Hanna Hasl-Kelchner: [00:00:00] Social media marketing has often been portrayed as the road to riches, a way to make millions while you sleep. But once you dive in, you quickly realize it’s not quite as easy as it looks. Today’s guest, Johnna Londen, and her business partner Valerie Jennings, say they have some tips to help you get better social media marketing results.

 

Announcer: [00:00:23] This is Business Confidential Now with Hanna Hasl-Kelchner helping you see business issues hiding in plain view that matter to your bottom line.

 

Hanna: [00:00:35] Welcome to Business Confidential Now. I’m your host, Hanna Hasl-Kelchner, and today I’m excited to learn more about social media marketing from our special guest, Johnna Londen, co-founder of the Online Business Gurus. Her mission and that of her business partner, Valerie Jennings, is to show startup businesses who want an online presence or well-established businesses that want to expand their online sales, the foundational steps they need in the online world.

 

Hanna: [00:01:05] In other words, they teach businesses how to build and manage their teams, install automation systems and market their products and services so that business owners can focus their energies on what they do best, which isn’t all this social media stuff. Together, Johnna and Valerie have 13 certifications in marketing and automation space, and one of their success stories is how they helped one client ranked number nine in Twitter’s Global Gurus Brand Top 30. Sounds like they’ve truly mastered the intricacies of this virtual interconnected world. And actually they live their truth because what you may not know about these U.S. natives is that they operate their virtual empire from sunny Mexico. So enough with the intro love fest. Let’s get started. Welcome to Business Confidential now Johnna, Hola.

 

Johnna Londen: [00:01:59] Hi, Hanna. Nice to be here. Thanks for having me.

 

The Million Dollar Question About Social Media Marketing

 

Hanna: [00:02:03] Well, it’s good to have you here. And I’m going to cut straight to the chase here. So can you really make a million dollars on social media?

 

Johnna: [00:02:10] There are going to be those rare exceptions of people that are going to make a million dollars on social media, but it’s going to be few and far between. If anybody is telling you, oh, do this, do that, and you’re going to make a million dollars tomorrow, it is too good to be true because it is not true. Social media was designed and the best way you can use it for your business is to build your like know, like, trust factor. And I am sure most people know what that is. But in case you don’t that like know, like, trust factor breaks down like this, they have to know you. So they have to see your post and look at your channels and get to know you and your business through that. Then they have to like you. They have to like you; they have to like your brand. They have to like your product. They have to like your voice. Once they do that, then they’re going to trust you with your money. And what I tell everybody is it doesn’t matter whether you sell a product, a service or yourself, your business is still going to be you. So that, like, know, like, trust factor is important. But to answer your question, not many people that I know are ever going to make a million dollars out of social media. And if they do, I want to know how they’re doing it because I want to be doing it, too.

 

What Can You Reasonably Expect of Social Media

 

Hanna: [00:03:27] Don’t we all? So what can people realistically expect out of social media? I know I hear frustration. Sometimes people say, oh, my God, this is such a time sink and it’s not, it doesn’t feel like it’s getting me anywhere.

 

Johnna: [00:03:44] Well, to be honest, it’s your social media. You’re going to get out of it, what you put into it and what I mean by that is, yeah, I know social media can be really time consuming. And what I tell all my clients is take a minute, take a step back. What is your goal in your social media? When you when you started into social media, or even those of you that have already social media in place, and like you said – they’re saying it’s just not getting me anywhere – take a step back and look at your social media. First of all, are you trying to be on every platform that’s out there? Because if you are, that’s your first mistake. Every platform out there is not going to be the best avenue for your business or your brand. And what I mean by that is if you’re trying to do Facebook and Twitter and LinkedIn and Pinterest and YouTube and Tic Toc and yeah, you’re not going to have any business or a life and you’re definitely not going to have any business to do what you really want to do, which is concentrate on what makes you happy in your business. So you want to take a step back for a second and you want to see what’s working and what’s not working. And you also want to take a few minutes and look at what maybe competitors of you, where are they living? Where does your audience live? For some people your audience is going to live on LinkedIn and some of them, they’re going to live on Twitter and some of them are going to live on Facebook, but they’re not going to live everywhere.

