7: GET SOCIAL

Social media mastery

Get primal, get fans, get paid

Be less curious about people and more curious about ideas.

— Marie Curie

Have you ever wondered why it's called a status update or even why social media is so addictive? It's because they appeal to a primal human instinct — to assert our status and establish our position in the social pecking order. Driven by the reptilian brain, our unconscious goals are to procreate and do what's needed to support ourselves and our families, and to continue our genetic line. Our supposedly evolved minds still respond to these primordial instincts. This compels us to share who we are with the world at large through the clothes we wear, the car we drive, the neighborhood we live in, the networks we surround ourselves with, the airline we fly with, the clubs we belong to, the restaurants we frequent, the music we listen to, the movies we watch and the partners we choose to nest with.

In addition to asserting ourselves in the traditional ‘tribal' sense in the real world, we've taken to the digital sphere to fulfil this most basic need for status assertion by posting external expressions of who we believe ourselves to be — online for the rest of the world to see. Even if you claim that you don't buy brand-name clothes because you don't believe in labels, you are still asserting your status and beliefs to your digital friends to help determine where you fit in your social network. It's inescapable. We all do it, consciously or not.

Social media is as addictive as crack for our generation. Its omnipresence provides us with a distribution platform to fulfil a basic primal need.

How often have you found yourself obsessed with the number of ‘likes' one of your updates has garnered, and the social acceptance it represents? It almost makes you feel sick just thinking about it. Could we really be this vain? Or could it be that we're simply not as evolved as we believe ourselves to be?

Whichever way you look at it, millions upon millions have flocked to these platforms to share their lives online. And, although these media will continue to evolve, our need to express ourselves through them in relation to both our daily lives and our businesses will only become more entrenched. Because of this we will continue to find opportunities to connect and share our messages with an ever-growing audience of like-minded individuals.

SSA — Status Seekers Anonymous

What we must understand in this newly shaped world is that just as you seek to express yourself through the brands, events, people and agents of influence you connect with as an extension of yourself, they too are seeking to express themselves through who you are as a brand. Are you akin to Coke or Pepsi, Lady Gaga or Madonna? Are you comparable to industry experts within your niche?

We must be aspirational and appeal to our customers' or clients' primal instincts to help them assert their status through association with us via our products and services and the messages we share to shape the world we live in. In knowing this we unlock the true essence of what social media marketing is — primal instinct on steroids. It is more critical than ever to differentiate ourselves online with a solid ‘personality' that helps us to stand out. Social media is as much about personality as it is about psychology — the two are intertwined. And the stronger the message you take to market, the more successful you will be.

The reality-show effect: why revealing ‘behind the scenes' will put money in your pocket

Reality shows have taken our TV channels by storm because they appeal to our desire to fit in and feel normal. Revealing ‘behind the scenes' information about your journey, the highs and lows (within reason), will garner more attention and in many cases more respect than remaining tight-lipped ever will. Reveal your flaws and watch your fan base support you — you've just connected with them in a way no one else has dared to do for fear of being judged. Don't lash out at others or provide ‘sensitive' personal information, but do allow them a peek behind the curtain, at the challenges you face in your life and industry. Many of you may have seen photos of me battling tiredness in juggling writing this book and filming for two TV shows. These types of posts always get a higher engagement level than those that are simply positive, because people can relate to struggle.

Social media has provided us not only with a way in which we can express ourselves, but with an expanding tool to grow our businesses, secure media coverage, attract high-paying speaking engagements, reach key influencers in typically hard-to-reach places, and share our knowledge and expertise in bite-sized chunks of information that have the capacity to go viral in a big way.

The question isn't whether or not you should be on social media — that's a given if your target market frequents any digital network (and you'll know which one to use after having done your research on your ideal prospect); it's how to use these networks to distribute your information in a way that leads to direct sales, an online following and greater connection with your audience.

Forget what you've been taught about social media and content marketing, because this will smash it to pieces so you can start anew and establish online interactions that yield a six- to seven-figure revenue. And now that you know how to plan, package and produce content by using the Matrix Strategy of Content Creation from chapter 4, it's time to extend your reach in various ways by creating articles, videos, status updates and images that build your brand and market your message to assert your status and build your following. True to the Flee 9 to 5 lifestyle, of course, all of these tasks can be outsourced. Let's look deeper.

