How to Avoid Social Media Overload – ep 48

Mostafa Hosseini  0:02 

And we’re live Welcome to daily confidence for entrepreneurs. My name is Mostafa Hosseini, and I’m your host for the show academic confidence entrepreneurs we share tips, actionable advice and strategies that you could use on a daily basis and boosts your confidence in different parts and areas of your business. During the show, and after the show, we always have a draw for the gifts and for you to enter the draw for the gift if you like to show like leave a comment, ask a question tag a friend who could benefit from the conversation that we’re having with our guests. Before during or after the show.

You enter your name for the draw. Also, if you subscribe to any channel, that channel that you’re watching, whether it’s on YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, or if you’re watching or listening to podcast on Apple, Spotify, Google and other platforms if you write a review or rank the show, and you also enter your name for the drop. I have an amazing guest Cory Perlman welcome, Cory. Thank you, Mostafa. It’s good to be here, buddy. And so today we’re talking about how to avoid social media overload.

So let me do the proper intro with Cori and I, we’re gonna get right started. We got a very important topic,  social media which is very hot these days and that’s what we’re going to dive into. So, Cory Perlman is a speaker, consultant and nationally recognized social media expert. His latest book Social Media overload, ranked number one on amazon.com in every major business category Corys has spoken for brands such as General Motors, the PGA Tour and Cisco foods on how to drive business results through social media.

 His company impact social Inc, employs a team of highly skilled digital specialists that manage the social media accounts for over 40 businesses. When not working, Cory loves singing Jimmy Buffett lyrics to his young son and trying to overtake his teenage daughter for most Instagram followers. Welcome, Cory.

Corey Perlman  2:12 

Thank you. It’s an uphill battle. Mustapha. It’ll never happen.

Mostafa Hosseini  2:17 

Kids know how to use social media like I did live on it, right? Yes, sir. Like my five year old is getting there. And he’s just five. Yeah, coming up with ideas. He’s spending a lot of time on YouTube watching. cartoons and the new kids are growing up on social media.

Corey Perlman  2:39 

Yeah. And they watch stuff. My kid watches. Other people play video games, which is the weirdest thing to me.

Mostafa Hosseini  2:45 

Yeah. Yeah, they do. That’s the thing. That’s the thing. And that’s a great, yes. And the kids that actually broadcast their games on social media, they make a killing out of it. They do

Corey Perlman  2:56 

they make more money than we do. I don’t know what’s going on in the world today.

Mostafa Hosseini  3:00 

I should get into gaming. There you go. So Cory, what is your story? How did you get into noon? What you’re doing now? Yeah, I’m

Corey Perlman  3:10 

gonna stop. I appreciate it. I’ll keep it brief. So we, you know, keep the value running for your listeners and watchers and such. But I’ve been in this business for over a decade, started with General Motors teaching car dealers about the internet. And we went on, when I was a youngster out of college went on tour, with GM going city to city and a 12 passenger van. And we literally did that for six months going to about 30 cities.

And during that trip, I met a woman who was on tour with us who became good friends and ended up becoming my wife. So that was awesome as well. And then from there, you know, I worked on a startup for a few years. And we sold that startup. And then I went into a kind of consulting for clients and such on digital. And I wrote my first book called a boot camp. And it was traditionally published by Wiley and kind of kick started my speaking and consulting career.

And then I started getting asked by lots of different industries just to help do their social media and digital marketing. So I didn’t have enough bandwidth to do it all myself. So I created an agency and we’ve been doing it for 10 plus years ever since. And we get to work in all kinds of fun industries, helping people do their social media and digital marketing. And I’ve got a staff of about seven to eight people. And we work with businesses all over the globe. So it’s really fun.

Mostafa Hosseini  4:37 

Beautiful. Is there any specific type of businesses that you guys try to serve?

Corey Perlman  4:41 

Yeah, I would say professional services. So you know, dentists, mortgage brokers, that kind of thing. We also work very closely with Dale Carnegie and personal development, leadership training and such.

Mostafa Hosseini  4:54 

Beautiful so what is the deal with this social media overload? What is the problem?

Corey Perlman  4:59 

Yeah, so I think you know, it can, it can obviously be in a lot of different areas of people’s lives. But I focus on it mostly from a business standpoint. And a lot of times when I’m talking to industries, and people about social media, they’re very frustrated, and have been for a while, and simply because there constantly is this, these new sites popping up and trying to figure out how to manage all of them effectively.

And so my big thing, and the reason I wrote that book, and still to this day, it’s four years later, I still say this quite a bit is, you know, I’m a big fan of focusing on a few and doing them really well, as opposed to being a jack of all social media sites, master of none. So it’s really about figuring out where your customer base is hanging out on social and meeting them there, and staying away from the, you know, hot social media sites that may just be distracting you or your audience.

Mostafa Hosseini  5:58 

Okay, and so, so you’ve done a whole bunch of stuff, how did you narrow down to social media? How did you end up on with all the work that you’ve done?

Corey Perlman  6:09 

It was really kind of a sort of a path or a journey started on internet marketing back in the day SEO websites. And then over time, you know, social media has just become such a behemoth from a marketing standpoint. Now, all that being said, A question I’m often asked around that, is our websites still important? Is SEO still important? And the answer is absolutely they work hand in hand with social media and work really well together.

One thing I always note, whenever I talk about websites and important detail, and it’s the fact that we own our websites, and we can’t say that about other sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Snapchat, Tiktok, whatever, that’s all rented leased space, and they can change the rules, we’ve seen it happen on a moment’s notice.