 

Johnna: [00:05:04] And you want to take a minute and you want to build your social media marketing around where your audience is, where you get the most traction is. And then you want to build your plan. I know planning, but it just takes it just a little bit of time and a little bit of research and effort to find out where your best avenues are going to be. And then you sit down on Saturdays and you create your plan. This is what I’m going to do. These are what I’m going to post. These are one of my posts are getting the best interactions. And from that, you will actually start to see that your social media marketing is going to get you some traction and you’re going to start seeing those responses and those shares and those likes and that engagement that you’re looking for by just taking just a little bit of effort to do a little research and a little tweaking, you’ll find out the social media is not all that bad.

 

Johnna: [00:05:53] But if you’re trying to live on every platform, then, yeah, you’re going to hate social media and it’s going to be a grind. And then it’s never really going to be what you need it to be for you because you actually physically hate being on there, doing it.

 

Determining Social Media Marketing Traction

 

Hanna: [00:06:08] Well, that makes a lot of sense. So how does somebody figure out the research that they need to do and which platform is the best for them? How much engagement is traction?

 

Johnna: [00:06:22] That kind of depends on the research. Basically research, what I tell everybody, even if you don’t have somebody doing it for you and you want to do it yourself or you don’t have the money for somebody to do it for you, just to look at your competitors, where are your competitors doing their most postings? What are your competitors doing their most postings about? When do your competitors do their posting times and that will give you kind of an idea of where you’re at, when and where your audience is going to be or where and when your ideal client is going to be on that platform. Then you look at social media that you’ve already posted and you look at, you can go into Facebook and Facebook has got insights and you can see what posts got the most engagements and when they got the engagement. So you can kind of start planning and most of social media channels have some kind of an analytics that you can look at and then you can just kind of start planning, OK, my nine o’clock post didn’t do well, but my eleven o’clock post did. And so then you just kind of plan your social media around those numbers and those platforms and you’ll find that it really works for you.

 

Posting Recommendations for Social Media Marketing

 

Hanna: [00:07:32] What’s your opinion on the number of posts that should go on a particular platform?

 

Johnna: [00:07:40] It kind of depends. On Instagram, I would say one to two posts today. Facebook, it’s going to depend. If your audience is really engaged on Facebook, then I would say concentrate your efforts on Facebook. Where you post really depends on where you concentrate your efforts and you want to concentrate your efforts depending on where your audience, your ideal customer is. So if your ideal customer is on Facebook, then you might want to put two or three post a day on Facebook. But if they’re not on Facebook, you want to keep your Facebook active. So maybe one maybe two the industry or the average posting schedule should be one post dealing with your business. Very, very specific about your services, your product, your brand, whatever it is that your business is, is in is about, then you may want to if you’re running a sale or you’ve got a launch coming up or something like that, then you want to make sure that you put a post in about that then.

 

Johnna: [00:08:43] You want to make sure that in one of your days post or one of your when you’re on the network or you’re on the platform, you find a post from somebody that’s in your audience or already connected to you and you want to share that post. So you want to make sure that you get your interactions. I also would recommend that on Facebook you do personalized birthday messages. We get a lot of engagement from just telling people happy birthday. Facebook comes up every day on your events tab and will tell you who are your friends list whose birthday it takes two seconds to post in a personalized happy birthday message to them. But it really does make a difference in that liking you factor that remembering you factor so that the next time one of your posts comes up for sale or a product that you’ve got or a launch that you’ve got coming up, they’re going to remember, hey, that person was really great to me and said happy birthday to me personally. And that’s going to make a huge difference. The other thing you want to make sure on your social media is, yes, you can use schedulers and there’s some really great ones out there, but you want to make sure that you give your platforms a little bit of a personalized touch, make sure that your audience and your community that you’re trying to build and grow knows that you’re also there, that you’re not throwing everything into a HootSuite, walking away, a set it and forget it type attitude, because your social media marketing does need to be nurtured a little bit by you. I’m not saying spend 10 hours a day. I’m just making sure that you make sure that your audience knows that it’s also you that you’re not just, you know, posting or HootSuite and walking away and working with the clients that you do small and medium sized businesses.

 

Social Media Marketing Mistakes

 

Hanna: [00:10:28] What do you find that they typically get wrong about social media marketing?

