Lisa Larter (00:01):
Welcome to, She Talks Business. If you’re an entrepreneur, business owner or aspiring mogul, chances are you want to learn more about marketing and mastering and monetizing your business. She Talks Business is where you’ll learn all of that and more. My name is Lisa Larter and I’m an entrepreneur, high school dropout, wiener dog enthusiast and your host. Let’s get started.

Adan Kovinich (00:24):
Hello, hello, hello. I was going to try and sing a song to start us off of our last day, but I couldn’t think of any songs that were like the last time, or the only thing I could think of is like, you’re gonna miss me when I’m gone.

Cass Bald (00:43):
Oh, I like that. I like that.

Adan Kovinich (00:44):
So I think, after doing six episodes, I’m kind of sad that this is our last one, but don’t worry. We will eventually steal the mic back from Lisa. May not be this year, but I don’t think I’m giving this up for life. Cass, what did you think about this experience and how did you feel about doing it?

Cass Bald (01:03):
It has honestly been so much fun and it’s felt really fulfilling. I definitely have a newfound respect for people who consistently record and publish podcasts every single week, because it is actually so much work to plan and come up with an idea that’s going to be high value and everything from the editing to the publishing, it’s so much that goes into it.

Cass Bald (01:34):
And there’s people out there that do multiple episodes a week. There’s some people out there that do a podcast episode every single day, even if it’s just a short one and it’s inspiring because now I understand what it takes. And if I do decide to start my own podcast in the future, which is something that I’ve talked about doing, Adan and I have talked about doing it together, actually, I know what I’m getting into. I really understand what I’m getting into now.

Adan Kovinich (02:01):
Yeah. And we just do the recording part. We don’t even think about all the other parts and pieces and all the team members that are involved and all the different people that help us and help Lisa along the way. There’s so many different players and, I can’t thank everyone enough that helped us, Michelle, Mandy, Ashlyn, Luke for doing all the editing, all of the people that have helped us. There’s so many big thanks because, it’s been great because everyone’s been so supportive and listened to our episodes and, made comments about it. So it’s given us that boost of confidence. But I agree with you. I couldn’t imagine doing this every day as some podcasters do and I really, it’s a lot of work to do it once a week. I think if ever we did do one Cass, we’d really have to move things out of our schedule to be able to block this, to do ongoing. So it’s a lot of work and I’m impressed with Lisa for finding time to be able to record and think of an episode every week.

Cass Bald (03:05):
Through this whole process, I think my favorite episode that we recorded was actually A Twentysomethings Perspective on Leadership. And what I loved about it was that I could share my own perspective and it gave me the platform to share my feelings and how I see leadership. And that’s not something that I get to talk about very often, but it’s something that I feel really passionate about. So I appreciate having the stage in a sense.

Adan Kovinich (03:36):
Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah. I don’t think I can have a favorite episode, but I think my favorite thing that happened was that both of us had aha moments in each episode. And it came through doing this podcast. This has been really therapeutic and just like having moments where we’ve realized things. But if you force to me to choose something, I think I would’ve chosen the social media platform,You’re not thinking about TikTok. And because I’m very passionate about it and because I’ve said it a million times that business owners are sleeping on TikTok, it was really great to be able to share that with so many business owners, and hopefully they got something out of it, and I think all the episodes were really fun to do, but the TikTok one was really special to me because of that.

Cass Bald (04:27):
You hinted at something and I think you really hit the nail on the head. We both have grown tremendously in the past few weeks of doing this, actually not even few weeks. How many weeks have we been hosting the team takeover is now this?

Adan Kovinich (04:42):
Six weeks.

Cass Bald (04:44):
Six weeks, which is pretty incredible. I feel like I have learned so much since then about myself and about, even just business. And it’s really forced me to think through things. It forced me to think through the lessons that Lisa has taught me. It forced me to think through what is your marketer actually doing and what are we doing? And being able to position that in a way that I can share it with the “She Talks Business” audience- –

Adan Kovinich (05:14):
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Cass Bald (05:14):
Has been a great learning opportunity for both of us.

