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Small Business Bestie
Entrepreneurship is hard, and sometimes we could use a friend to walk a mile in our shoes. Small Business Bestie is here to provide that friendship, support, and inspiration that small business owners need from time to time.
Small Business Bestie
32: Bestie Bites - The Art of Local Visibility with Expert Peg Fitzpatrick
What happens when you blend the expertise of a renowned social media strategist with the challenges small business owners face in local marketing?🤔 Join us as Peg Fitzpatrick shares her unique insights on attracting local customers and crafting a personalized brand. You'll discover the secrets behind optimizing your business profile and how simple tactics like embedding Google Maps and tagging locations on social media can transform your customer experience. Peg's wealth of experience with big brands brings invaluable lessons that any small business can apply to make their mark in the local community.
Have you ever considered how personal branding could elevate your professional life, especially if you're an attorney or accountant? We explore this intriguing topic alongside Peg, delving into building trust through a strong online presence. Hear the inspiring story of California attorney Mitch Jackson, who effectively connects with clients despite the high stakes of his industry. From managing Yelp reviews to preparing your business for a potential sale, we cover the essentials of maintaining a robust online identity, ensuring you stay ahead of the competition. 💪🥇😜
Peg Fitzpatrick's enthusiasm for social media and content creation is contagious, and she brings it full circle with the announcement of her new book, "The Art of Small Business Social Media: A Blueprint for Marketing Success." Learn how small businesses can leverage location tags and hashtags to enhance their local visibility without overusing keywords. Peg's authentic approach and passion for helping companies grow make this episode a must-listen. Don't miss out on her expert advice, practical tips, and the fascinating journey she shares with us.📖🩷
Check out Peg here!🩵
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Small Business Bestie is edited by Bourbon Barrel Podcasting
Hey everyone, welcome to another edition of Bestie Bites by Small Business Bestie. And today I'm so incredibly excited because I have a woman here that I know is going to bring us all a ton of value. She's incredibly intelligent. I already know from following her on social media. So today I've got with me Peg Fitzpatrick and Peg, I'm going to throw it to you. Tell us all about what you do. Well, first, I love the name of your show. I love what you do. It's so awesome, so cute and I feel like it makes it approachable for people, because small business owners it's hard when you're a small business owner. So you need a bestie. I love it. We need a lot of besties. Yeah, we do. We need a bestie community, it's totally true. So I'm Peg Fitzpatrick.
Speaker 1:I have been a social media strategist for 14 or 15 years. I was head of social strategy for Canva when they were a little baby startup. Now they're huge and everybody knows who they are. So I have done all different kinds of things. I've worked with big companies like Audi and Motorola and I've been a brand ambassador for Kempton Hotels and there's other brands that I'm like the secret weapon. They don't like to say that I work with them. They like to keep it a secret and I love you if you're listening to all my little secret people. I wrote that on my website and then other people email me like I also want you to be a secret up and I'm like, okay, I don't know, that's awesome. Yeah, I don't take clients anymore. But back when I did Wow, no-transcript, kind of thinking through, like what could we talk about?
Speaker 1:One of the things that really struck me that I think would be really important for the audience of Small Business Bestie is how to attract local customers to your business. So I know that we all kind of like are throwing spaghetti at the wall, constantly trying to figure out what the heck we're doing. So you have the secret sauce for our messy spaghetti. It sounds like Well, number one spaghetti stain. So don't throw it at white things. So I think one place it's really great to start for small businesses, for local marketing, is Google, my Business. Get your Google profile set up, make sure that you have it really optimized and then send it to someone else to look at it, to make sure that it looks really good, add a lot of really good photos of your business and then just write the hours that you're open. It's really basic stuff like that that gets overlooked and it's frustrating when people are looking for somebody local.
Speaker 1:And then the next part of that is you want to make sure in all of your website that you list your location and in your social media bio. So say, for example, I live in Elm City, like that's the, that's like the nickname of our city. So I would be like best Elm City boutique, you know, or the region, the Monadnac region's best bakery, or you know, think of how people are going to find you. So if they're searching, a lot of times people are on their phone and they're like they would just want a bakery near them, like what's open right now that's near me and they need to know what's. And if you don't have that information on your website, which is stuff that should definitely be there. But when we're new and we're setting stuff up which is stuff that should definitely be there, but when we're new and we're setting stuff up we miss things and that's really common and it's fine if you did.
