Are You Talking to Customers on Social Media, or Just at Them?

McCain: A lot of companies these days, social media is just treated like a billboard. They’re going to post something out there. They’re going to put it for people to see, look at. At Set Fire Creative, we have a saying that with social media, we want it to be a walkie-talkie, not a megaphone. Rather than just broadcasting constantly and trying to get your message out there. Exactly to your point. Like you should use social media to create a channel where people not only will see what you’re posting, but they also have an opportunity to engage with what you’re posting.

Coby: Hey McCain, you want to go get a drink? Yeah. Let’s go. All right, let’s do it.

Nicole: Hi, it’s producer Nicole Denson. Today we’re talking with McCain Kennedy, founder and president of Set Fire Creative, a digital marketing agency that helps businesses grow through social media, online ads, and SEO. McCain was named Sales and Marketer of the Year by Utah Business Magazine in 2023. What started as a side hustle in 2016 became his full-time focus in 2019, and he’s since worked with hundreds of companies. Before that, he helped brands like Avis Budget, Domo and Nomatic. When he’s not working, you’ll find him reading Stephen King or playing with his three kids. Back to the show.

Coby: You know, it’s not hoodie weather.

McCain: It’s not, man. But you’ve been rocking that hoodie.

Coby: It’s my favorite hoodie right now. It just reminds me of home, you know?

McCain: Yeah, I get it.

Coby: So outside of the, you know, infrequent California vacations, what’s new?

McCain: Good question. We just had our third baby. I mean, I say we just had, but it’s been six months now.

Coby: Okay.

McCain: But she just turned six months a couple days ago. And then our five-year-old, who’s our oldest, just started kindergarten this week. Yeah, that’s probably the newest thing in our household dealing with that. He’s already sick two days into kindergarten. He’s staying home from school today. So, yeah, off to a great start. You know?

Coby: Yeah. When they start recognizing—I mean, he’s not old enough to recognize that he can fake being sick to stay home, right?

McCain: I don’t think so. And the way that we’re working it today is he is in his room, in his bed, reading books or just listening to music. There’s no TV, there’s no play, there’s nothing. So I hope he knows, like, it’s a rest day. It’s not going to be fun. So don’t use this as an excuse in the future.

Coby: Yeah, I tried that for five minutes once and it was terrible. So during our meeting, Alfie, my youngest, I have eight missed calls from his school.

McCain: Wow.

Coby: And then a text from my ex that says Alfie didn’t even want lunch today. Because he told me that if he tells you he’s feeling sick, you’re going to let him stay.

McCain: Oh my gosh.

Coby: And so he’s tried to. And then finally she’s like, do you want me to take him? Like, yeah, I can’t come get him. And he’s going to have to learn. So he’s going to be a little upset with me.

McCain: Oh I bet, I bet.

Coby: So, what’s new at work?

McCain: You got a lot going on right now. Yeah, yeah, we’ve got a lot going on. We’re working on some new things. We’re updating some current things. Yeah. You know this, but we’ve been a part of the Agency Brands team over the last ten months, and we’ve seen a lot of growth, which has been awesome. We had a new hire start this week, which is exciting. Yeah.

Coby: I’m excited for that.

McCain: We’ve got another one coming pretty soon. Oh, really? Yeah.

Coby: I’m curious to know in the last ten months, like, have you seen any hit? I mean, you got your ears to the ground. Like hardcore. Right? Have you seen a shift in what, you know, founders and recently start-up organizations and companies are looking for in their marketing spend.

McCain: Yeah. From what we’ve seen on our side of things, it feels like people are a little more cautious nowadays. They’re being very strategic, which is good, but it’s not so much, hey, let’s try five different strategies and see what works. It’s like they want a proven process that they can really execute on where it doesn’t feel as much of a gamble. Right? Like we’ve always said, marketing is an investment. Like any good investment, you might put the time, effort and money into it, and you are not always going to be able to tell what kind of results you’re going to see. A lot of the founders and startups, they want the proof, like they want to know beforehand. They want to see the case studies, like how is this actually going to benefit my company? What kind of results are we going to see? And so people are just being a lot more cautious, but also a lot more strategic, which I don’t think is a bad thing. And more particular on where they’re putting their marketing dollars these days.

Coby: Where are they deciding to put it?

McCain: Still a lot on Meta, still a lot on Google Ads. Still a lot on, like, organic social media. Building a brand presence there, which…

Coby: Are two totally different things. Yeah.

McCain: Oh. Very different.

Coby: Absolutely.

