149 ⎸Social Media for Accountants with Alison Lukin

In this interview episode I’m chatting with Alison Lukin, CEO of Officially Social. From leveraging personal content to engaging with followers, Alison shares valuable insights on creating an impactful online presence. Join us as we explore the importance of social media, current trends, and practical tips for success.

In this episode you’ll hear:

• importance of personalizing social media content
• utilizing content calendars for social media
• strategies for visibility & engagement
• social media trends & current strategies
• complementing social media with blogs & newsletters
• overcoming barriers & insecurities about social media

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• Profit First 
  • Become a Profit First Professional
  • Read the book by Mike Michalowicz
• Social Champ - social media manager & scheduler
• Manychat - to automatically send links to audience
• Officially Social - Get 25% off the first month by using the code: FIRST25

Meet Alison
Alison Lukin has been working as a freelance writer for over 18 years with clients ranging from marketing firms to yoga teachers. She loves the personality and fast pace of social networking. It’s the perfect marriage of business marketing and creative writing that is essential for the modern freelance writer. Working with musicians, charities, educators, and other various businesses, she’s learned to maximize this mode of communication for her clients. Managing social media since 2014, she made her business “official” in September 2019 with the formation of Officially Social.

Connect with Alison
📱 IG: @therealofficiallysocial
🌐 Website: officiallysocial.com

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For more information about the Ambitious Bookkeeper Podcast or interest in our programs or mentoring visit our resources below:

• Visit our website: ambitiousbookkeeper.com
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Transcript

2:37

the number one bit of advice that I give people in this area is spend the most time on the social media platform that you enjoy the most. If you're a LinkedIn person, spend your time on LinkedIn, nurture your community there, because if you're enjoying what you're doing, you're It's going to be more successful for you. For me, I love Instagram. I could spend hours on Instagram. I'm not going to force myself on Twitter X because it's just not my thing as much, right? And, spend time where you enjoy. That's my number one, because you will be more successful. If you're hating where you are, It's going to come through. Like I said, it's social. People are going to feel it. You have to be enjoying what you're doing. Welcome back to the Ambitious Bookkeeper podcast. Today I have Alison Lukin on to chat with us about social media and it's been quite a while since I've had anyone on talking about this, so I'm really excited to get into some current trends and things that are working versus not working. So welcome, Alison. How are you today? I'm, really great. Thank you. Thanks for having me. How are you? I Very good. Yeah, it's been, it's beautiful here. We talked about being in Arizona versus New Jersey. So, mean, yeah. So go ahead and give us a background. Like I said, I don't like to read bios. I like my guests to introduce themselves and then we'll dive in. sure. So I really started off as a freelance writer working in music journalism, and that was kind of when social media was just starting, especially social media for businesses. You know, we had my space and Facebook in the very beginning. And I started working with clients and managing social media for small businesses in about 2012, cause it's kind of a natural. Segway for a writer to go into social media. I mean, uh, a social media caption really is, you know, just short form writing. Right. So I did that for several years and I was working with private clients, working with a couple of various marketing agencies, and then I went out on my own. And in 2019, I formed Officially Social and, uh, we do social media management. Blogging and newsletters for small businesses. We work really in most industries, as long as they don't have to have their content run past compliance. But a large, large portion of our business is in accounting and bookkeeping. We have a couple of different, accounting organizations that we partner with and work with several, accounting firms. So we're very well versed, in the accounting and bookkeeping community. Yeah. I'm interested to hear how you ended up, in that niche with a lot of people. I'm always curious how like other businesses also end up in niches, right? We have. There's all of us kind of get there at some point, but so how did you guys end up in the accounting sphere? Oh, there is an organization called Profit First, which I know a lot of accountants are familiar with. And the owner or the, the gentleman, Mike Michalowicz, who really started, you know, that whole brand him and the man who is the president of Profit First, Ron Saharian, they both live in my town. Yeah, our kids go to school together and, they knew me, from actually Ron's daughter and my daughter are in the same grade at school. And they just knew me from being a social media manager. And, they asked me, I've been actually managing social media for Profit First since 2020. I looked back cause you know, everything in life is marked by like pre COVID and post COVID. And I'm like, I know it was before COVID. And I look back in my records and I was like, January, 2020. Right before this stuff hit the fan, you know, so, so yeah, so just from being local it kind of happened that way. I never necessarily saw myself working in accounting but really, like I said, I've worked with all different small businesses and One thing that you have to have really innately in you in order to be good as a social media manager is you have to be interested in everything. You have to have the willingness to learn anything. I have to be able to research and love what