Your Brand is a Person, Not an Ad, Build Community and Win on Social

Speaker A: I like to say marketing is a game of trial and error. So you try it all, you catch, you're recording your analytics and seeing what's performing best, and then you tend to go heavier on that route and a little lighter on the other route.

Speaker B: Today's guest is someone who, well, not just a social media marketing professional, but also a familiar voice. And for those longtime listeners here on the podcast, you may know who this is. Jody Reed, who started working with us here at bluecoun Marketing, has been a co host for some of the earlier episodes, is back with us today. Since leaving working with us, she went out on her own and created JR Marketing. She worked with brands like Pete's Fatigue Valley Credit Union, helping them navigate the strategy, content and that ever changing world of social media that we all either love or hate. We're going to dive into that in just a few minutes. Now, what I've always admired about Jodi is her curiosity. She's called herself a forever student, which is exactly the kind of mindset that you need when algorithms, platforms and trends shift almost daily. So today we're going to catch up on her journey and explore what social media in 2025 really means for your business. Jodi, welcome back. That's great. I haven't been able to say that to any other guests. Welcome back.

Speaker A: Thanks so much for having me. Sean, awesome to be back. I always love my time on, uh, amplification. It was always good.

Speaker B: We've had some interesting guests and interesting conversations over those years and episodes. You're out on your own junior marketing. Before we dive into the questions a bit deeper, how does it feel to run your own business?

Speaker A: It's both the most amazing, fun thing I've ever done and the most stressful. And I wouldn't trade it for the world. It's so much different than being an employee. And I had a, uh, great mentor, obviously, yourself, early years, my career, to kind of show me what it looks like to be a business owner and the, uh, joys and hardships of it. And yeah, I love it. And honestly, if it weren't for my experience working so closely with business owner, I probably would have never have even had it in my mind that it was doable. So I owe a lot to blue cow marketing, that's for sure.

Speaker B: Well, thank you. Such kind words. So you dove into social media as a specialty and here we are in 2025. Social media looks completely different now than it did even years ago. And you call yourself a forever student in marketing. What's the biggest thing that You've had to unlearn because of the change that brought forward with you.

Speaker A: I think for most marketers, people who've been in the game for a little while, the number one thing you have to unlearn when it comes to social media is that audiences are shifting towards more authentic, engaging content as opposed to polished, professional looking content. So in the past little bit, especially with reels and short form video taking precedence in the social media world, people don't want videos that have been edited and shot super professionally with all these effects and the fine tuning to it. It's just not what performs the best anymore. And of course within reason there's certain industries where that might be a little bit different and there's always room, room for a little bit of a mix of super polished versus the kind of lower effort, authentic content. But that in particular has been a big shift, especially for people like myself who really love the sit, sit down interview style more kind of YouTube side of content and editing. It's, it's a big shift to me. Mhm.

Speaker B: Absolutely. And, and I think for anyone listening that that was held up on that fact of I don't have the skills to, to make this polished content. This is probably good news to hear because now we could just turn on our cameras, shoot it, upload it, maybe just trim the ends a little bit but. And that content's actually going to work better from what you said.

Speaker A: And I mean within reason. Right. Like there's definitely always a middle ground because some people will take that and then you see like videos that are posted that are really rough and you're like okay, M, I still love to see some B roll over it and some people talking. You still want to have a mic so it's clear enough to hear for certain content. But especially if you're a ah, service provider and you are the face of your business, to flip around and take a quick selfie video, especially on stories, or even add a little bit of music to it, a trending audio, maybe throw in a couple trends here and there. You really can get some awesome results on social media by being more authentic.

Speaker B: And there are apps, um, and tools that make this a lot easier. And I'm sure we'll get into that as we go through this episode. Correct?

Speaker A: Absolutely. Yeah. And honestly with that route I actually take a little bit of a simpler approach and I'll get into why later. But yeah, there's a lot of different tools out there now that can make your life easier when it comes to social media.

Speaker B: So with the Evolution of social media, I mean it's been around for a while. Is social media still about community? Is that what you want to do is you want to focus on how can I build that community around an audience? Or should you just look at it another sales channel, like I need to go on there just to sell my services and all that.

