She's On The Money - Maximising Social Media For Your Business!

Episode Date: March 26, 2024

Social media plays a big part in most of our lives, and even more so for the brands and businesses around us. Today on the show Jessica Ricci joins Victoria Devine to discuss how to maximise social media for your business. From optimising its ability to generate customers, to the importance of consistency and so much more! Acknowledgement of Country By Natarsha Bamblett aka Queen Acknowledgements. The advice shared on She's On The Money is general in nature and does not consider your individual circumstances. She's On The Money exists purely for educational purposes and should not be relied upon to make an investment or financial decision. If you do choose to buy a financial product, read the PDS, TMD and obtain appropriate financial advice tailored towards your needs.  Victoria Devine and She's On The Money are authorised representatives of Money Sherpa PTY LTD ABN - 321649 27708,  AFSL - 451289.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hello, my name is Natasha Nabanunga-Bamblett. I'm a proud Yorta Yorta, Kernai, Wolperi and Awadjeri woman. And before we get started on She's on the Money podcast, I would like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land of which this podcast is recorded on Awadjeri country, acknowledging the elders, the ancestors and the next generation coming through. As this podcast is about connecting, empowering, knowledge sharing and the storytelling of you to make a difference for today and lasting impact for tomorrow. Let's get into it. She's on the money.

She's on the money. Hello and welcome. I'm Victoria Devine, the owner of several successful businesses, and I am joined by one of the hardest working side hustlers I know, Miss Jessica Ricci. Hello. How are you? I'm good. How are you? We just had some tacos in the sun. I'm feeling pretty good.

Yeah, me too. So Jess, this week, we're going to be talking about something that's relatively familiar to both of us, and that is using social media to market your business. Now, Jess, tell me how important, this is like a loaded question, obviously, do you think social media is for your side hustle or business today? So important. I know it definitely is for Sheets on the Money and it certainly is for my small business. That's how I find literally all of my customers or how they find me. And then it's also the content that you create. Correct.

So I was like, it's loaded. Sorry about this. Yeah. Without social media, I don't really have a job. I would say that as well. Like Sheets on the Money wouldn't exist without social media, Yeah, let's be honest. And there are obviously a lot of factors that go into social media and whether it is right for your business. But for the most part, social media has become our biggest customer generation tool. Honestly, think about it now, Jess, even with a cafe, how often do you head to their Instagram just to make sure the food looks okay? Like I'm so guilty of even heading to their Instagram while I'm sitting in their cafe. So I'm like, oh, hold on, let me just check the

Instagram and see what those eggs look like. It sounds bad, but I probably won't try a new cafe or restaurant if I can't have a look at the food first, particularly because I'm fussy. It's so helpful. It's such a good tool to be able to see their photos and also the photos that people are tagging them in as well. Legit. And as unfair as it may be, it is definitely something business owners need to really consider. So today we are going to be covering off exactly how you can get the confidence to show up and also the fundamental things that you need to be doing to get your social media off the ground Jess. So let's start with chatting about target markets because if your business is targeted at the older generation I'm assuming social media might not be the best

place to focus. I mean logically yes and 100% correct. We of course need to start with actually figuring out what your best target market is and we've done this before on the show so go back to that episode we talked about customer avatars. Does your avatar even use social media? Yeah. Like if they don't, I know it can be tempting because I feel like so many of us get, I don't know, FOMO when it comes to like, oh, but every other businesses is on, you know, Instagram or TikTok. Like you really need to hone into what platforms are actually going to have the most impact for your community and show up on those and where your community are hanging out.

Because if you're picking a platform where a lot of your community aren't seeing you, it's such a waste of time, energy and effort. And do you know how much confidence you need to show up to begin with? Yeah. It is wild. So for She's On The Money, we already know that our biggest listeners are between the ages of 25 and 34 years old. So of course, that demographic is really active on social media. Therefore, we actually put so much love and focus into our Instagram and our TikTok and our Facebook to make sure that we're giving our community the best content possible, but also giving them as

many touch points with us as possible in places that they already frequent. But Jess, on the other hand, if your business is obviously targeted in an older demographic, you of course would be better off investing in more traditional marketing methods like maybe print or thinking about radio, really understanding, okay, well, a lot of my older demographic are on Facebook. How are they interacting with Facebook? What types of posts, if I'm going to engage with them on social media, would actually play well because the biggest demographic on Facebook right now is actually the boomers. So if that is your community, Facebook might be great. And when you start to dive into it, like you look at She's On The Money, right, Jess? We don't do a lot of posting

