Rev & Reach by PopSpeed®

In this episode of Rev and Reach, Lori and Kiley dive into the intricacies of social media analytics and how they relate to achieving Return on Investment (ROI). They explain the distinction between analytics and true business results, and explore how to effectively use data to optimize marketing strategies.

00:08 – Introduction to the episode’s focus on differentiating between signal and noise in social media analytics.

00:31 – Kiley explains the difference between analytics and ROI, and why pretty numbers don’t always mean effective results.

02:14 – Lori discusses the importance of engagement as an indicator of audience interest and how it informs content promotion.

05:55 – The critical role of video views and audience retention within the first few seconds.

10:21 – The importance of regularly reviewing analytics to inform strategy and improve content effectiveness.

11:39 – How analytics can help identify top-performing content and refine future content strategies.

01:14 – “It’s the difference between those high numbers looking pretty and them actually getting the job done.”

05:05 – “You want to give your audience the opportunity to say no. You don’t want to say no for them.”

11:07 – “If you’re not getting the leads, it doesn’t really matter how high your engagement is.”

12:44 – “Analytics allow you to optimize, which helps you deliver the results you want.”

00:08
LORI: Hello, everybody. I’m Lori Jo Vest, and it is time for episode 11 of Rev and Reach. And today, we’re talking about signal versus noise: decoding social media analytics that drive ROI. Now, analytics for social and ROI are almost two totally separate things, right? Absolutely. Kiley, like, what do we mean by ROI?

00:31
KILEY: Yeah, so, so analytics is exactly how it sounds, right? It’s the numbers behind each post, behind your month, how you did, how things are going, etc., etc. Engagement, clicks, video views, things of that nature. ROI is, you know, whether you have an outside agency like us, or you have an internal social media manager that does all of your business’s marketing on social—it’s whether or not you’re actually seeing your desired results. That’s almost never engagement clicks, website traffic, especially if that website traffic’s not converting. That’s kind of what we mean.

01:13
It’s the difference between those high numbers looking pretty and them actually getting the job done, right. So, yeah, if you’re a restaurant, it’s increasing people, like the actual foot traffic into your restaurant. If you’re a dental clinic, it’s, um, you know, increasing appointments booked and consultation scheduled, and that converting into, you know, real treatments, etc., etc. You know, if you’re retail, it’s increasing sales, things of that nature. Can analytics sometimes be an okay indicator that ROI is coming or that things are working? In some industries, I would say it’s easier than others to make that connection, but not always. It’s kind of the same point as how going viral isn’t ROI, right? Yeah, it’s fun to have high numbers and really high engagement and know that people are interested. But if they’re not taking that desired action, what’s the point, you know?

02:14
LORI: Exactly, exactly. Yeah, it’s so funny because, like, we really pay a lot of attention to our analytics. We’re always looking at the back end, how many people engaged with a post? You’ll hear us talk about engagement, and what that means is the number of people that chose to engage with the post, which is like, share, comment, divided by the number of people who saw it. And it’s listed as a percentage. So we use engagement as a way to show that the audience is interested in our content. If nobody ever engages, they’re not interested. We’re not doing it right, and it’s one of those things that we use to determine what content should be promoted.

02:59
For example, one of our dental practices. I, you know, we know the types of content that’s going to perform, but sometimes we’re surprised. Sometimes it’s a little, you know, you’ll see one that really rises above and you can’t really quite put your finger on why. Well, I’ll go in and that one that performed organically, I’ll put money behind it so it gets shown to a lot more people, because I know the audience appreciates it. So engagement is a good way to indicate that it’s content that your audience likes. Right conversion is what happens later. I mean, it’s all the way to the end of the kind of customer process is getting the consumer to either like, click on an application for volunteering, make a donation, print a coupon, and go to the store, you know, those kinds of things.

03:31
So conversion is great. And when we do social media, we’re paying attention to everything. We’re paying attention to followers. We’re paying attention to click-throughs, website traffic. We have a client that’s global, and the most important metric to them is educating their audience about the value of this particular material used in automotive manufacturing. Website traffic is the biggest indicator that we’re providing the information that that audience needs. And we get 10,000 or so a month on that particular website, so it’s a good indicator that we’re doing it right, right? Absolutely. What else do we use analytics for, Kiley?

04:31
KILEY: I mean, the possibilities with analytics really are endless, despite the fact that they don’t directly signal ROI in every case, right? If, you know, your call to action, like Lori said, is to visit the website or to learn more here, or, you know, in this case, you’ll see on our social, you know, in a few weeks, to click on this podcast episode and listen to the full thing, right? So clicks are really important.

05:00
One thing that we will say all the time about links and posts is that you want to give your audience the opportunity to say no. You don’t want to say no for them when it comes to learning more. And to learn more, that almost always includes a link to somewhere else. So I would say clicks are pretty important in regard to it; kind of, if you’re looking for increased website traffic in any regard, whether it’s to a podcast or to make more sales or to learn more or whatever, you know, if people are engaging with that and actually clicking to learn more, it is a signal that they’re interested, and that whether it was your copy or your graphic or your video or your photo, there was an element of your post that was enticing enough that made them think, oh, maybe I am interested. Let me click. You know, we’ve talked about conversion, we’ve talked about engagement.

05:55
I think video views are increasingly more important because, you know, again, you have about two to seven seconds in a video to grip your audience, and if that two to seven seconds really isn’t that interesting, you’ve lost them to the endless mindless scroll, right? Especially in informative and educational videos, because if you’ve used some witty headline or some witty opening comment and then locked them in, they will, you know, retain whatever it is that you’re telling them in the video content. I think that’s one of the reasons videos are so much stronger than photos and graphics, particularly today.

06:40
There are, I mean, truly, there are so many metrics that it’s kind of hard to put as much attention to all of them as you may want to. I would say that, in general, the ones that we probably look at the most as a signal that the content that we’re creating for our audiences is at the very least engaging and keeping you interested are clicks, video views, engagement. I would say reach is important in the sense that you want more people, obviously, to see your content, but if the quality of your audience is there, I would say it matters a little bit less than the other ones. You know, would you agree?

07:26
LORI: Yeah, absolutely. And I know we have some clients that the actual conversion is not necessarily the goal for nine months of the year. We have a social media account that’s a charter school, and what they want to do nine months of the year is communicate with the parents and keep them informed of the wonderful things they’re doing at school, and also get community support. So get the community involved, and it’s a specific charter school focused on a nationality, so we target the audience around so that we get the support of that cultural community, and they know about us, and they know what the school does, and they know how into really promoting and educating the students about their culture it is.

08:19
So the metrics can vary. You know what’s important can vary, and you always want to keep an eye on it because if you’re getting more engagement, more comments, more likes, more shares, it’s going to get shown to significantly more people because the algorithm pays attention to that. The algorithm pays huge, huge attention to what’s going on in the post when it comes to engagement, likes, comments, shares.

08:43
KILEY: Yeah, absolutely. I think that too, there are so many people that we talk to that kind of ignore analytics, right? And I don’t think it’s necessarily something that takes that much effort that it’s justified to ignore it. You know what I mean. I know Lori, for a lot of our clients, we do monthly analytics reporting for each of our clients, and I know Lori, for the ones that she’s super involved in—I would probably actually say, for most of our clients, you’re in there looking every single day.

LORI: I know, I can’t help myself.

KILEY: Right, which is, I mean, it’s, you know, you see so many brands that are completely ignoring their analytics altogether, right? When you’d rather just be in there every day seeing how the day before went?

LORI: It’s not hard.

10:21
KILEY: Exactly, it’s all you have to do is log into your accounts and take a little peek, even, even if it’s once a week, even if you’re just looking month over month at that monthly report that is so easy in every platform to view. I think it’s really important, despite the fact, again, that I’ll say it, that your analytics aren’t a direct signal to ROI. It is so important to get that ROI. That your content is interesting, right? Because if you have really, really poor numbers in your analytics, that ROI is significantly less likely. So, while they’re not directly correlated, one can signal that the other is possible. I think is—I don’t know if that made sense when I said it.

LORI: Absolutely, yes. Your analytics reporting. Yep.

10:23
KILEY: Yes. If you’re seeing dismal results on your social media, you’re not going to see ROI. However, you could be seeing really, really positive analytics and still not seeing that ROI. So that’s where it’s really important to get into because, you know, you could see, you know, in this month, I’ll go back to our dental clients. We did a ton of smile reveals and a ton of before and afters, and our leads skyrocketed. And then the following month, we did less smile reveals and less before and afters, but a lot of, like, still images of our doctors and our team and things like that.

11:01
And our engagement was really high, but we didn’t have any leads. Yeah, right, yep. If you’re not getting the leads, it doesn’t really matter how high your engagement is. So it’s really important to really look between the lines. I think it’s a good way to put that at—okay, yeah, our engagement’s high, but are we getting the desired outcome, right? So to kind of compare the two and understand that high engagement or high clicks or whatever is not necessarily a direct indicator that you’re seeing that ROI, but you don’t know that if you’re not looking, right? You don’t know how anything’s going if you’re not paying attention, absolutely.

11:39
LORI: And I would also add that your analytics can help you determine the best type of content to create moving forward. So we have a couple of different tools. We’ve used Loomly, we’ve used—I use Hootsuite for one client, we use Statusbrew for most of our clients, and you are able to go in there every month and see the top three performing posts. What are the top performing, and those posts are going to tell you that you need to do more of those types of content, right?

12:14
And the other thing is, you can use your numbers to test and learn. Does your audience prefer this type of call to action, or that type of call to action, can you just say, “Learn more,” or does that get you nothing? And if you say, “See how this works,” and put the link, that maybe performs better. So another reason to pay attention to those analytics is so that you can optimize your content, and that’s really the key to driving ROI. So analytics allow you to optimize, which helps you deliver the results you want. So with that, that seems like the perfect place to end. Yeah, right, so that’s how we do it anyway.

12:57
So again, Lori Jo Vest, Kiley Metcalfe, we are two members of the team at PopSpeed Digital Marketing. We help our clients with social, email, website development, SEO, content, and we love what we do. We’re the most enthusiastic people in the room. We are opening the curtain. Here’s how we do it. Here’s what works for us in hopes of spreading the good word about social media. If we can help you with your social, get in touch with us. Both of us are on LinkedIn. We’re open networkers, and we would love to hear from you. So with that, take care, guys.

KILEY: Bye, everybody.

In this episode, Lori and Kiley share stories of client engagements that didn’t go as planned. By examining these experiences, they uncover valuable lessons about setting realistic expectations, the importance of collaboration, and the need to recognize when it’s time to walk away.

00:08 – Lori and Kiley introduce the episode focused on client engagements that didn’t work out and the lessons learned from them.

02:25 – Kiley discusses the challenges faced with a restaurant client unwilling to offer promotions or adapt their expectations for social media’s capabilities.

05:05 – Lori highlights the disconnect between client expectations and marketing realities, emphasizing the importance of enticing customers with special offers.

08:02 – The successful use of user-generated content (UGC) despite staffing challenges within the restaurant client.

11:46 – Kiley describes the heavy workload of an account that wasn’t sustainable, leading to the decision to part ways with the client.

18:16 – Lori recounts an unusual demand for immediate ROI from a dental client and the decision to end the engagement due to unrealistic expectations.

05:25 – “When you look out into the ecosystem of restaurants on social media, coupons are a huge draw, specials are a huge draw, happy hours with reduced prices are a huge draw.”

23:03 – “We have a policy for our client roster that is really important to me.” “Yeah, it’s our no assholes allowed policy.

23:33 – “All of these engagements gone south, or engagements gone wrong… they teach us something.”

00:08
LORI: Hello, I’m Lori Jo Vest, and you are welcome to this episode of Rev and Reach. I’m here with Kiley Metcalfe. Say hi, Kiley.

KILEY: Hi, everybody.

LORI: And we are going to have a little fun today talking about client engagements that went wrong, because there’s lessons in here, right? There’s things that we learned, and there’s things that we hope we can teach our other clients, right? So we’re going to start with a story of a restaurant that we worked with, and we were so excited. It was a really cool concept. How would you describe them, Kiley?

KILEY: I would say it was, like, kind of high-end luxury bar food, almost. They had so much fun with their menu, with the types of creative spins they took on everything from burgers to tacos to ice cream to their cocktails and everything in between. It was very creative. It was very different. And, you know, with that, the food is good.

LORI: They were the home of the $20 hamburger, right?

KILEY: Yeah, $20 hamburger.

LORI: So things had to be really good, and really the service had to measure up. It had to be a really great environment in order for them to be successful, right? So we started working with them, and I think we had the account for about nine months, right?

KILEY: That sounds about right.

LORI: Some of the basic things that we know to be true about social media, they didn’t agree with, and that’s where things can get a little crazy. In this particular—we’ll just call it the restaurant—in this situation, with the restaurant, they didn’t believe that they should have to put out much effort or give coupons in order to maximize the results of their social media. No matter how hard we tried, we couldn’t get them to do coupons that were social-only—things like that that let you reward your social media audience and turn them into on-site customers of your restaurant. And we kind of fought with them for a while about it. What do you remember as being the biggest problem with them, Kiley? It’s been a couple of years.

02:25

KILEY: Yeah, I distinctly remember, and they were, you know, to their own credit, they were very upfront at the beginning of engagement that it was really important to them to see tangible ROI from a social effort, which, you know, you’ve heard us say here before, that’s a really difficult thing to do without things like, you know, social media-specific promotions and coupons and contests and discounts and, you know, things of that sort. If you’re not rewarding the audience that is engaging with your marketing, whether that’s social media or email or, you know, Google—even, you know, whatever that looks like—if you’re not rewarding those people that are paying attention, finding that ROI, especially in relation to a restaurant, when you’re not running ads that are leads, right? Of course not. We’re not looking for leads. We’re looking for restaurant patrons, right? They were very upfront about that, and it’s something that, you know, one of the things that I love about us and our company is that we’re not gonna, we’re gonna set realistic expectations from the jump. It doesn’t serve us or our clients if we lie and say, “No, 100%.” You’ll see the direct translation in some industries you can. In this one, it gets a little bit trickier.

So we were, we had that level set very early on where we said, you know, we’ll do what we can, but ultimately, like, we want sales to go up, and that’s the goal here. So it was something we had gone back and forth about a little bit, I would say, throughout the entire engagement. You know, if they had a slow week, “What’s not working on social?” when, you know, it was the week of Fourth of July and everybody’s out of town, of course, it’s going to be slow. Every restaurant’s a little bit slower if you’re not in a tourist town, right? It was little things like that that would just come up pretty regularly. And not to, you know, we’re, we’re always very, like, hand up, “Our bad” if something goes wrong. But to the opposite of that, we’re also very, okay, well, if you’re slow over the week of the Fourth of July, that’s not really something that social media marketing can fix, you know. So, so, yeah, so it was a battle of setting realistic expectations without, you know, kind of achieving that middle ground of, okay, well, you want tangible ROI to be seen from social, then we really need to give our customers something in return to get them in the door here, and to be able to show you that people that see our content are people that are coming in, right?

05:05
LORI: And the thing that I—that I just drove me absolutely nuts about that one—was the fact that the ownership really thought that they were doing everything they could. Why should they have to give a coupon? And it was a real bone of contention. And when you look out into the ecosystem of restaurants on social media, coupons are a huge draw, specials are a huge draw, happy hours with reduced prices are a huge draw. There are ways that you can prove that social media works. For example, you have a happy hour

that has these three to five cocktails that are on special. They’re really awesome, and you’re only going to tell people about it on social media. That means when people come in, they’re going to say, “Hey, I saw it on social media,” or your team is going to be able to say, “Hey, where’d you hear about this?” And you’ll get some solid return. They weren’t willing to do it. It just, and it was a $20 hamburger. And the other issue that we ran into, and this is something that I would recommend all marketers pay attention to, is that their team wasn’t really up to the challenge. They were not excited about being there. They were not excited about Kiley coming in to shoot social media content.

Oh, there was one guy behind the bar that was just so rude. It made it really hard for no reason. And, you know, we kind of figured out that there were some things going on that we were not able to do anything about behind the scenes. You know, things like quality of service that were a problem, but we couldn’t fix it, right? And so with the inability to get really great content with their team, which is an important part of any social media effort, and the fact that they didn’t want to give anything in order to get the returns from social, right? They were like, “Well, we pay you guys. Why should we have to give coupons?” It’s like, well, because you need to entice and draw people in, and then once they come in, your people and the quality of what you’re giving them—I mean, service is so critical in that business—yeah, that’s how you get success on social, right? It’s by a little coupon here and there to reward them.

And the fun thing about that too, which with restaurants is amazing, is the UGC. Now you’ll hear us talk about UGC. I did a great job managing the UGC for this client. User-generated content is when a customer says, “Oh, my God, this is such a great ice cream cone. I want to put a picture of me.” Or, you know, “Food eats first. I went to this restaurant, the food looks so awesome on the plate, they would share it,” and then I would reshare it. So, I mean, how—what was that like?

08:02
KILEYI: Well, I think it was, it was so interesting because you just made so many good points that tie into this. I think their UGC, the amount of content that this restaurant would get tagged in, was like nothing I had seen before, and nothing I’ve seen since. It was daily. It was, I mean, consistently very high-quality content, too. It did not take much to get UGC for this client. And it was easy because there was so much of it to pull from. You know, which, you know, to Kiley’s point before I did, I went into this restaurant pretty often to get that sort of content, to make some TikToks, to have some fun with the staff. And it turned out to not be very fun because nobody was really happy to be doing it.

KILEY: Yeah, which, you know, is so funny, because when we describe the vibe of this restaurant, the food and the menu—creative, fun, light-hearted. And the people behind the brand were not feeling that for whatever reason. But then I think that the amount of just sheer, really, really positive UGC that we were able to collect for them not only made up for the lack of, you know, really good, solid content we were able to get when we were in there, which did zero, but it wasn’t as much as I think it should have been, or could have been, right? But it also, I think, spoke to not necessarily the quality of service, but the quality of the product and how cool the vibe of the place was and how good the food was and how creative the menu was and, you know, just the fun atmosphere you’re in when you’re there, even if, you know, your server isn’t of, you know…

LORI: Yeah, maybe your server is a little snarky. A bit disgruntled…

KILEY: Right. Exactly, exactly. So I think that really spoke to how far we could have gone with this client just based on the quality of their product. And if all of those moving pieces that come together to make an atmosphere at a restaurant really, really special could have been pieced together, how strong it would have been. You know?

10:27
LORI: Yeah, it could have been something. It really could have. And in the end, because they weren’t able to prove the value of social media by having, you know, saying, “Here’s, you know, 20 people came in with a coupon last week off of social,” we couldn’t get them that kind of proof because they wouldn’t cooperate. And as a result, they wanted to cut our retainer. And they came to me. They were struggling as a business. They came to me, and, you know, they had a location in an area that wasn’t great, and they also didn’t have great service, so they started to see some declines in the revenue of the business, and wanted us to do the same work for like half the retainer. And based on the fact that they weren’t cooperating, that it was so difficult that we knew the service was never going to change—I mean, they really weren’t going to do anything about it, or so it seemed—we resigned the account, so we fired that client, and as much as I hate to do that, it was one of those things that neither of us was going to win.

They weren’t going to win because they weren’t going to change their service demeanor, and they weren’t going to do the things they needed to do. We weren’t going to win because we were never going to be able to prove that social media could grow their sales, because once someone went in once, don’t have a good experience, might not come back.

11:46
KILEY: I think, I think too that, I think that’s such a good point. And one of the things that, you know, we never want our clients to have to think about, but I think you know, in this regard, and on that, this platform, I think you know, hopefully most of the people listening can relate to this to some degree. When you, when you live in agency land, you don’t have just one client, yeah, and despite the fact that I genuinely had so much fun working on this account, this account was sucking up, I would say, out of a 40-hour work week for me, probably close to 30 to 32 of those hours. So this account became largely my full-time job. I was passing off other clients to other people on our team to make sure that our quality and the work was—it was in-depth. It was a lot. Like Lori said, they had multiple locations. They were expanding. We did a lot of emails. We, you know, we were going there. It was social on multiple channels for multiple accounts and locations. So that gets a little bit difficult. And I’m sure Lori can speak to that, you know, as the business owner, we’re a small team, and if, if we have, you know, one of our team members spending that much time on a single account? Yeah, it makes it a little bit hard to cut your budget without cutting the work, you know?

