Lessons

Lesson Info

Pitching An Experience: Social Media

So, my goal is to have two bums in seats everyday and not even caring not everyday, every week, and not even caring if they're paying, ultimately I hope that they do of course, but you know just get two shoots every week, and so you said before about if you need this many people then you need to be in front of this many people and I worked it out where I needed to do like 40 people a week, be in front of 40 people a week and so that has been what I've been trying to do so my original question to you then was what would the daily practice be to get in front of 40 people, I mean I have some things that I'm trying to do but it's not materializing for me, do you know-- Do you have Instagram? I actually just started after much pressure from a lot of people to add Instagram, I did. You had to have pressure to get on a free marketing stream for your business that visually markets your photography? I know. Oh Jamie, you're so lucky you're sitting far away from me right now-- Yeah, ...

and I have this so But I could throw a shoe. (audience laughs) Do you have Twitter? I do, but I don't use it. Facebook? Yeah, that it what I use and-- Page? it doesn't work, I'm sorry? Do you have a page or personal? Yeah, yeah, yeah page-- How many people follow your page? Like 350. Okay, how often do you post on there? Couple times a week. Okay, do you keep the content interesting and photography based? I sure try, yeah I do, a weekly style Sunday where I talk about what you could wear to photo shoots and then I try to show new content with photos every week-- Yeah, it's the photos, forget the bounce, not so much the content. Yeah, I get like nothing, but I just wanna have really active blogs so I try to do that So, I've worked all my social media, not Pinterest. I worked all my social media because right from the beginning I modeled my social media on the people that had really outstanding social media at the time and when I sort of... three years ago the most outstanding social media that I'd seen in our industry was Jasmine Star. Jasmine has incredible star profile and she built up her social media and I didn't know her for you know I lived in Australia at the time and I was watching her as a photographer build her social network and I built my Facebook page in two and a half years I mean two and a half years ago I didn't have a Facebook page now I'm at 113,000 but I've never paid for a like. That audience needs to be built, it needs to be maintained and it needs to be serviced constantly and I find now I'm at this really interesting peak because first it was people that I recognized immediately that were in my following group and then I got bigger and bigger and bigger and I noticed that people following me I didn't recognize them so much anymore and then the comments become a little bit colder and crueler because they don't know you they've just linked you from somewhere else so it's all of a sudden your community is larger and something happens but I know now no truer than it was when I had 1000 likes is people really wanted to see the rules of content and here's the rules of content for Facebook: It has to be 40% positive opinion, 40% knowledge, so you've got to give something to your audience that's interesting. 10% sell and 10% personality, you have to be consistent and it has to drive traffic. Now when I first started out, I posted a lot of sort of work and then I got no one so I started posting more personal stuff because people knew me, they were connected to me, they knew, you know and I'd be funny and I'd be trying interesting, but I would be personal I would post you know selfies and pictures of my dog. Now at 113,000, when I post pictures of myself or my dog I lose followers so I can lose up to two or three followers when I post a personal image but when I post work I bounce constantly, so unfortunately the only thing you can do across all your social media is just try and be as consistent and interesting as you can and you just gotta keep trying finding ways to share interesting, engaging content but keeping to those rules of numbers and yes, you've gotta be on Instagram now, its the new thing, also you can lose your Facebook in a day, you can wake up tomorrow and its gone and all the hard work you put into it could be taken away-- (Jamie) I actually heard about someone else-- Yeah The same thing that happened to you Because what they do is they cloned my page they screenshot my profile shot and then they reported me as doing business on my Facebook page, and Facebook looked at my page and just deleted it and I was like but I don't get a write or reply, there's no help disc, it's just gone and then somebody else has my photo and my name and everything, it was crazy. But okay, stay on point, daily practice, that is a daily practice for me it has been a daily practice for two and a half years. I have built this audience that I have this following that I have by constantly giving to them and I love it, like the engagement that I feel, especially when I was traveling. I would be alone in a country and I could go on Facebook and I see names that I don't... I've never met these people and I feel like they're my friends and my whole family would be asleep on the other side of the country and I couldn't talk to people I know and love and yet people I've never met that have followed me for two years pop