There is a perception on the internet that if you create great content and you’re consistent, your audience will come. In Marc Gutman’s experience, that’s just not true. Find out what no one advertises about being a social media presence and what it takes to grow.
Video Transcript
Keith Roberts 0:04
Marc, I would love to know from a guru, what is the one thing that nobody tells you about social media? One of the things that you've learned that no one's talking about how it relates to it, something that sticks.
In my mind, I've heard that you know, you should spend as much time promoting a piece of content as you do creating it. I know, I suck at that I could spend hours doing it. I post it once and I forget about it. So I have this backlog. But what is—that's my, you know, thing that nobody tells me, but what is the thing that nobody tells us about social media?
Marc Gutman 0:35
Yeah, you're right on, you know, and I think the real short answer is that social media is hard. You know, no one tells you that everyone, you know, has this like mythology that we create great content, if we build it, they will come. If we just create great content and post it, the social media platform will do the work, you'll start to get the shares, you start to get the results. And that's just not true.
What I found is, it's hard work, you need to show up every day, you need to interact, you need to build community, you need to be responsive, you need to answer just as many kind of weird DMS, I'll leave it at that as, as productive ones, you know, and you can't get jaded, you can't get worn out, you just got to keep showing up, you got to keep creating content, you got to learn about your chosen platform. And so, you know, we've been talking a little bit about Instagram, I've been learning a ton about Instagram, you know, like how to make it best work for you, you know, what to do, what not to do? What does the algorithm like? How do we keep people engaged? When do you post you know, how to use hashtags?
These are all things that, you know, we need to put a lot of energy into. And I do think that, you know, a lot of people just want to hand this thing off and, and, and give it to other people and other agencies. And the thing that I've seen to be most successful is to do it yourself. Some of the best social media accounts, one of them, which is Kum and Go that I'm a big fan of, and they'll be appearing on the podcast here, that we've already done the interview, we just got to wait till it releases, but their social media is amazing.
And when I asked them, I said, how do you do this? Like, what are the other tools are you using outside of your phone? Like, what are your favorite tools to get this job done? The guy I was interviewing just looked at me like kind of dumbfounded. And he was like, What do you mean? He's like, we use our phone. And we have a small team, it's me and two people, each person, you know, I head up Twitter, someone else heads up, tick tock, someone else heads up Instagram, and they just are all doing it organically.
They believe in the moment. They don't, they don't know what they're gonna post next. And it's an amazing social media account from a gas station. So, you know, it's hard. And I think that's what people don't tell you. And so I'm not here to dissuade you from social. I'm actually here to encourage you to do it. I think it's amazing. But just know that like, you're going to have to do the work. And I think I spent so many years thinking that the social media channel is going to do the work that I was disappointed it didn't work for for me. And so when you do the work, you'll get a lot back out of it.
Keith Roberts 3:01
I think that's really insightful man. I've got a friend whose son You know, this last year blew up and all of a sudden as 8 million TikTok followers just 20 years old, he's gonna make a million dollars off energy drinks and different musicians that are having him post stuff.
And I think the misconception is, that's what that's how easy it is. And that's really being fooled by randomness. I think if you know that person, my friend son lived his life 1000 times that's only going to happen one time and the other 990 you know, he's living in dad's basement. He's not you know, getting flown on private jets to the Bahamas to drink a Red Bull.
Marc Gutman 3:35
Yeah, now he said some sort of zeitgeist and you know, like, there's always that that opportunity. But you know, if you're doing it, you know, you know if it's naturally happening for you, that was not my story. That wasn't my experience. And that's not the experience of clients I have or when I look around I mean it you know, it takes work.
Keith Roberts 3:51
It's a lot I think that's winning the lottery is the way the right way lens to look at how that person hit success as they picked six for sure.
