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Social media strategy. Talk about overwhelming! There are so many questions that you don’t know how to answer and finding the answers… that alone feel like it takes a ton of time.

Instead, look at creating a social strategy that’s not only sustainable for your business… but that actually does what it’s designed to do.

Andréa Jones will take us through step by step what that looks like… and how you can build a social media strategy that fits your business.

Check out the Savvy Social Podcast

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Alyson Lex 0:02
If you're anything like me, and some of the clients that I've worked with, your social media sometimes can feel like an afterthought. If it's not posting adorable pictures of your kid in an Iron Man costume. Or maybe you have one of your many cats. Just saying it, it's hard to come up with a strategy that feels like something you can stick with in your business long term. And that's going to get the results you want, it sometimes feels like an either or situation, you have to do the stuff that you can't stick with. And you do it in fits and spurts. And that doesn't get results. Or you just plot along, doing stuff that you think might be right and doesn't move the needle anyway. And either way, you're back where you started. So when we met Andrea Jones, we knew that we had to talk to her about this. This is her jam, guys. I'm so excited that she's here with me, Andrea, thanks for being with us.

Andréa Jones 1:02
So thank you so much for having me on the show today, I'm really excited for our conversation,

Alyson Lex 1:07
I think we are going to have so much fun. Because not only is this something that I know a lot of people struggle with, and I think a lot of people do a lot wrong, but it's stuff that will help us too. So hashtag selfish agenda. Um, so what do you see most online business owners doing wrong with their social,

Andréa Jones 1:28
the first thing that I oftentimes see with business owners is that we haven't really decided what role social media plays in our business. So we kind of know, or we feel like we should be on social media. But we don't quite know where should it be Facebook or Instagram or all of them. And then we don't quite know what the point of it all is. Maybe we see our competitors posting things. And so we feel like we should be doing the same thing. And so we kind of get lost in the tactics of it all. without really understanding the strategy behind it, the real reason why we should be on social media. So an example would be if you are a financial adviser, maybe social media is a way for you to show off your expertise so that your potential clients and customers know that you know what you're talking about. Or if you sell products through an e commerce store, maybe it's to sell your products, people find you on Instagram, and they tap over to your website and they purchase something. If you are a business coach, maybe it is to kind of nurture your current audience and warm them up and get ready for, you know, some sort of launch or campaign. So it's really kind of deciding what role social media can play in your business. And if you don't have that decided it's going to feel like it's not working.

Jennie Wright 2:56
I survived with this right now. Because not only was this an issue for me when I was sort of getting started, and I was a late adopter for things like Instagram. But I understand this for also a lot of my clients. Right? So you mentioned there's a lot of different points that you were talking about. And one of them was like, how do we figure out the point of social media for our business? How does it translate into strategy? Where do we make that connection?

Andréa Jones 3:22
Yeah, and it really starts with understanding who you're talking to, and why they would interact with you on social media, because social media is a giant playground, we talked about cute kittens and those photos, I love it, I hear for it. But as a business owner, ultimately, we are trying to grow our business. And it's figuring out that space between, you know, where we want to go and where our customers are right now, and how we can use social media to take them on that journey. So it starts with understanding the different areas of that journey. So some people who find you on social media, they're they're new people, they've never heard of you before, and they just found your account, how are you going to speak to those people versus the people who've been maybe following you for a year or two, but they've never purchased anything from you. Maybe they've never even signed up for you know, a newsletter or a freebie or something like that. So when you're speaking to those people, they know who you are. But they need more encouragement to take that next level. And that next step, and then you have those people who, you know, they're just waiting for your next Lodge. They know that you're it, they want to buy from you, they're saving up their money, and they want to, like, buy something from you the next time you launch something. And so when you're speaking to that group of people, it's a little bit of a different strategy. And either each of those stages happen simultaneously with a lot of business owners, okay, so they all happen at the same time. But oftentimes with newer business owners, you're focusing on that first step, that first stage of, you know, you're talking to people who don't know who you are, and they don't know What you sell, and so you've kind of got to speak to them a little bit differently. So once you kind of outline each of those stages, then you can start to start crafting content and taking action towards growing your audience of people who would actually buy from me one day.

