Haris Alisic sits down to examine the do's and don'ts of good marketing strategy, identifying your audience through their social media behavior, and how to sift through the data generated by those habits.

Access this episode's show notes, including links to the audio, a summary, and helpful resources.

Elana:

Hello, and welcome to All Things Marketing and Education. My name is Elana Leoni, and I've devoted my career to helping education brands build their brand awareness and engagement. Each week, I sit down with educators, EdTech entrepreneurs and experts in educational marketing and community building. All of them will share their successes and failures using social media, inbound marketing or content marketing, and community building. I'm excited to guide you on your journey to transform your marketing efforts into something that provides consistent value and ultimately improves the lives of your audience.

Hello everyone, welcome to another episode of All Things Marketing and Education. This week I am really excited to be sitting down with Haris Alisic, a digital strategy consultant. He was previously head of Audience Development and Engagement at AJ+. And a little bit of a side note for our audience, this is our first guest that doesn't actually work directly in EdTech or as an educator in the field. But don't worry, I am so excited for this talk. He is so smart and brilliant, I learn from him all of the time on Twitter. Today, we are going to dive into all things Audience. And if you don't know what Audience means or the ins and outs of what we're going to talk about, stay tuned.

But what I can tell you is when I mentor EdTech startups, the number one thing they all have in common is that they do not know their audience fundamentally. I ask them a couple of questions, and it's clear that they've created a product where they don't know their audience. And that blows my mind. And it's not just startups, folks. Any company, but especially in education, will admit that they'd love to spend more time with their audience and their various segments of audiences, especially in education. Educators are so different from administrators, from parents, all the different people in the ecosystem of education. So today, we are going to be talking about the ways to understand, engage, and grow your audience.

So we led a workshop about the power of social media at the WISE Conference in Doha, and it was sponsored by the Qatar Foundation. And I'd never met him before, I don't even think we actually planned an agenda, we were like, we're just going to stand up there and talk about social media to a bunch of really inspiring award winners that were non-profit award winners, that were doing just fantastic things in education internationally. And we can talk a little bit about that if you want. But from that workshop, we kept in touch through Twitter and here we are. So I thank you for joining us, and welcome to All Things Marketing and Education.

Haris:

Thank you so much for having me. It's such a great pleasure to be here, to see you again. I will definitely not be able to live up to all the expectations that you have. We'll do our best, definitely. It has been really eight years, and as you said, we didn't plan what we were going to say before, because we just met maybe half an hour before it all started. But to me it was such an amazing opportunity, just like this one is, to help people who have some of the most important jobs in our societies who are educating the next generation, who are educating my kids and will be educating their kids and help them be in any little way I can to make their life easier, their jobs easier. Their jobs are very tough, especially today between the parents and the expectations and the children and all the dynamic who are often not paid enough. Whatever little I'm able to do to help, I'm grateful for the opportunity. Thank you so much for having me here.

Elana:

Yeah, I just remember, you were at the time using some and probably still are using some very cutting-edge social media tools. You and I were in front of this room with participants that maybe have never used social media ever. So it was like how do we step backwards? And I do think that that is a good testament of an educator, that we just meet them where they are, and we go slow, and we see where we can provide the most value without overwhelming. So I think that's always my struggle, is you can talk about social media and improve on it every single day, and it just is this Sisyphean prophecy where you're just kind of, all of a sudden you've maybe figured it out, and then the algorithm changes or the tool changes or your audience changes or a pandemic comes. So there is always a lot to learn, but I do appreciate times where we can step backwards and just talk about the fundamentals and get back to basics, too.

Haris:

Yeah, and that's so crucial what you're saying, because tactics or situations, they will change inevitably. And the only constant thing is what many people have said is the change. Our ability to reflect on that and to take the time, as you said, is really crucial. Now, it might feel for people who are in the thick of it that they are busy, that they don't have time, they just have to get the stuff done that they really don't have time to step back. But I think everybody should, because you can adjust tactics, you can do imperfect things tactic-wise. That's okay, you will do them even sometimes if you plan, right? Because nobody knows everything. But if we flip it, and you were to do all the best and amazing things you can do, but your strategy is wrong, so let's say you are writing it for the wrong people or you are using wrong medium to reach them, then all those amazing tactics would be in vain. So it is really crucial to keep your eyes on the prize and step back regularly and revisit what your North Star is and what the direction and strategy is. Absolutely.

