Brad Besancon

Social Media Road Trip: Need Directions To Your Customers?

Are you following the right directions to find a profitable audience for your business in Social Media?

Transcript

[FILE NAME: Social Media Road Trip – Where Are You Headed To Find Customers?] [DURATION 00:05:55]

Brad Besancon: Well, hello, everyone. It’s Brad and Robert with our Clairiti clip of the week, and we’re going to introduce a series today, kind of the three things we see a lot kind of wrapping up the year. We saw a lot in 2016 and one of those is, the three-part series, we’re gonna start with these objectives, online marketing, social media objectives. The second piece is this ROI issue that always comes up when you’re talking about social media or online marketing, and then all of these extra parts–there’s one in every corner, right, Robert?

Robert Riggs: Yeah, and now, we’re on location today in your new pick’em up truck as we [00:00:34 crosstalk]

Besancon: Yeah, out in the pickup truck. Because one of the things, when you think about social media online marketing, the first thing that you should do is figure out what it is you want to do.

Riggs: Where are you going?

Besancon: Yeah, where are you going? What’s the objective of why you’ve decided to get involved into social media or change? There’s always an objective. There should be an objective in the strategy. When you go to the grocery store, what do you do?

Riggs: Make a list.

Besancon: Make a list. When you plan a vacation, what do you do? You’d spend hours online looking, finding spots to go and everything, yet we run into numerous, numerous businesses all the time and they don’t have a written strategy or an objective of why they’re doing this stuff.

Riggs: Yeah, when they started the business, they had a business plan but there is no marketing plan and certainly no digital or social media marketing plan.

Besancon: Right. And it just doesn’t make any sense. A simple task of going to the grocery store, we get in our vehicles like we are today and we go from point A to point B. We know how to get there. There might be 14 different ways to get to the grocery store, we have our favorite path. So there has to be an objective on what is point B in my social media and online? How do I get there? It’s not going to be a straight road; it’s going to be curvy, right? You’re going to have to take some right turns and left turns, you’re going tohave to back up and start over but there should be an attractive. Heck, we have mapping systems in pretty much–any vehicle now has navigation, and what does that help you do? Get from point A to point B. And sometimes, it doesn’t give you the best route, which in our world, you do have to experiment. You have to say, “Well, maybe we’re going to try a different route or a different objective.” You got to change the destination. You have to load in the roadblocks and the traffic in the roadmap so that’s not going to happen. You have to know where those are and be aware of that, and notice, you’re going to have to back up. In football, you’re going to halftime and make adjustments.

Riggs: It’s going to happen. And one of the problems that we see is, that even when we get clients to get a plan for coaching them, you got to start the trip you, got to put in drive. They said, they’re frozen at the wheel. You got to. You just have to do it.

Besancon: Yeah, and the other thing to be cognizant of is, don’t hand your brand over to someone in a cube because they’re under 30 and you think they understand all the stuff because they grew up with it, and that’s not–I’m not being offensive to you; I’m not trying to critic. We just see that a lot and all the problems that come with that. We have a little saying, do you want to be cute, clever and social? Or do you want to become–those are the kind of three C’s that we talk about: cute, clever, and calm, and you have to pick one of those in your objective and put it in drive and move forward. And so we start with an online branding session about who are you going to be online and that really kind of in part, becomes the starting point of the map.

Riggs: Right. I mean, our brand storming session and we encourage you guys to do it as well with your own staff or whoever it is. You have to know who you are. If you don’t know who you are, how are you going to talk to your audience? And then the second thing is, who’s your audience? Who are you trying to be and who are you trying to target? Are you going to be a sales ? Are you going to more connection? We’re all about conversation marketing. We’re all about driving the conversation online, connecting with clients to eventually convert the clients. And there is a different way of talking depending on what that conversation is that you want to get started. There’s a different language for each of the audience. There is a different language for each of the platforms; your Twitter following doesn’t exactly look at Facebook, and your Instagram, and obviously, Snapchat’s going to be different, YouTube’s going to be different. So there’s even languages within the platforms.

