Social Media - Hijinx Marketing

Local Community Facebook Groups: A Treasure Trove for Customer-Centric Content Marketing

by hijinxmarketing | Marketing Best Practices, Social Media

In today’s interconnected world, local small businesses face both opportunities and challenges in engaging with their customers effectively. One remarkable tool for understanding customer sentiments and fostering relationships is joining local community Facebook groups. By actively participating in these online communities, small business managers and owners gain valuable insights into their target audience’s preferences, concerns, and expectations. In this blog post, we will explore how joining these groups can help local businesses shape their content marketing strategies, enabling them to connect with customers authentically and foster a strong community presence.

Community Connection and Insights

Local community Facebook groups serve as virtual gathering places where local residents share information, ask questions, and voice opinions about various aspects of their local areas. For local business owners (and managers), these groups are goldmines of customer insights they can use in their small business marketing. By joining these groups, they can observe discussions, identify trends, and gain a deeper understanding of the needs and wants of their local target audience. They can uncover pain points, preferences, and desires directly from the customers’ perspectives. This valuable knowledge serves as a foundation for developing content and product marketing strategies that resonate with the community’s interests and addresses their specific concerns.

Building Brand Credibility

Engaging with customers in local community Facebook groups enables businesses to build brand credibility and trust. By actively participating in discussions and offering helpful insights, business owners and managers position themselves as trusted authorities in their field. Sharing valuable information, answering questions, and addressing concerns demonstrate a genuine commitment to customer satisfaction. This builds positive brand associations and fosters customer loyalty. Moreover, when satisfied customers share positive experiences within the group, it acts as organic word-of-mouth marketing, further enhancing the brand’s reputation within the local community.

Content Creation and Customization

Joining and interacting in local community Facebook groups provides business owners with firsthand knowledge of the topics, interests, and challenges prevalent among their target audience. With these insights, businesses can create tailored content that directly addresses the needs and concerns of their customers. By producing valuable and relevant content, businesses can establish themselves as trusted sources of information within the community. Whether it’s blog posts, social media updates, or informative videos, local businesses can leverage content marketing to provide solutions, educate, and entertain their target audience while subtly showcasing their products or services.

Building Meaningful Relationships

Engagement within local community Facebook groups allows local businesses to foster meaningful relationships with their customers. By actively participating in conversations, responding to comments, and addressing feedback, businesses demonstrate their commitment to customer satisfaction. This interactive approach helps establish a personal connection and humanizes the brand. When customers feel valued and heard, they are more likely to become loyal advocates and refer the business to their friends and family. Additionally, businesses can utilize these relationships to gather user-generated content, testimonials, and reviews, which further contribute to their small business content marketing efforts. However, one thing that can damage those relationships quickly is not following the group rules. Some Facebook groups only allow company promotion on certain days of the week. Others don’t allow promotion at all. If you are at all unsure, check with a moderator before posting.

Here are some examples from my own local Facebook groups:

Bella Rose Designs is a local boutique. They sell a lot of handcrafted items from crafters in the local area, have a monthly subscription box, and they hold classes each month. In this example, the owner, Sarah Rose, uses her personal Facebook account to post in the local Chatter group about upcoming events. Depending on the circumstances, you might choose to use your personal Facebook account or your business account. You might want to consider creating an individual account that you use only for business purposes.

In this case, a customer had an experience at a local car wash, Kopetsky’s, and posted about it on Facebook. The owner of the business is very active in Facebook groups and responded to her original post. He was able to resolve her issue and she went back to the Facebook Chatter group and let everyone know what came of her original problem. This is an example of being able to mitigate a possible reputation hit by seeing posts about your business.

Another local business is our Biggby Coffee location. While this is a franchise, that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be involved in local Facebook groups. In this case, they were looking for workers. Your local community is a great place to find employees who will be invested in the area, know a lot of potential customers, and become local advocates for your business.

As with the car wash example above, residents often post problems with local businesses on Facebook Chatter accounts. In this case, an individual recommended that people not use a local business because of a poor experience. And they attached photos. The owner of this business is not a member of the local Chatter group and did not refute this bad review.

