“LBM Talks” hosts top professionals from different sectors of the lumber and building material industry to share their expertise, with a heavy emphasis on practical, tactical strategies to help you serve your markets and grow your business.
Social Media Coordinator Sally Lacey talks with dealers and experts in the industry to discuss challenges and innovations in online strategies.
In this episode, Rick Schumacher, executive editor and founder of LBM Journal, joins Sally to discuss the intention behind LBM Talks: Social Media and what to expect.
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Prefer to read about it instead? Take a peek at the transcript below.
(Editor’s note: Transcript is AI-generated and may include some errors.)
Sally Lacey
Hello everyone. Welcome to the first ever episode of LBM Talks: Social Media, LBM Journal’s latest podcast in our network of podcasts. My name is Sally Lacey, and I am the Social Media Coordinator for LBM Journal. So if you are not familiar with LBM Talks, our podcast, it is basically what I like to call, kind of a network. So under the name LBM Talks, we’re going to have different topics that we talk about. So our first segment that came out was LBM Talks: Credit, and that is hosted by the credit overlord of our industry, Thea Dudley, and today, for the first episode of LBM Talks: Social Media, I have a very special guest, and his name is Rick Schumacher, hello, Rick. Welcome,
Rick Schumacher
Thanks, Sally.
Sally Lacey
So Rick, maybe most of the people that are listening know who you are. But for those that do not, could you please introduce yourself, introduce what you do and how you’re related to the LBM industry.
Rick Schumacher
Sure, happy to so I’m Rick Schumacher, and I’m the executive editor and founder of LBM Journal, and I’ve been I, I’ve been doing this, covering the LBM industry since 1990 and with LBM Journal since 2003
Sally Lacey
So what is LBM journal?
Rick Schumacher
LBM journal. It stands for lumber and building material journal. So we reach the largest audience of LBM dealers, lumber and building material dealers in the country and our and the goal of LBM journal is to help our audience run their businesses better and smarter. And with social media, the goal is to is to just kind of build on the LBM, build the LBM community. So, and that’s the thing, that’s something that I that I’m pretty passionate about. So it’s the magazine helps people understand, but it’s just a, it’s a it’s a vehicle where we communicate to to the audience. But with social media, we communicate with the audience. So it’s, it’s very cool, and it’s something where the audience can also communicate with each other. It’s just, it’s, we’re, we’re essentially creating like a just a big open space in the universe where we can all connect and talk and get to know each other and share ideas and share, share ways of doing things better and smarter and just building community.
Sally Lacey
I love that. I’ve heard you are big on the LBM community. You’ve been saying that since I started working for you guys, and I haven’t heard you explain it like that, as the website is, you know, the space for the information and then social media and also the conference, are places that the LBM community gathers to be resources to one another. So that’s awesome.
Rick Schumacher
Yeah, it’s in the LBM community is, it’s, it’s, it’s very strong, but it’s also really fragmented, and because it’s a lot of it is, there’s lumber dealers, and they’ll be in their community, and they’ll know they’ll they’ll know their community, and they’ll know each other and their customers, but they don’t, but that’s it. That’s where it ends. So with the LBM strategies conference, the big goal with that was to do it bring people together in person. And that was that is just, I mean, magic happens at LBM strategies. When dealers get together and share. They learn from each other. It’s yeah, we we survey people after the conference and ask them what they got out of it, and if they got, if they went home with new, you know, new people that they’re going to follow up with new people in their network. And if they came home with new, new ideas that they could implement in their companies, and if they came home with new vendors that they can talk to and might be the next big thing in their market, you know? And there are things that these things wouldn’t happen if they didn’t take time from their business and travel and spend two and a half days with other dealers.
Sally Lacey
For sure. I’m only about a year into the workforce, and I’m beginning to see how powerful a network can be. So definitely a valuable resource.
Rick Schumacher
It really is. And now with social media, that’s just it’s kind of taken the next step, but it’s because the attending a conference is something that you know, between 202 50 people typically attend the conference, but there’s thousands of LBM dealers in the country. So social media that removes those, the boundaries or the it’s a lot lower barrier to entry because everybody has a a smartphone and a computer and social media is free, definitely,
Sally Lacey
And that is kind of next level Social. Media when you can not only gather a group of people around your brand, but then have those people, kind of in that community, interact with each other. So, right?