Speaker 1:But just write a list for yourself. Say, go to Google my Page. Did you already claim that Number one? Claim your page Number two. Fill everything out on there for people and then really just think about everything else, making sure you have the local aspect in there. That's really good. I think that the local aspect is something that I see a lot of not having the name of the town or even, like you know, if you're a regional company, like nobody knows how to find you. They don't really understand where you are unless they scroll all the way to the bottom in the footer and you know what.
Speaker 1:Put your phone number on your Instagram bio if you're a business. I hardly ever see people do that and why not Make it easy for people to call you? There's also a little button, too, where you can add the phone, little tools and analytics. But yeah, just you know, think about when people are going to your profile that you're really letting them know that you are local and then your about page lists all the local stuff and then, when you're on your about page, get directions to your location. That is so helpful. You can embed a Google map and then Google's like oh, they're connected with us. We should show that to people. Google knows when you connect with them and link to them and the easier you can make it. Don't you love when people give directions like go here, and just so you know there's meters downtown, so we have this app for locally like. Or make sure you have change for parking. Like just let people know what to expect. I saw an Instagram post earlier today that was like, if you're inviting me to something, don't make it a hot mess of parking, because I'm not going to circle back Like it's true, we don't like the complication of like it's hard to. If you have a little hard to find location, make sure you explain it. Say, go to this location, you know we're at the corner of this and this and just right around the corner you know we're right there. And then make sure that you tag your locations on your social media accounts too, because all of that helps build it up.
Speaker 1:Okay, I want to circle back to one of the things that you said about Google my Business, because, like I have an accounting company, a bookkeeping company, and we started out doing everything virtually. We didn't have a physical location and I don't know if you've ever tried to take pictures of bookkeeping, but it's not interesting to look at. Accounting is hard. I mean, you could be like at your computer working, you could show computers, you could show calculators, things that you know, and then just make it cute. You know, like we're doing the math that you don't want to do because most people don't want to do that. Yeah, yeah, for a while we used the slogan we're not your dusty old accountants. While we use the slogan we're not your dusty old accountants, and I had all pictures of me with, like you know, frou-frou hair and big earrings and you know all the things to prove like, hey, we're like young and hip and trendy. I mean young, 41, young. But you know, oh, young, young, yeah, yeah, I think that's great. I mean, I think it humanizes you.
Speaker 1:I'll give you an example, like where you think that it's very similar because there's an attorney that's online and attorneys, you think they're like how do you show attorneys? And a friend of mine online, his name is Mitch Jackson, he's an attorney in California, he does all kinds of stuff online and I, you know, I asked her one time like why is it worth it for your time? Because attorneys make a lot of money per hour. And he said it's absolutely worth it to personalize me because people need to see me and know who I am when they're making those choices. So accounting is the same. You know you're like, you're young in your hip and you're up on the tax laws. You know, right, that's your brand and I don't think there's anything wrong with showing you in a whatever you want You're. You know if you're going to wear because it's accounting where, like you know a blazer and still with a T. So, yeah, I mean, you know, I think that there are ways to do it. It's just maybe a little. Some brands are really easy. If you're a florist, obviously you're showing your flowers and wear cute little shop and stuff like that.
Speaker 1:But I think you could do office photos and you could even do a branding shoot. Have you ever done a branding shoot with anybody? Yeah, we did one in the early days with my husband and I and we were, you know, doing some work on the computer and we were drinking coffee together and things like that. So, yeah, like a couple of those. But yeah, that's really all you need. I mean, I think a branding shoot like you did is a great idea for small business owners.
Speaker 1:If you're not familiar with what that is, you hire a local photographer that will help take photos of you, cause sometimes it's just hard to get like like, I have a hard time doing the b-roll thing when you're like, setting a camera up of yourself to do accounting seems awkward. Yeah, right, like hi, here I am doing well, I can't show you what it is because it's confidential right. So you're like, but you could also make a joke of that, say, look, we can't show you this because it's confidential. Yeah, it's a picture, but it's all just blurred out. Yeah, like the black one. This is what good work we do. Look at this report we generated and it's all just blurred Blank, blank. Yeah, oh, I love that. That's genius.
