68 - Social Media Fails and Lessons Learned

Episode Transcript:

Catelin: Oh, hey Rich.

Rich: Hey Caitlin, how are you?

Catelin: You know, I had a, a, a lunch that I look forward to talking about. Uh, well, aside from

Rich: that, yeah. Are you ready to talk about some common mistakes companies make on social media? Cause that's, that's our topic today. So it's good. You're ready to talk about that.

Rich: Otherwise we'd be screwed.

Catelin: Yeah. Well, I'm also looking forward to talking about the consequences. Oh yeah. The mother in me is quite excited to talk about how your mistakes will cost you for the rest of your life.

Rich: Yep. And we're not going to go into individuals. There's been plenty done on individuals who make stupid comments and lose their jobs.

Rich: Uh, we're going to talk about companies, like actual corporate entities saying like, Hey, yeah, that seems like a good idea. And then just. It's actually

Catelin: not.

Rich: Do you

Catelin: know what does seem like a good idea though? A breakfast martini.

Rich: Um, it does. I thought you were going to say sushi, but um, that also sounds like a good idea.

Catelin: Consequently.

Rich: Um, I had it the other day. It was very good.

Catelin: We had a lunch, um, the initial place we tried to go, cause it's like kind of a, it was like a cozy lunch day. There's some sinus things happening. Okay. Megan and I were both like, let's get some, some spicy curry. But, the Thai place was closed for cleaning, they're cleaning their vent hood, which is good because that prevents a fire, right?

Rich: It does, and it prevents gross stuff from falling into your food.

Catelin: Yes. So then we went next door. And, uh, right after we ordered, the health inspector came. And so it was like, while we were waiting and then eating, the health inspector was like doing his job and we couldn't really focus on the conversation because we kept just being like, should we be here?

Catelin: Like trying to listen in. Yeah. Is he going to come grab my

Rich: plate and close the place down?

Catelin: He did not seem alarmed.

Rich: It was probably just a routine check.

Catelin: It was their annual inspection, according to Health Department Tom, or whatever his name was. Uh, I'm pretty sure it was Tom. Alright,

Rich: Health Department Tom.

Catelin: Yep.

Rich: Cheers to Tom. Um, he

Catelin: had a little, he had a little like, emergency pack, uh, fanny pack scenario, waste bag, belt bag. What are we calling him now? I don't know. It had like a little hair net and like a thermometer. He was prepared.

Rich: Well, it's his little equipment bag.

Catelin: Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, and I'll bet.

Catelin: Anyway. I'll bet they have Inspector Tom. Yeah, I don't really need to, I don't really need sush any time soon. But

Rich: I believe that Health Inspector Tom probably did not have a breakfast martini today since he was on the job and doing inspectory things. I would assume not. Yeah. Um, but I think, so this one's interesting.

Rich: It came from London, which, um, okay, sure. I mean, it's gin, so that

Catelin: makes sense.

Rich: Uh, traditional English name Salvatore Calabrese, uh, in London created this breakfast martini. So it's gin, orange liqueur, uh, lemon juice, and then he put in orange marmalade.

Catelin: I'm into this.

Rich: I feel like the sweetness of that and then there's going to be the bitter because marmalade has the peels in it too.

Rich: That little bitter. Is that what makes a

Catelin: marmalade a marmalade?

Rich: It is, I believe. It's the, it's got the chunks of the fruit. It's, it's, well, that's a jam versus a jelly. I think a marmalade does have to have like the skin of the fruit in it. Maybe.

Catelin: I don't know.

Rich: Um, but yeah, so you got that sweetness, but then you get the depth from those, uh, orange peels that are in the marmalade.

Rich: Um, super refreshing for any time of the day, but, uh, it is called the breakfast martini. So I think you start your day with this one.

Catelin: You're correct. Marmalade is a fruit preserve made from the juice and peel of citrus fruits boiled with sugar and water. The well known version is made from bitter orange.

Catelin: It is also made from lemons, limes, grapefruits, mandarins. sweet oranges, bergamots, or other citrus fruits can also be a combination of those.

Rich: Interesting. Um, so we know kind of what's in it. Let's talk about how it all comes together, Caitlin. Yeah.

