Melanie
The Monday Morning Marketing Podcast is brought to you by Esther of IPA Group, bringing premier online promotion to your business.
Esther
And Melanie of STOMP Social Media Training, who empowers business owners to manage social media and marketing for themselves.
Melanie
And welcome back. It's me, Melanie, and I'm giving Esther a well-deserved break from doing the intro. Today, we're going to be talking about... Well, what are we going to be talking about? We're going to be talking about how to consistently show up for our audience. And this was a topic that was brought up as Esther was at an event a little while back. Esther, tell us about the event you were at.
Esther
It was a great event called UpLift Live. It was all about LinkedIn. And you think just talking about one platform for an entire event from 9:00 in the morning to 5:00 in the evening can be a bit tiresome. But it was great because you got to see all about all the different sections of LinkedIn and the different things that you can do with it. So I would highly recommend it when it comes back round again. It's run by John Asperian, Gus, I'm going to butcher his last name, so I won't even try it, and Jeremy Freeman. So do have a look out for UpLift Live. And yeah, highly recommend going to the next one.
Melanie
And this particular topic, who brought this particular topic up?
Esther
So this particular topic was brought up by a couple of the speakers. So one of them that I remember talking specifically about it was a lady called Gillian Whitney. And she came all the way over from the United States to talk to us. And her angle on LinkedIn is going live on LinkedIn. And this is something that she said from the very start that when she first started on LinkedIn, her thing was to go live. And so she chose, rather, a day of the week at a time. And she went live, and her very first live, nobody showed up. But she kept going live at the same time on the same day every week. And now she has a massive audience and people show up because they know exactly when she's going to be on and exactly what platform she'll be on. So there's no surprises. And she blocks off that day of the week and that time of the week, no matter where she is in the world, she will go live at 10:00am pacific time on a Wednesday. I think it is now. I might check that one. But that's her example. Another of the speakers, and I want to say it was John Asperian said it, that he started showing up consistently for his audience based on his analytics. So when he looked at his analytics and saw when the majority of his audience that he had already cultivated were online, that's when he decided to be online. Now, he doesn't go live all the time. He does his Friday shout outs on a Friday, as you would imagine. But it's not just about turning up to go live, it's about turning up, posting your content, sticking around for any comments, any answers, any questions that people might have about your content, going and connecting with other people and commenting on their content. And that is how they are consistently showing up for their audience by choosing a date, a day, specific day of the week, specific time to do a specific activity and interacting with other people around that same time.
Melanie
See, this is proof in the pudding in that you can make time for anything, literally anything. You made time to go to this event, obviously at the detriment of other things, but you made time for it. And when you want to do something, you make time for it. And I love the two examples examples that you gave there. One person helped people understand when they could get the best value was, let's say, Wednesday, 10 o'clock Pacific Time. If you came along then, you would have her undivided attention, she'd respond, she'd give, she'd give lots of value. And then there was John who decided to look at his analytics and see when his audience was most available. So one person was saying, if you make yourself available for me at this time, you'll get the most value. And another one was saying, I can see when you're available and I'm going to make myself available to you.
Esther
Yeah.
Melanie
So it's interesting paradigm there, isn't it?
Esther
It is. And it's not just on LinkedIn that you can do this, because we've seen it and we've mentioned Amanda Webb before in her Friday morning digital coffee, which is another way of showing up consistently that she does every Friday. There's also Emma York with her tea and tips. Again, I think that's a Friday. During lockdown, lots of people would go live at exactly the same time.
Melanie
USA Biz Party?
Esther
Yes, USA Biz Party every Tuesday at 1:00 PM Eastern, Eastern Standard Time in the USA. So work that out for your time zones. But that's every Tuesday. That's a Twitter our chat, and that's been going on for six years. So that is consistency in action. And people then get to know, oh, so if I work my schedule out, so say for the 1:00 PM Eastern time, I will have lunch at that time, or if it works out to be about 10:00 AM Pacific time, I'll have my breakfast break or I'll take a little break to be able to interact with the people who are there talking in this chat, because it's a good That's the right way for you to get your information out across to lots of other people. If you're the person thinking about going live or thinking about hosting an event and you want that event to be memorable, Choose a day and a time that is exactly the same each and every week or month. You don't have to go live weekly. You don't have to do an event every week. But if you chop and change and go, well, this week I'm free on a Monday at three, and next week it'll have to be on a Wednesday at one. People aren't going to remember where they can find you, how they can find you, what time you're available. And it'll just weaken that connection that you have with them.
