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What’s better than one social media marketing expert? How about 4 of them teaming up to create a Marketing super team known as “The 360 Marketing Squad”. Covering all aspects of Instagram, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter, this super group has the experience, knowledge and determination to help small businesses not only step up their marketing strategies, but learn how to track their progress so they know what’s working and what needs tweaking.
Rich: The 360 Marketing Squad is a unique partnership between four talented and experienced marketers. Jenn Herman, Stephanie Liu, Amanda Robinson, and the absentee Mike Allton. Together. They are able to provide deep insights and strategic direction to businesses on every aspect of social media marketing.
They have a private mastermind group in which they offer live training sessions, support, and dedicated resources. And they have recently co-authored The Ultimate Guide to Social Media Marketing, published by Entrepreneur Press and available wherever books are sold.
So I’ve got three of the four right here today. I understand last minute Mike is suffering from food poisoning. So I just want to know, which one of you three delivered the casserole?
Amanda: I swear I had nothing to do with it.
Rich: A lot of guilty faces here. Alright, awesome.
Amanda: But in all honesty, Mike is our glue. So when Mike is not among us, we are sad. Somebody has got to keep us in line.
Rich: Well, and we did just have Mike on the show. So I’m missing him, but I feel like I did just have the opportunity to talk to him, so we had a great conversation.
So let’s talk about some of the other things going on. And first of all, every superhero group has an origin story. The Avengers formed because Loki was threatening the earth, the X-Men formed so that Professor Xavier could train Young Mutants on how to use their powers and bridge the gap between Homo sapiens and homo superiors. The Banana Splits. Actually, I don’t know what the origin story is of the Banana Splits, but I’m sure it’s almost as awesome as how you four teamed up. So how did you guys join forces?
Jenn: We started out, it’s actually funny because Mike just posted something to our group just the other day about when he bought his ticket to the first Social Media Marketing World conference that he attended, and that was where he and I met for the first time in person, but we had known each other online for a number of years. And so through having connected with me, I introduced him to Stephanie a number of years ago, and the three of us all have young daughters that are about the same age and we’re all in this space.
And we were looking for some sort of a Mastermind of people that we could bounce ideas off of people we could rely on and trust, and not just in business, but in family and life. And so we were just this really good fit, the three of us. And we started the Mastermind and in doing that, we were like, “Hey, we really want to do a membership program”, but neither one of us wanted to do it because it’s a lot of work. So we’re like, well, if there’s more of us, then that’s less work for each of us to have to manage. And we really wanted to do something with four people.
We really liked the idea of 360 degrees of marketing solutions, and the one area that the three of us most lacked was paid advertising. And with Amanda being my best friend, she was in an easy in for me, and it wasn’t a hard sell for the other two. So that was how we came up with a 360 Marketing Squad, and everything that’s kind of grown from there over the last couple of years has been really fun to experience as really good friends and colleagues.
Rich: That’s awesome. And going forward, what I’ll do is since I do have three guests right now is I will address it to one of you, and then if anyone wants to jump in, then please do that, too.
So Amanda, your book is on social media and this podcast about social media, as well as search and other digital marketing ideas. What do you think the role of social media should be in a company’s overall marketing plan?
Amanda: I think that if you’re marketing in today’s day and age and you don’t have social media as a core piece of your marketing mix, then I think that you are losing out to your competition. And most companies who are not on social media, are completely unaware of it. So once you get in, I’m obviously, I’m The Ads Girl. I am all about analytics and metrics and measurable results. And the depth of measurable results that using social media and paid advertising can give us through social media is absolutely mind boggling. And it allows you to basically sharpen your super power of being completely strategic. Whereas if you’re not using digital marketing, social media, you’re falling behind.
So it is hard if you’re a company or a corporation or a business who has it really been all in full buy in on social media strategy. So when you’re looking for somewhere to start, that’s where this book has been a really, really good gap filler to be able to help you get a 360 degree look at everything social media, all the different areas. Get an understanding of what different platforms are out there, what those platforms role is and if it’s relevant to you, and if you need to start now or if you can put that one on the shelf for a little bit until you’ve gotten to the point where you’re ready for it. So it really has been, it’s a nice evergreen piece of content in book form that really is geared to help people get motivated and get started in the right area so they don’t fall behind.
