Freshening Up Your Social Media Marketing Strategy

You ever wondered, how can I make social media marketing work for me and work for my business? Then you're in the right place because Nicole Morgan is with us today on Cashing On Camera to talk about how to freshen up, breathe new life into your social media marketing strategy. And she is a great person to have on because she is the CEO and founder of her own integrated marketing and PR agency based in Tulsa, Oklahoma. And that's Resolute PR. So Nicole, so great to have you on Cashing On Camera today. I want to start the conversation because you're an integrated agency, right? You do the marketing and you do the PR. And I think for our audience, it might be a good thing to start with the difference. What is the difference between PR and marketing?

Yeah. So I, first of all, thanks for having me on. It's so great to meet you face to face and I've seen so much of your stuff. So this was really exciting. So I think a really great real-world example to kind of explain the difference between the two would be during COVID We saw everything had been very integrated for our clients up until that point, but we really saw the difference between the two. And so in the beginning of COVID when everybody was freaking out and trying to figure out how they could retool their business and the way that they were doing things and potentially changing how an event was happening, it was really— our, our business really shifted towards toward things like messaging. How are you communicating with your audiences? How can you, how can you let people know that you're still open for business and that you're following all of the safety protocols and taking all of the precautions and making people feel safe and listening when things were going on? And there were a lot of employees that were really struggling with a lot of different issues over the course of 2020. So things went really heavy on the more traditional PR side. Then as things kind of stabilized, Then things went really heavy on the marketing side because then people said, oh, everything's going to be okay for me as a business. I've gotten the support I need. We still have to make money. And so then things started moving more into, into the marketing side of things with things like digital ads or advertising, newsletters, you know, really trying to get back up and running as a business to support the sales side of things. So So that's kind of a real-world example of the differences between the two and the different types of services that we offer. But in reality, they're just becoming more and more one in the same. We're really seeing that in today's environment, you cannot do just PR or just marketing anymore to be successful. Those things are, they're evolving and you really have to be able to hit on all of the different, all the different pieces to to see any kind of success and to move the needle.

But you've been running your agency now for, I think, 15 years, well over a decade. And you have, have you always done the integrated approach? And I'm just, the reason I'm asking is because is this something that you saw or, you know, you saw this coming? It was like there was going to be a day where this is all really going to meld together, or is it just that it happened that to turn out that way?

So I actually, I've run my agency for 8 years. Before that, I was at another startup agency that ended up closing. And so that's an interesting question because I'm also an adjunct professor at OSU. And so it— I've been doing that for about 3 years. And so it's interesting to see how, how differently they're teaching this now, because when I got my degree, it was a degree in journalism with an emphasis in public relations. And if you wanted to take any advertising classes or marketing class— I mean, marketing was in a completely different school. And the advertising track was— I mean, you had to be on a track. It was very just very separate. Um, now it's, it's integrated communications. And so the, the kids that are graduating now, they are learning all of the different pieces and, and learning how they fit together. Um, when I was at my, the previous agency, I had a really great boss who allowed me to test a lot of things. And so kind of the light bulb moment for me was I was working with one of my kind of, you know, flagship clients, and they got a huge investment. It was like a million dollar investment. And so they wanted to completely rebrand. They wanted to redo their name, their website, everything. And traditionally they would've gone to a different agency to do all of that, but we had a graphic designer in-house. And so the client said, Nicole, you know us better than anybody. We'd really like for you to lead this. And so I was kind of hearing about SEO and I thought, well, that's interesting. And kind of just poking around and testing some things. And what I started noticing was all of the news coverage that I had gotten for this client over the years was on the first page of Google. In fact, some of it was actually ranking higher than their website was. And so I started thinking, hmm, these things kind of play together. And that was probably the beginning of me starting to test some of these things out. And then when I started my own agency 8 years ago, I just knew from the beginning I wanted to be seen as an integrated firm. And it's taken a little while because a lot of people in the market knew me for my public relations background. And, you know, we'd have some frustration because a client would go and hire another agency to do a logo design, not realizing that was something we could handle. But over time, people have— they've caught up and they've learned kind of what our approach is. So it's taken some time, and industry-wide, this is a change that's happening. Um, with the change in the media landscape, the opportunities to get traditional earned news coverage are just less and less. And so if you're not moving in this direction, it's almost detrimental to your business. I'm, I'm not sure how people can sustain it, um, doing the way they've always done it. Yeah.

