Lessons

Lesson Info

Using Social Media

I want I want to take theon tune ity at this point you know we've been talking about sort of google search that I won't switch it back over to the to the power point presentation and talk a little bit about what these different platforms because I want to go backto you know, answering this question about what are some of the other types of things that you can do and spend time on so and it just briefly is kind of an overview and you know, all of you can start thinking we're going to do an exercise after this where we think about our own social presence so what what are these good for? So facebook okay, probably everyone I'm guessing here and let unless you were specifically opting out like, you know, no, I don't do facebook right? Unless you're kind of making a statement, you're probably on facebook one point two billion people are on facebook so if you were trying to reach a mass audience this is this is probably the sort of basic place to be because so many people are there you know ...

that sze useful for that? Twitter is interesting twitter is actually one of my favorites I started out as a twitter skeptic because you know the initial vision of it you know, like I think they have the prompt right you know, the what are you doing now and that's really it's frankly it's in a really inane question and so it led to inane answers and you know, we're here in san francisco and so I don't want trash twitter too much but you know, but the thing is things evolve and the original vision that you know that the twitter creators had for twitter they didn't fully know what it could be they didn't know how people would use it I mean in fact the hashtag function you know, the now you know, iconic hashtagged function as you guys perhaps know how did that get started? You know, is it some brilliant thing that twitter created like no users created hashtags because twitter was so basic and so totally stripped down it didn't have search functionality and so the users said, jeez, we really need search functionality and they made their own with hashtags and there's a hashtag for this right too and I am telling the truth here what's our hashtag our hashtag is dori clark live whoa exactly you can join the conversation enjoying the conversation with that hash tag and I'm on twitter too if people want to like, you know, interact or whatever I'm at dori clark just f y I clearly while I am on the air I will not be interacting with you personally, but you know later eso anyway, since twitter what's good about twitter, depending on who you want to reach. It is now. I would say disprove first was reasonably large what maybe five hundred million something like that, and but it's disproportionately opinion leaders. So if you want to be reaching people who are, like newspaper reporters and editors, you want to be reaching politicians you want to be reaching, you know, like the head of marketing for companies or something like that, they are almost all on twitter and it's actually a pretty good way to be able to reach them directly and build a relationship over time, so that could be pretty powerful linked in I hope you guys all have a linked in profile I mean, it's probably not necessarily going to be like the place that you spend all your time. I mean, when I'm speaking to corporate audiences, it's a huge deal for creative professionals, you know, I don't think it's like the biggest thing in the world, but but linked in you're asking earlier, how do you? How do you create content? That isn't necessarily like something that sucks all your time like a blogger? Lincoln's easy, you don't have a linked in profile, I mean, oh my goodness, do yourself a favour, it'll take you an hour, maybe ninety minutes tops to fill it out once and then you have this nice thing with your professional resume and it gives people a way to find you it gives people a way to check you out if they want a message you they can you know message you and it's just easy and google loves lengthen sort ranks very highly in search engine rankings yeah, you know, I actually I struggled with this because I was trying to actually push down certain images so I got this clever idea that I would focus on my google plus profile because I was like google plus and goo cool so is that a good strategy because google is actually part of the search engine and a lot of people can't figure out what the heck google plus is for right so I say it because we have to and I was like ok, yeah right so is that part of the google plus strategy their potential yeah you know, I think I think that was pretty good I mean so okay yes because we have this's this is me just kind of like crumpling over here I mean because in the bay area sorry google I don't really trash google plus too bad I mean, I love most things about google google plus is, you know, it's the big play, right? You know, google google has been tress trying so desperately to make its own facebook, you know, and we're late to the game and google plus I mean in many ways google plus is really a very nice technical tool it really it's it's got a lot of great things the thing I love about it is google plus hangout that's really cool where you can call people and talk to them live you can record it very easily you upload it, teo youtube that's fantastic and in fact tomorrow for people you know hello people at home