Rich: Awesome. Awesome. Stephanie, I know that you’re very well known for live video. That is your thing, right?
Stephanie: It’s totally my thing, it’s totally my thing as well as in addition to cosplaying as Slay Trooper, knowing that you are talking about superheroes. I was like, Oh Jenn Herman, you did not tell me that this was that kind of show.
Rich: And you can see my Spiderman poster that I’ve had for years. And then there’s also a little wooden Batman figurine you can see right here. And I am looking to sell my old Star Trek breakdown of the Enterprise right there. I was going to put it on Facebook marketplace, but I digress. So back to live video. I’d like to know what your thoughts are. What role does live video play in today’s social media landscape? Because it does seem like everybody’s rolling out their own social media native app within the platform. And what advice do you have then for somebody who’s terrified of video, much less going live with video?
Stephanie: What would I say for someone that’s terrified of going on video? You know, it’s one of those things where when you’re on video it’s so much easier for you to build rapport with people. Because there’s so much as communicated non-verbally and so when people can see how excited you are or whether or not what you’re suggesting is going to be readily accepted, it’s so much more powerful.
And I think it’s that added layer of getting to know you personally, right. Instead of just this business jargon, this FAQ, right? It’s really getting to know you and how you’re going to help your customer, your end consumer, really solve that issue. And so for anyone that’s kind of terrified of video, do what Jenn and Amanda does, they call each other and they FaceTime each other all the time. Just imagine what it’s like to talk to your best friend. You’re not thinking about how your hair is or any of that stuff. You’re just super excited to see that other person and finally get a solution to the problem that you’ve been chasing after.
Rich: So it sounds like you’re just saying, are you suggesting that we should practice our video with a friend or just imagine that we’re talking just to that one person as we stare into the red eye of our webcam?
Stephanie: The red eye.
Rich: On mine, at least. Yeah, you really are a nerd. I love it.
Stephanie: I am such a nerd. You don’t even know. I think I could go on with Lord of the Rings.
The thing is, is that I usually tell people if you’re going to practice, practice in a private Facebook group because that’s going to be your opportunity to really say okay, these are my camera’s settings. How does it look, here’s my mic settings. How does that sound, do a run through of your show and then invite your best friend over and say, “Hey Amanda, come into this Facebook group and can you give me some pointers on how I’m transitioning from one segment of the show to the other?” Because your friend, your colleague, is really going to give you constructive feedback. And by the time that you practice it, by the time that you go live, people are like, “Oh my God, how did you do that? You’re so good.” You’re like, “Yeah, I know. Thank you. I woke up like this.”
Rich: Excellent. Well, I probably did wake up like this, but anyway, we’ll keep moving on. Jenn, in the book you or you and your team, you talk about all these different social networks and you rattle a bunch of them off right at the beginning. And then you included a couple that don’t get as much attention at events like Social Media Marketing World or the Agents of Change Conference. And that is Reddit and WhatsApp. And WhatsApp specifically is probably the only one that I really haven’t played around with. I always thought of this more as a messaging app, not a social app. How would a small to medium sized business, how does it approach WhatsApp and what should we be thinking about it?
Jenn: And this is going to apply to different people in different ways. It’s important to know who your audience is. If you have a more global audience, using something like WhatsApp is potentially a better way to connect with people in other countries. It’s not necessarily something that is a hugely popular tool in North America, but overseas it is a very popular, if not the most common, messaging app out there. And because it’s owned by ID Facebook, family of apps, it has all the data and all, all the, you know, the information that Facebook has, which then ties into things like advertising, chatbots and all these other things that will come down the road that give this opportunity to connect with people on an easy to access global scale. You want to go where your audience is and if they’re on WhatsApp, that’s your reason to be there.
And even things like Reddit, again, it’s not necessarily something you would think about, but if you’re an expert in your field and you can be there answering questions and showing your expertise and out there myth busting all the wrong information that’s out there in your industry or about your service or your product and those sorts of things. It’s a great way to connect with those people who aren’t genuinely looking for that information. And that content lives on that becomes high ranking SEO results. Certain situations that again, months, years down the road, people are going to come back and find that content and see you as that industry expert answering those questions.
