The Art Of Small Business Social Media: Peg Fitzpatrick

Chris Stone [00:00:01]:
Social media is Peg Fitzpatrick's passion. She works with global brands and leaders spearheading successful social media campaigns for companies like Motorola, Audi, Google and Virgin. She was, Jim, the 1st head of social media strategy for Canva. She's been a brand ambassador for, oh, small companies like McDonald's, Adobe Spark. She's the co author of The Art of Social Media, Power Tips for Power Users with Silicon Valley legend, Guy Kawasaki, and she's now releasing her brand new book, The Art of Small Business Social Media. She is the amazing Peg Fitzpatrick. Peg, thank you for coming.

Peg Fitzpatrick [00:00:42]:
I feel like I could just, you know, stay here in this pink show forever. That thumbnail is giving me good vibes. It could be my movie cut. It could be my movie poster or something.

Chris Stone [00:00:52]:
There you go.

Chris Stone [00:00:52]:
Is our branding on point? Is there is there branding Yeah.

Peg Fitzpatrick [00:00:56]:
For me, yes. It's perfect.

Chris Stone [00:00:59]:
We win the Internet today, Jim.

Peg Fitzpatrick [00:01:00]:
You do win the Internet. Thumb hills win the Internet. I mean, we all know that. Right?

Chris Stone [00:01:06]:
Oh, awesome. Peg, you know, first of all, we didn't talk about this preshow, and so, you know, honestly, we didn't give you a list of questions or anything like that. We just said we're gonna talk about your book. I wanna know because it's release day of of your new book. How's it going so far? I see you're number 1 on a bunch of charts and, do you follow that kind of stuff?

Peg Fitzpatrick [00:01:28]:
Yes. I've been I've been refreshing Amazon all day. It's horrible. It's horrible. It's today is a hard day. It's it's, you know, like, really exciting as an author because your book is out there, but it's also like, now it's out in the world, so it's people's book. Right? And it's not really my book anymore. So now it's gonna be people reading it.

Peg Fitzpatrick [00:01:48]:
It's gonna be their book that's gonna help them learn new things. And so it's it's exciting. I'm you know, it's just like it's a little scary. My my last book I wrote with Guy, which you guys already mentioned, and that we have a coauthor. It's a little different. You're you do interviews together, and you're talking about stuff together, and, you know, they they're really interested in every single thing you have to say about, like, your spouse only cares a certain level. Absolutely. Your spouse is like, when do more checks come?

Chris Stone [00:02:17]:
Exactly. Exactly.

Peg Fitzpatrick [00:02:19]:
He isn't actually asking me that. I'm kidding. That'd be later.

Chris Stone [00:02:23]:
So I, you know, I I have to I have to dig in on this on this thing because, I'm I've always, like, been this person that's wanted to write a book. Right? But every time I get started, I'm like, I hate this. Right? And I just can't. I just Jim knows this. I have the patience of a, you know, of a

Peg Fitzpatrick [00:02:41]:
It's hard. Writing a book is hard.

Chris Stone [00:02:43]:
Right? It is. And I think a lot of people think, especially now with AI, like, you know, you could you could do all this other stuff. But what I liked what I liked about it was you targeted specific you specifically targeted small business. I mean, it's in the title, you know, and, and you certainly are, you know, looking at your resume and your repertoire, you are certainly capable of, you know, you work with companies like Canva and McDonald's and all these other, you know, major brands. Why are you targeting small businesses? Is it a passion for you? Is it or or what what is what's the reason there?

Peg Fitzpatrick [00:03:17]:
So the biggest you know, one of the reasons that I got started with there's 222 aspects to it. 1, I would get a lot of emails from small business owners saying

Chris Stone [00:03:26]:
Okay.

Peg Fitzpatrick [00:03:27]:
I have this company and, you know, I I see what you do online and I really think you could help me. And I could help them except for, like, if I work with clients, which I I don't really do client work anymore, but, you know, when you work with people, it costs it costs a lot of money. Right? And small businesses don't have that. So one was to help that. And then number 2, during the pandemic, we all saw the businesses that did not have any social media totally fail and and a lot of times just close and they're gone. And and every small business is someone's dream, like, they had the dream that they wanted to have a bakery and so they saved up all the money and they, you know, got the recipes and they got the space. Then the pandemic came and they couldn't their staff got sick and, you know, like, a 1000000 different things happened during that time. But the reality was if people didn't have social media to let their people know their hours, let people see what's on, you know, what they sell, where their location is, all those kinds of things, they just failed.

Peg Fitzpatrick [00:04:31]:
Before that, people could kind of say, well, I don't really think I need a website. Well, blah blah blah. But now, I mean, who knows what you're gonna see when you Google search something now? It's not even AI is your top answer for everything. Every single answer is is AI. So you better hope you already have some good searchability because if you don't, who knows if they'll even show you on the front page, and will people even scroll down? Everything is a lot harder now. Right?

Chris Stone [00:04:58]:
It is. It is. And, you know, to your point with AI, they, you know, people think it's easier. Right? It's like, oh, you just use plop it into this and it's gonna give you all of this stuff. But it's like, you talk a lot in this book about how to differentiate yourself. And you talk a lot in this book about, you know, how to, you know, create a brand for yourself as a small business. And I want to get into that. But I, you know, I love that you've got this passion for small businesses.

Chris Stone [00:05:24]:
It you like, the other great thing I love about this book is you can by reading it, you can feel your passion. It's not

Peg Fitzpatrick [00:05:32]:
I appreciate that.

Chris Stone [00:05:33]:
Yeah. It's like you can and it gives practical examples. You're you I I love the fact too is that you the case studies that you used were like, this is this is a company that doesn't really exist. I kind of made this up. But you can put yourself in the shoes of some of these businesses, these examples. Mhmm. How did you come up with the examples of these these case studies? Where was it just did you change the names to protect the innocent kind of thing? Or or

Peg Fitzpatrick [00:06:03]:
Well, several of them. Some of them. Yes. But Mike's mobile marine is actually my brother in law's company. Oh, okay. He is he's in there. That's that's an actual company. He he does not have any social media, but he's always, like, booked all the time.

Peg Fitzpatrick [00:06:17]:
But I'm like, you still need it. You should still do it because somebody he has, like, a competitor that keeps trying to, go onto Google and say that his business is closed because he hasn't claimed everything.

Chris Stone [00:06:29]:
Mhmm.

Peg Fitzpatrick [00:06:29]:
So the like, the downsize of things, you know. So, some of the things I just made up and the reason that I did that is because everybody always thinks, but what about I'm different? What about my business? I'm an I'm this. You know what I mean? Like, so that so just to give more examples so people could kind of say, okay. I'm this. Like, if I'm a florist, blah blah blah blah blah. Because there's there's I don't even know how many different kinds of small businesses there are in the world. There's kind of almost an infinite amount. Right? And people are online or creating their own kinds of businesses all the time.

Peg Fitzpatrick [00:07:03]:
So I tried to just give, like, a wide variety so people could feel seen, and feel like they could do it. That was really, like, my background. It I went to college to be a teacher. So my background is education and I actually was a title 1 teacher. I taught little kids in the elementary school, which was amazing. So I really, like, worked hard to make this go from the beginning to the end. Like, practical steps from the beginning to the end to, like, first, you do this thing because I've done it. Like, I just wanted to be people to be able to read it on their own, and it's making me so happy already.

Peg Fitzpatrick [00:07:41]:
Like, some of the people that have the book, one of my daughter's friends just started a business in locally. She just started a skin care business, so she's starting from scratch. And she is like a viral TikTok person. She's got, like, 75,000 followers on TikTok, but that doesn't mean you can market your small business because it's different. So she got it, and she was like, I'm gonna, I I brought it to her and she was like, I'm gonna read it. I'm gonna give it to my mom. But she started reading it, and she was like, I'm gonna keep it. I sent my mom her own copy because I need to keep it so I can so I can learn all the stuff.

Peg Fitzpatrick [00:08:15]:
And, like, that makes me so happy

Chris Stone [00:08:17]:
Yeah.

Peg Fitzpatrick [00:08:17]:
You know, to be, like, valuable for someone who's who's starting their business or or already has a business because sometimes people, you know, sometimes people start and they get stuck on social media that we see that a lot too. Small businesses, like, maybe they hired someone who didn't do a good job. We've seen people

Chris Stone [00:08:37]:
Oh, yeah.

