Social Media Hangout Time.
I’m here today with Lisa Saline.
Hello!
Kimmy in the background but she is not participating today. As you can see we’ll give a shout out to Sebastian Rusk. She is holding his new book called Social Media Sucks. And Lisa do you remember which show that was, by chance, on…
Honestly I don’t
Okay, well I believe he was number 2, well no actually I think he was number 3. So socialmediahangouttime/3 I believe. So check his interview out and definitely check out his book. Also if you have been watching our show, listening to our show on iTunes, download it and have that availability, we would love it if you give us a review. We are looking for feedback, we want to hear how you like the show and we’re looking forward let us know! And then we had a contest winner, we love to promote business owners that are listening to the show and following us. And we had a contest where Susan was able to win 4 different shows. We’re going to talk about her business on this show. Susan is a certified Light Vision and Empowerment coach and a retreat master. She does 1-on-1 and group coaching workshop, seminars and retreats. She works primarily with women between ages of 39 and infinity. She believes we are never to old to embrace our true nature and achieve our dreams. I agree. She helps women get past the fear of not being good enough — not having the qualifications, not being young or agile enough, and even the fear of success. You can learn more about Susan at susancareycoaching.com. We can include that in the show notes but it’s also, I’ll spell it so you have the spelling. It’s susancarey, C-A-R-E-Y, coaching.com. And then one more time I want to mention if you haven’t downloaded our content guide you’ll get a lot of ideas for your social media by downloading this guide and you can find that at socialmediahangouttime.com/guide, just G-U-I-D-E. Today, Lisa and I are going to go into the area of images. We’ve actually been talking about this quite a bit if you have been to catch on our last show. It was all about images, too, that was about how to create them using the product called Canva. And so there’s just becoming a lot of tools out there. I know Lisa you’re familiar with PicMonkey also?
Yep, I use PicMonkey, Pixlr. But yeah, Canva has got so many opportunities for people, anxious to use that.
And the fun thing is that after the interview I did not realize that they had presentations. So I decided to jump in and test out the presentation piece of it and that’s what we’re going to show you today is a presentation that was actually made right inside Canva. And it was so, so simple. Loved it and you’re just download pdf and we have the guide.
That’s awesome.
So let’s go and get started. I’m going to screen share here. And how is that?
Looks good! I love those colors.
Yeah we pulled them right from…
From the logo.
From the logo, you got it. Speaking of Canva again, we’ll just keep talking about Canva here.
A little bit.
When you do it they actually pull in the colors. So what I did was I dragged our little image on there and they figure out the exact pink and exact orange. You don’t even have to know what your colors are that you are using, they do it for you. It’s amazing. So we’re going to talk about 10 hot image ideas for social media. We’re going to cover 10 today, we’re also going to do another session of this where we cover another 10. So let’s get into it and Lisa and I will just kind of share some ideas that we have in our thoughts on this.
This is #1: post a picture of your open sign and caption it with your hours. And this obviously would be breaking order type of business or business that has specific hours. So if something that people, I think a lot of business owners assume that people know what their hours are. But if you do something fun like this, this can really draw the attention and it might bring in people during different hours than even knew you had.
And you know I’ve seen so many retail stores that have some very creative open and close signs. So it’s fun if you can take a picture of that open sign right from the front of the store and then frame it up and put the hours there. That’s kind of a fun thing and it helps with your branding, too.
Love it. I think that’s a great idea. So it’s an easy way, use your business as an image.
And then we’re going to talk about creating a guessing game using your teaser images. People love to participate, I call it game-ify, your Facebook pages. That’s one way of getting engagement. So if you took a picture and take off the eyes or the glasses, just use a silhouette of somebody or something and ask the question: what is this? Who is this? And that creates engagement because people always want to be the one to share and to win the game.
They love participating, you got it. And I think that it’s, the image that we have here and those of you that are on the podcast, we have an image that is Homer Simpson without his eyes. And then we have, what is that, a Barbie girl or something in the corner?
Looks like Barbie, yup!
And then Iron Man. So it’s just a fun, little game for people to play. And if you can think of things within your business that’s even better. So using things that are coinciding with your business will really bring your business into it.
You know what would be really good is for an automotive place to post pictures or images of the horn ornaments. A lot of times horn ornaments are identified in a vehicle, so that would be kind of fun.
Yeah, you got to be creative with it. The deeper you think with it, I mean that’s something I never would have thought of but that’s some cool idea. So doing on the business, you just got to come up with these different pieces to create guessing games. And you can do this once a week and people come back just for the fun of it.
