Latest / The ROI Online Podcast / [Feature Friday] Thibaud Clement on Using Social Media More Effectively - The ROI Online Podcast Ep. 67

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[Feature Friday] Thibaud Clement on Using Social Media More Effectively - The ROI Online Podcast Ep. 67 · The ROI Online Podcast

• 0:03
  Thibaud Clement: Because you know, you are probably going to pose the same thing on on Facebook and Twitter and LinkedIn, but maybe on Facebook, it's going to be a bit longer on Twitter is going to be shorter maybe with hashtags, and on LinkedIn is it will have to maybe have a more formal tone.
• 0:17
  Thibaud Clement: But the underlying idea that you are sharing is roughly the same.
• 0:22
  Thibaud Clement: Otherwise, it's just a different pose. And so the way we have built Lumi, is you have to step one ID and date. Step two, is selecting the channel. Step three is defining what we call generate content, which is content that is going to be common to all channels that you have selected. And you know, it's in terms of copy and assets. But then step four is where it gets really interesting is what we call the fine tuning step. And so you are going to get like, you know, a mock up for Facebook, a mock up for Twitter, a mock up for LinkedIn, that is generated automatically based on the Generate campaign.
• 0:58
  Thibaud Clement: And then from there, you can tweak it. Hi, everybody.
• 1:01
  Steve Brown: Welcome to the ROI online podcast where we believe you, the courageous entrepreneurs of our day, are the invisible heroes of our economy. You not only improve our world with your ideas, your grit and your passion, but you make our world better. I'm Steve Brown. And this is a place where we have great conversations with winners just like you while we laugh and learn together.
• 1:25
  Steve Brown: Welcome to the ROI online podcast Thibaud Clement.
• 1:36
  Thibaud Clement: I Steve, thanks for having me.
• 1:38
  Steve Brown: So, you know, people that listen to this podcast, they're wondering why they should listen to this particular episode. And so here's the thing is that YouTube's really confusing is something that we all know that we need to take advantage of it.
• 1:53
  Steve Brown: LinkedIn is confusing, and we know that we should take advantage of it. And then we hear about these other platforms like Tick tock, etc. And yet, there is not clear and yet you have a company loomly.com. And you come from this space. So tell us a little bit about why you're an excellent person to listen to and get clarity on this.
• 2:20
  Thibaud Clement: Okay, I'll try.
• 2:20
  Thibaud Clement: I'll try. Yeah, well, you know, so I do come from an advertising background. And I've basically been working in digital marketing for about 10 years, all the time, I've been working with my schools, No, me, you know, it's actually Lumi is the fourth company that we are building together. And, you know, before lumely, we had an advertising agency, we were operating both in France, where our largest and most famous client was L'Oreal, and we were managing five brands for them, luxury product division, and here in the US, where we were helping, you know, fast growing startups, trying to, you know, get more traction and more growth. And, and so that was one process, you know, that was Come on, like to all those clients began small, French and American, no matter the vertical is that we had to prepare, produce, and submit to them some content to publish on their social media accounts. In all of that, believe it or not, was happening through spreadsheets, you know, in muscle time in Excel. And if you actually speak, you know, is anyone who is actually doing or preparing like an editorial plan or an entire calendar, they will tell you most probably, that they use some kind of spreadsheet, maybe Excel, maybe Google Sheets, or some kind of evolved version.
• 3:39
  Thibaud Clement: But the truth is, spreadsheets were not meant for that they are rific for numbers, when you want to do like a profit and loss statement or businessman, but they are not great for media and text later on collaboration. And so that was a very repetative process time consuming. And and, and, you know, error prone. And so at some point, you know, know, me and I, we started like, looking for alternatives and ways to improve that process.
• 4:07
  Thibaud Clement: And and we could only find online like to, you know, specific sets of tools. The first company of tools was basically what we could call a generic project management software, which is great to organize collaboration within a team, but doesn't really cover the publishing workflow that marketing teams need, because once you have your content, you want to, you know, spread it online for everyone to see. And then there was another family of products, which was, you know, what we could call the social media schedulers. And those were terrific at actually spreading the content, but they were not helping you produce it. And so, that's, you know, where we kind of identify like, you know, some kind of gap and because we couldn't find a real solution that we wanted, we just started building it. I'm not an engineer. I you know, graduated from two business schools but They are interesting on my own.
• 5:00
  Thibaud Clement: And by the end of 2015, they had a prototype up and running, which we started using with our clients. And we did not tell them, it was our own product, because we wanted some, you know, honest feedback and nudges, like, yeah, good job guys gone. And they liked it.