 

Johnna: [00:10:33] They want to be everywhere, doing everything all at once. And they’re not really using the social media marketing to their advantage. They’re not using it to post in where their audience is. They’re not posting the correct things. They’re not they’re not doing their little bit of research to make sure their posts are at the right times. They’re wanting to post on too many platforms, too much stuff, and they’re not running a consistency on their posting. And so it gets to that, pardon of my expression, it gets watered down and their voice and their message gets lost.

 

Changing Environment of Social Media Marketing

 

Hanna: [00:11:09] That’s interesting. Now, you’ve been in this space for a while. What changes have you seen since you first got started in this specialty area in social media marketing?

 

Johnna: [00:11:22] The biggest change as I’ve seen is  with the younger generations now becoming into the workforce’s and stuff. I’ve seen that that used to be Facebook and Twitter and LinkedIn were your major ones. And then you had Pinterest because it became visual when more women started really getting into social media. And so it became visual. And then you had YouTube, because now we have videos. And I find that the trend now seems to be that it’s visual. So you want to make sure that even if you’re posting on Facebook and you’re posting text, that you make the graphic that goes with those text, very visual, because the first things that I’ve noticed in social media marketing, the biggest change is that first graphic, not the words, but the image that they see when they actually get your post is the first thing that draws their attention.

 

Johnna: [00:12:14] So you want to make sure that that image is very pinpointed and very eye-catching so that it draws them in and makes them want to see the rest of the post or watch the rest of the video or whatever platform your you’re choosing to bring to your audience on.

 

3 Keys to Better Social Media Marketing Results

 

Hanna: [00:12:30] All right. If you had to boil it down, social media marketing, what do you think are the three keys to getting better marketing results?

 

Johnna: [00:12:42] Know where your audience is, pick the correct platforms to post to make sure that you know where your audience, your ideal client, your ideal customer is going to be, you want to focus on that. That’s a big one. You want to make sure that your post gets your point across, but also build your like, know trust factor. And you want to be authentic and you want to make sure that you show up in your social media. Those are the three most important things that when you come from your social media marketing.

 

Hanna: [00:13:13]  In people being authentic, have you found that sometimes people overshare?

 

Johnna: [00:13:20] A little bit, yeah, I do, I find that they start to blur the line between personal and business and that line starts to get blurred and sometimes they overshare a little more information than they need to overshare. So I always try to encourage my clients to have two separate accounts. Keep your business account very business, but show up in your business. Make sure that people know that you’re a real person and you know that you understand their needs, which is why you’ve created your business or your product and then have a personal page that’s separate that if you want to share with friends and family that way your business doesn’t bleed in over into your business life too much and become oversharing.

 

Johnna’s Favorite Social Media Platforms

 

Hanna: [00:14:07] Sounds like a positive message. Now in all of these different platforms. I know you said some people try to be everywhere and it just becomes overwhelming. Do you have a favorite platform?

 

Johnna: [00:14:22] My honest favorite platform, yeah. Twitter and LinkedIn.

 

Hanna: [00:14:25] Twitter and LinkedIn.

 

Johnna: [00:14:26] Twitter, LinkedIn.

 

Hanna: [00:14:27] Tell me why.

 

Johnna: [00:14:29] Well, I love Instagram because I’m very visual and like pictures. But Twitter and LinkedIn, Twitter is very . . . I like the short brief messages that you can get with Twitter. It makes you really think about how you want to put that post up there, because it’s such a short brief amount of text you can put there. Makes everybody, the business owner, really think I need this to be eye-catching. So they put a little more effort into that post. LinkedIn I like because it’s very business-oriented platform. But you can still show your personality in that platform so you can show your audience your ideal client or customer or whatever you’re using these platforms for that you are business. And here’s my business aspect. But if they look at your profile, you can get a little personal without being oversharing or over personal. So for that reason, I like those two platforms probably the most.

 

How to Find Virtual Assistants to Help with Social Media Marketing

 

Hanna: [00:15:26] Awesome. Now, earlier you mentioned these schedulers like HootSuite, I’m sure there’s a bunch of others out there, somebody still has to fill in the blanks and come up with the content that that goes out there. And like you, there are virtual assistants out there that can create and facilitate that type of marketing. But they come in all shapes and sizes and different flavors, which is great. But for someone who needs help and is unfamiliar with the whole social marketing thing, how do they go about finding the right virtual assistant to help them with these things? What types of questions should they be asking? What do they need to know?

