Social Brilliant, Video Five Transcript:

Grow Your Reach

Welcome to the second to last session of social brilliant. I'm Sarah from
Team Edgar. In this video, we're going to talk about growing your reach
on social media. How do you get more followers and more engagement
with your social media content? Social brilliant is all about being
authentic. We're going to look at growing your reach organically and
authentically.
This is a big part of social media. We've talked about high-quality blog
content, and how you create social media posts from that content to
drive traffic to your website. We've talked about how you schedule your
content, how to automate that process. Now we're going to talk about
how to build your audience so that people actually see these posts
because that's the key.
If no one sees your social media posts, then no one can click on them or
share them or engage with them. You'll see as we go along that a lot of
the stuff we've already discussed actually does contribute directly to
building your audience. Social brilliant is a really integrated social
media strategy. If you just do everything that you've learned in the first
four videos, and you use Edgar and the planning tools we've provided
for you, you're already on the right track to build your audience. You're
already doing what you need to do. But as with anything in business, we
can plus that up, right? We're going to talk about how to grow your
audience even more.
The first strategy to attract more followers is incessant linking. People
need to be reminded of your social media presence over and over again.
This is one of the biggest mistakes that people make on social media.
They send out one link to their Facebook page when they first create. It's
a brand new page, you’re super excited about it, so you send out that
email blast, and you post about it on your other social networks to get

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people to like your page. But, then you never do that again after that first
release.
If someone didn't see that first blast, then they would have no idea that
you even have a Facebook page or that you have a Pinterest account or
whatever networks you use. You need to link to it over and over again
and link to it everywhere [00:02:00] you possibly can. You want to put
links to your social media profiles on your contact page, on your about
page, on your blog, put your social media links in the header or the
footer of your website as a whole. Just have them there on every single
page of your website. Don't make people hunt for them. Put them in
plain sight everywhere that you can.
Put links to your social media accounts in your emails too. Do you have
links to your social media profiles in your email signature? Are you
sending out links to your social media profiles in every single newsletter,
every promotional email that you send? These are all places to drive
people back to social media, where they can stay in touch with you and
where you can grow your followers. Not everyone is going to buy from
you every time you send an email but if you interest to them enough,
maybe they'll follow you on social media by clicking that button and
then you can continue to build that relationship.
Remember to link across networks as well. We mentioned how this is
part of our schedule in the last video. It's one of the categories that we
use, where we'll post on Twitter, something that links to our Facebook
page, or will post on Facebook, something that links to our Pinterest
account. So you also want to link to your social media accounts on your
other social media accounts.
This tweet is an example. We're not just tweeting, "Hey, come like our
Facebook page." We're linking to Facebook content on Twitter, and
asking our followers to check it out. In this example, we're linking to a
Facebook image that has the social brilliant logo. It's a way to be a bit

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more subtle and telling people, "Hey, I'm on Facebook. I'm active there
and here's my account."
Linking to your Instagram photos and your Pinterest boards and all that
kind of stuff across your social networks will help drive people to follow
you on multiple networks.
They can't follow you if they can't find you, though. This is another
thing that can really hamper [00:04:00] your growth on social media.
Name your social media profiles consistently and clearly. You may have
noticed in a lot of our examples in this course that all of our accounts for
Edgar across the social networks are named MeetEdgar, which is also
consistent with our website which is, meetedgar.com.
We could just say Edgar and that's often how we refer to it
conversationally but that's not what our website says, is it? We use meet
Edgar across the board for social media and our website so if people are
searching for us, they can find us across the internet and the social
networks under the same name.
Think about how people search for you on Google. If someone is trying
to find your business, what do they search for? Are they searching for
your name, because you're the face of the company, or because you have
a personal brand for your company or are they more likely to search for
your business name? These are things that you want to consider when
naming your social profiles.
You want your naming to be as consistent as possible across the board. If
you use your name and your personal brand for most of your business,
keep your social profiles named after you rather than your business. The
more consistently you name your accounts, the easier it is for people to
find you.
You also want to use consistent imagery to make it easy to pick out your
profile, we recommend that you have one profile image and one cover
image that you use across the social networks. You don't need different

