The sea we call social media can be deep and wide. All most of us can do is tread water and hope to stay afloat. It doesn’t have to be this way. That's why we've got Mark Galvin from ePresence, LLC with us. He is going to share some social media optimization and growth tips you don’t want to miss.
Join Mark Galvin and Tim Fitzpatrick for this week’s episode of The Rialto Marketing Podcast!
Watch This Episode
Listen To The Podcast
Subscribe To The Podcast
Read The Transcript Here
Podcast Transcription
Social Media Optimization & Growth Secrets
Tim Fitzpatrick
The sea we call social media can be deep and wide. I thought most of us can do to tread water and just hope that we stay afloat, but it doesn't have to be this way. I have a special guest with me today, and we are going to dig into all things social media optimization. And he's got some fantastic growth tips for you guys. So please stay tuned. I am Tim Fitzpatrick with Rialto Marketing, where we believe marketing shouldn't be difficult. All you need is the right plan. Thank you so much for taking the time to tune in. I am really excited to have with me Mark Galvin, my good friend here from ePresence. Mark, welcome, and thanks for taking the time.
Mark Galvin
Tim, I, you know I'm a little shocked that you would like, you know me so well that you brought me on the show. I'm a little surprised. Right? I know some you know where some of your you know, your darkest secrets. Actually, I don't, but.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah. Who knows. Maybe it was a lapse in judgment, but we're going to have fun anyways.
Mark Galvin
We're going to find out.
Tim Fitzpatrick
So before we get into social media, which people are always willing to to listen to social media tips and tricks, I want to ask you some rapid fire questions. Help people get to know you a little bit. Are you prepared for this?
Mark Galvin
I studied. Let's do this.
Tim Fitzpatrick
All right, man. When you're not working, how do you like to spend your time?
Mark Galvin
So I really like to go hiking. Every Saturday, my wife and I go find a place to go be at the North Georgia mountains or even locally here in the Atlanta area. A good hour-long ish hike where we get a lot of great exercise and see the outdoors.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Love it. What's your hidden talent?
Mark Galvin
Reading scripts, so do a lot of work in Atlanta and a networking group where I show up and I have to, I thought I'm good everything. So this weekend was my office. Anyway, I have to read a script and I'm there on behalf of someone else. And I get people to call me back and say, "Hey, I need you to do this again for me, because you read that better than anyone else." I have no idea.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Maybe you should be doing voiceover work or something.
Mark Galvin
I hear there's no money in that, frankly, but maybe I like but like I'm getting all anyway.
Tim Fitzpatrick
That's good. What's the best piece of advice you've ever been given.
Mark Galvin
So, 100%, the best thing I've ever been told is to make sure you show up acting like you are in the role you want, so never walk into a company, a position, or an organization acting like and just settling into your current role and not looking forward. When you look forward, you start acting like that person that you want to be that position. And what happens is the your peers, your bosses see you as someone that could take up that new role. So you're you're quicker to get promoted.
Tim Fitzpatrick
What's one thing about you that surprises people?
Mark Galvin
So I'm a third-generation Atlantan and that doesn't sound. It sounds interesting, especially because Atlanta is growing like crazy, but it's the reason I'm a third-generation Atlantan, and that's because my grandfather was a journeyman in baseball and he came to Atlanta playing in the minor leagues and was the catcher for the Atlanta crackers. And what's interesting is a lot of people hear that term crackers and it has a little bit of a derogatory term today, but it comes from the word firecracker. So they were a baseball team and named after firecrackers. My iPad is make that noise. So he came, loved Atlanta, he was an Irish Catholic from Boston, so he packed the car, will move to Atlanta in the middle of the south. And my dad was born here. And then there's my generation.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Nice. What does success mean to you?
Mark Galvin
Yeah, you know, success is I really do see it as personal. And if you are building your family, building the people around you that you love and that love you and you support them, and when there's a family event, everybody wants to be there. That's success.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Where's your happy place?
Mark Galvin
Yeah, it would. It's outside, you name it, wherever that is outside. My wife and I were at a local lake a couple of weekends ago and we went out and sat on the dock and we watched a thunderstorm come in and watching the clouds and then how the rain was rolling in was just absolutely terrific. I was mesmerized. So, yeah, definitely outside, whatever that looks like. My wife and I went for a hike this weekend in North Carolina and I found myself taking pictures all along this three and a half mile hike through a pretty strenuous hike at that through the mountains. And it's just awesome. So I really enjoy that.
