Let's Get Personal

This week’s lecture and reading have revealed that going personal with your business blog (like many other concepts in social media) truly depends on the type of business. In the case of my wife’s business, a family operation with clients who are like family, you can get away with getting personal, although since she is dealing with sensitive issues like taxes and immigration, professionalism is also of the utmost importance. Additionally, potential clients do not yet have that personal relationship with the business, so something too personal might come off negatively. As with all posts, tact and careful thought must be utilized. 

When blogging for a professional services business, I believe providing accurate information is a must, while showing personality is equally important, as taxes and immigration are not the most interesting of subjects. A little humor and personal touch can go a long way. Since potential clients will entrust you with their personal and/or financial affairs, they have to be able to have confidence in your abilities and/or knowledge as well as connect with you otherwise they will go elsewhere. Personality has a place in every post, but coming across as professional and knowledgeable is tremendously important as well.

Twitter contacts

I found the Twitter Advanced Search feature to be very useful. I will continue to play around with it. The only thing I would have liked to see is a dropdown menu to chose from as you are typing in the terms of the search. I believe I would have had a lot more success finding users that would be beneficial contacts for our business around tax time.

Presently, the only thing I was able to find was immigration contacts. I searched for the word "Immigration" near the city of Oceanside, CA. With immigration reform being one of the big buzz words in American politics right now, I had to shuffle through quite a few tweets about Obama's recent speech, where the topic of immigration reform was discussed. I found a few contacts, one of which I personally contacted, which may lead to a business deal between our business and an attorney in San Diego. Once tax time swings around, I will definitely perform another search for "taxes" or "income tax".

Competitors' visual platforms

Looking at the two biggest tax preparation companies I know of (H&R block and Jackson-Hewitt) and the visual social media platforms they are employing, I discovered YouTube is the most popular. These companies are huge franchises with equally large advertising and marketing departments. They have the time, energy, and resources to invest into this endeavor. They have robust videos with tax tips and interesting interviews with tax experts. Their videos boast rich graphics and branding strategies. This platform proves very useful and effective for both these companies.

Seaside Family Services is a very small business consisting of an employee field of my wife and my in-laws. Clearly, we don't have the resources to be creating and posting videos. The visual platform I decided to employ is Instagram. I am familiar with it and I think, since it is a small business where clients feel like family, followers would enjoy a backstage pass into the business and the life of its employees.

I discovered that none of the similar local small businesses in the area have any type of social media presence. I am excited at the prospect of taking advantage of this fact and reaching an untouched market.

Visual Platforms

Of the four most popular visual social media platforms, the one I feel is best suited for my wife's business is Instagram. My wife is the face of her business. She essentially is the business. Her clients do not come back to her year after year because she does taxes like no one else can. Many other tax preparers out there could provide the same service. What brings them back is the personalized service they get when they come to see her every year.

Her clients have seen her family grow and feel like family when they walk through the door. Countless clients have asked my wife to create a Facebook account so they can get to know her more closely. Although she has to this point refused to create one, she can see the advantage of utilizing social media for business. Since I have a personal Instagram account, I could easily maintain the account and train her once the time comes to hand it over to her.

I considered some of the other platforms, but neither my wife nor I have the time to be creating videos or graphics. A simple photo with maybe a cool filter is easy and can give followers a backstage passed into the business. We can also visually display the company's ethics and values, as well as celebrate milestones or events like immigration clients obtaining their citizenship. I see a lot of potential in the use of this platform for this business.

Scheduled Content

I have three scheduled Facebook posts in place on my wife's business page for the coming months. In an attempt to get more people engaged and thinking about tax time, the following posts have been scheduled at significant dates and times. 

The first post scheduled for later this month, is one that will hopefully spark engagement and more likes. This post is a tax poll with an incentive to comment, like, and share- a Starbucks gift card. Hopefully, this increased engagement will improve the reach of my future posts.

Additionally, I recently created a graphic with interesting tax statistics that I found online. This post will go out on November 1st, hopefully getting people thinking about tax time, perhaps at a time when it is furthest from their minds.

Lastly, on December 21st, the first day of winter, a post will go out, not reminding them about tax time (although that post will undoubtedly go out too), but just an interesting factoid about the city of Oceanside, where most of my likers reside. 

All three of these posts have an engaging question within the post, something I think my previous posts on this page have lacked. I will be posting other pertinent information as issues or dates arise, but I think these three will help improve my reach and get clients and potential clients thinking about tax time earlier.

Business "likes"

After contemplating this week's lecture and the practice of "liking" another page, I chose 7 Featured Likes for my wife's business page, Seaside Family Services. Since it is a business that provides multiple services, I focused on the two most lucrative and most often performed services: Immigration and Income Tax Preparation. 

TaxWise, the tax preparation software my wife uses, and the IRS have Facebook pages and I have included those pages on my Featured Likes. These two pages seem to post content her tax client followers would like. Reforma Migratoria is a Spanish language page (most of her clients are Spanish-speakers) that offers valuable information, events, and resources about Immigration Reform, a hot topic among her clients. I saw that a handful of her clients "like" this page as well. Clearly, this is a "place" where her customers hang out. I also included the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) and a USCIS Info page in my Featured Likes. I plan to look for a few more Spanish pages to feature on my page.

Lastly, I included the Women's Resource Center, a group home for battered and/or abused women on my Featured Likes. I chose this page for multiple reasons. First of all, the location is on the same block as our storefront. A few of their residents have become our clients. In addition, it shows a value system for the company. 

I have also liked a couple of her competitors' pages to see what they are posting, as well as get a pulse on the client base. The anecdote in our textbook about the Las Vegas hotels really made an impact. Clearly, keeping an eye on competitor pages is a useful and lucrative tool. 

This feature of Facebook is one I was aware of but had not seen the value of practicing l until having read this week's lecture and chapters. 

Facebook Insights: Post Reach vs Post Engagement

Although closely related, The Post Reach and Post Engagement features of the Facebook Insights tool are quite different. The Post Reach simply tells the user how many people have seen the post in their newsfeeds. The Post Engagement tells you how many people are interacting with your content, meaning how many post, likes, shares, comments, or clicks anywhere on the post. What marks the success of a post better than ever is the ratio of these two (the latter to the former): the Engagement Rate.

This rate conveys the fraction of your audience that is engaged with your posts, thus indicating the quality of your content. It is important to keep track of all of these because if a post is reaching a fairly large amount of people, but not engaging the readers, Facebook’s news feed algorithm marks it as low quality. Too many low quality posts mean less chance of your posts appearing in your fans News Feed in the future.

In addition, regular review of these metrics help you understand what content your fans are most receptive to and then you can work on creating quality content that your audience will engage in.