Losing Twitter Followers? We Can Help!

Posted on October 10, 2013 by - Blog, Marketing, Social Media

twitter-featured1When it comes to Twitter, you want to a lot of followers just like you want to follow others, but are there some things that turn people off?

Just having followers is also not enough, because it really comes down to the quality of your fan base.

However there are some things you should avoid when trying to maintain a valuable audience:

1. Not Enough Information

Twitter allows you 160 characters to fill out your bio information, so use it. Space is finite on this “about you” section so make it really count.  People will be seeing this information when they are deciding whether or not to follow you. Make sure your statement says something relevant about your business.

2. No profile picture

One of my major deciding factors about following someone is if they are using the default profile picture.  Someone that can’t bother to put up a photo usually does not get a follow back because they either don’t know what they are doing or they are a spam account.

 3. Your Account is Private

Unless your account is marked as public, people who may be interested in following you will not be able to see what you tweet about.  If someone can’t get a feel for what they are getting into with following you, they are more likely to pass.  Make your account public to get the most traffic.

 4. CAPS and #Hashtags

You don’t want to annoy your followers, so avoid using all caps to make your post stand out in the feed.  If your content is good enough, people will engage with you, so don’t resort to teenage antics to draw attention.  Also, the character limit is set to 140 with tweets. Make sure you aren’t using more than half of that for hashtagging or people will think you don’t have the content to fill a whole tweet.

 5. You have no Focusthinker-twitter

If your sole goal is to get followers and all you tweet is “Follow Me” or #followback, you will rapidly lose your audience.  People want substance and content that is engaging, or else they will get tired of you, as well they should.  Focus on putting out information that is useful and relevant to what your audience is interested in and what you have to provide them.

 6. You Don’t Follow Back

Following a legitimate account back on Twitter is like giving a handshake.  It acknowledges that you notice when you have new followers and appreciate the new fan.  Stay on top of your new followers to make sure you don’t miss any opportunities.

7. Never Engaging

This should go without saying, but take the time to respond to messages, mentions and comments.  People follow accounts on Twitter that they have a connection with, so encourage that by reaching out to your fans and let them know you are listening.

8. Not Tweeting Regularly

Stay active or the dead air could cost you.  The best accounts to follow are the ones that are sharing fresh content often, but not so often that they flood the feed.  There is a fine line between under-tweeting and over-tweeting so be sure to be aware of how often you are speaking to your followers.  Again, keep the content engaging and steady.

9. No Original Content and Too Much Repetition

Retweeting relevant tweets is a good way to stay engaged in the conversation on Twitter about your industry, but only retweeting and not posting original content yourself can hurt you.  Your followers want to know what YOU have to say, not just other people that they may already be following.  Keep your content relevant to your interests and those that share them.

10. Not Making Sense

This is another thing that should go without saying, but re-read anything you are about to tweet before you tweet it.  Does it make sense? How will your followers respond? Will they know what you are talking about? Always proofread to prevent confusing anyone.

11. You Are Always Selling Something

Obviously it’s important to your company or brand to have a following on Twitter because it increases your visibility to potential consumers.  However, you don’t want to annoy your follower base by ALWAYS trying to sell your products.  Instead, approach tweeting as a way to inform your audience about their interests as it relates to your products. How-to videos, links to more information, and pictures of products in use are much more likely to engage your audience than constant sales pitches.

12. Bad Follower to Followed Ratio

Following way more people than follow you shows people that you are either too aggressive or unpopular.  Following way fewer people than follow you tells people you aren’t very engaging.  Keep this number more balanced to reflect an active and watchful account that is interested in audience involvement.

twitter13. Your Content is Disproportionate to Your Following

Have you ever seen an account that has several thousand followers but no tweets? A name without content may gather you followers at first, but why should people stick with you if you have nothing to offer? Similarly, having only a few followers and thousands of tweets tells people that you oversaturate people.  A good rule of thumb is having no more than 2 tweets per follower, for example if you have 10,000 followers it’s okay to have 10,000 tweets.  Keep your tweets in check and make sure they are adding something valuable to the feed of your followers.

Ultimately, there are no set rules to getting and keeping followers on Twitter or any other social media site.  The best way to maintain a healthy social media following is by taking an organic approach.  Consider the value of what you put out there and how it will be received by those who share your interests.

For great social media management, the best tool you have is your ability to listen and respond.  Good luck!

