Gift biz unwrapped episode 328. So the more simple that we can keep a social post, oftentimes the better it's going to perform Attention. Gifters bakers, crafters, and makers pursuing your dream can be fun. Whether you have an established business or looking to start one. Now you are in the right place. This is gift to biz on wrapped, helping you turn your skill into a flourishing business. Join us for an episode, packed full of invaluable guidance, resources, and the support you need to grow.
Your gift biz. Here is your host gift biz gal Sue moon Heights. Hi there. Thank you for joining Me for the show today. I'm on my way back from San Diego right now, and we had a jam packed weekend. First, we had a couple's wedding shower for my son, David and future daughter-in-law Bree. Then we did some bridal dress shopping and the weekend closed out with a splash at David's new action park. I'm in awe of these kids with their skateboarding, snowboarding and surfing.
If you know anyone who loves extreme sports and lives near Santa Ana, California, they have to go check this out. It's called divert sessions. Although I ski you'd never catch me skateboard or even snowboard at my age, but I've lived my life around this scene through David. And I'm very familiar with the pros and all the gear. That's why it came as such a surprise.
When in this episode, we started talking about my guests history and I come to find out that she was head social media guru for Burton. This is a top brand in snowboarding. I can close my eyes and see Burton stickers all over a teenage room. The power of branding, just like that jaw dropping reaction you get from our extreme sports athletes, performing those crazy unbelievable stunts. You may have the same response to our chat today.
Katie takes her learning from Burton and overlays it on top of small business needs. Honestly, I was surprised by some of her comments. They go against commonly accepted best practices, but they really make sense. So today we're going to challenge the norm about things like the know, like, and trust factor, having a call to action on every single post and even whether boosting social media posts is one way to go after all, some great stuff coming your way. So let's dive right in today.
I'm looking forward to introducing you to Katie white. Katie is the founder of KW content, a content and social media marketing agency that develops and launches content and social media programs for purpose driven brands, strong brand social is the newest project that empowers small brands to develop their own high performing marketing programs that are guaranteed to drive growth.
Katie's goal is to demystify the art of social media marketing to offer focus efficiency and measurable results to small business owners, brand directors, and social media marketers. Katie, welcome to the gift Ms. On wrapped podcast. Thank you so much, Sue. I'm so happy to be here, Excited to dive into our conversation too, but before we do so I would like to ask you my traditional question, which is to have you describe yourself by way of a motivational candle.
So if you were to envision what that would look like for you, describe it to us by color and quote. I love it. Okay. So I think the color, just because it's my favorite color would be green, a different kind of color for a candle. I know, but, and I was thinking maybe the hue would be like the intersection of lime and an earthy green. And for me, it's just because where I get like the most energy and kind of restore and rejuvenate is always outside. And so that's why that's my favorite color.
I think the quote would be, look it in the eye and go, this is a quote that I always have right near my desk in my office. It's like always in my point of view.
And I think it's so relevant for entrepreneurs and especially anyone who is kind of thinking about diving in or is in it and thinking about how to get to the next level is sort of always relevant about just kind of listening to that voice in your head that maybe you hear, but sometimes try to kind of turn down and just bringing it to center, looking at it in the eye and going for it.
I love That. I've never heard of that before, but what it brings to me is like that decisiveness just make the decision and go with it. Don't back off and then think you'll do it again. Kind of like your foot on the brakes type thing. Just go for it. Exactly. And no, you can always pivot, right? I love how you just pointed out, like just make the decision and go for it. Because I think so often we can talk ourselves out of decisions by creating problems that don't exist yet.
It's like, well, what if this happens? What if that happens? And just trusting that if this or that happens, you'll address it and you can always pivot and to handle it and take it in stride though. I love that. Yeah, you're so right. And how much energy and worrying and time do we waste thinking of all those? What if scenarios, when a lot of them aren't even gonna happen, but Yeah, a lot years and years, For sure.
Well, tell me a little bit of your backstory in terms of how you got to the point where you were really looking at content and social media as your focus, for instance. Sure. Yeah. So in college I was a French major, which is kind of funny, but it landed me a job at Burton snowboards, right after college as a French speaking customer service representative. I think I majored in French because I wanted to do something different than English. And I was at a liberal arts school.
And communication has always been really interesting to me. The earliest, I think my dream career one day would just to be a PR writer. And that's like, I remember when I was a kid, if I had a babysitter, I'd be like writing poetry and our new computer or whatever. So I always loved writing and then I just love communicating. And so then I got a job at a snowboard company for people who aren't winter people.
It won't mean anything, but anyone who skis or snowboards will know the name, burdens no birds. It's the biggest global snowboarding company in the world. And from there, I was really lucky to get a job inside of the late Jake Burton carpenter's office. He was the founder. And at that time he was the CEO. So I was in there and I got my MBA while I was in his office.
And I still was really interested in marketing, but at this point had absolutely no writing portfolio that was official of any kind, no marketing experience. But I think because I was coming from his office, I was able to kind of claw my way into the marketing department, which was kind of a big deal cause it's a big company. And my first job was overseeing a women's blog@thetimeitwascalledburtongirls.com and we had different contributors and there was a lot of content going out.
So I started doing a lot of writing and I was in that role when our social media was pretty new at the time we were one of the first brands on Instagram. This was back in, I don't know, 2011, 2012. So our social media manager left. I was the youngest person in that department. And they were like, instead of interviewing for this job, Katie will do it. And so I slowly took on social media responsibilities.