Catelin: Uh, we need an ounce and a half of gin Hendricks, if you're me, a half ounce of orange liqueur, like combier, or you could also use, uh, is it, it's not curacao.

Catelin: It's thank you. I always get those, the vowels. Let's do something funny. Yeah. And if you've got that on hand,

Rich: if you got that on hand for your margaritas anyway, cause it's a nice little easy thing in the margarita. It works. It's very orangey.

Catelin: Yes. Yes. Uh, so three quarters ounce of lemon juice, as we know, freshly squeezed, and then one bar spoon, which is about a teaspoon if I had to estimate of orange marmalade.

Catelin: And then you can garnish with a lemon wheel. So you add your gin, orange liqueur, lemon juice, and marmalade into a shaker with ice and shake vigorously until well chilled. And you want to double strain that if you are feeling extra into a chilled coupe glass and garnish with your lemon wheel. A little tip about lemon wheels, you can dehydrate them and still use them for garnish.

Catelin: And you don't have to have like a, like a juicing lemon and also a garnish lemon. Cause that's a lot of lemons at a home bar.

Rich: Yep, if we had time, uh, I would put down my headphones and run to our freezer and pull out our bag of freeze, uh, of dried, um, blood oranges, blood oranges, um, which are great because you don't use those very often.

Rich: So like it's helpful. I, you know what I would want to do with this? I would almost want to candy the lemon wheel. So it's a little sugary, like, You know, you do the candy and, I don't know, you put it in the pan with sugar or whatever. Um, however you candy fruit. It's

Catelin: making me want, like, a little, um, sugared cranberry.

Catelin: Because it's the season of sugared cranberries now. It is the season of sugared

Rich: cranberries, yeah. Um, maybe that'll come up with a Christmas drink or something.

Catelin: I took a very delicious cranberry jalapeno relish scenario to a wine tasting last night and I Could have eaten only that

Rich: that's interesting.

Catelin: Yes

Rich: a cranberry jalapeno relish. I like

Catelin: well I mean just like they called it salsa, but I'm like, this is relish guys. This is cranberry relish That's not from a can.

Rich: I mean salsa just means sauce. I think right like that's

Catelin: true

Rich: so, I mean technically like Like ragu in Mexico is a pasta salsa.

Catelin: But don't they call it gravy?

Rich: Uh, I don't know. Not in Mexico. Isn't there like an Italian

Catelin: gravy? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. In Italian.

Rich: Yeah, yeah, yeah. They can call it gravy. Oh, all right. So, um, I wish we had breakfast martinis right now, even though it's not breakfast time, but it's always time for a martini. Um, But let's like, take a quick break and then we will jump into these common, super common mistakes companies make with their social media.

Rich: And hopefully none of our listeners

Catelin: make these. Yes.

Rich: All right. So we are back and Caitlin has done a costume change. Well, mild costume change. Adjustment. I

Catelin: just, I, I don't know. Does anybody else call us if you feel like you get also get tired of being in your skin sometimes?

Rich: And if you call us, you'll get a free book. You get a book. You get a free book. So we'll just plug that again.

Rich: It's been all over the, uh, the, the web socials. I know.

Catelin: I've got 65 impressions on my tiny little LinkedIn audience.

Rich: Well, you'd think one of them would call in, but nobody's called in yet.

Catelin: One would think. One would think.

Rich: All right. So, um, We're talking about social media and 65 engagements and mistake number one, not engaging with your audience.

Rich: Did you engage with your 65 impressions, but nobody said anything, did they, or did somebody come? I think

Catelin: there were some likes, but nobody commented on it, so I did my due diligence.

Rich: And engaging with your audience isn't writing a post that says, dammit, you people who liked this. Why are you not commenting?

Rich: You jerks.

Catelin: I would never.

Rich: You don't want to shame your audience to engage them. That doesn't work with anybody. Um,

Catelin: no, that's like the fastest way to an unfollow. Yeah.

Rich: Yeah. And we're trying to gain more like followers and fans and so, so is every company, but like, so if people do comment, you should respond.

Rich: You can acknowledge it with a like, you can give it a love or a laugh or whatever. Yeah. Um, you can also just reply to it. Almost every social media software makes that easy, or you can do it native on the platform. Um, same thing with You

Catelin: should, if someone is commenting on your stuff, like that's an engagement opportunity to have a conversation, like, and that's the fastest way to demonstrate your brand personality.

