48: Automating Social Media Content with Laura Roeder

October 10, 2018

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Yigal Adato: 00:21 Hey everyone, my name is Yigal Adato and this is the Pawn Leaders Podcast, a podcast that help you make more money, stress less, and live an epic life all while working at the pawnshop. Hey Pawn Family, welcome back to another episode of the Pawn Leaders Podcast. Today I have a great guests with an incredible software tool for you guys to use. Laura Roeder is the founder of Edgar social media automation tool designed to prevent status updates from going to waste. Laura has given talks at conferences like blogger and South by Southwest. She has spoken about the value of independent entrepreneurship at the White House. She’s also appeared in Forbes, Fast Company, Mashable, Seen it, and other major publications. Laura, welcome to the podcast.

 

Laura Roeder: 00:50 Thank you, Yigal, I’m excited to be here. This is a new crowd for me.

 

Yigal Adato: 00:55 Yeah, it’s a new crowd for a lot of people, come on the podcast. It’s a business that’s been around for thousands of years, but I know that can use which you have to offer. So tell me, give me a little bit of background on yourself. You’re an entrepreneur, before we get into Edgar, tell me a little bit about how you got into entrepreneurship and how you started this journey.

 

Laura Roeder: 01:15 Yeah. So, I’ve been working for myself for about 10 years now. I started out as a freelance web designer and then when social media marketing started to become a thing and jumped on that bandwagon and dead consulting and training, and then when Edgar launched in 2014 which is social media automation software. So, I’ve been in the social media marketing space for as long as it’s been around with various business models.

 

Yigal Adato: 01:43 Awesome. So, the pawn industry is getting into Facebook at the moment. They’re, you know, doing their posts and their pages and they’re trying to get some momentum there because it’s a very niche arena and it’s very local based right? Around your store, you want to be able to target five mile radius, 10 mile radius. Tell me what Edgar does and how it automates the social media posting and how it makes life just easier for people. Like a pawnbroker are very, very busy, they’re on, you know, they’re in the store working day in and day out.

 

Laura Roeder: 02:15 Yeah. So, what’s unique about MeetEdgar is our ability to store a library of content and then cycle through that content without you having to do that manually over and over again. So, for a pawnbroker obviously, a lot of your content isn’t going to be recycled, right? A lot of it’s going to be real time major posting, new items that are for sale. Already sold, you don’t want to post it again. But then there’s other types of content that’s more general messaging about your business or maybe produce content about you know, how to make sure something’s priced fairly, like how to sell things to a pawnshop and if you’re getting a good deal and you know how to trust the person you’re working with or like what are some categories of some things you can get a great deal on as a buyer so that type of content is what we call evergreen content, meaning it’s always like the evergreen tree, it’s always green, it’s always fresh. And that content is so cool for a busy entrepreneur because you write an article once about, you know, maybe you sell a lot of musical equipment, like how to figure out the right price for a piece of musical equipment. That post is good for years, right? You don’t need to rewrite it over and over again. So you write it once, you put it in Edgar and then that content is going out on your Facebook page or Twitter account. If you’re using Linkedin, I would guess that’s a little less common, probably more on Facebook and Twitter. That just keeps going out for you and you have a whole library of categorized, organized content so that live stuff can be on top. So, you know, the problem is social is so stressful every day facing that blank slate over, what do I do today? I’m supposed to post something. So, what’s cool about Edgar, you know you have content going out everyday cause Edgar’s handling that for you. And then that actually frees up your time, if maybe you’re taking some photos of some items and something like that. You can put that on top of what you already have and not feel that pressure that you have to come up with something new every day.

 

Yigal Adato: 04:15 Nice. So it’s essentially allowing us to post something and have that library of social media posts just in case like, oh my God, I have nothing today, let’s bring something in, also it schedules posts, is that correct?

 

Laura Roeder: 04:27 Yeah, yeah.

 

Yigal Adato: 04:27 So, you can come in on Monday, take 20 pictures of different items and scheduled them out throughout the week so that you don’t have to sit there every single day looking at that blank slate saying, what the heck do I do today?