And that’s why I think websites are so important, and why we should continue to invest in them and modernize them and nurture them. Year in and year out. I think that’s very important. But you know, social media is is a primary strategy for most businesses.

And the the question again, always comes down to what’s moving the needle. And I would tell you that just to give people some real actionable takeaways here, generally speaking, the top three for most businesses that are you know, in the spectrum that we work with, is the acronym Phil efile, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn over my decade plus doing this, I have found those three platforms to provide the most results in social media. Twitter, distant fourth, Pinterest is good with some industries. You know, and other ones Snapchat Tik Tok, but those are the primary three, I tend to see the most results.

Mostafa Hosseini  7:58 

Fantastic. And Ganga Cory and I are talking about social media overload and overwhelm. If you have any questions about social media, and how to deal with social media, pop in the chat box, whichever platform you’re on, and we’ll try to do our best to answer your questions. Now, Cory, why do most people or businesses get poor results from social media? What is the deal there?

Corey Perlman  8:23 

Yeah, I would say the first answer to that is, you know, something we’ve already touched on, which is just trying to be everywhere and being mediocre at best. And that’s part of the reason that I try to get people to focus on a few and do them really well. It’s not that you can’t get results on sites like you know, and I use Tik Tok and Snapchat as my typical example because they’re kind of like the new hot things. But it really depends on your industry. If somebody is listening and says, Well, Cory, my demographic is 18 to 24, then I would say, oh, my gosh, you know, tick tock and Snapchat are absolutely the platforms for you.

But I tend to deal with audiences that are 30 to 55. And it doesn’t mean that you can’t see results on a site like tick tock but what I see tends to happen is that it distracts us from focusing on Instagram are diving into the features that may get you more results on Instagram. So if I can give a couple of examples of that, you know, if Instagram and Facebook are, say your dominant platforms, you know, and you’re working on creating quality content, which is important, but there are features within each of these platforms that will help you get more engagement for example, on Instagram stories, or reels are great features that both that Instagram is really pushing hard right now.

So anytime you know any of our real estate clients or you know, dental clients or mortgage clients who are looking for more engaging. One thing that we’ll try to do is find ways to create these stories or reels within their platforms. And it’s like free advertising from Instagram. They push it because that’s a feature that they’re pushing. The same thing goes with Facebook, you’re on, we’re on live right now, you know, Facebook Live from a video standpoint, has been a hot feature for Facebook for about, you know, two or three years now.

And still is. And you know that I think that’s really important. And then just video in general, and I’ll even say LinkedIn is a great platform, if I’m talking to some professional services and b2b folks out there, and you’re looking to kind of up your game on LinkedIn, you know, think about video, apply to be LinkedIn live. And if you don’t get LinkedIn live right away, post some videos on LinkedIn and watch your engagement, we tend to find that we get a little bit more uptick in engagement because again, LinkedIn is pushing video very hard.

Mostafa Hosseini  10:45 

Absolutely. Now, I know we talked about trying to be on multiple social media platforms and trying to hold it all. What are some other myths that people have about social media?

Corey Perlman  10:59 

You know, a couple of myths out there, one would just be you know, that you, if you post it, they will come I guess to some degree, and I don’t even know if that’s a myth anymore. But it’s worth saying that I just said this, on another call that I was on. And it’s a big thing for businesses out there. If you’re a business, and you’re using social media for marketing, you got to have an ad budget. So just write that down, circle it, you know, I hate to be the bearer of bad news. But five years ago, you’d asked me that question.

 I say no, you know, there’s a lot of organic stuff we can do. That moves the needle and all that. But nowadays, Facebook, Instagram, you know, you post anything out there and a business page, we all know this, you got 100 fans, only about five or 10 of them even get a chance to see it without sprinkling the magic pixie dust on it. So just note that if you’re a marketer out there, if you’re within a company, and you know, you’ve been struggling with the, you know, the direction or you know, the executives are like, Why aren’t we getting more engagement, you can share this with them, and tell them that I said, Hey, man, you got to have an ad budget.

And then the people typically asked me after that, well, what kind of ad budget should we have? Well, that obviously depends on the business. But I’ll give you an answer to that. Typically, with our clients, which are small to medium sized businesses, will have anywhere on the low end from say, $250, up to 1000, maybe even $2,000, specifically a bad budget that goes to these platforms. And we’ll spend that money, some of it on boosting or promoting posts. And so if you, I just told you to create a video, so we’re talking to a real estate agent, and they want to do a virtual, you know, listing and they take people through the house, and it’s beautiful, and they post this to their Facebook, you got to boost it right, you know, spend 2040 $60 and get more people seeing that post. And of course, you’re going to see more engagement that way.

And then the other money that I might spend on behalf of advertising on Instagram and Facebook would be more traditional ads, promoted posts, sponsored posts, that will go out to different groups, different people, besides the people that are engaging with your page. And the beauty behind social media is the amazing way that we can target demographics. Again, I’ll just use the real estate agent example. Obviously, geography, location, age group, likes and interests, male, female, and it goes on and on. And we can really narrow that target to quality people. But the bottom line is, is we just can’t expect great results today without having an ad budget behind us.

Mostafa Hosseini  13:42 

Got it. Curry. Adele says ad budget is good, but their service suck. They don’t respond that and make you feel like you’re a guilty party. What do you say to that?

