I had a friend who had decent amount of followers. She really didn't put any time in figuring out how to, reach them and who they were, but she paid for an advertisement, a post on another platform, another company, it was an individual actually who then turned into a company.
Turns out she spent 5, 000 for this post. It got her zero response because that audience for the other person wasn't her audience. So she wasted all this time. She wasted all this money, in hopes of getting the right people to come to her. And it just was not her demographic. So your target demo is really important to think about in business in general, but specifically in social media.
Hey, y'all, you're listening to the designer within podcast episode number 24.
I'm John McClain and welcome to the designer within podcast, the business minded podcast created for creative entrepreneurs by a creative entrepreneur. That's me. I know firsthand the challenges, but also the victories that can come with our careers. And I'm here to sip and spill the tea with you. It's time to dive deep within yourself and redesign your own business and your life from the inside out.
Together we will uncover secrets and share valuable insights. So prepare for a transformative experience, my friend, because it's time to unleash the designer within.
Hey everybody. Welcome to another episode of the designer within podcast. We are on episode number 24. Can't believe we are there already. These are happening so quickly and I also cannot believe that it is December Wow. This year has flown by if you missed last week's episode. I gave three simple steps on how to look back on the year that you've had and to consider things that happened in the year, reflect on those.
And we are going to have an episode very soon about what to plan and how to plan and what to do for goal setting for the new year. So stay tuned for that. Now, in today's episode, I have something a little different for you. Today's episode is actually a broadcast of a portion of a presentation that I did for a group.
So I did this online presentation And it was for designers in our industry, but the topic is how you can social media proof, your company. And I thought, wow, this is really interesting because I did mention on last week's episode about going through your Instagram and finding the highlight moments of the year, et cetera. And I thought let's talk about something that sort of piggybacks on that in a way. But I know social media is something that's also on the minds of a lot of us at any given time. And I know what many of us use it for marketing.
And so with this presentation, I really wanted to show everybody that there's so many other options out there to consider when it comes to marketing. So in this particular presentation, I covered a lot of things. It was about an hour long presentation, but I've narrowed it down to you to about 25 minutes or so.
and I wanted to definitely show you some specific things that I wanted you to have as takeaways from it, but it's a very detailed presentation and I hope that it gives you a bit of information about not only how to social media proof your company, but also my presentation style and things that you can learn with me.
If you are joining any of my courses, This is just a little bit of the methods that I teach inside of my own courses. so the topic of this presentation was again, how to social media proof, your company, and the things that I'm going to share with you today.
The portions of that are to learn why social media should not be your only form of marketing. I'm going to talk about the good, the bad, the ugly of social media, and there are considerations under each of those categories. and I'm also going to discuss, creating your own social network and why that is important and what that even is.
And I'm going to share some specific ways that you can start to create your own social network, and they're not complicated whatsoever. So remember, this is just a portion of the presentation. The entire presentation was for this specific group only, but I do want to share these very, very actionable items with you today in the podcast.
And I thought this would be just again, A fun little insight for you to see what I covered So I hope you enjoyed this episode, which is again, an excerpt from a presentation that I recently did.
And if you're wondering why I sound a little scratchy in this recording, it is because I had a weird cold at the time. I felt fine. Just sounded a little scratchy. So that is why I sound a bit different. In this recording than I do right now. just wanted to point that out to you guys.
This is definitely a note taking episode. So grab at your note pad, if you're listening to this while you're on a walk, if you're listening to this, when you're putting dishes in the dishwasher or doing a load of laundry, come back to it later and jot down some notes are, you can also look in the notes section of the podcast as well.
But this is a note taking podcast episode today, and I hope you do learn a lot from it. let's dive in.
I'm really excited to share this information with you. It is It's going to be an interesting webinar because I think a lot of us are tiptoeing around the social media aspect and sometimes we're afraid to address it because it's the big elephant in the room. But I just want to talk to you one on one and let you know my perspective of that and maybe some other alternatives so let's jump right in.
I want you to learn why you shouldn't rely on social media as your primary form of marketing. And of course we all use social media. it's in many, many iterations from LinkedIn to Facebook, to Instagram, to Tik TOK, but there are so many other options that I really want you to think about, and this is not going to be a.
social media bashing session. This is going to be a session to just enlighten you and hopefully make you understand what other opportunities are out there to market your business. And that is really the goal for today. So I want you to really think about that as we go through the presentation. I want you to learn how to develop your own social network.
