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Welcome back to Local Marketing Monopoly, the go-to resource for local small business owners and marketing executives just like yourself, looking to revolutionize your marketing strategies. I'm your host, Clarence Fisher, and today your resident marketing expert, Clarence Fisher. Today, on today's episode, we are going to talk about gaining momentum on your social media - boosting, increasing your social media engagement. I'm going to give you seven quick wins that you can use to boost engagement whether you're a bakery like Merritt's, we don't do anything with Merritt's, but shout out to Merritt's. I love Merritt's Bakery. I got in trouble with that. I'll tell you about, I will tell you about that when we get back. But whether you're a bakery, local gym, fitness, chiropractor, veterinary, whatever, you are going to get something out of these tips, you're going to transform your online presence. We'll be right back.

You are listening to Local Market Monopoly with Clarence Fisher uncovering the tools, tactics and strategies the most successful small businesses use to dominate their local market and own the block.

Okay, welcome back to Local Market Monopoly. As I was saying, before I rudely interrupted myself. I did get in trouble. I was giving the love to Merritt's Bakery during the intro and I didn't get in trouble from Merritt's Bakery, but once upon a time when I was a radio dj, this is the craziest story. So back then you had to actually be in the studio. And I started working, I was able to finally get my foot in the door and I started working from 2:00 AM to 5:00 AM just three hours in the middle of the night. I used to always say, there's nobody listening to me really, but hookers and UPS warehouse workers, that was it. Those are the only people that called me. So anyway, this is how you think when you're young. Christmas bonus came, time came around and I got my Christmas bonus and everyone's opening up their Christmas bonus and mine was like 20 bucks and I'm thinking, what? 20 bucks? I have to come up here, rain, sleet, snow 2:00 AM in the morning. I remember one time just slipping up and down the street, 2:00 AM I tried to call my boss and say, "Hey man, I can't make it in". He was like, "Well then don't ever come back". I'm like, okay, well Rudolph, everybody hustle up and tie up the reindeer because I am going to work. I have to be there. So 2:00 AM it is so dark, the Tulsa streets, it was slippery and I made it to work. So I did this no matter what, made sure that I'm on time at work, I opened my bonus and it's 20 bucks and I got a bright idea like, look, now mind you, it's 2:00 AM. Anybody who hears this, I am going to share my Christmas bonus with you if you'll meet me at Taco Bell down the street.

Now I think this happened. I actually had a buddy, one of my buddies was that's when it was, okay, so I'm coming in to relieve the guy before me, my man JD from, he worked from 10 to 2. He had a better time slot than I did because he was a professional. He worked from 10:00 PM to 2, and when I came in to relieve him to change, I said, "Hey man, can you stay another 30 minutes? I'm going to do this stunt". And he is like, okay, so just man the boards, will you please and I'm going to call in and just put me on. And so I go down to, I tell everyone to meet me at Taco Bell down the street. I go to Taco Bell down the street. This is like 71st and Lewis, if you're in Tulsa, I go to Taco Bell down the street and I call in and he puts me on and when I get there, I promise there are like cars lined up down off of 71st Street all the way down to Riverside.

There are cars lined up and they are honking, and I'm like, "Hey, hey, I'm here". It is a crazy time. Little did I know, little did I know, number one, it was a bad deal. Number one, Taco Bell was about to close. I don't even think they did 24 hours. They definitely weren't doing it that night because the manager was hot. But if you're in the restaurant business, that was a crazy hour. This dude did a bang of money. Well, my $20 of course ran out the very first or two cars. I'm buying tacos, two cars, and then the rest of it was just money for them. Hence the second bad thing. When I got to work the next day, I got called into the general manager's office and I was kind of known for doing stupid stuff like this. And he said, "Hey man, that was a real dope stunt that you did, but you're suspended. You're lucky I'm not firing you". And I'm like, what? I'm livid. What? I couldn't even spell livid at the time, but I am that. "That was amazing. I got this station so much notoriety. Everybody.. there were so many cars" and he said, "Taco Bell did not pay for that. That's called a remote broadcast and you did it for free. That costs thousands of dollars worth of advertisement that you gave away. Free. Please sign this and get out of my office for the next two weeks".

