Lessons

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Google Analytics

so now that I've told you how to live your life, which that's not what I really did. But I mean, you kind of need a little schooling on. Just be cool on the Internet. And it's not high school, and it's not a competition. And just, you know, all of those cliche is your own drummer be your own best? Whatever. Just just don't be a jerk on the Internet, all right? So getting into it before we even start talking about anything above and beyond this, the first thing I want you to do is set up your ability to analyze your social media data. I lied, were doing spread cheese or we during math. And we're analyzing cause I can't not. I just have to know all the things, right? Like, I just have to know it all. And as I said before, knowledge is power. So the first thing that I've done before I even start posting a single thing on anything is understanding my analytics and what that means. So the very, very first thing is Google analytics. How many of you here have, like, look at your Google analyt...

ics for your website? Uh, you need to start doing that, which is usually pretty powerful. But Google analytics will take you just kind of even further. It's really easy to set up. It's really easy to dio on dure Google analytics just basically give you an insight into how people are interacting with your website. And now I know that some people have. You are just like, Well, wait a minute, we're talking about your website. We're talking about social media. What I'm using Google Analytics for is to find out how many people are coming to my site from a social media network what's bringing them there and then how long they're spending when they come over. Because I want to know if you found my site on Facebook and you come to it, Are you spending longer there than if you found it on Google? What's your bounce rate? How engaged are you with the website? This is helping me understand which social media chat channels are pushing the most people to my site. It used to be Facebook. It is still Facebook. Immediate, right underneath Facebook is Pinterest, which is massive. It is so massive I can't even tell you. Then, underneath that is Twitter and Instagram, and then Google Plus is somewhere down on the ground. So Google Analytics, we talked about that going forward, we're gonna create a calendar, okay? And for those of you who are part of the mentorship program, this is one of the things we're going to do together. But before all of this, I have always had a social media calendar, and it's very personal for you if you bought the business and marketing workbook or if you're part of the mentorship and you get the book, there is a sample calendar in there, and it's fairly standard toe what I follow and you will tweak it as necessary based on the number of followers you have and based on the number of people you're interacting with. So at first you know, how often are you updating? You can tweak that over and over and over again as you realize some updates. Air reaching more people, some updates, air reaching less people. I need to Facebook less and tweet mawr. You'll start to find your comfort zones in there. How often are you finding and following new businesses on? I'm talking about on every single Social Media Channel both on instagram on Twitter on you know, all the channels. How often are you engaging with other businesses now very new into social media? For me, that was an awful lot. Now it's a more careful and deliberate selection of who I'm choosing to engage with because I've been doing this for a while. Who are you liking and following? You know, I kind of have a strategy for that. I have a little calendar in my head that says every week I will find an engaged with X number of new businesses on each of my different social media platforms. I will find and like to new people on instagram that I can start building a social media relationship with. I will find and follow five new businesses on Facebook that I can interact with. And a lot of this now for me, comes from the weddings that I that I shoot. So I'll go to the weddings. I get my list of vendors in my wedding day worksheet on I go look for them on Instagram and I immediately follow every single person that I'm gonna work with. And then I go find their businesses on Facebook, and I like every single one of their business pages, and it helps me continue interacting with a large group of vendors. And because I do educate photographers, I do that on the photography side as well. Not so much the liking of the Facebook pages, because just for me on the education side, that could get a little cluttered. But I find them on Instagram. I find them on Twitter, I start engaging with them. So my social media marketing is twofold not only in my marketing to clients, but I'm flipping this around in doing the exact same thing. The market photographers as well. So if you shoot weddings and you do portrait, that's two completely different channels of marketing. And a lot of people make the kind of wrong decision that social media marketing is universal. I'm doing it to target every single group. When I kind of Europe this boudoir thing to get on moving. That's a whole new social media channel of liking and interacting and engaging. I know it's exhausting. Are you staying engaged? It's not just enough to go like a business. You need to stay engaged with them and in a way other than to just say cool or to click like so on my social media marketing calendar, I have how many times per week I want to go engage with somebody like Okay, three times a week. And I just made that number up on instagram. I'm going to actually post on someone's instagram something other than cool, right? I'm gonna be like, Whoa, those florals are amazing. It was great to work with you this past weekend. An actual engagement. Not just like the modern day equivalent of, like the head nod, right? You