How To Grow Your Online Presence As A Business Owner (2024)

Holi! Today we are doing a marketing meeting for Flights and Sights Media, our own brand, our own pages, but we're recording it so hopefully you can learn something, we can learn something all from each other. We tried this a couple different times, there was a microphone muted that we didn't realize was muted.

I'm sorry.

It's been happening a lot to Mike recently. Mike, tell them about your experience yesterday.

Yesterday I filmed a whole podcast and I press record and I go sit down and I sit there and I have like an hour and 10 minute long podcast and it was really good too. Yeah, I was listening through my headphones and I go back and he has to go so he left and I like go to click You know, I'm like, oh, I go to stop recording and it was never recording. And I go on, I was like, oh, maybe it's just a glitch. Maybe it stopped recording, like, you know. So then I go and I pull it up and I press play and it's 5 seconds. It's from the time I press record to the time I walked away. And so now I have to reschedule that. Embarrassing.

Fun times here at Flights and Sights Media. It's real, it happens. You forget to press record sometimes. It's my biggest nightmare at weddings. It's like there's only—

oh my gosh, the pressure—

one day to get that wedding right. But anyways, we're gonna be talking about marketing, not our fails on this podcast. So we usually like to start off these kind of conversations kind of just reviewing numbers. The there's an option on Instagram and there's a button you can click called Insights. On all the platforms you can view the analytics if you're set up as a business or a creator page. So Flies Insights is— I just moved it over to a creator page because I think you can use more sounds.

Oh, sweet.

That like, they don't just limit you to like the non-copyright music. But you can still view the analytics and everything, and you can monetize a little easier.

I like copyright music though, my favorite kind of music.

Mike, is your mic muted?

Uh, no, it's on.

Okay, that's just checking, kind of checking. So, um, this is Mike, by the way, sitting over here in the black shirt, and this is Naomi, our creative director, black shirt, black hat. What?

Black shirt, black hat.

Black shirt, black hat. What hat are you wearing? Uh, Costa B&B. Yeah, shout out Colt Moss. Free hats. Costa B&B. Enjoy free hats. Um, we might be doing a giveaway that involves them. Stick around and find out. Anyways, what the first quarter of 2024, Flags and Sights Media, we moved into the studio around February, like 14th or 15th. I remember it was around Valentine's Day, so we moved in there probably about halfway through quarter 1. Naomi, what are those numbers from that first quarter?

So in quarter 1, we were sitting at about 310 followers, which it's not bad, especially because there wasn't a massive push to promote our page. We weren't being very intentional with getting content out. We were more focused on making sure that we were taking care of everybody else, which is great and it's super important. And that's, that's why we're here. But for us to continue to build legitimacy around Flights and Sites and to help other businesses be confident that we are going to take care of their business and represent them well, we, we needed to start pushing.

Yeah. And so that's one thing I ran into. So I was a one-man operation all of 2023. And in 2024, the beginning was like, I've got to start delegating some stuff. And so that's why they're here. And they've been a huge help. Business owners, don't be afraid to delegate, even though cost some money. Don't be afraid because your life will get better. Um, yeah, so 310 followers in quarter 1. It's okay. I built 310 kind of posting like maybe once a week all 2023. Um, and that was mainly just on Instagram. Uh, the beginning of '24, I started posting on TikTok, Facebook, and Instagram. A little bit more because we had the studio set up and opening. We did the grand opening in February, so I posted like 6 or 7 days straight and it started picking up. And then I got busy actually filming podcasts and going back to work. Yeah, so it slowed down. And then y'all came on. Naomi's been helping with the other clients that we do their social media for. She gets on and creates the content and puts it together and posts it for me and helps with strategy for all that. She's, she's head of the whole thing. So it's been helpful. It's freed up time for me to work on my personal brand and the business's brand, which like Naomi said, is very important to focus on your brand online because especially after COVID, if you don't have an online brand built, people You're irrelevant. Like, the first thing that me or anybody that I know does is once they hear about a company or a person, they go look them up on Facebook or look them up on Instagram. And so I don't want to be the one who are like, looks like I'm a scam because I don't ever post on Instagram, but we do marketing as our job. So it's been super important to post on our own pages and and become present there. And that only gives authority and legitimacy once you have that foundation built. And we've been able to grow. And what's our follower count now looking like?

