Your intern shouldn't be your Social Media Director - here's why

Are you delegating your social media? I see it all the time. The big dogs of the business delegate to the pups because they're younger and 'get' social media. The leaders - who don't have the time or inclination for social - then wonder why their pipeline isn't looking great.

Here's why you're leaving money on the table if you're not showing up on the socials yourself.

Your social media is a business development tool. If you're using it efficiently it should:

• build trust and establish authority

• keep you front of mind with those in your audience not yet ready to become clients

• support your email list building

• drive sign ups to webinars and events

• support your paid ad activity.

Especially on LinkedIn, this applies to both your business pages and your personal pages, which both have a role to play in your success.

Think of it like this:

• your business page tells prospects about your work, your culture, your events, your industry experience (it's brilliant to be able to delegate this, but your team will need a proper brief on who you're trying to talk to, what they will be interested in and the client-benefits to pull out in their content).

• your personal page amplifies these messages and gives prospects an insight into the person they will end up having the strategic meetings with once they become clients. People ultimately buy people, so this view into who a business' leaders are is important.

It's brilliant if you have a team working on your business page content but don't miss an opportunity by not using your personal profile to support your lead gen.

So, with that in mind...

If you do one thing this week, make it…sharing the responsibility for your social media lead generation

Why?

Because a business page can share your company's story, achievements and services, but it can't share individual opinions and expertise in the way that a personal page can.

Because prospective clients want to know who they will be calling with their challenges.

Because establishing yourself as an authority within your industry is a powerful driver of new relationships and connections (and doesn't hurt when it's time to find a new role).

Because the reach of your content is multiplied if it's being shared by each of your business' leaders, with their thoughts.

Because a junior member of staff won't have the authority to provide opinions or the knowledge / confidence to make appropriate connections. They will likely have to book time with you to review what an opinion could be. By which time either the moment to share it has passed or the idea has been scrapped because no-one has time to deal with it.

How?

You don't have time to waste scrolling. So try this as a first toe-dip into showing up.

• Every time your business posts content, like it and repost it with your thoughts. No need to write an essay, a few lines will do. Focus on the benefit to the client of whatever the post is about if you can. Encourage other leaders in your business to do the same.

• Every day, spend 20 minutes on LinkedIn doing a) the above, b) commenting on any posts you find interesting, focusing on adding value and c) sending connection requests to a few people you'd love to work or collaborate with alongside a genuine, not-salesy message. I do this first thing in the morning before I move on to client work, but test and see what works best for you.

What now?

Pay attention to what comes back to you from your social media. I bet you'll notice a shift over time. Are you having more conversations with relevant people? Is your network growing? Are your business' posts getting more reach? 20 minutes a day well spent I'd say!

Your audience isn't ready to buy - how do you stay front of mind until they are?

97% of your audience isn't ready to buy. It's not the right time. They don't have their ducks in a row. They don't yet realise that they have the problem you offer the solution to.

Your marketing can't make them jump ahead to that moment when they'll be ready. What it can do is make sure that you're front of mind when they are.

How do you do that?

By creating content that brings your audience a little closer to you, establishes you as the authority and builds trust.

Think about someone you've spent money with in a business or personal capacity. That decision probably felt like a no-brainer. Why? Because by the time you made that decision, you trusted that person to help you achieve your goal, and felt like you knew them - maybe not personally, but in the capacity you would be working with them in. It might have felt like an instant decision, but it was most likely the end result of a series of touch-points.

Take my last major business investment as an example, which was joining a mastermind. Before I signed on the dotted line I:

• met the coach via a group I was part of

• followed her on social media and regularly read her content > started building trust

• attended one of her masterclasses > where she demonstrated that she knew how to overcome the challenges I was facing

Boom! I was a convert. It was the most money I had ever spent on my business. It felt like a gut decision at the time, but looking back it was a decision made in incremental steps over a period of time.

Those incremental steps should be at the heart of your marketing strategy.

So, with that in mind...

If you do one thing this week, make it…. write a social media post to tell your story and connect it to a client benefit

Why?

Your prospective customer needs to see that you understand the challenges they face, either because you've lived them yourself or because of your experience in your industry. This reinforces that you can offer a solution.

This applies across the board; whether you're a financial services provider, an ad agency or a non profit, your ideal customers or supporters have challenges and engaging with you will help alleviate them. They need to know not just what you do (function) but that your values and personalities align (emotion). And the best way to communicate those emotional elements is by tying them into a story.

