Social Media is More Powerful than the Media with Molly McPherson

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Hello and welcome to the program. I’m glad you’re here. Today we have a special guest. Molly Macpherson joins me. Talk about difficult. Molly worked for FEMA’s office of External Affairs during post Hurricane Katrina efforts and help them launch their social media program. She truly believes that communicating trust and transparency both online and off is key to an organization success. I agree and in this day and age we must understand how social media, messaging intergenerational offices, how they all impact our business and frankly how they impact ourselves. These are all topics that we unpack on today’s show. I want to give a shout out to Carol Morgan Cox who gave the podcast a five star rating and review. She says, conversations we need to have. Lara currie is brilliant at guiding us to have conversations that are not always easy but worth it. In the end. The podcast is full of actionable insights and interesting discussions about topics ranging from workplace dynamics to public speaking. Highly recommend. Thank you, Carol. I truly appreciate it. Rating and reviewing the show really makes a difference. And I want to thank you. Now let’s dive in.

Lara:

Molly, I am so excited to have you on the show today. Thank you so much for coming.

Molly:

Oh Lara, my pleasure.

Lara:

So you do some, I love this cause I usually will geek out with people who do very similar work to me, but very different. So you and I both go in and work with teams on how to communicate better. And you have an a, a wonderful podcast. I love your podcast. Confident communication, little jealous of the name. Seriously, I’m not going to lie. It’s good, right?

Molly:

Gets right to the point, right,

Lara:

Right. And sometimes I feel like with difficult happens, what I’m really doing is pulling difficult to me in the universe. I don’t want to manifest difficult. I just want to help people navigate it.

Molly:

Yeah. And we are similar because I do the same thing. I’m just trying to help people communicate more effectively and just feel better about communicating really in this crazy digital online environment that we’re in in person. Because it’s not just online, it’s also interpersonal face to face. So you and I are very similar I think.

Lara:

And I also love the fact that you will, you’re not afraid to talk about what’s going on in the news right now today. I love it. That you will call out what you are seeing and you have a, you and I have a similar background with journalism, but you are in public relations basically teaching people how to message who they are and what they do and how to navigate the oopsies when they totally blow it. Oh Am I getting that right?

Molly:

Absolutely. And I, there is a, as a special, there’s a, there’s a method behind my madness and the reason why I do what I do. So there are a lot of public relations practitioners out there and they just help people communicate, you know, two different audiences. It’s like a mutual beneficial relationship between, you know, a client and the public but what I like to do is use stories in the news because I feel that so many people are aware of stories that’s going on. So I called them above the fold stories they are the ones that anyone could talk about. You might be in a bar, you might be at a book club, you can be with your friends, you can be on a plane, but everybody can at least chat at a certain level about these news stories. I find value in them because there’s always a lesson to be learned because every single day someone is doing something in the news where they’re misusing communication or they’ve done something on social media that they didn’t intend to do. It just happened this morning in the news. So I always hone in on those because I use them as lessons.

Lara:

I love it. So do you mind if I bring something from the above the fold into the fray? Of course. I’m horrible with names. But there was an empire, a star who, uh, had accused a couple people of attacking him, uh, at for racist and homophobic reasons. Now instead of getting into whether it happened or not. Cause I think right now as, as we’re recording this, all the facts aren’t in. And I always hate to when people talk about things that they don’t quite know yet because the very first thing that you hear in a story that’s one person’s side and you and I being in journalism, we know that when you first hear something you’re saying, oh, okay, these people are trying to control the narrative. What narrative did they want to get out there? There’s going to be another narrative that’s going to come out. I would also think of that Ziggy song. I think it’s thinking “It wasn’t me. No, I saw you “it wasn’t me.”

Molly:

That’s good. I like that. I liked that. Yeah. You of course are referring to the, Hashtag Jessie’s story. He’s in the television program, um, Empire and I’m not even quite sure of his last name. It’s either Smollet or Smollett but he of course, last week was accused of lying about this, a racist attack and he was subsequently charged.

