Show Notes

Los Angeles born and raised, Sarah Olea has an unparalleled history of successful marketing and public relation campaigns. Under her direction, the careers of an amalgam of clients have been ignited; from artists, authors, and magazine publishers, to medical professionals and athletes.

Out of the office, you can find Sarah in another office or meeting, literally – she’s a slight workaholic, but finds joy in everything she does.

Connect with Sarah:

Website: https://www.sociallightllc.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/saraholea/

Instagram: instagram.com/teamsociallight/

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Want to Work with Jennifer and her Virtual Marketing Experts Team?

Are you a coach, consultant, or online course creator who are looking to grow your business, increase your income, and scale your impact? Connect with me at YourMarketingMatchmaker.com I look forward to hearing from you.

Watch the Podcast Here:

Hey there. Thanks for listening and welcome to the marketing matchmaker podcast. If you're looking to grow your business, increase your revenue and scale your impact all while staying true to who you are and the people you serve. This is the show for you. I'm Jennifer Tamborski, digital marketing strategists, fractional CMO, and founder of Virtual Marketing Experts. My team and I work with six and seven figure coaches, consultants, and online entrepreneurs who are tired of playing the guru game of one size fits all marketing. They're ready to create a business and marketing strategy that actually builds relationships with their ideal clients creates massive shifts in their business and rapidly increases their revenue. As your marketing matchmaker, I'm going to help you find the perfect marketing match for you. This show will teach you how to reach your ideal client, connect with your audience, build that perfect relationship and generate more revenue. All through a process I like to call dating your ideal client. Now let's go have some fun!

Jennifer (01:13):

Hey there everyone. Welcome back to marketing matchmaker. I am super excited about today's episode because I love to talk to people that I can talk, all things marketing with and social media and all of that juicy information. And that is who I have on the podcast today. Sarah Leah is a friend of mine and a brilliant social media marketing strategist. Sarah has had the opportunity of working in customer service, sales, public relations, and marketing, and decided to take all of that experience in those different fields and create a marketing agency that encompasses all of these areas. Sarah has had the pleasure of working with a variety of clients and helping to ignite the careers of artists, authors, medical professionals, and so many more people. Welcome to the show. Sarah, thank you so much for joining us today,

Sarah (02:08):

Jennifer, I am so excited. I've been listening to your podcast. I love what you talk about and just like you, whenever I get the opportunity to talk marketing with someone where we're on the same page, we get a lot of fun.

Jennifer (02:19):

It is, it's so much fun because we can totally geek out on all of the things. So before we jump into the depths of marketing, tell everybody a little bit about like what it is that Social Light does for their clients.

Sarah (02:34):

Absolutely. So we, so we started Social Light four years ago. It'll be five years, five years coming up here soon. And when we started, we had all artists and musicians and creatives, probably about 90% of our clients. And back then, you know, music marketing was a lot different it's it changes just like social media changes when the pandemic hit. However, that's when everything changed because not only was the whole world turning upside down, businesses realized, wait a minute, social media is really important. We knew it was important. Now it's really important. So it went from having 80% of creatives and artists as our clients all the way to probably about only 10 to 15% now. And now we work with a lot more entrepreneurs, business podcast, hosts, uh, coaches and all of that. And so when Social Light started, we wanted to give clients the boutique feel.

Sarah (03:27):

We didn't want them to feel like they were a number. We wanted to make sure that we cared for them like a PR would or a manager who's day to day. And then also make sure that we were really igniting their brand on social media. And we knew that a lot of agencies out there, they were charging some really high rates or maybe they were, felt like a number. They didn't have someone they could speak to on a weekly basis. And we wanted to really create kind of that one-on-one feel now that was when there was two of us. We quickly grew. I think there's like, I don't know. I forget the number between 10 and 13 at this point, everything from creative directors to graphic designers, to copywriters, we do everything, but what you do. And, uh, we got to really expand on how we serve our clients. And so I always say we're the social media marketing company that does more than just post. You can hire a social media manager and those are great for small businesses or preneurs when you hire kind of a virtual assistant to do it. But when you start getting behind the analytics, when you start looking at cause marketing campaigns, when you start looking at how to raise money for your nonprofit, or you just are doing more than just writing captions and posting pictures, then it requires a team and we thrive ourself off of that.

