November 30

Amplifying Your Social Media Efforts with Benjamin Dell.

 

[00:01:01.320] – Ken

Welcome to this episode of the Marketing Guides for Small Businesses podcast. My name is Ken Tucker. And today we’re going to be learning about some advanced social media techniques with Ben Dell. Ben is the founder of Missinglettr, HeySummit, HelpShelf, and OnboardFlow.

[00:01:18.030] – Ken

There are many ways to amplify your social media. Yet most businesses stop just at posting. But we’re going to talk today about ways that you can amplify your social media and how that can really help your business. Today, I want to welcome a new podcast panelist, Dan Gershenson, who joins us officially. He was on our podcast recently, but now he’s a member of our panel and will be joining us every week. So thanks, Dan.

[00:01:43.830] – Dan

Thank you, Ken. It’s a pleasure to be here and join you folks.

[00:01:47.160] – Ben

I’m glad I’m not the only newbie then, that’s good.

[00:01:49.600] – Ken

Yeah. All right, so let’s get started. Ben, this is Ken – can you talk a little bit about content curation and whether or not that’s still an effective strategy for social media?

[00:02:00.630] – Ben

Yeah, it’s interesting because you got people back in the day, if you’ve heard of him, and there’s many of them, many examples, but Heaton Shaw, for example, well known for many things, but one of which curating content and having big email list followers and everything else. And they’re still very much doing that today, it’s still going strong. And when you look at other, sort of subset of industries that also sort of are leaning on this notion of content curation, you know, newsletters, they certainly have started off their journey sort of many, many years ago.

[00:02:33.030] – Ben

And yet, anecdotally, I’m seeing the newsletter industry stronger than ever. A lot of actually people taking that side of the business very seriously and monetizing newsletters to, to quite great effect. Just two examples, I think, of, of areas where businesses, industries, individuals are still leveraging content curation to great effect.

[00:02:55.140] – Ben

And I, my thesis on this is that the amount of content online, whether it’s social, the web, the dark web, whatever it might be, only getting larger.

[00:03:03.450] – Ben

And, and I think certainly what I’m seeing and both in terms of observing through my businesses, but also just as a consumer in that space, is that I’m spending more and more of my time in terms of where I find and curate content, either for personal use or for sharing with, with my audiences.

[00:03:19.590] – Ben

I’m finding it through specific communities and niches. And I’m starting to depend on a fewer number of people to introduce me to content that I know I will care about.

[00:03:29.820] – Ben

And a really silly example being, I’m a big sort of wine nut, but also a coffee nut as well. And there’s a few key people in the coffee world that I love listening to. And if they mention something, I listen and I think that’s really commonplace is going to become more and more so.

[00:03:45.600] – Ben

Now, well, park aside that, the sort of, the dark side of that, which is that the more and more we do that, the more and more we sort of enclose ourselves into these sort of bubbles that, from a political and religious standpoint, maybe you do want to be listening to alternative views, but as I say, we’ll park that side of things.

[00:04:01.200] – Ben

But I absolutely from a trend sort of standpoint, I’m seeing it not only grow, but becoming more and more a central part of how we should be doing things as part of our marketing mix online.

[00:04:13.650] – Mark

Ben, this is Mark and thanks again for joining us. I think that leads great to the next question, which is about, for you it was wine and coffee, but this role of influencers, right. So speak to a little bit about, if you can expand a little more on what role these kinds of influencers play in social media. And really, our audience are small business owners. How should small business owners think about working with or taking advantage of these really, sort of micro-niches in this influencer marketing type world?

[00:04:38.580] – Ben

Following on from what I’ve just been talking about, which has all been about content curation, I think we can all understand that we get this sort of notion that Person A over there or Entity A over there is in that wheelhouse of whatever that subject matter is that you care about, that niche, then they have access to this content and, or they have access to an audience, sorry, that becomes sort of their addressable market and, and the opportunity to share content with but then when you start using words like influencer, particularly I think in the small business space, I don’t know about you, but I immediately jumped to sort of Instagram big hitters spending, you know, having to pay them a lot of money to, you know, it’s more of a transactional connotation that it sort of gives me, certainly for those in the small business of the world, and I think we need to just try and remove that association as much as we can, because all an influencer really means is, or equates to, is someone with access to an audience. And that could really be, you know, nothing more than someone with a following on Twitter of 500 people. It doesn’t necessarily have to be someone with access to 20 million people on Instagram, because the reality is we got to think about the influence of, sort of, opportunity as to the basic maths.