Why You Need Social Customer Service

Posted on October 1, 2013 by - Blog, Marketing, Social Media

using-social-media-customer-serviceMillions of customers are choosing social media over other communication channels to voice their opinions and concerns to companies. It’s become so prevalent that businesses no longer ask whether they should respond to these issues or not, but how.

Social customer service is now a fully established requirement for customer support. Over half of 18-24 year olds use social media for customer care and half of social customer care users engage several times a month.

Most consumers believe that social media is the next tier of customer service.

However, many still find it hard to see the differences between social monitoring, social marketing and social customer service. The truth is that social customer service is a wholly different creature –with unique practices, strategies and benefits that go beyond social monitoring. Here are some key ways your business can benefit from social customer service:

  1. Organic Customer Endorsement: Establishing a constant, customer-centric, presence through social media is important because customers are more likely to share their experiences and recommend your brand to their friends when you reach out to them. Many studies show that customers who have a positive experience online are four times more likely to endorse the brand than those who don’t. Being present and active before customers engage with you is a way to exceed their expectations and create a positive impact in their experience.
  2. A Boost in Customer Value: Social customer service increases customer spending. It’s simple: customers who engage with your company through social channels are likely to spend 20-40% more than those who don’t. Thus, providing quality interactions can be a highly competitive differentiator within most customer oriented industries. 88% of consumers will be less likely to buy from you if you have unanswered questions on your social media platforms. In this sense, using social media for customer service helps you stand out as a customer-centric company and is a great chance for you to set your offering apart in the minds of consumers.
  3. More Efficient Customer Service: According to recent reports, the social customer agent can manage four to eight times shutterstock_80975242-350x232more high-value interactions, compared with a traditional, voice-based contact agent. This is an important figure, especially keeping in mind that 70% of consumers who use social media for customer service will do so again, if satisfied with their experience. In short, investing in social customer service just makes good sense.
  4. Preventive Protection of Brand Reputation: One of the the biggest causes for social media crisis during the past decade has been poor customer experiences. 97% of consumers say they are affected by other customer’s comments on your page and 83% say they have abandoned a purchase after a poor customer service experience. Being present at the earliest warning signs of an online crisis is the best way to protect your brand against a reputation meltdown. In this sense social customer service is the only active and engaging way to address dissatisfaction and negative emotions surrounding your brand.
  5. Possibility for New Business Opportunities: Unlike traditional channels, social media allows agents to engage with an increasing number of users. This allows them to create a positive impact on new customers, not only by broadcasting things like latest offers, but also by providing advice for purchasing decisions. All of this can be done while also retaining existing customers and deepening the individual relationship with them.

Proactive outreach is a fine art–one that offers a great opportunity to stand out positively against the competition.

Why Your Social Media Content Needs Visuals

Posted on September 25, 2013 by - Blog, Marketing, Social Media, Video Production

social-network-mapSocial media networks are ruling the world, so that should be no surprise to anyone with an internet connection.

Over 1 billion people are using Facebook and over 300 million are on Google Plus. Twitter and Linked In have almost as many users in well over 200 million.

So why does that mean you must have visual content?

For starters, think about how people process information.  90 percent of information transmitted to the brain is visual and it’s processed 60,000 times faster than text.  People, as a rule, only really remember 20% of what they read but remember twice that when given visual information.

Photos are liked twice as much on Facebook than text updates and videos are shared 12 times more than links and text posts combined.

Data shows that viewers spend 100% more time on pages that have videos over pages that don’t. Over 700 videos are shared on Twitter every minute. So how does this drive results for your business’s social media presence?

Just on Facebook alone, engagement with videos and photos has increased 65% after the new timeline was released. Want people to engage on your page? Video posts attract 3 times more inbound links than plain text posts. 70% of online search results are videos. Take a how to guide or information report and turn it into a 2 minute video or infographic. Writers are often told to “show, don’t tell” and a simple visual representation of the information can do this well. For marketers, charts and illustrations can be very effective tools—for example, seeing the difference between percentages can give users a better picture of the significance of the statistics.

Screen Shot 2013-09-10 at 2.55.23 PMPhotos of your products let your audience know what you have to offer.

Use more than one photograph of your product to entice shoppers and try to show your product in use. This helps people think about how it will work for them.  Also try asking your fans to submit images of them using your products and feature those on your social sites. Fans will not only love seeing their work on your page, but they will also know that you are listening and paying attention to what your audience is doing.

Most people consider a website’s design when discerning the credibility of a company.

The same is true for your social media pages. Make sure that you are not only posting visual content, but that your page itself is visually appealing.  Is your Facebook cover photo interesting? Does it change? Does your company Twitter profile have a custom background image? These are things that must be considered across all social media platforms.

