Hey everyone welcome to Social Media Hangout Time. I am so excited today. We have a crowd here, kind of. We have our sunglasses, first off, specially for our guests. And so Kimmy and I have a new look today. And we are, Kimmy and I, if you’ve never heard of this show before or never been here, Kimmy is a salon owner. She’s our social media puppet and she owns a salon. And so Kimmy will be asking questions from that point of view. And then we have Brian Horn and Jack Mize. And I’m very excited to have these guys because I have been listening to their podcast that they have had. They can explain a little bit more about how long that’s been but I know I’ve listened to quite a few shows and it’s called The Authority Alchemy Show. And I’ve been friends, long time friends on Facebook with Brian also, and I’m just so excited to have these two here. I’d like them to explain a little bit more about their background and what they do. So welcome you guys.
Thank you.
Thank you for having us. I can tell about the show first, The Authority Alchemy and it’s all just about helping small business owners and entrepreneurs or even professionals position themselves as authority in their industry. And I’m going to take my sunglasses off, for Facebook and stuff.
I’m going to take my glasses, too.
I have to leave mine on.
You can keep them on dear.
Okay, thanks.
That’s the whole purpose of the show. And it’s not just about try to become a celebrity in your industry, to become famous. It’s really a lot of mind set stuff and putting the customer first, putting your prospects first – speaking to them directly instead of trying to making it all about yourself, coming from a me and I position type stuff, making it more about them. As far as for myself, I’ve been helping entrepreneurs, one way or the other for a long time now. I started off doing SEO, consultant for people like Dan Kennedy and Ryan Dice and a bunch of other info marketers and salon puppet.
Sorry, I didn’t mean to make you nervous.
No, you’re too cute. So I did it for a long time and I just kind of fell into this – fell the power of the authority positioning myself as an SEO consultant getting those big clients. And I just kind of want to share that with the world and I’ll let Jack tell his background but we kind came from the same spot, same ideas and we’re on a marketers’ cruise last Falll and just got to talking and started doing the podcast and taking off and going into a business together.
That’s awesome.
Neat, neat. I kind of thought that happened through your Facebook page. I saw the picture of your cruise and noticed you two had some sort of picture and all of a sudden you had a show. And I saw an interview before you had the show, too. So Jack did you had a show before?
Oh yeah I had some episodes from the long-running show where we interviewed some folks. Brian and I, we’ve been actually been connected, we’ve had lunch for the last few years, we’ve been local mastermind and the things that we were doing, Brian was helping folks in the realm of coaches and speakers and people that were doing, moving into tv, and reality tv and things like that. I focused a lot on the local business owners and what’s going to separate them. I come from a background, been helping local business owners for about the last 10 years of internet marketing but unlike Brian I am actually horrible at SEO. And so I didn’t like to do SEO or helping with SEO but one thing I found and what led me into the authority type marketing was I realized that a lot or more would spend money on SEO and pay-per-click and they were getting found but it didn’t quite get into customers. And one of the things I found was they only give their customers any reason to pick them once they found them. Because when they find them on local businesses search engines, well they guess they’d find 5 of their competitors. Now what is the reason to pick them and I started focusing on that. Ad that’s something that made a tremendous difference with a lot of businesses because it’s something that’s so neglected but so easy to fix. And so it’s really rewarding because it’s so easy to help businesses with this because they are so desperately. You know what, I’m going to grow hair just like…
I made mine sharp, I’ll help you out.
So what Brian and I had was we kind of have the flip the coins and which one is going to be the good looking one. Brian won that one so..
That’s great. Well I love that where the perspective you’re coming from talking about right now is exactly what we focus on on the show is just having something unique – that’s our tagline, being unique to standout in that crowded field of social media because it’s so loud and your business needs to be unique and different in order to standout so that you could be seen and noticed. So can you expand on that a little bit, one of you two can expand on that and what your show offers to go on with that.
