Introduction
Great to have you with us again. On another episode of Digital 4 Productivity and the ninth chapter of the book Using Digital Tools Effectively. As you know, as part of my podcast, I haven’t spoken my chapters one-to-one, but have instead prepared the key ideas from this book for you on the audio track, so that you can listen to the key ideas in the car or while jogging in addition to reading and supplementing the online material.
Optimize your social media strategy
Yes, the 9th chapter is about “Optimize your social media strategy”. Quiet Gentle. Facebook. Do you know that? You have spent years building up followers on Facebook or Xing. You have set up groups to reach your target group and suddenly the group is closed. Xing has completely abolished the group function and Facebook groups are also simply closed. But it doesn’t matter, because Facebook is dead. Today, everyone goes to Instagram, YouTube Charts and Tiktok. Do I have to be everywhere now? Do I have to post different content? How long can posts be? How does the algorithm work? Questions upon questions. Just when you think you’ve found an answer, new platforms with new rules come along. Perhaps this sounds familiar to you and the battle for the attention of social media users is becoming increasingly fierce.
Yes, just like almost everyone has a smartphone these days, some even have two or three and are always posting their lives there, sometimes with more or less meaningless dogs, cats or food posts. So I say, do you always have to take everything with you? Above all, the question is: where is your target group? Keyword algorithm, to put it simply, an algorithm decides what you see or don’t see on the Internet. So because of the wealth of information, if you have 5,000 people in your network on Facebook or LinkedIn, for example, you can’t see 5,000 posts every day if everyone posts something once a day. And then it simply selects on the basis of the things you like, the things you comment on, where the algorithm assumes, okay, you like that, that’s interesting for you, you’ll get more of that.
The main problems with the use of social media
Problem 1: Don’t listen to blanket statements
Yes, let’s take a look at the three main problems when using social media. Point number 1, we often and gladly believe the general tenor and forget that every social media presence must be individually designed.
Point number 2, often the own company, the product or even the own person would be the center of the posts and that on the platforms that we prefer. The needs and interests of the target groups are ignored. And if we are going to post, then please do it right. Everything has to be right, after all, you’re showing yourself to the public and that’s what the post looks like.
So that means here again and again, please do not rely on point number 1 to listen to blanket statements. For example, before we deal with the topic of social media. Email is always a dead issue. Email marketing is highly efficient. I, for example, build relationships and maintain relationships via social media. Especially with existing customers. I sell face-to-face or via e-mail marketing. Facebook is also dead. Yes, it is!
If you go into younger target groups, they are increasingly on TikTok, for example. But if you look at Facebook, it is still the dominant platform in Germany with a usage rate of 68% of all internet users over the age of 16. And while younger target groups are migrating to Facebook, new silver surfers, like my father for example, are constantly signing up to platforms such as Facebook. However, the basic idea behind these social networks is rarely understood. Every social media platform somehow has a different basic idea. Instagram, for example, has the basic idea of posts by beautiful people. In other words, if you have illustrated specialist information there, for example, it is hardly ever played out because Meta slash Facebook, the company that owns Instagram, says we want to see beautiful people on this platform. And it’s always difficult to make blanket statements about user behavior and blanket statements about algorithms. And then you have a lot of so-called self-proclaimed experts who know exactly how it works. To be honest, just to have a platform, the monthly algorithm changes on the (…), you need a team for that. The best tip is always, just try things out. Be highly relevant to your target group, the more interaction you will have on these things. And that is simply important.
Yes, the most important thing is that you have a good communication mix for all these things. So I’d say social media is a bit like soccer, especially during the World Cup. Just as there are 80 million national coaches, there are at least 80 million social media experts. Yes, so against this background, please don’t build a strategy on general statements, but really try things out for yourself and question them.
