249 7 secret tools social media wizards use (for accounting firms)

Today we're talking about seven top secret tools that social media wizards use to make this stuff easier. Does social media still feel really hard? Probably 99% of people are saying yes right now. I'm gonna let you in on a secret. The folks who are like super cranking on this stuff are using a bunch of tools and technology to make it easier for them. And they're actually, I like, the secret thing's kind of not a joke because they don't always share the whole tech stack that they use for it for fear of it. Maybe, I don't know, devaluing what they're doing or something like that. Maybe it makes it feel less personal when people know, like just how much technology there is behind the scenes helping them build their social media posts. But I'm gonna show you seven tools that ought to make it easier for you. Doesn't mean you're gonna go full down the rabbit hole of like doing a really sweaty version of social media. But you might find one thing here that just makes it fun, feel like a little bit less of a lift. And in my opinion, that is a win, my friend. So come on in. We're blowing the lid off this, this whole thing today. Okay? Otter. Good old fashioned otter. O T T E R AI because if you're like me, you suck at writing. We don't. Like, if you're an accountant, you don't sit down and write at length. At least most of us don't. That being said, if you've never journaled before, boy, does it help you get your, get your brain, your brain wires all lined up. Whenever I'm feeling overwhelmed or ungrateful or something like that, if I can just get myself to like spend 20 minutes journaling, I feel so much better after that. But for most of us, we don't like, know how to sit down and write a novel or a blog post. Like, that's a very foreign thing for us. That takes a tremendous amount of willpower to do. But you know what we do know how to do? Ramble on and on and on and on. Arguably it's something that I excel at. And so the easier version to get to a social media post or some sort of idea I would argue is just blathering on. In fact, let's just do it right now. If you've never used the app Otter, it's available both on desktop, like as a web app, but also as a mobile app. Originally it was for like meetings and creating transcripts of meetings. Now that's pretty table stakes. There's a whole bunch of tools for it. The one thing that it is still really good and really handy at is just open up on your phone and then start recording and have a really good transcript at the end. And this is really good for like abstract concepts where you haven't taken the time to organize your thoughts and be able to express them in a very concise way. You know, like I'm a big believer in the fact that you already know everything that you need to know to be able to do compelling social media and to write a book and all that stuff. This stuff in your brain just isn't in the right format yet. You talk about clients, you know at length with this stuff all day long. You can probably do it in your sleep at this point, but you just can't. It's not within you to put that into a social media post, right? Like you have the info, it's just not in the right format. So step one, if you struggle with this is just getting the information out in an unstructured way. So, so I'm gonna do this and ramble on for a couple of minutes about something that came up recently. I'm not even gonna explain it to you cause you're gonna hear it when I record. So I'm hitting record on my mobile app here. So I was recently highlighting some accounting firms that do like very unique services for their clients. Like they have clients that are in these niche industries and they offer services that are like random one off things that are just related to that industry and not something that you would necessarily expect an accounting firm to do for a client. And I love this stuff because either these are examples of like rare problems, rare pains that sets your accounting firm apart and makes clear to prospective clients that you really know your stuff when it comes to this domain. And you know, if you boil this back to like a landing page on your website, if you're trying to think how do I differentiate myself? Like how about solving a very, very specific problem to these types of business owners? So they're like, oh wow, this person actually really does have a deep understanding of what we do in a way that most accountants are not going to understand because any old accounting firm will tell them, oh yeah, we can do your work, we know how to do accounting and tax, no problem, it's all the same. But if you come in and you're like, okay, but we also have this service for a very, very specific problem that taxidermists have, for example, then you're going to look much smarter. Like those Clients are going to be impressed. Now, I wanted to highlight firms who were doing these sort of unique services on social media, but several folks jumped into the comments and were like, I don't know why people overthink this. All you actually need to do these days is just do the normal stuff and do it well and you can run a good business. And how I feel about this is it's absolutely true that you can run an accounting firm and just try to do the normal stuff to the best of your ability. I mean, heck, there are so many just God awful accounting firms out there who don't even do the normal stuff well. Like they do terrible quality work, they don't respond to their clients and they can still run a profitable business. Like that's just how low the bar is. But in my opinion, the fact that you can run a business that way does not mean that you should. And so I'm always looking for like, what, what is the even better version of this that supports my clients even better than I do now, that gives me more financial control, that