The hub technique: make social pay

Social media platforms are a traffic faucet — when it's on, it's on, but when a major player turns off the supply or redirects the pipes, revenues drop within minutes. Constantly changing algorithms and evolving platforms can put businesses at risk. For social to truly pay, your website must become the major hub for your audience so they are channeled back to it each and every time — like a major airport, if you will. It doesn't matter which platform you are using to share content such as articles, videos and status updates; all paths must lead back to you and directly into your ascension marketing model. Your prospects can opt in with an email address to further qualify, and you can collect the data and leads you need to be a success.

Email marketing humiliates social media in the conversion stakes. Consumers who receive email marketing spend 83 per cent more when shopping, and average a return on investment (ROI) of $44.25 for every dollar spent. But where does this traffic come from? A mix of banner advertising and publicity, direct promotions to other people's lists and, of course, social media. Although the conversion rates may not be on the ‘front' end of this specific sales funnel, they certainly are on the back end.

Almost every social media post should in some way encourage users to go back to your website, where a purchase can be made and they can subscribe to receive future updates and promotions. This results in a higher quality list and higher future conversion rates, because users are being nurtured not only socially but via email and direct contact.

The reality is that Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Google+ or YouTube could change their algorithms at any moment, which in turn could dictate whether or not your social updates get seen in your fans' and followers' news feeds. The hub technique is like taking out an insurance policy on your future income. Social media platforms are just one of many channels in your ascension model and should never be relied upon solely.

Put your website at the centre of the social media universe simply by tagging a link back to it in 95 per cent or more of the posts you share online. If it goes viral, you'll benefit from the influx in traffic and subscribers. This is where the money is. Break these rules and you could go broke.

Although the network you use is important, what's also important is how you distribute your content throughout the various networks to gain fans and increase sales by creating momentum. I'll take a high-quality email list over a massive social-media fan base any day. And although I could delve into how to use each of these platforms now, you and I both know that that would be a futile exercise given the rate at which change occurs in social media. But what is even more important than the distribution network you use is how you choose to use it, because little changes can lead to big things.

The butterfly effect: distribute, share, shape

If a status update is posted online and nobody is around to read it, does it really exist? Surely for something to exist someone must have the ability to perceive it. Ideas need to be seen and heard and shared, and crafting these ideas into viral wins is much harder than many realise. With little tweaks along the way, though, you can create your own viral butterfly effect, by which small changes in one place result in large, often digitally instant differences somewhere else or some time down the track. And although different techniques are used on each platform, it always comes back to how you present your content, the type of content you share, when you post it, the frequency with which you share it, how you engage with and connect with your online audience, and the rate it grows.

There's a specific strategy that all agents of influence must follow to monetise their messages, and that is sharing extracts of their expertise with their target market through the social sphere. This is the content that upsells through your ascension marketing model before you even begin to worry about attracting fans, and that will make your competitors green with envy.

Take Elizabeth, for example. She has a ‘principal product' that she would like to sell outside of her enlightened launch and evergreen campaigns to attract daily sales. It's a how-to program on getting a promotion at work. To sell it via social media Elizabeth would create free articles of 600 to 800 words or a five- to ten-minute video that shares the same framework as the content creation system. Limited by the length of article and video, she shares key points of her program. At the end of the video or article she will make her segue, just as she did with her ‘introductory product': ‘And, of course if you would love to learn more, click here to learn x, y and z.'

Elizabeth would distribute her article or video via all social media channels relevant to her specific target market in order to first establish credibility and naturally upsell the principal product. In doing this she creates another way to generate a consistent stream of revenue and growing engagement. How this content is created is just as important as the social channels it is marketed through. This content marketing specifically uses social media to drive a fan base and sales outcomes from which it can continue to grow.

Become an online giant through content marketing

Content marketing follows four distinct steps:

To begin, list 20 how-to article or video ideas for each of your proposed products, then cull them back to your top 10. Create the content for each one, providing a few gold nuggets, but ensuring the bulk of the ‘gold' is to be sold in your primary product. Once your content is created it's time to distribute it, but before you do, arm yourself with product extracts — the next powerful component in your social media strategy.