Lara:

So how would you tell, let’s say that you had, someone on your staff? The tweeted out support for um, for him and you know, where I stand with Jessie or whatever it is that they tweeted and maybe the tides turn in the public eye. Would you address it? Would you address it in house? Would you address it externally? How would you handle a situation like that?

Molly:

That’s such a good question. You know why? Because there’s so many different layers to it and and there’s so many different layers to how I deal with that. In terms of either my clients or let’s say in the workplace, so one, if it is a workplace issue, you have to have a social media policy in place because everyone is on, for the most part, we can make this generalization here, but most workers are on social media and especially if it’s a worker that could be front facing, like they could be the of the brand, they could be, they can be the owner or the CEO, whatever it is. If you’re the face of the brand, you have to be mindful of every single thing that you write or post or tweet or put out on social media. But then you have other employees as well. You know, just inherently if they have a linkedin profile that says they work there or on Facebook they mentioned where they work, they cannot put out any information, you know maligning something that you know, maligning a person or just jumping into the fray of these new stories. And as a lot of people learned in this Jesse Case is that he ended up lying and he was charged with it. And I think the facts will prove that he did. And a lot of, um, a lot of people had to back pedal on that. So one, there is a social media policy in place. You should tell employees that if they were, you know, if they were to jump in the fray of this of certainly they have the right to the free speech and whatever they want to say, but they should be mindful that they have to follow whatever the policy that you have in place. But then the general lesson is it’s really difficult in social media. Like when you do jump in the fray, it’s sticking to you. Cause you can delete tweets and you can delete posts but people can screen grab and people can bring them back and it happens a lot. These posts come back to haunt in every sector. It happens to athletes that happens to politicians. You want to make sure that if you are tweeting that you are not saying anything that’s going to get you or an employer in trouble.

Lara:

Yeah. I also think that it’s important to, there are just shades of gray in the universe and people need to stop the black and white thinking. They need to think about the shades of gray. And right away my very first thought was, oh no, they’re going to try and they’re going to try and dismiss the bigger theme, which is that racism, homophobia, hatred and uh, isolation of classes. And we’re trying to break people into groups is happening right now. And if we use this as a, oh, see it was all a lie and they’re trying to, you know, bring about stuff that’s not really even happening. Yes it is. It’s happening. And it’s such a, we felt it so viscerally on both sides, and I don’t know if they’re even sides on this, but you know, in both camps, in both ideology and both thought processes we had a visceral response, which tells me that yes, this hits a nerve because this is happening. We’ve seen it happen. It’s out there. So maybe even just talking about the, okay, but the bigger picture is I support people who have been marginalized or we as a company support. But I love that. Yeah, you have to have a policy. You don’t get to be ignorant about the power of social media as a business anymore. You just don’t,

Molly:

Oh you can’t. Yes and I, and, and when it comes to posting and tweeting too, and the reason why so many people do, you know, get afraid. There is that fear there is when you start posting about your value system is where you can get into trouble because it just goes without saying. Not everyone is going to share the same thoughts that you have. You know, if you have political thoughts, there is someone that’s going to be on the other side of it. How I navigate it personally, especially since I’m in public relations, is I bring it into my area of focus. I do not post or tweet about my opinion. I’m very bi partisan, A political like you. You could not look at any of my social media fees feeds and see who I would vote for, who I would clearly what side of the argument I land on. I always just bring out the element of the communication lesson or the PR lesson and if I bring my opinion in, it’s only about the subject matter expertise that I know and that’s public relations.

Lara:

Yeah. There’s a great podcast out there called Congressional Dish and this is for like the true nerd She actually reads all the bills and all the legislation and she will break down exactly what it says and what it means and what the history is, why this is being pushed, who’s pushing it, why it’s in there, and each podcast episode, I mean she’s got some that are four or five hours long because she is breaking this down for you. It’s called congressional dish. It’s really awesome.

Molly:

Well, you know what else that does, and this is something that comes up a lot in my work, is people will always, you know, Harken back to fake news, fake news, everything’s fake and there is legit fake news out there. One of the easiest ways to not be accused of that is to learn and to get to the bottom and to the meat of the subject matter. Then you see that no one can accuse you of probably getting fake news,

Lara:

Which is why I think that just like companies, just like businesses have a responsibility to know what’s out there and to know their social media,

Molly:

Their visibility, like what they’re doing and what they’re putting out there online.

