GUEST SPEAKERS
Renaya Demarest
GROWL Agency
Account Manager
Morgan Crouse
GROWL Agency
Account Coordinator
Jake Massey
GROWL Agency
Creative
GROWL Resources
the full report
Greg Olson (00:00):
Welcome everybody to growl connects. I’m really excited to be hosting this session today because I get to be with my team. As everybody listeners know, you can also go to growlagency.com/connex to see all of our past shows. But this one is special because I get to work with some of my team today. And we’re going to be talking about social media tips that people can implement right now. As we get tons of questions about this from email and on social media. So I thought we would put together a show and have a various team members. That’ll be going through again, my name is Greg Olson. I’m the founder of GROWL Agency and I’d like to go through. And so why don’t we start a little bit, and we’ll get our team honored to have them each introduce themselves, but we’ll start with Renaya.
Renaya Demarest (00:56):
Hi, I’m Renaya. I’m an account manager here at growl. I work on the social team, content development and helping strategize for our clients and push brands further. Okay.
Greg Olson (01:07):
All right. How about Jake? How do, what do you do here?
Jake Massey (01:13):
That is a great question, Greg. I, everybody, I’m Jake. I’m one of the creatives here. I work on a lot of the digital assets for growl with website development, social media development, and just overall design and things in that department. So,
Greg Olson (01:30):
All right. And last but not least, we have Ms. Morgan.
Morgan Crouse (01:37):
Aye. Hello, I’m Morgan. I’m on the content team. I’m an account coordinator. I help with social medias strategizing for our clients and copywriting and ad campaigns, all kinds of things, whatever I’m told to do.
Greg Olson (01:53):
You bring great insight and tips to the team. So thank you for you do, and thanks for all of you being on this today. I know we’re all, we’re very busy, so I’m going to get into it. I’m going to ask that what I thought we’d do is we’d go through a list of questions. Many of these are kind of like from what people ask and I’ll just kinda go around in a circle a little bit and I’m gonna start with Renaya. Okay. Are you ready, Renaya? Yeah. All right. What’s the best way to curate and strategize content.
Renaya Demarest (02:24):
So first would be focusing on your brand, who you are and your long-term goals. And then what we like to do is create like content categories. So you’re bucketing, what types of content you want to produce and put out that way you can have kind of a structure and a foundation to develop your content calendars around.
Greg Olson (02:42):
All right. Okay. Ms. Morgan, what’s one way to draft these content ideas.
Morgan Crouse (02:51):
It’s important when you are coming up with content ideas to think about your target audience and think about that, like Renaya, the content categories. So when you’re coming up with ideas, make sure you have those categories in mind and the needs of your audience and making sure that you are creating content that provides your audience value.
Greg Olson (03:12):
I like it. All right, Jake, you ready? Yeah. We’re going to get onto a big design question here. Something that I like to think about too, when we talk to clients is the best way to alter designs across social media, or do you just think we use the same design, like we see on a lot of different brands. So what do you think should, what’s the best way to alter these designs?
Jake Massey (03:33):
Right, that is a question we get a lot from clients and different people inquiring about social media, but the main thing to focus on is designing for the platform. Each one of these platforms is kind of focused around a different area of design. So we’d like to cater our designs to that. For instance, on Instagram image focused it was based off of sharing images. For Facebook, more of a call to action was that’s more of like a driving force for businesses. And then for LinkedIn, like the top three LinkedIn would be more info focused. So people are there to gather as much information business-related information for those clients. So focusing on altering them per platform.
Greg Olson (04:18):
Hmm. I like it. So there are different, we’re not just using the same image and the same content, and then I think they’re not sure what platform they’re on. So that’s a great tip. All right, Renaya. Now we’re back to you. So what’s another question that I think you’ll, we get a lot and I think the whole team can appreciate around metrics and what metrics are most meaningful.
Renaya Demarest (04:42):
So on social, there are tons of metrics, tons of data, and you can look at a lot of different things. So most commonly people will just look at likes or comments, but we consider those superficial metrics because it’s just kind of a simple action that’s taken, but the ones that are going to be the most meaningful and give you more insight on your strategy, if your content is successful, if your audience is responding are going to be reached. So that’s the number of like unique accounts that you have reached. So we’re looking at how many people we’re reaching. Are they the right people? We’ll look at the demographics and then we want to look at impressions. So that’s the number of views. So you could be one reach, but five impressions cause you’ve seen it that many times. So, impressions help us look at how many views content is getting. Is it correlating with reach? Are people going back to it or are people just looking at it one time, whatever that ratio is, then we look at the engagement rate by impressions. So there are a lot of different ways that you can calculate engagement rate, but calculating it by impressions is the most accurate because it tells you the average number of times, content viewed before action was taken, or how many times somebody had to see it to comment, like share, save, whatever that may be. And then also just depending on whatever platform you’re looking at, there are some specific metrics that you can look at. Like on Instagram, it’s important to look at the number of saves or story exits, but those get really like niche.
