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SME '19: Stratigro's Denise Alison Talks Social Media Marketing

Learn more about social media marketing strategies at Streaming Media's next event.

Read the complete transcript of this interview:

Tim Siglin: Welcome back to Streaming Media East 2019. I'm Tim Siglin, Contributing Editor with Streaming Media Magazine and founding Executive Director of the not for profit Help Me stream. Today, I've got with me Denise Alison. Denise, tell me a little bit about your company.

Denise Alison: Yeah, so my company does social media marketing. We work with service-based entrepreneurs, usually are the B2B space, so generally they're doing things like business coaching, consulting. And, they're small businesses, microbusinesses who are looking to improve their social media marketing.

Tim Siglin: And so, are you actually helping them learn how to use social media or helping their clients that they're doing business with?

Denise Alison: I'm helping them create their own social media content so that they can market themselves and find customers.

Tim Siglin: Okay, and what are some of the limitations that they typically have because, traditionally, somebody who does business coaching and like that would go to the local Chamber of Commerce and say, "Hey, I got this service," and then they'd get a list of members of the chamber and work that way. Are the ones you're working with first of all are they doing it on a national basis as opposed to a local basis? And, what limitations are they running into with traditional models of marketing?

Denise Alison: The problem with the traditional models is that they're not finding exactly the people that they want to be working with, and so when you just go to the Chamber of Commerce it depends on where you are and what other businesses are part of it. The challenge they run into is that when it comes to social media, they don't know what to say and so they just kind of default to traditional market messages. And, those don't really get across your brand, your personality, and what it's like to work with you.

Tim Siglin: And, it also confuses people looking at it because they may think it's sponsored content as opposed to you speaking from your experience.

Denise Alison: Right, exactly, so it's really helping them share who they are, share what their business is so that when they go and they approach a company that they may have gotten through a list, they might have met at a networking event or an event such as this one it's really helping them understand more about them and making sure that there's a right match so that they can learn, this is what they do, this is what they're all about, and we would love to work with this person.

Tim Siglin: In the old days, too, traditionally you'd meet somebody, get the business card, send them an email that you've crafted. With the social media shift do the entrepreneurs still send the individualized email to a potential client or do they sort of take the problem that the potential client described and turn it into a social media blog post so that more people can see it?

Denise Alison: There are different ways to do that. I always believe that if you meet someone there's a lot of power in following up, but now it's not necessarily, "Okay, give me "your business card and I'll call you or email you." It's "hey, you're really awesome, let's connect on LinkedIn now," but you also get the business card and you do the individual follow-up. Usually the greatest places for inspiration for content, as you mentioned, is someone might ask you a question. So, if you are speaking at an event and you get a lot of questions after the fact those are great inspiration for what to talk about on your live show, in a blog, on your podcast. But, the more you put yourself out there the more people starting asking you questions and that's always a great way to go when you kind of feel like you've run out of things to say.

Tim Siglin: So, besides the knowing what messaging to put out there do you also work with your clients on things like click funnels so that they're trying to figure out how to parse down a whole bunch of options of potential clients?

Denise Alison: Not really. Some of them want more information on that and we definitely do discuss it. It's not really a core of what I do. The core of what I do is helping them understand the content, help them understand the nuances of certain platforms, and really help them focus on creating their social media marketing strategy and sticking to it consistently.

Tim Siglin: And, what role does live video have in that?

Denise Alison: Live video is a great place to be your anchor content platform. So, that's what I recommend that they do on a regular basis. So, instead of writing a weekly blog or a podcast or infographic or all these other options you I find live video is a great way to deliver that content because people can learn more about you through your body language, your voice, your tone. And, it gives them more of sense of who you are, but it's also a great way to position your expertise by sharing that on live video.

Tim Siglin: And, when they do that are they primarily using Facebook Live, are they using other platforms?

Denise Alison: It really does depend on who their ideal customer is, but Facebook Live is a great across-the-board place to be because everyone's on Facebook. I think there's a lot of potential coming up with LinkedIn Live now that's just being rolled out. And, every week I see more people have access to it, but not everyone has access to it yet. So, it'll be an interesting place to see, but for now Facebook Live is generally your best option for live video.

Tim Siglin: And, what about some of the other social platforms like Snap or Twitter, et cetera?

Denise Alison: In my experience, Snapchat is not a great place for marketing unless you're marketing to teens, which none of my clients are.

Tim Siglin: Fair point, and just like people used to say Facebook wasn't a place to market unless you're marketing to your grandmother.

Denise Alison: Right, and like the usership of Snapchat is really declining other than with some of those younger demographics. Twitter can be an interesting place. I'm personally not a fan of Twitter because you can never get more than a sentence out. But, if you're already a Twitter user and you have a great following on Twitter it can be a great place to have Twitter Live slash Periscope, whatever you want to call it and it can be a great place to do that as well.

Tim Siglin: And also, maybe use Twitter to drive people back to the Facebook Live events, that type of thing.

Denise Alison: You can schedule a Facebook Live and so what you can do is schedule that Live, grab the link that it gives you because you're actually going to go live like directly into that post.

Tim Siglin: And then, you tweet it out.

Denise Alison: Right, so you can take that URL post it on Twitter or whatever else and say, "Hey, I'm going live, "go check it out over on Facebook." And, you can also do things like re-stream. So, for example, you could get there's plenty of re-streaming tools, but there's something like Restream.io let's you stream to multiple places at once. So, you can go live to Facebook, to Twitter, to YouTube, there's some more like Twitch and what have you, but the content of your stream doesn't necessarily match up to all of them. But, you could choose those big three and livestream at the same time and really knock off those three at the same time. And then, repurpose the content for other platforms.

Tim Siglin: Denise, thank you very much for your time. Really appreciate that.

Denise Alison: Thank you.

Tim Siglin: And, we will be right back with our next guest.

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