CHAPTER 6

Getting to Grips with Social Media

The digital revolution is one of the most exciting things to have ­happened to us as a species, dramatically changing how we lead our lives, how we communicate, how we influence change, and how we do business. I am a complete social media enthusiast, as it has really empowered us as businesses, opening up our worlds. It has dramatically changed the PR industry.

From presidents, prime ministers, to royalty they are all now on social media posting, particularly on Twitter and Instagram.

I think it is also important to remember that everyone on social media who is doing it well is actually self-taught, which means that it is easy to do, once you know how. There are so many different social media platforms and you will enjoy using some platforms more than others and once you get started it can be really fun and reap benefits.

There are so many businesses not using social media platforms and as a result are holding themselves back. These businesses and brands need to change their mind-sets and be open. I meet lots of different business leaders, business consultants, and entrepreneurs who are either talking to or advising businesses on how to strengthen their businesses plans and strategies, yet they have no visible online profile themselves. I always wonder how can they be advising businesses on the future, when they themselves are not part of it?!

They all have excuses of why they are not online—ranging from we do not understand it; it is for young people; we have no time; what difference will it make. Well, if you are not online how will your customers find you, and you can bet, while you are not online, your competitor will be.

We have evolved from ink and quill, from typewriter to now the use of e-mails, blogs, and social media posts. Whatever happens we are not going back to ink and quill, so it is important to get online. The next generations are already there and are your potential future customers, clients, and business leaders; to survive and to be relevant you need to be online and active.

To help you to change your thinking, I strongly urge you to go online and watch what I consider to be one of the best video overviews of social media trends with their data sources, which is produced annually by Socialnomics, a movement created by Erik Qualman’s number one international bestseller of the same title (https://socialnomics.net/).

Social media channels are free to use and here are some real facts to get you thinking of the value of social media for your business/organization:

There are many social media platforms and I recommend finding the ones that work for you, but at the same time suggest that you are working on what I view are the key ones; and that means being active on all of them simultaneously—Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and LinkedIn. We need to be engaged on each, as each platform attracts a different age group, which means that you are casting a much wider network to attract customers and an audience.

To get the most of your social media activity there are a few things you need to do, to ensure that you reap the maximum benefits. They are:

  1. There are lots of moving parts to consider when writing for social media. You need to decide on platform-specific tools, such as emojis, images, GIFs, memes, and hashtags. If you are looking to tap into a millennial audience for example, you might want to consider embracing these elements, as well as common abbreviations. Do your research before making this decision; moving content tends to attract more engagement.
  2. Make all your branding consistent; so when people click and see you on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and so on, they immediately recognize your logo and brand.
  3. Include all your contact details so people can get in touch if needed. If you are online, then there is no need to hide.
  4. Make sure all your posts are authentic; while there may be a screen between you and the world, people can sniff out anything that does not seem to be honest.

It is important to note that there is a certain etiquette about being online and I always describe it as being at a dinner party, where you want to be a good guest and be invited back again. Make sure you are listening, engaging with people, and not talking at people. Social media marketing is not about talking at people—it is about creating good conversations.

Always share the love online by retweeting others’ posts on Twitter, sharing content that you like and tagging others in, who you know will also enjoy the content. Paying it forward online grows your own following and helps your brand reach a bigger community and bandwidth.

As a rule of thumb—and one that works for us whatever age we might be—do not share anything that you would not want your parents to read. That way you always keep it clean.

You cannot control social media, so be brave. Being online is very serendipitous, where you can create lots of business opportunities without knowing where they may come from (see Chapter 12).

Once you start broadcasting on social media, you need to turn up every day. It is like being an actor at the theatre; you need to turn up for your show as your audience expects it. If you are unreliable, people will lose interest in you, your brand, and that affects your following.

Your collective social media following on all your channels is something called your “social media capital,” and this has a value. There have been many times when I have been speaking to the media, whether they are based in the United Kingdom, the United States, or South Africa, where I have been asked, “What is the social worth of your client.” Why? Because the media also want to attract new readers and if you can bring more people to their magazine or online platform then you will be of immediate interest.

Case Stories

A small family-run business working with people with learning difficulties was doing strong work around the world, but found they were not attracting the clients they should be and as a result their business was not thriving. Their social media activity and engagement was virtually nonexistent and acknowledged they had to turn things around; they had shifted their mind-set.

