Organic vs. Paid Social Media Strategy

So many business owners think that investing in their social media means lots of ADs, which means lots of money. I am going to tell you right now, that is 100% not the case. Five or six years ago this may have been the case, but honestly you can get better growth and better ROI if you focused completely on a organic social media strategy. Social media is changing constantly and the users are changing their way of buying and being influenced is constantly changing.

What is organic social media?

Organic social media is simply free content that all users share with each other. This content is posted regularly without boosting or being sponsored.

When going the organic route requires you to be more engaging on social media. This means liking, commenting, and sharing content consistently.

If your brand is posting organically you can expect to see that a percentage of your followers will see it, your followers’ followers (if people choose to share your content), and people following any hashtags you use.

Sounds simple doesn’t it? Well it pretty much is. The reason why most brands are implementing organic social media to their strategies is because it is the absolute best way to nurture a connection with your audience at scale.

The benefits of organic social media

It’s Free

The biggest and most glorious benefits of organic social media is that its completely free, that is if you choose to manage your social media platforms yourself.

It builds trust

Unlike paid campaigns, which usually are looking for viewers to complete some sort of ask, organic social media don’t necessarily drive sales. Instead, this approach is heavily focusing on brand building, audience entertainment, and general updates. Think about it this way, no one wants to see promotional content on their social media allllllllll the time. No one. I always people people won’t trust a brand that 1. never shows their face and 2. is always and only promoting their products/service.

Long-term sustainability

Because of the fact that it is free, organic social media is sustainable long-term. You don’t necessarily need a whole production team but you do need someone, if not yourself, to be consistent with organic social media in order for it to work how it is supposed to.

What is paid social media?

Paid social media is all things paid advertising, boosted posts, and the like in hopes of reaching a wider audience. Can be compared to a digital billboard on the digital highway.

Paid social media allows businesses to increase visibility, drive traffic, generate leads by investing in targeted advertising strategies on social media platforms.

A business will go this route to raise brand awareness and attract new followers, promote their newest product or service, and drive conversions.

The benefits of paid social media

It allows advanced targeting

When running ads on platforms like Facebook and Instagram you’re able to set specific goals and really give specific details on the types of people you are wanting to target. Now, I agree and disagree with this benefit. Sometimes and for some people running an add works for them, they see actual interest from the right people. Other times, I see it not work at all and never hit the mark. For me, it is too much money invested into something that claims it will do what it’s supposed to do only for it to fall short almost every single time.

Easy to track

You can easily track all of the information from a paid ad or boosted post in any of the social media platforms where you choose to run said paid ad.

There are also third-party tools and tracker that you can subscribe to and see more in depth data and you can see everything on a single dashboard. Some of these tools also offer detailed reporting features that can tell you how to improve the paid ads.

Hybrid strategy (paid and organic)

The best thing to do is utilize a hybrid strategy so that you can get all of the benefits of social media marketing and the social media platforms. This is of course, if you have a decent budget to do so.

You should neglect the organic aspect (being engaging and SOCIAL on social media - the apps hate that and will not push your content out there) and you shouldn’t completely turn off the idea of running an idea every once in a while on your platforms.

Social media is definitely a trial and error type of marketing and it looks different for every single brand even if there are 2 brands in the same industry or field, they may have 2 very different strategies and both are working greta for each of them.

How can 77 Socials help with organic social media growth?

I am an expert in organic social media growth. I work with business owners who want to invest in their social media but can’t necessarily afford to spend hundreds or thousands on paid ads. Business owners will hire a freelancer like myself that creates strong content of value to their target audience, utilizes hashtags, and spending time on community engagement.

This is how I am able to stay affordable for my clients, I take over all thing organic social media management and you can sit back and watch your online audience grow.

If this sounds like you and something you think you may need, send me an email and we can set up a time for a call.

Tips from a Social Media Expert

I get asked often what my biggest tips are for business owners on Social Media. I have way too many I could right an E-book (hmm, should I?) Social Media is always changing, which means these tips could be completely inaccurate in 6 months from now. And honestly, that is why I love Social Media so much and chose it as my career.

Read this blog if you’d like to know my biggest tips for Business Owners when it comes to Social Media.

Always use “audience” glasses and not “business owner” glasses.