Peg Fitzpatrick [00:08:37]:
Do that. They spend money, and then they kind of get railroaded or cheated, and the social media doesn't work, so they say it doesn't work. And and it's not that social media doesn't work. Yeah. I tried it.

Chris Stone [00:08:50]:
I tried it for a week, and I didn't make any sales, so it didn't work. So I'm not doing it now. And and I think too, I I mean and we had, Katie Brinkley, right, our last show, and and she talks about really about posting less as a you know, so you have you have people, like, say, oh, you gotta post multiple times a day. Some people, you know, it's more about engagement. But I also think too, right, it's that whole thing of, like, oh, well, why would my business need social media? And I used to work with, the Institute of Management consultants, and a lot of them are older. And they're like, oh, well, I get my referrals by word-of-mouth, but I think that's become harder and harder. And I think even for us, right, we just had a major change, if you wanna call it that. You know, I I might have been the 1st person to post a Amazon show link on Blue Sky to let people know

Peg Fitzpatrick [00:09:45]:
about this.

Chris Stone [00:09:46]:
Right? And so I I think

Chris Stone [00:09:48]:
and look at everybody who showed up. No. That's right. I hope

Peg Fitzpatrick [00:09:51]:
some people are here. Yeah. But we have If you're from Blue Sky, leave a comment. We had a lot of likes.

Chris Stone [00:09:56]:
Right? We had a lot of likes, which some of these other platforms you're not getting that reach now. So it's kinda like

Chris Stone [00:10:02]:
Mhmm.

Chris Stone [00:10:03]:
But are the people on Blue Sky yet that you wanna get in front of? Or, you know, do I spend all my time on TikTok? Because to your point, is it really growing my business if I get 7,000 people watch my video? I think that's where those metrics that in the past were measured. I mean, so how do you how do you think people need to approach that, Peg, as they're putting their their plans together as far as, like, well, where do I go? Are they all think, oh, I need to be on Facebook, but is Facebook really the place for them?

Peg Fitzpatrick [00:10:32]:
Right. Part of that I mean, I go into that obviously in detail in the book, but it really depends on your business because every business is different. Yeah. So you can't just say, you're this one's for you and this one's for you. You know, everybody goes here. It's not like that. It's more like who will what is your demographic of people who are gonna be your customers? So you kind of come up with who your ideal customer is. So when I'm writing the book, it was small business owners.

Peg Fitzpatrick [00:10:56]:
That was the only person I was talking to. There's never any times when I say, and if you work for a large brand and have a team, you could blah blah blah. I never did that. It's only spa business owners assuming that they're gonna do everything themselves because I feel like that's what they're doing. So it's kinda the same with social media platforms. You figure, okay. Like, what what you were what you were talking about is after the election, even more people made the mass exodus from, Twitter. I still refuse it to call it the other name.

Chris Stone [00:11:26]:
Same way. I still call it Twitter. I don't care. Funny when you say it, you know, how

Peg Fitzpatrick [00:11:30]:
you're supposed to say it. Right? I know it has another name, but I like Twitter. So, I mean, wait. People just like mass exodus to blue sky, which is so weird to me because I got blue sky when it first opened a year and a half ago or 2 I don't even know. 2 years ago.

Chris Stone [00:11:43]:
Oh, it's been around 2 years?

Peg Fitzpatrick [00:11:45]:
It's been around. Yeah. It's been around. Yeah. And I just grabbed my name and just I never even posted. I didn't do the, like, hey, first post deal thing. I just

Chris Stone [00:11:55]:
Right.

Peg Fitzpatrick [00:11:55]:
Grabbed my name. That's one thing. If a new social platform pops up, you should grab your name, especially if you're a small business. Even if you don't think you're gonna go there, just go to the new thing and get your handle so they're the same everywhere. So I just did the land grab and I grabbed my name. And then all of a sudden, I'm like, why is everybody, like, because threads is actually doing really great, but I think part of that is people are also frustrated with Mark Zuckerberg and his supporting fascist regimes.

Chris Stone [00:12:28]:
I don't know what

Peg Fitzpatrick [00:12:28]:
we wanna call it. We have

Chris Stone [00:12:29]:
a no politics rule on this show. No. I'm kidding.

Peg Fitzpatrick [00:12:32]:
I didn't even mention any politics. I know.

Chris Stone [00:12:34]:
I know.

Peg Fitzpatrick [00:12:35]:
I I just kidding. No. But, I mean, I think that's part of the reason. Most of the people said they were leaving Twitter, but, writers and, like, authors that they just were so embedded into the Twitter community that they just could not pull themselves out. And one of the best things I've seen though is Stephen King is on threads now, and he is all in. Like, one day, he's, like everyone is loving that he's there, and he's like, I'm a threads guy now that he put it was like his 3rd post, and he's commenting everywhere. Like, if people mention him, he's like, I'm here. I'm here giving people advice.

Peg Fitzpatrick [00:13:10]:
It's like it's crazy. So social media can change at the at the, you know, drop of a hat or the who knows? Like, a butterfly could drop a wing and and the Amazon rainforest, however that theory goes that it changes the weather all over, it's kind of what happens. So, hopefully, what you're doing when you're building your social media for your small business, you're gonna be I call it platform agnostic, which is what I really wanted to create, like a like a system that you could do that it doesn't matter if you're on Blue Sky or if you're on threads. Like, you're still gonna be the same you. Right? You guys are still gonna be deal pastors live. You're still gonna, you know, have great guests on, and you're just gonna be live and talk about great stuff. So when you go to the new platform, it's not like, oh, no. Like, what do we do there? You're kind of bringing your same self over.

Peg Fitzpatrick [00:14:01]:
There's always a there's differences between every platform and what place what how you post things, what they look like, how many hashtags. That was one thing that people really can't pick up on threads is, like, only one hashtag will ever work. Yeah. That's it.

Chris Stone [00:14:18]:
Right. Hey. It's bitch. Mitch Jackson is in the house.

Peg Fitzpatrick [00:14:21]:
Your wax star.

Chris Stone [00:14:22]:
Blue sky plus peg equals love and fire. Yeah.

Peg Fitzpatrick [00:14:27]:
Bitch. He's so awesome. He sent me my very first message on, on Blue Sky, and it was like how to block all the bad political stuff you don't wanna see, so I did that immediately, which is always good to do. Block all the words you don't wanna see, and then yours makes it all better. I mean, going back to

Chris Stone [00:14:47]:
our 4th guest maybe, Jim?

Peg Fitzpatrick [00:14:49]:
5th guest

Chris Stone [00:14:50]:
all time, something like that.

Chris Stone [00:14:51]:
I'm sorry.

Chris Stone [00:14:51]:
Peg, go ahead. You're saying back

Peg Fitzpatrick [00:14:53]:
there. Awesome. I was gonna say going back to our Google plus days in our Google plus days, which we are all all there, that's one of the things that, made Google plus successful was people were sharing how to use it because there was, like that was one thing people that came over there as new people always had a hard time, like Mhmm. We don't get how this works. And if you did anything wrong according to the social media, like, the Google plus the jerkier people that were there, they would really jump on you and be mean. There was a lot of trolls on Google plus That's one thing I don't miss about Google plus is there is a lot of, like it was really like a mean, grouchy area over there. I found all the nice people and made friends with them and kept them forever, and the other people, thankfully, have disappeared. But, it's that's one thing when you're going to different places.

Peg Fitzpatrick [00:15:43]:
They are they all work a little bit differently. But the goal as a small business is to be platform agnostic and to create just like a brand, to know what your story is. If you're not sure what that is, watch the show that Jeff and I did earlier today. It's on my YouTube channel. Really good about storytelling, for small businesses. But yeah. So it's really not so much about the platform as it is figuring out, you know, what your brand is and what your goals are. Like, if you're a show, you know, if you're a podcast or a livestream show, that's your thing.

Peg Fitzpatrick [00:16:15]:
But if you're, say you're what small business name 1, and I'll make up a thing. Pick 1.

Chris Stone [00:16:24]:
Jim, pick 1. Candle shop.

