For so many of my clients, primarily Gen X entrepreneurs, posting on social media is a source of panic. They are aware they should be, have to, need to, to keep up with their competitors. But doing so is daunting, time consuming, and confusing.
Let me clear up some misconceptions, give you assurances, and teach you a few key points so you can handle your social media marketing with confidence!
Social Media is One Channel
Communication requires the sending of a message across a channel. For any company, marketing channels are many and varied. The main categories are three: voice (face-to-face, telephone), print (periodicals, circulars, billboards, posters and fliers, brochures, business cards), and digital (website, email, SMS/text, internet ads and posts). Each channel has its own challenges – and digital can be the most daunting!
For many entrepreneurs who grew up in a non-digital environment, the concept of posting on social media induces anxiety. First, they’re not sure what message to send. Second, they aren’t tech savvy. And third, they don’t have time to keep up with it. So, they ask why do they need to use it at all.
Why Social Media?
Understand that our business culture has shifted to a relationship model. Consumers no longer want to be talked at: They eschew print ads, radio ads – Crazy Eddie screaming at them! They want to talk to the business. They want to feel part of a team. Our ever identity-focused culture demands businesses acknowledge the consumer as a unique person.
Social media facilitates that connection.
You post an ad for your new widget. Or you post a sale notice. Great!
But it should not stop there. You must rethink your approach to marketing. This is not 1975. You are thinking you can post it and the customers will burst down the doors, credit cards ready! Nope. Social media posting is not a spray and pray activity. You can’t randomly share posts you like and think that’s enough to establish credibility and qualify as a social media goddess.
No. Why bother at all? When you post that ad to social media, you must invite likes, follows, shares, and feedback. If you are posting without a plan, you are truly wasting your time. And, contemporaneously, communicating to the market that you don’t know what you are doing, do not understand modern culture, and don’t care about them.
Without getting too professorish, communication is not one way. In fact, communication theorists once thought of communication as a one-way exchange, akin to a photograph. But that’s not reality. Communication is more like a movie or video: Person One sends a message across a channel to Person Two. Person Two then responds across the channel with feedback to Person One. And so it goes.
Every effort you make on social media should facilitate that transaction.
The Challenge
“It’s too much,” my client, who I will call Larry, told me recently. “I’m supposed to create this ad or video or blog or whatever, figure out how to get it up there, track how well it does, answer everyone who comments or asks a question – and I’m supposed to do this daily? I’m running my business. I don’t have time. TikTok videos. Creating a YouTube page and videos? What the hell are Reels, anyway? And Facebook and Pinterest. I just about mastered posting an article a year on LinkedIn – and then my friend said I should be Tweeting daily. Are you serious? But I tried and was on the computer all day instead of selling my widgets. Who does that help? Sure, I got twenty likes and lost three days of sales. The whole thing is stupid and a waste of time.”
Larry is not alone. To those of us who grew up with radio ads and newspapers, with salespeople at our door selling shoes or vacuums, the social media thing is too foreign. The mastery is evasive – and with time so precious, most entrepreneurs hire some social media guru to handle all of it only to find the dude or chick disappears with the entrepreneur’s $3,000!
One of my friends hired a web developer to create the website and set up and manage social media. After fourteen months, her business still does not have the website. She’s at her wit’s end: “I’m relying on our Google and Yelp listings. The website lady keeps telling me she’s almost done. I just don’t have time for this!”
As an entrepreneur, you must pick your battles and spread your dollars for maximum return.
You may need an expert to create your website. But your social media? You can set that up and run it in a short time with an exacting effort. Here are your steps!
Where? What Social Accounts You Need
As a sophisticated business owner, you wrote your business plan and your marketing plan. So, you’ve done your research and described your customer or client persona.
The persona is a description of your ideal customer or client. It includes demographic and personality data. Who is this person? Age, gender, marital and family status, economic status, education level, and so on. You know what this person values. Do they care about religion? Their country? Family and friends? You know where they donate their time and to whom they make political contributions. What music and movies they like? What they wear. Where they vacation. You know their temperament and how they satisfy their needs and wants.
You get the idea.
You should also discover what social media your ideal client prefers. Are they on YouTube watching home improvement videos? Do they post vacation images on Instagram? Do they use Facebook daily? Weekly? Never?
Much of this depends, generally, into which generation your ideal client or customer falls. Socio-economic status and education level is also important. Do some research and figure out where they are.
Let’s take a Gen X baseball fan. You will find him on the MLB sites throughout the season. He’s posting on, maybe, surfing, Facebook and Twitter about the game results. He’s on fantasy baseball sites, card trading sites, and team sites. He’s on the baseball-related YouTube pages. Reach him there. For him, you can ignore TikTok and Instagram, LinkedIn, and Pinterest. Don’t even bother setting up accounts on those platforms.
This first step helps you identify exactly where you need to be so you don’t need to manage sixteen social media accounts. You need two or three.
Who? Set Up Your Branded Accounts
For this step, you need to refresh your brand awareness. Who are you as a brand? What’s your brand personality? What do you sell?
(If you don’t know the answers to these questions, you have bigger problems than your Twitter account.)
A photographer, for example, engages in visual creativity. She must run an Instagram account but doesn’t need to focus on Twitter. If her sincere/traditional service focuses on family portraits, she would be best served by having a Pinterest and a Facebook account to reach those parents every holiday. However, if she is a headshot guru, her focus should be on LinkedIn to reach professionals and businesses.
