Use Hootsuite and increase your engagement on the go

How are you from the last time you read my blog?

If you are new, welcome to my blog!

Today I am so excited to share with you one of my favourite scheduling tool that I have learned to use online.

It’s Hootsuite!

I was introduced by this platform from a previous client that I had worked with. The beauty of it was that I did not know how to use it and I taught myself and today I will be showing you how to as well.

Don’t forget to check the sidebar and footer of this website for awesome resources!

What is this Hootsuite all about?

Hootsuite is an amazing site that allows you to schedule your posts in advance for your social media sites. You can connect the minimum 3 social media sites on their basic plan.

First you want to visit the site when you do so you are required to sign up with your email address, then follow the instructions when signing up.

Glad you are in; once you are in, there is a dashboard that allows you to fill out your profile with your business information, your picture and if you have any team members you can add them to your organization.

If you are using the basic plan you will be seeing social networks where you can connect your preferred social site of your choice.

Hootsuite, allows you to add more sites on their pro plan if you wish to do so.

Let’s connect your social sites and start posting.

Now let’s go to the second icon, which is called streams. Steams allow you to use your social site to keep track of your scheduled post.

You will notice that when you do so a pop up is opened with the different social sites to choose from.

Once you choose these streams you will be able to see what’s going on your page from a glance. When you are finished adding your streams click on the minus button to add your stream tab to your right.

Are you as eager as me to make your first post from Hootsuite?

Now let’s visit our third icon to the left which is our publisher. The pop-up box on the page allows you to choose your social site. We will select Facebook. When you have selected Facebook, you can now compose your message. Hootsuite allows you to see your message count when you are composing your message.

You also will notice that you can attach a media (image, videos), schedule a time in the near future for your post as well as your location, set your target audience and base on your settings on Facebook this message will be set to either private or public unless you change this.

In most cases you will not be composing a message one by one for each social site. Look to the left of the publishing tab, and you will notice the different features such as saving your message as a draft, those that are scheduled.

Before we continue, let’s finish composing our first post to be sent to our social site. You can easily attach a video from your YouTube channel or drag or upload your picture when you have done so you can choose to save, send or clear that message to start a new one. If you choose to send that message or save it, you have two options to see that publish post.

Learn more about Hootsuite on your dashboard.

Now a bit more on those icons to the left of the dashboard, analytics allows you to create reports from your social sites, and helps you keep track on what posts were engaging and how many followers you have gained, things along that line.

You can then export this as a PDF or CSV file or print it. You can also customize this report to include a custom template, image. This report can be done and submitted by email either weekly or monthly depending on your choice.

Lastly, your settings are normally done to your choosing. You can set up your profile to add your image. Set your preferences to be notified when a post is made, as well as customize your posts to specific times to be posted throughout the day.

Now that you have played around with the different features available to you, you have the option of continuing on the basic plan or going pro.

Hootsuite is a very powerful platform to use and take advantage of, especially if you are a busy entrepreneur who wants to reach your audience and keep track of sharing more about what you do through your services.

Hootsuite also allows you to track what is engaging, allow you to respond to your messages directly from this platform without signing in and out of your Facebook page.

It was nice of you to stop by.

Until then, happy hiring, and best wishes with your business.

Don’t forget to check the sidebar and footer of this website for awesome resources!

Photo Credit: Haute Stock

Gain your first Facebook followers with these steps

10 / 1 / 17 12 / 23 / 17

How are you from the last time you read my blog?

If you are new, welcome to my blog!

Don’t forget to check the sidebar and footer of this website for awesome resources!

I literally created my Facebook business page on Sunday December 28, 2015.

I just wanted to put myself out there and make others know that my business page existed.

I was somewhat afraid because I was always seeing persons making offers on how to gain your first 100 followers and this included paid offers.

You do not always have to follow the crowd to be a success.

I was aware that Facebook allows you to do Facebook Ads, mind you, you can gain your followers organically as well, so when I created JuliVAGlobal Facebook business page, the first thing that I did was to grow my audience organically.

How I did this was inviting my friends from my profile to like my page.

I will share the back story of why I decided to invite my friends. When I was in numerous Facebook groups and I made connections with other entrepreneurs and bloggers, I kept sawing a trend that at the end of a conversation they all invited me to like their page or to follow up with updates.

At the time I had no website or Facebook page to ask them to do the same so all I did was liked their page and kept in touch when I had the availability.

Now when I did launch my Facebook page I created a post on my profile asking my friends to like my new business page.

I was not expecting one like, but when I got the opportunity to invite my friends. Most of them commented their links and invited me to like their page as well, but the likelihood was that in most instances that I had in fact liked their page already.

I also used the feature on my page to invite my friends to like my page. …within the hour I gained 53 likes.

I was totally blown away and so I continued to invite my friends, this overlapped into the following day it was 88 then within two days it was a total of 100.

By the end of about February I was close to 500 organic page likes.

If you are a LadyPreneur on a budget you can still grow your Facebook page.

Now why am I sharing this? You can invite your friends first which is considered organically.

I did this by inviting my friends from my Facebbook profile. Another way how I continued to grow my business page was in Facebook groups where they had threads to engage and tell others about your business.