Peg Fitzpatrick [00:16:29]:
Okay. Great. So you're a candle shop, and and I have someone that I follow who's amazing at this. So you make candles and, you know, then you're gonna say, okay. So this is my thing. I wanna obviously, you wanna sell your candles. That's the main thing. So the first thing you're gonna do is set up your website, which a lot of people aren't even recommending that people start websites anymore, and I think that is a big mistake.

Peg Fitzpatrick [00:16:54]:
Like, don't build your brand on TikTok or Instagram. You have to build your brand on your own. Have you guys had people telling you that? Because that's what I that's what

Chris Stone [00:17:02]:
Oh, yeah.

Peg Fitzpatrick [00:17:03]:
Oh, yeah. I I I have

Chris Stone [00:17:04]:
a website anymore. I just need a Facebook page or

Chris Stone [00:17:06]:
I just need a Instagram dude that that said that in 2 years, you know, websites won't matter because of the AI, but you still gotta have somewhere, and I think

Peg Fitzpatrick [00:17:15]:
disagree with that. I I think that who but that's what I'm seeing too is people saying that, and I vehemently disagree with that. You have to have your own website is the only thing that you will still have when that thing is gone. Everybody's all, you know, yay, TikTok, and I heard zero things about how Trump was the one who wanted to get rid of TikTok. So I expect to see that pretty soon coming back, and I know we didn't wanna discuss politics, but that is one platform that is discussed.

Chris Stone [00:17:44]:
Pulling us back in, Peggy.

Peg Fitzpatrick [00:17:46]:
I'm sorry. I keep talking politics too, but Yeah. It it is a fact though that it is a Chinese company, and you heard whisperings about it. And then when the election came up, neither side wanted to just talk about it. They're like, we'll just ignore it. But the reality is that could go away. That could disappear, and people have built their whole platform. Yep.

Peg Fitzpatrick [00:18:06]:
People do sell things there. There are people who are making a lot of money on TikTok that are selling stuff, but back to our candle maker. So our candle maker is going to first start a website and set it up with, like, WooCommerce or something. Get your sales all set up so you can take sales. Then you're gonna start building your social platform for people who like candles. And then you wanna, you know, figure out ways that you can get into certain groups. I saw oh my god. I saw the most amazing amazing Instagram account today.

Peg Fitzpatrick [00:18:35]:
This girl was doing, she was making, like, if movie characters had, camera rolls. So she did, like, met if if, here if when Harry met Sally. If Sally had if Sally Albright had a camera roll, this is what it would look like. And then it was all photos of what her camera roll would look like. Oh, okay.

Chris Stone [00:18:58]:
And then

Peg Fitzpatrick [00:18:58]:
she said, if you wanna see what it would look like in real life, you can, you know, comment whatever because she was using ManyChat, and then you would comment and she would send you a link to it. She's making she's selling shirts and things that have famous quotes from movies and things on it. She that that are really beautiful, but it's very, very subtle sale. All of those are not gonna be direct sales, but then you're like, I do love When Harry Met Sally. Then you pull it up and it's got shirts that are like, I'll have what she's having. You know, this I'm I'm all for Sally's, you know, custom sandwich. They're like and they have a whole bunch of different movies. But I was like, that was very clever.

Peg Fitzpatrick [00:19:37]:
So she's not the candle maker, but that just that one that that example was so beautiful of just, you know, she's making something that's aesthetically pleasing, very interesting to people. I'm not really sure what the legalities are of using character names in your stuff. I would say you could get sued.

Chris Stone [00:19:59]:
Ask ask for forgiveness, not permission, probably.

Chris Stone [00:20:01]:
Mitch Mitch probably knows. For that.

Peg Fitzpatrick [00:20:03]:
If it's your hope, this is on

Chris Stone [00:20:05]:
the line.

Peg Fitzpatrick [00:20:06]:
Yeah. That that's got you. But, anyway, I liked the idea of it. Like, the idea of it was really beautiful and really well done. It was, like, the rapid, the kind of, like, videos where it's like just photos, but it's like cycles through with music. And it was very, very interesting, engaging, and I was like, wow, that what a great sale. The subtlest of sales and a 100% clicked, and I was gonna I was like, I'm gonna buy some of those. That's my biggest problem on on Instagram or TikTok is I always see things a lot.

Peg Fitzpatrick [00:20:35]:
I buy I'm, like, buying books all day long. I'm like, I have to stop.

Chris Stone [00:20:41]:
So this is really interesting to me because, you know, and and you focus a lot on in the book about this is not don't necessarily try to master one of these platforms because, like you said, at any point in time, they could pull the rug out, you know, then Jim and I when we started here on, you know, live streaming on Amazon, we didn't know how anything was gonna happen. We just knew we wanted to go and, like, solve people's problems on how to figure out podcasting and live streaming and have like a have like a podcast. We didn't know what what it was gonna turn into. But because it steamrolled into this thing, everybody was going, how do I get myself set up on Amazon? How do I do this on Amazon? How do I do you guys are the Amazon guys. And all of a sudden, we have this sort of moniker of being the Amazon guy or guys. And but we were, like, we're not I mean, we're we happen to be on Amazon. We happen to be talking about that. And we're we're happy to, like, walk you through all this process.

Chris Stone [00:21:35]:
But our initial thing was never to be the Amazon guys. Our initial thing was to do a show that's engaging, show people that we are remote producers, and have engaging podcasts with people like you and Mitch Jackson and Jeff c and and all of these people and create a podcast live in the middle of that of that place. And if we always said if Jeff Bezos snaps his fingers and Amazon Live's gone, we still have something. And I think

Peg Fitzpatrick [00:22:03]:
Which we've seen happen on other platforms. Right? Live disappears.

Chris Stone [00:22:07]:
Well, and you and you talk about this in the in the book. Right? And and here we go. Google plus. Right? You were in the process of doing a book with Guy on Google plus. Right?

Chris Stone [00:22:16]:
Mhmm.

Chris Stone [00:22:16]:
And so Google plus, you know, gets yanked even though it was massively

Peg Fitzpatrick [00:22:21]:
We did actually publish that book.

Chris Stone [00:22:23]:
Oh, he did. Okay. Okay.

Peg Fitzpatrick [00:22:24]:
He did actually publish that, and I was not a co author. I did all the research for that book. That's that's that's why I knew so much about Google plus because I literally read the whole help section, all of it, and I linked it to everything in the book. So guys self published it, but then it did get it was a paperback as well. So, yeah, it actually but now it's not relevant anymore because But you you talk about

Chris Stone [00:22:51]:
this is and Jeff talks about this as well. That's how he met you. That's how you met a guy. That's how all of this and you guys have have continued this, you know, business and relationship and friendship with the people that you've met on that platform. So your intention, even though it was built on this platform is like, I can still take what I'm doing, you know, whether it's the networking that that it provided or any of these other things. So, I guess how I'm gonna frame this into the question is, is you talk about this, because we're really talking about how you create a better brand for yourself. You talk about the 3 seeds of a brand in the book.

Chris Stone [00:23:33]:
Oh, man.

Chris Stone [00:23:35]:
Did I

Peg Fitzpatrick [00:23:35]:
Yes? Yeah. And they are let me grab my book. Oh, boy. Let me even think about what they are. You're really putting me on the spot. I shoulda I a 100% wrote it, and I'm like, which are the 3 c's? That was, like, one of the things I was like, I need, like, an acronym or something in here. I should make up a thing.

Chris Stone [00:23:55]:
Well, you went into When is it? Developing a mood board, which I'm like, you know, for me, I'm I'm so like, like, for me, I can't I can't even think about putting together a mood board for a brand that I have. Right?

Peg Fitzpatrick [00:24:09]:
You know, for me, though, I like to think of things visually. It's part of the whole process for me of creating things. And, actually, even who you wanna reach and what you wanna do, if you're really just starting out, a vision board or a mood board is a great way to do it. And I actually did one before I think it was even before Pinterest was around. I did, like, the old school kind where you cut out, like, magazines and stuff and put stuff on there. But now I would make a Pinterest board and just make a secret board and pin the things on there because that's how you figure out visually what you want it to look like. So when I wanted to redo my website, I could do a lot of the front end stuff. I can't do the some of the really deep coding in the back end if I wanna change something in the theme that's so I had, you know, created a a board and then I put all the things in there that I want.

