Social Media for Healthcare
Health sector startups, medical device companies and provider networks – no matter their size – can maximize their impact by using social media for healthcare thought leadership and community-building. Social media can be used to offset changes in Google SEO algoritihms, provide customer support and generate more leads.
In this 3-part podcast interview, Angela Hemans joins me to talk about using social media to promote businesses in the healthcare space. Angela is CEO of Hemans Marketing Media and Founder of Women United in Business Mastermind Facebook Group. She helps healthcare, tech, and nonprofit organizations build influence, make an impact, and increase leads by leveraging social media and digital technology.
In our chat, we cover:
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- Part 1: How to Build Your Social Media Community
Learn how to use social media to create a community for your healthcare company. You’ll discover ways to measure your ROI and why your social media needs to integrate with the rest of your marketing.
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- Part 2: How to Excel at Thought Leadership on Social Media
Discover why Twitter is so useful for building thought leadership in the healthcare sector. Find out where to connect with journalists online and why the most important thing is to be approachable.
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- Part 3: Top 3 Social Media Mistakes Healthcare Businesses Make
Find out why a short-term social media strategy will always fail. Learn how even a one-person marketing team can build a strong network.
This is an episode of the Leading with Health podcast, formerly titled “Healthcare Lead Generation.” In this podcast, healthcare IT disruptors, innovative healthcare providers and health sector company leaders join host Jennifer Michelle to discuss growth strategies and navigating change.
Jennifer Michelle, MPH, EMT is a marketing consultant specializing in the healthcare sector. President of Michelle Marketing Strategies, she has a Master’s in International Health & Epidemiology and currently volunteers as an EMT. Her unique background allows her to bring unexpected insight and depth to every interview.
Part 1: How to Build Your Social Media Community (Podcast Transcript)
Jennifer: 00:03 Hi, everyone! I’m Jennifer with Michelle Marketing Strategies and today on Healthcare Lead Generation, we are talking with Angela Hemans of AngelaHemans.com. Angela is CEO of Hemans Marketing Media and the Founder of Women United in Business Mastermind Facebook Group. She helps healthcare, tech and nonprofits build influence, make an impact and increase leads leveraging social media and digital technology. Angela, I’m so excited to have you here today. Welcome. It is a thrill.
Angela: 00:34 I’m happy to be here. Thank you for inviting me on.
Jennifer: 00:37 You know more about social media than anybody I know and I know you do a lot of focus with healthcare. So, I was actually really excited to have you on the podcast. For the people who are listening, we always do interviews in three parts just to make it a little easier for people to listen if they’re having a busy day. For all the three with Angela, we’re talking about maximizing the return on social. To start, I want to say let’s talk about how do you build your social media community?
Angela: 01:16 Well, I think sometimes when, as business owners, we focus on what we’re bringing in as far as income-generating leads. But social media is really about being social and the first step is understanding that we need to be going in on these platforms as a long-term strategy. This is not a short-term gain because you won’t yield the results short term. It’s going to take a lot of effort, it’s going to take resources that people need. When we are talking about building a community, the first thing you want to understand is, who are we talking to?
Angela: 01:54 Some people like to say it’s the people we want to sell to. It’s actually a combination of several different audiences. So it may be the people you’re trying to lead, but it may also be finding the community for referral partnerships. Maybe it’s people you just need to connect with because they are the closest to the people who can provide you with the leads.
Jennifer: 02:18 Angela, I think that’s so smart to raise that because I’ve seen that myself with companies I’ve worked for. They’re so focused on it just has to be the leads – and I’m all about the lead generation – but social is different. Social is about growing your network and getting a message out there so people can find you more easily or be more intrigued enough to look you up. And I do think referral partnerships are something people undervalue. I know that’s how you and I met originally.
Angela: 02:49 Absolutely. And, even in healthcare, there are influencers that are connected. They’re not your leads per se, but they are connected to the people you need to know. And so the best relationships would actually start with the people that are connected to those potential leads. And we can’t skip over them because they are all part of the ecosystem. They’re part of the system that needs to be out there.
Jennifer: 03:15 I see a lot on social media with people just posting links to their own content. They post that we did a blog post, here it is. And oftentimes it’s just the title and the link.
