It’s all too easy to get stuck on the hamster wheel of posting content to your social media pages without much to show for your efforts, so today we’re going to be giving you some of our top social media marketing tips for small business that you can implement in your business, to supercharge and simplify your social media.
In this episode you’ll hear how to:
- Increase engagement and attraction on your different social media platforms
- Put together a successful strategy
- The best tools and resources to use for small businesses
Guest: Amanda Kendle
Amanda Kendle runs a social media and blogging consultancy out of Perth, Western Australia, working with small and solo business owners to help them learn how best to promote their work. Amanda also runs The Thoughtful Travel Podcast and is obsessed with how travel helps us be better people.
Connect with Amanda
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Podcast Transcript: Social Media Marketing Tips for Small Business
Nicci O’Mara
Social media marketing often grossly underperforms and overwhelms small business owners. So today we’re going to be giving you some of our top tips that you can implement in your business to supercharge and simplify your social media marketing from increasing engagement and attraction to putting together a successful strategy and knowing what tools to use. My guest, Amanda Kendle, and I will be shining a light on what you can do to make your social media work better for you and at the same time not take over your lives.
Social media is now an integral part of marketing small businesses, but it’s all too easy to get stuck on the hamster wheel of posting content without much to show for your efforts. It’s time to make your social media work for you. And today, I have the pleasure of speaking with Amanda Kendle, a social media consultant who works with small business owners to help them learn how best to promote their work and grow their business. Welcome, Amanda. Thank you very much for coming on the Simply Standout Marketing Podcast today.
Amanda Kendle
Thank you so much for having me Nicci. I’m really looking forward to our chat.
Nicci O’Mara
Oh, it’s wonderful. Now, look, I actually met you many years ago back in the sort of the travel blogging space, which is wonderful. And you do some great things in there. And one thing that that I do, especially love of yours, is your podcast. Now, before we get on to, so we’re talking all about social media today, but before we get onto that, I just want you to tell people a little bit about your podcast, because it is for anyone who loves travelling. It is one of my favourite things to actually listen to for something different.
Amanda Kendle
Oh, thank you. That’s so lovely. So I have been running the Thoughtful Travel Podcast for just about five years now. In a couple of weeks, it’ll be five years. And it’s a podcast where we talk a lot about travel, but not so much about destinations. I mean, they come up a lot, of course, but it’s really about all of the things we like about it, what travel, how it changes us, what it does for us.
We might talk one week about slow travel and the next about, I don’t know, volunteering as we travel or often the most popular episodes are when things go wrong when we travel and every episode I chat with three different guests in, you know, a little bit of an extract from three different conversations. So lots of variety, lots of fun. And it’s such a privilege to create it because I get to talk to so many fascinating, fabulous people.
Nicci, you’ve been a guest on it as well, a very wonderful guest. So thank you and so the Thoughtful Travel Podcast, one of my very favourite things that I do, out of a lot of different kinds of work I do.
Nicci O’Mara
Yes. So you do do a lot of different things. So you’ve got the Thoughtful Travel Podcast, you’ve got a travel blog, is it Not Another Ballerina? Is that correct?
Amanda Kendle
Just Not a Ballerina. . Because I am not a ballerina. I’m much better at writing, thank goodness.
Nicci O’Mara
And you also work in social media and blogging as well. So you’re a lady of many, many talents.
Amanda Kendle
I get bored easily, so I like to have lots of different things on the go, but it also does feed into each other. So as a very brief overview, I started off as, at some stage, doing travel writing, which became travel blogging. And then I wanted to combine that with my love of teaching, especially adult Ed. And so I pitched to a university here to teach a blogging course, and it kind of all exploded from there.
That’s about 12 years ago now. And I started to teach people to blog for their business. And of course, then social media became more important. And I started to teach people how to run their social media effectively to promote their business. And it’s all kind of all combined. And so, you know, I do all of it. You know, I get to use my podcasts and its social media as a kind of a testing ground and a learning ground so that then I’m always up to date and I can continue to teach my clients the best way to market themselves as well.