Speaker 1:So I want to ask one more question. You're talking about, you know, when you personalize, you know your brand, by showing photos of yourself, that of yourself. That's kind of the same as the old adage of like people buy from people, right? So I know that a lot of business owners that I've worked with in the past have had kind of a problem with like, I don't want to be the face of my business, because what if I sell my business? Then you know then what happens? In your experience, have those businesses, if they do, have like the face of the business as the owner and then they sell? Have you had any experience where businesses just tank after that, like, oh, that person left, so we're done. No, I mean, if you were going to do that and you were the face of the brand Number one.
Speaker 1:If you're really not comfortable being the face of your brand, you don't have to be. You can do faceless marketing they call it now where you know it's just not your face. It know it's just not your face. It's you working. But it could even be from behind or from the set, like some kind of clever photography which you can just. You can look on pinterest for photo ideas for your brand, like look for brand photo shoot ideas, and you'll see all different kinds of stuff and even guarantee. If you look for accounting, you'll see some. They might but not be as cool as I think your brand is, though, so they'll might be. Really, you don't want the stodgy, you know stock photo of the office people being like you know, yeah, but I think you don't have to be the face if you're really not comfortable with it. Like I said, do you like the faceless method, which you can look that up. There's a lot of people that teach how to do that now.
Speaker 1:But also, if you were the face of the company and you were selling it, you would introduce the new person. I think there would be a process of like handing over the key kind of thing. I think you could just say so you know, we're retiring, that. Like there's a little local cafe and they're retiring. They were like they worked in food services for like 34 years. They were like we're tired, we're retiring, like just do a little post saying you know our time is up in this location, but we have sold this to these new people and they're keeping our recipes and you know they're looking forward to meeting you. Like I feel like there's a way to like introduce the new people where it would work. Yeah, everybody deserves to retire or sell, if they can. Right For sure, hopefully sooner rather than later, or something.
Speaker 1:Okay, so I feel like I kind of caught you off there. I was like let's back up a little, but do you remember like the next tip you were going to give? Oh, I was going to say Yelp next, because I know people small business owners are petrified of Yelp reviews and if they're bad. But the thing is, if your business is on Yelp, you have to be there too. So it's really not a lot of hard work, but similar to Google.
Speaker 1:You go and you claim your Yelp page because someone else could, if you don't. So you claim your Yelp page, search for your business and then again you just, you know, make sure there's a good logo and you could add photos of your location if you are a physical location. And then you know you want to make sure you have notifications on. I don't always say this for things, but if somebody is leaving you a review, I feel like that's something that you need to know about. So turn notifications on, so you get an email for that.
Speaker 1:And if you happen to get a review that is not great, please respond to it very kindly and get it. Answer publicly, but then respond to them privately. So answer publicly and say we're very sorry that you had a bad experience. Can you please, you know, call and ask for you know blah, blah, blah, or give us, you know, send us a message or your email. We want to talk to you immediately. You always have to answer publicly, though Don't just leave things hanging, but then in private, you know, send them an email and make it right for people, and a lot of times that will fix it. So if people have a bad something happen and they feel strong enough about it that they're going to go write a review. Obviously they had feelings about that, something, right, right. So you can't ignore it. You just need to go and take care of it and then that good, the good vibes that you get from that, will be so much better than than the negative review.
Speaker 1:You know, just even like customer service policies, like bark box do you know the brand bark box? Yeah, I love bark box, they're so awesome and we used. But we had bark box for years with our golden retriever and then he passed away and I needed to stop the subscription because I did not want to get that box and, yeah, not have my dog there. You know, like all the feelings that you get from it. They were, were so nice, they immediately canceled it without a problem and they sent me a handwritten note from a whole bunch of people on their staff like with condolences. That's way above and beyond, way above and beyond. And I was canceling so I wasn't a customer anymore, but now I have other dogs. You know what I mean. So, but like the feelings that I had from that. I mean it's a very obviously we love our pets so much so. Every you know dog owners or cat owners, whoever you are like, we know we have a lot of feelings when our pets pass away and they were so above and beyond about it. It always brings me good vibe and when I think about them, I think about, yes, my dog, how excited he was to always get his toys and how much he loved them all, but also how great that company was to work with that.