13:10
LORI: We knew if we cut the work, we would end up cutting our effectiveness. And we knew we were effective. We knew based on what was happening on social that people were really interested in this place and going, they opened a new location. While we were serving them, we were able to get into some, you know, some Facebook groups that were specific to that town and the foodies in that town and start talking about it. We did some promotion for some of their products that were sold nationally, and we saw some hits from that. So things were going well for the marketing. What wasn’t going well was the operations, and that’s something that we can’t fix.

13:54
So, when they asked us to reduce our scope, and I knew that that would mean, you know, basically just paying them, getting more for less. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t do it. So we parted ways with them in as positive a way as possible, and we moved along. But we learned a lot about restaurants and how they work, and how social works, and how you’re able to get UGC, which is extremely effective, and the things that worked, we really got a good handle on what worked in the restaurant space. That’s a win. You can’t really say that’s not a win. And you know, anytime we can learn more about a specific type of industry for social media, the better off we are. So we look at that as a win, even though it sounds like a loss, and the wheels were falling off. And when the wheels fall off, we usually make sure we’re the first ones to walk away, because I don’t want to be hanging on. And we’re not desperate. You know, we have clients. We have a
good stream of revenue coming in. So let’s talk about the client we just fired a few weeks ago. Oh, this is fun. This was in our dental category that we’re so good at, too. So open up the floor on this one. Kiley, go ahead.

15:08
KILEY: So we’ve done an entire—I think our first episode with Rev and Reach was on our dental clients. We have, I would argue, the most experience, proof, results, and success in this category. We can, you know, to incoming clients. We can prove it. We have the numbers to back us. I think, I think we’ve earned our confidence in this category. We have no problem speaking to it, right? So anytime, anytime somebody new, like, within this space or in a space similar comes to us or, you know, enters our orbit. So to say, we get really excited. To some people, that might sound really interesting, because who loves going to the dentist, but we have a formula that really works, and this was our, I would say, first experience in the land of—in the land of dental—out of many people that are firms that we’ve worked with before, where I don’t think that our proof was necessarily what they wanted to see. All they wanted was overnight, instant, not leads, booked appointments with—

LORI: —with ROI seven to ten times ROI within the first two weeks. It was insane.

16:32
KILEY: Which, yeah, I think this is, this is something we talked about on that first episode. We know what type of content works in this category, and in a lot of ways, this one was a little bit different because Lori was able to, you know, be present. It was a little bit more local to where Lori is. A lot of our other ones are, you know, somewhere farther away in different regions of the US. But we rely heavily on these clients to kind of get us those smile reveals and the videos and the day-to-day, like photos of a happy patient with the doctor and things of that nature. So it is collaborative. Absolutely, it’s collaborative.

So when we are very forthcoming about needing, you know, somebody in the office that just a couple of times a week even can make a big difference to send us those photos, videos, you know, whatever, in whichever case, and we’re not getting those, that can make an effort take a little bit longer to take off. That’s not what happened here, which is very interesting. We hit the ground running. We started very quickly. We did a very brief strategy, a little bit less in-depth than what we normally recommend for clients, just to help them save a little bit on the cost, and we hit the ground running without any of that specific type of content. We had no smile reveals. We had not—when we first started, we had not a lot of, you know, patient-doctor content. But we’re like, you know, we’ll get going right away. Let’s get this thing off the ground. And we saw leads instantly.

18:16
LORI: Yeah, we had leads coming in. We had like 20 leads coming in. But what happened? This was so bizarre. I’ve never experienced anything like it. It was two weeks into the engagement, or maybe it was a weekend, but a weekend that, after we had started posting, the dentist had a husband that was retired as a big wig from some global corporation, right? So he was, like, Big Cheese somewhere, and he would retired, and one day she said, “Well, I need you to come in and meet with my husband.” Okay? So I met with him, and he basically said that he needed seven to ten ROI on what we were doing, and he needed it by the end of the month. So this was two weeks in, two weeks left of the month, and we had already had probably 15 leads by then. But when you’re starting to set up a Lead Gen system, it takes a little bit of time to find the right targeting.

You know, they had, for example, a piece they gave us about whitening and actually putting a gem on the tooth. And we did a really fun video about it. We did some promotion behind it. They got a lot of calls that it was too expensive. So what that tells us is, after three or four days, back off, don’t promote that anymore. Wrong type of lead. And then we went with an Invisalign, and the Invisalign got some appointments, the general doctor conversation got some appointments. So by the end of the month, I believe we probably would have had 30 leads total, and probably ten of those would be solid. And one person had already come in and scheduled a treatment, you know, some kind of implant or something. And I went in and met with him, and he acted like nothing was happening. So toward the engagement lasted about three weekends, and at the three-week mark, I looked at the leads coming in, and I said, “I think you can agree with me that we’re headed in a really strong direction. We’d like our invoice paid.” And he said, “I can’t pay your invoice until I get seven to ten ROI.

What? What? And at this point, their front desk person had kind of stopped calling people right away, because she got a little disgruntled over the two or three leads that were just, that’s too much money, and she kind of thought, and I don’t know what happened, but she got a little less interested. And so I said, you know, here are a few things. We need to shore it up. We need to have your front desk call immediately because leads are most likely to close if they’re contacted within two hours of showing up in your system. And so some of the leads she was leaving for a couple of days and things like that. And he came back to me after I sent that email and said, we’re not—you know, this is—we’re following up immediately on everything. I knew that wasn’t true because I could see the spreadsheet and, you know, we’re not getting—this is the wrong targeting, and this is the wrong. And I knew that by the end of the month, especially if you got into 90 days, if you can give your social media 90 days to take off, he would have been, he would have had a significant increase in his patient load. I know they would have, because we were already starting.

And I’m willing to bet three or four of those actually are happening now, in June, but seven to eight ROI within two weeks isn’t going to happen. It’s just not realistic. And while I was expressing to him, this takes a little bit of time and things like that, I think he was kind of one of those mean girl kind of guys, and he just wanted to see me struggle. I mean, it really felt like that’s how he motivates people under his leadership, is to make you struggle and give you goals that were kind of insurmountable, that you would never achieve. And I sent him an email, and after he responded to that one, saying that they weren’t going to pay, with “I’m really sorry, but we’re going to walk away from this engagement. We’re going to walk away from this piece of business because we cannot be held to these standards that are so incredibly unrealistic.” Now, I know we would have gotten him a seven to ten ROI in 90 days, and so he’s so short-sighted, he couldn’t see it. And I wish, I wish I had access to that patient list now, because it would be so cool to see what happened in the last 30 days, right? But I don’t know. There’s a policy we have, Kiley. I’ll let you tell them about it too. We have a policy for our client roster that is really important to me.

23:08
KILEYI: Yeah, it’s our no assholes allowed policy. I know exactly what Lori’s referring to, and I was really glad to because obviously, in this case, with Lori being so much more client-facing than the rest of us, I was glad that she applied it to herself, too, because she was getting beat up bad by this client. But I think that, I think that it, you know, all of these, all of these engagements gone south, or engagements gone wrong, as you know, as Lori said earlier about the restaurant, they teach us something, yes. And I think, like, I think one of the things here, as Lori said it, was, you know, we had a contract signed. We had, you know, our plan in place. We’re not an agency that works, you know, off of, “We got you leads. Now you pay us.” We’re an agency like “We work. You pay us.”

LORI: We’re retainer-based.

KILEY: Yeah. And I think that when you initially kick off an engagement, which, you know, hindsight is 2020 but you kick off an engagement, and within two weeks of actually starting to post content, somebody comes in kind of out of, out of the clear blue, and says, “Well, no, even though a contract is signed and we’ve started working, and we’re posting, and we’ve put all of this effort in, red flag right there.”

Yeah, and I think it’s so true too, because, you know, it’s an industry we’re so confident in, and it’s an industry that we have this—I hate to say it, it sounds so click-baity, but we have this model that really genuinely works in this industry, like time and time again, very consistently. We, I don’t think we’ve had an experience yet when, when we work in the way that we want to within the dental space, that it doesn’t get a significant amount of leads. So I think that, I think that it’s good that it happened recently in this industry because, you know, we know that we can do it. And it’s not to a lack of confidence. It’s to a fear that once we hit that seven to ten ratio, which we know we’re going to do again, once we start receiving that content, once the effort has been built up for more than 5 to 6 weeks, of us coming in and doing our thing, that that will get there, but then still somehow that won’t be enough, you know, like if you can’t let us get in and kind of get our gears turning and do our thing and get there, and then follow up with the leads in the timely manner and the way that we tell you works, you’re never going to be happy, and then we’re never going to be happy, and no one’s going to be happy. And then what’s the point? If it’s not fun, right?

25:48
LORI: It’s true. And if it’s not fun, we don’t want to do it. And if it’s not effective, we don’t want to do it. So let’s talk about that. If it’s not effective, we’re not doing it. And that’s, that’s the thing that I find, I find so revealing about that particular engagement as well. That gentleman—I’ll call him—chased me. Like he came after us a couple of times like, “Oh, I’m so sorry to hear that. I really thought that if anybody could do it, you could do it,” which is that weird love-bombing thing that sometimes people do. And then I finally, I had to tell him, “Please do not contact us anymore. Your front desk has everything. If you have other questions, go directly to Meta. I’m done,” because he kept kind of chasing us. So I got a feeling that it was his style, that that was his style of leadership, and I wasn’t having it. I just, you know, that’s—and we are very collaborative in how we work. We love client input. We love client feedback. We are here to support our clients, but we’re not here to be abused, and that happens sometimes. So we’re fortunate that we are not in a position where we have to take every piece of business. We will never just take any piece of business, and when the wheels fall off, we will learn from that experience. And I think one of the things that we learned is it may be that—and he was one practice, one dental practice, and that that the percentage of our retainer, which was only $2,300, was way too much for them. So what we’re going to be doing moving forward is looking for practices with multiple locations. If you’re a dentist that has a practice with multiple locations, get in touch with us. We can help you. We know how to do it. We’ve done it. We’re doing it now for a bunch of practices in Colorado, and we’re here to help.

So with that, I think we’ll let this one go. It’s always good to talk about the mistakes and the things that happen, and it will change how I onboard people, you know, that specific one will change how I onboard restaurants as well as dental practices, you know, because, again, we learn. So that’s what we’ve got for you today, guys. Thank you, Kiley, for joining me, and we will see you again very soon. Take care.

KILEY: Bye, everybody.

In this episode of Rev and Reach, Lori and Kiley share foundational strategies to optimize your social media presence without overthinking. Delve into the core practices that help brands enhance authenticity, engagement, and ROI. Discover why simplicity, authenticity, and strategic engagement are the keys to winning social strategies

00:09 – Introduction to maximizing social media results with straightforward strategies.

02:17 – Lori reveals the top social media tip: “Stand out by fitting in,” emphasizing authenticity and natural engagement.

04:21 – Kiley discusses the effectiveness of using smiling faces in content, highlighting its ability to connect with audiences and enhance authenticity.

07:47 – The crucial role of incorporating a call to action (CTA) in every post to encourage engagement and guide audience interactions.

14:39 – The pitfalls of prioritizing grid aesthetics over impactful content on Instagram and the importance of tailoring content for each platform.

25:50 – Emphasizing the need for active community management across all platforms to improve engagement and foster relationships.

03:09 – “The most important thing you can do on social media is stand out by fitting in.”

05:22 – “Not only do smiling faces really connect with your audience, they display that authenticity and they make your content more trustworthy and engaging.”

15:27 – “The amount of time that your audience spends there versus just scrolling through old posts on your grid is astronomically more.”

25:52 – “Don’t overlook your community management on every single platform. The amount of people not responding to comments or active engagement is alarming.”

00:09

LORI: Hello, everybody. Thank you so much for joining us for this episode of Rev and Reach, where we share our digital marketing secrets and give you a look behind the scenes at how we get results for our clients. I’m Lori Jo Vest with PopSpeed Digital Marketing. I am the co-founder and partner, and Kiley is here. She is a digital marketing specialist and our, I guess, third in command. And today, we are going to talk about some of the basic things that we do that you may not consider that can help you amp up your results on social. So, Kiley, why don’t you get us started?

00:50

KILEY: Yeah, so in kind of, you know, between Lori and I discussing, like, what we wanted to talk about in this episode, there are so many different directions we could take it. And it’s one of those episodes we could probably continue to talk forever about. And I think that, you know, for us, in terms of our, like, general basic tips that really work for us, they’re gonna ultimately come off as really simple. And I think a lot of people will have a lot of, like, aha moments when we kind of start going through these. But ultimately, it’s so common for people to overthink their brand’s social media marketing. It’s one of those things where yes, it is complicated, and it requires a lot of thought and intention and strategy, but ultimately, the type of stuff that works really doesn’t need to be overcomplicated, and it shouldn’t be. As a matter of fact, the overthought, overproduced, overcommercialized stuff really doesn’t work or play well on social anyway. So I think once we start getting into a few of our, like, top tips and, you know, the things that we kind of refer back to pretty often, it’ll be interesting to see how simple it seems, but ultimately, how few people are doing it the way that that it should be done.

02:17

Lori: Yeah, or the way that gets results. I want to start us off really quick with the most amazing piece of advice that we ever got, and it was from a TikTok Workshop. If you’re in the field of social media and digital marketing and you don’t attend workshops like every freaking day, you’re missing out because there are free workshops put on by the scheduling platforms, by HubSpot, by all that, you know, by subject matter experts about social media that give you all kinds of really, really good information on how to use it to get returns. And the one we were on TikTok, I think it was about a year ago, we just grabbed hold of this saying and have kept it with us, you know, I pet it and keep it, you know, pay attention to it, and they talk about it all the time. What it is is that the most important thing you can do on social media is stand out by fitting in. What that means is we do not go to social media to see your ads. We don’t. People do not go to social media to see the ads that we create as good as we are. People don’t do that. They’re not there looking for our ad. We know that. We are a disruption to their desire to connect with people they know. So in order to be a positive disruption, we want to look like what they’re looking for. So that means natural photos, authenticity, selfie videos, talking heads, things that you’d expect to see other people share, not necessarily brands. What that doesn’t mean, or what it means you should not do, is share a bunch of graphics, graphic billboards, and things like that. If you have to share a graphic billboard, make sure it’s interesting, right? Make sure it’s applicable and appealing and interesting, but “stand out by fitting in” is my favorite piece of social media advice to give. How about you, Kiley? What’s your fave?

04:21

KILEY: I think my favorite one is smiling faces. It’s one that we go back to all the time, and we try to convince—convince may not be the right word—but try to really, really, get our clients to understand this one. Smiling faces, specifically smiling faces that have to do with your brand’s community, whether that’s your audience members, happy customers, people you know within the community, staff, volunteers, anybody behind the scenes that’s involved with the brand using their faces and their happy experiences on social is so, so, so effective. I’d be curious to see an updated stat of this. I should have pulled that before we got in here, but I think it was two or three years ago. The statistic was it performs 29% better according to Meta platforms than all other types of content. And so for us, that goes to show that not only do smiling faces really connect with your audience, they display that authenticity and they make your content more trustworthy and engaging. So exactly what Lori said in terms of standing out by fitting in, if you look at nearly anybody’s Instagram or Facebook or any social platform, maybe excluding LinkedIn, a personal page, it’s a highlight reel of the best times of their life, right? It’s going to weddings, it’s going on trips. It’s happy dinners with your best friends, or whatever the case may be. And all it is is smiling faces, whether it’s posed with your friends or a candid shot of you at your favorite restaurant or whatever. And I think that that is like where that connection really lies, is that in the heart of it, it is standing out by fitting in. Also going kind of in relation to what Lori said, it outperforms graphics and it outperforms stock images, and that’s because it’s incredibly more authentic than a stock image. Because a lot of stock images are very obviously just that, it’s very easy to tell what is stock and what is not. You’ll find some good ones, but with trained eyes… 

LORI: Yeah, typically it’s a great big grin!

KILEY: Yeah.

06:49

LORI: Earlier today, I screen-capped some Meta analytics from one of our clients that we’re doing their social. We’re doing what we can. A lot of what they do is organic, and once in a while, they’ll share a real photograph of somebody at the practice, right? I looked at the back end of Meta and saw that the actual photo of their team members was shown to 538 people, while the other stock image content we use for them, because we have no other choice, was shown to 35 or 50 people. What a difference! Ten times as many people saw or responded to the image of their actual team, and it was just a cute little pose of a couple of their people. And it’s appealing because it’s real, and real is what social media is about. 

07:47

So let me get my next one here. My next one is CTA. Always. That’s another one of my favorites. And not everybody in social media will agree with me. They won’t, because some people say that you need to gift your consumer with content that doesn’t require their response sometimes, and that kind of thing, and that it’s a balancing act. And I disagree because I think you can always go down a few lines and say, learn more about us and just add that, skip a line or two and put that there. What that does is it lets the consumer make the decision of whether they want to go deeper or not. If you don’t include a link, you’re not allowing them to go deeper, even if they want to, without having to click to your profile, go to your profile page, click the link there, go to your website… Ooh, that’s a lot of clicks, and honestly, most people will not do that. If it’s not easy, they’re moving along. So CTA always and Kiley, what do you think about that? I mean, just on your personal feelings about it, what do you think?

08:58

KILEY: I completely agree with you. And I think one of the things, because I know a lot of people have mixed feelings about that, I think one of the things that’s important is that a CTA doesn’t always have to look the same. You’ll see us, if you’re one of those people that doesn’t think every post should have a link, generally speaking, we put links to learn more, and I would say 95% of our posts, maybe more. You can also incorporate CTAs that build engagement, right? Like, let us, you know, if you tried this tip, let us know how it worked in the comments, or give us a like, or drop a heart in the comments, or subscribe, or anything like that, give us a follow. Those are still CTAs, even without including a link. So I think that in terms of including CTAs, I don’t see a reason in not doing it, because the worst that’s going to happen is they don’t want to, so they don’t. It’s no harm, no foul, really.

LORI: Yeah, and I’ve been surprised by how many click-throughs I’ve gotten on some of my organic posts on LinkedIn, where all I say is learn more about us if they want to move forward, not expecting anything, and you still get, you know, 10, 12, 15 clicks. Because in a lot of cases, if the post is good, they’ll want to learn more. So anyway, that’s what’s your next favorite one? That’s mine.

10:22

KILEY: One of mine. And it’s- I think for a lot of people watching, it may seem a little patronizing. You would be very surprised how often we see this: stop including links in your post copy on Instagram. We see so many people still doing it, and there’s a lot of reasons why it’s a bad idea. First and most important is that links on Instagram and organic content are not clickable. So what they do is, particularly ones that are not shortened in the copy, they just take up way too many characters, and it looks silly, honestly, because it’s just a bunch of mumble, jumbled letters and figures and symbols that do nothing, because you can’t. 

LORI: People will not. They will not copy and paste. I don’t care what you think, they will not copy and paste.

KILEY: Exactly. It’s just far too much work and far too much to ask of your audience. They’re not going to do it. So our recommendation for kind of fixing that is to include, you know, we’ve used Linktree, link in bio is another one. There are a lot of platforms where you can kind of build your own profile of just your highlighted important links. They get housed there. You put the link to that page in your profile on Instagram, so then in your captions, in your copy, when you have a CTA and you need somebody to click on something, tell them to visit the link in your bio, instead of clouding your copy and making what could be really, you know, well-spoken, pithy, funny copy be clouded by a bunch of random characters that just look silly and annoying and honestly, like you don’t know what you’re doing.

