Lately Live

Is your social strategy stuck? Wondering what to prioritize? Confused about what REALLY matters to your bottom line?

Enter Neal Schaffer, the leading expert on helping businesses implement sales and marketing social media marketing strategies, influencer marketing campaigns and social selling initiatives that CHANGE. THE. GAME. 

Don’t you want to know how to maximize social media ROI, understand the impact of mobile and leverage employee advocacy to drive your brand?

Heck yes you do!

Neal Schaffer is a leader in helping educate executives and professionals on social media as well as in implementing successful social media strategies for businesses. CEO of the social media agency PDCA Social, social media educator at Rutgers University and the Irish Management Institute, social media keynote speaker who has spoken at hundreds of events on four continents, and author of three social media books, Neal is a true innovator and influencer in the growing world of social media for business.

Amazingly, loads of businesses STILL think of social media as just another way to “get the word out,” when it’s actually a powerhouse for finding and converting leads. Case in point: we here at Lately switched to only organic social media and in six weeks, increased our leads by 200%. 

How? By being uncommon and adding value. Just like our next Lately Live guest, Mike Gingerich, recommends. Join us on Thursday, July 18 at 12 PM Eastern/AM West when Mike pops by to share the tips and tricks he uses when it comes to harnessing the true value of social media for your business. 

Mike has a proven track record of providing innovative strategy consulting for businesses. He is President of a web development & marketing agency, and the co-founder of a leading Facebook Page app service for lead capture. He is a noted Facebook Marketing speaker, a blogger forSocial Media Examiner, an international business consultant, an author, and all all-around great guy.

Are you a visionary? A trailblazer? A founder? Or maybe you have dreams to become one and are just looking for the right encouragement? 

As a CMO-turned entrepreneur, Todd created FoundersPlace.co to champion startups. Hooray! He also podcasts, speaks, and consults with companies around the globe to help founders find their market, grow, and add value. Todd’s first book, Beyond Product, an entrepreneur’s marketing handbook, is a true layman’s guide with insights and best practices from over 70 founders… including Kately! 

We were stoked to be joined for Lately LIVE by Nimble founder and one of our fave people, Jon Ferrara. For Nimble novices out there, it’s a super sales app that helps you manage customer relationships and grow sales – we use it right here at Lately. In fact, Jon says using Lately and Nimble together is just like peanut butter n jelly, yum 😊

Jon’s a pioneer in CRM tech, so we sat down and chatted about start-up life, Nimble and what’s important in life.

Helping others grow

Using your energy to grow others and help lift people around you is what it’s all about, according to Jon and we whole-heartedly agree.

When you’re present and truly connecting with others in business, there’s no better high.

Listening, learning and adding value doesn’t happen in an instant – committing to conversation and the long-haul with someone is how you can both grow. During our chat, Jon got his smartphone out and said that we feed more and more into our phones to generate validation when we’re starved of it elsewhere, but that shouldn’t be what life’s about.

Idea behind Nimble

99% of CRMs aren’t built for the user, it’s basically for the person that manages you, cos it mainly acts as a reporting tool. So, Nimble is more of a contact management tool to get you connecting with customers, which should be at the heart of CRM!

And that’s why Jon built Nimble. To help people connect and dream-build. Nimble’s philosophy is very much built on the power of people – heck yeah.

People buy when they trust people and that’s at the heart of the company. Nimble is fixing CRM.

Because Jon has “suffered” through being a salesperson, he knows what’s important. Most CRMs are a dead database and make you do the hard work anyway – Nimble helps you foster and build thousands of connections and gives you that nudge to reach out.

It unifies business apps into one system and gives you a 360 view of your contacts, wherever they are in your business.

“Money ain’t it”

Jon takes us back to the beginning. He worked in aerospace tech after graduated in computer science. He didn’t enjoy it much, so started working at a start-up and quickly moved to sales, where he’d cold-call IT professionals to sell software and would make detailed notes about customers and schedules along the way.

Jon spotted a gap in the market for a CRM and quit his job to start up his own company, Goldmine. Jon likens launching a business to jumping off a cliff and building an airplane on the way down! He was pretty good at it though and Goldmine got super successful and bought out when Jon was 39, but he’s passionate about the fact that money isn’t what fulfils you, it comes back to helping others to grow.

And being in the moment and present is a big part of being happier too. If you accept that life has highs and lows, you won’t always be “winning or losing” then you’ll be happier.

Social Selling

If people are gonna buy off you, they need to trust you. Jon always taught salespeople that if they want to know about someone, look at their walls. And in 2019, that means your digital footprint – someone should be able to see what you’re like and all about from a quick check online.

Social selling is really just selling. “When something becomes ubiquitous, it disappears”, so social selling will be a bit like the internet…it’s so big, it’s everywhere and loses its definition.

“Life is social and business is social” and everything’s still based on the promises we make and the experiences we deliver.Make sure you listen to the end of the talk as well and you might be in for a super cool surprise from Jon 😉

We were super excited to put the spotlight on Rob Balasabas – the latest marketing badass to take a seat and have a chinwag with our CEO, Kate.

Rob’s a video maverick and expert social media marketer for Thinkific, an ace all-in-one platform to create, market & sell online courses.