Tim Fitzpatrick
We'll have to get you out to Colorado then.
Mark Galvin
I love my wife and I've been in Colorado a few times. And every time we go, we have to go for a hike. Just yeah, you're beautiful. You're in God's country Without a doubt.
Tim Fitzpatrick
There's no shortage of places to hike, that's for sure. What qualities do you value in the people you spend time with?
Mark Galvin
Yeah, the number one quality is a sense of humor. I am attracted to people who can laugh. Oh, my gosh. Because life is just too short. Oh, I got off on my iPad. Life's just too short and I'm constantly battling the, you know, the struggles that we all deal with in life, if you can laugh. Life is, oh, so much better. So my iPad is connected to the Internet. And of course it is. I'm getting a text message and my text messages are going on my iPad, so I got to go. Sorry, I did. I sized my phone.
Tim Fitzpatrick
That's a rookie mistake. Mr. Galvin.
Mark Galvin
Forgot to say. There we go. All right. So anyway. Yeah, that. So that's it.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Awesome. So before we jump into social media, tell us more about what your types of clients are working with, what you're doing at ePresence.
Mark Galvin
Yeah. So ePresence is a full-service social media agency, which means that we help companies get on social and get active, connect to their client base, connect to their target audience, whatever that is. And it's consulting and it's training all of those things we offer. But we also offer personal social media management. And here's why. You have organizations that have they're doing great on social. They are working those company channels, they're building landing pages to go with advertising on and on and all that great stuff. But their executive team is dormant on social media. And we were talking to a COO last week, as a matter of fact, one of our clients from a major bank in Atlanta and the COO said the value that we bring helps him communicate to his employees. And he was surprised how often over the years he'd have staff members walk up and say, "Hey, I saw that post on LinkedIn. Hey, I saw that what you shared on Twitter. That was interesting. Thank you for sharing that." And he's found that it's it does share his personal beliefs, what he's interested in, like management techniques. How do you want to manage people? What's important to you in management? You can share that on your LinkedIn profile on Twitter. I always think you should push everything to Twitter because that's where all the journalists are and a journalist could pick up something and call and say, "Hey, I'd like to talk to you about that post." So always push stuff to Twitter, sharing that content as an individual in addition to complimenting, if you will, the company channel is so important. Well, we help people do that. We're unique in that that we're positioned to help out individual executives, support the company message so we can drive the company page, and then pull content from that company page to push onto the individuals page so that it is a full cohesive message where you're hitting all pieces of your audience. You're the people that want to follow the company. Great. They're following it, but they're also following those executives. So President, VPs, marketing officers and so on, COOs, CEOs, someone, they all need to be active on their social. We manage all that, create all the securities that go with managing a personal profile.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah, I don't know anybody else that's doing that, that side of it. So that's it's a very unique twist to it. But I can see how leveraging especially, you know, management, social profiles, their personal profiles can really help drive everything in the right direction.
Mark Galvin
Absolutely. And recently there's a hotel general manager at a five-star five-diamond resort in Napa Valley. And he recently called us and he's just so amazed at the reach he's getting on his social media account. And he was someone he was a naysayer like as well as I'll do this whatever and have the hotel pay for it. And so we started this work and now he's amazed. He goes to Chambers of Commerce meetings and people are commenting about what he's sharing. So you can definitely widen your reach and turn up the volume on what's important to you.
The Most Important Part of Your LinkedIn Profile
Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah, I love it. So let's talk about LinkedIn. For those of us that are in business, in the business-to-business space, the vast majority of us have got to be on LinkedIn. What's the most important part of of a LinkedIn profile?
Mark Galvin
You know. So, Tim, are you going to in-person meetings yet?
Tim Fitzpatrick
No. No.
Mark Galvin
Unbelievable.
Tim Fitzpatrick
I don't like it.
Mark Galvin
When you did.
Tim Fitzpatrick
When I did. Here's the thing. Here's one thing about me that surprises people. I'm more of an introvert. I would rather.
Mark Galvin
I obviously didn't know that.
Tim Fitzpatrick
I would rather not go to in-person meetings if I don't have to.
Mark Galvin
You'd rather just not see people?