Elana:

Yeah, that's such a good point, because there's a lot of brands that especially when you're a startup or even sometimes you're a mid-level company, you say, "Oh, I get to it when I can." And I'm like, well, what does that mean on social media? "Oh, I post a couple things here and there," and something without a strategy is a hundred percent a waste of time. And that's what you said. It's just how can we look back and say, "What do we ultimately want to accomplish, and how can we craft a strategy that works?" And that's fundamentally why we're here. I love how you just jumped right into it, too. Why don't we talk a little bit about, we were talking about strategy, and you said something very key about you could have a strategy that you were talking to the wrong audience or you were attracting the wrong audience. So let's talk about audience a little bit. You talk a lot about audience first. So why is audience first so important to you, and how has it fundamentally helped guide you in your digital strategies?

Haris:

Yeah, that's a great question and a really important topic to talk about. I feel we could talk about this topic for ages and hours, but what it basically boils down to is if you're a company or if you are just a teacher or educator or if you are working the company, at the end, there is a certain thing that's your product, whatever that is. It might be that you need to get more admissions to your school. It might be that you want to attract funding. It might be that you want to improve your relationship with parents. It might be you want to elevate your students. At the end, there is something that you are offering or trying to do to help the people you want to reach.

And here comes the great thing. If you don't adjust your product or the way you are talking about your product to the people you are trying to talk to, your chances of success and of helping them and achieve success for yourself will greatly diminish. So you can see this in a lot of startups, even EdTech and other startups, is they focus on the product, which is important, obviously, if they have a great product. But at the end, then, there is a product, and sometimes that product comes out of let's say the bubble or the group of the people who started it who all of them are saved on this, and they feel really strongly about it, and they invested their time and money and effort, and they think it's the best product in the world. But guess what? Everybody thinks that about their product.

And eventually, then, your product will leave your lab, your office, will go out there in the world and will compete with all the other products about attention to start with. Before there is a purchase or decision, there is obviously attention. And for you to attract that attention, you have to have focused on the people you are trying to reach in the audience. And that's why we say audience first. It doesn't mean you give up on your product, it doesn't mean, let's say you're a tech and all you can see somehow on in some obscure part of Instagram is that people only want cookies. So you start selling cookies. That's not what we are talking about. What we're talking about is in your field with your product, with the problems you're trying to solve, identify first who those people are, or good representatives of them, or good channels where they congregate, or good hashtags they use. And just hear them out, see what they talk about, see what the problem is.

Based on that, develop a hypothesis for your product or a message you want to send, and then test that against a smaller subset of these people. Maybe talk to some of those people you are trying to reach, see if you understood this all correctly, if this really solves the problems they have, and then you will get the feedback, incorporate that into your product, then you will know that not only do you have a good product, but you also have a good product that clicks well with the people you're trying to reach.

And then when you have that, then you should develop key messaging around that product suitable for specific platforms you use. So, for example, we are different people in different platforms. So when we come to, let's say, YouTube, usually we know why we are there. We are coming to watch specific video first. Either we are searching for it or we have a link, we are there. We don't come to YouTube usually to see what's up on YouTube. Unlike Twitter, we come to Twitter, and we scroll through to see what's happening. So on Twitter, we are doing discovery to start with. On YouTube, we know what we're looking for, and we also have an expectation that we're going to spend more time there, because videos on YouTube are usually longer.

So we come with that intention a bit more laid-back experience, longer view time, and we are searching for something specific. Then, after the first video, maybe we get suggestions and others, but usually we know what you want to see first. So our behaviors on different platforms are different. We act as different people. We want different things out of it. So we as EdTech companies, as educators or anybody else really, need to account for that. And the content we produce and place on these platforms has to, in every aspect in what we say, in how we say it, in how we film it, in the length, in tone of voice, be adjusted to that platform. What I usually call this is platform native. So you have to be obviously audience first, and then you have to be platform native. Otherwise, it's going to be very difficult for you. I mean, you can put, nobody's going to stop you, ten-minutes-long video on Twitter, but not many people are going to watch that video until the end, unlike YouTube.

Elana:

Sorry to interrupt, but the new Twitter Blue now allows you to do the ten-minute stuff, and I'm like, no, no, I mean if the content's good, maybe. I want to pause really quickly, because you're saying such good things, and if the audience is like me and maybe they're a little distracted. I just want to reinforce a couple things. But the first thing you said, really, is everyone thinks their product is awesome. I always say nobody cares about your product. And the way you make them care about their product is you demonstrate that their problem that is one of their most pressing needs can be easily solved with this product, so solution-oriented. And then in education, I always try to tell people, be a part of the conversation. Social media is social, listen to educators, listen to your stakeholders, uplift their voices, contribute to the spaces with thought leadership. So I just want to pause for all of the people listening that have products that do think they are awesome and they probably are. Nobody cares.

