Crystal Media

Marketing Clarity.

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Effective Organic Social Media Strategies 👍🏻

There’s a lot of clutter on social media. We often talk about how you’ve got to push through the clutter by advertising to get your posts in front of your customers. While the rule “pay to play” is often true and a great strategy, it’s most effective when your organic content is strong too. 📊 And, there are times (like during COVID-19) when you want additional options.  I’m going to share with you some free or low-cost strategies that’ll help increase your organic social media presence 🤳.

Shine a light on others. 🔦

Put a spotlight on clients, feature your employees, or give credit to other businesses/organizations. People appreciate being recognized and thanked. And, remember people buy from people. The more often you shine a light on your employees the better your customers will get to know them. 

Do good in your community. 👍🏻

Donate money to an organization. Ask a school or hospital to nominate a deserving student, teacher, or nurse/doctor and give the winner a prize from your store. Your fans love to see what you’re doing to help others in your local area! You’ve probably been doing this for years, donating to the local little league or boys and girls club now is the time to talk about it! 

Leverage a local complimentary business. 🏪

Partner with a business complementary to yours and co-host an event or social media campaign. Not only will you be able to share any expenses, but you’ll also get extra organic exposure from your partner business posting about it on their socials too! 

Host virtual events. 💻

Not only is this a great tool during COVID-19, but this can also help limit the cost of in-person events in the future too. Hosting the event virtually will cut back on the costs of refreshments or entertainment you might have at an in-person event. Use what’s already popular in your town. Host a virtual fashion show or a game of bingo! Be sure to post about the event leading up to it so more people can tune in.

The key to effective organic strategies is posting content that people want to see, so make sure it’s relevant and have fun with it! 🥳

Comment below which organic strategies have worked for you!

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3 Free Ways to Market Your Local Business 🛍

It’s obvious that you need to market your business, and social media is the way to do it! Your customers are on social media every single day, multiple times a day. It is CRUCIAL that you’re showing up where your customers are and getting your content in front of them. Below I’ll share some tips on how you can market your business on social media and ensure you’re staying top of your customers’ minds.

Three Free (to start) Tips: 

Consistency ✅

  • Consistency is key. Make sure you’re posting a good mix of valuable content to relevant platforms every single day. Use the Insights tool to learn when your audience is most active on social media. 

Video 📹

  • Video is one of the most effective tools today. Videos capture attention and they’re memorable. Film pre-recorded videos or go Live to sell products, educate, or entertain. Answer FAQs or demonstrate how to use products. Consider hosting a weekly show or podcast to train your audience to tune in.

Follow your competitor’s followers 📲

  • Another great tactic for exposure and easy to do on Instagram! Chances are if they like what your competitor is posting they’ll like what you’ve got too. 

Two Bonus Tips: 

Influencers 💁🏻‍♀️💁🏼‍♀️💁🏽‍♀️💁🏿‍♀️

  • Consider partnering with influencers to get more exposure. Host an influencer meetup at your store or have one take over your social media for a day. Provide content or offers to incentivize the influencer and have him/her post and direct followers to your page.

Advertise 💰

  • There’s a lot of clutter on social media so you’ve got to pay to play. Make sure your content is seen by advertising it for as low as $1/day! Consider using retargeting to reach those people who are more likely to engage with your content.

You have to meet your customers where they are. Social media is an easy and cost-efficient way to do so. Follow these tips and you’ll be sure to see awesome results!

Share in the comments what your favorite social media tactics are.

📣If you’re looking for the most relevant training on Facebook and Instagram ads our Facebook and Instagram Ads Manager, Jess, created the Facebook and Instagram Ads COVID-19 Edition. This training is available in our Insider Membership, click here to learn how you can access it and much more for just $97/month.