Product extracts: one product, a thousand ways

Are you an industry leader? Prove it! Product extracts are simply a comment, sentence, thought or idea pulled from one of your primary products. For example:

The quickest way to grow your business in 30 days or less is by employing a series of strategic marketing campaigns that build your profile, your business and your profits. Go here to learn more …

You do not mention the product itself, but you do mention the tool offered — ‘marketing campaigns' in this example. The great thing about the extract technique is that you can pull countless extracts from your products and never feel like you're promoting it the same way as before, so you can re-engage people who may have previously tuned out your ads. This allows you to prove your worth as an industry leader by giving people tidbits that set you apart from everyone else in your field. Include the landing page URL at the end of each extract. The length of the extract will be determined by the platform you post it to — for example, Facebook and LinkedIn can cope with longer ones, whereas Twitter must have a condensed version. One sentence to one paragraph is ideal. By following this process you'll identify ‘breakaway' extracts that can later be used in advertising copy because they have been proven to work. This style is one of my favourites, because you can attract comments and create a conversation around the extract, instead of always pushing your products directly.

The biggest social media marketing mistake ever

This content will not only be used to upsell into your ascension marketing model and fill your funnel; when it measures up against my ‘engagement ruler', which I'll get to shortly, it will also be leveraged to attract a solid base of fans and followers who stalk your every move. But before I get to that, it's key to understand the biggest social media mistake everyone seems to make: promoting content via your channels only once!

There isn't one way to promote one product; there are thousands of ways, just as there are thousands of ways to promote an article or video via social media, particularly more than once on the same social media channels. Each piece of content, specifically articles and videos, should enjoy a solid campaign that aims to reach out to as many individuals as possible within that time frame to help attract more fans and prospects. This can be achieved in a number of ways:

• You can post a link to the content each day, Monday through Friday, but in different formats. For example, it can be posted with a quote from the article/video and a link to read/watch more.
• You can change the headline of the content to test and measure which one gets the greatest number of click-throughs back to your site, and rerun it periodically.
• You can post an image with the content or just promote it with plain text.
• Again, you can repurpose this content into different formats and re-release it at various times throughout the year to maximise its reach and your sales and minimise your workload.

It's critical to understand that our social media followings can grow by hundreds each day. These individuals won't be exposed to your older content unless you direct them to it. It gets lost and buried in the news feed. This is part of your social media schedule and can re-engage individuals who may have lost interest at some point. It can also be achieved by running Flashback Fridays or Throwback Thursdays intermittently throughout the year.

Take a look at this sample schedule of social media posts.

The 7-day social media posting cycle: how to create a social media schedule

Where many businesses fall flat is in relying on ad hoc efforts at engagement through their social media posts. A consistent schedule will ensure you attract and keep the engagement of your online following. It is critical to test and measure it to get the best result. Some markets will be more active at particular times of the day than at others. Using a tool such as Bitly (www.bit.ly.com) to track your website's specific URL hits via social media enables you to see which posts were better received than others, and when. Test the following:

• Morning vs afternoon and later posts. Re-post a link to an article in the middle of the night for your overseas audiences.
• Video vs articles.Test the different formats to see which one specifically appeals to your audience.
• Platform effectiveness.Compare Google+,Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn and more. Be sure to research Google+, as its relevance in ranking your website will be critical in the digital world in the coming years.
• Conversion rates. Each platform will result in different conversion rates. Test it, track it and rework your campaigns to continually increase your sales and profit margins.

Begin by mapping out a seven-day schedule using the suggestions in table 7.1 (overleaf), knowing that by outsourcing to a copywriter this process can suddenly become easy and seamless.

Table 7.1: the 7-day social media posting cycle (example)

Visit www.benangel.com.au/flee9-5 for a downloadable template to fill out.

As you can see, in the example in table 7.1 there are 17 posts within a seven-day period that engage your audience using different media and styles of communication — all of which can be scheduled in advance using a VA. Ideally, use as many of your own quotes as possible, not other people's thoughts. We want your channel to be ‘clean', focusing on the core messages you share with your audience to help you lead your tribe and achieve success.