Another story that predates Instagram is about a professor at a leading global business school, who had just written his new book and wanted to raise both his book and his own profile. He created a Twitter account, started tweeting daily, tagging in relevant journalists, the media, and influencers. Within three months he had been invited to speak abroad based on the topic of his book, was interviewed twice by the BBC, and boosted book sales.

Another author, who was a business consultant, had a zero social media profile, but he got active and engaged online, tagging current ­clients and companies that he would like to work with, and started to win new business based on the content of his book that he was sharing, without reducing the value of the book.

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

Social media marketing is a fundamental part of any business. It drives sales and those businesses that focus on building their social media engagement benefit from a strong PR reach, which generates greater brand awareness, which ultimately makes it easier to attract new customers.

Businesses need to understand the success of their online activities and what is working for them and, to do this, they need to measure their social media key performance indicators (KPIs). Tracking KPIs improves your online PR and marketing strategy. However, it is important to recognize that we do not all measure the same things or measure the same ways, or use the same tools or terminology. To help us all be more aligned, we need to understand exactly what we mean when we use or say certain words in measuring our activities.

So, with this in mind, I recommend the Dictionary of Public Relations Measurement and Research (Stacks and Bowen 2013), which has become one of the most popular papers the Institute for Public Relations has ever published! Visitors can download the dictionary for free (https://instituteforpr.org/dictionary-public-relations-measurement-research-third-edition/).

Otherwise, to get started, there are four core social media KPIs that I strongly suggest businesses and organizations focus on and they are:

  1. Engagement: Reaching lots of people means nothing if they are not interested in what you have to offer. Low engagement means that either your content is not resonating with your stakeholders or that your marketing message is weak. The actual KPIs that you as a business can measure for engagement are the numbers of click, likes, shares, comments, brand mentions, profile visits, and active ­followers. This data will give you an insight into what kind of content your stakeholders enjoy.
  2. Reach: Indicates how far your message is traveling, which you can measure by tracking the KPIs of total number of followers; impressions, which show how many times your post showed up in someone’s newsfeed or timeline, either because they are already following you or because someone they know has liked or shared your content; and traffic data, which is the traffic to your website. If you are putting a lot of time and effort into your social media content, then you will want to see that this is reflected to the traffic to your website.
  3. Leads: Once your social media accounts start to gain traction, it is important to find out how many of these engaged stakeholders are actually interested in making a purchase from your business. To answer this, you will need to measure lead generation from social media and, if you are not generating leads, you may be on the wrong platform or your content is not attracting your desired stakeholder. Therefore, the sooner you start to track to find out, the better.
  4. Conversions: The ultimate measurement of your success in social media marketing is if you have found the right people, kept them engaged, and who are interested to buy from you.

Based on the foregoing discussion, we will look at each of several important social media platforms individually to better understand how they can be used and how they are evaluated.

Instagram

Right at the start, Instagram was created as an app and has quickly become a powerful marketing tool for businesses looking to expand their presence and the visibility of their products. This is a fairly new platform, launched in October 2010, and is evolving with a greater emphasis on making money through product placement. Its latest program, called “shoppable posts,” allows businesses to add “tags” to the products in their photos with links that include a product description, price, and the ability to “shop now,” which will lead the user to their online stores. This service is simple for a business to attract actual sales from the site and 72 percent of Instagram users admit to purchasing products through the social media platform (Business Insider 2017).

You will need to approach it as a curated visual experience that showcases your brand, which needs to be both creatively presented and strategically planned if you want to build a strong relationship with your audience. You should use Instagram hashtags (e.g., #theprknowledgebook) to help place your content and products in front of the right people.

For example, if your brand’s target market is female entrepreneurs, you will want to start thinking about what kind of content resonates with this stakeholder group and you could post about women in business and entrepreneurship, or write blog posts about marketing and branding, thus empowering females in the workplace. These topics will influence what kind of hashtags you will want to use for individual post; when it comes to choosing your hashtags, it is important not to be generic. You might think using the “#entrepreneur” hashtag is a good one. But that would be mistaken, as this hashtag has nearly 40 million posts under it, which is updated every couple of seconds. This means the results are too broad, the market is saturated, and means you run the risk of your post getting lost in all that noise. Instead, find hashtags that are more streamlined and targeted to your audience, such as #womenentrepreneur, which is specific to female entrepreneurs and more likely to reach your target group of stakeholders.

