Ever wondered how you can make social media marketing work for you? Tune in as Kelly VanHoveln, social media marketing expert, sits down with me to reveal how she transformed a maternity-leave hobby to a thriving career.
We're unpacking the secrets to creating an online presence, that not only stands out, but stays true to you and your brand. From sidestepping the pervasive hustle culture to mastering the art of audience engagement on Facebook and Instagram, Kelly's advice will change what you post on social media.
We discuss the importance of:
Join us for our conversation to refine your online marketing strategy and raise your social media game!
Apply to be featured on My Weekly Marketing!
Ever wondered how you can make social media marketing work for you? Tune in as Kelly VanHoveln, social media marketing expert, sits down with me to reveal how she transformed a maternity-leave hobby to a thriving career.
We're unpacking the secrets to creating an online presence, that not only stands out, but stays true to you and your brand. From sidestepping the pervasive hustle culture to mastering the art of audience engagement on Facebook and Instagram, Kelly's advice will change what you post on social media.
We discuss the importance of:
Join us for our conversation to refine your online marketing strategy and raise your social media game!
Apply to be featured on My Weekly Marketing!
I'm Janice Hostager. After three decades in the marketing business and many years of being an entrepreneur, I've learned a thing or two about marketing. Join me as we talk about marketing, small business, and life in between. Welcome to My Weekly Marketing.
Janice Hostager:Do you get frustrated with social media? Sometimes I'm raising my own hand here it can be both a challenge to get your account off the ground, figure out what works, what doesn't work, and how to not let it consume your entire day. Can I get an amen? Enter social media marketing expert Kelly Van Hoveln. When she agreed to be a podcast guest, I had some hard questions for her and she had some great answers. Kelly is an ADHD introvert who believes that women flourish when their business is structured to give them plenty of time to rest and recharge so they can pursue their passions. She avoids the hustle- and- grind mentality that causes burnout for so many introverted and neurodiverse women. In my mind, that makes her the perfect guest to talk about how to not let social media eat up your life. Here's my conversation with Kelly. Well, hey, Kelly, thanks for joining me today.
Kelly VanHoveln:Hi, Janice, thanks for having me.
Janice Hostager:So tell me about your small business journey. How did you get to this place?
Kelly VanHoveln:Oh goodness, it's quite a spree. It was one of those things that I just kind of fell into my daughter when she was well. When I was on maternity leave with my oldest daughter, I knew that I really did not want to go back to work full time and we needed a few hundred dollars a month to make ends meet. My husband was like, well, you're creative and you have some art background and you know why don't you look into web design? And I was like, okay, I'll try, sure why not. So this was 2009. Well, in 2007 she was born.
Kelly VanHoveln:So I had some guts back then that I probably don't have quite as much right now. But just on a whim, one day while I was on maternity leave with her, I sent out letters, printed out letters on this letterhead I had designed myself that I thought was super fancy and pretty 25 letters to local small businesses offering web design and advertising help and whatever else they could possibly need my help with. And one woman who owned a little boutique in a neighboring town got back to me and she was like, I'm not sure that I need exactly what you're offering, but I need help writing blogs for my website. And I was like, okay, I took some creative writing in college, I can figure this out. So she hired me for $10 an hour and I worked four to five hours a week writing blogs for her and it has kind of just grown from there.
Kelly VanHoveln:She was very because she was in the fashion industry, I think. She was very up on trends and very interested in the trends that were coming down the pipeline. So after about a year of working together, she said you know, I think this social media thing is going to be big. I'd really like to know if there's a way that we can use it. And I was like, okay, sure, I'll figure it out. So we started with posting links to the blog posts I was writing on Facebook and Twitter and just kind of it's grown from there very slowly, At first very just word of mouth, you know I was raising my kids so I didn't want to be working a lot of hours. But when they were all in school full time, I was like, all right, I'm all in. And yeah, that's what got me to where I am today, I guess.
Janice Hostager:Oh, nice. And those are the early days of social media when you could actually get some traction when you posted a link.
Kelly VanHoveln:Yeah, it's a tough change.
Janice Hostager:I know I didn't appreciate it as much then as I do now, the fact that you know, engagement and reach were higher and it was like the golden era, and I had no idea.
Kelly VanHoveln:I wish I knew Exactly. Yeah, you could just post links. You didn't get penalized for posting links. Everybody saw everything you'd post. Yes, yeah, it was great. You could like share things and then get new people just because you were, somebody in your audience shared your article or shared you know a thing that you shared. Yeah, yeah, golden days.