By the time I left for in, I was overseeing three different brands on social, our kind of lifestyle brand, which is now the handle is Burton. I was overseeing Burton snowboards, and then a Goggle company that they own called an on optics. So I was overseeing those brands on Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, and also two different brand blogs at the time. So it was sort of trial by fire. There wasn't a lot of information at the time.
I remember trying to do a lot of research on how to do things well and right. Especially from a content perspective. And there just wasn't much, there's just so much more that exists now today, which is great. Yeah. That's kind of the story. Wow. I love hearing that story. I am very familiar with the Burton brand. My son is in extreme sports. In fact, he just opened up a snowboarding skateboarding, surfing park. So Burton has been integrated into our life for years.
So it's really interesting to hear what you were doing behind the scenes. Cause I know we've seen a ton of your work. It also, I was thinking based on the time of social media evolution, even though you may not have felt like you had the experience and trial by fire type thing, everyone was doing it because it was still so new back then. Right? Exactly. And it was kind of the glory days.
I will admit it was you showed up and you just tried to put your best face forward with content and you showed up for your community and you tried to tap into hashtags were a thing on Instagram at the time, kind of just were there every single day. You really had a great chance of growing. Of course the algorithm is more finicky today than it was back then, but it was definitely a fun place to get started for sure. And let's just face it with social media. It keeps changing.
The platforms changed. I mean, nothing is left to be the same even for a month. It feels like in social media. So it's always changing. All right. So you had experienced then with big brands, big audiences and where was the evolution then to help those of us who are smaller, who really, really now need the help because when you're starting, you have really no clue what was the transition there? Yeah, it's actually a funny story.
So from Burton, I went into the beauty industry just for a year at this brand called Tata Harper skincare. And they're big now. They weren't quite so big back then. So that was a great kind of proof point that I kind of was able to test some of my own methodologies that I had developed independently there and see that they worked, you know, and really from a content perspective, I think when we talk about social media, it's always about what's changing.
And what I love about my job is focusing on what doesn't change and that's, you're putting your customer at the center of your story, telling the right brand stories that they really want to hear and that the timeless stuff that's always important, no matter what. So once I left tot to Harper to start KW content, I had this grand plan that I was going to help small businesses. I was so passionate.
I was so excited and I went to do some market research and I live in Burlington, Vermont, where there's a really cute downtown with a ton of incredible independent retailers. And I must have walked into 20 to 25 different stores just to see, you know, if I could get them to talk to me a little bit about if social media was important to them and what were the problems that they were seeing with it.
So this was in 2017 and I don't think I had a single business owner that acted interested in talking to me, of course, any small business owners or especially retailers know that like marketer is a dirty word. Sometimes we did not want unsolicited advice. They felt like they probably were scared that I just wanted to sell them something when really, I just wanted to have a conversation and understand, but it was a discouraging day.
I would say that's pointed me back in the direction of bigger brands where I had experienced, but what happened when COVID and the pandemic hit? We found this moment, first of all, our agency was under the gun. We didn't have any brands that were in a central spaces, so to speak. So my team was growing and then we had a moment where we thought you were going to lose 80% of our revenue. So we pivoted and we launched strong brand social in a three week timeframe, our first product.
And all of the sudden there were all of those ideal customers that I had always wanted to work with because everybody was trying to figure out how to pivot to online business, how to connect with the customers that they had had and make sure that they knew that those brands were there online. And the rest is really history. We have generated almost 10,000 customers in the last 14 months, but more important than that, our community is amazing.
It's filled with everything from handmade family owned jewelry makers, to alpaca farmers, to beverage brands, food brands. I mean, it's artists, it's the whole gamut and it is exactly what I always wanted when I started my business. And I just feel so fortunate to be connected with them. And so the evolution of strong brand social, it's an online learning community. We have a suite of, I think probably seven different courses and a membership at this
point. And everything we have created has really been in partnership with our customers, put one thing out and we invited them to kind of join us in a small community. We showed up every single week with extra free trainings throughout those early months of the pandemic, especially, I mean, we're still in there all the time, but we were just like, how can we help? What do you need from us? And they told us.
And so everything that we've felt has really been in partnership with these small brands and it's just been amazing. And it's been cool to see how we want to tweak what we teach and the methodology of our fields to really suit small business resources and make sure that people aren't wasting time on shiny objects, which our industry is filled with and really feel empowered to build a program that is custom fit to your unique goals and your unique internal resources.
Because our fields and experts in our fields have a tendency to just constantly push the latest and greatest whatever features and trends that the platforms are pushing. Now, the whole conversation shifts that way. And if that works for you, there's nothing wrong with that. But my big fear is that that can be really daunting for small businesses. It can feel discouraging. Like if I don't have video talent now, then what is even the point kind of thing.
And so we're really passionate about demonstrating that there's really no wrong way to do this. As long as you have your customer in mind and you tie your content and your social media publishing schedule to your business goals and you measure results and you optimize, then it can look really different and anything is possible. Yeah. I mean, listening to your story.
I remember back to that time, too, when all of a sudden there were no more live shows where a lot of handmade creators usually go to interact with our customers. And so many people were caught off guard to the point where they didn't have websites. They didn't have Facebook pages.
