Bonus Training Session #2: Getting Traffic from Social Media

Speakers BD Brian Dean

IC Ian Cleary

[Main content starts, 0:11:19].

BD If you’re looking to get more traffic from social media then Ian
Cleary of RazorSocial.Com is the man to go to. What I love about
Ian and what separates him from the thousand and one other so
called social media experts that are out there is that he knows
what works and what doesn’t. And he’s not one of these social
media experts that talks about things like branding and
engagement, he’s all about driving traffic, clicks, sales – all the
stuff that are important for growing your business on social
media.

I’m very, very excited to have Ian on SEO That Works to reveal his
best secrets for getting the most traffic out of social media for
your limited time.

So Ian, thanks for stopping by SEO That Works.

IC Well thank you very much for having me Brian. Delighted to be

here.

BD Yeah, it’s good to have you.

So let’s just jump right in. Let’s say that you’re a small business
owner, you’re a digital marketing agency, you’re an ecommerce
site that sells jewellery. Where do people even start with social
media? Let’s just start with networks. How would they know what
network they should start with?
IC Yeah, I suppose you need to see where your customers are
hanging out. Is it on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn? One of the
key things is don’t get caught up with this thing where you have
to be on every single social network. It’s just a waste of time.
Because you’ll spend a small amount of time on each social
network and that’s not particularly valuable.

So figure out are your customers on a particular network and

start with one, maybe two. Get them working really well and then
move on to the next ones.

BD Okay. How would they know which network their customers are
on?

IC So for example, if you look and you’re considering being on

Twitter. So you might setup an account on Twitter and then you
might use some tools to actually have a look at, well, what type
of people are on Twitter? You might look and see – there’s a tool
called Twitonomy which allows you to put in a Twitter address
and you can see who’s talking to who on Twitter. So if it’s an
influential person, you can figure out all the other influential
people who are on it.

And pick out some of your customers and just do a search for
your customers and see who they’re talking about as well, see if
they’re on it.

So you really need to search through these tools or even just go

to search.twitter.com and put in the topics that are relevant to
your product or service. Are people asking questions about this
product or service? Are they having conversations about it? If
people are not having the conversations about it, well what’s the
point of being on this platform, you know? It’s not a case of just
being on there sending tweets and updates. It’s really going ‘are
 people actually on there talking about what I want to sell?’

BD Good answer. So basically what we should do is go with the

divide and conquer strategy. You just go for the big networks and
you find out which one seems to be the place where your
customers are – well not just are because they’re all on
Facebook, right? But where they’re actually having conversations
about what you sell or what you write about.

Because this is important because I think a lot of people make

the mistake of you have to plant your flag on, like, ten different
sites. And if you’re not on Pinterest, you’re dead. Even though
maybe your customers don’t even hang out on Pinterest. Me
personally, I never go on Pinterest because I know my target
audience is hanging out on Twitter all day.

IC Exactly. Another thing to check as well is, I was just thinking

there, [inaudible, 0:14:38] - I know you use that tool as well Brian
– that’s a useful tool to put in your competitors address and see
the content they have, what social networks that’s shared out on.

So if you find out ‘all my competitors, the content’s mostly

shared out on Facebook but people are ignoring it on Pinterest
and Instagram’, well you sort of get an idea of where are the best
channels to go to as well.

BD Brilliant. I love that tip. So just to summarise what Ian’s saying,

you want to go from network to network and see where people
are but if you just want to find out straight up where people hang
out and you know of a competitor that’s doing well in your space
and especially is doing content marketing well, you just put the
URL into [inaudible, 0:15:19] and you can see which networks
people are sharing on.

For a lot of B2C stuff it will be Facebook but sometimes you’d be

 surprised that they’ll get a lot of love on Pinterest or Twitter or
whatever. And that’s a great way to do it.

Another thing, I know I’m talking up Ian, but one of the things I
like about him, not just that he’s sales and traffic focused unlike
these social media gurus who talk about how you need to chain
yourself to your laptop and tweet all day, is that he’s all about
finding tools that will save you time and get you more out of what
you’re already doing on social media without having to spend
hours. And of course, being Ian, he already mentioned two tools
even though the question had nothing to do with tools. Just, they
come out naturally out of Ian’s mouth because Razor Social is
just a great resource for a social media tool.

So which tools do you think that people who are looking to drive
traffic through social media should focus on?

IC It depends on the platform you’re on. So if you’re on Twitter, one

of the best tools for building your audience is Manage Flitter.
There’s this power mode in Manage Flitter where you can do
these massive filters and find exactly the audience you’re looking
for.

So you can say they have to have a certain amount of followers,

they have to have a profile image, they have to be talking about
certain things in their bio or mention things in a tweet. So you get
a very targeted audience. And then you can get Manage Flitter to
automatically follow people on a daily basis. So you can say ‘just
follow twenty people automatically on a daily basis related to
this.’

