John Frye answers audience questions about growing brands on social media. He covers A/B testing strategies, repurposing Instagram content, automating posts with auto DMs, and growth tactics for Periscope and YouTube.
Chapters
Hello.
Hi.
So my question is, I've been given so much advice in terms of where to play, especially in the beauty space. I found that Instagram really works well for me because it is visual, and so I haven't really put a lot of time on So I was just interested in getting your perspective and your words of advice in terms of, should I really be playing on all 3, or should I be prioritizing where I see the greatest engagement?
That's a great question. I think what you should do is give it a test. Say, give it 1 month where you're going to say, okay, I'm going to figure out if this is really going to work for me or not. Create a goal like, I want 5 new clients or 100 products sold, and get Master Planner set up. For you, since you're already on Instagram, that's great. You can repurpose a lot of the content on Instagram into Twitter. And again, just give it 30 days and see like, okay, is it going to hit these goals? If yes, then double down and start investing a lot of time in it. But to be honest, like, if Instagram is working, then I would kind of double down and triple down on those things. I think it's worth a shot. I think you'll see some sales come through it. But again, give it 30 days. If it doesn't work, Just forget about it, don't let them spread, yeah.
What type of platform are you using to, like, are you scheduling your content? Like, what content are you putting on Twitter, and are you automating it?
Yes, so I, well, here's another little interesting thing I did. Once I got my followers up, I shouted out saying like, hey, I need help with a social media account manager, and I got flooded with requests. So I got this guy Hunter to help me out. Hop on board, and I figured out that quotes work really, really, really well. Not images, but just like plain, just text quotes related to marketing, because I'm targeting followers of Gary Vee, if y'all are familiar. So putting those quotes out was really, really effective. So I schedule like, gosh, 50 to 100 quotes at a time. That gets people used to clicking and engaging, and then I do a lot of Periscope as well. It grows your Periscope base. You get a lot of leads from that, and then Anything you want to promote for your business, whatever, schedule that every 5 to 10 posts. You can post up to 6 times a day on Twitter without seeming spammy, which is the cool thing, unlike Instagram and other platforms. So I would go heavy on quotes, particularly if you're in the B2B entrepreneurial founder space. That's a great way to go.
Hi there. Thanks for the information. I have a question that actually pertains both to you, John, and Click as well. Do you have a strategy in place that actually helps you leverage each of your channels to grow your other channels? So let's say that you're doing really well on Instagram, like Michelle, you're doing well on Instagram, how would you leverage Instagram to help you grow on Facebook or on Twitter and vice versa?
That's a great question, and Cliff, if you want to come up and answer that for me. So yes, absolutely. One thing I'm doing right now is I'm trying to grow my YouTube channel, which is a lot harder, a lot harder to growth hack. So the things I'm doing there is when I launch a new video, I put a video out every Friday, I put it in the bio. And what I do is in my auto DMs, I say like a— I try and say like a non-spammy message like, hey, first name, thanks so much for following me. Like, I saw you follow Gary Vee, so I thought I'd give you a call as well. Give me a shout out if you can ever help me. And then I just put the link in there. So people reply like, oh, like, thanks for the message. Like, yeah, I'd love to hit you up sometime. By the way, just watched the video you included. That's great. So that's one way in which I do that, but in general, just think of it as like any other post or any other promotional post. Schedule them out. You know, on Snapchat you can promote to Instagram, etc. Just figure out a message that works well with your audience, craft it so that way it'll bring people over, and just schedule a couple posts in between valuable content.
Cool, and I kind of do something similar for Instagram, where I do the same thing on Instagram that I do on Twitter in terms of growth hacking. So what I do is every follower that follows me, I send them an auto DM to tell them to come follow me on Instagram. So that helps leverage the Twitter following. And I just found a software for Instagram that allows you to send auto DMs. It's called Holler, H-O-L-L-E-R. It's like $20 a month where you can send an auto DM to all followers as well. So I use that to leverage, you know, anything really. You can put anything wherever you want to direct them, whether it's your website, whether it's another channel. But I was doing that specifically Twitter to Instagram.
Anyone else? I was curious, how much time are you spending every day managing your Twitter account? How much time am I spending every day managing my Twitter account? I'm on it every day, so I'm kind of in the camp of like Sequoia said earlier, like you can't just be like, okay, got automation, good to go, kick back, pop a beer. No, I think you need to do both really hard. Spend time engaging with people. Find the personal— find the people that are similar to you, shoot them a message, give value. Be like, hey, I mean, it's pretty simple, right? You can see their link in the bio, if it's their company or whatever, you can be like, hey, just saw your company, like, it's super cool what you're doing. I do this like growth hacking thing, would love to help out if I can, or like any other way you could see me helping you. That's huge, like build those relationships. And in terms of monitoring the growth hacking, if you want like a number amount, I would say maybe 2 to 5 hours a week depending on how much I'm outsourcing and maybe focusing on other new things. But I really think investing real human time is the way that you're going to build that depth. And the depth is what people like. That's going to create super fans, not just like— Oh, this person with a lot of followers followed me, like, that's kind of cool, I'll like their post every once in a while.