So let's dig in a little bit on how is it that they've always done it? What is the way that they've always done it that isn't really going to sustain them going forward?

Yeah. Well, traditionally public relations firms were where you went for, I mean, community connections and that's still very valid and certainly a big part of a lot of public relations firms. But you know, the big thing that, and people come to us for this too, they say, I want news coverage. I want to get into the media. I want to be able to control the narrative. Um, and you know, while that's still possible, I, I can tell you from Tulsa's perspective, just business publications alone, we used to have 4 business publications and then every community around us had their own newspaper. Well, those have all been bought up by one conglomerate, so that's not really an option anymore. And then the business publications have all gone away. So you really just have our daily newspaper, which used to have a staff of probably 5 5 reporters just in the business section alone. That's being run by 1 person now. So it's, it has changed dramatically. Not saying that there's not an opportunity for coverage, but the amount of coverage that you would need to really move the needle is just, it, it's not there like it used to be. So it really puts everyone in a position of needing to find other opportunities to tell their story and to connect with their audiences. And, and then the other part of that is the, the desire to control the narrative is even more challenging than it's ever been because we're in an era of clickbait and a lot of negative perceptions of the media. So there's a lot of distrust on the client side. And so having to overcome some of that when these reporters are, they're just trying to do their job, but they're getting a lot of additional pressure that they didn't used to have as well. So it's just, it's changed a lot.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, I come from the TV industry. I spent 25 years on television and 17 of them on the national stage, and I managed a news department at one point as well. That industry has changed radically from my heyday, right, when I was, was really in it. And I totally hear what you're saying about the local outlets that you're talking about. There, one person is doing the job of 5, and that is what we're seeing in the broadcasting industry. Uh, so yeah, I definitely can concur to that. Now let's talk about, uh, the three— you've been talking, I think, predominantly here about earned media. In other words, that you're getting press and you're getting coverage by maybe local or regional outlets. But then what about the owned media? So the, the media that you as a business owner would create for yourself, um, what— where is this future of, of where that stands right now? Because we do live in a clickbait world And we see a lot of people on the social media hamster wheel just kind of posting their every day, posting their inspirational quote and not like, we're past that now. But a lot of people are still doing those motions and still doing those actions because it's kind of what they were taught. That's not enough anymore. So I would love to know your opinion on that.

Yeah. Well, there are so many options now with the way that media has evolved for owned media. So yeah, it just kind of a quick overview of the evolution of social media. Um, it was invented while I was in college, which my students are like, oh my gosh, they can't, they can't even imagine a life without social media. But there was one. Um, and at the time it was very much a, you know, oh, I wonder if I can use this for a client. And you go create a profile for them. There was no business page or anything like that. And of course that's, that's all ancient history at this point. It's all been monetized and all of that. And so it's unfortunately become very much a pay-to-play environment. And so that's, that's one thing that I think is very surprising to businesses when they get on social media. They go gung-ho, they sign up for every single platform that's out there, and there's not a lot of thought that's given to which platforms make the most sense for me. And I think it's also surprising how much time it takes to really develop good content that's going to be engaging to the audience and the right audience. So those are a few questions that businesses really need to think through before they go that route. Then when it comes to content, content doesn't always have to be, you know, a caption. It can also be video, performs extremely well, as you know, and is, is just a great way to capture an audience. The attention spans are getting shorter and shorter. So images are also great, but they can't just be an iPhone image anymore. They've gotta be really strong quality creative because that's, that's the level you're competing on. I was actually just at a conference a few weeks ago in Scottsdale and my room overlooked the pool. The pool was in the middle and I got to see an influencer shoot go on like right in front of my eyes. And we do some interesting It was unreal. I mean, the amount of, you know, lighting that they bring in and the crew behind the camera. I mean, they're not just taking a picture in a swimsuit. It is a production. And so that, that's the level of creative you're competing with as a business. And if you're not producing that level of creative, then you're just, I mean, forget about it. Like, it's just going to be impossible to really reach the audience. Then on top of that, you have, you have organic content, which would be just putting out a post and, hoping that you get some comments and some likes. And then you also have paid. And so that could be anything from boosting a post to doing some really targeted ads through Facebook or Instagram or Pinterest, LinkedIn. All of these platforms have an advertising component. And that is really where you'll see more results on social media. And frankly, it's just, it's a better use of your time. We always say the juice is worth the squeeze at that point versus like kind of you're just spinning your wheels. Just putting out content without any of that behind it.

