How to leverage a one-person social media team with Jacob Shipley

In this episode, Jacob Shipley joins On Top of PR host Jason Mudd to discuss how a one-person social media team works, as well as some social media tips, tricks, and trends.

Tune in to learn more!

Short Guest Bio

Jacob Shipley started as the first social media hire at YouVersion. He now works for Tyson Foods and has built his own LinkedIn following, leading him to start a social media content strategy newsletter.

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5 things you’ll learn during the full episode:

1. What first-party data collection is
2. Why B2B companies need to be on social media
3. Pros and cons of being a one-person social media team
4. 2024 social media trends
5. The minimum viable social strategy needed to succeed

About Jacob Shipley

Jacob started as the first social media hire at YouVersion, an app with half a billion downloads. While there, YouVersion's Instagram grew by over a million followers two years in a row. Their TikTok grew from 0 to 300,000 in less than 6 months. In his current role at Tyson Foods, he handles the technology and execution for organic social, paid social, and first-party data collection. Jacob also has a weekly newsletter, Social Studies, which has one goal: to help social media managers take their game to the next level.

Quotables

• “You're delivering tangible value so that your customers want to hear from.” - Jacob Shipley
• “The difference between B2B social media and B2C social media is B2C you are talking to consumers and with B2B you're talking to consumers that happen to work in a business.” - Jacob Shipley
• “The bigger the team, the more complex it is, the harder it is to fight that.” - Jacob Shipley
• “Some of the accounts that have grown the fastest were some of the ones with the least amount of resources because they had to be scrappy, they had to be really creative and really clever about how do I meet my audience's need?” - Jacob Shipley
• “If you look at what really performs well, it's the kind of stuff that feels off the cuff, that feels native, that feels personal, it's cliche, but you can't fake authenticity.” - Jacob Shipley

Resources

• Connect and learn more about Jacob Shipley on LinkedIn.
• Follow Jacob Shipley on ‘X’.
• Visit Jacob’s newsletter for more information. 
• Follow Dave Adamson on ‘X’.
• Follow Tommy Clark on ‘X’.

Additional Resources from Axia Public Relations:

• Listen to more episodes of the On Top of PR podcast.
• Find out more about Axia Public Relations.
• Social Media Content Calendar Templates
• Top 3 benefits of creating a social media calenda

Episode Highlights

[02:05] What is first-party data collection

Jacob Shipley: “You're delivering tangible value so that your customers want to hear from.”

• Permission from a consumer to opt in to communication
• Permission from a consumer to contact them directly on behalf of your company

[05:26] Why B2B companies need to be on social media

Jacob Shipley: “The difference between B2B social media and B2C social media is B2C you are talking to consumers, and with B2B you're talking to consumers that happen to work in a business.”

• At the end of the day, you’re still talking to people. 
• You aren’t trying to sell to them but relate to them on social media.
• Provide valuable content.
• Building B2B relationships helps with B2C consumption.

[08:36] Pros and cons of being a one-person social media team

Jacob Shipley: “The bigger the team, the more complex it is, the harder it is to fight that.”

[10:09] 2024 social media trends

• More ghostwriters and brand personas because people follow people 

[12:06] How to work as a one-man social media team 

• You want to have a scheduled content calendar.
• Use the 80/20 ratio for planned content and trending content.
• You may want to create that viral meme or post, but don’t focus on that.
• You can repost top-performing content because your new followers didn’t see it.
• Reposting or reusing content helps save time as a one-man team.
• Use inspiration from your competitor's social media content. 

[16:26] Social media budgets

• Every company thinks they have a small budget.
• Organic social media takes time to form actual sales.

[20:25] Minimum viable social strategy

• What’s the right path you can go down that will be worth your time and money?
• It’s suggested you pick a specific format you want to dominate at:
  • Writing
  • Short-form video 
• You want to create a content plan.
  • What are my customers engaging with online, and how can we make similar content?
  • How can we be more helpful as a company?
• Pick your ride or die.
  • Pick one platform you’re going all out on for your content. 
• Cross-pollinate.
  • Use the content from your ride-or-die platform on other platforms.

