You may very well be asking the question posed in the title of this post because you’ve been following the recent damning Facebook whistleblower testimony, or maybe you’ve just had this sinking feeling for several years.

While I don’t think being on Facebook is at this point detrimental to a small business brand the way it might be for a publicly traded company the question is – Does it still make sense for a small business from the standpoint of meeting business and marketing objectives to invest time and money in Facebook?

In certain instances, maybe but with several big caveats.

Do you already have a decent following, and do you already have substantial engagement?

Without both, time spent posting on FB will have little impact now and certainly in the future – far too many small biz folks jumped into Facebook and mostly posted uselessness, and FB is making them pay for that. (Literally)

For at least five years now, I’ve been preaching about the need to post fun, fascinating, and culture-based stuff for organic reach and then pay for business and sales reach.

For most small businesses today, Facebook has taken away organic reach and made paid reach so much harder, more competitive, and more expensive.

So to me, the question becomes one of priorities.

There are probably five other more practical uses of time and money for most small businesses, so make the choice and stay focused.

In general, social media platforms see us as part of the product, not as customers of the product. They have realized that they need us here clicking, scrolling, and commenting to grow the product. But unfortunately, they’ve also learned that they can amplify this activity by appealing to the worst in us in many cases. And that’s the real problem.

t doesn’t matter whether you believe the details shared by the whistleblower or which side of the political chasm you fall on – the future of social media is based on this dynamic and probably does not bode well for small business growth.

When considering platforms today, we must consider a prospect’s research intent – Facebook is set up today in ways that might work for someone selling polarization and opinion in noisy ways.

But is someone considering a plumbing project because they happened to be scrolling through the noisy newsfeed? Are they clicking on ads for the plumber because the ad is so much more compelling than the ad for skittles that they just saw?

I don’t wonder much about either of those anymore.

Facebook can have a place for small businesses, but not one that comes before creating a better customer experience, discovering how to grow and scale with existing customers, or finding ways to generate referrals.

For most of the folks we work with, social media, in general, is a lazy and misleadingly costly way to market.

It’s time to let it slide, not as a political statement but as a marketing priority.

This blog post is brought to you by  Workpuls. 

With half of the world’s population now on social media, it’s rare you’ll find a brand or business not using it to grow an audience, generate leads, and increase sales online. 

Social media hasn’t gone away, it hasn’t died out, it has a place, and it’s here to stay, so let’s talk about how to use it in 2021.

Some of the questions that I received when social media was brand new I still get today:

• How do I find time to do it?
• What’s the ROI?
• How do I make it pay?
• Can I sell?

People still see social media as this disconnected piece of marketing that you have to go figure out and play in. Just like every other facet of marketing — social media needs a strategy too.

Social media is just another channel, it is another part of marketing. So how does it fit into your overall objectives? You may actually end up realizing that you are wasting your time in a lot of what you’re doing with social media because it doesn’t help achieve your objective of growing your business or getting more clients or the things that we tend to want to do in marketing. I think a lot of people bought into, “I have to be there, I have to be in all these new places or I’ll be left behind.” In some cases, your clients aren’t there and you can’t physically participate and do well there without watering down your other efforts.

Why businesses use social media today

Let me ask you this, what’s the main reason you use social media today? My guess is, some of you are going to say, “I don’t really know,” and I think that’s probably the most honest answer. I can tell you that brand awareness and community engagement and content distribution are the biggest reasons that people use social media today. Sales, lead generation, and customer support are not far behind because those are the things that we want to do the most, but I think you have to realize that there’s a place for social media today, and you just have to understand where that is.

On the flip side, I read a statistic recently from GlobalWebIndex that 71% are more likely to purchase products and services based on a brand’s social media presence and referrals, so it does have the power to help you meet your objectives. I think the thing that has become painfully clear today that maybe wasn’t a few years ago, is that it’s really not about the tools or the platforms. It’s really all about meeting your objectives.

How to meet business objectives with social media

So how could social media meet your business objectives? Well, first you have to outline what those objectives are. Is it to get a certain number of new clients, is it to launch into a new service area? Is it to launch a brand or a new product campaign? Is it to build a community?

If you think about those as some of your objectives then you could start saying, “Okay, well how could we tie that then to marketing objectives,” because sometimes it’s very difficult to go from launching a new product to how does Twitter help us do that? If you think about some of the marketing objectives, like:

• Increasing awareness
• Driving traffic
• Re-engaging current customers
• Generating leads
• Growing revenue
• Boosting engagement
• Building community
• Social selling
• Offering support to existing customers

Those are marketing objectives that actually can be accomplished quite nicely through the right use of social media today.

Think for a minute. What would be your top three marketing objectives for 2021? Once you have those, it’s simply a matter of saying, “Okay, how could social media help me do that? Here’s a list of specific tactics that we are going to use in order to have social media accomplish those goals.”

