QuickBooks Online 2024 bank feeds and your accounting system. Get ready because we're going to Bookkeeping Cloud 9 with QuickBooks Online. Here we are online in our browser searching for QuickBooks Online Test Drive. The primary tool we'll be using for the first part of the course looking for a result that has Intuit.com in the browser. Here we go. We're going to be selecting the United States version and then verify that we're not a robot. We're going to duplicate some tabs like we do every time putting our major financial statement reports in them. Right-clicking on the tab up top and then we're going to duplicate it as that's thinking. I'm going to right-click on the tab again, duplicate again and then as that's thinking back to the tab to the middle. Go to the reports down on the left-hand side and then I'm going to open up the balance sheet report. This is going to be our standard process. Then I'm going to the tab to the right. Go into the reports on the left-hand side and this time opening up the profit and loss. Otherwise known as the income statement sometimes called the P and L. And then I'm going to go back to my first tab. This is going to be what I would think of as my data input tab, then the balance sheet and the income statements on the right side. Last time we went through some navigation and we discussed briefly the bank feeds and the fact that the first part of the course we're actually not going to be using the bank feeds but doing the full accounting cycle, the full accounting process without the bank feeds so we can learn how all the forms work and then we will have an entire section on bank feeds discussed. First a word from our sponsor. Actually, we're sponsoring ourselves on this one because apparently the merchandisers, they don't want to be seen with us.  Like this CPA thinking cap for example. CPA thinking, CAP, you see what we did with the letters. And this CPA thinking cap is not just for CPAs either. Anyone can and should have at least one possibly multiple CPA thinking caps. Why? Because based on our scientific survey of five people all of whom directly profit from the sale of these CPA thinking caps wearing this CPA thinking cap without a doubt according to the survey. Increases accounting productivity tenfold. Yeah at least. Apparently the hat actually channels like accounting energy from the quantum field ether directly into your head. Allowing you to navigate spreadsheets faster. It's kind of like how in like the matrix when Neo learns kung fu or at least that's what the scientific survey saying. So get one because the scientific survey participants could really use some extra cash. If you would like a commercial free experience consider subscribing to our website at accountinginstruction.com or accountinginstruction.thinkific.com seeing how they work, how the rules work, how you can put the bank feeds in place. Now I know that a lot of people probably would think hey I want to get right to the bank feeds because that's the thing I'm most interested in possibly. So and I can totally understand that so I would recommend first watching this and if you think you are in a situation where the bank feeds can be easily implemented or that you have the knowledge to go forward and jump to the bank feeds section then you can go ahead and do that. So that's we go into the transactions here. You'll recall that the bank feeds are housed here. So let me just first lay out some of the complexities with the bank feeds and what you need to know about them and why I would recommend getting a basis understanding of the accounting process before you just upload the bank feeds. The bank feeds are going to be a connection between QuickBooks and of course your bank. Now the bank has the cash flow of your business but that's basically all it has. So if you're pulling in your information from the bank the question is what are you actually getting from the bank that's coming into QuickBooks? Well if we look at this is going to be a mock bank statement you can see that your bank statement basically has simply the beginning balances and then it's got the additions and the subtractions of the cash transactions and the detail down below it will give us the deposits detail and the outflow detail the increases and decreases to the checking account. Now when you look at the deposits oftentimes if you did a deposit like a check like or just cash that you put into the into your bank account then all you're going to have on the deposit side is the amount of the deposit and the date the deposit happened. So that's what would be pulling into QuickBooks that's it right. That's all it would have and that is not enough to actually record the transaction oftentimes because you might want to know for example the customer and you at least want to know if it's revenue or if it's some other account that we need to be adding. Now if you made a deposit from a check then again the check might not pull in and give you more information that would be on the check such as possibly the customer information but it would be information you could find on the bank with the cancel check. If however you're got an online transfer then you're going to have more information because that's usually going to give you the information in the bank description of who the money came from which will help you to populate the information from the bank feeds into your system providing you with the customer name possibly and giving you more information on how you would record the transaction to the proper income account. On the outflow side if you actually write physical checks then when you pull the information in from the bank feeds what you're going to have is the amount that came out of your account the check number and then the date not the date that you wrote the check though the date that it came out of your account because that's when it hit the actual bank account. So if you actually write checks and a lot of people don't write checks as much because they do everything electronically but if you write check there's going to be this timing difference between when you wrote the check and when you are it's going to clear the bank and so that could be a problem for the use of the bank feeds because one of the bookkeeping things you want to do if you write checks is to be tracking the checks that are outstanding the ones that you wrote which have not yet cleared the bank. However if you're in a situation where you do all electronic type transfers then it'll be easier for the bank feeds because you'll typically have a date that's going to be pretty close to when you did the transfer and the transfer will provide you with possibly information in the bank memo that can tell you who the vendor was so that you can add the vendor. So the general idea here is you've got just the increases and decreases to your checking account flowing in from the bank but you're going to have to at least verify some more information in order to help QuickBooks populate it from what I would call Bank Feed Limbo into the actual creation of the financial statement. So in other words if you pulled this information into the actual bank feeds it's not going to be used yet to create your financial statements but rather it's going to be populated down here in what I would call Bank Feed Limbo. So it's in limbo because we don't have enough information. We don't have enough information to pull it in to the promised land to create the financial statements with it. So obviously it has the increases or decreases but the things you're going to need to add or verify is the account that it needs to go to and you're also going to need to give us the vendor or the customer may not be required but that would be useful