With exciting and very knowledgeable guest this week Mojca Marš, from Super Spicy Media. We talk about social media in general. Then we go into some detail on Twitter and Facebook. You really don’t want miss this really interesting and insightful interview.

Bonus Content With Super Spicy Mojca Marš!

Mojca Marš founded Super Spicy Media after leaving a traditional advertising agency. Today she is renowned as one of the top social media consultants in the world.

By taking time to establish a distinct personality for her brand on social platforms, she was able to attract a robust client base. Mojca advocates against automating too much of your social media activity. She adds that if schedule your Facebook posts using their native scheduler tool, you won’t be penalized as you will be if you use third-party tools like Buffer.

Mojca says that early adopters to a platform have an advantage for a little while, but everyone has to work to sustain their advantage as new people come to a new platform. She also says you should study how people interact with a social platform and what type of content a social network rewards before you create content for a social campaign.

Mojca says most companies don’t make a lot of effort to distinguish themselves on social media, so if your company shows some of it’s real personality, you have a better chance of attracting customers.

We talk about many other subjects in this informative episode, including:

• Will Twitter survive the next five years?
• Is LinkedIn valuable for anyone?
• What does it mean for Snapchat now that Instagram has some of the same features?
• How do you sell the ROI of social media to a business?
• Will we ever see another social network as big as Facebook is right now?

Be sure to subscribe to WP-Tonic on iTunes and leave a review. You can also subscribe on YouTube for bonus content on each episode.

Full Show Transcript

John: Welcome to WP-Tonic, episode 122. Today, we’ve got the immense pleasure of having social media consultant extraordinaire, Mojca Marš, with us from Super Spicy Media. Before I let Mojca introduce herself, I just want to remind you, WP-Tonic, subscribe to us on iTunes, leave us a five-star review, that helps other people discover us, and this is not only a WordPress podcast, but also a WordPress maintenance service, high-touch concierge. If you have legacy clients that you’re looking to transition away as you’re raising your rates, we can help you with that, and you can leave them in capable hands.

With that, I’d like to introduce our spotlight guest, Mojca Marš. Mojca, introduce yourself. Let us know what you do and who you are.

Mojca: Okay, so I am a social media consultant, and my company is called Super Spicy Media because that name kind of embodies who I am as a person, but I actually founded my company right after getting fired from my previous job, and I was working at an advertising agency, and it was more of a traditionally oriented agency where they did newspaper ads and radio and TV and everything. That, but I wanted to move more into the digital waters.

What happened was that first year, we got along pretty good, and then the next six months were dreadful because we just stopped getting along. I was trying to do social media. I was trying to encourage them to try social media with our clients, but it just didn’t go well, so they fired me, and then I said, “You know what? I don’t want to work for anyone else anymore. I’m going to establish my own company, and I’m going to run it like I know how to run it.” It was actually my first company, but I’m doing a pretty good job now.

John: Very good. When you were first launching Super Spicy Media, what kind of obstacles did you have to overcome? Was it hard to make the transition, or … ?

Mojca: Yeah. It was the number one problem that I encountered was how to get my first clients because this was the first time that I had to find work. I had to find clients, but I didn’t know how. I didn’t know, do people call other companies? Do they email them? What do they do? So I just tried a bunch of techniques and tactics, so I did a lot of, because I was suddenly left. I didn’t have a job. It was just like that, I was without a job, so I knew that I had to do something.

At first, I did cold emails because I’ve read a couple of blog posts that said that with cold emails, you get clients. It’s the fastest way to get clients, so I started with cold emails, got my first clients, and then, I said, “I cannot really scale this, so I’m going to try to establish my persona on Twitter and just to establish my authority and communicate there, and then, maybe I will get some clients my way.” That’s how I started doing more Twitter and stuff like that for my own company as well, and it worked pretty well again.

Yeah, so just getting those first clients was the absolute hardest at the beginning.

John: I’m glad you mentioned Twitter too because one of the things I wanted to ask you is, a lot of people, they use tools like the auto-DM reply, like on Twitter, when you follow them, or Buffer to schedule posts. What are your thoughts on automating a social media? Is there a time and place for that, or … ?

Mojca: When it comes to Twitter, this is a topic that I love to talk about because ninety percent of people get it wrong. A lot of people automate one hundred percent of their tweets, for example, on Twitter, and they don’t get the results they want, and they come to me and say, “Twitter is not working. Why is it not working? Twitter is messing something up. Am I doing something wrong?”

When I check their profiles, one hundred percent of their tweets are automated, and people notice that, and people notice that you’re not putting the work in your strategy, and they will just go away from your profiles. So I do not recommend automating everything, especially when it comes to Facebook, that’s a whole other story.

With Facebook, Facebook is actually punishing you, your reach, if you automate your Facebook posts with third-party tools. If you use buffer, for example, Facebook will lower your reach just a little bit, and not a lot of people know that, so when it comes to Facebook, I do schedule posts for the clients that I have, but I schedule them with Facebook’s native scheduler.

Facebook is a whole other story, but when it comes to Twitter, I don’t really recommend automating.