Peg Fitzpatrick [00:24:59]:
So you're, like, looking for fonts that you like, looking for, like, colors that you like. Because I had a brand, website done for me and I didn't like the colors, and the person was like, you'll end up liking it. Trust me, you know. And I was like, it never grew on me and I hated it every second. It was like a slate blue with gold, but not like a sparkly gold, but like a but like a yellowy gold. It was the colors were not me at all. It made me unhappy. It's kind of like if you make a room in your house and and you you don't like the colors or you move into a new place and it's someone else's style and you're like, I just don't like it.

Peg Fitzpatrick [00:25:37]:
That's how the other website always felt to me. And, like, when you go to someone's website, it's a very big representation of who you are because they're not meeting you right they are meeting you right then, but you're not there to say, hey. This is what I like and this is what I talk about and this is what I do. So you have to really make sure that it's visually appealing, that it speaks to your brand, and then that all your texts and all your copy really says that too. Like, are you telling enough about yourself? Like, are you giving people a good picture of who you are? And you might think you are, but then maybe you're not. And one thing that I love to do with text, I'm sure you guys do it because you're totally techies, but sometimes I'll take little pieces of things and I'll say, I'll put it into AI and I'll say, can you tell me what kind of vibe you get from this or what's the you know, and have it kind of you have it?

Chris Stone [00:26:27]:
Cool idea.

Peg Fitzpatrick [00:26:28]:
If you haven't done that at all, have you asked it who it thinks you are yet?

Chris Stone [00:26:33]:
Yes. I have.

Peg Fitzpatrick [00:26:34]:
Okay. No.

Chris Stone [00:26:35]:
I I felt very, self serving there. It's like when you Google yourself, you know, or whatever.

Peg Fitzpatrick [00:26:40]:
Except it. Yeah. But you gotta know if if, so googling yourself and looking at yourself up in air are, like, kind of 2 different things because you wanna know, like, is it kind of are they getting the right idea of who you are? Like Mhmm. You know, do I need to, like, swap things up? And then it's like so you could ask it. Like, tell me who you think Peg Fitzpatrick is, like, and what she does, and then it'll, like, get and do it, like, so it's like an incognito one that, like, in your main thread where you're all the time telling it who you are. But it's really interesting. And then say, tell me three things about myself that maybe I don't know, and then it and then it explains it. So it's really good to just, like, help you stay on track and help you know that you have the right message going on.

Peg Fitzpatrick [00:27:25]:
So, you know, have it have it analyze your own stuff from your website and say what you know, because I have a lot of blog posts on my blog. It is just a lot of, you know, a lot of content. So, like, what is what is this telling people? What is, you know and I it's, you know, either you're gonna find out, yes, I'm, like, right on track or not. And I think that's one of the things with AI. It's like all the stuff that we already have out there, it's using that. And you don't you can't necessarily change it. It's not like Google where you could try to, like Right. I don't know.

Peg Fitzpatrick [00:27:53]:
I don't know how I don't know what you do if it's not right, but I think it tells you, well, I'm missing this aspect. Because maybe you think that your your message is really clear about who you are and what you do, but maybe it's not as clear in your text because that just happens, like, when we're writing stuff ourselves. Right?

Chris Stone [00:28:13]:
Yeah. It's almost like bouncing something off of somebody that's in the system or whatever. It also feels very much like a like a horoscope, like an like a robot horoscope, you know, like,

Peg Fitzpatrick [00:28:25]:
so to I like horoscopes, though.

Chris Stone [00:28:27]:
Yeah. Okay. Pisces.

Peg Fitzpatrick [00:28:29]:
Although I I haven't had any horrible ones. I had a great one today. I read my one today. It was like, you're gonna you're you're going into a new 2 year period of, like, healing and growth, and I'm like, yes. I don't know why it's so long, but thank you.

Chris Stone [00:28:43]:
So I've got a question related to all of this stuff, Peg. It's it's it's kind of been gnawed at me a little bit because we you know, Jim had mentioned we just had Katie Brinkley on, and you're you're also you're also seem to be aligned in in this thinking, as well is that, you know, like, you looked at a brand or whatever that somebody had done for you and you're like, I don't like it. Or like you walk into a room and you don't like it. What would you say, you know, what about someone that would say, hey, you're not your customer, you're not your prospect, you're not your client, Like, just because you might not like it, maybe your ideal, person that you are solving problems for or, you know, providing a service, for. Maybe they're maybe they're more attracted to something that you don't like. Like, what would you say to to that, and and how does that relate to the platforms that you want to be on to promote that?

Peg Fitzpatrick [00:29:32]:
I would say you kind of are your brand, though. So if you don't like it, it's gonna give you a bad vibe, which is what mine did when I didn't like it. Like, I I was like, oh, I wouldn't even wanna share stuff. Like, I just didn't like the way it looks. Now when people go to my website, they're like, it looks like you, and it's happy, and I love the colors. And, you know, even the even the pink that's on it was something that, you know, at the time, people were like, don't we have pink? People just think it's for girls or pink is only you know, that's such a girly color. But, you know, my pink is a very bright pink and it's very close to red. It's like it's if you look at the little color wheel, it's like really close to red, but I just did not wanna go with a bright red, and it does really well on Pinterest.

Peg Fitzpatrick [00:30:14]:
It was very close to, like, good Pinteresty colors that people like. So I was like, I'm all in on the Pinterest color.

Chris Stone [00:30:21]:
So What happens if Pinterest changes their brand color, Peg? What do

Peg Fitzpatrick [00:30:24]:
you mean? Care. It's just what people like that are on there. Pinterest has had the same they're Coca Cola. They've had the same red forever. I doubt they'll change.

Chris Stone [00:30:32]:
That's true.

Peg Fitzpatrick [00:30:33]:
So Coca Cola is one of the only brands. They've had the same exact everything since, like, 1912. Same logo, same color, same everything. And Pepsi changes constantly. Who even knows what their logo looks like?

Chris Stone [00:30:49]:
Yeah. It's like is coke is is Coca Cola like the the unicorn? So, like, when I I always hate it when somebody talks about podcasting and they they try to talk about Joe Rogan. It's like, listen. Like, you know, or music and they talk about Taylor Swift. It's like, okay, you're picking, like, the unicorns. Right? Is Coca Cola that? You you know, Coca Cola I don't know.

Peg Fitzpatrick [00:31:09]:
I mean, they saw the Cola Wars. I don't think their logo won them the Cola Wars or didn't win them the Cola Wars. I think I think people like the way Pepsi tastes or Coke tastes. Right?

Chris Stone [00:31:19]:
Yep.

Peg Fitzpatrick [00:31:20]:
And I don't think that changes. I've never heard anybody that's changed their mind that was like, I loved Pepsi, and now I love Coke. Which one do you guys like better?

Chris Stone [00:31:29]:
I'm a Pepsi I'm a

Chris Stone [00:31:31]:
Pepsi guy, but I don't drink soda anymore. But when I don't drink soda either. Pepsi.

Peg Fitzpatrick [00:31:35]:
I don't either. But if but back in the day when I could drink soda, Coke from a bottle, like, when you could get it out of the machine and just flip the little tab off, that was probably 50% sugar, but so good. So Gen X, no soda.

Chris Stone [00:31:54]:
Well, your sister shouldn't drink it.

Peg Fitzpatrick [00:31:56]:
I know. Well, we grew up, I had sugar, cereal, and soda. So

Chris Stone [00:32:00]:
That's right.

Peg Fitzpatrick [00:32:01]:
Better than us.

Chris Stone [00:32:04]:
So those of you who are watching and listening, we are live on Amazon. And Peg's new book, We're we're talking about Coca Cola and all kinds of stuff. And Peg's new book is available in the carousel on Amazon. And, for those of you who are not watching, on Amazon, go to pegfixpatrick.com or jump over to Amazon and pick up the brand new book came out today.

Peg Fitzpatrick [00:32:31]:
God. So live. It's so new.

Chris Stone [00:32:33]:
Yeah. Look at that. It looks so brand new. This is the art of small business social media. And we've got, a question from our good friend here, Mitch Jackson. Let me see. Hope hopefully, this doesn't fill up. I mean, we can let me see if I can get it aligned here a little bit better here.

Chris Stone [00:32:50]:
Mitch asked what's the biggest change PEGS seen over the last 2 to 3 years on social that we can embrace and leverage to improve engagement and our experiences? New mindset, new attention issues, approaches. That was like the more

Peg Fitzpatrick [00:33:05]:
That's it.

