Online Reviews: Should You Strive for a Perfect Five?

In today’s age, online reviews and ratings can make or break a business. Potential customers look to ratings to determine whether or not they want to support a business. With all that pressure, striving for a perfect five-star rating can be tempting. However, is that always the best approach? Let’s dive into the complexities of online reviews and how they can impact your business.

Five Star Reviews Only!

Firstly, it’s important to note that a perfect five-star rating isn’t necessarily the goal. While it may look impressive, it may appear fake to consumers browsing the web. A mix of ratings ranging from three to five stars can be more beneficial to your business. A mix of ratings shows potential customers that the reviews are authentic and will provide a well-rounded view of what to expect.

Quality Over Quantity

In addition to mixed ratings, quality should always come first over quantity. While an abundance of five-star reviews can look impressive, the content within the review truly matters. Customers aren’t looking for generic praise. They want specific examples of what made their experience great. Genuine reviews can truly paint a picture of what customers can expect from your business and are much more valuable than a high quantity of generic, uninformative reviews.

Responding to Negative (& Positive) Online Reviews

While we recommend responding to both positive and negative reviews, negative review responses are even more essential to your business’s online rating! Respond to negative reviews with understanding and a willingness to make things right. This effort to resolve or correct a negative experience can help change a customer’s perception of your business. This type of response shows that you take feedback seriously and are willing to go above and beyond to provide a positive experience. If you can “make it right” in the eyes of the customer, ask them if they would be willing to update their rating and review!

Where to collect reviews?

In terms of where to focus your reviews, it depends on your business.

  • Google My Business is a popular platform for reviews, allowing businesses to appear in Google searches and maps.
  • However, if your business has a strong social media presence, Facebook reviews can be just
  • as impactful.
    No matter what platform they are on, keep an eye on reviews and respond promptly to any feedback.

In the end, the focus should be on providing exceptional service rather than striving for a perfect five-star rating and listening to the feedback provided, both good and bad! Remember these tips and watch as your review ratings naturally improve over time.

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Marisa Lyon
Marisa is the Finance and Marketing Manager at Innereactive, and we are so grateful to have her. She enjoys helping businesses find the right solution for their marketing needs.

 

Increasing a Team’s Commitment to Performance Goals

The beginning of every year starts the same. We set performance goals for the upcoming year. Call them New Year’s Resolutions, initiatives, focuses, or objectives. We are inclined to establish them year after year, even when past years have had little or no success. This is true for personal and professional goals. So how do we increase the likelihood that the goal will be accomplished? Increase the team’s commitment.

The Basics of Setting Performance Goals

To increase your team’s commitment to performance goals, we must ensure all goals pass the SMART goals test. SMART goals are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and timely. All performance goals should have a clear definition of success and a process for measuring progress. They should also be realistically possible with other action items taking place in your life, align with your life purpose, values, and long-term plan. And finally, set a target date for the completion of your goal.
Take these two goals for example:

  • “I am going to lose weight this year” is a goal.
  • “I am going to lose twenty pounds by the end of the year and will track my progress by logging weekly weigh-ins on my Google Fit app” is a SMART goal.

Don’t Tackle Too Much At Once

Outline all of your company’s objectives and attempt to rank them in order of importance. Chances are, you came up with a long list of objectives and want to rank each one as the most important. You are not alone, but to succeed and increase your team’s commitment, you must limit the number of goals you focus on. Creating one or two clear priorities allows each team member to focus and dedicate their energy to completing one goal instead of taking baby steps on many goals. Most importantly, be willing to course correct or even drop the goal as new information and priorities present themselves. There is no faster demotivation for a team than having to continue to work on a no longer significant goal.

Except maybe course correcting or dropping goals too quickly or often. Explore what has changed with your team so they understand the need for the charge course. And don’t course correct or drop goals for the “new, more interesting initiative.”  If you have been strategic in your planning and know what a new commitment will cost you, then you can confidently refuse new opportunities. Keep track of those new exciting initiatives to consider when setting future goals.

