Who are you and what does your company do?
My name is Narcis Radoi – but people call me Nachos. I built my own network of almost 500,000 people on social media and can reach almost 80 million people through an indirect influencer marketing network that I control.
My full-time day job is managing the digital strategy and its implementation for Petroplan. This company is a global recruitment specialist in oil, gas, energy and renewables that celebrated 40 years of business in 2016. I also do talks on marketing and run mentoring workshops for start-ups and small businesses in my free time (as part of Marketing.Net.Co – my old marketing agency).
My influence has been recognized across the Internet:
- Top 100 Marketers to Follow – Associate of Forbes
- Top 0.1% of Experts in Marketing and Digital Marketing - Klout
- Top 0.5% Social Media Influencers – Klear
- Top 1% Influencers in Advertising – Kred
How and why did you get started in social media?
I started when I was 14 - almost 14 years ago – by trying to promote music events and our school’s mock-company as part of my work experience. When I turned 18, I progressed into being a Marketing and Advertising Manager for a couple of nightclubs. The continued promotion of my own events and giving advice to people spawned my own marketing agency. This agency started out as an agency for music industry but soon branched out to all industries as demand increased for its services.
What do you believe the benefits of using social media for business are?
There are many benefits, but the rewards are not what people expect. Start-ups and small companies expect social media to bring them direct sales. One thing I always try to explain is that social media is best used brand exposure and content marketing awareness.
It should be used to create engagement and interaction while driving traffic to a website. For some reason, a lot of people expect to put money into social media and track results in sales, rather than interaction. It is true that good engagement drives sales, but getting people to buy your service is your sales department’s job. You should use social media to raise awareness, engage people and show expertise through the content that you post.
What do you think are common mistakes business owners make when building brand awareness through social media?
I honestly believe that content should be shared on multiple channels and include the best content available for your audience. Notice how I said the best content - I didn’t say it should only be YOUR content.
The biggest mistake I have seen comes from a lot of companies and brands I worked with. They don’t want to promote their competition – which is understandable – so they only post their own content. This is OK but they are missing out on placing themselves as an expert (for a SaaS / personal brand) or as a go-to place (for a consumer brand / publication). Companies should be posting all good content that is relevant and resonates with their audience.
Make sure you vet it first though – an advertorial for your competition disguised as a good piece of content is what you want to actually avoid.
What qualities do you think social media managers should have?
I think a good social media manager is like a good commercial DJ. Being one myself when I was younger, I find that the skills needed are literally the same.
- Find and choose what has been most engaging based on analytics and experience. If doing what you personally like is not great, you need to do more of what your audience likes.
- Be able to find a good balance between what the client wants and what the prospect is asking for. Getting a good average between the two is good - don't just go one way or the other.
- Creating your own content is fine, but you need to make sure it’s up to scratch. Displaying a piece of your work just because you did it and want to grow your ego is not the best idea.
How do business owners know if their social media campaign is working?
While most companies want to see an increase sales, it's not always the case. If the goal of the campaign is mostly branding (exposure), a good indicator is the amount of money spent vs. the amount of people that saw the ad/post. More people for less money than the network’s recommended setting is what makes a successful campaign.
How do you see social media evolving over the next 5 years…what do you hope to see?
There are a lot of things I predict for the future, one of which I've decided to create. I'm currently building a platform and/or service that can show marketers what their customers really want to see. It works better than the existing content recommendation services, so I copyrighted the idea. Instead of only looking at post likes, my tool also analyzes the content people share and the pages that they like, thus increasing targeting in a non-biased way. I tested this my ad went viral, reaching 700,000 people whilst only costing £100. I believe that this method can ensure something going viral, rather than just hoping that it will.
What do you think are some of the consequences of not getting on-board with social media?
The biggest problem with not using social media for business is the increase in cost of advertising. There are a lot of methods of running an ad, but social media seems to be extremely targeted and cheap. If you are a big brand that only does TV ads, you can’t target people all too well. With social media ads you can reach people who are interested in seeing it instead. This will give you a better return on investment and bigger reach for the same amount spent.
What are your thoughts on social media versus more traditional marketing activities?
I think that a lot of people are still using traditional media for various reasons. For example, getting exposure as a B2B campaign works a lot better if the company runs ads in a major industry publication rather than Facebook. It gives the potential clients another reassurance that you know what you are talking about.
Which one best practice would you recommend about using social media to grow a business?
In my opinion, there are four types of people on social media:
- The poster (posting just their own content and nothing else).
- The seller (that does anything they think gets them more sales).
- The representative (that gets involved in discussions because it uses social as a customer service tool)
- The bot (the wanna-be-tech-savvy start-up that “growth-hacks” by automating an RSS feed from a keyword to auto-post everything).
I have seen big brands to spammy fake companies falling into the above categories. I think it's good practice to keep to the middle ground by being a bit of all of these, rather than sticking to one of these extremes.
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