Transcription:
It, since it’s the Steph Curry, the one that comes into, into the sport, which Steph Curry came to the sport of basketball and changed the game. It’s the way the game is played with how well he shoots the three. And ever since he’s established that the game of basketball has adapted and so many more players are, are pulling up and cheating or shooting long form three or long, long-range threes and whatnot.
He’s changed the game of basketball. That’s the same thing that TikTok has done in the social media world as, or the social media world as we talked about, Facebook and Instagram. Even though they’re the ones that have been established longer, they’ve had to change how they allow people or encourage people to post on their platforms.
Because of TikTok, and since TikTok has impacted other social media platforms. As much as it has, and it is growing as exponentially as it is, that’s the one I would prioritize next.
Welcome to another episode of DM Shop Talk or Digital Marketing Shop Talk. I’m Mike Mahaffey, as always, and here with me is…
Jeremy Mullins, from Valorous Circle.
Yeah, and Jeremy, I know, if, actually, the audience, if you guys haven’t been a part of this the past few episodes, we’re currently going through a series which we like to call myth understandings.
And Jeremy and I have discussed, and the reason why we’re going through this series right now, is because we hear a lot of home service businesses or business owners that might be maybe misled or might have a misunderstanding here and there. And, we just want to help clear the air and make sure that you guys are as well-equipped as possible to grow your presence online.
We just know there’s a lot of clickbait out there. We know there are a lot of people on TikTok, on Facebook, posting videos on what you should and shouldn’t be doing on your social media. And so we just wanted to clear the air and try to, try to bring light. Some of these, some of these myth understandings, as we like to call them, and I know we’ve talked previously about some of the SEO hacks and whatnot. And I know today’s episode, Jeremy, we wanted to talk about social media and social media platforms.
Did you want to, kind of, introduce more specifically what today’s myth understanding is?
Yeah. The myth understanding is that you have to automatically, or, you know when you start out, be on all social media platforms all at once. So if you can think of it, you should be on it. So we want to break this myth down and start talking about the baby steps you can take to get your business on those social media platforms correctly.
So it’s kind of the analogy of, you know, Hey, Mike, how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. Right?
Yeah. Yeah. It’s funny because how often do we hear when we start working with some business owners or we start, maybe even just collaborating with them, that they want to just kind of shoot a shotgun, just start doing everything all at once?
And my question to you, Jeremy, is how well does that normally work? If you just try to do everything all at once, starting from zero.
It doesn’t work at all. It’s complete chaos. You start looking for shortcuts and how to get to, you know, posting all of them, which might hurt your algorithms. And so if you don’t have a plan, it’s kind of chaos from the start, isn’t it?
No, most definitely. And that’s, that’s the one thing, the one disclaimer, I do want to see why this is a myth understanding. Is that eventually, you would probably like to be on most, if not all social medias. But that’s exactly what you’re saying, Jeremy, part of the plan, part of the strategy that you want to. You want to make sure that you’re not getting burned out, that you’re not trying to do everything all at once. That you want to take it step by step, exactly what you said with the elephant.
And so you don’t get that burnout. So we, I just want to make sure we don’t want to discourage anybody from not going on all the platforms eventually, but we just want to make sure that you’re doing it in a way that you don’t… say that again.
Just baby steps, right?
Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. So, more or less Jeremy, what would a strategy look like? How would a home service business owner, like a plumber or electrician, know which platform they should start on?
So, Jeremy, my question to you is if a plumber or an electrician, a roofer, or anybody in the home service industry is taking the steps that they’re, they don’t have any social medias created yet.
They don’t have any presence yet. What should a strategy look like? Where should they begin? So they don’t feel that burnout of trying to shoot that shotgun and go everywhere all at once.
Great question. I think we’re going to begin with one that, honestly, a lot of people don’t look at as social media, and that’s going to be your Google Business Profile.
So, if you remember, Google Business Profile came from Google Plus. Is that what they call it? I can’t remember now, but it’s been so long, but it’s a social media platform for your business. And so that’s the number one thing I would start doing is posting on there on a regular basis.
