How To Drive Your Social Media Marketing Like A Pro

Sure, so hello, thank you for that awesome introduction, Angela. Great, great big shoes to fill here so I better perform under pressure. I'm so happy to be here. I've been working with businesses of all sizes like Angela said for over 10 years and in a consultant capacity. From small businesses to larger companies, E Commerce, service based businesses too. And, I've learned a lot of lessons the hard way. I actually had my own brick and mortar business about 6 -7 years ago, so I learned lessons the hard way that way too.

And now I I work with these small businesses to kind of demystify marketing, specially digital marketing, and set up systems for business owners that really want to be hands-on and really get in there and get a lot of return on investment from their marketing efforts.

So, today I really just want to talk about Social Media. There's a lot of other arms and branches of the digital marketing tree, so stay tuned for more webinars. But today we're just going to do social media.

And I really like social media a lot. And, I like teaching business owners about social media. Because there's a lot of power behind it and some of the biggest advantages are here on this screen. It's another channel for customer service. It's ubiquitous meaning that everybody can access it on a number of different devices. Your PC or laptop. Your smartphone, your Nintendo Switch, you know, whatever it is that you have. You can reach social media. It drives traffic to your business website, which goes hand in hand with SEO and organic growth through search engine rankings.

It's cost efficient. It doesn't cost you any money to build a social media profile. It doesn't cost your customers any money to create their own social media accounts and access your social media account.

It builds loyalty with your customers. It's a place to build a community and to grow a network of customers and start conversations and keep conversations going and ultimately, it helps build convergence. It helps turn social media followers or Internet users into actual paying customers.

To kind of demonstrate the power - the quantitative power of social media. Here are some great stats.

42% That's nearly half. 42% of consumers expect a response to a complaint on social media within 60 minutes. I think in this stage in 2020 we’re so much more likely to sit down in front of our computer and send a message on Twitter or send a message on Facebook. Then we are too write an email to a company. And now customers have started to expect that. Crazy is that brands respond because it is such a dynamic channel. 80% of Facebook users access the platform on mobile devices. Which just goes to show there are so many ways your customers can reach you on social media. Desktop, mobile device and I think that number has grown exponentially within the last few months. Now that people are working from home much more and really, spending a lot more time in front of their devices. 97% of all bloggers use social media to drive traffic to posts and you don't have to be a blogger to do that. Many businesses now have a blog on their business website and use social media to post these blog posts. Then that direct funnels all of your social media audience over to your website. Which once again is something you want to help boost your SEO.

If you want to start paying for social media ads, especially on Facebook, It is a great platform to get a lot of bang for your buck. You can potentially reach 10,000 users with as little as $30. That's a pretty big return on investment when you consider something like a post card or a direct mail piece only gets 2% return on investment.

You know if you have a limited marketing budget - which many smaller businesses do - you want to make sure that you are getting the most out of that budget. And, in that sense, 80% of customers engage with brands through social media. You think about Facebook groups, LinkedIn groups, you think about people who are following you on Twitter. People who are commenting on posts on Instagram. It's now something that is really part of our culture too.

It's something that customers are starting to kind of demand that brands do. They want to know that they're being seen as customers on all sorts of different channels. To show the power of conversion, think about the fact that consumers are 71% more likely to purchase a product based on its social media referral. That's pretty big, you know. Especially now that we are staying home or we're not out looking at new products, We’re not out talking to our friends about new products.

Things have kind of started to center on social media in terms of Commerce, E Commerce and even small, local, service based businesses.

So, that said, we'll talk about platform selection. Choosing the right platform is key. If you are on all platforms at all times, you will be throwing your time and resources and energy out the window. If you are on nothing else, I suggest that you are on Facebook.

If you don't want to do anything else on any other platform, go to Facebook, be on Facebook. Facebook is the number one most used social media platform in the world and is most popular with Millennials and Gen Z social media users. Just as a refresher, millennials are the generation that were born in 1981 to 1996. Depending on where you look, these years might shift a little bit. But, these are young families. The millennials have right now a pretty hefty amount of spending power.