Speaker 1:Instead of you know so many online things are hard to cancel your subscription, right? I'm surprised they weren't like we need proof, you know. They were just like we're so sorry to hear about it. And they immediately I didn't get the next box. Like they immediately there was no, no flaw. Like oh well, we lost a customer. What does that do to our bottom line, you know, right. So I think I think those kinds of touches mean a lot to people.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, whatever your industry is, there's ways that you can reach out to people and make something. You know, like dry cleaners I work in the dry cleaning industry. You know if you know that somebody's bringing stuff in and it's for a funeral because you saw it in the newspaper and they're dry cleaners really know their customers, they know their names and they know their families. Don't charge them for that. Like, just give it to them and say you know, we're very like, write a note on it and say we're very sorry to hear about your mom Like that does mean a lot to people.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we owned a spa back in Oklahoma and the first visit from every client got a handwritten note from their technician, whether it was facial massage, whatever. And then if there was ever like a key event in anyone's life that we picked up on you know, births, deaths, marriages, birthdays, any of those things then we would do that also. Another thing that we did at the spa was, you know, our system was really smart the CRM. It would tell us if it was the week of someone's birthday. It would pop up a little icon on their appointment and there was a bakery down the street. So we would bring a cupcake, you know, and have for them at checkout if it was their birthday week. And I don't know how many five-star reviews we got from people sitting in the parking lot holding their cupcake or taking a picture of their cupcake. They were like, oh my gosh, yeah, and I think to your point, those little touches, you know it didn't, you know, $2.50 for a cupcake, but it really set us apart in the customer's eyes. So I think you're absolutely right. Any way that you can find those little ways to be special and to be considerate of your clients is absolutely worth it.
Speaker 1:And it doesn't all have to be on social media. A lot of things are offline. I actually for the company that I work for it's a large chemical company when we have new customers, I write a handwritten note to them and just say thanks for choosing us, because they have choices, and I feel like those touches do mean a lot now and customer service is taking a nosedive everywhere, everywhere, especially after the pandemic. It's just I don't think we'll ever get to the levels that we used to be. Now you talk to bots or it's hard to even get through on the phone. So when you get a person it's like, oh, thank goodness I can help. Although some of the bots are very good and helpful Some of them are. If they're set up right they can be super helpful.
Speaker 1:But yeah, never discount the fact that you could do something small for someone and have it mean a lot. I mean you have no idea, like if that person's like all alone and that's the only birthday wish they got for the week. Or you know, you just don't know, maybe they're going to do a divorce or just something like small gestures do mean a lot to people. Yeah, they really do. Oh, that got me thinking about all the things that, like, all the ways that I'm dropping the ball on my customers because, you know, like in an accounting company, it's like I don't know I can an anniversary, you know, thanks for sticking with us another year, but like there's so many other ways that I could just be thoughtful. So thanks for that reminder. I needed that today. Marketing, in my opinion, I feel like all of those things are marketing. All the small touches are something that makes it special.
Speaker 1:Kempton Hotels is another one. Have you ever stayed at a Kempton? I haven't, okay. So they used to be an independent hotel chain and now they were bought by a bigger company and I'm not sure if they still do all the things that they used to do. But when you stay at a Kempton, they would go, look at your social media and they would like print out a photo of your family and have it in your room, or they would like have treats that they know that you like, or they just did really special stuff. If you're lonely, they have a goldfish at the desk and you could have a goldfish in your room or a plant so you could choose to have like extra. But they always write you a note and they always do some special thing like that, whether it's like a special dessert that they bring if you're celebrating something there's like champagne there, or but really like the photos and the special little things. I mean it means a lot. Yeah, that's really sweet.
Speaker 1:I stayed at an Airbnb in Denver this last weekend with my sister on a little trip and I was blown away because we walked into a handwritten note welcoming us and letting us know that if we needed anything that we could buzz them. They were, you know, just across the street and they had fresh baked chocolate chip cookies waiting for us Nice. But more than that was the quality of the touches inside the space were just so much better than most Airbnbs that I've been to. It was like they really they weren't skimping, you know, even down to like the type of air diffuser that they were using. It smelled so good. I texted and was like what does that smell in here? And she sent me a photo of it and told me where to get it. You know, and I was like, who does that?