Problem 2: We are posting past the target group
Yes, problem number 2, we post past the target group. In other words, we rarely carry out a target group analysis in a structured form, instead we just blast things out along the lines of “buy me, you bastard”. Ego things are lived out. Especially for us as speakers, I always ask myself what a user gets out of seeing an empty room in front of me where I say I’m about to give a cool presentation. Yes, of course, if I put the three main messages that I have conveyed in a post after a presentation, then I can perhaps also combine utility value with marketing to a certain extent. And that’s kind of my strategy, that I always try to deliver value. And of course I can also show that I don’t just do it in a quiet room, but also with customers. Here too, relevance always comes before frippery.
Problem 3: We want to be too perfect
So that really means always saying that many die in perfection, never get a video out of it because they say no, it has to be produced professionally. On the one hand, you can already shoot wonderful videos on your smartphone with applications like Captions. Can you even add smileys to subtitles or shorten them? There are great tools for this and relevance always comes before frills. And authenticity doesn’t mean that I post bad photos when I’m in a bad mood. Just like I can still be professional on stage if I’m having a bad day. So please don’t confuse it with unprofessionalism. And you can also mix things up. When I look at Christian Lindner, for example, he always has two abbreviations, one TL and one CL. CL – Christian Lindner and TL for Team Lindner, so you always know who has just posted it and who is commenting on it. It’s also a good mix.
Each platform also has its own format rules, so Instagram and TikTok tend to film in portrait format and LinkedIn in landscape format. So you also have to look at whether the target group is more likely to be using a smartphone or a PC, for example. A good compromise is to film in square format. That works in both. But if you have that, you always have to consider where your target group is mainly on the move. For example, I’m mainly on LinkedIn because that’s where my business target group is. I also film there and many people say that LinkedIn and filming is not really the right medium? Yes, to a certain extent it can also be interesting to do what few people do, namely work with videos on LinkedIn if they are subtitled. That’s very important, because not everyone can always hear accordingly. That’s why it’s very important to get an idea of your target group first Who is your target group? Where are they on the move?
It’s also worth considering where the target group is professionally and privately? For example, I post business and useful things on LinkedIn and if I have cultural, private, funny things, then I post them on Facebook and they are then automatically played out for Instagram, played out on Twitter, where I say that I serve several platforms at once, which are also relevant to search engines. So against this background, it sometimes makes sense to actively operate a platform. That’s what I do with LinkedIn and operating the others at least to the extent that you can also be found in searches, for example via YouTube.
Yes, the important thing is simply to get a picture of the target group and then say, okay, who is my target group, what problem of my target group can I solve with my product? What ideal ACTUAL state does my target group achieve with my product and how does my product achieve this state? And a good idea here is to take a look at Donald Miller ‘s Story Brand concept. I can highly recommend his book “Building a “, because you really get this combination of storytelling and marketing, you really get it quite well. And if you use this structure and communicate emotionally with your target group, then this is not a guarantee of success, but at least a factor for a high probability of success.
Analyze social media platforms
Yes, you should also analyze the popular social media platforms. Take a look at the usage statistics, which can be found on Statista, for example. So don’t let yourself be talked to death. Along the lines of: Nobody is on Facebook anymore. If you are in an older target group, for example, there may even be more people there than on TikTok, where younger people are more likely to be on the move. On the other hand, marketing managers from consumer goods companies are also on Tiktok, for example, because they look at their target group. They can also use it to reach someone. My friend Rene Borbonus managed to win Adidas as a customer, for example.
Better to use few but correct platforms
Yes, and then focus on just a few platforms, but the right ones. So before you do something on every platform all the time, every day, it’s a good idea to really use one consistently. I do this with LinkedIn, where I try to make sure that I have time every day to post things there regularly. You can either do this with automation tools or even in the LinkedIn app itself or on the website you can even make timed posts by clicking on the clock, because sometimes you have days where you could bang out 3-4-5 posts. A good idea is to post them, but spread them out over the next few days. Regularity is simply better than really blasting everything out once and then not posting for five days.