Riggs: And also, you got to think about, there are multiple destinations in terms of what objectives are sure on each of the platforms, and as you’re on your way to those objectives, just like when you’re out on a trip, well, how many miles are we going? “Dad, are we there yet?”

Besancon: “Where’s the next Bucky’s?” right? so we’ve got to be measuring along the way of how are we getting to this objective, and then kind of once you’re there, now what’s happened.

Riggs: Right, and that’s the critical piece, is what’s happening once you got in line with an objective in? What’s the next step?

Besancon: And kind of the reason we’re talking so much about this is that we see this everywhere. Nobody’s got a plan. Nobody else got a strategy.

Riggs: And for some reason, everybody’s got the notion that the same people do Facebook that, well, you just post. You just post stuff.

Besancon: Yeah, and I think the critical thing is, they said, “We know what we need to be doing and we know we should start something. I’m going to change my website because it’s not mobile-friendly so I’m going to fix it. I’m going to do all of these things,” and they never take a step back and figure out what, what is it that the website needs to be doing?

Riggs: Yeah, and posting up a picture of your friends or your family around the table during a holiday or on vacation is a way different thing than when when you start doing that for a brand.

Besancon: Absolutely.

Riggs: And your brand story.

Besancon: Absolutely. There can be pieces of that as your brand and your brand family, etc. There can be pieces of that but without the written objective, without that taking a step back and really kind of understanding what it is you want to do. And you never know if that’s that’s going to work.

So we’re going to start kind of addressing some of those, and next week, we’re going to talk a little bit about this ROI question.

That’s the Clairiti clip, guys. We’ll see you next week. Thank you.

1 Billion Reasons Your Business Needs A Social Media Strategy

by Brad Besancon

More than one billion daily active users checked Facebook on their mobile phone in June 2016. Young adults up to 33 years of age check their cell phone 85 times daily. Here’s why your business needs an online marketing strategy.

Transcript

Brad: Well, hello everyone. It’s Brad and Robert again with this week’s Clarity Digital Marketing clip and we are in Las Vegas, Nevada, the city that never sleeps, and we did get a little bit of sleep. Signed up a new client here, locally, so we’re excited about that. But in our travels, over here in Las Vegas, we ran across some research and data backed by Pew that really opened some more of the importance of this mobile and social media. In fact, one of the bullet points was that 43% of the world’s population has a smartphone now.
Richard: Smartphone, yes.
Brad: So do you think it’s important to have a mobile initiative?
Richard: Well, you know, Las Vegas. You can see device obsession because most of the people here are experiencing Las Vegas through their smartphone.
Brad: I can’t believe the number of people we walked by that are just walking down the sidewalk videoing.
Richard: And where is allthat content going? Social media. There is also a study that indicates that more than a billion people check into Facebook at least once a day. A billion and that’s recent study. B. So for those of you who do not think that your customers or clients aren’t there, hey, you could walk down the strip here and you see every age group on it.
Brad: Yeah. Well and I think the key thing to think about the Facebook stat is, do you think in a billion people, you might have a few customers out there or someone you can connect with? Now, you’ve got to think about that. It’s a billion in a month. It’s not a billion over a period of time, it’s 30 days. Do you think in 30 days, there’s a billion people that might be interested in a product or a service, or doing business with you, or having some connection with your brand or your product?
Richard: And think about yourself. You go to bed with a phone and you wake up with a phone. A lot of people wake up and what do they do? Check e-mail, check social, and if you really want to see the frequency of that and what’s coming, there’s a small study of 18 to 33-year-olds that found that they check, on average, really without even realizing it, 85 times a day and that can’t be for e-mail.
Brad: Yeah, I mean you think they’re checking e-mail? They’re on Snapchat, they’re doing the Instagram, in that older age group, probably Facebook. I mean, it is part of our life not. It is our alarm clock, it is our communication tool, it’s our phone, it’s our video chat, it’s our social media piece, everything, it’s our video camera. So if you don’t have that strategy or initiative thinking about social mobile—really is what it is now, it’s social mobile—then you’re falling way behind, in all levels of business. It’s not just for the big boys. It’s for all levels of business.
Richard: And your customers are on mobile, in social, and it’s very hard anymore to get them to your website, so what is your social media strategy?
Brad: What are they doing? How are you going to connect with them socially in social media? Quit trying to do it on a website because it’s not happening.
Richard: And the big takeaway from Vegas is?
Brad: Always come out to Vegas and have a good time.
Richard: And be sure you check your phone. That’s the Clarity Digital Marketing clip of the week.
Brad: Have a good one, guys.

