Social Brilliant, Video Three Transcript:

Brilliant Social Media Posts

Welcome back. I'm Sarah from Team Edgar, and we're continuing Social
Brilliant with brilliant social media posts. Now, we're going to talk about
what you are actually going to publish on your social media accounts,
whether that's a Facebook post, a pin on Pinterest, a tweet on Twitter.
These are all different types of social media posts and each network may
do things a little bit differently or have a slightly different look, but
they're all the same fundamental idea.
Let's connect the dots so far. Your blog is the home of your online
content, and that's text, that's podcasts, videos, visual content, whatever
content you prefer to create, we're referring to where you keep that
content on your website as your blog. Social media posts are how you
push that content out to the world and get it seen and shared.
How your social accounts are set up matters way less than what you
actually post on those accounts. We want you to stop messing with your
cover photo and focus on the content of your posts instead. Somewhere
we see a lot of people looking in the wrong direction on social media is
that they want feedback on how their accounts are set up. A lot of
questions that we get are like, "Did I choose the right name on Twitter?
What do you think of my cover image on Facebook?"
These are all factors in the social media universe, but they're not nearly
as important as what you're actually putting in your social media posts.
If you spend a lot of time messing with that kind of stuff, but you don't
have a solid strategy in place for how you're filling out your social media
feeds, we want to redirect you now to forget about those little details.
They really don't matter that much, and you can keep tweaking them
later after you have a really solid strategy in place and you're publishing
great content on a consistent schedule.

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Going back to our chart where we're looking at the whole social media
universe, what we're focusing on with our social media posts is really
[00:02:00] this bit right here. What's really important about our social
posts is that they drive traffic back to our blog and back to our website
where customers can buy from us. It's one of the most important
purposes of our social media posts.
Building on that chart a little more, these little circles represent shares of
our social media posts. These are people who re-tweet you. They share
your posts on Facebook, they save your pin on Pinterest. Not only do we
want our social posts to drive traffic back to our blog, which then drives
people to the rest of our website, we also want people to share the actual
social media posts themselves. When you have share-worthy blog posts
and share-worthy social media posts, that's how you build a big audience
on social media that really moves the needle for your business.
What are the main purposes of posting on social media? Showing
personality, establishing that know, like, and trust factor for your
business is one of the big ones.
You're also sharing content from your own site like we talked about.
This is how you get the content from your site out to the world in front
of new eyes. We're talking about links to your blog content. Then
depending on your business, you might also be linking to product pages
or other parts of your business as well.
Social posts can also be general announcements and information about
you, your team, your business. Social media posts are really timely. This
is our platform for sharing when we've got a new offering out, when
we've got a sale, when we just added someone to our team. Whatever
that fun update is in your business, social media posts are a great place
to put it.
Social media posts also have an amazing capacity to scale relationship
building. Social media is a way to sent out a message to thousands of

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people without actually having to contact them individually, and it's on a
platform that they typically consider fun and useful and informative
already. [00:04:00] You don't have to convince them to get on social
media. They're already there. Social media is a fantastic place to build
relationships with your target audience.
What's cool about social media posts is they can work at both large-scale
and all the way down to one-on-one relationship building. You send out
a post to thousands of people, but then one person comments on that
post and you can very quickly and easily have a true one-on-one
interaction with that person by responding to them. The best part is that
your larger audience can see that one-on-one interaction that you had
with that person, which reinforces their relationship with you too even if
you weren't interacting with them. It gives them that personalized feel
even when your personal attention was for someone else's comment.
Driving traffic is another big one. This is super important as we said. It's
one of the main purposes for social media posts. You want to use your
social media posts to get your followers to your website where they can
buy from you.
Generating shares is the other really big one. You want to get your
content in front of new eyes for your business and that's how you do it
with shares.
Why are social media posts so fantastic? Well, they're amazing because a
single social media post can increase your know, like, and trust factor. It
can drive tons of traffic to your website, and it can generate shares that
will expose you to new customers all at the same time. Social media is
really, really powerful. We take it for granted a lot, and we see a lot of
businesses act like social media is just kind of a thing people play
around with like it doesn't really do anything for your business, but that
couldn't be further from the truth. What other marketing or promotional
or advertising platform can achieve all of those goals with one little tiny
post for free.