If you want to grow your audience on Twitter, that’s the best way,
find the most relevant people, following them and they’ll follow
you back. And then provide good content - some of which is your
own, some of it’s other people – to drive people back to your
 website. But that is the one tool you should use just for building
your audience on Twitter. Great content, a tool then for building
your audience automatically on a daily basis.

BD I have a quick question about that. If you follow too many people,
I’ve heard that maybe you can get in trouble with Twitter. Is that
true? Should you limit it to twenty a day or ten a day or thirty a
day or something like that?

IC Yeah, you should definitely limit it. So if you’ve got a thousand

followers, the most I’d follow on a day is fifty. So think of five
percent of people at that level.

Now if you’ve got a hundred thousand followers, of course you

can follow a lot more so you have to be careful. But what
Manage Flitter does is you pay a fee – you have a choice. You
can follow them yourself. I pay a fee to Manage Flitter and they
manually follow them on a daily basis. So they’ve got a team of
people. I don’t know where they are but it’s probably a low cost
place. But they follow them manually on a daily basis so I never
get into trouble with Twitter on it.

BD Good advice. What about some other popular social media

networks?

IC What was the question? Building audience?

BD Yeah, to really drive traffic. So you’ve got to build the audience

first, right? To get some followers in place. But specifically for
getting more traffic from the different platforms.

IC Yeah. I mean, you need to use imagery as much as possible and

move to video content because that’s getting an awful lot more –
I know we don’t like the word ‘engagement’ but it gets
engagement. And engagement then gets you the traffic.
So if you’re on Twitter, the other tool to use is Post Planner and
what I like about Post Planner, it now supports Twitter and
Facebook. So for both platforms. It has a content discovery
engine which helps you discover what’s the most popular
content related to certain topics. So you can easily find really
good content to share. And then when you’re sharing your
content, it’ll pull in a really nice image as well and that’s going to
help drive traffic back to your site.

So on Twitter, if you look at your Twitter profile, it should show

lots of imagery all the way through it. So you need to use a tool
like that for that.

From a Facebook side, so that posts that to Facebook, that’s

going to help drive traffic. What we’ve started doing on Facebook
is - most of the tools don’t support this yet – but uploading video
natively to Facebook. And we find that’s getting a lot more
engagement than anything else. And when you start running ads
to Facebook or videos we upload to Facebook, we’re getting, like,
one cent a view for a video view using ads on Facebook.

So use Manage Flitter to grow your audience on Twitter, use Post

Planner to come up with the content and share the content on a
really good schedule and then if you’re using video, you’ll have to
use it native. So you’ll have to go to Facebook, upload the video
there and run ads for there. And that gets a lot of views. So we
tease people with videos and send them back to the post.

So recently, our older blog posts, what we’re doing with our older
blog posts is pick out a really juicy tip out of our blog post, create
a twenty second video out of it, upload it to Facebook and then
bring people back to the old content. So you’re sharing
something really useful and interesting in your video and then
you’re getting people back to your old content. So it’s constantly
 coming back to your site all the time.

So we’re doing, like, at least a video a day and we’re going to do

more and more because people like the practical tips and we’re
not forgetting about our older content.

BD That’s brilliant. So what does this video look like? It’s you on a
webcam or what?

IC No. Well I make it very simple. So for me, I’ve done a few different
videos where I use ScreenFlow or if you’re on a Windows
machine, use Camtasia. I just record the screen and I say ‘here’s
how you schedule content in Buffer.’ So I’ll show Buffer and I’ll
show you how you schedule it. And then I’d say ‘here’s a link to
the post with all the details.’ And that brings it back.

Now the other thing, you know I’ve done different types of videos.
One video I’ve been trying out is where I post a new post and I
video it and I just scroll through the post, say ‘hey guys,
[inaudible, 0:21:21] new post. Here’s the post’ and I scroll through
it and I explain the post and link back. And people like that as
well.

BD I love it. This is great because I think most people when they’re
posting on social media, there are these little things that make a
big difference and a lot of times, it’s putting in this little extra –
probably minute to make a video but it makes a huge difference,
right?

IC Exactly. And then when you want to boost your post and boost
video content, a cent a view with video content, I’ve found on
Facebook with ads is don’t advertise until the post has got some
traction.

So if you post something on your Facebook page and you see

 people are liking and sharing it, then boost it with some ads.

BD Why is that?

IC It’s not as expensive because you’ve proven that the content’s

popular already. Facebook has seen it’s popular so it’s proven.
You could put up a spammy message and advertise it and that’s
not [inaudible, audio glitch, 0:22:16] Facebook. But if your fans
are liking and sharing the content already, Facebook knows ‘well
that’s good content.’ So it doesn’t mind you spending money on
ads on promoting it.

BD That makes sense. It’s like a quality score in AdWords?

IC Exactly.

BD You’re getting it at basically a discount rate and that’s how you’re

able to get these one cent clicks or one cent views for a
Facebook native video.

I’ve got to try native video. I’ve seen it a couple of times in use
and you see it and you instantly think ‘this is the future. This is
definitely how videos are going to be online from now on.’