[29:14] Advice from Jacob

Jacob Shipley: “Some of the accounts that have grown the fastest were some of the ones with the least amount of resources because they had to be scrappy, they had to be really creative and really clever about how do I meet my audience's need?”

Jacob Shipley: “If you look at what really performs well, it's the kind of stuff that feels off the cuff, that feels native, that feels personal, it's cliche, but you can't fake authenticity.”

• As a one-man social team, you can’t be really good at everything on all platforms.
• Be uniquely your brand.
• Use audience-focused messages.

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Transcript

Jason 

Hello and welcome to On Top of PR. I'm your host Jason Mudd with Axia Public Relations. We have a special guest today, Jacob Shipley, with Tyson Foods and, more specifically, Tyson Food Services. Jacob is the digital customer experience manager. Jacob, welcome to On Top of PR.

Jacob 

Hey, thanks so much for having me. I'm super excited to chat.

Jason 

Yeah, we're glad you're here. I'm going to read your bio here real quick and then ask you a couple of follow-up questions. So Jacob, you started as the first social media hire at YouVersion, an app with half a billion downloads. That's half a billion. That's a lot of downloads. I'm one of those. While there YouVersion's Instagram grew by over a million followers two years in a row. That's impressive Jacob. And then your TikTok grew from zero to 300,000 in less than six months. 

In your role at Tyson Foods, you handle the technology and execution for organic paid, excuse me, organic social, paid social, and first-party data collection. And you also have a weekly newsletter, Social Studies, which has one goal, which is to help social media managers take their game to the next level. 

Our topic today is going to be talking about social media managers and what to do and how-tos of best practices when you are a one-person social media team. But Jacob, I'm confident during our conversation today, we'll have plenty of tips for those that have the fortune, good fortune, or some days maybe not so good fortune of working with a larger team. Does that sound good, Jacob?

Jacob 

Yeah, absolutely. I love it.

Jason 

Perfect, perfect. Okay, so first of all, I know that somebody somewhere listening to this podcast isn't immediately going to know what first-party data collection means. Almost sounds like a credit bureau, I think, to some people. So Jacob, why don't you just express specifically what your role is with first-party data collection at your current employer?

Jacob 

Yeah, for sure. So I work at Tyson Foods, like you mentioned, and I'm on the food service side. So that is, I think selling food into restaurants, cafeterias, that whole side of the business. So any place that you go out of the home to eat. And the flip side of that would be our retail division, which is you go buy Tyson, any of our brands at Walmart or Kroger, anything like that. So when you think about we have access to reach our customers, so in this case, restaurant owners, chefs that kind of market have access to target them on Facebook, on LinkedIn, we can try some Google ads, programmatic ads, anytime we can get a customer to opt into communication and give us information or give us an outlet to contact them directly, that's obviously a win. And so usually that takes place in the form of an email address.

A lot of brands go phone number, even mailing address could be that. But anytime we just get permission from one of our customers that say, Hey, I'm opting into your communication. I'm giving you permission to contact me directly, that obviously streamlines communication and makes it easier for both parties. Hopefully in an ideal world, they find the communication that we give them super valuable so they get a direct line of communication. And I think that's what that's this predicated on is that you're delivering valuable communication, not just buy my product, buy my product, buy my product, but you're delivering tangible value so that your customers want to hear from you, want to know what you have to say, and then you have an outlet to communicate directly with the people that are making the purchasing decisions.

Jason 

Gotcha. Love that. Okay, good. So ultimately, what kind of software or tools are you using to produce or to integrate that kind of content from your activities into your master database?

