11: A Simple Social Selling System

What if I told you there was a way to grow your business’s visibility that was absolutely FREE! (Have I got your attention?)

Getting your name out there and creating relationships with customers can sometimes feel overwhelming – unless you have a plan to reach your perfect ideal customer. What easier way is there to do that than to go where they are already spending their time? I’m talking about leveraging social media!

Creating a following on social media is a simple way to get exposure for your business and turn followers into life-long clients. The best part is, with a great content creation strategy, it doesn’t take long, and you don’t have to blow your budget on expensive advertising campaigns.

In today’s episode of Shop Talk, I’m going to lay out my super simple system for getting your business more exposure by creating sharable videos on all social media platforms.

Here’s a snapshot of this episode:

4:11 – From “Oh No!” To “Oh Yeah!”
11:42 – The Key To Your Content Creation Strategy
14:12 – Why Your Social Media Marketing Efforts Don’t Get Results
17:15 – Social Media Marketing Simplified
23:30 – Sharing Your Micro-Content
27:13 – Turning Core Content Videos Into Micro-Content
31:23 – Video Content Creation For The Busy Entrepreneur

Links mentioned in this episode:

Content Creation Lab

Content Creation Machine

If you want to build relationships with your clients, you have to give them what they want – answers to their questions and confidence that you are the expert in what you do. How do you do that? Through social selling!

Today, I’ll share a simple content creation strategy system for selling on social media. I’ll also teach you to rapidly build trust and authority with your target audience as you grow your online following.

All while converting followers into clients without being pushy or “salesy”!

From “Oh No!” To “Oh Yeah!”

I’d like to start off today by pulling back the curtain to our business with a backstory about how we got to where we are today (and how this strategy has evolved for us).

We aren’t new to social selling – I actually started this WAY back in 2010.

I moved a family of six (plus our dog, Jude) from my hometown in Michigan to Arizona, leaving everyone I love and trust. I’m an “A” type personality, which means I like to take action and think about consequences later. That’s why my husband and I have such a great relationship. I’m the initiator of projects, and he’s the finisher.

Here we were, in the worst economic climate of our lifetime – working in the field of finance. When we moved to Arizona, we lived in a one-bedroom apartment for the first month. To make it more bearable, we tried to convince the kids that it was like we were on vacation.

Then we moved into a three-bedroom apartment and slept on air mattresses for a year. The only furniture in the place was a TV on the floor in the living room. It blows my mind because that was only 12 years ago! Now we live in a beautiful home. I have an amazing life! But that was the humble beginnings of our time moving to Arizona.

When people would ask us, “How’s it going?” I’d comment: “the good news is you can’t fall off the floor.” But I was also thinking, “The bad news is, some days it’s hard to get up.”

Time to get creative

Here we were, starting our lives over, with no money. So, I had to get creative.

Back in the day, when I kickstarted my business in finance, I joined a bunch of networking groups to meet new people and get referrals. It’s a great way to kickstart your business if you don’t have much money for your marketing. But that wasn’t going to work here because I didn’t know anyone. I couldn’t go to groups to ask for referrals if I couldn’t reciprocate.

So, I came up with a different idea.

At the time, Meetup was really taking off as a new concept to get people to connect. I joined quite a few groups just to get out in the community and meet new people. I joined hiking, euchre, and painting groups – anything that piqued my interest.

So, I thought, “Why not start a marketing group for small businesses?” I called it “Marketing 101” – cleaver, right?

We started to meet weekly to talk about marketing. Every week I would choose a topic on marketing because, since I was new in the state and trying to rebuild my business, that’s what I was thinking about.

I didn’t have my marketing business at the time; I was still in finance. But I thought to myself, “If I can meet local business owners, maybe they will introduce me to their employees. Then I can help them with their personal finances.” Since I went to school for marketing, I started leveraging my marketing knowledge to help businesses leverage the changing social media landscape.

The ah-ha! moment

Every week, I would share what I had learned. After the meeting, someone would come up to me and say, “Hey, Misty. I love what you teach. Can you help me in marketing?”

After two years of telling people, “I don’t do marketing,” I got a clue and started Your Marketing Coach. In the first week that I launched my business, I had 27 clients!

I had grown the group to over 600 members in the first six months and over 800 members in the first two years. We outgrew our in-person space, so I made the decision to convert the meetings to an online webinar that I hosted for two and a half years.

