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Struggling with your social media strategy? Tune into our latest podcast episode featuring Karlyn Ankrom from Oh Snap Social, who helps us break down the barriers to make social media manageable. Discover simple strategies to conquer your social media fears and start building your online presence with confidence. Karlyn’s unique Fan Firestarter Framework is designed to get even the most socially shy businesses on track. Let’s dive in!
Unlocking Social Media Success Episode Summary
Key Takeaways
- Website Conversion Focus: Emphasizes the importance of focusing on website visitors’ perspectives to increase conversions.
- Trust in Marketing: Highlights the need for trust elements in website design, such as modern design, contact information, and trust badges.
- Utilizing Testimonials: Stresses the value of diverse testimonials catering to different visitor preferences.
- Analytics & Heat Maps: Advocates for correct analytics setup and regular reviews for better website performance understanding.
- CRO Throughout the Customer Journey: Marty emphasizes optimizing every touchpoint in the customer journey, not just the bottom of the funnel.
Unlocking Social Media Success Episode Transcript
Rich: My next guest is the founder and lead strategist at Oh Snap Social and creator of the Fan Firestarter Framework, a new approach to social media marketing made specifically for businesses, and I quote, “tempted to fake their own death and flee to Tahiti at the mere thought of content creation.” That seems oddly specific.
Anyway, she developed her user-friendly strategy after working for a decade with a variety of brick-and-mortar businesses who were decidedly “social allergic”, as she calls it. Not because they didn’t want to do social media, but because they were intimidated by it.
In response, her new systems helps newbies get on the fast track to unsticking their social media in just one hour per week. To learn more, I’m very excited to bring on to the show, Karlyn Ankrom. Karlyn, welcome.
Karlyn: Thanks for having me, Rich. I’m so excited to be here and chat with you.
Rich: So what do businesses find most intimidating about social media, in your opinion?
Karlyn: I think the most intimidating and also overwhelming piece of social media is the amount of content at scale we have to create day in and day out to develop that consistency. I often equate it to a muscle, right? The more you do it, the easier it gets, the faster you get at it.
And if you’re looking at the numbers, which I know that you love some numbers, too. When you look at the numbers, you really get a sense of what’s working well and what’s not. And that makes your content creation even easier. And no interruption of an algorithm or interruption of all the different mechanics and tools and features that these platforms add that nobody, quite frankly, asked for, don’t get in your way and hinder your success.
Rich: All right. In your opinion, and the companies that you work with, what is the main goal of social? Is it to build brand awareness, to connect and engage with your audience, or is it to drive business?
Karlyn: So I would say it always is to drive business. But social media, especially on the organic lens, is to really build up this thought leadership, this trust, this authority over time.
And it’s funny that you ask this, because I was just having a conversation with two real estate agencies the other day. One, what is it going to sell? A million-dollar home is a huge paid ad, right? And you know this, and we talked about ads of course, and how they definitely get you in front of people. But is that going to sell the house, a million-dollar house, especially when there’s people behind it pulling the strings and things like that.
So organic content with that realtor, we were talking about this, showing their face over and over again over time, getting people to buy in to their personal brand, their understanding of the industry that’s always changing, and making a connection with that realtor. And then being like, you know what? That then stirs up the pot and say, you know what Miss or Mr. Realtor, I do have a question for you. What do you think I can get for my house?
And so it’s being out there, being visible. And I always say that each piece of organic social builds upon the next. If you’re not out there, then no one knows who you are. If you’re not out there putting content out to scale regularly, there’s no way to build trust and likeability and all those good things. And then there’s no way to garner that business, especially if you don’t have a budget, per se, for an ad campaign.
Rich: And we were just talking about this at our company the other day, that it’s sometimes hard to track everything. We love to track everything. We love UTM codes. We love to really follow everything right down to the conversion point in the sale, and then what the lifetime value is. It’s not always possible.
And a lot of the work that we do, even in real life, like last night I was at a networking event. It’ll be hard to track exactly what happens, but maybe by going there, I sold a ticket to my upcoming conference. Or maybe I met somebody who’s going to lead me to the next job. So I like what you’re saying that each one of these builds upon. It’s a snowball rolling downhill, and you have to be there and be present so that you have this opportunity when it finally arises.