[00:05:47.740] – Ben

Let’s take that example of, of someone with a Twitter following of 500 people. Well, if those people are actually really close to your core by-persona, someone who cares about the product or the service or the wares that you’re sort of talking about and selling, then that’s a really meaningful sort of subset to get in front of or an audience to get in front of. And the maths that I refer to is such that when you think of it in those terms, we then got to, sort of compare it with other means for getting in front of 500 equivalent people.

[00:06:18.270] – Ben

Now, that could be paid advertising, it could be an actual paid influencer in that sort of sense, it could be a longer-term sort of SEO sort of piece that you’re consulting on or having someone consult with you on, or on a content marketing piece. And so when it comes down to that sort of, way of looking at things, someone with ready access to 500 people, actually that’s the path of least resistance in most cases. So then the next question is, how do you get in front of those influencers who themselves can get in front of those audiences?

[00:06:47.040] – Ben

And how can you, in theory, have access to multiple influencers to, sort of broaden your, sort of reach? But I think just getting that principle laid out in our minds first, I think is a really powerful one to just sort of understand, because it should I think hopefully, having heard that, encourage you to see whether there’s anyone in your sort of niche or wider sort of category space that might have access to sort of audiences like that, whether they’re 500 people or 500,000, all just as valuable, in my opinion.

[00:07:14.400] – Ken

That’s fantastic, because I do agree with you. I think a lot of people, when they hear the word influencer now, they immediately go to that Kardashians or somebody like that.

[00:07:23.730] – Dan

I’m glad somebody said Kardashians.

[00:07:24.780] – Ben

And I was the one who said it first.

[00:07:29.420] – Ken

So I win, right?

[00:07:31.420] – Ken

Really, if you think about it in terms of blog posting, if you are a carpet cleaning company and all you ever post about is carpet cleaning, nobody is ever going to care. They’re going to look and they’re going to read some content. And at a certain point in time, you’re just going to hit the wall. So talk about a little bit bigger, broader concept. And that’s where I think an influencer can really help you take advantage of work with interior designers, right – content related to interior design or anything that has to do with the improvement of the inside of a home. Even if it’s not your core set of expertise, it broadens your reach, it gets you in front of other people that can, in effect, become an influencer and help drive your business and your visibility online.

[00:08:17.760] – Ben

Yeah, we’re talking not just about access to an extended audience network through an influencer or equivalent, but also broadening your content strategy and as you say, not just necessarily narrowing in on carpet cleaning or whatever it might be, but actually just broadening it out a little bit. And this raises the next point, I think, which is worth noting, which is when we think about marketing in these sorts of terms, it’s not just about the sort of the brass tacks, if you will, of getting content in front of an audience or a person in order to encourage a transaction of some sort, whether it’s a sign up on your list or whether it’s an actual sale for your e-commerce site.

[00:08:56.340] – Ben

The other part of it is actually engagement. And I think it’s something that is often forgotten. It’s not just about the transaction, it’s about what can you do to really deepen that engagement. And that then has other sort of benefits, terms of relationship building, trust, respect and everything else. And and that’s sort of general sort of a networking piece. So, yeah, I think broadening horizons from a content standpoint really help provide an opportunity for you to engage with your audience.

[00:09:21.990] – Ben

And that then in a very, very basic sense means that when you do then have something that is a bit more sort of focused on your core product that you want to put in front of them, they’re much more likely to actually care to listen, because for one, it’s not just constantly barking on about the same subject all the time, it’s now part of a wider mix and it’s much more natural, it’s much more conversational.