Corey Perlman  13:53 

Well, if he’s if he’s talking about Facebook or Instagram, you know, yeah, I mean, that we’re, we’re a small fish in a gigantic pond. Right. So that can be challenging. Absolutely. I think that, you know, you if you’re having trouble, you know, I guess hearing from them things of that nature. You can certainly try. What I tend to tell people is, if you’re willing to spend money with Facebook and Instagram, they tend to be willing to communicate with you. I guess you just I would just, you know, in your correspondence with them say, Hey, I’m looking to increase my ad budget, but I’m having some challenges that I need help with. And if they don’t respond, I’d be pretty surprised about that. Most of our challenges, communicating with Facebook, Instagram, is when it’s more customer service related and not advertising related. I don’t know if that helps or not. But

Mostafa Hosseini  14:48 

absolutely. And I think Adele to your question, it probably takes time to optimize an ad to to get it to work and to have the right target market right copy you know the whole thing. So I think it’s a it’s a learning process as well.

Corey Perlman  15:02 

Yeah, let me give you one quick, best practice too if you are interested in, in, obviously social advertising and you’re playing around with it, the again, I just use our experience to take it with for what it’s worth. But two of the areas that we’ve found to get the most bang for our buck. From a pure social advertising standpoint, one is remarketing. And for those that most of you probably know what Remarketing is today, but just in case, if you’re searching for a spatula on Amazon, and then that spatula follows you around all over the internet, that’s remarketing.

And we can do it too, which is super exciting. So if somebody goes to your website, you can drop a little pixel on them. And they go back to their social platforms. And we can stay top of mind with them, which is really powerful. And we like using that quite a bit with our clients. The other one is a look alike audience, which I absolutely love. What that essentially is, is whether or not we give them a database, then being Facebook, Instagram, or they visit a website and we draw again, drop a pixel, we figure out who that audience is.

And then we develop an audience or Facebook develops an audience of like demographics. So again, if I give him a list of people in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, that are typically aged 30, to 60 60%, female, whatever, then Facebook creates a new demographic for me to advertise to that have liked demographics, which is pretty powerful. Gotta work.

Mostafa Hosseini  16:33 

Is there any, any any mistakes people make with social media that comes on top of mine, other than a big

Corey Perlman  16:39 

one is phoning it in, you know, another thing, so I dropped two kind of crappy bombs on you on this on this call today. One is you got to spend money, which is never fun to hear. The other one is, you got to be super creative and compelling. With your content, you know, and so I just was on the phone, or I did a consultation with a bunch of Kitchen and Bath dealers. And their primary posts were beautiful products, and they are beautiful. But that was it. And that’s not enough to move the needle, you know.

So some things that I would suggest to stop phoning it in on your social would be humanizing the brand. So what can we do on our business platforms to get behind the scenes to show the human side of our brand, that might be meeting your staff that might be getting more connected with your community, that might be showing your face more doing more video, trying to add more value that way that might mean humor that might mean levity that might be a ray of sunshine, in some very dark times on social media, as we’ve seen in the past. But that’s what I mean by phoning it in is just kind of a standard boring articles pictures.

We got to do better than that. I remember I’m dating myself here Mostafa, but I gotta mention it because it was one of my favorite examples. It was Blendtec blenders many, many years ago. And the guy was tasked with getting their blender from b2b to B to C. And he had a very limited budget. And he decided to start blending random household objects in the blender. Yeah, probably remember this? Yeah. And then they blended an iPhone, one of the early edition iPhones and it went bananas. And not only did it go viral, but it also helped sell more blenders to consumers. And I tell that story simply to say that even a blending manufacturer can find ways to be creative and do things different on social media.

Mostafa Hosseini  18:45 

Yeah, I think the title was, Will It Blend correctly? Just throw random things in there and see if it would blend? Yes. And the next thing people were waiting for would be the latest version of iPhone or Android, which would be like 1000 bucks. Now it’s two grand. And then he would throw it in there, see if it would blend and it would just turn it into dust? Yes.

Corey Perlman  19:07 

The stuff that would show up in the blender was really scary, actually. Yeah.

Mostafa Hosseini  19:12 

Yeah. That’s interesting. So what while we’re at it? What are some some good ways for businesses and business owners to drive engagement on social media?

Corey Perlman  19:24 

Yeah, good question. One thing I like to tell folks, an easy thing to do is I liken it to getting at a wedding, you know, it’s hard to get people on the dance floor. So you get the wedding party to join in, and it sort of warms the audience or the rest of the guests up to be on the dance floor. I liken that to getting engagement on social. So if you if you’re you’re focused on getting engagement, it’s not happening, get your people or some sort of connections to start responding. So for example, you know, you post a question on your LinkedIn page. and you’ve got a team of six people, get those other six people to go on there and comment and engage. If you can’t get your own staff or own company, engaging with your content, why would you expect your audience to do so? So I would plant commenters question answers engagers, to start getting you some of that engagement, that’s one way to get more engagement.

Obviously, another way is to boost as we talked about before, so that’s number two. And number three, is to not forget about letting people know how you’d like them to respond. So here’s a really fun one for you LinkedIn users, you notice that LinkedIn has all those different icons. Now the clap hands, the heart in the hand, the heart, and couple other ones I’ve noticed, and I thought it was really cool. I didn’t come up with us at a site where somebody would ask a question and ask people to use those icons as the way to answer almost like a polling way.

And I saw some really great results with that, you know, people were given a very creative way to be able to engage with their answer on that, and saw some cool results. So so ask for the engagement, and then tell them exactly how you’d like them to respond.