BUT there's a catch. Your goal is to connect that story to how it benefits your client. As with all your marketing - it's not about you, it's about them.

How?

Here are a few approaches to get you started:

Founders story - if you have a founder or leadership team, tell their story. What drove them to set the business up? What problem or frustration did they experience that drove them to create a better solution than was available at the time? Was there a personal reason that the business was built in a certain way? How does that impact your client work? Focus on how an experience led to a lesson, and how this made your organisation what it is today. This helps prospects get a sense of whether you're in alignment, and a flavour of the experience they'll have working with you.

For instance - I sometimes talk about how I love that my business flexes around my family. There are businesses who will be aligned with this, and businesses that want their partners to be working in-house and available 24/7. So my prospective clients will self-select in or out based on details like this.

Day in the life story - give a snapshot of what you or your team are doing that day. Client projects, team outings, events - all of these give a sense of the workings of your business, your energy and your team. Again this helps to get a sense of whether you're the kind of organisation a prospect would want to work with, and the kind of people you are.

For instance - I love this post from Louise Timmins talking about her recent trip to visit leprosy survivors in India. Such a lovely snapshot into the work her charity does and absolutely radiates kindness.

Client / Beneficiaries story - focus on one client or beneficiary and zoom in on their challenge. How did they feel before they met you? What was their life like? How did that change once they found you? What solution did you offer? And what happened next? Showing measurable results is brilliant, but if you can focus on feelings too all the better. This helps prospects to envision how they would feel getting those results.

For instance - my client felt frustrated because her KPI was to increase awareness around her organisation's activities, but there wasn't the expertise in-house to create paid social ads to reach a wider, relevant audience. Since she started outsourcing her paid ad campaign strategy and management, she reaches 365,000 people a month with her campaigns and looks (and feels) great in internal meetings when she talks about her results.

What now?

Go post that story! It's tempting to fall into the trap of talking only about your services on social, but don't be afraid to pepper your content with personal stories, origin stories and lighter hearted posts. Remember that only a fraction of your audience will see each of your posts, so do this regularly. People ultimately buy people, and showing your humanity can only benefit you. And wherever you can, connect it back to a client benefit.

Note: you don't need to talk about anything that feels too close to home. I don't post pictures of my kids for instance. Only share what you feel comfortable with.

Are you doing too much on social? Streamline and thrive

Why are you on social media? As an individual, it's probably a mix of education, entertainment and community. For me social media is a combination of learning, community-building, networking, mumfluencer videos and inspirational things Taylor Swift said.

But as a business, your social media should have a very clear intention. Because otherwise it's very easy to lose track of the content you should be creating and the campaigns you should be running. And very easy to waste your time and money in the process.

So, with that in mind...

If you do one thing this week, make it…. review why you're on social media.

Why?

It sounds ridiculous, I know. But I talk to a lot of companies who excitedly list the platforms they are on but can't tell me why they are on those platforms. Or say it's because other similar businesses are on them. Or because they look fun. Or because they think they just should be.

Here's the problem with that. Social media is a time-suck. If you're not getting a return from your activities that's aligned with your business goals, you're wasting your time. And I don't mean that if you're posting and not seeing sales on the back of each post that's a failure - of course it's not. As I said in my last newsletter, 97% of people who see your posts aren't ready to buy. But you should be seeing an uplift in awareness, engagement, conversations, clicks or sales based on your social activities. Social media is not something to do for the sake of it, it's a business tool.

How?

First, take a look at your ideal customer audiences and where you think they spend time. If you're a branding agency, for instance, this could look like:

• Marketing managers of financial services businesses > LinkedIn

• Prospective employees and collaborators > Instagram

or if you're a charity this could be:

• Prospective donors > Facebook & Instagram

• Prospective partners and major donors > LinkedIn

Check the analytics of your activities on all these platforms. You want to make sure that the people who are engaging with your content on each platform look like they fit - in the vast majority - in the groups you're expecting. If they don't, this is a red flag.

Remember that having an audience on any channel doesn't mean anything if that audience doesn't match who you want to be talking to. So ask yourself whether this is because:

• Your content isn't attracting the right people because it needs tweaking, e.g. centring your prospective customer in your copy, calling out their pain points, using relevant hashtags etc, or

• The platform isn't right for you, because you're doing all the right things but 'your' people aren't there.

What now?