Dot This & Dot That: What’s The Scoop On New TLD’s? We Asked SEO Expert Bill Hartzner.

by Brad Besancon

Can your business get a sudden boost in search results by switching to one of the nearly 400 new Top Level Domains (TLD’s). We have answers from the expert.

Transcript

Brad Besancon: Well, hello, everyone it’s Brad and Robert with our Clairiti clip of the week again and we’re standing here by the Newton cabin in old town, small town America, in Midlothian, my new home. I just recently built a house down here and moved down here, and got out of the hustle and bustle of the northern, really Southern Kansas, Prosper. And we’ve been having a lot of discussions and seeing a lot out there online about these new Top Line Domains or TLDs, and we’ve had a lot of discussions about–I mean, I know there’s a lot of confusion out there and really give us the rundown, kind of where these things started and why now, everybody seems to be all in uproar about it.

Robert Riggs: So these new top-level domains are .horse or .dentist, .news, so there’s–good Lord, there must be 400 of them and they’re all aimed at business: .attorney, .lawyer, .legal, so whatever your business, that’s there. So one of the things we know, it will help Google in their indexing of trying to determine what is your website about. There is a little advantage there, and then what we’ve seen and we’ve talked with Bill Hartzer, and what Bill, he’s been doing domain sales and auctions since 1996, and so what Bill is seeing is that, this also gives you some new real estate for keywords. You might want Dallas-Fort Worth plumber, well, you can’t get that in a dotcom but in these news, and there’s a .plumber, you can go get it. It’s going to cost you some money but Bill explains here what the advantage is, what he’s done on one of his studies.

Bill Hartzer: The idea is that there’s a keywords in the endings and they really describe what your website is about or your business is about, and that allows you to really have that branding opportunity to show users and visitors and the search engines in Fort Worth that that’s what your company is about, that particular keyword. There’s a lot of really good opportunities there.

Besancon: Well, I think one of the interesting things that we heard from Bill just end-wise, it’s really about keywords but not keywords that you’re going out there for Google ad search and paying for it, it’s a little different approach.

Riggs: Well, just because you went out there and buy a .attorney doesn’t mean you’re going to automatically rank, but if you get the right keywords in there, you’re going to be more competitive in those search results. And he’s got two case studies that he talked about where that has worked, so.

I mean, one of the unique ones was, just real quick, just kind of put in perspective is, he took an attorney in Jacksonville, Florida who was not ranking at all; had the standard so-and-so law.com kind of deal. He put Jacksonville.attorney and he immediately ranked on the first page within a small, a very minute period of time.

If you are in a particular region like a city, in one particular city, and it is fairly competitive, if you can show everybody, by having your city name, Dallas.attorney, Jacksonville.attorney, Denver.attorney, and you are the attorney in that city, and you have the premiere domain name for–you are the Denver attorney, and when people do search for Denver attorney, if you move from your dotcom to your Denver.attorney and you use, you change your address to where you literally move your website from that dotcom to .attorney, I do think you’re going to see a lot of better results by using a .attorney domain name.