Haris:

That's the brutal, honest truth. You are coming, probably, with a project that has competition in a somewhat saturated market where many other people are already there offering, or if you are the first, they will be very soon after you offering. So just having a good product is not enough. How I usually explain this to people is if having a good product was the only thing that mattered, we would only have one thing of everything, but we would have the best car, the best stove, the best plane, the best clothes. There would be only one brand because they are the best.

But that's not the truth. The truth is we have a plethora variety of offerings in every of these product spaces. If you look at, for example, cars, if we stick with that analogy, let's say Volvo and Chevy under the hood are maybe 80-90% the same car, in the same class, especially given how cars are produced with the legal production. But two totally different sets of people buy these two different cars regardless of their technical specs that are almost identical, because of their brand. Their brand value signals different things. So just having a good product is far from enough.

And what you mentioned thought leadership and being in those spaces, I mean, that's crucial for establishing trust and authenticity. You have to be yourself. Now you will hear me, you will hear other people telling you, giving you suggestions, but I want to make one even more important point than strategy, is stay true to yourself. Remain authentic, keep your voice, you can adjust your voice, adjust your message, of course, and you should. This is what we're talking about here, but don't try to become somebody else or emulate somebody, because then authenticity will be lost and then trust will be lost, and you will not be seen as contributing to thought leadership. You will be seen as parroting somebody else's points.

Elana:

So the other thing you said was around we are all different people on different platforms, and that's a fundamental concept I try to teach, but it doesn't really stick sometimes. So sometimes I explain it, YouTube is a different planet of people, and those planets of people do all the things you talked about. But then on Twitter there's a whole other planet of people with different cultures, different norms, different expectations, different behaviors, and they all expect content to be the way they like to consume it. And I think fundamentally that is something that's, okay, great, that makes sense, but then we still create the same content and then quote/unquote push it out to all the channels. You want to talk a little more about that?

Haris:

Yeah, yeah. That's the sad reality for a lot of people, because I think the problem is that many people would love to do things right, and they know they should do this, but often there is either a skills gap or a knowledge gap, or they think it has to be superbly produced, which is far from the truth. Actually, there are spaces where the more rugged the product is, the more authentic it is. So, for example, Instagram stories, they shouldn't be super high-produced, in my opinion, because then they would just look too polished while people expect stories to be small views into a reality. And if you hyper-produce it, over-gloss it, then it loses its purpose.

So you don't have to overproduce it. It doesn't have to be the best product in the world, the glossiest, the shiniest with the best cameras. And, honestly, on some platforms, I mean, it shouldn't be a video. Many things don't even need to be a video. You can write smart things in a tweet and post them either as a tweet or as an image. That's easy. It doesn't take long. We're talking about minutes here of production time. So it doesn't mean you have to make 20 videos, 20 different versions of videos; many things you don't even need video. It can be image or text, and then you can try to link to your other video. Now, that's separate ball game, but you don't need to overproduce it. Don't be afraid. Try it, test it out, and see how it feels for you.

Elana:

Yes, I think that's such a great point. Many people are in decision or analysis paralysis where they're like, "It has to be beautiful, I have to spend 50k on one video." I'm like, "No, you don't." And that's a waste of money, because people are going to only see it for a short period of time, which is what it's designed to be in this ephemeral space of social media. So say I'm a company, I'm on a couple of different channels, my audience is interacting with me and providing me data. How do I begin to understand, and I know this could be a workshop in itself, this question, but how do I begin to understand what they like? How do I begin to create some insights that can start fueling maybe I should change my strategy?

Haris:

That's a great question, and that's really a million-dollar question. Data is for many people like Holy Grail. However, for many people it's also excuse and the reason for decision paralysis. I have been working in many places even before Al Jazeera, and in many companies, and what I can start with is first there is no perfect data. Nobody has all the data. Cambridge Analytica didn't have all the data. They had a lot of data, but nobody has all the data, so be at ease with that. Be at ease with what you have. Don't be afraid or reluctant to act because you don't own all the data you wish. And then when you have the data, another problem for a lot of people is data is nothing, it's not enough. Data is just the raw material.

Out of data you have to derive insights, and then out of those insights you have to turn them into... Well, I usually refer to this as actionable intelligence. And actionable intelligence means, okay, I'm going to make a three-minute video about this with this tone of voice about this topic, for example. Instead of telling you 80% of our audience are of these demographics coming here doing that, that's just information.

I derive insights. I provide actionable intelligence that somebody can take and act upon. That's the first step, and then you produce it, and so on. Interpretation of data specifically is where the key is really because, and you can easily see this, for example, if you make analogy to a country or a state and let's say new GDP data comes out, one political party who is in power will say, this is amazing GDP data, our economy is thriving. Opposition will use the same data to say how country is falling apart. So it's not about data only, it's about interpretation. And you have to really be honest with yourself there and use what you have.

