Day Trading Attention: How does your business use Social Media?

[DinaLRosenberg]

Hey Square Readers,

Welcome to another round of the Square Readers Book Club! Today we’re starting our next book, Day Trading Attention by Gary Vaynerchuk! 

This book is all about using social media to build your brand and market your business. It dives into strategies, tactics, and key principles that you can use to promote and grow your business. Its focus is on the idea that you need to understand where consumers are spending their attention, and create engaging content on those channels in order to get them to spend their money with you.

As we start reading the book, here we’ll kick off our conversations with a baseline of your experiences with using social media for your business.

As @Pesso mentioned in the book announcement post, I’m Dina Rosenberg, co-owner of Amityville Apothecary in Amityville, New York, and I’ll be co-hosting this round of Book Club! I am super excited to be co-leading this discussion because I am a huge Gary V fangirl.

Here’s some more about my background of using social media in my business.

We joined TikTok in March of 2020 because Gary V had mentioned if you put your business or brand on TikTok, you would get more attention than you deserve. I figured, what did we have to lose?

It took almost a year of us posting consistently before we had our first viral TikTok in February 2021. To date, that specific TikTok has garnered 3.1 million impressions and caused a worldwide spike in the price of a specific crystal (Libyan Desert Glass if you must know).

We weren’t stressed that it took a year of posting to gain any traction; frankly, we were having fun with it and whatever attention we gained was a bonus. I was just as excited to get 1 new customer as I was to get 10 or 100. It wasn’t until that viral TikTok (and the subsequent sales from it) that I realized it was way more than an “app for kids to dance and lip sync”.

During that same time (March 2020- the onset of the Covid Pandemic) we also up-leveled our Instagram game. Like many businesses, we closed our storefront at the end of March and we didn’t reopen until the end of June. Faced with the closure of our brick and mortar, and gifted with a lot of free time, we decided to utilize Instagram’s live feature. 

Our Instagram lives were an important way of staying connected with our customers. We showed up every single night at 8:30pm EST and talked about how we felt (scared like most everyone), we pulled tarot cards, we talked astrology, and we began to sell live and ship the products directly to our customers. This all grew from necessity; we didn’t really have a plan and the lives changed our Instagram strategy from aesthetic curation to real, raw and unfiltered.

Now both TikTok and Instagram are an important part of our business. We don’t value them above our brick and mortar or our online store, but they provide additional revenue streams and customers to us that we otherwise would not have access to.

In addition, by consuming social media, we stay on top of trends and learn how to communicate with our customers who are often significantly younger than us. For us, BRAT summer has turned into demure fall and we wouldn’t have it any other way (ifyky).

I’d love to hear about you and how you use social in your business, so share your story in the comments!

So let’s talk:

• How do you currently use social media in your business? Have you felt an impact? 
• What Social Media Platform are you most comfortable with? Which are you curious about that you haven’t tried yet?
• Is there anything that you’re uncomfortable with or haven’t yet tried on social media (certain platforms, features, getting personal)? What about it makes you uncomfortable? 
• What questions are you hoping to have answered by reading this book?

For some extra fun, share a selfie of you with the book here in the comments! 

Don’t forget to:

• View and Subscribe to all threads about this book
• RSVP to our Live Discussion – Tactic Talk: Social Media

Happy reading!

[Pesso]

Thank you so much for jumping in to co-host this round with me, @DinaLRosenberg ! So excited to have your amazing perspective and experience here. 

It was so great to hear more of your story and evolution of social use, and so dang inspiring to hear about your successes! I love how much you've experimented and jumped into trends and the huge boon that it's brought to your business.

When we had our business, Facebook & Instagram were my home. I built up a strategy to post every single day that we were open. It made a big difference and really brought people in. It was mostly just static photos in just a couple of formats, and I batched the post creation to make it as easy for me as possible. I would have loved to experiment more with it and try to get more traction, but I just didn't have the time or energy. 

Every now and then for an event or product launch I would do some polls and talking-to-camera videos and those had a HUGE response, but it was tough for me to put myself out there and to keep up with it. 

Can't wait to hear what others say!

