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No doubt about it, social media is an essential element when it comes to your business marketing strategy. So why aren’t more people treating it like that, instead of just a trend? Jennifer Watson shares her top marketing strategies that move the needle, and explains why “winging it” should not be your long-term plan.
Rich: My guest today is a Senior Social Media Manager at Active Campaign, a meteorologist on the Weather Channel, a speaker, and a podcaster. She is a dynamic talent with a passion for every aspect of digital media, from building brand strategies, creating content plans, to getting executive buy in. She motivates audiences from the stage and drives engagement, including launching numerous Facebook Live campaigns for the biggest weather brand garnering millions of views.
She’s been featured in Chief Content Marketing Magazine, on stage, on Social Fresh, Social Media Marketing World, Social Shakeup, just to name a few. And today we’re gonna tap into that wealth of knowledge to help you develop or improve your own social media marketing strategy with none other than Jen Watson. Jen, welcome to the podcast.
Jennifer: Oh my gosh. I’m so excited to be here, Rich. This is like a passion of mine, connecting people, and just social media in general. So I’m so pumped to geek out with you today.
Rich: Well, I’m very excited. Because even though we had talked once or twice over the years, we really got to hang out quite a bit at Social Media Week Lima. And so I really got to know you. And I kind of feel this is like my first real celebrity who’s been on. Like, you’re on the Weather Channel, you’re a well-known quantity. It’s a little exciting. I’m a little nervous.
Jennifer: Oh my gosh, I love you. I feel the same way about you, Rich. Like, we’ve met each other a couple times at conferences and events. Like, you’re kind of a big deal. The fact that you have over 400 podcast episodes, like knocking on the door of 450, is amazing.
Rich: I’m blushing right now. I’m gonna have to edit this part out. Okay. So my first question to you is, why weather? I mean, this is something that you’ve been into for a while. You were just saying before we started recording that you went to college for meteorology. So what’s the story behind that?
Jennifer: Oh my God. And I love this question because everyone’s like, I bet when you were five years old there was a thunderstorm or a tornado, and that was your passion. It actually, wasn’t. Funny enough, I wanted to be a nutritionist all growing up. I loved eating healthy, fruits and vegetables, all of those things. And then I went to college to actually to be a nutritionist. I did one year of nutrition school, realized that wasn’t quite the thing for me. And I tried a couple other things before one of my friends one day was like, “Jen, you love weather so much. Why don’t you make it your career?” And I’m like, smart thinking.
And so I was an undergrad at East Carolina University. They were just starting an atmospheric science program. They didn’t have it all completely laid out yet. So I did a bunch of research on meteorologists around the U.S. and what their degrees were in. And a lot of them had geography degrees, and math was a big core of that as well. So I minored in math. I also got my atmospheric science certificate, got my geography degree, and then got my master’s degree in geosciences with an emphasis in broadcast meteorology. So I did all the things, and then that’s how I arrived in weather.
Rich: Holy cow. See, I didn’t think it was gonna be some big tornado that you survived. I was like, maybe in her room there was a green wall, and she would stand in front of it and pretend she was on the Weather Channel as a small child. No, I don’t know what I was thinking. But I didn’t realize how much study went into this. And so that’s really fantastic. Did you know you wanted to be on TV for the weather, or were you just I’m fascinated by the weather and the science behind it all?
Jennifer: I always was fascinated by it. I think what really struck me was the more F5 1999 tornado. I watched that on TV. I was a junior in high school and just watching it live. Because in Oklahoma City, they’ve got the helicopters, they’ve got storm chasers out there, and it just was mind boggling to me. It’s just air around us that we’re sitting in, moving really fast. And that’s a tornado. And I’m just like, it can cause so much damage so quickly. And so that kind of sparked it a little bit. But yeah, there’s so much science in math that people don’t realize. Everyone’s like, “Oh Jen, you can be wrong 50% of the time and keep your job.” I’m like, you should watch a true meteorologist forecast and look at all the different models, and then you would likely change your tune. But yeah, it’s amazing.