I'm learning about enough and be able to write in anyone's voice and make it convincing because really anything I'm posting, I'm speaking on my client's behalf. So I have to say. Me and my team, we're just learners. We're just people who really want to learn about anything. So when we got the opportunity to work with Profit First, you know, we've been, you know, happily doing it for years now, and from there we've been introduced to Pumpkin Plan Strategists, and there's another organization, Universal Accounting, and, then just independent accounting firms and bookkeepers that have become clients of ours. So it kind of just fell in my lap, but we're happy to do it and we've been enjoying it very much. Yeah. That's really interesting. I never expected to hear that for some reason. Yeah. It makes sense now. I do. I did. I did know they were in New Jersey. I just, that did not connect, but that's really cool. And like you said, the niche thing kind of just falls in your lap. That's kind of how mine ended up too. and yeah, so if you're out there listening and you don't have an itch yet, just hang in there. It'll fall in your lap eventually. First lead you and it'll lead you somewhere good. Hopefully. Yeah. Awesome. so you provide one on one services for lots of industries, you also have a digital downloadable subscription type service, Developed for accountants, correct? Yes. Yes. Okay. Talk to us about that a little. Mm Sure. Sure. Yeah. We have a content calendar subscription service, like you mentioned, you know, we do one on one, with Any business really, if it's within their budget, but you know, sometimes custom accounting services can be a little pricey. And also a lot of times people do have, you know, accounting firms do have in house, maybe either an office manager or someone within the office that is managing social media for them. So Whether you have someone handling your social media or not, this can really be a good addition to your strategy. So, our content calendars, we have one, you know, again, just for accountants and bookkeepers with content that's great for your business. You choose between five days a week or seven days a week. And like we were just talking about before. If you chose, let's say, a seven day per week subscription, we're not telling you, you should be posting seven days a week. That's up to you whether you want to or not. That just gives you seven choices per week of content to pick that would be pertainable to your business. So once you choose your subscription, you log into your calendar, It's a one click download to download everything. And you have a full month's worth of accounting and bookkeeping content. You have fully written captions, tags, hashtags, graphics that are professionally done for you. We choose TikTok videos that are pertainable to your business. Like I mentioned before, we don't use any AI. Everything is created by Google. Real people, real account managers with a ton of experience in the industry. And we also really like to leave some negative space on the graphics. So if you want to, we have a simple image editor and you can drop your business's logo right onto the graphic as well. So it's branded for you. And then the text, the captions are fully editable. So if you want to put your business name into the text, you can. It's just a copy paste. or, you know, let's say you want to make it sound a little more lighthearted or a little more serious, whatever suits your personality. You can take that text. You can use it as is, or you can change it a little bit. And then you can either take this content We purposely did it this way because not everyone wants to deal with a scheduler. So you can take the content and put it directly into your social accounts if you want. Or, you can use a scheduler. So whatever way you like to work, if you're a little more advanced, or you, like I said, have someone in your office that's covering social media for you, you can use a scheduler. Easy. It's, it's, you know, easy to use it either way. We recommend a lot to people a scheduler called Social Champ. If you don't already use one, there's a free version. And it gives you kind of just enough basic scheduling abilities. So if you don't want to be posting, you know, kind of on the fly every day, you can do that as well, but you know, we, we were really thinking affordable. Easy and effective because like I said, also you can go on Etsy and for 30, 50, buy a couple hundred accounting posts, but they're kind of all garbage. They're not really going to do anything for you. It's just an image. They're really bland and it's not going to do anything for your business or your engagement, but these are well written by experts, social media experts, and people who've been working in accounting for a super long time. So and we do have a coupon code that we are offering your, subscribers, for 25 percent off your first month subscription. So you can kind of give it a try, very low risk. Mm hmm. We do month to month. So if you try it a couple months and it's not for you, By all means, you can cancel your subscription. We're not, we're not locking anyone into anything. So, Yeah. Awesome. And we'll share all codes and links and everything in the show notes, so not to worry there. Yeah. So that's an amazing level of service that you're offering. And I know Listeners that are Profitverse professionals, they probably already know about you, but in case they don't, what do you offer that's a little different for them? so yeah, we also have a profit first calendar as well. So, you know, the general calendar for accountants and bookkeepers, like I said, has more general accounting and bookkeeping content, the profit first calendar is, uh, All branded for Profit First professionals that will have the Profit First logo on it. We actually work with Profit First to come up with that content. So it's all approved by them and supports incorporating the Profit First program into your business. And it's all, both calendars are geared towards, you