Why your social media isn’t working with Holly Bishop

On Top of PR podcast: Why your social media isn’t working with Holly Bishop and show host Jason Mudd episode graphic

In this episode, Holly Bishop joins On Top of PR host Jason Mudd to discuss why your company's social media isn’t working. She and Jason go into depth about how to avoid burnout for social media professionals, how to improve social media content, and why community engagement is so important.

Tune in to learn more!

Brief Guest Bio

Holly is a seasoned social media and marketing professional with over 10 years of diverse experience spanning medical practices, retail/e-commerce, and non-profit sectors.

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5 things you’ll learn during the full episode:

Understanding the role of social media professionals
How to manage a work/life balance as a social media professional
Why your company’s social media isn’t working
How trust and flexibility with your social media team can improve your content
The importance of community engagement

Holly Bishop Bio

Holly is a seasoned social media and marketing professional with over 10 years of diverse experience spanning medical practices, retail/e-commerce, and non-profit sectors. Formerly an Axia employee with a foundational public relations background, she brings a unique perspective to the table. Her expertise lies in community engagement, platform strategy, and influencer management. Most recently, she has taken on the role of managing the marketing and implementation of a successful TikTok Shop. In her free time, her personal social media accounts reflect her journey as a neurodivergent marketing professional and a devoted full-time working mom.

Quotables

“There’s a lot of misconception that social media managers can do all of these things and that they’re experts at every single social media platform, and that is just not the case.” - Holly Bishop

“Companies either don’t prioritize social media or they don’t have the resources to make it an entire team. Yet, social media is a powerful tool with a global audience.” - Jason Mudd

“One person can’t do something great alone. They need others around them.” - Jason Mudd

“I'm seeing a huge shift in social media managers embracing the fact that our screen time is probably triple what a normal person’s would be by Wednesday afternoon. It just is what is, but also knowing when to turn things off and when to be unavailable.” - Holly Bishop

“This is the kind of role that you wouldn’t be doing unless you were genuinely passionate about it.” - Holly Bishop

“We also have our own social media too, which are almost always suffering and looking terrible because we're always so focused on the brands that we run.” - Holly Bishop

“They also don’t realize that what got them there doesn’t get them to be successful in social media. What I mean by that is they may be really good with their own social media, but what they don’t realize is that the expectation for professional social media is way higher. They can get away with typos and incomplete sentences on their own socials, but when you get to the corporate side, there’s not going to be a lot of patience or forgiveness when it comes to that kind of stuff.” - Jason Mudd

“Even for serious brands, it’s important to have fun with the things that are being put out with social media because at the end of the day, as a consumer for your audience that you are speaking to, if it's boring or it's not giving a hook or not interesting or providing that value why would they want to read what you put out anyways?” - Holly Bishop

“Having a really good professional working for your brand is so important because they are able to take that fun side but still utilize the important brand messaging and standards that you have for that specific brand but just making it their own, being able to speak in a way to that brand’s audience that captures their attention but still follows those rules of professionality.” - Holly Bishop

“If there isn’t that support to give for that professional to be able to do those things with having that creative team in their corner, then they won’t be able to have that fun aspect in it.” - Holly Bishop

“People don’t realize that brands should have personalities, and you need that social media manager who has personality in their writing style.” - Jason Mudd

“They’re just kind of treating their social media like walking billboards. Here’s our product; it’s on sale; here’s a promo code; come buy this, and here’s a really good picture and calling it a day. It’s treating that organic social media as an ad space when really it’s a community engagement space.” - Holly Bishop

“You can’t expect your brand to be on every single platform and to be a mediocre job. Especially if you have a one-person team.” - Holly Bishop

“There is no rule that says you have to be on every single platform and have a presence everywhere. If you are everywhere and you’re not doing well, it’s not a good look.” - Holly Bishop

“Community engagement is where you’re going to grow with organic social media.” - Holly Bishop

Resources

Connect and learn more about Holly Bishop on LinkedIn.
Follow Holly Bishop on TikTok

Additional Episode Resources:

Additional Resources from Axia Public Relations:

Listen to more episodes of the On Top of PR podcast.
Find out more about Axia Public Relations.

