****Please forgive any and all transcription errors as this was transcribed by Otter.ai.****

Brooke Sellas 0:00

Wait. Wait. I'm trying not to get my giggle box going. (laughter)

Kenneth Kinney 0:03

And scene. (laughter)

Brooke Sellas 0:05

Stop it. Stop it.

Kenneth Kinney 0:07

I'm not gonna look.

Brooke Sellas 0:09

Yeah, hide. Okay. Hi, I'm Brooke Sellas and you are listening to A Shark's (giggle, laughter)

Kenneth Kinney 0:18

your giggle box.

Brooke Sellas 0:19

We're gonna have to have a blooper reel. This is the best. Okay. Okay. Hi, I'm....(laughter) damnit. Stop. Okay, serious. This is for serious. This is for $500. Hi, I'm Brooke Sellas and you're listening to A Shark's Perspective. (laughter)

Kenneth Kinney 0:45

(laugher) I may have to keep it for the blooper reel. That's pretty funny.

Brooke Sellas 0:49

No, it's hilarious and that you should play it right at the beginning that I'm sure that you're gonna listen to all the way through because they're gonna be like, I want to hear these giggle boxes. (laughter).

(Music - shark theme)

Kenneth Kinney 1:17

Welcome back and thank you for joining A Shark's Perspective. I am Kenneth Kinney, but friends call me Shark.

Kenneth Kinney 1:22

I'm a keynote speaker, strategist, a shark diver host of the show in your Chief Shark Officer.

Kenneth Kinney 1:27

Well, if you couldn't tell already yet, this is going to be a fun episode. What kind of conversations are you having with your customers on social media? Or is it mostly just a bunch of posts that you think make you look good with your brand pitch? If you're truly truly listening to what these conversations are saying, then ultimately the hope is opening the door to better content, better customer care and more conversions. The question of the day is are you having conversations that connect?

Kenneth Kinney 1:53

Welcome back from Episode 269 Brooke Sellas, who is the CEO and founder of B Squared Media a done for you social media management, advertising and customer care agency. And she's also the author of "Conversations That Connect: How to Connect, Converse, and Convert through Social Media Listening and Social-Led Customer Care."

Kenneth Kinney 2:10

And on this episode, we'll discuss the book on customer care and social media. What happens when you're recording a podcast on the January 6 proven your brand promise early the social penetration theory, the personality of your social media, carnations and content, measuring social engagement versus actual sales, flywheels and funnels, navigating the future and opening those API's knowing what to say or not when the bandwagons hear the cost of silence scaling those conversations acquisition retention tax, making the C suite happy trolls lurkers brand DNA, the beaches in Maine, falling asleep to law and order the last kpop song on Earth giggle boxes, and a lot lot more.

Kenneth Kinney 2:48

So let's tune into a giggling Brook with a babbling shark on this episode of A Shark's Perspective.

[intro music]

Kenneth Kinney 3:00

Brooke, welcome back. And thank you for joining me again today on A Shark's Perspective. Last time we recorded a podcast was on January 6 of 2021. So listeners want to know what do you have up your sleeve this time? Do you remember that?

Brooke Sellas 3:12

Oh my God, what does that feel like yesterday and 100 years ago, all at the same time?

Kenneth Kinney 3:18

Seriously, I remember us recording this and looking away at the TV and asking you if you were seeing this. And now I'm worried that we're going to be called up in front of Congress to testify about something we have no clue about. Just because we were recording a podcast and I have a little bit of a southern accent. So anyway, very good girl. We had nothing to do. We weren't there. But briefly, you remind us if you will about your career to date. And in case somebody didn't catch the episode 269 In case they were scoring at home.

Brooke Sellas 3:47

Yeah, so I own a company called B squared media and we do social media management. We are what we call a social first agency. So we do organic social media management paid media management, including social and search. And then we also do social lead customer care, which is a very long story, but essentially it's acquiring and retaining customers through social media.

Kenneth Kinney 4:13

Perfect. Well, let's talk about your new book conversations that connect how to connect converse and convert through social media listing and social led Customer Care. What drove you to write it? Was it more to drive home social media listing customer service and customer care, a calling card for you and your business? Or what was it?