Rich: So I remember, and at some point we’ll talk about social media, but I remember being a small boy watching the news when my parents were watching, and all of a sudden it got to the weather and I’m like, “Oh my God, they’re talking about tomorrow’s weather!” Like everything in the news is about what’s already happened. The weather was the future. I just found that to be absolutely fascinating as a small child. So anyway.
Jennifer: And you could answer your question really quick, because I don’t think I answered it. I don’t know if I think I loved the science behind it. I didn’t necessarily have to do TV, but then I was communicating with people. And I got to do that a lot on social media, especially on Twitter, with tornado warnings and hurricane warnings. So I enjoy it, so yeah.
Rich: Excellent. Well, you’ve obviously worked for a number of well-known brands, like the Weather Channel and Active Campaign, doing their social media or being involved with the social media. What do you feel the purpose of social media or social media marketing is for brands?
Jennifer: I think the biggest thing is people get all caught up in the numbers, right? The metrics, the vanity metrics. We have to have a million followers doing all this. It’s all about connection and community and brand building. Some people think, we gotta drive traffic to our site. Yes, that is very important. But the biggest thing is showing people your brand. People want access to you, to your brand. And I think it’s a great way to humanize your brand as well.
I love sharing stories of our workers, behind the scenes, what they do, the school they went through. At the Weather Channel, our designers are incredible. They do all the 3D, all the things that immersive reality, and we went live showcasing them. And we got all these fun designers, students, and other people were like, oh my gosh, how do you create this? And so I give access, giving people access to you, allowing them to ask questions, and be a part of the process. Whether you have a service or you’re developing products, right?
Like if you go live and you ask your consumers, your followers, “Hey, so what did you like about this product? What can we improve on? And what would you like to see in the future? When you make them a part of the process, they’re more likely to purchase from you, buy services from you, and you’re building a community as well.
You don’t want to just sell people things, right? Any brand should be in the business of trust, and also building community, and just trying to help solve a problem that many people have. And that should be your number one focus, solving that problem. And what I love is when brands say, “You know what, I’m not the right fit, but this other company is.” And that is a true brand right there. That they’re not about making the money and pushing people into something that doesn’t make sense for them or a business. It’s about helping that person solve that problem.
Rich: All right. Now as I’m listening to you talk, and obviously getting a behind the scenes of the Weather Channel, or even Active Campaign for those of us who like marketing, I can see how that’s interesting. But there must be people listening in today saying, yeah, that’s great if you’re the Weather Channel, but I sell widgets or I’m a tax accountant. No one really wants to see what’s behind the veil. Nobody wants me to open the kimono on social media. What would you say to those people?
Jennifer: Oh my God. I love the tax accountant question, because also social media. People go on social media for entertainment as well. And so one of the best ways when you’re creating content for social media is make sure it’s entertaining and also educational.
I know nothing about taxes, what I should be doing. Like literally when it comes to that season, I stress. I’m like, oh my God, do I have everything? If there was a tax attorney that could give me fun tips, right? Create like 15 second Reels on you should be doing this. Hey, did you know that you actually get a kickback from taxes on this, or make sure to check that. I would love that because I know nothing about taxes at all whatsoever.
So you can get creative when it comes to content on social media. I would focus on sharing your knowledge and what you know. Even for entrepreneurs, you may not be what you call an expert, quote, unquote, an “expert”, but you know more than somebody else on something. So I think it’s important to share your story and your voice.
But for brands like a painter or something like that, that say, I just don’t see how I could do something. If you’re a painter, show people how to paint, give them tips. If you’re a recycling company, show people how they can recycle or make arts and crafts with different things around their home. Make it fun, make it exciting, and ask your followers what kind of content would you like to see? That’s one of the biggest things. If you’re not sure what content to post, ask your followers what they want to see or what problem they need solved, and see how you can solve that problem or create content that they want to see.
