3 Steps To Cut Through The Noise And Build REAL Connection On Social Media with Julia Bramble
Anyone can add to the noise on social media platforms by pumping out content... but actually cutting through the noise and creating a real connection with individuals is where the value is... and it's much harder to do.
Luckily, Julia Bramble, unique combination of PhD forensic scientist, empathic communicator and spectacularly popular presenter is here with Rob to explain the 3 steps to cutting through and building REAL connection with your audience...
TRANSCRIPT:
(Automated so please excuse any little errors!)
Rob Tyson 0:03
Welcome back listener Rob Tyson here and in the last episode, I was talking to Ian Anderson Gray about the three steps to start and be successful with live video on Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube. So be sure to catch up on that one. If you missed it. It was a really good one. And I'm here today with Julia Bramble. Now Julia is going to make it simple for you to get results from social media and online marketing. She is a unique combination of PhD forensic scientist, empathic communicator and a spectacularly popular presenter. And today we've got a really interesting topic, we're going to be talking about three steps to actually cutting through and building real connection with your audience on those social platforms, particularly because it's very easy for us to just pump out content all the time, but it just kind of washes over people. So how do we get beyond that and actually create stuff and interact with people in a way that does cut through?
That's what we're going to be talking about today, but before we welcome Julia and get into that, do you have professional expertise listener? Would you like to productize? what you offer? Would you like maybe to move away from custom work that eats up crazy amounts of time, and market what you do with more clarity? Well, right now I'm reserving time to talk with up to three people like you each week about your situation about what you want to accomplish. And together to figure out with you the bare bones of a low, medium and high price online package you can offer that's going to help you achieve your goals using my revenue logic process. Are you interested in that? Well, here's where you need to go. Now for more info, just go to chatwithrob.com. That's it chatwithrob.com. Now, of course, if there's an opportunity to help you get there faster and easier with a bit of help from me, we can talk about that but there are no catches tricks or obligations. The call itself is free the insights you get maybe priceless so once again if you're interested in that the place to go is chat with Rob comm chat with Rob, calm. I will see you there. So with that all said Judea, welcome. Great to have you with us.
Julia Bramble 2:12
Hey, thank you so much for inviting me to be here.
Rob Tyson 2:15
You are very welcome. So we're in a kind of a weird time as we're recording this Julie round. We're in this house arrest situation due to Coronavirus. And so people are probably doing even more online marketing than they were doing before a lot of people. And of course, we're going to talk about three steps to cutting through and building real connection with our audience and and you've got kind of three steps to this that you want to talk about today. So just talk to us about that briefly. How do we what what are some of the first things that we would look at?
Julia Bramble 2:52
Okay, so just to put this into context a little bit. I think what you said at the beginning is so important kind of half the battle in our minds. And that is that if we are using social media just to blast out content to try and keep Top of Mind, which is what so many experts and gurus have suggested in the past, then actually, especially at the current time, but moving out of this as well, it's not going to be serving us, it's not going to give us the results that we are after. Because people are going to glaze over, as all this generic content washes over them. What we need to remember is that social is always really busy. And at the moment, it's even busier than usual, as you said, so we've actually got to work quite hard to make sure that we are standing out in those crowded news feeds, attracting people that we want to interact with, and really starting to build those relationships as early on as possible in the process so that we keep people along with us. So having said that, the three things really that we want to look at in terms of the three steps.
First of all, what it means to actually feel a sense of connection. And how can we build that online? It's very easy to build it in a face to face situation. But now, of course, we're dealing so much more online. How can we help to make people feel connected with us online? The second part of that as well, thinking about that, what content can we actually put out there that's going to help people feel connected with us. And then thirdly, think about
what we can actually do in terms of doing this strategically and maybe on a larger scale than just thinking about the individual day by day.
So there are three steps that we're going to have a look at.
So a lot of people are gonna just jump on social media and think, oh, I've got to share this, that and the other if we actually want people to feel like they are important to us, which of course we do. What we need to do is actually take stock of the other person. So think about a situation when you are with another person, either offline or online, a friend, a family member, how do you actually feel connected with them? Very often what we do in order to build that connection and keep it going, the first thing we ask is probably how are you How are things going for you? We ask questions about the other person, we show that we're interested, we listen to their responses, we then come back and acknowledge if we are being a real person who is interested anyway, we tend to acknowledge what it is that they've said. And then we carry on the conversation from that. Now, how many brands and businesses do you actually see doing that? on social media?
