Lead Better - Grow Your Practice. Live Your Purpose.

Unlocking the Power of Social Media for your Brand

• Nicole Harlow: Entrepreneur, Designer, Yoga Teacher, Lifehacker + Author

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Are you ready to harness the power of social media for your business? You're in the right place. In our latest series, we're giving you a hands-on approach to construct your very own social media marketing strategy. We'll show you how to be authentic, how to sidestep fleeting trends, and reveal that you don't need to conquer all platforms to be successful - just one can do the trick. We'll also guide you to assemble a tech stack that aligns with your goals and persona. Plus, we'll be covering the power of social media and reasons why you should invest your attention in it.

We explore further into the realms of social media, discussing its power and how it can be wielded to foster relationships with potential and existing clients. We'll share tips on how to engage new clients and cultivate deeper relationships with the current ones. Choosing the ideal social media platform for your business can be tricky, but don't worry, we got you covered. We'll assist you in picking the platform that suits you best and guide you to create content that resonates with your ideal customer. And, if you've been wondering about Twitter for business, stay tuned! We're going to dive into the pros of using Twitter for business, and the distinctions between personal and business accounts on this platform. Get ready to unlock the potential of social media for business growth.

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I run three award-winning marketing / automations, branding & podcast production agencies for wellness brands, health-based businesses, health clinics and clinician entrepreneurs

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Speaker 1:

Hey, hey. Well, it's been a hot second, since I've recorded a podcast episode and I am back with a topic that every business owner loves to hate social media, social media marketing. I know you just like threw up a little bit just in hearing me say that, so I'm going to be going through a couple things. One is this is the introductory episode to we're going to have an entire series that's all about social media marketing, and this is a perfect time for me to pitch this little nugget right here in the beginning that at Brand Better, we've just created a whole new wing of our business around social media marketing. You know that we've done podcasting and that we love podcasting for our clients and, like I said, most business owners hate social media. So we finally took the plunge and we are managing social media for our clients and just loving it. So if you don't want to listen to the rest of this series and learn how to do it yourself and learn why you should even give a flying crap about social media, and you want a team to do it for you, get on a call with us and let us take over your social media channels and get you started on a TikTok and take over your Instagram and make it so you never really need to think about social media ever again. Okay, that's my sales pitch. But yeah, if you don't want to listen to the rest of this, you don't need to just hire us and we'll do it for you. But if you're in a DIY and continue to do your own social media, then let's dive in.

Speaker 1:

So the way that I'm going to structure this series is I want these all to be like bite sized episodes and that's super long, just kind of like telling you what I think are the best practices. I'm recording this in 2023. It's September 2023. So, god, we're getting on to you towards the end of the year. So a lot of these practices are going to be more timeless marketing principles, kind of underlying the foundation of each social media platform. But then I'm going to go through and do social platform specific.

Speaker 1:

So, number one just want to tell you right off the bat I don't think, in fact, I know that you don't need to be on every single social media platform. So let's just start there as our foundation and our agreement that, just because it's the shiniest new thing, there's a lot of platforms coming out. There's a lot of like OG platforms that have been around forever. So what I'm going to offer you is more a framework, and I would rather see you find success on just one platform than spread yourself then on having LinkedIn and Pinterest and Twitter. There are a lot of platforms that brand better just isn't on and probably never will be on either, because they just don't really fit our personality. Ie, twitter slash X Character limits don't really work for me, so I would rather sit down and podcast and create an hour long piece of content than be restricted to characters, and also there are just social media platforms that I just personally like better, and so I think part of developing a really great social media plan is personal right, and as a brand strategist, branding person, one of my main messages really is to create a brand, create a business, create content that's really unique to you, and so social media is no different than that, and I think something else that I'd like to start off with before we kind of dive into the overview is just another piece of allowing yourself permission to not feel like you have to chase trends all the time.