To find suitable hashtags go into “Instagram’s Explore page,” and search for a hashtag that you know would work for your brand and messaging. When Instagram produces the results under that hashtag, it also gives you a scroll bar at the top of related hashtags. This is a great place to find new hashtags for your posts. Remember to check how many posts have been published under the hashtag you have chosen; if it has been used thousands of times, it could be too saturated, and your posts will probably go unseen.

When you are running a small business, time is restricted and, as you will not be able to dedicate your days to Instagram marketing, you will need to stay organized and plan ahead to have the most success. With this is in mind, I suggest posting at least four to five times a week. Look at your analytics, which will show which days and dates are popular for you to post. Decide which KPIs you will use to base your decisions regarding success or failure or improvement. By simple planning and creating an editorial calendar for your Instagram profile, you will be able to build a more balanced relationship between strategy and art into your feed.

Instagram Analytics

Instagram provides for free insights to help you learn more about your followers and the people interacting with your business on Instagram. For example, you will find insights such as gender, age range, and location. You can also see which posts and stories your audience sees and engages with the most—depending of course on which KPIs you think are most important. Insights and metrics about your account should include paid as well as placed or owned activity. KPIs such as reach, accounts reached, impressions, and impressions by day reflect both paid and organic activity.

To access this, you need to convert your profile to a business profile, where the insight can be accessed. Here you can select specific posts, stories, or promotions you would like to view data and you can also learn more about your audience.

In Instagram analysis the website Activity tab allows you to track weekly interactions, reach, and impressions. The Content tab lets you see how your posts, stories, and promotions are performing, while the Audience tab gives important insights on your stakeholder groups.

Instagram Suggestions to Follow

Following are my top three favorite influencers on Instagram who I feel I learn from, as their curation of posts is clever and because I believe we can learn from people around the world:

  • Huda Kattan—@hudabeauty—is an Iraqi-American makeup artist, beauty blogger, and entrepreneur, and founder of the cosmetics line Huda Beauty.
  • Vishakha Vij—@theurbanelog—is based in India, who is an influencer, a content creator, and a lifestyle and beauty blogger.
  • Joel Contartese—@joelcontartese—is one of the first ­entrepreneurs to monetize social media in 2012. On his official website, Joel says he believes “connecting people is the most valuable and misunderstood element of business” (http://joelcontartese.wpengine.com/my-story/).

Facebook Business Page

A Facebook Page is another platform that allows businesses to develop their brand, grow their audience, and start conversations with customers and people interested in learning more. To create a Facebook Page, you will need to already have a personal profile, as only people with profiles on Facebook can create or have a role on Pages.

It is free to create a Page for your business, and all you need to do is follow the steps for creating a Page and decide how you would like to use your Page to interact with people and customers on Facebook. Once your Page is created, you can get access to free features, from Page Insights, publishing tools, and others that help you manage your Page.

Like Instagram, you need to create an online presence for your business, which will help build social connections with your audience and drive real business results. Again, it is about curating the tone, style, and personality of your business.

Posts with images do better on Facebook and you can showcase your brand through photos and video. Plus, putting a face to your business through a Facebook Page reminds your audience that it is run by real people and is authentic.

The platform also helps you engage in one-to-one conversations through comments and messaging.

Facebook ads can be a way to grow your brand and audience that is not expensive to use. You are in control and can choose where you place your ads, your target audience, budget, and schedule. You will have access to other Facebook advertising tools to help you understand what you are getting in return from each ad you run.

Facebook offers many tools to connect with the different communities that you care about via profile, pages, groups, and events.

Facebook Page Analytics

I suggest posting at least once to twice a week to keep your Facebook Page active. Understanding your Facebook page’s KPI metrics gives you the information you need to make sure you are putting the right content in front of the right audience. It helps you work with Facebook’s algorithm instead of just sending content into the void and hoping someone will see it.

Facebook also sends you weekly statistics to show you how your posts are doing, and you can also click into your actual Facebook Page and click “insights,” which tracks three important measurements:

  • Page Likes: How many people liked your page over the last seven days, where each of your new likes came from, such as from visiting your page directly, or from a page suggestion, or from mobile or desktop.
  • Post Reach: How many people saw all the content you posted over the last seven days, which gives you an overview of how many people saw content from your page and how they interacted with it.
  • Engagement: How many people liked, shared, or commented on your posts over the last seven days.