I know what you’re thinking, what does this even mean? I don’t know how to word this exactly, but let me try to explain.

When you are thinking about content for your business, switch on the audience view and think about how your content will come across to your viewers. What is it that they want to see? Do they even want to see this piece of content? What is the best way to deliver the message you would like to communicate to your viewers? Answer all of these questions from the point of view of one of your viewers.

Thinking too much like a business owner will, unfortunately, have your feed looking very very cold and stale. This is not what you want. You want viewers to see your feed and want to click on each piece of content and feel understood as a consumer.

You produce content for YOUR current audience, potential followers, and potential buyers, NOT for yourself or someone just like YOU.

Engage with your online community.

Take some time to understand your online community. Do this by posting stories often, replying to comments, and using interactive stickers and language to encourage open communication.

Another thing I will add to this point is to engage consistently with new accounts. You can discover new accounts by finding them on the Explore pages or by searching niche specific hashtags. Remember, your ultimate goal for your social media accounts is to GROW. Continue to prioritize your growth strategies as often and effectively as possible.

P.S. It’s okay if you change your strategy if you notice it isn’t working.

Don’t be afraid to show yourself on your business pages

This is going to be a shock to some of you as you have probably heard from other professionals to keep everything on your business pages as professional as possible.

But think about it….

Don’t you love to see the face behind the brand? Especially if we’re talking Small Businesses.

I wouldn’t trust a business if I constantly was only fed business related content and NEVER got to see the business owner(s) and got to see WHO and WHAT I am supporting.

Now I am not saying to post every single detail on your business pages but a monthly personal check in would be a nice break from your business related content for your followers.

Have fun

Social Media is all about fun and creativity. Don’t be afraid to post something more “artsy” or “different”

The post will likely do will because it is probably something different than what is typically seen. I always like to encourage social media managers to tap into their most creative side!

For more tips, follow my social media!

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I post tons of tips and tricks for Social Media!

Is it worth paying for a social media manager?

The big question for most investments in your business is the “Is it really worth it?” question. So let’s discuss.

Social media has become a very vital resource for businesses. It has grown into the beast that it is today, with now 302.35 million social media users in just the USA alone, which is 90% of the entire population of the US (“Social Media Users in the World”, DemandSage.com)

Chances are your target audience is on Social Media and they spend hours there. You probably know this already or you wouldn’t be reading this blog post. Now, let’s get into the point I am trying to make.

With Social Media growing at the rate that it is, adding new features weekly, changing algorithms, and constantly making feature adjustment, it takes an expert to keep up with all of this as well as manage a social media account effectively.

Hiring an expert or social media manager saves you time.

An expert in their role means that this individual has the knowledge, skillset, and expertise in the entirety of that specific subject. Hiring someone who has the ability to manage your social media account correctly and actually drive results can save you so much time.

Managing a single account on one platform takes hours and hours of content planning, content editing, strategy development, audience research, hashtag research, community engagement, and so much more. Do you have the time to do all of this AND run your business how you’re supposed to? Probably not.

Don’t you know the saying “Time is money”. If you’re wasting time doing a rushed and sloppy job of social media management with no strategy, no community engagement, and no research, then you’re not only wasting your own time, but so much money as well.

Don’t waste your time on something like social media. Outsource that aspect of your business and put YOUR time and energy into that of something of importance in your business that requires YOUR time and full attention.

A social media manager dedicates time to engage with your audience.

This part of social media is of the utmost important part of growing a trustworthy brand online. You have to be present online. You have to be engaging with not only your followers, but potential followers.

This part of the social media management role is one of the most time consuming, if not THE most time consuming. Actually going through liking and commenting back to followers as well as going through hashtags to find other potential followers to engage with their content.

Many people think that a successful social media account is posting 6 times a day and that's that. Let me be the first to tell you, that is very very wrong.

A successful social media account posts content intentionally and posts during certain times in the day and certain days of the week, yes BUT not just that. To build a successful social media account you have to build trust between yourself and your followers first.

You can do this by being present. A social media manager does this for you, engage with your online community to establish trust and begin building that relationship. It is a time consuming job.

Hiring a freelance social media manager is more than enough for your business.

Business owners often think that hiring an “expert” means that they need to hire a big Marketing Agency and need to pay thousands of thousands of dollars for someone to do a decent job at managing their social media account.