Alyson Lex 5:20
I really like how you broke that down as far as the buyers journey, because I'm all about, I'm all about that life. Okay. And that that's not just social, that's your entire business is understanding who they are and where they are in their journey in their relationship with you. The question that I have is, how do you create content? That doesn't alienate one or more of those, right? Like, do you create different posts or show up in different platforms? Or have a group for this? And how do we manage all of that?

Andréa Jones 5:59
Yeah, and for most of us, a lot of our audience will fall into one category, predominantly, or one stage. So for a lot of my clients, a lot of my clients are in the coaching space. So business coaches, leadership coaches, career coaches, a lot of their social media strategy is for that middle stage, people who no of them, have heard of them, maybe listen to them on a podcast or something like that. And they're kind of following along, because they're mildly interested. But they're not quite sure what the next step would be. So a lot of our content is focused on that group, and speaking to that group. So really understanding kind of the role that social media plays in your business can be helpful for that. But definitely having that balance of content is key. And for a lot of us about 1/5 of our content will speak directly to a call to action, meaning one out of every five posts, we're going to say, Hey, this is what I sell, here's how you buy it be very direct, the rest of the posts are going to speak to the other stages of the journey. So if you're new here, maybe here's a challenge you may be having, and here's how you could solve it. If you've been here for a while maybe going a little bit deeper into sharing personal stories or sharing examples from your clients and customers. And so the rest of the time, you're really focused on those first two stages of the customer journey. The exception is if you are launching, so when you are in the middle of a launch, all of that goes out the window, and most of your posts are probably really focused on that strong call to action.

Jennie Wright 7:39
I was just gonna ask that. Because if it's one, you know, if it's one out of every five posts, and you are in a launch, I want to know what that looked like simply because at the time that we're recording this house are nine days away from actually launching a webinar. So we've been all over social media with it. So I was like, Oh, no, am I screwing up? I really appreciate that. That answer you're, you're really diving in, you're giving us a lot of really good tactical information for every question that we're answering. We've actually added a couple questions that weren't originally even on our outline. And one of the ones I was going to ask, I'm not even going to ask them anymore, because we've like, we've already talked about it. It's already done. So let me ask a really general question that is probably pretty simple. And what is the point of growing a social media following, and I'm going to put a little bit on the end. I help clients build lists, builds. And we use social media to facilitate that. And we look at some people and we say, oh, that person has 150,000 followers on Instagram, they'd be a really good fit for utilizing them on, let's say, a summit. But you and I both know that conversions from social media are sometimes hit or miss. So what is the point of growing a social media following? In terms of

Andréa Jones 8:57
conversion? Yes. And unfortunately, you're absolutely correct in that followers aren't everything. There are some people who have you know, 300,000 followers can't sell anything. And I have a client who has 1200 followers. So just over 1000, she consistently sells out her launches every time she's launched, and we've been working with her for a year. So it's not about the followers per se, though that generally speaking can be a good indicator of growth and of interest in progress. But I like to see social media as really speaking to those first two stages of the buyers journey. And while we can sell on social media, a lot of the selling happens elsewhere, predominantly in email. And so when we think about social media, it's really I like to think about it like dating. So you meet someone, you get to know them, you go on a few dates, you get to like them and then you can take it to the next step, whatever that means for you. And so on social media, I really like to think about it as that wooing and dating period with someone where they're getting to know you like you and trust you. And then the next step happens elsewhere, whether that be if you're a service based business, it could be a free consultation. If you do summit, like you mentioned, it's it is joining that summit or signing up for that or webinar. If you sell a group program, maybe it's a lead magnet to get into your funnel for the group program. And so social media can really play a role in that way. And ultimately, this is why you really have to understand your entire marketing completely, in order to understand where social media kind of falls within that scope. But yeah, when you're thinking about, you know, what's the point, why am I doing this, you want to think about how you can get your followers or those interested in what you have to offer to take that very next step with you and get one step closer to working with you.

