#89 - Growing Your Influence with Short-Form Video on Social Media
w/ Rob Clark
From @ThatTallFamily
🤔 Want to create deeper emotional impact with your institution’s storytelling and content creation efforts?
🎉Join the Newsletter!
Every week I send out a dose of insights and inspiration including:
💪Excerpts from that week's podcast episode
💪Case studies and best practices from other institutions
💪Tips for creating content that resonates and inspires action
(it’s free)
SHOW NOTES
In this conversation, John Azoni and Rob Clark discuss the evolution of Rob's family brand on social media, the impact of COVID on their career paths, and insights from Rob's new book on social media success. They explore the importance of storytelling, audience engagement, and the balance between quantity and quality in content creation. In this conversation, Rob Clark and John Azoni discuss the unpredictable nature of content success on social media, particularly in the context of higher education marketing. They emphasize the importance of balancing quality and quantity in content creation, understanding trends without losing brand identity, and defining success in social media efforts. The discussion also highlights the need for consistent content creation and the evolving role of social media in marketing strategies for universities.
Key takeaways:
One video can change everything—you don’t need a massive following if one strong piece hits the right audience.
Quantity leads to quality—consistent output is key to learning what resonates and gaining traction.
Shares matter most—likes are nice, but shares drive real reach and impact.
Organic content is your testing ground—see what works before investing in ads.
The future of marketing is social—Rob predicts social media teams will be the marketing teams within 5 years.
Links:
Connect with Rob Clark on LinkedIn
Link to book referenced in episode: Growing Your Influence by Rob Clark
Learn more about UNVEILD: https://unveild.tv
Subscribe to the Higher Ed Storytelling Newsletter: https://unveild.tv/newsletter
Watch podcast episodes on YouTube: Higher Ed Storytelling on YouTube
————————
Transcript (done with AI so only about 90% accurate):
00;00;00;09 - 00;00;28;15
John Azoni
I'm going to introduce my guest today with a story which seems fitting for a storytelling podcast. So my daughter Allie was eight, maybe around eight at the time, and I went up in the hallway outside her bedroom. I could hear her iPad in her room. She had her door closed, which is always a bad sign. You know, I never like a closed door with my daughters, so I do what any parent does that wants to just catch their kids doing something.
00;00;28;15 - 00;00;46;26
John Azoni
I busted through the door and she's in this contorted position on the floor. And I look on her screen and there is Rob Clarke and his kids from that tall family doing some challenge. She looks at me and she's like, I'm doing a tick tock challenge as nothing, nothing crazy. So, yeah, I was like, Hey, I know that guy.
00;00;47;06 - 00;00;59;22
John Azoni
And she thought I was really cool for for a few minutes there. So, yeah, with that, I want to welcome Rob Clarke to the show. And I also want to thank you, Rob, for giving me a little cool dad moment there.
00;01;01;16 - 00;01;04;15
Rob Clark
So we're all trying to do it right or just try to be the cool dad once in a while.
00;01;05;19 - 00;01;24;20
John Azoni
Once in a while. Yeah. So disclaimer to listeners, we don't let our kids watch Tick Tock. I think she was on. We just call everything Tick tock, anything that's a vertical video I think she was on shorts or something like that. And we also have since banned iPads in their rooms. So I recommend those two things for kids.
00;01;25;04 - 00;01;47;05
John Azoni
Unless you're watching that tall family, it's all very wholesome stuff. So you you were on the podcast couple of years ago, so you are now a you've reached frequent flier status with the higher Ed Storytelling University podcast. So just give us a brief primer for people who didn't listen to that episode, who you are, what you do, And we're going to talk about your book.
00;01;47;05 - 00;01;49;22
John Azoni
So I want to hear about you know, kind of your journey to writing a book.
00;01;50;11 - 00;02;21;24
Rob Clark
Yeah, for sure. So I think why it matters to the people that are listening to this podcast about four years ago, a little over four years ago, we decided to start a family brand on TikTok and Instagram and Facebook. Since then into YouTube as well, centered around just our family life. It came out of the necessity. I actually was working at a college at the time in Michigan, but that was like, if anyone remembers a few years ago, the world kind of shut down and some states were worse than others.
00;02;21;24 - 00;02;44;11
Rob Clark
And so Michigan wasn't a great place. We just moved there a few months prior and what happened was that the schools were shut down, restaurants were shut down, and it was just not a good place for us to be. No one was out and about. So moving to Michigan at that time was tough because we were meeting friends, we were meeting people, couldn't even, you know, church wasn't really happening like normal.
00;02;44;11 - 00;03;02;08
Rob Clark
And so all that to say, we decided, well, what if we quit her job? I were to quit my job. We'll sell our house and we'll move down south. So at least the kids could be at school. Then we could have a little bit more of a normal life and just a different situation. So the only problem was I didn't have a job lined up.
00;03;02;08 - 00;03;20;06
Rob Clark
And so we moved south of Atlanta and that is when we decided to start this idea of a family brand. And the whole idea was like, let's go for three, six months, maybe a year. And then during that time, the exposure within the lead me to some connections would lead me to a job. And that was the really the big idea.
00;03;20;06 - 00;03;48;17
Rob Clark
But it took off and ended up becoming our main thing. But to come full circle when we were in lanta and Atlanta's an amazing city, but at the same time it isn't crazy. Everybody was moving there. People from New York were coming in and spending 50 or $100,000 over asking price in cash. And so just it was a really hard place to find a home is a really hard place to just you know, it was a stressful place to live and it's amazing for the right people, but as a family.
