Speaker 0 00:00 Welcome to another episode of social PR secrets. My name is Lisa buyer and I'll be your host. Today's guest holds a special place in my heart. Her name is Sarah Collins, formerly known as Sarah. Then Allison. Sarah came to work with me about 10 years ago, right out of college and we worked together for a couple of years and when this interview was recorded, she was actually working for another agency in Milwaukee. In this episode, Sarah and I talk about social media strategies that are still very relevant today, agency life and how she manages her team. I hope you enjoy the episode.
Speaker 0 00:58 Hi and welcome to social PR secrets. My name is Lisa buyer and I will be your host. This was a fun episode for me to record because I was able to interview one of my favorite and at the time former employees, Sarah Collins. Sarah came to work at my agency right around the time that Facebook first launched. She was right out of school. Snapchat was not even in our vocabulary. Sarah worked with me for a few years and then moved back home to Wisconsin and continued on with her career. In this episode, Sarah and I catch up and we talk about the topic of social media strategy and how she leads her teams in the agency world. Ironically, since this episode was recorded today, Sarah is back with the buyer group and she is the vice president of social PR.
Speaker 3 01:47 Hi. So we're back. We just finished a social media revolution and now we're getting into our session on social media strategy. And today our guest is Sarah van Alison and her ma, her name might sound familiar because she was um, in my book, social PR secrets talking about the chapter and the social media revolution. Hey Sarah.
Speaker 4 02:08 Hello Ron.
Speaker 3 02:09 So Sarah is now fast forward 10 years later, almost 10 years later, she is the director of social media at Hanson Dodge and also the senior digital strategist and she's going to be sharing, I'm very excited talking about the agency side of social media management. So Sarah, tell us a little bit about where you work and how you got to where you are, you know, now at this agency and then how it all works.
Speaker 4 02:33 Okay, well, hi everyone. I'm Sarah. I work at Hanson Dodge creative. We are a advertising agency in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, so it's very cold appear right now. Um, we are a full advertising agency, creative department, social department. Um, I've been in agencies my whole life. Starting with Lisa. She was my first boss and my favorite boss. And, um, just, you know, working in social has been a really crazy roller coaster and also really, really rewarding and fun. So in terms of, um, my favorite things about working at an agency and working in social media, it's always changing and, um, we can always be the expert, which is really, really fun.
Speaker 3 03:16 I think one of the really neat aspects of where you started in your career, Sarah, is right out of college, is when social media was just coming on to the forefront. I mean, I remember you being in coming and working for me and I was telling you about my space and you're like, no, no, no. Facebook is coming out. I know it's available, you know, beyond college students. And so you've really been in this since the day one of social media.
Speaker 4 03:39 Yeah, I, I've learned a lot and you know, for kids that are graduating now, students now, I, I almost feel bad for you because as you're, you're coming into an environment where there's so much competition and the, the social media space, creative, creative thinking and content development is such a big piece of it. Um, you know, back in 2007, 2008, 2009, even when we were developing social media content, it was pretty basic. Um, we were talking about our press releases and you know, marketing speak about what are, what's best about our products. And at this point, you know, have to know how to be a, be a producer at every level, create jifs, create infographics, create really cool, um, photos. And it's hard to do that as one person. Uh, you have to have the analytical thinking, like creative thinking and, and just the organization skills to keep it all together.
Speaker 3 04:41 So true. So true. So how does it work inside of an agency, being the social media director? How do you onboard clients and what are some of the, the basic components and strategies that are happening today?
Speaker 4 04:53 Um, from an agency perspective, we're always coming in as the expert and we need to be providing the best possible recommendations at all time ahead of our competing agencies and ahead of what anybody just, you know, graduating from school knows. So clearly we, we have, uh, a really wide, um, set of resources that can help us be as smart as we are. And, um, the agency side, we're always, we're working with all clients in the same way. We're, we're coming in, we're saying no, these are the channels, this is why. But we won't do any of that until we have the creative groundwork in place. So, for example, we work with the account team, we work with the creative team. And then, um, I lead the social team and on my team I have community managers, content developers, analytics people. Um, and we're all kind of working together as one big group to provide the best and creative thinking.
Speaker 4 05:58 Um, it's a long process. I mean it starts with the account teams or the account supervisor and then the, the creative lead. And then the social lead who is typically me or a senior person on my team sitting down and saying, all right, what are the client's goals? What are we trying to get to? Um, and then deciding from there, what, what are we, what's going to get us there? What messaging, what creative, what, what types of content, what types of imagery, what types of video do we need? And then we, we work with individual producers, videographers, photographers, um, designers to develop the whole strategy and the messaging that we're trying to get across. When we were chatting right before we started. So you were telling me about some of the things that have changed where it's more going towards the direction of less is more quality over quantity.