Episode Highlights

[01:27] Understanding social media roles and management

Holly: “There’s a lot of misconception that social media managers can do all of these things and that they’re experts at every single social media platform, and that is just not the case.”

To have good social media, you must have someone or a department dedicated to it.
A one-person social media team may not be the best fit for your company.
The best companies' social media have dedicated graphic designers, photographers, strategists, and customer support specialists.
Your company may not be able to have the staff needed for great social media content.
Companies can lean on agencies to outsource some of this work.

Jason: “Companies either don’t prioritize social media, or they don’t have the resources to make it an entire team. Yet, social media is a powerful tool with a global audience.”

Jason: “One person can’t do something great alone. They need others around them.”

[08:28] Social media manager’s work/life balance

Holly: “I'm seeing a huge shift in social media managers embracing the fact that our screen time is probably triple what a normal person’s would be by Wednesday afternoon. It just is what is, but also knowing when to turn things off and when to be unavailable.”

Holly: “This is the kind of role that you wouldn’t be doing unless you were genuinely passionate about it.”

Holly: “We also have our own social media which are almost always suffering and looking terrible because we're always so focused on the brands that we run.”

Set timeframes and boundaries with the brand you work for.
Both you and the brand should abide by those guidelines.
Social media jobs have a high turnover rate.
Social media work isn’t glamorous, though, and that’s often surprising to people.

Jason: “They also don’t realize that what got them there doesn’t get them to be successful in social media. What I mean by that is they may be really good with their own social media, but what they don’t realize is that the expectation for professional social media is way higher. They can get away with typos and incomplete sentences on their own socials, but when you get to the corporate side, there’s not going to be a lot of patience or forgiveness when it comes to that kind of stuff.”

[12:10] How do we improve the work/life balance for social media professionals?

Holly: “Even for serious brands, it’s important to have fun with the things that are being put out with social media because at the end of the day, as a consumer for your audience that you are speaking to, if it's boring or it's not giving a hook or not interesting or providing that value why would they want to read what you put out anyways?”

Holly: “Having a really good professional working for your brand is so important because they are able to take that fun side but still utilize the important brand messaging and standards that you have for that specific brand but just making it their own, being able to speak in a way to that brand’s audience that captures their attention but still follows those rules of professionality.”

Holly: “If there isn’t that support to give for that professional to be able to do those things with having that creative team in their corner, then they won’t be able to have that fun aspect in it.”

Having more than a one-person social media team can help prevent burnout.
Again, social media strategists can’t do it all, so hiring internally or outsourcing for that support helps build stronger social media accounts and provides a better work/life balance for employees in the profession.

[14:47] Why your social media isn’t working

Jason: “People don’t realize that brands should have personalities, and you need that social media manager who has personality in their writing style.”

Holly: “They’re just kind of treating their social media like walking billboards. Here’s our product; it’s on sale; here’s a promo code; come buy this, and here’s a really good picture and calling it a day. It’s treating that organic social media as an ad space when really it’s a community engagement space.”

Your social media needs to be engaging and grab the attention of consumers.
Providing helpful and valuable content helps companies provide engaging content.
People want to relax after work by scrolling through social media, so how can you fit into what they want to see during that time?

[18:24] Trust & flexibility for social media managers

Cutting back on all the team meetings and approval for content can help social media managers be timely with trends.
Trusting your social media professional to pitch ideas and run with them can help grow your social media.
Your social media professional knows your brand standards and what should fly for the company, so trusting them could make everyone’s job easier.
With more trust, social media managers can see what kind of posts go viral, flop, or get engagement.

[21:19] The importance of engaging with customers

Holly: “84% of social media traffic is done by dark social. So, DMs or person-to-person referrals. That’s not trackable in GA4. That’s not able to be caught, and that’s the DM aspect of things. People are spending more time in their DMs than they are in the comment section. So not taking time to either set up auto-responses or quick alerts to have a dedicated team or person to be able to have a response for a specific commonly asked question at the very basics, that’s a huge market that would be missed.”

Social media professionals are often the middlemen between the customer service team and the consumers.
Many consumers reach out to brands on social media for issues.
Being able to respond quickly to DMs can help make life-long customers.

