Leveraging Facebook and Instagram to Attract More Leads & Shoppers

TODAY'S EPISODE:

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Hello, and welcome to episode number six of marketing corruption. I'm your host Andrew Maff atone and today I'm going to be talking to about leveraging Facebook and Instagram specifically to gain more sales and more leads and today I'm going to step the social media is going to be the theme for the week which you Social media. I know it's overdone, but we're going to talk about anyway. Today specifically, I'm going to stick to strictly organic so and by organic, I mean just posting, I'm not going to talk about any kind of paid advertising with the exclusion of boosting and things like that. But so one of the things I wanted to talk about is something that I've always found is what I've believed to constantly be the missing link between Facebook and Instagram. And a lot of businesses don't do this. In fact, I think there's only been several times where I've started to work with a company and they already had one of these people in place. And it's, it's a, a game changer for social media. And it is something that I think everyone should do and is absolutely worth the investment if you're doing any kind of additional posting on social media. So the the obvious to me is the content. It's not something that if you're listening this podcast, chances are you've listened to other marketing podcasts and we're always preaching about the content needs to be quality, the content needs to be quality. So I'm not going to sit here and do that because It's obvious. So obviously, we're assuming that you have some good content that you're putting out. If you don't, UGC is my favorite way to go. So user generated content if you can find some content from your customers or from your leads, or from past clients or anything. But so we're going to talk about how to leverage the organic posts to actually start to bring in sales and bring in leads, or even just grow your email list in general. So one of the things that I find most people don't do they get great content, they post it on social media, they study up on the best times to post and Oh, I should post it this time. And and then I should, you know, oh, I gotta wait on Thursdays because my audience is here at this time. Great. You spent all this time making this great content, and us posted out there and you respond to hopefully respond to all the comments that are being mentioned in whatever posts you put out. Right. Great. Awesome. That is nowhere near enough. That's not going to drive anything. If you have imagine you had a Instagram page that starting literally from zero, you could post every day at the exact perfect time. It's not going to go anywhere. You can leverage hashtags, you can do things like that. And yes, it will help but it's still going to take a very long time. The biggest thing to me has always been what I have, at least where I work now kind of dubbed what I community outreach person. So Community Manager is basically what we've we've dubbed this role, I outsource it nine times out of 10 until at least on an agency side until we have enough leverage at a company that they agree that okay, we can bring someone on full time. So essentially, go to Upwork find. If obviously, if your audience is English speaking, find someone who's great with English who knows how to write and then send them over what I create. What we do is a brand voice guidelines So, once you figure out your brand voice, right out, here's what they would say in this situation, here's what they would say in this situation, here's grammar they would use, here's punctuation, they would use things like that. And so you want to add all that kind of extra stuff in there and send them a brand voice guideline, send them to stuff to test with, like, hey, you're gonna want to sound like this. They're going to do strictly outreach. Maybe you'll have them respond to comments and posts on you know, on your content you're actually putting out but have them strictly do outreach. So if you're on Instagram, and you have all these hashtags you're using, have them go to set hashtags and start a conversation with anyone on their posts who are using those hashtags. Also, it's not someone who goes to the hashtag goes to the top post and then goes hey, great picture with like a thumbs up emoji that does nothing for anyone. It needs to be a very thought provoking.

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well written comment that clearly states like I read your book, And not I mean, not literally states that it should say something along those lines of, you know, hey Reggie post is great. This is why I think this is this that is that there's no action item there's no CTA, there's nothing that I'm asking you to do. It's just starting that conversation, people will then get curious and come back to your page. That is the most organic way to get people to come back to your page without doing any of this. Follow people and then unfollow them or like every friggin post that's ever used this specific hashtag. That kind of crap used to work doesn't really work anymore. Now you have to try harder. Now you have to actually show what you're doing Facebook's algorithm and Instagrams algorithm is definitely catering towards this. In fact, I think some people get shadow banned now for liking too many things. So we actually want to go out and you're going to want to have a community manager. It is hands down. The smartest thing to do is definitely what I would suggest doing. My favorite way to do it is for when I have someone come in for a new brand, I keep them limited to 1015 hours a week, say, hey, let's just see how this goes for a little bit. And then as I start to see results, then we start to improve from there. And we start to scale. And that's when you start to bring in someone else. Or, sorry, that's when you start to bring in and allow them to bump up to a full time job or you bring in someone else or maybe you then bring it in house or obviously things are different. Now we're all remote. But you know, I mean, so that would definitely be the the top thing I would mention. Now, you're going to want to make sure that they're always very aware of what you have to offer, obviously. So having them dm you having them comment back having your community manager then No. Okay, we have this blog post that I could send them to help them with this issue they're having, we have this piece of data content that I could send them to help with this. I need they need to know the tools that they have around them, and then that's what's bringing in your leads. It's great to have a conversation. It's great to bring in a bunch of followers and I'm sure eventually they will end up over to your website. But if you're looking for more direct return, you're looking for more results faster, need to make sure your community manager knows the tools that they have available to them. And then they need to find ways to get them out organically without you shoving them in people's inboxes and saying, hey, you look like you might like this, like none of this sales approach, it has to be a very organic, your community manager is there to provide value for your readers for your potential followers. And that's it. So consider your social media manager may oversee your community manager and help them understand like, Hey, we're going to do these types of posts this week. And we'll also communicate with them about like, hey, this landing page is available or this ebook is now ready or things like that. But they are a part of the social media team, at least the way that we run it. And it's not someone who basically is scheduling it's they're not doing scheduled posts, they're not creating content. They're not doing anything like that. Their sole job is to be on social media all day or however long you Hire four to actually start the conversation. That's what will get the ball rolling. That's what's going to bring in more leads more people who are directly dming you more people who are going directly to your website and purchasing, that is what I think is going to be the biggest thing. So that's all I wanted to touch on today. Obviously, I'm gonna feature a tool. I use Sprout Social, that's my go to. I have had many, many conversations with a lot of social media people over many years about how, what platform they're using. And there are so many pros and cons and there's so many of them that it's overwhelming. I personally like sprout because it's very simple. It's very, they have a great listening tool that allows you to kind of see conversations and get into conversations without having to sign into every platform, especially when you're handling several accounts or several brands over several different accounts. It is also it is a very good platform. For if you're a marketer in house somewhere and you're only responsible for your company's social media, you're not an agency. Depending on the size of your social media and the and how much work you want to put into it. It's great. It's not the cheapest in comparison to the other platforms. They're very aware of this. It's fantastic for agencies. But if you're really focusing on social media in house, then it's great. And you will see the return without question, but if you're kind of just like, I'm just gonna schedule stuff and then maybe I'll go hire a community manager and just kind of have them do stuff for a little while. My backup has always been Hootsuite. I've always been a big fan. So I know I kind of featured to there but anyway, appreciate it. Please rate review, subscribe, make sure you send me your questions for any Friday questions that I'll end up going through or even if I get to them during the week, so send us over anything you have to marketing interruption@bluetuskr.com and I will see you all tomorrow.