Janice Hostager:Right, right, yeah. So actually I'm just going to segue into a question that I had about that. So I have clients who post consistently. They answer questions, they're being authentic, they're, you know, trying to do all the right things and they're still not getting a ton of reach on Instagram especially. Do you kind of feel like all of Meta is going to be pay to play or do you feel like there's some strategy that we're all missing? You know what's been your, what have you found out or what have you seen with your clients?
Kelly VanHoveln:ThGat's a really good question. That's a really good question. Well, my answer is two fold. So, first of all, my platform of choice is Facebook, just because I enjoy the slower pace, I enjoy the longer form of content and I do like it's just my comfort zone place. So, with that said, thank you. I don't know about it being paid to play. That's an interesting concept. I'll have to ponder that one for a little bit.
Kelly VanHoveln:But I do think, when it comes to Instagram and getting reach, it really is about using the right keywords and also having the right kinds of content. And I don't mean necessarily carousel posts versus reels, versus static images. I mean more along the lines of is it something that your client is going to see that first line of text, or see the little bit of text that maybe you have in your image if it's a graphic, and go, oh, I need to read the rest of this. Is your club really pricing? Are you grabbing their attention from the beginning? And then are you giving them something of value? And that doesn't necessarily mean educational content, though that can be a thing.
Kelly VanHoveln:I'm a huge fan of what I call belief- shifting content or mindset- shifting content where it's like throughout the course of your post, whether it's a real or a story or a written post. You're kind of flipping the script on something that they believe or something that they think, something that I work with a lot of coaches and service providers, so the written word is very important, but this belief shift concept, or this mindset shift concept, is really key for getting them to see why they need you, why they need your expertise, why you do things in a certain way that's different than other people in your industry. What makes you stand out so that they can see that you stand out, they can see that you're different, and that gets them to see, then, why they need to work with you. Oh, I love that. I love that.
Janice Hostager:I'm not sure if that answers your question, but no it really does, because I think it really kind of boils down to stepping into your, stepping into your ideal target customer's shoes and really hitting to the point quickly. Like here's what I do. Here's what sets me apart. Here's why you need me right away, instead of like recycling content that's already out there, or. I love what you said about changing and doing a mind shift. What were your words Like?
Kelly VanHoveln:Like a belief shift or a belief shift.
Janice Hostager:Belief shift. Yes, yes, I think that's really powerful because you do. You're absolutely right, when you're scrolling, scrolling, scrolling, and suddenly you see something and you're like, wow, I never thought of it that way before. That is somebody that you tend to look closer at. You're like, what else do they post? And you go to their profile and take a look at what other things they posted and kind of go from there. But I love that. That's really powerful. And that's true probably for all the different platforms, not just Instagram or Facebook, right, absolutely you can make that same concept work for TikTok YouTube videos.
Kelly VanHoveln:Whatever it is that you're doing, wherever your platform of choice is, there's a way to make it work for you absolutely.
Janice Hostager:Now you say your platform of choice. I tend to recommend that people go to the platform where their target customer is hanging out, right? But I think that there has to be some affinity that you personally have for that, otherwise becomes a chore, right? You don't want to have to make TikTok videos if you just hate being on camera, for example. Right? So, how do you balance those two?
Kelly VanHoveln:That's a really good question. That's a really good question. Okay, so my affinity for Facebook is because of two things Facebook groups are such a unique space and such a unique thing that no other social media has. There's so much value in Facebook groups and what I often joke is whatever it is you're selling, there's already a group out there about that, right? If you're a health coach, you're a pregnancy coach, if you're an I'm thinking of clients I've worked with recently a dementia coach, if you're a death doula, right, all of those different things there's groups out there for that.
Kelly VanHoveln:So I tell my clients especially the ones who are a little more introverted, a little more reserved, like I am, who don't want to be dancing on reels or TikTok or whatever get started on Facebook. Learn how to do market research on Facebook. Learn what your ideal client needs and wants from you. Learn how to market and sell. Once you learn how to market and sell on Facebook, the world opens up to you especially if you are earning to market and sell, which means you can bring in the money than to hire somebody to help you. With some of the other platforms that are more of what I'm going to nicely call energy hogs, I don't remember what their current recommendations are, but it was like three stories a day, one static post a day, two reels a week. It was a lot of content to be favored by the algorithm on Instagram. So Facebook is just a little lower of a platform, easier to get used to if you're not already comfortable with talking about what you do on social media.