[00:09:42.000] – Ben

People enjoy that. We don’t want to have content shoved down our throat. We want to have stuff that actually feels like something we want to sort of engage with. So, yeah, I think that’s a really, really important piece.

[00:09:52.660] – Dan

It’s good that you mention engagement because one of the things that people come to us as consultants is the frequency as far as posting, sometimes about the same content. They often think, well, one and done, that it’s kind of well, I posted that on this social media channel and that’s that. I wonder for the folks out there, though, what’s your take on how often you might need to post? Let’s just say for the sake of argument, it’s the same content, but posting it multiple times on social media and over what period of time? I know a lot of things are not always the same thing twice, but kind of what’s your take on that?

[00:10:32.640] – Ben

Before I waffle a little bit, my basic sort of short answer to that would be more than you’re doing, but less than you think. So I ran an agency before Missinglettr and actually this is where the idea of Missinglettr came from. And one of these common things that I’ve seen across all of our clients is that they would have the foresight to create a blog of such, they would have a bit of a content strategy around it in terms of subject matter and the nature of the content that they’d be talking about and writing about.

[00:10:57.360] – Ben

In almost all cases, they would do what most people do, which is they will send the tweets or the Facebook post or whatever platform they, they kind of choose to focus on. On the day that they publish that blog post announcing the fact that they’ve published this blog post, which is great. I mean, that, that, don’t get me wrong, that is an important thing to do.

[00:11:12.870] – Ben

But then they would stop. And this is a crying shame because there is this sort of notion of a half-life, of a promotional window, if you will, of opportunity that anything really in life, but specifically when sharing content specifically on social media, because it’s such a visceral, fast-paced sort of environment that, yes, is different on Facebook versus Twitter. You know, it’s much shorter on Twitter generally than on Facebook. Facebook will surface things a little bit longer than than that.

[00:11:38.790] – Ben

But generally speaking, your half-life, your window of opportunity to promote your content when you publish it on Twitter or Facebook is about 24 hours, if you’re lucky, 48 hours, maybe if you’re, if you’ve really got something that goes a little bit viral and then it kind of peters off almost to nothing.

[00:11:54.030] – Ben

Now, if you are lucky enough to have a great, you know, newsletter following, you know, list, that you can literally blast out this to, and then they themselves are an army of influencers that then share it organically with their lists and so on and so forth. Or you shove a lot into paid advertising or you just have a huge following on social media, then you don’t necessarily need this as much. But the majority of small businesses, ourselves included, are not in that sort of luxurious sort of position.

[00:12:21.690] – Ben

So you really need to be getting as much bang for your buck as you can out of every single piece of content. And at the end of the day we’re creating those blog posts, those pieces of content because we want to engage with them, get it in front of an audience as part of a marketing strategy. And so, yeah, I think to your question around timing and duration and everything else, certainly, in Missinglettr our default blog post campaigns that we then drip out your social channels for each blog post will last for 12 months.

[00:12:48.510] – Ben

And this is where I said at the beginning, less than you think. Within that 12 months, we actually only send it out to your social accounts nine times over that 12 months. Now, you can customize that if you wanted to. If you know that your audience more, you can create a two-year schedule that sends out three times as many posts. But we found the sweet spot, 12 months, nine posts. And actually we start off slightly more condensed at the beginning.

[00:13:11.040] – Ben

So day zero, day three, day seven… sort of the gaps in between get longer all the way up to day 365. So by that time there’s almost sort of two or three months in between the posts before that and the next post. And that’s no bad thing. The point is you have a system, you have a bit of a strategy around a habit that you’re forming within the business to get that content out over that long term. And it really has a huge impact.

[00:13:36.000] – Ben

And that’s just for one blog post. If you’re then running in parallel multiple blog post campaigns, you can really see how this can start contributing to a to a much more consistent body of work from a from a marketing standpoint.

[00:13:47.640] – Paul

Hey, Ben, this is Paul, thanks for joining us. Circle back a little bit, I think it’s really good what you said about the influencer. It’s an influencer in your niche and it has to be relevant. And that doesn’t matter if the influencer has five million subscribers, if it’s irrelevant to what you do, it doesn’t matter. What’s the importance of social media? How important is it to use social media to drive traffic to your website?