information to add as well so that we can track the information by customer or vendor. If you don't do that information and you just connect to the bank let's say you just set up your QuickBooks file you connect it to the bank and then you pull in a year's worth of bank transactions then it's all going to happen and populate in here in Bank Feed Limbo and if you don't know how to pull it from here into your financial statements then it's going to be a mess. So that's why you want to have an understanding of your bookkeeping system before you set up the bank feeds process. Now let's think about the bookkeeping systems in terms of what would be the easiest systems to use bank feeds versus the more complex systems to use bank feeds which again we'll talk more about in the bank feeds section but if you want to jump there you can jump there. So this is a flow chart now this is the desktop version of the flow chart but we're just using the flow of the forms to see how normal accounting systems work and how the bank feeds might fit within it. So we can break these out by the way into our cycles, vendor cycle, customer cycle, employee cycle and so when we think about a cash based system versus an accrual based system we can actually think of something on a cash or accrual based system by cycle meaning I could be on a cash based system for my vendors, my outflows I pay everything in cash when it becomes due but on my revenue side maybe I'm on more of a accrual system due to the industry that I'm in requiring me to invoice customers before I receive the payment. So this will really be driven not by just your choice it's not like well I'm just going to be a cash based system well if you're doing a kind of work that you have to invoice people then you're not going to be in a cash based system because you're going to have to do the work first and invoice people so it's going to be driven kind of by industry. So the easiest one to link in to just connect the bank feeds and let it flow the most automated system would be one where on the revenue side of things you're getting paid from like a platform that would be like gig work or something so if you just do work on a platform and the platform just pays you periodically, possibly monthly and you just want to take that money and record it as revenue when you've received it well that will be easy to do with bank feeds although you'll lose some detail because the deposit will hit your account it'll be an electronic transfer you'll be able to see who it came from therefore you can easily add the customer and you can say that all of the money that's coming into your account is income and that's another kind of caveat you have to be aware of all the money that's coming into your account under that system you're going to assume is income and then record it as income although you can kind of check it because if it's an electronic transfer you'll see who it came from so that if you have that kind of system if you're in gig work or something it's going to be pretty easy to do a bank feeds type of setup it's not like a full service bookkeeping system that way because normally what would happen is you would want to record the revenue when you earned the revenue and then double check that the revenue hit the bank you know with a reconciliation process however because and notice that you're also using a deposit form under this system to record revenue which isn't normally the form used to record revenue usually we record revenue with an invoice or a sales receipt these two forms are better designed often times to record to make other reports like sales by customers or sales by items reports so you lose a little bit of detail possibly but that might be well worth it because it could be a very easy system to do so if you're using that system bank feeds might be the best it might be really pretty easy to set up now if you're in a system where you're on an accrual based system then it becomes a little bit more difficult that would be a system like a bookkeeper for example or a landscaper where you have to do the work first and then you have to invoice the client for the work that you did and then you're going to have to receive the payment that means you're going to have to enter an invoice why does that make the bank feeds more complicated because when you enter an invoice you're not getting paid but you're going to record revenue at the point in time you enter the invoice and so now you have to actually track that outstanding balance in accounts receivable and normally you would then receive the payment at a later point in time and then make the deposit so how's a bank feed going to fit in there? because the bank feed is going to hit the deposit in your checking account well normally what would happen is you would still have to do a full service accounting process you would make an invoice, you would receive the payment you would manually make the deposit in QuickBooks and then use bank feeds to tie out or match the deposit the bank feeds now acting as a helper for the bank reconciliation process but not recording anything new now note that you could connect the bank feed deposit to the invoice possibly or possibly to the received payment we'll talk more about that later but whatever system you set up if you have an accrual system your invoicing clients on the revenue side then that's going to add a level of complexity and you have to think about how are the bank feeds going to fit in to that kind of system and you have to first set up your system and then put the bank feeds kind of into it and then if you're at a cash register situation you're collecting money at a store or something like that usually the process is you have a sales receipt recording the revenue and the cash you received at the point in time that you received it normally you don't deposit it directly into the checking account when you receive it because it's in limbo somewhere it's either in your cash register, cash or it's a credit card or something like that and so you're going to then put it into a clearing account and then make the deposit again, although this is a cash based system it's more complex than the cash based system where you just got paid by gig work if I just got paid by gig work then they just paid me directly from the platform into my checking account and I don't have to take the cash or I don't have to deal with a credit card company generally or anything and it's pretty easy to just record the bank feed as revenue but if I'm collecting money from multiple different kinds of payments and whatnot at a cash register then for the internal controls I'm going to want to collect the cash and then account the cash and whatnot and then deposit the cash manually and then most likely use the bank feeds once again not to record the transaction but rather to double check that the transaction has been recorded helping us out with the internal control of the bank reconciliation process you could again connect the bank feed possibly to the sales receipt creation, we'll talk more about that later just note it's a little bit more complex in that kind of system also if you have inventory inventory messes things up oftentimes because inventory by definition will typically throw you off of a cash based system and the system that would be most easy to automate with bank feeds would be a cash based system and even easier than that a cash based system where you get paid from electronic transfers possibly like gig work if you have inventory the problem is when you buy the inventory you can't just expense it right so if I buy inventory on the vendor side of things normally if I buy something and the money goes out of my company I would record it as an