• 5:18
  Thibaud Clement: And so from there, we open it up in public beta, and in the scene, a tiny little product that they had just built it not in my garage, it's not Silicon Valley, but but you know, in my living room, you know, kind of, you know, was getting some traction. And if we flash forward to today, we are now extremely lucky to serve over 7000 marketing teams, across the globe. In we're growing about 100% a year. So it's pretty, pretty exciting in, we now have all those marketing teams, you know, manage their assets, for social media, in a library, we help them we give them some ideas about you know what to post in, we help them create those posts, build the visuals, create the like some kind of mock up so that you can preview what the post is going to look like before you actually publish it. And then we have an entire, like, teamwork flow, where you can actually, you know, collaborate and say, Hey, I love this pose. No, there was a typo in this one, please change the image in that one. So that, you know, anything that goes out that goes live is actually on brand, and you know, kind of telling the right story for your brand. And then you know, of course you publish it, and then you measure your success is analytics, and you can respond to any comments you get. My point is to kind of get to your initial question is, we are now integrated with Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Google My Business, YouTube, tik tok Snapchat. So and because, you know, we have these kind of bird's eye view of like, you know, everything that's happening on all those platforms, with so many posts that goes through our platform.
• 6:57
  Thibaud Clement: Every month, we kind of have, you know, some some insights into kind of what's working, what's not. And we're seeing that going in the future. That makes sense. Yeah, totally.
• 7:07
  Steve Brown: So in my book, I talk about, you know, everybody, everybody's convinced they need to be posting on social media, but they don't know what to do.
• 7:14
  Steve Brown: It, especially the clients that we work with, they're, they're trying to run a business, they have 20 or less employees. And they have to figure out this confusing thing on social media, but they know there's some expectation that it can help them grow their business. And so they start throwing things against the wall, hey, it's, it's Veterans Day, let's post a picture on Veterans Day. And then it's Dog Day, grab, grab a little, little sissy, and let's get a picture of her and get it posted. But there's not a real strategy behind it. And then there's this communication breakdown between the social media people that you're trying to get to help you and how to do it correctly? How does lumely really start to address the strategy? And where you want these people to go? If they do click on a post? How do we know where to put them so that we can get a better value of this investment of energy?
• 8:15
  Thibaud Clement: Yeah, um, you know, this is, this is very interesting, because the first kind of question that you kind of raise is like, you know, you want to post you need to post you don't really know what you say, and then you kind of like, take things kind of piecemeal, and you're like, oh, two days, Veterans Day, and each post about that. And then you kind of like, the kind of prime is when you do it like this meal. And and you don't have this kind of strategic view of what you're trying to say, it is correct, that you may end up with kind of, you know, like series of posts that you know, are back to back and don't really mean anything, don't retell a story.
• 8:55
  Thibaud Clement: So the most important thing is, it's actually probably the most underrated trick, but it's, it's what we used to do as an agency is that you don't want to be thinking at 9am about what you are going to be posting at 10am.
• 9:10
  Thibaud Clement: That's, that's, that's a recipe for disaster. What you want to be doing instead, is you want to sit down, you want to look at, you know, the upcoming month. So let's say, you know, we sit down today and we look at, you know, what December is going to look like, and we're like, okay, as a brand. What do I want to tell as a story in December, you know, how am I going to talk about the holidays in the current context?
• 9:38
  Thibaud Clement: You know, are there any specific milestones that I want to share?
• 9:42
  Thibaud Clement: Are there any specific company related events that they want to share? And are there some of those, you know, date related holidays that are mentioning Veterans Day or international Dog Day? One marriage is it's not you know, that you should not be talking about those. It's that you should use those and leverage those to end Korea.
• 9:58
  Thibaud Clement: Communication onto those and and explain how you're relevant as a brand in this context. And so to kind of be like in a very practical, again, if you sit down, you look at the upcoming months, and you say, Okay, what you know, am I going to tell as a story over 10 or 20 posts, then you know, it's much easier one to go from, you know, a blank page to an actual series of 20 posts, that makes sense to, it's much easier to actually tell a compelling story, because you can see how you know, one post is going to build onto the others and kind of respond to the others. And three, when you do it like that, not only is kind of, you know, the quality going to be better, but your efficiency is going to be better, because it's much easier to look at your kind of, you know, your calendar and say, I'm going to post, publish those 20 posts, and you start by finding the ideas, and then you find it for all 20 posts, then you go into the next stage, which is I'm going to actually crap the copy and find the visuals. And then you know, you go on to the next step, which is okay, I'm going to preview all those in sequence and see, you know, what the story they're telling and submit them to my team to see, you know, what they think about it. And I believe that, you know, this is kind of leading me to the second part of your question, which is basically, how do you collaborate? How do you maximize efficiency? And how do you kind of implement best practices as a team? Yeah.
• 11:27
  Thibaud Clement: So well, that's, that's the thing, if you have, you know, Daniel work, and you have, you know, kind of created your content ahead of time, and you have those 20 posts for the month of December, well, then you can, you know, invite your team and say, Hey, what do you think about this? And what do you think about that, and what we tend to see from the top bear for me brands, is that they usually want to have one thing in common is that it's actually not a one person job. It's like a team working together, and most of the time with people that you may not expect to be involved in a marketing process.
