Social Media Strategies For Business: 201

Today we continue our social media series with social media, 201 strategies for business on a straight shot, marketing podcast,

that’s right. We’ve graduated from social media 101 and now it’s time for the second class 201. I feel like I’m back in college. Again, social media school for business here.

Yes. So let’s jump right into the topic here in 101 we did an overview of what social media was its history and a basics overview. So, what are we doing in 201? Well, today is all about businesses’ use of social media, which is different from how your normal individuals will use social media.

I mean, sure. Individuals don’t usually have a strategy at all. It is at least not a conscious one. Some people do, some people do. Some people, they don’t call that. If you’re in a, if you’re an individual, you don’t have a strategy, you have an agenda, you have an agenda anyway, but you know, not normally they don’t have a strategy, right?

Individuals normally not, unless the individual is a brand, you know, like Kim Kardashian J lo somebody that is, you know, a business in and of themselves. I still love that movie. So we are going to talk about the strategic approach businesses take when using social media. So today is still an overview-type background. High-level thinking approach sort of episode, uh, all of which is necessary before we get to the day-to-day, how-to steps.

Oh. And, but those are coming. Yeah, but none of that matters if people don’t understand why they are doing it and we will get into how we approach the how-to steps today, but not the steps themselves if that makes sense. Interesting. Okay. Well, Let’s get started. So what’s the first thing that businesses should know in their approach to social media.

Well, first they need to understand the different platforms so that they can decide which ones are going to be beneficial to them to use. And which would be a waste of resources. Your business doesn’t have to be on all of them. But you must be on the ones that will best reach your audience.

And that is the key, not what you like, but what will work best to help you interact with your audiences and intersect in their lives? Okay. So the number one is, uh, it’s not all about you, and don’t feel pressure from what others are doing. And that’s an interesting mix. I mean, they’re almost like opposites.

Yeah. Well, it’s not all about you and it’s not about your peers. It’s about your customers, right. And that is a good first lesson and something that all businesses should already know. Number two. Oh, that was fast. We’re moving along. Number two is that once you determine which platforms you need to be on, that you are brand consistent across all of them. This is forming your digital presence and you need to look confident across the interwebs feed. Remember we called it less than the internet broadcast. Right? You look consistent across the whole thing. If you look one way on Facebook, on Snapchat in a different way, still on your website.

That’s not good. Right? It comes across as very disjointed to the customer. That’s confusing to them and not valuable to you as a business at all. Every time someone sees you, it’s like, they’re starting overseeing you. First time. Yes, statistically, you have to see something seven times before you will start to recognize it before it will start to have its own memorable identity in your mind.

And if you are different each time someone looks at you, you will never get past seven. You do not even get past number two. No, no, you will. Um, so number three, we’re going to move along this pretty fast. Number three. Um, number three has to do with your participation on social media, which should be number one, like we said, planned and on the right platforms, number two, consistent and professional, but it also needs to be responsible.

You have to understand why you were there and it’s not about. Selling it’s about being social, being available, and interacting with your audience. So in that way, it needs to feel organic and natural. Is that what people mean by organic reach? Not organic reach, but organic engagement. Yes, organic reach is something else just to confuse people.

But organic engagement is ensuring that things don’t feel forced. They feel natural. People don’t want to feel like they are being sold to, or that you are being fake. That is organic engagement, organic meaning, you know, natural as it would come. Treating people like people sort of thing organic reach has to do with unpaid participation on a platform as opposed to advertising or paid participation on a platform.

So same adjective different noun. Okay. Well, you know, that’s important. I mean, okay. So let’s talk about unpaid participation. Some. Now, what does that look like? Um, it’s what we at the agency call foundational participation, meaning that it is the basic foundational level of participation that must be done before you can move on to any of the advanced levels of participation because if you don’t, your house will fall into it’s Sandy foundation.

Yes. As opposed to being built on a solid foundation of rock that’s right. I love analogy now so does the Bible now. Um,

Now this includes posting regularly scheduled or frequent content onto these social media platforms as part of a content marketing strategy. Now I’m going to keep this as simple as I can and restrict it to where we’re talking about social media only, but content strategy includes posting frequent content to the internet.

Regardless of whether it’s social media or not. Right. So that you are relevant, engaged, and active on the internet. So are there rules to how many posts you should put up or to like, like what types of posts? But, uh, they are not the same for everyone, which is why it’s difficult to talk about. It’s not some sweeping brush that is general, that covers everyone.