up and have this conversation with me on Facebook and I'd be like I don't even know these people and I felt connected to them so you know that to me was great but it's constant, constant, constant daily practice. Of my work or of just-- Your work. What? So remember my content rules for social media, something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue, blue from the hat, something borrowed is a share, something old is from back in the day when you were new and something new is something you've just shot and keep rotating them, keep it interesting. I'm at something blue and going back to a previous story that I had of my sort of personal energy that I'm gonna drive for. You think that's too blue, you know to talk about those things or I guess you know-- I wouldn't every month say I lost my brother and you know because human nature is kind of ironic we have this incredible empathy for authentic stories and then you cross this line where it's just like, excuse me while I get my violin. You know what I mean and it's kind of like wow we're incredible, we will listen to people, we will give to them and give to them but when they overstep that need to... You know, don't market through your grief, but don't be afraid of using your true story and your authenticity to drive you and like I said, sometimes you don't have to say it but your energy permeates it and I feel like that's really really important. Don't be afraid of that, like it's just something that you can smell when people are being disingenuous. You can, I feel like it's a very obvious thing. So you know how you said, you know you have to be passionate, you have to love what you're doing in order to do it-- No passion is to suffer, you have to be enthusiastic. Okay, you have to be enthusiastic to do what you do. Do you have to be enthusiastic about social media to do it, do you have to do things that you're not passionate or you're not enthusiastic about in order to be successful? I mean, there's people that hate social media, I'm a terrible blogger. Oh yeah-- You love blogging. I do, and I've been really lazy on my blog lately because I have been building this new website and it's taking me forever and you just spend all this time on the computer and then you forget that people aren't getting what they normally get from you. If you don't like blogging, don't start one. However, look at your blog instead like an archive. So I considered that once you Facebook something it's gone in a newsfeed within 30 seconds right? The more people comment on your thread, the more it bounces back to the top, but imagine that if you post something you then go and just quickly post it on your blog then it's archived by date on your blog and anybody can search that and look that up or just go back through your blog and read it linear on a timeline and you don't have to write more than one paragraph so maybe, did an incredible shoot today in a water feature in this gorgeous gown of Margaret, and you can, you know... I'm speaking to photographers so I tend to put my camera settings and but if you're not if you're speaking to clients just show the work and keep it current and then they'll go to your website and they'll look at your gallery which you haven't changed for four years but then they'll go to your blog and all of your fresh work will be there and archived. You don't have to love social media to do that you just have to exercise some... What do you call it? Discipline? Yes, you gotta exercise, no, discipline in making it a weekly practice to post your shoots, it's just discipline. It's not fun, but you've got to at least put two photos from the shoot, your most recent shoot on your blog and write one paragraph. I write storytelling blogs, you know I hop on and hop on because I love it so much but you know if I run out of time my blog's what suffers and then people write on my Facebook, "Sue Bryce hasn't blogged lately, hint hint." And I'm always like ahhhh, 'cause I'm like I'm trying to do everything and I can't do everything and the truth is is I could just put up two images and write a paragraph which is what I do on Facebook. True. Yeah, it's a daily practice, daily practice So what about, oh I'm sorry go ahead. I was just gonna say, one of the things I love about 28 Days is the first step is learning to love yourself and have a passion for chasing it down, but what's exceptionally phenomenal about it is... I can't remember where I came across it... It takes 21 to 30 days to rewire your... Actually it was "Change Your Brain, Change Yourself", "The Brain that Changes Itself"... That daily practice, that's what this is about it's about actually getting yourself going through a daily practice and what I heard this morning when you were talking... Sorry, not you, the person who was commenting about their blogs. I keep hearing people chime about their blogs and we have to give up in order to go up, right? We have to give up in order to go up and we do that, that's a daily decision, you have to choose daily to give up to go up. You know something, I still have to give up to go up to my next level now. Everyday. Like, I feel like that doesn't get easier although I am reminded like sometimes I think to myself, alright I have to go to the next level because people are kind of expecting me too, I have this following that I have to now go to the next level and then I'm like, I'm not ready to go to the