Every week I presented a different subject and never had a CTA. This means at the end of the webinar, I’d wrap up with a “See ya next week!” Even still, every week, I had people reach out to me and say, “I love what you taught this week. Can you help me?”

As a solopreneur with no strategy, figuring things out as I went, I earned $250k a yr. And I didn’t spend a dime on advertising.

The Key To Your Content Creation Strategy

Here’s the reason why I’m sharing my story…

Consistency (meaning every single week) has been the key to my content creation strategy, which has fueled the growth of my multi-million dollar coaching agency since the beginning.

I evolved my content over the years…

From live events
To online webinars
Facebook lives
Blogs
And I even launched my podcast, Shop Talk, recently

But things have changed. Ever since TikTok went viral, short-form video has exploded. In 2021, people watched an average of 8 hours worth of video every single week. And 73% of customers prefer learning about a product or service by watching a short-form video.

Video is the way people want to connect with brands and people. It’s not going away.

Yet, many business owners still haven’t embraced video in their marketing efforts.

And for those of you who know Gary Vee…

He says, “The number one variable in growing your business that’s practical, doable, achievable is how serious you take making content on the internet.”

Creating content through video isn’t just for celebrities and big brands – we have to be doing it too!

I spoke to a business owner just yesterday. He said, “I’ve hired a social media marketing company in the past and got screwed. They took my money, and I didn’t get any results.”

Here’s why most people don’t get results with their social media efforts…

They don’t have a content creation strategy. They post “stuff” without intention and hope people will do something.

Creating content is (typically) time-consuming…so most entrepreneurs don’t take the time to produce content. Which leads to them posting sporadically, not consistently.

And this is a BIG ONE…

Because creating content is so time-consuming, entrepreneurs want to hire it to be done for them (which I totally understand) – but the problem with that is the company/person you hire doesn’t know what you know. They aren’t the expert. So, the content they produce is (what I call) generic, surface-level, non-valuable content.

And audiences are over it! They want something helpful, meaningful, and entertaining.

If you want content that is valuable and connects with your audience, YOU have to create it.

YOU are the expert.

YOU have the experience.

YOU have the unique point of view.

YOU know your audience better than anyone.

The good news is YOU can create content consistently

without spending countless hours!

So, you might be thinking, “I wear a million hats in my business, Misty. How do I get this done?” The thing is, you can create content consistently without spending countless hours on it. I’ll show you how with a super simple system.

Let’s first take a step back and talk about Lifecycle Marketing (LCM) for a minute.

LCM is a mix of strategies a company uses to communicate and move its target audience from being a prospect to becoming a customer, an ambassador, and eventually a life-long customer.

There are 7 stages in the LCM process.

Awareness: These are the activities or strategies you employ that help you tell people you’re in business. Another word for that could be advertising.
Capture: You’ve got to have strategies to capture leads. You’ve got to add people to your email marketing list. You could add them to a private group you set up.
Nurture: Nurture the relationship with those prospects. Consumers want to be educated, informed, and to know that they can trust you.
Convert: Convert prospects into buyers with your sales process.
Delight: You want to have an onboarding process or a system that you follow that delights and wows your customers. Not just delivers your products and services.
Ambassadors: People who can’t help but to tell everyone about their experience working with you, your team, and your products and services.
Upsell: Offer additional products and services that can support them long-term, creating a life-long customer.

Each week, I will share different strategies you can deploy to scale your business. Every strategy I share will fall into one of these 7 stages of LCM.

This week, I am sharing a strategy that technically falls into three stages of the LCM process: awareness, capture, and nurture.

Here’s the gist of how it works…

You create one video each week (I call this a core content video). This can be a pre-recorded video done in your office. You can host a Facebook Live, use a Zoom meeting you had with a client, or a fireside chat you held with a group of experts. Or you can even use a recording of you speaking at an event.

Basically, any video where you are delivering 15 – 30 minutes of value that can be shared with your audience.

Once you have a video, you’ll slice it up into multiple pieces of micro-content. With this strategy, there are a ton of content creation possibilities, such as:

60-second YouTube Shorts
TikTok videos
Audiograms
Quote images
Reels
Stories
Testimonials

Full videos can even be turned into an SEO blog or even a podcast. There are all kinds of things you can do when you start with that core content video. You can even take a training video and turn it into a lead magnet that can be used to grow your email marketing list.