Catelin: How you care about your customers, like there's no reason to not respond

Rich: to comments. Even if it's a negative comment, as long as they're not trolling, um, like if somebody has a legit complaint, your best thing to do is to actually respond to that and talk to them about it. Um, if it's really tense, you can take it offline, but still even just responding and saying, Hey, I want to know more about this.

Rich: It shows you care. The other thing people forget about messages and reviews, Caitlin. Um, If I leave you a message and it's a legit message and not a, um, I'm from the Facebook's support team and I'm going to delete your profile. That's not a real message. You don't have to engage with that. You should just write it.

Rich: Um, but real messages like actually acknowledge them and respond. Um, you can have an auto responder on most social media that tells people like, you know, we'll get back to you within 24 hours. Don't really recommend it.

Catelin: I don't either. I think a lot of places used to do that when it was first, I think, like, especially on Facebook.

Catelin: Because nobody's monitoring it. Yeah. That's all it says,

Rich: is no, this is never going to go anywhere.

Catelin: Yeah. And like, what a waste. If that's not, if that's the choice, then just like, Don't allow people to message your page.

Rich: Well, and our, is it now meta messenger? I don't, is it separate from Facebook? It's, I think they're trying to make it its own social media platform, but your Instagram messages, direct messages and Facebook messages are in the same as long as you set it up that way in your business suite.

Rich: And so ours is connected to HubSpot. And so, um, if one of your clients messaged you, it would actually go to you, Caitlin, you would get an email or a notice. Um, otherwise everything else just comes to me and I can see it on my phone and generally it is just like the Facebook support team is going to delete our account for violating something.

Catelin: Okay.

Rich: So I'm like, Oh, delete, delete. I don't know why Facebook can't fix that. Maybe that's a whole other episode we could do. Why Facebook can't clean its own house. They

Catelin: don't care. Dear Mark. I think is the Did you hear the remix? Oh, I heard. Of the song he did with T Pain, T

Rich: I. Yeah. And so it became

Catelin: What a nightmare.

Rich: Yeah. Um, I, I try to avoid that stuff. Anyway, if you don't engage, there are consequences and you, you said you love the consequences, Caitlin. What if I don't engage? What's going to happen?

Catelin: Well, um, it's just, it's, it's not good. Uh, people, uh, will probably stop trusting you as much. Um, I think the biggest one for me is a missed opportunity.

Catelin: Like I said, that it's just another avenue to connect with your customers. Um, but the, the biggest thing. Um, aside from that missed opportunity to connect with your folks is the engagement. And that's what is rewarded so much on social media platforms is continually and consistently showing up in an authentic way is the way that content gets picked up by other people.

Catelin: It algorithm, whatever she prioritizes on any given day. Yep. Um, But your, your content will be de prioritized as people stop engaging with it. Which goes

Rich: back to missed opportunities, right? Because the more engagement you get, the more engagement you get. It feeds itself. Yes. And if you don't, you don't. So, how do you engage?

Rich: Um, easiest thing is respond promptly. Like basically have somebody monitoring things and connect, respond, personalize your replies. Don't use an autoresponder. We just talked about that three seconds ago. Definitely don't do that. Um, yeah. Yeah. Another great way to engage, share user generated content. If you've got users who are making things from your brand, um, don't shame them or send them a cease and desist, elevate that, uh, share it, um, embrace it, comment on it.

Rich: Um, And make sure you give credit.

Catelin: I was just gonna say the biggest one for this is credit. Your original creators. Mm-Hmm. , which goes back to that like trust and authenticity, right? Yep. If I make something that's like, oh, I love this face cream or whatever, and they're like, they take my. Post or video or whatever and don't credit that back.

Catelin: I'm like, oh, well that leaves a sour taste in my mouth

Rich: Yep, and also remember resharing on the same platform is generally allowed and that's perfectly fine Taking it and using it off of that platform and on another platform. You're gonna need to have a conversation with them Um, because that's their property, that's their rights.

Rich: So, um, but you know, resharing on Insta, totally great.

Catelin: Particular about it. It's actually the property of the platform, but that's a conversation for a different day.