John: No, and I totally feel you. I just see other people say, “This is always me,” and sometimes you see people, it’s all automated all the time. When people DM me when I follow them, I tend to be like, “Well, this is just off on the bad foot already.”

That brings me to a great segue. Relationship marketing is a really big buzzword in today’s social media scene and marketing scene. Where do you think people are really missing the boat when it comes to relationship marketing?

Mojca: If I understand that correctly, this is actually the first time that I hear about relationship marketing. Maybe it was defined like something else? Is relationship marketing like that you have to establish relationship with your customers and clients and audience?

John:All that, yeah. Absolutely.

Mojca: Okay, got it. Okay, got it. People don’t do that at all, because they think that social media, they automate, for example, their Facebook page. They put their blog posts in buffer, and they call that a social media strategy, where it’s not. Everyone can do that. Everyone can schedule ten blog posts or one hundred blog posts into buffer, but not everyone can establish that great relationship with your audience, so a lot of people are missing out on this.

What I really do with my clients is, first, I establish that relationship with sharing a lot of value and showing our personality a little bit. Sharing personal photos, for example, that goes a very, very long way. If I’m dealing with a big company that has, for example, a team retreat, we share photos from that team retreat, for example.

We do all these sorts of things just to get closer to the audience and to differentiate ourselves from our competitors because, like I said before, not a lot of people do that, so when you do that, when you start communicating your personality and value a little bit, the audience just comes to you because not a lot of people do that.

John: Yeah, I mean, and scaling the unscalable and doing those things where you make yourself seem more approachable and human, that is really what I feel as well differentiates brands that connect people versus cold, monolithic brands that nobody cares what they have to say.

Mojca: Yeah, and when you think about it, how many companies do you see on Facebook that share posts like this? Pretty much, you don’t see anyone doing this, so when you do that, people will notice, and they will say, “Who’s this? This is a Facebook page that I like. Let me check them out again. Oh, that’s the company.” They will scroll down your news feed and check what you’re saying, like your blog posts, for example, too. Everything just starts with establishing that relationship that has to be there if you want to get them to buy something along the road.

John: No, and that’s definitely it. People do business with other people. They don’t do it with companies so much. There’s always a human on the other end of that transaction.

Here’s the thing, when you’re pitching businesses on, and they probably reach out to you for help with social, but in typical businesses, they’re looking at, like, the ROI of each initiative. They’re saying, “What are we going to get for our money?” With social, it’s really hard to quantify because a lot of those results aren’t measurable in a spreadsheet, and why is that? Why is there so much opposition to using that versus some other traditional means of marketing?

Mojca: It’s, for example, Facebook is interesting. When it comes to ads, you can really measure the ROI. They have now doubled down on some things, so, for example, you can actually set a conversion window of seven days, so if a person sees an ad, and if they purchase something after seven days of seeing an ad, that will still count as a conversion. They are really trying to double down that game, measuring the ROI, et cetera, et cetera, but when it comes to organic traffic and creating a communication strategy on Facebook, you’re right. It’s very, very difficult to measure.

The only things that you can measure are, you know, the reach and how many people click on those blog posts, for example, how many people like and comment. But yeah, it’s very hard to explain to a client that we will not be able to measure the ROI. First of all, we’re not going to achieve those results. We’re not going to improve the results in a matter of one day, so the strategy has to be consistent for at least two months, and the ROI, they just have to trust me on that. I send them case studies. The ROI is noticeable in maybe a few month or two.

For example, I have been working with Hubspot, and they have seen an incredible increase in their website visitors, so after we’ve done some consultation, they’ve seen website visitors increase for, it increased for two hundred percent, I think, and that’s the ROI we’re looking for. It is measurable, but it is measurable along the way, and it can be very hard to sell that to a client.

John: No, definitely, and that segues into something else too. In traditional businesses, I see a lot of this, and maybe you do too, where people don’t hesitate to drop five figures on pay-per-click or Google Ads, but spending money on any other form of marketing is like, “I don’t know about that.” Why do you think that is? Why are people so attached to things like pay-per-click? Because I think that’s like heroin. You can’t get off of it, and the results aren’t long-lasting.

Mojca: Because you can measure everything. I think it’s because of that. You can measure everything. When you post a Facebook post, you will not be able to measure the impact, aside from, like I said, the reach and click through rate, et cetera, et cetera, but with Google Ads and Facebook Ads, I mean, you can measure everything. I think it’s just the measuring part, and us, social media managers and social media consultants, have a very long way to go to explain that to a client.

But yeah, I mean, not having a Facebook. You know, what’s the worst thing that could happen, and what’s the other thing? Whether you have a Facebook page and whether you communicate with your clients, or on the other hand, you don’t, so you have to have a Facebook page if you want your clients or your customers to know that you’re there. If you don’t have it, that’s what you have to have in 2016.

John: Nah. Totally, totally. When it comes to building like communities, say, whether you’re on Facebook or Twitter, a lot of it, say, like when Twitter first started, there was a core group of people that were on Twitter. They were like early adopters, and they built a community. Same thing with YouTube, and you see it happening right now on Snapchat. There’s communities that form around the platform, but what is more important to … Is it more important to get on a platform early and be part of that community as it’s forming, or is it more important to be part of the community that moves to that platform? I guess what I’m trying to say is, how do those two things tie together, platform and community?

