Episode 117: Derek Videll – Authenticity in Sales and Instagram Marketing
Social Bamboo Founder Derek Videll joins the LinkedInWhisperer Brynne Tillman to discuss the importance of having one-on-one conversations with your prospects instead of using a non-contact approach.
Listen as Derek shares the story behind Social Bamboo and his unique approach to working with clients. He’ll also go over some of his Instagram marketing strategies with Brynne and the mistakes most people commit on the platform.
You can reach out to Derek on LinkedIn for more information about him and his “You Can’t Possibly Mess This Up” program.
View Transcript
Derek Videll 0:00
A lot of times when people look at passive income, it’s like how can I not talk to anyone or make friends with them, or have any genuine connection and money still comes in all the time? It’s kind of what it’s asking in a way even though obviously that’s not how anyone words it, but when you’re doing a completely passive income source, a lot of them will be like, how do I just list my course online? People buy it. I never talk to them before they buy the course, after they buy the course. How can I get them to buy my consulting, whatever your professional services without being taught just on repeat on autopilot while I sleep. And although there are plenty of ways to make money while you sleep, a lot of times trying to go that route, I came to a realization about two years ago, I remember saying nothing has kept me more broke than the idea that passive income exists.
Bob Woods 0:51
Welcome to the Making Sales Social podcast, featuring the top voices in sales, marketing, and business. Join Brynne Tillman and me, Bob Woods, as we each bring you the best tips and strategies our guests are teaching their clients so you can leverage them for your own virtual and social selling. Enjoy the show.
Brynne Tillman 1:16
Welcome to Making Sales Social. Our guest today is Derek Videll. He is the founder of socialbamboo.com and the host of The Social Bamboo podcast, which is the number one Instagram Podcast. I’m so excited to have you here, Derek. How are you?
Derek Videll 1:37
I’m doing great. Excited to be here.
Brynne Tillman 1:39
Ah, me too. And you know, we had a conversation the other day, and I had some really big aha! moments around some of the things you do around social, which is so different than the way that we typically talk about social and social selling. So I can’t wait to dive into your specialty. But before we do, we ask all of our guests the same question. What does making sales social mean to you?
Derek Videll 2:06
I really love this concept because I think it’s very easy to get away from it. Especially when people are looking to make passive income. A lot of times when people look at passive income, it’s like how can I not talk to anyone or make friends with them, or have any genuine connection and money still comes in all the time? It’s kind of what it’s asking in a way even though obviously that’s not how anyone words it, but when you’re doing a completely passive income source, a lot of them will be like, how do I just list my course online? People buy it. I never talk to them before they buy the course, after they buy the course. How can I get them to buy my consulting, whatever your professional services without being taught just on repeat on autopilot while I sleep. And although there are plenty of ways to make money while you sleep, a lot of times trying to go that route, I came to a realization about two years ago, I remember saying nothing has kept me more broke than the idea that passive income exists, at least at the phase of business that I was at.
So where this really pertains to me is I used to try to sell a $1,000 course through Facebook ads and a webinar, can totally be a viable strategy, just really difficult to do especially as like one of your first major online marketing ventures was what I was trying to do. Very difficult. And then I started getting people on the phone and closing that way instead of just having a link on my website. And it turned out all these people just had some questions that I could answer that was my website was never going to answer like for me to have that on my website would have been such a specific random thing. Like it would have to be a different website for every different business owner. And even then they also have random reasons why they need to wait on why they need to do your course and a couple of weeks and a couple of months I want to go through this other course I just bought from someone else.
Just so many random things that it’s like a computer can’t handle this, especially because even if all those words are on the screen, for them to read it is a whole other thing. And they can just click off and exit or scroll down to the next post at any time like a split second, to divert their attention away from you, but when I got people on the phone, I realized that I didn’t have that much of a problem with what I was selling, which I thought I did. I had a problem with the way that I was selling it, which was a no-contact approach.
