Marketing Yourself on Social Media with Kim Garst
J: Hi Everybody! This is J Hunter with VA Staffer and today I’m here with Kim Garst, she is a very influential person in Social Media. Hi Kim, Welcome!
KIM: I’m excited to be with you today! Thanks for inviting me.
Who is Kim Garst?
J: You Bet. I’m so excited to kick this off with you, I know we’ve been trying to line this up for about a month. So, I appreciate you take your time on your busy schedule coming in here. Just to give a little bit of background for you guys. Kim Garst is the Co-Founder and the CEO of Boom Social Media Marketing, It’s a leading visual marketing firm specializes in teaching businesses, both large and small, how to harness the power of social media to drive growth and increase their bottom lines.
She’s also the author of a best-selling book called, “Will The Real You Please Stand Up – Show up the authentic and prosper in social media”, which I picked up personally. I must say, it’s so powerful. Kim is also widely regardless one of the world’s leading social media experts. I know she travels all over the place to do, to tell people all about social media and the power it is. She’s been listed as high as number eight (8) on Forbes List of social media women power influencers, she’s also a contributes frequently to the Huffington post, Entrepreneur magazine, and she has an award-wining top 10 social media blog just for recognized by examiner.
Finally, she’s a noted public speaker, with frequent appearances on television, radio and in front of some pretty large live audiences. As far as her education goes, she’s got a bachelor’s degree in political science and she has a master’s degree in business education. She’s a mother of two and she lives in Tampa, Florida and we just talked about all that fun things to do there.
KIM: yeah!
J: So, So first of all – You know before we get into, into the too deep of what’s going on here. You know if you could summarize everything we’re about to talked into. Maybe three tips, right now, that can kind of, resurrect or make it impact on a social media campaign. Let’s dive right into it.
KIM: Okay
J: Quick three tips. If somebody just tuned in for the very first 60 seconds and they said, you know what, I have attention span of my 3 year old, what they can get out of this?
Kim Garst Top 3 Social Media Tips for Short Attention Spans
We dive right into Marketing Yourself with Kim’s 3 essentials “Must-Do’s” for social media marketing.
MAKE A PLAN
KIM: Well, honestly, you know, in social media is the only marketing technique that I’ve ever seen that people approaching with no plan.
SET GOALS
What is your goal set? What do you want from it? And make that quantifiable. You know what do you want? X amount of new leads every month, do you want X amount of new sells every month, you know whatever it is. I think that’s the first goal before you ever get started on social media. It determined what you want from it.
BE AUTHENTIC
If I had to give, another media tip. It also, you know, for true result from social media, you have to authentic, you have to be real, and that is probably the number one struggle I see people, focused, or really struggling around that particular issue. And I know you kinda book that you said, you introduced the book earlier, but it’s why I wrote the book. Simply because, one of the biggest challenges, the most frequently asked question that I encountered is “What do I say on social media?” So, so many people struggle with that issue and I think that the very next thing you have to determine if it is, what is your voice?, how are you going to engage with people on social media? And then, and the showcase that realness because if you don’t do that job today people can sniff out, a fake and a heartbeat and your dead in the water before you can ever get started. So, I think that is, incredible and important and then, you know, you have to talk to people, I mean, just because their on a computer screen on the other side of the world or across the country or across the state or even across town doesn’t mean their not real people that you shouldn’t engage with them and, you know, hold conversations. Social Media is life because that’s truly what it is, we just leverage it at business centers for our marketing perspective. But at the root of it, people are engaged in communicating and if you’re not involved in the conversation, you’re going to find that that’s very difficult to create sale if you don’t talked to people.
J: Wow! That’s so powerful. And I know that for a fact that it works, I’m talking to you and I know It’s because I’m a huge follower, I mean I love your twitter strategies, we use them here, I think you have some great free eBook resources that are amazing. I’m a personal owner of your book and I can tell you, you’re really are so good at proving the value of social media, it’s just made me rethink exactly what we’re doing here, so I thank you for all the value you bring to the community. So, let’s get into some of the stuff that people are really are trying to figure out like, I know there’s always this huge, you know, quandary of how many post a day should I be doing on social media to get some real results? I don’t know if that is too generic of a question, but I’m sure you probably heard of that a lot? What would your advice be to someone, you know – how active does someone need to really be on social media to make an impact?
How Much Should I Post On Social Media?