Chris Stone [00:33:05]:
The most question marks I've ever seen in a comment, Mitch. Congratulations.

Peg Fitzpatrick [00:33:09]:
But all used correctly. So, boy, that's a really good question. I would say over the last 2 to 3 years that it is harder than ever to share links and social sharing in general has just totally died. So we've gone from, like, in the in the art of social media, we talked a lot about curating content when you would, you know, find a lot of great things and share them as a big part of your content strategy. And I think that really doesn't work anymore. As much as I still wanna share things that I see that I like, I usually just share it individually with people instead of sharing an article that I see unless it's something really strongly suited. So I would say it's gone more from, you know, being a quote unquote, like, generous person and sharing other people's content. Like, that was our mindset.

Peg Fitzpatrick [00:33:58]:
Before now, it's more you're sharing your own voice and your own content. And I would definitely say, what you mentioned earlier that Katie would talk about is, you know, share you can share less things now. I feel like you don't have to share. I've been more on an upswing because I'm I'm in, like, book launch mode. So I've been sharing more, and I've been a little bit like, oh, I hope I'm not sharing too much. Because in the past, I would have share been sharing a lot more posts. So the book post would have been mixed in more and now I just don't share as much content even though I feel like people see your stuff even less, even if you're following people. It's really, really hard to know if people see your stuff now.

Peg Fitzpatrick [00:34:40]:
Right? Yeah. It just is.

Chris Stone [00:34:42]:
And and so, Meg, do you think that's really where you get the importance of, like, how do you build a community on social? Right? We get into Mhmm. If you wanna call it the dark web where you're able to DM people stuff that are willingly wanting your info. I mean, even as an example, you know, we have, you know, broadcast channels on Instagram that you've got a list of people that when you put that broadcast out there, in theory, see that where if you put it in the regular feed, they're not gonna see it because it's overcome by, you know, millions of posts per hour or whatever.

Peg Fitzpatrick [00:35:17]:
Right. So I think one of the ways that, like, how I've changed social sharing. So instead of, like, like, for the pop up live series that I was doing, you know, it is a blog post and I am sharing that. But, like, for Instagram, I'll create some, you know, I'll create a post for it and talk about it and then use ManyChat to say, like, comment a word, you know, comment Mhmm. Storytelling below and I'll send you the link. So now people who wanna read it, I just send them the link directly. Or if they wanna link to the to the book, I can send them a link directly that way. That's the way that I see most people getting engagement now is creating those posts that it's a standalone has value post like the girl that I talked about earlier that was created the really great reel, and then, you know, it it was linking back to her her, site that was selling, products that were related to that.

Peg Fitzpatrick [00:36:11]:
So I think that is how it's kind of a permission based, you know, peep people say, yes, I do wanna receive that, and then you send them their message that is giving Instagram the signals, hey. I'm getting comments on this. More people are gonna see it, and then your direct messaging with people. So, again, that's the messaging telling Instagram, yes. People think this is important, and these two people are connected, so we should share their stuff with each other. Yeah. So I think it's just changed like that. I think it's more intentional sharing.

Peg Fitzpatrick [00:36:41]:
Like, Instagram stories before people just kind of use them, like, haphazardly. You know, you just kind of, like, post things whenever, whenever, whenever, and have, like, so many Instagram stories. It was just, like, little dots up at the top. And then you're just like, I don't even wanna, like that's too many. I don't wanna know 20 things you did today.

Chris Stone [00:36:58]:
That's just a lot. This person is a lot. Yeah.

Peg Fitzpatrick [00:37:01]:
Yeah. The it it doesn't doesn't it don't you immediately think that? Like, that is

Chris Stone [00:37:06]:
too much.

Peg Fitzpatrick [00:37:07]:
So so just be intentional with 3. Just share 3 stories and make them very intentional. You know? Tell people what you're doing. It's like a little behind the scenes stuff. And then if you're promoting something like you're gonna be live later, that's one of them, You know? But just do 3. Don't do like, I'm saying that today, I probably have more because people are sharing things and I'm resharing them. So it's a little bit of an accentuating circumstance. I will always have more, but I try to be really intentional about what more intentional about what I'm sharing, knowing that I'm gonna share less things because I, in the past, would share a lot of things.

Peg Fitzpatrick [00:37:43]:
I mean, Twitter, especially, I would just have tons of content scheduled out, you know, entertaining things, articles by blog posts in there. I always, you know, published on Mondays and then filled in with a lot of other things. So things have changed like that. And then I like to use Pinterest as kind of the backup plan for all of it because Pinterest is still good for long term things. It's never good for things today. So, like, we're live today. Sharing that on Pinterest isn't gonna help the live event. But then when it we have the video up and there's clips, it's the perfect place to share it because you can share it to your podcast boards or your social media boards or whatever it's related to.

Peg Fitzpatrick [00:38:23]:
And then over time, people will see those. And vertical videos are very popular there and not being used as much as they should be. So it's a great place for, for show clips. Which is

Chris Stone [00:38:34]:
why I went to your site today, Peg, and downloaded ladies and gentlemen, if you're if you're curious about Pinterest, we have the goddess of Pinterest here

Chris Stone [00:38:44]:
on live on our show,

Chris Stone [00:38:45]:
and I downloaded, the guide, which is called the 5 by 5 Pinterest power up plan. That is a lot of alliteration. The Pinterest power up plan.

Peg Fitzpatrick [00:38:56]:
I know. I mean, I did that for a for a plan workshop while I was doing a workshop, and I wanted to give people, like, something I like to do actionable advice for people. Right? Mhmm. So if you have something, you can create 5 different pins for the same thing.

Chris Stone [00:39:11]:
Power up.

Chris Stone [00:39:12]:
But I

Chris Stone [00:39:12]:
love it.

Peg Fitzpatrick [00:39:12]:
Right. And then you can share them at over 5 days or 5 weeks or, like, whatever cadence you want. You don't have to create them and share them all. You can just, like, trickle it out over time. Pinterest is still really good. Oh, Mitch. Thank you so much, Mitch, for buying it. Mitch is the best, literally.

Chris Stone [00:39:28]:
He is literally the best.

Peg Fitzpatrick [00:39:29]:
Yeah. So, yeah, Pinterest, I do have a lot of I do have a lot of resources. It's funny because I was, like, looking at stuff for, like, I don't know, book related things. And today, for some reason, I had a lot of people signing getting signing up for my email list. So I don't know if people were looking at book stuff and like, hey. She's got free resources up there. So which I do. I have, like, I have I have one for call to actions that's also very popular.

Chris Stone [00:39:53]:
Yeah. Look at all these. The she got the 5 by 5 Pinterest power up plan, which is like a I'm a plosive machine, and then air into my microphone. Fire up your feeds with 31 days of social media magic, the free visual branding guide, the 300 calls to action.

Peg Fitzpatrick [00:40:12]:
That one is very popular. It explains how to use calls to action and, and also just gives you 300 of them so you can rework them and

Chris Stone [00:40:22]:
Right. So it like, this is the the other thing that I've really tried to get away from, and I see other people doing it all the time in terms of calls to actions like check out my it's like, okay, we can do better than that. Right?

Peg Fitzpatrick [00:40:33]:
I mean,

Chris Stone [00:40:34]:
let's let's figure let's, like, just pause the here's like and if you've got a list that you can go to and kind of, like, alternate, you know, and it Yeah. Check out my

Peg Fitzpatrick [00:40:45]:
Take the list and put it into AI and say AI, my brand voices, blah blah blah. I need new, fresh calls to action that fit my brand that they're not gonna see everywhere else. So don't give me ones that you see all the time and have it and then see what it gives you. If it gives you crazy things, then say, no. I I really need them to, you know my goal and tell what your goal is too. That's important too. Say, my goal is to get people to watch my live show or to download the video or subscribe to the podcast, whatever they are. Because podcasts, there's so many podcasts just like blog posts.

Peg Fitzpatrick [00:41:22]:
You know, you wanna make sure that yours are not the same as everyone else. And then tell it not to use the rocket emoji. Like, pick out the pick out the standards. Well, you can use emojis, but don't, you know, be unique. I only like these 3. Because you could even cut you could be branding with your emojis as well. Right? Because it's all part of it. I only use these 5, so no rockets.

