We have our resident social media expert, Helium 10’s very own, Cassandra Craven! Cassandra will be bringing in the new year by taking a look at social media trends for 2021. Cassandra is a social media maven. She has been making strides in organic social media for over a decade, bringing her edge and expertise in community management, influencer relations, content creation, social strategy, and analytics to the Helium 10 social storefront. At the forefront of cutting-edge tactics and trends, she has been a pivotal part of the company’s growth and evolution. In this episode, we look back at the trends of 2020, predict what we’ll see more of in 2021, and take a look at any new platforms/mediums to watch out for in the new year to get ahead of the competition!
Date: December 2, 2020
Episode: 71
Title: Norman Farrar introduces Cassandra Craven, a Social Media Maven, an Influencer, Content Creator and Acts as the Liaison Officer in Facebook Groups of Helium 10.
Subtitle: “Engage, Enlighten, Encourage and just be yourself! Social media is a community effort, everyone is an asset.”
Final Show Link: https://lunchwithnorm.com/episodes/episode-71-social-media-trends-for-2021-w-cassandra-craven/
In this episode of Lunch With Norm…, Norman Farrar introduces Khierstyn Ross, a product launch expert that specializes in Kickstarter & other popular channels launch for physical products.
She managed and produced content for both national and international brands in the television, film and advertising industries. She can teach individual sellers how to implement strategies to increase revenue.
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Norman 0:01
Hey everyone, it’s Norman Farrar, aka The Beard Guy here and here’s another Lunch with Norm, the rise of the micro brands.
Norman 0:21
All right, I can’t wait to get started today. I’m with one of my favorite returning guests, Cassandra Craven from Helium 10. She takes care of all of Helium 10 social media, and we’re gonna be talking about trends, what’s good, what’s bad, what’s ugly from 2020, as well as what we should be looking at going into 2021. But before we get into that, we are broadcasting live on Facebook, YouTube and LinkedIn and I need my son. Where is he? There we go. How are you sir?
Kelsey 0:50
Hi.
Norman 0:52
There we go. How are you Sir?
Kelsey 0:53
Good. How are you?
Norman 0:54
Good. How do you like today’s incredibly cold but beautiful sunny day?
Kelsey 1:01
I haven’t even looked outside yet.
Norman 1:02
Oh yeah. You don’t have windows in your room.
Kelsey 1:05
I don’t have windows in my room. Right.
Kelsey 1:08
Have you noticed anything different?
Norman 1:11
Oh, you got rid of that 1970s porn mustache.
Kelsey 1:21
Let’s keep this PG okay?
Norman 1:23
Okay. I did. I didn’t say anything bad. You know me. I don’t swear.
Kelsey 1:27
On that note, hi everyone. Welcome to the show. Let’s see, we have our Facebook group that is up and going. You can search it right here. I think it’s added into all the links and I didn’t run this by you. I told you about this week ago, I think. But we have a secret episode. So we have a recorded episode that we have to be releasing, but it’s only going to be available in the group. So I believe right now we’re looking at two weeks from now on Tuesday, we have a secret episode. So you guys have to join the group to see it. There is a giveaway in that one too.
Norman 2:09
Actually, that’s a really cool giveaway to the episode is some we didn’t expect. It was just one day we were able to record it and usually we go live. But this was something really interesting and I’m sure you’ll enjoy it in the group. So yeah, check it out.
Norman 2:29
Alright and we also, before we forget, we do have a special episode next week we’re filming four for Lunch with Norms on Tuesday, which is Mike Cigar.
Norman 2:40
That’s Operation Underground Railroad. So he’s put together a great program, starting a week or two from now. Which are the 12 nuggets of, what is it? The 12 nuggets of Christmas, right? Yeah, where a ton of eCommerce sellers are getting together and sharing a 5 to 10 minute nugget with everybody. It’s for charity as for an incredible charity called Underground Railroad, they’re trying to stop human trafficking. So we’ll be also promoting that within the group and if there’s anything that you can do to help donate to a worthy cause, check it out.
Kelsey 3:21
It’s a December 8 special episode on Tuesday. So we have Rad joining us. Hey Rad and Raja. Hey The Beard Guys there, Hey there Norm and Kelsey. Hey Raja, how’s it going? So, for this episode, we’re talking about social media. So let us know what social media platforms you’re using for your business. How are they going? Put those in the comments and we’ll pull them up and yeah, let’s get started.
Norman 3:50
Okay, so last thing before we do get started, if you do have any questions for us, just throw them over in the comment section and we’ll get right to it and Hi Marina, how are you? Yeah, you must be experiencing this freezing cold day as well. So hopefully down in Toronto, I say down because they live north of Toronto. It’s nice and sunny as well. So sit back, relax, grab a cup of coffee and enjoy the show. Where is she? There she is.
Cassandra 4:19
Hi, Norm. How are you?
Norman 4:20
Good. How are you?
Cassandra 4:22
Good. Good. I always love coming on here and like hearing you and Kelsey riff right before the show. I feel like I’m backstage at Kelly and Ryan or something. I love it. I feel like this is like my entrance. I love it.
Cassandra 4:56
I was glad that you didn’t bring me on right after you said that because I was cracking up. So I had a minute to compose myself.
Norman 5:05
Okay, yeah. So today, before we get into that, let’s tell people a little bit about you, your fabulous background and what you’re doing now.
Cassandra 5:15
Wonderful Norm. I’m so happy to be here. I am Cassandra Craven and I am the social media content manager for Helium 10 Software. Prior to coming on board here. I worked in film, television, television production, daytime court shows, IMAX, all the fun things, all the great things and now I’m bringing all that experience to the team at Helium 10, now to you Norm.
Norman 5:38
That’s, this is almost like a new show and now to you.
Cassandra 5:45
That’s you Norm. Exactly, exactly.