Mojca: What do you mean by community? You said like the early adopters and … ?

John: Say, well, okay, like we’re here on Firetalk, and this is like a fledgling thing, and there’s people who are using this. Maybe a lot of the people who were on Blab like a few months ago are here on Firetalk now. Let me rephrase that in a different way. Do people who start on a platform when it’s first starting out, do they have an advantage over people who come there years later?

Mojca: Okay. I think they have an advantage for, I don’t know, those couple of months when the platform is just starting out, but after everyone gets on the platform, you have to be really good at maintaining that advantage and the following.

For example, I was one of the first people on Meerkat. I don’t know how that happened, but I was one of the first people there, and Meerkat…I don’t know if they still have that, because I haven’t been using Meerkat for a long, long time, but they had that leaderboard thingy, and I was there. I think I was on the third place when it started out. It was crazy. But then, after a few weeks of Meerkat becoming this big thing, and each and every company jumped on it as soon as possible, I was nowhere.

I had an advantage for maybe one to two weeks, but then, after that one to two weeks, just big companies and big brands took advantage of that, and I was out of there. I was nowhere to be seen again. So I think you only have that advantage at the beginning, but then, when other people come to that, you really have to … I don’t know. It depends on the platform a lot, whether you are able to step up your game and maintain that advantage, or whether you are just going to disappear like I did on Meerkat.

John: Nah. I think that’s totally it. You have to maintain your advantage. You can be there at the start, but overall, the platform changes. New people come in, and you have to still be active.

Jonathan, anything that you want to ask Mojca?

Jonathan: I think, god, it’s just terrible, those Meerkat people. They just kicked you out the top. Not really. I think it’s been fascinating. The only comment I would posit is that I do use Buffer on Twitter, and I do push out a number of predefined posts, because we’ve got a big library of past guests, but I also, I don’t do automatic DM’s, and I do thank people, every person that does a retweet, or posts a comment, they get a personal message from me.

Mojca: It’s not automated?

Jonathan: No.

Mojca: Just checking. Okay.

Jonathan: I hate those. No, they get a personal message from me, and I check who said something about twice a day, but I do automate as well, so I do agree with you that people that totally automate or, you know, you’re not going to get a lot out of it. Just my position is about fifty-fifty of yours. I think the more you put into it, the less you automate it, the more you will get out of it. I do agree. It’s just a time factor, basically. I just haven’t got the resources, or maybe I’m making excuses. I really don’t know.

Mojca: Yeah. That’s a good thought.

John: That brings up a great question, I think. Mojca, when it comes to establishing where you want to be, is it more important to be on every single platform that you can find, or is it better to just find the ones you want to be on and target those?

Mojca: Find the ones you want to be on and target those. Definitely. A lot of companies just, when they are kind of developing their social media strategy, it’s like they create a list of social media networks there, you know, all of social media networks, and then say, “Okay, so we have to be on Pinterest, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, whatever,” and they spread themselves thin, and they don’t have a great strategy in one place, like Facebook or Instagram, but they have a mediocre social media strategy everywhere. So it’s better to focus on one, mostly two platforms, or if you’re a bigger company, you can definitely focus on more if you have more people that can handle those accounts, but it’s better to focus on one or two social media platforms and do a very, very great job there.

Jonathan: I think that’s a great point. I think it’s time for us to go for our break, and when we come back, we’re going to delve more into this fascinating subject of social media. Be back in a second folks.

We’re coming back, and John’s going to take over again. Go on, John. Ask some more fantastic questions.

John: Sure thing. Sure thing. Right before the break, we were talking about it’s better to be on just a few specific platforms and be really excellent at those than to be on twenty million platforms and just kind of halfway have a presence there.

So how do you help businesses determine what platforms they should be on when you consult with people? What do you tell them as far as that? What platforms should they be on?

Mojca: They should be on the platform where they’re already in sales. First of all, if you really don’t know where your audience is, if you’re blind, then start with Facebook. You cannot possibly miss with Facebook. Facebook covers this broad demographic from teenagers, from people sixty-five years and older, you can find pretty much each and every profile on Facebook. But then you have other social media networks that are really, really specific, and really specific target audiences use them.

For example, Pinterest is mostly used by women, young moms, for example, or designers, and then you have Twitter. Twitter is for people that are really technologically aware and, I don’t know, maybe they own some technology companies, or Sass, or whatever, and then you have Instagram. Instagram is for fashion, for beauty, and we know men use it as well for other things, like cars, for example, and for just establishing your personal brand bit. Then you have Snapchat, which is a totally different network again.

When you are first starting out developing your social media platform, I’m sorry, your social media strategy, you should definitely focus on the platform where your audience is, and if you don’t know where that is, start with Facebook. Can’t miss with that.

John: I agree. One billion plus people can’t be wrong.

Mojca: Absolutely.

John: Yeah, so when it comes to that, like content creation, obviously, some platforms, like YouTube, Firetalk, Snapchat is kind of a combo, but those are more video based, Instagram, Pinterest, it’s more visual. When it comes to playing to the strengths of the business, when it comes to content creation, how much is that a factor?