Lead the tribe or get lost in the news feed

A tribe is a group of people connected to one another, connected to a leader, and connected to an idea. For millions of years, human beings have been part of one tribe or another. A group needs only two things to be a tribe: a shared interest and a way to communicate.

— Seth Godin, Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us

Social media has given us the capacity to be the master of our tribe from anywhere in the world, and being that master means one thing and one thing only — you must lead it. But before you can lead you must cultivate your tribe of online followers by learning how to successfully engage them. Without this engagement any effort to build your fan base will be in vain, which is why engagement is the first critical step and attracting fans is the second. If you already have a tribe, these strategies will help you push past any plateau in growth you may have experienced of late and immediately attract more fans to your media pages. And if you're just getting started, you'll have an unbeatable strategy with which to arm yourself.

We lead our tribes by using the engagement ruler as our guide.

Going viral with the social media engagement ruler (ER)

For successful engagement we need the ability to stir emotion and inspire thought, and, most importantly, to incite action. If we can't do this, we miss the mark and our reach is far from what we need it to be. This applies not only to social media, but to all the content you create and the conversations you have. When creating content, measure it on the ER to test how effective it will be online and whether or not it has the ability to go viral.

Content can be classified into three types: conflict, neutrality and elation. Let's take a look at each one.

ER #1: Conflict

Creating inner conflict in social media can have massive payoffs, particularly when it is centred on your topic. Conflict can be achieved by discussing the ‘elephant in the room' — the subject that no other agents want to touch because it's too controversial. When handled well, however, opening up these subjects to social media scrutiny can immediately polarise your audience and allow you to solidify and lead a tribe of loyal followers while the others fall by the wayside. Think now of the ‘elephant in the room' in your industry, the topic that no one wants to discuss, yet if you did, it could transform lives. For example:

• Is depression a ‘choice' or is it a chemical imbalance?
• Which weight loss programs can create a health risk?

To be recognised as an agent you must have a firm opinion. Not everyone is going to agree with you. Thankfully that's not the goal, or we would never be able to generate conversations that provoke change in the world. Find out what your audience's greatest fears, needs and wants are, and discuss them openly. This could even spawn a new product category and fill a void within your niche. Propose it in the form of questions, opinions, articles and videos, and watch the conversation spark on your fan pages. This point on the engagement ruler is massively viral and can help to attract international media coverage.

ER #2: Neutrality

In the middle of the ER is neutrality. Neutral engagement has little to no impact. It doesn't compel, nor does it conflict — it just is. This style of content may garner ‘likes', but it is highly unlikely to go viral or get shared. While this may present solid educational value, it will not compel people to take action to follow your social media pages or sign up on your website. Still, it is a necessary part of the mix of content posted.

ER #3: Elation

Passion is a fantastic driving force to get people to like, share and buy. Show your passion to create elation through your status updates, articles and videos. Add your personality to the mix to lift it up to an entirely new level, one that your competitors can't compete with. You're presenting the same information but saying it in a new and refreshing way that makes you aspirational and appeals to our primal instincts.

Getting the right mix

Great (not good) social media posts oscillate between these three points on the spectrum. The trick is to strategically pick which one you will use at any given time, thereby optimising your social reach. Next time you see a quote, picture or video being shared online, see if you can pick at which point on the ER that engagement sits and why it has or has not been successful. By observing, you will begin to adapt your social media marketing style in a direction that ensures you will build a massive online following.

Test your content now against the engagement ruler illustrated in table 7.2. Where would your most recent social media status update sit, even if you simply shared someone else's post?

Table 7.2: the engagement ruler (ER)

Engage your tribe and your tribe will engage your services.

The strategy: move fast, move often and move minds

Now you are clear on how to engage a fan base, it's time to attract and build one. I'll now share with you strategies that will stand the test of time and the impact of any new platform the IT gods decide to throw at us in the coming years. You'll want to adapt each of these strategies in varying ways and at various times, depending on your focus after you have filled out the 3X Customer Formula (see p. 51), located which channels your prospects frequent and set up your social media pages. But I'll now present the essence of each. This will also help you overcome any social media inertia you might experience.

