Category: Social

The Best Social Media Tips, Straight From Social Media Strategists

Post author By Rallio
Post date July 31, 2020

Sometimes, the simplest social media tips are the very best social media tips. There’s no need to complicate matters when you’re trying to figure out how to be impactful on social media for your brand.

In keeping with that idea, today’s blog article features social media tips from our very own Rallio Local Social Media Strategists. They are the people who work directly with individual businesses to post social media content, reply to reviews and social media engagements, and manage and monitor their social media presence.

When our Strategists speak with business owners, they tend to offer the same simple social media tips over and over again. Those tips are outlined below, followed by a brief video from our Strategists with further details.

Showcase the People Behind Your Brand

This is one of the best social media tips because it’s so easy to accomplish. You probably have content ideas right in the palm of your hand if you’ve taken any photos at your business lately.

People like to see who’s behind the awesome products or services you have to offer. From the owners to employees and even customers, it’s the people who really bring a business to life on social media. You’re passionate about your business, and that passion should shine through on your social media posts.

As noted in 6 Powerful Content Ideas for Your Small Business:

“Working on your storytelling skills is one of the best ways to improve your social media. Whenever you have something to post, think about the story of how it came to be. Share those stories with your followers. You’ll be amazed at how much they love them and how much engagement you get, especially with boosted content!”

Think about the people and customers who frequent your business, the history behind your location, the employees who have worked with you from the beginning, new employees, or new products and what makes them great. Snap a candid photo or video and put your stories out there!

Be Authentic

Why be someone else when you can be yourself? Your audience can tell when you’re being authentic versus when you’re trying to sell them something. Authenticity wins over salesy every time. It’s also the best way to differentiate yourself in a crowded online world.

“Brands with inauthentic messaging distance themselves from their audiences and open the door for more down-to-earth competitors to steal their customers,” writes Convince & Convert. “People ally with brands because they see their own personalities and values reflected, but most people don’t want to describe themselves as insincere, foolish, or untrustworthy. When brands step outside their identities and try to latch on to unrelated trends, customers notice—and the results are rarely positive.”

Engage With Your Customers

As people comment, share, like and interact with your posts, be sure to engage back with them. Let them know you’re listening and that you appreciate them as customers and followers. Being engaged means more opportunities to solidify relationships and expand your reach.

As we write in Top 5 Social Media Growth Hacks for 2020, “When you post something, don’t think of it as a “mic drop” moment where you walk away and never have to return to that post again. Monitoring comments and interacting with your audience as they post is one of the simplest growth hacks — and you might actually enjoy it!”

Be Relatable

What topics tend to resonate the most with your customers and target audience? That’s what you should be posting about on social media. Doing so makes you more relatable and memorable, and people will be more likely to stick around to see what you have to say.

Pair those topics with a defined tone of voice, and you become much more interesting to your target audience and followers.

Convince & Convert writes, “Whether you want to be quirky, shocking, unconventional, or just plain friendly, the choice is yours. Just don’t be boring. That’s the quickest way to be forgotten, or not even being noticed in the first place.”

Something is wrong if this sound isn’t familiar to you 🙃 pic.twitter.com/hD3PjTf34z

— OREO Cookie (@Oreo) July 15, 2020

The Best Social Media Tips, in Our Strategists’ Words

You’ve read the tips, and now it’s our Strategists’ turn to explain their best social media tips in their own words. In less than three minutes, you’ll have a few brand-new tools in your social media toolbox.

As always, reach out to us if you could use a helping hand or two establishing a strong social media presence.

Tags social media marketing

Social

6 Powerful Content Ideas for Your Small Business

Post author By Rallio
Post date July 30, 2020

When your brand is social-media-friendly, your content ideas might come easily to you. For instance, if you are in the pet industry, that’s a no-brainer. Nobody ever tires of seeing cute animals on social media doing even the most mundane of tasks, like sitting on the couch or staring out the window at a delivery person.

For some brands, it takes a little more digging to create social-media-worthy posts. Rest assured, though, with the right content ideas, any brand can become fun and exciting on social media!

All it takes is a little creativity — and the content ideas below can help you knock your content out of the park. Above all, remember that social media is supposed to be social, not boring or salesy.

It’s like if you were sitting down with a friend you haven’t seen in a while. It’s going to be a much more pleasant visit if you show them the photos you took on your last vacation — not your encyclopedia of common household pests, don’t you think?

https://www.facebook.com/541879122868760/photos/a.597667927289879/1427933680929962?type=3

Show the People (and Pets) Behind Your Brand

One of the simplest ways to connect with your audience is by showing the living, breathing beings at your company. This method works no matter what kind of business you have.

You can make a seemingly boring topic much more interesting by showing the personality behind your brand. Do you have an employee who loves to rollerskate? A co-owner who grows his own vegetables and runs a YouTube cooking channel? An office dog who brightens up everyone’s day?

These are all perfect content ideas for social media!

Think back to that friend you haven’t seen in a while. What pictures would you show them from your phone? Hopefully, you gravitate to the photo of you standing in front of the Grand Canyon, not the screenshot of a coupon you snapped before grabbing a sandwich for lunch.

Put On Your Teacher Hat

You have something to teach, so share your knowledge! Sometimes just explaining your product or service is enough to capture your audience’s attention. Examples of sharing your expertise might include:

How-to videos showing various ways to use your product
The history behind your product or service
A live video with insider tips
Little-known secrets you’re willing to share
Before-and-after photos showing the benefits of your services

Think about the FAQ you get all the time. Turn those questions into answers with engaging photos, captions and videos that your audience will appreciate!

Partner With Micro-Influencers

If you can locate micro-influencers — people aren’t necessarily celebrities but have an established social media following — you can ask them to share your story in their own words. Because micro-influencers already have followers who trust their recommendations, they’ll be more likely to want to buy the products and services those people are using.

These micro-influencers have the potential to expand your reach because they’ll be posting content to their own group of friends and followers. By simply talking about why they love your brand, they’ll help you spread the word and engage with new customers.

Be Edgy

Give your brand a sassier tone of voice, and you instantly become more interesting. One brand that comes to mind is Merriam-Webster.

While a dictionary might not be the most exciting product for some — and yes, every English major and editor out there is saying, “Huh? I LOVE the dictionary!” — the brand has become noteworthy for its quippy captions and retorts on social media.

If you start studying now, you might have a full command of these words by 2021. https://t.co/FINAScT6L4

— Merriam-Webster (@MerriamWebster) July 28, 2020

You’ll need a good writer to sassify your content, so don’t be afraid to hire someone or outsource the work if needed. Rallio has a whole division of dedicated social media strategists who would be more than happy to get edgy on your brand’s page. (We live for this stuff.)

Need more inspiration for edgy content ideas? Check out a few accounts mentioned in this list from Time.com. Notably missing: Wendy’s.

