Hey there, my amazing listener, I’ve got a question for you today – is your social media REALLY working for you?

How much time do you spend on social media a week/day? Can you honestly, hand on heart, say you are getting a good return (financial – not likes, comments, engagement stuff, but money – what we need as business owners) for your efforts on social media.

I make no secret of the fact that I have a love/hate relationship with social media.  My business definitely wouldn’t be where it is today without it, but if I could have a business that didn’t require it, I think I’d be all in with that. 

This week in episode 281 (and thanks for tuning in by the way), I really want to have a chat with you about your social media and whether it’s working.

Now it’s hard to have this one way conversation with you because I don’t know what you are already doing and whether you thinking, “yep, Jenn it is absolutely working” or “Jenn, I don’t know, how do I tell?”.

The second thing first – how do you tell – well I’d say three things

• Look at your bank balance, and
• Look at your data – whether that be Google Analytics connected to your website (is social media pushing traffic to your website), or whether you look at your social media platform insights to get some direction of what’s working and what’s not, and
• Potentially look at your calendar – how many client appointments do you have and/or if you are in retail/e-commerce, how many sales a day do you make, attributed to your efforts on social media – of course, pushing you back to point (b) above and getting you to look at your data!

And if you think your social media is working, I guess those four odd things above we just talked about – bank balances, orders, calendar bookings, data sets etc are all sending you very positive signs that it is working.

Side note – you cannot say that your social media is working just because your meme of Taylor at the Grammies or Taylor at the ball game that happened this week, got lots of comments and likes – that is not a good enough metric of “it’s working”! PS – I am just using Taylor as an example here, obviously, I mean any social media post that has good engagement – that’s not the metric of success, in my business coach’s opinion.

Let’s just say, for argument’s sake, that you don’t think your social media is working.  You have very little engagement, the data (social insights and Google analytics) don’t tell a great story, and your bank balance is looking a bit low in 2024 – then what’s the answer, what do you do?

I guess there’s two things you can do;

Firstly, think about your ideal client and where they hang out other than social media – so spread your marketing across multiple strategies (my book Small Town Big Impact has 107 of them – so you can’t say you don’t know what else to do other than social media- there’s heaps – at least another 106!).  If you get to know your ideal client really well, then you know whether else is going to get a good ROI for your marketing efforts.

And secondly, and it’s an “and/or” – as in you can do this and you can also do the first one, you can get some strategy behind your marketing.

Rather than just doing what you are doing now, which isn’t working, you can knuckle down and learn more about strategy.

I recently did some guest speaking at Dale Beaumont’s Business Blueprint event and one of them was around having a marketing strategy. Part of the presentation was actually making them (the audience) do some work and do an audit on their own social media.

Out of about 70 people in the room, I reckon two, after they did their audit, were happy with their current strategy. 

Everyone else was a little taken back by the different elements (there are five elements to a good marketing strategy) that were missing.  Many of them remarking that after years of marketing and having outsourced their marketing or having in house teams or doing it themselves, no one had pointed out their lack of strategy – like REAL strategy.

Side note – this is way I love speaking so much – to see the transformation in these audience members that day, the AHA moments of clarity they had – makes my day!

Extra side note – if this is something you need help with – sing out. Book a discovery call and let’s see how I might be able to help you. Perhaps 2024 is the year for you investing in a marketing coach!

But let’s circle back and say that your social media is working for you.  I guess it can always be better though yes? How can you improve? I’d say, my biggest piece of advice would be to look at your insights and analytics – they will give you ways you can improve.

For example, if your Google Analytics is telling you that Facebook pushes more traffic to your business – then look at your Facebook strategy. If it tells you that organic searches is how much traffic finds its way to your website – then SEO, Google Business Profile, and a strategy of PR (getting into the media, getting on other people’s podcasts etc) are ways to improve.

Of course, I’ve gone through almost a whole episode without talking about my favourite thing in marketing – email marketing! The number one reason why you should be on social media is to get people OFF social media and onto your list.

No one I have ever met, who does email marketing well, has ever said, I started my list too early – in fact it’s almost the opposite – I should have started my list when I started my business!

So regardless of whether your social media is working or not – consider email marketing as another branch of your marketing tree!

This episode is a little shorter than normal, but I really just wanted to plant the seed in your head and get you to honestly evaluate whether social media is really still working for you in 2024.

There’s huge changes in algorithms, platforms, and it’s in the air that there’s big changes coming, so to be ready for it, what I actually want you to do, is not rely on social media so heavily in your marketing.  This is really the path I am gently trying to take you.

Don’t forget you can get the show notes for this podcast at www.socialmediaandmarketing.com.au/282 – what’s in the show notes and why should you care about me telling you about the link each week? Well, each podcast has notes, so any links or anything you want to clarify after listening, you’ll find in the notes – so it’s a great back up system!

Before I go, did you have a listen into last week’s episode? On last week’s the episode was about explaining the different between a website page and a landing page.  They are both important, but have very different jobs to do in your marketing. Listen into that episode if you haven’t already! www.socialmediaandmarketing.com.au/281

But that’s it for episode 282. If you loved this episode and found it valuable, please take 30 seconds out of your day to leave me a rating and review if you want where you are listening. 

If you are keen to know more about my 5 week email marketing masterclass, then head here: https://bit.ly/EmailMasterclasswithJenn – any questions sing out.  Otherwise, again, it’s 5 weeks, spots are limited, we start on 26^th February, and I am super happy to do a payment plan, just reach out and we can 100% organise that.

Remember, you need to ask for help to get help.

I’d love to hear from you in the Like Minded Business Owners Facebook group. You can join the group here https://www.facebook.com/groups/LikeMindedBusinessOwners

See you next week on the podcast for episode 283.

But in the meantime, let’s hang out on social and get social on social – you’ll find me on Instagram, Facebook and my fav LinkedIn.

But whatever you do,

…….. remember small business peep, as my opening song says, there’s no point in dreaming small!