Speaker A: I think what makes people stand out now is that they focus on the community aspect of it. So I think a lot of businesses are taking the approach of looking at it as it's just another sales channel. But the businesses that actually do well and get sales from social media are focused on the community building. And I'll give you a perfect example. We had a client of mine, Halls Harbor Restaurant, they did a video for them. Are, uh, you really Nova Scotian? If and if you haven't, whatever. And we have I think a combined 10 to 15,000 followers on both. So Facebook and Instagram combined. And that video organically had I think 200,000 views and hundreds and hundreds of comments. Because we're talking about being Nova Scotian. Is that necessarily 100% tied back to the restaurant itself? Not necessarily, but we threw in the lobster. We threw in. If you haven't been to Halls harbor, that kind of idea. So they're still relevant to the business. It's still getting people's eyes on the business, but it's talking about community. Everybody was talking about what it means to be Nova Scotian and how, oh, the tartan mug and drinking tea and all that stuff. It's. Those are the posts that perform m best for pretty much every business that you can think of is the community building side of things.

Speaker B: And I think a word that stands out in that is relatability. Can people relate to the content? Can they, can they attach themselves to that? Um, in those community based posts and content where especially people that are away that are from that area where that business is. Right. It's a piece of home, it's a piece of way to, to be connected 100%.

Speaker A: And I mean I always say to my clients, at the end of the day, social media is a social networking app. Uh, it's about staying in touch with people. And so when somebody chooses to follow you, they're choosing to stay in touch with you. So don't be the person that is constantly shoving sales down their throat and your products and whatever. That's not why they followed you. They want to know about your brand as if it's a person. Right? Person isn't just one sided. It's not you Know a simple this is what I sell, this is what I do. It's, this is who I am. To take that approach and not just be one of those other businesses that are constantly posting ads. We see so many ads in a day, we are so numb to it. Like be the real authentic brand because that's how you stand out now.

Speaker B: Now we're in a world of AI. It's everywhere. It seems like it's everywhere and it's baked into almost every platform. In your opinion and your experience, this is making things better for businesses, especially from the social side or just adding noise because there's so much AI content that's just cluttering up those platforms.

Speaker A: It's both because it's all in how you use it. I know me personally and I uh, think people will have different opinions on it, but me personally and working in this world, I can so clearly see when videos have been AI edited or the captions, like the classic caption. We can all joke about ChatGPT, you see the long dash and you know, stuff just doesn't like. So I think there's a lazy way to use AI in social media that contributes to the noisiness and that's all it does. It makes it, it a noisier platform and it's not focusing on bringing value. It's not really strategic in the way that, that people have used it in their brand. But of course then there's the brighter side of it. If you give ChatGPT the right prompts, you can get some really beautiful captions and word and chatgpt can word what you're trying to say in a much more eloquent way than we can. But it's still your thoughts, you know, it's still your opinions. Same with scripts for videos or even video topics. There's all kinds of ways that you can use AI to have a better approach to social media and get better results. But it's when you use it the lazy way that it's just noise and that's all it is.

Speaker B: Mhm. I mean, I'll raise my hand. I'm guilty. Mainly because I like playing with different platforms and seeing what it puts out there. And you know what, when I look at my business, a lot of it doesn't come from, from social media. I use some of the platforms like Facebook and Instagram just to play. LinkedIn is, is my platform and that's what I love about that. So let's talk about being playful here. Chasing different trends. TikTok trends, Instagram reels how do you decide what's worth jumping on versus what's just going to provide a distraction? Because you hear of, you see these trends happening and businesses may be like, I need to do that because I need to get that exposure like everyone else.

Speaker A: Well, I think it all depends on what your goals are as a business and who your business is. So I always go back to your brand Persona. Like, who is your brand? What type of person are they? A lot of these trends that we're seeing are a little bit on the edgier side. So a lot of them I, um, don't even mention to any of my clients or think about doing because I know that alone it's not a good fit for a certain client because it's a little too edgy or cheeky or whatever you want to call it. It's really just what aligns with the brand values. And I'm all about jumping on trends. I think a lot of people, oh, it's all about creativity. And I'm not like that. I don't just follow what other people do. Well, you're missing out on results because of it. It's great to be creative and try and be creative within those trends. Like, you don't want to see the exact same video with the exact same words over and over again. That's not really what I view as a trend. I see it as taking something that's gone and blown up and applying that to your business in a creative way. So there's still creativity within trends, but not everyone's going to fit. Right. So it's just all about coming back to who your brand is, what their values are, and what you're trying to accomplish in your brand. I think that trends are a great way to do that.