Jacob 

Yeah, for sure. I have to be a little careful on this one. I'm not supposed to just go through the tech stack, but we do have a social media management platform. We have a marketing automation tool, and then we have a first-party data collection tool, and then we have a web analytics tool as well. And then all of those are puzzle pieces that fit together. And then they're constantly communicating that when we add a data source in one, they loop it all around so that the left-hand knows what the right hand is doing, and we're not shooting ourselves in the foot there.

Jason 

Sure, sure. Okay. So is there some automation that's happening in the systems, or there's a workflow that gets it from the time the data is submitted into some sort of platform?

Jacob 

For sure. Yeah, and like you said, in this case, it's the good fortune of having it being part of a company that has a built out team to where each person kind of manages a specific tool, but they're all the tools are talking to each other. But then at the same time, the social media person me is talking to the marketing automation person who's talking to the web analytics person just to make sure that we're all on the same page showing up as one Tyson in a single effort.

Jason 

So to be clear, you're doing social media, but you're doing it B2B, right?

Jacob 

Yeah, absolutely.

Jason 

And a lot of times I get feedback from B2B companies saying, why do we need to be on social media?

Jacob

Yeah. I think I had a LinkedIn post about this a while back where I said the difference between B2B social media and B2C social media is for B2C, you are talking to consumers, and B2B you're talking to consumers that happen to work in a business. And so I think sometimes we try to overcomplicate it. There are some nuances for B2B versus B2C, but at the end of the day, you're still just talking to people. And so in my case, we're talking to restaurant owners or restaurant chefs or general managers, but they're still people. The example we always use is they're out in the alley by the dumpster at 2:00 AM just taking a break or in the walk-in freezer just sitting down, just collecting themselves for a couple minutes in the dinner rush. And what are they doing? Well, they're probably on their phone, they're scrolling Instagram, they're scrolling TikTok, they're scrolling Facebook.

And so how can we show up? How can we provide content that is valuable in that instant? And in that instant, they're not wanting to be sold to, they're not wanting a professional long drawn out communication. They're just wanting to be entertained, educated, maybe inspired. And so how can we meet that need? I have a friend named Dave Adamson who has this brilliant quote, he said, being relevant is just meeting the needs of the person in the moment that they need it most. And so in that moment when they're in the walk-in freezer scrolling, TikTok, how can we just show up and meet their needs in that moment?

Jason

So it's really not that complicated, is it, Jacob? I mean, we make it complicated, but at the end of the day, I don't know who said this, but I use it all the time behind every B2B transaction is a B2C relationship. And so we are all humans. And to your point, I think we can complicate things a little bit too much, but at the end of the day, corporate buyers are also humans and humans have personal social media, and if you can connect with them during their personal time, then you're occupying more of their mind share and ultimately let's not complicate things.

Jacob

Yeah, absolutely. And I think, yeah, that's a good point. Most of the time people are on social, it's not with the mindset of looking for a business or a vendor to do business with. They're looking for the three pillars: educate, entertainer, inspire. How can you neatly fit your content into the kind of content that they're already consuming on that platform?

Jason

Right? Yeah, exactly. And the truth is, it's no different than just traditional media. People tune into traditional media to be educated, inspired, and informed or educated. They're not doing it because they want to see who's advertising and who can sell me something today. Right?

Jacob

Yeah, definitely.

Jason

Okay, so a one-person social media team can be very lonely, but there's also probably some benefit of being a one-person team. So talk through a little bit for me, in your experience, what are some of the pros and cons to being a one-person social media team?

Jacob

Yeah, I think Craig Rochelle says growth creates complexity. Complexity kills growth. And so I think the bigger the team, the more complex it is, the harder it is to fight that. When I was at YouVersion, we were delisted to some stats. We were able to grow really quickly, and I think a big part of that was we would have an idea at 9:00 AM and it would be live by lunch because I was the only social media person. And so I would make something on my laptop, turn it to my boss and say, how does this look? He'd give me a thumbs up and then we'd post it. And so we were able to be really, really nimble, really agile. 