Ask Team Members to Help Set Performance Goals

Selecting and shaping goals should be a team effort. When possible, collect team input on company objectives and ranking of importance. In larger companies, including the team on their specific department goals. The more involved they are in setting goals, the more they’ll be invested in the goals. Even if you cannot include your team in the goal-setting process, highlight how each person’s efforts contribute to achieving team goals. Connect with them emotionally and share how the goal will make their jobs easier. Encourage people to ask questions! When people understand the end goal and the steps the team will take to achieve it, the direction forward feels easier.

Once the goals are finalized, include regular communication about your progress toward the goal in your team meetings and individual one-on-ones. If the team is on track, celebrate. If the team is off-track, discuss what steps must be taken to get back on track. This shows that leadership is committed to performance goals. Our team of dedicated marketing strategists can help coach your team through establishing SMART Marketing Goals and creating a process for regular check-ins to ensure success.

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Heather Morrison
Heather is the VP of Operations at Innereactive and we are lucky to have her. She has over five years of experience running an HR department and enjoys helping businesses like yours find solutions to their HR needs.

Link Building | Creating Meaningful Website Links

Building meaningful links, also known as link building, is like networking at an event, but for your website. So the good news is the introverts in the room won’t be overcome with anxiety!

Why is Link Building Important?

Link building is an essential part of Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Everyone’s favorite subject! Links help search engines find and then rank your website pages. Without links, search engines like Google may take longer to recognize just how excellent your content is. First let’s look at what different link types we have:

  • Internal Links: These are links on your website that direct users to other places within your website.
  • External Links: These are links on your website that direct users to another website with relevant information.
  • Backlinks: A backlink is a link from another person’s or business’s website back to your website. This builds credibility for your website and content.

Not All Links Are Treated Equally

Although establishing internal links is important and can help end-users explore content, it isn’t the same as link building. The ideal goal is to get other websites to link back to your pages, but it is important that these links are credible and beneficial. Not all links should be equally coveted. Take a look at the good and not-so-good link examples below.

Good Back Linking

If you own an elite restaurant, having a review on a renowned food critic’s website that links back to your website will give you more credit on search engines. Hopefully, it is also a positive review! Event bloggers who visit your restaurant and mention it in their post is beneficial! However, the higher traffic and rating a website has that mentions you, the more credit and ranking that link get as well!

Not-So-Good Backlinking

As we mentioned earlier, not all backlinks boost your site’s credibility in the same way. Low-quality backlinks are links to your site from websites with little to no engagement. When looking at sites to help build your backlink network we advise against software or services that promise to add you to “100’s of directory websites.”  The key here is to build your backlinks with websites that relate to your business and may resonate with your audience.

Build Great Content

Before even considering building meaningful links, it is essential to have unique website content (see what we did there? what a beautifully placed internal link!) that represents your brand that people want to share with others. This includes a company history, employee bios discussing their contributions to the company, and industry-specific content that highlights your expertise. Creating and sharing content that is interesting to other individuals in your industry or your highly engaged consumer base makes it that much more easy to get those coveted links.

Define Your Audience

Who are you trying to reach with your content? How do those individuals usually consume information? Now, this is the part where the introverts will start squirming. This part feels a lot like networking. Once you have a defined list of ways your ideal end reader consumes information, it is time to reach out to them. Depending on your industry, the communication might look different.

For example, if you have a new tech product you are working on promoting, you could send a few samples to major tech publications asking them for a blog review to be featured on their website. Or maybe you invite a well-known health and wellness blogger to visit your state-of-the-art gym for free in exchange for an article on their blog highlighting how they can use your equipment. It is important to remember people will only add links to your website if it’s in their own or their audience’s interest.

You have to get creative when creating a link-building strategy! If you need help establishing your website content and marketing strategy to grow your business, promote an event, or increase product sales, we can help!

