Unlock Effective Social Media Strategies with Evan Carmichael and Stand for Something Powerful!

So first and foremost, I would like to thank everyone and welcome everyone to today's session. The topic of today's session is social media marketing for SMBs, and I am Kapil Nakra. I'm one of the co-founders of Digital Vidya. Welcome to today's session. You know, in today's session, one of the inquiries that I want all of you to have throughout the session is, if I ask you to formulate a social media strategy that generates business results with the condition that you do not have to try selling your services or product, how will you do that? That's what I want to learn out of today's session. And to lead today's session, we have with us Evan Carmichael. Evan, at the age of 19, he created— he actually built and sold a company. And at the age of 22, he was a venture capitalist. He helped organization raise money with the range from the range of $0.5 million to $15 million. And his goal is to help 1 billion entrepreneurs, and I'm just one of them. Evan, really delighted to have you here with us today, and thanks for taking our time. So before I hand it over to you—

it's an honor.

Thank you.

Okay, great. You know, hey, Kapil, I'm gonna be— I'm gonna close the GoToWebinar question section, at least for now. I'll take care of it. So if anything important comes up, just let me know. Sure. And also, hey, thanks everybody. It's great to be here. Today I'm talking about social media strategies. I know you guys are all from different companies and businesses. I tend to focus on entrepreneurs, but all of these strategies are applicable to the corporate level as well. So I'm excited to start. Let's get into it. On August 23rd, 1963, Martin Luther King got 250,000 people plus to come to Washington, D.C. to hear him speak. He didn't have a newsletter, he didn't have Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, any of that stuff, and he got them to come out to hear him speak. And you might be thinking, Evan, I thought you were talking about social media. What the heck does this have to do with social media? It's important because you guys need to stand for something. The problem with most of your social media campaigns is that they're boring. They suck. There's no feeling. There's no emotion to them. You have to stand for something important. You got to think, look at the stuff that you're sharing or your company is sharing. Would you share that stuff on your own if you weren't forced to? Probably not, because it's not interesting enough. It doesn't stand for anything. So it's not about how many people like your post. Okay, it's not about how many people follow you on Twitter or retweet your stuff. It's about standing for something important, and when you figure that out, then it's so much easier to create a social media campaign. What do you stand for? What does your company stand for? And for most businesses, they have no idea. And so if you're not talking about your values and what you stand for, why it's important, if you're not making people feel anything, with your social media campaign, then they're not going to share it. I stand for belief. Somebody wrote that was an awesome first slide. Thank you, I really appreciate it. But everything I do is about belief, so I believe in entrepreneurs, I believe you have to do the right thing, I believe that you have to believe in yourself, and believe that it's going to work out even if you don't know all the steps, even if you just see darkness around you, it's going to work out. That's what I fundamentally believe, and that oozes out of all the social media stuff that I do. I don't know if any of you guys are following me. You might be saying, who the heck is this Evan Carmichael guy? But if you look at my Facebook or Twitter or YouTube or any of that stuff, there's emotion, there's feeling, people engage with it because it means something. It means something to me, and as a result, it means something to other people as well. Stop posting boring stuff. And post something that means something to you. This can be difficult. So here's a guy who's tons of superheroes. He's Spider-Man, he's Iron Man, he's the Hulk. It can be hard to make decisions in your business and in your life, but when you stand for something, you know what you stand for, all of those decisions become easier. So for me and Believe, my social media campaigns become easier. I know what to talk about. When I'm hiring somebody in my company, they have to believe in entrepreneurs. If they don't, they're not going to be a good fit for me. Every decision in your business and your life becomes way easier when you know what you stand for. It also helps keep you motivated. You know, so many people, if you're an entrepreneur or if you are working for somebody else, it's hard to be motivated every day, right? You don't wake up every single day super motivated like, yeah, I want to go to work, this is great. And the problem is, you look at motivation, you look at why people get excited to do a job, it's not because of the money. You don't get all super excited because you're making an extra $2,000 this year, or whatever the conversion is in India. That's not what motivates you. You're motivated because you're doing something important. And when you stand for something important, and you apply that in your business and in your life, you're more motivated. You're not going to be this lazy polar bear every day. You're motivated to get to work, put the hours in, because you're doing something important. You stand for something important. You're starting a movement. So what is that for your business? And then we're going to apply that to your social media campaigns. What do you stand for? If you look at some of the biggest names in history, the people who have had major impact, the people who have changed people's lives, the people who have stood for something, you could sum them up in one word. So Martin Luther King Jr. is equality. Nelson Mandela could be freedom. Oprah Winfrey could be heart. Steve Jobs, innovation. Gandhi, peace. Everybody has one word that you can understand who they are and define them. I'm belief. What I want you to do is find your one word. And this is Really important. This is one of the most important things that you will ever do in your life. This is that important, okay? This isn't just talking about social media right now. This applies to everything you're ever going to do in your life. You need to set your direction and find your one word. If you think about the books you read, the friends you have, the movies you like to watch, the songs you like to listen to, the companies you've started, the jobs you've worked at, the quotes you like, the art you like to look at, all of the things in your life that you enjoy are all tied together by one theme. There's one word that connects everything, and what I want you to do is find out what that one word is for you. Now normally I'd go to Twitter and I'd have everybody hashtag something and we'd tweet it out, but I don't want to switch platforms, so what I want you to do is put it in the questions. I'm going to load this up now. What I want you to do is write your one word in the questions and submit it to me so I can see what they are coming in. So right now, think about what your one word is, your one-word biography. This is really important. You want to create a powerful social media campaign? This is where it starts. You want to feel like you're living your life on purpose? This is where it starts. You have to figure out— this word hasn't changed for the past 10 years of your life, it's been the same word. I want you to figure out what that one word is right now and put it to me in the questions. So we've got leadership coming in from Rob. We've got creativity coming in from Radheesh. Keep them coming. Empowerment coming in from Ishan. I hope I'm pronouncing your names properly. Entrepreneur from Pratik. Solutions from Ashish. Change from Prashad. Filmmaker from Joseph. Meaningfulness from Millie. Passion. Sapriya, originality. Amit, success, value, explore, positive attitude. Hey Amit, you're cheating there. Positive attitude, I wanted one word. This is great, okay? This is great. This is the most important thing that you can do today, and if you take one thing from this webinar, I want this to be it. Okay, I love these ones that are coming in. Look at this one, originality from Amit Sharma. It's great. This is how you start. So I look at Amit, originality. Okay? Every decision in Amit's life is going to be easier now because he has to do something that is original. If he's working at a boring job doing boring things, he's not going to be happy. If he's starting his own company, he's got to be doing original things. If he's hiring people, he's got to be bringing on people who have original ideas. That's what motivates him. And when you can define that, it makes all of your decisions easier, and it also makes it easy for people to spread your message. Right, we're talking about social media here. You want people to be able to spread your message. You need to make it easy for them to do that. So I love these. Keep them coming in. I love seeing these come in. This is really important for you guys. So let's bring it down to social media. How do we have success with social media? This is what most of you guys are doing. This is what most companies are doing. It's boring, you're yelling, you're broadcasting, you're screaming your message, nobody cares, nobody's retweeting your stuff, nobody's sharing it, liking it, anything. There's no engagement because your stuff sucks. It's boring, you're broadcasting, broadcasting. You need to get out of that and start talking about important things. Talk about that one word. You create your campaigns around your one word. And if you're working at a company, then your company has to have one word. And hopefully, you know, your word isn't that different than what your company's word is. But you need to have a soul, right? You need to have something that gets people excited and makes them feel something so they want to share it. You're getting me all excited. So I'm going to take baby steps here, okay? I know you guys are kind of all over the map in terms of where you are with your social media campaign. Some of you are— have been doing it for a while and are really advanced, and some of you are just starting out. So I'm going to go from basics all the way up to the advanced stuff as quickly as I can, because I also want to get to your questions. That's what I really love about all of these sessions, answering your questions. So this is my 5-step process, OK, from basics all the way up to the most advanced stuff. Claim, listen, reactive, proactive, movement. We're going to go through each of these, and if you have questions at the end, bring them up. I'd love to help answer them for you. OK, claim. This is the most basic, simple, stupid, easiest one that you all have to do regardless of what your passion or interest is in social media. Claim is just go out and get your accounts, okay? You need to own your name, your personal name and your company name on all the major social media networks. Just own it, even if you don't know what you're going to do with it yet, you may be saying, I don't get Pinterest, I don't know how I'm going to use it. Just go get your name, just own it so that nobody else can take it, okay? That's the basics. This is a friend of mine, his name is Joe Taylor, he has a— hey, sorry, I'm going to stop for one second. Am I speaking too quickly, Kapil? Am I speaking too quickly?