So let's say you don't have any listening tools, let's assume. You have, at least on the minimum level, you have the insights provided to by platforms. You have Facebook insights, you have YouTube analytics, you have even Twitter offers some minuscule amounts of insights so that there are insights you can lean on. Secondly, now it depends, are you making technical decisions about a specific piece of content, or are you trying to make a longer plan, let's say for a year or for even longer. Strategies usually don't even need to be changed every year. They need to be updated, you need to be aware, but if you have done your strategy properly, you would have based it on trends. And trends are not tendencies. They have to be more long-term and based on audience behaviors. They don't change. They change and modify, but they don't rapidly and radically change over six months or one year.

So there is a lot of research that other people have already done for you, and you can use that. There is a company, I think their name is We Are Social, every year, and I think now even more often, if it's not every month, but at least every quarter they would do a thorough analysis of almost every country in the world about internet online social media usage. And you will be able to see even on the platform level, which platform goes up, which platform goes down, what people do, what people search for, what people consume. So there is a lot of research already done for you that you can just go there and use without you having to conduct that research.

Now, if you have the means, you should definitely regularly conduct your own research, but it's more specific to you. You shouldn't conduct research how are people using Instagram. You should conduct research, you know should have hypothesis, and then you should test this hypothesis against relevant people in your target audiences. Or, for example, let's say you are an educator and you want to see because you want to prepare your students for life ahead of them, and to do that you need to know what they worry mostly about, for example. For example, is it are they worried that AI will take over their jobs, or they worry about the climate? So you can adjust your materials at least if you now cannot adjust your curriculum. So they reflect those things so you get more interest and engagement out of your students so they're more engaged in your classes. So if you really go down to the nitty gritty --

Elana:

Why don't I stop you, because you're saying so much good stuff. I'm going to pause because I want people to soak in this goodness a little bit. I will say that the first thing you said really was about, there's lots of data available and, in fact, sometimes there's too much data. We're swimming in data, so how do we make sense of what matters most? And you can go into industry reports and look at what people track, but fundamentally what we are trying to do, like you said, is the race for attention. We're trying to grab attention, we're trying to attract new people, engage them and move them down a marketing funnel. I know no one personally likes to be moved down a marketing funnel, but that is what we are doing. So in order to do that, you need to make time. So make sure you are reserving time on a monthly basis at least to say, "What is the data showing me?"

And for all of you that don't feel like you have time for social media in general, you just want to do it and not look at the data, just don't bother doing social media, because if you're not data-informed and crafting insights that are updating your strategy, you're wasting your time and your audience's time and an education, shame on you. Don't waste educators' time. They're the busiest people in the world and doing great jobs every single day, still surviving in a pandemic. So I think that's kind of the first thing you said around data. And then you mentioned bias. So make sure you're going in with an open mind. If we have data and you want to spot trends, and if you see an anomaly in a trend, why is that? Be curious, don't assume and don't do confirmation bias, is what we call it at times of like, "Oh, I knew that that was it, so let me try to find a way to spin it." Be open.

And then when your stakeholders come in, if you're reporting to a C-suite, educate them, talk to them about the narrative ways of interpretation. But given your expertise, here's how you could interpret it. So keep it neutral. And that was a really important point you said. Then you also said one thing that everyone struggles with, especially in education, in EdTech, is that there's not a lot of data industry-wide on the field of education and social media and especially EdTech. So they might lump in education into higher education, and universities are a whole different ball of wax than EdTech companies, than education non-profit organizations, than B to C E-learning companies. We're so many different flavors in the world of education. So I like what you said is listen on the platform, learn, create a hypothesis of how your audience uses the platform and then go out and test it and really see.

Haris:

Absolutely, Absolutely. Testing is key, and it's easy. If you are, for example, using Facebook, it has a built-in AB testing tool that's free of charge and very easy to use that anybody can use. I just want to refer to your point, but you said if you don't take time to do social media, don't bother. And God's honest truth, because not only are you wasting time, you can actually do things that are harmful to your business, right? As most of you know, marketing is not about just advertising, it's four P's, four things, right? Price, product, placement, promotion. Promotion, just a tiny part, 75% is all these other things, which also includes your product and placement. In this sense, because this is not a physical product, it could be let's say branding, how do we position ourselves? So if you don't take appropriate time to do things properly, then these three other P's will be hurt, your product will be hurt and your chances of success will be greatly diminished.

It's better to do less properly than to do more in not such a good way. And when I say properly, again, I'm not talking about hyper glossy production, I'm talking about here figuring out what is that you need to say to your audience, like your message based on their needs and their problems.