Brooke Sellas 4:31

All of the above? Yeah, but I mean, you know, social listening such a big component of, of customer care for us. So I think ultimately, it was to start to educate companies and marketing leaders about the need for social media Customer Care.

Kenneth Kinney 4:50

Great. Early in chapter one. You spoke about proving your brand promise more urgently than before, and I love the urgent emphasis there, but describe what you meant by that.

Brooke Sellas 5:00

I think you know it's kind of the age old tale woven in new words but the age old tale is you know the brand promise us You that You know shark promises you that his podcast is going to be very Sharky. And it is you're proving that brand promise. But I think what happens a lot of times is shark says, hey, my podcast is going to be very Sharky. And that we never see a shark. Right, we don't actually see shark follow up on his shark Enos. And so I think brands not only have to understand what their brand promise is, but they have to deliver it more urgently than before, they have to prove their worth, like walk the walk, don't just talk the talk

Kenneth Kinney 5:39

well in and then later on, you talk about the social penetration theory SPT for short. This dates back to the 70s. And you're already laughing, describe what you meant by that here to clarify, and you know, knowing me that I'm going to say something stupid about this, but the social penetration theory is neither a venereal disease or when your doctor talks too much during a colonoscopy, correct?

Brooke Sellas 6:01

Yes, that's correct. I know. It's a terrible, terrible name. But it's a brilliant concept. Right? So it was to social psychologists back in the 70s, essentially said that the way you and I form relationships is that we disclose information to one another. And it's also called the onion theory, much better name, so we can stick with that if you want. And essentially, when you think about an onion, it's nice and round, and breadth, the circumference around the onion is where most content lives, right? We're living on the outside of the onion, which is cliches and facts. It's not very telling about moving the relationship forward in the way of opinions and feelings. If you peel the layers of that onion, and you go into depth, like deeper into the onion, you then get to opinions and feelings and opinions feelings, as self disclosures are how you and actually you and I actually decide if we like one another, if we align with one another. And if we want to move the relationship forward and eventually trust each other.

Kenneth Kinney 7:01

I liked that you talked about this in the form of your own thesis, which I admired that you clarify that as to brands if they're doing enough with their social media to reveal a personality. And I'm curious, what did you find? I find most of it very vanilla.

Brooke Sellas 7:17

Yeah, unfortunately, most brands, most like the vast majority are living in breath. They're going around and around that onion, but they're never pure, peeling the onions back, they're never going to make anyone cry in a bad way, or in a good way. Because remember, happy tears are great too.

Kenneth Kinney 7:38

Well, so help unpack what you meant by think by conversation and not campaign.

Brooke Sellas 7:45

So I think that if you have a conversational mark, marketing mindset, you should be asking questions or eliciting and soliciting opinions and feelings. So if I'm a brand, I should be sharing my own opinions and feelings. One of the examples I give in the book is from proflowers, right? They're a flower delivery service. And they had a tweet that went out that said, hashtag unpopular opinion, we think carnations are gorgeous. And a lot of people replied, like, you know, it's a trash flower. And then some people were like, Oh, flowers are beautiful, you know. And so not only were they sharing their opinion, and kind of feelings on carnations, their customers and would be customers were sharing their opinions and feelings back, which allows the brand to collect voice of customer data. So if they saw, say, they got 100 comments, and let's say 90 Out of the 100. So 90% of those comments, were like, Oh, my God, we love carnations, too, then they might need to create more carnation type content in the future, right knowing that they have an audience that's interested in that. However, if they saw that 90% of those comments were like, you know, carnations are stupid. Maybe they should move on to a different flower.

Kenneth Kinney 8:59

But how should a brand really interpret this though, it may not necessarily be that the loudest voice on social is necessarily the one that's driving the most revenue. Maybe it is a trash flower. And she said, I mean, although that can maybe drive a lot of the likes and shares that doesn't always translate back to revenue for the brand.