They never needed it before because their life was just every other week, depending on where people lived in the country, they were out at all these shows and exhibiting and all of a sudden, all of that, it's like cut off at the knees and then with nothing. So from my perspective, what we saw last year were some people who didn't ever feel like they needed other types of things in place because they hadn't up to that point. And then they were caught unaware.
Or the other end of this was people like you were just referencing going after the newest, shiny object all the time and jumping and jumping, and then feeling like I'm investing so much time and labor and guessing into these platforms and not really seeing how to analyze and judge whether it's coming back in any way. Cause they're not necessarily seeing it in sales.
And so people just throwing their hands up and saying, I don't know, like I almost give up, I actually was in conversation with someone this morning who was saying, you know, like, I feel like I have to constantly be feeding the social media monster. I mean, social media has so much potential. It's just, we're struggling to get it right, Katie. I totally Get it. I think for what it's worth, for example, Instagram reels, that's the really hot topic right now.
Right. And we have clients and we have students across so many different industries of so many different sizes. I think it's just so important to give people permission that if reels aren't working for you, that's okay. You don't have to do them. For example, we have a global footwear client and reels just, they don't pay off the same way as just a traditional social media post with maybe $10 of spend behind it does. And I know that it's really important for small brands.
Some people are okay with spending a few hundred dollars a month. Some people really, really don't want to, but I think that what I'm really interested in is empowering small brands to create a content and social media strategy that is algorithm proof. And if you're willing to put aside $10 per post to help it get out to the ideal audience that you want to see, you can pull back on how much you're publishing.
So let's say you post just 12 times per month and to assign $10 to each post, you kind of grant yourself permission. First of all, now your posts are going to be distributed for a longer period of time. They're going to kind of bypass the algorithm because you are giving it the juice, so to speak.
And it kind of grants you permission to ignore what's happening with the algorithm and ignore what's changing and what everybody's talking about and say, this is going to be my program for the next year, like this works. And I think then that you get so much time back. If you're posting 12 times a month, instead of 30, you get all of that production time back.
Right? And as small business owners, our resources are so precious and being able to contain the effort that you're putting in see measurable results so that you can continue to drive your business forward while that kind of machine is working for you is just a really great opportunity. So all of that to say, I want to caveat it's like for some people really, really works, right? And so if that's working for you by no means, am I recommending that you don't do it?
I just really want to speak to the people who aren't seeing the tactics that the whole industry is pushing at them work. I want to give those folks something else to think about. Okay. So I am like stopped in my tracks here because you're talking about something totally different than I've heard before. And first, when you just say the words, algorithm proof, I feel like just come out of a massage or something like I'm so relaxed. That feels so good to me.
So when you say like, really, could it be, let's dive into more of the details about this, but did I hear you right. That you're saying that you don't have to be posting all the time every day with every portion of a platform that they give you in, like all the different areas on Instagram, that there are people now, not everyone I get that, but that there is the possibility that you could post 12 times a month. So that's three times a week.
Right. And then put some money behind those, but make those such high quality posts that the visibility is there and the reach is there. Exactly. Yeah. I mean, truly we have some of those examples of businesses that I gave you earlier. They follow this methodology and what we were kind of all talking. I think either in Q1, they were looking back and looking at their business growth because I asked them to like compare their year over year numbers in their online businesses.
In some cases literally grew 200%. And that was just by doing this. And I believe that of the case studies that I'm thinking of in my mind, none of them do reels. So I also think people say, you have to post on stories three times a day. Well, we have a flower brand, a high fiber flower, and we're noticing like no one is looking at our stories. And we think that's because of our demographic, our demographics skews at an age that is less likely to be looking at stories.
So I just think, yeah, it's so important that we equip ourselves with the proper knowledge to be able to really think for ourselves, because that allows us to ignore the noise and get time back in clarity and calm. Right. And so I'm super happy to dive into some of the details of kind of how we look at this. We have a pretty dialed framework that people can adapt to their own business model. Well, I'd be so curious to do that. Let's do it. Let's talk about it. It starts at the content level,
right? So I always say there's three phases to building your content strategy. The first is strategic where we're really squaring up. Who are we talking to? What are we saying? And what is it going to look like, feel like, and sound like, and that's kind of, how do we want our brand to look and how do we connect how we want our brand to look with what our customers really want from us and what they're doing on social media. So that's step one. And we'll talk about that.
There's kind of three pillars that we develop in that phase. Step two is then the tactical part, like that's where we get into, okay. Do we want to do reels? How often do we want to post, what budget do we have to get our posts out there further? Therefore, can we pull back on the volume of posts, all of that good stuff. And I think the real problem is that that's where everybody's
starting. They're just kind of chasing their tails in the tactical part without really starting at the message part. And then the third phase of your content strategy work is really just, you have to push it to market and let your community kind of give you feedback in the form of engagement and results. And then you're always optimizing.
We teach a three pillar framework and what I like to do because I'm so with resource efficiency and I'm obsessed with resource efficiency because it really doesn't matter. I've worked with fortune 500 brands and then I've worked with startups from nothing. It really doesn't matter who you are and what you have. No one ever feels like they have enough resources and content and social social just makes us feel that way.
And so we really want to make sure that the three pillars of our content program are aligned with our three most critical business goals. So for me, our three most critical business goals are number one, brand awareness, but more than brand awareness, I like to think of it as demand generation, right? Because in order to sell, we need to increase demand. So that's one. So we need a pillar that aligns with that. And then the second goal right, is sales. So we need a pillar that aligns with that.