I would start there just because, in our previous podcast, we talked about that checklist of priority items in Google’s business profile was like number two or number three. Because Google is the search engine giant that we have to deal with on a daily basis. And so, every business owner wants to rank well on Google.
So we should play by their rules and start with their services. Start with their services and Google business profiles are their service. So you want to be feeding that, you want to be nurturing that and posting your content on there. So whether that’s videos, whether that’s photos, whether that’s posts, you can post a lot on there.
If you haven’t taken the time to dive in to your Google business profile, I would definitely, I would do so because you, there’s a lot that you can do on there. As I said, whether it’s photos or videos, you can answer frequently asked questions, you get your Google reviews, you can be responding to those regularly.
There’s a lot that you can be doing on your Google business profile that you might not be aware of.
100%. So, I do think it’s important to be on the other granddaddy of them all, which is Facebook, right? The reason is when somebody goes to Facebook and starts greasing the wheel with their sphere of influence or who they’re connected with, a lot of times businesses can get tagged in a post.So you want to make sure that your business shows up there as well.
Yeah, no, most definitely in Facebook is, if we’re just going to be honest, Facebook is still where the majority of the homeowner’s demographic is going to be. We can make arguments all day that TikTok is growing exponentially, Instagram is growing exponentially. All that’s true and we’ll get to those platforms later on in this podcast. But Facebook is still the granddaddy of them all. It’s the original social media or the, one of the most original social media that still is established today. So if you’re going to pick a platform that you should establish yourself on, that’s Facebook.
Just because Facebook has the most features, has the most things that you can be doing. To target your different audiences, whether that’s organic or whether that’s through Facebook ads. Regardless, Facebook is the best way that you can get that foundation and start on. And realistically, there’s a lot, a lot that you can do, Jeremy, when it comes to Facebook.
And I know, you know, that. Our team especially does a lot on Facebook, regardless of whether it’s just a standard post, trying to interact with your audience. But Jeremy, do you have any experience with maybe some of the groups on Facebook or how business owners could be utilizing Facebook groups?
Yep. 100%. So, you know, the whole thing about social media is that you are social. And so by being on inside groups that are maybe local communities that you can be associated with. Trade partners that you can be associated with learning tips and tricks, But to get, to get business, I believe that you either should be in, I don’t know, 10 to 12 Facebook groups locally. And probably have one of your own started for your past clients and stuff like that. So every time you serve a client, they add it to the group, and they can ask questions there. It’s a direct portal to them anytime they want to write a promotion. It’s a great way to grease the wheel. I’m using that term a lot today, but greasing the wheel is important because that’s how you get a lot of business, right? It gets things moving quickly.
When you’re establishing a business, referrals getting friends of friends, and networking is going to be the fastest way that you can grow your business. And in, in 2023, Facebook is that new digital way that you can network through these Facebook groups, through joining local communities in the area.
There are still obviously ones you can go to and be part of in person, but they’re also found digitally online. You can connect with so many people through posting on there and interacting. It definitely wouldn’t hurt. If not, I would make a point that it is such a good thing to do. Which is posting your testimonials and your “before and afters” in those groups as well, too.
Just because it shows off your good work. You can only sell so much of what you can do. But if you allow other people to share what you do, to say how good of a job you’re doing through those testimonials, through those reviews, then you’re allowing people to get more credibility and build that trust that we’ve talked about before.
And that all can be done within those Facebook groups; within those Facebook communities. And once again, it’s like a snowball effect. Uh, you get one referral, that one referral, or one review through this Facebook group gets you another one. And that might get you to, or that might get you four. And it just keeps going, it keeps going down or keeps going down the hill and building momentum.
And so it, there’s just so much you can do on Facebook and whatnot. So, I mean, it is. And once again, once we touch on the other social medias, I can make arguments on why you should be on there, but obviously, we’re talking about not trying to do them all at one time. Let’s start at one, build your foundation, build your base, and Facebook is still the, as I said, the granddaddy of them all with the most that you can do.