LORI: Like you don’t know what you’re doing. That’s the part. You don’t want to look like you don’t know what you’re doing because real serious people will dismiss you. It’s hilarious that they’ll dismiss you for that, but they’ll think, oh yeah, they don’t know what’s up. And they’ll get going. Yeah, it’s just how it is.

KILEY: Exactly. 

12:35

LORI: Okay. So mine, this next one is hashtags. Hashtags and targeting by the algorithms is in a constant state of evolution, constant. And there are people saying hashtags are going away, and I truly do believe that. They’re not quite gone yet. But what’s replacing it is what they call interest-based targeting. What that is, it’s more like Google, where you’re going to have a keyword, and you want keywords that other people looking for the thing that your company does. If you are a veterinarian, they’re looking for pet health, you’ll want to use those words in your copy. So you won’t want to write two or three sentences and then you go back and look and you didn’t include any of the keywords that people would be searching for. And that’s the thing, you want to consider what people will be searching for and what they follow. So a veterinarian might be, you know, dogs. Dogs of Instagram. It might be, you know, things like that, but you want to mention the keywords in your copy on all the channels, including YouTube, because they’re all veering more toward this interest-based targeting instead of hashtags. People used to search hashtags or follow hashtags, and that was an active way of putting your content in front of them. It’s evolving, and it’ll be more intuitive and more, you know, if you’re a person who regularly or a brand that regularly uses these specific keywords in your post content, then people are going to understand the algorithms are going to understand that people that are interested in that should be fed your content. So it’s a little bit different, but it’s also the same, it’s also very similar. So same thing, only different, right?

KILEY: Right. The same but different, yeah, exactly. 

LORI: As it should be. What else you got? 

14:39

KILEY: My next one is specific to Instagram. We run into a few situations, particularly recently, which has been really interesting, where we are working with clients that are hyper fixated on their grid on Instagram. And you know, while we totally get that aesthetics matter, it shouldn’t be the forefront of an Instagram strategy, and that’s for a few reasons. We’re never going to tell you to post ugly content. We’re never going to tell you to post content that looks bad in your grid. However, when you hyper fixate on building a pretty grid, you lose sight of where people are going to be in taking your content, and that is in their scroll on their homepage. The amount of time that your audience spends there versus just scrolling through old posts on your grid is astronomically more. Honestly, the amount of time people are going to spend looking at your grid is so few and far between. Unless, yeah, unless you’re running a visit our page ad and so you’re getting a bunch of, you know, really timely clicks to one spot. But even then, if you’re prioritizing consistently appealing content, you’re not going to have an ugly grid. We’ve seen this with, you know, those puzzle piece kind of posts that come together on…

LORI: Oh, that used to be such a big deal, didn’t it?

KILEY: It used to be such a thing. And my take on it is that Taylor Swift can do it. You don’t have to. You’re not Taylor Swift. You know what I mean?

Lori: Exactly. Yeah. 

16:21

Kiley: So what something like that does is it clouds your audience’s feed because you have to post it so fast that it’s A, almost annoying, and B, it looks weird. The only way it looks normal is when it comes together and somebody’s looking at your grid. And then, even then, it’s only aligned every three posts to look normal on your grid. So yeah, getting hyper fixated on what your actual page looks like, we just kind of take it as a missed opportunity to really focus on what’s going to get clicks on your audience’s homepage, and that’s ultimately what matters far more than the look and feel of your grid. Should you stick to brand colors? Yes. Should you prioritize good thumbnails? Absolutely. But by trying to make too many things come together that ultimately, you know, once it’s been three weeks since you’ve posted something, nobody’s thinking about it anymore. So it just doesn’t matter how well it fits on your grid anymore. So yeah, it’s interesting because I think that maybe, you know, in past years, I could get behind it a little bit more when those puzzles were, you know, a much more prevalent trend and things like that. But it’s been really interesting how much we’ve run into concerns about the grid this year compared to how little it really matters if you’re doing everything right, generally speaking.

17:51

LORI: Yeah, it is interesting. And the thing that we noticed is that I think they may be through the transition now that Instagram photos are no longer square, they’re now the vertical format, and so it’s virtually impossible to get a beautiful kind of puzzle piece to fit together in the grid. However, that doesn’t mean there’s nothing that you can do to make your page stand out. And I’ll give you an example. I was working with a cancer center. It was a radiology center about three or four years ago, and we did a bunch of competitive research, and we found that Dana Farber, at that time, Cancer Center, it’s a really well-known cancer center in the US, had actually taken made their Instagram page, smiling patients, and it was just like casual headshots of smiling patients. And when you pulled up their grid, it was almost overwhelming. And how cool it was, because you just look at all these beautiful faces, and I’ve never forgotten that, because that was how you create a beautiful grid that just never is anything but that, right? Yeah. 

KILEY: Well, the thing about that too, is that it also appeals to the scroll, right? Just the random scroll, because it stands out by fitting it. I mean, every tip we’ve covered so far, really, you’re standing out by fitting in because you’re, you know, you’re using those smiling faces and all of that together. There’s a way, exactly what Lori said, there’s ways to make a cohesive, beautiful grid that stands out and gets attention that also works in the algorithms of your audience, in their mid-scroll on their homepage.

19:39

LORI: Yep, absolutely, absolutely, what we tell clients, and this sounds really self-serving, but it’s not, I promise you, is that if you combine social media with a monthly email and regular recurring content on a well-built and well-designed SEOed website, you can’t lose. Those three things work together in a really nice way, and you can repurpose content. So if a newsletter, a monthly newsletter, just sounds like too much, well, consider that social posts make great newsletter stories because they’re short, they’re quick, and they link to somewhere on your website, hopefully, right? And so you want to put regular updates on your website, and we do, for example, we do digital marketing for SandCastles, Henry Ford SandCastles Grief Support. And we do the website, the emails, the social media. And we’ll put a blog article up which turns into, you know, social content, which turns into newsletter content, and it just all flows really well and helps us reach our audience repetitively. Because today, things are not that much different than they were back in the day when they said that a consumer had to see your television commercial five times before they’d even remember your name. So you need to hit them in a lot of different ways to really create that connection and community through your digital marketing. So, yeah, that’s one of my all-time favorites. So go ahead, Kiley, what you got?

21:17

KILEY: My next one is about tailoring your content to different platforms. We’ll see, you know, whenever we go through strategies, we look at all, you know, this long list of competitors for whatever industry we’re creating the strategy for, and we’re constantly looking at what our current clients’ competitors are doing, what works for them, what can we make work for us. And something that I’ve noticed a lot, like, way more than I think that I should with people that are obviously working with digital agencies or have a social media manager, is the amount of brands that keep their content entirely consistent across all channels. And that’s not to say that you can’t repurpose content throughout, right? A lot of what works on Facebook might work on Instagram and etcetera. But when you start getting into YouTube and LinkedIn and formerly Twitter now X, a lot of that content requires a little bit of customization to be really effective on each channel. 

So let’s say, you know, we’ll go, we’ll go back to SandCastles, for example. We just brought them up. If they are recruiting volunteers for an upcoming event, the way they are going to do that throughout and across each channel that they’re on is not the same, right? So, what’s going to get the attention of potentially interested volunteers on Facebook is not going to be the same as if they’re trying to do it on LinkedIn. The audiences across all of these platforms and consumer behaviors are just so vastly different that it’s not to say that you can’t use the majority of your content throughout every channel that you’re on, but by making a few copy tweaks or maybe slightly editing a graphic, or adding a little something to a photo, or using a video on Instagram as a reel, instead, making those little edits and specifications to make it work on individual platforms is so worth the little bit of extra effort that it takes to get the ROI and to really serve the purpose of a specific post or a series of content or a campaign, or whatever the case may be, because otherwise it’s just falling flat. You know, what’s going to work on Facebook, Instagram is not going to work on LinkedIn, is not going to work on YouTube, is not going to work on TikTok. So going that extra mile is super important.

Lori: It looks lazy, too, to me.

Kiley: Yes.

LORI: But on the other hand, the channels will let you do it, right? The one I see the most of is Instagram being posted on Facebook, and it’s got 30 hashtags. And it says link in bio, and it just is… lazy. 

KILEY: Or vice versa, with Facebook and Instagram, and then Instagram having the link exactly. You don’t need a bunch of hashtags on Facebook. You don’t need links on Instagram. Just even something as simple as that, make those little tweaks just to showcase that you’re taking the time to customize for who it is you’re trying to reach on different channels.

24:38

LORI: And here’s my last one, is that if you’re not taking advantage of stories on Instagram, you are making a mistake. And I know how it happens because a lot of us, we schedule our Instagram content through a scheduler. We may respond to comments and questions from Instagram with a scheduling platform that has the community management function, but there’s nothing better than going to Instagram on mobile and sharing those stories with stickers and things like that. You’ll reach so many people that are not your followers, which I love, and it’s an easy way to expand your reach way beyond what you will get simply by posting content on Instagram. And then you can add them to the highlights, and if someone is really interested, they can dig deeper when they get to your page. But I’m really surprised by how many brands miss out on stories, and I think it’s because going to mobile, you know, who wants to use it, but it’s really important, as a community manager, to make sure that you utilize that particular feature of Instagram just to increase your reach.

25:50

KILEY: My last one, don’t overlook your community management on every single platform. The amount of people when we’re doing our audits and looking at competitors that we see that are not responding to comments, not actively going into their messaging platforms and things like that, is alarming because social media is a regular part of so many people’s lives that it should be an accessible point for consumers to reach brands that they engage with, right? When you don’t build that bridge, but then you also expect your consumers to engage with you back on social media, it’s, you know, you’re asking more than you’re willing to give. And that’s not necessarily fair to people who ultimately you’re asking for dollars from in whatever industry. So, even just having somebody regularly go into each platform, once in the morning, once in the evening, just to make sure there’s no questions that need to be answered, or if you get a happy customer review in the comments on a Facebook post, respond to them, make them feel good that you saw it and you’re grateful that they shared their experience and engage with them. It’s a win-win scenario, right? Because by not doing it, you’re making a lot of customers feel ignored, and by doing it, you’re making a lot of customers feel very heard.

LORI: Yeah, and I’ll add, the algorithm loves it. If you talk to, we’ll talk about Brenda Miller, because we love Brenda Miller. So Brenda Miller is our go-to expert on LinkedIn, and she’ll tell you that when anyone comments on your content there, you respond with five or more words to that comment. Don’t just like it. Respond to it with words. The algorithm on LinkedIn loves that. They love the community aspect of that and that content will get shown to more people. So if you log on in the morning and there are 16 comments, spend the time to respond to every single one, it does pay off, huge.

So thank you again for joining us for this episode of Rev and Reach. We really hope to share things that you can do right now to increase the effectiveness of your social media marketing effort. So I’m Lori Jo Vest with Kiley Metcalfe. You can reach us both on LinkedIn. We’re Open Networkers there, and you can also check out our website at popspeeddigital.com to find out more about us, what we do, and get in touch there if we can help you with your digital marketing. Take care, and we’ll be back soon.

In this episode of Rev and Reach, Lori and Kiley explore the relevance of TikTok as a platform for businesses. They discuss the rapid rise of TikTok, its impact on content across other platforms, and considerations for brands deciding whether to invest in TikTok as part of their marketing strategy.

00:08 – Introduction to TikTok’s explosive popularity and its potential role in digital marketing strategies.

03:00 – Kiley discusses the similarities in content trends across platforms like Instagram and YouTube, emphasizing the need for short, engaging videos.

05:44 – Considerations for using TikTok: brand voice, content style, and the potential to engage or alienate your audience.

09:04 – The importance of having a dedicated team to produce consistent, quality content on TikTok.

12:25 – Lori advises on testing TikTok for 60 to 90 days to evaluate its effectiveness for your brand.

17:02 – Final tips on exploring TikTok and understanding platform trends before making a commitment.

06:01 – “People expect TikTok-level entertainment and engagement.”

10:40 – “There’s literally, not exaggerating, a niche for everything on TikTok.”

14:03 – “Give it 60 to 90 days and make sure you strategize and really give it your all.”

18:05 – “You can’t strategize and plan what to do if you don’t spend time on the channel.”

Rev & Reach Episode 8 Transcript

00:08

LORI: Hello, everybody. I’m Lori Jo Vest. Welcome to this episode of Rev and Reach, where we share ways we get ROI using social media and digital marketing for our clients at PopSpeed Digital. So this episode is called “To TikTok or Not: Is TikTok Really Necessary for Your Business?” And I’m here with Kiley Metcalfe. Kiley is our third in charge at PopSpeed Digital Marketing and a social media specialist. So say hi, Kiley.

KILEY: Hi, everybody.

LORI: So we are going to alternate talking about TikTok. So here’s what I think about TikTok. I love TikTok. I try to stay off of it because it’s so addictive, and so many people are on it, creating awesome content. It is really—I mean, are you on TikTok frequently, Kiley?

KILEY: I was. I was on TikTok all the time. I had to get rid of it. The other thing about TikTok, which is true for every social media site, is that you’re inundated with information pertaining to your life.

LORI: Oh, yeah, yep.

KILEY: I’m currently pregnant with my first child. I think I’ve said that, so I was inundated with way too much information. So I’m on TikTok hiatus, personally, but I love it. 

LORI: Good and bad information will come your way. However, in most cases, it will be entertaining, because TikTok is entertaining. Took the world by storm back right around the pandemic, right? So do you need to be there as a brand? Should every business, every brand, every person who wants to promote themselves as an influencer be on TikTok? Well, let’s start with a real basic question. Who’s your audience? If your target market is under 35 years old, you should be on TikTok. If you are selling business to consumer, business to business is still best handled over on LinkedIn. But if you’re B2C, and you’re good at creating the kind of content that TikTok likes, then you absolutely should be there.

However, if you’re not good at creating that kind of content, which we’re going to get into in a little bit, and you can’t be consistent, and you can’t hit the goal of being entertaining or, you know, at least informative in a way that’s really engaging, don’t bother, right? Because there’s a lot to consider. And I’m going to hand this over to Kiley to talk about, it’s not just should you be on TikTok or not, but can you create the right type of content, right?

03:00

KILEY: Yeah, exactly. I think it’s no secret exactly what Lori said, that around the time of the pandemic, I know TikTok started a bit earlier than that, but around the time that COVID hit, everybody’s inside, got nothing to do but watch TV and hang out on their phones. TikTok took the entire social media world by storm and changed the way things are done. We’ve seen since then Instagram Reels pop up, YouTube Shorts, Facebook Reels. They exist everywhere, and it’s all essentially the same type of content. Do people live on TikTok? Yes. Do people still live on Instagram and Facebook also? Yes. So it’s really about considering that type of content and what it looks like.

It’s those short, hard-hitting, entertaining, engaging videos. Are there some other things you can do on TikTok with the sliding carousels? Yes, but at the heart of it, let’s focus on those videos, right? And that type of content is what is working best on every single other platform presently. Whether you’re talking about YouTube Shorts, Instagram Reels, Facebook Reels—I know LinkedIn even has a scrolling video section now—so it’s everywhere, right? And if you’re able to put together engaging video content in that format, understand how it works and produce it on a consistent basis in a way that really tells your brand story and builds that bridge between you and your audience, you need to not be missing out on the opportunity of TikTok.

And it’s also really good to consider that that type of content is so universal now, so if you’re going to take the time to do it on TikTok, then you’re also giving yourself extra Instagram content, extra Facebook content, extra YouTube Short content, in some cases, maybe some LinkedIn content.

So the reward versus the doubt about whether or not you need to be there can be so great. If you decide to launch a TikTok effort and it doesn’t go your way, or you find that the type of audience that you’re really trying to reach isn’t there, then you kill the effort. You know what I mean? No harm, no foul. But it’s important to look at whether or not you’re going to be there from the lens of is this type of short video content that’s engaging, that catches the eye, that stops an audience member mid-scroll, and gets their attention. If you can produce that, it’s absolutely worth considering.

05:44

LORI: Absolutely, absolutely. And I would say TikTok took all the platforms’ videos to task. Because what used to fly on the other channels will no longer fly. People expect TikTok-level entertainment and engagement, they just expect you to do something that’s going to get their attention. Another thing to consider, if you’re looking at should you be on TikTok, is your brand’s reputation, voice, character? Is it right for TikTok?

And some people will say, you know, you have to be funny, you have to be snarky to make any headway on TikTok, but I’m not sure I agree with that. I think that’s a really great place to go with your content if you can, like Scrub Daddy. I love Scrub Daddy. You’ll always hear me talk about Scrub Daddy’s TikTok. It’s the little scrubby thing with the smiley face. And they do the most hilarious things. They do great stuff. You may find that there’s something you can do that’s appealing on TikTok, that’s not snarky, that’s not funny.

But a really good question to ask is, would your audience trust you more or less after seeing your TikTok content? An example I had, we worked in the dental category frequently, and we were looking at competitors of one of our practices, and this guy is a prosthodontist surgeon, and he had a reel where he was putting teeth he had pulled into a little circle on a tray with bloody stuff hanging off of them. And it was disgusting to me. I wouldn’t trust him more, because I would think he was into cruelty or something, right? I would trust him less.

However, there’s another brand I know of. I can’t say I recall who they are, because I’m not in the market for a private jet. But there’s a company that either sells partial membership, so you kind of share ownership of a private jet, a private jet service, or a company that sells private jets, but they have an executive that’s just a real badass. I mean, he is just out there. He’s got a huge personality, and they follow him around. He happens to be in one of these jets, of course, in the seat, or getting on it, or getting off of it, and he gives really hard-hitting business advice. That is a really cool way to use TikTok and videos. And it’s TikTok-friendly because it’s got some snark to it. It’s got big energy. And it kind of breaks the mold on what you’d expect of an executive giving advice on social.

So if your brand voice can evolve, or there’s something that you do that is entertaining—I mean, let’s talk about the road company that stripes the road. All they have is just video of the stripe being laid down by the machine. And it is mesmerizing, right? So you may have something like that that you do that will let you be a star on TikTok, so consider that before you decide to skip it, right?

09:04

KILEY: Absolutely. I think, moving on to our next point, I think having it really goes to show how important it is to have a team behind you to support an effort, because one of the biggest considerations is the undertaking of TikTok, and whether or not you have the bandwidth for it. I know bandwidth is a buzzword, but it is so important because the algorithm on TikTok is tough. It’s very, very tough, which it has to be, right? There’s a niche for everything, it’s very competitive, billions of people that all have unique interests. And we’re tailoring every person’s “For You” page to exactly what they want to see, right? So it has to be a bit cutthroat, but at the same time, if you’re doing it right, it can be really rewarding.

So if you are not able to consistently, particularly in the beginning, get new content and consistently engaging and solid content on TikTok four to five times a week, I would say at a bare minimum three, you’re not going to see that growth at the rate that you might need to make the effort worth it. You really need to be there on a regular basis. Some people post multiple times a day on TikTok to build their following, so it really is quite the undertaking.

But again, that algorithm can be so rewarding because there are billions of people there, and there is literally, not exaggerating, a niche for everything on TikTok. If your brand is working in any A-through-Z type of industry, obviously, there’s a handful of people there interested in that topic. You’re not the only people in the world that care about what you’re doing.

So I think if you can make that commitment and, you know, put forth a team that is really focused on building that effort, building a following. Because once you get to—I believe the threshold is 1,000 followers on TikTok—then you can start monetizing. Then you can start including links. It makes your advertising dollars a lot more well spent. You’ll see that ROI bit more. So if you can just hit those targets and really put your head down and get there and make that content, you’re going to see worthwhile results there.

And then again, like we said before, you have all of that backlogged content, because you really shouldn’t be posting multiple times a day on Instagram Reels, not really the same type of algorithm. But if you’ve used all that TikTok content, it makes your life a little easier on your other channels when you have that library to pull from.

So is it a lot of work and a massive undertaking? Especially at the beginning? Yes, it is. There’s no other way to slice it. You have to be committed. But is it worth it if your audience is there? Yes, I think so.