And then the third goal is loyalty. I would say customer loyalty and the real reason that we care about customer loyalty, other than the fact that we love our customers, because we love our business from the practical standpoint, it's profitability, because if we can get customers to buy from us more than once, we're only paying to acquire them on that first sale. So on the second, third, fourth sale, it's a greater profit margin, Right. And referrals, I would imagine as well, A hundred percent.
So I align loyalty with advocacy. I think of those and kind of the same bucket. It's the same stories that will get people to stick around with you forever are the stories that will get them to refer you to their friends. So if we think about that first pillar, and then I like to, I guess I'll pause here and just ask people to think a little bit about one problem I have with our industry is the know like, and trust model.
And this might be a little bit of an unpopular opinion, but the problem with the know, like, and trust model on social media is that it's all about you. And if we take a step back and we think about social media, it's literally in the name, right. It's social. And so I ask people to think about, okay, remember before, and maybe we were getting back into it, a cocktail party, let's say that you want to meet someone that, you know, like you want to establish a relationship with them.
For whatever reason, maybe you want a job and they can help you, whatever it is. You don't start that conversation. When you get that introduction, you don't just start talking about yourself, right? You've probably done some research about that person. And you probably have looked for something that is mutual interest. So if you both have children, you might ask them about their children. That's something you have in common.
If you both played golf, if you both played tennis, if you both like to snowboard, right, you're going to find that out ahead of time. And you're going to try to drop that into the first part of the conversation. And that is the same thing as pillar one it's mutual ground. It's common interest where you're not asking them to buy
anything. It's the most social content Part of first, you have to really know and understand your customer a hundred percent, the value that you provide over and above your product. So whatever that would be, what the content would look like. It's not just always, and in our industry that it's such an easy default is here's my, here's the price. Here's where to go buy. Right? And Where is why I made this product. And here's why I love this product.
And here, you know, that instead Of other things, other areas where you have common ground to what you're saying, like with the cocktail party. So you're saying those are the types of things over and above our product that we should be adding to our content. Yeah. I love how you're saying over and above, because what I always say is it's like an interest in this content precedes an interest in your product, right? It qualifies them. A really great example is for food brands,
recipes. So if I see a recipe and it's from a food brand, I can make that recipe with a different brands product, right? You are bringing value to me. However, if I come to your site and read that recipe, the brand also knows that that's an ideal customer, even if they haven't bought yet. So this mutual ground, it serves a lot of purposes. It serves the purpose of providing value in establishing contact with your ideal customer.
And it also provides the mechanism that the brand needs of qualifying that person as a prospect. So that would be interested in buying your product eventually. Yes. I've been talking about this a little bit of a different way, and I'd love your opinion on this. If someone is a candle maker and all they're showing on social are these fabulous, beautiful, gorgeous, wonderfully scented candles.
Every single time, I might still love those candles, but I don't need to see that all the time, because maybe I'm not in the market for a candle right now, which for me is highly improbable, but let's just go with it. And if that's all that I'm delivered from that company, okay, that's fine. I love it, but I don't need to see it all the time. So I'm going to stop interacting with it, which then means if it's not paid advertising, I'm certainly not going to continue seeing it in my feed.
Versus if I was shown different ways to use candles, other products that being a candle lover, I like, I don't know all different types of like lifestyle type things I would be going then. And following it for more than just the candles, because it's providing me other types of value, which by the way, then when I need a candle, they're the first person.
Exactly. That is pillar one. And the other thing that pillar one does, and the other thing that that type of content does is if you see something that's new and different and interesting, you are more likely to share it. So that is how pillar one contributes to brand growth and demand generation. Because by sharing content that your prospects and your community just find interesting, it's new and it's different. It's entertaining, it's educational.
That's going to be the thing that they hit that little arrow and share it with their friends. Hey, have you seen this? Oh my gosh, how cool is this? And now that generates this like halo ripple effect around your brand gets it in front of more people and AKA generates more demand and just awareness of who you are and what you're selling. This seems so obvious, but because so many don't do it.
And to your point at some part of the conversation up until now, people repeat what they're seeing other people doing, right. Or what people are saying to do. But this seems like it would be so obvious if you just look at your own behavior, but we don't do it. I know, I think it's just because we're all so strapped for time and we try to fit. It's also funny because this is the content that's really fun.
Like if we love our business and we love our product, it's the stuff that we probably have the most creative energy around. It's probably the stuff we find the most. Interesting. And it's a really meaningful way to connect with your audience. I think the reason why we don't do it is we're just, I don't know, content production stresses is out. We're not thinking about it this way. So we're just trying to get it done and check off the box.
But then when we approach content in that way, where it's like under pressure, it ends up kind of not being good, which then kind of decreases our relationship with it. Right. It makes it feel. So it's kind of this, a little bit of a vicious cycle. I think. Whereas if we start to think for ourselves in this way, we actually start to enjoy it, which then means that our content gets better, which means the entire thing becomes more fun and more impactful for our business.
And you're saying we don't have to do this every day either. Exactly. Oh my gosh, you could do something like this. You could decide you're going to do one blog a month. That has a few different tips in it. And repurpose that blog promote that blog once a week for the full month, just through a different angle, Promote the blog in social, right. Directing back to the article. Just wanted to make sure everyone would understand that connection there. So can you give us some tips on other ideas?
