In this episode of Talking Shizzle, we sat down with Barlele's social media strategist extraordinaire, Becky Escher, to drop some truth bombs about social media and demystify common questions surrounding the wild wild west that is social media.
Becky Escher is a Texas-based graphic designer and social media consultant dedicated to helping small businesses, non-profits, and event planners create meaningful connections with their audiences. She is a millennial, who can really tell you all about social media truth bombs, posting cadence, and best of all making YOU look good on the various platforms in 2022.
In this episode, we talked some shizzle and answered questions like"
And....the big truth bomb reel included:
Learn more about Becky and get to know her on LinkedIn or check out her website at beckyescher.com.
In this episode of Talking Shizzle, we sat down with Barlele's social media strategist extraordinaire, Becky Escher, to drop some truth bombs about social media and demystify common questions surrounding the wild wild west that is social media.
Becky Escher is a Texas-based graphic designer and social media consultant dedicated to helping small businesses, non-profits, and event planners create meaningful connections with their audiences. She is a millennial, who can really tell you all about social media truth bombs, posting cadence, and best of all making YOU look good on the various platforms in 2022.
In this episode, we talked some shizzle and answered questions like"
And....the big truth bomb reel included:
Learn more about Becky and get to know her on LinkedIn or check out her website at beckyescher.com.
Hey all you lovely people out there. You've got a lot going on in your day with big dreams and big goals for your world. Are you ready to talk some shizzle and learn some shizzle from leading entrepreneurs, changemakers coaches and overall interesting people who like to shake things up. I'm your host Taylor Shanklin, CEO and founder of creative shizzle. And I am stoked to bring you a fresh episode of talking shizzle today, this show is all about helping you think differently so that you can grow. Talking chisel is brought to you by our team at Creative shizzle where we help businesses, entrepreneurs, and social good innovators make amazing marketing shizzle happen. Check us out on the web at Creative shizzle.com Now, let's talk some shizzle All right, all right friends, we are back with another episode of talking Shilshole we're going to be pulling out today some truth bombs on social media from our very own Becky Asher, our social media consultant strategist. extraordinaire. We've got sidekick will on the line today too, to make sure we keep this whole show rolling for you. What is up, Becky and will
Becky Escher:Hello, it's good to be here with you guys. Good to see you. Doing good doing good.
Unknown:What's up everyone?
Taylor Shanklin:Everyone. It's good to have you guys here. This is fun. This is our first official like team only talking shizzle. So Becky, let's get right into it. Tell us a little bit about who you are, what you do, why you love social media, and why you care to talk about truth bombs on social media.
Becky Escher:Well, my name is Becky Asher and I have been self employed doing entrepreneurial things for about five years. And you know, my background in graphic design. And that kind of led me somehow into the social media realm. You know, it was working with a nonprofit organization in Dallas, and they really didn't know how to market to younger audiences. And at the time, 2015 that's really where the height of millennials were. And I was a millennial. And so I was like, hey, my people are here. And for whatever reason, I have just stayed in social media and kind of tried to adapt and learn and keep up with all the changes. And it's been fun. It's cool to have a design background too, because I can kind of see like, you know, what people respond to, and that kind of informs a little bit of the strategy that goes into helping nonprofits and small businesses be their most successful selves on social.
Taylor Shanklin:I'm glad you love it. You know, I've got a real love hate relationship with social media these days. I know, we've talked about that. And sometimes I go off on rants and all team calls. But we won't talk too much about that today. Like he's amazing at social. And she knows a lot about how to really take engagement to the next level. That's one of the things that I noticed and love about working with you is how good you are at that. So I want to break down some myths today and get into some nitty gritty, because social media is this big, vast ocean. And it's scary for a lot of people, and it's scary for a lot of the clients that we work with. First thing I want to talk about is the difference between promotion and connection. So like, what is the difference? You know, a lot of times people think, well, I don't want to just be that self promoting all the time. But I want to connect with people like, what's the difference between the two? How do you balance the two? Because I'm guessing you're gonna say you need to do both. But tell us your thoughts.