IC Absolutely. I think the key thing with video is don’t make it

complicated. Don’t start off and think ‘oh I’m going to spend half
an hour on a video’ because you won’t do that on a daily basis.

When I’m doing a video, I take a video for thirty seconds, then I
export it to MP4 and then upload it. So the whole process is
about a minute and a half. If it’s any longer, you’re not going to be
doing that on a daily basis.

Now what I’m doing as well is I’m storing every video I have. So
I’m going to reuse them videos again in the future on Facebook.
When Post Planner support it, I’ll upload it to Post Planner but
 then I’ll use them on other platforms. When I keep them below
thirty seconds, I put them on Instagram as well. So you can start
putting them on different platforms as well.

[Inaudible, 0:23:34] Instagram, if you want to schedule content on

Instagram, ScheduGram is the best tool to use – Schedugr.am.

BD Any other tools that come to mind when you think – because I
know you know them all, whether they’ve been created by a
Fortune 500 or a team of Ukrainian hackers in a basement
somewhere, you’ve tried them all. We’ll talk about some different
types of social media tools you can use later that will get you
traffic indirectly but let’s talk about any that come to mind that
you think ‘okay, if someone wants to get more traffic from these
sites, this is a tool they should try’?

IC A tool within Facebook is using Power Editor for advertising. It

gives you a lot more flexibility compared to the ads that you’re
running.

Just while we’re on Power Editor, one great tip is when you
retarget website visitors with ads if you want to build fans
because you’ll build them very cheaply that way. So you set the
ads up with Power Editor, somebody visits your website, leaves,
goes to Facebook. You show them an ad, they become a fan on
Facebook. It’ll cost you less than twenty cents a fan that way.

But yeah, Power Editor is a more powerful tool than the

traditional ad manager within Facebook. So definitely use that
tool for building your audience on Facebook.

BD That’s a whole tool in and of itself that is very complicated. I

used some retargeting recently and like you said, it worked great.
Because you’re basically only targeting people that visited your
website. They’re the perfect people to try to bring back.
IC Exactly. Other tools that are interesting, so if you have a blog, you
need to share your content when you initially post it but what
about sharing it again at a later stage? So there’s various tools to
help you with that.

For example, CoSchedule is a very useful WordPress tool that

allows you to create an editorial calendar, create tasks related to
your content and then when you’re publishing your content, you
can specify different times and different social platforms to
publish your content on. And it’s like ten dollars a month. That is
an essential tool as a blogger to have good editorial
management. Especially if you’re blogging on a very regular
basis.

BD But with CoSchedule, it’s just for when you publish something
new or is it also for older stuff that you already have?

IC It’s for older stuff as well because it shows you your most shared
content as well and then you can click on a button and say ‘I
want to share some of my older content.’

So people forget about their older content. If your older content is

good and it’s evergreen, meaning it’s not out of date, you have to
re-share that content. But think about interesting ways of sharing
that content or present it on different platforms. So like the way
we take a blog post, create a video out of it and it’s an old blog
post [inaudible, audio glitch, 0:26:35] from that and that works
really well.

Yesterday I sent out a newsletter and I didn’t have a post. So I

was going ‘okay I’m sending a newsletter, I don’t have a post.’ So
I said I’m picking out six tips from previous posts and I go ‘here’s
a tip. This is what you should you do. Here’s the post that shows
you how to do it.’ And that was extremely popular. So don’t forget
 the older content.

BD I love that. It’s something I need to do and it’s really funny

because I never thought to share. I was like ‘it’s old, why would I
share it?’ Even though all my stuff is on Backlinko, it’s pretty
much evergreen. And if it’s not evergreen, I update it.

So that’s the reason that on the blog, I didn’t have dates for a
while and now I have ‘last updated’. But I didn’t have dates
because I felt like there’s no need. I’m always going back and
updating – if it’s on the blog, it means it’s relevant. So I change it
to just ‘last updated’ so then people know that.

I remember a while back I shared an older post that I published in

the early days of the blog and it got so many shares, it was like it
was brand new to everybody except for me. I was like, people are
sharing it, they were submitting to Inbound then all – it was like a
new post and it was over a year old at that point. Then I was like
‘there’s something to this.’ Because you kind of assume that
everyone’s read your older stuff.

IC Well people make mistakes about their content is – create a

piece of content, spend ages on the content and then forget
about that piece of content and think about the new piece of
content. You need to keep on looking at your existing content,
like you say, and make sure a lot of it’s evergreen so it’s easier to
re-share it out and think about how can you republish it or
change it so that it’s more up to date and then provide a new
version or create images in the likes of Canva to promote a
specific tip. Maybe there’s a post with lots of tips and pick out
five or six tips, create an image in Canva for the tip and then
share out them tips all the time because the tips are always
relevant.
BD Good advice. So for those people who don’t know, what is Canva
and what does it do?

IC Canva is graphic design without graphic design skills. I’ve no

graphic design skills but I can produce an image in Canva.

So it provides you with a template and with that template, you

can change the text, change the colour, put new tips or whatever
it is, create the image and then you can use that anywhere.