Janice Hostager:I love that. I always recommend that clients start with Facebook anyway. Not for that reason, though, but because Facebook knows everything about everybody. I mean, they've got so many data points on every living soul. That's ever been on Facebook and maybe Instagram does too I'm not sure, but, plus. It used to be in its heyday that you could get just a ton of valuable data as a marketer or as a small business owner from their audience insights, and you could really target ads just right down. You still can certainly do that, but that's really interesting because I think so many of my clients and honestly, I have to some degree have kind of abandoned Facebook just because it's I don't know, it's not this shiny object anymore. Maybe that's it. So that's really interesting that you're getting really good traction from Facebook because I tend to post on Instagram and share to Facebook, but of course, I'm not on the platform, I'm not interacting, so the algorithm is never going to favor that, you know.
Kelly VanHoveln:Yeah, I would say at this point in time there's enough differentiation between what the algorithms even look for in content that it's probably not as enough to cross- post anymore as it is to you know. Slightly tweak the post to make it the right format and the right wording for the. Yeah so.
Janice Hostager:Yeah, yeah. And on Facebook, of course, you can still post links, and unlike Instagram, where you have to send them off somewhere else to find a link or you know. So, yeah, I really like that idea. Do you work with LinkedIn, with your clients?
Kelly VanHoveln:Often on. I have a couple of clients here and there who use LinkedIn. The same content concept of the belief, shift content and selling through your content, painting the picture of what it really looks like to work with you All of that still applies also on LinkedIn. So I can really help them on LinkedIn excuse me, with that content piece, with the selling once they have the audience. But audience growth on LinkedIn definitely is not my area of expertise.
Janice Hostager:Okay, okay, yeah, I mean it seems like the messaging is so different on LinkedIn To any of you who are you're working with a professional audience. Also, people don't go there to unwind, you know. They may go there to look for a job or see who's gotten a promotion, but, unlike Instagram or Facebook, people don't relax there. They don't go there on a regular basis as much, I think, although I've been told that's changing a little bit.
Kelly VanHoveln:But yeah, I would. LinkedIn is probably the place to be and this really does play back to knowing who your ideal client is, knowing who your target audience is. I would say LinkedIn is the place to be if you are either targeting professionals very specifically with your offer or if you're trying to get known as yeah, yeah, okay, bye a speaker for corporations or a speaker for organizations in some capacity. That's probably where you'd want to be, or what you want to be using LinkedIn for.
Janice Hostager:Right, how do you stay up to date with all of what's going on on social media? That's a good question, just getting in there and jumping in and trying to see what works. I mean, I'm just curious.
Kelly VanHoveln:Yeah, for the most part. I mean I subscribe to a bunch of different social media like informational letters, social media examiner, or I still like my favorite one. They've been around forever in a day.
Kelly VanHoveln:So I get a lot of information from there, but I do subscribe to a couple of newsletters from, like one specifically for Instagram. I don't know, I just linked on that one specifically for Instagram. On Facebook, I often see a lot of the Facebook stuff coming through. So, yeah, just keeping a pulse on what's going out there, reading as much as I possibly can about it, and then, of course, doing my own experimentation here and there when I have an idea and I'm like I want to see if this actually works.
Janice Hostager:Right, yeah, do you with your clients? Do you see some common mistakes that they make that we should all avoid?
Kelly VanHoveln:Yeah, absolutely, absolutely, I would say. The two biggest mistakes I see people make are trying to be everywhere right from the beginning. That is a recipe for overwhelm and burnout and just really soul- crushing disappointment. Because each platform is so different. Each one requires a certain amount of engagement and you being present on that platform for your content to get seen, and if you're trying to grow your audience on two or three or four platforms, you're really spreading yourself too thin.
Kelly VanHoveln:So my first piece of advice for all of my clients is to pick one platform and we can work on any. Facebook is still going to be my recommendation, but we can work with any platform. But pick just one to start with and again, figure out what your audience needs to hear from you to get excited. Figure out what your ideal client needs to hear from you to buy from you. Start making some sales, and then we can look at how do we take the strategy and layer on another platform or higher help to move on to another platform, right? So I feel like it's all about a base layer and the layering on new tactics and strategies and platforms as things start working, versus trying to do everything all at once.
Janice Hostager:Great advice, yes.
