10 Social Media Principles That Work for MrBeast's Beast Games, Lord of the Rings, and Your Business

[00:00:00] Here's a truth that might sting a little. Social Media, easy to do, but hard to do well. And the gap between those two things is exactly where most businesses are losing. My guest today has worked on some of the biggest entertainment franchises in the world. Invincible, Lord of the Rings, the Rings of Power, the Avatar franchise, and right now, Beast Games for MrBeast.

[00:00:24] And his message for every small business owner and entrepreneur doing their own social media is the same. It is a craft, not a chore. And there are 10 principles that make it work. Principles so evergreen, they'll still be true a decade from now, just like they were a decade ago.

[00:00:41] So you'll make sure you want to stick around for this one and listen all the way through because my guest is going to bring the goods when it comes to social media marketing on this next episode of the Your Digital Marketing Coach podcast. Social media, content influencer, marketing, blogging, podcasting, blogging, TikToking, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, SEO, SEM, PPC, email marketing. Woo!

[00:01:11] There's a lot to cover. Whether you're a marketing professional, entrepreneur, or business owner, you need someone you can rely on for expert advice. Good thing you've got Neil on your side. Because Neal Schaffer is your digital marketing coach. Helping you grow your business with digital-first marketing, one episode at a time. This is your digital marketing coach.

[00:01:40] And this is Neal Schaffer. Hey, everybody. This is Neal Schaffer, your digital marketing coach. Welcome to episode number 447 of this podcast. For those of you following me on social media and subscribing to the newsletter at newsletter.neilschafer.com. Well, hopefully you've seen that I've been making progress on my next book.

[00:02:05] I am literally narrating a chapter per day on my one-hour walks locally here in Irvine, California. And I have been doing this 14 days straight. That is a table of contents, an intro, 13 chapters. Wait, that's 15 days straight. Anyway, tomorrow, I can't wait to actually record the conclusion. Now, this is all raw material.

[00:02:30] And I'm writing a book on how to write a business book with the assistance of AI. And this is actually the case study I'm using is the process I'm going to teach you is exactly what I'm doing for my own book. So I can't wait to start digging through. It's going to be a lot of edits.

[00:02:47] But just like everything else, when you have a rough draft that AI helped you develop and it represents your own stories and experiences, it just helps accelerate your completion to anything you do, any content you create or any project that you want to complete. So excited to share that with you in the not so distant future. But today we are going to be switching gears because I have a really great conversation for you today. One that I think is going to hit home for a lot of you.

[00:03:17] So especially when you feel like you've been doing all the right things in social media, but not quite getting the results you hope for. And we've all been there, myself included. But here's something I've been thinking about a lot lately. We live in a world where anyone can post on social, right? The tools are free. The platforms are accessible. And AI has made it easier than ever to generate content at scale. And yet most businesses are still struggling to make social media actually work for them. Well, why?

[00:03:47] Why is this happening? I mean, access to the tools has never been the problem. The problem is not having a system. Not having principles. Not treating it like the craft it actually is. That's exactly why I'm so glad to have today's guest on the show. John Stephan. See, I'm mispronouncing it again. John Stephen Stancil. And yes, at the introduction, I do mispronounce it. But I like to include those clips because, yes, I'm human.

[00:04:15] And it's okay to err, right? To err is to be human. So it is me. It is real. And in fact, the video will be uncut as well for those of you that follow my YouTube channel. I hope you'll check it out. And for all of you that know, I do speak Japanese as my first language at home. So sometimes my English, I stumble. I'll be completely honest. But hey, maybe that's the charm point of my English. But anyway, enough said about that. I'm getting borderline cringy here. So John Stephan has one of the most unique career paths in social media marketing.

[00:04:45] He started as an English literature teacher who figured out how to turn Facebook into a classroom tool and became the first full-time social media manager at Texas State University. And then made a leap of faith that led him to freelance work on some of the biggest entertainment franchises in the world that I already introduced to you in the teaser to this episode. And through all that, he wrote the book literally on what makes social media marketing actually work.

[00:05:11] It's called The 10 Principles of Effective Social Media Marketing, published by my friends over at Kogan Page. So in today's conversation, you're going to learn why goals, not followers, not viral moments, are the only thing that matters when you start a social media program and how to make sure your goals are actually realistic. You're going to learn why audience alignment needs to happen before anything else and how John Stephan researches audiences even when there isn't much being said about a brand online.