Greg Olson (06:20):
So more than just likes, right? So sometimes we meet with companies and they want to get the most likes, but it’s kind of more of a shallow metric. Is that correct? So that was a nice way to say dig deeper in social media. Okay, so Morgan, you ready? Doing great. We’re on, I think we’re on tip five already. So yeah, we’re, we’re burning through these. Okay. Here’s one, should brands always be changing to focus on popular trends and there’s a lot of different trends that happen out there. So what kind of tips do you have about this?
Morgan Crouse (07:04):
Friends can be really powerful within social media, but it’s important to think about your brand and your brand’s personality and decide whether or not the trend that is trending at the moment, if it’s relevant for your brand, if it actually provides any value. So it’s always to Jew. It’s always important to just think about whether or not a trend that’s happening is something that is valuable for your brand to jump onto.
Greg Olson (07:32):
So I like that one too, because it’s depending on, like you talked about before, was the audience, right? Cause again, is your audience on that trend or not? So sometimes if we move too far away from our brand or our brand personality, we move away from our audience that we’re trying to attract. So I liked that. Okay, Jake, we’re going to stay on the trendy topics since you and I are the trendsetters at GROWL, I would say by our stylish dress, the way we trim our beard, all the things. I mean, we have constant compliments. I know. So should your brand change, well, how do I ask this? Should your brand always change social media designs to stay trendy? Or should they stay more like us where we just have the same brand style for the last, I don’t know me. I’m like 20 years black t-shirt you know, so
Jake Massey (08:23):
Right. Well, yeah, that’s, that’s a thing with, with trends and design you have to be trendy, but adaptable trends, not like to piggyback off Morgan said trends, don’t always go in the direction of the voice of a brand. And that goes for the content and the messaging as well as the design. So you really have to be in it for the long haul. Pick a trend that is going to be the voice, support the voice of your brand for a long time trends that are, you know, hot and everywhere today are not what they’re going to be tomorrow. That’s why they’re trends. So, you got to find one, that’s going to take your company in a path for the long haul and keep you there for a while.
Greg Olson (09:10):
I like that. That’s a great tip because it is hard to keep designs kind of what the brand the language, all those things that we incorporate into kind of the messaging and the goals of like creating conversions for clients. Okay. Renee, simple question. Let’s see if you can answer it and maybe you can describe what this means should you pay to play? So what the heck does that mean first pay to play?
Renaya Demarest (09:38):
So that just means kind of like, there is a mentality of when you’re on social, if it’s worth posting, it’s like worth paying. So it’s kind of the mentality of boosting all your posts or always paying for ads straight out the gate to get more awareness or whatever. So paying to get those followers, to get people on your page. So should you do it? It, you need to strategize it. So not always because if you’re a brand is just starting, you don’t want to run ads before establishing credibility organically because once you start running ads, people will come to your profile. And if there’s nothing there, or it’s just a few posts that are very vague, it’s going to look like it’s a scam. So you want to build credibility organically first, besides just throwing money at any social media ads. The other idea of like boosting everything Facebook and Instagram will give you notifications that, you know, this post is doing 80% better than all your other posts, but that’s just kind of part of their algorithm of saying like, you know, this one got a few more likes. And if you really look at it and you look at all the data behind them, most of the time, those posts that the platform is telling you are doing substantially better, are doing about the same as the rest. And once you start boosting and throwing money at just random social media posts with no strategy, you’re going to be wasting money. So anytime you run ads, it needs to be strategic, planned out, you’re targeting a specific audience and you have a specific budget.
Greg Olson (11:23):
No. Good. When you talk about building up organic, I think our team has done a really good job with GROWL’s social media across from whether it’s LinkedIn or Twitter or Instagram or Facebook. So I think it’s a great example of best case, a best use case too, and not just like paying to play as you say. Okay, Morgan… Here we come. I think this could be your last question unless I come up with other ones that I wanna, you know, see how you do, so, okay. First. All right. How can a brand succeed on social media? What are your, how do you break this down? It’s a hard question. I mean, it could’ve been, if we could talk about that just for like two hours. So what kind of simple thing would, what would you give our client or what do you think the team gives our clients, but how can a brand succeed on social media?
