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Good morning Internet friends. Ryan Perry, it’s Simple Biz Support. Today is Wednesday, August 26th, therefore it is Social Media Wednesday. Therefore I have Sarah Giometti with Provaro Marketing. Good morning Sarah?

Sarah Giometti: Good morning Ryan. How are you?

RP: I’m doing great, thank you. Trying to think what we’re going to talk about. I have the Dodgers on my head ’cause I know that’s something we could talk about but unfortunately I think we’re going to have a pretty full show here talking about reviving your Facebook page, and essentially the ideas that a lot of times as business owners we start something and it’s new and it’s exciting so we get into it. Then time goes by, becomes less exciting, maybe we don’t see instant results so we kinda give up on it. But there’s just so much information, analysis, just real live data out there that says you really need to be socially active for your business in order to gain trust and credibility especially with our younger audience members, and therefore your Facebook page really should be active.

SG: Absolutely. You need to be consistently posting there. We’ve talked a lot in other episodes about scheduling your posts out, making sure you’re active on a regular basis. But in today’s post, we know as sole entrepreneurs we tend to get busy, and sadly marketing and especially social media is one of the things that is the first thing to put on the back burner. For a lot of business owners, I’ve followed into it and I do it for a living, is you look up and go, “Oh shoot! I haven’t posted in three weeks.” So for today’s post we want to kind of address that and help you re-engage your Facebook page and your audience and revive your reach and engagement.

RP: Right. We actually got this idea from one of my favorite pieces of software that I use to stay proactive in my social media posting, and that’s Post Planner. They posted a great article on how to essentially revive your Facebook page with just three posts a day.

SG: Yeah, and it’s brilliantly easy. I was surprised by it that I’m even using it on my own Facebook page to try it out, ’cause I thought it was a brilliant idea. I’d loved the article so yeah, we are borrowing the idea from them ’cause we think it really will help all of you, our followers in reviving your Facebook page and re-engaging your audience.

RP: Right. I can tell you over the years, I’ve been in marketing for a number of years now, all of my best ideas I stole from somebody else, so it’s totally legit.

SG: There’s no point in reinventing the wheel, they’ve got great writers over at Post Planner. I would like to hire them.

RP: I totally agree. Let’s go ahead and jump into it. So the idea’s that we’re not just posting three times a day, the idea is not just going into an auto feeder such as Post Planner or Hootsuite or any of the other services that are out there and just going, “Okay, I’m going to post some random piece of content at 8:00 AM, at 12:00 noon, and then at 3:00 PM, and hey I’ve done my job, thanks.”

SG: Right. You need to think through a little bit and still do the planning. We talked a lot about planning ahead, schedule out one hour a week to do all of your social media scheduling of posts. Because we’re going to do… It’s a specific strategy, you can’t use the auto feeders. Post Planner will be great for you for images and links and finding that kinda content, but you need some of your original content in here as well. But the first part of the strategy is posting three times a day and posting three different types of posts per day. We haven’t gone into… I’m not sure we’ve gone into the past, like there are four types of Facebook posts.

SG: There’s just straight text used to type something in. There are pictures, videos and links. You’re going to cycle though these for this strategy everyday. The first post you could do… And rotate them too. You don’t want to do all your morning posts are texts, all your afternoon posts are photos, all your evening posts are links. You want to mix it up again, but those are probably the three you’re going to use the most. If you happen to be like Ryan and you have a plethora of video to pull from, put video in the mix, ’cause with the videos you do want to be using your own videos that you can upload directly into Facebook.

SG: If you happen to have a backlog of videos that you can draw from, definitely put those in. Most business owners probably don’t have that, so you’re going to do a rotation of text, photos, and links. The links can be your own content and other content that’s educational and valuable to your followers. You’re just staring at me, taking it in.

RP: I was agreeing, well I was also thinking that because I know we’ve talked about this in the past, that a lot of time, as business owners, we feel hesitant to put competitors or somebody that’s in a similar field, put their content and give them credit for great writing. But essentially, you got to think about your page as being a resource. If people trust your page as a resource, as a community where people can go and get good information, all that trust and credibility gets transferred to you. If somebody like Post Planner creates something, it’s okay to share that. If your direct competitor shares something, it’s okay. Sarah and I are essentially direct competitors, however we work together. We feel that there’s… We can do more working together than independently, even though we have our own separate companies that do identically the same thing.