next level and then I was like well, you have to because you gotta keep moving otherwise, you stagnate and die and, you know, I've managed to maintain an income from being a photographer for 25 years because I've managed to evolve myself constantly and keep going to the next level but I noticed a long time ago that in order to go to the next level, we create something very negative in order to do that. And the reason we do that is to make change that it's very hard to just change something without being forced to change so if I... You know, you can't break up with someone so you be really mean to them and then you force them to dump you and then you're not the bad person, we do that all the time, sometimes we can't do something and we get really really sick because then you have an excuse and you are genuinely sick, don't get me wrong this is not a make up sick, you're not acting sick. I've seen people produce outstanding injuries and pain in their bodies in order to avoid emotionally fronting out to something, I've seen it over and over again. Your body does not lie, it will not... It simply will not allow your emotion to stay stored in there and hidden. We find ways constantly to create negative situations. We start hating people at work because then we go home and tell our spouse how bad these people are and then we're treated badly and then our spouse says you can leave and I'll support you. We do things like that... Human nature is unbelievable, I think we are the most clever, remarkable human being... Behavior is just outrageous, however we don't need to create negative situations to force change, you can change any time but it's almost impossible to, why? When is enough, you know, when is enough money in your savings account enough to leave that job you don't like? When is enough of a stagnant relationship to leave it behind? When is it enough to have a friend that takes and takes and takes and takes that you get nothing from to stand up for yourself and say enough, I don't get anything back from this friendship. When is it enough, it's never enough and sometimes if we create situations that end those relationships, it's not our fault. It just happened and then we don't have to take responsibility for it. The one thing I learned in business was to man up and I'm saying that as a woman in business. Man up. You know, what is it? You've got a wishbone where your backbone should be? (audience laughs) Something like that, I read that on Instagram the other day, you've got a wishbone I wish this person didn't... Man up. Business is business, man up. It's the first thing I teach women in business is man up. Men definitely have a more logical way of confronting... Although it doesn't make them better at it, it's just more logical than women, we tend to get all emotional and bitch about it and go about it in all the wrong ways but the truth is, you must learn to be a sort of... Somebody posted In Bed with Sue the other day, I don't have a problem saying this, I'm sorry if it offends you but you did post it in a group with 17,000 people in it so I'm gonna assume it's not a secret, that they didn't like a makeup artist and they wanted to phase them out, how should they do this? And people started to write, well just tell her that you're gonna hire lots of different people and I was like you could just tell her very gently that she's not quite at the skill level that you would like her to be at. And, she will up skill herself, you will learn a certain lesson of responsibility as a business owner. She will know the truth, you would have been honest, there would be no ill feeling. And the thread kind of came to a halt and I wondered if people were confronted by this and then it occurred to me, we have a lot of emotional dishonesty. A lot, it's easier to make up a lie than to tell that girl that she wasn't doing a good enough job and it's so horrible and we've all done it, we all do it and in that conversation, Nikki and I had a conversation where we realized that we hadn't confronted someone in our working life in both of our businesses that we needed to speak to that we should have told the truth to and in getting annoyed about that thread, we both acknowledged that we weren't doing it and-- Like, society doesn't encourage you to do that-- Yes, it does. Every time I feel like I have an honest conversation with someone and tell them what I'm thinking, people get offended, they get bent out of shape... A lot of it's delivery, if your delivery's not right, that screws it all up. True. But you know what, Nikki brought up the same point and I said to Nikki, okay let's do a dialogue where I confront you about something but I only own my part in it so instead of saying "you didn't do this, you didn't do this, you made me feel like this, you made me feel like this, you made me feel like that, then you did this, then you did this, I'm blaming blaming blaming blaming you." But, if I was to say, "I'm so gattered, because I really need you to be at a higher skill level, and you're not quite there yet, so I have employed, or found, somebody that's at a better skill level than you," and saying that, "this is what I think you're incredible at, so I need somebody that's gonna really bring it to the table. What I loved about you was you're always early, you're always well dressed, and I loved the way you spoke to my clients. So if you wanna go and up skill yourself, do