How to Master Social Media in 62 Minutes | Expert Strategies Unveiled

Started. Hey everybody, welcome to another Hangout. Super excited to be talking with you guys today about how to get results from social media, and I have a special guest with me. Brandon Olson is the Content Marketing Manager for AWeber. AWeber is the company that I use for my email marketing, have done for the past 10+ years, so very loyal customer, and we're going to talk today about social social media and help answer your questions. So Brandon, welcome aboard.

Thank you, it's good to be here.

Cool. For those of you who are new, if you want to ask us a question, I know a bunch of them already came in, but you can type /q and then your question and it'll show up. Brandon, before we jump into the questions, do you have any overall theories or approaches or concepts that you like to abide by that you use yourself at AWeber, but also advice? I know you have 120,000-some-odd subscribers. Clients who are using your stuff? Any general advice for entrepreneurs before we dive in on the specifics?

Well, I think related to the topic of today's Blab, I think, you know, whenever you're connecting with your audience, you're trying to build an audience on social media, it's all about relationships and connecting. It's not about selling. So you go into it with the mindset of, I need to get someone to do this, that's the wrong approach. You need to start by building your audience with trust and relationships, and in time, the results will come. So when it comes to social media, that's kind of how I look at it, is build those relationships and don't always ask for something, but start by giving something. And oftentimes it's education. A little plug for AWeber, you know, we're an email marketing company. We love helping entrepreneurs grow and build their audience and connect with them in really highly effective ways through email. And so, you know, we kind of carry what I mentioned about social media and how you approach that, we carry that into our email marketing as well. We encourage our customers to connect and to build relationships because as you do that, that's when they're most engaged and that's when your customers are are more likely to take action when you ask them to do something.

I love it. Well, questions are pouring in. Why don't we dive in? Julian, how important is it to automate social media content?

It's a great question, and it's becoming more and more easy to automate everything. You know, I think that's kind of going to be the theme for the next couple of years. Is automation. And I'd say with automating your social content, I think there's definitely advantages there, and I would encourage you to automate. So if you're creating content, it's so easy to use a tool like Hootsuite or Sprout Social and to schedule out your content, you know, days, weeks in advance. And there's also tools that help you automate responses and stuff on Twitter and I would just say yes, definitely look at automating as much as you can, but a little caveat, a little word of caution is be careful not to automate too much because social media is all about relevance. And if your automation is starting to make you irrelevant, meaning you're responding to something that is completely irrelevant to what the person what the person originally was asking or what they said, it doesn't make you look very professional. It doesn't build that relationship of trust that you're looking for. So be careful on the automation. Do certain things that automate certain things, but keep the conversations and stuff, in my opinion, keep those conversations with you manual, something that you do on a regular basis, not automating that relationship.

Yeah, I agree. And, uh, I like the distinction between the content that you're, you're posting and promoting versus the conversations that you're having. And I think, uh, you know, for example, I post a YouTube video, it'll automatically go to my Twitter and say, hey, I posted a new YouTube video. But the conversations I had, I log into my YouTube every day and my Twitter every day and see what people are writing to me, and I respond. And that's me, a human being, answering them. I think that's what creates the caring. So you can automate the scheduling of your content and the promotion stuff, but yeah, the conversations you can't. And so that balance is super important.

Absolutely agree. Yeah, you can't automate those conversations. You have to do that one at a time, person by person.

Cool. Dan, Dan Trimwitter is writing in. Dan, it's been a while. He's an awesome magician that does a lot of corporate training and based in Toronto here too. With so many social media platforms available, how does one decide where to devote one's energy?

That's a really tough question. A lot of people struggle with that. You know, that was some of the— one of the questions that came up pre-Blab on the Google+ page. And the short answer, I guess, is, you know, it depends. I know that's not It's not a very great answer, but let me elaborate. So, you know, when looking at all the platforms, you really have to decide where your audience is, where's your target audience. And you may not know that right away, so it may take some testing and trying to find out where your audience is. But it's good to start somewhere. And even if you're starting with an assumption, thinking about your audience and your customers You know enough about them to kind of start to understand their interests and kind of what platforms they might be using. So start with that assumption. And if you don't have that answer, you know, you can easily ask them. Send them a survey. Ask them questions when you're talking to them one-on-one. What platforms do they use? It's also a good idea sometimes to use those listening tools like I mentioned, Hootsuite. You know, use Hootsuite and start listening in on conversations that are going on on Twitter, on Facebook to see, you know, is there a conversation going on around my product, around my business that I could be a part of? Is my audience there? And I think as you start to kind of dive into those things, you'll start realizing, yeah, Facebook might work, LinkedIn is better for me because it's more business-focused. You start to understand kind of how people are using them and where your customers are. It's also good to understand kind of the intentions that people have in using the different platforms. For Facebook, for example, people are on there connecting with their family and friends, they're looking for entertainment, they're looking for fun. So if you've got content that matches that intent, then definitely Facebook might be a place for you. But if your, if your content is more business-focused, then LinkedIn is probably a better, better focus for you because the mindset of people on LinkedIn is, is a business mindset. So think about the intent that people have when they're on the different platforms. And does that match your product? Does that match your content? Does that match your brand? So that's another good way to kind of think about it as well.