Elana:

Yes, yes. And just underline that point: less is more. When you focus more, you have more time to really invest in the platform in the way it deserves. If you spread yourself on six platforms, and you can say, "I am on six platforms," but you almost, like you said, could be damaging your brand because you're putting out subpar stuff that you're just quote/unquote pushing out that shouldn't really be there anyways. That's not how those people consume that information and that media. So less is more, I will say. I'll put it in the show notes everything that Haris is talking about around the trends report. But I'll also put in a link to two guys on social media called Andrew and Pete, and they're from the UK, but they had a whole keynote at Social Media Marketing World that was about less is more and focus, and you don't need to be everywhere because when you're everywhere you're really nowhere. And it was so genius. So it just reminded me of that.

Haris:

Absolutely. And it's true in so many things, because through my career I worked within different companies, and within those huge companies often with many different entire divisions. Often discussion will start, we want to target everybody. Well, you cannot target everybody, and it's not because it's technically impossible. It is technically possible, but your message will not be consistent, because not everybody wants the same thing, so you cannot target everybody. You have to choose whom you are targeting. And when you are doing that, let's say you're developing your strategy, there is a simple recipe that I follow. You go first, and you look at your purpose. This is my purpose. This is why this company exists. This is why I do this, I want to achieve this and that. And then based on that purpose, you identify a target audience, and then you're going to look in the market, and you see where you identify that problem, which is what we spoke about here.

And then probably we'll find a variety of problems. It's not just one, it's multiple. Then you should take those problems, look first at yourself, where is your strength? And you should identify those out of those that you can solve the best. And then when you have this short list, let's say, you should look at your competition and see out of these, let's say three, where is the competition smallest, and where would it be easiest for me to succeed? And then you pick those, and then you develop key messaging and product and so on. So basically you would have checked a target audience, you would've checked against competition, you would've checked against ease of production all based on your strengths and actual problems. And that has always shown to be a recipe for success in what we have been trying to do.

Elana:

That is so smart. That's so smart because what I feel like a lot of people do is, "Gosh, lots of people could use my product, so I've got seven different types of people that could use my product, and I want to talk to them all." But you really do have to narrow-prioritize it. But I love how you said identify the problems they need to be solved first and foremost. And I don't even personally do that enough, and we need to infuse that more into marketing and say, "What are the problems to be solved?" But then you said something genius about competition and say, "What do they overly emphasize on, and are there opportunities where I can shine or can I do it better than them?" And that's cool. And then you said, "Can I do it easily somewhat?" So let's bring in the capacity and the budget and the realistic, I live in a real world thing.

Haris:

Absolutely. A lot of people have amazing ideas, there's a lot of really smart people out there, and they have great ideas and they know what they should do, but then capacity comes. And it's really important you mentioned one thing if you're talking to C-suite, let's say, or whomever, when you're having those conversations, if you are or with your manager, whoever your manager is, it is really important that you are very open and honest when you're having these meetings under the discussions. So you share all of this information, and if you think that something they're presenting to you or asking to do is wrong for or you couldn't be able to do it well or there's not enough resources, it is very important that you flag that. It doesn't mean you are opposing yourself at the end. The owner of the company can ask you to do something, and you'll do it to your best ability. But what is important here is that you flag it.

And that's for two reasons. One is for yourself and another one is for the company and for the success. Let's say you don't flag it, and then you get the to do this task with insufficient resources, whatever those are; budget, money, competency in the company, regardless, you will likely not succeed. And then this will reflect on you, right? Or for the company, let's say you have the resources and you can do that, but it's a bad space to compete. You will do everything you can and you will use those resources, but on the wrong thing, and ultimately you will not succeed anyway. So it's really important that you have flagged this, that you're really open.

You shouldn't feel that you are being confrontational and actually are just doing your job. You're doing the things that you should be doing because remember you are the expert, right? You know this better than these people, probably, than these people above you, or if they're very, very high above you. So you are the expert, and they rely on your expertise to tell them how it is. And if you don't, then bad decisions will be made that will impact everybody. And let's say you flag it and people choose to do the thing anyway, you will always be able to say, "Well, I told you so."

Elana:

Yeah. And that's a really good example of something like this is that you have the owner of the company or your boss, the VPs in the suite, and they're really proud of a campaign they created. This campaign wasn't audience-driven, maybe it's just something that maybe they're really excited about because they've found it and they're in the showers, it's a great idea, they're emotionally attached to it. They decide to say, "Hey, let's push it out on social media, all of it, and we've got this one thing, do it." If you don't flag, this will fail. And not only will it fail, it'll hurt your chances of anything else that you put out in social media.

