Facebook Expert Mari Smith: 3 Proven Marketing Techniques for Winning in Social Media and Meta

0:00I just love to empower others to come back to their own self. If you're good at that and you're passionate about it and you can make money with that, for sure you've got your formula, you've got your flywheel. She is the queen of Facebook, Mari Smith. Everything I've learned about Facebook started with her in 2009. New Relationship Marketing, the co-author of the book called Facebook Marketing. Even Facebook brings her in to help. Always at the core has been my passion for technology, the internet, computers, and then relationships. There's more to Mari than just being, you know, the Facebook queen.

0:34Let's dive deep. Mari Smith. So Mari, your definition of success so others can learn from it and maybe define success for themselves. Sure thing. Well, I was thinking about this and it can be a bit cliche, but certainly living life on my own terms. Financial is one aspect of that, right? But you know what, Brad? Two areas that are so critical to my success and one is health and one is relationships. So my vitality, my energy, my self-care is paramount to every single day so that I can show up and continue to create success for myself and others with this body, this vehicle I've been blessed with in this lifetime to make sure that it's functioning properly.

1:17And the core of everything I do and personal and business is always comes back to relationships, to bonds, to making sure that I'm staying in close contact with my family. you know, something's a little off with a family or a friend, I can feel it like literally affect my energetic field. So it's something that I really strive to cultivate beautiful, deep, nourishing relationships. Where do you feel that success became your performance standard in life? Was it as a young girl? Was it in college years? Where did that become your performance standard? Oh, okay. I would say probably in January of 1999, when I emigrated from Scotland to America, I came to San Diego, California and Brad, I had 50 British pounds to my name.

2:06It's probably about a hundred dollars back then. I had two suitcases and I knew one person. And I do know about myself that I'm very determined. I'm very resilient. I'm totally willing to jump in with both feet and figure it out later and build a plane as I'm flying it. And up to that point, I had always been an employee and I left school super young. I literally had my 16th birthday of my first job. So yeah, I would say success is something I've always been driven towards, but it wasn't until I started in late 1998, making that decision. You know what? I'm going to be an entrepreneur. I'm going to run my own business.

2:45And I was taking classes and I was studying about how to start your own business. I had built a website. I was getting myself out there. I was just going into the bank to get a small business loan and to get going. And I got this phone call out of the blue from someone, a long lost friend in San Diego, California. He's like, Mari, would you like to move to the States? And I'm like, whoa, I'm supposed to start my business in California, not Scotland. So as they say, the rest is history. And that's kind of how I rolled. Did you ever imagine you would be the queen of Facebook? It wasn't even invented when you moved to California.

3:25No, no. But you know what? I've always had marketing in my DNA. I'm really good at getting the word out, marketing, and invariably a third party. And so when Facebook came into my life in 2007, to be honest, it's the longest I've ever stuck with any one career, let's see, 17 years. And I've had a wide and varied career, but there's always at the core has been my passion for technology, the internet, computers, and then relationships. So social media was like this fusion of both my loves. So I've got the internet, I've got relationships. but yeah this whole queen of facebook it was almost accidental i just was following my passion following my gut following my inner guidance to recognize what was an ideal career for me that i could speak and teach and train and explain this kind of complicated thing called facebook and social media and it's getting more complicated by the day but to be able to help explain that to others such that it really lands they get it i distill it down into understandable components and people can apply it to help their businesses.

4:36You mentioned two things in describing that for you. One was what you're passionate about and the other was what you're good at. Is that part of your formula for success, like combining those things or is there another part to the Mari Smith success formula? Okay, so I have to interject here that I am actually deeply passionate about studying what's called the human design system. I'm not sure if you've come across ever, Brad, is an absolute profound body of knowledge, fusion of astrology, the Chinese I Ching, the Kabbalah, so on and so forth, and genetics and biology. It's like scientifically proven.

5:12Well, I first had a reading in the early 2000s, went right over my head, just didn't make any sense, bunch of gobbledygook. All I ever remember from the reading was the analyst said to me, Mari, you know, you have a really busy mind, a very active mind, it must be hard for you to meditate. I'm like, yep. Fast forward to late 2020 and a dear friend of mine brought human design back into my life. She was over at my house. She says, you know, my intuition said I should just give you this book. And it was a book on human design. And I practically left out of my chair through my arms in the air. I'm like, human design, you can study that.