Let’s say, you want to expand into a new market segment. Well, the strategy for that might be to use social media to discover and build relationships with influencers or brand ambassadors. Then, you could just break that down to a project. Create a list using Twitter lists or using something like BuzzSumo. Use an influencer platform like Upfluence to find people who fit your brand and manage your influencer campaigns.

Make it a plan to reach out to 10 of them a day about potential partnering. You just break it down into very specific things and just ask yourself again and again, “How can social media help me do that?” You may have noticed by now, I haven’t mentioned a single platform yet. I will actually get to that but I think that this is the element that is missing, that we don’t understand how we’re going to use it and why we’re going to use it so that we can make these proper decisions about when and where. What are some of the tactics or some of the things that you can do in social media based on the stages of the buyer’s journey?

For example, for our stages, I talk about the Marketing Hourglass; know, like, trust, try, buy, repeat, and refer. I’ll even add an eighth step to that. For a lot of companies, social media can be great for hiring as well. Paid social, paid Facebook ads, and paid LinkedIn ads can be a really great way for people to come to know you or know about your content. There’s no question that showing a personal side on a social platform is a way for somebody to identify with or like your brand.

Telling stories on social media is a great way to build trust, which is a step we need. You can make offers for certain types of businesses having a special or a sale or a holiday event as long as you are providing value and engagement in other forms. This is a very legitimate way of using social media. Doing things once somebody buys from you, like creating a Twitter video and just saying, “Hey Bob, we really appreciated working with you.” Or, “Hey Bob, here’s your finished product. We’re shipping out today.” That kind of stuff is a great use of social media to generate repeat business.

Then, there are all kinds of ways that you can use social media. Say, creating a Facebook group of your customers or your champion customers and creating something special or different or unique or custom for them. Then from a hiring standpoint, the greatest thing is most of your employees are on social media so you can use their networks, in some ways, to help recruit and maybe create some sort of formal program. If you think about using social media not as just this megaphone that gives you an audience but for your very specific marketing objectives, business objectives, and then meeting certain intent throughout the customer journey, you can develop a strategy that makes some sense.

What social media platforms you can use today

The amount of social media platforms to choose to be active on keeps increasing every year, but you don’t have to conquer them all. In fact, it’s best if you only choose the two or three that are really relevant to your business and that you can align your business objectives with.

Twitter

Twitter makes it easy to distribute your content. And, there are over 326 million average monthly Twitter users globally for you to share that content with. 

There are a ton of reasons to choose to use Twitter as one of your social media channels. It’s free to use, it allows you to offer quick customer service and support, it can be used as a search engine tool for competitive analysis and for prospects to learn more about your business, and it allows you to directly communicate with your audience.

Facebook

Facebook is a place for audiences to connect with businesses big and small. In fact, two-thirds of Facebook users report visiting a local business Facebook Page at least once a week. Facebook also offers in-depth paid ads and highly-customizable targeting features. 

The social media platform has launched features similar to Instagram like Facebook live and Facebook stories. These are great features to educate and communicate with your audience on Facebook.

LinkedIn

As one of the most important B2B social media platforms, LinkedIn is a channel that can help you attract more eyes on your business. LinkedIn is one of the most popular social networks for professionals and entrepreneurs. You can use the platform to showcase your business in multiple ways – if you are the face of your business, having a personal presence is important. You can also create a showcase page for your business and distribute content there as well. 

Instagram

Instagram marketing is competitive, but not impossible. Instagram offers a massive reach for brands with an advertising audience of more than 1.16 billion people – coming in at the third largest social media platform.

Today, 90% of Instagram users follow at least one business. And it isn’t only consumer products that benefit from having a presence on Instagram. More than 36% of B2B decision-makers use Instagram when researching new products or services. This makes Instagram a great channel to showcase the products or services your business has to offer

Clubhouse

Clubhouse is a relatively new social media platform focused on live audio. As a business owner or marketer, Clubhouse offers some unique advantages that make it worth considering. You can learn about your audience’s concerns and desires directly from them. It’s as close to a real-life conversation as you’re going to get on a virtual platform.

On Clubhouse, you don’t have to chase down your target market every time you log on. Your audience is already there and they want to engage in a conversation with you. Because of the real-time nature of the content and the ease of bringing people into the discussion, it allows you to have meaningful conversations and build know, like, and trust with your audience.

TikTok

TikTok is a video-sharing social network with over 800 million monthly active users and an average daily view time of 52 minutes. Right now, TikTok is experiencing a period of exponential growth which means there’s a huge audience ready to be tapped into. Brands who’ve successfully pivoted to TikTok early have reaped huge brand awareness rewards, often with very little investment. 

Creating viral content on TikTok is much more attainable than it is on a platform like Facebook or Instagram. The video-sharing platform has a huge trend culture, but there are trends in every niche making it possible for your business to shine within yours.

How I approach social for my business and myself

I’m going to wrap things up by just talking about a couple things that I’m doing. People, for some reason, like to know what tools I’m using or what platforms I’m using. I will say, for a marketing consulting business like mine today, we are focused primarily on Facebook and Instagram. We certainly participate in LinkedIn, but Facebook and Instagram are the ones that we spend more time on because we feel like we can get the best type of engagement. We have limited resources so we want to go deeper in a couple places.