Rick Schumacher
Yes, and that brings us to the whole idea for this podcast, or LBM talk social media, because there are so many dealers who are there’s a lot of dealers who do great things on social media, and they’re really creative, really clever, really fun, entertaining and that community is growing, the community of dealers who really do a good job with social media, but for every one that does a good job with that, there’s probably 100 that either haven’t really don’t know. It’s kind of intimidating to them. It’s like, this is not their they’re good at selling lumber, but they’re not good at social media. So the whole, my whole goal with this, the idea behind it, and now that you’re here, Sally and able to, you know, we have the person who can pull this off because you speak social media much better than I do, but the goal is to get Have you interview lumber dealers who are doing a good job with it, and just get them talking and sharing their experience with other dealers. You know. What are the things you know? Why did you start getting into social media? What? What’s it doing for your business? What are some mistakes you made that you wish you had never done. What are some things you should dealers? Others should, for sure, do when they’re getting into it. So it’s Yeah, so it’s for dealers to talk to dealers, and we’re just kind of the facilitator.
Sally Lacey
I love that. And we’re kind of just going on a roll right now, which is great. I had so many questions to ask you, but we’re just, we’re hitting most of them right now. But you know, it’s a lot of the bigger companies that have a really strong presence on social media. And so for your point that there’s one to 100 that are doing social media compared to those that are not, you know, it’s those smaller businesses that maybe have a tougher time figuring out what to do. And so it will be interesting to talk to some smaller businesses, too. I have a couple in mind that are quite active and hearing how it impacts them and how it impacts their presence in their community, because I think that’s a big thing for those smaller businesses, right?
Rick Schumacher
I agree, 100% Yeah. I mean, LBM journal itself is a small business where, you know, we’re, we have a big presence, but our, the number of people put it out is, is really, pretty, surprisingly small. So we, for years, we didn’t our social media was pretty limited. We were limited to doing, um, essentially, reposting articles, you know, articles from our website. You
Sally Lacey
You know, you post daily news. And so you guys were just, you know, sharing the link to your socials, right?
Rick Schumacher
Yeah, we were sharing, sharing content we’d already created, but, but then, about it a year ago,
Sally Lacey
about a year ago, Yep, I’ve been working here for about a year.
Rick Schumacher
So we, yeah, we decided we really need social media is getting to be a bigger and bigger part of our community and of our world, so we need to step up our social media game, and we need to find the right person to help us do that. And that’s when we found you.
Sally Lacey
That’s when you found me through a Facebook post.
Rick Schumacher
Yeah, that’s kind of a funny story, too. So we had a we talked to a couple of companies who are established social media companies with actual employees and offices and the whole, you know, and we just couldn’t find the right fit. And then one member of our team said that she remembered seeing a Facebook post from a young lady who was taking on new social media clients, and so he said, Well, let’s talk to her. And as it turned out, we didn’t know it at the time, but we are really your first second so okay, we’re your second client. But um, and it started, we started off thinking we didn’t know what we didn’t know what we didn’t know. So we started off, we’re going to do 10 hours a week, and I thought we were going to have to be coming to you with ideas. And, you know, here do this and this and this, you know, telling assigning you to do posts, and then you didn’t need that. You just took off running.
Sally Lacey
I think that’s something about social media, is that there are tactics, and there are, you know, best practices. And so once you know those, it was just a matter of getting to know LBM journal so that I could, you know, marry the two together. I could marry the content LBM journal puts out what LBM journal does with best practices on social media, and then we just kept going. So, yeah, I was really happy to get linked up with LBM journal. And it’s been, it’s been really great.
Rick Schumacher
And we, yeah, and we’re glad you’re here too. And I just want to throw this out there too, that, yeah, you started as well for other people who were thinking about building out their social media. I mean, we didn’t. We knew, we knew, we knew we needed to do something, but we didn’t know what exactly. So we were planning on 10 hours a week, and that’s what we budgeted. And then Sally came on board and started had all these other ideas. So it’s like, okay, well. Well, would you have time to do 15 hours a week? The numbers just kind of kept climbing. And then after about, I don’t know if it was about six months or so, yeah, it was about probably six months, yeah, that you became, you were working 40 hours a week. So it’s like, full time employee. So it’s been, yeah, so it’s that really has surprised me, but it’s, I look at the like, I look at the results. I look at what’s happening. Like, I look at the metrics with our, you know, the size of our audience, you know, our engagement with people, engaging with our with our Facebook, our LinkedIn, our Instagram, and it’s in the numbers of just they were going up just kind of naturally, but now they’re just exploding because we’re doing thing, we being, yeah, you’re doing things that are fun and that are entertaining and engaging and getting them involved.