Adan Kovinich (05:18):
So that brings us to our final episode this week. And that’s going to be top mistakes you’re making on social media since a big part of our job is playing social media as my dad tells many, many people, when they ask, what does your daughter do for work? And he says, I don’t know. She sits on Facebook all day. These are the- –

Cass Bald (05:39):
Oh, she gets paid to do Instagram.
Adan Kovinich (05:40):
So these are the things that we’ve seen through our time working on social media. And we’ve said it before in episodes that we grew up on social media. So we grew up with Facebook, with Instagram. I remember the days when it first started. So these are the top mistakes that you may be making on social media.

Cass Bald (06:00):
This is a really fun topic because there are so many simple things that you can do and that people just don’t realize that can make a huge difference in terms of your business. And they’re small things that you don’t need a marketing agency to do this for you. You don’t need a professional. These are going to be strategies, tips, small things you can change about the way you engage with social media that can influence your business for the better. Okay. So the first mistake that I want to talk about is not following the 80/20 rule. The 80/20 rule is essentially a rule that says you should not have more than 20% of promotional content on your social media channels. You should have 80% of value added content, things that are not promoting your services, not promoting your products, not promoting your business, but are just giving pure value to your community and to your audience.

Adan Kovinich (07:06):
Yeah. In the 80/20 rule, I live by that. I’ve always said 80/20, because when you go over that 20%, you’ll see your engagement really drop, because people don’t… I want to say people don’t care, but that’s not true. It’s that people feel overwhelmed when you’re trying to sell them something all the time. And then they don’t want to look at your content because they don’t think there’s any value to it. They just think that you’re promoting something. And when, you think of ads on Facebook, unless it really is an amazing ad, you often don’t stop and it really has to be right for you. And it has to be really targeted for you, for you to stop. It’s the same thing on social media. If you’re posting a product that you have or a service that you’re selling every day, or three, four a week, it becomes boring. And then it is what’s called viewer fatigue and the viewer just feels tired of your content.

Cass Bald (08:08):
It also feels less authentic when you are being promotional all the time. Your audience wants to engage with you. And so when you show up on Facebook and Instagram, and Twitter and LinkedIn, and show up as your authentic self and share your thoughts and how you are feeling, or if you show up and share real valuable insights that they can use, they’re going to be more likely to engage with those posts and more likely to look for your future posts.

Adan Kovinich (08:46):
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Cass Bald (08:48):
Going forward.
Adan Kovinich (08:49):
So our next one, and I think, all of our topics that are all the mistakes we want to bring up, they all kind of follow that 80/20 rule. So a lot of them are now we’re going to talk about that 80%. And what do you do with that 80%? So the thing that really I see often is that people talk about controversial topics in a casual way. So whenever somebody brings up something that is controversial, it’s okay to talk about it. And it’s okay to bring up something in a conversational way that is open to everybody’s opinions and isn’t a hard stop at what you think is right, and everybody else is wrong. When it comes to controversial topics, you want to be able to leave it open for lots of people to talk and discuss. You want them to discuss these topics respectfully.

Cass Bald (09:39):
When it comes to controversial topics, they don’t have to be avoided always. Lisa has said before that owning your views and your opinions will actually lead to you being respected by your clients, stand up for what you believe in, be open about it. It just comes down to making sure that you’re not being offensive.

Adan Kovinich (10:01):
And close-minded to other people’s opinions as well. People love to discuss. And if you have the right community and you know your community’s able to do that, to have that discussion, I think that’s a great way to put controversial topics out.

Cass Bald (10:15):
My public relations brain is kind of screaming at me right now, and also saying, be prepared, be prepared because you might have to respond, if somebody has a problem with what you post, you need to be prepared to respond to that. But the truth is somebody will always have a problem with what you post, no matter what it is, whether it’s controversial or not. So, whatever you’re putting out there online, just make sure that it’s aligned with your values and with your business’ values. So this is a great segue into the third point on our list, actually, which is don’t schedule your content and walk away.