know what I mean? Like, if you're building a relationship, you have to do something more than just give somebody a high five, right? The gun, the finger gun. How are you facing out your updates, Right, So I kind of have ah calendar. I screwed. I will admit this is one of my falling down points. I sort of Facebook when I feel like facebooking. But I have been following a calendar for so long that it's kind of innate in my head of Okay, x number of days have gone by and I havent posted anything on my Facebook page. I need to put something and I try to balance things that I posed for photographers and things that I post for clients because my Facebook business page is geared largely towards both of them. So I have to keep both of those things interacting. But you need to know how often are you gonna instagram? How often are you going to tweet? How often are you pitting the Pinterest? You need a solid calendar for these things so that they don't become either repetitive or so that you don't put too much energy into one channel and ignore another or so that you don't inundate the crowd out of people on. You know, nobody wants to follow somebody who post something 62 times a day to Twitter like you're out under. Sorry. Like I can't I can't do that. Right. So, having a calendar, sitting down and saying OK, it's Monday, right? Today I'm gonna like to new businesses on Facebook. I'm gonna post to Twitter. I'm gonna pin on Pinterest, and I'm gonna find three new businesses toe like on Instagram. Let's go do it. That is a manageable set of steps instead of OMG. All of social media is staring me in my face, and I don't even know where to start today. I'm gonna do all of it, and then not only are you gonna hate it, but you're gonna flood everybody. So if somebody follows you on a couple of different channels, if you continually post all like, if today I posted five times on Twitter five times on Facebook, five times on instagram and five times on Pinterest people who follow me on all of them are gonna be, like, just shut up and start following me like crazy. Ready for a question from the Internet? Yes. Are you using a program like buffer app or tweet deck that helps you post to all your different social media? Fantastic. If I talked about that in one of the next couple of flied. Okay. Thank you. Very many other questions so far, I couldn't help with going on. You know, Mohammed Ali had a good question. E. I don't think the Mohammed a mom, how do you protect yourself against excuse me against a negative comments or even losing your online profile on Facebook? So two different kind of questions, but I'm not sure what you mean by losing your profile in? Yeah, let's. That's another for the 1st 1 Negative comments. I don't believe that. That is a very deliberate decision, because it would be super easy to go in and just delete everybody who said, You know, But this is ugly. Do you know what I mean? Now I will delete if people are either abusive or swearing like if someone comes in and post on one of the pictures that I post This is the ugliest bride I've ever seen your out right? Because that's rude to one of my clients. Or if they're like, you know, L o l your work sucks. And then a string of swear words you're out. And not only are you out, I'm gonna block you like that's just come on, Rule number one. Don't be a jerk, right? Like that's just that's not you cannot come in and abuse me in my home. That's one thing. Now, last night I posted that the workbook was on sale and somebody went in there and write wrote, Wow, that's and I'm paraphrasing. Wow, that's way too much to spend on a book. Okay, now I could have gone in and I could have deleted that no one would have ever seen that he had written that. But instead I decided to meet it and respond to be like, you know, I totally understand that some people could feel that way. I understand that this isn't for everybody. There are lots of educational materials out there priced at all price points. And if this isn't for you, I totally understand No hard feelings. If someone wants to come in and be like, you know, this'll wedding is okay, but it seems like you kind of phoned it in. I'm not gonna delete it. I'm gonna say I'm really sorry that you feel that way. It's kind of passive aggressive, but I've done some research into it. And there is Apparently, there's a lot of power in leaving up your negative comments and responding to them, because if you just delete them all, then you have this kind of antiseptic whitewashed, raw, raw. Everybody loves me profile, and that's kind of disingenuous. Not everybody loves me, and that's cool. Like I get it. I totally understand. On def, you have a complaint. If someone has a complaint and they posted on my page. Someone posted the other day on my Facebook page. I ordered a think book, you know, back in February, and I still don't have it. What's wrong with you? Where's my book? I could have just deleted it. E mailed her personally and taking care of it. And instead I wrote right on the page. I am incredibly sorry. Stuff happens. It must have gotten missed. I am. Please accept my apology. Here is Sanders email address. She handles the shipping. We will get it out to you immediately with my sincere apologies, so people will see. Yeah, you screw up. But you care enough to get in there and fix it. Or yes, people don't like you, but you're classy enough that you go in there and take it right. But again, if you're abusive, if you're obnoxious, if you swear, if you talk about my personal life that I'm gonna take down, that's just you know, you wouldn't let somebody walk up and spit in your face and be okay with that on. And if you swear, I'm just gonna block you. Sorry. Try it if you want, but yeah. Unhappy clients Unhappy people. If you post on my page, I'm gonna keep it there because it's more authentic. And it shows that I that I care enough to step up and say, Wow, you're right. You never got