The Social Media Takeaway - Louise McDonnell

Social Media 2024 Trends: LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook and Twitter

• Louise McDonnell • Season 1 • Episode 31

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In this week's episode of the Social Media Takeaway, I am joined by Joanne Sweeney, a three-time bestselling author and host of the Public Sector Marketing Show podcast. Joanne shares her experience and insights on specializing in digital marketing for the government and public sectors. We discuss the evolution of social media platforms, the impact of AI on marketing, and strategies for using LinkedIn for business growth. We dive deep into trends for 2024 across these important social media platforms, so if you're looking to stay ahead of the curve and optimize your digital strategy, this episode is a must-listen! 

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Louise McDonnell:

Welcome to the social media takeaway. I'm your host, Louise McDonnell. And this is the show for coaches and consultants that want to know how to use social media more effectively to drive sales and leads for their business. If you enjoy the show, please subscribe. Be sure to subscribe. And if you know of somebody who would enjoy this episode or any episode, make sure you share it with them. If you want to tag me in any posts, you'll find me under sellonsocialm or Louise McDonnell on LinkedIn. Today, I have a real treat in store for you. My old friend is here, Joanne Sweeney, and we've known each other for a long, long, long time. And Joanne is a three times bestselling author. One of her books includes the public sector marketing pro. She is the host of the award winning public sector marketing show podcast. And she's the organizer of the public sector digital marketing summit. She is a conference and event speaker and consults with government and public sector agencies across the world. You're very welcome.

Joanne Sweeney:

Well, thanks for having me, Louise. And we go back decades, but we're still very young.

Louise McDonnell:

Yes, we were very young. So do you want to maybe tell us your story?

Joanne Sweeney:

Yeah, well, I mean, I've spent all my career working in communications and I've only ever had three or four jobs. So I've been self employed for about 15 years now and, you know, started off in traditional marketing and PR, but very, Very quickly, social media was evolving, and people were asking me to deliver training, and so I was quickly versing myself in the whole digital landscape. And then about 10 years ago, I niched into specifically digital marketing and digital comms. And then seven years ago, I went niche again and began to specialize in government and public sector. So that's a random sector. Maybe for your listeners, like it's not the sexiest, it's not fast moving. Maybe it's not dynamic. But you see, my background is as a broadcast journalist, and so hard news was always the content that got me curious and got me interested. And the other side of being a journalist is that you're there to, you know, hold government and public sector to account and report in the public interest. So I have very strong principles around that. And I'm also interested in politics. I've got a degree in politics. I tried politics once myself, and I just felt the communications aspect of all of that is absolutely critical and maybe no better person to step in and to help them out. especially in the digital world because they're conservative, and they Are often behind the curve. They won't mind me saying that because they have to be very considered about what they put out. So they move a little bit slower. So yeah, I'm consultant coach trainer right about all of this stuff. And I absolutely love digital marketing for government public sector.

Louise McDonnell:

Good for you. and you work all over the world.

Joanne Sweeney:

Yeah, I mean, luckily, the strategies and, you know, the ideas and the concepts that I develop are very transferable across the world and across different, countries and markets and even. If I think about government in Australia and the U. S. versus Europe, they all have the same challenges.

Louise McDonnell:

I wonder about that. Like, do you find even that they're the same kind of culture or are they still obviously ultra conservative, all similar?

Joanne Sweeney:

100%. I was talking to a colleague in the U. S., he's in Maine, and we were talking about local government and he was like, you know, Top three issues in Maine right now in our local council are a water dam, public facilities and car parking. And I was like, they're quite universal. And so, yeah, so communicating and getting the public to listen to you, to understand what you're doing and then convincing them to take a set of steps. With that good information is really, really important, especially in the age of disinformation, I guess.

Louise McDonnell:

Absolutely. And you know what? The disinformation spreads so much faster. You know, people love the bit of the story or something that's you know, maybe more exciting than the truth.

Joanne Sweeney:

Well, that's it. They used to say about newspapers, bad news sells.

Louise McDonnell:

Yeah, absolutely.

Joanne Sweeney:

And it's the same online. You're absolutely right. It goes Probably 10 times faster than good news.

Louise McDonnell:

Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Never let the truth get in the way of a good story. And so then in terms of social media, so where do they, where do public sector where do they, where do they like to hang out? They probably have to be everywhere because they're reaching people at every stage, every age.