Kelly VanHoveln:The second mistake I think I see people make the most, and I see this one, especially on Instagram, is being a little scattered. I'm not sure if it's because Instagram is a combination of like influencer style marketing and business style marketing and they're not quite the same, but when I do social media audits I a lot of times find that people's Instagram it's very unclear to understand what they do, who they serve, what their offer is, or even that they have an offer, because it's such a mixture of personal content and peak behind the curtain type of content Maybe some aspirational quotes because my words are not coming to me today Inspiration quotes or what have you versus very strategic, targeted, valuable content that makes it easy to understand what you do and how people can work with you.
Janice Hostager:That's really helpful because I think that's it. I think oftentimes we go to Instagram and I count myself in on this, thinking, okay, I could post this and this, but last time I did that it didn't get a lot of engagement. So today I'm going to try a quote. It's still related to my business, but it's a quote or whatever. I think we focus more on the engagement, on the numbers, on the likes, and we lose sight of why we're really there to begin with.
Kelly VanHoveln:Yes, absolutely, that's really good insight. That's really good insight, absolutely. I think that is a big part of it is seeing that it is the personal content that gets the engagement, or it is the inspirational quotes that get the engagement, and thinking that engagement is the most important metric. When engagement is a metric, it's not the only thing that matters when looking at or when planning your content.
Janice Hostager:Yes, for sure. I always tell people the old phrase don't build on the rented land. You really want to be sending those people to your website to get them to download something and get on your email list, so then you can nurture that lead. Of course, you can certainly do it to some extent through social media as well, especially if you bring that conversation into the DMs or Facebook groups you brought up. They have been really valuable in my own business. I've gotten several clients through Facebook groups and we kind of forget about them sometimes. I think we're so focused on the numbers, the clicks, the likes, all of that that we kind of forget that really the objective is to get business and not look popular.
Kelly VanHoveln:Yeah, absolutely Absolutely, and going viral doesn't guarantee clients. It feels good and fun, but it doesn't necessarily translate into the income coming in.
Janice Hostager:It doesn't. Often. A few times that I've gotten viral with posts it's been totally the wrong audience. It'll be a picture of my dog or something and who's in my office. I mean, it's legit behind the scenes, right, I don't know. But yeah, it's like I'm sure there are some of my target customers that a dog lovers, but by and large, these are not the people that I want to be working with. It's kind of wasted effort at that point, right? Not that people can't see that you're human and that you. It is fun to see behind the scenes every once in a while. But, yeah, I think you're absolutely right. So when people use social media, how can they use it at each stage of the buyer's journey? So we'll just use general terms right now, from awareness to consideration to buyer.
Kelly VanHoveln:Okay, I take a slightly different tactic, I think, than many people do when it comes to the buyer's journey, and that is I really encourage my people to write their top- of- funnel content targeted at people who are already solution- aware or solution- oriented already. Looking, I think all that. The comparison stage was the middle one, was that correct?
Janice Hostager:Yes, yeah, well, that's the longer version. I gave you a short version, but yes, okay.
Kelly VanHoveln:Yeah, so they're already in that comparison stage where they know they have a problem, they know that there's a solution out there and they're looking for the right solution, versus targeting people who are at the awareness stage, or I see this is probably another social media downfall. I see it's targeting people before they're even in the awareness stage.
Janice Hostager:So they would be people that they don't necessarily know that they need your services or your product. Is that what you mean before they're in the awareness age?
Kelly VanHoveln:Yeah, yeah, absolutely, absolutely. For example, a post from a coach that is here's why you need a life coach that's not targeted at someone who's already looking for a life coach, who already knows they need a life coach, or who even, like, understands the value of coaching. That is somebody that you're trying to get to first of all see the value of coaching, and now you have to get them all the way through the journey, through all those steps right From first to awareness and then to comparison. That's a much longer journey than if you start with. Here's why my brand of life coaching is so different or is so valuable. It already hits somebody who's at that comparison stage and it shortens the mastery from the cold soul, I guess, from when they first hear about you to actually becoming a client. It really collapses that timeframe.
Janice Hostager:Gotcha. That makes that really interesting. So has that been effective? Do you feel like people pick up on that?
Kelly VanHoveln:Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Janice Hostager:Because on my what I call it the trail to the sale, they obviously start with awareness and that's where I often tell clients that, like, this is the point where you want to go to social media for sure. I mean, there's a lot of things you can do for awareness and social media is one of them, but then I try and, as soon as possible, move them to the consideration stage and that's where I want them to be a subscriber, and the rest of the nurturing takes place through email and events might be podcasts, that sort of thing that goes on from there. So that's interesting that you start further down. I've never really thought about that before, but that makes a lot of sense.
