(loud wind blowing)
- What's up Believe Nation.
Today I'm going to share with you my seven strategies
to help you dominate social media in 2017.
- [Robotic Narrator] Nine, eight.
(energetic music)
- So I recently got asked to do an interview
about my thoughts on where social media is going in 2017
because I was featured in Forbes Magazine as one of their
Top 40 social marketing talents.
And so I shared my thoughts and then thought to myself,
I should share with you guys so you can dominate
your social media in 2017 too.
So here are my seven ways.
(energetic music)
Number one is small business will eat brands.
From all the brands that I've seen,
they really suck at social.
The content sucks.
There's a lot of production quality in it.
It looks fantastic but they miss the authenticity,
and they miss the storytelling,
and they miss the heart and this is your chance.
Guys, everybody's on social.
It's such an amazing way to drive traffic,
to drive attention, to drive customers to your business.
It'll, increasingly, in 2017
be one of the primary drivers
for any entrepreneur in your company
and it's your chance to stand out.
For entrepreneurs, this has always been, like your story,
your authenticity has always been the way to stand out.
If you have a website that looks super corporate and boring
because you're trying to compete with the big guys
you're always going to lose.
Because if you look the same as one of the big guys,
the only reason why I'm going to go with you
is because of price
and that's not the game you want to be in.
You should be able to charge a premium for what you do
because I can connect with you on a personal level.
I love your story, I love your passion,
I love your commitment.
I feel like I'm going to get better service
with somebody who actually cares
than going to the big company.
And because authenticity and storytelling
is how small companies win,
now you have the platform,
people to go out and win at a bigger scale.
Now it's not just relying on people to visit your website
or meet you at a trade show.
You can do it through content, through YouTube videos,
through your Twitter, through Snapchat, through Instagram.
All these different platforms give you the ability
like never before to reach an audience with
your authentic story and passion
in a way that brands can't.
The brands are boring.
Use that to your advantage to win and eat them.
(energetic music)
Number two is video's going to dominate.
Video is going to become more and more
and more and more important.
And it's not just YouTube, we have Snapchat,
we have Instagram stories,
we have Twitter getting into video.
Everybody is getting into video.
The formats that we did for different lengths
doesn't matter but video is going to be more
and more and more and more and more important.
Everybody has a device now to really record video.
And high quality video, and so being able to practice
your storytelling in front of a camera,
to share your expertise, to show off why you love doing
what you're doing so much, to be positioned as the expert
in your industry, is going to become so much more important
and I really encourage you guys to start practicing
your video storytelling.
Again, this is an easy way to stand out,
because you interview somebody at a big brand,
at a corporation, their videos are so bad.
There's no connection.
They don't know what it's like actually dealing
with a customer, where you do.
You feel the customers every single day.
Where some manager at some big company doesn't.
And so video is an amazing opportunity for you to stand out.
The people who are going to win are either the ones
who have great storytelling, right,
can be authentic, can answer questions,
can connect their passion through the camera.
And also the ones who
might be more gear heads who can focus on the 360 video,
who can focus on the 4k and 8k, right?
Have something different.
You don't need to be at the high end.
This is enough.
Your phone is enough.
If you're passionate and you're an expert,
sharing that content is enough
to make me feel that connection to you
and make me want to buy from you.
The other thing in video
that we're going to see more of is live.
Everybody's pushing live.
People want to see behind the scenes
which is a big advantage for entrepreneurs
because when it's live,
people don't expect the production quality.
If somebody's just snapping some videos
or doing Facebook Live,
they expect it to be from a phone.
You don't need to have a camera crew.
You don't need to have the lights set up
and expensive gear and five people around you
holding different microphone.
You don't need any of that.
The costs have come down to zero.
The costs have come down to this, right.
You have it.
You have the same ability as every big brand
to win in live video and it's only going to be more
and more and more and more and more and more
and more and more and more and more important
so start doing it ASAP.
(energetic music)
Number three is mobile first will win.
You have to be paying attention to mobile.