Rich: Okay. I’m gonna continue to play devil’s advocate here though. All right. So I’m sitting there, I’m listening to all this, it sounds wonderful. But you know what? I can’t even get anybody to respond to me on social media. Maybe because I’m brand new, maybe because I stink at it so far. So for those people who aren’t getting any sort of engagement, they’re starting from square one, what are some of the first steps they might take? It sounds like I’ve gotta build some sort of an audience regardless of the size. It’s not gonna be the size of the Weather Channel’s audience, but at some point, I have to build a critical mass. So how do I start getting those people who may be following or may not be to start engaging with me?
Jennifer: Oh my gosh. I love that. So one of the biggest things you can do is create poll questions, create engaging content to try to get people to engage. But before you do anything, you have to know your goals, right? For every social channel, why are you doing social? How does it measure up to your overall company goals?
Whether it’s your personal business or like Active Campaign, I try to create content and strategy funneling up to those goals. And you want to understand how you’re going to measure those goals as well. And then take a look at, okay, consistency is one of the biggest things. And Rich, I know you know this, but consistency in your message. And consistency in your content, right? You don’t wanna just sporadically be posting on social media. You wanna create some kind of strategy where like on Mondays it’s Motivation Mondays. But I tweak it a little bit to what I know my knowledge or my business, like email marketing. And then Tuesday is maybe like Tip Tuesday and there’s a fun tip there, and maybe you go live on Wednesdays. But you want to create a consistent strategy.
So let’s say I’m a new business and I’m trying to design my strategy. I’m gonna look at what kind of content I can create. And also the bandwidth that I have in creating that content. And what platform is the easiest for me to create content on? I think a lot of businesses and companies get overwhelmed with, I have to be everywhere all the time. You don’t. I would start small. Focus on one account or one social media channel that you want to grow and then go from there, start building that audience.
But lay out, I would say a month’s worth of content. Like what could I do, what can I commit to, and actually make happen? And then see what kind of entertaining value can I put into that? And also ask family and friends. Just be like, “Hey, you know what? I’m gonna start creating some content on social media. What would you like to know about the business that I’m doing, the services I provide? What would be entertaining for you?”
And also just consume content on the social channels as well. Get bits and pieces of wow, I like how this brand does this. Oh, this is really cool. And you can start piece to piecing together a really amazing strategy. But before you go bullish all in, lay out a plan, have that all set. I’m a big planner. Oh my God, I love planning. But just lay all of that out so you have that and it’s less stressful, and don’t overcommit yourself. Start small and then gradually grow.
And polls are a great way to get that engagement and going live as well. I love live video because people are like, oh my God, someone’s live. And not a lot of people go live. And that allows that two-way conversation. And even if only one or two people show up for the live, you never know who is watching. You just never know. There’s a story of one of my friends, he was going live in weather and forecasting the weather on Periscope. And Al Roker saw him and was just like – and this is at the Weather Channel, but he was working for NBC News – and he’s like, “We need to have him on TV on Wake Up with Al”, when that was a show. And so he got on Wake Up with Al. But at that point we weren’t getting like hundreds of Periscope views necessarily. But you just never know who’s watching.
But take the time and make time in your schedule to create that plan and really focus in on that. And then test something out for four to six weeks, you really need a long bandwidth. And even if for some reason, you’re like, oh man, that, that post flopped or that live didn’t do that. Well, keep doing it, keep being consistent, promote it, tease it, all of those things.
Rich: That’s so many great things to unpack here. Because first of all, I completely agree that you should be going narrow, not wide, especially if you are a small shop. If it’s just you or just a few people, I always say it’s faster to fill a test tube than a bathtub. So you always wanna start with that narrow niche. Once you filled it, then you can start looking at some other places where you can put your content as well.
And then the other thing is, I have a question. I wanna get back to what you were talking about, creating a plan, creating a strategy. But before that, one of the challenges that a lot of businesses face these days is the fact that so many other people are remote. So many people are hybrid. When you’re all in the office, I could walk around in the old days and see what people are working on and be like, “Oh, let’s put this up on Twitter. Let’s put this up on Facebook or LinkedIn.” These days that doesn’t happen. There are days when three or four of us are in the office. There are days when I’m the only one in the office. So do you have any advice for those workplaces where people are remote and hybrid, how to be gathering those stories that you want to share so you can pull back the veil and show people what it’s like to work for, with, or at a company like yours?