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You don't have to spend a lot of money to be successful at social media.
It's really, really incredible. The very best [00:06:00] social media posts
cause people to fall in love with you and your business. They drive
traffic to your website where they can engage with you or buy. They get
people to share your content, which puts you in front of new eyes, and
they educate people about your business and your philosophy, which is
really another way of saying posts increase that know, like, and trust
factor so that people feel comfortable buying from you.
Now, don't worry, you don't have to get all of those elements in every
single social media post. It's pretty impossible to do everything with a
single post really, but these are all different things that social media
posts can achieve and you want to make sure that each post is working
toward at least one of these goals. It's driving traffic to your website, it's
helping your customers get to know you better or encouraging your
followers to share to help expand your audience. Each post should be
doing at least one of these things.
Remember, it's supposed to be fun. People are on social media to have
fun. They're not on there to read boring corporate bulletin type stuff. Be
conversational, be cheeky, be humorous. Those types of things do really
well. Social media posts should be the most informal of all of your
writing. Your social posts should really feel like a person talking about a
business. They shouldn't feel like advertising copy.
Usually for the most part, they should feel like what you would say if
you were just talking about your business with a person who is standing
right in front of you. The best post, instead of being like, "Super huge
tent sale, 50% off," it's more like if you called someone on the phone
and you're like, "Hey, we're having a big tent sale. We've got 50% off
everything. I know there were some stuff you were interested in, so
come on down." It's just that little bit of difference, making it more
personal and more conversational, that really works well on social
media. Think conversation instead of billboard-type copy.

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Why do bad social media posts happen [00:08:00] to good people? Well,
to be honest, the worst social media post is actually no social media post
at all. This is the number one cause of the bad return happening to good
people. Just no post at all or not nearly enough or consistent posting.
One of the worst sins that you can commit on social media is just not
posting. A lot of us complain that our numbers aren't growing fast
enough, but then we're not really that active on social media either.
Think about your own social media behavior again. If you find a
business that you're interested in and you go check out their Facebook
page, but it's totally dead. They haven't posted anything in six months or
a year, right there, you lose confidence in that business. You start to
think, "Maybe, this business isn't worth investing my time in."
Consistent regular posts are so important on social media.
People also tend to think that everything needs to be brilliant, and yes,
this course is called Social Brilliant, but that doesn't mean every single
social media post that you publish has to have some amazing, profound
thought about the universe. It's totally okay and encouraged to make
small talk. In fact, that's often what works best especially when you're
asking questions on social media.
We find that when questions are really, really simple and easy to answer
like, "What city do you live in?" Those types of questions get the best
engagement. If you ask people questions like, "What are your feelings
about string theory and the multiverse?" That's a little harder to answer
on social media. It doesn't have to be brilliant and profound. Remember,
social media should be more like talking to a friend who is sitting across
from you. Simple is most often better.
We also get into a habit or a groove, and we forget to mix up our social
media posts. We see a lot of social accounts that only have links to their
blog or they only have one type of content. They use their social media
account to push out a new blog post whenever they have one [00:10:00]
but they don't have anything else on their social media accounts, so it

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becomes very boring. You want to drive traffic to your blog but
remember, that's not the only purpose of social media, you have to mix it
up to build your social media success. Just posting about your blog or
posting one type of content becomes more like a feed than a true social
account that's communicating with your followers and teaching them to
know, like, and trust you.
We aren't conversational on social media and if we're too salesy or too
formal, it doesn't feel like we're actually talking to people on social
media, and that doesn't turn out well.
Another bad social media practice is we're either all business or we're no
business, and we find that people are often at one end of the spectrum or
the other so you can see which one you identify with more. There are
some people who are so promotional on their social media accounts that
you would never really want to follow that account because it just feels
like you're reading ad copy all the time.
You definitely want sales messages as part of your social media mix but
unless you're such a big fan of that product that you would follow an
account only to see when they have a sale, that's probably not that
compelling to most people. Other people go no business at all, where
they're so afraid to promote themselves on social media, and they're so
afraid to be too salesy that you would never even know that they have a
business because they never mention it on their social media accounts.
You should really be somewhere in the middle of those two. Talk to your
followers, but also make sure they know about your business and what
you offer.
When it comes to writing each of your social media posts, we want you
to start with the end goal in mind. What do you want each post to
achieve? And then write the post with that tone.
Here are a few examples. If you're writing an update about your product,
there might be a few different goals. You might be trying to drive traffic