I always like to say social media is my older brother, he never forgets. He never forgets when that one time, I forgot he was 38, and he was 39, you'll never forget, right? He'll bring it up at Thanksgiving. So those are the things where you need to say is it worth it? I always just say it very neutrally, like you said, so we can do this. It doesn't even reach the audience on our platform for one. I want to show you some data, and if we do it will more than likely fail, and it will reinforce what the algorithm that we produce, things that our audience doesn't like. So it will decrease our reach for all the rest of our stuff. Would you like that?

Haris:

Yeah, absolutely. And depending on who your boss is or whomever, you can also add, "If you still want us to do it, we'll do it to the best of our ability, but I just wanted you to have this information." So if you're afraid of being perceived as contrarian or something, you can always go with that. But I cannot really stress enough the importance of this. I think some of the best things I have done in my career in AJ+, for example, where I worked just before until recently was when we launched it, there is data available, historical data, on Tubular and others. It was number one in the market, and then on top three for a very long period of time. In every market, we competed. Some of the best decisions I made was when I said no or suggested no, and it's not easy.

So you have to really feel strongly about this. And what I usually say is to people is, "Don't believe the hype, don't drink the Kool-Aid." For example, TikTok is out. Everybody's on it. Awesome, right? We should be on TikTok, maybe. It depends. Look at your audience, look at your target audience. Are they on the platform? Yes. Okay, check one. How are they consuming on the platform? It's like very short videos, it's this and that. They come there to be entertained. Okay, can you provide that for your product? Should you be? If you can, awesome, right? Another box check. If you cannot, then maybe you shouldn't do it there. Maybe you should do it somewhere else. So don't just follow the hype just because somebody's hyping up something. I know it's not easy where you know, let's say your boss or owner, he's like best friend or competitor has done that, and he thinks, "Oh, we should be there," and they come really hyped about it, and you need to tell them, well, maybe that's not such a good idea.

Elana:

I love how you started with maybe. You're not saying no, you're not saying yes, you're saying maybe, let me look into it, and then this checklist, "Is my audience on it? Do I see my brand aligning?" Like you said with entertainment-oriented content. Is there an opportunity for me to shine with this type the way people consume it and what is popular? Okay, great. Do I have capacity? Do I like it? Do I like producing it, or can I find an agency to do so? Those are a good checklist of just being more a little bit scientifically driven, like I don't know yet. I don't know if I have the data to make a decision yet, but let me figure it out. I love that.

Haris:

Yeah, you're making great point. Nobody knows everything, and often we will get questions we are not ready for, and don't feel pressure to say yes or no immediately. Just say, "Let me look into it," as you said, and go check, and then come back with your recommendation. When you are presenting what I have found to be working best for me, maybe not for everybody, I don't know, but for me was when you are presenting something and you have collected a lot of data and you really want to put a lot of data in those slides, what I would do is I would first say, "This is what I think we should do." First, I would state what my recommendation is, and then I would present data because otherwise as the presentation goes --

Elana:

Haris:

Yes. People get lost in the data, and they ask, usually it's in the first few slides people have most questions, and that's where all the energy will go. And in people they make conclusions, which might or might not be the ones that you have made. But if you have first put that up, your point is clear, everybody understood you, and then you're presenting the data. Now, I'm not saying present just the data that supports you, I'm saying present the relevant data, but unless you don't flip it like I did, the risk is great that a lot of people will have lost you on the way, will have made up their minds before hearing what you want to say. And then when you make your proposal, because it's maybe different from what their idea is in their mind, they'll be contrarian to what you're saying.

Elana:

I know we've been talking all about audience, and there's so much we can talk about. We can have a whole talk just about the tools, and maybe I'll ask you a quick question about that to follow up. But when we think about being audience-driven is, really, what we said is prioritizing your audience, not trying to reach all of the audiences, and letting them tell you what they like to consume, what topics they like to hear, all of the things that you can use listening tools to do. And also just simple social media programming tools can do it as well, is what is my audience signaling that they like to consume and what is actually converting to where I want them to go? That's how you let your audience drive, but they're never fully in the driver's seat, by the way. You always want to make sure that your audience is representing your business goals.

So in education, we kind of use a weird Venn diagram. We're like, it's that magic in the middle where you have to make sure that you are not just talking about, like you said, cookies because those are trending on Instagram. We're not just seeking attention for attention's sake.

Haris:

Exactly, because that can easily backfire, and even if it doesn't, it'll have drained your resources and you wouldn't have achieved so much if you would've put that money into let's speak marketing language funnel. If you looked at your funnel and looked at the user journey and where this is my top of the funnel, middle bottom of the funnel, what is that? It moves them from this stage to next stage. And if you have put those resources there, you would've gained so much more than making dancing video about cookies. I'm not trying to oversimplify TikTok or anything, just giving an example.

