124: How to Tackle the Social Media Problem in Your Business

1. Social media is just one piece of your business strategy. It’s easy to think that posting on social media will transform your business, but you also need a strong sales and marketing strategy to back up your efforts. 

2. If you’re struggling to post consistently, consider hiring a social media manager. Building an online presence is time consuming, so if you and your team are overwhelmed, it’s probably time to outsource. 

3. Organization is the key to managing social media effectively. Invest in a scheduling tool and make sure you’re storing everything in one place.

Theresa Summerlin:

Response times. I think it is really important.

Ryan Fitzgerald:

Welcome to One Next Step, the most practical business podcast in the world. You’re now one simple tip, practical tool and small step away from growing your business. One Next Step is brought to you by BELAY, the incredible 100% remote organization, revolutionizing productivity with Virtual Assistants, Bookkeepers and Social Media Managers. Accomplish more, juggle less. Modern staffing from BELAY. And now to your hosts.

Lisa Zeeveld:

Welcome to One Next Step, the practical business podcast that helps you run your business so it stops running you. I’m LZ and with me as always is my amazing co-host Ryan.

Ryan Fitzgerald:

Hey, LZ, I’m excited about today. We’ve got a great conversation lined up for our listeners. Today, our very own VP of Marketing, Amy Appleton, will be talking with one of our Solutions Consultants here at BELAY, Teresa Summerland, and they’re gonna be talking all about some of the biggest problems business owners face when it comes to social media management.

Lisa Zeeveld:

Yeah, there’s so much to talk about there. Now, if you’re listening to this episode, you probably understand that social media can be a great tool for connecting with people, but are you actually taking advantage of all the opportunities that it can provide? Whether you’re running all of your own social media or outsourcing it to other team members, Teresa and Amy will share a few different solutions that can help you make the best use of your time on social media. They’ll also offer advice to listeners who want to hire a social media manager, but don’t know if they’re quite ready yet.

Ryan Fitzgerald:

Speaking of outsourcing, LZ, let’s talk about hiring for a moment. As a business owner, you eventually realize you can’t do everything yourself, but hiring is complicated. And what if you only need part-time help? Your job is to be the visionary, but instead you spend countless hours on tasks that could be done easily and arguably better by someone else. That’s where BELAY can help with modern subscription staffing, offering Virtual Assistants, Bookkeepers, Website Specialists, and Social Media Managers for growing organizations. Accomplish more, juggle less. Modern staffing from BELAY. And now let’s jump into today’s conversation.

Amy Appleton:

Welcome, Teresa. How are you doing today?

Theresa Summerlin:

Doing great. I hope you are?

Amy Appleton:

I am. I am. Well, as always, we are gonna start with just a fun question to kick this off. So, you know, as a BELAY employee, you know how much we debate this question, so I have to ask, if you could only use one utensil for the rest of your life, would it be a fork or a spoon? And why?

Theresa Summerlin:

I’m gonna be probably in the minority camp here because I know we have a lot of forkers. Forkers that is. So I do wanna say I’m a spoon.

Amy Appleton:

How come? Teresa!

Theresa Summerlin:

Now I know that you can pick up soup and you can drink it, but I really enjoy the process of like soup and the spoon, and I like to stir my tea and I like to stir. So I just really like the etiquette behind a spoon. That’s it.

Amy Appleton:

Okay. Well, I appreciate you going ahead and prefacing things like, well, I know you can pick up soup and drink it, and all the things that all of us forks immediately start to argue when people pick the spoon. So you are a part of the minority and that’s okay.

Theresa Summerlin:

That’s okay. That’s okay.

Amy Appleton:

Well, today we are going to have a great conversation about social media management. So I want to know, in your experience when you’re talking daily with leaders, what do you hear are the biggest problems from them dealing with social media in their business?

Theresa Summerlin:

Yeah, so primarily what I hear first and foremost is that the leader is really not savvy in that world and those that are — because there are some that are savvy with social — but they simply don’t have the bandwidth, right? So it becomes a last priority instead of a first priority.

Amy Appleton:

Yeah.

Theresa Summerlin:

If it should be, it should be. And if not, then that’s another whole conversation.

Amy Appleton:

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, and some of the things that they like could be missing out on because they’re not on social. Like one of the things is maybe perspective customers, depending on what their business is or, do you ever hear kind of their fears of like, ‘Oh, I’m, I’m not on social’ or ‘I should be more on social’ What are kind of those maybe hesitations or fears that they feel like because they’re not great at?

Theresa Summerlin:

Sometimes what I hear is ‘All the cool kids are doing it. All the cool kids are on social.’ So I usually start by asking the question, ‘Why? Why do you think you need to be on social media for your business?’ And when they work through that answer, usually I do hear that it is just part of where we are in today’s world. So we dive a little deeper. Is this is it critical to the success of your business or is it more of a placement solidifying your brand or solidifying your existence even? Some clients are just there solidifying the fact that I exist as a company and others rely on social to continue the strong growth that they’ve had with success.

