Social Media for Brick and Mortar Businesses

Andréa Jones [00:00:00]:
If you've hired social media support, but you still feel like you have to go in too much and you're, like, fixing things, or if you feel like you are giving way too much guidance, this episode is for you, my friend. I can't wait to tell you all about how you can help support your team to get better results on social media. But first, a word from our sponsor. Riverside is the all in one podcast recording and editing tool that I use for this right here show. I use it to edit not only the audio and the video, it is like Chef's kiss magical, making the entire player process so, so easy. Plus, I love their Magic AI clips. Their little AI robot in the background pulls out the most impactful moments of the episodes without me having to comb through and do it myself. Resizes them for social media.

Andréa Jones [00:00:49]:
So those vertical videos you see on TikTok and Reels, those all come from Magic AI inside of Riverside. It's literally one click. It spits out 10 clips. I pick the best one and away I go. Saves me so much time. If you want to get on the Riverside train, check it out today, the links in the show notes and make sure to use my code DREA D R E A at checkout to get 15 off your membership. All right, here we go. So this episode, y'.

Andréa Jones [00:01:16]:
All, this episode came from an actual conversation I had with someone where they were asking me, hey, I hired this person to help me with my social media, but I feel like everything they do is kind of like, wah, wah. But I'm like, afraid to tell them because I feel like they should know. So then I just go in and like, tweak it and fix it. And I was like, girl, don't do that, please, please don't do that. There's a better way. And so I want to talk about how that is, but I got to give context to this first because I'm not new to this hiring social media support rodeo, even though I am the social media support for a lot of people. I also used to own an agency, so I own an agency for over 10 years. I've hired and fired a lot of people in that time.

Andréa Jones [00:02:00]:
Definitely learn my lesson the hard way. I call 2017 my year of hiring and firing. I've never hired or fired more people than that year. My agency experienced massive growth at that point. We had 40 clients. I had four people on my team and needed to scale up very quickly. And so I learned a lot of lessons along the way and I want to share those with you so you don't make the same mistakes. And also I want you to know that, like, you're not alone in this entire process.

Andréa Jones [00:02:27]:
I think one of the hardest things about hiring social media support is some of the stuff we just know, especially the stuff about our business. We just know so deeply and intrinsically and instinctively that it's really hard to like disseminate that information over to another person. So if you have someone, whether it's you've hired an agency or whether you hired like a social media support person, like a freelancer, or you just have someone helping you, it could be like your admin staff, your front desk staff, your, your niece, whatever it is, I want to help give you some guidance on how to have your team support your social media so that you don't have to do all of the things. There are a couple of kind of, I was going to call them mistakes, but we're going to go with the word hard truths that a lot of business owners like bump up against when it comes to hiring support. And sometimes they think it's a content, like the content's not landing. But I can promise you almost nine times out of ten, it's not a content problem, it's a systems problem. Okay? So it's not a content problem, it's a systems problem. So here's an example.

Andréa Jones [00:03:33]:
You hired someone new and you feel like they just don't get it. They don't understand your business. That's because it's all in your head. You've, you've maybe shown them the website, you've shown them social media, and then you expect them to just get it and they're not getting it. And I'm here to tell you right now, your team can't read your mind. Okay? We need a system to get things from your brain to their brain, okay? They can't just learn by osmosis. As much as we would want to just like zoop, zap information into their head, it doesn't work that way. And I've worked with so many different businesses over the years and even two very similar businesses.

Andréa Jones [00:04:07]:
So for example, I worked with a lot of, like, coaches and therapists. I work with two therapy group practices where their content approach was wild, wildly different, and we got wildly different results even though they both were therapy group practices. Okay? So no matter what, when someone's coming in to your business, if they don't know your business, you've got to tell it to them. So you need a system for that. The other mistake that I often see too is that there's no organizational flow to the posting. So what's happening is you said go do your thing and then someone comes in. Usually this is like a newer freelancer or maybe it's just like an admin on your team or your niece, whatever. And you don't know what's happening, you don't know what the strategy is.