If any of your channels aren't actually supporting your business goals, pause your activities and focus your efforts where you are seeing returns - whatever that looks like for you. Your time and energy are precious, don't waste them on TikTok if the people engaging aren't ever going to contribute to your business growth.

Your pipeline isn't safe: here's how to future-proof it

Social Media 101: relying on your social channels alone to bring you leads is a risky move. Although I firmly believe that social media is THE best way to reach and engage your ideal clients, ultimately you don't own your social media channels, and that makes you vulnerable to the whims of Silicon Valley & co.

Imagine you were dominating on Twitter and bringing in a solid stream of leads and new customers from it 4 years ago. You were probably feeling pretty great about your strategy.

Now imagine where you'd be today if your entire business was dependent on that one channel, following the mass exodus of users and endless bad news coming out of Twitter (now X) HQ.

Of course we all hope it won't happen, but in reality that could be any social platform - and with that in mind, we all need to future-proof our lead generation.

So, with that in mind...

If you do one thing this week, make it…. starting gathering email addresses from prospects

Why?

You don't own your LinkedIn connections or your Instagram followers, but you do own your email list. As long as you're GDPR compliant, you can continue keeping in touch with those people for the foreseeable future.

Email also provides your business with a great opportunity:

• it allows you to personalise your communications in a way that social posts don't (from simply using the recipient's name to more complex segmentation by audience group)

• a regular email gives you the chance to add consistent value over time, demonstrating your expertise and building trust (remember that not all your followers will see each social post, but barring delivery issues anyone who signs up for your email will then receive it).

• email, much like showing up consistently on social media, keeps you on the recipient's radar so when they're ready to move forward (start a conversation, buy, donate etc), you're right there and you've already done much of the legwork of them getting to know you.

All that to say - a regular email from your business will compliment your social media activity and future-proof your lead generation. So if you don't already send out an email or newsletter to your network, this is your sign to start!

Side note - I'll talk specifically about lead magnets in another newsletter so do DM me if you have specific questions on this, and I'll be sure to include answers to them.

How?

First things first, there needs to be a perceived value to the potential customer of parting with their details. People are time-strapped and they won't just hand over their email address for nothing - what you're giving out needs to improve their lives or align with their goals.

So think about what your ideal customer values - is it being up to date with insider opinions on industry news? Is it being the first to know about events? Is it feeling part of a movement for change? Whatever your answer is here will dictate the theme and format of your email. If you get stuck here, poll your social media audience - they know what they want to hear more about!

And remember that your email doesn't need to be an all-singing-all-dancing enterprise. It just needs to add one piece of value per email, and it can be different to the email newsletters you receive. In fact, it should be - the goal here is to stand out, be useful and cultivate those relationships.

What now?

There are a few quick ways to set yourself up to start collecting email addresses (if you're already collecting them, double check you've got these covered!).

• your website homepage - whether this is a pop up or a static part of your page, make sure it doesn't require any scrolling to find it, and be sure to make that benefit to the person signing up very clear. I love this rousing call to arms from Oceana and Jon Loomer's promise to help you reach your learning goals.

• your social profiles - your email list sign up link should be accessible from any relevant social bios. You can see below how I do this on LinkedIn - the link to sign up to my newsletter has been added as a button that takes you straight to a page to sign up, and the link gives you the benefit of doing so. You're limited to 30 characters here, so get creative on communicating your benefit extremely briefly!

I also have my newsletter in the 'featured' section further down my page, which is more prominent but requires scrolling, and again focuses on the benefits of signing up.

• within your social posts - tell your connections that you have a newsletter and make it easy for them to sign up by providing the link. Again remember that only a fraction of your connections will see each social post, so don't worry about saying this regularly!

• in your email signature - a brief benefit line with a link is all you need here to let clients and prospects you're already in contact with know that there's another way to get your expertise into their businesses.

Here's to future-proofing your business!

From CV to lead magnet: 6 words to make your LinkedIn profile attract your ideal customers

Is your LinkedIn profile a lead-generation machine, working hard to bring you leads or prospective partnerships while you crack on with the rest of your day? Sounds unrealistic, I know. But LinkedIn is a crowded marketplace, and what you say about yourself on the platform should be designed to stand out from that crowd and attract those ideal customers to your door. You never know who's watching!

So, with that in mind...

If you do one thing this week, make it…. updating your LinkedIn headline

Why? 

