Hello, I’m (kind of) back! In summer 2022 I won a contract with a local council. I’m working with 50 businesses(!) across Northumberland, and time for other stuff outside of that and my other training contracts has been tight.

My return to the newsletter world is inspired by the questions I’ve been asked the most over the past few months. I’ll publish more soon, and when the contract finishes at the end of May I’ll get back into a regular routine with things.

I was reading Rachel Karten’s always excellent Link In Bio newsletter recently and enjoyed finding out more about Lionsgate’s approach to TikTok and social media. Essentially: “post like a fan”.

This is the strategy I use with the new and small businesses I work with. Below, I’ll explain how it works and my thinking behind it.

In a nutshell, using your accounts this way is about conveying enthusiasm and excitement for your products and services. Because if you aren’t excited about them, how can you expect anybody else to be?

This also, helpfully, answers that question at the top: if you’re starting out on social with a business, how exactly do you go about using that for promotion?

What is a following, anyway?

Your followers are the people who’ve decided they like the cut of your jib. They want more of your brand in their timelines.

(A follower count is a meaningless thing to measure, but that’s a subject for another time)

People follow accounts for three main reasons:

1. To be informed.
2. To be educated.
3. To be entertained.

Not one of these reasons is “to be sold to”. People know that businesses sell things. We don’t need to ram it down peoples’ throats.

When you speak to potential customers in person, are you always in ‘sell’ mode? If you are, this might be why you’re not getting anywhere. Nobody likes being sold to.

You don’t need a CTA on each post. You don’t need to remind them to visit your website. You don’t need to promote a blog post.

This is where the Lionsgate approach above works well.

Yes, it’s helpful that they’ve got over 17,000 potential films to work with. That does give them a lot of content opportunities.

But it’s the way they do this that is most impressive. They act like they’re just as excited about the brand’s films as fans are.

The ‘fan’ approach in action

I’ve recently been working with a great cafe business in Northumberland. They’ve got some of the best food I’ve eaten, in really unique locations, and do the best hot chocolate I’ve ever had.

They were referred to me as they wanted to know how to push their reach and engagement on social media. They wanted to focus on Instagram in particular.

Before visiting, I had a look over their feed. They had tons of incredible looking professional photography. But there was one problem.

It looked too good.

There was no authenticity. The way the products were set up didn’t reflect reality. These guys do incredibly, wholesome food with a lot of rustic charm. You get value for money, and you get great food to boot.

We talked about this, and came up with the idea of approaching things a bit differently.

They team spent a few weeks posting shots of food in the counter, accompanied by a short sentence and sometimes a few emoji.

Take a look below. See if you can figure out which image got 10x the reach of the other.

In the 28 days that we tested this different approach, the account’s reach increased by 88%.

Over those 4 weeks they also had more messages than usual, and visitors were also ringing up to reserve specific cakes for their bookings. There were even comments overheard in-store - things like “I’ve seen that on their Instagram”. If that isn’t a good result I don’t know what is.

The approach is summarised simply as:

We’re a foodie, but for our food.

Btw: I’m not saying that there’s no place for well produced and set up product photography. There absolutely is. Just social isn’t that place. Keep them on your website, in your emails, and in your printed stuff.

Why is this important?

Social media sites decide what to show users based on algorithms. I’ve spoken about these in a previous myth-busting newsletter.

As a quick summary, if you don’t get people viewing, clicking, or interacting with what you post you’ll be shown to fewer people. And we don’t look at, click, or interact with sales stuff. So don’t post it.

So that’s my approach. If I was getting started from zero with a brand, I’d champion and celebrate everything I do on social media.

I’d adopt an influencer mindset and use that when deciding what to post. Become an influencer for your own brand. This means reposting when people tag you in things, interacting with other accounts as your business, and posting useful and interesting things the business is up to.

This approach works across pretty much every sector you can think of.

I’ll go into it in more detail in a future newsletter. Thanks for sticking around.