I love it. To the, to the, to extend the question, Brandon mentioned that someone had mentioned it earlier in the Google page, and that was Tamara Weeks, who said, "Is it okay to be on Twitter and not on Facebook? Do I have to be everywhere?" And then Dan was then asking a follow-up. He's a professional speaker. What platform would fit well for him? My take on it, I love Brandon's approach. I think it's marketing 101, is, you know, you want to be where your customers are. If you're selling to salsa dancers, you want to be at the world's biggest salsa convention, so You know, if you have a business audience, you go to LinkedIn and everything that Dan— sorry, everything that Brandon mentioned was great. The thing that I would add to it would be I would also try to match with what you're really good at and where your strengths are. So as an example, I love video. I'm a visual person. That's how I like to learn. And I'd much rather be on video than record an interview or write a blog post. And so if my customers are in multiple spots, then I have a choice of where am I going to be best at. And so, Dan, knowing your stuff and knowing you're a great speaker and knowing that, uh, you know, you have great visuals, that would lend itself much better to a video kind of audience. So I would, I would be heavy on YouTube much more than a blog post kind of content would work out for you. Um, so I think matching up where your audience is combined with what you're really good at and what you enjoy. If you're posting on Twitter because, oh, I have to post on Twitter. Like, you're never gonna— it's not gonna work. You gotta enjoy it. Like, I enjoy YouTube. I can't wait to put my next— I can't wait till I'm gonna upload this video to my YouTube channel and interact with you guys. So you have to love the process and not just the outcome. And I think some platforms are better designed for different personalities. And so, um, when you figure that out, I think you'll have success. And but then honestly, for you, I think YouTube would be a good, um, a good platform to get in on.

I'd second that, and I'll also add one last thing is, you know, in addition to kind of following a platform that works for you, you know, I heard Andrew Aval say one time that, you know, to stick to, you know, one or two platforms that you do really well. So don't feel like you have to be on every single platform. Find the one that works for you, the one or two that works for you, and really do it well. And, you know, Evan's done a great job with his YouTube channel because he's passionate about it and does it really well. And so find that niche for yourself, find the platform that works best for you, and really, really put a lot of effort behind those instead of spreading yourself too thin across, you know, 5 or 6 or more platforms.

I love it. Alright, Julian, how can a dance and fitness studio leverage Periscope?

That's a great one. I see a lot of, a lot of of people using Periscope from an educational standpoint. You know, Chris Ducker, um, uh, Andrea Wahl, they're all on using Periscope or these live broadcast apps from an educational standpoint. So they'll jump on there and share some tips, share some education with their audience, and it's really all about building your audience and building connections and strengthening that relationship and that trust. So for you and your example, I see a lot of opportunities, you know, to share tips, to share education with your audience and with your potential audience.

Yeah, I think with Periscope, there's a couple things. One, you could go the expert route, which is what Brandon's talking about. You could be an entertainer. If there's something fun that's happening at your studio, if I want to join in and watch people doing their crazy dance moves, that might be something fun for me to watch. If there's a vibe that you're trying to promote, you know, if you're all about family and you're showing kind of family moments, you're trying to create a culture and you showcase that, I think being consistent would help to build up your audience. So, you know, I'm going to do a Periscope every day at 9 o'clock at night, or whenever you're going to have somebody kind of around that's kind of interesting, and that, that trains people to want to come back. I think a lot of people— there's a lot of people on Periscope, not as many on the business side. There's a lot of like, "Chillin' on my back porch," you know, and drinking beers or whatever. And there's a curiosity factor there. I think you want to train an audience and develop an audience. You want to make consistent content and let people know that they can tune in every day or every week at this time to be able to see you.

Yeah, I'd second that. Great.

Uh, cool. We're getting a lot of live questions before we can get into the other ones. Um, yeah, and to ask a question, guys, again, it's /q and then you can type it in. Spy Gadget Rentals: My friend owns a sandwich shop, how can he use social media?

I think this kind of relates to what we had talked about earlier, um, finding the right You know, find the right place for participating in social media. So for a sandwich shop, you know, if you're working with a lot of local— a local audience, so Facebook would be a great place to start, I think, because, you know, you can create your pages that are local pages and, you know, do a lot of things within your sandwich shop to, you know, drive people to your Facebook page to build that Facebook audience. Offering deals and things on Facebook as an encouragement to build that network is another good one, a good place to start. I think, again, it's hard to say exactly where to start because I don't know your audience as well as you do or as well as your friend does. Look at your audience and start asking. You've got customers coming into the sandwich shop every day. Ask them where they're where they like to hang out on social media. Is it Facebook? Is it Instagram? And start getting a better understanding of, of where your customers spend most of their time so that you can start deciding where to invest your time and effort in social media.

Yeah, and I'd be looking at two things. I would, one, try to think about what kind of content I want to put out. What are you an expert at? Are you the healthy sandwich shop? Are you the delicious sandwich shop? Are you the, you know, am I going to come every day to your shop, or is it like a once-a-month kind of treat kind of place that is insane on the calories? You know, like, what, what, what do you stand for as a store, or are you just another sandwich shop, right? What's the expertise that you bring? And then try to share those thoughts as opposed to just saying, hey, come by our store and 2-for-1 deal on Thursday afternoon. You know, if you build up a personality so I get to know you, like you, trust you, then I'm much more likely to want to come back to your store. The other thing is using Facebook specifically, you can target like no other platform. Now it's much more pay-to-play compared to other networks, but I'd be looking at people who, you know, who's your demographic? You know, are they younger people who are health conscious? 'Cause you can target them, right? So if I wanted to target people who were 25 to 40 who like to run, and who are vegan and who live in Dallas, 'cause that's where your sandwich shop is, I can do it on Facebook, right? I can target those guys and show them a message. No other platform gives you that level of granular detail to reach out and target people. So I'd be looking at both strategies, looking at like a content strategy expert point of view, and then also direct campaign marketing through Facebook dark posts. Michael D. Haynes, where does Blab fit into the social media spectrum?