With control over your own content and growth, and this might sound a little scary. It might sound a little, unobtainable, but there are ways that you can develop your own social network and spoiler alert. we've already been doing it for years, even before. Social media was a thing.
So, we're going to sort of piggyback on social media, use it to get what we want, and then we're going to learn how to develop our own social network, which will be the thing that we can actually have control over.
Alright, so social media, they're good, the bad, the ugly, like here we have it right we have the all the aspects of it and there are lots of aspects of But again, this is not a bashing of social media. There's definitely good parts of it. And we're going to talk about that. first of all, there's connections, right? So we all know that we can connect with friends. With family, with colleagues, and we're helping each other out and we're commenting on each other's posts and we're giving each other advice and we're going into DMS and letting them know we've experienced similar things.
So connections on social media is really the intent that it was created for, of course, and I think that that is really the most important part of it from a perspective of personal and from business on the flip side. Guess what? There's connections. There's the downside of connections. So there are the, negative DMs, the negative comments, the people who want to tell you how bad your design was and want to tell you how terrible your idea was for this space.
So the positive and the negative, I feel, are always there on social media. And depending upon which platform you use, one could outweigh the other, but it's, it's amazing on social media. How entitled a lot of people feel to hide behind their phone or computer screen and just tell you literally things that they were probably would never tell you in person.
That always cracks me up. But here's some of the bad, right? So, social displacement and basically this is replacing time spent face to face with people with this online platform. And I'm not saying that it's always negative. I'm just saying that there tends to be some of us who Replace all the physical one on one contact, especially during the pandemic, with this online communication.
And we feel, unfortunately, that the online communication actually replaces the face to face and it does not. there is this little bit of withdrawal that we have sometimes when we are using social media. Secondly, This is a big one. Someone else owns your data. They own your story. you're on their platform.
And here you have this is to represent someone owning your land. So you're building on land that really isn't isn't yours. And, of course, social media wants to stay around and they want longevity. But when you sign up with them, you're agreeing to their terms, you're agreeing to all of the conditions that they have on their website.
And if they are to go away, they're I just saw Facebook is, releasing 11, 000 employees, I think today. So they're not as stable as we might think that they are. And you're essentially building your company in a lot of ways on their land. And if they were to remove that, where would we be? So that's something to remember as an important part.
It can be costly, right? So if you're posting and you're not getting response, they're going to send you that little thing that says, let's boost it. Let's spend more money with us. And. It can get really expensive and there's not always a positive outcome from it either. So you might just. In hopes of reaching the target market that you're wanting to reach, but not always does that happen.
And you can also spend hours making videos that you're hoping to go viral or videos that you're hoping people will see. And, uh, I know this firsthand I've done Tik TOK videos and I hate them and I've done reels for Instagram and you spend all the editing time and all the video time. And the views go down.
So they want you to boost that and to make more money. So it can be costly, not only in dollars and cents, but in your time, which let's be honest, is really much more important these days to a lot of us. I think your target demo can actually be diluted on social media. if you don't know your target market and you're just throwing out information to anyone who's following you and anyone who's on there.
in hopes that you can reach them, you're actually diluting your target market, right? So you're sending things out there with people who might not be your ideal client who want to purchase from you. So I had a friend who had decent amount of followers. She really didn't put any time in figuring out how to, reach them and who they were, but she basically paid for an advertisement, a post on another platform, another company, it was an individual actually who, who then turned into a company.
Turns out she spent 5, 000 for this post. It got her zero response because that audience for the other person wasn't her audience. So she wasted all this time. She wasted all this money, in hopes of getting the right people to come to her. And it just was not her demographic. So your target demo is really important to think about in business in general, but specifically in social media.
And something similar happened to me where we have a very high profile celebrity client. They have around 5 million Instagram followers, and I thought, well, you know, like, let's let them post things as they, as they want. And they were posting stories and posting some posts actually. And out of those 5 million or so followers that this person had, we may have gotten 15 or 20.