And Gen Z is like 1996 to 2010. The thing about the oldest of this generation are just now finishing college or entering their senior year of college. So, they're going to be going off into the working world. They're goong to have disposable income. So, if these are your target demographics. You're going want to be on Facebook.

Twitter is a great platform for real time engagement. Things happen very fast on Twitter. Trends change very quickly. Hashtag change news spreads like wildfire on Twitter. So, think about that you if you do want to engage and post on Twitter. Think about content that's relevant, that's inclusive and transparent. And if you want to have conversations with your customers on Twitter, make sure you're available in real time. Because this is not a platform where you can post something and then six hours later come back and respond to somebody who commented. You really want to be in the moment

LinkedIn is really a professional platform. We all have LinkedIn profiles or maybe at one time looked for Jobs on LinkedIn. It's a great platform for business to business marketers. 97% of this group uses it for content marketing and 89% use it for lead generation.

And it's a great way to show thought leadership and expertise.

Or, if you're a solopreneur or if your company is a professional services provider, this is a great way to kind of build up cache and network within your industry. Really show off what you know and generate leads that way and then Instagram. These are kind of just the big four. There's a bunch.

On Instagram now that Facebook owns it, it's a lot more intuitive and it's really kind of visual forward. So companies and brands that have products that are - think about home furnishings, think about artwork - you know its products and services that really lend themselves to kind of being seen to be understood. The power of Instagram is that 92% of Instagram users follow a brand wander to their website. I made a purchase after just seeing one post. That's the power of 1 post on Instagram.

There's also, you know, not on this list. Is Tik Tok. There’s Snapchat. There's countless numbers of social media platforms that depending on your core customer you could explore. But these are kind of the big ones that everybody knows and everybody tends to either have one or two of these apps on their phone and may even have an account even if they don't check t it regularly they are at least present on the platform.

So once you pick which platform is best for you, you move on to optimizing your content, and I think that this is where a lot of a lot of people get hung up.

OK, so great. I have a social media account now what do I post? Well you can post anything.

And you should if you don't know what to post, post something and post something that about your products, about your services. Don't go dark. If you have content creation paralysis, you know the last thing you wanna do is not post anything at all.

If you have no clue where to start. Start by checking on the competition. Start by seeing what your industry peers are posting. Go to three or four of your competitors, do a little industrial espionage. See  how they're handling their social media accounts. Look for trends. Look for patterns. Look for topics that seem to be common among them.

And make notes you know? Kind of ride on that wave to help get future creative juices flowing.

You can always link to your own blog posts on your business website. You probably spend time creating these blog posts. If you outsource them, you're spending money and this is content that's relevant to your business that has keywords in it for SEO purposes. And it's a great way to drive traffic to your website from social media.

You can also recycle and update Evergreen content - content that is not time sensitive. It's not outdated. You can kind of update it to make it more relevant to the day that were in the present time.

Don't be afraid to ask your partners and customers to share content as well and share their content. Link to it. Suppose that they're talking about your business or about any kind of topics or trends that are happening within your industry. And, that also helps to build community - not only with other businesses, which is great. You always want to have partners in your corner that understand where you're coming from, from a business owner's point of view. But, showing your customers that you listen is a great way to build loyalty.

And, you encourage comments. Encourage people to chime in. Everybody loves to be asked about their opinion. So you wanta to throw the conversation back at your customers and ask “What do you think?” “What was your opinion?” “What's your thought process?” and get people engaged on your social media accounts.

And then, if all else fails, there's memes, there's gif, there's viral videos. These are pop culture content at its finest. And as long as you give proper credit, it's a great way to really echo what your customers are seeing and consuming in terms of content. Really kind of stay relevant.

Don't forget your hashtags! There's relevancy there too. You don't want to set up a hashtag on just any word in your post. Think about your SEO keywords. Think about trends, consumer trends. Sometimes brands create their own hashtags. Hashtags are great for all platforms, including LinkedIn, including Facebook. It's a great way for customers to search by keywords if you are trying to introduce them to your business.

