Hey, guys! I’m back with another Blog article!

The second half of 2019 is officially here now! It’s already July, and I want to inspire you all. I want every single one of you to CRUSH IT, so that we go out with a super mega 💥BANG 💥 at the end of 2019, going forward into 2020. Speaking of July, I just realized that it is the ONE YEAR ANNIVERSARY of this Blog. I launched it exactly one year ago. Time really flies when you’re having fun, right?

Today, I have a great topic for you. The reality is that we are STILL in the greatest marketing era in the history of mankind, and the best is yet to come. There is a lot of greatness right in front of us as well as ahead of us, and we are going to keep on expanding from it NON-STOP. So I want to make sure to keep giving you all a lot of value, in hopes that you grab some of this value, and that you are able to use it to expand your own businesses and brands. Because when you reach the point where you really know what you’re doing, you can take full advantage of the incredible opportunities that are being handed to us. 

So having said that, today I’m going to be sharing how to make a significant IMPACT in Social Media in this second half of 2019 so that your business can truly level up and expand like never before. Whether your business is an online business, or solely Amazon-based, if it’s a lead generation business, a service business, a mobile business, or a brick and mortar storefront… WHATEVER it is, the one thing that is a common denominator between ALL of us is that we will ALWAYS need more traffic and more attention.  This exact thing that I’m going to be talking about today. These tips that I’m going to be sharing are the key for you to be able to take your business to the next level.

Now, I want to make sure that you know that I am not just talking out of some dream. 

What I am talking about is based on practical observation of data. 

Now, I know that a lot of you are pretty familiar with me and my story, but If this is the first time you’re reading one of my articles, or if this is the first time that you have ever encountered my content, let me share the fact that I have a marketing agency with over 55 staff, and we spend about $600,000 a month on Facebook advertising, so BELIEVE ME, we know what’s working and what’s not working. Thus, this is all based on data that we have been closely observing and monitoring for a few years now.

The audiences that have been following me in the social media world and applying the practical steps that I’ve been sharing in my high-value FREE content, the students who follow me and are a part of my programs and have taken my courses (whether my FREE mini-courses and/or my larger courses and my Internships and Masterminds), they are receiving the EXACT systems and strategies that are working today, which they can begin implementing into their business… So, YES, I am going all out! I am opening up my books, and I’m going to show you EXACTLY what works AND what doesn’t work, based on what I have been personally observing. A couple of things to mention for those who may not know the accounts that I handle, I handle accounts for real Social Media Superstars like my own father, Dr. Frank Suarez. He has over a million subscribers on YouTube, a million followers on Facebook, and he’s a super rock star, at 69 years old. 

Also, for the past 2 years, I’ve been the one who handles the channels across various platforms for Dr. Eric Berg, a Social Media superstar with 3 MILLION YouTube SUBSCRIBERS, over half a million followers on Facebook, and hundreds of thousands of Instagram followers as well. And, in reality, I’m the one who drives their social media strategies and I’m the one in charge of my agency continuing to explode their channels. Below is a photo pretty exciting photo of Dr. Berg: Here he is, being recently featured (just a few weeks ago) on the cover of a well-known National publication, Woman’s World Magazine! 

So anyway, I say all of this to prove the point that while I’m handling such GIANT accounts as well as many others, trust me; I have a lot of data. Over the last few years, I’ve invested over $10 million on Facebook advertising. So you may want to pay attention to what I’m saying here,  because wherever you currently are in your business, whether you’re just beginning to dabble in the social media world, or if you are pretty well-versed in it, and are just ready to take it to the next level, this is going to help you get there! I am going to share with you what I’ve been closely observing in the Social Media world. Of course, You will need to go and jump in there, TAKE ACTION, implement it and create the results for yourself.

I want to talk about the things that I think all of you need to be focused on in the current social media environment, because it has definitely changed quite a bit in the last few years, and it continues to evolve. What was working in 2018 and the first half of 2019, it’s actually going to work even better going forward, and we are already seeing it. I have many brands that I handle that don’t have a “famous face”, meaning that they don’t have a Dr. Berg or a Dr. Frank Suarez or a Manuel Suarez to be the “face” of their brands . They are faceless brands, but good brands, nonetheless. Well, I’ve been able to do some great things for these brands. One of the main things I’ve done is incorporate systems for them on social media to explode their e-commerce channels and generate a MINIMUM of “$1 invested ➡️ $3 in sales”, which is what they call a 3 ROI or 300% Return On Investment. (All 3 of those terms mean the same thing; how you say it is a matter of personal preference.) Overall, there’s a system that we are incorporating, using social media to generate massive ROI (Return On Investment) across the various channels and platforms on social media.

