0:00:04.9 West McDonald: West McDonald here, and I wanna thank you for tuning in to another episode of Tiger tube, and if you can’t see is that… Means you’re listening in on Tigerpaw radio, and wanna thank you for that too. Don’t forget, make sure you subscribe to get access to all of the great learning content to Tiger pass producing. And if you like this episode, make sure to like and share and as is our customer, we like to let the guests introduce themselves… Brandy Rogers, if you could introduce yourself or audience…
0:00:28.9 Brandi Rogers: I am Brandi Rogers, I am the Director of Marketing for CharTec and Arc technology. Arc technology is our own sister MSP, and CharTec is the training company for msps, and we ultimately train on sales, marketing and operations. Right now, that’s what I’ve been doing for about three years, and prior to that, I’ve had… I started my own business, where in a ways I do B2B slag, and then I also have a non-profit dog rescue that I still own and run today.
0:00:59.6 West McDonald: Social media like LinkedIn and Facebook are pretty misunderstood by most business owners. I think you can agree that people don’t really understand the power that it holds or if it’s useful at all in helping to push their businesses forward. Right, so maybe you can, for our audience, explain why you feel using social in 2022 was so important.
0:01:18.2 Brandi Rogers: You know, I’m really glad you brought that up was because I often see comments on LinkedIn and comments on Facebook that LinkedIn is dying and Facebook is dying and so on. So they’re always filing against each other, and I have to say, I just disagree with all of them and all together, so let me put some numbers out here for you, for LinkedIn, for example, LinkedIn has over 97% of B2B companies using it, and almost 80% of leads are coming from LinkedIn, so you can get a very specific… And you can get very specific with your audience on LinkedIn and the way of you are able to choose and select who you connect with that matches your ideal avatar, so to speak. So LinkedIn is definitely has moved very rapidly from the ways of employee employer use only and has been used to tremendously in the ways of move marketing. So I definitely highly recommend using LinkedIn for that, and then with Facebook, to put some numbers out there for you as well, Facebook has 289 million users and 193 billion daily visitors, and of that 74% leverage Facebook core business and decision-makers have 74% of the time and more time than other users on Facebook, so it’s gotta say something, when you see those kind of stats, right, you can’t ignore them.
0:02:48.6 Brandi Rogers: The numbers are real. That’s something that you’re just thinking out of an air when we have those stats. So I highly recommend using LinkedIn and Facebook for B2B purposes.
0:03:01.1 West McDonald: Yeah, I love it, and I’ve been a big proponent of that for years myself, and on LinkedIn, I agree with what you’re saying, that you really get to kinda hone in on the kinds of people that you actually build your network with it, and I’m always telling it my kids, they’re teenagers and young adults now, that you are defined by the people that you surround yourself by it, and I find the same thing on LinkedIn, to be able to have that choice of the kinds of people that were connecting with to build those relationships and I don’t necessarily have 10000 plus users, I think I’m around 5000 now, but I tend to personally at least be a little selective on the kinds of folks that I’m trying to connect with out there in the world, right.
0:03:40.5 Brandi Rogers: Well, absolutely, and you wanna connect with your target audience or connecting with people who don’t match what your messaging is about is not gonna do any good. And that’s kind of the big difference between Facebook and LinkedIn. And what are the differences between Facebook? LinkedIn is that, and LinkedIn, you can actually be very selective and Facebook, you don’t really… You don’t see their profiles, you don’t see what they’re all about, but one thing Facebook desert have is a mean wicked retargeting tool, so hey, you can definitely re-target to the people you really wanna target. Yeah.
0:04:14.4 West McDonald: And I saw you speak on that action, I was honored to meet you at Channel Con and this idea that Facebook does have such a powerful lunch and for that retargeting. Right, and so Freitas watching, make sure you check that up because it is very powerful, you know.
0:04:30.7 Brandi Rogers: In the tech services world.
0:04:32.9 West McDonald: Maybe you can let us know because obviously I’ll tell you from my own experience that I find that in the off equipment channel, for example, that LinkedIn is a great tool for networking and getting work done with people, I’ve worked with other folks that say, for example, in commercial integration space that Twitter is quite heavily used by them, and for msps and managed IT providers, I’ve seen actually that the Facebook groups are actually quite heavily used by some of them in that space to be able to do stuff. Right, so I’m just wondering, in the tech services world, from your experience, because you actually do this for a living, what platforms are the strongest and are you seeing anything that’s coming down the road…
0:05:12.9 Brandi Rogers: Right, so besides the LinkedIn and Facebook that we just discussed, what we do for our own MSP in The NPB market for, is we also heavily utilize Google Business, Google business profile. So again, I’m a numbers grow and I like to see the stats on these platforms, so just think about that, 50% of Google business profile visitors lead to website visitors, right. So they’re coming from Google business to your website, 90 cent, 97% of the users learn or got you online, so in 64% of them have used Google. Alright, so Go is a huge, huge search engine, and you get 5% of Converses a conversion, which is huge, so we utilize those three platforms the most when it comes to the IT industry.
0:06:01.5 West McDonald: Well, that’s great to hear. I hadn’t actually thought of using Google business for the IT space, right, if you maybe have three to five tips that you can offer folks out there that are actually trying to say, Okay, I get it. A buy-in. How can I get started?
