Social Brilliant, Video Six Transcript:

The Social Brilliant Master Plan

Welcome to the final video of Social Brilliant, where we're going to
discuss the Social Brilliant Master Plan. I'm Sarah with Team Edgar, and
I'm so glad you're here with us in this last video. We're going to wrap
everything up into the integrated Social Brilliant strategy so that you can
employ it in your business for social media marketing success.
Fundamentally, social media is social, which is talking to people, and
media, which is your content. When you boil it all down, it's just sharing
content and talking to people and that's pretty simple.
Social media should feel like a human talking about their business.
Think of social media like a marketing channel rather than an
advertising channel. You're telling people about your business, you're
marketing it but you're not posting ad copy. Even when you're doing
direct promotions for sales or products, like if you're having a 20% off
promotion for your product for example, phrase it in a way that you
actually sound like a human talking about their 20% off sale as opposed
to someone feeling like they're reading an ad that they might see in the
sidebar of a website or on a billboard.
You can and should promote on social media but talk like a human about
your promotions. That's how social media should feel, like it's a
conversation with your followers.
Let's take a look at our social media chart to review all the connections
and put it all together. The first thing to remember is that your home base
in social media is not your social accounts. It's your own website. That's
where we want to drive people back to because that's where the money
changes hands. That's where people can call you. That's where they can
find your address and come into your shop.

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Whatever your business is, your website is the face of your business,
where people can move along in the process of buying from you. On
your website lives your blog, and your blog exists so that people can
know, like, and trust you [00:02:00] and so that people have something
to share on social media. If you create great content for your blog,
people will share it. It's really unlikely that people are going to share
your 'contact' page or your 'about' page on social media but they will
share blog articles or podcasts or videos or graphics. They'll share your
content.
The next element we have is our social media posts which we're linking
to our blog. We're sharing words of wisdom, we're linking to other
people's content. Then those get shared by others so that more and more
people see them, and those shares and those posts link back to your blog.
Your blog leads people to these other parts of your website that really
drive your business. Your blog leads people to learn more about you, to
get on your e-mail list, to check out your products or services.
This is the whole social media ecosystem for business, and it's this
interconnected system that makes having a cohesive social media
marketing strategy like Social Brilliant so important.
With that picture of the social media marketing cycle in mind, we're
going to talk about some of the very common roadblocks that we see
businesses run into that keep them from achieving social media success
and how to defeat those roadblocks.
The first roadblock is “This will take way too much time.” We get this a
lot. “I don't have time for social media.” But if you have time to mess
around on social media at all then you have time to do it right. Let's get
real here. If you say you don't have time for social media but you're still
scrolling Facebook and Instagram or pinning things on Pinterest or
reading blogs, well, then, you do have time for social media.

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If you're thinking, "Oh, well, I do that but it's really not that much time.
It's just a few minutes here or there,” then we'd like to challenge you to
download a time tracker app on your computer and your phone and your
tablet. These apps will show you exactly how much time you're
spending doing different [00:04:00] tasks throughout your day and it's
almost guaranteed that you're spending a lot more time scrolling random
stuff on the internet and messing around with social media than you
think you do. If you have time for that then you have time to do it right.
Because when you employ a real strategy like Social Brilliant, it actually
takes less time and it's way more effective.
Start with what you can do and then add in more. Create only one really
awesome piece of content for your blog per month and post once a day
on social media to get started. It's way, way better than nothing and it
really is an excellent use of your time to grow your business.
We see a lot of business owners get scared by the whole process and
then they don't do anything at all. It is a new process and it definitely
feels challenging whenever you're looking to start something new, but
starting a business was challenging, right? This is just another process to
put in place that's going to grow your business.
We hear people say things like, "I want to blog but I would have to blog
every day and I could never do that right now. I'm just going to wait
until I have more time." But, you’re never going to have more time. New
things will always come up, so start right now. Start today, whatever you
have no matter how little that is because that's how you build this
audience over time.
None of us started with a huge audience. All those people that have a
huge backlog of content on their blog or their podcast or whatever
started out with just one post just like you. You have to build that over
time and the only way to do that is to start and to start now.