Sorry, Nick. No dice. https://t.co/bExfIVSyFH

— Wendy’s (@Wendys) July 16, 2020

Put Culture First

Particularly in this day and age, people care about how you treat your employees. We’ve seen brands crumble before our eyes because their workers took to social media to air their complaints — whether about their pay, working conditions or other matters. To avoid this kind of public shaming, you need to:

Take care of your employees. Make sure they feel supported, heard and recognized for their contributions. A great form of recognition is highlighting them on social media!
Create the kind of culture where people want to come to work. The details of doing so are beyond the scope of this article. (Again, outsource if you need additional support to create change.) But bear in mind that with a positive employee culture, employees will naturally want to post about your company on social media (more on that below).
Implement a formal employee advocacy program. Create both a means and incentives for your employees to post about your brand on their own social media pages. Rallio can help you create this program, whether you have one employee or hundreds.

Be a Storyteller

Working on your storytelling skills is one of the best ways to improve your social media. Whenever you have something to post, think about the story of how it came to be. Share those stories with your followers. You’ll be amazed at how much they love them and how much engagement you get, especially with boosted content! Examples of “storytelling” content ideas might include:

The story behind the 90-year-old grandma who has visited your hair salon every two weeks for 20 years
The story behind the family heirloom you keep on your desk
A series of stories highlighting your employees
The story behind how your company came to be

Content Ideas Don’t Have to Be Boring

As you can see, it just takes a little creativity to take your social media content from ho-hum to exciting. You don’t have to look much farther than your own camera roll to find content ideas worthy of posting on social media.

Of course, we’re here to help if you could use some assistance breathing life into your social media. We’ve performed triage on many different pages before to help them grow their following, engagement and “fun” factor on social media. To learn more, see rallio.com.

Tags content marketing, social media marketing

Social

Top 5 Social Media Growth Hacks for 2020

Post author By Rallio
Post date July 28, 2020

So you took the time to set up your social media pages for your business. Great work! What happens next is critical to your social media success, and you’ll need the right growth hacks to make an impact.

Keep in mind, the single most important factors for your social media success are still:

Posting local content
Boosting content

You’ll need to keep doing both of those things even as you implement the growth hacks we suggest below. Essentially, all of these hacks should circle back to local content and boosted posts.

Obviously, there’s a lot more to talk about as far as local content and boosting. We suggest you read some of our other articles on these topics as well, such as:

In the meantime, try out the growth hacks below to take your social media presence from “meh” to great.

Growth Hack #1: Activate Employees and Micro-Influencers

The trends don’t lie: Nowadays, you have to get employees and micro-influencers involved with promoting your brand. Social media audiences are more likely to trust content and recommendations that don’t come directly from the brand itself.

You can activate these brand advocates in several different ways:

Partner with micro-influencers who have an established social media following. It doesn’t need to be huge, and they don’t need to be celebrities. In fact, content coming from “regular” people who have a moderate following will tend to be viewed as more trustworthy. When they promote your brand, they reach all of their followers — people you might not have reached if you tried to promote to them directly.
The same principle applies to your employee advocates. When they post about your brand, they reach all of their own personal friends and followers — again, people you otherwise might not have been able to access.
Formalize an advocacy program that enables your advocates to either share brand-approved assets or post about your brand. Rallio’s leaderboard and advocacy tools make it easy to track progress and reward your advocates.

Learn more: rallio.com

https://www.instagram.com/p/CDKV80mg47y/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

Growth Hack #2: Go Live

While Facebook and Instagram “live” features have been around for some time, they’ve become even more important and useful during the pandemic. This trend isn’t going away, and the sooner you take advantage, the quicker you can grow. Consider the following:

Businesses that have had to close their physical doors have been able to maintain or grow by going live. In-person classes, concerts and other happenings became virtual events with captive audiences that are using social media all day long.
Live video had already been growing in popularity before the pandemic, and the trend is only going to accelerate. Entrepreneur reports, “Go Globe estimates that as much as 82 percent of online traffic will be dedicated to live video by the end of 2020.”
Getting your live video strategy up and running will help you immediately start appealing to your audience while also setting you up for success going forward. Even if and when COVID-19 is no longer a global and local threat, you will want to prepare for the possibility of future disruptions to business — it’s not out of the realm of possibility, as this pandemic has taught us.

Learn more: 25 Live Video Stats Marketers Need to Know in 2020

Growth Hack #3: Mention Other Accounts

When you post, tag and mention other accounts and influencers whenever possible. When you employ this strategy correctly, you’ll strengthen relationships with key accounts and foster new connections. Keep the following points in mind to avoid any missteps:

Don’t simply mention a brand out of the blue just to try and get attention. Your mentions should be authentic. The simplest method is to mention your employee and brand advocates anytime they mention you. Repost their content in stories, highlight them in posts, basically return the favor when they post about your brand. This reciprocity helps you build a relationship and builds confidence among your influencers by rewarding them for their mentions.
You can also mention other non-competing brands when it’s a product or service you actually use and swear by. Again, don’t just mention for the sake of mentioning.

https://www.instagram.com/p/B9fz_Vun9Wu/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

Growth Hack #4: Get Involved in Conversations

When you post something, don’t think of it as a “mic drop” moment where you walk away and never have to return to that post again. Monitoring comments and interacting with your audience as they post is one of the simplest growth hacks — and you might actually enjoy it! Things to think about:

When someone comments and you comment back, not only does it help to build relationships, but it also improves your engagement on the account. When there’s an increase in engagement on posts for a page, your posts will get more visibility, particularly if you’re boosting content.
As a busy business owner, you might not have the time to dedicate to social media conversations. Rallio has Social Strategists who are dedicated to this very task, so you can always outsource to us if you want to make sure those important conversations don’t get missed.

Growth Hack #5: Check Up on Your Competitors

Your competitors presumably have social media pages — if they don’t, well, then you’re the one staying ahead of the game. Find out what they’re doing on social media so you can use that intel to inform your own strategy:

Navigate to Facebook’s Ad Library and search your competitors by name. You can also access a page’s ad history by navigating directly to their Facebook page; look for the Page Transparency link. Facebook will show you what ads they have running currently or ran in the past, the amount spent, impressions, demographics and other information about the ads. While you won’t know the results of these ads, you can at least get an idea of their advertising strategy.
Bear in mind that you don’t have to do things exactly the way your competitors are. You might see their ads and think, “Hmm, I can do that better” (you probably can!). You might even see that they’re not running any ads at all (it does happen)! The goal is not necessarily to duplicate your competitors, but to discover your competitive advantage and differentiators.

Bonus Hack #6: Think Bigger

Your social media pages have the potential to help you grow your business if you maximize their potential.

The growth hacks above will help you step outside your comfort zone and try things a little bit differently. It might just be the little extra push needed to help you grow your business the way you want it to.

Tags social media marketing, social media strategies

Social

5 Easy Ways to Power Up Your Social Media Presence in One Hour or Less

Post author By Rallio
Post date July 22, 2020

When you think about tidying up your social media pages, you might immediately think it’s going to take exorbitant amounts of time. Well, we’ve got some good news for you. Improving your social media presence can happen in minutes, not hours.

In fact, we’d bet you can perform some light housekeeping without a ton of time or effort. Making even a few small tweaks will instantly help you start making a bigger impact online.