Kim Garst: “It Depends on the Platform”
KIM: Well, I think it depends, you know there’s no pad answer to that although I’ve heard a lot of “experts”, I’m not a bit the term expert, but in a way we all leverage that because we all have to showcase some level of expertise, right? But in social media, things changed so much each and every day literally each and every day that, you know, we use them the term expert is a little loose in my opinion but that said, I kind of have a little bit different of philosophy as relates that how you should post and I think, I clarify this answer by saying or qualify this answer by saying, you know it depends on the platform that you’re trying to leverage too, you know the strategies on Facebook are got to be great different than on the strategies on twitter. Twitter, for example move very rapidly and you can share a lot more content on twitter at any given day than you can on a Facebook page.
Facebook Posts Are Seen Less
I like to address the Facebook issues specifically, cause right now that such a pain plain for everyone, and it’s where a lot of people start. You know a lot of business owners are most comfortable in, they feel like they can navigate inside a Facebook and they get it, they feel like their ideal clients are there. But reality of the Facebook right now is really curtailing our reach our Facebook fan pages and/or business pages. So, you know, I can take that question a lot, “How many time should I post on a Facebook in order to get into my fans news feed?” And you know, I’ve heard a variety of people saying with different things, “You only need to post once a month, or once a week or you know, once a day. And I really have to say that our whole posts are the really wrong answer on my opinion. Facebook has basically gone from a one out of a six post, – it was said in the past that one out of your six Facebook post will be seen with your fans news feed. Well now, I would say that that’s probably one to two out of things you shared, so you’re sharing one or two post a day on your Facebook fan page and less than 1% of your audience is seeing your content then the reality of the very few people are actually see your content. So just a really kind of a just to give a specific answer to that question:
On Facebook I think you need to be posting at least 4 to 6 times a day on Facebook in order to get any measurable result, and get into the news feed of your fan base there. –Kim Garst
J: wow!
KIM: It simply because that’s the way Facebook is operating today, you know, they’re kind of giving us small business owners a hard time and you know, a lot of people are complaining about that, but you can’t really, you know, throw Facebook under the bus because they’re a business owners too and they’re trying to monetize their platform.
J: Right.
It’s not Facebook’s Fault – We Need to Adjust
KIM: So we either have to adjust as marketers and figure out how we basically work within their system to get what we want from it or hybrid, maybe do a little of both do some, make / have good strategies around our posting, our Facebook posting strategies be strong and then maybe have a some small budget for, you know, paying to play essentially.
J: Yeah. Which is really why they did that, in the first place, right? They want your money. (Laugh)
KIM: Yeah. (Laugh) You know like a saying you can’t hardly blame them for it, It is a business, and you know, we are, frankly, you know, it is still the largest marketing opportunity online today the data they have they literally put our fingertips, it’s surreal. You know, it’s really an amazing marketing avenue for us as a business centers.
Facebook Knows More About You Than Your Family
KIM: And we give the information freely, that’s what is so amazing to me. You know that we put so much information that you know, I mean, all these, you know the past, you’ve had all like these like you know people that is trying to unmask all of this information about us, right? In some other way and then you’ve got Facebook who, you know, just build the platform, they say, you know share what you want to share and low and behold people sharing pretty much everything, and now they’ve been. There’s amazing data…
J: Yeah. They know what school you go to, and like you’ve said, people willingly give it up. I mean, you can have, there’s nothing on the planet more geo targeted specifically than a Facebook audience, and it’s unbelievable.
KIM: Unbelievable. I mean, down to, you know “have it” and “Likes” you know, things that you buy, it is a, it’s an incredible marketplace. So, in my opinion, it’s not one what you want to cut off your arsenal (Laugh).
J: Well, on top of that, that will lead ’em to the next question that I was thinking. You know, what actually type of content should be people focusing on? Is it business specific? Is it a specific, you know, I guess, that’s a question that people are looking for they say, well if I’m getting out in social media, what in the world do I tell people?
What Should I Post On Social Media? What Do I Say?