Norman 5:46
So today, I think we got a really great topic and that’s what was hot, good, bad, ugly, and 2020 and just sort of predictions for 2021 within social media. Oh, but before we do this, because when I talked to you, you said that building your audience is important. Well, guess what? We’ve got an incredible community. We’ve got some names that come out new, I don’t know each week, but our community like Marsha, Michelle, Nathan, Simon, all these people, Raja, they’re on here every time we’re broadcasting and like, we’re trying to build that community of engaging audience and it’s just great seeing them all, back here every week, so and I did really learn that from you about building a community and how important that is. So thank you.
Cassandra 6:44
Oh, you’re welcome. But, it’s really just props to the community, props to the members, because having that loyal followership is just something you can’t purchase. You can’t buy that on social media, no fake followers here.
Norman 6:58
Right and you’ve got to provide content. So something that you specialize in.
Cassandra 7:04
Well Norm, that’s the testament to you. Sorry, I just want to tell you, that’s a testament to you, providing great content to everyone that you have these loyal members, these loyal community, so props to you Norm.
Norman 7:15
Well, that all goes back to Kelsey. So all right, so let’s just dig right in. All right, what were the big trends in 2020?
Cassandra 7:26
I think it’s undeniable that TikTok exploded with quarantine life, and everyone at home, I think, TikTok was always around and it was kind of latent, and it was there, and there were like some Gen Z years that were a part of it. But I think it just exploded when everyone was in lockdown, quarantine mode, they started getting into it. So it’s undeniable and obviously, Instagram took that on as well with their Reels feature. So I think that is just the knockout of 2020 is live, TikTok, Instagram Reels, all those sound bites, that content has to be the winner of the year, if we were giving awards and be the winner.
Norman 8:13
Tiktok
Cassandra 8:14
Yeah. I think the way I think they paved the way, I don’t think Instagram Reels would be what it is without TikTok.
Norman 8:22
Right and what is it? Is it LinkedIn, one of the other big social media groups now just rolled out another Reels TikTok type of application?
Cassandra 8:35
Well, LinkedIn has stories, and Twitter just rolled out fleets, which is also stories essentially, for their specific platforms. So it kind of takes on that. Yeah, exactly that same trend, it pops up in your feed, it’s at the top of your feed, it’s expiring content, things like that.
Norman 8:54
I’m kind of curious. So this is something that I’ve been learning, and we’ve been going this has been a COVID project, just working a lot more with social media, never done as much social media as what we’re doing right now. But like, what if you take a look at Instagram, you’ve got posts, you’ve got stories, you’ve got Reels, do you need to take advantage of all? Oh, Instagram TV. So there’s four on Instagram, so you take advantage of all of it or what would be your starting point?
Cassandra 9:24
I’ll even say that as a social media manager, you kind of start off with this foundation of, Okay, you’ve got infeed, got now we got stories and now like you said, there’s four different types of content to produce there and so that can even get overwhelming for me, you know what I mean and I’ve worked in social media for 10 years. I think each one serves a different purpose and when you’re catering content, curating content, keep each of those platforms and features in mind. So if you want something to be more top of mind, instant access, you’re going to go with stories. If you have something more long form like an interview, or a commercial type video, things like that, you’re going to want to go IGTv and I would definitely say anything with user generated content creators, fun, dance routines, things like that, you’re going to want to go Instagram Reels. It’s almost odd that what started the whole thing is in feed posts and now that’s kind of taken a backseat to those other features. But it’s still important to always have that main content, because that’s the first thing when people come to your, they’re checking out your brand, they’re checking out who you are, your product, whatever it may be, that’s what they’re going to see when they come to your Instagram. They’re going to check out your feed, what are your posts about, what’s your product about, that’s where they’re going to kind of get the backstory, if you will. So definitely keep in mind what each of those features can do for you and your business and keep in mind where your audiences are as well. So if you see more views on stories, you’re going to want to push more content that way, because that’s where your audience is.
Norman 11:05
I was just talking, I was just actually submitting an article to a magazine about perception. Perceived value.
Cassandra 11:04
You’re so cool Norm. You’re so cool.
Cassandra 11:17
You are. That’s so casual. Like, I’ve given interviews, no big deal.
Norman 11:23
But anyway, you make me crack up. It’s important, I think, and this is going down a different rabbit hole. But you can go and you can go to, and I’m not saying that going to India, going to the Philippines is bad. There are plenty of really good social media companies that are there and usually you pay the price, just like you would pay in North America might be a little bit less expensive. But I found that so many brands are off brand, they’re not consistent, because they’re trying to go so cheap, that they go to these factories, social media places, and it hurts their brand, and hurts their social media. Way more, even though we’re growing groups organically. We’re trying to do this organic and people will say and especially like in Instagram, Oh you only have so many followers. Yeah. But look at the engagement, and the reason I’m saying this is you can go out there and there are a lot of people now hearing, okay, I have a brand, like a private label brand. I need social media but I only want to spend $100 a month and I want them to post three times a day and it just never works out. I’ve never seen, like I can always tell when it’s a factory social media company doing it, correct?
Cassandra 12:49
Oh, totally and Yeah, exactly. It takes us away from that organic, naturally curated vibe, if you will, and I think people connect better. They know you, they know Kelsey, they know who’s behind the scenes, even speak for myself with Helium 10. I think there’s just a better connection when they know who’s running this is not a bot, it’s not some schedule. Of course, always, scheduling is great, we all need to free up our time. But knowing that there’s someone at the helm, they want to know there’s someone they can connect with and I completely 100% agree with you, as you kind of start to see what the mass produced content is or something that’s just not timely or relevant. Or you can, you can just tell, I know, I think that people are just very perceptive and that especially the younger generation, the kids these days, they can spot a fake. So I think they just can tell what is done in the moment. One thing that even when I started out in social media that we always tried to flag or stay away from was posting like, exactly at, like 10 o’clock straight up, or 10:30, that kind of thing, because it was just such a dead giveaway that this was scheduled, or that just wasn’t innate content, organic content and people can people can spot that. Okay,
Norman 14:10
So you just touch on something, how important is it for time?
Cassandra 14:15
I think timing is everything.
Norman 14:17
Scheduling for different platforms is different, isn’t it?