And it just made me realize even more how my target demographic is solely to me and we all have our own demographic that we, are targeting, but everyone else is just because they have a big following. They're not always your target demographics. That's really important to remember. I think the unhealthy comparisons, and this just goes across social media in general.
we have unrealistic views of other people's lives. We're showing this highlight reel. They're showing this. This trip that they took and this project that went great and this install that's happening and oh my gosh, no, no hiccups whatsoever. And we're really, we're having these unhealthy comparisons between what we're seeing and actually what's happening and that's annoying to me.
I think authenticity and honesty is so important. And I try to do that more on my social media, but their highlight reel is not always real life. And they're not always putting their best foot forward, even though they're showing that to us. And there's some studies that have occurred, where long time use of social media platforms, they actually make you addicted to checking out other people's content.
So you're Going on to see what this designer did or going on to see if this architect was published. And it's just creates this mental fight within ourselves where we're always looking to other people. And there's also the FOMO aspect of it. So if we're watching other people succeed and do well, and oh my gosh, this multimillion dollar project that this client has with this designer, why don't we have that?
I think it just, it, it creates this struggle in our head that is really unnecessary. There's also a little bit of a false sense of accomplishment and I'll tell you what I mean by this. tend to feel as if when we do put something out on social media, or when we do post something that, yes, I did it I did it for the day I've done my marketing for the day, and that is not always the case.
Yes, of course. There are the high profile people of the world who, you know, get a lot of attention on social media regardless, but the ones like who I have 20 or so thousand followers. I, I don't really climb the ladder of trying to get more just for the sake of getting more. I want people to follow me and to go along this journey with me because they're actually interested in it.
So, just by posting something, we're not marketing every single time. Sometimes it's a wasted post, as I said, and they try to get you to boost that. But, this false sense of accomplishment, just because you did post something it's a bit of a problem. The good. All right. Yeah, look, there's some good stuff.
So you're actually developing your own voice. You're are learning who you are by going on social media. You are hopefully able to open up and be a bit more honest with people, not only about yourself, but about your company, your company values, how you run your business. it's a really great platform to actually develop that voice within yourself.
and I know this firsthand when I started out, I was. only on social media to, to do what everyone else was doing and to say what everyone else was saying. And I can tell you that will get you nowhere. You're going to, again, just be riding on someone else's back to get where you're going. And that's not really who you are.
If that's not who you are, then you're not going to make any progress. So for me, I started to hone my own voice and really realized. What was important to me and what was important to my company. And I encourage all of you as well to really think about yourself and your business versus what everyone else is promoting on social media, or what everyone else is doing and try to find your own specific platform and your own voice for that.
This is a really good one and it's empathy through sharing. you're sharing the issues that you and other people, are having. It helps you to overcome those issues. It's almost therapeutic in a way to know that other people are having the same problem. So if a designer is honest about, something that happened with a client.
And someone else reads it, then there could be a conversation started. And I love, I love that part of it. I love that there is this, empathy and this concern for everyone else who is in the same industry that we are, or just as human beings to share what has happened to us. another good, it's relatively quick and easy to implement.
And by that I mean, you can wake up in the morning, you're having coffee and you're like, Hmm, I think I should talk today about, you know, bathrooms and how to choose the plumbing fixtures for that. You can literally go in and pull a photo from your file, post it and have it online. And, you know, a minute or two if you want.
So it is relatively quick and easy to implement. I think that there are, you know, a downside to that. again, as I said before, there's this, , false sense of accomplishment with it. So you feel like you did something great when all you did was post something that perhaps no one's going to see, but it is in general very quick to, to implement. many of us depend on social media as our primary form of marketing. I know that because I did that in the beginning as well, but I want to ask you, like, what if it all went away? What if the, Facebooks and the Instagram and the TikToks and the LinkedIn, what if it all just went away? I know that's far fetched, but I always like to think that way because I want to have control over my own marketing.
something interesting happened recently to me. Someone, I was at High Point, and someone actually took my phone accidentally, so I was without my phone. Yes, scary for 24 hours. And not only was I in a city that I didn't know, I had no idea for navigation. I was using handwritten notes driving around, but also I had no social media.
I had no, email right away. I had no, , Instagram or Tik TOK or any of those things. And, and what it really did, it, it made me realize for a minute. What really does matter and that I still could carry on with my speaking engagements at High Point and my meetings that I had with vendors, I could still carry on with that.
It was just going to require a bit more work, And I did for 24 hours, buddy. I was out there. I was , calling people from my hotel phone, , and then using email when I was in the room, but I was not texting people. So I had this disconnect between what I had become accustomed to and from what was actually available to me.
