Hey everyone welcome to Social Media Hangout Time. I’m here today with Kimmy, our social media puppet.
Hi everybody!
And we have a special guest today, Nick Rosener and he’s actually from Minneapolis but we’re not together but we are from the same area. So welcome Nick!
Well thank you, thank you so much for having me.
Yeah. Thank you for coming on. I want to talk a little about what Nick’s background is and then we’ll start asking questions to him. Nick is the owner of Tech Nick Creative, like the name.
Thanks.
A web marketing company in Minneapolis, MN as we talked about. And he dreams about social media, web design, blog strategy and other ways to help small and medium companies grow using the web. Nick is a speaker and instructor on social media strategy teaching a course on a topic at Century College, Argosy University and North Hennepin Community College. So you can also connect with Nick, and we will talk about this again at the end, at Nick Rosener, R-O-S-E-N-E-R and that’s his Twitter username. So welcome, thank you Nick so much for coming.
Thanks,
I’m going to actually send, Kimmy always has a question first.
So of course I do, thanks Janet. You don’t have to hog the show, you know. And I have a really serious question for you Nick. Have you ever been interviewed by a puppet?
You know I’ve never been interviewed by a puppet before but we do at Tech Nick have a fish that is our social media intern and he’s pretty snarky. He has a Twitter account of his own. His name is Frank.
I think I saw a live stream on your website with the fish.
Uh-huh, that’s Frank the intern. He’s got his own webcam but other than that no puppets.
What’s his username so people can follow him too?
He’s on Twitter @FinternFrank.
Okay, cool. All right Kimmy, you’ll have to follow him. Kimmy has her own Twitter account, too.
@kimmythepuppet, Kimmy the social media puppet.
Kimmy the puppet, yep. So cool, well I’m going ahead and get started with you wrote a book recently.
Yes. Yes, I did.
That takes some work, believe me I have heard and its something that we’ve thought about but hasn’t happened yet. So congratulations on that.
Kimmy can you type?
Are you kidding me! You should see I could text with one hand under my, what do you call those – hair dresser shirts. I could do it blindfolded. Yeah.
That’s good. But yeah, it took quite a while. My co-author and I, Eric Lehnen are good friends. He’s another marketer and it took us about 2 years to get this book written. We met at Common Roots Cafe in uptown Minneapolis every Saturday for about 2 years. It’s a lot easier to write a book when you bribe yourself with a great breakfast. But yeah, it was finally just launched a few weeks ago.
Wow, well congratulations! And the book is called “Shout in the Right Direction.” So how did you decide that name?
Yes, Eric and I really wanted to come out with a topic that would resonate with the small business owners we were working with. And when we were thinking about one of the biggest challenges in marketing, what we settled on was that entrepreneurs and small businesses need help getting buzz, generating buzz and that’s the shouting piece. And they like to use these social media tools to get their word out about their brand. But it’s not enough just to shout, you have to make sure that you are talking to the right people. Because I’ve seen a lot of really, really brilliant entrepreneurs who are marketing to people who cannot and will not ever buy from them. And that’s really the genesis of what “Shout in the Right Direction” is all about.
That’s such a true statement and how do you figure out what your right customer is? Do have any advice on that one?
There’s a framework we talk about in the book and this is called “segment target position strategy.” Sounds super serious, I know. But the biggest thing with it is that when you use this process of grouping your people by group so that you can group them into segments that are similar. You choose which segments go best with your message and which are the best clients. And then you position your marketing and your message to be able to hit them. Just the act of writing those segments down can give you a huge impact in knowing who you’re selling to but more importantly who you’re not selling to.
Yeah, that’s great. Great advice.
Yeah, absolutely. What would you say the biggest challenge is right now in the world of marketing today?
The biggest challenge in the world of marketing I would say is trying to figure out who those segments are. A lot of times entrepreneurs have 1 to 2 problems when they’re doing their segmenting. They will on one side of the show, they’ll have too few segments and they’ll just group people in to this gray, amorphous blob of this customer segment. And when you do that, have you guys ever know anybody who does that where they just have a gray, amorphous blob?
Yep.
It’s hard to market to a blob.
You’re right because it’s hard to have that carry on a conversation because it’s all over the place.
Exactly. Exactly. Then you have people who have the opposite problem and these are the people who have way too many segments. I like to call these the shiny object syndrome entrepreneurs where they say ‘oh my product is great for this market, my product is great for this market, and you know this product really work with this market’ and before you know it they’ve got 15 different segments that their shooting for and they probably even have 3 different types of products. So that means they have 45 different marketing plans that they have to do. And for a one-person business that’s not just feasible.
That makes me really tired.
It does.
I mean I like I can handle hair and nails in my salon. I don’t want to do anything else.
