Jeff Bullas is the man brands turn to, when they are trying to make sense of digital jigsaw puzzles. He is a blogger, author, strategist and speaker and works with companies and executives to optimise their personal and company?s presence online via digital and social media marketing. Bullas is number eight on Forbes?s ?World?s Top 40 Social Marketing Talent ? 2014? list and was number 11 on Forbes.com?s ?Top 50 Social Media Power Influencers 2013? list. His blog, hosted at JeffBullas.com, is all about social media marketing, content marketing and digital marketing, and is read in around 190 countries, getting over 4 million page views every year.
Bullas has trained and offered consultation to top telecom and internet companies including Telstra, Optus, Vodafone and Ozemail. He is also the author of the bestselling book ?Blogging the smart way?How to create and market a killer blog with social media?. He has over 2,18,000 followers on Twitter and his Twitter account finds place in Huffington Post?s ?Top 100 Business, Leadership and Technology Twitter Accounts You Must Follow? list. In this interview with FE BrandWagon?s Anushree Chandran, Bullas speaks on what it takes to be a top blogger and how standing out in the crowd is one of the biggest challenges for brands today. Edited excerpts:
From an accidental blogger to a top influencer, you have come a long way. What goes into the making of the Jeff Bullas brand? What makes the ?viral? you?
It starts with a passion for your subject and then it requires a consistent persistence in the blogging content creation and then the marketing of that content. Many bloggers are good at the art but fail at the marketing of ?brand you?. That means building your social media followers and fans and also tapping into the power of other digital media including email and search engine marketing.?
What kind of problems do companies approach you with??
Most of the problems are in the area of creating online attention and also converting that into brand awareness and sales. Many do not know where to start, so a lot of what we do is map out digital strategies that provide a digital playbook.?
Marketers are complaining that brands are being crowded out of social media platforms as content from publishers and people?s friends is given priority in the news feeds. Would you agree and how do brands deal with it?
Yes, the online noise is increasing, so standing out is becoming a bigger challenge. That is only going to get worse as 3 billion more people come online in the next 5-10 years. Also, you mentioned the news feed challenge, which is happening because many brands are relying on Facebook for their marketing. They need to understand that it isn?t just about Facebook, and with that social network reducing its organic reach to 2-5%, you have to make sure you are pursuing a multi-channel digital marketing approach. ?
For small and medium businesses, to what
extent do you recommend outsourcing
social media management versus keeping
it in-house?
It?s different for every business. If you don?t have the writers and creators in-house then you need to outsource that content creation piece. You also need to take a closer look at automation with social media management platforms.
What do you make of Facebook?s mood altering experiment in which the news feeds of about 700,000 users were manipulated? To what degree is Facebook filtering the news feed?
I don?t see that experiment as a big issue but just part of media experimentation. That has happened for decades. As Facebook and other social networks mature and go public, they are looking at ways to monetise to provide a return to shareholders. I expect that reduction in organic reach to continue. It is becoming pay-to-play and Facebook is leading that trend.
How important are endorsements on LinkedIn? And how does one control them??
I don?t see endorsements as that important but they do provide some social proof. If you want to be seen as a specialist you need to edit them to ensure that they reflect your focus.?
I am neither a celebrity, nor particularly witty in 140 characters. Should I just forget about building a following on Twitter??
Twitter is underestimated in creating brand awareness and as a distributor of your content. You need to see Twitter as part of a long term commitment to building content distribution you own to reach your own audience. It?s not all about being witty!
If you had to talk about three big things that could potentially happen in the social media space over the next few years, what would these be?
There are a few things that could potentially happen. We are already seeing some signs of that happening. First, Twitter grows more rapidly because Facebook has reduced its organic reach to almost zero and people change their focus.
Second, consolidation of the social media networks as the bigger players acquire the smaller start-ups.
Third, visual crowd sourced content from Instagram and other mobile apps takes centre stage for most B2C social media marketers.
We keep hearing of unbelievably valuations in the social media business. Do you think these business models are sustainable? Will WhatsApp ever make enough money to justify its valuation?
Only the future will tell us whether a valuation is obscene, undervalued or realistic. When Facebook bought Instagram for $1 billion when it was making a loss and had only 16 staff, everyone thought they were mad. Three years later it is looking like a bargain with it now being the fastest growing social network and with nearly 300 million monthly users!
Is acquisition the only way forward for Facebook to keep innovating?
Innovation is not just about acquisition but about internal innovation. Facebook is really in constant beta stage. Acquisition just helps it accelerate its?innovation. ?
What are some of the best examples of social media marketing for brands? What are the things to keep in mind when it comes to curating content and creating great original content for brands?
Coca-Cola is a great example of experimenting with content on social media with their 70/20/10 ratio of safe to experimental and innovative content. Red Bull is the master at epic content event creation driven by their own publishing company. Beyonce showed that you don?t need mass media to market your record album when she announced her new album last year on Instagram to her 8 million followers and broke iTunes sales records.
How can media companies, particular print media, innovate in the social media space and keep their brands alive? Are some of the more traditional media companies facing a test for survival, because of new age content companies such as Buzzfeed?
Innovation is the only path to avoid irrelevance and possible extinction.?The biggest challenge quite often for traditional brands has been well-stated by John Maynard Keynes??The difficulty lies not so much in developing new ideas as escaping old ones?. People and brands are?creatures?of habit. That is why The New York?Times is struggling with new age content companies such as Buzzfeed, Huffington Post and the exciting new media brand Upworthy.
What are some of your own blogging secrets?
Here are three blogging secrets that I have found vital to success.
-As I don?t assume that Twitter will allow one to follow many people on Twitter with external apps for much longer, I continue to work actively on growing my Twitter followers using a tool called Tweepi.?
-Automate my tweeting using the SocialOomph app as this saves me over 100 hours per month.
-I get up at 4:30 am five days a week to write and market the blog. I find this allows me to get much more done.