Becky Escher:Yeah, you're absolutely right. It's important to do both. And a lot of kind of misconceptions that businesses and nonprofits especially have is that you should always be promoting. That is true, but there are different ways to go about that in a way that is not just pitching your product or pitching your service to people. A lot of times people are on social media to escape that, you know, they want to be inspired. They want to connect with people. That's kind of the whole core purpose of social media is to provide this network that allows people to get together and to share ideas and things like that connection and promotion go hand in hand. You know, I was kind of looking through some of my favorite accounts before we got on the call. There's a nonprofit radio station here in Dallas Fort Worth called kxt. And it's an NPR affiliate. And I love it. It's one of my favorites. Asians, they play Indian music, their social media is done really well. And because they rely on a lot of, you know, donor support to keep the station going, they do have to promote things like that on their social channels, but they also have this really cool way of engaging the community. So highlighting new artists, asking people, Hey, where are you listening to today? Hey, here's our top five, you know, new artists you need to be listening to, they're connecting with their audience, because they know their audience is on their accounts, to connect with music to connect with local music, and they support the mission overall that kicks T provides, but they do they have their spring, you know, donor campaign every year. And that allows them that opportunity to really petition people for that donation call that call to be engaged and involved on a financial level. They've been around, I don't even know how long, at least 10 years. So there's got to be some sort of success to that even though they do have the, you know, the NPR affiliation, they do rely on local support. So there's something to be said, for making connections with the people who believe in your mission.
Taylor Shanklin:What do you think works in terms of getting people to connect? So like getting into the day to day of like, actually getting people to comment to share to truly in gauge with your content? That's their secret sauce that you found?
Becky Escher:That's the big question. That's, that's something every brand is trying to uncover every day? And it's a really good question. There's some simple things brands can do like asking questions, or encouraging people to comment on posts, I think one of the best ways to invoke engagement is to vary your content. And what I mean by that is, rather than relying on the same messaging, the same visual graphics, the same cadence, change things up a little bit. So if you're on Instagram, and you post, you know, a quote every Monday and it looks the exact same, and you're not getting any engagement on it, maybe there's a different way you can share that content and get the engagement you're wanting from that by either sharing it in a story or tying it into a poll to actually get people to want to participate and engage with that, you know, that quote, or whatever it is, you know, the other thing we've been talking about this with, you know, few other clients is finding your brand heroes and your brand advocates, once you find those, and you're able to kind of leverage those connections that will help you foster engagement from their communities and their audiences. So that's kind of a really natural way to build engagement, and show them hey, we've got cool content, we have a cool mission, why don't you join us and participate with our conversation online?
Taylor Shanklin:So I like that takeaway from that. And I think the big highlight for people is, I hear this a lot from our clients like, well, I got to do lead gen on social. So like, it's all about promotion all the time. It's like no backup, you got to connect with people as well, because that's what they're there for. So it's about mixing up the content, doing things different trying, like, you know, I'm not always just all doing self promotion, but actually like asking questions, pulling them into the story. That was truth bomb number one, demystified. I suppose. Will's gonna go fact check us on all of this stuff on what the PDF today actually will.
Unknown:For sure, I'm learning about kx t now seems like a pretty cool
Taylor Shanklin:blogs right now, like making sure that we're making sense, you know? Okay, I want to get into the truth. Next, number two about the difference between paid and organic. So like, we throw out these words all the time, we know what it means. But maybe when we're talking about it to other people or to our clients, they don't necessarily know what it means. Let's talk about the difference between paid and organic. How do you figure out how much to put into each you know, like in terms of just your time investment, all of that stuff, your dollars? What goes into paid what goes into organic demystify this one for us, Becky? Yeah, that's
Becky Escher:great, great question. And you're right, there are so many people who don't even know that there's a difference. So, a quick overview. Organic social is just that it is social content that you share organically. It is something that comes from you directly. It is a post that naturally, again, organic, natural, it naturally gets shared out to your audience in your feed. The difference between that and paid is that Organic does not cost you any money, it is just a post that you're putting out into the world. Paid is kind of where you get into social advertising. So you can put, you know, on Facebook and Instagram, you can boost a post, you can put 50 bucks towards a post to hopefully get it in front of more people. That's kind of a tactic people will use to get more followers more engagement on posts on their pages, and kind of can broaden their audience in a faster way. The other way you can utilize paid advertising is a lot of what we see when we scroll through our Facebook and our LinkedIn feeds every day. And that's selling products. It's you know, it's a great tool for nonprofits, especially to get themselves in front of new audiences and new prospects. I've been working on a lead gen campaign for a nonprofit in Dallas. And because they already had an established following from their organic content, their paid advertising did really well. In paid you can do things like targeting people that you want your ads to get in front of. So location, certain age ranges, you know, different interests. So that's kind of helps you qualify your leads. And qualifying means Oh, you know, I want someone to buy this. I don't know this plant, maybe you want to find people who are plant enthusiast. And that's kind of a nice way to niche you into your right audience. There's a lot of a lot of benefits to paid. But it's not necessarily a step, a lot of newer accounts need to be taking, it's good to as an account by nonprofits, social media account, builds your organic content out so that people have something to see and something to revisit once you start running paid campaigns. So that makes sense.
