Somewhere along the way, it became easy to think that marketing means posting on social media.
You haven’t posted on Facebook this week, so you need to get something up.
Instagram has been quiet, so you find a photo, write a caption and post it.
Someone tells you that you should be doing Reels, so now you’re trying to figure those out too.
And before long, keeping up with social media starts to feel like your marketing plan.
But posting isn’t a marketing plan.
Social media is part of your marketing, but it’s only one part.
There’s your website. Your email list. Your Google Business Profile. Print advertising, signage and the ways you market your business in your local community. Your promotions and events. What’s happening inside your business. And most importantly, the people you’re trying to reach.
All of those things should be connected.
When they’re not, you can end up spending a lot of time creating content without really knowing what it’s supposed to be doing for your business.
And I think there’s something else that can get lost when the focus is always on creating the next piece of content.
You.
Your voice. Your experience. The personality of your business. What your customers have come to know you for.
There are more tools than ever to make creating content faster and easier. And there’s nothing wrong with using them. But the easier it becomes to create content, the more important it is to know what you actually want that content to say.
Otherwise, you can put out a lot of content that doesn’t really sound or feel like your business anymore.
Marketing is still about people.
There should be a reason behind what you’re putting out there and a connection between what someone sees on social media, reads on your website, receives in an email and experiences when they actually do business with you.
And all of that becomes part of the customer experience. From the first time someone comes across your business to what happens when they walk through your door, visit your website, make a purchase and hear from you again afterwards, it should feel like the same business.
That consistency helps people get to know your business and understand what you’re about.
That doesn’t mean you need to do more.
Sometimes, you may actually need to do less.
But before you worry about what you’re going to post next, it might be worth asking yourself:
What is all of your marketing supposed to be working toward?
Maybe that’s where the marketing needs to start
.