EntreLeadership - #253: 7 Solid Social Media Strategies with Rachel Hollis

Episode Date: March 12, 2018

Rachel Hollis, best-selling author and CEO of Chic Media, hesitates to call herself a social media expert, although the mega brands she’s worked with—like Disney, Rubbermaid, and Target—would likely beg to differ. Instead she considers herself a tribe-building expert, and her vehicle of choice to do that? Social media. Whether you love it or hate it, social media is here to stay and, if used correctly, is a powerful marketing tool capable of taking your business to the next level. Tune in to find out the seven highly effective strategies Rachel swears by. Also joining us is EntreLeadership Senior Vice President Daniel Tardy with a useful whiteboard exercise to help keep tabs on your marketing return on investment. entreleadership.com/podcast 7-Day Plan to Triple Your Productivity from EntreLeadership Free Email Templates from Infusionsoft Want expert help with your business question? Call 844-944-1070 and leave a message or send an email to [e-mail]. You could be featured on a future podcast episode! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

helping business leaders grow themselves, their team, and their profits. This is Andre Leadership. Now, here's your host, Ken Coleman. Coming to you from the Music City, this is the broadcast of leaders, by leaders, four leaders. Thank you so much for joining the conversation. Our feature interview this episode is with Rachel Hollis. You heard Rachel last week, and we wanted to dive in deeper regarding social media. Rachel has seven practices for how your business can improve,

Immediately. She's the founder and CEO of Sheik Media. You're also going to hear from our senior vice president of business and leadership here at Ramsey Solutions. He is Daniel Tarty's going to give you another whiteboard session on how to spend your marketing dollars. So you don't want to miss that. And of course, we're going to be free resources from Entree Leadership and Infusion Soft. Well, Rachel Hollis is a great story. I love stories of men and women who see a problem and they come up with a solution. And her case is even more organic in that she just began to promote what she was all about. What was she passionate about? What did she enjoy partaking of? And from that grew an amazing social media brand. Then the big time company started going, wait a second. She knows what she's doing. She knows how to get her voice out to those who are in the same boat.

Really, really good stuff. She's named one of Inc. Magazine's top 30 entrepreneurs under 30. She is an infectious personality. A great lady. She joined us here in studio. So let's get to some great marketing content from Rachel Hollis. So let's talk about social media. This is, again, it's ubiquitous now.

And, you know, there's always people saying, here's how you do it right. Here's how you do it wrong. And I think anybody that's listening in right now knows that that's true. There are right ways, wrong ways to do it. But I'm also afraid that it's just such a thing now that we dip our toe in. We go, oh, we've got to have a presence. Yes. And then we're actually doing damage by starting something and then letting it lie down.

Absolutely. Okay, I was going to ask you to. I'm so glad that you get that. I'm so glad you know it. Yeah. So I don't want to just come at this with, okay, here's another person who's an expert. And you are. Sure.

But before we get into some practice, you've got seven that I think are very, very helpful. I want you to give our audience some context that you do know what you're talking about. You're working with some very big brands who have got complex strategies. So it's not as simple as let's put our special up for the next 10 days. Yes. So talk a little bit about your experience and then how you're guiding some big brands in this area. Yeah. So I started as a food blogger, oh gosh, maybe six or seven years ago, back when we weren't called influencers.

You know, you're just a mom talking about your recipes, right? And I started to grow this audience and got a pretty big fan base. Brand started reaching out asking if I would, you know, hey, can you incorporate our eggs? We'll give you $200 if you put our eggs in your recipes. And I was like, oh my gosh. Yeah, absolutely. Wow, we're going to live it up at Bunko this week. So, yeah, so I would, I started working with brands that got bigger and bigger.

And somewhere along the way, those brands started to say, hey, we really love the content you're putting out. Could you create white label content for us? Which means you're creating strategic stuff for those partners. You're creating that content for them to push out as if it's their own. You don't know that we created it. And then that came to be, can you create a strategy for us? Can you tell us how to do holiday, you know, 2016 so that we're communicating with our audience in the right way? And it's just gotten bigger and bigger over the last however many years.

And, you know, these are brands like Disney Jr. and Walmart and Rubbermade and Target. And every single time we got a little bit of business, we just hustled and worked really hard and grew it to what it is today. I think probably the biggest difference between me and maybe someone who would come in here and talk about being a social media expert, I don't think I'm a social media expert. I think I'm an expert at building a tribe. And I'm an expert at using social media as the vehicle with which my tribe communicates and gets information. So those brands who are hiring me, it's not because I'm incredible at Facebook ads. It's because I know how to help you speak to your audience in a really organic way.