And then for my traffic too, I did a lot of stories to “Hey, book a call with me guys.” And I did a lot of posts and then YouTube videos and those do work well to tell people, hey book a call but then I was like what if I, you know, make that part personal as well and I just DM people? And that was such a revolutionary time for my business because when you’re just creating content and just say sitting there and waiting, that’s all you can do. You’re like, should I make another post? Like, but it’s like, dang, like 300 people saw that story and none of them booked a call, which is typical, like, and a lot of people, dang, like, I guess I did it wrong, just kind of like the speed of their attention at that time when they’re going through stories, they might be like, “Oh, I’ll book a call later” but it’s just it’s not personal, it’s going too fast, they don’t really know if or is there, “Are they talking to me?” for booking this call, or I don’t know if this pertains to me but when the approach became personal, and I said, why don’t I just start DMing people who have liked my posts and just get a conversation going?
All of a sudden sales became more in my control for my business rather than like hoping a post went viral. I could just sit there and say, I have this many followers on Instagram, there’s definitely five clients in there. So let’s go out and find them. And so many of those clients are like, “I’ve heard you mentioned the free call forever but until you reached out, I just never took you up on it.” So yeah, breaking through those barriers of the computer was really necessary for my business to start working.
Brynne Tillman 6:10
So I love that right? The social piece is really about those one-on-one conversations. Content, you know, we often talk about content in three ways. There’s the one too many I post it and hope and pray that the right people see it. I create a template of sorts that I specifically get into the inbox of folks. So it’s not really personalized, but it’s tailored. And it’s going into the DMS, but it’s still not 100% personal, but that one-on-one where I use your name, you know, I refer to something that we had in common or that I noticed on your profile, or that I noticed about a vacation you went on if you’re on Instagram or something where they know that you took the time and you made them matter, you matter. Right? But until you can make them truly feel like you’ve invested time, why would they invest time back? Why would they invest in the 15 minutes to have a conversation until they know? Well, two things: one, that you matter, and two, that you actually can bring them value.
So the other thing I’ll say and then I’ll go into some of our question set because I love what you said, is often we’re sharing content we want them to know versus the show the content that they want to engage on. So if we’re constantly saying book a free call but they haven’t experienced us or even know why because we haven’t brought them value yet, why would they book that call? Right? So that value that we can deliver to them earns us that call.
Derek Videll 7:56
And the conversations that I have are like someone who’s not me couldn’t even have some of these conversations, because I’ll DM them. And there will have never been any messaging that has happened between us. And I’ll say, “Hey, I just wanted to reach out and say I love this about your account, this about your account.” And I never use a cookie cutter. I mean, I dive in there, I was fine. Like there’s plenty of, everyone’s awesome. Everyone’s got something awesome going for them. It’s not that hard to find. I remember one girl, her bio link was her like singing at a hockey game and she sang like a Taylor Swift song, like at the start of it or something like that. I watched part of it and I like messaged her about that. And she was like, “I’ve been listening to your podcast for three years and I was having the worst day of my life today. My car, got an accident, and then you just hit me with this message complimenting me singing at the hockey game” and it was the best thing ever. And yeah, and then…
Brynne Tillman 8:48
Because you made her matter. And that’s the difference, right? There’s all these automation programs out there, which are, in my opinion, completely unauthentic. If you’re trying to pretend that you actually care about me when you don’t, if I identify that, it’s icky for me. It’s like “Well, clearly, I don’t matter. I’m a lead, not a person. So that feels very unsocial.
Derek Videll 9:19
It might work at the beginning before people realize it’s an automation, when they don’t realize the authenticity. And then now there’s just such banner blindness to it, where if they, if it looks like a text that could have been copied and pasted, it’s just assumed at this point. Even rarely, I’ve tried to personalize my messages as much as possible but sometimes they reply, like, “Is this actually Derek?” you know, because they’re expecting (crosstalk).
Brynne Tillman 9:44
I respond with that all the time, “Is this automation?” And what’s interesting in LinkedIn is I’ll get a connection request and instead of accepting it, I will reply and just say, “Is this automation?” and I immediately get a reply. “Thanks for connecting with me,” I’m like, “I didn’t connect with you, you didn’t answer my question.” So well, actually, they did answer my question. It was automation. (Derek: Yeah.) I actually, anyone that’s using automation, I will block because it’s just not… Social to me, social media to me is about being social. And you would never send a robot to a business card exchange or a conference or a trade show when you’re trying to build relationships, so why would you do that here?