RP: However, if you look at my Twitter feed, I share Sarah’s information on a regular basis, and vice versa. On my Facebook feed, any time Sarah’s involved in something, I make sure I mention Provaro Marketing because she’s a credible company. By sharing that information, all that credibility gets transferred to me also. And it lets people know that you’re from a mindset of being prosperous, versus, “No I gotta take all the credit and I can’t give up any customers”. It’s just a completely different way, and freeing way, of looking at your business that will reap huge rewards down the road.

SG: Right. And there’s a lot of different ways of sharing content. You can do industry leaders that are not direct competitors… Sort of technically direct competitors but they’re out of service area. So somebody from another state who does the same thing as you, who writes really great content, there’s no reason not to share their content because there is no risk there if you are concerned about direct competitors. Ryan and I just happen to have a really great relationship that we figured out how to… There’s enough business for everybody, so we approach business that way.

SG: If you approach business that way as well, and you’ve got a competitor that you’ve got a great relationship with, definitely share each other’s content and leverage that, and boost each other up with it. But there are plenty of resources for content. And obviously, Post Planner’s a great place to find the articles that you can share as the resource showing that you’re an expert. And showing that you’re an expert doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to write all the content. You have to know where to find it in order to stay on top of what you’re doing for your industry. So that’s a big part of being and expert, is knowing that you don’t know everything, but other people probably know things that are beneficial to you and your followers.

RP: Right. And the other great thing, you brought up industry leaders. When you share information from industry leaders and you let them know… So on Facebook you link them. “Hey, found a great article from Mari Smith,” as an example, and you link her. You’re going to create visibility with her audience. Same thing on Twitter. Make sure you #MariSmith or do her, @MariSmith, so that her followers will be able to see that information also. All it does, is it really broadens the amount of exposure that you have right now, which is going to create more visibility for you.

SG: Absolutely. So find the industry leaders for your industry. Mari Smith is one for us ’cause she’s a social media thought leader and very big on Facebook. I follow her and get a lot of information from her. Before even Facebook announces it, she’s got the information. So to go back, you’re going to do three posts per day, rotating between texts, pictures, links and videos. They recommended just kind of blanket times. They recommend looking at your analytics, like we talked about in previous episodes. Looking online, and pick the three top times throughout the day. If you don’t want to go do that or it’s a little complicated for you, you can do the blanket times of between, I think it was, 6:00 to 8:00 AM In the morning, 11:00 to 1:00 in the afternoon, and 6:00 to 9:00 in the evening. Put one post in each of those three blocks of time, every single day.

SG: Pictures… You can create pictures. We’ve talked about Canva in the past to create your own pictures. Or, if you don’t have the time for that, Post Planner’s another resource for you, where they’ve got a section full of viral photos and you can have fun with that. You can put comments, funny sayings, inspirational sayings. The images don’t necessarily have to be industry-specific. Those you can have a little bit more fun with. And have your humor show through, and your culture, and your personality. Because like we’ve talked about before, people buy from people that they know, like and trust, and can relate to. So having a little bit of your humor show through, or just your personality if you believe in some certain inspirational quotes, follow people, include that in your images section of it.

SG: Then the text portion of it, do fill in the blanks. If you go to my Facebook page, you’ll see recently I had, what book… Fill in the blank, what book changed your life? Or blank book changed my life. So having a fill in the blank that had nothing to do with what I do, but I’m a huge reader, so it actually relates to me personally, ’cause I’m really into books. For me, it turned out to be suggestions for things to read. So feel free to have that. But having the fill-in-the-blank or the answering a question, even if it’s a little bit of a silly question, it creates engagement and community, and outside of the business world, people just having fun with it.