00;03;49;01 - 00;04;07;12
Rob Clark
So we decided to come back to where I grew up in the area, small town, Illinois. We have family here, we have friends here. And so when we ended up here, then an opportunity came to do some more work for the university where my wife and I went to school at Greenville University, which was college at the time.
00;04;07;12 - 00;04;28;11
Rob Clark
So every time I say Greenville University in my head I'm thinking college. But anyway, long story short, and so doing some social media with the school and I've had, I think, four different jobs now in the last two years with the school. And so now helping with some of the marketing inside of athletics at the current moment and still doing our own thing with social media.
00;04;28;19 - 00;04;48;14
Rob Clark
And so I do have my toes dipped in the higher ed world. A lot of the things that we talk about really is no different. If you're running a for profit business, if you're running a church or if you're running side hustle, or if you're running a university, a lot of the marketing principles really aren't that much different.
00;04;48;22 - 00;04;53;03
Rob Clark
And so I think in some ways that's a good thing. In some ways it does make it challenging.
00;04;53;23 - 00;05;14;27
John Azoni
Yeah, I feel the same way about this podcast and most anything I talk about on LinkedIn, it's all the same principles. You know, we just sort of apply it to higher education, but that's why I liked your book. It's really applicable across the board, and I didn't realize maybe you didn't tell me this when we did the episode together, but I didn't realize until I was reading your book that you lived in Michigan.
00;05;14;27 - 00;05;33;23
Rob Clark
Yeah. So I grew up in Illinois. My wife, we met at college here in then, but she's from Canada. So after we both graduated, we actually moved back to Canada and we lived there for 20 years. So all of our kids were born there and it wasn't until 2020 we are, I guess is 2021 when we actually moved that, we came down.
00;05;33;23 - 00;05;54;09
Rob Clark
So we were in Michigan for six months, Spring Arbor University, my basketball coach when I was here in Greenville, my basketball coach is a VP there and so there was a connection and led to an opportunity there. And so it was a great opportunity for the school that I actually liked working in the role. It was just all the like outside of the job.
00;05;54;09 - 00;06;07;21
Rob Clark
That is a tough time and a tough situation. So if people ask you about Michigan, there's always a caveat. I'm like, Well, it was like the worst time ever to live anywhere or so. I really can't give a fair assessment of our time in Michigan.
00;06;08;15 - 00;06;27;03
John Azoni
Yeah, honestly, like COVID, COVID has launched so many new things for I think, so many people. I mean, that's why I went off on my own. I was working at a production company for over a decade and I loved it. You know, I worked with my buddies and we're having a good time. And I was like, and the work I was doing, I thought I'd never leave there.
00;06;27;03 - 00;06;47;09
John Azoni
And then COVID hit and like just the need for flexibility with my kids, like scheduling flexibility to be able to just shut work off and turn it back on whenever I needed to just became really apparent and just, you know, I feel like COVID just caused me to just reevaluate my whole life and what I wanted to do the rest of my life.
00;06;47;09 - 00;06;52;15
John Azoni
So I was just like overnight, I just was like, woke up one day. I was like, I need to go. I need.
00;06;53;22 - 00;06;54;00
Rob Clark
Yeah.
00;06;54;13 - 00;07;04;09
John Azoni
So, yeah. Okay, cool. Well, great books called Growing Your Influence. Hold it up here for the camera recently came out so give us a synopsis of the book and tell me how the launch went.
00;07;04;25 - 00;07;31;27
Rob Clark
Yeah. So the big idea is and I talk to people often about social media. And of course, one of the biggest questions is where we next week on YouTube will hit 2 billion views and sort of putting to put it in context, there's less than 2000 channels that have that many views. And so we've we've also had 2 billion on TikTok and then another almost half a billion on Instagram and Facebook combined.
00;07;31;27 - 00;07;52;15
Rob Clark
So people want to know like, what's your what's your secret sauce? And and the way social media works is that anyone could have a viral moment. Like there are some things like you just don't know why it works. And so there are people that have, you know, ten videos and one goes viral, meaning it gets a million, 2 million views, whatever it may be, that it really performs very well.
00;07;52;25 - 00;08;12;22
Rob Clark
But what we found is that we have over 2000 videos that we put out now. And so there is a consistency where we have every single week we're having a video go to a million plus. And so what we found is that there is there is a mix, meaning that there is a little bit of skill, meaning that you have to tell a story.
00;08;13;00 - 00;08;34;19
Rob Clark
There's a little bit about all the things that the platform wants you to do, how important the first couple of seconds are using the right music, using the even the right format, where as I look at higher ed, there are so many videos and I know this is the work that you do is there's beautiful videos that are shot in horizontal format and those are amazing for YouTube.
00;08;34;19 - 00;08;56;20
Rob Clark
Those are amazing for presentations, but for social media, for vertical videos, they're not great. And so a lot of people will have a very nice video and they just want to post it as is. Well, the platform's not going to push that out. And so because it's just it's not the right thing for the right place. And so there's little things like that and vice versa, like and so it's not either or.
