523 – Can you pass a Social Media Microtest?: Tom talks Social Media Strategy

Episode 523 – Social Media Strategy
[00:00:09] Welcome to Screw the Commute. The entrepreneurial podcast dedicated to getting you out of the car and into the money, with your host, lifelong entrepreneur and multimillionaire, Tom Antion.

[00:00:24] Hey everybody, it's Tom here with episode five hundred and twenty three is Screw the Commute podcast. Today, I'm going to talk about social media strategy, and let me preface this by saying social media is a necessary evil, especially when it comes to marketing. So in this episode, I'm going to give you a simple strategy that if you use your brain a little and learn some stuff about your audience, you will have a much easier time using social media to your advantage. So that's what we'll talk about today. Hope you didn't miss episode 522. That was beginning video editing. And I'm not in favor of you doing complicated stuff, but simple stuff can really help you out. So I had Marc Bullard, my video guy for, I think 12 years give that episode. So that's episode five twenty two. Any time you want to visit a back episode, you just put screwthecommute.com, slash, and then the episode number that was 522. Today is 523. And then there's a couple of other ones you really want to know about. Episode 521 was WordPress plugins. Wow. You really need to listen to this. This is like one of those must listen ones to.

[00:01:41] If you have a WordPress site or if you have any other site, you should get rid of it and get a WordPress site. There's no question about that. Anything that you see on national TV, these Wix and Weebly and all this crap is ridiculous. The gold standard is WordPress, and you'll hear a little bit why on that episode that was 521 and then 520 was all the marketing tools that I use and really not all of them. I probably can't even remember all of them. And then I had a series: 511, 514 and 517 on Pinterest. Wow. I'm putting a lot of effort into that, and my views are going to skyrocketing from the the webinar from John Kremer and Daniel Hall. What I learned on that, it's just going crazy, so check us all out. All right. How would you like me to send you big affiliate checks? Well? Email me at Tom@screwthecommute.com. I'll give you details. Can send you money, money, money. How about that? That's why we're on here. Entrepreneurs will need to make money and affiliate stuff is one way we do it. I do both affiliate stuff where people sell my stuff for commission and I sell other people's stuff for a commission. That's been a a big, big part of my revenue over many years besides selling my own stuff, as always.

[00:03:00] Grab a copy of our automation e-book at screwthecommute.com/automatefree. You know, a lot of this stuff can be automated, so you're not, you know, I want your psychic energy spent on selling stuff and taking care of customers, not busy work and so many people. So many students come to me and they're just fighting with their computer all day long. And then they're exhausted and then they can't sell stuff. So no, no, no, you got to learn. Some of these things in this book will give you a big jump on it, and I'm giving it to you free. We sell it for twenty seven bucks, but it's years free. It's screwthecommute.com/automatefree. And while you're at it, pick up a copy of our podcast app. It's screwthecommute.com/app where you can put us on your cell phone and tablet and take us with you on the road.

[00:03:49] All right, let's get to the main event. Social Media. Well, now why do I call it a necessary evil? The thing is you are expected to have it. Whether it's doing anything for you or not is a different story, but you're expected to have it. The first place someone is going to check you out is your social media, if they want to do business with you, so they want to make sure you are current and you're a real person.

[00:04:19] And another thing, Google is going to cross-check your social media in its algorithm to determine if you're worth giving a high ranking to on your topic once people search for it. Now, another reason that it's a necessary evil. It changes all the time, all the major social media are in constant flux. They bring out new features to stay competitive and and they reward you for using them. Well, that means you have to take time to figure them out all these new features. A current example of this is Instagram Reels and another one even more current is Pinterest idea pins. See, Instagram Reels came about when TikTok started taking off like crazy. TikTok was grabbing tons of traffic off of Instagram, so Instagram came out with Reels or Reels with similar features, and I had to figure them out and make some which mostly were funny ones. But but I got rewarded for using the new feature. My first reel got forty thousand five hundred views, pretty much overnight. And the same thing with Pinterest idea pins, which were formally and blatantly called story pins, because Instagram and Facebook have stories, so Pinterest got in on the bandwagon and have story pins. And my first, well, excuse me, idea pins, they're now called my my first idea pin got two hundred times the exposure in the first day that my regular pins get.

[00:06:03] Now, an older example, this is when Facebook came out with Facebook Live, all my Facebook lives in that period got way more exposure than my regular post. But here's the thing. See, it's my responsibility to figure these things out and teach them to my mentees and the students in my school. But it's not your responsibility to keep up with every latest, greatest feature. See, without a staff of people, it'll eat up tons of time and pretty much drive you crazy, and the payback is dubious. You know, if you haven't done other things that I'm going to tell you today, then you spend all this time. Maybe it was fun. I mean, I had fun making those goofy reels. But the thing is is they didn't bring any business in. They so so having a lot of views on them didn't didn't really do anything for me. All right, then, another reason that it's necessary evil is new ones are coming out all the time. The question is, should you jump on the bandwagon or not? Well, after being through so many starts and stops over many years, remember I've been in this since the beginning of the commercial internet. Nineteen ninety four. I've seen all of them come and go, OK. And. I mean, do you remember MySpace? You know, that was the biggest, greatest of all right and boom going, you know, I think it still exists, but who I haven't looked at it for, I don't know, seven to eight years, I don't know.