Lara:

Exactly. And what they want it to be. You also have a responsibility as a citizen to know what’s really going on and to not just hear the sound bite, not just to, you know, and to go with it. And just like leaders, you know what? You may be an entrepreneur, you get into your business, all you want to do is you want to make and sell these awesome shoes that you designed, but you also have to know how to upload stuff to your website or hire the right person to do it. You also have to know the inter or the team dynamics, which is the stuff that I love and how people work together and how to navigate that because that’s all part of it. You may be thinking, Oh man, I just make shoes. I decided she didn’t want to sell shoes. Well then go be an employee. You have to know all of these different things when it comes to walking in the world,

Molly:

Oh absolutely. And that’s an objection that I hear a lot. And typically I’m going to hear this from the baby boomer sect. You know that generation? Uh, many of them I will say, I don’t understand. It’s such a waste of time. Why do these millennials spend all their time online? I don’t have time for, for Facebook. It’s all fake news anyway, and then we’ll just kind of spiral, you know, down this hole. And the last time it came up in a conference in a workshop, I, I knew exactly where this guy was going. He said, you know, my daughter had a friend who had a friend and everybody thought he was a nice guy. Everybody thought this guy was great. And then I’m like, love you, finish a story for you. Let me guess. He turned out not to be a great guy, you know, but there’s all these objections there and when you have these blocks and you are a business owner or you’re responsible for selling goods, whether it’s brick or mortar or online, if you are blocking social media from your life or from your business plan, you’re blocking business. Yes, it’s simple as that. You have to, you have to acknowledge and accept that it’s there. I never tell anyone that you have to be the person online. You don’t have to be the person taking the photos and writing the post and tweeting this, hire someone to do it. But please in 2019 21st century technology and communication. We need to acknowledge that it’s here because I feel here is my opinion where it will creep in. I think social media is more powerful than the press. Yes. And that’s a big statement.

Lara:

It’s the new press.

Molly:

It is. It is. And Nancy Polosi just came out with the, I call it a sub tweet a yesterday where she was acknowledging, she was calling out a republican congressman who had made a comment about Michael Cohen and his testimony and what he would be speaking about as it related to president Trump. But she reminded everyone, all of the members that um, social media and the press, you know, are really powerful and, and you need to watch what you’re saying. And you know, on social media that, and I, what I noticed wasn’t the word so much, but in that sub tweet is what she was saying is the power of it. It’s, it’s equal now to the press.

Lara:

And people will take it and run with it. You know, I I think of a Lindy West who wrote a great book called Shrill and she was a local gal here in Seattle. She used to work with a Stranger and because her name is Lindy, most readers didn’t know if she was male or female. Um, and she, long story short, she actually was quite a cult of personality around here. And then when people who loved her realized, oh my gosh, she’s a woman, she’s a fat woman. That’s not what I expected at all. And it Kinda got into, you know, they started attacking her. There were these keyboard warriors that started attacking her, going after her. But this was in, I want to say it was like the early nineties I think a lot of people misunderstood. It’s like, oh, I’ll just ignore it. Just ignore it. It was coloring her brand. I mean it was really impacting her and just physically when you’re being attacked. She now works, I believe for the New York Times. Uh, she has another book coming out soon, but it was just really interesting to see the invention of the troll on social media, the power of the troll and the destruction of the troll and then the trolls destruction. Now she actually engaged her troll and it Kinda came to a conclusion to where he ended up apologizing to her. He didn’t really see the impact of what he was doing at the global level. He was just being a keyboard, tough guy, you know?