Alyson Lex 11:05
I feel like you are leading me and leading us directly through exactly the story that we're telling our audience on the information that we wanted to get out. Because my next question is, how do we get traffic to our offers? How can we use social I know that it's a part of your whole marketing strategy? And I love that? What role does it play?

Andréa Jones 11:28
Yeah, and one of the things that I like to talk about when I'm thinking about social media, and how to get people to take action, because, you know, it's really easy to post the cute cats, it's really easy to post even fun things like a poll or ask a question. But ultimately, as business owners, we do want them to take that next step. So one of the things I like to focus in on is the feelings that they have before and after they work with you. So when you're listing out that next step, let's say it's a lead magnet, you could talk about how many pages it has, you know what they're going to learn. But even as business owners, it's like that feels like more work. Right already, as I'm saying, it's like, I don't want to read pages, I want to solution. Um, so when you're thinking about writing that social media post, it's focused on that feeling of where they are now, maybe they aren't making progress in some area. Or maybe they feel like they're blocked in some way, like they feel stuck. Or, you know, the after is maybe they'll feel accomplished, proud. Maybe they'll feel like they can take that next step with you. And so really, in your captions describing what the feelings are, is a great way to encourage that next step. And then you want to be really clear about where they can do this, because social media moves very quickly. And I don't even remember post, I saw it yesterday, okay, so think about your audience and that, and you want to kind of have that call to action start to feel a little bit like a commercial jingle. So you know how we all know, like the lawyers phone number, for some reason, we can't forget it. So on social media, we want our calls to action to start sounding like that. And as a business owner, when you're writing these yourself, it does feel repetitive. Hey, you're like when I said this already. But I promise you, not everyone has remembered it. And previously to that call to action, you're going to use different feelings, you're going to tap into different words to describe what that before and after transformation is. But your call to action should feel more like that commercial jingle, so that people remember it, they know where to click, they know where to go, especially on platforms like Instagram, where clicking links is a bit of a it's a bit of a journey. And so you want to do make it that clear to help people to then take action in the middle of the hundreds of other posts that they're looking at every single day.

Jennie Wright 13:46
I love the jungle idea. And it makes total sense. I was actually there's a person I follow on Instagram. She is she does cleaning videos. And the end of every single one she says and now it's clean in this like super low calm voice. And it's like, oh my god is it's it's cleaning porn. It really is. It's amazing. And she uses it on every single video. And this morning, I clicked the link on her bio, because I was like, Okay, I need to know what the product that she used today. Because she cleaned a shower door and I was like I need to clean the glass on my shoulder. But I get the jingle part. How do we associate that? And this is a follow up question. How do we create the jingle? How do we know what's going to work? Wouldn't that sound like? Can you give us some examples? Yeah, so

Andréa Jones 14:34
I love that. And now it's clean because it is one of those things that you remember and you actually look for it right whenever you go through. So to develop this does take some time and trial and error. A few things that can work. You know, one of a great example of this is Instagram, tap the link in the bio. Why do we all know that? It's because we've all been using that language for years. Do you have to develop what that looks like for you? Oftentimes, it really is that simple. It's just kind of like have that subconscious way of encouraging action. And, you know, if you one of my lawyer clients would want her audience texter. So all it was was text me, here's my number, it can be that simple. And you never know which feeling or benefit is going to trigger someone. Now the key here is to track this on the other side. And this is where business owner started to get a little side eye with me because they're like, I don't want to look at the numbers, I just want it to magically work. But you do want to look at the number. So on a platform like Instagram, on the post level, you can swipe up and see how many people went to your profile. And then how many people click the link in your profile based on this one post, as you can look at it on the post level, you can also go into your insights and pull up the posts from the past 30 days, 90 days a year, and see which posts encouraged the most action. So if I say go visit my profile, are people actually clicking over to my profile? And then are they actually clicking that link in the profile. So once you start posting, you'll see the trends of what works with your audience. And you'll be able to make some decisions from there. It doesn't have to be complicated, especially for business owners. It's a little bit different than content creators in the sense that we're not churning out tons of content, right, we just need to get the right amount of content. So you're really focusing in on that content that actually does convert and then you rinse and repeat those.

