“Social Media is a tool to help you make that sale, but you don’t have to use every tool; you wouldn’t use a screwdriver to build a house,” explained Mr. Springer. “Advertising shouts at people and storytelling develops relationships with people.” It is significant that we use social media to stay relevant to networking as opposed to cold calling our customers. Mr. Springer pointed out a valuable rule of thumb, “Whether you are on social media or not you have conversations around you. Therefore, it is beneficial to know what people are saying about you.” Mr. Springer went on to explain the essentials of knowing your ideal customer persona because it helps you to better target those customers with what you are trying to say, “Knowing something about who you are marketing to is just as important as what you are telling them.” After all, how can you make your customer base without having the knowledge of whom you are targeting to or wanting to attract? Our customers should be our best advocates is another crucial lesson that we learned from Mr. Springer, “Give people something on social media that they want to say; have contests, make it a tool to leverage a larger audience. For example, have people put their best and worst hair cut pictures and give them a discount; ask people what they like.”

Mr. Springer went on to discuss about the meaning of failure and significance of a businesses social media tactics. “You have to try things even if you fail a lot keep going. People will more likely like a picture then text. The question is not should I post? Rather it is how do I post.” When posting content on your social media platform it is important to remember the valuable rule of thumb that it doesn’t matter how many posts you put up, but how the post will benefit you. Our business is a reflection of us therefore, as Mr. Springer disclosed, “Give your page a personality in which it tells your story and remember the platform you use will be dependent on the audience you are looking for.” It is crucial that we use goggle alerts to see where our industry is and to view where our customers are; we should research our competitors too for the reason of being inspired not for stealing their strategies or content. Mr. Springer went on to explain the essence of creating a content strategy, defining your own voice, and how important it is to adjust your strategy as needed based on the results you get. “Failure is only fatal if you don’t learn from your mistakes; it is really important to try things you wouldn’t do. Failure can teach you a lot about success so don’t be afraid to fail.”

When talking about monitoring what people are saying about you, Mr. Springer put forth a beneficial lesson, “ A lie becomes the truth if it’s not responded to so the question to ask in this case is; is the benefit of responding greater then the cost of not responding?” Mr. Springer added value by bringing up a great point, “Social media is no different than marketing or communicating; it is all part of the same thing and your audience should determine your actions.” When putting up content on your social media platforms it is important to keep in mind that reach is about who sees it and engagement is about who takes action to do something about it as Mr. Springer went on to disclose. Also, he explained how we need to appeal to people’s emotions because emotions spur actions. “So when telling your story remember to tell who benefits from it and tell the story like lessons learned because the less you make it a sales pitch and the more you tell the story about helping others the more loyalty you will get from your customers.” Therefore, it is important to monitor our social media platforms and to research especially on how our customers view us and talk about us, thus we make trends in accordance with what our customers think about us. As Mr. Springer mentioned, “Social media is not a press release form; it is a social engagement platform and the first word in social media is social so why do we forget to socialize?”

LAEDA hosts numerous seminars on a wide range of topics. Our next seminar, Quick Start Seminar series: ABC’s of Starting a Small Business: It is scheduled for Tuesday, May 03, 2016 at 6:00 PM at La Cabana Tio Tom Deli Express in Vineland, NJ. We invite you to join our mailing list by clicking here