Bridget Willard | SaaS Marketing Agency

Category: Branding, Marketing, Advertising

  • What Does Social Media Engagement Look Like?

    Updated 2/21/22

    Everyone talks about social media engagement. But what is it? How do you do it? What does engagement on social media really look like? Short answer: it’s a conversation — a back and forth of exchanges. Someone has to start the conversation. Someone has to keep it going.

    Firstly, you should respond to your audience: whether it is a tweet, Instagram post, or comment on one of your blog posts. By the way, comments are great for SEO.

    But engagement is more than just responding. As a brand, that is building your awareness and audience, you will want to go out of your way to engage. Think of it as outreach.

    What is Social Media Engagement?

    Merriam-Webster states that engagement is the state of being engaging, “tending to draw favorable attention or interest.“

    Drawing attention to your brand by being polite and interesting is the way to engage on social media.

    What about short comments?

    Are short comments less valuable? In a word: no.

    It’s a conversation. Sometimes you say hi to someone in the grocery store or in the coffee room at work or while you’re at the neighborhood bar. The engagement isn’t less important; it’s just brief.

    Conversations are valuable regardless of the length. I’ve talked about the value of small talk before. Often small talk is a way to build trust before talking about deeper things.

    Social Media Engagement: Be Interested

    If you want people interested in you, show interest in them.

    Whatever you choose to do, I recommend spending five minutes a day finding posts you can reply to. Set a timer if it helps you. Do it in the morning or after lunch. I enjoy scrolling Twitter while I am drinking my coffee in the morning.

    Here are some recent examples of people who reply often.

    https://twitter.com/ryankienstra/status/1126263102784163840

    Engagement is up to you.

    Think about engagement as outreach. It’s allowing people to know that you are relevant. It’s keeping your brand top of mind. For businesses, engagement shows you’re still open for business.

    In most lines of work, referrals are our bread and butter. Why wouldn’t you want to build relationships on social media? It’s not different than in “real life.” We work in digital; we live in digital. Let’s succeed in digital.

  • Fruit Requires Patience – Marketing on Social Takes Time

    When planting your marketing seeds, you can’t expect fruit immediately. Fruit, like marketing on social media, requires patience.

    I recently purchased a strawberry kit from Target. The “growing medium” had to be prepped, the seeds planted, and it should be watered regularly. Furthermore, during the first year, the plant shouldn’t be allowed to bear fruit. Whoa.

    “In the first year, pick off blossoms to discourage strawberry plants from fruiting. If not allowed to bear fruit, they will spend their food reserves on developing healthy roots. The yields will be much greater in the second year.” The Old Farmer’s Almanac

    I can’t expect this plant to have “results” in a month. Yet, so many people expect dramatic results with social media marketing or product marketing in a month.

    Gardening and marketing both require patience. You must plant your brand awareness seeds. You need to phase the growth. You must do the work to ensure its health — in the long term.

    Watch my IGTV video below for more and let me know if I can help.

    https://www.instagram.com/tv/BvNO1Fvnb9X/?utm_source=ig_web_button_share_sheet

     

     

  • In Marketing There is No Magic — Just work

    Magic. Magic awes us. Magic deceives us. Marketing tools are awesome. But they don’t do the work for you. If you want effective marketing for your business, pay less attention to magic tricks and more on the work.

    Do the Work

    I used to say there is no dream without the work. It’s true.

    So often our work has long term results. It’s no different with strategy. To craft a strategy and then wait for results takes faith — faith in the process, faith in the forecasting, faith in the tactics. 

    What does the work look like? Well, that depends upon your goals and budget, of course, but here’s a list off the top of my head.

    • Follow accounts that align with brand goals.
    • Share content from brand’s strategic partners.
    • Share content that aligns with brand goals.
    • Curate guest bloggers.
    • Write posts that engage the audience.
    • Interact with said audience (this means on blog comments, social media shares, etc.)
    • Be on the lookout for trends that will affect brand.
    • Advise clients based upon trends, industry news.
    • Interact with brand in their preferred form of communication (email, Slack, etc.)
    • Create and manage content calendar.
    • Check for replies and engagement during waking hours (6am – 10pm).
    • Be available for consultation on integrating social with whole marketing and product plan.

    Mimicking Social with Automation

    We love to hate Big Brother, data mining, and lack of privacy but in marketing we like to buy tools that simulate social interaction.

    Building a business outside of your first circle (your friends) requires blogging then a push to social (content marketing) plus engagement on those profiles (relationship marketing). There is no way you can do this with only tools.

    You wouldn’t buy a hammer and think you could build your own house.

    Why wouldn’t you also hire a professional to build your brand?

    Good marketing is more than tools you can buy.

    When you work with a professional social media manager, you get boots-on-the-ground insight that helps shape and modify your marketing plan to meet your business goals.

    You’re not getting automation.

    Sure tools can do things like help get impressions.

    Having impressions isn’t the goal of social media. A brand can have a lot of impressions for the wrong reasons (broken code, offensive tweet, etc.).

    The goal of social media is to engage an audience and gain or maintain affinity.

