Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Bill Lampton Ph.D.
Yes, welcome to the business communication Show. I’m your host Bill Lampton the biz communication guy, bringing you tips and strategies, which will boost your business. Today we have a wonderful guest whether you’re on video, our podcast, I know that you will benefit. A great deal as I will as well. coming to us from Ormond Beach, Florida is Ken Fehner, the owner of the social glue, a social media and email marketing company. He has over 25 years of experience with traditional marketing channels, such as newspaper, radio, and TV TV cable advertising. Unlike many marketing companies who add social media to their list of services, the social glue is a social media marketing email marketing company first. The social glues main focus is social media management for businesses can find her works with local businesses, startups, national international companies, and associations supporting their social media needs. The scope of His work includes email marketing, social media, including Facebook management and design, Twitter management and design, LinkedIn management, YouTube, video creation, and more. So certainly, you and I are going to get valuable information from Ken Fehner
Hello, Ken, and welcome to the biz communication show.
Ken Fehner
Thanks, Bill. Glad to be here.
Bill Lampton Ph.D.
Oh, one thing that struck me I think a good while ago when I became familiar with your very solid word was your the name of your company, social glue, G L O. And I thought, well, I’ve known Ken quite a long time, I think he can spell. So tell us why the social glue G L oh,
Ken Fehner
well, it turns out, glue spelled properly wasn’t available. And so you know, on the internet, you kind of do what you have to do sometimes. And my wife suggested spelling it, G L O. And so I looked and there was a company in Canada that was using that name already, social glue. And I thought, well, I’ll put the in front of it. And it looked like that company really wasn’t doing a whole lot. They kind of reserved the name I guess. So I watched it. And I finally got social glue also, so you can look me up either way. The social glue or social glue, I’ll come up. But um, that’s that’s how it came about. We were looking for something creative. And the whole idea was our tagline is social media and email marketing that sticks. So that’s that’s where the that particular spelling of glue came up with, we came up with it.
Bill Lampton Ph.D.
Well, you are illustrating and embodying what you’re trying to get your clients to do. And that is to be creative, to get noticed, to be distinctive, to do things a little bit differently than others. So thanks for that explanation. I know you could spell I knew that. Your reason behind it. So let’s get down to something else. I have noticed about your company as I watch your videos, and you do them so well. Thank you. So many of us who who create videos do exactly what I’m doing right now we sit behind a computer or we sit with our with our smartphone camera. Were there stationary, except for maybe a few gestures. But on yours again, something highly attention getting. I don’t know how long it’s been going on. But at least for the last couple of years, I think. Yes, I see Ken fainter giving his social medias marketing advice, walking alone outdoors on a beautiful day to look into a camera. And like many people who see that and wonder how does he do that? So in previous conversations with you, I ask, is this a trade secret? Is this something you want to keep private? You said no. You’d be happy to describe So describe for us please how you do that. Can
Ken Fehner
I, before I do this, because some of the equipment I use is kind of expensive. But I want to encourage people to get out there and start making your own videos, you don’t have to spend a lot of money, you can go get a small little tripod, and put a phone, mount on it, and maybe spend $20 To get started and put your phone on it, sit in a quiet room and record your videos. And Bill, like Bill said, That’s how most people do it. I like the idea of getting out and walking and talking. And I guess going back to the days of when I had to write theme papers or whatever I usually have anywhere from two to three points, I start with a an introduction, get into my two or three points. And then I wrap it up. And as I get older, I found that two or three points is perfect for me because I can remember everything I want to talk about. And I can get out there and just start walking and talking. And I feel very comfortable doing it. I use some equipment to do it. That like I said is kind of expensive. Depending on what