McCain: But they work really well together. Hand in hand. Right? Yeah. Like I always say, organic, social and paid. It’s like a one-two punch. You know, if someone is scrolling through social media and they see one of your ads and they’ve never heard of you before, the ad catches their attention. But from there they are either going to click on your ad and get led back to your website to learn more about the business, or check out the product that you’re advertising. But they also very well can click on your business name, which is going to take them back to your Facebook page or your Instagram page. And if your Facebook or your Instagram or whatever social channel it is, it could be TikTok. If they go on there and you have no posts or you haven’t posted in months, and there’s zero engagement and it just doesn’t look like there’s much upkeep, that just misses out on a huge trust factor. And so a lot of people will turn away. I’ve seen it as a consumer. I’ll get ads for something I think is awesome. I click on it to go check out their Instagram page or their Facebook page, and they’ve never posted. Or they post once or twice, and it just makes me lose a lot of trust in the business where I back out and I go, okay, well, I’m not going to go buy a product from a company I’ve never heard of before. This is my first time seeing them and they have nothing to back up this ad. So yeah, paid social and organic social. Very different. But, both work together really, really well.

Coby: I’ve noticed that when I, to that point, I look at interaction, social interaction or interaction and responsiveness on social channels.

McCain: Yeah.

Coby: As proof. Not that I have a problem with offshore-sourced goods, but as proof that they’re nearshore or, you know, that they’re domestic. And again, I have no problem one way or the other other than if I order a product and the fit’s wrong or something like that, and it’s coming from China, I’m not getting a refund. Right. I’m not going to get a refund. There’s no—it’s almost kind of what you see is what you get or buyer beware. Yeah. Right. And so that becomes whether or not there’s ongoing dialog with folks and there’s kind of commentary on what’s going on and anything, any kind of commentary at all. As long as I’m feeling, oh, this is they’re going to be engaged with me enough. If there’s a problem with the product or service, that I’m going to have some sort of resolution channel. Yeah. And that is that trust factor. Like, I don’t need a thousand reviews. I just need to know that there’s somebody on the other side of that email address.

McCain: Yeah.

Coby: And nowadays more often than not there’s not anybody on the side of an email address with all the different folks that are trying to get my attention on the social channels. Right.

McCain: For a lot of companies these days, social media is just treated like a billboard. It’s just they’re going to post something out there, or they’re going to put it for people to see. At Set Fire Creative, we have a saying that with social media, we want it to be a walkie-talkie, not a megaphone. And so that means rather than just broadcasting constantly and trying to get your message out there exactly to your point, like you should use social media to create a channel where people not only will see what you’re posting, but they also have an opportunity to engage with what you’re posting. They can shoot you a message, they can comment on your post and feel confident that you’re going to respond to it.

Coby: It’s really client success.

McCain: Yeah.

Coby: It’s really customer success. Do you see a time when social totally replaces? I mean, I remember having this conversation when social media first hit the scene as a real business asset. It was going to replace all client success. It’s going to be like that’s all customer service is through social. I think people quickly realized that, no, there’s some privacy, not just for the business but also for the individual. Right. But, that was my generation. I’m 50. That’s my generation trying to find a new packaging for a customer success motion that is a very specific feeling. And it has to look a certain way to people my age. Yeah, but to younger folks, I think the question is brought up again. And maybe the answer is different this time. That social can be your primary client success channel. Yeah. But in order to do that, like how—if a company wants to do that, how would they do that? Right. Because I would imagine it’s more cost-effective to do it that way. What does doing it right over social for customer success look like?

McCain: Oh, that’s such a good question because part of it is you have to have the bandwidth on your team. You have to have someone dedicated to that. You know, I worked in-house at an e-commerce brand, and they had a customer service team, and it was two individuals, and they were on the phone and answering emails. It felt like all day long, that’s all they did. They were answering people’s questions about products, giving refunds. But at the same time, I was working on the marketing team and I oversaw the social, and the first couple hours of the day, we had one team member who was purely dedicated to just responding to all of the comments on posts from…

Coby: The previous night and…

McCain: Yeah, yeah, responding to comments on posts, responding to DMs. And they would have to work hand in hand with the customer service team a lot. They would just walk over to their office and be like, hey, this person sent me their order number, they have a question about this or they need a refund. And it was interesting because that person could have spent all day just responding to messages and responding to comments. And so you have to have someone who’s able to. So that’s where it gets really tricky because then you’re a marketer and you’re a customer success or a customer service representative at the same time.

Coby: It’s interesting that those two things could be considered so different when to me, like it’s kind of the same.

McCain: Stuff in the same.

Coby: Marketing gets you to buy, but like, that’s not the end of the customer journey. No. So client success is still just marketing.

McCain: Yeah. I tested it out one time where I had an issue with a product. I went on the website. The website said I could contact them via email or I could start a chat online. I ended up going over to their Twitter and I sent a message over Twitter. And then I went back to the website, sent an email. Then I also did their virtual chat right there on the website just to see where I would get a response first. And they got back to me first on Twitter. Like a minute. Yeah, it was crazy.