Joanne Sweeney:

Well, would you believe X is probably the place where they all are? They all started out there when it was Twitter because the journalists were there. So Twitter was very much delaying to their PR and corporate com strategy. We know almost 100 percent of journalists are on X, and that's where they break their own news to provide updates and journalists are building their own profile. Some agencies, depending on the remit, would have also have started on Facebook. So again, local government for real time updates about weather events, road closures, you know, planning applications, all of that. So they were very much in the Twitter and the Facebook sphere. You're right, they should be everywhere, but they're not. I was only writing last week about, you know, an exodus from X to LinkedIn. the algorithm there is, is, is wildly broken and moderation teams have been let go in Dublin after Elon Musk took over in 2022. And moderation for, I guess, media and public sector agencies is important because control or manage is probably a better word. You manage the truth on the social networks. And that now isn't being done. And so their ability to reach people and not be drowned out by bad actors who want to kind of disrupt democracy, disrupt the truth for their own, you know, political or commercial gain or ideological gain. That's really difficult now. And in fact, what you find is whenever You know, a politician or a policymaker or somebody in that sphere stands up and speaks pylons are regular. Now they're almost daily and their personal attacks, you know and then just the spreading with misinformation. And then these comms teams are really under resourced. It's not unusual for an organization of 3000 people to have one comms person. It's not unusual. So you can then imagine that moderating comments, they just don't have time for it because they're doing the PR, they're doing the website, they're doing the social, they're doing the internal comms, they're fielding media queries, you know, freedom of information requests. So their job is really complex. But there isn't enough of them there. So, so X is problematic right now, and that's across the board.

Louise McDonnell:

And I know like from having done some work, I know I've done some work for some government agencies that, for the comms people, I can imagine the pressure is intense because All the counselors, all the people who've been elected, all those elected, you know they're not the officials of the councillors. If they spot something they're not happy with, like they're straight away onto, you know, onto the county council. So I can imagine the pressure to have things right and the pressure to be on top of things must be, must be immense. But yeah, so X for me, X is like a place where you reach to journalists, but you're never going to reach. The general public there because they're just not there. And it's so hard to reach for me. Anyhow, it's just never a platform I ever, ever, ever talked to. So, okay. So what about Facebook? What's your thoughts about Facebook? I was saying earlier on Hans and I'm going to be very honest. I used to be known as the queen of Facebook here in Ireland. Then I have my Facebook book there behind me on the shelf and I still love Facebook, but I, I'm, I'm falling, I'm a bit cross with Facebook. I just think they're not staying in their lane. I just don't enjoy it as much as I, as I used to. But what do you think, Joanne?

Joanne Sweeney:

So I think when it comes to Facebook, they had their peak, you know, many years ago, maybe around, 2018 and they maxed out nearly their usage in, in lots of markets. Then we had the kind of out of the blue of tick tock and that just kind of made meta shudder. And when I look at what methods doing on Facebook and Instagram, I feel it's Decisions are being made to try and counteract the rapid growth popularity and the attention that tick tock is getting. And so the user is forgotten about. And that's, you know, you've said it, you know, who are they anymore. Are they just emulating. Another social platform I'm forgetting about the uniqueness, we know is good communicators, and you know your your listeners will know, and you'll teach them, lean into your uniqueness, what makes you different in a noisy in a crowded market. I just think they've lost it. We were also saying about Facebook's value right now. It's a really powerful local media tool. So we know that print media is declining and, in regions and in countries right across the world. But people are now getting their news from Facebook and local media are there too. And of course, your friends and your family, your old schoolmates are there. And I know that if I want to know what's happening in my home county of Donegal, I'll go to Facebook. And so it's still very powerful, but, you know, we've got reels there. We've got stories there. And again, these are just emulating what they've introduced on Instagram and that they're copying from TikTok. But what I would say about Facebook and Meta more generally, I think they have the most powerful advertising platform.

Louise McDonnell:

Oh, I totally agree. And I agree with absolutely everything you've said. I mean, as a user, I find I'm quite frustrated because I'm going on and all of a sudden I'm like, Oh, my God, I'm watching the same cat videos that I watch on tick tock. Literally, I totally agree with you there. And I think what makes Facebook different, and I think I totally agree with you that they need to, they are the community. on Facebook, it's this, it's the one place maybe where people can connect with their school friends, their college friends, their old work friends, their current work friends, their first cousins and their second cousins and their third cousins all over the world. And it could be the, you know, it's the only place maybe that you connect with them. And I was also saying earlier on that a lot of the clubs are on, on Facebook. So the soccer clubs and the Gaelic clubs, and they write the write ups at the weekend of the games. And so you see the young kids are coming onto Facebook. So it mightn't be their platform of choice. But they're there. So I, as much as it annoys me as a consumer, I still find in our agency that when we're running ad campaigns, we're running campaigns. It's still the platform that delivers the best results. And the meta ad platform is amazing. I totally agree.

