At Altrincham HQ we like to look at successful social media profiles and get under the hood of why social media works for business
Below is a transcript of an interview we did with Jos Mills of The Con Club Altrincham. Jos manages the Social Media inhouse for The Con Club in Altrincham plus 4 other brands in the same group (Lime Bar, Food Unagi, Holy Dough and George Charles)
You can watch the full 43 minute video below or read the full transcript on which we cover the following and much much more
* A day in the life of a social media manager
* How to get into working as a social media manager
* How many hours a day it takes to manage social media for a bar?
* Defining your brands voice
* Scheduled vs Live Social Media Updates
* The Importance of quality content
* The importance of engagement on Social Media
* Why Twitter is still relevant
* Dealing with complaints
* Personal relationships with social media when you work in social media
* ROI of Social Media
* Top 3 tips for social media
Altrincham HQ: So a little bit of context for the for this discussion. So Jos manages a social media in house for The Con Club which many of our Altrincham based followers will know, but also for other brands in the same group. Lime bar, Food Unagi, Holy Dough and the George Charles. For many of us that follow us on our Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, etc, you know that one of the things we do is manage outsourced social media for businesses. So what we’re actually going to be talking to Jos about today is the other side of social media – social media management in house for brands. So that’s kind of the intro, but I want you to introduce yourself as well. Tell us what your job title is, first of all, what you briefly do for the business as well look at that more in depth later, and how long you’ve been doing it for.
Jos Mills: Okay, so my actual job title is social media marketing for mainly for The Con Club which we’ll talk about that mostly today and a couple of other food and drink outlets
Do I think I stick to my job title, not always I get involved in an awful lot of operational side of things as well. But yeah, I’ve been doing that for just over two years for my current bosses. And it’s great. It’s been very busy. And, and it’s fun. I love it.
I’m very lucky. I enjoy my job.
Altrincham HQ: So you just said you’ve been there for two years. How did you get involved in social media in the first place then?
Jos Mills: So and I’ve been in the hospitality industry for just coming up to 13 years now, I started at the very bottom and working on the door and hosting, sitting people down at tables. And I just fell in love with the industry really. And it’s quite hard not to. I spent 13 years kind of working in various sectors and I was predominantly in the operations side of it, and then moved on to business development, which I did for the last five or six years.
Whilst I was kind of working on the business development side, I always felt like I wasn’t being creative enough, I was always kind of watching what the marketing and the social media team were doing. And we were kind of working together, but I always envied them a little bit because it felt like they got to produce this amazing creative and voice for all the brands that we were looking after. And I was looking after the business to business side of things. And so I was spending a lot of time try and get the sales in from that side and I wasn’t really having any creative output that and and hence me kind of moving into this role with with the guys that currently work for
Altrincham HQ: We’ve sort of mentioned this when we’ve had chats before, but you did quite different roles before hospitality. I remember you mentioning once used to tour with rock and roll bands,
Jos Mills: I did, I had a wonderful two years, travelling the world and working into a catering so again, nothing to do with kind of, you know, the communication side of things. I was predominantly looking after dressing room riders, artists, catering, and sometimes crew catering as well. It was amazing. It was great.
Could I do it now? No, I don’t have the energy. I don’t think I could drink that much anymore either. But it was a great experience. And I wouldn’t take it back to the world. It was fantastic. But I think now I’m a little bit older and quite happy quite settled here.
Altrincham HQ: Yeah, I think that’s I used to work in rock and roll as well. I used to be a music journalist. And I think it’s definitely like, you can do it when you’re young. And you get more sensible as you get older. So you obviously did this and you talked then about the sort of envy from being in business development and wanting to have this creative side. You said you studied the people that were doing the market But did you do actually did you actually study marketing? Get training? obsessed on studying marketing before jumping into the role?
Jos Mills: No. Well, I’ve got to be honest with you. No, I didn’t. And I don’t think you have to nowadays, by all means, yes. I think that you need to have a vested interest and you have to have a passion for it because then it’s not so much studying. It’s the interest in it kind of means that you get involved and you kind of watch the way people work and you see what works, see what doesn’t work.
The company I was with before this the business that we had, I think it was 11 brands that were looking after. And some work, some didn’t. But we had one marketing manager and one social media manager that looked after all those brands. And, and it was just kind of seeing how they were watching how their day to day and kind of diary worked out, just watching them and seeing the content that we’re putting out. And if you kind of study that, and you watch what people are doing, and you kind of, you know, take your vested interest in it, I think that you can still be successful.