00;08;56;20 - 00;09;24;04
Rob Clark
It's both and but it's putting the right product in the right place at the right time to write music. And so there is a science to that. And so people often ask me, like, what can I do to get my videos to be seen? And that's the whole point, is that you may not ever have a video go viral, meaning millions of views, but if you're posting and you're having 500 or 1000 views per video, what can you do to get 5000 to 10000 views per video?
00;09;24;15 - 00;09;46;12
Rob Clark
That is very, very possible. And so in a lot of times it's the small things that you can do to make that happen. And so that was the big idea behind the book is I talk with people about what they need to do differently. I just realize, like I got this information, how can I package it in such a way that if someone does want to get better, then it's an easy resource and and I love it.
00;09;46;13 - 00;10;06;10
Rob Clark
I love talking about social media. It's like anyone, it's like you love talking about your kids, you love talking about your hobbies. And so the things that you care about. Having said that, obviously there's only so many conversations you can have. There's only so many podcast that you can host. John And so the idea behind the book was it was an opportunity for people that wanted to go a bit deeper.
00;10;06;20 - 00;10;21;05
Rob Clark
And of course, anything, you know, anything in the book, you could find it easily on the Internet. But yeah, it's like, where do you look? Where do you start, What works, what does it? So for us, we want to come from a place like, listen, this is what we've done for the last four years and it's worked very well.
00;10;21;16 - 00;10;43;20
Rob Clark
And so it's one of those things where every caveat in the book is that, you know, the results aren't going to be the same for everybody. I think if someone took my playbook, they could actually do better than we have. And of course, some people won't do as well because there's a lot of variables. But this playbook will actually get you to be efficient in doing social media, giving you the best chance to be seen by many more people.
00;10;44;04 - 00;11;02;29
John Azoni
Yeah, absolutely. The whole thing with your with that tall family is your whole family's very tall and kind of has like that novelty to it. But what, what was it like? There was there was one video where it just really took off for you guys or was there like one kind of turning point where you decided like this was a viable pursuit?
00;11;03;14 - 00;11;24;05
Rob Clark
So actually I knew it was fun. If you go to our YouTube channel, I was posting YouTube videos eight years ago in early on. I do remember making my very first video for YouTube and I think YouTube was only like six or eight months at the time. And I made a video and it's actually my son, my son, who's now 21.
00;11;24;05 - 00;11;41;00
Rob Clark
He was young and he was sitting in a chair trying to put on his socks as a as a one year old. And he couldn't do it. He was struggling. He's frustrated. I play some music. There's actually a song. There's a song way back in the day called It Sucks to Be You. And so I played that song and he's a struggling.
00;11;41;07 - 00;12;01;19
Rob Clark
And so it's funny, looking back, it was very much like a TikTok style video then, but obviously that didn't exist at the time. And so when I put that video, I actually ended up I was working at an insurance brokerage and I used that as an ad for insurance brokerage. And I said, like, life is hard. Insurance doesn't have to be.
00;12;02;00 - 00;12;17;18
Rob Clark
And so when he got it, it got like 2000 views. And so even the very first video for me, I realized, like you can create a piece of content that we created for free. We could put it on the Internet for free and it could be watched by thousands of people for free. No other advertising can you do that?
00;12;17;18 - 00;12;33;10
Rob Clark
I mean, billboards, radio, TV. You got to pay money for those things. And a lot of those things. You don't get any instant feedback or any feedback at all. How often you know, if you put up a billboard, you have no idea who sees it. You may know how many people drive by it, but that doesn't tell you anything.
00;12;33;21 - 00;12;55;18
Rob Clark
So for me, I knew at that moment, like 20 years ago, that I knew that that having content online, there's something there. Now, fast forward when COVID first happened, we're living in Canada at the time before the lockdown started to happen, and I think it was like November, maybe December, and I forget stuff was starting to happen. Just that was right before things started to happen.
00;12;55;18 - 00;13;13;24
Rob Clark
But I was coaching my daughter's basketball team and so there and in junior high at the time, I think grade seven, grade eight, and were in the gym and Tik Tok just came out or or just kind of hit that tipping point. And so we all had it, you know, as a family, scrolling through is a new thing.
00;13;13;24 - 00;13;32;16
Rob Clark
It's interesting is blowing up everybody's talking about it. And so I decided to make this video where I had the assistant. I was like, Here, hold this camera. And my daughter was underneath the hoop and just playing with basketball underneath the hoop. And so I went up alongside dunked. I like dunked on her on the video and dropped down and like got in her face, like very playfully.
00;13;32;27 - 00;13;51;25
Rob Clark
And we put that on Tik tok. And and I remember like it went a couple of hundred thousand and I still remember doing like a Facebook post about like there's there's nothing like getting street cred with your kids friends and having a video with hundreds of thousands of views. Well, that video eventually went up to like 5 million views.
00;13;52;01 - 00;14;16;21
Rob Clark
Wow. And so that was our very first video that ever kind of went viral. Well, they go viral. And so, like I knew at that moment that this this short form style of video, because even that's what I posted, you know, 18 years ago, like I knew like that worked for us. But even before that, for years before that, I was making hundreds of long form video and as you know, John long form videos very hard.
00;14;16;24 - 00;14;39;07
Rob Clark
And so I would spend hours editing video at night that would get 100 views, 200 views, 73 views. And like, oh, that was but funny story. I remember going in to a car dealership before we had any followers at all and pitching to him to give us a Honda Odyssey in exchange for us creating content for his dealership.