Cassandra 14:22
100% and again, you’re gonna want to tap into it. We’ve talked about this previously, with social media analytics and insights and social listening, things like that. Find out when your audience is online. It may sound crazy to post it at 3am, but if you have an audience on the other side of the world, if you’re really popular, you’re going to want to start getting content in their feed when they wake up. So you really have to pay attention to when your audience is most active, what channels they check in the morning, what channels they check before bed. A lot of times people check Twitter first thing in the morning because it’s kind of like a news outlet and then they move over to like Facebook or something for more family centric things, friends, what big brands are doing. You kind of just got to go with the audience behavior, if you will and then that’s how you can curate the best posting times, everything that’s going to be optimal for your content to perform at its best.
Norman 15:16
So before we get into 2021, there are all sorts of tools out there that you can use and it’s not faking it or it’s not, I mean, you can go out and find incredibly great content, just curating it using tools. That’ll save you a ton of time. But one of the tools that we look at is Post Planner just to find the curated content and you could put in keywords, and you can put in your favorite accounts just to monitor, and then you could pull it up very simply. I know Kelsey, I think he got this from you, Sprout Social. Yeah. So we subscribe. Yeah, they’re very good. People use Hootsuite, but other applications like for design or for just to help out with your social media tasks for the day?
Cassandra 16:10
Yeah, I think Canva has, that’s another just, website platform that’s exploded, because I think so many people are pivoting and doing their own, whether they’re starting their own Instagrams, their own branding, things like that. They have pre-made templates, but they’re also customizable. So you can kind of get this inspiration for an Instagram story, an email, banner, in feed posts, things like that. They also have animated content that you can pull from, but you can curate it to your specific brand, colors, fonts, everything like that. So it’s not generic, I’ve used it for myself, I haven’t used it for Helium 10, but I’ve used it on my personal stuff. Yeah. So it’s not, you’re saving time in the essence that if you’re not a designer, if you’re not a graphic artist, you can get these elements and put them in place and curate them to your brand and it’s a huge time saver than coming up with something from scratch, or even hiring out someone to do a bulk amount of content all at once.
Norman 17:17
If I understand correctly, Canva used to be able to have a free account that just did a ton. I don’t know if that still exists, I know that they do offer a premium. But is there a free account still available?
Cassandra 17:31
I believe so. I think you’re just limited in what templates you’re going to get and what features you can add on, things like that. They also have somewhere when you’re downloading the content, you have to pay like $1.99 or 4.99, or something for certain elements that you add to your post things like that. But really, I mean, if you look at it, especially for a business just starting out, and when you’re kind of trying new content or experimenting with things, this is I mean, 4.99, you can’t beat that price. It’s a really good outlet for you to utilize. So you can experiment with things while you’re finding your way on social.
Norman 18:09
Right and I guess, when you’re looking at images as well, you can spend, I am going to talk about this one first. This is crazy. But you can spend a lot of money on images, we subscribe to Adobe and there’s one other one. But I got nailed three times, I think. I got sued by Getty 32,000 bucks, because my artist that was doing something did not give me the licenses and I paid them for doing what they did. Getty was either coming after me or coming after my client and so I ended up negotiating, I think I got out of that $32,000 one for $3200 but that’s another when you’re using social media, and be careful of the images that you use and make sure that they’re royalty free or if you’re using them under commercial circumstances, that you have a commercial license or make sure that they don’t have a fee associated with it and then another really great place to get images is Unsplash.
Cassandra 19:19
Oh yeah, I was just gonna say cuz, you’re talking about Getty and I think that’s definitely more celebrity focused, I would say more higher end images and those are pricey. Shutterstock is great, but exactly, Unsplash is that more, it’s more organic and I’ve seen images of Unsplash come in my feet just because I’m familiar with them and it really makes me stop and look because I think it’s someone I know because it looks so organic and Shutterstock I will say is I think getting better at that because for a while and I’m sure Norm you remember even a couple years back, Shutterstock was super cheesy with some of it, like very like bright Like this. So now I think they’re getting more into that organic feel, what can work better on social media? We have Shutterstock. So I know like, if you type in, even Instagram story templates, four of those will pop up and you have like a concise story that you can, that’s cohesive, and colors and branding and fonts and things like that, that you can customize as well. But yeah, I 100% don’t use anything off Google Images, don’t just pull images from anyone, ask for permission always, of course, you don’t want to get sued by Getty. I feel like that probably wasn’t fun.
Norman 20:34
No and they really aren’t forgiving. Like, you can say, Oh, it was my project manager in the Philippines. They said that they did it. Well, that changed the SOP but that didn’t stop the other three, or other two that came in after that. So now we have a policy where the license has to be in a folder in the clients’ file. But yeah, and that’s even if you’re doing it yourself, make sure that you put the license somewhere if you are getting an image from Adobe, or from wherever, just so you have it, it might be in your account, but just in case they come. So the other area that we’re looking at too, is now that we’re seeing a lot more social proof, lifestyle images, and getting these influencers and getting the brand ambassadors built up. So it’s a lot different. I know, like Karen, is your brand ambassador over there. But getting a brand ambassador for your social media, it’s a little bit tougher for private label sellers. But if you can get influencers to provide you with social proof, I think that’s going to be a huge trend going into 2021. What do you think?
Cassandra 21:56
You are absolutely correct Norm. That was actually what I was gonna segway from too. I was gonna say, we’re talking about Shutterstock, and Getty, and all these things. I think that’s why UGC content is so valuable because you make an agreement with someone, you have the email, you have the contract, or whatever you decided to, terms and conditions that you agreed upon. You have these images to use, and they perform exponentially well. Like you said, it’s social proof, it’s real people using your product, endorsing your brand, because they genuinely like it, or they’re an influencer, they have a good good social reach, they have good engagement within their followers and I feel that 9 times out of 10 influencers don’t endorse anything that they don’t actually like themselves. Just because of false advertising. So you definitely always have that as a value to hold and so I was looking at my ladies are not Cassandra Cravens, own social media predictions, I was looking at social media today. So they did a whole breakdown. So definitely check that out on their website, too. But they gave 10 predictions for 2021 and UGC content was at the top of that list and I think, yeah, definitely, it’s only going to get I think it’s only going to blow up more especially with people being at home still, we’re still in kind of lockdown mode across the world and so people are using those kitchen products. People are using those beauty products, they’re taking more lifestyle photos. We have the holidays coming up if they’re using your plates or you’re serving utensils or whatever it may be. I’ve seen a lot of stuff with holidays, Christmas trees, Hanukkah, things like that. Decorations and lights and things like that, people are photographing it, because that’s kind of what’s hot in their life right now. So I definitely think it’s only going to pick up. I personally think that and social media today thinks that as well, as well as Norm, so it’s 3 for 3. If you said it, you know it’s good.