Exactly, exactly. But you know there are some types of salons that want to know what types of people they’re getting in. Are these the younger-hip-trendy type crowd?Are these the more middle-aged-maintenance- and-they’ve-already-kind-of-developed-their-beauty-habits kind of crowd? Is these the older type of crowd? Understanding where those are for your salon Kimmy I think would really help.
Well being that I have pink hair, what do you think? I have to speak to my audience. I’m kind of hanging out with the hip crowd.
Definitely the trendy ones. So when you try to market to them you might want to figure out are they on the newer platforms like Instagram, Pinterest? Or are they on the older platform, more like Twitter and Facebook?
Definitely Instagram and then also Facebook is the hot one for my kids.They love to sit in their chair, take selfie of their tin-foil hair and share it with their friends.
Yes, yes. It seems like you got this on mark, you don’t need my help!
It’s always nice to get good ideas from everybody that comes on the show.
The question I was going to ask how do you choose? So is that kind of how you’re choosing, how you suggest to choose which platform to start with? How many should people start with? I get that question a lot, so what would you say Nick on that?
You know, I like to think about social media as though every social media network is like it’s own country. And it really kind is because if you think about it each social network has a different population of people. Some of them have more people, some of them have less, some have different types of people that are on there. Each social network might have different language that they use. I know some people who are going on to Twitter for the first time, they’re a bit taken aback by the language of re-tweets, follow Fridays, all these types of things that you have to learn. It’s really like a different language like in a different country.
They’re totally a different language.
And they have these different shared history, too. I mean take a look at how Twitter’s roll and starting revolution in the Middle East versus Pinterest roll in revolutionizing how Home and Garden Channel does a lot of their DIY projects. So really thinking about how not only is each social network where your different customers might be. Your brand might work better on some than on others. So you want to think about that question like where should I be on social media? But also the same question as where should I live in the world? That has a lot to do, just much to do with you as it is with your customers.
I like that analogy. Very good. Yeah it makes a lot of sense because it sounds like to me what you’re talking about is more what your customer is comfortable with.
Yes.
What they’re using you need to look at, so Kimmy was saying for hers, there’s a lot on Instagram and Facebook. And I know for Twitter, like you said, that’s a foreign language for some people. I still, I mean, many people still can’t even handle hashtags. I think it’s definitely grown but I still think for a lot of people they’re not there. So I completely agree with you on that piece.
For example I have another client who runs a salon, another salon here in Minnesota. When we first started working together I found out that she has a salon and she have 13 chairs and they were all full. So pretty big salon specially for the city she was in. And she was running all the social media herself, the owner, which a lot of business owners find themselves in. But she was running it all herself. And she was not only doing it by herself but she was on Facebook, Twitter, LinkeIn, YouTube, Google+, Instagram, Pinterest, blog and email news letter. And she was kind of come and go.
That’s crazy. She got a full time job, she doesn’t have time to cut hair.
And she still cut hair two days a week.
That’s amazing.
Right. It was a little bit insane. She was kind of having trouble with it. She was keeping up with it but really none of it was being very effective because she was spreading herself too thin. So two pieces to these; one, we look at the metrics and we look at some of the criteria for what success to look like. And things like which networks were getting the best engagement, were people driving traffic to the website, were people in the salon, in the chair using it and talking about it. Did they mention to the stylist that they were using that type of social media? And one thing we found was that probably half of them, after doing them for several months, were producing barely at all. The second thing is that there were platforms that neither one of us would have ever guessed were the ones that were under performing until we looked. We ended up cutting the email newsletter. We ended up cutting the blog. The blog, she was doing these fantastic articles about do-it-yourself beauty tips and all these that are really great but not only were the blog articles not getting any traffic of their own, but when she shared those on social media those were the lowest engagement post that I’ve seen. So as much as I love blogging and for most businesses that’s the answer to search engine optimization, it really wasn’t cutting it for the salon. So we cut that. We cut the email newsletter. We ended up cutting Twitter which I thought would have been really fantastic. But the ones that were performing were Facebook, Pinterest and Instagram. And when the numbers tell you, you don’t fight them.
I like it, I like it. That’s something to look at because there’s a lot of businesses out there right now that are doing exactly what you just talked about.
Yeah.
And they’re just existing, probably more than half, what I’ve noticed a lot of it is the business owners focusing typically on Facebook and then the other pieces kind of exist. And granted there’s a little mix and match. So if they’ve been doing that what you just stated is what they should look at and just kind of narrow down those numbers and break it down a little more and maybe drop a couple of things, correct?