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Heather is the VP of Operations at Innereactive and we are lucky to have her. She has over five years of experience running an HR department and enjoys helping businesses like yours find solutions to their HR needs.

Create a Culture of Coaching

What is a coaching culture? Creating a culture of coaching means your business intentionally establishes a structure, processes, and systems across the organization where individuals and their personal and professional development are prioritized. If it sounds daunting, it is, but the benefits of creating a coaching culture are substantial.

You may already have some individuals in your organization who promote a culture of coaching without any formal processes or systems in place. So what are these individuals doing to create this ideal culture?

Create a Safe Environment

This one is a no-brainer, but many businesses need help with it. People in working environments with explosive leaders or leaders who prefer to place blame instead of explore solutions often hide mistakes and feel like questions are a way to trap them. If employees do not feel safe, secure, and equitably treated, they will not be willing to explore the deeper conversation necessary for a culture of coaching.

Ask Questions

Quiet Leadership has been around for a long time, but when implementing a culture of coaching, the idea of asking questions instead of giving answers takes on a new level of importance. The main premise of Quiet Leadership is to ask questions to encourage individuals to think through challenges and solve their own problems. Many people in leadership positions mean well when they jump in to solve problems or immediately share how they would handle the issue, but it sends the wrong message to employees. Instead, leaders should focus on asking the right questions to help the person get to the answer independently. Some of these questions are:

  • What does the ideal outcome look like?
  • What are the options for moving forward?
  • What barriers do you foresee running into?
  • How will you overcome barriers?
  • If that doesn’t work, what else could you try?
  • What is your first step going to be?
  • When are you going to take that step?
  • Is there anything specific I can do to help?

Setting Clear Expectations

It is important to know what success looks like, what to prioritize, and how to improve. Defining what success looks like begins with setting goals. From there, it is communication, communication, communication. And in case that didn’t sink in, some more communication!

Everyone at the organization has many fighting initiatives they are attempting to juggle. Communicating your expectations on a project once and then not following up again until the deadline is going to result in a misunderstanding. Be sure to continue to share necessary updates, ensure people have the tools they need, and trust them to do the work.

Focus on Development

To have a culture of coaching, people in leadership positions must want people to and believe people can grow, learn, and develop new skills. What’s the point of coaching if you believe they couldn’t? This process should be collaborative, exploring each individual’s unique strengths and passions. Sometimes it means letting one of your best sales reps explore a path in web development. It is about giving individuals opportunities to explore things they find engaging.

Creating a plan allowing your organization to implement coaching into its structure, processes, and systems can be daunting. Get started by grasping your team’s desires and headspace through an employee engagement survey. Based on the results, identify who will have access to coaching. Hopefully, the end result would be “everyone!” but select a small group within the organization when getting started. Test some processes, collect feedback, tweak the process, and expand. If you need help getting started, consider using Innereactive’s employee engagement services! We can implement surveys, measure and report on results, and consult on the next steps based on individual results.

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Heather Morrison
Heather is the VP of Operations at Innereactive and we are lucky to have her. She has over five years of experience running an HR department and enjoys helping businesses like yours find solutions to their HR needs.

Tips to Create an Engaging Event

An engaged audience is a happy audience, whether right there in front of you or participating remotely. So, how do you ensure you create an engaging event with opportunities for audience engagement or interaction? Here are some tips from the Innereactive team!

Choose an Engaging Speaker

Select a speaker with experience and great reviews to present to live and virtual audiences. The speaker you choose can truly make or break your event! If you are looking for help selecting the perfect event speaker, we can help! Beyond a wide connection of industry speakers, we are lucky to have Samantha Toth, ABOC, as the President of Innereactive. Samantha is highly praised for being a highly engaging speaker, lecturing internationally, and teaching executives proven marketing and company culture strategies.

Presentation Tips to Create an Engaging Event

The presentation they are giving to your audience is just as crucial as your speaker. Add live or virtual polling to keep your audience engaged throughout the entire event. The key to this is to ensure all attendees can see the results after everyone has had a chance to answer.