your book. I'm super sorry. Let me try to make it right. Good, Good. And how many times per week The last one on this, Like we talked about this already. You know, how many times are you gonna hit each of those channels? So let's start off talking about Facebook, all right? Now, when I'm talking about Facebook and I'm talking about your Facebook page, I'm not talking about my personal page. I'm actually trying really hard to sort of get people off of my personal page a little bit. I made a mistake of just trending everybody in the world, and now I want to sort of pare it down a little bit so that it's it's a little bit more of my friends. So every once in a while, somebody will post like, you know, here's a picture of an abused dog, and, you know, here is the video of the dog being abused, and I'm like, OK, it's a good reason to mix you off the Facebook for Earth. Mom goes on like an insane political rant. I'm like unfriend. I'm talking about your business Facebook page, and if you don't have a business Facebook page, it takes five minutes to go get one and then come back. This video will be sleeping all day. You can catch me later now to stay at the top of people's news feeds, and you've probably all heard about the Facebook algorithms that are frustrating and change every 20 seconds, Right? So the more you interact with a person's business page, the more you will see it in your Facebook news feed. So if you're constantly posting and constantly interacting with creative lives, Facebook page, you'll see it more in your news feed. But if you just go click like one time and then you never go visit it again, I could be updating 300 times a day, and they're never going to see it because they're not engaging with me. So it is incredibly crucial that you get people interacting with your page because then it will show up in their news feed mawr and more. Now what am I doing with Facebook. First of all, it's really easy to say. Well, every time I shoot a wedding, I blogging. And then I post those weddings on a Facebook album. Of course I do. We all do that. But what else do you do like, what do you do on Facebook that makes people come back and keep interacting with your Facebook page Posting tips, tricks and hence all right. And I am doing that for photographers, and I'm also trying to do that for brides. I will admit I fall down undoing it for brides because let's be really a lot of the people that are looking at my Facebook business page are photographers, and I try very hard to still try to make that relevant to my wedding client so that they feel like they have a place there as well. But you need to become a valuable resource to your clients, right, because fans aren't dumb. They know that your business Facebook page is not just this sweet. I love everybody page to help you, you know, be awesome. We're all there to sell something on our Facebook business page. Why am I posting tips and tricks and advice for photographers Number one, Because I care about the industry number two because people gave those things to me and I want to give them back number three because I want to sell you things right. Like I'm being completely honest. I write things to sell the photographers. I have to tell them I can't just put them out there. But if people are coming back to my site and they're receiving free content, they're getting help. I am not on Lee a place for you to come by something, but I am a valuable resource for you. And if your clients are looking at your page and you're talking about how to choose your outfit for your engagement session, the top five best getting ready locations in your area. When it comes time to hire the photographer, they will remember you as this valuable source of advice, and then they will come hire you. If photographers were looking at my page and they're seeing wow, she gives back and she helps, which I do when it comes time to buy an educational resource. They already trust me because I've established myself is helpful, honest and genuine and know what I talk about, right? So there needs to be free content that you put out there with no expectation other than to help people and start up dialogue. Monday morning. Facebook Post. Hey, everybody, how's the wedding planning going this week? What's one thing that you're doing this week in your wedding plans? That's an open ended question asking people to engage with you, right? So you're becoming a valuable resource in giving them information. You are becoming a community in trying to get them to interact with you, right? Your Facebook page is more than just showing pictures to people. You're trying to make it a place that people turn to to get info and go to chat about that info and know what you plan to post. Think about it in advance. I have about 15 different posts for my Facebook page that aren't up there yet because I'm spacing them out on your Facebook business page. I showed this to my husband. He's like, Where did you find that? Which humorously enough. If you look up the top here, there is actually a I did a screen cap while I still had a little floating overlay that's not normally there, but your Facebook business page actually has insights. Okay, so if you're watching this at home and you have this window open on your computer will open up another window, go to your business Facebook page at the top, where you're gonna post a post. Do you see these little button and has three little dots? Click on that button with three little dots and one of the drop downs that will pop up will be insights. You see it towards the top page activity insights when you click your insights. This tells you what your Facebook page has been doing in the past week, right? Like so this is my Facebook page. From August 27th through 0902 14. I can see that my total page likes of the week. I have 224 new page likes, which seems cool until I realized that it is down from the number of people who like my page the week