Granted, if you invest a little more time on your social media presence — or pay an agency like Rallio to help — your results will be exponential. Rather than get overwhelmed with the idea of tearing yourself away from your business for a day, however, simply get started with the five power moves below.

Size Your Images Correctly

Every platform has its own image size requirements. For instance, on Facebook, you have a profile image, a cover photo and shared images — each with its own set of image guidelines. Your images will also look different depending on the placement and the device used to view them.

Knowing the ideal dimensions, file sizes and file types will help you optimize images for each platform. It’ll also help you avoid having any part of your image cut off or uploading low-resolution photos that don’t display properly.

Rallio also offers a simple image editing tool if you need to crop an image or touch it up before uploading it.

The link below has complete guidelines on image sizes for the different platforms. Once you’ve familiarized yourself with them, download the Rallio app to start posting! We offer both mobile and desktop technology to make it easy to post to your pages.

Brand Yourself Across Platforms

Nothing says “branded” for your social media presence like having the same profile images across social media platforms. Whether it’s your logo or a branded image, make sure you’re using the most updated version on all your pages.

That goes for franchises, too. Keeping a consistent social media image across all your locations builds brand awareness and makes you look more professional for your followers.

If possible, you should also keep your social media handles the same across platforms — like @rallio does on Facebook and Instagram. Even better, make sure it matches your website URL. This makes you easier to find and prevents anyone confusing you with a similar-sounding handle.

If someone already owns the handle you want, you can try reaching out directly to that account owner and see if they’ll let you take it over. To learn more, check out this article, “The Importance of Having Consistent Social Media Handles.”

For individual locations, keep a consistent pattern. For instance, if Rallio had individual franchisees (we don’t, but we work with a lot of them from other companies!), we might want them to use something like @ralliolosangeles or whatever the city name is.

Rallio makes this process easier for franchises because you can control everything from one dashboard. Need to update the cover photo for corporate, plus 400 franchisees? Do it in just a few clicks. Everything is centralized.

We also encourage brands to develop social media brand guidelines for themselves and their locations. Tell everyone what they can and cannot do on social media so everyone gets (and stays) on the same page.

Improve Your Profile

Your profile description and business information are some of the first things people see when they land on your page. Make sure it’s not only accurate, but also fully optimized to work hard for you as people are searching for businesses like yours.

Here are a few quick upgrades you can make:

Update your directory listings. Your hours, contact information and location need to be consistent everywhere your business information appears online. Using a directory listings service like Rallio’s will help you get this done in a few clicks.
Update your bio. Add keywords to make you more discoverable — a keyword planner like Google’s will help you choose the right ones. Work these keywords naturally into the text; don’t just stuff them in there, hoping something will stick.
Fill in every field. Don’t skip over anything — it might take more effort, but you’ll appear more professional and “on the ball” if you provide helpful details about your business.
Get creative with your bio, too. Your bio should represent who you are and what you’re all about in a fun, memorable way. Hootsuite’s guide gives you templates to get you started.

Highlight Important Content

Take advantage of opportunities to highlight content at the top of pages. On Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, you can “pin” important posts up at the top. This could be a special offer or updates about your business. Maybe it’s an invitation to join your subscriber list.

On Instagram, you can add content to Story Highlights after you post to your Stories. Create a fun Highlight Cover image for different sections (you can download an app or use Canva.com), and generate interest for people who visit your profile.

For example, a fitness trainer who posts workouts to their Stories could create a Story Highlight called Workouts. This way, your Stories — which disappear from feeds after 24 hours — will still live on and potentially attract new business.

You can also update your website URL on Instagram to point to different types of content. If you have a new blog post up, add a link in your bio and point to that content in your Stories or in a post.

Automate Where You Can

Do the work to automate upfront, and then you won’t have as much upkeep to do over time. Facebook autoresponses to direct messages are one example. In Messenger, you can set up answers to frequently asked questions.

Make sure you provide customer service contact information even if you have autoreponses set up. Give people a way to contact you if their question isn’t addressed properly by an FAQ.

Reviews are another opportunity for automation, but proceed with caution. Rallio lets you set up pre-approved messages you might want to send out if someone leaves a five-star review, for instance — maybe a simple “Thanks for the great review!”

However, you always want to be sure a real human is monitoring these conversations. If someone leaves a one-star review and includes details about their experience, it’s not enough to say “We’re sorry you had a bad experience.” You’ll want someone — either on your staff or from our Rallio Local division — to craft up a response that helps to ease tensions with the customer.

Start Improving Your Social Media Presence Today

Do a little light housekeeping on your social media pages, and you’ll find they start working harder for you. Especially when you add great content to those pages, your social media presence has the ability to go from “meh” to “wow!” within a short period of time.

Tags branding, social media marketing

Social

Facebook Boosting 101: How to Boost Content for Better Results

Post author By Rallio
Post date July 15, 2020

So you took the time to create a post on Facebook, and now you’re waiting for the engagements to start rolling in — reactions, comments, shares, maybe even clicks over to your website. Unless you used Facebook boosting, you might be waiting awhile.

Why, you ask? Welcome to Facebook Boosting 101, our breakdown of all things boosting-related.

In this article, we’ll cover:

The concept of Facebook boosting (and why you should even care about it)
What types of content to boost
How to boost for the best results

Facebook boosting puts some muscle behind your content — which, while free to publish, won’t get seen by your followers or anyone else without paid advertising. Consider it the protein shake that follows your great workout, allowing your page to grow and capture the attention of existing and new audiences.

Let’s start with a basic understanding of what Facebook boosting entails and why it should even be a part of your social media marketing strategy.

What Is Facebook Boosting?

When you have a business Facebook page, the content you publish doesn’t necessarily get seen by all your followers. Even people who have chosen to follow your page might initially see your content organically, but they won’t continue to see it unless:

You regularly post engaging content that interests them and inspires them to interact with it; and
You pay to get it seen. Yes, Facebook is a “pay to play” platform.

This winning combination of great content and boosting increases the likelihood of making your content visible in newsfeeds. Read that again and again until it sinks in, because it’s an incredibly important concept to grasp as a business Facebook page owner.

The good news is that boosting is a relatively simple tool. Even without having advanced knowledge of the full gamut of Facebook advertising options, you can jump into boosting and start seeing results fairly quickly. While using those more advanced options is also a great way to expand your reach on Facebook, boosting is the easiest way to get started as soon as you launch a business Facebook page.

Once you set up an associated ad account for the page, you can simply choose a post from your timeline and click on the Boost Post button. Facebook will then walk you through your boosting options, such as choosing your audience, budget, placement and duration of the boost.

As your boosted posts reach newsfeeds, ideally your audience will engage with the content. The more they like, comment and share your boosted posts, the more relevant your page becomes — meaning your content will be more visible to your followers as well as their friends and people who aren’t following you yet.

