EP # 178 - Social Media Simplified: Effective Growth Strategies for Service Based Businesses

Welcome to Episode 178 of the Diamond Effect Podcast! 

In this episode, Maggie Perotin dives into social media; a tool that many business owners find challenging but crucial for growth. Discover a fresh perspective on how to leverage social media as part of your marketing strategy effectively.

Key Takeaways:

• Mindset Shift: As a CEO, you're in control of your social media strategy. Avoid getting overwhelmed by external pressures and focus on what works for you.
  
  
• Five Best Practices:
  1. Consistency Over Perfection: Start small with a manageable posting schedule and build from there.
     
     
  2. Play to Your Strengths: Choose content types that align with your strengths, whether it's video, static posts, or something else.
     
     
  3. Have a Strategy: Develop a comprehensive social media plan that includes personal branding, marketing, and sales content.
     
     
  4. Engage with Your Audience: Respond to comments and messages promptly to build relationships with your followers.
     
     
  5. Enjoy the Process: Avoid overthinking and have fun with your social media efforts.
• Content Strategy Formula: Learn the 20/40/40 rule for balancing brand storytelling, marketing, and sales content on your platforms.
  
  
• Sales Content Importance: Ensure your social media includes sales content to convert followers into clients by demonstrating how your services solve their problems.

Don't miss out. Tune in to the episode right now. 

If you're struggling with your social media in any way, Maggie offers personalized coaching to help you create an impactful presence aligned with your brand and achieve your business goals. Schedule a free consultation with Maggie here - https://calendly.com/maggie-s2l/discovery-call.

Transcript

Hi, everybody! Welcome to Diamond Effect Podcast episode 178. Today, I want to talk about a topic that's maybe not be one of the favorite amongst my clients and small business owners, but I think it's very important. And I have a fresh approach to it that you might have not heard before. That topic is social media.

I want to share some best practices with you and really encourage you to use the tool of social media, whatever platform it is, as part of your marketing strategy. Why do I think it's important?

There is a big potential to nurture your current audience, to attract new clients, to reach markets that you can't reach any other way. 

And yet because of sometimes unrealistic expectations, you're 

[00:01:00] getting overwhelmed trying to learn everything and do everything perfectly right off the bat. Also through too much consumption, business owners get overwhelmed by social media and then lose this great opportunity. 

But you don't have to do that. You can use social media for you, not against you. You can use it to a nurture your current network, your current clients to stay on top of their mind, to continue delivering them value, to build a stronger relationships. So those clients keep coming back to you. And also, Attract new potential clients and show them how you can serve them and therefore sell them on your services and then grow your business this way. And today I want to share with you the five best strategies 

[00:02:00] for you to start using social media or get back to it if you paused or be more consistent. And again, as I said, they will work for any platform out there, no matter which platform you use. But before we get there, I want to talk through your mindset, because I see the perspective that my clients have and the perspective that I see other business owners has.

have are the biggest barriers because I see that perspective is the biggest barrier sometimes for people to start to continue and really take advantage of this opportunity. So one thing that I want to say is that hey, As the CEO of your business, you are in charge. Don't let the social media pressures, the opinions of the experts of what you should do, how much, how often, and so on, dictate What you do, 

[00:03:00] because it's always better to do even a little bit consistently than nothing at all because you're overwhelmed by all the advice out there trying to do it all, trying to do it perfectly.

So know that you are in charge. You get to choose. You get to make things work for you. Okay? Another thing is. And I want to say that to benefit from social media, you don't need to even know all the algorithms. You don't need to be like those maybe gurus that you're following. You don't need to be posting 10 times a day, sharing all your life on the silver platter. Me and my clients use social media to our benefits.

And we don't have huge followings. We're not using trendy music in our reels. Some of my clients don't even do reels and yet they still 

[00:04:00] benefit from social media. They nurture their clients. They sign new clients, same with me. So there is ways you can utilize social media that it will help you.

It will help you grow your business without. doing everything perfectly to the extent that maybe you think you should be doing. Now let's address who should be responsible for social media. If you're just starting or you're a solopreneur and you have limited resources, You need to figure it out. You should be doing it. 

