EPISODE 105 OF THE MARKETING SOLUTIONS PODCAST: STOP CHASING THE SHINY THING AND GET STRATEGIC WITH YOUR SOCIALS

Sonya:

If I could give most small business owners one piece of advice, it would be this, stop chasing the shiny thing and get strategic on your socials. The original title of this episode was, I Think you Need a Digital Marketing Strategy, Try These Things First. But I think I need to be blunt here, chances are, if you're not seeing followers convert into sales, you're making one of these three common mistakes. In this episode, I'm going to challenge you to try three relatively simple things before you spend a lot of time and energy switching up your strategy. This is a short and sweet episode, but I hope it provides you with a lot of value, which may or may not be one of the things that I'm about to talk about. Ready? Let's dive in.

Welcome to the Boom Your Biz Podcast, a podcast for the movers, the shakers, and even bigger action-takers in business. I'm your host, Sonya McIntyre-Reid. And each week I'll be exploring the question of what really makes businesses and organizations thrive. I'm on a mission to educate, empower, and inspire business owners and myself along the way.

Whenever a new platform comes onto the scene, users are incredibly obedient. They told me to like and follow, so I have to like and follow. Share this post with a friend, okie dokey. Hit that subscribe button, if you say so. This is a pretty standard feature of common use and behavior when a platform is brand new, but as time goes by, those old calls to action no longer work. And because we're all such social savvy girls these days, we can spot a call to action a mile away and we know we don't actually have to like, share, follow, or subscribe in order to get the full experience. So what's a business to do? My team and I have identified the three most common things we see our clients getting wrong on social media. You may even know someone that does these things, that someone might even be you. No judgment here. I know better than anyone how hard it can be to juggle marketing of a business and actually running a business. I'm here to help and maybe dish out a little tough love.

The number one thing we see small businesses miss the mark on when it comes to their socials is consistency. I'm not just talking about being inconsistent with your posting, although that is part of it. And I'm not here to tell you to post a brilliantly edited caption every single day. I don't even do that and I own a digital marketing agency. I'm talking about being consistent in terms of what you post. I know it can seem like the algorithm changes every couple of months and it can be difficult to keep up, but I need to stress this, consistency will make you stand out long term. I can still rattle off the 1300655506, the Reading Writing Hotline jingle in my sleep.

Why? Because they consistently played ads on the radio and on television throughout my formative years, and that memory file goes deep. The Reading Writing Hotline were consistent with their messaging. They were consistent with the way they delivered their message, and they were consistent with the platforms they chose to deliver that message. Even the discount coupons, you've had it in your letterbox, looked the same for years for brands such as Dominoes and Pizza Hut. I guess the moral of the story here is don't change up your branding colors because you're bored. Don't have a completely different visual style for each of your content pillars. Don't be on a platform if you're only going to post once every six months. And above all, stay consistent with your messaging.

The second mistake I see businesses make is they're just not adding any value. Sure, once upon a time you could post a selfie or a picture of your morning coffee, and the likes would still pour in. But today if there's not a compelling story behind that selfie or if you're not tagging another local business in that coffee shop, you're not providing value to anyone. Ask yourself, what am I in the business of? If you're in the business of being a beauty therapist, a selfie might be completely appropriate, particularly if you're talking about how a product range or service has improved your skin. If you're in the business of selling educational board games for kids, I don't see how endless selfies are adding any value to your customers. Yes, if you want to show up on your business account with your face, that is fine, but there is a fine line between posting your face to create connection and posting your face because you want the validation of likes on your selfie. I told you there'd be a little bit of tough love in this episode.

Easy ways to add value include answering frequently asked questions, letting your customers know about a promotion or sale coming up, talking followers through how to use a product, explaining the difference between two similar products, talking followers through the benefits of a product. I know that in the age of Reels, it can be tempting to spend your allocated social media time making Reels of your team, but while connections should definitely be one of your content pillars, if all you are doing is posting your team and nothing about what you actually do, you're missing a real opportunity to showcase your services or products.

Speaking of showcasing your products, my third and final point is an important one. Level up your content game. I cringe when I see businesses slap together graphics in Canva without any thought to the weight of their font, the difference between the edge of an image and their text, and even the size of their logo. I'm no graphic designer, but I can tell when the owner of a business or a junior team member is running the company's socials. I mentioned it in last week's episode, Canva has given us all a sense of, I can do this myself, but if every process created from a new template and your brand colors just don't work with a certain type of layout, it can really cheapen your brand.

And the same goes for video content. There isn't really any excuse for poor-quality video content these days. You can grab a ring light with a built-in phone holder from Kmart for around 12 bucks, which will give you good lighting and a steady video. Most phones have a decent camera in them or if yours doesn't, I can also guarantee a member of your staff has a decent phone and probably loves to have an excuse to use it. Think about what your ideal customer wants to see from you. Sure, sometimes it's the team having Friday knockoff drinks or celebrating someone's birthday, but more often than not, they want to connect with your business. They want to see what you do, how you do it, and they want to learn why you do the things that you do.

I find that when business owners are chasing likes and follows, it's usually because they have outdated notions of what they should be aiming to achieve on their chosen platform. Unless you have tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of followers or a particularly engaged audience, you're not going to get thousands of likes on your posts, nor should you want to. Good engagement from a group of people who genuinely like your product, your service, and who you are is always going to convert to actual sales more effectively than having loads of bought followers who barely engage with your content and have no intention of making a purchase.

Forget all of that noise. Be consistent, add value, and level up your content game. And if that means you only post twice a week, but you do it every week, perfect. The purpose of social media is to be social, so if you slipped off course, I hope this episode has helped. As always, I will be continuing this conversation over in the Boom Your Biz Podcast Facebook group. It's free to join and we're building an amazing network of business owners over there. Just search, Boom Your Biz, and request to join.