outside our Facebook group because our community don't look at that content as much as they do if it's inside a Facebook group. So I think it's important to not only understand does your demographic use this platform, but how are they using it? What type of content are they absorbing? Are they, you know, wanting to interact with other people like in our Facebook group where they actually just want to have consistent conversation? Or do you actually need long form video? Like what's that going to look like for your community? So it obviously doesn't hurt to have a social media presence in general. I sometimes call a social media presence a hygiene factor because it's kind of like social proof. Even if you're not trying to market on there, I do want to see

that you have a website. I do want to see that you have a Facebook and it exists and you're a legitimate company if I've never engaged with you before. So obviously it doesn't hurt to have that social media presence. We just need to work out what is the best bang for our buck and where do we pour our energy and effort into? Because let's be honest, we are small business owners. We don't have unlimited time, Jess. No, not at all. So let's say we've sat down, we figured out that our target demographic is heavily present on social media. They're our age. They live there. There's really low barriers to entry, which is super appealing because if you're starting your small business, like you said, we don't have a lot of resources. We don't have a lot of cash.

We don't have a lot of time. Sometimes we have zero dollars for our marketing budget and we have to just make it up ourselves. So social media seems like an ideal place to do that because pretty much all you need to get started on the social media platform nowadays is an email address. So we've found one of those. Most of us do it. If you don't, you can get one for free. money win money win indeed so you've created a business page it aligns to your business name or maybe the audience that you're trying to find where do you think that the most important place to start would be bang on jess i feel like the best thing about social media is literally anyone can start up a business account on any social media platform some people are even starting

you know their platforms without even having a product or service like i've spoken about it on she's on the money. One of my favorite Instagrams, right? Millions of followers because they just are consistent with their content. And it's kind of interesting. I've told you about this, the goats. Yes. Yeah. So on TikTok, there are these goats and they work and it is definitely for a business. Actually, now I think about it because they do land clearing, but they bring in a bunch of goats to like clear all the shrubbery. And it's literally my favorite TikTok because I'm just like, go work a goat, go. Like it's so fun. But anything pops off on the internet these days. So I think it's really important to go, all right, clearly, V, I'm not going to be posting

about goats. Or maybe you are, in which case, like, please send me your link. I'm going to follow you too. But there are such low barriers to entry and it's so cost effective to get your business out there. We obviously, when we started Cheese on the Money, I didn't have a lot of money. I really, really didn't. Everything I had done was really DIY.

Like I've spoken about it before on the pod. yeah so our logo I actually made on Microsoft PowerPoint and then I screenshot it Jess yeah and I remember when she's on the money then started to get big and I think you were around when this had happened because like guys I had been able to employ my first employee Miss Jessica Ricci she's still here it's a trap but I remember we joined our first podcasting network which was insane right yeah I remember Jess you came to me and you were like hey the network has asked for all of your like files. And I was like, files of what? You know, like your podcast artwork and stuff. And I was like, oh, oh, can I send them a PowerPoint? And they laughed so hard. I was

honestly so mortified. I was like, oh, sorry. Like this is all I had. Anyway, I think we need to also celebrate those things. Sorry, that was a big business we just built with Microsoft PowerPoint logos and free downloadable fonts. But I think it's really important to also talk about the cost of social media because we can spend as much or as little time on it as we want but that's also the important thing to go well how much time should I be dedicating to this marketing channel you might not have a budget so you say I'm going to do it all myself but at what cost so what am I compromising to be able to create these posts or how long are they taking me because I wasn't a graphic designer just every post used to take me one million years

And then I'd be heartbroken when it wasn't tracking well, because I'd be like, oh, but that took me so long. And now, Jess, we have an in-house content creator that does all of that for us. And I swear, she's the speediest person I've ever met. 100%. But we all start somewhere. So I think it's really important to understand where are we starting and what does that look like?

Absolutely. There are heaps of perks, I think, with social with those low barriers to entry and the fact that it can be free, depending on how you want to do it, which is all really well and good. but I think the toughest thing for a lot of people and the thing that stops a lot of people from jumping online is the fact that they have to show up on the socials and be consistent when doing it. And we know that it's so important, but I want you to explain maybe a little bit to the people who are just starting out brand new and fresh, why consistency is so important.