people consider expensive. To me, it seems expensive. The other thing that I want to point out is I didn’t start out using this equipment, I started out using my phone on the end of a selfie stick, walking along and recording myself. And the thing that you’ll discover is the most important thing in your videos is to have good sounding audio. So I did have a wireless microphone that I could plug into my, the end of my phone into what would be your charging port or whatever. But you can also plug in your head, the time you could plug in headphones and stuff like that, I would plug in my microphone jack in there. And I had the had the proper setup for that. And then I could use a wireless mic that I did have already for some other video work that I did. And I was able to record myself nice and clear. If it was a little windy, I had a little wind mic on it a little foam covering that would keep out most of the wind. And it gave me really clear audio. Now if you’re sitting in a room, you’re gonna have nice clear audio, if your camera’s you know, a couple of feet away from you. So I would recommend starting off simple doing it in your, in your office space, use a small little desktop tripod, and put on a adapter for your phone. And you’ll be good to go for about $20. Now I’ll show you real quick, what I use. And it’s gonna seem like it’s that expensive. But I use this little camera, in this case here. And what it has on it, if you can see, it has what’s called a gimbal it’s kind of hard to get up here. And that gimbal is what keeps everything perfectly balanced. It’s about a 350 to $400 camera, believe it or not, but it goes on the end of a special selfie stick, which I can control the buttons from my handle to turn this on and off. And then on top of that I have a set of wireless microphones they’ve gotten so much smaller used to have big battery packs and things like that. This is actually a charging case, it’s from the same company that makes the camera DJI not a plug, just wanting you to know if you want to look it up. Look up DJI is pocket cam. And then this is a DJI microphone wireless microphones. And this is your microphone and it has a magnet on it, I usually put it under my shirt and clip the magnet on on the outside of the shirt. That gives me also when protection. And then this is the transmitter. So I hooked the the or not the transmitter. This is the receiver I should say the microphones are the transmitters. This is the receiver and I plugged this into the camera. And that’s my setup is like I say on the end of a selfie stick made also by DJI that I can control the camera. And that’s how I get such smooth video. It’s the same technology DJI uses for all their drones, which you can get incredible footage and if you ever seen a drone fly if they’re very jerky and everything but when you watch the video back, it’s very smooth. How they do all of this. I have no idea. It’s magic to me. But that’s that’s how I do it.
Bill Lampton Ph.D.
Well, thank you and I’ll have to say practically all of technology is a magic to me. I leave how they do it to the experts. And I noticed that in the introduction that you’ve been in business 25 years and I imagined like me, you you were using what technology we had at the time it was much more expensive. It was much more cumbersome. It was much more complicated. And what you have just told us is very value More that it seems to me that far less than $1,000, you can get equipped to do something as unique, as compelling. And as interesting as walking and talking. In fact, I think you have a name for that those presentations, something like that walking and talking or what is walking
Ken Fehner
talk? It’s there. They’re just called my walk and talks. Yes. So very basic.
Bill Lampton Ph.D.
And you mentioned two or three points that you have. I would, I would imagine that you don’t have any kind of teleprompter, you just know what you’re saying. And you say it, is that correct?
Ken Fehner
Yeah, I, I usually write down my key points, and I stick them in my back pocket. And before I start recording, I just review them. And you know it, I’ll be honest, it’s not always the first take. You know, sometimes I go along, I try to do it all in one take, though. Very seldom. I mean, every now and then I’ve, I’ve had to clip something out. But mostly I tried to do it in one take. You watch some of them, you’ll even see me saying hello to somebody is on walking past. But that’s, that’s just the nature of the of the walk and talk.
Bill Lampton Ph.D.
Well, one, one thing I think about often when we’re recording outdoors, you’ll hear some pleasant nature sounds such as birds chirping, does that come into yours?