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images for each network. Using the same image creates a really strong
brand for you, and people are able to glance and instantly know that
they're in the right place.
Try to make these images consistent with your website too. For example,
you don't want to use a totally different color scheme on your social
accounts than you're using on your website. If someone clicks over from
your website to your Facebook page, they should feel like they're still
looking at the same business, the transition shouldn't be jarring for them.
We talked about this one before but it's really important. If you have
multiple accounts on the same social network, [00:06:00] people won't
know which one to follow, and they'll likely not follow any of them.
You've added an extra decision for them to make, and people don't really
like to make decisions, so they just won't. You want to remove as many
barriers and decisions as you can. If someone searches for you or your
business on Twitter, but then they get three different accounts in the
search results, you've made their lives too difficult. They don't know
what to do so they often won't do anything at all. Just stick to one
account per social network as much as you possibly can.
The next really important factor for growing your audience on social
media is being likable. This aspect is often overlooked. People get so
focused on the tips and tricks and gaming the social media algorithms
that they forget that people are never going to click that like button or
that follow button unless they actually like you. Think about your own
social media habits. You don't actually follow businesses that you don't
really like. You're not going to follow a business that you find annoying
or that you don't agree with. That's just not something people generally
do.
That's why a relatable compelling brand and relatable compelling
content is the most effective thing that you can do to grow your audience
on social media. You've probably heard people say this before, “just

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create great content and the rest will follow.” There's nothing more
effective you can do than to create great relatable content.
It's like if you want to sell a book. You can have all this clever marketing
and all these clever promotions but if you sell a copy, and it's not good,
you're going to get bad reviews. People are not going to tell their friends
to buy it and all the marketing in the world isn't going to help if it's got a
bunch of one-star ratings.
But if you have a really great book, then people are just so eager to tell
their friends about it, that you don't even have to do as much promotion
because they're doing it for you. It's the same with social media. People
have to actually like you and like following your accounts in order
[00:08:00] to choose to do so.
Remember that humans connect with humans and human always wins.
This is why we often recommend that you err on the side of being you
on social media instead of being your business because people like to get
to know the owner of the business.
Even for the MeetEdgar social accounts where we often are speaking as
our business, we have the character of Edgar the octopus, and he's got a
fun cheeky personality that we've given him, which helps create that
human connection. Making sure you're speaking in a really human and
natural way on social media that's relatable is really important. You have
to show people that there's a human behind the brand.
An example of this would be something like the Wendy's fast-food
chain. If you remember a number of years ago, the Wendy's founder
used to be in all of their commercials. His name was Dave Thomas and
he was the face of the Wendy's brand. He was in every commercial, he
was relatable and fun to watch in them. A sweet guy who really seemed
to love and care about his business, and until he passed away, that's how
they marketed their brand by using Dave Thomas's personality and face
so people got to know the founder of Wendy's.

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People love that kind of content. That's why it's so important for your
personality to be there in your social media accounts.
The best way to grow your following is to focus on shares. We've been
talking about this all through the course. We've talked about what kind
of content gets a lot of shares, how to create that content.
Shares are so important to successful social media marketing. Shares are
called different things on different networks, but they all accomplish the
same thing. Shares get your social media accounts in front of new eyes.
On Twitter, shares are called retweets. On Facebook and LinkedIn,
they’re actually called shares. On Pinterest, it's called a repin or a saved
pin. No matter what it's called, this is how you get the biggest exposure
because it puts you [00:10:00] in front of new people. When someone
shares a post from your Facebook page, it puts you in front of all of their
friends.
All those people that don't follow you yet are now seeing a link to your
content and your Facebook page. It's also an implicit endorsement from
the people that are sharing your content. When their followers see that
they shared your content, they automatically think, "Oh Jessica must
really like this company." She's sharing their stuff, maybe I'll go check
them out. This is why shares are so big and this is why we emphasize so
much those categories of content that get a lot of shares. The
inspirational stuff, the funny stuff, the emotionally evoking stuff. That
gets shared and that's why it's really important to have that type of
content in your mix of posts.
Now let's talk a bit about engaging your audience on social media to
further build that relationship and encourage shares. This is the social
side of social media. What do you need to do when you're talking to
people on social?
The most important thing to remember is that social media is short,
casual and informal, so your most conversational language is best when

