Despite the title suggesting we like war analogies we must confess to you that we do not. However many do relate our primary industry to something like battle so it seemed to fit. Our business is actually rather far from a warzone atmosphere. It’s a hippie little restaurant chain, Squeeze In, that serves breakfast and lunch with mimosas and bloody marys. And by hippie we’re talking writing on the walls, surfboards hanging from the ceilings, mimosas flowing non stop and copious amounts of avocado on just about everything.
Over the last 16 years we have worked to help grow the Squeeze In from one location with 7 employees to the 12 location, 8 figure family business we are proud to own today. We definitely didn’t do it alone, and we made a loooooot of mistakes along the way, but we’ve also had some great wins too-like understanding the power of social media early on-and invested in learning and development. In 2015, we were contracted to architect the marketing system for the John Maxwell Team and invited to teach marketing to our fellow members there. We’ve since added event production service and we are currently building our personal brand for speaking, educating and entertaining. In other words we’ve got experience in a variety of industries and we’ve been doing this for a while. What are we currently focused on in social media right now? Below are 5 boxes that we’re making sure we check when it comes to our social media presence and think you should get your pens out and start checking them too!
✅Audience Safety
Anything that disrupts the audience’s sense of congruence in your brand experience is a risk for losing trust. Think about how you like to be portrayed, figure out how that translates to your brand and then implement it across your platforms. From the words we use in our posts, to our profile descriptions and photos, we want to make sure that what we post is authentic and consistent wherever our audience finds us. We want them to feel nice and safe, no matter where they engage with us and you deserve to enjoy the business your marketing because it’s congruent with who you are and what your brand stands for.
✅Stories Matter
Building community, connections, relationships and value adds is the name of the smart marketing game. Creating content that engages is a key factor in that connection building and that’s why stories are seeing such success for those who are using them effectively. How do we do that? Show behind the scenes real stuff, and give your lessons, teachings and messages from your heart along the way. You be you. And let them see through stories. Just little 24 hour glimpses into life and quotes to think on or lessons to reflect on in a moment. Stories are an awesome place to play the connection and relationship building game but they can be intense which why the next box will quell that story anxiety already rising up in you.
✅ Plan it out!
We started getting that anxiety too and you know what happened? We started to stumble on our story game. We’d beat ourselves up when we went dark for a while or would waste time scrambling in the moment to ‘just get something out.’ Ewwww, who wants to run social media like that? Not us, and that’s why we came to our senses and started implementing the same strategy for stories that we do for everything else. Put it into a planner. Or more specifically, put it into the hands of our team who handle the logistics and details (praise be you Megan and Rachel!). Once we got it all mapped out onto a planned editorial calendar it became so much easier, more intentional and best of all started helping us build that consistency muscle in this important area of brand building.
✅ Highlights Help
Ever experienced story mourning? That sense of loss when you hit hour 25 and your perfect little photo or quote or video that you loved is now retired and gone forever. You probably already know that you can add those best-of-your-best stories to highlights but are you actually doing it? Hopefully you are because it’s a great way to add a professional touch to your profile page and is a great way to have featured documented journeys of you doing what you do successfully there for your audience to watch any time.
✅ Bio 101
Cue freshman year flashbacks and awkward memories of high school! And just like an awkward highschooler we often clam up when it comes to writing our social media bios and end up being a person, from a place, offering a thing. With goldfish attention spans that’s about all we have time for in a social media bio these days but there are ways to make it more pleasing and enticing and that reinforce that first box way up there about safety for your audience. Find a way to spark some interest and give a taste of your brand flavor spice so that your audience knows what to expect from you at the most basic of levels. A person, from a place, offering a thing, but with emojis and a few well-placed words and details!
If you’re like ahhhhh I want to check all these boxes but I need help! We got you. Here’s a cool product we’ve developed that helps with each one of them and it’s got a bunch of other stuff that will help you bask in the glory of confidence and professionalism! But in all honesty you don’t need our social media booster pack to be successful. You just need to implement smart and simple strategies on a consistent basis like the 5 listed above and you’ll see those efforts compound into results. If you want to see more about our social media booster pack check it out here and happy social media-ing one and all!
Want to here us talk more about these 5 Boxes? Tune into our bonus episode of Millennial Mentorship where we dive into social media strategy here!