Now what you should do if you’re creating – say, for example, I

decide I’m going to take tips from my blog and I’m going to share
tips from the blog. I’ll go in and create one template and create
fifty tips. And for the fifty tips, you might change the background
colour or you might change the image slightly. But you have a
template. Create a batch of them together and then put them into
a directory and don’t forget about them and then start sharing
them out.

So don’t create one image at a time, think about how can I create
ten or twenty. Because you create an image, you can copy it,
change it slightly, put your new tip into it so you can easily create
a lot of different images.

BD Okay, and just save them somewhere.

That’s why I like your approach to social media, Ian. You’re not
the guys who are like ‘you need to be on social media.’ It’s all
about getting the most out of it. So when you batch stuff like this,
it’s a lot more efficient

IC Yeah. It’s a bit like social media is so time consuming and you
can just waste your time sending random tweets all day which is
completely pointless.

So, for all the different social networks, you need to be organised,
 need to have the right tools in place. Then when you generate
your content, you need to measure to see what’s working, do
more of what’s working and then when you drive people back to
your site, you need to go ‘well, what happened on Facebook or
Pinterest or Instagram? Did people actually sign up to my
newsletter or did they sign up for a trial of my product or sign up
for a free consultancy session?’ Did they actually do it? If they’re
not doing it, well why should you be on the platform?

We’ve seen only the other day, Social Media Examiner closed
down their LinkedIn group with forty four thousand people in it.
So forty four thousand members and they decided to close it
down. It wasn’t strategic for their business. Yes, they were
driving some traffic but they felt they could probably do better on
other platforms and make money – they’re launching a monthly
service so they’ll probably have their own community.

So if things are not working, you don’t have to stay on those

platforms.

BD I like that advice. So that’s later down the road.

So you start off, we went through the process that you use. First
you find the network or two at the most that your target audience
tends to hang out at. Don’t plant your flag in twenty places and
spend one minute in each place. Spend twenty minutes on one,
every day.

And then when you’re there, post some good stuff. Post some
different stuff. Be a little bit strategic about what you’re putting
out there and most importantly, use tools like Post Planner and
CoSchedule and Canva and Facebook native videos that you can
record with Camtasia or whatever or a webcam, to make sure
your stuff stands out and also that you’re not spending a tonne
 of time on it. That’s the key.

So you’re not there engaging, you’re not there to necessarily start

conversations, you’re there to spread your content, also other
people’s stuff. There is a place for engagement and stuff like that
and we’ll talk about that. But for driving traffic, the most
important thing is to have a link back to your site and a social
media update that people like. That’s the key. And Ian’s just
revealed some helpful tips to make that happen.

IC Yeah. You know, when you’re building your audience, you need to
make sure it’s a relevant audience. If people are not interacting
with your content well then you can’t get them to your website.
And that’s where the engagement comes in. You want
engagement because when you share your content you want
people to go ‘oh right. I’m going to click on that link and go to
your site.’ And then when you get to the site, you need to go ‘well
what did they actually do?’

Because people talk about ‘oh share content out to StumbleUpon

and all these social networks.’ I’ve shared content out to
StumbleUpon, I’ll get a tonne of traffic where people will leave
immediately. They’ll spend two seconds on the site and leave.
That’s pointless. If they’re not going to take action when they
come well then the traffic is just a waste of time. So it’s not all
about traffic, it’s what are the results at the end of it.

BD Good call. So basically, you want to be a little bit pragmatic about

what you’re doing here and that’s why I’m glad you brought up
the tracking.

So when people are on social media, they’re starting to do this

stuff you recommended, doing some native videos on Facebook,
tweeting videos – you can tweet YouTube videos clearly on
Twitter, Instagram, sharing images from Canva on Twitter,
 Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, all that stuff. And you’re starting
to do this consistently, maybe seeing some results. What are you
tracking exactly, besides people getting to your website and
taking action or is that the only thing you look at?

IC You track on both sides – the social media side and the website
side.

So the social media side, say, for example, you’re on Twitter. You
want to see is your audience growing, do you have a relevant
audience, is it the right type of people you’re attracting and are
people interested in the content you’re sharing?

And let’s figure that one out first. If you go to

analytics.twitter.com, that’s going to show you a profile of your
audience. It’ll say ‘Brian, you’ve got seventy percent people
interested in SEO, twenty percent in entrepreneurship, ten
percent in marketing’ then you go ‘oh actually, I’m attracting the
right type of audience. That’s working.’ Then you look at
analytics.twitter.com and it shows ‘all the posts I’m sharing out
people are retweeting, sharing and favouriting. So great, that’s
working.’ So that’s okay, that’s all you need to know on the
Twitter side. Quite straightforward.