Jennifer: Oh my gosh. I love this so much. So, especially at Active Campaign a lot of people work in Chicago. That’s where our main headquarters are, but we have offices around the world. And so I am part of the marketing team, but we’ve got over a hundred people on our marketing team, so it can be very intense. But we have a smaller, corporate marketing team. And what we do is we have weekly meetings, and we popcorn around in our meetings understanding, okay, so what is everyone working on? And we understand what everyone is focusing in on that week or that particular day. And then if we want to, if I wanna put that on social or understand that for social, we incorporate it. I work with that person.
One other thing that we started doing is, vertical video is a big deal, right? At least right now, Instagram is still competing very much so with TikTok, and their Reels, they’re promoting those and any brands that are using Reels. And so what we did is we vetted everyone in the company where who is wanting to go on camera, is excited about what they’re working on, and would be willing to create some vertical video content for Reels and for TikTok. And so we are creating a vertical video team. And so we’re vetting everyone who is willing to do it, but also understanding what our goals are. And we have an education team, which is great. And so I like to focus on education when it comes to our social channels. And so we have a couple of people on our education team that create consistent Reels and TikToks all the time. But understanding what everybody is doing is so critical. So I would say, have a weekly meeting, or vet everyone in the company who is comfortable on social, who wants to be on social, post on social, that sort of a thing. And then make sure the content, know the people who can create it, and create a strategy around that. That’s exactly what I’m doing right now in Active Campaign.
Rich: I keep on wanting to get back to the questions, but then you say something and I wanna ask another question about it. So when you’re creating vertical video content, and obviously the two big platforms would be Meta – Instagram specifically, although it’s also on Facebook – and then TikTok. So are you doing one and then using it into places, or do you create different videos for each one even if it’s the same content?
Jennifer: Okay, great question. I love that question. It depends on bandwidth. Sometimes we just only have the bandwidth to create one, so we post it on both. I like to create content if we have the time. Each platform performs better with different types of content. What I highly suggest people doing is, because a lot of times you hear the rumors and things like, oh, this performs better like this, or this performs better like this, do your own testing. You have your own audience. See what they like and look back.
What I’ve been doing actually this week as we’re in the middle of 2022, I’ve been looking back at the past six months, actually even the last 18 months, and seeing what content works best, how it’s performing, but understanding that. And then I like to create different content for each channel. That’s not always easy. And sometimes you just need to post it everywhere. But we’re trying to, with bandwidth issues it was more of we make one and we kind of tweak it just a little bit for each individual platform. But now we’re gonna be creating different content for TikTok and for Reels, and for any kind of other vertical video.
Like another thing I’m testing right now is on Twitter. So one thing that we found when I was working at the Weather Channel when I did a lot of A/B testing, which I love, is we tested out tweets with an image and without an image. And we saw the tweets without an image draw or drew more traffic to our site than with an image. And so it was fascinating. And sometimes you wouldn’t think that at all. And so you’ve gotta do your own testing and see what people like and don’t like, and it’s gonna be different for what worked for the Weather Channel is gonna be different for Active Campaign. You really have to test different things.
Rich: And again, I can’t get back to original questions because you keep on saying something I wanna dig deeper. So when you’re doing the A/B split testing on say Twitter, with and without the image example that you used, are you doing it at different times of day? Or are you using ads so that only some people are seeing one and some people are seeing the other, all of that?
Jennifer: All of that. Yes. Yes. And yes. Okay. So ads is a great way to do it. If you don’t have the budget or the money, that’s okay. You can just test out just a general tweet. What we did at the Weather Channel, we did ads and we used smaller audiences. We would even tweak like one word in the post copy, and it would be amazing how one word would make a massive difference on people being excited and driving it to the site. So it just depends on what you have.