[00:05:39] And the one principle he says sits above all the others, that social media marketing is fundamentally human and why that matters even more in the age of AI. And to repeat what I always say, social media was made for people, not for businesses. I love the way that John Stephan frames it. This is one of those conversations that reminded me why the fundamentals never go out of style, whether it is before AI or with AI or much into the future.

[00:06:09] Without further ado, here is my interview with John Stephan Stancil. You're listening to Your Digital Marketing Coach. This is Neal Schaffer. Hey everybody, this is Neil Schaefer. Welcome to another episode of the Your Digital Marketing Coach podcast. Social media marketing. For those of you that have read digital threads, you know we have discoverability, we have email, direct communication, and then we have the huge world of social.

[00:06:38] And for a lot of small business owners, entrepreneurs, founders, it can be a struggle to be able to consistently publish authentic content that helps move the needle for your business. So I can't think of a better guest today than the author of this book, The 10 Principles of Effective Social Media Marketing, who is going to school us on how we can all be more effective social media marketers. John Stephan Stancil, the author, welcome to the podcast.

[00:07:06] Thank you. It's John Stephan Stancil. Yeah, and it's funny. I don't edit this stuff out. Yeah, and it's funny because just before we started, I'm like, how do I pronounce your name? Because I'm going to say John Stephan. Anyway, it happened. John Stephan Samsel, welcome to the podcast once again. And congratulations on really writing a definitive book on these effective principles of social media marketing.

[00:07:30] We're going to dive into that book in a bit. But first, I want to start with, obviously, when we were born, social media was not a thing. So how did this all get started? What brought you into the world of social media marketing? Yeah, this was never my plan. I'm not supposed to be here. My goal was to go back to college and get my PhD in literature. I've got a master's degree in literature. My undergrad degree is in radio television production way back in 2000. So I actually learned how to splice tape manually and all of that sort of thing.

[00:07:59] And I went to a top-of-the-line television editing program and all of the equipment that we had now, we have on our phones now. Yeah, I can imagine. So I was teaching English as a second language at a university and noticed my students weren't paying attention to me. They were on their phones all the time. And this new thing, Facebook, had just started.

[00:08:22] And unlike other teachers and faculty, I thought, well, how do I turn this into a tool and not a toy and teach the students how to use this as a way to be useful to them? So I started creating Facebook groups for all my classes, doing things like, okay, who's going to be responsible for taking a picture of the whiteboard and sharing it with the class on the Facebook group? And one thing led to another, and I started doing more and more of it to promote our department.

[00:08:47] I became the go-to person on campus as the social media guy to know, so other departments started asking me to do it. And finally, I was like, hey, can I be the social media person at the university? And this was 2015-ish. And we don't have that position yet. So I said, well, you know what, I'll go find a school that does. And I went to Texas State University, and I was their first full-time social media manager.

[00:09:12] Eventually, after my son was born, the school that I was originally at in my hometown came to their senses and wanted to hire somebody. So I went back there and was their social media manager several years later. And then during COVID, well, I'll put it this way. One thing I learned being in higher ed in that mentality that one day I was going to go get my PhD was publish or perish. So the whole time I was working on social media at the university, I was going to conferences and speaking about it.

[00:09:40] I was writing in peer-reviewed journals about social media marketing. I was on Twitter and developing a following of other social media marketers daily just talking about what I did. And COVID hit, and I got burnt out doing Crisis Calm for a university, as you can imagine. A lot of angry parents, a lot of confusion. And finally, my wife said, she said, hey, you've got about, at the time, I had about 10,000 followers on Twitter.

[00:10:04] She said, why don't you quit and put it out there that you're looking for something else and see what comes up? And I took that leap of faith. And the power of a personal brand, man, I'll tell you, my DMs filled within like half an hour of people wanting to either interview me. And one of them was someone at Prime Video who said, hey, from your social accounts, I can tell you know your social. You're kind of a nerd. You talk about comics too. So we've got this new television show called Invincible.

[00:10:34] Would you like to come on board as a freelancer for three months and work on this show? And I jumped at it. I was thinking, okay, yeah, I'll just do that until I find another full-time job. But it went so well. They asked me back for the next season. More clients in the entertainment industry started coming to me asking to work on their shows. And that was five years ago. So I've been pretty steady doing the freelance thing, mostly in entertainment. But I've worked for startups, small businesses, a little bit of everything.