Chris Stone [00:41:46]:
No rockets. Hashtag no rockets. So

Chris Stone [00:41:48]:
so big,

Chris Stone [00:41:50]:
yeah. We've got some questions, Jim. Let's, like, a lot of questions coming in from the from yeah. So, Jeff c, we know this guy. He's got a question. What steps can businesses take to revive a dormant social media account and reengage their audience?

Chris Stone [00:42:06]:
Hey. Here you go. That's a good question.

Peg Fitzpatrick [00:42:08]:
Social media, CPR. That is a 100% different. So, yeah, if you have a dormant social media account, the first thing is don't come back and say, I'm so I've been gone for so long. I'm so sorry. Like, don't do, like, the bait it's kind of like when people get all dramatic and they're like, I'm leaving Twitter. I'm never coming back. Nobody cares. Like and when you when you when you've had a break, we don't need an explanation.

Peg Fitzpatrick [00:42:35]:
You don't need to make a big deal about it. Just hop back in. But when you are hopping back in, make sure that you have the time to do it this time and that you know what your plan is. So have a plan before you're gonna hop back in and create, like, at least 1 week's worth of content. So you have something going so you don't start say, okay. I'm gonna start. Then you start one day, and then it comes to the next day, and you're like, oh, no. What am I gonna post tomorrow? And then immediately after coming back in, you're fail you're I don't wanna say failing because it's it's hard to be a small business owner, you know, even to just be like you guys and me.

Peg Fitzpatrick [00:43:11]:
Like, some some days you're just off. So having a little stockpile of stuff is very, very good for you. So keep a little file of b roll and photos that you can go to for your brand. I like to keep them in Canva. I also have I use Plan. I don't know if you guys have used that. They have a really great media, section in there where you can just, like, put all your stuff for 1 month and then you can use all the images to and put the text on stuff. So it kind of gives you this I like to do the visuals then do the text then put it all together.

Peg Fitzpatrick [00:43:40]:
It's a process. Right? So, so, yeah, if you if you need to if you need to revamp your social media, for do a little bit like, first do a little deep digging and say, why did this happen? Did I get too busy? Did I not have ideas? Did everything change and then I got lost? Were you trying to do TikTok and you like, someone said you had to do 3 TikToks a day? Like, nobody can really do that unless that's your only job. And even at that, that's a lot of videos. So I think, you know, looking at where you kind of broke down a little bit, take a little time and look around the main platform. If you're hopping back into Instagram, maybe things are a little bit different. Reels are popular and carousels are popular and then stories, you know, like I said earlier, just kind of doing a few stories, that 20 stories. So kinda take the temperature of where you're diving back in and then come up with, like, a plan for a week and then really look at what what works for you, like, how much time do you have to do this, and create a content calendar for yourself. Even if you don't create all of the content, create a calendar.

Peg Fitzpatrick [00:44:46]:
I mean, I literally I was gonna pull it out, but I literally have an actual calendar that I use every month that I write on, and I put what things are gonna happen when. On my little calendar in front of me, I have another calendar and that I had so much reels content posted. I had, like, posted where I had different things because some things were coming from plan, some things were at Instagram. Today's was like an Instagram draft because I needed to do something different before I posted it. Like, there's never one thing that works. You you're always doing a couple different things to make things work. So it does take planning. So make sure you have time to do it and then kind of take the temperature, create some content, then just take a breath and step back in.

Peg Fitzpatrick [00:45:28]:
You don't need to say I've been gone. You know, you don't need to make the big announcement. Just step back in and reengage. And, it might take a little bit because, you know, it might take a little bit more work. It's not like hopping back in, you know, you're gonna get a lot of engagement right away, but I think engagement is down everywhere

Chris Stone [00:45:47]:
Yeah.

Peg Fitzpatrick [00:45:48]:
Sadly.

Chris Stone [00:45:49]:
Yeah. And I think it's good, and and Mitch has a comment here too. And I think this is it's important for people that are listening to this, on the audio podcast and and watching it live or watching this on replay to understand, especially as you go as you crack open this book and you start going through this stuff. I'm going through it too. And I'm going, yep. Guilty. Yep. I do that.

Chris Stone [00:46:10]:
Yep. I shouldn't be doing it. But I do that. And I do this wrong. And I do this wrong.

Peg Fitzpatrick [00:46:14]:
It's not wrong. I never say people are doing it wrong. I try to make it, like, friendly. Right?

Chris Stone [00:46:18]:
Right. Exactly. But it's like, it's good. It's like, okay. Yeah. I need to make changes here. But you don't you're not gonna be able to do all the changes in one, you know, one day.

Chris Stone [00:46:28]:
Yeah. You gotta you

Chris Stone [00:46:29]:
gotta you gotta you gotta just chip away at it. And, you know, don't feel overwhelmed. I, you know, even said this, you know, as you got near the end of the book, it's like now your head is just full of all these great ideas. Now start to just apply one here and one here and just get 1% better every time. Mitch says, this is brutal. Peg's reminding us, well, me, not to do the things I do every day. Well, me, not to do the things I do every day. Always learning.

Chris Stone [00:46:48]:
And that's really the key. Right?

Chris Stone [00:46:48]:
I doubt that, Mitch. You're awesome. I doubt anything I said that you do. We've got another question

Peg Fitzpatrick [00:46:52]:
coming in here,

Chris Stone [00:47:00]:
from Doug Layman. Now Doug does a lot of video. He does a lot of, you know, leveraging, you know, videos, doing interviews, doing clips, and, you know, doing book reviews, in in in doing that. So he wants to know about curating content with, like, reaction style video. Mhmm. The voice and video perspective. So in other words, like, maybe some you're doing a hot take on somebody else's video.

Peg Fitzpatrick [00:47:24]:
What are your thoughts there? You can definitely curate that kind of content or, like, the meme kind of things, you know, that in capcut, those are popular where you can go in and find the thing. Look, to today's, video that I did was a friend's meme that I just thought was funny. So, yes, you can definitely curate, like, trending audio, sounds that you like, and videos that you wanna react to or different kinds of clips. That's a 100% fine. I was talking more about, like, like, blog posts, like, it used to be the kind you would curate blog posts and you would share other people's content a lot. Mhmm. It was more what I was talking about and that kind of disappeared more with podcasts. I feel so bad for podcasters because I hardly ever see people sharing podcasts, like, say, listen to this great thing I heard on a podcast.

Peg Fitzpatrick [00:48:13]:
I feel like blog posts used to get shared a lot more. Don't you think so?

Chris Stone [00:48:18]:
Yeah. Yeah. They did.

Peg Fitzpatrick [00:48:19]:
Like, what happened? Right?

Chris Stone [00:48:24]:
Bad podcasts happened. Maybe I

Peg Fitzpatrick [00:48:26]:
don't know. Bad blog posts too, but there's also a lot of great podcasts. Like, are people at the individual experience?

Chris Stone [00:48:34]:
Into the whole the community aspect of right? We should be supporting each other as opposed to thinking that it's all about you because I I mean, in fact, you know, like, Jeff Boeskin has a great podcast, and he posted something the other day. I said, hey. This is something you wanna listen to, but I think to your point, you don't see a lot of that. I I don't know, Chris, if you feel, but I know that that we're different in some aspects than other folks. A lot of people don't wanna spend the time on social promoting their podcast, but that's the only way people are gonna find out about it because I'm not gonna go out and say, hey, find me this podcast. It just doesn't quite work that way.

Peg Fitzpatrick [00:49:12]:
No. Yeah. I don't think it is.

Chris Stone [00:49:14]:
It's a lot. It, my, I guess, my my hot take on this is is that I think a lot of like, this this show right here that we're doing is probably gonna be about an hour long, you know, plus or minus. And so I think it's a lot to ask someone to sit down and thank you for all that our Richard's here. Mitch is here. Jeff's here.

Peg Fitzpatrick [00:49:36]:
Dustin is burning.

Chris Stone [00:49:38]:
Yeah. There's there's, like, a lot. Yeah. Go go fix your dinner, Jeff. Catch it on re no. I'm kidding. You know, go go catch up on Blue Sky. But I I think it's a lot for someone to say, hey, I'm going to, you know, and and so you gotta curate this community.