If they don't have any kind of specific knowledge about your business yet, they're probably not gonna go to Facebook and look up your specific business name. But they are going to go to Facebook and look up plumbing or look up home, home furnishings or whatever hashtag is relevant to your business in your industry. And it makes a difference for engagement.

Then, once you choose your content, your scheduling is just as important. Different audiences look at different platforms at different times. You'll be able to check in on your dashboard if you're an admin. You'll be able to see these metrics on your Facebook dashboard, your Twitter dashboard, your LinkedIn dashboard. They've all become very intuitive and they've all built these algorithms that track when your users are using the platform the most and viewing your post the most. So you want to make sure you're pushing out post at when your customers are in front of their screen. And that's what helps you optimize for engagement, right? You don't wanna push something out and then have somebody miss it as their feed goes by. These social media feeds move very quickly and you want to grab them. You wanna grab your captive audience and get them to engage. You don't want to set it and forget it. You don't. If we've learned anything in the past several months is that we can no longer schedule our social media for the next two months. Because what we think is important now could change tomorrow or could change next week. While it's good to have some kind of plan or blueprint for the next few weeks, you don't want to get ahead of yourself because you don't want to post something that seems tone deaf. Or, that's kind of not part of the news cycle anymore. Or, is something that may become somewhat of a controversial topic that could backfire.

You want to check your metrics. You want to see where people are engaging. If you have a schedule setup and you're scheduling and you're posting and you're still not getting engagement, go back and check your metrics again and think about maybe shifting it one hour and post on Wednesday instead of Thursday at 6:00 o'clock. You know, the numbers don't lie. They will always tell you what you need to know to help you optimize your scheduling and consider current events. That kind of goes with set it and forget it.

If you want to post about topics on your business account that you think might draw some controversy or draw some comments, that's OK, I'm all for that. You have to think it through though. You're gonna get feedback. You're gonna get push back and you may end up losing customers. If you're willing to back up your opinions and engage with customers on social media and thoughtful ways that doesn't kind of blow up in your face, then by all means, go ahead and share those opinions. But, in general I think the rule of thumb is to save that content for your personal accounts as opposed to your business account. But once again, that's something that is totally up to you. Your mileage may vary.

So after you figure out your content strategy and you figure out your scheduling, it's time to create your content. There are so many great software tools, tech tools, web based apps and mobile apps out there that that all marketers use. Small business owners use these to create marketing. This is just a group of tools that I have found to be the most useful and offer the most return on investment.

Canva, I love for designs. I used Canva for this entire presentation. I've used it for business cards. I've used it for print marketing tools. I created a design for a 20 foot vinyl banner and we took that design to the printer and printed out this banner that was for a beer festival  a few years ago. It stood on Overpass Bridge on an older road and 10s of thousands of people saw it every day. So, it's a great drag and drop. You can upload your own photos. You can upload your own logo. You can really customize these images. It's a really great tools to use at every single day.

Hoot Suite is a tool for scheduling your posts and tracking metrics. The nice thing about Hoot Suite is that you can post from different accounts on different platforms at the same time and then you can see all of those metrics together in the same dashboard instead of having to sign into each platform individually and check those metrics. This is a great way to compare and contrast your efforts and see where you need to adjust.

Emphatic is another amazing tool It is for copywriting. US based copywriters – real people, not robots and a scheduling tool. What you do is you create your content strategy. You send it to the writers at Emphatic. You tell them how many promotional posts you want, how many third party posts you want, a month. if you want to promote any products or service. You tell them all about your business and they will create social media copy for LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook for you. Then it will go through a human editing process and then these posts will be sent to your scheduling tool. You have a chance to review them. You can accept them, or you can send them back for rewriting. Once you've accepted these posts, they move into your scheduling tool and they will be posted automatically based on the schedule that you set up.  great tool and I actually have a link for free trial for that tool. Full disclosure. I've done some copywriting for them for their blog and I know that the owner of the startup. Stay until the end and I'll give you the URL on the last slide.

