Social Media Survival Guide for Busy Business Owners

Feeling the entrepreneurial squeeze as you juggle social media marketing with a million other tasks? Take heart and tune in, because I'm peeling back the curtain on how to thrive online without a full-time social media manager. With a treasure trove of personal experiences and hard-earned insights, I'm here to guidae you through selecting the right platforms for your audience, training a part-time assistant, and setting up those lifesaving contingency plans. Let's face the music together: respecting the digital space of our customers and valuing their feedback isn't just good manners—it's smart business. 

Then, let's march into the eye of the storm where business chaos reigns supreme. I've been there, and believe me, I understand the emotional toll it can take. That's why I'm passionate about sharing systems and processes that bring order to the mayhem. Whether you're neck-deep in your business journey or supporting a friend who's steering their ship through turbulent entrepreneurial waters, these strategies aren't just lifesavers—they're game-changers. So, let's connect, share, and systemize our way to the top, because nobody should have to navigate the whirlwind alone. Join me, and let's turn that collective sigh of overwhelm into a sigh of relief.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Supporting Small Business Owners With Social
• 9:47 Managing Chaos, Implementing Systems in Business

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

This is directed toward business owners, specifically small business owners, solopreneurs, people working for themselves or under 20 employee work environment. This podcast is for you because I've spent the last several years helping to lift up other small business owners through social media marketing. I managed several accounts, I have helped get email marketing set up and all of those things. But what I didn't expect coming from you know in my photography life previous to that working alone and really being in control of how things are run and able to work on my own mindset and not have other incoming stressors. I've learned a whole encyclopedia full of what the struggles are as a small business owner with employees or as someone that feels often chaotic and overwhelmed, and I want to talk to you and support you through that in this podcast because I do understand what that's like and I have seen it for myself with people that are extremely successful where it's very hard for them to spin all the plates and a lot of times they put on the professional face in front of employees and customers and you would never know and behind closed doors. It is just deflating to experience their stress and struggles. So I want you to know that you can be in a position of needing a social media manager and also, at the same time, be in no position to pay a social media manager and still get it done. So could you do it yourself, potentially, if you enjoy it and if it is helping you to work on your business rather than in your business, if you're talented at telling your story and showcasing your work, you are probably a very great candidate to do. You know, to spend 20 to 30 minutes of your day just doing some social media marketing and light connections through direct messages on Facebook and Instagram or posting to Pinterest and using that for search engine optimization. I'm working on creating some quick guides, some video tutorials that will help you to do that. And if it's not, you and you just don't have the time and you feel like you're kind of always a sinking ship and you're like taking pills of water all day, every day, I want you to think of who you know or what the person would be like that could work part time to help you out, and it is okay to train someone to do this job. If they believe in what you have, what you offer, if they believe in your business, you are already eons above a lot of other people managing social media accounts, because all you need is someone that really believes in your business and is technical as far as social media apps go. The rest they can be trained. They can learn as they go and there are all kinds of resources online to do that. And it's your approach as a business owner of how you train your. You know, whether it's a consultant or a part-time person, how you want them to do the job. It's like any other job.

Speaker 1: 3:27

The struggle that I believe small business owners have is it's not their area of expertise. So to hire someone to do it feels overwhelming and scary because you don't really know your own expectation of what you want to see out of them other than results more foot traffic in your showroom, your store or on your website. So I, like I said, have created some and I'm creating some quick guides to help with that, so that that person whether it's your teenage daughter or your college aged son or a retired friend that just is looking to keep a little busy but not work a full-time job you can park them in front of the computer or ask them to for an hour a day and focus on one thing and see that through over the course of several days and they will have a pretty good foundation of how things work, where to go and what to do and why. And then they move on to another set of tasks, whether it's like learning, let's say, facebook, rather than you know. Once they've gotten through Instagram, then we go to Facebook and then, once we get through with Facebook, then we look at, possibly, tiktok. They don't need to be on all the apps. Your business does not need to be everywhere. Do you need to claim your name on all of these accounts? I definitely recommend that, but you don't have to have yourself or your social media marketing manager on all the apps every day.