Spotlight Vendors & Sponsors

When hosting a live in-person event, you are presented with many touchpoints to build an engaging event. From how you set up the classroom, brand signage, provide presentation takeaways, and highlight vendors, you have ample opportunity to improve audience engagement.

For example, if your live event includes vendors selling/promoting their products and services, help them create a more engaging event with these ideas.

  • Provide ad space within the handout or share their takeaway with the audience from your vendor.
  • Allow your vendor to share a product sample with attendees.
  • Have your vendor host a short workshop on utilizing their technology.
  • Highlight your vendor’s name and contact information within the presentation.
  • Give your vendor time before or after your presentation to introduce themselves and allow the audience to ask questions.

Breaks Can Help Create an Engaging Event

If your presentation lasts 2+ hours, don’t forget to allot time for breaks. Let your virtual and live attendees know when to expect the next break. Providing a timeline in the event reminder email so they know the schedule can help improve engagement during the event.

These breaks are a perfect opportunity to answer audience questions or discuss more individualized recommendations based on your specific audience. Don’t let your audience sit in silence! Move around, introduce yourself, and meet your attendees to boost engagement. During your break, don’t forget to share an event-specific hashtag so they can take pictures and share them online!

Handouts & Breakouts For Virtual Events

Prepare your virtual event by distributing handouts or helpful materials ahead of the event so attendees can print them ahead of time or view them electronically during the live stream session. Another option, if you can’t email ahead of time, is to create a QR code for downloadable handouts at the beginning of your presentation.

Breakouts aren’t just for live sessions anymore! Zoom has developed opportunities for virtual attendees to split up into virtual breakout sessions, too. For more detailed information on how to execute virtual breakouts, read about it here.

How did you do?

Your event is complete. Now what? We recommend always measuring the success of your event by surveying all attendees! Add a QR code on your presentation for easy link access allowing participants to provide candid feedback about their experience. Use this information to learn and improve all future events!

If you prefer to hand off the event planning to experts, our team is well-equipped with the experience needed to ensure your engaging event is executed successfully.

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Marisa Lyon
Marisa is the Finance and Marketing Manager at Innereactive, and we are so grateful to have her. She enjoys helping businesses find the right solution for their marketing needs.

Turn Your Volunteer Time into a Social Media Campaign

Our team loves giving back to the community, and we try to volunteer as a team each year to many local organizations! If your company offers an employee benefit like “Volunteer Time Off”, use this time to showcase your team on your company’s social media!  More people are connecting on social media than ever before, and it has become a primary means of communication and connection. Social media doesn’t have to be a space where you spend endless time scrolling and worrying about what to post. Think of it as another platform to restate the consistent messaging you’ve developed and shared on your website, newsletter, and printed materials. When you’re clear on your mission, social media becomes a place of support and community!

If you are like our team and LOVE volunteering, post a few photos during your next volunteer activity on Facebook! Posting this type of content will invite people to connect with your company more personally. Here are three things we recommend keeping in mind when making volunteer posts for a social media campaign.

  • Educate
  • Inspire
  • Invite

Educate Your Audience on Your Mission

Share your mission on social media by educating your audience about what you did. Ask yourself, “What is our mission?” and “How did we carry out that mission by doing this work?”. Explain in your post your company values and how they intertwine with volunteering. Consider writing a post using hashtags, pictures, and a caption! These types of posts do very well on Facebook or Instagram.

Inspire Others to Volunteer

To inspire is going to rely heavily on storytelling. Share why your company loves to serve your community by creating an Instagram Reel and ask your employees to share why they are there. If you chose a specific organization to volunteer for, share why! The story on why you love the organization will create a connection to the audience and can help boost engagement on your post!

Instagram Reels or TikTok can help create this story. When organizing your video, develop a theme to carry through your story. Good ideas include why you chose a specific organization, what programs your organization serves, or how this will impact others in the community. Keep it short, so your audience will stay engaged and not scroll away.