But Jeremy, I have my thoughts on what would be the next one. What would be your thoughts?
Well, I mean, for ease of use, I think Instagram would be my next go because Facebook and Instagram are connected.
No, I was going to say the same thing. If we’re making a priority list of things that they can bring consistency to posting on social media, it would be Instagram just because they’re, they’re partners; they’re sister companies.
And so, what you can post on Facebook, if it involves a picture or video, can also be posted on Instagram in the same way. And you can use the tools that Facebook, or I should say the parent company, Meta, allows you to do if you can post on Facebook and Instagram at the same time. And so you’re getting two audiences at one time.
And so just, just for the ease, just for the fact that you can bring that consistency. I’d agree. I’d go with Instagram. But, I mean, the biggest question is is it isn’t Instagram mainly just for posting your vacation pictures or what you did this past weekend? Why why would a roofer want to be on Instagram?
Yeah, well, it’s a good question. I mean even this past year Instagram, I’m saying this first, Instagram, and Facebook have all shifted to really pushing shorts, right? So even the platforms themselves are kind of starting to get integrated. And, Instagram is a fantastic place to start posting shorts.
Tell the stories visually still, but posting shorts, I think is where you’re going to get the most traction for your business by far.
Yep. And it’s, you’d be surprised just by. Just by starting it, just by doing it, how much traction that you can be getting off in these short videos is, as Jeremy said, TikTok kind of reformatted within the past few years, how social media is done.
And so the fact that Facebook and Instagram have been the ones that have, or the social media that have, that have been established longer, they’re trying to make sure that they’re still the faces of social media. And so they’ve really reformatted and put a lot of emphasis on those short videos.
And that just means that they’re going to encourage people to post short videos, and they’re going to push your short videos out. You’ll be surprised if you post your first short video, how many, how many views you’ll get. You can get 200 easily without, much effort on your first video.
And if you start building that consistency on Instagram and Facebook of posting those short videos, they’ll just continue to build momentum and continue to build that audience that you want. And so, and that’s the beauty of it. As we’ve talked of why we’d go with Instagram next is the fact that you can post a short video on Instagram and Facebook at the same time. Which is, which is beautiful and it adds, it adds ease to a busy business owner.
Yep. Exactly. Which kind of leads into the next two, which I’m going to have a hard time seeing which one’s going to go first.
Cause I, I have a strong opinion on which one would go first and for me it would be, it would be TikTok. Are you thinking of YouTube?
Yep. Those are the two.
So I would prioritize; Even though, even though YouTube is massive for longer-form content if we’re talking about consistency and just creating short-form content, I would still, I would put TikTok above YouTube at this moment, but just because your TikTok is at that point where it is growing exponentially. And you want to join TikTok now and be posting those videos when you can, just so you are, you weren’t falling behind by other, other companies and whatnot. And since it’s, since it’s the one that’s I would like to use a sports analogy It since it’s the Steph Curry the one that’s, came into the sport. Which Steph Curry came to the sport of basketball, and changed the game. It’s the way the game is played with how well he shoots the three and ever since he’s established that They gave a basketball has adapted and so many more players are pulling up and shooting long form three or long, long-range threes and whatnot.
He’s changed the game of basketball. That’s the same thing that TikTok has done in the social media world. As we talked about Facebook and Instagram, even though they’re the ones that have been established longer, they’ve had to change how they allow people or encourage people to post on their platforms because of TikTok.
And since TikTok has impacted other social media platforms, as much as it has, and it is growing exponentially as it is, that’s the one I would prioritize next. Once again, as Jeremy said, Jeremy and I were talking about the videos, the short form videos, the 30 to 60-second videos that you can post on Instagram and Facebook, you could also be posting those on tick tock as well.
Now, the reason why we want Facebook and Instagram first is because they’re, you can use the same tools and post them together just because they’re, they’re sister companies, but you can still use the same videos and post them onto TikTok as well.