00;14;39;19 - 00;14;58;28
Rob Clark
He literally laughed in my face and said, No, we're going to no one's ever going to pay you to make content. So like, I knew like it just makes so much sense that creating content and for people to view it and in a way that could be like, I can have an idea, I can create a video, have it out to the world and be seen by millions of people within a 12 hour window.
00;14;58;28 - 00;15;22;13
Rob Clark
I mean, the actual filming, editing and posting could happen within minutes. And then within a day you can have millions of views. And so just with that, that quickness of that feedback loop, like there's no doubt that this going forward, it's only going to continue to grow and we're going to look back in a couple of years and wonder why we spent any money on anything except social media for sure.
00;15;22;13 - 00;15;46;07
John Azoni
Yeah, I think it's such a great awareness tool and I actually like, you know, we do mostly I would say to be transparent, we do mostly like mid and bottom funnel type content for clients. We have started like experimenting with like, okay, while we're doing that stuff, this is probably only going to be relevant to someone that's already considering the school, you know, seeing someone's story in the engineering program or something like that.
00;15;46;13 - 00;16;08;04
John Azoni
What can we do that's more top of funnel that could maybe get some legs in a vertical format? You know, it's a little more topical, you know, And so that's one thing I've just learned is that like so much of that virality is great at the top of the funnel and then it's such a good pairing with the longer form stuff once they're ready for it.
00;16;08;04 - 00;16;21;29
John Azoni
But like I'm the first to admit, I'm like, I don't know that like, hundreds of people are going to watch this video that I'm making. But, you know, even if like 50 of the right people watch it in the right context, I mean, they got to like, pay attention. You know, you make.
00;16;21;29 - 00;16;43;28
Rob Clark
Yeah, you're exactly right. It's both. And and so where the idea that a lot of times in marketing and definitely in higher ed and I know you hear this all the time it's like well we just want one really, really good piece. Yeah. And like, well, it doesn't work that way. And then at the same time, if you decide to just go, we want to go super wide and never go, you know, a mile wide and an inch deep.
00;16;44;09 - 00;17;04;21
Rob Clark
That's not helpful either, right? So it's a both and, and so the beauty is with social media, you can do the wide if you know what you're doing, you can do it fairly affordable and fairly quickly. But it does give you that awareness that then allows you to go deeper. But if they don't know about you, you see that all the time.
00;17;04;21 - 00;17;20;25
Rob Clark
You can make the best video in the world, but if no one sees it, then it doesn't matter. And so whether we like it or not, the reality is, is that we live in a place where people don't sit down and start watching an eight minute video. That rarely happens. They usually start with a 15 second video.
00;17;21;15 - 00;17;37;29
John Azoni
Or I mean, much less a even like a 30. No one goes out of their way to watch a commercial, you know, or a marketing video. No one's like, man, I can't wait to get home from work so I can sit down with pretzels and beer and watch, you know, watch college marketing videos, you know?
00;17;38;02 - 00;17;59;24
Rob Clark
No, not at all. Unless actually funny that you say that because last night, my wife and I, we decided it's like because we're a basketball family. And so we decide like, okay, when we watch the basketball game, let's actually watch the commercial and the commercials because we're just kind of curious, like because you're right, like outside of Super Bowl, when's the last time I was like, Oh, I want to watch a commercial was just kind of interested in And I don't know, I'm not deep in that world.
00;17;59;24 - 00;18;18;14
Rob Clark
But it's interesting, a lot of the commercials had like A-list and B-list celebrities and so like, man, they must be paying a super expensive. Yeah. And so it's like these are celebrities and, you know, they're getting paid at least a million, probably more for these commercials. And then they got to shoot them and they got to put them on TV.
00;18;18;23 - 00;18;32;29
Rob Clark
And so at the end of that, you're probably paying ten, 20, $50 million to be putting these commercials out for exposure. And if you if you did social media right, is that even close for a fraction of the cost, you could reach more people?
00;18;33;20 - 00;18;50;07
John Azoni
Yeah. So I want to take us through into your book, like what's one or two spots in the book that you want people to like really pay attention to? Like, like earmark this, come back to it, underline it like what's kind of like some of the really main content there.
00;18;50;29 - 00;19;13;14
Rob Clark
So I think, you know, as they get into the book, some of it it starts off just as awareness and I think if for higher ed if we started there because and that's sometimes you got to put in the book where I think if we take a step back from our jobs, whatever our jobs may be and just think about how the world operates, then none of this is surprising.
00;19;13;14 - 00;19;41;18
Rob Clark
It feels like common sense is like, yeah, no one's going to go watch commercials, but what do they do? You go anywhere and people have their phones with them. They're always like, If someone leaves the house without their phone, they're going to go back to the house and get it. It's just a world that we live in. So the book starts with pointing out some of those things where we got to realize, like the world we live in that we could get in front with our message if we believe in our message, we can put that message in front of the world at any given moment.
00;19;41;28 - 00;20;08;25
Rob Clark
Instead of trying to say like, okay, only in these certain times, in this idea, like they've got to be in the right place at the right time, they've got to be in the right mood, like there's just too many variables instead of like, let's put them wherever we can. And one of the things they talk about that I think in higher ed we need to consider more is the quantity leads to quality, meaning that sometimes we'll spend, you know, tens of thousands of dollars for these high end videos.