Don’t get me wrong, if you have the ability to pay a big agency and that is what you believe is the correct route for you and your business then by all means go for it! However, I know that many business owners don’t necessarily have those funds to pay someone to just manage their social media. It seems too overwhelming for them, which I totally understand.

This is why there are people like me with a passion for helping people and a passion for social media and content creation that work as Freelance Social Media Managers. We offer the same, if not more, services those big agencies offer at a much more affordable price. And we work for ourselves meaning we don’t have those feelings of “eh I won’t try that hard today” like some of the employees from those big agencies do.

So, is a social media manager really worth it?

Absolutely!

It is definitely worth investing in a social media manager because you know that they are experienced professionals in that specific field. You know that you are paying someone that has the knowledge and skillset to help your business grow online in the correct way.

If you’re interested in discussing your business goals with a social media manager, send me an email today to discuss how I can help your business grow online!

Here are the top 3 Instagram Insights to track to help your business account grow.

Instagram offers a Professional Dashboard for Business Accounts on their app, which shows the Account Insights in detail, tools for things like ads and branded content, and even tips and resources to help you get the most out of Instagram. Today we will be focusing in on those Account Insights and I will be sharing the top 3 Instagram Insights for all businesses.

Website Clicks

One of the 3 most important Instagram Insights is the Website Clicks. This metric can be found under ‘Accounts Reached’ and displayed under ‘Profile Activity’. Now, this may be totally accurate for most businesses, and for others it may not be.

This is crucial for the accounts with a priority to drive traffic or sales, if that is your account then you would need to be paying attention to that ‘External Link Taps’, seeing if you are reaching your goals with your current methods.

If you aren’t seeing the results you like, and you need to get those website clicks increased, my suggestion is to change up the CTA in your bio or the link displayed in your bio regularly. Change it up, monitor your methods and see what works best for your account.

Instagram Reach

The second most important is the reach, the amount of times your content has been seen. This measurement may not necessarily be the MOST important, but it is helpful to know how much brand awareness you are generating with the content that you are sharing.

Reach is important because it tells you which posts are showing up in the most people’s feeds. A lot of things can affect the Reach of your posts like at what time it was posted, on what day, how long are people viewing it for, and how many people are engaging with it.

Is your average post reach decreasing? Be sure to note the time of posting your content versus the time of day your followers are online, this can also be found in your Account Insights under Followers.

Engagement Rate

What is the almighty metric on Instagram? Engagement! Measuring the success of your content on Instagram is what all social media managers will do, and the best place to start is with engagement.

Instagram likes to highlight posts that have good engagement by showing those posts at the tops of the users’ feeds or sharing it to the Explore tab for potential NEW followers to see, engage, and initiate a relationship.

Your engagement rate tells you what percentage of people that saw your post engaged with it. Think of it this way, if one post has hih reach and another doesn’t but they get the same amount of total engagement, you can conclude that the post with the lower reach was more enticing.

The average engagement rate vary by number of followers. However, most marketing experts agree that between 1%-5% is a good engagement rate.

5 Ways Small Businesses Can Improve Their Social Media Presence

Small business owners should know that social media is the best way to grow their business. It is where more than half of the world’s population is active on a daily basis, according to research done by Global WebIndex. Social media isn’t necessarily difficult to understand, but it is time consuming and take a lot of planning to get the proper results for business growth.

In this post I want to highlight 5 tips on improving a brand’s presence online to ensure the correct steps are being taken to see organic growth. Creating an effective social media strategy and following through with the plan will ensure your online presence is seeing the results that favor growth for the brand.

Tip #1 Choose the Right Social Channels

Choosing the right social media channels will help keep your brand presented presented in front of your potential audience. Doing target audience research is very important in determining what social channels your brand should be active on. You want to be where your target audience is.

Let’s say, for example, you are a dance studio that offers dance classes to kids ranging in ages from preschool to teenagers. What social channels is your audience on? Preschool moms are likely to be active on Facebook, while teenagers can be found scrolling TikTok watching, you guessed it, dancing videos. This is where you want to be most active on.

Now let’s say you are an office furniture and supply company, your target audience is probably not going to be scrolling on TikTok watching funny dog videos. They are professional business men and women likely to be most active on LinkedIn. This is the social channel you would likely need to be most active on.