Jennifer (04:45):

Absolutely does. I mean, I don't think, I don't think that people really understand marketing in general requires a team because there's not one person that is excellent at understanding the data and creating all of the creatives, whether that's the, you know, copy or the images or videos or whatever. So having that team of people that can support that is so super essential to those businesses that really want to grow.

Sarah (05:13):

Absolutely. And you hit it right on, on the head because marketing is a huge umbrella. I was just talking to a lady the other day, who's an entrepreneur. And she's like, yeah, we're a marketing company. I said, okay, well what kind of marketing? Because let's be real here. Everything is marketing at this point, right? And so when you talk marketing, you really have to narrow it down to what are the goals? Who is the audience, and then build the strategy, which you're very, very aware of build a strategy around that. You're going to need someone that does ads and does ads. Well, you'll need someone to come in and do your social media posts and creativity and copywriting. That's not necessarily the same person. And then we haven't tapped into the world of SEO and click funnels and e-courses, and oh my goodness, it's, just..

Jennifer (05:57):

It is a rabbit hole that you can go, go down really easily. Um, especially I think a lot of business owners try and DIY it and then don't understand why it's not working. Right? Like they try to DIY their social media or they try to DIY their ads. And they're like, well, I did the thing and it didn't work. So obviously this doesn't work.

Sarah (06:23):

That is what we hear all the time. I tried social media, it didn't work. I tried social media. It didn't work and I'll have the conversation with people. Okay. What did you try? What did you do? How confident do you feel in that? If I was going to work with an esthetician or something, and I'm like, I did face peels on myself, you know, the ones you buy at target and yeah. It didn't work, you know, exactly the same thing, you know? Um, you have to find someone that not only knows what they're doing, cause that's, you can find people that know things. They have to have a passion behind it. I get excited to talk about social media. I get excited to get on the phone and talk strategy and you know, what's interesting is like I just started building my own brand. I didn't have the time to build my own brand. I was building everyone else's but I got excited about it. I was like, okay, you know what? I think maybe I should, you know, sit my own tea and do it myself.

Jennifer (07:18):

Yeah, I know. I mean, that's the thing I've said for years, the cobbler's son has no shoes. Right? My marketing was always not the best because I was focused on my clients. I wanted to get their marketing, their brand, build that kind of stuff. So it is really exciting when you get to focus on your own marketing, especially when you understand the marketing. Um, and as business owners, we also understand that while we're fabulous in marketing, I don't do my own books. Right. Like I hire people to do the things that I'm not great at.

Sarah (07:53):

That's such a good example. Would you do your own taxes if you're bringing in a quarter million dollars a year, do you trust yourself to do your own taxes? Do you trust yourself to balance the books, right? No. You hire professionals for that social media and advertising is the same world. Uh, and I, and I find a lot of business owners because I was that way too. I did HR myself. I did the books myself. I did payroll myself. Eventually you get to this place where you're like, wow, how much more money do I make when I start to send that stuff out and start to focus on the part that I'm really good at. And I'm really passionate about. Um, that's also what keeps us from feeling like it's a job and it's, it really is a passion and a career. So when I talk to, you know, business coaches and entrepreneurs and stuff like that all day, I'm like, okay, I know I have to, we just hired on a, or we just brought on a lawyer client and he's like, this is what I'm good at.

Sarah (08:48):

I can cancel debts. I can cancel student loans. I could do all this stuff. That's what I'm great at. I'm great at getting in of the camera. I'm great at that. I'm not great at all the other stuff. So I'm going to hand that to you. Uh, and it's your trial and error sometimes with people like some business owners really want to try it themselves. And I commend them for that because honestly, if you really want to be successful on social media, there has to be an element of you. Absolutely. It's just how much of time, how much time do you want to put behind it?

