EP 416 – Micro Influencers with Elijah Whites

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This is the no Closer show where you get the latest developments in distressed note investing and learn the secrets of how you can control millions of dollars worth of property for pennies on the dollar. Get educated and entertained by someone who has closed thousands of deals and lives to support you in achieving the same. Now here's your host CEO of We Close notes, Scott Carson.

Good morning, good afternoon, good evening everybody. Welcome to this episode of the no Closure show. As always, Scott Carson. And with it being third Monday of the month, we're excited to have back our good friend and rock star marketer, Mr. Elijah White from Circuit Social.

Hello.

We didn't have you on last month because I was too busy in the Bahamas. You know, tough life.

Yeah, right. Yeah. So yeah, I wish we could all be going through those struggles.

The struggle is real much man struggle because trust me, I would rather been here with a whole lot cheaper than the Bahamas. But anyway, pretty good looking morning here Monday, it's President's Day. Just finished, wrapped up our first workshop of the year. Had a 510 smart people on there. So it's a good time. I'm a little worn out this morning. I'm not going to lie like I usually am after workshop. But that's why I called Elijah. I was like, come save me, man. I'm going to have you carry the show this morning for the most part. But we're doomed. It's a sinking ship. But for those that are listening to the note code show the first time around, share a little bit who you are and kind of what your focus is.

Yeah. So again, my name is Elijah. I am the COO at serving. We are a social media marketing company, content creation and in fact that's actually changing a whole lot right now. But for now we'll stick with that. Been in the marketing business since 2008, serving social started in 2014 and ever since then we just been all about showing people one, how to use social media, how to market your business online and then the tools and resources that are out there you can utilize in order to do that. Now of course we also offer all of those services in house. So whatever you want to do, we definitely want to do that for you. So yeah, I mean that's us in a nutshell. We focus a lot on Google local, Google search and maps marketing especially. You know, there's a lot of changes out there going on in the digital realm of the online Internets. And so yeah, we just try to educate, teach people what they can do, how they can do it and when they should do it.

That's a good point there. Everybody has a focus for their first of the year, right? Oh, hey, I'm going to do this or I'm going to get started. Rock and roll. And one of the things that we wrap up our workshops with is always kind of a 15 point plan. You can see like the plan written on the wall there for everybody. And one of the biggest things, number four, number five, is always about getting your social media up and running. Whether it's Facebook or your LinkedIn, your bigger pockets, which is primarily real estate, Twitter, YouTube, you know, meetups, and also going out to the REI clubs that a lot of people are at. And one of the things that you mentioned when you walk in was kind of the social communication, right?

Yeah. I would say this. When you're looking at social media, there's a couple things you got to pay attention to. So now that we're at the first of the year, first, if you did social media last year, really take a deep dive into your analytics. What worked, what didn't work, how much growth did you have? Did you have the growth that you wanted? Did you even make goals to grow? Were you just kind of throwing stuff out there to see what sticks at that point in time, you just really need to see what worked, what didn't. And then looking at this year, what did you not like, what did you like, what did you find challenging and just really pull all that together. And actually one of the biggest things, you got to make a plan. Right. If you really want to have a successful vacation, you don't just buy a plane ticket and go somewhere, you get a hotel room, you hopefully have rent a car. You look at some of the things that you can do while you're there. Same thing with social media. You want to have a plan. You want to make sure that you look into the type of social networks that are available to you. You don't want to, in most cases go after every social media network because, well, you have to have an audience demographic, the type of people that you're marketing to, and you want to make sure that that social platform actually caters to the people you're marketing to. Right. So having a plan is really important. Being able to see what you did last year and then really put together the plan this year on, you know, can I do more video this year? Can I be more consistent this year? Can I talk to people? Engagement is a huge thing too.

Wait a second, are you talking like talking to people like.

Yeah, exactly. No, like useful information like for instance, I would say a lot of people just getting something out there, you know, we just got to have something out there. Well, yes and no. Definitely quality and creative content is going to perform way better than just overall, just getting more and more out there. Because to be honest with you, you see a lot of these really big companies and they're really diversifying the way that they're marketing because there's so much noise online that it really sounds.

That was perfect one for them, like four of them. Yes. We have a blah, blah, blah button in the office today. While it's in here. Earlier, as I was cleaning up, I found it under a stack of files.

Yeah, you got a ton of these.

I know. Let's talk a little about the communication, because somebody reached out to me this morning, said, hey, I've been doing what you taught me. I've got a ton of new LinkedIn connections with bankers and asset managers. Should I reach back out to him? I'm like, yeah, say hello. Say thanks for connecting. And he's like, well, should I ask him if they've got notes available? Like, well, yeah, sure. It doesn't hurt.