    In-House Teams

    So you have in-house people to implement a strategy. Great. Do they know which tactics will be most effective? Aside from posting, how will they do with replies?

    A person can implement a tactic but without understanding the why of the overall strategy, it is easy for the implementer to go astray. Blindly following trends, being distracted by the Kardashians of the Internet, and inside jokes are just some of the ways social can go wrong — quickly.

    The Brand’s voice must be protected in every social post. This means that the implementer must think out the effects (both good and bad) of any action before it is done. On social media, this thought process lasts seconds, if not minutes. Thoughtful engagement and relationship building is key to building a successful brand — that builds a business — in the long term.

    This is why it is important that a brand contracts with a professional social media manager or trains thier in-house staff.

    Both my very good friend Robert Nissenbaum of tso.media and I are available to train in-house teams.

    Marketing is a Business Expense

    Regardless of how you choose to market your business, it is a use of resources and, therefore, an expense. To grow your business beyond the near future, you will need to decide how best to use those resources — outsourcing a marketing professional or training in-house staff.

    A necessary evil? Maybe. It depends upon if you want to grow your business.

    I’ve been managing social media for businesses for over ten years and watched them grow. Is yours next?

  • Social Media 101 for Small Business

    Your small business has a website. Great. Now what? Use social media and be human to create online relationships the way you would in person.

    Once you have a great website for your business, or a client’s business, it’s time to get it out there. No longer is the Internet a Field of Dreams where people just show up. Using Social Media can help grow your brand awareness and show customers how engaged with them you are.

    I had the distinct opportunity to be part of Beginner Day at WordCamp Los Angeles again in 2018 to help small businesses maximize the use of their time on social media. It’s only 24 minutes long.

    Watch the Video

    Do you have questions?

    Just as I did in the video, if you leave a comment here with a question, I’ll be happy to give you specific advice.

  • Do you want results or convenience?

    When it comes to our businesses we procrastinate on the things that we don’t like including [insert surprise here] marketing. But if marketing produces results, why do we wait?

    The question to you is this:

    Do you want results or convenience?

    Spend 7% of Your Gross Revenue on Marketing

    Budget may be an issue, though you should set aside a good 7% of revenue toward marketing, but it’s not the only excuse. Inconvenience tends to be the leader in the procrastination excuses.

    “The U.S. Small Business Administration recommends spending 7 to 8 percent of your gross revenue for marketing and advertising if you’re doing less than $5 million a year in sales and your net profit margin — after all expenses — is in the 10 percent to 12 percent range.” George Boykin

    For the sake of an example, if you are a WordPress Developer who charges $1,500 per website, $105 of that should go to marketing your business. This is a conservative investment in your future.

    If you do four of those sites a month, $420 should be invested in marketing. To be more aggressive, you’ll have to dedicate a larger percentage of gross revenue.

    Spending $420 a month on marketing instead of something else isn't convenient; it's an investment. Share on X

    What is convenient?

    Pretty much nothing. You’ve heard the saying that nothing worth doing is ever easy? Well, nothing worth achieving is ever convenient.

    Does anyone ask rugby players if it’s convenient that they get so dirty or become injured because of the lack of pads? No. Does anyone ask X Games athletes how many bones they broke to be champions? No.

    There are plenty of things I do that are not convenient. But I choose to invest in my community, my business, and myself.

    Investing in your business is never convenient. Share on X

    For example:

    • I drive 33 miles to my closest WordPress Meetup. This takes at least an hour in commute time. I do this one to three times a month. Results: friends, business, and fun. That matters.
    • I worked in Santa Ana for 14 years. It was a 27 mile commute and took an hour. Results: That job helped me launch my career shift.
    • I traveled for work while I was with Thought House (on behalf of GiveWP). I hated travel before. Results: I met people all over the world and many of them have become clients.
    • Attending WordCamps can be expensive (about $1000 is an average budget). Results: I get clients all the time from attending, organizing, or speaking at WordCamps. Also: friends.
    • Blogging takes time and focus. I don’t always feel like writing for myself, especially after doing client work. Results: people continue to read my current and past writing and (guess what?) I get business and referrals. This doesn’t even speak to branding issues. (Would you hire a marketer who didn’t blog?)

    I am not even talking about physical or mental fitness either. We all know that being fit is more than looking at magazines and having a gym membership. It’s not any different for your business.

    What gets results?

    Effort.

    Period.

    Start.

    Start somewhere. But stop complaining.

    It’s your business.

    Results require effort. Effort is rarely convenient. Share on X

    Why aren’t you marketing your business?

    I always tell business owners that they have to care about the future of their business. As a consultant or even their social media manager, I can’t care about their business more than they do.

    So, I say the same to you — my audience. I can’t care about your business more than you do.

    It’s your livelihood. It’s your future. It’s your passion.

    Your business is your passion. Don't put its future into someone else's hands. Share on X

    You should be involved in your business. You should care about its direction.

    When’s the last time you had a checkup for your body or your vision or your teeth? It’s been a year or less. Right?

    When’s the last time you had a checkup for your marketing plan? What worked ten years ago may not work now. What was true in social media last year, may not be true now. Changes in tactics are sometimes required.

    Maybe it’s time.