Well, Michael, that's a great question. I'm a newbie to Blab. I know some of my colleagues are more familiar with it and spend a little bit more time on it, but from my observation, and I'm sure Evan Carmichael can speak a little bit more to it, but from my observation, you know, the benefit of Blabs and Periscopes and these live broadcast platforms is the ability to connect with your audience in a real-time, immediate way where you can have a conversation and start building a community. So I think, in my view, the benefit of Blab is being— Blab and these other platforms is to really start connecting and putting a face and start building a conversation in your community, in your audience, to where you're strengthening that relationship and that tie with them.

Yeah, I think there's something about live. I think it's just going to get more and more important. I know a lot of you have come from my YouTube channel and you're used to seeing my videos, and most of the videos I put up are the standard, you know, I have a videographer, they're polished. Here, you know, it's live. I'm just, I'm standing here, I'm answering questions live. We got Brandon on the line here. You never know what's going to happen. I think just the ability to connect with people quickly and get answers to your question is something people care about. I like Blab. I've done a bunch. I've done Periscope. I've done Hangouts. I still do Hangouts. I do Blab. I like Blab because of the interaction. I like that people can also call in if we take live questions. I like the— you can see everybody. I like the— you can give— props to people, and then you can still download the video and upload it to YouTube or wherever else you want to upload it as well. So it's still a— it's a, you know, it's obviously a newer play to the game, but I'm a fan, and it's great to see like the questions pop up. We'll see where it goes. We'll see how quickly they grow, who ends up acquiring them, but it's a fun platform. It's just a lot more fun, I find, than the other platforms for doing live events. Julie is asking— this is a related question for AWeber— is it crucial to build a list on social media? For example, sending, routing people to your site and getting them on your newsletter, or have them subscribe, follow you on that specific platform, specific social media platform. So how important is it to build a list from your social media platforms?

I'm always a fan of building lists, and your social content should be helping that effort. I think it is crucial. Your number one goal in AWeber's opinion is to build that list. If you build that list, it's a list you own. You control how often and how much you are communicating and connecting with your subscribers. Whereas opposed to social media, you're sort of at the mercy of whether Facebook decides to show your post to your audience. Whether your tweet shows up in someone's multitude of tweets that are coming flying down their newsfeed. So with an email list, it's your list, you own it, you determine how often and what you send and to whom you send those emails, which is why it's been proven to be one of the most effective marketing tools or channels that you can really employ as a business owner. You know, I think part of your social media strategy or approach needs to be, yes, building your social audience, but also getting them to go that one step further and become a subscriber so that you're able to communicate with them in a way that you want to versus being at the mercy of the social networks.

I totally agree, and everything I do in social, my funnel leads to my newsletter. Like, at the end of the day, you want to generate business, right? You want to sell more, you want to get more deals. Uh, but the people who just push that on social, you don't get results because nobody wants to follow you. My goal for every social network that I have is to get people onto my newsletter list, because email is still the best way, in my view, to get in front of somebody, right? Once you have permission to email them, because you open up emails, you see an email from Evan Carmichael, and hopefully you guys open that up. Uh, I mean, think about, for those of you watching, how many of you came here because I emailed you? That's probably why most of you are here. Wasn't because I tweeted it or made a video about it. You're here on this thing right now because I emailed you, and that's still where I get most of the results. You want somebody to take action right away, you want to build them on your email list. So you look at my videos, you know, you know, we have 200,000 subscribers on the videos and 20 million views. At the end of every video is a link to to sign up for my email list. That's what I want people to do. Yes, I want you to subscribe. Yes, I want you to leave comments. Yes, I want you to watch more videos. But by watching like 3 or 4 videos, your next step is going to be sign up for the email list. And then I'm going to send you not just sales stuff. There's still tons of value. And we could talk about that, I guess, later. I know we did that in the last session. When somebody puts out a tweet, you don't follow that person most of the time so closely that you read every single tweet that they put out, right? It just gets lost in the firehose. But with email, if somebody sends you an email, somebody named that you recognize, you still open that up and you take action. And so I run my entire funnel through my email list and then that leads to business. So social, email, business.

Yeah, absolutely. I will add too that, you know, the inbox is pretty coveted. People, you know, they're pretty tight with how, who they let into their inbox. So when they add you to your list, When they get added to your list, it means that they want to be there. They want your content. They took that step to invite you into their inbox. Remember that relationship building. That's sort of the path that that relationship takes. You're tracking them on social. You're starting to build that relationship. Then the next step in that relationship is for them to really become a subscriber and start communicating with you directly.

Love it. Dan has a follow-up question. Do you have suggestions for ways to convert your social media audience into list members?

That's a great question, and there's tons of ways, Dan. Some of the ways that we see the most effective from our customers is by, you know, what it boils down to is value. You know, are you offering your audience value? So, you know, that comes with understanding your audience, what their interests are, what they find valuable, and then providing that. So, you know, it could be in the form of an incentive, it could be a discount or coupon, it could be an ebook, it could be joining a webinar, or it could just be simply, you know, subscribe to our blog to get daily updates, daily tips on building your business. So it's all about defining what the value is for your customers, what do they find of value, and then delivering that. So I, you know, those are some examples of things that we've seen our customers do effectively, and it's really going to depend kind of how you determine, you know, what the value is for your customers and for your audience that's really going to attract and convert those social, their social audience into subscribers.

