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Tips, tricks, and advice on getting a sewn product idea into development and manufacture.
Heather Zager: [00:00:00] Hello everyone and welcome to the Made Apparel Services Podcast. My name is Heather Zager and I will be your host for this series. I am also the founder of Made Apparel Services, which is a sewn product development company for small brands. Whether you are just starting out or a seasoned pro, I have a lot of resources to help you on your journey to manufacture. Don't forget to sign up for my newsletter and follow me on social media for other fun updates. Links to both are always in the show notes.
Heather Zager: [00:00:30] Hello everyone! Today we have Rebecca from Creative Nobility with us. We are interviewing her on everything social media. So Rebecca, welcome. Let's just start off by having you tell me a little bit about your business and what it is that you do.
Rebecca Scott: [00:00:44] Awesome. Thanks for having me here today, Heather. I guess I'll start off by saying I'm a social media manager. I have had my company for, actually this month is year 10. So it's pretty exciting. I'm happy that I made it to 10 years. You know how it is with starting up a company and entrepreneurship, all that fun stuff. I started off just as a graphic designer, that's what I went to school for. It was called Electronic Publishing at a university here in Canada, in Calgary. I started off by doing graphic design, branding, mostly print for my clients, which is kind of dying out a little bit now, which is sad. But that was one of the main reasons that I ended up adding social media to my offerings, because people were looking more for that digital offering to grow more online and to get more online sales. That wasn't something that I originally had planned on offering, but it developed into this new passion that I had about 7 years ago. So I started doing that, and that's about 95% of what I do for my clients now. It's clients from Canada and the US across all different industries. A lot of them have podcasts like yourself, and I fell in love with doing anything social media, and I am on my phone a lot, which is a bit of a downside, but it's good because I'm always learning. Staying on top of trends that way and making sure that I'm giving my clients the best chance at growing their business as possible.
Heather Zager: [00:02:27] And that makes sense because I think in any industry, the best thing you can do as a business owner is be flexible. You have to see what the customer wants and move towards those trends to stay afloat. So that makes a lot of sense to me. Very cool. I have a couple of questions that I'm going to go over with you and we can take this any direction that it tends to go. Some things that I thought of that my clients might be interested in is, how many times per week should someone spend doing social media, especially if they're doing it themselves. What can they expect to be the percentage of time, if they're really going to do this well, and try to gain a following to sell their product or their brand or whatever it is that they're starting up.
Rebecca Scott: [00:03:13] That is a great question. That's one that I get asked often by prospective clients and business owners who are looking to do their social media themselves and aren't quite sure. It does depend a little bit on your comfort level with social media. If you're comfortable creating assets and how many platforms you're going to be on. In general, I asked a bunch of my friends who own businesses, and then read a study as well, and it said that 43% of business owners spend around 6 hours each week. So I went through my process of what I would think a business owner with maybe not a ton of experience would do with their own social media. And I came up with a bit of a breakdown that I thought I would share with you. And this might help your listeners to come up with a process for their social media that they're doing themselves as well. You have to consider that this does include creating the content, the graphic templates, writing the captions, filming and editing your video, and engagement. It does seem like a lot, but in the end it does add up to that 4 to 6 hours a week.
Rebecca Scott: [00:04:31] What I like to do is batch everything at the beginning of the month. And then that leaves me time daily to go in and do the engagement. You're going to spend 1 to 2 hours each month first determining your content pillars. That's going to be educational, inspirational, promotional, behind the scenes content. Step two would be a huge content dump. Getting all of your ideas out for posts under each of the pillars that I just mentioned. That could be your client's pain points, questions you've been asked regularly, promotions you have coming up, events you've been to, that kind of thing. Step three, that'll be once you have your massive long list, you break them down into which are going to be carousels, which are reels, which are images. Step four, determine how many posts per week you'd like. I usually recommend around three as a good starting point. Any less than that and you're not showing up enough in people's feeds. Any more than that, it can tend to be a little bit overwhelming for creating your own content. And then step five, fill your three posts a week by rotating through your pillars and making sure you have a good balance of carousels, images, and reels.