you can my pal john corcoran who's really interesting an awesome is going to be google plus hang outing with us tomorrow so you can watch that with us but so that's really cool, but frankly, yeah, why do we use google? Plus, I mean it's it's something I basically think leo, we have tio because they are trying to integrate almost all google functionality if you want to comment on youtube videos now gets what you have to have ah have ah google plus account to be able to do that because they're just trying to rope everything in together to, like, make us use it, and the reason they're doing that, of course is that we're not organically choosing to use people are still sticking with facebook by and large, so is google plus helpful in terms of search engine rankings? Yes, because they're really tryingto leverage their power with it they have something called google plus authorship which allows you to kind of be like hey, I'm the author of this and you know it helps you know connect with with your search engine results all this is good I used google plus I do but it is a little bit you know because okay thanks, larry page guests I have teo so you know that's that's sort of my take on it some people are far more bullish you know you talk to people some people even wrote books about it you know chris brogan kai back kagawa's sock a guy kawasaki abel wrote books about it so they're into it yeah. How about you do you like it? Actually I love good love tell me what gives the gift the good guys because it makes it really easy to separate different types of people of course it means that those people have to be going oh blessed but for me personally I'd become a huge tool to share my family photos with just my family it's much harder to do on the facebook and it was just has such a complicated work full for that but google glasses super easy and in fact I would rather do ingrid gold plus group on then a facebook group like yeah because just because it's easier yeah eso that's that's a really that's a really good point thank you for making that and you know on facebook now you can you know, choose like what's your audience who do you share it with? But you couldn't always and you know mr zuckerberg he did that because google plus made him so the little healthy competition is good andi I think that that's been powerful and in fact interestingly I mean there are a lot of google plus partisans out there I actually think that my number one most popular article that I ever wrote on my forms block it's gotten like one hundred thirty five thousand views I think on it is called it was I was interviewing someone who is like a big google plus pusher this nice woman named linda sherman on so you know, the headline comes from her perspective rather than mine but the title is why you should be on google plus even though no one else's is on and so that became very popular he's on google plus, of course people were sharing it. So anyway, what else? What can we do? So pinterest instagram I talked about this earlier you were visual people oh my goodness please use this yes, this is the tool for you you've got and take beautiful photos you can share it you know pinterest pin your your colorful things and it will look fantastic and you can really show off your strength which you possess in which I do not so I encourage you teo do that if that's your thing tumbler yeah I mean, you know tumbler sold for a billion dollars to marissa mayer over at yahoo very popular you know, I don't you know ideal in the business world and so tumbler is not it's not my bag let's let's put it that way it's like if you want to be like like super cool like you know with the youth if you sell sneakers or if you you know want to be awesome tumbler is a good is a good platform for like being awesome uh itt's a blogging platform but not a traditional block like, you know, wordpress it's a blogging platform that you know you can put in videos and get put in pictures and putting text and it's all kind of jumbled together in a youth friendly way. So and what else? So email okay, I'm going to give a defense of like web one point oh, ok, so my pal chris broken who I was mentioning he he has a saying which he says that that that is the sexiest platform for him is your inbox and I love that because really for all of these things there's one you know they're great for brand building really powerful, you know, it's important t get the word out about what you do online but fundamentally all of these things we don't control them we control our web sites you know but do we control our facebook page? Well, not really I mean a lot of businesses now for instance or complaining because you know that the big the big thing that you hear about is it when facebook changes the algorithms and it's been making it less likely for company uh company facebook posts to get into your user feed and so consequently it's like oh if they're not getting in organically then the companies have to pay more money to get them into your feet so over time I mean I would imagine uh facebook probably would decide that they want to kind of keep turning the knob a little bit to get the companies to pay more and more money to get into the user's feed now it's fine they're entitled to do that for sure but if you're a company of you've spent a lot of time building up a big facebook fan following all of a sudden you're going to be