Molly:

Yeah. And I, and didn’t see the impact, but also felt that he was safe because there was a barrier there. He’s just sitting in his house on a keyboard typing away now that the line of communication there, the dots connect get really, really close. You know, if you post something in, in the, you know, in your rural home and you’re sitting on your, on your computer, it gets somewhere instantaneously and something can happen from that. That’s a whole new area that I’m working in is this idea. I like how use keyboard warrior, I liked that a lot, but there’s a lot of grassroots activists that have found the power of social and they use it for good and they use it for evil, you know, cause uh, they will, you know, target, you know, businesses are people that are really trying to do the right thing. But at the same time, there are groups now that are understanding the power of the search and the Google and they can uncover more information and they’re uncovering very viable information, very true information. And a lot of these companies, these boards are left flat footed because they forget about this technology that the, the public now now has the power for information at their fingertips. And there’s that disconnect and they’re being accused of not being transparent. So an area of focus that I have right now is this idea of trust that people don’t trust anyone anymore. And I think because of how business was typically done, and you know this from your journalism background, as do I, and also in public affairs, you, you hide that information. You keep that information close to the vest as long as you can. It doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re hiding it or you’re doing something wrong, but you’re just a company you’re just accustomed to keeping it in. But that’s a huge disconnect nowadays because the public expects information. If they can expect a box from Amazon to be delivered within less than 24 hours, then they should, they have the same level of expectation that they can Google something and get that information. They come up against the company that says, Whoa, Whoa, no, we’re not going to give this up just because you want it. We’re not going to give it out. There’s a real disconnect and the company always loses. So that’s an area of focus that I’m, I’m in right now where I’m trying to educate the companies on different layers of trans, a transparency that it’s not just like opening up the doors and giving out all the information, but providing the information that the public expects and how important it is. And if you don’t, they will come up against you and they will rally against you and try and bring you down.

Lara:

Yeah. And you also don’t want people to fill in the blanks. You know, you don’t want them to, to tell a story in their head about what you are and who you are. I remember when my son came home from school one day and I, at the time, I think I was on Facebook, I was looking at something, it might’ve even been Instagram, maybe it was, well, it was one of those study back in the day, I think it was. It’s a media that’s now gone, but I was looking at one of his classmates. I’m like, oh, that’s adorable. Got a new puppy. And Lucas looked over my shoulder and he said, oh, that’s Instagram, Ben. That’s not real life, Ben, and what this younger generation understands persona versus reality. You know they, they talk about, there’s this one tweet, I saw that yesterday. That’s hilarious. It’s like, um, how to become a youtube sensation on doing makeup tutorials be 20, be gorgeous and have a lot of money. There you go. That’s how you do it.

Molly:

Yeah, that is so true. I mean I have, I have teenagers and I have, I have teenage girls as well and there is the I r l the in real life person and then the insta person and a lot of these kids too, they have finsta grams, which is the fake Instagram account and that is more of the real life, the IRL life and then their regular Instagram account is that on that persona that they want to project out there. And even as silly as it sounds, it’s actually pretty smart and savvy in this day and age that, you know, the older generation still think like that. And I’m not advocating that you have a, that you have a private account. But for example, for all my social that I have and I’m a gen x or so, I, you know, for social media for me is work. You know, it’s, it’s a grind. It’s not like that natural, but I still like to do it. It’s helpful for business. But I have some counts accounts that show more of just my professional side, which is linkedin and Twitter. Where’s my Instagram? I label it as, this is just behind the scenes. This is what it looks like to be a speaker, a public relations executive, so on and so forth. And I just do it behind the scenes. So it’s more of my in real life. So like shaping your persona to your medium is also a very savvy thing that you can do nowadays as well.

Lara:

Yeah. Yeah. And it can be exhausting. I mean, I’m also a Gen exer and there are times when I’m just like, I don’t, I don’t want to do it anymore. I, I’ve got to, the episode that aired last week is, um, it was called a What Choosing to go gray has taught me about difficult conversations because there’s just little things that happen in your personal life. Like, okay, I’m going gray and it’s, I’m decided to just stop the fight and let it, let it go because I’m, I’m allergic to hair dye, but having some bad reactions anyway, not to relive that whole episode. But there are times when it’s just like, I don’t want to be seen. I don’t want to have to always be championing, championing, championing myself. You know, I, I just want someone else to do it. It can, it can become exhausting and that lack of trust, it’s almost like you want to be seen, but you don’t want to be seen. You have to control the narrative and the younger generation, I think they have that lack of trust, that disconnect because they know the Finstagram versus the Instagram. They know that inherently they were raised in it. The older generation is like, why in the world would she talk about such a personal thing? She’s a communication specialist. She goes in and trains people on how to communicate. I don’t care that she’s going gray.