Brooke Sellas 9:19

It does not always translate to revenue, but what it does translate to is better content. You're stopping the dooms. Scroll, when you're asking those types of layup questions, you know, for marketers, a lot of companies have been posting lately, like how do you feel about the Instagram update? They know everyone hates it, but they're asking because it's a layup question that they know they're gonna get engagement on and what happens when you get engagement on your social media posts. The algorithm shows more people your social media posts, so you're playing the game a little bit, you know for the algorithm,

Kenneth Kinney 9:52

but it opens the door to a conversation.

Brooke Sellas 9:55

Exactly, it opens the door to conversation and allows you to talk to your would be customers and your customers. and allows you to collect that voice of the customer data on those opinions and feelings or products or themes that you're talking about.

Kenneth Kinney 10:08

Well, it's great too, because now if you're a person buying Carnations for your loved one, Brook says they're trash flowers, so I didn't say that, she said it, you can rewind it a minute, you know. And so you're a smart cookie. But when you later wrote about the customer journey, I'm always curious, because I've gone through this a lot with studying attribution. Was there anything that you uncovered there that maybe made you rethink what the customer journey was that you didn't know? before? I mean, you go through some research, when you put together a book that's different outside of what you do day to day with work?

Brooke Sellas 10:43

Yeah, I really kind of leaned on Jim Collins book and his flywheel and that whole concept, you know, from good to great. And I obviously adopt and believe in the concept of the funnel is no longer linear, you know, customers don't necessarily enter at the top or would be customer sorry, and then it you know, exit at the bottom as a customer, they can come in pretty much anywhere these days. Right. So, I wanted to look at a flywheel obviously, versus a funnel. But instead of putting growth in the middle, I was trying to, through the work that we've done, and through the research for the book, understand what drives growth the most. And for me, it was customer care, because and I think a lot of people are like, wait, wait, wait, what about acquisition, customer care does include acquisition, it's the entire digital journey, we're talking about pre purchase and acquisition, all the way through retention, loyalty, advocacy. So I think when you put customer care in the middle, knowing that it's literally soup to nuts, that's what drives growth, keeping the eye on the customer constantly, whether it be acquisition, retention, or anything in between an actor.

Kenneth Kinney 11:53

Yeah, I know that, you know, when looking at attribution, I think a lot of people are becoming a lot more surprised how much social media isn't necessarily dominating. But it becomes more of the conversation, the total journey, rather than just a particular point in time. So I'm curious how you look at where we think about social listening and customer care in regards to the future of social media. And for example, a bulk of what was done over the last decade, for example, was on Twitter and Facebook in a very, sort of 2d, conversational medium. It was almost like text messaging. But yeah, you know, since we even spoke on the last episode, clubhouse is fairly mature. I heard a lot of people say, No, you gotta get all the brand's gotta get on clubhouse to have conversations. You know, LinkedIn is where people go to be more social, but not at nasty. Brooks probably going to be doing a tick tock dance in response to a customer service issue at some point. But in all seriousness, I asked this because your audience may not always live, just as you talked about within that point. And I'm curious where you think about social media and the future of it as to how we sort of navigate the social listening as to new social media mediums?

Brooke Sellas 13:00

Yeah, well, first and foremost, I hope that a lot more of the social media, newer social media channels, open up their API's, right? Because social listening tool is just a tool. And to be able to listen on a platform, that tool has to open their API to the tool. So for instance, we just literally today I'm not even kidding, like today, got LinkedIn listening for Sprout Social, because they just opened their API for listening for sprout. So yes, that I make that point. I feel very clear in that chapter that, you know, social listening is limited. But I hope that more platforms start to open these API's. So that voice of the customer data can be shared to brands, which is important, but also it's important for the customer. Because for the customers who have said, and we know most of them have said this with iOS 14, I don't want to see things that I'm not asking for. And in research that I've read, and then it's in the book, people want personalized ads, but they don't want ads that they didn't ask for and you know how you get personalized ads with Cookie pocalypse coming or maybe not. He's not the keep pushing it out. But I digress. Is your voice of the customer data you have those conversations, you ask those opinion, feeling questions, you let the social listening do the work on your brand listeners, your industry listeners and your competitor listeners. You bring all of that information in house you slice and dice it based on the goals that you have you and you then can drive more data driven decisions for sales, marketing, content marketing, social media, product development, product packaging, I mean, the options are endless. It