So to answer your question in, in, you know, give a response that applies to everyone, let’s just say that you should be putting up as much content as you possibly can using the methods and the media that is going to. Relate and engage with your target audience. What’s going to reach them best. Right.

And of course, that will be different depending on who you are, who your audience is, and what platform you are on. Okay. So if all of that is the foundational level, then what’s the next step up? Well, I don’t know if it’s the next step again, that would be completely dependent on the same factors that we just talked about, but a step.

Oh, okay. A step up from the foundation for many businesses will include gaining influencer support. This is akin to making friends with the popular kids in the school so that other people will like you too. . The world is just one big schoolyard. Isn’t it? You know, it seems so doesn’t it uh, that’s because the behaviors that we, you know, grow into as adults are learned at a very young age, and though we may grow into wisdom. Those behaviors, follow us innately as we grow up.

Now we have an entire episode that we’re dedicating to influencer marketing, I believe. And it’s coming up later in this series. Yes. It may be the very next episode after this one, or, if not, it will be the one after that. It will be soon. Okay. So what’s next for us here today within the strategic approach for the business.

Okay. So the next is what we call strategic engagement and it has to do with proactive engagement with customers in perspective. Customers now the internet is one big town. We’re going to use another analogy, right? So the internet, if the internet is one big town, you should be talking with others in the town.

You should be being neighborly, right. And using the tools that are available on the internet. So to do that, you need to do some research. To find out who is interesting right. In your town and who would be interested in what you do. Then go talk to them, invite them into a conversation. Good morning. My neighbors

organically. Of course organically. Of course, you don’t want to come across sales. That is the kiss of death. Yes. People don’t like salesy. I think we talked about this before social media, Oh one, maybe, but it is true. And millennials and the iPhone generation, the one after millennials. Uh, bore it.

They hate it. They will run the other way violently. If they say that you are being salesy or fake to them. So you must be genuine. You have to be true and you have to. Earn their interest in what you offer. I think we need to start picking on a new generation and we can’t just keep picking on the millennials anymore.

We’ve got to get into the iPhone generation. I’ll pick on them. They’re coming right along behind them. This is the truth iPhone generation. Your time has come. You will now be picked on, but anyway, it’s a different world with different tolerance called them the Z generation I, you were Y, and then I think we skipped and went to millennials.

No, it was a gen X gen Y millennials. Now it’s the iPhone generation, but I don’t know what that, so we never said Z generations. It’s so hard to keep up. Maybe that’s the, maybe that’s the bill and he is with that baby. I think they should call it the, uh, I generation, I don’t know the difference. Anyway, there was a clever name I had thought of at one point, I can’t remember.

Millennials are known as the I generation from, you know, iPhone. I work, I pad, I pop up. I whine. I, no, I’m just kidding. Sorry. Sorry. I love all the millennials out there. Seriously. Like we all need to band together and millennials included to pick on the next generation like the invitation is out there, but it’s a different world with different tolerances than it used to be.

Do you know? Isn’t it. Yeah. To a degree, yes. Much more unforgiving in this way. So reach out to people, but be pure in your intentions and show genuine interest in who they are. It is serving their needs, not in them, serving your needs. It is forcing businesses to be better people. Wow. How very altruistic, Oh, I believe you still have one more thing left to discuss with us today.

Yes. Uh, one more kind of level or whatever, uh, advertising. This is relative to what we just talked about. If you are going to be salesy, make sure that it is through advertising. It is more accepted. There than in foundational precipitation or strategic, but they don’t even want it, then do that, but it’s better there than in the other areas.

At least they expected somewhat here, even if they don’t necessarily like it. So even advertising should be informative, entertaining, genuine, and true. Less salesy as you can to be in an ad. And there’s a little, you know, there’s some finesse in how you, how you do that, but you have to showcase who you are and how you connect to your audience rather than clubbing them over the head.

And, you know, hitting them over the head with a sales message and dragging them back to yours. Retail store.

It just doesn’t work that way anymore. Does it? Not really? No. Uh, and at least it’s working that way less and less as time moves on, but advertising on social media is beautiful. Why is it beautiful? Well, because we, as marketing professionals and business owners can do things that we’ve never been able to do before.

And that is all centered around targeted, which again will receive it to own episode coming up soon in this series. Yes, it will because advertising is important, but different on each platform as well. But overall social media, very targetable. And that’s why companies are turning to social media advertising in droves.

Yes, but more on that later on Zachary, why don’t you go ahead and give us the straight shot for today. What’s our summary of important facts and takeaways here. I feel like today was a relatively short episode, but it’s, it’s important. This is all high-level stuff that as a business, you need to have a fundamental understanding of before we go into anything else that I’m going to talk about from this point forward, which is why I wanted to call it out today.

