The Lead Generation Power Of Social Media In A Remote World

Paul Roberts: Hey, welcome back everybody. It’s time for another episode of Leader Generation presented by Tenlo Radio, a show where we help B2B and CPG marketers generate data that turns into money, starting with the woman who makes tons of money. Oh, just tons of money here. Tessa Burg.

Tessa Burg: Yes, that’s right. Thank you, Paul. So today we have another person who’s making a lot of money building relationships online and this episode is important, especially now, as we think about building relationships and B2B marketing without trade shows and without being able to physically connect with our clients.

Tessa Burg: My guest is Brittany Mayti. She is coming to us, well, she recently moved to Cleveland from Atlanta, and now is coming to us from her home in Cleveland. Brittany, thanks for being our guest today.

Brittany Mayti: Thanks for having me.

Tessa Burg: I wanted to start off by, I know before we met, I was taking a look at your social presence because if I’m going to have a social media marketer on the show I wanted to see, like, what does that look like? You have 73,900 followers on Instagram, and I know you said just two, three years ago, you had 300. Tell us, how did you do that? How did you build such a huge following?

Brittany Mayti: Well, one of my passions since I was younger was acting but I was always, in my adult life, in the corporate America world in marketing. So my acting agents and manager looked at my online presence and I had everything private because I didn’t want my clients to see that acting side, the entertainment side of me, but they told me if I want to take entertainment seriously, acting seriously, that I need to jump on the social media bandwagon and build up my following.

Brittany Mayti: At that time, a lot of Indie filmmakers, even certain networks, will Google you and look at your presence to see what audience you already have to bring to the table. And that’s a big deciding factor sometimes when deciding on talents. So there could be one person that is equally talented that has 300ish followers like I had, or someone else who has over 70,000. Who are they going to hire?

Brittany Mayti: I decided to utilize my marketing experience and education and apply that to myself. Initially I was referred and hired someone to help me maintain it because I had nothing, so I had to create my own content, pictures, videos, and then I had someone in there finding followers for me. Now this isn’t completely allowed, but a big part of it was they took a list of other up-and-coming African American actresses with 10, 20ish styles, and I’m not talking like Angela Bassett or Holly Berry, someone a little bit like myself and I gave them list.

Brittany Mayti: And so the company had their team and they logged, were into my Instagram account and would go in and like from my account those other people’s followers and posts, assuming that, “Hey, if they like this person that’s up and coming, why not like Brittany?” My responsibility was just to keep them coming, keep content. Back then I did videos, photo shoots. A big thing I learned is that people go to social media to see pretty pictures, to be motivated, inspired, and to learn something, so that’s what I just encompassed with my post. It just got crazy and overwhelming. It’s like full time job.

Tessa Burg: Oh, I’m sure. I mean, that is huge. So you spend all this time and energy and really digging into what motivates your audience and what keeps them coming back. How did you translate the benefits that you were experiencing as an individual to helping to create motivating, engaging content for businesses?

Brittany Mayti: Well, at the time I worked in property management so what I learned, even though it was just myself, is people like personality. So I noticed some of my other friends who were trying to start, my peers in acting, weren’t getting the same results is because they weren’t really posting things that had themselves with the personality behind it.

Brittany Mayti: I would do silly videos or maybe I’m eating something really good, and I’m in my stores like, “Oh my gosh, you guys have to try this.” One of my peers, her name was Tabitha Brown, we were in the same kind of theater group together, and she posted a video about a sandwich from Whole Foods that was vegan and got a deal with Whole Foods.

Brittany Mayti: The video went viral and it was just simply her in her car, like, “Gosh, this sandwich is so good,” and just that personality behind it. So I took into my buildings is I gave my buildings, the businesses, some personality. So we would do videos, tours, and although the group of us is still that personality behind the brand. People want to be entertained whether it’s an entertainment or in business. So that’s how I take the personality.

Tessa Burg: That’s a great point. I think that’s something that feels like it’s missing right now for a lot of us is that human connection and the personality behind the brands.