You get to know your ideal client better You get to narrow down your messaging that helps you figure out your competitive advantage and really understand your business It's the same with social media Through marketing on social media, you can learn a lot about your business. You can be better at selling your services.

Now, if your business is bigger and now you have resources, you can 

[00:05:00] outsource portions of social media management and even content creation, but as the CEO, unless you have really a CMO, so Chief Marketing Officer, that you will outsource all that part to them, but if your business is not big enough to do that as a CEO, you should be still involved in social media marketing, even if it's just overseeing, making decisions about strategy, approving the content, and making sure that whatever is posted is on brand, is aligned with the messaging, is aligned with the goals of the strategy that you have, so you still need to be involved.

You can't just give it to somebody and forget about it. That's not what you want to do as the CEO of your small business. So let's move on to the five strategies I wanted to Share with you first is decide on a minimum 

[00:06:00] that you can be posting on a social media platform of your choice, right?

Whether you're on one only, and I always recommend if you're just starting Pick one social media platform where your ideal clients hang out and that's also the least scary for you that you like the most personally and get good there and start there. If you're on more than one, That's fine.

So just decide on the minimum consistency that you're willing to do 80, 90 percent of the time. It's better to post two times a week, even one time a week consistently, than five times a week for four weeks and then nothing for six months. Okay. So start small and then increase. That's rule number one.

Rule number 

[00:07:00] two, play to your strengths first, and only then in terms of content creation, in terms of what type of posts you create. If you love to be on video and that's your thing, and you don't spend a lot of time over analyzing, Just go on video. And if it's a long form video, do a long form video.

Don't worry about the fact that maybe short term video is more popular. In the beginning, you just want to start and be consistent. And as you do that and that sort of becomes a habit, then you can push yourself a little bit and say, okay, now that I'm consistent and I really enjoy long term form video, and now I want to grow even more my presence.

Then maybe I will start introducing short term, short form video and I will start learning it. Because whenever we learn something new, the learning curve will be that in the beginning, it will 

[00:08:00] take us longer to create that type of content that we don't know how yet. It's going to be a bit frustrating.

So you don't want to start with social media frustrated. You want to start with something that is easy and simple enough to execute. So play to your strengths. And if video is not your strength, start with static posts. Start with a graphic and a caption. Or whatever that looks like. Best practice number three is have a strategy. Have a plan so you can showcase your business, your brand in an organized way. So the content that you create, it's not ad hoc and as you're building and growing your audience, without a strategy, they will be confused. They might not know what you offer.

They might not know who you are. They will confuse. who you are and what you offer, have a plan, have a 

[00:09:00] strategy. And of course, if you're outsourcing partially your social media management, then the manager could potentially, or the agency, if you're using, they can help you develop that strategy.

But if you're outsourcing only certain things, and maybe you have an assistant or a VA, who does more of an administrative, aspect of social media management, then. What you want to do is create your own strategy, and I'm going to give you a very simple outline to just help you with it, and you could do it right here with me as you're listening to this podcast. Here is a very simple three part formula for sort of social media comprehensive strategy. First part, 20 percent of your content should be around your brand. And if you're a business where you have a personal brand, around 

[00:10:00] your personal brand. So talking about how you started and your personal stories of overcoming challenges.

And celebrating wins and things that relate to how you started your business, your journey around the business, and personal life that kind of is related to it that was important part of you building the business, your values, your mission, your vision. And that's about 20 percent of your content and you can think about it in a month, right?

So within a month, However amount of posts you do or however amount of videos you do, 20 percent of them on your personal brand. 40 percent is on your typical marketing. So marketing is about building that know trust factor, telling people a little bit about, your services and kind of meeting them and building the relationships. 

[00:11:00] So part of that could be you teaching about the services or anything, any expertise that you share to your audience. So let's say if you're a chiropractor, you teach about, importance of proper posture and whatever else goes into what you do. If you are a photographer for families, you teach about, how to have a Good family shoot without kids getting restless or things like that, right?

You teach your clients how to even prepare for your services. If you are in financial industry, you educate them on how money works, how mortgages work, whatever it is, right? So a big part could be teaching. Another thing is sharing some trends in your industry, sharing events that you attend, things like that.

And 

[00:12:00] hey, if you're a social media lover and you love trends and you love to know what's trendy and what's popular, you can use it to your benefit. Always link it to your business and your brand. Make sure that you're not using trends blindly and you're using trends that are really not gelling well with your brand.