Chris Stone [00:49:54]:
Maybe it happens like Jeff shows every Friday at 11 EST. And so, you know, I it happens to work for me. If it didn't, I'd try to catch it on replay. And I think it's a lot for for someone to ask someone to listen to an entire episode and really grasp something and then go, I want to share that. And and so, unfortunately, it's just I think it I I think it's just not happening anymore unless you're putting out like maybe a clip from the episode. Like, here's a short, here's a reel, you know, here's here's something that you can pin, you know, here's a here's a Pinterest video to your point. It's just it's difficult to say, hey, I here here, listen to this for an hour. I really got a lot out of it.

Chris Stone [00:50:35]:
It's I don't know. It's a lot.

Peg Fitzpatrick [00:50:36]:
I know. But it was really the same with blog posts. I feel like now it's more about building your own community. You know? Like, everybody we're all trying to, like, engage and build our communities, but I still feel like sharing. I haven't, like, given that up in my heart. You know what I mean? I still do like to share my friends' stuff. I think now I try more to like and comment on everything that I see of my friends. Like, when I see your stuff on TikTok, I I try to always comment and and like it because I feel like that is how we help our friends now,

Chris Stone [00:51:04]:
right Yeah.

Peg Fitzpatrick [00:51:05]:
Versus sharing it. It just doesn't seem as much, though. You know what I mean? I don't think it does as

Chris Stone [00:51:13]:
Yeah. I

Peg Fitzpatrick [00:51:14]:
don't have a solution to that. I'm very just lamenting. The joke stays. Right? I mean

Chris Stone [00:51:20]:
Yeah. And going back to to Mitch's question, do you feel like you know, and I think, you know, because I'm one of these older people, older than young Chris. I I think people that in social media, especially these business owners, right, video is a big struggle for them. Mhmm. Especially if it's, I think, more so short form video as opposed to right? The and the beauty of what we're doing here is, like, Chris can take this and create a lot of short clips from this. And I don't think that people always think about that. They're like, oh, I've gotta I've gotta say everything I know in 60 seconds or less, and there's a lot of pressure. And Yeah.

Chris Stone [00:51:57]:
I I put it on TikTok, and nobody liked it.

Peg Fitzpatrick [00:52:00]:
Right. There's definitely an art to short form video. I mean, long form video is one thing, but short form video, it's really harder to be interesting in a short period of time. Right? You only have a short little glimpse to say something, and that's where people freeze, and they're not thinking that of the there's a lot of different ways to do things. So they might just be thinking, I have to be on camera for all that time. They're not thinking they can edit in b roll or photos or other things because they're new. They don't really know how to do those things yet. So if you are starting, I say check out TikTok and YouTube and look for how to create short form videos for my small business.

Peg Fitzpatrick [00:52:39]:
And then you could even use AI for that to ask for ideas and just say, you know, AI, I wanna create, you know, 4 short form videos and, you know, 4 and this is my plan. Like, I would have a sale. Like, we'll go into Black Friday because we're if you haven't created your Black Friday content, you're kind of in trouble already. But Right. You you could still pull it up. You could still pull it up. You got, like, a week

Chris Stone [00:53:02]:
We believe in you.

Peg Fitzpatrick [00:53:04]:
So you could just ask it, like, this is my candle business. I need something for Black Friday. You know? You know my brand. It's blah, blah, blah, and these are my customers and this is, you know, I need to make 4 different kinds of videos. Give me give me 10 ideas and then you select from those. It'll even give you little scripts and it creates really good little, like, it'll say, like, talking head. It'll give you, like, a little breakdown. It never just gives you all talking head.

Peg Fitzpatrick [00:53:30]:
It gives you, like, b roll, add this, add this. It gives you a lot of suggestions. So if you're not sure, just really watch a couple videos to to figure out how to create your video content. It's not as hard as you think. Just takes a little bit of time to get used to being on camera, but there are ways around that. You could use you can use, like, b roll video that's not your face. You can do faceless videos, which are also pretty popular, where you're not even on camera at all. It could just be your hands making the candles or something like that.

Peg Fitzpatrick [00:54:02]:
So look up how to how to film b roll and then look up how to, you know, how to create some scripts for your and you can just put those things together. It's not as hard as you think. It is hard, but you can't expect that you're gonna put things up for the first time and make lots of sales. It does Right. It takes time on any platform to, to reach people. There is the the rare, rare thing where someone puts something up and it gets, I actually on my TikTok account, one thing I put up that has nothing at all to my biz to do with my business, I filmed my husband making, homemade Reese's peanut butter eggs, and it has, like, 450,000 views on it. It's the most views on my TikTok account, but it has nothing to do at all with my account. And there you go because it was when I wasn't really pardon me?

Chris Stone [00:54:52]:
You were selected.

Peg Fitzpatrick [00:54:54]:
And everybody loves it. And, hey, you know what? It comes up every Easter because it's, like, 3 years old now. On Easter, it trends it trends again, which I didn't really know content did that, but it does there. So, yeah, it's it is hard to do video, but it's not so hard that you can't figure it out. It does take time, but you could create batch you can batch process if you're gonna do some short

Chris Stone [00:55:16]:
form of video. And you could practice, like you said

Peg Fitzpatrick [00:55:18]:
Or you could hire people to do it.

Chris Stone [00:55:20]:
Yes. Yes. And and you you talk a lot about that in the book. And and for those of you who are watching pegfitzpatrick.com, in in you can go to deal casters. Live. Peg's new book is in the carousel. It is the art of small business, social media. This is this has just been amazing.

Chris Stone [00:55:40]:
I do have a one question we didn't get to that I was I was really curious about. I hope

Peg Fitzpatrick [00:55:45]:
it's not the 3 c's again because clearly

Chris Stone [00:55:47]:
I got everything that I wrote. It's not the 3 c's. So a lot of people will, you know, they will hold back and just get free, the free plan with Canva or the free plan with StreamYard. And and we always, we always would say, hey, listen. If you really want to, you know, kinda really, you know, level up, I would use the term, you know, you need to invest in your business. In other words, you know, get the premium plan here, you know, the Canva premium plan, the, you know, all of these things to really get, you know, all of that stuff under the hood of your of the engine and and really be able to use it. You talk about in the book, that your marketing should be looked at as a cost center, like As

Peg Fitzpatrick [00:56:36]:
an investment. Yeah. It's an investment. Yeah. My little I don't have it right here. I can't grab it. I have little stickers that say marketing is not optional. I actually and I made a little Etsy shop, but which I only shared once, but I've made little coffee mugs that say marketing is not optional.

Peg Fitzpatrick [00:56:52]:
Because if you're not marketing, if it's not a line item Yep. It's not gonna be done. And it you have to have marketing to get sales unless you have a bunch of salespeople out there, which most small businesses don't. So marketing has to be a line item, and it there are some expenses with it. Even if you're doing it yourself, you do have the expense of, like, Canva or some other things. I will say Canva is the best deal you can get. I don't work for them anymore. I started working for them.

Peg Fitzpatrick [00:57:21]:
But, I mean, I think they're I think maybe it's, like, $12 now for the monthly plan.

Chris Stone [00:57:26]:
That's insane. How does

Peg Fitzpatrick [00:57:27]:
it get to that? It's it's around there. It's very inexpensive. It saves you so much time. Yeah. We but just don't waste your time doing a whole bunch of different things. Like, pick the one that you really like. Canva is is clearly the forerunner here, for small business owners because you can do everything in there now. You can make bookmarks.

Peg Fitzpatrick [00:57:46]:
You could make the little tent cards that go on your counter. You can make posters. You could and you can print all these things and make you can make 2 posters and print them and have them sent to you.

Chris Stone [00:57:57]:
I made thumbnails that look like this. Because that was that was Canva.

Peg Fitzpatrick [00:58:01]:
I love it. The best thumbnail ever made.

Chris Stone [00:58:04]:
That makes me so happy that you love my thumbnail, Peg. It

Peg Fitzpatrick [00:58:07]:
really do. I don't wanna share, like, the best I think I said that when I shared it on Blue Sky or somewhere. But, yeah, you you do have to make an investment for your marketing. You know, video is something if you were a small business owner, if I could choose one thing that I would outsource, I would do video. I would hire someone to come once a month and film a bunch of stuff and then process it for me. And then I wouldn't have to think about it at all except for, you know, just looking at stuff. The girl that did, I did a brand photo shoot in the summer for my book. I did, like, just headshots and studio shots and things like that.