Not many. Exactly. And then they're going, Oh, but nobody listens to me, or I've got like, really low engagement levels on social or no one's actually interacting with myself. Well, is it surprising? So let's take you know, let's unravel this all a bit. Take a couple of steps back and think about, you know, these people that we are so desperate to get to come and visit our website or buy our stuff or take our free trial or whatever it is, what are we actually doing to help them get that feeling that at the moment, especially they are so craving, we know From Maslow's hierarchy of needs, that that sense of connection and belonging sits just above the actual things that we absolutely need to stay alive, it literally sits just above that on that hierarchy of needs. So a well known human needs to feel connected and feel like we belong to someone and yes brands and businesses, we tend to leap over that entirely. And just try and go right to the top of the triangle and get people to buy stuff from us. So what do we need to do? We need to go out there and we need to ask our people how they're feeling. We need to listen in to our audience, to maybe our followers to people that we would really love to be our next client or our next customer, for example, or people like them, and actually listen to what they are talking about on social media. At the moment. It is particularly easy because there are some major scenes going around. We've obviously got COVID that's going around. But we've also got at the moment and this is why this is so important, that sense connection at the moment, as long as well as COVID. We've got this enormous sense of all being in it together, of humanity, of this crisis, actually stripping away those layers and those barriers that we've built up maybe around big businesses, and around celebrities. We've got people like Martin Clunes appearing on TV news programs in the morning in his PJ's, for goodness sakes, we're seeing celebrities from all around the world streaming from their sitting rooms, you know, all at once. This sense of humanity and human to human connection is absolutely one of the major priorities for everybody. So for us to be going blundering in as a business and to be sharing sort of business as usual posts without acknowledging any of that is going to be a real mistake. So that's, that's where we're at right now. But that gives us lessons for sort of post COVID times as well, because people are going to be people have been will have been through this process. So they are going to have their feelers out if you like, for brands and businesses that can tap into how the public and how they especially are feeling at this present time. So as businesses, we need to actually check in with that. We need to listen to what our customers are saying. We need to ask them questions. Go out on your social media and just ask simple questions and listen to the answers and then acknowledge show that you have listened to those answers, either by responding directly or by then creating content that comes back and feeds on that. Also, when you've been listening to people, when you know what their challenges are, when you know what their dreams and their aspirations are, you can reflect that back in your content. And guess what, the minute that you do that when people start seeing your content in the newsfeed, that sort of digital ears will prick up because they will see that that content is relevant to them and relevant to their situation. So I've seen a couple of lovely examples of this kind of thing going on at the minute with brands, for example, Wagamama. So Wagamama, because they can't serve people at the moment, and they are all locked down, they, their executive chef decided that he was going to start running some YouTube tutorials showing people actually how to cook their food. So this is giving away real value. It's thinking about the people who are at home, maybe wanting their food. So and the second best thing they can do is obviously if they can't get on their food, actually give them the wherewithal if they want to create it for themselves. So that in itself is thinking about who people are. It's sort of sharing human side, the executive chair saying, you know, I'm getting really bored. Because I haven't been created. I haven't been creating my dishes recently. What can I do to help? And then the way this was actually introduced on Twitter, they put out a tweet that said, you know, this, this could go really well, it could all go horribly wrong. We don't know, we've never done it before, you know, and that's just being incredibly human. That's saying, oh, we're a little bit nervous. You know, this is an experiment. We're trying it for you. That's real connection, human to human. And the other thing that they've done is once they started this series off, what they've done is they've gone out to people and they said, okay, we shared these recipes. Now, what would you like us to share next? So they're really bringing everybody into this conversation. They're encouraging people to go out on social and share photos when they've made the food with a hashtag as well, so they can search the hashtag and then respond back. They've really just started this whole conversation going around their business around something that isn't earning them any money at all This isn't them selling stuff. This is just them sharing value and, and bringing in that connection and it works really well. And I think we can use that as a model for our own businesses.