Speaker B: So I'm going to jump a little off the script of questions that we've gone through here because you said something there that kind of sparked a follow, uh up question. The brand value and the voice of the brand. When you work with a client, how do you. Is that one of the initial things you do? And how do you start to pull that out of a client so they understand, well, this is my brand value, this is my voice?

Speaker A: Well, I, I like to take the approach of a conversation because that's the best way that you can get any information out of, uh, a business owner about their business. Because just when they say simple things about, it's really important to me that my clients feel comfortable around me and they feel like they can tell me anything. Okay, so trustworthiness, that's a big piece of what we want to communicate. That approachability, the comfort that alone. That one sentence tells me a lot about what I need to do on the social media side of things. Right. Which might not be intuitive to some people, but it really is that simple. Um, I just think it's, it's really a conversation and you can, I know it sounds silly but if you're managing your own social media, you can have that conversation with yourself or with ChatGPT. I'll ChatGPT simple prompt of hey listen, I'm trying to come up with a stronger brand voice and brand identity. Ask me some questions and talk to me and I'll answer these questions and we can figure it out together. It really is that simple with ChatGPT. And you can find all kinds of prompts online to help you find your brand voice and brand identity. But really if you don't have that already, I don't, I wouldn't recommend going forward and anywhere else in your marketing efforts because you really need to have that nailed down before you do anything.

Speaker B: Mhm. And you mentioned ChatGPT. It's a amazing copilot partner in your marketing. And you know, with the voice mode you can do that conversation just with voice on your computer, on mobile app. I've done uh, quite a bit of conversations while driving with it and then by the time I got home, you know, we had fleshed out the entire idea right within the, the application. So you know, there's really no excuse these days to, to hone in your, your brand now for Dodge conversation for a lot of people, those truck people that are there. But, but in your opinion, what platforms you think are overvalued people are just kind of put more focus on that and it really, you know, it's a dying trend and which one is really you should look at because it's, it's underrated right now and it's, it's really going to give you more exposure or you know, more results.

Speaker A: Now I have a bit of a different, not as straightforward answer to this question because I do really think it depends on the business because there's different kind of types of people that are on different platforms. And you know, for example, for uh, a lot of the businesses that I work with, being in Nova Scotia and working with local businesses, Facebook is the best platform to be on. And I personally don't love Facebook but it, it really does get results because a lot of, you know, especially if we're looking at women in you know, the kind of 40 to 60 range a uh, really good amount of those local women are on Facebook and that's where they're, you know, they're on their morning, day and night, they're looking up. That's where a lot of people do their brand research now as opposed to just going to Google and websites like it really is. Facebook has really become super important for a lot of local brands in the Nova Scotia area. But if you're a uh, Etsy shop owner and you're targeting 20 to 30 year old women who really like trendy interior design, I'm not going to point you to Facebook. Right. Like I'm going to say TikTok and Instagram are uh, really where you're, you're probably going to thrive. But it also depends on what geographical area are we talking America and Canada? Because anything beyond that I can't really tell you much. So it just really depends. But when it comes to what's overvalued for me and really since I've been doing this I've never found that Twitter or XL has been gotten much, much value for any of my clients. So that's something that I can actually say at this point now I don't manage any Twitter or X accounts. Put our budget uh, elsewhere and underrated would definitely be LinkedIn B2B I think it's often one that goes, people see it as well. If I'm looking for a job as an individual that's where I go. But it's so much more than that. And to be honest I don't, I don't spend too much time in that world because I tend to work with more B2C businesses. Uh, but for B2B if anybody comes to me looking for advice, that's the first thing I say. You always go to, to LinkedIn and I always like to give a little shout out to Pinterest because I do think that they're a lot of value for that in like interior designers and home builders. And if you're a product based business sometimes that can be a great place to be. But not for everyone.