[00:14:11.520] – Ben

The way I look at this is twofold. For one, you need to think of it as part of a broader mix. And just recognising when you think of it in those terms, that in most cases there are always exceptions, of course, but in most cases it’s very rare that you’re going to have a single silver bullet of a marketing channel that is going to be the one place that you go to and you can forsake everything else and you’re going to go double down on that and it’s going to give you everything.

[00:14:35.040] – Ben

And the reality on the flip side of that is that actually the sensible thing to do is to just have a healthy mix of various channels that you’re engaging in, in your presence in. Now, social is a really, really powerful part of that. The reality is that that’s where most people are at some point in the day. I mean, that’s kind of a crazy thing, really, isn’t it? I mean, email and social on both of those at least once a day in most cases.

[00:14:59.070] – Ben

And that’s really powerful as a takeaway to sort of just bear in mind. Now that’s the one way of looking at it. It’s really important that we continue to think of social media as part of a wider marketing mix. The other part is just then deciding whether you take it further. And that’s really a question of suck it and see, you’ve got to experiment with various channels. And that is where you then choose to double down on things that are demonstrably working to a real extent that is beyond anything that you’re seeing in other channels. That’s when you double down. But even in those cases, you still want to be playing in the other sort of spaces to some extent. So your question, how important is it? I think it’s as important as you want to make it, but don’t underplay its importance as part of that sort of broader mix that you should be at least playing in.

[00:15:42.860] – Ken

We’ve been a Missinglettr customer for quite a while now. We see a tremendous amount of traffic that comes back to reading content on our clients’ websites, blog posts, and the traffic that we’re driving with the 12-month type of campaign that you talked about that you can build out in Missinglettr, actually, conversion is a little bit more difficult to track, people filling out a form to request a consultation or calling the business or something like that. But what we do see, and we measure, is actually when people go back to the website after they’re driven from social media to a blog post, which is how we’re predominantly using Missinglettr, we see that they stick around on the website and the dwell time is actually very powerful.

[00:16:29.330] – Ken

So it’s been a wonderful tool that we’ve been able to take advantage of. Like you said, most blog posts, sure, there are seasonal blog posts. We work with painters right now, we’re getting to the point where they might be writing blog posts about getting your house painted for the holidays, things like that. You can still build out some campaigns when obviously keep driving traffic, it may not be a 12-month life cycle that you would want to do that, obviously, but a lot of content, especially blog posts, is really evergreen.

[00:16:57.860] – Ken

The value of sending people back from your social channels to your website, I think can be very strong. And it has a nice social signal that’s sent that’s an element of search engine optimization. If people are engaging with your content or interacting with your content on social channels, that’s picked up by the search engines for sure.

[00:17:17.120] – Ben

Yeah, it’s definitely a piece, isn’t it? And it’s it’s also the case, I suppose, that by being present in that sort of sense and promoting that piece of content over the long term, you’re not just increasing the chances that a potential customer or potential lead might might sort of pick it up and click through to the site and anything else.

[00:17:34.190] – Ben

But you’re potentially getting in front of potential future influencers. You see it, you didn’t see it the first time you published it, but maybe six months down the line, they see it, and then they choose to share it. So by not doing it, the bottom line is you’re just leaving all of that opportunity on the table really. So, yeah, it’s great to hear that you’re getting so much traction out of it. And you’re right, there are cases where it’s not so relevant because of seasonality and everything else. But I think the majority is much more down the evergreen sort of route and it absolutely applies there.

[00:18:00.140] – Ken

Yeah, one of the questions we get a lot from our clients in regards to social media is why is it important for your content to be shared by people who don’t know you? So that’s one. And then the second is, why do I want to share content from people that are in my business that’s not me, that doesn’t take somebody to my website. And so I’d love to hear your thoughts on the value of sharing through social media. After all, it is called social for a reason, right?