[00:07:33] So I have a philosophy. I may have heard this on other episodes that I use dull edge technology. All right. So. So I don't run to a new service until it has proven itself to be long lasting. I just can't waste the time, and neither can you figuring out how to use something when it might not be there tomorrow. And a perfect example of this is Parler. It was supposed to to be a more open and free speech alternative to Twitter. Well, guess what? All the biggies got together and just squashed it. I mean. I mean, it got zapped literally overnight. I mean, Amazon quit their hosting Google, and Apple wouldn't handle their apps, and even their lawyers ran from them just all about in the same day or so. So and it was touted as the Big Big Kahuna that's going to, you know, be an alternative to Twitter and Facebook and stuff gone. Now they're back up, I saw. But do I want to take the time to learn such a social media if it could disappear again tomorrow? No, I don't. I mean, this is crazy. I didn't get on Facebook till they had a billion users. That's been quite a few years ago. But but that's the game I play, and it's worked beautifully because I don't waste time on stuff that you know is not proven.

[00:09:02] You know, yeah, some people say, Oh, you get it on on the ground floor. Yeah, but it's kind of like rolling the dice. I want a sure thing, and so I wait until the thing is proven before I jump on it. I use dull edge technology. And then you got there's some other examples I just forgot I saw in my notes here. You've got Substack and frank speech again. I don't care about your politics or what they are, but these are just two places that don't have a long track record, so I can't spend my time learning their ins and outs. Maybe I can go, look and read some crazy stuff that they put up there, but but doesn't mean I have to learn how to use it to the nth degree. So to teach it to others because it might go under, who knows? Ok, let's look at strategy and I realize it'll be somewhat different depending on your goals. But some of the things are universal. And one of them is like, get them off social media platform and onto an email list. See when you build your email list up enough, you really don't care that much about social media other than to feed more email subscribers. And I've been at that point for a long time, and I want you to get to that point.

[00:10:15] See, I don't fret over social media like crazy, and, you know, sometimes I don't post anything for months, you know, on certain, you know, I have loads of accounts, but the thing is is I got an email list and that's what where the money is and that's where it's under my control. So see, when you have a big list of email subscribers that can't be taken away from you. Another peril of social media is that you don't really own your followers, the social media platform does, and they can make a change instantly where you can lose everything. Here's an example I just happened to see last night this guy on YouTube had twenty two million views on a video about catching mice. Ok. The video got taken down because YouTube said something about it was against their terms of service. Gone, twenty two million views. I or maybe he was catching Democratic mice or something, I don't know, you know, they're very liberal, or maybe he was catching rats. That's why they didn't like him. But uh, but anyway, you don't want to be in that position to lose everything at someone else's whim. And the people that work for these, these people are wet behind the ears. Got all this ideological stuff going on? Or clueless don't have any experience doing anything, except they have your life in their hands. See, I don't want that some little punk, you know, having their life, my life in their hands, put it that way.

[00:11:51] That's not going to happen. If you have an email list, say, and you have good backups. So even if your list management company goes down or goes under, you can be up and running quickly with a backup. That and I emphasize again, you own the list, say. So I'm going to give you a pretty simple strategy here, and if you're. One of the following kinds of people, you don't need this strategy. So if, I was a bikini model, OK, or or a really hot male model, or if I had some really cool, unique niche, then you don't need really need any kind of strategy. And in talking about some unique niches, how about the Instagram account called bread face? Yes, I said bread face. He's got a hundred and seventy nine thousand followers and pictures of people sticking their face and making patterns in various kinds of bread. I got to give that guy a good marks for uniqueness, right? Hundred seventy nine thousand followers. But there's another guy he's just really good at Photoshop, and he's really creative, too. He's got a Instagram thing called Combo Photo Combo Photo. He's got four hundred and sixty eight thousand followers, and all he does is combine two objects uniquely in a photo using Photoshop, I guess. An unbelievably gorgeous stuff.

[00:13:28] Unique, interesting stuff. You won't see it anywhere else. But but if you really want to jack it up. Dr Sandra Lee is also known as Dr. Pimple Popper. She's got the grossest Instagram channel with four point four million subscribers. So she doesn't really need my strategy. Ok. But the granddaddy of them all, this young guy, they probably never even heard of him, Cristiano Ronaldo, the famous soccer player. He's got three hundred and seventy one million followers on Instagram. So if you're any of those types of unique people or celebrities, you don't need this strategy. You can just quit listening now. But the strategy is going to be, as I promised, very simple. All right, here it is. Five steps. Step one. You're going to make it your main priority to get people off social media onto an email list. You can do giveaways and all this kind of list building stuff I've covered in other episodes, so step one. Get them on an email list in your mind. That's your goal. Step two Find out where your best customers are. And here this is really scientific. Just ask them, all right, when I ask them what social media they frequent regularly and and what do they do while they're there? I mean, does one social media just satisfy their entertainment needs or news needs? Or where do they check out things to buy? In other words, where are your customers? And you can't really do any one of the social media correctly if you spread yourself too thin.