Obviously on the flip side of that, if you're part of a integrated team, you're able to do things at scale. You're able to make use of the best resources, the best content. So yeah, obviously there are benefits. I think when I think about what kind of content drives the most results on organic social, it tends to favor content creators and teams that are able to be incredibly agile and nimble and really play to what the algorithm is pushing and play to what the platform is prioritizing.

Jason

Excellent, excellent. Jacob, so tell me, what are you working on now that's kind of got you excited, or what are you keeping an eye on in social media that you see is either going to be exciting in 2024? Give me your thoughts on what you're looking forward to.

Jacob

Yeah, for sure. I think obviously if you scroll Twitter or ‘X’ for very long, you'll see everybody is a ghost writer now. And I think it's kind of funny, but it's also, I think it highlights a trend of that people are realizing, businesses are realizing that people follow people. And so obviously brand accounts, there are so many brand accounts that just have created an identity, but it almost highlights that stand point when you think about the brands that are really crushing it, you're not following brands on social, you're following the persona that brand has created. Even if there's not a figure, it has a personality; it has a certain feel to it. So in some way you still are following a person. 

And so this ghostwriting craze, I think a lot of CEOs, a lot of founders, a lot of executives are realizing that, I mean, if you look at how many followers Elon Musk has versus Tesla, right? Elon Musk is far and away above that. Not necessarily because the content's better, but because people follow people I think, and people follow personality. And so I think this infusion of personality into corporate brand accounts and also executives planning their stake in the ground and saying, I'm going to try to grow my own following, grow my own influence that will follow me wherever I go, but also benefit whoever my employer is or my business along the way.

Jason

Right. Okay. So circling back to a one-person social media team, it's a little bit lonely and probably a little bit of pressure of what if I call in sick or I'm out for an extended period of time, and I don't know about your policy –– I'd be curious to hear yours –– but we try to prepare 80% of our content ahead of time, and then 20% of our content is designed to be spontaneous and reactive and trend spotting and things like that. How might you do it differently, Jacob?

Jacob

I love that 80% number. There's another really, really great content creator in the social media management space named Tommy Clark, and he has a newsletter called Social Files, and he had a quote that I just loved. He said, if you know what content you're posting in two months, your content probably sucks. And I think there is some truth to that, that obviously you want to have a really solid content calendar where you have right now on LinkedIn, I think I've got all my posts scheduled out through the end of the month knowing that I'm going to go in at least a few times this month, delete one that's scheduled and plug one in based on something that's trending. So I think that's perfect. I love that ratio of 80/20, I think leaving room to be nimble and then just building out systems too. That's the unsexy side of social media.

Everybody wants to make a banger meme that goes viral. But when I was at e-version, we lived on spreadsheets. Tyson too. We have, it's not just as simple as a spreadsheet, but we have systems in place to where we know what we're posting, we have a really solid format. And then repurposing content too can definitely help. I think it varies depending on your brand voice and how quickly you're growing, but another way to scale up content and velocity is anytime you have a top performer, throwing that back in the rotation, making some slight tweaks, other ways you can improve it even more, but then reposting it because most of your followers never saw the first time and none of your new followers saw it. So is there a way you can continue to that can help build up? So it's not as much work in the long run.

Jason

Love that. Love that. Yeah, I think the idea of if you prep 80% of your post ahead of time, whether it's that same week or that same month, then you've got the boxes checked and then you can be out there engaging with your team instead of showing up to worrying about, oh my gosh, I don't have anything to post today. And then you've got that pressure of doing it. 

And I think the extreme version of what we're talking about is what comes to mind is has an agency with 40 something people or more working on their social media every day, and then they've got store level social media coordinators managing local stores as well. And to me, that just seems like so many people involved in such a big effort, but that's because McDonald's is this huge brand. There's a lot of fate stages of compliance and approval and things like that. So sounds like at your current employer, and even at YouVersion, it was pretty nimble as far as the approval process and approval chain. Can you kind of describe what that was like at those two organizations?