Alyson Lex 16:46
I'm thinking about the way that we end our episodes, where it's we'll be back answering another big question next time. Or a variation of that I know Jenny, Jenny does all of our outros for a reason. And we'll release a blooper reel one one of these days that will announce why. But she's kind of evolved it over the last year and a half, two years or so. But it's, it's like, okay, that's the end of the episode. It's done now. And so I do like that because it's it is comforting to your people, they know what to expect. And one of the things I teach about is let them know what to expect. And it's routine people like routine. And want to dive in a little bit more on I'm really want to talk about the overall strategy and how like we start with a strategy. But one of the things that we're talking about is how to really make it feel sustainable for us. And, you know, yes, we're doing things and we're saying, hey, you can learn and choose and that feels like you said business owners give you a lot of Sinai, it feels a little overwhelming to do. So how can we really make sure that we're building a strategy that we're going to stick with, it's going to work for us long term, not just for the 30 days that we remember to do it?

Andréa Jones 18:11
Yes. And I like that you mentioned routine as well, because sometimes we feel like free spirits, I just want to wake up and like post from my heart, which is great. A lot of us don't have the skill set to actually do that. It is a really big wish and hope and dream. So there are three different habits that we have to build as business owners in order for this social media thing to work. And I base these habits on time commitments, so time commitments, because then we can get better within those time containers. Okay, so the first one is your content creation habit. So that's actually writing the posts designing the graphics. And generally speaking, I suggest one hour a week for that content creation habit. I like to do this on Fridays, knock out my posts for the next week. Okay, so the first time you do it, you may only get one post, that's fine. It's kind of like going to the gym like you're at five pounds, five pound weights. We'll work up work up tomorrow, but it's really sticking with that habit. So that's the first habit that I suggest business owners build. The second habit is daily growth strategies. Okay, I like to call this my daily check ins. And this does vary depending on how many platforms you are managing. I really only recommend one at this point. So one to start with 1520 minutes a day. I like to do this right before my lunch break. My platform of choice is Instagram. It's where I like to hang out. So I'm scrolling through Instagram. And in those 1520 minutes, I'm looking at my current feed and followers engaging with those, but I'm making sure that I'm also carving out time to find new people. Okay, so maybe I spend 10 minutes on my current audience, five minutes actually looking for people who I don't know, they don't know me, and engaging with them. So we've got our content creation habit, our daily checking habit, then we have those monthly metrics. And this is the one where people go, do I have to do this? Yes. Because this is the one. This is how you know if this is working, otherwise, you're just going to feel like you're on this hamster wheel of like, producing all this content, networking and not feeling like you're making progress. So this will take about an hour a month to sit down, look at your metrics, there are a few different buckets of things to look at. And it is based on that customer journey. So how many people even know you exist? Those are things like impressions. Yeah, impressions, those sorts of things. Okay, so how many people are seeing your content, then you're going to look at how many people are joining your community followers, how many people are engaged in your community, comments, likes, saves shares, and then how many people are taking action, profile visits, website clicks, and then you can look at conversions, which is typically not related to social media at all, you're looking at things like Google Analytics, newsletter, subscribers, sales. Okay, so taking a look at each area of those every month, it'll take you about an hour, I like to do this on the first of the month, for the previous month. So those three habits, once you build those down in your content creation, your daily check ins and your monthly metrics, you can really get yourself into a system of success for actually using social media as a tool to grow your business. Instead of feeling like it's not working.

Jennie Wright 21:43
Okay, that's my cue to come in. No, I

Alyson Lex 21:45
was taking notes. That's why there was like this long pause, which will probably edit out and post. So everybody listening is going to be wondering what we're talking about a pause. But so what you're saying is, you have a monthly habit, and then you have a weekly habit, and then you have a daily habit. So it's not do these four things every day. It's do this one thing every day, do this one thing every week and do this one thing every month, which so then if we don't create, if we create that one post for our weekly content habit, that's the post that we have for the week, how do we like, so that's we don't have to do more?

