Mastering Social Media: Insider Tips for Marketing Success! with Mari Smith

You can find Mari Smith at:
Website: https://www.marismith.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/marismith
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mari_smith/
Superstar Community: https://marismithsuperstars.com/

Mari Smith Podcast Transcription

[00:00:00] Kris Ward: Welcome to another episode of Win the Hour, Win the Day, and I am your very lucky host, Kris Ward, because today we have a treat in the house.

[00:00:07] Oh my gosh, this is a big deal. We have Mari Smith in the house. Now listen, she has got accolades on top of accolades. I’m just gonna highlight two that I think are very significant. Mari was headhunted by Facebook. And she represented Facebook and went around doing the small business and Facebook marketing expert where she toured companies to boost your business series lives. Now, before I dive into that a little bit more, she was also named by Forbes as one of the top 10 social media power influencers several years in a row. And I’m gonna tell you a little bit more once I just at least welcome her to the show. Welcome to the show, Mari.

[00:00:43] Mari Smith: Thank you so much, Kris. I am really looking forward to this conversation and I appreciate being a guest on your show.

[00:00:49] Kris Ward: Oh my gosh. Okay. What? I don’t know if people know, but here’s the thing that I think is astoundingly impressive about you. It’s gonna sound like I’m talking about back when we went horse and buggy in the 18 hundreds, but I remember when Facebook or the idea of using Facebook was new to your business and for me as a little baby entrepreneur, my business was very new, and the idea of buying an info product was incredibly new.

[00:01:17] Oh my gosh, I don’t have to drive somewhere. I don’t have, it doesn’t have to be local. And here on the horizon was this phenom, and the first person out there was Mari Smith and it was you. And it was the first pro… and it was even like, oh, I’m buying something off. Look at me. I’m like, living life… large, risky.

[00:01:37] Here I’m buying this info product off the internet. And to me, what’s astounding is not only the quality of your work and the consistency over the years and how the quality continues to, scale and grow, but the fact that you sustained all the changes that have been since then, I think that’s one of your biggest achievements.

[00:01:57] Cause once you got going, of course you had competitors and everyone’s ” Hey, what’s she up to?” But for you to power through with all the changes and all the platforms and to still be the impact that you are, I think that’s frigging it just phenomenal.

[00:02:16] Mari Smith: Thank you so much for saying that, Kris. Yeah, it’s definitely been a very dedicated journey, but I know what you mean.

[00:02:22] I think it was Mike Stelsner, a founder of the social media examiner, that gave me the moniker of the Queen of Facebook. Maybe like 2007 or eight.

[00:02:31] Kris Ward: Yeah.

[00:02:31] Mari Smith: And then it just stuck and people got calling me that. But sometimes it, it makes me chuckle when I’m thinking, gosh, I guess my, I guess I still have my crown, and I polish the jewels up every now and again.

[00:02:42] But Facebook really keeps us on our toes now. Matt, of course, the holding company of the whole family of apps. And it’s, it, I enjoy it and I’ve really come to know about my own self. Through the human design system. We can talk about that if there’s time. That’s a whole other side project, a passion project for the last several years.

[00:02:58] But as I’ve dug into that and gone so many ahas oh my gosh, no wonder that I’ve stuck to this career for so long because it’s like never a dull moment. There’s no two days that are same. And I’m like, I really have to stay focused on sifting the wheat from the cha, but what is really important here for businesses and marketers to know, and what is all noise?

[00:03:17] And then how can I structure that? I’m going this with my throat. I have all these, I have all these like strengths in, in my ability to articulate. Kinda almost like the unknown, say the unsaid and read between the lines and help people to know, like the great Wayne Gretzky’s talks about the hockey player, where the hockey puck is going, and that’s Angela, what Mark Zuckerberg has done with all of us is she’s just yanking our chains, so to speak, of okay, now what? Oh, pivot. We’ve gotta go all in on reels. Okay. Reels. Maybe we’ll talk about that.

[00:03:49] Kris Ward: I’m Canadian, so I all know about Wayne Gretzky coats for sure. Quote, I can’t talk quotes for sure.