Yeah, I love that point. I think, I think you have to date before getting married, and I think social media Social media is like passing somebody on the street, and then email marketing is like dating, and then you get married when they actually buy something, they're a customer. And so, you know, how do you go from just meeting somebody on the street to getting their number and going on a date? You know, you got to provide value just in the social media stuff, right? So the tweets you're putting out, the videos you're putting out, the blog posts you're putting out has to be interesting enough to say, wow, this person has some cool content. 'Cause I'm not gonna subscribe to somebody's email list if I didn't like, really like their tweets, right? Passing by, sure, ah, that's cool, I'll retweet that or like that, but am I gonna now spend time to read emails from them every week, right? That's a new level. So you have to be providing enough consistent content to make me want to go that next step with you. An easy way to kind of bridge that gap is offer some kind of bonus that's in the email that ties to what you're posting on social. So as an example, you know, if you have a cooking channel and you're making a YouTube video that talks about a recipe you're making, you could give the recipe away if they sign up for your newsletter, right? Sign up for the newsletter and I always email out my recipes so they can watch and follow along in the video. But to actually get the printed recipe out, then they need to sign up for your newsletter. So then your speaker, you know, maybe you have your 5 pillars that you talk about in your speeches, you can make videos about it and you can, you know, blog about it and you can tweet about it. But then by signing up for your newsletter, you get the printed manifesto that then I can, you know, put on my wall right under the Believe logo. I have like Dan's manifesto here, and I got that because I signed up for your newsletter. So some kind of extension of value based on what you're already talking about in social, but you got to build the relationship up first. If you just jump to that, just say sign up for my newsletter Nobody's gonna come because you haven't brought enough value first. Cool. The questions are flying in. We had the other questions too. This is insane. Everybody loves you, Brandon. This is a hot topic. Okay, New Future Builder. Do you have any examples of truly unique Facebook, Instagram, Twitter posts, as in they have unique yet consistent formats that catches the eye and attention? Facebook, Instagram, Twitter.

Well, um, that's a good question. I follow a few brands, larger brands, on Facebook and Instagram, and I feel like they do a good job of having a consistent format and a consistent look, uh, design. Um, and I'm not sure I see some of the smaller companies, smaller businesses is doing that. I guess that's an area of opportunity for them. One that I really love on Facebook is Oreo. Who doesn't love Oreos? But they do a really good job of keeping a really consistent look and feel for all their posts, and it's really engaging content as well because they understand their audience. People love cookies, so show them cookies. Show them interesting things about cookies. So, yeah, I think nothing else kind of pops into my mind right off the bat. Oreo is one that I really love watching on Facebook. I think they do a really great job of that. One thing I will mention, I mentioned earlier in the chat here that we do a weekly email chat on Twitter, and Olivia, our social media specialist, she does a great job of of making the look and feel of the email chats consistent. So every week, you know, when you're there, you know you're in email chat. So I think there's an opportunity there to, with your content, to bring some consistency to it so that they recognize that it's yours, that it belongs to you, and they can expect that.

I think from my end, I'm not a huge consumer on any of those platforms— Facebook, Instagram, Twitter. I'm pretty active on Facebook and Twitter, not really Instagram, mostly just in responding to people. Like if somebody leaves a comment or mentions me, I look at my Twitter feed every day and I'm responding to people, but I'm not a consumer. The only people that I really pay attention to are either my clients or my friends. And I don't know if there's anybody who's like massively amazing content that I would highly recommend to you. For me, I'm a consumer on YouTube. Which reflects me being all in on YouTube as well. And one of the only channels that I consistently watch most of the content from is Gary Vaynerchuk. He's a guy out of New York. He does a lot of— he talks a lot about social media. So a lot of you guys would get value from watching his channel. And it's not so much that it's amazing graphics or design or, you know, special effects or anything. And he's not even that consistent. Like, he may have 3 shows a week and then 1 show a week and then 5 shows a week. Jumps all over the place. Just the content is good. It's interesting. It's interesting to hear what he's doing, his perspectives. Um, so I don't know if that— I don't know if that kind of helps you too much on answering that question, but, um, I mean, that's where I'm a consumer and I'm a user. And the other ones are like video game stuff, like League of Legends tutorials and stuff. Otherwise, uh, those are the only ones that I like. I watch every video that these guys put out. Shubham, how can the small business— how can the small business can use the— this and how? I'm not following this. And they don't have enough knowledge about the website building and the newsletter. How can they manage it? So I guess small business getting started, trying to build a newsletter, trying to build a website, it's kind of over their head. What are your thoughts on a newbie getting started?

Well, there are so many resources out there that can help you get started. I can speak from AWeber's perspective. We provide a lot of content, a lot of education on how to get started with email marketing, as well as some of the other marketing channels like building your website and how that connects to your email marketing. So, you know, for selfish plug, you can go subscribe to the AWeber blog and get regular information and updates. On how to build your list and how to use email marketing effectively. But I would start with just searching. There's tons of resources out there. I think you could probably go to some of those education sources like Lynda.com or some of those other free training areas. Evan, I'm not sure if you've got any other resources where they can go to, to some good ones for building.

Yeah, I mean, I think it's never been easier to start a business online. You know, websites have never been easier to set up. I would honestly, if I was starting now, had zero technical knowledge, I would just start a WordPress site and you can, you can get a free template or you can pay $50 and get a really nice looking template. And if you can use Word, you can use WordPress. It's super simple. And then for newsletters, since you asked about it, obviously I've used AWeber. It used to be— I mean, it's so easy to set up now. I was on 10+ years ago where you had to have HTML experience and you design your own forms and it was a lot harder. Now there's so many preset forms and graphics and best practices that you can, you know, they'll, they'll design the thing for you. I'm a real estate agent. Okay, here's a theme for real estate agents and there's a picture of a house on it and free report is already on there. It's so easy to set up now that the tools are available. I think just— I would honestly combine that. I would look at WordPress and then AWeber for the newsletter and you're off and running and you don't need to have— like you used to have to have a programmer on staff to run a website. Now you don't need it anymore and the tools are only getting easier. Sometimes I still default back to the technical ones because I'm used to them. Like, oh, they added all these things. Hmm, I'm so used to this, we've already set up templates and formats for it, but it's cool to see all the new stuff that you guys are coming out with. Uh, any thoughts with communication, customer service, tech sales support using text, using— so text messaging as a marketing communication?