[DinaLRosenberg]

I really am so jealous of people that have a content strategy where they batch content. As you know from working from me- I'm a little bit of a wild one (🤪). So much of what we put out there has to do with the vibe of what's going on. I really do need to up my game and push out some more content but like everyone else (I'm sure)- the running of the biz gets in the way!!

Can't wait to hear everyone's thoughts!

[Pesso]

There's pros and cons, @DinaLRosenberg ! It definitely made it less stressful, but the way I did it, it also took a lot of the experimentation and spontaneity out of it. That was detrimental to gaining new attention and trying new things, since I stuck to the same format for all of it. 

[CareyJo]

We currently use only FB for our business.  About 90% of our posts have nothing to do with our business.  I post fun content that people like to see and enjoy and I get a few comments here and there.  I share many of my posts in several local groups and that boosts our impressions.  I've been doing this for a year now.  I have a calendar and plan my content and schedule it so that I don't have to do it everyday.  We have definitely felt the impact because I ask every new customer how they found us and a lot of them say FB.  I do not pay for ads and I mix in about 10% business with my posts.

I'm only comfortable with FB because personally I don't use any other socials.  I have no desire to be on anything else, especially TikTok.  We're not a brick and mortar.  We're a service company, we don't sell products.  Most socials don't lend to our business.  I've contemplated getting IG but haven't for a few reasons.  1.  We've shifted our business model.  2.  We're working towards retirement and only keeping contracts, so I don't want a 1000 new customers.  3.  We can't post product in order to use IG.  We don't have employees and I cannot follow my husband from call to call and ask every customer to sign a waiver to allow us to take a video or post pictures of their install.  IG just doesn't work for us.

I'm not uncomfortable with posting on FB and I don't put a lot of personal stuff on there.  I'm also careful about what I post on my personal page.  As a business owner, you're always under the spotlight and everything you say or do is visible and vulnerable.  So I watch my P's and Q's.  I have, on a couple of occasions, vented about a situation that required attention because customers were taking advantage of us and that put a stop to it.  I did it appropriately and respectfully but put my foot down and let people know that WE own and run our business.  Not our customers.

I only use free photos that have no copyright for my fun "stuff".  Any other photos I use are my own.  I have no desire to make videos and I don't think they would be helpful but the thought of it does make me uncomfortable.  They won't look polished or professional and because I don't post daily like a lot of businesses do, doing them in the raw doesn't make sense.  There's not really a benefit in our line of work.  My fear is that if I start doing them they will be terrible.

I hope to learn a few new tips that I don't already know.  I know this book is written for the masses and businesses with large client bases who largely depend on social media to keep their business growing.  We don't depend on social media.  Our success comes from over 25 years of experience and actual education in the field.  Our most successful form of advertising is referrals and we don't even ask for them.  My husband's skill is so rare that he is quite literally sought after because people talk and spread his name.  We've struggled with getting people to stop calling him so much, that he's changed his phone number three times in the last 10 years in hopes that people will 'lose' him.  Earlier this year we finally forwarded his phone to our office phone so he can just stop answering unless it's someone he knows.  It doesn't matter how much we ask or tell, people won't stop giving the wrong number or thinking "oh, I know him, I don't have to talk to his office" or "I just need five minutes, you don't have to come to my house".  It got old real quick.  All that I have learned about posting on FB has been mostly self-taught.  I read, I experiment with things and if I get a chance to attend a class or something through the Chamber, I go.  It just adds to my knowledge base.  So I'm hoping he will tell me something that I don't know.

[DinaLRosenberg]

I love how you are leveraging Facebook and it sounds like you have a lot of wisdom there that you can share with the group. 

Re: posting and being terrible/looking terrible... I get that. That's something so many business owners fear. 

Question: what about Linked In? Ever thought about trying it?

[CareyJo]

Thanks Dina.  I do want to look at my seminar notes and see what I can offer.  @Pesso suggested that I share some things from that.

I have thought about LinkedIn but I don't like the joiner's fee.  If you don't pay the fee, you get nothing out of it.  I've been a member of business networking groups and although that one is online, that's still what it is.  Not sure that I want to join another group again...

I will look at my notes though and see what I can share. 🙂

[DinaLRosenberg]

I hear ya- I have a LinkedIn but don't pay the fee. Apparently people are alway looking at my profile, or so the emails I get from LInkedIn say (LOL).