Like it could be something that's trending. We talked about that something that's brand new. What other types of things are your clients doing? Just so we can continue brainstorming what that could be for us. That's not just the product price content. Oh my gosh. So much good information already. And right after a quick break, we'll get back to talk about more ideas for posting content over and above product and price. Yes. It's possible. Increase your sales without adding a single customer.
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I sell social media marketing services and products, but I know that my target audience is a business owner and they're also, what else are they? They're probably a really high achiever. They're probably someone who is highly motivated, but they have taken a lot on. And so one category of content we put in our pillar. One is what we call words of encouragement.
And the whole point of the content is to just meet them where they are in a moment we love doing it on a Friday because everybody's just tired on Friday and can't wait to get to the weekend. And we just hit them with like an inspirational quote, super conversational it's fun. And the whole idea is that we think of it as trying to be your hype woman. Like we tell you what you need exactly when you need to hear it.
And that content is the content that people save the most, share the most engage with the most. They just love it. And that is content, right? That takes very little time to produce. It's just inspirational quotes, but really like centered around our target market's mindset. I've seen a lot of people in our community sharing memes, or even self-initiated quotes I'll go with, or other quotes from others, but on posts that they're creating.
But I don't know that we're always thinking about hitting at the right time that you were talking about. So I want to underline that concept. I think it's something that I'm going to think forward when I'm doing my quotes and some of the inspirational things what's the balance or what do you suggest then with copy, you know, the actual post part versus the visual. How important is that and what do you do with that? So it's a great question.
I think both are really important, but I think that there's a little bit of a myth about how sophisticated your design really needs to be the graphic part, the craft exactly we actually have. And I see it all over the internet, oftentimes a white background with black copy on it. If we're talking about a quote here will outperform something that someone tried to pretty up.
And I think the reason for that is there's three words that I like to keep in mind about my content, especially with this pillar, one content that we're talking about, and those are timely, relatable, and relevant. And we want to keep it simple because our community is being kind of, for lack of a better term, smacked in the face with so much information all day, every day, right? We're just all bombarded. It's infobesity. Like we're all just getting hit with too much information.
So the more simple that we can keep a social post, oftentimes the better it's going to perform, this can really be up to the brand. Some brands want to have really nice designs or graphics and that's totally okay too. I think I just want to put a plugin for a simple also works really well. Does that mean It makes so much sense and I'm feeling so good cause I do the white background on my quotes or whatever with type and then just a little yellow flower, which is my brand logo. And that's it.
So I'm feeling good about that, but then what about the word part of the post, the content part? So I think that this is another area where especially pillar one, I think that less is more, unless what you're saying is just so meaningful that it deserves more words. So there is a tendency I think for people to give really lengthy, almost journal style entries on their captions. And again, if you see that your community is responding to that, don't stop. Certainly don't stop.
But if you see that your community is not responding to that, try simplifying. I think that it's a lot to ask people to read a whole two or three paragraphs in the middle of their busy day, unless it's something that is so value packed, it's going to immediately move the needle for them.
So anytime I'm in the editing phase, I am asking myself if this paragraph does not add value to my customer or center, my customer's point of view in some way, if it's a little self-indulgent and it's just a story about me, I will often cut it because I think again, just putting yourself in the mindset of it's really easy for us to put ourselves in the mindset of our customers on social media, because we are all customers of some kind, we are humans that are really strapped for time and just
there's so much content to produce. So keeping it simple is 100%. Okay. So sometimes with our words of encouragement posts, we have a one-liner maybe one to two sentences that goes with it. This is Such a breath of fresh air. I cannot even tell you. Oh my gosh. And I'm also thinking that if you put this whole personal story about what's behind the quote, it might detract from how that landed with the person who was initially Reading it. That's exactly it.
We really want this content to be about them. So the less you say, the more people can relate to it because they can make it whatever it needs to be for them in that moment. I like this. And so add some hashtags. What's your position on the hashtags hashtags? Yes. This is a really interesting one. I do think that it's important to invest some time in
hashtags. We talk about this a lot in my agency because sometimes I'm not sure if the juice is worth the squeeze in terms of how much time it takes. So in terms of hashtags, you really want to stay away from, I might have these specific numbers wrong, but you kind of want hashtags that are in between like the 10,000 and 50,000 volume mark. Otherwise they're going to get completely lost. Do you need to make sure the hashtags you're using are not shadow banned,
right? So before you publish with a hashtag, you need to check all of those hashtags and make sure that they're healthy, so to speak. So one thing, and we haven't really gotten into the other two pillars and then how to use a little bit of paid advertising spend.
But if you're spending $10 a post and do you find hashtags kind of soul sucking and time-consuming, you do have the option to ignore them because paying to get a kind of out past the algorithm in front of more people is one way to kind of buy it. It's doing the same thing that your hashtags do. So we see varying levels of success with our hashtags across our brands in different industries and all of that. I just want to empathize that it can be a really time consuming process.
So if it works for you, that's awesome. Don't stop. If it is your least favorite part and deters you from posting, let's maybe consider putting $10 behind your post instead. Okay. That makes total sense to me. Completely agree with that. Okay. So yes. I know we've been taking a bunch of time on content, but if we don't have the content, nothing else is going to happen. Yeah. It's so important. And I think pillar one also this like lifestyle content that's interest based.