some more training, I'd happily look at you again in a few months, but right now, you know"... I mean there's always a way to own what you do... Or how about instead of, "you did this," "When you said that to me, I felt this way. I'm gonna own that, and I know that I maybe shouldn't have and it's taught me a great lesson, but it really hurt my feelings." That's saying, "me, me, me, me." I'm taking responsibility for something that you did to hurt me but it's not blaming you. I know, I mean that's the delivery-- Yeah Which is, it's easy to say that but it's a whole nother thing to be able to Actually do it do that and practice that. You're right-- That's another practice and it's really hard to do. I offend people all the time, I'm very direct I don't realize that I offend people until afterwards when they tell me I've offended them. I always think to myself the most interesting thing about me is you could be offensive towards me and I would take it as a lesson, so I guess I look at other people the same. There are very gentle people in this world that you offend very very easily. People have followed me, I've offended them, they unfollow me and now I'm like I wonder what I did wrong to her and then I think back and I can't think of what I did but clearly I did something wrong and so they're either offended by something I've done or said and... I mean, I hate that feeling but that's definitely who I am but I try to be aware of it and I try to you know be conscious of it 'cause I think it's really really (mumbles) don't wanna go and hurt people's feelings all the time. It does happen, but really (mumbles) emotional honesty I feel like it's a huge important part. This is the slide that I put up because we talked about it already. Somebody tweeted it, what you're going through right now, what is it teaching you? I want you to apply that to illness, to grief, to anything. If that's a question you could ask right now, and you're locked in a hell over something or you are struggling and I can only tell you everything that I've been through in terms of struggling. If I had looked back to this question I could find the lesson in everything I've been through. Yeah, I could tell you, which is probably why I moved through each lesson. I could tell you what I learned from each lesson and I always think to myself, what are you learning right now, because this keeps coming up and if it keeps coming up it's showing you something that you need to know. That's another great quote, something along the lines of yeah you'll keep getting it, you'll keep getting the lesson over and over if you haven't learned it. Yeah, I think (mumbles) said,-- Maybe. "You will release an identity when you move through it when you no longer need it." So let's talk about... So, do you wanna go through some more slides? I've got a couple up here-- Okay that I just wanna talk about. One of them is this, I wanna talk about the smackdown. I thought long and hard about showing this. I got approached by a woman who came up to me in WPBI in Vegas when I did the fear talks a year and a half ago, 18 months ago and she was kinda shaking and crying and I said to her, "What's wrong?" and she said, "You taught a class on video and you said go, make videos. So, I took $5000 out of my savings account, I went to a videographer, I gave them $5000, I said make a video like this one, which is like what you made." And he made a video like it and it was kind of a ripoff of one of my videos to a point where it was a pretty obvious ripoff. You know I saw it and I was like, you know... Some photographers put it on a private thread and just ripped on her like nobody's business and somebody in that thread sent it to her, so she's reading a thread about yourself. I've read a few threads about myself, now I don't read them 'cause it's just anonymous commenting so at the end of the day, except for it's not anonymous 'cause it's on Facebook. What they did to this woman on that thread was just so cruel and she gave up, stopped shooting, gave up her business, but she was shaking because she said to me, "You told me to go and make a video and I went and made a video." And I was like, okay I did, I did. I said go and make a video like this one. I didn't mean like this one, but again was a good idea so why not? I've seen people just smackdown so badly like that they just get torn apart and that's it, they're just sitting at home crying and hurting and how do you come back from that? And so, she was asking me how does she come back from that and I said, well the first thing I would do is confront the smackdown, and I would send me the video and I'll post it, I'll post it and we'll talk about what is copying, what is the mistake you made and you can own up to the mistake you made. I shouldn't have just said copy this video. You know, maybe you can own up to the industry, maybe you can say sorry or (Sue coughs) maybe, just maybe you can just get over it. It's yesterday's fish and ship paper. But to her it's not, today's news is her life and there's just no getting over it and she's just lost all... What's heartbreaking about that is you know she's lost her dream of being a photographer because she really tried to put herself out there and she got smacked down. How would you respond to that? I mean at the end of the day, we are by nature, we have this equilibrium and we've gotta maintain an equilibrium of humble, gratitude, and