So talk to me a little bit about using social media and the internal and external calls to action we might want to include in some of our posts.
Karlyn: Yes, so there are two different types, as you just mentioned. Internal, which means you’re keeping it on the platform. And I will say that for the power users of, say Instagram, if you’re listening to this you probably have seen it or you’re already adopting it. It’s a little mixture of both internal and external. You’re asking people to leave a comment, the word blank, and you’re using a bot, like Manychat or your bot of choice, to then link into their DMs where you want them to go and buy the thing, or download your freebie, buy your ticket, etc. So that’s internal meets external.
And my goal on Instagram or any platform is really to start that conversation. And so if that means I’m asking a question, drop a thumbs up if you agree with this, that’s an easy thing for people to do inside a platform. Where people go wrong with these internal calls to action is when they make it too hard for people. People don’t want to think on social media. They’re there to feel seen, to be entertained, and quite frankly, maybe escape, right? Flee to Tahiti a little bit. We’re there to be able to engage people, have them be in those comments.
On the flip side, is the external. That’s where we’re connecting all the digital dots together, where we are taking our content and driving traffic somewhere else. Our landing page, our registration page, what have you. And different platforms require different external styles of calls to action. So Facebook, people are used to leaving Facebook. Facebook doesn’t really like that when we leave. But it is something that happens, versus Instagram where they are very adamant about keeping you on that particular app.
So you have to be creative and strategic with how you’re going to drive that traffic off. So hence the more ninja move of utilizing those bots.
Rich: Yeah, can we talk about that for a minute? Because I have to say, my Instagram usage is more on a personal side than a professional side. Although it is funny, because recently when I’ve been speaking at events, a lot of the other speakers are no longer saying “follow me on Twitter” or X, they’re saying, “follow me on Instagram”, “DM me on Instagram”. It almost feels like Instagram, at least for some people, has become the new Twitter.
Walk me through how you use a chatbot like Manychat to get into their DMs. This is probably 101 stuff. I should know this, but I haven’t used it. So if you could walk me through that, it’d be great.
Karlyn: Yeah. I’ve used it on a very simple playing field because it’s more like a 1, 2 step. It’s like you set up the comments for whatever keyword you want, it triggers the bot, one, two step to deliver the DM. It’s it feels simple, but in the backend of Manychat, they actually make it pretty simple, if I’m being honest.
And of course, there’s a whole rigmarole, the additional funnel that you could keep the conversation going. And for those of you that are listening that are like, “I don’t want to adopt a bot right now. I feel like I don’t have enough engagement to warrant a bot.” Cool. What I’ve done and what I tell my clients to do, who are very much into the building of relationships, they know who their people are, they’re wanting to DM them themselves. I love that. But you have to be willing to be inside that app when people are leaving those DMs, so that you can take part in that instant gratification of getting your link to them.
The worst thing is that you say, “comment the word ‘adopt a bot’, and people comment and there’s nothing happens. So that’s where it could go very wrong. So you can definitely do it organically without a bot. But if you want it to be more instant, definitely do that.
And there’s tons of tools out there to make it more advanced and more funnel-like going forward. That’s not my jam. That’s not what I do all the time, but I’m good at setting up the one, two step to get the lead.
Rich: Sounds good. So basically if we had something to offer like a white paper or a free consult or a discount code to a customer to a conference, we could say, “Hey, if you’re interested in this, give me a thumbs up” or “say this catchphrase”, or whatever it is. If we’re just starting out, we can do it ourselves and just be doing that manually. But like you said, we have to be present, we have to be responsive. When we get to a certain point, when we want to do it at scale, that’s where we might bring in a bot that can handle those simple transactions for us.
Now, I’m guessing if we see that somebody’s gone far enough down that pathway and they’re interacting with a bot, at a certain point we may just jump in and be like, hey, I see that you’re really interested in X, Y, and Z, and why don’t we take this to email, phone, Zoom, what have you.
Karlyn: Exactly.
Rich: All right. Talk to me a little bit about the new metrics of social media. What do you recommend that, as social media marketers, we should be paying attention to?
Karlyn: I love this question, because there was some research recently done by Publicist Media that teamed up with Twitter…X. I’m forever team Twitter, let’s just be transparent. And this research did a whole “let’s talk shop study”. And what they were finding was that engagement, being social on social media, we’re not really talking about ads here. We’re talking about that organic social and how it directly impacts the overall buyer’s journey, shopper purchase, buying decisions, and what it does to a favorable fashion. So engagement is one metric that we really need to be paying attention to.