So it’s another avenue outside of traditional social media, as a way to reach more people and potentially get that exposure outside of your normal circles, especially in those B2B spaces.
Rich: It’s interesting that you bring that up because I know that I will sometimes do a search for something that I’m getting interested in and find that the discussion groups are all on Reddit. So suddenly I’m going from Google to Reddit, and then I’m opened up to this new world. Also we at flyte just started experimenting with Reddit ads, because one of our guys was spending a lot of time answering questions on SEO at Reddit. And he’s like, I think we should be promoting some of our articles and blog posts there as well. So this is a brand new area of experimentation for us. So, interesting to hear your thoughts on that.
And then the other thing I was thinking about with WhatsApp, this is totally ignorant question, but I’m just curious. Is it a one to many platform, or is it just a one-to-one platform?
Jenn: Amanda, you’re probably a better person to answer that. Do you want to take that one over?
Amanda: It started as one-to-one, sort of like a supplement to text messaging. And now it’s evolved and it has so many features built into it. Now I don’t use it personally myself, but I follow up all of the different, I keep current-ish. But it really has evolved into a social area where you can gather with multiple people and have multi-video multi-stream conversations and share multimedia through it. So it really has become an extremely social place to have your groups of people that you can stay connected with. So it doesn’t operate in a function the way that we think of a social media network. Because you know, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, et cetera like that. But it’s a completely different space that has more of an intimate feel to it where it’s, you’re connecting with the people that you want to talk to, you’re not just connecting with strangers there.
So it really is an important app that’s ranked extremely high on people’s phones or in people’s minds when they think about connecting with family, friends, and people they want to be present with.
Rich: Awesome. I’ll definitely have to give it a second look. Now Amanda, I’m going to stick with you because you’re known for your Facebook ads expertise. In fact, Jenn kind of gave you props at the beginning. When social media first started and really became a thing, it was all organic, it was all social. So what advice for owners and entrepreneurs, and even marketers today, do you have when they feel that they shouldn’t be spending any money on social media and that social media should be free?
Amanda: Well, I like to use a lot of analogies. So let’s talk about trying to move a locomotive. You can move that locomotive from A to B by pushing it by hand and that’s okay. There’s nothing wrong with that. Yes, you’re still going to get to your final destination eventually. Or you could shovel a bunch of coal into that thing, light it up, and you could get there with steam engine speed and lightning fast, reach more people, and then open up your network even further to travel even beyond those borders you thought you could make it to. But in order to do that, you need momentum.
And so that momentum can either happen organically in little spurts where it’s like you post something and it goes a little bit viral and then you get a little more exposure. Or you can complement your organic efforts with putting paid advertising on top of that, and completely bust out that momentum and get enough speed to reach your goals even faster.
So it, it really does come down to, you don’t have to be doing paid advertising. You can reach a goal or several goals organically, but most of us can’t do that in time to stay competitive with our competitors. So you do need to put together a paid advertising strategy to get there and stay current and innovate and get beyond your competition.
Rich: Well, and kudos for using a metaphor that even people in the 1800’s would have understood up until the part you started talking about social media. But that was still great. And I agree. I mean, the bottom line is it’s for those of us who have been doing it since day one. There was a time when you would never pay money for social media. But I also remember back in the day where you would never pay money for search visibility. Because yes, I’m that old.
The bottom line is when a lot of people congregate to a certain area, then it has to become some sort of marketplace and that’s what you’re bidding on. And if you do a good job by following these fantastic four people that I have – well, three of them, at least – they’re going to show you how to get that engagement so you don’t always have to be paying.
Because I’m guessing, at least for me, a lot of the goal of social is to get that know, like, and trust factor going so I can get people on my email list so I’m only paying a couple pennies every month per person. So that’s a lot of our strategy.