Tim Fitzpatrick
I would rather. I mean, I like to interact with the right people. So, yeah. So, yeah, I think something I'm not going in-person meeting. So what's how tell me how this relates to my LinkedIn profile?
Mark Galvin
When you do. Exactly. Come back, reel me back in. So, when you are going to an in-person meeting. How important is it to dress the right way? How important is it to comb your hair? How important is all that?
Tim Fitzpatrick
I would say it's pretty important because first impressions are lasting.
Mark Galvin
Absolutely. So you've just answered the question on what's the most important part of your LinkedIn profile? It's your profile picture, because when I walk up and meet you face to face, I walk up, I shake your hand, I look you in the eye. And I and we are doing in-person meetings in Atlanta. I've been to a lot of them and people are still shaking hands. There's that pause. There's like that. Not a pregnant pause or sort of the you know, you start you throw out the hand, you know, and I've seen this, maybe not, but most people are absolutely shaking hands, shaking hands and looking at people in the eye is so important. Why? It's the personal connection. Your profile picture is the most important part of your LinkedIn profile, because that's how people connect to you and we connect to people still as human beings. So I would encourage everyone on your LinkedIn profile, make sure you've got to do your security settings and you're showing your profile picture. Now everybody has reasons. There are some people who have very good reasons not to share their profile pictures to people who they're not connected with. And I'm not going to question that because those are very good, valid. If you haven't thought about it or you have no reason not to share your profile picture, share it because people connect with people and allow people to connect with you.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Is there any tips about, like, the type of photo, right? I mean, like we don't want to like a prison booking shot here, or a driver's license photo.
Mark Galvin
Right. So, yeah, you know, the thing that's important is there's a lot more to say about what you shouldn't do than what you should. So don't crop your spouse, don't crop your dog, don't crop coworkers out of a picture. Even if you think it's a great picture of you, you need to have a profile picture that's just you. So I encourage you to get something where you have a professional photographer taking your picture with a background that supports what you're doing. And it may be a flat background. It may be a background that is out of focus. You definitely want something out of focus so it doesn't distract. But I want to make sure you are looking at the camera that people can see your eyes because your eyes are the most important. So if you're like me and when you smile, your eyes get smaller, you need to make sure that pictures cropped a little closer. You need to make sure that your face is really well lit. There are some that and I've got a couple of lights in my office, but I could probably create that effect where only one side of my face was lit. You don't want that. You want to make sure that we can see your face because again, it's just human. That's what we do to connect. Now, the other thing that's important is what if you've got a bunch of these profile pictures, you're not sure which one is best. I love this website called Photo Feeler dot com. P-H-O-T-O F-E-E-L-E-R dot com. Photo Feeler dot com is a crowdsourced site. You can drop in a picture. Random people will drop in and say your picture and you have it. There's a business component. So you want to say that they'll rate you on confidence, likability, and influence. And it's a scale of one to three. So you want to scale in the highest part. And that's how you can determine which picture is the best from people who don't know you. Because Tim, I'm going to say if you sent me your profile picture, say, "Hey, Mark, what do you think?" I may be a little reticent to tell you the truth, because your a friend and you know, I don't want you to think I'm a jerk.
Tim Fitzpatrick
So Photo Feeler dot com.
Mark Galvin
That's right. Photo Feeler dot com. They'll tell you when you have a bad picture,
Tim Fitzpatrick
that is that's an awesome piece of advice. I wrote that down because I've never heard of that.
Mark Galvin
Cool.
Tim Fitzpatrick
So let's dig a little bit more into LinkedIn. And this is a fantastic tip because I think a lot of people overlook their profile picture. I find myself doing it sometimes where I get connection, like if I get a connection request and they don't have a photo, I don't connect and I connect with anybody. So if you don't have a good if you don't have a photo on there, it's like that I'm like, "Who the hell is this person? I have no fucking idea." So I think a lot of people overlook that. So I think it's a fantastic piece of advice. Are there any other things, tips or trends that you're seeing on LinkedIn in particular?