Jennifer (09:18):

Right. Absolutely. So that, let's take this into the world of social media, um, when it comes to people who are DIY, or even if they've hired an agency, but maybe you see them making the same mistakes, like what are those mistakes that people are making all the time when it comes to social media?

Sarah (09:38):

I just had a meeting about this two days ago. And my business partner was saying, Hey, we're making some of these mistakes we tell people not to make. And I'm like, no way. And then I kind of talked through and she's like, okay. Yeah, I understand how we're not fully making it. We found some loopholes, right? Because social media changes. So often the number one mistake we find is that people use the exact same content across every single platform. Now how we've made it work for our clients is that if I'm going to share something from one platform to another, I just make sure that I'm sharing it from a platform that makes sense to share it from into. So for example, Instagram has very specific dimensions because 99% of people consuming content on Instagram are using their cellular device. That's not the same as Facebook.

Sarah (10:29):

Facebook is primarily being used on desktops and iPads. So the dimensions are different. And on Facebook, you don't really care too much about how much real estate you're taking up, because it almost gives you a lot of space on the mobile device. So if I'm sharing from Instagram to Facebook, you're winning there because at least that dimensions on Instagram can work on both platforms. Now, if I have posted a horizontal photo or a square on Facebook, I can't share that to Instagram and get the same or the best results. So one of the biggest things that I find is a mistake is people using platforms, treating them all the same. I follow on Facebook, and think about this, even from a personal perspective. When I go on Facebook to consume content, my mind shifts to Facebook, I'm going to see my family. I'm going to, um, I'm okay.

Sarah (11:21):

If I only got, you know, 20 likes on Instagram, I'm like, no, no, no, no, no. I need to be in the hundreds, there's an engagement rates that I'm trying to achieve. My mind consumes content differently. When I open up my YouTube channels and, and go scrolling through different podcasts or different channels. I like to watch, I'm already preparing myself to spend 15 to 30 minutes, either listening or digesting the content, because I know it's long form content. So when you think about how we digest or consume the content on each platform, that's what need to think on the opposite end of when we're producing the content. Okay, this is a two- or three-minute video. It's not going to work on Instagram with an attention span of 14 seconds. On YouTube it will. And for whatever reason, our minds just shift from platform to platform. So that's, I think the number one mistake that's made is people just treat them all the same. I think that the second thing is people, especially business owners that are selling a product, or a service, there's not a call to action, right? Like you've posted a really pretty picture and you asked them to do nothing.

Jennifer (12:28):

Yup. I actually had, so I had a friend, um, that decided to DIY your ads. And I just, she didn't tell me she just did it. And I saw the ad come through my feed. And I was like, there's no call to action on this ad. You're paying for people to read words. There's not even an image. Like if you're going to DIY the ad, at least talk to me for five minutes so I can give you some best practices.

Sarah (12:56):

Absolutely. No, you're right. And the other mistake that I find is I'll meet companies that will have went through several different social media people and one, they hire kids. And I think that that's okay because my staff is all seven to 6, 7 years younger than me. I specifically wanted to get people that are very tech savvy. They were like walked out of the womb with an iPhone. Right. So that was important. However, I'm teaching the strategy behind it. We're looking at growth reports. They know how to operate the programs. They don't know how to make an ROI on social media or engagement rates or what are the benefits of it. So when you think of that perspective, like, yeah, you can hire your daughter to post for you on social media. If you just want to post, if you rent the tap and all the features of social media, you need another element to that.

Sarah (13:47):

Or what I see is that, oh, well they're very successful on their own social media. So I hired them to do mine. Okay. Well, that's their brand. When I talk to influencers all the time that I negotiate brand deals for they'll say, well, I know if I post at 12 o'clock that's when I that's, when I get the best. So I don't want to post it the recommended time you're giving me. I said, okay, how long have you been posting at that time? Well, I've been posting at that time for like six years or six months. I'm like, okay. So you have actually no idea how a post would do at a different time. Cause you haven't tested it.

Jennifer (14:16):

Absolutely.