[00:11:02] I worked on Lord of the Rings, Things of Power, the Avatar franchise. I'm currently working on Beast Games for Mr. Beast. So it's been quite a journey. So yeah, and here I am. Very, very cool. I mean, outside of all that, you also wrote a book. So what prompted you to do that? Again, it kind of goes back to the academic in me, right? That's always been the goal in mind. At some point, I want to have a book written.

[00:11:30] And again, coming back to having that personal brand as a publisher came to me and said, Hey, you've got all these great posts and you're respected in the field. Would you be interested in writing a book? And I had a few ideas in mind. I pitched them one that I was thinking of called, What if I could distill social media marketing into 10 principles? I'm a big fan of the designer Dieter Rams. He has the 10 principles of good design.

[00:11:57] What would that something similar to that look like for social media and be as evergreen as his principles are? Like he, I think, I believe he wrote his 10 principles in like 1972. And they're still applicable today, even with, you know, so much changes and so many changes in technology. How can we do that for social media? So I kind of just, you know, took my 10 years of working in the field of like, okay, what has

[00:12:23] been true since day one to me and is still applicable today and then put that into a book. Very cool. Yeah. And Kogan Page, they're a excellent publisher. I've engaged with them as well. Highly respect. A lot of my friends have published with them as well. So yeah, I don't think you could have picked a better publisher. So yeah, they're fantastic. Yeah. So, so fast forward to today, a lot of businesses, you know, entrepreneurs, small business owners listening to this podcast. They're like, okay, 10 principles, you know, what am I missing?

[00:12:52] Where would you get started when, whether it's prime video or, you know, any, any new client reaches out to you to start applying these principles? What is the beginning sort of onboarding look like? Goals are everything, right? What are your goals and are they realistic? And from there we can figure out what the next steps are and where to go. And also, yeah, coming down with a set of realistic goals.

[00:13:19] That's not a list that just goes on and on forever. I worked with the Texas Department of Transportation. And one thing I asked them, I asked their entire C-suite, I said, please send me your top three goals for your organization's social channels. And, you know, C-suite, you know, there was about half a dozen people up there and they all emailed me back and not the same answer twice, you know, all, all different, you know,

[00:13:48] and there were noble goals. We want to reduce the number of traffic fatalities. We want to reduce the number of drinking and driving, which very, very important, you know, needs to be done. But if you asked their audience, it would say, we want to know when the construction on the highway is going to be done, you know? So I presented that to them. I said, hey, look, here are all your answers. Let's pick three and narrow it down.

[00:14:13] And if it doesn't apply to one of those goals, it's not going on the channels. And that was, that was a great place to start from and kind of really narrow down their focus rather than try to be all things to all people. Well, you gave us a few important hints there. Number one, obviously goal oriented, that the goal is everything. Number two, Rome wasn't built in a day. You can't do everything. You got to focus on a few important things that'll move the needle. But you also said something very interesting, which was audience alignment, which is you want to do this.

[00:14:43] Your audience wants to hear that. Where does that, does that come at the very beginning of an engagement or obviously for, you know, everyone listening is having a virtual consult right now. Where does that, that audience alignment or trying to figure out what your audience wants and working that in your strategy, at what point does that take place? I am a major proponent of audience alignment before anything else, especially working in the entertainment industry of like listening to the audience.

[00:15:10] And before anything, I love to do like a good deep dive snoop into what the audience is saying about a show before I, you know, when I, when I first get on board with it or, or when I, when I was interviewing for a job at Texas state university, the first thing I looked at was what are the students saying about the university? And what I loved about that, what attracted me to working with them was that as opposed to other universities I was interviewing at the students legitimately talked about how

[00:15:39] much they love the university, you know, but on another side, you know, you can see the negatives, the things that they want improved, the things that they don't like. And the things that, that seem to be lacking, that they're not getting the information there, you know, what misconceptions are out there that we can correct. So going in and really understanding your audience is just, it's absolutely vital, you know, in, you know, work again, like working on the entertainment industry, like working

[00:16:08] on a show like invincible, you need to know what the fans want, what their, you know, sensitive points are, how you can best engage them and let them know you're one of them. I think it's really important and identify with that. And the only way you're going to be able to do that is just listening everywhere you can. I get up on Reddit and read the threads, you know, AI really helps out now because you can kind of have some of, especially on a large account where there's thousands and thousands