Angela: 03:27 And that’s great. You know, they have Twitter, Facebook, everybody’s keep hearing about the algorithms and that there was a time when that worked. Period. There was a time when you could just coast. But those times are no longer. That moment in time no longer exists. Posting links will get people to see it, but you have to share, you have to let people know why they need them, why they need to read that article. What is it about it that I need to know, other than the title. If it’s good enough, it might grab my attention but nowadays you won’t even get into somebody’s timeline or their news feed if you’re not engaging with them. So just sharing random pieces of content won’t get you what you need. Whether it’s the engagement, whether it’s the traffic to your website. It depends on what you’re wanting to get out of being on there, but just randomly dropping links and running … any business at healthcare tech, nonprofits, you know, it’s just not going to work right now in 2018.
Jennifer: 04:26 I totally understand that. It’s a lot like Google. If you want to rank, you have to keep up with the changes in the algorithm because they change all the time. Exactly. So now if somebody is doing social media, how are they able to tell if they’re getting a good ROI? What do you think is the best measure of that?
Angela: 04:43 Well, it starts with understanding what are the overall business goals? Once you figure out who, now what are your goals and what are you wanting to achieve with your marketing online? So is it market research? Are you working to build in some customer service aspects? Are you wanting to generate traffic to your website? Are you wanting to build brand awareness? It depends on the goals that you want and that will determine what kind of return you’re getting when you’re social.
Angela: 05:15 It’s kind of a layered approach. You start with the audience, you start with your content, how much time are you investing into it. Are we doing paid ads or you’re not doing paid ads? You have a non-financial ROI, which is website visits, click-through, social mentions, followers, retweets, likes – these are non-financial metrics. But these non-financials add up to financial goals. The more retweets, the more social mentions will lead back to increased website visits. Are people going to your opt-in, are they calling your office, are they asking you questions in reference to your services? It’s a layered approach that you have to take and then you can say, hey, over time, within the last month, we’ve increased all of this on social and therefore we’ve also gotten this amount of results.
Jennifer: 06:12 Absolutely. Absolutely. And I think people sometimes forget about that, that those softer non-financial metrics build up.
Angela: 06:21 Correct. And if they’re not building up, then it’s still not going to lead to the financial portions of that. Ultimately, we are in business. There has to be a financial ROI for people to want to continue on.
Jennifer: 06:35 I always say, if you’re getting a lot of traction on social and they’re going to your website, but it’s not getting leads coming into the funnel, then that’s when you call me because that means something’s gone wrong on your site and in your funnel.
Angela: 06:54 Exactly. You know, once again, it’s that layered approach. It’s not just one thing. Can one thing rule them all? We can’t do it. It’s not going to work that way. You’ve got to keep doing it and you’ve got to layer it and then you call it and help.
Jennifer: 07:07 Absolutely. Tell me this, when you were talking a little bit earlier about community-building and how that happens, talk to me about how you build that network.
Angela: 07:18 I like to think everything is integrated with everybody. So there is, in healthcare, there are the people that say we need to have our forums on our website and then there are people that say put the forums where the people are, be on Facebook. And I say yes to all of it. I believe in integrative network building. For instance, I had surgery a few months back and there were a lot of questions that I had to call the nurse and wait for them to call me back. It was a hassle. So, I ended up actually getting a lot of my answers from an online forum. Now, you know, Jennifer, wouldn’t it be nice if I could go to my doctor’s website, mark their Facebook page and find out that they had their own forum. I would have been thrilled and pulled all of my information. And then I would have known, okay, maybe I need to call the doctor from here because they told me that they have their own forum for stuff just like this. Because it was a specialist in an industry, so it would have been great for them to have a forum that I would’ve been able to find because they were on Facebook. All it would’ve taken was them telling me, hey, go to our Facebook page. We have forums, we have all of these different resources that are available to you.
Angela: 08:38 That’s the integrative part of it. Saying, hey, we have Facebook, but we also have this group on our website, in case you have other questions you might want to ask. And that’s what I think we’re missing when it comes to healthcare and tech and not-for-profits. It’s just integrating it all and putting it together. They’re not separate pieces of the puzzle. They work together to create the whole puzzle.
Jennifer: 09:01 I love that. I love that. And I would like that if on people’s websites for their doctors, they did have that kind of useful information.