Nicci O’Mara
Yeah. And look, I think with social media, it’s one of those things. And with all of the things that you do do, small business owners, they really have to, you know, wear many hats. And that includes the social media and promotion and marketing and all the rest of it. So, I think it’s fantastic. And that’s why I love talking to you, is because you have that depth of experience of you know, you do specialise in different things, but you also know how things fit together, which I think is fantastic.
Amanda Kendle
Thank you. I think over the years I’ve worked with people in so many different industries, and these days I really focus mostly with small and solo business owners of various kinds of industries. But definitely that, where they need to wear a lot of hats thing, really relates to a lot of my clients. And then we have to find a way that social media can fit in with all of the other work they have to do so that it doesn’t become something that, you know, is all consuming and they don’t actually get much chance to actually do the actual work. So, yeah, it’s a tricky puzzle sometimes.
Nicci O’Mara
Absolutely, and social media is seriously overwhelming and often very underperforming for many small business owners. What can they do to make it work better for them and to not take over their lives?
Amanda Kendle
Yes, that is the million dollar question. But what I kind of advise with my clients, largely speaking, is obviously they need a strategy. You know, often clients will come to me and they’ve just been you know, I just I started a Facebook page and I’ve just been posting on it sometimes. And they haven’t ever stopped to sit down and think, OK, what will we post and and why and when and how and all of that.
So I try and get them always to stop, you know, stop and step back. And first of all, really think about their audience, who is the audience that they need to reach and which platform are they on? How are they actually going to talk to them on social media? And if they have existing social media to actually stop and look, who is the audience existing there already? And are they my audience or not? You know what? What do we need to do about that? And then to have a really good think about, you know, the overall messaging, you know, what are the brand values that you’re wanting to show on social media? And, you know, what are the key things that you need to be communicating?
What’s the best way to do that on social media and putting that together and tackling it one platform at a time. So sometimes I’ll have clients come in, they say, right. So I need a Facebook page, an Instagram profile, LinkedIn, blah, blah, blah, blah. I’m like, yes, maybe you do, but you can’t just start doing all of those at once because that will send you to an early grave very quickly. So let’s think about what’s the most effective one for your audience and which one you like. Like which one do you actually use? Personally, there’s nothing worse than trying to get someone to do a lot of Facebook marketing when they never open it for themselves because they don’t have that intrinsic understanding of how the platform works or they can’t observe their own behaviour as a user.
And so it just makes it really, really challenging. So I get them to focus, you know, one platform at a time, do that for a while, see how that goes, refine it, and then we can look at adding other platforms as well. But stepping back and even if it’s just an hour long, think about, you know, what what do we need to say and how best to say it and where, then, you know, even just that makes a massive difference.
Nicci O’Mara
Oh, absolutely. Without a doubt. And just having a strategy behind things that they put out. So rather than just putting out, you know, there’s so much fluff on social media and it’s great to have, you know, something funny, something that from my point of view that really connects with your audience and then, for me, some how-to stuff connection and also, you know, that thought reversal, just getting people to think differently about what you do and you know, how you solve a problem differently and really getting people to stand out and stand for something.
So rather than saying what everyone else is saying, I’m really trying to get businesses to go, okay, you know, I’m putting my hand up. I really do stand for something. These are my values. This is how we do things differently. This is why you should choose us, rather than, you know, we’re the best. Yeah, we’re the leading.
Amanda Kendle
I think it’s so important. I just had the exact conversation with some clients this morning, in fact. And, you know, a lot of people are scared to stand for something because they think they’ll offend someone or that someone won’t like it. But then they’re not your customers or clients anyway. And you’re much more likely, it’s the whole you know, you have to repel to attract. You’re much more likely to get people who really love what you do. If you actually stand for something and have a bit of a position or, you know, have some real authenticity there. And if you’re just going along being very average or normal or just, you know, posting pictures of your products every day and that’s it or something like that, then there’s nothing to really grab onto. People go to social media to have conversations. Otherwise they’re just Googling or just going shopping. You know, that’s not what happens on social media. They want to have something to talk about.