So it was an eyeopening experience for me. I don't wish it on anybody actually. what is the solution if all of this went away, right? My solution is you should create your own social network, and I'm going to tell you what that means in a minute because I know that can sound daunting,
Here is one way that I want you to consider when you are developing your own social network.
An online community. So your own online community that you host and that you moderate so that you are in control of that. So let's jump in. What is a social network? So a social network is two different things, right? So it is a network of social interactions and personal relationships.
So that is the one on one part of it. That is the in person. And in a way, even what we're doing now, this is, a social network as well. secondly, it is a dedicated website or other app which enables users to communicate with each other by posting information, comments, messages, DMs, images, etc. So this is what we all know of social network, which is social media typically, which is Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and all of that. But keep these two definitions in mind as we go through today's presentation. Here are the benefits of having your own social network and why it could really really help you. First of all, you have a community of like minded people.
So we talked about that ideal client. We talked about that person who is more apt to buy from you. That is the community that you need to surround yourself with in this social network that we're developing. you really need to realize that people choose to be in this social network with you as well.
You're not reaching out to people who aren't your ideal client. You're not forcing people to be involved this social network with you. But these are people who choose to interact with you. They choose to be your friend. They choose to be your colleague. They choose to go to functions with you.
And they choose to do business with you, hopefully, at the end of the day. And by the way, the community of like minded people is not just potential clients. It is also your colleagues who are in the industry with you as well. You're in control. And I know this is a broad statement. and of course it depends on which platform you're on, but there's really no more worrying about censorship of your messages, not being seen or your info being taken away because you are in control of that.
And, I love that part of it. as an entrepreneur, it has always been my goal. Um, that's probably why we, a lot of us became entrepreneurs is so that we could be in control and we could. sort of guide that ship. And I, I think that with your social network, you should always keep that at the forefront of your mind.
You have unlimited growth potential. the sky is literally the limit when you are in control of your own social network, all of your marketing endeavors, all the things that you work on, they are just going to keep building, building, building on top of that land that you own and that property that is yours.
and it's going to just continue to grow and grow and grow. in a much bigger way. And soon it will start manifesting itself. And I know this from experience, it will manifest itself in new clients. It will manifest itself in, new business opportunities with vendors and with other people that you like to partner with.
But your growth potential is really only limited to what you want to do when you are in charge of your own social network. So let's talk about ways that you can develop your own social network. These are fun. In person. Ah, what is that? How do we, what is even in person? We don't do it anymore, but I'm here to tell you old school is the best school, old school interactions and old school networking is so important.
we all understand the power of a word of mouth advertising. It is literally oldest form of marketing and centuries later from when businesses even started and people started to do that. It is still impactful. As a matter of fact, a recent study showed that 64 percent of marketers agreed that word of mouth marketing and advertising is the best method.
Really cool. So the , first part of that I wanted to talk about was industry organizations event. So this is your ASID, IIDA, any sort of event where, you are having an event with colleagues, a cocktail party, an event that you're going to, it can be at these different functions, at High Point Market, all these things are ways to interact with the, people in your industry.
and to create your growth of your own social network. This one, maybe you do it, maybe you don't. I still find it effective. It's the old school chamber of commerce, and I know it sounds a little antiquated, but I'll tell you guys, I have met so many potential clients. I have met, vendors that I wanted to work with.
I have met trades people that I want to work with, and I have gotten so many referrals from. Simple little chamber of commerce mixers, which is what I did in the early days of my business. So I would out there pounding the pavement, putting my face in front of everybody, doing everything imaginable just to keep myself, uh, in front of people.
And it worked at the time I, it was, you know, block by block and bit by bit, but it did work at the end of the day. And it was so wonderful to see all the fruits of that. Personal interaction, coming into play. And I did it because social media wasn't a big thing when I started my business it was there, but it wasn't what it is now.
And I really didn't know any other way. So I decided to do that and it did pay off. these industry organization events are really important. show houses and trade shows. This is speaking to, Particularly people, of course, in the design and architect industry. But show homes are just a great way to put your talents out there to the world.