Amy Appleton:

Yeah. And you know, I think it’s one of those things where everybody knows you should be there because that’s where the attention is, or they think they should be there because that’s where kind of people are actually spending their time and then trying to figure out, you know, should I be there? And then what does that look like for me as the organization? Do you hear that?

Theresa Summerlin:

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, social kind of sits at the intersection between sales, marketing, and even client experience. So I try to have that conversation. Do we, do you really understand what social media is? Some people have the understanding that it is the end-all and it is going to take their business to the next level.

Amy Appleton:

Maybe, maybe not, right?

Theresa Summerlin:

Right, right. It’s but one spoke in the wheel that can certainly lead to success, but that’s why I think it’s so important to really understand what that social media will, what that spoke is and how it’s defined in the full marketing plan.

Amy Appleton:

Yeah. No, I would agree with that. It can be one piece of a much bigger thing. So I completely, completely agree with you. I know it is, you know, for what we do at BELAY, I know that it’s one piece of a much larger, our wheel of marketing essentially. So if you talk to a leader, though, and they are spending, so let’s say they are doing their own social media, what are some of the risks or what kind of, how do you guide people out of maybe that’s not the best use of your time?

Theresa Summerlin:

So one of the things I hear often is that maybe they started or they had someone, they had a volunteer, they had a teammate that or a team member that actually addressed social and things shift. And then that becomes less of a priority for whomever. Because it’s a consistency game as well. So I think that’s the biggest thing to realize is if you can’t be consistent with it, with the team that you have and maintain the quality and maintain every other responsibility that you have, it might be time to look at a social media manager, but there’s things that have to be in place. You and I both know for this to be truly the most effective next step.

Amy Appleton:

Right. No, I think that’s a great thing. You know, to your point, a lot of people, just like any other position that they’re kind of scaling, it can start with like them, the volunteer, then maybe it’s, I don’t know, someone else in the office that can do it. Then it’s, you’re getting to those points where it becomes almost a low-value task for those people. And there, there are other things. Eventually, it does become a specialty that you need to understand. It’s not just about the number of times that you’re posting, right? That’s, that’s not the end all be all of being on, on social media, which I feel like when it’s someone else doing it, volunteer, whatever, sometimes we can start focusing on like, ‘Oh, I’m supposed to post three times a day, always all the time.’

Theresa Summerlin:

Right? And so it becomes very quantitative versus qualitative. So I think too, that’s when, when you’re only living by the numbers that it might be assigned to take a look at what it would look like to have a specialist. So, I think that on the surface execution is one thing, but strategy and understanding even the relationships of platforms, I mean, it’s not your garden variety platforms only. Now there’s vertical-specific social media platforms. People are getting very sophisticated in the way they want to consume their content. And so a social media manager not only knows how to engage and create that social content, but they should be able to initiate campaigns that are let’s say, kind of edgy, just kind of bordering on taking risks, but at the same time practicing great business etiquette. So those types of things, I think it stops when you’ve got a team member that this is just a part of their daily or weekly responsibility, right? They’re not gonna have that depth of knowledge that a someone that specializes in social media would have. I think that’s also a telltale sign when you sort of hit the bottom of your knowledge tank when it comes to social.

Amy Appleton:

You know, and I think one of the things that you have to do is determine are you on the right platform? And if you just have general knowledge of all of them, you think you need to be there, or you might just be there because you’re there personally. But when you have a specialist that they’re able to actually identify which ones you should actually be on instead of doing all of them okay.

Theresa Summerlin:

Right. I agree. And that’s where that qualitative versus quantitative approach comes in. I think too, a specialist will work very hard to understand the audience. Facebook attracts a demographic that’s quite different than Instagram. So the strategist will understand that and post and execute accordingly and evaluate, shift and pivot according to the qualitative data that they gather from reporting.

Amy Appleton:

Yeah, absolutely. And you mentioned, I mean, we kind of we’re kind of throwing around probably what I would say is the big, the big three — Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, but Twitter is also very, depending on your industry, and then we haven’t even gotten to the ones, if you’re a consumer product and you have a target demographic of, I mean, I know a million people on TikTok, they’re all my age. It’s just not my kids anymore. And figuring out that platform or YouTube is actually considered a social platform in that. So it really can expand beyond just your the big four, there’s now a whole nother group of ones that you may or may not want to explore being on.

Theresa Summerlin:

Right. And really as an owner, do you have time to do that?

Amy Appleton:

No.

Theresa Summerlin:

Like I said earlier, the vertical sort of platforms where certain verticals are building community, I mean, essentially they’re, they are creating their own social platforms like Discord and some of these that I’ve never even heard of on a call and I have to plead ignorant. Like, I don’t know. But I think the days of just having those primary platforms and someone that only knows Instagram only knows Facebook, in my opinion, are coming to a close.

Amy Appleton:

Yeah, I would agree. The other ones, they’re, they’re coming up strong, and they are and can be important other places to be. And it’s fun to be able to be in on the kind of the ground floor of new social channels and kind of be a trailblazer. I know that I’m sure a lot of people that you’re talking with every day consider themselves trailblazers in a lot of ways. and so to have that, someone who can specialize in social and do that kind of trailblazing makes a lot of sense. 