With the days of auto-publishing everything and going out and curating hundreds of posts, and making sure that you’re posting three times a day, Facebook has basically said, “We don’t want that. We don’t think that’s worth very much. If you do that we’re not going to show your content to very many people.”

Really, the approach that we have taken in Facebook is we want to promote on the business page. I have a personal page and a business page and those two both serve a business function for me. The personal page is more on the personal side of John Jantsch, the author, where the business page is meant to be more straight up Duct Tape Marketing stuff. Now, there’s some crossover upon occasion but that’s how we try to split it up. Now, as far as content goes, about 30% of the content is our ongoing content, the content that we’re producing on a daily and weekly basis.

About 25% is curated content from other sources, 25% is straight up business goals so we’ll promote a product, a new podcast episode, a webinar, an event that I’m doing that I want people to take advantage of because they may opt-in. It’s straight up business goals that we’re trying to meet. We will boost or advertise most of the content. Then, we like to look at, say, another 25% is about people, and culture, and personal observation. We round that out with our ongoing content that is on our editorial calendar. A fourth is curated from other sources, a fourth is aimed at meeting our business goals, and about a fourth is just people, culture, goofy stuff. That’s the mix that we like to go with on Facebook right now. That seems to be a good mix to create engagement and to create views, and to create comments. Then, we put routine or consistent advertising into Facebook as well, primarily as the two categories of our own ongoing content and of the content that supports our business goals.

As far as Instagram goes, Instagram recently introduced a business page type of account. You get some more insights and you get access to the advertising platform. I was on Instagram very, very early on and so I had an account that I just called Duct Tape Marketing. I used it as much as anything as a personal account but it had the Duct Tape brand.

I converted that to a business page and then I created a new page, John Jantsch, that I am sharing my primarily personal rambling of travel pictures and things of that nature and then sticking with promoting things much like we do with our Facebook content on Instagram on the business page. I recommend that you look into creating an Instagram business page if that is a platform for you.

Tools to consider using to amplify your social media strategy

As far as tools go for social media scheduling and management, I am and have been for many, many years a big fan of Buffer. A new social scheduling tool I’ve recently been testing out is MissingLtr – the platform offers quite a few more features than Buffer like advanced performance analytics, content curation, and more. However, I find myself actually publishing directly on the platforms a lot more now. It’s not maybe as efficient but I think you get the most bang for your buck. 

Facebook seems to like you to do that, especially if it’s videos or native videos or native photos that you’ve uploaded from your computer. Those seem to get shown more than anything else. Facebook and Twitter actually have some pretty good insights. Now, when you go over to the business side on Instagram you’ll actually get some analytics there. Really, from an engagement standpoint, either Buffer or MissingLtr are really great tools to monitor and respond to things of that nature.

A couple of tools that I often use for content creation are Canva and Headliner. Canva has tons of different templates you can use to create clean, unique graphics for Instagram to promote something like a new blog article or an upcoming webinar. Headliner allows you to easily create videos to promote things like a new podcast episode or blog article.

That’s kind of my take on where we are in social media. It’s all still about meeting objectives, both business and marketing objectives, and looking at the platforms that really allow you to do that. Again, I think half of these tools that are out there will do most of what you want and so it’s a matter of making a determination about the business objectives and marketing objectives you’re trying to meet. Just set up campaigns, set up tactics that are based on your strategy and you will ultimately win.

Answer this one question if you’re trying to make a decision about social media today: is the use of this tool or this practice or this tactic going to benefit my customers? I think if you can say “yes” to that, then you will always find a return on investment.

Word of mouth marketing is considered by many to be the most desired form of marketing. The trust, referrals, and overall brand-building buzz that’s garnered by customers spreading the good word to prospects are worth its weight in gold. Some products, services, and experiences naturally produce chatter, but there are certain things that any company can do to stimulate word of mouth and cash in on the buzz.

Here are six ways to get your customers talking about you and your organization:

1) Ask them – The best word of mouth starts with “word of listen.” Call your customers up and ask them why they buy, why they stick around, and why they tell their friends about you. You might be a bit surprised by their answers. Hint: it’s usually not the stuff you have in your new marketing brochure. You stand a far greater chance of attracting the right customers and the right buzz if you really understand what your current customers value about doing business with you. This goes for online and social media listening as well – what are they saying in Slack channels, blog comments, on LinkedIn, or Twitter?

2) Teach them – Sometimes great word of mouth just happens, but sometimes you’ve got to help it along. One way to do this is to make sure you are teaching your customers how to spot an ideal client, what a prospect in need might say when looking for your products, and how to properly and concisely describe how your company is different. Of course, in today’s hyper-social media world you should also be teaching your happiest customers how to write reviews on Yelp, Google My Business, Facebook Ratings and Reviews, Insider Pages, and CitySearch-type rating sites.