Nicci O’Mara
Exactly, and with social media, a lot of people, and rightly so, are scared to actually say something that could have people going, oh, you know, you’re an idiot or you look stupid in that dress. I mean, people are horrible on social media. But, one thing I’ve been given a lot of very good advice is, you know, you’ve got to pretend you’re covered in Vaseline or just let it slide off because they are not your people.
You know, you do need to look at those people that you really admire and the ones that you follow and look at them and go, okay, well, why do I follow them? Is it because they’re the same as everyone else, or is it because they stand for something? Is it because your values are similar or you know, you’re inspired to be like them or they empower you to be a better version of yourself or whatever it happens to be. It is a hard thing to get over, especially with social media, that the benefits are there if you can stand out.
Amanda Kendle
Absolutely. And I think that you’re right that people find it hard to do when they’re concerned and anxious about it. And I’m always telling my clients, just be brave and try this out. And the other thing that I often, the way I often frame things when my clients are worried about those kinds of things or anything at all actually is I say just make it an experiment. And so I say do this, you know, every day for a month and then come back and tell me how it went.
You know, it’s not like let’s change this forever. You know, I just say let’s experiment, try this. And if it works, that’s great. And if not, then that’s fine. And you know, that kind of if they feel it’s possibly temporary, they tend to be a bit braver.
Nicci O’Mara
I like that. That’s really good, because at the end of the day, I just need to take one small step and then after that take another one. And if it doesn’t work, there’s a lot of things within marketing and social media that just doesn’t work. You’ll try something and go, they didn’t quite hit that mark. But, you know, maybe if I just tried a little bit differently a few more times and keep trying, it just might work.
So it should work. You know, it should work. Sometimes, you’ve just got to, it’s trial and error for a lot of it. So, now one thing that most businesses do struggle to get, and that’s small and large businesses, I’ve got to say, is to get the engagement that they need on social media. Have you got some really good tips for increasing engagement for them?
Amanda Kendle
Well, I hope so, yes. I think they’re good tips. And I think it comes back to the fact that you have to remember, social media is a constant thing of putting yourself in the shoes of the audience and a user perspective and thinking, you know, what are they coming to this platform for? What are they doing the rest of the time on this platform when they’re not looking at my posts? And, you know, most of the time they’re there to see what their friends or people they really know up to.
So as a business, you want to fit into that. You don’t want to stand out and look like you are just promoting something and you know that it’s like traditional marketing or an ad or something. So I think that’s the first way to make sure you’re thinking about it. And then you want to find ways to engage or, you know, ways to post in social media that help with your kind of that know, like and trust factor, which we always talk about.
And to do so, I think you want to be personal in a way. And I don’t mean you have to give, you know, intimate details of your private life or anything, but speak as a person, especially if you’re, you know, a sole business or even in a small business, sometimes that will work as well, or make it sound personal. So there’ll be some aspects in some posts which are not just about, you know, the business, but, you know, whether it’s an issue of the day or something that’s been bothering them or a mistake or error that’s been made, you know, that they’ve made themselves and you want to talk about it.
Those kinds of things are relatable. Also, try and be emotive. Sounds wrong because I think it’s a bit sound sensational. But consider what emotions you might draw out of the reader or the, you know, the social media user. So whether, you know, you make them laugh or make them kind of, you know, feel drawn to you and connected or sad about something or whatever, there’s a lot of engagement in emotion and just being real, like you don’t have to be pretending to be perfect all the time.
I certainly don’t. Even though, I mean, in social media, no one can know everything anyway because it changes by the minute. And a lot of it’s all a mystery. But I am very blunt and honest about what I do and don’t know or like, you know, what I’ve only just discovered. Or, you know, oh, I’m not sure if this will work, but this is a new thing, you know, I’m going to try this out and, you know, just I think finding ways to come across as much as possible, like a real person and then opening up conversations.
So that’s where engagement really happens, is where there’s a chance for a conversation. And to have good conversations with social media posts, you need to know your audience well. You need to understand what kind of things do they want to talk about? People love to give examples of. Actually, I learnt this from my podcast. People love examples of what’s gone wrong. So, you know, as an engaging thing or, you know, just the chance to even have some feedback or, you know, conversations about topics that they care about.