Andréa Jones 22:24
Yeah, that's it exactly. And you will get better with this. As you grow as a business owner, it's just like anything we do in business, the first time is just gonna be very challenging, and then you will get better. Now, there are exceptions to these rules, especially if you have a team. So if you start outsourcing other things, some of my clients love social media, they want to spend more time on it, I say, now it's time to outsource something else, bookkeeping, updating your website, whatever it is, so that you can spend more time on social media. Alternatively, you can outsource the social media piece, there may be some things you still need to do, taking photos, providing some of those transformations. But someone else can write the captions, design the graphics, so when you're growing, you will start to see your time shift in those areas. But this strategy is like a really good place to start, especially if you wear a lot of hats in your business.

Jennie Wright 23:21
I like that a lot. There's a real I like concrete strategy. I like step one, do this step two, do that. Please, thank you, that's all I want. Makes it easier for me versus Well, you could do this and you might be able to do this. Obviously, every strategy is going to be a little bit different. My strategy is going to be different than everybody else's, or how, you know, however it's going to work. But how should we build out that strategy and figure out what content we actually want to create? What do we you know, what are we promoting? Do we map it out for the next week, for next month? You know, how do we incorporate this into our overall marketing strategy so that it works and again, to what else? I'm saying not feeling overwhelmed? Yeah.

Andréa Jones 23:59
So there's two different types of content creation, let's say time periods in a business, because there is the launch period, which is a different campaign strategy. A lot of the launch, campaign content is around whatever it is you're selling or promoting at the time. So that really is fairly straightforward. It's finding different ways to say the same things. Now, when you're in that evergreen mode, I find this is where business owners find it harder because you're just kind of waiting, or you're promoting the same things fairly consistently. So I like to put this into five different categories. And you'll rotate through these. So the first one is promotional content. So that's that 1/5 of your content. you're promoting a lead pack magnet, you're promoting your free consultations, your webinars, you're talking about what you do. The next category is educational content. So showing your expertise teaching something in some way. We also have Community College content as our third pillar of content. And this is really talking about what's happening in your industry, or within your local community if you're a local business. And so recently, I saw a lot of business coaches talking about riada, becoming a billionaire. That's a great example of a community piece of content. We have entertaining content, which for business owners, typically is sharing that behind the scenes, reality TV show version of your business. So it's talking about, you know, if you're an artist, it's showing off how you paint or how you create art. If you are podcasters, showing off your space where you record your podcast episodes, so really letting people in. And then the last type of content is engaging content. And this works for two ways. One, we don't want to always be talking at our audience, we do want to pull them into a conversation. So a question or a controversial topic works really well here. But also, the algorithms on pretty much every social media platform, love engaging content. So anytime you can get people to signal that they like your content by liking it, commenting on it, sharing it, it's a beautiful thing, and it encourages the rest of your posts to also be seen. Now with these five pillars of content, you can combine them. So I have seen people, you know, use an entertaining post that has a question at the end. So it's entertaining and engagement, or use a community post that promotes their content as well. So you can combine them. But generally speaking, our content is going to fall into these five categories. And I do recommend assigning them to a day. So this goes back to that routine piece of it. So you know, if I add three posts a week, maybe Mondays is promotional Wednesdays is engaging. And Fridays, I'm going to talk about something happening in the community. So I'm going to rotate through those on a weekly basis. A lot of my clients and customers are at five posts a week. So you can rotate through the five pillars fairly regularly, depending on your skill level. So I would say five posts a week, you're at, like 50 pounds, that's okay, if you're at the five pound weight, you can work your way up to that 50 pound weight setting. But typically, that's where a lot of people are.

Alyson Lex 27:23
I'm totally in love with these five pillars, and the way that you broke them down makes a lot of sense. So with engaging this with not engaging, I'm sorry, entertaining content. This is this is where I can share my cat pictures, right?

