Note Night in America webinars, whether it’s the Note Closers podcast. It’s uniform. People get an idea of that and they get to expect it. It works in my favor because people are like, “I’m looking for the green email.” The asset manager is like, “The guy that has the green email. I want to send him stuff. I want to reach out to them because I recognize their branding. I recognize what they’re doing. I went to LinkedIn. I haven’t been informed, but I see that they’re posting stuff on a regular basis there.”
We all know how important branding is. Be consistent with that brand and figure out what your brand is. Your brand doesn’t necessarily have to be who you are. I know a lot of people say, “Your brand is who you are.” Not necessarily because I’m an individual. Serving Social was created for a specific purpose. I and Kristie wanted to make sure that the branding was for that purpose of why we create Serving Social. That’s what my branding went after. That’s important. You want to make sure that that’s consistent everywhere. This is not just for brand recognition. When you are jumping to the bare bones of SEO, Search Engine Optimization, being consistent across the internet is important. Your name, your address, your phone number or any information that you put out there on a regular basis should be the same everywhere.
I was on a two-day workshop with Merrill Chandler from CreditSense. It’s the thing to help you boost your credibility to get funding from banks and having this same type of information. You don’t want to confuse people. One of the most important things is being congruent in the things that you’re providing on a regular basis.
On Google, when it comes down to how they rank people, there are 41 factors. For the most part, we think we know all those factors but they change on a regular basis. On top of that, every day there are millions of new searches that are performed on Google that even Google has never seen before. When it comes to human activity, it’s also something different. Let’s say you’re only doing investments in Atlanta, Georgia. Yet, when Google looks at local businesses on how they rank, they rank you on three different factors. It’s prominence, relevance and proximity. When somebody is looking for your services in your area, they’re going to look at, “How close is that person to me?” That’s what Google is going to look at. Based on the information that you have out there, “How relevant is that information?”
When it comes into prominence, “How much of that relevant information is everywhere? How many places is that found?” How many times did you go out there and look up your business and make a consistent effort to make sure your business information is correct all over and that you’re on a regular basis putting more information out there? This is where it even comes into blogs. That’s why podcasting can be so powerful. It’s the amount of content that you can put out there. It’s the amount of byproduct that you can create from one podcast and then how much of that becomes those prominence aspects that you’re putting out there online. For instance, you’ve got your podcast and you don’t just put it on iTunes. You put it everywhere. You put it on Spotify, Pandora and any place that you listen to a podcast. You can listen to more like this wherever you get your podcast. Now they’re saying, “Wherever you listen to your podcasts, we’re there because they made that effort.” They knew that we do audio. This is our business. This is how we get in front of people so let’s make an effort to make sure that all of our information is everywhere where people would listen.
The first person who was good about using transition radio would be Howard Stern. He got out of New York with opera show and then they turned it into a TV show. He had a movie come out and he’s got a podcast because he got kicked off a radio. The thing is you could substitute podcast for YouTube videos. A lot of people think that podcasting has a lot of work, which is what I thought. It’s just sharing the video. That’s what I did for nine months before we ever launched the podcast. I was doing it very simple on a Facebook Live video on a topic each day. A lot of times, it’s me holding my camera here. It’s on a tripod or even having an assistant to hold it while I’m throwing ducks on my shoulder in the water being goofy.
Those are simple things that you can do and they don’t necessarily have to be that. They can be a five-minute nugget of what you’re working on. It can be a day in the life of Laura Blunk of Silver Hammer Investments, a day in the life of Charles Wilson out there on the assets that he’s doing it. If you’re looking to do something, you’re looking to be more of a social influencer and sharing what you do, just share what you’ve got going on. Share what you have going on, whether it’s on Instagram or share it across the board. Get in the habit of doing it. Doing one thing, getting a little bit good and then adding something else. Do something once and then work on doing it for seven days straight. There was a podcaster that was at the Podfest Expo last 2018 and she was like, “I’m going to do a live video for 30 days.” She did great and then she stopped. I was like, “Why would you stop doing live video?” She was like, “I just challenged myself.” I was like, “You had all this traffic. It wasn’t about you. It was about what you were providing. You tease all this other audience and now that audience went away somewhere else.”
A narrative is so important. Be consistent because every day you’re telling people a little bit more about that story. You’re telling people a little bit more about what you’re doing and they can put together this overall like, “This is what this guy does. This is what he does on a regular basis. This is how he goes about life.” You even here with people in reality TV or anything like that and they’re like, “I always say to myself that one most important thing about this is this.” Now they’ve shared a little bit of tidbit of who they are and how they go about, but we’re building that narrative. I watch a lot of gaming stuff online, especially through YouTube. We’re watching this billion-dollar market emerge. What is engaging people to continue to watch that type of content?
Micro Influencers: Make a consistent effort to make sure your business information is correct.