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Another Helpful Resource 📑

Are you seeing it too? 👀

Everywhere we look we see another wonderful company creating helpful resources to keep your small business going during these uncertain times. The reason we are all trying our best to help retailers pull through is that we love you, and we don’t want to see you go. RETAILMavens recently created a list that is packed with great ideas and tips on how to play offense. They explain “Be ready to: Stop.Pivot.Reset.” and challenges you to ask yourself “What else is possible?” Here is a sneak peek of a few of the points:

  • Know that Cash is King now. More than ever we have to protect it 💰
  • Ask your Landlord for rent abatement – not deferral – Abatement! They have a template for you to use. 📝
  • Call credit cards and ask that they defer your interest so that it is not accumulating 💳

➡️ To download the entire “Play Offense” list from RETAILMavens for free, click here. ⬅️

If you keep hearing more about selling through social and you don’t know where to start, or how to stay relevant during these rapidly changing time, be sure to check out our newest course: The Social Selling Course: A Step-By-Step Guide To Selling On Social Media, Even Without an E-Commerce Site!

Hear from Crystal, and learn more about it, click here. 🤳🏼

These resources are here to aid you in doing what you do best! Running the small businesses we all know and love, and that we can’t WAIT to visit. We are here to help you, retailers, and please know that everyone is cheering you on. You’ve got this!

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Your Store Might be Closed, but Your Business Isn’t 🛍

As we navigate this new strange reality we’re in, one that is directly affecting you and the way you do business, we at Crystal Media were called to look at what we could do. We asked, what can we do NOW to help our small business retailers, the people that we’ve helped and worked with for over seven years? I think you’ll love what we came up with. 👫

Crystal and I spent hours the past week on the phone (self-quarantine anyone?😷) talking about our options. We were about to close the doors to our Insider Membership, but we decided to keep them open indefinitely so retailers can still join and get continued support and training. We’re confident Insider membership is the best place for retailers to start, but we decided to offer some free ways to support you, too. Crystal sent this out last week:

I released a digital version of our 12-Month Social Media Planner and I’m giving it away to all retailers who need help with social media. If you have to close your store keep in mind your store might be closed, but your business isn’t. Stay top of mind by consistently posting, build your audiences and even sell through social. My planner will help you. Click here to get your planner now.

Also, Crystal was a guest speaker on the Management One webinar sharing several strategies to stay in front of customers and continue to sell to them through social media and other tools. You can watch the replay by clicking here.

Finally, early in March, we did a 5-Day Social Media Challenge, helping retailers set up a social media plan in just 5 days. We were going to take this training down but we decided to keep it up because we had so many retailers tell us how helpful it was. Below are the links to access all five days:

These are three incredible resources and they are yours for free, we’re happy to help and hope you utilize these tools. If you have any questions please email us at hello@crystalmediaco.com, all of us at Crystal Media is here for you. ❤️

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One Easy Tip to Getting Organized

I’m a huge fan of lists and tasks. I LOVE to check things off. In fact, I still write a grocery list each week and walk through Sprouts with it; my pen happily scratching things off as items land in my cart. I also write out a menu each week for dinners and lunches (breakfast doesn’t vary too much at my house) and, if I skip writing it, I always end up with a ton of random food I need to cook at the end of the week. Hmm…is this turning into a food blog?… Get…back…on…track. 🙂

My love of lists and tasks flows into work too so I was pretty excited when Crystal asked me to sign up for Asana. If you’re not familiar with Asana, it’s a platform to keep you organized, on task, and track and manage a team.

Here’s a peek at my dashboard.

With Asana, you can set up teams and projects, assign tasks to yourself or others, create tasks to recur, assign subtasks and, depending on the paid vs free version, the list goes on. There is also a mobile app so you can quickly and easily reference your list at any time. The best part once you’ve completed a task? You get to check it off!

If you’re looking to get more organized, Asana is a great tool for a small team. And, as I mentioned in the email, studies show that you’re 42% more likely to achieve goals if you write them down. Or in this case, type them down.

I put everything I need to get done on my Asana and I check my tasks for the following day at the end of each day. This eliminates the panic of “did I remember to do blank” and makes it easy for me to assign items to the team without a ton of back and forth emails. I rely so much on Asana that I told Crystal if the site ever went down she’d probably just find me walking in circles in my office. Don’t worry though. You can back up your tasks to your calendar so you won’t lose them if the site goes down. 🙂

And for the record, we’re not an affiliate of Asana. We just love sharing best practices and helpful tools with our small business community to stay organized and efficient. And this one checks both of those boxes!