Yeah, well, you got to start the conversation somehow, people. Even if you have all of that information on your LinkedIn page, it tells people all about what you do, what you offer, and everything from there. You know, that's one thing, but how many of us actually go through and read absolutely everything that somebody does on a LinkedIn page? Right. Compared to somebody who instantly engages you and say, hey, are you looking for this? Can I provide you this? Hey, if you need this service, I have it. I get that happen all the time. I mean, take in mind, when I really put myself out there on social media, I get tons of LinkedIn connections. I mean, tons of them. Christy, she gets even more than I do. Grant. I think it's because she's female, but she's. At the same time, she has a lot of diverse expertise, and especially with social media marketing. And of course, on LinkedIn, everybody's looking for the CEO or the COO. So with that, you have to reach out to people, you have to talk and you have to engage. That's one of the biggest things that most people miss out on when it comes down to marketing online, especially through social media, is engagement. I post a photo. Great photo. I post video. Oh, great video. Well, people comment. Are you responding to those comments? Are you keeping the conversation going? If someone says, hey, thank you so much. I really appreciated this post that you put up. I really liked this aspect of it. Do you say thanks or do you say, hey, thanks, so and so. Me too. And then you continue the conversation. Right. I would say that if you sit there and you talk with somebody in real life, right. Let's say person to person, me and Scott. If Scott just keeps on saying things to me and I'm just telling him thanks, or I'm just not responding at all, Scott's not going to be real inspired to continue the conversation.

You're saying you say something and I just say heart. Give me the thumbs up.

What's up?

It's a heart emoji. You know, imagine how difficult that would be. But that's what we see a lot of people doing these days, especially in the teens. They're on their phones, they're saying hi like this. For them, it is a conversation.

Right? Well, and take in mind too. I mean, that's what we're looking for here. It's really important to understand your audience. If you're going after teens and stuff like that, you want to be hitting the engagement online really hard from there though. You want to be engaging people enough to get them to do something. You know, do you want them to sign up for your webinar? Do you want them to sign up for your newsletter to keep up with more information? The only way that you do that is by engaging them, informing them on what they can do and how they can engage you even further. And then once they engage you, what can come from that? What kind of benefits do they get?

It's the same thing as like just having a website. A lot of people believe that they have a website. Oh, I'll have all those business coming just because I have a website. Yeah, that's not the case. You have to literally go out and still hunt down your potential clients and refer them to your website or give them something to go back and click back to your website. So, right, like with the podcasting meetup, meetup group, I got a Facebook group, whoopee doo dah. I get a few opt ins. But the biggest time I got opt ins is when I went on myself on an evening and just went into and found Austin podcasters and messaged them, hey, think you might enjoy this? Hey, you might enjoy this. On Instagram. People responded, oh, I can't make it, but can't make it. But hey, go ahead and sign up for the group. It's free. You'll be alert of everything else going on. But we had 30 people show up to it. Yeah, you know, we're working on one as well, for south by Southwest, that we kick into heavy gear here in the next week or two to really drive people to that. But that's the thing. I think a lot of people, like, hey, I'm going to throw something up there, and that's all I'm going to do. And that's literally just the first, like, nugget that you've got to have done. Right. You've got to constantly be reaching out. And that kind of takes us into. I think I can transition it to kind of becoming almost like a micro influencer, right?

Yeah. So micro influencers are. You have people who actually have authority. Scott Carson, I would consider a micro influencer. You have the audience, you have the downloads. I mean, your podcast, you have success with the podcast. You have individuals wanting you to be on their show to share your content. You have a lot of users engaging you. Being a micro influencer is actually a really great way to tap into other audiences to build brand trust. Especially for instance, you're just getting started out. You find somebody who already is working with the type of people you want to work with. And take in mind when it comes down to, and Scott, you mentioned this earlier, is that they're not your competition.

Right.

You're an individual. Not everybody is going to like the way that I say things compared to another guy that I don't like the way he says things. But he clearly has other clients and we both do the same thing. We're able to work with each other and understand that. Right. So being in a micro influencer, there's all these individuals that you can engage with and you can involve yourself with. Even if you feel like you're competing with them, you're not. The world is a big place. The pie is big. You know, you just got to find out where your piece is and take the bite. Right?

Yeah. You got to go out and carve out your own piece. You can't wait for it to be hand delivered to you on a platter.

Exactly. But when you start engaging with micro influencers, you'll find that, hey, they can work with you and show you that path to be able to get there. Right. Especially if you're already very knowledgeable in your industry, but you just don't have the audience. Right. So you have the knowledge. You don't have the audience. So what you're looking for is somebody who has that knowledge or, and has that audience that you can start working with and start sharing information. Take in mind too, you know, like for instance, brick and mortar businesses. If you're going to engage brick and mortar with a micro influencer. What they're looking for is individuals that a lot of influence that can come inside that business experience, a product experience, their services be able to tell their audience about that. So on a local level, micro influencer could be that local person in your community on Instagram that has above 2000 followers. Now take in mind, just because somebody has a lot of followers doesn't mean they're an influencer. Because I can buy a million followers all day long. But I'm looking for like what we said earlier engagement.

I have a buddy that's got a half million dollar, half a million followers on Instagram and absolutely love the guy. He's been influenced on you, but he was all, yeah, you should sign up for my guy. That does help me out with this. And I get the guy on the phone and I'm like, okay. Because I know what my avatar is. And Instagram necessarily isn't the best avatar for what we do in the note business because it's. Our primary audience is 35 to 65. Instagram doesn't have, I mean they have people at 35, 65, but you don't see it's not quite the best way for real estate or real estate investing and things like that.