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you're talking to someone on social. Keep it really short. Social media is
not the place for dissertations or formal language. Be chatty and be
concise.
When you log in to engage on your social accounts, there are two things
that you should be doing. The most important of course is you must
respond to the comments and messages that people send to you.
Don't leave your followers hanging. Always respond when someone
comments on your post, even if that's just liking their comment or saying
thank you or just responding with something like, "Cool, thanks so
much, Robert." Make some response so that they know that you heard
them. They'll appreciate the interaction so much.
The second thing that you should do is to comment on other people's
content. No one knows that you read their post unless [00:12:00] you
comment. Remember we talked in an earlier video about leaving a trail
behind when you're on social. Don't just mindlessly scroll through your
feed. Like things, comment on things, share things, leave proof that you
were there.
Every time you comment on something, you're leaving a link back to
your Facebook page or your Pinterest account or your Twitter profile. It's
not an anonymous comment. People can see who wrote the comment
and they can click on that. If they like your comment, maybe they'll
click on your profile and follow you. It's another way of getting you in
front of new eyes and expanding your reach.
Sometimes just making small talk can be so effective. If someone posts a
picture of Hawaii and says, “Hey I just went on this trip.” Then you can
comment with wow that looks great. That's just making small talk. It’s
like what we do at a networking event when we're just chatting with
people and getting to know them. It’s just being social on social media.
It's also nice to thank people. This is a great way to get people to share
your content more, and it's just a nice thing to do. If someone shares

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something of yours, just comment on the share or the retweet with a
quick, “Thanks for sharing Steve!" or “So glad this was helpful for you
Erica.” It only takes a few seconds. You do want to make these thank
you’s personal though. This is not something that you should automate
or quickly seems inauthentic.
Throw the person's name in there so they know it's you and you really
are taking the time to say thank you. This helps build your reputation
and that know like and trust factor. People see that you take the time to
be courteous and appreciative.
One of the reasons that social media marketing is so powerful is that it
has this Snowball Effect. Like we said before social media is all about
sharing, getting others to share your social media posts and your blog
content. When those shares happen, when you follow the Social Brilliant
strategy, you get this snowball growth effect. The more [00:14:00] your
reach grows, the more your reach grows.
Maybe only 1% of your followers are actually sharing your content, but
think about how much that number grows and how quickly it can grow.
If you have 50 followers, then only one or two people are sharing for
you but by the time you have 5,000 followers, then 50 people are sharing
for you. It's still only 1% of your total followers that are sharing, but it's
compounded as you get more followers.
Every follower can be a multiplier. If one of your followers shares a post
with their audience of 10,000 people, that's huge for you. You could get
50 new people that sign up for your email list or follow your social
accounts, just from that one share.
You never know what the reach of your followers is, so every single
share is an opportunity for huge growth. Again, it's that Snowball Effect.
The more your audience grows, the more your chances increase for that
to happen. It becomes this exponential thing where the more followers
you get, the more followers you get.