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Remember to treat social media as a marketing strategy. Social Brilliant
is a social media marketing strategy for businesses. When people tell us
they don't have time for social media, we always ask them, "Well, what
marketing strategies do you have time for? What marketing strategies
are you using [00:06:00] to grow your business?"
Because you have to market your business. Your business isn't going to
grow without you doing anything to make that happen.
If you're a bootstrapped business like Edgar is, if you're funding it
yourself, if you don't have a million dollars from investors in the bank
then you have to use social media to market. Social media is a free
marketing channel for your business. You have to view it as an integral
part of your overall marketing strategy. You have time to market your
business.
The next roadblock we see people telling us is, "I'm not a writer. How
am I going to do all this writing?" Well, a lot of social media is written
traditionally. You will have to write things, but that's not all you can do.
If you'd prefer to speak, make a podcast. If you like video, record
videos. If you like to design things, make graphics.
Ultimately, social media is about communication. Create content in a
way that you communicate best. That can be traditional blog articles or it
can be something else. You can put all kinds of content on your blog.
Even when you are writing you don't have to start from scratch. For
example, if you write a weekly e-mail newsletter then pull quotes from
that for your social media posts.
If you recorded a podcast then make a transcript of the podcast and use
excerpts from that for social media posts. If you appeared on someone
else's podcast, take note of the questions they asked you and ask your
followers those questions while linking back to the podcast. And of
course like we talked about, write multiple headlines for every single
piece of content you create. Headlines make great social media posts.

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Remember, we're compiling all of this in a library of social media posts
in an automation tool like Edgar. You can reuse these posts over time.
You can and should recycle your content and that's what those variations
and those headlines are all about [00:08:00]. Don't reinvent the wheel
every time.
Here's an important thing to remember, too. Even though this course is
called Social Brilliant, every single social media post does not have to be
brilliant. You're just a human talking about your business, so don't
overcomplicate things. Your social media posts don't have to look like
they were written by an award-winning author.
The next big roadblock that we see people run into all the time is, "I
can't keep up with all the new tools and tactics." Social media is a
constantly changing industry, but you really don't have to be on the
cutting edge of it to be successful at social media marketing. Get a solid
strategy in place, and then add on the latest and greatest thing after your
foundation is set and running on autopilot. This is why Edgar's founder
Laura Roeder created Social Brilliant and created Edgar in the first
place.
She found that people were so focused on the little tips and tricks and
details of every little algorithm change that they couldn't see the forest
for the trees. We see people focus on things like, "Should I post at 7:30
or 7:32? Do I have to do this specific thing on Twitter but something
totally different on Facebook?" Those things don't really matter if you
have no underlying strategy in place.
The tricks change constantly and they can be so hard to keep up with.
But you can be very, very successful on social media just by doing what
we've taught you in Social Brilliant without ever knowing which kind of
Facebook posts is getting the most attention this month or how much
white space to put in an Instagram graphic.

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People like to talk about those things because it's exciting. Everyone
likes to think they've got the system figured out and they're beating it.
Maybe you will get a little boost by following the latest trend but then it
changes next week and you have to start over. What's really important
and will help you get to a place where you have the capacity to try new
things and check out the latest fads [00:10:00] is establishing your
foundational Social Brilliant strategy. You have to put that in place.
Create content regularly, utilize automation, and post consistently first.
The next roadblock we see is, “I just can't handle all of this myself. I
can't do all the social media work by myself.” So, let's talk about the
stuff that you can easily outsource and what kind of skills the person
needs to do those jobs.
Well, pretty much anyone can load your social media content into a
scheduling tool like Edgar. Any kind of administrative assistant can take
your spreadsheets with all your social media content and load those into
Edgar. That's a really, really easy thing to have someone else do.
If you want someone else to create your blog content for you, or
translate your content into social media posts, they should be a
professional content creator. There are lots of great content marketers
out there. Thousands of people make their living blogging, and a lot
them are great writers or podcasters or video producers that can do this
kind of work. And, many of them are very affordable freelancers, but
you should be hiring someone who is experienced in content creation
and content marketing.
They can create content for you either from scratch, or you can have a
conversation with them about a topic and then they can create content
from that so that they're really capturing your voice. That's something
that Laura really likes to do. She’ll talk out an idea with someone on our
team, and then have them turn it into a fully fleshed out piece of content.

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You can also hire people to curate content for you from other sources.
They just need a good understanding of your company's voice. They can
find other people's content for you to share, they can find inspirational
quotes or funny content to share as long as the person understands the
personality and philosophy of your brand, then they can do this for you.
You can hire a freelancer or an intern or someone who really [00:12:00]
gets what your company is all about, but make sure that person's style
and personality are really in line with yours. Otherwise, they might post
things on social media that you would never really post. It's important to
have that match, but there are a lot of great freelancers out there that can
do this for you.
Going a step further as far as outsourcing and hiring staff goes, social
media and content management really is a whole career field. There are
lots of really smart and talented professionals out there that are
experienced growing social media accounts, and creating content for
company websites and blogs.
Several of our Edgar team members had backgrounds in freelancing or
working for other companies in social media management or content
creation before we hired them for Edgar. There are a lot of great writers
and content creators that will work for you either on a contract basis, or
you can hire them full-time if you have a budget for that, who can
manage this side of your marketing for you. The really important things
to remember when hiring someone is that you have to make sure they
have a deep understanding of your philosophy and your business'
personality.
Social media shows the world who you are, so you do need to watch it
carefully. We don't recommend that you just hire someone to write a
bunch of blog posts and social media posts for you, but then you never
really take a look at what they're doing or know what they're posting.
Content marketing, social media marketing is how customers form that
know, like, and trust. It really needs to reflect your business, honestly.