That doesn’t hurt. That doesn’t hurt whatsoever. And so that’s why, that’s why I would go TikTok. And I know, I know you’re kind of hesitant with YouTube. Do you kind of agree with me or would, you go to YouTube? There is a strong argument because YouTube is a daughter company of Google. So there, there are strong, there are strong thoughts and reasons for why you’d go Google or YouTube first.
Yeah, and the reason is that I think YouTube is still the second-largest search engine right now ranking; Bing and even Yahoo. So that was my, that was my thought process. So going back to the understanding of the myth understanding you don’t have to be everywhere all at once. Let’s talk about those baby steps that people should take to make sure that they can get there.
I think the number one thing that you have to do is make sure that you have the time to do it. Right. So is it on your calendar? Are you scheduled to do it? Do you have reminders when you’re on the job site to start recording videos, and stuff like that? So Mike, what are your thoughts on that? Hhow long should a company schedule to be on each platform, let’s say, just, just give an estimate?
What are you talking about, wait, rephrase that question.
So, if I wanted to be on each platform, how long or how many minutes or hours a day do you think it’s going to take to post everywhere?
If you’re going to be if you’re trying to do it all at once and just starting to take a while to not only record the content, create the content, edit the content, and post the content. If you’re trying to do all the platforms, it can easily take three, or four hours a day just to plan that out. It can be very time-consuming by doing all of the platforms at one time.
So I, I think that’s the reason why this is a myth understanding is businesses want to be everywhere, but if you’re not able to post, realistically, what can fit in your calendar, right?
So, I mean you know, hiring companies to do it for you is always going to be a benefit. A lot of times what happens though, is you should be using the tools in the platform natively, right? You made the comment the other day that the companies that you follow, they’ve said that, the TikTok, for instance, that they post it’s because they use the TikTok tools.
Do you want to feed anything into that of why I can’t, or maybe I shouldn’t use the same video across all platforms and I can use each platform individually?
It’s kind of like if we bring this conversation full circle when we were originally talking about Google Business Profile and why we would start there is because Google wants you to be using their tools and their resources. And so they’re going to favor you by using them.
So that’s, that’s going to be the same thing with TikTok. TikTok has a lot of things or a lot of resources. On there, you can record the video, edit the video, use trending sounds, use trending effects, and all this. TikTok is a very trending platform. Everything- if you want your videos to go viral and get some traction, you have to use what they view as trending. And that’s going to be their tools.
And so. If you start using their tools, they’ll favor you, just like we mentioned with Google, and you’ll start getting more and more videos because the problem with TikTok is you, you can post a video about what TikTok does and they’ll boost it for like the first dollar. And so you can get up to like around 200, 200 views, blink of an eye. But if they don’t view it necessarily like what they want, then it just, it stops pushing it out to accounts.
So if it’s not getting engagement or they don’t like how you did the video, then they’re going to stop pushing it out. And so they’re more likely to push it past the 200 view mark, if you start using their tools and see what’s trending. And all of it, all of it starts with just going on and doing, doing some personal research. And the word research is used loosely here because usually, that sounds boring or whatnot, but research on TikTok is fun.
You’re just going on there in viewing other videos that are popular in your industry. So, If you’re, if you’re a roofer, you’re just typing in roofer and seeing like, Oh, these are the type of videos that people are viewing. Oh, this one got a million views. Oh, this one got 500,000 views and so on. And so it’s like, don’t view it as research, but it is.
And, it doesn’t hurt to kind of take what’s working and make it your own, because that’s really how, how you’re going to get viewership is. It’s a lot harder to try to do the new trending thing or set new trends. Usually, the new trends are set by, the influencers that have millions of followers.
And so it’s up to businesses and people that are trying to grow their social media platforms to take what’s working and push into what’s already working. Just because we don’t have the millions and millions of followers that the influencers have. And so, and so once again, to bring it back full circle, It helps if you do use the tools on the platforms independently.
Now, that doesn’t mean if I record a video at a job… That doesn’t mean I can’t use that same video on the different platforms. But you can still use it in different ways on each platform and use the tools and effects on each platform differently if that makes sense. And so I just wanted to make sure that people were like, Oh, we have to be posting everything completely independently.