Mojca: I’m sorry? Can you repeat that?

John: Sure. Sure. With the businesses, say they’re having to create the content for the different platforms, how much is determined by playing to their strengths, like what type of things they’re putting out on, like, Facebook or Instagram or Twitter?

Mojca: It plays a major role, especially, like, if your Twitter strategy is going to consist of just photos and nothing else, you’re going to fail. If your Facebook strategy is going to consist only of links to your blog posts, you’re going to fail, so you have to get familiar with each and every social media platform and just kind of discover it a little bit and see what types of posts suit that social media platform.

For example, with Facebook, you have, Facebook covers pretty much everything. You have video, photos, links, text, whatever you want. Then on Twitter, Twitter is, I mean, it’s one hundred and forty characters, so you really can do a lot there. I mean, they do have video, but it’s just not catching up. People are not really, really using video for Twitter, for example, but it’s mostly text-based and link-based and photos and GIF’s.

Then on Pinterest, you don’t have anything else than photos and GIF’s, again, but GIF’s are not really, really widely used, but it’s a photo-based platform. Then on Instagram, you have just photos. You cannot … Well, for example, a lot of people try to promote a product on Instagram, and you have to do a workaround because you cannot put a link into the description box, so what they do is they post a photo there, and they post a link in the bio section, and with that photo, they write that, “If you want to see what this product is, go and check the link in the bio section out.”

So you have to work around these platforms a little bit, and if you want to get the best results, you definitely have to adapt to the platform, so if it’s a visual-based platform, you need to do visuals if you want to get the best results. If not, well.

John: Yeah, no. I totally see what you’re saying. You have to know the platform, and you have to work within its rules and the way that it wants to display content.

Mojca: Yeah. Yeah.

Jonathan: I think another thing that gets me going is, on my Twitter, I built it up, and I didn’t buy any of those tweeters, and some of the connections aren’t that strong, but I do regularly go through and clean who I’m following, who’s following me, and check them over. But you’d be amazed at the amount of people who are saying, “Well, that person’s got twenty thousand,” or, “They’ve got thirty thousand people following them,” but what they don’t realize, a lot of those they could have just bought, so it’s more quality than volume. Would you agree with that?

Mojca: Absolutely. Also, you can check which, if there is one person, and it has a massive amount of following, you can check it out if they’re fake or not. Definitely, I mean, the quality of your audience plays a major role.

For example, if we check Facebook, you can have, I don’t know, one hundred thousand Facebook likes, and I’ve seen that happen. I’ve worked with companies that had one hundred thousand Facebook likes, and they got zero engagement on their posts. That can happen, and they didn’t buy Facebook likes. It just, they didn’t have a good enough of a content, so it definitely, you know, just having a quality audience plays a major, major role in that too.

John: Nah, it totally does make a difference. It has to be something that people want to see and share and reply to. How big was Facebook Video when they introduced that? Are they positioning themselves as a real rival to YouTube, and how is that affecting YouTube?

Mojca: They are trying to rival YouTube, definitely. When Facebook first started doing video, it didn’t take off immediately, but then, what they did was they started pushing video content higher in the news feed, and now, if you own a page, and if you post a video, for example, a one-minute, two-minute video, that video is going to get pushed higher in the news feed, and more people will see it. It will have a bigger and better reach than, for example, a link to your blog post, so I really encourage doing that because, like I said, Facebook wants to rival with YouTube, and they are pushing the video content hard. There’s an opportunity for all the businesses that are listening to this. Create video content because it will go a long, long, long way.

John: Nah, totally agree, and I do see that, like when you just scroll through it, it automatically does it. It wants you to stop and watch. It wants you to just kind of chew up your time and just watch everything that’s in your feed.

Mojca: Oh yeah. It happens frequently to me.

John: Totally. Totally. Are we ever going to see another social network become as big as Facebook? Ever?

Mojca: That’s an interesting question. I mean, I cannot say for sure definitely because it’s so unpredictable. No one anticipated Facebook’s success as well, but Facebook is so big right now, I’m having difficulty saying that there will come the next Mark Zuckerberg that will do another social media platform that will just go big.

I’m having trouble saying this because Facebook is so big, and it has made such an impact that I don’t know what the future holds for us.

John: Yeah. The reason why I asked that is, if you look at the history of social networks overall, it’s kind of like there’s one at the top of the mountain. Kind of first, it was Friendster, then it was MySpace, and then eventually, it was Facebook. I thought for a minute there was going to be a time where it started to slip, but there was nothing that really came to replace it.

I have a theory, and I want to see if you agree with this. It really kind of depends on where your friends are hanging out, what social network you’re going to spend the most time on. I think for most, or at least my friends that aren’t in the tech scene, my normal, I guess they’d call them normal friends, but my non-techie friends, they’re all on Facebook, but all my tech friends are on Twitter. There’s not any of my, you know, normal blue collar friends, they’re not on Twitter at all. It’s just not a thing for them, because I’m one of the only people over there.

But when I saw people move from Facebook to, or I should say MySpace to Facebook, yes? It was when people started moving over there, then it just had momentum. What’s your thoughts on that, when it comes to … ?