enables me to build clients more for the work that we already do. And so I'm struggling to get a concise version of this out on social media that is like, yeah, just because you could do it this way doesn't mean that you should. So like, let's be on a mission to keep finding the better and more specific version of what we do that helps our clients even more. Because if we're awesome for a specific type of person, that's just always going to be better than being okay for everyone. Right? Okay, so that was a three minute voice memo that I just recorded into Otter on my phone and I now have a transcript of it for you to do that like verbal blathering for most people is going to be infinitely easier than having to sit down and write out all of those thoughts and process it as I'm writing it. Like that's just a much, much faster way for me to get there. But obviously it's not going to be publishable. It's actually kind of funny when you see your verbal words, like in a transcript on paper, it is so cringe and you realize like, oh geez, I actually don't talk at all. The way that I write. Which sidebar. The like Jason Bot, the AI assistant that I chat with sometimes that's trained on all of the data from all the past podcast episodes. It's tone of voice is really annoying to me actually, because it all of the transcripts are how I talk and stammering and all that and not how I write. It's kind of irritating. Okay, so first secret tool we're talking about here is Otter. Second, I'm going to say the second tool, I'm going to say Cloud AI could also be ChatGPT. I think Cloud is a little bit better at this. So the website is Claude AI. To get access to the very best model, you have to pay $20 a month, just like ChatGPT. But this is the peanut butter to the Otter jelly that we just created. So I recorded that little voice memo on my phone. Now when I open Otter in my web browser on my computer, I go to Otterai.com there's now that full transcript of everything that I just said. And I'm literally going to copy that full transcript. The three minutes of me blathering on. So in cloud, I'm just going to prompt it. I'm trying to more clearly illustrate this concept in a concise social media post. Give me 10 concise statements, maximum of two sentences each, that encapsulates the concept explained here. And I'm going to paste in the full transcript of that just brain dump I just did into Otter. So I'm in. Claude, you could also use ChatGPT for this, but right now I'd say it's not quite as good. I gave it that little prompt to say, give me 10 concise statements, max two sentences each and then the full transcript. I'm going to hit enter and I'm just going to read you the raw output of what Claude gives us. Actually, no, I'm not going to use an AI voice for this. I'll just read it to you. Gave me a list of 10 here. First one, specializing in niche industries, sets accounting firms apart and demonstrates deep understanding of a client's unique needs. Eh, feels pretty vanilla. Number two, solving rare industry specific problems on a landing page differentiates your firm from generalists. Ooh, I don't know that I'd call that a banger, but it's on the edge. It's nearly a banger. Number three, offering services tailored to niche clients like taxidermists, showcases expertise and impresses prospects. It's okay now, like with every single one of these things, you change a couple words here and there and it's going to be much better. Right? It did all these in one sentence. These might be better if they were like a couple statements to kind of encapsulate more of the entirety of like the, I guess what I was grappling with when I recorded that. Number four, some Argue that simply doing the basics well is sufficient to run a good accounting business. Okay, that was. That was the whole brief. That was all it gave me. That's a good first statement, but I want a second statement. Maybe we circle back that one. Number five. While it's true that many poorly performing firms still manage to be profitable, this doesn't mean it's the best approach. Okay. Number six. Always strive to provide better, more tailored support to clients. Easier, even if a basic approach can work. Pretty good. Number seven, Continually seek ways to improve financial control and build more value for existing clients. That's a complete nothing burger. You just said nothing. Number eight, pursue the better and more specific version of your services to help clients more effectively. That's right. Number nine, Being awesome for a specific type of client is better than being just okay for everyone. That's pretty good. I actually think I said something very close to that in that recording, which is actually totally okay. Doing the verbal processing. By the end, I actually got to something that maybe more concisely summarized it. And then. Number 10, specialization and excellence should be the goal, not settling for the bare minimum. Eh, what are my favorites here? I like number four. Some argue that simply doing the basics well is sufficient to run a good accounting business. But that's like half the equation, right? I love. Number two. Solving rare industry specific problems on a landing page differentiates your firm from generalists. I'm going to combine or tell it to combine. 4, 2 and 5. 