Amy Appleton:

What advice do you have when they’re really concerned to kind of take the leap where they feel like the system that they have in place, they maybe know that it’s working okay, but they have concerns. What are the usual concerns that you would hear and then how do you kind of give them confidence or advice that you give them?

Theresa Summerlin:

In my conversations, I really wanna make sure that, that because we have multiple service lines, that they are being put in the right service line and the client that isn’t ready, I really want them to know why, right? And just to kind of backtrack a little bit on that thought, there is a point where I believe the client is needing to level up. And when they understand that they’re ready to level up, that is a good client for BELAY or for any business owner to think about: Now I need a social media manager. Starting from ground zero and wanting to dive into the pool of social media is gonna be a little bit more of a difficult — it can be done — but it’s a little bit more difficult road to be on. And so I really want the client to understand where they sit and why.

Theresa Summerlin:

And the hesitations I think are sometimes around are they going to understand my audience? Are they gonna understand our brand? Will they be able to interact and affect my client experience and have conversation in our voice and representing who we are? So I do hear those reservations from the client that is ready. So I remind them that there is sort of the agency approach, nothing wrong with that. And then there’s the boutique-ish approach where your person that is managing social media will take the time to really understand what your brand is and where you sit currently in terms of digital assets and collateral to be used in the social campaigns as well. So those, for the client that’s ready, those are more the reservations that I hear is will they truly understand our brand and what we’re trying to do with social?

Amy Appleton:

I mean, I can imagine having a designated person then is very nice for them to have that person that they can go to that can learn the brand, but then is able to respond on the behalf and on the behalf of the brand. I mean, I guess that’s true of anyone that they would hire to have come in and do it, or anyone really who’s gonna be in a customer service aspect of their business. I mean, that’s just part of it, just part of the onboarding is learning the brand. And I know that social media managers also have a skillset and they just ask really good questions so that they can determine what’s important to the brand, the brand tone, all of those kind of the true marketing questions that also allow them to represent a brand well.

Theresa Summerlin:

Right. Absolutely. Not only in their online communications, but even just going back to what are they posting, right? So what graphics and how are words formatted and what tone is used? But you know, you just mentioned something about a team member, whether this is a full-time individual or not, but response times. I think it is really important to realize that on social, I mean, people expect as quick, if not quicker of a response to a question or to a comment. So that’s also important when you’re thinking about adding the social media manager to your team, that’s something you’re probably gonna get a good improvement over. So if you don’t have somebody that can be responsive, because that’s what consumers expect, like I said, even more so on social, then it might be time to think about a specialist that is literally checking in on your platforms, paying attention to the notifications that they’re getting when there has been a note or a comment made.

Amy Appleton:

Yeah. You’re right because people are so used to now communicating within the messaging within the platforms. The the direct messaging and they, you’re right, they’re anticipating response time as if they emailed or as if they called. That is the response time that is expected in those, the messengers that are built into all those different platforms. Well, what would you tell, what’s one step that someone can take to make managing their social media just a little bit easier?

Theresa Summerlin:

If they’re doing it themselves?

Amy Appleton:

If they’re doing it themselves.

Theresa Summerlin:

Yeah. Get a good scheduling tool. Do some research. Identify what your assets are, and keep them organized. I think when, again, you’ve got the business leader that’s trying to do it all, the solopreneur that’s trying to do it all, now it becomes the CEO’s responsibility and they’re really busy too. Having the bandwidth and the margin to even create the posts is a challenge. And so I believe that making sure that your content library or the collateral that you do have is fresh and organized so that when you do go to create a post, or when you do go to spend some time focused time on building out some posts, you’re not scrambling every single time. That’s why it becomes a last priority. Well, there’s a couple of reasons why I think, but that’s primarily it. It’s just that requires some attention and focus and a lot of organization.

Amy Appleton:

Yeah, it absolutely does. You rattled off fantastic tips for people who are doing it themselves just to make it just a little bit easier on them. And I feel like the organization piece that you just began to touch on is huge. And we’ll set them up for success for later as well. Absolutely. Well, Theresa, this has been such a great conversation. So I hope you’ll stick around for a little bit so that we can ask you one more question, really about the pros and cons of having your VA or EA manage social media for you and your business. You don’t wanna miss it to hear that clip, subscribe to our email list and we’ll send you a link to our bonus content or visit onenextsteppodcast.com. Or you can find a link in our show notes.

Ryan Fitzgerald:

What a great conversation between Amy and Theresa. Theresa really has seen and heard it all over the last eight years, and we are grateful for her valuable insights.

Lisa Zeeveld:

Yes. I could not agree more, Ryan. Now we have a one next step for our listeners. I want you to head on over to the show notes page to access today’s resource so you can take the first next step towards elevating your business.

Ryan Fitzgerald:

Well, thank you so much for tuning in for this week’s one next step. To make sure you never miss an episode, subscribe on Apple Podcast or follow us on Spotify. And if you’re ready to start accomplishing more and juggling less, go to belaysolutions.com.

Lisa Zeeveld:

Join us next time for more practical business tips and tools to help you advance your business one step at a time. For more episodes, show notes and helpful resources, visit onenextsteppodcast.com.