Rich: We can get into copyright later. Terms and conditions. The last one really dovetails into our mistake number two really well. So the last one, the way you can engage is know who your audience is, understand what they like, get your content focused on them.

Rich: Um, look at your metrics to see how you're performing. Look at your metrics to see who you're performing with, because that is going to prevent you from making mistake number two.

Catelin: Well, I, yeah. And I want to say too, like the comments and things are the easiest way to know your audience. Like they're telling you, right?

Catelin: They're saying you can. Depending on how large your audience is or how many folks are monitoring your social platforms, you can use all of those comments and shares and things to go look at those profiles to start. Understanding your audience. Like, are they sharing pictures of their kids or their dogs?

Catelin: What age demographic are they falling into? And that's the best

Rich: way to not misstep with your audience. Um, so I've seen so many companies do this chasing transport blindly. Like you see something cool and you want to jump on it and it's kind of like. your grandparents, like wanting to jump in on some cool slang.

Rich: It doesn't hit right. It's just never going to hit. Um, I was trying to think of a better example of that, but, um,

Catelin: I mean, it's probably me like explaining what like Gen Z and Gen Alpha slang is. In our podcast channel earlier, where I'm like, Google tells me and then try to use that in a sentence. It just is not,

Rich: uh, ill advised.

Rich: Well, they made me feel ancient. So, I don't know what any of that was. Yeah. It was very exciting. Maybe we could do an episode on that too. We've got so many episodes, Zach, we can spin out of this one, spinning them out left and right.

Catelin: The kids would call it cringe.

Rich: Yeah. I mean the, um, and I can't remember her name, the actress, but the old lady who does the gangsters paradise thing.

Rich: Right. Is that the rap? No, maybe that's not right.

Catelin: All I'm thinking of is Amish paradise,

Rich: like whatever thing, um, you're not going to, you're not going to be that as a brand. Like the fact that you will hit that cool point where it's like so far over the top and cool. That's also scripted and practiced and rehearsed.

Rich: Um, so find things that your audience likes. You're much better off like hitting with things that resonate with your audience than not. Um, So you hit the, you hit the nail on the head. You're just way ahead of it. Like, this is great. We're running early because you talked about practicing social listening, right?

Rich: Use your tools, listen to your audience, talk to your audience, take their feedback. Um, it's so easy to do. Um, and then my favorite, um, is what we just talked about. Don't jump the shark. Fun fact, Zach, do you know where jumps the shark comes from? Do you really

Catelin: name it? Name it, name it. This is a, I don't know if he can get it.

Rich: Can he get on mic fast enough?

Catelin: Yeah. Yes, you got it. We'll

Zac: cut it

Catelin: out.

Zac: Okay. So I don't know the specific show, but I know that the show happened like where they actually jumped a shark and then that became like the thing where every anytime a show goes way outside of like the box.

Rich: Yep. Yeah. So it was happy days.

Rich: It's

Catelin: happy days. And it was fun. The

Rich: Fonz jumped the shark, like literally water skiing in like

Catelin: a leather jacket

Rich: and

Catelin: jumps over a shark. And at the time, because was that show in like bed.

Rich: Yeah, I think it would have been. Because it was

Catelin: like, it was set in like the 50s, but it was like, it was in color. So it had to have been like the 70s.

Catelin: Yeah.

Rich: So it's kind of like setting a show today in 2000.

Catelin: Don't.

Rich: Um, but yeah, so that's where it comes from. That was rude. Good job, Zach. I'll take that. I mean, you didn't know the exact show. But I will allow it. There was a literal shark jumping.

Catelin: You just, just acknowledge. Have you ever seen or are you familiar with the show Happy Days?

Catelin: Yes. Ron Howard. Okay.

Rich: Some great actors. Joanie and

Catelin: Chachi.

Rich: Yeah. The spinoffs. The spinoffs of the spinoffs of the spinoffs on Happy Days. So with that, and the part of the reason it's called Jumping the Shark is because they just went so far for a stunt that it wasn't true to the show. It wasn't true to the audience.

Rich: Left field.

Catelin: Nobody understood what it was about.

Rich: It happens a lot when shows when TV shows in particular comedies get late in their career, like their career, I guess, or long in the tooth late in their run. Um, and they're just trying to make up new things. Somehow the Simpsons, however, has never jumped the shark.