3) Star them – Letting a customer testimonial or success story go uncaptured or untold is downright criminal in WOM circles. Today you can easily record customer testimonials on an iPhone or Android or you can start doing video interviews over Zoom to record their success stories. These “real life” bits of content are gold and turn your featured customers into talking referral billboards for your brand. Want to take this idea up a notch? Hold a customer party and film a dozen or so at one time in a great atmosphere – this alone will get your customers talking.

4) Include them – People like to be asked what they think, it’s just human nature, but it’s also a great way to get some sound advice. Create a round table discussion group made up of select customers and charge them with advising you once a quarter or so on new marketing and business initiatives. (Reward them for this in some way as well.) This can include advising on everything from a product extension to the look and feel of your website redesign. Members of your marketing round table will become natural ambassadors for the brand. (You can do this with simple video chat meetings – Zoom or GoogleMeet)

5) Video them – People are more likely to respond t0 a personalized video over a generic one any day. People’s email inboxes and newsfeeds are flooded with businesses trying to sell to them so much so that it’s hard to stand out in all of the noise today. One-to-one video is a highly effective way to stand out in the crowd. You can use a tool like Loom to send a prospect a quick personalized message about something you saw on their website, invite a lead to sign up for an event you’re having that you think would be valuable to them, or follow up with a potential client with a personalized video instead of an email.

6) Surprise them – I like to think I saved the best for last – few things get people talking faster than surprising them. This can include doing something that was out of the blue and much appreciated to just giving them more than they bargained for. I remember a PR firm that was pitching me some business and the account rep showed up to meet with an apple pie (I’m still talking about it.) I once worked with a financial planner that hired a mobile auto detail firm to detail his customer’s cars during their annual review – that created some buzz.

The bottom line of course is that you’ve got to do good work, do something that somebody appreciates, and create an experience worth talking about, but then, prime the pump and leverage all that greatness.

Far too often businesses of all sizes leave the official job of marketing to, well, the marketing department, which is frequently known as the owner of the business or top salesperson turned into the marketing person. 

But, here’s a little newsflash – marketing is everybody’s job. Anyone associated with your business that comes into contact with a prospect or customer is performing a marketing function. It’s not just the people with marketing in their titles. So the question is – are these people prepared to carry out that function well?

Marketing isn’t just a new ad campaign, an email series, or this month’s current promotion. It is so much deeper than that. Marketing needs to permeate every aspect of your business and be a part of every person’s job description, from the admin department to the managing partners and so on. That’s why internal marketing and official marketing training is so important. 

What’s internal marketing?

If you think that the people outside of your marketing department understand what the marketing team does and why it matters to your business, you’re wrong. 

Internal marketing is essentially promoting your company’s goals, vision, products, and services to your own employees. Customers’ feelings and attitudes toward a company are based on far more than just the products or services you offer, but the overall experience they have with your business. And your entire organization is included in that experience.

The ultimate goal of internal marketing is to ensure that your employees can provide value to prospects or customers because they understand and believe in your company’s brand, goals and vision. And perhaps, you can teach them what they can do to help.

I believe that one of the smartest things any business can do is create and perform official marketing training for everyone in the business. Again, this goes for delivery people, administrative people, and finance-related people (especially finance-related people).

I’ve outlined an example of what should be included in an internal marketing training program that you can use for your own company.

Guide your internal marketing training program with this outline

Once a quarter at a minimum (and with every new hire that joins the company) conduct an all-hands brand meeting.

This internal seminar can and should include training and examples on things like:

• Why you named your company what we did – attach this to your personal story
• What colors, images, fonts are official and why – create a simple style manual of standards to share with everyone
• Your core marketing message and why – help everyone connect their position to the message
• The way you want the brand to be thought of in the market – your goal, your one word of association
• Benefits of your products and services – demo them and present them just like you would to a customer
• Description of your ideal customer – use photos and success stories of real customers
• Your current lead generation activities – show off ads, landing pages, run radio spots – sell them on the campaign
• Your lead conversion process – everyone should know the next step when a prospect calls
• Key marketing metrics – sales generated, leads generated, referrals generated, PR generated, social media growth
• Your marketing calendar – show everyone you have a plan for the future

In addition, I would help everyone write or rewrite some aspect of their position to include a direct relationship to the marketing function they perform. 

For example, an administrative person who primarily answers the phone might have the directive to answer the phone and route calls to the proper person, but in a marketing world, that person’s directive is to answer the phone and act as the very first impression and representation of the brand. Now, could that change that person’s role in a powerful way, I’ve seen it happen.

Then take it up a notch and create marketing scorecards for everyone. Simply list all the marketing-related ways that every position in your organization can score marketing points throughout the day and turn it into a game. ie – asking for and getting a referral, turning a customer complaint into a win, writing a blog post, participating in a social network, sending a hand-written thank you note, giving a referral, making a contact at a Chamber event. Challenge everyone to score X amount of marketing points each week and create an award program as part of your marketing workshops.

