Social Media | Personal v. Business
The focus on this post being specializing your social media - it's perfect for branding, promotion, getting bookings, finding shows - but there's usually a weird combo friend/follower list of real-life friends and family vs wrestling/business friends and contacts. Personally, I sometimes hesitate posting on my social media accounts because I have such a mix of "personal" friends and "industry" friends. And there have absolutely been a hefty handful of people I un-friended/un-followed who I knew "professionally" for posting things that I personally disagreed with. We're in a werid-ass timeline right now, and everything is a hot button topic for someone. So I wanted to delve a little bit into separating personal from business on social media, and share some info I found about making that a bit easier as well as utilizing social media for promotion.
Most social media apps have made it easier to manage multiple accounts, which is super helpful here. If you have one IG account or one Twitter account where you throw everything - business, marketing, personal, etc. consider setting up a separate 'business' account. Make a couple posts encouraging everyone to follow your Business Account and then remove anyone who isn't a personal friend or family from your now-personal account. *Or if it's easier, convert your existing account into your business account and set up a separate personal account. Either way, part the waters! With Instagram you can have up to 4-5 active accounts in the app, and Twitter is crazy. They let you manage up to 8 accounts in the app. I know this seems like the most obvious thing to some, but I've seen a surprising amount of people who either don't have separate accounts or who have a "professional/business" account and neglect it because they're just so in the habit of posting to their personal account.
It can seem like a lot of extra work, but it doesn't take very long and I promise it's worth it. There's a tool I use to help manage and cross-post on social media accounts so that you're not wasting time. The goal here is to create your dedicated audience for business/wrestling/promotion. So once you've established a difference you can start utilizing it getting the most from all those potential buyers, attendees, fans, etc. I use an app called IFTTT (If This Then That). It's free (yay!) and very customizable. In my previous life of office-job we went through a couple different social media management tools like Hootsuite and Buffer but they have limited functionality and getting posts to look good across all platforms was difficult at best. IFTTT implements "applets" or what they used to call recipes to create actions.
For example, I have "applets" set that when I post this blog, IFTTT will automatically take this post and share it to Facebook and Twitter. Which is most likely how you got here! See how that works out? And when I add a photo on Instagram, I have applets that will share it to FB, Twitter, Tumblr, and Pinterest. Boom. All on its own. You don't have to tell it when to do it, it will recognize that something new was posted and will run all by itself so you don't have to mess with it or create the same post in 10 different places. I love it - it's a huge time saver and you can broadcast to a wide audience without blowing your whole morning posting all over the place.
The one thing I did like using about Buffer, the other service mentioned above, is that it will automatically optimize your posting schedule. Like if you make a post and publish it, Buffer will post it during the "prime" time for each social media. For Facebook it's 1-4pm, for LinkedIn it's 5-6pm, etc. But at the time it didn't work with Instagram, and limits the amount of accounts you can connect unless you pay for one of their higher tiered options.
As a general tip, I also keep a note in my phone of hashtags for specific things. Between Fully Gimmicked, my Etsy shop, and an Etsy shop I run for my mother, I do A LOT of promoting and a LOT of posting. So typing and remembering the same hashtags forever is just useless. Instagram lets you put up to 30 hashtags so you can go nuts, just keep them relevant. I've used Hashtagify - it's a tool to find relevant and popular hashtags and will even let you track certain hashtags to see their utilization, popularity, and "influencers" using it. When I track #FullyGimmicked, it lets me see who used the hashtag with the most "influence" - reach, followers, activity, etc. It's pretty cool to be able to see that and helps shape your marketing campaigns and strategy.
Regardless of what it is that you're doing - whether it be a podcast, small business, wrestling, or anything else - being able to identify and utilize your audience will determine the effectiveness of your posts and promotions. You can have a great show coming up, but if the show is in Florida and you're promoting it to people in Wyoming that's not going to do any good (unless it's on iPPV but you get the point I'm making here). You have to promote the right thing to the right audience.
Oh, and last thing I promise, but I love this too much not to share it. Another Small Business Boss Lady friend of mine turned me on to Linktree. And it's fantastic. Since Instagram and most social media profiles only allow you to put in one link, you have to make that one link count. Linktree is the best way I've found to promote multiple things at once without having to keep swapping links. It creates a landing page, where you can add multiple links. So if you look at mine for Fully Gimmicked https://linktr.ee/fullygimmicked - you can see I have links for Punk Pro, the website, a new shirt drop, etc. List your next show, YouTube channel, merch site (*cough cough* us *cough cough*), link to a video or sponsor site. You just log into Linktree using your instagram login, and any changes you make are updated instantly. It's so incredibly helpful that no matter what I'm promoting I can say "Link in bio!" and the Linktree has got it covered.
None of the things I mentioned here (IFTTT, Hashtagify, Buffer, Linktree) are sponsored posts or anything like that - I mean if they wanna pay me that'd be rad - but I'm just sharing what I've found works well for me and hopefully to help others.
Let me know what you use and what you like! I'd love to see if/how these things get implemented. And if there are other topics you'd like to see me ramble on about here, let me know!
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