5 was. While it's true that many poorly performing firms still manage to be profitable, this doesn't mean it's the best approach. Basically, I pointed out the numbers that I wanted and I'm saying give me three more statements, two sentences each, and combine the concepts from those three statements. All right. Number one. Solving rare industry specific problems on your landing page differentiates your firm from generalists. While doing the basics well can lead to profitability, it's not the best approach. Pretty good. And like a more complete snapshot on number two, underperforming accounting firms can still be profitable, but this shouldn't be the benchmark for success. Highlight your ability to solve niche issues to set yourself apart. Not bad. 3. Generalists may argue that executing fundamentals is enough, but featuring your expertise in tackling uncommon challenges proves you strive for excellence. There are way too many big words in that one. First one's pretty good here. First one's like almost postable. Solving rare industry specific problems on your landing page differentiates you from firm, your firm from generalists, while doing the basics well. Can lead to profitability. It's not the best approach. This episode is brought to you in part by Team up, helping you recruit top Filipino accountants without any ongoing monthly fees. The difference between Team up and all the other offshoring options. The Team up helps you hire staff directly. No middleman. You, you work directly with your new hire in the Philippines. Hire the person, not the company. Guys, gals, gang. Here's just a few reasons to hire directly. You have access to higher level talent. Makes sense. You have complete control over team culture and training. They keep 100% of what you pay them and it's a lot more affordable for you. So you can retain your team for the long term. Team up could source accountants with experience working at US or Australian firms familiar with tools like Zero, QBO and DeX. Also recruit specialist roles, team leaders, tax specialists, administrative assistants. Thought experiment what if you had an executive assistant for the first time this tax season just just throwing it out there. What would they do? Start at that email video I did on the main channel recently. Get help with that stanky ol inbox. I digress. Team up recruits these talented folks for a flat one time fee of 4,000 US American dollars. That's it. 4K one time. Somebody at Robert Half just did a spit take. Robert Half reference. We ever going to get Robert Half to sponsor this pod? Not anymore. And they can connect you with an affordable employer of record if you need help with payroll and compliance once you hire that person. Big fan of hiring in the Philippines. You know I did a bunch of that. Check out the link in the description to learn more about Team Up. This episode is sponsored in part by Client Hub. Here's the thing. Here's what's different about Client Hub. Interesting kind of different methodology to building a practice management system is they have built a like a client portal that they say your clients will actually want to use. It's sort of a almost like a side by side workspace where you have your tasks and your client also has their own tasks where you're getting into like largely the same space. There's a whole like firm only side of it that they can't see obviously. But when they log in you can see all the stuff that they can see and their portal setup is actually looks pretty much the same way as how you manage your work. And I remember man this was maybe three years ago now where we were running our cast practice in ClickUp and we had just a killer system for managing tasks and getting everything done and we got to the point where like this would Be so much easier if I could literally just send an invite to this client where they could see this same space that we're working out of and they just tackle the stuff that we're assigning to them. But like the only way to do it was with like these guest accounts and there was problems with views being shared and them seeing something that maybe they weren't supposed to see. That's kind of been Client Hubs approach from the beginning is like what would a shared space look like where you could come in, do all the stuff that you need to do, have all the tools you need to manage the firm. Even cool like AI stuff like generative email they're doing now while also being something that like your client would actually appreciate and actually use because it's an easy place for them to see what you need from them, like all rolled up into one space. Reality is most of our clients these days like they are using task management systems also. And unfortunately a byproduct of us supporting them is usually stuff they just gotta do for us. So if you're looking for a more collaborative way to get that stuff done, check out Client Hub. We recently also did a five minute sponsored demo day video on YouTube for Client Hub. So if you want to see me like running through how it works, just some pretty silly things in that video, check that one out too. To learn more, I'll put a link to Client Hub down in the show notes. So we've gone from a rambling kind of incoherent like you just verbal processing, which we're all capable of, to something pretty darn concise here. And it's like, helped me get to a framework of like, okay, here's a clearer way to communicate this. And this whole thing could be done in five minutes, probably maybe 10 minutes if you're still getting started with it. And I've got, I don't know, probably like three things that I could schedule to be like future things on social. You can also do this for like, you know, just ask for an outline if you're going to do something longer. But for those of us for whom writing doesn't come easy, like this is a really, really good way to verbally process while still getting to something concise. One thing to always keep in mind with AI and this was an interesting framing that I heard from a comedian. If you put like a bunch of joke writers in a room and one in every 30 of your jokes are actually okay, like, like that's the reality. Everything good that we see in the world is the product of a hundred really bad things that you Never saw, or 10,000 really bad things you never saw. If a human can write down 30 jokes and one of them is okay, let's not expect anything different from the AI. Like, have the AI take a whole bunch of