Joanne Sweeney:

Yeah, it's a superpower. So, so yeah. And I think that a lot of us have kind of Gone over to Instagram to their sister platform and are maybe enjoying it a little bit better. I love Instagram just as kind of escapism. It wouldn't be where, you know, I'd get my public sector clients. They show up in their own personal realm there and they don't want to hear about business. But I really enjoy just the visual storytelling there. You know, people. Coming on and I found out about what they're doing their day. It's almost like many soaps, isn't it? and then tick tock has taken it to another stratosphere.

Louise McDonnell:

And at the same time, I don't know about you, Joanne, but as a marketer, I'm, I'm always curious. So when I'm in a waiting room, some lace, I'm always like curious. I'm checking it. What are they on? What are they on? What are they on? What are they on? So we were out to watch the European. soccer final last weekend and I was driving, so I was, listening in to people around me and I could hear these men and they were like in their like 60s, 70s and talking about what they were looking at on TikTok. And I was like, really, I was like, Oh my God, I don't even think they'd be on Facebook.

Joanne Sweeney:

TikTok is a phenomenon. It really is. Yeah. You know what? COVID obviously gave it the space to get our attention because we had nothing else to do. We're all locked in and people started experimenting, but it's given just everyone a voice and how they've embraced video is quite remarkable because you and I have been asking people to embrace video for over a decade and still some people won't listen to us. But now you have people of all ages, from all walks of life, picking up their phone and, and I'm being shown new accounts every day because the first video I see is this is my first video and then I jump into their profile I'm like, oh my god They're now making videos for months and months and they've commanded, you know Half a million views the algorithm is so different to everything else and it's all about niche I like you. I absolutely love cat content. I love content from marketers. I love content from women in their forties and their lifestyle. You know, this is what I'm interested in. And TikTok just feeds it to me. And. I have to admit that I find myself now pausing Netflix in the evening and just watching Tik Tok.

Louise McDonnell:

I go through phases of it. I do go through phases of watching a lot of it. And then it's like, I become allergic to it again. Now we'd be on it for our clients and stuff in that. That's different, but I'm just suppose I'm talking about me personally in terms of how I consume a chat, but I just find that if I, that drawn in and then the time is like time and just goes on double travel time. And that's what they want, of course, to keep you on the platform, but we mentioned it a later on. So my new favorite, shiny new social media platform that I love the best, even though I've been on it the longest, but I kind of fell out of it, of love with it for many years back in love with it again is LinkedIn. LinkedIn How about you?

Joanne Sweeney:

Yeah, I love LinkedIn. And obviously as a consultant coach, you know, that's where I get my leads and that's where I get my sales. And I just love the results that I get. I think the algorithm is very favorable. If you're there personally, so my company page would underperform, but my personal LinkedIn profile will perform really well. And I've kind of, I know the content that my audience wants. And what I literally do is I repurpose my. Video podcast and my trainings and give them little snippets and then it just kind of triggers an idea or a problem in somebody and then they'll drop me an email and say, Hey, and I can almost tell which video they've watched. And so it really speaks to my audience if you find a platform that. Speaks directly to your audience. You could nearly eradicate the others and just go all in on it. You know, we have to be discerning right now about where we spend our time. And for me, it's definitely LinkedIn. And it also keeps me up to date with what my own sector is doing. So I kind of feel informed as well. And they're currently testing a new video feed. So TikTok for LinkedIn which I would be very excited about because I don't think my home is TikTok, but I think my home on video could certainly be LinkedIn.

Louise McDonnell:

I would like to see I'm going to try and say the word again, some ephemeral content cause I know on LinkedIn, like they say posting, and even though I'm, I hate that they say the rules, I hate that. And I hate living by that. I think good content always performs well, if it's good, if it's good enough, and if it's a value to your ideal customer, it'll perform. But. If you do, you know, sometimes you may have a few more than one thing in a day that you want to share. So I just love that. like an Instagram story feed on LinkedIn that would just be gone tomorrow and it's only relevant right now. So if anyone's listening, the universe, please put it out there that would,

Joanne Sweeney:

you know, Twitter tried fleets, right? Remember they introduced fleets, but like they were just a fleeting. Six or 12 months, because then they took them down. So I don't know if LinkedIn will do it potentially.