Brittany Mayti: Right.

Tessa Burg: So if we’re thinking about, “Okay, I want to start putting my company, putting my brand out there, showing more of what makes us work and unique,” how do they get started?

Brittany Mayti: Well, I always recommend interns. I wasn’t really privy to what’s happening, so my little brother is who I kind of go for, like, “What’s trending? What’s out?” and I would say that with businesses as well. If there are people in this business that have the absolute do not know where to start with social media is hire someone that’s freshly out of school or a new marketer. It’s not always the person that has 30, 40, years of experience because things change. So you want to diversify that and have those different elements and see what’s trending and stay on top of the trends.

Brittany Mayti: And in regards to finding the personality, having a meeting just like, what do we want? To look at your core values, really. Look at your mission statement. Really look at it and see how to put a personality behind it. A brand I can think of, it’s not necessarily B2B, but Wendy’s does a great job with this. They’re always trending on Twitter and social media. They’re always up with the times. They’re making political statements. They took a personality, whomever runs their social media, and they’re in the forefront. I mean, I don’t even aggressively eat that but when I’m thinking of fast food Wendy’s sticks out because I always see them. I’m saying there, like it’s a human, but that’s how they make me feel about their brand because they added some personality to it.

Tessa Burg: Yeah. And I mean, I think that’s important because people do business with people. You’re right. That it keeps it top of mind and it keeps it more personal, even though it’s on social.

Tessa Burg: You mentioned that it’s a full time job and you have to stay up on the trends. What are some ways that you’ve done that to make sure that the trends that you’re following are what people actually care about or want to see from you or from the companies you work for?

Brittany Mayti: Personally, I can give you an example. I didn’t do this. I was a little late to it, but the Met Gala. We all know the Met Gala is something that comes up every year, and some of my what’s it called? Content creator, influencer friends had content pre-created prior to the Met Gala because they knew that event was coming up. So having that social media calendar, what’s coming up, whether it’s national donut day or ice cream day or big events, the Oscars, everything is accessible via Google, and you can preplan that out even quarterly.

Brittany Mayti: Another thing is if a news break happens, so whatever your business pertains to, for instance, something for me personally is the Hollywood Reporter or different news outlets. See what pops up that day. Like, “Oh my gosh. Let me make some content related to this. Let me incorporate some hashtags creates this,” so when people are seeing this big news break, my personal brand pops up close to that and I was already on it and not a day late.

Tessa Burg: Wow. That does sound like a lot, but I think it’s manageable. So you really have to find what events or even milestones your audience is following, and then sort of back out what content is going to be relevant on that day, and maybe leading up to it.

Brittany Mayti: And recycle content. You could have done something two or three years ago, or maybe you had a video where you can break it down and like, “Oh my gosh, that’s relevant now,” because as you’re growing new followers come. They’re not going to see something, necessarily, that happened six months ago or even if they did, they may have forgotten. So when you’re doing content, videos, pictures, always think forward, too.

Tessa Burg: Okay. That’s interesting. So I’m wondering, you know, you have a ton of followers, to build up that audience or keep them engaged, do you ever interact with them one one on one? How do you create an open communication channel or start building those deeper personal relationships with your audience?

Brittany Mayti: I have to do better at that but with my posts, I try to respond to… Everything’s relevant in my comments because with the algorithms specifically on Instagram and Facebook, they reward you for actually being social on their social media platforms. So if people are sending you messages or commenting and you’re not replying, that’s going to put you down a little bit lower when people are scrolling through or on the Discovery or Explore pages. They reward you for being social.

Brittany Mayti: Something you can do, especially for businesses, they have canned responses. So something I get a lot in my Instagram messages is how do I become an actress or how do I get paid partnership with brands, so I have something that’s already formulated, so I’m not taking a lot of time in typing that out to send a response. But I try to respond to as many relevant questions as I can.