[29:04] Platform strategy and goals

Find which platforms your target audience is using and focus on those.
Focusing on just a few platforms can help prevent your social media professionals from getting burned out.

Holly: “You can’t expect your brand to be on every single platform and to be a mediocre job. Especially if you have a one-person team.”

Holly: “There is no rule that says you have to be on every single platform and have a presence everywhere. If you are everywhere and you’re not doing well, it’s not a good look.”

[31:18] The importance of community engagement

Organic social media is the long haul.
Going viral is not the end goal; it’s creating an engaging community.
Building relationships is more important than gaining followers.
Companies responding to consumers makes those people feel great and helps post the algorithm so content is being shown to more people.

Holly: “Community engagement is where you’re going to grow with organic social media.”

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Transcript

Announcer:

Welcome to On Top of PR with Jason Mudd, presented by Reviewer.

Jason Mudd:

Hello and welcome to On Top of pr. I'm your host Jason Mudd with Axia Public Relations. Today we're joined by Holly Bishop. Holly is a social media professional and we're talking today about social media, more specifically why your social media isn't working. Fun fact, Holly used to work at Axia and we're excited to have her on the show today. She's in the social media business and advises companies on how to do a great job with their social media and is in the trenches doing great work. And that's what we're going to talk about today and ultimately why your social media isn't working. Candidly, why your social media sucks because a lot of it does. And we're here today to figure that out and help you figure that out, help you improve it, and become a social media wizard like Holly is. So Holly, welcome to the show. We're glad you're here.

Holly Bishop:

Thanks so much for having me. I'm so excited.

Jason Mudd:

We're excited to have you too. Holly and I have known each other for a while and we've stayed in touch over the years and followed her career and really glad to have you back at Axia here as far as being on top of pr. So Holly, I want to jump right in and talk about kind of understanding professional social media roles and resource management. I know you and I have talked, we've done a previous episode which we'll link to in the episode notes about why it's hard to have a one person social media team. The cliche is there's no I in team yet. So often the social media team is one person. I empathize with that because I've seen that firsthand and I see it at most companies. When I talk to most companies, Holly, they tell me, oh, our social media is fine. We don't need any help. We've got somebody. And I'm like, yeah, you really don't know how hard social media really is. So Holly, take it away. Tell us about this.

Holly Bishop:

It's interesting because when I first was with Axia, it was, gosh, that was about 10 years ago. Social media wasn't a thing. That was a job. It wasn't a role. It wasn't something that companies were looking at as something to capitalize on and take advantage of. And it has really, really grown. And even now as we're going into 2024, the understanding of what it takes to be good at social media is still evolving for brands to fully grasp and comprehend and understand the professionals that are in the trenches every day. We see it, we know and we all like and comment and oh absolutely this on all of each other's LinkedIn posts. But it's also important for all the levels inside of companies to recognize the importance of having a specialized area, a person in this role. And there is also such a misconception within this field of work as well about how multifaceted social media roles can be in that.

Many companies or brands will think, oh, you're going to be great. You know how to film this video. You know how to write this post. You know how to use this software. You can just do everything from content creation, video editing, graphic design, social strategy, community management. Oh, you can also manage all of our UGC, our user generated content and you can help bring in all of our influencers and you can do all of that too. Don't forget, you can also help write all of our paid social ads too. That's just so much for one person to do. Well, one person can juggle it and maybe drop some balls here and there, but doing it well is the key. So they can do it. It's just not going to be looking all that great. And so knowing the value of a really good social media manager and what they can offer is so important, but also providing support for that person.

If you can't have a multi-member team for social media, how about maybe utilize your UX expert coming in and helping with things or someone from the creative team or the photographer or videographer or providing a supportive role for your social manager and being able to give them those elements and those pieces of content that they've planned for and strategized and researched for, but they don't have the bandwidth to also go and create it as well. I personally am very good with strategy and research and community management, but graphic design and long form content, video creation is not my wheelhouse. And so there's a lot of misconception that, oh, you're a social media manager, you can do all of these things and you're an expert at every single social media platform. And that is just not the case. There is no such thing as the unicorn that can do all of that and do it well. So that's a huge part of just fully understanding what it entails to be a social professional and providing them the support to give your brand quality content with those supports and really bringing it to the next level to stand out among your competitors is really the goal.

