Digitally marketing your business can become very overwhelming. Where to even start? You start to question how much money will I have to throw down on top of other operating expenses to really make an impact online. Although spending money can get you quiet a bit of value and quality when it comes to marketing online. It isn't the sole way or even a necessary starting point. I wonder if anyone has ever considered how start ups or small businesses can afford to allocate and budget expenses for this very purpose right out of the gate or even after all the determents of covid. The answer is that, you don't have to go completely without online marketing just because you can't "afford" other avenues like ad spend or hiring a digital manager. It doesn't have to be that worrisome of a topic to where it is avoided all together. To simplify this let's just consider social media marketing to start and then eventually unfold all the possibilities. The reality is building your brand online can cost nothing at all, it just has to be done the right ways and the real cost is your time. That within itself is worrisome too. You just cannot afford to not build your identity online in this day and age, so Rescript Solutions refuses to let businesses down by not sharing this important information! Get your notebook ready and let's bust into the Digitally Basic concepts of Social media marketing (without Ad spend costs). Let's just start with Facebook later on discovering ins and outs of Instagram and Twitter. If you have not done so already, create a Facebook profile strictly for yourself to be your "identity" when talking with people online. No don't use your personal, you don't want to blur the lines of business and your personal life. Once you have created your professional business Facebook profile, you then want to create a professional business page for your business linked to this profile. These profiles will not have any friends or followers, now this is where it can become daunting of a task to get the right "audience" for your page. You will want to search groups in Facebook, Business groups to find like minded individuals who hang out in these groups. Now search in the group, "network," this will bring up several posts that previously were posted by members looking to grow their network too. In the threads you will find different linked business pages to follow and once you do reply to the comment tagging the person who shared their page, now let them know you followed them and if they could please return the favor. You are looking for professionals so of course observe their page and content. Decide if they are someone you want to network with. This brings value to helping them grow and will in turn help you meet your online presence goals down the line. This is an over time process, can become tedious, so tedious and annoying even. It has to be done, you have to start somewhere. No one likes to dig a trench, they just want the end result. So maybe allocate 20 mins every Monday to do this. I know this can become frustrating, this is usually when people give up and hire an admin to do this and other tasks or they outsource a social media manager all together. In that case, you know where to find me. If not, let us carry on to the other steps. So all the while you are devoting time to building your followers base and searching for your online audience on Facebook, you will want to engage with others posts and pages. This is vital, you represent your business when doing so. You have to be interested in others and not just the sole focus on building your brand. The worst thing you can do is become a spammer and ask everyone to do this and that for you. You need to be others focused as this can open opportunities, trust me. I would not being sharing this if I didn't see the proof myself. For example, I started Rescript Business Solutions with a simple passion to help start up companies and small businesses outsource the time consuming tasks associated with operations. When I created my social media profiles and pages I did not resort to asking friends and family to follow and create a fake following base. The fruit of my labor started paying off 6 months in. As I am sure you have noticed by now my services are over saturated, with the pandemic many people are starting their own businesses with online marketing, social media management, bookkeeping, website design and virtual assisting making it more of a challenge for myself. Especially since most of the spam and cause reputation damage to the process and what my services have to offer. This of course takes longer for my brand to grow online versus that of tangible items such as jewelry, soaps, apparel or everyday high demand service needs. It is what it is. Now my type of business benefits the most from marketing on Facebook and Instagram. With my persistence and efforts, now my Instagram has organic growth and guess what... I did not post every single day! Yes, you heard that right (read that right, LOL), not every day! Strategically using appropriate hashtags, offering value to my audience and enjoying what I do along with being genuine, did that! It took time, lots of patience and reminding myself why I am doing this. Please don't give up before you start. Your business cannot afford to not be on social media. I will say that over and over again. Billboards and commercials are not obsolete, but I can tell you I'm not the only one who has streaming services only, no cable. Even if I did, I'd mute the commercials or do something else during them, they are viewed more of an annoyance. I hardly ever look at a billboards unless there is construction on the road or a long light. Think about it, how do you respond to these marketing methods. How much do these cost, I personally do not like to even think about it. I couldn't tell you last time I saw someone with a magazine or newspaper. Alright, enough you get the idea... back to Facebook basics, now that you have your profile and page up, you will need to strategically plan out what type of content you will be posting. What eye catching imagery are you going to design or share with your written post content. What hashtags will you be using? Will you be cross posting on different audience based groups? Who can you ask to share your posts? The more eyes that view the better, word of mouth still happens with online marketing. You do not have to post everyday, value and quality over quantity 👌 Even if there is not a whole lot of engagement, likes and comments do not get discouraged! Many eyes see but do not engage... eyes people, eyes add so much value! We will unpack more specific strategy next time and help give you an idea how to make your own content design, eye grabbing is important.
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