[00:03:55] Yeah, but again, to your credit, you didn’t just sustain it cuz it was interesting. You obviously, you had chops and talent to survive all the waves that were coming at you. So I know you’ve written this amazing book, the New Relationship Marketing, How To Build A Large, Loyal, Profitable Network Using the Social Web.

[00:04:12] Fantastic. Reddit. It’s a great read. You gotta get it. What the first question I would have for you is somebody that navigated, survived and thrived so many reiterations of social media. What do you see, and I know you highlighted on some of this in the book, but what do you see the greatest hits and the greatest misses of what if people just got this, they’d be able to survive all the changes?

[00:04:37] Mari Smith: Oh, I love that you’re asking this because, and I think that is one of the keys to my own success over the years and then helping my students and clients is that at the end of the day, it’s all a people business. It’s whether you’re B2C, B2B, to me it’s always P2P, it’s People to People and Social Media, all social platforms.

[00:04:55] But Facebook in particular affords us this opportunity to really connect with people around the world is what Zuckerberg wants us to do, and not just people we know that went to school with friends, family, extended family, community, but certainly your prospects, your clients, and to nurture relationships with them so that we can build you can call it a tribe, a community and audience.

[00:05:18] And I love to say of people who love you and love to buy from you. All and good having maybe have a Facebook group or maybe people really engage with your content on your business page, but do they buy from you? At the end of the day, we’re in business. We need to sell, we need to be collecting leads and making sales.

[00:05:36] And so when I wrote the new relationship marketing quite a while ago now, I really was very intentional in making it as evergreen as I possibly could. Because one of my favorite chapters in the book is talking about soft skills, so the ability to have empathy, compassion, deep listening. I mentioned earlier about reading between the lines, so you know when you’re responding, let’s say on Twitter, you’ve got limited characters on Twitter or wherever it might be, where you’re just reading a comment or a piece of feedback and you immediately take it personally and you jump on your high horse and now all of a sudden there’s a tension and you’re like that person you have no idea what’s going on in that person’s life.

[00:06:15] And so to be able to have some empathy and compassion and training your moderators and your public facing community managers to have those and embody those soft skills can really make all the difference in your success.

[00:06:29] Kris Ward: Yeah, you speak such profound and wise words, and I agree with Michael Stelsner, who has also been on the show, a friend of the show, as you are the… definitely the queen of Facebook, but almost in a way, I was wondering if I should bring that up to you in the beginning, because I almost felt in my little heart that it not, I don’t, and this as a compliment that it almost limited you, right?

[00:06:49] Because it’s oh, you’re so much more than that. And speaking of that, I am curious when all of a sudden there’s different waves and it’s all of a sudden, oh, this month Facebook is dated and we should all be on the grownups are on LinkedIn or the professionals are on LinkedIn and there’s all this, like high school, what’s the new thing this month?

[00:07:08] And you gotta get over there. What was your insight your expertise that made you stay the course on Facebook? It would just be so easy to jump chip. It’s not even about loyalty to Facebook, but your ability to navigate the landscape and to see the bigger picture where so many of us start hopping to new things because we’re told everybody’s there and you’re the last one coming.

[00:07:30] Mari Smith: Interesting. Yeah. Zuckerberg and team, they’ve been so relentlessly focused on attracting the youth and, it’s really shaken the foundation of Zuckerberg and Metta, the whole empire. Excuse me, where the competition back in the day with Snapchat. So they just, blatantly copied the stories feature.

[00:07:49] And then now, as Adam and Siri, the head of Instagram set a about three years ago now, two and a half, three years, 2020. And that the TikTok is the most formidable competitor that the company has ever seen. And so many of the new developments, features, whatever that they roll out. They met on Instagram.

[00:08:11] Facebook is a direct attempt to try to woo the youth. Being Gen Z, maybe younger millennials, people in their, up to their late twenties and under back to Facebook or even on Facebook in the first place. And so to your question about what has kept me like just sustained and devoted to the platform, when others were like, oh I’m over it.

