SU Live! - S.1 Episode 1 - The Importance Of Being Active On Social Media
What better way to start the new year with a new idea. SociallyUP, like any other business, was impacted by the events of 2020, but not only in the way, you may think. SociallyUP is a small, woman-owned full-service marketing agency, but if you are reading this page, you probably already knew that.
While everyone began working from home, they found themselves spending more time on their social media trying to remain connected to the people they could - although, not like they used to prior to the pandemic.
Our new 2021 idea was to become more connected with our followers. Even though Instagram Live is not a new feature, we decided to make it a new feature of our company. Every week on Thursday at 1 pm EST, the @sociallyup Instagram account will be live!
During this time, two team members will be broadcasting to our followers, but the topic will change every week. On Thursday, January 21st, our Instagram live debut was made. The topic was: The Importance of Being Active on Social Media.
One of the most frequent questions we receive or hear about from fellow business owners and potential clients etc. is – Does my business really need to be active on social media? And what is considered active on social media? And How do I create content?
The short answer is…. YES! Absolutely! 1000%. Your business needs to be active on social media. Now, of course, there are modifications to this answer based on the larger aspects of your business. For example:
Overall goals of your business
Type of product or service you offer
Audience
Method of sales
But in general, there are some great benefits to having active social media profiles, such as (listed in no order of importance).
Driving traffic back to your site
Expanding your audience & reach
Networking opportunities
Methods for sales – such as built-in shop options on FB & Insta
Establishing trustworthiness
Establishing a brand voice and personality
Educational opportunities
Informing your audience of quick updates, changes, information, services, etc.
Giving your brand a voice – in an informal method
Highlighting information that can get lost inside the website such as highlighting your team, depth of your company, your mission statement, and highlighting spots for our services.
Paid Ads
We could go on and on!
Now that you know you should be active online, we need to talk about social strategy and content planning. We could do a whole Instagram Live or two on this topic, so for now, we’ll just mention a few touchpoints.
A great starting place is to start with 2 posts per week, think about the goals of your business and the important pieces of your business. What do you want to bring attention to? What do you want to feature, highlight, or inform your audience of?
At first, your audience is going to be small – but don’t get hung up on that. Most of the numbers we see on social media are inflated and there is nothing wrong with stating where you are – even if you have 0 followers – recruit people you know, friends, family, colleagues, etc. – and get just started!!
When it comes to social strategy, think about those brand goals and create some content categories. For example, we like to highlight the accomplishments of our clients, give our team and their skills a spotlight, and showcase our work.
For you, dependent on your industry, you could choose from a variety of content categories – This is why it’s important to establish what matters to you the most.
As we went live on the 21st, we were happy to see some questions in the chat. One question was: “What is your favorite social media platform?”
As a digital marketing and social media agency, this was not an easy question to answer. We have personal favorites for outside of the office use and also professional favorites, with some overlap of course.
Our favorites are the following:
Instagram
Facebook
YouTube
TikTok
These are some examples of amazing platforms to establish your brand, your voice, and your customers. Each of these has unique features and can be used to target a variety of audiences.
These platforms are also a beneficial resource to find inspiration and become a guide to what you like and don’t like. The amazing thing about social media is that everyone has different tastes, styles, preferences, and ideas. This allows the never-ending social media feeds to be filled with things you may not even know exist yet.
Another question that was asked in the comment section was the following: “What are your thoughts on hashtags?”
Our answer: YES YES YES!
Hashtags are one of the best things that have happened to social media if used correctly. This is a great way to bring your brand, company, or name to people who are actually looking for you or are within a certain mile radius of you. For example, we are a small marketing agency located in Bloomington, IN. Some hashtags that we may use may highlight our location, Indiana University, Bloomington, small business, women-owned, the services we provide, and more. The hashtags you should be using should be big enough that people are using them or looking for them and small enough that they do not get lost in the sea of posts with the same hashtag.
We loved our first live session to say the least. It will be a great way to show our followers we are in fact not perfect but we stay positive, work hard, and make it happen. We look forward to seeing what each week brings in the near future.
If you like this live session – you can join us weekly, on Thursdays, at 1p where we’ll talk about a new topic each week. AND if you have a topic you’d like for us to talk about – Let us know!! You can email us at hi@sociallyup.com.