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The Snowball Effect can also apply across platforms and networks.
Once you have a lot of followers on one platform, you can move them to
another. For example before Edgar, Laura Roeder, our founder, had a lot
of followers on her social accounts. Before Edgar, there was LKR Social
Media where Laura taught people social media marketing strategy just
like we're doing right now.
Those LKR accounts have a lot of followers that she built up over time
with her business. Well, when we decided to launch a Facebook page for
Edgar, we told all those followers about it. Right away we got a ton of
follows for the new MeetEdgar Facebook page because the LKR
followers wanted to follow Edgar too. They wanted to know about
Laura's new venture. You can snowball across platforms to whenever
you decide to launch something new or branch out onto another
network.
After a while it becomes this self-fulfilling thing where if [00:16:00] you
just follow the social brilliant strategy, you will continue to get more
followers. It'll just automatically continue to snowball for you. So, you
create that great content for your blog. You post consistently on your
social media accounts by using Automation. And, you take the time to
respond to and engage with your followers, and you will just keep
getting more followers.
You don't have to keep doing more or keep adding to what you're doing.
You just have to keep doing what you're doing, keep doing the social
brilliant strategy.
We want you to spend your live time on social media connecting. That's
why you're scheduling out your social media posts and automating your
strategy so that you're not spending time writing your posts every day.
You're doing that in dedicated chunks of time and scheduling it ahead of
time. That leaves you with plenty of time to connect live.

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Let's say you're spending half an hour or an hour a day on social media,
but you're not spending that time writing posts anymore. You already
scheduled those ahead of time. Instead spend that time just talking to
people, spend that time leaving that trail behind to show what content
you're viewing and what you're interacting with. Participate. In a single
hour on social media where you're actively interacting you could
probably talk to and be seen by hundreds of people. Every person who
sees you is a potential new follower who might share your content.
Let's talk a little bit more about connecting and more importantly about
connecting with leaders in your industry. Forming relationships with
leaders in your industry and related industries is a very effective way to
grow your business. If those leaders and well-known people know you,
they can follow you back, they can spread the word about you, they can
share your content. Then their large audience becomes your large
audience. It's the same idea with guest posting [00:18:00] on someone
else's blog or doing an interview on someone's podcast.
You can take advantage of the audience that they've already built and it's
a two-way street too. They benefit from your audience, too, even if you
have a smaller audience than they do. It's still new eyes for them. So
these types of relationships are really valuable to cultivate.
Here's the thing, though. Don't try to be too strategic about it. Just pursue
the people that you actually like and actually have a connection with. If
you're looking around in your industry and you find three people that are
really the top dogs and they have a lot of followers, but you don't really
like them, you don't really resonate with them, maybe you're just not that
into how they do things, you’re probably not going to become very good
friends with them no matter how hard you try because they're not really
going to be that into you either and that's okay.
You're not really going to want to share someone's stuff if you don't
really like them and they're not going to want to share your stuff either.

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What works better is to pursue relationships with people with whom you
have a genuine connection.
If of the top 10 people in your industry, you really only resonate with
two just try to form relationships with those two. Don't worry about the
others even if they have larger followings. If someone seems like a
person you'd want to be friends with or a business you'd honestly like to
do business with, those are the people to reach out to. Those are the
people you're going to be able to cultivate a genuine mutually beneficial
relationship with, a genuine friendship with.
The people that you actually like. Once you've identified those people,
then it's time for the next step. Send them an email schedule or a call,
propose a meet up and go off of social media if you can.
Social media is step one. It's a great way to catch people's attention
because you can respond to what they're saying. People will notice if
you're responding consistently and genuinely. Think about [00:20:00]
your own social media accounts. You know the names of the people who
share your content or comment on your posts most often. Their names
stand out to you because you see them over and over again.
Interacting on social media is that first step to building that relationship,
but then you need more if you're going to form a real friendship. Friends
do favors for each other. Friends want you to succeed and you want your
friends to succeed, and that's why we recommend that you only pursue
relationships with people you really like and resonate with.
Let's say a friend writes a book and they ask you to share it with your
audience. If you're their friend and you believe in their work, you're
going to be happy to do that. Laura does this sort of thing pretty
regularly. She promotes the work of her friends. She talks about fellow
founders and entrepreneurs. She shares their stuff because they're her
friends and she believes in what they're doing and they do the same for
her.