If you have budget to do it, yes. But not all of us have budget, so you can also just test separately. You can test the same tweet, maybe every couple of weeks. Or like I’ve laid out a strategy where it’s the same type of content. So I’m testing both post copy, long and short, and image and no image, at the same time right now on our Twitter account. Just to see what works and what doesn’t work. But ads, if you have money, that’s amazing. But definitely do that. That kind of enhances it a little bit. But if you don’t, that’s totally okay, too.
Rich: All right. So, getting back to the whole plan and strategy thing, which I think is why I asked you to come on the show in the first place. So I’ve been doing social media long enough that Facebook was only for college students, right? So, when social media started to bubble up to the surface of marketing conversations, that had been up until then blogging and SEO, there were no strategies. It was all about winging it. And I still see most brands out there with barely a strategy. And they’re like, no, it’s gotta be of the moment, that’s the only way to really be authentic and stuff. So what is the argument that you would have for people who just wanna wing social media?
Jennifer: So I feel like, I love that question. So winging social media. I think 2020, the pandemic, I think customers and really business owners and entrepreneurs, they realize the true importance of social media. More than ever they need to be on it and how critical it is to growing a business. Right? You build that community and those followers on social media, it can really help out a lot. And I think a lot of businesses have been resistant to even hiring a social media manager. They’re just like, oh, we’ll make this part of your job or this part of your job. And it becomes an afterthought. It’s checking the boxes, and it can be so easy. Even for social media managers themselves like me. Like I can get burned sometimes and I’m like, I need a day or two off because this is crazy. But winging it is just, you can wing it, but you’re gonna have a much better strategy and outcome and understand the metrics, the success of everything you do, if you have that strategy. And it’s gonna be so much easier than the stress of waking up one day being just like, what am I gonna do today?
Between the Weather Channel and Active Campaign, I worked at Agorapulse, which is an amazing social media marketing platform where you can schedule out evergreen content ahead of time. That is one of the most beautiful things in the world. And that’s what I loved doing at Agorapulse, everywhere I’ve worked, even Active Campaign. You find that blog content or some piece of content that you know has driven a lot of traffic to your site, figure out how you can repurpose that, or even create a video around that. But winging it is just, it’s very hard to find success. A few do, but if it’s not a part of your daily job, you need to have a strategy to make sure that you’re consistent with your content and your message. That’s the biggest thing.
Rich: All right. So you’ve convinced me, right. I’m ready to develop a social media strategy, I’m done with winging it. So what would you recommend, whether it’s tools or teamwork or whatever it is, for me to start thinking about the next week, the next month, the next quarter, even the next year, so I have maybe that minimum level of social media content that I’m gonna plug into? We love Agorapulse here at flyte, that is not a paid endorsement. We just happen to love it. But if you wanna send me t-shirts, Agorapulse, I’ll take them.
But basically, so you always have that content that’s going along. Right? And then you can always add more. Like, if people wanna wing it, great. Something happens. You can weigh in. But what are those steps to get that minimum viable product of social media out there with a strategy behind it?
Jennifer: Oh my gosh. I love that. So the biggest thing you want is investing in a tool. I highly suggest that. At the same time though, each of the tools themselves are getting better at being able to schedule. But you want to learn how to schedule out content, understand Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, the nuances of it all. What you think you can do, what you can’t do, understand all that. If you can invest in a scheduling tool, it does make it easier, the analytics, the tags.
I love Agorapulse because doing all the hashtags for Instagram is just, oh my God, let’s type it all over again. But they have the hashtag buckets. And they allow you to tweak the post copy where you can actually, if you have a big brand announcement and you wanna push it out on all the social channels, you can actually tweak the post copy for each individual platform within the same post. And it makes your life a lot easier doing that.
We use Asana, I’ve used Asana a lot. Slack, obviously for team messaging. There’s Airtable, which is really good as well. One of the basic things that I love is just spreadsheets. I’m a spreadsheet girl. So I focus in on the spreadsheets, right. And creating the little buckets and seeing how we’ve grown from month to month from quarter to quarter. I have a lot of analytics and metrics that I use in spreadsheets, but you don’t need anything fancy. You just need a spreadsheet, any kind of calendar, whatever that looks like for you. But you can keep things organized. You can schedule. You don’t need a tool to schedule things out. I think it’s definitely 100% worth an investment to do that, but you don’t have to.