[00:16:35] and thousands of comments and there's no way you can read them all. It's good to get a summary, but I also like just to see it for myself. So I'll get, I'll log into Reddit. I've got a few burner Facebook accounts. Don't tell Mark Zuckerberg where I can join like fan groups and read without, you know, revealing who I am. So yeah, getting in there and really listening to your audience, I think is paramount importance. So you're not using any social listening tools. You are going in as if you were a average social media user using the same channels and looking

[00:17:05] at it from the same perspective. A little bit of both, right? I will use brand watch for some of my larger clients who have access to that, which is incredibly useful to go in there and be able to do that. But like I said, I do just personally, I feel like I learned more getting my hands dirty and going in there and feel like, okay, I've seen this for myself. And even, you know, when, when I have access to the best tools, I still like to do that because it just, I feel like I get a little bit more insight.

[00:17:34] It just gives me that little extra edge that I wouldn't get without it. Makes total sense. So what about those startups and smaller businesses will, where there isn't a lot being talked about? That's one of the problems they have. You know, how do you go about trying to figure out their audience? Are you looking at competitors, looking at the entire industry or what's, what's sort of the formula that you use? And this is a feeling, you know, when I, when I talked and take on clients outside the entertainment industry,

[00:18:03] or I speak to at conferences, people say, well, you know, it's easy for you. You know, like people are talking about Lord of the Rings just all the time. They don't have to be prompted. You know, of course they have fans. I work for, you know, a B2B company and there's nothing. And what I tell them is like, it doesn't matter big or small. Your brand has fans. Like, and there are people that care about it and care about your product.

[00:18:27] They may not be as large, but they can be just as loud as fans of a sports team or a television show or something like that. One thing I like to point to is like, there's a community of fans of scented candles. They're called fandals and that's a real thing.

[00:18:46] So you have to do, might have to do a little bit more work and finding some of these smaller niche communities of people talking about your industry, but they're out there. You just have to take the time to really, really find it and listen in. So it may not be TikTok, might be LinkedIn. Right. Might not be Reddit, might be X. And it might not, you know, it might not be a thousand people, but it might be a small group of, you know, a couple dozen that just are really into this one thing.

[00:19:17] And you can, can latch onto it. Also, like you said, looking at competitors and what people are talking about there, just anything industry related, just dive into that and hear what people have to say. Okay. And once again, I'm assuming, you know, if you can afford a social listening tool, but even if you can't, a combination of just doing searches, keyword searches in social media, AI research, and just spend a little bit of time to dig out where those people are. Is that the recommendation? Exactly.

[00:19:45] You know, I spend just a little bit of time each day taking a look and then seeing what I can find. Gotcha. Okay. So let's switch back to those principles, the 10 effective principles of social media marketing. And for those businesses that are listening, and we're going to talk about how to potentially outsource or work with, you know, freelancers, what have you, or make more time for your social media.

[00:20:08] But for those that are already doing it, what are some, without knowing, you know, who's listening exactly and what their exact situation is, what are some of the common mistakes or common areas where you see room for improvement in general, when you look at the social media of just the average business? I think areas for improvement are that social media is a professional field. It's not something that just anyone can do. I refer to it as a craft.

[00:20:37] It is something that, you know, it takes time and effort and experience to be able to do. It's not something you can just hire an intern and have them run your socials or find a teenager and be like, okay, you're Gen Z, go do the socials. It's not like that. Maybe it was in the beginning when we first started, but now, you know, it is something that requires that insider knowledge. I like to say, I'm like, most of us drive a car, right?

[00:21:06] And we can put gas in the car, maybe we can change the oil in it. But if something really goes wrong, you need a mechanic to fix it. And it's the same thing with a social media manager. Like I'm a social media mechanic, right? Most of us have, you know, social accounts that we can do our own thing on. But when you want to, you really figure it out, you need to find an expert. Now, that's not always something that a small business owner can do.

[00:21:29] They don't have, maybe you don't have the budget or bandwidth, but you need to give it the respect that it deserves and take the time to really learn. Learn what it is if you're going to take it on yourself. Got you. So when you say a craft, and this is something I'm a firm believer in as well, so thank you for saying it. But because it's a craft, it requires time. It requires experience.

