Hello and welcome to the Working Image Podcast. I'm your host, Jarrod Michael Gordon. This is episode 10, what and How to Post on social Media. Let's get started. Social media, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, TikTok. How about Friendster? Maybe MySpace. Do you remember those? I certainly do. There have been amazing things to come outta social media, such as finding long lost family members or finding an organ donor or helping people via a viral GoFundMe post. However, there have been horrible things to come outta social media, like cyber bullying, stalking, and Ford scams. Every technological advancement has given us good and bad things we have to deal with, especially when that technology changes the world. But something happened with social media. It changed the way we connect with each other, and with that, it changed the way we share our business with people. Used to be that a business took out the largest ad it could afford in the yellow pages, that is how you got a lot of leads. In addition, word of mouth was a great way to get business. Of course, for example, if a couple's getting married, the chances are very high that they would use the same vendors as their friends did for the wedding. Or if they need a plumber, they would call a family member or a friend and ask if they knew anybody. Sure, they still exist today, but on a different level now, a couple will scroll through countless social media accounts of different wedding vendors, and when you need a plumber, it's more likely that you would go on your social media and ask for recommendations. Does anyone know a good plumber? The telephone, the car, the airplane, the internet, and most recently social media have made the world smaller. It used to cost a lot of money to call my family long distance. Now it's a video call away, and it's free as long as you have the internet. When it's easier to reach so many people in a short amount of time. Of course, business is going to change. In this episode, we are talking about the general overview of social media and what you should be posting on your various accounts. But with this in mind, what social media platforms should you even be active on? Most of the time people answer this question with, I don't know, or all of them, and that's okay. How are you expected to know what to do? But posting for your business is very different from posting personally. The first thing you want to do is get an account for your company on all the main social media platforms. At the time of this recording, they are Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and TikTok. Next post on all of them for 30 days after that, you'll be able to see what type of engagement you're getting on all these platforms. If you can't tell Post Everywhere for another 30 days, so now you have 60 days worth of data, you'll definitely have enough data in that timeframe to tell you which social media platform works best for your company. It may be one, it may be two, but you will know where they rank for your company. Once you know which social media platform or platforms work best, that is where you want to concentrate your posting and advertising from now on. Also, you'll own an account for your company on every platform, and this will save you from your competitors claiming that from underneath you, so you're protecting your company and your brand. Now, on the platforms that are not engaging with your company, you simply write a post saying that you mainly post somewhere else and pin it to the top of your feed. This way, when someone finds you and they can see that you are more active on the other social media sites and that they should go there to really engage with your company. For example, LinkedIn might work best for your company. Simply post and pin a post on the wall of Facebook, Instagram, et cetera, telling people that you're more active on LinkedIn and here are the links to your profile there. Now, you just substantially cut the time you need to spend on social media down because you are concentrating on the one or two platforms that work best for your company and not just blanketing every social media platform there is pro tip. If you are uncomfortable with a video only platform like TikTok or something else to that effect, don't consider using it. You'll never be successful on social media if you are not comfortable with it. In this case, some people just don't want to be in front of the camera, and that's okay. You can still build an audience without dancing on TikTok. But what should you post? Keep in mind we're talking about your business, not your personal page. So keep to some hard rules. Do not post about religion or politics because you will be alienating some of your audience. Do post about what you know. That sounds simple, right? Well, it might be harder than you think. You see, if you have a business that can be very technical, and of course you know your business like the back of your hand, it's easy for you to use technical terms that might confuse your audience. So don't post about things that are too technical for them. You need to relate to your audience, and your audience is filled with potential customers. So what do you do? Well, you educate them. You educate them with every post again and again and again. A lot of business owners think they have to entertain their audience on social media, but that's not the case. Educate them. You might be asking, who wants to learn about what I do? Trust me, they do. People will follow you on social media, learn about something they don't know no matter what the topic. So if you're a plumber, an electrician, a musician, an artist, it doesn't matter. I know you may feel like your topics are boring or you may be boring, but as long as you're teaching people will follow. Education is how you will build trust with your audience. And as I said before, trust leads to sales people. Remember your company because you taught them something useful. Now, your posts don't have to be long written, step-by-step, drawn out ways on how to accomplish something that is what you want them to hire you for. You need to post tips and tricks and basic information they probably don't know about your industry. In addition, you want to post about how your services helped someone or you solved a problem via a story. People love a story, especially when the problem is really hard to deal with. Then the audience is engaged and may like or even share your post. But the most important thing is that they'll remember you for your industry. So when they need your industry services, they'll remember you. In return, you'll gain popularity and potentially more followers, building more trust. And again, trust leads to sales. Let's talk about followers. You don't have to have a lot of followers to be successful with social media. I'd rather have a hundred followers that engage with my content and hire me than 10,000 followers who do nothing. So when you see only 10 people like your post, ask yourself, if those 10 people turn into customers tomorrow, would that be a good thing for your business? Of course, it would be a good thing for your business. So now you need to concentrate and turning those 10 followers into customers. And before you know it, you've gained new customers via social media. But what about time? Time is something we can never get back. And as busy as business owners are, time needs to add value to your company. Are you expected to jump onto social media every day? The answer is no. And even if you think you that answer's yes, you will shortly find out that you simply will be burnt out and you'll have too much work or your personal life will get in the way and somehow some way you'll let your social media die off. So here's what you do. Without going into crazy detail on the psychology of social media and the best times to post and how many times you should post per week, you need to first establish a foundation that you can stick to. The best way for you to do this is to set a day of the week that you're going to post to social media, but commit to this day and make sure to post to it every week. Some may want to post three days a week, that's great, but no consistency is what will drive your social media forward. You don't have to post at the same time every day, but just make sure you're getting something useful to your audience out there each week. Now, you don't have to take time away from your job every week. You can use one day a month to schedule all your posts for that month. Most social media platforms allow you to schedule posts and for those platforms that don't, or maybe you have more than one platform that you're posting to, you should use a tool like buffer.com. Link in the show notes. Buffer allows you to write your post once and only once and then schedule it to every platform that you're on. That is a huge time saver. I recommend you take the time and plan your posts, ask yourself what you want to tell your audience. What do you want to educate them about your industry? Really think about it. Then come up with the posts and schedule them. Make sure to use at least one image for every post. And if you have a video that's even better than a photo, people engage with posts that have photos and videos much more than posts that don't. Now you have a social media foundation. No matter what happens, no matter how busy you get, you know posts are going out on your social media every week. In addition, when something arises that you want to share, do it. If you have the time, open your phone and share with your audience, and that will just be extra posts on top of your scheduled once. Now you're really starting to post on a regular basis and it's not overwhelming. You have the scheduled posts and if you can do so, post on the fly during month to share some more things that is happening to your company and industry. But if you don't have the time, it's okay cuz you already have the other posts scheduled. Once you get the hang of really working with your foundation and you know that it's working now you can branch out and you can schedule more posts during the month or maybe you can hire someone to take care of that for you. Whatever the case may be. The foundation of posting on social media is what everyone needs to help their business grow online. Well, I hope this helps you understand social media for business a little bit more. A social media foundation is a good way to get started and build from. Remember to educate your audience and discuss how you solve someone's problem. It makes you more relatable with the audience and builds trust while making you an authority in your industry. Well, that's it for episode 10 of The Working Image Podcast. What and How to Post on social media. All the necessary links and information are in the show notes. If you have any questions, email theworkingimage@gmail.com. We know your time is valuable. Thank you for using some of that time. So listen, take care, everyone.