So, NOW we’ve come to the part where you REALLY want to  pay attention, because I am about to share the exact tips I’ve found that are working today, in present time. You can actually explore each one individually, but the main thing that I want you to understand is that the combination of these elements, if you go heavy on them, is going to pay off BIG TIME.  Going BIG is the key, guys. Social Media is no longer a part-time job. That’s right. Social Media is no longer something that you just do in your spare time. Social Media advertising, Content Creation and Content Marketing requires its own department. And if you’re not already doing that in your organization, you are leaving an enormous amount of money on the table, because, simply stated,

Social Media is a term that describes the current state of communications of this planet. 

This means that we are using Social Media to communicate to everybody else out there; we’re using it to find out what we like and what we don’t like, what brands we want to engage with and which brands we don’t want to engage with. We are using it to connect with the world. We no longer go to newspapers 🗞, television 📺, radio 📻or magazines; nowadays, for the most part we don’t go anywhere else except social media.

Of course,people are still looking at Google to find answers about different things, but even that has gone down. 📉Right now, if someone wants to go to the Dentist, they actually search for RECOMMENDATIONS on Facebook. If they want to find a good Chiropractor, if they want to find a Stylist, if they want to find out about a venue to rent for an event, they don’t go to Google anywhere near as much as they used to. They find out through Social Media and through their network of friends. So, there has been a massive shift in the way that we human beings communicate with everyone else out there. And, as brand owners, our job is to put ourselves in front of these people where they are at. And where are they? They are in the social media world.

So, what do we do? I’m going to start going over these particular points: 

VISUAL CONTENT

One of the things that I want you all to know is that social media also has changed dramatically over the last few years, and it is ever-evolving. Maybe 5 years ago, social media featured a lot of audio content – people would LISTEN 👂🎧 to content all the time. They would open up their desktops/laptops or use their phones/tablets, and consume audio content. They listened to a lot of things that were happening on Facebook or on Instagram. Today, not so much. Right now in 2019, SOCIAL MEDIA REQUIRES VISUAL CONTENT. 

If you are not creating content in a visual fashion, you’re also leaving a lot of money on the table. Let me explain what I mean by that:  You’ve got to remember that people are consuming Facebook, Instagram and YouTube while they are living and going about their day. So, if they’re in the bathroom, they are consuming it silently 🤫. If they are in bed with their spouses and it’s late, they are consuming it silently 🤫 because they don’t want their spouses to get upset. Trust me, I’m one of them. My wife can’t stand it if I’m playing audio content very loudly, (in my case, what I’m usually watching or listening to is marketers speaking — really loud. She cannot handle that. So, it’s important to understand that as a social media advertiser and content marketer, you have to produce visual content that you make that be consumed even if the sound/audio off by using CC ( CLOSED CAPTIONS/SUBTITLES in your videos) AND you can also delight your listeners when the sound is actually ON as well.

What does that mean? That means that in order to keep contending and winning in the Social Media game, when you are creating content yourself — or you’ve hired people under you to create content,  you have to make sure that your content can be completely, 100% understood even if the audio is not turned on, such as when they’re scrolling through their timelines, and they see your video playing, even if they don’t click on it, they can read what you’re saying. If they DO actually happen to click on it to listen to it, then, in that case, you’d better have good quality sound, because if your videos don’t have good quality sound, you’re still going to lose people’s attention. However, the MOST important thing is visual content. How do you do this exactly? Well, go ahead and check it out yourself. Go and take a look at companies who are successful out there on these platforms. What are they doing? Some of these companies out there are doing visual content which could involve using a “face” as the spokesperson for their brand, and this could be either via videos or images/quote cards (images with a quote on them)… and they generally put some text at the top and perhaps some text at the bottom, and they use closed captions (also known as “subtitles”) in the video itself. 😉

So….How do you get all this stuff done? Allow me to introduce you to a very powerful website that can tell you pretty much EVERYTHING that you want to know. That website is  www.google.com. 