Ken Fehner
It does, you will hear if you especially if you put little earbuds in or headphones on, you’ll hear the sounds going on in the background. The nice thing is, of course, with technology today, the microphones suppress certain sounds, if a car goes by the car, you’ll hear it but it won’t be as loud as me talking, it’s picking up the human audio. And I once again, I don’t know how they do these things, but it’s it works and I’m very happy with it. I try to walk in areas where there isn’t a lot of traffic, but in one part of my walk, I might be walking along the street, and you’ll just hear the car will kind of wish by. So that’s that’s um, you know, something I was very pleased to find out with when I was recording it that the car didn’t take over my audio.
Bill Lampton Ph.D.
One thing I I want to say to those who are listening on podcast, I know you did not get to see what Ken was illustrating as far as the equipment but you can go to the YouTube version of the biz communication show, find this interview, and you can then see the various simple and yet marvelous devices that that he illustrated there. I want those of your own podcasts not to feel lost, because you can do that. So simply on YouTube. In fact, I think every one of us uses YouTube, I know I do as a how to on almost anything mechanical, electrical, whatever. So this, this conversation will be there as well. Can I have other questions that I’m going to ask you, which I know our listeners and I too will benefit from? We’ll be back in a few seconds.
Unknown Speaker
Do you wish you felt confident about giving speeches? Do you want to deal with difficult people constructively? And what about becoming more persuasive in sales, then keep listening now to Dr. Bill Lampton, he spent 20 years in management, so he knows the communication skills you need for success. I urge you to call the biz communication guide today for a no call, but very valuable 30 minute discussion about your communication challenges. Call now. 678-316-4300 Again, that’s 678-316-4300.
Bill Lampton Ph.D.
Can it it fascinated me to, to know that, that some of the things that we in our marketing might think are passe because now we have so much in the way of video and then many new technologies are coming in. And so I’m sure that you work with some clients who say well, can you know we we just don’t use email anymore. That’s that’s something that was good at one time when it was when it was the only dance that you could go to. And yet I know that you state that email marketing is is a very important part of the professional training that you give. So talk to us please about why email marketing can still be one of our most valuable ways of presenting our brand And our services, and some of the tips that you would give to companies who have not been taking advantage of email.
Ken Fehner
Sure. And, and I get that all the time. A lot of people, they call me because they’re looking at some new, bright, shiny social media aspect. And what I always ask them first is, well, where are your customers? And they usually can’t tell me and I say, Well, what you really need to do is start, you know, with a simple survey, when you’re talking to somebody on the phone, or you’re there in your office or whatever, ask them, Are they on Facebook, ask them if they’re on Twitter, that’s where you need to be. And I’ll tell you where 99% of people are, is on their telephones. And that’s the wonderful thing about email marketing is it can reach them in their office, it can reach them on their personal computer, and it definitely can reach them on their phone. And the way email works today is totally different than the way it used to work. You used to get an email, you looked at it on your computer, it was it was like it was called a newsletter. And it kind of looked like a newspaper, it maybe had three columns, with different stories and each column. And that’s where it kind of got I think the term newsletter was because it looked like a newspaper. And then his phone started becoming more and more, you know, prevalent. And people were starting to open their, their email on their phones, they couldn’t read your newsletter. Well, if it was a three column newsletter, because they had to pinch and zoom and slide left and slide right and go up and go down in order to read the copy in the format that it was being delivered in. Now, newsletters are designed to basically know when they’re opened on the phone, and they reconfigure themselves to become a single column. And all the stories just flow perfectly. Sometimes I feel like the newsletters look better on the phone today. And I have clients that they have about 80% open rate on the mobile device, most people will will get well over 50% opens on mobile devices. So email is kept up with technology, they they knew that they had to do something when the open rates started getting over 25 30% on the mobile device, and they saw people unsubscribe, because they couldn’t read the emails. And that’s one thing, you want to make sure that your emails are readable on a phone, otherwise you will have people unsubscribe.
Bill Lampton Ph.D.
Well, let’s talk about something you just alluded to. And that’s opening of the emails we all get. We got a surplus of emails, I think would be a kind way to put it. What do you advise your clients on? I guess a lot would have to do with the title? What do you advise your clients on what to say? That will get your emails opened?