Pay attention to the way that the guys that are live streaming and what they say because even on their recordings they will let you know like, “Sorry I was sick for a couple of days.” They’re apologizing for not putting out content because we’re like, “I want content. Where is it? I watched you, I subscribed to you, I get on YouTube to figure out what you are doing.” It becomes that, “I got to get through to the next episode.” It’s all the way to the point where they have premiers like, “Subscribe to my YouTube channel. Do this by that and you’ll get videos released two hours before everybody else.” There are all these things that even YouTube is doing. From that, you’ll see that these YouTubers will even tell you, “I lost 50,000 subscribers because I didn’t put anything up for a week.” As soon as you stop fulfilling that need, they’re going somewhere else. It’s like any relationship. If you have a wife or you have a girlfriend, as soon as you stop taking her out on dates, you stop spending time with her, you stop having those conversations, do you think she’s going to hang around?
We have a question, “What’s the best software to chop up a long video into shorter ones?” You shared CutStory with me.
At Instagram, I’ve noticed that when I uploaded bigger videos, they start chopping them up for you. I haven’t done too much on social media. We’re doing a ton of changes in Serving Social in regards to how we’re going to be delivering services, products, and information. That’s been taken up all my time.
You do a lot for other people. That’s the biggest thing.
We’re always playing in the background with other organizations and other groups. That’s usually how that works out. CutStory for Instagram is one of them. It’s easy. Just open a video and it chops it up into fifteen seconds increments and that’s all done on your phone. If you’re not doing it on a mobile device, you’re on a Mac, iMovie could come standard. It’s easy to use from there. I personally use Adobe Premiere because if I’m going to be sitting on my desktop computer chopping up a video, I’m going to make sure it’s the best video I can get. I’m going to be able to do all my color corrections. I will work on my audio, subtitles and all that good stuff that I can bring into there.
There are a lot of great apps. I can share more of those with you depending on exactly what you’re trying to do. Not every app is going to serve that purpose. Some apps allow you to chop up the video. You can chop up the video but you’re only going to use that one little section. It comes with a lot of other cool stuff that you can do to that video to enhance it and make it be something more than just a stale piece of bread. CutStory is one of the things I would recommend for Instagram and that can work out well for Facebook if you’re doing stuff on Facebook. Adobe Premiere Pro and Final Cut Pro, all of those seem overwhelming. If you use the basic features of cutting a video, dropping it in there, cutting it and exporting it, it’s easy. We do have some classes that were going to be coming up on that we’ll be teaching some more about video editing and some of the simple tools and tactics that you can use.
What’s the best way for people to reach out to you, Elijah?
Elijah@ServingSocial.com and you can go to www.ServingSocial.com to find out more about Serving Social. If you reach out to me at Elijah@ServingSocial.com, I also have some forms that I can send over where we can do a 30-minute consultation call. If you are trying to figure out what your next line of business is, where you want to go and trying to get some direction. I know that not everybody has a budget. Sometimes you’re looking for some guidance to get you there. I’d rather guide you to get you where you need to be so when you have some money, you want to come and spend it with me and not somebody else. If that’s something that you’re interested in, email me, Elijah@ServingSocial.com. We’ll set up a 30-minute consultation call with you and we’ll talk about your marketing goals and figure out what direction you can go and what you can use.
Take advantage of that. It’s how we originally met with Kristie is in San Diego event that you were both awesome locals. She reviewed some things, gave me some ideas and some stuff and we’ve all been good friends since. I look forward to what you got rock and rolling. Elijah, thanks for coming in. I’m glad to have you back on. Go check out ServingSocial.com. If you’re looking for a game plan and you’re overwhelmed and you need to know where you’re at and what you’ve got going and what was working for you, get some suggestions to move forward to the rest of the year. That’s the place to get started. We will see you at the top.
Important Links
- Serving Social
- Simpler Moving & Packing
- South by Southwest
- Sprout Social
- Simply Measured
- Merrill Chandler – previous episode
- Podfest Expo
- CutStory
- Adobe Premiere Pro
- Final Cut Pro
- Elijah@ServingSocial.com
- www.ServingSocial.com
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 increase online as well as in-store traffic by using Google‘s Street Views 360-degree immersive Technology.
The Elijah serves as an Advisor to VettedHeroes – A platform for training and career placement for our country’s former military members. As the Advisor for VettedHeroes, Elijah oversees all research and development initiatives. His work is helping this worthy organization connect skilled veterans with employers that want to hire them.
Elijah and his Wife (CEO and Founder) are Launching a new Brand that will build, connect, and grow small businesses across the country. The Traveling Marketer is a new endeavor that takes online marketing directly to businesses and supports the Serving Social mission of creating positive change. Working with Sponsors who promote a Smart City initiatives across the globe.
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