expense but with inventory you're supposed to record it as an asset at that point in time now I could do that with the bank feeds I could buy something and record it as an asset but then of course I have to track the inventory and when I sell the inventory then I'm going to sell it usually with a invoice or a sales receipt and if I'm using a perpetual inventory system then the inventory would be decreased and the cost of goods sold would be recorded at the point in time we sell it so the fact that we have to track the inventory and then record the expense when we sell the inventory if we're using a full perpetual inventory system means that inventory is going to kind of mess up our recording of just on a cash based system there are workarounds around that so you might say maybe I don't have a lot of inventory on hand I just buy stuff and I sell it very quickly in which case maybe you could just expense it as cost of goods sold when you buy it or you might be using a periodic inventory system tracking inventory outside on a separate ledger so that could work and help you to stay more in a cash based system we'll talk about those options more when we get to the cash the bank feeds section but just note if you're tracking inventory that will usually be more complex on the cash outflows side if this is usually for small businesses where it might be the easiest to be on a cash basis so you might be able to use your bank feeds very easily on the cash outflows and have more difficulty on the revenue side if on the revenue side you have to invoice you're on a cruel method for revenue you're on a cash method for the expenses because when the expenses come due you're not entering a bill possibly but rather you're just recording the expense when it comes up right if you're paying with an electronic transfer as bills come up you just pay it with an electronic transfer then that would be the easiest thing to record with a bank feed because now the money you don't have this a cruel problem happening the money is paid with a transfer which will give you memo information which will help you to record the vendor and then you can use that to select the proper account that it should be going to also if you pay with credit cards the credit cards can be connected to the bank feeds like the checking accounts it's a little bit more complicated to wrap your mind around it's not really more complicated I don't think of paying some cash going down when something is paid as opposed to a liability going up but you can connect the credit card so that would be fairly easy to do as well but if you're on an accrual system and you're entering bills which is usually happening for small or mid-sized to larger businesses where they are trying to pay as late as possible because possibly if you have many transactions taking place then cash management strategy becomes more crucial and paying the bill as late as possible becomes more important and therefore you're entering your bill you're tracking your accounts payable which means you've added an accrual component when you enter a bill into the system it increases accounts payable and it records the expense or the inventory if you bought inventory and it doesn't have any cash related to it so you can't record the bill just using the bank feeds and then you're going to pay the bill and when you pay the bill it decreases the accounts payable and records the amount to cash so how would bank feeds fit in then? you probably do the whole process enter the bill and then pay the bill and then you would be matching this transaction to the amount that came through the bank feeds which means the bank feeds would once again be helping you with the reconciliation process not with the actual recording you may possibly be able to tie out the bank feed to the bill so that it records the transaction but we'll talk more about that later and then payroll throws a big wrench into everything if you're doing payroll then there's two primary choices you can use for payroll one is that you can run payroll through QuickBooks or which is usually a cost more you have to pay for the QuickBooks to run payroll or two have a third party provider do the payroll such as an ADP or a paychecks no matter what you do it's going to cause a complication to just recording things with bank feeds because with payroll you have to process the payroll and record there's an accrual component to it because you have to deal with at least in the United States payroll taxes which means you have to do with holdings record liabilities and therefore you can't just wait till something clears the banks and record it as employee expense or payroll or wages now there are workarounds to that once again which we'll talk about when we get to the bank feeds section but just note if you're dealing with payroll it's not going to be just as easy generally as just I'm just going to set up the bank feeds and we'll let it fly and we'll just let it roll from there so that's going to add complexity so the bottom line here bank feeds are great they add more it makes things easier in a lot of ways however you first want to think about how your accounting system works and then how the bank feeds will fit into that accounting system the things that will be most easiest for bank feeds if you're on a cashed based system not only that though you're on a cashed based system where you have transfers that are electronic transfers that are coming through possibly something like a gig work things that are going to make things more complex is if you're selling stuff at a cash register and you're trying to use the internal controls there if you have a cruel components on invoices on the sale side or entering bills and of course if you deal with inventory and if you have employee information any of that stuff will add a level of complexity so you want to first understand how the whole cycle is working and then how you can put the bank feeds into your system and there's no like one size fits all approach because everybody's accounting cycle will be a bit different depending on the industry that they're in and how large they are and so on I'll also just realize that when we say that a business is easy or difficult we can break that further down not just into the whole accounting process but by cycle I mean is their revenue cycle easy or difficult are they on a cash based system or do they have to invoice clients do they deal with tracking inventory is the vendor cycle easy or difficult are they just paying stuff with a bill or a credit card I'm sorry with a check or credit card or expense are they doing electronic transfers or are they actually writing physical checks which adds a level of complexity or are they entering bills which will make things more complex and then do they have payroll and then you can get into the levels of difficulty with payroll how difficult is payroll to connect to the bank feeds we'll dive into that later if you feel competent that you want to dive into that straight away then feel free to do that we cover the bank feeds in a future section


