Hello, and welcome to another episode of Behind the Madness. I'm your host, James Roberts, founder, and owner of Method, a growth agency who are hell bent on unlocking company's potential through creative and marketing techniques. Today, I am joined by Jamie and we are going to be talking everything around social media. I'm going to give him some hard hitting questions, and really combat those, those kind of main points want to know around social media.
So without further ado, let's jump straight in Jamie. Welcome again to the pod.
Thanks James. I'm very, very excited for this one.
So as you are our social media guru, I am going to take a step back. people will be pleased to hear that. And we, within about 13 or 14 minutes are going to talk over everything any business owner or marketeer needs to know about social media? Should we, should we jump in and give it a go?
No pressure
No pressure at all. So, first off, I'm going to go with some stats. I'm going to see if you know what you're talking about. Now I could have teed you up, but no, I much prefer to get a recording going and put you right on the spot. So how many people are on social media? So as of the backend of 2021 there are just under 3 billion people on social media as whole, and then there were 2.4 billion just Facebook alone.
So that kind of shows you the reach they have considering this just over half a billion on the others. Um, incredible. Wow. So all the eyeballs are still on Facebook, which is amazing and well done because I had the numbers in front of me. And, uh, yeah, you've done pretty well. To be honest, there was a spike, which was interesting. There was a little bit of a spike in 2020. Something must have been going on in 2020. There was around an 8.8 increase of social media popularity.
So let's, and I think you've already answered it, but let's jump into it a bit more. What is the most popular social media?
So popular in terms of sheer numbers is just Facebook. Since they launched back in 2003, they have dominated the market in terms of numbers, but in terms of popularity because, of the content that is short form at the moment, short form video that is. TikTok and Instagram reels are exploding. It's unbelievable. The amount of attention TikTok is I believe the fastest growing social media there has ever been in terms of numbers.
They started in China with 500 million monthly active users before they even came over towards places like the UK, the US, Canada. So those two are the real big ones right now, are Instagram and TikTok.
What does short-form video mean? Just
Short form video is quick digestible video that is normally anywhere between 15 and 60 seconds, and it can be a range of stuff like other content types. So it can be educational, it can be inspiring, it can be entertaining, I'm sure you've seen the funny cat videos, I'm sure you've seen the dancing trends.
If you haven't seen any dancing trends or some of the funny things, keeping an eye on our Instagram in the next few weeks and, uh, James will be busting out the moves and the pointing and the different directions. But, um you haven't jumped onto a TikTok, jump onto an Instagram reel and see what it's all about. It's quick, quick, quick video.
Where can people find my crazy dancing on Instagram, Jamie?
They can find that on our Instagram. So it's a bit of a shameless plug here, but if you head over to at hello underscore method, on our Instagram, you can see some funny reels, but most importantly, some educational content, super, super digestible, carousels or reels, we want to make business super, super simple.
So apart from watching my dancing on social media, how long does the average person spend social media per day?
It depends if you're working on it. I think if I looked at my screen time, it was probably a bit about four or five hours a day. but funny enough, actually working outside of it, it shown that now people spend about four hours a day. So between. Screens that are in our pocket and the screens, normally in our living rooms, people actually normally spend four hours watching TV and four hours kind of on a social media platform on their phone.
So they spend a whole eight hours a working day on those two devices. So it shows you the power of digital for one, but about anywhere between two and four hours as kind of a generic, because everyone's different. Everyone has busy lives, some people have kids, some people don't, some people have free reign to go wherever they want in the world and just take their phone.
Yeah, I think mine is I watch telly and a lot of social media at the same time, multitasking in my living room.
Men are well known for it.
What's the best time to post on social media
Massive massive, pointless one because we got a couple of normal questions when it comes to socials. This is one of the common ones. It's case of how long's piece of string you're going to have to test it. I'm not going to give you a number and say it's five o'clock for Instagram. It's 3: 30 for Facebook, because that won't be true for you. Social media is a very personalized experience. It's what these platforms pride themselves on.
So, test it,, But also consider where your audience, who you're trying to attract, their patterns, their behaviors. If they work nine to five jobs, then realistically they, okay, there may be on a lunch and they may be on around 10 30, 11 when there's a coffee break, having a quick scroll.
But you thinking probably between about six to seven, eight o'clock at night when they have either fed the kids or they've had dinner themselves and are sitting down that in front of the TV, bit like James in front of the TV, seeing what's going on in Instagram, catching up with friends, discovering new brands, new products. So test it and understand where your audience are and what time.
tips that I learned when I was doing our own kind of social media stuff was to think about where, as you said, think about what your audience is. Think about when you can post out to them. So let's say, uh, most people have appointments booked on the hour or on the half hour, so rather than post on the hour, on the half hour, think about what that person is doing before then, which is probably twiddling their thumbs.