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This is just how the world works. People like to be helpful. They like to
help their friends. You want to build friendships with people in your
industry and in related industries who you honestly enjoy and would be
happy to recommend to your followers. Meeting in person is huge for
that. This may sound a little strange in a social media class, but we really
do recommend that you get off the computer. Go to conferences in your
industry. Go to workshops or professional development courses in
person. Go to meetups or free networking events in your area.
Online friends are great, and we all have online friends that we've never
met in real life. It's just kind of a fact of the world now, but as much as
you can, you want to take these relationships offline. Build relationships
in person whenever you can. Or if a meeting in person is just not
physically possible then at least meet live. Talk to them face to face via
video chats, interact live instead of always through email or social media
when you can.
You can find these [00:22:00] growth opportunities and a lot of places
too. For example, if someone links to you as an example in their blog
posts or tags you on social media, check them out. Look them up online,
see what they're all about and see if you feel like they’re someone you'd
like to get to know better. Do they resonate with you? If they do, start by
sending them a direct message to say, "Hey, thanks for tagging me, I
really enjoyed your perspective. Let's talk about it more."
Or if you go to a conference, use the connections that you make there.
You always end up with that big stack of business cards anytime you go
to a conference, but do you ever actually do anything with those cards?
Take a look through that stack, look up the businesses and the people
who gave them to you, and then reach out to the ones that genuinely
interest you. Send them a followup email saying, "Hey, I really enjoyed
meeting you. I'd love to talk about things more."
Build relationships with others as much as you can. Through those
relationships you'll build partnerships, you'll get shares on social media,

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you'll get new ideas, you'll help others, and they'll help you. If you help
out your friends, they'll help you out too. That's just what we do for our
friends.
You do have to go out and make those friends though. No one is born
with friends. We have to make them, and yes, it can be hard sometimes,
but it's definitely worth it. It's not like some dirty secret that Laura's
friends help her out in her business and she helps them out in theirs. It's
because they have genuine friendships and they want to help each other.
She's put time into building those friendships because she really, really
likes those people and thinks they do great things and that's why we say
don't be strategic about this. If you think that someone would really help
your career, but the two of you don't actually click for whatever reason,
that relationship is not worth investing time in no matter how influential
or how big they are. If you don’t really like each other, then spend your
energy elsewhere. Someone who maybe isn't quite so big but [00:24:00]
you just think is really amazing, that person is a better investment for
your time. So connect with people you can be friends with. Build
friendships to build your business.
We know this can sound really like elementary school playground sort of
advice, but relationships are how the world works. Build genuine
friendships in the business world and those friendships will be a two-
way street where you can help each other grow.
Switching focus a little now, back to social media specifically, how do
you know which networks to spend your time on? Well, it's going to
depend on your content and your business. If you're creating very visual
content, then networks like Pinterest and Instagram may work best for
you. Or if you're creating a lot of written content and then maybe
Facebook and LinkedIn are where you should focus.
It depends on the subject of your business, too. Sometimes certain types
of businesses do really well on a certain network whereas others just