Melanie
Yeah. And it's a personal choice thing, isn't it? I mean, you can look at your analytics or you can just say, look, I know that now the kids are at school full-time. I can definitely do 10 o'clock on a Tuesday morning. And so it's just a mental decision that you make. And a lot of it's down to providing accountability for yourself, I think. So what we're asking you to do today is to think, how many times do you feel you're actually opening yourself up to being available to your audience on a regular basis? How can you be more consistent? Is it, can you post more consistently? Can you video more consistently? Can you go live more consistently? Can you do more newsletters consistently? What is going to make you more consistent? And it may not be going live. That's not for everybody. We get that, don't we?
Esther
We know from personal experience, we know these things.
Melanie
But it could be that you create pre-recorded videos and they go out consistently at that particular time on that particular day every Every single week. Now, Matt Hughes is another fantastic example of consistently showing up using video. So try and think how you can be more consistent and work towards that. And that could eventually, like the people that Esther has met, could be the USP.
Esther
Yeah. And like we said, it doesn't have to be going live. It doesn't have to be on a specific platform or anything. I even remember, sending an email to somebody that I wanted to get a reply from. And they sent an email, they had an automatic response coming straight back saying that they check their emails twice a day. So that also gives you the... They're consistent in only checking their emails, say nine o'clock in the morning, four o'clock in the afternoon. But you know that you will get an answer at one of those times rather than, oh, well, they'll see it at some point and dear knows when they'll reply. They have set that goal and set it up that people know when to expect an answer, and they know when that person will be online to answer. If you do have a question in the future, then you know when to send the emails. So it sets up that line of communication very nicely to say, look, thank you. This is when I'm available, either email me back then or that's also when I'm available to take phone calls. Having that means that people aren't going, well, that was very rude, didn't reply, especially in the age of automatic reply that we expect these days. People send messages to social media platforms at 2:00, 3:00 in the morning, and obviously, most people are asleep. So it's setting up that consistency of I reply to messages at whatever time I go live on this day at this time. I am available for Q&A's at XYZ time. And your audience will appreciate the consistency. They will appreciate knowing in advance that this is what you're doing, and they will thank you for it.
Melanie
It's all down to customer expectation at the end of the day. So was there any other takeaways that you got from UpLift?
Esther
Far too many, but I think we could actually turn them into lots of other podcasts because it was just not even a sea, what's bigger than a sea, an ocean of information and given to us over lots of different speakers, I mean, in lots of different areas of LinkedIn. So I think we'll do a couple of podcasts just on LinkedIn. Don't be scared, people. I'm hoping it won't be boring, but we'll try and see if we can get some of the speakers to come on and explain a little bit about what they do and how they use LinkedIn to create Their Audience. And now a quick word from our sponsor. Get ready to be a social media superstar with Feedalpha. Their friendly AI and super simple tools make it a breeze to see what your followers are into. That means you can post the cool stuff they love right when they're most likely to see it. Check out feedalpha.com to find out more and take your social media to the next level.
Melanie
Awesome. Well, thanks so much for giving us an outline of how to be more consistent and the top tips you gleaned from UpLift Live. Come back very soon and hear some more podcasts about, apparently, LinkedIn. And, yeah, I'm not very good at this signing off thing. I'm much better at actually starting. So let's swap for a little while. What do you reckon, Esther?
Esther
What? So you do all the intros and outros and I just say, bye?
Melanie
Yeah, pretty much. You sign out and I'll sign in.
Esther
Okay, let's do that. That's it for today, guys. We'll talk to you next week. Until then. Bye-bye.
Melanie
Bye.
It's weird. It feels like I have to suck at one of the two things, and now I'm sucking at the end rather than the beginning.
Esther
It only gets better with practise.
Melanie
Yeah, but I've been doing the end longer than I've been doing the beginning.