Yeah, I mean, I think that the piece around authenticity— you talked about the influencer whose video shoot or photo shoot you were watching. It's so staged, it's so perfected, it's so filtered. I really believe that there is a space for creators to show that real authentic behind-the-scenes kind of actions that are going on. And so I think it has more to do with the strategy behind what that photo is and, and how you're positioning it than the quality necessarily of the photo itself. Um, but having said that, everything you've mentioned has a strategy behind it, whether you're gonna— like, if you, you can go out and you can spend whatever, it could be $5,000 a month on ads and see not a lot of return if you don't have the right strategy behind how that's being done. Um, everything is about strategy. Everything is about strategy. And then figuring out what's the tactic to, to attack that with. Um, now, so, so social media, you mentioned about how like it's evolved, it's changed, it's to pay to— it's pay to play. And I think anyone who has a Facebook page, myself included, who has spent many, many years building up all these likes on a Facebook page only to find out that if I post to them organically without boosting a post or paying for it, it doesn't It's reaching like, I think, 1% or 2% of the people who like it, like that page. So yeah, definitely. I think we all realize that we're in the pay-to-play. So if that's true, then how can a business owner attack their social media? And this is where I'd love for you to tell us, how can we freshen up our social media strategies if we don't want to spend, you know, $10,000 a month on ads?

Yeah, well, I think it's, it's helpful to revisit that regularly. So it, I, I tell people all the time, what worked last quarter for a client is not necessarily what's going to work this quarter because the algorithms are always changing. The opportunities for content are changing. People's appetites are changing. We have so much that is demanding our attention these days. So it's, it's good to, to pause and to look at the data, look at the analytics, see what's performing well, look at your past posts and which ones did better than others and are there any common themes that you can take from that? And then looking at competitors or other similar businesses that you aspire to be like and looking at what type of content they're posting so that you can maybe learn some of those lessons. We always tell people too to look at where are the gaps. I mean, what are your competitors not doing that could work really well and try to think outside the box on that. If you're going to get into trying to run your own ads. There are a lot of resources out there through Facebook or through Instagram, through Google to learn how to run those ads. So I would highly recommend doing that. Someone described to me once that it's kind of like a lightsaber. Anybody can use it, but there's definitely an art to— you could easily chop off your own arm if you're not careful. So you wanna recognize that there's a science behind it. Checking in on your ads regularly, making sure that that cost per click isn't too high, Setting goals and looking at, are we achieving those goals behind our social media? Does the strategy still make sense? Have things evolved for us as a business? Um, so I, I would look at all that definitely annually, probably biannually, like quarterly would be even better. Um, and then the other thing is you, you also wanna make sure that you have enough data that you're not making a gut decision one way or another. So looking at it, you know, at least a quarter's worth of data before you just totally change course and try something different.