So really just opening up lines for conversation, I think is, you know, that really real key to good engagement.
Nicci O’Mara
Yeah, and look, I think, as you say, the human element is key because you look at the really big companies and they would pay millions just to get the human element that small businesses and solo operators have because they’re, you know, they’re so big and they just don’t have that. And they try to do it with staff and staff being out the front and all the rest. But it just doesn’t work as well. So I think one thing small businesses have got over everyone is that they are humans.
They can sit there and go, you know, they can have the knowledge of their audience and going, okay, well, this is the problem my audience has. This is how I solve it. But taking that imperfect action of, okay, we get things wrong, we admit that. I think where a lot of businesses actually do go wrong is going, where you try and, you know, we do everything perfectly and it’s not our fault. And it’s, things go very wrong very quickly now that there’s social media with negative reviews and with, you know, some of them are horrid, but the majority of people saying, oh, look, this didn’t go so well for me.
And you’ll see comments on social media that are saying something, you know, critical of an organisation and the ones that do it really, really well put in the human element and go, hey, look, we stuffed up. Or, you know, if that is the case, obviously, we’re sorry, we will do everything we can to fix it.
Amanda Kendle
I think that you’re right that small businesses and solar operators, it’s our super power that we can be human because you’re right, a big supermarket chain is never going to be human, no matter what kind of strategy they put in place. It can’t work. But small business and solo business can do that beautifully. And, you know, that’s where social media really, really works.
Nicci O’Mara
Yeah, absolutely, and look, it is hard, I do know being a small business owner, actually responding to people all the time on social media and you don’t want to be on there all the time. So you really want to set yourself some boundaries of, okay, I will check, you know, whatever, whether it’s Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, I will do it for this much time every single day. And that’s it. I think otherwise you end up, I remember going through a stage where I was just, I felt like I was always on social media and it drove me crazy.
Amanda Kendle
I heartily approve of your boundaries and I aspire to be better. That’s all I can say. But do you know what? I’ve found that with my social media channels over the years, they’ve morphed to the point where I’m not even aware half the time that it’s my business and it feels like I’m just chatting with friends and therefore it doesn’t seem to drive me nuts. So I guess that’s, I don’t know if it’s a good or bad thing, but that’s the way I feel.
Nicci O’Mara
Now, look, one of your social media channels, you host a highly engaged Facebook group called Thoughtful Travellers. Now, can you tell us a little bit about the group and what you’ve learnt over the years about running a successful Facebook group?
Amanda Kendle
Yeah, thank you. Now, my Thoughtful Travellers Facebook group is absolutely one of my very favourite little parts of the Internet, it’s been running, must be nearly four years, I suppose. So it’s kind of a group of the listeners of the thoughtful travel podcast, not exclusively, but I think most people in there do listen or have listened and some of them listen religiously. And I think it’s a very, very engaged group. You know, whatever gets posted gets a lot of discussion.
It’s the kind of group where people have ended up meeting up in real life. For example, I had a German woman who went on a trip with an Australian woman in Morocco, and the German woman now lives in Morocco through people she met and they met through my Facebook group. And there’s like a dozen examples like that that I could give you. I mean, that’s the most geographically extreme one. But there’s lots of things like that, like people, you know, form these bonds through the group.
So I think there’s a few things. I mean, and I love Facebook groups for this reason because they set up really well for this. One thing is that it’s important with the Facebook group to have a fairly tight niche. So thoughtful travellers is a fairly tight niche where it’s people who are travelling not just to, you know, have a, what’s the flopping holiday called? You know, when you just go and flop by the pool, it’s not a flip flop, you know what I mean?
They’re not just going to relax. They’re going to, you know, to have a real experience. And, you know, they have, they are they’re kind of addicted to travel. So, you know, what I think is a really positive way. And so those people are the people who end up in the group. And I think it’s engaging for them because we all have a lot in common despite being very diverse. There’s the age group is from, you know, 20 to 80 plus. Diversity across countries is really broad. And despite that, everyone gets along because they have this common, you know, common, really dedicated interest. But I also curate it that way, I suppose, in the stuff that I post. So I make sure that it’s you know, I know that what they like and I always make it conversational. So whatever it is, I will give you know, I’ll post an article or a photo or something.