 

Johnna: [00:16:12] Even for the beginner who’s on the social media but doesn’t really know how to do it, and they want to have somebody that can help them walk them through that. The first question is the first the first things I would say is don’t settle for the first person you talk to. Make sure that when you get to that point where you’re ready to get somebody to help you and your social media marketing, have a phone call with them, get to know their personality, the first thing you want to know is, is your personality going to be workable with them. Can you have a good working relationship or are you going to buttheads the whole time? If they’re personable and you guys have a great conversation, then there’s some things you want to know. Ask them what their experience is with posting. Ask them how they would take your business and get it out there on the social media. Ask them how they would change what you’re already doing in social media. Ask them if they’re going to do the research about your competitors to make sure that your in consistency, you know, your right around with what your competitors, that kind of thing. You want to make, ask them for examples of their work. If they’re going to, if you’re going to have them creating, you know, many graphics or graphics for you or they’re going to be posting your blog and then posting them on social media, asking for recommendations and then actually call their recommendations. Most people, if they’re good at their job are going to be more than glad to give you recommendations, examples of their work, and they wouldn’t be afraid to answer those questions if they’re afraid to answer any of those questions then keep on looking.

 

Hanna: [00:17:44] All right. Sounds good. And how do you go about finding people who have expertise in this besides yourselves?

 

Johnna: [00:17:53] There are some places and it just depends if you’re really starting out and you’re like a start out person and you need to get into the social media or you’ve just got your channels up now, you don’t know what to do with them. There’s a couple of nice places there is, I believe it’s called the VirtualAssistants.org used to have a job board and it had the jobs at the different VA specialties broken down by what their specialty was. Another one is up work, UpWork.com, it’s  a contractor site, but they do have VAs. If you go in there you can do a search and you can put in what you’re searching for and they will come up with people. And the thing was UpWork will give you the recommendations from the people that they’ve worked for in the past. It will give you recommendations and it will tell you how they rated them and it would give you their price points and that kind of thing. So you can start from there. There’re groups in Facebook, there are some virtual assisting groups in Facebook. You can post in your own groups or on your own post or on your own pages. And then you take the people that you responded to you and like I said, just have an interview with them. If they don’t want to answer the questions that they don’t want to give you the information and the examples and the recommendations. Then it’s probably not going to be someone that you want to go with.

 

Johnna: [00:19:17] There are like you said, there are a million different VAs out there, so if you find a VA that says, oh, I can do this and I can do that and I’m great in this, I’m great in that, I’m great in this, be a little leery because VA, the VA have now niched down to everybody has a specialty. And if you’re looking for one that can do social media marketing things, you want to make sure that that is their specialty, that it’s their bread and butter. That’s what they do. That’s what they know.

 

Hanna: [00:19:42] Sound advice, the virtual assistance, the VA’s, the links that Johnna has just shared with us. They’re going to be on the episode page at BusinessConfidentialRadio.com for this particular episode. So don’t worry if you don’t have a pen or pencil handy and you missed it, we’re going to have those links for you, in addition, of course, to the links to Johnna’s business with Valerie so that if you want to learn more about what they do, you’re certainly welcome to do that.

 

What Metrics Matter?

 

Hanna: [00:20:10] OK, so let’s say I find myself a virtual assistant. We’ve got this great chemistry and after, you know, say, a month or two, how should I evaluate what they’re doing? Yeah, there’s a bunch of posts out there and they’re keeping the different channels that I have filled. But what should I be looking for in terms of results? How do I measure and determine whether they’ve done a good job for me?

 

Johnna: [00:20:38] Ok, any good social media marketing VA is going to give you an analytics report at the end of the month. If they don’t, then you need to ask for one and you need to ask why they’re not giving you one. And an analytics report basically is, they’re going to give you all of these stats and analytics from all of the platforms that you have them managing. What you want to look for is your community growth and community engagement. Now, if you’re running a launch or you’re selling a product or a class or something, and they have been running that through your social media as well, you also want to look at those from those posts they posted. How many people signed up or how many calls did you get or how many people visited that landing page? They can only get them to let any page. They can’t get them to sign up. Unfortunately, however, those numbers do matter. So if they’re not giving you that report at the end of the month, then you need to be asking them for that report and you need to ask them why they’re not. Because I don’t know many social media marketing views that don’t give that as a standard. And what you want to look for is when you get those reports, as you want to look at your different channels and you want to look at your different platforms and you want to look at where were we when we started and where are we now.