Facebook Pages Suggestions to Follow

Here are my top Facebook Pages that keep me fresh and inspired:

Twitter

Twitter is perhaps my favorite social media platform, because I enjoy the way it can randomly connect you to people and everything is in real time. I find it serendipitous and fun; like Instagram and Facebook, it drives engagement for your brand and is about being active. Here are some of the things you need to know to get started and to get the most out of the platform.

  • Ideally, you want to be on Twitter 15 minutes a day, at different times in the day because people from around the world come on to the platform in real time. I suggest splitting your 15 minutes into five minutes in the morning, five minutes at lunchtime, and then again in the afternoon/evening.
  • Twitter has established itself as a news platform, where in real time it shows you what topics and news are trending; these days breaking news is broken first on this platform before it has been released on leading news networks such as CNN or the BBC.
  • Next there is your Twitter handle, which is the name people give themselves on Twitter—@username.
  • Twitter has its quirks, and is all about brief communications where you can only send out your message, which is called a “Tweet” that is made up of 280 characters. Your tweets can include a link to any web content (blog post, website page, PDF document, and so forth) or a photograph or video.
  • People follow and subscribe to your Twitter account and you follow other people. This allows you to read, reply to, and easily share their tweets with your followers, which is called a “retweet,” or “retweeting.” Importantly, your content does not have to be solely branded and you can share other content by sourcing it from relevant industry news, blog posts, newspaper articles, and so forth. Identify the news and publications that are most relevant to your industry. Set up alerts for these sources and for the hot topics of your industry and take a look at your timeline to see what everyone else is talking about.
  • Creating lists is the easiest way to see what your followers are tweeting. So, if you have some major influencers in the food industry, then add them to a private list.
  • Make sure people know who you are, what you are selling, and how to buy it. You can put your shop link into your bio or pin it to the top of your profile page.
  • Again, this is a platform that uses hashtags. Twitter makes it easy to expand your audience reach using #hashtags. This is because people who are following #hashtags can find you, even if they are not your followers.
  • You can always schedule your tweets. Again, there are tools that will do it all for you, plus they can tell you when your community is most active. Just be careful to keep an eye on them, so you can jump in if anything needs changing in the interim.
  • Shorten your links. As mentioned, Twitter is known for its bitesize posts. If you want to pack as much into your tweets as possible, shortening links help you go that extra mile. Bitly, HootSuite, and Buffer will do this for you.
  • Find influencers. It is vital to start talking to the right people to turbocharge your marketing efforts. That means reaching out to industry influencers, so you get to piggyback on their huge followings. Just remember, half of Twitter users say they rely on influencers for product recommendations.

Twitter Insights and Analytics

Twitter’s analytics help you understand how the content you share on Twitter grows your business. Your “Account home” features high-level KPI statistics tracked from month to month and highlights your top-performing Tweets and introduces you to the influencers in your network, people that you should be following.

  • Tweet Activity Dashboard: This is a rich source of KPI metrics for every single one of your Tweets. You will know exactly how many times Twitter users have seen, retweeted, liked, and replied to each Tweet.
  • Audience Insights Dashboard: This graphic and textual dashboard contains valuable information about the people who follow you on Twitter, where you can track your follower growth over time, and learn more about their interests and demographics.

Twitter Suggestions to Follow

There are so many people that I could recommend to follow here on ­Twitter, keeping with Twitter’s randomness here are my eclectic three:

  • Thomas Power—@thomaspower—an entrepreneur, a business advisor, and a professional speaker on social media, technology, and the world of digital.
  • Malala Yousafzai—@Malala—a Pakistani activist for female education and the youngest Nobel Prize laureate.
  • Marie Forleo—@marieforleo—an American life coach, motivational speaker, author, and web television host of Marie TV with a focus on small business and personal development training for entrepreneurs. She is the owner of Marie Forleo International and B-School.

LinkedIn

According to LinkedIn editor Daniel Roth (2018), every day, over 2 million posts, videos, and articles course through the LinkedIn feed, generating tens of thousands of comments every hour—and tens of millions more shares and likes. It is one of the best networking tools for business owners and job seekers and, by using a LinkedIn business page, you can attract top talent, position yourself as a thought-leader in your industry, and promote your products or services. One of the things to think about doing on LinkedIn is to create a company page, which will help potential customers learn about your business, brand, products, services, and job opportunities.

