Learn how to use social media for local business in this week’s podcast!
This week’s episode of Good Girls Get Rich, I interview Deborah Smith, founder of JerseyBites.com, an online publication covering the food and restaurant scene in New Jersey since 2007. Karen and Deborah discuss the importance of leveraging the community for your local business, as well as ways she helps small businesses grow their local brand through social media and content creation.
We are joined by Deborah Smith is the founder of JerseyBites.com, an online publication covering the food and restaurant scene in New Jersey since 2007. Her marketing agency, Foxtrot Media LLC., specializes in social media management, Facebook and Instagram ad campaigns, photo and video creation, review generation, and more for restaurants and other businesses. Through JerseyBites.com, Deborah leverages the highly engaged foodie community she has cultivated for over a decade on social media to help restaurants grow their business. She is also the author of The Jersey Shore Cookbook, a collection of 50 recipes from 50 beloved shore restaurants.
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About the Episode:
We’re focusing all on local businesses here today, and how better to learn about using social media for local business, than from someone who works to help market local restaurants?
Here are 3 important tips from Deborah when it comes to leveraging social media for your local business:
HAVE GREAT CONTENT
Since Deborah helps local restaurants grow, she focused on the importance of great food pictures! I mean think about it, how can you market your food on social media if
- You don’t have any pictures of the food
- The pictures of your food aren’t attractive
- People can’t tell what your food is??
This applies to so many businesses in how it’s extremely important to have high quality, attractive visuals for your brand, whether it be photo’s or videos!
This day in age, our phone’s can take amazing quality photo’s. To leverage social media for your local business, invest time in training of your social media team to take high-quality, attractive photo’s that stand out from your competition.
**Quick tip: make sure you stay consistent in posting. Even periods of 2-3 days of not posting sends a message that you’re not a business that is invested in it’s customers. You don’t have to post a thousand times a day, but make sure you stick with a set schedule! Also be mindful to give your audience information when they are most likely to see it! i.e don’t post last nights dinner special the next morning!
INCORPORATE THE COMMUNITY
You’re a local business, therefore it’s important to cater and highlight your community through social media! Before heading out to take pictures of your customers or post someone’s comments, it’s important to take a few things into consideration:
- Do you have their permission to be photographed?
- Do you have their permission to be re-posted?
- Is the content on brand?
Engagement from the community is also extremely important. Did someone leave a comment on your post tagging a friend saying they should try a dish? Respond! Is someone mentioning they missed out on a great dish you just posted? Offer them a discount to come in and try it! Making the community feel loved on social media from your local business can easily turn into a butterfly effect. One happy customer can lead to their recommendation to a friend and so-forth.
INVEST IN FACEBOOK / INSTAGRAM ADVERTISING
A quick tip would be investing in Facebook / Instagram advertising to leverage social media for your local business. It’s extremely efficient and cost effective at targeted by geo-location and pin-pointing your ideal customer. However you can’t just throw money at a post and expect it to work for you. Have a plan when it comes to your budget and strategy.
From here, you want to make sure you strategically create the content so the customer wants to come in and engage. This is where you can highlight special promotions, events and new products from you business. Each piece of content should answer 3 questions:
- Why does the customer need my business?
- What problem am I helping my ideal customer solve with my business?
- How can I attract the customer to my business?
Episode Spotlights:
- Meet Deborah Smith, founder of com (4:43)
- What led Deborah to create her famous, Jersey Shore Cookbook (7:23)
- What led to Deborah creating her own business and blog, jerseybites.com (9:20)
- How local businesses can incorporate social media tools (16:22)
- How Deborah works with clients to produce and use content that benefits then (23:22)
- Should you take a personal brand approach to the clients you work with? (25:25)
- How to incorporate clients customers into the content mix (27:35)
- What’s next for Jersey Bites (29:47)
- Find Deborah on social media and visit her agency website (33:04)
- New Jersey “foodie things to do calendar” (33:33)
- Best thing to invest in as a local business (34:27)
Episode Spotlights:
- Meet Deborah Smith, founder of com (4:43)
- What led Deborah to create her famous, Jersey Shore Cookbook (7:23)
- What led to Deborah creating her own business and blog, jerseybites.com (9:20)
- How local businesses can incorporate social media tools (16:22)
- How Deborah works with clients to produce and use content that benefits then (23:22)
- Should you take a personal brand approach to the clients you work with? (25:25)
- How to incorporate clients customers into the content mix (27:35)
- What’s next for Jersey Bites (29:47)
- Find Deborah on social media and visit her agency website (33:04)
- New Jersey “foodie things to do calendar” (33:33)
- Best thing to invest in as a local business (34:27)
Resources Mentioned In This Episode:
- Check out Deborah’s Jersey Shore Cookbook here
- Tips for increasing profits from social media
- Deborah’s Foodie Things to Do Calendar for Jersey Shore locals
- Check out more information on Deborah’s agency, Foxtrot Media LLC.
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