Social Media Is Changing, Are You Ready?

Welcome to a New Life podcast with Pamela Jean, where it's all about empowering women to empower more women. Get ready, friends, to create a new life. And here is your host, Pamela Jean.

Hello, my friends. Welcome, welcome. It's an honor to have you stopping by today. My podcast is for my business owners, entrepreneurs and my side hustlers. You are going to love this episode. I'm so excited to present this to you today. I want to give you a couple of updates. I am working feverishly on my new community. This is a Facebook group, but a thousand times better. Think about a Facebook group without the limitations that Facebook has on how we can communicate and have a community. It is awesome. I cannot wait till it's ready. And I will definitely let you know. My other big project right now is the Business Battlefield starting this month. Oh my gosh. I'm so excited about this program. This is for serious business owners, upper level entrepreneurs that are ready to take their business to the next level, but just have hit a plateau and cannot push yourself to that next step. I'm so excited about this. Truly, truly life changing and business changing. Go ahead and shoot me an email@pamela jean.anew lifegmail.com to find out if your business qualifies. As I said, it's not for everyone. It's definitely for the serious entrepreneur. I really can't wait to take you on this journey of growth and transformation. But I do want to make sure that your business is a fit for this program because it is definitely very, very intense. Okay, let's go ahead and dive to this podcast now. I wanted to talk about the changes that I am seeing happening in social media marketing. You know, it's probably one of the most frustrating things that I deal with and other business owners and other people marketing on social media, you may feel the same thing. It's like once you have a new system figured out, it all changes and everything you did before doesn't work. And then you're trying to find new ways to make it work and the algorithms and the whatever, there's just always something that's different. But remember when there was a time that you could easily build business, sell products and services simply by posting an offer or dropping a link in a DM, etc. But unfortunately, that ship really has sailed. Marketing your business on social media is nothing short of frustrating and confusing. I know you understand. I know you know what I'm talking about. But I wanted to give you a new, valuable perspective today. First of all, I do believe that social media Presence and marketing is very important. Don't, I don't want to mislead you in any way. It's very, very important to maintain that consistency. Intentional posting is still very, very relevant. You need to have your content buckets outlined, figured out, know what your pillars are, and have a very specific strategy. But I want you to start thinking about your social media presence really as an opportunity for your clients and potential clients to window shop. So if you've ever gone to an outdoor mall or, you know, if you've ever been shopping down in like New York City, there's a lot of window shopping that happens. You know, you're walking past, you're looking in the window, you're peeking in, you might go up and, and press your finger to the window to get a better look, but you're not quite ready to go in. Well, that's what your social media presence is. Today, with most of our content being consumed by stories and reels, think about how quickly a story and a reel goes by. We're talking seconds. If you don't grab their attention within five seconds, they've swiped left and they're moving on to the next reel. So your reels and your stories are very important, but it's really about window shops shopping. You're not going to get as many people to click on the link of that reel as what you used to be able to when you just did a regular post. So think about your social media presence right now as your clients and potential clients to be window shopping now, that means your content of what you're posting has to be attention grabbing. It has to really be intriguing. It has to peak an interest. For someone to pause long enough to peek in your window, that still might only be seconds. It's not going to be 30 seconds. There's no way you'll, you'll keep somebody's attention for 30 seconds. It just won't happen. So think about that as window shopping. But when your client clicks on a link, when they click on the link, this is what is really, really fun and exciting. When they click on the link, of course you have incentivized them to do. But when they click on that link, that's when you actually open the door and they enter your store, they're entering your online world. You have brought them into your world. It's in your world that you have the opportunity to serve your clients best. This is where you teach your clients how to work with you. You share with your clients that you have the solution to their problems. This is where you get to make your business transactions with your clients. Now, I know that might seem a little bit crazy, but you have to incentivize your clients or potential clients to click on that link to get them to enter your store. The days of them just clicking and buying off of Instagram is definitely gone way, way down. But changing your perspective from window shopping to clicking on that link, getting them to walk into the front door of your store is really important. Your email link is the other way to bring your clients into your store, into your world. What is most important is that you restructure your mindset on social media marketing. As business owners, we cannot give someone else so much power in our business. If you've ever worked with me in my business mentoring segment, you'll be like, I've heard this already because I talk about this a lot. But as a business owner, we cannot give someone so much power in our business. What if Instagram shuts down for a week for no reason? Or you are blocked out of your Instagram for a week and that's where you primarily get most of your sales is through Instagram. What if they shut you down for a week? Can your business survive not having a week's worth of income? I've had friends with Etsy stores that a good friend of mine was blocked out of her Etsy store. And right at the holidays last year, can you imagine the panic that she had because there was no way for her to serve her clients, her customers when her Etsy store was shut down? And the reason for the shutdown? You know as well as I do, there's no direct line to speak to anyone on any of the social media platforms. You can't just call customer service of Instagram or Etsy or Facebook and say, oh, hey, why is my account blocked? They don't care. They really don't care. But if Instagram was shut down for an entire week, think about the thousands of dollars in revenue because they are shut down. We know the answer to that. We know what the answer is. We have to take responsibility for our business success, period. We cannot trust that to anyone else. We can't trust that to anyone else. It's our responsibility to educate our clients how to do business with us. So whether you are a realt boutique owner, hairstylist, attorney, or architect, it's your responsibility as the business, business owner to teach your clients how to work with you. And relying on any platform, social media of any kind, a platform that you do not own and you do not have complete control over, is reckless to say the least. It's just business suicide. Now, honestly, social media, they don't care if they shut your account down for whatever reason, you may have done something wrong or maybe you were flagged out of a mistake, who knows. But they don't really care because you're not paying them. You're not paying Facebook, Instagram to be, you know, your, your account is free, so you get what you pay for, right? You get what you pay for. That's why there's not the direct line to customer service at any social media platform, because they're free platform and you get what you pay for when it's for free. So to recap your daily posts, give your clients a place to window shop your business and your brand. And your email correspondence and website is where you bring your clients into your store, let them shop and make sales and transactions with them in your store, your domain, your website. That's where you get to service your clients. Really? Really. So when you're building out your social media marketing, be sure to give your window shoppers the prompting and opportunity to do business with you. Have linktree. If you don't have a linktree to your business, I would definitely look into linktree. It's not very expensive and it's very easy to set up. It's a small monthly fee. Get a linktree connected to your social media. So you can always say link in the bio or you can share that link on your post. It's very important that you make it easy for your clients to do business with you. But that business transaction has to happen outside of your social media platform. So social media is your window shopping mechanism, your website, your links, your email correspondent, your phone number, your phone calls, your texting. That is your domain. That is where you get to actually do business with your clients. So friends, thank you so much for joining me today. I know this one was short and sweet. I hope you enjoyed this episode and I'll see you here next week. Be sure to subscribe to my podcast and follow me on Instagram and Facebook. And my friends make it a great day.

Thank you for joining us today on A New Life podcast. We will see you next time.