know, they're not geared towards other accountants and other Profit First professionals. They're geared towards getting you clients. What do your clients need to hear? You know, what will it take to get you more business? What do these people need to be? Seeing in your feeds to build the trust to convince them why they should be working with you. And it provides some really well done educational posts that are engaging. Yeah. Yeah, that was going to be my next question is what's your take on educational content versus Inspirational or, you know, whatever else is out there. Do you have like a formula that you guys use? Because there's different people that talk about the social media strategies and some people are like, educational content is dead. And then like, you're just going to get freebie seekers. So walk us through what your take is on all of that. Sure, sure. So your social media feed really has to be a good balance of both education and entertainment. It's funny because I always, like, I am on that pillar all the time, like education and entertainment. It's got to be interesting. It can't just be boring. Right. And I was watching a podcast actually a day or two ago. That's completely unrelated, even to social media. It was just like marketing for a different business. I knew the lady running it. So I watched it and the person who was being interviewed actually said she had four E's entertainment, education. Engagement and emotion. So really, if you're taking all of those things into consideration, I almost think like the emotional could fall under the entertainment umbrella and you want all of it to be engaging, right? Whether it's educational or, or entertainment, but I mean, you know, everyone like likes a joke here and there. Right. I mean, I don't know anyone who doesn't. like to scroll and like, Oh no, don't show me anything funny, you know, Yeah just an interesting fun fact. Like, Oh wow, I didn't know that about bookkeeping or whatever fun fact it is, or, you know, it's National Bookkeepers Day. Oh, I didn't know it was National Bookkeepers Day, you know, some sort of interesting fact. And also, I mean, Giving away educational content is not, you know, attracting freebie seekers, right? You have to give something away for free because you have to show people what you know. yeah, And also, if you're not educating them, they're not going to know what they need. They're not going to know what you know. They're not going to know that you're the best person to give it to them. And then also on the entertainment side, you know, no one thinks our business is as interesting as we do, right? We could just promote ourselves all day long, and all of our followers just love everything we have to say. Like, wouldn't that be amazing, right? But to most people, that gets a little boring after a while, right? We can't just talk about ourselves all day long. So the entertainment portion of it, we Really is what keeps people involved. Like, you know, everybody loves, you know, all accountants rather, you know, there's, there's accounting jokes, there's accounting, accountant humor, there's small business humor, you know, misery loves companies sometimes, you know, if there's something that, you know, all small business owners or all people who have worked with accountants can kind of, you know, relate to, and you put that on your feed, People are going to like that, you know, like, Oh, that person read my mind. I've thought that before too, you know? So it's just like this conversation right here that we're having, right? We're enjoying talking to each other. There's some lightheartedness to it. We have a little chuckle here and there, right? We're talking about business, but we're also having an enjoyable conversation. So that's really what your feed needs to be like. Also you're providing value. But it's also something enjoyable to listen to or, you know, something enjoyable to read through or scroll through, however you want to. So it definitely has to be both. Yeah. I, I agree on that one. Yeah. Um, and, and it's funny cause like, I think I do think accountants and bookkeepers, like we're, we're a different breed of people and we do have the tendency to just focus on the educational content. So it's nice to be reminded that like, it doesn't have to all be that and you can sprinkle in some personal stuff and, Some humor, make sure people understand that we're not all dry and boring. And listen, I mean, let's say, you know, you work in your office with, even if your team is small, if there's two or three of you, let's say every once in a while. Take a picture, have a selfie of the three of you smiling, and guess what? I'm scrolling through, I'm going to say, oh, they look like nice people. They look like people I would want to work with. You might think that it's kind of like, who cares about a picture of us? But people do. You know, it helps you be more likable. It helps you more trustworthy. So let us get to know you a little bit, you know tell us something exciting that's happening in your business. You know, a new client maybe that you have or an accomplishment of one of your clients or an accomplishment of yours. Mm hmm. Mm All of that stuff is interesting. The more we get to know you, the more we want to work with you. And people think so often, you know, Oh, my followers aren't going to care about that. But believe it or not, they do. Like I said, people want to get to know you. It can't just be, here are my services, it's tech season. Make sure you do this, watch out for that. You know, it has to be interesting. It has to be creative. And, you know, with our content calendars. Let's say, you know, that part of, you know, your social media strategy isn't really your strongest suit as far as coming up with variety, right? You can get that right in our content calendar and, you know, choose two or three posts, let's say over the course of the week from our content calendars, then that leaves room for your maybe more straightforward posts that just advertises your