Cass Bald (10:53):
And what I mean by this is we all know that it is a good strategy to batch create your content and schedule it ahead of time so that you’re not having to manually post on your social platforms every single day. It saves time to schedule in advance, and it helps you to be more productive when it comes to content creation. However, it is important that when you schedule things, you don’t just turn around and look the other way and hope that everything is okay, because the situation in the world today is drastically different than what it could be tomorrow. And a post that I scheduled today might be appropriate, but tomorrow something could happen in my community. It could happen in my market. It could happen in the world. And what I scheduled to go out yesterday might no longer be appropriate today.

Cass Bald (11:47):
And I think some really great examples of this is when the COVID-19 pandemic first hit. There was a need to go in and pause a lot of communication or reassess the communication to make sure that it doesn’t come off as tone deaf, to make sure that it doesn’t come off as insensitive. And current day at the time of us recording this episode, there’s a huge conflict happening between Russia and Ukraine. And so we have had to go back and look at our content strategy and look at what we’ve scheduled to go out to ensure that nothing that we post ends up coming off as tone deaf or insensitive, because those are real world issues that are going on. And it’s important to be mindful of that.

Adan Kovinich (12:37):
I think you bring up a really great point about whether or not something’s appropriate one day versus the other. And, we often see, when we are discussing in our work group chats like, Hey, this is happening in Ottawa. This is happening in Toronto. This is happening in New York. Do you guys have clients there? Should we be reaching out to them? Should we be checking to see, what kind of content’s going out? Should we be going into a media blackout?
Adan Kovinich (13:02):
Those are things that we all talk about together. I wouldn’t say often, but anytime something happens, it’s an instant everybody’s running to find out what are we doing for our clients that are in that, that are going through that, or potentially, is one of our clients part of that demographic, that’s happening to them? Do we have any Ukrainian clients? Do we have any Russian clients? We should check in with those clients and say, Hey, are you doing okay? Because there’s so many different things that happen in our world to different people. And we want to make sure that they’re doing okay, but also that, if they want to go into a blackout that we’re stopping any posts that are going out.
Cass Bald (13:39):
I think you’re absolutely right about that. So the next point is business versus personal.

Adan Kovinich (13:46):
Yeah. I think, it’s so funny because we tell our clients, okay, we need personal posts. You need to be talking about what’s going on in your life. It’s part of the strategy that I give them in a roadmap, that we’re really saying, Hey, you want to have some posts that talk about your personal life, but there is a boundary that cannot be crossed, and it’s a thin line that you can walk, but you have to be careful on what you put on a personal post versus a business post, but even on your personal page versus your business page.

Adan Kovinich (14:16):
And I think it’s important that people put out personal content, but it needs to be aligned with business in some way. So I think of my sister and I’ve talked about her a lot, but it’s because she’s a really inspiring businesswoman, but she is very careful with what goes out on her personal page, because she needs to uphold a standard for herself and her business. She sells real estate. But yeah, I think that it’s just being careful with what you’re putting online and always tying it back to business life.

Cass Bald (14:52):
So that’s exactly the two things that I was going to say. I’ll just expand on that thought a little bit. It definitely depends on you and your business. There are some businesses that it is fully appropriate for you to share a lot about who you are and what your life is. Especially if you’re a solopreneur, I would say. People want to see you. They want to see your face. They want to know about you and know about your life. And they really respond well to that. If you are the business owner of a larger corporation, though, it might be less appropriate than if you’re a solopreneur to be showing up about, with stories about what you’re doing on the weekend. Not to say you shouldn’t do it at all. It’s just finding that boundary and finding the line of sharing the right amount.

Cass Bald (15:46):
And I think Lisa does a really great job at this. If you follow her on social media, which you should, because she posts some really great things, but she does a fantastic job of sharing about her personal life. She’ll share about her new little puppy, Faith, that she just got, who just joined her dachshund clan. And she’ll share about a cocktail that she’s having with a friend or a colleague. She shares those things, but she always ties them back to her community, to her business in a way that is providing value. She might be sharing a photo of her new puppy, but she’s sharing the story of how price doesn’t always matter, especially when it comes to a new furry family member. So be mindful of that. If you’re going to share something personal about your life, which you should, think about how you can tie it back to your business in a way that is going to provide value for your followers.