You got it – fun! So the next image we have…
Did I go too far?
Yes you sure did!
Ah-hah!
There we go.
Mine’s not turning, that is weird. Okay, hold on.
Hey, we’re good. Showcase a product with multiple color selections and let your customers indicate the best choice. So if you think, I mean the image that we’re sharing now is there are six high-heeled stilettos, high-heeled shoes in red, yellow, brown, blue, green and grey. You could do the same thing with jelly beans. You could do it with candy or flowers or cars. So if you have a product that you would like or that you sell or offer you could just showcase it with different colors and ask people to pick their favorite. And sometimes when you’re creating a product you might want to do this just to get feedback from your audience. But it’s a great way to find out what people like and then take note of that, too, because if you’re selling a product and your red is your hottest offer then that would probably be a good indicator that when you’re doing your marketing maybe with Facebook ads, that you could lead them to one of your red shoe products so that people could buy. But it is fun, I love it!
Yeah, that one is, you know I’m going to do one. We were just putting one together for the orthodontist that I work with the different colored braces. Like their different color bands that the kids can pick.
Oh, fun!
You can put the red and yellow, similar, exactly similar to this. I completely agree. And if you have a specific, let’s say you’re selling sweaters and you have a few, you haven’t order them yet or something like that. Then you can kind of have an idea of you know maybe I should order more of that one color.
You know I like it to, I think of a painter’s — interior painters or exterior painters. If there’s a certain color for shutters you could actually have the same house with different colored shutters. So think that way too and you can get some good ideas or good feedback on what people like in the house, as well.
Yeah, that’s great! And you know the biggest thing I’ve noticed with people, they just love giving their opinions.
They sure do. Yup, you bet.
So that’s a great way to create the business. Okay so the next one…
And then we’ve got entertainers, post still images of an upcoming video shoot. You know this is one of my favorites because we did that with Kimmy when we were doing some video shoot and still photo shots with Kimmy the puppet, the social media puppet. And Janet and I were in our video studio or camera studio when we’re being goofy and taking pictures. And it’s fun to see behind-the-scenes because when you see the real shots or the live shots on tv it really can be a very small space and there’s nothing fancy. So when you show the whole production I think it adds a little bit of reality to it. It just gives you some personality to the business. It’s always fun to do something that’s out of the norm for a typical video or media shoot.
And James Whitemore’s one of my favorite for doing this. He does behind-the-scenes all the time because he teaches the video marketing on how to create videos and he is always sure to be behind-the-scenes that his putting it together and a lot of people have big interest in that.
Yes, definitely. Well it just makes it real like you have, you can do it. You can do the same thing that everybody else does. It’s just the eye of the beholder and when you have the camera and film editor, it’s amazing what they can do.
Uh-huh.
Then we use Pinterest or Instagram. Use what’s called a split panel image and ask which option is their favorite. So on the picture that we’re looking at now we’ve got a picture of the Pinterest logo on the left and the picture of the Instagram logo on the right with just the words that says Pinterest or Instagram? A lot of times when you’re asking for audience feedback give them an option. It’s the green M&Ms or the red M&Ms? Is it Pinterest or Instagram? Would it be LinkedIn or Twitter? And you get some good engagement levels on that because like Janet said, people like to give feedback. This is a real simple way to do it — just to the split panel image and then add a little border around it and you can brand it to your colors.
And I’ve seen this a lot with A & B, you could do that, too. A or B. Or you know you could do, let’s go back to the shutters that you talked about. We can have an A or B and have black or white shutters. And just as simple as that. But then people only have to, you’re getting more responses most likely because if they only have to put in one letter, it’s kind of clicking the Like button.
Yeah.
People are more apt to click on Like button than to like and comment it’s because that’s extra work and time.
Quick and they put an A in there, it’s easy.
Or 1 or 2. You can do it anyway that you want. But I love this idea and it’s something simple, short to the point and will create engagement.
I wonder if we created an image of the snowfall on the left and a beach on the right to see what kind of response get on this order right now.
Well it could be my backyard compared to north backyard because there was only about half hour away from here that I didn’t get a speck of snow and everybody else did.
Yeah, we just got a little bit of covering. A friend of mine just half hour north got 15 inches. Woooh, we missed.
Wow.
I know. That’s crazy.