No Stephanie, I want to come back to you. There is a lot of talk in the book about adapting to a changing media. So what are some of the tactics that you recommend? Because social platforms always seem to be throwing something new at us, like Reels on Instagram. So what exactly, you know, how do you stay on top of it and how do you recommend people who maybe aren’t living this life approach an ever-changing medium?
Stephanie: Absolutely. There’s one of the things about social media that I love is that it’s always changing, ever evolving. And so all of us will always be employed because we have to keep tabs on what’s happening. And so even whether it’s going to conferences like yours, or reading blog posts, listening to podcasts to keep you updated. That’s how you’re going to stay top of mind and stay on top of what’s actually happening in the industry. As far as how to stay on top of that, really it’s listening to other thought leaders, seeing what they’re doing and experiment. Because you can only read so much about it. At one point you eventually have to roll up your sleeves and say, okay, I’m going to give this a go. And the nice thing about stories, let’s say even on LinkedIn stories, is that they only live for 24 hours. And so if it flops, that’s okay. Try it again. No one probably saw it. So give it another go.
Rich: I love that. And I love the idea of experimentation. And that’s something that I really try and tell everybody. And I’ve often said during a presentation, best practices do not equal best results. And what worked for the person on the stage or the person who wrote the blog post may not work for you.
It’s a great place to start, but ultimately you need to be measuring what you’re doing to see if it’s working to continually improve. I’m watching this part of the video and Amanda just gave me a little golf clap over there. Which is actually a nice segue because you guys do have a chapter on measurement and analytics.
So Jenn, why don’t you talk to me a little bit about what should I be measuring if I’m using social media, what are the KPIs? What should I be paying attention to, in your opinion?
Jenn: And this is one of those things where everyone’s kind of got their best advice for what’s most important, right? A lot of times you’ll get the CEO’s and you know, the highest levels and they just want to see engagement rates. And those aren’t necessarily bad metrics, but they aren’t necessarily good metrics. They can be a good metric when analyzed over a long period of time. If you see your engagement increasing over a period of 6 to 12 months, that can be a good metric of performance. But just looking at one point, this one got 20 likes and that one got 50 likes, it’s not necessarily a good metric. There’s a lot of factors that go into those things.
One of the things that I like to look at is those trend analysis over time, which means you are going to have to start tracking your data. If you haven’t already done it and start looking at things monthly, look at things quarterly, look at things seasonally and look at things annually. We want to see how things are performing at different times of the year. So you may know that your business succeeds really well in the winter months. Okay. So we know engagement’s down or we know conversions are down in the summer. How do we counteract that? What sorts of campaigns can we be running to make sure that we get more in the summer months when we know it’s going to require more effort to get to that level?
Because we know in the winter it’s an easy sell. So things like that are the things that I most look at in my metrics. I look kind of those long-term ranges of performance. Yes. Like I said, engagement is kind of an indicator of that.
I also like to look at reach and exposure in terms of a metric. Because sometimes you can turn around and be like, oh, well, this post got 100 likes. But maybe it’s because it reached 10 times more people than you normally do. And how did that post reach 10 times more people? That’s what I want to know. I want to know what is it about that piece of content that made it so much more popular with your audience. Was it shared, was it retweeted? Did somebody else mention you and reference that? How can you then capitalize on those opportunities to get more of that type of exposure on your other content? So I always look at reach.
And then we want to look at things like either website clicks, link clicks, conversions, any of those sorts of things. Because ultimately most of our end goals result in some sort of revenue generation. Not always, some people are just looking for brand awareness. But if your goal is that revenue generation, we need to be looking at what’s driving that traffic to our website. And this is where you have to look at your content because sometimes your content is fluff. Meaning it’s meant to drive engagement, it’s meant to keep your content in front of your audience, but it’s not high conversion traffic. Different types of posts, maybe your videos, are what are your high converting traffic. So we want to save our videos for when we have that call to action, go sign up, go register, go download, go buy. But you need to know what types of content serve the engagement. And we need to know what types of content serve the actual conversions that we’re looking for, and then tailor our content strategy around those two metrics.
Rich: Now Jenn, your jam is Instagram. Instagram in my mind doesn’t really have a lot going on in terms of metrics. So correct me if I’m wrong, I always like to be corrected. But also are you then paying more attention to your website metrics and you’re looking at Google analytics to do that?