Joining local community Facebook groups opens up a world of opportunities for local small businesses to understand their customers better, engage authentically, and strengthen their small business content marketing strategies. If a business serves multiple communities, the owners should join multiple groups. By actively participating in these groups, businesses can gain valuable insights, build brand credibility, create customized content, and foster meaningful relationships with their customers. Remember, content marketing is not just about promotion; it’s about providing value, building trust, and nurturing lasting connections. By adding engagement in local community Facebook groups to their small business marketing plans, businesses can become an integral part of the community, shaping their brand story while addressing the unique needs of their customers.

Your customer has a question…

by hijinxmarketing | Audience, Marketing Best Practices, Social Media

Business owners talk to their customers all the time, right? Well…not always.

I am continually surprised by how many large companies do not respond to their customer or potential customers on social media. WHY? If a customer walked into your store or called you on the phone, would you ignore them? I would hope not! If you are not going to engage with your audience on social media, then maybe that is not the right channel for you to communicate.

Don’t be like those big companies. You are in a unique situation as a small business to engage with your customers at a personal level.

Here are some common queries that customers ask and how to respond to them:

Logistical questions: What time are you open? Do you carry a certain product?

Response: Always, always answer these type of questions. As quickly as possible. If you use Facebook, you can even set up standard responses. Or develop a list of answers to common questions so you can easily respond to your customers. These are no-brainers.

Compliments: They love your products, had a great experience with an associate or want to share your generosity.

Response: Some businesses think they don’t need to respond to these type of messages. But that is wrong. By responding (particularly to a public comment), you elevate these brand-boosting messages. If it is a really good comment, you might even think about asking the person who made it if you could use their comment (or image) in your marketing. This is called UCG, user generated content.

Complaints: They had a bad experience with you, your staff or your products.

Response: It may not be comfortable, but you need to acknowledge complaints. Do not just leave them hanging out there without responding. Show empathy. Make it right (if you can). There is no excuse for not responding to a complaint, particularly when it is public. Responding shows everyone else that you are paying attention and make things right if there is a problem.

Does it matter if the messages are direct to you or public comments? In most cases, no. If you don’t respond to public comments and questions, everyone will see that you are not engaged with your customers. If you don’t respond to direct messages, you are ignoring customers who are actively seeking you out. They took the time to find you online to ask a question. You should take the time to respond.

Have more questions about engaging with your customers, contact me for a free 30-minute get acquainted call.

Feeding the Social Media Beast

by hijinxmarketing | Social Media

Using social media is easy, right? Just set up a Facebook page or Twitter account and start posting. Sounds easy. Unfortunately, for businesses, it is not.

“Doing” social media is one thing. Being good at social media is another. Consider this: on most days there are more than 1,000 job postings on monster.com with ‘social media’ in the title. That means that companies are willing to pay for people who specialize in how to help them reach their customers on social channels. People who know how to craft a post so that it gets the most likes, shares and clicks. People who know whether your video post should go on Instagram, Facebook or Snapchat.

Aside from developing a strong strategy and creating content, you also need to monitor your page for comments, messages, tags and other notifications. That can be a lot of work if you have a large following. Certainly not something that a small business owner should be spending their precious time doing themselves.

Lastly, social media is not really a free marketing channel anymore. Do you know what the best advertising structure is to reach your target audience? How much money should you spend? Should you boost posts or boost your page? Or both?

This post just touches the tip of the iceberg of the considerations when you embark on social media. Needless to say, feeding the beast may be the least of your challenges if you really want to be GOOD at social media and use it as a tool to increase customer loyalty or sales. You wouldn’t try to fix your furnace yourself if you weren’t trained to do so. So why are you still trying to do social media by yourself?

Has social media peaked?

by hijinxmarketing | Social Media

Social media has been on an almost vertical trajectory for the past 5 years…booming faster than most people can keep up with it. But many social media sites are experiencing slowing or flat user growth. And companies can no longer rely on ‘organic’ social media engagement. Paid posts are almost always required when attempting to reach customers via these channels.

Does that mean that you should not utilize social media as part of your marketing strategy?

Not necessarily.

For small businesses that have a very targeted customer base or have a retail location that they are looking to promote, social media is still a good option. The caveat is that you need to be dedicated to keeping up with it. If you have a strong, loyal following that is willing to help share your content, it is even better. After all, it is social media!

However, social media should not be your only channel for communicating with your current and potential customers. It should be part of an integrated marketing approach that fits your business’s needs.

And you also need to keep up with social media trends. What are the latest features on Facebook Pages? Is there a social media site that caters to your typical customer? If you need help figuring it all out, contact me.

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