Rebecca Scott: [00:05:52] That seems like a lot, so it might take more than the two hours each month for you. But once you start getting into the batch cycle, it does end up being a little bit faster. Then you end up doing your 2 to 3 hours of filming, editing your videos if you have them, and then taking any photos or sourcing them from your catalog in your iPhone. And then you have about 1 to 1.5 hours of creating the graphics, if you're graphically inclined. Or you can use something like Canva, and then 30 minutes approximately to schedule your content. That's a really important point, to make sure it's all in there, scheduled, ready to go. The most important, out of all of the hours that you're going to spend, would be 2.5 hours a week of engagement. I like to break it into 15 minutes in the morning, 15 in the evening, Monday to Friday. And that means you're going in and you're liking, you're commenting, you're sharing, direct messaging. Or ideally you do 15 minutes before you post and then 15 minutes after your post goes out. So that just gives you a little bit of a boost in the algorithm and warms people up for when your post does go out.
Heather Zager: [00:07:12] Okay, that makes sense.
Rebecca Scott: [00:07:13] So that's my very long explanation. Approximately six hours a week.
Heather Zager: [00:07:19] That is fantastic and I'm glad it's recorded so people can go back and listen to it. And we can put that list in the show notes, too, so we can just break it down real quick so somebody doesn't have to relisten to it, they can just look at those show notes. That is actually really, really helpful. You reminded me of a question I don't think I had in here which was, one thing I ran into was, not only what platform is best for posting if you're not going to post within the Facebook business suite or within Instagram or within Facebook, if you're trying to tackle a couple of different sources at once. I thought that picking one would solve everything, but it doesn't. If you need to do graphics, then you're going into Canva and if you're doing reels, you're going into a video editing software. So it ended up being ,I think, about 4 to 5 different possible softwares. I see you nodding that that's right.
Rebecca Scott: [00:08:18] Yeah, I am agreeing.
Heather Zager: [00:08:20] So you have to have a couple different platforms to be able to tackle all those different things. You're not in just one social media platform doing all of this, you have to bring that content in. And what that content looks like may need to be edited somewhere else. Just to confirm that. Maybe you won't be able to answer this, but can you give a quick breakdown on the different platforms that you've worked with and which one you like best? And maybe not "best" because I know we're not trying to pick one out and get everybody signed up for it and try to promote it, but there's advantages and disadvantages to each. So maybe you can talk a little bit about Loomly versus Hootsuite versus another one, the top three and tell me what you think about each one.
Rebecca Scott: [00:09:03] I started off using, I think it was, Sprout Social and Hootsuite. Back when I did start with those, they were great, but the price was extremely high. I know that it has changed a little bit now, and there are people who really like it. I haven't gone back and tested it again, but that is one that I know a lot of people do enjoy. My favorite so far has been Loomly, just because of the ability to easily schedule everything and assign it to a client. They can go in and hit 'approve', 'requires edits', that kind of thing, and it gives you pretty much all of the platforms as well. So you can do Google My Business, YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn. Then there's another one that I used to use, it's mainly for Instagram. I believe they've expanded into Pinterest and maybe Facebook now, but it's called Planoly. That one I really liked because it gives you the ability to see your whole feed right in front of you and drag and drop your Instagram squares to rearrange your posts, which is really nice, because the aesthetics of your feed on Instagram are still really important. So being able to do that is great. And then I like Later as well, but it got to the point where I was trying all these different ones. I had to get down to one of them and ended up doing Loomly. It was the best price for the number of accounts that I have to manage.
Heather Zager: [00:10:38] That would make sense for your situation, there's so many different clients. One thing, just a quick aside that we learned together, that I'm just recapping here for my listeners is, I had noticed I did a post right in Instagram and I felt like it wasn't a very substantial post, but it got so much traction. It was just a stupid, simple thing that I did, and I had this realization that perhaps using something like Loomly or Hootsuite didn't work into Instagram's algorithm as well as when you post right within Instagram or right within Facebook. I just wanted to call that out to people that are listening, that sometimes these platforms are good because they help you manage a lot of different social media sites, but they may not work as well in getting in front of viewers as being right within the platform. So it's a balance, it's a trade off. And then with that, it occurred to me that the reason that something like Hootsuite is so expensive is that perhaps their ability to get in front of the viewers in each of those social sites is maybe a little bit better. So if you are going to use a platform, the reason you're paying more is because they have a little bit better strategy so you don't have to be in just Instagram or just Facebook and repeat the same post across all of them, which is time consuming. I don't know if that's true or not, but I suddenly I had this 'aha'. There's give and take for everything no matter what you do, so finding the one that's the right price or has all the platforms you need, everything's going to have its advantages and disadvantages. So do what works best for you that keeps your posts consistent and that you're constantly there and you can shift later if you need to. I think that's the best strategy is just making sure you keep doing it wherever it is that you go.