Norman 24:00
If we take a look at even Amazon listings, using that social proof, you can definitely use it on your Amazon listings, you can use it on your Amazon posts. If you get an influencer or a brand ambassador to do video, you can use it with Amazon live and then it’s repurpose time. You’ve got all this. I talk about Paul Baron. So Paul has his brand and he gets in the last three months 2000 images. It’s amazing. Where do you even start to post 2000 images?
Cassandra 24:37
Well, you got to look for the cream of the crop, you got to look for what the best of the best is. Yeah, kind of take it down there and that’s where I think you want to put your best images are always going to go on Instagram. I think that’s where people are looking for quality content, but also organic content and I talk a lot about experimenting with your social media content. So if you have any other images, like you said, you have so many to choose from, start sprinkling those out on other channels, different times, different audiences and see what resonates. So it can always be utilized and another great thing that I noticed when I had, we have a bulk of whether it be stock footage, or footage that our photographers have taken or, things I’ve worked with in the past. You never know when you have to dip into that, for like one of those unofficial social holidays. I feel like that can always be relevant. So there’s always an opportunity to use those images, don’t ever think that something’s going to go to waste or, that it’s kind of just Oh, that was for not, that was just wasted effort. Because there’s always something that comes up, you’re probably thinking, well, I didn’t know it was this national holiday, and that image works for it. So now you can post that. There’s always opportunities, I feel like don’t ever narrow your vision with that.
Norman 25:53
Yeah, and when you get these images, we’re going to spend a bit of time on images, because it’s so important, but just like your primary image in Amazon, it’s that important. But you can get influencers or brand ambassadors, you can ask them and this is the beauty, especially when it becomes a brand ambassador. So in case you don’t know, so you get a customer, and then you can target that customer and see if they want to become more of an influencer, or there’s definitely ways and I’ll touch on that in a second to find influencers. But then if the influencer loves it so much, you can also start targeting the influencer to enter into an agreement, an agreement to be a brand ambassador and so I know like talking with Paul, he actually has contracts that we need you to post three times we need you to do this, we need you to do that and in exchange, you get this, this this and this. It works incredibly well. So I’ll tell you another thing that he was able to do and this was over, I think it was a one week period. He needed a certain feature, or benefit of his product in video. So he said, Hey, I need this, like a video of this, this and this. He got 30 videos over a period of a week and where was he posting it all over social media, Amazon live. So it worked really, really well for him. But one of the other things I wanted to just Excuse me, I got to cough for a second. Just hymn a song or something.
Cassandra 27:38
Oh, we’re just Lunch with Norm.
Norman 27:44
Interlude. There we go. We’re back. Alright everybody, that’ll be edited out. So there is a search string that I love for Instagram that Dan Fernandez and I mentioned this, I think on the last podcast as well, but Dan Fernandez the owner of Tomoson, came up with, a year or two ago. But to find influencers on Instagram is this simple. You type in site:instagram.com space whatever your product keyword would be. So let’s say it’s bully stick or pet treat space advertising, okay? So at that point, is looking for people that are willing to advertise. Then you go space, quotation, Instagram photos and videos, quotation and quotation, and that will give people who are not only advertising but want to provide photos and videos, and then you go space minus explore, that gets rid of all the crap.
Cassandra 28:51
Oh, that’s cool. I didn’t even know that.
Norman 28:54
Yeah, it’s very, very, very cool.
Cassandra 28:56
I know, I’m gonna have to watch this back and take notes now. Well, that’s genius and then you don’t have to worry you’re kind of weeding out everything that’s non essential and then you’re getting the people that want to be part of those sort of Ambassador influencer programs.
Norman 29:13
Right. Hey, I just saw Melissa was on. There we go.
Cassandra 29:18
Hi, Melissa. How are you?
Norman 29:22
Alright, Kelsey, are there any questions before we continue?
Kelsey 29:27
Oh yeah, we got lots of questions.
Norman 29:28
Oh, good.
Kelsey 29:29
But before we do, should we talk about the little giveaway we’re gonna do today?
Norman 29:33
Oh, yes.
Kelsey 29:34
So Cassandra, what’s happening today?
Cassandra 29:38
So we have some Helium 10 swag to give away. We’ve got some shirts and we also have exclusive Helium 10 face masks. I don’t have one now because I’m at home. There’s no one around me. But they’re very cool. So yeah, definitely. That’s our giveaway. I don’t know how you guys are gonna go about, how do you give it away? Because we’ll provide it.
Kelsey 29:58
We have a special wheel that we do at the end of the show. We need to figure out what we’re going to do. So usually I have them either answer a question or a hashtag or they have to take someone.
Norman 30:13
Well, it’s very simple. I love Cassandra. #IloveCassandra.
Kelsey 30:17
Alright, well make it nice and easy today. I love Cassandra, #IloveCassandra in the comments and you’ll be entered into the draw for a little contest and yeah.
Cassandra 30:29
That’s great.
Norman 30:30
But there is one catch, you have to take a picture, send it to Cassandra so she could put it up on her page or at least tag her.
Cassandra 30:38
Definitely do that. Please. I will be carrying it all over social.
Norman 30:42
Very good. All right, so let’s get into the Oh yeah.
Kelsey 30:47
Yeah, we got I think there’s like 10 questions that Oh, we got our first I love Cassandra, Huisman there we go. Okay, so where do I start? Okay, I think Dan was first to enter. We also have Sarah joining the podcast. Marcia, Simon, Alan, Rad, Melissa, Huisman, we got a whole bunch. Lisa, Angie and oh, okay.