Well, I wouldn't consider text messaging social media, but any thoughts on communication using text? Well, I've seen contests and promotions done through text. I've seen live text happening at conferences, live events. Then obviously you get your customer service and support texts from your phone provider and your other utilities and stuff. I think that's an effective way to communicate. I think you have to be careful about how frequent you're using that medium. Because it is so instantaneous, you don't want to be using it for everything, otherwise your subscribers or customers will find it annoying and will find it disrupting of their day. So just be mindful of how often and how immediate that communication channel is being used. You kind of have to think about all the different communication channels that you have. Some are more passive, like email, you know, that you'll read it when they want to or when they have time to. Whereas, you know, with text, it's right on your phone, instantaneous. So it better be urgent, it better be important. So, you know, those are my thoughts on communication through text.

Yeah, I think one depends on your audience, like any marketing, right? Is your audience— are they younger? Are they walking around with phones? You know, especially if you have a retail location and you can do like geo-targeting. Text, like, hey, somebody's within a mile of my sandwich shop, that sandwich guy that we had on earlier, right? Someone's within a mile and they've opted into my text messaging and I can invite them in to have soup and a sandwich here, right? That could potentially be pretty powerful. I don't use— I mean, my business now is online, so I don't have text marketing. With my Toronto Dance Salsa business, that that is a potential option, right? People who are within a certain block radius. Just make sure again that it's opt-in, um, and be careful what the messages you're putting out, because the phone is, is a sacred place, just like an, just like an email inbox, right? And if it's value and relevant, then I'm gonna pay attention to it. But if you're just blasting me, just like, you know, you can say build a list, but if all you're doing is blasting people with spam, you're gonna your list is gonna get unsubscribed pretty quickly. So make sure you treat it really carefully and give people what they want.

[Speaker:EVAN_CARMICHAEL] Yeah, and I also add to that to make sure your expectations are set up front. So if they're opting in to receive texts from you, make it clear what they're gonna be getting. Otherwise, you know, if you're starting to deliver things that are not what they expected, you're gonna start getting complaints and you're gonna start getting some unsubscribes. So be very clear on what they can expect to get and then deliver on that expectation.

Cool. We've had a bunch of people trying to make video calls in, so why don't we take them? We've got Tamara Weeks. We answered a question, I think, from her earlier on. Let's see if she can join in and hit us with a question.

While she's joining, I see Michael is asking about if AWeber has a WordPress plugin, and we do. We're actually going to be posting a blog post about it on our blog either later today or tomorrow about the plugin, but it's really easy to use. It connects right away and you're able to pass your subscribers right into your AWeber list from your WordPress site.

That's pretty cool. I didn't know about that. I need to know about that. I'm going to use it too. I'll be a user. Alright. Okay, let's get— we got the other questions too from the Google Sheet before. Oh! Tamara, how you doing?

I'm good, how are you?

Tell us quickly about what you're doing and then hit us with a question.

All right, this is Tamara Weeks with Tam's Daily Vlog. I have— I am a daily vlogger on YouTube. And first, I really want to tell you, I love giving you high fives, but my hands are not touching anything. It's on complete auto, like it's just doing it all by itself. Somebody was annoyed and wanted me to stop and I can't. I have a question about websites. I have a website, it is currently down. I don't really have like a business per se, so I'm not selling anything, I'm not doing consulting, but I have a daily YouTube channel. Everybody always, and you guys at the beginning talked about the importance of a website. What do I put on the website? I used to just put my videos on there, but I mean, if you just want a video, you just come to my YouTube channel. I don't know what to do with a website. Why do I need one?

That's a great question. I think, um, so I think a website's sort of your destination. You know, YouTube is there, you're constantly updating it with fresh content. But like Evan was saying earlier, the way that he uses his YouTube is always to build his list. So he's always pointing his YouTube channel to building that list. So your website can have some—

excuse me—

your website can have information about who you are, what your YouTube channel is all about, what you do, what makes you unique, what sets you apart. And then, you know, you can also use your website as a means to build that list of subscribers, email subscribers. And it doesn't have to be a really elaborate or intense website. It could be very simple and very basic. But just making it really clear who you are and what you do and giving them a reason, that value that we talked about, to become a subscriber. Whether it's getting something unique or something exclusive or if there's something else that you're offering with your YouTube videos. Just making sure that that value comes through when you're with those website visitors.

Yeah, my view would be I would start thinking about this as a business, right? You started off saying this isn't a business, it's just a YouTube channel. Like, start treating this like it's a business and think about, hey, I want to start being able to earn an income and make money through this, and what a business model might look like. Right now you're just building up your personal brand so people get to know you, like you, trust you. But as you build an audience, that can develop into a bunch of other opportunities, right? You could create products, you could do speaking engagements, right? All of these things can help. And if you ever want to send people somewhere, right, then you want to have an email list to be able to say, hey, I'm going to be doing this Blab, come join me, right? I know you mentioned that you found us here because the email that I sent you, even though you follow me on Twitter, even though you subscribe to my YouTube channel, you're on here now because I emailed you, right? And so So many entrepreneurs make the mistake of starting to build their list too late. And so you've already started your— I would start looking at the business. You've already started it. Now you're building up your personal brand. Have a website that talks about you, your story, even, even find out more about you. Like, why did you start this? Why is this interesting? You may have made a video on it, but it could be buried, you know, 20 videos back. And I'm not going to go through that backlog to find it. So you could put that on your website and tell me more about who you are and what you're all about. And have a newsletter list to make me sign up for. I'm going to get value on an ongoing basis. Even if you're just sharing some of your top videos, that could be in your newsletter because again, videos are missed. Even though I subscribe to you, I go to my YouTube feed and there's— I subscribe to 100 channels. Yours might not show up in the algorithm today, right? So getting an email saying, here's your top video, makes me tied to you. And then when you have an announcement that you want to make, you want people to come in to check out your new book that you're launching or whatever it is. You have those subscribers on your email list. I value my email list subscribers way more. I love my YouTube subscribers, but like, if I need something to get done, it's happening through my email, not through any of my social media platforms.

