Don’t Panic Post Everywhere: The Why of Social Media Management

Photo by Jas Min on Unsplash 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