Tom here from Lawrence Systems and Greylog is an amazing open source logging tool that I've talked a lot about. I've got a video link down below of how to set up Greylog. I think it's great, but then of course people, well, they use Windows a lot and they want to know how do I get my Windows logs into Greylog. The Syslog format is good for all the other devices and Greylog supports that, but we're going to be using the GELF format, the Greylog Extended Log format. Now, this is going to be combined with using Sysmon, Sysmon Modular to create enhanced Windows logs and then using NXlog to actually ship them over to Greylog. All the links and everything are posted down below for all the different tools that I'll be using. It's pretty simple and straightforward to set up. I have predefined configs. The only thing you have to do is put your Greylog IP address in. And as I said, if you haven't set up Greylog, you'll find a whole video on how to get going with Greylog down below. Now, full disclosure up front, this video is not sponsored by Greylog, but in the past as I've done videos, they've sent me shirts. And hey, folks at Greylog, if you like this video, give it a thumbs up and send me another shirt, because you got my address or actually really any Greylog swag. I'm a big fan of the product. Now that I've disclosed my business relationship with Greylog or lack thereof, other than the shirt thing, let's get started. Are you an individual or forward thinking company looking for expert assistance with network engineering, storage or virtualization projects? Perhaps you're an internal IT team seeking help to proactively manage, monitor, or secure your systems. We offer comprehensive consulting services tailored to meet your specific project needs. Whether you require fully managed or co-managed IT services, our experienced team is ready to step in and help. We specialize in supporting businesses that need IT administration or IT team seeking an extra layer of support to enhance their operations. To learn more about any of our services, head over to our website and fill out the higher us form at lorenzsystems.com. Let us start crafting the perfect IT solution for you. If you want to show some extra love for our channel, check out our swag store and affiliate links down below that will lead you to discounts and deals for products and services we've discussed on this channel. With the ad read out of the way, let's get you back to the content that you really came here for. Now the first step in this is going to be downloading Sysmon. This is part of the system internals. And Sysmon by itself doesn't completely set this up because it needs a config file to really take advantage of all the capabilities. And you could write this all yourself, but don't worry. There's plenty of templates out there that'll help you. And a template we're going to be using today is the Sysmon modular. This is over on GitHub. And there's a few variations here. You got the default and the default plus. We're actually going to use the default plus because it has a few extra features in there. But this is a rabbit hole. I'll leave you to go down. If you want to go through all the different options in here, including verbose and super verbose, these might be fun learning opportunities. If you are deep diving into all the internals of windows, I wanted to know all the logs that get created. But for sanity reasons, we're just going to use a default plus because that's a more common production version of it. I also like this because it will add midter attack techniques as part of the systems that run. We'll show that later in the video and eventually I will have some videos diving deeper into some of the midter attack and how this is used in SIM tools. But essentially what you're doing here is aligning when something runs, such as who am I, two different midter attack techniques. And that's in this default plus setup. Now to get the logs over to gray log, we need a tool called an X log and they have a free community edition. And you can just go here to an X log community edition, choose the windows and choose download. That's all we're doing. Nothing special we have to do here. I have a config file. So you don't have to mess with the config. We'll show how to apply that config, which I also uploaded to my GitHub. So you'd be able to download this yourself. Now, when you apply this config file, the only thing you're going to have to change is your gray log server IP address down here to bottom under host. So you just put the IP address of your gray log server by default. The port is that one two two oh one that is a default when you build gray log based on the Docker compose that I have. And if you've changed that or done something different with it, well, then you'll have to match that. But by default using my Docker config that's also in the same GitHub, this is the same default port that's used and created. And then in gray log, it's pretty simple to set up. You go into your gray log inputs, you want to choose gulf UDP launch new input, and it all defaults to the same ports, give it a title and follow my gray log video for more details and setting yourself. But this part's pretty easy. Now onto our windows config. I've already downloaded all these files that I mentioned right in here. And we're going to go ahead and open up an alibi the command prompt. Right here, we want to make sure we run this as administrator. So say yes, make sure we have permissions to install these. The first thing we want to do is set up sysmon. And we got to go into the downloads directory. So it's user, your username, and downloads. And we're going to run sysmon exe. We need to accept the end user license agreement and dash I sysmon config with file delete XML. This is that enhanced sysmon config, starting sysmon done. Now from here, we can actually open up event viewer. We can open up the applications and services, Microsoft windows, scroll all the way down, click on sysmon, click on operational. And this is where the enhanced logs will show up. Now this does not export them out. That's the next step. But this is where all those extra sysmon logs with all those details are in here. Now let's go and set up annex log to get them shipped over to gray log and click finish. And we're close that now next log needs to have the config file. This is where you can use the config file for my GitHub. We're going to run notepad. We're going to make sure we run it as administrator so it has permission to edit the file. We're going to go file open. You can specify the file right here and just hit open. It'll open the default config that was created for annex log. Now I'll do a quick select all delete the config and paste in my config for my GitHub, noting that you change the host. I have the IP address change to 192 1682.7 because that's my gray log server. We're going to go ahead and save this and close it. Then we're going to run services because we need to restart the annex log service so it recognizes the new config. There's annex log and we're just going to do a restart. All right, now let's see if the logs are showing up in gray log. We can see that the logs are flowing in here to gray log. Now as I mentioned beginning, you don't need an extractor for the gel format. It's already going to put all the data into the structured fields.  