5:49Because honestly, prior to that several years, I had been feeling less than satisfied with my career at Facebook. I'm like, there's got to be more like, there's more to Mari. I always knew there's more to Mari than just being, you know, the Facebook queen and just specializing in social media and Facebook. I wanted something that would really give me this deep, profound ability to impact people's lives, in addition to what I'm already doing with social media. And so I began very earnest studies. And I've learned about myself to your question about is my formula what I'm good at and what I'm passionate about my formula is because I've really studied human design now is looking at what lights me up what is I'm a generator one three for people to know that I'm investigative pioneer and I'm not afraid to try things and I know that it's so critical for me to follow my own inner direction and be correct for me.

6:43What I'm out there leading and demonstrating does empower others. They in turn can learn from me blazing a trail and following my own inner guidance, but that's correct for me. And so I just love to empower others and to come back to their own self. Okay. If you're good at that and you're passionate about it, oh my God. And if material success is important to you and you can make money with that, for sure you've got your formula, you've got your flywheel. But the litmus test for me as a generator, and including the manifesting generators, there's two thirds of the whole planet are the generator types.

7:20Your signature is satisfaction. When your head hits that pillow at the end of every day, the way in which you've used your life force isn't deeply satisfying. The flip of that, the canary in the coal mine is frustration. The minute you're feeling frustrated, my career is not satisfying, this is ticking me off is like signpost, something's off. You need to make a change. What do you think it is that gives you or gave you the courage to make the shift? The shift from? You know, from being frustrated to say, yeah, I'm going to go after this thing that I'm passionate about. Oh, yeah. The courage, I would say, again, I come back to trial and error is one aspect, But I'm also, you know, I know about myself, I'm a deep investigator.

8:08Anybody, anyone who's listening to your podcast who does have a modicum of understanding of the human design system, I have 10 line ones. It's kind of unusual to have that many of the lines. So 10 line ones is a bottom line investigator, research, kick the tires, figure it all out, create that solid foundation in order to feel secure and be able to speak with authority. So I will say to my social media audience, look, I will not be the very first of anything. I'm not going to be the first adopter, early adopter. I'll be an early adopter, but I'm going to be a highly researched, investigative, I'm going to read the small print, I'm going to try something out, and then I'm going to be maybe the second or third or fourth or whatever adopter, and I'm going to explain to you all, hey, here's how it can apply to you.

8:57ignore all that rubbish over there pay attention to this part here and you will be able to create success I mean AI for sure right now it's been a big week for meta AI and they're just crushing it right now people are spinning their wheels and they're confused and they're frustrated and so I love to be the voice of reason the voice of calm I know that my life purpose is about explaining structuring my knowing and explaining it so you asked about courage I think there may have been a little bit of courage there. It's more was really about dropping more and more in my 50s, just more and more into who I am and letting go of what I'm not, what I'm not good at, what I don't want to do.

9:42Love that. You're on the Big Success Podcast. We're going to be back. We're going to talk about Meta or Facebook, Insta, the whole program with Mari Smith when we get back. Join Brad Sugars' Landlord event and you will quickly see why real estate investing has long been the backbone of serious long-term wealth for so many. That said, so many try and fail at creating wealth because they simply don't learn how. Visit bradsugars.com and attend this program as a standalone or as part of a Brad Sugars' Entrepreneurial University. Mari, Facebook today, Meta today. I want to go back to 2009, I think we agreed it is, that in Barcelona, Spain, when you came to teach us about Facebook when it was like two years old.

10:24It was a baby. We were all babies in the woods. What have you seen as the massive shifts over a period of time with Facebook or with social media in general? Gosh, many things. Social media in general has really pushed this concept of being a quote creator. Everyone's a creator. Everyone monetize your content. And I get so ticked off, quite frankly, because that is not a sustainable business model. People get burned out. They don't even realize they're part of the machine. You know, you're getting forced to create all this content. Why? Because Meta, Facebook, Instagram, they need your content to shove ads in.