Jason Mudd:

Right, and Holly, I don't have to tell you, and perhaps I don't even have to tell our audience, but companies either don't prioritize social media or they don't have the resources to make it an entire team. And the other thing I'm noticing Holly here is that yet social media is a very powerful tool that is a global audience. And so what you were describing earlier made me think of this. So if a company wanted to do a first class advertising campaign, they would go out and they would either in-house or outsource. And by the way, when you were talking about all those different roles, kind of hard to justify having a huge in-house team where you could lean on an external team like an agency that specialized in social media and they can win those resources, but that's a conversation for another time. But when you're comparing a one person team to an agency, it may not be as scalable for them, but if they really want to take their social to the next level, they should do that.

And my analogy is this, if you wanted to do an ad campaign and do it well and do it right, you probably wouldn't have one person in-house doing all the things you just talked about, the photography, the design, the copywriting, the headline, the call to action, just all those things that go into a campaign. Plus, if you're doing a campaign well, you're going to have different executions. You might have a web ad, a print ad, a billboard, an email and all these other things. So that requires a whole lot of people. But for some reason when we get in our head social media, we think, oh, just one person can do all of those things. And I think they're really missing the mark here when you're thinking about how important it's to have a team do something great. If you want something done great by one person, can't do something great alone, they need others around them.

And if you look at anybody who's been successful in life, it's the people around them that help them get there. Now they did a lot of the hard work and they are entitled to the credit, but they should also be giving credit to the people around them. And when I look at social media, I think the same thing. We have this misconception that it's just a one person job. And here's the other thing, as you were talking earlier, you're describing a scenario, and I don't know if this was clear to our audience of you're doing this work simultaneously for multiple brands. And so if you're a one person social media team doing all, I don't know, 16 things that you outlined and then doing it for each brand on 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 or more possible channels for then six, eight or more brands, that's a lot of work. So we should probably point in our episode notes to people who are like, that makes sense to me to some of our work-life balance past episodes that we've done. Right? Oh, maybe you've got some tips we can talk about at the end, how you find sanity probably besides listening to music really loud on your way and maybe some days having a box of Kleenex, right?

Holly Bishop:

Right, exactly. You hit the nail on the head with that. Honestly, it's something that social media managers are really discussing in our own community right now, especially as we enter in 2024 and everyone is trying to make their resolutions and everything. And I'm seeing a huge shift in social managers and professionals embracing the fact that our screen time is probably triple what a normal person's would be by Wednesday afternoon, and it just is what it is, but also knowing when to turn things off and when to be unavailable because we are so very much invested in our work and we love our jobs, absolutely love it because this is the kind of stuff, this is the kind of role that you wouldn't be doing unless you were genuinely passionate about it. And we also have our own personal social medias too, which most of which are almost always suffering and looking terrible, always so focused on the brands that we run, but finding that balance and making sure that also the brands that you work for know, Hey, these are my limits and this is where we need to have that healthy cadence of timeframes and boundaries.

And then it's important from an individual professional perspective of keeping to those boundaries as well for your own health and sanity too.

Jason Mudd:

So Holly, one conversation that you're making me think of here is that I know social media professionals are online talking about the difficulty of working in social media. I know firsthand as an agency owner that social media tends to have high turnover. I sense that there are not enough conversations on the brand side about this topic, and I think there should be more conversations about it. I think what happens is people get into social media. I know most people would say young people, young professionals get into social media, but I don't think that's true per se. I think that people are just attracted to social media for a variety of reasons. I think they see it as being glamorous. They see influencers doing it and they say, oh, I want to do that too. What they don't realize is that one, it's not glamorous. They think it is because the social media team is generally behind the camera, not in front of the camera.