Coby: On Twitter.

McCain: On Twitter of all.

Coby: Places. All my friends, everybody.

McCain: Oh, it was a message. Okay. It was a message. But yeah. Reached out to them and still it just blew my mind that I was like, oh, that’s funny that whether this is their social team or their customer service team working together, they were more responsive than the virtual chat or the email, but yeah, that’s always stuck with me because you hit it right on the head. Like the way that we view social media, like I mentioned before, it’s got to be a walkie-talkie, not a megaphone. Yeah. The key to that is responsiveness. If people can see a brand engaging and interacting and communicating with people, with users, with followers, it builds just so much trust. And to your exact point, I’m going to feel way more comfortable buying a product from a company that I know if I ever have an issue, I can just jump over to their Instagram and shoot them a message, and these guys are responding right away, right?

Coby: There’s a level of accountability that’s demonstrated that way that’s really nowhere else because it’s kind of in front of an audience.

McCain: Yeah, it really is.

Coby: So, what do you think is the biggest, you know, in your experience? What is the biggest barrier to effective use of social media for a small organization, let’s say under 2 million in gross revenue and under five employees?

McCain: So a lot of it comes down to just understanding and education. And really knowing the power of social media and what you can do with it, it’s really interesting because, for instance, at Set Fire Creative, we have four different services that we help companies with: organic social media, paid social ads, Google ads and SEO. Out of those four services, organic social media is the only service that people just generally when they’re starting a business, they’re like, that’s the marketing that I’m the most comfortable with. And it always comes back to, well, I have my own Instagram, so surely I can run my business’s Instagram. Yeah. And they’re very different though. And so for…

Coby: Us.

McCain: It’s like when someone comes to us and they’re saying like, yeah, I’m running my own socials and things are going really well, like, look at what I’m doing. Nine times out of ten, they’re posting a lot of content, just, you know, back and forth, back and forth. Like they’re really good at the posting part and staying consistent. They don’t even think about the like, do I need to respond to this stuff?

Coby: Like a billboard? They’re using it like a billboard. So yeah. What I’m hearing is—and that was to me, my follow-up question is—if you could give one piece of advice for how to approach social, it’s to approach it like a dialog.

McCain: And I’m like, yes, exactly. Yeah. And that’s something that a lot of people miss with social media. And that’s where a lot of the power comes from. It’s all about community building.

Coby: It’s just another level of commitment. Discipline though.

McCain: Yeah.

Coby: It really is because you can talk about what you’re doing or you can do what you’re doing. And the more you talk about it, the less you’re doing it. Right. Like it’s an inverse proportionality. So like, you know, I’ve done this, my clients have done this. Internal stakeholders at every company I’ve ever worked with or run have done this. And it’s always when you bring up social media, the response is…

McCain: Yeah.

Coby: Why is that? Because you think that we would love to talk about the things that we spend 8 to 10 hours every day doing, like, why is it so difficult for us to find that spark and to follow the spark?

McCain: Yeah. So I think a lot of people just don’t. They get that eyeroll that comes up when you bring up organic social media. And I think that comes from there’s not always an obvious ROI. So Google ads you can track really easily. Here’s the ROI, you can…

Coby: Track it, but the ROI is falling precipitously.

McCain: True.

Coby: Across the board.

McCain: Yeah, with organic social, most of the times people have no tracking set up. So when I worked in-house at an e-commerce brand, like I mentioned before, one of the first things I noticed when I got in there is I said, hey, let me see the Google Analytics. I want to see how many sales you guys are getting from organic social. And I dived into the back of their Google Analytics. This is a company that was spending $10,000 a day on Meta ads. On Meta ads alone. They were making a lot of money, and they did not have a hundred…

Coby: Grand a month.

McCain: Yes.

Coby: On Meta ads. Yeah, okay. It’s a big spend.

McCain: And they were making about 30 okay.

Coby: Yeah. Okay.

McCain: But when it came to organic social for them, they’re just like oh, it’s just an aesthetic thing. We just want people to follow us. We don’t really focus too much on it. So one of the first things I did is I set up the tracking for them so that we could see over the next couple months. We said, hey, you’re selling about $500 a month in product. And they’re like, yeah, that’s nothing compared to what we’re doing on the ads. Within six months, we got up to the point where they were doing 10,000 a month in sales from organic social alone.

Coby: Okay.