Mojca: Yeah. I absolutely agree, and you’ve made a pretty good point there. As a person, you’re using Facebook, and you’re using Twitter because your friends are there, so when you decide what content you are going to share, I mean, I usually go with Facebook and Twitter, again, because that’s where my audience is. If it’s a more personal thing that I only want to share with my friends, I will share that on Facebook. Facebook is always the number one pick, and that’s why it’s just so big, and it keeps … You know, it’s just there, and it will always be there.

It looks like it for now, and they are doing a very, very good job on keeping on the first place. They are constantly updating. Twitter, if you notice this trend, Twitter was just dying at some point, and it still is a little bit because they’re doing updates, but they fell asleep along the way somewhere. It was big. It was very big, but they just fell asleep, while Facebook, Facebook has been grinding all the way and all the time, so definitely I think that Facebook is going to stick around.

Just think of it like this way. We thought that MySpace was big, and Facebook came, and it took it all away, so I think that, and we thought, “Okay. MySpace. This is it. This is the social media network. This is going to stay here forever,” and it didn’t because Facebook came, so Facebook really has a big impact, and I think it’s just going to stay here.

Jonathan: Yeah. I think … I just want to ask you one question before John finishes the formal part of the podcast, and hopefully, you can stay on for another ten minutes that we added content for our website.

I’m just reflecting what you were saying. I think a key moment for Facebook was how were they going to deal with mobile. They dealt with it very effectively, and the threats, the scene threat disappeared, and they’ve just accelerated because they dealt with the threat of mobile.

The only threat I can see to something like Facebook is actual device-driven. If some other kind of platform like mobile comes along, and Facebook doesn’t adapt like the way they adapt to mobile, then they could be in serious trouble.

So there’s the two parts to this. I like your reflections on that, see if you agree with that, and secondly, have you got any insights about why did Google fail so dramatically in the social media area with Google+?

Mojca: I have absolutely no idea. I think that, at first, they were trying to be like … If I remembered that correctly, it’s just such a long time ago. I think that, at first, they were trying to be like Twitter. They had, like, these, it was maybe very, very, very similar, like one hundred and forty characters, then they tried to be like Facebook. They were always repeating after someone and not innovating, and I think that was like the major keys that Google+ went away.

I still get clients asking me if I do Google+ strategies, and they just, I’m like, Google+ doesn’t exist. Didn’t they even say they’re turning it off, right? Yeah, but I think it was just that they didn’t know how to innovate. I mean, they’re not a social media platform, so they’d better focus on the things they are good at.

Jonathan: What’s your reflections of what I said about Facebook? Do you think there’s any truth in it?

Mojca: I think there’s truth, but until now, they have adapted very, very good, so I think we shouldn’t be even scared of that because whenever we have, I don’t know, Snapchat, or when Instagram came, or stuff like that, they bought Instagram, for example. They adapt incredibly quickly, and I think they just have such a great team there, and we shouldn’t be afraid of them disappearing any time soon.

John: Yeah. Totally. Okay. We’re going to go to our last break, and then we’re going to come back and close out the regular podcast, and then there’ll be some bonus content after the podcast for people on the WP-Tonic website and our YouTube channel. Back after the break.

We’re coming back. We’re talking with social media consultant, Mojca Marš, and what we were talking about before the break was a little bit, we were talking about social networks that copy each other, and that’s when they start to die out.

But one case that we just saw recently was Instagram, could we say, borrowing some of the features from Snapchat?

Mojca: They stole it. They admitted it.

John: Some people, I want to say this. Another guy who’s like a big fan of Snapchat, Brian Fanzo, he says this is actually a good thing for Snapchat because the people who are learning the new Instagram stories maybe will go over to Snapchat now. What are your thoughts on that?

Mojca: I don’t know if I would agree with that because now they just got an excuse why not to go to Snapchat. Now Instagram’s offering the same, and they already have a good platform probably, or I mean, a good following there, so they’re just not, “You know what. I don’t even need Snapchat anymore. I’m just going to stick to Instagram now,” so I don’t know if I agree to that.

John: Yeah. Well, and here’s a question. Here’s something that I see a lot in my own Twitter feed, and I think, Jonathan’s in his early fifties, I’m in my, coming up on my mid-forties, a lot of people that I know, they’re Gen X, you know what I mean? But a lot of the people that I know, they’re completely reluctant to be on Snapchat. A few people are like, “Yeah. This is the next thing. We need to be on it,” but a lot of people are totally like, they’re fine with Facebook, they’re fine with Twitter, Instagram they’re fine with, but they’re completely reluctant to do anything new, whether it’s Vine or Snapchat.

What do you say to that? Is it just evolution, like, hey you’re going to absolutely eventually need to be on here, or how do you deal with that?

Mojca: I don’t think they will need to be there necessarily because it’s the same with Twitter. Not a lot of my friends use Twitter, because they just don’t like it, and it’s not like they have to be there. They don’t have to be there, and companies don’t have to be there either. If your audience is there, yeah, sure, then absolutely, you have to be there. If it’s not, why even bother?

