399: Transforming Social Media Efforts into Tangible Results- with Louise McDonnell

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Social Capital podcast is sponsored by Keystone Click, a strategic digital marketing agency that believes in order to market to your customer, you need to understand your customer. Learn more at KeystoneClick. com.

The topic of relationships ties in very closely with marketing. That's why I continue to bring on marketing experts with a variety of backgrounds for you to learn and grow from today's guest is Louise McDonnell. She is renowned expert in leveraging social media to enhance sales and leader generation for coaches, consultants, and online entrepreneurs. She offers a comprehensive suite of services, including a complete done for you package, group coaching, and online training aimed at converting social media efforts into tangible business results.

As the founder of Sell on Social Media, Louise leads an agency dedicated to developing and implementing custom digital strategies that drive real results. Her team excels in creating actionable plans that effectively integrate strategy with execution to boost sales and market presence. Louise also establishes the Academy, an online platform offering training in sales driven digital strategies.

It features group coaching and mastermind sessions to support collaborative learning and practical strategy development. This platform is designed for professionals eager to expand their digital marketing skills and achieve sales growth. Louise, welcome to the show.

Are they not sure where to start when it comes to using social media? Or are they very busy creating content on social media, but it's not leading to any new business or any leads? Or are they just wanting to totally skip organic content and just go move to the paid ads? And surprisingly enough, it's usually over 60 percent of businesses who come back and say they're busy on social media, but they're frustrated because it's not leading anywhere.

It's not giving them any sales or any new leads. And that's what I, that's what I help businesses with.

So I, like I said, in the intro, a lot of what we believe at Keystone Click is that you need to know and understand that customer in order to properly market to them. Do you want to talk to that a little bit?

So if they want to use social media to grow sales and leads, what is it exactly that they're selling? Because it's one thing to have a coaching package or a program to sell, but it's another thing to communicate that effectively to the target audience and to convince them and to persuade them through your messaging that you have the solution to their problems.

So you're completely right that the starting point is understanding what it is you're selling. Who you are serving, what is their pain? How does that show up every day in their lives and how can you get their attention in order to convince them that you have the solution?

So I'm going to start with the negative. What does not work is to create a generic kind of 50 shades of vanilla content that is, it doesn't get anybody's attention. It doesn't speak to your core messages. It doesn't differentiate you in any shape or form from your competitors.

So there's a lot of that type of content, which is now floating around the internet. If you see even how the algorithms within all the different social media platforms are trying to cope with this, and they're trying to weed out that generic content that just, it just does not perform.

So number one, there's a lot of people creating a lot of generic content in written form, but also AI generated images, which I feel don't serve anyone, to be honest. Not only that, you have people who outsource their social media to content creators who are creating this generic content as well.

So it's people creating the content, but also be careful if you're thinking about sourcing your social media. You have to have a plan and a strategy and you have to be able to communicate that to whoever you're outsourcing it to. So outsourcing isn't a bad thing, but if you can't clearly comm unicate to the person that you're outsourcing to how you're different, how your product is different, who you're targeting and how you can persuade them through your messaging and through your social media content that you're the person, you're the solution to that problem.

Then you can't effectively outsource your social media as well. So there's the two big problems that I see with AI is that the generic content or outsourcing to people who are producing this generic content. Or not showing your own face or your own team's face on your social media because instead you're using AI or generic images.

That doesn't work. Where AI is very effective is at helping to create your personas of the people that you're targeting. So for example, if you say well, I'm launching a new coaching program, this is the person that I want to target. This is the pain points they have. This is how it shows up in their lives. Create me a persona. So it's very good for brainstorming, for doing the background work on persona creation or even on product creation. And then once you've created your personas, it's very effective for asking you can use Chat GPT, for example, to review a landing page you've created or review a webpage or review an ebook or a lead magnet.

And, with taking it into consideration, the persona to give feedback on that and to let you know where your content is good or where, and where the gaps are. So social media or so AI is, is excellent from that point of view. I would also use it to help me with content creation, but I'd be very careful that it writes in my tone.

So one of my favorite prompts when it comes to using Chat GPT, for example, is just to check syntax and grammar. So I still write everything myself. I'm not having to worry, I can write it really quickly because I know I can get Chat GPT to check the syntax and grammar. Um, Other AI tools that I love at the moment are the Hemingway app. com, where you can just use that to check the copy of what you're writing so that it's easy to understand. And so that's, when you create the content, that it's not this big, long, gobbledygook, flowery language that, you know, that, written in a way that nobody speaks, but that it's your content gets the attention of your ideal customer.