It’s like, no, you can, you can cross-post some things. But also make sure that you’re using the tools that each social media platform has been giving you. But it is it most importantly it involves consistency Taking it in in small chunks because if you’re doing all this at one time You’re most likely gonna be burnt out and you’re not gonna want to do it. So maybe start with one platform instead of just trying to post on all these platforms. Learn the ins and outs of every single platform that you have and lLearning the TikTok tools, learning Instagram tools, learning what Facebook has.
Start with one. Learn it. Get good at it. Get consistent at it. And then open up, to Facebook. Then open it up to Instagram. Then open it up to TikTok and so on and so on. The biggest thing I want to make sure people take away from this podcast is consistency. If you’re, if you’re going to go out there and post as much as you can on all of the platforms, you’re going to, you’re going to, within that first week, you’re going to post 50 videos. And then that second week, you’re going to be down to 20, the third week, you’re going to be over it. And then next thing, you know, six months go by and your social media hasn’t seen a single post. I see that so much. And eremy, do you think if, if a business owner comes to a point where they get burnt out and then don’t post for two or three weeks, like, will that ultimately hurt when they do start posting again?
It’s going to take a while to get that traction again, won’t it?
Yeah.
There’s another side of social media that I think that could benefit from, to be honest with you though, Mike. And that’s if you are on the platform going through liking, commenting, sharing, you know, loving other items. That is when you do post. There is a reciprocity thing that comes through, but don’t expect a lot of traction.
If you take a break from posting, don’t expect a lot of traction when you come back to it. It’s just, just not going to be there.
We’ve talked a little bit about it with Google before, but these platforms want to see you be active. And if you’re not active for a while, and then you just randomly start posting again, it will be harder to catch that traction, traction once again.
So that’s why I want to emphasize, don’t sit here and be like, okay, I’m going to record 50 videos this week. Start with looking at your schedule and figuring out what is a realistic goal that you can make sure that you can hit. And then create consistency out of that. It’s like dieting.
It’s like dieting and exercise. If I go out there and try an extreme diet and start working out three times a day, like that’s awesome. I might lose five pounds in the first three days. But odds are I’m going to be burnt out, hate working out. And then by Thursday of that week, I’m already ordering pizza again, just because I’m so exhausted.
It just didn’t work out just like dieting. It’s consistency, finding the right strategy and plan that works for you. So you can make sure you’re on top of it.
I agree, man.
I was going to say there’s a lot, there’s a lot that we can go in. And we can, we can have different podcasts where we go further into each platform talking about how or why, or what strategies they can be used for each platform.
But the biggest thing we just want to make sure that home homeowners or home service business owners can take away from this podcast is creating a, creating that strategy that involves consistency. To eat an elephant, like you said, with small little bites. Is there anything else, Jeremy, that you think we’ve missed out on when it comes to creating a strategy or, or busting this myth, or myth understanding that people need to be on all the platforms right off the bat?
Nope. I would just treat it like it was normal, a normal client to be honest with you. You know, if it’s not on your calendar, it doesn’t exist. That’s kind of a rule that I live by. So my suggestion to you is like really dive in and make sure it’s on your calendar.
Yeah, most definitely. So, hopefully from this podcast, you guys are this episode, home service business owners can take the next step, and evaluate their schedule.
See what is realistic for them and they create that strategy based on that so they can start posting on social media consistently and not get burnt out. We appreciate you all for listening to this podcast and once again I like to put a plug. If any of you listening to this episode we’d love to have you share your story your industry. What you do; how you’ve seen success. And just have a conversation on here. As we’ve always said, we want to create a community around this podcast.
And so we, that involves inviting you guys on here to have a discussion, to talk to us about what has worked for you, what hasn’t worked for you. So other home services can learn from you as well. So, feel free to reach out to Valorous Circle. We can get that conversation going to get you onto an episode of DM Shop.
As always, we appreciate you guys attending our podcast and we hope you guys have a great day. Cheers.