Tessa Burg: That’s a great idea. That happens a lot. I see that. You get some of the same questions. So for your person representing your own personal brand, what do you recommend for companies? Should it be coming from the company’s brand or a specific person within a company?

Brittany Mayti: Well, I personally recommend you want to keep it brand focused because people do not stay with companies forever. So you want to have the brands, and you want to hire someone who really encompasses the brand, but they’re speaking for the brands. Now in regards to content related, they’re going to have to be people.

Brittany Mayti: You can even… I know we hired actors when I worked in property management, when we were doing our new construct buildings to introduce them to businesses in the hospital, so they would place their people in our long-term housing apartments. So we would hire actors to come in and kind of make it like, this is the best place to stay. So if people did not feel comfortable in the company to be on camera or demonstrate products or whatever that may be, hire actors, hire local actors and have them do the content for you.

Tessa Burg: That’s awesome. I had a question and then I just lost it. You just said something really interesting. Paul started wiggling his fingers signaling that we-

Paul Roberts: Oh, it’s my fault. I see. It’s my fault here.

Tessa Burg: I’m going to blame you, Paul, I’m going to blame you. I was like, “Oh, that was it,” but could we take our break now to see if my thought comes back to me?

Paul Roberts: Let’s do that. Let’s take the break. I’m sorry to disrupt your thought. I was trying to give you a quiet hand signal. Instead, I just totally disrupted the flow of the conversation here.

Tessa Burg: It’s fine.

Paul Roberts: All right, well, hang on. We’ll be right back right after this.

Paul Roberts: And all we wanted to tell you is in the past year marketing and sales have changed dramatically, so where does your business go from here? Well, there’s one idea that we’re going to throw out here. Why don’t you sign up for a one-hour digital readiness session with Tenlo? They’ll talk about how can meet your business goals using digital marketing. Yeah, this new stuff we’re all trying to figure out, plus you receive a digital readiness playbook. That’s worth the effort right there.

Paul Roberts: It’s a step-by-step guide to execute digital marketing tactics that drive growth and deliver sales, something you didn’t think digital could do. If you want to learn more about all of this, it’s pretty simple. You simply go to tenlo.com, just like it sounds. T-E N-L-O.com and you can sign up. So check it out. The new digital readiness sessions, get your copy of their digital readiness playbook and be ready for wherever digital goes in this new, crazy era.

Paul Roberts: Okay. Surely, now, we’ve given you plenty of time to come back and think about the question. If not, I have one for your guest here.

Tessa Burg: Yes. So Paul, I’ll let you go first because I wrote it down so I won’t forget.

Paul Roberts: Okay. Well, you know, the whole title of the show is the power of B2B Social Media in a Remote World. Is it really powerful or is it just a poor substitute? Because that’s what I hear over and over again. Social media, yeah, you can connect with more people and everything, but it’s not the same. And I wonder, I think it’s a different kind of connection. I wonder what your guest thinks about that.

Brittany Mayti: Well, the power is in your tracking and your lead generation. I’m an advocate for, if you’re doing something and you’re not getting results and you’re not getting leads, then you need to change it and switch it up. My experience with working in property management, the way I knew what we were doing worked is because we saw the results. We were filling up our apartment buildings. We were reaching out there. We were on the top of the list of referrals and that wasn’t just to consumers. That was who we did business with them and partnerships with for our corporate housing and with the hospitals and the local schools.

Brittany Mayti: So personally, for me, I track my growth in running this by the partnerships that I get. Now, I really only pay to post. And so I’ve done that, and I’m getting paid more and these brands are coming back. So that’s why I see that it’s working. And also a lot of the brands will do commission. So through your link, if people purchase through your link, that’s how they know that their leads are working, working with you.

Brittany Mayti: If I’m working with a brand and no one’s buying anything, because that does happen, there’s people that buy followers or don’t have really active, engaged followers. Or as a woman, a lot of the brands will only work with me if I have 50% or more of women followers if I’m advertising women products. They keep hiring me, so I believe what I’m doing is currently working, but I totally understand what you say that people are just trying to get followers. Companies are buying them, and it’s not working if you have a hundred thousand followers and three people are commenting on your posts.