00;20;09;06 - 00;20;26;02
Rob Clark
But we have no thought process of how to get people to watch those videos and they're great. And that is going deep and you need that. But if we don't think about how do we get people there in the first place, then I think we're wasting money. And that's where social media could come in that we can drive people.
00;20;26;11 - 00;20;48;29
Rob Clark
And of course, so if we reach 100,000 people only, you know, 10,000, 20,000 may get to them the longer thing, but opposed to only a handful. So there's little things like that practicality where I talk about like quantity. And another thing is like we don't know exactly what people want to see it Actually speaking about higher ed, there's this and I may get the story wrong and you may know the story.
00;20;49;08 - 00;21;00;04
Rob Clark
There is a university at one point, and I think it was up north somewhere where when they built a new building, they actually didn't put sidewalks in. They went a year or two. He followed the story and they and.
00;21;00;05 - 00;21;01;13
John Azoni
Then they remember I heard it. But yeah.
00;21;01;18 - 00;21;22;12
Rob Clark
Yeah. And so they had see where the students walked and then they wore a path and then they put the sidewalks where the students were going. And I think that's real. But I think it's also a perfect analogy of how we need to think. And so instead of trying to say, well, this is how you need to think and this is how you need to consumer content and this is how you so we need to go to the people and be like, no, like how do you consume content?
00;21;22;12 - 00;21;38;06
Rob Clark
How do we put our message where you're at already? And so I think the book talks a lot about that. And so one of the stories that I tell is that there's in this happens if you create social media at all where you will make a video and you think it's going to be amazing, it's like, this is amazing.
00;21;38;06 - 00;21;53;20
Rob Clark
It's going to crush. People are going to love it and it doesn't. Now the vice versa happens. There is a time and I tell the story in the book about how we did a video just because it's like we know that we have to get the quantity out, so we need to make videos. And we did this idea.
00;21;53;20 - 00;22;07;19
Rob Clark
I didn't think it was very good. I don't think like it. It just didn't feel great to me. I was like, whatever, but we got to put it out anyway. It ended up having 225 million views on YouTube. We saw our best video of all time on YouTube and so on. I didn't think it was going to do that well.
00;22;07;27 - 00;22;28;18
Rob Clark
And so that just shows you that we don't always get to decide what the people want. So in a college, there's so many things like in higher ed, there's all these different programs, there's a different sports, there's the different clubs, there's just a culture of the town or the city that you have your school, and there's so many things and students choose schools for all those things.
00;22;29;06 - 00;22;52;05
Rob Clark
You know, sometimes there are, you know, the one offs, like I'm only going here to play basketball or I'm only going here to take pre-med. But the vast majority take a lot of different factors into consideration. And so and I think that's where we need to think about quantity, our colleges and our universities. We have to have social media that touches all those things because all those things are how students choose which school to go to.
00;22;52;05 - 00;23;13;06
John Azoni
Yeah, absolutely. I love that story about the sidewalks. You know, I tell people, clients and we work with them. I'll tell them like I, you know, I can make a good video, but I can't tell the future. Like, I can't if we're not starting with data here on what your audience likes. You know, all of us in this room are just making assumptions and we're going to guess.
00;23;13;16 - 00;23;34;28
John Azoni
And so I always yeah, I really lean into that, like, let's try some stuff, you know, let's try some thought leadership stuff, Let's try some stories, let's try, you know, get a guest speaker on stage and have them talk about something interesting. You know, it really like you just don't know what's going to work. And that's where sometimes I get, you know, a little bit cautious.
00;23;35;00 - 00;23;59;24
John Azoni
It's like we're going to put like all these like we're hundred thousand dollars into this one video, you know? And I'm like, you should have a video. Like, you should have one video that you feel is really captures the spirit of your brand and you're going to blast you're going to put paid ads behind it. And so it's not really about like, you know, you're going to control who watches it just like a commercial, you know, on TV or something like that.
00;23;59;24 - 00;24;18;15
John Azoni
So I think that schools should have that. But I think, you know, that's why, like, I'm really big on just like helping schools get like more of a quantity of content, still quality, but really balancing that like, hey, let's not like belabor this one video, let's just get it out there. You know?
00;24;18;15 - 00;24;38;13
Rob Clark
Yeah, yeah. And there is a line and that's where we always have to figure out. There is a as our kids would say, cringe, right? So we got to be above cringe, but at the same time, if we're at a 70%, we can spend a lot more money to get to 90%. And that actually might not actually make a difference going from 70 to 90%.
00;24;38;13 - 00;24;38;25
Rob Clark
Yeah.
00;24;39;19 - 00;24;53;18
John Azoni
Yeah. So one of the questions that I get often is like, how do how do colleges, universities stay on top of trends? And you have a part in your book about like, you know, the pitfall of chasing trends. So tell me about that.
00;24;54;16 - 00;25;19;05
Rob Clark
Yeah. So it seems like most people doing social media, including higher ed, they fall in one or two categories. It's either never go to trends or always go to trends. And so like most things in life is a both. And and so the idea is that we we want to use trends because they're a trend for a reason, but not to chase them and only do trends because what happens when you only do that, then you don't actually build your own brand.
00;25;19;18 - 00;25;35;04
Rob Clark
Now it could be helpful because if you jump on the right trend, you could go viral. You're going to pick up some people, you're going to learn a few things. But if that's all that you do, then you're not building your brand. And so but when you're building your brand, you got to also be aware of culture and where things are at.