No, I think the pace is perfectly fine.

Okay, sometimes when I do webinars and presentations where English may not be the first language, I get feedback that Evan, we love it, but it's too fast, so I get excited, but good, I'm glad. Thank you. Cut me off and we'll keep going.

Yeah, Ivan, can I hold you for a while?

This is a buddy of mine, his name is Joe Taylor, he runs a t-shirt company here in Toronto. If you see my shirt here, it says Believe this is made by Joe. His company is called Toronto Tees. The problem with Joe is he doesn't own Toronto Tees, the Twitter account, so he has to go with Joe T-Shirt. And he's been trying to reach out to the guy who owns Toronto Tees to buy the Twitter account from him because he didn't get it fast enough, right? It doesn't cost anything to get it, but if you don't get it and somebody else does, then you're out of luck. So he's been trying for a while to get it, right? So the guy who owns it, his name is Mike, he's been trying to reach out, give me a call, please, I want to get this Twitter account, right? This is the guy who owns TorontoTeefs. He's not doing anything with it. He's posted 8 tweets in his life on the thing. He just got there first, so he owns it. And that's a huge problem for my friend Joe, because this is his brand and he should own TorontoTeefs, so at least bare basics, go out and get all of the accounts. Joe wrote to me and said, hey Evan, thanks for looking into this. I've been trying for almost a year to get in touch with this guy, different means, he doesn't seem to reply to any emails. Now this actually turns out to be a good news story. I reached out to Mike who owns that account on LinkedIn, I reached out to him and managed to facilitate the sale of the account. So Joe now actually does own Toronto Tees, but it cost him money. Where you could have gotten it for free. So all the social media networks, basics, just go get your name so nobody else can take it from you. That's number 1. Number 2, listen. And with each step here, guys, a lot of people say social media is a waste of time, there's no ROI, how do I prove this to my boss that it works, how do I prove it to myself? You know, when I first started, I thought Twitter was a waste of time. I thought it was a huge waste of time. I'm an entrepreneur, okay? I have a busy schedule. I don't have time to waste around and putz around on social media if it's not getting me results. So each step along the way here, guys, I want to make sure that you are getting results that you're happy with before you justify moving to the next step. It doesn't make sense just to dive in deep and spend, you know, hire a full-time person to go on social media when you don't have a plan, you don't know it's working. I want you to take baby steps and prove to yourself and prove to your company if you're working on a business that this works. Okay, so step 2, listen. Again, I thought Twitter was stupid. When Twitter first came out, I thought it was stupid, a huge waste of time, people talking about their cats, people talking about what they eat for lunch and where they're going for dinner. I thought, this is ridiculous, I don't have time for this, I don't want to be part of this conversation. The thing you need to understand is you Marketing 101 is you need to be where your customers are, okay? You need to be where your customers are. Look at this picture, you see a bunch of redheaded women. If your target audience for whatever product you're selling is redheaded women, then wherever these people are, that's where you need to be. Whatever conference or organization, whatever event this is, picnic or whatever it is, you need to be there because you sell to redheaded women. And so the same thing applies. This is marketing 101, we're just bringing it to social media. If your target audience is hanging out on Twitter, you need to be on Twitter, right? If there's a networking event that's happening with your audience, that's where you need to be too. So just listen, do a search, find out if people are talking about your industry, talking about trends that are happening, because if your customers are there, then you can justify being there. If your customers aren't there, then there's no point. Don't waste your time on it. But each one, just go and search. See if your customers are hanging out there and starting the conversation. Okay, that's listen. Third is reactive. With reactive here, what we're doing is you're looking at what people are saying about your business. Just by putting up your Twitter handle, your Facebook page, you know, if you have a YouTube channel, you just put that up on your page, you're going to start getting some people commenting. Right, if I go visit a local business, I always look to see if they have a Twitter account because I'm going to send them a tweet. So reactive is just responding to people who are talking about you and recognizing your champions. Okay, if people are talking about your business, if people are sharing your website, sharing your Twitter handle, you want to at least just say thank you. Give them a, who's awesome? You're awesome. Thank you, thank you for sharing. All you're doing is recognizing your champions, recognizing the people who love you, who are sharing it, because just getting a simple thank you means that they're going to do it again, right? They feel grateful that you recognize them. And the strategy here isn't you creating a huge network yourself, a huge following yourself, but when people who talk about you, they have their own following and they're helping promote you, so you're just saying thank you and you want them to do it more. This is what got me on Twitter. Cats, you know, ridiculous stuff. I'm not going to waste my time. What got me onto Twitter was I did a search for my company name and found out that people were talking about me, talking about my website, and I wasn't a part of the conversation. Right? If people are talking about you, you need to be in that conversation, at least to say thank you. Now fortunately for me, all of the comments were good. It wasn't, ah, that Evan Carmichael is a loser and his website sucks, and there were no complaints, that was good. It was all good stuff, all positive comments, but I wasn't part of the conversation at least to say thank you. So here are a few of them, some old ones that people wrote in and just were recognizing my site and my account, and so I started just by being reactive and saying thank you, okay? And this is how you can get started, and again, prove the value because you're having conversations on social media. Now we're going to move to proactive. Take a quick sip of water there. This is really important. So proactive now is you are going to be seen as a thought leader. Okay, what are we going to share on our social media channels? Again, that's important, right? You're taking the ideas that come from your one word and applying it to a social media strategy. So if you're looking at Twitter, you know, you only have a certain number of characters, but if you have your one word— what was our one word here? Originality that Amit shared. You want to share tweets, share Facebook posts, share YouTube videos that talk about originality, right? And the people who are going to watch it are people who value originality, and they're going to share it because they feel, yeah, that guy's got it, he understands. and whatever you're selling, if you're selling shoes or chairs or consulting services or whatever it is, when people understand what you stand for and who you are and they believe in you, they're more likely to talk about you, to want to sign up for your services, to inquire, to share your stuff with their friends. When you're blasting out coupon codes and discounts and check out my latest blog article and all the crap that's out there that nobody cares about, you're not going to get any action. So with proactive, start small, okay? Again, we're starting baby steps. A lot of people, they get started on this, they go crazy, like, okay, I'm going to tweet 3 times a day, and they do that for a couple of weeks, and then they say, I don't know what else to do, I don't know what else to tweet about. You get tired, you get burnt out, so start small. Once a week, pick your platform, you can start with one, start with Twitter or Facebook or