But those are like the biggest tools. But I don’t really use anything too fancy. I’m lucky to have design teams that have always, I can ask to create graphics and everything. If you’re not sure about designs or you don’t have a design team, use Canva. There are so many great tools out there.
One other tool that I really love is Quik. So one of the best ways, and this has been a thing. There was a stat I would say three years ago or so Rich, where it was like 80% of people watch videos on social media with the sound off and captions is just good in general for people who are hard of hearing. But I know with the air buds and everything now, people are more listening to video, but you wanna think about captions. And Quik is amazing because every platform has captions built in. But if you create Quik captions, you can change the font, the colors, make it fun, make it funky. We used Quik at my last job and people were like, they would love the content, but they’d be like, oh my God, the captions. Like, the captions drew people in. And so think about using a tool like that as well. Tiny, little tools that can make a big difference.
Is it okay if I keep going, Rich? I have a couple more.
Rich: Yeah, no, please.
Jennifer: So, one of the other things that’s important is there’s so much content out there, right? An overwhelming amount of content. Everyone’s on social now. Businesses that weren’t on social before the pandemic, they’re on social now. So you gotta think of how you can make your content sound stand out.
So audiograms is a great way to do that, where it’s a static image, but it’s the audio sound. It’s audio wave animation. So like Rich could do this with this podcast, right? If I have a great tip or something, he can create an audiogram. Or infographics. Infographics are a great thing and they’re very shareable, right? Because they contain a lot of stats and content. And there’s actually motion infographic creator. I’ll have to share it with you, Rich, because I’m not sure exactly the name of it. But you can create infographics that move. Naturally as humans, our eyes are drawn to movement. So if you can create motion, graphic standalone themselves, or like an infographic that has motion in it, that’s always gonna do better than a static image. And that’s why video is so powerful.
Rich: Excellent. So much good stuff. And so I’m trying to think now, because I didn’t know if you were gonna keep going, because you had so many good ones in there. So I know what I was gonna ask. I was gonna ask about metrics. So obviously you pay a lot of attention to the numbers. And what are some of the numbers, the KPIs, that you think people should be paying attention to? And obviously this might change between companies and industries, but what are some of the basics, and how do you come about them? How do you find them?
Jennifer: Yeah. Okay. So I love this so much. One of the biggest things is, a lot of companies and executives are like, we need to have a million followers. We need to do this. No, you don’t. It’s all about engagement and conversation. And you wanna have those organic conversations on your platform. So engagement is like the number one thing I look at, the engagement rate. Yes, I look at follower growth and everything else, but I look at that engagement and the impressions, too.
Such a small percentage of our content is seen by our followers, just because of the algorithm. And so understanding that, our impressions, how many people see that, the engagement rate, and that content that actually gets more engagement. I’m like, okay, so how can we recreate that? How can we do more?
Another thing that social media managers they have to do. So it’s not only growing the audience, but organically increasing that engagement, but driving traffic to the site. So one of the best ways that I use or things I do is Google Analytics. So we have, I attach UTM parameters to every single link that I have. And that allows me to focus in on, okay, so how much traffic am I driving to the site? How long are they on that page? I look at all that granular information, where they hop and jump to. And so that allows me to understand, okay, where was that really engaging content? What is driving the most traffic to this site?
So there’s a couple of KPIs that I do, but I try to focus in on, and it depends on your follower numbers and your growth. I try to grow by 50% a year on everything. But there can be even more aggressive goals than that, but really focusing in on that content and spending that time is critical. And looking at the metrics I love like analytics and metrics. Like we have sheets upon sheets of it and it’s fun and it’s amazing.
