How to Fix Your Social Media Campaigns | 12 Minutes to Lasting Impact

Evan Carmichael. Evan Carmichael Believe. This guy is a force of nature. He is a nuclear-powered professional. He's flown from Toronto, and you probably think that he's here to speak about social media, and you're wrong. He is here to dance salsa. He really is. And he invited me out tonight to dance salsa, but I expect that we're going to have separate partners, right?

95% of businesses should not be spending money on social media advertising. I'm gonna say that again. 95% of you guys should not be spending any money on your social media campaigns on the advertising side. The problem is advertising improves already existing successful campaigns, and the problem is your current campaigns aren't good enough. Your current campaigns suck, and so throwing advertising dollars on top of it is not going to help you. I like to think of campaigns as franchises. So if you're gonna start a restaurant and you wanna franchise it out, you have to have one location be successful first. You can't franchise if your one location doesn't work. I like to think of it as a fire. So your successful social media campaign is your fire and advertising is the gasoline on top of it. Advertising can make your campaign explode. It can make it go to new heights. But you have to have the fire. If you pour gasoline on nothing, you're not going to get a huge spark, right? You need to have the fire, and that's having a quality social media campaign. Your campaigns aren't good enough yet. I also believe that you can build a huge fire, you can build a forest fire without any advertising, just by having a really good quality campaign, something that you can be proud of, something that you believe in, If the conditions are there, if you're standing for something important, you don't even need the advertising to help you grow. This hopefully is not you today during my presentation. This is most of your campaigns. They're boring. They put people to sleep. They suck. That's most of your campaigns. That's 95% of the campaigns out there. They suck. Think about what you're putting out there. Are you actually proud of it? Is there any feeling behind it? Would you retweet your tweets if it wasn't you? If it wasn't your company, would you share this stuff? Probably not. And that's the problem. That's the problem with your campaigns right now. You throw advertising on top of this, nothing's gonna happen. You have to make your campaigns better. The key thing to think about is how many people are actually sharing your stuff. Whatever you put up right now, you have a little bit of a following, Twitter, Facebook, whatever you're using, you have a little bit of a following, are people actually sharing your stuff? Even though you have a small sample size, do they care enough to share it? Because if they don't, throwing advertising dollars is not going to do anything for you. You have to produce something that you are proud of. This is an example of a video I launched a month ago. This slide's a couple days old. In one month, We made this video, we put it live on YouTube, it now has almost 160,000 views. It has, what, 2,000 thumbs-ups, 200+ comments. I did zero advertising for this. Zero advertising. It took off because it's a really good campaign. You watch this video, and for those of you who are sitting on my Thursday session, I'm gonna be playing this video live. You watch this video and you feel something. And that makes you want to share it. Your campaigns have to be this good. They have to be something that when people see it, they want to share it. I could throw advertising dollars on top of this and make it explode, but it's already trending pretty well right now. I come from the school where money is important, okay? I'm the founder of my own business. My very first company, I was 19 years old, it was a software company. I was struggling to make anything. I was making $300 a month. $300 American dollars per month. That's what I was pulling out. You can't survive on that, right? I was eating beans for lunch every day to make my company grow. Money is important. When I invest dollars in something, it has to work. If you come from the school where you have tons of budget, you got, you know, some big partner supporting you, you have lots of money to spend on advertising, then go for it. But if you come from the school where money is really tight, when you invest something, it has to work, then your dollars, especially at the beginning, are better spent creating an amazing campaign, something that means something, instead of advertising. Martin Luther King, he got 250,000 people to come to Washington, D.C. with him in 1963. To talk about equal rights for black people in America. 250,000 people. How did he do that? He didn't have a Twitter account. He didn't have a newsletter. He wasn't posting blogs. There was no YouTube. And yet 250,000 people came out to see him speak. Why? Because he had an important message. Because he stood for something. Because when you listened to him speak, it made you feel something. And this is what's missing in all of your campaigns. People don't feel anything reading your tweets about a promotional coupon you have or the latest blog post you wrote. They don't care. You have to make them feel something, and that comes from you standing for something important. When you figure that out, then you can create a great campaign, and then you can throw advertising on top of it and it'll explode on you. But this is a step that you're all missing. This is a step most people are missing. You're just spamming stuff