I think one of the big things that we have is people when they think about being authority is they feel that they need to, it’s about being an expert. And a lot of people have heard through a marketing forever that you’ve got to call yourself the expert to be the expert. And the fact is a lot of people aren’t just comfortable taking on and say hey I’m the expert. And unfortunately there’s a lot of people that aren’t comfortable and force themselves and that’s their message. And what ends up happening is that they think what do I put out there to convince people I’m an expert. And it makes it all about them. And so to us the real core of being an authority is to stop thinking about yourself as an expert and start thinking of yourself as an educator, an advocate for the success of your customers. In whatever business you’re in, if you start speaking to them as that and they start seeing you as an educator and advocate for their success, you never have to call yourself and expert again. They’re going to be the ones to call you an expert. Because if they feel that you’ve educated them and you truly concerned about their success and using your product or your service or, there she is again. You win, you’ve created what you’ve just said, you’ve created that tipping point, you’ve created that separation, that distinction.
I believe that education is definitely a magnet. When I teach other salon owners I’m not worried about my competition, I’m just educating them on different styles and colors and just by the nature of being available to help others, they come into my salon.
And they’re going to tell other people about you. I surely am.
Yes. Good!
They are going to tell people about you. A lot of people
think about marketing specially on the internet that it’s all about the front page of Google, right, the front page of Google. Yet, specially think about the salon business. What are the rates or percentage that come from referrals?
Oh I get 90% of mine from referrals because we actually have them do selfies in the chair when we have tin foil on their head.
Oh I’m in!
That will be a smooth ride!
I think it’s a ball joke! A puppet with yarn hair just may talk about.
Am I being made fun by a puppet?
I think you are. It’s the first time in your life.
I’m ashamed to say no. But that’s exactly when you have referrals guess what people do? They still go to Google but they are not looking for salon, they’re looking up your name specifically.
Right.
And the part about authority – what are they going to find about you? And I’m not just talking about reviews and stars.
Or your website.
I am talking about can they see you being that educator and advocate? Because I can tell you the second that they see you educating and and be an advocate of success you’ve just gone a mile ahead of your competitors. We are very strong on the first points we make our clients really focus on is going from “I am” to “I help”. Brian talked about that is that so many people’s marketing, some of their social media profiles or their social media is all about themselves – I am, look at me, look how good I am, look what I’ve done, look at what I’ve achieved. And we often say, if I met you at a party and I ask you what do you do, what’s your response?
Most says I am or I own a salon, probably what most salon owners or others would say the same thing. I own XX Salon instead of I help or I help worn down women who had a hard week recover and look beautiful again or something like that. We go back and start that I help we make it all about your target customers. By just saying that I help forces you to change how you change your message and also change how you think about what you offer, it makes a world of difference. We have people going through live events or we speak at Masterminds or just work one-on-one with clients, we do the same exercise and almost everyone of them starts with I own or I do and just to change that with I help, a light bulb goes off and they often see what they are doing wrong. They can see the power of how different it is.
It forces you to make it about your customer, your prospect when you start out your reply with I help.
Right! So instead of saying Janet you’re a social media consultant, your “I help small businesses” you maximize…
With puppets and the doors.
Nice, nice and that make all sense in the world, I love it. So if you’re going to expand that into the social media talking about, you’re exactly right – we went into the social media side of things, how do you bring that into like the posts you’re posting, that kind of thing on your Facebook page when you’re talking about this area?
We’re just talking about we just finished recording a show just few minutes ago and we talked about the exact thing. A part of it is just being authentic about yourself showing your flaws that you have and not being afraid of being a real person – that’s one of the big things we talked about.
Brian’s the master of social media. Facebook is still one of the things that I, nothing against social media but I…
Just last 20 posts the once I’ve tagged and then probably , he is not a big Facebook person. One thing that we have this authority stuff with Facebook. We did actually a whole thing on this on Facebook coming up with different story lines for people to follow. I call this the 90210 formula where all the night time dramas follow a specific story line. Like the Brenda and Dillon, they’d go and talk about Kelly and Brandon… They’d alternate the story lines and they did that for a reason. We have short attention span. So if you are a small business and you post on social media, if you’re a restaurant – this is the daily special, this is the daily special, this is the daily special. Or if you have a salon, these are the women with tin foils on their head and that’s all you post, it gets boring and loose all it’s power. But if you offer those things and 5 is what I found the magic number, you offer those 5 different story lines it become very interesting. It helps position you as that there will be more interactions and makes you more interesting. Where if you’re the person who’s posting the same thing you get boring really fast and not cool.