So tell me a little bit about socialbamboo.com. Talk to me a little bit about the value that you’re bringing primarily on Instagram. Most of the people that we have here are more LinkedIn-savvy and sales-savvy but you are really Instagram. So talk to us a little bit about socialbamboo.com and why Instagram is really a solution for businesses.
Derek Videll 10:55
It’s so, it started off as Instagram Marketing Secrets was the name of my podcast, actually. When I found out there was really an opening for Instagram podcasts, I was like on the road, and I was looking for one for myself. And I typed in Instagram, and the top podcast hadn’t had an episode for like, five months or something. So I was like, okay, and I just started a podcast that day, actually. And I just started recording on my phone, called it Instagram Marketing Secrets. And within a week, I was like the number one search on Instagram. And that’s kind of where the business started. I didn’t actually have an intention to make money. To be honest, even though I was like, I’m sure I’ll find some way to make money eventually, if this takes off but after a couple years, I started branching out and then two other social media platforms, and it became Social Bamboo.
So I’m still really known as the Instagram guy and by far, that’s the platform I know best on both on the organic and the paid ad side of things. And now I guess like such as yourself and other people to really help me fill in the rest of the social media marketing realm on my show, but Social Bamboo got its name for me, reverse engineering the name actually, I was like, the major Facebook and Instagram ad strategy I teach, like, what is it really about? It’s a sustainable strategy because this is really been a marketing strategy that’s kind of been used for decades, just in different mediums. And then it’s fast growth just because it works really quickly for people who are like, “I just need a boost to my following and assets now.” So I was like, alright, fast and sustainable and then I looked at I typed in, I think those words, and like bamboo is the most sustainable plant and one of the fastest growing, so I was like, there you go. So that is where the name Social Bamboo came from but yeah, it’s been a podcast for about three and a half years and I’ve got my YouTube channel, Derek Videll but basically, I do a lot of free content, as far as, you know, interviewing people or just giving basics on getting started on Instagram and getting your initial sales on there. But then, it’s consulting as far as a business goes, I do “done with you” with people. I’ve done courses before and done for you right now, done with you is how I’d like to structure it.
Brynne Tillman 13:10
I love the done with you because then you’re getting their voice. It’s not your voice. Right?
Derek Videll 13:15
Yeah, it’s the inauthenticity thing, too. I don’t do agency work, or it’s so rare that I do I have to really know your business, or be willing to learn all about it, because and even then, when I do done for you work, I’m like, I’m not pressing publish until you look over every bit and make sure it sounds like you because it’s like, I don’t really know about yoga or whatever your market is nearly as well as you I just know the marketing tactics and how to set this up and how to go about it but I really need people’s voice to stay within it.
Brynne Tillman 13:44
So talk about some of these marketing tactics. What are some things that really work on Instagram? And what are some mistakes people are making?
Derek Videll 13:52
Yeah, so we’ll talk about the organic side of things first. It’s hard not to mention Reels. If you go through your Instagram feed, it’s almost all Reels at this point. So I think a lot of people know that they don’t love that because it’s not what they’re used to. Maybe you were just figuring out how to do your posting strategy and then all of a sudden Reels came about. Now, your engagements’ gone with your carousel posts, your single image posts, and you’re like, how do I even do this real thing, like I’m just figuring out like how to do Reels. It took me a while to do. You can go through my Reels evolution on my profile and see it right, you’ve really got to post through it. But the organic reach on Instagram, that’s where it is right now. So it’s very hard to grow a following from doing regular types of posts, single image, or carousel, but those still get to your own followers pretty well. So don’t be afraid to keep those up even if the light numbers aren’t what they used to be, they’re probably still finding their way in front of the followers who truly care about what you’re doing so you can still mix those in.
Reels though, you really can take any kind of content you’re doing and turn it into a Reel. It just might take a little bit of creative thinking. So, for instance, I was just thinking of a way that I wanted to say, “Hey, the Instagram algorithm doesn’t hate you, in particular, it hates us all the same,” so I can turn that into a Twitter quote, and I can, like screenshot it, or I can turn that into a Reel where I find an audio that’s like eight seconds long and at the halfway mark, like the beat changes, or just like, you know, the song indicates like something should change and I can just like film myself for eight seconds, not even saying anything sitting there with an audio and the first four seconds might say to everyone that thinks that Instagram algorithm hates them, dot dot dot, and then at the beat drops, say, it doesn’t hate to solve the same, like just, you can really turn anything into a Reel, but it just takes a little bit of, you know, understanding how do I match this up with an audio, and it’s just going to do a lot better. And that’s really the only way you can grow your following consistently from from posting, still easier said than done, especially because it takes the time. But that’s where the reach is, definitely.