Taylor Shanklin:Yeah, absolutely, it does. And we've definitely had organizations come to us and say, you know, whether it's kind of a startup organization, or nonprofit or for profit, I say the same thing. You know, like, well, if you don't have any content yet, like, we've got to get some content there. And a consistent regular drumbeat. That way, when people do start visiting from a paid ad, like you look legitimate, it looks like like you've already got a reason to engage. So I think that's really, really important. Taking that a little bit of a step further, like, how do you usually help people determine what a paid budget should be, I mean, relative, it can be all over the place. But do you have kind of a general rule of thumb you like to coach people
Becky Escher:through, I like to really be mindful of what people can actually afford to do, depending on the client. And depending on the scope of people they're trying to reach and the leads they're trying to generate, that will inform a lot of the budget, it's kind of hard to do a one size fits all recommendation, I will say if you want to run multiple campaigns and run different tests, you need to really consider your budget limitations. There are tools, Social Media Examiner is a great resource, they have a really great YouTube video that kind of breaks down how to determine a budget for, you know, a long term marketing campaign. There's different budget considerations for different goals. You know, if I have a client who has a little bit of ad spend for the month, and something we really want to do is generate more followers on their account, I'll just throw in a $50 boost, and I'll select a geographic location, I'll run that for like five days. And the return on that is usually pretty impactful if the content is good. And, you know, I pride myself on doing pretty good content. So normally, we have pretty successful results. But if I'm running, say, a month long campaign to sell a product, that budget is going to be significantly larger. And it's something that you really have to monitor pretty regularly. And by that I mean daily. If I'm running an ad campaign, I'm in the back of meta every single day, seeing how things are performing, seeing if I need to reallocate budgets to different creative, it can be very nitty gritty. That is a lot of the time why people hire outside agencies to manage that because it's very time consuming, especially if that's not your bread and butter. If you're an admin assistant for a nonprofit organization or small business, you probably have 1000 Other things you need to be worrying about, then how an ad is performing on social.
Taylor Shanklin:Absolutely. Okay, cool. And we'll put Social Media Examiner social media examiner.com. We'll put that in the show notes. I agree. They've got a lot of good resources on that site. That's that's the set you were referring to. Right?
Becky Escher:Yes, yeah. I really liked their content.
Taylor Shanklin:All right. Let's see mystify this next one number three. So we got then to so far promotion versus connection paid versus organic. Now I want to ask you a common question. But one that everyone still struggles with? Do I need to be on all social media platforms? Oh, wow.
Becky Escher:That's such a good question. My short answer is no, absolutely not. First of all, there are so many social media platforms out in the world outside of Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn, that it's probably impossible to even be involved with all of them. But if we're talking about those top social media platforms, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, gosh, tick tock YouTube, you really need to think, Okay, where is my audience? Is it business to business? Is it business to consumer? What's the age demographic of my audience? Is it people over the age of 40? Is it people under the age of 20? And then understanding what types of people are on those different platforms? I have found with a lot of clients, in particular, for whatever reason, everyone is on Twitter. They all have professional accounts on Twitter, and I have no shade to Twitter whatsoever. But it's interesting to me how many people have Twitter accounts, professional Twitter accounts that don't use them, and don't have the capacity to maintain the Twitter account? Is Taylor one of those people
Taylor Shanklin:you're truly embracing? Included? Like, I don't know, I've made it a long time ago. I've some followers, but I just, I can't keep Twitter. So fast moving like, I've just never been able to keep up with it. You know.
Becky Escher:And that's exactly why people in my opinion, a lot of people and a lot of businesses don't need to worry about being on it. Unless you have someone who is on Twitter all day long. And who can engage with people all day long? No.
Taylor Shanklin:Like, I have real work to do. Like, that's been my issue with Twitter the whole time. I'm like, I actually have real work to do. So I can't be on Twitter all day. But like you have to be on Twitter all day to get good at Twitter. So I just, yeah, yeah,
Becky Escher:it's for people who are very passionate about tweeting, I guess. I've had some clients where it made sense, but a lot of them it doesn't make sense.
Unknown:I have never been good at Twitter. And I understand what you're saying completely. The more you're on there, the more you stay on there. But nope, not for me.
Becky Escher:Yeah, it's too there's too. There's too much going on on Twitter anyway. It's like what? Every type of thing?
Taylor Shanklin:Never been able to keep up though. There's probably some good dad joke channels on there will. This is true.
Becky Escher:Just look through the hashtag dad joke.
