Marketing + Margaritas Episode 5 - Social Media Platforms
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This week’s episode is all about how to choose the right social media platform to suit your business. Since we’re all about practicing what we preach, we also whipped up some mango margaritas for the occasion… and it went swell. In fact, it went so swell that we may have spilled way more tips than we anticipated!
EPISODE 5 SHOW NOTES
Social media platforms covered in this session >>
Facebook
Instagram
LinkedIn
Twitter
YouTube
TikTok
Today, we're talking about how to choose a social media platform for your business.
Yes, so first of all, we're just going to go through the pros and cons of actually being on social media as your business. Lani, What's your favourite pro?
It's free. Says a lot about me, but it's alright. So, it's free. You've got an opportunity to talk to your audience directly - it is your story, your audience, you can dictate the message.
Yeah, so rather than a media outlet doing an interview with you and then piecing the story together the way that they want - this gives you the opportunity to communicate your message exactly how you choose to, directly to your audience.
Absolutely. The other pro is the ability to drive traffic and sales. If you are doing a campaign and you're trying to push your brand new candle line that you have just launched, you can use messaging surrounding that. You can link to your website, where they can buy - it is all in one spot. Whereas if you're taking a more traditional advertising method, like radio or newsprint, then they're actually going to have to go somewhere else - either on your website or in your store to buy your product. Social media will let you do that for free.
I think also that it is about finding new audiences, increasing your brand awareness and building and strengthening your relationships with your customers as well.
Absolutely. Being digital, you can attract so much further afield than just in your shopfront. Okay, so cons?
Yep, so the main con that people generally have is that they're worried about someone coming and being negative on their page. Whether that's leaving a negative review or making comments. That's a very real concern. It's never nice to hear someone not talk nicely about your business, which you care about and work so hard for.
Not just a written complaint, but actually where people will see it.
That's the thing, I think sometimes that some people don't realise the power of what they're doing. If they go in there, and they're leaving a negative review for a business, I don't think they always necessarily realise what an impact that can have. However, when someone does say something negative on your socials, the opportunity there is that you actually get to respond to them. You have a chance to be a part of that conversation.
Absolutely and, quite often, it's a miscommunication or misunderstanding about your service or what your business does. Now you've got that opportunity to correct them, where everyone will see that.
You've got to remember too, there's trolls everywhere. If someone posts negatively, you know who looks bad?
They do.
Exactly, the person who does it. And the way you respond? That shows your audience the kind of business you are. If you respond to something calmly, with respect and trying to have some empathy, that's just going to look so good. Whereas, if you then get down and dirty and just as malicious as they are, that's not going to leave a good impression. So really, someone leaving a negative comment is not a bad thing - but it's how you respond to it that matters more than anything.
Absolutely. It goes the same for if someone's asked a question. If someone's asked a question, then other people will have thought that same question, so it's a really valuable space for you to respond with that answer. Obviously, doing that in the most timely manner is going to look best. But if it's been a week - still reply, don't leave it because it's going to be there forever.
Oh my God. Don't leave it for a week.
No, but if it has been, it's fine, we'll forgive you - just reply to them.
No, we won't! Don’t do that.
Alright, good, because that’s what I thought. Can you tell? But no, if someone is harassing you on your page, and that is your concern - you can hide their comments if they're repeatedly doing something, and you can block them.
One hundred percent, I would definitely hide over deleting. Deleting, more often than not, puts fuel on the fire. Whereas if you hide, only they and their friends can see the comments, so it's just a much smoother way to deal with that. But yes, you can actually block people from your page as well - that's in your page settings, if they're being a serial nuisance.
So the other con is maintenance. Now, if you are starting yourself off on a social media platform, you're going to need to use it regularly. It's not a setup and forget, it's not a local directories listing. This thing is going to need a little bit of love. But with everything, we do recommend starting slow. Set it up, try it out, and just go bit-by-bit. You don't have to be posting every hour, every day.
You might have a goal where you want to be posting, say, five times a week - that doesn't mean you need to be doing that straight out the gate.
Start with two.
If you start by posting at least a couple of times a week, depending on the platform, you might not get into newsfeeds that regularly. But it does mean that at least if someone was going to go to your page, it would be that there was something only posted like two or three days ago. So it doesn't look like it's inactive.
Absolutely. We often, as users, search just as much on Facebook for a business as we do on Google or any other platform.
One hundred percent. If someone's last post was January 2016, you're going to think that they closed. It actually does have a detrimental effect. So if you're going to do it, you need to actually put some effort in, because again, when something's free, that doesn't mean that it actually costs nothing - it costs your time.