Right.

So I get to talk to his guy, his guy's like, oh yeah, yeah, we're gonna make you go viral. I'm like, wait a second, is this gonna be viral? That if I can somehow dictate towards the right people or this can be some 17 year old Bangladeshian kid across the world that has an Instagram profile is just gonna follow me out of the blue. Cause that's not really effective use of my time or marketing that, right?

Well, yeah, exactly. And it's not necessarily, those type of customers aren't necessarily going to engage you on the level that you're looking for. You're looking for a quality connection. You know, half a million followers that don't really contribute to anything that you're doing. They really don't watch your stuff, they're following you, that's great. But they're not going to your website, they're not visiting the links, they're not engaging your posts, they're not liking, they're not commenting. But yet you can have 2000 followers and you get a lot of comments, you get a lot of likes, you get actual real, true engagement from other human beings that are enjoying the content that you're bringing to the table now. So Instagram is one thing, right? But you got Facebook, you got LinkedIn, you got a lot of these people out here that you can do these cross promotion programs with that can bring the audience, that can give you the exposure that you need. But you got to engage them, you got to actually work with them and know that those are the type of influencers you want to be a part of and just start talking to them, figuring out, hey, what can we do together? What kind of programs can I put together that you would want to be involved in or whatever the case is. I think most people are always interested in collaboration, as long as it's collaboration and it's not a one sided thing. Right. It has to be a win win. People love win wins because, well, we all like to win.

Yo collaborate and listen I sit back with a brand new Something grabs a hold of me tightly Flows like a harpoon daily with marketing let's stop turn off the lights and my phone glows to the stream I rock Instagram like a vandal I go up the stage and watch me dance like a genital yeah, Ali Larder would be excited about that. The little riri would love that. But it makes me crack up about that a little bit because I was thinking about how I think it was on Friday or Saturday, how all these people were not last week because Instagram scrubbed a ton of bots of fake accounts off of people's profile.

Good.

Yeah, good. There was a big thing that Kylie Jenner lost like a million followers and they were all, I'm like gay. That's great. They weren't real people following anyway.

Well, it's a ripoff. I mean, this is why, especially when you're engaging influencers and taking my serving social, we consult with people who especially are looking for influencers to really try to guide them down the right path on this. Because you could sit there and say, well, I'm going to pay this person, let's say $5,000 for this one post because they have all of these followers. But yet when we truly dive down deep into that account, you can tell really quickly if that $5,000 is actually worth it. Somebody like Kylie Jenner. Yeah, they're going to get lot of interaction not only from their fans, but also all the.

They get paid like a million bucks for an Instagram post.

Yeah, well, they have the audience there, you know, I mean, homegirl is like, what, she's worth like 100 million something dollars.

No. So she's like, they did a crowdfunding page to get her to a billion, the last hundred million to crowdfunding I want that. But the funny thing is, I would.

Like y' all to do a crowdfunding page to finance my company.

You know, it's not a bad idea.

Yeah, right.

So talk about micro influencers. So here's one thing that I just did recently. So we have the podcast. One of the things I'm able to do is I'm able to go back in and see each episode has. And we just went over 246,000 downloads as of last night. So we'll hit 250 by this Friday, which is. It's a big milestone for us. But I went back in from and looked at each episode the last couple days, see how many downloads I've had. And it's in a direct proportion. I wanted to see who shared the episodes because if we shared, great. I would like them to share.

Right.

If they didn't share, we'll put a little stars. Okay. We probably won't have them come back on because part of the goal is not only just good content, but also that it's share. Like Mike. Mike Terravella mentioned, Sky's a big influencer. He helped me inspire to do my podcast. Thanks, man. I'm glad to hear that I'm on Mike's show later on in a couple of days. Remember correctly, if not, I think it's today, actually. But we'll make sure. I'll check my calendar. But that's the whole thing, too.

Busy man over here.

Busy man. That's one of the things I like about podcasting is the way I look at it, is I'm helping that person who has a podcast with good content. I'm helping influence their audience and vice versa. It's like I'm speaking. And even if they only have 100 downloads an episode. Yeah, it's like I'm in front of 100 people. If they've got a thousand downloads, that's even better because I'm in front of speaking. But. And part of that has helped me influence my schedule so that. Okay, I would rather if I could stay home and I get booked five or six podcast episodes in a day. Not that I do that, but if instead of me traveling to one event, it just makes more sense for me to do that and then being able to help out. How about it's a win. Win across the board for the most part.