Invite Followers to Your Next Volunteer Event

Finally, remember to add a call to action in each post! Invite your audience to volunteer within their community, or if you know when your next volunteer opportunity will be, invite them to join you! Tag the organization you volunteered with on Facebook and Instagram, so your followers know where to reach out to. Tagging additional pages in your post can also help broaden the reach on each platform!

Ready to launch your first social media campaign and start posting team based content every week? We’d love to help you create a consistent, brand-focused social media presence.

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Marisa Lyon
Marisa is the Finance and Marketing Manager at Innereactive, and we are so grateful to have her. She enjoys helping businesses find the right solution for their marketing needs.

Google Analytics: Measure Website Metrics That Matter

You’ve dedicated the time and effort to launch a new website complete with a beautiful design, customized messaging, and search engine optimization, but now what? If this is as far as you read in this blog, we hope you take this one thing away. Don’t just let your website sit there! Use it as a tool to help you reach your company goals and measure website metrics that matter!
We’ve talked in the past about the importance of marketing goals and for 99.9% of businesses, your website is an essential tool to helping you reach those goals. To see how your website is helping accomplish those goals we need to track, report, and pivot.

Tracking Website Metrics

Installing Google Analytics & Google Search Console

First, make sure Google Analytics and Google Search Console are installed on your website. Google Analytics released a new tracking code version called GA4 that will replace Universal Analytics (UA) in 2023. If you have Google Analytics installed on your site, it’s important to make sure your code is updated or includes a GA4 version because, at this time, historical data is not able to transfer over.

Reporting Metrics That Matter

There are a million and one metrics that you can dive into and report on within your analytics dashboard. Our advice is don’t track just to track. Track and report on data that:

  • Provides insight into how users are engaging with your business and website.
  • Gives you insight into your goal performance.
  • Shows if you need to pivot your efforts to reach your goal.

While there are similarities in what to track across different business websites, the specific tracking for your website is unique to you!


Website As A Lead Generator

Is your marketing goal to gain more new clients? Your website should be a main reporting source to determine how this goal performs. Some metrics to track may be:

  • # of new users to your website you are receiving each month.
  • # of users that click on your call to action button or page
  • Of these users, how many complete your lead generation or new customer form?
  • # of users that click to call your office

Influencing or Informational Website

While all websites could be considered lead or customer generators, some business, like a restaurant may utilize their website as a tool when customers are already in-store. These websites are more informational or influencing in nature to help increase revenue per customer. Some metrics for these types of sites are:

  • How long are users spending on each services page?
  • Which services page or product is getting the most views?
  • Which services page is leading to the highest conversion?
  • Do your website views and revenue trends match?

Website As Revenue

For businesses with ecommerce, your marketing goals are probably directly related to your website’s traffic and performance. For these types of websites, important metrics to report may include:

  • # of users visiting shop vs # of customers placing orders (capture rate).
  • # of products placed per order.
  • Average dollar value of an order.
  • Source of website traffic (google, social, email marketing, etc).
  • Metrics of purchases made from automated website emails like an abandoned cart.

Report and Pivot

Once you’ve identified your key metrics to track, report on them monthly and quarterly along with your social, marketing, and revenue goals. Are all your metrics showing the same thing? Remember, not every metric is a simple pass or fail. Some metrics listed above can help guide your strategy if and when you need to make a change.

Our team of dedicated marketing strategists are here to help guide your marketing goals and determine which website metrics are the best to report on for your business.

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Marie Wiewiora

Marie is the VP of Client Relations at Innereactive and has experience in marketing strategy, graphic design, and web development. She has over 8 years of experience creating comprehensive marketing strategies.

This is the Year for Performance Appraisals

It’s everyone’s favorite time of the year! Performance Appraisals!!!

“waits for the collective cheer*

Well… this is a little awkward. I guess we might be on our own with excitement for performance appraisals. But hear us out before you rule out performance appraisals for your team!

