Embrace the power of Social Media and Live streaming for your Local Business

Most of the weekends I spend some times wandering in the street of the little town I can now call "home".

As many well advised citizen, I'm a member of several Social Medias groups build around this town.

The topics that are discussed are very broad, from local event to dog poop inadvertently abandoned on the pavement by a pet owner (how dare him?!).

At my deepest regret, I barely see any local business owner taking part to conversations in such groups. That's like they live in another dimension and have no clue of where are the local influencers water holes.

That's well known to any hunter: the best way to catch good game, it's to hide near their natural drinking places and wait for them to show up, which usually happen at least once a day.
Same is valid for members of the public you try to catch and convert into customers.

So during my weekends discussion, I kinda like to tease business owners about their social media use. That's are my conclusions:

1. They all are aware of at least one of those: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or Pinterest. Sometimes even all of them. 
2. They mainly go to Social Media for personal use and rarely to promote their business.
3. Those who use FB have one page they rarely feed with content, sometimes from time to time.
4. As in reality, they have no marketing strategy whatsoever and they decide to go on social media because everyone else is in there. Pretty much like 20 years ago when they decided to have a website without really thinking it would worth it but only because that everyone else had one.
5. Nearly none of them consider social media as a mean to drive more customers to their business. When I mention that it could be the case usually causes a wide range of reactions that I could summarise as "denial snobbery".
6. None of those who have a FB page do know how to do a Facebook Live. 
7. None of my respondents do know what live streaming is.
8. Most of them are totally clueless and far away from believing the use of social media could make a difference into their business.

In the last business I've been, Steve's Hair Salon the owner seemed to complain endlessly about the competitors who appeared in the high street and how they are killing the business but a no point he was even questioning his own set of decision, aka marketing strategy.

Am I the only one in town that can spot the elephant in the room?

There would be so much they could gain in implementing a social media strategy.

Yes, I did use the word strategy.

For me, a strategy is a series of actions that are done consistently with a goal in mind and for which we measure the impact of those actions and compare it with the costs incurred.

In other words, that's something different that a pub discussion about what some one think they should do and that they will try some day for few times just to decide it's not worth it and go back to their old bad habits.

In order to help any small business embracing social media, there are a couple of advice I would give to the business owners:

The basics: A Facebook page for your business.

Get at least one Facebook Page. Those are easy to setup and are totally free.

Get your page linked to your account so it's accessible from your smartphone.

If you have no smartphone, it's tome to get one.

Join some local groups on Facebook. All town, villages and cities have at least one. Get a member of every and each of them.

Don't fear introducing yourself into those groups and introduce your business briefly.

Take pictures with your smartphone to add to your page. Your business is great and you look gorgeous in it, show the people. 

If you have a website, link it to your page and if you don't, don't worry. I see more and more businesses that don't even bother to get a website but only a FB page.

Feed the page

Now you've got your FB page online, there are 2 important things you need to do in order to benefit from it:

First most important thing: post at least weekly on your page. There are plenty of things you can talk about, from a specific product, a story about a client or about you, some promotions and offers, season sales, holidays, etc. The sky is the limit in the creativity you can put in your page.

Second more important thing is to ask your customers to interact with your page: that translates in everyday words as "like our Facebook page" or "follow us on Facebook", along with a sticker or sign everywhere your customers eyeballs may fall into: a menu, a price list, at the checkout, on the receipt...

You can use the Facebook page as a mean to reach you. People will love it: everyone spent at least 12 minutes a day on FB. So why not telling people who just purchased "if you have any problem, get in touch on Facebook".

If you don't ask it you won't get it.

We say that to our children but why can't we do it ourselves? Many business owners are reluctantly shy to even ask for something to their customers. What do they have to loose? They already got a no, why not asking? You may get a yes. If you don't ask, you get the same as if they'd say no and the only way to be sure is to ask.

My point is : don't be afraid to ask for what you want your customer to do, you'll see it will significantly increase the chances for it to happen.

• Ask to follow your FB page 
• Ask to share your page
• Ask to share their experience on Facebook
• Ask to share a photo of what they just bought while using it
• Ask they to do a Facebook live while they are in your business
• Ask them to talk about your business in FB groups
• Ask them to talk to their friends

That's call buzz marketing. 

Because delighting your customers is not enough. 

If you're the kind of those you always go the extra mile to provide what your customer wants, the money you get is not the only reward they will be wanting to give you. 

By asking for one of the actions listed higher you sometimes give them a chance to show the excess of gratitude they want to express to you. 

You're rendering a service to them.

The power of live broadcast

That is the ultimate use of Social Media and that's the most powerful.

And that's the most under used by the small business.

And you know what's the most ironic?

That's totally free.

At least for the moment.

So why don't the local businesses embrace it?

They spend ridiculous amounts into Yellow pages ads, Local newspaper ads, even road signage or local football club sponsoring. All of this can affect painfully their bottom line.

So why is the free tools that will multiply your potential reach snubbed by most business owners?

My hair dresser Steve I mentioned earlier could highly benefit from that.

He's nowhere to be seen on the internet and even though he's got a modest website, he's not even in the search engine result when searching for "Men's hairdresser near me", which in itself is a shame.

He's got some strong unique selling points though: He's open at 5:30 am, is affordable (10£ haircut, while the cheapest competitor charges £12).

Still, he complains his hair salon is empty on Saturdays when it used to be overcrowded many years ago.

If Steve would embrace social media, on one of those dead days he could pop into a local group and do a Flash Sale: 50% on the next 4 men who come into his shop today. In order to leverage his message, he could make a quick live broadcast to announce it to his followers.

The fact that many do ignore is that Facebook, Google/Youtube and Twitter/Periscope are in the middle of a war for live streaming. Therefore, they are all in into it.

Currently, Facebook have ceased showing all the followers of your page whatever you post in it. It only shows to 10% of your followers and will increase it to 25% if the followers that'd seen it interact with it (like, share, comment). 

So people became desperate wondering if it's worth it. 

Yes it is because this don't apply to live streaming. 

Every time you'll start a live broadcast from your FB page, it will notify all of your followers. Some of them will pop in but if you decide to, you can keep the video of your streaming posted on your page. Those who will see the notification later will be directed to this video, called a "replay".

And if you don't like the video you've just made, you can simply delete it.

As simples as that.

This is a powerful way to communicate to your audience and potential customers where they actually spend the most of their free time: on social media.

So why not embracing it and start now?