Jenn: So first of all, Instagram does have metrics. They don’t have as many metrics as Facebook. One of these days they’ll give us more metrics. And there are some things that are missing, like we don’t get to see how many people tapped on or clicked on a post unless it’s an actual comment or share. Those are the only tangible metrics we get from Instagram. But you can get other metrics that show what posts are driving the most in terms of website traffic and those sorts of things.
So yes, there are ways to still look at that. What I’ve been telling people, if you’re looking to measure conversions from Instagram is to set up a dedicated landing page on your website. So we’re not going to use Linkin.bio or linktr.ee or any of those third party tools. You create a dedicated landing page that has five or six typical options that you promote through Instagram. So maybe one is to your blog, one is to your product page, one is to a webinar registration, those sorts of things. And what happens is now you retain all the Google analytics off of that page. And the only place that you’re sharing that landing page is Instagram, so you know that all the traffic that goes to that page came from that source. And it gives you a much better insight into how much traffic you’re getting from Instagram, but what they’re doing, how long they’re staying, where they’re navigating to, what they’re looking for in terms of actual product service, blogs, whatever it is. So that you can better decide what type of content you’re going to promote on Instagram and really enhance that turnaround and conversions for you.
Rich: Awesome. Stephanie, I’m just curious about what kind of analytics do you look for in your own business? Because I know you do a lot of Live.
Stephanie: Oh, yeah, live video is fun. Things that I look for is obviously going to be reach, the number of impressions things as far as the comments and the engagement that I get from it, mostly because whenever I’m live streaming, not only for myself, but also for my clients, but I’m looking for what are specific topics that people are really, really interested in. Because we may talk about this overarching topic, but then if we dig deeper into the actual episodes someone might chime in. Jenn might say, “Well, I want to learn more about this.” I’m like, “Oh, new blog posts coming out just for you. Right? Like, here’s a new episode just dedicated for you.
So those are things that we definitely look at is the number of reach, the number of impressions, the number of views. But really from a qualitative data, we want to know specifically what people want to learn more about.
Rich: Awesome. And Amanda, obviously with Facebook ads, both through Facebook as well as our website, we can get some amazing analytics. What are your thoughts on what you’re measuring either for you or for your clients?
Amanda: So I have two sides of the camp on this. One side is when you’re talking, starting out, I have recommendations. The other side is when you’re at ninja level, there’s certain things you should be doing.
So when you’re just starting out, my advice is that you manage expectations on what you’re measuring. So everything that Jenn and Stephanie just said is absolutely critical. So what you should be paying attention t. But I know that that’s a lot. There’s a lot of pieces there and it can be very overwhelming. So when you just start out I would highly recommend not trying to measure for conversions right away. First back up a level and understand where people are coming from. So focus your goal on the smaller pieces first, grow those. Once you have results coming from those and you’re achieving your goal, then layer on more metrics.
For example, focus on your digital footprint. How many people you can reach? Focus on of the people that you’re reaching. Are they actually engaging? Are they liking, clicking, commenting, or sharing of the people who are engaging? Are you also having video content? Are they watching the videos? Those are three parts reach; engagement, video, views. Focus on that once you start. Once you’ve got that nailed down, then you can start going, okay, now we need to get these people onto our website. Now we need to get these people signed up to our email list. Now we need to get these people sign up to a webinar. So now you can start to increase your goals from there, but just layer it on slowly.
Now, if you are doing paid advertising and you’ve been doing it for a long time, there’s a very big difference between low quality traffic and high quality traffic. And low quality traffic could actually hurt you more than help you. So low quality traffic, what I mean by this is if you’re attracting people to click onto your website, you might be pumping out a ton of money in dollars in ads. You might have an ad that that is performing extremely well to get people to click to your website. But if those clicks are resulting in you get an immediate bounce and people are just not interested in what you have to offer, or it’s a poor user experience, for example, then those abandoned clicks are going to hurt you from an SEO perspective more than help you.