Sarah (14:17):

Oh, well I guess I didn't think about, oh, okay. So let's go ahead and try this. Cause I've looked at the data. I've looked at the information, post at 7:00 PM, please. Cause I'm paying you to promote this brand. They posted 7:00 PM. The engagement goes through the roof. I get a, DM, it says, wow, like I'm going to start testing different stuff out. So people will hire successful influencers or successful social media people. So they did well on their page, they can do well for mine. Every brand is different. What we do for our clients may be very similar in terms of, they all get the same procedures, have a content calendar and stuff like that. But the voice that I'm using for a client like Seal is not the same voice that I'm using for a business coach that I'm using for an artist are not the same hashtags I'm using for a solopreneur. And so you can hire somebody who's very successful, but if they don't know your industry in your niche or how all the features work across the platforms for your audience, you might find yourself in a position where you're not going to see the same results, be disappointed and things. Social media just doesn't work.

Jennifer (15:21):

Yeah, I actually often I've done several podcasts about, um, marketing in general, being both an art and a science. And I think that's what the science part is, what people miss. Right. They miss the, try something, look at the data and then bring it back to, did it work? Did it not work because you're right. If you're just assume that you get great engagement at noon. Fantastic. However, like you said, if, if you just try posting at seven and your engagement goes up by thousands of percent's, what did that hurt?

Sarah (16:00):

Trial and error is so important. And if you're super stubborn about social media and you don't know what to do, you're just going to repeat these circles and be upset and you'll see opportunities, you know, get missed all the time. And I love when clients call me and say, Hey, I just looked at my competitors thing and I want to do this. Absolutely. Let's check it out. Let's see what they're doing and how it's working. And also not believing the hype. Sometimes it really looks like people are doing well and they're really excited about it. And then you go to look into, and it's like, no, actually the, you know, all they did was run a bunch of, they run a bunch of ads and then the ads got them a bunch of page likes because you can do that.

Jennifer (16:38):

Yeah, absolutely.

Sarah (16:40):

It's great for brand credibility. I tell all my clients to do it. So when people look you up, if you're talking about I'm a six figure something, then a lot, having a lot of page likes helps to build that credibility, you know, get, don't get twisted though. And think that, oh, well I need to have a Facebook page like this and not want to spend any money in advertising. Well, that's how they got it. You know, there's a very important part about looking at the results and then seeing how people got there. And I think that sometimes we get so excited about the guy standing in front of the plane or the jet or whatever, and don't was rented and he was on Instagram.

Jennifer (17:14):

Yeah. Well, I mean, that's, that's the reality about social media, right? Is that oftentimes it is manufactured, right? So how would you, I mean, what would be the biggest thing that you would suggest people do on, on social media? Like there's number one, tip?

Sarah (17:35):

Build your community, find out who they are and speak to people like they're human beings, right? I, I get it. There's a lot of motivational speakers right now. There's a lot of people who want to inspire and motivate. I know that their things are great. You know, we see the Grant Cardone and the Gary V's and the Ed Mylett's, and I think that those are wonderful. Their community is their community. They've built really strong communities. If we start to talk to people from a place of, this is my audience, this is my community and connect with them on a personal level as best possible. Perfect example, I have a fitness influencer right now who is going viral on every platform, sharing his testimonial videos. And I told him, I really want you to start connecting with your audience. And he's like, I don't really know how to do that.

Sarah (18:33):

What do I ask them? Like, what do I tell them? And then when I started giving them ideas and like, I don't know, this doesn't feel super authentic because he's so used to being like disassociated to everything and just being the guy that posts pictures without a shirt on and a bunch of people like it. And I'm like, how do you, you have 380,000 followers that you have not monetized. Wow. Monetize that audience. In order for me to bring in a brand deal, we have to know what they like. So now he's starting to post stuff like, Hey, how many of you are businesses, how and where are you guys located asking questions about his community and his audience? I said, respond to comments. I can't do that. I'm an influencer. People are going to think I'm crazy. And I'm like, respond to comments. We're switching your role from being the guy that's unavailable. And you know, doesn't really talk or speak kind of just posts pictures. But your goal is to be a speaker. Your goal is to step into selling maybe courses or your fitness coaching or your health, that's community. And so he's had to get out of his comfort zone and do it. Once you start tapping in your community, it doesn't matter if you have a thousand followers or you have a hundred thousand followers, there's a major benefit there.