00;25;35;04 - 00;25;53;18
Rob Clark
And that's the beauty of social media is I think we could we could blend those two. But part of that, too, is getting back to what you were talking about, that we can't predict the future. And this is one of the things that social media does that no other marketing can do, at least at this speed and at this scale.
00;25;53;18 - 00;26;12;02
Rob Clark
Is that right now, social media, you know, the term organic basically means free, that you can put a piece of content out there for free and see how it performs. And so, no, no other media can do that. Like we've already talked about radio, TV, billboards. You got to pay and you have no idea if it's going to perform well or not.
00;26;12;14 - 00;26;32;15
Rob Clark
But with social media, you can actually put out a bunch of content, different styles, and you could see because what's going to happen is you're going to have 3000, 5000, 7000, 3000, 8063, and all of a sudden 52,000 views. And you could take a look at like, why did that video of 52,000 views do so much better than everything else?
00;26;33;02 - 00;26;51;23
Rob Clark
And what you can do is then take that piece of content and then put paid media behind it, meaning you could then turn that piece of content into your ad. And so I see so many ads because I'm looking for them of universities and they look like every other university. You just swap out a logo and they look exactly the same.
00;26;52;07 - 00;27;15;22
Rob Clark
And we all know that if you get to metrics, yes, there's going to say you had so many impressions because the companies are paying them to get these impressions, but nobody's consuming that. You're not building your brand. It's people are going right by it. But if you actually had organic content that you made creative for your university, that performed well, if you put money behind it, you know that people have already been watching it.
00;27;15;22 - 00;27;34;01
Rob Clark
So you know that it resonates for whatever reason, and then you could use that as your ad. So that's a word that, you know, big Fortune 500 companies are doing this a lot now, and it's called brand formats. And the idea is that you see what does well and then you pour the gasoline on that fire. Right? And so it takes the guessing out of it.
00;27;34;05 - 00;27;47;27
Rob Clark
And so that's another thing where social media now is changing how marketing works, because I think as more and more people catch on, why would you not use marketing that works opposed to the old school where you have no idea if it's effective or not?
00;27;48;22 - 00;28;09;17
John Azoni
Yeah, I mean, totally. It's such a good, you know, that the partnership between top of funnel with mid and bottom funnel needs to be there. Like there has to be, you know, the social media team needs to be talking to the marketing team and the the video team because they're probably the ones that are going to figure out faster what's going to work.
00;28;09;17 - 00;28;30;00
John Azoni
And so I see sometimes like schools that will put out like a commercial and then they'll brag about like how many impressions that it got. So it's got like so many, like millions of impressions. And I'm kind of like, that tells you nothing. I mean, of course you got the impressions. It was on Hulu and people had no choice but to watch it and no one went out of their way.
00;28;30;00 - 00;28;59;17
John Azoni
You don't even know if they actually watched it. They might have just probably just got on their phone, started scrolling Facebook because they can't hit a skip button. So like, that really tells you nothing. But the organic stuff really is such a great data mind for you can see. Yeah, like you said, just those spikes and sometimes I feel like it's maybe you have some thoughts on this I find especially with YouTube shorts, like I could post like five clips from the podcast and one of them will have a clear spike.
00;28;59;17 - 00;29;16;15
John Azoni
But there's really no like, there's no telling like what was it about that one? I don't feel like the hook was any better necessarily. Sometimes I feel like it's a little bit random, but there are times when something just clearly hits, you know, and and you can go back and kind of reverse engineer that.
00;29;17;08 - 00;29;50;03
Rob Clark
Yeah. And this is where the biggest metric or the biggest piece of engagement for social media is the shares. So the likes matter. The comments are great as well. And so to see what people are saying about the video, saying about your school, that's important. But when people share that piece of content, then that's when virality happens. And so in those clips, and that's when I look at the things that I have done that's gone viral, it makes sense when you think through the lens of why would someone share this?
00;29;50;16 - 00;30;13;09
Rob Clark
And so and there's people that built entire brands off of creating content designed to share, like send this to your redhead, send this to your friend if your friend sent you this. I mean, you got to take them out for a drink or, you know, they literally build it in for that piece of content to be shared because that's the most valuable piece of social media right now, because it leads to more views.
00;30;13;09 - 00;30;21;16
Rob Clark
And so any time you have lots of views on any video guaranteed that the shares are going to be proportionately higher.
00;30;21;16 - 00;30;40;00
John Azoni
Yeah, that's a great piece of advice and that's something that I think about a lot, too. You know, most of the stuff that I share is like thought leadership stuff, but even within that is like I always stop and think like, would anyone have a reason to share this? Like, does it help someone express their identity? Like, this is what I believe too, or does it help them?
00;30;40;04 - 00;30;48;04
John Azoni
You know, do they want to just be passive aggressive and share that and share this thing that's like that's like, I want my boss to see this, but I don't want to actually tell them, you know?
00;30;48;04 - 00;30;49;05
Rob Clark
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00;30;49;21 - 00;31;00;25
John Azoni
So, yeah, that is really important. So as you, it seems like you look at other schools, what they're doing. Are there any like what schools are you a fan of? They're short form content.