KIM: Well, I have a, again, have a very different take on this, it’s because back to, you know, why are people on social media? The majority of people are on social media –NEWS FLASH, they are not there to buy your product to service. They are there to engage, to communicate and search and find, you know, connect to people, but frankly, they don’t care about our products and services, not to say that they won’t buy our product or services. That’s not yet it all, but their first goal or reason that they’re on social media doesn’t revive around, you know, trying to find a specific product or service normally. You know they connect with friends and family and, you know, that type of thing. So I personally, from my content stand point. I approach it from a comprehensive life stand point, in the sense that so I try to connect with people around, specific types of Content. You know, I call on my content bucket, so for example, you know, I have, I uses inspiration a lot, I use #biztips, I used, you know I share my social media blog post. You know, social media related content. I share humor, you know in other words people connect with me the most around things that revive around my product or my service but, when I, they need what I have to sell, then they see the content of mine because I am engaged with them, I have given great value to them. So I used my content to kind of chum the waters, you know, it’s a way for me to connect and build community and then I throw my marketing hooks in every once in a while.
You know, at about an 80 to 20 ratio, 80 % is literally just chum, to build up that relationship and value, and then every once In a while at the bottom of 20% ratio I throw in my marketing element. –Kim Garst
J: That is really, really good influence. See, I got to change my strategy already
(Laugh both)
KIM: It works! They truly does.
J: Well, let’s be hypothetical here, and I know this is probably dependent on the type of business that people are in, but if won’t you feel from your experience are really the three most impactful social media channels, I know you really mentioned Facebook as very valuable, and I know there are millions of social media platforms right now, and everyone wants to try to make a new one, what are the best three for you, I say from a business perspective. J What are the best social media channels, if someone had to pick three, what would they be?
What are the Top 3 Social Media Channels for Business?
KIM: Well, I think, you’re exactly right, there’s obviously have a lot of opportunities out there and literally you could choose just one and if just focused on one and it got absolutely all of your focus then you could just kill it.
I am an absolute believer in that statement but, there’s a lot of ways to leverage and cross platform, basically and leverage communities that you build there to build the bigger community and ultimately create more sales, so buy to choose three. I would choose Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. – Kim Garst
J: Wow. Instagram.
Instagram is a huge marketplace, so let me just, in anybody out there just listening today guys, within the next five (5) to seven (7) years Millennials are going to be seventy percent (70%) of the buying population……………. I paused there for impact
J: That’s true.
KIM: And I paused there for impact, because I think we need to get to wrap our hands around that. I have two Millennials myself and I have been on a huge mission the kind of you know, poll people and say okay, where are you personally using or spending your time. And lf bracket they’re all on Instagram, you know they’re on twitter but they’re not on Facebook that much anymore.
Not to say that that’s not a marketing haven for us, I still believe that the data alone there is still incredible and they still have, you know on Facebook on particular, people spend more time on Facebook that they did at any other platform even if they’re active on twitter or Instagram or even linked in, the time that they devote to Facebook is way more than. You know, and I think that is good because they’re comfortable there, they used it for communicating, you know, they have friends and family there that kind of thing.
J: Everyone’s on it.
KIM: So Facebook definitely.
KIM: Twitter is an amazing traffic driver, the best traffic source I’ve ever seen and I’ve been on line for twenty four (24) years now and I leverage twitter for traffic and conversion each and every day.
Marketing Yourself… on Instagram Again!
Instagram just a circle back on that right quick it is from my marketing stand point, it’s an amazing platform, it’s a little bit harder to create sells on it simply because there’s not a lot of linkage there, but I think that will come and I think that platform is got to continue to build out. But the reason I say this, obviously, outside of the fact that there’s so many people on Instagram, the fast is growing, social network out there today, but the other thing that why I think it’s so hot, why our marketers should be paying attention, is the fact that very few marketers were actually on Instagram as of today. There are some people doing great things on Instagram but even on the social space most people that are, you know, in my area of expertise are not leveraging on Instagram yet. Their still using it more from a, you know, just sharing photos and that type of thing, they’re not marketing using Instagram. So I think there are a tremendous opportunity to be kind of the forerunners, from the stand point of, you know, getting out there and creating sales and actually leveraging Instagram to market not just throwing up photos and engaging the people.
J: Yeah. Absolutely enlighten. I like, you know, you just recently posted an awesome blog how to really use Instagram, and it was so powerful. That I actually created my very first Instagram account that unhooked.
KIM: Awesome!
J: So, I know. And I had no idea about all those hashtags, because you know, even my own family they would always do funny things. I mean, obviously, I used twitter hashtags and things so, and I didn’t really realize the power of the hashtag on Instagram. It is so powerful.