• 12:06
  Thibaud Clement: For instance, you know, one of our largest clients, that I would rather not disclose their name, because they are publicly traded. But because they are publicly traded, what they need is to involve the CFO in the process, because anything that goes out, you know, on social media, can potentially affect the stock price. So this is extremely important. And it's not only for, you know, large companies that are publicly traded, even if you are a smaller company, but maybe you are in a regulated industry, or you want to make sure that you don't publish anything, you know, that that could create a liability for, you know, rent or just because you want to be accurate in everything you say, it's a best practice to work in a cross functional collaboration fashion, where, you know, maybe you mean that you invite the product people, because they will be able to explain, you know, a great feature that you may have no sort of add as a social media manager, you can, you know, invite the salespeople, because they may be able to give you some insights about what people are saying on the field or question that they have, and that you can answer in your post, and so on and so forth. You know, you can also invite the HR people, we are going to talk about LinkedIn.
• 13:18
  Thibaud Clement: So, you know, employer branding is really important. So, yes, you need to invite the HR people to collaborate on this process, because they will tell you, yes, that makes sense in the context of our employer brand, and so on, and so forth. So, all these to say that, it's not a one person job, work, you know, kind of ahead of time and in batch, involve as many different skills as you can. And these four will make the whole process more efficient and more effective.
• 13:46
  Steve Brown: So in my book, I talk about how I'm actually this is a legitimate business process that we're talking about, okay?
• 13:53
  Steve Brown: It used to be in a union, imagine small companies with 20 or less employees, they're trying to get something out there because they see other brands doing it, and your clients or your customers are expecting you to do it. But it's like, it's always just another thing, we're going to tick off a task but but what I really want these heroes, these entrepreneurs to know is that this is a legitimate business process. Well, what that means you have to set up a strategy, you have to have a process and a system and a communication for for you to take into consideration HR or the marketing or the sales so that this actually moves the needle for the business some way is the tool that you're lumely that you you've invented, is that is that a process based tool that helps you shortcut all these things that usually would have to put together in some Frankenstein system?
• 14:55
  Thibaud Clement: Absolutely.
• 14:55
  Thibaud Clement: Exactly. You know, as I was explaining, you know, we want to cover the cost But we want to cover the publishing part, when you use rumely. First, for instance, if we kind of go through the process, you know, what you start with this, you have a library where you can manage all your assets. So first, you don't have like, you don't need to have like Dropbox or anything where you have to share your files, know everything in one central place, you have your photos, your videos, your links, your notes, whatever you want, you know, all these kind of intelligence and brand assets that you may have, you can have them here at the ready, that's number one. And on top of that, and that's going to be a pretty neat feature is, if you don't have any of those assets, we are actually integrated with some platforms, like unsplash, and GCP. And you can actually pull down important some assets from those platforms for free. So even if you don't have like a beautiful photograph, or like, I don't know, the sunrise or sunset for your inspirational quote, well, you can just put it down in like one second two clicks, and it's free. So that's one thing we help you, you know, organize the assets, to, we provide you with some ideas about what to post and that's, you know, kind of the next step into into the process. So, we tell you about those, those funny days, it's funny, social media holidays you're mentioning, but we also, you know, piggyback on to the trends to tell you what is trending. And we also kind of, you know, lets you connect some RSS feeds into your calendar. So that, you know, if you have a blog, for instance, then any kind of new blog posts that you publish will be kind of fed into your calendar to be transformed into into a post. And you can also add your very own custom post ideas, like I don't know, if it's the 20th anniversary of your company, or if you just you know, pass like a revenue milestone or anything that you want to share and celebrate, you can actually input it into there. And then from there, you know, so you have assets, you have ideas, you craft your post, and that's where I kind of, you know, only really helps you because the way we you create a post in lumely, is you actually have what we call pose builder, which is a step by step wizard, that take you back at hand and tells you here's what you need to do here. And here's what you need to do there to go from that idea to accompany posts. And finally, to kind of go about get down to really your question, we have what we call post view where you can preview the post, and you can from post view, you can assign a post to your collaborators to say, Hey, can you look into that, please, you have a state. So the post can be in draft, in pending approval approved or scheduled if it has been scheduled? And you can leave comments, you can say, Hey, can we change the so that, can we I don't like that post, can we actually cancel it to even have it canceled state. And so you have a history of all of that history of audio changes, so that the workflow is actually you know, kind of track. And then from there you publish it, you receive an invitation for, you know, when you get like, kind of, you know, like a comment mentioned or message in all those you can also assign to your collaborators. So that, you know, you can