11:05They've got to keep creating ad inventory. And I'm all for ads. I do ads as well. We all probably should be doing or, you know, do well to do ads. But just be careful not getting sucked too far into the machine. I call it Meta marionettes because we're all these puppets on a string going, oh, everybody's to be a creator. oh my god if you boost this post it'll get more reach then it's like oh you're striving for the viral reel and i'm like wait a minute stop the presses is it really what you're supposed to be focused on these vanity metrics these public facing is it growth at all costs do more followers more likes more reach more video views and reels plays does that all pay the bills or would you do better to focus on getting eyeballs on your offers, building relationships, generating leads, and making really compelling offers.

12:00And yeah, okay, you want to do some good content, but don't get so caught up in thinking that it's all about these creators. So that's one area. Another area is this, they call it the AI powered discovery engine. And that is that they say 20 % honestly I think it's way more than 20 % of the content you see in your feeds now that is Facebook Instagram and now threads I don't really do much with threads whatever it's Zuckerberg's answer to Twitter and but all three of those feeds the content 20 % or more of the content you see is chosen for you from sources you don't follow and it irritates the heck out of people because they're scrolling their feeds and going who are they where's my friends I don't see stuff from my friends anymore.

12:45Our pages have chosen to follow. And on the flip side, it creates that dopamine hit in the brain. And you're like, well, oh, oh, I just watched a cat video. Now I'm seeing 400 more cat videos. I really do. I love that. Or apparently it is actually increasing time on site, both Facebook and Instagram to the tune of maybe six or 7 % increased time on site. So there's that. And then now the third aspect of what's really changed since Barcelona days is this AI and I call it synthetic content. So content that is made, generated, generative AI, you know, no matter what platform it's made on. For example, we recently had the solar eclipse and it was a big deal in the States, as you well know.

13:33And I could not believe my eyeballs how many AI generated images were going through the feeds. There was one that beautiful one like Niagara Falls. But if you look closely, it wasn't even like, you know, anatomical or whatever, it wasn't even set out correctly. But it had like 7000 shares because people don't think it's cool. That's pretty and share it or liking it or whatever. But you start to look at the comments and a few people are like, what's happening? Is this for real? So I get concerned, Brad, there is a big erosion of trust happening right now because we're flooded with this synthetic media.

14:08We don't know what to trust anymore. If people are not disclosing, hey, I made this with AI, then I don't know. It's like, we don't even know what to believe anymore. Well, it's why I like live interviews like this, because then people know it's actual, it's Brad and Mari chatting. I want to hit two angles of social media that I've seen over the last few years. One is using it as social proof. People, when they find out about your company, They're going to go and look you up, LinkedIn or Face or wherever. What are your thoughts on it being more of a social proof aspect today? I think social proof is an important aspect for some industries.

14:48For example, you're offering social media services. You probably should have decent social media. But otherwise, for the vast majority of industries, you simply want to maintain a good presence. So publishing regularly, only a few times a week. You don't have to go crazy and do multiple times a day. And just have your bio optimized, your links optimized, update your cover image and your profile them periodically and just maybe choose which one or two or three platforms are your thing. So for some folks that might be, they're all in on Instagram and LinkedIn and they just don't want to do Facebook, but most people really would do well to do something with Facebook, whether it's a personal profile and or a Facebook page, business page, and or even a group as well.

15:42So yes, there's merit to social proof. I've been amazed in the last year or so, how many times I will go and look at a business page and it's all but neglected. That business is just throwing the towel and gone, you know what? I can't keep up with this. And they're just off busy running their businesses. And I always say to people, don't judge the book by the cover. It's like, you don't know what someone's doing behind the scenes. They might be crushing it and making millions of dollars and they just don't really keep up much with their social and that's okay. Yeah. Another side angle that's been presented in the last few years is that it's not so much what you say, it's what other people are saying about you on social media.

16:23What's your thoughts on that one? That's an interesting point. You know, something that I, well, I wanted to say pride myself on, I will say, is I do have an impeccable reputation, and I protect my reputation fiercely. I will never delegate my voice. So if someone's having a a conversation with me in first person, it's always me. And my team will interact on my behalf, but always as them and posting, you know, or engaging in my, my different forums and page and whatnot. So there's that also just really going above and beyond and delivering exceptional service, exceptional experiences. And just because at the core of everything I do is mentioned is just bonding relationships and making sure people are seen and heard and made to feel important.