services. Or, you know, maybe there's a deadline you need all of your followers to know about. so the more straightforward stuff then, that's what you can fill in. But get that variety, get that interest from our content calendar. So if you need to keep in that area, it's kind of a good resource to have. And it breaks it up. It's less overwhelming. Like, oh my gosh, I have this whole month in front of me where I have to be educational and I have to entertain people, but maybe that's not my personality. Yeah. It makes it a little less overwhelming. Yeah. Absolutely. So, what do you think about, because I can already, I've, I've seen this comment kind of float around in my community and I can already kind of hear the listener being like, well, if everyone's using the same calendar and the same social posts, like, we're just going to all look the same. So how do you handle that objection? The absolute number one question that we get about our content calendars. The reason why you don't have to worry about that is because you can take any of these posts and use them however you want. We, yes, we give them to you in a suggested order. And sometimes, you know, they will have to stick on whatever day, like, you know, Sunday was Mother's Day. You're not going to take a Mother's Day post and put it on Tuesday. Mother's Day is Mother's Day, Mm hmm. Yeah. there are certain posts that will have to stand where they are because of the day. But for the most part, you know, if you want to put Monday's post on Wednesday or Friday's post on Tuesday, you can, you know, you You know, if you're subscribing, let's say to the seven days per week, you can choose out of any of those days. You don't have to use all seven and different ones will pertain to your business and some won't. And you know, the business down the street, the accountant or bookkeeper down the street. Their business I'm sure isn't exactly like yours. Maybe there's different posts that they would choose for their business. You're manipulating the text a little bit perhaps, so the caption will be different. Also, this content is not for other bookkeepers and accountants. It's for potential clients or current clients, whoever is following you. So you don't care if the other Bookkeepers or accountants are reading your stuff because that's not, that's not who the show is for, right? So and then also, you know, if you think of yourself as, you know, either a, you know, a single person or a business owner and you follow some accountants on, on Facebook or Instagram, right? How many really are you following? Like two, maybe three, like max, you're not following 20 accountants. I mean, that I'm going to say is going to be super rare. You're definitely not going to be following 20 accountants that are all subscribing to officially social calendars and posting things in the same order. I mean, the likelihood is nil, right? So it's really not a concern with this content. And again, you should be sprinkling in. Your own content as well. And if you're unsure of, let's say, how to put a post together, right? What structure should I be using? What should a graphic look like? Look at our posts that we're giving you and model your own posts after it. It'll kind of show you how it's supposed to be done. So the likelihood of your feed looking exactly like somebody else's who is subscribing to our calendar, and again, with the exact same audience that's looking all on the exact same days. It's just, it's not really a concern, but not a question that we get. Well, can I circle back to what you said about, like, you're not following 20 other accountants? If you're listening and you are following 20 other accountants, because I know this is, it happens to be a thing, and I get, like, wanting to have, like, your community or whatever. of other bookkeepers, might I suggest just muting or unfollowing other accountants for a bit, because that's also just going to feed your imposter syndrome and comparison, and it's really not a good place to be. And it's going to mess with your algorithm. If you keep following other accountants, you're going to keep getting fed other accountants profiles. exactly. it's going to mess with their algorithm, too. Filter out the noise. And their own analytics, so please, do us all a favor. Follow the ones that are really giving you value. You know, read the content that is really serving you and giving you value. And I mean, you know, if you see another accountant that posts something that would be beneficial to your audience, share it. You know, social media, the biggest thing people miss out on is social media is social. We're supposed to be interacting with each other. It's not set it and forget it. That's not going to benefit your community, right? So the more you like and share and comment on other people's content, when they're scrolling, they're going to be doing the same thing to you. They're going to be like, that Serena is just so nice. Every time I post something, she likes it. Or she, you know, leaves a nice comment. When I see her content, I'm going to do the same thing. You know, on the, on the flip side, if you never interact with anyone, you know, and never like, comment, share anything that anyone else posts, they're not going to pay attention to what you're posting as much. Also, you know, your content's not going to show up as much in their feeds either. One hand washes the other. Again, it's social. It's not set it and forget it. As much as You would maybe like it to be because it's less work. That's just not how social media works. You're not going to get, it's not going to be beneficial for you. You're not going to get the results that you want and the engagement that you want from it. yeah. So that kind of leads me into my question about current trends and what you're seeing across Instagram, Facebook. LinkedIn, I don't know if, like, your calendar is, like, you guys suggest to post the same thing everywhere, or what you're seeing as far as trend, trends overall with social media. Like, where