Visuals are exciting and grab your viewers, so make sure your pages pop with imagery and you will be reeling your audience in.

Common Mistakes to Avoid with Social Media

Posted on September 16, 2013 by - Blog, Marketing, Social Media

Measuring_SocialMediaSocial media is not an exact science, nor is it something that you can get a degree in. Posting to Facebook should be easy, right? Tweeting is not brain surgery, so anyone can do it, right?

No one debates the user friendliness of social media sites (well almost no one) but very few people fully understand how to use social media effectively for business pages and marketing.

After scouring the web, here are a few tips to avoid the most common mistakes in social media:

  1. Using the wrong metrics: Most people feel that the number of likes your page has on Facebook is the final indicator in how well your page is doing, but this couldn’t be further from the truth.  Facebook has recently updated their page Insights to make tracking your metrics easy and more user friendly, but you’ll notice that more emphasis is placed on engagement than simple page likes.  Other services also offer social media metrics and analytics, such a Youtube and Sprout Social.  Use these to monitor your brand more closely.
  2. Too many channels/pages: Years ago when social media started booming, companies jumped at the opportunity to have a social presence online.  Many companies ended up with multiple (sometimes even hundreds) branded handles and pages.  The rush also pushed brands to stretch themselves thin by trying to have a place on every social media outlet.  Avoid this by consolidating your pages/profiles into a unified front and just pick the outlets that will be most effective for your brand.
  3. Social-Media-Listening-Image-twoAll About You: No one likes to listen to a person talk only about themselves all the time. The same is true for your businesses’ social media profiles. Obviously you want to sell your products and services to an audience that is interested, but the focus should be on what you can offer that’s of value. Listen and respond. Your content should center around knowing what your target audience wants and providing them with interesting information. Feature your fans and give shout outs to those who use your products and you will notice an increase in engagement as well as loyalty for you taking notice.
  4. Social Media in One Department: Marketers market, customer service helps clients and human resources recruits, right? Wrong! All of these departments have something to contribute to your social media pages, so limiting social media to one department leaves out valuable resources and information. Make sure everyone in your company is on the same page with your social media presence and encourage participation from everyone.
  5. No Direction: So now that you have your whole company on board to contribute to social media, what now? You have to establish a clear path for your social media profiles and individual purposes for all.  Set up a group calender with a posting schedule and determine customer response protocols so you don’t have duplicate posts or things flying under the radar.  Meet often and keep the lines of communication open and active, because above all social media is just that.

Hopefully now that you have a better understanding of what not to do with social media, you will experience better results with your marketing strategy. Good luck!

Using Instagram Video and Vine for Business Marketing

Posted on September 13, 2013 by - Blog, Marketing, Social Media, Video Production

instagram-vineWe don’t need to tell you how important video is to social media engagement, but you should understand the marketing benefits to services like Instagram video and Vine.

Here are a few ways to capitalize on Instagram video and Vine for business:

#1: Shoot a Product Demo and Answer FAQs: Sometimes, a simple how-to video can answer your customers’ questions quickly and efficiently. Make a list of the most-asked questions your customer service department gets and use video shorts to answer them. This is a great way to add value to your  brand.

#2: Create a Visual Portfolio of Your Work: If a picture is worth a thousand words, imagine what 15 seconds of video can communicate. With Vine, not having to shoot six consecutive seconds is a favorite feature for most and allows you to pack more into six seconds than you think. Shoot videos of the work you’ve done for recent clients to create a portfolio for potential customers to browse through.

#3: Highlight Special Offers and Events: Fifteen or six seconds is a significant amount of time to promote your special offer or event with video. Use the description field to emphasize and reinforce the video message and add a hashtag to track conversions or extend your reach.

#4: Invite Fan and Follower Submissions via Hashtags: Invite your audience to submit video with a hashtag to enter a contest or promote your live event.

mm-06-27#5: Humanize Your Brand: We often hear about how brands “need to become human.” Social media has blurred the lines with real-time, real-life engagement between companies and customers, creating a need for companies to be transparent and more open.  Use Vine and Instagram video to introduce your team in fun and interesting ways. This will help not only put a face to your brand, but it will make users feel more connected to you.

Videos and photos inspire the most user engagement across the social media board, so it should be no surprise that these new tools offers some rich possibilities for marketers.

With Vine and Instagram video, anyone can be a filmmaker. So, turn on the smartphone and shoot some video shorts today. You’ll be surprised how popular your videos could become.