0:06:17.1 Brandi Rogers: That’s a great question. So I would say the top five tips to really focus on when you’re deciding to get into the social media world, of course, you kinda define your goals with your social media platforms, what are you out there trying to do? Is it purely lead conversion, is it brand awareness, is it just going out and creating some sort of website traffic, so you gotta define those goals, did you understand what platforms you should utilize, then you gotta stay consistent with your brand. Posting things that are just all over the place with different colors and different fonts and different… Everything ran, consistency is key to keep, to sort of have inception with your audience, they consistently are seeing it, and even it’s those people who may not need your services, but they recognize you, they remember you when somebody does, one of their friends doesn’t say, Oh, I’ve been seeing this IT company pop up on my feed a lot on this name, this is the name, and they automatically recognize that. So Grant consistency is very important, following your audience, so choosing a platform where your audience is hanging out at, that’s really important, so if your audience is always on LinkedIn, ’cause you’re promoting to businesses, then definitely use LinkedIn.
0:07:33.6 Brandi Rogers: I see, for example, I see TikTok, there’s a lot of businesses promoting their business, but I see a lot of consumers, and so if you have a tangible item, then I would say TikTok was probably a good platform. The other tip I would say is optimization, and you’ve gotta optimize all of your platforms, if you don’t optimize them, they’re not gonna really… You’re not gonna take advantage of our capabilities, and so that’s something that we do here as well as optimize them, staying consistent with your content that’s relevant to your audience, and then also continuously driving traffic to those posts, those are the top things that are super important when it comes to social media and all that, another tip is that I think if we had, let’s say the 60 tip, they could get in touch with Char Tech as well for help with that, is that correct? Well, that’s how we do, we retrain themselves, but we do marketing for it companies, that is our IS.
0:08:30.8 West McDonald: Yes, that’s great. And actually, we did mention before the call as well, to work with some of the partners that I do as well, and that I know they would speak very highly of the services that you do, so make sure you check them out. If you’re looking for some help on social for business isn’t just marketing. And I know that one of the things that I help people with, oftentimes is building their personal brand or their online persona, or their digital presence, whatever you wanna call it, right. And I wonder, do you have any recommendations for people that are looking to increase the strength of their personal brand on social, you did make some mention obviously about brand consistency for the organization, what about… What’s your advice for that personal brand?
0:09:13.4 Brandi Rogers: I’m a big advocate for video marketing, and I’m sure you could agree, so people recognize you if you’re after you’re putting yourself out there and they see you’re personable, they understand your personality, and they understand, they will automatically relate that to your business. So video marketing is huge, and I highly… I give lots of training sessions at our academies on this on how to utilize video marketing within your sales process, how to utilize it within your marketing process is… It’s where we’re going, you know, look how many people you’re seeing walking around looking on their phones, people at dinner at a restaurant, all on their phone, and they’re watching videos, but they’re not necessarily having to hear them, they’re watching them. And so there’s a lot of tips and tools that you need to know when it comes to the video marketing, and it’s not hard, it’s just a consistency. So that is a really big one. And another one that I find that works really well. Or curiosity-based post, when they’re posting things that require someone to engage with you, that’s very important when it comes to staying consistent with your personal Rene
0:10:24.6 West McDonald: And LinkedIn makes it easy now because they actually do polls and questions, and I’m one of those people that cannot resist them, it’s like, I think it’s number two, I have to get involved with that, and then usually leave a comment afterwards once it all comes through, and I think it is very powerful… Yes, on the video. So we’re seeing so much it everywhere, and again, in the retail space, when I’m upping my wife with her stuff, everything on Instagram has shifted to video now, right. So for them, their platform is real, is they make it real easy on the actual platform to be able to produce some pretty cool things with 10 plates for videos and everything else, but I’d say that most of the views and stuff that are happy to were happening with video, right? And every day when I’m on LinkedIn, I see more and more people that are starting to post little videos, and they could be talking about culture, they could be talking tips and tricks for improving your business or whatever, and I find those much more engaging and it may be easier to digest than having to read something long for him, and I still write long-form blogs, but I think it’s…
0:11:27.4 West McDonald: At least for me, I see that happening quite a bit. Just as you say on the platform, now we’re getting to the part of the interview, which I like to call the impossible question, and it’s the impossible question, because we’re gonna say if you only have one piece of advice, protect service providers looking to make a bigger impact for social, maybe, what would that be?
0:11:47.9 Brandi Rogers: Do something, just don’t do nothing. You don’t wanna sit there and then here it goes by and you’ve been thinking about doing some marketing or doing some social media, doing some blogging, and then a year goes by and you did nothing and then your back… You’re just wasted a whole year, so just sit there and be status quo and you gotta do something, you can start small, you could break it down to the bigger pieces from down to one avenue. And stay consistent with it, and then move on to the next piece. Or you can outsource it to a firm that can do it for you, and
0:12:21.2 West McDonald: Hey, for folks out there that may be looking to do something and get a little help. How can they reach out to you?
0:12:26.5 Brandi Rogers: Yep, you can reach out to me on [email protected], or you can just go to CharTec.net as well, and I will say that we have an upcoming training academy that’s all on lead generation and how to close those leads, it’s two days and I will extend an offer for more marketing firm for your followers West speaking of video marketing, if they decide to attend our training academy referred by, we will go ahead and make them a 30-second business video for them to post on their business. So
0:13:03.6 West McDonald: That’s fantastic. And you can’t beat that. Wow, so for anyone that’s watching, reach out to me and I’ll help make sure you get in touch with branded, take advantage of that incredible offer, and to make sure you get the information on that training that’s coming up. So Brandi, cannot thank you enough for us for the interview today, that was great seeing him a channel can wonderful to have you on the program today, and for all of our listeners and viewers out there, cannot thank you an upward coming into tiger paw for learning resources. And remember, until next time, keep learning.
0:13:36.3 Brandi Rogers: Thank you again.