Paul Roberts: So let me just expand upon that, and then I’ll drop out again here. I think you nailed it. In an old world of marketing, in broadcasting, for example, I’m in radio. It was all about how many. Not who and what they did with it or how they engaged they went with it. I think that’s true across the marketing world, but particularly with social media, if you go into it with the old perception that it’s just about how many, how many followers, so I’ll just buy them. How many clicks I get. How many people sign up for my webinar or something, and don’t really pay attention to what you’re doing. If it’s all about just call me, call me, call me, then social media doesn’t work.

Paul Roberts: No, because called social media is about creating a connection and starting a conversation, and if you’re not really ready to carry on a conversation, if you’re not interested in a true connection, you just want a lead that you can pester, then no, social media is not going to work for you.

Brittany Mayti: And with Instagram and Facebook’s algorithm, as I’ve met at the offices, they can see that. They have a team of people who look and see what people are doing. So if you are doing that and abusing it and not being social, your posts aren’t going to show up. So if you want people to engage, they’re not, because they’re not even going to see it.

Paul Roberts: So what do you think, Tessa, are we ready to have conversations? Marketing’s not supposed to be… that it’s just supposed to be getting me in front of somebody so they’ll contact me or give me a lead that I can follow up. They’ll send in that coupon, and then I’ll pester them.

Tessa Burg: Yeah. I think that marketers, especially digital marketers, are held to really high goals and high standards of how well we’re doing in generating leads, especially for our sales teams. So I think it’s easy to lose track that what’s most important is that you’re making these connections, and in having strong empathy for what motivates and engages is what leads to higher conversion. It’s interesting because we use social, but hearing this conversation with Brittany and having talked to her before even made myself and our team step back and say how do we make these connections deeper? Because, Paul, right now, I feel like we have to do it because of the pandemic.

Paul Roberts: Right. Exactly.

Tessa Burg: We are in a remote world. Would we have otherwise? Maybe not. Maybe we wouldn’t be giving it as much attention as we are now.

Paul Roberts: But I think we have to pivot and think how we do it and why we’re doing it. For example, I’ll give you, I mean, maybe it’s a strange analogy. I hate going to networking events. Now, I know everybody’s supposed to go to a networking event. That’s how you meet people and build your network, but they’re never about really meeting people. They’re just some guy running around passing out his business cards. Hey, how are you? What do you do? Here’s my business card. Yeah. Great. Call me, call me, call me. They don’t really want to get to know me. They just want to get in front of me and pass out as many cards as quickly as possible, and when I start to talk to them, they’re already looking over my shoulder like, yeah, that’s really interesting. Hey, there’s one over there. I just need to go get it.

Paul Roberts: It’s not about connecting and it’s not about conversing. If you’re not really interested in connecting, which means back and forth, not just me telling you. And if you’re not really interested in conversing, which is, again, answering questions and finding out what you can do for them, then no. Social media is not about just how many followers you rack up and then they’re going to instantly sign up for your service.

Tessa Burg: Well put.

Paul Roberts: Okay.

Tessa Burg: So, I have my question, Brittany. When we’re looking at social media strategies, you said it’s to keep it behind a brand because people can switch over. I totally think that makes sense, but do the social media platforms value what brands put out, the content they put out, differently than what people put out.

Brittany Mayti: There has been a new terms update because, specifically with Instagram and Facebook, that they want you to pay for their sponsored posts. I don’t know if you’re ever scrolling through and you see something underneath and it says sponsored. That means that they paid to get that post out there to be visible. For brands, they’re taking that advantage so they may not, within their algorithm, have them show up more as just someone who’s showing people how they love making their Sunday dinners as a person as opposed to a big brand that has the money. Because it’s all about, too, at the end of the day, making money.

