Episode number 19 of the Digital Marketing Creators Podcast, we're going to talk about how to do social media marketing for small businesses. Stay tuned.

Welcome to the Digital Marketing Creators Podcast where we help creators and entrepreneurs just like you magnify your brand message through digital marketing tips and strategies. And now your host Andre Vaughn.

As a creator, or entrepreneur, you have so many things coming your way in terms of online marketing, digital marketing, and it can be so confusing, but we broke it down in this free mini course that we have called the five day digital marketing mini course. And you can get that at DigitalMarketingCreators.com/free-mini-course or anywhere on that website, you should see something where you can sign up for that free course. And it's not a long course he does a real short course. And you know, we didn't want to take up a lot of your time when we put it together. But it kind of guides you through different aspects of of digital marketing, and we try to keep it condensed for you. So check that out at DigitalMarketingCreators.com/free-mini-course.

If you are a small business, you might want to pay attention to this podcast, you want to pay attention, because today we're going to be talking about social media marketing, for small businesses and a few other things that that I that I believe will help you not only build your social media marketing, to make sure that you're not going to make I guess, make some of the same silly mistakes that maybe I've made, a lot of other people have made social media marketing.

Man, it's really wearing a lot of different hats. If you are, I don't know, maybe a creator, entrepreneur, maybe if you are a marketing person at a company, you know how it is to wear many hats. I think a lot of times with companies with small businesses that hire and I've said this before in the past that hire different positions in social media, I think sometimes they don't understand that they more than likely need a team. Because a one man show to do all these things is is really not cast is not going to be effective.

But you want to burn a lot of people out if you are going about it that way. Because there's so many things that you that you have to do. And before you notice, before you know it, the production and things like your posts is gonna be down in effectiveness in your social media marketing campaign is gonna go sideways. So you really have to be focused on community, when you're doing these things. It's very important. I can't, I can't really stress that enough of how important it is because you have to take into consideration brand awareness and brand loyalty. Those are those are real things, when you are trying to not just grow your business, but you're trying to, you know, build community through social media.

The good thing about social media itself, it's free. And it's an easy tool, to use to galvanize people, and not just talk about your products and services, but just talk about a lot of different things regarding or that's around your products and services. And I think a lot of people jumped down that rabbit hole also to where all they want to talk about is their products and services. And that's not going to cut it either. Make sure you're paying attention to, to a lot of other things. Also, we know that's the goal.

You know, we want to get leads and sales and all that and talk about you know what we have to offer and help people but you know, there is a way to do these things without turning people off. And a lot of times, once people turned off, they're not coming back. So once they leave, they're not coming back. So there's a way to do things. And you want to make sure that you're doing it the right way. And with social media, you have to make sure that you are sharing the right kind of content and say, you know, how would I know that? Hey, the people that's you know, a part of your community, ask them, ask questions.

You'll see also you'll see what they're, what they're liking, commenting on what they're sharing what they're ignoring. They'll tell you a lot, all you have to do is listen. Also, all you have to do is conversate with them, strike up a conversation, get them off, get them off line and talk to him. You know, a lot of us are not doing that. We're not talking to these people. We're just engaging with social you know, through social media. You know, we're not, you know, hopping on these calls, um, a lot of these features such as Facebook, you can actually talk on the telephone with people actually, well, especially with the messenger feature, you know, you can actually put in a phone call to a particular person, and you can actually talk to him.

There's a lot of ways to communicate, are you going to use those ways to communicate to your advantage? Okay, now I get into the nitty gritty enough of me talking, saying a bunch of other things, but, okay, you have to determine what platforms that you want to use. And here's the ones that I recommend, if you are a small business, and I'm gonna throw some kind of go with what you know, I'm saying and what I'm feeling, then I'm going to throw some stats at you later on. And in the show, Facebook, I'm gonna reel off a few of them for you.

Actually, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, the short form video sites, which are tick tock Instagram reels, Snapchat, YouTube shorts, that's what I that's what I like, um, you know, the type of content that you post on any of these platforms? You have, you have to find out, hey, what do I need to do? You know, what type of engagement can I get on YouTube? What kind of videos should I be putting out? You know, what type of content should I be putting out on Facebook?

Should I be doing some other than Instagram reels on Instagram? How does LinkedIn work? How does Pinterest work? How does how do these, you know, other short form video platforms work, but do a slight break down for you, we're going to talk about, you know, you have original content you can put out, and then you have, you know, if you are going immediately for growth, and you got money to splurge out, and you want to start using some of the paid campaigns, if you're starting out, I would, I would recommend you, I would recommend just throwing money at this thing. I just wouldn't.

If you're if you're a beginner, I definitely would not if you're more established, and you have you know, products and services and things like that I always tell people to start off with, you should always have some type of giveaway, some type of mini course some type of ebook, because at the end of the day, this is about generating. This is about getting getting leads, and obviously getting sales afterwards. So and you can do that using these platforms. So you have to make sure you know, you know, what type of do I want to put out a helpful ebook, do I want to, you know, do a mini course, you know, you have to know these things. And that's also going to require, you know.