before, which means that I did not do something to get people to continue engaging. You can see your post reach how many people your posts they're reaching versus the week before and then over here, which is incredibly important, is how people are staying engaged. That week I was down 50% from the week before, so that meant that whatever I was doing that week was not encouraging people to engage with the page in the way I had the week before. So I went immediately looked at what I had posted the week before to see, you know what I want to do wrong this week, how many people commented, how many people were sharing things, how many people were clicking on your post? And if you scroll down even further, it will show you what post people are engaging with in different ways. For example, when I posted my new website, I had massive people looking at it, not many people engaging. When I posted a wedding album, I had less people looking at it, more people engaging. So then you can start to see what my posting that is, getting a lot of people to look at it versus what am I posting That's getting a lot of people to comment on it and engage with it, and how can I create the perfect posts that get people to do both. So it just starts giving you insight on what the people looking at your page are doing with your page. And I think that that's sort of very valuable knowledge. I also use my business Facebook page to let people get to know me a little bit better because they will trust me. Mawr as a resource. My clients will trust me more is a wedding photographer, and photographers will trust me more as a teacher if they know me a little bit more right, like that's me and my husband. That's our wedding day. This that's me. So I'll post a picture of my kids every once in a while or all post some inane thing like today I am beside myself, right? Okay, those of you who are in here, you might have heard me tricking in the other room during the Break, My favorite Broadway show for those who follow me on social media know that I'm obsessed with Hedwig and the angry inch. It's amazing. Neil Patrick Harris was in it. He left. I lost my mind over his replacement. They announced the new replacement this morning, and I lost my mind and had to immediately call my assistant and scream and she screamed and we were like, OMG, Dexter Morgan is going to be on Broadway and OMG, we're so excited and I will lose my mind about it on social media later. Well, it helps clients know that. Okay, This smart photographer that we trust for photography resource is or this lady that we hired to shoot our wedding is completely bananas over this Broadway play that she keep seeing over and over and over again. You're gonna everything that's weird or oddly charming, or it will make you laugh, but it will get. It will let you get to know me a little bit better. And I try to be very careful about inundating Facebook, my business page with personal things. Because first and foremost, my marriage is my own and my Children are mine. My step Children are mine. It is my life, and you don't get it right. Like my life is my own life. Just because I choose to have a Facebook business page doesn't mean you get to know every single thing about me, right? Like my husband's Ah, very well known photographer, but our photography life together is about 3% of our whole marriage. It's just not. But you don't get to know my whole marriage because it's mine. Like that's my private life, right? But I can let you get to know me, and I can do it in a genuine way without telling you every single time I eat a doughnut or do a juice cleanse or go to the bathroom or buy a new pair of shoes, right? So you have to judge how much of your personal life are you okay with putting out there? And how do you want to put it out there? So there's that on Ben. You just have to make it easy, right? Like this. Getting people to engage with you on social media shouldn't be hard. And you doing your own social media also shouldn't be hard. You need a system, you need a way to do it. You need to understand your analytics and then just set a plan and get going, right. So I want to make it easy for people to engage with me. How am I going to do that? All right, First of all, I have, like, buttons on my site. If you go to Susan tripling dot com and you click on the contact page Boom, there is a little, you know, Facebook icon that you can click and go like me. I put it on my blawg. I put it every single place that I can put it because I want someone to just be able to click on it and go to it. I have links in my email signatures. It says Susan, my phone number. My website, my Facebook page. I want to make it easy for someone to just go click and have it right there. There are links everywhere. When my assistant who helps me with albums, e mails clients were putting my Facebook page in her signature are not being egregious about it. I haven't papered the front of my studio building with like me on Facebook, but I want it to be out there so that if people want to engage with me, it's a no brainer to just click on it, right. All right. Ready to have your mind blown ready? It's my favorite. All right. Have you heard about text toe like anybody? Nobody. All right. So pull out your phone. Right. You're at home. Hoist out your phone. Go to your texting out. 32665 You're going to text to Facebook, right? You're going to text the word like and then Susan Stripling photography. All one word when you're in a press send you automatically just like me on Facebook. And every time I update, you will get a text telling you what I updated. Right. Imagine the power that that could have If you're a portrait photographer and you are running a sale and you posted to your business Facebook page, every single person that you've convinced detect text toe like you, we'll get a text 25% off many sessions this week. Oh, wow. I pick up the phone and call instead of hoping that it's gonna pop