[00:08:35] Quit Facebook or these trending hashtags every now and again, Facebook is dead, or, yeah. Facebook frustration and Facebook fatigue is a real thing. I have many friends who’ve actually taken a break for a while and then come back and that’s all well and good too because it is the mental health aspect.

[00:08:53] But if I go back to the early days, Kris, one of the things, even long before there was like ads or business pages, one of the things that touched my heart so deeply with this platform is I saw that there were more like high school reunions. There were children who’d been adopted and they’re adults and they found their adoptive parents after years of searching organ donors, people looking to adopt babies just unions that just never would’ve happened if it were not for this platform.

[00:09:23] So the humanity aspect. Aspect of it, the positive side of the humanity always kept my spirits high and I would just put my horse blinders on because there is an enormous amount of pretty, sometimes pretty heinous things going on over the years on Facebook. You not at least of, which is the whole privacy and all of that stuff, the data that they collect on us.

[00:09:46] So I just, I’ve always been a champion for the positive aspects of Facebook, and any time a new platform comes along, I often will say to myself, would my mom go over there? Is my mom and my extended like senior members of my family, are they likely to go and set up an account over this other place and see their grandchildren and their children and their, no. No way. Facebook is it for the, forties and up younger.

[00:10:13] Kris Ward: So that’s interesting. Oh, sorry. Go ahead. Go ahead.

[00:10:14] Mari Smith: Yeah, no, that’s it. I was just gonna say the younger still have an account, they may not be as active. Yeah. But they certainly still have an account.

[00:10:20] Kris Ward: Yeah. So that’s interesting to me. Cuz you’re right, we take that for granted now.

[00:10:24] But you’re right, I’ve had people I hadn’t seen, like there’s all kinds of connections. We all have a story about something that happened on Facebook, and you’re right, you’re not gonna find your former biological parents on LinkedIn. That’s not where it’s gonna happen. And I know in a sidebar note, totally irrelevant, but I moved across Canada, sold everything, moved across Canada.

[00:10:41] And I’m telling you I have a friend who’s an interior designer, and we decorated my entire house beautifully. $20 at a time off Facebook marketplace to the point that they did an article on me because it was stunning.

[00:10:53] Mari Smith: Wow.

[00:10:53] Kris Ward: Stunning. And it was just like, oh, somebody’s selling this for 20 bucks and that for 20 bucks. And it was crazy. Like I would’ve thought, oh, It would take me five years to get furniture and it would’ve cost like thousands and thousands of dollars. I was fine with living in this house empty for a couple years, but it didn’t happen. It’s all Facebook marketplace, so you’re right, it does have that.

[00:11:11] When you talk about because you… this isn’t a feel good thing. You talk all the time about conversions and leads and metrics and stuff. So when you say to me like, “Hey, are my friends and family am, is my mother going to go on that new platform?” Then I, what I’m thinking is that’s the compassionate, wonderful, friendly side of you, but the business side, which is no joke in your world. Explain to me how you justify that, because is your mom is in your case, your mom’s generation, your target audience, because I see those as two different categories.

[00:11:43] Mari Smith: They are absolutely different categories. And the interesting thing is because if we can bring in a very new component of Facebook and that is the option to take your personal profile, which you might have had for 16 years or more. Facebook is a company is 19 years old. Folks that started in 2004, right? But you can now flip a switch and change your personal profile to what they’re calling professional mode.

[00:12:07] May you still have your friends, you can still post to friends only. You can still have maximum 5,000 friends and anybody can follow you, which is the same way for the classic profiles. You can have as many followers as you want. That doesn’t change. What does change is you suddenly get access to metrics.

[00:12:23] Same as a business page. You start to see reach, you can see insights on your audience of who’s following you. You can actually even boost posts. And what Facebook is really pushing is this whole monetization aspect for creators, become a creator. It’s just a drum they’ve been beating like crazy because that’s what YouTube is doing, and that’s what TikTok is doing.