Company Page

Creating a LinkedIn company page is easy and similar to the Facebook Page, where you will need a personal LinkedIn account and a verified e-mail address. LinkedIn guides you through the process of setting up a company page and, if you have questions, you can always visit LinkedIn’s help page.

Once created, you can start editing your company page; LinkedIn requires that you include a company description, which should be information about your business, such as what products and services you offer, your company’s history, and its mission.

After crafting your company description, fill in other company details, such as your website, where you are headquartered, company type, company size, and your company’s specialties. Make sure you upload your company logo and cover image before hitting publish.

If you have a team, let them know the page is active so they can edit their position description and add the company page to their personal accounts.

LinkedIn Groups

LinkedIn Groups are great places to build an engaged community surrounding your business and to grow your online community. There are so many groups that you can join on LinkedIn that will fit your interests, from public relations to branding, to publishing, to films and media, to women in business, to blockchain, to fashion, and more! You can also join groups based on location, a good way to enter a new location that you have been thinking of by being active in that group. Or, you can also create your own group. Either way, being active in LinkedIn Groups will establish you as a thought-leader and an industry expert. It also sends more people to your company’s LinkedIn page.

However, LinkedIn Groups are not a place to share ads for your business; instead, share valuable content with people who are interested in your business and industry. It is about creating meaningful conversations. Once you have created a company page, career page, and LinkedIn Group, regularly use these assets and create content for them. Here are some tips on where to get started and how to build these pages:

  1. Followers: Publishing and sharing content is pointless if no one is seeing it. You should be constantly looking for new followers on LinkedIn. You can post a widget to your LinkedIn page on your website and add your LinkedIn information to your e-mail signature. In fact, you should be adding all your social media information to your signature—Twitter, Facebook Page, and Instagram. So, people can find you and follow.
  2. Publish and Share Relevant Content: As with any successful marketing campaign, you need to know who your stakeholders are and what they want to see on LinkedIn. It is important to publish and share content that benefits your followers—not just content that promotes your company.
  3. Do Not Be Overly Self-Promotional: Instead, you want to provide content that is helpful, informative, and interesting. Your followers will be put off with constant marketing messages. No one likes to be sold to or see commercials all the time.
  4. Vary What You Post: Seeing the same thing repeatedly gets boring and annoying. Make posts a mix of visual, video, and regular articles.
  5. Experiment with Video and Photos: LinkedIn has a video and photo feature. In 2018, it introduced filters and a couple of text styles to its video feature; the filters include “Work High Five,” “Side Hustle,” and “On the Air.”
  6. Sponsored Ads: Like other social media platforms, you can create sponsored ads on LinkedIn, but they do cost money. There is freedom and customization available with this feature, where you can select the geographic range you want your ad to target, the ages of the audience you’re seeking, the profession and industries of the stakeholders you are seeking, and more.

LinkedIn Tracking and Analytics

The best way to offer relevant content to your audience is knowing what they want by monitoring and tracking past posts. You will determine what works and what does not. LinkedIn’s Company Page analytics allows you to evaluate KPIs such as engagement on your posts, identify trends, understand your follower demographics, and learn more about your page traffic.

LinkedIn Top Voices

LinkedIn also does something called “Top Voices,” which is a global annual list of influencers on the platform, where its editors bring their data scientists together to sort through various articles and updates that spanned over the past year.

Again, there are so many Top Voices that I could recommend, but my personal favorites are these three, mainly because I know two of them and have seen them become the superstars they are:

  • Sanyin Siang. CEO coach, professor, and author. Siang, who is an engineering professor at Duke and executive director of the Fuqua/Coach K Center on Leadership & Ethics, talks about behavioral science principles and then focuses on the human factors. She tries to engage different perspectives in her video conversations and enjoys experimenting with different formats, such astravelogues.
  • Prof. Jonathan A.J. Wilson PhD. Academic, consultant, and author. Wilson specializes in business and culture. He is an international speaker and author of the book, Halal Branding.
  • Richard Branson. Founder, Virgin Group. Branson is ­Britain’s well-known entrepreneur and businessman, who covers all aspects of his life and work, from his travel adventures to the initiatives of Virgin Group’s more than 60 companies in his LinkedIn feed. Branson says, “I don’t see any separation between and work and play—it’s all just living, and I love sharing all of it” (post published by Branson, 2018, on Virgin.com).

