by Karen Petrauskas | Jun 27, 2019
What do you find is the hardest part of using social media for your business?
Most business owners will find that the hardest part of social media marketing is coming up with new content on a regular basis.
This could come down to not having the time to post, not knowing what to post or how to attract your audience with posts.
Lingering on these points alone will procrastinate your social media marketing and will slow you down. It could have an impact on other parts of your business too, if you spend too much time concentrating on this one aspect, or even if you get too stressed trying to figure it out, you run out of steam to carry on with anything else!
Creating content is not easy and it does come with practice. It’s a never ending cycle machine that needs to be monitored and fed, and also it needs some love. Finding the passion in your social media goes a long way to making it successful. It’s the same as anything, when you enjoy something, it works.
Should I just post ‘something’ to get content out there?
Many business owners fall into the trap of just posting ‘something’ so it looks like they’re on top of their social media. Anything is better than nothing, right?
Not necessarily. If you’re churning out content with no engagement or reactions, no new followers, no comments or shares – it’s not working. You are simply spending time creating content that has absolutely no impact on your business at all, wasting your precious time and causing you stress when you can’t get ‘something’ posted.
How do you know what to post on social media?
This is the part that you need to figure out – and this should only be a handful of things, preferably not the same content posted on every social platform out there. Once you’ve worked out what it is that works well, the rest will fall into place. It’s much better to do one or two things well and to see results from those actions, than to try and do lots of things not very well. One of the reasons we lose followers or people unsubscribe from our mailing list is that they are either bored with the content, or they feel that it’s not relevant or adding value to them. The key is in providing the value so the people are going to want to continue to listen and ask for more.
Therefore, to be able to post something well and make it relevant and with value, you must enjoy what you are posting about. When you don’t enjoy it, neither does your audience. The positive energy and the vibes that you give out from your content is an important factor in your social media marketing. You need to make your brand stand out from the crowd, make your content unique and by adding in your personality and spice you’ll give it an edge – the whole reason people choose to follow you rather than another business. 
What should I be posting about on social media?
When you’ve discovered what you’re enjoying and what makes you smile when you’re creating it (along with more and more people engaging with the content), that’s when you’ll know that you’ve found your sweet spot. Now it’s time to focus in on this and to make it the best it could be.
You’ve tried Facebook and managed to get a little engagement. Perhaps your friends and family still support your business page and like your posts, but the community isn’t growing. You post two or three times a day, spend ages creating beautiful images with captions. Share all the latest articles that you come across and even add in some of your blog posts… but still no engagement.
You jump over to Twitter and again share all the best news stories and retweet a few posts that you like the look of. Perhaps even follow a few more people in the hope that you get some love back. Tumbleweed… nothing.
So you head over to LinkedIn in a last attempt to get a little attention, perhaps you might get one like on a post and feel like you are still appreciated.
After all of this you are absolutely exhausted, completely overworked and have not achieved very much – sound right? So what have you done wrong?
Niche down and specialise
You’ve not done anything wrong per-se but you’re not giving your business the chance it needs to dig deep and find its perfect clients. After all your posting and content creation, you need to work out which is the right platform and what type of content fills you with joy; you’ll know when both are right when the content you create gives you a buzz every time you create it and you just love to talk about it and share.
This may mean that you’ve got to niche right down, you may even think that this will cut out half your audience and you’ll lose people, but that’s ok. As when you do specialise in a particular area and have a focus on your ideal clients, not a general overhaul of everyone you can imagine in a ‘just in case’ mindset, then you’ll start speaking directly to the people you want to reach.
Being too general can have a negative result even though it can seem the best thing to do to reach as many people as possible. As a young business, a startup trying to build a business, you need all the positivity you can get – and nailing down to a smaller specific audience will be beneficial and help with the success. When those ideal people start to see that you are sharing a solution to their specific problem or scratching their itch, they’ll start to follow you and engage in what you have to say. When this shift happens, you’ll discover the people that want and need your services and they’ll begin to share your content and recommend you to their communities too.