If you search on Google “how to create visual content” or “How to create subtitles on your videos”, you’re going to be exposed to different brands of software. I use one in particular which has really been a game changer for me. I am not affiliated with it, but I have been using it with my team for a few years… and although it’s not as advanced as others such as Adobe After Effects or Photoshop,etc… it’s good enough to create the visual content that you need to make, and the beauty of it is that it’s very simple because it has its own canvases that you can just draw on and create visual content that can be consumed very easily. That software is called Camtasia. If you want to find out about it you can search on the website for it. It’s not expensive. You can keep on using it over and over again. So there you have something now that you can use to create visual content. You can also use it to create visual infographics, images, and articles that are interactive. There are lots of things that you can do with Camtasia to create visual content that can easily be consumed for platforms like Facebook and Instagram.

I know I’ve already stated this point, but before I move on to the next one, I feel compelled to reiterate it, because it’s REALLY that important: Here, in the remaining half of 2019 AND BEYOND, your efforts as a marketer, as a business, and as a brand overall have to be directed towards creating content that can be consumed even without audio. If you’re not doing this, or if all you do is Facebook live videos and you expect people to actually buy your products and go to your website, and you expect to expand and build a multi-million dollar empire, it’s not going to happen. You’re going to have to produce visual content.

SHORTER VIDEOS

Another thing that I’m observing, a VERY important thing to pay attention to — is shorter videos. Facebook wants you to do shorter videos, customers want you to do shorter videos, potential prospects want you to do shorter videos. It isn’t a wise idea to be consistently producing 6-minute, 8, 10, or 40-minute long videos (Ok, maybe 40 minutes is an exaggeration, but you get the point.) Make sure that your messages are concise, to-the-point and FAST, because in reality you only have a short time to capture people’s attention. In fact, 

“Humans have shorter attention spans than goldfish” — said a headline of a recent article that I saw. It turns out that throughout 18 years, the average human attention span has reduced from 12 seconds to 8 seconds. That’s lower than a goldfish, which has a 9-second attention span!

Now,  I want you guys to understand the reason for that is because there is so much content out there being produced every single day, because we all now have devices. Everybody has a cell phone, which essentially means that everyone has a “content machine” they carry around in their pockets every minute of every single day. Because of that, there’s an abundance of content being generated and we are competing with wayyyyyyyy too many people now.

Now let me quickly interject and go slightly off topic here, and give you something “contradictory” to that: It’s still very early in the game because all of the mega brands like Coca-cola, Pepsi, GNC, all these “Giants”, they’re not really pouring all their money into this Social Media world YET, at least not on as large a scale as they should be. So, it’s still early in this game and therefore, it’s still affordable for the “little guys” like all of us to continue to do really cheap, affordable and SUPER-EFFECTIVE advertising (when done right) on Instagram and Facebook. It is still  EXTREMELY affordable for us…for now, that is. So the thing to do is to JUMP IN THERE and stake your claim while you can before the GIANT brands come in, increase the demand, and the prices skyrocket.just like they did with newspapers, magazines, radio and television. (Believe me, THAT DAY IS COMING!!!) But like I said, I digress. I just HAD to share that with you, even though I say it a lot. But let me get back to the point that I was making…

I want you all to keep in mind that overall, you’re going to have to create shorter videos because if not, you’re going to lose people’s attention along the way. And if you lose them, your chances of getting them back are “slim” to none. You have one first impression with these people. It’s like in the dating game:  You’re interested in this girl and she has never met you. On the first attempt when you DO meet her, you totally BOMBED 💣. It was an epic fail 👎. You tried to say something nice and flattering, and then you ended up saying something stupid. For example, she’s this really beautiful, classy, professional-looking woman, and you tell her that she looks “hot” and she doesn’t like you using those terms when communicating with her. That first impression ruins it for you forever. There’s no way to recover from that. 

It’s pretty much the same principle when it comes to your approach in the social media world of content marketing and advertising. When you are trying to communicate as a brand, you have to understand that you have one opportunity to get that message across and to create an impact on the individuals who are viewing/reading/listening to it. And that basically has to be within the first 8 to 15 seconds. (Well, preferably 8, according to the study on human attention span as referenced above.)

Okay, so on to the next point…

ThruPlay OPTIMIZATION…What is It? And Why is it so Great?

Facebook rolled out a new optimization going into 2019. Anyone here who has been doing Facebook ads for a while (and is already familiar with Facebook Business Manager) knows that when it comes to Facebook advertising, there are optimization methods. What this means is that you are optimizing your ads to accomplish a certain result.

The thing is: advertising on Facebook is one story. Optimizing your advertising and getting an amazing result is a totally different one. 

If you fail to constantly improve and maintain your Facebook campaigns, chances are that your results will start declining pretty fast. It may even happen in a couple of days after setting up a new ad campaign.