KIM: Incredibly powerful. It’s really interesting, because you know, the hashtags started on twitter, and people of course do used hashtag still on Twitter to this day. I used them pretty much everywhere because I love them myself, I used them to search for the content and find targeted people to connect with, conversations etc. But the interesting thing that and I think the differentiator for the Instagram VS. Twitter is you can used way more hashtags, so you can get more kind of a bang for your back with Instagram and hashtags than you can on twitter because we only have 140 characters on twitter, you know if your trying to load up a tweet, with you know, 10 or 15 hashtag, then there’s no one you will just make people upset because you’re not get listen to the back. I guess it should be the difference, and the audience and what people get used to but –
It is incredible that the hashtag is so very powerful on Instagram. – Kim Garst
J: Yeah. And I think clarifying what you’re saying earlier, you’re saying that Instagram doesn’t do linking, that’s you mean that in the actual title and the actual description of the photos, if you put a link in their it’s not actually going to linked back to anything.
KIM: Correct. Please don’t place on the Instagram that you have a clickable link, you know where you can drag traffic from because obviously, from a conversion stand point that’s important, you know, you have to move people, in some words that they can buy.
J: Right.
KIM: But the only place inside of the Instagram is inside of the bio and you know, you can of course, put a link in there and then in the comments area, you can say, you know click on the link in my bio and go you know, put those on blog post to whether it says sells page or you know, some source of the often page, whatever it is you can use that page.
J: I didn’t know that.
KIM: Yeah. Yeah.
J: Well, you just schooled me. Alright
KIM: I hope someone else can use it too.
What Happened to Google Plus? Worth Marketing Yourself There?
J: So, I just got to throw it out there. Where is google plus? I mean google plus was supposed to be this most awesome thing a couple of years ago when it launched and I just feels that it was never really picked up skin. Do you even used google plus? Is it really a valuable platform at all?
KIM: Well I was really concerned, you know not long ago, literally, just a couples of month ago. Google disbanded their entire google plus team. And so I was, and I was like, oh my goodness, you know, that’s the end for sure. But I have in own good territory that it’s not going anywhere, they are actually working on some things your pulling some elements out of google plus and are going to kind of brand them outside of the google platform but they’re still be there, it’s not like, you know all the things that the google plus hang out, you know all of those thing are still going to be a very much part of a platform. I’m not super active on google plus, simply because there’s not just enough time of the day to do it all.
The one thing if you do nothing else as it relates the google plus but what I’m getting right to say, then do at least do this one thing, and that is every time you share a piece of content to your blog, you know, we have a new article it goes up on your blog, then you need to post that to google plus, because that, google plus gives preference to google plus content,
I’m sorry, google gives preference to google plus content, in the organic search, so in other words, if you post your article to google plus, google immediately index of it and if you go to google right now and you type in any keyword phrase you will probably notice that there is a search result that take you back to a google plus post, so that’s why it’s important at a minimum to do that just one thing, you know, make sure that you are sharing your new, your content, every time you have new content to your blog on google plus.
J: So, the value of google plus isn’t really to sharing your statuses and what not, but is actually sharing content you’ve credit on your own website, that’s really valuable.
KIM: Oh that’s definitely SEO value with my point and there’s you know, there are a lot of people who love google plus, there’s a whole other set of folks, but you know a whole other way to connect with people that are maybe active on twitter they’re not active on Facebook, their thing is google plus. So, you can absolutely build great communities on google plus, I think, still to this day, It’s not as mainstream, I think, as google plus that had hope that it would be, but It’s a great platform there’s definitely active people and people like I’ve said that are not you know maybe as active on somebody other platforms are die hard google plus-ers, you know.
J: Yeah. Yeah. I know there are a lot of those.
KIM: Yeah.
J: Just like they were die hard My Space user. We won’t go there – hah!
KIM: True! Awesome, the same thing. Oh my gosh!
J: Yeah, I know. If that is wrong, I apologize haha.
KIM: You’re right!
J: Well, one thing that I realized, when I was, you know, doing my homework on your website in not saying that Alexa.com has, any true analytical value, but it did say on there that about 20% of all your visitors to KimGarst.com were from Facebook, now I don’t know exactly how true that is, but to me that’s seems like you’re driving like a ton of traffic to your own personal branding through Facebook, is that true statement?
KIM: Well, the numbers are true but only it’ll explain why the numbers allow why you have those numbers, essentially what happened was I’m just actually trying to pull it up here on my blog and January the 5th of this year I posted a blog entitled, “17 killer Facebook post ideas for small business centers”, and it has been my most popular blog post ever, it’s a, it’s been shared almost 24,000 times, which had disproportionally giving Facebook credit for a lot of my traffic.