Kenneth Kinney 14:41

was somebody who's worked in performance marketing a pretty good chunk of my life. I find social listening and where we may go with killing of cookies. It's there's incredible potential there for filling the gap with really understanding you know, the behaviors that cookies track and tell us about I think we talked last time about trolls on our last episode, something you talk about a lot, not Justin Timberlake. But social media wins. It was good good movie with for my child. But seriously with the volatility that arises on social media day, when you think of BLM and how everything happened with post George Floyd with Roe vs. Wade, now everybody erupted. How can you develop a troll policy that persist as well as a good social media stance to be unable to weather a lot of the storms that nobody knows how to predict what's going to be the next one. And then everybody's that a little bit of a loss as to how to react.

Brooke Sellas 15:34

I that is a very, that is an ongoing conversation that is requiring a lot of iterations. But I think first and foremost, as a brand, you have to know what your brand core values are. If your brand core values for your company is to bring clean drinking water to countries that don't have access to clean water, then you don't need to go posting about BLM or pride or Roe v. Wade, unless those are things that follow them around with along with your brand values. I think where brands get in trouble is a lot of times they jump on the bandwagon, which ends up really being grandstanding or posturing for some of these delicate and important conversations. But if if abortion or Black Lives Matter, or you know, pride is not part of your brand core values and not something you support, it's okay to be silent. So I say in the book it there's a cost to silence, but there's a cost to silence if you're not speaking out on what your brand is aligned with. You can't be all things to all people. And I think that's where a lot of brands are getting themselves in trouble because they're jumping on the brand bandwagon. They're grandstanding, and people are coming in commenting and having the conversation but the conversation goes like this. You're you say you support X thing? What are you doing? What actions are you providing to support X thing? And when the brand can't answer that you've been caught red handed, and it's not gonna go well, for you.

Kenneth Kinney 17:07

I thought the cost of silence point was brilliant. And I think it's interesting how the voices that are getting louder, getting louder, even when they're, in a lot of ways getting smaller, it's some of the niche voices are getting louder. But brands are reacting in such a demonstrably not authentic way to their DNA, that they're trying to appease everybody in it. And then it didn't stop looking like they don't care.

Brooke Sellas 17:34

Right? You can't you cannot be everything to everyone as marketers say all the time. So it's no different here. But I think once you know, whatever your brand values are, whatever charities you support, or causes you support or whatever, then stand on that. Stand on that. And don't be silenced, because that's where the cost comes in. But again, if that's your brand core value, and you want to stand on a cause, then you better have some sort of action to go along with that cause a committee a fundraising drive I, you know, you know, volunteer day, something within the brand to back up your stand.

Kenneth Kinney 18:11

Yeah. Well, right after that, too. I love that you refer at least reference lurkers because there are a lot of them, a majority of them. Nobody ever talks about him a lot more than people think they pop in look for something to comment on, or not. And then they jump out most of the time. You know, I know you you talk about it briefly in the book. But was there anything you necessarily addressed to get people more engaged in a conversation than just sitting back and lurking?

Brooke Sellas 18:36

Yeah, I think, you know, again, you have to look at who your brand is, and what your services and products are. So the example I give in the book is we work with a doctor's office, we've worked with them for, I don't know, five or six years now. And they're a gastro group. So they provide colonoscopies and hemorrhoid banding surgery and things that people are not going to come have conversations about online. So we try to get conversations happening on really like the behind the scenes content of the staff, and kind of fun things or colon cancer awareness month, right the the brand core values, but we know that we're not going to have conversation on some of the more factual things that we share. So we do share a little bit, our facts are more skewed heavy for that brand. But then we look for a click through rate on those posts. And we see that we have an extremely high click through rate. So people want the factual information because it's a sensitive subject, right? They're searching for it. They want to be able to read about it, but they don't necessarily want to talk about it. So you kind of have to look at what's the goal of this piece of content? Is it to educate my audience so that I'm okay with a high click through rate? Or is it to have that return on conversation? And if I'm able to get that, how am I going to do it delicately with this particular audience?