Same with Snapchat. I think some people like Snapchat. I love Snapchat. I love Snapchatting, and there’s a certain group of people on Snapchat, and companies that have those groups of people on Snapchat, they should definitely do Snapchat strategies as well, but if they don’t, why not focus on something else? So I definitely think that people shouldn’t force themselves to use a social media network just because it’s in, because that’s going nowhere. Definitely focus on the ones that you like and that you love to use, and don’t bother about anything else.

Jonathan: I think that’s fantastic. I think we’d better wrap up the podcast part of the show, so Mojca, how can people get ahold of you and learn more about all the insights that you’ve given us?

Mojca: First of all, they can always, I love getting emails. I reply to my emails in about, I don’t know, seven days time. Always with a seven-day delay, but I love helping, so definitely, they can reach out to me at mojca@superspicymedia.com. I’m @MojcaMars on Twitter. Definitely reach out there too, and if they want to join my free email course about Facebook Ads, they can go to https://superspicymedia.com/fbads/, and it’s a pretty neat course, and I ask a lot of questions, so reply to those emails as well.

Jonathan: That’s great. How can people get a hold of you, John?

John: You can find me on my site, which is LockedownSEO.com, and you can follow me on Twitter. I’m @Lockedown_. How do people get a hold of you, Jonathan?

Jonathan: Oh, definitely not by Snapchat. You’re not going to get a response when you Snapchat me. Twitter, Facebook, email jonathan@wp-tonic.com. Twitter me. The things that I’m covering I try and cover reasonably well, but no point in Snapchatting me.

It’s been great folks. We’re going to end the podcast. Like we said, we’re hopefully going to continue the conversation for ten minutes. You’ll find that on the website with a full set of a transcription of the conversation, plus any other additional information that me and John thinks will highlight the points that we’ve discussed through this fantastic interview that’s been such fun.

Our guest has been very gracious. She came on this show that I managed before, and I totally destroyed her name. It was a bit of a disaster, but she took it as right. That’s I can’t do the background, because I felt a bit embarrassed, but I did my best.

We’ll see you at the … Oh, before we go, we’re doing a live WP-Tonic each Saturday on Firetalk at 10am PST. Please come and join us. You can ask the panel questions. They’re much smarter than me. John does an excellent job. Please join us. We love people joining us on the Saturday show. We’ll see you next week, folks. Bye.

Right-i-o. We can go on to another bit then. Do you mind?

Mojca: Yay.

John: Yeah. This is the stuff that’s on the WP-Tonic YouTube channel. We embed this on the website, so again, an incentive for people to go to different platforms.

Mojca: Great incentive.

Jonathan: Good. Come to my website. Come to WP-Tonic.com.

John: That’s Jonathan’s idea, actually. He’s the one who came up with that. It’s a great idea.

Here’s a question.

Jonathan: Oh, before you start, I just want to apologize about butchering your name. It was terrible. It was terrible, that podcast, but you took it so well. I feel a bit embarrassed about it.

Mojca: No, it’s good, really. I was just talking to John before that. The worst version I heard, and I really don’t mind, it wasn’t yours, it wasn’t yours, the worst version I heard was “Monstra”.

Jonathan: I swear, his will survive.

Mojca: So you’re good.

Jonathan: Oh, thanks, you.

John: [singing] I’m in love with a monster.[ends singing] Crazy. Crazy. Oh man.

Yeah, if Facebook isn’t really going away, and I thought there was going to be a moment where they were going to fall off, but they didn’t, and they’re even investing in virtual reality now because they’re anticipating what the next thing is going to be, and they’ve pretty much got an empire going. They’ve got WhatsApp, they’ve got Instagram.

Jonathan: John. You don’t need goggles, virtual reality. You just need to live in America.

John: Yeah. That’s the truth, man. That’s like a bad acid trip right now.

Mojca, do you see a future where we’re going to … Is it just going to be like a few social platforms, like your Facebook empire, maybe like Twitter, YouTube, or do you see a future where we have a whole bunch of splintered social networks where there’s a whole ton of niche networks out there?

Mojca: We already do. We already do have a ton of niche networks, but I mean, just a few of really big platforms persevere through time, and that’s, for example, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, so I think that many more social media platforms will come, definitely, but just a few of them will persevere and become these big platforms that we all use.

Jonathan: Could I ask a question? The one platform that I think is apart, not, it won’t ever be like Facebook, but it could also become really much bigger, is LinkedIn, and obviously, they recently got bought by Microsoft, but they got in a bidding war with Salesforce.com. I’m not a big fan of either company, but in a perverted way, I think it might have been better if Salesforce had bought it than Microsoft.

They’re getting enormous traffic, and there tends to be traffic when people are looking for a job, but do you see any way where they can get more engagement, more people spending more time on it, and do you think, in any shape or form, it could be, in the business area, more of a threat to Facebook?

Mojca: Honestly, no.

Jonathan: All right. That was straightforward.

Mojca: That’s my answer.

Jonathan: That was straightforward. [laughs].

John: Just “nope”.

Jonathan: That was a silly question.

