It was a very somber occasion at Flamingo HQ on October 4, 2021. One might call it “the day the music died.” (bonus points if you’re old enough to catch that reference)
OK, the music didn’t really die, but Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp did.
What did you do during that extra free time? Did you swear at your computer and frantically refresh your browser windows over and over again? Or, did you kick back with your legs in the air and relax? Or, did you tackle some much-overdue tasks that you couldn’t get to because of the pull of social media?
If this day didn’t teach you the importance of marketing your business outside social media, let us make it a little clearer.
The sad truth about marketing
True confessions: we hate obsessing about algorithm changes and organic reach and engagement numbers more than you do – because, quite frankly, they are metrics that are out of our control. You can have the best-planned strategy, but you cannot fully control the results of your marketing endeavors.
While we’ve done this for long enough to be able to predict how certain things will do, and recommend the best tactics to meet your goals – but we cannot control the world. If we could, there would be an endless waterfall of wine outside our office, trust us.
So, since we haven’t fully mastered world domination yet, what’s a business owner to do when the world goes bananas and we can’t snap our lunches for the ‘Gram?
Don’t be afraid to play in a different sandbox
So Facebook and Instagram went down. Where did your customers go? Do you know? A lot of them dusted off their old Twitter handle, or found other communication channels to distract them and chat with friends during that fateful day. We’re willing to wager that those seeking information probably went to your website. Is yours up to date? Is it listing your hours of operation and ways for people to contact you outside of social media? If not, talk to us. We pride ourselves on building websites that are affordable, easy to maintain and help your customers find you.
If you’re not sending emails to your best customers, the October outage might be a great reason to start! You don’t have to reinvent the wheel if you’re already generating social content with us or on your own – just expand upon it and start collecting email addresses to send it to! Most email platforms have a free or low-cost plan that make it an easy, low-maintenance investment. We like Mailchimp and Flodesk, just to name a couple of options.
Furthermore, social media algorithms mean that your best customers might not see your best content right away – but email inboxes have no algorithms to contend with once you’ve made it to the inbox!
Read the room!
We’ve all heard about those companies that commit awful branding faux pas (and if you haven’t, here are some truly terrible ones for your enjoyment). Often, these mistakes are due to using a scheduler for social media or email, and not being nimble enough to un-schedule messages before they are published.
Luckily, your Flamingo team is normally nimble enough to help you unschedule before your business becomes fodder for late-night comedy. We review your social media content writing as we go, to look for any holidays and culturally significant events that could be an opportunity for a promotion OR a tone-deaf mishap.
Put yourself in your customers’ shoes – how are they feeling when things like a social media outage happens? Are they able to get a hold of you? Are they frustrated? Or do they think it’s funny and you can use it to spin a fun promotional idea in another channel?
Social media shouldn’t be the only tool in your toolbox, and it’s not the only one in ours either! From websites to advertising, texting to branding, we can help you navigate this big crazy marketing world! Contact us to chat about your business today!
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