Angela: 09:10 I lived on the website and I lived on the forum because, just to ask a question like, is this pain normal?, to wait a whole day to get a response …. I understand the offices are busy, but to wait a whole day for that, it becomes a hassle. When I can go on a platform and get a quick answer because other people have been asking the same questions. When providers and some of these healthcare organizations think of it, they have to think holistically instead of individual separate parts. How can we make this all work together?
Jennifer: 09:47 I love that. I think in healthcare that’s something we’re trying to do on so many layers that I think it’s beautiful to pull that into our social media. Because that just underscores what we’re trying to do. And I think that brings us to the end of Part One, which is really focusing on how to build your social media community. Angela, I think that was just tremendously helpful about how to measure it and how to think about it more broadly. For everyone, that’s the end of Part One. We’ve been talking with Angela Hemans of AngelaHemans.com on how to build your social media community. Angela is CEO of Hemans Marketing Media and Founder of Women United in Business Mastermind Facebook Group. If you are looking for more information there, her website is AngelaHemans.com. Come back and join us in Part Two where we’ll be talking a little bit more on how to excel at thought leadership on social media. And then for Part Three when we will be talking about social media mistakes. Thanks everyone. See you then! Thank you so much, Angela!
Part 2: How to Excel at Thought Leadership on Social Media (Podcast Transcript)
Jennifer: 00:06 Hello, everyone! Welcome back to Healthcare Lead Generation. We are speaking with Angela Hemans of AngelaHemans.com. Angela is CEO of Hemans Marketing Media and Founder of Women United in Business Mastermind Facebook Group. She helps healthcare, tech and nonprofits build influence, make an impact and increase leads leveraging social media and digital technology. Angela, welcome to the podcast. Welcome back.
Angela: 00:29 I’m glad to be back. Glad you didn’t dump me on the first part!
Jennifer: 00:34 And for everyone listening, we were just talking in Part One about how to build your social media community. Now, for those of you who are new to the Healthcare Lead Generation podcast, I like to do interviews in three parts so people can hone in really easily on what they’re looking for. In this part, we’re talking about how to excel at thought leadership on social media. So let’s dive in with that. And we’ve actually been talking about thought leadership a lot lately on this podcast because I do a lot with thought leadership and I think it is so critical to anyone in a healthcare field, to anyone in the healthcare sphere. It’s an essential part of the strategy, but let’s talk about how that really plays out on social media.
Angela: 01:13 Absolutely. And so for those that don’t know why you want to even consider thought leadership, it’s about being that go-to person. Some people say they don’t want to be the face of the brand and I want to touch a little bit about being the face of the brand. It’s having your business be the go-to industry professionals. So whether you are a health or telehealth, you want to be that person. When I think of my watch and my health and calculating my steps, my go-to person is Fitbit. And I say “person” because it’s almost like a person, but if you’ve given me a brand, I’m gonna say Fitbit for whatever your company is. You want to be that person or that company that is thought of first and that’s where thought leadership comes into play. If you’re wanting to really build that up, hands down, I recommend social media for it. It’s free, you invest time, you invest effort, but ultimately you can do it with a little bit of time every day and build a huge presence over a period of time.
Jennifer: 02:23 I actually want to stop and point that out because I think that’s the thing people don’t realize. A lot of times, we think thought leadership and we think PR, we think article placements, we think of speaking at conferences and obviously that’s tremendously useful, but if you’re starting out right from scratch, social media is right in front of you. It’s this huge wide open landscape and it’s a beautiful way to start creating that thought leadership.
Angela: 02:54 And you mentioned it, it’s PR, it’s speaking engagements, it’s all of that. I don’t want to make it sound like you don’t need that and that’s not part of building your thought leadership. But like you said, when you are starting out and budgets are tight and you don’t have, you know, $5,000, $10,000 to be the keynote speaker, you’ve got your camera and live streaming, which is right there on your hands – live streaming on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook. You can do that and start building your platform without having to spend $5,000 to get in front. People will see it when they’re ready, which is why on-demand is so popular. Getting out there and building your own platform, your own ways of creating your PR. It’s available, it’s right at your fingertips.
Jennifer: 03:42 Let’s talk about that a little bit now. I want to talk a little bit about Twitter because I think they really do thought leadership in a very active way. I think Twitter has a lot more real interactions and conversations going on, at least in the healthcare sphere where I think maybe it’s more active than other industries. What are your thoughts on that?
