Explain the whole Instagram thing to me/Late to the party!

debsey

Sun, Jul 21 2019, 4:44 pm

My business has a website which tends to bring in a lot of business. (Don't want to specify the industry, but basically, we provide services to companies that have to interact with the government on a daily basis - so social service facilities and the healthcare industry, but sometimes industries that you wouldn't imagine would need us.)

This business is really a side venture off my main business, but it's picking up nicely, and I want it to grow to the point where I can justify hiring a dedicated person just to manage this aspect of the business. It's about 75% of the way there right now.

One of the ways I attract new customers is that I have a blog on the website that explains certain aspects of what we offer, and reading this blog has brought me a lot of interest and quite a few new customers.

A social media consultant suggested I use Instagram to promote the blog, stating that it can drive more traffic to the blog and allow more of the industry leaders I'm trying to attract to read my content.

I'm not such a social media person. Can anyone explain this to me? What kind of service/freelancer would I need to hire to create images on Instagram that could potentially drive traffic to my site? And is it too good to be true?

mha3484

Sun, Jul 21 2019, 4:54 pm

I work in a service related business (staffing and recruiting). Our marketing consultant told us to focus mainly on LinkedIn and our website. We use Facebook a little.

She said that Instagram primary serves retail, restaurants, beauty etc basically anything visual you want someone to see so they will buy your product or use your services.

Without knowing your business it doesn’t sound like Instagram is for you.

debsey

Sun, Jul 21 2019, 4:55 pm

Kumphort wrote:

Is this business something that someone would use for personal stuff? It doesn’t sound like it?

If not I would look into using linked in as a social media platform

I'm on LinkedIn.

It definitely has helped.

What I'm trying to do is get interest from people who are completely out of the usual pool of my customers, because the service we offer has implications for completely different industries than the ones I used to focus on.

I'm not interested in being an "influencer", I'm only interested in getting people from other markets to click on my blog and know that our services are out there.

One random person in a completely different industry reached out for services after reading a blog post of mine that he stumbled on completely by accident. Now he's a steady client, and he has referred others. I want more things like that to happen, but I'm not sure how. I don't have the money for a large-scale advertising campaign in random industries.

Stars

Sun, Jul 21 2019, 5:15 pm

debsey wrote:

I'm not interested in being an "influencer",

Then you will be lost in a pool of millions of other users. That, combined with the type of business you are referring to, makes the time and work investment not worth it imho.

It's a free platform, but nothing in life is actually free. It sounds like you are doing really well slowly but surely . IG will suck a lot of your time. Time you could spend to continue doing what you were doing till now.

debsey

Sun, Jul 21 2019, 5:16 pm

mha3484 wrote:

Thanks.

The example this marketing consultant gave was a client of hers who was an OT who also had a blog, and she would post either inspirational quotes or photos of particular exercises on Instagram, which drove a lot of traffic to her blog, and ultimately allowed her to generate much more business in multiple ways.

There is a "visual" component to what I do (like flowcharts or clear cost-benefit analysis) that could be translated to something visual, but I'm not sure Instagram is the right place for it.

Basically, I want to cast out a much wider net, to services and industries that could use our newly expanded service, but I can't go from industry to industry because I don't have the time and I don't have a dedicated staff member for this yet.

ggdm

Thu, Jul 25 2019, 6:45 am

I am not a marketing or sales person and I am in a different type of company. But I can tell you what we do in my company and maybe some of it is useful.

We have a company website with a blog. We have a regular schedule of blog posts (don't remember, a post every two weeks?). Regularity is rewarded by search engines and it keeps you fresh in the memory of your customers. Recent content on the page shows to a new customer that you still exist. Blog posts are from different fields in the company to appeal to different reader groups (sales will look for different things than a technical person, etc). What you do in your blog (explain your value) sounds great. We also post events, e.g. a fair or conference where we go.

We have social media presences on several platforms, but they mainly exist to link to the web page. Whenever a post on the blog is published, it goes on all social media as well. Usually it will be only a picture, a teaser text and a link to the blog. I think probably someone is also in charge of reacting to comments there. I vaguely remember that they also comment on event pages, if they exist (like "we are coming, looking forward").

To be honest, in my opinion the only use of social media for companies is, that people can follow you instead of actively having to look for new content on your web page. If you are not in a B2C business, your customers are found elsewhere (fairs, networks, ...). But that's my personal non-marketing, non-sales opinion. I think 80% of our projects come from existing customers and their recommendations.

About who/if to hire: I think you can just open accounts on social media yourself for the business. Then have someone like a marketing intern be responsible for linking to a new blog post there when it appears on your blog. I think with a blogging software like WordPress you can even automate some of that. Of course that is a minimal thing and to really get a lot of customers via social media, you may want a marketing person who knows more about the platform. Also you could check what your competitors or similar businesses in other locations do on social media and maybe go from there. Good luck!

FranticFrummie

Thu, Jul 25 2019, 8:18 am

Personally, I would hire a media savvy Millennial teen, on a commission only basis.

Let them manage a new campaign for you, and then give them a percentage of the net profit their leads provide.

Young people who use social media a lot know what catches people's eye, and what doesn't. You don't want to get lost in a sea of people posting pictures of their cats doing cute things, or what they had for breakfast. You also want someone who is highly motivated to work effectively in order to get that commission.

If your social media person attracts younger companies, that's excellent, because they grow with you. Startups often stay with the ones who were loyal to them in the early days, and they remember who gave them a chance and took them seriously. The only way you'll reach them is through the youth markets.