McCain: And it was just a matter of putting a different spin on how they did organic, because before it was like, yeah, we’re just going to post a few times a week. It’s not a big deal. Then when I got in there, what we did is we just restrategized and said like, no, let’s actually have a strategy behind this and let’s also use this as a customer service platform. Let’s be more responsive, let’s be more engaging. Let’s also pull in influencers and content creators, and let’s send out product to different people. And it was just a game changer. So that is such a great case where the founders very much were like, just organic social, like, who cares? There’s nothing to track there. No one’s going to buy from it. But once you can actually set up the tracking, you can actually show people like, no, this is how it’s affecting your bottom line. But the other thing that a lot of people don’t consider is that it’s kind of so top of funnel as well, where there are a lot of people who are going to follow our brand on social and not make a purchase right away. I’ve been in that position myself, where I’ll follow a brand for…

Coby: 6 months to two years. Yeah.

McCain: Yeah, sure. I follow the gym that’s here locally. And I just always…

Coby: The name of the…

McCain: The name of the gym was Dash Combat Sports. Okay, so for almost a year, I think I followed them and I would see their content all the time. And I was just like, okay, I’m kind of building up the courage to try this out. Finally, they had one post that really stuck with me where I went, okay, I’m signing up. Let’s go do this. And then I was at that gym for about three years. You know, that’s the type of ROI that business owners and founders don’t always look at is, oh, I’m filling my funnel. And these people are going to be really prepped when we have some sort of sale, when they see an ad, that’s the key.

Coby: So, and this is such a fundamental difference in mindset that I bump up against and have been for a number of years, as I personally in my career have gone from advertising to marketing and what those imply. Right. And I frame it this way, and these are actually Google statistics, that 95% of all of your buyers are not in market yet. So out of all of your addressable market, 95% of that addressable market is not yet ready to buy, only 5% are in a buying situation. And marketing is often considered like this: it’s the discipline of finding those who are ready to buy and getting in front of them and making it happen, you know, as profitably, as cost-effectively, as quickly as possible. Right. But the reality is that what moves somebody from 95% to 5% being in market, ready to buy, sometimes there’s a buying need. But in the gym example, what’s the buying driver there? Somebody says, you know, hey, move over fatty or something like that. I know, right. Like there’s some sort of experience that pushes them over the edge. No, I mean that’s what the dialog that organic social is, it’s an ongoing conversation and it’s a slow convincing. Sometimes, all the time, if we were able to truly just open up our brains and the black box that is our brains—and you kind of do this now, but it’s extremely expensive and there’s a lot of research that goes behind it—but the point is that the decision making process is not just that. Yeah, sometimes it’s very long drawn out and there’s incremental shifts to get from point A to point B, and there is no other medium that is equipped to be responsive to and track and map along with those incremental shifts, structurally. Yeah, like organic social. And that’s what I think. It’s the most powerful marketing tool there is, when done correctly. Yeah. Right. But it’s generally because of that, if you approach marketing from a ‘my job is to find people ready to buy’ versus ‘my job is to cultivate buyers.’ Yeah. It’s totally different. Now your discussion around your ROI and your KPI and your timeline and your spend and your tactics and the substance of your tactics, all those things have fundamentally shifted.

McCain: Yeah. I mean, we work with a lot of small businesses. And I have spent most of my career working with small businesses. And if there’s one common thread, it’s there’s a lot of small business owners who are very passionate about what they do and what they sell, and they’ve done a great job creating the product or service, putting together a nice website, and then when they’re finally ready to turn on the advertising, to them it’s the ‘well, hey, if I turn on Facebook ads today, I should start getting sales tomorrow’ mentality.

Coby: Because this is what all the metrics say because it’s performance and this is what the metrics say. And so this is what I can depend on.

McCain: Right. And so for us it’s like our job is to educate people and set proper expectations and show them how a funnel works. And hey, no one knows who you are right now. We need to fill the funnel. We need to get people interested. We need to get people aware of the product and get aware of your brand. We need to build that trust with them. So it’s to your point. It’s like I always put myself in the shoes of the consumer. And I know that personally, I am the farthest thing from an impulse buyer. Like you can just ask my wife, to make the smallest purchase, I will do so much research that it is crazy. Whereas I have a lot of friends and family that are impulse buyers and that’s totally fine as well. And it just feels almost like when companies start marketing, the hope is that everyone who sees their ad is an impulse buyer, and they’re just going to buy right away.

Coby: You have the need. You have the solution. Yes, this is perfect because it’s just the perfect timing. Yeah.

McCain: Hey, where are we going? We’re going to go to FiiZ.

Coby: No, wife is.

McCain: It’s my wife’s and my go-to spot.

Coby: Oh, really? Yeah. The first time you went.

McCain: Oh, it’s been like a couple of years now.

Coby: Okay, tell me about the first time.

McCain: Oh, that’s a great question. I believe it was a day after the pool. Just during the summer. Yeah, we went through the drive-through after it had opened up.

Coby: And what did you get?

McCain: Okay, so I like getting one called King of the Jungle.