Now the next thing I want to talk about is the MITRE attack techniques. This is actually a really cool feature built into this particular Sysmon config. And to demonstrate this, we're going to run a command on our window system. We're going to run a who am I. This is a tool that an attacker might use that is built into windows because if they get a shell on the system, they want to know what user they are. So they might use something like who am I, they might use something like net use. And this will now flag the matching MITRE attack techniques that matched this. And if you're not familiar with MITRE, I'll leave a link to this. This is specifically IDT 1033. And this is a system owner user discovery technique. And they have a lot of descriptions in here. This is a way that security researchers use a common language. So we can say not did someone run who am I, but someone tried to do system owner user discovery techniques. And these techniques are all explained here. If you're into security, this is a great read to understand these techniques goes beyond the scope of this video. But let me show you how it maps inside of gray log. So in gray log, I'm going to put the rule name technique IDT 1033 matching that MITRE technique, we're going to put the full name in here. And then you can see clicking on this. This is that running of who am I, where they ran it from, the event time recording, all the other details around it, as well as the rule name right here, technique ID. Something you can do is go here, we're going to copy that, we're going to change it. So we're only looking for that technique ID. And you'll see each time technique ID came in. So if we scroll down to some of the other events, such as running net use, you'll see that is a different technique ID in there. This allows you to actually build queries. And this is running net exe. And this particular technique ID was T1018. So you can get the idea that you can start querying or build queries and statistics on when these are run or even build triggers, because these are anomalies you should be looking for on your system. And by having all of that MITRE data, along with all the other data from Windows, this gives you a really good base if you're trying to understand the security or what's going on or build those triggers, as I said, for things that are happening in Windows, you can look up the different MITRE techniques and start building this. And this is also really fun if you're diving into a cybersecurity career of just getting your hands really deep into how Windows does things and how you can trigger things in Windows. Matter of fact, this is a fun way to set up simulated attacks against yourself and understand how it maps techniques. Having all that in there, just to me a really cool feature. Leave your thoughts and comments down below. Love hearing from all of you. Like and subscribe. You want to see more content from this channel. Sign up for my newsletter if you want to keep up with what's going on with me and some of the videos and other friends videos that I post in my newsletter. And sign up for our forums, forums.laurancesystems.com, to have a more engaging discussion on this or other topics you've seen on the channel. And I'll see you around. Thanks.


What is going on everybody? Welcome to Monday morning. Good to see everybody here J.R. Fisher here if you're new to the channel, do me a favor subscribe go down there to that subscribe button It's a red button. You got to click it turn it gray and today. We're gonna talk about social media mistakes Some of us are making some terrible mistakes on social media. I want to talk about that today keep in mind This is an open session. So guys if you have questions about anything having to do with starting running and growing your online business Hey post them in that chat section if you're not watching this live You can post them in the comment section and then I'll see them there But man so good to see everybody. I'm so excited to be here today. I'm excited to be alive I mean, I saw yesterday that One of my favorite comedians and actors died Bob Saget. I don't know if you guys saw that or not 65 years old the guy was three years older than me and he just died. I don't even know why So, hey, we've got to make use of every single day Okay, we've got to really make use of it get something out of it contribute to other people's lives I mean this this life thing is not about just getting through it It's enjoying it and it's helping other people out and it's it's accomplishing things. It's all these things guys So so very important, but I do want to get down to the business today about the social media thing you know, they did a survey recently of people and they asked them the question has your social media use gone up during the world illness and 71% of the people said that their social media use has gone up And that's crazy. I mean that's crazy that so many people are into social media now But that means we got to be better at it, right? And don't let this overwhelm you don't let this scare you don't go My gosh, I can't learn all this you can learn this stuff It's not that hard you just got to know what to do and that's what I'm gonna do with these training sessions Is to share this stuff with you guys? Yeah Ty Ann says that yet so sad love him and of course Betty white. Oh my gosh. I forgot to say anything about Betty white Truly a legend. I mean what a cool lady she didn't even up until the end She didn't even want a big funeral or anything like that. I mean 99 years old.  She did so much of her lifetime. She was so funny.  You might as well do that I do want to get into the meat of the subject today, but don't feel bad about interrupting me If you've got a question if there's something you want to know if you've got some input You think it's gonna be helpful to other people, you know, go ahead and interject it put it in that chat section right there I'd love to hear from you And like I said, don't forget to subscribe and turn all notifications you notify each and every time I go live Okay, so the first mistake that we're making this is this is a pretty big one and I've been guilty of it, too And it's posting the same content across all channels. Okay? while cross while Cross-posting sharing Identical content on our social networks may save you time It can also make your content appear careless or out of place. So here's why it doesn't work Users engage with each platform differently users seek out different social media channels to fulfill specific needs Facebook Twitter Instagram YouTube they're all different people go there for different reasons number one reason people go to YouTube watch a video That's not the number one reason they go to Instagram. That's not the number one reason they go to Facebook For instance users primarily use LinkedIn to build a professional network. Okay While 66 of Instagram users say Instagram is where they interact with different brands So, you know, you've got to think about this when you're posting Each platform has its own distinct format. Twitter requires You know grief type things throwing 280 characters per tweet while Instagram emphasizes visual content and allows for captions As long as 2,200 characters in the post similarly as buffer points out instagram favors captions With at least 11 hashtags twitter posts perform better with no more than two hashtags So depending on what you're doing you need to alter this stuff In facebook posts Do best without any hashtags at all facebook doesn't like hashtags Let me get a sip here real quick So you may have The users who follow you on multiple platforms, but they follow you for different reasons I have a cooking channel at the start. You may want to check it out. It's restaurant quality recipes But I know that you know people on youtube are going to want to watch a video on how to do a process And make something and cook something Whereas on instagram, I need to post some pictures there right because that's what they that's what they want to see There are some pictures. So there is a difference. Okay, there is a difference Mistake number two, you don't have a clear audience in mind guys You are talking you're not talking to everybody nobody talks to everybody You have a specific niche and you've got to target that specific niche because if you don't Um, then you're just going to miss out on the entire audience. Okay, so know who you're talking to on social media It's really a vital Component for creating relevant meaningful content after all how you can speak directly to your audience specific needs If you don't know who they are how you're going to do that. Okay So what is the predominant age bracket or generation? These are some questions you may want