are you finding that people are getting the most engagement? What type of post, which platform, all that kind of stuff. You know, the number one bit of advice that I give people in this area is spend the most time on the social media platform that you enjoy the most. If you're a LinkedIn person, spend your time on LinkedIn, nurture your community there, because if you're enjoying what you're doing, you're It's going to be more successful for you. For me, I love Instagram. I could spend hours on Instagram. I'm not going to force myself on Twitter X because it's just not my thing as much, right? And, spend time where you enjoy. That's my number one, because you will be more successful. If you're hating where you are, It's going to come through. Like I said, it's social. People are going to feel it. You have to be enjoying what you're doing. As far as trends go obviously I'm not saying anything new. It's still video. It's still video. As much as people hate to pick their phone up and talk into their phones. And you know, and, and you know what, to be honest with you, when it comes to social media, I am more of, I love being a producer. I think of myself as a producer. I love to, you know, help everyone else come up with their personas. And, but then when it comes to me, as talkative as I am, I'm going to be reluctant to pick up my phone and talk into a video because that's just kind of who I am, right? However, if I'm at an event. I'll film a little video. I'll take a picture of myself sitting at my officially social table, or if there's somebody else that I want to support, I'll take a little video. You can always, you know, share videos from other accounts to your stories, let's say. So, I mean, as much video as you can is always really, really good. People need to get past that barrier of thinking that like, people won't care. Someone's going to look at me and think that I'm stupid. Why are they, why are they talking and, you know, into their phone and making a video? They're not going to care what I have to say. But people really do. Anyone who's going to say anything negative about you probably wishes they had the guts to do it themselves. Right? And You have something to offer, you have really great knowledge to offer people and they're going to be appreciative, so video as much as you possibly can. When it comes to playing to the algorithms of Instagram, it is, really about stories. Stories is your number one. I'm going to say in 2023, it was about reels and stories. While yes, reels are super important, stories will feed the algorithm in 2024 more, you know, and is feeding the algorithm. Obviously we're already in May. We're halfway through. I can't believe it. I'm up. I don't know why, since it's a month that begins with an M, I keep thinking it's March, but it's May. So anyway, they, year, the algorithms are just loving the stories. So as a result, for anyone who doesn't know, feed the algorithm and your content will show up in other people's feeds more. So that's what you want to do. And the, the big thing about Instagram, I was actually, I had a meeting with a potential client this morning and they had no idea about this. That, you know, Instagram, for example, right? There's your beautiful grid, which, you know, are all of your posts, which live there forever. hmm. There's the stories, the circles that go across the top. We know that they disappear after 24 hours, right? Most people are going on Instagram and they are watching stories. For me, some days I'll go and I'll scroll through posts for a while. And I don't look at the stories, but most of the time I'm going on Instagram and I'm looking at stories. I actually just looked at a poll that a pretty major influencer put up not that long ago to ask people, like, when you go on Instagram, do you look at posts? Do you look at stories? 80 percent of the answers were stories. So if you're not posting to stories on Instagram, you're missing a large portion of your followers because they might be going on Instagram and not even looking at your posts. They're just going on there to watch stories. So you can always share your post to your stories. That's pretty useful for you. And obviously we know that Facebook has stories also. But people don't watch stories as much on Facebook. They're going there more for the posts. So it's really like knowing the behaviors of the people who are going on each of these platforms. You know, the style of posting on LinkedIn is very, very similar to the style of posting on Facebook. So those kind of, you can be posting the same content on both. You can post the same content on Instagram, but obviously you have to do it in a different way. You can't be putting, you know, links that people can click on in your captions. That's not going to work very well for you. You know, the whole link in bio thing or putting a link tree in your Instagram bio is super useful. So there's ways, you know, to keep people engaged and make it easy for people to find your business and do business with you. but stories, people want to get to know you. And also it's like, you know, right now, even, you know, in this conversation that we're having. It's more of a professionally filmed thing that you're going to edit later, you're going to put it on your feed, but it really is just, it doesn't, stories don't have to be that. It's literally just you picking up your phone, taking a picture at an event that you're at, or, you know, let's say you're not comfortable with that. And, you know, you want to just. Take a picture of a book cover, something, a book that's helping you out. It could be something simple like that. It doesn't always have to be your face. Right. Be making slides in Canva for your stories that have good tips and tricks or things that are current, or seasonal on those slides to put in your stories. So there's a lot of different ways to present your information even without filming. And, you know, making a slideshow that counts as a video or a reel. It doesn't, again, have to be you