On Instagram, we are sitting at 637 followers.

Okay.

Yeah.

Sweet.

So— Insert the clap.

We've over doubled since the end of quarter one, which has only been about 2 months.

Yeah.

And how do we do that? We did a lot of collaborations, a lot of giveaways. Involvement with other pages was key. We did a giveaway with Espresso. She has super loyal fan base. She was on the Howdy podcast. We did giveaways with— who else do I know? That might have been the only collab giveaway that we've done. But we've collabed with on other projects with other companies, and this last month we gave away a Yeti, which, I mean, it was a $300 purchase. I didn't have to boost it at all.

Business expense, correct.

Good job, Mike.

Advertising write-off.

Uh, it was $300. If you were to put that $300 into running a random ad that didn't catch anybody's attention, you wouldn't see the same results. We gained like 40 or 50 followers.

I don't know, we could do a billboard.

A billboard? We'll put Mike on a billboard shirtless. That'll be our next— Burt Kreischer drinking.

Do you want to get canceled?

Why?

What's wrong with that?

It's different. I'm a male. There's that double standard. Oh, the female would be a different story.

I think that we should probably—

are you talking about the drinking the milk part or the shirtless? Oh no, it'll be fun.

What if I wear like, uh, like coconut bra?

People need to learn to laugh, man. I go to the movie theaters and the local ads are just— they're so— nobody likes watching them. And that's one of the things that inspires me to make creative videos is like if you're gonna put out something and you're gonna spend money on it, make it entertaining or something. Like, make it funny, make it informative. Yeah, don't just say how long you've been in business and say your name. Like, yeah, we are— I'm not gonna say any names actually. Yeah, we are blah blah blah Corporation. We've been in company, or we've been in business for 50 years. Thanks for letting us serve you. Nobody likes watching that. They fall asleep. Like, I— everybody's on their phone, just like Mike is right now.

Sorry, clientele.

Sorry, I was, uh, I was responding to comments. That's our excuse, right?

I was beefing with the—

you know how—

reaching out to a lead.

You know how when you're like in class or something or in a meeting and you're like falling asleep and they're like, hey, what 'What are you doing?' You're like, and then you pretend you're praying.

I've never done that.

Is that something that you've done regularly?

No, that's how Mike is with phones.

Is that what you do?

He's like, 'Oh no, I was responding to DM. I was, I was, I was doing business.' I hope Cody sees this. Yeah, and the only reason it's acceptable is that's what we do.

I was doing business.

Social media is our business, and so even if we're just scrolling on Instagram, I don't know about you, but we can say we are researching.

Yeah, my phone, it is always like dying. Is that a common thing for you, or—

it's always dying? Yeah, like, I mean, just charge it, Mike. I don't know what to say, bro.

I charge it.

That doesn't resonate with me.

I don't know, I think it's also my phone. I think I need an upgrade. But it's like, I put my phone on a charger and it'll be like 100%, I'll start my day, and by like noon it'll be like dying.

And I'm like, how long have you had that phone?

Um, 2 summers.

Why don't you go see if iPhone Medics will give you a discount if you make—

Shout out iPhone Medics.

—some cool content. No, it's fine.

You can barter. All right, then just deal with the bad service. Our services are very easy to barter.

So yeah, sometimes we do it for food. I will say I've never bartered social media for food.

That is true. Okay. For McDonald's. Oh.

Anyways, we had a good quarter one.

Inconsistent posting the second quarter, we started posting way more on all the platforms, and we were able to grow our Instagram to— we're on the road to 700 followers, which is cool. Um, by the end of 2024, I'm kind of wanting to hit like 2,000, honestly. If we collab with some people, we have a giveaway with Chick-fil-A during Christmas happening, so Hopefully that'll be cool.

I say we collab with Donald Trump right before the election.

Donald Trump? If you can get Donald Trump in the studio, I will not say no. I'll work on it. Yeah, collaborations are all about taking their audiences and putting yourself in front of them.

