Abhi Arya shares what he learned at Social Media Marketing World 2018, covering networking strategies, personal branding, and how to grow Facebook groups as business tools.
Foreign breakfast. It's already 8:30. I think it should be okay. Christian and I are headed there. Today is the beginning of social media Marketing World 2018. So we start with an early morning breakfast. The breakfast is for society members only. So we're gonna go for that breakfast, we meet a few friends, meet some new Internet friends. We're meeting, sorry, in person for the first time. Then you get. The conference is going to be amazing keynotes. But like I said, it's a good idea at conferences is to select out a few speakers you want to listen to in person, live and everybody else you can listen to later. And the better idea is to be on the sidelines and networking with everyone. So meeting people, networking. I believe in the old fashioned. Shaking hands and making sure that I have enough and more business cards. My business professor told me many years back, this is your cheapest marketing tool. I show my car every time because I'm proud of it. The day I'm not, I change. It goes with my jacket. But I talk about personal branding. So I try to look the part. And so yeah, it's going to be an interesting day. I always call it like this, a team. We're trying to fit a team together. Once it clicks, heard that sound, it clicks. The team is working, let's give them more work. Then it'll break, right? It'll either he leave or he'll get hired or he'll open his own company or he'll get too big for his stuff. I'm black and so, so, so now I'm like. And my dad told me this all he said, you're getting frustrated for knowledge. This never exists. I was like, no, I'm gonna make it happen. I'm gonna make perfect team. And that's how Richard Branson built his business. And I don't know, it doesn't work. We're almost about 200 people in my company and I am still, I still have to go in. I don't do the Facebook ads or all of that, but I still have to go in and come out, go in and come out to make sure that. So it's good to know that. It's good to hear you because for me it's been very frustrating trying to get that thing to work out and it breaks out and I try again to build it up and everybody's working together. And I was like, well, I'm gonna take vacations now. Day one, social media marketing, it just starts. We already had a great networking session with some great people that we met. So looking Forward to a brilliant, brilliant day. That's all. I'm good now. How are you? Nice to meet you as well. She's a phobia of elevators, escalators. So she said, random stranger, she said, can you drop me? I said, sure, why not? So you can go to Instagram, go to search.instagram and a search for all the people who are acing it, getting it in your niche. So it could be people like Chase Jarvis or all these top photographers and see the hashtags that they are using to build their community online. That's number one. Number two, you can go into search and see which are the hashtags used in and around photography content. So it could be Canon dslr, so it could be the rode mic and what are people saying around it and then accordingly add your advice or your one minute videos on that using those hashtags because you're talking about a rode mic. Use the rode mic hashtag if it's trending during that time. The third thing I like to do is to actually go to Google Trends and see what is trending in the market and then accordingly make content so that's more relevant content coming onto Instagram and then using those very hashtags. So two things in a nutshell, One is to see what other people in your fraternity were acing it, killing it, what are the hashtags that they're using. And then the more search for products and services in and around your niche, could be cameras, could be mics or whatever. Lean on those hashtags and put them in your feed. Don't really put them in your post. You can put them in your feed or in the comment section. And that done a couple of times a day because that's how competitive it is. You need to do a couple of times a day consistently for about 90 days for you to start seeing, you know, build 5, 10,000 people niche people who really want to follow you. And once you've got 5, 10,000, then you got it. You get sort of addicted to it, you know how it works. And then you sort of start. It's not, it's not gaming the system, it's understanding the system. Kristen, I'd love to see you do that, man. Pretty cool. Go back all the way to what's up? That's it. Oh, that's my boy. You're a legend. That is perfect. Thank you. Not at all. Appreciate it. I'm grab a bag. I have to go there. They've got the best fish tacos ever. Really Sam, almost been a Year. It feels crazy that I was here last year meeting all these people, making almost a family, a community out of everybody that I've met. And that's the power of social media. You make communities online and then you meet them actually offline. And the power of Facebook groups. Facebook is now actually promoting groups and in a very, very big way. It wants to have more interconnected societies all over the world. So it's going to invest money to actually show your posts higher in community than in groups. I think everybody for their business must have a community. And the fastest way to grow a community is not by posting stuff that you think is relevant for your business, but what is relevant for your audience's business. And then let them interact, ask open ended questions, let people have contests, have winners, highlight the people in your group. Do Facebook ads to do webinars. Do online conferences. Bring in more speakers, the more value you add to your group. People start entertaining, exchanging ideas amongst themselves and then eventually what happens is that the Facebook group and community starts becoming a self engaged community. And you can go in and go out of that. You can sell your courses, you can sell your programs and all that, but that comes at a later stage. The idea is to first build a community of people who love each other, talk to each other every single day, watch out for each other, have everybody's back. Social media society that is part of the social Media Examiner Facebook page. It's a paid society. And every time that I'm going in for a meeting and I feel that I am not very sure about how Twitter, video ads work because I'm not spending a million dollars on those or any other thing. I just put in a post taking my flight to meet my client. By the time I land the 8, 10 people who I feel have got my back because they come back to me with their experiences and what they've done, case studies, links and all of that. It is so very powerful. One thing that I encourage all of you to do is to join social media society. I've got one, it's called Learn social media with ABHI Arya where I an expert from all over the world. Because of my friends being everywhere, me going to conferences all these years, I've been able to build a fraternity of people who like to, who are humbled, are you know, coming in to help me and my fraternity and my group grow. We just about 2500 members but it's a lot of engagement happening over there. So engagement is key. Facebook groups are key. So if you're a business person or if you're an entrepreneur. If you're somebody working in an entrepreneurial setup looking to do something as a side hustle on the side, I think you should create a Facebook group and spend some time on it every single day to grow it, to know, nurture it. And once it's developed, the ROI in terms of real money, real value coming out of it is humongous. So it's a great ROI business tool. It's just not a brand building tool. Facebook groups, Facebook communities, something to watch out for in 2018.