Don’t waste your time on a social channel posting to people who don’t care about you or what your brand has to offer. You want to make sure you are posting to people in hopes that they will want to engage with your content and connect with you and your brand.

Tip #2 Set a Solid Strategy and Follow it

After you have decided what your goals are for your brand’s online presence you’ll want to cultivate a detailed social media strategy. This where you decide what type of content you will be posting, how often you will be posting, when you will post, and much more. An expert in social media marketing management has the knowledge and skill to carve out a plan and help to execute it efficiently.

There are a ton of moving parts to a social media strategy and often times you will be making adjustments to this strategy as you begin posting and receiving feedback from viewers but also from analytics reports from the social channels you choose to be seen on.

Tip #3 Be Consistent

Consistency really is the key to seeing true growth online. You most be active online, posting regularly, engaging with your viewers and putting out a positive image for your brand.

Social channels determine the success of current and future posts of each account based off engagement. If you are pumping out valuable content for your audience to enjoy and they are engaging with that content by liking, commenting and even sharing your post, social channels like Instagram and Twitter will continue to show your content to your audience members that already follow you and even possibly publish your content to members that don’t even follow you giving you more exposure.

Tip #4 Avoid Overly Promoting Yourself

There is nothing worse than a social account that is just full of promotional posts and nothing else. You come across desperate and untrustworthy. People enjoy seeing personable and knowledgable posts that help believe them in your brand and believe that your brand knows what they are talking about and is trustworthy.

The occasional promotional post is acceptable, of course, it is just better to keep those posts to a low to moderate amount. Think about it, would you enjoy following an account that only wanted to sell sell sell and never proved to you that they are knowledgable and should be trusted? No, of course not, it comes across fake and pushy.

Promote yourself, but don’t forget to prove yourself as well. It is easier to connect with you when there is reasons to believe being showcased.

Tip #5 Invest in a Social Media Marketing Expert

Reading this probably sounds exhausting and like a full time job ON TOP of running your small business. I won’t down play, it is hard. As I have mentioned there are tons of moving parts to social media and managing social media platforms. Trends are always changing, network are constantly updating their tools, and creating content can take up many hours a week.

Social Media Marketing Managers, or SMMM, are experts in all things social media. We take a huge load off of the backs of Business Owners and take charge over all things social media for the brand.

As a social media manager I take over all things social media and put my focus on growth for the brand and create a clear and constant presence and brand voice across all platforms. My job is to sit with the owner, create a plan, execute the plan and analyze the results and make adjustments as needed.

If you are interested in investing in a Social Media Marketing Manager today, email me for more information or click here to review packages.

What is a Social Media Manager?

Social Media Managers are experts in social media platforms and properly representing their brands online. A social media manager does things like, create content, engage with the online community, and analyze reports to ensure optimal growth.

What does a social media manager do?

Typically, a social media managers first task to work with the brand owner in sculpting a marketing plan. A social media marketing plan outlines what you want to achieve on social media and how it supports the overall marketing strategy of the plan. This plan will include the brand’s target audience, the social networks that the brand should utilize, and the specific type of content the target audience would engage with.

A Social Media Manager’s job is to monitor social platforms, analyze the performance and make adjustments so that the social platforms can see growth organically. The goal, in all aspects of the job, is to see growth.

Why hire a freelance social media manager?

I can’t stress this enough, hiring an expert for this role instead of just allowing an existing employee to post on your brand’s Instagram and Facebook accounts whenever they remember, will make the greatest difference. Let me explain, if you have an expert that is solely devoted to making the best out of your social platforms, it will only do you and our brand all the best for the future.

It may seem easier and just less stress for you as a business owner to pass that role along to someone with little to no experience, but think about the end payoff with hiring an expert. The growth will likely be immense and the consistency always working in your favor.

If you are wanting to talk to a social media expert today, send me an email today!

3 Types of Engaging Content to Post on your Business Platforms

Creating social media content sounds so simple but it in fact does lots of planning and research. The entire point of posting content on social platforms is to get potential clients or buying customers, you don’t want to create content that isn’t relevant because our viewers will not engage with that content. Engaging with content is something like liking, commenting, or sharing your content. That is your ultimate goal. The higher engagement your posts generate, the more likely that social platforms will show your content to your current followers, and even in sections like “Top Posts” or “Featured Posts” which is an awesome way to get in front of potential new followers.