Grammarly! Talk about copywriting. Grammarly, is a spelling and grammar checker tool. Please, please don't have spelling issues in your social media posts. Because I guarantee your customers are noticing that. It may not mean that they're gonna go to the competition. But, then again it may. There are people out there who say “Look they're not using their apostrophe the right way. I can't do business with them.”. You have to understand there's so many people out there who will sit there and scrutinize what you're posting, how you're posting it and make a decision about spending their money or not with you. Really, it's just a generally great tool to have. You can use it for your Emails, professional email.  It's available in Google Docs, word docs, and it's a great tool. I love it. Use it every day also.

And Giphy, is this searchable gif database.  I know that there's some controversy about how to pronounce that, so we can have a discussion after the webinar is over if you want to get into that. But gifs are small, short videos one to two seconds. They loop and they are kind of once again part of that pop culture online, digital content consumption and video engagement because they are considered video. Video engagement is huge right now. People love video and people love video that’s silent that they don't have to read subtitles.

LastPass -Save all of your login information in LastPass. It will autofill for you. It will offer password suggestions. Really strong password suggestions. It will let you know if you your passwords are the same for different accounts, which can be a vulnerability. But more importantly you want to make sure that you're not the only person with access to your social media.  So guess what? LastPass allows you to let other people log into your account without you sharing your specific login information. It will send them a link with an encrypted login and as long as you authorize them to use that link, they will be able to log in. Yeah, I can't tell you how many times you know both Angela and I have dealt with clients who have put their social media marketing in the hands of an intern or another employee who then leaves and takes that information with them. Then, now you can't log into your Facebook page. And what happens now is that you're gonna have to start all over! You're gonna have to create a whole new page. It’s a mess! All of the audience that you had is going to be lost. That big page with that big audience is going to go dark and your customers are not going to know where to find you. They're gonna have a hard time coming to your new page and you're gonna have to try and direct them over there.

The last, once again, the last thing you want to do is go dark. LastPass allows you to make sure that somebody other than you can access, when they're permitted to, can access your social media so that you don't have that headache of recreation on your hands.

As an aside, most of these tools have free options. There are, you know, pro level options that you can choose. If you were to choose the pro level for Canva, Hoot Suite, Emphatic and Grammarly. LastPass is free. But there's also a pro version. I don't use it, I don't. I don't need to. I don't think a lot of people need to unless you're kind of a big enterprise. But all of these tools together for me. I pay for some of these tools. I pay less than $200 a month to use all of these tools monthly and I can tell you if you are the business owner, an entrepreneur who wants to get hands on with your marketing. This is a great way to go. Because even if you don't want to get hands on with marketing, I can tell you a Social Media Marketing Manager is going to cost you much more than $200 a month.

So, it's definitely doable for even businesses. You have tight budgets and it will make your job much easier when it comes to marketing.

Moving on.

Let's talk about metrics. We mentioned them before. It's not algebra. It's not pre-calculus. But, it does take a little bit of formulating and once again the math won't lie to you. Sitting there wondering if posts are working is not going to help you understand what your audience wants.

You come to the numbers and they are in the dashboards for each of these platforms. The dashboards  are really rich in metrics. And, if you've ever taken a look at them, there's a ton of different graphs and charts and numbers and stats and percentages. That's great, and I encourage anybody to get to know these dashboards. Go in there and play around. You're not gonna break anything.

Facebook especially is really starting to pivot towards helping small business owners break down what these metrics mean. There are tutorials all over the place. That being said, you don't even need to go into the dashboard to drill down on the metrics that matter. You can look at each individual post. You can use information like on Twitter - the likes plus the shares plus the comments divided by the number of impressions. If you have admin access to these social media accounts you will see these numbers on each individual post will be clearly labeled. You just whip out your phone. You use your calculator and you get your engagement rates. There are different formulas for different platforms. They all have a little slightly different algorithm when it comes to engagement rates.

But this will let you know how you're doing post by post and if anything it will give you a baseline as you're starting to kind of beef up your social media. These formulas will allow you to say, “Alright, well this post is great. This post is not great.”  Let's figure out what to do here.