[00:21:52] And it just requires someone that's been there, done that, seen that, that just is an extension of that time invested and those skills gain. And that is not something that just overnight one can become. Is that exactly the right way of, yeah, I look at it the exact same way. So based on that then, for business owners that don't have the time, right? Obviously hiring someone full-time that can do that is one great way to do it.

[00:22:20] But if they don't have the budget, even hire someone full-time. Thus, we have the agencies, freelancers. It's a, you know, it's a dark and mysterious world. But what would you recommend? I mean, you've got Craigslist. You have, you know, friends of friends. Where would you even begin to help a company with that search for that resource that will help them? LinkedIn is an amazing resource, for sure.

[00:22:47] You know, take a look at some of the social media manager community on there. We love to talk about our jobs. So we're very vocal. Right now, there's a great, great community of social media managers. And, you know, I would even go so far as to take a look at your personal social feed and look at the brands out there that you think are doing well and reach out to that social brand, social media manager.

[00:23:13] And not to hire them or steal them away, but to say, hey, I really like what you do. Can you recommend anybody for me? You know, we love to talk about our jobs. So it's not like a cringe sort of thing. Like, who is this guy? Like, oh, yeah, I'd love to tell you about, you know, so-and-so who I think does really good work. That's a great way to do it. Take a look in your community. There's a lot of folks in smaller towns that do really good social media work. A lot of smaller agencies that do really well.

[00:23:42] Like, look, you know, who are, you know, the people in your town hiring? What is the go-to agency there? And go from there. But also just be very careful and cautious about anyone who gives you, you know, the promises sound too good to be true. True. There's also a lot of folks out there that will overpromise, you know, I see on TikTok all the time people that are like, oh, you know, I may, you know, got this business went viral and, you know, overnight. I got them a million followers.

[00:24:12] Well, where are those followers coming from? Right. So you need to be sure that you're finding somebody honest and trustworthy. Yeah. It goes without saying everybody listening that, you know, followers can be bought. Views can be bought. Engagement can be bought. And I've seen some, a lot of small businesses where they had someone getting back to this point. They hired someone. Their craft was not social media. It was something else. They were put in charge of social media. The boss wanted more followers. So they delivered more followers by buying more followers. Exactly.

[00:24:42] It happens, right? Yeah. I see it all the time. And you can kind of, when you know the telltale signs, you can spot it when it's happening. So yeah, that's something out there. And again, it comes back to goals, right? And what's going to work well for you and your brand. A million followers for a local chain of copy shops is not going to really do a whole lot for them. Yeah.

[00:25:07] You know, you like to have those numbers get big, but maybe, you know, lowering those expectations and goals and not making follower count the be all end all is going to be an important thing for you. So once you get to those goals and you have a resource, whether they're internal or external, what are sort of the next steps that, you know, businesses need to take to ensure we were just really talking about the planning, but in terms of the implementation, what does a business, I guess, need to prepare for this resource,

[00:25:37] whether they're internal or external to help them be successful in reaching those goals? Oh, there's so many, so many areas. One of the first things I like to do when I, when I take on a new client is really solidify what the brand voice on social is going to be and what that's going to look like, right? We've got our goals. We know who our audience target audience is. Now, how are we going to talk to them? You know, right. What are our posts going to look like? What are they going to sound like?

[00:26:05] Are we going to take, you know, are we, are we going to have that, that sort of highfalutin voice? Are we going to be more casual? What, what are we going to do? But we need to solidify that because your goal in the longterm is. And one of my, my principles is that social media is a team effort. So even if you, you know, only have one social media person, eventually you're going to want to expand it out and be a team. So you need to be sure you have those tone and voice documents.

[00:26:35] So one post doesn't sound like it's written from a, by a, you know, middle-aged guy living in Arkansas, me. And the next one, you know, sounds like it's written by, you know, a college student. So that's incredibly important and going forward. And that also kind of helps give you a bit of a guidepost to, of how that content is going to be created, what it's going to look like. Gotcha. And then what are the questions on the other hand, there's the give and take.