 

Laura Roeder: 04:39 Yeah. And you know, we find, so all of your content Edgar stored in categories which is something else that is pretty unique for us and it really helps you jump start that thought process of the kind of content that you could come up with for social. So another thing a local business might want to do is promote other local businesses or things that are going on in the area and when you start thinking of your social, not just as like, oh my God, it’s a new day, it’s a new week, what do I do? But like, okay, these are the categories I’m going to make sure to host the community events for the week and then I’m going to post some items and I’m going to have some evergreen stuff from my blog. It makes it so much easier when you can batch it and you can break it down. And of course you can use this concept, you know, whether or not you’re using the Edgar software, the Edgar software automates that for you. But that’s just a helpful tip, I think for any business owner you can then it’s so much easier to make a list if you’re like, okay, every Monday I schedule out the community events for the week. It’s so much easier to do that on Monday, get them all done or you know, you can have an intern or something to it rather than like, oh, it’s Wednesday, what do I post? Oh maybe I’ll see if something’s going on in town and try to find it and that’s your work and makes it so much easier and faster.

 

Yigal Adato: 05:55 Nice. So, pawn family listen up. You don’t have to sit there and be afraid of posting on Facebook every single day. You can go to meetedgar.com and really find a way to batch the posts, categorize them, and then just schedule them out so it’s not overwhelming, right?

 

Laura Roeder: 06:09 Yeah. So another thing we do [Inaudible[ to save yourself a step is we scheduled based on categories. So, if you used another scheduling tool, a lot of the tools you have to pick the date and time for every single post. And it’s really tedious. So with us, if you’re doing this community events thing, you just choose that community events category. So you’re like, I want to post a community event three times a week. Alright girl like just pull it for me, what’s in there and then it just saves you that time between like Tuesday at four o’clock like Wednesday at nine o’clock just makes your life easier.

 

Yigal Adato: 06:42 Nice. And so what have you seen with other companies who’ve used meet Edgar or Edgar excuse me, and then the website is meetedgar.com How has it helped them to gain more fans on their Facebook pages and deal with the content? What have you seen happen for people using your tool?

 

Laura Roeder: 06:58 Well, so the biggest thing is that activity begets activity. So, the hardest thing with social is just keeping up with it at all. And so many businesses, you know, they get all excited and they listen to a podcast like this or like I’m going to do it, I’m going to start updating my Facebook page. And it just takes them so much time that they do it for a week or two and then it just stops all together. You know, I’m sure if so many listeners can identify with this experience of like you have something else that comes up in your life and it just goes dead. And the problem with your facebook page being dead is that no one can like anything, no one can share anything, right? No one can comment on anything. So, what we’ve seen at Edgar is just that activity that gets activity if you have anything to share, you’re giving people an opportunity to share it. And even if just a few people share it, that’s more exposure for your page or if a few people like it, that’ll help increase other people seeing something in the future, right? Because Facebook really looks at the engagement, meaning are people interacting with your posts to see if they should show those on other people the post. So, just putting in a system for having and like something is better than nothing. Posting on Facebook three times a week is better than zero. You know, once a day is better than zero times a day, maybe twice a day is better than one but you don’t have to go crazy with it. Which a lot of businesses feel all this pressure, like I have to create two Facebook lives every day. And like, that’s not sustainable for most businesses. So yeah, the more you know, you have to stick with this stuff long term, you’ll build your audience over time. It’s not an overnight thing. It can be super frustrating when you start and you’re like, no one’s reading it, no one’s liking it because it does take time. But then you get that snowball effect where you’re adding more and more people. And like I said, like everything is an opportunity for more people to discover your business. Someone leaves a comment and a friend might see it that they left that comment on their feed like that’s the whole nature of these platforms.

 

Yigal Adato: 08:58 I think it’s a lot more fun when you sit down, let’s say Monday from 10 to 11 and you plan everything out, you take your pictures, you write the copy, you put it into Edgar and it’s just scheduled. That’s it. It’s like once a week and you’re done.

 

Laura Roeder: 09:12 Yeah, yeah. And then you get, so what we always preach is you know, a lot of tool like Edgar handle sending everything out so that you can go in and chat with people. Cause that’s the fun part, you know, and that’s the human part, right? When you are engaging with people and responding to comments or maybe it’s fun for you to take like a little photo or a little video of like some cool item that you got in and then you’ve freed up your time to do that because yeah, because you did the hour once a week and just got everything else done.

 

Yigal Adato: 09:41 Nice. Love it. So, you’re an entrepreneur obviously started this company, you’ve got employees, it’s growing like crazy. The listeners are entrepreneurs who opened stores, have employees. Tell me, what was the hardest thing about building Edgar for you when it came to like culture, leadership and just growing a business.