J: Ah see, had a viral post.
KIM: And it was Facebook related, so of course, a lot of the shares of this particular piece of content was which of course shared from within the Facebook, and so it drove a lot of Facebook traffic. Traditionally, and historically, for me, twitter has been my number one traffic source. From the social status thing, anyway, but because I have this massive you know, post that kind of swung me in the other direction, it definitely looks like Facebook has been a huge traffic source for me, and you know just from the stand point, if I just used to stay out of the equation and said, okay now, how, what is that look like, it’ll be Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest interestingly enough is my 3rd traffic source.
J: Yeah, the power of Pinterest. I saw you also posted a blog on that, and it has been awesome, and we started using that not too long ago, maybe 3 to 4 months ago, I think that ironically, for me as a Virtual Assistant Company, we worked on our clients so much to this kind of like the shoe maker’s kids, you know, the shoes are just never there.
KIM: Yeah.
J: So, were starting to do our own social media and I think that is something that you can really show to our community here is, you know, really the power of investing your own time and resources and to actually getting a presence out there and putting yourself out there and kind of like you did in our intro earlier, people are out there, conversations were there, and if you’re not participating on that conversation then you’re missing out, I really like that point, I mean that really does drive the whole essence of what we are trying to discuss here. So, finally, I wanted to move in to your book for a second, if that’s okay.
Marketing Yourself by Putting You First and Lead by Example
KIM: Sure! Well the moment you do that, Will you just make a comment on what you have said because I think it is so important to your community as a whole. I, you know, I’ve coached a lot of people over the years cause it relates to, you know, growing their businesses and my first piece of advice to everyone who is out there that from the stand point of, yes, if you are in the service business then you’re, you feel like your clients have to come first, and I would like to encourage you to put yourself at the forefront of your client list, and you do your own work before you ever step into the client work on a daily basis, because if you don’t lead with an example then it’s very hard to sell that you know what you are doing, so you absolutely need to take care of your own business each and every day, and there’s another piece to this is, if you don’t have, your always chasing the next client, if you can’t demonstrate that you can do that you say you can do.
Taking care of your own business, first and foremost each and every day, and your own presence on social media will, my virtue of just that one thing, will attract the right people and the right client tell to you and you can, you know, your showcase and you’re eating your own dog food, so it’s incredibly important that you take care of your own platform, I’m just be more passionate about that and I just wanted to share that one right quick. – Kim Garst
J: That’s powerful. You know, that’s right. And that’s the goal of ours the last couple of months has been, It’s a really focused on, you know, setting that example, and I think that that’s really important for everyone in any businesses to always set example no matter what service you do, no matter what type of clientele tell your getting, your right your always chasing after that next one, you know, you’re trying to really prove what you’re doing instead of letting the actions that you do speak for themselves.
KIM: Absolutely. It’s so important, you know we can tell wrapped up and oh my goodness to all these clients paying us to do X, Y, and Z – yes, that’s true and you don’t want to discount that, but at the same time, if you just do the work yourself and on your own platform then you will have, one, there’ll won’t be no more question that you know what you are doing, so the clients will trust that you know what there are doing, and then you also attract, you’re not leveraging somebody else’s platform as an example, well, I’ll be at their work, you know, in some point in time but no longer will gone to be effective for you, so take care of your own business.
J: Yeah, Using yourself, as your own testimony, I love it!
KIM: Yeah, absolutely!
J: Well, what should I been doing? Well, look of what we’ve done here. See this? This great when someone gets back to yourself and you can say, “Look! I’m leading an example I’m doing it. This could be on what we do free, right?
KIM: Absolutely!
J: Awesome! And I know that’s part of that, actually of what you talked about your book about being authentic and how to really stand up and you know, set an example in your own personal life and letting it bleed into your social media. Why don’t you give a little bit of a break down on you know, of what people will going to get out of your book.
Will The Real You Please Stand Up: Show Up, Be Authentic, And Prosper In Social Media! Kim’s Book on Marketing Yourself.
