Marketing, Meerkat and Facebook Questions

I’ve spent my entire career in marketing.  It was my first love in the business world and continues to be one of my favorite subjects.  Before Alesya Bags,  I spent over a decade in marketing and my last role was Vice President of Marketing for ePrize – the largest promotion agency in the world.

Because of my background I often get asked about different marketing tactics.  Since all of us at the Southern C are looking to grow our businesses, I wanted to share my answers in my monthly post.  And now, onto the good stuff:

Q:  What are these Meerkat links that I see popping up in my Twitter feed? 

Haven’t you heard?  Meerkats are the next purse dogs.  Kim K had three at Paris Fashion Week.

(A little marketing humor for you there.)

The Meerkat App is fantastic.  You can instantly stream live video to your Twitter followers.  They can ask questions, comment and like it – even retweet it.  Those thoughts are shared on their Twitter feed.  It works with your Twitter handle but not within the Twitter platform itself.

Since I’ve started using it about a week ago I’ve formed deeper relationships, talked to the people behind my favorite web show and randomly found someone live streaming from a business I’d just seen on Shark Tank.  Besides that it’s super fun.  Give it a shot – I think you’ll be amazed on the connection you’ll make with your clients with a live video as opposed to a single photo or line of text.

Q:  Is Facebook old news?  Should I stop using it?

A:  Especially with Instagram gaining so much traction I get this question a lot.  But don’t stop using Facebook.  While there are a ton of people on Insta – 300 million at last count – Facebook is still queen of social media with 1.35 billion active users.  And don’t forget, Facebook owns Instagram so it’s likely the two will stay at least somewhat connected for the foreseeable future.

Facebook also has a lot more flexibility.  As a business you have control over your content.  You can advertise for as little as $5 and target your specific audience.  You can easily share long videos, photo albums, live links and calls-to-action as well.  Instagram doesn’t let us do any of those things yet.  If you haven’t tried Facebook advertising yet I would highly suggest it.  Tons of bang for your buck.

And while you may not be posting status updates everyday on Facebook, I’m willing to bet you’re still lurking on a fairly regular basis.  (How else are you going to remember birthdays?)  Don’t worry, everyone else is too.

Q:  How much time do I need to spend on social media?

For busy entrepreneurs, this can be the billion dollar question.  I would challenge you not to think about your social media in total time – but in total days.

The first step is to find out where your audience lives.  Perhaps you have a younger demographic (18-25) and they get all their news through Snapchat.  Maybe you want to influence a few key folks in your industry and they comment regularly on Reddit.

While not totally ignoring other platforms, spend the majority of your time on the most important one or two.  And rather than taking Friday afternoon and dubbing those four hours “Social Media Time” on your calendar I’d challenge you to take 15-30 minutes everyday to tend to your users.  Knowing you’ll be there on a regular basis rather than just once in a while will keep your audience engaged.

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If you have marketing questions, feel free to throw them my way.  You can reach me on Twitter – @Alesya.