Andréa Jones 27:43
Yes, and use a story to like loop it back in. So an example is my dog Gibson is like a minor, minor Instagram celebrity. And he has a really big personality, people love to see him, I post them a lot to my Instagram stories. But if I'm posting it to the feed, I will tie in Gibson's confidence with like, a confidence idea about business owners on social media. So it'll be a picture of Gibson, but I'll use the caption to kind of tie it in to the work that I do.

Alyson Lex 28:16
I really like that. And yes, there are I've said this to a couple of clients Lately, I've been using it just keep a list a running Doc, a journal of your stories, because you can really pull content back in and make it entertaining, and educational. Pull those lessons in together. And I've been working on doing that more for myself as well. So I can't thank you enough for being here. And just really breaking this down, letting us off the hook with this five posts a week stuff. Where can Where can we and our listeners find out more about you? Yes.

Andréa Jones 28:56
So if you like listening to podcasts, I do have a podcast of my own. It's called the savvy social Podcast, where I talk about a lot of topics like the things we covered today. It's on any podcasting app, and then I'm also on Instagram at online drag. That's where I spend a lot of my time come hang out with me there. If you're listening to this, send me a DM I love direct messages, especially voice note ones because then it feels like I'm actually talking to like real human people. So feel free to do that. I'd love to hear from you.

Jennie Wright 29:25
So helpful. Everything that you've been talking about today has been so incredibly just to the point and I love that because it gives us strategy and things that we can use to actually get into the social media side of things. And everybody should go and check out Andrea where she is online. I was actually just on her Instagram just now a second ago, which is why I was like zoned out for like two seconds because I was just like, oh, look at all these great pictures. So you actually practice what you preach. I was taking a look because I was like okay, those are the five pillars, and you have those on there. So it was really really cool to see that. And I just want to take a second we're going to talk about a couple takeaways that Allison I have from today's episode that we think are really crucial for people. I'm going to start first. I love this one followers aren't everything some people have huge followings. Some people have small followings. And you can still sell out lunches and still make really great calls to action and get some progress from that it doesn't have to be 300,000 followers, you can really do this with a dialed in smaller audience.

Alyson Lex 30:24
I really like and I think I even said it, like you're speaking my language with the buyers journey. Social tends to be those first two stages, the people who don't know you at all, and they're just finding you or, and the people who know you but haven't bought from you yet. They're not in that buyers list of. And what that tells me is now the goal is to get them to take that next action to get closer to you. Maybe sign up for some of your free stuff. And then they can become a buyer from that, because the selling will happen predominantly elsewhere, like email.

Jennie Wright 31:01
Absolutely. I also love the figuring out the space between where you want to go, and where your customers are at the moment. And how social is going to help you sort of get that journey to come together so that you are on the same page. And that you're able to connect with those people on a deep level. That's a huge thing for me.

Alyson Lex 31:21
And I am totally swiping these social jingle concept. And this doesn't necessarily need to be the cheesy Cars for Kids song which you're welcome is now stuck in your head, but something that your people will come to expect from you. That will give them an anchor. They know that's the call to action, and they remember it much more easily.

Jennie Wright 31:44
Hopefully those takeaways are things that are going to help you to implement everything that Andrea was talking about today. Andrea, thanks so much for doing this with us. We really appreciate all the time, and everything that you've given in sharing on the episode today.

Andréa Jones 31:56
Thank you so much for having me on the show.

Jennie Wright 31:59
Yeah, it was absolutely our pleasure. We were so excited to have you. Thanks so much, everybody for listening. If you haven't already, make sure you're following us or subscribe to us wherever it is that you're listening to your favorite podcast. We love interacting with people. So head on over to our Instagrams and our Facebook pages and connect with us wherever you are on social. I'm really loving and getting the hang of Instagram these days. So DM me I'm super excited to connect with people. So do that as well and Allison's totally on board too. Thank you so much for listening. Thanks so much for being here. We'll be back again soon answering another big question.