[00:18:30.530] – Ben

Yeah. Yeah. I think trust and engagement, I think are the key words there. And I think they’re almost interchangeable on both sides of that sort of fence. By having other people share your content, you can lean on their trust with their audience, you know, the relationship that they have with their own sort of audience. You can lean on that because certainly if it’s, if it is, and hopefully you’re not creating blog posts that are out and out sales-y, sure some of them might be, but the majority should be sort of more informational and engaging with things on a broader sort of topic level.

[00:18:59.450] – Ben

But even then, by you simply sharing your own content, it will only get you so far. Again, it comes back to that point. It’s one part of a wider marketing strategy. And so having other people do it, not only gets you in front of that wider audience, but you can, as I say, lean on the trust and relationship that they’ve built with their own audience, which is really, really powerful. And then when you share your, sorry, other people’s content with your audience, you’re building that trust again by saying, hey, look, I’m actually a purveyor, if I could use that sort of word, of content that you care about and it might not be something that you come to us directly for. But we know that if you care about carpets, you probably care about curtains or upholstery or something, or just, or just more broadly, home improvements, or just homes sort of products. And if we can start cementing ourselves as a good, trusted resource for sensible information that isn’t just ours, then it builds that trust. But it also means that you’re engaging and you’ll hopefully be front of mind when they do then need to buy or to acquire the services that you then offer.

[00:20:01.050] – Dan

It builds authority as well, trust and authority.

[00:20:04.743] – Ben

Yes yes, that’s the word I was looking for.

[00:20:05.040] – Mark

As you continue to do that and you sort of build on those layers, I mean, you’re really sort of forming a community around the topics or related topics that your target customers may be interested in or people adjacent to your business. If you will amplify a little more on how you can leverage that community to share social media content and to build up that that trust factor.

[00:20:24.660] – Ben

Yeah, I think it’s just, it’s just leveraging the fact that if you have a community that cares about a topic and if you’re part of that community, whether that’s a community that you’ve nurtured or whether it’s a community you’re a part of, because like in my case, I’m interested in coffee, and so I’m part of a couple of sub-Reddits and follow people on Twitter, that sort of thing. No matter what your role is in that community, by being part of it, you can engage in that sort of conversation.

[00:20:47.340] – Ben

And, you know, it comes back to something we haven’t spoken about yet, which is sort of delivering value beyond the content as part of that responsible, meaningful part of that community. Whether it’s responding to a question in that community, whether it’s sharing advice, these are really just simple ways that you can participate in this wider sort of conversation that then just make it far, far more easier to later on share information that might be your own or have them share your information because they choose to.

[00:21:16.080] – Ben

And that still just all comes back down to that idea of trust and engagement and everything else. But those are two ways that you can kind of get get get to that point as well.

[00:21:24.270] – Ken

I think it also just naturally kind of leads to link building as well, as you start to share out content and you discover new content, whether it’s your content or somebody’s that you shared, if anybody was paying attention to that, might wind up saying, hey, that’s a really good piece of content. I don’t need to write about that. But when I’m writing my blog post, I might want to link out to that because they explain it better than I ever could.

[00:21:49.920] – Ken

That link building is always a challenge. And if you’re within a community where you’re already very topically aligned, that’s going to be even more powerful, even if they don’t have the domain authority of some massive websites or really big influencers because it’s a highly relevant link can be just as powerful.

[00:22:10.560] – Ben

Yeah, don’t be afraid to link out. Certainly what we’re seeing is a trend. More and more Google and other search engines are focusing more on perceived engagement and value that the reader is getting from that individual piece of content vs. just whether they’ve been drawn in by a particular click bait title or keyword or whatever it might be. If that is the case, and I think it’s almost certain that that’s going to continue down that trend in terms of ways that Google and search engines will attempt to monitor things and therefore rank and everything else… If that is the case, and really our only job is to provide content that resonates and that provides value, that delivers value. And and if part of that means that there is this person over there that may or may not be my community, but just is much more of an authority on a particular subject matter, and it makes more sense for you to link out to them and share that wisdom or whatever it might be, then it’s almost, in most cases, worth doing.