Then you move over to the website and basically, the simplest
thing would be to setup a goal within Google Analytics and the
goal is achieved when somebody buys a product or signs up to
an email or spends a certain amount of time on your site,
whatever that is. So when you set up the goal in Google
Analytics, now you can go into Analytics and go ‘okay, what’s the
source of the traffic? Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter?
What was the percentage conversion rate from each of that
traffic?’ So you go ‘well I got ten thousand visitors on Pinterest
and nobody signed up to the goal I want to achieve.’ Well then
 you’re either doing something wrong on Pinterest, so you go
back and review ‘do I have the right audience? Am I getting the
right engagement? Are my follower counts growing?’ If you’re
getting the right audience and everybody’s engaging and they’re
coming to your site and still not taking action, well then it’s
questionable whether you should be on Pinterest at all.

If you go to Pinterest and go ‘well I actually am attracting the

wrong audience’, well then start changing the content and
reaching out to different people and then see if you get better
results.

But you will see in there which channel is working the best and
then you know ‘well I’ll focus more on that channel, I’ll do more
content on that channel.’

If you’re not tracking this sort of stuff, well social media is just a
complete pain because you’re doing all this work and you’ve no
idea is it actually benefiting your business. So you have to figure
out is it really benefitting your business.

BD Good advice. I like that. It’s like the old marketing expression.
You waste half your marketing budget, you just don’t know which
half. It’s the same thing. But in today’s world, you can know
which half and especially with social media, it’s dead simple to
set this up in Google Analytics.

Now one word of warning, I just want to say, if you notice that
you’re getting no goals in Google Analytics, you do want to
double check that it’s setup correctly because I’ve had that
happen to me before where I’m getting no goals and I’m like ‘oh
this lead magnet must not be very good’. I had a site that was
[inaudible, 0:36:21] CPA offers and a totally different niche than
marketing. I remember having some goals not setup correctly or
showing no goals. But when I went to my CPA network, I was
 making lots of money.

So just double check that it’s working. If you see other networks
are converting and one network’s not working, that means the
goal’s setup, just that network’s not working well for you.

IC Yeah. If you’re making loads of money, it’s not an urgent

problem.

BD No, no. Definitely. I wasn’t like ‘I need to get this goal fixed now.’
It was more like I look at the goal a little dejected ‘what’s going
on?’ And then when I checked, I know that there was a
disconnect there. So it’s just something to note because a lot of
people will think that there’s something wrong with the network
or their approach is wrong. Actually, it could be some small
technical snafu. Because goals are surprisingly complicated to
setup in Google Analytics.

You spoke a little bit earlier about engagement on social media

and it’s one of these words that I have two minds about. On one
hand I think it’s cool that you can talk to people on Twitter or
Facebook and Pinterest and Instagram, having conversations
with people. On the other hand, you can’t pay a rent with
engagement. So I like your approach to social media in that it’s
sales focused in getting results for your business.

But I do want to talk a little bit about engagement, specifically

about engaging with influential people and how you can use
social media to get in touch with these [inaudible, 0:37:48] and
get them to know you and like you and all that stuff. Because in
SEO That Works, we do focus a lot on email outreach because
that’s by far the best way to get links, get traffic, get buzz, get
shares, all the good stuff that’s important for SEO today. But
there’s a case to be made that you can warm people up on social
media before you send that outreach email and that can work
 even better. And Ian has a lot of experience with this because a
couple of years ago, just like me, just starting out, he didn’t know
anybody and he’s grown his blog into this huge success. So
maybe you could just touch on some tips that people could use
to get in touch with influencers?

IC The biggest problem with influencers, influencers are extremely

busy and get a tonne of email, a tonne of requests all the time.
And typically when somebody reaches out, the first thing they’re
doing is a request.

Now I know, when you’re link building, it’s like going, well, you
know, you sort of need to get underneath things quickly. But if
you want to build a relationship, you need to see how you can
add value to them.

I’ll give you an example. When I wanted to build relationships

with the influencers, a lot of them were authors. So I went to
Amazon and I created video reviews of their books. So the thing
about it is, as an author, they get notified there’s a video review
and of course, they’re going to watch the video. So they’ve seen
my face, they’ve seen me give a really positive review of their
book. Now when I reach out through email, they absolutely will
answer me because [inaudible, audio glitch, 0:39:16] video
review. So you can be smart about it.

Another way is their blog. No matter how many comments you

get, it’s never enough - unless you’re Brian Dean.

BD It’s still never enough. Anything below four hundred in

unacceptable. I can’t sleep at night.

IC There you go, you see? Bloggers love comments and I love good
comments. We get a lot of spammy comments and I’m sure
you’ve got your challenges with spammy comments and we hate
 them of course. And somebody that’s just looking for a link back
to their site, I hate them ones. But I love when somebody gives a
good comment and go ‘wow, you really thought this through’ and
I respond. If somebody gives them comments a few times, you
start remembering them. I’m sure there’s a list of people you
remember, Brian, from your blog.

BD All up here, man. It’s not even an official list or anything. I just
expect them to comment. I’m surprised when they don’t actually.

IC And then when they reach out to you and say ‘hey Brian, you
know [inaudible, 0:40:13] writing this great post. Would you like
to contribute to it or give me a tip?’ At that stage, you don’t ask -
well I never ask ‘what’s your audience? What’s the size?’ I don’t
care. I found that this person was genuine, has interacted with
me, is helping me build my community. So I’m going to do what
they ask, generally, as long as it’s reasonable.