I’ll give my opinion. You know, this is what I feel about this. It might be a story of something that’s happened to me. And then often I will ask a direct question as a result. But these days I often don’t even ask. And they just spontaneously appear with their own ideas and their own opinions and their own discussion about it, because I’ve kind of trained them to do that. So that just, I think that’s an important part of, you know, kind of providing expectations for followers in a group and then it works from there.
The other thing that I have deliberately done over the years with that Facebook group is actually controlled it quite tightly in terms of firstly who I let into the group. So I do screen everyone quite carefully and check their profiles and make sure that I think they are the right kind of person for the group, which, you know, means that the numbers grow more slowly in terms of, you know, straight follower numbers or straight group member numbers. But the engagement stays high.And I think that that’s really important. So it’s very easy to think, oh, yes, I just want to have the biggest group possible. But I think it’s important to think, no, actually, I want the most engaged group possible, because at the end of the day, that’s the thing that will, you know, lead to the. Best outcomes, rather than just a straight numbers. So quite tight controls, and I’ve found lots of different ways to get them involved over the years in the group.
So, for example, I run a book club through the group and I reached out to just someone who’s engaged a lot in the group and has been on my podcast a couple of times and said, Hey, Justin, do you want to co-host this book club with me? And like a year on, he still does. And, you know, you know, he just has no stake in it. He’s just a engaged member of the Facebook group or when I had an anniversary, must be about a year, a year ago now.
It was the fourth anniversary of the podcast. And in the group, I’m like, okay, I’d really love to just interview a few normal group members. So, you know, they’re not travel agents or travel bloggers or travel professionals in any way, just ordinary group members. And I wondered if anyone would want to because it’s a bit daunting. I had such a, such a good response and the interviews I did were amazing. I just got such a thrill out of them.
And the episodes with those interviews turned out brilliantly. And those people are like now hyper. They were already were pretty engaged, but now hyper engaged in the group because I’ve, you know, connected them in. So yeah, I guess that’s a bit of a bit of a blah blah blah. Lots of stuff there. But that’s some of the reasons I think that the group has been successful
Nicci O’Mara
And it really has been successful. I mean, I’m, I’m actually in your group and you really do build a community, but it feels like you actually belong to the community.
It’s not it doesn’t feel like it’s yours. It feels like it’s ours. And I think that’s a really important thing to actually give people that sense of belonging to something so that they do value it. And you do then create those, you know, those raving fans, which is so important. Now, from Facebook, facebook groups obviously aren’t for every small business or every business. What are some of the business, you know, some of the industries or types of businesses that you think that Facebook groups are good for?
Amanda Kendle
Well, I think with a bit of lateral thinking, Facebook groups can be appropriate for all kinds of industries. What you really need to think about is who does your business help and what kind of help is it providing? And is there a basis for a kind of a support group around that, around the answer to that, around the way that you help people? That’s often a way that I find Facebook groups can work. And the other thing is just a passionate interest.
So if your followers have, you know, have like in my case travel, but perhaps if I did an outdoor adventure or, I don’t know, cars or whatever, if you’re business type lends itself to some kind of passionate hobby or interest, then that can be another kind of group that can work. So obviously also like a service industry business might be more, might be that more, you know, how to do something or actual support and help within a Facebook group.
But it doesn’t have to be that. I think it can be something where you are the facilitator of a group of, you know, passionate people about a particular topic. And you don’t have to be doing a lot of, you know, promotional marketing within that to actually get a lot out of having such a group because they know that, you know, you’ve provided this space and you are the, you know, the business behind it. So I think, I think they’re underused in lots of business segments and with a bit of, bit of thinking around, a bit of creative thinking. I think there’s lots of options that groups like that can work for all kinds of small businesses.
Nicci O’Mara
Yes, well, actually I’m a member of quite a few groups, but, I know there’s an accountant who actually has a Facebook group. There’s is a lawyer. I mean, they’re not traditional. Hey, if you thought about it, why would anyone want to join a Facebook group? It just doesn’t make sense. But the way they do it, it’s that sense of community. It brings that personal, that personal side of things into business.
