We don’t claim to be experts at many things – like everyone else, we know we still have a lot to learn and we’re excited about the process. Having said that, we’re going to go out on a limb here (and maybe even toot our own horns a little), when we say that we’re pretty well-versed on the ins and outs of social media marketing.
Over the last few years, as we’ve built our team and expanded our work to cater to a range of different clients, we’ve learnt a few things. Some of these lessons have changed the way we run the day-to-day tasks at HighKey. Others have confirmed that we’re on the right path and we’ve zoned in and focused on that.
Our focus has been narrowed to creating elite personal brands in the digital world. We utilize publications, social media content and social media growth as our main services to create our high-level brands. Here are some of the things that we have learned along the way…
What we’ve learned: Your Personal brand is the most lucrative Long Term Investment
Over the years the owners of HighKey Agency Jordan (@jordanlintz) and Luke Lintz (@lukelintz) have been growing their personal brands right alongside their company brand. At first they were skeptical about building their personal brands and the value that would be added to the company by doing so. But, after two years of investing millions into their brands, the mindset completely switched. “It’s not possible to invest too much money into your personal brand. Every dollar that you spend on your brand will pay dividends for the rest of your life. Having direct advertising efforts is great, but if you have extra cash you should be spending it on your brand” said by CEO, Luke Lintz.
What we do now: After the confidence was built by the owners that there is no other investment that is more valuable than your personal brand, the entire team felt very comfortable scaling and expanding our services to offer as many branding opportunities for our current and future customers.
What we’ve learned: Our target clients don’t have time
Over the years we have quickly realized that the high-level clients that can afford and benefit greatly from our services have very minimal extra time. The main rebuttal we get from potential clients is that they don’t have the time to invest in their personal brand. We fully understand this because high-level professionals should be focusing and working on what they do best, not doing $20/hour tasks like teaching themselves video editing, filming, social media posting and should be leaving that work to people who work on a daily basis in these platforms.
What we do now: This is exactly why we have continuously hired on staff and contractors in very specific areas to make the efforts of our clients as minimal as possible. We have video editors, graphics designers, social media managers, press managers, writers and more to make sure that our clients have to put in very little effort to grow their personal brands.
What we’ve learned: Every social media platform is different
This sounds obvious, but there’s more to it. You can jump from Facebook to Instagram to LinkedIn to YouTube and see completely different interfaces and different tones and ways to communicate with people. The six biggest social media sites – Instagram, YouTube, Tik Tok, Facebook, Linked In and Twitter all have different content preferences and requirements for hitting the highest level of engagement. Whatever you put on there has to align with not just your brand, but also the medium.
Most importantly, however, is that these sites have different algorithms. What works on one won’t work on the other because it’s been programmed to show content and engagement differently. Also the majority of these platforms are owned by different companies so they all have their own ulterior motives with advertising, virality and data collection.
Tik Tok’s algorithm has been focusing on viral and trending songs that creators use their creativity to film the most outlandish content and utilize the trending songs and topics to go viral.
YouTube’s algorithms are much different because it’s owned by Google and focuses heavily on SEO. The majority of YouTube video viewership is from the “Home Page” where YouTube uses its algorithms to pick the best videos for your liking. From the publishers perspective this has a majority to do with SEO.. The titles, Thumbnail, description, keywords and hook of the video all play a major role in the “virality” of a video.
What we do now: We make sure that each one of our social media managers are taking time daily to study the algorithms, market leaders and content strategies for each of the social media platforms that we offer services for. This allows for an extreme growth mindset because each of our social media managers bring their own ideas to the table on enhancements for different industries and each one of our clients.
What we’ve learned: Analytics and Reports are imperative
From a creator’s vision, the thought of trudging through numbers, data, and metrics to see what has worked and what hasn’t is, honestly, slightly terrifying. Luckily, our lovely social media giants, website hosts, and browser companies have done most of the legwork in terms of gathering the information and putting it together in an easily digestible format. All you need to do is find out what information you want and learn how to access it. Our success is based on measurable data and providing those reports helps us understand which direction to move into in terms of content, and gives us an idea of what we need to work on. Of course, celebrating the successes is a plus too!
What we do now: No two reports are the same. It’s important to adapt your expectations and number predictions for different accounts – depending on the niche – and depending on which social media channel is used most often. Going through the reports with an idea of what motivated the content output and what the initial goal was will help determine whether or not it’s worth creating similar entertainment products despite not reaching the desired goal. Sometimes you find something unexpected that works well, and sometimes the content you hoped would crush falls completely short.
What we’ve learned: Understanding Which Social Media Platforms are for Each Client
There are many different social media channels and each channel has different demographics, ways of sharing medium and marketing opportunities. It’s not at all necessary or practical for someone to be on every single social media platform. Designing your feed for one social media network is hard enough. It takes creativity, thought, time, and energy. Doing so for multiple networks and adjusting the content to suit each medium takes a big chunk out of your day and leaves little time for actually enjoying and appreciating your work. Understanding which social media platform is best utilized for specific industries is imperative.
What we do now: We have a large variety of clients in many different industries and we have been able to figure out what social media platforms are best suited for our clients industries and each of their unique set of goals. Things like E-commerce companies should be focusing on Instagram and Tik Tok, while Real Estate Investors should be focusing on Instagram, LinkedIn and YouTube.