Jennifer (19:51):

Absolutely. Absolutely.

Sarah (19:52):

That's the biggest, the biggest piece.

Jennifer (19:54):

I think that's, I think people often, I know, you know, this term; entrepreneur witness protection program, right? They're hiding. Right. They're hiding from being authentic and they're never going to really be able to scale or to have this like massive brand or business, faking it.

Sarah (20:17):

Right. Right. You can't, you can try see, okay. Here's the interesting thing, right? We talk about brand credibility and then we talk about community. There are two separate things that need to be treated separately. I have clients they're going to launch something, let's do some PR, we'll get, we'll get USA today, New York, weekly times. We'll get all these articles to write about you. Let's be completely honest though. People aren't digesting them the way they used to. That's what's needed to build this stamp of approval.

Jennifer (20:51):

It gives you that blue check mark or whatever.

Sarah (20:55):

Verification, right? You get 10,000 followers, people's mind shifts a little bit like, wait, maybe they are really who they talk about right? After you've reached that 10,000 threshold, you've gotten some extra features on Instagram, like the swipe ups and adding a link. You've got your press to get your verifications. Once that's done now tap into your community. And, if you want to start off slow and you don't want to build a following and, or you don't really care about the credibility because you only really need like six clients a month to like hit your revenue goal or something, you get excited about a thousand and turns a six of that a thousand into your monthly clients.

Jennifer (21:33):

Absolutely. Absolutely. I love talking strategy with you because we both have such a very similar, um, you know, idea in that it is about building relationships. Whether those relationships are through social media or through your funnel or whatever, marketing should be about building authentic relationships with people.

Sarah (21:53):

Absolutely. Absolutely.

Jennifer (21:56):

So when it comes to growing your audience, um, and, and connecting with the community, what kind of tips do you have for people to do that?

Sarah (22:08):

Influencer marketing is my favorite. It's the one that I talk about the most. Find someone in your niche go live together. So let's, let's use it. You and I, as an example, right? So let's say you just started your Instagram about a couple of thousand followers. Um, I currently have 16,000 followers. We do this podcast together. Now in the podcast goes live. I share it to my 16,000 followers. And so now there's this organic conversation that starts. Now, when I start telling my followers, Hey, any business entrepreneurs are looking to get, you know, their advertising done or click funnels made, this is the person you need to connect to. It doesn't look like an ad. We just did a podcast together. Right? Exactly. And then it's like, Hey, let's go live on, on Instagram. You know, a couple of minutes, 15 minutes next Friday.

Sarah (22:53):

And let's talk about like fun fact entrepreneurial Friday or something. And now we go talk about it and it doesn't seem like as a sales pitch, it doesn't seem like an I paid an influencer to help me out. No, it just looks like an organic conversation. I'm getting exposed to your audience for the first time you're getting exposed to my audience for the first time. It doesn't have to be massive influencers either. Now, yes, you can pay an influencer. Hey, you know, we do like a lot of giveaways, which are really, really beneficial for our artists because it doesn't matter where they're located. If you have good music and you're targeting your audience, you get in front of them. Some Mac books, some, you know, AirPod pros or something. And in order for you to win that, you go and follow someone. You know, those are great starter strategies.

Sarah (23:37):

Eventually you want to tap into like your core niche audience. So for musicians, I might put a singer with a, with another singer, or I put a singer with a rapper, a singer with a producer and they can get on a talk about it. A business coach might find an entrepreneur influencer go live with them, interview them on their podcast. I think influencer marketing is the fun, the funnest part for me. Um, I'll share a quick story. I had an artist come to me, just launching her career, wanted to do a music video and wanted to have an influencer of all involved, but didn't want it to look like a paid gig, right? We had the influencers show up to the music video and be part of the music video, but wow,

Sarah (24:21):

Was the lead in the video. But while the video is getting made, he was doing stories while he was there. Like he was just on set. No one knew he was going to actually be in the video. So everyone's like, is this his girlfriend? Like, what is this like, who is this? In one day she got 12,000 followers just from this influencer. Then we took a BTS video and he posted that on his YouTube. And then the same day she posted the actual video, which drove about 180,000 views for her YouTube video. So that's like a perfect way where you can hire an influencer, but make it look organic and have it be this, this thought out campaign to where you're not throwing away $3,000 hiring influencer. That's just going to tag you in a post and you're going to write a little bit of something, you know?