Andréa Jones [00:04:53]:
You feel like they're just posting randomness and it doesn't feel like it's actually having an impact on your business. And that's because there is no outlined flow. So either they need to outline it, which is what I recommend, or you need to outline it. Either way, we need to know who's capturing the content, who's writing the captions, where is that content being stored, when it's created, who's actually hitting publish on the different platforms, or are you using a scheduling tool, who's monitoring results, who's responding to comments and messages. All of those questions need to be answered and you need to have a clear understanding of who's doing what, when, where and why. Otherwise you're going to feel like posts are going out but there's no flow to it. And then the other thing that I see, the hard truth that's a system problem for this is the lack of organizational tools. Okay, so you know, this mostly happens when it's a multi location business or you have multiple people posting to the same account.

Andréa Jones [00:05:55]:
You know this person has like all the videos on their phone and then someone created the Facebook account from 10 years ago and they have the login information and so we did can't actually get access to that account. And so. And so is posting sometimes you never know when. So you both end up posting at the same time. And now your posts are competing with one another. That is an organizational problem, a system, not necessarily a content problem. So this is not like doom and gloom. I just want to set the stage with like this is these are all common issues that small business owners have and there are solutions to them.

Andréa Jones [00:06:28]:
And usually it's a systems thing. There are some technical things that you can do, technical fixes you can do to help with this. But I want to give you some insight into some of the systems. And one of them is what I call the digital brain. Like digital brain is a game changer for your businesses. It doesn't matter where this tool is. Okay, so it's not an actual tool. I use Airtable, some of my clients use Google Drive, Google Docs.

Andréa Jones [00:06:55]:
Some of my clients use a project management tool like an Asana or a ClickUp or a notion board. It doesn't matter where digital brain is, but you need to have a central location where everyone's contributing their content, their ideas, and where it's very clear where things are stored. So here are a few things you can put in your digital brain. One, a content capture system. Okay, how do we record content? Is it photos or videos? And then once those photos or videos are captured, where is it stored? Who's capturing it and where is it stored? I don't want it to live on someone's iPhone and then when they upgrade, all of that stuff is gone. Right? Like, I don't want it to be in someone else's icloud. We need to have it in a central location. Even if you're the owner of the business, let's put it in a central location so that when you bring on support, it's very easy to just go, here's our file full of photos and videos.

Andréa Jones [00:07:47]:
Okay, how are we labeling those for easy, easy ways to find them later? Right. This is a big thing that I see a lot, especially with local physical businesses where, let's say you're a bookstore and you have tons of footage of individual books and stores, and then also your coffee shop, you have specific events, but ain't nothing labeled. So a new person comes in and they're spending hours and hours trying to sort through these files, and then they pick a random one and you're like, that's not even related. And then you're the owner getting frustrated because someone else is picking a random video because they have no idea what this content is from specifically, if it's current, if it's antiquated. And so the storage labeling system is also important there. The other thing that you can store in your digital brain is your brand guide. Okay? And I know, I know people don't want a brand guide, but you have to have one. And you can easily use tools like ChatGPT or Gemini or Claude to help you build out a brand guide.

Andréa Jones [00:08:48]:
But we want the brand guide to be both voice and visual. Both voice and visual. And this is a huge disconnect. I see a lot of times when hiring new social media support is they write a caption that doesn't sound like you or they design some sort of canva graphic that doesn't look like anything you do. And that's because you gave them way too much space to be able to do whatever they wanted to do. And you need to give them guidelines on this. Now you don't have to have every single thing Done initially when you bring that person in. This can be a co created process.

Andréa Jones [00:09:17]:
But I want you to have a place where you continue to edit the brand guide. So an example from one of my past clients, she didn't like using a lot of emojis. Now I'm a pretty like light emoji user person. Like, I don't like a ton of emojis emojis either. But she didn't like any emojis. Zero. She thinks that emojis kind of look like, you know, like the MLM girlies who, who like, you know, oh, bye bye Mary Kay. Like they're always using a ton of emojis.