Mark Galvin
So, yeah, there are some trends. Number one is LinkedIn, when we all heard about it originally, it was OK, go there to get a job. It was kind of like an extension of a job-hunting site. Now there's still a healthy component of that without a doubt. If you're looking for a job, you need to make sure your LinkedIn profile is built out, but outside of that, LinkedIn is becoming the business database. If I'm looking for someone that I need help, I'm going to go to LinkedIn and I'm searching for that type. I need a bookkeeper. I'm going to go to LinkedIn to look into. Do I know any bookkeepers on LinkedIn? Also, remember, when you do a search on LinkedIn, it automatically defaults to the second level connections. So it's not going to show your primary and LinkedIn the same, if you're searching for somebody in a career field, you probably are not looking for someone that you already know. So you can switch that, go to the settings on the search and you can say, I want my first level connections, but you're always going at the second level. The reason this is happening, there's I think the numbers around seven hundred sixty million people on LinkedIn. We really do need a good business database, right? If I'm looking for a marketing person in Atlanta, I should be able to go to LinkedIn to find someone who's there, who I can see something about. And this is why it's a great business database. When I land there and I lamb on Tim Fitzpatrick and I see what he's doing and I can see the work you do and I can see some of the samples, it's like it's a digital portfolio of your work, so I can see that content. Have to go ask for it and I could go to your website, but there's something special and I really do mean that there's something special about going into LinkedIn, being able to see you on LinkedIn and see the work that you've done that you personally, you personally have put there. So it's a business database. That trend is only going to expand and the more we see it that way, the more we'll value people can find us and we will be optimizing it so that people can find. It's much like you optimize a website, your LinkedIn profile can be optimized so people can find you.
PUSH THROUGH YOUR REVENUE ROADBLOCKS!
Get the outside eyes and feedback you need to get on the right path with your marketing.
Gain clarity and understanding. You'll leave your discovery call knowing where to focus your marketing efforts right now to get the best return on your investment.
How to Get Better Results with Social Media
Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah, awesome. I love it. So social media in general, I think there are a lot of business owners who are like, "Oh my God, why? I don't want to do this." Why should we really be looking at social media to grow our business?
Mark Galvin
This is good. I think before I answer that, I think it's also I think it's important to distinguish the difference between social media and SEO, because it is all marketing and I consider it all spokes on the wheel. So here's a good example. Should you have a website? Yes. Now a website when you start off is it's rather passive, right? You build a website and it's not it's kind of like a field of dreams. You build it, you hope they will come. But that's not really the case. You build the website and it's kind of like your bookend it's your online brochure. Great. Once you've done that, you've got to drive people to the website. How do you do that? Well, that's through SEO. And SEO is if I'm searching for a marketer, you hopefully will appear in that search and I'll go to your website, so that's good. But notice what just happened that's SEO. I went searching for a marketer. And when I did that, I went to your you showed up and I went to your website. That is very important again it's a spoke on the wheel. Social media can do that, but social media is a better place to see as a long term relationship build, because if I'm a target of yours and I'm looking at your I'm connected to you on LinkedIn and you start appearing in my feed, well, maybe I'm not ready to buy today, right? Maybe I'm not quite ready to call you and say I need your help but I'm interested. Maybe I not even search for you on your SEO and I found your website, but I see the Facebook button or I see the LinkedIn button. I click on it and I follow your page. Now you're showing up in my feed as I slowly mature along my journey to where I'm ready to buy, you're on my mind. That's the value of social media. It helps you stay connected to your target audience and building credibility. And there's so many things that happen through a social media what through what you share. And I will also tell you it can hurt you, right? There's a realtor that I've seen recently that was sharing political content on Facebook. I wouldn't do that. Unless you don't want to work with the opposite party, I wouldn't share that content on Facebook because that is hurting that brand. So we always say never share anything about politics, sex, or religion unless you're in the business of politics, sex, or religion, right? So stay away from those because you are slowly building it. So why should somebody use social media to grow your business? It's because it's a spoke on the wheel where you can continually influence your audience by reminding them that you're there and what you do and that you're a subject matter expert. Super important.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah. So you can attract new people with social, but where social really shines is building that ongoing relationship. Continuing to stay in front of your audience.