But even more than that, is our response to that engagement. And this is where a lot of organizations, especially those that I’m going to call them more ‘buttoned up corporate’, go wrong. Because they leverage social as a push, push strategy rather than a push pull, or they’re actually warranting conversation and being social media. And it’s when these conversations, these back-and-forth conversations, start to happen organically on social that leads into positive semantics, which is a more complex thing to measure. But it also allows people to build brand loyalty around it.
So a big thing that I want a lot of brands to be paying attention to, if you’re listening to this, is creating content with internal calls to action that elevate engagement. And have someone in your team, a community manager, a customer care manager, whoever they have to be there to respond. Because nothing is more brand building than basically when you see an organic conversation happening.
And Rich, you’re coming to a RayBans page and you’re like, “Hey, how much is that pair of sunglasses?” Or, “This pair broke in my first wear.” And RayBans come back and they’re like, “Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry that happened. Let me help you out.” Nothing is more feeling seen than having a brand notice that you’re having an issue, and actually responding. Because then everyone else around you sees it and that elevates your brand to a whole new level and more people will talk about you, when maybe RayBans used to be something you wear on your face and that just was the brand.
Just like your dentist, same thing. People don’t go around talking about their dentists all the time. But if you are creating content that is garnering conversation, other people are seeing that conversation happen. That will elevate your brand, and then more people will start talking about you.
And especially today’s world, millennials, I guess younger than millennials, Gen Z, is that what they’re now Gen Z? Gen Alpha? Slowly going back to the front of the alphabet. They search for products and experiences on social media, right? So utilizing it to search for things, which also means they’re looking for those conversations that are happening. Because they are waiting in the same study to go back to that. The same study was waiting, these brand conversations as high or higher than online reviews. So that just shows if you don’t have someone adopting some type of replying, being human, you might be missing some brand loyalty, visibility, and ultimately down the line purchase decisions being made.
Rich: Yeah. And I can definitely see how that makes sense. Because in my own world recently, I use Sunday lawn care, the spray stuff. And I went out this year and my sprayer that comes with it was broken. And I reached out to them, and within five minutes they emailed me back. They said, “We’ll send it out. No charge”, all that sort of stuff. That’s been my experience with Sunday. Every time I’ve had some issue come up or when we moved and getting them to send to the new address, everything just was so friendly.
Comparing that to another brand I won’t mention. And basically it’s been a month and a half I’ve been trying to get in touch with them and it’s like nobody works at the company. So I understand beneficially, as an owner of course, down the road that’s going to lead to more business, more customer loyalty.
If we’ve got some bean counters out there who really have to prove ROI, is there a way that we can measure those details so that we say we had this many positive outcomes, or this many positive conversations, and this is what we did? Just so we can show this to the boss or to the client to say, we were able to accomplish this, and here are the numbers to prove it.
Karlyn: Absolutely. Tools will be your best friend ever. Otherwise you’re going to be playing like tally marks, and no one’s got time for that. So there’s tools out there that do that. I’m a big fan of Sprout. They’re finally advancing their tool – I can’t think of the name, of course it’s escaping me – that is hardest around this level of attention to the brand conversations that are happening. And they also are really good at identifying what the semantics are of those comments to understand how they’re being identified and have a total for you at the end of the month, week, whatever kind of report you’re going to be running.
Rich: All right. I know from working with a lot of businesses, I’m sure you get some other questions, they’re looking for instant ROI. Can we ever expect instant ROI when it comes to social media?
Karlyn: No. I wish it was ‘yes’. Organic social is not meant to… it’s a marketing tool. It’s a marketing tool. And this is where I get frustrated at gurus who are out there being like, you can grow your following to 40,000 people in four seconds. And you’re like, awesome. But do you have 40,000 people on your email list that you can market to over time? Are you having 40, 000 conversations? Are those people actually replying to any of your content? And nine times out of 10, the answer is probably no. And you went viral for one thing that has nothing to do with your business. Which, pro-tip, always create content that’s related back to your business. Because if you go viral for something, it’ll drive people to your business.