stabs at it and maybe it has a good one or two in there. Sometimes it'll surprise you and a whole bunch of them will be bangers. But in my experience, like I'm just going to have it run a list of 10 of them and I and I'll pick my favorite one or two, maybe remix them a bit. And this is super helpful for me on the days when it's just not flowing. Some days it will be flowing, you can do it. Other days it will not be flowing. Now tool number three. Man, I love this one. It may not be for everybody. A Hemingway app. If you've ever used it, there's a free version online. I'll have links to all these things in the show notes. Hemingway app is like a super lightweight writing tool, I guess, like Microsoft Word or Google Docs or something like that. But it forces you to use really clear, simple English and not let your sentences get too long as you're writing. It basically tells you what the grade level of your writing is. And in general, you want to keep it pretty low. Social media these days, like people do not use big, complex words. You just, I mean. And business writing is the same way. You're using clear, simple language to try to get your point across as clearly and concisely as possible. If you are trying to do more traditional writing or if you want to write a blog post from scratch, like, this is my favorite app for it, Hemingway app. I much prefer it to something like Grammarly because it feels like Hemingway app is trying to get you to always, always be simplifying. Always be simplifying, which works really well for social media. Okay, fourth app here, it's called Hype Fury. All one word. You may have heard that out in the wild. In my opinion, it's still the best social media scheduling app. And anyone who is taking social media remotely seriously, 90% of their social media posts are scheduled. So they sit down at the start of the week or whenever they're feeling inspired, and they queue up a series of posts. And so Hype Fury right now you can draft a single thing that it'll publish to Twitter, LinkedIn, and even create an image, a graphic of it for Instagram. So if you're on Instagram much, you've seen like the little snapshots of like Twitter threads and that sort of thing. Hype Theory even has like a built in version of that now. And the reality of writing anything is there's times when the ideas are flowing and, and man, there are times when you just feel dumb as a rock. And I can tell you that's 1000% the case for me. And so anytime that stuff's flown, you want to try to capture as much as you can. And this is where a scheduling tool can super come in handy so that you're not just sitting there like machine gun and 20 posts out on social media in one day. That is not the way to do social media beyond a certain threshold. Your posts just aren't going to be put in front of people and so you'll actually be penalized for putting a huge volume of stuff out. At a bare minimum, you want to post a day going out. Maybe a max on LinkedIn of two and a max on Twitter of three or four. But the worst thing you can have if you're taking social media seriously is nothing on a given day. So different people will have different consumption habits where maybe they only get on social media on the weekends, or maybe they only get on it certain days. The best thing you can do is be there consistently every single day. So before you're sending a whole bunch of posts out in any given day, fill out a bunch of days into the future so that you've got a like consistent feed going out. Now you don't just want to ghost posts like the people who are doing this. Well, it's all going out on a schedule, but they're also coming out and engaging and having meaningful conversations in there. But when you're riding a bike or in the shower or something like that, and you have that thought and you're like, oh man, this would be a good social post. Whether it's the exact words or whether it's just a concept that you could elaborate on later. You want to capture it no matter what. But, but then when it comes to actually writing, I don't know about you, but when it comes to writing, you kind of get into a flow. And it may take 30 or 40 minutes to get into that flow, but once you're in the flow, it's much easier to do more writing. And the worst thing that you can do is sit down and be like, okay, I'm going to post to social media today and then spend 40 minutes to get to like one good post. The much better version of that, honestly, is to spend like two hours and do five or six posts because you're already in the flow of things and like they can keep coming. I, at the very, very beginning of this year, I was trying to write basically 500 words every morning. And like I was just coming off having read Atomic Habits again. And it's like just set a really low bar for yourself to just do a little bit of a thing each day and you'll find it becomes easier to do more. And the reality was is I would write a 500 word post and I would throw it away and then I would write a second 500 word post that was way better and, and I would publish that. And those are still some of the best, the posts that I am most proud of. Because when I'm not on top of things, I'm only ever doing that first 500 word post which isn't as good as the second one. So just because of the ways that our brains work, you will get much better quality, like much better results by sitting out and carving out a meaningful chunk of time to do a good amount of writing and then schedule that stuff out for the full week. Throughout the week, stuff usually comes up and I'll like fill one in here or there. But. But highly recommend scheduling tools because they just work better for our brains and how we write. Okay, that was number four. Number five is a tool called typeshare. Typeshare Co. So you may have noticed if you poke around on social media, much is you start seeing posts that are