to ask yourself What location are they at? You know, I know half my audience is in india and half is in the united states And that's about it. The rest is you know, one or two percent So that's what I do. What languages do they speak? What cultures do they belong to? When spending power and purchase behaviors, uh, do they exhibit, you know, what are they buying? What are their hobbies? What are their interests? What are the subcultures or affiliations they have? What other businesses do they interact with on a regular basis? You could see what those other businesses are doing what forms of content Do they consume or share on their accounts? What challenges or pain points do they need for a solution? What stage of life are they in? Okay, are they students or their parents or they retirees? I know that my audience is primarily 18 to 24 Um, I don't know why it is it just is and then the majority of them After that are 24 to 35. So 18 to 35 is my demographics. It's not 50 year olds It's not 40 year olds not that I don't have 80 year olds that listen to me I'm just saying that's the majority of my audience So I kind of speak to them about what you can do and what you can accomplish Number three, this is a big one. You don't have a defined social media strategy in place Smaller local businesses represent 65 to 75 of search and social media Spend on google and facebook and this is only likely to increase beyond 2022 with all of these networks Saturated with brand messages. You can't just toss your content out there and hope that it'll resonate with the right audience No matter how compelling your brand's message may be if you don't have a plan to adapt to social media Your content will not deliver the traffic leads and conversions that you're looking for So you've got to really target what you're doing guys Uh, what a good group here today and guys don't forget. Um, and I'm looking at some of the comments here Put my oh you're gonna put your you got a roast going Tyan's got a roast going. I happen to know her as ty and not pluckety chickety, but that's fine Do some more trainings pick up my client in the afternoon She's got it. Look at this. She's got her day plan Would it be beneficial to put our lives on both facebook and linkedin? Um, I I don't even use linkedin. So I can't speak to that I know linkedin is more of a business networking thing and if you're trying to you know I guess network with businesses, you know to get a job or to you know, you know You know get more information of your business to people that I think that's the place to go It doesn't fit me And that's the other thing I would say to you guys think about the platforms and who they focus on and does it fit your business It doesn't fit my business It doesn't fit my business for uh, you know training people how to make money online It doesn't fit my well, I guess it could because people are looking for jobs So maybe so much to look at but it doesn't fit my survival food business either because I sell survival food It just doesn't really fit in there. Um, so what you want to do Is you want to make sure that you're supporting your business goals? Okay, you want to make sure you're targeting audiences for your brand? Um, and you want to save time by allowing you to plan a content calendar in advance So you want to set your brand apart from competitors with better content? Okay, you want to convert social media leads into sales. So that's the point of all this It's not just to waste your time spending time on social media. You don't want to do that Okay, tyan's got another question here. Um, say On youtube channel would you out Would you out shout out to others that are marketing or making content you enjoy? Yeah, I tell you a good thing to do there. Um, tyan Don't go to another channel Let's say you're on youtube. Don't go to another channel and post in there Hey, I like your content. Check out my channel Don't do that That looks like Just spammy kind of promotion what you may want to do is actually talk about what they talked about So let's say somebody came to one of my recipe channels Or my recipe channel And said, hey, I liked your chicken and dumplings that looked really good. I like cracker burl too. Thanks for the video Then I may be more likely to go and click on that person to look at their channel and see what they're doing If it's interesting i'm going to subscribe to their channel But don't call out that the reason you're putting a comment is you want them To subscribe to your channel or come to your channel or check out your channel Actually have real interaction And this has to be done, you know on an ongoing basis. Um, I prefer what I prefer to do Is subscribe to a whole bunch of channels that I think are relevant to my channel Okay, so um this channel here I teach people how to start running and grow online businesses and then Once you subscribe you want to turn on the notifications for those channels So that you will get notified immediately and that's what I'll tell you to do do the same thing with this channel turn on your Notifications, but you'll get notified immediately when they put up a video Now the importance of that is that you can get there and comment right away because on most Uh videos the comments that are first put on that video are the ones that the channel owner will respond to I mean like if I get 400, you know comments on the video, I can't respond to 400 of them But if I put up a video today and somebody comments today, I'll probably comment back And I'm more likely to see who you are. So it's really all about timing Um, that's not to say you can't go to some older videos and put comments on there But the the real process is find a group of channels that are similar to yours Um subscribed to the channels and then turn on all notifications so that you know exactly when they put up a video Now that doesn't mean you're always going to hit it You know, maybe you get up at 10 o'clock in the morning and they post a video at 6 a.m So you're not going to have a chance to really be one of the first people posting However, if you do that with a lot of channels, you will get some opportunities And when you do that and you actually comment on the content itself and call out specific content You know, don't just say hey, that was a great recipe video. Well, all of my videos are recipe videos on my recipe channel Uh, or you know, somebody will put on this channel to go that was a great money making idea Well, what what exactly was the idea? Okay, I know you're just spamming me right now So you got to call out specific in other words, you got to watch the video you got to put work into this, okay? You do want to try to develop a detailed buyer persona, okay Which contain the key characteristics and behaviors that you target your audience allow This will allow you to actually develop content through The lens of your customer's eyes as opposed to you just kind of guessing You want to have carefully selected calls to action that are logical and easy to understand So like in my video right here that we're doing right now this live training that we're doing right now In the description, there's going to be a link for a free course on how to make money online So that that is a call to action to something that is going to help my listeners my watchers to to get something accomplished Let me check out some more of your Um Comments in here example Caitlyn doad tree makes historical content and mortuary cremation facts as a mortician Wow, there is a channel for everybody Um Just excellent combo of interesting things and call subscribers deathlings. I love it. Yeah, that's kind of cool And you'll find a lot of celebrities, you know, we'll let's say Shoot who is who