Mark Galvin
That's absolutely right. And I'm answering this question for the perspective of why should I use it to grow. So that's the platforms of sharing content. Don't forget, there's the targeted ad spend on social, which will allow you to target that specific audience. Again, that's the there you are pulling them in. On SEO you push content to the people that are interested. OK, "Hey, they've already they self-identified. I'm interested in marketing." Great. Here's content for you, right? So the self identification you want to be. That's brilliant. It's great. Yes. Check. Make sure you do that. But on social you're kind of pulling them because you're "Hey, here's what we do. Here's another reminder of what we do. Let me remind you, this is what we do." And there's a great there's a great way to do that. There's bad ways to do it. But let's just keep that simple. And then you can also throw in the hook with an ad where you're reaching people you're not connected to. People who are not following you. That's right. If you're not if someone does it following you, the only way they see your post is if someone in their network shares it or someone or there's a hashtag search that you'll show up in a hashtag search. I may be missing one, but you get the point to reach people that you're not connected with, you should spend money on ads and then you can reach that target audience in LinkedIn in Facebook in Twitter. They know who your target audience is. Go and tease out, build up, build your target audience and you can speak specifically to them.
Tim Fitzpatrick
What do you think is the easiest way for somebody to get a business owner to get started with social media?
Mark Galvin
Dip a toe in the water. I mean, it sounds like I mean, that tongue in cheek, but it's true. There's a home renovation company in Atlanta, and they asked me that a question, "How do we start?" I said by starting. Build a page. Go to your website. Borrow content from your website, make your page look like your website. You don't have to rewrite everything, just grab that stuff. Build a page, and then just start sharing content that supports your mission. What's your mission? Your mission is what do you do every day that you find boring other people find interesting? One of my favorite things to do is to grab a pad. I have a little yellow pad here that has nothing on it but little yellow pad, put it by your phone. When someone calls you and asks you a question, "Hey, Tim, how do I?" and I keep using you as an example if you don't mind.
Tim Fitzpatrick
That's OK.
Mark Galvin
"Hey, how do I do a good email campaign." Well you go to your pad, you write email campaigns. Well now you have content to share because people are calling you and they're asking you, you're writing it out. Email campaigns, branding, website development, blah, blah. You know, now you've got all these. Go say something once a week. That's it. Just once a week. Say something. That's how you start and then you're building that following. The following is important. Start off with your current clientele, starting with people you know, ask them to follow you. There are ways to do that on all the platforms. Harness that. Start to build your voice and then you'll find you will start to learn that the things like LinkedIn, you want to post on Tuesdays and Thursdays, Tuesdays at seven, Thursdays at seven or noon. Basically, it's a seven a.m. post and noon. And I am looking at my notes, you can see or between five and six. Those are the best time for LinkedIn, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. So you got to be all over LinkedIn, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays. Facebook. Well, Facebook is really poppin Thursday, Friday and Saturday, and Sunday. Notice that in an interesting, right? Focus, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday on LinkedIn, Friday, Saturday and Sunday, focus on Facebook sharing and share the same content or both. So whatever you're posting on Thursday, push to Facebook on Friday. But just start sharing content and then once you have your little list of stuff, people ask you, your set. Then you can nuance it. Then you start to build a content calendar, then you start to develop what is my branding look like? How do I make sure my brand looks the right way? How do I make sure I look consistent? What about Instagram? Answer, I would do this, I'd go to Facebook and link to it, because everybody's watching is either their audience is either LinkedIn or Facebook, you can probably check that off. That's kind of that's the segment depending on where you are. Start their build a little following, build a little momentum, if you will, and then you can start to do this.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah. So I want to pull something out because I think this is important. You said start on Facebook and or LinkedIn. One of the things I see people doing is that where they run into problems is they try to be everywhere at once. And let's like you said, dip your toe in the water, get good at Facebook, get good at LinkedIn, then you can start to expand out from there. But don't bite off more than you can chew.
Mark Galvin
I'll take it one step further. If you do the research and which is smart, you're saying, "OK, how am I going to start this, where I'm going, where am I going to go?" You're going to be tempted to subscribe to a social media aggregator like HootSuite, which will post on multiple places at once. Don't start that way. Start off going natively to Facebook and posting or natively to LinkedIn and posting and learn that sort of cadence and learn what works inside the platform before you back out where you're using like a HootSuite. We use Social Pilot to post across multiple platforms. And we can post a to LinkedIn, to Twitter, to Instagram, to Facebook all at one time, scheduling it at different times. Yeah. That's great. Why start off that way. Start off just on one platform, figure it out and then expand it out. And here's something else. Don't hire somebody to do this until you've done it, until you have played around with that and doing it. And I'm not talk about once a week, just once a week, post something, then go find somebody. Say, now I've got a better sense of where I should be heading.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Anybody has time to post once a week.