Speaker 4 06:55 Can you speak to that a little bit? Yeah. So, um, we're, we're up against, um, clients marketing calendars where they have, you know, six different initiatives that they're working on. And there's four different departments that want to give input into the social media calendar. So what does that yield? Oh, well that means I can, you know, put six Facebook's posts up a day. Well, no. Um, we don't, we're, we're getting a lot of pushback in terms of the recommendations, but at this point, if you're putting six Facebook posts out the day that the chance that your community will see them is really low. So it used to be no one post per channel every day. And then it went to two posts per channel every day. And now I'm stepping back and I'm like, well, let's not, let's just fill out a little bit. We don't need Google.
Speaker 4 07:48 Plus it's not getting us any, any comments, any engagement. We don't need an active Twitter strategy other than from a customer service and a response standpoint on Facebook. If we have one post a day, that's too much. Um, I'm recommending, you know, three posts a week with add support behind it. So for example, I, I only want to see, um, significant reach and, and comments on my, on my, my client's pages. Um, and the only way that we're going to get that is if your content is stellar. So that's why we work with, you know, really robust creative teams and if you're using paid support behind it, so what's your take on if there's not a budget for paid support on Facebook? I, I always recommend paid support on Facebook, but if it doesn't exist, we'll, we'll try to have our content, have as much, provide as much value as possible.
Speaker 4 08:47 So whether that is something that our communities is really yearning for, like how content or it's really creative and interesting or maybe it's funny. So, you know, like the videos that do really well on Facebook and the um, clients that have great success, they, they really know what that niche is that their client that their audience is looking for. And if you can figure that out, like one of my clients has recipes, you know, as many recipes as we can put together the better. Um, so you just have to know what piece of content works and if you don't have ad support behind it, create the most engaging creative posts that you can.
Speaker 3 09:30 Totally. And so what do you say to one, what are some examples of ROI for when you're putting together the strategy? So what a lot of times clients are just not realistic about what the return on investment is going to be. So what are some examples of realistic return on investment for social media?
Speaker 4 09:48 The way that we look at it is reducing spend. So for example, one of my clients is case Wist and we help them with all their social media. Um, their, the, the, the costs that needs to go into creating content is massive. You know, it used to be social media is free and we're going to be able to, um, connect with all of these potential customers and engage them at this point. No. So when we look at, um, user generated content that we're able to get from our communities, we take that we don't have to pay for it and we can reuse it to engage with our audiences. So that would be one thing is, um, savings of costs. But then clearly there are other metrics like awareness in general, you know, how, how much are you growing, how engaged is your audience, how much traffic are you getting? Um, so it really depends on what the goal is to begin with. You know, if it's a e-commerce client that all they care about is sales on their site, well then your content strategy will reflect that and you'll drive a lot more product links to, um, straight to sell through and then use Google analytics to track if it's working or not.
Speaker 3 11:05 Okay. Awesome. And then you said that you had, did you want to walk through the process that your agency uses for the strategy?
Speaker 4 11:11 Sure. Um, just to kind of give you guys like a 10,000 foot view, I don't know how much you know about agencies versus um, in house and in house is really cool because you get to like dive into one brand. Um, what I liked about the agency is I probably worked on, I don't know, 50 brands in the 10 years that I've been doing this. And I get to learn so many different industries. Um, social, you need to be really focused on the actual client and you need to kind of know all of the trends. And um, what, what's interesting about the agency side is we come in and we have a whole team. So it's, um, the creative team, the account team, the social team. And when I look at the process, just to kind of give you guys like how social strategy comes together, we have took a four to five week process.
Speaker 4 12:10 So from a cost perspective for clients, the four to five weeks of a full team working on them is relatively expensive. And when you think about, um, what clients want to pay for a social strategy, they're like, just get me on Facebook and do some cool stuff. All right, well we're not going to do that unless we kind of have a single minded idea that we're coming from. So the way that Hanson Dodge creative works is we, that we get together as the account leadership team and we plan, you know, where, where do we want to be? What is the strategy, what's the brief that we're focusing on? So it's a single minded idea and then we'll kick off the team. So once the, you know, the core team is ready and we're all on the same page and we get everybody together and it's the account side, social side and creative side.
Speaker 4 12:56 We start thinking about what assets do we have, what, um, access we have for logins and data, what have they done in the past? We'll go in and then we'll audit, um, all the competitors and what they're doing. So that just kind of starts us with a really nice foundation that we can then give the broader team that's working together to go and think in their own kind of desks for a few days. And then we come back and we have, we actually put up all our ideas on a wall and um, talk through them. And it's just cool to see people get excited about their ideas. So that part of the process that that's really, it's like a two week long process where you're, you're dedicated to this account and you're thinking about, you know, what type of content could we do, what type of promotions make sense?
Speaker 4 13:45 Um, what channels do we want to use? And on the social team we'll focus and my team will focus on channels and kind of tactical, um, outputs. But the creative team, they'll come in with, you know, the message and the tone and um, whatever creative concept that they have. So we'll get back together after those two weeks and then it'll be the last week and we'll determine what, what do we want to do, what are we going to execute from here? So we'll sit down and kind of go at it where we, we choose which of these ideas are we gonna push forward. And a lot of the times for clients we'll have so many cool ideas that we'll, we'll put, you know, four or five of them in front of them and allow them to choose. So, um, once we have those four or five and we're going to put those all in a deck, then we'll, um, kind of like create executions for it.