Rob Tyson 12:13
Yes, it's really interesting. So like so if you're if you're someone like me, who doesn't find that easy? Do you have any advice for how you get started? And because I'm going to be honest that that's not my mindset. I don't think in that way usually, like I think I will sit there I think all you know, what can I publish? And I and I take your lesson completely, which is that we're really you need to get out of that mindset where it's not just publish, publish, publish, it's actually you want it needs to be a two way street. How do you get started with that? And the other the other is kind of sub point that I had was, I've seen this a lot of people posting on social and stuff and then post something like, Oh, so how is COVID-19 affecting your business? And when once you've seen that for the 700 and 50th time, you just kind of like, I mean, you know, early on once or twice that was okay, but then you reach a point where that that becomes almost even worse, I think. And so I don't know I'm I guess I'm confused as you can probably hear from the way I'm talking about it, but it's so what are some baby steps for you know, sociopath like me to actually begin this process and, you know, begin this dialogue process and get out of this just kind of published published mindset.
Julia Bramble 13:45
Brilliant question. Thank you. Yeah. And I think you're absolutely right. I think it is a bit of a daunting switch if we have been in a different mindset before. And like you I've seen posts like that and also emails, you know, emails about these things. precedented times and pivoting my business and goodness knows what and I just yeah.
Rob Tyson 14:04
you've not heard from him two years ago and we're here for you guys during this right? Who are
you again? It's like yes. Just weird, isn't it
Julia Bramble 14:12
just trying to cash in? So yeah, I think you're absolutely right. And I think what we need to do is be a little bit smarter than that. And this all starts off from going out there to your social platforms without that intent to publish straight away but with an intent to listen, go and find some of the people that follow you on Twitter, for example, and just have a look, see and see what they're tweeting about. Or go and have a look at the people that you're connected with on Instagram, for example, go and see what they are posting about and also how people how other people are responding to them because that will show you the conversations that are going on in their little bubble in their lives. And you know, you can you can really it's not going to take you long, maybe 10 minutes, you can start to get a feel for this especially On Twitter, when stuff moves by so quickly, you could start by going and having a look at your followers. Or you could, for example, think of a keyword or a hashtag or something to pick up on and just start sort of going into a strategic rabbit hole that way, but go and start listening to other people. And on Twitter, especially, you'll probably find it really difficult not to go and engage because you will see people talking about how they're thinking or what their challenges are, or what's going on at the minute for them. And you can literally just then, you know, tweet back join in. It's very British, I guess, in inverted commas. That is for us to go in and bust in on other people's conversations. It's something that we've probably been told not to do by our parents over and over again, but actually, on social media, it's perfectly acceptable to do that. And that might be a way to dip your toe in the water to start those baby steps towards thinking about not just publishing and broadcasting and getting out there, but actually Engaging in the conversation, don't publish yourself, but just go and start responding to other people's stuff, listen to them and respond to them. And you will probably be really surprised by the positive feedbacks that you will get from that by that little burst of dopamine you get when someone then responds back to you. It's brilliant, and it can be quite addictive.
Rob Tyson 16:24
So that that did sort of cross my mind. Quite easy to, you know, to spend quite a lot of time doing that. Not that that's a bad thing. But do do you yourself? Do you kind of do specifically have time to do this kind of interaction? And do you limit it? I mean, how do you how do you look at that because it can be very easy to lose track of time if you're doing this kind of thing and then wonder where the day went, I guess.
Julia Bramble 16:49
Yeah, it can. Absolutely. So I would suggest if we if we possibly can do try and limit it starts off with you know, 10 or 15 minutes, you can set a timer. You won't see on Twitter or on Instagram. And you can do that say twice a day if you're only focusing on one platform without that taking over your life completely. But what you will find is not only will you, if you start going out there and engaging with people that is automatically going to ramp up the results that you get on social media, because automatically more people are going to find out about you in a lovely organic way. But also, you will immediately just have in the back of your mind, much more information, even if you if you if you're not like currently processing it at that point in time in the back of your mind, you'll have a lot more sort of data and information about the people that you really want to reach out and talk to. So all of a sudden, instead of saying, for example, how's it going for you in COVID, you will probably be able to nail two or three specific things that you could ask questions about or funny humans things that you could post about that you see Other people talking about maybe have got a good response? Or maybe they've been asking questions about that are much more specific to the situation, as pertains to your people than just asking about COVID. So you can show that you're much more aligned, and your content is much more relatable to them. Then just talking about that generic COVID stuff.
