First show in a 3 part series on Social Media.
In this episode we tackle the daunting question of "What Social Media platforms should I use for my business?" Should you pick only a few? Should you be on every platform? What type of content should I post? Where can I find my demographic?
All these questions and more will be answered in this episode and the next 2 upcoming shows. Let's get you set up and moving in the right direction for your business with the right social media platforms.
First show in a 3 part series on Social Media.
In this episode we tackle the daunting question of "What Social Media platforms should I use for my business?" Should you pick only a few? Should you be on every platform? What type of content should I post? Where can I find my demographic?
All these questions and more will be answered in this episode and the next 2 upcoming shows. Let's get you set up and moving in the right direction for your business with the right social media platforms.
Hey everybody. Welcome back to the GSD podcast. I'm your host of Wizard of Isz. This podcast is for business owners and contractors who feel stuck, confused, and uncertain of where to go in their business. And through my help and through this podcast and with the experience I have gone through, I plan to give you clarity, value, and purpose.
So you can have a thriving business. So in today's episode, we have a three part series coming up, and it is all on social media. I hope all of you guys had a great Christmas and New Year's. We're kicking things right off. It's the start of the new year, 2023. So we're gonna dive right in. One thing that I want to start to go into is we've kind of started the backstory.
We kind of went back whether you already have a business that you started, whether you're about to launch a. Whether you're a contractor that's out seeking clients, so you are your own business, but you're trying to bring in work via other businesses or just other clients. we, we started that groundwork where it's like, why do you wanna start a business?
We talked about that. We talked about what is your niche, why it's important to kind of niche down and find a specific topic, be a master of one, not a jack of all trades. We also talked about your business unique selling point or proposition, which is a way. Market yourself more specific to your client.
We also talked about why you shouldn't add more services and why you should kind of be specific or compliment what you're already doing. And then we also talked about understanding your client, which ties into your niche. What we're gonna take a left turn and what we're gonna do is we're gonna talk a little bit today about social.
I know some of us love it. Some of us hate it. Some of us can't get off of it. Some of us refuse to get on it. But when it comes to business, I still think it's very important that you have some sort of social media presence for your business. But an issue we run into is a lot of people are like, I don't know where to begin.
It's overwhelming. I'm posting here. I'm posting there. I'm not getting anything. I don't know what to do. Hold. It is a lot to take in. I spent years actually creating imposing social media for clients until it was overwhelming for me and so much went on with it, and there's so much to do with it that it's hard to do it for a decent price.
So we're gonna dive into that in a three-part series. And today the first part is just gonna be what social media platform should I use? Right? Like, what should you use? So I'm gonna give you a. It's not all of them, unless you have an in-house team that can focus on all of 'em. You don't wanna do all of 'em.
So you wanna start with the necessities and workup. So how do we figure that out? All right, let's jump in. So first of all, what you wanna think about is social media in itself is a search channel. So what I mean by that is if someone goes on Facebook and searches for you or your. You wanna pop up, it is a search channel.
It will help you out, but it doesn't mean that everything you do on Facebook is indexed by Google. So what I mean by that is if you don't have your typical like website, you know, Google Business page, if you're not on other business directories out there, which we can talk more about this later, but if you're not on things like Yelp or Yellow Pages, you know, there's other places like Manta.
a few other ones. Alignable. If you're not on these business directories, you know your name is out there less. But Google doesn't normally index social media channels, but they do some. We'll get to that in a second. So think of it like a business directory. , if you have a business, it makes sense to have a Facebook page.
What's the hard thing about a Facebook page? Well, the hard thing about a Facebook page is you almost have to pay to play. Creating a post organically is not gonna hit many people. Also, creating a brand new page and trying to get followers isn't as organic as it seems either. The easiest way to get followers is start off by inviting your own friends, and I'm sure my friends are tired of being invited to every page I've ever made and every business I've ever tried to help out.
Just be mindful of that when you do that. So some of these you want to be a part of cuz they're just, they're a widely used platform. So let's really find out though what you need. So the first thing I would say is, Where are your people? Where's your demographic? Now that you know your niche, now that you know what your customer wants, you should have a good idea of your demographic.