Getting marketing understanding and buy-in from your entire team makes them feel more empowered to act on behalf of the brand and better ambassadors wherever they encounter prospects and customers. Think about it – if you have two marketers out of a ten-person company, what would you rather: two people or an entire team of ten promoting your company’s work to the rest of the world?

One of the ways to create goodwill, positive buzz, and happy customers is to exceed expectations. Responding proactively to problems is, in my opinion, one of the easiest ways to exceed the expectations available.

Problems happen, that’s a fact. You can choose to respond to customer challenges, problems, let downs, screw-ups, and mistakes in one of two ways. You can ignore them and create the kind of friction that drags your trust into the ground or you can respond in such an over-the-top, out of control, nobody does that kind of way that can turn problems into gold mines. If you want to exceed expectations, choose the latter!

For the longest time, Nordstrom had a policy that granted refunds with no receipt, no time limit, no questions asked. A variation of that policy still remains today. This policy is often an example given whenever someone talks about customer service. But it’s really a signature response to a customer problem, and it’s become something that creates incredible word of mouth for them.

Creating what I call your signature response to problem-solving takes a little thought, planning, implementation, and even training, but it can become a very valuable tool for your organization. I’ve mapped out four things you can do to quickly, proactively, and creatively address customer problems with a signature response of your own. 

1. Invite and reward customer feedback

The first step to making problem-solving a core marketing system is to encourage your customers to tell you when something’s not right. This may sound like a simple thing, but there is plenty of research that suggests somewhere near 90% of your customers experiencing an issue will simply go away quietly unhappy.

You should clearly state in all your marketing copy that you welcome feedback and won’t rest until your customer is thrilled. Spell out guarantees, return policies, and make it very obvious how to get in touch with you via phone, mail, live chat, web, or email. You should also build satisfaction surveys, results reviews, and even random phone follow-ups into your standard operating procedures.

Of course, it’s not enough to just ask for feedback and then send it down a black hole; you’ve got to respond.

2. Create a response

In order to get the full impact with this idea, you need to design the manner in which you will automatically respond in order to solve a customer problem. Some of this can and should be handled through clearly spelled out, no strings attached, guarantees, and return policies, but you need to add some flair as well. Adding some creativity in this step is how you turn a response into a signature response. For example, does the CEO show-up with a bouquet of flowers, does the customer immediately receive a month of service free and a dedicated service rep to help guide them through the challenge, do you do whatever it takes to make it right?

The key here is to do something that gets the customer the result they are after but also offers a little ‘wow’ that they can’t help but notice because it was unexpected.

Occasionally, we receive notes from customers who have purchased one of our products but feel it isn’t what they thought it would and want to return it. We cheerfully refund their purchase price, but instead of asking them to return it, we ask that they make it a gift to another business owner. It’s a pretty simple thing on our part, but it really creates a warm response each time we offer it.

3. Act quickly

Speed matters in problem-solving – especially in a technology-filled world that caters to and sustains our desires of instant gratification. You need to act quickly. A fast response time makes customers feel that their concerns are important. In a study by CMO Council, the most important attribute of a good customer experience, according to the customers themselves, is a fast response time.

Zappos is well known for its incredible customer support. They have live chat, email, phone, and social support available 24/7. Customers expect their problems to be solved and fast – it’s another prime example of a signature response they designed for themselves.

4. Empower your team to fix the problem

Another really important piece of the problem-solving puzzle is blame. When you make a mistake, admit it, and move to fix it. When your customer makes a mistake, well, move to fix it. There’s no gain in getting the customer to admit they were wrong, even when they are. One of my favorite business expressions said to my staff in my best dad voice is: Fix the problem, not the blame.

The way to make sure that your signature response to problems is actually delivered as designed is to empower your staff to fix the problem, not the blame!

Let them know that while you have a set of policies designed to make their life simple and your business profitable, they can do what it takes to make the customer happy. Now, if that makes you more than a little nervous that you will be taken advantage of then perhaps you need to refine whom you are attracting as customers. There will always be people who try to take advantage of your willingness to please, but the key lies in setting the proper expectations upfront in all of your marketing messages.

Saving a deal gone bad by reacting in a way that is generally unexpected is how you create positive buzz and customers for life.

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With over 2 billion users on Facebook (and still climbing), Facebook should continue to be part of your overall marketing strategy to engage with current customers and reach new audiences.

It seems as if there’s always some new feature on Facebook to conquer. So whether you have a well-established Page or you’re just starting, follow this list to optimize your profile to get the best results for your business in 2021.

1. Add a strong Call to Action button

A strong call-to-action button on your Facebook business Page is imperative. The bright blue button is the primary means of driving some sort of action on your Page. This can include sending traffic to your website, direct messages, signups, and more. This appears right below your cover photo. 

You choose what action you’d like visitors to take based on what you think is best for your business. For example, if you’re a dentist’s office, your CTA might be to ‘Book Now’ or ‘Call Now’ to make an appointment versus a ‘Shop Now’ button. Today, there’s a long list of options to choose from – so if multiple CTAs apply to your business, you have the opportunity to experiment with the options available to see what works most effectively. 

