Wedding Professionals - do you ever feel like the content you spent so much time preparing will do amazing and it flops?
Then, the posts you make super last minute, without any thought end up with higher engagement and outperforming anything else?
Let's talk about listening to your audience and how to give them the polished but authentic content that they want to see!
To preface this discussion, I must mention that we were all so worried to go into this episode talking about social media. We are not experts, we do not have millions of followers, we are just small business that is trying to stay relevant and keep up with the research as trends and the algorithm(s) change. With all of that being said, we are just trying to share the conclusion we came to before recording: Imposter syndrome comes easy when you are on social media - especially on Instagram.
Don’t compare yourselves to accounts or other businesses because each audience and who you reach are so different.
Okay on to the good stuff. We have four main areas that we try to prioritize and you should too.
1- Track metrics- you will always be surprised! Post more of that stuff!
"But Jenna, metrics are boring and I don't have time for that!" YES, you do, and here is why. You spend so much time scheduling your content, hunting down photos and videos saving them to the right drive/shared folder/computer. Hours uploading them into a scheduler (or right to social, which psst read our episode about batch content HERE), way too much time figuring out a caption, call to action, and of course hashtags.
Why? Why are you doing all of it? To reach and connect with your dream clients, to educate, entertain, and introduce who you are and the amazing service you offer. You're using social media as an unpaid form of advertising your business.
So why would you not take the time to keep tabs on what is working, and what is not and skip spending hours of work on the things that do not work? Imagine you start tracking your metrics and realize that Facebook engagement prefers polls and Instagram prefers short behind-the-scenes videos that require no editing. (We wish that was the case for us - imagine how short and sweet creating content would be!).
Here is the thing - you don't know unless you've been watching and paying attention. Once you start to pay attention you can use that free platform to truly get the most of your time.
2 - Know your brand - Identity, the problem you solve, have pillars for content
This should be, and probably will be in the future, an episode all its own. Your brand identity is much more than the colors in your logo and the name at the bottom of your emails. It outlines the type of conversations, tone, words, and style you write to your clients in. It also should include the style font(s) you use, the focuses that are important to your business, and the atmosphere or culture you create not only with your team but your clients. Keep in mind that this is NOT the service you provide.
Think - What makes you unique and amazing?
When you know your brand inside and out (hint hint - you should have an entire book or guide on this and can update it as time goes by) then it helps to focus on your posts, web design, and captions. It also will frame your content pillars which are necessary for a cohesive web presence and social media profile that will help turn you connect with your future clients as a result of your social media time and work.
Not having core pillars makes it so hard to post. Because you're basically doing it from scratch, with no direction at all.
3 - Keep posting
Try try try - if you post and think it bombs, let it sit there. As of right now, most social media platforms are not chronological (although Instagram has tried to go back to chronological most places it did not go well so much so that they reverted back). Reels and TikToks are prime examples - you scroll and click on the profile to see "part 2" and realize you have to scroll through posts to find the one you just watched. This is a huge advantage but sometimes hard to remember. What it means is that people may not see your content right away so you should not spend time hitting refresh and feeling deflated if it does not perform well in the first hour. Post it, put your phone down, turn off those notifications, and walk away.
Take the advice of Rachel Pederson: a marketing expert and keep it on, and post 100 more times. If you still don't like it or want to remove it after that then go ahead.
At the end of the day - more content is normally better than none!
4 - Listen to your audience
You do not need to overthink this. It can be as easy as posting in stories and just asking... Instagram has great tools that make this easy in the form of polls and questions in your story. Bonus - people love interacting with stories too! A big one for interactive stories is also “this or that”
This also doubles with those metrics we told you to track - check out those saves & shares and see what people thought was high-quality content they could use and saved for later.
EPISODE RESOURCES
This Episode hosted by JENNA
Rachel Pederson's website: HERE
Check out Metricool yourself! HERE
Learn more about all of us HERE
Check out what tools we love to use for business: HERE