Next, you’ll take your core video and break it up into social posts – I call this “micro-content.” Once you have created your micro-content, you want to make sure you have shared it on every platform that your audience is hanging out on.

So, that means Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Snapchat, and yes… even TikTok. In the coming weeks, I will show you some of the results I’ve been getting on TikTok. I was one of those that said, “You know, I really don’t want to be on that platform.” But I can tell you, with the results I’m already seeing, I should have made the jump sooner.

At the end of the day, if you have the content, you may as well push it out to as many platforms as you can. It’s simple – the more posts you create, the more visibility you and your business get.

One question I get asked a lot is, “Should I share the entire 30-minute video on social?” Well, it depends on the platform. For example, Facebook will allow a little over two hours of video length. Where I recommend you share your core content videos is Facebook, for one. And if you have a Facebook group like we do, we post full-length videos in our group so members will have exclusive access to our entire content.

You can also put it on your YouTube channel (which, at this moment, is the #2 search engine). When people search for answers, if your video is there, you can be found.

The third place I’d put it is on my blog. Some people still like to read, so you can take the video and have someone extract that transcript. Once you have the transcript, turn it into an SEO blog. So, now you’ve got the written word on the page. This way, Google can also have its bots crawl and rank your post in their search results.

But, along with the transcript, pop the video on there. If someone gets to the blog and only wants to play the video in the background while doing something else, the option is available. It’s just another way for them to consume the content.

Turning Core Content Videos Into Micro-Content

When it comes to making videos for social media posting, there are a ton of tools available.

Recording your 15-30 minute video

I used to use Zoom a lot for coaching calls because it’s an easy tool to use. But I’ve noticed that Zoom doesn’t have very high-quality video. So, I switched to a tool called Loom. They have a free version and offer a paid version that’s super inexpensive.

Loom has a lot of features. If you create a video with Loom, it gives you your transcript. They host the video on their site, so you can share it from there if you want to. However, I wouldn’t recommend that, necessarily. I’d move it over to your YouTube channel so you can get the SEO benefits and advantages.

There’s another tool I use when I’m doing quick little social snippets (maybe 60 seconds or less). Because I like using a script, I use a software called BIGVU. I love it! I’ll pop my script into their desktop software and save it. Then pull it up on my cellphone with the mobile app. The script will roll right on my phone, keeping me on track while recording.

Making your micro-content

We actually offer micro-content creation as a service. We take the video and clean it up by removing the ums, ahs, the mistakes – anything like that. When we’re done, we’ll give you a nice clean video. We do that in a tool called Veed.io.

It’s a simple tool to use. You upload the video and clean it up with the click of a button. You can even extract the audio. What we do is slice and dice the video up. We try to keep it to 60 seconds or less because if we do that, it can be shared on multiple platforms. If videos are too long, certain platforms won’t allow them.

And the other one that we lean on a lot is Canva. It can do so much. So, you need to check out those tools.

Video Content Creation For The Busy Entrepreneur

This may seem time-consuming, but trust me. It’s doable! Creating the core content videos takes 15-30 minutes. I know the first few videos you create can be more overwhelming, and they may take a little extra time. You may even worry about things that don’t matter. But once you get your setup and become comfortable with the tools, you can sit down and knock out a video in 15-30 minutes max. Why? Because you do this every day – this is your expertise.

Creating a video is not hard. The micro-content takes a bit more time because you need to know how to edit it, then slice and dice it. You’ll also need the skill set of going onto Canva and creating the graphics. Is it impossible? Absolutely not.

For the longest time, I did my own content. It would take me half a day to slice and dice a video up into multiple pieces of content, then post it on social media.

My goal is to NOT make this a pitch fest – but I do want you to know that I have a program called “The Content Creation Lab” that shows you how to outline, create, publish, and promote your content to help you grow your business.

I could sell this program (easily) for $500 or more. But I’ve decided to get this in the hands of as many people as possible. I’m (essentially) giving it away for just $4.95.

This program teaches you how to do it as a do-it-yourself program.

I also have an option for those of you who’d like to stay in your lane of genius called the “Content Creation Machine.” If you are okay with creating a 30-minute video every week but are not interested in producing the micro-content, here’s what you can do. You make one video a week, send it to our team, and we will repurpose it into multiple pieces of content for you. With just one video per week, we will give you 20 videos of content to post on your social media platforms.

So, if you want to find your ideal customer, why not meet them where they are? Show them your expertise and start engaging with them on social media!