12:25
LORI: Absolutely. And I think this is the advice we would give about most channels, however, when we enter a business relationship with a company where we’re serving as their marketing agency, we recommend the standbys, the Instagrams, the YouTubes, Facebook, LinkedIn. TikTok, not so much, because it’s so specific.

If you feel like you really want to give TikTok a shot, make sure you do it right and you give it 60 to 90 days. Don’t expect to see results in two weeks. Do everything you need to do to be successful, including four to five times a week, spend some money. Look at your metrics. Have a landing page or a link or something so you know what’s happening there. Pay attention. Test it and see what happens.

If you make a 90-day commitment and then walk away because you got likes and stuff, but nobody went to your website. You didn’t get anything sold. There was nothing tangible that came from it. Give it up. No harm, no foul. You can walk away from a social channel, just let it go dark and come back later, or don’t come back at all. It’s okay to do that because if it’s not going to work, why spend the energy? You may be better served on a different platform, but if you can find a good angle, you may find TikTok is where you want to be.

So I would give it 60 to 90 days and make sure you strategize and really give it your all for those 60 to 90 days, rather than just kind of throwing it out there to see what happens, and then you’ll know for sure.

14:15

KILEY: I think to build off of that too. Another thing that’s really interesting about TikTok is that it is pretty unpredictable. I would say, in our experience there with our clients, you know, we’ll say over and over again, you can’t just decide one day that you want to go viral and then go viral and virality, ROI, and blah, blah, blah. Is it fun to go viral on TikTok? Yeah, it is. You know, it is what it is, but it’s really interesting.

I remember there’s a client we formerly worked with. We’re not with them anymore, and they were really heavy on TikTok. They had the type of stuff that we could put together for them there was so fitting. And I would say, yeah, it was absolutely worth the grind there for them to be successful there.

But I remember putting together videos for them, and, you know, oh, this one I’m super happy with, and I feel like this is the best one we’ve done yet. And it’d be dismal. It would be like bomb, yeah. I’m like, what is going on? And then there’d be another one that, you know, of course, we’re never putting together bad content, or we’re never going to run with content that we’re not proud of, especially on behalf of our clients, yeah.

But, you know, it’s something maybe we’re less excited about, or I was less proud of than this other one, and it would go crazy. It’d go crazy. A lot of factors work into that. If you’re using audio that’s presently trending, or if you’re jumping on a certain trend and things like that, it ups your chances a little bit. But it’s so funny to see how the algorithm or your viewers pick and choose what’s worth their time and what isn’t.

So it’s another thing—testing versus guessing—because you never really know. You want to see a bit of what works. Maybe, because I know this is—I haven’t looked at Scrub Daddy’s TikTok in a minute, but I know a big thing they used to do all the time was jump on every trend that was fitting, right? Use that trending audio and make it work with their brand. Surprisingly, so many trends did.

If you have a niche like that where your brand is, we’re going to stick with what’s trending and that seems to work for us, then once you try it once and continue down that path, you figure out what works. Particularly in the beginning, I think, kind of using, again, not guessing, but experimenting, because it’s one of those platforms where it might really surprise you what goes really well and what doesn’t go so well.

17:02

LORI: Yep. So make sure you’re trying enough variety in your content. Variety is really important. And the last bit of advice I would have is, if you are considering if you should be there, is to go there, spend time there. Maybe you need to give yourself a limit an hour a day or something because it’s really crazy. However, spend some time on it so that you can see what is happening there. Get familiar with it. Look at what brands are doing. Look up your favorite brands. Look up your competitors. Look up if you’re an accounting firm, look up accounting. Look up tax accounting. See what’s out there before you decide what you are going to do.

You may see some really interesting things that you can make your own and trends that you might be really suited for. You can’t strategize and plan what to do if you don’t spend time on the channel. So I have a timer on my phone that I use once in a while to keep me off.

So that’s what we’ve got for you—TikTok or not, right? We’re going to end with a checklist. Do you think you should be on TikTok or not? Question number one: Do you have a product or service that can be used to create personality-driven, engaging, entertaining, deeply moving content? Are you targeting Gen Z or young millennials? They are there. Can you commit to creating the content that needs to be created? Or will you do two weeks and then you’ll run out of content? You just, you know, you kind of let it float. Don’t do that. That’s not good for anybody.

Do you have someone on your team or a partner agency who can work with you to understand the trends and help you come up with a plan to create and execute that content that really makes a difference for you? If you can say yes to a few of those questions, it might be time to give it a chance. We are here to help you.

Of course, I gotta tell you that at popspeeddigital.com, you can get a hold of us. We do social media, email marketing, website development, and SEO content for websites, and we do it with an ROI focus. So we’re a little bit different than a lot of the digital marketing shops that are out there right now.

You can reach out to either me or Kiley on LinkedIn if you’d like to connect with us there. Suggest a topic that you’d like us to cover. Ask us questions you’d like us to answer in this podcast. We’d love to hear from you. So that’s what we’ve got for you. Thank you so much.

Again, thank you for joining us, and we’ll see you in about a week. Take care.

KILEY: Bye, everybody.

In this episode of Rev and Reach, Lori and Kiley explore the changing landscape of organic content in digital marketing. As organic reach continues to decline, they discuss the vital role of intentionality in content strategy and the growing importance of integrating ad spend to achieve meaningful results.

00:08 – Lori introduces the discussion on organic content and how its role has evolved over the years.

02:15 – Kiley explains why relying solely on organic content is insufficient for generating ROI.

03:13 – Lori shares examples of when organic posts yield varying levels of success and the importance of targeted promotion.

05:14 – Strategies for using organic performance as a guide for paid promotions.

09:01 – The growing importance of platforms like Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts for reaching beyond current followers.

14:14 – Kiley discusses the value of engaging staff and using comments for increased reach on LinkedIn.

17:01 – Examining why organic content can’t be the sole content strategy for audience growth and lead generation.

18:09 – The correlation between ad spend and access to service support, demonstrating the benefit of advertising on platforms like Facebook.

09:34 – “If you have the opportunity to put up shorter clips…and put them into those streams, the YouTube Shorts, or the stories and reels on Instagram, those, if they’re good enough, strong enough, appealing enough, can really shoot up your organic views and engagement”

11:33 – “By not being intentional and very, very thoughtful with your organic content, you lose out.”

19:35 – “They think they need a massive budget to see results, or for it to be worth it, but that’s just not true.”

20:43 – “Meta’s back end is a dumpster fire, but it’s our dumpster fire, and we know how to navigate around it.”

Rev & Reach Episode 7 Transcript

00:08
LORI: Hello, everybody. I’m Lori Jo Vest. Welcome to this episode of Rev and Reach from PopSpeed Digital Marketing. I’m Lori Jo Vest, and I’m here with Kiley Metcalfe. I am the founding partner of PopSpeed Digital, and Kiley was our first employee. We do social media, all kinds of digital marketing, websites, email marketing, etc., and we are here to share our secrets. How do we get ROI from our efforts for our clients? There’s always something new to talk about, so we’re doing this every week to help you create and get better results from your efforts.

Today, we’re all about organic content. It’s just such a weird thing these days. For those of us who’ve been in social media for 16 or 17 years, organic content used to rule. I mean, Kiley, we would put things out on Facebook, and we would get so many views, and it was basically a free-for-all. You would target different people, and you could target, actually, with your organic posts. You could target a state, you could target audiences.

KILEY: Oh my gosh, I didn’t know that.

LORI: Yeah! And it didn’t cost anything. Over the past, I don’t know, I’d say maybe 10 years, maybe 8 years, all of the channels have decided that if you want to get reach, you’re either gonna need some type of hook that really gets people going and go viral, which is very rare and can never be predicted or expected.

If someone ever says, “Make this go viral,” slap ‘em! It’s not something you can do. We can never guarantee virality. But organic content these days has a much different purpose and a significantly lower reach. So, Kiley, what have you seen?

02:15
KILEY: I think it’s funny because a lot of the time you’ll hear us say that organic content is dead. It’s not dead in the sense that it doesn’t have a place in your content mix. It’s dead in the sense that if you solely rely on organic content, you’re not going to see ROI. So now, in contrast to what it used to be that Lori took us through, organic content is not filler content, but in a way, it is. It should still have an important purpose, it should still send an important message, and it should still be very intentional.

But the point of organic content is to give something for your audience members to see and to look at, and a place to learn more about you once they get there by seeing your promoted content. It’s for those people that see your ads and really want to dive deeper and continue to get to know you better.

03:13
LORI: And I do think, too, depends on the channel, depends on the client. There’s so many variables. And, one example, we have a client, a global client, that targets automotive engineers. And once in a while, we’ll put something up that has, you know it’s always a leader’s face or people at a trade show—it’s always smiling faces. It might get, you know, 700 to 1,000 views. That’s amazing. That’s a great example of organic content getting some nice views. However, the vast majority of the organic content that we share gets 140 to 200 views. While that sounds really disappointing, and yeah it can be, it also gives your people that are new to you, a place to land.

So you’ll see in some of the analytics that we share that there is an analytic called profile views, and that’s when someone sees one of your social posts, goes, “Huh? Who are these people?” and they go to your profile page. And that gives them the opportunity to go through and see all the things that you want them to know about that you have posted about on your page.

However, promoting your key content in one of two ways is critical. Either you take one or two posts a month that are really solid and serve your goals and push those with a lot of money, or you can put a little bit of money on several different posts. That will get all of yours views. All of your engagement. Because what happens too when you promote, you can promote to specific demographics and interests. So you will get higher engagement than you do on just standard organic in most cases. I know sometimes, Kiley, we’ll use organic results to choose the ad that we run. Can you talk a little bit about that?

05:14
KILEY: Absolutely. With a handful of our clients, when there’s not something really timely going on, like if we’re not, you know for our nonprofit clients we don’t have an active fundraiser or we’re not looking for current volunteers or donors or whatever the case may be, what we do then, is really look at what’s performing best organically. That’s a good indicator that people are interested, and that organic engagement is an important signal that more people might be interested beyond who already follows us and engages with us. So that content, paying attention to your analytics in that sense and what’s working organically, is a great benchmark for where to start when you’re choosing promotions.

Whether for our nonprofits, if it’s resources pertaining to the cause that they fundraise for, and spreading the word more about that. And in turn, that gets more people to their website, assuming the ad is successful, and builds their audience. So it’s really a win-win because you’re giving something to your audience and people beyond your currently active audience, and potentially getting those new audience members in return.

And the same goes, really, for any industry, right? We’ll probably, every episode, go back to our dental clients for at least some reason or another. Let’s say, you know, our calendar is full, right? What a great problem to have, but we’re not actively looking to fill slots for free consultations in the month of June. What we might do is promote 101 content about dental hygiene. If we’re engaging enough, and it looks like people are really interested in the random tips that we’re putting out, we’ll promote that to a larger audience, and continue during those slow times when it comes to promoted ads, to build our audience for when we really are looking to fill our books up once again.

And I think that—Lori you said something earlier about how your organic content is like your landing base, like where you want the audience members to land—I think a really important thing to consider, particularly for people starting their social effort from scratch, something that we’ll say anytime we’re building a brand new audience for a client, is we can’t do promotions until you have that base, right?

It’s funny, because we’ve worked with people in the past who are like, “Oh, well, we just started posting. We have two posts on our Instagram. Why are we not promoting yet?” Well, because, why don’t we backlog the page a little bit so- because at that point, the most important thing to do is build up your following, right? So why don’t we build up your page, beef it up a bit with content that kind of explains who you are, what the goals are, what you want the audience to take from the continued effort that we’re going to keep working towards, and then start promoting so they really have the chance to get to know more about you, the brand, the organization, whatever the case may be, and then make more informed decisions, right? Because you want to make it as easy as possible for the consumer. So if they don’t have to leave the platform to learn more, don’t make them. So that organic content? Yeah, it’s really for those audience members that want to learn more but don’t want to work that hard to do it.

09:01
LORI: Now, there is an exception to every rule, right?

KILEY: Yes.

LORI: So let’s talk about the exceptions! The exceptions that I’m noticing lately are specifically related to Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts. Instagram Reels, when you’re doing organic content, if you put stories or reels out, you will get a significant amount of people that are not your followers as viewers of that content. So if you have the opportunity to put up shorter clips, video clips, and put them into those streams, the YouTube Shorts, or the stories and reels on Instagram, those, if they’re good enough, strong enough, appealing enough, can really shoot up your organic views and engagement. But again, you’ve got to have strong content. You’ve got to have things that are going to really engage the typical audience on those channels in order to push up those views. Because what pushes up views is likes, follows, you know, all the things, all the engagement that people have with your content. That is what tells the big bad algorithm to show your content to more people. So don’t put up boring content, and your organic content will get more reach. I mean, that’s just kind of a fact of life, right?

10:28
KILEY: I think that’s such a misconception too. It’s important to not get lazy with your organic content, and it’s really easy to do as promoted content, paid content, continues to grow and grow and grow, and how necessary it is for building a following, increasing reach, engagement, all of the things. It can get really easy to overlook what it is you’re pushing out organically. And we get that because it’s not going to be necessarily shown to potentially hundreds of thousands of people with money behind it. But again, it goes back to that it’s kind of the foundation of your page and your image. You want people to be interested, and you want to entice people, once they land on your page, to follow you, continue to learn more, interact, maybe comment, share it to somebody that they know that might be more interested in it.

By not being intentional and very, very thoughtful with your organic content, you lose out on that, right? So you could have a great ad that takes somebody to a page that’s kind of clouded with boring or unnecessary or lazy-looking imagery and other content, and then the ad loses all of its spark. So you got the click to the page, great. What did they do when they get there? And that’s where ROI really comes from. So as tempting as it might be to put a ton of extra thought into your ads and a lot less thought into your organic content, it’s a balance, and it’s a really important balance, because, of course, you know, your best content is more than likely going to be your ads, right? What’s most engaging, what’s most important for new people to know about you, but you want to maintain that brand image and kind of harness that loyalty from the new audience members by making it obvious that you know you care about what they think of your brand and your page. Because if you don’t, why should they? Right?

LORI: Exactly, exactly. And the thing is, too, a lot of the like campaigns that we run, and a like campaign is when you are using that ad to push people to like your page, to follow you, and those people end up on your page. So you want to make sure you don’t look like you just got there, right? We just showed up. We have one post, and it’s the post we used to entice you to go here. You want to have a solid base of good, strong content. Because that’s what leads them to hit that like button, which then puts your content, your organic content, in their feed, or is more likely to do so.

I have to say LinkedIn is a lot less algorithm-driven. There are things that you can do to help get your organic content from LinkedIn into people’s streams, like setting up arrangements with your employees where they go in and share the content from the page. And I’ve seen a company do this really well recently, called Anderson Material Handling, and what they’ve done is they’ve got the salespeople going in and sharing Tech Tuesday, so they go in and share a selfie with the text so it appreciates, gives the employee some appreciation, and it shows humanity of the company, and it really grows their organic reach on those posts. So there are things you can do on LinkedIn that are a lot easier than the other channels, right?

14:14
KILEY: I think another thing on LinkedIn too that’s really fun and it matters on other channels, but not as much on LinkedIn, from what we’ve seen, is comments. By getting, like, a lot of comments in your LinkedIn content, it can really start to push it out to more people, because then, you know, if I comment on Lori’s post on LinkedIn, a lot of people that I’m connected with then on LinkedIn will see Lori’s post because they’re connected to me, and I commented on it.

And a really good example of that is a relatively new client to us. They are a young professionals networking group that’s kind of a sub-branch of a larger networking organization specific to certain industries. Pretty quickly after we launched that effort, you know, you hear about that and think like, you know, it might take a bit of time to grow something like that. We pretty quickly built a bit of a following on LinkedIn, simply because the people that we work with were really engaged. When we told them, you know, if we want to build this up quickly, go ahead and comment, tag other people that show up to your events, get senior leadership and board members of the overarching organization to comment, to show it to their networks, and it worked. And they’re still engaged, and they stay commenting, and you get, you know, bigger names in the industry, sharing our stuff.

It’s been really cool to see that because we’re not really heavily doing much besides organic content for them, and so to watch their following, because, in my opinion—Lori, let me know if you agree—I think one of the hardest things on social to do is grow an audience from scratch, create a brand new page, it’s and create a brand new following, kind of out of thin air. And you know, we’re continuing to grow, of course, you know, you never want to stop that growth, but in just a couple of months, by indicating to them the importance of commenting and sharing the content, we’ve built a pretty quick and fast and engaged audience over there.

16:24
LORI: Absolutely. Yeah, that is a really interesting client because it’s difficult to find the content that’s just perfect for them. That gets the attention of the people either trying to get into the industry, or the young people that are in it now that they want to retain because, just like most industries, you’ve got to draw the young employees to keep the industry healthy, right? It’s not easy, but social—it’s another thing that social media can help with. It’s working. So, yeah, so you want to do that when you can. So anything else we want to say about organic content?

17:01
KILEY: I think it might be pretty important to talk about why you can’t only rely on organic content. You know, we’ve talked about how significant ads are, but I think, going back to that follower growth and when you have a specific thing that you need results for, how important those ads are. So, organic content, how do we feel about it? What are we seeing? We’re seeing that building that landing base, that foundation for your page, is really important. But we’re also seeing that it can’t be the only source of content that you run if you want to increase your follower count, if you are a nonprofit and you need a fundraiser, organizers, or attendees, or donors, or volunteers, or if you are a dental practice and you need qualified leads. Relying on organic content isn’t going to get you there. It’s just not. It’s going to get put out to a lot of your current followers, which, depending on your industry, most often, is people that have kind of already gotten what they need from you, right? So you’re not reaching anybody new.

18:09
LORI: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it also has a halo effect on the rest of your content, when you’re paying for ad spend. And I’ll even go as far as to say this, if you are an advertiser on Facebook, you can actually get them on the phone. We had a client that—they do everything organic, and I’m sure they get some results, but we handle the offices that don’t do organic. So we do two of their brands, we do social media for them, and they got locked out of their main Facebook account, and because they weren’t an advertiser, there was nowhere for them to go. As an advertiser, you can figure out how to go into the back end and actually get a human being and have them call you.

So there’s another reason that you want to be, you know, on Meta anyway, you know, it gives you a little bit more pull when you need to talk to somebody. And just the ability to talk to somebody when something goes wrong is really important. So I would recommend even just a little ad spend. $250 can make a difference. $2,000 can make a world of difference. With $2,000 a month, you can have hundreds of thousands of people see your content. With $250, you can have thousands of people see your content, depending on what it is.

19:33
KILEY: Exactly. I think that’s something that scares people away from ads, is that they think they need to have this massive budget to see results, or for it to be worth it. And that’s just not true. There are a handful of clients for us. You know, one of the clients that I work on their ads, they’re $10 a day. I mean, think of it. That’s $365 a year. To a lot of brands, that’s not really that much. And sure, we’ve worked with the clients before that are, you know, giving us $4,000 a month to spend, and is there a difference in the results? For sure, but even that $10 a day budget— I know, Lori, I think it was on LinkedIn you worked with one that was even less than that, and you still see results. So whatever you have to throw at it, try it. I would really, really, really implore brands to give it a try because I don’t think if you’re doing it right, or if your team is doing it right, that you’ll be disappointed with the results that you see at all.

20:30
LORI: No, you will not. You will not. Yeah, and it’s really interesting. Of course, we’re the experts, so we’re happy to help you with that. Meta’s back end is a dumpster fire. You hear us say that all the time in the dumpster fire, but it’s our dumpster fire, and we know how to navigate around it. So if you need help, get in touch.

So that’s what we have for you today around organic content. We could talk social media day and night, 24/7, but we will let you go back to your world, and we’ll be back again in about a week with another episode. But in the meantime, we have a website at popspeeddigital.com, if you’d like to know more about us, and Kiley and I are both open networkers on LinkedIn, so hit us up there if you would like to hear more about what we do as a company or how you can connect to us. Please feel free to reach out to us there as well. So we’ll see you again soon. Thanks for joining us today.