Kelly VanHoveln:Yeah, yeah, especially, and this is one of those reasons I can't remember if we talked about this before we were recording or not. This is one of the reasons I find Facebook so valuable, because in these Facebook groups there typically are people who are already looking for help in some capacity. Right, they're asking questions, they're asking how do I solve this problem, or they're talking about. They're asking for help. So now you have the opportunity to get into a conversation with them in the comments or invite them into a DM conversation where you can say, hey, I've got a solution for you. Give them a little bit of advice. Maybe send them to your free resource that's in your Facebook group or that's on your email list and get them into your system where you continue the conversation there and if all of your content is written at the comparison level, you're continuing to have them see over and over and over again the value in working with you and why your offer is the right offer and why you do things so differently versus if you get them in and you have this conversation and then they're on your social media, they're seeing just like the foundational level content, the awareness level content. That might be a little bit confusing for them.
Kelly VanHoveln:So, yeah, absolutely, it is a different strategy. It is a different strategy. I think it helps people make sales faster because they're not spent, there isn't a long lead time from awareness to comparison and there's a very specific content flow or specific content, yeah, flow or framework or formula whatever you want to call it that you can then plug into your content to make it make sales for you, that you can use that on social media content and on emails. I'm all about working smarter than harder, so I have my clients do the same content for the most part on their social media feeds and in their emails, with very little difference. So they're hitting that comparison stage content in both places.
Janice Hostager:I love that. I think that's brilliant. I'm going to try that. It's okay if I steal that idea.
Kelly VanHoveln:Absolutely. Let me know how it goes.
Janice Hostager:Yeah, I mean you're right. Actually, what I've done with my trail to the sales is that I've kind of broken it down into micro steps. I've kind of gone the other direction with it, just because there's a lot of nuance. There's a difference between considering somebody and then comparing them, but that tends to be the path that a customer will take. If I am going to I don't know to hire somebody to mow my lawn, I don't know how to do that, but I would would, of all, do my research, take a look at what they do, but then I would also do some digging around. But it's not necessarily necessary. It's not really necessary.
Janice Hostager:If they give you enough information and that individual has a good enough price and you're just happy with them, you can skip that comparison stage altogether. You don't want to give people an opportunity, for example, to go price shopping. If you're comparing apples to oranges and this is something I just actually did a podcast on about that whole price shopping thing but you're right with your social media content, you can address that as well. You can say this is why we're different here we are. I mean, you can go do your research, but we're better because of this, or something like that. Yeah, really interesting.
Kelly VanHoveln:I encourage my clients, especially the ones who are coaches because I think coaching is such a nuanced space and there can be so many differences from two programs that on the outside look very identical. The results can be really different. The exact framework or container in which they work can be very different. I encourage my clients, as part of the intensive that we do, to go through and find three to five competitors. Go to their website, go to their social media, analyze what they do, what their offer looks like, what kind of screening and experience they talk about having, and figure out what makes you different from all of those, what sets you apart from that.
Kelly VanHoveln:You really want to draw attention to in your social media and email content, in your nurture content.
Janice Hostager:Absolutely. I love that. Well, Kelly, thank you so much for being here today. Where can people find out more information about you?
Kelly VanHoveln:Yeah, absolutely. The best place to find me is going to be Facebook. I'll put the link directly because my last name is hard to spell, but Facebook. com/kellyvanhoveln or I have a Facebook group where I have a three-part training on building out the simplest sales funnel ever. So you can find that in my Facebook group. That is called Unignorable. So if you go into Facebook and just search Unignorable, that should pop up for you. Otherwise, my website is kellyvanhoveln. com, and again, hopefully, Janice will link to it, since VanHoveln is hard.
Janice Hostager:I absolutely will put all the links in our show notes for today, All right. Well, thanks so much, Kelly. I really really enjoyed our chat today and I learned a lot.
Kelly VanHoveln:Well, thank you for having me. It was nice chatting with you today, all right.
Janice Hostager:So did you enjoy my conversation with Kelly as much as I did? I'd love her insight into the abbreviated buyer's journey and her idea of belief shifting on social media. I am going to try both of those for sure. To learn more about anything we talked about today or to view the Transcript visit myweeklymarketing. com forward slash49. That's episode 49. Thank you so much for being here with me today. If you liked what you heard, I would be so honored if you left a review on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast platform. Thanks again. See you next time. Bye for now.