There’s an exercise that I often will help people with that’s related to this. It’s called the imaginary sales person exercise. I’ll ask a client, imaging that you are gong to hire your first, real, full time sales person today and ask them what would you them sell. And whatever first comes to mind you would have them sell. That is what you should spend most time promoting because that is where you should put all of your resources in, which obviously is the juiciest thing for the company. But we as entrepreneurs and small business owners don’t always remember that because we don’t have to pay ourselves. We feel we can spend our time on things that are always the absolute best use of our time. Whereas if we were paying somebody, a salary to go out and sell, there’d be no question. We would have them only on the very best things. Same thing has to go on social media.
Yeah, that’s true and she can use a lot of that content for her blog and put that out in different aspects, too.At least it’s not a wasted effort and she can just maximize the use of her time. But can I ask, what kind of system would yo recommend that they use to help keep track of what they do everyday? Do you use any/certain system?
So lots of people have different ways they look at things. For me in particular, I’m not always very dictatorial about this is how you should do it, this is the way that I do it because there are lots of different right ways to do social media. Specially the content of the book, for example, is more about the highest level of strategies that you can align your efforts all the way down the line. But for me, I’m a big fan of Hootsuite. Hootsuite is a social media management tool I’m sure a lot of you have heard of.
Yep, I use it.
Yeah. How does it work for your salon?
It works great because I love to watch it. I can monitor all my mentions, that’s what I use it for.
Bingo! Bingo!
All in one screen and I can see who’s talking about me.
My staff and I really like it because whenever we put out a campaign we can schedule most of the messages around the campaign all at once. And that helps a lot with efficiency and making sure that we have a consistent coordinated effort to get it out the word about the campaign when we’re putting out something.
That’s great.
Hootsuite is my favorite, too, so we all kind of agree on that one. And you know, they’ve perfected it. They have a good system there so you can’t go wrong with it. Now there are others obviously but I know Hootsuite is a favorite of all of us so that’s great. So what about, so with all the things to do that helps keep you organized, what other suggestions would you say keep everything organized and aligned with the business goals?
One of the biggest things that I recommend for all people is to have everything come back to the marketing segments. Because when you decide, we can think about what should I post in on Facebook? And that might roll up to well what’s on my editorial calendar, what have I decided that I’m going to schedule, what is my post schedule like? And then you might think how have I decide with my editorial calendar? That can go up another level to the level of the segments. You decide what’s on your editorial calendar based on what you’re trying to promote to whom at any particular time. And then one more level up, it goes to why do I choose this segments? That’s just about why are you in business? What is your core purpose for being in business? And once you can answer that question everything just kind of cascade down from that and the questions are answered.
Well Kimmy answer that question.
Why are you in business?
Why am I in business?
Yes.
Because I absolutely love to serve people and help them make and look beautiful and pretty so they’ll feel good.
But in the end…
And we make money, of course. Money is everything. No, cash is king, you know.
Exactly, exactly. Yeah. But I agree with what he’s saying. It’s something about you got to look at that stuff right there and narrow it down. You’re right about editorial calendar, I love that idea of the editorial calendar but you’re going even deeper than that.
Yeah. A lot of times what we’ll do is this idea of the editorial calendar has been out in the social media for quite sometime. And I would imagine even you guys have discussed it on the show sometime as well. What I want to advocate in the book, for example, is not just an editorial calendar but also a campaign calendar.
Campaigns – I like that word, campaigns.
Because, yeah, go ahead Kimmy.
That way it allows you to tweak and adjust and you’re not just stuck to having a certain thing on Monday and something on Tuesday but you can move your campaigns around and speak to your audience.
Yeah, and I like to quip further with it, too, where we think about strategic planning at three major levels. And one of which is the business plan level, that’s the highest level. The 3-5 year plan and we all know that 3 to 5-year plans are becoming harder and harder to realize. By the time it comes the world has changed so much. But at least having some basic idea of what you’re going to so that anything you do in any 6-month period or 1-year period doesn’t get you off track for what your 3 to 5-year plan is.
Yeah.
Can zoom down to the level of 6 months or 1-year plan and this is what we often think about as the marketing plan. Coordinating what you’re planning and doing for the next 6 months where the highest levels of where you want your business 6 months later and that just helps you make sure that 6 months don’t go by and you haven’t gotten to where you are because you’ve been cut so much up in to the month to month. But then when you get down to the month to month that’s where a lot of the magic happens. That’s where I like to think of as a campaign. A month long or a quarter long effort to do one specific thing. And a lot of times that saying, for me for example, one of the recent campaigns I did was I want to do a concerted effort for one month to connect with and build my audience in professional speakers in the Twin Cities who I think could be a good fit for website and marketing support with Tech Nick. And that’s a one month effort that we’re able to do in order to generate some business pretty quickly in that arena.
That’s great!
Like it, like it. Yeah. And I’ve seen it broke down to the quarterly piece. I know in the Porterfield she does a quarterly segment so there’s different people but I love what you said because it’s really hard to do the few years ahead nowadays because we don’t know what the next social media site that’s going to pop up it’s going to be so it’s pretty hard to go that far but monthly and quarterly and I think we can wrap our heads around that a little better, too.