Peg Fitzpatrick [00:58:43]:
She also did, like, videos and b rolls and things for me. That's what she does. She has customers that are, like, spa owners and salon owners, and she goes once a month and she films a bunch of content. They have a little content day. It's probably only, like, half a day or I don't think it's probably even a whole day, but she does tons of photos and videos, and then she creates TikToks and all kinds of stuff for them. So if this is not your area of expertise, that's where you're gonna pay someone to do something. So you could you could get a lot from a day's worth of content. I've been using things since July for 1 photo shoot.

Chris Stone [00:59:19]:
Awesome. That's awesome advice. And I think, you know, that one resonated with me. You even go into detail of, like, suggested percentages that a small business might think about to allocate towards things like, you know, like what we're talking about, or even, you know, fate, you know, targeted Facebook ads or things like that, which is, you know, something that, you know, is not dead. You have to do it, you know, correct. But, like, you can't expect to create something that looks like an ad on Facebook and not pay for it as an ad and expect it's gonna resonate with people's right. So, I really I really love the fact that you you look at marketing as something that we should we should look at as an expense. Like, don't don't think of it as you know, you should you should be a line item, like you said, on your on your profit and loss statement.

Chris Stone [01:00:03]:
And I I think it's important that people understand that. Like, stop doing the free plan here. I mean, free plans are great to kinda test some things out, but eventually, you gotta you gotta pack pack all the stuff in for for these things.

Peg Fitzpatrick [01:00:16]:
Yeah. I mean, if key if I can't have account, if something happened and I lost all the stuff in there, I would be like, what? Because it's paid you so much time, and you could have all your photos in there, your like, once you really invest in a platform like StreamYard or, like, whatever platform you're using, you don't have to think about that aspect. Things change and things update, but it gives you, you know, the more you learn about it, the better you become with it. So the I just don't recommend just swapping around and checking out different stuff all the time, especially with, like, social media sharing. Like, I get so many emails, like, I made this social media sharing platform. Will you try it out? I'm like, nope. Like, I'm just like not I like, it takes so long to put all your accounts in there and set all the stuff up and set up a plan. Like, I know which one I like, and that's the one I stick with for that particular thing.

Peg Fitzpatrick [01:01:05]:
So not that I don't wanna help people out, but I don't think we need any more social sharing platforms anymore. I think we have a lot, don't you? You mean, like, schedulers? Yes. Like, schedulers.

Chris Stone [01:01:17]:
Yeah. We use Agorapulse and and we've we've used lately, and it it's I I think for the most part, I like to be more tactical as opposed to just likes, you know, set it, forget it scheduling. And does that post less? Yeah. Probably does. I don't I don't think these I mean, you may disagree with me. I don't think these platforms hurt like you're hurt by putting them in schedulers like they look at it and they say, oh,

Peg Fitzpatrick [01:01:41]:
this came from Agorapulse

Chris Stone [01:01:42]:
so we're gonna squash it. I just feel like if you make good content whether it comes from a schedule or native, I think you're gonna get, you know, it's gonna resonate with people. But I just feel like, I know I could probably post more if I used a scheduler. But I just, you know, for whatever reason, I just like to be a little more tactical. And do Yeah.

Peg Fitzpatrick [01:02:03]:
See, that's where I like to I like to get the bread and butter out of the way. So if I was you guy if I was you guys doing your show, I would know exactly what I wanted to create, and I would create all those things. And then I would schedule that all out, And then I would just put other things in when I wanted to, but that's just how I like to, you know I mean, when I was when I was trying to find Fitzpatrick

Chris Stone [01:02:24]:
to do it for us.

Peg Fitzpatrick [01:02:26]:
For sure. Cool. Actually, I know. I worked on a podcast. Not my favorite.

Chris Stone [01:02:33]:
Oh, okay.

Chris Stone [01:02:34]:
I

Peg Fitzpatrick [01:02:34]:
just I'm gonna tell the honest truth. I don't really like podcasts.

Chris Stone [01:02:39]:
You don't what? You're on them, Peg.

Peg Fitzpatrick [01:02:42]:
I know. I'm sorry. I just

Chris Stone [01:02:44]:
podcast. Video podcast listeners.

Peg Fitzpatrick [01:02:48]:
I just have I'm an I'm I'm a visual person. I'm not an auditory listener, so listening to someone talk, like, I can't work and do it. So it's hard for me. Like, I have to, like, stop working and listen to something. And videos too, same thing. Like, I can't keep a video running in the background when I'm trying to work because words confuse what I'm when I'm trying to write. Like, my brain is like, you can't listen to words and type words. I can't listen to music at with, like I can't listen to Broadway show tunes, which I love when I'm working because then I'm singing, and I'll be, like, typing out the lyrics to Wicked.

Peg Fitzpatrick [01:03:20]:
You know? That's, you know, my I don't know. Is that ADD or something? But maybe

Chris Stone [01:03:26]:
I don't know what it is, but it's something.

Peg Fitzpatrick [01:03:29]:
I gotta focus on one thing at a time real hard.

Chris Stone [01:03:32]:
Can you walk and chew gum at the same time?

Peg Fitzpatrick [01:03:35]:
Yes. Okay. And I could do multiple jobs at the same time. It's just really like listening to listening to words. Like, I can't because I'm always creating stuff, like, when I'm working. I'm either writing stuff or creating visuals or working on videos, so I can't have, like, other input. Do you guys Interesting. Were listen to podcasts when you're working on?

Chris Stone [01:03:52]:
I'm I'm completely opposite of you, Peg. My, my creative juice starts with music. So I need music helps, like, it it just aligns my brain, and it gives me I

Peg Fitzpatrick [01:04:04]:
like I do like music a lot. I just put music without words when I'm doing stuff.

Chris Stone [01:04:08]:
There you go. That works.

Chris Stone [01:04:10]:
You want to sing. I like you, Craig. I I've gotta I've gotta shut all that stuff off if I'm trying to create something or I'll get distracted. It'll be like squirrel. Right?

Peg Fitzpatrick [01:04:19]:
Right. That's gonna have that pure creative process.

Chris Stone [01:04:25]:
Have to be fun. I'm gonna be chopping that up to, a reel and putting that on the Pinterest, pin for sure. That's gonna be, that's gonna be up in a few hours. Peg, this has been amazing. I knew I knew we would have fun. I hope you did too.

Peg Fitzpatrick [01:04:40]:
I totally did.

Chris Stone [01:04:41]:
Okay. Amazing. And thank you so much. On the day of your brand new book, you showed up and graced us with your presence. And we Yes. We are so grateful that you, you came here. And those of you who haven't bought the book yet, Mitch Jackson did, why aren't you? The Art of Small Business Social Media, it's available now. Peg, if anybody wants to connect with you, pegfitzpatrick.com.

Chris Stone [01:05:07]:
Are you is there any, you're on all the platforms. You just said you got the real estate.

Peg Fitzpatrick [01:05:11]:
I'm on Blue Sky, but I'll Instagram is the one where I threads is the one where I'm I'm talk talk to people a lot, but now it seems like it's gonna be Blue Sky. So I'm around, whatever. I mean, Facebook, I check-in there. I check everywhere, but Instagram and thread, blue sky, wherever you like to chat. I'm kind of around. I appreciate you guys so much for having me on your show today, my little book my little book birthday. So thank

Chris Stone [01:05:36]:
you. Thank you. Thanks, Peg. And for everybody else, as always, don't fear the year.

Chris Stone [01:05:43]:
Thanks for listening to Dealcasters. Congratulations. You've taken another step forward in your content creation journey. Please don't forget to hit the subscribe or follow button here in your favorite podcast player so you can be reminded every time we drop an episode.

Chris Stone [01:06:00]:
We love hearing from our listeners and viewers. And if you're wanting to watch our shows live on Amazon, feel free to follow Dealcasters Live as well at deal casters dot live. Follow us on Twitter or subscribe to our YouTube channel where we also included added content that you cannot find anywhere else.

Chris Stone [01:06:20]:
If you have questions about this episode or have something you want us to review, you can also email us at Dealcasters at Dealcasters dot live. Thanks again for listening, and you know the deal. Don't fear the deal.