[00:12:46] It’s all about the creators. And so that is the younger audience I have yet to see in their videos and photos and interviews and panels they put out. I’ve yet to see any like 50, 40, 50, 60 year old creators crushing it. It’s all the younger immigration.

[00:13:02] Anybody 35 and under, and so that’s fine. But the reason I’m bringing that in is because I kind of like breathing new life back into the Facebook machine, where a lot of people are getting excited, people being marketers, fellow marketers, peers of mine even where they are converting their personal profile to professional mode, suddenly seeing that they’re getting infinitely more reach, more engagement, more followers, massive spikes in followers, and particularly if they focus on the reels format.

[00:13:33] Not all reels, which is the short form, vertical video up to 90 seconds. There was a guy, great creator Austin Armstrong young guy who has a social media agency. He was featured at social media marketing role and he spoke there to fun guy and he’s amassed 800, over 800,000 followers on his personal profile by having the professional mode.

[00:13:53] One of my own clients, Sally Tebow, she had this one viral reel on her personal profile, like over 3 million plays, and then she’s got well over a hundred thousand followers. So there is this like tipping point right now. And also a decision point, whereas as a business person, if you’re like a personality based brand, big companies who have employees, just carry on as usual, and you’re gonna use your business page. But let me circle back to, to make sure I’m catching your original question Kris, you were asking me.

[00:14:21] Kris Ward: Just that you were talking about you wouldn’t leave and go to a different platform, like if your mother and them wouldn’t be there. But I thought your.. I’ve been following you. Your mother as far as I understand, is not your ideal client. So it’s not like you’re attracting different markets.

[00:14:34] Mari Smith: Yeah, she’s in her late seventies and I, I, yeah, my ideal market is definitely a little younger and but I have chosen to focus almost exclusively on my business page. And then I also have a companion group, my social scoop group, very active, a lot of support for social media marketers.

[00:14:52] And then back to the profile. Thank you for connecting my dots. Sometimes I lose my train of thought. Is that right now I did check shift to professional mode last year, 2022. For about six months. I saw an immediate spike in my reach, and then over six months it just started to taper off and I’m like, you know what?

[00:15:09] And I think a lot of my friends were not seeing my posts. I’m like, no, I’m gonna switch back to classic. But here’s the point I’m leading up to, no matter where you post, if it’s a profile, classic mode, professional mode, a page, a group on Facebook is thinking through strategically, you’re going to be just a bit more personal sharing tidbits of your life on your personal profile.

[00:15:32] But for me, I’m always gonna be dropping in little things. Oh, I just got booked to, for a speaking engagement and in Cabo, at the end of June. And so then people are like, oh yeah and I’ll sometimes, I’ll very clearly spell it out, I’m gonna be talk, here’s the title of my talk.

[00:15:45] How to improve your organic Facebook marketing in 2023. Brand new people have just started following me. They see that one single post on their feed and they go, oh, she’s a speaker. She talks on Facebook marketing. We’re looking for to hire a speaker. And so it’s, I’m always strategic, I’m like, even when I’m sharing my personal updates, I’m like, is this on brand?

[00:16:06] Kris Ward: It’s a great reminder because there’s so much social media, so it’s so easy to get into the reputation, repetition of repurposing. Okay, I’ve got this post and we’re gonna do this and we’re gonna put it on different platforms. And I think you just brought up something that I think somebody could remind me every Friday of everyone’s, you need to have what’s happening now and it be, and it not be evergreen and it be timely.

[00:16:27] And you sharing a little bit of behind the scenes where, we have such volume that we have to push out, then we get lost in the repetition of it. I think that’s a really good reminder too.

[00:16:38] Mari Smith: No question. Just real quick, I can interject here. This would be a good point. My, my Evergreen success formula across all social platforms for the longest time has been content, as we were just talking about.

[00:16:49] It all starts with content. Then community, I used to say engagement, but in some places, engagement rates, it’s going down. I’m switching it up now and saying community. So it could be a Facebook group, it could be a third party. And then the third most important part for businesses is conversion. And so being strategic, putting calls to actions in not being afraid to put links in, having good compelling lead magnets and integrating some paid strategy in there as well is not all gonna happen organically. It might, you might get lucky, but you really do have to have a little bit of there.