The Benefits of Performance Appraisals

When done correctly, performance appraisals have proven to:

  • improve employee performance
  • increase employee engagement
  • clarify expectations
  • determine training or coaching needs
  • allow for improved conversations between employees and supervisors

With all those benefits, it’s mind-boggling that more employers are not leaning into performance appraisals. However, to receive these benefits, it is important to structure your appraisal process based on your company goals, vision, and values.

The Correct Performance Appraisal Process (For Your Business)

Now that you are convinced of the benefits let’s talk about your options! There are Traditional Performance Appraisals, 360-Degree Reviews, Self-Appraisals, Employee-Initiated Reviews, Group Performance Appraisals, Upward Appraisals, and more. Hopefully, we haven’t lost you! There is no one size fits all solution for performance appraisals.

At Innereactive, we wanted something that was less formal, more frequent, and ensured employees were living by our values. We landed on monthly appraisals where we focus on one value each month and three to five supporting questions that allow for deeper exploration of employee satisfaction and career development.

What to Discuss During a Performance Appraisal

Career growth. Career growth. And… what was the last one… oh yeah… career growth. We’re only half kidding. If you were to ask your employees what they wanted from you as an employer (and this is something we highly recommend you do), it would probably be a conversation around career growth and development. According to LinkedIn’s 2019 Workforce Learning Report, 94% of employees say that they would stay with an employer for longer, if they invested in their career development. So if you are not using your performance appraisals as an opportunity to discuss career development, it is a missed opportunity.

Tips for Discussing Career Growth

When discussing career growth and development with employees, it is important to understand and care about each employee’s career growth dreams and expectations. However, it is even more important to keep the growth ownership with each employee. As a manager, it is not your responsibility to push each employee toward career growth. It is your responsibility to:

  • provide opportunities for growth to each employee
  • promote from within when possible
  • prioritize employee learning and development
  • take a personal interest in your employees

The last one is a must for this process to be successful and employees will know if you are faking it.

If you need help getting started, our team of dedicated marketing strategists is here to offer consulting services to discuss the challenges you anticipate facing and explore the solutions you can implement to have a successful performance appraisal process. Our goal would be that every employee and employer shares in a collective cheer when it is performance appraisal season!

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Heather Morrison
Heather is the VP of Operations at Innereactive and we are lucky to have her. She has over five years of experience running an HR department and enjoys helping businesses like yours find solutions to their HR needs.

The Importance of SMART Marketing Goals

Whether you are trying to boost social media engagement, grow brand awareness, increase website conversion rates, or generate new leads, having defined marketing goals for your efforts is important. Without a defined marketing goal, your team may become misaligned, focusing on individual efforts instead of your overall goal.

Marketing Goals Outline the Intentions

Having a clear goal helps make clear the intentions of your organization when you have an internal marketing team or are hiring a marketing agency. Knowing the intentions for growth helps the marketing team determine where to focus their resources and energy. When working with clients, we believe it is important to establish marketing goals before outlining the services we recommend. If a business is looking to bring in new clients our recommendations for marketing services will be entirely different from the client who has a maxed-out client load and is looking to increase revenue per client.

Goals Provide a Way to Measure Success

Without a marketing goal, you cannot prove your efforts were successful. If you have ever spent money on a marketing campaign and then struggled to answer, “was it worth it,” you are not setting clear enough goals. Setting goals can be more complicated than one initially wants to believe. Goals that follow the “from x to y by when” model are a great starting point, but there is more. It is important to set realistic, achievable goals.

For example, if you set the sales goal of “increase annual first-time sales from $300,000 to $500,000 by the end of the calendar year” that’s great! However, over the past two years, your annual first-time sales have only grown each year by $20,000. In this scenario, it’s important to have a concrete plan for how you plan to go from an average of roughly 7.5% to 67% growth. If you aren’t making major changes to the status quo, you shouldn’t expect to see major changes in the outcome.