Louise McDonnell:

You see, the thing with LinkedIn is that, and what I really like about it, is that it does reward decent content. So at the moment, you said it yourself, like at the moment, if you go on and you, you know, put out decent content, you'll find you get decent reach. You'll find that you make good connections. You'll get those inquiries and it'll just keep. Rewarding you with that, so you're going to keep going. I think, I think what comes down to LinkedIn is that only a very small percentage of people actually create content. Yes. They may be, they may be weary to create too many news feeds if they don't have the volume of content yet, I suppose is the only thing. And suppose the good news is if that you are prepared to create good content, you will be rewarded. Like I love the LinkedIn features. I love the polls. Thank you. They're my favorite thing. They're so great for getting engagements. I love the newsletters and the audio events and you know, even the way that they've created the new creator accounts, whether now everybody has them, but you know, the featured stuff at the top, and it's just a really good platform for showcasing what you do.

Joanne Sweeney:

Yeah. And people, people are there to do business. Yeah. So don't be afraid to slide into somebody's DMs, you know, increase your network by, you know, connecting regularly. We can connect with up to 100 people a week. Why wouldn't you, you know what I mean? But the secret to being good at sales on LinkedIn is don't be salesy.

Louise McDonnell:

Oh my God. Absolutely. Like nothing drives me as crazy as the deal. Hi, this is what my company does. And do you want to, no, go away. You know, I'm not even going to read your message. Whereas, you know, just a nice connection or I'd like to connect or a commenting on your post. And that was really nice or enjoyed that. And that's yeah, you can definitely have conversations, but oh gosh, the heart cell just turns people off. Doesn't it?

Joanne Sweeney:

Yeah, people are allergic to it. So, you know, I think, as you said, the content will speak for itself. You should produce content that shows you at work. And that's why for me, if I just take clips of my online trainings and put them out as teasers, people see me at work in my natural environment. So I don't have to try and convince them. And. You know, if they know me, like me and trust me, then potentially they'll reach out to me. And I'm that type of sales person is like, I like to get asked. It's like, it's like, I'd like to get asked out. I don't want to, I don't want to be the chaser. I want people to ask me because it makes closing that sale a lot easier because they've done their research and they've already kind of decided that they want to work with you now it's about availability, timing, pricing, potentially, but honestly, Content is the best sales tool and then LinkedIn is a platform and together. You know, it really works.

Louise McDonnell:

Exactly. So you're giving somebody a window into what you do already. So your, your social media is an extension of what you do. So, you know, so that, that makes complete sense. Yeah. And I think as well that if somebody knows, likes and trusts you and wants to work with you, price is less of an issue.

Joanne Sweeney:

Absolutely. Absolutely. Because at the end of the day, you know, people price. It's one of the four P's of marketing. People can price really, really cheaply or really, really, You know, high value, but at the end of the day, they want to get value for money. And that means somebody who's competent, confident, and will deliver on what they promise. And so having that visibility and building up your professional profile and also they see your network, they see who you're connected to, who's engaging with you, and that speaks volumes as well. And one of the best features if your listeners haven't done it is like adding recommendations. Your clients can actually write you a digital reference on your LinkedIn profile. Yeah, that's brilliant.

Louise McDonnell:

Absolutely. And, you know, it was because I Louise McDonald. I had a louisemcdonald. com website and then I had my cell on social media website and my Louise McDonald website was a total. Disgrace. Like I say, I have to get rid of it now because I'm embarrassed. I'd hate anyone to find it. And so we, we got rid of it and we pointed it to the new website. So for a few, you know, for a few days in a row, I was constantly searching my name, so I wouldn't normally be, but I was like, it's amazing. It was LinkedIn LinkedIn. So your LinkedIn profile is very valuable because it is indexed in Google. It'll probably come ahead of your website. And especially if somebody's searching for your name rather than the company you work for. So yeah, very, very powerful. So what are you doing differently in your social media strategies this year that you weren't doing last?

Joanne Sweeney:

I'm actually doing less. Would you believe what I am doing is I am producing the video podcasts And I am repurposing those, I rerecorded all my trainings in January and so I'm using clips from those and I'm just leading with that value add content and then I write blogs and LinkedIn articles when I have like an inspiration or an idea that I want to talk about something. And that's it. Yeah, I've just focused on the value led content. Repurposing long form to short form on my social media management tool. So less is definitely what I'm doing. I'm being more strategic and actually what I would say is maybe asking for the sale a little bit more as in, you know, on my Tuesday newsletter if this is something that you struggle with, book a call on my calendar. So I'm kind of going that little bit step further and saying, Hey, you know, book a call on that book, a call it's free 30 minutes. You don't have to pay anything. I will give you loads of advice. But ultimately I see them coming through and conversion, even if not in the moment, like one, I got one sale this week and I remembered I'd spoken to her on one of my free calls. It was probably about five months ago clients have to get approval from management and there's all of this going on. So I need to be constantly filling my pipeline of inquiries and leads. And so LinkedIn plus the content and then the free call does it for me.