up in their bizarrely algorithms news feed. You just put it straight in their phone. Now, when you're giving someone the thing Teoh like it is whatever is after the slash mark after facebook dot com. Right, So mine is www dot facebook dot com forward slash Susan stripling photography. All one word. So if you're going to do that, you're gonna text like 753 All one word hit. Send done. They've like your page. Do you want to try it? Try it on my site or try like creativelive all one word. Boom. You just like creative live on Facebook. You'll get a text every time they update. Now, if that annoys you, you don't want me in your phone, which I can totally understand. I barely want myself in my own phone. Um, I start posting updates. You start not liking them. You type the word unsubscribe into your text box and hit send. You'll still like my business, but you will unsubscribe to the constant texting. Welcome. You have to do anything to set up your Facebook page to do that at all. It's out there. It's one of those little tiny, unknown Facebook things that I found somewhere in the dark rabbit hole of the Internet and decided to tell the world about because more people should know about this. This is brilliant. It's brilliant if you have a studio and people are coming in and out in and out to your studio. But a little sign in your window, you know, like Bob Smith, photography on Facebook for text updates done, boom done. And even if they unsubscribe from your text updates, they still like you on Facebook. That's my favorite bit of knowledge for at the week. Any other questions before we move on to Facebook ads Feeling good? How's the Internet feeling? Are they all in Matt immediately, like texting toe like all of these different pages on the Internet? So Darren Cavin George, we would just love to know they have no business Facebook page starting from scratch. Just I know you mentioned some tips and tricks and things they can post to help get activity. But anything else that you would recommend them to gain activity. Ask people to like you. Ask people to who'll? Ask your client. Ask your friends. You know there's if they talk a lot, especially in senior photography about your your brand ambassadors, people who go out there and spread the word of you. Ask people to do that. You know there is nothing wrong with asking a client toe like you on Facebook. A. I have a new Facebook business page Come over and like it. You know, we have great dialogue going on over there you've got to start somewhere and you're gonna start with, like, five people, and then you'll have 10 people, and then you have 20 people. And then the next thing you know you'll have a community. Okay, here's a great question from Christy. Done. Is it best to be a fan of other photographers through our business page or personal page? Should we be commenting as a photographer on there on the pictures that they like? So commenting from their business or on other photographers? And then you have to personally decide on for yourself? Um, me. I don't really engage with other photographers very much on Facebook, and it's very deliberate. I do not like other photographers page through my business page because the last thing in the world I want is a perspective client coming to my page, saying that I like other local photographers and having a reason to go talk to them instead of me. If they're my friends, I will. I will engage with other photographers on their albums and on their posts. And what not as a friend. If we are friends, I will do it from my personal page. But photographers are the one kind of vendor that I sort of I stepped back a little bit from, but that's, uh, there's nobody answered without sounding like a kind of jerk. It's where I am in the industry. I've got my group of photographer friends around me. I have the people that I refer weddings to. I had the people in my inner circle, and I have to be really careful about my interaction and motion within the photography industry. Now, early on, as I was building a community as I was building a reputation as I was going on and on, I would have been more active. But it would have been always to get to this point where I have my bubble of friends around me and the other vendors or the people that I'm looking to interact with. Does that sort of makes sense? Yeah, definitely. Cool. And since it's so amazing and so cool, would you mind a quick reiteration of textile likes? Thank you were gonna go back there. Hang on. I got really excited and started just pounding the buttons here. Okay, everyone, get out your phone that you guys, You're fine. You're cool. If you're at home. Bust out your phone. Right? Okay. Think of ah, Facebook page that you want to like. All right. Like find went out there finding if you don't like mine like mine, you immediately unlike it. I really don't care. It's illegal. Creative or let's do creative life. Okay, As an example, you're gonna go to your texting, whatever it is you do on whatever device you have. And you're gonna text to F book, which is the number 32665 standard text messaging rates apply. All right, 3 to 6 x five. You're gonna text the word like you're gonna press your space button and you're going to write creativelive all one word, and then you're gonna hit send, you will automatically get a confirmation text that says that you now like creative life on Facebook. Right now, every time that creative life post something, it will be texted to you so that it will be right there. You won't have to remember to go back to their Facebook page over and over and over again. You will get it as a reminder. But if over time you decide that that's not a feature you like you'd really just rather do it through your browser. All you have to do is type in the word unsubscribe and hit send. You will still like that Businesses page. You just will no longer receive their updates via text. It's if it's just kind of a fun little fine. That was fun.