Sarah (25:06):

So that for me is probably the funnest. Now. Not every client has a budget for it. And I totally understand that. So find, micro-influencers find the ones with 10,000 that are trying to grow, find the ones with 20,000 that are right in your niche. Uh, we work with a holistic dentist. That's what I started doing. Just tagging their people that were bigger than her reposting, their content. They were reposting her content and it became a community within a community and she was getting exposed to different stuff. And I think in a year she got to like 26,000 followers. That's awesome. That's fun stuff. For sure.

Jennifer (25:40):

That is fun. I mean, it does. It sounds like, I mean, really it is supporting entrepreneurs, supporting each other, whether it's paid or you find someone that you're just connected with. I think it's really super, um, a fun way to go about doing things and something we should definitely do.

Sarah (26:03):

I don't know if you remember clubhouse when it had its cool little spin. It's a dead now, which I was, I really wasn't anticipating that I haven't been on clubhouse probably since the top of the year. And I haven't heard of anyone else. I want to see it getting posted or anything. But one of the cool things about the platform was that you were able to kind of get invited to the stage and talk alongside people who were just like you through the concept of Instagram and social media is create a space for two people of like-minded with similar audiences to expose each other to each other's audience.

Jennifer (26:36):

Now, when we, speaking of clubhouse, just because it's, it's a, um, kind of, uh, just shows you the things come up and things go away. Right? So when we start thinking about like all of the new technologies, the shiny objects that come up, um, what would be your suggestion to people as far as like which social media platform should they, should they try them all? Should they focus on one or another? What would you say?

Sarah (27:10):

From a branding perspective? I think you should have an account on every platform now. Yes. New ones will pop up. I kind of will tell people it's up to you. If you want to go grab your username just in case, right? If you don't want to waste your time doing it, you want to wait to see how it builds up then great. I jumped on clubhouse very early. I was an early adopter and I think that when it became more public people started to back away because the cool thing was that you got to be in rooms with people you wouldn't typically be able to be rooms with it became more like Instagram. Then I think people backed away. And so from a branding perspective, you should have an account everywhere. And if you can post everywhere, great, it comes back to community. Where are, where is your audience?

Sarah (27:54):

I remember in 2012, when I was doing PR and advertising for a shoe company, they were selling shoes to 65 plus year olds who were making, you know, a hundred thousand dollars a year or something because the shoes were kind of expensive or on the primal price inside. And, um, and I told him about Facebook and I was like, there's no way. It's like college kids. I'm like, not anymore. I think there's 55, 65 plus year olds on there, I know my grandma's on there. My aunts are on there, right there. And it's over saturated because a lot of people think like you think, and so they were running ads gave 400% return on investment where Facebook picks up the phone and was like, is this a really accurate, before ads were oversaturated? So right. Those results anymore. Um, but back then, yeah, they took a risk.

Sarah (28:39):

And so when I talked to people now dating coaches, business coaches, they're like, yeah, my niche audience was like 38 plus like, I'll be great. Let's start a Tik Tok, like what? Noo. Look at the data and see how the platforms curve, because they start young and you get a little older, then they get a little older. Your audience could be almost anywhere. Yeah. You're only producing long form content and you don't care to do selfie videos, Tik Tok's probably not your platform. Um, if you're selling high ticket offers, $5,000 Tik Tok might not be it, where LinkedIn maybe it. So I think it's just a conversation of where are your ideal clients? How are they consuming content on a regular basis? Once you, once you answer those two questions, you can figure out which platforms you're supposed to be on.

Jennifer (29:23):

So what would you suggest as far as the amount of time for those DIY'ers, like in reality, how much time are they spending on if they're not hiring an agency, how much time should they actually be spending?