KILEY: Bye, everybody.

In this episode of Rev and Reach, Lori and Kiley discuss the impactful role of showcasing genuine human connection on social media. They explore how showing faces—whether of team members, clients, or leaders—creates authenticity, enhances engagement, and boosts ROI. Learn practical ways to humanize your brand and effectively connect with your audience.

00:08 – Introduction to the power of showing your face in marketing materials and social media.

01:08 – Kiley explains why connecting with real people behind the screens is essential for engagement.

04:01 – Examples of client success and challenges based on using authentic content versus stock images.

08:20 – Trial and error: Discovering the most engaging formats for talking head videos.

13:23 – Using genuine human interaction to build connections and enhance brand authenticity.

01:34 – People respond to feeling connected with other people. So by showing your face… that is such a key and crucial way to build a bridge between brand and potential customer.

07:31 – “And when we are able to create the content that’s 100% your team, your business, your authentic happening at your place, that’s what resonates with real people”

12:58 – “Don’t let, your unwillingness, or even if it’s a lack of confidence behind a camera and being unsure of what to say, don’t let that hold you back from really harnessing what social media marketing has to offer, because in this case, it couldn’t be easier”

Rev & Reach Episode 6 Transcript

00:08

LORI: Thank you for joining us for this episode of Rev and Reach. I’m here with Kylie Metcalfe, and we are both on the team at PopSpeed Digital Marketing LLC, and we are here to open the curtain and show you what we do that gets us ROI on social media and digital marketing. So, Kylie, today we are talking about the power of your face, and I get a kick out of this because so many people are not about showing their face on social media or in their marketing materials. They feel shy. They don’t want to do that. And I also spent 25 years of my career in video, and we used to try to stay away from the talking head. So it’s kind of a weird thing to learn that, in these days of social media, your face, and a happy face in particular, is one of the most engaging types of social content. Why do you think that is?

01:08

KILEY: I think that a big reason is that people connect with people. So we’ve talked about this before. Your audience, it’s really important to remember that they’re not just, you know, fingers behind the keyboard or people behind a screen. They’re real people that are looking to make purchasing decisions, whatever it is that your brand is selling, right? And inherently and biologically, people respond to feeling connected with other people. So by showing your face, whether it’s talking head videos or selfies or, you know, group photos of the team or real-life testimonials of, you know, real people that have positive experiences with your product, that is such a key and crucial way to build a bridge between the brand and potential customer.

02:00

LORI: Absolutely. I always say we are biological beings pretending to be intellectual beings, right? But we are very biological. And as such, we crave connection. We crave social connection. And so when social media came around, unfortunately, a lot of people have forgotten that it’s meant to be social. We go there to see our people, right? And I’ll tell you a little story. There’s a woman, Brenda Meller, that is an amazing LinkedIn expert and trainer. She’s amazing. She does great work, and she shares all kinds of really interesting information and ways to use the LinkedIn tools. And she has a community that I’ve joined. And we were on a live event. She was presenting, and one of the gentlemen that is just a really, I always think of him as, like, really great on LinkedIn. And he was there to ask Brenda, you know, why? What can I do to get more engagement? Because I post all these different kinds of things. I’m not sure what, you know, what I should be doing. And so she asked him to pull up his LinkedIn posts, and we watched as she went through each one. And I predicted it because we’ve been recognizing it and in our work for our clients for so long, every single post that had his face in it, whether it was a selfie or a video or, you know, even if he was a little off to the side, if he was at an event, those were the ones that people actually clicked, liked, commented on, shared, and so to me, that was a really great confirmation of, you know, lead with your face. And, you know, I had an old friend that used to say her motto for life was, lead with your face and have a bias for action. Isn’t that like the best bit of life advice? So, Kylie, where have you seen this come into play?

0401:

KILEY: I think for me, one of the most glaring examples of, you know, why showing your face is so important is we have, currently on our client roster, two clients that are in the same sort of niche industry, and one of them our, you know, our philosophy when we get into a new client engagement is that, you know, we can’t be in your office every day, right? So in some ways, and you know, in a lot of cases, we rely on our clients to get us that content of their face. And of course, we’re collaborative, and we’re ready to support in any way we can, but that everyday stuff, you’re there, and you know it best. So for us in this industry, we rely heavily on our client to send us photos, and, you know, engage with their team and their staff members to send us the talking head videos and things of that nature. One of our clients is so, so incredibly good at it.

LORI: They are.

KILEY: We’re regularly getting new photos and new videos, and, you know, of a bunch of different people on the team, and you know, things like that. And it makes our- not just our lives easier, but it makes our content so much better. And you can see it in the results. Really, I mean, we’re consistently getting highly qualified leads and high engagement, and our ads do really well, and the ROI is really there for this client.

05:34

On the flip side, the other client that’s in the same industry just isn’t as motivated to do it. And we know, you know, of course, things get busy, and it’s not at the top of your mind and things like that. So for them, we use a lot more graphic content, and we use a lot of stock imagery. And truthfully, the difference is in the ROI, right, for the client that is consistently getting us the, you know, the face-forward content, they’re consistently really happy with their success levels. And you know what, what ROI they are seeing from the resources that I get, that they get us on a consistent basis. And you know, both clients are happy. Both clients stick with us. But it sits in the results. You know, people engage with people. And to be honest, a lot of stock imagery now is obviously stock imagery, right? Like, every now and again, you can get pretty lucky with something that’s pretty candid or fits the point of the post really well, and it’s not terribly obvious, but it’s really hard to come by stuff like that. So it just feels less authentic, I think, to your audience, and people really respond to authenticity.

06:50

LORI: Yep, I think that’s a huge thing. I noticed when we just onboarded a new client at the beginning of May. And what we noticed, you know, what you can see on this account so obviously is that everything that’s there is authentic, the team photos, the doctor interviews, the patient testimonials, every single part of it represents them. And then you look at a lot of other practices in the space, and it’s stock images. It’s, let’s talk about a celebrity. It’s, you know, here’s three tips. And when we are able to create the content that’s 100% your team, your business, your, you know, authentic happening at your place, that’s what resonates with real people. You know, to me, it’s so interesting to see how people, you know, brands, often want to present themselves as something very pristine, right, and high level. And, you know, she just a really beautiful image. Well, to the average consumer, who includes your customers and your patients, that’s maybe not as engaging, it’s not as compelling, it’s fake, yeah, inauthentic. And if it’s inauthentic, yeah, if it’s inauthentic, we’re not attracted to it, right?

08:20

KILEY: I think that’s such a good point you made. That was like, the next thing that kind of came to my mind is with, with those same, that same industry I was just talking about, where we have a couple of clients living with the, with the one example, where they’re getting us stuff consistently, even that took a little bit of trial and error at first to kind of figure out what that talking head video needs to look like to garner those results, right? And what we found was, you know, that that team has somebody on their staff that is a great video editor, super, you know, very, very skilled in that area. So she would take a lot of the video content that we got, and edit it up, make it very pretty and very polished and very professional looking. And, you know, add some title cards and end frames and tags and things like that. And what we actually found is that by removing those and actually just, you know, making life easier and not having to go that extra mile, the videos performed better. So I think if anything really goes to show how important your face is, or your team’s faces are on social, it’s that, like, you don’t need all of the extra bells and whistles. And in fact, in a lot of cases, we’ve seen it kind of take away from the authenticity and just, I think it’s just inherent credibility when you know, speaking of like our dental clients, right? When you have a doctor that is so clearly passionate about what they’re doing and well educated and knows what they’re talking about, all of that extra fluff kind of takes away from. How impressive it is, and how eager a potential patient may be to get to know the doctor, and just simply how engaging they are.

10:11

LORI: Absolutely, I mean, and part of what we sell to our clients is when we’re in, you know, pitching or talking about how we do, what we do is we talk about how we bring your business to life and create a connection with your audience. And the way that you do that is you pull back the curtain, you let them see behind the scenes. You let them see your people. You can be silly. You can be, you know, we had one video that we’ve got in our queue right now, and the doctor puts bunny ears on top, you know, devil horns, whatever that is, on top of the patient’s head at the end of the video. It’s cute. It was funny. It was authentic, and it will warm hearts much more than, you know, a formal, you know, video that was shot by, you know, a corporate video company. The real is, what is, what sells right now, especially on social.

11:07

LORI: And I’ll go back to this, to talking about, if you’re an entrepreneur and you don’t want to show your face, you got to give that up. You really got to give that up. And I know that can be really hard, but to be successful in today’s business community, your personality and your personhood is what people will connect to, people do business with, people they like, and if you, you know, never show who you are or what you do on social media, you’re really missing out on some big value and big ROI on the platform. So, yeah, you know, I think that’s, that’s kind of all I had to say about this subject. Anything else you want to add before we wrap up?

11:50

KILEY: I do just want to build off what you just said, just a little bit, because I think that, you know, that’s something that we see all the time, right? We totally, you know, I don’t always love being on camera, and here we are, right? So we totally understand people like that. We run into so many clients like that, and while we think it’s super important that, particularly like the leaders of a brand and organization, show their faces pretty consistently, even if you’re not terribly comfortable doing it all the time, make a concerted effort to do it sometimes. But it’s also not a bad idea if, you know, you don’t have the time or the energy, or, you know, whatever, whatever it is that’s holding you back from doing it, find somebody really personable on your team that’s willing to do it, that’s, you know, really likable and good behind a camera, right?

Because I think the best news about talking heads being so important and so effective on social is the fact that it’s so easy. I mean, it lives at your fingertips. You do it with your phone, you do a little bit of editing and whatever app. And you know, a lot of the times a free app is good enough, and it gets the job done. So, don’t let your unwillingness, or even if it’s a lack of confidence behind a camera and being unsure of what to say, don’t let that hold you back from really harnessing what social media marketing has to offer, because in this case, it couldn’t be easier. So you don’t want to lose sight of that. I think it’s, I think it’s really important, and I think it’s something that a lot of brands are missing out on right now.

13:23

LORI: Absolutely humanize your brand. Yeah, that’s basically what you’re doing when you put faces, is people do business with the people behind the brand. You know, that’s even a product, there’s people behind the brand. And, you know, I remember I used to work on, I got, I’m just going to throw this out there, I used to work on Depend brand products, and it was a difficult category to be in because incontinence is, you know, stigmatized and everything else, but we had a very dedicated and passionate community on their website that I used to run back in the I don’t know… I think it was like 2012. And what happened? What they asked us for is they asked to talk to the researchers. And so we did an event, and this was way before people were doing live events like this. You know, virtual things we do every day. Now, we did an event, and we had the researchers there that the consumers could ask questions of, and they went bananas. They loved it. They were so appreciative that we heard what they said, took the questions they wanted answers to, brought them to the researchers, and created this event, and then also allowed them to ask questions of the researchers there.

So there’s a real need to create connection by using humanity. You know that it’s kind of part of how it works. So for now, that’s what we’ve got on this lead with your face, you know, face first, that’s kind of how it works, on social and just remind yourself that we are social beings and that that’s, that’s what feeds us and creates engagement and the resulting ROI. So that’s what we’ve got for you. We will be back next week with another episode filled with tips that you can use to ramp up your ROI on your social media and digital marketing. So we’ll see you soon.

In this episode of Rev & Reach, Lori and Kiley dive into why they love social media despite its mixed reputation. Explore heartwarming stories of human connection, life-changing campaigns, and the personal and professional growth opportunities that these platforms offer.

Discover how social media, when curated thoughtfully, can serve as a tool for change and connection, overcoming its often-negative portrayal.

00:08 – Introduction to Lori and Kiley’s experiences with social media and its potential for positive outcomes.

01:33 – Kiley shares inspiring stories of using social media to find living kidney donors and build community connections.

03:54 – The powerful role of social media in corporate responsibility and giving back to the community effectively.

07:15 – Lori discusses how social media facilitates personal connections, like mentoring and support groups.

12:12 – Advice on curating a positive social media experience to avoid negativity and foster uplifting interactions.

14:38 – The educational and professional benefits of platforms like LinkedIn and YouTube.

06:31 – “Give back to the community initiative on your books, no matter what you do, because it’s good for your team, it’s good for your energy.”

10:12 – “When you’re in control of the content that you’re seeing and you’re really able to hone in on what is important to you, all of those benefits really come to the surface.”

12:29 – “Curate your feed so that it shows you what you want to see.”

12:43 – “It’s possible to have a really positive experience on social media on just about all channels.”

Rev & Reach Episode 5 Transcript

00:08

LORI: Hello, everybody. Thank you so much for joining us for this episode of Rev and Reach. I’m Lori Jo Vest. I am the partner and co-founder of PopSpeed Digital Marketing, LLC. I’m here with Kiley Metcalf. Kiley was our first employee besides my husband and I with our little agency here.

And today we want to talk about why we love social media. As if you needed to hear it. It’s getting such a bad rap and I hate it. It drives me absolutely nuts. Because, yes, I think there are a lot of things about social that are kind of ick, but I think you can curate your own experience to make it something wonderful. And it also can be used to do amazing things, and we’re going to tell you about a few of those today too. So say hi, Kiley.

KILEY: Hi everybody. Happy to be back!

LORI: Yeah, we’re excited to start. And Kiley, you ideated this episode and you were talking about our kidney clients, so let’s talk a little bit about that.

KILEY: So I want to say it’s been over two years now. You might have to fact-check me on that, but it’s been a couple of years since we were contacted kind of randomly, kind of out of the blue by somebody who was looking for some assistance. She needed a new kidney, a living kidney donor, and wanted to use social media to find someone. Find somebody willing to get tested, go through the process and donate their kidney to her. And since then we’ve come on at no charge to her, just something that felt really important to us and a really special thing as a team that we could be involved with.

And ever since then we’ve been working on finding her a living kidney donor. And somewhere along the way, we found out that somebody in our network, their husband was in a similar situation, needed a living kidney donor and his situation was a bit more urgent than the original woman that we’re still working with. And so he needed one a bit faster. And with social media and the creation of a website and a place to send people that needed more information, we found him a living kidney donor and now he’s happy and healthy and living life. And it’s just, I mean, it’s crazy. It’s really crazy. 

02:42

But it’s something that I think goes a long way in showing that social media works and the impact that social media can have, not just on building connection and making friends because I know Lori can really speak to that, like with our LinkedIn community, but on saving lives too.

And it’s something that we’ve been so happy to be a part of. We’ve worked with some—I’m sure we’ll touch on them—with some other non-profit clients that we’ve worked for for free and achieved some really great things and been involved in some really great missions that are important to us and we think have really made a difference.

And honestly, in a lot of ways, those are our favorite to work with because it not only is why we love social media, but with corporate America and working in the business realm sometimes it feels—I’m sure many people can relate to this in similar situations—sometimes it feels just all about making money. So to be able to use social media and digital marketing as a tool to really impact people’s lives has been really special to our team.

03:54

LORI: Yeah, it’s huge. It’s absolutely huge. I’ll never forget getting that first call and it was actually Jo’s mother. Jo is the woman, I think it’s hero4jo.com and she has been- she knew she was going to need a kidney so we started working with her and I don’t know what it was, but when I first heard about the situation I was like we need to do this and we just need to do it.

And so we did and we took it on as a client. Not just here’s some stuff but we took her on as a client with a monthly status call and all the things that go with that. And as we got ramped up with her social and her website, one of our good friends that Kiley mentioned called me and she was going to have to do his, what do they call that process they do with-

KILEY: Dialysis? 

LORI: Dialysis, yeah, where they cleanse the blood, that kind of thing at home. So she was going to be his person doing his dialysis and she was getting trained. And I said well guess what, it’s a really weird coincidence. But we’re doing this kidney recruitment, living kidney donor recruitment thing. Join us. And, so, she’s a marketer too. She jumped on with us and we just bounced things around. We worked together and we exchanged assets, we did all kinds of things. Bob, her husband is two years anniversary with his new kidney, I think, just this spring. 

And Jo is to the point where she needs her living kidney donor now, and she has six people that they know about that have gone to the hospital to be tested in the last couple months. So the hospital doesn’t tell you. They’ve had 15 people, they’ve heard that they won’t tell you anything, if people are testing, that’s just their policy. And her mom, Jo’s mom said that six people told them. So they don’t know if there are more that didn’t tell them. So it’s just a really great way to, I think, get into the real positive aspects of social media and use our powers for good. Right? 

KILEY: Yeah, yeah. 

LORI: I mean, seriously. We have a client that we support in Michigan that has a literacy program for boys, black and brown boys three to seven and their families. It’s absolutely amazing. And we’re helping them raise money. So there’s these things that we do, and I highly recommend if you’re a business owner, always have, you know, at least one non-profit fundraising type, you know, give back to the community initiative on your books, no matter what you do. Because it’s good for your team, it’s good for your energy. I really think I tell people where we just do it because we want to pave our way to heaven. You know, we just want the karma that comes back. But there is more to it than that. There’s the, you know, the warm and fuzzy feelings, and the learning. I know so much more about kidney donation than I ever needed to know.

KILEY: Right, right.

LORI: And those skills that we learn and the things that we pick up and the ideas that come through inevitably create something larger down the line. You know, we’re learning things, we’re creating things, we’re enjoying it. You just don’t know where it’s going to lead to, honestly. I mean, that’s part of it. 

07:15

So, let’s talk about why we love social media, beyond how good it can be. What is it about social media that you love, Kiley?

KILEY: Well, I think it’s a great place for connection. You know, I know that we- I know, Lori, you have so many stories of people that you’ve met through LinkedIn that have become like good friends of yours and stuff in real life. I think, you know, the way that social media started- I remember creating my Facebook account and, oh my gosh, I think I was in seventh grade maybe. And oh, all my friends are here and oh, like, you know, my family, my older relatives are here and you know, it was created out of like a necessity to be more connected to the people that you care about. And I think that obviously in the last couple of decades, it’s taken a completely new form.

And, you know, the way that I view it now, working in social media is entirely different on a daily basis. You’ll find if you go to  my personal social media pages, I am not very active on them, which is so funny because I’m, you know, I’m- I live on them every single day. And I log off and I’m just not there. And it’s, it’s weird. But I think that, I think that at its core, the power of social media is good. I know, as Lori said there’s so many ways and obviously so many negatives, I guess, that have taken form since it’s continued to just absolutely skyrocket and take over the world.

But, you know, these kidney donation clients are a great example of, you know, just word of mouth, spreading the word about causes and how much of a difference it can make or, you know, making new friends and, you know, being in a community of people online that you would never be introduced to in the real world because they’re across the country or in a different country or because sometimes we just feel inherently more comfortable sharing things online than we do with people face to face. And, you know, whether, I’m sure there’s arguments that can be made on whether or not that’s a positive or a negative, but that’s the reality of our world right now, regardless of whether it’s positive or negative.

And, you know, so you learn things about people or know that you’re not alone in a certain situation. I think a good example for me is I’m currently pregnant with my first child and being able to search things on social media to find out, oh my God, is this normal? Or, oh, has anybody experienced this? And, you know, things like that can be really helpful.

LORI: Yeah. Absolutely.

KILEY: Yeah. So it’s- I think it’s really good at creating community and creating connection when you allow it. It’s possible to, you know, take that toxic turn. But I think that when you’re in control of the content that you’re seeing and, you know, you’re really able to kind of hone in on what it is that’s important to you, all of those benefits really come to the surface.

10:26

LORI: Yeah, I think so, too. I know that some examples that you mentioned earlier would, I’m sure, also show up in groups.

KILEY: Yeah, absolutely. 

When I had, I went through a breast cancer experience. Yay me. And there was a group of women that had the exact same type of aggressive cancer I had. And these two nurse oncologists ran the group. And this was on Facebook, and everybody in the group had this particular type.

And we could talk to each other and ask questions and support each other and, you know, you’d get scared and then somebody would come in that said, yeah, I’m a 10-year survivor and you’d be okay again. And, you know, I mean, so that’s pretty deep. I mean, that kind of thing is deep.