Right. Well. And I think when you start doing that kind of stuff too, it gives people more of that opportunity. Engagement is something I'm going to really drive home today is because everything that we do online, for the most part, is all about engagement. Okay. Do our social postings engage you? Do they spark some kind of question? They spark interest? Does it give you enough information that makes you want to go and click the link and go to my website and find out more? Do you want to reach out to me? Do you want to sign up for my newsletter again, subscribe to the podcast, subscribe to my YouTube channel, whatever the case may be like that. It's just such an important piece. But yes. I mean, even if it's someone who doesn't have a big audience or something like that, one thing I've always hated is when you're in business and you're working with others, you find some companies where you're just too small. But yet I could be one of the strongest partners in the future that they could ever have. Now, I don't know that for certain. That's all speculation. But at the same time, having that opportunity to actually have them engage with me, see what I can do. I think all of us would like to be in a room full of 100 people, and from there, being able to not only have a room full of 100 people, but make sure there was a camera in the back that filmed the whole thing, and then that we could use that for later on. And something like a podcast is able to do that. And not only am I getting in front of your audience, you're getting in front of my audience. And then anything that I do from then on out is going to also. Now it's giving you more exposure, Right?

Exactly.

But being able to figure out who those people are, who's complimentary to you. And it doesn't even have to be somebody in your industry. It could just be a complimentary industry with real estate. I'm part owner in a moving company here in Austin called Simpler Moving and Packing. Shameless Plug. And Shameless Plug.

Hang on a second. Let's add that there to the. There we go.

There you go. But with that, we have a podcast that we're working on right now and really looking at the type of content that we want to put out, because one, moving is boring. People hate moving in the first place. It's stressful. It's expensive.

Oh, I think I just pulled the back muscle without even doing it.

Yeah, exactly. And I've heard that guy shows up at his house, just went and bought the box of getting ready to pack in the first box he tried to build. He pulled his back out. Right now he's done. Okay, so. But with that there are so many things that go along with the moving industry. You got realtors, you got cleaners, you got construction, you got everything to do on the outside of the house, interior of the house, and then anything in between investment. I mean, there's so many things that we can look at and all these different avenues that we can go down and find those influencers in those industries and just really engage them on the right level, make sure it's a win win and just watch our audience grow.

And that's the big thing too is if you're working with other people and you're sharing their information, most of the time they're one of the first ones that want to refer business back to you to do business with you. Especially, like, I'll give an example. A lot of US are using LinkedIn and bigger pockets to really kind of connect with other asset managers, banks to get products. Actually, tonight's topic is creating the perfect pitchbook and using a short video to help get your message out in a LinkedIn Pro. LinkedIn comment.

Oh, cool.

So you don't have a lot of real estate there.

Right.

But it gives you enough room to put a link to a video or link to something about what you do to really get the word out and encourage conversation.

Yeah.

And a lot of people like, hey, just connect D. What do you have? What do you have? What do you have? And people like, okay, I don't know you from Adam or oh, you got a good glamour shots headshot. I'll take a look at it. Exactly, exactly. The thing is, you want to encourage those conversations and those are some of the best things that you can do. And besides just commenting, share something. The one thing I hate, there's a guy that comments on everything I post. Like a podcasting post. Oh, hey, great. Follow my podcast. Hey, jackass. I already do.

Yeah.

Oh, I'm already. Hence, we're friends or follow you. You know what? Third time you did, it's the same message. I'm like, okay, never mind. Unfollow.

There is a way to really piss people off. And here's the thing about that engagement. What? One thing I've noticed is that like, for instance, I'm in the Google Street View program. So I have a lot of companies reach out to me saying, one of.

The premier Google street programs here.

And because of that, I have a lot of companies that reach out to me and they're like, hey, we're looking for photographers in your area. We'd love to connect with you. And I'm like, Great. Yeah, let's do it. Because not only could I fulfill the job for them, but at the same time, I can also see like, hey, your company, you have resources. I have needs as well. We could really partner up on something. We do stuff nationwide. What I end up finding is that two days later, I get the same email. I already responded to your first email telling you, yeah, I'm down, you know, let's set up the time to talk. And now I'm getting that second email. And so at this point in time, now I'm spamming the company and I'm telling them that I'm done. I'm blocking everything. Right. That relationship's over.

Okay.

Same thing with my social media is that have people that reach out and they'll ask me like, hey, we, we have this and this, and we would love to get with you and talk to you about software development. I'm always up to talk to people about software development or social or your next best service. You got something cool that you think is really great. Let's talk about it. Let's really see where I could implement that into what we already do. Because I know technology moves so quickly. It is hard to keep up with all the new products. And so we make an effort to try to find those new products. But at the same time, I already said yes, I already said, let's schedule a time. And then I get that same message from you again on LinkedIn. Well, you're either a bot or something or you're trying to take some cheap way out of getting in contact. And that's not how I do relationships. That's not how I'm interested in building relationships. And so automatically, like that opportunity is gone, pissing people off that you acted like you were somehow personally reaching out to them and then they realized that they were just a part of some mass message is really disappointing.

Yeah. Anytime you can customize it, I mean, even you're doing a mass email out to somebody, anytime you kind of even put their first name in the title or first name. Something that helps aggravating is when it ends up being the same canned response.

Yeah.

You can tell like, hey, we talked about that. Oh, hey. Yes. What can I help you with? About. Okay, this is a bot. Okay, great. Mike asked a question here.

Yeah.