KIM: Well, the book itself is a definitely not your traditional social media book, even though it is, the focal point is definitely is around how you leverage a basic concept to roll it into your social media presence and more specifically to do so in an authentic and real way that drives sales, I mean that is all about. So if I had to like kind of quantify what the book is about, it’s a very, it’s business based in a sense that, you know there’s a lot of business nuggets in there, you know help people, you know, how they buy today is very different than how they bought even 10 years ago, and you know, why it is so important for us to be on social media and connecting and engaging in a real way, because people buy it from those things that they can trust, and if you don’t show up and you know, build out a community and be likeable essentially, be trustworthy, be value-based, then you’re not going to create sales on social media, It’s not gonna happen. So, the core of the book is about, how you do that? You know, and I gave to you the very specific examples from brands to done things very well, to brands to you know, haven’t done it so well and have ultimately paid a huge price for it. So it’s a different book but at the root of it, but I think it’s the secret sauce to creating sales on social media today.
J: Yeah. And I really like how you really drive home, that being authentic and really being yourself and you know, really how to leverage your passion in social media marketing, it’s actually one of your talking points in your book, you know I think that when people experience that passion that they have in themselves it’s really something that people can feel and they can experience and they really connect with you, I think that you really drive home the idea of really connecting with people and building the relationships with people and then having valuable services that you offer, like you’re really focusing on connecting with them and providing value and then they say, “yeah, you know what? That’s right, you know I want to learn more, you know I really want to dig in to what you are doing” and your living as a light showing everyone what they can be doing, and then they just have to take the next step themselves.
Leverage Your Passion in Social Media
KIM: It is really incredible the value of social media, I mean outside of the basket, you know from a marketing stand point that were absolutely trying to, build our business using social media. But it’s much bigger frankly in my opinion than that, I think that it is amazing the relationships, the people that you meet, the people that you have an opportunity to serve, and sometimes it’s a unique way, you know, sometimes it’s not a direct sale, you know sometimes it’s just simply by being human, you know showing you care for someone, it’s just that incredible, a place to network in and build relationships with people that you would ordinarily on the normal course of life never be able to connect to, so it’s just like you said the passion part of it, you probably tell, I am incredible passionate about it, and it’s a piece of you know, why I’m so successful, I think it relates to social media, because I’m like I am saying I am very passionate about it , I’m a big believer, specifically a big believer in the value of it for a small business owner, you know in the past, big businesses, one because they’ve had a lot of money to throw at it, especially from a traditional marketing methods – they have more money than small business owners, but small business owners are still struggling in my opinion to wrap their heads around you know, consistently marketing their business, but it gives you such an immediate edge, if you just get out there and be real engage, bring the value proposition to it, you will absolutely blow your business up, if you do those core things. It’s not always about the money, it’s about, you know, being value based in showcasing that you’ve have a service and a value to your ideal client. And you’re interested in serving them.
J: Absolutely! Well, I am just so happy that you gave me an opportunity to bring on the show and you know, I’m really blessed you gave a little bit of your morning to me and I have one last question for you.
KIM: Okay!
J: Hostess – they’ve re launched the infamous cupcake of grandeur and they recently posted a baseball for game day and then they put the word beneath it touch down, did you hear about that?
It’s here and we couldn’t be filled with more sweet joy. #OpeningDay pic.twitter.com/YndEyEgQQa
— Hostess Snacks (@Hostess_Snacks) April 6, 2015
KIM: I can hear about this. Oh my gosh! NO! How would I miss this one? J: Oh man! I figured, you wouldn’t heard this, it was all the craze on the news and everyone was talking about how, oh it went super viral because everyone was making fun of Hostess this because of this pole fiasco and then they came out afterwards saying, “yeah! It was on purpose and it obviously worked.”
The Hashtag Hijack Marketing Method
KIM: Well that’s pretty awesome, and see that’s the interesting thing too, well I just, you know, I’ll tell you some of the story sort of. Do you remember during the super bowl there was a one of the commercials was, oh I don’t exactly remember the connotation, but it was basically a video that was lifting up a girl? And then used the hashtag #likeagirl and so I wrote a blog post, leveraging that hashtag, that was about a top social media women who were rocking it on social media, hashtag like a girl. And it was incredibly viral, or you know compared to the some of my other content and it got on the first page of google in organic ranking because I used the hashtag like a girl. So, concept of you know tagging, or the reason I bring it up is obviously big brands do certain things and they get things you know, sometimes on purpose but sometimes not on purpose nut sometimes you can actually grab a whole of concept and leverage it in your business in a unique way. Like I just took that hashtag and said you know like a girl and created a blog post, top 13 on social media who were rocking it like a girl and it was basically just a spin of you know, a huge brand hashtag. J: Wow! That’s the perfect hijacked. That’s what we call it, right? Hijacked. KIM: Exactly! You know, you can do the top movies that are out, you know that you get a lot of visibility; it’s the way to get your content into the conversation in a unique way. J: See, that’s why I like these little random nuggets. That’s why it was really cool. Well, I’m so thankful again to have you on here and if we could leave with the final thought any shout outs, is there anything that you want to just throw out there and say guys, you know, if you’re re-inventing yourself on social media or if you’re not on social media yet, and you want to get started, how would they do that?