Brynne Tillman 16:05
So, what are some of the tools and I’m gonna go back to the mistakes, but what are some of the tools that people can use easily. So like, we use Camtasia, and we use Canva. So Canva can do quick little things, what are some things you recommend for Reels?
Derek Videll 16:19
For Reels, just because it can take so long to do, especially if you’re doing a lip sync, I do like so many takes before I’m okay with it. I don’t get people who can batch (unintelligible), I’m like, this one took me way too long as it is. So if you can keep it on the app, for the sake of speed of content production, a lot of times if you can do it on the app, it can be great, especially if you’re like, you know what, the lighting is great, right now. I got something to say, I got high energy, I’m in a great mood, you don’t have to go home, get on your lights. If you want to do it right, then the car oftentimes has really great lighting and great sound too. so you should find a way to make Reels where you might not need external tools although I do use the same two that you just mentioned, actually. And then people who like a phone editor that’s more complex would be, Inshot, is very common. But Reels, TikTok just got basically every feature that InShot has on their creator, on their platform, like creating the content. They’re really trying to make it like you can do everything on here. But Reels, just for the sake of making it easy. If you have something to say, it can be hard to do it in one take in 60 seconds and get your point across and still be engaging content.
So just try filming yourself for a couple seconds and say like a hook, like what is this post about? Hey, guys, here’s three tips to grow on Reels, and then film yourself for a little bit. The first one I want to talk about is make sure at the beginning you have a captivating hook, stop and then like film yourself on the next one and just give yourself these like little microbursts to say it so that you can be very condensed, and then you can give yourself unlimited tries is more so each try even if you mess up that second 45 I hate having to restart the whole thing. So if you do all these little quick bursts of filming yourself, that can be a great way for a lot of the educators that listen to show, to get on Reels and then not require eight takes before you get it right. Just sit there and just keep filming little seconds at a time.
Brynne Tillman 18:21
I love that tip. That’s awesome. All right. So I want to go back what are some mistakes people are making on Instagram?
Derek Videll 18:26
The biggest two mistakes, I’ll still stick with Reels, I guess, for a second, then I’ll go to more general — two biggest mistakes with Reels, if they’re not trending, don’t look at, Oh, it’s my hashtags oh it’s posting time. It’s almost always going to be these two things: either the first couple seconds wasn’t engaging enough to get people to watch to the end and if your watch time is bad, it doesn’t matter how many people like it. Like we have a lot of friends. You know, you might like your friends’ posts that you’re like, “I’ll like it because I like you I don’t want to watch your video though.” And you just keep scrolling on. So Instagram kind of to knows that and they’re like, they’re not recognizing that as Oh, they must love this post, like didn’t even watch it so you have to get people to watch the post. Regardless of even if they like it. If your watch time is bad, it won’t go anywhere and bad watch time just means that they don’t know why they’d watch it. So you can have like the best tip in the world for buying real estate in your area but if you just start talking, “Yeah, so the other day I was out in you know, Warwick Rhode Island and…” blah blah blah, like they’ve already skipped over. So you have to say like, “Here is the best house hunting tip that I’ve ever heard in the camera” and then say it, so you need a hook. Right? Absolutely need it.
And then the last second has to be the coolest part of the video. So the engagement rate is largely based off of if that last-second hit, if it made them laugh or do whatever. If you imagine like a video of someone that just does like a crazy backflip on a motorcycle, I know there’s there’s probably not a lot of you out there listening to this podcast, I’ll give some more general examples, but a motorcyclist, he does a backflip and he lands it. If that video, he lands it, and then he keeps going off and then that keeps filming, people like clapping, and nothing else really happens for the next 10 seconds, get rid of it because that means that someone only has to watch the half point of the video until they’re satisfied. So they’ll skip over it so that the last second has to be the coolest second. So hey, I’m showing this to my friend, he’s going to get 100% watch time. Every person they show it to, it’s always going to get 100% watch time. And then they’re like, that was crazy. And then that’s when the like happens, if they’re like, that was crazy. And they’re like, just don’t even want…what’s, what’s happening? Oh, no, I can skip. There, like the like, doesn’t even happen anymore. So the emotion has to be in the last second, if you say a joke, the last second that people get it. Or as soon as people get the joke, cut it don’t keep going. So cut it this as soon as the main point or the coolest part has gotten across is very important.