Email marketing or getting an email service getting an autoresponder like MailChimp or Aweber ConvertKit. That's important, also, but after that, you know, you want to determine, you know, do I want to make YouTube videos? I would say hell yeah. Make YouTube videos. And the reason I say that is because you can get organic traffic coming to your site, we all want to get traffic. That's the name of his game, getting traffic. If we get traffic, we know it's going to lead to leads, no pun intended in sales.

I'm just not saying just put out videos you have to be strategic when you make YouTube videos, you know, are you going to make Are you going to put out a video a week are you going to put out two videos a week. If you're just making regular long, long form content, YouTube videos, you're not going to need to put out a video every day, I wouldn't recommend that at all. What you can do is you can batch record some videos, you put out a video one video, maybe try two videos, I personally wouldn't put out more than two videos per week. Sometimes one is sufficient.

You want to make sure that you're specific about what you're putting out. Find you three main, three main topics, make 10 videos a piece on those particular topics. Put those videos out once a week, put two of them out a week. Don't go more than that. That's with YouTube, then you have to do things such as um, you know, make sure you fill out your title, your description, you may want to add a couple of tags. But YouTube says that, you know tags are not that important, but I still would put out tags, fill that description out also, and make sure you have a tantalizing title.

Now when it comes to since we're talking about, well, I'll go straight to Facebook Facebook, what I'm interested in more than Facebook, I'm not interested in organic traffic, can you still get organic traffic? Yes, you can. I tell you who's, who's great there, as I'll leave it in the show notes. But there's a lady named Rachel Miller. Thicker website is Moulard dot life, if I'm not mistaken. So I'll have it in the show notes at Digital Marketing creators.com, forward slash, Episode 19, she teaches how to get organic Facebook traffic. With Facebook, I would put out one or two pieces of content a day, you know, you can put I would use, I wouldn't use text posts, I would, it would have to be a video or something with an image.

But they remember on all of these platforms that we're talking about, whether it's YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Pinterest, make sure that you are and I cannot stress this enough, make sure that you are going to like minded or either your competitors or whoever content that you like, that's like yours, make sure you're going on there and you're commenting on their videos, make sure you're liking their videos, and so on and so forth, you have to do more of that than putting out content. That's why I say I don't agree with doing a video a day, if you're starting a business, or if you have a business, if you have a small business, and okay with Instagram, with Instagram, you want to utilize everything that they have to offer. And you also want to do it on Facebook also, because Facebook now has stories. So make sure you eight, upload some daily stories that can be the same stories, you know, that you have on the other platforms.

So Instagram, also, Instagram, you want to make sure that you you put out images with great, you know, caches, a great descriptions, videos, all of that they even have a section for what's called guide. So that's gonna stuff that I'm talking about other than the guides will fall through your feet, or will fall through other other people's feeds. You can also use carousels, you know, that's like you can use up to 10 images.

And that's let's say, if you are you can do some similar, let's say if you are a bakery, and you're talking about the, you know, the best ingredients of your vegan donut. And you can have, you know, the 10 top things that you can do while making that particular doughnut. Or you can have the seven things and the seven things that you can make that seven, top, so on. So to make your vegan donut. And reason I say seven, because you're gonna have seven different things to make up the 10 slides that you're going to have, but the other three, you're gonna have something else because you want to have some at the end also, other than the seven things that you're talking about.

So Be that as it may make sure you make up the 10 you have 10 slides that you can use on carousels on Instagram. And that's kind of similar to LinkedIn. Also, with Instagram, you know, you got you have carousels you have. Don't forget about the DM's also, you have stories. So make sure you're utilizing your stories you can do a daily story doesn't have to be some extravagant, it could be, it could be an image, or maybe you're tagging someone or, or another page or you can share someone else's story.

Also on your Instagram story. LinkedIn, LinkedIn is another it's gonna be similar to Instagram, even though it's a way different platform than Instagram, but as far as, um, you know, engaging on other people's posts and make sure you're in other people's comments, and you're sharing stuff and you're liking stuff and all of that. You can do content on LinkedIn, like you can anywhere else. But I would make like a minute and a half, two minute helpful videos. Or you can be entertained. And also, you know, you want to educate, you want to be entertaining, so you can make videos on LinkedIn.

It all depends on what what you know, I guess what you're talking about, or what you know what business debt that you have, and you know what people that you're trying to actual actually get to follow you. But all in all, and all of this in creating content, you want to tell a story, obviously. So don't just make content to be making content is just like, on even if you're you know, if it's educational, you know, you can kind of tell a story. And that way your own unique way you can do that. Also, if you can tell a story. You want to be successful period.