Norman 31:19
Facebook user.
Kelsey 31:21
So that’s Rad.
Norman 31:22
Oh, okay.
Kelsey 31:25
Okay, so first question, is there a way to track sales from Instagram to Amazon?
Cassandra 31:32
I don’t know, Norm. I mean, maybe you have some info on that. I would say you need to track when the post goes live. So if you’re using like an influencer to post on Instagram, and you know that on Wednesday at 10am, they’re going to post this video, a tutorial, or something like that, I would track the sales from that day, the next 24 hours or so and see if there’s a spike in people inquiring about your product, or people who say they use, they went to your product because of this influencer. You can do a quick survey here, you can do a little questionnaire, things like that. You could have the influencer post something, like, let me know, if you bought this product, share it with me. So I think that’s where social proof would come in unless Norm, do you have any other way?
Norman 32:19
There is something you can use, and that’s the attribution, you could put in a pixel and so in some instances, you can track where it’s coming from. So if it’s coming from a post, or from Instagram, or Facebook, they do give you that opportunity now through the Amazon attribution program.
Cassandra 32:43
They also have, I’ve seen a lot too, where people get their special links, they’re kind of curated links of like, if you click this link, you get the 25% off because of hashtag, like #Alexandra. That kind of thing, or they put something special in so that you have a curated link, so they know how to link it back and track back.
Norman 33:03
Yeah and that’s it. I mean, a really simple one too, would be creating a discount code, either on Shopify, that drives it over to Amazon or an Amazon code that you would just create for that promotion, too. So that’s another way in case you’re not using attribution to easily track it.
Cassandra 33:22
There you go. Three great ways.
Kelsey 33:25
Okay, great. So let’s see our next question. Going through. Okay, from Marsha, how does this all apply to the new ADA requirements for websites and does it also apply to social postings or is it just for websites? Norm talked about this on the previous podcast.
Norman 33:47
I don’t know if you know this. But this is so important. Making sure that everything is ADA compliant. So we talked about making sure that people going to your website, you’ll usually see a wheelchair icon, you can click on it, there have been people chasing small businesses, and just saying that they’ll sue them for 10 or 20,000 bucks. I mean, you can’t even defend it. So you just end up paying. So interesting that you said that, because I had that same question that I just asked my lawyer about and that was okay. If ADA applies to your website, what about social media? What about going to Facebook? What about going on YouTube? Aren’t they under the same guidelines or regulations as everybody else and I don’t have that answer yet.
Cassandra 34:45
I don’t either. I’m not a legal expert, but I would assume so and I would definitely look at the terms and conditions for that as well. But yeah, that’s a great legal question. I don’t have the answer either.
Norman 34:56
We will be digging into that.
Cassandra 34:59
Yes. Well, that’s a good case study. We can leverage but yeah, that’s a really great question.
Norman 35:02
Yeah. Thank you Marcia.
Cassandra 35:06
Sorry. Do you get something if you stump us?
Norman 35:08
Yeah. Helium tanks swag.
Cassandra 35:16
Yeah, that’s good and I don’t want to give any misinformation, being legal or anything like that.
Kelsey 35:21
Okay, I’m just sorting through these questions. Let me see.
Norman 35:26
Kelsey, you have one job.
Cassandra 35:28
I get the pressure on the back end. I know, I do sometimes I’m the one looking for stuff. So I get it.
Kelsey 35:36
Okay, so from Simon, I think we kind of touched on this a little bit already. But what is your opinion of image libraries like Shutterstock? When do you use them?
Cassandra 35:45
Yeah, definitely. I think I mean, like I said, Shutterstock, I think is getting way better with organic content, content focused on social media performance, things like that. Norm, I love your suggestion Unsplash. I think that’s a great website to go to and then like I said, Canva, I think they even have some images that you can pull from the free tier or you can just pay by icons and things that you’re leveraging. But yeah, definitely, I think Shutterstock is great. I think they’re pretty reasonable in price as well, especially if you’re pumping out a lot of content. What are your thoughts Norm?
Norman 36:14
Yeah, one of the things that a lot of people use are, it’s Pixabay because it’s free. I’m never crazy, like they are okay, but as soon as I see certain stock photos, I go out Pixabay, Pixabay, Pixabay.
Cassandra 36:31
I was gonna say I noticed, and this was kind of early quarantine too, because I think a lot of people jumped on, Oh, we can’t do photo shoots, or we can’t go out and get our own content, if you will and I started seeing so many of the same stock at three, like in my feed and and from huge brands. We’re talking like, I saw stuff from like American Express that I think I’ve used in the past, and it’s kind of wild. But yeah, and I don’t know if that’s just like an industry thing. But I think they’re becoming pretty frequent to where you’re starting to see it resonate more and more.
Norman 37:05
What we’re seeing, at least what I’m seeing now, too, is when you see a real, like user generated content. Hey, okay, that’s great. But when you see somebody with a bar of soap that’s five times bigger than their hand, that you know is a stock photo that just has something photoshopped into it poorly. You don’t trust that anymore. I don’t trust. It looks to me, like just being cheap and what you’re trying to build is authority or trust, and you’re going about it the wrong way by paying $10 for a really bad graphic artist to put a bar of soap or this big thing is shampoo, people know. That’s why going to an influencer, or at least an influencer, or finding and it’s so simple. Just ask people even in your Amazon packaging, tag me. Yeah and then, you could be entered into a draw to win 50 bucks, 100 bucks or something. Oh, one other thing we did, by the way and this is with one of the knife products that we have. We sent them out to chefs.
Cassandra 38:21
Nice, smart.
Norman 38:22
We just said, Hey, provide us with you using the knife. Give us your favorite recipe and if you’d like, provide a video. You know now how much we got and these are from like, chefs, owners of restaurants, and also what we did is we took Okay, who would use knives? Who wants knives? Culinary schools. You send them over, students get them on one condition, when you graduate you pose with the knife.