like whoa, wait a minute I thought you know that this was going to continue and I could just continue to reach people but facebook you've changed the rules of the game but you know facebook can change the rules of the game because they own the platform that's that's how it works you know they're the landlord and if they want to jack up your rent well guess what they can do that um so we just have to be cognizant of that it's useful to build a following but it doesn't mean it's going to last forever the thing that last forever is if somebody ops in they give you their email address then you got it you have a one on one communication channel and so don't forget the newsletters that is really, really valuable a lot of people don't think about it even because it's not a sexy is some of this modern stuff but it's one of the best ways to really communicate directly with people who love your stuff so what I'd love to dio if you can flip to your workbooks here it's paige five we have a social media and you exercise so number one which social media platforms are you active on? Are there things you always flip back for a moment here um out of these guys facebook twitter lengthen google plus et cetera center what are what are you using um and the number two would actually works for you what have you found to be most beneficial? Are there some that you know really you feel like you see a lot of impact a lot of bang for your buck or are there others that it's like yeah, you know I put up something there and just cricket sound hear anything so you know the corollary of that of course is are there ones that our least effective for you so most and least effective what have you seen out there and then the other thing which I hear a lot from people and I'd be curious about for you are you are you as active as you want to be online because I hear from many people that they're like yeah, I'd love to do more but I'm so busy you're or whatever or some people you know they say well, I'd love to do more but I don't know I don't know which platform to get active on where should be spending my time and so I'm curious if there any obstacles get in the way of you being more active online yeah, the main thing for me is that I don't feel like I really have audience are following um even though I have a thousand plus like, quote unquote friends on facebook if I am I'm like I've got really exciting news I got this big and like twenty people you know, I feel like people don't pay attention and it's easy to go like, oh, nobody cares and b is watching like what you know and same with my blood like I don't write it consistently because I look at the stats and like, well, who look eight views, you know like that's a good day and it's kind of um so yeah, and I have so much to say and so many s so many things I would like to put out, but because they're not all consistent under one clear message of, like, I'm only wanting to talk to the people who want to become professional entertainers like if I knew that was you, and that would be a little but there's sort of multiple things. So again, it comes back to the personal branding thing if I knew exactly like what kind of, you know what? I what I wanted to be known for, mostly more, like among my peers, I know what I want to be known for among like the event clients, right? That's clear, but among like other artists and entertainers, um, I haven't figured out really quite yet. Well, how I want them to see me and thus haven't attracted the audience and thus can't be bothered writing a bunch of articles and blood post when I feel like if people aren't going to hit tune in right a vicious circle. Yeah, absolutely that's so surprising because what you do is not any creative but super visually of painting, people's bodies and things so doesn't mean you have a bunch of amazing photos that you put on pinterest and tries to grant just a spinster pictures on instagram and facebook like I do it all and there you know there's like tags and like burning man and all those other things that like link sideways I'm at it is that we weren't like talking that day like it doesn't make sense yeah challenge yeah help yeah totally well I have so I have a few thoughts okay, so the first one to I have felt your pain right everybody who starts a blawg like you start with zero right and unless you are already a celebrity like you know if you're if you're like dennis rodman and you sign up for twitter you send a tweet that says I'm dennis rodman and um on twitter and then look what we have a million followers okay we nice if that happened for the rest of us it does not so you have three twitter followers you have ten people who follow your blogged and it feels depressing like why am I doing it for this tiny audience? So so a couple things number one chris chris broken who I was mentioning a moment ago you know, greek new york times best selling author right he's become very successful the most amazing thing that I found out about chris broken he said that for the first I think he said the first eight years of his blawg it took me eight years to get to one hundred followers it's like yeah wow and now he, you know has hundreds of thousands of followers, I mean, you know, he's, he's, enormous he's got two hundred twenty five thousand twitter followers or something, and so sometimes it really takes a while for an audience to build, and the hard