EPISODE 18: The Seb Rusk Show - Facebook Stories Facebook Messenger for Business

What is happening, everybody? Welcome back to the Seb Rush Show on Social Buzz on Air. I'm your host, as always, Sebastian Rusk. Hey. Welcome to the show. Today we're going to dive into Facebook, Facebook, Facebook, and more Facebook. And we're streaming live on Facebook. Speaking of Facebook, while we do this. So in the event you wanted to see what the interaction was like on this, make sure you check out our YouTube channel, YouTube.com forward slash SocialBuzzTV, and look on the playlist for Social Buzz on Air Podcast. You'll be able to see this video replayed if you're listening to this in your car, maybe a week from now, maybe a year from now. Hey, thanks for tuning in. We're broadcasting live here from our beautiful office inside Business Miami. If you're local to Miami, looking for a place to call home and not kick the monitor out of the way, looking for a place to call home for your business. It doesn't matter if you're just getting started, if you're an established business, there is private offices, there is conference space, there are dedicated desks, there are shared cubicles, and just a really all-around cool experience right here in the heart of Coral Gables. More information at BiznestMiami.com. That way, if you hear some background noise or you hear some shuffling around or at uh the water fountain, that is because we are sharing the space here. But because we are in 2017 and because we hyperconnect so instantly, it affords a little bit of off the cuff, not as, you know, so perfect, if you will. I like someone walking in the middle of my shot or, you know, coughing or drinking a glass of water or slamming a door. It kind of adds a little bit of character here. So again, hey, if you're just tuning in, this is a Seb Russ show broadcasting on Social Buzz on Air. Wherever podcasts are heard, if you want to subscribe to what's going on here, just simply go to the iTunes Store, type in Social Buzz On Air, and hit subscribe. You'll get a nifty notification on the show each and every week that we're recorded. The goal here is to record something each and every week as we continue to uh scale the show. This is the third time I've restarted this show, but hey, better late than ever. And third times a charm. Let's dive right into what the topics are today, which are Facebook rolls out their stories in Ireland. That's right. Facebook Messenger, what it means for your business. And then I want to follow things up and close things out by chatting about six social media marketing fads that are taking completely taking over 2017. Uh, first on our agenda is Facebook rolls out stories in Ireland. Now, they do these unique things like uh finding unique test beds to roll these features out. Now, Snapchat's platform is all about a story. You've got 10 seconds to tell a story about your brand, uh, about yourself, about your life, and then it goes into your story for then 24 hours and then poof, it disappears. Now, marketers can then take that content and repurpose it and upload it and create videos, et cetera, and really extend the lifespan of it. But the platform's designed to actually tell a story within a 24-hour period. Well, Instagram quickly caught on and said, hey, listen, we need to do something here. And now Facebook obviously owns Instagram. So Instagram quickly got into the air quotes story game. Now, what does that mean? Well, if you're taking pictures and posting them on Instagram, that's great. That's what Instagram was originally designed to do, to share photos and have quick micro conversations. Now, if you uh realize that if you within your stream on the top left had the ability to click on your story and actually create uh a minute, you have 60 seconds, uh, to create content on Instagram, and that'll compile over a 24-hour period, enabling people to essentially read your story, watch your story, listen to your story. And again, another content creation platform for marketers to leverage and utilize when being able to get create one piece of content and use it in multiple ways. So, for example, creating an Instagram story, creating a Snapchat story, I can then take that content, upload it to YouTube, take the content from YouTube, put it into a blog post, create a blog post on my website, take the video, upload it to Facebook, run some ads on it. Are you picking up what I'm putting down here? One executing one piece of content and being able to use multiple platforms. Uh the Sub Russ show here on Social Buzz On is a great example of that. We record the show uh once a week. Uh, our editing team then makes it sound all pretty and gets it promoted and distributed. And then in the meantime, I'm recording this live while we're doing it. So I've got a piece of content. The show's actually recorded, but a very rough cut, very interactive cut on what we're doing right now. Now, Facebook stories, and I'm getting this piece here from my friends at socialmediaexaminer.com. Big shout out to Mike Stelzer and his team doing an incredible job of not only branding, but really delivering the type of content you need in order to stay with your thumb on the pulse within the social media world, if you will. And if you can't seem to stay with your thumb on the pulse, then well, just continue to tune in to the show. Facebook uh says here on Social Media Examiner, I'm gonna post the link here in the comments after the show so you'll be able to see it. Uh, if you're watching this on at a later date and you're listening to iTunes or maybe SoundCloud, simply go to socialbuzzonair.com and you'll be able to get the link from the post. Facebook releases Facebook Stories in Ireland. Facebook rolled out Facebook Stories in Ireland for the iOS and Android apps with plans to bring it to more countries in coming months. Similar to the stories featured and found on Snapchat and Instagram, Facebook stories will allow users to share photos and videos in a slide share that disappears in 24 hours or later. 