Molly:

Yes you are. You are absolutely right. You know, it’s funny, I just, the other day I was on a Facebook live interview and of course I, you know, I had you look at yourself afterwards and think, okay, how do I look? Do I look okay? And for the first time ever I notice my neck and I always remember that Nora Ephron book. Um, I, it’s, it’s like I hate my neck and other things I hate about my neck and other things I hate about me or something like that. And I thought, I wonder when the day come where I’ll notice my neck. It was like, oh my gosh, there it was. At first you think, wow, I look, it’s my neck rippling out. But the lesson here is that now more than ever I’m putting myself out there on video, on social and feeling a lot more comfortable about it and the reaction that I get is amazing.

Molly:

It absolutely does. People say you are crushing it. You’re killing it. Like I am so impressed what you’re doing now. Part of it could be smoke and mirrors of course.

Lara:

Its just finstagram,

Molly:

Exactly but it’s just that impression that I’m putting myself out there. It’s like there is a lesson to be learned here. The more you hide, the more you cover, and it’s not about posting everyday or putting yourself out there, but just having that comfort level. People can see it, they can smell it, smell the authentic person and that’s the word. It’s authenticity.

Lara:

And that’s where the trust comes in. Also, what people need to understand, you know, for, for every tweet that happens and response that it gets, there’s a whole audience out there that you don’t even know who is paying attention to this. Just like with the podcast, sometimes I sit here and I’m like, is anyone really even listening?

Lara:

Every once in a while someone might reach out to me, but you know it. You just don’t know. But for every person that subscribes and they go ahead and click that subscribe button, it really helps me out. But for every person that subscribes, there’s someone who comes across the podcast and listens to it and you don’t even know who that person is or what impression they got or what they took away from it. But I do feel so passionate and I know you do too about your podcast and actually did I mentioned Confident communication already. I think I did.

New Speaker:

Ya know we talked about it. Yeah, I’ve about uh, in the episode, the last episode I did was how to spot a liar of course. And then I, I have to pivot because I brought my friend in cause we have to talk about the Oscars as well. But yeah, the podcast is just that the general idea of communications and how I want to help people. I like I, I consider myself that translator between the baby boomers and the millennials, how we can, how we can merge the two to effectively communicate. So I speak to boomers about feeling confident in that social space. I also talk about how to public speak, you know, interview, just great people that will just kind of up level that communication game. And the cheat in there is just because I’m such a newsy and I love just talking about current events. I like to tie in lessons from the current events that are out there. Yeah. So the podcast is a lot of fun. I really enjoy it.

Lara:

Yeah. And I think that stories like for my podcast, the going gray story that I use that as an example of internal conflict, external conflict, judgment, expectation. You know it’s like all the stuff that I talk about, people often will be like, well what exactly do you do? It’s like, well I train people how to understand why people react and you know, what does that look like? Well let me tell Ya, you know, I got to use my stories and that’s one of the reasons that I love to be able to podcast, to be able to explain how this impacts you, how it impacts you physically and personally. How it bleeds over into your business, what you can do about it. And how you can kind of build that. Like you were saying, that trust, that being seen back up again. Because when you have internal conflict, when your team is infected with negativity or dysfunction anyway, Oh God, it, it will, it will crush you and your business.

Molly:

Oh, without a doubt.

Lara:

So you need to be able to know how to train them to interact and to react to difficult situations. So have you ever gone into a company, I know that you do public relations who is already blown it. They’ve already made a huge mistake and they’re like, oh Geez, I think we need some help here. Have you gone in and talked to them then trainings with them on what to do?