Types of Content to Boost

There are a few different ways to choose the content you want to boost depending on your objectives. Here are a few examples of content you might want to boost:

Posts that are already performing well on your page or that are likely to get good engagement. Oftentimes, your best candidates for boosted posts are real photos or videos from your location, including the owners, employees or customers, as well as snapshots of anything new and exciting at your location.
Job postings, if you’re looking to hire. You can create and boost these posts right from your business page.
Events you’re holding. Again, you can create these posts from your business page and boost them.

Choose your boosted posts carefully, because you cannot edit the text, image or video once you’ve boosted a post. If you end up wanting to change the creative, you would have to create a new post and boost it. You can, however, edit certain components if needed, such as your budget or the duration of the ad.

How to Boost to Amplify Your Results

Choosing the best types of content to boost is the first step in making sure you see good results from your campaign — as in, reactions, comments, shares and clicks. You can further amplify your results by following these guidelines:

Avoid posts with a lot of text in them. Facebook may limit the exposure of your ad or even reject text-heavy posts. (See this article for more about text in ad images.)
Choose your audience carefully. (See this article for potential restrictions, such as age.) While you can choose to target your followers and their friends, you can also create a custom audience that specifies location, gender, age or interests. Being as specific as possible will help you avoid targeting too broad of an audience — that is, people who may not be interested in what you have to offer.
Limit the length of time you boost a post. Around five to seven days is probably your sweet spot to avoid having your post decline in performance.
Monitor the performance of your boosts throughout your campaigns. You don’t have to wait for the ad to finish running! Check to see what’s working and what’s not. As mentioned above, you can adjust certain parameters of an ad to better target the people you want to reach.

If the idea of getting up and running with Facebook boosting is unappealing to you, Rallio can help. Our Rallio Local division works with businesses of all sizes to create and boost content, taking the guesswork out of the process for you. You can be as involved as you like, or not at all, and we’ll partner with you to make sure your Facebook page is successful. Care to learn more? Visit rallio.com and request a demo to view all your options.

Tags social media marketing

Social

5 Common Pitfalls in Social Media Marketing for Small Business

Post author By Rallio
Post date July 9, 2020

Learning how to market your business on social media is a skill that not every small-business owner has time to tackle. Understandably, many small businesses start out doing the bulk of their social media marketing themselves. In time, however, you might find you need the help of a team.

Even then, hiring full-time or even part-time employees isn’t always the answer. When you consider the costs of payroll, insurance, benefits, human resources and other employer responsibilities, sometimes outsourcing your social media marketing ends up being the better choice.

Business owners who aren’t willing to delegate responsibilities — thinking they know their business best and therefore should do everything themselves — are in for a rude awakening. If you’re not outsourcing your social media marketing, there’s a good chance you’re either missing some key opportunities or expending too many internal resources on this part of your business.

Let’s take a look at the potential pitfalls you might encounter when you’re aren’t outsourcing your social media marketing to an agency like Rallio.

Pitfall #1: Time

If you handle your social media marketing yourself, ask yourself if you have time to do all of the following:

Create daily content for Facebook and Instagram, with carefully crafted captions (say that fast 10 times), hashtags and local photos of your people, location and products
Boost that content using precise targeting of your desired customers by geography, interests, demographics and other factors
Address every single comment, reaction, direct message and online review with thoughtful, friendly and sometimes clever responses

And these are just a few of the daily responsibilities of social media marketing. It takes time not only to accomplish these tasks, but also to build a relationship with your local community.

And if you’ve got that kind of time on your hands, it’s highly likely that other areas of your business aren’t getting the kind of attention they deserve.

“But I can do this at night, after hours!” you exclaim. Two thoughts here:

Social media doesn’t just happen at night or in your off hours. In fact, especially now during the pandemic, people are spending more time online at all hours of the day, more than ever before. If your social media is working as it should be, then you will have customers engaging with you and expecting quick responses all throughout the day. So if you’re a dentist in the middle of a procedure, we’re guessing you aren’t going to want to set down that drill to answer your DMs. (Your patient won’t like that much, either.)
Is that how you want to spend your time off? Or would you rather take that time to rest, recharge and prepare yourself for the new day ahead?

https://www.facebook.com/psphuntingtonbeach/photos/a.609267432746891/1224036704603291/

Pitfall #2: Money

Inevitably, succumbing to pitfall #1 means you will fall victim to pitfall #2: money. As we all know, time is money!

So how much is your time worth? As Entrepreneur states, “Time is the one resource all of us have, but it’s also painfully finite in nature. You can’t bank it — all you can do is invest it wisely.”

The article goes on to say that your time appreciates in value as your business does. “So, as your business grows and develops, sooner or later the monetary value of your time is going to surpass the importance of money. It’ll be more important for you to invest your time in moving the business forward because your time is going to be worth more.”

That’s why it’s so important to set up the proper processes and systems right from the start in your business. As for social media marketing, outsourcing might make the most sense because all of the systems will be in place already. Agencies like Rallio are experts at plugging any kind of business into those systems and setting the business up for success.

Read between the lines: The agency doesn’t need to be an expert in your particular business, product or service. They need to be experts in duplicating the success they’ve seen working for their other clients.

At Rallio, we work with businesses in a variety of industry sectors. Would it surprise you to learn we have clients in everything from pet supplies to automotive tires?

That’s because we have the systems and processes figured out already. We simply get you set up and then pair you with a strategist who gets to know your business on a more personal level.

Pitfall #3: Writer’s Block

Constantly coming up with new ideas of what to post on your social media pages can lead to frustration, exhaustion and good ol’ writer’s block. As a result, you might start resorting to low-quality — dare we say boring — content.

It’s easy enough to download a stock photo and post it on social media, or maybe simply post promotional offers over and over again. Your audience isn’t going to respond to this type of content, because you’re not adding any value to their feeds.

People go to social media to socialize and keep up with what’s going on in their community. They’re not there hoping for a sales pitch or to become your “lead.”

They’re more likely to respond to an autobody shop that posts helpful maintenance tips, for example, versus one that only posts promotional offers.

When you outsource your social media marketing, the writer’s block problem is solved for you. You can let someone else ponder over just the right caption for your cool photo of your backyard barbecue or the latest socially distanced team event!

https://www.facebook.com/MassageHeightsNewportBeachBluffs/photos/a.224224787591629/3676754182338655

Pitfall #4: Inconsistency

Pitfall #4 may come into play for a variety of reasons. Lack of time or writer’s block can lead a business owner to post nothing at all.

Additionally, you may find you’re inconsistent in engaging with your community and giving them the attention they want.

When your efforts are inconsistent, you’ll fail to grow on social media. You’ll also miss out on opportunities to build relationships with your audience and practice great customer service.

Outsourcing your social media marketing eliminates the inconsistency problem. There will always be someone who has your back — whether for posting fresh, quality content or following up on customer engagements.

Pitfall #5: Not Keeping Up With the Times

Social media platforms, and the audiences that use them, change frequently. Consider the recent global events we’ve experienced: Many businesses had to change the way they operate and truly rely on social media to either keep their businesses afloat, or to take a strong stance on social justice.

Without social media, it would have been nearly impossible for businesses to continue connecting with their customers.