Rich: Awesome. It is interesting because I know a lot of people do pay attention to the vanity metrics, and I get it. And there’s real good reasons why some businesses need to pay attention to that. But at the same time, like me, I’m a business owner. The most important KPI I have is basically our profitability at the end of the year. So I’m mostly focused on the engagement that’s gonna drive traffic. But there’s all different things you can be measuring this, taking a look at your Google Analytics. We’re now using a lot of Google Data Studio. And of course you can go into each individual platform and get some great metrics from that as well.
I’m just blown away by how much science and math you put into social media. Because I feel like a lot of people think that it’s fluff, and you have proven to us today that there may be some fluff, but the bottom line is this is a marketing science that you really should be paying attention to, to grow your audience and to grow your business.
Jennifer: And no, it truly is. And it’s amazing what the numbers tell you. The story that the numbers tell you. It will guide you to the right content. If you just look at the metrics and the analytics, it will guide you into what you need to be doing. And let’s say you get off track, it’ll pull you back on track. You’re like, wow, why were the numbers last month or six months ago so much better? What were we doing back then? And so I really look at that.
And I geek out a lot about numbers anyway, Rich, I’m one of those people that I’ll do math homework for fun. Literally, like I will like Google equations. But anyway, that’s beside the point. But you really need to have the analytics and the metrics and that’s your truth, right? That’s your truth right there with what’s working and what’s not working.
And going back to what we were talking about before Rich, when people are just like, I’m a one-man band, I’m doing social media with everything else. Like I said before, focus in on that one channel, focus, create content in the easiest way that you can create content, but focus it on the consumer, the customer. And, find ways and other businesses that you can collaborate with that, maybe just, your product or service would, look really good with whatever they have to offer. Collaboration is great. And I bet if you just DM like another business and you’re like, “Hey, let’s do something together. Let’s go live together. Let’s have an in-person event.” Do that.
And it’s so interesting, Rich, talking about the vanity metrics with influencer marketing. It used to be like, we gotta have the influencer with a hundred million followers, and that’s gonna be our influencer. People have found and businesses have found the smaller micro influencers that have followers less than 10,000 have more of a stronger community, and people are more willing to trust them and their products, promotion, and everything else. And they drive more revenue for the companies they work for with someone rather than someone that has a million followers. So even micro influencers, you can find them with under 10,000 or 5,000 followers, and you only have to pay maybe like $500 bucks for them to showcase your content somehow doing like a post or a vertical video.
There’s lots of creative ways that you can create content with a small budget or with a one-man band or less than a one-man band, if it’s like part of your regular job. But the biggest thing is tracking those metrics. And sometimes the metrics aren’t pretty. And you’re just like, man, I spent a lot of time on that and that sucks and that’s okay. Every person feels like that. And it’s amazing, Rich, too. I know you’ve probably experienced this where you’re like you spend weeks on designing an amazing video. You’re like, this is gonna be so awesome. And it flops, and then you spend like 10 minutes on another post, and it goes wild. And you’re just like, why? But looking at the numbers and understanding the content and everything will help you out so much.
Rich: All right. There’s so much going on here. We’re gonna have to ask you to come back another time in a not-too-distant future, Jen. But in the meantime, where can people find you online or on TV?
Jennifer: Oh, my gosh. So you can find me on the Weather Channel, and actually the Weather Channel is now on YouTube. So you can watch me anytime on Weather Gone Viral or Weird Earth. We are filming newer seasons of those, season eight and season three, of each of those respectively right now, which is so exciting.
On Twitter, I am at @jwatson_wx, Instagram is at @jenniferweather, and TikTok at JenniferWeather as well.
Rich: Awesome. Be sure to check out these show notes. We’ll have links to all of those, so you can check those out if you weren’t taking notes fast enough. Jen, absolute pleasure to see you today. Thank you so much for being here.
Jennifer: Yeah. Thank you so much for having me, and I can’t wait to be back.
Show Notes:
Jennifer Watson is a social media manager that believes metrics are a priceless tool when it comes to marketing success. Follow her on social media, and you can even catch her talking about weather as an official TV host for The Weather Channel.
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.