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Do This One Thing to Grow Your Business, Nonprofit, or Personal Brand with Social Media

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May 12, 2022

In this final episode of Season 1, Dr. Barnes shares one thing that every business, nonprofit, or a personal brand must do to grow with social media. This episode is based on Dr. Barnes' book "5 Social Media Mistakes Your Business Should Avoid."

Season 2 of the Bricks-To-Clicks Marketing Podcast will explore the 7 Things Your Social Media Plan Should Include and will be available in July 2022. 

Transcription:

James Barnes: (00:07) Welcome to the Bricks-To-Clicks Marketing podcast. If you're a small business owner and you struggle with marketing your business, this podcast is just for you. I'm your host, James Barnes, and thank you for listening today. Let's get started. James Barnes: (00:22) Today, I want to share a story with you, a true story that happened to me when I was doing a workshop, a social media marketing workshop. And this last episode, I wanted to really be a word of encouragement to you about giving your social media a makeover to really grow your business. It's possible. Tons and tons of companies do it each and every day, and they grow their businesses with social media. But you got to do this one thing, and I'm going to tell you what that one thing is in just a few minutes, but I want you to know a story, something that happened to me that really gave me the reason to write the book and put together the content around five social media mistakes your business should avoid. James Barnes: (01:04) So I was giving this workshop, and the workshop started in the evening time, like five o'clock. So there was a meal that was provided and it was a group of business owners in a community. The next day, we were going to spend a couple more hours working on things in the morning for the social media marketing workshop, and much of what we've covered in season one, we went through during the workshop. James Barnes: (01:25) But at the very beginning of the workshop, we were going around the room and I was asking participants, business owners, "What are you expecting to get from this workshop?" They were there to give their social media a makeover. And I'll never forget this one guy, and I'm just going to call him Jim. When it got to him and it was his turn to speak about it. He said, "I don't have time to do social media. I'm too busy." Now, everybody prior to Jim had said, "Well, I'm looking to learn how to give my social media makeover. I want to get more engagement. I want to get more sales, more leads, build relationships." Lots of things, all positive outcomes, things of that nature you want to do. James Barnes: (02:03) But when it got to the Jim, it got really personal. And he just said, "I don't have time to do this. I don't have time to do this. I'm too busy." And it really changed the tone of the entire meeting that evening. You have to imagine, everyone's sitting around this U-shape table, beginning to eat. There are some still in the line getting food. I'm in the middle, talking with them. And he says this, and there's a couple of ways you could handle that. So I just asked Jim, I said, "Why don't you have time? Tell me more about it." And then I said, "Before you answer that," I said, "does anybody else feel like this?" James Barnes: (02:42) Every business owner in the room raised their hand. They said, "Yes, I struggle with this. I don't have time to do this." And for me, it was a moment of, okay, this is an opportunity I can help. This is a moment when they need the help of some kind. And so I was hoping that in the time we had left that day, and then the next morning, we could start to give them some help in the workshop. But Jim said that he didn't have time to resonate with everybody. And so we started talking about the reasons. Why don't we have time? And oftentimes, it's just we're so busy, we've connected with so much with our mobile devices to social networks, to so much that we're just really, really busy and running a business is a lot of work. James Barnes: (03:33) So, as we talked about those reasons and we started talking about, okay, which ones can we control? There's some of the stuff that we can control. There's some of it we can't control. But we can control a lot of our time and how we use it each and every day. So you've got one of two options. This is what we talked about there in the workshop that day. You can outsource someone to handle your social media management to get you started. If it's overwhelming, don't let it be. You can outsource to someone to start creating content, to get you up on the platform where your target market audience is at, where they're engaging that group of people. And just remember, this is not about just posting something. This is about how do you build community? How do you build a tribe engagement? How do you do that? James Barnes: (04:16) Think first about that. And one of the things that helped Jim that day, and I think all those business owners is that Jim hadn't yet identified the real problem that his business was solving for customers. Jim owned a small engine repair shop, a common small business in America. He worked on lawn equipment, all kinds of stuff people would bring him in. He was just a wizard. He could make anything run. He could make anything work. I don't know if he could work on the stuff that I tear up, but he might be able to. He was really good. So we used Jim's frustration and his business as kind of a case study for the workshop really. And I asked if we could do that and he was elated that we would do that and work through all the questions to give his social media a makeover. James Barnes: (05:08) At the end of the day, we had to come up with a strategy for content. I tell business owners all the time, "You have to come up with one thing that you're going to do frequently to help your customers somehow get to know you." One of the things you can do is give away a free piece of content that's going to help them solve a problem they have. You're not giving away the farm, so to speak. You're not just giving away what your services are, but you can do something. And so Jim really started to see that his purpose was to help his customers. And there's something that comes with clarity when you understand your purpose. And so that for Jim that day, that's what happened. So that evening, he