As experts in social media marketing, we were able to help our clients pivot. Businesses that lacked that kind of partnership may have found it difficult to keep up with the ever-changing times.

There are other types of changes that occur in social media, too. Technology evolves, and so do the recommendations for small-business owners looking to market themselves.

At Rallio, we’ve made it our business to not only keep up with technology and current trends, but to make sure we’ve got our clients’ backs at all times. That’s a relief to any business owner, to know there’s someone else handling such an important part of their business.

Bottom line is, you don’t have to fall victim to the common pitfalls above. Set yourself up for success and growth by outsourcing to Rallio, and you can continue focusing on running your business.

Tags social media marketing

Social

Pandemic Greatest Hits: Top 7 Secrets to Social Media Success

Post author By Rallio
Post date July 7, 2020

Throughout the COVID-19 crisis, virtually every type of business has had to pivot in order to continue reaching customers — who are spending more time online than ever before. Throughout this time, we at Rallio have been helping businesses find ways to change things up and strategize for social media success.

Many of our blog posts have focused on reimagining “business as usual,” because business as we know it has changed. So today, we’ve got a quick roundup of some of the tips and tricks we’ve provided during the pandemic — a “Pandemic Greatest Hits,” if you will. Cue it up, put it on repeat and get to work adjusting your social media strategy if you haven’t already.

Track #1: Boost the Right Content

Boosting content gives you the ability to reach more of your followers and their friends than organic reach alone. While you might be familiar with the concept of boosting — or maybe you’ve not yet added it to your social media strategy — you might not know what to boost.

Here’s the track for you: Social Media Success in a Pandemic: A Conversation With 2 Brand Managers

The quick takeaway:

We’ve all seen the constant stream of ads on social media for the newest fashion, kitchen gadgets and skin-care, but local businesses also have the ability to show off their services and products online to their local area. Boosting during COVID was imperative to social media success, but the question became “What do we boost?”

At a time where businesses are struggling and have taken massive hits to their cash flow, boosting for engagement was not what was going to have the biggest impact. We took the time and care to consider what could actually produce an ROI for these hard-working business owners. Services were emphasized as well as updates for reopening or any pivot they had made during this pandemic.

Business owners were able to generate actual leads at a time where their businesses were forced to close, and even those that stayed open were taking big hits. In some cases, we actually saw an uptick in sales for products, and followers started using the new methods of getting their products (curbside pickup, delivery).

Some followers, of course, would automatically assume that they could not go to their favorite local business during this pandemic, but thanks to boosting updates, our clients did not miss out on valuable customers that would have otherwise opted for something else.

Track #2: Update Your Directory Listings

If your business hours have changed during the pandemic, it’s important to communicate that information to your customers. Updating your online directory listings ensures your hours, location and other basic information about your business stays up-to-date so people can find you.

Here’s the track for you: Why You Need Your Social Media Company to Do Directory Listings, Too

The quick takeaway:

If you adjusted your hours due to COVID-19, for example, maybe now you’re getting back to regular business hours. You would want to not only update your hours across the web, but also tell your followers. With a combined directory listings and social media provider, that’s all handled for you.

With Rallio’s services, you actually can be everywhere at once. You can manage your directory listings and social media from one simple dashboard:

Your hours, physical address, phone number and other details about your business can be easily updated on over 40 directory listings sites, in just a few clicks.
Using that same dashboard, you can create a post for all your social platforms about your changed hours — maybe a photo of you as the business owner holding an “Open” sign, with a caption that reads, “We’re back! We have resumed our regular business hours and made a few adjustments in-house to account for social distancing and proper cleaning and disinfection.”
Another benefit is the ease of maintaining information across platforms. Instead of franchisees having to log in to six or seven different platforms to update their information, they have one simple login and one dashboard to handle it all — streamlining the process and preventing errors.

Boom. You just updated everyone and, at the same time, gave them the confidence they needed to feel safe returning to your establishment.

Track #3: Go Virtual

Having an online component of your business is essential, particularly if you aren’t able to open your doors to crowds at this time. Fitness, education and food are just some of the industries that had to pivot to go online. Whether through virtual classes or online ordering options, having online capabilities is what allowed many businesses to stay afloat.

The track for you: Reopening Your Business? 7 Social Media Strategies to Keep — Plus 1 to Ditch Forever

The quick takeaway:

Many businesses switched to virtual formats to continue offering services amid the pandemic. We’ve seen fitness businesses offering live streaming via Facebook Live and Zoom. Tutors are providing online education in place of in-person tutoring. Everywhere you turn, businesses are figuring out how to reach their audience in a virtual way.

Many customers have discovered the convenience and safety of staying home while still getting the services they need and want. As a business, you may have discovered a whole new line of business by offering virtual services.

How to incorporate virtual formats in your social media strategy:

Use Facebook Live to offer classes, educational services, how-to tutorials and more. You can also use Zoom in cases where you want to be able to see your customers and vice versa.
Continue to get creative with your virtual offerings. How about virtual tours, wine tastings, happy hours, shopping events and guest speakers?
Create Facebook events for your virtual events. Promote them beforehand with your target audience. Your guests will get reminders on the day of the event to join.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CBjqWyFgeH7/

Track #4: Incorporate Employee Advocacy

Employees have become brand advocates and influencers, as they snap photos and videos and mention your company on their personal pages. These personal posts have greater reach than brand-created posts. Employee advocacy, therefore, is now an integral part of social media success.

The track for you: Same track as #3 above

The key takeaway:

Maybe you’ve been highlighting the great work your employees are doing throughout the pandemic. Or perhaps you had to temporarily lay off employees, and now you’re preparing to welcome them back. Whatever the case may be, it’s important to keep showing gratitude for the people helping to keep your business running — from employees to suppliers.

How to incorporate employee advocacy in your social media strategy:

Spotlight your employees in social media posts. Tell your followers why they’re so great!
Empower your employees to share about your business on their personal social media pages. The Rallio platform makes it easy to share brand-approved content through these extended networks.
Invite employees to submit assets like in-store photos and videos. Again, the Rallio platform simplifies this process.

Track #5: Measure Social Media ROI Correctly

ROI is something every marketer wants, but measuring it is not always easy. The social media buying process looks different than the traditional one, but the point is that there is a buying process. Customers do not always buy from you based on one campaign or social media post alone.

The “track” below is worth reading in its entirety, especially if you are in a position where you have to prove that social media marketing is a worthwhile investment. (Hint: It is.)

The track for you: The 6 Most Important Social Media Metrics to Track for ROI

The key takeaway:

To measure your own social ROI, start by considering the different steps in the buying process of a traditional marketing funnel:

Awareness
Interest
Consideration
Intent
Evaluation
Purchase

We’ve tweaked that traditional funnel a bit for purposes of illustrating the social media buying process:

Awareness
Interest
Consideration
Purchase
Loyalty
Advocacy

One caveat to keep in mind at all times: A social media user may find you at any step in their own buying journey. They may become aware of your existence through their friend commenting on your team-member Tuesday post. Or checking out your social content and finding out how well you treat your staff may be the tipping point to get them to buy. We recommend checking out our post, Social ROI and the Marketing Ecosystem, for more details on the non-linear nature of social media purchasing behavior.