00;31;01;18 - 00;31;27;05
Rob Clark
Yeah. So one of the things that makes social media tricky is how do we define success? And so, for example, that whole family for us, like our goal is virality. Our goal is the maximum amount of use because how we get paid is in brands reach out to us and they say, Well, we know that if you make a video for us, it's going to get viewed by a lot of people, which is valuable for us.
00;31;27;17 - 00;31;59;24
Rob Clark
And so that's our goal now at a university. That's not necessarily the goal now that's a piece of it, because the more you get in the funnel, more than likely the more people you have that can see your school and or dot your school. So as a piece of it, but it's not the only piece. So having said that as a caveat, one of the things that makes it really tough is that in the same thing as big universities with a big brand name, and so I always use the word Harvard because for whatever reason, Harvard sticks out my head is that Harvard is a global brand.
00;32;00;06 - 00;32;25;16
Rob Clark
They have billions in their endowment, and so they're in a different category. Like they you know, they could do whatever they want. Money's not the issue. The brand is not the issue. Now, politically, there has been some things that have kind of hurt their brand. And but that's a whole different thing. But so when they do a piece of content on social media, like it's going to be viewed just because they already have that built in brand The same thing with professional sports teams.
00;32;25;16 - 00;32;58;14
Rob Clark
I would say that most professional sports teams, there are exceptions, but most of them aren't very good at social media at all. But because they're already a professional sports team and they got a fan base, it looks like their social media does well. They got lots of followers, they get lots of views. But if you look at, for example, Savannah bananas, which if anyone is at all on social media, you've probably seen a piece of their content, like they actually have more followers and more views Then like all of the Major League Baseball teams combined.
00;32;58;14 - 00;33;27;03
Rob Clark
And so for them, obviously they're doing social media very well. And so but it's built into their product. It's a piece of they are a marketing media company that also plays baseball. And I think the way Jesse, the owner describes it is that they're in entertainment, they're entertainers. And so, of course, that's a piece of it. So all that to say is that when it comes to what schools are doing it well, unfortunately, I can't give you one example.
00;33;27;03 - 00;33;47;11
Rob Clark
I do look at schools, but it's hard to tell because I don't know on the back end. So, for example, we had and this was even before I was involved at the school that I'm at now, Greenville University City, the women's soccer program years ago, when Tik Tok was new and early, they were posting videos. They actually didn't have that many followers.
00;33;47;11 - 00;34;11;01
Rob Clark
They posted a video that had a couple hundred views, and a girl in Texas laying on her bed sees one of these videos because she's into soccer and it's a soccer video. So it resonated with her because the coach stands up now. She's been on campus for years now and she plays on the soccer team. And so so that one video with only a couple of hundred views led to a student.
00;34;11;01 - 00;34;33;25
Rob Clark
So it was free to make and ended up leading to a good player on the team and a student at the college. So all that to say is like, it's hard to say what is success and what is it. I would say without a doubt that success. But what I would say is that if you're not doing social media and if you're not doing it the way that it's going to make it most effective, then I would say you're doing it wrong.
00;34;34;00 - 00;34;57;00
Rob Clark
And so I would look at examples and so little things where not using the right format, you know, it being way too long, if it's only about like there is a lot of like inside jokes. And so those would be examples where I'm like, that's not a good use of social media. Now you can have an on campus account, you know, like the barstool accounts or whatever.
00;34;57;00 - 00;35;14;03
Rob Clark
So you can have an account for students on campus. But when you're talking about the university as a whole, you need to think through the lens of like, okay, how do we tell the story of who we are as a school? And there should be serious videos, but there also should be fun videos as well that just kind of gets you attention.
00;35;14;03 - 00;35;33;20
Rob Clark
So we and this wasn't a video we made, but right now there's a video all over the Internet over time and House of Highlights and everyone's sharing it where a track meet this past weekend. One athlete ran up and on a high jump and missed the mat. And so so that happened at our school isn't one of our athletes you know.
00;35;33;20 - 00;35;54;22
Rob Clark
And those moments happen where all of a sudden now we're not going to get any students out of that. But those are types of examples where students are like, Hey, our schools on House of Highlights and over time. And so there's fun things like that, which is getting a lot of views probably won't lead to anything where sometimes a video with a thousand views can lead to a new student or a new donor.
00;35;55;07 - 00;36;10;03
Rob Clark
So All that to say is like social media. But again, just I'm not finished. My point here is like, if we don't make content, put it out there that none of that happens. And the fact that it's free, it'd be foolish of us not to lean into a more.
00;36;10;26 - 00;36;35;11
John Azoni
Yeah, it makes me think of this quote that belong to this sort of like accountability, like action, like it's called commit action. It's like productivity accountability for small business owners and the founder. You know, in one of his yearly retreats or whatever, he said, like, you know, what they do is is try to get you to think of the highest leverage tasks that you can do and do those every day.
00;36;35;11 - 00;36;56;07
John Azoni
He's like, But there might be a task that like it's like a slot machine, like you can just pull the slot machine. It's very low effort and eventually something will hit and that will take off for you and produce a lot of return on investment. But if you look at it like pull by pull of the lever, it's not going to make sense, you know?
00;36;56;07 - 00;37;19;23
John Azoni
And I think that that's like, yeah, it's like the more you get out there and the more you just put stuff out there and think about quantity, the more opportunities you are pulling that slot machine lever. And that one video, I don't remember you said this on our podcast a couple of years ago, like one video could make up for, you know, a long time of no risk of like, no results.