Jacob

Yeah, I mean, YouVersion was owned by Life Church, so it's a faith-based nonprofit. It's like if you have a Bible app on your phone, it's probably YouVersion, but still, we operated in very much like a startup mentality. Were, I think when I was there, we were 10, 15 years old maybe, but it was very much very nimble, very lean. Tyson obviously is a hundred year old company that there are definitely more layers of approval. Not that that's a bad thing, just is as part of a big employer, there has to be more layers of approval to get legal signoff and that sort of thing. 

And you mentioned, I think is an incredible example of how they're able to make content that feels socially native without curating from anybody else. If you look at, I love Dave Ramsey's content. He talks about his niche in a way that's very fun and very funny, but they're constantly pulling memes from other people, which I love.

I imagine that opens the door to intellectual property issues, whereas McDonald's creates that same style of content that feels very native, very like this was made for whatever platform it lives on, but they do it using all of their own assets. And I think they're one of the few, I can't think of another one off the top of my head that's pulling that off really, really well. But like you said, they have, that's obviously a big pillar for the organization that they put resources behind that to make it happen. But yeah, they're absolutely best in class in that.

Jason

Well, let's talk about resources by the way, because you and I had talked previously before, even today when we're recording about this idea that every organization claims they have a small budget. So if I were interviewing the head of social media at McDonald's, he or she would go on and on about how small their budget is and they're expected to do so much, but then any other company would just be probably blown away by how much money McDonald's invest in social media. And I'm using the word investment intentionally because there is an investment. So this idea that one, most companies say, oh, we have such a small budget. Well, guess what? So do the billion dollar global corporations, they say they have a small budget also, so it's all relative, right? I've never met anybody that goes, man, we've got this huge budget for social media and we're excited to be spending it. I've never heard that. And so I'm sure that happens somewhere, but at the end of the day, it doesn't go very far. 

I remember I was advising the world's largest FinTech company about social media very early on in their entry into social media, and we kind of agreed that they had about a $5 million budget to kind of experiment with social media and see how it's going to work for their brand. And some companies would find it unbelievable to have a $5 million budget, much less the $5 million experiment. But when you're the world's largest of anything, you're a publicly traded global corporation, obviously you're going to spend a little bit more money than a smaller, more scale back organization is.

Jacob

Yeah, definitely. I think that highlights the thing about organic social specifically because with almost every other digital marketing platform, you can really tangibly measure ROI in the short term, whereas organic social, it's, I like the phrase, the quicker you try to prove the ROI of organic social, the longer it's going to take. Because if you're constantly saying, buy my product, buy my product, buy my product, nobody's going to buy your product,

Jason

Nobody's going to follow you either.

Jacob

Right. Yeah. Whereas if you build content that people find relevant, they want to share, they want to engage with, are they going to buy a product? Probably not right then, but over the long term, you're going to build a community around this interest around your company that yes will translate to tangible sales. And so I think that's probably, whenever there are budget cuts, organic social usually gets hit because of that reason of like, well, we can't prove tangible ROI. Yeah, we can do things like UTM tracking to see, okay, link bio clicks or post link clicks and then purchase on that. But the vast majority of content on organic social shouldn't be that type of content that's pushing people off the platform onto a site to drive traffic and drive sales. It should be content around building affinity towards the brand that, down the line, will lead to sales. So it's a tricky situation for sure.

Jason

Yeah, absolutely. Alright, so I want to get back to what we were going to focus on, which is the minimum viable social strategy. But first, I want to take a quick break, and then we'll be right back with more from Jacob Shipley. 

Jason

Hey, welcome back to On Top of PR. I'm Jason Mudd, joined by Jacob Shipley. Jacob is with Tyson Food Service, and he's helping us understand what it's like to be a one-person social media team and how to be successful in that environment. Jacob, welcome back. And we're going to talk about the minimum viable social strategy. So first of all, what is a minimum viable social strategy?