Adan Kovinich (16:46):
And that actually ties in perfectly. Look at us segueing so nicely, we’re really getting good at this podcast thing, but something that we wrote down was don’t just show up on social media to like cute dog videos, show up intentionally to engage with your community. And you just so perfectly bring that up. So I’m going to let you go deeper in that. And then I’ll chime in on your thoughts.

Cass Bald (17:12):
Yeah, sure. So this is actually something that I’ve heard Lisa say a few times. This is fully her advice, not ours. But- –

Adan Kovinich (17:21):
So it’s not about food this time.

Cass Bald (17:25):
Apparently not. But yeah, she often will give clients the advice that if you’re going to show up on social media, don’t scroll mindlessly. Don’t show up just to look at dog videos, don’t show up just because you’re bored and your first instinct is to open that, the Instagram app on your phone. Instead, show up intentionally and engage with people that are commenting on your posts. Go and comment on other people’s posts, send a message to somebody you haven’t chatted with in a while, send a message to an old client, send a message to a current client, find something valuable and send it to your team. Post a story with just what’s on your mind right now. If you are on your phone and you are scrolling mindlessly, stop that. If you are on your phone, make that time worthwhile and do something that is going to boost your position in the algorithm.

Adan Kovinich (18:28):
And engagement as well, you want to engage with other people in your community and other people that are maybe potential clients. So going through those hashtags and interacting with them, I know we love to scroll, but you can do that exact same thing just within your niche and that by engaging with them and following those type of people and commenting on their content, you’re going to increase your engagement on your content and maybe pick up a new client. Although, we did say don’t just scroll and on TikTok, we told you to just go ahead and scroll, in this case, we want you to, think about why are you scrolling? And is it just to kill time? Well, if you’re going to just kill time, think of other ways that you can do that within social media platforms. And even on LinkedIn, it’s so easy to do that because there are things that come up that are, third connections, I guess. Yeah.

Cass Bald (19:32):
And it’s true, the number one way to not only gain followers and gain new connections on your social media, but to gain quality followers that are your ideal audience and or potential clients is to engage with people online that are in the same space as you.

Adan Kovinich (19:54):
Yeah. Or looking for your services, interested in it. Some people ask questions, we haven’t talked about them before, but like Reddit, medium, Quora, like look on those places that are not your regular social media, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, look there, you never know, your client could be in one of those places or asking questions in those places where you can go back to social media and answer them. And you can directly answer them on those posts as well. But at the same time, if one person’s asking that question, 10 other people have that exact same question. I think back to like my high school days when my teacher would say, it’s okay to ask a question because 10 other people in this room have the exact same one and are just afraid to ask it. So if you’re giving them the answer, people are going to look at you like the expert.

Cass Bald (20:43):
So the sixth mistake that is on our list, and this one I think is really fun, is an inappropriate use of memes, gifs or jifs, depending on how you like to pronounce it, comics and just relatable, funny things. There is a time to use them and there is a time not to.
Adan Kovinich (21:06):
So in my previous role, I worked with very small businesses that, I was working with the mom, ma and pa, older demographic who, feels like they have to post on Instagram and they have to post on Facebook. And they’re not sure how to do it. And a lot of them aren’t online. And, they’re like the stores that have been stores since 1953 and they’re like third generation owners. And what we would do is do an audit of their social medias. And all, every time there would always be somebody who have like six or seven, very inappropriate memes or gifs or comics that were just so left field of their niche. And they were very, very personal memes, making fun of something so outlandish, but they thought was funny. And of course people would react to it because it’s relatable, but it’s so off brand. And that was a really big problem where I’d have to go through and explain why memes are great, right place, right time.

Cass Bald (22:14):
Used effectively, memes can be a great marketing campaign or a great social post. When it’s done right and done strategically and done in a way that is appropriate and bringing value to your audience, it’s totally okay. In fact, it’s encouraged, but you have to make sure that you’re not crossing any lines and because memes can be inappropriate and they can be off-brand.

Adan Kovinich (22:46):
And offensive.