Speaker 1:You know, I think Airbnb hosts are definitely the good ones have stepped it up and they have like a book with like local things no Go do, uh-huh yeah. And, being in Denver, they had like kind of a little library of like Denver sightseeing and like cool things. You know, it wasn't just like a binder, it was like actually actual published books, so it was really cool. Yeah, yeah, that's cool. We could all learn something from the good Airbnb hosts. Yeah, we'll talk about the bad ones we won't See. And it just shows you that, like Airbnb can mean two different things to you, right, like if you have a bad experience or if you have a really good one. You're like, you know, this house is amazing. Sometimes you're like I definitely want to go back and stay at that house again. Absolutely yeah. If I go back to Denver, that's where I'm going. Absolutely Awesome.
Speaker 1:Okay, anything else that you feel like you could leave us with before we jump off, just make sure I haven't talked about this yet with your local marketing, make sure that you're tagging your location on your posts. So if you're like posting an Instagram post or a Facebook post, you can tag the location and you can use hashtags for your local, what you know, town, or like for your business, but also your town and your region and your state, depending on where you are. Like for your business, but also your town and your region and your state, depending on where you are. So just look up, like, do a little hashtag research, you know, go into Instagram and type in your because sometimes it's not always just the city name, like Rochester, new York, they go by just rock, sometimes ROC, and they'll do like different versions of it, which is fun because there's also a lot of Rochester's around in the country, country, yeah, but but they do the ro, they do roc, and so they'll do like you know, roc, museum and science center or like. So just check, check what your local, what people use locally, and just you know.
Speaker 1:Make sure that you tag your locations and that you talk about your location in all of your marketing, so it just helps with all of the search. So the more you talk about being a Elm City accountant, you know, in the Monadnock region, you know, it just reinforces to people that you're local where you are. Let people know you know where, where they can find you. Make it easy for people to contact you. Just go through your profiles and make sure that it's very clear how they can email you, how they can call you and what your website is, because I feel that the basics do just like I said, sometimes we set it up first and then we never go back and you think people are going to know. Well, they know I'm, you know this, but just make it easy for people to find you. That's the biggest key and reinforce that everywhere on your you know, in your, on your website, in your text, on your social posts and things that you share in your emails. Okay, so okay.
Speaker 1:Last question I swear I'm a curious person. So when you're using your location on your website, like you're trying to mention you know what city you're in multiple times on the pages and all of that there, kind of like a like. Where's the balance for like having it mentioned enough that you don't have to do, you don't have to keyword stuff it, but like three times, you know, one or two is even fine if you do it in like a h2 tag, like a header on your website. That's best you know. It doesn't have to be multiple times. It depends on the length of the text, if it's. If it's pretty short of text, then just in the header and maybe somewhere down in the bottom, so you're not putting in an overly huge amount of times. But it's just that you're kind of sprinkling it everywhere just to make sure that you're reminding people, because you think that people are going to remember. But we all see tons of information every day so they might forget. And even with the algorithms, if they follow you, that doesn't mean that they'll see your stuff, unless they're, you know, if they hit that little favorite star, which I don't know if anybody does that anymore. But yeah, so, yeah, it's just just reminding people. Okay, so tell us about your big news that's coming up. Yay, it's behind me.
Speaker 1:My second book is coming out the Art of Small Business Social Media A Blueprint for Marketing Success. It's on pre-order right now. It will be out November 19th. It's on sale everywhere that you like to buy your books. So it's literally just beginning to end for small businesses on how to do everything from like how to create a brand, what is a brand online, and it just goes through all of it, like all of the branding pieces, talks about Canva and it talks about, like, how to create your strategy and then how to create content. So it's in three separate sections. It's very easy to read and I've been doing this for a really long time and I was I was in education before I worked in social media, so that's my background is teaching people things. So it's very like, very nicely laid out, very easy to use, not stressful, and it's not going to tell you that you need to post a million times a week or anything. It's like it's really for small business owners who don't have a lot of money or time. It's how to do it so you can still build a social presence and grow your business, perfect.
Speaker 1:Well, I've already pre-ordered my copy. I can't wait and I know that I'm going to go ahead and like tag everything, but obviously you're on social right. Yeah, you have a website Yep, pegfitzpatrickcom. I'm Peg Fitzpatrick all over on social media, but my website is PegFitzpatrickcom and there's a little book tab at the top and there's all the information there if you want more information Awesome. Well, peg, thank you so much. This has been so much fun, not only because I got to record a podcast, but you seem like a genuinely nice person. I hope that our paths actually cross in person someday, so it'll be amazing. Yeah, thank you so much for sharing all of your wisdom with us, and we will talk at you guys later. Thank you so much.