Speaker 0 00:00 Hmm.
Speaker 0 00:10 Welcome to social PR secrets. Those three words can change your life. Social PR secrets is a book and now a podcast. My name is Lisa buyer and I'll be your host. I wrote the book and I host this podcast because the struggle is real when it comes to PR and business and in the digital world. As we launched this season one, we're in the midst of the coven 19 pandemic. We're stuck at home and we're wondering where we will all end up in this episode. I interview guy Kawasaki guy is an icon when it comes to social media and disrupting technology. He was the original evangelist for Apple and he wrote a book called the art of social media. In this interview it actually took place when I was teaching a class at university of Florida on social media management. Guy was nice enough to be my guest and we talked through some of the trends in social media, some tips that are evergreen and you can definitely apply today if you want to read guy's most recent book. It's called wise guy and it's available on Amazon. I hope you enjoy the interview with guy as much as I did.
Speaker 0 01:28 Okay. Hi everybody. So we're here today with guy Kawasaki as our guest. Hey guy, who are you? Good, how are you? Good. So I'm just going to keep the screen on you because you're our main focus and we're going to be talking this week about social media content. So the students are already familiar with you. Thanks. Do we have the required reading of your book? And then your name is our third book that we have. I know that you like this book too is ask Gary to be, so those are our three books that we're using, but we also have guest speakers like you giving your expert knowledge. So I thought we'd start off about all time and tell us what our students should know about Alsop and life as a social media manager. We should use it.
Speaker 3 02:07 Yes. So all tops, that's where all the topics and what we do is we aggravate agri, we aggregate content from all the blogs and websites that we can organize by topic. So for example, if you want it to stay on top of social media, you would go to social media that all top.com and we have about 1100 of these topics ranging from hockey.alltop.com to politics. That all top the top to zoology.alltop.com and why this is significant for your students is because if they want to curate content for a specific area, hard to imagine there's a more efficient way than to use all top. Because we've already aggravated the last five stories from each of these blogs and websites into one single place that you can scan through very fast. And that's the whole goal. It's not like Flipboard or Phoebe where we're trying to be pretty, we're trying to be efficient. We only show the headline.
Speaker 0 03:14 Okay, great. And then if you have a blog, it's also cool to be listed on our list. Yes. And so there's a, there's directions on how to do that on the site and you actually created all top,
Speaker 3 03:24 yeah, a cofounder of the com.
Speaker 0 03:27 Okay. So at that, I think that's a great, great tool to use in social media manager. So the last question is, um, so you wrote the artist social media, we're using it for our class. It was about a year ago that it was, it came out. And so there's new developments constantly, of course in social media. So what would you add to the art of social media with these new developments?
Speaker 3 03:45 Do you mean what would I change in the book?
Speaker 0 03:48 Well, what would you maybe change in the book or maybe what's not in the book because new things have come out.
Speaker 3 03:53 Well, the, the most important thing that's not in the book is Facebook live. Uh, the book was written and published before Facebook live existed. And I think Facebook live is the best way to foster engagement these days. So that's a, that's a hole in that book, honestly.
Speaker 0 04:10 And what about Google plus? What you, what are your thoughts on Google class? Did they change?
Speaker 3 04:14 Plus, you know, that's the place I have the most followers and I, I don't see that much engagement anymore. Um, I really love Google. Plus. I, my, my, my number one go to psych really is Facebook right now.
Speaker 0 04:34 And so Google plus in our class, the past couple semesters, I actually dedicated a half a week on it. So this semester we are barely even touching it. The way we position it is that it's owned by Google so we can't ignore it, but it's not truly that much of a social network. So we agree I guess. Huh? Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3 04:54 Using a tool like, uh, I use social champ, but social champ or buffer or Hootsuite or sprout, you can write a post once and deploy it in multiple areas. So I don't think there's any harm in saying, alright, so I'm going to post this to Facebook and Google plus you might as well. Definitely. That's what I do.
Speaker 0 05:14 Yeah. It gets easy to do and the traffic is good. Why not? Right. So what are some of your favorite social media content tips?
Speaker 3 05:24 Uh, by far the most important tip is that every time you post there should be a picture or a video with it that, you know, you can't just post plain texts anymore. And I also think that you can repeat tweets, repeat posts much more than most people do. I repeat tweets like four times yesterday. Very interesting. Uh, because of a mistake that I made, I posted the same thing to Facebook four times in a row within minutes. Very interesting. Each of them got a reach of about six, seven, 8,000 each of them. And there were no complaints that why'd you repeat this four times? So, you know, I don't know for certain that the four or five, six, seven, 8,000 people were not the same four times. But it seems to me if they were the same people who got it, somebody would complain. So all of this leads me to wonder, you know what's wrong with repeating Facebook posts too? Because you know, you can either have 5,000 views or 20,000 views. I mean, guess which one is better? So I wasn't very interesting data point. So it's about repetition. I think people don't push it hard enough.
Speaker 0 06:40 Yeah, they're afraid to repeat there. I noticed that when really the audience doesn't notice it because everybody's there at the same time.