What's the best way to aggregate all those interactions with all the platforms and bigger pockets is not exportable at all. The whole goal with bigger pockets I try to get is to get people to go on over to the website, going to opt in there and then carry on the conversation on my platform versus bigger pockets. Because bigger pockets will stop you if you've communicated with more than 12 people in a day.

Oh, right.

If you post more than two things in their marketplace, they shut you down. I mean, they're like Nazis over there.

Oh, geez, they're horrible.

But it's such a great platform because there's so many real estate investors. You can't send the same private message to the same individual because they'll start recognizing you're looking to spam. Same thing on meetup. You can't post the same thing in different groups, even though it may be. You have a deal in Tampa and you want to go to all four or five of the meetup groups and post a deal there. You've got to change it up, switch the paragraphs around so it doesn't fit in there. Biggest thing I can tell you, Mike, is communicating on a regular basis and taking the time, whether it's through you or an assistant, to log in, communicate with those people individually or grabbing their info.

Right.

Whether it's their name, email, phone number, and then putting that into your system. It's a bit of a tedious interaction. One of the funny things I always crack about is when people go to LinkedIn and they post something like, oh, I've got a list of deals. And then it'll be like a hundred people like, oh, send me it. And they put all their emails in there and I just kind of chuckled like, copy, paste, copy paste, copy paste. And I'm thinking like, yay. Or.

That'S a lot of times that's what you end up doing, chat. The reason why people love using chatbots is just that, right? Is that one. I've never tried to act like my chatbot was an actual person. Okay. I always wanted to make sure people knew that it was a chatbot. And then from there, though, you automatically, as long as you can get them to subscribe to your chatbot, you open up this line of communication where, yeah, you might send out a mass message, but as soon as they respond, you're talking to them individually. Now you're able to actually sit there and do instant messenger with those people on a regular basis. Same thing. Google my business has that messaging people can message you through and you can sit there and just talk with them through your Google my business. Now, of course, local businesses compared to somebody working within the real estate industry who's looking for investors and things like that is going to be different, right? But being able to utilize those type of resources can help you out there. Now, as far as when it comes down to your social media, really being able to see like what all is coming through all at once and being able to manage that, social platforms like Sprout Social can help you out with that. It's an automatic social media scheduling software. So you can get on there, you can schedule all your posts out for the entire month. Basically, it's social media automation, but they have social listening. In fact, Sprout Social actually purchased, simply measured, which is one of the best besides like. Well, I guess actually I would probably say they were one of the best social media analytics softwares out there. I mean, they would really look at everything they could, especially with social listening and stuff like that. Those are features that they offer. So services like that can really help you get control of the actual social media aspect of it. Then, of course, with podcasts, I'm going to go to Scott on this one since he's the guru when it comes down to podcasts right now, I think he buy has more of an understanding on that.

So the beautiful thing about podcasting is anybody can do it, whether it's a Facebook Live video.

Even you.

Oh yes, even you. Or a YouTube video that you use. Because that's the beautiful thing. I like what Chris Chromitos did with a PodFest Expo that's coming up here the first weekend because he has a kind of a true podcasting track, which is like the audio side. He also has a video side to those that are just using YouTube. And then of course, there's a lot of crossover in between.

A lot of crossover.

Lot of crossover. So the biggest thing I look at when I'm looking at doing the podcast is when we've been doing videos is I look as each platform as a net. Okay? Now the smallest net in my platform, the smallest net that we use is actually Instagram. It's a small net, but we still use it. We still have 2,000 plus followers, maybe 3,000 plus. I still post on a regular basis there. We're going out and connecting with other podcasters or other investors there and doing that. But our biggest net is our video. It's twofold. It's our YouTube channel. Because YouTube is what? It's the second largest search engine owned by the largest search engine.

Right? Well, and video accounts for about 80% of the content that's being consumed. So not doing video is.

It's basically choosing. But that's the thing. I part of these different podcasting groups and there's all sorts of People. And the first thing I do is I threw a podcast up on itunes. How come only 15 people downloaded it? I'm like, well, first and foremost, itunes is not even a top 100 download website.

Yep.

It's not even in the top 100 if you're just throwing it there and expecting everybody to fall over dead, like.

Oh, I gotta listen to a podcast.

Or I'm gonna die. And they all have that high pitched voice that sound like Mickey Mouse.

Oh, boy, oh boy, oh boy.

I found a new podcast lesson.

Oh, boy, Mickey's gonna be so excited. Let's go back to rat land.

Okay.

Gotta subscribe.

He's gotta subscribe now. I'm gonna get that when I get home.

Yeah.

But anyway, the thing is, it's. You gotta throw some of your activities, like planting seeds, planting trees. You gotta throw your seeds out across the point, give it time to marinate, give it time to germinate and kind of grow. Pop up the odds and then you can see which is growing faster.

Right.

Did you plant bamboo in one field that's skyrocketing at six inches a day, or did you plant something that's going on in a bloom like once a year? Another part of the area there. Christy Weitz is shaking her head at us like, oh, my God, thank you, honey.