2. Fill out your Facebook Business Page profile in detail

This is a simple step. But it’s something businesses can neglect to take full advantage of. A completely filled-out profile sends the message to your audience that you’re engaged. There are a ton of sections where you can add more information about your business. Here are a few:

• Description/About
• Location
• Contact details (include your phone number and email)
• Website address
• Other social media accounts (Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, etc.)
• Hours of operation

Social media is a place where people go to understand who you are as a business and gain trust. Consistency across all of your social media channels is crucial, along with keeping your information accurate and up to date.

3. Utilize Facebook Messenger

Giving your visitors and customers an easy way to communicate with you gives you a competitive advantage. Messenger is a great way to enhance the user experience on your Page and showcase how well your business provides quality service. Speed is imperative today – setting up automatic messages with Messenger can go a long way. A few options you can do are:

• Set up a welcome greeting when someone begins a conversation with your Page
• Create and save frequently used replies
• Turn away messages during your out of office hours

4. Encourage your customers to leave reviews

Social proof is so important. Think about it – how often do you buy from, let’s say, an Amazon seller with zero reviews? How often do you buy from anywhere that has no reviews? Likely less often. And even so, when you do buy from someone with few reviews or social proof, there’s a lot more hesitation and time needed for consideration.

Encouraging your existing customers to leave reviews on your Facebook Page gives you the opportunity to engage in conversation with existing customers and builds an additional layer of trust with new audiences.

5. Choose or update your Page template so that it is in line with your business goals

A few years ago, Facebook launched templates for business Pages. This is a feature that offers a variety of Page layouts that you can choose from to best suit your specific business.

There are ten options for you to choose from. You can change your template under the ‘Templates and Tabs’ section in your Page settings.  The template you choose determines the order in which your sections appear with the timeline feed and tabs. When you’re deciding which template to use, consider what the goal of your business is. 

6. Experiment with different types of featured cover photos

Your Page cover photo is a digital sign for your business. It’s the first thing people see when they visit your Page. It’s your first “conversation” with your customers, and it can have many uses.

You can use it to showcase a new product or service, announce an upcoming event, promote an upcoming book release, direct users to take action, the list goes on. Your business Page serves a purpose – so when you’re thinking about a cover photo, factor in what your business goals are so that you create something with purpose as opposed to just an aesthetically appealing image.

Not only can you upload a still cover image, but you can now experiment with different creative types like video or a slide show.

With Facebook being the widest-reaching social network around, there’s no doubt your potential customers are visiting your Page. Ensuring your business Page is optimized is something that you can’t afford not to do, and it’s a great opportunity for your business to make a lasting first impression. Go through this list with your Page and optimize where you can.

This post was brought to you by NapoleonCat, one of the leading social media management tools available on the market.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in May 2016 and has been revamped and updated for accuracy and comprehensiveness.

Taking care of your social media presence is just as crucial as creating brilliant content for your audience. Not only do you share valuable information with them, but you can also engage with them, receive valuable feedback and ideas for topics, connect with other people in your industry, and reach out to influencers, among other things.

However, since there are so many popular social networks you need to be a part of – plus new ones are continually being added to the mix – it’s nearly impossible to manage all of those accounts manually. Fortunately, there are plenty of free social media management and scheduling tools you can use to make your job and your life much easier. Let’s take a look at the 6 most effective.

1. Later

Instagram is one of the most popular social networks, with over 1 billion users active on the platform each month. Later started as an app dedicated to Instagram as a scheduling tool, but since its inception, they’ve added support for other social networks and are continuously adding new features. The app has a strong focus on visual content. Whether you want to schedule in-feed image or video posts, stories, or carousel posts — Later supports all of these options. Later has a free plan available that you can use forever, but you get features such as analytics, saved captions, scheduled stories, and more for paid plans. Their paid plans start at $9/month.

2. TweetDeck

Those who rely on Twitter to get their message across will find much to like about TweetDeck. TweetDeck is a free application that enables you to manage multiple (unlimited) Twitter accounts from a unified interface. You can create your own customizable social media dashboard that allows you to send and receive tweets and manage and monitor your Twitter profiles. You can use TweetDeck as a web app, Chrome app, or desktop app. TweetDeck can be set to post scheduled tweets, build Tweet lists, and more. And the extra special part is that it’s always free.

3. Canva

Social media is increasingly becoming more and more visual. Canva is an excellent tool for anyone managing social media accounts to use. You can create designer-level marketing assets using any of the thousands of ready-made designs they have available to you. Now, you can even connect your social channels and publish or schedule directly from Canva. They have a free version available, which gives you decent access to great pre-made templates. The pro plan gives you access to all of the templates for only $12.95/month.