[00:23:00.930] – Ben

Now there are, of course, exceptions. You don’t literally expect you to then sort of be literally linking out to your direct competitors. You know, you need to use a level head here. But literal competitors aside, most other people are not. And therefore spreading the love and the authority, I think, is a sensible thing.

[00:23:18.540] – Dan

It would seem like one of the best parts of that, too, would be sort of the win win of sharing the love with people who are your allies. And it makes for more interesting content from angles and perspectives that you never even imagined before, but still within the same realm, at least of the people that you speak to. Case in point, the folks right here on this call, all good allies and speaking to the same people, but just doesn’t have to come from you all the time.

[00:23:45.360] – Paul

Yeah.

[00:23:45.810] – Ben

As you build those relationships with those in your space who share common sort of interests and and everything else, collaboration almost, you can’t help but find opportunities to collaborate, whether it’s on a blog post or podcast like this or something else, and that in itself can open you up to other sort of communities. So, yeah, worth doing for multiple, multiple reasons.

[00:24:06.630] – Dan

One of the things that I would ask about is, and this is a hard one because it really encompasses a whole lot but, you know, when it boils down to it, when you think about one of the most important things that a small business can do to improve their social media effectiveness, gosh, it’s so hard to pinpoint on one thing I know, but if you had to pick one or say a top three right now for some of the people who are starting to wrap their arms around the idea of what we’re talking about here from link building to content to social media, what are some of the very first most impactful things that you could say, even if it is just one, that you could say would really propel their business?

[00:24:46.950] – Ben

The one thing that comes to mind, as I sort of hear that, is consistency.

[00:24:51.390] – Ben

I think if there’s one thing you should be sort of taking away from this and thinking about, because we’ve spoken about lots of potential different tactics here, whether it’s sort of directly engaging with influencers, whether it’s building your own community and using that as a link sharing opportunity, whether it’s, whatever those things are, there’s lots of different things. And that’s part of the problem. There are so many opportunities that it can feel a bit overwhelming and difficult therefore, to commit and to pick something into it to sort of start playing in that space.

[00:25:16.650] – Ben

And so the downside of that is that we become habitually comfortable with trying and stepping back.

[00:25:24.360] – Ben

Silicon Valley dictates that we should fail fast and be comfortable with that. I’m all for that. You shouldn’t be trying something unless you are fully prepared to fully commit. No, that’s not what I’m saying. But just be aware that by trying out a tool over here, trying out that technique over there and then stepping back, that the risk is that you end up having nothing that you’re consistently following through on. So the goal I think overarching all of this is to find a consistency in your marketing output, because particularly in content, it is all about consistency.

[00:25:57.330] – Ben

We often hear about this sort of this this content snowball, this SEO snowball that will sort of roll down the hill and will in time start delivering all of this SEO goodness and social goodness or whatever it is that, you know, that space that you’re playing in.

[00:26:08.610] – Ben

But that will only happen if you are continually maintaining a healthy habit in content publication, content promotion, social presence and everything else. And and so, yeah, come up with a plan and really, without wanting to sound too sales-y, that’s the kind of what sort of Missinglettr hinges on, which is helping you, at least for the promotional side of getting your blog post or whatever the content is that you’re trying to promote, at least for that bit, helping you create a consistent output.

[00:26:36.070] – Ben

If any sort of customer comes to me and asks for advice, I’d say, well, as much as that might have solved that part, you still need to find consistency in other areas. And quite often, ironically, it’s actually in the publication of the blog post in the first place and people sort of publishing not often enough or not regularly enough, let’s say, because it actually doesn’t matter too much, whether it’s once a month or once every six months.

[00:26:53.310] – Ben

Quality counts, but you don’t, you know, just do it once because where’s the habit in that, where’s the consistency. So, yeah, consistency to me is key.

[00:27:00.690] – Paul

What about the role of hashtags in content promotion and discovery and how do you go about finding the right hashtags to use?

[00:27:09.000] – Ben

This is really interesting. I’m going to say something slightly non… can’t think of the word, non-standard there, which is rather than think of hashtags as a content discovery mechanism, as a way of providing those sort of clickthroughs to other communities so that people can discover you, you know, what people are clicking SEO and then they find my content and they see it in a big stream of other people’s tweets… Yes, that can happen. And that’s partly what it’s all there to do, I suppose.