say, Oh, this is a question I don't know how to answer. I'm going to assign, you know, john, who is in sales. So this is also kind of the conversion but and then you have the final part, which is the analytics, because as you mentioned, it's a process, we want to move the needle. So you have an entire analytics dashboard that helps you report on your progress, your growth, and see what is working what is not. On top of that, we are actually in the process of releasing a pretty cool new feature that is called custom workflow. And it's actually taking everything I just explained to a whole new level, because it allows you to download some rules. So for instance, you can determine some rules where you say, as soon as I create a post, and it's becoming pending approval, I want it to be assigned to john, and, and, you know, they an automatically so they don't even have to click the button so that anytime you create a post and you need it to be approved, then john and Diana will receive a notification telling them that they need to come in see it and approve it. So that's a pretty cool new feature. And another thing that you can do is you can also say, you know, I want to be I want to enforce some kind of limits on, you know, who needs to actually approve a post before it can go live. We call those walls. And the idea is that, you know, we can say, Okay, this has been approved by TiVo, but it cannot actually be scheduled until john and Diane have approved it. So that you know, you also have some kind of security and safety net. So yes, I I'm tempted to say that it does address these workflow and in process approach that you were referring to, sort of the traps of social media to me our first time wasting if you're not doing it right,
• 19:56
  Steve Brown: then then, you know, we've done we've managed Social media for clients. But if you misspell a word, like you or your, and you put the wrong version of that the client can be, it can really be Pennell, it can penalize you, just because of a small little mistake for whatever reason, they put so much weight on what you do on social media, which conveys there's this big expectation of it. But then let's say you get a post in really perfect and it's out there, then there's the whole interactive side that usually lost or not taken advantage of. And so there's a lot of ways to waste a lot of money, not to it right, not take advantage of it. And you can't afford to hire an army of people to do it. Right. That's really frustrating for small brands.
• 20:48
  Steve Brown: Yeah.
• 20:52
  Thibaud Clement: I understand.
• 20:52
  Thibaud Clement: And that's why, you know, you want to be as efficient as you can. In C, you know, and like you you like you said, you want to have a process and a workflow, where you know, who is involved? And who needs to do what and when? And, well, it turns out that, you know, loomly kind of support you in that, but even if you don't use loomly, that's what you should have, you should have this process where, you know, who is supposed to create the post? Who is supposed to approve them? We some kind of tracking of who said yes, when because, you know, like you say, let's say there was a typo, but you know, like, did the client approve it or not, if the client approved it, there was a typo, but didn't even catch it either.
• 21:36
  Thibaud Clement: So this way, you know, you have some kind of tracking safety net and liability management system, I would say. And this is very important. And then for what you mentioned, like responding to any engagement and collaboration, sorry, engagement and interaction that you that you receive from your content, which is kind of the goal, the posting is not the goal, building your brand is interacting with your audience is and and growing this kind of you know, trust and momentum around your brand is so huge.
• 22:06
  Thibaud Clement: Also, it should be clearly defined, who is supposed to do that. And then again, you can do it organically, you can use a tool that can automate it for you and anyone who signs you tasks that you need to perform.
• 22:21
  Thibaud Clement: But the truth is, what matters is who is in charge of what in when.
• 22:25
  Steve Brown: So it's like, here's the other thing, that's really a gotcha, let's say you do have a good social media person, you do have a good strategy and a process and the sign offs. One post has to be formatted in multiple platforms, when you take their LinkedIn has its idiosyncrasies, YouTube, yeah, big time, we're gonna even talk about Tick tock, you know, and, and all these, how does lumely help you handle all these, these multiple formats that you need to really avoid a bunch of gotchas, doing it wrong?
• 23:04
  Thibaud Clement: Yeah, that's, that's an excellent question.
• 23:06
  Thibaud Clement: And so, in lumely, you know, I was explaining earlier that we have built this feature called called post builder. And so it takes you by the hand through the creation process, or the production process of your post, step two, in the process. So step one is basically you know, defining like finding the idea and choosing the date. Step two, is selecting the channels, you're going to publish your post on. And so, you know, you may set like, like, you know, Facebook and Twitter and LinkedIn, for instance. And like you say, those platforms have different requirements, and and the usage is different, and the expectations of users are different. So the way we have built kind of the next steps of post builder is based on how we use to handle that part of the process before in the famous or infamous spreadsheets. The way we used to do it is we would have one central theme, you know, one central idea for post that would, you know, be kind of replicated for his channel and slightly tweaked, we should say fine tuned, because you know, you are probably going to pose the same thing on on Facebook and Twitter and LinkedIn, but maybe on Facebook, it's going to be a bit longer on Twitter is going to be shorter, maybe with hashtags. And on LinkedIn, it's it will have to maybe have a more formal tone. But the underlying idea that you are sharing is roughly the same.