Speaker 1: 5:00

Pick the two that you know your customers frequent the most. Not you, because you're probably not your own customer no offense, maybe you are, maybe you're not. Very few business owners that I've met are actually their own customers. But choose the two apps that you know that they use the most and focus on learning those, or focus on having the person that you select to run your social media accounts. Have them focus on only those apps three times a week as a start and what I mean by three times a week is three posts and posting the stories three times a week. Just start with that.

Speaker 1: 5:38

We're fortunately in a window of time where people are oversaturated online, so they're not wanting a lot of incoming from any business. There's a dance and there's a cadence to learning that dance of what your customers want to see from you, and you find out really quick because they hit the unfollow button if you're posting too much or if you're in stories too much. Right now is about the latest hand that I've had on all the social media platforms that I work with. I am very respectful of people's time and I appreciate that they let me know by unfollowing if they don't like the amount that I'm posting. So it's just having listening ears and watching eyes and then learning the skills. So there are all kinds of places that you can learn and it's more time blocking than anything to try and pick up what it is that you don't quite know yet.

Speaker 1: 6:36

And I do recommend finding a backup person as well, because I've been in a position a couple of times where I am a sole owner of my business and I had a concussion that was pretty bad. I almost no joke died at a hockey rink taking senior pictures. I did everything right. I had spikes in my shoes. It was a domino effect of someone being very, very late earlier in the day to their appointment and me feeling stress and letting that get to me and slipped and boom and was out for a few minutes and when I woke up I couldn't talk, I couldn't move, I couldn't do anything until I don't know how much later when I started to talk, mumbling, and could kind of move around a little bit. But it was a whole summer worth of being grateful that I had a very good system in place of names, because that's one thing I could not remember and once I was able to be up and around, that I was able to lean on a backup person that could help me so that I could at least use my best skills and keep my business running with my camera, and my part-time person was able to step in and do what I couldn't do on social media and marketing, and mainly marketing for me with photography is helping people to feel seen and to have that moment where I share a reel from their session or a few photos from their session. People look forward to it and I love it and if I missed that, it does kind of make people feel bad and I don't ever want that. So I had that happen. I had my mom passed away, my dad passed away.

Speaker 1: 8:15

Things happen and life is awesome most of the time and a lot of the time we can get it all done. But there are things that come up and if you don't at least have another administrator on your accounts, you have yourself in a pretty precarious situation of if something occurs that you're very sick or just need to take a mental break, there's no one that can even help. If something goes wrong with an account or people send a message requesting to purchase something, it's nice to have that other person, even just on a watch and see kind of basis, like if you have a good friend that you trust to have as another person to help manage your account, just to be there when you can't. So you do not need to be everywhere all the time. You can be in a position where you need help with social media but you can't afford the help, and it's common. It's more common than you think. It's just a matter of time blocking or selecting that right person part time to help. You don't have to train them.

Speaker 1: 9:18

That's what people like me are for and there are other people just like me, that help to do that, and it's just a little at a time and over time, they will totally own it and you can just say this is what we're featuring this week, this month. You can have your weekly or monthly marketing meetings with that person and say this is what we're looking for, this is where we want to go, this is what's exciting. Here's a few customer stories. These are the awesome reviews. You go crazy with social media.

Speaker 1: 9:47

So I hope this was helpful and I hope that you start to feel better about that chaotic feeling, because it's so totally normal and I completely get it. I wish that I could just snap my fingers and make it go away for everybody, but it's a part of doing business, as we all know. It's just that it feels heavy sometimes and we just need to get the right systems in place, and I'm a huge systems person. I love getting systems in place so that when something comes up or there's a need, we're already two steps ahead and we're already on it. So if you found this helpful, please let me know, and if you have a friend in business that you think would benefit from hearing this, please pass this on. I thank you so much for being here and I look forward to the next podcast.