The biggest influencers all have staff that work for them that do the video editing and the sponsorships and all that stuff. Second thing is they also don't realize that what got them there doesn't get them to be successful in social media. What I mean by that is they may be really good with their personal social media, but what they don't realize is the expectation for professional social media is way higher. They can get away with typos and incomplete sentences on their personal social, but you do that corporate side, there's not going to be a lot of forgiveness or patience for that type of stuff. And the third thing is most companies of credibility have a brand standard that needs to be followed, a certain voice that you have to follow. And some people really don't see that the social media is strategic. They're very focused on the tacticals and the tactics and doing things that seem fun or cool, and then they show up for work and it's like, wow, this is a job. The expectations are high because the risks are high also, and the visibility in the platform is very high. So Holly, that's a loaded question that I'm sending back to you to say, how do we improve the turnover? How do we improve the work-life balance of social media professionals?

Holly Bishop:

Yeah, I completely agree. There is such a distinction between an influencer running their personal brand and a social media professional running the social media for a company brand that's selling a product or service or whatever. And it is so important for all of the parties involved to recognize that yes, behind the scenes there should be supports put in place that these influencers doing what looks glamorous do have that support behind them. They are hiring video editors, they are hiring personal assistants. They have a whole team behind them. It's makeup artists, completely different artists. It's a completely different type of managers, social media content. That's content creation is the way that I personally view it. When you come in with a brand, you can absolutely run with the fun things of social. It's really important. I want to make that very clear. Even for serious brands, it's important to have fun with things that are being put out with social media because at the end of the day, as a consumer for your audience that you are speaking to, if it's boring or if it's not giving a hook or if it's not interesting or providing that value or emotion invoking, why would they want to read what you have to put out anyways, so that's where having a really good professional working for your brand is so important because they are able to take that fun side but still utilize the important brand messaging and standards that you have for that specific brand, but just making it their own, being able to speak in a way to that brand's audience that captures their attention but still follows those rules of professionality that really kind of wrap it all together in a nice fancy bow, if that's a good way of putting it.

Sure, it's

Jason Mudd:

A package. Yeah,

Holly Bishop:

It's a full package too. It really is. And that's where that burnout aspect comes in because if there isn't that support to give for the social professional to be able to do those things with having that creative team or having a video editor or a graphic designer in their corner, then they won't be able to have that fun aspect in it and have that good strategy without that support. And so they're kind of just running the whole show as the directors of everything and trying their best, and that's when the burnout comes because they can only do that for so long, being completely all out there alone doing everything.

Jason Mudd:

And I think what's also missing is people don't realize the brand should have personalities and you need that. A social media manager who has some personality in their writing and in their communication style and whether that personality is going to be helpful, if it's going to be entertaining and fun, if it's going to be informative. There's a lot of different personality types your brand can have, but if your social media is just putting content out there, especially promotional content and it's not really making a connection, then you really should rethink And our topic today is why your social media isn't working well. That's probably one of the reasons if you're not letting some personality in.

Holly Bishop:

Yeah, absolutely. A hundred percent agree. And it kind of goes into what I personally believe is one of the main problems with brand social media is the lack of realizing who you're talking to and providing that value or entertainment and they're just kind of treating their social media like walking billboards, here's our product, it's on sale. Here's a promo code, come buy this and here's a really pretty picture and then calling it a day. It's treating that organic social media as an ad space when it really is a community engagement space. It's providing value to the people who you want to be potential customers or people who are really just at the top of that funnel and don't even know who you are yet. Why are we just wanting to throw salesy stuff at them when it can be bringing them in with whatever kind of hook via storytelling or case studies or just any kind of whoever your audience is, pick a niche, you can find what their problem is and here let me offer a solution to your problem.

And then you can sprinkle in a little bit of that product or service placement with that aspect in mind. But it's valuable, entertaining and relatable content is key. It needs to grab them from their scrolling of just disassociating as many people do on their phones. It's what can pull them in and what can make them want to say, oh, what does that say? What is this company saying? For me personally, I'm not going to stop unless I see something that really pulls me my attention because I'm also in this world all day long. It takes a lot to pull my attention, but imagine the people who are just going on their phones to look for something entertaining after a long day. They don't want to see a sales ad from a company who they thought that they liked or maybe just happen to see. It needs to provide that value. You got to know your audience. At the end of the day, knowing your audience is really so key.