 

Johnna: [00:21:59] So if I had 500 likes on my Facebook page where she started and now I have, you know, 700 or 800 likes, that’s a pretty good, good return on your investment for having that person work for you. But if you started at 500 and now you’re down to 300, then there’s something wrong with the way that she’s managing your channels. And you might need to sit down and have a discussion as to what changed or what is not working. A good social media marketing VA is constantly monitoring your community growth and engagement growth and should be adjusting your postings and adjusting your scheduling until you find that optimal sweet spot where your community and your engagement and your likes and all of that is growing each month. Now, I’m not saying it’s going to grow by five million people each month, but it should show a consistent growth and a consistent engagement rate that goes up, not down.

Managing Your Social Media Expectations

 

Hanna: [00:23:07] So what’s a reasonable period of time to have things, let’s say, if you’ve been doing that next to nothing on it, to have things start showing an increase? Do you expect it to be immediate? Do you expect it to be one month, two months? What’s reasonable?

 

Johnna: [00:23:26] So reasonable for somebody that you’ve just brought in for say for the person who’s just got their channels up and they haven’t really done anything and now they’ve got a social media marketing VA that I would say somewhere between two to three months. That’s a reasonable time for you, for them to get really good at knowing your voice, knowing how you post, to do the research, to get the posting schedule scheduled to niche in those posts that really start to get that engagement, somewhere between two to three months.

 

Johnna: [00:23:54] Now, if you’re somebody who’s been rocking and rolling on your own social media for a while, but you’re ready to let somebody else take it over, but you’ve already got a good base and you’ve already got a good posting schedule and your engagement is good, then somewhere between a month to two months only, because that allows the VA time to get into there, get into the flow, understand the post, get your voice down, make sure that your engagement is good then somewhere between a month and two months. So anything anybody tells you that they need six months before your channels start showing anything, that’s a lie, OK?

 

Hanna: [00:24:31] By the same token, it’s not an overnight success either.

 

Johnna: [00:24:34] That is correct. Social media is not going to make you million or you’re not going to get 500 people to like your Facebook page tomorrow. It is a growing process. And unfortunately, social media is, I like to like to say, it’s a growing entity. I like to kind of give it a little bit of a living, breathing type thing, because it’s going to be ever changing. It’s going to be ever growing. And you’re going to have to always be tweaking a little bit and changing a little bit, depending on your audience, your growth and what you’re wanting to see come out of those channels.

 

Hanna: [00:25:12] Very good. It needs to be nurtured, is what I’m hearing loud and clear. Is there anything . .

 

Johnna: [00:25:19] It needs to be nurtured

 

Hanna: [00:25:20] . . . is there anything else you’d like to add to this party? Because we’ve covered quite a bit of ground here.

 

Johnna: [00:25:26] I think social media is a wonderful tool to use in your business. I personally love being on social media, but if you’re not one that likes to be on social media, then you might want to look into maybe getting a little bit of help. Social media should be fun. And if it’s becoming a chore for you, then you might need to find somebody that can help you with it. But in the end, it is a valuable and very valuable asset to any business or brand.

 

Johnna: [00:25:56] Like I said, if nothing else, it’s to build a community and audience and build that like no trust factor, because in the end, if they like you and they know you, they’re going to trust you. And when they trust you, they’re going to buy from you or they’re going to use your coaching services.

 

Hanna: [00:26:13] Wonderful. And thank you so much for giving us a small road map and a taste for how to make this happen. Thank you so much, Johnna.

 

Johnna: [00:26:22] You are so welcome. Thank you so much for having me. And I really appreciate spending the time with you.

 

Hanna: [00:26:27] That’s our show for today. Thank you for joining me. If you’d like to learn more about today’s guest, you can go to our website at BusinessConfidentialRadio.com. It’s got a lot of other powerful information and resources available to help your business grow. So be sure to check that out. The website again is BusinessConfidentialRadio.com.

 

Hanna: [00:26:49] I’m Hanna Hasl-Kelchner and you’ve been listening to Business Confidential Now. Have a great rest of the day and an even better tomorrow.