RP: Right. One thing, I want to step back with images. And with images, is that, yes, Post Planner is a great place. If you are not in a position to create your own, we talked about Canva. The next step would also be getting a graphic designer, either somebody locally or go to an online website, such as Fiber or Upwork, and actually have somebody create graphics. What’s nice about that is now you can customize the message, the coloring, the branding, and all of that that’s geared specifically to your audience. Always think about your audience. You brought up a text post that’s book-related. It’s a generic one, so it works. If you’re into motorcycles though, if that’s what you’re all about, you may also bring up other stuff that’s automobile related, because it’s relevant probably to most auto…

RP: Most people that like bicycles are probably going to like rat rods or high performance vehicles, and so stepping out of those bounds, but really thinking about who your audience member is. If you’re into the Harley scene, as an example, maybe posting pictures about flowers may not be directly relevant. So you kind of want to still think about your audience members while bringing that personal touch in.

SG: Absolutely. Hopefully your audience have some, some same interest as you. ‘Cause you definitely, I know as a business owner, my favorite clients are the ones I have relationships with ’cause we have things in common. Like, Ryan and I talk about the Dodgers all the time, ’cause we’re two of maybe 10 Dodger fans in Northern California. So, having something in common is a great way to build that relationship further and having a better relationship. So, hopefully you incorporating some of your favorite hobbies and interests into your Facebook posts and social media posts in general, you’ll attract potential customers who have the same interests as you. And that just makes being in business a whole heck of a lot more fun.

RP: Yeah, totally. I mean, when you can emotionally connect with somebody on a shared interest, not only does that make it more fun, but they’re likely to be your client for a much longer time, and willing to pay more money because it’s not just a commodity now. There’s an emotional relationship there.

SG: Right, right. So I know we’re ending, so let’s recap real quick. And this is, so here’s your to do list for the week. You’re going to schedule three posts per day, approximately one in the morning, one in the midday, one in the evening. So 6:00 to 8:00 AM, 11:00 to 1:00 PM, or 6:00 to 9:00 PM, or look at your analytics to find the best three times per day to post. You’re going to cycle through a text post, and image post, and a link post for your primary three of the day. And you’ll throw in the video post if you have your own videos to upload to Facebook.

RP: Right, and then the other thing is create a system. So, as Sarah said earlier, you don’t want to do a link post every morning, a picture post every afternoon, and then a… I forget I said picture, word, link, picture… You want to make sure, so even if you create a system that creates randomness, put that in your marketing calendar, and all it’s going to do is make things easier for you. So that when you wake up tomorrow and go, “Okay, I need to do three posts. Oh geez, I don’t know which one I need to do first.” If you have a system place where you can just look at your marketing calendar and go, “Oh, okay. I need to do a text post first, then a picture. And then I’m going to do a link post.”

RP: And then, again, looking at your calendar for Friday, “Oh, I’m going to do a picture post, then a link post, and then a word post.” You’ve already planned everything out. It’s just going to make life easier for you, and you’re going to want to do it on an ongoing basis, because it’s not this frustrating thing everyday. Aw I’ve gotta figure out what content, how to post it, when to post it, and all that type of stuff.

SG: Right, and pick, looking at your week, when you’re scheduling it out, pick an hour on the day that you tend to be the least busiest. When is your phone the most quiet? When is your email the most quiet? ‘Cause those are the biggest time killers. Mondays tend to probably really, really busy. People are like, “Oh, first thing Monday I’ll do it.” And it tends to be really busy. I actually find Fridays for me, my email and my phone go almost dead silent on Fridays. So that’s the day that I schedule things out. So think about what your week looks like before you plan it, and just put it on your calendar and honor your calendar.

RP: There you go. Honor your calendar, and with that, my calendar says our time is up. Next week, we’re going to be optimizing tweets for search. If we can optimize the content that you’re tweeting about, it’s going to create better visibility through search. So that’s the topic of the hour next week. Sarah, as always, I appreciate your time, and I hope you have a great week, and we will see hopefully everybody next week on what is it, Wednesday, whatever, are we going into a new… We’re going into a new month. It’s going to be September next week.

SG: We are. September 2nd, next week.

RP: This is crazy. So that’s that. I better go, ’cause I’m just going to keep on randomly random-ing. So, that’s that.

RP: All right, Sarah.

SG: Bye.

RP: Everybody, thank you very much, and we’ll see you next week. Take care.