And on top of that, all you’re doing is saturating your pixel with traffic that isn’t really worth retargeting. So what I mean by that, you have a tiny pixel code, tiny snippet of code that lives on your website in the header of your website. And for Facebook’s perspective, they’re all different pixels for different platforms, but from a Facebook perspective that gives Facebook visibility to the traffic that they’re sending off of Facebook and outside of the Facebook environment and onto your website or onto wherever you have that pixel living. So the quality of that traffic allows you to be able to retarget those people and serve additional ads based on their behavior, based on what content they’re consuming. But if you’re sending low quality traffic onto your website or onto your app and your other properties, then all you’re doing is diluting the quality of those audiences and you’re basically obliterating your strategy.
So how do you combat that? Use different types of tracking links, such as Google UTM links, so that you can measure in Google Analytics now just how well did your ads perform, but measure the quality of that traffic hitting your site. And how do we measure quality? We’re going to look at average time on page, we’re going to look at number of pages per session, and we’re going to look at conversions from that perspective. So you’re going to measure a little bit deeper below the surface on the quality of the traffic that’s actually making it to your website.
And if you’re not sending that traffic to your website, you need to find other ways to get very creative at measuring the quality of the traffic. And the reason being, this is a little bit long, but you can back up this, you can follow it through your funnel, find out where your bottlenecks are and tweak things and understand that, okay, this ad A compared to this ad B, Ad A brought us so much fewer traffic that the quality was off the charts and so much well worth it. Ad B got us 10 times more clicks, but the quality was garbage. So now you have a better decision making ability and better strategy in behind which ad worked better, which one do we put more effort into and energy into.
So that’s when you’re getting down there, anyway, I get very excited about analytics, metrics and the quality of traffic. But when you’re just starting out, just set yourself three or four goals, start there and improve upon that.
Rich: Walk before you can run. One thread that I’m pulling from all three of your answers is that very often there might be a marketer’s mental mindset that it’s like, okay, I create the content and then I look at the measurement. So it’s beginning to end. But actually that measurement is not the end of the measure. The measurement is almost the beginning of things where it’s like, now I have additional information and I can do a better job marketing and getting in front of my ideal customers as I continue to move forward. And that’s definitely an excellent point that all three of you touched on.
So that was some great stuff. And I know that you guys have this very exciting Mastermind as well. And I’d kind of be curious and I’ll open this up to anybody who wants to answer it, but can you tell me a little bit more about what’s going on in your Mastermind, what I can expect if I join? Anything you want to share would be great.
Jenn: Steph you take this. So I think Stephanie’s really good at talking about this. But yeah, our Mastermind really is based around a Facebook group. It is something we wanted to make easy access for people, and we know that where people are is on Facebook. So it’s a nice, easy place.
You’ll see the content when we post things and update things in there. But we do a once a month live training in the group exclusively. So the great thing is you get all four of us teaching throughout the year on all the various different topics. And we do source those topics from the group as well, so we make sure that they’re getting the training that they want. And best part about it is only five bucks a month. So it’s a really reasonable expense. It’s totally justifiable to be able to get access to all of our articles and videos and all those sorts of things that we’re always sharing. But Steph is way better at talking about this.
Stephanie: I was just going to say, it’s kind of like having The Avengers, right? Like you have Mike Alton coming in as Ironman who’s like, I know how to plug this all together and make it all work. And then we come in. And it’s just amazing the fact that if you have a particular problem that you’re trying to solve within your business, you’re getting a 360 approach from all of us. And sometimes, here’s the fun part, sometimes we don’t even agree with each other, and we’re like, wait a second.
And so it’s good to get advice from real people that are actually in the trenches, also consulting. Because there are some Masterminds where they’re just tell you the best practices, but they actually haven’t dug deep within Facebook ads manager to know what has actually changed. They haven’t actually seen the analytics or stayed on top of the trends themselves because they’re just big names.
Amanda: So the other benefit that I want to point out is that among each of us, we all have our own private memberships or our own paid ways of gaining access to each of us for one-on-one advice or to have our attention on something. So the 360 Marketing Squad for the $5 a month, that is all of us. It’s our project for all of us. It’s our priority.