Let’s say I’m in national practice as an attorney. Am I better off leaving my firm name there? Or should I do a specificity of what practice I specialize in?

Yes, if you have the option, if you have the option to, and that name is available, if you are a criminal defense attorney and you go get to criminaldefense.attorney, if you are, if there is a generic word that you can pair with that perfectly describes your business, then that just as buying criminaldefense.com, criminaldefense.attorney really perfectly describes your business and that is a great opportunity for not only just search engine rankings but overall branding, and you’re showing all of your visitors, you’re showing your customer base and potential customers, your potential clients that you are the criminal defense attorney or you are the Denver attorney, or you are describing your business right at the beginning, even before they even click on your website, they will know what you do. And whether they see it in an offline ad in the newspaper or an online ad, or they see it in the search results, they will see that domain name. That’s the first thing they see before they click your website.

And when you think about that, that makes sense because what are people searching for? Jacksonville attorney, so he automatically gets that. It’s that little pop

But you have to think this through and also, some of these domains, they’re difficult to get. It might cost you $3,000 to $4,000 on somebody’s–they’re premium. But it looks like they’ll pay dividends particularly if you’re in a paying business.

What do you think about that compared to ad budget? It’s the way you got to look at it. I mean, that’s the way–

That’s a good way.

And you still have to do–everybody talks about, “Oh, you mean I can just–” No, there’s no shortcuts online; you still have to build the content, you still have to drive people to your site, you still have to have the links, you still have to do all the normal things that you need to be doing with the website. The difference is, you’re just taking a little different approach with keywords in your actual URL.

One key takeaway he advices everyone too, if you’re a big company, big business, make sure you’re trademarked, otherwise, somebody can go hijack your domain and be out there using it. You have a way to contest things if they’re violating your trademarks.

That’s a good point.

And there are some companies, went out and trademarked without checking for domains and somebody already had the domain.

That’s a no-no.

And there’re not a lot because if you got into domain before the trademark was applied for it, that’s yours.

That’s right.

Yup.

That’s correct.

That’s our Clairiti clip don’t forget to get out there and keep hustling.

SOCIAL MEDIA TIPS: Making Yourself Real With Video

by Brad Besancon

What if your online passion provided an immediate “ice breaker” when you meet with new business prospects. Here’s an example of how a winning car from the Superbowl of high end car collecting supports our client’s business goals.

