#151: How to Build a Social Media Following on Every Platform

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Hello,

Claus Lauter: and welcome to another episode of the e-Commerce Coffee Break. We as entrepreneurs, solopreneurs, marketing guys, always coming up with new ideas, new business concepts, new projects, new campaigns, and more often than not, you are starting from scratch when it goes onto the topic of building a social media, following specifically, if you're dealing with a lot of different [00:02:00] platforms and you can't use what you have or you wanna grow what you have.

So that's what we wanna talk about today, and as an expert, I have Derek Videll with me. He is the founder of social bamboo.com, and more importantly, he's the host of the Social Media Entrepreneurs Podcast and also the inventor of the Social Launch Formula. With that, you already can see he has a ton of background when it comes to social media and how to build a following.

So we wanna dive into this right now. Hi Derek, how are you today?

Derek Videll: Hey, doing great, Claus. Glad to be.

Claus Lauter: Eric, I'm glad to have a, , fellow podcaster here on the show because obviously you're talking to a lot of people when it comes to social media. And before we dive in, give me a bit of a background, what got you into social media and all this sphere, what we are talking

Derek Videll: now.

, my entrepreneur journey started with being in sales for over seven years, and then I wanted to transition into online sales. Started an e-commerce business , that was about four or five years ago now. Once I got to about 20,000 Instagram followers, I was, , looking for a podcast on Instagram marketing, and [00:03:00] there wasn't really one, , that was coming out with frequent episodes.

So I, I started it that day and just haven't stopped for four years. So, , just done in, , at least an episode a week for four years now, and about to hit episode three.

Claus Lauter: Okay. That's quite impressive. Same story here with me. There is a, opportunity, there is a gap in the market.

And then I start, and as you said, you already had built a followship, so basically you started from scratch, you know, about the pain points. Before we dive a little bit deeper into this, give me an idea why it is important to build a social media.

Derek Videll: a lot of people get it at this point it's, , what the best source of free traffic that you can get out there, and it's just where people hang out all day.

, it's pretty rare that you meet anyone nowadays that doesn't have any social media platform. At this point too, most people just have all of them, , all of the main ones that is. So you can usually find your target client , on a lot of these platforms. Even TikTok, it's not really like, oh, it's for the.

, it really has bridged into the older generations as well. , social media is [00:04:00] very important and it's also really important for past customer business, not so it's like, , email marketing has obviously always been big for driving sales with past customers, but just these extra touchpoints with people who are already fans of your product really leads to a lot of organic marketing sales.

Claus Lauter: Now I talk to a lot of e-commerce entrepreneurs, obviously, and a lot of them are pulling their hair out because they are just going crazy on how can I build more following? I'm creating content, I'm posting content on all of these platforms. Nothing is really moving the needle. I think it's a very common problem now.

You created a, formula to help with a launch, not only from scratch, but also from existing, , accounts on all these platforms. Tell me a little bit , what's the key factor on how to get started?

Derek Videll: Yeah. The, trick with growing an e-commerce page is that hard to make content that displays your product and also is trending content.

A lot of times people will just find like audios on TikTok or reels and try to fit their [00:05:00] product message into there, but whenever a post looks like. a promotional post, it's that much harder for it to actually go viral and, and be go trending. So Instagram is great at showing your post to a lot of your followers, but you may see at this point that, , unless you're really finding a way , to educate people a way for free, that is really valuable.

, mention of your product that it can be hard to really, , grow a following quickly. , now it's not even my suggestion to try to find some kind of content, even though great, like it's obviously the goal if you can come up with it, but it's just so much easier said than done. It's very hard to teach. I would have to go through a bunch of just individual examples to even teach you anything in this, , realm to, figure out.

A unique, creative way to create content for a business outside of posting their product. It's just very hard to educate people on. And you should be posting your product because that's what ultimately gets the sales too. The way that I [00:06:00] found to grow a following, , without buying one and just getting all these random people who want nothing to do with ever buying from you.

is to run a giveaway for the exact offer you're looking to sell. And this is not a giveaway like you may have seen online, like, this post tag three friends share it to your story. No one really wants to do that. And they just tag the friends that won't kill them for tagging them in a giveaway. So it's not, , very quality clients either, and it just doesn't.

