Even if you think you know everything about social media basics, tools, and trends, there's always more to learn. For this episode of All Things Marketing and Education, Elana chats with Shana Bull, children's book author, freelance writer, digital marketer, and marketing educator. Together, they review their takeaways from the 2022 Social Media Marketing World (SMMW), including new social media trends and localized marketing tips. Shana also shares marketing lessons as a children's book author.
We encourage you to listen to the entire podcast episode, but we’ve also highlighted some of our favorite points below. Don’t forget – you can scroll to the bottom for a list of links to the resources that Shana and Elana mentioned.
Stay Flexible By Following Social Media Trends
Social media marketing evolves, yet its core principle remains: you're only as effective as the relationships you create. The engagement from an authentic relationship builds inherent trust. Elana offers a basic example of this on Twitter, where you can follow anyone who mentions you:
"Respond back with something authentic and appreciative. Be a human and start connecting. Add them to a list so you can then start liking their tweets and getting involved with them."
Shana loves that in-person events like SMMW are back:
"The after-parties and the connections that I made were worth the price of admission. I had a strategic plan of who I wanted to connect with, and after the event, I made sure to say, 'I had a good time. I look forward to connecting more.' And then I added them to a Twitter list."
While defining your brand through this lens of relationship marketing and tailoring content for your target market, you'll need to find the best tools for authentic, efficient engagement. For social media programming tools, Elana suggests:
"We use Sprout Social. There’s Agorapulse, Buffer, Hootsuite – gosh, there’s ten million. Tools should match your budget and your capacity. Don’t get something super fancy that you’re not going to use 100%."
Shana is also a big advocate for programming tools:
"It looks like I’m on social [media] every day, and I’m not. I batch-create my content where I spend a few hours at the beginning of each month to look ahead and work with my social media manager."
As an example of focusing on a niche and considering what messaging works best across platforms, she says:
"Check out TikTok and figure out what you want to talk about. It’s a good way to understand that your content should be short and to the point. Using a hook to capture attention right away is something you can take with every platform."
Your Business Is Local Wherever It Is
While we think of social media as something with global reach, many businesses maintain storefronts or want to target specific communities by zip code or area. To find your local social media audience, Shana recommends Google Business Profile:
"It's a huge website traffic driver that most businesses, specifically brick-and-mortar, are not taking advantage of. All businesses should be posting regularly to the Google Business platform about what they’re doing: periodic updates, events, and hours. Google My Business helps potential customers, and it helps you be found in search."
Twitter's effectiveness for local audiences depends on your (and their) location. To become a more successful local influencer on any platform, Elana suggests:
"Hashtags can help you reach audiences whether you have a local storefront or you’re trying to reach certain types of people in different states and locations."
Sell Your Book As A Solution, Not A Product
When Shana was ready to publish her first book (Randall the Blue Spider, co-authored with her young son), she worked with East 26th, a Houston-based publisher using the hybrid model of individualized strategy and support. She coordinated with a "launch crew" of friends and family to instantly buy the Kindle version and post an Amazon review. This works best with short books, of course, but she adds:
"The reviews were so important to the Amazon search algorithm. I’ll say that my first book has over 100 reviews on Amazon. It still does better within the Amazon search than the second book that only has about 30 to 40 reviews."
From a marketing standpoint, the best possible message is emphasizing how your book can help people, which Shana is taking to heart in promoting her third book:
"I’m really focusing on how this book can help parents and educators. And that’s relationship marketing. Find out the pain points of your audience, and create content to help them, whether that content is a book or a blog post or a video."
This is audience-driven, audience-centered marketing in action. It's not about your product as much as speaking to the challenges that people face and what they'll need to meet them.
Here's the full transcript of Shana’s podcast episode.
Resources Mentioned in this Episode:
Social Media Tools
Sprout Social, the social tool that the LCG team uses
Agorapulse, social media tool suggested by Elana
Buffer, social media tool suggested by Elana
Hootsuite, social media tool suggested by Elana
Social Media Tips & Tricks
Social Media Marketing World, an annual professional marketing conference, the source of this podcast's many talking points
Elise Darma on Twitter, Elana and Shana praise her Social Media Marketing World session about multi-purposing video segments
Removing TikTok's video watermark, Elana's tweet linking to Snaptik.app
"Using Hashtags on Facebook Can Help Increase Your Organic Reach", the article Elana refers to about marketing via Facebook
Google Business Profile, Shana mentions as one of the best ways to market locally
UTM encoding, Elana says that software for tracking the traffic to your links is essential for meaningful analytics that connect to website traffic
A Few Words From Elana
Metrics That Matter, LCG's social media metrics boot camp blog series
Elana's tweet about being human, a slide of tips on "Filming for Engagement"
EdTech
EdTech Karaoke, an industry event icebreaker initiated, in part, by Shana
USDE Office of Educational Technology, federal agency overseeing EdTech policy at a national level
Hyperdocs Handbook, mentioned as an EdTech book that was well marketed
All Things Shana
Randall the Blue Spider, Shana's first children's book, co-authored with her son
Randall the Blue Spider blog, a resource for fans of Shana's children's books
Social Media Marketing World Trends - My 2022 Experience on Shana’s blog
Elana Leoni, Host
Elana Leoni has dedicated the majority of her career to improving K-12 education. Prior to founding LCG, she spent eight years leading the marketing and community strategy for the George Lucas Educational Foundation where she grew Edutopia’s social media presence exponentially to reach over 20 million education change-makers every month.
Shana Bull, Guest
Shana Bull is a best-selling children's book author, freelance writer, and digital marketing educator based in the Bay Area. She is passionate about helping small business owners and marketers build their confidence with social media. She loves low-alcohol wines, elaborate cheese boards, and traveling on food adventures with her husband and redheaded son (the co-author of their children’s book Randall the Blue Spider Goes Surfing). She can be found on Instagram/Twitter at @sharayray, or at http://shanabull.com, and her book can be found at http://randallthebluespider.com.
About All Things Marketing and Education
What if marketing was judged solely by the level of value it brings to its audience? Welcome to All Things Marketing and Education, a podcast that lives at the intersection of marketing and you guessed it, education. Each week, Elana Leoni, CEO of Leoni Consulting Group, highlights innovative social media marketing, community-building, and content marketing strategies that can significantly increase reach, relationships, and revenue.
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