Mostafa Hosseini  21:19 

I love it. Love it. Love it, love it. I had a question earlier on, and I forgot to ask, and I think it’s important. Let’s say that I’m starting with social media, or I have been on social media for a while. I’m trying to be on multiple platforms, nothing is working. What are your suggestions and tips on how to pick the one social media platform to master? Yeah,

Corey Perlman  21:45 

that is, I’m, I appreciate you asking that question. Because that’s an important when even before you dive in, it’s really to figure out who your demographic of your typical audiences. And I recognize, too, that a lot of us have a wide range of prospects, you know, so I look at it like a bell curve, and wherever that that major area is, is where I want you to focus. So what’s their age? You know, again, what’s their demographic? Like? You know, is it tend to be b2b? Or is it much heavier, b2c? Do they tend to still be kind of the older generation, when I say older, I’m kind of talking about myself nowadays, but you know, 45 Plus, you know, those things will dictate to me where you should start.

And obviously, if it’s, you know, b2b, it’s LinkedIn, if it’s 40, plus, it’s Facebook, if it’s the millennial zaniolo market, it definitely could be Instagram, slash Facebook, you know, the beauty behind Instagram and Facebook is that they’re owned by the same company.

 So if you have a lot of anti Facebookers out there who are a little bit younger, and but they tend to migrate to Instagram, which they work so well together, because they’re owned by the same company. And then if they’re younger, you know, then then obviously, Tik Tok comes into play. And so to Snapchat, not my expertise, I wouldn’t be able to tell you anything about those platforms, because that’s not my market. But that would certainly be the place that I might start.

And then, you know, a couple other platforms out there, just so people are aware, is that you know, I was just talking about Pinterest yesterday. I don’t ever talk about Pinterest. Mustapha, very rarely, but in certain industries, it makes complete sense. Yeah, real estate, interior designer, interior designer, weddings, photographers, photographers. It’s huge. Right. And, you know, and then there are other platforms like Howes and, and even some of the fringe sites that might make sense for certain demographics. So all that being said, the answer to your question is, figure out who your market is, and then prioritize a platform from there.

Mostafa Hosseini  23:53 

Absolutely. I’m just going to add a comment about my experience with this. And I’m going to go over the question that I see here. And that is, it tell me if you if you would agree or disagree with this, and that the experiences, try to master one platform, one strategy and be the best that it make it work for you. And that should be more than enough for you. Like if your your audience hangs out on Facebook, get on Facebook, learn how to do Facebook, forget about everything else, and you can make a lot of money. Do you think that’s a true statement? Or is that a false statement? Or do we need to modify it?

Corey Perlman  24:29 

I think it’s true, I look at kind of what you’re doing right now. I think like you’re focused on this, you know, daily confidence video series podcast series, and I’m assuming that this is the lion’s share of the time that you’re spending dedicating to your, your social and, and like you’re a good example where you can still send a credit Kate across platforms. So you’re giving you’re showing some love to YouTube showing some love to Twitter, Facebook, but you’re primarily focused on this episodic kind of content, and I love that So I’m a big fan of that. So for those that are saying, Gosh, you know, I don’t know where to begin, I like your idea of one platform.

But I even like even more. So one strategy. Mm hmm. That might be this episodic type of content like you’re doing now. Or maybe that’s just, you know, once a week, it’s an interview, or even it’s just you on camera. Or maybe if you’re not a camera person, I’ll tell you what I do really quickly, once a week with my team, besides doing video, I write a meaty piece of content. So I sit there on Monday and I say, you know, what is something that I could write about, that would be a value to my crowd. And I write about it, and I send it to my social team. And they chop it up, and they post it throughout the week. So any of the content you see on our stuff typically comes from the one piece of meaty content that I do during the week. And that seems to be the heart and soul of our content. So does that kind of make sense?

Mostafa Hosseini  25:56 

Absolutely. Absolutely. So I have a question here ideal says, Can you comment on asking for comment on social media platforms? Is it generally a good idea? And he says, he heard that it’s not a good practice to overdo it or do too much?

Corey Perlman  26:12 

Yeah, the one warning I would give to asking is, is I would really prep some people to answer because it never looks good to ask and not get answered, right. kind of quiet and empty. And I’ve fallen guilty of that ourselves with some of the content that we’ve done. So if you are going to do a poll or as that type of thing, I think it’s a good idea to prep some people. Another little quick tip for you. When you do polls, and such I set them up or we set them up in a way that doesn’t show respondents. It just those percentages. So for example, it might be 3070. And maybe six people did the poll, but it doesn’t show that six people responded to the poll, you know, so doing things like that just you know, it, especially if you’re starting out, or you don’t have a huge pool to choose from setting yourself up for success. So they it doesn’t look like it’s super quiet is a good idea, but I’m okay for asking for comments but not overdoing it. And and prep a couple people to answer those comments.

Mostafa Hosseini  27:18  

Absolutely. Can I share a question that we actually tested over the weekend? And he actually got good responses? Sure. Absolutely. So the question is, what do you hate about x? Mm hmm. That’s some market research that you do with your with your audience and ask what do you hate about marketing? What do you hate about social media? What do you hate about accounting? And then that’s a very good, engaging question, that they will give you some business ideas, there’s probably some article titles in there you could write about, and people really talk like to talk about what they don’t like,

Corey Perlman  27:51 

I love that. I love it, write that down. I absolutely love that.