Brittany Mayti: I would say you want to have a budget to get those sponsorships, which can in fact also present you to new audiences but in turn you’re also being rewarded for actually utilizing that service. So when I did work in property management we did have a budget, a social media budget, where we did do the sponsored ads as well, not just the organic ads like I do as a person for my personal brand that I can reach more.

Tessa Burg: That is interesting. And is that true across all of the social platforms, that you need to, as a business, have that mix of organic and paid to get a real lift and real visibility on your content?

Brittany Mayti: I think initially. Once you garner, once you create that audience, you may not need it as much, but with our new buildings we definitely, definitely have the organic and the paid mix. Our average is probably a hundred dollars that we would use on an ad., and that was with Facebook and Instagram specifically.

Brittany Mayti: Now YouTube, we did our videos. We would put the link in with a sponsored post. For instance, with YouTube, we would put that in our Facebook carousel or post or with a click ad on Instagram or even in the link, there’s a bio link in Instagram.

Brittany Mayti: But it definitely helps because if you don’t have an audience you have to find them and Instagram would prefer you hiring them, or Facebook, as opposed to when I started I hired a company. So they’re getting smart with that. Like, okay, people are hiring third parties to help grow.

Tessa Burg: Along the same lines as business posting, business contacts, one thing I get hung up on is the hashtag. I don’t understand the role of it. I originally thought it was just a funny little joke that you put down. Why? Is there a purpose? Do I need to be more intentional about it? How should companies think about hashtags?

Brittany Mayti: I believe a company should have their own personalized hashtag, so when you do build up that brand, people will see that and post it and all of your content will be together for discovery. Hashtag is really about discovery, so if you ever went to a wedding and they’re like, “Okay, this is our hashtag,” and so you’re at the wedding. You’re posting your pictures. When you click on the hashtag, all the wedding pictures pop up through that hashtag. So that’s the personalized hashtag.

Brittany Mayti: Now if your company’s selling some type of equipment for other company or plane parts, you don’t want to hashtag plane parts, plane equipment every single time because there’s something else that’s called ghosting, and so then you will not show up in the discovery. So the hashtags, you want them to be specific to the posts that you’re posting, and I have some recommendations.

Brittany Mayti: There are some hashtag apps. So you’re posting the picture. You can upload the picture, describe what it’s about and it’ll generate as a hashtag generator. One of them is called Tagstigram, like Instagram, but it’s called Tagstigram. The other one is called Hashtag Expert. And then there’s a website and it pops up, and you just do a general Google search. So if you’re posting something about planes that I have a Top Plane hashtags, you can look at that and see what works for you.

Brittany Mayti: Another trick that I do, but it changes a lot with Instagram, but it works now to not get ghosted. As I said, I was an actress, so I will use acting, actors hashtags a lot. So I’ll put my hashtags in the first comment of my posts. This is specific to Instagram. And I think now you’re allowed up to 30 hashtags per post. Then after three to five business days after I feel like I’ve garnered new followers, people click on it, I’ll delete that comment. So my next post, I want to use some of those hashtags. I can reuse them without being ghosted.

Tessa Burg: Well, we’re learning new words today. Or I guess I’ve always thought of ghosting as when someone just stops talking to me without [crosstalk 00:00:22:26].

Brittany Mayti: They call it, “Oh my gosh, my hashtags have been ghosted. So if you’re posting a lot about hair products and you click and you’re not there anymore, they feel like you’re abusing the hashtag, I guess.

Tessa Burg: So it’s really important to pay attention to it, especially if you’re trying to be discovered in a specific space.

Brittany Mayti: And after you’ve reached that pivotal point, you don’t really need need it that much, but there’s always room to continue growing. You always want to garner new leads. I don’t use hashtags as much now, but they’re definitely helpful for both Facebook and Instagram, even YouTube. YouTube is very important, too.

Tessa Burg: Okay. I’ve never actually even thought of hashtags on YouTube.

Brittany Mayti: Say you’re wanting to look up a cooking recipe… I’m trying to think of business examples. When you type that in, YouTube posts pop up based on that, too.