1. Entertaining

The first type of engaging content, by no surprise, is entertaining. Social media is overloaded with entertaining content, creators making prank videos, teenagers dancing, fitness coaches sharing their day through mini vlogs. It’s probably the most used type of engaging content, mostly because so many can relate to something as lighthearted and just simply entertaining. Depending on your brand voice and tone, you may or may not use entertaining content successfully. This is what I mean when I say this, you don’t want to try to do all of the trendy content on your account just to get a viral video, in all honesty it ends up being very cringey and does not get the point across.

2. Educational

People loooove when they get to learn something they are interested in for FREE. Give your audience something of substance and value that will leave them feeling informed and they will likely follow you to learn more from you. Keep these posts to a minimum, sometimes they come across as too pushy and one sided. Keep educational posts factual but still intriguing. I keep educational posts to about once or twice a week. They’re on my feed, but they don’t drown my followers feed and turn the away from my other posts.

3. Informative

Content that is informative can be both entertaining and educating. These posts can also be static posts that simply inform your followers what to expect of your brand. For example, an informative piece of content could be a reel of you showing how your spa salon only uses vegan products. This is information specifically about your spa and the products customers can expect to use when they visit your spa.

Content isn’t limited to just these 3 types, you can posts whatever content you believe your audience would want to see. These are just the most commonly used and easily achieved types of content for most businesses. You also aren’t expected to just post one of these types or all 3 of these. You are able to mix up content however you see fit.

As a Social Media Manager, I post content on a brand’s page that I, and the owner, see to fit best. After posting, my job is to analyze how the content performs and how I can improve future posts to ensure the brand is seeing growth. If you would like to speak to me in more detail on how I can help your brand’s social media platforms grow send me an email today, info@77socials.com

5 Reasons Why Your Business Needs a Social Media Manager

Social Media Managers have access to all of your brands social media channels, on which they will post engaging content to ensure your brand sees growth with your online platforms. So much goes into social media, as I am sure you already know.

Social Media is always changing, new trends are always popping up, the algorithms are always updating. This in itself is a full time job, just keeping up with social media and all the changes. As a business owner, you don’t have the time to keep up with social media let alone then be creating and editing the content for posting.

But you already know this, this is why you are here. Let me tell you how a Social Media Manager can help you and make being a business owner enjoyable.

Social Media Strategy

I think most everyone reading this can agree that they post on their social media accounts very sporadically. Most will tell me they post when they remember to or post something, anything, just to say they posted. A social media manager will put together a strategy to ensure the content being created is meaningful and actually relevant to your audience.

Brand Awareness

The main goal for a social media manager is to create brand awareness. By creating unique and valuable content, your audience is more likely to trust you and your brand. It’s all about trust, loyalty, and a healthy seller/buyer relationship.

Analyze Data

Sure having one of your existing employees run the social media accounts is easy and they can do the bare minimum, but what would they do differently than what you would be doing? Not much. They probably don’t have the experience of managing social media accounts let alone the skill to read data and utilize the data to optimize the strategy for maximum results.

This is probably the biggest and most valuable reason you should invest in hiring an expert. They are experienced in reading data and determining the best steps for your brand. For example, your data could show that your audience is most active on the weekends at 5:00 in the afternoon, but your employee is posting your content on weekdays at noon. This is just a small example of some of the data social media channels will show you about your accounts and our audience and how experts will utilize the data to actually do something with your social platforms.

Time Saver

Let’s be real, as a business owner you could probably be doing 1,479 other things that require YOU to do and YOUR final say. Social media is something that does not need your full attention 24/7. You can easily hand this off to someone else and not worry about getting back to people, engaging with your audience, or creating eye-catching content to attract new followers and potential customers. By hiring a social media manager they can take over about half of the stress you are having when it comes to the millions of moving parts in a successful business.

New Customers

Social media experts will have the knowledge and skill to create successful ads and boost your posts effectively to get your brand in front of new potential customers. It definitely takes time and research, but a social media manager is hired to do just that, analyze the industry, do the research and by doing so they can help your brand thrive.

If you are interested in learning about my social media management packages, contact me!