Speaker 3 06:49 Well they, they, you know, they also think, well in my case, you know, when I did it, when I caught Drupal that the audience was there. It was the same time. I mean it was within minutes. So, you know, obviously obviously, well some people said, well, the reason why this worked for you guys because your guy and you can get away with it, but most people can't get away with it. I, I disagree. I think anybody could get away with it. And I also would say that, you know, this is a very good philosophical perspective that you should try stuff like this because everybody assumes you can't repeat something and so nobody tries and discovers it. Maybe you can repeat stuff.
Speaker 0 07:31 Definitely. Definitely. So that brings me, we're talking about Facebook, Facebook live. So you'd been really big on Facebook live and I've been watching a lot of yours. You probably go a couple of times a week.
Speaker 3 07:43 Right?
Speaker 0 07:44 Um, so what are your tips on, so there's the live content and then there's the afterlife content that people can go back to. So what are some of your tips on using that as a content strategy?
Speaker 3 07:55 Sure. Facebook live for me has been the most effective way to foster engagement. And I, I do it in so many different ways. At one level, I, I just have an iPhone, right? But usually, uh, I've, I've, I never kind of do that anymore. Now I have an iPhone with at least a gimbal to make it smoother. But most of the time I'm using something on a Wirecast and with Wirecast I'm able to really script the show with pre roll, then the desktop camera like we're using now. Then I can bring in the video from my phone on my tablet, then I can go back to the desktop camera, then I can play a post role. Uh, it's kind of a production for me at this point.
Speaker 0 08:40 Have you always done it that way or when you first started, did you just do it?
Speaker 3 08:44 No, when I first started, I just held up a phone like everybody else, but I just wanted to have more control over what was happening. And I saw it being so powerful that I thought, Oh, you know, it's just too, like even large brands today, they're just holding a phone up. I mean, it's kind of a joke.
Speaker 0 09:01 But would you say that's better than not doing it at all?
Speaker 3 09:03 Yes, absolutely.
Speaker 0 09:05 Guess what? I hear from the conferences that I go to, the brands and brands that I work with. I mean, they're afraid to go lie. They're just plain out scared. What are they afraid of? They're not planned. They don't, they're not going to look good. They're not going to send the right message. So what do you say to that?
Speaker 3 09:22 I'd say man up. I agree. I agree. I agree. So what's the difference between Facebook buying and Facebook mentions? Well, Facebook mentions is an app for a smartphone that, uh, let's see. It is, it is for a subset of people, uh, verified public figures to use so that they never miss mentions of themselves. And so I think only about a couple thousand people in the world can use mentions. So there's mentions. Okay. And Facebook live is obviously completely different because Facebook live is not an app. It's a service. And then there's Facebook pages, which is for people who manage pages to use and then there's regular Facebook app. So it's kind of confusing quite frankly.
Speaker 0 10:21 Yeah, it is. It is. And so I was noticing you and Peggy were talking about Facebook mentions and the Facebook mentions people maybe got access to the two two way.
Speaker 3 10:30 Did you get first access to uh, the, the several thousand people who use Facebook mentions we are able to create a Facebook live and then invite somebody on stage with, yeah.
Speaker 0 10:45 So when would that be available to everybody else? Do you know?
Speaker 3 10:48 I have no idea because we could be doing this on Facebook live right now. <inaudible> there's another uh, service being announced this morning from blue jeans and what blue jeans is, it's an online video conferencing system. I was going to use that instead of that today. Actually, that's not just for one to one. That's for like, you know, you could have like nine people all over the world on a video conference. And the main one shows in the main area. And then there's the ones who are not talking on the bottom right. So now that can feed into Facebook live. Awesome. So that is Facebook itself is doing this where you could have one person in the corner, but if you use blue jeans you could have this, you know, nine people using blue jeans broadcasting through Facebook live. That's cool. Yeah, that's great.
Speaker 0 11:45 I started here straight from di so we're gonna have to check that out for our class for sure. So just moving on to Canada, you are the brand for Canva. We are using Canva for our class to do all kinds of creative things, right? So what's it like to be the brand evangelists and how did you, how did you connect with Canva?
Speaker 3 12:04 Yeah, so the way I connected with Canva is actually pink Fitzpatrick was using Canva on my account in Canva. Noticed that I was using Canva and they reached out to me via Twitter. And one thing led to another. I really believe that Canva is democratizing design, just like Macintosh democratize computers. And so, you know, this is called guys golden touch, which is whatever's gold guy touches. And it's very easy to be an evangelist for Canva because it's so easy. It's so useful.
Speaker 0 12:38 Definitely. Well, I'm a huge fan. And so is everybody in the class. What are some of your favorite hacks that you can do on canvas as a social media manager?
Speaker 3 12:46 Well, I, you know, the, one of the most powerful features is this magic resize where you create a graphic once and then you say, okay, so now I want it for other sizes, for other social media platforms. Uh, that is very, very useful.