You are a hundred percent right. Consistency is key and it's not what you want to hear. Because I think what you want to hear when we talk about social is, hey, listen to this great podcast episode of the Business Bible. Guys, everyone should listen. They talked about what would make you go viral and kick your business off. And in reality, yes, businesses can go viral, but it's actually few and far between. That's not actually, you know, the common denominator of being successful online. Consistency is key for a number of reasons. So obviously we want our consumers to begin to know and understand us and our content. And if you are consistently posting, even if you are not getting heaps of views, that consistency does pay off because the algorithms on social media

platforms usually play to that. They see that you're being consistent and they are actually more likely to then put your future content at the top of the feed. And if certain demographics have engaged with that, even if it's like five or six people, Jess, Instagram sees, oh, that type of person engaged with that content. Next time it goes, you know, online, they might serve it to more consumers who look just like you. So I think it's really important to just be consistent and how, you know, at the end of the day, you could have the best product in the world, but if you're not showing up as much as your competitors, they're going to be the ones that are front of mind. I think to me, the hardest thing about showing up on social media was actually showing

up as me on social media. Like it's one thing to sit down and go, I'm going to make 20 text posts and that's my next month's worth of content. And Jess, how many times have we done that? A million times. But we know that the traction actually starts to come when I put a face to a business. And we know from research that businesses that have a poster person or a poster child or, you know, an individual leading them grow 10 times faster than businesses who don't have that. So if you're sitting there and you're just going, well, V, I'm not very confident to show up online. so I'm just going to do these text posts or use stock images. It's just not going to have the same traction. And in 2024, your community and your consumer, they basically demand authenticity

and transparency. They want to know the people behind the brand. They want to know that you're as passionate about your product as you're saying you are in these text posts. You're who they want to resonate with. And I think that we need to give it to them. And honestly, the only people that are going to judge you on this are the people who are doing less than you. So like show up as much as possible. And honestly, I don't think any small business owner to me has ever looked silly for going, hey, guys, just wanted to introduce myself. I'm always like, oh, my God, that's who's behind that brand. Oh, that's cool. And I feel so much more connected. Yeah, I think there's lots of conflicting opinions on the best way to grow on social media and whether that is just regular,

consistent content, regardless of what the output is or whether it's high quality content and what you should prioritize you know it's that concept of do I pour my time into making one really good video a week that's super high quality or do I just post two videos every day that are okay they're nothing groundbreaking and the algorithm is shifting constantly your audience is going to be shifting constantly I don't necessarily know that one or the other is guaranteed to work every time but what I would say as someone who has been doing the social media thing for a little while is that if nothing else, putting content out as regularly as you can, prioritizing that consistency ahead of the quality sometimes, is it gets you more comfortable more quickly. Because if you're

not used to jumping on and talking face to camera, or if you're not used to editing graphics in Canva, practice makes perfect. And anybody who's built a small business, anyone who started anything was never as good at the start as they are a year, two years, five years in. And so I think like when I look back on what I did at the start, when you look back on what you did at the start. I'm so embarrassed. Please don't bring it up. It is. It's mortifying. You know, those silly posts that maybe got one like or one view are what led you, you know, for Shares on the Money. Now we have 200,000 followers. We just ticked over. Yeah, we do. Very exciting, you know, but to get from point A to point B, you have to start at point A. And anybody who has a billion

followers once started with none. And so I think it's important at the beginning to prioritize just doing it, just getting comfortable with it, just learning how to edit things. And also trial and error, I think is a really big part of that. So, you know, talking about she's on the money again. I find it so interesting and I don't want people to compare to this. I'm not sharing it as a, oh my God, we post all of this and you should too. I am now at a point in business and Jess, you already know this because you're part of the team, but like we have a dedicated social media person. We have a dedicated graphic designer. I have a full-time video editor that works for me so when I'm saying this is how much content we're pumping out I don't

want you to hear oh my god is that the expectation no it's not because historically I didn't even have the capacity for one video a week I had maybe one video a month if best and I tried to make like a text post every day and even that felt like a stretch because that wasn't you know what I was best at and now we do a lot but we post every single day multiple times a day on all platforms right and so on Instagram it's always interesting watching what performs and what doesn't because sometimes the things that we go yeah yeah great that'll be a good filler post pop that up semi-interesting not as interesting as tomorrow's post Jess and then tomorrow's post gets like no views and that post that we just thought was naff was super popular got shared heaps of times like

we're talking thousands it is really good to keep your finger on the pulse there too because if you're creating content that you go wow that popped off I didn't think about that yeah change your strategy try more of what is popping off with your community instead of sticking to your guns and going well actually I had a plan for next week and I'm still going to facilitate it but it might be more aligned to stuff that wasn't engaging as well yeah the other thing that I find really interesting and I know you do this as well with your socials is when I post a video on Instagram, we post it at the same time on TikTok. And something that goes viral on TikTok might get like four views on Instagram. And I have had videos that I have posted on Instagram that have