Cassandra 38:55
There you go. It’s so simple. I think that’s what people, I think they get all caught up in it, or they think there’s I don’t know if they think there’s too much red tape or something. It’s really that easy and I’ll be honest too Norm, I post things all the time even if there isn’t an incentive. I don’t know. I mean, I’m a social media person, though. So I get it. But like I love knowing when I get something in the mail or whatever, whether it’s an article of clothing or an accessory and they say tag us, I know that that’s what they’re looking for. So it almost isn’t going for nothing. You know what I mean? I’ve tagged brands before and then like I go back and once I look at their Twitter or their Instagram data, like Oh, wait, they haven’t posted in forever. So they’re not actively looking for that content. So there’s something nice about people like you said they want the content, just asking for it and that that is such a simple ingenious idea. I love that. You’re like who needs knives? Cool. One caveat is to post a picture. Super easy.
Norman 39:51
That’s all you have to do. Yeah and the other, again, keeping on because I mentioned how important it was for images or video. It doesn’t even have to be a video. What you can use right now and I think one of the trends, and it was for 2020 as well. Pattern interruption. So usually that comes with a video. But videos can be very expensive. What you can use is an image, and I’m telling you this, it takes nothing to do this or get a graphic artist to do this, get a cinemagraph or a plotagraph. They’re 25 bucks, or whatever it is and now you’ve got, Norm theGnome here and his beard, like this beard waving in the wind from a static photograph. Yeah, all of a sudden, it’s in your feed and what is that and you can get their attention and that is super cheap, super cheap.
Cassandra 40:54
Oh, I totally agree and I think videos, they’re always going to perform better because the kind of barrier to entry is lower, they don’t have to actually like it or comment, they just have to watch it and so you rack up the views. I love that someone else is talking about cinemagraphs. It’s something I’m a big advocate of, and 100% agree. I also think when you’re asking people to do these things, I can be a little wary. I have to say my infeed even on my personal accounts, that’s precious, that’s precious territory right there. That’s called A plus content, but Instagram stories, it makes it so much more accessible for people. It expires, they can do something quick, it’s something fun, they can tag the brand. So I definitely always encourage people to go there and relay that so that they’re always posting their content. Cinemagraphs, I love it Norm. God, you’re always speaking my language. You’re speaking it.
Norman 41:45
Very good. Kelsey. Oh, by the way, Kelsey is always always the, what do we say? The guard. I’ll say, Hey Kels, can you post this? No, that doesn’t go into your feed, it’s a story. Why is it a story? People don’t want to see your breakfast.
Cassandra 42:05
That’s good social story content. You got to kind of go down the levels of like, this is precious. This is precious territory, what were we gonna put in feed, what’s gonna stay and what can expire after 24 hours.
Norman 42:17
He is the gatekeeper.
Kelsey 42:22
When you guys are talking about Canva, I highly recommend that for anyone that’s interested in starting their own, doing their own work on their social media stuff. I’m on there probably three hours a day at least, playing with templates.
Cassandra 42:38
It’s kind of fun.
Kelsey 42:39
It’s creative.
Cassandra 42:41
Yeah, exactly.
Kelsey 42:43
Okay. So I think Alan was first. Okay, any recommendations on where to source influencers? I’ve tried several online sites but have not had great success.
Cassandra 42:55
Okay, this is where I’m always big on grassroots approach. Look for who’s using brands or products similar to yours and look, search on that on Instagram hashtags, things like that. I heard I don’t know if it’s live yet. But I did hear that Instagram is coming out with its own like search feature, similar to where you search for the hashtags or geo tags. But now you can search by keywords. So that would be huge. Twitter, you can also do that, I believe that feature has always been active, that features live now and I think those will be your best bets. TikTok, same thing. See, if you have like you said knives, see who else is posting about cooking, and that you can tap into and if people are already adamant or passionate about that topic, or that product or something similar to it in that realm. They’re going to be more apt to collaborate with you. What are your thoughts Norm? Back to you, Norm.
Norman 43:49
Why, thank you Cassandra. So, yeah, very, very similar. If you’re going in, let’s say it is knives and you go #chefknife and you see the influencer there, the most relevant, you click on it, and then you can start if you like what you see and again, it’s personality. If the person doesn’t reflect your personality, don’t follow them but follow, engage, comment and then try dming and if you can, direct message the person and just tell them no ego, you tell them how much you like their, what they’re doing and their posts and then the other thing that a lot of people forget about is you don’t have to go to paid sites. You can go to Tomoson or Intellifluence, or Buzzsumo is probably a good one too, Buzzsumo. But go back to Google and just let’s say it’s a pet product. So, you’re looking at pet product influencers, pet product bloggers, mommy bloggers and you’ll get the list. Oh, here’s another search string. Okay. So if you’re interested let’s say you get this really incredible mommy blogger, so you’ve got a baby product, and you go to their blog, you put in the word related colon, and paste that URL and what will happen is all the related topics that you’ll see, it’s just like a regular Google search will be there and you can just go through all those bloggers, and then start following or talking to them. That’s one of the ways to do it. It’s actually quite simple. It does take some time if you are going after anything above, I would say, I don’t know about what you say. But there’s nano influencers that are basically up to 10,000, micro influencers up to 100,000, that’s the range that we target. Anything above that, like mega influencers, and they’re tougher to work with.
Cassandra 45:56
Yeah, I think those would be kind of your gold star influencers. Like if you have a budget you want to set aside, maybe you’re going through an agency to work with them. Yeah. Anyone who’s going to have those mega top tier celebrities like influencers, you’re gonna have to take a separate approach to it for sure.
Norman 46:17
Oh, I just thought of this one and so this is really cool. Cameo. They do have, so just don’t think you can go to Cameo and post people, saying how great your product is because you have to get a commercial license from them.
Cassandra 46:39
I didn’t know that. Oh, see now I’m learning stuff. Okay, cuz I know you can’t just say like, Oh, this is the best podcast ever, or something like that.
Norman 46:46
They can do it. The celebrity can do it. But Cameo can come after you for promoting that because you didn’t buy a commercial license.
Cassandra 46:54
I didn’t know that. Okay, that’s interesting. That’s a great tip.