Angela: 04:05 Twitter is, Twitter is my baby, so, that’s kind of where I started. Well, I started on Facebook with everybody else, but then I fell over and fell in love with Twitter. Twitter is popular, one it’s not as uptight as Linkedin, so Twitter allows you to have more of a personality and Twitter allows you to speak freely and minimize your words and learn how to put everything and make it succinct. When you’re building thought leadership on Twitter, specifically, it’s all about the engagement. It’s all about being approachable. It’s all about, creating a tone that, that people can say, hey, okay, I can relate to that. It’s where you really go in and fine-tune your presence, your message, your tone, you can play with it. It’s a great tool for just testing out, okay, what kind of tone do I want? Do I want serious? Who do I attract? Who am I building connections with? Twitter is just a great tool that allows you that flexibility that you don’t necessarily have on Linkedin. But then it also adds a serious tone that you don’t quite get when you’re on Facebook sometimes.
Jennifer: 05:20 Exactly. Interesting. What about using it not just for the thought leadership, but to start making those connections with the media? Because that is a place where thought leadership can also happen. Where you can use social media as that bridge to maybe get a different kind of PR engagement going.
Angela: 05:41 Right. Why would you not use Twitter to try to connect now? Obviously the PR, the media, the journalists, they’re being bombarded everyday and I don’t want them to start sending me hate emails saying they heard this podcast and thank you Angela – I can hear it now. But they are on the platform. You can get in front of them a little bit easier than if you’re sending 15 emails trying to get in front of them. Start building the connection without wanting anything. Start sharing stuff, start promoting their content. Start just being a real person and socializing with them on the platform. If you relate to something they’re saying, let them know you relate. I always tell people that people are nosy by nature, so if your profile is filled out completely and you’re connecting and you’re talking, they’re going to say, who is this person and you’re going to get noticed. Also to get in front of the audience, there’s a network called HARO and it’s called Help a Reporter Out. They give a list at least three times a day and it’s a list where journalists, reporters, media people are looking for pitches. Believe it or not, there is a section for biotech and healthcare and I dished out pitches where I’ve sent it to dermatologists.
Angela: 07:03 I’ve sent it to different healthcare practitioners I thought could answer – you know, therapists, physical therapists. They have a whole list and usually it’s the first 10 to 15 that are looking for people in the healthcare industry and that’s the best way to get PR. That’s the best way to get attention. And they’re also on Twitter. You can type in PRrequest and some of these HARO requests are actually on Twitter. You just need to look them up with the hashtag PR request or #journorequests on Twitter and you’ll find them.
Jennifer: 07:41 Very cool. I actually didn’t know that. That’s a new one.
Angela: 07:44 Yes ma’am. It’s there. You just need to look and use the information that’s out there. HARO is free to join, by the way. So if you are saying, how much is this? It’s free if you’re looking for people that are pitching.
Jennifer: 07:56 Absolutely. Now let me actually go back to something you said a second ago, which is that we have to be social and someone people can relate to on social media. I always instruct people that you have to be real. You can’t just be constantly putting out content as if you were automated. People will sense that and what they really want is to get to know you and get to know that as part of your company and see you as a real person. Therefore, what you’re doing seems like not so much a sales pitch when they finally meet you. It seems like this continuation of what they already know. Can you talk about that? Because I think, especially for new companies where their Boards have a lot of influence in how they’re marketing because they are new, I think that there can be a lot of hesitation there. Because people don’t really understand social media and especially if you have people leading your company who are not comfortable on social media, they might just say Yes, I’ll go do that. And then when you start using it in a more social way, they can get nervous.
Angela: 09:04 Right. And yes and no. So it goes back to the mission and the goals. But when you’re building thought leadership, you’ve got to find the person you choose. They don’t always have to be the CEO or the VP. The person you choose to represent the company ought to be the face, ought to be the thought leader in it. They have to be somewhat social. Obviously, if you set the tone ahead of time of where you’re going to be, you’re talking about a topic that’s serious. Say, blockchain. Blockchain is the new buzzword that’s floating around. You’re talking about it and people want to know. So you need to be knowledgeable and when you’re knowledgeable about something, it’s going to come through when you’re talking about it, period. If you’re knowledgeable about it, you don’t have to pretend, you don’t have to be serious. You’re going to talk about it in a way that says “this person knows what they’re talking about.” So if you’re serious when you’re talking about that, that’s fine. There’re also different means of creating conversations that you will feel comfortable with. So I think the first step is finding conversations you feel comfortable approaching more so than just jumping on conversations. You’ve been on Twitter chats. Some Twitter chats are a lot more flexible, some are a little bit more uptight. You have to find where you’re going to fit in and then fit into that and then just make it work for you.