This social media one-on-one was kind of the basics of where everything came from the history, you know, that sort of thing. This is the business approach. Uh, you know, understanding that you need to have as a business owner when you’re approaching social media, right? Because if you do any of these things wrong, you’re breaking the rules and that has negative consequences.

So it’s very important. I think that you understand that all platforms aren’t the same and know which ones are best for your business. And your audience, the platforms are going to tell you, you need to be on them, you know, and your, your buddy that you’re networking in may tell you, Oh, Snapchat is great for me, but he may have a different audience than you.

All right. So you have to be smart at how you do this, but the next thing, most important thing, most important, these are all important brand consistency. It’s important when you’re doing printed material, it’s important across the internet. Right. These are not things that you can, oops. I just didn’t know that I could didn’t make Snapchat look completely different.

No, you have to look consistent or it will work against you. And then the other really big piece is number three, you’re going to trace, I like to be Spanish, everyone. I am organic and pure in your approach to people and your content. I kind of want to do a cheerleader. Hold on. I want to do beat organic beet organic P E O R G a N I C.

Organic. Yeah. You’re supposed to put on your, your skirt and do a little twirl and stuff. And I got to stand. I’m going to say I’m a bit, I’m old enough that I can just do it. Clapping at my chair. I don’t know why I felt the need to do a cheer, but be organic. Eat organic, right? Yes. But, uh, you know, again, the important that you kind of have to understand with the new generations that we have.

You’ve got to change your approach from the way it used to be used, a car salesman. No. Good. No. Good. And then we have, you know, the the the mix things that, which are the steps that you’re going to need to take, right. You’re going to have to engage in foundational participation. Don’t run to advertising without doing foundational participation.

First, don’t skip putting regular content up on your social media, because if you do. And then you shoot, uh, you know, you do advertising somewhere and you drive people to your social media and they see that you haven’t touched it. That harms you. So don’t do it. You have to do a before you do B right.

Same thing with the mixed, which is strategic engagement. Don’t go running and talking to people on the internet. If you have it. Done your foundational participation, or it will harm you. It will make you look like you are approaching them for nefarious, AKA salesy reasons, and they will run from you.

Not good. So again, all very foundational things that you need, to understand influencer support is another thing that I wanted to mention because influencer support is good across whichever, you know, every single platform has some sort of influencer that you can use. So it’s something that, that you can look at.

But again, when you’re looking at it, it needs to be pure. Organic genuine. Don’t try to, you know, put your sugary cereal in the middle of an organic nature show or vegetarian joke. Cause it doesn’t make sense. Right. So you have to pay attention, use a basic sense so that you’re smart about it. Thanks to

that once you do all of these things, correct, you get the wonderfulness that is targeted advertising. It here’s the, here’s the thing about targeted advertising Zuckerberg has made it worse instead of better. It used to be, we could target all kinds of things and it was wonderful since then they have changed some of it to be politically correct because that’s now, you know, the political police are kind of what social media has kind of moved into recently.

Uh, so we can not target some of the things that we could target. Before, um, however, it’s still so much more targetable than anything we’ve ever done before. We were able to do targeting before by niche, by interest. You know, we talked about this before sports illustrated is what we used for, you know, athletic type people filled in the stream was what we used for outdoorsy type people.

So there was some targeting there, but nothing like we have as instantaneously as social media, but again, we will get to advertising. That’s good. All good stuff. All of it. Well, you know, it’s a short episode, but as you said, it’s a good episode to get everybody’s feet wet and ready for the next episode in our series.

So get everybody get excited. And if you enjoyed our episode or any of the series, please hit that like, and subscribe button. Leave us a comment. If you like, let us hear from you. It means a lot to us. And if you need us, let us know. By calling (678) 825–8086 X tension 300 will be there. Or you can just email us at info at the straight shot net.

So until we meet again, guys, Right. Well, I don’t know which one is it? Well, it’s probably going to be on the same level. So maybe like one 25 or two. Yeah. Something I don’t know. I don’t even remember how colleges do it. Yes. Yes. Yes, you have to, you have to pass this class before you can get to the next one.

Okay, guys, we’ll skip. Yes, it’ll be good. We’ll figure it all out. We’ll see you on the next installment of social media. Thank you for listening. If you found this podcast informative, we hope you’ll pass along your web address. Straight shot.net to your friends, colleagues, and business associates. And please leave us a positive review on our Facebook page.

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