going viral that kind of look similar to other posts, right? Like they follow a similar format. And the tool that was the original culprit form for this was typeshare. Basically what Typeshare does is it's like a little writing platform, but it is like a templated writing platform where there's all these different formats that it serves up. So I'm looking at it now. Life Hack, the next best option. So I'll just read, I'll read the next best option template here for you. Unless you want to play for a and then in brackets, impossible big outcome, close bracket. I really believe open bracket, alternative option, close bracket is the best path. And then brackets, benefit one, benefit two, benefit three, benefit four. That's a LinkedIn post. That's a tweet. That's like one format that you can use where you basically just swap in the placeholders. And I used to be like, that's wrong. That's not really creative. The reality is like, as long as it's valuable, that's kind of what matters. In the end, a couple months back, I called out this format that Brandon hall was using around like 10 tax advice. And he was just hammering the exact same format every single week. It would be completely different information in the exact same format. And it was the engagement on it was doing really, really well. And every single one of those posts was helpful. So the fact that it was in the same format, it's like, oh, that actually doesn't matter because I'm plugging my own expertise into this and it is useful. Like that is the goal here is actually making something that is valuable to the type of person that you're trying to attract. And so for accountants like us, we already like have the bedrock, like the technical expertise in accounting and tax. Again, we're just trying to get it into the right format, a format that will engage with people. That's the hard part. We already know this stuff. That's the differentiator for us and why we have this advantage. And so a tool like typeshare, honestly, like kind of pairs really, really well with the fact we already have the expertise. We just need to find like a clear way to communicate it. Now they have like hundreds of templates at this point of all sorts of different structures. I usually don't like use it verbatim word for word because it's kind of annoying to me. If I see another post that uses the same format, I will change it a bit. But it's great for coming in and getting ideas. Oh, on the subject of ideas, one other thing I forgot to call out that scheduling apps do well is they will resurface past posts of yours, like to help you ideate and some of them even give you the option to like remix high performing past posts. So hypefury was the tool that we're talking about. If I go to the dashboard, it shows me like past posts that I've done that have performed really well. So first example, it pulled up past post of mine. Self employment. Distributing your financial security across 100 customers employment, consolidating your livelihood into a single person with the power to terminate you at any time. That's. That's pretty good Boast. Nice work me. I. I could post that again. I could post a different version of it. These scheduling platforms can help you like not reinvent the wheel. Cause the reality is virtually nobody sees the stuff that you post and they certainly don't remember it a month down the road. So don't be afraid to reuse content. This episode is sponsored in part by Live Flow. I think this is My favorite tagline for Live Flow, where QuickBooks Online ends live flow beacons. AW Life Flow gives you the ability to sync a whole bunch of data and reports and all that out to Google Sheets or Excel. Because there's a lot of data captive in QuickBooks Online that you may want to give people access to or you maybe don't want in the QuickBooks file. But even if you just need to get that data out and cut it up different ways, they've got a LIFO's, got a Consolidations product that lets you roll up all sorts of company files with different different chart of accounts and something I'm kind of hot on right now that has absolutely nothing to do with Live Flow, but I'm going to include in the ad read anyways is getting away from the traditional month end cycle delivery. Getting away from financial statement delivery as being the thing we build deadlines around. Like because that ends up being the crunch for your accounting firm, right? Getting the financial statements out by the 10th. Well, what if instead, instead we had something that was not the financial statements, but maybe I don't know what the client actually needed to see because they don't really understand the financials. What if you had a more real time dashboard that was the stuff that was actually actionable for them that they wanted to see, that could be populated on a weekly basis or real time. Or you could use Live Flow to like pump into a spreadsheet that they use. If they've got this info near real time time, then it takes the pressure off. Hey, when are those financials going to be ready? Right? Which ends up being the bottleneck for your entire accounting firm. Because LifeLow will sync just about any QuickBooks report you want out to your spreadsheets. You can cut that stuff up to do any sort of reporting that you want. Either pulling that data out like when you choose manually, or continuing to sync it out real time on an ongoing basis. Could be just the thing to get the crunch off that month End close. All right, learn more about LifeLow VI the link in the show notes this episode is brought to you in part by Cloud Accountant Staffing, who helps you find just mega talented accountants in the Philippines to join your team. I got another resume here. This is a real life resume. I'm looking this person right in the eyes right now. Also got an intro video because that's how Cloud Accountant staffing works. You