social media strategy Archives

Dear Business owners,

So glad you have understood that you can gain great value and grow your business through Social Media, but did you seek advice before you started? I actually wrote this blog originally back in June 2012 on my old blog Socially Skilled, but I’m reproducing with a few updates which I will note as I still see it happening, businesses operating from a personal Facebook profile instead of a Page.

I can’t believe I’m posting on this topic again – but still I see so many new businesses starting up as a personal profile under a business name, or operating their business from a personal profile. I know it might seem easier, and you feel you don’t want to personally “be” on facebook, but this is against facebook terms and is a poor business decision. (Update: using your personal messenger is also a pretty spammy way to do business).

It kinda makes me want to cry!

Because I am passionate about supporting businesses to grow, I usually drop a friendly private message to give the business a heads up… but I find it so frustrating that so many still do it. On an ethical level I will no longer “friend” a business – it would be hypocritical of me. (Update: I never did “friend” a profile in a brand name). However create a page and if your product or service is something I value, and proides value, then I will LIKE away, and engage!

Remember a LIKE is an endorsement of a product or service – if you are getting value from a page then you should LIKE them to say thanks! Update: We value engagement so much, comments, hearts and shares will always give your business a boost!

(Note that this is a reproduction of the original post from 2012 with updates or amendments noted).

After sending messages to a few pages, I had a couple come back saying they get better engagement with a personal profile – but the principles are all wrong. Let’s just examine a few from both the business perspective and that of someone “friending” the business as opposed to becoming a fan:

Do you really intend to push your business out onto all your friends – many of your friends may not appreciate that you are spruiking to them, and it is very poor social etiquette to do so.
On the other side, if you “friend” a business they are able to spam your friends .. NOT good social etiquette at all
as a business on a profile, you cannot take advantage of all the cool things that the Tabs can do help your business to grow. Update: Pages include messaging, shop, services and insights and more!)
You risk building a huge base of fans only to have it all it all shut down – at some point, especially with facebook now privatised, they are going to do some serious culling – then all your work is lost!
It is almost impossible to implement any kind of reasonable social media marketing strategy when you are operating as a personal profile, and any self respecting and qualified social media consultant should not encourage it. If you want to start list building – then do it through offering something of value and create an opt in offer.
Without a page you cannot take advantage of the analytical tools on offer – so how are you measuring your engagement?
Having an individual profile will limit you to a maximum of 5000 friends, pages can have millions of followers.
Converting to a page later is messy and doesn’t always work as well as you might like. It may not work in the best interests of your brand to later change over where some fans may move and others might still interact with the profile. You miss opportunities for engagement with a much broader audience.
You can link a page to your website and include a buttons to improve engagement, you can’t do this with a profile.
If you later create a personal profile then you are again in breach of facebook terms which clearly state that personal profiles must be in the name of a real identifiable individual (yes not your dog, cat, boat or business) and you may only have one. If you also have a business set up as a profile then you risk having both your profiles shut down.
It actually doesn’t help anyone to do it this way as it causes the statistics to be incorrect – and if you are trying to measure your ROI accurately then we all need to play the game fairly.

I could go on, but the number one thing that you are doing when you set up your business as a personal profile – is not being honest. No one knows who you are – it does not generate trust. If you are being transparent and using your own name, but using the profile for business, you are missing out on many benefits of a page. Be proud of what you have created and let it shine on it’s very own page. If you are not sure what to do, or don’t have a strategy, seek help from an expert so you don’t waste precious time and money, because you never get time back.

Update: I don’t really need to update any of the points, as they are all still really relevant despite me writing them back in 2012!

Fi.

Humanize your brand with user generated content

The quest for new content is never ending. What is user generated content? It’s allowing your fans, customers, clients, users to tell their story of your brand, or to contribute in other ways to your social media presence. It’s marketing generated by them for you.

image by davicidig depositphotos

User Generated Content (UGC) is becoming a big go to for brands big and small. It’s not a new concept, but it is developing in the ways it can be incorporated into a business strategy.

Becoming creative with your clients, letting them tell the story of your brand, letting them take the lead? Perhaps it’s time too consider.

According to research by Stackla in the “Bridging the Gap” 2019 Data report

[click_to_tweet tweet=”Consumers find UGC 9.8x more impactful than influencer content when making purchasing decisions…” quote=”Consumers find UGC 9.8x more impactful than influencer content when making purchasing decision, yet 49% of marketers are planning to increase their investment in influencer marketing in 2019″ theme=”style3″]

So consumers seem to prefer to connect with Peers and “regular” people over influencers. That’s pretty big.

It also is a call to influencers to choose to promote products that match their brand and that they actually like and use. Nothing is worse for a brand than an endorsement made purely because of the monetary transaction that took place. Seek out micro and macro influencers, people in your own community and local area who can become brand ambassadors for you and share content with you. Best of all engage your customers in your marketing.

Use contests and promotions

Another fabulous way to bring engagement and fun to your social media pages is to run a contest or promotion which requires entrants to post their entries. Whether a creative image, or a paragraph, all of the above not only creates engagement, but it’s done for you. Nothing beats the excitment of interaction with a little competition. Be sure to follow the appropriate rules when running promotions however.

Celebrate their wins

Asking your audience to share their wins and achievements, whether business or personally is another way to generate content for your brand.

It’s such a feel good thing, just writing this makes us smile! Every business is only as good as its customers, so celebrate them, respect them and get to know them

Make Sure you have permission

Having permission is everything. Whether you are talking to a client, an influencer or strangers with a competition, it is vital to ensure they have given permission for content to be used. For a competition this would be written in the terms and conditions. For a client or influencer, make sure you have a signed agreement in place which outlines how you may use any content provided.

Of course if they are posting it directly themselves, then permission has been granted by the very act. We would still recommend having terms and conditions somewhere on your blog or on Facebook as a note or in the about of your page that content posted may be used. One thing to be wary of, is that you need to be sure the person sharing the content, owns the content.

There have been issues where folk have entered a photographic competition for example, with an image that was not theirs to share. Make sure you have a line in terms and conditions that says entrants are agreeing that they have copyright and are giving you rights to their intellectual property.

Would you be game to ask a stranger to judge your product?

It might sound risky, but if you are confident in your product, getting the reaction of someone seeing/using that product for the first time is worth a million words. That first look of surprise and delight is pretty hard to fake! You can ask people at events, tradeshows, marketplaces and on the street and video their reactions, or ask them to film an “unboxing” of a product. (see above, make sure you have permission to use the content, have them sign a disclaimer before you give them the product).

Whatever you do, be authentic – mean it!

Please don’t ask questions or run competitions just for the attention. You will build much greater trust and rapport if what. you do genuinely comes from an interest in your clients/customers and prospects.