This is the stuff that people have the most, it's a little challenging. So I think it's great to spend time here. Perfect. Okay. But let's go ahead and carry on. So we have a complete package for everybody. Okay. So then pillar two is all about your product. It's like, this is where you talk about your product. You want to get really clear about talking about your product in a way that is benefit driven, not feature driven.
So it's not a book with 200 pages, it's a book that's going to change your life in these ways. And so that's where that time to talk about your product. At any time you're talking about your product, you really want to include a call to action. Another piece of advice that I see across the industry is like include a call to action on every single post. And my students feel really awkward about that because you include a call to action on every post. And a lot of times people don't answer.
And so I say, if you feel awkward about calls to action on every single post, you can contain your calls to action to pillar two. It's like, here's the product. Here's how it's going to change your life. And here's how you can learn more about it on my website. Here's how you can buy it now. So that's really where you want your calls to action. And then pillar three, this is where all the know like, and trust stuff comes in. So pillar three is about you.
It's kind of, I like to think about it as this is the stuff that people hear and when they've tried your product already, and then they read the story, that's what hooks them. And they become lifelong friends there. And this is what makes them refer friends. So it could be that you're a woman owned company. It could be that you use sustainable materials in the way that you produce your product.
It could be that you use your grandmother's recipes and family secret recipes in the things that you bake, whatever it is that really makes you, you that's where pillar three content. Perfect. And the importance of that, of course also is you then are separating yourself from anyone else who makes a similar type of a product. And you're giving content to someone to talk with you about they can share, oh, I love this jewelry.
And here's why, because you fed them that information that is authentic. That's exactly. I love it. And then what percentage should the sales portion Be? So I like to say in a kind of standard, because it's going to change, it's going to change my brand and it's going to change by like the season of business that you're in. But if we were just going to start at a baseline, I would say, you do 50% pillar, one 30% pillar, two and 20% pillar three.
And you can kind of visualize the way that that matches and mirrors a marketing funnel, right? The top demand generation needs the most. Then we convert that in demand. And then we really have those conversations with our customers. Now you can take those percentages and dial them up or down, right? If it is a big promotional month for you and you have a lot of product to sell,
right. When we're in Q4 for we're taking pillar two and we're dialing it way up and that's totally fine, but I like the 50, 30, 20 as a baseline. Perfect. And I think the thing we always have to remember too, is just because maybe you're doing more of loyalty or advocacy posts doesn't mean that someone's not going to say, oh my gosh, I just totally forgot. I wanted to order something from her. Oh, a hundred percent.
So it doesn't mean that you're not going to get sales just because you're not quote unquote selling in your post it's that you're making contact with your followers, staying top of mind, deepening the relationship, which then brings all the goodness in terms of sales and support and referrals and all of that down the road. Exactly. And when someone sees a meaningful post on pillar one or three, they are, they're more likely to kind of get their attention with that. And they're like, oh wow.
And that's what kind of drives them to your profile. Right. They're going to click on you and kind of see what you've been up to. And then they'll see that last post you did on your new, awesome product. So there's a little bit of a rabbit hole effect for sure. Sure. You know, what else I feel is when I'm just seeing like sales posts all the time, I feel like that brand just is in panic mode for
sales. Yeah. So if I see it leveling out, just like some behind the scenes or some sharing, you know, we all know, yes, they're trying to get visibility, but it doesn't feel so needy. If you Will, a hundred percent, it's a way better experience for everyone. It really is how social originally was created in the beginning when brands first started using social media. I remember when in my first job we would be like, you're not supposed to sell on social.
Like we would hate it when the brand team would breathe in a sales campaign for us. And looking back on it now either only asking us to do a couple of posts, because originally it was very much a top of funnel, community audience building tool. And that, because of the way that users use social, they're getting on social for a breath of fresh air for an escape of where they are right now for really quick distraction for something to do while they wait for an appointment. It's like, it's social.
All of that does not mean that we shouldn't sell now that it certainly has shifted, but I completely agree with you that it's just a better experience for everyone when we're not just sell, sell, sell, sell, sell. Right. For Sure. It's so funny that the change and evolution of social, we're really only talking what a little over a decade. Maybe I know. It's So crazy. All right. Let's continue on. And just quickly talk about the tactical and then the market
feedback. Okay, great. So I think the tactical can be anything from, okay, should we be partnering with other brands? That's one tactic that a lot of people don't necessarily talk about. We see it all the time. It's a really good tactic for small brands. So that means finding other, some people call it influencers. I don't love that word for small brands. It's finding individuals that have your audience and partnering with them to bring value to their audience and introduce you to their
audience. It could be partnering with other brands and organizations. I really love that for small businesses. It's a super powerful way to get in front of new audiences. That's one tactic. I like hashtags is an example of a tactic, right? You're layering that on the message to get your message out further. I developed something that we call the three by three model and it is how we align kind of boosting posts, so to speak with the pillar that it lines up with.
So we used to allocate, I don't know if anybody remembers, I think now the button on the Instagram post says promote, but it used to say boost this post. And we used to allocate just a little bit of budget every month for our clients to just boost posts that were performing well. And one of the benefits of having a ton of clients in a ton of different industries that you're managing is when something changes, do you see it immediately? Because it changes across all the accounts.
And we used to get these amazing results for boosted posts. And then about a year ago that like in the same month, all of the reports I was looking at, we had a fraction, like we had a quarter of the amount of the results on the dollar that we had received the month before. And so that's when we developed the three by three models.
