Social Media Momentum
There is nothing more exciting than starting a business and watching the buzz and momentum grow.
The main objective for your business should be that others know exactly what you do and the services you offer, so if asked it rolls right off their tongue. Also, they should have a personal feeling about you and your business, so they talk from a place of trust.
About 6 months ago, I met a local yoga instructor, Jamie Wilson-Murray of Mindful Play Yoga. We were both involved in the “City of Trees” student art project hosted by the Jersey City Parks Coalition and their engagement and education partner, Goldman Sachs.
The kickoff started at the Jersey City Reservoir, which included 40 students from local schools. The day was a combined lesson of yoga, art and nature and was an inspiring combination. Jamie and I decided to talk more about combining forces between her business and my own Frogs Are Green to build our own curriculum using these three components and seeing the interest for children in the Hudson county area.
We branded the name “Peaceful Frogs” and took our idea to a few local people including Sean Connors and Councilman Michael Yun, who both encouraged us and did what they could to get us started. Councilman Yun even offered us his office space for Monday evenings during the summer and we had many parents drop their children off.
Building the momentum took a little time and it comes from not being afraid to share! So many are afraid to post too much but I’m here to tell you, with millions of people online each day and at different times of the day, there really is nothing to be afraid of.
What matters is posting in the right places, where you can get the right eyes on what you’re doing.
Right from the start, Jamie and I had the right combination of experience. Together we share the responsibilities of photography, graphics, website building and sharing across social media on Twitter, Instagram, Google+ and Facebook. We also took some time to hand out flyers at festivals, farmers markets and posted flyers in shop windows and other local establishments. We also visited many schools and child care businesses to pitch our classes.
As the momentum grew, we were contacted to teach in more locations and are currently in Hoboken, Jersey City and this month expanding to Union City.
Today we were discussing the posting we’ve done for a particular event, making sure we’ve done what we can to assure signups. We will continue to share photos and information everyday and are excited for the future.
Ready to take action on Facebook and other social websites for your business? Here are some tips:
- Don’t be afraid to post the same content in many pages and groups. Remember, people hang out in different places.
- Be sure that the page or group where you are posting is relevant to your offering.
- Add a great photo as well as a link for more information to your website, so you can track the visits. (*If you load the photo first, the photo will show, not the link preview.)
- If you are talking about another person or place, tag them and encourage them to accept the tag, so it appears on their page also. (Message the person about it).
- Be sure to track your post shares by others and like / comment there also.
- Research local news pages and share your content with them also, so it gets picked up and the information spreads wider.
- If it’s an event, share it with the city, so they can help promote it.
- Another way to have great visibility online is to spend some time commenting on other people’s posts, (whether their individual profile or a company page) however you should switch to commenting as your page instead of yourself, at least half of the time. (*Be sure you have followed your favorite pages, as your page, then you can tag them later on in a post.)
For example: When you comment in a post, it says who is commenting and there is a little pull down to select another voice besides your own.