Sarah (29:37):

Oh, it's so hard to say that, um, you know, ideally you're posting three times a week and how long that takes depends on, are you posting on the fly? Trying to come up with something, kind of like what I do? Or are you planning out ahead, like we do for our clients? You know, our clients are 30, 60, 90 days planned ahead. It all depends on, do you want to do all the work on the front end or do you want to do a day by day? Um, the more you post, the more there's this frequency marketing, you know, kind of sneak in, more often. If you go a week without posting, then it's like you have a dead audience doesn't make any sense. You know? So I say three to four hours a week is ideal. If you're spending two of those hours creating content and posting it, and you're spending two or three more hours engaging with people answering DMS and stuff.

Sarah (30:30):

I think that's a good place to start. Um, Canva has become an incredible tool for DIY'ers. We still use Canva for our clients. You know, you create a really awesome template or there's already awesome templates there. You just brand it to your color. As you add your photo in. It's a great opportunity for that. I still do coaching right now at far, do it yourself packages. And I that's the first thing I do when we get on the call, I teach them how to use Canva, create your content. And my homework for them is before you start posting, create 30 images on canvas that you love. Now write the captions. Then you have content backed up. Yeah, leave it all on your phone and an album. And you have all the notes. And however, which way you want to organize it, you do it that way. But stockpiles and stuff. I know the pressure, you know, my, my business partner sends out all the updates. She's the one that stays on top of all the updates with social media. Sometimes at 12 o'clock at night, she's texting stuff. And I'm like, this is stressing me out! She said the other day, she's like, you guys, aren't going to like this. She goes, the only way to really go viral on reels is to post three of them a day.

Jennifer (31:37):

Yeah. Let's talk reels for a second.

Sarah (31:39):

I almost lost my mind. Yes.

Jennifer (31:44):

Because reels are our Facebook's slash Instagram's newest toy right there. They're working to compete with Tik ToK. Um, so three reels a day. I just like that hurts my brain. Oh yeah. But can you do reels like ahead of time or do you are those..?

Sarah (32:05):

You can do them ahead of time so you can either, so what I did when I first started doing reels was do stories first. And then I was like, Ooh, that's a cool story. And I would save it and post it as a real. Then I just started filming stuff throughout the day on my phone and then I'll turn it in to a reel later on. So I kind of stopped pile different videos if I get a cool thought. And I'm like, oh, I want to share that. I'll spit it out on a video and save it and post it later. Um, I got to posting two reels a day and then she's like, this is too much, you know, like on top of managing everyone else. So, um, here's the benefit of reels for now? Uh, they want to keep you on the platform, Instagram, and off of Tik Tok.

Sarah (32:42):

So they're literally giving people free clout, a person we both know posted a testimonial video, it got 20,000 views. I literally almost lost it. I'm working so hard on my reels and I'm getting 5,000, a thousand and it's a client I'm jealous. Like we pulled your first rail and it gets 20,000. It wasn't even him. Right. It was a client testimonial video. And I'm like, are you serious? And then as I'm doing the homework as we're posting client's first reels, because they're just now getting excited about the feature. I'm like, I get it. See, they want to show your content to as many people as possible in the first couple of rounds, they establish who your audiences, and then they send it. It's Instagram right now is doing homework on us. We are the Guinea pigs. Tik ToK has mastered is the algorithm. When I first got on Tik ToK, all they did was show me like faith-based content because that's the content I was engaging with.

Sarah (33:45):

When I started working out, all of a sudden, I started getting fitness faith videos, like Christians working out in the gym and I'm like, that's crazy. You're like, Ooh, you know me too well, you know, and so Tik Tok's Algorithm is insanely brilliant. I have not wrapped my head around it. It's like I touch it and they can feel my soul. And then that's content it shows me. And Instagram is trying to do that. So we are their Guinea pigs right now. So the cool thing for creators is if you want to get exposed to thousands of people with very little effort post on Instagram reels and do multiple of them if possible.