Coby: What’s that?

McCain: At this point, I don’t even remember everything that’s in it. It’s just my go-to every time.

Coby: What’s it taste like?

McCain: It’s got a lot of caffeine. It tastes…

Coby: Good. Sounds good.

McCain: Tastes tropical and fruity. Yeah, that’s the best part of it.

Coby: What does your wife get?

McCain: She always gets some sort of soda. And then for our kids, she’ll get, I think it’s called a Shark Attack. It’s like a little Sprite soda for them, a little Sprite drink, and it comes with these gummy sharks in them, and it’s blue, so they love it.

Coby: That sounds fun. Yeah. I might get a Shark Attack.

McCain: You should get a Shark Attack.

Coby: Okay, so first time you went, and, but there’s a difference between going one time and then deciding that it just kind of becomes your place. So why did it become your place? And specifically you and your wife’s place.

McCain: Yeah. Yeah. Well, there’s so many of these dirty soda places out here, and we’ve tried every single one, I swear. And for us, it’s just been our favorite. Like, we like the flavors, we like the options. We like the variety. My wife always gets pretzel bites. Also, she’s a huge pretzel person.

Coby: I think the food accessories is what really makes a difference with the dirty soda places. Yeah, totally.

McCain: Because they do the cookies too. They do all that. But yeah, you can get the pretzels with it.

Coby: And so you’ll get pretzels today.

McCain: Oh we’re going to totally get some, we have to.

Coby: All right. So we’re going to go to FiiZ. What are you going to get again? It’s called the King of the Jungle. The King of the Jungle. I’m going to see if there’s like a coconut Diet Coke thing because it’s got to be Diet Coke and coconut. I just love it. Yeah. And then we have a lot of stuff to talk about on the way, don’t we? Yeah, we do, it’s gonna be fun. Yeah.

McCain: I’m looking forward to it.

Coby: I want to know. Yeah. What are the different channels for? You know, you got these social media platforms for our work.

McCain: Yeah.

Coby: I like to segment subject matter. So I delineate which kind of content goes on which channel by subject matter and by the purpose for engaging on that channel. Yeah. I would love to know if you have kind of a broad strokes strategy that is kind of a baseline that you start from. Facebook is good for this. Instagram is good for this. Right. It’s good for this kind of thing. I mean, I’d love to know how that works.

McCain: LinkedIn generally is great for B2B.

Coby: Sure. I’m seeing that Insta is good for B2B too as well.

McCain: Yeah, and that’s the funny thing. Everything has crossover. We’ve worked with e-commerce companies that are B2C and they’ve sold organically off of LinkedIn, so you just never really know.

Coby: What do they sell on LinkedIn?

McCain: Well, this was specifically a travel bag company. Okay. But for instance, like I use all of their bags for my work stuff.

Coby: Makes sense. So they run ads on LinkedIn?

McCain: No, this was organic. They would run ads on Facebook and Instagram, but organic. We would post on Pinterest, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter.

Coby: Okay, so when I say run ads, that’s a misnomer. I’m sorry. On LinkedIn would the posts look like ads kind of? So they were just text.

McCain: Oh wait, there would be like an image. Okay. Yeah, but it wouldn’t look like an ad. It would definitely look more native. Okay. With organic. But yeah, because generally LinkedIn is great for B2B businesses. Facebook, what we always say is it’s kind of the older demographic these days. Instagram, younger demographic, TikTok, young demographic. Even though now there’s a lot more adults like when TikTok was first a thing, it was very much just teenagers. Now it’s gotten bigger.

Coby: Did you know that… So I did a lot of demographics across platforms by demographic and socioeconomic status. And it was interesting. LinkedIn almost drops off seriously over 55.

McCain: Well, okay.

Coby: You’re getting close to retirement. You don’t care. You’re not looking for a job, that kind of thing. You’re not looking at work. So it’s done. You would think that those with huge networks professionally would be on. No. Unless they’ve established their network on them, they don’t usually port those things over. Another one: TikTok, under 25, TikTok search gets higher usage than Google search.

McCain: Okay. I believe it.

Coby: It’s crazy that people are looking up facts on TikTok, of all places. I just, I love it, but it’s just like, wow.

McCain: Which is really a scary thought because there have been things in the news lately about people getting their information from TikTok. And it’s like these AI videos that are educating them. It’s an interesting time.

Coby: Yeah. It is. TikTok as a commerce platform is taking off, like the TikTok shop is super. I mean, I’m not telling you anything you don’t know, but it was really interesting to me to see how this usage by age group is. Right. Yeah. So, well, it was another one. Yeah. Facebook I remember thinking, Facebook has its highest usage cohort over 55. Yeah.