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don't so much. You have to find the networks that work best and have the
most return for you specifically.
A good place to start can be to see where your direct competitors have
big audiences. If someone seems to be doing really well posting similar
content to you on a specific network, then that network may be a good fit
for you too. We talked about how social media is all public. You can see
the follower counts and all of that other information for other social
media accounts. Use that information to find a starting point. You have a
limited amount of time that you can focus on social media marketing.
You’ve got a lot to do. So, do what works and ditch what doesn't.
Now, you do have to be careful and give things a fair shot before you
ditch them because if you hardly ever post somewhere, then obviously
that network is not going to send you a lot of traffic, so don't discount
something if you haven't really tried it and given it your all first. But if
you really put effort into something, and it's just not sending you a lot of
traffic or you're just not [00:26:00] getting shares or seeing growth from
it, then you either want to reexamine your strategy and take a different
tact or maybe you don't want to spend that much time there.
Again, this is why automating is so amazing because it really doesn't
take you any more time to post on multiple networks. You're using
automation to cross-post to multiple networks without any extra effort.
Use automation and really give all of the networks a fair shot over time.
Then take a look at your analytics on each network and check out your
traffic sources in Google Analytics. Really see which ones are sending
you the most traffic and where you're getting the most engagement. Then
you can use automation to keep posting to those other networks, but you
can really focus your live engagement time and focus your future
content development on the networks that are working best for you.
Start with the big networks, too. That's where everyone is. You're on
social media to promote your business, so you want to be where all the
people are. People often ask us things like, “There's a brand new social

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network, I read about it just last week. It sounds really cool. Do I need to
get on it right away?” Well, no, not really. You don't really need to be on
every brand new network all the time. You should focus on the
established networks. This is an area where you do not have to be
cutting edge. You don't have to be the first one there. Social networks
come and go all the time really, don't waste your energy chasing after
that brand new thing. It could go under next week and then you've
wasted your marketing efforts and time.
Wait until the network has established itself and has made itself into a
real player in social media marketing. Wait until it has a lot of people to
see your posts. Stick with the big networks, the ones that we've
referenced over and over again in these videos, those are the big ones.
You really don't need to worry about all the little ones that are cropping
up every day. You can jump on board [00:28:00] with those in the future
if they become really popular.
Also, keep in mind that total abandonment of a network can really make
it look like your whole business has shut down. We don't want to scare
you and say that you have to be super active on every single network,
but that's where the automation comes in. Again, you can automate your
posts for those networks where you may not see a huge return and then
you can just check in really quickly to make sure you're not missing
messages or comments. Because if you set up an account years ago and
it hasn't been updated, it's dead, maybe it even has wrong links in the
profile, people will see that and they'll think, “Is this place even still
open? Should I bother with this business?”
And you can miss out on messages, too. Most social networks have
some sort of functionality for people to message you either publicly or
privately and people will try to get customer service however they can.
That can be really frustrating for businesses, but it's true. People
message us on Facebook a lot with customer service questions, even
though that's not really the best way to contact our customer service
team. But they're on Facebook, so they just message us because it's easy

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to do. Even though you know that messaging on social media for
customer service is really not how you want them to contact you, they're
going to do it anyway, and if you miss those messages, then your
customer's confidence level goes way down. It plummets. They're not
going to feel important to you.
This goes back to the whole, automate your posting on social media, but
don't automate your interactions. If you maintain any sort of presence on
a social network, if you have an account on it, you need to make sure
that you're responding to messages and comments. You really must do
this.
Let's wrap up how to grow your reach on social media.
Link to your social media accounts incessantly and relentlessly. If you
think you've linked to them in enough places, go find like four more
places to put those links [00:30:00]. Put them everywhere you possibly
can.
Be likeable for likes. Remember, no one is going to follow you or share
your content unless they actually like you. They have to enjoy you and
your content first before they will click those buttons.
Getting other people to share your content is the best way to grow on
social media, whether that's your friends sharing it, whether it's people
you've partnered with, customers, just random people from the Internet
who saw your content and liked it. Every single share is an opportunity
to grow, so post high quality, shareable content.
Finally, spend your live time connecting. If you're on social media, leave
that trail behind you—like things, comment on things, respond to
comments and messages. You have to interact and connect. And don't
just limit that to the Internet. Go offline to make some real friendships
and some real connections for your business.

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That's it for growing your reach. Our next and final video for Social
Brilliant will really tie the whole Social Brilliant strategy together and
will also go over some of the biggest roadblocks to achieving social
media success and how to defeat them. I'll see you over there.
[00:31:16] [END OF AUDIO]

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