Speaker B: Mhm. Great insight. Let's shift over to content creativity. We look at this now. Uh, you've done everything from graphic design to strategy and putting all this content together. So how do you balance that between, with an account between polished brand content that is designed with the rise of the raw phone shot posts and things that people seem to love, which is more of the authentic kind of feel? Do you go all one way or do you do a m mix of both? How do you figure that out, it's

Speaker A: always a mix for me. But I will say again, this will probably get old, but it depends on the business, right? So I like to say marketing is a game of trial and error. So you try it all, you catch, you're recording your analytics and seeing what's performing best and then you tend to go heavier on that route and a little lighter on the other route. But I still think it's great to have a mix because with social media you got to keep it fresh, you got to keep it exciting, you got to have new stuff here being done every month to make sure that you're staying relevant. Right. But I think certain industries, for example, one of my pet peeves is if you see a super high end restaurant, for example, and they have super low quality content that simply doesn't match and again comes back to that brand Persona. If your brand Persona is high end luxurious, you can't get away with the Ma and Pa's restaurant content. It just doesn't work. So that's the biggest thing is what aligns with your brand and then go from there. And with a high end restaurant, of course you can still kind of play with it a, uh, little bit with doing just some quick selfie style content, talking to camera. Even if it's the chef in the kitchen, that could be something that could be fun, that's a little lower effort, not a big production or anything like that. But still can keep that elevated as he's talking. Maybe we do some B roll over it of the dishes that he's talking about. Like there's all kinds of mixes that you can do. But I think at the end of the day you gotta look at your brand Persona and what aligns with that. Because if you're high end, you, your content should not constantly be low end. And if you're a mom paw shop, don't spend $5,000 doing a huge production once a month when that's the majority of your marketing budget. It's all about finding that balance. But I think we can lean on the kind of more raw, uh, we still need to polish it off a little bit. But the more authentic kind of iPhone shot content, we could do a lot with that, uh, that can perform really well. That wasn't always the case. So I think we can definitely take advantage of that in 2025, you know,

Speaker B: and the quality of the, what you're carrying in your pocket is far superior to a lot of other cameras that people would have had. Now I want to ask you this one around Consistency. Because for years this has always been the question. And I'm sure you still get asked that. You know, how many posts should I be doing a week, when's the best time to post, how many, what time of day, all that kind of stuff. And I know there's been shifts in AI and algorithms and all that kind of stuff. What would you tell somebody who came to you and said how many times should I post every week and when should I post?

Speaker A: Mhm. Let me back up.

Speaker B: Depends on the business, right?

Speaker A: I'm going to try not to say that, but I think every account should be active daily.

Speaker B: Okay.

Speaker A: And when I say that, I mean commenting, uh, answering DMs and posting stories. That doesn't change for any business because again, as a business, a brand on social media, you should think about it as your brand, as a person. And your brand checks social media in the morning while they have their cup of coffee, the same as you do. Or they're, they do a quick scroll at lunch to interact with the people that, that they follow, that they want to stay in touch with on social media. Think about it like that. And I mean we can group that into one daily check in just for the sake of time, where you put a story what's going on in the brand today, you answer a couple comments and maybe respond to some DMs. So that I will say be consistent with that. Um, in terms of posting to the newsfeed, I like to see at least three posts a week and that can be a mix of static, some carousel posts, and there should definitely be a reel or two in there. So that's kind of a very general kind of guideline to the frequency. Obviously the more that you post, the more opportunity you have to talk to people. But I really don't get into packages more than four or five posts a week just because I don't think that there's a huge jump in value from four posts to seven posts versus that there is in two posts to four or five posts.

Speaker B: Mhm. Absolutely. Now I'm sure anyone listening that isn't tuned into social media all the time may be freaked out by what you just said. It was like, like how am I going to find time to do this every single day? It's not my jam. I don't enjoy that kind of stuff. I know I need to be there working with someone like you. Is there a blend there where you could create the content and then the client can go do the commenting? Like is it, Is there a team aspect to that? Where it will work for both where they don't have to do the heavy lifting, but they can do more of the conversational engagement.