Molly:

Yeah, I mean usually most of my work is proactive, but I do have reactive clients that will call me and that’s when it’s hit the fan and it’s all over the walls and I have to come in and help them clean it up literally and figuratively. But uh, but yes, it’s that, it’s that typical crisis communication framework. And most people, they’ll panic when something happens. But I come in and it’s the first responder in me.

Molly:

You know, I worked for Fema for a number of years as well, but I just look at the situation and say, listen, we’re going to acknowledge what happened, but now we’re going to clean it up. And with every cleanup there’s an opportunity, you know, the opportunities here, we’re going to have a clean room, everything’s going to be clean, everything’s going to be open, everything’s going to be transparent. We want to tell people what’s happening. That’s really like the first classic step in any type of crisis communications. And it’s not just the big brands that deal with it. It’s small business owners, it’s entrepreneurs. It’s, I remember getting an email like midnight, you know, on my phone. And uh, it was a panic was an entrepreneur was a woman, you know, small business owner and someone was trashing her online and she was in her being a liar and accusing her of, of, of selling a bad product and she didn’t know what to do. That’s crisis communications.

Lara:

Yeah. What would you say for a new business who maybe has between five and 20 employees who’s kind of in more of the high stress? You mentioned first responders and those are a lot of the people that I work with. People who are on the front lines and who’s clientele is already at a heightened state. Meaning you know, maybe you’re an attorney and people don’t normally go to attorneys unless there is some sort of crisis that they need to, they need help navigating. Or even like real realtors. I work with a lot of realtors, people, it’s a lot of stress buying and selling a home. There’s a lot of uh, emotion kind of tied into that. So what would you say to someone who may be owned a brokerage firm or owns a law firm for their social media? What kind of plans should they have in place and how do you start to build that trust with your clientele?

Molly:

Well, I want to hear how you do work with realtors. Like difficult happens, like they, are you helping them try to communicate better with customers? Is that it?

Lara:

Not Only that, there are so many players, so many balls in the air and so many individuals that are involved in the process of buying and selling a home. You’ve got your team, you’ve got your broker, you’ve got the inspector, you maybe have a house stager, you’ve got the lender, you’ve got the whole mortgage team, which is a whole other team. Then you’ve got, you know, the, the other real estate agent and their entire team. And so that just the level of people navigating that you have to do and relationships and personalities,

Molly:

Its that building trust. Oh yeah. You build trust. Okay. That’s very interesting. At the beginning of my career when I started this, I got a lot of realtors that seemed like that was just a pocket of area that, um, that they, they homed in on me quickly.

Molly:

And the reason why is because I found that the majority of them were female and the majority of them were gen x are and above. And they knew in the business because they’re in the business of selling, but they needed to have a social presence, but they had no idea what they’re doing. And uh, and a realtor it is such a, it’s such a great market for social. And even when I was, uh, when we were selling our house, how I got my realtor is I went online and I looked to see who was most social, who got it because that means they have another channel to sell my house instead of just those personal word of mouth and the MLS listing, people expect now to find homes online. You know, they expect to go to Truilla They’re not getting in their cars and driving by anymore.

Molly:

They, that’s the first step. So if we’re talking about like a social plan for um, or an office, a realty officer or a firm is one. All the realtors need to be online. They have to have a presence. They definitely should be on linkedin. Okay. We need to know what kind of realtor you are. What kind of awards do you have? What kind of honors do you have? You know, are you the top seller and your district? Even if you’re not, just give us something, any testimonials that you can get from your clients. If they successfully sold the house, he didn’t mind leaving a testimonial on Linkedin, not just on our website, because people are not drawn to the realtor’s website. They’re not. They go to Truilla, they go to Zillow, realtor.com and then they might look up the realtor and then, you know, they, they might go to the webpage to see, okay, who looks like they’re the most experienced.

Molly:

And again, I find in this generation, it’s the people that are the most social cause they’re the ones that get it. And if you get social, then you’re going to get how to sell my house and you’re going to build that trust.