Taylor Shanklin:See what? All right. So I like that you don't have to be on all the social media platforms, find the ones that matter for your audience. That takes us into the next thing that we wanted to talk about? I think really well. I was asking you offline before this about different creative for different platforms and why it matters. So I think that's a good segue from that last thing that you said about like, think about your target audience. So tell us a little bit about how you how you then take it to the next level and focus on what kind of content goes on what kind of platform.
Becky Escher:First of all, there's the basis that there are different specifications for different creative meaning on Facebook, to post a picture, maybe it needs to be 1000 by 1000 pixels, but on Twitter, it's different. So that's, that's one way of explaining Oh, your content, size wise needs to be different. But it's also considering how people are going to be viewing your content. If you're posting a video vertically, that's going to be good for a store you're good for Tik Tok, but maybe it's not the best for Instagram and Facebook. But it all comes down to audience and what your goals are posting an article talking about current events that might land on something like LinkedIn or Facebook, maybe not so much on tick tock or on Instagram depending on what that topic is. Having different visuals makes a lot of sense. You don't necessarily need to post the same exact thing on every single channel that you have, you know providing different value for your different audiences. That's that's essentially the basis of content variation. I will say this, most of the platforms respond really well to video. That is the big thing people are pushing right now because a lot of people are engaging with the video forward platforms like YouTube and Tik Tok. So Instagram and Facebook for example, have really been serving video more and promote noting those types of posts more than static posts. So that's something to keep in mind as you know, if you're able to keep track of the trends and how the social media platforms are evolving, that can ultimately benefit your return on content investments, so to speak.
Taylor Shanklin:Awesome, excellent. And make sure you've got plenty of cats doing all sorts of things all the time will puking or meowing. Yep, saying, tick duck.
Becky Escher:Exactly. I have a tick tock account just for my cats. So yeah, cats through the world, as far as I'm concerned.
Unknown:They definitely rule the internet. We've been reading this book for our son called stack the cats. It's pretty hilarious.
Taylor Shanklin:That's definitely cats.
Unknown:Yeah, it's pretty hilarious. I would check it out. It's like a super tiny, but it has a little bit of efficiency. And you basically it talks about stacking cats. It's pretty hilarious.
Taylor Shanklin:All right, I want to get into the last segment of this, let's talk about we're gonna call it the big bomb reel. Two major questions. First one, are you ready for it? Why am I not going viral?
Becky Escher:Man? Why are you not going viral? It's a great
Taylor Shanklin:question. I mean, me personally.
Becky Escher:Well tailor if Senior Content. And it's actually really good. So first of all, it helps to know what going viral means. And in summary, going viral basically means that your content gets shared multiple multiple multiple times by other users. And it just amasses views and engagement, because people have found your content. One example I love is, right in the middle of that pandemic, there was the TIC tock account of the guy on the skateboard with his like Ocean Spray grape juice. And that went viral, it was on the tick tock ads on TV for a while. And I was thinking like, Gosh, why did this go viral? And it really comes down to uniqueness of content. And being current with the times. I think people seeing this video in such a stressful, dark, withdrawn period of time, kind of inspired a little bit of whimsy, a little bit of freedom, and gave them a little bit of hope and something fun to just, you know, dissociate with. I think a lot of times people try too hard to go viral, and therefore they don't go viral. So if that's kind of your ultimate goal, I would consider why do you want to go viral? And I would consider how unique is my content? And how different is it from everybody else's content out there? What will make people want to share my content and make it blow up in this way? For me personally, going viral? Doesn't mean people are sharing my content. It means I'm getting good likes on Instagram. I don't really my personal brand. I don't really have time to manage it, because I'm doing so many other people's accounts. But I shared a post last week and I got like, 50 likes on it to me. I'm like, well, dang, I'm famous, you know. So it's also just measuring like, what that looks like for you and your brand.
Taylor Shanklin:Yeah, it's relative. And viral is totally unpredictable. That's the thing about it. That's why it's like people why can't it go viral? Well, that guy on his Ocean Spray adventures was not predicting he was gonna go viral. Becky, I made a video one time of trying to ride my one wheel in my apartment. And falling off of it a lot. It did not go viral. That's disappointing. Like, negative viral? Yeah.
Becky Escher:Can we add that in the show notes too?
Taylor Shanklin:I mean, I made music to it. Like it was kind of funny. I was just being a dumbass you know? Like I guess I needed juice
Becky Escher:that's all you were missing
Taylor Shanklin:my juice like I needed a second of the two big bomb reels debunking hashtag what is in a hashtag what? What is a hashtag?