And, you know, the other thing that people miss out on is everyone has this desperation to get bigger and bigger and bigger. And I was never focused on getting bigger. I was focusing on how do I talk to these people individually, my audience is women. How do I talk to these women one at a time? How do I grow this community one at a time so that these are friends and fans and they're voracious about our products? So they'll buy anything. I love that. Okay, great distinction.

So I'm going to tee you up on these seven and you just teach us. Great. Okay, this is great. The first one is welcome everybody but mark it to a specific somebody. Yes. Dang, I mean, this is lost. I think lost most often when you're a smaller business. Because, you know, I was listening to you had talked to Clayte from, yes, which was such a good interview.

And what I loved about it was he talked about chasing money. And I think a lot of us do that as small business owners, we're so desperate for clients that we think everybody's our client. So you, in social media, a lot of times people are just casting a wide net. You know, we've got a special on coffee this afternoon. It's buy one, get one free or whatever. And you're not thinking through who is the key, who's the ideal customer? And how do we speak specifically to them? It's such an obvious thing.

But, you know, have you ever actually added up what it would cost for an ideal customer to afford you in a calendar year? So if my ideal customer goes to my two-day conference, buys all of my books, does the few different things, does it, you know, that's a, it's a little bit more money. And not every woman can afford that. And I want to welcome them all. I want to serve them with so much incredible free content. I want to serve this tribe well. But the customers who can actually afford me at the ideal rate have to have a little extra spending money. And that means that they shop in specific places. That means they like specific brands. And that means I need to be marketing to them exactly, not to everybody. That's really good. Okay, number two, deep versus wide. I resonate with this because I feel like I see so many people just going crazy with the wide.

Yes, yeah. I thought you were going to say you resinated because you grew up in church and you used to sing that song. Do you know that song? Deep and wide. I'm a pastor's kid. I'm a pastor's kid. P.K. And so deep and wide, deep and wide, there's a fountain flowing deep and wide. I know it.

I can do the motions as well, but I'll spare you. Yes. Yes. So deep versus wide. There is an obsession with how do I get more followers. How do I get more followers? And the truth is, you know, I have just under a million women all over the world who follow me. And I swear to you that I have grown that one woman at a time. Absolutely.

I, for years, it was just me by myself responding to every single comment, every single direct message, because I thought, if you're going to take the time to reach out to me, sister, I'm going to take the time to write back. And, you know, I would also, while we're on that, ask, why do you have social platforms? Why do you have social platforms if it's not a space for your customer to interact with you and your brand? And how much of a brand, with you, It is a brand versus a brand deposit. How much it is for them when they've taken a second and they've reached out to someone on the internet and you don't answer their question and you don't like it and you don't, it's like

you don't care. It's like you're not responding to customer service. So yeah, so I really focus on how do we go deeper with them? I got to tell you there's so much, you know, influencer marketing is a big thing, right? And there is this belief by a lot of people that if you've got five million followers, you must be the ultimate influencer, when the truth is that someone with 50,000 dedicated or 5,000 super dedicated, passionate fans is way more valuable than having millions and millions. It's not enough that people like you.

The question is, are they engaging with you? That's a really great tool for you guys to be thinking through as you're looking at your social platforms. It doesn't matter if your photo got 100 likes. it matters what was the engagement on it did people comment in fact you know I hate to say this because it freaks people out even when someone's commenting and it's not perfect it's not exactly what you'd want them to say even if they're asking a question or saying you know hey I didn't love that product as much you answering that and being genuine and being up front is way more valuable than having a photo that you know a handful of people see so don't focus on how do I get more fans focus on how do I take care of this community that I've built. And that matters if you're an accountant or a lawyer or you own a bakery in a small town.

Yeah, that's really good. Okay, three, build a community. You've been touching on this and you really did this. I love that you said you did it one at a time because I, you know, I was talking to somebody actually earlier today. This audience knows about the Ken Coleman show. It's five months in. And one of the things I've been very careful to do is not look at metrics and things of that nature because what happens is when you're in launch phase. And you get this big dream and all this. And you're very ambitious and you're on purpose. You can get really caught up in that stuff. And one of the things, thankfully, at 43, become disciplined to do is focus on the main thing. And that's caller after caller.