When you dig deep down, you may only find one social platform that suits your audience. For example if you are a B2B, LinkedIn might be a great place to connect with other business owners and to build relationships and to show your expertise. This will build trust and a familiarity of your brand. And when they realise that your services will give them value, they’ll come to you. No more hard-selling, no more pushing and knocking on doors. When you build a reputation for being an expert and offering value to those who need it, your business will grow organically.
What about the other social platforms?
We’re not saying that you have to dump every other social network that you’ve ever used and totally disappear from these sites. Customers are still searching for you on their favourite platform and having a presence is still a good idea. But why not spend 90% of your time focused on the platform that works for your business and 10% keeping up appearances on the rest? 
Using a scheduling or management tool for your social platforms will help with time management and give you a freedom to spend more time on the platform that you enjoy being on and communicating with the people that are more likely to become clients. If you realise that Pinterest or Instagram are your platforms of choice, we recommend Tailwind – you can try for free too!
Where do you go from here?
It’s all about using a working marketing strategy that you can work alongside and adapt as time goes on. Setting goals and targets, understanding your business objectives and knowing what you want to achieve. When you can answer these questions, finding the platform and creating the content will be a lot easier.
Don’t forget that we’re not all good at everything – we all have our own creativity inside but not everyone knows how to express that into social media marketing. If you’re looking for guidance and a creative spirit to come alongside your business and help you tighten the reins, we’d love to chat with you. Get in touch to start the conversation.
Why not start off with our social media checklist, giving you an idea of what you can achieve on a daily, weekly and monthly basis before you get started? Organisation is a good habit to get into! Best thing is, it’s free! Download now…
by Karen Petrauskas | May 18, 2019
What are the benefits of using social media for business? What impact can it have on your brand and is it worth the effort long term?
These may be questions that you ask yourself over and over again, but consider this – there are 2.77 billion social media users around the globe, that’s not something to take lightly. The people on social media are engaging with brands and businesses, they are following celebrities or influencers and they are making their purchase decisions right from the social platforms.
If your business is not on social media, you could be missing out on huge potential and the chance to engage and build relationships with many customers in an extremely cost-efficient way.
Let’s take a look at the benefits to using social media for business.
1) Brand Awareness
We all want to see our brand grow and become established. As a business owner you need to reach your customers where they are and to be where they hang out. With the large global number of people on social media, your audience is going to be on there somewhere. The more you post, the more active you are, the more times you push your business out into the social media world – the more chance there is of people seeing and hearing about you. When someone discovers and likes your brand, they will tell others about you, and the awareness and journey of your business begins.
2) Become a Thought Leader
Whatever niche you are in, there are people searching the web for answers. The more you assert yourself and provide valuable content, the more content there will be available to be found by people looking for solutions. Social media allows your brand to grow and become established within an industry niche. It’s a way to build trust and relationships, it’s a way to engage with consumers and for them to know that you’re a ‘go to’ place for information.
If you’re looking to establish your brand in this way, LinkedIn is a great place to start. Network with people relevant to your industry. Provide answers in comments that can solve issues or problems. Give people a reason to trust and like you and you’ll soon become recognised as a thought leader if you are consistent and reliable in your approach.
3) Increase website traffic
When you create killer content, you want it to be seen by as many people as possible, otherwise what’s the point, right? Once you’ve created your content, you can use your social channels to promote it. Blog post, article, press release, offer, new team member – whatever it is that you want to shout about on your website, you can use social media to do it more effectively.
Not only do you need to create the killer content on your website, you need to write just as well on your social channels in order for people to want to click through to your site. And once they’re there, you want people to stay there for a little while. Although the incoming links and shares from your social accounts aren’t as great as authentic links from high-quality sites, they are still important for SEO purposes and help to rank your site on the search engines. And you want to rank high to be found!