Jason Mudd:

It doesn't matter what type of media we're talking about, but at the end of the day, no one goes on social media to see who's advertising. No one's going on social media to say, well, I can't wait to see what they're trying to sell me today on my Facebook feed or whatever it might be. Exactly. The minute you realize that I think, and look at your competition, meaning how much competition you have, you want to create an environment that people feel safe and comfortable with. Speaking of which, the next item on our list here is trust and flexibility. And I am sure that is referring to the trust and flexibility that leadership should offer to their social media team.

Holly Bishop:

Exactly. There is so many social professionals out there that, and I see this daily, it's not a complaint per se, it's more of an exasperation cry for many social professionals in this space of all the excessive hurdles we have to jump through or the red tape, and there's hilarious memes floating around. I've seen recently on LinkedIn of, okay, I've spent 84 years waiting for legal to get back to me to approve that one meme I wanted to post. And so it's kind cutting back on the, well, let's have this meeting tomorrow with the director of so-and-so and then let's bring legal in and then let's ask our CMO and then let's ask the whatever of the whatever. You know what I mean? And at the end of the day, the trend is gone now it's not funny anymore. We've kind of missed the boat for it and it just doesn't almost impertinent at this point and it just kind of lost its value.

And then also the trust factor of let your social media professional, whether it be they're just a manager or they're a strategist or they're a community engager, let them pitch ideas and give them the trust to run with that, trusting that they know the brand, they know the professional rules, but letting them experiment a bit with the audience or potential audience that you haven't reached yet and giving them the faith and that extra space to let things flop and see what might go viral, see what might grab some traffic, see what might just get some community engagement at the end of the day. I think social media managers in general, if we can just get engagement, like comments or responses, that's like the meat and potatoes, that's the gold because that right there, if the person took the time to type words out directly to speak to you and your brand and your company, that's the money. That's the money right there because now you've gotten a person who's shown an expressed interest, and if you don't have the trust in your social media manager to go out and get that, then they really won't be able to if they don't have that faith and they're kind of pulled in on a tight leash through all these hurdles and red tape, it's going to be a struggle through the murky waters of the long haul of organic social media. And that's really kind of the base issue there with that.

Jason Mudd:

And your point is well taken. Well-made that when someone takes the time to engage by commenting that shows they're making a connection. You're building a relationship. Speaking of, I want to jump ahead. I know this was our bonus takeaway we were going to talk about, but I feel like it's just a natural tie to mention it now, which is kind of, and we talked about this before we pressed record, right? This idea of the importance of engaging with customers. And I think this is part of the challenge of having small social media teams is social media teams, as our audience will knows, is often assigned to also manage dms. And a lot of times those dms or messages that are sent from customers through social media are often really customer service type inquiries. I know I go on Twitter when I have an issue with something with a big company and I get a good response. These big companies have a dedicated customer service team that's managing those dms, but in smaller organizations, I sense and perceive and have seen where it's being managed by their social media manager or their social media team. Holly, I know you want to talk about that, so let's talk about that for a minute. We'll go back to the other things.

Holly Bishop:

Yeah, you're so right. Literally only the only time I go on Twitter is when I need to get ahold of my certain internet provider. I have a problem and I know that they're going to respond, and that's the best way to get ahold of them quickly. I a hundred percent agree. It's the customer service aspect is invaluable because if you can be that intercept of catching a potential customer with a question or an angry customer with a problem or whatever the case may be, that is where people know to go to get ahold of a person if they're having a hard time getting ahold of a human being, if it's a large brand, if they're having a hard time getting ahold of a human being via customer service, I can tell you they're going straight to social media and you need to have a plan for that. You need to have a response for it.

My current role, we just got through, I work in e-commerce and we just got through peak season between Thanksgiving and Christmas and our customer service team was just hustling and they were doing an amazing job, but I was able to be the intermediary for the stragglers that came and reached out to us on social media, and it ended several times with people saying, oh, thank you so much for making this so easy. Thank you for responding so quickly because we are right there on the front lines. We need to be able to catch them quickly because sometimes it is time sensitive. And I was able to help make customers for life because they were so appreciative of that relationship that I was able to foster with those conversations in DMs. And a lot of times that part of social media is so forgotten about, but Instagram also just came out with some stats just recently that 84% of social media referral traffic is done via dark social like dms or person to person referral things that's not trackable in GA four, that's not able to be caught.

