Grow your Fan Base – Grow your Bookings –
By: Phillip Archer
We want to start thinking about stretching yourself a bit on social media. Let’s take pulse for a moment and think about what steps you should have taken so far. At this point, you should have created a Facebook Business Page and Linked it to your BranchUp and you should be seeing beautiful content automatically posting to your page regularly. Your Facebook Business Page should be connected to your Instagram Page and the content that is eligible to post on Instagram (some Photos & Videos) will also post to your Instagram Account. If you have a LinkedIn Account, you can now link your BranchUp to it as well and it works very much the same as Facebook.
Before we move onto the next “brick in the wall”, take a moment to make sure you have these systems in place and they are working well. The last thing you want to do is invite the planet to your “party” and not be ready when they all show up. This is one of the reasons I do not allow people to refer to me as an influencer. I am never going to invite you to an island for a fabulous party and when you get there you find a pile of sand littered with what looks to be a frat party. Before you start promoting your business to the world, make sure your “shop” has credibility. Social Media is the new “public space”. It has replaced newspapers, magazines, and news programming for many – and as wonderful as it can be for you to be a source of trusted information, it is a double-edged sword. If you have all of your pages linked, it is probably a good time to go through those pages and make sure the information on them is correct. Make sure the advice you share from yourself and other sources is current and accurate. Most importantly, make sure that when you post information from other sources that it does not lead your followers to a competitor. It is vital that you understand that you are now going to be a Trusted Advisor to your followers. They assume you have done your homework. They assume you have fact checked your posts. They assume that if they are led somewhere by your post, it is legit. This is one of the things I love about BranchUp. I already know the information is legit and that it comes from a trusted source – my travel vendors. Your non-BranchUp posts should be just as credible. If they are not, delete them now. You should thoroughly scrub your social media sites before you start promoting your business. If it is true that everyone knows 250 people, a successful post on social media can reach millions of people in a very short period of time. We call this “going viral”, and it is really not something you can control so you should make sure you are ready long before it happens.
Are you ready to start growing your fan base? Come on! Do you want to book $1M in travel this year? Do you know how to do that? You have to reach more people and convince them that they need to reach out to you. People do business with people they know, they like, and they trust. How do you pull that off online? You have to know them, like them, and trust them back – and this is going to be hard for a lot of you. First, I have been on Facebook longer than most people and I was an early adopter of social media. As I have mentioned before my husband works for one of the most significant social media companies on the planet so we do tend to consider ourselves well informed on the subject. I am aware of no legitimate study that has been able to document that an individual user is at greater risk of crime or violence due to their social media presence. I do think you have to adjust your behavior if you are going to be a “public person” and this is your next step. Make sure that your home address and any other information you want to be kept private is locked down in your social media profiles. If you only have one phone number and want to keep it private, perhaps you should get a Google Voice number for your business profiles that you can forward to your private phone number or cell phone. We use a mailing address for our personal and business mail so that we do not have to publish our home address. You can get a mailing address from the postal service with a post office box or you can do it through a mail and package service like The UPS Store. These resources are usually readily available in most cities and they are typically affordable. The last thing I want you to do on this step is check the location pin on your social media accounts that have your location and make sure that it is not on your home address. They usually update when you put in an address, but just make sure. Most of them are easily moved. So, if you live close to your mailing address you may want to move the pin to a well-known intersection nearby. That will give you the benefit of location service for people looking for a travel agent close to them – but also allow you to maintain your privacy if you only use a home address.
Now are you ready? Are you chomping at the bit to get your brand out there? Let’s check one last thing. Are you a full-time travel agent or advisor? There are not many left. I am full time entrepreneur and I have a full-time office, but most of our travel associates started their travel business as a side gig. It is really important to make sure that you have a plan in place for when people start reaching out to you. You need to run your business like a business and you need to make sure that your business has regular office hours and that someone will actually be able to respond during those hours. When I started our travel agency there were just two of us and I was the only one full time. My business partner worked his travel clients in the afternoons and had regular office hours from 4-6 PM and on Saturdays. It was important for us to tell his clients a few things. First, they had a number to call for emergencies when he was not available – this will also help you get into the practice of reminding your clients of the “emergency while traveling” phone number from your vendors. A lot of us forget to highlight that information, but it is invaluable when needed. The clients will understand that you work many more hours to get things done, but they need to know when they can talk to a live person. They also need to know if there are days that your schedule may change. We keep regular office hours posted on all our social media and if we are away from the office for an extended period during office hours, we update our voicemail with that information and use automated email responses. The biggest failures in small businesses are due to a lack of communication between the provider and the client – don’t fall into that trap – over communicate. You also need to remember to keep these store fronts (pages) updated. We use a Google Business profile for all our businesses as well as social media and I love that Google sends me an email before every holiday asking me to update our business hours. This is a great reminder for me to make sure our social media pages are also up to date. Remember, if you are not going to have time to keep it current – don’t start it in the first place. It is better for you to start small and build a quality product slowly in a manageable way.
