You can cross-post, meaning any content you have on your website, post to your GBP, anything on your Facebook, post to your GBP, anything on your Facebook, post on your website, so you just have lots and lots of web pages.
When you see a post on Facebook, what's the likelihood that you're going to engage on that post even a couple of days later or a week later, or even see it again a month later?
It's very small, if not zero.
Because social is based on a feed. And there's decay on the feed so that it's only showing you the freshest things that have just happened.
You don't care about what the news was eight months ago. Or whatever the stock price was a year ago.
Social media is about “What are my friends doing right now”. But Google is completely different because it's not about what's going on right now.
It's about “what is the answer?”
So here's how you arbitrage digital marketing as a local business owner:
Initially, you post something to Facebook and Twitter because that's how you get something right now.
Some people who are purists in digital marketing will want to argue with me, but if you're practical, 99% of people agree with me on this.
You take the same content, that same photo, that same post, that same phrase - whatever it is... And you just post it to your website as a new post.
In WordPress, you can just create a post, and you don't have to write a whole blog.
You can just paste that photo in there, write 2-3 sentences and then publish. For example if you had a customer celebrate their birthday at your restaurant you could put a photo and say “Happy birthday Amanda! We’re happy you chose to celebrate at our place and we can’t wait to have you back.”
Maybe put a tag in it, put it in a category if you like.
And now you're just putting out more blog posts, which are more web pages on your website.
Then you can post it to LinkedIn because you're the restaurant owner and you say “I'm so happy that Amanda came to celebrate her birthday and brought her friends to the restaurant”.
We call that repurposing or cross-posting.
You don't need to hire a consultant, don't hire some expert, SEO, WordPress, Gidget, tools, magic, whatever thing.
It is not magic or software and engineering. It is literally interacting with your customers and posting content.
Because when you pull up at a Thai or Italian restaurant in your area, how likely is it that those restaurants are doing this?
Very unlikely... so all you gotta do is be ahead of them.
When I ran analytics at Yahoo 20 some years ago, my team did a little research on food.
What percent of people do you think have decided where they're going to eat two hours before dining?
25%!
That means 75% of people have not decided where they're going to have dinner. So there are two hours left and they're obviously going to eat, so then how do they decide in the next two hours?
They search, they ask friends, they text their wife, they ask their buddy. “Oh, let's pick up some food along the way”
Or they're on social media and they see a friend eating at this one place. It's like, “ I want to eat at that place too. “
Restaurant owners - food, except for things like weddings and special occasions or high-end stuff... is decided spontaneously because of friends, social media and all that.
So what you've got to do to win is to marry your search and social media together.
The way you get in front of these people in that window, when they're deciding, is by publishing content constantly.
So you have to hit them multiple times. The more you honor your customers, your employees, and the more you share... the better you’ll do.
Think of yourself as an awards manager - You're constantly elevating other people. You love your customers and you show that you love your employees.
You love when people come into town, you love going between the different tables and asking how people are feeling, and sharing it on social.
And when someone says something good - ask for a review. Feature them everywhere you can.
They will most likely feel honored. They feel like it's first-class, they feel like “Oh yeah, these guys really care about me.”
That’s free content for you.
Share it everywhere
Facebook, Instagram, Google, your website, Twitter, whatever social platforms you use or your customers use.
And the biggest one is going to be your website and the next biggest one, it's going to be your Google Business Profile listing, which is like a mini-website.
The 3rd most important is Facebook.
Don’t have time to do it yourself? Do you have some servers that maybe want to earn a few extra dollars or be able to build a career in social media instead of just serving food and taking orders? Get them to do that for you.
Assuming that you have analytics set up properly, you’re going to get a lot more business from Google than from Social Media.
Social's a great way to create content because people see the content when it's posted. So you have a window of 24 to 48 hours to see the content on social media, and then it disappears.
But with Google, the more you keep adding to your GBP, the more you keep adding to your website, that stuff lives on and on, and it builds momentum. And then once you have that ranking and you're in the top spot you don't have to put in as much effort.
It'll just continue to provide you more business. Google is a steady source of business. Social, you have to keep coming up with something every day because whatever you did before disappears.
That's how you balance search and social.
Use social media as a way to collect the content. You can post it there, but the key is you've got to move it to a place where you can keep getting value out of that asset, which is the website, Google Business Profile, YouTube, etc.
You get this right and it will change your business.