What are we hearing from real people that are listening to show? Are we helping callers? Yes. And so we've had some success lately and all this kind of stuff. We're seeing some really nice numbers. But I will tell you that what I'm most excited about, and I'm leading you into this, Rachel, is sustainability. to me is going to come when I see, like you said. You've built one woman at a time, helping them adding value in some way. So for me, it's got to be caller after caller, or for people

who never call the show, they're going listen to this guy's show. And that's what we're hearing. For me, if I keep my head down, stay faithful to the main thing, that's where long-term sustainability comes. Yes or no? Absolutely. I think, I mean, I feel like that's forgotten so often. It is. We are here to add value to their lives. That's the whole point. You know, I'm in the middle of this book tour right now, and you know how it is, right? You're doing a signing, and it's hundreds of people in line. And the people that are running your event are typically trying to, like get them out there. We want to close these doors. Let's get the picture. And I'm like, I will stand here with you until midnight. I want you to tell me about your babies. I want to hear about what you're going. That's the whole point. You waited in line for three hours to give me a hug. We are going to stay here as long. wrote the book for that late. Yes, it's for them. And they've been so, the thing is they have been so supportive. And I can tell you, I mean, you know this, right? We wouldn't be anywhere without this community, at least for me personally, I would not have the career or the company that I have were it not for these people supporting me. And it has, there are people, I'm sure you have the same thing,

where they've been around from Jump Street. They have been here the whole time. And to just keep offering value to them and making sure, not only are you offering value, but you're also giving them a space to interact with each other because so many people, especially those that are really into using social media, are looking for a place to connect. And I know that social media gets a bad rap of, you know, we're not really connecting in person the way that we used to. But what I've found is so many of these women are finding friends and finding community and finding fellow moms just like them that they wouldn't have otherwise. So making sure that you're giving platforms for them to have conversation.

Let's see you own a Harley dealership. You can use your social media to prompt conversations where they can all talk to each other. I picked that out of the blue and now I can't think of one question a Harley dealership would ask, what's your favorite leather jacket? Did you watch Suds of Anarchy? I don't even know. But that you're using things, giving them the chance to talk to each other. Yeah, you know, I'm going to say something right now that might be a little heretical.

Yes. And I'm okay if you disagree. Okay. Okay. But you just said something and we're both, I think, resonating on the same feeling. I'm getting a little weary of all the platform building. Yes. Like where people, and I'm not attacking anyone.

I get it. I get it. But there's this focus on build your platform, build your platform, build your platform. And I got to tell you, I think that it is almost impossible to be a healthy human being and focus only on that. If you build a community. Yeah. That you're serving. then the same thing you're chasing in building a platform,

you're going to have. Yeah. But I think your heart stays in the right place. So I'm just a little tired of that. I don't think you need to be building a platform. No, I don't think it's about building a platform. I think it's about, you know, Simon Sinek says, what's your why? What's your why?

My why is that I want women to understand that they have the tool, that they can change their own life, that they are in control of what happens next, that they can go back to school, that they can be a better mom, that they can be a better wife, that they can be the CEO, whatever their dream is. I want them to know that they can do that. That's my why, and I'm super passionate about it.

Social media is the tool that I get that message. It's the tool that I'm able to serve them content that might be helpful. But if I'm obsessed with how do I get more people to like me on Facebook, I lose my why. Absolutely. And by the way, you might not even make it. Yeah, totally. It's a hard. Because you're staring at numbers and likes all the time, and how do you stay encouraged?

Absolutely. Yeah, really good stuff. Okay. Moving on. Number four, give as much as you ask. Oh, my gosh. So one of the best books on social media ever written is Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook, Gary V. And it's the idea that every single time you're going to ask your audience for something, you need to have given them three things. So you need to serve them content. You need to give them ideas. And then you're going to ask them. And people will say, like, well, how do I know what an ask is? If it has a link, it's an ask. Sign up for my news.

letters and ask, come into the stores and ask, what you can serve them with? Because the other question is, well, what if I'm not a content creator? How do I serve them anything but what I've got, you know, what I'm trying to sell? You should be following other things. Remember we talked about your ideal customer and what are the brands that they would love? You should be serving up content that's relevant to your ideal customer. So you're this, it's great education-based marketing. They come to associate your social media pages as a resource for them in these areas. You're sharing all of this like-minded content. And then every once while you're like, hey, hey, can you, you know, would you do this for me? I think, you know, I'm experiencing this great

success right now with the new book. And it's because for two years, I've had nothing to sell. I have just served, serve, serve, continue to give them. And all of a sudden, I'm like, hey, you guys, would you consider pre-ordering this book? And it's going bananas. Because these women are like, man, yes, we are going to show up for you because you have been showing up for us. It's also worth saying being really strategic about your marketing calendars. You look at the year. If you know we're going to launch a new product in fall, man, I'd be going hard in the summer. I'd be going hard serving that audience in the summer so that when fall comes, they're like, yeah, I'm going to take care of Ken.