Mojca: LinkedIn has been around for quite a long time now, and it hasn’t … I mean, you do have some traffic there, but personally, within my circle of friends and colleagues, not a lot of people use it frequently, and they don’t have a reason to do so. They have other platforms to communicate with their peers too, so I think that, no, Lynda is just going to stay at what it is right now, or maybe, my prediction is that it’s even going to die away, like, I don’t know, in two years time, so we’ll see about that.

Jonathan: Yeah. It’s a really interesting one because real thought leaders, they never answer any query that you send through LinkedIn. But they’ve tried everything, haven’t they? I give them full marks for trying. They have thrown … But on the other hand, in some of the basic, you know, like why would you pay for premiere level? What exactly are you getting? In some ways, it’s a total mess, isn’t it? It’s quite strange, really, isn’t it?

Mojca: Yeah. It is. I tried creating a strategy on LinkedIn as well. I’ve tried really hard. I did advertising too, but nothing really worked. Everything just basically failed, and then, what it comes down to when it comes to LinkedIn is just getting those requests, I don’t even know how they are called because I don’t use it anymore, but just getting those connection requests or whatever, that’s what LinkedIn comes down to, and is that valuable to, I don’t know, ninety percent of people that use social media? I think not.

People accept everything. People send requests and connections to everyone, and it’s not really valuable. I did not get anything from LinkedIn, basically, so I don’t know. I think that-

Jonathan: In other words, you don’t think they’re going to become a client of yours pretty soon, are they?

Mojca: Nope.

John: This is a fascinating questionnaire too, because, I don’t know if you follow Professor Scott Galloway from L2 at all. Have you ever seen any of his talks about the Four Horsemen of Tech? Anyway, it’s fascinating. Go check it out.

But they were saying, he had another talk where it’s like, what’s going to be the next Horseman, like that unstoppable juggernaut, and they were evaluating different companies based on kind of like their brand, their value, their business model, and their ability to attract talent, and LinkedIn he gave pretty favorable marks to because they actually have a business model, where, I mean, you or I, and everybody I know doesn’t use it, but obviously, recruiters, or somebody pays that big money to connect to people.

What do you think about LinkedIn pivoting? It seems like they’re pivoting to becoming like a content network now. Do you think that that’s going to lengthen their life at all?

Jonathan: Can I say something, John? Can I say something, John?

John: Yeah.

Jonathan: There’s two parts to this before our beloved guest answers for herself in a very straightforward way. Part one, people think because I’m English, I’m the intellectual part of this relationship. Actually, John’s much brighter than me.

John: Ah, you don’t have to be so kind. Come on.

Jonathan: The second part. I think you’re wasting your breath here talking about LinkedIn with our guest, because she’s just not interested, are you, dear? You just think LinkedIn is a ghost town, don’t you?

Mojca: Well, I tried really hard using it, and I was asking all these people, and up until now, I’ve only met … and I didn’t even meet him personally. This was just forwarded to me from another friend that just one marketer really had great success advertising on LinkedIn, for example. I didn’t, and my friends didn’t. I don’t know. As far as content goes on LinkedIn, I think you have better platforms to spread your content around, like Facebook or Twitter, so I think that they should pivot into something totally … Like you said yourself, recruiters used LinkedIn. Maybe they should do something about that, not focus on the frigging content, because people can get that and can spread their content around as elsewhere, but just do something totally else.

Jonathan: Yeah, well, the one thing I thought they were doing, and it would be interesting to, you know, because I think Microsoft seems to be, under the new CEO, more … This, how to put it? More-

John: Stable.

Jonathan: No, I was going to say more responsive or more adaptive, to some degree, because obviously, LinkedIn, well, Lynda.com, and I presume they bought Lynda.com because they were big into online training, and I could see the kind of convergence between jobs, resumes, training platform, adding more value. I could see that becoming interesting. Now Microsoft owns them. It’d be interesting if that just gets killed off, because I actually, I don’t know if they just bought Lynda because it was available, and they did the deal, or they really had some strategy where they were going to link resume training into something that, what you were hinting, where they focus on a particular large section but don’t try and be everything to everybody, because it just ends up being a bit of a ghost town, doesn’t it?

Mojca: Like it is right now.

Jonathan: I think we’d better get off LinkedIn. Got question, John, because I think we’re boring her …

John: Yeah, I do have a question. You guys, so I’m-

Jonathan: I’m a bit bored. Bored with LinkedIn.

John: Yeah. No more on that, on that network, on that Network That Shall Not Be Named.

Here’s a question. What do you think about Twitter’s chances for survival? Will the shareholders, they want to see a profit now, and it’s like, “Hey, guys. This has been around for a long time. We want to see some money.” Are we going to see Twitter continue to try new things and maybe alienate their user base, or are they going to survive?

Mojca: I mean, it’s not that they’re not trying. They’re trying really, really hard, but it’s just the fact that they should have done these things earlier when people were still on Twitter, when people were still using Twitter regularly, but then, after Twitter stagnating for a while, people just went to different platforms and stopped using it and automated it, automated their profiles one hundred percent. Now, after that happened, Twitter is trying all these new things, but people are just not around to see that.

I think that, I mean, I know that Twitter is really, really struggling right now, and I have a special place in my heart for Twitter, but I just don’t know how … I don’t see them persevering for another five years. They’re just struggling really hard. Unless there will be this major update, and they pivot into something else, or they do something really extraordinary, and everyone jumps up on that.