Ken Fehner
There are two ways that people usually determine if they’re going to open an email. One is who it’s coming from that email coming from your boss, you know, it’s gonna get open. Yes. Right. If they don’t know you, there’s a good chance they may not open your
Bill Lampton Ph.D.
email, it could be risky. For one thing, it could
Ken Fehner
be risky. The other thing too is I ask people when I’m setting up their account for them, how do they know you? Do they know you? Or do they know the company you’re working for. And if it’s the company that they’re working for, then we put the entry, we put the in the in the front line, the name of the company, because that’s something you can do if you send out a Gmail, it’s going to have your name or your user ID or whatever you’ve put in there as your [email protected]. But when you when you create an email marketing newsletter, you can put in that from anything you want to put in there. Which is great for marketers, it’s also bad can be really bad marketing. When you try to spoof and get someone to open, you know something because you put something in there that isn’t true. And then when they open it, they find out it’s not true. And they they mark you as spam, which hurts your
Bill Lampton Ph.D.
reputation and subscribe if they were subscribed.
Ken Fehner
So the number one way people decide whether or not to open an email is who it’s from the number two, or the second reason why people decide if they’re going to open the email is the subject line. So they’ve looked they said, Okay, I know this person, what are they trying to tell me today? And if you have a good subject line, you’re you’re going to grab their attention and that’s the whole idea using enough using numbers and a subject line three hips to do whatever, you know, people will go like, Oh, three tips that’ll be just, it sounds useful. It’s useful. And they, the number three indicates it’s not very many. So they can go, oh, yeah, I got a few seconds, I can read that. And they’ll they’ll go ahead and open it. You know, you’d be surprised how many times I’ll take over someone’s email account, and I go back and I look at their newsletter and their course they’re complaining, our open rates, no good. It was started out really good. And now it’s really bad. And they’re giving me the sob story. And I go back, and I look at their newsletter, and it says, you know, January newsletter? That’s right, what could be donor, but yeah, February newsletter, it doesn’t excite them, or give them any reason to open that newsletter. And I look in the newsletter, and there’s great information in there. If they would put one of the titles or, or put discover this, this and this, you know, it would cause people to go like, yeah, I want to discover that I want to know how to do that. And unfortunately, a lot of people just don’t do that simple thing. So knowing what it’s from a great subject line, is the best way to get good open rates.
Bill Lampton Ph.D.
It reminds me, even as we talk of the the amount of mail that I get from people who want my business, and if it’s a closed envelope, I look at who it’s from. And if I’m not interested, I trash it. And so I’ve noticed that more and more when you’re talking about US mail marketing. Now it comes not enclosed. But it’s it’s an open flyer, I guess you could call it with the message already there where you can’t miss it, because I’m sure. Mail marketers, mailing marketers have caught on to the fact that if you see it’s from a certain company, and then of course, there’s there’s the the oft repeated, this is urgent, you must open now. And yes, we know it’s not urgent. So if I get a an envelope, and it’s from my bank, I’m going to open that, right. Kenya recently held a an all day workshop, on how we could use Facebook, to market our business. And we unfortunately, can’t hear all the gyms and nuggets that you shared from that. But let’s talk a little bit about and then thanks very much for those email tips. Let’s talk a little bit about Facebook marketing, practically everybody has a Facebook page. And so my, I guess my initial question would be, like many professionals, I have a Facebook, social page and a Facebook business page. And I guess the first question I would have, if you have both should you put any business information on your social page?