Rebecca Scott: [00:12:39] Exactly, making sure you're showing up. Just the consistency for people, always having you top of mind. That's really important.
Heather Zager: [00:12:47] Exactly. My next question then is, how do you know if your social media strategy is working if you're doing those average 4 to 6 hours a week and you're posting in whatever platform you decide? How do you, at some point, evaluate whether or not what you're doing is working for you?
Rebecca Scott: [00:13:07] This one always comes down to the goals that you've set. For some of my clients, they want just brand awareness. There's not many of them that want just brand awareness because most people want the extra sales and newsletter subscribers and that kind of thing. But if you're looking for an increase in subscribers and getting your name out there, that could be one goal. Otherwise, it's more of the sales, web visits, newsletter subscribers. So you have that as your overarching, this is my goal to meet that's going to tell me if I've hit this. That means my social media is working. I like to break it into a social metric and then a business metric. Your social metric is your follower growth, your impressions, your engagement rate, all of those in-platform metrics that you have. The hope is that these are not just vanity metrics, that these are actually people that are "filling a room" for you or growing your audience. All of these people are going to funnel into your business metrics, which are determining if you are going to have those extra sales and the extra newsletter subscribers. That's more of a lagging indicator, it shows your business outcome is specific to your company. And if you have those sales, that, I think, is what you want to reach for in terms of, is it working for me or isn't.
Heather Zager: [00:14:41] Interestingly, I feel like if I get a customer, a new client, I have a referral source. Rarely does somebody say social media, because you stay top of mind and then they feel like they actually found you. They found more information on a Google search, and so then they say they found you on a Google search and you're like, well really, you heard about me through social and then got more information on a Google search. I've discovered that my clients that come in are much more abreast of my business. They know what I do, I don't have to explain things to them. So I think the social media presence, while I can't manage it or understand it directly, like where it's coming from, it still has an effect that's positive in how educated my clients are when they do come to me. I think that that has a lot of value too is, I think, that lagging metric you were talking about. It's a little bit hard to nail down, but you get this sense of it as you go that things are getting better in one way or another, so that's very good. We were talking a little bit about all the different platforms that you might possibly need to use to make a post, and I'm wondering if you have suggestions for someone doing their own posts on a workflow.
Rebecca Scott: [00:16:01] For a workflow, I would say that determining those platforms is number one. Making sure that you're starting off by seeing who your target audience is. A lot of people, they skip this step. Coming up with your persona or your avatar for your clients, that will determine which platforms you want to be on. I heard somebody, the other day, say that LinkedIn is like going to the cocktail hour at your business, your after work cocktail. Facebook is like going to the family reunion, and then Instagram is like going to your local mall or shopping online. And then once you have those platforms determined, that's when you move into more of the content creation and monitoring, making sure that analytics are part of your workflow, looking at the numbers and making sure that everything is running smoothly and consistently.
Heather Zager: [00:17:09] Okay, perfect. In that, what is the most common mistake you see people make when doing their own social media?
Rebecca Scott: [00:17:18] That's a good question. I would say the number one mistake is not providing value in your posts. People are coming to your platform and looking at your posts, wanting to get something out of it. I see a lot of people who, they put out posts, but they're mostly just fluff. And that's fine if you're on a personal account and you're just talking about your day to day, what you're up to, maybe your kids, what book you've read recently.
Heather Zager: [00:17:50] 'Look at me and what I do'.
