Building A Strong Social Media Strategy For Business Growth

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0:52Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantz. My guest today is Andrew Barlos. He's the head of marketing at Loomly, a leading social media management platform. He's got a long history of success in the B2B SaaS software, healthcare, fintech, human resources, consulting, and employee benefits technology industry. So Andrew, welcome to the show. Yeah, it's kind of been a diverse background, hopped around a little bit, but I'm stronger because of it. Thanks for having me, John. You bet. So the burning question I want to start out with, is the Loomley icon, logo icon, a cat or not?

1:32That's a great question and something we need to do a better job describing on our website, probably. It's a double entendre, actually. So when Loomly was created, the tagline was a social media manager's best friend. And that was, you know, obviously a cat that comes across your desk, gets in the way of your camera all the time. So there's the cat icon that kind of symbolizes that we're your partner on your desk, just like your cat. There are also two chat bubbles. So they're symbolizing, you know, commenting interactions on social media as well. Yeah. Awesome. I knew you'd have an answer. So glad we started there.

2:09So let's talk about trends, I guess, you know, when you talk about social media technology in general, I think, you know, things are changing rapidly for folks. And I think one of the, in fact, one of the biggest frustrations is that, you know, for a lot of businesses, it's just hard to catch up. So what, if you were going to list maybe two, three of kind of the hottest things right now, you know, for business use of social media, what would you say those are? I'd say it depends where you're at in the journey. I'd say for a lot of small businesses and growing businesses, number one overall is the need to build out not just a social media manager as a owner of everything, but also a department there.

2:54You can't expect to grow and manage, like you mentioned, there's so many updates across all the algorithms, all the different channels that you're expected to be on. It's impossible for even one person to manage, let alone a small team. So the number one thing I would say was invest in them, cherish them. It's a tough world out there, especially when you're asked to have a consistent presence on eight different social channels. So that's one overall. The next one is you got to build in video. Obviously, TikTok has proliferated quite a bit. A lot of brands, both large and small, have seen massive success, even brands that you don't expect, like the Wall Street Journal.

3:39I would say video is definitely not going anywhere. And by all means, we need to focus on short form and long form video, find ways to scale that across both YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, and all the channels. Yeah. All right. So let's dial back the department thinking for a minute. Let's say I'm a small business. I don't even have a marketing department, let alone a social media team. And so I think that, so what would be your best advice for somebody like that? Because they just can't do it all. So, you know, how do they get bang for what little buck they can invest? Do more with less channels.

4:17So don't try to have that presence across eight different channels. Pick the two or three that are going to be most actionable, that where your audience is the most and be great at those. Learn those, understand the algorithms, understand what content works for your audience and hone in there because there's no way you're going to be able to manage YouTube, TikTok, if it's just one person, especially if that person is not a social media focused role. Yeah. So I know the ultimate answer to this next question is it depends, but would you say that there are, if generically somebody came to you and said, I'm a B2B business or second person, I'm a B2C business, would you say, oh, well, you probably should be focused on these channels.

4:59So for B2B, what platforms I should say should generically say they should be focused on? Definitely. The big boys haven't gone anywhere. Facebook, DIMM specifically for B2B and Instagram. I mean, you could tell most companies like you need to have a consistent presence there, but that's changing. More and more B2B businesses are shifting to exploring audiences on TikTok. The other one is YouTube too. I think being out there, that's how people research nowadays is both YouTube and TikTok. So those would be the second tier that I would get to for most businesses. But as you said, the magic words in marketing, it depends.

5:42Yeah. So B2C, I'm guessing you're saying same thing. Facebook is still there for them, you know, maybe Twitter's there for them, but TikTok is certainly, and Instagram are both channels that they need to be really exploring all the various ways to create content. Yep, absolutely. If you're not, if you're a B2C company and you're not leveraging short form video on Instagram and TikTok, you drop everything and start that now. And, you know, that's intimidating and I'm not a outward facing guy, you know, I don't want to be the face and record videos. We hired an excellent social media manager who started to produce some great results for Loomly.

6:22But the good thing is nowadays, it doesn't have to be that intimidating. It's all about authenticity and just being yourself and telling your story. And what performs better on those platforms is actually not this great production value video. People want to connect with your story and who you really are. So that's tough to do sometimes to be vulnerable like that. But the good thing is, you know, anybody can do it. Yeah, it's pretty interesting. I've noticed that across the board, even on, excuse me, even on, you know, like lead magnets, you know, you're trying to get somebody to opt in for something.

6:56Almost today, it needs to look like an internal, you know, internal like process document or something as opposed to this polished glossy thing. Because people are thinking, oh, that's, you know, I can just, that's like behind the scenes, something I can grab. That's not like something you produced. Yeah. Yeah. That's a good point with, even with the downloadable, right? It's something that's going to be actionable. And I want to hear from a human and not a brand. And I want to hear stories not be sold to. So anybody that's starting out with short form video or start investing in Instagram reels and TikToks, definitely do not just start selling.

