In this presentation, Jason Will outlines practical strategies for effective social media use, focusing on personal branding and business development. He emphasizes concise messaging, appropriate hashtag selection, and the importance of high‑quality visual content (photos and videos) while warning against over‑use of text‑only posts. Will advises shortening URLs to stay within character limits and maintain professionalism. He critiques private social media accounts, arguing that most platforms are designed for discoverability and that true privacy requires keeping content offline. The talk then shifts to discovery tactics: using Twitter lists to curate niche communities, joining open or closed Facebook groups, participating in Twitter chats, and engaging with live streams on platforms like Facebook Live, YouTube Live, and Periscope. Will stresses that social media should be social—interacting, asking questions, and giving back. He addresses the opportunity cost of social media time, positioning it as a 24/7 business development tool that can connect entrepreneurs with global partners. A case study illustrates how he leveraged social media to engage a brand ambassador with 530,000 followers, turning a low‑follower account into a partnership. The session concludes with an audience question about Facebook’s buy‑and‑sell feature, which Will defers to discuss later.
Chapters
So what does good messaging look like? Very concise, right to the point. You use proper hashtags. You don't use 20 hashtags. I can show you examples of companies that use 15 hashtags because they're like, wow, we want discoverability. As soon as somebody sees that, they go, what are you doing? All right? All 15 of these do not apply to this concise 100-character message or something like that that you're sending out. As a result, use the hashtags that only make sense for people that are trying to discover that stuff. You know, if I put up a photo of a hamburger and I put #vegan next to that, I'd probably get a lot of people pretty upset, right? So make sure that you're using things that are in line with exactly what it is that you're trying to attract, right? So on top of that, pictures and videos. That's the engaging content that all of us need to have to accompany our content. If you just put out text, I heard a statistic that said something like over 70% of all the messaging that goes on online is just text-based. So if you want your message to be lost in the crowd, then definitely use just text. But like most of us, if you're trying to grow your personal brand, what you want to do is you want to have something that's engaging, a nice clean photo, a nice crisp video, something that put a little bit of effort into it where you didn't just copy and paste something off the internet or use something that's blurry. People want good content. On top of that, a lot of people use these URLs that run off where it's like facebook.com/123456 and then all this forward slash afterwards. Take the time and actually shorten your URLs. There's tons of tools out there. Keeps it very concise. You keep your character limit down. All this kind of stuff makes a lot more sense. It shows that you know and you care about the content that goes out. Again, this goes back to the first principle that I talked about, which is the personal branding. If you don't know how to do these things well, it shows that you really don't respect the fact of what your online identity looks like. And you've got to take the time and you've got to really focus on this. This is very important. Okay, so what is social media? Social media is a place where you connect with people, you make friends. Okay, whether or not— if I asked anybody in this room how many friends actually on your Facebook are the friends that you've met in real life and you interact with once or twice a year. It's funny, right? Because now most of our Facebooks are these digital sort of friends, right? It's the same thing even when you talk about Twitter, you talk about Instagram, or you talk about, you know, Pinterest, you name it. The fact is, is that these people still are conversing with you, they're still interacting with you, they're still doing this stuff. So get to know these people, engage with them, give back, ask questions, right? Don't be shy. Social media is meant to be Social. So that's what you're there to do is interact with people. If you're not a social person, then don't be on social media.
Right.
If you have a private account, why do you have a private account on social media? Does that make any sense? Absolutely not. If you want a private account, create one on your computer in your camera roll or whatever and keep the photos to yourself. But the truth of the matter is, is that somebody has access to your information. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, whatever. So is it private? Okay, maybe private to the common person, but that information is still not private. So open it up. If you have an account and you want it just to be for your friends and family, okay, then go on Facebook and control who gets to see your content. But the truth of the matter is the majority of the platforms are meant to help people discover the cool and interesting things that you care about. So post about that.
Right?
So what are some of the ways that you can discover new people, new ideas, new interests? Twitter lists. Who's familiar with Twitter lists? Like 3 people.
Cool.
This is actually the best possible place to find new people on Twitter. Most people actually don't even understand Twitter. The truth of the matter is that it's one of the most powerful platforms in the world. Actually, all the breaking news happens there first. If people, you know, know this. On top of that, when you think about the trending hashtags, you think about all this kind of stuff, the search capabilities there on Twitter are insanely powerful. Within profiles, there are lists that people create and they curate these lists online. They talk about chefs, they talk about, you know, Olympic athletes, they talk about all sorts of things. But the thing is, they curate these lists online. And if you find these lists, all you have to do is go to somebody's profile, under the gear it'll say lists. They've either created their own or they've been added to lists. And this is where you really get to discover the different categories. And it's super powerful because that's where you really get into all the chunk of the content that you're looking for. It's not just based on a hashtag anymore. It's based on a concept, right? And all sorts of people can be added to that. Facebook groups are still an amazing way to connect with people, and the majority of them are actually open. And if you aren't, you know, try— or if you want to access a group that is closed, start interacting with the person who owns that group, right? So find them on other social media platforms. If people own a group, especially a group that has thousands of people, most likely they're going to be active on other channels. Find them, interact with them, and say, wow, it'd be so cool, I'd love to connect further. And then, you know, you evolve the conversation to get to where you want to be. Twitter chats are still very popular. Every single day there are Twitter chats going on in real time where people really just schedule almost like live meetings. And what happens is everybody gets together and they just start collaborating. So imagine it, we're all having an in-person meeting. If we took that to Twitter and we all started tweeting at the same time, that's what a Twitter chat is. You also can get on live streams. You know, we have Facebook Live, we have YouTube Live, we have Blab, Periscope, all these places where you can connect with people in real time around the world. If you're interested in a topic or a certain area or you're about to go travel somewhere, How— imagine, I mean, imagine how powerful it is if you go to somebody's livestream and you start asking them about maybe Malaysia or someplace that you've never been before. So connect with people. That's what it's there for. Any questions so far? Everybody knows exactly what's going on? Cool. Yeah, go ahead.
Now with so much stuff happening on social media, it's usually a case of opportunity cost. The time you're spending doing this is the time you can't spend doing something else like business development. How exactly at the startup phase can you still manage your social image while still building your business?
Because I think that's quite important. Why would you not do your business development online? That's where I do all mine. I mean, think about this. You can do business development 24 hours a day no matter where you are. You could be in a box room by yourself sitting there and you could be doing business development 24 hours a day if you know how to do these tools well. That's the way I look at social media. Social media is not just a personal branding tool. Social media is your way to connect with anybody you want around the world whenever you want. And I'm about to tell you a story about, you know, how we connected with our brand ambassador. There's no reason why this guy should have ever replied. Not at all. The guy had 530,000 followers and I had 600 at the time. Why would he reply? Makes no sense. recruited the guy from Thailand and brought him here to the States, right? That stuff doesn't happen because social media is just a personal branding tool. It happens because true connections are being made with people around the world that also want to do business development, also want to make an impact. Does that make sense? You also had a question back there?
Yeah, I wanted to see your vision about the new Facebook The feature, the buy and sell one?