Speaker 1:

I think that what I see really holds people back on social media either getting started or posting content or even jumping into a platform like TikTok, for example, would be a great example here Is this feeling like it has to be really trend focused, and so I don't want to do TikTok dances. I don't really want to be up there pointing at things and kind of feeling a little bit like an idiot just the time doesn't really work for me. It doesn't work for my sense of how I want to use my time, how I enjoy creating, and that's okay, because you can be successful on a platform like TikTok just by being yourself and so I wanted to just put that out there that we can create a really robust social media presence. We can create a social media strategy without ever really bowing down to trends or feeling like we have to communicate in a way that's inauthentic to us, right? So just because everybody else is using meme posts or just because everybody else is dancing or because everybody else is using humor, that might not be part of your personality, it might not be part of your brain, and so I think part of it is being able to just authentically know who we are and know how we want to communicate and how we want to create before even really diving into a strategy or a plan. So that's it. That's my soapbox.

Speaker 1:

I think I wanted to give you permission, in the conversation around social media, to not be trying to focus, to be authentic, and we're going to go through this series in different platforms and you might find that some platforms just aren't the right fit for you, and that's okay because, like you can find success on social media only being on Twitter or only being on Pinterest or LinkedIn or YouTube or TikTok or Instagram, and so there's lots of platforms to choose. With podcasting, I know podcasting isn't a specific social media platform, but I would also add that as a platform which opens up iTunes and Spotify and Apple Music and lots of other places that you can be found. You also have your blog, you have your mailing list, and so these are all channels and the goal is to find a tech stack, a channel stack that works for our goals and our personality and our brand authenticity. So here's what I'm going to cover in this episode, a first part of the series. The first thing is, I want to spend a little bit of time talking about what I see as the power of social media and why you should even give a flying crap about it.

Speaker 1:

What is important about being on social media, because I think a lot of us really see it as a. I think most of us see it as like a vacuum of nothingness, where you create a post and 24 hours is lost to the void forever. And I'm hoping that I can change your mind about that, because I think social media is incredibly powerful, but maybe not for the reasons that you're already thinking about. So that's part one, and part two is going to be a little bit more focused on choosing the right platform. Now, coming up in the rest of the series, we will go through each platform in itself with best practices and whether you should or shouldn't be on there, and strategies that are specific for each platform, and then we'll kind of round off this series with how to create engaging content, how to create a content calendar, how to bulk create your work so you're not on social media all the time or feeling like you're constantly on content creation hamster wheel.

Speaker 1:

We will talk about growing and engaging your followers and building a loyal and engaged following on social media, and then we will also kind of round this out with measuring success in ROI, which I think is probably I'm not this far in my content calendar just yet, but I think will probably lead us into another series where we're talking more about the power of paid advertising, because I think being able to kind of have a content creation and social media strategy and then rolling that into paid ads whether that's boosted posts or Instagram ads or Facebook ads, tiktok ads, etc is a great way to like supercharge your social media and your content presence with some paid advertising. So I think this is probably where we're going to go afterwards, but I always reserve the right to pivot if there's something else that I want to talk about. So let's dig into the power of social media. So some of the things that social media can do for you are boosting your brand awareness, generating leads and sales, and really it can help grow your business, the visibility and even transforming your bottom line. So it was all that the social media does, but I think, above all else, how I see social media and this is really ties in directly to my focus as a brand strategist it is a relationship building tool and it's the place that people will go to when they're researching your brand and they're trying to figure out about you and they're trying to figure out if they're going to hire you if you're the one to solve their problem versus somebody else, right? So we always have peers and competition in the market and think about yourself in the buying cycle.

Speaker 1:

Are you the type of person to go and check out their social media? I certainly am a couple of the ways that I check out brands before I want to either purchase with them, and this can be anything from skincare products to service providers that I'm looking to hire to who's going to give me a massage, right? So one of the ways you know, we have referrals, obviously, but we will go to their website and we'll check out what their website looks like. I like to generally like, join a mailing list. This is maybe less for like a spur of the moment purchase and maybe this is a little bit more like on a bigger purchase, but I like to, you know, join the mailing list. But then I'd also go and subscribe to some of their social channels and see what they're posting and see what kind of reviews and testimonials they have.