7:32You have to build trust first and build an audience and then work in your product or service as you go. And I think certainly most people would suggest that is absolutely true. And yet, you know, there are a lot of brands that are looking at social media as a new lead gen channel. Would you say that, would you say that, well, the answer is definitely yes, it can be a lead gen channel. But what you started to allude to first, there was, you know, you almost get permission to do lead gen there by your earlier actions, don't you? Right. It's like any brand building, you know, you need to establish trust first before you start asking for them to convert.

8:14and you can't ask for a conversion on a first touch. You know, one thing, once you have a library of different types of organic content that you've tested, video, graphics, carousels, whatever it may be, once you know it works organically with your audience, that's what you take and then turn into a high-performing ad. So those are the posts that you boost. Those are the types of content that you scale and then put those into your ad campaigns. The organic data is the best type of data because, you know, obviously you haven't paid to get it yet. So that's what we've started to do is, you know, do it even if it's something simple, like let's say you're a solopreneur or a small business and you don't have the whole ads campaign set up and multiple team members to run it.

9:02We pick like a few high performing organic posts and just boost those in TikTok and Instagram. And, you know, that's a great way to expand your audience with stuff you know is going to work. So, so there's one school of thought that says really social media is more what marketers call top of the funnel. You know, it's where you get exposure. It's where people come to know about you. For some people, that's not enough, you know, because they need some sort of result today. So what do you, you know, how do you advise people get into and use social media with sort of the realization that it's not necessarily going to produce immediate measurable ROI?

9:40right it's a long-term game and if you're not ready to that's where it's difficult i let off by saying hire a social media manager invest in that team it's difficult to because it's not a one-to-one roi but if you're looking to build a successful brand over time and not have to have you know each conversion each lead be paid and build that organic presence just like a content strategy, you need to have social media content over years, months and years at every level of the funnel too. So obviously brand awareness is number one, but then you loop in some converting content as well, similar to any other content strategy.

10:22So you, I think just about at the top, talked about video. Almost all of the platforms now have some way in which you can post video. So would it be fair to say that's the content format that everybody should lean into the most? I wouldn't say the most because it, again, it depends, right? But I would say with each platform prioritizing video overall in some form or another, you'd be smart about when you create video content. So batch it, film as much as you can at once and then break it up. take an Instagram reel, repurpose for TikTok, repurpose for YouTube short. That's something that we've done.

11:08We've seen a lot of success with Loomley's account is just posting frequently on YouTube shorts and we've seen a lot more exposure there. So I'd say definitely work it into your overall social media strategy if you haven't focused on it enough and be smart about repurposing it. But overall, test all types of different content, stories, reels, carousels. You know, continue to test as many different types and push yourself to experiment as much as possible across the board because you can't put all your eggs in one basket when it comes to social content. And now let's hear a word from our sponsor.

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13:17Look, why create the wheel? Use a set of tools that took us over 20 years to create, and you can have them today. Check it out at dtm.world slash certification. That's dtm.world slash certification. So here's a question that I'm sure nobody has asked you. What role is AI playing today in social media content production, scheduling, hashtagging? I mean, all the various components. And it seems like it's crept in largely. And there's two camps, I think. There's one that's like, oh, it'll do it all for us. And then the one, you know, the other camp, it's a research assistant. So, you know, I'd love your thoughts on where you see it today and maybe where you see it going.

14:06Well, yeah, it's incredible. And it's, you know, what I say today may not be relevant a week from now with how fast things are advancing. You know, I'm kind of in between the two camps. I think from a social media perspective, there's lots of things that it can help get you jump started on. You know, the easy one is caption writing, right? Write me 50 tweets about social media. You'll get some stuff you could work off of, especially with the free. If we're talking about ChatGPT, the free version, the paid version's a lot more enhanced, a lot more in depth that we haven't explored a ton. But I think right now it can get you a good part of the way there.

14:44It can spark ideas. And you take that and then put your own personal touch on it. So I get a couple ideas for a format of a blog or an email or a social post. Then I take those ideas. Okay, that's how I can structure my thoughts. The number one thing I keep preaching though is authenticity. I would not recommend any form of AI content to be your all-in strategy and just do that. Close your eyes and let that go because it's going to be generic inherently. You know, but it's definitely a tool that anybody in marketing and social media should be experimenting with. And I know, you know, at Loomly, that's something that we're looking into across the board.

15:23You know, number one, caption writing. Again, like it was pretty straightforward thing, but there's all different types of research, listening, other types of ways AI can be applied, which we're really excited about. So one of the uses that I think is very effective right now is kind of working backwards. taking content that is already been well-written, well-researched in your voice and ask it to extract, you know, from that or to rewrite for a shorter format or something like that. And so it's, you're not going to get the clumsy generic stuff as much because you've already, you know, you've really fed it great content already to, to extract.

16:01We take, you know, we'll have somebody do an interview, you know, testimonials, you know, that kind of stuff. And it'll be 10 minutes of them just babbling and we'll say, you know, get me a couple of great quotes out of this. And I could go through it and do it too, but it does it in 10 seconds. So that's how we're using it right now. Is it just, it's like an assistant in a lot of ways to make you more efficient. Yep. A hundred percent. It's a great way to repurpose content. You have a strong blog, white paper, whatever you see, turn this into however many social posts. Yep. Absolutely. So let's pause on the conversation from my end and just maybe give a minute or two about, not a pitch for Loomly necessarily, but just like here's what Loomly does that are kind of the core features and how people use it.