Mostafa Hosseini  27:55 

So we actually, we were doing our quarterly planning workshop here this weekend. And we actually did a deer in a workshop. And by within a day or two, each of our students had probably 10 or 20 comments about what they hate about, say, stress what they hate about marketing, and you know, the rest of it. But

Corey Perlman  28:14 

I love that, again, I would plant a couple of people to start that at that conversation. I’ve actually been told by people that they don’t like to be the first it’s really interesting. I’ve heard that in audiences. But yeah, plant that a couple times. Plus, when you plant comment as a plant, you know, just ask, you know, certain people make sure they do it. But it also indicates to the social network or the social platform that this is getting a little bit more engagement for you. And they may up the algorithm a bit and get it to a few more people. So all that is good for overall engagement.

Mostafa Hosseini  28:49 

Absolutely, absolutely asking good questions. And we actually did what you actually just just said, as well. So we actually went on each other’s posts, we liked it. And we responded like and like you said, I don’t want to be the first guy or some people don’t like to be and so you’re looking at and it kind of drives that social proof as well saying, oh, other people are engaging on this post. I should too, and I have an opinion lately, that’s a great way to get them started.

Corey Perlman  29:15 

Absolutely. And another thing that kind of you asked about engagement, this is actually flipping it on its head but I think it’s really important. I dedicate time once a day to go out on my tribes content and engage with their content. I go with the sole purpose to engage with other people’s posts and not do any content posting myself Hmm you know, you know a lot of people like you know, you and I got to make sure we get connected and as I move forward I’ll make sure to you know, like your stuff and engage with your your upcoming podcast episodes and such.

And you know, what that does is not only is it is it, I like to do it, especially the stuff that I’m interested in, but it it reminds people that you’re there obviously so it’s a top of Mind strategy. And of course, it’s a common strategy that typically you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours kind of philosophy. So, you know, we are both mutually friends with my friend David Newman. And we do that for each other all the time. You know, I’m constantly going out and engaging with his stuff. And I make sure to because he does it for me. And that’s another way of making sure that that you’re getting engagement. So 15 minutes a day, folks go out on social media with the sole purpose to engage with other people’s posts and not your

Mostafa Hosseini  30:28 

Mm hmm. Good idea. I really like that idea. Especially with your tribe, and with your friends and people that you support. Or, you know, maybe if they’re your customers, they’re your program you like them comments, and it kind of encourages other people to engage with their posts as well. Yeah, and it would it would turn around do the same with you like, comment, like, share your post and engage in different formats.

Corey Perlman  30:52 

100%

Mostafa Hosseini  30:53 

Hmm. Love it, love it, love it, I really like your idea about spending money on social a little bit of money on social media true, because relying heavily on organic alone will take a lot of time and man hours, right. But if you spend a little bit of money to boost it to your target audience, and the other thing is you can still pics, all those people as well, and the people that engage with you even on social media. I really liked that. Yeah,

Corey Perlman  31:27 

I mean, not only, you know, we talked about obviously advertising with social, but the other side of it is figuring out what you don’t want to do or don’t have time to do. And just being very honest with yourselves about that. So even in my business, being in social media, you’ll be shocked at how little I post on social media. As I’ve gotten older, as I’ve got, you know, I’ve got kids, I’ve even gotten busier, you know, I typically traveling on COVID times quite a bit, I’ve just, you know, had to recognize that I’m not on Instagram every day, I’m not, you know, doing live videos as much as I used to. So what did I have to do? Well, I either stopped posting and, you know, that’s not a good idea, especially in my industry, or I figure out how to, to get help.

And that’s what I do with my team. So it doesn’t mean it’s not my content, be be clear with that, you know, I’m driving the content, I’m just not clicking the buttons. And I think that that’s important for your your listeners out there that if you are not, you know, actively engaged on these platforms, but you think they’re important, you don’t have to be actively engaged on Facebook, you can be a content creator and get other people to make it look, right, beautiful, hashtag properly, and fit in perfect, you know, dimensions for each platform, and have it done consistently for you. And all you have to be as a content creator.

Mostafa Hosseini  32:54 

Absolutely. Nothing I remember, it’s as you keep promoting some of these posts on social media, you will know which one is actually getting better responses. So you probably even pump more money in there. If it’s working.

Corey Perlman  33:07 

i That’s a great best practice 100%. And that’s exactly what we do if if we post something and it starts to get even a little organic engagement, it’s a great post to boost. And if we boost something and it starts to really move, we might boost it some more just like you said,

Mostafa Hosseini  33:23 

I mean, if it’s working, why would you want to go create more stuff? It’s working.

Corey Perlman  33:29 

And the opposite is true, too. We might think that we created the best most engaging posts ever and we were wrong. Yeah, absolutely.

Mostafa Hosseini  33:37 

I have I have I have a little a call it my, my luck called the Mostafa test and that is if I if I think it’s really stupid, I should definitely try it and test it. Nice. And if I think it’s brilliant is probably a dumb idea. I love like that that guy, the guy. Whoever came up with the blender idea, probably thought it’s a stupid idea. I love an iPhone. And then he tested it and it caught fire and people are like, Wow, that’s amazing. Yes. Oh,

Corey Perlman  34:09 

yes. No, that we are not our own best gauge for what’s going to get engagement or not. I can do that. Yeah,

Mostafa Hosseini  34:17 

I have a I have a thing. Two things that I’m scared off more things that I think are stupid. Hmm. They usually give me better returns. Yes,

Corey Perlman  34:29 

yes. Yes. Another one that just popped in my head that’s really good for getting engagement is newsjacking. And what I essentially mean by that, and my definition might be different for other people, but it’s simply like whatever everybody else is talking about. If you can create a thread between that topic and your business, you can anticipate more engagement. So an example of that right now would be marshmallow. adness here in the States and you may have international listeners, March Madness is on a lot of people’s minds.