24 hours later. There is no or there. It's gone in 24 hours. Stories can be found at the top of the news feed and appear to fear feature stickers, effects, and more. TechCrunch reports that Facebook built a smarter feature to stories called Quick Updates, and it's tested in July, but by August said it wouldn't launch. So these things change. Facebook and just the technology space in general constantly tweaking new technologies, but they as you see, they are all coming together to compete, essentially. Well, Facebook's not going to compete with Instagram because Facebook owns Instagram. But as far as Snapchat is concerned, Facebook could very well, and this is a very bold statement, and I'll go on record by saying it, Facebook could very well take Snapchat out with this technology and the fact that they own Instagram stories. So they've rolled this out in trying to reconnect. Come on, internet. Always internet. Come on. Reconnecting. We're reconnecting. Anyhow, we'll go ahead and cut and edit this part out and pick up exactly where I left off. Because our Facebook live stream cut out, but that usually happens when you're dealing with Wi-Fi, the unpredictable world of Wi-Fi. So moving on. Facebook rolling out stories in Ireland as a test bed. They'll continue to roll out to other countries in months to come. For more information on that and anything pertaining to social media news and updates, socialmediaexaminer.com, a phenomenal source to be able to stay in the mix and keep your thumb on the pulse. Moving right down our agenda here today, and we're back in. There we go. All right, excellent. Facebook Live is back on. Goodness, the wonderful world of Wi-Fi. Okay, continuing to move down our list here of our agenda here at the Seb Russ show on Social Buzz on Air. Facebook Messenger, what does this mean for your business? Facebook Messenger is not just the ability for you to communicate with your peers. Facebook Messenger is an absolutely vital component to your brand, especially if you have a local business, especially if you're in the B2C space because you're dealing with customers having an additional alternative to be able to contact you. They don't have to pick up the phone anymore and wait on hold and press one, press two, et cetera. They have the ability to actually just message you direct on Facebook as you would message a friend. Now, if you're a brand that's on it and your social media team is all hands on deck, then your team should be responding accordingly. Now, Facebook has set up several different features to be able to help you automate the process of being able to respond to people. So if you haven't yet gone in to set up the logistics for your Facebook Messenger for your brand, make sure you go and do that. You can set up a quick autoresponder so that when someone sends you a message, you have the ability to respond with something personable. It is a canned response and it is automated, but if you can't get to that actual response, maybe you're a solopreneur running a local business, you want to be able to have the ability to actually uh respond to these people in a timely fashion. Now, of course, an automated message doesn't resolve exactly what you're doing. A lot of the times people are hitting you up on Facebook Messenger through your brand page because they want to do business with you. So it's very important that you reach out to them. There's also automated responses, like I said, to be able to help ease the process of making sure you're actually getting back to somebody. Um you can utilize it for customer service, customer support, problem solving. Again, for local businesses, for small businesses, this is absolutely vital to be able to utilize. Why? Because it is the opportunity to reach an audience where they're at, right? So sometimes they don't want to pick up the phone. People are lazy, they don't want to call, they don't want to even want to send an email these days. It's way too much work. So technology affords us the opportunity to make sure that you've got these awesome tools. So if you go to your brand page and you go to your options, you make sure that you edit the messenger options and you're responding accordingly, instant replies, because what happens is Facebook tells the customer how many, how quick it how long it takes you to actually respond to a message. So it's very important that you stay on top of the messages there because they don't penalize you, but they say, hey, this person typically responds in two days. Now, as a consumer, do you want to deal with a brand that responds in two days, or do you want to deal with a brand that responds um almost instantly, as Facebook would actually describe it? Now, in addition to customer service, which is the lifeblood of your business and making sure that you're on all fronts Instagram, Twitter, Facebook Messenger, email, inquiries from your website. You want all hands on deck to be able to respond back to people when they're reaching out