And I think there's a little bit of a misconception around some collaborations too, because I think that, I mean, even we've done it. We've talked about who can we collab with, who can we collab with, and we look for people that have thousands of followers that are here locally, but one of the other clients that we represent, we collabed because someone was in the content that we shot, and that's been our best performing piece of content for them since. And the person that we collabed with, they don't have a huge massive following. They have, I mean, about the same following that I do. Yeah, but just having them on and representing who they are, their character, their integrity, and then tying that into another business that really popped that piece of content off. Yeah. And I think it really matters. Like, you don't have to collab with people that have huge followings. That's ideal. But if you can just find somebody else that you're like, hey, you align with what I'm trying to do and get them on board, you're already doubling your audience. Even if you don't have a massive audience, it's a great place to start.

And even if one of them sees it and converts into a client, that's way worth it. So, and also we have to think about if we do an intentional collab with like another business or something, we have to think about who's following them. So like, are they our target audience? Will they be— will they like our content? Will they like our services? So like with our giveaways, last month we did a Yeti, went great. This month we're gonna be alternating, and this is just our personal strategy that we think is gonna work best. We're going to be doing product one month, service the next month, product one month, service next month. So like Yeti, we reached the entire audience of everybody because everybody likes Yetis. Um, nobody's going to say no to a free $300 cooler. That's super awesome. The next month we're going to be targeting our client, our ideal client, which is small businesses, business owners who are local to West Texas, Abilene, Lubbock. Even like hopefully Weatherford and Fort Worth eventually. But the second month, which is June, we're going to be releasing this here in the next week or so. We're going to be doing like a free promo video, which is like highly produced commercial for social media. So that's going to be one of the things that we do for June. And then July, we'll go back to a product. And we've even talked about like Apple Vision Pro, like AirPods, anything Apple people love, an iPhone, Apple Watch, Granny Smith, iPad, an iPad. But think like whenever you do giveaways, like make it something that people are actually gonna want and they're gonna be intrigued to enter the giveaway. Because if you give away koozies or pins with your logos on it and say Win a free koozie. Nobody's gonna answer that just because it has your logo on it. Like, you got to make it worth their, their time, and you got to bring value to them not only through the giveaways but like through every single piece of content that you post. And so today, like, I hope you take away something of value and take away some of our ideas, strategies, and apply it to your own business. So what are some other ideas that that y'all have in order to get more engagement and grow a following in the next couple of months for Flights and Sights?

I think honestly we've been, we put a lot of effort into making sure the stuff that we put out is actually funny and entertaining. And I think that that's pretty vital to just stay on that. And I think that we all kind of get around and act like the Three Stooges when we're unsupervised anyway. So it kind of works, but having something that's entertaining because I don't get on social media to go and look for other businesses to do business with. I do that to be entertained. And that's not uncommon. You don't get on social media to do homework unless you work for a company like Psych. Yeah, grinding over here. But I think just going through and making sure that what we're putting out is entertaining and is funny because the second you hear, well, my name's Naomi and if you need help with social media marketing, swiped, you're gone.

Nobody's paying attention. Lost their attention. You have like the first maybe 2 or 3 seconds to capture their attention. So the first thing they see, then you need to have them intrigued, whatever it is. But yeah, I think that's a good point.

Just keeping up with the trends, staying on top of it, trying to get it before everybody else has gotten it, but still keep the message clear and concise.

Trends, trends, you have to be watching and researching the trends, especially at the beginning. You don't have to do this forever, but if you want to capture eyes and attention at the beginning, if you're not collaborating with people especially, you have to be doing the trends so that the algorithm sees that and pushes your stuff. There's a whole SEO side of social media which we've been studying for a long time. And so yeah, it doesn't always have to be funny either. Like this kind of thing, I think it's just very informative and people will see value in it. Like it's not— I mean, it might have some funny parts, but like it's not a comedy. We're not a comedy show. Yeah, we're a business. We're just trying to make our content either entertaining or informative that doesn't feel salesy. Yes, because like if you push something and you're just like, buy this from me, buy this from me, people are not attracted to that. Like, I don't want to be sold to, I'll just keep scrolling, not give 2 seconds of thought about your product. Okay, but what about you, Mike? You have any ideas?

Um, I think we do like a gift basket giveaway and like have a bunch of small businesses like kind of put something in it.

Maybe we could do—

and then we just do like a giant collab.