Rich: They just predict the future because they're time traveling into the future and coming back and writing about it. That's how that's working.

Catelin: Is that the theory?

Rich: I mean, some of the stuff is pretty exact. Like almost frame for frame from things that happened like 10 years later. Like, yeah, Google it. Google the Simpsons time travel conspiracy theory.

Catelin: I've seen the memes.

Rich: Jump into the time travel conspiracy theory. So anyway, um, so you want to be focused on content that aligns with your brand's voice and values and you can test and learn, right? So if you try something and it falls completely flat, um, figure out why. And, and don't do that again. Don't do it again.

Rich: No, stop. Just stop. All right.

Catelin: No, that number three is actually like my biggest pet peeve.

Rich: Oh, this one kills me. Um, yeah. Not proofing social content. I might throw

Catelin: up.

Rich: If you need a proofreader, we have a great one and we would refer you happily. Uh, KSE edits.

Catelin: She is worth her weight in gold. She is wonderful.

Catelin: And worth her time in gold and she

Rich: She's affordable too. And a good friend. That's, that's actually where I'm having Thanksgiving, Caitlin. So me and my mom and my mother in law, because we're the only ones actually around for Thanksgiving, are going over to Kim and John's house.

Catelin: And that will be delicious because it's going to be great.

Catelin: Yeah.

Rich: Um, Alright, so typos, grammatical errors. Don't do this. Please, please, for the love, all of those things. Um,

Catelin: there's no excuse in the year of our Lord 2024 for you to not have the Grammarly extension enabled. Mm-Hmm. , checking your spelling, even the free one. Look for your squiggly. Just please, please.

Catelin: Even the free, and I Grammarly understand like mistakes happen. It's not, it isn't the end of the world. Like I follow one creator who, she's like, I type too fast. I have let this go. I don't, don't come after me for typos, and I'm like, I We'll try really hard not to.

Rich: And don't let the wine or the gin do the typing either, especially for your brand.

Rich: Like just stay out of the brain. That's one with that. Um, if you want your own like feeds to be that, that's great. Um, there was in 2017, there was a pretty famous one. The department of education typed out about Dubois in a tweet, uh, with a Quote, uh, and they spelled his last name wrong. They spelled it Debois, D E B O I S instead of D U B O I S.

Rich: Um, and then they apologized about it and they had a spelling error in that tweet. I

Catelin: think that I have to go throw my laptop into the river. This. enrages me.

Rich: Yeah, it was, and it was, it was a time, it was not a good time for them. I mean, it's when Betsy DeVos was, um, heading that department and she already was being attacked left and right for, she was never a teacher.

Rich: She like didn't really understand it. And then to have the, again, the department of education having bad grammar, misspelling a name of a famous author and, uh, then having, uh, spelling errors in there. It's just so. It's like Webster's Dictionary having grammar errors or spelling errors.

Catelin: Please, for the love.

Catelin: So,

Rich: you have to proof your social content. Have more than one person look at it. Most of your social content should be happening ahead of time anyway. Like you should be planning that out and hitting with your audience on things that you want to talk about. Your of the moment stuff though, it takes minutes, if that, to have somebody else read that and proof it.

Rich: Or

Catelin: put it together. It's like Webster's Dictionary. Step away for 10 minutes, come back. If you don't have, like, if you're a small department, if you're an individual creator, like either have a tag team, a buddy that you can have look at it, or take 10 or 15 minutes away from it and come back to it with fresh eyes, because the biggest issue that we run into is like, I've looked at this 400 different ways for two hours and I can't look at it anymore.

Catelin: And that's how you miss really, really simple stuff.

Rich: And that's part of why we use an external proofreader. Mm-Hmm . The first time she sees it is when we send it to. Excuse me, I've got the hiccups. Oh, no. I know, terrible. And she's fresh on it, and fresh eyes, and she'll see things that we completely glazed over and missed.

Rich: We actually had one where the output, um, and it's a known issue, apparently, with the output, It had, we'd output something as a PDF for print and it, it just removed letters from words in the output. Like they were there in the master document. They weren't there in the PDF and she sent that back and none of us looked at it.

Rich: None of us noticed it. She sent it back and she's like, I feel like. Either my eyes are giving out or these words are missing letters. And so I went in and looked and I'm like, no, no, they're, they're missing letters.