actually talking, it makes people uncomfortable sometimes, but once you do it several times, it's kind of like, you don't think about it as much, just kind of something that you do, Yeah, I agree. I agree on that one for sure. I have, it's been actually quite a while since I went on stories and actually talked to the camera. Most of the time my stories are pictures of things throughout my day and I'll just put a caption on it, do some like engagement polls, and stuff like that. And that's great too. You're interacting and you're, you're putting stuff out there, you know, you don't have to always be talking. Yeah, I will say what's interesting is since I run two social media accounts, run one with four, actually I run like four, but that's besides. Story of a very different day. I have my ambitious bookkeeper one, I have my firm one, and then I have personal That's very private. And then I have a music one. So but my two bookkeeping related ones, like the ambitious bookkeeper one has three times the followers than my firm Graham, and they both get the same amount of views on stories. So, Yeah, like, that's the other thing of getting people to go to stories. Like, once you're kind of at the bottom of the algorithm, it's, it's kind of harder to come back, I think. you know, we have people that come and work with us that like, let's say haven't posted for like six months or like, you know, I actually had someone early on when we first launched the content calendars. subscribe to our calendars. She maybe took three pieces of content. She put them on her, you know, on Facebook or whatever, but literally had not posted anything it's in six months. And then she reached out to me and was like, these posts don't have any engagement and it's like, well, There's no pixie dust in these, these posts. You have to play to algorithms. Basically what's happened is if you haven't posted in six months, the algorithms have put your account to sleep. No one's seeing it because you haven't been posting to stories. You haven't been, you know, putting posts up there or engaging with anyone either. It's not even like you're going on there and scrolling to look at the people that you're following and like, or comment on there. So the algorithm has put you to sleep and it's going to take a while. to wake up again. So just the act of getting posts out there, putting some stories up there, engaging with other people. I also recommended her, you know, boosting some posts just to give it a little more oomph to maybe make the gears move a little bit faster. But the more you post, the more engagement that you're going to get, you know, and and also sometimes the algorithms are a mystery, you know, you have the same engagement on stories on the same, you know, two accounts. Sometimes it's like, It's however the wind blows. Sometimes it's a mystery. We don't even really know why, but we can just kind of do our best to play to what we think the algorithms want to see. Yeah, right, now, like, what's been really successful for me as we're recording this in May of 2024, in case anyone's binging this in a year in advance or year in the future is doing, Like I'm all about doing things like as simple and easy as possible, Sure, sure. but I've been doing a lot of like just time lapse videos of random stuff throughout my life and my day and then doing like text overlay and a good caption on and putting it to a trending audio on Reels and, and I use many chats. So everything has a call to action. Like every post you can comment a word and it'll send you a link to whatever, whatever it is, whether it's a podcast episode or a resource or whatever. You know, speaking of trends, that's actually just something that I'm seeing all over Instagram now where an influencer is showcasing whatever and you know, comment this word and I'll send you this, you know, that's been a really good engaging call to action that I've been seeing a lot lately. So yeah, Yeah, it's working. It's working really well. But that's, that's how simple it can be. It can be a time lapse of like, not even your face, honestly. Like, I time lapsed myself cutting up a pineapple and I put that reel up a couple days ago with an engaging text, an engaging caption, and a call to action. With a trending audio and I'm every day. There's multiple requests for that link. So it's like, that's, that's what's working for me right now. And don't overthink it. Like just whenever you have the opportunity, put up your camera, do a short little video, people get paralyzed. in the, in the bank. Yeah, and then, you know, maybe they'll take a photo, and then they don't end up actually posting it. Like, hit post. Just do it. Just get it out there. And I say to people, too, all the time, like, You can delete anything if you put it up there after five minutes, you realize like that really is awful, or that's not what I want to say, or there's an error in it, you can delete it. It's not that bad. You know, maybe only a few people will have seen it and maybe not anybody, depending on how quickly you delete it, but just, Just post. Stop thinking how much people get so self conscious or just overthink strategy so much. And, you know, we have clients sometimes that just nitpick at graphics or nitpick at a sentence. Like, don't think about it that hard because nobody else is. It's like, Only people in our industry. oh, well, there's, there's an amazing quote. And I, I, Have to figure out, I think it's Winston Churchill, but I don't know. And I'm one of these days, cause I keep repeating it. I'll figure out who it is. When you're young, you think that everyone is thinking about you. When you are middle aged, you stop caring what everybody thinks about you. And when you're older, you realize no one was thinking about you in the first place. And it's so, so true. Like, yes, obviously people care about your business. People who follow you for a reason, but no one is analyzing and nitpicking The way you think they are and the way you are to yourself, you know? So just do