YouTube®

As we now know from the previous chapter, video is key, and it makes sense to be here as a business. Just like any other social network, it is free and YouTube represents a community and is specifically designed for uploading and sharing video content.

It is important to understand who the YouTube user is, as they are much younger than those on other platforms along with some clear trends. Understanding what these are can help you to create content that will appeal to your target audience:

People use it to watch videos and visual content from brands, as well as other users. It is this user-generated content that YouTube is particularly well-known for; while the average user may see it as a means of accessing entertainment and visual content, the site represents another platform for businesses to incorporate into their social media strategy. Some of the most popular categories on YouTube are:

  • Beauty
  • Comedy
  • Gaming
  • Music
  • Sports

To get started on YouTube, you are going to need a Google account, where you can either create a new, dedicated account specifically for your YouTube business channel or use an existing, personal account. Once you have created a channel for your business, you will need to brand your channel, which includes:

  1. Branding: Your channel icon and banner are both opportunities to promote your business. Displaying your logo and images of your products can keep viewers curious and help you make a name for yourself.
  2. Description: This section offers more information about your organization, such as what you do and why.
  3. Links: They provide the opportunity for you to include links to your business’ website and other social media sites, such as Facebook, ­Instagram, and Twitter.
  4. Activity: Like any other social media site, be an active member of the community that your business is trying to reach. Signaling yourself as an active participant in the community means following other channels, liking other videos, and letting your viewers know that you are involved in your industry. Highlighting featured channels and “liked” videos is a subtle way to show your fellow YouTube creators support. It is a smart strategy to make your YouTube business channel appear more active, if you do not plan on uploading on a frequent basis.
  5. YouTube Business Account/Brand Account: You can add owners and managers, giving you the option of letting multiple team members have access to your account. Owners have full access to the channel, while managers can use the channel for admin purposes on behalf of the owners.
  6. As a Small Business, You Will Need to Create Your Video Content Yourself: The quality of the videos you produce depends a lot on the equipment you are using; ensure that your devices are up-to-date and have the right camera and video settings for filming content. Make sure you include branding within your video.

There are two things to be aware of when using YouTube and they are:

  1. There is advertising on the YouTube platform, and ads will be appearing alongside your videos; you cannot control which ads are displayed. Also, YouTube decides which related content to show users, meaning you have little control over which ads and videos are displayed with your company’s content.
  2. Unless you opt to restrict comments, users will be able to leave reviews directly beneath your video; these reviews will impact on your KPIs. Your business will not be able to manage what they say and how they say it, meaning your video comments section could end up filled with negative reviews or online arguments.

YouTube Analytics

In your channel homepage, there is a tab called “Views,” which takes you to the analytics, where you can see how your videos are performing based on a number of KPIs. The “overview” report in analytics will show data for the past 28 days, which can be altered to show different time periods.

  • Annotations: These are links in the video that people can click on to be taken to other pages you want them to find. Learn which annotations people click on and the result of this action. Key performance indicators include:
  1. Audience Retention—tells you how long people watch your ­videos, before leaving the page.
  2. YouTube Cards—is a graphic at the end of a YouTube video that encourages viewers to explore more content or directs stakeholders and other audiences to take a specific action. If users subscribe to your YouTube channel, they will be alerted whenever you upload new content. Cards can be monitored to see which ones users are interacting the most.
  3. Comments—assess the statistics around the number of comments and how often your videos receive them and do manage replies to comments.
  4. Demographics—discover who is watching your videos, including data on age and geographical location.
  5. Devices—allow you to see what people are watching your content on, such as mobile or desktop.
  6. Sharing—provides you with which social media networks your videos have been shared on, and how many times, and how many likes (shown as a thumbs up, )/dislikes (shown as a thumbs down, ) you have per video.
  7. Playback locations—with this report, you can discover which websites your videos are watched on, whether they are on ­YouTube itself, another page you are linked to, or pages where your videos are embedded.
  8. Subscribers—find out which videos are most and the least likely to get people to subscribe to your channel.
  9. Traffic sources—this report lets you discover how people are finding your videos, such as by searching for it, or being referred from your website, social media sites, or other pages.
  10. Videos in playlist—view which of your videos have been added to playlists.
  11. Views—collect data on how many times your videos are viewed, which is good for measurement of stakeholder penetration.