YouTube, and do once per week. That's it, make it simple, make it powerful. When you read your message, you should say, yeah, that's right, I feel that, I love that, because other people will feel the same way. So once a week, but make it powerful. And then as you start to see results, you can boost it up, right? You can go higher, you can do every day of the week, you can go higher. But again, we're proving value along the way, we're proving that it works. If you can't get your once a week to work, then don't go crazy and start doing every day. Make your once a week work and get results and have people interact with it and I love what you're doing, I can't wait for your next one to come out, okay? But the quality trumps quantity, always, especially on social media where our attention span is so low, we don't have time for crap. Our BS filter is so high, we know when somebody's just trying to sell us, and we don't engage with it. So you have to have something powerful that you put out on a regular basis, keep it consistent, but start once a week and then move up. To have it being every day of the week and you can go more if you want afterwards. The last part is movement, okay, and this is, this is the power stuff, this is the gold, this is the honey, this is where nobody gets to almost because most people are just screaming at each other and not getting any results. What do you stand for? Okay, now we're really taking our one word and we're trying to create something powerful. You need people to feel something about your business before they're going to buy from you, before they're going to interact with you, you need to get them to feel something through your messaging. So let me give you an example of some of the things I do, okay? I'm about believe, you've seen that, you see the shirt, you know, you've seen some of the slides that say believe. Everything I talk about is around believe and my social media campaigns are around believe. Now for me, I target entrepreneurs. Most of my audience are business owners because that's who I love helping. Although it's kind of spread out, you find it was a universal message. So here are some of the things that I might share. Okay, so this is a picture that I posted on my Twitter, on my Facebook, on my Pinterest. A bird sitting on a tree is never afraid of the branch breaking because her trust is not in the branch, but it's in her own wings. Believe in yourself. I saw that message and I loved it. Like, yes, that's an amazing message. I'm making a t-shirt about that. So I said, you know what, that makes me feel something. I would tweet this, so I'm going to put it on my account. You have to be proud of the stuff you create, guys. It doesn't have to be something that you make yourself each time, right? I didn't make this picture, but I loved it when I saw it. So you have to be proud of every single piece of content that you put out. That's what's going to move people. So that's one example. Here's another one. Believe in your dreams, they're given to you for a reason. It's a quote by Katrina Mayer. Again, I didn't make this one. I'm linking to her website at the bottom, katrinamayer.com. I love this picture. Again, I saw it and it meant something to me. It may not move you, that's okay, but for people who follow me, they like seeing content that's about belief. Door. Now this one doesn't say believe in it, but it still is about belief, right? Trusting in yourself, believing in yourself, build your own door, opportunities aren't going to come knock, right? So not every piece of content you put up has to have your one word in it, but it's got to encompass it. So we're building a movement for me around belief, for you around your one words that you all shared with me that are all amazing. And hopefully guys, that one word, it means something to you, right? You should look at it and say, you know, and feel your heart getting, beating faster, right? You get excited by it, you think that this is something that is your life, right? Your whole life is around this. And so you want to share this with other people. And when you inject your passion, and you're feeling, and you're sharing into your social media campaigns, that's what's going to ignite it. That's what's going to get people excited and want to share it with you. Here's a quick example, okay? This is the difference. This is the difference on a social media campaign when you have one powerful word that you can rally people around and make it easy for people to spread. So these are two videos I have on my YouTube. The first one on the right is Chris Gardner. He was a homeless guy who became a stockbroker and trusted in himself, believed in himself, and became a millionaire. I put that video up a year ago, and this is still quality content. This isn't promotional junk. This is quality, and it got 100,000 views in a year. Okay? I recently released a video called Believe. That's it, Believe, and I partnered up with a video maker to help create this. In one month, I had 152,000 views because it was clear, it was focused, it meant something a lot more powerful. I was giving people something easy to spread. Now there's no advertising in this. I didn't pay for any of those views. And look at the difference. It took a year for that video, my other video, to get to 100,000 views, where this one, in a month, is at 152,000 views. It's been translated into 13 languages, it has thousands of thumbs-ups, tons of comments, Now we're at, what, 350,000 views almost on this video in just over 2 and a half months because it's so powerful. I don't have to say anything, people spread it automatically. So pick your one word and then create all your content around that theme because it makes it so easy to share. It's critical, guys. Now usually I stop and I play the video here in my presentation, but I want to be able to get to the questions. I know we're short, we only have an hour. you guys can always go to my YouTube channel or just type in Believe by Maituri Zam and you'll find it. Worth a watch definitely if you want to see how a good social media campaign is done. So what happens now? As a result of making it powerful, injecting meaning into all of my campaigns, and giving people a simple concept that they can share, people share it and they're out hashtagging stuff, they're out sharing stuff with me. These are a few sample tweets. I get stuff like this every day, every single day people are writing into me. They're hashtagging Believe, they're sharing it Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, everywhere. The response is overwhelming because it's easy. It's coming in multiple languages, so this was in French, it says, I like the video that I created. It's international because people can feel it. All of the words that you pick can strike people in any country in the world because it touches your soul. This is who you are, this is what you want to share with the world, this is the movement you're building, and if you follow that, you have an ability to reach millions of people in a meaningful way, and they'll share it for you. So again, now we're applying these concepts to all the major social media networks— Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+. YouTube and Pinterest is where I would start. Get those working. Pick the one, you know, if you're just getting started, pick the one where you have the most customers on, you have the most traction already. Start with that and then expand to the other ones. One last thing I want to talk about is I believe you have a responsibility. This is next step up, guys, okay? This isn't just selling whatever product or services you're out there trying to promote. Now if you look at me, I sell webinars, I sell products, I sell consulting services to big companies like Google and Dell and American Express, but you look at most of my posts and that's not— I'm not selling the social media stuff because that's not what it's meant for. People look at my stuff, they love it, they feel something, they say, I want to work with Evan, how do we work with him somehow? And they reach out to me and they buy my stuff and they get my programs and they hire me. But I believe on top of that you have a responsibility So once you identify what your one word is, support other people who are going through the same problem, who are