Cass Bald (22:47):
One of my favorite example of a business that uses memes effectively, and this is an extreme example, I don’t recommend this to all business owners, but Wendy’s, I don’t know if you’ve ever seen Wendy’s on Twitter, but they respond to tweets and it is absolutely comical. And sometimes it’s walking the line so finely, like it’s almost crossing it, but it’s not quite, but people love it and they go nuts for it because it’s relatable. It’s funny. And it makes you feel almost a little special when a big brand interacts with you that way. And so that’s one example of the business using memes to their advantage.

Adan Kovinich (23:33):
And memes and gifs can be a really great way to take advantage of the algorithm, but you can even take advantage of it with their new features and playing with the algorithm. So if right now, images are doing really well on social media, on Facebook and LinkedIn, for example, or even on Twitter, then posting a meme to get yourself going will be a really great way to take advantage of the algorithm. There’s also new features like on LinkedIn. Last year, they released the creator mode allowed you to go live on LinkedIn. And it allowed you to say that, “Hey, I’m talking about these five hashtags”. And that helps the algorithm because LinkedIn is trying to promote their features. And so when you use their new feature, they’re boosting you so that other people see that feature is an available thing. It’s like free promotion for them.

Cass Bald (24:24):
I completely agree. Every time any social platform comes out with a new feature. Another example is Instagram reels. The algorithm does favor that, and they’ll give you almost a free little boost and Instagram, especially right now is breaking their algorithm just for reels, because they’re trying so hard to compete with TikTok. So if you’re not using Instagram reels, maybe that’s an opportunity for you. So I guess we’ll label that as mistake, number seven, right?

Adan Kovinich (24:55):
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Cass Bald (24:55):
If you are not taking advantage of the new features and playing the algorithm, I say, playing the algorithm, because it’s a game. These platforms like to almost gamify it, so that they can’t make it super easy for you to fully understand it. They want to make it hard. I don’t know if that’s actually the truth. That’s just how I feel as somebody who works in marketing, I might be making that up, but I definitely feel like they try to gamify it a little bit so that it keeps us on our toes. But if you’re not taking advantage of the new features, and if you’re not playing the algorithm, you’re missing a huge opportunity.

Adan Kovinich (25:35):
Something that social media platforms do that drives me nuts is hide what their algorithm does and forces us to figure it out. And then as soon as we figure it out, they switch it.

Cass Bald (25:47):
They change it again, just when we think we understand what’s going on, they switch it up. So.
Adan Kovinich (25:52):
I could say the same thing about Google and SEO. They also do that. So it’s like a constant game. It’s probably the main reason we are employed is because we strive our whole lives. Our whole jobs are figuring out what’s going on the algorithms so that we can make really great recommendations. So we get to like, my dad would say, sit on Facebook and play on Facebook all day. That’s my only job. But we get to do that to figure out the new features and do the algorithm. And if, you don’t have a marketing person that works for you, this is still something that you can do by just taking, a couple of minutes and reading up on, Apple news or Google news, and just seeing what are people talking about within the algorithms and how can I utilize them for my benefit.

Cass Bald (26:46):
Yeah. And just reading up about what’s new on social media and learning about the new trends and stuff like that. If you don’t have a marketing agency, you might not know about all of these things, but doing a quick news search to find out what’s new in the world of Facebook, what’s new in the world of Instagram or LinkedIn, can be a great way to take advantage of new features.

Adan Kovinich (27:11):
And one little secret is that marketers talk to each other on social media and get ideas from each other. So if you go on Reddit and look up like marketing, for example, you’ll see long threads of marketers talking about what’s going on, and you can get so much information from them, on what they’re doing and how they’re taking advantage of new features in the algorithm. And they give each other tips and tricks all of the time. And it’s a great place to go and just sneak out what they’re doing and grab little things and little tidbits of information.

Cass Bald (27:45):
Or if you don’t want to actively seek out this information, go follow a marketing expert on Instagram. I follow probably 15 different marketing experts who are constantly putting out content about tips and tricks and new things and announcements from the platforms. And I don’t seek out this in information all the time, but if I do open my Instagram on my phone, that’s a lot of the content that shows up for me. So it’s high value and I’m learning a lot from it. Okay. So that’s our seven top mistakes you might be making on social media. I’m interested to know if you have caught yourself making any of these mistakes before, or if you have anything that you want to add to the list. If so, send us an email. I would love to hear from you.