Lara:

Yeah. Yeah. I think right away of three people who are in the industry, who are friends of mine, Renee Vanous of the Vanous group, she is a broker. So she’s, or I mean a real estate agent and she has a brokerage. Um, and her game is tight on Instagram. I just love it because she’s herself. She goes live a lot. She often was, whoops, oops, excuse me. Well, it’s over there, you know, which is doing it, but it’s so real and she’s so passionate and it all comes through. And then there is Tina Mitchell who runs the money hour here in Seattle and she’s got a radio show and she does lives and whenever she does her lives, she’s a little more buttoned up and professional, but it’s so genuine. It is exactly who she is and you know that every time she goes online she was trying to bring value, you know? And then there’s a kitty Wallace who’s the head of the, um, real estate, uh, lobbying group here. I’m totally going to massacre that. I’ll put it in the show notes exactly who these people are, but she travels around and testifies in Washington DC and in Olympia and she tries to get laws changed in real estate that impact buyers and sellers and they go live to share what they do. And so much of that, so much of why people reach out to them and know them is because they’re social and they’re online. I kind of went on a tangent there. I’m

Molly:

No, but I love all the plugs. You need task three people in your area. Yeah, it’s true though. It’s what you, what your, what you’ve just explained, Lara though, is that you believe on, yeah, capability. The trustability you’re going to build trust. If I were moving to Seattle, any of those names, I know. Oh, that’s I, those would be the people that I would call because I can sit on my phone and I can look and see what Kitty is doing. Or I can go on Instagram live and look at a house. I mean, how brilliant to do lives if you have an open house, do alive so someone could see it right there. And if they’re in the neighborhood, oh, you know what, let’s just get in our car and we’ll go down there. There are so many opportunities, so many categories. Real estate is a biggie. Like I always wanted to niche my business just in there alone because there’s so much that you can do if you’re a realtor.

Lara:

Yeah. Yeah. Now, what do you think about, like I’m thinking of Burger Kings, Twitter feed a lot is made of Burger King’s Twitter feed because it uses humor a lot and sometimes it will call out other brown brands in a jokey way. Sometimes when people will tweet negative things to burger king, they’ll call them out the play with them. Yes. What do you think about that?

Molly:

Oh, I love it. It’s called the, the term is called roasting. Like you’re roasting someone online and Burger King, but also Wendy’s. Uh, those two brands are probably the best. And then Arby’s is in the mix as well. Uh, they do an excellent job is, so if you ever want to just be entertained and you’re just kind of, bingeing on your phone is just go down the rabbit hole on some of those accounts. But what they have, which is somewhat risky, is they have a clever person or persons behind the Twitter account and it’s someone that is a writer. Like I suspect they’re not necessarily, um, a social media guru, but they’re probably a very, very clever writer. It’s probably a team, but it is a marketing strategy and it works.

Molly:

But I think there are very, very few people that can do it. Where you can get into trouble is if you do have a young person, typically it’s that young person that thinks they’re funny and they’ll post something and they’ll find out, oh, it’s not funny at all. And they’ll have to bring it down. So most brands, I’d say like maybe five years ago, a lot of these brands would try that humor. And now there’s just a few. But just the other day I tweeted one, the Minnesota Timberwolves, uh, they, they tweeted, um, uh, they had a tweet up against Ja rule and he was one of the organizers of the fire festival. It was just this much maligned festival. It had a Netflix documentary of Hulu documentary where just basically ripped off all these people and they lied about it. And Ja Rural did the national anthem, um, at a Milwaukee Bucks Minnesota Timberwolves game and he kind of bombed.

Molly:

And the Minnesota Timberwolves made a reference on the tweet to this fire festival. And what I loved about it is that it was a pretty, pretty raw and cutting a shade of a tweet and they kept it up and I thought that’s bold like that. And they’re making a statement like that’s a public relations move. They chose to disparage someone and they, and it was safe because it was a guy that everybody hated because of the fire festival. So if you are going to do what I normally advise people not to do it, unless you’re protected and by protected, I mean someone that’s really clever and then you have someone on legal as well that can help you if it ever goes south. Yeah.