So to add on to that, right, all of these things that are out there, that's the top of the funnel.

Yep.

I mean, this is the top of your sales funnel. So you got your video, and maybe through video, maybe you've even broken that down into YouTube, Vimeo. And then from there you're even looking at your Facebook stories, your Instagram stories, you know, your Instagram tv. You could break all those down into one video category because that's all your visuals, right. So you do one podcast, you take that video and then you just chop it up, you just chop the fuck out of it. And now you have all these different size of videos, all these different versions of it that go through all of your channels, and that's the top of your funnel. Because that's exactly what we're trying to do here is we want to try to engage. You hear people say, well, we're going to meet them where they're at. Well, they're on YouTube and they're on Facebook and they're on Instagram. Now, not everybody is using these platforms, but if you're going to creating this type of content in the first place and you really want to engage people, you're going to spread, cast that net. You're going to really see where some of your biggest traffic sources are coming from. But that is the top of your sales funnel, your social media, all the video, even I would say email marketing I would think is a little bit further down because you got to get them in the first place, right?

Got to collect that at whatever.

You got to get them there in the first place and you want to bring them into the website. Once they get into your actual website, you got to also make sure that the website is designed to be a funnel. They got to get the information and you want to move them through your website appropriately. UX UI Just the overall usability of a website is something that I think a lot of people get lost on because, well, I got my website up. Okay, great. You know we just talked about that. People think you just get a website up and we're going to be making money here. Well, that's not necessarily the case here because now we got to set up all the social. We got to set up all these outlining top of the funnel sources that are going to bring the audience in. But once they actually get on the website, does your website serve them? I mean is it clickbait to get to badass social posting that then you go to the website and it's just lackluster and it's like wow, well this.

Didn'T give me any information.

You know, I thought I was going to figure out how this person over here turned mom and pop shop into a seven figure business. And then I get there and it's kind of like, well where's that information? Where is all of that? A lot of those things can really affect the way that one people engage you, how they actually subscribe to your content. Could have some really good content. And you keep on telling everybody to go to this place that really sucks. They're probably not going to want to engage with you and not be a part of that because they didn't like that version of it. And that could be just enough for them to just wash their hands of you completely and go after somebody else.

Yeah, let's hang out. Let's go hang out here. But we're going to go to the dentist office and I'm going to do a root canal.

Yeah.

Don'T want that. But that's the thing. You talk about something very having basically everything kind of uniformed across the same thing with colors or same images or logos have it kind of look the same. So it all kind of blends together. Like I bet it'd be really hard for people to figure out what my favorite color is. Huh, Says the green wall behind me.

Any guesses?

Any guesses? Right. But they see that because I got two colors of green in my logo.

Right.

Is green all over my website, all over other things we have, whether it's Note Night in America webinars, whether it's the Note Closer show podcast or it's even things that. But that's uniform. People get an idea of that and they get to expect it. And it actually works in my favor because now people are like, I'm looking for the green email. The asset manager, like, oh, the guy that has the green email. Yeah, I want to send him stuff or I want to reach out to them because oh hey, I recognize their branding, I recognize what they're doing. Or hey, I went to LinkedIn and I mean I have anything for them now, but I see that they're posting stuff on a regular basis there.

Right. So branding, we all know how important that is, right? Being consistent with that brand. Really figuring out what your brand is and going after it. Now take in mind, your brand doesn't necessarily have to be who you are. I know a lot of people say that, well, your brand is who you are. No, not necessarily because I'm an individual. But Serving Social was created for a specific purpose. And so the reason behind Serving Social and wanted to make sure that. Or me and Christie wanted to make sure that the branding was actually for that purpose. Right. Why we created Serving Social, that's what my branding went after.

Spoon or the Alphabet soup. Yeah, brilliant.

Yeah, we're serving social here, baby.

That's right.

And so that's really important. And you want to be make sure that that's consistent everywhere. And to take in mind this is not just for brand recognition. I will tell you this. When you want to really jump into the bare bones of SEO search engine optimization, being consistent across the Internet is really important. So your name, your address, your phone number, any information that you put out there on a regular basis should be the same everywhere.

So we found a funny story here. Last weekend I was on a two day workshop with Meryl Chandler from Credit Sense. It's also very thing to help you boost your credibility to get funded from banks. Yeah, having the same type of information, so you don't want to confuse people. But yeah, it's one of the most important things. Being congruent in the things that you're providing on a regular basis.