Speaker 4 14:40 So, um, you know, here's an idea for a popcorn brand that's all about beautiful photography. Um, and you know, we're one tactical execution is how we'll handle it on Instagram and who will be responsible for taking the photos, what the look of those photos will be like. And then maybe another strategy is, is, is all about, um, recipes and how we're using pop for in, in, in a specific recipe. Um, so that's, that's right. Kind of where we get, where we're ready to present and all the ideas, all the thoughts go into a deck. We sit down with the client and we say, Hey, this is, we're all working from the same month, same single-minded idea. We know what your goals are. Here's what we recommend from a content perspective, from a channel perspective, when to do any sort of bigger campaigns along with it.
Speaker 4 15:32 What does that mean? Um, and then it's just back and forth with the client from there to get approval and to get it going. Awesome. That was like a great step by step scenario. So once you do that, um, then where do you go from there? How often do you report? Um, and do, do you show them quarterly reports and measurement and things like that? Where does that all come in? Uh, well as soon as we're approved, we get our creative teams together in our social teams and then we assert, we assign leads. So someone is on the social team, someone's on the creative team. We get the content developed. We work either on a monthly basis or a biweekly basis to develop content. And then we always leave room for, um, just openings for whatever's coming up that might be relevant. Um, we will then present the first content calendar.
Speaker 4 16:23 Once that's approved, we'll get that live in the channels, whatever channels we're using. And within the first month we'll get the report and say how things are doing. Um, I've had a recent example actually where something wasn't doing well and it was one of our really kind of creative concepts and I dunno if you guys have ever seen on Instagram where one channel will do, um, a bunch of different individual photos that turn into one big picture. Um, so we, we recommended that for a client and we launched it and we were two weeks in and it just, it wasn't getting the engagement we thought it would. Um, so the client wanted us to back off of the idea and we really disagreed because we were only two weeks in and we felt like it was a really cool concept. Um, but it was taking a lot of time. We were illustrating it so we weren't getting, we, we weren't getting the value that of the time that we were putting in, in actual engagement on the content. So we did end up pulling it. And that was, you know, two weeks in. Um, but just our standard measurements, we send monthly decks and then, uh, we'll do by, um, we'll do once year, like in the middle of the year, we'll do a halfway report and then we'll do an end of the year report too.
Speaker 3 17:55 Okay. Awesome. So I'm going to ask you now just a bunch of your favorites. Okay. We get ready to wrap this up a little bit. So as far as your platform, do you, what types of platform do you use? Do you use Hootsuite or buffer or both or which would you prefer inside the agency and even on your own?
Speaker 4 18:12 Um, as far as clients, we'll do native publishing almost always. We typically schedule, um, depending on if you need to be live or not. Um, we love only pulled in IKONOS square for Instagram. Um, the, our using our own kind of internal project management software to, to keep ourselves in line. And, um, we use a lot of Google docs and Google spreadsheets. And, um, my favorite platform personally is Snapchat, obviously because it's amazing and there's so much opportunity there. Um, we actually have one client that's launching Snapchat finally in the next couple of weeks. And there's just, um, Snapchat to me is what social media should be. Um, it's really raw and, um, there's just new surprises and delights that come out all the time. Like, Oh, this filter's awesome. This is, and I think there's so much opportunity for brands to be really nice ways without being super intrusive. So, um, yeah.
Speaker 3 19:21 Okay. And then, um, any other tips that you can give just for social media managers of the future that are in this class? Um, professional tips, what to look out for, do's and don'ts.
Speaker 4 19:33 What I always tell my team is, um, you have to be organized. You have to be on top of your game. There's so much happening on a daily basis that it's just, it can be overwhelming if you're not sure what to do next and how to prioritize yourself. So from a professional standpoint, I say, um, you know, take it easy when you can, but know that there's a lot to get done and, um, just use time management appropriately. Um, we're in a really fun collaborative space so it's easy to get kind of sucked into, Oh, what are my friends posting about today? Or you just kind of get sucked into things that you shouldn't be focused on. So um, try to keep eye on what you can be doing to advance your client or your brand and stick to that.
Speaker 3 20:31 Okay. Awesome. Sarah, thank you so much for joining us. So if our students want to follow you, it's at Sarah van Elsen and if they want to connect with you on LinkedIn is, are you cool with that too?
Speaker 4 20:41 Yeah, I'd, I'd be happy to talk to you guys or walk you through any of the case studies we have. If you have any questions about our agency, it's Hanson dodge.com H a N S O N D O D G E. And we have a lot of cool social case studies up there as well. So check it out. Any internships? We always have internships.
Speaker 0 21:02 I check it out on the website. Yep. Okay, great. Thank you so much Sarah. Have a great rest of the day everybody. Thank you. 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.