Rob Tyson 18:21
Okay, no, that's really good. Yeah, I like that. I like that. And now I can see how that can be really valuable.
Julia Bramble 18:29
Okay, get really callous, especially at the moment. You know, as you've said, that people just posting that generic stuff. They are getting sidelined, completely sidelined. In fact, there's been a bit of a backlash against companies that have still been just running their regular scheduled stuff or their regular ads, because people are saying, you know, what are they doing? They're obviously not listening to us at all. They've got no interest in their social media audience because they're still pumping out this stuff. Mm hmm.
Rob Tyson 18:58
Yeah. So yeah, so Just kind of needing to adapt, adapt a bit.
Julia Bramble 19:03
Yeah. And it doesn't, it doesn't have to be huge. I've seen, who was it's a video company, that's they're trying to get us to buy their video production tool. I can't remember what they're called now. But up until about three weeks ago, they were running ads on Twitter that were just talking about that all. And just recently, I've noticed that ads are subtly different. They're saying, okay, so you're trying to run your SME from home, and you've got this set. And the other challenge while creating your videos doesn't have to be a challenge. So literally, they just changed it up to that degree. And all of a sudden, they're now relevant to what's going on. It didn't take long and for me, I can't actually understand what took them so long to do. But there we are, at least they have actually done it, you know, so it doesn't have to, we don't have to be making major changes to what it is that we want to actually get across in terms of our message, but we do need to make it more relatable than ever. And I was as I said before, I was suggests that coming out of this because people on social now will have been would have seen how how brands can be so very human and can be so connected, that if you're not doing that coming out of this phase, then also you stand to be sidelined. So don't think this is just relevant for now. It's going to cover how we move out of this as well.
Unknown Speaker 20:23
Okay,
Rob Tyson 20:24
that's good advice. That's good advice. All right. So is there anything more on that kind of step which, which is really about as I say, just getting out of that publish, publish publish mindset and actually listening a bit more. And they
Julia Bramble 20:42
probably probably know I mean, it moves into my third step, which was about thinking about how to scale this up a little bit without, you know, losing all day doing it which was really around I know that a lot of people like to shut down their social media content and especially when it comes to Twitter. And I still see lots and lots of businesses out there just tweeting, for example, links to their blogs, or links to other people's stuff, which is even worse. Because if you're just posting links to other people's stuff, then how are we going to find out about you and what you're all about, and for For a start, but also people who are tweeting like links to stuff on their website or stuff on their YouTube channel. You are asking people to a read your tweets, when it might not seem interesting or relevant to them at all. And be then click away from Twitter, where they actually are where they're probably quite enjoying having two way conversations with other people to another site. And then to go and actually read or watch whatever it is. Now, if someone's never met you before the chances of them actually going and doing that are quite slim, because you're actually asking them to take a very small, but it's a commitment nonetheless. So We want to make sure that when we are on social media platforms, especially Twitter, we've got content designed to actually attract people within that post itself. So attract and encourage interaction. So especially for Twitter, but also for the other sites as well think about providing value, or a reason for people to engage. And that's especially important within the post itself. So if you are scheduling stuff, then make sure you've got a mix of content. So you've got content for people who've never yet met you. Who might be you might have met you for the first time, like right now, how are you going to engage with that person, you don't want to be sending them off anywhere else? How are you going to encourage them to respond to you or give them something of value that they can take away and act on from within that post. So do do that, but I would suggest also trying to decrease the amount that we shedule is on places like Twitter, be present be in the moment because again, especially now, what we're finding is people are just jumping on, they're jumping on Twitter for a bit of a sanity check for a bit of reassurance to get away from the people that are actually locked down with at the moment and just talk to somebody else. And the tweets that are out there that look and feel like scheduled tweets, again, are getting bypassed and sidelined. Whereas the tweets that are conversational, or are providing value, where they are the ones that are getting engaged with. So I think again, especially Twitter, we may see that looking very different when we come out of this face. So have some sheduled tweets that make them look as if they're not sheduled. But also be prepared. spend the time and just go in and be present with people as well. Just start up a conversation, just share something that's going on with your day. Just say, oh, I've just done this silly thing. Can anyone else relate that type of stuff because that's what gets people talking. That's what gets people to feel like they can easily connect with you because they've done the same goofball thing. And they think it's really funny. I mean, one of the biggest conversations I've seen going on on Twitter over the past couple of days was someone saying, oh, it is okay to wear the same clothes three days in a row, isn't it? You know, that type of stuff. That's the stuff that's getting responses at the moment. And that kind of stuff. We'll be getting responses as we move out of this as well.