He started off very much behind the camera, playing around with a camcorder at college, then taking and making cute videos of his family. Before long he recognised the mahoosive potential in video marketing and started using it for professional gainz.

Here we talk about why Rob thinks video content is having its moment, how to get better at doing video and a few tips for successful vid marketing.

Watch this and other Lately Live vids here.

Why we <3 Video

“As humans, we gravitate towards video” and Rob believes we’re possibly drawn more to it than text and audio. They can be more authentic and build that direct connection – they’re the closest thing to looking your audience in the eye.

It’s an exciting format, it’s hot and platforms are making it easier than ever to create good videos. The big platforms have pivoted and their algorithms are helping video content get seen.

There’s also loads of cool in-built tools on platforms to help create, spruce up and deliver stellar quality marketing vids.

Rob’s thing is educational videos so that’s what he sticks to, it’s what he feels most at home. Deciding what you’re best at i.e educational/entertaining is key.

Videos catch more attention too. Rob stresses that you have to try and stop an audience scrolling past your vid. Lots of people might not even be watching vids with sound, so captions are great with video. And not everyone consumes video, people like to read blogs on their way home from work. Start with a long-form Youtube video, transcribe it and then use that as a blog post – there are lots of ways to use video content and repurpose it.

Rob is a believer in the mantra of ‘put the wow on social’ but the ‘how inside the course’. On Youtube, show cool features and effects etc, to draw an audience in but show how to do it by leading them to a resource or course. More theatrics on social, but inside course instructional, step by step

Learning Curve

For Rob, video content is a continuous learning curve. When he thinks back to early videos, he knows that there’s loads of stuff that he’d do better now.

Making your space comfortable for you and feeling good on camera is a big plus. Even if you’re doing a livestream at home – “act like you’re going to work, be professional with a good set-up”.

Another thing that jumped out was Rob’s idea that it’s easy to look at a content creator/influencer you admire and think their videos have always been slick and exciting. But he guarantees that if you go back to the beginning and take a look at early video content, you’ll find that they’re simply not the same level of quality.

And a good plan to follow: always work on how you can improve your video content.

Top Tips

A great tip that came out was creating your own fake test-Instagram/Facebook account and then uploading and looking at the content you post objectively. This lets you experiment, take a look at things objectively, learn how to communicate and see how you come across on video.

People can get intimidated by video as well and think they need amazing mics  – Rob says, not really, you can use your phone for speech and a laptop for webcam. Buy a simple headset cos an expensive mic doesn’t give you a massive difference in quality, it’s something you can look at further down the line.

And what does Rob think’s one of the biggest mistakes you can make when starting out? Not understanding your audience. Think about how your messages come across to different crowds, so you don’t create a disconnect. Put lots of effort into learning about guests and brands you’re interviewing or going live with.

We don’t use the word legend lightly, but…hey what the heck, let’s crack this blog post off with an introduction to marketing LEGEND, Bryan Kramer.

Over here at Lately, we love us some BK and what he doesn’t know about marketing, frankly isn’t worth knowing!

Bryan was at the helm of the H2H business movement, that’s human to human marketing to you and me. He starting shaking up stuffy, corporate approaches to marketing – think B2B, B2C and all the rest.

BK’s message is simple, we should be encouraging brands to refocus and remember that ‘customers’ are humans and marketing based on authentic, emotive conversation beats corporate claptrap every day of the week.

Kate sat down and talked with Bryan about all things H2H.

You can also watch this and other Lately Live videos here.

How has H2H Changed?

H2H was first used by Bryan 15 years ago and obviously at that time, we didn’t have as much capability in terms of social media, it used to be more about ‘human experience’, so how a customer interacts with a store or employee. But with social media and new comms channels, businesses were starting to see that they could get in front of the customer in a more direct way.

This was scary though! A huge paradigm shift was going on and for businesses, it was very much “omg, we can’t control the narrative anymore”. Social media was changing these tightly managed marketing plans.

And another of the biggest wake-up calls for businesses according to Bryan? Customers don’t see themselves as ‘customers’ or part of B2B or B2C. A few haters came out the woodwork when Bryan dropped this truth bomb “there is no B2B or B2C, only H2H”.

That’s what H2H is about, having an emotive conversation – it’s stronger than any ad and the strongest form of marketing.

How can Companies ‘do’ H2H?

When Bryan consults with companies, he often hears them say, “this is what you can do on social media, go do it”…but they’ve been through absolutely no training!

They’ll obviously have internal rules about sharing, but the ethos is very much “go share but if you screw up, you’ll be fired!”, so people end up not sharing online or reaching out and helping customers when they’re not solely ‘customer facing’. You can get around this by creating stuff that’s been agreed and people can share and then encourage your team to change tone to add personality.

Getting people around the table to practice is a great idea. Sales and customer support etc throw examples around – do role plays etc talk at each other and find solutions. Practicing back and forth creates more authenticity and a natural tone.

Don’t over polish too much, or you’ll strip the human out of language and messaging.

Being human is about “opening the door for people” and the more human you add to marketing strategy/ social media management, the more connection you generate. This in turn creates more $$$, more friendship…whatever it is you’re looking for in any industry or walk of life.

Thanks Bryan!