That's a good way if you can tell a two minute story being entertaining have been educational on LinkedIn. You can do the same thing on YouTube. You can have that same those same type of videos on any of these platforms. But LinkedIn is a whole own nother monster you can actually write articles on LinkedIn. Pinterest is a whole nother beast. I think Pinterest is underrated. Pinterest is very underrated to me. Pinterest is a visual platform. But if you use it right, it can bring in some magic and bring in some heavy, heavy traffic for you.

There's a website called tailwind that you can actually use in conjunction is a paid paid tool that you can use in conjunction with Pinterest. So there's some some different Pinterest experts out there almost everybody uses it. If you want more, I guess more of more information on Panthers I'll I'll link some stuff up in the in the show notes as well on Pinterest. One of the most underrated things for any small business is utilizing short form content or for short form video content. And those are things such as tick tock, Instagram, Rios, Snapchat, and YouTube shorts.

When you're making when you're making YouTube videos, or YouTube short video, all you're doing is putting hashtag shorts, you put in a great title, you can put some in the description. And you know, they do not pay close attention to tags. When it comes to shorts. I can tell you that right now. But make sure that in that description that you put hashtag shorts, you have to put that in your description, hashtag shorts, in all your YouTube short videos. That's the most important thing right now. But it's got to be the same thing. You can make a short form via one short form video and you can use them on all those different platforms.

But with Tik Tok, if you're starting out, you're probably going to want to implement more content if you are newbie, because you want to you're trying to get it to catch on trying to get to TikTok's to catch on. And once again, you want to be educational, or entertaining. And if you can tell a story even doing short form videos, you're gonna be successful, or the whether you're on Snapchat, or whether you're on Instagram reels. So it's almost the same type of mentality even though these are these are different platforms.

So even with even with a place like TikTok, like I say, a starting off, you probably want to do three to five videos, you want to do some some entertaining some educational, or maybe a couple educational videos, you want to make sure you do you want to have people replying, you can do some reply videos, also. And there's, there's so many other things that that you can do. But if you can tell a story, you're gonna blow up. And that's just a fact. And, you know, use the use hashtags on your TikTok's. And on these other platforms also.

Now, like I said, with, with YouTube shorts is the only one that I would probably just put hashtag shorts. Because if you can put whatever keywords you're using, if you can put that in the title and maybe in the description, YouTube is gonna figure out what the video is about anyway, you know, the algorithm is that smart, short form videos, I think all small businesses should use short form videos, as well.

And if you guys have any have any other tips and strategies, we have a private Facebook group and I got one more thing for you also on our private Facebook group is that digital marketing creators.com forward slash group. I have some stats for you right here. And this is from a Quick Sprout. So article, Quick Sprout and I guess it's because it shows what I got the sources and where to get all this info from that they put on their website, but it says says which social media channels do small businesses use?

It says 86% of small businesses use Facebook and I can see that and the reason why they probably use Facebook is probably some of the things I say but it's the ad platform is the ad platform that that people love because you can do so many things you can target you can you can highly target pretty much whoever whoever you're looking for with Facebook ads, also with Instagram ads also because on his list Instagram is number two with 48% being you know the social media channels that small businesses use number three.

YouTube 46% Make sure you you check this out and wanted to more than I'm gonna read to you says small business goals for social media has three of them three small business goals right here is just talking about defining your marketing goals and it says 70% using social media to generate leads 53% to build brand awareness 50% to engage with consumers. So that's what we've been talking about lead generation brand awareness and customer engage To me, these are all important factors.

When it comes to social media marketing of any small business, there's a section right here where they talking about posting content on a daily basis, depending on what platform they're not talking about this one particular platform you should post on every day, you probably can post, you know, you can post on tick tock every day, or, you know, any of the, you know, your short form video platforms, I would definitely highly recommend that. But on some of the other ones, I'm not so sure.

Well, you know, if you're using something like Twitter, you can post daily on Twitter, but it says how frequently small businesses post on social media 52% of small businesses post on social media daily 79% of small businesses post on social media, weekly 94% of small businesses post on social media monthly, and 6% is less often than monthly. But there's a lot of other stats on here. Here's one I'm going to talk about the fastest growing online customer acquisition method. And they're talking about things such as influencer marketing, which is 28%, organic search 15%, email, 13%, paid search 11%, so on and so forth.

So um, this is a nice article, I'm going to link this up in the show notes also. And that's going to be a digital marketing creators.com forward slash, episode number 19. And once again, our private Facebook group is digital marketing creators.com forward slash group, I encourage you guys to come in there and strike up a chat and let's learn from each other. So this is a this was a a nice, lengthy episode lengthy in terms of the amount of time I usually take to do a podcast episode. So I hope you guys learned something. Hey, come to that private Facebook group. And let's kind of geek out in there. And let's learn from each other. So appreciate you guys. And hey, we'll see you in the next episode to see you there. Thank you so much. Episode 20 coming up. Thank you.

Thanks for listening to the Digital Marketing Creators Podcast at www.digitalmarketingcreators.com.