trying to conquer the same goal, who are on the same mission as you are. So here's a story I like to tell. I don't know if you guys are Star Trek fans, but this is from the original Star Trek, Lieutenant Uhura. And she's important because she was the first black woman on American television who had any kind of role of significance. She was, I think, third in command on the starship. And at the time, black people on TV were always— they were servants, they were maids, they were delivery people. They never had any kind of power. And she went and did one year with Star Trek and said, you know what, I'm done. I don't want to do this anymore. I want to do something more with my talents. I don't want to I'm not getting the respect I deserve. I want to go off and do something else. And she quit the show. And Martin Luther King went to go see her and said, you cannot quit this show. What you're doing is important. This is beyond you. You're inspiring millions of black people across the country because now they believe that they can do something greater with their lives than just be a servant. Or a maid or work at a restaurant. You have to keep going. This is important. This is beyond you. And when she realized how important it was, she decided to keep going even though her, you know, she wanted to go do Broadway and other things. She decided to keep going because of Martin Luther King's call. That's you guys. Whatever your one word is to move in your building, you need to be like Martin Luther King and shine the light on other people and help them out. A quick story about Whoopi Goldberg, if you guys know her, famous American actress. She told a story about when she was a young girl, she was watching TV and she said, "Mommy, mommy, mommy, mommy, there's a black person on TV and she's not a maid." That's what inspired her to become an actress, an award-winning actress. So Lieutenant Uhura's start inspired millions of people, but it happened, it kept going because Martin Luther King stepped in and said, "This is important." This is what you guys need to do with your campaigns as well, is reach out and recognize the people who are doing great things who tie into your— even if it has nothing to do with your product or service, who tie into the same one word, the same belief that you have, because when you go and help them out, that's going to come back and help you. One more quick story. When Black people in the US were trying to gain equal rights, There were restaurants that wouldn't serve black people. You could go into a restaurant and if you were black, they would not serve you. You had money? Doesn't matter. They wouldn't serve you because you're black. A bunch of students one day decided, these are the three of them, we're going to go and do a peaceful protest. We're going to go sit in the restaurant and wait until we're served. And we're not going to leave until we're served. We're served, we have money, we want to pay. We're not going to cause violence, we're not going to yell at anybody, we just want to be served. And what happened? They were surrounded by everybody in the restaurant, you can see here, and people started abusing them, pouring their milkshakes on their head, smearing their faces with hamburgers. You can see these guys are covered with food that these guys threw all over them. And that would have been an isolated incident, okay? These 3 kids just decided to go and do it themselves. But word got out to Martin Luther King that these guys did it, and Martin Luther King went and told everybody. He got up on his stage and he said, "Way to go, guys. That's the right thing to do." He shone a light on them, and instead of this just being an isolated incident, around the country students now started doing the same thing. Peaceful protesting, going to restaurants, and demanding that They get served because they have money, we're not going to fight, but they started doing the exact same thing. So there are important people who are on the same mission as you who might be thinking about giving up or who might feel like what they're doing isn't meaningful, and by you reaching out and saying, this is important, guys, what you're doing is important, you're helping inspire them. And I think that's part of your responsibility as a person, not just an entrepreneur or working at a company, as a person. This is something you believe strongly in. You see something that you like, you go out and you share it and you tell them, hey guys, what you're doing is important. And social media is the perfect avenue to do it through. One quick example from my personal experience, I read this about Martin Luther King and said, hey, I got to do the same thing. I got to support people who are taking risks in entrepreneurship and trying to help. I want to help a billion entrepreneurs. I got to help other people who are trying to help entrepreneurs too. One of the things I believe is there's not enough quality programming on television at least American and Canadian television, I don't know about India, that support entrepreneurs. We have a couple shows but not a lot, and I recently discovered a show called The Profit where it's an angel investor, he goes in and he puts his money into businesses and he helps them grow. And it's a pretty good show, and it's struggling along trying to get an audience, and so I reached out to him, the guy's name is Marcus Lemonis, on Twitter, and I said, Marcus, hey, you know I love The Profit, 'What you're doing is important. Keep going.' And I don't know if he was thinking about quitting or not or whatever, but I believe that it's part of my responsibility to get out there and support other people who are trying to help entrepreneurs. And I try to share his stuff, and I try to promote the show when I can. And he didn't ask me to do it. He didn't pay me anything to do it. I'm not asking anything in return, but I know it's going to come back. I know it's going to come back. Either he's going to help me, somebody else watching the show is going to help me. It always comes back, guys. This is an important part of creating your movement around your one word. So I came back from Malaysia, that's where I met Pradeep, who's Kapil's partner at Digital Vidya, and they invited me to this. And people were saying, "Nice t-shirt, can I get one? I'm a believer." "That was inspiring, now I believe." You know, everywhere I go I'm spreading this message of belief. Hopefully you guys are feeling something from my presentation and not thinking, "Hey Evan, what you're saying is all garbage." Hopefully you feel something, you're ready to to take some action. But you want to do the same thing through your campaigns. You know, you don't have to be an eloquent, outgoing professional speaker. That's cool. You do it in your own way. But whenever you share something on social media, it has to mean something for you. That's the test. It's not how many people are going to like this, how many people are going to retweet this and share this. It's does this make me feel something? If it makes me feel something, if I see this picture and my heart starts getting excited, and I get a little bit more motivated, then yeah, I'm sharing that. It turned into this crazy thing, everybody wanted to take pictures in Malaysia and hashtagging and Believe and everything, it was great. But that's the power when you stand for something important. None of these guys knew me coming in, maybe none of you guys know me watching this webinar for the first time meeting me, but you have to have the ability to come in and make an impact and it's so easy when you give them something that you feel important about and that is easy to share. So that's a quick overview of the 5-step process: claim, listen, reactive, proactive, movement, believe. I was told to go to 11:30, so I'm a little bit over on my time, but I want to get to your questions. Again, that's what I love about all of these things is getting to your questions. So if you, you know, have a question for me, put it in there. I want to answer it. Now is the Q&A time, guys. My favorite part about these things is answering your questions, so feel free to put it in there. Let's go. I know there's a whole bunch of stuff coming in. Kapil, is there anything that we should hit first? I haven't been following along. We've been going along here.