And luckily for Kimmy everybody’s still going to have hair in three years.
Oh, well most people will.
There’s got a little pink streak in there, you know.
You know I think that will be good. There’s a woman on Twitter, Sandi Krakowski who’s got her famous pink swipe. I’d never want to steal her brand but maybe I could go blue or purple or something.
That’s funny! Orange, it’ll match your book.
That’s right, that’s right. You could see it.
One of the questions off of this that I’d like to ask you also because we’re talking about not just randomly posting, actually having a campaign, actually organizing this campaign, narrowing down the time I’d like how this has gotten into the details of it. And so we’re really narrowing this campaign down to a very specific goal and then once you’ve done that, then how do you measure it? Let’s talk a little bit about the measurement because I know that’s such a big topic nowadays.
First and foremost there’s lots of people who’ve lots of different opinions of measuring things. But I always like to start, as always as a strategist, at the very top. And we look at the core business goals and even more importantly the money, the money that’s coming in. Because my favorite social media metric is profit and loss statement. A lot of people will think, will have this disconnect between their core business strategy and social is just a tactic they add on after. And really they should be integrated because social is nothing without a core business strategy and core business strategy nowadays is most of the time not very effective without social. So that is the first piece that looking at it that you want to set up the metrics that makes sense to you for you business goals because you can’t measure everything. You’ll go insane just looking at all the numbers and being swain to one side to another just by what the numbers change day by day. But always stay focused on what is it that’s important for my business in this 30 days and did I hit it plus #1. Second thing is really to look at the difference between some metrics you have more control over. Things like how many likes you get and how much engagement you get on a post, which are things that are activity-based metrics. These are easier to control but they’re further away from final goal. But also looking at the results metrics – traffic to the website, conversion to your email list and sales. Those things are harder to control but they’re closer to your business goals.
Yes.
Right.
Like it, like it. Love it, wow! We’ve narrowed this down to I think people understand now how to narrow this down. And I’d like to hear a little bit more about your book. Can you kind of go a little more into details before we finish up about what is in the book. Some specific that you want to tell us that’s in the book that really stands out to you?
So Shout in the Right Direction is what it looks like is what came out of doing strategic marketing consults with clients for years. So this is what we do at Tech Nick with clients when we want to figure out what they’re marketing strategy should be. So Shout in the Right Direction goes to three major areas and the first is the planning stage. We talk about how to choose your segments, how to make a plan that’s effective but still flexible and you as a business owner, yeah, I know you, will actually want to do. Because I know you and I know you hate planning but the plan we talked about in Shout in the Right Direction is wanting that even if you hate planning it’s worth it enough to kind of green and barett to get this planned down because it will really help your business.
Nice.
Second piece is all about the tools. It wouldn’t be a social media book without talking about each of the network syndap. We go over all the biggies and some of the newer ones and talking about some of Eric and my observations of how to position each social network — what they might be good for, what they might be bad for, what to watch out for and some insights like that. And last … oh go ahead.
Nope, you have another one? Go ahead.
Yeah, and last part of the book is called creative. That is where now you’ve got your plan, now that you’ve chosen the tools that you’re going to use, you have to figure out what exactly you’re going to say to your target audience. So we’ve come up with several chapters on this idea of creativity in the social space and how to be creative and how to create compelling messages that keep people on with your brand.
Nice. Sounds like it has a lot of material in there. Well two years worth, obviously.
That’s right, that’s right. We don’t hold back with this one.
Ah that’s great, I love it. Now let’s finish up with, we always want to hand our audience a to-do list but a real simple to-do list. Something that they can take action on in the next 24 hours.
What do you think are these things?
What I want to challenge you to do if you’re listening, make a campaign for one month in the next day. What you’re going to do is just choose one thing, one basic thing about you business that you want to do in the next month and write down a smart goal which is a goal that’s specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time bound. And then write down your action plan. One pager, maybe a couple of words says I want to reach, I want to do this by this date and this much and then write on your action plan of maybe 10 steps that are going to help you get it. If you do that in the next day and implement it in the next month you will have some serious return on whatever you set your mind to.
That’s awesome, thank you. So Nick..
Go ahead Kimmy, I’ll let her finish it up.
Yeah, where can people find you and your book? Are you on Amazon?
Yes, yes so Shout in the Right Direction is available for sale in paperback like this on Amazon. And it’s also available on Kindle, as well. If you have any questions for me or have any questions for my co-author Eric you can use, tweet at us with the #shoutbook and we monitor that hashtag and we’ll answer any questions about that show that you have.
Excellent. Thank you so much for coming on our show, I really appreciate it.
Thanks you guys.
Thanks Nick.