So what this means is, and this I'm going to speak in super layman's terms and just know that you can learn more about this if you're not inside of business manager yet. But the idea and business managers, Facebook's advertising tool. The idea is that if you're publishing pillar one, pillar two pillar three, because now your content is organized according to the customer journey,
right? It's organized according to demand, generation sales and loyalty and advocacy, that makes it really easy for you to decide who to target a message to. So if I'm publishing pillar one and I want to put $10 behind it, I am going to promote it to audiences that look like my customers, right? And then when I publish pillar two, I'm going to promote it to warm audiences. People who have seen, maybe they have engaged with my posts recently, maybe they are my customers.
Maybe they are recent website visitors, right? They're really warm. They're ready to buy. And then with pillar three, I like to promote it to both warm and cold. I think both our customers and people who don't know about us yet will sometimes enjoy that content. So the three by three model, just that is the guide to follow. If you decide, you're like, yeah, I want to get some time back. I'm willing to pay 150 bucks a month to post way less when put just 10 bucks behind my posts.
The three by three model is the number one way to go. We see an insane results from a consumer engagement standpoint. When we deployed it for a cosmetic, a national cosmetic brand within the first 90 days of taking over their social media, they saw an immediate 30% lift in their average order value because you're just getting in front of the right people at the right time. So it's a really great way to just align your content to the customer journey and really focus on targeted distribution.
Love it. Okay. And honestly, $150 a month to post less think of how much time you spend doing social media and what your time is worth and equate that to the $150. And you're actually making out, I actually did, I think, as some sort of math equation in an email I sent recently, exactly, you're coming out on top. If you treat $150 for like 12 to 15 posts of your posting every day, right? Seriously.
I mean, the key is then you take that newfound time that you have and use it in activities that will help bring in more business. Exactly. So you're not just going off and you're free and that kind of thing, even Getting a little bit of time back to think freely, right? We all know that that's where going for a walk and thinking strategically is an incredibly high value use of your time compared to creating an Instagram post. That's not going to move the needle. I agree A hundred percent.
So what is going to happen with your three by three, given the new Facebook policy issues with ads? So the only really way that it is, it really hasn't changed much. But what we will think about is really keeping that customer journey on the platform. So the way that the privacy updates have impacted the pixel and our tracking the most is that when we send people off of Instagram or Facebook, the pixel will drop if they're not allowing us to track.
So for example, we used to use a tactic where we would take a pillar, one blog post and drive people to the website. And then we would retarget them with pillar two products. Now we need to find a way to just keep that on Instagram and Facebook, because if they engage with a post, we will be able to track that and get back in front of them.
So it just means that for example, instead of a blog post, maybe we have a video top of funnel where it's like a video of us making a thing or setting up a scene, right? Or like when you were talking about kind of styling at home like candles, maybe it's a video or it's just a pillar one post, like it can be a static image that we keep people on the site on Facebook or Instagram. But if they engage with that, then we know that they're warmed up to us.
And when we re target people who have recently engaged with our content for pillar two, the number one thing to think about is just kind of constructing that customer journey and helping them get to know you as much as possible while still on these platforms is the number one thing. And then you can overcome that sort of issue by making sure your profiles are really optimized.
Like making sure there's a really clear path to your website, if they're interested and curious enough that they want to get there now, otherwise we just focus on warming them up while they're still on these platforms. There's a lot of fear-mongering happening, which is unfortunate to see, but we can definitely still use these platforms in a powerful way. Okay. So let me ask you this all been with your word strategic, so no longer can I make a post on Facebook when this is all in fact,
okay. Make a post on Facebook, directing people over to my blog article on my website where they'll see my products and all of that. But instead, what you could do is a post I'm saying this slowly, because I'm thinking this through at the same time is a post that then could, that direct them to a different post, which is maybe a video that you did that you uploaded directly to Facebook. So it's tracking the activity and the link from one to another, where then they would get more information.
Yeah, that is exactly right. One clarification I do want to make that I think is really relevant to the people who listened to your podcast is you absolutely still can create a post driving them to your site, especially if your product price point is under $50, because if your product price point is low enough that it's not a super high consideration buy and they are relatively likely to buy on that first interaction, then that you can absolutely still do. And just see if it works.
If they're buying the one thing that's removed is our ability to retarget them. If they bounce off your site and don't buy that first time. So you want to try both things, you want to try sending them to the site to buy the first time. And then the alternate is trying what you just articulated, where we keep them on warm them up with like a video post or just a really fun social posts and then re target them with a product post right after that.
Right. Because then you're what you're doing is you're searching for their activity, staying on site because it's telling the algorithm and you're able to track that they were interested in it, that they took action. Right. But you still, I mean, there's so much value. It's look, someone's not going to read a long post probably on social. So there's a place for each you're just going to use them differently A hundred percent.
Yes. Okay. And make sure if you send them to a blog post, give them an opportunity to get on your email list and that blog post. Oh yes. And I'm sure you're talking about that all the time. So that's super valuable still as well. Okay. Wonderful. And let's finish off here with a little bit of market feedback, share a little bit more about what's under there. I think that something that I hear a lot is my pillar to post don't perform anywhere near as well as my other stuff.
