OF COURSE you’re using social media to market your business! It’s 2016! NOT having a Facebook Business page is like not having a logo or a business card…..unthinkable!

It seemed so straight-forward when you worked through that online wizard: uploaded a few photos (they didn’t quite fit the alloted space, but you just needed to get SOMETHING in there…), banged out a short description, added a link to your web site, made a post or two, invited all your friends and family, and hit the PUBLISH button. Easy Peasy…

You checked that off of your To-Do list and got back to business. Besides, you needed to spend more time getting your product into the hands of anyone who would buy it, right? You checked your page on Saturday to see if anything was happening, and, since there really wasn’t, you were actually kind of relieved…one less thing to worry about!

Then you started to listen into some of the conversations some other folks at a Chamber of Commerce lunch you went to. They were talking about how visitors were coming to their Facebook Business pages and clicking through to their web sites…resulting in some sales! They trotted out several great reviews some customers had written on Facebook, Google+ and Yelp that resulted in referrals. One shop owner even disclosed some of the details of her most recent Facebook ad campaign, including costs, and bit about how she designed a Custom Audience and how that resulted in more business, as well as gave her more information about the things her customers are interested in so she could make sure she published posts that they found valuable and relevant, and would come back to her page (and share it) regularly.

You decide to take a look at your page…

Dead.

Dead.  Dead.  Dead.

You’d even invited folks you KNOW are interested in you business, and they didn’t LIKE you. Huh….

You could search the internet for tips on how to make things better, so you did a search on Google and it resulted in 329,000,000 results! YIKES! This just caused you to look blankly at the screen. Where do you start? Who can you trust? What’s the most current information? Will this work for MY business? Too much…..too much…(oooh, baby panda video!)

So you own up to the fact that you need help. Help should be in the form of expert help, not your nineteen year-old nephew (who, while quick on the draw with his Facebook app, knows nothing about Brand Voice, Audience Research, Channel Strategy, Social Networking Psychology Dynamics, and Analytics…). Help requires budget. You get what you pay for, and if you want to have the kind of value and business goals impact you want for your business, you’re going to need to invest. The channel’s free, but the resources needed to do it right aren’t…

Even the Big Boys realize this. In a recent article on Social Media Today, Martin Jones, Senior Marketing Manager with Cox Communications, writes that a 2015 CMO Survey conducted by the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University revealed, “that this year, social media accounts for approximately 11% of companies’ marketing budgets. Within one year, that figure is expected to rise to 14%, and within five years, it will reach nearly 24%. As traditional advertising is fading out, social media is booming.“

As the Louder Voices (that is, big brands with big budgets) invest, what do you do? You can’t sit still and risk becoming just a bit of noise on the internet. You may not require a global voice like some of these companies, but you certainly NEED to raise your visibility, credibility and profitability in your geography, and social media can be a strong leg of a multi-part marketing plan. You’re going to have to take your marketing much more seriously. Referrals are good. Networking is good. Advertising is good. Now, how do you extend those online in a way that’s strategic, targeted, give results that you can measure, and grow your business?

Get Expert Help….and don’t skimp on it.  Quality and experience matter. You know that as a business owner in what you deliver to your customers, so your business deserves the same.

You need help defining goals for your social media and digital marketing. They need to snap to your existing marketing and business goals (and if you don’t have a marketing plan, now’s a good time to build one…). No strategy = no direction = you’ve already lost.

This is just a part of the value that my company delivers. While my tagline is “Social Media Made Easy“, what becomes easier is the relief from that feeling of powerlessness when confronted with this valuable, but complex thing that is social media and digital. Partnering with an expert on what will make your goals come to be is much easier than trying to figure it out for yourself, going low-bid on something as crucial as this is, or working with the wrong expert.

Let’s figure this out together. Call me today!