And you don't need to spend hours in a dashboard trying to suss everything out or do  really complicated math. It doesn't have to be that complicated. But it doesn't have to be for people like me who are not great at math. I use these formulas too. Really often to kind of guide what kind of content is working and what content isn't.

So moving forward. Once you get those engagement rates, once you know what's working organically, which means you're not paying to boost these posts, you're not paying to advertise organic. Think free. Once you know what kind of organic posts are getting there. You can start to think about… OK, let's maybe pay to boost posts. Let's pay to advertise on social media. You don't have to, but if it is in your budget, it's a great tool to amplify the content that's already working for you.

Once again, set a budget.

If you know that you really only have a certain number of dollars to spend every month on your marketing, and you can allocate some of that to pay to boost ads or pay for social media ads, do it. But, don't stress yourself out over it, especially if you're just starting out.

Once again, I'm gonna go back to that chat at the beginning on Facebook you can reach 10,000 users for just $30. That's that's pretty big. That being said, you want to drill down on those 10,000 users. You don't want them to be just 10,000 people in the state of North Carolina. You wanna make sure that those 10,000 people are your social media audience that's already interested in what you do.

All of the big four – that’s Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram. They all have really great tools for narrowing down your audience when you pay to advertise. It's not just 10,000 people within a 7 mile radius. It can be people who have the same interests as your business.

My example is like a home furnishing store, right? You can choose people. Those 10,000 people can be people that have already liked Chip and Joanna Gaines Facebook page. If you know that your core audience is women 35 to 45, you can add that to your demographics. If you know that you're a local business and generally people don't drive more than 15 miles to come and see you. Once again, you can narrow your radius. So then you have 10,000 people in a small target that you know are already interested in what you offer. And that gives you a much better chance of converting those viewers to customers.

Platform specific tools and metrics. -  I think I mentioned that each platform has different tools. Your audience on Facebook for your home furnishings store is probably going to be much different than your audience on LinkedIn who may theoretically be Realtors who are looking for furniture to stage their homes for sale. So just keep that in mind. Just like there's a different audience and you should tailor your content for each platform. And the same applies when you're paying for ads.

Don't... I won't say don't, but it's probably not a good idea to use the same demographic parameters on LinkedIn as you do on Facebook. Then, once you have an ad, once you have content that you want to pay to boost test two different posts. We call it A/B testing. Send one out with half of your budget. Send another out with the other half of your budget and with a little context and see which one gets more engagement. You know have different pictures on each one, have different content, different copy, different wording, even different links to your website on each ad and track them and see which one performs better. Then, the next time you run an ad campaign, you know that there are certain elements that work. Then, there are certain elements that don't and this will help you really streamline your budget when you do decide to pay for social media ads. But, but once again you can still get a ton of traction without ever paying a single penny to anybody to advertise on social media.

And so this is the information about Emphatic, and once again I really believe in this service. I am friendly with the owner of the startup and I have done some work for him, but I would not be sending you to something that I didn't know worked. I know this works. I've used it for some of my clients and had great results, and then I have walked them through setting it up and then handed off the process to them. It's very easy to use. Very intuitive and it's really a kind of all encompassing tool for people who want to really beef up their copy and content but don't know how to start or may not have comfort with writing. Or, may not really know where to start building content.

This is especially great for business owners, entrepreneurs who are just starting out building their social media profiles. Because you have to start somewhere. And if you really don't have the time or the energy or the confidence to invest in building up your posts and building up your content, outsource it!

It's not an expensive tool and you can change your content strategy in real time. If you have an event tomorrow and you need 10 posts for Facebook to promote that event, you get in touch with the team to fast track those posts.

Get up to get them going and really work with you to make sure that you have the content and the copy that you need. Use all these tools. You can send them images. You can send them drop box folders. You  can send them Google Docs, whatever it takes, they will work with you to create great content that really drives engagement because ultimately, that's what you want.

So that being said. I am done with my spiel here. I'm going to roll it back.