Adan Kovinich (28:35):
Cass, you almost forgot the best part of the whole episode, where we talk about the two takeaways from, or one or two takeaways from the episode. This is the last time we get to do this. The last time we get to do our takeaways. So what are the top mistakes that business owners are making on social media? So you can think of like one or two little side things that everyone should take away from this episode.

Cass Bald (29:01):
You’re right. I did almost forget about our takeaways. So for this episode, I’m going to keep it short and simple. I’m going to keep it to one because there is one thing that I spoke about that I think stands out above all else, especially given the social climate of the world right now. If you are scheduling your content in advance, you cannot close your eyes and hope for the best and forget, and turn around and forget about it. If you’re scheduling your content in advance, you need to be aware of what is going on in your community, in your country, in the world. And you need to ensure that nothing you are putting out on your social media makes you look insensitive or is hurtful in any way.

Adan Kovinich (29:56):
Those are great points. I think right now, more than ever, well, maybe not more than ever, but right now, time of recording, this is definitely a time to really look this week at what you’re posting, but in general, think about it every week. And yeah, those are great points. Cass. Here we go with my one and again, Cass always comes out with really great points. So mine’s going to be, not following the 80/20 rule because it’s so important that you’re giving out value all the time. And something that I hear a lot is, well, I don’t want to give away free content. But giving away a little bit is so important because how do people know if you are good at your job or good at your business? How is your business good? If you’re not telling people, “Hey, this is what I know. And this is what I want to give you. Here’s a trade secret that you may not have thought of before. And let me help you. And if you want to explore this further, I’ll show you how to do it.”

Adan Kovinich (30:56):
And people will look at that and maybe grab the value from it. And maybe they won’t engage for, or they’re just liking and commenting. But whenever they do need your services or your product, you will be the first thing that comes to mind. And you can think about this in your life whenever you are going to buy a product next time. Think of how many times you may have seen that on social media and didn’t buy at the time. But now you’re thinking about a product that’s similar or a service that’s similar and “oh, I’m going to go to that place that I saw. Oh, what was the social media? Oh, I think it was this name. I’m going to look there. Oh, great. They have a link” and they click on it and they make a purchase. So it’s not always about putting your promotions out there, but putting it out strategically, maybe if you’re doing 20 posts a week, you’re maybe only putting out two to five that are shared links, images.

Cass Bald (31:46):
Here’s what Lisa would say about that. People will buy from you if they know, like and trust you. And following the 80/20 rule is how you get people to know you, like you and trust you. You have to foster that relationship. You can’t just expect it to come of nowhere. If you want people to trust you need to let them in on your brain and your talent and your ability and show them what you’re all about. And a straight-up promotional post saying, buy my book. Isn’t going to do that. A straight-up promotional post saying, schedule a call with me. Isn’t going to do that.
Cass Bald (32:23):
You need to give them more so that you can foster that relationship and really nurture it until they’re ready to take that step to buy or to become a customer or whatever it may be. And on that note, that’s what Lisa would say, I think. And we will find out what she really has to say next week, because she’s back for episode 50 of “She Talks Business”, and I’m really excited to hand the mic back to her even though I am a little sad that our team takeover season is coming to an end. I can’t wait for you to hear what she has to say on the next episode.

Adan Kovinich (33:07):
I hear it’s something really, really special.

Cass Bald (33:10):
I got a little sneak peek of what the title of the season is, and I don’t want to give it away because I don’t know if it’s solid yet, but it’s going to be really good. I’m really excited. If you’re going to come back for another episode, please, episode 50, you have to come back and listen to it.

Adan Kovinich (33:29):
So I guess we’ll see you guys soon. It won’t be next week, but soon enough.

Lisa Larter (33:34):
Thank you for joining me for this episode of She Talks Business. If you enjoyed the show, you know the drill, leave us a review, tell someone about it and join the conversation on social media. Thanks for listening and until next time remember, done is always better than perfect.