I go more in depth on how I use Facebook to maximize my business. You can read the complete post by clicking the link here.

The thing is if you want to grow your audience to reach specific people or in the business world- your ideal clients to know more about your business and your services then I recommend FB Ads to promote let’s say a post about a free guide or maybe an event.

This will work in your favor because I know that these individuals will be the ones who you target and they will be more engaged as opposed to those friends who you have invited organically.

With the continuous changes of Facebook algorithms this will come into factor once you decide to use Facebook Ads for your business. As with my recommendations, I always suggest that you outsource such a task to a trained professional who will show you in depth results of their success with past clients.

While these two methods are useful in growing your Facebook business page (Organic & Paid likes) it will be vital to the start and the continuation of your business, it’s no excuse to not get your business out there.

Start off by inviting your friends to like your page, also join groups where you know you can add meaningful value and make great connections as well so that you can invite these persons as well to like your page organically.

As your business continue to grow, when it’s in your budget to do paid Ads to reach your ideal clients, this is another method of growing your audience and keeping them engage with your products and services.

I would like to know what method you used to grow your Facebook business page?

It was nice of you to stop by.

Until then, happy hiring, and best wishes with your business.

Don’t forget to check the sidebar and footer of this website for awesome resources!

Photo Credit: Haute Stock

Disclaimer: Please note that this post is base on my experience with growing my business page and with anything that involves a business, seeking professional assistance to help is also vital. So, I cannot be held liable with these suggestions and experiences and the outcome and growth of your Facebook business page.

Use your favourite social media site to maximize your business

3 / 5 / 17 12 / 23 / 17

How are you from the last time you read my blog?

If you are new, welcome to my blog!

My “fave” social media platform is?

Today I want to share my favorite social media platform with you! I also want to clue you in that you can use your favourite social media platform to maximize your business as well.

I literally get goosebumps when I am talking about it. I love Facebook and this post is all about how I have moved away from using Facebook from my personal profile to my business page to maximize my virtual assisting business.

Don’t forget to check the sidebar and footer of this website for awesome resources!

Let me show you how I use Facebook to maximize my business.

So before when I actually had my personal profile page, I use to love liking my favourite pages, these consisted of fashion pages. Can you guess which ones?

I loved that I was able to see beautiful pictures that I could like and comment at my disposal and I was able to follow up with any new trend from the comfort of my home here in Jamaica.

Fast-forward to having an online business and trying to get other’s to notice me and to even like my business Facebook page

First of all, when creating your business page it’s free to use, but people will not randomly know about you or your services unless you get yourself out there!

The first suggestion that Facebook recommends is inviting your friends to like your page, when this has been done you can go on to create Facebook Ads to reach your potential ideal clients. This is by far the best way to reach those clients who will actually benefit from your services.

What I did first to maximize my favourite social media site for business.

Now you do not have to go the route of the paid version of getting your ideal clients at first, if you want, the choice is yours. I did my likes organically first by inviting friends then afterward I would do FB Ads.

What I also did when I first started out was joining Facebook groups with my personal profile, so that I can see what my ideal clients were talking about and how I can be of service to them.

To be clear when you have joined these groups, please read their group guidelines. Do not spam their groups, but do make an introduction of yourself and how others can benefit from your expertise.

Most groups hate spam so if you are going to join these groups to spam about your service then you will be banned and trust me others will remember when you came and spammed the group and you do not want that for your first impression.

So you have joined the maximum 10 groups, which I recommend, you want to add value in these groups as well, pay close attention if these groups offer theme days, if they offer a promotion day, the best time is to advertise what you do on that day.

Make sure you have an elevator pitch or an offer pre-schedule at that time so that you can customize by each group.

Facebook groups are another way to maximize your business.

Participate as often as possible, but because I do not personally like when I am seeing others posting what they can do. I personally recommend you post what you can do for your clients instead than what you do. Trust me this tends to stand out more and when done creatively.

When you also tend to add value by sharing your tips or comments. You do not want to be spending the whole day doing this. You can schedule 10 minutes at a time for 2 hours, then you can sign in and out to see what others have replied to your post or what you have commented.

If you prefer not to see your notifications pile up by the minute whenever you sign back in after your ten minutes interval, once you make a post you can right click on that post and turn off notifications.

These are tips that I have used both with my personal and business page. I try my best as possible that when I do connect with other women who might be my ideal clients I show them that I care, and not pushing down their newsfeed what I can do.

You might ask how do I do this? I might send a message every now and then. I interact with their posts on their personal Facebook page, as well as their business page and I also send birthday and or anniversary wishes when they are celebrating.

Depending on how you use Facebook, this platform has been beneficial to me for both my personal profile and business page. I show my clients that not because they will need my services in the future they will not know who I am. I tend to also post engaging posts for these women so that they are seeing that I am a human and that I am relatable.

This is how I have used Facebook for my business. If you are interested in joining my supportive group The LadyPreneur MeetUp you are welcome to request to join.

I also want to know what you have done to maximize your favourite social media for your business? Share in the comments below.

It was nice of you to stop by.

Until then, happy hiring, and best wishes with your business.

Don’t forget to check the sidebar and footer of this website for awesome resources!

Photo Credit: Haute Stock