So it’s about making an effort. So sign up to their blog, do the

comments. When they send a newsletter, if they ask a question,
answer it, give some feedback, fill out their surveys. Anything you
can do to help the influencer. And if you know that coming up
you’re going to be in a month’s time asking a hundred influencers
to do something, well see if you can interact with a range of them
first.

It doesn’t have to be all of them. Say, for example, you say I want
to do a post that’s about the hundred top influencers in the
fitness industry. So I reach out to ten of them and start to interact
and they get to know me. Then when I’m sending out my emails
to the hundred, I’ll send it out to the ten that know me first and
once I get some feedback from them, their tips or whatever, then
of course with the other ninety I’ll say ‘by the way, these are the
five people in this post already. Would you like to be in it?’ And
 then they’ll want to. Influencers are influenced by other
influencers what they do.

BD Well said. But they’re not influenced by – it’s so funny that. And
the reason I brought this up is actually just yesterday this guy
tweeted at me and he said ‘Brian, I’m trying to get in touch with
influencers but they won’t get back to me. What should I do?’ And
it’s like ‘well maybe because you’re tweeting at them stuff like
this.’ You know what I mean? It’s like I never heard of this guy
before. He’s not one of these people that you mention that
contributes to the Backlinko community at all. He’s just a random
guy. So I’m not going to reply to something like that. But
someone who’s interactive on the blog, I’m much more likely to
lend a hand wherever I can. I tweet people’s stuff all the time. It
depends but a lot of it has to do with whether I recognise a
person’s name and that has a lot to do with the comments.

I’m glad you mentioned comments because even though it’s

about social media, a lot of times commenting is better than
social media for people that have blogs. Because like you said,
people love them, you’re on their home turf, it’s less crowded and
busy – you know what I mean? It’s their home turf, you’re
contributing there versus on Twitter or Facebook it’s very noisy. I
feel like it’s a good place to get to know somebody.

IC And I think of social media different than a lot of people think of

social media because I think of the social – like your blog is a
social media presence and the comments is a community or
building around that. Email is a social media tool. If you’re not
being social on email well then it’s not a community you’re
building up. Because it’s not just broadcasting these newsletters,
it’s actually trying to create a connection about an audience. So I
think any of these channels where you’re interacting with people
 is part of the social media.

So that’s why you don’t have to be on Twitter, Facebook,

LinkedIn, the obvious ones, if you’re building your community
around a blog and an email list, you know that’s a good presence
on social media to me.

BD Me too. Obviously we’re both huge fans of email in terms of

building your business and getting people to reply to emails and
replying back. I do that all the time.

Some people call it, like, an anti-social media network but that’s
just because most people just blast newsletters like you said. But
it can easily be a social media network and it’s a great way to get
in somebody’s inbox.

I’m always shocked at how many people email me to ask for

something through the contact form. And it’s like ‘dude, you’re
not even on my newsletter. I’ve sent out tonnes of emails where
I’ve asked people to reply. It’s a great opportunity for you.’ But I
feel like they’re like ‘I’m a huge fan of your work and duh-duh-
duh’, it’s like, ‘dude, you’re not even on the newsletter.’ I feel like
it’s a bit dis-genuine and if you want to get in touch with
someone, sign up for the newsletter. That’s like a huge trick. Hit
reply, done.

IC Exactly. And most people, like you said for yourself, [inaudible,
0:44:24] you know? If you reply to a newsletter, we see the
responses. The most annoying one is when somebody sends an
email and goes ‘hi there.’ I don’t read beyond that

BD Well we don’t have to worry about that because SEO That Works
students or actually graduates at this point of watching the
video, they have tonnes of outreach scripts that are tested by me
and they’re very personalised.
 So it’s not the email part. I mean, we’re [inaudible, 0:44:50] a little
bit, but these are some little things that can make a difference if
you’re getting in touch with a blogger. If you’re going to get in
touch with them, you’re better off replying to an email that they
sent out, that they asked you to reply to.

Some people don’t even monitor their newsletter replies which is

crazy to me but it happens. That’s where a contact form could
actually work. But if you do have a newsletter that is a little bit
more interactive and is more like social media like Ian [inaudible,
0:45:13] newsletter, it’s a pro tip that I’ve replied to a lot of
people’s newsletter emails and built relationships that way.

IC Absolutely.

BD So let’s switch gears a little bit and talk about – again, this is to
drive traffic but specifically it’s to promote content on LinkedIn.

So if you have an audience on LinkedIn – and it’s almost like

Facebook, you do have it on there. Whether they’re active on
there is a different story but pretty much everyone who is a
professional is on LinkedIn – you talked to me about this
strategy that you’ve used in the past to basically use your
LinkedIn connections as an email list to promote your content.
Can you talk a little bit about that? Because that just blew my
mind when you told me and I just wanted to [inaudible, 0:46:00]
drop that on …

IC Okay. The thing about it is you build up all these connections on

LinkedIn and typically what happens is nothing. But a lot of these
people have reached out to you and said ‘hey, I want to connect
with you. I want to hear about your updates and I’m interested in
your business.’ To me that’s close enough to being an email
subscriber. You have to be a little bit more careful you’re not
sending regular emails every week to these people because it’s
not a list they’ve signed up for but if you’ve got something
interesting to offer them, what’s wrong with actually reaching out
with them?