is the lady lady gaga? She calls her audience a little monsters You know, so they kind of name their people, you know, I call I call mine the fisher family You know, which is not nearly as specific as some of that, but that's that's a really cool idea to do that Do like that Um, you also want to have a really optimized landing page experience So when you do have these call to actions on your social media when they go there It should be one thing to do and it should be the opt-in that you talked about and nothing else So be very very very specific on that Uh mistake number four This is a big one Your content is just So so it's not great. Um You really want to have good content Um, it's been found that 79 of consumers unfollow a business social media profiles if the content no longer interests them And nearly 67 percent unfollow a business if the content becomes irrelevant So you got to make good content guys and you know, this being said i'm i'm going through a course right now of pacy 9 stead if you don't know pacy 9 stead is you haven't watched much on youtube The biggest youtubers in the world, uh, but in this course he walks you through um Actually, you know creating the developing idea and filming videos for youtube If you guys are interested in that I can get you a discount on that course also It just started but you can jump into the course. Uh, so, you know Send me a message at training at jrfisher.com or something like that And i'll send you a link where you can get a discount if you're interested in taking the course I'm taking it. I think it's pretty darn good. Um, so what you what some of the things you can do is promote Collaboration between the marketing and sales team is your sales team talking to your marketing team Maybe you are the sales and marketing team. You don't have to worry about that You want to listen to your customers feedback study the engagement matrix to determine what your target audience wants to see from you I know on youtube you can go in there and you can see your most viewed videos Well, if you've got two or three videos that are getting way more views than anything else study those videos What did you say in those videos? Would you do in the videos? What was the message in those videos that really resonated with all those people? You got to ask yourself that Oh And I love your comments in there Tie in and everybody else. Please put your comments in there Ask me a question.  The one thing I will always tell you guys is that When you participate when you get involved in one of these live trainings You're a lot likely or excuse me You're a lot more likely to become successful because you're getting involvement Involvement is where it all starts guys, you know, it's not a matter of one day you wake up and you got a million followers You just start getting involved And the best way to get involved right now if you're on this right now is to put a comment in there Some form of comment. Tell me what your weather is. I don't care. Tell me how you're feeling today Hey, tie in was telling me she was putting something in a crock pot that interested me. I cook I'd kind of like to know what you're cooking too. By the way tie in tell me about that But do that, uh, don't forget to give the video a thumbs up too guys. I do want to interject that in the middle That's my little self promotion. I don't sell anything on these videos, but The thumbs up really really does help. Um, so you want to listen your customer feedback. I said that You also want to make the content immersive and uh experiential, okay? And that's what I'm learning to do in a couple of videos now But infographics you got polls quizzes webinars any other interactive things that draw people in a little bit You want to build your content around let's say newsworthy articles topical issues or trends Now one thing I did talk about was bob saggett and Somebody else mentioned uh, betty white here, but the point of that is you're going to be gone one day two You're going to be gone. So why not go ahead and put some good content out there? Why not leave something behind? You know, nobody's going to go. Oh, wow, did you check out his bank account? They're not going to do that I mean making money we have to do but You know, they're going to look at what you gave back to the world. Okay, and what are you giving back? You know, that's something interesting um social media is Not only a tool for generating brand awareness and website traffic But you can also be used for social selling especially companies that conduct business with other companies Now somebody mentioned linkedin earlier linkedin is an excellent channel for business to business research Okay to locate and connect and find people and find the contact people You know, that's a really good site for that You can you know through linkedin you can target your decision makers. You can research them find out who they are Um, you can be on the lookout for unexpected connections Okay, because people will want to connect with you once they see that you're on that platform You can use the search feature to target specific leads Um, you you can focus on one clear realistic call to action if you've got one set up, you know, and you want to do that Um And you could also follow up if you don't see, you know, any type of response from the people you can certainly do that Uh, there's a lot you can do on these social platforms All right, let's check out what tianne's got going on. Oh my god. This sounds good. I'm coming over tianne She's got pot roasts with celery carrots And onions and that is that's exactly what you do is you do celery carrots and onions What is that called? That's called a mirepoix. I believe Uh, sir, uh, celery celery carrots and onions doused in ranch packets Garlic salt pepper and cumin I'm coming over. I'm coming over. That's all that you need to post your address there.  It really does Okay, and I'm down to my last mistake or you know The last mistake is you're fatiguing audiences with too much activity Now, you know, this this is a weird one Um, and I think I think it really depends on what you're doing Um, I have a friend who's in essential oils and she may go live two or three times a day Uh, and her audience loves it just loves it. Um, I don't think that would work for my channel two or three times a day I just don't maybe it would but you want to make sure that you're if you're going live a lot Or if you're posting a lot of videos that it's really good stuff. I think it's hard to overdo good stuff Um, it's really easy to overdo common, you know, mundane boring stuff. Okay, if someone Follows your brand and social media and they they're given a certain Expectation to interact with you on a regular basis a consistent posting schedule is crucial To create maximum exposure to your content now People who follow this channel know that around 10 o'clock in the morning, you know, monday wednesday and friday And I wasn't doing it monday through friday. It's just too much or actually it's monday wednesday friday and saturday this week But four days a week i'll be live and i'll be talking about stuff that's going to help you out grow your business However, there's a fine line between creating brand awareness And being so active on social media that it comes across as self promotional Now you can you can go live a lot and you can upload a lot of videos as long as you're not selling constantly You know selling should be maybe 10 or 20 percent of what you do Uh and 80 to 90 percent should be free content. That's my belief Uh 42 of users unfollow brands because they excessively publish sales content So if you're not doing as much sales content, you can get by with going live or posting more videos or