I mean, we could do like 4 different businesses because you can collab with like— I don't know what the limit is. They just changed it. It used to be like you used to be able to collab with like 2 or 3 people. Now it's—

I think it's more, but Well, I mean, putting that basket together, that's content in and of itself because we could, you know, Carly's the first person that comes to mind just because we've already done stuff with her and Espresso Oak. But I mean, we could roll up to the business with the basket and just get a really cool, just fun shot of them putting it into the basket. And for like the sneak peek part of that, we could take that and just put it on like quadruple speed or something. Yeah.

And just be like, oh, keep your eye out. We can go to like the shed. Ooh, the shed would be good. They can throw like brisket in our mouths.

What? What did you say?

They can throw brisket at us.

Like throw brisket? Like at the shed.

And then like we like put, we put a hat on. Never mind.

I've noticed that almost all of your ideas are all just around food. Are you hungry? Are you okay? Do you need a snack?

I feed you. He does.

He feeds you regularly.

I didn't have breakfast today.

Why is my arm like that?

I called you to see if you needed breakfast. I— we are trying to take care of you.

I don't trust fucking food.

Let's just leave it there. Yeah.

Sorry. Maybe I should have told you that before you—

we're gonna have to bleep that out. Yeah, we're gonna have to bleep that out. We need to collab.

I don't trust bleep food.

Anyways, we love every restaurant here. What, you're gonna redirect? No, no.

Anyway, I think a giveaway basket—

giveaway basket, we can put Costa B&B hat in it and collab with them. We could do even Espresso Oak again, put another gift card in there. We did a $50 giveaway with Espresso Oak and it popped off. Like, there's— that was— that had more views than our Yeti. It did. Yeti giveaway, and it was only $50. Like, I'm trying to go—

but I think that goes to speak on Carly's following. Yeah, she's, she's put a boatload of work into building that following and building followers that organically and loyally, they pay attention to her stuff.

And it's almost like a, like a story too. Like, she does a great job of like showing behind the scenes stuff, and like people kind of want to see what she's doing next. Like, she just got a warehouse, and we're like, what is she doing with this warehouse? So we keep watching it. Every time she posts something new, we're like I want to see what's happening. So if you can create some sort of curiosity too— I don't really think we create that much curiosity. I think we're just entertaining. I think we create a lot of good, but it's like a lot of the time it's, it's very intentional and like we're doing what we do because we think people resonate with it.

So I think a lot of what we do is also just like trying to like capture different like editing styles and then like different like video ideas. Because like in and of itself, like we're doing these videos for us to promote our business, but it maybe it's like another business down the road that's like, oh dang, I kind of like that like editing style. Like I wonder if they can make a video for me like that, if they can help me.

Yeah, every client that we have is usually a little bit different. Yeah, no, no, it's—

your clients are the same.

They don't like the same editing styles. They don't like their photos to look the same, which is great. And it's even better if we can adapt and learn how to change and be creative in different ways. And so Flights and Sights page definitely has its own vibe. Yeah, going kind of swag on purpose. Like, we spend a lot of time trying to make it that way for us and our clients. So yeah, I think that's a good idea. Collaborations with other businesses, gift cards and stuff. Yeah. So what else? You have any other ideas or like thoughts on where we could take this for marketing?

I think for, for this specific quarter that we're finishing out, I think that just kind of staying on, staying on the level that we're talking about, just consistency posting, that's probably the smartest move. But I definitely think that we're gonna have to do something different next quarter and really just kind of like a full send moment.

Yeah, I think we should like set a goal like Yeah, because what we're at, like almost 650 right now, and we still have a month and a half, a little more than a month, a little less than a month and a half left. I think we should set a goal like at least another 100 followers by the end of the—

I think 750.

Yeah, that's what I was thinking.

By the end of this quarter. Um, that seems reasonable. And then mid-July, I think we do a very big giveaway. Yeah, potential. And something that'll not just limit it to Avalon people either.

Yeah, I agree. Sit down.

We can give away a Vision Pro and then hand deliver it if they're wherever. We just drive there if they're in Texas at least.

Or like maybe the surrounding states. Surrounding states.

Do you know how big Texas is?

It takes like 12 hours to get across Texas.

Well, hopefully nobody wins that is in Houston.

We love Houston people though. We love all people. Mike's just eliminating these potential clients. Just one at a time.