And the salon, I know it would be hard to believe that I would be a slave to hair care but probably if few salons and a few salon owners, you know there’s big business in weave, right?
Absolutely. Weaves and blow outs.
Right and so when people considering weaves and I say this because I work with several salon owners, there’s a huge psychological impact of those when people are making the right decision. There’s a lot of anxiety or am I going to pick the right one or am I going to pick the right thing. We are on social media by simply putting out something as simple as the 5 things that we need to be aware of when choosing if you’re getting a weave or anything like that. You’ve just created the anxiety and curiosity from people that are specifically want to be in that weave market. And you’ve also given them reason to come to you as the educator because you just created these 5 things that they need to be aware of.
Absolutely and some of the things that I had real good engagement on is when I do a before and after picture of like somebody has gone from long hair to short hair or celebrity style. I might pick 4 pictures and say which one do you like, A, B, C or D?
Yes. And you’re getting the engagement. I’m curious about you, is that a weave or is that a…?
This is just a curl. I just have naturally curly hair, I just color it once in a while.
So you’re not naturally rainbow, is that what you’re saying?
Nope, my pink is natural.
Okay.
She added some color. But now Brian I want you to expand on a little bit… here’s a difference with how I work my business because once upon a time in the world of Facebook we weren’t suppose to post on our profile about business stuff, correct? So now I have this two platforms, the personal profile which ends up now as being more my family that kind of thing. And Lisa got the same thing. And we have the page that has more engagement that I focus my time, energy,effort there. But I see that you do it a little differently and I do have a couple of other friends that do it and you got incredible engagement with your profile posts. So expand why you chose that direction?
It goes a lots what we’ve talk of authority stuff also is that people want to buy from people that they know they can trust on. It’s an old cache saying but it’s true also. And people seeing me that I’m interacting with my either my family, going out on weekends doing stuff or me making comment about other current events that’s driving me nuts. I have my 5 things, 5 little story lines that I use on my personal page. And people follow those. With each one those that I pick there are specific things that I look at before I choose one. And one of those is an important one that people don’t look at is the way to show progression in that story line overtime. Like with my son, Jackson has Down Syndrome. He’s one of the story lines that I go a lot of stuff with him and it’s able to show him progressing little bit by little bit on different things that he’s doing. And you can see as far as post a little go about him – getting out of PPC and going out into pre-can like in the first hour it’s going to get you 60-70 likes, getting a lot of comments, anything like that you want to be able to show progression overtime in your story line and that’s one of the magic things I think that people don’t follow is people will be watching you. Going back to the 90210 stuff, that’s what people like about those – they can see the relationship of Brenda and Dillon progressing overtime wasn’t always the same thing every single time. You want to have some different stuff like that. Another key thing to put in there are those 5 story lines have one like humorous one like a self-deprecating one. And one that’s tear-jerker or motivational story line. Like for mine it’s son with Down Syndrome, other post about that and the more comedic relief one is more of me being kind of a frustrated 40-year old guy that’s sick of lazy people and bad music today and not understanding the crazy, young people. I post about those things often and just kind of come across one of the characters that I have. And those things all work in tandem together, it’s like alternate those and resonates to different people. What works really good are the personal stuff is if you can incorporate multiple story lines into one thing like my son having a picture of him talking about Down Syndrome and also have a business lesson woven into it. I have one of those I did awhile back where thousand of shares on a post on my personal page that I paid nothing for this main graphic. Yes that’s one I love in personal stuff because I, if I owned a salon, maybe different but I don’t even think it would be that different. I think a salon owner or any type of entrepreneur that is personal behind what they’re offering needs to do a lot from their personal page. Now if it’s something you’re creating with the intent to sell, like I have a partner with a restaurant in Austin, both myself and the primary owner, the chef, we heave ourselves completely out of it because we’re building to create a hub to sell that and franchise or something so we’re from the beginning not a part of it. But other than that if you’re the person behind it, I’d say all four, I’m all for personal profile.
I think one of the important point there is you’re not supposed to do business stuff on your Facebook. And one of the things you rarely will see Brian do is buy my stuff, right?