[00:27:34.740] – Ben

But I don’t know. How often do you guys click through on the hashtags? I mean, do you do it that much?

[00:27:38.850] – Paul

Not really.

[00:27:39.514] – Ben

No

[00:27:39.910] – Ken

No.

[00:27:42.130] – Ben

It’s funny isn’t it…

[00:27:43.260] – Ken

But it’s probably true, I don’t.

[00:27:45.390] – Ben

Because we all are led to believe and we all tell ourselves and there is an element of truth in this, of course, but we’re all led to believe that hashtags are important.

[00:27:53.790] – Ben

And despite having said that, I do think they’re important, but not for the reasons that I think we were all led to believe.

[00:27:59.670] – Ben

So rather than think of it as a content discovery mechanism, think of it as a way of kind of signposting your audience, your potential audience, to the content you’re actually talking about. And let’s specifically think about a tweet in a stream that is literally linear and it’s scrolling up before your very eyes. Our eyes are bleeding there’s so much content. Even without there being great content behind it, the chances of your content being seen, and even less, of it being consumed, diminishing. So if you think about it you’ve got two layers to this content – we’ve got the actual long form content, the blog post or the video or the blog or the ebook or whatever it is that we’ve linked to… but before they can actually get to that they’ve got to actually engage and identify that single tweet as the thing that they want to click on. So the way I like to think about hashtags is, as a signpost that in a quite punchy, quick, efficient way, helps inform my audience what it is that I’m actually talking about.

[00:28:54.960] – Ben

And I find that as a bit of a release. It kind of, it frees you up, I think, because rather than, it fundamentally changes how you think about hashtags, because rather than think about having to find the most impactful trendiest hashtag of the day, actually your only job is to make sure that it’s relevant.

[00:29:12.360] – Ben

And even if it means it’s completely leashed and no one’s come up with that hashtag before, if it’s relevant and it talks to your audience and it’s honestly referring to what you’re talking about, it’s going to capture their attention and it’s going to give them trust that the thing that they’re going to click on is going to give them the information that they think it’s going to give them.

[00:29:28.590] – Ben

Because worst-case scenario is that you lead them astray with some sort of click-baity hashtag because it’s trendy, even with the best intentions. It’s just too broad because you’ve gone for the trendy hashtag. Let’s just say, you know, they tag it with marketing, that’s a really broad sort of attack. Yes. You’re probably broadly talking about marketing, if that’s your space, but specifically, what are you talking about? I’d much rather send them specifically so that they actually engage with the content rather than bounce once they land on it.

[00:29:52.740] – Ben

So, yeah, shift around. Contrarian, contrarian, that was the word I was looking for at the beginning, a slightly contrarian view.

[00:29:58.560] – Ben

Yeah. So. That’s the way I would think about things.

[00:30:01.220] – Dan

I absolutely love that, actually, because you’ve probably saved people minutes upon minutes, if not hours, on doing research for LinkedIn hashtags and other Facebook hashtags and things like that, because I think they obsess about it so much.

[00:30:15.890] – Dan

But I love the way that you’re thinking about it as kind of a teaser for the content itself. We certainly see that a lot on some of the longer form things like LinkedIn, where people take up every single character possible. And if you could take three hashtags, the way you’re talking about it, I think is, is just a great, great tease for, this is something really interesting and engaging and gets them into it just another way.

[00:30:40.070] – Ben

By the way, I’m still talking about restricting it if you can to about two or three, I’m not advocating for more than three, because otherwise you just… 

[00:30:46.040] – Dan

Yeah, yeah. Two or, no, we’ve seen some pretty crazy and obnoxious twenty-five hashtag posts… But no I agree with you, two or three would be great.

[00:30:55.100] – Ken

And I would like to go back just a little bit to something you said a few minutes ago, which was to talk about consistency of posting. And right now I think it’s super, super important, maybe even more important than it ever has been because of the pandemic. If you’re not actively posting on social media, I think people can look at your business if they find your profiles or they find your Facebook page and they may not think your business is open or active.