And you look at- I do mentoring for Imerman’s Angels out of Chicago, which connects survivors to patients just getting diagnosed too. And the first thing we do is connect on Facebook and then I can send rah rah notes. I can say, how you doing? And when they go to treatment and come home and it went okay, I can say yay, I see you. You know, over here cheering you on. So there’s, there’s so many things you can do at that very deep level on social media that we didn’t have as easy access to previously. So that’s another thing.

And that the amount of people that you can connect with that are like-minded. I know over on LinkedIn, we have so many people that we follow in the social media space that are just hilarious. They get it. We feel seen. It feels like a support group when I go over there sometimes. And just to know, again, that you’re not alone in the weirdness of your career choice can be really helpful. 

12:12

So we just wanted to jump on here today, talk about the positive aspects and the positive ways that people use social media. It’s not just a cesspool. If you don’t want to go on Facebook and see a bunch of negative politics or Instagram, unfollow those people, disconnect from those people, curate your feed so that it shows you what you want to see.

And if there’s ads showing up that you don’t want to see, report those or, you know, say, don’t show me these anymore. You know, click those buttons that let you do that. Because it is possible to have a really positive experience on social media on just about all channels. 

And there are times when I am just, you know, sitting on the sofa. Maybe I didn’t have a great day that day. And I’m on reels on Instagram. And I am just cracking up to the point where my husband’s like, what are you looking at? You know, because there’s so much great humor out there too. Right? So Kiley, bring us home.

13:08

KILEY: I think actually—it might take us into a new conversation, so I’m sorry—but I think you just made two key points that are another really, really interesting thing to touch on here. LinkedIn, for example, it’s the professional social media network and it’s all business, all the time.

But if you really take a look at some of the features that LinkedIn has, job postings, getting connected with high-level executives in an industry that you’re interested in looking for work. I can’t even- I know that the job market during, you know, the thick and the height of COVID when a lot of us were being laid off or losing our jobs, it wasn’t a great job market.

But imagine if LinkedIn wasn’t a resource during that time or, you know, if you couldn’t search, you know, nowhere near me is hiring, but I need remote work and somebody’s hiring remote. You’d never find opportunities like that if it weren’t for a platform like LinkedIn, which obviously is totally different than a Facebook or Instagram where you’re more likely keeping up with loved ones or friends.

But that also is just such an important asset to have in your everyday life, particularly during a job search or when you’re looking to advance in your career. And it takes a lot of the guesswork and the stress out of it. Right? Because you can directly interact with the HR team or, you know, depending on your experience level, the CEO, whoever you’d be interacting with. And I think that’s such an overlooked great asset of social media. 

14:38

And then the other one’s YouTube. 

LORI: I love YouTube. 

KILEY: I swear I could talk forever about YouTube. My husband’s go-to quote lately is that you can learn anything on YouTube. And I- he’s so right.

Like we, for example, we got a new two-person board game a couple months ago and I was sitting there reading the directions, trying to figure it out and it was just going so over my head like I do not understand how to do this. And so we went to YouTube to, you know, learn how to play this game. Made so much more sense than reading the directions.

We, you know, we watch YouTube videos as a part of our regular like, oh, what do we want to watch tonight? Oh, let’s see what’s on YouTube. So even for entertainment and learning and education. There really is a channel that does everything that you need it to right at your fingertips, which I think is really cool.

15:38

LORI: Yeah, it’s kind of awesome. We had just a side story- we had an air conditioning for a long time in our house that my husband actually got much joy from keeping this early 1970s era AC unit running. And the way he did it was YouTube. There were people out there that had this exact one. Oh, yeah, ants can get in there and do this. So when the ants get in there, you do this, this and this. And he’s like out there with his phone looking at it. And he kept that thing running until we finally decided we needed to be more energy efficient, you know, and had to replace it.

But it’s just, it’s amazing what you can find. Somebody out there has recorded a video about whatever topic you happen to be thinking about at the moment. I guarantee it. It’s absolutely insane. And it’s fun, you know, there’s so many fun things to do. And again, that’s not the one reason we might not love social media so much, is how addictive it can be. That’s the part that- that’s the downside. It does require you to exercise some self-control.

KILEY: Absolutely.

LORI: Yeah. But that’s what we’ve got for you today. We’d love to hear from you. If you have ideas you’d like us to cover or specific questions you’d like to ask, reach out to me or Kiley on LinkedIn. We’re both open networkers there. We also have a website at popspeeddigital.com. Again, I’m Lori Jo Vest, this is Kiley Metcalfe signing off and we will see you soon.

KILEY: Bye, everybody.

In this episode of Rev & Reach, Lori and Kiley discuss the common pitfalls businesses encounter when their social media content focuses more on their interests than on their customers’ needs. Dive into valuable insights on how to shift your perspective and tailor content to connect meaningfully with your audience, ultimately driving engagement and ROI.

00:08 – Introduction to the topic and the importance of understanding customer needs in content creation.

01:33 – Kiley discusses the importance of crafting content based on audience research to avoid losing followers and prospects.

03:41 – The balance between fun and valuable content: why behind-the-scenes content shouldn’t dominate your strategy.

05:45 – Common mistakes in small to mid-sized businesses: assigning social media responsibilities to unqualified individuals.

07:12 – The impact of using smiling faces and authentic images: building connections through relatable content.

10:35 – Introducing the StoryBrand book and its influence on effective social media strategies.

14:19 – Lori and Kiley discuss tailoring content for different audiences, particularly in niche industries like dental implants.

19:12 – Kiley details the audience research process, emphasizing the importance of understanding demographics, behaviors, and platform preferences to build effective social media strategies.

23:03 – Lori highlights the significance of testing and adapting content strategies, encouraging businesses to continuously evaluate and refine their approach for better engagement.

2:03 – “Doing that research, being very intentional about it and then crafting your content towards what the research says will work what your consumer behaviors indicate is what they’re interested in is so important not just for ROI, but for building that bridge and that connection between you and your audience so they feel valued and like you’re paying attention.”

08:14 – “Content with smiling faces and not stock images, real smiling faces that are somehow involved in the community of your brand, perform… so much better than all other types of content.

15:11 – “What they want to see is the end result that will improve their quality of life.”

Rev & Reach Episode 4 Transcript

00:08
LORI: Hello everybody, I’m Lori Jo Vest. Thank you so much for joining us for episode four of Rev and Reach. And today’s subject is you versus your customers. And the thing that we find really interesting in that clickbait title is that we run into a lot of situations where clients really want to serve what they want more than serving what their customers or their prospects want when it comes to social media. So they, you know, you might be looking at somebody who, I’ll give you an example and I think this is a really good one: dentists. We love our dental clients and sometimes we have to rein them in because they like to share the things that dentists like to look at.

And some of it’s not so great. You know, the before and after photos where you look at the Instagram feed and all you see is the before photos and it’s a little frightening. We love that transformation. But when it comes to social media, people want to see the finished smile. They want to see how wonderful that person looks now. Then if they want to, they can go peek at how bad they used to look. I guess is what, what I’m going to say here. So Kiley, tell us a little bit more about how, why it’s so important to turn your ego aside and dig into what your customers want.

01:33
KILEY: I think the biggest reason is that it’s obvious and when somebody that’s in your customer base or an audience member has been paying attention, they can tell what content is for them and what content is for you. When you haven’t done your research and when you’re not really paying attention to what type of content it is that your audience wants to see and that they find valuable, you’re losing people, you’re losing followers, you’re losing prospects, you’re losing potential sales.

So doing that research, being very intentional about it and then crafting your content towards what the research says will work what your consumer behaviors indicate is what they’re interested in is so important not just for ROI, but for building that bridge and that connection between you and your audience so they feel valued and like you’re paying attention.

02:30
LORI: Absolutely. And they won’t respond. If you are, for example, a 30 year old woman with young children and the person who’s creating marketing content for you is a 45 year old single man, that can be a little challenging. However, it’s worth the effort. Don’t make assumptions.

We see a lot of cases where you’ve got a marketing team making assumptions about what the audience likes or doesn’t like. In reality, research will tell you what they like and what they don’t like. There’s a lot of digital tools out there you can use and there’s a lot of value in even using some of the AI tools that are out there now to see, you know, what is your audience doing, where are they going, what are they reading, what are they ingesting, what are they really hot about, what trends are they on. So that when you are crafting content for your brand or your company, you are thinking as if you were them, not necessarily, you know, you and what you want to show them. Right?

3:41
KILEY: Exactly. I think a really good example of that that we’ve seen before is, you know, people love content that’s like the faces behind the brands, right? Behind the scenes and things like that. It shouldn’t be the baseline of content and it shouldn’t be the majority of what you’re pushing out. And here’s why.

As fun as it might be to be in charge and have the reins to the brand, social media channels and, you know, like your boss bro brought in donuts today or oh, you know, you’re dressing up for Halloween and how fun, as fun as it might be to share those things, and it is sometimes, you know, like it’s a very easy thing to throw on your Instagram story for extra views, you know, on a given day. It shouldn’t be a part of your regular marketing mix that sort of behind the scenes, you know, oh, like a day in the life with donuts and with, you know, oh, we’re matching and you know, things like that.

Because your audience doesn’t care. It serves them no purpose. It might, you know, if they know you personally. Like Lori’s example of the dental clinics. Oh, you know, oh, that’s my favorite hygienist. And oh, how cute, you know, things like that, it’s fun. It builds that bridge. It helps, you know, kind of connect the audience to what you guys do on a daily basis. However, it does not do anything for inclining a new prospect to choose your brand.

Whatever your industry is, it does not serve any purpose to why a given audience member should choose you. And ultimately that’s how we get ROI by persuading prospective customers and new consumers that you are the best at what you do. You should be their selection and that you’re worth their dollars, your audience’s dollars. Right? Because ultimately, you know, you’re selling something and everybody’s dollars are precious. So why should any audience member trust that what you are offering them will improve their life?

5:45
LORI: Right. I’ve got to say now one of the things- some of the things that we’re referencing here happen more commonly in small to mid sized businesses where social media is still seen as, you know, my college kid’s roommate has a great Instagram channel for their, you know, lure tying business or whatever. And so he should do the social media for our business when in reality, you know—or maybe just the front desk, maybe it’s a doctor’s office and they say, oh, we’ll have the front desk do the social, take a picture of a patient, you know, oh look, we had a, you know, we have this really cool little puppet we use. Or maybe, doesn’t the lobby look pretty today? Look at our Christmas tree—and you have people doing your social media that aren’t marketers. And when you are looking for ROI from digital marketing, you can’t just hand the reins over to the youngest person on the team because they have a really cool Instagram channel for their personal stuff or to someone who is doing it as kind of an afterthought.

Because when you do those two things, you are guaranteeing you will get no ROI from your social media. Because ROI requires thought. And one of the biggest things to think about is what your audience wants to know. What do they want? Not, you know, maybe what they need can be sprinkled in there, but what they want is more important.

07:12
And let’s talk about that, Kiley. One of the things—and you’ll hear us say this over and over because I feel like we’re constantly reminding people—people, your audience is full of human beings that are biologically driven for connection. So right off the bat, smiling faces, right? We have a client right now that’s material handling and we use photos of their technicians. We don’t just show the equipment, we show the people. The sales reps share things. It’s just awesome. It’s all people. So that serves the audience, right?

KILEY: Yeah, I think so. I think that’s a really good point to make and a really important distinction. There is a difference between, oh, you know, the fun donut content that I mentioned earlier and using the faces, using the happy people behind the brand or the happy customers in a way that does serve the audience.

And like Lori said, we’ve said it before, we’ll probably say it in most of our episodes here, that content with smiling faces and not stock images, real smiling faces that are somehow involved in the community of your brand, perform, I mean, so much better than all other types of content. Better than graphic content, stock images, any- anything of the sort. Smiling faces is the way to go. And there’s a way to use those and prioritize them in your regular mix that will serve your audience and will continue to build that bridge, but also indicate to them why whatever it is that you’re selling is something that is gonna improve their life or whatever.

You know, whatever it is that, like- we’ll go back to the dental example, why receiving this new smile will improve their overall quality of life every day for the rest of their life. You know what I mean? There’s so many ways, no matter- you could throw any industry at us, I think, at this point, and we would be able to give you an example of how to build your content in a way that serves your audience versus serving what you think is fun.

Or as Lori said, what the youngest person on your team thinks is trending on TikTok and why. Somebody might think it’s funny, they might think it’s funny, but they’re probably not gonna buy your product or service because you made a funny TikTok. It really is the difference between social and social media marketing, which is another thing that we say pretty regularly.

09:41
LORI: Yeah, yeah, we’re gonna repeat ourselves a lot, but hopefully, you know, we kind of want to spread the word on how to do it right. And one of the reasons that I think it’s so important is because there are so many people that do social media by having just an afterthought or, you know, the college kid or the youngest person on the team or the lowest budget.

When they do that, they come back to us and say, social media doesn’t work. Oh, you aren’t doing it right. And I’m not saying there’s a right way to do it, because there isn’t. There’s a lot of ways to do it. However, there’s a right way to do it for your brand or your product that will help you get results. I’m very confident in saying that. I don’t know any business that I can think of off the top of my head that would be not appropriate on social media because there’s just so much you can do, you know?

10:35
So let’s talk a little bit about the StoryBrand book, Kiley. You mentioned it before we got on this recording, that it’s an amazing book that basically turns you into a person who in your copy and content will look out for your customer as opposed to just providing them with what you think they like. It’s just a- makes a great case. Tell us more about that. We did it in a book club at our company.

KILEY: Yeah, in our, in our company book club. I think it was one of the first books we read actually, it may have been just the second. And it really, I would say it changed the way that I write social media copy and think about social media copy for all of our clients. And I spend a lot of time doing our PopSpeed Digital Marketing’s social media and a lot of our internal marketing, and changed the way I think about that as well. And I think that- it’s Building a StoryBrand, I believe, and I highly, highly recommend it. It’s been one of my favorites that we’ve read, and it basically kind of outlines this template, this step by step process of getting your social media marketing and really your overall digital marketing to a place where you are serving your audience first and foremost.

I won’t spoil the template. You’ll have to read the book. But it really- it does provide a very regimented step by step guide on how to get there, which we all found very helpful. Because it’s so easy for us to sit here and say, right, you know, you need to tailor your content to your audience and you need to pivot how you’re doing A, B and C.

LORI: Blah, blah, blah.

KILEY: Exactly. Without a step by step guide on how to do that, which is not something that we can cover in a 30 minute podcast episode, it’s really hard and it’s really daunting. This book, again, I’ll repeat myself once again, really changed the way that we do things and it changed the way that we view each of our clients’ audiences. Right?

12:34
So for us, it’s a little different than just being an internal social media manager for one specific brand. We have 15 to 20 audiences that we need to think about on a daily basis. So it forced us to pull our brains out of, oh, you know, for today I’m going to write and create content for this particular client. Let me get in their headspace and into their voice. To now, we’re okay, let me get in the frame of mind of their audience as opposed to speaking the voice of the brand, which is important. You know, each brand has a voice, and it’s important to maintain that consistency.

However, now our writing is really tailored and really focused to, okay, based on, you know, what did well last month and what consumers seem to be interested in as of late or what time of year it is, what do we think that our audience needs to hear today? And really using that sort of benchmark in the way that we create content, whether it’s writing or, you know, if we are creating graphics or if we’re planning fundraising events for our nonprofit clients, pretty much from A to Z of the digital marketing work that we do for each of our clients, our—because of that book, I think—our energy and our focus is set towards our audiences now, which I think is so important. And I think we’ve seen big upticks. I think our dental implant client is a prime example that we’ve seen increases in leads, and really qualified leads as well, since we’ve started crafting our content specifically with them in mind.

14:19
Lori alluded to it earlier, I think it’s really important, that client, it’s such an easy example for us to pull from all the time, because It encompasses all of our best tips, in one single industry, really. But for them, it’s- you know, we go back to what we talked about in episode one, where you see so many people, whether it’s dentists or in the healthcare space or, you know, cosmetic or aesthetic surgeries and things of that nature, where if you’re the doctor or if you’re the health care professional, of course you got into it because you’re fascinated by the medical aspect of this. Right? What you need to keep in mind when you’re creating your content is that nobody else is. And the majority of people are probably a little bit grossed out by the behind the scenes of what it is you do every day and don’t care to see it.

What they want to see is the end result that will improve their quality of life. Which I just, you know, again, there’s a million examples and we could pull from any industry, but this one just makes our lives too easy with the connections.

15:26
LORI: Yeah, I’m going to add to this because I think it’s so important. Just the StoryBrand advice, some of it included being a guide for your client to help them get the results that they want. And that piece right there is so important, I would say in marketing, in sales, in customer service. The way you get and keep a client, keep them loyal and happy, is by figuring out what they need and want and guiding them to getting that end result. And that’s what you’re doing.

So for example, if you’re a dentist—we keep talking about them, but again, they’re such an easy example—if you’re a dentist, people want—people who are having problems with their teeth or in pain—they want to know that you know about that. That you know that it’s hard to go to a dentist because you know it’s going to hurt. So you may do some content around pain relief and easing their fears.

They also want to know that what you do is going to be done- that they’re going to be treated well. There’s proof in the form of testimonials, right? They want to know that it’s going to look amazing and that it’s going to be custom for them. That it’s not going to be just something stuck in there that doesn’t look right.
16:45
Again, testimonials, you know, happy smiles of the patient after they’ve had the process. Right? So basically looking at what that customer needs and being able to guide them through the process of getting their desired end result. Not yours, theirs. Yours is that they buy. Theirs is that they get that brand new smile, that they get to have an amazing experience as a volunteer, that they got to contribute with a donation.

I mean, their desires are not the same as yours. So that’s where we get this, you know, you versus your customers or you versus your clients kind of thing. Because in a lot of cases we’ve had—especially, you know, again, small to mid sized businesses—where the ownership may not be tuned in to that, you know, sales and marketing aspect of running a business. Maybe they got into business because they are really good at making, you know, designer suits. Or making- they design suits and do them custom for people. And that’s amazing. And so they are so focused on that that they don’t think they should ever have to do a coupon. They don’t think they should ever have to. And what that is, is that is getting stuck in your ego and that creates that us versus the customer or you versus the customer attitude. And that can’t be there because you want something they have: money.

KILEY: Exactly. Exactly.

LORI: And in order to convince them to give it to you, you’ve got to prove to them that you’re worth it. Right? And that you’re gonna help them.

KILEY: I think that’s such a good point too. And it really ties this whole episode together because it is- your content should, from the rear view, from your point of view, be laid out as a win-win situation.

LORI: Yeah.

KILEY: You’re making money off of your customers. Obviously that’s why any business in the world exists, to make money. We get it. But let your customers know what they are getting out of it. It is about them. So you can make the money on your side.

LORI: Yep, that’s what it is. What I would say is instead of us versus them, you go around to their side and see what you would want from you. You know? In order to get good topics. And also strategy, just going back to the age old advice, your audience research should be a huge part of planning for what you do in social.

19:12
I mean, Kiley, tell us a little bit about the kind of research you do for our strategies because I know you’re deep in that right now. What kind of research do you do and where do you find it?

KILEY: I would say a brunt of the research there, I mean, there’s so much research that goes into a strategy, but the most time consuming aspect is that audience research first and foremost, especially when we’re kind of diving into a new industry that we might not be totally familiar with is we want to know age demographics, we want to know, you know, is it, is it more tailored to males or females? Who’s more likely to be interested? We want to know location- where is it extra hot and where do we really want to target. If, whether that obviously applies to, if it’s not a local business. But things of that nature. Really researching who our target audience is, and then completing the research of what the best ways to reach them are. Whether they’re primarily on Facebook, if it’s a younger audience, maybe they’re mostly on TikTok. Whether or not YouTube will be a good place for them, Twitter, even. But just the right way to reach them and who they are. And then that puts us in a position to build content that not only will reach them, but will entice them.