McCain: That makes sense. It’s so interesting too, because for instance, we’ll work with a brand that says, hey, my product, I know it’s going to be based on TikTok and Instagram because this is geared towards a younger generation. So I want to run Instagram ads, and I want to run TikTok ads. Since Meta owns Instagram and Facebook and it’s all under the same ad account, we always tell them like, just run Facebook and Instagram together, just run them on Facebook too. And they go, no, no, no, I think it’s gonna be a waste of money. They will always get sales on Facebook. And what cracks me up about it is I don’t know if it’s just not cool to be on Facebook, and so people don’t want to admit it. Or Facebook’s not their top platform, and they spend most of their time on Instagram. But Facebook still gets sales when running ads. It’s interesting.

Coby: Facebook still has the largest share of wallet just because of the demographic that spent time. Over 45 got more money and that’s who’s using it still, you know, and if there was an over 65 that people were tracking, it’d be Myspace. Right, right. Which is coming back.

McCain: I saw that.

Coby: I freaking love it. Don’t share data, I love it.

McCain: I think Myspace tried to make a comeback a couple times, if I’m not mistaken.

Coby: Yeah, yeah, but I just love an underdog story. Did you see that? I would love to know your take on the lawsuit settlement.

McCain: Yeah, I saw Meta’s. What they posted about it and whatnot. You’re talking specifically with the teenagers and… Yeah, it makes sense. You know, it totally makes sense. I haven’t read all of it. I read their statement, and to me, it just seems like, you know, social media, unfortunately, is that thing that we unleashed on the world without knowing what the repercussions would be. And now it’s like this year alone, I feel like I’ve read a few books that specifically talk about social media and its effect on us, and especially on the younger generation and their development and everything like that. So any steps to limit their time on it? I mean, by all means, it’s probably for the best.

Coby: I’m really interested in knowing, I mean, you make your living off of the existence of social media.

McCain: Yeah.

Coby: What is your personal usage of social?

McCain: It’s very different at different times. I will say that lately, I’ve probably spent more time on social media than I generally do for whatever reason.

Coby: Just outside of professionally just.

McCain: Yeah. Instagram and LinkedIn seem to probably be my top two. LinkedIn I always just like to stay on top of what other people are up to in the business world, especially out here in Utah, it’s a good way to stay connected with other professionals. Instagram is purely just I need to disconnect for a little bit after work. I’m sure. Like end of night, I’m just going to go scroll for a little bit and you know, I follow some pages that I really like and stuff. So I like to see their content. And it’s also become, for better or worse, my news source and I don’t know, like, what do you—do you feel like you use social for news at all? Are you skeptical when you see something on social, like what are your thoughts on that?

Coby: I mean, I’m the biggest cynic you’re ever going to be. Yeah. So whenever I read anything, I never take it on its word. I’m taking what is the response that this is trying to elicit from me, and what is the financial model of that response?

McCain: Yeah.

Coby: I can’t look at it, I can’t have a conversation.

McCain: Yeah.

Coby: I mean, maybe I can have—I don’t know if I know how to have a conversation now. And it sounds cynical and terrible, but it’s just the nature of how I think now, or I think I have always thought, but I don’t know if I know how to have a conversation totally on the level of the conversation itself. Except for with maybe, and this isn’t all the time, for 7 or 8 people in my life.

McCain: Yeah.

Coby: I like my kids, but I know that especially as they get older, there’s always an agenda there. With the teenagers, there’s always an agenda. Yeah. You know, rarely is it just on the level of just connection. My folks and a couple of my friends, sure. Yeah. I feel like I can let that guard down. But when it comes to social media… here’s a good example. And I know that you know this, but on Facebook, the kinds of posts that do far and away the best, here’s a tip and a hack, is ads that mimic UGC.

McCain: Oh yeah.

Coby: Yeah, yeah. So user-generated content for those that might not know, ads that look like they were just a post from some rando. They always do the best. And the reason why is because there’s still a large swath of Facebook users who will click on that, not recognizing that it’s an ad. Yeah. And thinking it’s just a post and maybe even respond to it before they go, oh my gosh, this is an ad. Yeah. And I’ll be honest, as somebody who has been doing this his entire career, I get fooled sometimes too. Yeah. And when it happens, it’s like, oh, they got me. And I click out of it immediately because I don’t want to be caught. So I don’t trust any of it. But that said, I get all of my scientific updates from the STEM channel on TikTok. TikTok’s STEM section. Yes. Is the greatest thing ever. Yeah. And so when people bag on TikTok, the first thing I ask is, have you looked at the STEM channel? Yeah, it’s amazing.