4. Hootsuite

Hootsuite is one of the most established and popular apps for social media scheduling and marketing. You can use it to schedule posts, receive in-depth reports, and collaborate with your team members, thanks to built-in teamwork features. It enables you to view multiple streams at once and monitor what your customers are saying. There is a free limited plan available for 3 social profiles and up to 30 scheduled messages.

5. Buffer

Buffer is also one of the best apps for managing your social media presence and scheduling your posts. The app also comes with analytics tools that enable you to track your audience’s activity and figure out when it is the best time to post in the future. We especially love its Chrome extension, which integrates itself seamlessly and never gets in the way, yet it is always there when you need it. It is a more straightforward and more effective way of managing your social media, and you are never more than a few clicks away from setting up anything you want. Buffer supports over 7 different platforms – you can add up to 4 on the free plan.

6. Planable

Planable is a social media collaboration tool helping marketers work together better & faster. So, if you care for efficiency, this is the tool to consider. It’s one of the most visual platforms allowing marketers to create, plan, collaborate, review, and schedule social media content. It supports the most popular social media networks: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, TikTok, YouTube, and Google My Business. Planable is 100% focused on collaboration and approval so it allows you to get feedback on each post, have conversations, request & get approval, and  schedule automatically. They’ve got a free plan to get you started — so you can test all the features for the first 50 posts.

Bonus Tool: ContentCal

ContentCal is the ultimate tool for bringing your team together. You can share ideas with, create approval workflows, build your content plan and then publish that content to multiple platforms (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Google My Business, YouTube, and Medium). ContentCal’s analytics will help you understand your content performance and the latest ‘Respond’ features act as a shared inbox for monitoring and responding to mentions, messages, and comments across social media.

One of the star features is the fact that ContentCal integrates with over 2000 other applications so that you can create the perfect social media workflow by connecting ContentCal to tools you currently use (think of things like Slack or Trello) and also distribute content to channels beyond social media, like emails and blog posts. The best content is created together. Involve your team (and clients) into the content creation process, share ideas, gain feedback and watch your content performance soar!

While managing your social media presence and getting your content to reach a wider audience is a challenging task, there are some things you can do to make it easier on yourself. That includes relying on apps to help you handle the jobs which don’t require you to use your creative capacities, and that includes scheduling. We hope you will find these apps helpful. Good luck!

Kenneth Waldman is a Professional Writer and also a Blog Editor at Essay Mama. The areas of his interest include the latest education trends and technologies, digital marketing, social media. You can get in touch with him on Twitter. 

When you first start your business, you’re wearing every hat—you’re overseeing every single aspect of the company:

Accounting, check. 

Sales outreach, add it to your to-do list.

Administrative work, it’s not going to do itself.

And let’s not forget, you’re the full-time Marketing director, too.

Your list of roles and responsibilities goes on. And these things add up quickly. Most entrepreneurs suffer from the belief that they can do it all. But eventually, there will come a time when you’ll have to admit that doing everything yourself is no longer effective. 

So that’s why we’ve created the last guide you’ll ever need to help you find and hire someone you can trust to take some work off of your plate.

Signs that it’s time to hire someone to help you

1. When you just can’t seem to find enough time 

When you’re spread too thin tending to every other aspect of your business, your days start to get longer and longer. Your to-do list becomes more than just a list—it becomes pages. And things start to get put on the back burner—like your marketing efforts.

2. When you’re constantly fixing mistakes and putting out fires

When you’re strapped for time and in a hurry, the quality of your work suffers. Mistakes happen—and you’re busy fixing things instead of creating. 

Marketing mistakes can cost your business a lot of lost revenue. When this happens, it’s time to take a step back and look for additional help.

3. When you find yourself doing repetitive tasks

As the business owner, your attention should be focused on leading, pitching your products/services, and managing your big picture operations. 

If you’re finding yourself working on a laundry list of repetitive tasks like social media scheduling, managing clients, or preparing marketing reports, it’s time to bring in help to allow you to focus on the big picture.

4. When you lack consistency in your marketing efforts

If you want your campaigns to produce results, your marketing needs constant attention and consistent effort. Writing a random blog post every couple of months, sending a one-off email promoting a new product, or following a content calendar sometimes—isn’t going to cut it. 

You can’t expect the garden to grow if you don’t water it.

If you can relate to any of these telltale signs, it’s time to bring in someone who can tend to marketing your business, regularly—like a Marketing Manager. The job is too important to do in your spare time.

What a Marketing Manager does

A Marketing Manager helps with daily marketing activities and initiatives of a company. 

They work on building brand awareness, managing social media, planning and implementing marketing campaigns, creating content for SEO and traffic growth, tracking and analyzing performance data, and the list goes on. 

To be sure you’re hiring the right person for the job, you need to know what to look for in a Marketing Manager. 

What a typical day looks like for a Marketing Manager

Each day can be different, but some of the most common activities you can delegate to a Manager are things like

• Creating content for publishing on your blog
• Managing and engaging with social media accounts
• Writing newsletters to send out to your list
• Designing collateral and assets for social media
• Writing landing page copy to support promotional campaign

These are a few things that may take up the day for a Marketing Manager. They often wear many different hats and usually have a long list of responsibilities. 