Back here we ever aim. Yeah, it’s crazy. Living in Minnesota is interesting one. And then this one is post a series of sneak peek photos that show part of a new product. And so you’re just kind of I remember I think it was Brian Arnold who was launching a product and he kind of blacked out some of it with like who he was partnering with. He blacked out the person just to kind of tease, you know give you a little bit of a sneak peek. So if you’re going to be launching something or any product that you have new that’s going to be coming soon, this is a cool way to do it.
That’s a great idea, you know really. It reminds me of those board games that we used to play when we were younger where we would have to listen to the sound, you could see a picture of that item and trying to guess what it was.
Oh, what kind of game was that?
It was one that we played in daycare where we have pictures of animals also then you would uncover a fur or something like that and you would try and guess what kind it was. But here it goes to show that people are curious. They like to play games and so this really increases that engagement level.
Display you mission statement over a staff/location photo. So basically your mission statement is you’re putting it into a photo instead of having it in verbiage, if that makes sense. Do you want to explain that a little more Lisa?
So instead of having it hanging on your wall where people probably won’t see it especially on the online world is you can take that and incorporate it in with your team, with your employees. Have them hold the mission statement, have it bold. So that when the photo get shared that, it shares along with your company, with your company information. Sometimes the mission statement is just a very short statement but very powerful. And when you put something in words, you put it around the people that are supporting that mission statement it has a lot of volume to it.
And if it’s a longer mission statement you could always break it down and do multiple photos, too, so that you don’t have it all in one. Or you can even re-word it to different things so that your getting the same mission statement all put up in different ways so there’s a lot of different image ideas for using your mission statement and turning it into a visual.
And you can even record that as a video so you could have your employees talk the mission statement and use the thumbnail from the video on your Facebook wall so when they click on that they go out to the video and they could see it.
Great idea, yeah, that’s another level. So look at all these different things you could do just with your mission statement alone.
Yup.
I’m going to have you read the next one Lisa my thing is lagging, you’re seeing it I’m not.
Okay, yep, no it’s fine. You know post, and I can talk about this one really well because post a photo of a local event that you attended. I would work with a couple of the expo guys and we would go around live events — at trade shows, expos. And we would take pictures to show people coming in the door, you take pictures at the booth. You take pictures and maybe spotlight the sponsors, somebody sponsoring your event. So there’s all kinds of things that you can do with local events that you attend. One thing that I encourage people to do is if you post a picture of a local event make sure you tag it with that city so it helps with some of the search ranking. Tag it and hashtag. But people like to see what your company is all about and where you participate. So when you’re doing any kind of training, training class or trade show, be sure to share that experience. People like to be part of it even if they can’t be there.
Agree, agree. My thing is so lagging that it hasn’t even changed yet. So we’ll go, here it again and tell me if the next picture is up.
Yep, the last one is up Janet.
Okay, go ahead, I’m not seeing it.
Okay. So post a photo of your team hard at work. Now Janet I believe you know someone in the construction industry, correct? So if you could share a little bit about why would somebody want to see people building a roof or putting a house together?
Yeah, they love seeing the progress of that like with the framing or even just putting a basement together from nothing there all the way until it’s finished. To see that progress is absolutely, everybody is interested in that. And so that is a piece that you’re showing them progression and it’s also showing how hard. You obviously wanted a hire like a general contractor that know is a hard worker. So that shows your team is hard at work. So for that type of business I definitely can see why we make a difference and stand out.
Well and you know, too, I think of and I relate this to the Minnesota Vikings stadium where people are on their edge watching. They were watching Facebook because they wanted to see the stadium be torn down. And now they get huge engagement because you’re taking pictures of it being taken away and then the progress as it’s building, as it’s being built. So, you’re right, people do like to see progress and it also build a level of integrity and trust among your team. So if they could see you there, they feel like they’re part of that project, as well.
They want to get to know, I think the audience want to get to know people. And the more they could see pictures of the actual team, the more they know them. That’s in video, the same way, if you’re in the video. They feel like they can know and that breaks down the trust, breaks that you’re trusting them so breaks to make the trust happen. Well that was the full 10 and what we’re going to do is these are going to be available to you. They are going to be available to whoever has signed up for the content guide, we’ll be giving these to anybody that has signed out there, we’ll be sending to so they can download the entire pdf themselves. And so once again I’ll give you that link, it’s socialmediahangouttime.com/guide and that way you can get access to this one and the next one that we’re going to do also all about images.
That’s awesome and it’s really simple. So by giving the people the tools to use and the flexibility to take those images we have and re-brand them for themselves, you know if gives you a jump start. Thanks Janet.
Well thank you. Thanks Lisa. Have a good day you guys!
https://www.businessgrowthtime.com/guide/