Okay, that really does help.

We have a lot of customers too that, that don't necessarily have a full-blown website, that just use really landing pages for the incentives that they offer to build their list. So that's another option to consider as well, is not don't necessarily need a full website, you can use landing pages as well to build that list.

Okay, can I ask just one more question?

Sure.

Wait, just one more. Okay, so I have a question about privacy and how you feel about this. So I have a YouTube channel and I have like a fan page on Facebook that's not active. It's literally just, you know, my videos go on there and if people comment, I always respond. Then I have my personal Facebook page, but I'm finding that a lot of my YouTube subscribers are coming over to be friends on my personal Facebook page. I'm totally okay with that, but I'm really wondering as this grows, is that really okay? Like there's nothing really private anyway, but just kind of what is your take on that?

So I am 100%— I'm a believer in creating a Facebook page. I do not believe you should be using your personal profile for your business or for your community. Okay. And not necessarily just for privacy reasons, but for all the abilities you have with a Facebook page versus a profile. Okay. Andrew Wall talks about this all the time about why it's important to build a page. Using a page versus a profile for your business. There are so many advantages that you have by using a Facebook page versus a profile for marketing and for reaching your audience. Then there's also the privacy discussion as well, which is also an important thing to consider. You just never know who you're connecting with exactly. Always drive your followers to connect with you using a Facebook page versus a profile.

Okay, cool. Uh, so some people had a hard time hearing the question. Thank you. So we'll answer. I'll just take it for now, but we'll answer you in the video. Um, the question was about privacy and whether you should do a Facebook page, personal or business or both, and how to make that work. For me, I have both, and I, I use Facebook for myself as a husband and a father and a friend and a son. For the personal side of stuff, and then I use my business page for posting videos and comments and connecting with the fans, and I keep that separate. So if I haven't actually, you know, met you, then you're not on my personal Facebook page. And I get people ask all the time to join me as a personal friend. I just, I ignore it. Um, that's just how I divide. I'd rather to be on the Facebook page and not on my personal Facebook. Alexander, do you have tips on starting with affiliate marketing?

Yeah, we've got lots of tips that we do. I mean, we have an affiliate program here at AWeber, and we have lots of affiliates that, that are, that are part of our program. And when you're starting with affiliate marketing I think it's important to align with your passions. You have to really stand behind what products or services you are an affiliate for. That's where I've seen the most success from our affiliates is when they're really passionate about what they are offering as an affiliate. It also needs to align with what your business is. It wouldn't make sense for me to become an affiliate to the food industry when my business has nothing to do with food. Make sure that whatever affiliate programs you're part of are aligned with what your business is and what your passions are because you really have to be able to stand behind it if you really want to make it work. Then as far as actually becoming an affiliate and doing it effectively, we've got lots of really effective and successful affiliates. John Corcoran is one of them. They do a good job because they're incorporating their affiliate information and content into their overall and ongoing communication. So when you match your affiliate program and your the product that you're an affiliate for with your business and your passions, uh, and you're— and it's so natural to talk about that because that's what you do, and it becomes super easy, uh, to, to really grow your affiliate, um, marketing efforts.

Yeah, Alexander, if you're not using it, don't sell it. If you wouldn't recommend it to your mother to use, don't sell it, right? I think too many people jump into affiliate marketing or network marketing, uh, just trying to make a quick buck, and it never works out. You gotta actually love— there's nothing wrong with the business model, the model is fine, but you actually have to have passion for what you're selling, just like Brandon was talking about. Uh, I think so the avenue of this Hangout is talking about social media. What I would do is if I was trying to market some affiliate products, I would think of my funnel like we talked about earlier on. I got my social media, I wanna drive people to my newsletter list, and then from the newsletter list provide value. And then also sell the affiliate products, right? AWeber has an amazing affiliate program, uh, which gives you ongoing commissions and referrals, which is great. If I was going to promote that, I'm not just going to go up on Twitter and say, sign up for this social— this newsletter software right now, right? Like, nobody's going to do that, right? But if I put it out to my newsletter list, I could probably convert a whole bunch of people to then sign up for My referral program, but I would lead that with content. Like I'd have to talk about how I use email, why I use email, why it's beneficial for you to use email, and here's the tool that I use to use email that I've been using for 10 years and I highly recommend it, right? Just like we're doing now, you guys are curious about email, maybe some of you will go and check out AWeber now because we've had this conversation, you've got to meet Brandon, he's a nice guy, he's answering questions, we're giving you value. If I just posted to my Twitter or YouTube saying go sign up for AWeber now, most of you wouldn't take any action. And so I'd be looking at what are the products that I'm repping, what's the value I'm getting from them, share valuable content on social media, drive people to my website, to my newsletter, and then in there I would have my pitch to make them be interested in the products that I'm selling.

Yeah, I second that completely.