This is key in attracting a new fan base and re-igniting an existing one. You don't have to be the first to market in your industry. In fact, being first is rarely a good idea, because you have to run a major campaign to first educate people about your new niche and then ‘sell' them on the concept. But you do have to have a consistent presence, which can be fully automated by your VAs.

Step 1 is to set up the social media pages you would like to focus on now and throw your full weight behind each one; step 2 is to run campaigns such as these to attract your tribe:

• Existing networks. After you have encouraged your existing professional and personal networks to opt into your hub, invite them to your social channels. Send a minimum of three invitations to each one.
• External networks. Ask your existing network to send an invitation to their networks to extend your reach. Offer a prize for the most referrals (or new fans, followers or subscribers) to your social channels.
• Social media cross-promotion. Partner up with businesses that offer products and services that are complementary to yours. Send out emails to one another's social channels and email lists encouraging one another's networks to become fans. Once again, offer some kind of incentive — for example, the 500th person to ‘like' your page will receive a copy of your book or primary product.
• Run a competition. On sites such as Facebook you can run competitions using third-party apps that encourage people to become a fan and share the competition details in order to win a prize. Generally speaking, a game of skill (that is, where people submit an entry and you judge the winner) is easier and cheaper to run than a game of chance (that is, a random draw). This is because in some places (such as NSW in Australia for example) a government permit is required to run a competition that involves a random draw. Check the legal rules that might be applicable to the competition you wish to run before you run it. Also check the relevant terms and conditions on the social media channel to ensure you adhere to their policies.
• Nominate your local hero competition. Leverage not only social media but mainstream media to nominate a ‘local hero' who deserves to win one of your products. This can create an enormous amount of goodwill on your channel.
• Run a 72-hour Q&A session on your Facebook feed. This is one of my favourite strategies. I will answer as many questions as I can on a specific topic within the defined time. Promote this to your email list and through your other networks, sending them directly to the post where they can put their question. Offer sample questions for them to ask. You'll find the questions you are asked can be adapted into other content that can be featured later. It also offers a fantastic opportunity to upsell your products. A recent one I ran attracted over 100 comments within three days and resulted in direct sales.
• Hit Like/Share/Hashtag posts. Depending on our personal settings, generally when we like, share or hashtag a social media post, that information is shared to our personal and/or professional networks, thus reaching a larger audience. Run a post such as: ‘Hit Like if you're excited about the weekend'. This formula can be used in various formats (‘Hit Share if you love social media', and so on). Encourage people to engage and they'll be more likely to like, share or hashtag future posts.
• Use events to drive fans. Use actual events, as Gaga did (see p. 123), to drive fans to your social media pages. This could be a Google+ hangout session, webinar, live speaking engagement or publicity expo. Tie in a competition to social media to reach more prospects and drive them online.

You will have noticed that I have left advertising directly to fans off this list. Why? Because, as we've discussed, as much as possible they need to go straight to your hub and then on to social media to help speed up cash flow and increase profits. This is always objective number one. Objective number two is to increase your fan base, leveraging their networks on social media using a mix of the strategies outlined — a winning combination if ever there was one.

Set, but don't forget

Lastly, but most importantly, although you will have established your social media schedule, maybe outsourced the production of the specific content to a skilled copywriter and got a VA to schedule your updates to appear automatically, you will still need to check in and proactively engage with the interactions that occur. This will help you keep your finger on the pulse and immediately respond to any queries or challenges that come up, or assign a team member to manage them.

These strategies are designed to monetise social media in a way few companies have been able to achieve in recent years. For updates on specific training programs on any of the platforms mentioned in this chapter, you know the drill: visit www.benangel.com.au/flee9-5.

Now it's time to go back to New York — to uncover how to create international reach in innovative ways.

Tips and resources

A good email marketing campaign is far more profitable than a massive social media fan base, but with careful, strategic content marketing you can build a social media following that will keep your sales funnel filled indefinitely.

Your website must become the major hub for your audience so they are channeled back to it every time; all paths must lead back directly to your ascension marketing model.

Cultivate your tribe of online followers by learning how to successfully engage them using the engagement ruler — then lead them.

Visit www.benangel.com.au/flee9-5 for a downloadable template of the 7-day social media posting cycle, and for updates on specific training programs on any of the platforms mentioned in this chapter.

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