And that's the DMM aspect of things. People are spending more time in their dms on Instagram than they are in the common section. And so not taking time to either set up auto responses or quick alerts to have a dedicated team or a dedicated person in a smaller organization to be able to have a response for specific commonly asked questions at the very basics, that's a huge mark that would be missed. You are missing out on creating amazing relationships with potential big, what I would like to call them would be brand promoters. They're not paid influencers, but these are people who had such an amazing experience with your brand, even just via dms of social media that they're telling everybody that they know what a great experience they had. And that's just immeasurable. It's just so vital.

Jason Mudd:

So over the years, we've worked with several retailers that have multiple retail stores. We've worked with several urgent care centers that have multiple locations. And what we've experienced is people will DMM there and ask very specific questions about company policy or to ask about a certain customer interaction or to inquire, Hey, I know there's, whether in this area, is your store going to be open? And I'm not even getting to the nuanced, very detailed questions that people will pose. And so that's always been a conversation we've had to have with clients is are you expecting us to manage the direct messages because we really, that may be a challenge, right? And it might be a challenge even if you had an in-house social media team, because the truth is they'd have to pick up the phone and call a location or reach out to a manager and things like that.

People will ask what the urgent care thing about billing and providers? Or I'm sorry, what insurance do you carry? And will I have to pay for this or that, and what does it cost? And when you're dealing with dozens of locations, the response I hate to give as an advisor is to say, oh, well, you'll need to contact the local location. They're like, I made the effort already. You help me. And so a lot of times for me, clients just think, oh, that'll be easy, but that takes a lot of time and it pulls. If you have social media experts assigned to that, it's not their highest and best use. So I believe in the importance of integrating at least one person to manage customer service on social media. It really just depends on the volume, and that's what we talk to clients about is, well, how much volume are you expecting? And do you have a budget to allocate a concierge, if you will, to liaison between the social media presence and customer service, or could you have someone who just is one of your star performers who could also adopt and take on that additional responsibility?

Holly Bishop:

Absolutely. I a hundred percent agree, and if you can't have someone constantly focused on the dms, at the very least have some sort of warm and not AI sounding auto response that can direct the customer where to go if you can't get to them as quickly as you may prefer to. If your resources are low at a very basic level, just having some sort of response to show them where to go to find some answers, even that can go very, very far versus having no response at all because you just didn't have the resources to catch those messages. You don't want to leave them hanging. That's at the end of the day, give them something.

Jason Mudd:

Yeah, exactly. Holly, we've got two more things on our agenda, but I want to take a quick break and come back on the other side with more from Holly Bishop,

Announcer:

You are listening to on top of PR with your host, Jason Mudd. Jason is a trusted advisor to some of America's most admired and fastest growing brands. He's the managing partner at Axia Public Relations, a PR agency that guides news, social and web strategies for national companies. And now back to the show.

Jason Mudd:

Welcome back to On Top of PR with Jason Mudd. I am Jason Mudd and I'm joined with Holly Bishop, and we're talking about why your social media isn't working. Holly's got two more reasons for that. The first one is talking about platform strategy and goals. Holly, tell us about this.

Holly Bishop:

Right? It's really important to, this kind of also comes back through having the trust and the flexibility with your social media managers in that you can't expect your brand to be on every single platform and be doing a mediocre job, especially if you've got a one person team. And if you don't have a strategy for each platform or goals of what you're doing on each platform and the bandwidth to provide quality content on each one of those platforms, then you're essentially going to be doing a mediocre job across all the platforms versus the option of going where your audiences, you've done your audience analysis, you had a team that probably did that, you know who you're kind of looking to aim towards, find out which platforms they're primarily using, and just focus on those. It would be so much better for your brand, for your social media manager and their non burnout hopes to let them focus on the core channels and platforms.