Jennifer: 10:24 I like that. I have also often found that “do what you’re comfortable with” works very well in general because some people really have natural affinity for Twitter but not Youtube. Or they can do Facebook but Instagram freaks them out. I am always a big believer that you don’t need to do everything. Do what works for you because you’ll do it better and you can always add later. Get a good following with what you can do to start with.
Angela: 10:52 Right. And sometimes I think we are not good at certain platforms but we could be because we put unnecessary stresses on us. If we would go ahead and carry over some of what makes us good on a platform to the other platform within its own culture, I think we would find our own way. And also connecting with the people that we are best suited to connect to. And then branching out from there.
Jennifer: 11:18 Oh, I like that. I like that; that’s a really smart idea. Angela, I love having you on this podcast. Every single time I talk to you, I learn something new. Every single time. It’s just amazing. I think that that wraps up Part Two. For everybody listening, go back and listen to Part One where Angela and I were speaking on how to build your social media community. This topic that we just talked about was how to excel at thought leadership and we’re going to come back in Part Three to offer top three social media mistakes that healthcare businesses make. For those of you who just joined us, we’re talking with Angela Hemans of AngelaHemans.com. Angela is CEO of Hemans Marketing Media and Founder of Women United in Business Mastermind Facebook Group. Angela, thank you so much. It has been such a pleasure.
Angela: 11:18 You’re welcome. Thank you.
Jennifer: 11:18 Thanks. Bye, everybody!.
Part 3: Top 3 Social Media Mistakes Healthcare Businesses Make (Podcast Transcript)
Jennifer: 00:06 Hi, Everybody! Welcome back to Healthcare Lead Generation. We are speaking with Angela Hemans at AngelaHemans.com. Angela is CEO of Hemans Marketing Media and Founder of Women United in Business Mastermind Facebook Group. She helps healthcare, tech and nonprofits build influence, make an impact, and increase leads, leveraging social media and digital technology. Now, we always do things in three parts when we do interviews on this podcast. So, for those of you just joining us, you want to go back and view Part One of this interview, when we talked about how to build your social media community and Part Two when we talked about how to excel at thought leadership on social media. Right now with Angela, we are going to be talking about the top three social media mistakes that healthcare businesses make. Angela, welcome back. It is such a pleasure to have you again on the podcast!
Angela: 00:54 Thank you, thank you. I’m ready to get to this.
Jennifer: 00:57 Awesome. I’m actually very excited to hear what you think people do wrong on social media and I’m going to make notes so that I can go and correct it all.
Angela: 01:03 You can’t be on social and not make mistakes. If you’re not making any mistakes, then you’re not doing something right.
Jennifer: 01:03 So true.
Angela: 01:14 It’s a game and part of it is people, especially in healthcare. There’s a lot playing on something, so people, companies are more prone to be leery of it because they don’t want to make the mistakes. And some mistakes can be avoided but then there are some mistakes that you have to make in order to learn from it. So you can move on. So one of the top mistakes that I find when I’m working with these organizations is that they’re not thinking long-term.
Angela: 01:49 Social media is not a “right now” game. This is a long-term game. This is where we’re going to do some testing and we’re going to see what content is working. We’re going to see who gravitates towards our message. We’re putting a bunch of things together and putting it into a pot. What we’re putting into the pot makes it somewhat consistent but we’re putting these things into a pot and we’re seeing if it comes together. So really it’s a bit about patience. It’s not about throw that out there and see what you get. You’ve got to let the pot cook a little bit, right? You’ve got to let it simmer. You’re reaching two or three or four different audiences.
Angela: 02:32 You know what content is gravitating towards the CEO, the Chief Financial Officers. What content is gravitating towards our clients or patients. What content is gravitating towards the physicians. Depending on where you are, who you’re trying to attract, you have to put out different things. Maybe it’s the season, maybe it’s seasonal content that you need to put more of, or maybe it’s nonseasonal content that you need to share or conversations you need to have. So it’s really about saying, okay, over this period of time, what are we doing and are we meeting some of the other goals and different objectives that we’re trying to meet in the long run?