Morgan Crouse (12:16):
It may sound a little bit redundant because we have talked about it already in today’s webinar but focusing on your brand’s goals. It’s important to when you’re planning out your social media to think about your long-term goals and your short-term goals, but things like, are you trying to just build awareness or to connect with your audience on a deeper level? Or are you trying to inform or persuade them? Think about the things that you are trying to get out of your social media to plan a successful social media presence.
Greg Olson (12:50):
I like that. So we’re looking at the goals and objectives. Many times we look at those, like, are we looking at it to be a do conversions? Right. You know, I always ask kind of our clients, you know, we’re trying to drive people from social media to specific places on the client’s website or today call to action. So, I think that’s how brands can succeed, especially the clients we’re working with to get them to do something with that great job, Morgan. One thing I want to loop back, we had a couple more questions, but I have someone online here following us. Thank you for being on. I think the pay to play to go back to that one of the comments was about Facebook having algorithms that limit reach to roughly less than 6% of your audience. So you should pay to play to reach your audience or reach targeted audience outside of your followers comments on that. Maybe Renaya. Like, I mean, we get these, I mean, people want to get outside of their audience. I know we geotarget. We do all different things. Facebook is just one tiny bit that we might utilize, but any comments on that?
Renaya Demarest (13:59):
Yeah, definitely. So the whole idea of Facebook’s algorithm and Instagram’s algorithm limiting your reach to like less than 6%. That’s been going around for a while. A lot of people sharing things to their stories of like, Hey, help us out like this, or respond because we’re being limited. That isn’t actually how the algorithm works at all. And Instagram and Facebook both have addressed this like algorithm myth how it actually works is based off of mutual interaction and that two-way conversation. So if brands aren’t interacting, they’re not commenting back. They’re not engaging with other pages or if a follower, does it interact with every single one of your posts or the majority of them, then your reach gets limited on their specific feeds because the algorithm is very specific to each person, how I interact with growl posts versus how like Morgan might would change how we see them. So, if I always go on and like our posts, the first thing, once they come up, I’m going to see them, the first thing on my feed. And if Morgan, I’m sorry, I’m using you as an example, Morgan. But if she likes our GROWL posts, like, you know, the next day, she’s not going to see them as often as I would. So it’s highly hyper-focused on each individual. But paying to play to reach your own audience is kind of silly because if you really think about the reason social media platforms existed in the first place and how brands can best leverage them, it all comes back to those relationships. That’s why social media started in the first place. And that’s really where they’re taking their algorithms back to is driving authentic two way conversations and building relationships. So if you’re not building those relationships with your audience and you’re just paying to reach them, they’re not going to have that connection with you in the long run. They’re not going to become loyal customers and they’re not going to ultimately convert. So reaching target audiences outside of your followers, that’s a good idea. But again, it needs to be strategized if you just pay for a post to reach people in another city, if it’s not planned out, if you’re not detailing that audience and focusing on what those goals are, it won’t be successful. You might reach some people, but they might not be your ideal audience.
Greg Olson (16:32):
I mean, that’s a great response to that because I think it’s just, I mean, especially the kind of companies that we work with and our expertise, you know, we’re multifaceted how we’re going after some of these brands. And we, it could be Facebook, it could be LinkedIn, which we do a lot in LinkedIn, of course, and that strategy is completely different. So you know, and you’re right about the algorithms they keep changing. And I know it’s really hard to keep up on and I think that’s what our team, you guys do a great job of understanding. You know, what’s changing in that. Okay, Jake, we got two more questions. I’ll keep it, look, I’ll keep an eye on any other outside questions coming in, but we have two more. And Morgan, you get to argue with them now, since there’s no more questions for you, so you can disagree with either Jake or yeah. Okay. So Jake, here we go. How do you know what a successful design style for your brand on social? So, okay. Probably kind of interesting. We get a question a lot, so go on. Go ahead.
Jake Massey (17:50):
Oh, what really makes a, you know, what a good design style is, is really to cater it to your brand, to your audience. One way that is good for people just starting out, a new company, a new business, even just a new personal profile that you want to kind of push yourself is to see what the big guys are doing. See what the big players on the big brands, big names on social media are doing. You know, they are the ones that kind of, you know, again, going back to trends, they set different trends different styles, different interactions that they have on whether it’s Instagram on the grid or carousel type photos on Facebook, or the lot of it. So really finding you know, your audience and who you’re trying to reach on these platforms and then seeing what the big brands are doing and kind of aligning yourself or taking bits and pieces from them and catering it to your own brand. You know, it’s one of those things that goes back to just design and art in general, but everything’s been done out there. It’s just, who’s going to do it and push it and be better in the future with it. So just try to find different places that are doing it the way that you like and want to cater it to your brand and mimic that for yourself. So, you know, if you’re really unsure of what truly good design is, find somebody who you think is doing it well and all learn yourself to it.
