A Strategic Guide for Small Business Success

As this year is ending, your mind may be planning for 2023.

Many changes are coming in the business realm, whether online or brick-and-mortar. As we plan for 2023, we need to understand the broader trends that are taking place in the market, so we can plan our marketing efforts strategically to get the best results.

Listen as I share three marketing and social media trends for 2023.

Hootsuite report

Thanks for tuning in to another episode of Collab with Kiva.

See you next time!

Are you ready to take massive action in your business and harness the power of data in your decision-making? Let’s chat 👇🏽

Podcast Transcript:

0:01

Hello and welcome to Collab with Kiva. I'm your host Kiva Slade. From the marbled halls of the US Congress to my racing themed office chair. I've learned that there is no perfect path to the life of your dreams. My journey over the past 20 years has included being a Legislative Director for a member of Congress, Policy Director for a nonprofit, stay- at-home mom, homeschooling mom, jewelry business owner, and now the owner of a service based business. Whether your journey has been a straight line, or full of zigs and zags. Join me and my guest as we share insights, hope and lessons learned from our female entrepreneurship journeys. Made the collaborative sharing of our stories be the tide that lifts your boat, let's dive in.

0:55

Welcome to another episode of Collab with Kiva I trust everyone stateside had a nice Thanksgiving. I had both of my kiddos home from college under the same roof. It was wonderful. On the first day of the last month of the year, your mind may be in planning mode for 2023. There are many changes afoot in the business realm, whether online or brick and mortar. The good news, people are still buying. Recent Black Friday numbers set a new record with over 9 billion in sales. Yes, a billion with a B. For those in service or b2b industries, this is good news. However, evidence also suggests that the sales cycles are longer. What used to take three months may now take five minutes. Why is this important? Because as you plan for 2023, or simply Q1 of 2023, you need to understand the broader trends that are taking place in the market. Also, your planning needs to not neglect your marketing efforts. I know some of you have already started to roll your eyes. Trust me, I get it. Marketing and social media tire out small business owners. I feel you agree entirely because I feel the same way. Trying to keep up with the changes while still serving your clients and running your business is exhausting. Yet, despite its exhaustive nature, marketing is a necessary evil. So we adapt to help our businesses thrive, or we die. And we are not about that dying live over here. So let's talk about marketing and social media trends for 2023. Let's go.

2:56

Hootsuite recently released its social media trends 2023 report, the data driven me gets excited over reports. It's a whopping 46 pages of information. For the data nerds, there were over 10,000 respondents from 109 countries and more than 11 industries, and the research was conducted in July 2022. And for those wondering if this could apply to you, 64% of the respondents had businesses with one to 99 people. So yes, it applies to you. I'll include the report link in the show notes. But for now, I'm going to share three key takeaways. The first one is budgets are tight, better have receipts, knowing the return on investment or ROI of your marketing spending in efforts. It's critical. Whether we are discussing the looming recession or market downturn, the trend is to direct business funds toward core objectives. Typically, this means a shrinking marketing budget, which must be balanced with long term brand building. Social media is key for many small business owners and growing long term brand awareness. To achieve both, track your metrics that align with your business objectives. You will have to dig deeper than views and impressions. There's no shortage of metrics to track but are you tracking the right metrics that will help you know your social return on investment? Once you track the right metrics, create a report to help you analyze your performance. Lastly, don't forget the big picture. You have worked hard to build your brand reputation. Don't jump on a trend that annoys your key demographic audience or muddies your brand messaging. These things can have long term impacts. Remember, the information you're collecting from your social is a part of your business intelligence. It can also help you improve customer service to strengthen your team and more. Your business data shouldn't exist in silos, and you shouldn't evaluate it in a vacuum. If you need help setting your business objectives, defining your metrics and measuring your ROI, you do know you can book a call with me via my website the.516 collaborative.com.