Jacob

Yeah, I started writing on LinkedIn every day in January of 2022, and accidentally just built this community of other social media managers, social media professionals that were all in the trenches trying to build a presence for a brand on social media. And so then I eventually transitioned some of that to a newsletter where I could ramble a little bit longer and put my thoughts in one place and have a place to share that. And then I always end every email with, send me any questions. I love just thinking through things with people. And the most common question by far is where do I start? If it's just me running social, I'm a one person team, where do I start? And so kind of chat with some people that I really respect in the industry and thinking through what is the minimum viable strategy if you're a one person team.

And a lot of times people, they're not just social, they're like a marketing manager, marketing coordinator where you own maybe email, website, social, which in a lot of places is 3, 6, 9, 12 jobs. And so you're managing all of that. If you don't have that crazy budget, what's the minimum strategy you can start with to where it's worth the investment? Because a lot of times if you're doing the wrong thing, it doesn't matter how long you do it, you're not going to get results. So what's the right path to go down that it's not going to be as effective as if you had 40 hours a week to dedicate, but where can you at least start?

Jason

Okay, good. Yeah, I like that. So in your tips, you're suggesting that you pick a format. Let's talk about that.

Jacob

Yeah. The way I'm not that this is right, but how I'm thinking about it is there are a few different categories of social. There's the written word, which is kind of where I live on my personal brand. So LinkedIn, ‘X’ and Threads. As we're recording this is still relatively a new player. And so those brands where it's really all about writing, obviously image and video still exist, but it's about writing. And then there's the short form video platforms, which TikTok kind of changed the game entirely. They really were able to change what other platforms were in order to compete with TikTok. So when TikTok came out, it was the go-to destination for short-form video. And then very quickly Facebook had one called Lasso that nobody remembers, but that was their original competitor didn't really get traction. And they're like, well, let's shift and turn Instagram into this TikTok competitor.

YouTube came out with shorts and then even Facebook was pushing reel super hard natively in Facebook too. So really every platform is trying to compete with that. So the way your brand is situated, you can probably pick pretty quick, do we fit more into that written word category or are we more in the short form video category? The stereotypical examples are like a B2B company. Well, living on LinkedIn and ‘X’ and the written word is probably more effective than a B2C soap company, whereas you can be really visual and make tiktoks and reels where it really highlights that product. So where does your brand fit on that spectrum is kind of where I would start, right?

Jason

Yeah, absolutely. You can't be all things to all people and you can't be on all platforms. So if you're a one man band, you got to figure out what you can do efficiently and do well, especially as you said, if you're a one man band and this is just one fifth of your role within the organization. So that makes sense to me. And then step, so let's just outline the steps real quick. Step one's, pick a format. Step two is create a content plan. Step three is pick your ride or die. And step four is cross pollinate. So step two is create a content plan. Tell us more about that, Jacob.

Jacob

Yeah, we chatted about this a second ago, but if you just show up and say, what am I going to post today? The quality is not going to be where it should be. And by quality I just mean relevance. Whether or not it resonates with your target audience is not going to be there, but then the quantity is not going to be there. Really, I'm a pretty firm believer that it's really hard to overpost if your content is good, if your content is legitimately adding value. The way we always joked at YouVersion, we posted a lot, but it was all encouragement. It was all trying to help people in their day. And they always joked that nobody's going to see like, oh man, Youversion’s inspired me six times. Nobody's going to be mad about that. They're going to like that. They like content that meets their needs in that moment.

Jason

They aren’t going to say, Jacob, would you stop being so helpful? It's really obnoxious.