I think that as long as you’ve got a bit of a creative mind, and you know who you want to talk to, and you know what it is you’re talking about, then I don’t think you need a qualification anymore. I really don’t think it’s important.
Altrincham HQ: Yeah, I agree. Obviously, my background was studying marketing way back in the day, kind of an oldie, but studying marketing at Salford, uni and did all that, but a lot of the social media skills I learned in a job is as a music journalist. Social Media didn’t exist when I was at uni. I learned on the job studying from when MySpace came out in the music industry and then on to Facebook and yeah, a lot you can pick up. But I think as you said, then you’ve got to have that creativity side to you. A lot of people, unfortunately don’t have that side to them, I guess.
Jos Mills: And I’m the kind of, you know, the technical side of things as well. There’s, there’s things that I kind of missed all the time that I look back on, and I think I didn’t think about that, that I probably don’t have done with some help. And, you know, like, you do that. So I could probably come to you and say, Alex, like, give me a hand cuz I’m not too sure if this is the way I should be going about this, or if this is the format, because I’m literally learning all the time. And but I think yeah, it’s the content and the creativity comes from from there. And then the technical side the skills you can learn from, from people like yourselves really,
Altrincham HQ: One thing that is passionate hate for me, I really, really hate this
But when when I see some social media gurus, or I call them charlatans say you can manage social media like 10 or 20 minutes a day. So for any beginners that are watching this, you can’t . I wish it was true as I’d have more time to do my own stuff. But for anyone who’s watching this and I imagine a lot of people watching this are going to be in hospitality, retail and so on. For any beginners watching this, how much time do you spend the day on social media marketing and talk us through a day in the life of your job
Jos Mills: Okay, so firstly, I spend a lot of time if you ask anyone, I am on my phone constantly. So my laptops there, my laptop kind of helps with graphics and with with kind of scheduling posts and things like that, but I am on my phone. The whole time I’m in work because things are changing all the time, especially at the moment and given what’s going on in the world and you have to constantly be with it. Checking social channels to make sure what’s happening. And not only locally not only nationally, but internationally now. And so a huge chunk of my working day will be spent on social media.I tend to schedule it a little bit, but not so much.
And as per my working day, I couldn’t tell you a typical working day, because it’s so fast paced. Hospitality is a tough one. And like I said, at the minute especially, and then having quite a few brands to look after, and my time will change depending on who I’m looking after, on what day what the weather’s like, all sorts of things, the number of them, the number of things that can can affect your business. And that mean that you have to constantly be on the go and constantly thinking. Can’t forget about that. Can’t forget about that. You know, I need to make sure things going out on the right timing. It can just be that literally be every day is different for me. There’s never any kind of structure. It’s great
Altrincham HQ: People outsource social media to ourselves. And so the minimum time we start on is like, four hours a week. And that’s, I think that’s about half an hour a day. So how much time a day if you had to guess or estimate how much time you spent on social media? How much would it actually be on social media for work
Jos Mills: It’s terrible, but you know, you get your iPhone report of how long you’ve been on the screen. Normally, I would say that’s between eight and nine hours a day. And I would say probably six or seven of that would be work. I would say maybe an hour or so is me. Kind of checking everything for myself and making sure you now that my own little channels game
Altrincham HQ: Literally 80-90% work related so 10% yourself. So it’s a huge time investment. I would say that for any business that’s watching this, and is thinking, we need to make more of social media for businesses and thinking of handing it over to bar staff, for instance, that’s a classic mistake.
Jos Mills: I think if you haven’t got someone in house that is naturally focused, you know, is given the job role, and is kind of just there to do that. I don’t think that it will necessarily get nurtured and looked after and executed in the right way, consistently, with the right voice with the right content. Because, you know, before I got here, it was being looked after by some great people that worked here, but it’s the timing. It’s finding the time to do it, and it’s making sure it’s done at the right time. The picture’s are clear, and it’s enticing and what you’re saying has all the informations there.
And if you can imagine a waitress or the managers, you know, kind of having that extra pressure on the shoulders really because it’s quite a lot of responsibility. I don’t think people realise that is it’s a lot to ask someone.
Altrincham HQ: Yeah, if you think about it and think I’m sat here interviewing you, and there’s a reason for that. Because you think of all the bars, restaurants, cafes, food business in Altrincham, I’ve chosen to chat to you because what you do is a good job. And you do it well, and lots of people don’t. And so you mentioned it, then in the last answer, where do you sit on the scheduled updates versus the live social media updates? What what percentage is scheduled on yours?