Yeah, so I think, guys, since it's a very different kind of a session, you can post your question here, or if you want to have an open conversation, just raise your hand and I'll unmute you, and we can have an open conversation as well. By the time you do that, I have one question, Evan, from my side. You know, since I'm an entrepreneur, there are two brand names I have to deal with. One, my name, and second is Digital Vidya. So I'm actually, I want Digital Vidya to be promoted. So, but as an individual, I really want to promote Digital Vidya as more than Kapil Nakra, which is my name. So what is your suggestion? I'm sure a lot of entrepreneurs would be dealing with similar stuff.

Yeah, and that's fine. It's okay to have it come from your company, and what I would suggest is— so you're in a partnership, right? So you and Pradeep are together in this, and hopefully your one-words are close enough to each other. But when you guys post something— I haven't checked out your Twitter feed— or your Facebook feed, but when you guys post something, it should be something that again means something to you. Like you have— so for everybody who has a business partner, you have to sit down with your partner and figure out what do we want this company to stand for, right? We're not just selling, you know, these webinars, we're not just helping people learn about social media, we're trying to do something more important. and so what is that? And then all of your posts, it doesn't have to be you sharing it on your channel, though you can too, but you can send it through digital media. And there are some brands who do a decent job of this, right? If you look at like 3M, they stand for innovation, and all their stuff is innovation, and the people they hire, they have to be about innovation. Everything is innovation. and it's clear to understand what that brand is. Most brands do a terrible job. So think about, you know, you and Pradeep getting together, thinking about the things that inspire you, what you want your business to stand for, and start sharing content that again you look at, makes you get excited, and that's what you start with.