to you. Don't make it difficult for people to do business with you. Way too many brands do this. It blows my mind on a daily basis. All I want to do is buy or consume your product, and I can't get a hold of you. That's a challenge, my friend. So, lesson here: take your brand page, make sure you're responding back to messages. If you haven't tested this out, have some friends send a message to your business page and respond back to them. Set up some features, some auto-responding features, and let them know so that you at least reach out and touch them virtually in some form or fashion. And most important on this list on why Facebook Messenger can really help expand your business and the way you communicate with your customers is sales. If someone reaches out to you on Facebook and they say, Hey, I saw your page, I saw your product, I saw your service, and I want to do business with you, for you not to respond back to them in a timely fashion. You're being grossly negligent and you're costing yourself a significant amount of money and of course taking away from your bottom line. So my quick advice on that is make sure that your Facebook Messenger strategy for your brand is in place. Yes, they call them bots of sort because they respond on your behalf, but it's about 80-20, 20% automation and about 80% uh human touch. So if you're not responding back to people, stop doing that and make sure you get on your Facebook Messenger for your brand page and you're responding back to people. Automation's not bad as long as it's in the mix with uh a human touch. Again, 80-20, 20% automation, 80% human touch. People want to reach out, touch you, talk to you, communicate to you, um, give you tips, tricks, uh uh ideas, concerns. They want to complain, you want to hear their complaints so you can make it right. Because people talk these days, and people do business with who they know, like, and trust. I wrote an entire chapter in my book about that. Yes, my book's about social media and why it sucks if you don't know what you're doing, but social media has always been around. These tools are about 12 years old. That's what's new to all of us. Social media and the way we communicate has always been around. They're doing business with people they know, like, and trust. People are more inclined to know, like, and trust you if you're responding back to them, if you're meeting their needs, if you're answering their questions, if you're giving them exactly what they need to be able to interact with your brand. Any questions about that pertaining to Facebook Messenger and your brand, hit me up, send me a tweet, hit me on Instagram, Facebook, wherever you can find me online. It's not too hard to do. Moving to our third and final item here on this episode of the Seb Rush show on Social Buzz On Air. If you're just joining us, hey, thanks for tuning in. My name is Sebastian Rusk. I'm your host. As always, welcome to the show. Last and final, six social media marketing fads that are completely taking over 2017. These are fads, these are things that took place last year that are now really effective with this year and what they're doing for brands. Found this information of our friends over at socialmediaexplorer.com. All kinds of great up-to-date content about social media and what you need to know about your brand. Take a glance, subscribe to their newsletter. It's gonna give you some daily information of some stuff that you didn't know that you didn't know. I'm gonna run down this list pretty quick. Again, I'm gonna post the uh the link in the blog post on socialbuzzonair.com and also in the comments on Facebook Live on my page. If we haven't yet connected on Facebook, find me at facebook.com forward slash s rusk. That's s-r-us-k. All right, six social media trends that will take over 2017 if they haven't already. Number one, uh, owl lenses for Facebook and Instagram. The growth of Instagram stories means major social media trends could be a lens across all networks. Here are some reasons to believe Instagram will increase the competition even further in 2017. First, Snapchat is possibly going public uh in March of 2017. That's of this year. There are more than 150 million daily Snapchat users in 2016. Friends, 150 million users is a boatload of people. If your brand isn't currently utilizing Snapchat as part of your strategy, you are missing out. It's not just teenagers anymore. The demographics have widely grown because of the microability to share content and tell the story of your life, of your brand, etc. 41% of US adults, 18 to 34, use Snapchat daily. About a year ago, those stats were 14 to 17, 13 to 17. My teenage daughter was all about, still is all about Snapchat, could care less about Facebook. $750,000 is the approximate cost for a custom Snapchat filter for a peak 24-hour period. That's what brands are forking over to be able to have a custom Snapchat filter to be able to interact and be able to brand specific things like their brand. There's a hundred million active users on Instagram stories two months after the release. So you've had two months from the release and a hundred million active users two months after the release of Instagram stories. That is a boatload of people. Between that and Snapchat, we're talking about 250 million people. That's 500 million eyeballs. Everyone has two eyeballs. Instagram stories are watched by 18% of users daily. There's been a learning curve a little bit because people have what's this whole story thing? I just got