Becky Escher:Hashtags are the bane of my existence. So a hashtag is essentially a way to connect with people. And what I mean by that is if you put something like hashtag Texas in an Instagram post, anyone who is searching the word Texas and Instagram has the opportunity to see your post, because it connects that topic with your content. So There's a reason why people will often flood their posts with different hashtags is to capture these different search terms, essentially, in different people looking for that content. I have been of the school of thought for a very long time, that you only really need to use hashtags on Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, my mind has been changing to include that more in Facebook. And that's because Facebook has actually been using and allowing people to use hashtags in the way they had been used and promoted on Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn. In the past, when you put a hashtag on Facebook, it literally did nothing. There weren't hot links that could help you connect with those topics. It just looked junky. That's really why hashtags are the bane of my existence, because in my opinion, they look very junky. One tip, if you're using Instagram, is if you can put your hashtags as your first comment in your post. It alleviates the chunkiness of all of the copy. But yeah, that that is a hashtag in a tiny little package. They are super helpful. They're pretty essential. But they are the bane of any social media managers existence.
Taylor Shanklin:They help your content get found, because it's basically like I think of it like it's a search terms, kind of for social media for your content. But yeah, Instagram is kind of funny, when Instagram first came out and I first got on it, I did not understand it's one that requires a lot of hashtags, more so than other platforms. And it's like I would see my friends posting stuff with like, 35 hashtags. I'm like, What is this?
Becky Escher:One, if you see people posting that many hashtags, and you notice that they have a really low number of likes or comments, that should tell you that they're probably not using the right hashtags for their goal. So that's that's kind of a learning lesson. As you observe things on social you can kind of tell what actually works.
Taylor Shanklin:Yeah, we've got some favorite hashtag like research tools that we like that are free to use. We'll put those in the show notes. So Fleetwood Mac song, what do you wills? I Emina. Something psychic. Well, what's this about a Fleetwood Mac song? For me?
Unknown:That's that's the song in the in the video from the
Taylor Shanklin:ocean. Yeah.
Unknown:Talks about freedom, right? You go again, you say you want your freedom.
Becky Escher:And you're just checking some juice.
Taylor Shanklin:I think you had a good point about the timing of that video and why it went viral. You know? That's a that's a good point. All right, Becky, let's close it out. I've got one last question for you. We always ask some people some some fun questions at the end. What's been one of your favorite jobs you've ever had? That's not social media consulting.
Becky Escher:One of my favorite jobs. I've had quite a few jobs. I worked for JC Penney's marketing department, kind of freshly out of college. And I loved that job for so many reasons. I loved all the people I worked with, I got to touch a variety of projects. And I've learned so many different things from graphic design to some initial social media business tactics to managing print deadlines, and working with designers and copywriters. It was really one of my first times to see how a large scale organization utilizes teams and multiple talents to be successful. I really valued that experience. In tandem with that I was a workaholic in my early 20s, and I had a part time job during that time at the mall, working at Paper Source, because I'm a paper craft junkie. And I loved I loved that job. I love working with people. I love retail. But yeah, I wasn't there for very long, but I absolutely loved that job. That's my short answer. But um, I've been doing this for you know, like I said, about five years and it's been the best in terms of like, work life balance and figuring out what I can actually manage without having someone dictate it to me. So it's been kind of neat.
Taylor Shanklin:Now I know send you fun paper. Yeah. I'd love to know. Alright. Well, I think this has been good. I think we've demystified a lot of things about social media today. Thank you, Becky. Thank you sidekick. Well, if people want to get in touch find you online, find you on the interwebs and stalk you on Twitter. What's the best way to find you?
Becky Escher:My Instagram is at Becky Asher. And my last name is E s ch er I don't follow me on Twitter. That's my dumping ground for just garbage. But yeah, I'm mostly on Instagram and if you want to follow my cats on tick tock we are at porch Kitty and Friends.
Taylor Shanklin:Well Thank you Becky so much. This has been a another episode of talking shizzle where we talked some shizzle today about social media. We hope you enjoyed the show, learned some nuggets, and had a few takeaways about how to make your social media more effective for your business or nonprofit. We'll see you next time. Well, hey there. That was fun. I love how much mind blowing and mind opening shizzle our guests bring to us with every episode. We hope you enjoyed the conversation as much as we did. Make sure you hit that subscribe button on your favorite podcast player so that you don't miss a beat of the talking shizzle podcast. And if you're listening on Apple, be sure to let us know what you thought and leave us a review. We'd love to hear from my listeners so that we can bring you all the good juicy Business Growth shizzle that you would like to hear about. Get in touch with us and follow along at Creative shizzle.com or email us at podcast at Creative shizzle.com Until next time, keep making your shizzle happen