doing a lot of that stuff A whole lot more. Hey tyen says lol. I guess she's not going to let us come over darn. I wanted to come over Make sure your social media isn't your only channel for promoting your messages cross promote on other platforms, too Okay, so that your followers aren't overwhelmed on any single channel when I say other platforms. I'm talking about texting I'm talking about videos. I'm talking about email blogs all of those things you can use So this year 2022 Should be your best year. It really should we Excuse me. We are set up to really crush it this year People are on social media They're more receptive. They're listening to us more and more and more There's more people out there on these on these platform guys And for us to miss out to miss out on that, you know, because five years from now the same opportunities won't be here You know, they're gonna be different. So for you to mess out on that. It's just it's really a shame Yes, I plan to give lots of tips and things that I would do differently or avoid all together I like that. I like that a lot And you know what people appreciate that and and I think a lot of people don't give tips or suggestions or training or whatever Because they're afraid that somebody's going to disagree with them They're afraid that somebody's going to say no you jr. You cook that recipe wrong No jr on social media. This is what I do and what you're doing is entirely wrong And you're always going to have somebody who's going to disagree with you you can't worry about those people guys You can't you've just got to worry about putting out your best effort Giving good information helping people out the best you possibly can And doing that every single day and not letting up don't let up, you know, I've been working on this channel I'd say for two years You know, really kind of hard where I hadn't before And I've gotten a lot of results prior to that I had the channel for three or four years I never got much out of it and the reason I didn't is because I didn't put a lot into it And that's a big key guys if you're listening right now say hello. Tell me you're here Make sure you make your existence known because one day it will be gone Ask bob saggett if you could ask betty white if you could one day your existence will be gone You know in his last set bob saggett at the end of the set. He says oh my god He says I I've been up here two hours. I didn't realize you know this i'm paraphrasing But he says I've been on stage for two hours. I can't believe how long I've been out here on stage He says I've just fallen in love with doing this all over again And that is a big key guys Fall in love with what you're doing enjoy what you're doing, you know That passion will really spill over to your audience. It'll make a huge huge difference Make these corrections. I just talked about these six corrections in your social media Do these things actually implement these things if you don't remember all of them go back and watch the video over again I know it's live at this moment, but at some point it will just be uploaded on my channel You go back and watch it 10 times if you want Um, and tyen says that everyone has different experience. That's exactly right You know, that's exactly right and I go back to my driving thing And I'm not a hundred percent on this because I got mad at a guy the other day They cut me off and blew his horn and all this but Understand that everybody's life is a different experience and because you would do x y or z Doesn't mean they would because you're basing it on your life experience They're basing it on yours.  Maybe they just found out they had terminal cancer Maybe they're just an awful driver. They don't know anything better But the point is There's a reason for people doing stuff and for you to react negatively is a waste of time It's a waste of time and I got to say I did react negatively that person cut me off the other day But I do my best not to do that I do my best to be more aware of my situation if somebody's trying to get in front of me I just let them get in front of me. Okay. There's no point in getting angry. There's no point in getting upset There's no point in you aren't winning you aren't winning if you get one car length ahead of somebody think about that It's a car length. It's not going to really affect your day or time or any of that stuff So, you know, keep all that stuff in mind Um, so unless you guys have any other questions or comments, I'm going to wind it down I don't want to but I got to because I got a lot of work to do a lot of work to do. Um, but, um That's basically what I've got for you guys today. Think about your social media Realize there's a lot of people out there now get involved if you haven't put a comment yet It's not too late. As a matter of fact, if this isn't live and you're watching a recording of it Put it in the comment section. I come back and I answer those. I will hit all the comments this morning I'm gonna do that immediately after this. Okay, and I want to talk to you guys. I want to get to know you I've made a lot of friends on here. I don't know where paul is today Tie in that's kind of weird, but you know paul's normally here Shout out to paul. Uh, he's been around for a number of years with me now. Great guy Very knowledgeable too very knowledgeable. Um, so guys, I appreciate you being here. I appreciate everything you do I appreciate your comments. I appreciate you. Give me a thumbs up if you haven't done that Don't forget to hit that subscribe button and don't forget to Bring the bell turn on all bell notifications so that you're notified each and every time I go live Okay, each and every time I go live or if I upload a video, uh, I got a couple more comments angel Thank you so much for participating angel says. Thank you. I appreciate you being in there Yeah, he is usually and yes, he is. I don't know why christine. There she is. Thank you so much for commenting Thanks for reminding me to put my passion for what i'm doing into my post vital. Yes And you have a really cool thing that you do there and I won't get into a lot of detail But she has some really cool stuff Um, and use use my videos to promote your stuff guys if you have a channel and you want to put something in there About your channel about what you do put it in that chat section. I don't mind you doing it at all Feel free to do so, uh, and tyan who is plucky chickadee is saying hello to angel I appreciate you doing that you guys are interacting Um and angel saying hello back and that's awesome guys. That's what I want I want you guys to help each other out Uh, people are saying hello to christine now. This is what i'm talking about. This is what i'm talking about guys Let people know they're important.  They seem important Tell them they don't know that you think that they don't know that you care about them Let them know that you care about them. This is a community on this channel This channel is a channel to help people start running grow online businesses But it's also a community where you guys can help each other So everybody's saying hi to each other now. I really appreciate that. We're heading in the right direction Thank you so much guys. I'm going to go ahead and sign off now I will be here again on wednesday friday and saturday. Uh, I also have videos going up monday Wednesday and friday. Yes, I gotta think about my schedule. Uh, so you'll be getting live or not live videos You'll be getting uploaded videos on top of these other ones. I'm doing too Thank you so much for being here guys. Love each and every one of you Don't forget to be kind to one another. I will talk to you later. Thank you so much. Thank you angel Trying to hit that off button