If you want to achieve a higher campaign ROI (Return On Investment), as well as lower your advertising costs AND increase the number of conversions (Sales/Leads), you DEFINITELY need to learn the rules of Facebook ad optimization.  

 For many years we have had options to  “optimize to get 3-second views”. And then we’ve had “optimize for link clicks”. And then we’ve had “optimize for conversions” which mean purchases or leads, etc. Well, there’s a new optimization method that just rolled out a some months ago, when we were about to enter into 2019, and it’s called “optimize for ThruPlay”. What does that mean? It means that when you’re putting a video or any other form of content pieces out there, you want Facebook to put your video ads in front of people who are likely to consume at least 15 seconds of that video or more. That’s something that you DEFINITELY want to go for. Make sure that on your first 15 seconds, you position your brand, you tell them what you have to offer, how is your product special and then you create an impact on that first contact.

If you are running funnels, meaning that you are actually putting videos out there and then you’re retargeting, make sure that those first 15 seconds are very interesting and that they GRAB ATTENTION. That’s where we can segue into the next section, which is quality, high-value content.

This newer Thruplay format gives advertisers more options for their videos compared to before, when Facebook measured and charged for shorter views which were hard to quantify in terms of their impact and difficult to prove when users were watching. With the ThruPlay format, Facebook can lend more credibility with its video ads and gain market share in the increasingly competitive online video market.

So let’s go to the next point, which is about the High-Value Content that you need to be sharing with your ideal audience(s).

4 TYPES OF CONTENT

I say this one a lot: There are basically 4 types of content out there and that’s it, and you can mix them up and create a variety of content for your audience to consume. And make sure that you’re consistent and sharing valuable content EVERY DAY. (If you want to find out what I am doing, follow me on my different social media channels — if you haven’t already — and you’ll see a pretty good variety. You’ll see that I am WALKING 🚶🏻‍♂️THE TALK 🗣 myself… just to make sure that you guys don’t think that I’m out there just “talking” my 🤬 off and not really being an ACTIVE part of this whole wave 🌊 myself.)

So here are the 4 types of content that you can create: 

There are IMAGES (pictures) that you can share. There are images that you want to share about your own image/persona (as a business owner and marketer, and you’ll also want them to see that you’re a real person…your everyday life, family, pets, etc.). You also want to share images about your company/brand, about your personal brand, about your success stories, testimonials, information about your product, all that stuff. 

And then, there’s WRITTEN content — articles that you can write which are STILL really valuable today. (Case in point: You’re reading THIS article 😉.) You want to write articles that communicate with the world, and have readers engage with those articles, so definitely write about topics that are of VALUE to them. Answer common questions. Give solutions to common concerns and problems. Relieve their “pain points”.

And then of course, you have VIDEO content which has gotten very popular, and it continues to increase in popularity. (Again, this is the visual video content I spoke of  at-length earlier.) Don’t Forget to add the Closed Captions/Subtitles!  

And last but not least, you have AUDIO content — the SPOKEN 🗣 word . You can do a podcast on iTunes or Anchor (FREE platform, very beginner-friendly), and THEN you can create more awareness for the podcast by sharing it on Social media. Audio is DEFINITELY another valuable way. The advantages of audio content  are unique, because it can be considered the most CONVENIENT form of content for your audiences to enjoy. And convenience is king 👑 for majority of people. Audio content (such as podcasts, Facebook Live Audio, audiobooks, etc.) allows people to listen and learn while they go about their daily lives…while driving/commuting, while walking/jogging/working out, while cooking, etc. It is literally one of the BEST things going right now because of this! People are looking for information through audio right now because they don’t have the time to sit down and watch a video. They want to be able to listen to content from the brands that they’re interested in, about the services, the products, and the knowledge that they’re interested in. They want to be able to do that consistently. Because of this, podcasts in particular,  CAN be a pretty huge deal. I’m an example of that. 

I created my podcast 2 years ago. And now, I have hundreds of thousands of downloads. And the incredible part is, 

I did not invest a single penny into it. Not a cent. 

I just literally invested my time in producing the audio content, talking about valuable things that I was observing. And, right now, it’s a powerful source of attention. So, that’s something you should really do.

So, those are the 4 types of content. You need to do one of them aggressively or you need to do all of them. I now recommend that you do all of them because 2019 is a unique era….

Well, I have a lot more that I’d like to share with you about this, so what I’m going to do is end off here for right now, and I will continue with a part two on this subject. Looking forward to sharing the rest of it with you in the next one.