Episode Details

In this episode, our guest is Natalie Speers, the Founder & CEO of Social Ally, an agency in the digital marketing and social media space.

It was a great chat, in which we talk about how being an early adopter has pushed her out of her comfort zones, particularly in the social media space in the last decade. Natalie also shares some incredible social media stats that prove that everyone needs to use social media, regardless of your industry.

We then go through her list of common mistakes business owners and leaders make on social media and what they should be doing instead, and then we round up with her explaining what visual disruption - a term she coined - is and how to introduce it into your social posting strategy.

You can connect with Natalie Speers on LinkedIn or by email: natalie@socialallyusa.com.

Key Quotes from Natalie Speers

Keeping up with the ever-changing social media landscape

• I visit various websites, such as Social Media Examiner and Social Media Today. I'll visit those three times a week to read the articles of anything up and coming that's new, and I'll be sure and relay that to my entire staff. And if it's something of extreme interest that directly impacts us and how we service our clients, then I'll do training on it with all of my staff.
• My best ideas come to me when I'm laying in bed and it's the middle of the night and I wake up and I have some sort of great idea, so I go and write it down in my phone and then I'll go research accordingly the following day.

Misconceptions of social media and some incredible stats

• The most common misconception of social media is that often times people think it's just for young people or a social media marketing strategy won't work for their industry.

• So, you have Facebook. Obviously it's still the reigning champion. It has 2.27 billion monthly active users. That's a quarter of the entire world population, which is really crazy. The fastest-growing demographic on Facebook is ages 50 to 56 years old. So, again, it's not just about young people. All ages are on social media.
• Then, take a look at YouTube. YouTube is the second largest search engine below Google - 5 billion videos are watched per day and 300 hours of video are uploaded per minute!
• Instagram is more of a millennial-driven crowd; the 18 to 34-year olds are primarily using it.
• Twitter has 66 million monthly active users, and, interestingly, 34% of Twitter users are ages 25 to 34, favouring the side of females.
• A ton of millennials use Pinterest - as much as Instagram. The median age is 40, typically female and highly-educated.
• I like to refer to LinkedIn as a professional goldmine. It's a database for professionals by professionals. There is a lot of opportunity to be had on LinkedIn. Any business should define a LinkedIn prospecting strategy because I have seen a lot of success and lead generation come from LinkedIn.

Why you can't afford not to use social media

• A lot of people come to me and for whatever reason, they don't think social media applies to their industry. So, to these people, I ask, "Do you not want your business to show up on a Google search when a user is searching for whatever service or product you're providing?!"
• Every minute there are 40,000 Google search queries happening. This equates to 3.5 billion searches a day!
• People are literally searching for a