it. Just put it out there. It's really not that serious, you know, Honestly, if you do put something up with an error, you're going to get more engagement on that, and then you're going to be in the algorithm. So Yeah, I've had that happen where it was like, I It was a while back. I, I put up some, it was also very, uh, controversial type of thing, but it was like at the beginning of when reels were starting to really pick up. And, I hit like a million views on this one video because people kept, Taking jabs. And I'm like, you're just feeding the algorithm now. Please bring it on. Give Bring it on haters. People that weren't even the targeted audience for it were nitpicking. And I was just like, Oh, this is amazing. Exactly. Exactly. You think you're hurting me, but you're actually helping me. Yeah. So, do you have a lot of, clients that, because this is a common question with a lot of the bookkeepers that I talk to, they're like, I don't get any engagement on Instagram and I don't think that's where my clients are going to come from, but that's where I like to be. So do you have advice for that person or, I mean, this can apply to literally any of the platforms, obviously. So it's like, I want to be here, but I'm not getting the traction that I want. Maybe my clients aren't here. What's your suggestion there? you're not going to be equally successful across all platforms. No one is. No one is. If you look at any business's platforms, let's say they're on, you know, the main four, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, X, right? You're going to see one that is much more successful than another, right? So don't feel bad about the ones that aren't. There's people there too, and you should continue to post on everything. But if you have one that is successful, be happy with that. Because again, There's always one. I'm not talking about celebrities and things like that, but your average person, your average business owner, there's going to be one that is more successful. So definitely spend the time and nurture that. Now, let's say you're an Instagram lover and. You're just not seeing the engagement or the traction that you want. You can always do something like a growth campaign. Take, you know, your budget, let's say for two or three months. you can start a growth campaign for like 300, 350 a month, do it for a few months, you're going to see an explosion. And then maybe you're going to have a more active community on a platform that maybe you enjoy more that you want to be on more, but and it also depends on your demographic. You know, who are you trying to attract? Cause there are facts as far as. Where certain people hang out on social media more often, you know, so you know, you're not necessarily, let's say, you know, you're, you're looking to attract, you know, business owners, 25 to 30 years old or 35 years old, Facebook might not be your place because, you know, if you're on Facebook, those 25 year olds look at you like you're old and you're a loser or whatever, because the young people, a lot of times they, you know, oh, Facebook, forget it, you know, so maybe they're on Instagram, but you, so. Look at what's successful for you. Look at where your demographic really hangs out. I mean, and if you don't know, I mean, some simple Googling will tell you the main age and gender demographic and industries that are most prevalent on what platforms, so that will help you target where exactly you need to be for your business. But again, I'm an Instagram lover. If I really want to bump up my Instagram and get more engagement and get more followers, there's ways. Ads, you know, do a growth campaign and that will bump it up and give you kind of the satisfaction that you're looking for on, on whatever platform. Can you explain what exactly a growth campaign is for our listener? for the most part, they really are like a targeted, a super targeted ad, like an ad can be for really anything, right? You can, you know, Put an ad to sell a product, to sell a service, to get more followers somewhere just to educate people. It depends on, you know, what you're in it for. And your growth campaign is a targeted ad for the purpose of getting more followers and you know, bringing them to your account. And again, we can target something like that really for a specific age group, for a specific region, whatever. They are super targeted. You can think of them Okay. Awesome. what do you think is important as far as like, cause you did say that you guys provide newsletter and blogging. So how does social media fit in with that and where, like, what is the ultimate goal with, with all of that when you do provide all those services for a business? Well, we find that if people are covering those three bases and, you know, blogs could be a little bit more challenging for people if it's really not your thing, right? Or if you don't have someone working for you that can write one for you. But they really do cover all bases. The benefit of having a blog is a couple of things. It gives you the opportunity to have exclusive content, right? Then you can take that content. You can put it in your newsletter. You can post it on social media. Now let's say you write a blog post, you know, the top five, whatever. Your number one, you can make that into a nice graphic and post that on social media. The next week, take your number two. Make that a nice graphic or make a little video out of it. Post that on number three. So it gives you a space for exclusive content. Another thing is, is every time you're posting a blog post, that is considered an update on your website, right? The search engines love website updates, right? And it raises you in the search engine. So if someone is searching for an accountant or bookkeeper in your area, you're, you know, you have lots of links on your website. People are linking to you. You're always updating your website with blogs. You know, aside from let's say Google ads or, you know, other things that you paid, things that you can do to boost, you know, your