You get to meet people. Yes, it does have a price tag attached to it, of course, but, the marketing aspect of it. It's so fantastic because you can tell your story to every single person who comes into that space right. And then, and you can actually have other media, wonderfully publicize the event for you too, which is great so I like to do marketing where there is
sort of a piggyback on it where other people can use it to also market myself and themselves as well, which is why combining with different companies is a really great way to go, trade shows. So again, very old school. I did it. I did it in the beginning. I would go and I would set up a booth with a design and it was like, you know, a 20 by 20 space.
I would have a little. dining area, a little, living area and people would come in and talk. And I literally found at the time, one of my best clients that I have ever had from a trade show who came into the booth, they liked what they saw. They liked my personality. I was a one man show back then, and it was just my way to sell my wares to them, so to speak.
And it was, it turned into an amazing project that got published in lots of different magazines. So trade shows do work if it is the right trade show. I have also spoken at trade shows and I encourage you to do that too. If you're shy, there's lots of ways to do that. Maybe you can speak in only one booth, or if you're a little braver, you can do like I do and go in on the main stage And chat everybody up about whatever topic you want to talk about, but these trade shows are just fantastic ways to, to get your message out there and to get people to know about you and not only again, remember, this is your social network of not only your clients potential clients, but also potential vendors and potential ambassador programs that you can work with with other companies.
And lastly. vendor partner events. I love these. let's say, an appliance company that you've specified in a project reaches out to you or maybe you reach out to them and you see them at a function one of the other functions, they're like, Hey, I love, I love that, that bathtub that you Put into that space.
It's so beautiful. I'd like to talk to you more about working with you. So these vendor partner events can be at a showroom. maybe the showroom sales manager at a an appliance showroom has an event. Go to that. Maybe, a showroom, such as a vendor showroom at high point or any these other places having an event, go to that, because you're going to speak to the person who is in control, you're going to speak to the marketing person, they're going to be there, you're going to speak to probably the manager, perhaps, in my instance, at high point recently, The owner of the brand was actually in the showroom when I was there for an event.
So don't discount the power of going to events where the vendor is sponsoring it, because that only nurtures that relationship with that vendor. And I can tell you from firsthand experience, it has led to countless ambassador programs with different companies. I turned my own home into a show house probably 90 percent of the products inside of it was sponsored from other vendors because I had this relationship with them that I developed and that relationship, sometimes it happens at that meeting.
Sometimes it happens at the dinner afterwards, the cocktails afterwards, but, that relationship is so important to nurture. And the other part is that person is going to remember you. when there is an opportunity. So it's not always you knocking on their door. It is also them knocking on your door, which I think is fantastic.
That's really where you actually want to be is where you have people contacting you. and they think of you first when it comes to whatever niche or category you're in
Okay, well, what did you think was that helpful for you? I hope it was again, remember, this was just a brief exert. The entire presentation was about an hour and I actually teach a full presentation of this as well in a, in a different version inside of my own academy, my design success academy.
But I did want to again, share with you the information inside of it, because again, I thought it would be something fun to do, to share a little bit of a different version of the podcast today, but also did. You see yourself in that? Do you find yourself? Relying only on social media. Do you feel like there are other avenues out there?
Have you explored other avenues? Are you relying on less face to face and you really should be looking at more face to face interactions. think about your social network. Your social network is much, much bigger than what we give it credit for. And we are in control of that. If we just set an actionable plan in place to achieve a larger social network that we have control over and that we can truly monitor and grow and nurture and really take care of even if social media were to go away.
So that is today's episode. I hope you learned a lot and I will see you next week with a really fun episode that I think you will enjoy. I will be chatting with my friend, Beth Kushnick.
She is, a set decorator for a lot of TV shows and movies and commercials that you are going to recognize.
And we're going to dive into how she does it, why she does it and what she's learned over her 30 year career.
So that is next week's episode. And I do hope to see you back for that one as well, but until then, keep designing a life and a business that you love and deserve. I will. see you next time. My friend.
Thanks for sticking with me to the end of the designer within podcast. It means the world to me, if you're ready to dive deeper into the topics that we've discussed here,
Be sure to check out my online coaching and courses, program, design success, academy.com. Here. I will teach you everything you need to know to run your interior design business from a starting the project all the way to the end, including marketing and pricing your services for profit..
And for more information on this podcast, including how to be a guest or my design services in general, go to JohnMcClain.CO that's. JohnMcClain.CO. See you soon, friend.