Speaker 0 13:02 Also, the app just came out, so I'm, yes,
Speaker 3 13:05 the iOS app just came out. And one of the great things about the iOS app is that your iOS app, your iPad app and your desktop, they're all sync. So if you create something in the iPad, you can access it on the iPhone. And I created on the iPhone, you can access it on your desktop grid, on the desktop, you know, so you can do all of this. It's not like they're standalone islands. Um, it's not, you know, sometimes a company will have this desktop version that does everything and then they have this other thing that kind of does a similar thing, but it's completely separate really. And they're just trying to, you know, milk their app Mark. And, um, this is completely sinked.
Speaker 0 13:44 One thing that I noticed with working with the students at USC is that they literally do everything using their iPhone. So they're in Google docs, they're checking their notes, they're studying, they're doing everything. So I think the Canva app will be a good tip for them for sure. I can't do that. I have a hard time doing it too, but I like being able to edit on the fly. But they're in Google docs with me and
Speaker 3 14:07 it's just second nature to them.
Speaker 0 14:10 So if you could use, I think I know the answer to this, but let me see if you could use just one social network and none other
Speaker 3 14:17 Facebook by far. Not even, I don't have to think twice about that. Yeah. The targeting is so good. The interaction is so good. I have a very good relation with them. Um, just everything is, yeah.
Speaker 0 14:34 Okay. Yep. That's what I figured. So what are your thoughts on Snapchat?
Speaker 3 14:39 Well, I, you know, I just, I can't wrap my mind around Snapchat. I Slack. It's not like I'm taking pictures of myself and putting dog ears on me, you know, and that kind of stuff. So all those kind of silly things, which I can understand some 12 year old wants to do is great, but it has no meaning for me. And, uh, with Instagram stories, which I do use, I think that is one of the key parts of Snapchat that I would have used. But now it's on Instagram and there are things about Snapchat, I just can't wrap my head around. Like, I don't know how many people follow me on Snapchat and I don't know if there is a way to tell him, you know,
Speaker 0 15:21 it's super hard to measure for sure. It's fun, but it's super hard to measure and fund as an equate to ROI.
Speaker 3 15:28 Well, yeah, but you know, if you're 12 year old, you're not, you're not caring about ROI. Right. It's a different world. I don't, I don't know. You know, brands keep saying how great it is, these Snapchat, I don't understand that because like if you, if you are a huge brand and you can buy your way into be one of these suggested things, or you can name a filter or something like that. Okay. But you know, how does Geico Saki, Snapchat, I have yet to figure that out.
Speaker 0 15:56 Yeah. Yeah. It's still, I think the jury's still out on it. We'll see what happens. Right? Yep. Um, okay, so a couple more questions. So social media can be super consuming and it's hard to balance if you're, even if you're not in the social media business like we are. So what do you do to balance work life from being consumed by all the different screens that are around us?
Speaker 3 16:17 I don't, I mean that's, this is what I do. This is my job. So, you know, that's, that's like saying to a professional tennis player or what do you do to balance your life? You don't, you practice eight hours a day. I mean, that's your life, right?
Speaker 0 16:32 I read though that you, you, um, play hockey to
Speaker 3 16:36 I play hockey and I do paddle boarding, but um, those are distractions from the core of my existence, which is social media. Maybe that's your recharge, maybe I'll absolutely, yes.
Speaker 0 16:47 Yeah. That's your to reset. Um, so for the future graduates that are here in the audience today, what advice do you give if they want to have a career in social media?
Speaker 3 16:57 Well, my, my advice is that you don't worry too much about your, your first job, your second job. Uh, this is general advice, not just for social media. And I think that over, or if I were starting a career today, I would realize it in the next 30, 40 years that I'll be working. I probably have 10 or 15 jobs and it'll get to the point where when you're, I'm 62, when you're 62, you won't even remember your first job. So, you know, you shouldn't sweat the first job so much. The second job, so it was, this is going to be a long marathon. Mmm. You know, do crazy stuff while you're young. Because when you're old and you have mortgages and cars and family, it's a whole different world.
Speaker 0 17:43 Okay. And what about specifically in social media? Is there any credentials they should or shouldn't have or criteria should worry or not worry about?
Speaker 3 17:51 Uh, I, me personally, I don't think so. I mean, you know, obviously when a company looks at your social media graph, it shouldn't be a stupid looking thing, right? A fixed your LinkedIn. If you don't, if you don't have a good LinkedIn profile, you might as well not exist. So that would be my advice. Fix your legs then profile.
Speaker 0 18:11 Okay, perfect. Well guys, thank you so much. If there's anything else you want to add, please add now, but please follow them on Facebook and watches his Facebook lives. They're awesome and
Speaker 3 18:22 anything else? That's good. I, you know, have a great day over there.
Speaker 0 18:27 All right. Thank you. You too. Thank you for listening to this episode of social PR secrets. If you like what you heard, check out the book on Amazon or follow our
[email protected] this episode was sponsored by the buyer group, a social PR agency, striving to keep our balance in the digital world, practicing public relations, social media, and search marketing while occasionally drinking a glass of wine or two for the best creativity and results. Thank you all for tuning in. If you would like to get a free chapter of social PR secrets, go to social PR secrets.com/free.
Speaker 2 19:21 Okay? Okay.
