Using social media to build up the recognition of a brand and market products and services has become a popular strategy among small businesses, in part because it costs nothing except time.

But is it effective for your business?
Do you get sales from your hard work?
Does it take up far too much time?

Knowing which social media marketing tools, strategies and tactics work for a small business and which are a waste of time can make the difference between a business succeeding or failing.

That is our job.

We provide social media marketing support to the smallest of businesses, focusing on only those tactics that will turn into sales and growing the reach of your accounts at the same time.  All you need to do is provide us the details about your business and explain us your business goals. We will take care of it from there!

Services you can use include:

Collecting your current marketing materials, images and details relevant to your business, we will build great social profiles for you in each relevant social media platform. The profiles will reflect your business values and reinforces your brand. Profiles we build are where your existing and potential customers are.

If you would like easy-to-use post templates, we can create you a set of them that makes posting much faster and will look awesome.

Many accounts we see don’t use the right hashtags for building up sales. We can provide you with a selection of hashtag sets that you can use to reach your target market.

The simplest detail about your business can be turned into an interesting content with creative writing skills and relevant images, making your current customers read more about your business and help new customers understand why they should buy from you.

A set of posts created each month is a common way of us managing your content creation. For example, we can create and post 9 posts per month for you, giving you space to add in your own posts whenever you want while ensuring your profiles build up their reach. 

Getting your marketing content planned strategically in advance saves a lot of time and energy but most importantly, makes it much more effective. We work with you to build your marketing content around what is happening in your business and what is happening for your potential clients.

With tools designed for big businesses but scaled down for us, we can plan, schedule and automatically post your content at any time of day and night. We can even share the system with you so you can add posts too.

We will make sure that your marketing content is published to reach the right audience at the right time.

If social media marketing is what you need but you don’t have the time, energy or inclination to run it yourself, we are here to run it for you. Full responsibility sits with us and we report back on the progress, including tying in the activity we do with the sales of your products/services.

*The most effective service we offer:*

This is a very unique marketing service that we provide. Many social media marketing ‘experts’ miss this point but if we are running social media marketing for you, we make sure that we build up the number of relevant people seeing and reacting to your content. While you work on growing your business, we work to grow the reach of your messaging. Without this, sales won’t come from social media.

Each small business is unique and each small business owner wants and needs different things from their marketing. Talk to us about your business.

If you’d like to find out more about running your own social media marketing and/or have some coaching along the way, check out our online courses and coaching options at www.myownmarketingcoach.com

We see a lot of small businesses trying to market on social media. Creating great content and posting it, only for it to be pretty well ignored.

If you have done any of our courses, you'll know we go on (and on...) about posting being no more than 20% of the job. The other 80% contains engagement and marketing building (getting more of the right kind of followers to read and react to your posts).

Social media marketing is not for the faint hearted.  Each social media portal is one channel and needs a marketing campaign with all its elements to make it a success. Plus a lot of time and effort. 

Hiring someone 'young' to manage your social media is not sensible.

Neither is hiring a social media manager without checking that they are properly qualified - that means education (preferably marketing and not just social media) and experience that shows they can build leads or sales for a client.

Using a posting system, like Buffer, Hootsuite or Later, helps you post a little faster and a little easier. It does not help you market your business.

Social media marketing is marketing just the same. It needs to fit properly into the buying journey your potential clients/customers take and it needs to directly move them one or more steps closer to the buying decision. If it doesn't, it is a waste of time. 

Does social media really fit in your potential clients/customers' business journey?

If you aren't getting sales from your social media efforts - saying that it is 'brand awareness' doesn't count - brand awareness is a step at the beginning of the process and should still add sales at the end of the process, if it is working - or you aren't sure social media is where your target market is looking for your service/product, get in touch with us and we'll work it out with you.

If you are marketing on social media, here is our take on doing it yourself versus using us. Please get in touch if you would like to discuss any aspect of it.

If you have an online store, one way to shorten the process of buying your products is to set up your Instagram posts so that viewers can see your product info and click through to buy those items. As Instagram doesn't allow links in posts normally, it is a really powerful way of getting people clicking through onto your website.

There are some things you'll need to do to get Shopping set up:

1. Meet these requirements:

• You must primarily sell physical goods.
  
• Your Instagram account account must be a business profile and you must comply with Instagram commerce policies.
  
• You need to be located in Canada, US, Puerto Rico, UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Sweden, Netherlands, Switzerland, Ireland, South Africa, Belgium, Austria, Portugal, Poland, Greece, Cyprus, Denmark, Czech Republic, Romania, Norway, Hungary, Bulgaria, Croatia, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovenia, Luxembourg, Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, Peru, Uruguay, Paraguay, Malta, Ecuador, Panama, Belize, Dominican Republic, Australia, New Zealand, Japan or Korea.
  
  

• Your Facebook business page can't have age or country restrictions. Message to Buy is also not supported.
  
  
• You need to have your Instagram business profile associated with a Facebook catalog (see below for how to do this).
  
  

2. Connect your Instagram business profile to your Facebook catalog. There are two ways to do this:

Option A: Add a shop section to your Facebook page.

1. Use the Facebook Page template 'Shopping template' and click the Shop tab.
   
   
2. Agree to the Merchant Terms and then click 'Set up Shop'.
   
   
3. Enter your business address and click Next.
   
   
4. Choose your currency and enter the email address you use to access your business Page and click Next. Your currency might be automatically selected for you based on the address for your Page. This currency will apply to all your products and can’t be changed unless you delete your shop and create a new one. Click Finish.
   
   
5. Add your products to the shop.
   
   

Option B: Create a catalog in Business Manager

1. From your Business Manager account (the account that owns the Facebook page linked to your Instagram account), create a new catalog or identify an existing catalog you'd like to use with Shopping on Instagram.
   
   

3. Wait while your account is reviewed. Instagram will review your account and, if using, your catalog, automatically. It can take a few days.

4. Add your product tags and stickers on InstagramUsing the latest version of the Instagram app, you turn on product tags in the following way:

1. On your Instagram business profile, tap the ... or gear icon in upper right hand corner
2. Choose Shopping under Business Settings and press Continue
3. Choose the product catalog you want to use with Shopping on Instagram and press Done

Your business profile will then be set up to tag products in posts and stories. Product tags in posts will show the name and price of your tagged products.

5. Create your first shopping post or story
In a post, you can tag up to 5 products per single image or up to 20 products per multi-image post. You can even tag products in existing posts.

In a story, you can add one product sticker per story. Product stickers show the product name and you can edit sticker color and text. You cannot edit stories that have been published - you would need to delete it and then re-publish.

1. Create a new story or feed post
2. For posts, tap Tag Products from the Share screen. For stories, tap the sticker icon and then select the product sticker option
   
3. Select the product you want to tag from your catalog and place your product tag or sticker on or near the product you are tagging.
   
4. Share your post or story
   
   

Once you have Shopping set up and running, don't forget to regularly look at the Insights to see what gets clicked on and which types of posts and stories work best. If you need any help getting set up, get in touch with us!

Instagram has just rolled out a new feature - you can now add up to 10 photos and video in one post.

To get the update, you might need to reinstall the app (we did). Then, when you want to upload to your Instagram feed:
1. Click to add a photo/video
2. Click on 'select multiple'
3. Tap or hold to change the order
4. Add filters if you want
5. You can like or comment on each photo just like Facebook
6. When you now see the blue buttons on the bottom of an image appear this means you can scroll to see all the images/video.

We'll be working on it for Life in Danderyd tomorrow (www.instagram.com/LifeinDanderyd). How will you use it for your business? Let us know so we can check it out when you have!