[00:31:21.200] – Ken

And it also, I think, sends a, just a subtle signal. If the last time you posted was six weeks ago, do you really pay attention to what’s going on in your business? And so it’s really become a prerequisite and a necessary thing that I think businesses need to do. Again, that’s part of the beauty of what I think Missinglettr helps to do, is you build out these twelve-month campaigns and after you’ve published a series of blog posts, you have a fairly regular stream of content that’s coming through, so I think that’s fantastic

[00:31:54.170] – Ken

Ben, we’re right at about time, we normally try to keep this at around 30 minutes… Before we leave I’d love for you to tell our listeners how they can find out more about you and your business. And if you want to talk a little bit more and explain a little bit more about what Missinglettr is feel free to do that.

[00:32:10.370] – Ben

I feel like I’ve overrun ever so slightly already. My British waffle has undone a few things there, but thank you very much. It’s been really enjoyable and I’ve actually never done a, sort of a panel-based podcast like this, so kudos for the format, it’s quite enjoyable.

[00:32:23.180] – Ben

You can find me on Twitter @BenDell, B-e-n-D-e-l-l. If you don’t get the spelling of the next thing I’ll say in a second, we’ll talk about branding another day, and then you can find the links to my other products on my Twitter profile. So Missinglettr can be found @MissingLettr.com. There’s a missing letter in there, clever eh? Until you have to explain it. So that’s, that’s where you might want to go for that.

[00:32:47.780] – Ben

I think hopefully most would have caught the thread of what Missinglettr does. But in a sense, it helps create a social media campaign for each of the blog posts that you publish that lasts for an entire twelve months. And that’s all automatic. You get to review the campaign, of course, before you approve it. So that’s nothing goes out without your say-so. But within about fifteen minutes of you publishing a blog post, you’ll receive an automatic email from Missinglettr telling you that there’s a new campaign ready for you to review, you can cycle through suggestions, tweet the images, do a whole bunch of things with hashtags and all sorts of clever things.

[00:33:19.190] – Ben

And when you click ‘go’, we then will drip it out gradually, as I mentioned before, to the default being twelve months over that year will drip it out to your social profiles. And for those listening, whenever this does come out, we’ve just as of when this is being recorded, two weeks ago we launched a brand new add-on to Missinglettr called Post-box, which neatly touches on a lot of what we’ve spoken about, which is a platform, a two-sided marketplace if you will, that helps you get your content in front of the right audience.

[00:33:46.010] – Ben

So essentially it’s a platform for helping find the influencers within your topics and niches and categories, however you self-categorize. And on the flip side, as a way for you to discover content within your own niches to then share with your audience. So it’s kind of solving that sort of promotional requirement as well as that engagement requirement that you have within your own community. So a lot of interesting things there, and it’s all about how can you amplify your content the most effectively? And that’s what we live for. Thanks so much for having me on. It’s been great fun.

[00:34:14.990] – Paul

Thank you Ben.

[00:34:15.440] – Ben

But yeah, I’m happy to, if there’s any other follow-up questions from those listening, just catch me on Twitter and we can pick things up from there.

[00:34:21.600] – Mark

Yes. Thanks, Ben, for being on.

[00:34:23.220] – Ben

Thank you.

[00:34:23.570] – Ken

Absolutely. Thanks.

[00:34:25.580] – Dan

Thank you.

[00:34:27.740] 

We want to thank you all for taking the time to listen to today’s podcast. Please be sure and subscribe to the Marketing Guides for Small Business podcast and your podcast software. We’d love for you to rate and review us wherever you get your podcasts. And please don’t forget to visit marketingguidesforsmallbusinesses.com for more episodes, free resources and links to set up free consultation calls with any of the hosts of this podcast.

[00:34:52.880] 

Thanks again. And stay tuned.


Tags


You may also like

Leave a Reply
{"email":"Email address invalid","url":"Website address invalid","required":"Required field missing"}