Rebecca Scott: [00:17:53] Especially if you are not providing a product to somebody and you're more of a service based company, you need to be showing that you are a subject expert and that your posts are giving them either a tip, a trick, some kind of solution to their problem. When they see your post, the hook in your caption, or the first sentence in your video is really going to reel them in and tell them exactly what they're going to learn and what the subject is of the post, and then you have to follow through on that and make sure that you're actually giving them something by the time they're done reading or watching your video.
Heather Zager: [00:18:32] That makes a lot of sense. Are there any 'don'ts' with social media posting? Other than keep your shirt on, literally. Keep it G-rated, those kind of things obviously. Just in the creation or something.
Rebecca Scott: [00:18:51] Number one, I would say don't use low resolution videos or photos. It downgrades you in the algorithm, but it also makes your brand watered down and less professional. You don't need to go out and hire a professional photographer necessarily, but making sure that you are using a little trick, like cleaning your lens on your iPhone. I've seen a lot of people take photos or videos and it's super blurry, and it's like their phone has been in their pocket all day. So little things like that. Don't rely solely on ChatGPT if you are using it. I know that AI is a huge thing right now, and it is very helpful, especially in doing some of your own social media. But if you are going to use it for captions, you really need to make sure that you're adding in your own voice, you're adding in parts of your brand that it won't know about, and just finessing it so that it sounds like you, and not that it was copy-pasted right off of there.
Heather Zager: [00:19:54] That makes sense.
Rebecca Scott: [00:19:57] Third, I would say is, don't ignore negative comments if you have them on your posts. And that's a tricky one because a lot of people, their first instinct is to either reply really fast and angry and get heated because of it, which is a natural instinct, or they want to delete it. I always say, don't delete the comment, even if it's not true. Always reply in a professional way because that shows that you're invested in your brand, and you're invested in standing up for your values and your mission and your company. If you leave it without replying, then it just leaves questions for people and it makes it look like you don't care.
Heather Zager: [00:20:45] It's sort of is like, where are they? They posted the post, but it's not engagement. So engagement needs to be in the form of also responding to negative situations, too. To show that you're there and you're aware of what's happening on your social front. I watched a video and was looking through the comments and somebody was just so disgusted with it. They're like, 'unfollowing'. And it was so funny because the thousand other people commented 'buh-bye!'. I'm not even sure I saw anything from the original poster, but the rest of the followers defended the original poster, so it was pretty funny. I was like, okay, well, they're gone.
Rebecca Scott: [00:21:28] And that's funny because that one negative person boosted that post up in the algorithm because everybody got in there and was commenting, so it backfired.
Heather Zager: [00:21:39] Yeah, exactly. I wondered, did somebody go in there and post that just to try to boost the engagement?
Rebecca Scott: [00:21:47] Yeah, you never know.
Heather Zager: [00:21:48] You try to play the game. So anyway, it was pretty funny, I kind of laughed at it. I was like, well, can't please everybody. That makes sense, if you get a negative comment, you need to be on the spot. I did have somebody, I did a post and they had some concerns about it, and they DM'd me directly. It was somebody that I knew from a long time ago, so it was very nice of them to take it offline and contact me. In that case, I responded right away. I kept it professional and appreciated their feedback and their input. I didn't say this to her, but she's not my target market, so it was okay to me. It was worthwhile to respond to that offline, even if we didn't agree we were professionals about it. I really respected her for doing that and still connecting with me to tell me her thoughts. So there's that side of things too. If you get a message directly, you need to handle those people too, because it could escalate and that's not a good thing. One of my questions to you after all of that is, it's a lot of work and people are hearing 'six hours of getting prepped every month' and 'engagement' and it's just a lot of work. At what point would you recommend hiring a social media manager?
Rebecca Scott: [00:23:04] Good question. I would say, if you're doing this on your own and you're finding that it's taking away from your personal life and it's taking away from your ability to focus on the other parts of your business that need you more than your social media, that's a really good 'red flag' that things aren't working out. You don't necessarily have to hire somebody full time, but maybe you'd want somebody to do a strategy for you that you can then execute easier. Or you can have somebody come in and do just the graphics or just the captions or just the scheduling. Finding a good social media manager that can work with you if you still want to be involved or that can take it off your plate fully so you can get back to what you do best in your business.
Heather Zager: [00:23:57] When you're spouse hands you divorce paperwork, you know you've gone too far.
