BLOG: Social media tips as a one-person team

AKRON — Last week I had the opportunity to attend sessions covering various topics impacting the independent tire dealer. One of those sessions was with Michael Brown, founder of the Brainzooming Group, who gave strategic tips and advice for companies with one-person or small-group social media teams. Since this is a trend I see often with independent tire shops, I wanted to make sure to check out what he had to say.

My absolute favorite piece of advice he gave was to think of your social media like a TV sitcom: of the 30-minute run time, only eight minutes is made up of advertising.

What does this mean? You cannot just have your social media presence be all about you. Entertain your audience. Give them information they care about, something that they want to tune in for. They will show up for those things and then can get the information about your business or sales, etc., that can be peppered in with the rest of your posts.

Challenges

Have you ever felt like you have a lack of time to commit to social media strategy and daily posting? Or what about creating a social campaign that produces business results? Well, guess what? Michael's presentation really hit home that you are not alone.

Those challenges, along with producing enough content, a lack of budget and being pulled between competing priorities, all are issues small social media teams are faced with. While using a social media dashboard such as HootSuite was discussed, one point I took to heart was learning how to use evergreen content versus timely content.

Does your company have a blog? Share that content on social media. You can take one blog and post it many times throughout the week. Additionally, taking the content you have and finding different ways to post it on varying social media sites is important too. Michael said infographics are a huge visual aspect that is not being utilized as much as it could be. For instance, if you have a blog post, you can link that to Facebook. Create an infographic with some of its key points and post that to Instagram. This will help save you time because you can use the same content, but repurpose it in different ways for different sites.

Find your target audience

Many companies turn to social media to reach certain demographics. Figuring out what you are trying to achieve is important. If management says, “Create a Twitter. I hear it is popular,” what do you say in return? You don't want to just create something if it won't give you the return you are looking for or be able to reach the demographics you want to hit. But what are your actual goals for this? Michael suggested creating a “persona” for your target audience by answering ten questions about them.

1. How old is this person?
2. What is his/her demographic profile?
3. What are the person's job title, role, goals and challenges?
4. What is the range of responsibilities they have?
5. What's on their professional frontier?
6. What lifestyle is this person in?
7. What is this person passionate about?
8. What personal aspirations and issues are top of mind?
9. What topics are of greatest interest to them?
10. What activities do they enjoy?

By creating this persona, you will be able to better identify who your target demographic is. It can also help you shape what your posts should be about, etc. For instance, say you are trying to get more customers to buy off-road tires. Learning about those customers' lifestyle will help you cater content to them. What new products are useful to them? What kind of articles can you share relating to adventures or events that you want to participate in?

Maybe you decide to sponsor an event and then you can promote that on your social media sites. Answering these ten questions may help you look at your customers and potential customers as people with interests instead of just as a demographic. With the engagement factor being so important to a successful social media presence, this could be key.

Different kind of ROI

Many social media professionals run into the issue of explaining how social media can help the company's bottom line. Return on investment is important, but social media does not have the same return on investment that other forms of sales and marketing have.

Michael said you can still have a return conversation with social media, in both quantitative and qualitative ways. For instance, when followers leave comments on your social media sites that creates an activity that turns into customer interaction. This creates an audience sentiment that can later lead to success stories and audience-generated marketing. Let your social media successes become successes for your business.

If your boss is asking for a more quantitative form of ROI, assess how many customer complaints are resolved through social media and the number of qualified leads. You can also show how many posts, comments, followers and the amount of user content to show how much social media can play a role in the business.

There is a lot of work to be done on social media, but utilizing your time wisely a key to success. Re-purpose content when applicable, track your success and know you are trying to reach.