Norman 46:58
Very cheap to go over to Cameo. I know, we’ve do some 90 Day Fiance people. Yeah and we’ve got some guys from Saturday Night Live and I mean, it’s great content that you can get. Yeah, well, but you might just make sure that you either interact and ask if they have like, will they do it for this price or if there’s a commercial license, and you’ll see it. Usually it’ll say, oh, for commercial use and then if you don’t see it, and there’s any confusion, talk to Cameo and get their permission, because they might say, Yeah, go ahead, but just don’t take and I’ve had my lawyer look at that too, because we didn’t want to get in the middle of a lawsuit.
Cassandra 47:42
Exactly. I didn’t know if that was like kind of a gray area or what could be done. So that’s a really interesting tip. Definitely, and especially like, if that’s someone that’s right for your audience. If you could get a Top Chef contestant to do Cameo for you, if you’re looking to sell knives, things like that. That’s awesome. Because that’s relevant to that audience.
Norman 48:04
Yeah, we’ve had Penn like from Penn and Teller. We’ve had Gilbert Godfrey. It’s really cool. Some of the people.
Cassandra 48:13
Love that. Oh my God. Very cool. Very cool. One thing I did want to tell you, since I know we’re coming up on the hour, so when you were saying about stock images, and how you were saying, like, Oh, you see someone with their hand and it’s like this big huge thing, it’s so curated or it’s Photoshop content in such a bad way. One thing they did also say on social media today was meme content is going to pick up and brands are actually going to start using it to communicate more about promotions, things like that and so what got me thinking was, it’s okay to do that if you’re in on the joke. Don’t try to pass it off as real content, like a giant bar soap or something. But I’ve seen brands Slim Jim, does this really well. I remember, Wendy’s was doing stuff really well. A lot of the like, fast food chains will kind of make, they’ll kind of poke fun at themselves, if you will. So definitely, if you’re in on the joke, I think it can be funny. I think that’s how you could utilize that. It has to be so bad that it’s good and so if you can kind of get that conversation going, because again, if you see a bad Photoshop, I know I’m gonna stop and look at it and be like this right now and then if you know the brand, don’t try to pass it off as real though, that’s the biggest mistake. But if you’re in on the joke, it could actually be very beneficial for your social media engagement. I think bringing some levity, 2020 was a rough year norm we all need some levity in our life. So if you can bring that to the table on your social media content, I think it’d be very beneficial.
Norman 49:44
That’s a great point. I didn’t think that memes we’re going to be on the trend. That’s good. Great.
Cassandra 49:50
There you go and I think it’s that there’s so many again, relatable content. We’ve all been here in lockdown and quarantined and that’s how people share life experiences now or day to day activities. They’re just sharing memes back and forth. So definitely look into that.
Norman 50:06
I know.
Kelsey 50:09
Actually, we started to dive into some memes on the Instagram and Facebook page. Yeah, they’re pretty fun to work with that. Uh, yeah, I definitely agree with that. There’s memes everywhere.
Cassandra 50:23
I admire you Kelsey, though, because meme content is not my forte. We actually started collaborating for Helium 10 with Amazon humor. So we’d do a cross promotional. Like, we share their posts, things like that and I gave the creator that I go props to you. I cannot. Like, I just can’t think, you know what I mean, in that meme way. So if you’re doing it Kelsey, the way to go, because I can’t get my head around it. I mean like, I can take it and laugh, but it’s so hard to curate that content for yourself. So it’s a niche.
Kelsey 50:54
Yeah. So I try and relate it back to like, so for Norm, it’s a personal brand. So like the podcast, I’ll just share my screen quickly. This is just a quick example of like, what you can do with a meme. I mean, it’s pretty relatable, like you can be something as easy as that for example, yes. Do you guys want more questions?
Norman 51:23
What time is your cutoff?
Cassandra 51:24
Yeah, I got like 10 more minutes.
Kelsey 51:27
Okay, maybe one or two more questions, and then we’ll, okay. We’ll have fun. Yeah.
Norman 51:36
Yeah.
Kelsey 51:38
Okay. I lost my spot now.
Kelsey 51:43
Let me see just a second.
Cassandra 51:45
Put the meme content quick.
Kelsey 51:47
Okay, so this is from Rad, I believe. Can you suggest any micro influencer? Could you direct where you can find one? So I think we talked about that. Yeah.
Norman 51:57
Oh, by the way, if you are looking for very inexpensive photos, you can always go to AppSumo and AppSumo, I think right now they have one or two different stock photo libraries on, I don’t know how good they are. Check it out, they’ll usually give some examples. But AppSumo usually gives some pretty good discounts if you’re just trying to break into it.
Kelsey 52:26
So here’s one, what are the things that we should be careful about when hiring or taking onboard influencers?
Cassandra 52:35
I mean, I definitely think going back to what you were saying Norm, even if it’s as simple as a one page agreement or contract or things like that. Designating the time, the times you want things posted, when you want them going out, how long they should stay on their page, and any, whether it’s a content swap, or credit that will be given, if you’re tagging them, or using a specific hashtag, things like that. I think definitely making sure everything you want out of it and everything they want out of it is like explicitly outlined. I don’t think you want to leave anything up to question. That would be my biggest thing and you also want to make sure, going back, if you’re looking for people, especially through a grassroots approach, and not using a verified site, make sure they don’t have fake followers, because you’re not getting anything out of that. So make sure to check, like you said, check the ratio of followers to engagement, and see if it matches up because you don’t want even if they have 100,000 people. If they’re all spam bots, it’s not gonna do anything for you.
Norman 53:35
Yeah, and you mentioned this last time you’re on, like, just check and see if they’re one word answers or very generic or if they are actual engagers. Now, the other thing too, it’s important that who owns, do you own that image? Do you have the right to the copyright so you can use it? I talked about this before, where a client paid a lot of money for a video, ended up it was on YouTube, but he couldn’t upload it anywhere. The guy came back and just would not allow him to do anything, unless the traffic was driven over to his YouTube channel.