Well, exactly. So check this out right now on Google. Okay? Now Google, when it comes down to how they rank people, there's 41 factors, and for the most part, we think we know all those factors, but they change on a regular basis. Okay. And on top of that, every day there's like millions of new searches that are performed on Google that even Google has never seen. Right. So when it comes to human activity, it's also something different. Right. But when it comes down to a local business, let's say this, you're only doing investments in Atlanta, Georgia, okay? That's it. Yet when Google looks at local businesses on how they rank, they rank you on three different factors. It's prominence, relevance, and proximity. Right. So when somebody's looking for somebody that offers. Looking for your services in your area, sorry, they're going to look at one. How close is that person? To me, that's what Google is going to look at. And then based on your information that you have out there, how relevant is that information? And then when it comes into prominence, how much of that relevant information is everywhere and how many places is that found? How many times did you actually go out there and look up your business and make a consistent effort to make sure your business information is correct all over and that you're on a regular basis putting more information out there? This is when it even comes into blogs. You know, that's why podcasting can be so powerful, is the amount of content that you can put out there, the amount of byproduct that you can create from one podcast, and then how much of that becomes that prominence aspect that you're actually putting out there online. So, for instance, you got your podcast, right? And you don't just put it on itunes, you put it everywhere. Spotify, Pandora, like, any place that you listen to audio, podcast or whatever. That's one thing I really like. I listen to a lot of npr. Some people might shake their heads, but.

It'S not just a lot of.

Well, I don't know. It's National Public Radio. You can trust the public, right?

That's right. That's right.

So basically from there, though, what they say is, yeah, you can listen to more like this wherever you get your podcast.

Mmm.

Now they're saying, hey, wherever you listen your podcast, we're there because they made that effort. They knew, like, hey, we do audio. This is our business. This is how we get in front of people. So let's make an effort to make sure that all of our information is everywhere, where people would listen to this.

Well, and it's the same thing you look at. Like, I think the first person was really good about using Radio. And then transition radio would be Howard Stern, actually. Oh, yeah, the Eagle lot of New York was a popular show. Then they turned it into a TV show on the E. Networks.

Right.

And then became. He had a movie come out and then, you know, he's got the podcast because he got kicked off of radio. He had to go to XM radio.

Had to go to xm. Yeah.

But that's the thing is. And you could substitute podcast for just, we could say YouTube videos. Because a lot of people, I think podcasting discouragement. There's a lot of work, which is what I thought. But just sharing a video, because that's what I did for nine months before we ever launched a podcast, was doing. Just doing a very simple Facebook live video on a topic each day. A lot of times it's me holding my camera here, it's on a tripod, or even having an assistant out there holding it while I'm throwing ducks over my shoulder into the water, being goofy. But that's just simple things that you can do and they don't necessarily have to be. And they could be a five minute nugget or. What are you working on today? What's the day in the life of Laura Blanc, Silver Hammer Investments, Day in the life of Charles Wilson out there on the assets that he's doing it. And so that's the thing is if you're looking to do something and that's kind of wrap it all together here, you're looking to be more of a social influencer and sharing what you're doing, just sharing what you got going on, just sharing. I mean, if people are taking food, porn, pictures or too busy taking a selfie, from the right angles, it looks like they got a lot of cleavage, guys. It's kind of hard to get a lot of cleavage. There's no. You need some more. Just more pushups. What I'm getting at is sharing what you have going on, whether it's on Instagram or then sharing across the board. Friday things just get in the habit of doing it. Doing one thing, getting a little bit good, then adding something else, doing something once and then working on doing it for seven days straight.

Yep.

You know, there was a podcaster that was at Podfest Expo last year and she's like, oh, yeah, I'm going to do live video for 30 days. She did great. And then she stopped. And I'm like, why would you stop doing live video? Well, I just challenged myself. I got to the end, I'm like, you had all this traffic. It wasn't about you. It was about what you were providing. Teased all this other audience and now that audience went away somewhere else.

Perfect example of this. First off, a narrative is so important, okay? That's why being consistent, because every day you're telling people a little bit more about that story, right? You're telling people a little bit more about what you're doing and they can put together this overall, like, hey, this is what this guy does. This is what he does on a regular basis. This is how he goes about life. You even hear with people in reality TV or anything like that, they're like, I always just say to myself that the one most important thing about this is this, right? So now they've just shared a little bit of tidbit of who they are and how they go about, but we're building that narrative. One of the things I would tell you right now is I watch a lot of gaming stuff online, especially through YouTube. And because I mean, we're watching this billion dollar market emerge, right? So, but like, what is engaging people to continue to watch that type of content, right? But pay attention to the way that the guys that are live streaming and what they say, because even on their recordings, they'll let you know, like, hey guys, sorry, you know, I was sick for a couple days. I mean, they're apologizing for not putting out content because I want content. Where is it at? Like, I watch you, I subscribe to you, I get on YouTube, just figure out what you are doing. Yeah, exactly. You know, it becomes that, hey, I gotta get through the next episode. All the way to the point where they have premieres. Hey, subscribe to my YouTube channel, do this, buy that, and you actually get videos released two hours before everybody else, right? There's like all these things that even YouTube's in doing.

Elijah's Hot list.

Yeah. Oh yeah, baby.

The hot list.

Two hours before. Yeah. 48 hours before my new podcast. Oh, yeah.

Oh yeah.

Marketing hot.

Oh, that's not a bad idea. The marketing Hot minute.

We take things you hate and make them sexy. So but from that you'll see that these, you'll see that these YouTubers, they will even tell you that, yeah, I lost 50,000 subscribers because I just didn't put anything up for a week. Because as soon as you stop fulfilling that need, they're going somewhere else. It's just like any relationship. You have a wife, you have a girlfriend, you, as soon as you stop taking her out on dates, you stop spending time with her, you stop having those conversations, you think she's going to hang around.