Rebecca Scott: [00:24:02] 'You love Instagram more than me'.
Heather Zager: [00:24:07] Your 5 year old is suddenly 18, I haven't been paying attention.
Rebecca Scott: [00:24:13] 'You've been in the TikTok hole for 5 years'.
Heather Zager: [00:24:16] That's a really good strategy. I didn't realize that you could find a social media manager that would parse out sections of what you needed. I thought it was an all or nothing thing, which worked great for me, so that that was fine. I just went, 'I can't do this. I just don't know enough, I need somebody to do it entirely'. That's helpful too, because I can just completely concentrate on other things. I have challenges sometimes with resources like Fiverr and Upwork. There's good people on there, but there's so many people who think they're good, and they are to a certain degree, whether it's what I do with the pattern making and sewing or even with the social media. There's people who just aren't the best person for the level of professionalism that you need for your business. What are a couple of things you would look for in finding a social media manager? Some professional skills or some education or credentialing that you would recommend?
Rebecca Scott: [00:25:19] I'd say they don't necessarily have to have formal education. It would be more of their experience. If you're looking for somebody, ask them for portfolio samples, links to accounts that they've worked on so that you can see their style, the results that they've gained for their clients. Somebody who is a really strong copywriter, that's really important because you need to be landing your hooks and your main parts of your copy as well, and then your call to action. It's more than just putting a little caption on a photo and hoping that it sticks. Another benefit that's not necessary, but it really helps to have somebody who has a bit of graphic design experience so that they know how to make your posts look branded. They're cohesive across every platform, and you're not just taking a Canva template straight from Canva and putting new text in. It has to look different and connect with your audience. And then communication, somebody who is willing and open to having a dialog with you about things that are going right and things that aren't going right, so that you can keep tweaking as you go and see how things are progressing throughout your contract with them. I think those would be probably my top highlights of that.
Heather Zager: [00:26:47] The big question that everybody wants to know the answer to, of course, is what is a price range that they could expect to spend with a social media manager each month? The low end to the very, very high end.
Rebecca Scott: [00:26:58] This varies depending on where you live, how much experience the social media manager has, if they're a freelancer or if they have a team that's working with them. From what I offer in my experience, it's between $500 to $1500 a month. There are agencies that charge a lot more than that. I tend to work with the small to medium sized businesses, so I try to have monthly packages that can fit within a variety of budgets as well as hourly coaching, if that's something that somebody wants. You really are paying for the experience, so if you are going for that lower price range, like you said, Fiverr, you have to expect, that's the results that you're going to get. So it's worth it to invest a little bit more to get those skills from somebody who has more experience and to not waste your time in the end.
Heather Zager: [00:28:00] That makes a lot of sense. You are my social media manager, and we have gone around a couple of times just figuring out what can fit into my budget, what works best for me and what my expectations are. Speaking to the communication part of it, you've been great with that so that's been super helpful for my business too. There's just a lot going on, and it was new to me, so finding where I wanted to be took a minute and I appreciate your patience with me with that. I'm sure you get that from a lot of new clients. I think that was all the questions that I had today, unless you have anything that you want to add to this interview that you think might help any listeners. Let us know, how can you be reached? The name of your company is Creative Nobility. You have a website, so they can find you there. Do you have a free consultation booking button there or how can they get a hold of you?
Rebecca Scott: [00:29:01] You can find me at my website, you can book a free consult there. There's a little contact button that you can use. You can also find me on LinkedIn under Rebecca Scott or Instagram at @creativenobilitysocial and I will reply on all of those.
Heather Zager: [00:29:20] Perfect, wonderful. Okay, so we know how to reach you now. Thank you so much for doing this interview with me today. I hope everybody that's listening found this very helpful, and if you have any comments or suggestions or ideas on future podcasts, feel free to email me directly. I'm at heather@madeapparelservices.com.
Rebecca Scott: [00:29:38] Awesome, thanks Heather.
Heather Zager: [00:29:40] Thank you for listening to today's episode, we hope that you enjoyed it. If we didn't answer all of your questions, or you have some comments or suggestions about future podcast episodes, please email me at heather@madeapparelservices.com.