Andréa Jones [00:09:47]:
It's very, it's giving that. And so she would say, I don't want to be aligned with those people and I don't want to have zero emojis. That's something that needs to go into the brand guide. Zero emojis, very simple conversation that needs to be recorded and stored so that everyone's on the same page about the zero emoji rule. Okay. Same thing with a visual brand guide. I once had a client who had multiple brand colors and, but there were certain colors they didn't like using together. I didn't mind, but they had a very specific way they didn't want to use colors together.

Andréa Jones [00:10:20]:
So we created a visual brand guide for them so that we could go. These two colors go together. These two colors never go together. Okay. It's, it's really that simple. But once you start getting that feedback or once you start giving feedback, you want to record it and store it in some way so that everyone's on the same page. And we're doing this to future proof our business. This isn't about a make work project, but it's about every time you're creating these resources.

Andréa Jones [00:10:45]:
Anyone can come in and pick up the ball at any time. Okay. Another thing that we need to have in our digital brain is the content flow. When we think about content flow, I want you to think about when is the content being captured, when is it being edited, when is it being published, and when is it being analyzed? Okay, so content capture, especially if you're, let's say you're like a coffee shop and one of your baristas is the one capturing content. Okay, Maybe they come in on a Monday and like before they start their shift at the register, they spend an hour every Monday capturing content. They need to be able to take photos and videos and then put them in wherever Dropbox, Google Drive File Notion board and label it okay. And then maybe they come in on Tuesday before their shift, and they spend an hour writing captions and uploading it to a scheduling tool, and then they send it over you to the owner. So, you know, on Wednesdays, you're reviewing that content and then you say, yep, it's good to go.

Andréa Jones [00:11:42]:
And then they, you know, schedule it out for the following week on their next shift. That is a very clear system, and it's really helpful to have everyone know what that system is so that you, the owner, don't have to keep following up with that person. Like, when am I getting this? And you kind of get a bird's eye view of what's happening without having to micromanage every single step of the process. And this is where my business owner friends, we get so lost in the sauce because we feel like we're in micromanagement mode and we actually haven't saved ourselves any more time. We've just created another thing for us to do. And this is why some people go, you know, I tried outsourcing. It didn't work for me and it didn't work for you because you didn't have that system in place. And we're not aiming for perfection with these systems.

Andréa Jones [00:12:29]:
We're aiming for repetition and a repetition that has a flow to it. So not saying that it has to be super rigid, but we kind of have to know what the expectations are going into it so that anyone can follow the system at any time. Okay. Now, I'll be talking about this a lot more in my upcoming workshop. It's called Train youn Team, and it's a live workshop, happened opening on September 25th. It's completely free. There will be a replay. But I'm specifically creating this for local business.

Andréa Jones [00:12:58]:
If you have a local business even more specific, a brick and mortar business, this workshop's for you even more specific, kind of the Niagara region. Niagara, Ontario. I'm talking Fort Erie, Welland, Port Colburn, Agar Falls, and Catharines, Thorold, Grimsby, Jordan. If you're kind of like in this area, I want you at this virtual workshop. But we all know that these things are, like, digital worldwide, so anyone can join in. But this is specifically for business owners who want to be able to. To do that. And I will be giving you my Digital Brain starter kit for free for anyone who comes to that workshop.

Andréa Jones [00:13:40]:
So what I want to leave you with is there are some foundational fixes and habits that you can build into your business that move you from content creator to business owner. And I want you to be able to feel comfortable in not just handing over social media, not just having something go out today or posting something today, but really having a process that helps you feel confident, capable and creative. And your team, so that they can build the habits they need to create something that you feel proud of, you feel proud to show on social media something that sounds like you, looks like your business, and represents you in a good light. So if all of that sounds good, come join me in the workshop. I'll see you there. In the meantime, make sure you leave us a five star rating on Apple podcasts and Spotify helps keep us in the top 100 marketing podcasts. And that's all because of your support. I'll see you next week.

Andréa Jones [00:14:34]:
Bye for now.