• 24:30
  Thibaud Clement: Otherwise, it's just a different post. And so we have built lumieres you have so step one, ID and date. Step two is selecting the channel. Step three is defining what we call generic content, which is content that is going to be common to all the channels that you have selected. And you know, it's in terms of copy and assets. But then step four is where it gets really interesting is what we call the fine tuning step and so on. You are going to get like, you know, a mock up for Facebook, a mock up for Twitter, a mock up for LinkedIn that is generated automatically based on the generate content.
• 25:07
  Thibaud Clement: And then from there, you can tweak it for each one. So no copy and paste, no need to kind of, you know, like upload several times the same file.
• 25:16
  Thibaud Clement: Nope, you are here. And you can check everything for his channel, we let you know if your post is too long on Twitter, we let you know if your image is too heavy on LinkedIn, and this kind of thing. So that you know, when you are fine tuning each post and you're ready to save your post, you are confident that is going to get posted as a cheat on each platform and customize voice. But I
• 25:43
  Steve Brown: want to pause here just for a moment and talk to you about a program that we have just released called ROI quickstart Academy for authors.
• 25:50
  Steve Brown: Every day, I talk to business owners just like you who struggle with quickly getting their fundamentals in place. We want to create a great foundation and we want to grow our business. But the things that are in our way, our lack of knowledge about the specifics we should put in place, what kind of technology what kind of messaging and what kind of campaigns and that problem exists for authors as well. And we just chill so good with authors because, well, I'm an author, and I understand everything that you struggle with, you have a great idea you have a great book, but what do you want to do, you want to get your book in front of more people, you want to make it easy for them to find you learn how they can schedule a time to talk with you hire you for a conference, or maybe sign up for the services that your book promotes. So what is the Quickstart Academy for authors?
• 26:43
  Steve Brown: Imagine working with a small group of like minded authors, and the experts from the ROI quickstart team, it's a great way to get your messaging clear to be confident with the technology in your marketing automation, and how to run a strategic campaign to get you more of what you want from the investment of your book. To learn more about the Quickstart Academy for authors, you can visit ROI online.com or click in the link in the show notes below. And now back to this episode. So that leads us to the next gotcha is like they're there. Each of these platforms have algorithms, and they change every day. And so there's there's great recommendations on when's the best time to post on this platform like the worst time to post on the other? How does loomly? Or how does one that has a small team become proficient at understanding that and taking advantage of an ever changing? Yeah, yeah, environment.
• 27:55
  Thibaud Clement: So there are two things that we do to help you with that. The first thing, it's not that I've driven, in the sense that it's not based on your own account, but it's based on studies and experiments and information that we have. And so is what we call post optimization tips. So we have those, you know, General best practices that we know, you probably have seen studies online, you know about like, indeed, like, when is the best time to post this day to post the idea of copy links and this kind of thing. And so what we do is we have built those rules into our platform. And we have a very simple, you know, green orange in red system, where we tell you for each attribute of your post, whether you know, you're doing great for those best practices, or whether you can improve, or whether we recommend that you should really be doing something else. And so we do it for the days, we do it for the times, we do it for the cookie legs, we do it for the engagement markers to include in your your copy. So you know, for instance, do you have like, hashtags and at mentions and, and even like question marks or exclamation points, emojis, these kind of things that, you know, we know, tend to lift engagement. And we also, you know, look at kind of the format of your posts like is the link it's a simple copy post is like an image video. What is it and so for each platform will tell you, well, you can do it. But based on the best practices here is you know, if you want to optimize your post, here's what you can try. That's kind of the first thing same for everyone, not customized for each person.
• 29:37
  Thibaud Clement: It's just kind of you know, General best practices. And then there is the other part which is customized and which is I in my sense, probably the most interesting is that we have this analytics dashboard, which you can look into at any time. And it will tell you you know, for each post, like how many You know, clicks and impressions and reach and in the engagement you've got, and it will also rank your post, like, you will have a top three and a flat three for for each month. And so, these actually tells you what your particular audience is more responsive to. So let you know the next time. So you know we are, we have prepared all 20 posts for December, we have published those, and we are now at the end of December, we're looking at, you know, January.
• 30:31
  Thibaud Clement: So what we do is, instead of just starting from scratch again, we go to the analytics dashboard, and we look at, you know, the posts that work the best, you know, in, you know, where do we talk about, when did we publish them? How long were they were the images or like, videos or links, and then we try to incorporate that kind of feedback into our next planning session for the 20 posts that we're getting to publish in January. So it's kind of you know, an iterative process. And that's how you actually best learn to kind of adapt to the ongoing changes of the algorithms because well, like you said, the general time.
• 31:08
  Steve Brown: So to all this talk about video now, when I think about the, probably the platforms that most companies are weak on or need to up their game, their platforms that really reward video, that would be LinkedIn, that would be YouTube, that would be Tick Tock and I have to confess, I haven't even been on tik tok. Okay, there's like, so many different platforms, I don't know which one. I do think YouTube. And LinkedIn, at least for what we do is like the best place to focus, but then there's Instagram, and there, there's Facebook and talk to us about how to look at video and how to take advantage of this opportunity. And it's a big competitive advantage if you get it right. Right.