Like, oh, we don't like them. One offense after another.

You know how I can be controversial.

Controversial. Yeah, maybe we'll give away like a Vision Pro or an iPhone or an iPad or something. Or a date with Darren. A date with Mike. A date with Darren. He's taken. So is Darren. I'm married. Yeah.

A date with you and Winston. A date with Winston.

Our dog. Winston. Our 100-pound golden doodle. The goodest boy. He loves to cuddle.

Honestly, I'm not gonna lie, that's kind of a fun idea. I know a lot of people that would jump at the opportunity to go on a doggy date with Winston. Just like candlelit pup cup moment.

You can film like the Lady and the Tramp with the—

That would be so funny.

You know, okay, sorry, this is completely different. I just thought of this. Um, have you seen those posts where people are like, hey, show this to the Starbucks person who's checking you out and it'll give you free coffee? And there's like a set fund, so like anybody who scans that code—

yeah, yeah, yeah, I know exactly what you're talking about.

So if we load up $500 on a Starbucks card— not Starbucks, or wherever—

like, I don't know, I don't know who Yeah, I know.

Well, then it's just Avaline.

That's, that's a good point.

That's a good point. Anyways, that could be a cool idea. We did talk about earlier doing it. If we did do koozies, I know we hated on them earlier, but if we did do koozies and we give away like 200 or 500 koozies for free somehow, I don't know how we would even give away that many. Just good, like a hundred concert or something. It's just, uh, we'll do 100 koozies. Each one has like a unique QR code, and only one of them is like the golden ticket to win either a prize or like, uh, something.

Photo shoot or koozies could work out really well, especially if we're looking to reach Abilene and outside of Abilene, because shipping on a koozie Yeah, is that's like nothing. So that could actually work to grow our reach outside of Abilene too, because it's probably, I'm gonna guess, like less than $2 to send out a koozie. So that, that could be kind of cool. And it might be fun to go through and take a, you know, when you get this koozie in the mail, like send us a, send us an unboxing reel. Yeah. Or just like you and the koozie doing something iconic. And then put that all together. Something like that could be kind of fun. You and the koozie. And it wouldn't require, you know, Mike to drive to Houston, his favorite place in the whole wide world that he loves so much.

I don't have a problem with Houston. With a flat tire? It's not flat. I fixed it. I can tell you this. I fixed it.

It's fixed. Maybe we could deliver some of the koozies with the drone, just like tie a string.

I love that. Free koozie. I think that—

just fly around downtown.

I don't know, maybe we can do like some cigars in the gift basket now that we're thinking about it.

The Leaf. We love the Leaf.

Shout out the Leaf.

Shout out the Leaf.

They're our next door neighbor downstairs. Love your spot. Maybe we can give out some birthing lessons with, uh, birthing lessons with Julie.

Then that cuts it down to like half of the population.

Well, not even half. Less than half, pal.

Because you got women, which that's 50% usually. I don't know what the percentage of men to women are, but half. Then you got women that are pregnant, and that's like very small, 1/30th. 1/30th.

I think that might be generous of—

hey, I'm just throwing it out there.

So that's not— if you— if that's an example of—

if you win a Bertrand lesson, are you gonna go?

Are you going to go if it's free? Hey, I do a lot of things for free. Let me, let me retract that. Let me—

we had to bleep out.

Can we cut that part out?

You know, maybe we should, maybe we, maybe we should have left him muted.

Maybe we should have left his mic muted.

Oh my God, there's your, there's your new Instagram handles, Mute It Mike.

Oh my goodness. Okay, so end of quarter 2, our goal is $750. Hopefully we can get over that. Um, and I'm gonna just set $2,000 as our goal for the end of 2024 because these next few giveaways I think will bring a lot of—

yeah, $2,000 across 6 months. What is that?

Well, with, with the giveaways, with consistency and posting, like 334 people a month.

Okay. All right. For a short price of $3,600 with an Apple Vision Pro.

Oh wait, we're shooting for that. Let me— I totally— 2,000. I don't know, maybe we'll wait.

Well, maybe we'll wait to do that one. Maybe we'll do like something— $2,600.

If we hit the 750 goal at the end of this, then it's only $208 per month, which isn't bad, but that's like $600 a quarter the next two quarters.