Jacob

Right? Exactly, exactly. It's all about if you can find that thread, that needle of what content people really want, then you can just kind of put your foot on the gas and go. But so yeah, find out where's that content coming from? Do you have case studies? Do you have blogs? Do you have old podcast interviews? Finding a content source. And then if there is no content source coming up with, okay, where's my idea generation going to come from? And that can come from a lot of places, competitors, peer accounts, figuring out what are your target consumers already consuming? And then back into what content can fit that. And not exactly what you asked me, but I think a lot of businesses start with what content do I have? And then they start posting that on social when really a much more effective strategy is start with what are my customers watching or reading on social media? And then backing into, okay, what do I have that I can make fit that mold of what my customers already seem to and seem to engage with?

Jason

Yeah, our thing is asking ourselves, how can we be helpful? And does this make their day better? Does this help them be more productive in their role? Are we helping them have more work life balance and that kind of thing. Alright, so what is this next step called? Pick your ride or die?

Jacob

Yeah, typically, let's say for me, my personal brand, if you shook me awake in the middle of the night and said, what are you, I would say something to the effect that I'm a rider, I love riding. I think that's where I feel most just in my element. But I know that when I write a piece of content that I can write a piece to be really, really, really good for LinkedIn or really, really good for ‘X’, and knowing that it will probably work fairly well for the other one, but it won't be as optimal as it could be. And so picking your one platform that, what are you going? 

So again, the stereotypical example of a B2B company, well, your ride or die is probably LinkedIn. If you had to pick one platform that you are going to go all out on, it's LinkedIn. If you are a direct to consumer B2c, you're probably going to pick TikTok or Instagram, maybe YouTube shorts, whatever's most natural for you. But then that leads into that next step of cross-pollinating. You're still going to put that same content on the other platforms, but you're going to create content with one platform in mind, knowing that's where you've planted your flag in the ground of this is where we are going to really try to build an engaged community.

Jason

And at a big company, Jacob, there might be somebody who's creating the strategic vision and direction for social media. Somebody underneath them is actually writing out some themes, and then somebody underneath them is the TikTok person, the LinkedIn person, the Snapchat person, or whatever it might be. And they're taking these what we call cornerstone pieces of content and turning them into little pebbles that go specifically for that outlet. So same messaging, same strategy, maybe even the same audience, just a different format. 

And I think that's a big mistake that brands make is they try to make one platform work for everybody, or I'm sorry, one style of content and they just plug it in, oh, I'll put this on Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. And it just doesn't work that way. So imagine if you were just trying to, and you can't post text only to TikTok, if you could do that, you'd have near zero followers. I mean, they'd just be like, what are you even doing right now? So you'd be worse off doing that than just not even doing it at all.

Jacob

And the stereotypical example is putting a link in an Instagram caption, right? We've all seen it that brands stumble and do that. It's like it just comes off as So tone deaf don't, have you heard of Instagram before? You've got to be familiar with the platforms, as familiar with the platforms as you are with your own message and your own brand.

Jason

Right? Exactly. Exactly. Alright, Jacob, so tell us, what's something that I should have asked you or you wanted me to ask you that we haven't talked about yet?

Jacob 

That's a great question. I think, I don't know. The main thing is I think we tend to really overcomplicate it. And so would just love to encourage any social media manager, social media, professional listening that so often we put so much weight on the algorithm, on the tool. If I only had x number of dollars like we talked about, or this tool or that platform. And I think when I look at some of the accounts that have grown the fastest were some of the ones with the least amount of resources because they had to be scrappy, they had to be really creative and really clever about how do I meet my audience's need? And then sometimes too, so if you look at what really performs well, it's the kind of stuff that feels off the cuff, that feels native, that feels personal, it's cliche, but you can't fake authenticity.

There really is that person to person, human to human element that I think you can really take advantage of. I was listening to Alex, her Moey made a comment a while back about, he said, I wish I could be my business's competitor. There are so many ways I would go about it as a startup, as a one person team that I could use things I can't use now. And so I think just obviously we all want to get to a point where we grow the socials and build out a team underneath us. But yeah, use the season you're in to do some really cool stuff.