It was awesome, and I'm still a legend to this day for that gig. They did let me back probably, fortunately, but unfortunately we had really great ratings while I was on the air, but I was one of those, it was a problem. I really was a problem. So shout out to Merritt's Bakery. Now I own the joint so I can say who I want to say and there you go Merritt's. There are some free advertising. So social media, let's get to social media. Clarence, you and your stories. Seven quick wins that you can have with your social media, increasing your social media engagement. The number one, the big, big, big, big, big deal is to create relatable content. This is content that your people can relate to. We talk about this all the time as far as your avatar, you are speaking to your avatar.

No one does this better, I don't think than Tyler Perry. We spoke about that a couple of episodes ago. If you haven't seen a Maxine child, which is that Maxine's baby, I think it is, is the title of that Amazon documentary about his life. My goodness, does he know his audience? And you should know your audience too. I mean that documentary, what he's been able to do has inspired me to get to know you a little better, a lot better because I need to know you so that I can post relatable content and share stories that resonate with you. Just like that. Giving away free advertising to Taco Bell who probably did not need free advertising, not as much as you want or could use free advertising. Right? So you can give behind the scenes this, oh, this always works. We call it the backstage pass.

Give your customers, clients or patients a backstage pass to a glimpse, like 10% of your posts, one out of 10 or whatever. Give them a picture of what's going on behind the scenes. They're going to love it. Give them employee highlights. Highlight a doctor or highlight a customer. Well, not I say an employee. Highlight a doctor, highlight one of your service techs. Give them the highlights. Give them customer stories. Make sure, and I don't know why in my brain right now, I have vets in my mind, but you got to make sure that even on pets, that you have the permission of the owners to share those stories. But share customer stories. Relatability, pardon the pun, breeds engagement. If people can relate to it, they will act on it. So do that. It's called the Backstage Pass. Give 'em a backstage, behind the scenes, give 'em some employee highlights and customer stories. All right?

Now the second thing is let's leverage the good old hashtags. Yes, I am still talking about hashtags in 2025 or four, where the end of oh four or at the end of 24, 25, I shouldn't not be dating myself with this, but hashtags are still trending. If you're listening to this in 2056 hashtags, were probably, yeah, yeah, hashtags will probably still be trending. But understand back in the old 2024s and the 2025s, we were still talking about hashtags, so jump on them. The hashtags that are trending, you want to use those. The popular ones, these really do increase visibility, but remember, relevance is key. So they have to relate to the posts, which as we said before, relates to your audience and use the popular hashtags. Let's move to number three, engaging your audience. Social is a two-way street. I've told this story before when I did a live presentation at an Oklahoma Engineers Association or whatever it's called.

I think that's what it's called. And I've been doing this whole presentation on how to increase their social media engagement, which is what I'm telling you. And one of the engineers raised their hand, raised his hand, and he said, does this mean I have to reach out to other people? Basically? Does this mean I have to talk to people and everything in me, like sweat started beating up on my forehead because I thought this is going to be a long presentation. Yes, it is a two-way street. You must respond to comments. You have to engage in conversation, create a community, create community-driven posts. You're talking to your audience. By the way, engineers aren't typically doing their own social media, not the engineering companies. Well, they have a person that is doing their engineering and their social media, and that is a okay and probably a good thing.

So engage with your audience. Number four, what I'm going to share with you is use visuals as much as possible and video. Tell you what happened today as I'm doing shopping for date night, tonight is date night for my wife and I. We've been doing date nights once a week for decades, and I try to do my thing. So I bought some flowers and I knew I did in Tulsa, in Oklahoma, we say we did good. I know the correct grammar is I did well, but I'm going to say I did good because the lady that was ringing me up said, those are beautiful flowers. And I thought, thank you very much. And as I'm walking through the parking lot, this lady yelled out at her falling out of her SUV, said, those are beautiful flowers. I was cheesing. I said, thank you. Ting! Gonna be a good night.