How do I double-check to make sure a third-party company is actually sending out my newsletter?

Third-party company, I guess I could read into that two ways. One, you're using a third-party service like AWeber, or you're using an agency, a third party, to actually do your email marketing for you. With AWeber, if you're using a third-party service like AWeber, you get all the analytics that come with your email marketing. So when you send out your newsletter, you see right away, you know, how many were delivered, who's— how many opened it, who's opening it, who's clicking it. So all that data is right in your account when you're using a third-party email marketing provider like AWeber. If you're using a third-party like an agency or a virtual assistant, you know, I would assume that you'd have access to log in to your— to whatever system they're using. So that you can confirm that, you know, they're actually sending those things, your newsletters and emails. So I think it's really pretty simple to double-check that, you know, either in either scenario.

Yeah, I would also say just at a qualitative way, like, are you getting responses? You know, like, is your email— when you send out an email, Newsletter, you're supposed to get replies, right? If it's any good. So are you getting responses on an ongoing basis? You know, he just wrote in the comments that it's an agency that is hired through Elance. So I'd also be careful, like, how are you building that list? Are you relying on them to say, hey, I'm gonna email 10,000 people and promote your product? That's probably not a massively effective way, you know, just spam people. But yeah, they should be giving you reports and updates and you should see results, right? Email marketing works. So if you're not getting results and your content isn't good or you're not targeting the right people, it's just spamming people on the list. Yeah. And, you know, I think also you want to get to the point with your email newsletter where if you don't post an email out, people will write to you, right? If I don't post, you know, people are used to my newsletter coming out. Every week, and I had a week where I just, I didn't have time. I was traveling and I forgot to send it out and I didn't have time, and people would write in and say, "Hey Evan, did I miss your newsletter?" They go to spam, "What happened? Nothing came in." That's when you know you're actually posting something that people look forward to and is of value, and your aim should be to create content that's so good that if you don't post it, they miss you and they write to you. So either way, you're getting a response, a response to your newsletter or a response that You haven't sent your newsletter out.

That's the kind of email list you need. I like it.

Oh, there was a question that just popped down. Let's see. Has AWeber ever thought of letting newbies start for free or until X number of subscribers are reached? You start at, what is it, $9?

So our $19 is the basic start. $19. And that's up to 500 subscribers. We do a 30-day free trial to allow people who want to kind of kick the tires and see if it's the right solution for them. We have, you know, we've thought about it, we've talked about, you know, a free option, but we've decided not to do that. Now if you look at other free providers, you know, yeah, you do get a free account and the ability to email, but you're not getting all the suite of features. But when you sign up for AWeber, even though it's it's not free, you get everything. There's really no add-ons or upsells. Every customer gets the same features, the same functionality as everybody else. There's nothing that you have to be worried about when you sign up for AWeber, whereas other free providers, you may get very limited abilities with your email marketing. Smaller list, or, you know, they don't let you send as much email, or maybe the automation features aren't there. So, you know, that's, that's something to consider as well.

Yeah, you want to make sure— this doesn't just apply to email— whatever providers you're working with, you want to make sure that you can grow with them and they're going to be able to help you longer term. When you look to email, it sucks to have to switch providers. It really sucks to port your list over and whether everybody moves over, they probably won't, you lose a whole bunch of subscribers. But more importantly, it's finding companies that with the long-term perspective, you think you can work out with them. Just as a example, with the salsa company that I have, I'm looking at a studio software for them and, you know, it's $100 a month or something. And they're like, we can give you the first 2 months for free or something like that, some kind of promotion. I don't care about the first 2 months for free. I care if I move my entire company, over this software and it goes wrong or something, it's worth way more than $200, right? And so I wanna make sure that I align myself with the right company, that as I grow, they're gonna be there for me, it's the right solution, 'cause I don't wanna keep having to hop and switch. And so free for 30 days, $19 a month, you know, you should more than make up for that in your first month as you're driving people on and then selling whatever product or service that you have. and then know that you have a company that you can work with and grow. My list is almost 80,000 people. You can continue to grow and build your list up. I'm one-sided obviously because I've been a loyal AWeber customer for X number of years, but let me tell you it's not also because we're doing this Hangout. This is like a hashtag real talk moment. I only promote the stuff that I actually use, and as an example, I was on a Twitter chat with Microsoft and they asked me what are my favorite productivity apps, and one of the ones I mentioned was Evernote, and they freaked out because they have OneNote, which is a competitor to Evernote, and they said, "You can't talk about Evernote." I said, "This is what I use. You asked me what I use, I'm gonna answer it honestly," right? And so sometimes that works out in my favor, sometimes it doesn't, but it always works out in your favor. Like I use AWeber, I haven't looked at a different email provider for 10+ years, I'm happy with it. And so my view, $19 a month to get started. Yes, I get it. Like, if you're at the very start, every dollar counts, but I'd much rather work with a company where I'm not going to have huge pain down the line with and porting lists and the service is insanely outstanding. So there you go. That's my real talk rant, my rant for the day. Jerry, is it necessary to create multiple social media profiles? Example, Twitter, Twitter for Business, Twitter personal. Do you need to create multiple pro— We kind of covered that with the Facebook one, but what are your thoughts about creating accounts on, like, do you need to have every account on every social network? Should you have an Instagram account? Should you have everything?