Cassandra 54:15
Yeah, that’s where I think you got to make sure everything is outlined where you want it to go. You’ve talked with them beforehand and my big thing too is to always make sure they leave their content up there for however duration of time. Because now we can archive posts and things like that. You don’t want someone saying yeah, I posted it, pay me and then they like get rid of it two seconds later. You know what I mean? You got to make sure you have it there. If you want this through the holiday season, or for a week or a month or whatever it may be.
Kelsey 54:46
So I think if we want to end it at an hour, we’ll have to jump to the wheel now.
Norman 54:53
How many questions are left?
Kelsey 54:56
I noticed that Huisman was asking about community building. So we had a couple guests, I think the last two weeks talking about that. So Huisman, if you want to check out Dr. Travis Zigler. Yeah. Wilfred Ligthart and Carlos Alvarez. We had them on the podcast, they all talked about different aspects of building community. So I can link those to you. But yeah, let’s get started with this. We got a bunch of entries. I’ll share my screen again.
Norman 55:27
So do you want to give 30 seconds to anybody who’s just new and listening? Just have to put, Oh, no, I guess we don’t.
Kelsey 55:35
So any last people? #IloveCassandra to be entered into this draw. Cassandra, how many giveaways are you doing? Is it one?
Cassandra 55:45
Let’s do two shirts, two masks.
Norman 55:49
T shirts. There we go.
Kelsey 55:51
All right. So I think that’s if anyone comes in during the saw them into names, but looks like this is it for now. Okay. All right. So 321.
Cassandra 56:03
This is so exciting.
Kelsey 56:05
Is it for a shirt or mask?
Cassandra 56:08
This one’s for a shirt.
Norman 56:09
Oh, rad. There we go.
Cassandra 56:12
Congratulations. Whoa.
Norman 56:14
Oh, Drew and Sarah just came in.
Kelsey 56:24
Okay, so is this another shirt?
Cassandra 56:29
Let’s do that. Another shirt.
Kelsey 56;31
Okay, shirt.
Norman 56:33
Oh, it looks like Mark just squeezed out.
Cassandra 56:37
That had me on the edge of my seat.
Kelsey 56:41
Okay.
Cassandra 56:42
Alright. This one’s for a mask.
Norman 56:45
Okay.
Kelsey 56:46
Oh, sorry, Melissa. Okay, for a mask. 321.
Cassandra 56:59
Okay, so we have two masks. So should we get into both Drew and Sarah?
Norman 57:03
I think that would be good. Yeah. I know, Drew and Sarah listen all the time. So why don’t we do that?
Cassandra 57:10
Awesome. There we go, cool. Okay, so two shirts, two masks. Let me know, I’ll send whatever, I’m gonna send it to you guys. You tell me whatever you need. We can work it out on the back end, but we’ll get some Helium 10 swag and please to the prize winners, post a photo hashtag Helium 10. Add Helium 10 Software on Instagram. We would love to feature you.
Norman 57:31
There we go. Alright, so I think that’s it. This has been great tons of engagement. Thank you, everybody. We’ll take a look at all the questions that we didn’t get to, and we will get you some answers. But Cassandra, thank you so much for coming on again.
Cassandra 57:50
You guys are the best. This is always the highlight of my month. You know that. I love it.
Norman 57:54
Well, it’s our highlight too.
Norman 57:57
Okay, well, thank you so much, Cassandra. Oh, how do people get a hold? Sorry, I talked over you. What were you saying?
Cassandra 58:08
No, no, I think we’re lagging right now a little bit.
Norman 58:12
Yeah, I think so. I was just gonna say how do people get a hold of you? We are lagging
Cassandra 58:21
Cassarandra_craven on Instagram, @helium10software. Am I back? I don’t know. Just find me. I’ll put it in the comments.
Norman 58:28
Alright, so thank you. Thank you so much, Cassandra. I think I don’t know what happened. But I think we were just getting a bit of a lag in there. Anyways, Hey, thank you, everybody for joining us today. It’s always having Cassandra’s on is always a great time. I had no idea where we’re coming up to the hour, but we tried to get all your questions answered and we’ll post all your comments. Kelsey, what do we have to do?
Kelsey 59:01
Okay, so if you haven’t yet, hit that like button or smash it as we say here, ring the bell if you’re on YouTube, all of the content goes directly over to YouTube. So if you’re gonna miss an episode, you can just find it there. Nice and easy. It’s Norman Farrar. If you search Lunch with Norm that should pop up, too. Yeah. Join our Facebook group. It’s growing every day. We got some good discussions happening there. We featured Norm’s mug the other day, so who knows maybe the future?
Norman 59:32
Not this mug.
Kelsey 53:35
No, no, no. The pretty mug.
Norman 59:41
Okay. Now the other thing that we should be talking about too just very briefly is if you are looking for more online content, you can always subscribe to the newsletter that it’s not only for Amazon, it goes right across for online sellers, how to improve your business using different marketing techniques. It’s all curated content from some of the top marketers in the industry, it comes out every Monday. So if you’re interested in that, head on over to Lunch with Norm or go to normanfarrar.com, and you could subscribe. It comes out every Monday and I think you will enjoy it. The newsletter does not suck. Also, you are going to interrupt me, aren’t you?
Kelsey 1:00:22
Maybe. Okay first, I just want to say that we have a special episode for Tuesday with Mike Cigar. So I’m going to be making an event soon. So you will be able to find it. But we do have an episode on Tuesday. So Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, next week and we also have a secret episode only available in the Facebook group two weeks from now, but there’ll be more announcements on that later. Okay, and I know Huisman has been posting a couple questions. So if you have any questions, post them in the Facebook group, and we’ll get back to you as soon as possible and okay.
Norman 1:01:03
I can talk now?
Kelsey 1:01:04
Yes you may.
Norman 1:01:05
Thank you very much. All right. So this Friday, it’s our monthly appearance for Kevin King. So if you have any questions for the holidays, what you think is going to be coming up in the New Years, any issues or problems that came up during Black Friday or Cyber Monday? Just post them and we’ll be asking Kevin. So he’s going to be joining me on Friday. I can’t wait and I think that’s it for today’s episode. Thank you everybody for joining us and again, we will be getting to your question. So have a great day, guys.