Because remember there's, they're on social media and they're flying by. You need to get their attention really quickly and you need to use words that are going to stop them in their tracks. So from that perspective, AI is exceptionally useful. It will help you be more productive and it will help you create much better quality content.

So it's definitely worth embracing as well.

And I would like to say, good inputs equal good outputs. And if you're just throwing in those bland vanilla inputs, you're going to get a bland vanilla output as well. So the more info, especially around your brand, your voice and that kind of directives, the better the output is going to be with AI and your social media content.

It's not going to attract your ideal customer. It's not going to be on message. You'll just be creating content for the sake of it. And I think sometimes that's what happens. People is that they fall into this trap of, oh, I must create content, but there's no focus around the content. There's no campaign. There's no start point. There's no end point. There's no measuring where it's leading. So getting the foundations first is the first point. And then after that, you've got to create, you've got to, I would try organize around campaigns. If you're selling a service, and it's a high ticket service going on social media and saying, Hey, I'm launching a new coaching package. It's 5, 000. Do you want to buy it? That just doesn't work. What we need to do is start creating funnels and we need to create like what we like to call micro yeses along the way. So somebody who doesn't know you, So if they don't know you, they don't trust you. Okay. So if they don't know, like, and trust you, they're not going to give you a few thousand dollars.

Whereas if you can create some kind of a lead magnet, some kind of an ebook or cheat sheet or some downloadable, something downloadable that you can get in front of them and get their attention and get a micro yes. So that's your first yes is to say, yes, would you like this? Would you like this ebook?

It's going to solve the problem that you have right now. And then after that, you need to nurture them through the funnel. And you may run webinars or challenges, or you may offer discovery calls, but you have to create some kind of a funnel. And so another one of the big problems, Lori, that I see people make is that they go to social media without having this funnel created.

So if you're doing a launch in six weeks time, all the social media content that you create in the lead up to that is with the goal of getting as many people into the funnel as possible.

So the role of your social media content is to get in front of your ideal customer. It's to, it has, content has a number of different purposes. As I said, they have to know, like, and trust you. So they get to know you through awareness content where you know, you show up as Lori and you say, here I am.

I'm having a cup of coffee on a Saturday morning and it's really pretty outside. This is where I am. And so they get to see who you are as a person or, for example, shared a post a few days ago about a personal project that I worked on in a voluntary capacity. And we did something really good for the local community.

And so that's how people get to know you and like you, when you share content like that. So that's the awareness content. Then there's your expert content where you have to show up and you say, Hey, I know I'm an expert in solving problems to do with X, Y, and Z.

And that's where you give advice and you share your knowledge because that helps position you as an expert in the eyes of your ideal customer. So you have to produce that kind of content and then you have your sales content and that's where you're putting out your free lead magnets, your free guides, because that gives you a lead and it gives you something to nurture your prospect with.

And then you have your advocate content, where is content produced by your most loyal customers. So say, for example, somebody says, Oh, I worked with Louise and, after three weeks of working with her, I grew my sales by 50%. That's a huge endorsement in me and my services. So if you can have those four content pillars built into your content strategy, that's going to help you create content on social media, which is very goal driven.

There's a very, specific reason you want to get people know, and trust you and you want to get them into that funnel and saying yes to you or, those micro yeses with your lead magnet, with your discovery calls, with your webinars, whatever that may be.

And you're talking a lot about that and I love it. Because if we're just selling constantly, we're going to turn people away from us. So we have to add value. And then when we go to the ask for the sales or the lead magnet, whatever it may be, we've established that trust. And therefore that person will be willing to take the next step. But that's not going to happen without that. No, you like, you trust you that you're talking about.

And in my head, I thought, I asked the question, do I believe that they know, are they an expert in that area? And I'm like, No, because they just turned up out of the blue and I'm like, I know I, I just don't believe it. So the people who see you on social media, they have to believe that you're going to be able to actually provide the solution to their problems.

And another problem that I tend to see Lori is people give up too quickly. They think, you have .To be showing up consistently. So I will say, instead of thinking three posts, think three months. You know, so it's going to take time to gain traction.