The skills to look for when you’re hiring a Marketing Manager

These are the 6 core skills you should look for when you’re hiring someone in-house to help with marketing. 

1. Creativity—they’re creative. They use out-of-the-box thinking to ideate and develop strategies on how to drive growth for your business.

2. Writing—they’ll be responsible for creating a lot of content. It’s imperative they understand how to write for audiences in a way that captures their attention and connects with them on a deeper level.

3. Research—they’re investigators. They need solid research skills to keep up with new trends in the industry as it relates to your business’ target audience.

4. Omni-channel and social savvy—they’re a versatile marketer. They understand that the customer journey isn’t linear. They should know how to implement marketing tactics and strategies across all marketing channels: email, social, paid, SEO, and content.

5. Critical thinking—they’re inquisitive and analytical. They should be able to understand and leverage data to guide marketing decisions and the overall strategy.

6. Project management—they’re a project management pro. They should know how to juggle and manage multiple projects and initiatives at once.

What a job description for a Marketing Manager position should include

The job itself varies based on the needs of your company. Here’s an example job description including the core responsibilities and qualifications you should include in your Marketing Manager job post:

Responsibilities:

• Research and analyze customers’ behavior and insights, consumer trends, market analysis, and marketing best practices to build successful strategies
• Plan, create, and implement strategic marketing campaigns that align with company goals
• Organize promotional assets and campaigns for new products/services launches
• Set up and maintain tracking systems for online marketing activities
• Write content for campaigns across various channels such as social media, email, and blog
• Manage all online channels of production, including website, social media pages, email campaigns, and responses
• Create, maintain and strengthen the organization’s overall brand through all media avenues
• Create and distribute content on key channels to reach new audiences

Requirements:

• Proven work experience in digital marketing and knowledge of content management, creative writing, advertising concepts and vendor negotiations
• Demonstrable experience with social media marketing, email marketing, advertising campaigns, marketing databases and analytics, and SEO/SEM
• Knowledge of traditional marketing tools
• Critical thinker with strong problem-solving and research proficiencies
• Solid knowledge of website and marketing analytics tools
• Highly creative with experience in identifying target audiences and planning digital campaigns that engage, inform, and motivate
• Knowledge of various Content Management Systems (CMS)
• Solid organizational skills and detail oriented
• Ability to work under pressure and meet deadlines
• Superb written and verbal communication skills
• Ability to simplify complex information into a user-friendly format

Find world-class marketing candidates by looking in these places

Luckily, there are many places where marketers hang out. Social media, networking sites, job boards—since most marketers have an online presence, there are a lot of places you can look to find talent. Here’s a few places to start:

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a great place to start. You can post your job there as well as source for candidates based on their title.

Freelancer sites

Upwork and Fiverr are sites that are dedicated to hiring talent and finding jobs. You can browse profiles and reach out to folks to invite them to apply for your open job. People can also find your job posting and apply on their own.

Facebook groups

There are many Facebook groups that are made up of people with specific skill sets (e.g. Content Marketers, The Copywriter Club, Remote Marketing Jobs). People often add posts about jobs to groups, and these kinds of posts typically get a ton of engagement.

Job boards

Larger job boards like Indeed, CareerBuilder, or Monster have a plethora of candidates with all levels of experience. There are also marketing job boards you can check out like VentureBeat, CrunchBoard, or Mashable.

Interview questions to ask marketing job candidates

You should ask questions that give the candidate an opportunity to show how they think about and work on problems. 

What’s an example of a lead-generating campaign you’d be excited to work on here?

This question gives the candidate an opportunity for on-the-spot brainstorming. It highlights what they know about your company and if they did any interview prep prior.

Share an example of a challenge you faced at one of your previous employers.

How a person responds when the going gets tough or when they’re caught in a difficult situation is important. This question hones in on how they handle those situations. 

Quickly onboard your new Marketing Manager with these 3 steps

If you want to get your Marketing Manager productive quickly, here are a few things you can do to set them up for success:

1. Give them access to your marketing tech stack—you want to be able to manage the tasks and projects your Manager is working on. Giving them access to the programs and tools your team uses is important for transparency and accountability.
2. Integrate them with your team—most people work best where they feel ‘part of the team’. They’ll communicate better with you and your team. This is especially important for marketing roles where collaboration is key.
3. Get them to interview a few of your best customers—a quick way for your new team member to learn about your business quickly is to learn directly from your audience and have them interview your customers.

Two things are almost always in short supply for small business owners: time and money. Is it worth it to spend money on a Marketing Manager if it frees up your time and contributes to the growth of your business? 

The answer is most likely yes. By hiring a Marketing Manager, you get to take some things off of your plate and focus on the big picture. Not only do you get some of your time back, but now you have someone whose job’s main purpose is to focus on efforts that will grow your business. Pick the right one, and your return on investment should outweigh the initial cost.