Jennifer: 03:15 I think that’s beautifully put. I think that’s something that people lose sight of, and then they get nervous – and I think that happens a lot in marketing in all different areas. Frankly, you start doing an email campaign and people aren’t responding on Day One and you’re like, oh my God, it failed. And I feel like it doesn’t help that there are always these situations that you read about online, and they’re usually in different sectors, they’re usually not in healthcare IT. Something where “we did a launch today and 6,000 people downloaded it.” And I’m like, I think that’s a different industry.
Angela: 03:45 You know what, let’s touch on that. So even if you have these people that got these launches and they seem to be doing phenomenal, there’s a lot that goes behind the scenes that nobody’s really thinking about. For instance, HITMC [Healthcare IT Marketing & PR Conference]. They have social media ambassadors, they’re putting out content way before the conference even takes place.
Jennifer: 03:45 Absolutely
Angela: 04:07 They’re putting out content now for next year. It doesn’t happen overnight and I think people underestimate the amount of effort, the amount of time, the amount of funds and resources it needs to build those particular types of campaigns, with those results. You can do them in anything. It’s just it takes a lot of behind-the-scenes work that people don’t see.
Jennifer: 04:31 I think that goes back to what you’ve spoken about with me today in Part One and Part Two, which is relationship-building. That’s something that comes up a lot on this podcast because it’s essential to marketing; you can’t do good lead generation without building relationships. And those take time. So, when you do see someone who got this tremendous response, it’s exactly what you said. It’s, well, yes, but they’d been using this tool for a solid year and, on top of it, they had this other platform and then they did this. So they have this hugely integrated world and that takes time to build but I think, either way, it is definitely playing a long game. Let me ask you about the other thing: what are the mistakes people make when it comes to connecting with people on social media? Because I would think that’s an area where there are some issues.
Angela: 05:17 They’re not connecting. That’s usually the problem. They’re not connecting and if they connect, they get on intermittently. So, I’ll get on for five, 10 minutes this week. I’ll participate in chat – and then I don’t see you again for the next three weeks. It’s not only just connecting but it’s consistently connecting.
Jennifer: 05:46 So, in a healthcare IT startup, for instance, where it is so unlikely that you have more than a single marketing person. How does a single marketing person manage to keep up with that? Because, obviously, when you just had to post a link to your blog post – when, as you say, that used to work – that’s a lot easier for a single individual to manage. But if you have just one person and they have to really create these connections, what can they do?
Angela: 06:12 You know what, I got you. Because I understand that. So the first thing that I say is one – once you know who you’re trying to reach – you’re the only marketer, write down your hashtags. For any platform, because LinkedIn even has hashtags. On Instagram. Hashtags are your keywords. They’re the words that you’re going to use to connect with the people you’re trying to find. So, one, create a list of the keywords that you need so that you can be like, “Okay, today I might be looking for people in healthcare IT or females in healthcare IT.” You’re going to keep those hashtag because, if you’ve never noticed, when you go online, the same people are using the same hashtags.
Angela: 06:50 If you’re wanting to find those same people, you find their hashtags. Okay, two. Depending on the platform, you create a list of their names and their @ handles. For instance, if this week your goal is to follow with the 20 people that you connected with at a conference. A lot of people go to conferences, you might’ve made really great connections with a handful of people. Write their names down, have their names and reach out to them online. Go like their content. “Hey, great to meet you at the conference.” Connect with those people that you have the business cards for. Go ahead and pull that out. Go pull out your stash and say, “Hey, we met at this conference.” Use the conference hashtag along with it and start building those connections with the people you’ve already connected with.
Angela: 07:39 If you had to get one tool, get your Excel sheet, your spreadsheet, Google sheets, whatever, and write down the names and rotate. You want to write down as you come across people that are engaging. If you come across people that are retweeting, you want to write their names down and say, okay, I need to keep track of these people. Obviously, there are different tools that people use depending on your budget, but writing them down and keeping track of those people is your best bet when you are a one-man army.
Jennifer: 08:05 Interesting. I think that’s fantastic because I think that is something that people get lost in.
