Roundtable episode (host + four guests) discussing which social media platforms and tools have most helped their businesses and clients. From this chunk: Sue prefers Instagram and uses third‑party schedulers (mentions Hootsuite); Becky prioritises LinkedIn for business growth since the first COVID lockdown and also uses Facebook/Instagram for B2C and Facebook ads; Kim credits Facebook (pixel, ads, competitions, Messenger automations) for growing her holiday-cottage business and also uses Instagram; she lists tools including Notes, ContentCal, Planoly (for Instagram grid planning) and an awareness-day diary. The segment continues to ask Craig Webb the same question.
Chapters
I am going to ask our esteemed guests and experts a couple of questions. Having a blast. Gonna get it on the Bruce Lee podcast. Bruce Lee, like Bruce Lee. Cuz it's so hard. And the tee is loosely making up those rhymes. Don't write it, just do it loosely. If you want my respect, you better. But direct.
Mmm.
Here are the words in the podcast. That's what comes next. Now it's gonna be interesting. This is the way a roundtable works is that we're all gonna have a different opinion on, on what everybody has to say. So let's start off with our first guest. We'll go back to Sue.
Sue.
And the question that I would like to ask you, don't laugh. Is what has been. And I can see lots of lovely social media on the lovely wall Cal you've got behind you. You've got all the channels behind you right there. But what has been your number one social media tool to grow your business and what has been the one social media of choice that you have recommended to your clients and the people that you have helped over the years and why?
Good question. Or two questions. It's hard for me to pick a favorite for a client because I think every client has its own agenda and I think it really depends on where they want, where their customers are and who they want to actually push their services too. If I had to pick a favorite that I use, I do love Instagram. It's a slow grow, a slow love that's grown over time. And I think I probably would say I spend most of my time hanging around on that platform. With regards to tools, it's really again, hard for me to pick one. I think a tool that helps me be more creative, to give me back some of my time, to make it as time effective as possible, is a really useful tool. So anything that I use that helps me on maybe a third party scheduler, something like hootsuite that allows me to plan and get ahead of myself a little bit, is a massive tool that I would like to sort of definitely use moving forward. But there's so many fab tools that I've recommended to people and I always try and recommend ones that have free options. So it's not going to break their budget in any way, but will help them to get some of their time back as well because often they're running their businesses full time. Social media could be full time if you're really clever about it. So I'll try and give them tools that help them to use their time most Effectively.
Okay, love that. We'll definitely dissect in that later on, but Becky, gonna move on to you. So, again, same question, your social media. So we've had a little shout for Instagram. What about yourself? What do you love?
Yeah, well, for my business, LinkedIn has been the top of the agenda, especially since the first lockdown. I have to admit that I kind of dabbled in it before that, and then I made a conscious decision to kind of really go for it since the first lockdown and post on it regularly. And I post lots of value on there. Lots of opinions, you know, ask lots of questions. I have genuinely seen the fruition of that probably since about October time with people coming to me and sort of client business due to that work that I've done for my clients. I do specialise in B2C, so Facebook and Instagram. And I'm a bit of a Facebook geek, to be honest. I do like both, but I do, I do love Facebook and also the opportunities. I mean, obviously you could do this in Instagram as well, but the opportunities for Facebook ads as well as the organic side of things. So, yeah, that will be my. My answer.
Interesting. And it was LinkedIn is how I discovered yourself with the post. So definitely. So thank you. Thank you very much for sharing that.
You're very welcome.
Moving on to Kim. So, Kim, again, same question to you. Your social media of personal choice and the ones that you recommend and the one that you use most with your clients.
Yeah. So first of all, with my Devon coastal cottages hat on for my cottages, the biggest, biggest tool that I've used to grow our business has been Facebook. We literally left our agent five years. We were with our agent for five years and we left last year just before the global pandemic struck. And luckily, in that time, before I'd been building up the Facebook page, I'd been. I've utilized the pixel on there, also been running ads and I also did a competition to get people to like the post and a lot of them ended up following us because I invited them to like the page. And Facebook has been the biggest, biggest thing for our holiday cottage business, Instagram use as well. But it's a bit more sort of as a compliment, mainly because you can't share as many links and you can't, you can't. It's not as real time as Facebook, I find. I find that people head to Instagram perhaps in the evening or first thing in the morning and they'll spend like 10 or 20 minutes there, whereas I think Facebook People dip in and out of all day. You've also got messenger that links really nicely into Facebook as well. So setting up the automated messages on the Facebook page has really helped too. So I'd absolutely say Facebook has been number one in building our cottage business and helping us to move independently from an agent as well. I wouldn't want to completely build my business on Facebook land. So obviously the email list and all the other forms of communication are really important too. But yeah, Facebook for me, for my cottage business, for my own social media side of my business. Instagram, it's kind of where everyone is and it's a lot more for a business platform I find for chatting and also for my other social media clients who happen to be content marketers and estate agents. I've sort of got into property and competent marketers and Instagram is really big for them as well. IGTV Instagram reels. It's great for video. So yes, that's Instagram. And then tools that I use, there are so many. The biggest thing that I use is notes on my phone and on my computer, which I love. Notes. And the other really good thing is a scheduler. I use content Cal. I don't know if you've heard of that. It's really good for scheduling Twitter posts and LinkedIn and Planoloy is fantastic for planning out an Instagram grid where you can just really see visually how it's going to look and getting your hashtags in and, you know, really, really focusing on your brand planelloi and the other thing is an awareness diary for awareness day so that you can create content around little pig points in your business. So you're always talking about something new and starting conversations. So yeah, those are my tools.
Mr. Craig Webb. So same question to you, please. What is your social media?
They've all said the good answers, so I'm going to go with firstly my phone. You know, an iPhone X is just probably a bit of a cheaty answer, but it comes everywhere with me. I can run the business with it. Even in downtime. You're sitting in a car park waiting or any downtime like that, you can do posts, you can run your business from it, check your emails. Kim mentioned the notes section. I keep all the hashtags I use for Instagram in there so I don't have to type them every time. You just copy and paste them. So that's what I use. I also use my G drive, my Google Drive, quite a bit to plan my social media posts. I actually created a calendar with 365 posts ready to go for this year. So the idea was already there, written out, and then in a month or a week in advance, I can just go in, expand on the post and sort of tweak it to the business I'm helping with. So personally, for my business, I think Facebook has been the best because I run a Facebook group in there. So that's really helped me grow my group. But for my clients, I've got two different clients in particular I'm thinking of, and one is an IT recruitment company. So for them, LinkedIn is the best and their Facebook page does nothing. But LinkedIn gets really good interaction. But I've got another client that's got a food business and Instagram and Facebook are the best. 2. And I'm finding more and more. I've always said, oh, Facebook, Facebook, Facebook. But now as I'm using Creator Studio a little bit more, I'm finding actually that the Instagram posts get many, many more likes than the Facebook posts. But it tends to be the Facebook posts get more comments and that type of interaction. So I'm seeing different results at sa.