Mark Galvin
Once a week, you start there.
Tim Fitzpatrick
So one of the things you touched on was followers. Should I hire a company to grow my followers on any of the platforms? And let's take a step back too and just talk about what we mean by this. So there are companies out there that strictly focus on getting more followers, correct?
Mark Galvin
Right, right. And we've heard from you guys have all heard from them. I bet. "Hey, would you like more followers on Facebook? I guarantee we'll get you a ten thousand followers in a week."
Tim Fitzpatrick
Yes.
Mark Galvin
So. I will guarantee that company that's doing that is going to guarantee you 10000 fake followers in a week. What does that mean? That means they have ten thousand fake accounts that will all follow you. So it's all garbage. It means you have just thrown a lot of money in the wind. There's a lot of ways, you know, there's a couple of analogies that go with that. I'll just though, throw your money into the wind. And it's just a waste of money because those are not your followers. There's other companies will they'll aggressively attack every market they know. Here's an example. I know a company that helped another organization on Instagram and they and these folks, a really wanted followers on Instagram. So this company went in. They said, "Great, we'll help you." As soon as they took over the account, a miraculous thing happened. All of the other clients that this other company was managing started following that company. All right. So why? Because they have the passwords for all those accounts. And so now you've got people who are not really have anything to do with you. They just happen. Your commonality with them is that they happen to be working with the marketing firm you're working with. That doesn't help you either, because they're not your target audience. I would encourage you. It's a long term play. Start off and slowly build your followers the right way. Get the followers from your network. Get your followers from your current clients. Send them. You've got an email blast. That's another spoke on the wheel, by the way. You should be in touch with all of your clients through email. You own your email list. You do not own your connections on LinkedIn. Very important to know. So let's make sure that you are speaking those people through email. Ask those people every email at the bottom. Please follow us. Give them a reason to follow you. Don't just say please follow us. Please follow us so you can or to see or learn or hear what. Give them a reason that they should follow you but slowly build it that way. Now here's what's great LinkedIn as this great new thing. I love this. On the LinkedIn company pages, you can go in and you can go to your own connections on LinkedIn and ask them to follow your company page. You can have a hundred active invitations out there at a time, which means per month. So a hundred active invitations per month, which means you go to your company page, you ask one hundred of your connections to follow your page. Great. Ten of them take you up on it. Well, those ten become available. So through the month you could ask another ten to follow the page. If all say fifty, follow your page, then you've got fifty more people you can send an invitation to at the end of the month, it resets. So what do I do? At the beginning of the month I've got an account with my calendar today, as a matter of fact, when I came to the office, I invite one hundred new people to follow my company page every month on LinkedIn. And what's great about it is it tells you who you invited last month. So you're not going to reinvite the same people. It's awesome. That's a great way to get people who are in your network who you are already identified as targets to follow the company page. And if you're not doing that, shame on you. You there are a lot of companies I go out there that are much more large, much larger than ePresence. We have almost eight hundred followers on our LinkedIn page. On our company page. Why? Because we're every month methodically going out and asking another hundred people to follow the page.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Have you ever heard of any accounts actually being shut down because they took advantage of services like this?
Mark Galvin
I have. I don't have an example, but I have. And what happens is you start to get identified as potentially one of the fake accounts. Because you're now you're affiliated with these ten thousand fake accounts. And when they go on and look at your profile, if your profile looks at all suspect like you've never posted anything, nothing ever happens on your profile. But you have to be connected to these all these other ten thousand, chances are they're going to be worried and they may they may shut you down. So don't ever buy followers. It is the most dangerous things. And this is followers. These are connections. These are Instagram. I'll tell you what, Instagram, there are a lot of people that you can pay, not a lot of money to. And they'll get you a thousand followers on Instagram. Well, once you start sharing content or other things, you'll find those followers slowly disappear. Here's something else.
Tim Fitzpatrick
They unfollow you.
Mark Galvin
They'll start to unfollow. But there's something else is that there's a lot of fake followers. As Instagram identifies those fake accounts, they start knocking them off. It looks like you're losing followers. You're not. Those accounts are just going away. So don't pay for followers, grow them organically.
How to Easily Engage with People on Social Media
Tim Fitzpatrick
So if it sounds too good to be true, it is good to be true. OK. All right, good. We're love it. So you've talked a lot about posting and let's talk about engagement, right? How important is it to engage with the people that you're connected to or you're following your audience on social?