• 31:56
  Thibaud Clement: Now, of course, it is. And, and, you know, for sure, to us, like, you know, we are integrated with with YouTube were into it, it was LinkedIn and was most platforms out there. To us, YouTube is probably one of the most often overlooked platform. Because, you know, creating videos is frightening. So you know, there is this kind of barrier to entry, where you're like, maybe I don't have the budget to I don't have the skills to create some videos. But the thing is, the rewards are undeliverable for a couple of reasons. YouTube is one of the most visited websites on the planet after Google. So that's just for one, the rich is almost unlimited, it's it's probably, you know, half of the planet who is actually logging into YouTube.
• 32:45
  Thibaud Clement: So it's just it's huge. That's, that's, that's one, two, YouTube is actually very interesting in the way it works, because it does have some social features.
• 33:00
  Thibaud Clement: So the algorithms, and you can subscribe to channel, and you can build like an audience. And you can have likes and dislikes and comments and things. That's true. But it also works and doubles as a search engine.
• 33:10
  Thibaud Clement: Because you have many people who, you know, they are looking on how to do something, and they will either look it up directly on Google. But then, you know, we know that YouTube residents actually show up very well in Google, because well, YouTube belongs to Google. Or to they will actually go to YouTube, and look straight up for a recipe, or a DIY tutorial, or how to do some home improvement or, or, you know, even like in the b2b sector, like how to do social media marketing, or SEO, this kind of thing. So YouTube has this search engine power, which is tremendous, and which is like, you know, a huge advantage over some other social networks, because you're probably not going to go on other social networks and look for something like that, you're not going to go to Facebook and look for a recipe or go to Twitter. And that's not how it works, but YouTube does. So that's a huge advantage. And the last thing, which is actually phenomenal to me, is that you have the ability to build on YouTube, audiences of amazing sizes, with huge engagement. If you just like look at some accounts that are like exploding, what you will see is that it took them some time to go from, you know, zero to maybe 1000 100,000 a million subscribers. But then once they are there, it just like their, their growth is exponential. And that's, you know, really to the the YouTube algorithm for sure, which tend to kind of, you know, push a channel such you know, have been publishing steadily and that, you know, aren't going to be reliable. So that's where it's interesting, because on YouTube, you can actually build you know, defensiveness by being, you know, By showing up and producing videos regularly.
• 35:04
  Thibaud Clement: So to me, it's an amazing advantage to, like I said, have this amazing rich, have those search engine capabilities, and having the similar teachable defensiveness over time was in that audience, which, you know, on other platforms, it's getting more complicated.
• 35:20
  Steve Brown: So you're connected to all these platforms where you can publish into them?
• 35:24
  Steve Brown: Obviously, you're probably receiving analytics and data and insights from that. What is what is your data revealing about LinkedIn and the best way to take advantage of LinkedIn?
• 35:37
  Thibaud Clement: Yeah, so we have to be careful about you know, because we, it's not like, we are going to be looking into our users data or anything, oh, that is private. But on LinkedIn, one thing that we consistently see here is that you have your company pages, and you have your individual profiles. Interestingly, you know, those two work very well hand in hand, where you know, on your company page, you will probably, you know, publish some very corporate content, and then on your individual pages, you can actually share your, your company page corporate content, but you can also, you know, share things about your career and your achievements and things like that. And it's actually we have a blog post on our blog, but that where we actually explained that using certain leadership from one of your executives, or founders, and leveraging their individual profile is a pretty good hack to actually get even more exposure than just simply publishing through your, through your, your company page. And that's, you know, it makes sense. Because if you think about it, you you always happy to hear, you know, directly from the founder of a brand that you like, or the software that you use, or an agency that you want to work with. And so that makes it just more human. Yes, it's professional. Yes, it's b2b. But yes, it's also human. And that is, I believe, also in the current context more important than ever. Yeah. In human
• 37:07
  Steve Brown: psyche competitive advantage now just being?
• 37:11
  Thibaud Clement: Yeah. So.
• 37:14
  Steve Brown: So what's, what's one good question that people don't ask you that, that you wished you could be answering on this?
• 37:24
  Thibaud Clement: On? Like, on social media?
• 37:27
  Steve Brown: Yeah, well, and obviously, you design lumely to help people excel in this area.
• 37:30
  Steve Brown: But there's usually like a question you wish people would ask you, but they don't?