Kenneth Kinney 19:52

How can you have conversations that connect at scale? This is easier to do when it's small but as it grows It becomes difficult to manage.

Brooke Sellas 20:02

Yeah, you know, we work, as you know, which I can't mention, but you are familiar with some of the brands that we work with. And they're global, big brands,

Kenneth Kinney 20:12

We'll put them all in the shownotes.

Brooke Sellas 20:14

No. And, you know, some of them have like 1215 channels that we work on for them. And so for them, they had to outsource this is not a pitch. For me, it's a pitch for any agency who provides social customer care, because, as I say, in the book, there's an inherent mismatch between employees who work nine to five, Monday through Friday, and social and customer care, social customer care is also not well fit with the traditional call center people, right, because those are typically the least educated, least paid people on the team. So there's a lot of mismatches that happen with corporations who want to have like a 24/7 voice or something along those lines on social. So they, they have to outsource and maybe they can move to a hybrid bottle. You know, I'm, I'm kind of pulling this out of thin air right now. But if I were a big brand, and I wanted to keep my social media, customer care in house, I would probably have to adopt a hybrid model of some remote workers who would be willing to work seven days a week, holidays, you know, all that good stuff.

Kenneth Kinney 21:24

Do you find that it works better for you and your team to do 24? By seven, or let's say the money's the same. So it didn't matter in that argument. But 24 by seven, or maybe a hybrid model, where there people are making it nine to five, and then you're taking it and managing it the rest of the time?

Brooke Sellas 21:41

That's an excellent question. Because we've run through that time and time again, where the brand thought we were going to kind of split things up. And ultimately, they ended up handing it over. Because it's it's a, it's a very mental health, taxing job on their internal team. And they don't want to they don't want to put their employees through that. So they kind of you know, give us the you know, what end of the stick, which we signed up for, we know what we're getting into,

Kenneth Kinney 22:08

well, that frees those people up to go complain about them online. And then you answer so Exactly. You used a Ben and Jerry's reference on where they stood on an abortion law in Texas. And they jumped Ben and Jerry's jumps on a lot of purposes that they're passionate about. But what do you say to the brands who make up the market when they stick their toe in the water? And they they just want to sell more ice cream, for example? You know, yeah, out of something like the top 10 Ice Cream brands, I know, they're somewhere in that like fifth sixth area, but they're not. They're far from number one. And they're, they're one out of 10. But they aren't the biggest. They're the only one I think that I remember of that example that I looked at later that spent all that time jumping in. But it's almost unfortunately that a lot of other brands are sort of trying to figure out where they show care if they're not been a Jerry's for at least in the ice cream world, you know, to use a bad analogy. No,

Brooke Sellas 23:01

no, I love that. But here's the here's my thing about Ben and Jerry's, they've always been a political brand, always. So it's very easy for them to and they jump as they see fit. And they do they have literally I think supported all the causes big, small, and otherwise, sharks, except for sharks Dang it, we're gonna have to write them. But because they've always been a political brand, it's very easy for them to take a stance on these things. 99.99999% of brands are not a Ben and Jerry. And so my recommendation would not to be to take a Ben and Jerry's approach. But my point was with that that I was trying to make was, if you know, your brand's core values, if you stand on those values, when you will align your audiences who have similar core values to your brand, they'll connect with you even more easily. They'll converse with you more easily, they'll convert for you more easily and hopefully get you to that Northstar if you're looking for that of becoming a community member or an advocate more easily because you're so aligned. Patagonia was like the layup example.

Kenneth Kinney 24:10

Exactly. Yeah. To that point. I think having worked with a lot of these large brands as well. I find it very interesting that a lot of them say that they know what their core brand message is, and they know who they are. But a lot of them are playing Queensbury style holding the boxing roles. And then they go into a street fight on social and and I'm curious how you sort of navigate that space with giving companies advices to know you got to play by these rules, the old rules don't work.