Speaker A: Right? Yeah. So I kind of take a very customized approach. Nothing that I do is standard. I have a chat with a client and then we figure out uh, what's the best route going forward. Because for some clients, they don't want to even look at anything social media and it's like, okay, great, I got the package for you, I'll do everything. For some clients, it's like I really struggle with the post, coming up with ideas side of things and actual techie side of things. Right. So then we have a package for them. But I think the easier part of social media management is the engagement. It's 15 minutes a day and I know everybody can at least find 15 minutes a day because I know you're scrolling for at least 15 minutes a day. So instead, hop over to your business account, look at a couple stories, answer a few, look at some comments and answer a couple, like a couple posts comment. That's it. You can set a timer for 10 minutes. The same that we all come into the office and we sit down and we check our email. Just tap the social media onto your checking your email and it can be a lot simpler than it needs to be. But in terms of the actual creating content, that can be a super time consuming process. I totally get that. But using tools like AI to help you come up with some ideas or honestly hiring it out, that's the way that I see it. And I might be a little biased, but for me my social media outsourcing thing was bookkeeping side of things. I was brand new in my business and started looking up, okay, I'm going to do it myself, like I can totally do this. And I looked up a couple words and went on government canon, website. I'm like, no, I can't. I immediately just find somebody and I I m need somebody to take care of this for me because the time, the effort, the expertise that it all takes, I just don't want to deal with it. And I really think that's how you grow your business is by those components of your business that you don't like that are time consuming for you to do and you don't have the expertise, hire them out. Like just get it off your plate. Right?

Speaker B: Yeah. No productivity hack here, not this, uh, isn't as a joke, but you're probably in the bathroom 15 minutes a day, right? You got your, like you sitting on that toilet instead of scrolling through Your personal Facebook look at your business account start. Right.

Speaker A: You've got the time to know where you are when you leave a comment.

Speaker B: Yeah, I wouldn't do a Facebook live there, but um, maybe skip that one. That's right. Now the human factor, automation, it's my jam. There's so much out there. You can automate a lot of stuff. But where do you think automation should not play a role in social media? What should you not automate?

Speaker A: I think people will have different opinions on this and so I'll give you mine. I cringe when I see comment replies or DM responses that are so blatantly automated that it hurts you a little bit. Now I want to say I set up DM replies on all of my accounts, but that's like for the basic questions. Right. So you have a little bit of information but if it's a more in depth question, then you come through and you answer it when you're in your 15 minutes on the toilet checking your DMs. Right?

Speaker B: Yep.

Speaker A: So I totally believe in DM automatic DM replies if it's. You have a basic one, but then if it's a more complicated question you go and you respond to that. Or if they're saying something nice about your business or a uh, complaint about your business, they're not mashed. These cringy automatic replies, same with comments. I like to keep comments a little more personal because I just, again I always come back, your brand is a person and imagine you commented on your friend's photo and they gave the same reply to every single person. How cringy that would feel. And you'd never want to comment again. Like that feels weird, right? It takes the community building side of social media, which we went over is what makes you stand out. It completely ruins that by automating those types of things.

Speaker B: It's very similar to my thought process on holiday cards where companies just print the signatures and everybody gets the same one. I uh, strongly believe if you really care about the people you're sending it to, take the time to write a personalized message in every one. So let's talk about the risks. Future thinking. How do you think about the future? What do you think is the biggest social media risk businesses aren't talking about right now?

Speaker A: Mhm. Well there's obviously the risk of not just simply not using it or not using it correctly and the loss in opportunity there. But I think you could say that about really any, any selling channel or sales channel. Right. So I would say the, the biggest thing is the blind trust in easy and lazy AI solutions and AI tools for social media. I just think if that's the only thing you're going to do on social media is those blatant DM replies or comment replies blatantly AI or auto generated AI edited videos that are kind of awkward or not really cut. Right. Because no human went through and edited it after AI carousel posts that another marketing company did the exact same one multiple times like that is the biggest risk because you're worse off doing that than not doing it at all in my opinion. I think that that can actually tarnish how you look, especially if you're in an industry like me. Like imagine if a uh, marketing company who's talking about doing your social media did that. That could actually have a worse, that could have a very negative impact on my sales as opposed to a positive impact. It's a risk in actually taking credibility away from a business and doing things like that as opposed to what you're trying to do, which is obviously get some um, traction on social media.

Speaker B: Mhm, absolutely. And there's another risk out there that I want to dive into just briefly. It's the security of your account. There's been a huge increase of these messages that come through. Especially when you have a business account that says you're breaching Facebook policies or meta policies. Click here to see why. Which are really phishing attempts to gain access to your account. So if you ever receive those, they're not legit and if you click that link there's a serious risk that your account is going to be taken over. How do you combat working with clients accounts where making sure they have two factor authentication and stuff like that in place and is there a way that they can share access to their account with you without giving out uh, their password themselves?