Look at your website.
Look at where people are coming from.
Look at the past five years.
No matter what industry you're going to be in,
you'll see that mobile has taken up a greater,
greater, greater chunk of your visitors.
And in the next 12 to 24 months
it may be almost all of your business.
And so it depends on your industry.
For some companies, already the number one traffic source.
For some it's 30% or 40% but it's getting there.
And so if you're thinking about your next website
or your next social media post that you're
going to be putting up,
you have to be thinking mobile first.
I'm in a process of redoing my website for both businesses.
You should be looking at yours.
Don't just assume that people are going to be
using a desktop forever and optimize around that.
Or a laptop.
It has to be mobile.
The companies that are going mobile first
are going to win, it's only going to get more important.
Start now, don't lose out,
don't be here in 18 months
and wondering why your business tanked
where, when I go to your website on a mobile phone
and it looks like crap
and I can't find your information, right.
You need to plan for mobile first.
(energetic music)
Number four is advertising costs are going to rise.
They'll keep rising.
It's still actually a great deal
if you look at Facebook ads.
If you want to target Facebook ads,
it's still an amazing deal compared
to any other platform, but the bigger brands
are starting to pay attention.
The big brands are always behind.
It's just the nature of the beast.
They're still spending money on TV and radio and billboard.
They're still spending money but it's shifting.
It's now shifting.
They realize how far behind they are
and it's starting to shift
and so the opportunity window is closing down.
Advertising costs are going to go up as big brands
start shifting their budgets from TV into online.
But there's still an opportunity now.
There's still a window within the next 12 to 24 months
to be able to capitalize
and I'd be looking to Facebook first.
If you can specify a target audience,
you know these are the people that you need to target.
You know we do it for CharlieDan's Salsa.
We look at people who are between 25 years old
and 35 years old, is our sweet spot
and we run targeted campaigns against them.
Men like this, women like this,
within a geographic area.
So whatever your business is,
if you can target, if you know what your target audience
look like, I would still be on Facebook ads
as the number one advertising platform for you
but costs are going to go up
so you have to be smarter about how you do it.
(energetic music)
Number five is influencer marketing is going to explode.
It's going to happen.
You have to realize that the people with the voice now,
the people with the audience, is not just the big networks.
It's not just put an ad on some TV show
and hopin' that things are going to take off.
Especially YouTube and Instagram,
people with large followings
and building up Snapchat now too.
People with large followings,
getting them to endorse or use your product.
It's not just about hoping that Kim Kardashian
wears your shoes and you take off.
You can get insane results from other influencers
and those prices are going to rise as well, right.
Now it's massively underpriced to work with influencers
to get their buy-in because there is not as much demand.
If you think about advertising costs coming up,
the next wave is going to be influencer marketing.
And so that's an opportunity while the big brands
are slow and sluggish and behind.
It's an opportunity for entrepreneurs to identify
who are the 10 influencers that my audience cares about
and how do I get them to work with my business,
talk about my product or service, be a user,
while the costs are still really cheap.
The other thing to think about for influencer marketing
is you have to let them control the message.
This is something I think entrepreneurs are better at
than big brands.
A lot of brands say you have to do this,
you have to mention these five points
about how great our product is.
You need to understand you're dealing with creative people.
They know their audience better than you do.
They know what works better than you do.
And so you have to be willing to give up
some creative control to somebody
who really knows their audience
to let that campaign win.
And so I'd be focusing more on influencers
and give them creative control to do what they want to do
to help pump your product or service.
(energetic music)
Number six is content is going to grow.
The amount of content is just going to explode.
It already is.
How many times are you going to conferences now
and you see people holding up cell phones, recording?
How many people are recording parts of their daily life
and snapping pictures?
It's growing like crazy.
The supply is out of control
and it's only going to continue to explode
in 2017 and so you need to find a way to stand out.
Any time there's a ton of quantity,
then it's the quality that will stand out.
You have to find your angle.
You got to find your niche.
