Social Media for Your Business

Almost every business owner I sit down with asks some version of the same ten questions about social media. After forty years in advertising and marketing, the answers are less complicated than the industry would have you believe.

Posting and platforms

• How often should we post? Less often than you’ve been told, and far more consistently. Three considered posts a week beat ten thrown together. Pick a number you can still hold in twelve months when the business is busy. Jess Cook sums it up well in How Often Should You Really Be Posting on Social Media.
• Which platforms should we be on? The ones your customers use, and no more than two done properly. B2B and trades: LinkedIn and Facebook. Consumer products that look good: Instagram. TikTok only if you’ll genuinely commit to video.
• Does posting time matter? Far less than people think. A weak post at the perfect hour is still a weak post. Weekday business hours, then check your own analytics after a couple of months.

What to post

• Stop thinking posts, start thinking proof. The work you’ve just finished, a customer saying you did it well, the person who does the work, something useful you know, or news the business has earned.
• Skip the filler. Motivational quotes, stock photos and public holiday graphics could belong to any business in Australia.
• Do I have to be on camera? No, but it works better when you are. You, answering a question a customer actually asked, is the strongest content you can make. It stops being uncomfortable at about the tenth video.

Organic, paid and results

• Is organic still worth it? Yes, but its job is credibility, not leads. When someone looks you up, an active page closes the deal and a dead one opens a doubt.
• Should we pay? Paid is where the reach is, and a modest weekly budget aimed tightly at your part of Ipswich or Brisbane goes a long way. Organic for trust, paid for reach.
• What should we measure? Enquiries first. Then reach, saves and shares to judge the content. Likes and follower counts are what agencies report when they have nothing better.
• How long before it works? Three months to read the pattern, six before it’s doing real work. Most businesses give up at week seven, just before it compounds.

Who should run it, and the biggest mistake

• In-house or outsourced? The raw material (photos, jobs on site, you explaining something) has to come from inside the business. Strategy, writing, design, ads and the discipline of publishing are better outsourced.
• Don’t hand it to the youngest person in the office. Using social media personally isn’t the same as running it commercially.
• The biggest mistake is starting without a purpose. Decide first whether it’s there to make you look established or to bring in enquiries. They need different content and budgets.

That’s entirely doable in a day a week. 1 Day Marketing works as a fractional marketing department for businesses across Ipswich and Greater Brisbane, with a deliberate maximum of three clients at a time. If your social media has been half-finished for a while, a single day is usually enough to work out what it should be doing.

Frequently Asked Questions

1 Day Marketing. One day at a time. Based in Ipswich, serving small businesses across Brisbane and beyond.