Speaker A: So uh, with Instagram, unfortunately there's not. That is simply a trust based feature. Make sure the person that you're working with you really trust. Honestly with a lot of my clients because I tend to attract more the business owners that are so overwhelmed they just want it all taken off their plate and they don't want to check it, they don't want to do anything because we've taken that approach most of the time. Two factor authentication is set up to my number to make things easier. So I don't really have a ton of good advice in that area other than if you hire somebody that you can trust, it makes your life so much easier. The majority of my clients too, I just say to them, any email, just forward it to me and I'll tell you if it's legit when it's relevant to the social media side of things. Any I'll tell you what, I don't think I've seen a single real email that any of my clients have ever been worried about. So pretty much most of the time you can assume that it's a scam, but there's been some very realistic looking ones lately that scary for sure. So really just make sure. I know it's a pain in the butt but with Facebook where it's tied to your personal account, like change your personal password many times and make sure it's complicated when it recommends that strong password do it. I also it's worth having a conversation and doing some free seminars. As a business owner with some local cybersecurity places, there's a really good one Adaptive Office solutions around here. They do free cybersecurity webinars and kind of and oh my God, he just has so many Matthew McGee's name. He has so many amazing tips and advice to keep your account secure. Not just on the social side, but if you use Google Workspace or Office365, all of those, there's some really good advice in there. So it's the same as you want to stay up to date on what's happening in social media, stay up to date on what's happening in the world of cybersecurity because that can ruin your day really quick if you don't.

Speaker B: Yeah, it's uh, only going to get harder too as things progress with AI and these deep fakes and all that stuff. So let's hop on a time machine for a second. If you could go back to 2021, look at your 2021 version of yourself. What's one piece of advice about social media that you would tell yourself now

Speaker A: Double down on video, short form video. Like really start learning the tools and some cool shots and getting some of the cool equipment for the short form style video because that's the most valuable piece of content nowadays. And work on being more concise in scripting because attention spans just downhill. Right. Like we I went from most of my packages including maybe it would be like a uh, up to a three minute video each week and now it's usually somewhere between 5 and 30 seconds each fit though.

Speaker B: All right, so as we close junior marketing, let's give a pitch here. Tell our listeners how people can work with you where they can find you all that stuff.

Speaker A: Yeah, for sure. So my tagline is calming the chaos and that's because I worked with a business owner. It was her lifelong dream to open a business. She did it in retirement. She was super stressed out. She just had this ball of chaos around her. At our first meeting, implemented my strategy. It was, you know, six months later, at one of the monthly check ins, she came to me and she said, jodi, I just can't tell you how much I appreciate you being calm amongst the chaos. And so I clocked that as a tagline really quick because I loved it. But that to me is really what it's all about. Giving business owners back their time so they can focus on what they do best, on why they started their business. Because we all have a love for what we do. We all have a reason for why we started it. And with being a business owner, a lot of times there's just so much that gets in the way and that makes us forget that. So I like to give people back their time, manage their marketing strategy, let them get back to what they do best. So that's really what I'm all about. So if somebody who has is really feeling that right now that there's just so much going on, you just want to get some stuff off your plate, come to me. I would love to chat about what it can look like to take some stuff off your plate in the digital marketing space. Like we talked about today, I do specialize in social media management. We do some paid advertising on social media as well. That's really our bread and butter. We love it. So you don't have to.

Speaker B: And you don't only just work with Nova Scotia businesses, correct?

Speaker A: No. So Canada wise. And we have worked with some American businesses in the past as well. Perfect.

Speaker B: Well, thank you so much for this wealth of wisdom you shared over the last 40 minutes with us.

Speaker A: Awesome. Thanks so much for having me, Sean. I appreciate it.

Speaker B: Hey, what's up everyone? It's Sean here, the host of this episode. In addition to doing this podcast, I also have a marketing company called Blue Cow Marketing. We help you with marketing automation, CRM and all things to get your business message out there. If you need help with your marketing, with your systems, please I invite you go to our website, BlueCowMarketing CA to learn more.