The best way to think about using the two platforms together is by using both your website and your social media accounts to direct traffic from one to the other. Great content on website, promote it on social media. Great post on social media will drive a consumer to your website.
4) Generate and increase leads
What’s the point of getting a consumer to click from social media through to your website? The ultimate goal is usually to gain sales. The more leads (people) you have that discover your site, the more chance of them being interested in what you have to say along with liking your brand. If they like your brand, there is a higher chance of them purchasing from you.
Not only thinking about the sales aspect of your business though, the exercise of generating leads is extremely important. It creates a database of people that are interested in your brand. It’s a resource that you can tap into when you need to. Most of the social media networks provide paid advertising ways of providing lead generation – and always worth a try if you have the budget to do so.
5) Faster and easier communication
Communicating via social media is great for responding to customers in a quicker and more effective manner. People are after ‘instant’ and that applies to questions they may have about your brand, about your product, or anything… if they can’t get an answer, it’s just as easy for them to go to the next business on the list. Many businesses miss out on opportunities when they either do not have a social media presence, or they have it and are not using it effectively.
Now it’s even easier to contact a business, file a complaint or provide a positive feedback experience. As a business you have a responsibility to be where your audience is and communicating with them on a level which they feel comfortable on.
6) Great customer service experience
As with the above point, having a faster and easier communication line going, customers can have a better journey with your business. The user experience is an important factor to get right. Lose the customer on the first hurdle and it could be hard to get them back.
By using social media for business, you are providing a way for them to communicate with you at any step of their journey with you. When they first hear about you, when they want to ask about your services, or if they have something to discuss – providing great customer service goes a long way. And if a person is happy with your services, they are more likely to recommend you to a friend. Loyalty and trust are built on relationship, use your social media as your customer service help desk.
7) Create engagement
Social media allows you to engage directly with your customers or followers. It’s a safe place for them to interact with your brand and to provide a two-way street between you and them. Unlike offline communications where often it can be one-sided, social media provides a way to have a dialogue or to engagement with you as a business.
This allows them to get to know you, what your business is about and if you can provide them with value. If they engage and interact, if they share your posts or like and respond to comments, you’re creating people who respect your brand. The more engagement that happens, the more changes there are of building on that relationship and in turn, building your business.
8) Learn about your customers
The more a person engages with you, the more information you can obtain about them. Social media generates a lot of information about a person, the longer they use the channels and the more they interact with posts and brands.
By utilising the analytics functions on all the platforms, you can create a picture of your audience and angle your content directly towards what they are looking for. If you tailor your content to what the audience wants, you’re providing them with value. When a customer sees value, they start to trust you.
Encourage your followers to engage in your posts, ask them questions to gain responses and insight, learn more and more about their needs – and then use the data to create a perfect environment for them to take a step forward if they want to.
9) Keep on top of competition
You’re not the only brand out there doing what you do! Even if you think you are, there’s probably more competition than you realise. Social media gives great opportunity to keep an eye on the competition and to see what they are doing. If you can see that what they are doing works, use their ideas. Note, we didn’t say ‘copy’ their ideas! But if something has been tried and tested and it works, there’s no reason to reinvent the wheel.
It’s also good to know what people are saying about your competition. If you find someone complaining about a service they have receive or a product they have bought, there is your opportunity to swoop in and let them know that you’re there to help.
Social listening is great for hearing about new product launches and offers and generally anything that relates to your brand. If you can stay up to date with the competition, you can stay ahead of the game.
10) Tell your brand story
Using social media is perfect to tell about your brand’s story or journey. It’s a place where you can be completely open and honest, share the heart of your business and its core values and mission and be transparent to your audience.
Every business has a story. Every brand has a journey. Social media gives you a platform to share that story and to make your brand unique and stand out from the crowd above all the other competition that is out there.