I think that, you know, there's some value in at least getting in there and getting a feel for it. To really understand how it works. You don't need to go create profiles on all the platforms for your business, but I think there's some value in jumping in personally and just kind of getting a feel for how it works and the type of people that are there so that you can make a really educated and wise choice on where to invest your time. I do believe that, and I do that myself just to kind of get a sense of the platforms and what their advantages and disadvantages are. When you decide, you know, yeah, that's the right channel, you know, say Instagram for example is right for my business, then yeah, go ahead and create a personal and as well as a business profile for your business there. So I think, you know, just determining kind of where to invest your time is sort of that next step. First get a feel for it, decide whether it's the right platform for you, and then really start investing time. If you have a business, you create a business profile. A lot of people are sort of their own personal brand, and so you wouldn't necessarily need to create another business profile necessarily. It could be your personal profile if you're sort of that personal brand. I think it is necessary to create sort of separate profiles for business business and personal. I'd start with personal, get a feel for it first, and determine whether it's the right fit for your business, and then, you know, make the time and investment to, you know, build it for your— build a profile and a presence for your business as well.

Cool. You know, to add to that, I would say you would want to have the account on every social network, even if you don't use it, just to avoid squatters. You know, I thought Twitter was stupid at the start, people talking about their cats and what they eat for lunch. And it's like, you know, I'm a busy entrepreneur. I don't have time. It's great entertainment. Awesome. But I'm not going to spend my time here. But I still went and got Evan Carmichael because if I decide to go on it, I don't want to be Evan Carmichael 23, right? I want to be Evan Carmichael, right? And so it's like it's a, it's a land grab always at the start when these things come out. So I would just go and grab it. Doesn't cost you anything. It costs you 5 minutes of your time just to make sure that you have it. And you can use it for potential future use. I would split the personal business only if you really feel a personal need. Like on Facebook, I feel a lot of my friends are on there, my family's on there, so I have a personal need, and so I created my own personal Facebook. I don't have a personal need on Twitter. Like Twitter is my public persona, it's my business side. I don't, I don't have anything that I would put on that I would have just like protected tweets or anything for my friends. So I don't, I don't have a need to do it, so I don't. So I'd just be looking at what networks first, like get the land grab, get your name in every network. And then if you have a personal need, then you can also create a personal site. Blue Lindsay, Blue Lindsay, what would be a piece of advice that you know now that you would give your beginner self to be able to— sorry, to be able to manage your social media as a business and make income from it in the most effective way from the start, whether it be physical, physiological management, or whatever. Thank you. Advice to your younger self, Brandon.

My younger self would probably say, now that I've got a lot of social media experience and I've been working with AWeber for a while now, I think we mentioned this earlier, but if you're looking to make income in the most effective way from the start is building your list. So, you know, everything you should be doing from a marketing standpoint should be with the end goal of building that list because that's how you are reaching your customers, your potential customers, your audience in the most effective way. So from the get-go, make sure that you're building your list. You don't have to have, you know, everything all in order, you know, everything lined up exactly. In other words, don't delay building your list just because you don't have an autoresponder series all fleshed out or your email marketing strategy all taken care of. Start building your list from the get-go, even if it's a little rough, you know, and you're not sure exactly how you're going to use the list. Build it, start building it, and then, you know, over time you'll start to really understand how you want to use your email marketing. In the most effective way. That's what my piece of advice is, is to really start building that list first. And social media is one way of doing that, and it's a really effective way as you are able to turn those passive dates into, or those passersby into official dates like Evan was talking about earlier.

Yeah, I think, I think too many entrepreneurs don't have, they don't necessarily see themselves as a business yet. They don't see social media as a business. And so they haven't figured out the funnel, the funnel of social media to your website, to your newsletter, to then your income and your sales. I wouldn't give that advice to my younger self 'cause I came from a business background and I started doing that, right? So it's not like, oh, I wish I started doing my list earlier. But I think that is a, it's like super valuable even for like, Tamar, who we had on the show, didn't think that she was an entrepreneur or have a business, right? Like, change the mindset immediately. Start building your funnel, build your list. Don't wait for, you know, 2 years to go by before you do anything. I think the advice to my younger self— who was it— for success on social media, I think it would be, um, going all in on one platform. I think I spent too much time initially, like— and it's fine to test things out, but I was spending too much time trying to do everything and then ended up doing everything in a super mediocre way and not building up some real traction. And I wished I could do more YouTube stuff, but I was being sucked in by Facebook and Twitter and figuring out Instagram. And you only have so many hours in a day to do everything, I guess, but especially just for social. And I recently just not totally dropped, but dropped some and, and spend a little less time on others so I can go all in on YouTube and video, and, uh, it's had insane success. So I think it's hard because everybody's telling you— you see this article like, why LinkedIn marketing is the future, like, oh, I'm not on LinkedIn, I gotta do better on LinkedIn and have more success there, uh, and people kind of push you all these different directions and you end up just researching, researching, research and not actually doing enough. And so going all in on, on, um, on my strengths, I feel really helped me, and I wish I wish I'd done it earlier, I guess, but that would be my advice to my younger self.

Cool.

Brandon, man, we're at the hour. This is like, I don't think we touched, like we touched maybe one question that was in the free questions. We had an awesome audience. I appreciate the call-in. Thank you guys for watching. Brandon, for more on you, if people want to reach out or learn more about what you're up to, what's the best way —way to do that?

So you see my Twitter handle there. You can absolutely tweet me. I'm active there. You could also go check out the AWeber blog, blog.aweber.com. Subscribe there. There's lots of awesome education and tips on just about anything related to email marketing. So that's what I'd recommend doing is going and checking out those.

Those resources. Cool. And for those of you watching on YouTube on the repeat, I will put Brandon's Twitter feed in the description. And Brandon, if there's any links, resources you want to share, I'll pop that in the description too. That's great. That's it. Thank you guys. Have an amazing— what day is it? Thursday. And, uh, we'll see you soon. Thanks, Brandon, for joining.

All right, thanks, Evan.