Closing Advice from Kim Garst
KIM: Well, definitely, if you’re not on social media, I can’t encourage you enough to be, to get active and you know if you don’t have a lot of time, choose one platform get started, you know it goes right with those three things I’ve said at the beginning, the side you want from it, you know get your authentic voice sound, you know what kind of content are you going to share and you know, talk to people. It’s a big social event; you know it’s just like going to any social event in real life. There are broke people out there and you have to engage with them and chat with them. And as it relates just give them a shout out, you know I don’t know when this will go live, but do you know Ted Rubin? J: No. KIM: Well, Ted is somebody that you should definitely know. And if you would like an introduction I’ll be happy to give you an introduction. J: Okay. KIM: But one of the things that we’re doing – he recently, just a couple of days ago lost his mother and as kind of a way of you know honoring her today and more specifically to showcase the social family that we have, you know we’re showing our love of him and you know, kind of supporting him through this process is he asked us to use the hashtag rest in peace Bernice which is his mother’s name, so you know, it’s just going to give him a shout out and use again for it will kind of touch on this, but you know the relationships that you form on social media, the true family that comes as a result of that, it is kind of highlighted in this in the sense that were just all trying to support him, and you know, showcase in honor of his mom today.
” /> RT @Luewellyn: Today, my tweets will include #RIPBernice to honour life of my friend @TedRubin’s mother #family1st pic.twitter.com/IEO2EojJQp — Ted Rubin (@TedRubin) April 8, 2015
J: Wow. That is so powerful. We are trying to get this out today.
KIM: Okay! That will be great. Thank you.
J: Well, I am really fortunate to have you on here. If you guys don’t know who Kim Garst is, she is phenomenal, she is so much of value, guys I promised you, you just read one of her blogs which by the way, it could take you a very long time because you’ve had a lot of good stuff out there, but you just picked some blogs. I would recommend getting on social media, you want to do Facebook, or Twitter or Instagram, or Pinterest, anything that she talks about today, if she’s got blogs with guides, I would definitely recommend picking up her book and this is really good opportunity for you to take an action item to really step up to your game on social media and start increasing your business by building that trust and relationships to people want to do, like she said, I think Kim really nailed it at the beginning people are not online to buy your products, they’re online because they’re trying to connect with people, they are trying to see what’s going on, you know, and they’re not really looking for you to sell them something if you build that trust, I think to take away from this Kim, is that, if you build the trust and show the value you provide, people will take the next steps from sells in engaging with you and that’s how you can really engage with people as far as selling your product through who you are and be real and authentic and not try to be salesy.
Build Relationships, Stop Trying to Sell – WHAT?
KIM: Absolutely.
You don’t walk up to somebody you personally, I mean, at the gate you just met and you just say, “Hey I’ve got a great sale on my website, 20% off and you need to rush over there right now and buy something, you just don’t do that, right? So why is it OK to do it on social media? It’s not. You know, so, I will tell people, you know, it truly annoys me when somebody connects with me in Facebook and then the very first thing that they do, is they come to my personal page and share their business with me. I don’t go into their house and start spray painting on their wall, you just don’t do that. – Kim Garst
J: Yeah.
KIM: So, It’s kind of one of those things, you know, build those relationships and it’s not an immediate thing, you know you can’t just plop down on social media and think you’re going to have an extra $10,000 on sales this month, it doesn’t work like that. You have to do the work and you have to build those relationships, you have to bring the value and with then when you have done those things, then the opportunity for sales is absolutely there, when they need what your product or your service, and they’re ready for it, they’re going to buy from you.
J: Wow. That’s a perfect closing comment. That is really powerful.
KIM: Awesome. Well, it’s been so lovely to be here Jay, Thanks for inviting me.
J: Oh, you’ve bet! I appreciate your time and you guys heard it here on VA Staffer
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