I had a friend of mine, they went viral because they put their dog out there. And of course, dogs and babies equal internet gold. Always and forever. They grew their following. They’re like, I grew so much of my following. And then the next week when they got back to business, they’re following tanked, and then they got all bent out of shape about it. But the people thought this was a dog account and now it’s not. And so they’re like, how did I end up here? So I always caution people around that just to be careful. And you can’t make things go viral. So those that are listening that are part of the social media and the boss is saying, “Hey, just make this go viral.” That’s not a thing, right? Virality is a concept.
And I always explain it as, imagine a pond. And your piece of the pond is the internet or your platform of choice. Your content is a pebble in this vast pond. You boop, drop it in. What happens when you drop a pebble into a lake or a pond? There’s rings that start to form around it, right? The first ring that your content is shown to is the people that always engage with your content. Those are the diehard, raving fans that always are commenting or liking your content. They get that content first. And if they like that content, then it shows it to more people. And if those people like it, then it shows it to more and more. And that’s how virality starts.
A big piece of that, too, is not just seeing the content, it’s the engagement piece. It’s commenting, replying back, that continues to create those rings and get that visibility out there to make something go viral.
Rich: Alright, so serve your acolytes first, it sounds like. Make sure that they’re getting the content they need. And you talked a little bit about this earlier, about creating engagement on the post. But what other advice can you tell us that might increase the chances that people are going to engage with our post, like it, comment on it, even share it around?
Karlyn: So besides asking, you can create stuff that is super shareable. So if you know your audience inside out, you can create fun memes that are related to them. You can create, right now I’ve been seeing a lot of POV styles, which are humorous, but also really hit some type of polarizing point about your business and what you’re doing on a daily basis that really relates to your audience.
Always make it go back to your ‘why’. Why you’re creating this piece of content. What’s the purpose of this content? And ultimately your answer should be to serve your audience in some capacity. And if you can get them to take part in it, and sometimes yes, we still have to spell it out. Save this for later. If you agree with this, share it with a friend who needs to hear this today. We’re smart as consumers these days. But sometimes we’re moving at such a rapid pace that we don’t slow down enough to figure out, okay, what do they want me to do? Make it easy for someone to take action from your piece of content, which then elevates your content, gets it seen to more people, et cetera.
Rich: When you’re a personal brand, like you are the brand, I think there’s a certain expectation that your face is going to appear in a lot of the posts. And I noticed this, especially, it feels like women are better at this than men are. But as I say that, I do think of some men who are really also very often in their own post, so to speak.
But then there’s this whole thing when you’re working for somebody or you are a brand, people obviously tend to get more engagement than brands do on social media. So if we are posting on social media on behalf of our company, on behalf of that brand, what are some things that you’ve seen work in terms of getting some engagement? And maybe what are some things that you see traditionally tend to fall flat?
Karlyn: Yes, stock photos never perform, like almost never. And the reason why I say that, is across all industries in the past eight years I’ve been measuring content and success. The most frustrating thing for social media managers and creators is when the owner or people in the business don’t want to be visible on social. Because it makes our job that much harder, and that’s much harder to be successful.
Because all these platforms, Linkedin included, are craving human connection even in a world of AI that we’re all forced to be in these days. Humans still rule the roost in terms of content visuals. That being said, I’m not here to say, oh, don’t create content, unless you have a human in it. You have to tweak and test. But in my experience, and I think some other folks in my industry can attest, stock images almost never work. You have to get creative with it.
Maybe it’s a Reel, because content right now on a place like Instagram – and I think they’re testing right now a vertical video over on the LinkedIn app for some of us – video is here. It’s been here. It’s nothing new. It’s just been here. The way that we create it is different. So you have to be willing to put on that lab coat, roll up the sleeves, and get to work. But at the same time, don’t take the metrics from the past for granted, because they’re also telling you a story. And static, corporate looking photos don’t work. That’s what I have to say.
Rich: Corporate photos. You referenced AI, and I’m just curious what role does AI play in your own social media marketing, if any?
Karlyn: Absolutely does. I love ChatGPT, but what I do use it for is inspiration, because nothing’s worse than a blinking cursor when you have no ideas or too many ideas. The other thing is speed. It makes things a lot faster for me and my team.