We’ve been using a new- it’s an AI system, but it’s really good at kind of streamlining the research process and it provides qualified sources and I’ve been using that quite a bit. Honestly, with reputable sources really just putting in the time in Google searches is helpful. Doing research on individual platforms is helpful. Places like HubSpot or Hootsuite very often have great articles on who to reach, why to reach them, where to reach them, everything like that. So it’s time consuming, but I think results speak for themselves. Right? If you put in the time and energy to research your audiences in the strategy phase before you’ve really kind of jumped in headfirst into the content creation standpoint, you’ll be amazed by how much time and stress and, you know, annoyance it’ll save you once you’re in that publishing content phase.

Because you’ve done the work, you know who your audience is, you know how to reach them, you know what they want to see. And of course, will you be pivoting along the way? Yeah, for sure. Could your audience grow? Of course. Will behaviors change? Yeah, they change every day. But when you have that baseline and that foundation of research because you’ve put in the time, it makes the world of a difference to really launch yourself and launch your efforts and initiatives off in that story brand, sort of your audience comes first mindset, as opposed to trying to pivot and get there along the way once you’ve already started.

LORI: Absolutely, yeah. I think there’s a lot to be said for spending that time up front. And then I would add to that, the during phase. Like when you are- don’t just throw the stuff, the content out there and just keep throwing it out there and not going back to see what works and what doesn’t. And always be open to trying new things because your audience may be into some trend right now that you can jump on that could be fun, or they may not. Don’t jump on the wrong trends. But there’s something to be said for having a test and learn to see on an ongoing basis which audiences respond.

23:03
If you’re using Meta, you can target age groups, you can target special interests, that maybe align or are related to your audience. There’s a lot you can do to reach the right people and also kind of change your messaging. Experiment with video versus stills, with carousels, with different calls to action, with different types of art, maybe it’s smiles, maybe it’s really bold, colorful graphics. I mean there’s a lot of different ways to get attention. And pay attention to that back end to see what does better.

And what we found—again, here we go—we have a client that is 100 organic right now. We don’t recommend it. We do not recommend it, right? We’re still working, trying to get them to get a little budget. But what we see is sometimes exponentially like 8 to 10 times more people, impressions, on the content that has photos of their team versus anything else. Testimonial graphics, anything else that we do for them. When it’s real and it’s their people, it gets exponentially more impressions. So those are the kind of things that if you pay attention to them, you will reach more of your audience.

24:17
So I think that’s what we’ve got. We’re coming up on 27 minutes here, Kiley. So we’ve given a lot of information today, which I’m really happy to do. It’s kind of why we’re here. Please know that we are a small agency that is growing and taking on new clients. So if you are interested in hearing more about us, you can visit our website at popspeeddigital.com, there’s a contact form so you can get in touch. I am also an Open Networker on LinkedIn, and I think, Kiley, you are too.

So connect with us there. We’d be happy to do a half hour audit of your social media presence. Just free, no obligations, just to talk through what you’re currently doing and what you might do that would make it better. So that’s what we’ve got for you today. We will talk to you again soon.

In this episode of Rev & Reach, Lori and Kiley discuss the critical concept of spending money to make money in digital marketing. Discover how investing strategically in ads and community engagement can lead to remarkable ROI, whether in terms of sales, audience growth, or brand trust.

00:08 – Introduction to the importance of spending money on digital marketing for ROI.

01:06 – Beyond ads: Leveraging discounts and promotions in social media strategies.

02:44 – A LinkedIn ad campaign that drove significant website traffic.

07:54 – Small ad budgets making a big impact: A charter school’s success story.

11:25 – Strategies for building an engaged audience and using user-generated content.

20:05 – The importance of organic growth and authentic community engagement.

01:49 – “But if you take one thing out of this episode, spend money on social media. It matters”

02:53 – “A nice way around that to see how effective or not effective your social media marketing is social media-specific discounts, coupons, promotions.”

05:14 – “You can get ROI, you can sell product…But you have to invest.”

14:25 – “When you buy your audience, your engagement sucks.”

20:39 – “When you engage with your social audience in that way and really connect with them, and are willing to give things away to them, you’re building a bridge between company and consumer that entices your consumer to want to engage with you back.”

Rev & Reach Episode 3 Transcript

00:08
LORI: Hello, I’m Lori Jo Vest. Thank you so much for joining us for this episode of Rev & Reach, a podcast brought to you by PopSpeed Digital Marketing LLC. That’s our digital marketing boutique. We offer all kinds of digital marketing services. And for this podcast, we are here to share our secrets. We’re going to tell you what worked, we’re going to tell you what didn’t work, and ways that you can amp up your ROI to better serve your organization and your brand. Here with me today is Kiley Transit. Kiley is our social media strategist and specialist, and she does all kinds of things. What can I say. But she’s been doing this for a while. She’s been with us for four years. I’ve been doing social media, I think I figured out the other day, for 19 years.

KILEY: Oh my gosh.

LORI: So we kind of know our stuff, wouldn’t you say? We know our stuff.

KILEY: I like to think so.

LORI: But yeah, so I’ll let you get us started, Kiley.

01:06
KILEY: So today we’re going to talk a little bit about the importance of spending money in order to make money. And this can be looked at from so many different angles. The first, and I think what Lori and I would both agree is the most important and obvious is ads on social media, Meta ads, LinkedIn, spending money on Google, you know, things like that. Really, really putting an intentional set aside budget to put your social media marketing content in front of more and more and more people to garner that ROI. And they really do work and it really is worth it and we’ll talk about it. But if you take one thing out of this episode, spend money on social media, it matters.

I think a couple of other examples that really fall under the spending money to make money category are in more, not necessarily just a retail space, but like retail restaurants, you know, online shopping platforms, things like that. Prioritizing discounts and social media-focused discounts. We know for so many clients and for us too, as your digital marketing provider, ROI is everything. It’s the most important metric, as it should be. You put a lot of money and resources and time into your digital marketing, you should see results from it. When it comes to social though, it’s very difficult to directly track ROI in terms of-

LORI: It can be.

02:44
KILEY: Yeah, in terms of sales and, you know, money spent and a real increase in profits directly from a social channel. So a nice way around that to see how effective or not effective your social media marketing is, is social media-specific discounts, coupons, promotions. Really, you know, things to either draw people, your audience to your website or to your store or your shop or your restaurant or whatever the case may be.

LORI: Absolutely. Or in one case, I was just thinking about this one. One example, we have a global client and they market or, you know, promote their research to engineers in the automotive space. And we spent just in the last, I think in the last couple of months, we spent $300 on a LinkedIn ad. And it was, you know, promoting traffic to the blog, which is highly technical and really demonstrates the depth of information that this organization provides. But this got shown to 60,000 people on LinkedIn and 60,000 people around the world and generated some really significant traffic to the website to see that article.

And the thing that’s really interesting to me is people measure ROI in different ways. Sometimes it’s donations, sometimes it’s, you know, if the mission of the organization is not sales, then it’s not necessarily a return on dollar investments. It could be, you know, the investment could return with volunteers, it could return with donations. It could return with downloads of a report with proof of who you are as an organization and why they should trust you. So there’s a lot of different ways that you can measure ROI. We love it when we can measure it with cash. Absolutely.

KILEY: Oh yeah.

04:45
LORI: The grief support group that we talked about in our last episode, there was a local fundraising initiative. In their first year, we were able to get $25,000. And they won several of the little competitions inside the fundraising initiative based on email, social media and boots on the ground, talking to people, making phone calls and asking them to donate on certain days, things like that. So, yes, it does get- you can get ROI, you can sell products. Absolutely.

But you have to invest. You have to invest. You have to go the extra bit and add a budget to that. You know, not just- even if you’re doing it yourself, if you’re doing your own social media and you are not spending any money on ads, good luck. You’re wasting your effort, in my opinion. You know, because you can reach so many more people with just a $250 a month spend. Right?

05:44
KILEY: Yeah. I think that’s a really important point too, is that you don’t- it’s not like your ad budget needs to match, you know, how much you pay your agency or how much you spend in your marketing budget. We have clients that range from as little as $60 a week to Lori just mentioned, we had one that was $300 over the course of a couple of months. And then we’ve worked with clients in the past where we go up to about $4,000 a month. It is completely dependent on the individual brand, client company organization, whatever the case is.

And, you know, what you’re comfortable with, what you’re willing to put into it. And we see results, we see great results with as little as $60 a week, or as Lori said, it was $300 in a couple months and 60,000 people saw it. That’s incredible. And you know, obviously the more you spend, yeah, obviously the more eyeballs are going to see it and the more targeted it can get. But do not, you know- even that $60 a week, even I’m sure $50 a week is better than zero.

LORI: Always.

KILEY: So as much or as little as you’re able to put into it, it is worth your time at the very least to prove it to yourself. You know, to prove it within your marketing team or to your CEO or founder that a little bit of money really does go a long way on social media.
And because, I think I’ll speak specifically to Meta targeting and how specific and nuanced you can get, just continues year after year. As much as Meta is a headache sometimes in the back end, it gets better and better and more specific and really enables you to not just put your content in front of more random eyeballs because, you know, in that case who really cares. But in front of the right ones and the right demographics and people that are really more likely to engage and convert on whatever it is, whatever action it is that you want them to take.

07:54
LORI: I’ll give you an example. For charter school that is focused on maybe a specific ethnicity, you can actually target people that speak that language. Let’s just throw this out. We do this for a school, but I don’t want to reveal who they are. Let’s just say it’s Ukrainian, it’s a Ukrainian school. And we can target on Meta, parents, preschool with preschoolers within a 10 mile or 25 mile radius of the school. We can target people who speak that language within a 10 mile radius of the school. Grandparents within a 10 mile, 20. I mean, it’s amazing how you can really niche down.

And on the other hand, you can also niche up. And one thing I really like is for some of our clients that really need to reach people who are in the highest income levels in a geographical area, you can target geography like let’s say Detroit or Denver metropolitan area. And I want just the top 10% household incomes. There you go. You’ve got that audience and every dime will go toward those people. And Meta has this tool that will also expand on those people to reach more people that are like your buyers and your most engaged audience members. So there’s a lot of tools that can help you. We’ve had some great success with the charter school that I mentioned earlier with a—gotta love this, Kiley—a $75 a month budget.

KILEYI: Yeah. Right.

LORI: But because it’s a school with a small audience and a foreign language, the audience is so engaged, it’s small, but their school is full. Their enrollment is really, really good. As a result, you know, of part of that.

09:51
KILEY: Right. I think that’s a super important point that it’s, you know, I got on my soapbox about, you know, you can spend as little or as much. But I think it is so individual based as well and so specific to a certain company. That client specifically, they don’t need more. They don’t need more than that. Like we- and as, you know, their agency, we never recommend them putting funds that they don’t have into something that is already garnering, you know, significant results. We don’t benefit from it. We want you to see that ROI. And if we think that putting more money into it, you know that, that $4,000 a month client I mentioned earlier, you know, for them. Yeah. You know? If that’s important to you and you have the money to spend.

LORI: We’re starting from scratch.

KILEY: Yep, exactly. Like do it and, and we’ll recommend it. If you’re- I think starting from scratch is a great, great, great point where it might be important to invest a little bit more. But when you have that already engaged and previously existing audience, you don’t need to drop that kind of money on it. You really, really don’t. If you have it and you wanted to, cool, do it like, we’re happy to see what happens, but it’s just it’s not necessary when your audience exists and they’re already engaged and they’re helping spread the word about you anyway with or without more money than $75 a month.
11:25
LORI: And parents are passionate. Parents are passionate. But another type of investment that can be really useful is—speaking of just starting out—is if you are just starting out, you are just launching on social media, you need to put, you know, at least I would think, a couple of thousand dollars a month toward audience growth. And that is growing your audience on Facebook and growing your audience on Instagram, LinkedIn is a little harder. But we’re talking primarily B2C on these Instagram, Facebook, you know, Meta channels. But if you are a B2C company, Meta and Instagram as a combination are very powerful. And you can use ad dollars to send people to your Instagram profile. If you’ve got great, engaging content and you’re targeting the right people, that will grow your following really quickly. Meta the same thing. You can have a call to action on your ad that says follow our page or even join our group. So there’s a lot of really great, not just targeting, but CTAs. You can actually create lead forms.

We do this for a dental client. We have a budget and a certain percent of that budget, the majority of it goes toward lead generation ads on Meta and are shown on both Facebook and Instagram. And we can create whatever we want on the form. We can add things so that people self select out so that if they’re not a candidate for what we’re doing, they can- they won’t fill out the form because we ask questions that lead them to understand if it’s a fit for them or not. So there’s a lot of things you can do with ads.

But moving over to restaurants and other types of B2C businesses, investing in things like contests to grow your platform audience, it can be really important because you don’t just- but you don’t want to buy an audience. Never buy an audience because those people are not your people. I would rather see you have 2000 engaged people on Instagram that love your brand that took us six months to build than 10,000 people that you got in a month and a half by buying something. And when you look at them, they’re all in foreign countries, they don’t care about you. It might look good, but it will not serve you. And there’s really not ROI behind that.

KILEY: Exactly. Exactly.

LORI: You know, there really isn’t. A random audience is not necessarily a good audience. Right?

13:57
KILEY: Yeah. I think that’s super important. We’ve seen, you know, with brands or companies that, that buy their audience, a high follower count is cool. And, you know, we’ve talked about how ROI is the, the most important metric and if it’s not, it should be with social. And, you know, if you want to look at the other ones, engagement is a really, really common one to put a lot of stock into. When you buy your audience, your engagement sucks. Right? Like you’re- the audience-

KILEY: They don’t care.

14:31
LORI: Yeah, they’re not there. So the only thing that looks good or looks like it’s working is that you have a high follower account. If any one person were to go look at the list of followers, it’s so easy to tell that it is bought. So easy. So it’s really, it’s worth—whether that’s ads or contests or giveaways or, you know, random monthly promos that require a follow to a brand—it is so much- it’s so worth the time and energy. It really isn’t just money, but also money put into it to build that engaged audience that is going to convert. Because what’s the point, as Lori said, of having 60,000 followers if none of them are really contributing to your ROI at all? It looks cool, sure, but it doesn’t achieve anything. And then it’s money wasted on buying an audience that’s not getting you anywhere.

I think that for us as an agency, we’ve seen both ends of the spectrum when it comes to clients with, you know, us encouraging them to do giveaways or contests or, you know, random promos that are social media driven. We have one client right now where they just ran a community promo with a couple of other local businesses back in February, like Valentine’s Day themed like a date night for couples. And it was a giveaway and the call to action to join, to be entered, to win that contest was to join their newsletter list, their email list, and correct me if I’m wrong, Lori, but I think that promo, which was only run on social and in their newsletter, garnered over, I think it was between 200 and 250 new email subscribers, which is huge.

KILEY. 500. Okay, yeah, even crazier. I wish I had that stat in front of me, but I mean, significant. And it was driven on social.

LORI: I think it was 500. I think it was 500. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it was.

16:53
LORI: And what if- what I thought was really interesting about that example too was it’s a micro resort, like a tiny resort. They’ve got five or six shipping container, beautiful Scandinavian rooms. Cabins, they call them. And to give one of those away for a night is worth a lot of money. And the business owner talked to the city’s downtown area. The best restaurant, the best, I think it was a candle making experience. And so they all donated. And that had to be worth, you know, probably about $1,000.

KILEY: I think it was eight. I think it was $800 was the total. Yep. Exactly.

17:39
LORI: And then I’m going to- I won’t reveal any names, but I have to spout off about one client we had that was a restaurant that they were like, our food is so good. Why should we have to give things away to get people to come in? And they wouldn’t. They wouldn’t do giveaways, they wouldn’t do special social promotions. I would have suggested they do an Instagram wall, a really cool wall that on the way out, people take their picture, you know, those kinds of things. And they just weren’t interested.

And so we, you know, we ended up mutually agreeing to not work together anymore because the way the relationship was going wasn’t very positive. And we, it was kind of holding us back. A lot of things that we wanted to do, we couldn’t do. And fast forward six months. And what do we see on their social now? Coupons. Special offers. Somebody finally got through to them. Maybe it was just a matter of somebody, you know, enough people telling them that that’s part of what you have to do. But it is part of what you have to do. But it’s kind of fun to bring people to your place through social.

We also love to work with really solid influencers. There are some great influencers out there that will- the least they can do is get traffic to your website. And we worked with a company that produced ice cream. They did craft ice cream. And this was super fun. I found a guy on Instagram,@dadbodsnacks. And this guy has a dad bod and he doesn’t care. He just gets snacks from everybody and he does it for free. So we shipped him some ice cream and he wrote a little review. He didn’t even charge us. But there was cost for the product and the shipping and the follow up and all that, you know, and it sent a significant amount of traffic to their website. Well worth it.

KILEY: Yeah, absolutely. And I think those are such good examples because it can be- and that shows the range of the type of company that this type of spending money to make money works for. It’s restaurants, it’s, you know, in store retail shopping, it’s online shopping, it’s, you know, mini resorts or a, you know, normal sized resort or a hotel or a bed and breakfast or, you know, something as big as Airbnb. There’s no limit to who should be considering promos, giveaways and contests.

20:05
And another key, key, key piece that I can’t believe we haven’t mentioned yet. And now it’s, like, all I can think about, of those contests on social is the user-generated content that it provides. So not only are you very likely to, if you’re offering something enticing enough to grow your email list or to grow your followers or to get more people in store on Taco Tuesday to get a great deal on your tacos that taste delicious, but in a lot of cases, when you engage with your social audience in that way and really connect with them and are willing to give things away to them, you’re building a bridge between company and consumer that entices your consumer to want to engage with you back.

And when this happens in the, you know, in the manner of UGC (user generated content), when, you know, let’s stay on the restaurant example. When a patron comes into your restaurant, sits down, orders, let’s go back to Taco Tuesday, orders some delicious tacos and does, you know, the whole, we all know phone eats first, gets a picture of their, you know-

LORI: Phone eats first, I love it.

KILEY: Yeah, right? You’re very appetizing looking tacos, goes on social, posts it, tags you, says they had a great experience, et cetera, you can take that content for one, repost it, tag the creator and it is the number one most trustworthy type of content for other members of your audience. Because it’s a little different than influencers, right? Where a lot of time when you engage with influencers, there’s an incentive for them to give you a good review, whether it’s money or a free meal or product or, you know, whatever. This individual came in, sat down, took a picture, posted to their community about their great experience for no reason other than how good of an experience they had. So others are very much more likely going to trust that with no incentivization on the part of that particular user. And it’s free content. It’s free content for you. So while maybe, you know, they came in because it was 50% off on taco Tuesday and you have to eat that 50% of their meal, that UGC could very likely bring in four other people minimum, depending on how many followers they have or how many people are in their community or how many people saw your post if you reshared it, let’s call it four. I would say in a lot of cases that’s on the low end.

LORI: Yeah, very.

KILEY: But even those four people saw that post and came in are more than making up for that 50% on that one meal that you lost the night before. And I mean, you wouldn’t have had them otherwise come in if they hadn’t seen that little bit of content.

23:08
LORI: If I owned a restaurant, I would actually say- I would have a sign up on the wall that says, post a picture of your experience here on your Instagram account and get a $5 coupon for your next visit.

KILEY: Yep.

LORI: There you go. They show it to you. Hand them the coupon. Life goes on. $5. This place was expensive. They served drinks. They had a $20 hamburger. It was a great hamburger, but it was on the expensive side. So $5 off could entice someone to come in with a friend, they have a couple of drinks and you got a nice check. So the idea that you have to spend money to make money is true, has always been true and will always be true, period.

KILEY: Exactly, exactly. Truly, truly.

23:56
LORI: So I think that’s what we’ve got for you today. Kiley, anything else to add before we drop out?

KILEY: No, I think the two best examples for this are ads and using social to really engage with your community. And I would also say that those are two of the biggest pieces of advice we would offer to any brand ever. So spending money to make money is massive.

LORI: There you go.

KILEY: Yeah. When it comes to effective social media marketing.