Mark Galvin
So if you go back to the beginning of social and just think of the name, it's social. Yeah. Why did people do social? Why do they jump on social? It's because they wanted to interact with others so great. I like interacting with people. So I do that then my social channels. As a result, the social media systems, their algorithms start to notice that the most valuable participants on social are the ones that are actively engaging with others. So those programs, those systems will promote you will put you in front of more people if you're actually engaging with them, right? Because you make their platform more robust. So you've got to understand that in the back end. I think that's an obvious one. It's always important to mention. It is extremely important to engage with people on your social for, number one, you're going to see your content getting in front of more people, even though you may be connected to folks. If you're not active on that social media platform, when you share something, those social media platforms are going to see you as a nobody. They're not going to share it with anybody. Yeah, you're connecting them and they can see it if they go look for it. But you're not going to be shown in those feeds. So being active will boost that. But something else that's important here. Is as you interact in social, it's a public forum and people can see what you're saying, you have an opportunity here to build your brand equity, to show how great you are, what you do, to show how great your company is. There was I heard somebody this week talk about this on one of my favorite podcasts, and they said that they go on this was a HR person they go on to their HR channels and share how much they love working at their company because future employees land on the social media sites and they see all these separate employees talking about how great it is to work there. Well, those employees are going to want those future employees will want to or candidates would be better would want to work there, too, so that engaging with everybody that, you know, somebody has a comment you want to comment back to, you want to think that the very least thank them for the comment, but build on that and don't build by being trite, right? And people can see that. What do I mean? You know, if someone makes a comment on a photograph and they say, "Great photo!" And I come back and they say, "Yes, it's a great photo because I enjoy taking photos and I like the color green."
Tim Fitzpatrick
Yes.
Mark Galvin
Shut up. Instead, just say thank you, number one or say thank you. And maybe the person who commented is a photographer. You could say your opinion means a lot to me. Thank you for sharing that. That's genuine. So build number one. If you don't have anything genuine to say, have a response that is positive. Thank you so much for your comment. Or maybe it's not positive. Maybe it's a negative comment. Go into the negative comment and say, "Thank you for making that. I appreciate how you feel. We're going to try to fix it by doing X." Notice what I did. I acknowledge them. I appreciated their position where they're coming from. And then I said, well, I'm here to fix it. That's a common customer service step by step guide. Follow that in your social media. Whenever you have somebody complaining because you're really not speaking to the person complaining, you speak, speaking, everybody else that's watching that post. And you can make huge strides by responding to somebody in a compassionate way, acknowledging them, and showing how you're going to fix that.
Tim Fitzpatrick
So it's engaging on posts that you put out there that other people are starting to interact with, it's also engaging with other people's content or resharing it as well, correct?
Mark Galvin
Absolutely. And thank you for giving me that course correction. Yes.
Tim Fitzpatrick
No, no, no, no, no, not at all.
Mark Galvin
Stream of consciousness. I'm just we're rocking along here. It is you. And I'll give you an example or one. I kind of mentioned this. There's a general manager. His name is Elena Galloway from the bar Disano Bar Das Sono Hotel in Napa Valley. He goes on to LinkedIn and he likes and comments posts on post. Now, he didn't always do this. We share content for him. We are building his what is sharing his voice, because we get to know our clients well, we sort of share their voice. Well, he's been going in and commenting and liking posts. As soon as he started to do this, we saw all of his other posts that we were sharing. We saw the engagement go way up link to sort of sharing that, sharing content out there and making sure that his stuff was getting in front of more people because he was engaging with them. The other thing that's great about this is those people that you're engaging with is their chance. There are much more likely to share your content. You want to grow followers? Go out there and engage with others and they'll start following you and you'll find that you'll be reaching more people as well.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah, so and I think out of anything with social, this is the most difficult thing for people because this is not something that you can scale. I mean, you just have to take the time to do it.