And so Dale Carnegie’s a client of ours, which does professional development and, you know, public speaking and leadership programs. And Dale Carnegie’s got these human relations principles 30 of them. And so we did a March Madness bracket around the principles, and let people vote on which ones got all the way to the Final Four, and then eventually the winner. And it did great. It was one of our highest engagement we’ve ever had with them. And I think the reason it did so well, is not because we created a bracket, but because we created a bracket during time when everybody was watching and doing their own brackets for March Madness.

Mostafa Hosseini  35:46 

Very interesting. Yeah. Very interesting, huh. So writing on some other thing that is going on. And then you just use maybe to tags and engage into posts. And right there,

Corey Perlman  36:01 

yeah. And be careful with that. Now, a couple of warnings slash caveats with that one would be obviously, but it goes without saying, don’t jump on anything that’s newsworthy that you don’t want to talk about or that might frustrate people, politics, you know, you know, terrorism, you know, stuff, that’s really not a good idea to, to mix in with your content. So I’m not saying that. So typically, what our litmus test or gauge as to whether or not we should do it is, can we offend anyone? If we can, like, we have a hard time offending anyone with March Madness, maybe somebody who hates sports or hates basketball, but we’re pretty safe there. So we were fine with it. But you know, where

Mostafa Hosseini  36:46 

you got to be careful, I guess, with your audience. Yeah, we’re

Corey Perlman  36:49 

very careful, even with holidays and such we try not to, we try not to, you know, make people you know, especially if we have any kind of internet, like a good example, a lot of our clients are North American based. Yes. So we want to be careful about saying, you know, Happy Fourth of July or Happy Thanksgiving, because that’s, it’s American based, and at least create some context to our American friends, Happy Thanksgiving to you, you know, or, you know, Boxing Day in Canada or whatever. So that we don’t look like we’re not paying attention or being insensitive to our audience.

That’s definitely a part of it. And the other little quick caveat on the news jacking thing is, don’t try too hard, because it can go the other direction. So if you throw out something, you know, willy nilly on something, you know, and it just looks like you’re trying to get likes or connections, they’ll call you out for it on that, you know, so take some time, like, like we did in that case, like, we really found something that made sense with what was going on in our little world, and Dale, Carnegie’s world, and it worked together. Mm hmm. But if you just throw something out there, and it doesn’t really make sense, we’ve been called out on that before. So be aware of that.

Mostafa Hosseini  38:05 

Absolutely. So what So while we’re at it, I have a question, I’m going to ask you my next important question. And Adele says, any sessions on Messenger and WhatsApp?

Corey Perlman  38:15 

Yeah, I don’t work too much as on those strategies for our clients. So I don’t have too much to tell you on that. The only thing I’ll say that we found in the past is if you’re using that as sort of lead gen or customer service, which I think is great, just make sure that you are they are actively responding to it. Don’t frustrate your audience. So never use a feature that you’re not actively managing. And I’ve been on the receiving end of this, I send a message via Messenger, and I get an auto bot, which is fine. But eventually if I’m what ready to get to a customer service rep, and then it’s crickets, will you lose me as a customer? So just make sure that if you are diving into a feature like WhatsApp or messenger, that there’s somebody on the other end or there’s an autoresponder on the other end, that gives me a good customer experience.

Mostafa Hosseini  39:05 

Absolutely. Yeah, I haven’t done much with the messenger or WhatsApp. The only thing I’ve done is I set up whatsapp on my Facebook page, and then hasn’t been doing much for me. Yeah. So how do you deal with negativity? If you make a post, let’s say Happy Fourth of July, or you say something, and people of different faiths, or people have different opinions, they get offended. How do you deal with that?

Corey Perlman  39:36 

In those types of cases, you know, I actually use a Dale Carnegie principle and I am quick to apologize, you know, and apologize. emphatically and sincerely. You know, because it especially if we were wrong, you know, or if we weren’t thinking fully about everybody, you know, and we’re very sensitive to that. 

But a couple additions to that and with response to negativity, one thing We try really hard not to do and I recommend to all of you out there, don’t pick fights, you know, I mean, keyboard warriors, man. I mean, it’s like, everybody’s just, it seems like everybody’s is waiting for a brand or a person or an influencer to, to respond negatively, and then they go to, you know, toe to toe. And as a business, I don’t think that’s helpful. 

So a few best practices, if I will, on on just responding to negativity, whether it be reviews, or just overall negative sentiment on a post, like you said, Be as, as empathetic as you possibly can try to fix the problem.

The cool thing is that there’s been studies that have found that if a business responds to a negative review, and tries to fix the problem and or fixes the problem, and the reviewer goes back and says, Hey, thank you so much, I’m good. That does more from an overall satisfaction than if it never happened at all. Mm hmm. Which is pretty cool. 

And I think that just indicates that people appreciate authenticity, and businesses owning the fact that we’re not perfect, we make mistakes, which is cool. But if you can’t fix the problem, take it offline as quickly as possible. So don’t pick a fight, don’t you know, go back and forth, back and forth. If it can’t be fixed, then just say, Hey, I’m really sorry, this happened. I’d like to get your email address or phone number so that I can work with you to try to respond and fix your issue and leave it at that.