I mean, no, she can jump on a plane, take off.

Yeah.

Okay. I have a little paper, a little airplane here, Southwest, that I picked up the plane. It's one of the things I always crack up. I bought it was the crazy idea that the plane just crashed there. Taking it with me and doing a stupid video when I'm traveling. But a lot of people like, what's a grown man doing playing with a little kid? Is he. I'm afraid they're growing up with Stephanie. Is he a good boy? You're a brave soul to travel with such a crazy man.

You're such a big kid, aren't you?

Does he need duct tape? Well, yes, definitely put duct tape, which is great. Laura Blanc asked the question here, what's the best software to chop up long video into shorter ones? And I was gonna say shared cut story with me.

Yeah. So Cut story is one of them. But actually Instagram, I've noticed when I uploaded bigger videos, they start chopping them up for you. So I've noticed that. Which I haven't done too much on social media. Fair warning. We're doing a ton of changes right now in serving social in regards to how we're going to be delivering services, products, information. And because of that, that's been taking up all my time.

Well, but you guys do a lot for other people.

Of course. I mean, yeah, we're always kind of playing in the background with other organizations and other groups. So, yeah. The man behind.

Don't pay attention to the man behind the curtain. He's a curtain.

I'm behind the curtain, that guy that pulls that curtain. So that's usually how that works out. But I would say Cut Story for Instagram is one of them really easy. You just throw up a video and it chops it up into 15 seconds.

Increments, increments.

That's all done on your phone if you are doing it on your computer. Honestly, if you're not doing it on a mobile device, I would recommend if you're on a Mac imovie, it could come standard, really easy to use from there. I personally use Adobe Premiere just because if I'm going to be actually sitting on my desktop computer chopping up a video, I'm going to make sure it's the best damn video I can get. I'm going to be able to do all my color corrections work on my audio subtitles, all that kind of good stuff that I can bring into there. There's a lot of great apps and I can definitely Share more of those with you, depending on exactly what you're trying to do. Not every app is going to serve that purpose. Some apps allow you to actually chop up the video, but you can chop up the video, but you're only going to use that one little section. But it comes with a lot of other cool stuff that you can do to that video to really enhance it, really make it be something more than just maybe something that's kind of like a stale piece of bread. So. But yeah, cut stories, one of the things I would recommend for Instagram and that can actually work out really well for Facebook. So if you're doing stuff on Facebook. But yeah, like I said, from there I would Adobe Premiere, we got Final Cut Pro. All of those seem really overwhelming. But I will tell you right now, if you just use the basic features of cutting a video, dropping it in there, cutting it and exporting it, it's actually really easy.

Very, very.

And that's definitely something that we do have some classes that we're going to be coming up on that we'll actually be teaching some more about video editing and some of the simple tools and tactics that you can use. It's actually a part of the thinking local podcast that Serving Social is actually launching coming up here. We're a little bit behind on it. Just film it, Just do the thing. That's all we're saying.

Film the video, send the email, post the photo. Yeah, exactly. What's the best way for people to reach out to you? As always, Elijah.

Yeah, so elijahervingsocial.com of course you can go to www.servingsocial.com to find out more about Serving Social media. That site will be completely revamped here soon. As well as if you reach out to me@elijahervingsocial.com I also have some forms that I can send over where we can basically do a 30 minute consultation call. So if you are trying to figure out what your next line of business is or you know where you want to go, I'm trying to get some direction. I know that not everybody has a budget, so sometimes you're just looking for some guidance to get you there. I'd rather guide you to get you where you need to be. So when you have some money, you want to come spend it with me and not somebody else, right?

Yeah, but you didn't mean me. That was. He understood the other guy. Okay.

Yeah, the other guy. Okay, I'll do this one next time. But yeah, so if that's something that you're interested in, just email me elijah servingsocial.com we'll set up a 30 minute consultation call with you and we'll talk about your marketing goals and figure out what direction you can go and if what you can use.

Yeah, guys, take advantage of that. It's one of the things that actually it's how we originally met. I met Christie in San Diego event find out we're both awesome locals. She put together, reviewed some things, gave me some ideas and some stuff and we've all been really good friends since.

Yeah.

Looking forward to what you guys got. Rock and rolling here.

A lot of great synergy, a lot.

Of great century and a lot of sake bomb.

So much, so much sake.

All right, guys and gals, that's gonna wrap it up for this episode of the Knuckle Show. Elijah, thanks for coming in, hanging out on your head to do another appointment here shortly. But I want to say thank you again. Glad to have you back on.

Yeah.

Yes, definitely. And go check it out. Servingsocial.com everybody. If you're looking for kind of a game plan, you're kind of overwhelmed and you need to kind of know where you're at and what you've got going and what was working for you and then get some suggestions to kind of moving forward in the rest of the year. That's the place to get started. So we will see you all at the top, everybody. Have a great day. Bye, everybody.

Bye.

Sam.