Speaker 1:

But ultimately, social media is that relationship lever that we're looking for to continue a conversation with, not only a would be client, but somebody who already is a client, right? So we have clients and customers that we can use social media, both on the front end, to drive engagement and have people find out about our brand and our business and our products. We can use social media to kind of dive into the specifics around like. So, if it's a product we can dive into the specifics of, just like how it's made and the supply chain and our values and our mission and all of the manufacturers that we work with or the small businesses or brands that we support Going behind the scenes with our team, and so social media gives us an opportunity for people to kind of peel back the curtain and see more about our business so they can like line up with our we have business that shares similar values to them, and a lot of this kind of goes back to like a lot of the branding messages that that I've talked to you in previous episodes and if you're a client of ours or you've come to a class or webinar with me, I talk about brand messaging a lot, and social media is a great sandbox for us to continue to refine the brand message to speak to our ideal person, and part of that is the magnetism of the right type of client, but also repelling a client.

Speaker 1:

That just isn't a good fit for us, and we use that with imagery and language and the type of posts that we post, depending doesn't matter what platform you are on, whether it's podcasting, even, or your mailing list or your blog the content that you create, these are all beacons that reach out to an ideal person, and so that's kind of on the front end of getting new clients. But also social media can be amazing at retaining the clients that we already have, increasing the current value and lifetime value of a customer, keeping them loyal and advocates of the work that we do. So I like you to think about social media in that respect too, that it starts kind of like on the first pillar, as bringing in engagement and interest, clicks and follows and new potential clients. It gives us a platform to talk more about the product that we have in the service, but it also gives us a reason to continue to develop a relationship with the clients that we already have so they come back and buy more product with us or work with us again or refer people out to our services. So I like you to think about that.

Speaker 1:

As if I would wrap it up, I would say for me, that is the power of social media. So it builds relationships and builds rapport. And when you have a great social media strategy and you are bull creating content, you're really thinking about your ideal client avatar and you're thinking about exactly what what's going to help them solve their pain point. How do you showcase your unique value proposition and what makes you unique in your field? When you put that all together and you are able to like pre-schedule your content, you're not even there on social media every day. Maybe you're showing up once a day to answer any DMs or comments, but there is a way to make feel like social media is just not in your space all the time.

Speaker 1:

That, for me, is the power of social media, is the relationship building capacity and the fact that we can use tools to just like podcasting, to create content and relationship building content. That goes out and we don't have to be there every day, right, feeling like we're totally a slave to the social media machine. You can decide to opt out of that or have a completely different relationship with it. So the next thing that I want to talk about before we wrap this episode up is how to choose the right platform. So there are lots of different social media platforms to choose from and I don't think we need to be everywhere. I think when you're just getting started, I would focus on just one platform, maybe two, and start getting good at that platform, start getting comfortable about the language of the platform, the cadence of creating on that platform, and then you can add platforms as you start to feel more comfortable. Or also you can get really good at cross promoting and cross-purposing repurposing your content and using it for different platforms.

Speaker 1:

So you know that I'm a huge advocate for podcasting here. I am podcasting because I like to have, like, when I think about a social media content calendar and I think about, like, creating a social media strategy, I like to have like one piece of content that really is like it anchors the week. And podcasting really helps when you have a weekly show for the clients that we produce podcasts for and now for ourselves. Now that we have a new series starting, we'll have our episode go out on a Monday and then our social media content will follow that topic right, and so we will develop like three pieces of social media content for our clients and ourselves. That will come back to that main thing. But you can do the same thing with a blog post, right, or an article or a piece of content, or you could just create a topic list and say you know, this week of September the topic is gonna be, I don't know, chronic fatigue or something like that, like five steps to help heal chronic fatigue, and I like having that piece of content that anchors the week.

Speaker 1:

And then it's just a matter of deciding not only which platforms to be on, but how does that content get parsed out to the different platforms. So if we take the podcast episode or say, for you, it's a blog post and we have this one like anchored piece of content, then we wanna bring it on to Instagram and on Instagram it wants to be told as visual, right, and so I'm gonna hop on Canva and have some social media templates that are in our brand, that maybe have a carousel of the five different steps. But we know if we wanna take it over to YouTube, that's video, right, and so we need to have some kind of video content that goes with it. If it's over on TikTok, it's gonna be like sticky videos that are shorter, maybe like 20 to 30 seconds, and have them over on TikTok. So each so you can have like one core piece of content or one topic for the week. This is just an option. You can have anything that you want really. So I don't wanna say this is the way you have to have it. But what I like to have when I recommend, is like one core topic for the week and then go to the different platforms that you're on, parse out that content in the way that is right for that platform, and then you're going through and you're repurposing just one piece of content multiple times over the week and you can do that week over week. You can also write to the mailing list. You can have it on your blog. So we have a one core piece of content but we're really just firing it out to a bunch of different platforms.