And the last piece is repurposing content. I’m a big fan of developing repurposing content strategies for myself and for my clients. Because we have tons of collateral that is just sitting there, from our website to white papers, to blogs, to videos. And we post it once, and that’s it. Truth be told, no one remembers what they had for breakfast this morning, let alone what they saw on social media two weeks ago.
So how can we create content, repurposed, utilizing a tool like AI that makes it faster? And you have to condition, just like anything, you have to condition the bot to know your brand voice and tone and all those things. And you still have to put your human thumbprint on it before it goes out. Because if you’ve ever used ChatGPT and said, “Write me a social post around blah, blah, blah”, it overuses emojis. It always gives it a headline. It just utilizes hashtags that don’t make any sense and I would never pick.
So you still have to be a human and developing. But what I like about it is that people are feeling guarded about social and they’re like, I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to write about. This is a great tool to get the ball rolling.
Rich: All right. So you’re using it as an assistant. You’re using it for ideation. Those kinds of things, but like you said, you’re always reviewing everything before it goes live because ultimately, even when it’s pretending to use your voice, it’s not truly your voice. It’s not truly the hashtags that are on point for you. So that makes sense.
Now, if somebody’s listening in, this could be me, somebody who’s generally more focused on things like SEO and paid search and paid social or CRO, the real hard sciences of digital marketing, perhaps. And we’re telling them, you’ve got to post things on social media and engage with people and talk. How do they move from that left brain approach to this more right brain approach? How do they make social media fit into everything else they’re doing if they’re really specific about some of those other harder sciences?
Karlyn: I love this question because I used to be the person who totally ignored the data.
I was like, it’s supposed to be fun. And then I chatted with one of my friends, I call her the ‘data diva’. She doesn’t really like that, but it’s true. She eats, breathes, sleeps data all the time. And so for those out there that are data divas and data dudes, I have much respect for you. That being said, it’s not an either/or, it’s a yes and right. So it can be both And it should be both because both work better when they’re running in tandem with each other in terms of creating content, paid ads. If all that’s running like a well-oiled machine, you’re set up for as much success as possible.
But I also think there’s a level of authenticity that comes with showing up organically and delivering value without an ad spend behind it. And for a lot of people in the small business space, solopreneurs, they don’t have a $3,000 a month budget to pay an agency to create the ads, run the ads, measure the ads, and also the ad spend. And unfortunately, Meta was like, it’s easy, but I’m sure you meet this all the time. We try to run ads and we don’t know what we’re doing. We’re just flushing money down the toilet. It’s gotten too complicated. It used to be that Meta touted it as, “You can do it too. You can do it for yourself.” But it’s almost a requirement these days to pay someone else to do them for you. And so if you’re not working with a massive budget, you can here and there, add some ad spend behind boosting a post that’s already doing well to get more visibility on it.
But always make sure that again, if you’re boosting something, what’s the purpose of that post? Why are you driving traffic? Do you want people to comment? What’s the thing behind it? It’s not enough just to share what you’re eating for breakfast this morning. But if you’re like, this is what I have for breakfast and this is why it gives me energy for the day, especially if you’re a fitness person, that makes sense.
So always tie it back to your business. Always understand the ‘why’. And it’s not an either/or, it’s a yes. And the data tells us a lot. But also the qualitative approach and the story that the data isn’t telling is that piece of human behavior that’s happening.
Rich: Awesome. Karlyn, this has been great. If people want to learn more about you, if they want to learn more about Oh Snap Social, where can we send them online?
Karlyn: Yes, you can go to ohsnapsocial.com. That’s ohsnapsocial.com/resources. I’ve got tons of freebies for you there. I’m a freebie junkie. So download one, download them all. It’s up to you. And of course you can find me on LinkedIn and Instagram, that’s where I hang out the most. You can just search my name, Karlyn, K A R L Y N, and I should pop up.
Rich: Awesome. Karlyn, thank you so much for today.
Karlyn: Thank you so much, Rich, for having me.
Show Notes:
Karlyn Ankrom uses her Fan Firestarter Framework to help businesses get their social media strategy on track by taking the intimidation out of it. Head over to her website to grab one of many ‘freebies’ she has available. And be sure to connect with her on LinkedIn and Instagram.
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 25+ years of experience into the book, The Lead Machine: The Small Business Guide to Digital Marketing.