[00:27:04] We, we will provide you these resources. One of them being that the brand voice, as you said, you know, visual branding style guidelines, but what can a business, you know, expect or what is the conversation they should be having so they set up these goals. Should they be expecting the social media manager to say, I am going to do this, this and this to reach those goals. I'm going to have these metrics that you're going to manage me on. I don't see many social media managers doing this, which is why I asked the question, but

[00:27:31] how do you align that relationship between the way a social media manager sees success and the way that a CEO sees success? Yes. And it does come down to those goals because the metrics that you're going to use to judge the success is going to be based on the goals, right? So, you know, what, one thing that was really difficult when I was in higher ed and I would repeat to, to the university president and vice presidents ad nauseum was no one decides to go to a picks a college based on a tweet.

[00:28:01] And if they do, that's not a student that you want, you know, like, so it was very hard to prove ROI to say, okay, well, our social media efforts got us this many students because that's just, you're not going to be able to do that at all. So I tried to sit down and kind of triangulate ways that we could measure the effectiveness of our social channels. And plus we, you know, at a university, there's a multitudes of goals. It's not just recruiting students.

[00:28:30] It's being sure that they are aware of, you know, what resources they have. So they eventually do graduate all sorts of, you know, and communicating with the parents and things like that. So one example, you know, to increase enrollment was, you know, I can't, you know, make somebody convince somebody to go to the school based on one tweet, but I might be able to convince them to attend a campus tour. Right. So why don't we do a campaign for campus tours?

[00:28:56] And I can tell you exactly how many people registered for that campus tour based on our social media efforts. And that, that gave, and from that we could kind of extrapolate and kind of guesstimate the effectiveness of some of the more abstract goals a bit. And so it's going to depend again on your goals and sitting down with that social media manager and saying right, right off the bat, this is how we're going to, you know, this is the goal we want to achieve and this is how we're going to measure it going forward.

[00:29:25] And also understanding those, what those metrics are going to be, because you know, as well as I do, like social media metrics, you can make large numbers or pretty much make any number look good. But what does it really mean to your, to your brand and being sure you have that honest and open dialogue? Yeah. And you bring up a really important point, which is the education of the executives or whoever is in charge of managing this person or agency or resource is their understanding what social media can and cannot do, how it works.

[00:29:54] And therefore we may not be able to attribute 100% of the sale to this customer. However, we know that if social touched them or if they were on our mailing list or whatever that may be, I mean, I'm going beyond social right now, but understanding the way that all these channels contribute to each other. And, you know, I just wonder, is this a conversation that, that you or a lot of social media managers, you feel like you have to educate your clients on social media as part of this process. All the time. It never stops. Right.

[00:30:24] Because, you know, a new client comes, oh yeah, you're going to make us go viral. Right. Like what does viral mean to you? Right. Because it's such, it's not a definite term. And again, we're talking about like the, the local coffee shop, like, hey, you have a viral TikTok that gets millions and millions of views. Well, you're just only have stores in one city. That's not going to help you. So what, you know, what, what do these terms, what do these concepts mean to you?

[00:30:53] What can we do and what can't we do? And being very clear on that. Yeah. So based on that for the businesses that are listening, you know, obviously it starts with goals, but how would you virtually guide them to understand what can't and can't be done in social media when they think of all these fantastic goals they have for their social media program? Yeah. Yeah. It kind of comes back to sometimes you have to scale those big dreams down a little bit

[00:31:20] and say, okay, you're not going to be the next, you know, Mr. Beast, but here's what we can do for you. Right. I love competitor analysis and being able to say, Hey, give me a list of your five strongest competitors. Right. Right. And I will go in and give you a report of what they're doing, what I think is working for them, what I think is not working for them.

[00:31:46] There's a lot of information that you can find out that is, I love Meta's ad library where you can go in and see like what paid ads they're running, if any. And showing that off to your client, I think is really incredibly useful and kind of going from there and saying, okay, you may, may not be, and to bring it back to higher ed, like we can't make you the next Harvard, but we can probably, you know, nudge you up a bit

[00:32:14] in the rankings, you know, this much here. So gotcha. So when the social media manager is, you know, working on the social media, we have things like paid social. We have other things like user generated contents, influencer marketing. And I'm curious, how do you see all this fitting together at what time do you trigger what sort of activity? Okay. And again, it comes back to the beginning of what your goals are.

[00:32:43] And these are, these are, it's also an issue of that team effort too, because this is where an agency hiring an agency helps out so, so much more because social media has become so diverse in skills for, you mentioned like paid ads. Personally, I hardly ever touch them because it feels like the rules change every time I log into, to, to, to do it. So if you hire an agency, you're going to have somebody specifically unpaid.