You can use different social platforms to tell the story, you can use one form of medium to tell the lot, but be consistent in whatever you choose and allow you potential customers to get to know and love who you are and what you stand for.
You can also share the stories of people who buy your products or services, again building on brand awareness, customer service and engagement to create a fuller picture of what your business is about. 
People love a story, what’s your story?
KJP Creative is an online marketing agency, specialising in social media management and there to help business of all sizes grow their online presence. If you’re looking for guidance in creating a social media strategy for your business or help managing your social media, we’d love to speak with you. Get in touch and let’s talk!
You can also download our social media checklist to ensure you don’t miss the basics when it comes to your social media marketing. A daily, weekly and monthly checklist to help you grow your business using social media.
Did you enjoy this post? Please comment below 👇
by Karen Petrauskas | Apr 26, 2019
If you’re ready to take action in your business and see results come in, you need to take that extra step further. Social media coaching could be your solution.
If you’ve read all the blogs, scanned all the articles and downloaded all the eBooks and cheat sheets your mind can cope with, you’re either ready to explode or you’re on your way to being ready to take action in your business.
Often the first step is the hardest step and crossing that line can be a large bridge to jump – but how worth it once you have!
Social media marketing / online marketing is a huge mine field and finding the areas that work well for your business can feel extremely daunting however when you start to work on your social media platforms and discover what is working (and what is not), we promise it gets easier to whittle down a path that will guide your business to see successful results. And the good news is that once you know what you’re doing and you have the right tools and support, it becomes an easier task to manage.
So, what can help you bridge that gap to help your small business – or even larger organisation if you’ve not yet mastered a successful social media presence – in reaching your audience (your ideal avatar), attracting them to interact with your brand and then leading them through to sales?
It’s about digging deep into the core values of your business, it’s about truly understanding what your customers are looking for, understanding their needs and problems (even if they don’t think they have a problem); your job is to find and provide their solutions while always adding value.
There is so much material available on the internet about how to achieve success, but unless you actually take action and believe that you can achieve that success, it will not happen. Fact!
You have to get out of bed on a daily basis knowing that you are going to make a difference. You need to find the perfect person / mentor / or ‘thing’ that will motivate and inspire you to push forward and guide you in doing things the right way.
We all have our own way of managing stress, getting past a hurdle or just getting on with life – and the same goes for managing our motivation and dedication to reaching and attaining our business goals.
We want to tell you that you need to take action TODAY. Not tomorrow, not next week, not when you have money in the bank, not when the kids have got through school… you need to take action NOW!
“Don’t put off until tomorrow what you can do today.” – Benjamin Franklin
Don’t you just love this quote! Motivation at it’s best… and that’s what you need to keep striving.
Here’s a few ideas on how to get started and how you’re going to see results.
Find a business mentor
When you’re good at something, you’ll feel happier. That will have a knock-on effect to your personal and business life meaning that the happier you are, the more likely you’ll be to get better, progress and achieve more.
When you find the right mentor, they’ll be interested in where you are, what you’re doing and give you attention when you have a ‘yes’ moment encouraging you to see more of them! They are aligned with your best interests and want the best for you.
Finding a good mentor will boost your confidence and help you feel better about yourself.
Business Coaching
A mentor is there to support and encourage you. However, a business coach will also guide and help you to get smarter about the way that you do business. This will include all factors of your business from strategies, to relationships to opportunities and more.
A business coach can help you get from A to B and fill in the gaps in between. They can assist in giving you clarity and vision in your business and help you to see what steps you need to take in order for things to happen. They will help you take action
Social media coaching
If you put the above two points together and find yourself a social media coach (hint: we can help!), you’ll have a mentor and coach who can help you dig deep into your digital marketing needs, focusing on what you love, what makes you tick and what steps you’ll need to take to make your business grow.
By working one to one, you can build a relationship of trust, accountability and nurture in order to take action in your social media marketing and create content that relates directly to your ideal audience.