Alright, so let's dive into some platforms. Now obviously, Facebook is a big one to start with. The audience that we’re looking at there is a mid to slightly older audience. It's really popular in regional areas. It does really well for us here in Mackay.
It's got a high penetration for all regional centres in Australia. I mean, across Australia, I think it's over 70 or over 80 percent of eligible people - which means 13 years and older - have a Facebook account. When you go into regional centres, it's just the most common social media that is actually used. For example, I've got a TikTok account, but I've never actually put a TikTok up.
Yeah, right. Awesome. And so it has a slight con to it, is that it has quite a competitive feed.
Because it is so highly used, there are a lot of brands on there that are also competing to put their content in front of that audience as well. It's something where creating consistent, unique, interesting, brand-aligned content is really important. It's a bit more effort in that respect.
But you're going to get good results if you get that nice cut through.
It depends on your audience too. Sometimes, someone might only have, say 400 followers. But then they might have extremely amazing reach and engagement, which makes it completely useful for them. Someone like - won't name names - but there's a local business that has obviously bought their followers. So they've got over 10,000 - actually, there's a couple now that I think of it - and it's just so funny, because they'll post something, and you can see every post there is over the last month, has had nothing. There's maybe one like and half the time it's their mum or something. It really is about being consistent, putting out quality content, engaging and talking with your audience, no matter what size your audience is. If you do that, then you will build those relationships.
That goes for all platforms, not just Facebook. If you're there, you've got to put the effort in. Next one off the bat is LinkedIn. It's a little bit more easy to be seen, as it's not as competitive in regional areas.
There are also less people on there. So you're not reaching as many people and there's not as much content going up, but it does mean if the kind of people that you're wanting to engage with are on there, it'll be easier for them to see your content.
So who predominantly hangs out on LinkedIn?
It started off as quite a recruitment thing. I wouldn't say that LinkedIn has a specific age group or anything like that.
It's a more professional audience?
Yeah, it is. Definitely a professional audience. I think it's because over the last year or two in regional areas, it's really started taking off. The amount of people on there who are good contacts that you might want to build your relationships with, has definitely grown. Because it is easier to get seen, it's definitely worth considering. It doesn't even have to be a B2B [business-to-business] audience, you might have B2C [business-to-customer] as well. There are some retail ones that do fantastic on there.
Awesome, so personal profiles are a big driver on LinkedIn, over company pages?
One hundred percent. When you're posting as yourself - so if I was posting as 'Jade McAuley', I'm going to get more traction than if I'm posting as 'Rebel Nation'.
Not to say, not to do both?
No, it's definitely still a good idea. LinkedIn has incredible SEO. So, when someone is searching for your business or searching for your name, it's got a good chance of turning up really high on that first page of Google. Having your company page set up - properly branded, all your information - and then posting every now and then, so the page looks active and might have some interesting messages that you want to convey on there. Still very worthwhile, even if it doesn't come up in a LinkedIn feed, it could be if someone's giving you a bit of a stalk online in general, that they'll come across that content - and that's still getting found online for the information that you want to be putting out there.
So say, for example, you're doing a recruitment campaign for your business at the moment. Obviously, your company profile would have some posts about how you're hiring and that kind of stuff. But your key team members, such as your manager, or that team's General Manager, or, you know, whoever...
Salespeople... anyone who kind of has a lot of contacts, knows a lot of people etc.
Sharing that - or not sharing it sorry - posting about it themselves.
Posting over sharing will get more of a response. LinkedIn consistently say that they don't mark down shares. They've come out saying, "Our algorithm is not biased against shares", but it is just so obvious when you look at analytics that shares just don't do as well as a post with an image or whatever it might be. That's why you might notice all of the time that people actually will put a link into their comments on their LinkedIn posts, rather than putting it into the posts themselves - which I don't do, because I'm lazy.
Only with our stuff. She does that with clients' stuff.
Well, I don't really do our clients' stuff.
Joys of having a team.
A good one. A good team.
So Instagram? Obviously, a very visual based platform. You're not going to be blogging away, or putting the same photo up all the time - you're going to need a bit of an image library for that.
That's the thing, people think that getting an image library is some sort of big, massive task - it really doesn't have to be.
We've got a camera in our pocket, everyone has one.
Getting some images of your team together in different groupings, nice headshots, and then maybe some of what you actually do. If you're a mechanic, you'd be working on a car and shit like that. Then each year, just get a bit of a refresh - add some more - you can keep reusing ones from years ago, but add to it every now and then. It's really not hard to have an image library. With Instagram, it needs to be good images. It has to be good images - a shit image will not get you anywhere.