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to that product, you might be trying to move people along the buying
process or maybe you're just [00:12:00] educating them more about that
product.
Another example would be if you're writing a words of wisdom sort of
post or something that's part of your philosophy, the goal of that type of
post is to encourage shares. People like to share words of wisdom or
humorous types of posts. The goal of those posts might be to increase
your know, like, and trust factor. It's important to keep the goal of each
post in mind when you're creating it, so that you can tailor the content to
achieve that goal.
How do you write really click or share worthy social media posts? Well,
remember what we learned about headline writing in the last video.
When you're trying to drive traffic to your blog, all of that applies to
social media posts as well.
In fact, just a headline alone often makes a really good social media
post. Go through that headline factory for your blog post, and then use
your extra headlines as social media content.
Curiosity wins every time. If you want to write a social media post that's
going to drive the most traffic to your blog use curiosity so that they just
can't not click, they have to click to see what your link's about.
We also want your social media posts to get shared. The posts are
driving traffic back to your website but then they also should be shared
so that you can get a larger audience to see them. That's a share on
Facebook or a retweet on Twitter. A save on Pinterest. These are
universal concepts throughout the social network when people are
passing along, not just your links, but the actual social media post itself.
People share posts that can stand alone, so a piece of advice or
inspiration that lives within one post will usually get good shares, and
I'll show you an example in just a second.

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People love funny or inspirational content. We find that these types of
posts get shares consistently. Think about your own behavior again.
When you're scrolling your own [00:14:00] social media feeds for fun, if
a post makes you laugh or really inspires you that kind of makes you
pause, right? You stop scrolling and you actually look at who posted it,
you think about who among your friends might appreciate the post, and
maybe you share it. Anything that gets your followers to stop scrolling
increases your know, like, and trust and increases the chance of getting
shares and clicks.
Now, I know you might think well is funny or inspirational, really
relevant to my business? That is something to consider. If you're just
sharing a bunch of funny stuff that has nothing to do with your business,
you might grow your social media audience, but will that audience be
likely to buy from you? And that's why you want to make it part of your
mix. It's not everything, but it is in there to grab people's attention, give
them a little happy boost in their day and then that associates that feeling
for them with your business, and those shares that the post generated get
your name in front of a bunch of new people, which is great.
Then it's time to mix it up again. Your next post should be a link back to
your blog or something about your product and so on. That's why the
mix of content is so important. All of those new followers that you got
from sharing that funny video, for example, well, if they're not actually
interested in your business, they'll just stop following you and that's fine.
If they are interested in your business, now you've harnessed that
audience and driven traffic back to your website to boost your business.
Here's an example post from a woman called Ali Brown and they've
gotten a ton of shares, 322 shares is a lot. It's basically this kind of
inspirational words of wisdom type posts. It says, "When your prayers
seem unanswered, when you're in the middle of chaos, and you can't
figure out how you're going to get to that next level, you choose to
believe, you choose joy, you choose peace, and that changes
everything." It's uplifting, it's inspirational, it's a short little nugget that

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you can send out to your audience and say this inspired me, I agree with
this. That's [00:16:00] what shares are a way of doing and what's so cool
about social media is that it's all public. You can see what's working for
people.
A lot of people on their blogs have that count of how often a blog post
has been shared on each network. You can go look through their blog
posts, and you can see what's succeeding and you can try to model some
of your content off of that. Or when you go look through posts on a
Facebook page, you can see which ones have a ton of shares and when
you're looking through Twitter, you can see which tweets have the most
retweets. You have all that data available to you for free. Start paying
attention. What are people sharing? Can you create the same type of
posts to mix into your strategy, but keep them relevant to your business?
Here's the big thing, don't be boring in your social media posts. Pretty
much any topic or social media posts can be made a bit more interesting
with a few tweaks. Something that we see a lot is people posting stuff
that just says read my new blog post and has a link to the blog. This is a
really generic way of telling people that you have new content on your
site and it takes no effort at all to write that post but it's also not
interesting at all and most people are going to scroll right past it. Let's
take that generic post and make it a bit more interesting.
Instead of “Read my blog post,” how about “Read my new blog posts on
cats?” Well, now you've at least interested people who like cats. Or how
about “Find out how I recently adopted 22 Tabby cats?” Or even better,
"Can you handle 22 Tabbies at once? The shocking story of one brave
man who did just that.”
These are all potential social media posts for the very same blog content.
Read my new blog post is probably going to get zero shares and the last
one about handling 22 Tabbies at once, that one is clearly going to get a
lot of shares because who can resist sharing that? Who can resist