Same for a real estate agent. Why the heck would a real estate agent need to worry about Twitter or TikTok? He’d be better served with an Instagram and YouTube channel. Get those customers shopping! And if his market is primarily families, Facebook is a good idea.
Another thing to consider: Your business is not you (in most cases). Set up business and personal social media accounts. First, your friends and family don’t need to see every ad or appeal you post. Yuck. Second, although personal branding and showing up authentically is a marketing tool, your customers don’t want to see your selfies, breakfast, or grandkid pictures.
Third, you as an individual are not you as a brand. Separate your business from your personal life. Not only does it allow you to focus during business hours on the conversations related to your business, but also allows you to chill on the weekend and attend to your cousin’s wedding images!
One past client, who I fired because of this type of nonsense, constantly posted her dating close-to-porn selfies on her business account. Her business is no longer operating. Go figure. It’s an extreme but one to note.
When to Engage
Time is our most precious resource.
Decide when, what time, your posts will receive the most attention. And choose when, how often, you should post.
Like exercise, consistency is key.
We return to the customer persona. When is that ideal customer on social media? A quick internet search, social media or Google Analytics report will give you a strong indication of when your customer is surfing YouTube videos. That answer is simple to find.
When, how often, is much trickier to determine.
To start, I’m offering an unpopular opinion: Be realistic about the time you can spend on social media. Do not risk your health or sanity to Tweet. When and if you find you need to post daily (and only the big, established organizations and corporations do), hire a dedicated social media specialist. Until then, be kind to yourself.
If you find your ideal customer is on Facebook Tuesday evenings, post at that time once a week. If your ideal customer likes video, post one a month on YouTube. As long as you are consistent, and that customer’s expectation is satisfied, you will earn their trust and following.
How….the Hell Do You Manage This?
You’re a successful business owner. You’ve suffered bigger obstacles and challenges than posting to Instagram!
Once you’ve figured out who, where and when, the how is easy. Sort of. While the details for each platform is far too complex for one or two paragraphs, a simple internet search for “marketing on blank (social media platform)” will yield thousands of how-tos. It’s not as hard as you think!
From my perspective as a content consultant and creator, your best investment is in a post calendar. Create a simple document with a table for each platform (or one with columns for each platform). Create headings for three months (one quarter). Enter the dates of the month. Incorporate holidays where you can engage customers or clients in conversation. Then mark the active days your customers or clients are most likely on that platform.
Next, review your sales initiatives and offers, new product launches, and so on. Enter those ads and announcements on the active days. Just the titles. Don’t worry about the details yet! This is a plan exactly like Facebook and Instagram, where you can use Meta to quickly and visually schedule your posts.
And that’s the big key to mastering social media: Creating your posts the month before you post them! Take one day a month to create your content. Take a second day to schedule your content. In ten hours, I create and schedule a client’s daily posts across three or four platforms. Creat that visual aid to see where and when to put what. Easy.
What: Content Is Key
Content is difficult. And it’s the key. I don’t want to end this article by misleading you.
Creating whatever content, sharing others’ content, posting the picture of your breakfast – that’s easy. Creating engaging content that encourages feedback and connection is challenging. And doing so requires consistent analysis. What is working? Who is engaging? When do they engage most?
I have not even touched using keywords and tags – or links or SEO practices….
Yeah, there’s a lot to learn. But if you are not at the point of hiring that dedicated social media guru, you must rely on you.
The points given here should make the execution easier, less stressful, and more effective for you. For the what to post, here are three key ideas:
- Brand your content. Everything – every word, image, idea – you post should echo your brand message. This is why I don’t post pictures of my breakfast. True, I don’t eat breakfast (shut it, I intermittent fast!), but my clients could not care less if I have dried chickpeas and coffee. I post humor, anti-establishment memes, and social commentary. I post how-to articles. I post uplifting images – life is good stuff. I post offers to save my clients’ money and time. My clients, across all my business interests, are primarily Gen X. They need a laugh. They appreciate honesty, the meaning of life, and how to accomplish their next challenge. They want someone who cares about their time. And their budget. My message stays the same no matter what I post.
- Create engaging content. I admit, I’m working on this daunting challenge for my clients and myself. People, no matter who, are suffering information overload. So, getting your target consumer to even see your content is difficult. Add to that: People will only engage if it means something: To help another, to self-define, to grow relationships, to rally others. Lots of trial and error brings the greatest reward. You know you’ve done well when you count shares, comments, follows – and leads. (Forget likes. Monkeys can press the thumb button. Ignore it.)
- Stop selling. Yes, I said it. Stop. Selling was for Gary the Car Salesman in 1972. We don’t do that high-pressure thing any more! All of your content should offer information, help, assistance, ideas, inspiration, insight. Make your customer or client (potential or current) engage because you offer something that opens the conversation. Consider social media a cocktail party. Would you walk around handing out business cards and shaking hands and giving your elevator pitch? If you say yes, you are off my invite list for my barbeque. Don’t be a dork. Be a person. Ask questions. Learn about the person on the platform. Conversation over conversion.
That’s all for now. I hope that helped. Drop me a line if you want to chat about your experience! I’d love to hear if this helped – and what other challenges you have when posting to social media.