 

Youtube SEO

Posted on September 10, 2013 by - Blog, Marketing, Social Media, Video Production

WatchingYouTubeAtWorkWe often forget that YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world. Being a site that hosts videos, we tend to miss the factthat a lot of people also use YouTube as a search engine to find what they want and need.

Like any other search engine, you can optimize your YouTube videos and move their rankings up in YouTube search result pages just like in Google search results.

Here are a few tips to help make your videos more visible through the masses:

  1. Closed Captions: YouTube is becoming global now and captions not only enable more people to consume your video but YouTube also crawls the content in the captions! Recently, YouTube introduced a speech recognition feature, which automatically detects the start and end of each line spoken and matches it to the video’s audio. So all you need to do is upload the script of the video and the captions will appear exactly in sync with the video.
  2. Naming the Video File with Keywords: If you are uploading a video about the ‘Health Benefits of Organic Foods’ then the file name of the video should be something like organic-food-benefits.avi or something similar. The viewer of the video does not look at this but YouTube gives a relevancy credit to the file name because if your file name is named with your keyword then there is a better chance that your video is about what it says.
  3. Understanding how engagement affects ranking: This probably sounds straightforward and simple, but it is proven that more interesting videos gain higher SEO.  YouTube gives relevancy credits to videos where people watch it for a longer time because it is a good way to measure the quality of the video. So for example, keeping a video to two minutes and having viewer retention of 1:30 would rank your video higher than a 10-minute video with a 5-minute viewer retention.
  4. Don’t mix video channels: Don’t mix your business and personal videos on the same Youtube channel.  Youtube and Google rank your videos based on the channel it’s placed in and how well they match.  So, make sure you have a business channel that is strictly for content that directly relates to your business.
  5. Posting HD Videos Instead of SD: HD videos out-rank standard definition videos every time. If someone is investing the energy and resources in creating a HD video then the content could be equally good. So try to upload 1080P videos whenever possible and if you are doing screen cast or presentation videos – 720P should do the job.

So keep all these things in mind when uploading your content to Youtube and you should see improved search results for your videos.Youtube_logo

Pin Me!

Posted on September 7, 2013 by - Blog, Social Media, Uncategorized

Pinterest-for-B2BPinterest can be a fantastic tool for sharing anything and everything relevant to your business! Here are some tips to follow to maximize Pinterest for your business:

  • Think visually: Across all social media avenues, posts with strong images attached to them get on average three times more user engagement as those with no images. This is especially true on Pinterest. The more immediately captivating your pin is, the more likely it is to be repinned.
  • Have a guest pinner board: Getting your followers involved in your boards is a great idea for small businesses. It increases your user engagement, makes your followers feel more personally invested in your brand, and gives you automatic feedback and insight into the interests and opinions of your audience.
  • Introduce yourself: As is true on all social media, your small business will have a stronger brand if it’s built on the actual people running the social media outlets. Introduce yourselves! Pin a photo of an employee’s face, attached to a profile or fun interview with them. Post one per week, and collect them all on a board that serves as a truly personal, vibrant company profile. It’s the Pinterest version of an “About Us” page.
  • Pin videos: You’re getting the idea by now that Pinterest is a visual environment. Post videos either produced in-house, or from relevant industry sources. This can either be content that directly communicates something from your business to your customers, or something you think would interest them.
  • Think Pictionary!: Promote deals with graphics. Translating any deals, sales, or special offers into smart-looking graphic coupons is a powerful way to boost their circulation and further develop your company’s brand as one that doesn’t just offer great deals, but looks good while doing so.

The most important thing to remember is exposure.  The larger the presence your business has on all social media websites, the more your audience feels like they can connect with you directly, so get online and start pinning away!

Get Linked In

Posted on September 4, 2013 by - Blog, Marketing, Social Media, Uncategorized

linkedinLinkedIn is a network with 65 million business professionals around the world. Currently, one person creates a page every second and nearly 50% of LinkedIn members have decision-making authority in their companies.