Elana:

Yeah, I know that you and I would probably both say that TikTok does provide a huge opportunity for brands, but I think what we're saying is be smart about your entry, make sure that you're data-informed and that you have a strategy before you go in because I do believe, and there are some naysayers out there right now about B2B, TikTok is not effective. I think that you can, and I think that you can in education for B2C and B2B, you have to do it aligned with what your brand truly cares about and your mission and vision. There are ways that you can be successful in TikTok without dancing or doing all those things.

Haris:

Absolutely, you're absolutely right. And this is the same thing people would have said about any other platforms ten years ago, or 15 years ago or so. It's because this is the newest platform, so now they're saying the same thing about it.

Elana:

Yeah, I think what we end up doing in social media, to be honest, is in a data-informed way, we end up hopping platforms to platforms, because as social media platforms mature, they give you less and less organic reach, and they want to make you pay for more and more reach. That's okay if you can sustain it a little bit. But when we see with the algorithms right now and surfacing up, I think the latest data showed that TikTok is delivering to 118% reach. So that means if you have a hundred followers, it'll deliver to 118 on average. Whereas like Facebook, 2-5% Twitter, 2-4% LinkedIn, I think they say it's like 11%, but people only check it once a week anyways. It's a dramatically different world, but if you really look at it from an unfolding perspective, the new platforms tend to give free reach because they do need to attract more people.

Haris:

And there's a great opportunity in that, and there's a great opportunity in TikTok. You just have to be smart about it and choose what works for you and don't B2B or B2C. At the end, it doesn't really matter, because it's about people in those B2B, these companies, people make decisions, not machines, and people can be on TikTok watching something, and then your video comes up and they're on TikTok for TikTok reasons, but also we have multiple roles in life. They're also the manager or procurement manager of a company, and this is where they might hear about your product first. It doesn't mean that, okay, now I'm on TikTok and now I only have my entertainment mind with me. It's the tone of voice more. Every platform, if used smartly, if provided your audience is there, can be used successfully. You just have to be smart and strategic about it.

Elana:

Yes. All right. One of my last questions to you, because people always get very shiny object syndrome with tools, are there any tools that -- it could be the really small tools to the medium level tools to the robust tools -- what do you use to really understand your audience beyond? And, again, people listening that don't have budget for any tools, know that you can go on platform and download insights as well. But are there tools that you would use or recommend? It might be a strong word, because no tool is perfect.

Haris:

Well, there are tools I use, and there is one tool that I love using to be politically correct. Now, that tool is for video. It will give you channel-level information and then detailed video lead information. And that's also supposed to be maybe the most expensive tool or one of them, but it's called Tubular. Tubular Labs. That is an amazing tool. If you are a company in EdTech or educational conglomerate or whatever, you should definitely invest in this tool. I would because, among other things, what they have, and I think if I'm not mistaken, only they have is the full history.

Many other tools will provide you analytics, let's say about your content from the moment you start using them. What Tubular has is full history about you and other accounts. I found that to be very, very valuable, and they have a lot of filters for almost every language in the world, for any country in the world. It's very easy to use, robust and complex, and they have amazing customer support. I'm not paid by them, just for the record. I'm not getting paid if they sell or not. I just love the tool.

On the other end of the stuff, if you're looking at the free tools there is for video, there is vidIQ, which has a free part of it, which can be enough. There is a Social Blade. Use every tool with caution. Don't use the numbers as absolute, use them as indicators.

Then if we are looking at, if you are using Instagram and Facebook, there is a tool called CrowdTangle. It used to be an independent tool than Facebook or Meet About It several years ago. It's a free tool. You just have to request access, and they will give you access. You can monitor not just your own content, but any other page or accounts on Instagram. Let's say if you want to do benchmarking, you can benchmark yourself against competitors, and you can track that over time. There's also historical data there, not as much as Tubular, but there is. So that would be also a great free tool to use. That's kind of what I would use. There are other tools as well.

Elana:

I think Haris went into a lot of the video tools. We could have a whole talk on social media programming tools. We could have a whole talk on social media listening tools, and then also engagement tools. Know that when we're talking about social media tools, a lot of the times you end up purchasing four or five tools, or one really robust tool that does everything somewhat okay. So I think those are really great examples around video. The video I would add, we also use Tube Buddy, so it's an extension, and it's really helpful for us to make sure that when we are uploading something specifically to YouTube, it'll make sure that it'll score my video and make sure that it has the SEO value, the title's okay, so you always need some help around that. Does it have a proper description that accurately talks about what the video is?