Lara:

Yeah. Well this has been so much fun. I always love talking to you about all this different stuff. It really is a, there’s so much involved in communication. We communicate every day, not just online, but with what we were, with what we look like with what we say and how we say it. So communication is, it is, it can be a rabbit hole and it’s so thick. There’s so much there. Yeah.

Molly:

And I like to just help people out of the rabbit hole cause I’ll go into the rabbit hole for you. But I, I truly liked to help people just feel comfortable about communicating in the digital age. I think fear is such a big block and I just feel it’s my job to try and eliminate the fear as much as I can. And I do that through education. I have a online courses I one that’s going to be launched soon. Um, and also with my podcast as well and all of my social media feeds. But I really truly love what I do. I absolutely love it. And I just, I love seeing that person that they just feel comfortable. It’s like they’re, they relaxed like, oh, I get it. It’s not that big a deal and it actually helps my business. Yes, it does. So thank you so much for letting me be on your podcast today. I love ’em. I love speaking with you, but if it’s okay, I do have a quick cheat sheet, um, for any of your listeners, especially those realtors out there too, if they want to give. But it’s on my website. If you go to my website, Mollymcpherson.com there’s a number of resources there that um, that you could see that can kind of help you in your business. But one I think that would be particularly helpful for your listeners that we discussed today. It’s um, it’s just a one sheet on the rookie mistakes seasoned executives make and it’s at Molly mcpherson.com backslash Rookie and it’s just that little checklist that kind of keep you protected and to keep you safe and kind of help you become executive, become more comfortable with being online and building your online persona.

Lara:

And I think that’s so important and thank you for that. It’s so important to face the fear, really taking a look at the fear because we can all ignore it and ignore it and ignore it. I don’t get on Twitter because I don’t, I can’t do them all and I don’t know the field, you know, I know Marco Polo, I know Instagram and on Facebook that’s kind of my wheel house. And even those, I don’t know too well, but if you don’t face the fear or even at an acknowledge the fear, then you can’t move through it and you can’t move past it. So thank you so much for that. A rookie mistake, rookie mistakes that leaders make. That’s awesome. well I hope that you come back. I think that the next time something really big happens in the news. I want to break it down with you. I think that we should do something like you do it from a PR standpoint and I’ll do it from a communications or like what they were intending standpoint that

Molly:

Oh, absolutely. I’m in, I would love to do that Lara.

Lara:

And right now as we’re recording, Cohen I believe is testifying. So there’s just going to be a wealth of stuff.

Molly:

So much information. So much information. Yeah, I can’t wait. I cannot wait to read all the reports.

Lara:

So fun. Thank you so much. And until next time.

Molly:

All right, bye Lara. Thank you so much.

Lara:

Nothing stays hidden anymore. Sometimes it feels like privacy has disappeared completely and just a few short years. And even the most staunchly private person no longer expects it. You can look back on someone’s social media for years. Google can find anything one wrong tweet, one negative post and it can impact your image irreparably. Think of the Oscar’s a couple of weeks ago and the reason that Kevin Hart did not host it, he was tired of apologizing for something that he had tweeted over seven years before. Maybe it wasn’t a tweet, maybe it was something he said, the way that he lives his life is proof that he does not believe those things anymore and he has apologized for it time and time again and this time he was done. He didn’t want to keep apologizing. Molly is so right. You need to have a plan. You need to be authentic and you need to acknowledge the truth. This formula right here, a plan, authenticity and a mea culpa or just acknowledging fault is one that you can use in any situation, in a conflict, in a conversation anywhere. Have you grabbed your copy of five ways to deal with negative comments? Just go to difficult happens.com/five and until next week. Be honest, but kind be firm, but fair and be in touch. You know? I love to hear from you.

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Resources:

Confident Communication with Molly McPherson

Congressional Dish By Jennifer Briney

Shrill By Lindy West

What Choosing to go Gray Has Taught Me About Difficult Conversations

How to Spot a Liar – Confident Communications with Molly Macpherson

Renee Vanous – Vanous Group

The Money Hour with your host Tina Mitchell

Kitty Wallace

FYRE: The Greatest Party That Never Happened by Netflix

Show Intro music is Whispering Through by Asura

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