McCain: And I guess that’s a good clarifying point when it comes to like, what news, I’m talking about world events, current events, not so much. But if I’m looking for updates, whether it be sports or movies or something like that, that’s where I like to go to get my updates on that stuff. Because to your exact point, it’s a scary place out there on social, and you really have to know what is the intention behind what’s being posted. You have to go and do some fact checking, which to be honest, is kind of how it’s always been, whether it’s on social media or not. Right? Yeah, I kind of have always had to double check things.

Coby: And well, I mean, well, social media, sure. But you never had to double check an Economist article.

McCain: Yeah.

Coby: So yeah, I don’t, I don’t, I can’t… it’s very interesting. I’ll talk to my kids who rag on Facebook. They don’t have Facebook. Like why would it’s like I never had a Myspace.

McCain: Right.

Coby: But TikTok and Insta for sure. They both have Snap. But they can sniff out AI-generated stuff even better than me. They can sniff out the ulterior motive. Yeah. And that’s one thing I actually really like about social media. Is that my kids are not naive consumers of information. Yeah, they are cynical consumers of information. And I would much rather they get exposed to some of the harmful effects of social media and be very cynical about what they hear across the board than to otherwise not have built up that kind of filter.

McCain: Yeah.

Coby: We spent the last 15 minutes kind of talking about the pitfalls of that medium. Yeah, kind of where it falls down and doesn’t serve us as a society. But I see the opposite opportunity where…

McCain: Yeah.

Coby: It can be used to distract you, but it can also be used to focus you. Yeah. And it’s all about whether you’re going to show up as a business owner. Right. As somebody who’s trying to drive impact in your community on that channel. In other words, there’s so much crap on it. Yeah. Put some good stuff on it too.

McCain: Yeah definitely. And I think that falls on the shoulders of the users of social media and businesses that are also putting out content there as well. Yeah. Because I think there’s a user… And this is my two cents. I think it falls on you to learn how to filter out what kind of content you want to see on social. I’ve had this thought being on like X, if you go to X’s For You page, you can scroll for a while and you know, just showing content they think you should see, they think this is content you’re interested in. And you can go through everything from like, you know, World War III is going to happen tomorrow to the earth is dying to next it’s, hey, look at these puppies to next it’s, hey, look at this returning soldier surprising his family, and it makes you tear up.

Coby: I always love those. I love it when I get caught on one of those. Yeah, yeah.

McCain: But within the span of a minute or less, you’ve gone from being fearful to angry to, oh, how cute to crying. Like. And I’m like, I don’t know if we’re meant to feel so many emotions in the matter of 30 seconds. I don’t know if that’s healthy. So then you get off the For You page and you go to the stuff that you actually follow though, and you go like, oh yeah, I’m following brands I want to see. And they’re providing content that actually uplifts me rather than trying to make me feel a certain way. It’s really interesting. It’s like I have a friend who told me that they stopped following a friend of theirs on social media, even though they’ll hang out in person, because they felt like that individual on social media was toxic in just what they were posting, and they’re like, I couldn’t, I would go on social and everything they were saying just brought me down. So I had to cut them out on there, even if I have the personal relationship. So I think it falls on all of us to filter out the content we don’t want to see on social and only have the content on there that we actually care about. And then it’s a business’s job that, hey, if someone’s following you, put out damn good content for them, make sure you’re responding, okay.

Coby: So let’s bring that back because I love this. Because this is what we’ve learned. And this is how I like to approach it. And that’s all really good stuff. But you know, I want to know what can I do. What are three things, what are three guidelines, the top three guidelines I need to follow if I’m going to attempt to have a presence on social media for my business. Yeah. What are the three? Rule number one. Rule number two. Rule number three. Or we’ll get to it. Whatever. What are the top three rules?

McCain: Rule number one, follow what we call the 80/20 rule of social media. Okay. 80% of your content should be educational, inspiring, entertaining, uplifting. Only 20% of your content that you ever post should be promotional. Too many brands, every single post is buy our product, buy our product, buy our product. And then they wonder why people stop buying. People don’t want that. They’re not following you so you can keep shoving your product down their throat. They’re following you on the Tupperware party…

Coby: Otherwise.

McCain: Yeah, exactly. So rule number one, that what we call the 80/20 rule. Rule number two goes back to that responsiveness. Engagement. Like focus on engaging with your audience. Be a walkie-talkie, not a megaphone. Listen. Respond, communicate. Go out and follow other people. You know there are some brands that you look at them and they got 50,000 followers and they follow two people. And it’s like the two founders, right? Don’t be afraid to go follow other people, comment on their stuff.

Coby: I think that says an awful lot about why somebody would be on there. No, I got a lot to say, but you can’t tell me anything, right? I don’t have a lot of listening in me, but I got a lot of talking. Yeah, yeah.

McCain: What do they say? God gave us two ears and one mouth for… Yeah, right.

Coby: Yeah.