If you’re not ready for one to one coaching, there is always an option for group coaching sessions which still gives you accountability but may help with any confidence issues or not wanting to go it alone. Group sessions are great for bouncing ideas off each other, by learning from what everyone is doing and the results they see, along with being able to share your journey and help encourage others with your own story.
We fully believe that working with a social media coach is a great step to take if you’re ready to take action, push forward and watch your business grow. There’s no need to struggle alone, you don’t need to sign up to every mailing list in case you miss a prominent piece of information, your coaching sessions will work specifically with your business and follow a path that will work for you, not necessarily someone else.
When you meet your marketing and business goals and when you see an increase in business growth, you’ll be more confident to keep going and keep striving. When you’re happy, when you’re confident, when you understand how to market your business – THEN you will see great results. 
Are you ready to take action?
We’d love to chat with you if you can resonate with the above. We want to start you on a journey that you wish you’d started years ago!
1-2-1 or group social media coaching – we’re here to help at the click of a button! Get in touch today.
And if you’re still looking for something to read to get motivated in your business, read our free eBook “Get Out Of Bed & Start Your Business” – it’s our gift to you.
Have a fantastic day!
by Karen Petrauskas | Apr 10, 2019
The world of social media is forever changing, and forever will be! It evolves as people find new ways of connecting and communicating with others and as technology develops.
There are new platforms popping up all the time, so where do you begin? Do you spread yourself thin and try to be active on all social platforms or do you choose just one? And how can you keep up with the social channels as a business looking to reach out to an audience and build brand awareness?
First off, if you’ve got a marketing strategy, and more specifically, a social media strategy to adhere to, you’ll know your end game and the targets you’re trying to reach. But if you’re a small business, or are just starting out you may not be that far along the line as yet. That’s ok (although we do suggest creating a marketing strategy), you need to first understand your audience and where they are most likely to ‘hang out’, then establish what you are looking to achieve when you’ve grabbed their attention, and then use the social media networks that are most relevant to them.
If you think about a group of people, say your friends or your colleagues, you would act or speak differently to your best friends than you would with the person you meet at the coffee machine. You’d also have a different rapport with your friends than your clients. The relationships are all different and need to be nurtured in a different way.
Many people think of all social networks being equal – but they’re not. They all have their own specific purposes and all have the job to do in the ways of networking. Understanding their purposes and what to use each channel for will give you a better understanding of how to use them for your businesses and which social network will work best to engage with your customers.
So let’s look at the different social media channels – what are they about and what are they mostly used for?
Facebook
Whether you like Facebook or not, your customers are most likely to be on there in some shape or form. It is the biggest social media network with Facebook had 2.32 billion monthly active users.
Not only do people use it for personal use, it is now becoming an advertising platform for businesses across all industries and sectors.
For business use, Facebook is a place to share company news, updates on offers or promotions along with interspersed industry news. People will come to your Facebook page to find out more about your business and your company culture and values.
With Facebook being the biggest social networks, it is important to have a presence on the platform. Many people looking for a service or product will search through to find a Facebook page as it’s a place that’s familiar, that feels safe and allows a person to take a peek with no pressure.
Always keep your audience in mind with all content that you post. Are the posts fitting with your business, do they match your culture, are they things that your audience will want to see or hear?
Once you’ve established a small audience, you’ll get to know what kind of content they prefer to see as engagement rates will go up and you’ll get more response to your posts. Use Facebook as a way to link your customers to your business and to show the reasons why they should trust your brand and buy from you.
Twitter
Twitter is extremely fast-paced and on the go but it is a great way to establish an audience. It’s an easy and simple platform to use and with 326 million active monthly users, it’s not one to miss! The microblogging platform provides a user to give a status or update in 240 characters and is a sea of information. The platform can be used for news updates, company updates, quotes or inspiration but with the limited number of characters allowed, it’s vital your copy is inviting, enticing and relevant to ensure that people click through to the place you want them to.