Brooke Sellas 24:38

Well, this is why I think there's probably a book to coming even though I said I would never do this again, is because this is exactly what we're talking about with these brands is we're starting to put I don't want to call them formulas or algorithms, but parameters around you know, for instance, I'll give you an example. One of the large global brands who we work for, put out a pride post. And normally their audience is very ill aligned, but they boosted that post on Facebook of all platforms, okay? Think about who Facebook's audiences, They boosted it, which means it goes outside of their audience. And what happened was they got slammed, they got overrun with hate speech. And trolls and people who obviously did not align with this, I would say, part of the algorithm for you know, doing social media correctly based on your audiences and segments, do not boost a sensitive post on Facebook, where you can't turn off comments. You know, that's, that's something that's sensitive, like, that would be like a, hey, here's a quick and dirty roll. Don't do that. So, so I think we're, we're starting to outline some of these more nuanced things, to kind of protect the brand integrity and to protect and you know, they actually do support pride. So we want to protect that core value. But we want to bring people in who aligned with that core value. And in that move, unfortunately, didn't do that.

Kenneth Kinney 26:12

How should we measure whether or not care succeeds? How are you going to make that skeptical C suite care when we know that they really mostly care about the bottom line?

Brooke Sellas 26:24

I'm so glad you asked that. So one of the things that I talked about in the book, which, again, now is becoming one of those things, which which may come out in book number two, was the acquisition retention tags. So very, very long story short, I'm just gonna read the book, but very long story short, we went to all of our customer care clients, and we said, how much of your social chatter, do you think is acquisition or retention? Meaning how much of it is pre purchase people asking questions in the buying moment? And how much of it is post purchase meaning I've already purchased from you. And now I'm coming to you with a question or a complaint about the product or service. And across the board, they all told us that acquisition would be 5% or less. So using social listening, we started to tag all of the incoming conversations to the brand as acquisition or retention. What we found for every single one of these clients was that over the acquisition chatter was over 20%. For that big global brand that I was talking about, we have a tech brand that we work with four of their product lines, and I'm not making this up, I promise you. month over month, they've gotten somewhere on four of their product lines between 60 and 80%. Acquisition, chatter, poop, like my eyeballs popped out, rolled around on my head did a dance and came back in when I saw these numbers, right. And I think they're just in two. So now, the C suites paying attention, because they're like, Wait, this is this is sales. And so we suggested coming in and saying, Now what if we went on that 80% acquisition chatter and we were able to put a retail dollar value around it? Because we can we know what products are being mentioned in these conversations? Right. So what if 80% chatter amounted to a million dollars in revenue? Now, what if you gave our frontline our customer care agents, a attribution link? So that we can say something like, Hey, Kenneth, yeah, so glad you asked that question about, you know, widget x, here's the spec sheet, you can see a you know, compared to competitor, whatever, we do better in the lottery, la dee da. And Kenneth, if you purchase today, here's a link for $100 off or free shipping, or a percentage off whatever it may be. So then now, we're basically warm social selling, we'll probably close some portion of that 80%. And then we can attribute revenue dollars to organic social media and Customer Care.

Kenneth Kinney 28:58

affiliate link for Customer Care. Love it. Last but not least, you speak about this early. This is a book worth reading. But where should people start?

Brooke Sellas 29:07

Ah, yeah, I, you know, I don't think people are gonna like this answer very much. But I stand behind it 110%.

Kenneth Kinney 29:13

Page one.

Brooke Sellas 29:17

In the negative, you know, as marketers, I feel like we're conditioned to always be reporting numbers to the stakeholders, and it always has to be the good story. And then we're trying to figure out how to take the bad and spin it into the good so that we can present to the stakeholders and I think that's wrong. I think we're doing ourselves a disservice. Because in that negative Chatter is the only space where there's catalysts for change, right? If everything's good, there's your job isn't needed, right? Finding the negative is and then figuring out how to fix it on the brand side so that you can say, hey, we heard you and we fixed it, and now it's better and now you can sell more things because you'll like it this way, is never going to hurt your business. So I I think we need to kind of flip the script or the mindset for marketers focus on the negative and start there because that gives you a roadmap of places to fix or I call them potholes to fix along the digital customer journey.