They do really well. So really, at the end of the day, you just got to think outside the box, outside the square and just go, OK, well one, do we actually need this? What’s the purpose of it? What’s the strategy behind it? And how can you make it successful? So, I mean, not everyone’s going to want to. They are quite a bit of work.
Amanda Kendle
But they are so fun.
Nicci O’Mara
But you could talk about travel all day, every day, and it would just be like a hobby.
Amanda Kendle
This is true. Yeah, you’re quite right. OK, well, that’s what you have to do. You have to find a Facebook group purpose that feels like it’s fun all day.
Nicci O’Mara
Yeah, well, that’s very true. So. Well, none of us can travel really at the moment. But we can dream.
Now look, let’s get into some sort of tools and resources. What are some of the best tools and resources that have helped you with your social media marketing?
Amanda Kendle
Well, this is such a good question, because I sometimes find that small business owners go a bit nuts on using all kinds of tools. And it sometimes is, I guess, overengineered, I think. And especially when they’re starting out, they try and get all these things to use and they really don’t use them to their most effective capacity, etc.. So if I’m starting out with someone who’s, you know, just beginning to build their online presence, the one tool that I always send them to is Canva.
Or I mean, there’s some alternatives to Canva these days. But I think having a bit of simple but decent looking graphic design at your fingertips, the power of that cannot be overstated. So something like Canva. You know, it was actually founded by a woman who went to school not five kilometres away from where I sit now.
So I feel a little bit proud of it. But I mean, it’s life changing to me. It’s yeah, I think that’s one of the best tools that has ever been invented. And the other thing that I often get them to do is just from an organisational point of view, to use some kind of like project management tool like Asana or Trello or one of those. So at the moment I use Asana, but I have used Trello in the past. Just I sometimes need a bit of variety and I chop and change. And I like the way Asana looks at the moment.
Nicci O’Mara
So I’m laughing because that’s what I do.
Amanda Kendle
Oh that’s good. Sometimes you just need a refresher and a restart. So yeah. So I think those things are important because that’s a good way if you can, you know, kind of plot out a bit of your social media strategy. You know, what kind of posts and things like that is just a good way to kind of keep track of things without having Post-it notes all over the place.
And then the other thing that I really recommend is, you know, keeping track of a bunch of resources where you can get good information, especially in an area like social media, because it’s constantly changing. So I actually have a short list, I’ll tell you, of of like blogs that I tend to look at. And they’re largely blogs from, in fact, ironically, tools. But if you ignore the fact that they are sometimes trying to spruik their own tool, their information in them is usually fabulous.
Nicci O’Mara
So I often look at later blogs or later the Instagram scheduling tool. So laters blog, Buffer’s blogs, so buffa another scheduling tool, the HootSuite blog, similarly, I find they always have really useful stuff and also social media examiner. So I just regularly check on on those for four or five sites and I feel like I can easily stay up to date with, you know, important changes. But without having to spend all my life kind of, you know, delving into all of the little nooks and crannies where I could get information.
And they’re also really good to go, okay, I really need to do something with something new that I’ve never done before with, say, Instagram. So you go to later, search it and up pops some guide to, you know, how to do the latest insta TV or insta stories or whatever it happens to be. And it’s brilliant. That’s how you know, that’s how half of us have ever learnt to do things from the start. And you go, I don’t need to reinvent. The wheel. I don’t need, I don’t need a course for this, I just need to know how to quickly do insta stories or whatever it happens to be. So now I do like all of those things. They’re they’re really good.
Amanda Kendle
Yeah, you’re right. They do have really good guides. Like, if I’ve got someone who’s never done Instagram stories before, I would just send them that. And that, you know, already gives them so much information because they have those really good step by step guides. So, yep, I agree.
Nicci O’Mara
And one thing I’ve always been told from, you know, from the Facebook experts, because I’ll never say that I’m a Facebook expert. I know a lot, but nobody is really apart from Zuckerberg, maybe. Look, is to always use their scheduling tool because Facebook loves itself. Yes. What I’ve always been told and always use their scheduling tool, never use an outside one. Is that what you think, too?