Track #6: Post. Local. Content. On. Repeat.

We can’t say it enough. We’re actually sick of the sound of our own voices saying it. So just trust us on this one. Your real, authentic, fun, non-salesy, friendly, personable, relationship-building, community-supporting content will outperform the pants off of boring, salesy, promotional or stock photos. Every. Single. Day.

And when you boost it, as we discuss in track #1, you improve its reach. It’s that simple!

The track for you: Facebook Ads and Hyper-Local Content: Your Recipe for Social Media Success

The key takeaway:

While many marketers might be pulling back on advertising due to cost concerns, that’s the last thing we’d recommend doing. Between the increase in usage and the reduced CPM/CPC, there’s never been a better time to dedicate dollars toward social media ads.
Franchisors have a unique opportunity to help their franchisees increase exposure at the local level. Franchisees who post and boost hyper-local content ensure they’re connecting at the local level with their customers.
Customers want to help their community get back on its feet. When you engage with them and increase your reach with Facebook ads, you increase the likelihood of driving local business.

Track #7: Be a Storyteller, Not a Salesperson

Your social media should paint a picture of your business as a place where people would not only want to spend money, but also get to know the business. The businesses that demonstrate their commitment to their community are the ones that will thrive.

The track for you: 4 Ways to Tweak Your Social Media Marketing for COVID-19

The key takeaway:

No matter what the industry, COVID-19 has affected businesses everywhere, along with the consumers who buy from them. Given the global impact this virus has had, it’s important to adjust your messaging and social media marketing to reflect the current times — whether your business is booming or struggling because of COVID-19.

Instead of a hard sales pitch, it’s about softening your message and looking for ways to be of service. The term “We’re all in this together” has become a rallying cry of people everywhere — from all industries and walks of life.

And actually, this is the perfect time to recognize that the hard sales pitch was never a very effective way to capture your audience’s attention.

Rather than use social media as a blatant promotional tool, think of it as a platform for being authentic, honest and real. Recruit the power of social media to help you tell your story, support your customers and serve your community, and you’ll be met with enthusiasm from your audience.

We know how overwhelming it can be when there are so many different sources of information out there on social media marketing. Hopefully this article gives you some simple, solid starting points. We’re always happy to make the process easier if you want to tap into our expertise.

Tags coronavirus, social media marketing

Social

The Truth About Social Media for Small-Business Owners

Post author By Rallio
Post date July 1, 2020

Becoming a small-business owner is a bit like skydiving. When you jump out of a perfectly good airplane and free-fall with the hope that your parachute deploys, you’re taking a huge risk, obviously.

The same is true when you make the conscious choice to step outside your comfort zone for the chance at being your own boss. Whether you’re choosing to leave a job or simply pursue your passions, taking the big leap into entrepreneurship might be the biggest risk of your life.

Perhaps it’s this huge risk factor that causes many entrepreneurs to cling to ownership — not just of their company, but also of every aspect of running a business. Putting it all on the line has a way of making anyone want to manage it all and avoid delegating responsibility to anyone else.

The truth that many successful owners come to realize, however, is that there are numerous benefits to surrounding themselves with people who are experts in their fields. Rather than be a “Jack of all trades, master of none,” they make the decision to hire people who are the best at what they do — whether it’s accounting, sales, human resources, marketing or any other number of job functions.

So when a new client comes on board at Rallio, we’re always super excited to start working with them. They’ve recognized they can’t — and shouldn’t — do everything themselves. They’ve chosen to hire experts who will handle every aspect of their social media, online reputation, directory listings and even recruiting to an extent.

Known as Rallio Local, this in-house team consists of social media strategists who work one-on-one with business owners. Why is this important?

Having a dedicated strategist puts time back in your day as a business owner. You can focus on growing your business, building a customer base and doing all the things you love about entrepreneurship — the things that made you jump out of the proverbial plane.
You don’t have to lose sleep wondering if you’re doing the right thing on social media. You have trusted advisors who have your back.
You’ll be able to grow your business faster when your social media marketing aligns with your overall marketing strategy. Your strategist will take the time to understand your goals and deliver on them.

“Sounds good,” you’re thinking. “But how does this all work?” We’re glad you asked!

Below, we’ve provided a quick rundown of the different types of services you can utilize with us.

Local Social Media Content for Small-Business Owners

The most important factor to the success of your social media pages is the winning combination of local content and targeted boosting.

Local content = Photos and videos of real people at your business doing real things. It may include employees, customers, owners and any other real humans related to your business. It doesn’t include a bunch of stock photos, overly promotional posts and sales pitches.

Targeted boosting = Paying to get your content seen by your followers and your followers’ friends. It’s the only way to ensure your content is visible.

If all of this sounds like a bunch of mumbo-jumbo, you don’t need to worry about it. Your Social Media Strategist will ask you for specific images every week. You upload them to Rallio, your Strategist adds a fun caption and boosts the post. That’s it!

Offers, Job Postings and Events

But what about my special offers, recruitment posts and events? Can’t I tell my followers about them?

You absolutely can, and your Strategist will work with you to get all the details and schedule them strategically. In general, about 80 percent of your social media content will be non-promotional. The other 20 percent may include your special offers and news about upcoming events or job openings.

Your Strategist will boost these promotional and recruitment posts, too, to get more visibility.

With both your local content and other types of posts, we use artificial intelligence combined with science to help you decide what to boost and when as well as how much to spend. You won’t have to worry about blowing your budget or boosting the wrong content to the wrong audience.

Responses to Online Reviews, Comments and Messages

When you have followers, they’re going to engage with you. They might leave an online review, comment on a post or send you a direct message. Someone needs to be responding to those engagements if you want to keep your followers — and customers.

Rallio Local Strategists take care of all these responses for our small-business owners. If a new review pops up on Google My Business or Facebook, if a comment appears on your page, or if a direct message hits your inbox, your Strategist crafts a response.

Anything that requires owner involvement is sent to you for approval first — say, if a customer leaves a negative review and needs a more detailed answer.

All of these engagements are handled within 24 hours. Can you honestly say you would be able to get back to your followers as quickly — and also try to run your business?

Additionally, we can help you get new, positive reviews with our technology. You can choose to have your customers get a text survey after their purchase that asks for feedback. If it’s a positive review, they’re encouraged to leave a review on the review platform of your choosing. Negative reviews are handled offline instead of published on a public platform.

Updates to Your Directory Listings

When you have changes to your hours, address, phone number or other business information, your Strategist will make sure it gets updated across the web. Our Business Listings service is built right into the Rallio technology. Done and done!

During the pandemic, many of our clients have found this to be an invaluable service. They were able to easily announce any temporary closures or other business changes, and then change the information back once they reopened.

Employee Advocacy

One of the best parts about our technology is the ability for small-business owners to implement employee advocacy. You can get your team involved in creating and posting content, helping to build morale and extend the reach of your content even further.