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It's not going to do you any good if people get one impression from your
social media accounts, but then they buy from you or they hire your
service and it's a totally different experience. That creates a mismatch in
your marketing and your sales process, and it doesn't create repeat
buyers. It doesn't create word of mouth recommendations. The owner of
the company doesn't have to be the one doing all the social media
themselves, but if someone has a conversation with the owner,
[00:14:00] and then they go on social media, or they go on your website,
it should feel like the same experience. From the first introduction to
your business, through that buying process, to repeat business, you want
it to feel seamless, and you want your philosophy and your personality
to be pervasive throughout.
Anyone you hire needs a thorough understanding of what you're all
about before you hand over the reins to your social media accounts or
your blog content.
If we had to boil our recommendations down into one pervasive theme,
it would be start where you are and do what you can. You can't go from
start to finish without running the race. You have to build things over
time. That's what Social Brilliant is all about. It's a strategy that's going
to help you build continuously. Let's go through the Social Brilliant
master plan step by step to really drive home what we've talked about
over the last five videos.
Step one, blog regularly and make it count. Always, always remember
that it's quality over quantity that's important. If you create one excellent
piece of blog content a month, that is going to get you much further than
publishing mediocre content every day or every week.
Step two, establish yourself on the number of networks that you can
manage and link to them incessantly. Stick to the big networks and stick
to one account per network. You don't have to jump on every new trendy
network right away.

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Establish yourself on the big networks and build from there and link to
your social accounts everywhere and repeatedly. Link to them on every
page of your website, in your e-mail signature, in every newsletter.
Cross-link to them on your social media posts so followers on one
network go and follow you on another. Anywhere you can think of, link
to your social accounts.
Step three, create your library of social media posts and aim for a goal of
posting three times a day, [00:16:00] five days a week. That's a great
solid goal to build to. Remember, we said start where you are and do
what you can. If you start posting just once a day, five days a week, that
will start to get you traction on social media, that will start to drive
traffic back to your website.
It's about consistency. Consistency is the key. Post consistently and build
as you go and eventually, you'll get to a point where your library of posts
is so big that you can easily post more often without it taking any extra
time. That's the power of this strategy.
Step four, use scheduling software like Edgar to publish your posts to
the social networks. Use those planning tools that you can download
from this course, create your content in your social media posts, and
then take the busy work out of it by automating with Edgar.
Then you can add in those live updates as you see fit. Respond to people
live, comment on things, share the cool new link you found on your
phone while you were waiting in line somewhere, share thoughts on
what's happening in your business right now. You can add that stuff in on
top of the content that you've already scheduled.
Finally, step five. Engage with others on your social networks to make
new friends and keep the old. Leave evidence behind that you were
there. This is super important. Reading blogs does not grow your
business, but making friends with people does. Engage with your
followers, respond to comments, share other people's content, reach out

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to people you follow and enjoy and go offline and talk to people
whenever you can.
Remember, everybody starts from zero, and this is the big thought we
want to leave you with. If you remember nothing else from this course,
every single business on social media started with no followers, no
clicks, and no blog content. Everyone starts at zero, but the more you
follow these steps, the easier it gets. Remember that snowball effect that
we discussed. [00:18:00] When you build up your audience on one
social network, they'll follow you to the next one.
With every piece of blog content that you create, you'll be adding more
social media posts to your library that you can share over and over
again. The more you follow the Social Brilliant strategy, the easier and
easier it gets.
Just get started. That's the hardest part of any new thing is to just get
started. Just do it. Go out there and be Social Brilliant. Create some great
content that you're really proud of, create some social media posts that
link back to that content that are going to drive people back to your
website.
Talk to people on social media, make friends, make it fun. The reason
that everyone on Team Edgar loves social media so much is because it's
incredibly effective. It drives tons of traffic, it builds your know, like,
and trust factor, but beyond that, social media is fun. It's fun to create
content that you're really proud of. It's fun to find funny stuff to share,
and inspirational quotes. It's really fun to see how people respond to
your content and to talk with people on social media. Have fun with this
and just get started.
Thank you so much for joining us for Social Brilliant. We can't wait to
hear about your social media success. Please, reach out to the Edgar
team with any questions, with comments, with success stories. We love

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to hear from you and we wish you all the best in your social media
journey.
[00:19:29] [END OF AUDIO]

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