thing is that most people give up. Most people get discouraged, but they're really can be an amazing payoff at the end. Um, second point that I want to make is that depending on your goals, sometimes you actually don't need tohave an enormous audience in order to fulfill your goals, and I'll tell you what I mean, um, for me, so, you know, I'm a consultant, and if I'm writing a blogger post its great, of course, if you could get lots of use that's awesome, but sometimes it actually matters less, having ten thousand views on a post, then it does having one view that's the right view, and so in my case, I would say let's say that there is a client that's um, I'm potential client that I'm going to be meeting with next week, and I have a strong suspicion from having analysed their business if there's a particular issue that they're having, and so I wrote a vlog post that's about that issue and I just you know put it up on flog file it away so the next week I go to the meeting without we're having the conversation I'm like just tell me about your business blah blah blah blah oh guess what they're having this issue I can see you know that's so funny I wrote a blogger post about that last week let me send that to you I can follow up and then they're thinking like whoa she's so knowledgeable that's amazing she not only is like thinking the same thing she has concrete suggestions about it she's taken the time to learn about it and it gives us an excuse to follow up on the meeting and continue the conversation so you do that and you know if you manage to get a contract for work out of that that is like so worth having one person read your block post so it can be powerful in that way but I would actually what I would do what I would love to do that can I borrow you up on stage because we're gonna have ahh portfolio revue and then it'll give us an opportunity to talk a little bit about how you do use social media so if you come on up here we'll take a little chit chat yeah excellent so we'll switch it over now teo to the internet so we can look in odette's profile excellent okay so right here so which one is use that catalyst tallis type okay fantastic so we're we're going in here and this will load momentarily all right. Cool. So all right, so what woke me through tell me a little bit about this website like who who is the target audience? What are you hoping to accomplish thiss say is uh for high end event planners both kind of in company and somebody throwing a private event eso individuals also entertainment agency's khun stumble my best clients are actually in a big entertainment agencies they use me is like sub so um for event planners they they just know like I've got a wedding coming up or I'm doing nothing at a winery so they would go under events and click on the kind of event that they have to see what I've done in the past for that whereas somebody who's just looking for ideas what maybe look under under entertainment and that kind of show is like what? Uh we'll see what we specialize in what we got here all right? I'm like true because I must still look er I've got a lot to make it work and you get good yes stilts characters I love it let's see what that isthe yes so we've got like, you know, over thirty full on still characters and that's one of the more popular things that we dio um klick out we click on strolling servers under salute way that's kind of fun that's getting to be one of our more popular things um and this is sort of just a way for people to distribute things to their guests or have like little mobile kind of interactive experiences that come to you oh yeah so that she's doing turo there's that cannot be we bring you candy you've got you know cupcakes sir this's that so there's um there's a ladies and then there's like big skirts and tables and things like that that's awesome yeah I can imagine that people would uh would love that wow that's on their dress that's that's pretty cool yeah so um do you want to you want to control the clicker here if there's anything else you want to be sure that we see um so but this is not my social media this is my business yeah exactly so I wanted and I don't really cat first of all I don't I don't do a good job of capturing people like there's a you know, very subtle like join our email list thing at the bottom that doesn't usually isn't on every page just like the very isn't like the footer at the very bottom okay let's let's see here so yes so this is ok join our mailing list contact us and so you can you can connect here who on twitter, facebook and youtube but you're right, you do have toe it's very school around and be and be all subtle about it. So that's uh, so that's useful, I'll just just by way of comparison, because I, you know, I do marketing, so I don't mind too much being obnoxious. I'm like, hey, people joined my list, so yeah, it's, uh, you can, uh you could see you know, things by the book, so incidentally, if you're watching at home, you khun do these things, they're all awesome, but back to you, you want a while, you've got the live camera just let everybody know you're facebook and you're you doing to twitter you due to twitter? Yeah, catalyst arts is my twitter handle on dh catalyst is entertainment is the facebook page great. Give her some likes. Give her some follows her community look at this fantastic work that she does. And that was rule on the