Jennifer (34:26):

That's a, that's a really good point because Facebook did that with Facebook Lives. I don't know, five years ago, or whenever, whenever Lives first came out, people were going viral with their Lives. So yeah, if you're using Facebook or Instagram or whatever, their favorite toy is, that's, what's going to get you the most. So when it comes to reels, what do they need? Like, I know they have to be short. Like they're what you asked me. 30 seconds

Sarah (34:55):

Get increments as you do more so 15 seconds and that's it. And then you get 30 seconds and that's it. And then you get a minute and it might be, it might start at 30 seconds now. So it used to be 15. So it was 30 seconds. Then you get a minute, Tik Tok's got to the point where you get three minutes and are people digesting three minutes. The key is you have to suck people in the first couple of seconds, because more people that swipe past your content, the less likely Instagram is going to show it to more people. Right. So have a clickbait photo. Right. And then in those first three seconds, I'm a little, chunker, I'll talk through those details. I can't do that in reels. Like I have to boom, boom, boom, boom. Because I only have a few seconds to capture them, capture the audience when you're making reels. That's the most important thing is start with the big thing, right? So it let's say you're going to do something on, um, procrastination, like three steps how not to procrastinate. You want to make sure that at the very beginning you hit them with, are you tired of your career just sucking? Here's three things... So you have to have that,

Jennifer (36:01):

That whatever that hook is.

Sarah (36:04):

And that's where like, people like you and I can thrive on social because we already think like call to action, hook and all of those things. So those are always the best. And then anything that's just entertainment. Right? Perfect example. I had a client get on Tik ToK. She was on her 13th, one. She's like, I'm done with this. I'm over it. I'm getting a couple hundred views and posting every freaking day. I was like, don't give up, just keep posting. Right? Her 14th one, I think it was 3.8 million it hit. It was literally a dog and a baby pig. Like, and I told her it wasn't her. It wasn't her dancing, all these ones, you put all this effort to, it was just this little thing, a couple seconds long. I was like, girl, I wish you would've put your song. She's an artist. What did she do to put your song behind the video? Right? Like we've got to think like that, but now she's got 70,000 followers and every video gets over 20,000 views.

Jennifer (37:00):

That's amazing. I mean, that's the thing with organic traffic is that you can get there, but only if you have the strategy behind it, right. Consistency

Sarah (37:11):

Consistency is key.

Jennifer (37:11):

Yes. Yes.

Sarah (37:13):

You can hit it big on one video, we see it happen all the time. Percentages are low. So be consistent. I was posting reels, I was getting like a thousand, thousand, thousand. You know, my first one, I got like a thousand because the day reels dropped, I did a reel, and they hadn't figured it all out yet. right. I broke my board and posted that on a video. So those you don't know, like we, you know, smash our hand against them would and breaking it up. I posted it like 5,000 views. I'm like, cool. It was entertainment. People are like, what the hell is she about to do? Right. And I had dress on like, come on. If you can find stuff that's really, um, either inspiring or super niche or just entertaining. It'll do well.

Jennifer (37:56):

Awesome. I have loved this conversation and quite honestly could probably spend the next several hours just talking to you about social media. Um, I think that a lot of people don't quite understand the difference between like organic traffic and other than pay traffic being paid. But like, there's an important like synergy, which is why we work so well together. Right. We, we pass referrals back and forth all the time. Cause there's that synergy that goes along with it. Um, so I am super excited for our audience that's gotten, hear all of these tips and tricks and information from you. Um, if you have one thing to say to the audience, uh, before we sign off, what would you like to say to them?

Sarah (38:46):

Take risks and get out of your comfort zone.

Jennifer (38:50):

Awesome. I love that. That's fantastic. Thank you so much for joining us today, Sarah, and thank you everyone for joining us on Marketing Matchmaker. I will talk to you next week.

Thank You for listening to the Marketing Matchmaker podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, I would love to hear your feedback. Please head over to iTunes and leave a review so we can hear from you. And if you are a coach, consultant, or online course creator who are looking to grow your business, increase your income, and scale your impact connect with me at yourmarketingmatchmaker.com. I look forward to hearing from you.