Amanda Kendle
I agree completely. Yep for Facebook, definitely. I always recommend scheduling from within Facebook itself. So, yep, the other platforms, I think it’s much less important and some you can’t even schedule within. But yeah, Facebook, I still always do it within Facebook.
Nicci O’Mara
Yeah. And there’s one tool that I love using. Back when I used to do a lot on Pinterest, I don’t say much anymore, but was tailwind.
Amanda Kendle
Yes. Same. Yes. Yep.
Nicci O’Mara
It was a fantastic tool to use. If you begin to Pinterest and it’ll be more the people in, you know, beauty, fashion, food, the pretty visual stuff.
So now what advice would you give a small business owner wanting to simplify their social media and to make it far more effective?
Amanda Kendle
Yes, this is the utopia that everyone’s looking for because they want to spend less time but get a better result. And sometimes that’s tricky, but it is not impossible. So I would say pair it back. First of all, have a look at your results so far. Often people think they know what works, but they’re just going on hunches or they’ve seen lots of likes or something. But, you know, actually look at the insights and the analytics.
So that might be like on Facebook or Instagram, the actual, the insights tabs, maybe comparing it with your Google analytics for your website if you’ve got that set up. So, you know, spend a little bit of time having a look at what the data actually shows is working and then using that information, focus your attention on, you know, probably one or two platforms. Which ones are actually converting for you. For example, over the years, a lot of people have, they love Instagram and then they look at the data and they think, oh, wow, only like three people came to my website from Instagram last month.
So maybe that’s not the best for me, for example. So focus on one or two platforms. Maybe if you really want to be simplifying, focus it on just one or two audience types. So sometimes people are trying to reach all of their audience. Maybe their audience includes different demographics or different kinds of people. But, you know, focus on where you’re going to get the most bang for your buck or, you know, return on your time investment.
And an important piece is I think I mentioned it early on, but pick what you enjoy as well, because there’s nothing worse than feeling like you have to get on social media and you have to post, you know, twice this week or whatever, just because that’s your strategy and you actually really resent doing it. I can feel that resentment in people’s posts when they do that. So, you know, you’ve got to find that balance of what works for your audience, what works for you time wise and what you actually can enjoy doing.
Nicci O’Mara
Yes, and it’s quite interesting. You talk about the data side of things and looking at the insights and what time people are on and how much they’re engaging. And I know people who go, yeah. And a lot of the time I use Instagram, they go, oh, I love Instagram. But yeah, it’s just not, you know, and then you look at it and go, well guys, it’s not actually converting into any sales or it might be Facebook, whatever it happens to be.
That’s actually an entire topic that I just covered in Episode nine and talking about actually doing a marketing audit of all of your marketing, including your social media, to actually look at the data plus the psychology plus, you know, what’s the emotion behind things so actually going through and instead of guessing what’s working, going what are the pieces of the puzzle? Why is someone going from your social media to a page on your website and then not doing anything and then leaving straight away because you got to go, okay, well, social media is working, but that Web page is obviously broken because no one’s doing anything with it. So there’s a lot of that stuff that people are missing because they’re going, oh, yep, we’ve got lots of people on our Facebook or Instagram, the engage was pretty good. But either people are going through to our website and not doing anything or they’re not going through to it at all. So there’s a lot of pieces in the puzzle with marketing that often get, people forget to connect them.
Amanda Kendle
And I think people have a fear of data and or, you know, I might say a spreadsheet. And then they freak out like, oh, I don’t do spreadsheets or, you know, it sounds like maths or whatever. And I often start with my clients off to something really simple, like I’ll get them to like do a weekly monitor, just, you know, five or six statistics from your social media use, you know, just every week. And sometimes I’ll tell them, even if you won’t go near a spreadsheet, get it, put it in a notebook, but at least start monitoring things so that you can see trends and you can see, oh, gosh, something worked really well this week.
What was it? And, you know, actually coming to grips with how things are working, what actually does work and having a bit of, yeah, having some data to back things up.