Great. Sure, I'll definitely do that exercise. So now there are questions coming up, so I'll just Let's take them up in chronological order. I think the first one is from Lalitha. She wants to know, how does an SMB start their social media program? If you have any tips on this.

Well, I mean, so that's going through the 5 steps. I don't know where you are, Lalitha, with your campaigns right now, but again, just look at— oops, let me load this back up here. You look at your 5 steps. can't go back, hold on. Whatever. Your 5 steps, right? You're looking at— first of all, you just have to claim them, right? Make sure you get all your accounts, right? So go through those 5 steps. That's how you get started. I don't know where you are at in your path, but I mean, that was the whole point of this presentation. I think the slides are going to be made available afterwards as well if we went a little fast through everything. That's right?

Right.

Right? Everybody get the slides?

Yeah, we'll be emailing the slides as well as the present— the recording of the session to everybody.

Right.

Okay, the next question is from Saurabh. He wants to know, how can we choose one single word for business? Any tips?

Yeah, uh, again, I would refer to that slide where I look at, you know, books, movies, friends, all of that. It's, um, for some people it's super easy. Some people, like the guys who wrote in here, who are sharing all their words, some people find it, they already know it. Other people take a— I didn't come up with believe right away. I didn't know what my one word was right away. I had to think about it. I had to really, you know, agonize over it. It took me a little bit of time before I got to it. But to find your one word, and this is a personal one word to start with, you look at everything that you, you enjoy in your life. And find the one theme that combines all of them, and then you inject that into your business. If it's your own business, it's easy because it's just you, right? If it's a partnership like Kapil has with Pradeep, then they have to work together, and hopefully their words are similar. If you're working at a big company, then again, hopefully your one word is close enough to the one word of the company If it's not, then you probably don't enjoy working at your business. You know, if your one word is— what was that one about being different? If your one word is different and your company does everything the same way as everybody else, you're probably not having fun there, right? That's probably not the best job for you to be at. But some words could be sister words, you know. So I work with I know some people who have their own businesses, and I'm thinking of a photographer friend of mine. His word is inspire, and we've done a lot of projects together. You know, believe and inspire, they're close. They're not exactly the same, but they're pretty close. So if you're working at a business, you're working at a company, you have to figure out what is the one word for your business, for the whole company. It's harder as you get higher up. Like, what do we want our company to stand for? It might not be something that you can create yourself, you got to involve other people, but that's how great campaigns get created. Your company has to stand for something important, otherwise you're just broadcasting crap all over Facebook and YouTube and Twitter.

Great. The next question is from Rahul. He's saying that I'm a busy entrepreneur, sometimes I find it hard to find times to tweet. During the day. How does one work around that?

Yeah, and the way to do that is you start off small, right? You look at my 5-step process, you start with baby steps. You start once a week, you start with once a week and prove yourself that you're getting results. Listen, you're busy, I'm a busy entrepreneur too, okay? I don't, I didn't just say, hey, you know what, I'm going to spend 2 days a week dedicated to social media. I don't have that kind of time. You only make that time when you're seeing results. You have to prove to yourself that you're getting an ROI from this. But when you're tweeting, a lot of people just tweet because they feel like, oh, I need to tweet. I haven't put anything up for 3 weeks. I got to put something up. Well, then what you're tweeting is garbage. It's, here's a link to my latest blog post. Here's a link somewhere, and nobody ends up engaging with it. At the start, it doesn't matter so much how much you're tweeting. Start with once a week, but make that tweet count, man. Make that one tweet that you put out mean something powerful to you, right? Be proud of what you created. Read that tweet and say, "Yeah, I'm really happy with that tweet." And you'll start to see some results. Keep doing that once a week until you see results, until you see people engaging with you, and then that will give you encouragement and motivation ROI to keep going. The best part of my day honestly right now is I wake up in the morning, I get my bowl of lentils for breakfast, and I start reading through my social media comments, YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter for the most part, and just interacting with people and seeing the comments that come in and seeing everything that, you know, how we've impacted people's lives. That gets me excited and gives me motivation to keep going. But when you're at that early stage, again, yeah, you're busy. We're all busy. I mean, entrepreneur or not, everybody's busy. Nobody's sitting around saying, hey, I have a day, what do I do with my time? You gotta prove it to yourself. So once a week, make it super important, make it valuable, make it mean something to you, and build up from there. Great question, Rahul.