Kenneth Kinney 30:13

Agreed. All right broadcast this of all my guests I did last time talked about sharks and you hit had an A nightmare the night before we recorded the last one. Not about January 6, but about a shark. You told me but you spent a lot of time in Maine. Do you ever go to the beach when you're in Maine and see any sharks in the water there?

Brooke Sellas 30:31

Okay, so yes, I do go to the beach, but I only go in the water up to like my big toe or my ankle. And I will say, Maine. When we first moved here people told us like, oh, there's never any sharks in Maine. Well, I don't know if you heard this, but it was either last year the year before a woman got attacked and it was fatal are from Harpswell, which is close by and there's been so many sightings and now we still see like chomped up seals in the water. So I do not get in the water. But I have not seen one firsthand of yet.

Kenneth Kinney 31:06

Yeah, I always recommend people should put on like a cape for sale outfit and go get in the water. It works really now. Just kidding.

Brooke Sellas 31:12

Well, the lady who got it in Harpswell had on a wetsuit

Kenneth Kinney 31:16

She had on the wetsuit. Yeah, well, the murky water the 20 degrees. Well, Brooke, it's a special time in the show again, are you ready for the five most interesting and important questions that you're again going to be asked today?

Brooke Sellas 31:27

I'm....bring it I'm ready.

Kenneth Kinney 31:28

All right, here we go. Since we talked about the onion and SPT I will first ask you about pizzas in supreme pizzas. Onions are no onions?

Brooke Sellas 31:42

Oh, it depends. Depends on the other toppings. But if it's just onions, I'm a no.

Kenneth Kinney 31:47

It's the pizza company called Sophie's Choice. You got to pick one.

Brooke Sellas 31:51

Okay, fine. No. Okay.

Kenneth Kinney 31:53

Number two. And I remember this. Oddly enough. It you're the only other person I know that did this. It's a very odd explanation of how I got to question two. But you said this on your former old podcast she did with Mark Schaefer. I don't know if you still do you fell asleep to Law and Order episodes.

Brooke Sellas 32:13

I still do I now I prefer Dateline.

Kenneth Kinney 32:17

So I did as well because he was on for like 24 hours...

Brooke Sellas 32:21

Straight

Kenneth Kinney 32:22

Turner, TBS, and TNT and any and all of them AMC, they all had it so yeah, number two. Law and Order the original or Law and Order SVU. Not to fall asleep by but which show do you prefer? Or I guess it could be which one makes you sleep?

Brooke Sellas 32:41

They're both good sleeping shows in my opinion, but I had to pick it would be the original.

Kenneth Kinney 32:47

Yeah, I don't want to fall asleep and hear about trafficking and all that stuff.

Brooke Sellas 32:52

Just murder. Murders.

Kenneth Kinney 32:55

Then I sleep like a baby. Alright. Number three. I think you and I have this conversation once or heard it somewhere. So you're at Wallburgers, which is pronounced a certain way in Texas, you and your Funky Bunch. How do we pronounce this correctly?

Brooke Sellas 33:13

Are you talking about Whataburger or Whataburger?

Kenneth Kinney 33:17

Whataburger

Brooke Sellas 33:18

Whataburger but we say water burger. Okay. Yeah.

Kenneth Kinney 33:22

So you're at Whataburger, which is what I meant to say. Are you ordering a classic lettuce, tomato mayo? Or an Impossible Burger?

Brooke Sellas 33:31

Oh, classic. Please give me all the meat.

Kenneth Kinney 33:35

Aren't you technically still a millennial, though? You're you're required to

Brooke Sellas 33:38

No I'm Gen X. I'm right on the cusp. But yeah, I haven't eventried an Impossible Burger. gasp

Kenneth Kinney 33:46

I don't. I don't want to put into words what face I'm making. Alright, number four. This is a question you probably get asked all the time. If you had if you were driving to Maine, from New York, or let's say Texas make it a longer drive. You had only 1k pop song to listen to on your drive from New York to Texas. And you had listened to it over and over again. Like it was the last song on Earth. Would you listen to size Gangnam Style or BTS is dynamite.