Transcript

Robert: Hi, I’m Robert Riggs, this is Brad Besancon with a Clarity Digital Marketing clip and we’ve been MIA out at the Monterey car week, at the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance, which is the Super Bowl of international high end collecting of the most amazing cars in the world, that you have invited 202 cars from 16 countries, including Elvis’ BMW.
Brad: Elvis’ BMW he drove around in Europe.
Robert: In the Army in Germany. Yeah, sure did.
Brad: Yeah, it was a pretty interesting event. One of the things we noticed too that was pretty unique was we saw these film crews. These weren’t guys on their cell phones. These were three, $400,000 camera groups with mics and directors and lighting, and everything else. What were they doing?
Robert: Well, they’ve been hired by many the owners of these cars to do their own personal documentaries. But you know what? No social. Nothing online. So who will ever see it? I guess they’re going to sit in their theater room at home and watch. No, these are things that you really want to get out there and share and the benefit of telling a story around cars—and we were there to do it for a client—is that it’s an icebreaker for new business. Our client goes to meetings—we run all kinds of social channels that when he goes to business meetings with a room full of 125 prospects, he doesn’t need an introduction. The first thing they want to know is about that car collection.
Brad: Yeah, “Hey, we’ve been seeing your car videos online and Facebook.”
Robert: So what’s the ROI of social media? Can you put a value on that? You walk in to a room full of business prospects and they feel like they already know you, they already have a connection. That’s what social does if you will focus on that passion.
Brad: It’s all about that connection. It’s all about making a CEO, or an owner, of a business—or an executive manager, a director, whoever it might be—it’s all about making them real. You see a card or you see a LinkedIn profile, it’s all kind of status-y. It’s all kind of, “Look at my accomplishments, look what I’ve done,” and then, “Oh, by the way, I’m also passionate about 45 records,” or “I’m really passionate about art,” or cowboy art, or whatever it is. It makes you real and it makes a connection like, “Hey, Robert, I like that too.” We already have something in connection, we already have something in common, so now I go into a business meeting with you and I can say, “Tell me about that one piece of art that you have, that I saw on your Facebook. Tell me about it.”
Robert: Exactly. One of the other values is reputation management. Everybody these days needs to be concerned about how they appear in Google search results because bad things happen, people say bad things about you, and if you’ve loaded that up with positive stuff about yourself, you’re going to win. And one of the nice things about our client—and you can do this with anyone else—around these kind of passionate subjects. We’re on all the social channels and it just stacks up on search returns for him. That’s why when he goes to give a business presentation, people ask.
Brad: Exactly and it’s the way you do it. It’s smart about how you do it. You can’t just go, “Hey, if I start putting some stuff out, I’ll rank in Google!” There’s some tricks to the trade that we’ve kind of—not mastered because I hate that word—that’s not what we do. We’re not gurus and we’re not ninjas but we’ve tested it. We’ve done the old Google of hard knocks. You know, hard knocks Google and we’ve kind of figured out this stuff. So there are some little tricks of the trade that you need to do too to be sure that you’re doing it and doing it the right way.
Robert: You have to have good content. You’ve got to have content that potential audience or a general audience is going to find interesting.
Brad: You have to know your audience, which is the critical—we always talk about our audience speech, so we knew—it’s very interesting that on Twitter, our particular client has a total different audience than he does on Facebook. For example, he has a Ferrari, a 2005 Ferrari, SuperAmerica. This is only 500 of them made This is a premiere Ferrari from that era. They love it on Twitter. They’re like, “It’s a Ferrari on Facebook.” But you put something else out, a 1948 Delahaye, or a 1946 AC Roadster and they’re like, “Whoa! This is the crème de la crème. This is awesome.” So you have to know that too so that you’re poking the bear or pushing the button, to ignite that passion within your fanbase.
Robert: All right. The takeaway of this clip?
Brad: The takeaway is there’s multiple things you can use with events, particular passions or particular hobbies and interests of leaders within your company or your business, to really drive home the message of the business. And to make connections beyond, “Hey, I’m trying to sell you something,” and “Boy, our product sure is great.” Man, make it really. Make that person that is out there calling on those people real.
Robert: That’s the Clarity Digital Marketing clip of the week.
Brad: Have a good one, guys.

WHY COMPANIES MUST PUBLISH OR PERISH ONLINE

by Brad Besancon

Robert Riggs and Brad Besancon explain why all businesses also need to be in the business of producing content. They talk to Tony Cecala, head of the DFW WordPress group in Dallas about the need for using a search engine friendly content management system on the web that makes it easy to upload blogs, photographs and videos.

Transcript

Brad: Hi folks, it is Brad and Robert again with our Clarity Digital Marketing clip of the week. You recently when over to a WordPress meet up and watch Tony Cecala, who is kind of a WordPress guru. I love that word, WordPress guru. And listened to him. What are some of the things you heard him talk about when he talked about WordPress?

Robert: Well for those of you out there in business, who are trying to figure out this stuff, WordPress is a content management system and you have got to be a publisher if you want to be successful online. The cool thing we like about WordPress, we use it ourselves, we recommend it to clients, is that Google likes it and it is very easy to do compared to any other system.

Brad: It is like website management for dummies.

Robert: Yeah.

Brad: I mean it is basically cut and paste.

Robert: Here’s Tony.