Your headline is basically a one line elevator pitch designed to attract your ideal customers. It's the only piece of information a prospective client will see of you from your LinkedIn activity other than your name, without clicking through to your page (and we'll overhaul that in another newsletter!).

If you look at the below - this is all anyone sees of me when I comment on anything on LinkedIn, so if those few words aren't speaking to my ideal customer, I'm in trouble.

If you're looking to attract your ideal customers (and who isn't), it's crucial to stop seeing your LinkedIn bio as a CV, and start looking at it as the headline that will either attract those ideal customers straight to you, or allow them to walk on by.

How?

Give yourself some tough love and be realistic about what your ideal customers aren't interested in:

• how long you've been doing what you're doing

• your job title, especially if it's vague or involves any kind of jargon, like being an SVP

• whether you consider yourself to be any of the following things: enthusiastic, passionate, hard working, motivated to learn.

What are they interested in? How you can help them. How you can make their life easier.

To paraphrase Busted - it's all about THEM.

Tell them very clearly who you help, how you do that and the business problem you solve for your clients (or the problem you solve for your beneficiaries, if you're a non profit).

And make sure to focus on the absolute end goal. (It's all very well for me to tell you how to increase engagement on social media, for instance, but ultimately you want that to convert into money, am I right?)

Using this formula can help get you thinking: I help [who] [do what] [how].

For instance: [Agency name] helps law firms drive growth by creating branding that stands out in the market.

What now?

Now you have a headline to attract those customers, go one step further and make sure you're super searchable. Put yourself in your ideal customer's shoes and think about what they would search for on LinkedIn if they wanted to find someone with your skill set. For me, that would probably be 'social media strategy' or 'LinkedIn ads' or 'digital marketing', for example.

Add these keywords to the end of your headline. They don't need to fit within a phrase; including them as a list is fine and you can break them up with | lines | if you need to. If you need inspiration, check out what keywords others within your industry are using.

Feel free to test different variants of both headlines and keywords and see what difference it makes to the connections you grow on LinkedIn - your profile should evolve over time and reflect your own business growth.

Why marketers need to look back to move forwards

If you do one thing this week, make it…. auditing your organic social media 

Why? 

Because you can’t increase engagement on your content and start turning that engagement into action if you don’t know what your audience responds best to, and therefore what you should be focusing on. I’m talking topic, creative and format - what makes your audience click? 

How? 

• Pick a platform you're active on, and go into your analytics: for Facebook and Instagram activity this is the Insights tab in Meta Business Suite, for LinkedIn and X it’s the analytics tabs, for YouTube its the Google ads dashboard. 

• Select the last 3 months as a time period (unless you’re posting very infrequently, this should give you a good overview of what’s been happening)

• Filter your results by reach and take a look at your top 10 results. Note down the topic covered, the format (video, single image, stat, quote etc) and any particular creative features that jump out at you.

• Go back and filter your content by likes / reactions, and again jot down the key topics and formats and any particular creative features

• Repeat one more time by filtering by comments received 

  NOTE: Not all platforms will let you filter by all of these, but the key is to analyse reach and engagement in whichever way the platform allows.

• Now you have breakdowns of your top 10 posts, you're looking for patterns. What do those top 10 posts for each category have in common - are the majority video? Does your audience tend to comment on case-study-type posts, but not on stat-based posts? Do they respond better to long posts or short snappy ones? 

• Repeat for any other platforms you post on.

What now?

Now you know what your audience responds best to, it’s time to make sure your content plan for the coming quarter is prioritising the formats and topics you know get you the best results. If video drives reach and engagement, for instance, could you turn static images into reels to make them work harder for you? Or could you take beneficiary quotes and animate them? The possibilities are endless once you know what to focus on.

What should I outsource to a digital specialist to best set me up for success?

"When's the best time in our growth to start outsourcing to a digital specialist?" I was asked recently by a client at a smallish charity. My answer was to outsource when you reach the stage where you don't have the expertise in-house to get results or to scale your activities. But I think the best question to ask here isn't 'when' but 'what'.

For a small to medium sized charity with limited resources, what are the key projects to outsource to a specialist that will best equip you for success and save you the most time (and headspace) going forwards? Here's where I think smaller charities can benefit the most from one-off specialist support, based on where they are in their digital growth...