Twitter is great for polls, to gauge audience reactions or opinions and to raise brand awareness in bite size snippets. You can post using polls, images, gifs, videos or plain links and as long as you can get your information into the small tweet box, you’re ready to go!
Be sure to respond to comments or new followers, thanking new followers is a great way to build relationships, perhaps asking them a question in return to get to know them a little better. When you know your audience, you can service their needs and add value.
Pinterest
Often Pinterest is a platform that is missed off the social media strategy but we have found that it is an extremely important network to utilise for business. It’s all about eye catching visuals that entice users to click through. The visuals need to show knowledge or expertise, they need to have something to offer and be offering something that another person is looking for.
Content is king, it’s the way that you get people to click through from Pinterest to your website. Therefore you need to ensure that your content is spot on target with what your audience is looking for. Provide the visuals and content that people are searching for and the people will find you.
A great take-away for Pinterest is to offer a freebie in order to get people to click through to your site. Once they’re on your site, they need to know that you can help with their problem but if your website doesn’t match your Pinterest content, you’ll lose the customer.
The pins on your Pinterest account can all be re-purposed from the content already on your website, if you have a blog, create a multiple number of different images to link back to the blog posts.
To make Pinterest work properly, you need to be posting on a very regular basis which is where scheduling tools come in handy. We recommend Tailwind which can be accessed for free to start with and can be free for forever if you want to keep it at the basic level. Definitely a tool that necessary to make Pinterest work properly.
Don’t forget to actually engage with followers as well on Pinterest, it can be easy to get overwhelmed with posting, but the engagement is also a big part of the marketing strategy in order to grow your business.
Instagram
Instagram is another visual platform and if you love photography, real life images or grabbing the moment, Instagram is for you.
These images should be to a high resolution and to a good standard, as Instagram is all about an account being beautiful and attractive. Although it does help, Instagram is more about telling the story behind your brand and letting followers know what you are about and what makes your business tick. You are able to engage with local people, relevant hashtags and people interested in your niche. There’s a whole range of ways to interact with brands on Instagram and now you can even shop directly from the platform!
In order to use the shopable feature on Instagram, you’ll need to have an active shop in Facebook and your account will need to be set up as a business account.
Individual posts do not allow links in the copy so it’s a good idea to make sure your website link or preferred link is in your bio, you can then ask your audience to connect with you via your bio link in each post. You can always change that link to different landing pages if you’re running a campaign or you’d like to direct your followers to somewhere different – this is changeable at all times.
LinkedIn
If you’re a B2B business, LinkedIn is a great place to be. It’s known as the professional social network and it’s a lot easier to build professional relationships and gain new B2B clients from this channel.
LinkedIn has 590 million users and 260 million monthly active users. It performs better when it comes to lead generation conversions at a rate of 277% which is 3 times higher than Twitter (.69%) and Facebook (.77%). 80% of B2B leads come through LinkedIn.
The type of content on LinkedIn is usually business or company related. If you want to share about what’s happening in your business, the new employees, the company culture, that you’re hiring, milestones and such like. All this is great for company pages.
To build the engagement on these company page posts, it’s a good idea for business owners and employees to share the updates on their personal profile. If you’re a business with many employees, encourage them to share and comment on company posts.
When it comes to using social media for your business, there are many choices and opportunities, so you need to find what works for your clients. Don’t waste time on platforms that don’t work – understand and know your audience and hang out where they are.
If you’d like help in putting together a social media strategy or you simply haven’t got the time to invest and would prefer to pass the task onto an expert, we’d love to help. Get in touch for a free consultation.
Don’t forget you can download our FREE social media awareness days calendar for 2020 to help plan out each month in one swift document! ![What is the difference between the big social media networks and how can you use them to grow your business?]()
by Karen Petrauskas | Apr 1, 2019
You’re ready to grow your business, but you don’t have a captive audience to hear what you’re saying. You’re spending hours on content and social media with little response. Fed up might describe the feeling. Sound familiar?