It's probably waiting to go in somewhere, and as we know when we're nervous, we have this, this tendency to pull out our mobile phone and jump on it. And to be honest, what are you probably going to go towards? You're going to gravitate towards social media, towards Instagram and Facebook, and just see what's going on in the world. So. Posting just before those times, is a great way of kind of getting eyeballs on it when people are, tend to be doing nothing.
But again, do your research, as Jamie says. So following on from when the best time to post on social media is, and how often should I post on a social media
So the phrase kind of content is king is very, very common, but the big one is consistency is queen. So this one comes about because how often you post is up to you because you dictate, what can you manage? You want to make sure you're not running around every day. Thinking I've got to post today, I've got to post now I've got to post tomorrow And kind of putting out content that you're maybe not happy with, or it's overwhelming you and detracting from other areas of your business.
This is one element of your business, so make it manageable. The other thing is how often your audience gets used to you posting. This is what consistency is key.
If for example, you choose a Monday or Tuesday and a Friday to post, then post show up on those days, your audience will get used to seeing a post from you on those days, new posts on Tuesday, if they show up and you're not there that trust that you've built in the early stages or throughout your journey with them will straightaway be lost. So consistency is the key over frequency pick when you want to do it, test the best times, day and the actual time, and then be consistent.
And I guess this ties into, when we're talking about doing all of our testing, the best, obviously there's a number now of social media platforms, but again, I guess, which social media platform should I use to promote my business comes down to doing a lot of research and testing as well does it Jamie?
Massively, I think one of the big things that people often happens. They jump into social media, To start with, find the strategy, work out what's going on, like with your business, why you want to be there. So if you are thinking, okay, I want to attract people because I'm a visual first brand then Instagram is going to be key for you, but you want to know what you want to get out of that. Are you doing it to build a community?
Are you doing it to convert sales or push people to your website, up that traffic? You want to make sure that you are delivering for the people who matter. So make sure you do your buyer persona research, understand your demographic, who they are, what pain points they have, what their lives looked like, what the behaviors look like. The biggest thing with social or digital anywhere is attention is currency. The attention is What matters.
So you want to know where it is, when it is, and why it is. why is someone's attention on this topic? Because they've got that pain point, actually that aligns to our product. We can help them and then you can reach out to them on social.
What kind of content should I post?
So right now, short form video kind of, we mentioned it already earlier is huge, stuff like reels, stuff like TikTok, Stories even they are sort of short form video that disappear after a while. These kinds of things are huge, the biggest thing with social is people get frustrated with organic growth, because these are a newer product, there is still some organic growth. They are becoming more and more saturated, there is more organic growth with them some of the older features.
So decide where you want to be. So if you are a restaurant and you have visually very pleasing food and you've hired a good photographer, then get that out there onto Instagram, get it onto social media that promotes that kind of topics. But you also want to fit into one of the, are you entertaining people? Are you doing a funny dance? Are you just being funny with your content in general? Are you, educating them? is it how they're solving a pain point?
But then when you want to do that, you want to take that content form and you want to wrap it in a story that is your brand and your audience, and then push it to the various places.
So lastly, the question on everybody's lips and the first question we get asked. How can my business get more followers on social media?
I love this question because it is how we have been shaped to think of social media. It's almost like high school it's the more followers, the more friends, all of that kind of stuff, the better person you are, the social status you acquire. But people are more and more focusing on engagement now, it's not so much about the follower number, it's how engaged our audience is. Making sure the community is actually giving a shit about what you do.
So with that in mind, there are a few things you can do for a follower number, but that is, be consistent show up for them, show up for the audience like you want them to show up for you, create relatable, relevant, and useful content, stuff that they care about. Stuff that they can connect to, stuff they can get behind, they can share.
They take use out of, there's nothing worse than scrolling on say Instagram for half an hour, I'm coming off and thinking that's half an hour of my life just gone. In the last episode, on behind the madness, James spoke about the company Tribe and he spoke about how he connected with a brand and he got more out of that product because of the mission behind them then he thought going into it.
If you can do that every time someone lands on your social account then you are winning, the numbers show it, so be consistent, be relevent. And be authentic, be social. Don't the social in social media, I hate it when people forget it.
Amazing. Thanks, Jamie. We managed to do everything we needed to cover around social media in a whirlwind trip of about 14 and a half minutes, which is pretty impressive. If you have found this useful, then we want you, we want you to follow us on social media. You are going to be the type of person who is going to be engaged in what we are offering. So find us on Instagram at hello underscore method. And if you have any questions, use the same place to kind of give Jamie or myself.
Any questions, any kind of questions you've got around social media, or even just getting some growth within your organization, then we are there to help. So until next time bye-bye for now