Are you struggling with your Instagram
and Facebook? You know they just take so much time and you're not getting the
results you are after well in this episode I'll be sharing an interview I
had with social media marketing guru Toni Aston who shares the reasons why a
social media manager is necessary for small business owners and gives us an
idea of how much it's going to cost and why it's such great value let's get into
it so Toni you're social media and digital
marketing guru and the owner of 2AT startup so I'm really excited to have
you because you so knowledgeable in the space of social media and digital
marketing something that side hustlers are definitely struggling with
especially when people are starting their own business trying to work out whether
they should be doing it all themselves or whether they should be hiring someone
to help them out so I'd love you to go through a bit about your experience so
far and why you started – and yeah any challenges you've sort of faced so
far.
I started 2AT in 2015 and I was working in marketing for that
eight years before that the reason I started 2AT was because I started
to take the struggle that's startups were having and that wasn't just about
you know how to get there product out there those smaller things it
was like knowing what branding was knowing what resources were available and
knowing who the target audience was um and then on top of that it was also
the budget restraints that they faced as well we all know what bootstrapping is like
and so I traveled for a few months when I quit my full time job to decide what I wanted
to do and then when I landed back in Melbourne just the thought of
going back to the regular nine-to-five just was insane
so I started freelancing on the side and helping the startups that was struggling
a lot of them were just friends at the time and realized that with my
background in marketing social media and all of that that I could really start
something to help them and so I didn't know anything about business so I went and
studied small business management full-time before I wanted to launch 2AT in December 2015 my vision is to be and the startup place for entrepreneurs in Melbourne and hopefully one day Australia wide so we consider ourselves a resource hub which we provide more than just services it's more
about support and kind of holding their hand along the way and yes that we branched
out from everything from websites social media branding and just general startup
support and now I've got a small team of two or three with a couple of subcontractors and we work from a space in one roof what are the biggest challenges you're
seeing small businesses facing in the space of social media so when someone's
starting a business what are the immediate things that they're struggling
with ok and then the number one challenge that small businesses come to
us the very beginning is just not knowing who they're talking to so who
their target audience is and when we ask them that they usually say anyone
that can find their product or service and very classic to see that you
do want to service anyone that you can as they want the income through quickly
but the key to it is just knowing your customer and who they are where
they're hanging out especially online yes that knowing their target audience
and then on top of that the biggest challenges they face is the time to do
it and the knowledge or understanding so you'll constantly get startups that are trying to do everything they're trying to do their own accounting the
kind of the third website they're trying to do their own marketing and social
media so when you do that you just tend to post the sake of posting and I think
that's one of the biggest challenges that if it's not your area it acknowledge that acknowledge that it's your weakness and see where you can get
the help yeah cool I love that so much I've
talked about on my channel about target markets and finding a target market and
really focusing on that one ideal customer and targeting all your
communications to them rather than trying to you know do this blanket
strategy for everybody that could potentially want to purchase your
product so I totally agree with that we always say don't look at the
bigger brands like out there and think who they're targeting athletes but also by their sneakers as
you mentioned before Toni small business owners are a struggling with budget and
find it really hard to work out how they're going to be spending their money
so often they think on social media they're going to get a intern or a
junior to do the work for them so what would you say is a benefit or a con for
doing something like that versus hiring an agency like yourself
I definitely think interns can be great We have interns all the time at
2AT and they are great because they're being directed by marketers but
if you have an intern that doesn't have experience or haven't been educated and
they can do more damage than good so what I mean by that is you might have an
intern that's posting pretty content and making your feed look good but if
they're not engaging or providing value or generating leads eventually you might
have to go back and start from scratch and so I do think there's pros and cons
at the early days I definitely think they're a great resource just to get
your social media going and that you're definitely going to have to give them
some for the guidelines and some sort of strategy around it and so you'll get a
lot of people just posting for the sake of it and yeah I think that it really does
depend on the intent but essentially you're going to do a lot more good if
you either do it yourself or get an expert to do it for you what results have you seen from businesses who have invested in a social media manager like whether they
had given it a go themselves before and the types of results I've seen since
actually investing so yeah the biggest benefit is that outsourcing to people
that really understand social media they understand the storytelling and the
benefit that yeah the customer journey and where they are at when they land
when you all social media and how to engage them how to connect with them so
when they are ready to purchase they'll come back to you and that's kind of
essentially how you start creating that community and yeah I think that's
probably the biggest benefit is social media managers really understand social
media they they live and breathe it they're up to to date on the algorithm
they know what an algorithm is a lot of start ups don't really
understand that where we we have to stay on top of that we have to know Instagram
updates we have to know what Facebook is doing and then we have to evolve your
content to react to the updates so and unless they're experienced you know
you won't know that unless you kind of study marketing yeah I love that you
mentioned that idea of social proof so your social media channel isn't just
about being a channel to facilitate leads it's about creating that bigger
picture story about your brand and creating that social proof of having you
know people engaging with your content rather than just relying on that and
follower figure which I think a lot of small businesses just want that follower figure to be massive but there's no real objective
around why they why they want that exactly and for me when we get those
clients that just want these followings we really need understand why they
want that and it can be reasons that people need that kind of vanity factor
whether they're looking for investors or they would have become an influencer
other probably the two biggest reasons people who actually need it but other
than that these social media is about creating a community and valuable
content you're just flashing your product in their face every day you're