McCain: Rule number three would be on that point. Listen. And then actually do something with the listening. You want to know what kind of content you should be posting and how you should talk to your audience? Listen to them. What are they asking you? What are they telling you? And then build your content around that stuff. Let them be the ones who drive your content creation. And so those would be my top three.

Coby: What if somebody has got a real, you know, a pretty strong opinion about certain things? And the market’s not ready for it. How long does it take for a business to… Let’s talk about there’s all different kinds of businesses. And if you have a product or a widget, okay, it’s different than if your product is maybe you’re a consultant or you want to be a thought leader, or you are the innovator in your space and you’re typically historically a pretty early adopter or a little bit before your time, just, you know, that’s just kind of how you’ve moved through the world. Yeah. Like how do you keep up with it when it’s been six months and there doesn’t seem to be any traction and you’re trying to listen, is it because you’re not listening? Is it because you just haven’t talked about what you want to talk about enough? Like, I guess my question is, how do you balance between hearing what the response is and having a conversation that other people want to be a part of, but still showing up authentically with what you want to talk about? Yeah, it’s no different than doing it face to face. Yeah. Right. So I guess maybe it’s a social skill. It’s the same social skills. I don’t know, is there a trick, like, how do you do it?

McCain: It’s a good question. And I was just having this discussion with someone the other week because some people will come to us and say, this is who our target demographic is. And then when we start advertising for them, we learn the people who are buying their product doesn’t fit their original ideal customer profile or their target demographic. And then the conversation is, and quite frankly I don’t have a straight answer for you, well, do we say, okay, well, now this is our ideal customer profile, or do we stick to our guns and say, no, we need to keep going after these people?

Coby: How long does it take typically to find a message-market fit?

McCain: Yeah, it’s a good question. I mean, it differs for everyone.

Coby: How do you… what are some indicators that you have found a message-market fit?

McCain: Are people responding to it and how are they responding to it.

Coby: How quickly they’re responding?

McCain: Yeah, that’s part of it. I mean, you’re talking specifically on social, right? Like if we’re starting from scratch, I always say that social, if you’re looking at your following and even the engagement, I call it the snowball effect. It is so hard to get those first ten followers, and then it’s hard to get the first hundred followers, but the more followers you have, the easier it is to get to the next step. Yes.

Coby: Exponential growth. Yeah.

McCain: And it’s the same with engagement too. It’s like you’re not going to get a ton of engagement right away. So what I would hate for someone to do is test a message on a brand new social account, post three times using it… No, this isn’t working. I’m not getting an engagement. Like give it a college try, right?

Coby: What about recycling content or messages that you’ve posted a couple of years before? Is that a no-no? When now you have a larger audience? Maybe people, like when you start following somebody, how far back in your history are they going to look? Probably it’s like from that point moving forward pretty generally, right? Yeah.

McCain: You want to know a secret, but this isn’t for your business. But for my own personal LinkedIn, I did it just yesterday. I’m drawing a blank on something to post for the day. I’ll go back like a year or two, and I’ll just take something that I thought should have done better and I’ll retry it.

Coby: I’m going to try that. Yeah.

McCain: And the best one was I did one where someone called me out on using an em dash in my post and they said, oh, this was written with AI and I was like, do I take the AI info or do I let them know, oh, this was a post from six years ago. That was it.

Coby: Hey, maybe I use em dashes, I know grammar, yeah right.

McCain: I just rolled with it like, oh, you caught me because I was like, maybe that’s better than them knowing I’m reposting something from six years ago.

Coby: Well, that’s really cool though to know.

McCain: But to your point, it works. Like the post yesterday did not work. But sometimes I go back and I’m like, oh yeah, there’s a post I did two years ago that should have hit better, but it didn’t. Let me try it again and I’ll even make some tweaks to it so it’s fresh and it’s more current, and then I’ll see if it works better now. And so I think businesses could do the same thing.

Coby: Cool. It sounds like the running thread here though, is that regardless, just treat all of your activities on social media as a dialog as opposed to a monologue. Yeah. Like that’s the number one takeaway is just treat it like a dialog. And you would never have a conversation where somebody says how are you doing and you wait two days before you respond right face to face. Yeah. So just if you wouldn’t do it in a convo right there, like if you wouldn’t do it in a convo at a theater where there’s people around and they’re not part of the conversation, but they could hear, then don’t do it over.

McCain: So yeah, yeah, I think that’s a good way to put it.

Coby: I’m gonna use it. I’m gonna use it today. I’m going to go repost something on LinkedIn from two years ago. Do it, do it. Thanks, man. Yeah. Boom.

Nicole: Thanks for coming along for the ride. If you enjoy sweet takes, be sure to subscribe and leave us a review. Join us next time. There’s more sweetness ahead.