Speaker 1:

But how do you know which platforms to be on? I would say for me, this is definitely a personal choice around. I don't think that there's one core platform that's like. This is the first best step for every single client. I just don't see that.

Speaker 1:

I think Instagram is a great, easy place for most business owners to be on and it's a place where most of your clients and customers will expect you to be. I would say, at this point in 2023, moving into 2024, most of your clients will expect you to have a Facebook page. Not that I mean I don't know about you it's been a long time since I followed a Facebook page but it feels kind of like a necessary Place that everybody needs to be, and if you want to foray into paid advertising at some point you will need a Facebook business page. So I feel like that's kind of like a bare minimum foundation is to have a Facebook business page. I think most clients will expect you to have an Instagram as a small business or a practice, as a wellness business owner. So, for me, the two places where I Like to start our clients off on our well, I guess it would be three. One is to have a Facebook business page, but that's just because we can cross post Instagram content to Facebook. And then we have one more platform that we've added and also, like I said, it opens up the paid advertising side of it. So a Facebook business page, instagram account always feels like a no-brainer for almost a hundred percent of our clients. And then Right now, we're starting everybody off with a TikTok channel too, which is just, you know, the newest and the fastest moving of the platforms and is also a really good place to be sharing some like wellness advice.

Speaker 1:

The only time I want to do that is for a client that is just like dead set. I'm not having any video, and it does happen. There's some people who are just like. I just like won't record any video at all. I just don't want to, in which case we would just stick with Instagram. But I feel like that stack of a Facebook business page and an Instagram account are at least where I would start off and Then you can start customizing based on your like business personality the way that you like. Are you B2B? In which case, if you're B2B, I would go LinkedIn. If you're B2C, I would be going TikTok. If you have a Product that's like, very like visual, visually oriented so you're like a skincare line or something like that, I would be adding like a Pinterest. Or maybe you're Like us, like a design focused business service oriented.

Speaker 1:

I don't think a lot of people will listen to this because it's this wellness business specifically. I don't think most people are in that category. So for most wellness business owners, pinterest is kind of not Not a major strategy. Twitter could be helpful, especially if you have a lot of like Information and educational content. If you have a podcast, I Could see you having a Twitter account. But more so than that, I would like to stack a podcast with a YouTube channel and Record video content while you're recording your podcast episode, bring that over to YouTube and then Repurpose some of that video content into YouTube shorts, which are just like Instagram stories or a TikTok Instagram reels or TikTok videos, but for YouTube. So that's another way that you can repurpose some content. But yeah, I guess I would say for most wellness business owners, a Facebook business page and an Instagram is a great starting place. We'll go through Instagram specifically on another episode.

Speaker 1:

Any, any of these platforms will go through specifically, but that is usually a good starting tact If you want to get comfortable with video.

Speaker 1:

I would say a TikTok If you have a podcast which I would love if you had a podcast that gives you another opportunity to add on a YouTube channel and YouTube shorts.

Speaker 1:

So, and that's a pretty nice tech stack Twitter or X is a platform that, like I said, I've never really gotten into it and and don't really have any clients who have really gotten into it either.

Speaker 1:

So that's a specific beast and in itself, but I think it's very designed. If you're more extroverted, if you like, if you already are on X and you have been maybe for years you know you have like a personal account and you're really comfortable on the platform. I could see you starting a business account for that, but I Really don't feel like that's a necessary platform for many of our wellness business clients and ourselves too. If you like that fast-paced communication back and forth and you're like a like an Andrew Huberman Huberman labs, that would be a great. Like we're just sharing little tidbits of information. Or you want to like Crowd source questions to an audience, that's also a great place to use like a Twitter X account too. Okay, I think I'm gonna wrap this up and look forward to seeing you in the next episode, where we will be covering Ta-da-da Facebook. Okay, have a great day you.