[00:17:21] Kris Ward: Yeah. Yeah. We’re in the middle of another yet tsunami of change. And that’s AI.

[00:17:28] Mari Smith: Yeah.

[00:17:28] Kris Ward: You of all people. I guess when I know Michael Stelsner, of course he says wise words. So in my mind, instead of the queen of Facebook, I really think of you as the pied piper of social media. So much is happening and you’ve got such a grand scope on it all. Where do you see, how do you see this impacting social media or other changes similar to AI? What do you think we should be expecting or how do we navigate through that?

[00:17:51] Mari Smith: Ooh, so many things flying through my brain. Thank you for the Piper Fad Fast Company dubbed me. That was 2008. They called me the fad, the..

[00:17:58] Kris Ward: Oh, there you go. I’m not original, so it’s must be true if everybody thinks it you go

[00:18:02] Mari Smith: yeah. Of of the internet. That was fun. But thank you for that.

[00:18:05] So I always, for the longest time, I’ve considered myself an early adopter. And at the same time, I say to my audience, look, I’m an early adopter, but I will never just jump in head first and get on the bandwagon and go, “Hey everybody, come on. This is it. Oh, wait a minute. Oh, it turned out maybe it wasn’t.”

[00:18:20] Kris Ward: Whoops. Back up. Back up left.

[00:18:22] Mari Smith: Yeah. No, they, my audience have come to rely on me and they know, okay, Mari’s gonna do her homework. She’s and investigate deeply. Does this serve me right now? How Kick the tires, right? Take it for test run. Then say, okay, here’s what you need to do now. I, maybe a month or two ago, I put something on my, it was actually on my personal profile and I was like, PSA, you do not need to quote, keep up.

[00:18:48] And because it was just this frenzy, it still is. It’s like it gets louder every day that people, oh my God, ChatGPT this and this new day. There’s thousands of AI tools coming every day and people are feeling like they’re getting left behind. And then there’s this other. Excuse me. This other message that’s really dominating is that you know you’re gonna lose your job, the AI’s gonna take over, and that, sorry, you’re gonna be outta a job.

[00:19:11] And social media managers don’t need you. Content creators don’t need you. Writers don’t need you. And I’m like, whoa, stop the presses. That is so not true in my world. And AI, generative AI, right? AI has been around since the fifties, but generative AI, it’s been around for a bit, but it definitely hit, peak at the November last year with chatGPT blasted on the scenes, and so my message is yes.

[00:19:37] Do what you can to carve out little tidbits of your day, your week to explore and keep on top of what’s happening. For sure. Get a ChatGPT account. Play around with it. Maybe mid journey if you can figure out discord and make your images. But what’s gonna be happening, where I’m encouraging folks is look, AI, generative AI is going to be baked into practically everything that we do sooner or later anyway, including Meta Business Suite.

[00:20:05] You’re gonna go to Meta Business Suite, which is for creating, publishing, managing, measuring content on Facebook and Instagram and Zuckerberg and team are working on it right now. You’ll be able to generate text and images and video right inside Meta Business Suite without using a third party app.

[00:20:21] So yeah, we wanna keep on top of all that’s coming. Just keep an ear on it, an eye on it. But at the same time, I’m actually saying to folks who you can stand out among this cacophony by putting more emphasis on the personal touch. And if you’re a writer or content creator, you, we use AI to spark ideas, but it’s always gonna have the personal we do our fact checking. We deductive reasoning, integrate some and weave even some emotion, that kind of thing.

[00:20:50] Kris Ward: Yeah, I think that’s a really valid point. I never for a minute bought that. It’s gonna replace social media managers and writers and stuff, and to me it’s only the answers is like in any aspect of life whatsoever, the answers are only as good as the questions.

[00:21:03] And I think though, a point you’re bringing up is we did all run around. Like in high, hysterical mode, getting all, oh, ChatGPT, like the new savior is here. And then what you bring up to your point is, oh, Facebook’s working on this and that. So that chat didn’t dominate anything. It’s just one model that will be integrated in all other platforms and we will learn for things to be more intuitive.