16:51Sure. Yeah, absolutely. So Loomly is an all-in-one, easy-to-use social media management platform where you can upload your social media assets, create, review, optimize your posts, schedule them, and then automatically post them to all your social accounts. So we talked about having to manage eight different accounts. I don't know how anybody does it without a scheduling tool like Loomly, especially when you want to push for post consistency. What Loomly does a little bit differently is we were actually built as an agency to client collaboration tool. So with custom workflows, review process, approval process, and custom user roles, that made us a really great tool for agencies, large teams.

17:40but at the same time as they built out the scheduling and calendar component it was very simple easy to use no bells and whistles but any client even small businesses or non-experts can adopt it so it's great for small businesses small teams too and so you know we've grown quite a bit with a very you know lean team and we're super customer centric and that feedback loop we've established with our customers to for them to vote on different features has really driven a lot of what we've done with our product and a lot of our success how is that feature request that actually shocks the client if they don't approve quickly is that coming along yeah that's a great question yeah we you know we we do what we can you know and but i think uh a lot of times even with a a relatively smaller team, we do delight when we can.

18:37And even if it's a couple, if it's a quick win or something, we do try to jump on it. But it's been so good at helping us analyze trends and make sure that what we're focusing on is actually what our customers want. At the same time, adding in new innovative features that we see in the market. So talk to me a little bit about the scheduling feature. And I do, I appreciate completely that, You can write a month's worth of content because that's what you do on Monday or Tuesday or whatever of the month. And then you put it out there and it posts on the date. Is there any sense that feature by itself or that practice by itself is hurting people's authenticity or maybe even algorithms within the various platforms?

19:24Yeah, that's a great question. There's been a couple of studies. there's been some anecdotal things like, hey, you know, why aren't my scheduled posts performing as well? There's also been anecdotes where my scheduled posts perform better. And there's been a couple studies out there that showed there wasn't a direct correlation. And we haven't seen that across the board. But obviously, there's so many other variables. What are you posting? You know, did you post bland content and schedule bland content? It's not going to perform. What in some cases where it can help is what Loomley provides a post inspiration.

19:55We've just kind of refresh that frequently just to give ideas for different types of content. Like I said, it's so important to figure out what works. But then there's also post optimization tips. So like, hey, make sure this is a little long. Make sure this video is trimmed. Make sure you focus on this. So those reminders, especially across each different platform, can go a long way to optimizing content. But you know what? Kind of like AI, you know, I wouldn't say schedule every single post. You know, for example, Twitter, it's very much a real-time platform. If you think of an idea, you should get it out there and jump on it quickly that day.

20:32But what it can do is take 50%, 60%, the schedule post, the brand post, what you know is going to be out there, get that off your plate. And then a social media manager or a marketer can focus on what really gets you going in social media, which is like real-time interactions with your audience. meet them where they're at, comment on things, follow hashtags and jump in on the conversation and then research, you know, see what your competitors are doing, see what people are talking about. And then you have more time to reinvest that into your strategy. You know, it's interesting. One of the things we've seen with our clients is that, you know, obviously they want to promote their business objectives in social media.

21:13But, you know, when the boss has a new baby and they take a picture of the baby in the office for the first time, the engagement blows up. And I really try to encourage our clients post about 50-50, post as much culture stuff as you can, because that's going to make your business objective stuff do better. Yeah, 100%. You know, like I said, it's a massive research tool, just as much as Google search. You know, it's funny, we'll look through our attribution software, and I'll see all the touches and it'll start, it'll go blog, TikTok, Pinterest, Instagram, you know, sign up Facebook, Instagram, and then they convert.

21:53And it's, you know, people again, like you said, that human authentic content, people want to work with people. They don't want to work with a generic brand. So that definitely goes a long way. Awesome, Andrew. Thank you so much for taking some time to stop by the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. You want to invite people where they might find you, connect with you, and I bet you even have a trial of Loomly. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. First of all, thanks for having me. It's been fun. You can start a free trial of Loomly at loomly.com. It's a full feature trial, so you can test everything out, see which plan works for you.

22:28Follow, we're either at Loomly or at Loomly Social across all the platforms, and I'm on LinkedIn at Andrew Barlow's if you want to chat with me anytime. Awesome. All right. Well, again, thanks for taking a little time out of your day to chat with our listeners. And hopefully we'll run into you one of these days out there on the road. Sounds great. Thanks, John. Hey, and one final thing before you go. You know how I talk about marketing strategy, strategy before tactics. Well, sometimes it can be hard to understand where you stand in that. What needs to be done with regard to creating a marketing strategy?

22:59So we created a free tool for you. It's called the Marketing Strategy Assessment. You can find it at marketingassessment.co, not.com,.co. Check out our free marketing assessment and learn where you are with your strategy today. That's just marketingassessment.co. I'd love to chat with you about the results that you get.