John: Yeah. I really feel firmly. I do have a special place in my heart for Twitter as well. It’s my favorite social network, but I just know how big business works, and if you’re a public company, you kind of don’t get to choose your own destiny. Do you think, though, that’s part of why Blab went off the air so abruptly?

Mojca: The what reason?

John: Being public, or having a VC, VC’s maybe that wanted to steer it in a different direction?

Mojca: Oh, yeah. Definitely. That plays a major role, so I think that’s definitely one of the reasons, but Blab, I mean, it did take off, but if we compare it to Twitter, it didn’t take off as much as Twitter did, so it’s lifespan was just definitely shorter, but definitely, we see money. People that don’t know the industry are trying to make decisions, and that can be a very bad thing.

Jonathan: You know, I just want to give my reflection on Twitter and then maybe ask one more question, and we’ll wrap it up. You’ve been a fantastic guest. Thank you. Just quickly, and then maybe, John, you can ask one more question, if that’s okay with you.

Mojca: Sure.

Jonathan: My reflection on Twitter, where I think it started to go a bit wrong for them is this whole business with how they dealt with third parties and the API. When it was an open API, there was a lot of third parties doing very creative things with the Twitter platform, and then it was decided, “We don’t want that. We don’t want … Where it’s going to be a walled garden, and we’re cutting off most of the third party functionality, that we’re going to make the API a lot more limited,” and they got hard-balled with it.

I’m not the greatest fan of Facebook, but I think they learned from that, and they’re being a little bit more with it about how their API and their platform … When it has … Don’t get me wrong. I’m not going to go into great depths, but they also liked Twitter being quite ruthless, especially in the gaming area. but they seemed a bit more grown up. I think, when it came to Twitter, when they made that decision, and how they dealt with the API and all the quite cool development going in it, that’s when I think the rot really started to set in a bit.

Meh? All right.

Mojca: I partly agree with it. I don’t think it had such a big impact. I think it was just a lot of things bundled together, and it made it this big thing and this big elephant in the room. Is Twitter going to die, or is Twitter going to continue living on?

Jonathan: One more question, John, and then we’ll wrap up.

John: Yeah. Totally, totally. Okay. One question.

When businesses overall, as far as social media, where it fits into their overall approach, you probably deal with more like bigger businesses, but I see a lot of smaller businesses, they use something like a Facebook page as kind of a de facto website. Is there a danger in building on someone else’s platform, and where does social fit into that overall marketing structure? Should it be like your home base, or should your website be more your home base?

Mojca: I think they should cooperate with each other. Your website should do one thing, and your Facebook page should do the other thing. I think that that’s always a great point that relying on someone else’s platform is not a great idea, but it’s not, with Facebook, if we talk about Facebook, it’s not that bad idea, because Facebook has been around for such a long time and is not going anywhere any time soon, but definitely, when it comes to putting everything you have on Facebook, on your Facebook page, I mean, you should definitely treat it like its own hub for content, but your Facebook page and your website should work together, not separately, but together. Do not put one content, one page. They should definitely work together, so I think that don’t rely only on Facebook, but make it work together.

Create separate content for your Facebook page, and then link, from time to time, to your webpage, and say to people, “You know what? I have more content there,” and then you have those opt-ins there, you have whatever you have, I don’t know, ads, whatever, and people can click through that as well. Make it work together. Facebook page and your webpage.

John: Yeah. I think you’re right. It works best as complementary.

Mojca: Yeah. That’s it.

John: Okay. Well, I think we’re going to wrap up the bonus content and YouTube content here. Thank you so much, Mojca, for enduring us, and hopefully, we didn’t mess up your name that bad, but thank you. You’ve been an awesome guest. This has been one of, I think, one of our better episodes that we’ve had, and just thank you for being on.

Jonathan: Yeah. Thanks, Mojca. Thanks, Mojca.

Mojca: Thank you. I really enjoyed being here, and you didn’t butcher my name, so …

John: Thank you.

Mojca: It wasn’t so bad.

Jonathan: At least I’m aware of it, Mojca, but it’s been fantastic speaking to you on both shows, and you had some great insights. It is confusing for the average person to have a realistic social media strategy, and it’s very easy, and I think you’re very down-to-earth, and you’ve provided a lot of insight for people, practical insights, and thank you so much for coming on the show.

Mojca: Thank you for having me.

John: Okay. All right. We’ll let you get on with your day. All right. Thank you.

Mojca: Okay. Talk to you soon.

John: Definitely. Talk to you soon. Bye.

Jonathan: Bye.

Mojca: Bye bye.

John: And I want to make sure that, is it “Moi-sa” Mars?

Mojca: It’s more of a, the S is a bit shorter. It’s “Moi-sa”.

John: “Moissa”. “Moisa”?

Mojca: Close. Yeah, it’s cool.

John: I know. I know I’m to going to get it a hundred percent.

Mojca: No problem. No problem. The worst one I heard was “Monstra”.

John: That’s pretty bad.

Mojca: That’s pretty bad. I know.

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