Would love to hear your take and your seminar notes 😉

[Pesso]

Would definitely love for you to share some things from your seminar notes, @CareyJo !

As for LinkedIn -- I'm not sure if that's true that you only really get things out of it if you pay the fee. The way LI works is that anytime someone shares or comments likes something, it's immediately raised very highly in the feed of all of their connections (and so on). It's really similar to the early days of Facebook where everyone saw everything. So there's a LOT of potential for free instant exposure from network to network. Could definitely be worth a shot!

[CareyJo]

Good to hear.  I've heard from some local people I know that if you don't invest you don't get too much out of it, which is why I'm skeptical.  Will think about it...

[Pesso]

@CareyJo -- I think more for the job hunting/recruiting side of things that paying for LinkedIn matters more. Just for the posting & building, I think it's great for anyone! Let us know what you do-

[Pesso]

Thanks for jumping in, @CareyJo !

That's such a good point about the stage and goals of your business. If you're not in the zone to grow and gain more customers, then investing the time and effort into promoting your business (on social media or anywhere) may not make sense. 

There is benefit in posting on social to help stay connected and build community with your existing followers, and that sounds like more along the lines of what you're doing, which is great!

Great point about the line between being authentic and oversharing -- definitely need to protect yourself and your privacy! 

As for the worry about videos looking non-polished unprofessional, I don't know -- I think there's more of an appeal and appetite to raw & real and not so polished than you might think. I think that kind of thing really resonates with people, especially in today's TikTokified social media landscape. If you want, I'd say give one a try -- but no pressure if you don't want to. You never know! 

A great suggestion I got from later in the book is to try out just talking to camera for a minute or so about some of the expertise and knowledge that y'all have. Share a tidbit of something you would tell a prospective client, either about yourselves or the services you provide, or just about HVAC in general. Could be super valuable! 

Really excited for the rest of the book and I hope you can find some new tips and things from it-

[DinaLRosenberg]

you know me @Pesso I am all about off-the-cuff! Especially on TikTok... I think people love a look "behind the curtain"

[CareyJo]

So... @DinaLRosenberg and @Pesso requested that I give some of my tidbits... here's one:

When I started posting on FB a year ago, I used a block calendar.  I wrote down all of the 'fun' days from the Holiday-A-Day calendar - you know... Chocolate Milkshake Day (which is coming up on the 12th) or Friendship Day, for example, that I wanted to write a post about.  I chose only days that I thought would be of interest to others, would remain impartial and somewhat educational.

I then included days that relate to my business... changing your filters on the 1st of each month.  World Refrigeration Day.  Encouraging people to book appointments for AC installations or heating check-ups.  I also use a FILTHY filter that my husband got a picture of, to remind people why we change filters every thirty days.  (You can see it on our page.)  I also add any monthly themes like September is National Library Card Month.

Once I have all my days filled in for the month, I then get onto the planner in FB and schedule a week's worth of posts all at once.  Sometimes I do about 10 days but it won't let you do more than that.  I always make sure I cover the weekends so that I don't have to stop and work during them.  I usually do the scheduling on Tuesdays or Wednesdays through the end of the following week.

I save the old calendars in a binder to refer to them for next year.  I can add or delete anything for the upcoming year.  On the holiday months, when things like Sugar Cookie Day or Pecan Pie Day come up, I share a recipe in the post, not just a picture of a pie.  I'm adding value.

Enough for now... I'll post again soon 🙂

[DinaLRosenberg]

That is so organized... are you a Virgo? This is like super big Virgo energy.

[Pesso]

It me -- Big Virgo Energy -- birthday on Friday! 

[CareyJo]

Happy Birthday!!! 

[Pesso]

Thank you so much!

[CareyJo]

Nope.  Aquarius.

[maxpete]

same!!

[Pesso]

That's really fun, @CareyJo -- I love that you worked in the fun days that are connected to your business, and even more so that you worked in a monthly reminder to change filters! Such a great way to be a resource to your customers, but also encourage them to use your services. Doing a picture of dirty pictures with that is super clever and visceral! 

I love the batching and scheduling of the posts too -- that's what I did too, but I used a spreadsheet to plan it all out.