, hack the algorithm like it used to. So what I like to do, , and the reason why we give away your offer itself is so that the only people that enter want your product. If you give away an Amazon gift card, it's just gonna attract, , a very broad audience. A lot of them will unfollow you after, but if you give away the thing that you sell, The only people who are going to take the time out of their day to actually enter for it.

It is free. So you don't have to have your copywriting perfected in order to get an email. , is why. It's also a great idea for someone [00:07:00] who's newer to ads that just wants to make sure they get some results from their ads. You want followers at the minimum. , we just keep a very simple caption. Hey, for our anniversary, we are.

, choosing one lucky winner to win our most popular product. , and sometimes we just give away like one product that's like 80 bucks or a hundred bucks and get thousands of entries. So it really doesn't have to be a ton of different prize winners. I found like it doesn't change the, , amount of people who enter that much by choosing 10 winners versus one.

Sometimes do a few more, but , it's kind of funny to see that it doesn't really change the amount of entries that you get. . , how it works is it just is name and email on that first step. So it says, all right, if you wanna win this, , yoga map, then, , name an email here, and then on the next page it says, you're entered, you've got one entry.

In the meantime, if you'd like to increase your chances to win, you can. Follow us on Instagram. You can like our Facebook page, you can subscribe to our YouTube channel . Comment on this YouTube video, review our podcast. You can, , follow us on [00:08:00] Pinterest, fill out this survey, whatever your business needs.

So you don't do like all these things usually. I usually just choose, , the most, , important ones. But whatever your business needs, you just incentivize here. The thing is, is about 30 to 40% of people do at least one of these things, and a lot of them just do all of them. and one that we always do is if you share this with a friend and they enter, , cuz everyone gets like a, their custom share link, , with the program that I use, then you'll get an extra five entry.

So it creates, People wanting to share it as well. , and usually about five to 10% of every giveaway that I've run is organic share lead. So it just has this share factor to it as well. So at that point , we're running a giveaway to our product and how we get the word out is ads, Facebook and Instagram ads.

So it's very controlled if you're a local business. Cool. You just put in the region that you're, , able to sell to. It doesn't even work that well organically if you were to do this as a local business, cuz you can't really just hashtag your area and have it go there. But you can put in any [00:09:00] age, qualifications, interests, all that stuff, just get it right in front of the exact audience that you want.

After they've done the entry step, and then they've done all the additional entries on the day that we announced the winner, we say we've got our one winner for the 5,000 of you who lost. Thank you so much for playing. If you would like to still get your own yoga mat as a consolation prize, we will give you 20% off over the next week, and then we run a sale at the end.

And what this does is that if a business has their offer ready and they did their targeting correctly, Then it usually results in quite a bit of sales. If they already know it's a proven offer, then , the people who entered to win obviously want your product to some degree. Some of them just want it for free, and some of 'em want it from you in a year or two.

And the cool thing is they follow you everywhere now. So you'll get that sale eventually. and you got their email, , as well. You'll get the sale eventually if it's gonna play out. But anyone who's ready to buy right there is good. Your offer isn't ready. Like if you're an artist launching your brand new art store and you have no idea [00:10:00] what's gonna sell, the cool thing is, you still have that audience at the end.

You might not get as many sales as you were hoping for at the end, but the fallback is just a lot safer because now you have all these emails and, , followers and you can remarket to them later as you come out with new art. In that example,

[00:11:00]

Derek Videll: Okay. No, I mean, that's

Claus Lauter: a great strategy. , you give [00:12:00] something away, you make it sort of gamification in there.

So follow more, get more, increase your chances of winning. I think one thing that you mentioned, I really like that you mentioned is, don't go out and buy addresses. Don't go on fiber and buy 5,000 followers. Now, question, when you have started with this initial, Gamification was giving something away was the giveaway, and then you want to keep the momentum.

So basically then the next level to keep people engaged. What's the structure or , the strategy that you would follow through on going from the first initial sign up and then continuing there?

Derek Videll: It's a program that I use called Kickoff Labs, and I actually, affiliate with them.

I'm the only one who has this thing, so I do have a link for an upgraded account if anyone would want that. It builds the giveaway for you and it makes the first page where it's just name an email and then the giveaway details on the first page, and then the second page has all the additional entry steps.

And then that's how you can. With the pixel, who's actually entered your giveaway by having it on two separate pages. , but on the second page is where you have the additional entry [00:13:00] steps and even some more, , product information. Cuz while you got their attention, might as well educate them on your, product a little bit more before you try to run the sale.

