Maximizing Your Social Media Potential

June 22, 2015
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Maximizing Your Social Media Potential

Attendees of Williams Advertising Social Media JAM Session.

Attendees of Williams Advertising’s Social Media Chamber JAM Session.

“Maximizing Your Social Media Potential” was presented by Williams Advertising to local Hopkinsville/Christian County and Ft. Campbell businesses last week at the Chamber of Commerce JAM Session. Did we ever have the best group! There were non-profits, service organizations, several event venues, retail and more. There was a really good mix of area businesses and an impressive turnout that showed the diversity of local businesses that social media impacts (if you’re reading this and you think social media doesn’t apply to your business, contact us, we’d love to chat with you about that!). See the links at the bottom of this post to check out some of the social media efforts of the businesses that attended this session.

We started off with an introduction of the class members, where we got a feel for where everyone is in their social media efforts. Seriously, check out the links at the bottom of the page. Hopkinsville has some social media savvy businesspeople masquerading as things like “owner”, “doctor”, and “accountant”! To begin we talked about the importance of social media – we know that it’s here, it’s necessary, and you can do really great things with it. (Check out this video we played to illustrate:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jottDMuLesU).

After an overview of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Google Plus, Pinterest, and YouTube, we talked local and review sites. The businesses in the room want people from Hopkinsville, Ft. Campbell, Clarksville and beyond to visit their places of business, and what better way than to claim the free tools available to them? (See our post here about Google’s initiative to help local businesses get online). We spent some time on this subject, and on some powerful statistics about local search. 50% of people on a smartphone that look up your business will visit your business within the day. About 91% of people see a completed local listing and view the business as knowing what they’re doing. 94% of people’s opinion is that you’re a reputable business if you have a claimed listing on Google. (These are all numbers straight from a Google study). All during our section on where to be on social, we had really great dialogue between class members. When the audience feels comfortable enough to speak from their own experience, it makes for better takeaways for everyone – it’s nice to hear what fellow marketers are seeing, and how they tackle things we all deal with. That’s exactly the kind of session we had with this JAM Session.

Content, content, content! We could have spent the entire morning talking about the importance of good content with social media, how it impacts SEO, and how it can help you grow. If you’ve got something like TikTok then you probably want to know how to sort out the lag that keeps happening, luckily you can access this article as well as others on top of what we spoke about, so you are completely up-to-date with all angles. We also covered optimal posting times, different tactics for different networks, using your brand enthusiasts for growth, and more. Then we wrapped it up with measures of social media success, touched on crisis management, and then tools to help manage it all.

The only thing I think we didn’t cover is how business owners can get more time in the day. But then again, that’s where Williams Advertising comes in!

Chamber JAM Session

Sarah Whitaker of Williams Advertising presents to the JAM Session audience. Photo courtesy of Amber Anderson, Comcast.

A big thank you to these businesses that attended the JAM session and contributed to our fantastic discussions! Since we’re all about social, where available visit the local businesses’ Facebook pages to find out more about each organization:

And of course the Christian County Chamber of Commerce!

Categories: Hopkinsville, Marketing Services, Small Business