Dr. Barnes shares the third social media mistake that many business leaders often make. This one mistake positions a company’s products or services incorrectly in the mind of customers. Making this mistake can drastically reduce engagement, leads, and sales. Dr. Barnes explains how avoiding this mistake can keep a brand or company’s product and service top-of-mind with its social media followers. This episode is based on Dr. Barnes' book "5 Social Media Mistakes Your Business Should Avoid."

Transcription:

Welcome to the Bricks-To-Clicks Marketing podcast. If you're a small business owner and you struggle with marketing your business, this podcast is just for you. I'm your host James Barnes and thank you for listening today.

Welcome back to the podcast, everyone. In season one, we've been talking about the five social media mistakes your business should avoid based on a book I wrote that just came out on Amazon and Audible not long ago. And I just want to carve out a little piece again from the book.

And today we're going to talk about really mistake number three, and the mistake is you don't use your secret weapon. What do I mean by that? In previous episodes, we've talked about explaining to your customer that you understand the problem they have and the losses they experience, and that sort of goes together, problem and loss. And then next we wanted to add empathy, you want to express genuine empathy so your customer understands you get it, you know what problem they have, you know how to solve it. You get it, you have empathy.

And then today, really the reason I call it "you're not using your secret weapon" is that a lot of times those pieces do not go into the marketing collateral when people just say, "Here's my service and you should buy it." They don't know why to buy it. They don't know if they buy it, how their life is going to be made better. Sometimes they may be even unclear as to how they even buy the service or engage with the company or brand online. So what you have to do is you have to position yourself so that your products and services can be the solution to the problem and loss that your customers are having. You explain the problem and loss that they have, you understand it with empathy, and then you can immediately position what you sell as the solution to it.

Think about it like this, if you sell something that helps customers reduce anxiety, then what does life look like when someone has less anxiety? Well, your solution, whatever it is that you're selling that does that, needs to express those points, it needs to say, "If you buy this service, you're going to reduce your stress, you're going to be able to get back to life and live it to the fullest," that kind of stuff.

So your secret weapon is really what you sell, but you don't want it to be a secret weapon. But when it's not positioned as the solution to the problem your customers have, it does has become a secret weapon because people don't know about it, they don't know why they should actually buy it and you don't want that. So what you want to do is express that you understand the problem they have, problem, loss, and empathy go first, and then you can pivot to offer what it is you sell, could be an ebook that helps them do something, could be any kind of service or product, it just doesn't matter. You want to position yourself as the solution to the problem.

And if you want to think about like, your customer's problem, there's some pain point they have about it, and your solution provides the medicine. So pain and medicine go together. All of a sudden you relieve the tension they have, the stress they have, the problem they have, and you have a chance to sell what it is that you sell in your business, product service, whatever it may be. That's sort of the idea, and that's the kind of content that you would write in any social media post, problem, loss, empathy, and then you can offer your service, whatever it may be.

It doesn't have to be for sale either, it could be a free e-book or free something else. I'll go back to the example I've been using in the podcast for the season, and that is the billboard example. I was driving down the road in Louisiana years ago and saw this billboard and the top it said, "Gambling problem?" And then it said, "You could lose this," and there was a silhouette of the family and you could see that was the loss. And so underneath, they expressed empathy by simply saying, "We can help," in really bold letters, you could see it very easily.

Well, the next component to that is the secret weapon. What's the service? What is it I can now use that you have to actually solve these problems that I have about gambling? And so what this company did is they had the name of the rehab facility and it said, "Call us at..." and then it gave the phone number. So they were calling their customer to action once they said, "Here's our secret weapon, here's our service, here's who we are." But they did it after they explained the problem, loss, and empathy. So it followed that problem, loss, empathy came first, and then they offered their solution to it, which is what they sell, which is a rehab facility services.

That's the way that you're going to get attention when you post things on social media. People are looking to have a better life. If you can show that you understand the problem they have and that you have empathy about it and then you have something that helps them solve that problem, it may be a free ebook, could be a free service, or it could be something for a fee, it could be either one, you have a great opportunity to position your business as being helpful and helping your customers solve a problem they have.

That's going to take you miles down the road in terms of connecting with people in general. And that's the kind of stuff you want to be posting on social media, it's one of the mistakes that companies make over and over again. They don't do this together, they don't put problem, loss, empathy ahead of their secret weapon, whatever it is they sell, they just say, "Hey, here's our secret weapon, here's what we sell, this is what you need. You should get this." And you really don't know why you need it.

And so problem, loss, empathy come first, then you understand why you need the service and people will too. That's going to help you go a lot faster into developing relationships online for your business through social media. So again, use problem, loss, empathy, and then you want to pivot to what it is that you're selling, whatever it may be or whatever free ebook, whatever you have. That's the way you're going to start writing content on your social media to get people to pay attention more and more.

So avoid the mistake. You want to position your product after you do problem, loss, and empathy, and write it out. And that's the kind of stuff you want to do. So use images, use video to show your product and service solves your customer's problem, you understand it, and then show what life has made better after they use the service, that's the way you want to do your content.

So that's it for this episode. I [inaudible 00:06:09] want to come back and talk about... You can show, "Here's what I sell," or "Here's the free ebook," or whatever, but make sure it's preceded by content about problem, loss, and empathy. At a minimum show something like that ahead of time before you say, "Here's what I'm selling," or "Here's what I'm giving away," it gives a reason for why you're giving away or why you're selling your services and what you have, going to make you a lot stronger in the minds of your customers about what you do, and that's going to help you sell more.

I hope you've enjoyed the episode. We're going to come back to the next episode and we're going to talk about mistake number four and we're going to talk about what that mistake is. I'll tell you what that is in the next episode.

Well, listen, that's all for this episode. Thanks always for listening to the Bricks-To-Clicks Marketing podcast, where we help you market your business without feeling overwhelmed. You can get the downloads and show notes and much, much more for all the episodes for the podcast just by going to our Facebook page. Just search for Bricks-To-Clicks Marketing. See you again next week.