17:15I just don't like ever thinking of people like as a number on my list. Moreover, real people with beating hearts and challenges and things that keep them up at night and how can I help them? So that really comes across in all that I do. So before I get into how we succeed with a lot of that stuff, there's another area that's being put forward. And that is like, keep thinking of your Facebook or your LinkedIn or your, any of these as more like a database of prospects for you. What are your thoughts on that? Yeah, that's accurate. And we never know when the timing is going to be right for someone to make a buying decision.

17:55I have literally had people in my audience for a couple of years, one or two or three years. Now, Mario, I've been following you for years and now I decided to finally sign up for something. And in my mind, I'm like, what took you so long? But it's like, okay, you know, all good, all good. You do your timing. And so you're right. Absolutely. We ideally want to cultivate this following at large who are ideal prospects and not really having people following you on your socials that aren't a prospect unless it happens to be your family and friends and whatnot. But yeah, I like that outlook for sure.

18:30So with Meta today, where do you see the best impact for someone? Where should we be focusing in our attention nowadays? Well, honestly, my model that I teach, I call it evergreens, my three-part success formula. I call it evergreen because no matter what changes are happening on the social landscape, met Zuckerberg throwing all this stuff at us these three components will always stick and that is content you got to start with some kind of content whether you're producing it yourself whether you're doing the AI what you're doing right here today this is content here Brad you know your podcast of course you repurpose it you put it out in video clips and so content the next part I used to say engagement because it was all about getting an engagement that likes the reactions, the shares, the comments.

19:23But you'll see different stats out there and engagement rates are down across the board on all social channels because there's only so much attention that we can pay to all these things. So I switched that up to connections, connection and connection can happen in the comments and also in the DMs. I really encourage businesses to invite your audience members to DM you. DMing sometimes direct messaging is almost sometimes almost as good as having someone's cell phone number and being able to text with them because now you're in a one-on-one instant conversation and yes you can bring in the chatbots to do that and automate the first part of it get to know the person drive them to a certain place segment and then you can also have your community managers in there your moderators public facing highly trained and what offers are being made able to spot buying signals directing people to different places to maybe make a purchase.

20:18So that's content, then connection, we just talked about connection, I also insert in their community, for some businesses, some industries, it's correct to have a Facebook group, or potentially I'm seeing more folks are kind of like over it, they're done with their Facebook group, and they're choosing to use a whole separate platform like Circle or Mighty Networks. There's all kinds of ones out there. Even a Slack channel, you know, I love following And Paul Reitzer, he's the founder and CEO of the Marketing AI Institute. And he has the Artificial Intelligence Podcast. And they have this amazing Slack channel for free.

20:52And you can get all these great interactions and community. And then the third part to the formula, the all-important one, which a lot of businesses tend to overlook, and that is conversion. And you just mentioned about looking at your followers as this potential database of prospects. And that's the thing is we've got to be strategic in the way in which we're generating leads, we're driving offers, we're nurturing those connections and absolutely bringing in the organic calls to action, as well as weaving in the paid campaigns. Because ultimately, you got to drive sales, you know? That's the part of business.

21:29Hey, subscribe, hit that button. We're on the Big Success Podcast. We'll be back in just a moment. Mari Smith taking us from good to great. Often referred to as the queen of Facebook, Mari Smith is widely known as the premier Facebook marketing expert and top social media thought leader. She is the author of The New Relationship Marketing and co-author of Facebook Marketing, An Hour a Day. To learn more about Mari Smith, please visit marismith.com. And we're back. Mari Smith, queen of Facebook. What's the difference between someone doing good on the meta programs and someone doing great on them?

22:07You know, what comes to mind is knowledge is just really keeping your finger in the pulse of, you know, what's working today, what technologies are available to you, not necessarily having to be a master overnight. There's just too much for any one individual. It's overwhelming right now. And with this recent release of Meta AI, which is very, very cutting edge, they're actually really blazing a trail in the AI industry in general. not just generative artificial intelligence where you can create images and text and I'm sure videos will be coming and voice but what Zuckerberg and team are working on because remember meta is a trillion dollar company that guy has billions to throw at whatever he wants and so they are also working on AGI which is artificial general intelligence and honestly Brad that bit frightens me a little bit this is where the future is going where you got these sentient beings this self-aware, these robots that are like able to, you know, function almost like humans.