Great. Lalitha has another question. She wants to know what holds more credibility, the person or his company? Which is better to reach out to, reach out, the person or his company?

I always like having a person behind the company because people like buying from people and not, not companies, right? So if you are launching a campaign, it could still be your business, but it's good to know who's behind it, like don't hide behind the logo, because nobody likes buying from a logo. They want to see who's there, so if you're tweeting something, if you're at a company, maybe it's a big company, have a picture of who the person is behind the account, right? Even if it's a huge company, whatever the biggest company in India is, that company should have a person who manages their social media campaigns that I can see their face and I can I can ask questions, she's going to come back to me, because again, we love working with people and not companies, and this is a huge advantage that entrepreneurs have over other people, right, because it's easier for us to tell our stories than it is for big companies. There's so many layers at a big company, right? If I think about Pradeep and Kapil's business, when they're tweeting stuff out, I should know who it's coming from, right? Like their faces should be on their Twitter homepage, and they should have a little sign-up so I know who it's coming from. Simple stuff like that, you know, in your post every now and then, show a picture of you guys. Like let me feel a connection to you. So the credibility, I feel, always comes from a person, because this is social media, guys, you got to be social. You're social with other people. That's like the basics of being social. You don't go and be social with a company. You're social with other people.

Great. Ashwin, you have raised your hand. I'm unmuting you. Yeah, Ashwin, what's your question?

Hey, Evan, big fan of yours. Just a quick, uh, thing. I'm an entrepreneur and I run 6 different companies myself. and I'm looking to scale up even more and further. I'm having a really hard time finding good people to head these companies. Do you have any thoughts on that? Yeah, I'm a big believer in building from within and finding people who share the same values as you, who may not have all the skills you need, and training them up to become person that you need. Because it's so much easier to train somebody who wants to learn, who shares that same one word, the same values as you, but maybe a little short on the skills, than somebody who has all the skills but is lazy, not motivated, looks great on paper, but is not going to be the right fit to grow this thing up. OK. So the person should also gel with the values of the company and my personal values also, right? Absolutely. Number one. Absolutely.

Great.

Thanks a lot. No problem.

Rahul, you have raised your hand. I'm unmuting you. If it's a follow-up of, you know, the question that's already been asked, that was about busy entrepreneur, let us know.

Oh, the busy entrepreneur. Yes, good. Can you hear me? Yeah, I can hear you. Yes, well, I guess I posted that question on the questions list as well. But I wanted to know, I have a company YouTube channel, and I wanted to know if it's possible to change the YouTube channel name even though I've already registered it. Is there any way around it? Ooh, I don't know.

I don't know.

Kapil, do you know?

I think it's possible. And they have some restrictions, but it's possible.

How do we go about that?

Now what I'll do is we have a YouTube expert in our team, and I'll ask him to mail you a blank mail and possibly just reply to him, and then you guys can have a conversation. But only thing I know is that it's—

that would be—

he'll give you the further details on that.

Okay, that, that would be much appreciated. Appreciate it. Thank you so much.

Welcome, welcome. Guys, there are close to about—

yeah, I deal more with like the big vision structure of the campaigns, not so much a technical.

Got it.

Guys, there are about, uh, that's why we have digital media, they can handle that stuff.

So, uh, great. That's why I'm just one of the trainers. Uh, so, um, yeah, so what I was saying was there were about 15, 10, 15 questions that are still unanswered, so I'm picking them up in chronological order. Um, the next question is from Sudarshan. His question is, what are some measures you use to tie the efficacy of social media campaign, especially when it comes to hard metrics like sales and revenue? How does that usually look for startup businesses based on your experience?

Yeah, this is a really hard one. Michael, based on—

Michael, I'm sorry, I actually muted you. By mistake, so can you please repeat the response to this?

Oh, start over. No problem. Okay, so figuring out the ROI of social media is complicated, is not a direct line, it's not a lever that you just pull, and we're used to TV spots and direct marketing and Google AdWords where you say, you know, this many people went, this many people people converted. It's not that kind of model. It's like trying to measure word of mouth. How do you measure that? But it does have a major impact. So first of all, when I'm creating social media campaigns, I don't do it based on quantitative data, right, because that can send you in the wrong direction where you're just trying to get lots of views and lots of likes, but you're not actually putting anything out there that's super meaningful. I've gotten business in a lot of different ways. I've gotten business from people who have bought my guides, who've signed up for seminars, I've gotten deals. So when that Malaysia presentation came up, this is where I met the guys from Digital Vidya, they saw my YouTube videos. They saw my YouTube videos and said, hey, we need to have Evan Carmichael speak at my presentation, so they paid my speaking fee and they played my my flight and my hotel over there, and that was a great opportunity. And then from there, I've met lots of great people. I've met, you know, Carmichael now because of that. I'm talking to you guys because of that. I've gotten brands who write to me and they say, Evan, we'd love to have you create some content for us or help us consult with this project. You know, lots has come from it, and what I would encourage you to do is not invest yourself crazy heavily into social media until you're starting to see some of those results, until you see customers writing to you and saying, "Thank you so much, you really helped me out," or until you see somebody reaching out to you asking you about your product or service, or asking you to come do a speaking engagement, or consult with them on whatever project they're having. You know, like, get results from it first before you go crazy. Because we're all busy, you don't have time to do hours a day on social media, and prove it to yourself that it's worth the time to do. You're going to get— the ROI is going to come from a lot of different places. Even just having people talk about you is beneficial, but I want you to generate dollars, right? Like, we're in business to make money. I make a lot of money through social media, but I can't say, hey, you know what, if I'm going to tweet 5 more times, that I'm going to get $100,000 more. It's not that direct linear connection, but I know that when I am active on social media, I get people sharing my stuff, and then people write to me with opportunities. And so until you start seeing an ROI, whatever format that means to your company, don't invest crazy heavily into social media. Great.