[00:33:12] You're going to have somebody specifically on this, even in the area I'm in, it feels like I'm struggling to keep up because I need to know Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, which is X now, you know, the list goes on and on. Don't forget about Pinterest. Exactly. Exactly. So, so by hiring an agency, you're going to get that team that knows, you know, everybody kind of has their specialty area.

[00:33:39] And yeah, that, that, that's where, where it gets really, really tricky of, of finding that split between all of those things and finding that balance and, and what areas are the most important to you. Right. If you have that budget, I'm a big believer in paid ads, even though I don't do a whole lot of them, you know, of what you're going to get there. If you're wanting to nourish community, put a little bit more time and effort into community management.

[00:34:05] If you want, you know, to reach a younger audience, you're going to have to make that budget for TikTok and, and learn some video editing. So yeah, it's, it's a, it comes down to finding, finding what those goals are and what your resources are. Yeah. You know, I find there's two types of businesses, one that are just used to buying paid media and the others that think religiously, it would be anti-religious to invest in advertising for social media. It should be a hundred percent organic. Right.

[00:34:32] So, you know, for those that want to do it organically and for those business owners or practitioners that are listening that want to follow all your advice and want to follow all these 10 principles, but they just don't find they have enough time. What would be your, your advice? And there's never enough time for anything in life in pure, you know, to begin with, but vis-a-vis social media, what would your advice be? If you have limited resources and limited time, if you are a solo entrepreneur that you're

[00:35:02] doing it for yourself, you just need to make it a daily routine. It's like, it's like exercising, you know, you've, you've got to make a little bit of time for it. You know, I say, say even, even 15 minutes at the beginning of your day and 15 minutes at the end of your day is better than nothing. Right. It's better than just trying to do it between things whenever you've got, got a chance. But if you make it a routine, a part of your day, you'll be able to keep up with it.

[00:35:29] You start, you know, if you look at my personal social media accounts, I made a goal a long time ago. It was like, I'm going to post something about social media marketing once a day and around about seven 30 ish every day. You might see a post from me about that time for some reason, because I've created that habit. That's what my brain thinks of something to post something to do. So what I tell people, you know, my clients, you know, take 15 minutes at the beginning of your day to create a post.

[00:35:57] At the end of the day, go back, check, take, take a look, do some social listening, see what people are saying about, about your brand. What are you going to do there? And eventually you'll find that people will want to spend more time on it. And then you kind of worry like, okay, now, now you need to kind of pull back because you're, you're spending too much time on this, but 15 minutes at the beginning and 15 minutes at the end, I think is the best way to go. All right. Well, there you have it. So I'm not sure we covered, you know, all of the 10 principles

[00:36:24] today, but if there were any, you know, one or two more that you'd like to throw out as, as further advice, we'd love to hear what, you know, obviously we talked a lot about the planning, the strategy, some tips, but we didn't really talk a lot about the implementation. On this journey and the things that you're going to hit, you know, what would we want or two most recommended of those 10 principles for those that are listening?

[00:36:49] I think it's that social media marketing is human and that you need to go and listen and talk back to your audience. You know, I've got a bit about that, that how can you be human in the age of AI, but you very much can. And that means going in and listening to what your audience has to say, talking back to them, making people feel heard, I think is so valuable, you know, in all of the

[00:37:15] industries I've worked in, you know, it makes people feel special. It makes that audience come back. I loved working in higher ed when people would say, you know, say, Oh, I just, just graduated from the university. I'm so excited. I got my diploma and just typing out congratulations. That student felt like, Oh, the university heard me not realizing it was me in a little windowless office in the administration building, you know, or, you know, now working on television shows, people get so, Oh, the, the invincible account, you know, responded to me. And it's like,

[00:37:45] yeah, yeah. You said something nice about the show. Why not just say thank you or something, you know, and the larger you get and the more you scale, the harder is that is to do, but still going in every now and then, and just giving it that human touch, I think is, is of vital importance to me, like the, the humanity that the social media marketing is human is probably the, the guiding principle that all the other, the other principles kind of follow. And I guess if you want to, based

[00:38:12] on that, right, if you want to have those conversations, you need to begin the conversation yourself. And if those conversations aren't sparking engagement, I'm assuming you need to go to other places where there is conversation. Would that be, you, you, you got to get that conversation going one way or another, right? Go without audiences. There's somewhere out there. Somebody's talking, having relevant conversations that you can get part of and being able to, to find those and spot them. And that that's really, you know, one of the, the talents that you're going to get by hiring a