Yeah, very rarely.
And it goes back to not selling but people want to buy. It’s very easy to be an educator and advocate on your personal page because you’re not saying buy my stuff. But when you’re being that educator and advocate people are going to say I really want to know more, they’ll go seek out your more sales e-marketing things. But there’s definitely subtle ways to bring in the fact just like people that have corporate jobs. They talk about their work. They don’t leave their work off, they talk about things that go on their lives and business is part of your personal life. And it’s easy to introduce that stuff very subtley that will let people know what you do or when you congratulate a client on something or you know, anything like that. You’re not doing it as a straight sales buy-my-stuff type of thing. You would definitely wouldn’t suggest you do that but the way Brian blends it in with the story line and more of an episodic type thing it works extremely well.
I always share the podcast episodes or if I write, I also write for Huffington Post and I post article out; put it there or if you have a blog post or have another profile that get picked up or I was just interviewed by a puppet today, that would definitely be able to put things on there. Those things would put people links. They go back for our podcasts as always link back to the site then they’ll listen to it and get all the buy buttons there but it is all about sharing the education like Jack said, not about buy-my-stuff and very very rarely this straight buy thing.
Well I’ve think you’ve seen witness to whether it’s more of a Facebook thing even though they encourage you not to engagement is far, far greater, multiples if you’re putting it on your page.
People like the lifestyle. They like to see how business owners live their life and then they can relate to them because they have the same types of family issues, same type of boats to drive, you know. So I think there’s a lot of good relationship value that come through getting to know them, just like when we’re in a live networking event – you see them face to face and you learn more about their family than you do about their business and that’s what generates that long-term sales process.
Oh yeah, specially if your business is a community-based business. There’s no question.
For sure.
I’d love that Brian always post pictures of his kids and they’re so cute. And you’ve got the little ones. Mine are older now and so are Lisa’s and I actually chase them with the camera and they don’t want pictures.
Yeah and they un-tag themselves.
So that’s great! Well so you really talk about the uniqueness of the business; and this is going to be show #15 so you’re our show# 15 and we will be putting all your s to Authority Alchemy and anything specifically that you brought up we could put into our blog, too. I want to always leave people with the questions like what would you suggest, and both of you can answer separately, if you’d like, what are 1-2 action items that the audience can actually do within the next 24 hours to improve marketing their business?
Well I would say if you’re doing marketing, most people are going marketing after new customers and obviously the salon business referrals are big part of this. I found, specially the local, community-based businesses whether it’s salons or restaurants, one of the easiest way to increase business very rapidly is to focus on your current customers. And giving your current customers a reason to tell their friends’ family and even strangers about you which is the beauty of social media, right? Give them a reason to make it easy for them but I think the first thing you do is go and look on your social media profiles whether it’s Facebook, LinkedIn, LinkedIn could be very powerful with this is look at what you’re saying. Look at the About You and see if it is just about you. See if it is looks more like a resume than anything else and easily change that to make it based on about the customer. And then the next thing you could do is it’s so easy to post successes of your customers. They don’t have to be these hypie testimonials that people think you have to do, just a simple congratulations on anything because that’s the one thing that I know our clients and Brian talk about more on this because he’s the magician around this is getting engagement out of simple post rewarding others or talking about others and it’s kind of what you call the humble brag. You can start doing that immediately and start seeing engagements and shares out there specifically around the social media. But the main thing that I like to focus on is what are they going to see when they come back to you. Go ahead and get it out there so they can see you but also make sure that when they follow back I can start looking at you that they see you as the educator and advocate and the easy way to do that is change your language from I am to I help and look at your website and look at those things if you’re talking to your prospects or just talking about yourself.
