37:1 Are you wasting time on social media?

Welcome to the Agency Trailblazer Podcast. This is your host and on today’s show, let’s talk social media and the big question, “how do we measure the success of the activities that we engage with”?

Before we carry on, I’d love to thank Cloudways for supporting this show. You can find them over on cloudways.com. They are our preferred host of choice and they support both of my agencies from small websites to large e-commerce sites and huge multisite networks.We have had a great experience, great performance and great support. You can find out more information over on cloudways.com.

So in this episode, I want to share with you our story and a conversation that we’ve been having over the last few weeks. We as an agency recognize the importance of engaging in social media to the extent that we invest a lot of time and effort in what we do. You’ll be aware that we have over 300 episodes, if you count all of the extra “mini-sodes” that we’ve added over the years, we have hundreds of videos. I show up live, up to five days a week on multiple platforms.

We also run a Facebook group of over three and a half thousand people and we often engage in relevant groups within the industries that we touch. We’ve come to a point where we believe we need somebody to help support our social media efforts at a full time level. And as we began to plan the role, it made me realize something really important.

As we planned the new job role, we asked the question, “how would we measure the success of the individual that joins us”? And it didn’t take me too long to realize that the success of our team member relied on what goals we had for our social media.

Ever since we started the podcast, social media has taken up so much of our time and I suddenly realized I had no documented goals for the activities that I was engaging with. I’d become so wrapped up in the doing I didn’t really have a handle on those desired outcomes.

By coming up with the job role of a social media manager, it forced me to question myself. It forced me to look at what we were doing, the activities that we were engaging with, and not only to say how do we measure the success of the person who fills the role, but how do we measure the success of the social media activities we engage with? And more importantly, why are we engaging with social media altogether? What are those measurables? What are we doing? Why are we doing this?

In this episode I would like to share with you the five outcomes that we are looking for from our social media. We spent a long time looking at all of the different pieces of content that we create and the platforms that we engage on, and we began to list the desired outcomes we’d like to see for our business.

What we came up with isn’t rocket science, and it’s important to pretty much every business out there.But we personalized it to what we do and what our goals were. And we also noted down our whys. Why did we want these outcomes?

The first one is audience growth. We have a podcast. We have the website, we have the YouTube channel. We go live every day. And we also have the groups. That’s the Facebook group and the private group. We would like to see audience growth across all of those channels. A wider audience allows us to help more people with our mission.

Our mission is to help agency owners build a business that they love through education based on real world experience from people who run agencies right now. The wider the audience, the more people we can help. The wider the audience, the more people sharing the content that we have to share. Whilst follows and views can be seen as a vanity metric, they are also perceived as a credibility booster. Agency Trailblazer does have five years in the game and yet our content still only has a small reach compared to the larger industry out there.

When somebody new comes across one of our platforms, they’re less likely to engage with the content should they see lower numbers.

“Who are these people?”, “What is Agency Trailblazer?”, “Why should I listen to these guys?”

And yes, it’s important that we put across compelling content that speaks to the problems that they have, but also those numbers really do help. When I search for help and I find a video that’s only had a few views, I’m more likely to skip that and find something else. If I find myself doing it, then I’m sure people who consume our content may do the same.

So for us, audience growth will allow us a wider audience will allow us to help more people will allow us to pursue our mission and will improve our overall credibility in the industry.

The next outcome is an increase in lead generation. That’s either through emails direct to us, telephone calls, emails, sign ups, etc. Leads are qualified people that we know we can help. We know we can support them with quick wins and increase the likelihood that these people will convert into customers.

Growing our audience is great, we are going to help many people with the free content that we provide. But growing our leads means we are growing a pool of people that we can help further.

These are people who are prequalified, who are ready to take the next step in their business. The more people we can reach on a global level will in turn impact the leads that we generate.

We recognize it’s not just a numbers game, however. We also need to ensure that our content speaks to that target audience and is compelling enough for them to take that next step.

The next outcome is sales conversions. That could be for tickets to our physical or our digital events, course sales and people joining our premium membership. Sales are the lifeblood of any business, so it doesn’t need to be said that these are important. But also with our mission, we know those investing in themselves are taking that next step in improving their business.

That, in turn, means we are achieving our mission to help those agency owners make real change in their business. That’s real achievable change to help agency owners fall in love with their business.

Outcome number four is engagement. That’s conversation across all of our social platforms, likes, dislikes, shares, you name it. We are looking for engagement. Engagement allows us to help many people, but also allows us to learn from them.

Just look at the Facebook group, this is full of agency owners and team members from around the world. They ask questions, they share their opinion. They help and support each other. And this for us has been invaluable in helping us understand the heartbeat of the industry and understand what is important to our target audience.

Therefore, the more people that do engage with us across all of our social channels, the better it is for us as a business, so we can serve content that will help change lives and also we can help more and more people.

And the final outcome is increased brand awareness. I remember a few years ago in Florida when I went to a WordPress meetup and I shared that I ran a WordPress podcast and got really excited when the guy said, “Oh, my word, I know your podcast. I was listening to you just the other day”. Bearing in mind the podcast used to be called WP Innovator and he proudly held his phone high, showing me WP Elevation!! Alas, I was heartily disappointed.

But yes, we do want that sort of brand recognition. We do want Agency Trailblazer to be a brand and a name that people in our industry talk about, that people recognize that people engage with. We want to be seen as the “go to community”, the “go to resource” for agency owners that want to make real achievable change within their business. We’d love to be as big as the WP Elevation’s and the ugurus as big as Futur and Chris Do because we want to help as many people as possible.

And of course, I would love one day to be at a random WordPress meet up in a random country and be told: “Yes, Agency Trailblazer, I was only listening to your podcast just the other day”. (Short disclaimer, that isn’t the only reason we want brand awareness. Obviously).

With these outcomes that we have defined, we are being more intentional about the social media activity that we’re engaging with. And it’s helped us to define a role within our business that we believe a new team member can fill.

Not only have we put out an exciting job description, but we’ve started to look at all of the content that we’ve done over the last few years. We recognize that much of that content isn’t being put to work towards the goals that we have.

A great example would be our YouTube videos. We would record a video. We’d put up a basic thumbnail, a basic description and leave it there for all to see. The problem being the views are still incredibly low, even a year later. Being aware of the outcomes we want, we’re looking at that old content and we’re improving its description, its SEO, the keywords, the visuals and of course, the sharing that we do around those pieces of content.

I remember many years ago when somebody shared on our podcast that many people can do the content, but they forget to do the marketing, and hey, you know what? That’s been me for too long. We are great at content, but not great at content marketing. And with these outcomes that we want, with these measurables, we are being intentional, (A) with what we already have and (B), with what is about to come.

Now that we know what outcomes we want, we can look at what we are doing in the social media landscape and choose wisely. We can measure the results and we can refine. We can test and we can iterate.

Over the next few weeks it’s my mission to know these off by heart. Our mission with social media is to grow our audience, to generate more leads, to increase our sales conversions, to increase engagement across our social platforms, and to maximize the brand awareness of Agency Trailblazer.

This exercise has been really healthy for our business and great in defining the role for our new social media manager, and I encourage you as an agency owner to take a look at what you are doing online. Write down the outcomes that you’re looking for, then review the time you’re spending on social media and select those actions that help you towards those outcomes.

Let’s talk about this more over in our Facebook group. You can check that out over on trailblazer.fm/group. I also go live five days a week over on leematthewjackson.com/live where I share thoughts and experiences of agency life and interact with those who show up with me, so be sure to check that out too.

Folks, if we don’t see you in the community, if we don’t see you on the live streams, then we will see you in next week’s episode.