YouTube® Suggestions to Follow

The Stanford Graduate Business School allows viewers to step inside the classroom via their YouTube channel and experience interviews with big influencers and business classes taught by renowned scholars (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGwuxdEeCf0TIA2RbPOj-8g).

The Google Small Business channel features advice from experts on how to get your small business noticed online and offers a variety of channels based on your area of expertise (https://youtube.com/user/GoogleBusiness/featured).

The Harvard Business Review channel gathers all online and print content into one place with topics ranging from business leadership to current news (https://youtube.com/user/HarvardBusiness/featured).

The Last Word About Social Media

It may be impossible for you to be on all the platforms, but if you can do four make it: Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, and YouTube. Remember to have fun with it and be open to connect with people, as you just do not know who people know within their own circles and feeds—remember it is all about your mind-set.

Finally, learn from the next generation, whether they are your kids, nephews, or nieces. This next generation understands better than us, of how things work and how to engage. Some of my best Instagram lessons of “how to” have come from our 12-year-old!

Podcasts

Before we leave this chapter, I want to mention podcasts, which have been proven to be extremely popular in 2018, especially with young listeners, who are more likely to use podcasts to discover news rather than listening to the radio (Podcasts Insights.com, 2019). A podcast is an audio file similar to a radio broadcast, without the commercial breaks, and is available to stream online for listeners. Once your audience members have found you based on your specific content, they can subscribe to your channel. When you upload new content, it will automatically download to their devices. They are relatively easy and inexpensive to make.

Podcasts offer opportunities for audiences to share in-depth discussions and incredible real-life stories. As a business owner, you want to build your credibility and your authority on your platform; podcasting is a great way to do this—share your knowledge and position yourself as an expert in your field. You will need to make your audience understand the amount of value that you can bring to their lives and businesses. If you deliver high quality, you are building trust, credibility, reputation, relationship, and authority.

Now is the time to build on that popularity, focusing on podcasts as a source with fresh, interesting content, where you can interview guests to strengthen your content. When you are starting a business, or even if your business is established, connecting with influencers is an asset. It is your chance to connect, exchange, share opinions, and sometimes even share some valuable information. It is a first step to various collaborations with those guests. Getting in touch with influencers can be done during live events, via e-mail, on their blogs by adding comments regularly, or via social media (see Chapter 4 on working with influencers and celebrities). These collaborations could lead to joint ventures, products creation, online summits, speaking engagements, and guest blogging.

Podcasting is a medium that can be accessed while your stakeholders are on the go—travelling to work, going to meetings, at the gym, on the school run—wherever they are listening, the experience is that it feels as though you are part of a conversation. It is intimate. Therefore, it is important to be authentic and speak with your heart, as the way you communicate with people is the way they will perceive who you are and what your brand is like.

Talking is extremely powerful and being listened to is even more powerful. As a small business, or organization or being self-employed, you can look to build awareness and engage a new audience.

Case Stories

A small, global publishing house that publishes business books creates podcasts by interviewing its different authors, who share their knowledge and wisdom for the business community.

A life coach does a monthly podcast, interviewing other therapists and coaches whether they are nutritionists, dream analysts, and well-­being experts. It has positioned him as an expert in his field and grown his audience and client base.

Summary

After reading this chapter and absorbing all the facts, there is little doubt that social media is one of the most empowering mediums to have evolved for all types of businesses. The key is not to be overwhelmed and think of it as another task to do in your busy business day, but instead to approach your social media activities as part of your business strategy. Investing in your social media PR plans and measuring your KPIs means you will not only be raising the profile of your brand with your stakeholders, but you could actually be making sales.

Probably, one of the best things social media can do for a small organization or business is open up your business to a whole new world, which is not on your doorstep. In one clever social media swoop, by taking the data from your KPIs, you could be engaging with new stakeholders in Hong Kong, Dubai, Barbados, Mumbai, Ghana, and more, where the world is really your oyster. All you need is a global frame of mind, so let’s discover what this means and how to get going in the next chapter.

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