As employees post content about your company to their own social media pages, it becomes more visible to their own audiences. They’re able to reach new followers who otherwise wouldn’t know about your company.

Technology + Team

The key takeaway here is that Rallio Local gives small-business owners both the technology and the team to be successful on social media. We understand the complexities of social media marketing and are able to navigate them on your behalf.

Whether you want a lot of help or just a little extra push, we can provide the right solution for your small business or franchise brand. Drop us a line at sales@rallio.com and we can set you up with a quick demo to show you how we can help your business.

Tags small business, social media marketing

Employee Recruiting Social

The Ultimate Guide to Social Media Recruiting

Post author By Rallio
Post date June 22, 2020

With many businesses reopening around the country, there may be an increased need for new hires. Social media recruiting is one of the best ways to find the talent you need and streamline the hiring process.

If you’re looking to fill any vacant spots on your team, there are many ways to use social media recruiting to your advantage. It’s not as simple as creating a job posting and hoping the best candidates start flooding in; actually, a lot of the “recruiting” process will happen before you even make contact with a job applicant.

The Muse reports that 92 percent of companies use social media in recruiting — and 29 percent of job seekers turn to social media as their primary job-seeking tool. In a nutshell, employers and would-be employees alike are checking each other out on social media.

As such, getting your recruiting ducks in a row is extra important in order to source the best talent on social media. Our Ultimate Guide to Social Media Recruiting will help you skip common missteps and put your best virtual face forward for your brand. You’ll save a ton of money over traditional job sites — while also furthering your overall marketing goals.

Know Your Platforms

Although LinkedIn is a valuable social media recruiting tool — and one you should be using to connect with candidates — it’s not the only platform you should pay attention to. Here’s a quick overview of how to use each platform to your advantage when you’re looking to fill open positions:

LinkedIn

Create a company profile that’s separate from your personal profile
Search for, screen and connect with candidates via job postings, sponsored jobs and InMail
Network within industry-related LinkedIn groups
Post updates that include any details about job openings
Target passive candidates who look like a good fit and may be open to new opportunities

Facebook

Create and boost job postings from your business page
Join job and career groups related to your industry
Participate in conversations that happen in those groups
Post local content that shows the personality behind your brand, such as pictures and videos of team members, customers, and product or service spotlights (more on that later)

Instagram

Announce job openings via Stories
Include relevant hashtags
As with Facebook, post local content

Twitter

Tweet about job openings
Use relevant hashtags to make your posts discoverable
Grow your following by participating in conversations and retweeting content

The above methods are just one part of your overall recruiting strategy. That strategy needs to incorporate many of the same techniques you would use to build your consumer audience. We’ll get into that aspect of the process in the next sections. Read on!

Make It Local

As we’ve said many times before, posting local content is the best way to show the personality behind your brand and build relationships with your audience. Photos and videos of your team, your customers, your products or services, and other real-life photos give your followers a glimpse into what it might be like working for you.

Do your posts scream teamwork, collaboration and, most of all, fun? Or do they make you look boring, unapproachable and behind the times? Keep in mind, your local content is working to engage not only your followers, but also potential job candidates.

Examples of the types of local content you should be posting include:

Photos of your best customers when they visit your location
Team member spotlights that highlight the awesome people you have working for you
Photos of the owners and managers
Videos explaining how to do something related to your products or services
Photos or videos that address current events; make it local by describing any of your efforts to address important issues like COVID-19 and Black Lives Matter

Over time, your local photos paint a picture of the leadership, people, customers and culture you’ve created at your company. They make your page inviting — and your business, too.

Leverage Employee Advocacy

It’s not always easy to remember to post local photos or find the time to do it. That’s where you can leverage employee advocacy to improve your social media recruiting efforts.

When you have happy employees (and if you don’t, you might want to find out why), they’re more likely to share about their experiences of working for you on their own social media pages and stories. These types of posts are more likely to improve your reach and engagement than brand-created posts.

While you can and should boost content to improve the reach of your own posts, you should also spend time creating an employee advocacy program.

Employee-generated posts also are more likely to be seen as trustworthy. Social Media Examiner writes, “It’s no secret that employees are some of the most trusted representatives of your brand. According to the Edelman Trust Barometer, potential customers trust employees over CEOs, journalists, and celebrities. Internal stakeholders are sincere and accessible, which humanizes your brand.”

So how do you go about getting employees to post? Here are a few ideas:

Rallio offers mobile technology that makes it easy to share any brand assets — maybe some imagery advertising your job openings — with employees that they can share on their pages. They can also upload assets of their own. When you work with our Rallio Local team, they can create posts for you using employee-uploaded images if you’d rather not DIY this one.
Formalize your program and get everyone on board. Consider incentivizing employees with rewards when they post, along with referral bonuses for any successful new-hires. The Rallio technology has a leaderboard so you can easily see who’s posting the most.

The beauty of an employee advocacy program isn’t just in having employees post for you. It’s an opportunity to showcase your company’s core values and correct any areas of the business that may need improvement.

In other words, if your company truly supports employees and has the type of culture that makes them want to stay, they’ll be happy to post about their experiences. If they’re reluctant to boast about working for you, you can take an honest look at the reasons behind that sentiment.

And with a properly designed employee advocacy program, you can generate a positive online reputation and keep attracting the best talent via social media recruiting.

Manage Your Online Reputation and Directory Listings

Ideally, you should have someone on your team dedicated to responding to social media comments, questions, engagements and customer reviews. If you don’t have the time — and you probably don’t if you’re running a business — you can either hire someone to do it or outsource the work to a third party like Rallio.

Keeping up with all your social media engagements ensures that job candidates see the best sides of you when they check you out on social media. And they will be checking you out if they’re considering working for you.

Think of it this way: If candidates get to a page and see unresponsiveness or rude remarks from a company, they’re going to assume that’s how they treat their employees, too.

You also want to be sure your online listings are up-to-date to aid your social media recruiting efforts. Business information like address, phone number and hours of operation need to be accurate so job candidates know how and when to get in touch. Again, Rallio can help. We offer a directory listings service that lets you easily update this information across the web from one central dashboard.

Boost Your Posts

As you’re creating job postings, as well as hyper-local content, boost these posts to reach a wider audience. More potential new recruits will get exposed to your company if you’re paying to get content in front of them.

You can also set up auto-response messages in Facebook Messenger to help with screening and responding to candidates. Set up a series of answers to frequently asked questions so that as candidates apply to jobs and ask questions on Facebook, you can respond quickly to those common questions.

Social media recruiting may seem daunting, but when you have the right systems in place, the process actually becomes easier. Get in touch with us if you could use a helping hand getting those eager new recruits to apply with your company.

Tags social media recruiting

Social

Social Media Success in a Pandemic: A Conversation With 2 Brand Managers

Post author By Rallio
Post date June 17, 2020

As a social media company, Rallio has worked with businesses in all different industries to help them pivot during the pandemic and find social media success. Whether they were offering virtual classes, curbside pickup or restaurant takeout, we’ve been able to help spread the word about any changes to the usual course of business.