Tony: If you are building a media company, whether your company sells cars or sells Red Bull, you are a media company in the new world. If you want to market digitally you have to think of yourself as a media company. So why WordPress? Well, the New York Times finds WordPress to be a great platform for all their blogs. Huffington Post uses WordPress. Lots of people use WordPress as a publisher, that is the number platform for building your method online, it is pure, it is fast, it is built with all the standards inside it to make publishing a wonderful experience, not some technical thing you have to worry about.

Robert: Alright, I want to underscore what Tony said, that if you are in business today you got to be a media producer. In the old days when I was in broadcast journalism, I was the gate keeper. Now, there are no gate keepers.

Brad: Everybody is a media producer.

Robert: Right, if you notice, if you look at anything coming on television these days, what you see? You see cell phone videos all over the place. You know if you have the will and determination you can be a media producer. And if you are not, you know, somebody is going to tell your story and that story is being told on mobile.

Brad: Yeah and one of the things that people forget about in mobile is, you know, one of the first things you think of when we say mobile, is what? We will wait. Right, phone. But guess what, this is mobile too, the tablet. This is now my new toy, this is an iPad Pro, yes Apple you’re welcome for the promo. I am getting away from a laptop; I am not going to carry a laptop anymore because this pro will do everything that my laptop will do. The deal is when you think mobile you can’t just think phone. It is tablets too; it is also in that category. And as Tony mentions, over 50% of people nowadays are gathering information on mobile so that is phone and tablets, and that is what you have to remember.

Robert: And so does your website work on mobile? We had a founder of a law firm….

Brad: Do you got to sit there and do this?

Robert: Yeah. But we had a founder of a law firm say I don’t think anyone would ever look at our law firm on a cell phone and I said well how they are going to find directions to your office. But….

Brad: What’s the first thing they are going to do if they say, “Hey Brad, I am looking for a lawyer, you got any?” “Yeah, call Bob over here.” What are you going to do, what is Bob’s number, what is Bob’s website? You are going to look at it right there and you are going to Google it.

Robert: And I am going to get more information off the tablet. My wife sits in front of television and shops off the tablet.

Brad: Uh oh.

Robert: Yeah.

Tony: Why mobile? That’s the next question. When you are thinking about publishing you have to think to yourself when everyone is going to be on the move, looking at their phone, way more than 50%, we use mobile to access the information so you have to understand finding the right way to publish in a format that is fast and easy to digest is the next big wave. That is why Facebook has Facebook Instant Articles and Google has Accelerated Mobile Pages. They understand that people want the information fast so learning, building a team that will help you create mobile media, create information that goes out quickly, that is the number one task for this modern era.

Brad: So I think the final piece is critical for businesses to think about when they are thinking about not just online, just in general right, in today’s world because we are touching people everywhere but mainly online and through their mobile strategy is if you are not out there telling your story, your competitor will. And….

Robert: Yeah, don’t let your opponent define you.

Brad: Correct, that is basically what it comes down to. We call that here at clarity, we call it accidental brand. So if you are not controlling your brand message, someone will and you will have a nice little brand out there online. So be sure to take some of this, think about that mobile strategy, if you are in business, you better be producing content. If you want an easy way to do that, do it on a WordPress site.

Tony: So if you are in business and you are not a media producer, then someone else is telling your story. If you are hoping your advertising agency is going to tell your story, you are hoping your PR guy is going to tell your story, the PR is competing with every other PR guy, your advertising agency is competing with every other person to send out that advertising messaging but if you develop your message like Red Bull or like any company that has grasped social media, Will It Blend, I mean these people, they sell blenders and they are blending up iPhones and people are watching. I never heard of Blend Tech before but now I know Blend Tech because Will it Blend, their videos were so popular. So you have to think like a media company because the way to get the message out these day to these people is through their phone, that is where they are looking. It is a simple, it is a simple answer but learning the ins and outs of it is not easy, it’s tricky but focusing like a laser on getting the message out in that way, whether your choose Instagram, or you choose YouTube or you choose Facebook, be excellent at that delivery of the message and you will be successful.