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clicking on that? Why on earth [00:18:00] would someone adopt that
many cats at once? I have to know.
Spend just a little time making your posts a bit more interesting. Use that
headline factory that we talked about in the last video and just like we're
spending a little more time on our blog posts so that they actually get
shares, it's the same thing with your social media post. It’s that issue of
quality again. If you're going to take the time to write the post, make it a
quality post so that you get some shares, get some clicks, get some
engagement.
We want you to get out there and play around. Have fun with your social
media and try a bunch of different things. Again, it's social media, it's a
big content playground, it's supposed to be fun.
Try conveying the same message three different ways, and see what
interests people, see which one gets the most clicks, see which one gets
the most shares and which one doesn't. Take different angles of saying
the same thing.
At Edgar we call these variations and they are a great way for
pinpointing the type of content that works best for you and your
audience. Try mixing in images and videos, social media is very visual,
see what's grabbing people's attention, see what they like. Try posting
about the same blog post, but use an image for one variation and a link
preview for another, and a little video for the third.
Which one got the most engagement? Which one got the most shares?
How can you use that information to influence you as you create future
posts? The social networks change constantly so you should be trying
new things regularly. This is the stuff that can get really overwhelming
with social media where someone tells you, "You know what, on this
platform, if you put a picture with every post, a lot more people will see
it and it'll get shared more", and you're like, "Okay, I have to put pictures
on everything now."

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But that's not necessarily true. Most often, the networks don't actually
publish exactly what their algorithms favor. Just because your friend got
better results by putting an image on every last post doesn't mean
[00:20:00] you will too.
The networks are always updating and changing their algorithms. It's
just like Google where you're constantly getting new advice on what
things Google is ranking in their searches because Google is constantly
changing how it ranks things. That's really why we created this course
because what we're talking about here is the fundamental strategy of
social media so that you can really stop obsessing so much about, I'm
being told to do this thing this week but last week I was told to do this
thing, because all of that stuff is just extra.
That's why you want to pay attention to what's actually working for you
right now with your specific audience. Because maybe putting in a video
used to work, but maybe now videos aren't getting played as much.
Maybe videos aren't showing up as much. If you mix things up regularly
and post a variety of content types, you're much more likely to see
what's working for you and basing your content choices on the results
that you see on your social media accounts is always going to work
better for you than basing changes on whatever people are saying an
algorithm is doing this week.
You can also be a spy like we talked about. This is all public. Social
media is public. Notice what people are sharing, follow some Facebook
pages that have hundreds of thousands of likes, and notice what people
are sharing and what people are commenting on. Follow people on
Twitter that have huge audiences because with those big numbers, it
becomes really easy to see what’s succeeding and what isn't.
To sum up what we learned in this video, keep it conversational. Social
media is not a place for corporate bulletins, it's a place to be a human
talking about your business.

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We learned the three main purposes of social media posts. Those are
driving traffic, driving shares, and increasing your know, like, and trust
factor for your business.
Remember what you write in your post and publishing your posts
[00:22:00] consistently matters so much more than how you've set up
your social accounts. Stop playing with your cover image, stop playing
with your name, get a strong posting strategy together first.
In our next video, we're going to outline exactly how to fill up your
social media accounts with really, really compelling content and then
how to put the whole thing on autopilot in a really authentic way. Since
consistency is the key here, we want to make it super simple and doable
to have months and quarters and years worth of awesome social media
content that moves the needle for your business. I'll see you over there.
[00:22:39] [END OF AUDIO]

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