[00:38:40] social media manager is they kind of know how, where to go, how to find those, those things that you may not. But, you know, if you're a solopreneur and going in there and doing it yourself, it can be done and just take you longer. Yeah, absolutely. You know, John, Stephen, what I love about this conversation is you're not promising those viral tricks and shortcuts because they don't exist. And what you talk about is rooted in sort of the principles, those evergreen 10

[00:39:07] principles of design of 1972 that you talked about. We've been talking about these for more than a decade in social media marketing. I'm sure you know that as well. And it does, it really does come back for those that are listening and trying to figure out how to improve or get started. It does go back to digging deeper into those principles. And I love the fact at the end, you, you ended with human in the age of AI, even more important, but really getting back to, you know, human beings. And,

[00:39:33] you know, my daughter is currently in college and she just had her birthday and she got a text from her Dean saying happy birthday. Now the college only has like 1000 plus students and maybe the Dean is using some automated text platform to send it, but it, it was pretty remarkable, not just for my daughter, but for the parents as well to see that, to see that, you know, the college actually cares. So little human touch points have huge impact. And if there's one takeaway, I hope everyone gets

[00:40:00] from this conversation. It is that, and, and social is really the place to make that happen. Obviously, if you can text people that we can talk about text marketing, that's a whole different thing, but, but John Steven, this has been an amazing conversation. Any final words of advice you'd like to give our listeners? I would say, Oh, the thing I keep going back to there's so much, but I would say social media is easy to do, but it's hard to do well. So it's one of those things.

[00:40:25] If you're doing it for yourself, just give it patience, give it time. And, you know, eventually your business will grow and you can, can hire social media managers, but also even if you don't, or, or you do hire a social media manager, knowing it and understanding how it works and being able to communicate with your social media manager is going to pay off just giant dividends in the long run. So it's, it's worth understanding how it works. Yeah. And you know, any aspect I'll go beyond just

[00:40:52] social media, any aspect of marketing is going to be the same. If you just pay an SEO agency, a lot of money without understanding how it works, that often is a recipe for disaster, unless you, you really trust. And that is a, a reputable agency. So yeah, it requires, and I started my journey back in 2010 and I said, you know, this, it requires education and it still does. So hopefully those of you listening, you listen to this podcast, you, you listen to all the other episodes, you buy

[00:41:18] books, including John Stevens book right here, the 10 principles effective social media marketing. And thank you once again for being on the podcast. Now, if people want to go search you out, find your daily 7 30 AM social media posting, where can we send them? Yeah, I am on all the socials. My handle is J S Stansel S T A N S E L. Uh, you go to my website, J S Stansel.com. And as you said, you can find my book on Amazon or anywhere you find your books are

[00:41:44] sold. Excellent. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you for having me. All right. I hope you enjoyed that conversation as much as I did. And I think the timing of it couldn't be better. You know, we, we are still struggling with social media as a business. We talk about, or I talk about user generated content, influencer marketing, but for those big brands that want to establish communities that want to go a hundred percent organic, it's challenge, right? Easy to do,

[00:42:12] but hard to do well. And in a world where AI is making it easier than ever to produce more content faster, the gap between doing it and doing it well has actually gotten wider. In my opinion, not smaller, the brands and businesses that win are the ones who treat this as a craft. As my guest lecturer today with clear goals, real audience understanding, and a genuine human presence behind every post. If this episode resonated with you, I'd really encourage you

[00:42:39] to check out John Stevens book, the 10 principles of effective social media marketing available on Amazon and wherever books are sold. I'll have a link to it in the show notes. You can also find them on all the socials at app Mark J Stansel and at J Stansel.com. That's J S T A M S E L. A huge thank you to John Stevens Stansel for being so generous with his time and knowledge today. And all that's left to

[00:43:04] say is this is your digital marketing coach, Neil Schaefer signing off. You've been listening to your digital marketing coach questions, comments, requests, links, go to podcast.neilschafer.com. Get the show notes to this and 200 plus podcast episodes and neilschafer.com to tap in to the 400 plus blog posts that Neil has published to support your business. While you're there, check out Neil's

[00:43:32] digital first group coaching membership community. If you or your business needs a little helping hand, see you next time on your digital marketing coach.