 

Laura Roeder: 10:03 Oh Man. So, you know, I think something that’s been a challenge for us, which I imagine a lot of listeners could share is determining that pace of growth. So, you know, we’re a [Incomprehensible] strapped business. I’m sure a lot of listeners, you know, maybe got a bank loan, but you weren’t like a Silicon Valley company someone wrote you a check for $1 million, you know, and you just went out over 10 locations, like something you do over time. And I’m sure people can identify with this experience of like when times are good you want to expand, but then sometimes you expand either with maybe another location or some more employees to cover your time and then maybe you have a rough quarter after that and now your expenses are too high. And you know, after doing this for four years, at first we felt like we were hiring too slowly and we’re like, oh we could have grown the business more if we had hired faster. You know, we shouldn’t have been so conservative. Well you know, often your first year it’s like when you see this biggest growth month over month and then maybe you have slow periods after that. Maybe things kind of level offs. So, I mean that’s something that I’ve learned is to be really conservative with your hiring, with your expenses. You know, I think it’s important like to keep that monthly not down as much as possible because you can’t predict like they do construction in front of your store, no one can see it anymore and it lasted nine months and it was supposed to last two or just like, life is unpredictable. So, I think being conservative without overhead and growing when you feel really stretched like okay, now you know, now this, if we don’t have this other employee, like things are going to fall apart. I think as a small business that doesn’t have a huge amount of funding that’s kind of how you have to do it.

 

Yigal Adato: 11:57 Love it. Love it. Thank you so much for sharing that. And just kind of my last question, why Edgar?

 

Laura Roeder: 12:03 So Edgar was a code name that we were calling the project before it had a name. And so when we’re like, okay, this is, you know, really going to launched this, like this is going to be a rough business. We went through this whole naming process of companies like, you know, start up the names something about social media. And then I’m like, ah, these are lame, I don’t like any of the these. And I kind of thought, wouldn’t it be funny if there was a social media scheduling tool that was just called Edgar? Because people seem to remember like when I’d be like, oh, they’re like, what are you working on? I’m like, well Edgar, but it’s not called that [Incomprehensible] of course it’s not called that. And then a month later they’re doing what’s going on with Edgar? They remember the name. But we’ve been able to have so much fun with the personification of like Edgar the octopus, and we always say, he manages your social media for you. You know, send it to Edgar, let him handle it. So yeah, I think it’s been something that’s really helped us stand out. We just couldn’t think of a better name. So we’re like, maybe we’ll call it Edgar and it’s been a good move.

 

Yigal Adato: 13:07 Nice. Very, very cool. Laura, thank you so much for being on the show. Appreciate your time pawn family remember that like the Facebook posting doesn’t have to be overwhelming. The tool like Edgar and go to meetedgar.com to check it out. And that’s why I bring on vendors like this cause I want to make your lives easier. So, Laura, any final comments that you want to leave the pawnbrokers with?

 

Laura Roeder: 13:30 Yeah, I mean, you know what I love about being in the software business is for a small business who like I said, is watching your costs. Like there are so many things that software can do that maybe used to have an employee do. And we get these emails all the time. They’re like, I sort of feel guilty celebrating this. But like I had someone who was managing my social media and I don’t have to pay them to do it anymore. software [Incomprehensible] take care of the whole thing, you know? And I think if you’re someone who, you know, maybe as tech savvy, maybe doesn’t come from that background. Taking the time to learn, learn these tools, learn what’s out there, can really save you so much time and money. So you know, meet Edgar is definitely one of those.

 

Yigal Adato: 14:15 Awesome. Well thank you so much for being on Laura. Remember pawnbrokers go to meetedgar.com to check out Edgar and see how they can automate your Facebook posting and your social media posting. I also remember to join us in the Pawn Leaders Podcast Community on Facebook to keep chatting about this and with any questions that you have. Laura, once again, thank you so much for being on the show and pawn family I’ll talk to you soon.

 

Laura Roeder: 14:38 Thank you.

 

To continue the discussion join the Pawn Leaders Facebook community

 

For more information on working together go to www.pawnleaders.com.

 

Software Mentioned on the show: https://meetedgar.com/

 

Yigal Adato

Yigal is a 3rd generation pawn broker, and is now a mentor, coach and educator with the pawnbroking industry.


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