So use the trends if you want to and you can in a way that aligns with your values, brand messaging, story, and all that. And then the third thing is, third portion of your marketing, of your social media strategy, the other 40%. So remember 20 percent was your brand, personal brand, about your business.

40 percent was marketing content. So building that know, like trust, where it sits through teaching tips, sharing industry, updates, and also some like trends, following certain trends if you want to. So then the last part, 40 percent is 

[00:13:00] Sales content. And I see very often this is where small business owners actually miss the boat.

A lot of business owners just do the first two part and totally forget about the sales content and This is super important in order for the new followers of people who haven't been your clients yet to become your clients because in order for your clients to buy from you They it's not enough for them to know and trust you.

Yes, it's important, but also they need to feel safe to buy and they will only feel safe to buy when they know how your services solve their problems. How your services help them achieve the goals that they have. How your services help them better than any other competitor. And you can 

[00:14:00] educate them on that through your sales content on social media. And what I wanted to say is that if you don't have sales content, what is going to happen is if your marketing is amazing, you might attract a lot of followers who consume your content. They will get a lot of value from it. They will learn about the industry. They'll learn about your specific services.

And very often they will go to competitors because the competitors will be telling them how that translates into the client getting what they want. So if you have only amazing marketing, it's almost like you're doing your competitors a favor. Bringing an ideal client on their, purchasing journey, moving them faster, but then sending them up there and not.

Telling your client to come to you because you don't have sales content that would tell them how you work 

[00:15:00] with them What's your process? You know how to work with you and so on and so forth So it's so important you cannot miss that and I have multiple clients who come to me who have following and have great marketing And they always say but nobody's buying from social media, it's not working.

And the majority of the challenges is that because they lack the sales content. They don't have sales content in their strategy. And when we implement it, within weeks, within a couple of social media posts, a couple of emails or a couple of sales posts, they start signing clients. So it's very important. Now, if you don't know how to do it. I can help you. I have an SPF formula, meaning sales post formula, that I teach my clients. The same way I also teach my clients how to do the first part of the [00:16:00] strategy, because very often people struggle with that as well. How to showcase their brand whether it's their personal brand or business brand on social media So we have some exercises where we take out the stories.

We align the Content with your values and all those things so I can help you with it All you need to do is just reach out, book a free consultation with me, and I will tell you how I can help. So moving on to the fourth best practice for your social media. Of course, you have to engage, and I'm sure you've heard about it, right? So it's not about you posting only on social media. But also engaging, meaning responding to the comments of your ideal clients or your followers on your posts and responding relatively quickly.

It doesn't need to be the moment the post is created, but 

[00:17:00] within 24 hours or if somebody appreciates or your followers won't appreciate if they comment, and then they don't hear back from you for a week, right?

The comment is not responded to for a week or they send you a message with a question based on, the real or something that you created and they're interested in working with you. And then that message is not responded to for weeks or days on end. So you want to engage in a reasonable time.

And also if you can't, you want to Follow your potential clients and engage in their content, especially if your potential clients are businesses, right? So if you're a service provider that caters to businesses, they will have social media presence. They will always appreciate that support. If you're catering to individuals, that's very different, but at least engaging in the comments that your followers leave for you in a timely 

[00:18:00] manner.

And last but not least, get out of your head and have fun. Don't overthink it. Make social media work for you. Use the powerful potential that it has to help your business grow. 

Now, don't rely only on social media because sometimes people get frustrated with social media because they became too dependent on it. They're putting too much weight on social media, helping them grow their business. Social media should not be your only tool you're using to get in front of more clients. 

When it's not, then it's easier to treat it more lightly, without frustration, but just having fun. And when you do it that way, it's also easier to be consistent. It's easier to be more creative, and ultimately that creates the results that you want. 
[00:19:00] Because as a professional business, you want to be there for your clients. And if your clients are on social media, get in front of them. Have a presence. Not for you individually, but for them and for the benefit of your business. As CEOs, that is our role. Our role is to do what's best for our business and what's best for our clients.

Just make it work for you. Don't get into what you should be doing trap. Just do what you think is best for you. Have a great week and talk to you next week.