Paul Roberts: Can I jump in again? You forced me to come out of the shadows again here and ask another question here. What’s the difference between a hashtag and what’s the other one they call?

Brittany Mayti: A handle? Like an at?

Paul Roberts: They say @Tenlo or something here. I mean, the hashtag is what? It’s what you put into the body of the post?

Brittany Mayti: Yeah. So the hashtag is for discovery. The “@” is your page. So if I put @brittanymayti, that’s where how you locate my direct page across the platforms, but #brittanymayti, if you click on that, that’ll bring up other people that have posted about me, other pictures. That’s more of a discovery. So if you’re looking for a recipe for donuts and you search #donuts, whoever used the donuts recipe hashtag, you’re going to see those pop up.

Paul Roberts: I see. Okay. So when you’re posting this, you’re going to put that little cross hatch, that little look like the tic-tac-toe kind of thing, and then you’re going to put your hashtag in, and if you get enough people to do it, then you trend or you show up or whatever here.

Brittany Mayti: Yeah. So on Twitter you see what’s trending, that’s the hashtag. Yes.

Paul Roberts: Okay. Because a lot of people put the at symbol. They put @tenlo or something here and then I’m like, they put that in there as well. So I’m doing this @tenlo. And I’m wondering, is that as effective as putting the little hashtag? Hashtag is actually searchable, right?

Brittany Mayti: Right. The “@” symbol is to get to the page but for instance something that’s popular right now is quarantine 15. Everyone’s talking about they’ve gained the quarantine 15. So #quarantine15, people post workout things or food, and that was something that was trending. So if you’re up on that, you know it’s trending. You want to make a post, whether your [inaudible 00:24:57] or anything, like quarantine15 or to stay on trend like that.

Paul Roberts: So should I put both in all my posts? Instagram, Facebook, Twitter? Also, should I put that @tenlo and then put the hashtag of the topics I want to be found under?

Brittany Mayti: You don’t have to put @tenlo. So @tenlo, if I made a post about this podcast, I had a great time with @tenlo?

Paul Roberts: She said if. She said if she makes a post about it. When. Not if. When. Right.

Brittany Mayti: I will definitely promote. So when I make the post, I’ll put like, “had an awesome time with @tenlo. We talked about #B2B.” So people can find Tenlo and they can also find what we talked about.

Paul Roberts: I’m an old guy. I don’t understand all this. I think I’ve been doing it wrong.

Tessa Burg: Oh yeah. I’ve learned a lot. This is my third conversation with Brittany, and we need to just keep talking.

Brittany Mayti: No problem. I’m like, “Oh, I didn’t tell her that either. There’s so much. Honestly, it is so much. That’s why I had my little brother help me because I had no idea either. He talks so fast and I’m like, “Okay, but what do I do?”

Paul Roberts: So she really should put both in there. I had a good time @tenlo and then that on that social media, if I clicked on that, that would take me to the Tenlo page. Is that what you’re saying?

Brittany Mayti: Yeah. So my followers, they can click on @tenlo. You can also tag them in the video or picture. Then the hashtags are more discovery upon which we talked about. Like #podcast, #show, talk radio, coronavirus, marketing, marketing in coronavirus. You can use a hashtag expert to get the right ones posted.

Paul Roberts: You’re going to have to do this again, Tessa, because a lot of people are scratching their heads. I think I got it now. I think she explained it better than… We’ve had lots of people try and tackle this because everybody obviously wants to put the little at symbol in and then the cross hatch symbol. When do you use one or the other here, and should you make them the same? Well, no, because the cross hatch is the conversations, but yeah.

Tessa Burg: Yeah, it’s been helpful. So, Paul, do I have time for one more question?

Paul Roberts: You do because I took over an asked mine, so you get a freebie here. All right.

Tessa Burg: Well, the other thing other than hashtags that’s been a mystery is TikTok. I’m now getting targeted with all these ads saying that businesses should stop making commercials and start making TikTok’s. What is Tiktok good for? Why is that a benefit to businesses?