chat room if you want to get on there one more pages under recent events under recent under events. There's a gallery called recent events. Okay, yeah, and it's just just just to give, like a quick because it's very fun, it's absolutely like dream business like thes people, this was a fancy napa. Botanical garden there, like we want pollinators to serve things. So we made these fancy pollinator headdresses, and then this is like a gatsby theme, so I got to make twenties showgirls and have, like, a little photo studio, and this was a really amazing corporate party where they they commissioned me to make all these new characters like light up still costumes and these marie antoinette's and aerialists and, like zebra contortionists and and then actually did a thing for google like aquatic themed thing recently, teo so it's, super fun and creative and I love it, I get to do so many things. Yeah, fantastic, but it's a very specific market and there there wanting to come and just figure out if I can do their event, they're not necessarily like wanting teo be sent a lot of things about, you know, that's why I don't function, I'm not trying to funnel everybody on this site exactly. So tell me more about your social media presence. So you got the facebook you got the twitter you got to you, too. How do you use these things? Um, I have, um I have a catalyst arts facebook page, but I don't feel like my clientele is really on there, so I don't really push it very much. Um the become the art facebook page is sort of a great place for like when I do an event at a street fair or something and I'm body painting than I like check out the facebook page as a way for people to kind of be connected because that's sort of a separate identity than being the business owner s o that one I do promote um and pinterest and instagram I'm kind of new to but because I have some such a visual business there like it's it's building um yeah but what I really need to do is have ah have ah opt in and try and actually get people on my team ellis yeah absolutely that that would be my my two cents is to try to you know move that up a little bit more yeah and my big plan though because of the airstream and the makeover services that I do that are more one on one I want to do a bunch of giveaways where like teo teo makeover give away and maybe use instagram I know I was watching creative life thing and um she didn't get into the anatomy enough but like I think it's a great place to be like do you wantto mythic makeover and iconic makeover fantasy makeover like you know for our service and I'm giving it away and then you know try and get followers that way whoa cool I love it's cool I did thank you very much for sharing thank you bi curious for the folks at home what what are they talking about when it comes to you know their usage of social media what works for them? What doesn't but we have some challenges uh first off eric jacobs austin says I have the challenge of having three different career paths dance instructor, writer and nonprofit consultant notto mention muppets here I try to use these different flat forms for different pass linked in for consulting and facebook for the others and use multiple accounts for different things I have to twitter account and a professional facebook page on I guess this is that expert strategy having expert accounts, the question that eric has is is that okay? Yeah, yeah, it is it's tricky because for people who are who are doing, you know, sort of different things it's like, you know, how do I have a position myself there? And I think that actually eric strategy is is probably a good one, and one thing that I use personally is, you know, it's it's really hard to be successful when you're doing social media. If you don't have a strategy about why you're making choices that you are, you know, you should never just like om on facebook because I ought to be on facebook and then not really understand why on dh so I think that you know what I did, which I think is really valuable is, you know, she she's really thinking about okay? Well, for my work with individual performers, they actually use the facebook page and that's a great way to reach out to them, whereas it's less effective for the people who are, you know, her buyers for event planning. So those things air crucial teo to sort of think about those distinctions like, who is your audience and where do they congregate, what kinds of things they do so exactly so for in eric's case, he's talking about get a linked in page where he does, you know, sort of advertising is consulting work that's great, because if you're looking to hire a consultant linked in is probably the place that you're going to go. You're not gonna go to instagram unless you're looking for a photography consultant. Maybe so, um so just thinking through that way in my own instance, I, um you know, I have ways you know, where I'm writing different blawg posts, for instance, and I do different different ways of doing it. So, for instance, for forbes, I will usually have that be the place where I interview experts and write about the interviews for entrepreneur that's, a place where I often write tips and I'll have sort of a tips column for entrepreneurs and for harvard business review I that's like my kind of think piece you know and I'm sort of bringing ideas together and coming up with like a you know synthesis