Because he has been giving us so much great stuff. That's good. Okay, dovetelling off of giving as much as you ask, calls to action. It's got to be clear, and you can't forget to do it. Honestly, don't forget that. You know, people, if they're following you, they want some direction. They want you, and it can be as simple as comment below. That's right.

Tell us what you think. Social media is an incredible place to have conversations with your customers and find out what they really love and what they really want to see from you. So make sure you've got a call to action. If you're trying to grow a new platform, using one to promote another is a great idea. If you want them to, for instance, pre-order a book, hey, you guys, pre-order the book. You have to actually say it. And in this day and age, you have to say it about 17 times for them, for it to resonate in their mind. And a lot of times we think, oh, I don't, I'm so nervous.

I don't, you know, I don't want to keep asking. I don't want to annoy anybody. When the honest truth is they probably haven't even heard it. With most platforms, most of your following is maybe 4% will see an average post. So just keep serving them content, but do it in different ways. Let's say you have a book coming out. You're going to show a picture of you with the book. You're going to show a quote from the book.

You're going to show someone else endorsing the book. You're asking the same, it's the same call to action, but we're serving it to them in several different ways. Good. Okay. Content is king, not a new phrase, but again, something that people lose sight of. Yes. So making sure that everything that's on your social platforms is on brand for you.

I would rather, when we're working with clients on strategy, I would rather that someone actually not post on a platform than serve up something. that is off-brand, then serve up something that is not beautiful, making sure that if you don't have content, like if you don't have internal content like I do, I've got a whole machine of people who can create stuff for me, that you are partnering with other people who can, that you're sharing other people's content and giving them credit for it, or there are so many opportunities to partner, even when you're in small towns, to partner with other makers, other creators, let's say you have no idea how to take a picture, I promise you there's someone in your hometown

right now who does. You can partner up with a few different people and you all work to create content together so everybody's winning. Okay. And the final one is there's different social media channels and different people are over here versus of here. So who you communicate with on Twitter may be very, very different than who you're communicating with on Instagram. Yes. So for anyone who's feeling overwhelmed, because I know, you know, a lot of people hear this and they'll think, A, I don't know how to use social media so I'm not interested. I like to remind people that You didn't always know how to drive a car, but a car was a vehicle that would take you somewhere and social media as a vehicle that can take your company somewhere.

So I just want to challenge those of you who are listening. Just get into it. The thing I would say, too, is get into it, but don't get into everything. Choose one platform. Know what is the right platform for you. From LinkedIn to Twitter to Pinterest to Instagram, there is something for everybody that's can be really relevant and helpful for your business and just focus on one area of growth. I also think for anybody who is unsure what's the right platform or what kind of content matters there, every single thing that you want to know how to do in your business, the answer exists on the internet for free right now.

I literally makes my brain explain. I cannot listen to people tell me they don't know how because I am someone, I have a high school diploma and I have built my business to a staff of 10 and the revenue that we have. through a Google search bar. Every single thing I know how to do I learned on the end or listening to your podcast or going to a conference. So you can't sit on that excuse that you just don't know how. It's only going to get faster. You're only going to feel more left behind.

You need to take control of what you don't know and start learning it. And don't do. Oh, my gosh, if you're listening to this, you're like, you're right. I don't need to do that. Let me hire a 24-year-old to run this for my business. Don't do that. should never hire someone to work at your company doing something that you're not familiar with because you run the risk that they're going to damage the brand. So don't make the excuse,

figure it out, and find the platform that's going to work best for what it is you're trying to speak to your customer base about. Good stuff. Rachel Hollis, thank you so much. Thank you. This is really important stuff. Tell folks where they connect with you. I am Miss Rachel Hollis, MS, Rachel Hollis on every social platform that exists. Good. Good. Well, thanks for being with. Yeah, my gosh, thanks for having me. Big thanks to Rachel Hollis for hanging out with us. Again, if you'd like to learn more about Rachel, you can look her up. Sheik Media for all you dudes out there.

That's C-H-I-C media, chic media. Our friends at Entree Leadership are bringing you a great resource. It's called Triple Your Productivity. Now, we've brought you this resource before, but we're bringing it back because it was wildly popular. And let's be honest. A big portion of you, listen to a show like this every week because you want to be more productive. So do you actually know how you're spending your time?

Do you have a strategy for how you should spend your time? This is a great resource. It's a chart that has every 30 minutes of the day from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. charted out. You know, you can't figure out how to get where you want to go if you don't know where you are. You know, and that's what this resource is. It's going to show you where you really are, not where you think you are. where you really are when it comes to how you spend your time. So here's what we want you to do.