just started to discover his purpose. That helped him clarify what he should be doing on his social media. And then he could choose whether or not he really had time to do it or not. James Barnes: (05:59) Because really the statement he made, "I don't have time to do social media," was just complete frustration. He does have time. He did have time. But he didn't know what to post. He didn't know why he should post. He didn't know when he should post it. He didn't know that like, "What's the core reason am I on this platform? Why am I here as a business?" James Barnes: (06:18) So for Jim, it was all about discovering his purpose. His purpose is to help his customers. And it's the same thing for any business. You want to be positioning yourself to help your customers solve some part of their problem, educate them, help them, and give them tips, practices, and things they could do. So we came up with a strategy for Jim. He's been following it ever since the workshop, where he would go live on Facebook and he would take a common piece of lawn equipment when it came in and he would show how it should be taken care of. He would show what happens when you don't take care of it really well. And he would have something that was broken or something that needed to be repaired and he would get tips. So he was giving away advice on how you can make your lawn equipment last longer. James Barnes: (07:03) Now all of a sudden, he is giving away some advice and people start to connect with him. They go, "Okay. Jim really knows about lawn equipment. He does this thing on Facebook every Wednesday, Thursday," whatever. Going into the weekend. He tries to do it Wednesday through Friday. Here's what you should be doing. And he started positioning his business as one that's helpful to those people in his community. Word traveled quickly. He came up with a new service that he ended up selling, which was based on like, you could drop off your equipment for 20 bucks, they would clean it, inspect it, get it back to you the same day, pick it up in the evening. It was super or fast service. And so he started doing all kinds of things because he discovered his purpose and that was to help his customers solve some part of their problems. James Barnes: (07:47) At the end of the day, that helped Jim quite a bit. But there was this one thing at the very end of the workshop, I challenged him. I said, "Listen, we've done this with Jim's business in mind today. We've taken, last night we had a couple of hours, this morning, we had a couple of hours and we've done the work to try to reposition and give his social media makeover. And I think we've done that." And Jim and the others agreed that we had accomplished that. He now understood what he can do and how he can help people. And so off he was going and so forth. James Barnes: (08:17) But this one thing is that you've got to carve out some time. Everybody has the same amount of time every day. You're going to have to carve out some time to figure these things out. That's the hardest part. Getting started is always the hardest part of doing anything. So this one thing that you got to do is you got to set aside some time. Jim attended the workshop. He had some time and he gave to get that done. And if you do that, you're going to have an opportunity to really specialize in understanding how you can help people with your social media and position your business as being helpful. James Barnes: (08:53) So when my time was wrapping up with Jim and the others in the workshop that day, I asked him a series of questions. I'll just throw these out as we wrap up season one here. What if you were to take just a weekend and you go somewhere, fill in your ideal location, could be a cabin in the woods, maybe you want to go on the beach. I don't know, anywhere you want to go, just get away from the demands of life, including running your business. Just take a few hours to yourself. Maybe just take the day off. Close early one day, something. Set aside some time. What if you were to do that? And what if, when you get to this place, you have all the things in the cabin to help you brainstorm through the process, outline in the book, things that we've talked about in this podcast, and you discover your purpose for posting content on social media. James Barnes: (09:38) What if you did that? And what if you returned and you had all these questions answered and you had a game plan, you knew why you should be on social media. You had an idea. You put several ideas down on how you can create content and what that would look like and how you would start doing that. And then think about this, how would you feel if you implemented your new social media content and your business actually started to grow because you gained more social media engagement and attention, and then leads, emails, email contacts, and sales took off, they grew. What would it look like for your business if all of this comes true? Well, there's only one way to find out. You have to set aside some time. I know it's difficult. I know you're busy as a small business owner, you're doing tons of things. It's incredibly difficult to own and operate a business. It is. James Barnes: (10:35) And I get it. But what if you were to take the time to really go through and give your social media a makeover. It will make a difference. It will help you grow your business. You'll find a purpose in helping people with your business by going through these questions, and the way we've done them throughout season one and the episodes. It's going to help you grow your business. I hope you'll take advantage of it. I appreciate you being with me for season one, listening to these things about the podcast, and the different ways you can make your social media grow and reach more people, and grow your business. That's the whole purpose of it. So I hope it's been useful to you. I hope you share it with people, subscribe to the podcast. James Barnes: (11:11) You can get the downloads and show notes and much, much more for all the episodes of the podcast, just by going to our Facebook page and searching for Bricks-To-Clicks Marketing.

I appreciate you being with me for season one. We got lots of good stuff coming up for you in season two. Still going to be about social media management. I hope you'll tune in and check out season two when that comes out. Thank you for listening. And I wish you the very best.

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