Anytime I show my product, it doesn't perform as well. And my first question is how are you measuring success? Because if you're measuring success just by engagement, then you might be reading the data wrong, right? With pillar two, we want to see people either saving your post so they can come back later and buy, or we want to see them clicking to your website. And so what I mean by pillar, just to back up a little bit by market feedback, is, are people engaging overall engagements,
right? With your posts more so than before you implemented the three pillar model is engagement moving in the right direction. And today shares and saves are really important, but it doesn't mean if you've got a lot of likes and comments. That's also really great. That's striking a chord, but I think it's really important to make sure that we don't measure the success of every post, according to the same metrics. So on pillar one, I want to see likes comments and shares on pillar two.
I want to see saves and clicks or buys. And on three, I kind of look at total interactions and observe what's happening. And because of pillar three can really run the gamut of the types of stories that you're telling. So as long as you have community engagement on those of any kind, it's a step in the right direction. So how do you do that? When you go in and you look at your results for each of your different posts, then you also need to categorize which pillar each of those posts is In.
I will. I typically like to, I mean, once you do this, you'll automatically know, and I think differentiating most of your posts from the post with product in them is a really good shortcut. But yeah. And the other thing that we do is if you use a content calendar of any kind, when we're planning, we write pillar one, two or three, so that's kind of there.
And then when we go back and look at performance, we can reference the content calendar and say, oh, okay, well, this was the goal of that post. So how do we look at what success looks Completely makes sense? Oh my gosh, this is so incredible. You know, we talk about social media all the time, but you were bringing up some things I haven't heard before. They're making me think about this a little bit differently.
Like I've already said a couple of times, just the idea of being able to slow down, do it smarter, not more, but smarter is incredible. So I'm anxious to just listen to all of this again, myself. I really, Really appreciate it. And I'm so glad you feel that way. I hope your listeners do too. I love it. Okay. So I know you talked in the beginning about strong brand social already, but now everyone's heard what we just talked about.
So let's go back and share a little bit more about strong brand social. And then I also believe you have something called strong band social express that you could tell Us about. I do so strong brand social is kind of our suite of online courses, right? And strong run. Social express is the first one in the suite. It's a really great kind of crash course in our philosophy.
We have, it used to be 90 minutes of content, which was great, but now we have all these other bonuses that we just keep sliding in there that aren't on the sales page, but it kind of looks at, Hey, what are the three types of content that every brand needs to have? What are nine elements of growth,
right? And really the whole goal of this product is to help people see what's possible a lot like this conversation and help people think for themselves that that'd be also have a hundred content prompts in there that are aligned with business goals. Like we've been talking about. And we have our point of view on a paid social roadmap. We have a tutorial video showing you exactly how to do this new boost method.
That for the three by three model that I was talking about, you know, you're looking over my teammate's shoulder as she's executing that. And so that strong brand social express, it's usually $37. We're going to gift it to your listeners. I don't have the coupon codes. I'm hoping we can. I do it is S B S free in all caps. Awesome. Perfect. I love it. All right. So for your listeners only, and that sounds strong brand social.com. That'll take you there.
And the rest of strong brand social, we have a course on building your content strategy. You work closely with me and my team to do that. So we kind of look at your three content pillars. And if you feel like, man, I think I get this, but I want more support on figuring out exactly what this looks out for me so that I can really stand out from my competition. That's a great place to do that.
We have a membership community where then we work to help you implement your content strategy and all of that good stuff. And then we're always just all ears for what people need from us. Oh my gosh. This is amazing. So everybody go to strong brand social.com forward slash express one. This will be in the show notes.
Of course you'll enter the coupon code, get into Katie's ecosphere because once you do first off, you're going to get a deeper dive on everything that we've talked about already with all the other value ads that were just discussed, but then you'll also see what else is available. Oh my gosh, this sounds so freeing. So exciting, unbelievably amazing Katie, just to think that this is even possible. Thank you so much for having me Sue. This was such a fun conversation. I love that you ask.
Well, you've been very generous also in forthcoming with like all the information. It, I don't even feel like you held anything back and for that, I really, really appreciate it. Thanks again for being on the show. Of course. Thank you so much. I have to admit, I hear a lot of the same direction from our guests in terms of the standard way to do things. And that's significant because people don't keep doing and teaching it if it doesn't work.
But it's also important for us to remember that there may be different ways that work as well, or even better as Katie shared with us today. I don't know about you, but I'm going to relisten to this, analyze it against current systems that I have in place and see if there's something new that I want to test. Perhaps I've gotten your wheels turning here. This podcast provides you with resources that you can refer back to at your convenience.
And to do that, I have a great way for you to find what you're looking for. Have you ever listened to a podcast here knew you wanted to write something down re-listen at another time or come back and grab a resource that was mentioned, but for the life of you, you can't remember what episode it was in. Well, now you can find it instantly. If you go to gift biz, unwrapped.com forward slash search, enter keywords on any topic you want.
And not only will it tell you in what episodes the topic was discussed, but it will bring you to that exact spot grab and go style quick, easy, and you can be on your way to taking that newfound information and implementing it into your business. Whether it's a topic like SEO, you want to hear from other jewelry makers or you're looking for a specific guest show all now can be found through keyword search right inside this podcast.
Yay. I'm so excited it and quite honestly, I've been using it for myself as well. That link again is gift biz, unwrapped.com forward slash search as always, thanks for spending time with me today. If you found this show valuable, you know how much I love those ratings and reviews, it would also be great. If you share this podcast with others, it's a great way to pay it forward and now be safe and well. And I'll see you again next week on the gift biz on wrapped.
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