Rob Tyson 24:25
No, interesting. And what's the character limit on on a tweet these days? Because it used to be very small, didn't it? But what is it now?
Julia Bramble 24:33
It used to be 120. It's now 240. So you can actually say quite a lot into 40. And what people are doing a lot more of now than they used to do is actually having Twitter threads. So Twitter allows you to sort of thread all your tweets together. So I mean, sometimes when people are actually wanting to share results from something or talk about something at length, you'll see threads going on 18 or 19 tweets. I wouldn't necessarily suggest that but you will find that people will read a whole set of tweets. If they find it interesting enough.
Rob Tyson 25:02
Yeah, I mean, I that's
Unknown Speaker 25:04
kind of
Rob Tyson 25:06
partly why I asked the question because I was thinking of stuff I've seen lately on Twitter. I'm not a big user. But I do go in there from time to time. And that was something that I noticed stuff that was there were long form articles, but they were broken up into a series of many tweets, as you say they're so so it's just a kind of interesting development over the last couple of years, I guess, but,
Julia Bramble 25:31
yeah, yeah, no, it really is. And we see, you know, even brands that have been used to maybe just sharing out those sort of very punchy, catchy, very short character tweets, we now seem to see them even using maybe two or three tweets to share the message that they want to. And again, you know, if we are thinking about being slightly more conversational and slightly more chatty, then we may well find that we need to use a couple of tweets actually, to get that point across. Let's just go 85 people have a much more used to seeing that now.
Rob Tyson 26:02
And do you? Do you have any? You know, I get the messages is to try and be a bit more spontaneous. But equally, do you have some kind of go to formats that you always use to get a conversation going? Or? I mean, you mentioned a couple, but I just wonder, are there any others?
Unknown Speaker 26:26
You know, if you're
Rob Tyson 26:26
just completely bereft of ideas like I am sometimes, is there anything? Is there anything kind of generic that you can think of,
that people could could get started with?
Julia Bramble 26:41
If you're completely bereft of ideas, I mean, what I done that served me very well is to think about top tips that I would like to share with people so say, you know, we've got the conversational side, which is just kind of, you know, sharing stuff that's going on for you at the moment all that's about bit funny or something like that. But the other side also is we want probably to be going out there and demonstrating our expertise and sharing value with people both now and into the future. So thinking about those top tips that we can share, that will really help people, but kind of trying to pare them down into maybe two sentences that really can give somebody something to go away with at that time and put into action or encourage them to think differently maybe about what it is that you do. So for example, I already create content like that for my Instagram. So what I tend to do quite often is to go back somewhat through some of my Instagram posts, and pull out the ones that I think will work well. And then either use the image that I've created for Instagram or recreate something slightly different for Twitter, and then share that out on Twitter as a sort of value tweet. And you can share that then a number of times because you could always change the wording that goes along with that answer. To share out there on Twitter so you can repurpose it. So, brainstorm, for example, you know, 10 nuggets that you think you'd really like to share whether they are just evergreen content or whether they something that you've just discovered now, and it can be the smallest detail about using something, and someone somewhere is still going to find that really useful. You know, for example, when this all kicked off, lots of people started sharing little details about how to use zoom, for example, that really helped other people along the way. And it didn't have to be anything earth shattering at all. So take away the idea that you've got to be changing the world and just share tiny little details. And that works incredibly well. And also, in terms of the human side, actually sharing those tiny little details or those tiny little funny stories about the messages made in the kitchen, spilling your cup of coffee or whatever it is. Actually they work really well.