the whole Instagram hashtag thing down. What's this story part all about? And they quickly realize they can record tidbits and clips and micro content in 60 second uh variations, and it compiles all together for 24 hours, and their followers can then go and see their story and see what they're up to and etc. etc. As a brand, you can give a peek behind the curtain. You can say, here's what goes on at Social Buzz TV, here's a minute with our CEO, here's a marketing question, here's a whatever it means, whatever it means to be able to give your customer an experience they're not currently having by just being able to follow you online and engage with you. That's really what the peak behind the curtain, the stories does, but it allows you to do it in 60 second clips, and those 60 second clips compile for 24 hours and they actually become your Instagram story. If it's Snapchat, then they're 10 second clips, and those all uh come together uh for 24 hours too to create your Snapchat story. Facebook is already testing uh lenses for its mobile interface. Number two, more customers, more customer service chat bots are on the rise. We just got done talking about uh Facebook Messenger and their chat bots and how they can help uh increase communication and customer service and sales for your brand and your business on Facebook. The rise of social customer service means more businesses will look to automate simple requests from customers. Automate simple request. How do I get a refund? Where do I buy your product? Who can I talk to about billing? In 2016, Slack Daily active users grew to 4 million. Slack owns roughly 1.25 million paid accounts. Uh Facebook, uh and and by the way, Slack Daily is a uh bot company that creates bots. 11,000 for Facebook, uh Messenger, and bots, 440, 484 Slapbots currently available according to bot list, 300 million people actively using voice and audio calling features on Facebook Messenger. That is absolutely huge. The ability that I can pick up the phone and call anybody, it's a little scary too. But the be able the ability to be able to pick up the phone and call a brand through Facebook Messenger, or call it a prospect through Facebook Messenger, or be able to reach out. I can basically do anything I need to to be able to communicate, connect, etc., through the means of um Facebook Messenger. So it's only going to continue to become more and more robust. Paid content continues to rain. What's paid content? That's a blog post that relates to your product, service, or brand that's branded with a call to action that's very non-abrasive, if you will, um, of with a call to action of someone to buy your product, consume your services, etc. Paid content continues to rain. Social media algorithms make it harder for brands to get ads in front of users, focusing on high quality and engaging content still holds merit, but paid continues to flourish. Gotta pay to play in this game of social media and being able to uh to connect with uh customers and stay in the mix. A projected 41 billion dollars will be spent on social media advertising in 2017. Did we get those numbers correct? 41 billion dollars will be spent in social media advertising in 2017. If you're not currently advertising your brand, even if it's posting a video or a blog post on a weekly basis that you boost for 10 or 20 bucks, you need to get in the game. It's gonna allow you to expand your community, it's gonna get your content in front of the people you want it in front of because you can target, and you're also going to find new people that you aren't currently connected to, right? That's what we all want to do, anyhow. We want to talk and connect with our existing digital ecosystem on Facebook, and we want to connect with new people to continue to expand our ecosystem online by sharing content, providing value, engaging with our community, loving our community, and making sure that uh that we remain the go-to source for what we do when our community thinks of what's happening. Thanks so much to all of you guys that are joining on Facebook Live here. Uh we're recording our uh this week's episode of the Seb Rush Show on Social Buzz on Air. It's so great to be able to interact on Facebook Live and also get the episode recorded here. If you're just joining us, this is the Seb Rush Show on Social Buzz On Air. My name is Sebastian Rusk. I'm your host as always. Welcome to the show. We ran through uh Facebook rolls out stories in Ireland, what that looks like, Facebook Messenger, what it means for your business. And we're running through six social media marketing fads that will be taking over 2017, of which we are on the fourth one right now. Uh Twitter, uh Q3 advertising revenue grew from $513 million in 2015 to $545 million in 2016. Instagram mobile ad revenue drew $1.53 billion across the globe. With a B. $1.53 billion in Instagram mobile ad revenue. And that's only going to continue to increase significantly, in my opinion, as brands continue to embrace the ability to be able to create micro content, target that content, and be able to get it in front of the eyeballs that they want it in front of. Number four says priority on business, prior on business features and analytics with networks prioritizing business needs. Most brands are beginning to understand the value of social media analytics. Expect even more focus on native platform business tools of sort. So the more analytics become available, the more data is available, the more we better understand who our