Jason

Jacob, you're reminding me of something I used to talk about, which is asking yourself, what would your replacement do different than what you do today, right? So if you left the company today, Jacob and somebody came in behind you, what would they do better or different than you're doing and why? And do you have the courage and confidence to start doing those types of things now when you know those things would be done just a little bit different from an outside perspective. So it kind of reminds me of that. And if possible, Jake, we'd love to put the links to some of these people that you're mentioning in our episode notes so other people can follow them on ‘X’ or other platforms that are LinkedIn or wherever we might find them and their content. So Jacob, you kind of did this already, but what are some additional mistakes you see people making on social media If you could give some rapid fire ideas there.

Jacob

Yeah, I think trying to be all things to all people. Trying to live on every platform, trying to live in every format. If you're a one person team, it's probably not realistic to pull off being a great writer, great graphic designer, a great video editor. So trying to pull all that off is definitely tough. And then I think I mentioned this to you. I think the biggest problem, and I can't take credit for this, my friend, his name's Jake Bajor has this example, but he's talk about coffee shops, coffee shops. They start with, okay, what content do we have? Well, we have behind the scenes roasting videos, we can do latte art, we can talk about national coffee day. And then as a result, what happens? Well, every coffee shop Instagram feels exactly the same as their next one and there's no differentiation, there's nothing exciting about it. 

Whereas the ones that are really winning are saying, okay, who is my customer? Let me look at Instagram from their perspective, what kind of content stands out? And then backing into what kind of content can I create? So I think anytime we start with us versus whoever's on the other side of that screen, that's probably the quickest way to lackluster results.

Jason

Yeah, audience focus is the way to go, make the audience feel special, put the spotlight on them and walk a mile in their shoes with an audience focused message that has empathy towards what their problem is and what they're trying to solve by using your products or services. So I completely agree with that. A hundred percent. Alright, Jacob, anything else you wanted to cover as we're wrapping up?

Jacob

I don't think so. I think, yeah, I'm always like, I didn't get it across. I love chatting about social and so always down for conversations, whether that's on LinkedIn or email, I'm always down to jam and chat about all things social.

Jason

Awesome. Well, we connected on LinkedIn and I'm sure this is how most people connect with you on LinkedIn. Someone comments or likes or shares one of your posts on LinkedIn and then we end up reading it and I end up reading it and I was like, this is really good stuff. So I started following you and then I reached out to you and said, let's connect and collaborate a little bit, and then turned into an invitation to be on our podcast. So I'm really glad we did that, Jacob. And here's to more collaboration together in the new year and really appreciate you joining us today.

Jacob

Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it.

Jason

Yeah. Jacob Shipley is on LinkedIn and we encourage you to connect with him there. And when you do, make sure you send him a custom note, custom invite and tell him you heard about him On Top of PR with Jason Mudd. And so with that, this is Jason Mudd with On Top of PR and Axia Public Relations signing off and saying thank you for tuning in. If you found this episode valuable, please share it with a friend or colleague who would benefit from it. And with that, we are thrilled and honored to help you stay on top of PR. Be well.

Sponsored by:

• On Top of PR is produced by Axia Public Relations, named by Forbes as one of America’s Best PR Agencies. Axia is an expert PR firm for national brands.
• On Top of PR is sponsored by ReviewMaxer, the platform for monitoring, improving, and promoting online customer reviews.

About your host Jason Mudd

On Top of PR host, Jason Mudd, is a trusted adviser and dynamic strategist for some of America’s most admired brands and fastest-growing companies. Since 1994, he’s worked with American Airlines, Budweiser, Dave & Buster’s, H&R Block, Hilton, HP, Miller Lite, New York Life, Pizza Hut, Southern Comfort, and Verizon. He founded Axia Public Relations in July 2002. Forbes named Axia as one of America’s Best PR Agencies.

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