In last week’s blog, we offered some advice on how best to have a local focus with Social Media Marketing, but we thought it would be good to do something platform specific to further elaborate on those points. So this blog we’re talking about Social Media Marketing (in Ipswich for the purpose of examples) with a focus on Instagram. The best way to do this would be to go through a typical couple of days in the life of a small to medium business owner in the area. You don’t necessarily have to post as many times a day as we’ll be suggesting, the idea is to give you a bit of a feeling for what can constitute great posts with a local focus. Additionally, if you feel that you’re too dull (then we sincerely hope that you don’t and offer our sincerest hugs), you can always hand the duties off to a staff member who you feel would represent the company well along with these guidelines.
Day 1 – Friday
6:30am:
You get up and greet the dog and get ready for a quick jog. This morning you think you’ll head to Queens Park and back. While you’re there, you take a quick snap of your loyal doggo enjoying a roll around in the grass and caption the Instagram post with something about how great a morning your canine friend seems to think it is and that you’re preparing for a big day ahead. You hashtag it #dogsofinstagram or #doggo or something else that will help you capitalise on the large amount of traffic that will follow those hashtags along with a few business-related hashtags (auto-suggest is your friend in this respect as it will give you the number of posts around those hashtags) and tag yourself at the Park. This immediately will put you in front of locals, dog lovers (an admittedly wider net, but still attention drawing) and anyone involved in your industry.
7:15am:
On your way back, you stop off at Seed Coffee for your morning caffeine fix. If you’ve ever used Instagram, then we don’t need to explain the photo opportunities here. But for those who aren’t yet in the know, the platform is huge with foodies and coffee lovers. You sit near the window and get a shot of your double shot short black and provided you get the right seat, try to include the church steeple across the road and clear skies in the background (or the storm clouds, they’re still photogenic). Post something about getting your caffeine fix and something about the work you plan to get done today. Wish everyone a great Friday! Again use auto-suggest to pick some of the best coffee and business related hashtags and don’t forget where you are as you’re doing this social media marketing for Ipswich
8:30am:
Time to start work! You’ve got a meeting about to happen and notice the staff getting along well and having a laugh. This could be an opportune moment for a quick staff snap! Although it could be possible that you’ve posted enough feelgood material for today, so alternatively why not wait until the right moment during the meeting and get something professional? If you’re able to talk about the topic of the meeting publicly, then it’s immediately great material for a post. Again use auto-suggest and your best judgement for business-related hashtags and pepper it with a couple of other relevant/fun/traffic heavy hashtags and you’re good! Don’t forget to tag yourself at your business address if it’s open to the public. We’ll assume for each post after this you’re also tagging yourself in those locations and utilising hashtags.
12pm:
Lunch! You decide to head out with some of the staff to Thai on Ipswich. As we said earlier, Instagram is huge with foodies, and if you’re not quite getting the approach here yet, it’s probably a safe bet that someone who likes food, coffee or dogs could be a customer of yours. On top of this, it just encourages interaction and followers. As much as you do want to keep your audience as relevant as possible, it never hurts to have a mix and aside from spam accounts a bigger audience is a bigger audience. The number of followers alone can act as your credibility when people first view your account (with 1000 generally being the magic number).
3pm:
The week is starting to wind down (remember it’s Friday) and hopefully you’ve achieved what you wanted to accomplish for the day. If you can post a picture of that work then great! If not then you can always take a picture of the office, or staff, or a work selfie and wish everyone an enjoyable weekend.
5pm:
Time to kick off the weekend. No matter how professional your business, there’s nothing wrong with showing that it’s populated by real human beings. Obviously, you’re not going to be taking photos well into the night, but if everyone is going for an after-work beer then why not show yourselves having fun? For example’s sake, let’s say you go to Pumpyard for a drink and a good pub meal. This should all be starting to make sense by this point.
7pm:
LOGOUT OF INSTAGRAM. Nothing good for business happens after this point unless you’re at an industry or business function and even then, log out on drink number 4 or just take photos without posting them and go through them the next day. Speaking of which…
Day 2 – Saturday
8am:
We’re being generous here and assuming that you were responsible the night before. However, we’re willing to bet that you don’t exactly feel 100%. Believe it or not, despite the struggle to actually get yourself out of the house in the first place, exercise is a great way to combat the seediness. It gets the endorphins going and helps combat the post-booze blues so long as you stay hydrated and mitigate the headache however you can beforehand. You’ll be surprised. But if you feel like a jog is out of the question, it at least helps to get yourself out of the house and resist the urge to binge watch reality television and eat the worst, greasiest things you can find on Ubereats (much as a day like that is definitely required on occasion).
11:30am:
Accounting for hangover time dilation and your partner’s disbelief that this is a good idea, you find yourself out of the house and around town. The Ipswich Antique Centre seems like a safe, quiet bet, so you spend a bit of time browsing around the store and buying that Clothes Press or Sand Bucket you’ve always wanted. Or not, but either way whether it’s the beautiful old building or that thing you never knew you couldn’t live without, your day off is still fodder for Instagram content. Remember, you’re trying to be a part of and promote yourself within the local community and humanise your business so while this might be a slightly left of centre idea for a post we’d hope that the point is clear by now.
1:30pm:
You swing by the Workshops Rail Museum. No-one hates trains, and this is a chance for you to talk about your appreciation of the rich history of your local area. It’s also a shared history with the locals and will endear them to you.
4pm:
Its winter and the sun is going down early, but it’s not too cold out today, so you decide to head to the Denmark Hill Water Tower Lookout to watch the sunset. No points for guessing why this is excellent content, but we are now getting towards the end of the usefulness of your day off. There’s no plugging your business or talking about work here save perhaps to mention something about being grateful that your business affords you this. It’s just a beautiful picture, and that’s what Instagram is all about. So sign off with the post, tag yourself at the water tower, pick a few choice hashtags (which we’re sure you can take a stab at by this point) and leave everyone to their newsfeed of dogs, cats, celebrities, food and memes for the rest of the weekend.
Some of you might be asking at this point what the business objective of all that was. Well for starters “all that” is literally a couple of minutes per post out of your day. It’s really not a hugely time-consuming marketing activity. With regards to what the business outcomes are we’d simply say: local credibility, emotive connection, increased followers, interesting content regardless of what your business does, a relatable personality for your business, trust, engagement and a human story around your business that will serve you very well.
If your business doesn’t value any of these things, then marketing is probably not something you put much focus into, but we find it delivers value for a lot of our customers. If you have a more hard sales focus, then you can always explore Social Media or Google Search PPC (Pay Per Click), but that’s a blog for another day.
So as always if you’d like any more detail on Social Media Marketing in Ipswich or anything we’ve talked about today then feel free to get in touch!