tell them what your needs are. They got boots on the proverbial ground in the Philippines. Recruiters who will find you, the folks that you need then you get a resume, you get an intro video. If you want you can interview these folks and you actually don't pay Cloud accountant staffing a dime until you make a hire. Check out this resume though. Professional US tax accountant with six years of experience been working with US tax firms. Last three roles were Senior Tax Account, CCH Access, Ultra Tax, Lacert Corp. Tax NetSuite, oh SAP plus your heart, QuickBooks Online. There you go. And their last role they've been in the last two years just doing business tax S Corps and C Corps. They do some of the other stuff too. But main focus has been business tax because they've already done a bunch of individual tax in the past. They did all that. Oh former PwC gang. I've shared with you how my team I was I was building a huge percentage of my team in the Philippines. Mega, mega talented people that become a like came became such a crucial part of the firm that that I was building. You got nothing to lose to explore it, learn more If I plopped this resume on your desk and it was an onshore person, tomorrow you'd be clicking your little heels in excitement. I know you would. Okay, it's a big world out there. There's other ways to get this stuff done. I'll put a link to Cloud accountant staffing down in the show. Notes. Okay, getting back on track here. Two more to go. Number six, a tool called Taplio T A P L I O. This tool's actually just really helpful for me to create LinkedIn carousels and and Instagram posts so you can link it like a tweet or a tweet thread and it will just create images of each of those things. If you haven't done much on LinkedIn yet, LinkedIn carousels are those things that are like multi page sort of things where you can slide, swipe left and right and it will go from one to the next to the next. Carousels actually get a little bit of a boost relative to normal posts in the algorithm, similar to how posts on Twitter right now. If they have a picture, they actually get a 2x boost in the algorithm. So you pretty much always want some sort of picture there. But I've got, you know, a short bit of writing. I post it to Twitter across four tweets. All I have to do is I take the link to that Twitter thread, I paste it in Taplio and it gives me interestingly a PDF, which is what you need for LinkedIn. It gives you a four page PDF. Each page is an image of the Tweet, and then you upload that PDF to LinkedIn and it makes a carousel where people can swipe left and right through each of those images of the tweets. Does the same thing for Instagram, but just with image files. Everything back to the exercise I did at the beginning of the episode where I did that, like, verbal dump into Otter. I could have it build that out into like, you know, four individual statements that are maybe a couple sentences each explaining how my, my thoughts that I kind of outlined. That could be a sequence of four tweets. And then we post that across not just Twitter, but LinkedIn and Instagram as well. If you're stuck on, like doing stuff on other platforms. I know I've always struggled with, well, if I post this on TikTok or on Instagram or something like that, nobody's ever going to see me over there. It's worth remembering just how small of an impact you have to have for it to actually be meaningful for you and for your business. All it takes is one person who could become a client, one person who you could add to your network, you know, be it, say, a consultant who you can do a project with that could get you in front of more people. Never underestimate, like, how impactful just a single post on a platform where you don't really have much following can be. And then last one, I don't think people dig into enough just analytics on social media platforms where you already hang out, if you've done a bit of posting, we need to recycle more than we do. Like, we have this, this spotlight effect where we see everything that we ever do, but nobody else does. So, like, stop being afraid of reusing your best content. Being consistent on social media is so much about hammering the same point over and over again and just finding a new way to say it. If you're coming out on social media saying a wildly different thing every single day, it's not going to attract a very specific type of person with a specific problem, as opposed to going out and just really drilling on the same concepts. That's kind of the name of the game. It's also another case in point of why rare pains are really valuable. If taxidermists have these very specific to them problems, and those are the things that I'm always talking about. They can, there can be general problems also, but the rare problems that are specific to them that other accounting firms can't speak to, those are even better. So if I'm just coming up with a hundred different ways to Talk about those same problems day, day in and day out. That is the best way to do social media. You don't have to have these big brain like incredibly ornate, fanciful ways of saying things. Just keep talking about the same problems consistently and you're going to attract a bunch of folks. Okay, but back to social media analytics. If I go to my LinkedIn. On LinkedIn, you just go to look at your profile and then there's an option show all analytics. I can click on post analytics, change the filter to past 365 days and then show results and it'll give me a list of all of my top performing posts that I've done. The number one top performing post I've done with 1600 likes and 178,000 impressions. This is so annoying that this is the most popular one. The new Lego STEM collection includes a few accounting sets. I used AI to make images of fake accounting related Lego sets. And a surprising number of the people that