If we do bomb giveaways, we could do giveaways, good collabs, great content. And giveaways are like also a way of pouring back into the community. Yes, builds goodwill, it builds like good PR. So It's never a bad option to do giveaways that people like. I think merch—

if we come up with some merch giveaway, that'd be cool.

We need cool merch though. I've— we need merch. I have a problem.

Katie needs to get on it. Katie's our, uh, we have a few designs.

I'm still trying to figure out our— we have, we have a decent design right now, and so I think I'm gonna stick with it for a little bit, but We'll get the—

get the design nailed down, send it over to me. I have a whole t-shirt printer.

We have one that I think that's on the front door. Mhm. I think we'll— I like that one. Kind of give like a retro—

well, it's retro and you could do that on literally any color t-shirt. Yeah, that could be a fun little giveaway too.

Yeah, monetize. We're always thinking of ways to monetize. You can monetize anything. You can monetize a service, a brand, a product. Like, easier than ever.

Monetize a bucket.

Yeah, yeah, seriously.

Like, if it's a service, in which we're going to be doing this, and it's hopefully this year we'll have it out, but we're going to be making like kind of a masterclass course type thing. We're going to do a couple different ones showing you what camera you need, how to use it with this budget, like that kind of thing. And once you record that and have that edited, I mean, it's probably good for a good 2, 3, maybe even 4 years. I mean, we're using cameras that are 5 years old at this point, and so they're still relevant. And you can monetize anything. Anyways, I was just a quick nugget. If you want ideas on that, let us know.

That also is something that we could do that I think would be kind of fun is not necessarily with cameras, but maybe do a little class with some small businesses that they just don't have the budget to pay for a service like us. Like no matter how you cut it, sometimes they just don't have it. Yeah. Like I think that most small business owners, they've, they've been there. But I think that if we did some sort of class or even shot a couple of tutorials on like just cool things that you can do with, with your iPhone. Yeah. And let them take that knowledge because, well, you can show somebody how to do something all day. Yeah. But if they don't ever follow through, then yeah.

And I think that's using an iPhone for an example. I think, I mean, everybody has— a lot of people have either an iPhone or some sort of smartphone and they all have cameras. And the first step to building your brand online is just getting out there, putting your face out there, making something. It doesn't have to be top-notch quality. Like, you don't have to use cinema cameras like we do. We just happen to be in that industry. But like, if we didn't have this, if we were a different type of company, we would use our phone. Like, we— I mean, we still use our phones. Like, the new iPhones— mine all the time. If you have a newer than an iPhone X, like, you're fine. You can use it as a webcam. You can use it as a microphone, like you can use it to record video and audio. Like there's lots of things and there's a lot of settings in the phone that a lot of people don't know about that you can change. Like it's crazy. So just up the quality and make use of what you have.

So I mean, there's another like small giveaway idea we could put together a package with like a ring light tripod, some of the little microphones that you can—

yeah, that you plug in the bottom.

Creator Starter Kit. Yeah, because that could target anybody too. We could— that could work for individuals that maybe they just want to have like an Amazon storefront and just drum up enough money off of their social media following to where it pays for, you know, a pair of overalls for a month. But that could also work for some of those small businesses that they can't afford a service like this, but they've bought, they're willing to put the sweat equity into building it. Yeah, that could be kind of fun. I would jump all over something like that because I just bought all that stuff.

And that's— I think that's a good foot in the door, especially once they start growing and once they start utilizing this stuff that we talk about on their own. Yeah, they'll build a following, they'll eventually run out of time because they're getting more clients. And so like, that's whenever we can step in and help take over.

And if we time some of our content on like, hey, this is how you You can shoot high-quality content with your iPhone by yourself, and then we do that giveaway around that time too. It could kind of—

maybe. But yeah, that'll hopefully all be in the masterclass. Yeah, classes. Um, and you can make a class over anything. If you're a chiropractor, if you're a masseuse, like, it's real easy to Set up a camera. We can record it all for you. Once it's recorded, people can buy it as many times as they want. Like, and you don't have to physically be there, which is one of the benefits of videoing and recording things. So anyways, things to think about. Good meeting today. Um, 7:50 by quarter to.

Let's do it.

Let's do it. All right, thanks for hanging out. Y'all have a good one.