With that in mind, it’s easy to see why LinkedIn is considered the world’s largest audience of influential, professionals in one place. Like other social media sites, marketing a small or home business on LinkedIn is relatively inexpensive and provides a lot of bang for the buck. Here are some of the things Linked In can do for your business:

  • Search Engine Reputation Management (SERM) – Google gives LinkedIn company and personal profiles high authority and generally ranks them for queries that include a company name, brand or employee’s name.
  • Increase your brand’s visibility – By your employees and executives adding connections, answering questions and participating in group discussions, your company’s brand will be much more visible and your employees may be considered go-to professionals in your industry.
  • Lead Generation – By actively participating in the LinkedIn community you will have the opportunity to offer up your content with the purpose of helping people solve their problems.
  • Decision Maker Lead Tracking – Once you’ve generated leads and connected with decision makers on LinkedIn, they may move to another company.  As these contacts change jobs or switch careers, you’ll be able to track where they go and reach out to them at their new company, generating yet another lead.
  • Targeted Ads – LinkedIn will allow you to place text ads in front of the individuals whom you’d consider to be the most qualified prospects – i.e. CEOs, CFOs, Human Resource Executives, etc.  You can target them even more by choosing specific industries.
  • Product Feature – In addition to profiles, companies can now list their products and services with links back to their websites and YouTube videos.  Also, companies can have existing clients review their products and/or services on LinkedIn.

Now that you are filled in on how Linked In can help, get on and start you linking away!

Pet Marketing for Businesses

Posted on September 1, 2013 by - Blog, Marketing, Uncategorized

puppy-money-w724Pets equated to $53 billion of spending in 2012–a three-fold increase since just 1994. That’s almost the same yearly average spent on Collision Repair.

A 2012 survey found that 68% of US households have a pet and of that 56.7 % of them had a dog.

With all the added household pets, drivers are taking fido along for the ride at a sharply increased rate. In fact pet distracted driving is now #2 on the distracted driving list, right behind texting.

Did you know the crash risk for drivers who drive with their pets was double that of drivers who don’t.

The problem with having pets in the car isn’t that they are likely to physically interfere in the operation of the vehicle, but that they are distracting. Currently Hawaii is the only state that bans drivers from having a pet in drivers’ lap.

Two important aspects of any marketing campaign is a sense of community and providing context.

Pet Safety marketing is the perfect fit for a community action project because we can provide community and context on the issue of Pet Distracted Driving. As Collision Repairers we are the experts on the effects of distracted driving, accidents and how to ensure the safety of Fido in a collision.

Pet marketing is far more reaching then Texting and Driving Campaigns and you’ll have an unlimited amount of opportunities all year long to keep your message in front of your community. Here are a few ideas to get you started:

Remember when before considering any marketing activity we must place it in one of the Three Categories of Communication: Advertising, Marketing, Public Relations

Screen Shot 2013-08-28 at 2.57.45 PM

For Pet Safety Marketing, it actually touches all 3 categories which further maximizes your limited marketing dollars.

We also have to Plan, what is our overall marketing budget for the year and can we afford this campaign.

  • Budget: $250
  • Resources: petspot.aaa.com

Activities:

  1. Contact local pet stores for a schedule of their Puppy classes (PetCo, PetsMart). Offer to be a free speaker to the class on properly restraining your pet in a car to prevent harm in a collision. Demo the seat belts and kennels sold in the store. Pass out cards with pet tips and statistics on one side, shop contact other. Offer to install seatbelt or cable systems free with proof of purchase from the store.
  2. If your local Humane Society or Rescue group makes scheduled appearances on TV or Radio, contact them about helping to produce a safety segment or PSA  on pet safety in cars.  Offer to donate a portion of every repair that mentions the TV/Radio spot to the organization. You’ll end up with free radio and TV time for the PSA vs a paid advertising.
  3. Reserve a booth at the local pet fair or fundraising dog walk. Demo pet safety and seat belt use. Hand out cards and offer to install seat belt and cable systems at no charge.

Just a tip use the removable seats from mini vans for your demo’s. With the Seat belt inside the seat, you can wheel your seat around a store or pet fair and easily demo proper installation of the dog seat belt.

If you want to take it a step further, purchase used seats from your local salvage yard and have them re-covered with your shop logo and contact information in the fabric. You an offer to leave the seats at the pet stores, Humane Society, AASP, or Kennel so their employees can help shoppers or new adoptive parents understand seat belt safety for their 4 legged family member.

social-media-billboardWhat ever you do, don’t forget to be social. Once you connect with people they’ll want to promote and praise you in the social world. But remember Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram are a communication vessel for any of your three chosen categories. You still have to shape, craft and deliver the content that makes your business one to engage with. So don’t just post photos of the events you do on your social channels, find interesting ways to engage the users beyond the events. Get Creative!

Good Luck!

 

3rd Party Social Media Marketing

Posted on August 29, 2013 by - Blog, Marketing

marketingampI get asked all the time by repair shop owners across the country what should they do to market their business better in Social Media.