00;37;20;09 - 00;37;39;15
Rob Clark
You know, you're exactly right. And I say that all the time. One video can change everything. And it doesn't necessarily have to be the one video that goes viral. And so, for example, I, I did a video early on is a brand deal. And it wasn't even a lot of money compared to what we do. But that one connection led to a little bit more.
00;37;39;15 - 00;37;58;18
Rob Clark
And he introduced me to someone that writes for Forbes and ended up getting a story about us in Forbes. And, you know, things roll from there. So it's one of those things like sometimes it's not even the video that gets the millions and millions of views that can change everything. And so it's sometimes you put things out there and you don't know where it's going to lead.
00;37;58;28 - 00;38;04;29
Rob Clark
I really do like like, well, I've never heard that before, but it does make a lot of sense. And I think it applies a lot to marketing as well.
00;38;05;14 - 00;38;13;19
John Azoni
Yeah, well, cool. This is great. So give us a little commercial for your book. Where can people buy it? Who should buy it?
00;38;13;19 - 00;38;44;01
Rob Clark
Yeah, so everyone in the world should buy it. And so so it's on Amazon. It's only on Amazon. And so let me give you a hot take as I push on my book. And I want to go on the record and I've said this, but this is first time I've said it publicly out there, All right. That I believe within five years the social media team is the marketing team that the social media managers, that the social media directors, whatever you want to call them, are.
00;38;44;01 - 00;39;02;06
Rob Clark
Now, the CMO is the chief marketing officers. I think we underestimate, even though we know how powerful social media is, we complain about it all the time, rightfully so. And you know, get back to the opening story. I think it's a great move to not let iPads be in the rooms of kids. We have the same rule in our house.
00;39;02;06 - 00;39;25;03
Rob Clark
No phones in the rooms with the door shut. At the same time, our kids are very versed in social media because it's also the world we live in. And I want them to be able to operate to the best of their ability. So my hot take is, is that in within five years marketing, 99% of marketing is social media because the writing is already on the wall is already happening.
00;39;25;09 - 00;39;44;27
Rob Clark
If you look at what Fortune 500 companies are doing because they have all the research and all the money and all the data, that's they're at and that's where they're going even quicker right now. So schools, unfortunately, all schools, the as an industry, higher ed as an industry, unfortunately, many times we have been too slow to the party.
00;39;45;13 - 00;40;06;19
Rob Clark
And so I would say if you're listening this podcast, more likely you're in higher ed that you could get this book and it's going to tell you how to be effective. I would say read the first three chapters and then if you have any questions. What I do is in the back of the book, I actually have my cell phone number and I tell people, if you want to call or text, I will answer any question you have about social media.
00;40;07;06 - 00;40;33;13
Rob Clark
Now, there's a lot of experts out there that don't have that actually aren't even like, okay, I'm going to get in trouble here. But it blows my mind that we have chief marketing officers of schools, DPS of marketing that don't use social media like they don't have social media. And to me that's crazy. That would be like me in charge of biology and say, okay, Rob, like you barely passed biology in high school.
00;40;33;13 - 00;40;56;10
Rob Clark
We want you to run the biology department and try to get more kids into pre-med. Like it's just mind blowing to me. Anyway, that's my take. But there's nothing on this planet that can get your message out to the world quicker, faster, more efficient, and for free than social media. So why wouldn't you want to use that tool to the best of your advantage?
00;40;56;21 - 00;41;11;10
Rob Clark
And so there's a lot of people that do social media who are my book tells you is how to do it to the best of your ability. It doesn't mean you're going to be a superstar. You don't have to dance on TikTok. But if you have a message and you want to get to the world, my book is a playbook.
00;41;11;10 - 00;41;27;21
Rob Clark
Again, you can find it anywhere out there on the Internet if you knew where to search. But I packaged it. It's super easy. The only problem with social media, like there's a lot that changes so fast and so already it's like, oh, there's like three things I want in the book, like right now that have changed in the last three months.
00;41;27;21 - 00;41;31;13
Rob Clark
But I guess I'll have to be book number two.
00;41;31;13 - 00;41;36;10
John Azoni
Yeah, maybe someday there'll be some AI where like books in print will just update themselves or.
00;41;37;01 - 00;41;41;10
Rob Clark
Yeah, actually you're probably right.
00;41;41;10 - 00;41;50;00
John Azoni
Well, awesome. Even just the last 3 minutes of this episode is better. Yeah. So my favorite soundbites drive your permission to clip the CMO thing.
00;41;50;08 - 00;42;04;27
Rob Clark
And of course, of course I got a joke. I jokingly say, I'm going to get in trouble. I mean, what I actually do and I do say it to people all the time because I want to be on the record as being correct. It's like, Hey, remember when Rob said this, so I want to put stuff out there.
00;42;04;27 - 00;42;12;22
Rob Clark
So I would love for you to put it out on social. So in three years I can go back and be like, Hey, I was talking to John about this. You should have listened. Yeah.
00;42;13;08 - 00;42;20;15
John Azoni
Yeah, totally. All right, man. Super great having you again. Yeah, that's good. You're welcome. Anytime. And thanks.
00;42;20;28 - 00;42;22;18
Rob Clark
Okay. Thanks, John. We'll talk later.