Brittany Mayti: If your target market, who I believe would be people between the ages of 15 to maybe 35? That’s where everyone is at right now. TikTok. I don’t know if you’ve seen kids with the store doing all these crazy little-

Tessa Burg: Yeah.

Brittany Mayti: That’s TikTok.

Paul Roberts: My grandson. Yes. Right. He’s crazy about TikTok’ing. I don’t even know what the heck it is, but it seems like just short videos. It’s very short. It’s what Periscope tried to be once way back when. Little short little snippet videos, right?

Tessa Burg: Yeah.

Brittany Mayti: Upcoming generations have very short attention spans, so TikTok is for that with videos. I think we were discussing previously about the trade show. That would be a great idea. Since you’re missing out on the trade show because of coronavirus, TikTok would be a great thing to maybe do some demonstrations really quick.

Brittany Mayti: And as we’re using TikTok, still learning about it. It’s a lot. I haven’t reached my large file on TikTok. You’re doing those as the kids are doing the dances, the youth, even adults now. I saw my grandma on TikTok. I’m like, wow, really? Because they just laugh. The videos, it’s really for entertainment. I’ve also seen some that’s educational, but the little laugh factor in it. So that would be awesome for businesses to jump on that now. It’s like the new Instagram.

Paul Roberts: But it’s got to be entertaining. It’s not like a listicle where you say here’s the three tips to a better seminar. Here’s three tips to that.

Brittany Mayti: I’ve seen cooking tutorials that weren’t funny, but the ones that do very well and trend need some kind of like comedic element to it. People are bored right now in their homes scrolling through these apps, so I would recommend a little bit of entertainment, but still keep it on brand and professional with what you’re doing.

Paul Roberts: Well, there are emerging TikTok stars. I shouldn’t get political, but Kellyanne Conway, the White House counselor, her daughter became a big TikTok star, so much so that’s really why mom and dad quit what they’re doing. They’re going to go back and kind of ramp her down because she’s having these raves and rants and meltdowns on TikTok, then became a big star because of it.

Tessa Burg: I bet that’s entertaining.

Paul Roberts: It is. It’s very entertaining. I’ve seen some of the stuff she does. I mean, she comes out and wishes AOC would adopt her and all these other things. She does these goofy things her, and her mother is working for the president. Now, for those that aren’t in the know, she’s become a big star on TikTok and there are others just instantly coming up out of nowhere here.

Brittany Mayti: They’re trying to shut down TikTok. Instagram, because they’re on top of it, has something called Reels. R-E-E-L-S. It’s very similar to TikTok, and it’s within Instagram. So I would say prepare for both, but it’s the same type of concept.

Paul Roberts: Why are they trying to shut it down? I’m lost. Is it just because it’s a Chinese company and we don’t like Chinese things?

Brittany Mayti: The president wants to shut it down. I really don’t know. I don’t know the background of it, but I know all the young people in my life were like, “Oh my gosh. TikTok is going to be shut down by the president.” [crosstalk 00:30:18]

Paul Roberts: Right. Or he’s trying to get some American company to buy it. He was trying to get Microsoft to buy it or something because there was some fear of the Chinese are influencing our kids or something. I don’t know.

Brittany Mayti: I have no idea, but Instagram recently, I think a couple of weeks ago, they came out with something called Reels, and so now I’ve been seeing that a lot. And if you are on Instagram, your business and you use these new releases quickly, they reward you so you pop up quicker.

Tessa Burg: Yeah, and I definitely think there’s a business application even for the most technical products because what brought people to even work at that company or what brought people to work at the companies that buy technical products is passion. And there’s entertainment when you bring that cash-in forward. I feel like, especially if it’s on Instagram, which has sophisticated targeting, you could add personality to your brand.