Nicci O’Mara
Oh yes, I did up a checklist or I use a huge checklist. It’s actually about seven pages, with my client just to break it down step by step of okay, have you done this, you know, are these things true or false in your business? So they can actually look through every section and go, okay, no, this isn’t so. We better start working on this and they can do it quite easily. So, yeah, it is important. And look, the word audit or spreadsheet or data does not fill me with excitement at all, but I’ve learnt the hard way that you just you have, you got to make friends with them.
Amanda Kendle
There is power in that information.
Nicci O’Mara
Oh, absolutely. So you just have to go with it whether you like it or not. Really.
Amanda Kendle
Yep, yep, yep. But I think if like, when I get people to start for that really simple level, it’s enough usually because then they, if it’s small enough that they can do it and, you know, use it, then they’ll start to say, oh, this is, this was working. Oh, Amanda was right. And then they might take that next step and be a bit more detailed about it and go a little bit deeper. So, yeah, it’s small steps first.
Nicci O’Mara
Yep. Everything is small steps. Everything in marketing and business in probably in life.
Amanda Kendle
Lots and lots of small steps. I always tell my clients that success is the result of a lot of very boring, small, consistent actions. But you’ve got to keep doing them and then they add up to something bigger.
Nicci O’Mara
And they do. And it’s got to be much better off, as someone once said to me, you know, taking action one step at a time rather than being in motion. And I sort of thought about it. And just went a lot of the time, a lot of us are in motion, we’re doing stuff, we’re busy, but we’re not actually taking action. So that’s where your strategy and your you know, your strategic plans and stuff like that really come into play because we all get, even including me, get that shiny, the shiny object syndrome. And you go, oh, cool. There’s some new really cool new technology or something new. Come out quick. Better have a look at that. Is that going to save me a world of time. Really, it probably will take, you know, more time to learn how to do it.
Amanda Kendle
Yeah. Yeah, that’s right. And you’re better off spending the time doing what you have been doing, but just more strategically.
Nicci O’Mara
Yeah, absolutely. So now look, Amanda, one thing I’d love to ask my guest is what is your favourite quote that inspires you?
Amanda Kendle
Oh, this is easy because it’s all over my office and my fridge. And it’s actually from Gretchen Rubin, who I really admire, who works, who writes about productivity and habits and happiness and stuff. And she has said on numerous occasions when you’re faced with a decision, her her quote is “Choose the bigger lif”. And when I’m wondering what to do. And there’s lots of variations of what the bigger life might be. But when I’m wondering what to do, I often often think of that.
And then that kind of gives me that, okay, I’m going to take this crazy step or I’m going to try this thing instead or sometimes choose the bigger life might be, actually I’m going to let go of posting, I don’t know, posting everyday on Facebook, because for me, the bigger life is now spending more time playing table tennis with my son or, you know, there’s so many versions of it. But I think that asking yourself, you know what for you is the bigger life, can be amazing in helping you make decisions.
And as a business owner, there’s just so many decisions that you need to make all the time. And so I found that really helpful for me over the years.
Nicci O’Mara
I love it. That’s a really good one. Gretchen Rubin is so good. Her and Brene Brown. I’ve actually got Brene Brown, one of her quotes, up right in front of my computer that says “Choose Courage over Comfort”.
Amanda Kendle
Oh, brilliant. Brene Brown is very similar.
Nicci O’Mara
Now, look, where can our listeners connect with you online?
Amanda Kendle
Well, in lots of different places, but basically I am everywhere as Amanda Kendle on Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, all under that. And of course, if you are a travel lover, then do come and find me at the Thoughtful Travel Podcast, which is in all the podcast apps or at notaballerina.com.
Nicci O’Mara
Beautiful. Thank you so much, Amanda, for spending some time with us today and imparting your wisdom. So it’s been fantastic to have you here. Oh, it’s been a great chat.
Amanda Kendle
Thank you so much, Nicci.
Nicci O’Mara
Thanks for listening to Simply Standout Marketing Podcast, head over to simplystandoutmarketing.com for the show notes, downloads and even more great stuff to help you grow your business with marketing made simple.