5:21

So, the second thing, cross posting is okay, but be strategic. Hootsuite defines it as the frankensteining of social networks. Each company is blatantly ripping off the best features of other platforms. Now, at the same time, this can and does drive most of us crazy as we're seeking to keep up or opt out entirely. Again, we must remember the big picture. The reality is that people go to different networks for different reasons. Like each of us. We're not on one platform only. Neither are those we're seeking to reach. We spend time on multiple platforms. Hootsuite found that 84% of Tik Tok users are also on Facebook. 88% of Twitter users are on Instagram. The report further details what kind of content people are looking for on each platform and the rank order of those platforms. So for example, you're looking for funny or entertaining content you go to Tik Tok then IG and then Facebook to follow our research brands and products Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest. To keep up with the news and current events, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. To message friends and family, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat. To post or share photos or videos, IG Facebook Snapchat. Now find it interesting, LinkedIn was wholly excluded. LinkedIn exclusion aside, though, the results show us why reusing the same pose for each platform, and making very few changes can hurt our results. Ultimately, we must explore which platforms best reflect our business goals, then focus on creating content for those platforms. Actionable steps are to conduct a social media audit, what's working, what's not? Which networks does your target audience use as your social media presence compared to the competition? Hootsuite shares an audit guide and its report. Secondly, make your content fit the platform. Give the people what they want. Okay, just give them what they want. In most cases, this is sometimes more work for us, but it's worth it in the end.

7:20

Third, valuable content still reigns supreme. While Google is still the search engine powerhouse. There's growing power in social search. Yes, it applies to younger folks more often because they refuse to scroll through Google's long list of results in the you know, opt for social platforms to provide them with the best travel tips, recipes, news and more. Don't despair, if those under 24 are not your demographic. The top types of websites visited in apps used by those 16 to 64 are chat and messaging social networks, search engines or web portals, followed by shopping, auctions, classifieds, and some other stuff. Key takeaway, 8% more people visit social networks than they do search engines. So even if your demographic is likely searching, they're likely searching via a social network. So for each of us, that means we need to nail down our content strategy, just like you can't show up on every platform delivering the same post and caption putting out valuable content that resonates with your current and future people will do well and be bound by whatever algorithm is being used on that day. Valuable content gets seen. Same content gets pushed to more eyeballs, more eyeballs, the right eyeballs that is as what we are trying to do with marketing. Check your profiles on each platform. Are they optimized for that platform, update them, update that linktree that has broken links and expired offers. Make sure you have a photo. Okay seems obvious, but you'd be surprised.

9:18

Two other recommendations though, are always to use alt text to describe the contents of your images. Not only does alt text help with accessibility, which is highly important. It also helps search engines index images, which can improve your search engine optimization. SEO has an IT boom. Secondly, geotag your posts in make sure your location is accessible. Local SEO is critical for many brick and mortar small businesses. Now privacy folks you can take that last tip and do as you please, stay private if you don't have a physical location and aren't interested in local SEO. The bottom line here is don't ditch your marketing as you evaluate 2022 and plan for 2023. Instead, do a thorough audit, double down on what's working tasks, what isn't working, and know that just because you built it, the people aren't coming. You have to get in front of them, tell them where they need to come, how do they get there, and you want to measure how they arrived. So you can start this process all over again. That's what happens in our digital marketing ecosystem. It is truly a circular pattern. So we're getting those eyeballs. Hopefully that will lead to leads and leads leads to sales. And then we're testing to see what worked, what didn't. And so we can start all over again with what creating content to get eyeballs. So as you look ahead to 2023, make sure you do look back at 2022 to see what was and what wasn't working, but move forward in an area of not necessarily an area of an era of empowerment, be strengthened and embolden in what you've found. That's working. Be also strengthened and embolden in letting go, what's not working, show up how you want to show up. But also give the people what they want for the platform that you're deciding you want to be on. Instead of trying to, you know, white elephant Christmas, those gifts on every single platform. So once again, thanks for tuning in to this episode of Collab with Kiva I wish to use and really happy marketing thoughts as you plan out 2023. Talk soon.

11:45

Thanks for tuning in to this episode of Collab with Kiva, each of us has a different path. And I hope that this episode gave you some takeaway that has left you inspired and motivated to keep pressing forward on your unique path. Make sure you subscribe so you don't miss out on any future episodes. And of course, your reviews on Apple are greatly appreciate it. You're a small business owner, ready to start making data driven decisions in your business. And you know that without the data, you're really just guessing, make sure to visit my website, the516 collaborative.com. And let's schedule a time to talk to make sure that you can harness the power of data in your business. I'll see you next time. Bye

Meet Kiva Slade - the Founder and CEO of The 516 Collaborative. With a unique background in high-power politics on Capitol Hill and sixteen years as a homeschooling mama, Kiva found her calling in the online business world as a trusted guide for entrepreneurs looking to build the business of their dreams.

Kiva's work began behind the scenes, orchestrating the back end of businesses and managing teams. But her inner data diva couldn't help but notice that small businesses needed help harnessing the power of data for growth. So she and her team set out to uncover and tidy up the data required to enable clients to grow their businesses confidently and easily.