[00:21:28] Or just like back in the day when all of a sudden we had spell check, or we had this, or we had that, that these things made it more easy for us and more convenient. We still are the creators of our messaging or what we do with that. So I think one of your strengths through the years, and like I said, I’ve been following you for so long, that your accent has actually gotten much less when you had a thicker accent when I was following you in the beginning.

[00:21:53] Yeah. So what I would say is, the clarity and the simplicity and the consistency to your message to navigate when we all get hit by a wave in the ocean of, oh, we must all be doing this. And you’re like, okay, hold on. At the end of the day though, it’s still just water. Just water. Everybody calm down.

[00:22:12] Yeah. So I think you do that beautifully where then instead of us running left, right and here, there and nowhere, you’re like, okay, but it’s still just social media marketing. And so I guess it’s like cooking. The tools may change, but so a spatula or a fork, you’re still gonna flip the meat. It’s no big deal.

[00:22:29] Mari Smith: There’s that, and there’s also keeping your eye on the prize, which is growing your business, generating leads and sales and traffic for your business. Just because meta says reels, I literally, in some of my keynotes, Kris, I have this one gif that’s like these marionettes on a string, and I have all the social icons at the top.

[00:22:47] But meta is the best at where it’s like, one the best. They’re, what I mean by that is they’re, yeah. They’re so skilled at manipulating us, yeah. And I use that word reluctantly, but it’s true. Anybody that’s seen the social dilemma documentary and all of these algorithms are designed to get us addicted, to keep us coming back and just time on site, and just a continuous scroll on TikTok or the reels format.

[00:23:13] On Instagram or Facebook. And so you could spend your days making nothing but this vertical short form video and not really see a whole lot of results for the longest time go, oh, but wait but Meta said I could monetize. They could they’re gonna pay me if I do this format. Yeah, you know what, about 5% of creators are making, six figures. So fine. People might wanna have a little side gig and, pay some bills with less than that. But I’m really imploring my audience, don’t get too drawn into this message about how you have to be a creator and you have to monetize your content. No monetize by offering your own products and services, right?

[00:23:56] Kris Ward: It gets seductive when you see some kid on YouTube with millions of views cuz he is opening gift and he is five years old and you’re like, okay, clearly I have more content than him. So then you get a little what’s going on here?

[00:24:06] How do you, from another angle of a business question, when Facebook headhunted and hired you to do this small business and Facebook marketing expert, do you not? I guess I would be fearful that it might muffle me like then, like you still speak very frankly of their strengths and pluses and minuses to what they have. How does that work in your business?

[00:24:29] Mari Smith: Which part?

[00:24:31] Kris Ward: What I mean is, so if Facebook’s hiring you and you’re going around and they recognize the expert and the leader that you are. So they hire you to in this case, do a tour with the Facebook marketing and the business and all that stuff.

[00:24:41] So then I’m just thinking about, I’m just always, of course, thinking about the insides of other people’s business. Does that then can you, if you’re hired by them and you’re doing a tour with them, then do you have to watch what you say about their weaknesses in your…

[00:24:56] Mari Smith: I see what you’re saying.

[00:24:57] Kris Ward: Yeah.

[00:24:59] Mari Smith: Interesting point. That was an experience that happened several years ago now. And it was wonderful and I’m glad I’m glad I had that. And then I’ve since been hired by them a couple of different times to contribute to the curriculum of the blueprint. They have used to be Facebook Blueprint, it’s now Meta A Blueprint, so it’s this free educational online trainings that they have to learn everything about all their platforms.

[00:25:20] And yeah, I once took a trip to London, hanging out with the Facebook London team and the Ireland team. Been up to Palo Alto for sure. But it’s been a little while now and I’m fine with that. And I am pretty outspoken on my views about the company and the leadership.