Sally Lacey
So Rick, you are, you’re kind of, you’re an innovator, you’re just, you’re willing to try new things, and that’s why you ended up hiring someone for this position, right? Not everybody is necessarily sold on social media.
Rick Schumacher
So I’m right on the I’m at the very, very tail end of being a boomer, so I’m like, one of the very last boomers. And so social media is not something that I’m Native to, you know, it’s not something I grew up with, and it’s something that I’m still figuring out. So it’s something that I poo pooed, you know, for a long time. I just did. It’s like, this is not, I mean, it’s Yeah, because, well, first of all, I mean, from a business standpoint, from a number cruncher standpoint, you know, where’s the ROI, you know, because you can’t, it’s really, really hard to like for us, for for LBM journal. We’re a media company, so our revenues come from advertising and sponsorships and those kind of things. So it’s hard to directly tie those numbers to social media. And so that’s why we didn’t jump in with both feet when, when it was grown, when social media really started to grow the social media thing is, I mean, it’s fun, but it’s also, I’m seeing it more now as as another, just another vehicle to communicate, especially so as a media company, everything that we put out is carefully curated, and it goes through multiple, multiple rounds of editing and proofreading. And so by the time the magazine gets in people’s hands, it’s, you know, I mean, there might be an occasional mistake now and then occasional typo, but it’s pretty it’s pretty spot on. There’s no mistakes. It’s like, it’s pretty perfect. And social media is like the opposite. That’s like, that’s the magazine without any editing, without any proofreading. And so that was that, to me, it was daunting, because I’m used to having nothing goes out under the album, journal name that’s not perfect. So, so this was a stretch. I mean seeing it as not something where we’re communicating to our audience, but where it’s we’re all communicating together. I mean, through social media, people are seeing a different side to LBM journal. They’re seeing the people who put it together. They’re seeing who we are and what we’re about, which is kind of fun, and I’m really we’ve got an incredible team made up. I mean, there’s so much talent on our little team that we punch way above our weight and in the more attention, the more people get to know who’s behind the scenes. Make an album journal happen is fun, and it makes me proud, because I’m proud of what, proud of the people I work with, and I’m really, yeah, I’m really fortunate to be able to work with them. So this shows it an authentic side of who we really are.
Sally Lacey
I think so too. So about a month ago, Rick, I get a phone call, and he tells me that he has an idea and that he wants to start a new podcast segment about social media and that he wanted me to host it. So Rick, can you share with us a little bit about how this idea came to you and kind of what your intention behind LBM talks social media is? Well,
Rick Schumacher
first of all, when I did bring up that idea, you liked the idea of creating content, but you didn’t love the idea of hosting a podcast, I thought that was interesting, but I’m glad that you’ve come around to it, because, yeah, and the idea behind it was just a growing number of dealers want to get involved with social media. They don’t know how to start. They don’t know where to start. So the best place to start, I thought, would be to hear from other dealers who are doing it and you’re the right person to to find that. I mean, because you follow these dealers, you find them, you engage with them. So it was like you were the perfect person to reach out to them and have conversations about their social media. How do they get started? Just all the questions that these dealers are thinking or might be thinking, but they’re not sure where to get started. So that’s it’s just to do it as a resource. It’s to make it it’s to build the community and for us to be a. Resource, definitely.
Sally Lacey
So that’s kind of what you’re going to get for LBM talk social media. Is me just having conversations with LBM dealers and getting kind of the inside scoop about what they’re doing, how they’re doing it, and essentially information about how you guys can do it too. That kind of wraps up this very first episode of LBM talks social media. I’m really grateful that Rick, Rick, that you joined me on this first episode, and I’m excited to host this podcast for us.
Rick Schumacher
Well, you’re going to do a great job. Sally, I’m excited that you agreed to do it.
Sally Lacey
If you’re listening to this podcast on Spotify, you can follow us so that you get notifications of new episodes. If you’re on Apple podcasts, you can also follow us. And I’m going to be starting out posting every the first Thursday of every month, so you can expect new episodes then, and you know, if it’s a hit, we will up the frequency. Thank you guys all for listening, and we’ll talk to you later.