or like you know here's here's my take on the world hbr is my place for that so you know it's it's not necessarily that they've told me like oh, you must do it this way but for me when I in order to make sense of the different elements that I'm doing that's that's how I think about what would make a good good piece of content for one versus the other and you khun do the same thing you can say well, you know I'll do my consulting thing on linked in and I'll do my yoga instructing on facebook and that sort of thing so that's a great comment great we actually do have some feedback for you our debt a suggestion is coming in from a newton who says I would suggest her toe add the quirkiness of her event to her online presence the page does look like a template when it could be filled with magic that same magic that you want to sell to people so there's just an idea for you of of getting some feedback on a way that you could take because we since the magic I mean I don't think anyone in this room doesn't doesn't believe that you have created we feel the magic yes because any holy cow super talented makeup here costumes creativity awesome and then I agree I agree I agree I guess it's just really that that first impression teo maybe people aren't going to drill down toe looking into all the details so it's that magic from that one that first place that they land right dorie absolutely and you know one thing that I'll just mentioned I think the still photographs are great but I can I can imagine that for the kinds of things you dio like stilts and like aquatic themes and whatever I mean video would really be a powerful way to do it looks like you have a youtube account and so you know, it's super easy to embed a youtube video on your website and so having you know, having something where someone is able to sort of immerse themselves and see like oh, what it would feel like to be at one of our debts parties that could be kind of cool I I'd like to see that that's great there are a lot of videos all woven throughout but yeah when I when I have the video I'll put it right there at the front and stories about like here it is by it put your name there look at this which is a little on the side you know people are so limited on time these days you know and they've got to get it right away so they'll go click somewhere else the internet is like the abyss right don't get lost yeah well I mean one of the most important innovations in you know in business in the past you know, ten or twenty years you know when you think literally from like an intellectual property standpoint has been amazons oneclick patent one klick to purchase why is amazon so dominant? I mean literally I was with I was with the guy yesterday were having breakfast and I told him about a book that I thought he should read and he takes his smartphone he whips it out bump bump boom he's like okay, I just bought it and you know that's what we're able to dio and if you make it easy for people who make it frictionless then it's far more likely that it'll go through I mean I know is an author you know I if I don't have books for sale at my event like people were like oh, this is great is good I'm gonna buy your book and then they just like they buy my book you know because life intervenes and it's not their top priority the minute they walk out of the room and so making sure we make things easy for people is really important we've got to just like take the friction and eliminate it and so the more we can you know really make it easy for people to you know in one glance no you know what kind of stuff we d'oh or one glance like you know how you know how do I look if you're a photographer it's like, oh well, can I buy it on your site or whatever that's that's something that is really helpful so that was great thank you for for sharing all of that and I'm just curious I mean just is kind of like a quick survey so samantha for you what kind of what kind of social media do use is there? Is there anything that has been particularly useful for you or that you liked? So I've kind of gone through them all yeah when I wanted to start with model photography, I went to model mehan dot com and use facebook bless but on finding that now that I have more experience and contacts facebook is working better and working with children I learned that facebook is not ask cool amongst the younger crowd and so it was a crazy s instagram is really the way to go so you know, I haven't account I just haven't really used it, but I plan on using more instagram and I love tumbler you know, because you're cooler than me well here you could just be a little like wonky sometimes it just you know, like I like to write teo, so that's, kind of what I was using, that for just one, I want to write random stuff, yeah, and posted so I don't know it's something for everybody out there. You just gotta figure out how to make it work for you that's, right? You gotta you gotta find your channel because here's, the here's, the key thing, you know, like anything, this is like, you know, this is one of the themes here. We must choose, we can't do it all. We should not do it all and for anyone who's, like, owns, overwhelmed, I can't do social media, because I, you know, I can't do ten things we're not telling you to pic picture one picture to specialize. You don't need to be on every platform. It would be absolutely overwhelming.