customer is. And you as a consumer, if you're just thinking as a consumer and you don't own a business, you want your data and information customized as much as possible so that brands and content is being delivered to you that you're interested in. If you don't like football, you probably don't want to be uh subscribed to ESPN or NFL or sports or things of that nature. You want to be to cater to your content. That's what brands are able to do with our data. So whether you like it or not, Facebook and all of the platforms have more information on us than we care to even believe. And number one, and number two, we will always trade convenience for privacy. And if you don't believe me, just remember just remember the last time you actually read through the terms and conditions as you click the box to sign up for something, connect something, etc. Remember, we will always trade convenience. Privacy for convenience. It's just easier. 92% of C level executives already use data and analytics for marketing insights. Thirty-six percent of businesses use social media analytics for more than uh just a competitor analysis. In 2016, Instagram launched its Instagram partner program. Only thirty four percent of small businesses use social media to engage and converse with. With their customers. Number five, move away from automation. We talked a little bit about this. I believe automation should be 80-20, 80% human touch, 20% automation. Social media automation is more likely than ever to simply turn social media management into something that is more of a streamlined process. Automation really feels robotic while consumers want real humanistic interactions instead of these tactics. So you can try things like social media campaigns that interact with consumers. If you want to be more human with your brand, these are some things you can do. Listen to your customers, don't just promote to them. Very, very important. Jab, jab, jab, right hook. If you haven't read that book from my good friend Gary Vaynerchuk, pick it up wherever books are sold. It talks about a boxing analogy of jab, jab, jab being providing value, providing value, providing value. And then the right hook is coming in and asking for the sale, asking for the money every now and then, once you've delivered the value and actually been able to provide something to your client, whether or not they're going to do business with you or not. Avoid untimely messages around current events. Don't leverage the election. Don't leverage tragedy to be able to make sure your brand stands out just because it's a trending topic. Don't do that. Remember, as quick as people tune you in, they can tune you out. So don't do that. Build an organic following with better relationships. Build that organic following that loves you, cares about you, likes you, listens to you, follows you, endorses you, tells people about you. Those are the people that you want to be able to engage with and talk to, even if they don't buy your product, consume your service, et cetera, et cetera. Be personal and give humanistic responses. And I want to be very careful when I say go to your Facebook uh business page, set up your Facebook Messenger uh settings for your bots, but make sure those automated responses are not just thanks, we'll get back to you. It's a very warming uh way of being able to reply to them automatically so they at least get a good idea of what you're all about as a brand and they feel warm and fuzzy. Maybe say something funny. Um I saw an email one time that you know I sent a customer service email into my domain provider and they responded back with an answer, and then it said, P.S. We love cupcakes. This that has nothing to do with this email, but we thought we'd share anyway. It gives that human touch to what is taking place. Well, that's it in this week's news of social media here on the Seb Rush show. The goal is to have a short, very uh micro content show, less than 20 minutes. I don't know how long we've been rolling today, but it feels like I've been talking for a long time. So it's a good thing that we've ran through all of our topics here. If you're just listening to the show later on, maybe on iTunes, thanks so much for tuning in. We do this each and every week, broadcasting live from our studio here in Biz Nest, Miami. My name's Sebastian Rusk. I'm the host here on the Seb Rusk show on Social Buzz On Air. We're chatting about tips, tricks, tools, ideas, thoughts, my point of view, and just basically providing you as much value as we possibly can. You want to join us live next time on Facebook as we as we record the show, make sure we connect on Facebook at facebook.com forward slash srusk or follow me online at Seb Rusk on Instagram, Twitter, etc., etc. My goodness. Ten years ago, if you said you were following me, I would call the police. Well, I know what that sound means. That sound means that this episode is a wrap. I appreciate each and every one of you tuning in. Without you guys, the show does not happen. Without you guys, I'm not really motivated to get on here and deliver content and get all mic'd up and just get all crazy. So thank you for tuning in. The very fact that you listened and have taken 20 minutes or so uh today to listen to this episode, it really shows where your priorities are about. And clearly, if you continue to tune in, I firmly believe that your social media will not suck. Hey, I'm Sebastian Rusk signing off from our studio here in Business Miami. I'll talk to you guys next time.