Yeah, those are all great, all great tips. And really what I hear you say is if you want to freshen up your social media strategy, you really need to dig into the research part of it, which for a lot of creators, or maybe for a lot of business owners, might be the less sexy part of, of social media because they just want to, they want to have to do the fun stuff, they want to do the creative. And, and, but really it's what is underlying And what backs up all of those, those posts, the analytics, the data, the research, the observation of trends, what's working with this audience, what isn't working, the gaps, all those things that you mentioned, is all the back-end stuff that people might not otherwise want to dig into because it's not as much fun for some people, especially for creatives who are not maybe quite as analytical as others. But this is the stuff that makes the difference, whether you, like you said, you're doing it quarterly or biannually to go back and take a look.

Yeah. Well, and as a business owner, I recognize it's really hard to do surgery on yourself and you're close to it, especially if you're the one who's developing the content. You know, it's tough to really take a look at yourself and go, how can I be doing better? Or if you're a creator, You want to be creating. You don't want to take the time to do that. So I would say even if you're, you're not at a point where you feel like you want to hire outside help to run the social media, you can even do that in a much smaller scale and hire someone to just do the audit and to provide you some feedback. And that can be a more manageable way to maybe get started in that.

I love that. So let's tell everyone about your, your website and where they can go to learn more about you.

Yeah, so our website is www.resolutepr.com. And we actually, speaking of not being able to perform surgery on yourself, we just redid our website and outsourced that. So we're really proud of it. It was a great move for us as a business as we've evolved to really take a step back and say, hmm, okay, what services are we portraying that we offer? And is that accurate? And are we really selling our capabilities here?

So Yeah, I love that. Well, I am really happy that you've come on the show. We have a little segment that we do near the end called Stop Marketing Like It's 1999, depending on your age. Again, the references to Prince, and who I'm a big fan of. And so, stop marketing like it's 1999. Nicole, what is a tip, a tool, a tactic, or a technique that's really helping you to market Resolute PR?

Yeah, so I think selling yourself is something that's— it's really difficult to do. It's not something that comes naturally. I think it catches a lot of business owners by surprise when they go, oh, I have to actually get out there and sell. And so I— that's not something that I've always enjoyed. Um, but what I think has worked really well for us is that I have a commitment to giving back to the community. And so I actually— everyone on our team is encouraged to join a board or to join a committee, to take company time to do that. We actually donate about $500 hours a year pro bono in individual volunteer work that we do, not to mention different events that we sponsor and things. So while that is very important to give back to the community, and it's certainly a core mission of mine, it also is kind of a natural way to network and to get involved and to get connected to other people in the community who are also out there trying to do great things. And so that alone has really helped us with word of mouth and and being out there and led to client work. So that's something that I would encourage. And I would say, pick something that you are actually passionate about. Don't just pick something that is well-connected and is, you know, that's not the reason to do it. I would pick something that you're really passionate about because then you're naturally going to want to do more of it.

I love it. And I love the energy behind that, right? That service-minded energy, I think, comes through when you're committing yourself to an organization or to a cause like that. And, and I love that approach. I think that's really, really smart.

Yeah, well, not being afraid to encourage your employees to do that. That's where when I, when I knew you're going to ask me that, I was thinking, you know, the old school business model is everyone has to be in the office from 8 to 5. You get to take a quick lunch and there's not that flexibility and willingness that a lot of that used to be on your own time if you wanted to do it. It wasn't necessarily seen as a core value of a company and For me, I feel like it's really helped with recruitment and retention because everyone in the company gets to feel like they have another outlet to be able to give their gifts and their talents.

So yeah, I love that. Well, Nicole, this has been great. Thank you so much. Hide that one. Oh, it loves Prince. Oh good. Nicole, thank you so much for being on Cash In On Camera. We really appreciate your insights. It was a great exploration of the difference between marketing and PR. We talked about the 3 different kinds of media— earned, owned, and paid— how things have evolved from the inception of social media to where we are today. And then we kind of foreshadowed a little bit of where things are going as well. So we really appreciate your time and, and energy and coming on the show today.

Thank you for having me. Had a lot of fun.