• 37:38
  Thibaud Clement: Yeah, well, the thing, you know, is, is, like, everyone, you know, is seem to be like trying to get there fast. Like, they want to set up an account, I'm sure your clients, they're like, like that, maybe, you know, they they're not showing the most patients and, you know, your podcast is our I write our eye on line. And so I write has to be here. And now, the thing is, our eyes is, you know, is kind of a reward in the long term for building your brand. Meaning that you know, it's not because you're just going to open up a Facebook page or Instagram account, that all of a sudden, you're going to go viral. And even if you go viral, is going to last for 24 hours, and then you're going to be forgotten, because another person is going to go viral. So the most important thing is how do you build your brand? over time? How do you stay relevant, and how you actually build this defensiveness that I was mentioning, because going viral is not defensiveness going viral is is being lucky. And what you want is building this defensiveness meaning that, you know, your audience is going to be interested in what you say.
• 38:50
  Thibaud Clement: Because you take care of them, you publish great content that they like, and you show up, you're not like, I publish, like, two posts, like at the same day, and I'm, and I'm not here for a month, that's not what you want. What do you want is, you know, regularity periodicity, where you show up, you tell your brand story that resonates with your audience.
• 39:10
  Thibaud Clement: And, and, and, you know, you just be you are here consistently, and that's how you actually build an audience. And that's how you're rewarded. And so I think that, you know, the, the most important question here, whether people want to ask it to me or not, is, is like, how do you brand how to be? How do you build your brand on social media? And and the answer is you do it over time. That's the answer.
• 39:36
  Thibaud Clement: Does it make sense?
• 39:37
  Steve Brown: So there's no shortcut. That means like, that's like,
• 39:42
  Thibaud Clement: I don't think there is. I don't think there is.
• 39:45
  Steve Brown: Yeah, I think just like in any domain, consistent, strategic, long, March, and most people give up after a little bit, and that's why it's a competitive advantage. Do the long game. Yeah.
• 40:02
  Thibaud Clement: Yeah, exactly.
• 40:02
  Thibaud Clement: You know, like we say often that nothing beats perseverance.
• 40:05
  Thibaud Clement: That's true. And so that's, that's the first thing but but I also think and that's, you know, again, that's, that's after 10 years in the field, I really believe that consistency beats creativity every time, every time. Because you know, maybe you are genius, one day, you put, you know, you put all your energy into this nice design, then you don't have any more stamina for the next one. And so, again, it's not one, one beautiful picture, or one nice as for me to post as an interview brand, what is the way to build your brand is the emotion that you're going to create with your audience, and the fact that they're going to be happy to see a post from you.
• 40:41
  Thibaud Clement: And that even more importantly, they're going to expect to see a post from you. And so that is something that you achieve with consistency, not like, you know, creative genius. So, you know, it's just a sweat. That's what you should be putting into it.
• 40:59
  Steve Brown: So what's the platform that has, most people are not taking advantage of right now other than YouTube?
• 41:06
  Steve Brown: What's and what's the strategy that you should be applied to that platform?
• 41:13
  Thibaud Clement: While you think we mentioned LinkedIn, and I think that LinkedIn is extremely interesting, for it's interesting for, of course, b2b marketers, so if you do sell products to the company, because they are there, you know, most of them are there. LinkedIn is already huge. And it keeps growing. So I think it's a fundamental platform. And so it's also interesting for b2c brands, because maybe they're not going to sell their product on LinkedIn, because maybe it's not the place to do it. But they can still build their employer branding. And employer branding is actually extremely important.
• 41:55
  Thibaud Clement: And it's, of course, important, because you want to attract talents. And then once you kind of hire those talents, you want to retain them, meaning, you know, they, you want them to be proud to be part of your of your team. And actually, you know, involving your employees into sharing content on LinkedIn is actually one of the best growth hacks that you can think about.
• 42:18
  Thibaud Clement: But it's also important for actually for your customers, because you know, when you know that such brand, is one of the best companies to work for you, you know, it just contributes to your perception of the brand.
• 42:29
  Thibaud Clement: And so maybe it's not going to trigger a sale right now. But it's going to actually maybe make you you know, more interested in whichever ad they're going to run next. And maybe it will also make you less price sensitive to whatever innovation they're going to launch. And so, because you will be thinking about, you know, yes, people are happy to work there, they are one of the best places to work, so they must be doing something, right. And that in and of itself, it just doesn't only build the employer brand, it also builds just the actual brand. Because you see value in what they do. And I think this is, you know, extremely important in actually for businesses
• 43:08
  Steve Brown: of all sizes. So where did your passion come for this industry? Why, why? Why connecting all of these disparate things together and solving a problem that's never ending, and always changing?
• 43:26
  Thibaud Clement: Well, that, you know, in itself is actually a pretty good reason. But, but, you know, it's, uh, you know, I like to joke about the fact that Lumia is basically your love story. Like, like I said, I was, I've been working with mice who's known me for nine years.
• 43:41
  Thibaud Clement: And so, you know, she was the one in charge of the spreadsheets. So, you know, I wanted to help her, I wanted to make her day and her job easier.