had millions of views and not even 10,000 on TikTok. So you literally can't predict it. You don't know what the algorithm is doing. That's why when we say be consistent, it's really important. But with that consistency, have an eye on what is actually performing so that you can kind of go, ah I see you know my target market is Jess and Jess is watching this I didn't think she'd watch that I'm gonna make another one of what Jess is watching and see if we can get her to watch that again and maybe share it with her friends so I think it's about being smart but let's go to a really quick break and when we get back we're going to be chatting about why and when to start a website and how you can make your social media strategy seamless all right V we are back and we

have chatted about figuring out if social media is right for your customers, the super low barrier to entry, which is a huge perk, and how cost effective that it can be. But what comes next? Let's say our listener has done the fundamentals, they're showing up consistently, and they figured out that they've got a little bit of room in their budget to spend on social media. I'll just give it all to Jess. She'll do it for you. Oh, come my way, friends. No, but what should they do? Let's say that that's happened. What's the next step? I really feel like one of the most important steps is also pretty cost effective.

And honestly, it's super easy. And that is setting up a website for yourself. I know that that sounds overwhelming. It does. Because even way back in 2017, when I was creating the She's on the Money website on Squarespace, that was hard. Like, don't get me wrong, adore Squarespace. Still with them now today.

Our websites have just been redone with them and I'm not going anywhere. But, and I hope they don't hate me for saying this, but it was really clunky. was hard. Like the templates were more challenging to edit because they involved a deeper understanding of code. And my, I guess, knowledge of coding, I don't know if this is going to resonate with anybody, was coding glitter mice into my MySpace page when I was in high school and editing my top friends list. And I could absolutely do that. I was a genius at it. However, that was the extent and that was MySpace and that was 2007. So things have changed and updated. And obviously there are heaps of different website platforms that you could use so obviously do your research work out

what works for you but we obviously are massive fans Jess of Squarespace not just for their ease of use I think because I mess things up so much their 24-7 support really helpful I sound like an ad they are not actually paying me to say any of this I'm just like hey if I can do it you sure as hell can too but I think having a home on the internet is so important so personally I own the She's On The Money website. But then recently, Jess, I've also started victoriadivine.com.au and I always thought that was really self-centered. So I really shied away from having a personal website. Now I cannot think of a business without one because I think that now our brand, and this is just me reflecting on it, we've got She's On The Money and yes, I run that, but I think that

there's a lot more to what I do. I've obviously got the business Bible and I own Zella Money, which is a wealth and mortgage broking company and we've got the property playbook and I have a number of courses and all of that stuff it didn't make sense to have that live on She's on the Money but it also didn't make sense to have another quote branded website for it to live on so for me it's a way to educate my consumer on who I am and what I do and the breadth of that because you might have just been introduced to me through She's on the Money and have no idea what I do but if you're interested here's this platform that you can learn more about me yeah so I think it's to me really important that that exists and it obviously works really well because on social

media I can send you to those links to learn more about me and potentially become a consumer yeah I guess the other huge draw for a website if you follow me on TikTok you would have maybe seen that I did my 2023 goals and I had make a website in my 2023 goals and I didn't do it literally I thought about it for the first three days of January and then I never thought about it again. You were like, oh, was that a goal of mine? No, not here, not today. But I guess the reason that I was thinking about it and the reason I would encourage small business owners to think about it is because you see a lot of people talk about you don't own your social media. At any point in time, Instagram could take your page

down because they decided they don't like you. You could be hacked and your account could be removed. It's very much at the mercy of somebody else. And we've seen it so many times where people lose their Instagram for some reason or, you know, it gets reported for absolutely no reason. And Instagram's like, yep, cool, we deleted your account and you had 10,000 followers. Yeah, and it's such a struggle. So I think the big draw beyond being able to be found is owning your audience. Correct. It's all yours and it's all there.

That's why you want to direct them to your website. Yeah. Generate your email list, build up the people who know that that's your space where they can come and find you and everything that you do. but it is really cool how technology has made it so incredibly accessible for things like social media and building a website and creating your content because it can be really low maintenance it can be really once it's set up I won't say it's set and forget I look at it quite often but it's not a task I have to do all the time yeah with platforms utilizing AI and platforms like Canva I think it's changed the way that social media can now be accessed and utilized particularly

by small businesses. Yes. And I love Canva. I'm really glad you've brought it up. If your name is Georgia and you work for She's On The Money as a full-time graphic designer, I need you to turn this podcast off right now because I'm going to talk about Canva and she's obviously well beyond that. But Canva is amazing. And I think for small businesses, creating templates is one of the easiest ways that you can make sure that your social media is consistent, but also low maintenance and it also gives you a base to go oh wow I saw a really cool quote you can easily jump on in a couple of seconds pop that quote into a template that's branded for your community and your business and whack that out instead of having to start from scratch each and every single time