You got to find the thing that you do that's different.
And so the way for entrepreneurs to stand out
is one, you need to create content.
Like once a week is going to become not enough.
Once a week right now is kind of good.
Once a week is not going to be enough.
You're going to have to move to daily content.
You need to find something everyday to talk about
in your business.
And so some ideas, you can share the stories
of the people working with you
or the stories of your customers.
The stories of why you started this business
and what gets you all excited.
You can share your expertise.
It can be your thoughts on the industry
and where it's going.
It could be questions that people come in and ask you.
It could be from your audience and saying,
"Hey you can make a video about this."
It could be what your customers are coming in
and asking you everyday in your company.
Turn those into video or written content for your
channels to start to stand out.
It could also be the sawdust of your company.
Right, sawdust used to be seen as a byproduct
that you would throw away.
Right, this is garbage, nobody would ever use this
and then company would realize,
hey you can turn sawdust into products, right.
So think about the stuff that you do day-to-day
in your business that you never record,
that you never share,
that you never put out and make it public.
You could.
That behind the scenes, authentic stuff is,
is where entrepreneurs can win
because the brands never want to do that.
The brands are always so concerned about
how it looks and how people are going to judge them
and is it going to pass through legal.
Is it going to pass through all of our PR team
right, and then nothing ends up getting produced
except the overly produced stuff
that people don't resonate with.
It's your chance as an entrepreneur.
Show me behind the scenes.
Show me how you make your pizza.
Show me what you're doing to create
that website and you're grinding out the code.
Show me your day-to-day life.
Show me that behind the scene stuff.
Make it authentic.
Make it daily.
So you can do a vlog.
You can do a Q&A.
You can do storytelling.
Has to be regular, consistent, daily content
that's quality, if you want to start standing out.
(energetic music)
And number seven is that the data nerds are going to reign.
It's really important to have both the passion
and excitement and fire that the entrepreneur founder
can bring but you have to look at the analytics as well.
The people who were so focused on SEO
and driving website traffic and conversion optimization,
you know all of that data geek stuff,
you're going to have to bring
to your social channels as well.
Understanding how to hack the YouTube algorithm.
Understanding how to place Facebook ads
and have it generate a return on investment.
Whether that's you,
if that's you and you love the science
and you love the data and you love diving in
and figuring out what works best
and hacking it and making it better
and going to conferences and researching
and watching videos and paying attention
to get better constantly because it's,
once you figure out how to hack YouTube,
it's going to change in three months.
So you got to stay on top of it.
It's a constant battle to stay on top of the algorithm
just like it was in SEO.
And so you need to either be that person
or you need that person on your team
and say you know what, I don't care about that stuff
I want to focus on creating the content and being the
CEO and being the leader.
You need to bring that person on board who has the passion,
who loves keeping up with it
or you're going to, you going to lose
because the entrepreneurs, the one who's are going to win
are the ones who get it
or bring somebody on to help them with it.
You need to understand the analytics
and if you're that data nerd,
if you love staying on top of things
and tweaking and hacking,
that's going to be a massive opportunity for you
this year and going forward.
So that's what I got.
Those are my seven ways that you can dominate
social media in 2017.
I'd love to know what do you think?
What was your favorite one?
What are you going to apply immediately
into your business?
What did you learn the most from?
Did I miss something?
Is there an eight, nine, 10
that you want to add to the list?
Leave it down at the comments.
I'm going to join in the discussion.
I also want to give a quick shout to Jay Wong
from the Innerchangemaker.com.
Jay, thank you so much for picking up 10 copies of my book
and making that awesome YouTube video review of it as well.
I really, really, really appreciate it.
- So Evan is coming out with a new book called
"The One Word" or "Your One Word".
And it's the idea of that, if we pick one word
that is what our whole branding is about,
it's what our whole story is going to be about.
- So thank you guys again for watching.
I believe in you.
I hope you continue to believe in yourself
and whatever your one word is.
Much love.
I'll see you soon.
(loud wind blowing)