• 43:51
  Thibaud Clement: So that's why I went into the code and build it. So I would say that's, you know, where my passion come from. But But then, you know, the real thing is, once you kind of scratch the surface of such a big problem, and that is, like you just said, Never ending, then and you know, you are able to communicate with your clients and your customers, because we speak with over 200 customers every single day, through customer support, and they all have my email address, they, you know, I receive tons of emails every day, and I read them all, like respond to them or so we have this constant feedback. And these, you know, kind of shapes our vision, as we keep growing about, you know, where we need to take the product and the company, you know, which features matter which bugs Do we need to fix?
• 44:38
  Thibaud Clement: How can we improve the UI, all of these things, and as you have all those, you know, little data points every single day. It's like an impressionist painting.
• 44:46
  Thibaud Clement: It kind of forms a very clear image. Once you have this clear image as an entrepreneur, it's really hard to forget about it and only want to do is basically go and achieve that vision. So that is a huge drive. For us, for me, but for me as well, because now that we have identified this pain point, and you know, we have a pretty good idea of what people want, it will be pretty frustrating to go all the way and actually deliver it.
• 45:13
  Steve Brown: So what's the most surprising thing about social media to you now that you didn't expect eight years ago, six years ago?
• 45:24
  Thibaud Clement: Probably to see my parents on it. But no, I think what what is extremely interesting here is to see how it kind of snowballed from, you know, something that was kind of, you know, niche practice, into something so mainstream, and I think it's really interesting. I know, there's a lot of noise about, you know, how, like, the negatives of social media, but but in a, you know, you are probably aware of all of them. But, you know, I think they also create great scene, they enhance creativity, they unlock new opportunities, and they connect people. And I think that this is pretty amazing to me that, you know, we live in the US, we have family in France, we can talk to them, like they're in the next room, that's just so amazing. Like I said, we are we are a startup, we have 7000 clients around the world, that's pretty amazing to me, the fact that you know, and that's also part of social media, the fact that, you know, we can be based in the US and serve clients in Australia, and and in France, and in Canada, or Mexico, and Ms. And it's pretty amazing to be so, you know, social media is pretty inspiring in its in its market penetration rate, I would say.
• 46:37
  Steve Brown: All right, so just a couple more questions. Which country? I guess it's the US, but which country? Do you think?
• 46:44
  Steve Brown: Does social media the best?
• 46:48
  Thibaud Clement: Yeah, do us a pretty good, I mean, it and I think, you know, it's interesting, because in France, I remember that very, very clearly. In France, in the early days, there was kind of these, I would say, reluctance to be on social media, because most people, you know, in France are a bit more private than they are here. And so it was like, What am I going to talk about? I don't have anything to say, and, and my life is private, why would I post about, you know, going to a restaurant and the funny, usually, the funny satirical joke was, Why should I? Why should I tweet every time I pee? That was something like that. And so I think, you know, it's, it's interesting to see that, you know, I've been living in the US for six years now. And it makes a lot of sense to me that the social media came from here, because there is a different culture of, you know, being outgoing and outspoken and sharing what you do in a very, very organic way, which is a bit again, like a friend of Europe.
• 47:53
  Thibaud Clement: So that's probably why I believe Yes, in the US. There is, you know, a lot to learn.
• 48:01
  Steve Brown: Thibaud, Clement, how can people connect with you?
• 48:05
  Steve Brown: The best way
• 48:07
  Thibaud Clement: up, you can find me on LinkedIn. If you can spell my name. I know it's very hard to spell. You can find me on Twitter, at Thibaud Clement.
• 48:13
  Thibaud Clement: And, you know, you can, you know, visit our website loomly.com. And you can like shoot me an email anytime it's just Thibaud@loomly.com. So like I said, I receive and open and read and respond to every email.
• 48:29
  Steve Brown: So Thibaud is spelled Thibaud at loomly l-o-o-m-l-y.com. Thibaud has been a really good conversation.
• 48:40
  Steve Brown: I've learned some good stuff here and fascinated by this because it's one of the biggest problems that businesses face is how to do well on social media.
• 48:48
  Steve Brown: It's so confusing. It's so changing. But we do need the tools to help be more strategic to do it. Right. So I'm, we appreciate you being on the ROI online podcast.
• 49:04
  Thibaud Clement: Thank you so much for having me, Steve. It was really a pleasure speaking with you, Jose.
• 49:08
  Steve Brown: Alright, that's a wrap. Thanks for listening to another fun episode of the ROI online podcast. For more, be sure to check out the show notes of this episode. And feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn where we can chat, and I can help direct you to the resources you're searching for. To learn more about how you can grow your business better. Be sure to pick up your copy of my book, The Golden toilet at surprise that golden toilet.com I'm Steve Brown, and we'll see you next week on another fun episode of the ROI online podcast.