Greg Olson (19:09):
Morgan, do you agree? Do you agree with that? Yes. Okay. I mean, we have to go back if Morgan doesn’t agree. So let’s go on to this last question. With Renaya, to one that I always ask too, is how can you gain leads on social media? I’m always about talking about everything we do is about conversions, about building thought leadership and all those things. So tell me a little bit about that.
Renaya Demarest (19:35):
So this actually kind of ties perfectly to the answer about like the extended answer to pay to play. So first, like you need to consider again that like reason why social media exists for relationships and connections. And then when, you know, like where your brand stands and connect with your customers, that’s going to be the main purpose of social, not like, you know like shouldn’t equal as sale because that’s just really not how it works and focusing on how to create those connections, how to better engage and better serve your customers online and becoming that like resource for them. So you’re always at the top of their evoke set, you’re always like you are trusted and they value your relationship with that customer. And then that way you’re not focusing on posting too much salesy content and it pushes people away. Because again, that’s not why they are on social media. You’re focusing on authentically connecting with them, having those relationships, having those conversations that turns them into loyal followers, which then will turn them into customers and loyal customers. So, and another way to really focus on this is when you start building up those relationships, start sharing other like promotional content on your pages that drive somewhere else, drive to your website, drive to your shop. Now Facebook and Instagram have awesome integrations. So you can have like, you can shop from a feed on Instagram or there’s the shop now feature on Facebook. So utilizing what the platform gives you, but using it correctly.
Greg Olson (21:21):
That’s great. So, all right, we’re going to wrap up. I thought we’d do one round. If everybody can provide their number one tip for social media marketing. All right. Okay. I think I’m going to go to Morgan for this, for that. You’ve been so quiet. Yeah. So what, what let’s go around and maybe I’ll even get one. If someone doesn’t give the one I want to stay, so yeah, go ahead, Morgan.
Morgan Crouse (21:49):
Okay. I would say my number one tip for brands on social media is to be authentic because if you’re trying to, if it seems too contrive to the audience is going to see that. So the authentic share your voice, being yourself and your audience will see that and take it to heart and be loyal.
Greg Olson (22:10):
Good. I like that. That’s a great tip. Be authentic. Okay. Jake, how about you,
Jake Massey (22:15):
Number one, tip for social media marketing. Since I’m in the design realm of things, I would say that putting there needs to be a value put on overall design for all of your social media. Every anybody can jump on and post something. Not everybody can conceptualize a good design to get your message across whether it’s a salesy post or just the everyday post to voice your brand. So really putting the value in design and taking time to really hone in on what is good for your brand and your voice.
Greg Olson (22:57):
I like it. That’s a great tip. Okay. Renaya, what do you think? What’s your final tip?
Renaya Demarest (23:03):
My number one tip is to strategize. So going off of like what Morgan said, what Jake said, pulling it all together and coming up with your overall strategy. So whatever you do on social should correlate with whatever else you’re doing for your marketing plan. Focusing that strategy on always being on brand and achieving your long-term goals. So, and strategy really comes down to like even how ma how often you’re posting when you’re posting what you’re posting. So, focusing on the strategy rather than just kind of going forward and doing your social willy-nilly.
Greg Olson (23:42):
Yeah. Social willy-nilly. That should be something we talk about all the time actually. Cause there’s, there’s a lot of willy-nilly going out there and social media, so hashtag social willy-nilly. All right. So my final tip is which I and passionate about is how we use social media for content distribution. I think it’s a great way for thought leadership to build up your content and to use it in different formats. You know, a lot of brands when we talk to them or companies, we talk to, you know, we’d guide them into things of like increased brand awareness. It gets people talking about their story. And also again, it’s, it’s that lead generation and conversions and the sales are through that buyer journey as what we like to talk about. And it was if, and some people might do it for different reasons, but I really think that should be part of your process is driving people to your website or driving to sign up for something, driving them to a conversion. If it’s not part of your strategy as we’re an asset and we don’t have that authentic voice and we’re not having great design, then it’s all, all for willy-nilly, let’s say. Okay. And I think those are kind of those kind of all wrapped in tips together. Well, I want to thank all of you for taking time out of your very busy GROWL schedule. I know how busy each of you are to have this. We’ve been live on Facebook as we normally are, and we’ll post this out. We also have a lot of social media guides that we share. And I think we’ll probably have that as a link on this while we afterwards.
Renaya Demarest (25:14):
Yep. When this video is up on our website for you guys to look back at, we’ll share a bunch of resources there.
Greg Olson (25:23):
Okay. growlagency.com/connex. I wish everybody a wonderful day out there. And we’ll talk to you all soon.