We want you to, of course, download the tool, and we want you to take a picture of it or print it out, scan it, and we want you to email Will the Producer with what your chart really looks like. We want to brag on some of you. We promise not to make fun of the rest of you. Podcast at Entreeleadership.com. That's the email.

Podcast at Entreeleadership.com. To get the resource, text triple to 33444. That's the word triple. text that to 33444. All right. So we recently launched a new segment here on the show. Daniel Tarty himself, the man who I affectionately refer to as the grand pooh-bah. And this guy's great on a whiteboard. So Will the producer came up with a great idea. Let's record him teaching, instructing, guiding on a whiteboard. So as I said, episode 246 was the debut. If you missed it, you got to go get it. So he is teaching on some questions.

that we receive from our all-access community. And you're going to love this. Now, YouTube.com slash entree leadership is where you go if you want to watch Daniel be a wizard of the whiteboard. YouTube.com slash entre leadership. Without any further ado, here is the Grand Puba himself. Hey, guys, it's Daniel Tarty,

and today we're answering a question from Rebecca, one of our customers, and she sent in this question about marketing. I love marketing. It's one of my favorite subjects, I got to be honest, I'm not a classically trained marketer, but I've been working with Dave and our incredible marketing team here for 14 years, and we've learned a thing or two about what works and what doesn't work. So Rebecca's question is, hey, guys, I've been spending a lot of money with Facebook,

and over the time that I've done this early on, I got a lot of results, but lately because the formulas have changed with Facebook, we're seeing diminishing results. What do I do and how do I know where to best invest my marketing dollars? Well, Rebecca, this is a great... A question and guess what? Welcome to the club. About the time we get it figured out, something changes in marketing.

That's always been true. It's always going to be true. So there's a skill that we can learn here on how to think about the way that we measure success and the way we spend are marketing dollars. Now, if you run into business, you should know at least give or take how much money you're spending every month in total dollars going towards marketing. This isn't just going to an agency or to ad buys or media, but this is all the the entire payroll that you have tied up. So if you have marketers on staff, if you have creative

people who are working on marketing assets, take all of that money and go, what does that cost us every month? That's your spend. That's how much is going out the door. And so what we like to do is kind of plot, where is our highest ROI or return on investment? So think about the lifetime that a customer is with you. If they spend more money with you over time, you may have had to pay a little bit more for them on the front end if they fall into the top right quadrant, but they're actually worth more because they're a better quality customer. Okay, we can be throwing a lot of money out there in marketing spend and none of it's actually coming back, but we feel like, well, we need to do it because marketing, it just matters.

It's important. So let's just throw money on the wall and hope that it comes back. That's not going to happen if you don't measure it and watch it like a hawk. You got to be able to track this stuff. So build it out. It can be as rudimentary as this crazy scorecard that I just built where I even misspelled stuff, or you can do it in Excel and build it out with a really robust platform. There's options out there.

Software you can track this thing. But the key is you got to measure it. Peter Drucker said what gets measured gets managed. So measure your marketing dollars. Pay attention to it. Marketing drives revenue. And revenue is the lifeblood of your business. So if you're going to do anything as the leader, this is an area.

You don't want to take your eye off the ball. Rebecca, I hope that helps. We love what you guys are doing out there. Entree leadership here. We are here to serve. you, empower you guys. We believe in what you're doing. Go get them. And our friends that in Fusion Soft have a great resource for you. How about free email templates? Like, this is my love language. Like, email for me is a necessary evil. Jim Bab, the engineer,

shaking his head behind the glass, will the producers wiping his head off? The sweat is just coming all of a sudden because he knows how much I hate email. But if I had templates to answer the most basic emails I get, I would be a happy man. Well, Infusion's office has gone out there and giving you 10 email templates to help you close a sale, not communicate, to close a deal. And boy, boy, they help you not be spammy. They help you with your automation. And this is so practical. Why wouldn't you take advantage of this?

So we've got a link for you to get these templates. And all you got to do is go to this episode show notes. It's episode 253 at entreleadership.com. Click on the podcast tab, episode 253. We've got a link in the show notes. And I don't know why as a leader, right now you wouldn't go get this and give it to your sales manager, all your salespeople, and say, start using this. And I want to know results. Why wouldn't you do that?

I don't understand. I got to move on. Will the producer is saying, you're beating it to death. They know they need to get it. They're going to get it. Leave them alone. All right. So that is going to do it for this episode.

On behalf of Will the producer, Jim the engineer and the entire Entree leadership team, thank you for listening. We'll talk with you again very soon. Thank you.