Angela: 08:13 Right. It’s easy when you’ve got low numbers. If you’re growing your following, you’re building your brand. It’s a lot of moving parts. Even myself, I’ve got Twitter lists of people I’m trying to keep track of. On Facebook, I have pages that I liked specifically that I go through and I try to make sure that I’m engaging. It’s the same thing for Linkedin and lately I’ve been revert to just writing down people’s names so that I could say, hey, I need to go in and check in on this person, see what they’re up to. And that’s what is needed. I know they’ve got the conferences, but if you’re going to conferences, keep track of the people, use those business cards and rotate the business cards. If you don’t want to write it down, just say, Hey, let me find that person on social real quick. Write their name down on the back of the business card and keep going that way.
Jennifer: 08:56 Absolutely. And you know what? I think this answers something we were addressing earlier about how people fall into that overly corporate tone. Talk a little bit about that because we see way too much of that.
Angela: 09:10 You’ve got your brand, you’ve got your corporate brand and you’ve got the individual persons. Obviously, if you’re on a company profile, you want to keep it more professional, but you still want to be approachable. There is a healthcare company, Boehringer Ingelheim, and I was going through their stream and they incorporate a nice bunch of stuff that CEOs are interested in, as well as the average everyday person who wants to know more about the company. They’ve got a group of pictures. They go into the community and they take whatever they’re doing in the community. They’ve got pictures to show for that, as well as industry information. So they did a really great job of that as a whole.
Angela: 10:02 So you want to be a company that, one, if you know your tone and you’re working from your professional page, you want to keep that tone. Yet ,you still want it to be about the people you’re trying to serve, as well. Now, if you’re coming from thought leadership, you want to be able to talk in a way that people can understand. So if you’re only reaching out to industry professionals, then that’s great. Then speak only industry talk. But, if you’re trying to build a well-rounded community, you have to find a way to build your brand in a way that is approachable but also communicates the message you’re trying to get people to understand. Sometimes, just throwing industry jargon out is not the way to do it. You have to be approachable about it.
Jennifer: 10:46 Yeah, you have to be a little more human.
Angela: 10:51 That’s good because that’s why we call it social media, right? It’s not a white paper on social media, you’re supposed to be engaging. I you’ve got a white paper, that’s great, but you can’t say every text, every post is 5% of this, 2% of this. Get to the point. So you also have to communicate a why that’s worth communicating. And that’s part of social that a lot of people miss out – communicating the why and being approachable about it.
Jennifer: 11:24 Absolutely. Angela, this is just phenomenal. It’s just phenomenal. I think this is so informative. I love the way you approach it and you make it so human. Now, before we wrap up, I always want to just ask something for fun. Is there like a specific book or a show or something that you just love, just to give people a different side of you and maybe give them something that’s fun that they should check out?
Angela: 11:47 There’s only one side of me. You know, I’ve lost people over The Walking Dead. I think I’ve actually been blocked recently because that’s the only thing I could think of why somebody would block me. I tweet The Walking Dead. I will get on and that’s what I do on Sundays when it’s in season. I am a first generation, first season Walking Dead fan. I’ve been loyal since the first season and one of my downfalls is not just about the zombies, even though I love zombies, but it’s a great plot. It’s just about people and how people socialize with each other when the world is supposedly coming to an end.
Jennifer: 12:31 You know, I think that’s funny that you say that. I made it through, I think, the first six or seven seasons and then did drop out so I might have to go back. My husband is still an absolute devotee of the show. Absolutely.
Angela: 12:46 I want to say that this last season wasn’t as great. I For the defense of the show, this last season wasn’t the best. They had some real – you wanted to shake the TV – moments and so, yes, it’s easy to drop off. But that is my one downfall. So if you’re on the platform and I’m tweeting The Walking Dead, it’s just what I do.
Jennifer: 13:05 Oh my God, that is so funny. So, everyone listening, we have learned about social media. Now we’re learning about zombies. Is there anything Angela cannot help us with it? I don’t know. Thank you so much for sharing all your thoughts on this with us and, for everyone listening, I invite you to go back and listen to Parts One and Two, where we talked about how to build your social media community and how to excel at thought leadership on social media. Also, for those of you who joined in and didn’t hear the beginning, to find out more about Angela, please visit her at AngelaHemans.com. Angela is the CEO of Hemans Marketing Media and Founder of Women United in a Business Mastermind Facebook Group. Everyone else, if you have lead generation thoughts or questions, please always come and visit me at MichelleMarketingStrategies.com. Angela, thank you so much.
Angela: 13:55 Thank you. Thank you.
Jennifer: 13:55 And everyone, catch you next time!