Brooke Sellas 34:17

Gangnam Style.

Kenneth Kinney 34:19

Thank you. I have no idea where I came up with that. But I've been wanting to ask somebody for some wisdom. All right, number five last time you chose biscuits and you get bonus points for the correct pronunciation which is best. So the most important question that you're going to be asked today is fried chicken or fried catfish.

Brooke Sellas 34:40

Oh fried chicken.

Unknown Speaker 34:41

Really? Okay.

Brooke Sellas 34:42

Yeah. Well, I immediately was thinking it was my grandmother's fried chicken. So obviously, that's what I picked. But I mean, if it's hers, and she does a good good fried catfish too, but it's still I'm taking the chicken.

Kenneth Kinney 34:54

I know she stopped inviting me over. I don't know why. So Brooke, where can people find out more? Got you. Get a copy of this great book, keep up with what you're doing your thought leadership in the space and more.

Brooke Sellas 35:06

Oh, thank you so much. Well, you can find me just by Googling Brooke b-r-o-ok-e S E L L, A S, or you can go to our website the traditional way. Well, I don't know, it's kind of traditional to Google people when you don't know. Anyways, our website is b squared dot media, and you'll see a little button right there on the top menu that says our book, you can click that it'll tell you all about the book, I actually give away chapter one for free if you're not one wanting to buy, but if you want to buy now, you can just go to Amazon and search conversations that connect.

Kenneth Kinney 35:40

Awesome, Brooke, thank you again for being with us today on A Shark's Perspective.

Brooke Sellas 35:43

Thank you so much for having me. It's always so much fun to swim with you and the sharks.

[music]

Kenneth Kinney 35:54

So there was my conversation with Brooke Sellas, the CEO and founder of B squared media, a done for you social media management, advertising and customer care agency. And she's the author of conversations that connect how to connect, converse and convert through social media listing and socialized Customer Care. Let's take a look at three key takeaways from a conversation with her.

Kenneth Kinney 36:14

First, prove your brand promise early. This is so incredibly true in anything less leaves your customers thinking that you're not interested enough in them, and why they even came to you and gave you their money, which was to solve their problems, brands gets so lost. And this interests me crazy. And if you want me to prove it with sharks, than just go take a look at pictures or videos of me on a website. Or better yet, let's go diving.

Kenneth Kinney 36:36

Second, peel back the onion of your brand's social posts and content for that matter. Most of the time that onion makes me cry because it looks so generically plain, safe and boring. You've got to show personality in your brand. Otherwise, you look the same and there's no differentiation. If you're at near the private label brand. That's a different story. But I shouldn't simply be able to take the logo off of your social post and insert any other competitors logo that would make me cry, especially when there's no onions on that pizza.

Kenneth Kinney 37:04

Third, having conversations with customers on social can really open the doors, including to your would be customers. You know this but we don't always apply it. The more you listen to your customers, the more you will learn from those conversations. social listening isn't new, but the power of it is just coming of age. It's the new cookie that allows more context to why they might buy in it should help drive and inform you of better content. A lot of people lose sight of this too and it drives me cuckoo, but that social content needs to tie back also to what converts we were talking about carnations and and about their importance and social, some may trash them in this conversation. But then they outsell everything else you do. A lot of people would then listen to too much of that noise and skew all their social to what people are only chattering about and forget what's really selling. It should inform you with data and not just feelings. So oftentimes are siloed in social becomes a big part of the story, but not enough on that side understand when the other became a strong driver for the sale. So please listen and also look for how those conversations connected. Continue to tie the thread in the journey from awareness to sale in your marketing, media, social and advertising. Show the C suite at least that you care.

Kenneth Kinney 38:12

Got a question send me an email to Kenneth at a shark's perspective.com.

Kenneth Kinney 38:15

And thank you again for the privilege of your time.

Kenneth Kinney 38:17

I am so thankful to everyone who listens.

Kenneth Kinney 38:20

Please consider writing a review and letting me know your thoughts on the show.

Kenneth Kinney 38:23

And really, really show me a care and don't make them think we care ish. Join us on the next episode of A Shark's Perspective.

(Music - shark theme)