And that's the cool thing is usually we run this giveaway over a couple weeks, so by the time they enter and the time that you are going to run the sale. You've can market to them a bit, right? So you can warm up these leads and send them some emails about your products and make sure they see a bunch of your posts during that time about it.

So by the time you do run the sale, they've actually, been well educated on it.

Claus Lauter: talking about different styles of posts, , what's it from your experience, what works best there? Would it be static images? Would it be video? What,

Derek Videll: Luckily the static images have one and, and it's mostly because there's less.

Ways to screw up a static image, I feel like, and there's a lot of ways that you can make this video appear unprofessional, not really be engaging. And if you're trying to get the message out, if it's like a 27 second video, it takes 27 seconds for someone to learn. There's a giveaway going on in a static image.

It takes one second for them to learn. There's a giveaway going on. So there's a lot of [00:14:00] that. , it's because it's not necessary to get a free entry. You're not trying to get a credit card. We don't need to sell them on it that long. It's just like the thing you want for free enter. They're like, got it. So usually the static image wins.

I could see a video doing extremely well if it was made and under. 15, 20 seconds. Highly engaging, very professional. But I like to teach things to people that anyone can do. So even if you're just getting started on Instagram and you're trying to get your e-commerce product out, and you really just like, I need more followers.

I don't wanna post every day, what's something that anyone can do regardless of marketing and graphic design skills? So that's what I teach specifically to get people to just build out. The static image is usually what? What works and it's templ. .

Claus Lauter: Now I can see that this strategy works very well in the D two C and B2C business, , where people go just and buy for themself.

, they on Facebook, , we're talking about products that have, or services that have a little bit of a longer [00:15:00] decision time. We're looking into b2b. How does the strategy for these kinds of clients?

Derek Videll: Great question. B2b, very difficult to do to a cold audience. B2B is great for a warm audience, for me, b2b, I'm coming out with my 300 podcast episode.

I always do a giveaway on the hundred episode, so I do a giveaway for my coaching. To an audience who already knows they want my coaching. I can't run ads to win coaching with me to people who have never met me before. I have done it. Just, I was like, sure it wasn't gonna work. I was like, I gotta throw some money at it, just so I can say for sure.

It was like 50 bucks an entry, so I was like, all right. No. B2B is very difficult to do to a cold audience, b2 c of any kind, though I've had someone do like a duck hunting giveaway for a duck hunting trip on their land, , to people doing win a week in this Costa Rica camper van. And then to like products of.

all kinds artists, , literally anything B two C. And also, , even courses that our B two c I had someone do [00:16:00] with a fitness course that did really well. , giving away access to the fitness course, but giving away access to a business course. , there's just that trust. Gap. Someone like Tony Robbins could probably do it effectively, right?

Because it's his warm audience is so big. , but it's a great way for any podcaster or coach out there to take followers that they have on one platform and then cross pollinate onto the other platforms, cuz you just, I'll email my list that the giveaway's going on. I'll post it on my Instagram, I'll post it on my Facebook, post it on my YouTube, and then now, There's a way for all these followers to have incentive to follow me everywhere because we all know that you can tell people all day, Hey guys, make sure to follow me on Instagram, on a podcast.

And it's just does not translate, , nearly at the rate that we'd like it to. People will have to hear me say that for months before they finally do it.

Claus Lauter: No, that's great. A big advantage, you mentioned that before, is that people, if you post a product there and a sales link there, they might even buy it.

So you basically, it pays for itself, I reckon, , just [00:17:00] as a ballpark, what's the price per follower would when you put in, for instance, Facebook ads

Derek Videll: With how many times that I've done it, which is like 150 now. Like the way that I've got it refined, exactly the caption, everything.

Now I, see an average of 30 to 60 cents per giveaway entry. It used to be like a dollar when I first started teaching this though. In the last year? Yeah. It's, like 40 to 50 cents is probably the average entry price, and then about one. By if you already know your offer works.

Claus Lauter: so obviously that's the one, that's the lead, that's the email address that you get once they sign up, and then yeah, from there, obviously they sign up through your different channels and then obviously you need to factor that in the overall price. So it's pretty cheap to get new followers for Instagram and TikTok and whatever you use.