Brittany Mayti: Yeah. I worked at a startup company. We started off with like 10 employees and something we did big that started with the social media was birthdays. They completely embarrassed you on your birthday, but it was fun, so we would record that and post that. So something that simple, it had nothing really to do with the brand, but people that were wanting to work for us and came on later were like, “Oh my gosh. You guys do the birthdays, right?” That was something that the company was known for. Like hats, and they would bring in clowns sometimes for adult birthdays and just different ideas like that to show your company [inaudible 00:31:42]

Paul Roberts: Since we’ve already blown past the half hour here, and we don’t have another show immediately after this, so let me ask you. Can I take advantage of this moment to ask? Are companies embracing… I’m talking about big companies… embracing these new fun platforms, TikTok, Instagram Reels?

Paul Roberts: Or are they scared of it because it empowers the ordinary people to start doing goofy things, and maybe that doesn’t fit the corporate image. Maybe that hasn’t been vetted and tested. Maybe we don’t want our employees out there doing goofy things for birthdays and stuff here because we’re not in control of it.

Brittany Mayti: Well, that’s what you have to be in charge of. Who’s in charge of your social media? I know when I first got out of undergrad, there weren’t a lot of positions in marketing because of the recession, but now there’s so many people hiring for a social media coordinator, social media head, social media. So you have to have those people in place that you check the content because, yes, I have seen larger companies things have been released and people have even been fired that worked for the company unrelated because of their social media presence. So you do have to be careful.

Brittany Mayti: Previous larger companies I’ve worked for, you have to sign things off. We even had to sign waivers saying that we might be on social media via the company, specifically the one with the birthdays, but you just have to have someone in place to filter all that.

Tessa Burg: So, Brittany, how can people who have more questions about this get in touch with you because this is your area of expertise, clearly, and your profession. So how can they get in touch with you?

Brittany Mayti: They can contact me @infoatbrittanymayti.com. That’s I-N-F-O @brittanymayti.com. Or, now we’re talking about social media, just send me a DM @brittanymayti.

Paul Roberts: Whatever the heck a DM is here. I got to go look that one up here. A direct message, I think she means. How do we spell direct? How do we spell Brittany Mayti because I would never figure it out.

Brittany Mayti: It is B-R-I-T-T-A-N-Y-M-A-Y-T-I, and I’m the only Brittany Mayti in the world.

Paul Roberts: I’ll bet. I’ll bet. Yeah. Perfect handle. Perfect handle, hashtag, whatever, here.

Tessa Burg: I would say that we’re the only Tenlo, but we’re not. There’s actually a DJ named Tenlo.

Paul Roberts: Is there really? Wow. Okay.

Tessa Burg: We are on Instagram. You can visit us at tenlo.com. We have lots of other episodes from Leader Generation on tenlo.com under podcast. Subscribe, reach out, and suggest new topics or feel free to shoot us questions, and we will answer them on our future episodes.

Paul Roberts: Okay. That’s it. We’re going to wrap it up from there. And if anybody wants to, how do they find out about your other thing you were talking about? I was intrigued at the commercial. Just to really, to give you another 30 seconds to do a quick commercial on this digital playbook.

Tessa Burg: Yeah, the Digital Readiness Playbook. You can go to tenlo.com. Just go contact us and request a Digital Readiness session. Basically about 60 minutes, we help bring external view to how you’re building relationships, how you’re approaching digital trade shows and the new things that have entered our marketing tool set since the beginning of the pandemic, and looking at what’s great and what can we learn from this moment. And what should be tested? And then we have some training and programs available to help you test new tactics to keep your leads up and sell through this time.

Paul Roberts: Well, if you keep getting guests like Brittany, I’m going to keep coming back and listening because these are people on the cutting edge of what are very confusing, quickly being thrown at us, opportunities to talk and communicate with customers. I don’t think most of us know what to do with them or how to deal with them, so we just avoid them or try and shut them down or hope they go away.

Tessa Burg: I agree.

Paul Roberts: All right. Thanks, guys.

Tessa Burg: Thank you, Paul.

Paul Roberts: Well, there you have it. Another example of why you need to tune in each and every week to this show right here on the Funnel Radio network for at-work listeners like you.