Yep, I-am I-help is the easy one to and get a big thing for. This is a completely different angle on the question but it’s a hack or a little trick you can go and do and get immediate bang for it. You can go, each person can become a contributor to CNN on their particular topics so Kimmy, the social media puppet, can go on and she can be regular contributor owning hair salon, manage her hair salon and market her salon. I just got an i-report.cnn.com, that is CNN Citizen Journalism area of their website where you apply for accounts, you get approved very very quickly, within minutes. And you can start posting news stories. Now these are not going to be sales messages designed to draw people in to your business. You write those like journalistic style where it’s just about a news topic in your industry. So Kimmy would write one maybe about new type of stuff coming out or why women want to get their hair lighter with the summer coming up can write stories about that type of stuff. You’re not going to get any business out of it, you’re not going to link your website from it. It is simply designed for you to put your content, position yourself as an authority. So you can go and post that on CNN, share the link or screenshot of it on your social media page and go hey, here’s a story we just ran on CNN, I’m a contributor on x – whatever your area or expertise is and you’ll just look like a total stud. And then you will look like or studette in your case, lovely Kimmy, you will claim your authority and prove that you are an expert in your industry. People love this thing. The response from your audience is you’re going to be surprised, they’ll really going to love it.
That’s a perfect example of not be going and saying I am an expert but putting something out there shows that other people think enough about what your saying – that you’re the expert. So really it’s not really calling about yourself expert again but doing the things that allow others to call you the expert.
I love it! Third party documentations where it is, you got it! And you know one of the questions I meant to ask Brian is how did you, fast forward a little bit, how did you end up getting on Huffington Post? I knew you did a lot of work to get there.
This authority marketing works. We used the authority marketing to get a go to have to post about authority marketing. We just actually have a client message me this morning when I woke up, he’s in Australia and he is going on a national morning show and I was actually talking to his wife about going on one also by using his exact same things. This authority stuff really does work and it’s stepping up. I just called immediately come and say Huffington Post you need to write about me but we did little things, we did the podcast. We got featured some ABC CBS and Fox affiliate, got newspaper stuff and it just start building just the way you position and leverage showing that you are the educator/advocate. I know words coming out of our mouths but it’s absolutely true and it resonates to people. There are bigger things coming now, much bigger things we have coming up. A lot of places up here because of this.
And so most of our successful clients have been once we simply say we just provided the kindling to start the fire. You can start a little fire with a little bit of kindling and then watch it rage out of control very, very quickly. If you just to these little things you’d be surprised, remarkably surprised at how that spreads and turns into a fire with something that you thought you have to build a huge fire from the beginning but you don’t. Just do the kindling and see how rapidly it can grow because you are being very, very different than just about any of your competitors when you take that approach.
Right. I’m always out there saying how can I learn more and more about this authority markets. How can I learn exactly what your editors want, how they write so I can write more and stun all the technical stuff. I didn’t think any of that. When I was doing SEO for Dan Kennedy, Ryan Dice and all the other big people, I wasn’t better than the other SEO people out there. I had a way I position myself that made it appealing to that type of person and makes it appealing to people in media – the editors, web properties and tv stations. And it’s working for our clients also. We’ve got tv deals and other stuff. Anybody can apply all the way from the top guys. You can get a reality show all the way to your small business that’s just starting off. We’re doing the same with my restaurant in Austin. He’s already been in tv twice and we just started the restaurant back in end of last year. He’s got on tv all the time and that stuff works. It’s all about positioning Kimmy.
Great ideas. I really like that, thank you so much for your feedback. You know before we close the show out, did you want to share with people how can we find you, where would you like them to go to listen to you, can you give us a URL or how do we locate you?
Sure. Absolutely. Our show is The Authority Alchemy. You can find it in itunes, just look up Authority Alchemy. We’re also on stitcher. You can find us on the web, authorityalchemy.com. Also watch our videos on YouTube, Facebook.com/AuthorityAlchemy and that’s how you find us, whatever the show we would love to have your listeners.
Absolutley. And I highly suggest it, I highly recommend it. It’s something that I catch or I try to catch weekly or else I have to do catch up, listen to them all. But I do catch every show. I do think it’s something that any size business can learn from whether you’re an entrepreneur, whether you’re a small business owner, whether you’re a large company. It really doesn’t make any difference with the lessons that you’re teaching there. I so appreciate you coming, we really appreciate your time and thanks for getting interviewed by a puppet. I can’t say that you probably or I bet you’ve never done it before.
I got to have a picture, selfie with the puppet.
Okay, let me know, I’ll show my best shot!
I got to post this stuff.