23:08I don't know. But anyway, will they all look like Mark is the question? You know, that's the. I wouldn't be surprised. So if keeping our finger on the pulse is really important, what are the top three things? And let's break it down between Facebook and Insta. Let's start with Insta? What are the top three things I should be focusing on right now to be great at Insta? So top three things on Instagram, absolutely video content. Meta on the whole is on a mission for years now to compete with TikTok. Adam Masseri, the head of Instagram said that TikTok is the most formidable competitor the company has ever seen.

23:52So anything TikTok does, Meta is going to turn around and copy. And that was where they brought in these short form videos. And now every type of video, whether it's landscape, longer or shorter, goes into what's called the Reels tab. And invariably, when I am teaching my classes or working with a client, I look at their socials, I have them in the hot seat. And if I don't even see a Reels tab on their Instagram profile, I know they've never posted a video. And that's a big no, no. You've got to do at least some video on reels. The second thing, you don't have to try to necessarily sell. We were talking earlier about calls to actions and Instagram is really frustrating where we always have to say, see link in bio, see link in bio.

24:34I don't know why they don't let us put links in, but guess where you can put links? In the stories. The stories is where you can sell. Get those links in your stories. Not every story, but active stories are absolutely the name of the game. And then I would also say, we mentioned it earlier about putting, syncing up with a chat bot, because that is one way you can put calls to actions in your organic posts on a feed post in Instagram. You know, having people do the comment trigger and dropping a link right away in the DMs. Very, very successful. So that kind of one, two, three punch with the reels, the stories and the chat bots will definitely create much more success on Instagram.

25:16Well, hey there, and thanks for listening. I've noticed that 78 % of you are brand new, which means you haven't hit the subscribe button yet. By subscribing, you help us bring on even better guests, better quality content, and serve you better with even more podcasts. So please hit that subscribe button. It only takes a second. It makes a huge difference. If you support us, we're going to support your success and help you achieve big success together. ever. I've seen, and we've had a lot of success with asking people to DM us, but we've also had a lot of success with asking people to book a call.

25:49Are you seeing more of that today or less? Where are you seeing that trend? Yeah, I would say more for sure. And certainly in the coaching industry, definitely getting people onto a call. I think it's a wonderful approach, especially as this AI gets so infiltrated into everything and you're having this fear and uncertainty where people are like, okay, wait, is this a real human? And they almost feel like breathing a sigh of relief. Oh, I got a real human. Okay, shoo. Flip it to Facebook. What's the distinctions there? What should we be focusing on Facebook? Is it the same? Is there some differences?

26:26It's certainly the same in terms of having a heavier focus on video content than any other type, but there's another type of content that only works on Facebook. And that is where it's really read as a text post, but it has the big font and it's a colored background or background color. And you can do that in your groups, on your personal profile and your business page. They tend to do so well in the feed and especially, well, you don't typically put a link with that, right? Link posts sadly get the lowest reach, but what you do and see so many people doing this well is you're going to put a bold statement, quote, or ideally a question, right?

27:02The question is going to hook the mind. Do one or two questions in that short text. And then you can, you just get people engaging. You could also do it as a link post where you put the link in the first comment. I never used to say that was very resistant because the minute somebody goes to share that post, the link doesn't go with it. But oh, well, nowadays, that's how we have to do it. So that would be one thing. The other thing too, especially for coaches and individual business owners, solo professionals, making a decision, am I going to go all in and keep working this page as well as my personal profile?

27:36Or with the personal profile, you can switch it to what's called professional mode. And switching it to pro mode gives you access to insights about your audience, about your post, your reach, the boost button, potentially a bit more reach. You've got to experiment with it. Some people say it might not get more reach, but I've seen many successful profiles switch to professional mode, focusing heavily on those background text posts with the background color and reels and posting quite a few times a day even. Some of these people, like I know one person, I'm thinking of Austin Armstrong. I love to use him as an example.

28:11He runs an agency as an AI platform. And he's just a great person to follow. And so he has almost a million followers last I looked. And then the third thing for Facebook, I would say, is the groups. And this is a personal choice because groups definitely take resources to run. But you can eventually reach the flywheel effect, which I've managed to achieve in my social scoop Facebook group. We have about 26 ,000 social media marketers and whatnot in there. And they're providing most of the content and the engagement. I don't really need to do much at all. It is one of the most engaged groups that people can join in the social media arena.