Dan McCue of Grinnell Mutual has worked with multi-channel marketing campaigns for over a decade. He uses social media to help businesses be successful, break down roadblocks, and build relationships.
Dan recognizes that there is a fear of 'missing out' among businesses when it comes to social media. They know they have to use it, but either don’t understand it or fear it because they don’t think they have the time needed to be successful with it. Businesses have to overcome this fear and be willing to be in the same online space as their audience. They need to also understand their clientele and understand what it is they need. The better you know the objectives of your business, the more you will be able to tell your story online.
Dan shares the strategy he figured out for himself and to help his clients in this episode - a strategy that is manageable and doable.
Make a plan
In order to have a solid social media plan, you must first know who your audience is and where they are online. For example, Dan’s customers sell peace of mind and risk management. To help them understand their audience he works with messaging that will help build on their relationships with their audience. The idea is to effectively reach your niche audience by using what you already know about them.
As part of Dan’s work he keeps an ear to best practices as it pertains to the insurance industry (his niche market). He encourages people to look for the white papers within a person’s industry and research what they are doing and who their audience is.
Break it down
Social media is already there and waiting for us, we are not responsible for the algorithm behind it; we just have to play to its preferences.
Break down your industry’s best practices and see where like-minded businesses are spending their time online. For example, with insurance it is Facebook, LinkedIn and then Email marketing. Dan then looked at how much staff insurance companies are using and how much time they spend on social media compared to other marketing channels.
Once you know how much time and money is spent on social media, you may come to realize that you don’t need a person to work on social media marketing full time and that in fact, it may only take 23 minutes a day (in his industry that's what the successful businesses were doing broken down into a daily amount)! It could be done by you throughout the day in five to ten minute chunks – morning, noon and evening.
Stay on task
The key is to avoid the rabbit hole and stay on task. Have your game plan and check list and as you do those things check them off and then sign off. For insurance agents, the goal is to publish every day. So to make content posting easier, Dan took a look at other insurance carriers to see what content they were posting. The idea is to look for content that matches your story that you could perhaps share on your social channels. This will also reinforce a sense of community between like-minded businesses.
How can you find content on a regular basis that will speak to your audience?
Maintain relationships
Who is talking to you?
Respond to comments and private messages and continue those dialogues as much as possible. The expectation in the U.S. dictates that people will respond to online messages within an hour, but in reality it is closer to one day and 40% of those posts or messages never receive a reply, but if you break up your time to 5 minutes, three times a day you are allowing yourself the time to read and respond as needed and within a reasonable amount of time.
By creating a plan and following it you can eliminate overwhelm and find success with social media. Instead of feeling like you don't know where to start, you have an action plan that helps you know that you will be putting aside short blocks of time three times a day to share, engage and build relationships with the key audiences you want to work with.
How would you break down the time you spend online to make it feel more manageable? Leave a comment or come and share in the Biz Studio!