Rob Tyson 28:52
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, sure, sure. All right. So we've we've talked a bit about connecting with people respond. to people and also doing it, you know, doing this in real time so not doing not just trying to schedule schedule stuff on automate everything Yeah. Because it kind of defeats the object. Um, what else any other any other sort of tips or ideas for us
Julia Bramble 29:19
tips in terms of creating the content. We were already seeing a move towards this anyway because of the prevalence of stories and livestreams and everything else. But please try and avoid the pressure to be presenting highly polished content like images and videos and stuff like that because you know what? People look right through that now they kind of think Oh, that looks a bit too perfect. What's the real story underneath, so you may as well just present the real story in the first place. So images taken on your phone, ditto videos taken on your phone, you don't have to be perfect. All people love Seeing people on live people love seeing celebrities streaming from their living room. And Martin Queens in his PJ's, as we've talked about, and Chancellor of the Exchequer working from home, in his hoodie, they are all used to just seeing life as it is now. So I think Gone are the days of those highly polished, you know, marketing videos and, and professional photo shoots almost were much more interested in actually seeing the human. So you if you're a small business, if you are the person behind your brand, actually, this is where you can win out against the larger businesses who are going to find it may be much more difficult to actually get this through compliance and get that sort of stuff approved as a smaller business, we can just go and do this straightaway. We can stick our faces in front of our phone and make a 10 or 15 second video and share it out there or jump on Twitter live or Facebook Live and share it out there. The big companies can't whereas actually, if we want people to be connecting with us, that's way to do it to really share that, just that that human start to show that we are so keen to get our stuff out there that we're not going to faff around trying to make it look perfect because what we want to do is actually get out there and reach people. And that's what they want to know.
Rob Tyson 31:16
It's really interesting, isn't it? I wonder if that will ever come back that kind of that style of very produced content because it doesn't feel like just a fashion does it? This this much more casual style, it feels like it almost feels unthinkable now doesn't mean that that kind of old, old style of doing stuff in a really polished way would ever be the way to go again, but I guess time will tell.
Julia Bramble 31:48
Yeah, time will tell you're absolutely right. But I've come across so many brands and businesses that were really struggled to, to step out of that sort of corporate corporate branding and that idea Now, you know, you see lots of people selling templates to make your Instagram Stories look perfect, or templates to make your Instagram newsfeed look like this wonderful, you know, organized, polished checkerboard. And I just, I just kind of think that isn't going to wash for much longer. I think people really just want to see who is behind all this, you know, what are you about? What's special about you? Who are you as a person? And and what's in it for me? Why is that important to me. So you know, be up front and center about that, try and remove those barriers, rather than putting them up there. That's not to say that you can't have your brand out there, say your logo in the corner of your photos and things like that if you feel you need to But personally, I think you know, the time has come actually for stripping away a lot of the branding when it comes to our content.
Rob Tyson 32:54
Yeah, we're not really interesting, really interesting. Now we'll do this has been really good. So just to wrap up But if people were just to take one piece of advice away, because we've covered quite a lot of ground, what would that be?
Julia Bramble 33:07
to pop into your social platform that you enjoy using most? As a business pop in there in Facebook, you're going to have to go and have a punter on Facebook groups, probably because as a page, you can't go and talk to people as you know. So Facebook groups Instagram or Twitter and go and start listening to other people and joining in their conversations and seeing what it is they have to say.
Rob Tyson 33:33
Excellent. That's great. where's the best place for people to get more from you, Julia?
Julia Bramble 33:39
Oh, you can with across to my website, which is Bramble buzz.co.uk or find me on social if you want to come and have a chat, which would be lovely. come and find me on social media. I'm at Julia Bramble everywhere.
Rob Tyson 33:51
Excellent. Julia, thank you so much. This has been really interesting.
Julia Bramble 33:55
You're very welcome. Thank you so much for having me on.
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