Jos Mills: So I think, I think scheduled posts are great. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with them.
I think they should be the skeleton of your diary every week. So I think you sit down and you kind of think right, they say there’s a general message going out every every day.
I kind of want someone to know what time you open. So they know I’m open. Or you know, and they know what day of the week is leading up to the weekend. Oh, you’re looking forward to it. Have you made your booking yet? So a very general, like consensus post that kind of is, just a bit of a suggestion.
And then I think that you build around that with the live updates. And I think live updates are important just to show that there’s a person behind it, that it’s not just a computer because because Don’t get me wrong. I have had instances where I have and sheduled posts to go out and something’s happened like, we’d like for example, a football games been postponed or anything like that. And I I forgotten about that post or I’ve kind of been too busy and I’ve not had time to get to that schedule post and it goes out and you can guarantee there’s loads of people, especially on Twitter, happens more on Twitter, Twitter warriors jumped straight on I Oh, you forgot to delete that posting you know, that kind of thing. I’m a perfectionist so I take it to heart and beat myself up when I’ve done something like that.
So use your scheduled posts, but kind of keep your live updates for you know, while it’s a sunny day “oh my god it’s beautiful outside Look how busy the town centre is” – you know the kind of more personable tweets that you can make.
Altrincham HQ: I think getting that balance right between scheduled and live is is important. We I schedule stuff on my account, schedule stuff on clients accounts, but then you leave the gaps when you know something’s gonna happen like a Boris announcement or something like today was a bit hectic.
So one of the things you’ve got, obviously, you’ve got all the different brands. Well, I think the benefit of what you’ve got doing with us is the brands that you work with are naturally aesthetically pleasing from the locations or based on the type food that you serve and so on. But I mean this Still aesthetically pleasing in real life and as aesthetically pleasing on social, which has got really high standards. So how much time do you actually spend on content production terms of taking photos, taking videos,
Jos Mills: Loads, I spend loads, I have a my camera reel on my phone is currently at 13,000 pictures. And you can guarantee 2% of those are my personal photos.
The best of them are food drink, doorway entrances, roof, terraces, paints, you know, sushi, everything on my phone is dedicated visually to work.
And it is really important. And again, it’s quite, it’s quite high pressured because you do want to kind of, you know, stand out, you’ve got to, you’ve got to be unique in what you’re selling, what you’re asking people to come and spend their hard earned money on. I think it’s really important. And I do think that it’s getting a little bit harder because I think everyone’s uping the game. Everything looks fantastic to stand out in a feed, especially on Instagram, where it’s, you know, it’s, everything looks fantastic. Everyone can edit a picture nowadays, you scroll through really quickly, you pass you know, it’s gone. You forgotten about those before because you’re on to the next one. So it’s incredibly important to kind of make sure that your feed looks aesthetically pleasing to start with, and then people are interested in what they’re looking at. It’s interesting to, to kind of see
Altrincham HQ: Yeah, I think you’re right that the standards have really improved from when I first started 10 years ago, I’m not saying you could get away with a rubbish photo then, but it wasn’t as high standard due to camera phones
Jos Mills: You should see my photos on my on my personal Instagram from like, seven years ago. They’re hilarious. can’t even see people’s faces properly. They’re blurry. But yeah,
Altrincham HQ: I mean, it Everything’s massively improved. In the old days you used to have like only the high end restaurants that had good quality food photos. Now even the greasy spoon cafe photos are stunning. You can take amazing photos on your iPhones nowaday. Amazing.
So one of the things that I always sense that you get at the Con Clubparticularly is you have a really supportive team, in terms of management and staff helping you out. There’s no one putting barriers in the way. I mean, does it help that you have that team behind you?
Jos Mills: Yeah, they’re, they’re really, really good. They know what I’m like. So like I said, I’m quite, I’m quite impatient. And I’m quite a perfectionist with certain things. And I like things being done my way and this is all like, you know, to my detriment, and because then when I asked for help, sometimes I’m like, come on, come on. We need to do it now. And everyone’s Oh, gosh, like leave us alone.
But I have got The most wonderful team and they’re really good as well, because they’re all really interested in social media as well. So sometimes if I miss something, or if I’ve not noticed that something’s going on local.