I'm just gonna throw some things out there. Let's say your demo demographic is middle-aged people. We'll just say in their late thirties and early forties, most likely you're gonna find them on Facebook. A lot of them are also on Instagram. Now, if you want a younger audience, let's say 24 and younger, you're probably gonna be marketing on TikTok and Facebook ain't a thing for you.
You might have a Facebook page just to have one for your business, but you're not gonna focus your energy there. You wanna focus that energy on TikTok. So you want to start to look in in place. So what I say to businesses and when I'm working with them and whatnot, I say, pick. And one that is indexed, a third one that is indexed by Google.
Let's talk about that. So when I say indexed by Google, usually if you make a Facebook post and say like, Hey, I'm offering blah, blah, blah, services, you know, I do services. For example, like me, I do services and video editing and Google ads. There's not a lot. , let's say value to that, an SEO for Google to index that post.
So you would never see it. , I might show up when someone looks for my business. Like if you type in my business, you're gonna find every place I am online. So in that sense, it helps. But if you're looking for like local Google ads, my Facebook is probably never gonna show up, you know? But it's important to.
But it's never gonna show up. You have a better chance with your website and running ads than you do social media. So I say pick two channels. So think about it. So my audience, I'll use myself for an example. My audience is gonna be Facebook. because I'm targeting businesses and business owners, it's also going to be, believe it or not, Instagram is not a bad tool for visual stuff.
I do have it. I don't use it as. But it's not bad. But more importantly, something like YouTube. So that's why I was saying three channels. So for me, if I was on the flip side and coming to me and saying, what channels should I do? I would say like, well, first of all, Facebook, and then I would say LinkedIn if I'm trying to get other business people to maybe do Google ads and video marketing, and then I would say YouTube.
Now YouTube out of those three, is indexed by Google. So let's stop. Talk about indexing by Google. Google will index relevant information, but most social media channels, they don't index for SEO purposes. They'll index for your business, like your business name will show up, but it won't index for your services or products or things like.
So because of that, investing too much time on social media can actually not benefit you as much as you might think it does. But I still think a presence is important. Now, there are some channels that Google does index. Surprise surprise. YouTube is one of them. Why? Cuz Google owns it. And a recent algorithm change in the, in the, I think the last quarter of 2022.
You're gonna see a lot more videos in search results as before. And now you're gonna start to see YouTube. Yeah, I'm sure some of you're like, which YouTube shorts? The best way I can describe it is YouTube, but short or another way you can say Instagram reels or TikTok reels, things like that. It's, it's like a short video content, but now YouTube shorts are gonna be indexed.
And speaking of TikTok, which used to be a young kids platform, early twenties, Google's gonna start indexing TikTok, and TikTok is gonna start showing up in Google results too. So there's three platforms there. Two happen to be YouTube that can be indexed. So if you're looking for SEO strategy, you know you want one of those.
I, for this podcast, I'm starting to use TikTok as a tool to get out there. Now, something about. TikTok does not have a typical algorithm like these other platforms have. You literally can make a post and it can go viral with a million views by just. Sheer luck of it going through the right channels. That doesn't happen really on Instagram anymore.
That doesn't happen on Facebook. That doesn't really happen on LinkedIn. And even with YouTube, with so many people watching YouTube daily, it's hard for that as well, unless you hit that perfect niche. So TikTok now has become a channel where, You almost want to test it out and try it because the views you can get, you're not paying for.
You know, when they first launched Facebook and they had business pages, I mean, whoever followed your page saw your business in the feed. Now it's less than, I think 5% can see your post. If you don't pay for Facebook, almost no one's seen your post. So again, I'm kind of throwing all these things at you, but you're probably thinking like, what platform should I use?
Well, like I said, stick to that. Two, two main social media platforms and one that's index. So you wanna think of YouTube, YouTube shorts, and TikTok as something to use, as well as what falls in your demographics. So just think of who you're targeting. You know, all this stuff we're talking about, just building upon the next step.