out there. You have to stand for something important. So what do you stand for? What I want to do is have you guys pick one word. One word that defines who you are. You have your one-word biography. This is what you stand for. This is the positive change that you want to make in the world. One word. And when you figure out what that one word is, that becomes a theme for your entire social media campaign. I'm going to give you some examples. Martin Luther King stood for equality. And the people who have a lot of success, you can sum them up in one word because it's easy to spread their message. Nelson Mandela stood for freedom. Oprah Winfrey, heart. Steve Jobs, innovation. You guys all know him? This guy is incredible. He is a consummate entertainer. I'm belief. And for me, this isn't a marketing thing, okay? This isn't coming up with a marketing slogan for your company. This is a personal positioning statement. This is your personal branding. Everything I do is about belief. This isn't just what I'm positioning myself as a company. I believe in entrepreneurs. I can't help it. It's who I am. And so whatever company I bring it to, whatever social media campaign I launch, has to incorporate belief. And I sell a lot of programs and seminars and worksheets and advertising and sponsorships, but if you read my Twitter and Facebook and all the social media channels, it's never a pitch. Because you have to get people to feel something before they're going to take action. If they don't feel anything with your business and what you're putting out there, you're not going to get any results and you're going to be sitting there saying, why aren't people sharing this stuff. This is gonna be right now the most important exercise that you ever do with your business. We're gonna find your one word today, right now. There is one word that strings together your entire life, okay? Think about the books that you like to read, your friends, the people who are in your life who you enjoy their company, the The movies you like to watch, the songs you listen to, the companies you've worked at or founded, the jobs you've had, the quotes you like to read, the art you like to look at and consume. There is one word that strings them all together. You have to figure that out. For me, it's belief. I read books that are about belief. I like reading books about people who have come from nothing and become something. They overcame huge odds. The friends that I have believe and believe. The movies that I watch are about believe. You know, my favorite movie, I like the Jobs movie. You guys have seen Jobs? It's a great movie. If you haven't, go check it out. I like Seabiscuit. You guys know Seabiscuit? He rode the horse. Why? It has nothing to do with entrepreneurship, has nothing to do with business. Why do I like this movie so much? Because it's about the little guy, you know, like the horse everybody gave up on. And he made it. Through all the struggles and the pain, he made it. The companies I founded, the quotes I like to read are all about belief. So I challenge you today to think about what that one word is in your life. And we're throwing up a new hashtag, #MSMW1Word. I want you to put it up right now so you can see what people are doing. I can't see it on the screen. I see few. Passion? Can't read it. I need to work on my glasses. I need to get some better vision. I want you to put it up there right now though. Guys, this is important. This becomes a foundation for all of your social media campaigns, for everything you do in business. It's not just social media. Your company has to stand something, stand for something that has to make people feel. You have to get people to feel something, to have an emotional connection to your brand. Before they're going to take any action. Think about Nike. Nike in their commercials, in their advertisement, in all of their positioning, they don't compare themselves to Reebok. They don't talk about how their shoe was better than Reebok or better than Puma or whatever other company. What does Nike do? They talk about athletics. They'll throw up a picture of LeBron James because when you put on a Nike shoe, you feel like you're a champion. That's the feeling that they get out there. You have to make people feel something with your business first. You may not have your one word right now, okay? I see some of them kind of streaming in. You may not have your one word all figured out right now, but this is such an important exercise, guys, because when you're thinking of founding your next company, we're thinking of bringing on people on your team, we're thinking about launching your book, we were thinking about creating creating a social media campaign, it has to embody this feeling. Until you do that, it's hopeless, it's lost, your campaign isn't gonna go anywhere. So make people feel something first, and that sets up your campaign for success. On Thursday, I'm gonna be breaking this down in a little more detail. I've got 15 minutes today to try to hit you with something. There's a 5-step process I go through. We're gonna spend a whole hour talking about this on Thursday, so hope you're gonna join me. And we talked about salsa. I do love salsa dancing. That's me doing a flip with my dance partner. And if you guys are interested in joining, tonight, 9 o'clock.

Is that legal in Malaysia?

Is that legal? I don't know. You tell me. I hope so.

Looks good to me.

I hope so. Find me after the conference. Find me after the session. I'd love to go with you guys if you're doing salsa. And believe.

Hey everyone, Evan Carmichael, thank you very much.

Fantastic.