It's going to take time to, for somebody, if you keep repeating your core messages, it takes time for them to get that message and to believe that message. And then another thing you need to be, which is actually so important is you need to be persistent because sometimes what happens, people, as they get a bit down, they go, they're all gung ho and they're all delighted to with this new campaign that they're working on and then they create some posts on their social media, whatever channels that they're using.

And then, you know, maybe one or two of them perform quite well. And then there's some other posts which just don't perform that well. You know, Maybe they're only reaching a few thousand or even just a few hundred people and people get disheartened. And the message I would say here today is don't get disheartened.

You need to be persistent because the people who ultimately succeed are consistent and they're persistent. And that's what makes them ultimately successful.

Louise, if you could go back to your 20 year old self, what would you tell yourself to do more of, less of, or differently with regards to your professional career?

What happened was I left college and I was just, I just wanted to work in marketing. And at that time I had some experience in customer service and I just kept getting put into customer service roles, which I hated. They were just too repetitive for me. I couldn't cope with the repetition. So I remember when I left college, I've got a job and I left it within a few months, and then I got another job and I left that within a few months, and then the recruiter got me another job and she said, Louise, you cannot change. You just got to sit in this job for at least a year or a year and a half. So anyhow, the third job I got I, it was with a company called EDI Factory. And I did not know that EDI stood for Electronic Data Interchange, and that I was entering the world of digital marketingat it's very infancy.

So when I walked into the company on the first day I was horrified to find that there was no factory and that it was all these techies. And they were working on the internet. And at that time, I'm showing my age now, there was only dial up internet on one computer. So they were coding away, but anyhow, I found that I was the only female in the company.

And I found I was in a very male oriented, like an industry which was predominantly male. And as a young, I was in my twenties and I, Oh, I just found that really difficult. But the words of the recruiter were, in the back of my mind and she's you cannot move. So what I found was I stook it out and what I found, it was probably the best training I've ever had to work in a very male dominated industry at that time and to be young and to be female. I got a great training. I learned how to deal with people. I learned, I was always underestimated in terms, I would walk into a room and people would look and they'd underestimate me, which gave me the opportunity to really impress them.

Um, Because of what I found was that I absolutely love all things tech and I love all the really technical aspects of setting up things. And I love being able to explain them to customers or potential customers in a non technical way. So, the advice I would say, give it back to myself in my early 20s with that, I can still remember that day that I walked into that company would be just to stick with it, because It's going to be very difficult for a few years, but you're going to learn a lot and you're going to gain a lot of confidence.

And it's still to this day, that confidence um, stays with me. Other advice I would give myself is learn how to say no a little bit earlier, especially, you know, when you have your own business. You know, this Lori. So, you know, when you start your business, you're just afraid to say no to any business because it's all new.

So that would be my advice learn how to say no to projects which don't serve my own goals and the direction that I want to go in. And, And another piece of advice I give myself would be not to, not to be afraid to charge enough for your services, to value your expertise and to value.

What you can achieve for people and not to be afraid to charge. And these are advice that I would freely give to other people. But when I started my own business, I had to sit back and somebody nearly had to give me the advice for me to actually take it on board.

And if I say something that's not 100% percent absolutely true, don't bang your legs under the table because that gives it away.

We've been using Descript for our podcast editing, so that's created some efficiencies there.

So that's been a really fascinating resource out there. And I think you can do that for a number of things. You know, client kickoff meetings or presentations and just how, how could you have done better? What could I have done differently or how could I have captured the attention of my audience, you know, with this presentation better?

It's full of strategies and there's also little exercises in the guide which will really help you progress and help you to use social media more as a sales tool rather than just someplace where you can maybe waste a lot of time. So, um, If you find that you're spending time on social media and it's not leading to sales, definitely check it out.

All right any final words of wisdom that you'd like to leave with our listeners?

And the other thing I tend to say to people is that sometimes on social media, people are more concerned with how many followers they have. I've had clients who have run amazing campaigns on the back of a few hundred followers. And I've had people approach me at events saying, I've 30, 000 followers, but I can't monetize them.

So followers mean nothing. What's really important is your approach and your strategy.

If you have a burning marketing or relationship question, just reach out. I'd love to answer it on the show. And as mentioned before, connect on let's connect on LinkedIn. Connect with me, connect with Louise. We'd love to hear from you. I hope you enjoy today's show and I want you to go out there and get noticed.