Now, what I don’t do is I don’t export the full list of connections

and send them an email and they’ll see it’s from another tool and
then they’ll feel they’re part of an email list. I don’t want them to
feel as part of an email list. So within LinkedIn I can send emails
to fifty people at a time and I will pick out fifty people that are
relevant and go ‘I’m running a social media workshop for any of
my LinkedIn connections.’ I was going to give a big discount or
something and I’ll say ‘here’s the link’. Or I’ll say ‘I’m about to
come out with this new guide. It’s a completely free guide.
Because you’re in marketing area, I thought you might be
interested. I picked out fifty people that I thought would be
interested in it.’

I get positive responses out of that generally, you know? Like, if

you send to a thousand people on LinkedIn something really,
really relevant and they’re a relevant audience, you’ll probably get
a hundred people signing up to your newsletter. [Inaudible, audio
glitch, 0:47:29] high conversion from it. And then send regular
status updates with valuable, useful content that people will
share and like and comment and then bring people back to your
website as well.

One thing I find challenging is the groups because the groups are
spam. They really are and you end up, everybody’s dropping links
in there. What I’ve done recently is I was a member of forty
groups and I got rid of about thirty five of them. Because I looked
in the groups and I’m seeing where people are sharing out
content with links back to the website. Was anybody interacting
with that? Liking, sharing and commenting or not? If that was all
dead, where there was no interaction, then I was going ‘well I
 don’t want to be on this group.’ So I look for a group that’s very
interactive, that’s relevant to what I’m doing and gets lots of
comments and feedback and interaction on content that’s
shared. Then when I go in there, I actually ask questions, open
conversations, teasing with people with stuff I’m writing about
and not necessarily putting in a link all the time back to your site.

BD And that’s working better for you?

IC Yeah. The problem is you need to put in the work there because
if you just drop in links, you’ll get penalised for that group and
every other group you’re a member of.

BD Really? I didn’t realise that part.

IC Yeah, it’s reported to LinkedIn that you’re this guy that’s just
abusing things in that group and that’ll affect you in every single
group. So you have to be very careful.

But the email side of things, just connect with relevant people,
connect with people in the groups, build your list and then when
you’ve something of value, share it to them. And don’t say just
‘I’m launching something, here’s a link.’ Make it so that you’re
either providing them with some good benefit like a massive
discount or you’re providing something free to bring them into
your sales funnel, something to bring them back to the site,
something that’s useful and valuable. And also include a friendly
message there as well like ‘I hope things are going great with
you. Anytime I can help you, please give me a shout.’

BD I’ve actually done some outreach on LinkedIn, not really with my

connections which I need to start doing but with people that I
wanted to reach out to and for whatever reason, I couldn’t find
their email despite my insane amount of tips and tricks to find
people’s email. Some people are just like Jason Bourne. You
 cannot find their email.

So I would message them on LinkedIn and the response was

great. It’s just super expensive to keep that membership. You run
out of credits very quickly. [Inaudible, cross talk, 0:50:06]
connected with you, you don’t have to worry about that.

IC Yeah. So what you do is you join a group where this person’s a

member of and then you send a connection request for free.
Once they’re a part of the same group that you’re in then you can
connect with them for free.

And make sure never ever use the standard LinkedIn response.
Always do a personalised email.

BD Cool. Yeah, I’ve had a lot of success and I feel like one of the
reasons this strategy works well is just because people get so
many emails a day but they maybe get one or two LinkedIn
messages a day at the most. And usually they’re kind of the
service spam like ‘hello, I have SEO services duh-duh-duh’ and
you delete it. But if it’s like ‘hey, I know you love – you know,
you’re a nurse. I had to [inaudible, 0:50:47] this free guide, Ten
Ways Nurses Can Get a Raise’ – now that’s going to be
something that nurses are going to be like ‘oh this is cool, right?’
And open it and share it on Facebook and all that stuff

IC Yeah. A girl connected with me recently and her next message

was ‘I love to share something of value. Here’s a business book I
read I thought was really excellent. I thought you might enjoy it.’
And I thought ‘that was nice. At least she’s making the effort.’ It
was something nice and positive.

But yeah, make sure it’s good personal messages. People

respond to good personal messages. People will accept
connection requests generally if you do a good personal
 message.

BD Good stuff. So let’s just wrap it up by tying it all together, all the
great nuggets of wisdom from how to find your network using
[inaudible, 0:51:32] - I love that tip; I never even thought to do that
before - and then when you find a network where you audiences
hang out, what to do when you’re on there. How to actually get
people to not just like you and follow you on Twitter but to click
on stuff that you’re sending out so they go back to your site, get
on your email and then you can sell them down the road. And
then how to track all that stuff, how to know what’s working,
what’s not; on the network but more importantly in terms of your
bottom line.