Brynne Tillman 21:03
I love that tip. That’s awesome. And also what people are doing wrong, so they can fix it. So one of the things that I was fascinated in what you do is, well, I’m going to back up for a second. One of the things I see broken across all social media, when it comes to people that want to sell their thing, right that I teach social selling, is that they pitch too soon, they, they try to sell too soon before there’s any kind of interest or value. And, when we were chatting when we first met, you talked about giving away what you sell so that you’re actually attracting people, you can talk more about what you sell when there’s a giveaway versus I’m just selling to you. So talk to me a little bit about and talk to us a little bit about what that looks like and how you work with your clients around that particular topic.
Derek Videll 22:06
Yeah, the foundation of it is just what you said, the ability to advertise your services but through the lens of “I’m just giving away for free right now.” So their walls are down. If you imagine trying to run ads, Facebook, LinkedIn, it doesn’t matter. What would that ad say if I’m trying to sell my $2,000 consulting service or my $300 course, or even products, it can be really hard to come up with the proper copywriting. It’s a very, very advanced skill to be able to write, copywriting that actually, you know, would convert that, especially if it’s a higher ticket offer. But then you think alright, what if I run like a brand awareness campaign where it just kind of get people to know about me, and then maybe they’ll follow me. And then maybe eventually they’ll hear about what I talk, what I sell, and then it’s just such a long sales process. It’s hard for those ads to really be profitable, unless you’re looking like 10 years out like, oh, yeah, 10 years ago, that brand awareness campaign seems to be finally coming to fruition.
So what I found is a way to kind of combine the two is, you know, without having to be an awesome copywriter, if you do a giveaway for the exact service you sell, and then I’m a fan of running ads to this, if you already have an audience, and awesome, it’s great to run to them but it’s just a great way to be able to say, you know, hey, if you like this and give some details on it, you can enter to win here. And just so it doesn’t ever sound like a weird promotion coming out of nowhere, having just a reason for the contest is really how you give it that professional vibe. So you can say, “Hey, for our fifth anniversary in business, we’re choosing one lucky winner to win our full consulting package,” or our course, you know, literally whatever you sell is what the price should be very few exceptions to this. But like so if like your realtor like yeah, maybe don’t give away a home. But you can attract an audience of people in your area with tickets to a sporting game, or even I had a realtor who did this recently, where she was doing like a giveaway for this, this gift basket, there was like all these things that a new homeowner would want but then she also had like an event going on, where it was like a wine and design event. So you get like a free glass of wine for attending her design event. Like just what can you give away for free, it’s usually a lot easier to market just having the start of your sales process. So actually your first point of contact, be that. So like the tactical side of like, how does this work, it’s basically a very basic landing page that just ask for name and email. And on that page, just details here’s what you can win. Here’s when it ends. Here’s the reason why we’re doing this giveaway, name and email and then on the next page, it says we’ve got your entry, we’ll let you know in a couple of weeks if you want or not. In the meantime, if you want to increase your chances to win, you can like our Facebook page, you can connect with us on LinkedIn, you can follow our LinkedIn page for an extra entry. For your e-commerce, you can follow my Etsy store, you can review our product online, you can review the podcast, really whatever you are, this is where you can get very creative and just put anything your company needs. If you’re a new company put a survey there. “Hey, fill out a survey. What products would you even choose if you won our giveaway?” Lots of creative things that you can do but what I found is usually about 30 to 50% of people do at least one of these things. And of those people, most of them just do all of them, because they want your thing. They’re just trying to give themselves the best chance to win. And they’re also quick, oh, just gotta follow you on Instagram for another one, double my chances, like your Facebook page. Another one, so rather than running a campaign where I want to grow my LinkedIn, so let’s run a campaign over there. I want to grow my Instagram, let’s run the campaign over there, grow Facebook, all different campaigns, how can we go all social audiences at once is what this allows you to do. And that’s the second major step is populating them everywhere. But then the third one is announcing the winner. So on the day the giveaway ends, I mean, I have people that will get thousands of entries.