ego. I'm learning about myself and I'm getting better and I'm seeing myself as better and I'm growing and it's sort of an even flow and it's very easy to get stuck in the ego and get smacked down for it, but for every smackdown I've ever had, I kind of have always looked at it like an equilibrium that there was always an equal balance of push up. So maybe the people that smack you down see the push up and they don't like it. I can tell you a fact, whenever I post a shoot that gets a really big hit, like in the thousands, the next shoot I post gets a smackdown and I don't know whether people see the big post going viral and they're like it's not even that good and then they wait til the next shoot and I get the smackdown. But I know every time I post a really full on shoot that gets a really big post I'm gonna follow it up with a smackdown. And I've been watching In Bed with Sue and lately people have been posting and they got quite an instant reaction so they quickly jumped on and posted two more shoots and they got the smackdown on the second and third and it was like up up up, down down down you go! (audience laughs) And I watched this happen and there is an equilibrium there and whether it exists in your own ego and you're attracted or whether the audience keeps it real. I mean I have to keep it real all the time in order to keep balance. You know, people send me the most extraordinary emails, I get everything from, "I have hated you from the day you first did your first CreativeLive, and I still do, and then it occurred to me the other day that I envy you." And I was like, "Oh, do I say thank you, I don't know if I say thank you." "I liked you better when you were fat." And I got emails when I was fat saying "You're really fat." So I was like do I get thinner, do I not get thinner, do I not care what people think and just be myself? I mean you get the (mumbles) of love and hate but I'm gonna say this, I tell my friends this all the time. I've got 113,000 followers on my Facebook page. If I was to put 113,000 people in a stadium, in one stadium, all of my followers, how many would you like? How many mean people would be in there? How many douchebags, what's the percentage, cross-ratio of the number of people? That's what you're dealing with on your social media. You know, that's really really good to know because I personally struggle to even start a blog like I'm one of those (mumbles) thinks I'm not gonna start it because that's not for me but realize the importance of it. But to realize that if I do decide to launch, and when I do, I'm gonna get the up up smackdown. And that's important because that could easily make me just give up shortly after I start but knowing that may be coming in the horizon is key. You can guarantee you're gonna get a smackdown. Somebody said to me when you blow up with an audience they push push push you up and then they start to pull pull pull you down. That is so true and not true, like I never saw it as being pushed up and I never saw it as being pulled down. I read a quote the other day that said, "We love to support the underdog, but when was the last time you supported someone more successful than you?" Well I have this incredible support on my Facebook page, I've gotta be the luckiest person alive, I post something and the support then feedback I get is so consistent. People will stop and leave a positive comment and there might be one negative comment and you know two hundred positive comments it blows my mind that people are that kind. And I love that I'm so lucky... And yeah the negative ones come in but they're never in the same ratio. But do expect that it's gonna hurt, it comes out of nowhere, I call them drive-by shootings. You know, especially when they're on Twitter, because you don't get the number plate. (audience laughs) You just get shot and it really shocks you and it hurts and you're always sort of outside a restaurant, you know a drive-by shooting. Yeah, but you know-- It's good practice too for your clients and when you get shot down, I mean if this is how it is out in the world then you toughen up your skin a little bit for when your client shuts you down, or when they don't like your work, or when they don't want to hire you. And then think about the stadium thing. Have you ever been on a date with someone you didn't like and they liked you? And then at that awkward moment when they're like we should take this to the next level and you're like no I'd be happy if I never saw you again. (audience laughs) You know that is the most horrible situation to be in and yet you know you've got to say it. You've got to say it because it's like oh no, now I'm right in front of you and you're like... And by next level, what do you mean by that? (audience laughs) This might be a good analogy for your blogs because if you're the kind of person that says yeah call me Yeah call me sometime Okay-- No, don't call me, yeah But you know there's women that will stand up and say no I'm not interested and then there's other women'll say I'll just never answer him again Yeah, but guys are the same Yeah but that's a block, that's like you're not being honest, Yeah You're not being emotionally honest Not being emotionally honest (Sue laughs) Oh boy I feel a story coming on. (audience laughs) No, I try to keep my dating life off CreativeLive. Ugh-- Hilarious-- Next slide. (audience laughs) Moving right along.