I think at the end of the day if social media isn't a designated job in your company which if you're a side hustler or a small business it's honestly likely that that doesn't exist it can really feel like something that's time consuming and it ends up falling by the wayside and on Canva there are heaps of templates you can use if you don't have heaps and heaps of budget but maybe your budget's a max of $50 you can go to Etsy and buy a whole heap of templates from there and edit them into your colors which is so easy because they open directly to Canva and Canva is user-friendly or if you're stepping up and you have maybe the budget to engage a graphic designer once or twice, you can get them to build those custom templates for you to put into Canva for

you to then implement. I think when it comes to social media, having access to just different levels makes sense, but you often don't know unless you've been taught. And that's where I started, right? Like I literally was making my stuff on Microsoft PowerPoint. Please don't talk about it. I can show you through that template at some point. I had a page per template. It was fun. And then I learned about Canva and I was using their stock standard templates. And then I tried to make my own and that was a massive fail because I have literally no creativity in my entire body when it comes to that. I also felt like I got analysis paralysis. So I bought a set of templates from Etsy and loved that. I think they cost me like $29 or something and I got like

a hundred of them. And I was like, ah, Slay, look at me. I have glown up. Then this would be like two years ago, Jess, we engaged a social media, like graphic designer as a once off and they created us that suite of templates that you used to use and we thrashed them. Now we've grown up again and we have someone full time. But I think it's important to also recognize the journey because I know that a lot of people look at She's On The Money and go, that's so polished now. I'm like, that's not me though, guys. Yeah. There's a whole range of different options and there's some really good tips in there. And it is worth noting, like you said, that there are heaps of people who do freelancing as well. So if you want to take it off your plate, but you don't have the

funds to bring it in-house, you can look at outsourcing to people, which may be a worthwhile investment to free up your time. Honestly, it's where I started. And freelancers are so fun and so dynamic. And also they're small business owners and we want to be supporting small business owners. But I think you are absolutely right. One final thing with social media is honestly, do not be scared to put yourself out there. I said before that the only people who have bad things to say about this or like are going to look down on you are the people doing less than you. Nobody doing more than you will ever look down on you. They'll be like oh get it queen like we love to see you put yourself out there. Like ick if you are in a community where people are

treating you that way. So I think one of the scariest things is genuinely putting your face to a brand but at the end of the day I feel like we need to remember that people love buying from people. They don't just love buying from brands and they love understanding the people behind the brand. And that is really, really powerful. So if you can find your confidence to put a face to a name, you might just start with photos or you might just start with a little, hey, I just wanted to introduce myself. I'm new to this. Your community is going to love it. I promise. So to me, that would be, I guess, my two cents. Yeah, I totally agree. I think if you are really scared, look at ways that you can start doing it without putting your face directly in front of the camera you can

do point of view of my day or yeah like a day in the life or something where you just film the stuff you're doing not you exactly there's lots of little ways to build your confidence up but I think if you go into it with the mindset of ultimately you want to show up for your brand you want to show up for your community because yeah like you said people want to buy from people and people that they like and the best way to connect and find your ideal avatar and your ideal people is by showing who you are as well. I think that's super valuable. And I think confidence at the end of the day is key here. Like just being confident in your brand, your product and the service that you're providing to consumers. It's something that will absolutely boom your presence

online. And honestly, confidence is a bit like a snowball. You might not have anything really to start with and you're so angsty. Start rolling down the hill though, it gets bigger and bigger. And then all of a sudden you've got so much audacity that you buy your own personal name as a website and set up a whole website on how great you are. And I'm not willing to admit that I would never do that. But, you know, it gets there. But that's what I guess brings the money in at the end of the day. Like you've got to back yourself. And if you want to be successful, that's what 2024 is going to demand on you. Huge. All right. Well, I'm going to go away and put together a strategy. Making a website is back on my 2024 goals list.

Can I help? I had so much fun doing mine. I would love nothing more. I am so across it. Let me show you. But thank you guys for tuning in and taking in all our hot tips. And I think here, social media, it's a bit like the brand Nike. Just do it. Like, just go do it. Just do it.

Have the best day, guys. Bye. The advice shared on She's On The Money is general in nature and does not consider your individual circumstances. She's on the Money exists purely for educational purposes and should not be relied upon to make an investment or financial decision. If you do choose to buy a financial product, read the PDS, TMD and obtain appropriate financial advice tailored towards your needs.

Victoria Devine and She's on the Money are authorised representatives of MoneySherpa PTY LTD ABN 321 649 27708 AFSL 451 289. Thank you for watching.