position in search engines, Website updates are just a good, organic way to raise, you know, your position. And like I said, you're going to be posting, let's say, you know, I put a blog, a new blog post on my website. Obviously, I'm going to post that on my social media. Check out my new blog post. I'm going to put that in my newsletter. It gives me a lot of great content. And also, linking back to what we started our conversation with. Give things away for free. You want to give things away for free. It's showing that you know what you're doing, right? If you post a blog post that has some information that teaches a potential client something they didn't know before, they're like, oh my gosh, thank God, you know, Serena put that blog post out there because now I know what I didn't know before. I wonder what else I don't know. Maybe I should be working with this person. Exactly. And putting out free, free advice like that, it's not going to hurt your business. Someone's not going to read your blog post and say, Oh, now I know enough where I don't need Serena services, you know? And if, if they do say that, you don't want to work with that person anyway. And even when it comes to like, you know, your coaching, for example, let's say you have a new blog post that you write every single week that you put out there and I'm considering taking your course and I'm eating up your free information because I love it so much. I want to know more. And I'm going to say, if the free content is this good, I can only imagine what the paid content is. Right? So it's not going to dissuade anyone from using your services ever. It's just going to show them, you know, just the tip of the iceberg of what you can offer. So, like I said, it, it really, all three of them really work well together. Social media is your great foundation for everything. it's just your main way to connect with people. But the newsletters are really great too, because people sometimes can forget about their email list, right? Let's say, God forbid, You know, you, let's say you have, you know, 10, 000 followers on Instagram. You hear every once in a while, something happens where then your Instagram gets shut down and you can't get it back. I had it happen to a client of mine a few years ago. We still don't know why it actually happened. Right. So let's say, you know, your main way to access people is Instagram. Now it's gone. Your email list is something that no one can ever take away from you. Your email list is there. No one can take it. It's something that, you know, you can nurture over time, have that, you know, box on your website where people could put their email address in, you know, and also it's really great to offer some sort of incentive, like, Hey, here's a PDF that you need during tax season. Put your email address in and you'll get my free PDF. Great incentive for someone to put their email address in that box on your website. You nurture, you grow that email list, then no matter what happens on social media, you still have connections to people. You can still continue to nurture your business through a newsletter. So they all work really well together and they're all very important to your business. Yes. There's been times where I've like, I, I do have blogs and social media and newsletters for both my firm and this business, obviously. But there's been times where I've been like, I wonder if the social media is really doing anything. And I stopped posting for a while and then realized like, Oh yeah, it was working. It was driving people to our email list. It was growing the email list. It's helping during launches and all this kind of stuff. So even if you don't. Love it. Obviously, you have a solution for that, so don't be scared of it. You know, you know what I You know what I tell people all the time too? Like, okay, typical, this kind of thing happens every day. I need a new accountant. What am I going to do? Maybe I'll go on Facebook and I'll say, Hey friends, I need a new accountant. Does anyone have an accountant that they like? 12 of my friends are going to respond and say this person, that person. Maybe in the end, I get a list of five or six people that have been recommended by my friends. What's my next step? I'm going to go on their website. I'm going to go on their social media pages. I'm going to look at the reviews. I'm going to see online, you know, what's happening with this person. Let's say I narrow it down to two people. Okay. One of them has posted twice this year and, you know, maybe post a little in, you know, 2019. Then I look at this accountant over here that posts two, three times a week, really current content. People are engaging with them. They're offering a lot of free, really, really good helpful advice. Who am I going to pick? It's a no brainer, you know? So if you might not, if you might be wondering, you know, what's this ROI on all this work that I'm putting in, it's there, that's it. You're positioning yourself as a reliable, trustworthy authority in your field. That's what it's doing for you. That's the platform. yeah, absolutely. Well, on that note, I think that's a great note to end our interview on. Remind everyone where the best place, and we'll link everything in the show notes, but where's the best place them to connect with you? So, you know, obviously our website is, uh, OfficiallySocial. com. Our Instagram account is TheRealOfficiallySocial. I am always very accessible. Anyone can email me at any time if they have social media questions. I am Allison with one L at OfficiallySocial. com and, we'll provide links as far as the content calendars and coupon code. Awesome. thank you so much. And we will link everything in the show notes for you. And yeah, thank you again for taking the time to come on the podcast and share everything. And it was such a pleasure to chat with you. I loved our conversation. My pleasure. My pleasure. I love this kind of stuff. This is super fun for me. Awesome. Thank you very much. And we'll talk to you next week.