So the next question is from Pratik Kumar. Guys, before I actually take up this question, I'm launching a poll in front of you. You know, as part of Digital Vidya, we provide 3 months and 6 months training. So if any one of you is interested, you know, you can just set yes, yes over here, and someone from our team will contact you. Okay, so the next question is from Prateek Kumar. His question is, how much control should a brand give to customers on social media?

Sorry, what's the question?

How much control should a brand give to customers on social media?

Ah, okay, this is a great one. Now I know we only have what, like 6 minutes left on this, so I don't know if that's the last question or not. Maybe I'll just say one thing before answering the question. For anybody who has asked a question or if you still have questions coming up, leave it in the question chat. And I will make a YouTube video answer for you guys. So I still want to be able to answer everybody's question. I know we're kind of crunched on time, but leave it there, and Kapil, if you could send it to me, I'll make a video response for everybody so that they still get their questions answered.

Great, I'll do that.

So in terms of control, you have no control on social media. I mean, I get into fights all the time with brands over this, and they're used to controlling the message, you have no control. You can't control what your customers say about you. There is no control. And to be an active participant in it, because like it or not, people are going to be talking about your brand. If you're doing anything important, if you have any kind of size, whatever product or service you're selling, people are going to get on and they're going to share their experience, good or bad. And it's more how you react to it that will help shape the public opinion around you. If somebody is slamming you and saying you're the worst company ever, and you get on social media and you interact with the person and you show that you're a classy organization, that wins you points. If you're then sharing stuff— like most of the brands I work with, their campaigns, they suck. They're sharing the worst content. The content is so boring, so bland, and as a result they get nothing, no engagement happening. They're just trying to pump out whatever product happens. If you're sharing meaningful information, then people will share it, and they'll come to your defense, right? Like, your goal here, if you're trying to look at customers talking about you and how to shape that to a positive experience with you, if you mean something, right? Say your Twitter feed wasn't showing up in somebody's Hootsuite or whatever anymore, would they come back and seek you out on Twitter because they miss your stuff that much? They would do it for mine. If your brand means something to them, then people will jump to your defense, okay? People love my brand, and for the most part, all the comments are great. But anytime there's one comment that is not great, that says it's a stupid comment, or Evan, you don't know what you're talking about, 'Oh, that was a stupid video.' My community jumps on that person. I don't have to do anything. And when I write back, it's usually a funny comment or, you know, 'Thanks for your feedback,' even if they're slamming me. But my whole community jumps on them because I've built up so much equity with them that they love everything that I create. And I'm not a special person. You can do the same thing for yourself, your company. If you are providing tons of great stuff that that touches people and is meaningful to them, then if somebody is slamming your brand, you're going to have your customers come to your defense. But you can't control anything, right? Like, how much control should a brand give to the customers? You have no control. They're going to talk about you regardless. So your action steps are, one, when anybody talks about your brand, good or bad, you're there, you're responsive, you're fast on the trigger. You're helping answer their questions, you're helping turn situations into as positive as they can be, and a lot of times a negative situation can be made positive if you handle it properly. And then action step number 2 is you're again creating meaningful content that builds a movement, that builds a community who supports you and who love everything you're doing, and if anything negative happens, they're on it helping support you. But I think we're at our time, but Again, if you guys keep asking questions on whatever is still outstanding, I will make a video response for you. And if there is an email— we have their emails, Kapil?

Yes, we have their emails. So we'll mail it to everybody.

Yeah, I'll make it. Oh, there's a lot of questions. You guys are going to give me a lot of work. I will do it. I will do it. It may not be right now, but I will do it for you guys. I honestly love communicating with people. And thank you guys so much for having me. And I'm not sure what the next step is, but I've enjoyed so much being here with you today and answering your questions.

Great. So guys, I think Rob, you have also asked this question that I do not have a question, but I would like to receive the link of the YouTube video response. So definitely what we'll do is within a couple of days, you will receive the recording of this session. We'll also do a blog post on it and we'll send a recording link to that also in the same emailer. And also, as soon as we are done with the video response of all the questions, we'll send the link to everybody. Okay, so that's actually— that's it from our side for today's session. There are actually a lot of questions unanswered, but I'm sure you will receive your response very soon. So yeah, that's it from my side.

Okay, so thanks everybody. Yeah, have a great day, great evening.

Thanks everybody. Thanks, Evan, and looking forward to seeing you in our other upcoming sessions.

Absolutely.

Thank you.