Mostafa Hosseini  41:31 

Absolutely. Absolutely. In my experience, when you when you when you try to pick a fight, it never ends. Well, no, no, it doesn’t look good. It doesn’t look professional. And people do see that. And like you said, we have a pretty good chance of converting that negative comment into a paying customer. 

Yes, if and actually probably a higher chance than maybe the positive ones. Because in my experience, when I when people have a negative feedback, that’s when they care, they were actually thinking about signing up. And they saw that the objection or they saw something wrong. And now when you address it professionally, then you have a chance of having a lifelong, loyal customer.

Corey Perlman  42:13 

Amen. Yeah, right, who’s gonna talk about you,

Mostafa Hosseini  42:17 

versus Screw you, sorry to cut you off versus, oh, you saw problems Screw you, blah, blah, blah, blah, here’s, you know,

Corey Perlman  42:24 

they may go to the end of the earth to promote you. After helping solve their problem. I remember, I had a guy who gave me a scathing, scathing book review, my first book, and part of the reason for that was that I wrote a very non evergreen book. So at the time, from my best of my knowledge, everything was accurate, the rules, the strategies that I gave, but years later, those strategies from Google and all that other stuff changed. 

So he, he beat me up for it, but we got on the phone. And I talked with him about it. I you know, I listened to him. I said, you know, in some cases, you’re absolutely right. Here’s my reasoning for other things. We ended up having a good friendship. I think he even booked me for a speaking gig in Toronto.

So yeah, I mean, it definitely happens. And there’s a there’s a meme out there that if you guys want to search or something, you’ve probably seen it, but I absolutely love it. And when I get back out speaking, I, I’ll definitely show it as an example. But it’s two dogs. And there’s a there’s a barrier between them. 

And they are vicious dogs, and they’re screaming at each other. And then the gate opens up. And they’re just like, you know, licking and just sweetest can be and totally quiet. Then the gate closes, and then they’re vicious again. And then the gate comes back up and nothing. And then the gate and it goes back and forth. And it’s like, that doesn’t like talk about this computer thing between people. I don’t know what that’s crazy.

Mostafa Hosseini  43:47 

Absolutely. So Cori, I understand you’re sharing your gifts with us about your masterclass.

Corey Perlman  43:54 

Yeah. So what I thought I would do is, I’ve got a presentation, my typical presentation that I do on stage. And I often people always ask for my slides. And so my slides are really a lot of to do’s and summaries of what I talked about. So what I thought I would do is give your the folks that are watching us or listening via podcast, the opportunity just to have those slides to review them to keep them to soak them in and have them Yeah, so that’s what that is.

Mostafa Hosseini  44:24 

Fantastic. So again, as you can see, Cory is has a wealth of knowledge and experience when it comes to social media. If you want to tap into his experience, and get his training slides and the two lists that he has around different parts of social media management, and marketing the rest of it, I put the link in the chat box. 

It is in the show notes as well if you’re listening, and so go grab it and if you want to tap into his expertise, reach out, have a conversation. I know a few people that do know him And they wouldn’t recommend him unless he was really good at what he does. So go ahead and get access to that. Now. Cory, what are some of the books that have made a massive impact in your life? Or in your business?

Corey Perlman  45:17 

Oh, I really love that question. One was E Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber. Very much entrepreneurial journey, you know, employee versus employer kind of mindset stuff. Really great book. Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki and sharing big time for me in the early stages of my career. Good to Great by Jim Collins is another one that I absolutely just read over and over and over again. Thank you know, again, a plug to my buddy David Newman, but his both of his books, do it speaking to marketing have been on my shelf reviewed multiple times.

He also gets a lot of other experts besides himself, to share their wisdom and those books, which I thought have been super helpful, very, very tactical. So those are those are good ones. Just think of a couple of others. You know, Dale Carnegie’s books, as I mentioned earlier, How to Win Friends and Influence People. One of the best ever that I’ve, I’ve, I’ve read and I reread over and over and over again. And then just a podcast. And I didn’t ask that question. But I love Tim Ferriss podcast, I’m a huge avid listener to that and, and love it a great, great deal. So I’ve gained so much interesting information from his podcasts.

Mostafa Hosseini  46:45 

Yeah, he does share a lot of good. I just saw like a three and a half hour podcast from him one of his latest ones. I got to go on a drive for that one. Exactly. Sure. A lot of good stuff. Yes,

Corey Perlman  46:57 

multiple runs, or multiple drives to get through a Tim Ferriss podcast, but they’re usually

Mostafa Hosseini  47:02 

in it, they’re worth it. He has some really good people in there. So those are some amazing books, books I’ve read most of them except for David Newman’s book, which now is on my list to go read. And that’s amazing. Amazing, amazing. Now a career if you had a Facebook ad, or an internet ad, where everyone on the internet would see what would your message be? Hmm.

Corey Perlman  47:29 

Um, I would say, you know, I love I love teaching. So I love being I love being on the road. Not too often because I love my family. But so you know, if I could offer value to your audience, whether that be in person or virtual in 2021, I would definitely offer that and you can go to Cory Perlman comm which is my name, which, you know, you find on here to see more about that. And then from our agency standpoint, you know, we’re really good at keeping people top of mind and businesses top of mind, they used to say in the olden days that the seven touches to make a sale, you know, but nowadays, it’s like 70, you know, or you know, just a lot more and so keeping businesses on the radar of people that are interested in them from research mode, all the way to buy mode is what are what are our business does best.