engaged with this thought they were real and were actually excited. So there's a Lego box here that is. It just says tax and it looks exactly like a Lego set. It's like a product photo of the box. It says Tax. There's a guy working in an office in the dark at his desk. It's obviously nighttime and he looks very stressed. The next one is audit. There's a lady working in the dark in a warehouse, looks very tired and there's racks and racks of potatoes behind her because that's what auditing is, is counting things. And then the third one is Pizza Party. It's a bunch of people sitting around a round table eating pizza, looking sad. So what does that tell me? Well, this might have been a bad example because did that ultimately offer value to people? Did I get more followers from it? I don't know that I actually did if I want to, if I wanted to do more of that stuff. Like posts like this ultimately are not transformative for people. Maybe it helps you find a few folks. So maybe it's worth doing something entertaining like this every week. I certainly do just because I think it's fun. So maybe I do something like this similar around another like common trope in our profession. Second most popular post I have on LinkedIn is when we did the big practice management report that's got like 1600 comments. That was like a three month project though. So that's not a realistic thing for me to do a lot. Third most important one though, or third most highest engagement. 11 lies you've been told about being an accountant. We did a podcast episode on this. This did almost as well as those other two. So what is, like, the seed in that post that I could lean into further? Because it obviously resonated with folks. The underlying themes of each of the bullet points were, like, kind of our own insecurities and how we don't see other people's insecurities. So you think that your manager is a genius, and it's like, well, they're not. So it's kind of picking apart some of our internal blockers. So maybe that's something there that I need to lean more into. Next one is actually my top 11 favorite GPT ChatGPT plugins for accountants. I said the post is, there are over 800 plugins for ChatGPT. Here are my 11 favorites. I get the feeling, you know, AI stuff is generally pretty popular, but what also made that one big is probably that it looked like I did a ton of work. And I did. I actually went through every freaking plugin. So, you know, at the end of the day, like, make your. Make your social media posts useful. And so this is an example of something that was useful. Like, I did a real work for people, and then I gave it away. And so rather than just, like, playing the game, like, maybe that's telling me, okay, what's like, meaningful research I could go back and then give away that's truly valuable. I've actually been thinking about that a lot lately. Like, what are some research projects that we're sort of uniquely positioned to do rather than just saying things? To say things. What are some. Some things that we could put out into the world that would be really useful that are the sort of things where people are like, man, I want to have that information, but it would take so much time to put it together myself. Like, I'm kind of in a spot where, like, I've got employees. We can invest time in that sort of thing and then give it away. That would probably be my main takeaway of, like, skimming through these five or six biggest posts is, let's go do some research, or maybe even hire some contractors to help us do, like, a higher volume of research. In fact, I saw a social media post from somebody the other day that was something along the lines of, if I were to put together a report on one thing that we did a whole ton of research on, then you could grab a copy for free. What would it be? This guy put this post on LinkedIn and had unbelievable amounts of engagement, hundreds of comments. So if I'm looking to do more research. And this is unique to me. Maybe this isn't something that's going to be relevant to like how you build accounting firm content, but if I were going to do more research, man, I could put a post out there like that and folks will give me a whole ton of ideas. Then we can start working on our few favorite ideas, maybe pull in some off offshore help to like, help with the heavy lifting of gathering information and then put out some more high performing posts. I definitely struggle with the notion that like you gotta be saying something different every single day. And I think part of it is like, I know a lot in my mind, a lot of people listen to this podcast and subscribe to my newsletter and all that, but there's a million times as many people out there in the world who have never seen or heard from me. And so every time I put a social media post out, honestly the majority of people who see that post are not folks that consume my podcast or anything like that. And even the folks that do consume my podcast. You don't remember stuff that I said a month ago. You may remember a couple impactful tidbits, but would it really be the worst thing if I said the same thing again? Probably not. And if you are nodding your head and agreeing with me that that wouldn't be the worst thing, then don't put that expectation on yourself. Right? I do think we hold ourselves to a higher standard than oftentimes we. We don't extend ourselves the same grace that you, you may extend to me or you may extend to other people. Right? Okay, there you go. Seven tippy Top secret tools that social media wizards are using that they don't want you to know about. Don't tell anybody about this, okay? Hey, if you're a wizard or not and you have a secret tool, something that you love, drop it in the comments. A killer app, Something that's making it easier for you. Do share. That'd be super helpful. Thanks for coming and hanging. I'll see you tomorrow.