Okay, I won’t even ask you if you are ready this time because I know you are likely already angry with me making you do all that “housekeeping” before we get to the fun stuff. Surprise! We are here!!!! It is now time to Boost Your Bookings through Growing Your Fan Base! So, you have heard all of this before … “Don’t post pictures of your lunch … dog … baby … etc …” I have been able to build a business where 30% of my “reach outs” for business come from social media and I am here to tell you that it is just fine to post a picture of your food, your dog, your baby – pretty much whatever is meaningful to you – though I do avoid highly charged topics like religion and politics on my business pages. Remember that when you are creating Organic Posts (posts that come from you) these posts should be providing valuable information to your followers about you – they cannot know, like, and trust you unless you show them who you are. The real you. The sad truth about social media is that, although most of your interactions will be uplifting and surprisingly beneficial personally and/or professionally, some of them will not. There is a critic in every room and you are about to open a LOT of doors. So be prepared. I am also going to tell you to ignore the detractors and be YOU. This is YOUR space. This is YOUR career. Make it what you want it to be. Be genuine. Be honest. Be vulnerable at times. You should also be respectful of others and be prepared for feedback – not all of it good. This is a good time to share with you one of my favorite quotes, “There is no failure. Only feedback.” Attributed to Robert Allen and likely inspired by Thomas Edison’s quote, “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” You are going to experience failure. You are going to find out who on your page is a friend or foe, and you will be surprised. By walking into it with the right attitude you will discover that you are a lot better at it than you ever imagined and people are going to love you ... and your breakfast … and your dog. Let’s get to it. Here are some examples of organic posts that get a lot of attention on my feed. Keep in mind that organic posts that you create will get better exposure and are more likely to syndicate to Instagram – both photos and videos. Keep in mind though – that when you create organic content it is not going to be syndicated by Branch Up so you will have to post it to yourself and create a similar post on LinkedIn and other platforms. This truly shows you what a great tool Branch Up is for you and how much efficiency it gives you during times when you do not have the time or ability to post new content. BranchUp was designed to augment your content – but it cannot make people know, like, or trust you. You have to do that on your own. Here are some examples of organic content from our page:
I told you I was going to stretch you a bit. So, take a minute to limber up. It is about to get all crazy up in here. The first thing I want you to do is make a video. I know you are thinking, “I just want my BranchUp to work” – but you have that going – now you have to give it something to work with. You have to give it an audience. A little secret, if your audience is less than 250 people you have a LOT of work to do. I have a little over 3,000 friends on my personal Facebook Page. My first goal was to get 250 friends on all my Business Pages and go from there. How do you do that? You ask your friends to follow you Facebook Business page and share your posts. Keep in mind that if you are really lucky if 1-2% of your friends will actually support or promote your page when you ask – so you need to ask regularly. The first ask should be a video request from you and I do them regularly, I try to do them once a quarter or so and some of my posts I will actually start with “PLEASE SHARE”. I have made an example for you here:
You can view a collection of videos we have posted on our page here: https://www.facebook.com/roamingrichly/videos
As you can see, no studio, nothing professional, just genuine, credible, trusted me …. YOU can do this. Just make it on your phone and then post it to your business page. Keep it short. 90 Seconds max and 30-45 seconds will get more plays. Try to shoot your video with an interesting background that will get peoples’ attention – but make sure you are somewhere that you can be heard clearly and with few distractions. This one is ALL ABOUT YOU. If you are in public, make sure you are not breaking any rules about video or photography and make sure there is no copyrighted music audible as it will cause the post to be flagged and removed.
BranchUp has already got your started with great content, so start by cross sharing your favorite post that BranchUp created to your personal Facebook Page. I know you have heard a million times not to share personal opinions and posts on your Facebook Business page, but you should ABSOLUTELY share some of your business posts on your personal page. There are just under 2 billion daily users on Facebook and 1.5 billion of them are on the platform for at least 30 minutes a day – you cannot afford NOT to cross pollinate your Facebook Business page to your personal page. All you have to do is login to your personal account, navigate to your business page, find a post you want to cross pollinate and hit “share” it will ask you where you want to share it and you want to share it to your “story” (some photos and videos) and then go back and share them to your “profile” – you can also add a “PLEASE PLEASE SHARE with your friends” or one of my favorites, “I am trying to make our group for this voyage, can you PLEASE SHARE this post with someone you know who loves to River Cruise?” You will be amazed by how much traction your posts will get when you share them with your friends and specifically ask them to support you and your business. It is easy to fall out of habit of this when things are good, but your friends actually do want to support you – they just need to be reminded of it. They also get a great deal of joy out of introducing you to a new client successfully. Always remember to say thank you – and do it publicly on their Facebook feed.
Are you tired of your new social media duties already? Are you thinking, “wait, BranchUp was supposed to do all of this for me?” Well, BranchUp does the heavy lifting and if that is all you do, you will see a benefit to your business, but when you give BranchUp a bigger audience – that is when your business will start booming. I like to picture my business as a garden. I am responsible for the soil, tending the rows, planting the seeds, and watering. BranchUp is like the sun. It is going to come out regularly and it is going to provide you with “nourishment” so your garden can grow. What if you added some fertilizer? How quickly would your garden grow if you did that? How much more produce would you get out of your garden if you tended to it a bit more? More importantly, we want you to limit your time investment as you have many other plates spinning – or should. A great goal is to spend an hour on social media a day 5 days a week. If you want to actually be a “normal” person on Facebook you can have another 30 minutes for your own enjoyment, but absolutely not a moment more. More importantly, if you are really busy like me – use your “down time” to do your social media. If you see a post from me pop up there is a good bet I am in the bathroom, at a red light, waiting for an appointment … I get a ton of social media done each day using time that would otherwise be wasted. You also need to take a break. I rarely post evenings and, on the weekend, unless I am traveling or at a great event. I learned early on that I need to enjoy social media and I can use social media to promote my causes and businesses, but they are two distinctively different things. I usually enjoy social media evenings and weekends and I typically use it during the weekdays to promote my business. I also take social media breaks when I can. You can use your Facebook Business Suite tools to schedule posts for you in advance and this is a great way to stay on top of your posting when you are traveling or taking a social media break.
In closing, I want to acknowledge that this was a LOT of information and a HUGE amount of homework – but it is February. Wave season is over! It is time for you to get out there and make some money using BranchUp to boost your business. Congratulations for making it through the entire article. I hope you will find it both relevant and rewarding.