Brynne Tillman 26:12
How do you decide the winner before you announce it?
Derek Videll 26:15
Yeah, so I’ll use like, you actually just use like a giveaway creation tool. There’s actually quite a bit of them out there. Kickoff Labs is my personal favorite and I just had the founder on my podcast this morning, and he gave me a special link that gets a better deal than on the website too. So I can give you that too. Yeah, this tool just at the end, you’d say pick a winner and it just rallies everything. So yeah, I’m not keeping track of like, alright, they like my Facebook page, give them one extra, like it’s not manual, it’s all instantly automatically computed. Even their referral link, they get a custom link, hey, if you want to share this with a friend and they enter, you’ll get points automatically. Yeah, correct. Then everyone gets their own link for sharing it. So then they see the points. And there’s a leaderboard for their points versus other people’s points, too, so they’re like, I want to get all the points.
(Brynne: That’s awesome.) It’s fun. It’s really evolved. I’ve been doing this for like four years now, so you can imagine just staying in this lane for four years, I’ve really evolved it in all the ways that I can think of, and you know, it’s still got more to go but on the last day of the giveaway, once you choose the winner, you send out an email with the subject that’s like, you know, the results are in, we got our winner or something like that. So everyone opens it. It’s like 60 to 70% open it, and you say this is the person who won. For everyone else, thank you so much for playing as a consolation, you can get 25% off, you know, just whatever deal you want to do over the next week, you know, just now’s the time to run an offer. Because from the time they entered the giveaway, and the time it ends, you actually have a couple of weeks. So you send them emails, getting them used to your services, priming them, getting them ready to buy, and then you run the sale at the end. So you’ve got email, populate them everywhere, then run the sale at the end but it doesn’t require that you be a clever copywriter, just because you’re just giving away something for free. So it’s just a lot easier way to set marketing up.
Brynne Tillman 28:13
I absolutely love this. So to that, for all listeners and we are coming to the end here. If someone’s like, oh my gosh, I want to do this. How would they get in touch with you? And what does it look like to work with you?
Derek Videll 28:28
Yeah, so my professional program, which I just call the “you can’t possibly mess this up” program. How it works is you do get a video course and the worksheets and templates and everything. However, I’m not cool with you getting it and it’s sitting on the shelf and you never opening it. So what we do is once a week, we talk on the phone, and I just do like it pay as you (unintelligible), pay as you go. So if you only, if you want to knock it out in a couple of months or whatever, you can do that but it’s all at your own pace. So you just talk to me once a week and before you start the giveaway, I just look over literally everything. And since I’ve done it a hundred times, I’m like just don’t turn on your ads until I’ve given full approval and you’ll be good. And at this point, it’s very, as long as your offer works, it’s going to work pretty well. And then the freeway is I do have a free course that will show you like how to set up. Like what does the ad structure and what does this flow of traffic look like? So that’s called How to Build and Monetize a Following in 90 Days or Less and I’ll give you the link to that, otherwise it’s on socialbamboo.com/freecourse.
Brynne Tillman 29:33
Socialbamboo.com/freecourse. Derek This was awesome. I don’t know a lot about Instagram but it’s time. This was great. I thank you so much. We really, our audience will hope—I got so much value out of it, I know that our audience will.
Derek Videll 29:52
I’m glad to hear—people are like you’re going to talk about giveaways? I tried those. I’m like, just give me a second.
Brynne Tillman 29:59
Yeah, it’s a little bit different. Well, we loved having you on. Go follow Derek Videll on Instagram. Find him on LinkedIn and connect with him there because that’s where I live. And go sign up for his free course. I mean, that’s a no-brainer, right? Social bamboo.com/freecourse. Derek, thank you so much. I really appreciate your insights. Thank you, Brynne.
Bob Woods 30:23
Thanks for watching and join us again for more special guest instructors bringing you marketing, sales training, and social selling strategy that will set you apart. Hit the Subscribe button below to get the latest episodes from the Making Sales Social podcast. Give this video a thumbs up and comment down below on what you want to hear from us next. You can also listen to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and Google Play. Visit our website socialsaleslink.com for more information.