And so I would send them to impact social media calm, which is our website for our agency impact social media calm, and they learn more about that. So those would be our two ads. I appreciate asked that question.

Mostafa Hosseini  48:37 

What’s one piece of advice that you received that made a massive impact in your business or in your life,

Corey Perlman  48:45 

fire myself, fire myself on anything that I am not a complete expert in or that I do not like to do? That has been hugely valuable, which I think one of the ways I learned that advice, ironically, was from Tim Ferriss, his book The Four Hour Workweek, which is another book I would recommend, so circle back on that shout out again to him. But that advice of fire myself, so you know, I used to, like dabble in websites and, and you know, against, you know, create Instagram posts or work in Canva. And I just wasn’t very good at it. So I stopped doing it. I now have a team of people who are frickin magicians at it, and creating e newsletters. So, you know, if it’s not something you love to do find other people who are really good at doing it.

And then just one recent one, I’ll leave you with, you know, just advice wise that early on in the pandemic. I had our accountant who I been with for a very long, long time. We were trying to get the PPP loan, and we never heard from them like I expected to hear more from them and I times of crisis. And so they’re no longer our accountant. On the flip side, my banker here, which is with a very large bank, by the way, called me out of the blue about a year ago, and was like, hey, Cory, I know you’re a small business. I know this is challenging. I know, you’re probably trying to get this PPP thing, they have no idea what it is, how can we help? How can we support you? What can I do? You know, can I walk you through this? And I was like, yes, thank you.

And he did. And so it was a huge reminder to me that we have to make sure that we are not just reaching out to our customers and clients when we need something. But when they need something. And so I have done I’ve tried to do a better job now. And in the future of reaching out to my clients and customers and just saying, How can I help be of service, but I don’t want them to wait six, eight months to be like us, you know, it’d been nice to hear from Cory more. So that was an advice given to me. But it was an advice that I’ve had to learn over the last 1216 months. And that’s,

Mostafa Hosseini  51:05 

that’s a very, in my experience, the most profitable advice when you reach out to your customers. And we’d like that and every once a while and say, Hey, can I help? Yeah. And usually they come back and say, Yeah, I actually was expecting call. Thanks for reaching, reaching out, here’s what I need.

Corey Perlman  51:25 

They never say to you, you know, can you stop over communicating and offering value to me? You know, like, yeah, they never asked you to stop. But they, they typically when they leave, they might say we could have heard from you guys a little bit more.

Mostafa Hosseini  51:38 

Fantastic. Curry, what advice would you give your 20 year old self

Corey Perlman  51:46 

don’t don’t keep the music inside of you, you know, that, you know, you. We think we were busy pre you know, when we were younger, you have no idea how busy you get when you’re older. So, to my 20 year old self, I would say you know, write the books, you know, write the poems, write the songs, you know, take the trips, you know, don’t wait, you know, until you think that there’s going to be a right time because there isn’t. And so, you know, and I did do some of that, which I’m kind of proud of, but I certainly could have done more of it.

And I guess, you know, a little personal note, I guess don’t take you know, relationships for granted. You know, at 20 years old, I would have only had my mom for four more years. So I would have visited her more and seen her more because I didn’t know that you know, it was only going to be four more years that I’d have her so cherish those relationships because you know, time is indeed short.

Mostafa Hosseini  52:44 

Absolutely love those. Love those don’t keep your song in sight. Did I get that right?

Corey Perlman  52:51 

Don’t keep your mouth yeah, don’t don’t get the music inside. Yeah, let it out.

Mostafa Hosseini  52:56 

And nurture your relationships because you never know how long you’re gonna have them. Yes, love it, love it, love it. This has been an absolute amazing conversation, some some good value that you share it to do is what to do what not to do, because I know social media these days is very important, especially with all this whole online madness that we have going on because of COVID. So Ganga if you want to reach out to Cory What was the website again? Curry?

Corey Perlman  53:27 

Yeah, it’s my name. Cory Perlman, calm, cure UI, pe RL ma N calm or impact social media.com impact. Social media.com gets you to us beauty,

Mostafa Hosseini  53:39 

curries, anything that you’d like to add that we haven’t talked about?

Corey Perlman  53:43 

Well, you’re an excellent interviewer, you ask great questions. And I really enjoyed this conversation. And the questions at the end, you know, just to kind of pull out a little bit more beyond just social media. But yeah, I would just say, perfectionists are the, the the enemy to progress when it comes to social media in particular. So if you are a perfectionist, try to get away from that and just try to be more consistent on this. I think you’re a great example of that, where I’m sure doing this over and over and over again. I bet you when you first did stream yard, it was a painful experience. And now you are a pro. And that’s what happens when you do something consistently.

Mostafa Hosseini  54:28 

Absolutely. Yeah, I appreciate that. Thank you very much. Great to have you again, if you’re watching or listening. One way that we add value to our audience is by helping them helping them create and implement their one page marketing plan through our bootcamp simple marketing formula, and we do that over a weekend. So if you want to create your one page marketing plan for 2021 and increase your chances of reaching your goals and being successful by at least 40 times. Check the link in the chatbox and in in the show notes, and check, check the page for the upcoming dates. I appreciate you. Thank you for joining us.

Again, if you want to get entered to draw for winning the gifts if you like the show, tag someone in there if they could benefit from the conversation, ask questions and stay engaged you enter into the draw, and then we’ll go from there. Thank you for joining us. My name is Mostafa Hosseini. And thank you, Cory, for joining me again. And you guys have a great day and we’ll see you on our next episode. Thanks everybody.