[00:25:35] At the same time, I’m extremely cognizant that I know some leaders, not necessarily Zuckerberg and Mosser, but I do know that certainly some C-Suite leaders follow me and my content and what I say out there in the world. And so it’s not like I’m trying to mind my Ps and Qs.

[00:25:52] I’m very transparent in guiding my small medium business owners and some major brands too, of as I say, almost like putting those blinders on. Okay, this is all happening over here. Here’s where Facebook wants you to go away over here, but you stay focused on what is true and correct for you.

[00:26:13] And so back many years ago now, when I had that first tour with them. They’re, and I really milked the PR I will tell you. Correct. But I made..

[00:26:22] Kris Ward: Good for you

[00:26:24] Mari Smith: a little too much. Cuz literally people thought that I was, and I was always a contractor. I was never an employee. And of course, people make up stuff and they, people thought that I had sold out.

[00:26:33] They thought no. And I think even to this day, there’s still some people that think that I work for them or that, I get all kinds of dms all the time. People looking for technical support or favors or, oh. Just get on the speed dial to Zuckerberg and fix all their problems.

[00:26:47] Kris Ward: And Mark Mari here. Yes. Yes. So one of your other things in this current, with all that’s going on, what would be a tip that you would give us for getting noticed in the Facebook feeds?

[00:27:02] Mari Smith: It is the short form vertical video or reels.

[00:27:04] Kris Ward: Okay.

[00:27:04] Mari Smith: The personal profile or the page. However, there’s another little known or overlooked format that is infinitely easier to do, and that is a simple text post published on a background color, and Facebook gives you these.

[00:27:20] It’s in the little publisher. It doesn’t work through a third party scheduler, but it’s in the publisher of your groups personal profile and page you can go into Meta Business Suite and they give you a couple dozen, somewhat limited, but it still works. You can mix it up. And what really works well is doing a question, a simple question post.

[00:27:39] Kris Ward: Okay. Okay.

[00:27:40] Mari Smith: And that gets tremendous reach because the algorithms are actually reading it as a text post, cuz it, it looks like an image with text on it, but it’s actually a text on their own native colored background. That one works super well. Like I say, questions are good. Maybe polls and then mixing up with some image posts.

[00:27:59] On Instagram I would always do carousels, so not just a single image, but the carousel. So you do up to 10 different images and have people swipe. They used to have that on Facebook. They took it away. There is a ninja hack way to do it inside of Ads Manager, even though it’s free, we won’t go into that, but just FYI in case people are like, wait, what?

[00:28:18] You can go in and do a carousel post in the Ads Manager for Facebook. But otherwise though, that would be, the main formats would be the color background, text, images, short form video. Oh, and live livestream. Absolutely. Livestreaming gets actually sometimes the best reach and engagement and yeah, it’s often the least used type of content.

[00:28:39] Kris Ward: Okay.

[00:28:40] Mari Smith: And he first brought it out in 2015, and I think everybody was like, oh live, blah, blah. Let’s do live. And then, it takes effort, getting yourself ready. And my God, blah blah.

[00:28:48] Kris Ward: Brush. Brush your teeth.

[00:28:49] Mari Smith: Yeah. I can’t edit it. What if I make a blooper?

[00:28:53] Kris Ward: Yeah. Oh my gosh. You’re right. Oh my gosh, Mari, this has been such a treat. In case people haven’t figured out by now, they can find you on Facebook, but where else? Let’s be specific. Specific where they can find your brilliance.

[00:29:04] Mari Smith: Oh, thank you.

[00:29:05] Kris Ward: Where should they find it?

[00:29:05] Mari Smith: Thank you. You’re very kind. So marismith.com and certainly Mari Smith on Facebook.

[00:29:09] Maric_Smith on Instagram and I have a new community that I launched not long back. It’s called mari smith superstars superstars.com. marismithsuperstars.com. I’m teaching social media there. I’ve also integrated my new passion project over the last few years, which is a human design system. I mentioned that earlier.

[00:29:27] Kris Ward: Awesome. I think there’s nothing more valuable someone can give you other than their time. So we thank you very much for doing this for us. We appreciate you and everyone else. We will see you in the next episode.