Be authentic
Yes, then be authentic, ideally with your smartphone. So to really say here simply on the one hand, of course, when someone like BMW or Porsche introduces a new car, they don’t do it with a shaky cell phone video from the palm of their hand. Yes, but the one or other board member from Porsche, for example, from BMW is also active on LinkedIn and posts videos of conferences, personal statements etc. shot with their own cell phone. So it’s a good idea against this background. The important thing is that the picture quality of these cell phones is now extremely good. Sound quality is usually not so good with the built-in microphones. I always recommend the DJI microphone. You can simply plug it into the bottom of the phone via Lightning or USB-C and then you even have two microphones, which is great for interview situations.
The most important social media platforms
Yes, what are the most important social media platforms from my point of view? For me it’s LinkedIn, in the business sector, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube. And now you’re saying, wait a minute, YouTube isn’t a social network. Yes, but it belongs to Google, for one thing. Secondly, it’s also very much used here as a search engine. I also search for videos a lot. First on YouTube before I go to Google. In many areas, you now even have more search queries on YouTube than on Google. People no longer read, people want to watch a video quickly. Take advantage of humanity’s laziness.
Yes, I think LinkedIn is the most effective platform in the business sector. That’s why you can really find top business contacts right up to the boardroom. There are real, interesting dialogs. You can also network very well with decision-makers in person. And you also see things that people like and comment on in their network. And vice versa, of course. And a good idea is to go in a bit every day and comment on other things too, not just post them.
Content Creation
Yes, on the subject of content creation. I’m a big fan of the fact that you say smartphones are camera apps. You can also do a few more things in the ProKamera app, for example. I’ve always set it to 16:9, for example, so that I can always snap photos in chart format without having to do that. The Adobe Suite, for example, is also available with Photoshop Express for iPhone iPad. You can also do a lot there. And there are also some apps like Snapseed from Google or special apps with which you can do a lot on smartphones. For example, you can use TouchRetouch and CloneErase to remove objects from photos and ReCrop to change the photo frame. You can use Unfade to sharpen up blurry pictures. Superimpose is used to superimpose photos on top of each other. You can useCreamCam to soften wrinkles and skin blemishes. Slow Shutter is used for long exposures, Colorize, if you have black and white photos, you can fade them into color with AI and with Photos you can change the aperture and the depth of field setting. With RemovePic, for example, you can crop images. Incidentally, this is now also possible with the on-board tools on the latest iPhones. So a whole lot is possible. Apple is also integrating more and more of these functions into the built-in apps. And as I said, I can highly recommend Captions because they can do subtitles. You can even generate emojis automatically. And with Captions you even have the option of dividing a longer YouTube video into shorter reels.
Yes, sound, as I said, always with an extra mic and Auphonic is a service with which you can wonderfully optimize every sound that you record as audio or video. So every one of my podcasts always goes through Auphonic so that volume and differences are balanced out here and background noise is removed there. But Honig is also really great and very, very easy to use.
Planning social media content
Yes, the platform itself now offers a number of functions for planning social media content and you can use tools such as Buffer, Facelift, Fanpage, Karma, Hootsuite, Later, Meet Edgar or the Social Poster from Germany to create real content management plans. You can even set them to repost content. Because you don’t always have to reinvent something, you often have evergreen content that you can post again after a few weeks or months.
Top ten tips from chapter 9:
Last but not least, the top ten tips from chapter 9.
- Use Statista for real numbers instead of guesswork.
- Observe which social media platforms your main target group is using.
- Focus on a maximum of two social media platforms.
- Above all, post your own relevant content.
- Don’t think about the algorithm, think about your target group. Relevance before frippery.
- Take out your demand for perfection. Better then, because perfect.
- Use your smartphone or tablet to produce content.
- Record podcasts on the iPad. I also do this with the Ferrite app.
- Good sound is more important than a good picture. And last but not least
- Use tools for automated posting such as the Social Poster.
Conclusion
Yes, we are not at the end of my Latin, but at the end of chapter 9. And I look forward to seeing you again next week for chapter 10, when we will be talking about the strategic use of artificial intelligence.
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