Any specific social media channels where people sign up.

Derek Videll: Wherever they came from, they're most likely to sign up from. So I just run Facebook and Instagram ads. If they came from Facebook, they're [00:18:00] more likely to like the Facebook page. And if they come from Instagram, they're more likely to follow you there.

So that plays into people's budget sometimes if they're not just looking for, let me get as many leads for a cheapest cost possible, cuz usually can get a little bit cheaper on Facebook. But if you're like, I just really want more Instagram followers, then that's where people can maybe just turn off the Facebook side of things.

And then from there, like , the podcast in YouTube, I would say like YouTube, they're a little bit more likely to do. and then if I really want them to do something, you just give them more entry points to do the other thing. So you can kind of just wait it that way to counteract whatever , you're wanting people to really sign up.

Yeah, bribing always

Claus Lauter: works. . a little bit from the legal side. , obviously there's a lot of GDPR in in Europe and California has a different one. So more and more, , countries are coming up. When it comes to signing up, what kind of, , strategy are you following there? Is it double opt in or how does that work?

Derek Videll: It's completely illegal. I can't even tell you what country I'm in right now, cuz I've fled from the amount of giveaways. No, I'm just kidding. It is completely legal. It's totally fine. Great question. People bring this up. [00:19:00] There's, , one advertising policy that it gets close to, , which is advertising Policy 29, and it says that you can't use a post to, , ask for engagement.

If you were to put like this post tag friends comment on it and try to promote that post, that actually would not work. But asking for an email from the giveaway, there's nothing wrong with the giveaway itself, but , it's more just what you can ask them to do on it. You can't ask them to share it , and such, although, because it goes to manual review, a lot of times the reps don't really catch that.

Had people like accidentally do that in the past, , it still doesn't get bammed that often, but giveaways in themselves are fine. But if you just do name and email and, they only check , the ad and then the first landing page. that first landing page only has name and email on the next page.

It has the follow you everywhere. They don't worry about that page. Even if they were to look at it, , they're not, having that abide by their policy.

Claus Lauter: For the listeners and viewers that are a little bit more into, , the Meta Ads Manager, what [00:20:00] kind of campaign, , option do you choose?

Derek Videll: the leads. and uh, Conversions. Gotta make the custom conversion for it.

Claus Lauter: You have created a social launch formula. , tell me a little bit more about this. How does that work? How can I get in touch with you?

Derek Videll: That whole thing that I just explained is what I've coined as the social launch formula.

It's a giveaway, but. Some extra steps, right? And a specific way of doing it. I have a free course that details, , how to do this. It's not like everything, but it's like 15 page pdf if you just want a little bit more free information. That is called how to Build and Monetize a Following in 90 Days or less.

So that's, , social bamboo.com/free course. And then I also do have a program where I just hold people's hand through this so people. Want to do this as best as they can the first time with pretty much no chance of messing up. , I have a program where you follow a video course and everything to set it up, but then we talk once a week and do this entire thing together.

So before you turn on your ads, I look over it. , and make sure that everything is good. The emails your website, literally every part of it. I don't [00:21:00] let you turn it on unless I'm pretty positive it's going to work. And just since , I've done it so many times, , I've got pretty good, eye for it now.

It's been really great. I've been teaching that program for four years and it's just been, improving. As I was telling you about the results of the lead costs, it's, , in an all time low for people who have been going through. Okay.

Claus Lauter: People will be very, very happy to hear that.

Obviously, you're also running the Social Media Entrepreneurs podcast. Give me an idea where people can find you.

Derek Videll: , for those interested in that, you'd book a free call with me. You can find it on social bamboo.com. So social media entrepreneurs, , you can find it on any podcasting platform.

We're about to hit episode 300. You, it might, , already be out by the time that this comes out because we're seven days away, , at this recording time. And I'm sure you can find some kind of episode that would be good for you. , and we. Mostly focus on Instagram, but we touch on the other social media platforms and bring on experts for the ones I don't really know.

Okay, great.

Claus Lauter: I will put the the links in the show notes as always than just one click away. Derek, thanks so much. I think it's a very interesting, , strategy that , you have there and makes perfect sense for me. , [00:22:00] will try it out on my own, I reckon.

So thanks for that and , thanks for your time and talk soon. Absolutely,

Derek Videll: man. Have a good one.

[00:23:00]