If you’re looking to up your game in social media and to find an audience that wants to hear what you have to say, Facebook groups are the place to be.
Facebook groups is a must for any small business trying to gain attention, and by providing value in the groups, you’ll be able to engage directly and personally with each member who stops by.
The whole point of a Facebook group is to connect, engage and share on a mutual topic, therefore the perfect place to grow an audience that is interested in your niche.
Engagement on social media means that followers are doing these three things:
- Reacting to a post
- Sharing a post
- Commenting on a post
This is basic across all social media, just applicable to Facebook groups. So, with this in mind, creating content for your group means that you have to bear your readers in mind and create content that they will want to engage with. Stick with your main theme and aim your posts to what the people are waiting and wanting to hear. One thing to try and remember is to keep to your niche topic or theme and steer it to stay that way wherever possible. It’s great when conversations flow and ‘out of the blue’ questions are asked, if people are comfortable in the group, they will relax and chill in it.
Starting a Facebook group might sound a little frightening but if you’ve got something to give, there are people to listen. Imagine a world where your audience are waiting intently on what is coming next. Imagine a time when your posts are getting so much engagement that you were able to sell at the click of a button. It can become a reality if you do the research and create the right type of group for your business. The results can be amazing when you’ve mastered the art of Facebook groups.
Where to start?
First off you need to create the Facebook group and contrary to popular belief, it can work in your favour to create a ‘closed’ group in order to get the right engagement rates. This is because people have to request to join and therefore will only join if they think they can benefit from being part of it. As an admin, you don’t even have to allow them in if you don’t think they are the right fit! Making clear that you want the group to be respectful and mindful of others will help eliminate the trouble makers or spammers!
It’s a good idea to set some questions in order for someone to request to join. Within these questions, it’s beneficial to ask for their email address so you can add them to your mailing list. Not everyone will give you their email address, but it will definitely help grow your list, which ultimately is what you need to do to grow your business. Have you heard the saying “the money is in the list”?
A closed group also gives members confidence that their posts or comments will only be seen by people with similar interests and where they can gain confidence and respect. It gives them an avenue of asking questions that they perhaps would not normally feel comfortable in within an open setting. The perfect opportunity to be able to help those who have burning questions and for you add value to each and every member that enters your group.
Add in a welcome video or message
Before anyone even filters through the posts in the group, it’s a great idea to have a welcome message to greet them as they come in. Just as you would if someone steps into your office or workspace – they are coming to see what they can find and what information they can obtain. Let them know that they are welcome and that you value them, right from the outset, this will also help them know who you are and what the group is about.
Get personal
Get to know each of your members. Make an effort to welcome each member as they join, ask them to introduce themselves and make it personal for them. When they feel valued, they will give more to the group.
As the group grows and there are more members, it’s still important to value each of them. Take time to respond to all comments, even if it’s just a like, to show that you are listening to what they have to say.
Encourage questions
Your group is a place for people to grow or learn more. What better place for them to ask as many questions as they need to! In your content you can trigger questions or invite people to be free to speak to others members if they need advice. As well as helping the person asking the questions, it’s a time where other members can use their knowledge and expertise to help another. This raises their profile and allows them to connect with other people – networking is a fantastic tool!
You can also ask your members to turn on their notifications of the Facebook group so they ‘never miss a post’ which will help with people seeing and interacting with your content. Ask your members what they want from the group, what content they want to see and how you can help them achieve their goals. Stuck for ideas for content – ask your audience!
Structure your Facebook group
As you would with any other content marketing campaign, structure your group. Provide great (and free) information and content, showcase your expertise and reap any benefits or rewards further down the line.
Plan out content and make a plan of what to post and when. It will help with those times when you run of time or you’re stuck for ideas. If you have a content planner, you’ll have something to work towards.