The point is, I took a picture of 'em and I posted on Facebook and I said, Hey, I know I did a good today because two ladies told me that these are gorgeous flowers. And then everybody was like, oh, yes, they are gorgeous. They are. Those are gorgeous flowers. Hey, guess what happened when I got home? My wife said, those are gorgeous flowers. I'm like, yes, I know. Anyway, I took a picture and posted that on Facebook. That is a visual. Add a visual with just about every post that you can. Every now and then, I try to experiment. Actually, a lot of times I may not even add a visual on my personal Facebook. If we are friends, then you'll see that I do a lot of text jokes, and I purposely don't put an image there because I want you to kind of visualize in your mind the scenario that I am explaining in text, and I do that on purpose.

But typically for the business, we are using some type of visual, some type of image, some type of video. You can do a live video. You can even use user-generated content like one of your people, download a picture that they've posted and you can repost that. But either way, use visuals, videos 99% of the time. Alright, number five is, now this is tried and true, hosting giveaways and contests. Everybody loves free stuff. It could be the smallest thing to you, but the biggest thing to your people, a T-shirt is crazy works wonders, right? Doesn't really cost you much to make, but you can create all kind of contests around T-shirts, dog treats. Again, I'm on the whole vet thing today, dog treat, but use contests. Use giveaways to drive engagement. Just make sure that they align with who? Yes, your audience, and not even that, their interest.

Make sure that they will be interested in it. You can't have a giveaway on something that only you love and they don't care about. Nobody's going to enter it. No one's going to talk about it. Now, let's move to number six. You can collaborate with local celebrities, local influencers. You should know who has it popping. Can I say that on this podcast? Has it popping? Yeah, popping in your neighborhood and partner with influencers who resonate with your audience. Every city has them. A local influencer that people, and even if it's not local, you can go regional. You can go as high as you can go to a national person. Like say, if it's not Tiger Woods, who else is big in your state? Who else is big in your region? Who's the next biggest in your state? Who's the big guy in your city? Okay?

Man, a lot of college football players will make money this way. I see them all the time on billboards in our state. And I'm not saying the NIL deal thing that's happening right now, I'm saying even after they leave college, if they were a superstar in college, and let's say they didn't even make it to the pros, they're still making money by endorsing. We've got one here that endorses a heating and air company, and I don't think this guy has played for 20 years, and he still endorses that. Heck. I mean, that's a whole another thing though, that we have Billy Sims barbecue, but I mean, that's his home restaurant chain. And I think he actually played NFL though, so that's not what I'm talking about. But he's a local celebrity here as well, so you could use him. Adrian Peterson, he's NFL too, but a local guy here, just all of the NFL people, Troy Aman, Steve Large, and all of those guys are from Oklahoma.

Football's big in Oklahoma. But you just find an influencer for you, a local influencer, and see how you can partner with them. And then the last thing, which is going to be no secret to you that I'm going to say this, is you have to analyze things and you have to adapt. You have to look at what's working and then adapt your strategy based on the engagement metrics that you are seeing. Constant learning is going to be key to this, okay? So it's not like you hit it, you quit it. It's like you need to pay attention. It needs to be something that is ongoing. So there you have it, implementing these seven quick wins. These are, I say they're quick wins, but they're going to take a little bit of effort for you. There's not only going to boost your social media engagement, but it's also going to help deepen the connection that you have with your audience.

Remember that social media is going to be more than a platform. It is more than a platform. It is a community to you, and you have to engage authentically with your people. All right? Thanks for tuning in today. Let me know how you feel about this. If you go to LocalMarketMonopoly.com, number one, you can sign up for the newsletter, but also there is a tab there that says, ask Clarence and you can record a quick voice message to me telling me that this is the most awesome podcast that you have ever listened to. Or you can tell me something really crazy and opposite of that, which I probably will not put that on. Actually, I probably would. I don't care what you tell me. I'm probably going to put it on and then we can interact with it. But I'll bring your voice on if you want. If you don't, just tell me and get your questions answered. But until then, I will check you out next week. Please go do this. Do whatever you need to do in order to own the block.

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