not giving them any reason to follow you so yeah I think our agency and other agencies really just understand that is key so if a small business was thinking
yes I am resonating with their so much I'm finding social media really hard and
struggling to you know get those results that they're after what would be the
process someone would go through when trying to find a social media manager or
are there any sort of you know things to be wary of when you're looking for
social media managers again definitely a bunch there's a big checklist I'm
sure you can google but my biggest word of advice is to make the person and to
make sure that you connect within yourself I just had a conversation about
this with my client and she was looking for another service provider in a
different area and the whole thing was making sure that they understood her
personally before they understood their brand so knowing her needs and wants
and then going into her business goals so my biggest thing would be to make
sure when you engage with someone that they are really wanting to meet you and
really wanting to have a briefing session with you
anyone that's like happy to do it over their email and I don't think you can
get the connection that you need you can obviously then go and do your credit
check and you go look at their social media and I think a lot of the time you
hear a social media manager that's not active on social media themselves that
they're they're not good I don't actually stand with that and I think
you'll find that social media especially the startups the social media managers
and even 2AT sometimes we can be quiet on our socials because we're
managing so many other accounts that we put our client first but to make sure
that we're doing a good job when we do let out a piece of content we make sure
it is very valuable and that it is a resource and but there is an objective
behind everything we post so even if the person that you're looking to
engage is quiet on their socials check what they're posting and check their
brand check their consistency check the reviews all of that do your own
credit check the same way when you go and eat at a restaurant you go on
Instagram you look at the food photos you see the review all that sort of stuff do
that with your social media manager and they should also want to get to know
your target audience and find out I wouldn't work with the social media
manager if they haven't created a social sorry a customer audience profile for
you or if you have given them one they needed or that person almost better than
themselves because they're gonna be talking to them every day and yeah and
social media managers I think generally by trade are usually organized people and
they can think on the spot and they usually think outside the box but they
don't just think about your social media I think they ask you what you're doing
the bigger picture what's happening on your website what's happening offline
what events you attending and they they bring all of that
social media is a tiny part of the marketing strategy so they need to be
across that oh if they're just willing to you know post for you they're not thinking about the bigger picture yeah cool I love that so much because with social media especially like Instagram you can
fill your feed with just a whole lot of pretty pictures and lifestyle images
that don't really mean anything and while it does look really visually
appealing when someone lands on your account they're not gonna actually
engage with any of your posts moving forward which is part of the whole
reason why you're doing it otherwise it's a bit of a waste of time but how
much do social media managers generally charge or what are the sort of price
points that you have found in the market and it really does depend like we
usually quote case by case it's you've gotta look at how much work are they
doing are they just regramming for you are they designing graphics from
scratch or are they sourcing imagery for you and they taking photos for you and to
give a ball park is fairly hard but I would generally just look at someone's hourly
rate and ask them how many hours a week been look to spend on your social
media you can't really run a social media account without spending a minimum
of three hours a week so then times it by the hourly rate and see if it matches up but yeah like when I when I've done my market research you know you'll
see people talking anywhere from $150 a week to 600 to 1000 dollars per week but
it really does depend what the person is doing for you especially if you go down
the path of online advertising the cost are going to go up so yeah so just on that
point about pricing like are there different levels for different quality
or different experience levels of the social media managers yeah definitely
juniors always you know I have a little bit lower you can say anywhere
like in the industry from $50 per hour to $250 an hour I trying
to look for someone in the middle of that if you can and always just ask them
if you can see proof of their work to ask to see their clients and sometimes you
can't like they've signed disclosues to say that you know they they can't
say who their clients are but you need some sort of proof so ask them for a case
study you ask them who reviews again check their social media and see what
they're doing just to know how experienced they are yeah cool I love
that so much so just to kind of close what would be
your number one tip if someone was going yes I need help with my social media
what would be the first thing that you'd get them to do probably a couple of
steps before you get to a social media manager is to see really define what
your messaging is and so that quick elevator pitch get that done then really
think about your target audience that person I like to tell my clients to
think of a friend or someone that they know that fits the target audience and
perfectly and just write it down with that person is what their traits are
where they hang out what point they buy all of that before you reach the social
media manager because you've done a big chunk of the work but whether you do it
yourself or you engage with someone it is just learning how to tell your brand
story and provide value to your audience awesome well thank you so much for
coming on today Toni where can people find more about you and 2AT and you
can go to our website which is just 2ATstartup,.com or over on
Instagram @ 2ATStartup so it's the number 2 a t well I'll provide all the
links in my description below so thank you so much again thanks for sharing all
your knowledge you're so experienced in this area and I'm sure any side hustlers
and small business owners would have found is so valuable thank you
so what do you think does this make you feel like you need a social media manager
I sure do it's really about building that brand story on social media that
makes social media managers role so important not just post pretty pictures
on your Instagram account but actually deliver great results and build an
engaged community that will lead to sales just be aware follower count isn't
necessarily a indicator of success it's a vanity metric so if you have any
social media managers that you're approaching saying that they can give
you a certain follower account don't trust them it's about building this
organically that's important so once again thank you so much for watching I
hope you enjoyed this episode and please give it the thumbs up and comment below
with whether you've ever hired a social media manager or whether you want to now
I release new episodes of the side hustlers handbook every week so make
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well that's it for me for another day so until next time bye for now