So with everything there's, like, basic baby free tools to very complex, robust tools. And where you are in an organization, you might want to start small and go big, but if you say, "Hey, next year if I'm planning my budget, I want to invest in a robust tool that can get us to a higher level quicker," maybe that's also a strategy, too. Social media programming tools. All I say is that try to find a tool that allows you to tag so you are able to not rely on UTM encoding. And UTM encoding is when you append something to the URL and it says okay in the URL, this is about for first grade and it's about STEM, and it's a social media campaign, organic and whatever else I want to know. You can append anything else you want in URLs. That's really kind of tedious, and it's very Google analytics driven. What you want is something on your social programming side that you can add tags to so you can look at performance of tags over time.

So, how does my product line A compare to my product line B tweets? How does my topic around project-based learning compare to my topic around STEM? And your audience will tell you, and that's where you can create insights. That's all I ask you to do. You can go ahead and Google all the social media programming tools and just look for tagging capability.

Haris:

Yeah, what you just described is really important to be able to put your own labels on things and then track it and compare them to each other, because let's say you would want to know performance also against resources. Let's say you have invested in a series of videos that are animated and highly produced, and you spend a lot of money on them, and then you have other content that you know produced yourself, you would want to have them under different labels so you can see actually how is your return on investment. So many of these tools can be used in a variety of ways that even impact your internal processes.

And that is one point I haven't spoken about so far, but that's really important to know is that "no" thing, right? That once you start going on social media, if you're not on social media, your internal, this will have an impact on you, on your organization. It's not just you speaking to somebody, it's communication, and people will also speak to you, right? Then you have to listen, and then when you listen on some of that, if it makes sense to you, you should act. Which means this outside world you will be bringing into your organization so it'll have an impact on you. Now, it's not bad thing, don't be afraid of it. Relax, you'll handle it. But it's important that you are aware of this. It's not a bug, it's a feature, it's a good thing. And just prepare for it so you know that when this happens, it's what was supposed to have happened, and then I'll bring that insight to my team inside, and then we'll see what to do about it.

Elana:

Yes. Okay. Well, I could talk to you for hours and hours and hours. So next time you want to do a coffee chat, I'll pick your brain on all the things. Thank you for taking the time. And just having our audience have the ability to learn from somebody who's done digital strategy on some of the biggest brands is really exciting, but you notice that we weren't generally talking about tools or this or that. It was bringing us back to the fundamentals, and we all can do that, and we can all succeed. And when Haris was talking about it doesn't have to be overly produced, just take that with you. It doesn't have to be perfect. Everything you're doing is just learning and getting better and getting better. And guess what? As you're getting better, it's really resetting you because the algorithm is changing.

Haris:

Exactly.

Elana:

You have to be okay with that and have a smile on your face. Haris, I think I want to close our podcast today with one question we ask all of our guests is during challenging times, during the days where you are just like, "Don't talk to me, I feel very drained, I don't know how to function in this world, frankly." And our educators are always feeling that way. So many people in education right now, they come home, and I do it, too, I just want to stare at a wall. "Don't talk to me, I'm drained." I find ways to replenish myself. But I'm wondering what are ways that you fill your bucket and get that energy back so you can take charge into the new days?

Haris:

I can really sympathize with that feeling, because it happens to all of us. We are human, after all. And for me, well, I'm religious person. So for me, I find solace and recharge my batteries either in prayer or in reading scripture, and obviously talking to my family. I have five kids, myself, and I've been married for almost 22 years now. My wife is my companion, and she provides a lot of emotional support to me, and obviously my family, my children, too. I think that combination that I have with my family and with the faith is what enables me, at least personally, to overcome challenges that can at times feel insurmountable. You can feel either there is a lot, or there is something that you feel is strongly unjust, or whatever that is. It just gives you, we were talking about going back to the fundamentals and looking at the strategy, and then it centers you into, yes, there are challenges in life, there have always been and will be, but it's part of something, and this too shall pass.

Elana:

Yes, yes. Well, thank you so much and thank you for joining us, truly from the bottom of my heart. I really appreciate it. Everyone that is listening going, "Gosh, he said these tools or he mentioned this report," know that we capture all of those resources on our show notes. So this episode's show notes will be@leoniconsultinggroup.com. So that's two G's consulting group.com/35. So this one is episode 35, and so we'll do tools, resources, anything Haris wants to send our way to help you along this audience-driven journey that you are on in social media, and really in all of marketing, trying to figure out what audience makes the most sense, how can I speak to them authentically.

So thank you all for joining us. We will see you next time on All Things Marketing and Education. Take care. Thanks so much for listening to this week's episode. If you liked what you heard and want to dive deeper, you can visit leoniconsulting group.com/podcasts for all show notes, links, and freebies mentioned in each episode. And we always love friends. So please connect with us on Twitter at Leoni Group. If you enjoyed today's show, go ahead and click the subscribe button to be the first one notified when our next episode is released. We'll see you next week on All Things Marketing and Education.