So what you want to do is, Figure it out. Like figure out what those two platforms will be. Start small. And you know what? It's okay right now if whatever you post, let's say you're doing LinkedIn and Facebook, it's okay. Whatever you post, you post the same on Facebook and LinkedIn, it's fine. You know, cuz you wanna test it.
You wanna see what happens. And a lot of times on Facebook, You're probably not gonna get the results you want, but it's just one of those things where you don't always need a website to sell your services or product. But it's like we all have websites cuz it's just for, you know, validity to be like, Hey, I'm a valid business.
It's Facebook's kind of becoming that too. You almost want a Facebook page cuz it makes you valid when you have a Facebook page. So it doesn't hurt to have yourself out there. And by the way, that's something else Google does too.
Google does crawl all these sites, they look at the information on all these sites, and that's how they also populate information based on your businesses on these sites. So in that sense, it's good to have all these pages, but sometimes they're not as beneficial, like a post on Facebook as it might be.
So let's say you're running Facebook, LinkedIn, you can share the same posts on both of those. See how you get, you know, reactions from people. Remember it's social. They want you to engage. So if someone co comments on a post, comment back, talk back, build that engagement. That's why I said social media is tough for businesses.
Doesn't matter if you're small business, medium business, if you don't have a team or the money to outsource to someone, if you can get one person on it and stick to, you know, at least three platforms to start and have something consistent and respond to people, it'll be huge. It'll pay dividends for you guys to build it.
Social media's a long-term. You're gonna wanna do this for a long period of time to build up trust with customers, trust with clients, you're gonna wanna do it to also build awareness of your business. So just cuz you do it for a few months and you don't see anything does not mean to stop. That's the worst thing to do.
But while you're doing these two platforms, let's say Facebook and Instagram, you throw the third one in, that's indexed. I highly recommend YouTube because if you do niche down your business, if you do, figure out who your ideal client is and what they want. You can provide so much value through a YouTube video or in this case, you can also do a YouTube short.
And if you're asking Mark, how do I do YouTube shorts? Download the YouTube app, have a YouTube channel, and you can post shorts through the YouTube app. That's how you get to YouTube shorts. Your YouTube shorts will also go on your YouTube channel too. So if you're not ready to do long form content, stick with YouTube shorts.
But as a business, people want to know about the business. They wanna know about you. They want to know about the services you offer. They wanna know the value they want Trust built in some of the best ways of this face-to-face or listening to someone from the business talk. So it is beneficial. To have a YouTube.
And when you YouTube everything that's in the description, all your keywords, everything you have is indexed by Google. And you know what's even better is if you make YouTube videos on how to dot, dot dot or what to dot, dot, dot. Anything. That's a question someone might ask. If you can create a video around questions people would ask that will help you in your search results on YouTube and.
On Google, if you, I mean, go to Google, just type in how to dance and I guarantee you the first thing that pops up is gonna be videos before any type of, you know, webpage. So think of that. You can really use this to your advantage in business, a lot of people used to think hiring someone to help out with social media, help out with videos was pointless and not worth the money.
And I can tell you, I highly, highly disagree too. , if you have someone, you don't see the dividends in the beginning, but you'll see the dividends in the end of someone working on that stuff. So, Part one of this three part series for social media is what platform should you use? That's the trick. Pick two, and then one that's indexed.
Stick to them and post to them. And you know what? From there, figure it out. Have someone in house, do it. If you got a big team, hit every platform. If you have to outsource it. Outsource it. But realize year after year, it's costing more money to market on social media because of what's expected and how much has to go into it.
And video is a big factor too. So now you're hiring people to edit videos and put those together. So start small, pick two, and then a third one that's indexed and you'll be good to go. . Next episode we're gonna talk about making sure your social media looks cohesive because how that can actually deter people from your brand.
So until then, thanks for listening. Check out the website, the wizard of viz.com. You can go on there and actually make donations to the show. It does cost a bit to run the show and make the show so you can set donations. I also have a private community on a Patreon that you can join on where you get additional extras, extra podcast shows, and we can communi.
In a community together and talk more and it'll help actually promote the show and help this show run so I can bring more content to you and start to bring guests to you as well. So I appreciate you all for listening. Tune in next week where we talk a little bit more on social media.
Thanks.