- Giving some other business control. Outsourcing your social media posts to another business, a consultant or a marketing group results in generic and often bland posts that are likely to deliver little commercial value to the business.
- Not entertaining. People use social media for entertainment. If you’re not entertaining the engagement you see is likely to be minimal. Bland posts about a new lottery jackpot or showing a magazine cover that many others show is a nothing post.
- Ignoring local. Living local through your posts is likely to be loved by locals. Support local community groups. Celebrate local heroes. Be out and about locally using what you sell, and share it.
- Yelling. Telling people to use cash or to shop local are posts likely to be ignored. Posts like this may make you feel good but they achieve nothing.
- Missing in action. You are a key differentiator in your business. You need to be seen through the posts. help people to get to know you and have a laugh with you.
With any social media post you have a couple of seconds to grab their attention. I spent a couple of hours last night looking through newsagent Facebook pages and I tagged 75% of posts falling into one of the above 5 areas. That does not allow for the 33% of newsagent pages I saw that infrequently posted, like the one business that last posted in January this year.
The best face to put on your business is you. On social media, be yourself, have fun, bring customers along for the ride with you.
I appreciate some will say they know nothing about social media, that they don’t know what to say. Social media engagement is a basic business task. Anyone can do it. You start by starting. Getting someone else to do it for you is a dreadful mistake, it will likely achieve little for your business.
Remember, have fun. This is key. People go to social media to be entertained. Entertain them. Let them see that you have a sense of humour.
One other point: avoid using an AI tool to write posts for you. AI content is, well, AI content. Oh, and don’t use AI generated images as doing so will say more about your business, which you ay not like.