Ken Fehner
I don’t, you know, I personally I don’t I keep it strictly personal. And I don’t have a lot of business associates that I’m connected with on my personal page, I get in, you know, invitations from them to, to, you know, get connected with me. But I tried to keep my life personal and my life business. Now over the years, a lot of my personal or my business clients have become good personal friends. And so I will have them on my Facebook page, those are decisions you have to make individually. I do know of people who will occasionally post something on their personal page, they have a storefront of some sort. And they just want to let that let that all their family and friends know that are in the area. Hey, I’m doing this. And that’s, you know, perfectly fine with Facebook, if you occasionally do it, if you get to where your your personal page is kind of mirroring your business page. And there’s a reason for that. Facebook, business isn’t showing your posts to everybody anymore. Your posts are shown to maybe 1% of the people. So if you have 1000 people who liked you 10 plus 10 People are going to maybe see your Facebook post unless you pay and they become pay to play now on your personal they have a tendency to show it to more and more people on your personal so a lot of businesses kind of out of frustration have started posting on their personal page also. And that can cause a lot of issues. Facebook has the right to shut you down for doing that. So I would warn against that. You can maybe try every you know, once a week, make a post um But if only if you only make one post a week, and that’s a business post, that could start to hurt you if Facebook notices it. So if you’re posting regularly normal posts, and then you throw in a business post, maybe 10% of the time, you would probably be okay. Don’t count, don’t, you know, Mark me on that percentage, but Facebook probably wouldn’t care. But if you start using your personal page for business, they’re going to care about that. And they and if they shut down your personal page, or your business page goes away, too, because they’re usually hooked together?
Bill Lampton Ph.D.
Well, I, I like the distinction, I think the personal page is for people to get to know, whatever you would like for them to know about your hobbies, your family, your vacation, your pets, and they get to know you now, from from what you’re saying, my approach is okay, if all these people, as an old saying goes, if they get to know like, and trust you once in a while reminding them what you do is not going to offend them, is it?
Ken Fehner
No, no, not at all. And, and that’s why I’m saying if you do it occasionally, it’s totally fine. But you know, it probably would start to irritate family and friends, if you start posting all your business stuff on your, on your personal page. So I will sometimes do it, I think I’ve done it, maybe I can count it all on one hand, and how many times a person will pay
for it was impossible.
Bill Lampton Ph.D.
Ken, we’re going to have to come to the close the clock has ticked on by these are very valuable tips and strategies that you’ve given us, which we appreciate so much. So I know there are people who want to get in touch with you, please give us your contact information.
Ken Fehner
Sure, you can email me at Ken at the social glue.com. And it’s g l o we talked about that the beginning. So a little bit different spelling of glue, or you can go to my website, which is the social glue.com. Or you can call me, my number is 678-358-3680.
Bill Lampton Ph.D.
Thank you. And since you’ve given your contact information, I’ll give mine biz communication guy so logically, my website is biz bi Z biz communication guy.com. And certainly, I invite you to visit my YouTube channel, all you have to do is go to the search area there type in my YouTube ID which is Bill Lambton PhD. And I hope while you’re there, you will hit the subscribe button, not only would you be able to see this conversation anytime that you want, but there there are dozens and dozens of top interviews there. And I’ve also posted some individual interviews as well. And then after all that, after you’ve subscribed to my YouTube channel and visiting my website, certainly I invite you to call me so that we can talk about your communication challenges and problems and how I can assist you with them. give a special thanks to all of you who joined us today on video and on the podcast. And what a privilege to have hosted you can feign or can any closing remarks for us.
Ken Fehner
I just think YouTube is a wonderful format and being able to for you to do these things, get them on YouTube and then convert them into podcasts. It’s a perfect way to repurpose information that you’re that you’re doing. Especially the effort that it takes to make a video. Why not repurpose it also for a podcast? I recommend that to people highly. You’re doing all the right things bill, and I’m so glad to be here.
Bill Lampton Ph.D.
Well, the right thing today was hosting you. Thank you. Yes, I’ve known and admired your work for a long time since we met at the Gwinnett Chamber of Commerce. Again, thanks to all of you who joined us be with us for the next edition of the biz communication Show. I’m your host Bill Lampton the biz communication guy Hi
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