So putting it all together Ian, when did you start Razor Social?

IC About two and a half years ago.

BD So I think we started on the same day. It’s ridiculous, I think it’s

two and a half years ago also with Backlinko to the day.

What would you do? If you were just getting started with Razor
Social or let’s say a blog in another space like fitness or you ran
an ecommerce site, what would you do to get going in the early
days? What would you focus on?

IC Well I think it’d be like you, Brian. I’d focus on building my email
list. So if I was going ‘okay, I’m starting my site immediately’, if I
was starting my blog, the first blog post I’d write would be an
expert post with influencers because I don’t have the audience,
influencers have the audience, I want to borrow their audience so
I involve them in the content and that brings audience to you
immediately from the unpaid side of things. And then I’d create
the Lead Gen Guide and start building the email list.

From a Facebook point of view, I’d focus on running ads to the

 Lead Gen Guide.

BD Using the Power Editor?

IC Yeah, I’d create the ads in Power Editor, target some of my

competitors and drive people back for the Lead Gen Guide. Then
over time, build the page.

So you’d need a paid approach with Facebook ads and then the
blog approach with the influencers, involving them in your
content. And then build an email list and then really support your
community, build that community and show a personality and
get interaction going with people. And then you’re on a good
starting point to start building your products and rolling out
products.

BD Cool, good advice.

That’s a good summary of what we talked about today and I just

wanted to see how you would do it. And I’m glad you tied in the
expert side because I get a lot of emails from people – let’s say
I’m posting on Facebook, I’m posting on Twitter but I’m not
getting anywhere. And as you learn, maybe it’s because your
audience isn’t on these platforms or they’re there but they’re not
active there and they’re not talking about whatever it is you sell.
So you’ve got find those places and then send them stuff that’s
cool and then get them back to your site and most importantly on
your email list.

So I just want to wrap up with a quick little lightning round of cool

tools because I know you have so many. We shared a lot but for
Ian this is just nothing for tools. He has a great tools directory on
his site that’s just insane, that lists not just the tools themselves
but how they work and pretty much everything you need to know.
It’s a pretty crazy guide. It was one of the most impressive pieces
 of content I’ve seen this year.

So maybe you could just go through a couple of tools that you

just think are cool because they’re great for saving time, great for
driving traffic, great for getting people to follow you or what have
you.

IC Okay. So a couple of different tools. One I didn’t mention that is

very useful is SocialBro and I use SocialBro for our direct
message campaigns on Twitter. I know direct messages have a
bad name but that’s probably because people send spammy
stuff as a direct message. But I tell you, if you send something
really relevant and useful to your audience, they will respond and
answer you and interact.

So we invite people to webinars using automated DM messages

and most of the responses we get back are ‘yeah, I’ve just
registered. Thanks Ian. Love this. Signing up.’ So that is one to
use, the SocialBro side of things if you want it for Twitter DM.

We mentioned Post Planner, we mentioned CoSchedule already

as a useful tool. I use Buffer on a regular basis. So when you’re
browsing the web and you find some useful content, click on that
Buffer button and that automatically queues up content for you
to share out at a time you’ve specified. It’s a great time saver and
recently they implemented an auto scheduler where you can
schedule, say, ‘oh here’s a post. I want to send it today, eight
hours’ time, two days’ time, five days’ time’ as part of that as well.

We mentioned Canva as a graphic design tool so definitely have

that in your bag for using it. I used Dlvr.it which automatically
picks up new blog content and immediately publishes it. Just in
case you publish something and you forget to promote it, that
will automatically go out to the different channels.
 If you’re looking for analytics on Facebook, if you use Fan Page
Karma, it’s a good tool to get some detailed analytics on if your
account is working or not working. That has a good free and paid
version.

How many more do you want

BD That was good. I just wanted to wrap up. I know you could go all
day with the tools.

IC Yeah. I just don’t want to do tool overload. The thing is find one
or two good tools and focus on them with the right platforms and
then over time you can add ones in. But you need to have your
strategy first and then implement the relevant tools.

BD Right. Tools come and go although on social media, the ones

you’ve mentioned have been around for a while so they’re not
going to go tomorrow. But we didn’t talk a lot about tools
because the most important things are the techniques and
approaches that Ian talked about. But just to have some fun, I
wanted to have a lightning round with some tools because there
are some people who have done this stuff already, they’ve come
back to watch this advanced training masterclass and are like
‘okay, how can I get more out of this?’ And usually the answer is
a tool because you already have the approach down.

So Ian, thanks so much for stopping by SEO That Works and if

you’re looking to get practical tips on how to get more traffic
from social media, head over the RazorSocial.com and make
sure to sign up for the newsletter because that’s [inaudible, audio
jumps, 0:57:47] experience, I’m a subscriber, that’s where he
sends his very best stuff.

IC Cool, thank you Brian.