[00:15:22] So get really good at the main platforms where your customers are. All right, step three, Reduce your number of posts and make them more in-depth in high quality. Make it information that shows off your expertise while helping your followers. They don't want to just see you bragging about yourself, they want stuff they can use. The old method was to post like crazy to show that you're active. Well, that's way had been gone for a long time. The new method, the modern method, is to post less and shoot for more. Which brings us into step four more engagement. All the social media platforms want engagement now, engagement starts as simple as a like, that's the lowest level, then the next level up is a comment. Then the next level up is a share. In other words, the thing was so good people wanted to show it to other people and then a save is even higher level. It's so good that people wanted to keep hold of it, say, and all the platforms see what's going on in the engagement and and the more you're engaged with, the higher quality engagements, the more they show your stuff to. And I'm going to do next Monday, episode five twenty six is going to be all about engagement techniques, so so you can get started on this and then stop back next Monday, you definitely for that episode.

[00:16:55] And then step five. You probably didn't hear about this concentrate on passing micro tests. I'm going to tell you all about this right now. And a lot of sex said most people don't know about this. But lots of people do know that your posts don't get shown to all your followers unless you pay. Now, if you didn't know this, you're seriously behind on your social media knowledge. You need to get into my mentor program because that became known years ago. So you're a little bit behind and I can catch you up in a hurry, but hit up greatinternetmarketingtraining.com and join up. And let's seriously get you going. That's for serious people. Anyway, the more engagement you get, the more of your followers get to see your post. And in some social media, you don't have to have followers for the social media platform to show your posts to people that don't follow you. But that's only if you have a really good post that gets lots of engagement. All right, back to microtest. The way it works is when you make a posting, the clock starts ticking. If you start to get good engagement in the first hour or so, then the social media platform thinks it's a good post and it starts showing it to way more people.

[00:18:22] If no one engages in that first hour or so. The game's pretty much over. All the work you did to make that posting is worthless because the social media platform says, Hey, we showed this to some of your followers and nobody engaged, so why should we bother showing the posting to anybody else? We'd just be wasting our bandwidth. So what does this mean to you? Well, most social media have analytics that will tell you when the most people are viewing your stuff, that's when you want to release your postings because there's a much greater chance that you will pass the micro test. It makes no sense to work on a posting late into the evening, and then you're so proud of it. You release it at two o'clock in the morning thinking, Oh, all my people see it in the morning, you know they won't. You failed the micro test unless all your followers are night owls, maybe. So no one would see your post. Well, another thing you can do is have all your best friends listen to this episode and then ask them to help you out with engagement immediately or as soon as possible when you make a post. You can even tell them or text them or something. That post is coming. So that's the strategy now I'm going to recap it for you here in a second, but I just want to tell you a little bit about the the program that we have going with.

[00:19:51] The persons with disabilities in my school to get them trained and get them either hired or in their own business. And boy, it's one of the most proud moments that when I see these people progressing in the school, two of them are blind. They're going through an internet marketing school in digital marketing school, just very inspirational. So we have a Go Fund Me account that we'd love to have your help with. Any little bit helps. But hey, if you're really flush with cash, you could do a sponsor a whole person. And hey, if I can, I can figure a way to make it legitimately tax deductible for you. You'd have to check with your tax advisers, but I can work that out. Be something that save you some tax money, maybe, and also help somebody change their whole life. I mean, how much better can that be? So check it out at IMTCVA.org/disabilities and, of course, it's distance learning, so people can be anywhere in the 10 to school. Click on the Go Fund Me campaign and you'll see videos by these people that are blind, making nice videos. I mean, just very inspirational. So check it out and something you can really be proud to be associated with.

[00:21:11] I know I am. Ok, let's recap this simple strategy for you. Step one. Get them off social media and onto an email list. Step two. Find out where your customers are and get really good at those platforms. Step three. Reduce your number of posts and increase their quality. Step four, Concentrate on engagement and again next Monday, episode five twenty six, we'll be doing a whole thing on engagement and step five. Pass your micro tests. You're doing all this for nothing. If you're putting stuff out at weird times and don't get the engagement, so that's a very simple strategy. It's working for me for years and I make lots of money doing this, but I don't eat up a lot of time playing games now. I said it's my responsibility to learn these really to high levels to teach people. But do I do it myself? No. I use a simple strategy because I've already got the email list built up. If you haven't built up the email list yet, then you need to do that while you're doing this social media, so you take care of the necessary evil part of having it. But you are building your email list like crazy, and it's getting easier and easier to say heck with the social media because you make all your money on the email. All right, so that's my story, and I'm sticking to it. We'll catch you all in the next episode. See you later.

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