 Most are surprised by my first answer: “ I Don’t Know”

In a speech to a room of repairers it’s easy to give some generalizations and tips, but to give advice on how to improve an individuals social marketing without researching their market, business and history is like giving a diagnosis without examining a patient.

If you want to fail, hire a 3rd party to manage your social media marketing.

Let me explain, like many other aspects of technology and marketing the collision repair industry was slow to catch on to the Social Revolution. The real social revolution was in 2007.  So when it did hit our industry a few years back, there was already 100’s of books, websites and newsletter’s dedicated to social media marketing. It made it easy for last weeks parts salesman to be this week’s “Social Media Expert”. It was in fact, the new “Gold Rush” to a number of companies and organizations thinking it was a fast track to revenue.

We’ll build a presentation full of statistics, we’ll convince shops it’s too time consuming and complicated for them to manage and they’ll pay us to make their accounts look like all our other clients???

That’s good right? I get what seems like an endless list of services that I don’t understand and all I have to is give them a credit card to hit every month.

First, let’s understand what social media is.

Well…… It’s Social!

What I mean is, it’s a communication forum that was founded on personal connections of friends. We connected with our friends and family to share pictures, life moments and content that we thought would enrich the lives of those we connected to.  In fact over 60% of people that list their primary job as a ‘Social Media Marketing Manger” responded in a recent survey that their primary use of Social Media is to check status updates from their friends and family. That’s right even the people that do this for a living are not using it as a business tool. Does that mean you shouldn’t use social media as a marketing channel.  NO, it does mean that you need to recognize how consumers use the tools and plan your content accordingly.

Let’s face it no one is dying to follow Collision Repair on Facebook or Twitter. We’re not celebrities that can post or tweet about the their lunch and get 1,000’s of likes. We must make a rationale and compelling case to be followed, liked, +1 and retweeted.

 Simply put, you must be awesome! Average will not do!

We live in an age of information overload. In a response to that we want to consume only content that is relevant to our lives, gives us a sense of community or gives us context to an issue or trend.  Pre-Packaged content from 3rd party managers such as silly laws, bumper stickers, driving tips or links to articles not from your community or website is not compelling, relevant or providing a sense of community to your followers.

Also, what’s good content for Twitter is not for Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and on and on. If a third party is using a mass posting service to send the same content to multiple platforms at the same time and same day then why would people want or need to follow you on multiple channels?

So take a look at your current social media pages and ask yourself:

  • Does the content on these pages prove I am the best collision repairer in my town?
  • Does it show that I understand my community and the needs of my customers?
  • Am I adding value or just “noise” to the followers of my page?
  • By the post on my pages, can the followers clearly determine the type of character and business we are in THIS community?
  • Do I like what I’m seeing or reading?

Then take the next step:

Find two people you trust in your community that are not in the collision repair industry. It could be your pastor, member of the rotary club, president of the chamber of commerce or the door greater at Walmart. Ask them to review your pages.  Then ask them: Did any of my content add value for you?

You’ll either pass the test or it’s time to re-evaluate your current marketing plan and have some serious conversations.

 

So here’s were most shops tell me that they understand all the negatives of hiring a third party, but they just can’t do it on their own.

If you must bring in help, know that your involvement and supervision will be required. If you can’t dedicate one hour a week to review content and one day a month for strategy meetings, then don’t even think about hiring a 3rd party for your marketing.  If you’re willing to make that commitment, then look for a local marketing or public relations firms in your area. You’re not going to find an agency that is an expert in collision repair, and to be honest you don’t want one. That’s what your for. You’re not talking to yourself in social media your talking to people just like the ones at that local marketing firm. They’ll help your context around your content.

You want an agency that has connections to mutually beneficial organizations in your market. A firm that knows how to make connections and build community around brands. That’s why their local and not national. They need to understand your community and it’s customers in the context of your local events, news and activities. National firms can market national products and local firms market local services.

Ask them how they’ll work with you to see content before it’s posted. Most firms will present you a plan 30 days in advance with all engagement campaign ideas around your business. It’s your chance to review and give input on anything you’d like to see different or added. You’ll have access to a shared calendar to review at any time and make changes at anytime.

That’s were the one hour a week and one day a month comes in.

You’ll need to meet with the firm each month to review your statistics and performance. That means you should be presented with monthly performance reports. What’s working and what’s not. What content do you need more of and what should you cut.

Good Luck and Stay Awesome!