Louise McDonnell:

So I had a, I had a workshop the other day and I love looking at data as well. Like I'm intrigued as to how things work. And there was nine people booked in for this workshop. And I just went through each of them on my, on my own system and I could see how they all came onto my system. And every single one of them came through a different lead magnet or event or something. They all had something. And I was like, wow, it just goes to show you. And you've touched on it a few minutes ago. It's not what you do once. It's what you do. All the time. and that sometimes that showing up consistently and also being a bit persistent when you feel that it's not working, but that's what works, you know, so I think it's a strong message to send as well.

Joanne Sweeney:

Yeah. And now, obviously, we're all experimenting with AI. Oh, yes. Trying to uncover, you know, better ways to do things being more efficient. But I'm a writer by trade and I still like my, my longhand writing and emptying my brain. But for sure in terms of like repurposing my own content, putting structure on content and Even ideation, you know, when you're starting off that blank page and you've got to come up with ideas. AI is really good. But you know, AI and marketing, our businesses are going to be transformed Louise, aren't they?

Louise McDonnell:

Oh, they are. Yeah. Yeah. And like my podcast that was, that was out this week, actually. So this won't be coming out for a few weeks, but like I talk about how. I wouldn't really, I don't use AI to create my content because I think it has to be authentic to me. It has to be my voice. And even if that's not perfect, that's me. But what I do like to do is get AI to check my work for me. So I go Hey here's my persona. This, you know, this is my persona. This is who they are. And I've just written this article. What will they think of this? And they'll critique it and that's, and they will say, yeah, they're going to love X, Y, and Z. But they might think this, I remember getting feedback, but they might think that that's too basic for them because they're more into the strategy. So maybe think about putting that further down or not including it. No, stuff like that. Like, so I think when and even though I have a team of people that work with me and you're the same, But still, ultimately they all work remotely, so I'm still sitting at a desk by myself. So I find that that assistant is great assistance. And as I said, in, you know, it's 20 a month and you've the smartest person on the team who's never tired and always on, although they do hallucinate, holy moly. Yes, they do. Oh my God. I got it. I took a video transcript and put it in the other day and I said, what advice did I give to, let's just say Joanne. And then it gave me feedback on what happened at a NATO summit back in 2013. Oh dear. Holy crap, what's going on here? I've broken it. But yeah, so that happens. But I, you know, I was under no illusions that that was not the advice I had given.

Joanne Sweeney:

Yeah, but it did. We live in remarkable times and like we've been in marketing two decades now and You know, that makes me feel tired going, Oh my God, I've had to keep up for two whole decades. Otherwise I wouldn't have a business. And that's the tricky bit of our industry and I've been in this business is because you have to be keeping up or else, you know, you're irrelevant and obsolete,

Louise McDonnell:

but we both love it.

Joanne Sweeney:

We do, we do. We'd get bored if it was easy.

Louise McDonnell:

And you know what, like, I think, and I think in particular, I think things are changing a lot on Facebook and Instagram. And like, I would go, and one of my favorite things to do is I go off for a long walk, I listen to podcasts, and I'll come back full of ideas, you know. But I think yeah that's that's what makes us do what we do because if everything was the same as it was two or three years ago we'd be bored and we'd have moved on to something else whereas we have to continually keep ahead and that's I love doing it. I know you love doing it too.

Joanne Sweeney:

Well you have to love doing it if you're running a business and have a suite of clients. They'll, they'll see that you're not, you're not into it. You know what I mean? So you, you have to be enthusiastic.

Louise McDonnell:

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Okay. So last bits of advice then Joanne. So for somebody tuning in here, what's the last nugget of advice you'd give them?

Joanne Sweeney:

Lean into your zone of genius into your niche. You know what I mean? I did that eight years ago and I haven't looked back. It's the smartest business decision I've ever made. And I love showing up for my government and public sector pros every single day and linking that to my love of digital comms and digital marketing and then show up, be consistent and show up because showing up is filling your pipeline, even if you don't see it, but that's how you do it. And yeah, choose your social network. You don't have to be in all of them, but people need to see your face. So video is key.

Louise McDonnell:

Exactly. And your pipeline, it could be five, six, seven, eight months, two years, three years.

Joanne Sweeney:

Absolutely.

Louise McDonnell:

Yeah.

Joanne Sweeney:

We're good.

Louise McDonnell:

Yeah. So brilliant. Look,, thank you so much for sharing. I really, all your advice and I really enjoyed our conversation as ever, and thanks so much for coming on.

Joanne Sweeney:

Thanks Louise.