So if you're focusing on Gen Zs, you're going to want to hit TikTok and Instagram. You're not going to probably want to be on Facebook, or if you're focusing on an older generation, you're going to want to go where they are, which is usually Facebook. Sometimes they're on X or Twitter. You just kind of have to know where your people are and then just do it really well on just those. There is no rule that says you have to be across every single platform and have a presence everywhere. That's really just not true because if you are everywhere and you're not doing very well, it's not a good look. So it's better to just have no presence whatsoever on platforms you don't intend on having a strategy for and having a plan for than to have a presence. And then it's just kind of sitting there and it doesn't look very professional.

It doesn't look like you have your act together and it's not a good look. And my main point, my final point of the main thing that social brand or that brands are doing wrong is, and I touched on this before, is having content value and building the relationship. Community engagement is where you're going to grow with organic social media, and at the end of the day, it's knowing that organic social, it's the long haul. We're not here to go be viral every day. That shouldn't be the goal. It should never be the end goal. The end goal should be creating those relationships and creating a community of people. Like I say this too, and I've seen several other professionals say this, I would rather have an engaged conversational community of a thousand than a hundred thousand or a million followers that hardly ever see our content, don't ever engage, and they're just a number on our social media platform metrics, because what's that metric really doing for you?

Followers is never the goal, it's the engagement. It's that building of relationships that's so important to prioritize and having that valuable content was going to be the way to bring that in. And there's some companies right now and brands that are doing an incredible job at it. Like Duolingo for example, they got a mascot of a little owl and they have a whole team granted, but it is so fun to see that majority of their tiktoks that they're posting is not talking about learning another language in any way, shape or form. It's just really hilarious entertaining content and people are following them and they're engaging with them. But the key part that they're getting right is the comments section. People respond to these funny videos and they're social professionals that are responding to comments are hilarious, and it'll be like just these quick little witty quips and it just cracks you up and it's getting people engaging in the comment section, which not only builds relationship and builds that strong, authentic foundation, but that also does help the algorithm and it pushes your content higher up in the level and pushes it out to more people's feeds to see.

So when companies are doing content, it's making those people make comments on your videos or your static posts or your carousels on Instagram or your reels. But if you're not commenting back then that amazing content's not going to go anywhere. So responding back to them, I can't tell you how many times I have commented on a brand's post, and I was one of the people who they decided to respond back with, oh, the giddy laugh of glee that I will have because I'm like, oh my gosh, they saw my comment and I work in social media and I still am starstruck because this brand acknowledged me. That is a huge, very easy act that your single person team or a collective team can do. That is, doesn't require a ton of effort really at all, but acknowledging the people that are there consuming your content and is kind of like your way of appreciating them for being there and telling them that you appreciate their engagement and their being with your brand. That's the relationship at the end of the day. That's its basic form.

Jason Mudd:

Yeah. Yeah. You're fanning a little bit when it happens, right? Absolutely. I can relate some actors that I follow or bands that I follow, I've commented and they've engaged back, and you don't really know if it's their handler or whatever, but it's just nice to see that at least somebody's listening to you or at least acknowledging your comments. So yeah, for sure. And that kind of thing. So Holly, it's been a pleasure connecting with you. I think we've given out a lot of good advice today, and I appreciate you being here. If somebody wants to connect with you on LinkedIn or otherwise, how do you want our audience to connect with you if they have a question or they just want to comment to you?

Holly Bishop:

Yeah, I am on all of the platforms. I'm on LinkedIn, absolutely. And I am also on TikTok. You'll see, I think I have like 300 followers. I don't get to spend a ton of time on there, but I do shoemaker's

Jason Mudd:

Children. Right?

Holly Bishop:

Yeah. I change my handle quite often, so I will make sure that it is put in on podcast notes.

Jason Mudd:

Alright, excellent. Well, Holly, thank you for being here. It's been a real pleasure to have you and to our audience, we thank you for being here and helping us help you stay on top of pr. If you enjoyed this episode, please be sure to share it on social media or with a friend who you think would benefit. We would appreciate that and so will they. With that, I'm signing off. This is Jason Mudd with Axia Public Relations. I'm glad to help you and here to help you stay on top of pr. Thank you.

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This has been on top of PR with Jason Mudd, presented by Reviewmaxer. Be sure to subscribe so you don't miss an episode and check out past shows at ontopofpr.com.

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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