Mark Galvin
Use your phone. Your phone is the best way to engage on posts like this. Because why? I'm in a doctor's office for 15 minutes. I'm going to like some posts when you have those down times, you go, "I'm losing time." That's when you could take advantage of social. When you have those moments where you're waiting in line for at Target, right? You're putting gas in your car. And this is one of my favorites. Someone actually said they do this, they will engage with their social when they do get will they put gas in their car. So when they sit in the car and they're just working on a liking post and commenting on posts when they put gas in. Fine. Find those times using your phone and making quick little comments if you are, and I'll tell you, if you're got a company page, you got to make sure somebody is monitoring the page and responding to posts. But this is for you personally in and attached to a company as a business leader. If you're commenting and sharing and engaging with people, you're going to find the payoff is about tenfold of what it would be if you did nothing.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah, so you're what you post is going to perform better the more you start to engage consistently, right?
Mark Galvin
Absolutely, you know, Facebook is doing this. LinkedIn I hate this, frankly, I actually wish I would just get a date, date order post, but you can change it on LinkedIn. It's a little more difficult Facebook, but you can on Facebook, but it's going to show you what they think, what the algorithm thinks of the most important posts. If you're engaging, your posts become more important.
Tim Fitzpatrick
I think your tip on doing it on your phone is a fantastic one because we all have that downtime. I guess the only thing I would add to that is if you do that, turn off the the dang notifications on those apps. Otherwise you are going to be bombarded. So turn them off when you got downtime, get in there because look, five minutes here, five minutes there is going to start to add up.
Mark Galvin
And I do think the purposeful if you're purposeful about it. You say, "OK, I put gas in the ground, will go on LinkedIn." And you can look at your notifications inside the app so they're not popping up on your phone. You say, go check my notifications, but make sure that you are engaging in that session at the gas station. Make sure you do an engagement piece and also check out the notifications.
Conclusion
Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah, I love it. This has been awesome. Mark, any last-minute words of wisdom or thoughts you want to leave us with?
Mark Galvin
Yeah, you know, I think it's really important not to let social media dominate your life, it can be a huge time suck. I personally don't love Facebook. Honestly, I when I get on Facebook, I know you know the things that I see people sharing and like, come on, people, my favorite thing on Facebook are the dogs because I love dogs. But you can and I like watching what my kids are doing. Is that trolling my.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Don't worry they're not listening to this or watching it.
Mark Galvin
That's right. So being really methodical about how you can make your social media produce results for you, that's what I want you to think about. And you can do this. You start off slow and then and thank you for putting that up. And then if you want help, we could help you with this. So this is what's interesting. There are a lot of there's a lot of marketing firms that will put to do, "oh, and also we do social." Those marketing firms are coming to us because when they say, "oh, and we do social also." Well, we focus on social. I had a team meeting today at 10:00 o'clock this morning, we talked about all the things. Here's a tip I did not know. This is great to I got to go. And that came from my team today when you're posting multiple photos inside the LinkedIn. And let's say you want a particular photo to be the first photo on that series. Well, LinkedIn alphabetizing the photos, so you've got to go in and if you got five photos, make sure the first photo has an A on it. Second photo has a B beginning. So on, because as soon as you drop them in there, LinkedIn is going to reorganize and do a post them in alphabetical order. We know this because we have a team. We all sit down and we all talk about what's going on on social media so we can help you be more effective on your social because of all of these key learnings that we find doing this day in and day out. And we do it at affordable prices. So our website there at the bottom of the screen ePresence dot me that's ePresence dot me because it's all about you. Yeah. And you can see our our handle, their ePresence me no dots or dashes in our handle. That's our universal handle. You should do the same thing, have the exact same handle on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter. I don't care where you go use that handle. And yes, ours handles inside LinkedIn. If you go in and search for it you'll see it. But that's how you can find a server. Follow us. We want followers don't follow us anywhere. And also we do have and it's also the handle for our YouTube channel. We have a YouTube channel where we're sharing great content as well, trying to help people with their digital marketing, much like what Tim does here. Tim's been on our show. Come check out that channel as well. We're always sharing great content.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Awesome. Mark, I really appreciate it. If you need social help, reach out to Mark and the ePresence team. They know what the hell they're doing. Thank you for taking the time to share your wisdom with us, Mark, and appreciate all those people that are watching and listening, if you want to gain clarity on where to focus your marketing right now for the best return, hop on over to our website, Rialto Marketing dot com. That's R-I-A-L-T-O Marketing dot com. Guarantee you'll get a bunch of value from that call and walk away with some clarity on where you need to focus right now. Thanks for tuning in till next time. Take care.
Connect With Mark Galvin
Links From The Episode
- Photo Feeler
- ePresence