1. If you answer the question 'who is your ideal supporter?' with 'anyone': ask for an ideal supporter deep-dive. If you aren't super familiar with who your ideal supporter is and why they support you, this is job number one to ask for specialist help with. Your ideal supporter is a fictional description of a typical supporter, and the person all your comms (website, blogs, social media) should be directed to. Understanding their pain points and what drives them makes creating content they will respond to 1000% easier and will help you reach and build familiarity with the 'right' people. It also makes life significantly easier when you're planning your hashtag use and paid ad targeting and stops you trying to target everyone and anyone (and thereby no-one) and wasting your time talking to the wrong people.

2. If you're clear on your ideal supporter but are struggling to know what to post to nurture them: ask for a social media content strategy. If you find yourself either posting whatever comes to mind on the day, or planning a few weeks in advance and hoping for the best, this is for you. A solid content strategy will build on your understanding of who you want to talk to and leave you with a plan of the channels to focus on, the topics you should be covering (with loads of post and blog inspiration examples), how often to post and the hashtags to use. This means that whenever you sit down to plan your content, you're never starting from scratch because you know exactly what to focus your efforts on, saving you time and energy.

3. If your socials are working well, and it's time to put budget behind your content to reach more people: ask for paid ad consultancy. Starting running paid ads can feel like a big step, and realistically if you don't have the budget to pay a professional to build and run your campaigns, you're going to be adding it to your own to-do list. Training from an expert, getting their eyes on your plans and being able to ask all the questions takes the pressure off you (or your team), and makes sure that you have all your bases covered before you part with your hard-earned budget.

These are all one-off investments, which can feel scary. But they will pay dividends in the long run in helping your non profit reach and nurture your ideal audience, as well as helping you avoid costly ads mistakes and streamlining your processes. Most importantly, they can help free you up to focus on the parts of your role you can really add value in. Win-win!

How do you know when your non profit is ready to run paid ads?

Paid ads are sometimes approached as a bit of a fix-all solution when you feel like nothing else is working. But without getting your foundations in a good place first, paid campaigns can end up costing you a lot of money without much to show for it. Make sure you've sorted out these five areas before you start putting your precious budget behind a paid campaign...

1. Your brand identity. Being really clear on who you are, why you do what you do, and what sets you apart (and making all those things clear through your comms) is absolutely key to being able to talk to and convert more people to supporting your cause. If you look and sound like everyone else, you won't attract the people who would benefit from a relationship with your non profit.

2. Your ideal supporter. Remember, if you try to talk to everyone, you end up talking to no-one! Really getting to grips with who your ideal supporter is - not just their age, gender and location but what drives them, the challenges they face and why they would benefit from knowing more about you - means that whenever you're creating social content, blogs, newsletters etc, you can write with that one person in mind, and draw on all the things you already know they value and are interested in. This means that when it comes to paid ads, your targeting and messaging become 100% easier because you know exactly who you want to talk to.

3. Your organic social media. The channels you focus on should be determined by your ideal supporter and where they spend their time. For instance, if they are predominantly on Instagram, spending loads of your time trying to reach them on LinkedIn isn't the best use of that time (although I do think non profit marketers should spend more time on LinkedIn as themselves, and here's why). Your organic activities help your non profit to reach new audiences and to nurture your existing community, and it's also a great place to test messaging, topics and creative formats. Once you have a clear idea of what your audience responds best to, you're then ahead of the game when it comes to putting budget behind that winning formula.

4. Your path to donation. You can run a brilliant campaign with a high click through rate, but if people looking to donate hit a website that's hard to navigate and takes ages to load, a payment system that's glitchy and a form with a bunch of unnecessary fields to fill in, you're going to lose them. Ironing out all these creases ahead of time will save you money in the long run. Testing this can be as simple as asking a few people outside your organisation to visit your website and try to make a donation, and talking to them about any stumbling blocks they came across.

5. Your best converting asset. Paid ads amplify what is already working well, so being really clear on what you already have that's converting prospects into supporters efficiently will come in extremely useful. If, for instance, your newsletter has a high conversion rate, running a paid ad campaign to increase subscriber numbers will help you make the most of something that is already delivering. Similarly, if your organic channels have great engagement and that engagement is translating well into donations, a follower campaign would help you boost those numbers.

Being really clear on these five will save you a lot of time and money in the long-run, so make sure you're feeling confident in all of these before you start putting money behind your campaigns. I'd love to hear how you get on so do drop me a message on LinkedIn if you hit any stumbling blocks (or if you're smashing it - I love hearing that too!).