LORI: Yeah, absolutely. It is not free. It started out free, there’s no free to it right now.
KILEY. We wish!

LORI: There’s not, so. Anyway. So that’s it for us today. If you have an idea for a topic that you’d like us to cover here on Rev & Reach, Kiley and I are both Open Networkers on LinkedIn. Connect with us there, let us know you’re a listener. We will be back for our next episode soon, and we’ll talk to you then.

KILEY: Bye, everybody!

This episode of Rev & Reach emphasizes the importance of digital marketing for nonprofits to enhance their reach and maximize their impact.

Lori Jo Vest and Kiley Metcalfe discuss how a comprehensive digital strategy can support a children’s grief support nonprofit by attracting volunteers, donors, and resources. Learn how storytelling, engagement, and creativity can drive success in the nonprofit sector.

01:11 – Comprehensive nonprofit marketing: Overview of how a cohesive digital marketing effort supports nonprofit objectives, including newsletters, social media, and websites.

03:16 – Unique challenges for nonprofit ROI: Understanding the varied objectives and needs in nonprofit marketing.

05:56 – The power of impact stories: Leveraging authentic stories to engage potential donors and volunteers emotionally through Facebook Live events.

08:09 – The importance of faces in marketing: Why authentic, candid imagery is crucial for attracting social media audiences.

09:15 – Strategic communication through newsletters: Tailoring content to maintain donor engagement and provide valuable resources.

13:06 – Video as a powerful tool: Capturing authentic moments to inspire community involvement.

17:38 – Fundraising models and creative events: Using unique fundraising strategies like pet art contests to foster engagement.

20:16 – Sponsorable digital assets: Developing creative content like podcasts and humorous graphics to attract sponsors.

07:40 – “That impact story is the most amazing tool for fundraising and soliciting, you know, volunteers and other types of involvement, sponsorships, all that kind of stuff.”

08:15 – “Faces are what gets attention. Faces sell.”

14:13 – “If there’s any way you can find a down and dirty, quick and easy way to capture video—on your phone is fine—do it.”

16:08 – “We’re not looking for the over commercialized, over professional, super highly edited and treated video content. We’re looking for…things like this where we’re just sitting here having a conversation.”

Rev & Reach Episode 2 Transcript

00:08
LORI: Hello, everybody. Welcome to this episode of Rev & Reach, PopSpeed Digital Marketing LLC’s podcast, where we provide you with tips and tricks to amp up your ROI on your social and digital marketing efforts. With me today is Kiley Metcalfe, who is the first real employee of PopSpeed Digital Marketing four or five years ago. And I’m Lori Jo Vest. I’m the founder of the agency with my husband, Ron Wingard, who does our websites.

So we want to get you as much solid information as we can that will help you immediately in your digital marketing efforts. So today, Kiley and I are here to talk about a grief support for children nonprofit that we work with. And we want to treat it kind of as a case study because it’s a really good example of why a nonprofit should have a very solid digital marketing effort going on. If you do not, you are missing out on so much. Right, Kiley?

01:11
KILEY: Yes, absolutely. And this client, this particular group, they’re not the only nonprofit we’ve ever done work for, but they are a great example of what our work looks like in a really all encompassing way. For them we do their newsletter, their social, their website, we take care of their blog. There’s so many different things that we do on behalf of this client. And it’s really a great way of just putting proof in the pudding, honestly, of how a solid, cohesive digital marketing effort can help sustain volunteers, donations, and continued fundraising support for nonprofits.

LORI: So let’s dig into the story of how we got to work with this group. It was right before the pandemic. It was really interesting because they’re part of a huge health network in Metro Detroit, and they work with a development office. And the head of development at that point decided that they really needed this particular nonprofit inside the health system, needed help beyond just, let’s try to raise some money.

They needed to have a social presence. They needed an email initiative. They needed a better website. So they called us in initially just to do the social media. And we started off right before COVID, right? That was crazy. So everybody was, you know, spinning and crazy things were happening.

And it was a difficult time for nonprofits because people were saving their money. A lot of people weren’t working or they couldn’t do their jobs on site because of, you know, the shutdowns. Well, the best part about it was that they ended up raising more money in that year of the pandemic than they had raised in years previous. And that shows you what a good social media effort can do.

So what did we do differently for this particular grief support group that helps them kind of soar above some of their competitors when it comes to fundraising?

03:16
KILEY: Yeah, absolutely. I think that a—and it’s… I wish there was a simple answer for it, I don’t think that there necessarily is one single answer—I think when it comes to non profits in particular, you know, I think about some of our other clients, and in most cases, there’s one single, you know, pinpoint of what ROI looks like. You know? In our last episode, we talked about our dental implant clients. For them, we want leads right? Over and over and over again. For this particular nonprofit, we go into it and there’s almost a new kind of marker for ROI regularly. You know, this given post, we need volunteers. This given post, we need people to sign up for camp. We need, donors, we need fundraisers. The list really goes on and on for what we need to achieve for this client in particular. I think that’s true with a lot of nonprofits as well.

So for us, I think the key, you know, the key thing that we keep in mind on a regular basis is to keep our minds very, very open. It’s a great learning opportunity to go see what competitors are doing and not steal their ideas, but get inspired by them. See how we can turn it around for this particular client and even make it better on a lot of occasions. And it’s different in a lot of ways than you know, just a traditional company or organization because there’s so much more collaboration and freedom and the need for ideas to really garner the attention of prospective donors and say without saying, we’re worthy of your dollars. We’re worthy of your donations and your volunteer hours and your attendance at our fundraisers. And here’s why.

LORI: And matter of fact, what we’re- here’s why, because we’re going to show you a story, an impact story, or several impact stories that are going to help you want to become a part of that organization’s mission. And one of the ways we did it with this grief support group, I got to share the story of the live that we did, it was awesome. And what we did was we got their alumni volunteers. Now, this is a group that supports children who have experienced the death of a loved one. Friend, family, parent. The stories are heartbreaking. And we’re not sure why it works, but it does. There’s a lot of joy in this group.

05:56
So let’s talk about the live event we did for them. This was really cool because it was multi purpose and they are a grief support organization for children. And what has happened over the years, they’ve been around for 20 plus years, is their children that were helped by this program, they experienced the death of a loved one. It could be when they were 5, when they were 10, when they were 15. But a lot of these kids end up growing up and either becoming social workers. One that I talked to was 19 or 20 and he wanted to become a psychologist. And they also come back and volunteer. So there’s an alumni group. They love what the group did for them and how they were supported and the difference it made. And so they come back and volunteer and there’s an alumni group.

And we held a Facebook live about this alumni group and promoted the organization. And they really talked about what it meant to them as a child to walk into a room and thinking that you were the only one that had ever had your dad die or the only one whose grandma died when you were, you know, and everybody else still has their grandma and I don’t, and that’s not fair. And you walk into this room and there’s 20 other kids and they’ve all experienced the same thing. You’re not alone.

So they told these stories of why they came back and what they did. And we recorded them on StreamYard, which is a tool we use for our podcast and other video projects. And we were able to take individual recordings from each of these alumni and let them tell their story and also let them tell the combined stories. And so that impact story is the most amazing tool for fundraising and soliciting, you know, volunteers and other types of involvement, sponsorships, all that kind of stuff. So if you can figure out a way to get those impact stories with faces and voices and, you know, real true authenticity, you will have more impact.

08:09
Another trick that we tell people, and this applies to everybody, not just this grief support group, is faces are what gets attention. Faces sell. And they don’t have to be beautiful, perfect. Matter of fact, the more imperfect, the better. If it looks like I took it or you took it, you know, it was just a flash in the moment, joy or sadness, that’s going to attract that view of that social audience.

That’s part of the story that I wanted to get out there, that if you can get your- the people that you’ve impacted to share their experience over and over and over again. It helps you create that feeling of, I want to be a part of this mission, I want to be a part of this organization. Which is what a donation can be if you handle it correctly and maintain communication.

Let’s talk about the newsletter we do for this group. Kiley, I know that is a part of keeping in touch with those donors as well as volunteers, everybody. Right? What do we do for that every month? Would you share it with us?

09:15
KILEY: Yeah. So we do, I would say, a short newsletter for them would be about five topics. I would say a normal one, maybe six and then a little bit longer we get into 7ish topics per month. Because again you want to, you want to make your—particularly with email communications, I think, just because everybody hates spam. Right?—So when you’re crafting your newsletter, I think particularly, when it comes to a non-profit, when a good chunk of your email list is donors who are like, hey, I’ve given you my money already. If you’re gonna send me emails, make sure they’re worth my time.

That it’s really important to be intentional about what goes in there. And consider that you’re writing for who’s receiving it. Not for yourself, the brand, the non profit, etc. So for us, we like to- we typically include a note from the program manager in, in every edition. That’s how they start. It’s a personal touch. She always has. As Lori said, it’s somehow for a group that really could be clouded by so much sadness. It somehow is a very joyful group and I really believe that that stems from the program manager because of who she is as a person.

LORI: And let me add real quick, her address always has a photo and her signature. Personal. Personal. That’s a big part of it.

KILEY: Exactly. Exactly. It’s very personal. It really connects the audience from the jump of the email with the people behind the organization. And then we follow that with kind of whatever’s hot in the program right now. So on a month by month basis we run a- like an audiogram series. We couldn’t get approval to do a full blown podcast with the group, but we do every month a—we’ll talk about that, sure, in more depth in a little bit—But it’s not a podcast series, but it’s a podcast series. It’s very short episodes month by month on different topics surrounding the group.

So we follow- every newsletter gets a snippet about that, whatever episode came out that month. And then you know, we get into this time of year, we start talking about the fundraisers that are coming up over the summer. Some save the dates. Camp dates.

LORI: Golf outings. Golf outings. Grief camp.

KILEY: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And then it’s very seasonal too. Yeah, exactly. And then we run it kind of on a seasonal basis. So around the holidays we’ll talk a lot about topics that are very timely to, you know, grieving, you know, around the holiday season and how to, you know, manage your grief during Christmas or Hanukkah or Thanksgiving or you know, whatever your family’s big holiday is. Because ultimately we know that a lot of the audience that’s going to read the newsletters is parents of grieving children or guardians. A nd so it’s important to cater to what they need too, because in most cases they’re also grieving. Right?

So we kind of- we kind of work towards getting resources and information to support the community and to display to those past donors. You know, kind of reiterate what the impact of the group is as opposed to just every month over month making a direct appeal for more donations. It’s a little bit more important to tailor it to, if you’re a grieving family on our list, here are some resources that can help you this season. If you’re a past donor, oh, look at how, you know, we’re continuing to support these people. We can do it a little bit more with another donation. Very subtle, very subtle, pleas. Yeah.

13:06
LORI: Yeah. And it’s interesting because as we have added more and more video, it’s been the more effective, the impact of the story. When you actually, like I did last year, go to grief camp and you would think, you know- I went the first day once and the kids were all a little anxious and kind of, you know, not sure of themselves. I went the second day this past year and by then they’re all like wilding out, you know, they’re all crazy and having a great time and, and they- there’s so much joy and they meet each other and make those really fast friends and, and when you ask them straight out, what is it that you love about this organization, they always say, I’m not alone. And they spend a lot of time at grief camp learning how to process grief in a healthy way, learning, you know, doing exercise to help them manage their emotions, all kinds of really healthy things that help them when they, when they grow up.

So the video aspect I think of it is really- is also really important. If there’s any way you can find a down and dirty, quick and easy way to capture video—on your phone is fine—do it. Because you never know when you’re going to get that perfect moment that inspires a whole bunch of people to join your list of supporters.

KILEY: I mean I would even argue too—like you say on your phone is fine—I’d argue that it’s better. I mean you look at the- we talked about the live that we did back in, I think it was in December, with the alumni group Lori. And a lot of those, you know, we got so much. I mean it was such an amazing event to talk to, you know, directly to families that are either, you know, young and experiencing it currently, or prospective families that want to join the group. You know, a wide array of people within the community.

But it also gave us a lot of content to work with after the fact. So there are a lot of, like, videos you’ll see on our pages now with little snippets of, you know, this alumni talking about how the program impacted them in this specific way. Right? As an example. And it’s so, you know, authentic. You know, we talk about talking head videos. It’s not, it’s not professionally done. It’s coming directly chopped up from a live event that was on Facebook. It’s not terribly high quality or terribly over polished or professional or formal or anything of the sort, but it’s authentic, and more than what the people in the video, you know, are presenting. Whether it’s a perfect, you know, camera angle or lighting or etc. It’s the content of their words that really matters. And particularly I think with impact stories for on behalf of nonprofits, that’s what matters. We’re not looking for the over commercialized, over professional, super highly edited and treated video content.

We’re looking for, you know, things. Things like this where we’re just sitting here having a conversation, talking about general impact on, on personal lives and even just a cell phone video of, you know, this is why I volunteer with this group. Things like that, I mean, in this case are so, so much more real. And the content of nonprofits and groups like this is just that- it’s things people deal with every day in real life. So why not keep the content real?

LORI: Yeah. What I liked about that too was some of the young people that participated—because these people are people in their 20s, maybe somebody was 30, I don’t know—but they were recording them, a lot of them were on their cell phones. So when we took the video clips, they looked like reels on Instagram or TikTok something on TikTok. They were just like, you did that yourself. But at the same time, because they were talking to each other, it was a very heartfelt, authentic conversation where if you sit somebody in front of a camera and say, okay, say this. It’s not the same. It’s so not the same. So you may not get the perfect sentence or the perfect lighting, but you will get the perfect level of authenticity to create connection. And that’s really what you need to do as a nonprofit, is to create that connection.

17:38
I wanted to mention here, and I talk about it a lot with our nonprofit clients, there’s a model for fundraising out there. It used to be called making more money. Now it’s called Benevon and it’s got a formulaic approach. I’m sure it’s changed with social media and digital marketing, and I’ve not looked into it, but the idea is that you share a huge impact story with your audience, and then once they become connected, you encourage that monthly donation kind of thing so that they’re donating every month and you communicate with them every month and you give them opportunities.

We’re going to stuff backpacks for, you know, kids at the school because we’re an educational organization and we want to demonstrate our commitment. So we’re inviting 50 people to come help us stuff backpacks and, you know, drive them out to the schools. People love that kind of thing. So it’s- as a nonprofit, being involved, creating opportunities to be involved is absolutely critical. And digital marketing is a great way to do it.

I’ll tell you- before we wrap up, I want to tell the story of our pet contest.

KILEY: Oh, yes! Yes, yes, yes.

18:47
LORI: I saw this- oh, gosh, I saw this years ago. And we’re in the process of launching it. So don’t steal it until at least, if you’re going to do it yourself, do it after June, because we’re getting ready to do it, like, March, April, May of 2025. But what we’re doing is we’re offering our followers and supporters the opportunity to have some artwork made of a picture of their pet. And when we say artwork, we’re saying that very loosely because it could be good refrigerator art, or you might get art from, you know, that looks a little nicer, but it’s going to be done by the kids from this grief support agency, the staff of the grief support agency. I might even draw a dog or two. Kiley might have to draw her dog, I don’t know. But they’re going to be refrigerator art.

And it’s a small donation. And what it does is it pulls people into our sphere. It pulls people into this organization’s group, and we’ll show all of them. So we’re going to be able to show on social the before and the after. Here’s what the picture looked like, and here’s what the kid drew. And it’ll be funny and it’ll be cute, you know, and it’s a minor donation, but it creates that connection, which is what you really, really want. There’s a really nice way to balance grassroots fundraising with corporate sponsorships.

And Kiley, do you want to talk a little bit about what we can do or what nonprofits can do and what we’ve done for nonprofits when it comes to creating sponsorable assets?

20:16
KILEY: Yeah, absolutely. I think this client in particular is a great example of that for us. And it’s another- it just kind of goes to show the importance of being creative. Right? So when we think of our general service offerings as an agency for digital marketing, we do a lot of social media, we do a lot of newsletters, we do a lot of websites, SEO, lead gen.

But in this case we got to have a little bit of fun. Because obviously nonprofit is another great way to kind of accept philanthropic dollars is with sponsorships. Right? So for us, we’re like, okay, so if we’re not really doing it at events and things of that nature, how do we create sponsorable assets to be consumed in the digital media space?

So the not podcast podcast that I mentioned earlier that we do for this client on a monthly basis, those are relatively quick. I would say episode lengths kind of span from, I would say shorter ones are about two to three minutes longer ones, I believe the longest we’ve ever done is about 20. And then generally maybe like 8 to 10, I would say is pretty average. So they come out every month. They’re on different topics related to grief and healing and coping and community and you know, finding joy.

LORI: How to be a better ally. I love that one. How to be a better grief ally. We all need to know how to do that, right?

KILEY: Exactly. Yep. That was a great one. Yes, exactly. So really speaking to the entire community, I think—it’s March 2025 right now—this month we did kind of playing into, you know, green being the month or the color of March with St. Patrick’s Day, talking about, you know, the little green monster that comes up, jealousy and envy during grief. So it’s a- that’s a sponsorable asset. It’s an episode that comes out every month. We’ve- I believe we’ve talked before about pitching it to, like, bereavement facilities and funeral homes and things of that nature, you know. Other organizations and companies that are involved in some way or another in grieving. Right?

And that is something that any company can come in, pay a set fee and have, you know, their logo stamped on the audiogram each month and you know, get a shout out in the episode. Right? And then obviously win-win, some marketing for the company and a little bit more money for our nonprofit.

22:53
Another one that we’ve done that is my personal favorite because it’s so fun, is humor. Humor is healing. So it’s a grief support program. And one of the things that this particular client really relies on is humor and finding joy, as we mentioned, in the wake of grief. So we don’t shy away from laughing. We keep things light as often as possible. We tell jokes and really, really cheesy jokes. So it was a little thing that kind of started on our own Instagram page for the most part, with little graphics with little puns and, you know, funny little jokes kind of designed for kids and them being told on just cutesy, fun, colorful graphics. That has now turned into Humorous Healing, becoming its own Instagram page. And it’s just flooded.

LORI: We’re growing it.

KILEY: Yeah. It’s a growth process, absolutely. But it’s just this cute, silly page that’s just flooded with these dumb little punny jokes and

LORI: Dad jokes.

KILEY: Yeah, right. Dad jokes and the cheesiest ones. And it’s so fun and the community loves it because it’s just, you know, what’s your little dad joke today? What’s going to make me laugh today? We take, you know, jokes from the community and highlight those anytime we get them in the next graphic.

And it’s become this very communal thing that again, is a sponsorable asset now that it’s turned into its own Instagram page. In particular, because at any time, you know, this company, this funeral home has sponsored this joke or this week’s jokes. So it’s a great way, I think, to be really creative with how to make an organization that does really, really important work get access to more funds and more resources to be able to do more of that work, you know?

25:01
LORI: Absolutely. They’re 100% supported by donations. And even though they’re part of a healthcare system, they’re actually attached to the hospice aspect of the healthcare system and they support the families coming through as well as free support to all the families in Metro Detroit. It’s absolutely amazing. And there’s a lot of these organizations.

We found out over time that there’s a lot of organizations that help children grieve. So if you are, you know, side note here, if you have a child that has experienced the death of an important person to them, grief support is really important. And what we’ve learned from this is that these kids grow up to be really healthy adults because they’ve had to learn how to process really heavy emotions. And that gives them a solid base for a healthy and successful future. So it is important, you know, so something to think about.

25:57
Anything else we want to talk about with this particular nonprofit? I think we’ve covered everything. Our next episode is going to be about what? What are we talking about? Coming up?

KILEY: Next episode, we are going to be talking about spending money to make money.

LORI: Oh, yeah.

KILEY: And that is not just for nonprofits. That is for all clients across the board. Forever and ever.

LORI: For everybody. So social media is pay to play. That’s what we’re going to talk about next time. But for now, that’s what we’ve got. Again, we are PopSpeed Digital Marketing and we are here to help you bring solid ROI to your social and digital marketing efforts. Check out our website at popspeeddigital.com and we’ll see you soon.