Okay, so get your team involved, get them taking photos and submitting them through to be shared. If you absolutely need to, you can use stock images, but we do highly recommend trying to add a personal touch to them, or popping some brand styling on them if you can. Tools like Canva, or even filters, are really useful. While we haven't used stock images so much on our Instagram page, we have set the tone with black and white images. That's just the way that we like to replicate and push through some of our branding and styling.
Plus, I'm also an incredibly shit photographer. Black and white just looks so much better.
Pump up the contrast a little bit, and it's all good.
It actually looks half decent!
There you go, another little tidbit for you.
Don't steal our black and white idea. It’s all I have.
Another really handy thing with Instagram is, if you've got your Instagram connected to your Facebook account, you can schedule from Facebook. If you're sitting down batching your posts, which we highly recommend, you can do that from the one spot, which is super easy. When you go through Publishing Tools, Facebook will either prompt you to use something along the lines of "creator studio" or "business suite", it just depends on what version of Facebook you are running at the moment - and we all have different ones. Joy!
Always fun. Once you get in there, it's really quite easy to use. As far as being able to sit down once a month, schedule it out. Say you were going to stick with the basics and just do two posts a week - in a month, that's eight Facebook posts, eight Instagram posts. It's not going to do great leaps and bounds but it's going to get you started and it might get you seen, and start developing that habit for you because the more you do it, the faster you'll get at it.
And you'll maintain a presence on those platforms, at least.
That's it.
Okay, so another one is YouTube. Now, YouTube is a really competitive space. Obviously, videos only. It has a huge volume!
Oh my god.
Deep dive right there.
Dude, who has not gotten lost down the YouTube rabbit hole?
I think that was before Netflix and chill, it was just YouTube binge.
You would just be looking at one or two things, and next minute, you're like, "Holy shit, it's been four hours."
I can't say I've had that problem, Jade. What are you doing on there?
Looking at cooking shows - the things I will never make.
Mind you, I can say my four year old has that problem. YouTube Kids.
Amelia and I are on the same page.
So yes, large volume, which means it can be harder to be seen on there. But it is a really great resource for having your video library popped on a social media platform. You can be putting things up like 'frequently asked questions'. If you've got a service that no one really understands what you're actually doing, and you have to explain it to every client that comes by.
Even our service, marketing's been around forever and a day. People are like, "Oh, so do you do websites?" Of course we do websites! I mean, marketing!
We're just like a female version of Mad Men. So, frequently asked questions, case studies, that kind of thing, can all be up on your YouTube and it's really handy.
So when you say case studies, you mean testimonials? Or project kind of case studies? Or all of the above?
All of the above. You don't have to stick to theme topics or anything, you don't have to be posting regularly. It's not about keeping topical or front of mind on YouTube - it's really about utilising the platform as a library of resources.
I think 'resources' is the right way of terming that. Building on that, obviously, Google owns YouTube - so video content does really well for search. It could be that if someone was searching - you know when you do a search, and a whole bunch of videos will appear at the top? Depending on what the search terms are, when you embed YouTube links on your website - so you have the thumbnail and everything of the video there, and when you press play, it still plays on your website - but it's embedded from your YouTube. That's also really good for your SEO. It's much better than trying to upload a video to your site. There's some platforms that won't even let you upload video because if you think of a mobile phone, it's just way too slow to load.
Absolutely. So yes, YouTube is a handy one, if you've got those video resources that you want to live somewhere, chuck them on YouTube.
Remember, video doesn't always mean footage. It doesn't mean that you have to go out there and actually shoot video of stuff. You could have something like Screencast-O-Matic, where you're explaining something on your screen, and it's taking a video of what you're doing onscreen.
Like a tutorial?
Yeah, or it could be that you've got a project and you just put together a photo slideshow of before and after a renovation or something, with a bit of music. Video content does not have to actually mean, "I'm going to go out and get a produced video". There are other ways of creating video content. Even stuff like Powtoon! There's a bunch of them, but I remember I used to like this one...
Can you tell that Jade just got really excited about this?
I hate videos, so it's exciting for me to actually like something like this.
So Powtoon?
There's a lot you can do on there for free. Most of it is free. But it's creating little comics, like it's animated videos. I know that sounds like, "Oh my God, how would I create an animation?" But trust me, I've done it a lot. I remember I created a video for a campaign that was on TV and stuff. It's really quite cool.
So that's just an app you can download on your phone?
Um... I don't know if there's an app version. Well, it's definitely on desktop, but it might be like Canva, where you can get the desktop in an app version, potentially.
Cool beans. Well, that's one to check out. God, we're giving away so many tips in this episode.
It's kind of the point of these things, you know?
Okay.
She wants to charge you entry, now. This is literally what she's thinking, "We should paygate this content.”
No, I wouldn't do that. I hate that. Alright, so Twitter? We don't really recommend Twitter for its return on investment, purely because it's been declining in Australia.