It’s not just our clients pivoting, of course. Around the world, businesses have had to adjust to current times as they navigate the COVID-19 crisis. Those that acted quickly and implemented changes have survived and thrived in many cases.

Yet all of these changes don’t mean much if your customers don’t know about them. Social media has become more important than ever as a means of communicating, staying in touch and building relationships with customers.

To get some insight on the factors that contribute to our clients’ success despite the COVID-19 crisis, we chatted with two of our brand managers here at Rallio, Anton Emmerton and Summer Garschina. The Rallio Local team continues to assist clients in pivoting, keeping their social media pages fresh and managing their online presence.

https://www.facebook.com/rallio/posts/1618832671603232

How were your clients initially impacted by the pandemic?

Anton: Since we work with such a wide variety of brands, each of them was impacted differently. Some businesses were forced to close while others remained open as essential businesses. Even those that were deemed essential businesses were still impacted due to the traditional in-store shopping experience changing so drastically overnight. Foot traffic slowed down, so options like curbside pickup and delivery were emphasized to help sales.

Summer: One fitness brand we work with was unfortunately closed during the pandemic, but they saw the power of social media and continued to post and grow engagement. Our printer clients are considered an essential business and saw a need for home office printers and delivery drivers to drop-ship cartridges. Our laboratory testing client was impacted in the best possible way because they were able to come out with a new test in high demand for COVID-19 antibodies.

What were some of the ways Rallio Local helped them to pivot and find social media success?

Anton: Rallio Local has the responsibility of not only managing online profiles, but also providing business with insight and expertise on how to navigate this space in a time of crisis. We offered content ideas to all our clients as well as contingency plans so they knew exactly what to do if anything were to happen to their business. With some businesses not able to operate how they normally would, we were able to help them pivot their business model so they could maintain their clients and even grow their customer base by offering new services or new methods of delivering those services or products to their dedicated customers.

Summer: Rallio Local continued to post locally for brands to keep them on social media, where most people spent their days scrolling during the quarantine. We hosted webinars to show the significance of social media during these times, the current digital marketing trends, how to respond to a new climate, and how to pivot their local social media marketing strategies.

https://www.facebook.com/rallio/posts/1594061280747038

How did social media help clients maintain or grow their business?

Anton: The value of social media became so clear to clients when their traditional forms of outreach and communication with their community was no longer effective. Through the constant updates and advertising opportunities on social media, our clients were able to make their followers and community aware of services that they may have not known of before. We ran ads to push these services specifically to their local areas so that the business could continue to grow and keep the loyal customers that they had pre-pandemic.

Summer: Social media helped our clients more than ever during the pandemic because they were able to get information out to their customers and clients here. During a time where everything was basically closed down, people began to use social media as their go-to for everything, whether it was closure notices, positive stories, new products, how-tos, and recent reopening information.

What did Rallio Local do to help manage clients’ online reputation and customer service — i.e., via online reviews, direct messages, and social media comments and questions?

Anton: At a time where screentime is at an all-time high, there’s no better reassurance to a client than having someone specifically dedicated to monitoring their pages and managing their reputation. Direct messages came flooding in with questions regarding whether our clients were open, what their new hours were, and what precautions they were taking to ensure the safety of their customers. We were able to align quickly with all the franchisees and corporate teams to make sure that these questions were answered in a timely manner with brand approved messaging.

When it came to reviews, we were able to respond to all reviews within 24 business hours and address any concerns their clients had with the necessary and accurate information. In a time of crisis, it is crucial that all voices are heard and acknowledged and as a customer, there’s no better place to express your concerns than through listings platforms and social media pages.

Summer: Rallio Local helped manage our clients’ customer service tremendously by staying on top of daily direct messages, comments and reviews. There was an overwhelming number of customers going to these platforms with questions regarding what they should do next, how to get in contact, hourly changes and much more. Our Rallio Local team makes these questions and comments one of their daily priorities and won’t end their workday until they’re accounted for and answered.

What about their change of hours and temporary closures — how did we help with that?

Anton: With new regulations and orders coming into play each day, we were able to stay on top of updating store hours and temporary closures to a plethora of online listings platforms like Yelp, Google My Business and Facebook through our directory listings management.

Every day, we wake up to a different world, and business owners already have so much on their plate when it comes to in-store operations and their day-to-day. We know how important it is to keep your customers in the loop on changes, and we are proud to say that we could update store hours easily and efficiently to make sure their presence stayed consistent online.

Summer: At the very beginning of the pandemic, this was our main focus. We had client locations with closures and hours changing by the second. We made sure to post for each location on what exactly was happening for their specific store. A rollercoaster of changes, but Rallio Local held strong and made sure to get the job done for each of our clients.

What impact did boosting have on clients’ social media success overall?

Anton: We’ve all seen the constant stream of ads on social media for the newest fashion, kitchen gadgets and skin-care, but local businesses also have the ability to show off their services and products online to their local area. Boosting during COVID was imperative to social media success, but the question became “What do we boost?”

Summer: Boosting for our Rallio Local clients helped with getting their content out to more than just their followers. We were able to set up specific mile radiuses on posts in order to get the word out to people who may not even follow their page. This was a huge benefit for all of our clients, because it not only expanded the brand, but it also helped maintain high reach and engagement on content.

https://www.facebook.com/rallio/posts/1586573711495795

For those businesses that pivoted, what are some of the permanent changes they’ll be keeping?

Anton: Tutors can now teach online via Zoom video chats; auto and tire shops can now drive out to customers’ homes to perform routine maintenance; stores can offer curbside pickup or delivery services so that their customers still get what they need from the store they love. The possibilities really are endless.

Not only did these changes help them maintain their business, but it also opened up a completely different avenue for generating revenue for a lot of business owners. It also emphasized the dedication these businesses have for their local communities.

Summer: Our laboratory testing client has a new COVID antibodies and viral test that will permanently be in their labs in order to test anyone for the virus. Our printer client now offers to print menus for restaurants due to the new regulations on disposable menus. Our fitness brand started a livestream for home workouts that will continue to be a feature on their social media.

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What’s one key takeaway you could mention regarding social media as it relates to the pandemic?

Anton: This is a really hard one, because there’s so much to take away. My biggest takeaway is that social media is not just a place to advertise your products/services or share photos and videos with your friends; it is becoming increasingly clear that this is now how we communicate.

Do not stop talking on social media. As soon as you stop communicating with your local community on your social profiles, they forget you exist and they forget that you care. I encourage more businesses that don’t see the value in social media to take a look at how it has affected our culture in the last three months. We have only scratched the surface of what is capable with these platforms, and you need the help of others to navigate this space.

Summer: A key takeaway of mine is, no matter your brand, create memorable and engaging moments for your clients. Everyone is looking for something to relate to online, especially during these times. So us as a Rallio Local team are the ones to help build these relationships and help grow the brands we partner with.

We’re continuing to help many brands pivot and make the most of their social media presence during the pandemic and beyond. Be sure to check out all our service lines over at rallio.com and schedule a demo with us by reaching out to sales@rallio.com.

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Tags coronavirus, social media marketing