So when somebody posts a question and I get tagged in 360 Marketing Squad, I drop everything and I’m there. Whereas, in order to have that level of, “Hey, I need help with a Facebook ads question”, you’d have to be in my membership or you would have to be on a one-on-one Zoom call. You’d have to go through one of the other avenues that is a little more on the expensive side, versus this is a cost effective way to not just get that from one person, but you get it from four industry experts and it covers off the entire suite. It’s basically a full marketing package in your back pocket, you just need to activate it.
Stephanie: It’s like a FastPass. Like, my Instagram account guy has FastPass, Jenn Herman. Come on in.
Rich: That’s awesome. This has been great. I’m sorry that Mike couldn’t join us today, but I’ve had an absolute blast talking to the rest of the fantastic four here.
Any last thoughts that you want to share with people or where we should send them online? And I’m looking up and down on my screen, so I’m going to start with Amanda. Amanda, anything last thoughts or where you might want to send people online?
Amanda: I definitely recommend checking out the book, The Ultimate Guide to Social Media Marketing, obviously. But I do recommend starting there because from there you’ll find the inspiration on what you feel you need to be working on in your business. And then from there, you can find all of us at our various channels and get more specified help if you need it. But definitely check that out on Amazon or Barnes and Noble, and that’s where I would suggest starting.
Rich: Excellent. Stephanie?
Stephanie: Oh, my gosh. Okay. When we’re talking about FastPass, slide into the DMs. I feel like Jenn is saying, “Don’t you dare tell them that!” No, but honestly, as Amanda said, check out the book because that’s really going to be a ‘choose your own adventure’ where it is that you want to go.
But if you really want to find us all hanging out, breaking stuff and testing things, then it’s going to be the 360 Marketing Squad Mastermind. Because that’s where I’ll be like, “Hey, I’m testing out this new Facebook live shopping, who wants to beta test with me?” And they’re like, “Oh my God, it’s up? I’m like, yes, girl, let’s do this. That’s where the fun is.
Rich: Awesome. And Jen, I’ll let you wrap up since you and I have known each other the longest.
Jenn: I know, we go back a few years now. So I would say obviously in addition to the book and the Squad and everything, I would tell people, look, is an expert in everything. And if you are a small business owner, even if you are part of a team, there are only so many hours in a day and there is nothing wrong with outsourcing. There is nothing wrong with having somebody come in and do some consulting, some training, some coaching to help you better understand. You can spend 8 hours researching a topic on any one of the various things that we all talk about, or you could send us an email and have your answer right away. So don’t worry so much about who to reach out to. Start by reaching out to somebody. Somebody you know in your industry, somebody who knows an expert, maybe they can refer you to the right person.
But if you want to learn more about anything related to social media and you want to get there faster, don’t be afraid to reach out and ask for that help, hire the consultant, that coach, that sort of thing, and get that FastPass for that access to be able to do these more effectively. You only have so many hours in the day.
And then yeah, obviously, find the book, find the group, find all of us on social media. You can search all of our names; Jenn Herman, Mike Allton, Amanda Robinson, and Stephanie Liu. We are pretty much everywhere on the web.
Rich: Sounds awesome. And we’ll have links to all those in the show notes, so make sure you go check out the show notes. But Amanda, Stephanie, Jenn, thanks so much for today. I really appreciate you coming by and sharing your expertise with us.
Jenn: Thanks, Rich.
Stephanie: Thanks.
Amanda: Thank you so much, Rich. This is always fun.
Show Notes:
The 360 Marketing Squad is comprised of 4 industry experts covering the topics of Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube. Their new book is a treasure trove of all-encompassing advice and tactics for your entire social media marketing strategy. They encourage you to join the Squad, so you can gain access to their private Facebook group to receive their exclusive content, materials and advice. Also, be sure to check them out at their individual website to learn more about them; Jenn Herman, Mike Allton, Amanda Robinson & Stephanie Liu.
Rich Brooks is the President of flyte new media, a web design & digital marketing agency in Portland, Maine, and founder of the Agents of Change. He’s passionate about helping small businesses grow online and has put his 20+ years of experience into the book, The Lead Machine: The Small Business Guide to Digital Marketing.