Some groups have set posts for certain days of the week and this is great for members to know what is coming up, especially if they have something that fits with that topic. For example, in our FB group we often have a “Share your events” post on a Tuesday. If you’ve got something happening that you’d like to share with the group, you can post it on a Tuesday!
Others do a ‘FreebieFriday’ inviting people to share their giveaways. There are many creative ideas that you come up with to engage with your facebook members.
There are many: #MotivationalMonday #WednesdayWisdom #FridayFunday
Have fun
A Facebook group should be fun and informative for all members. You want to raise your brand awareness, you want to show expertise and authority, you want to build an audience – but don’t use this as a platform for talking down to members, use it to provide advice, value and tips. A place where members can grow their knowledge and learn more. Make posts exciting, gauge what type of content your audience enjoys and keep going with those.
Always keep your audience involved in the content – ask them to comment or give ideas. Ask them to share their experience, opinion or ask them what they are struggling with.
Aim for big!
The bigger the better when it comes to your Facebook group. People like to know that they are getting value and opportunities from other members in the group. People are more likely to engage when they know they’re not on their own. Once you’ve reached a high enough number, usually around 500 members, the group will automatically grow itself.
Although the group is not a market place, you want to be able to sell to your audience. Once you’ve built up trust and reputation, followers will begin to know and love what you do. When you get to this point, you will be able to sell your services to them, where applicable. The bigger the group, the better the percentage of sales will be. Not everyone is going to buy from you, so it makes sense to have a bigger group in order to achieve your target.
Remember the rules
As the group grows, it’s important to remind people of the rules. Some people will join a Facebook group just to market their services. There is a time and place for this but only when relationships and trust have been established. Those that don’t abide with the rules can ruin a group for everyone else. Therefore, make sure you have a set of rules that you can ask everyone to read when they first join and then every so often post a reminder publicly for everyone to see, in case you have recurring offenders. It will also help other members know that you won’t tolerate spammy messages or content and help to keep credibility in the group.
You can’t do it all!
You’ll find that as time goes on and (hopefully) your group has grown, you won’t have time to post and engage all the time. This is a great time to hire another admin to help. You can see who admins are by the ‘cog’ icon under their name when a post is created. This is great for members to see that they have authority, not just you.
Keep it high quality
Just because it’s on Facebook and not your website, does not mean it should be any less in quality. Always provide quality over quantity. You can share a hundred posts in a week that have absolutely no relevance to your audience, or you can share 2 or 3 posts that are spot on with what you audience are wanting to hear. This goes without saying for the visual side of things too. Your visuals are so important as well. Eye-catching posts that have impact will encourage your members to want to respond!
Creative high-quality images doesn’t have to be hard work- or costly. We love Canva and recommend this to anyone creating social media content.
Offer stuff for free
This is really important to gain respect in your group. The people who join want to know that you have the needs of the people at heart. By offering advice or freebies ‘for free’ gives you authority and provides value to the people who are looking for solutions. It gives them a bite size of help without having to commit financially and to get to know you before they do decide to buy anything later on.
At the end of the day when it comes to Facebook groups, it’s about working with the needs of the members and providing content that will give value and help others. When people engage, they will share, when they share, the will recommend you, when they recommend, your group will grow. You will raise your brand awareness and see an increase in everything across your business. And engagement holds to the key to all this working smoothly.
Happy engaging everyone and feel free to get in touch if you’d like help with your social media marketing strategy or just a friendly chat to see what you need to be doing to grow your business.
PS If you’re a woman in business and are looking to grow your brand, we’d love for you to join our Facebook Group: Inspirational Business Women: Grow Your Brand! Look forward to seeing you in there.
Are you a women in business? If so, join our Facebook Group and be supported by like-minded women who are looking to grow their business online and receive regular motivational and inspirational encouragement.