So it never really took off here, especially regional centres, it really didn't get that much traction. But during COVID - I think it was mid-February to July, or something - Twitter dropped off the 50 most trafficked sites in Australia.
That's pretty bad. We were all sitting at home, looking at the news.
People were wanting to know what was happening, they were looking for a connection - when they were at home, it actually dropped off. In the US for example, it goes great guns. But in Australia, we just don't really vibe with it, man. Don't waste your time, and it's also fucking annoying.
If you want to keep up to date with American politics, Twitter's probably the place to do that.
No, no. A hard no!
A pass on that one? Alright, last but not least, Jade requested we add TikTok to the list.
We have to have TikTok on the list.
Can you guess who's the older and who's the younger of us?
TikTok's fun! I mean, I haven't done one but it's hilarious. It's another one like YouTube where you can get lost in a bit of a spiral.
Okay, so tell us about TikTok, McAuley?
TikTok is these short, little, really creative, really engaging videos. I've seen some businesses do some fantastic ones, especially retail. Like explainers! Actually, there some explainer videos that are really quite clever on TikTok that people have just done with their phones, done themselves in the office, etc. The thing is, it's not like you need to have some sort of big creative idea yourself. I get on there, watch what other people do, the chances are you probably go, "Oh, I can actually probably adapt that to use for my business."
Shows what I know. I just thought it was a bunch of kids dancing, and then adults trying and failing.
Well no, it is that. It really is very much a youth audience. Most of the people who are contributing are younger, but there's a lot of older people that are getting into it. It's like anything, the young ones find it and then all of us oldies come along and go, "Oh, that looks pretty good."
I'll use the Tock-Tick!
"Oh, there's that clock one, what's that clock one?" But it's obviously one of the fastest-growing platforms at the moment. There are some concerns - because it's Chinese owned or something like that - about the content and who it's owned by, so that there's...
Some security and privacy stuff?
Yeah, so if you do have a business where that could potentially be an issue. It's like anything, I mean, if you're one of those people who read the terms and conditions for stuff, more power to you, but it is one to probably look into more than any other. But it's a lot of fun!
Alright, so Friday night drinks with TikTok-ing.
Sounds fun!
Alright guys - to wrap this up, we've got a few points for you. Number one is to secure your handles. If you've had this discussion, and you know, you're going to be on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and YouTube and leave the others by the wayside, then jump on them, and secure your handles. So, it's that @rebelnation...
Secure your business name's handle. That doesn't mean that you need to be actively using it. What we're going to say next pretty much is that, start with one. If you know most of your audience is on Instagram, start with Instagram - build it up, get good at it, get consistent at it, get a strategy that works for you. Get it so that it's not a pain in the ass to do. Like you've gotten really good and consistent about posting etc - then start on your next one and leverage your audience from one platform to the next.
So when you start rolling out even just one, if you're rolling out multiple platforms, we highly recommend using a content calendar for your planning. If you're like "Right, I've got my two on Facebook, my two on Instagram this week, and one on LinkedIn", you'll know what you're going to be talking about across those platforms that week. So if we're focusing on recruitment, we're focusing on sales - you've got your key messages all in front of you, and you're batching it.
It makes it a lot easier to repurpose content across the platforms when you can see it all in one spot. When you're mapping out your content, you can be like, "Okay, we've got this client testimonial, I'll put it on Facebook this week. Two weeks later, it'll go on Instagram. Then a few days later, I'll put it on LinkedIn. Cool. I've used that on every channel now". It's just really making sure that when you put the time and effort into creating content, that you're getting the most out of it. Just going back to one thing though, when it comes to securing your handles, with YouTube you can create your channel for your business, but you need - I believe it's 100 subscribers - before you can actually do the vanity URL.
Yes, that's right, definitely. So, our last tip going off the content calendar planning is to check out episode 1 if you haven't already. Bless that episode.
Oh my God, our starting one. I don't know if we should direct people that?
Well, it was about theme days, guys. So, if you're having trouble mapping out what content you want to be posting, or you have no idea where to start - 'Theme Days' is a great tool to get you going. For example, Monday motivation, sales post on a Thursday, or a Friday funny. There's a heap more that's probably more suited to your business, but that just gives you an idea of what we're talking about.
Agreed.
Awesome. That was how to choose a social media platform that's going to suit your business or you know, just jump on all of them and go for gold.
And if you do have any questions about which platform to choose or anything like that hit us up. Just send us an email. We really love to hear what your thoughts are because obviously, we can't cover every single thing, but it helps us to plan out future episodes.
Definitely. We look forward to hearing from you and thank you for joining us for Marketing + Margaritas.
Cheers.