Evan Carmichael answers Maria's question about boosting engagement on Periscope live sessions. He recommends three tactics: broadcast on a consistent schedule so audiences know when to tune in, assign a theme to each session to focus discussion, and collect questions in advance to turn the chat into a real Q&A instead of a monologue.
Chapters
How do you get people to engage with you on social media? Now this is a question that I got in Maria— I got— wow, I'm really tired. This is a question I got from Maria in my mastermind group, and the mastermind group is called TGIM because we meet on Mondays, and it's Tuesday at midnight, so I guess technically it's Wednesday. I am crazy late in answering this. Maria, I apologize. I have been working through the acquisition of a company and bringing on a new team, And last night I didn't get to bed till 5 in the morning, and it's midnight, and I just finished another meeting with somebody about this new idea. And I'm like, I need to make this video for Maria because I promised her. So excuse me if I'm a little tired, my voice is a little cracked from talking for so long, but we're here. This is important. Maria is doing a lot of stuff on Periscope, and she is running these live chats and and she is finding one, that she's getting a lot of people to come to the chats, but she's not getting a lot of engagement afterwards. They're saying hi to her, but they're not asking questions afterwards. They want my feedback on how to get better. So Maria, here's my answer for you. I got 3 tips that I want to go over. First is have a regular schedule. And what I find, and I've done a lot of these Twitter chats, a lot of Google Hangouts, when you have a regular schedule, it's easy for people to want to come back to and stick with. So I know you're doing them at 11 o'clock at night on certain days. I don't know if that's every day. I don't know if that's Monday, Wednesday, Friday. I don't know if that's weekends. You want to have a consistent schedule so that people know when to come to have an amazing chat with Maria and get some awesome feedback to help them grow their business or live a better life or whatever you're talking about. And so I would set that out, and at the end of your chat, then the next one you promote and you say, hey, tomorrow again, 11 o'clock, or next Wednesday at 11 o'clock, come join me. So you start creating a system A schedule, people put it in their calendars, they know, and they come to expect it. So have a regular schedule. The second thing is have themes. I don't know what you talk about in your Periscope chats, but I find it super helpful to get discussions happening when you have a set theme for each one. And so the Twitter chats that I run are successful. I know you've been a part of them, Maria. The Google Hangouts I run have been successful because they all have a theme. Where I find if you just open it up and say, hey, What do you want to talk about? A lot of times people don't know what they want to talk about, and so they don't ask the question. They'll sit there and they'll watch, and they'll hope to gain a little bit of knowledge from you, but they won't think about what they want to ask. Where if you prime them and you give them ideas, so if you're, you know, you're going to talk about how to market your business, you're going to talk about how to have success with Periscope, you're going to talk about how to create a YouTube video, you're going to talk about how to live a better life, you're going to talk about your morning routine, whatever it is, if you have a set theme for each one, then it gets people thinking about questions that they want to ask around those set themes. Where again, if it's too loosey-goosey and just free-for-all, then it's harder for people to come up with questions because you haven't primed them. Here's a great example where I find this holds a lot of entrepreneurs back from growing their business in terms of getting new referrals. People say, "I need referrals, I need referrals, I need referrals for my company." where if you aren't specific with the type of referral that I need, then it's hard for me to help you. You know, if you're just a web developer, right? I know tons of web developers. So why am I going to refer someone to you versus somebody else? Where if you said, I'm looking for clients as a web developer who are, who are in the financial space, as an example. I love working with banks, or I love working with insurance companies. I love working with companies of a certain size. Then that starts immediately me thinking about, huh, what financial companies do I know? What banks do I know? Right? It starts immediately shaping my mind towards that topic where if you just said web design, it's so general that I don't think about it and it goes over my head. And so a tip for entrepreneurs is when you're asking for help, you want to be specific because as soon as you start saying those words, specific words, it aligns people's brains to start finding solutions for you. You want people to ask you questions. Have set themes that gears their brain towards those topics naturally before— I lost my train of thought quickly. I'm watching my wife. She's here playing League of Legends. Love you, baby. She's focused. She's in the zone, not paying attention to me. It's hard because I'm talking so much and very loudly. Oh, you're paying attention? She looked at me. She's focused. She doesn't want to die in the game. All right, moving on. So have a regular schedule, have regular themes. Next is I would ask them questions, and a lot of times what you have to watch out for in a chat or in any kind of these live Hangouts is sometimes people expect to come and just to listen. A lot of times people will watch a Hangout with me and just expect to listen, to take in, to absorb knowledge, to hear from me, or if I'm interviewing somebody throat is killing me— to hear their feedback or the questions that I'm asking them, they don't necessarily realize that they could ask a question as well, and they can get their feedback from that question. And so what I always do is, as much as possible, try to have a way for people to ask questions, first of all, in advance. So if I'm doing a Twitter chat, I'll put out the hashtag and let them know, hey, ask a question with this hashtag and I'll answer it on the Twitter chat. If I have a Google Hangout scheduled, I'll have on the sidebar to say, "Hey, if you have any questions for me or my guests, leave it in here. We'll answer it for you during the show." And so people start asking questions already, and then when we start the program, there's already some pre-questions that I can answer, and it gets people already thinking to, "Oh, Evan's asking questions, Maria's answering questions, maybe I could throw in my own question." And while you're answering somebody else's question, they're thinking about the question that they can answer— sorry, that they can ask themselves. And so I would definitely be looking at a way to let people know that you want to answer questions. So I'd be saying, "Hey, if you guys have questions, let me know," and then start answering people's questions already because you've lined a few of them up. Does that make sense? So whatever makes sense in terms of Periscope, if you want people to tweet with a certain hashtag or email you a question or whatever it is, you want to have a few pre-questions already set up and lined up from people so that when you start the chat, it's not you going on a monologue, it's a Q&A. And then people know that, hey, I asked my question, Maria's going to answer. Okay, Maria, those are my 3 tips for you. Hopefully it helps. So looking over it again, have a regular schedule so I know exactly when you're going to be online every time. Have themes and topics for each chat that you're doing. And then let them find a way, or you should find a way to have pre-questions and then make sure that you are asking for their questions during the chat. I apologize, uh, as I did at the start for my maybe lack of focus and my tiredness at the moment. It's been a crazy, crazy, crazy but exciting past the past couple of days. I still have a little bit more to do. It's coming up on 12:30 in the morning, but your passion should drive you, and so I believe. Thank you guys for watching. Thank you everybody in the Mastermind group. I will see you again on Monday, and continue to believe.