Catelin: They're definitely gone.

Rich: Yeah. And then Jesse dug into it and he's like, yeah, it's a known issue.

Rich: So, uh, so he converted our entire cocktail book to outlines. All of the words in there are outlines. Did

Catelin: it take seven hours?

Rich: I don't know. I mean, he's got a pretty fast computer. Like we beefed him up. So

Catelin: yeah,

Rich: hopefully not, but yeah, have somebody else look at it. It's not that hard. It's not. You know, I was thinking as we were talking, like I love Wendy's Twitter account or X account or whatever, um, just their brand personality.

Rich: And I haven't seen it on other platforms. I don't know if they do an Insta with it or whatever. Um, but what I've never seen from Wendy's typos.

Catelin: They're sassy, but they are grammatically correct.

Rich: Yep. And so even when they're sassy and quick, they still take time to make it look good and make it right and correct.

Rich: So yeah, that's, uh, those are our three things. So, uh, quick recap, um, your mistakes to avoid not engaging with your audience. How do you avoid that? Engage with your audience,

Catelin: just talk to them like they're people and like you're a people,

Rich: uh, not understanding your audience, which honestly dovetails right out of engaging with them.

Rich: You're going to understand them better if you engage. Um, and then, um, proof your social content, people double check your images, especially if you're using AI. I was generating something the other day, I think in HubSpot, just to play with it and see how their AI is working. And every single page where you, when you generate with AI has a warning that says, AI is known to make factual mistakes.

Rich: Please double check and proof this output. And I'm like, yeah, that's true.

Catelin: Did your arms and legs get all put in the right spot? Were you, I wasn't doing image generating. I was

Rich: doing, um, doing coffee. However, I did find a video on that. I was actually sent to me by somebody at HubSpot. It's of an agency dude who's demonstrating the breeze social agent.

Rich: Um, and he has it create a post, but he also has it create an image and the image it creates sort of has the HubSpot logo in it, but it screws up part of the logo somehow. Um, and so. I've seen that a lot too, where it's like, it's close, just not there. And part of it's like, you just, dear AI thing, you have to just go get it from their website and stick it in here.

Rich: Like, how do you mess that up? Whatever.

Catelin: I imagine there's something with, uh, intellectual property that says you can't just like copy and paste it. Yeah, it could be, and that's something you'll have to

Rich: get to permissions with. So like you can submit a form to HubSpot if you want to use the word HubSpot in a Google ad, if you're a partner, um, and they'll get you approved and get you ungated so that Google won't slap you for trademark infringement.

Rich: Um, they need something like that with AI where it's like, no, I'm allowed to use. These logos and things because they're mine or we're a partner. All right. So those are, I mean, it's really easy stuff. It's so basic, but I just feel like so many people don't do this, right? That's fair. I think, uh, yeah. Okay.

Rich: Well, Caitlin, uh, the basic bitch is going to read us out.

Catelin: Let's just read us out. Uh, thank you as always for listening. You can find us at antidote underscore 71. We would love to hear your comments or feedback about this. Uh, if you have a question you'd like to send our way, you can do that at ctapodcast.

Catelin: live or you can still leave us a voice message on our hotline at 402 718 9971. Your question will make it into a future episode and we will send you a cute ass little cocktail book that has all of the letters.

Rich: All the letters are in it. It's actually in final proofing right now to make sure, um, is it the first 10?

Rich: Is that what we're doing? I think so. Okay. Yeah. That works. Um, and definitely check out our next episode coming up, uh, in a week. It is called Thanksgiving Margarita, um, and my gut says that episode comes out on Thanksgiving since we come out on Thursdays. I feel like Zach has timed that for that one. Um, the topic there is going to be tips for working with an agency.

Rich: Um, and I've worked both sides. So I've been agency side, I've been client side. So it'll be a really fun one. And I'm dying to know what the Thanksgiving margarita is. Hopefully it's cranberries. It's not like a Thanksgiving wrap where you've got like the turkey, the mashed potatoes, the gravy, everything like all wrapped together.

Rich: I did see a cute little

Catelin: dumpling. Okay. It was like a puff pastry and you just, okay. Yeah. We'll talk about it. All right. So we'll see you

Rich: next time.