Steps to Achieve Your Marketing Goals

Even if you have a goal that is Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Timely (SMART), you are not guaranteed to succeed.

  • Generate Team Buy In | If at all possible, have your team assist in the process of determining the team goals. Teams without buy-in are more likely to lose focus of the goal.
  • Consider the Whirlwind | The Whirlwind was made popular by FranklinCovey and it discusses the importance of the day-to-day activities that need to be completed for the business to run. Never set a goal that doesn’t first consider the essential action items a team has to complete.
  • Create Bite-Sized Milestones | After establishing your goal, create smaller milestones that can act as stepping stones to the larger goal. When each of those milestones is achieved, celebrate the success to keep your team motivated.
  • Set Up a Scoreboard | Create a scoreboard that measures the team’s progress toward the goal. Allow all team members to check whenever they want. This generates ownership and creates a visual reminder of how close or how far away from the goal you are. Report on this progress weekly or monthly to ensure you are on track!

Whether you need help setting goals or implementing marketing campaigns to achieve your goals, our team of dedicated marketing strategists can assist and help your business grow!

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Heather Morrison
Heather is the VP of Operations at Innereactive and we are lucky to have her. She has over five years of experience running an HR department and enjoys helping businesses like yours find solutions to their HR needs.

Social Media Posting | The Benefits of Using An Agency

It’s the end of the year and everyone is saying “Marketing budgets are tight.” So, should you still be working with an agency for social media posting on your behalf? The answer? Maybe. When considering whether or not to work with an agency, each business should consider four aspects of its business:

  • Time
  • Expertise
  • Desire
  • Money

Let’s break down each of the following to determine if hiring an agency to post on your behalf is the best decision for your business!

When Should an Agency Manage Social Media Posting

If your team doesn’t have the time, expertise, or desire to post content, it is time to invest in working with an agency. This lack of time, expertise, or desire will manifest itself in many ways. Many people think that paying someone to post on your behalf is an all-or-nothing solution. For some agencies, that is true, but it doesn’t have to be!

Start by asking yourself, “When was the last time someone on your team posted to your social media pages?” If it has been awhile, why?

Time

Sometimes, your team is too busy focused on the day-to-day requirements of running a business. This is especially true for small businesses where employees have cross-functional responsibilities. They may rock wearing multiple hats, but the social media hat has started to fall down and no one is there to catch it.

Expertise

Even if someone is posting content, if no one is engaging with it, it is as if no one is posting content. When looking at social media, average follower engagement is between .5% and 1%. If you are not seeing an average engagement in this range, your messaging needs improvement.

Some businesses have the time and desire to post content, but lack the expertise. In these situations, Innereactive crafts unique marketing strategies that outline a posting schedule. In some situations, we even design branded posting templates to allow the business to post.

Desire

In other situations, a business may love sharing posts that showcase the company’s personality and culture but don’t enjoy creating and sharing educational content about products, services, or promotions. Innereactive works with clients to create posting schedules that show when we will post educational content. This allows for a decreased investment from the business and still allows the business to engage its audience with personalized content.

When Should You Keep It Internal

There are a few key features when considering continuing to do your own posting.

  • If your posting schedule has a healthy balance of brand, educational, and promotional content.
  • Your audience is taking action on the posts requesting them to do so.
  • Your average follower engagement maintains 1% or better. Anything over 1% is considered exceptionally well.

However, even if all of these things are true, if your team feels like posting content is taking too much time or no longer has the desire to maintain it internally, an external agency can help.

Paying someone to post on your behalf has been a question that plagues business owners since businesses started creating Facebook accounts. It isn’t right for every business, but for those businesses where it makes sense, it is important to pick the right partner. One that gets to know your business so well, they are an extension of your business, not just a marketing agency. We look forward to being that agency for your business.

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Heather Morrison
Heather is the VP of Operations at Innereactive and we are lucky to have her. She has over five years of experience running an HR department and enjoys helping businesses like yours find solutions to their HR needs.