Or you know, if someone’s posted a really nice post, it looks fab. And it’s really cool. And you know, it’s really interesting and mirrors kind of what we’re doing, but somewhere else, they’re always really quick to say “Oh, wow, have you seen this, like, Oh, this is great”. And it’s, it’s good that you’ve got that they’re also interested in it. And they’re always watching our socials as well. They’re sharing and commenting. And it’s nice because it just makes it reach that little bit further, organically rather than kind of pay, you know, when you constantly paying for posts to try and get them to people. So much easier if you can, if you have a bit of a network that you can kind of say, Come on, guys, give us a share, give us a retweet on post will yer.
Altrincham HQ: And has that is that been there since day one, or is it kind of happened over time?
Jos Mills: Happened over time? I think now because we’re confidence in what we do. And and because everyone is so involved in what we do, everyone knows what the what the scope is. So I think they feel confident enough to share and to talk about it and kind of do that. And but it’s it’s definitely come with time. I think it comes when you feel secure in in your brand.
Altrincham HQ: That’s really good because I think that when we when we do what we do and businesses outsource to us, the success of the campaign is definitely based on the backing of the staff. And it’s really, it’s really frustrating when we deal with a client, say the owner or the manager. And they don’t explain to the staff that social media is really important. And then you ask him for photos and you don’t get them and it’s really annoying.
Jos Mills: Oh “hi. Do you know what that offer is?” And staff are like “What? What’s he talking about?”
Altrincham HQ: So yeah, definitely, that whole sort of joined up thinking.In terms of your brand’s voice, and you said you’ve been there for two years. What freedom do you have in controlling that brands voice?Is that entirely down to you? Or do you get guidelines from above?
Jos Mills: I am very lucky. I would say I’ve got complete freedom. And I think that’s because I have known my bosses for quite some time. So I think you know, I’m really conscientious anyway. And especially nowadays with the reach of social media, and you you can speak to the other side of the world, and, and also given what’s been going on currently with regards to Coronavirus, Black Lives Matter, and there’s been so many kind of social situations where you have to be really, really careful and my bosses are amazing. They just kind of say whatever you think, and what they know. That’s because I am incredibly careful of how I speak to people and and I’m also really conscientious of what How are brands appear?
And a think that they know I would, I would always consult them I’d always ask their opinion and I do on, you know, loads of occasions, I will say to them, what do you think? and nine times out of 10 they’ll go Yeah, cool. Go with it. If you think that’s right, go for it. And very rarely they’ll say, let’s have a chat, let’s move on. Let’s ask the team and but other than that,
I’m really lucky I think as well. And the businesses that have kind of been born in the last six months. Food Unagi and Holy Dough and because of I’ve literally been there at the point of it kind of realisation you know, we’re going to do this let’s do it. What do we want to look like? What do we want to sound like? And they’ve kind of just handed it to me and gone “Tell everyone”
Altrincham HQ: It’s really like interesting because I think that’s the thing about social media. You do have to know the brand inside out, you have to know the voice. You have To know what’s acceptable, what’s not acceptable, so on. I think with everyone in 2020, everyone’s so ready to be offended. That’s like a minefield. You say something that would have appeared normal and you have to double check, like you said, you have to go to sort of say, what do you think of this? Because you have to have that sense check with someone sometimes to sort of think, yeah, I don’t think it’s risky. But does anyone else think it’s risky
Jos Mills: I think that’s one of the hardest parts of the job. And because it’s once it’s out there on social media, regardless of whether you post it and a minute later, you think, Oh, I’m going to take that down. Within that minute. You don’t know how many hundred people how many thousands of people have seen that screenshot of it.
Altrincham HQ: One thing that you’re good at, as well as the brand voice is what I call social media engagement. Like literally, the idea of actually going out and talking to people and building relationships with people. And I know so many local businesses are totally naff at that they just broadcast and don’t do anything else. So is engagement, something you find natural as a human being, as a person, or is it’s something you’ve learned over the years on social?
Jos Mills: Yeah. can’t shut me up. No, and it’s really important because it’s genuine. And you know, someone takes the time out of their day, to respond to you to your post to say “that looks great” or post a heart or you know and interact with you. They’re taking time out of their day to do that. Now, don’t get me wrong. I am absolutely at work, all day every day. But if I can respond to people, even if it’s just like, you know, a heart back at them, thank you anything. It’s really important for you Just it shows a bit of integrity behind your brand that you’re actually there that there’s someone there that you’re not just going to say, buy this, drink this drink, eat this food, come and spend money with us.
It’s a way of constantly always about saying, Thank you, that’s great. But you know, just kind of a bit of encouragement as well for people to just know that we do care. And we are grateful, you know, for everyone that comes through the doors, for everyone that goes through a takeaway, for everyone that buys it or not. And we’re really grateful and it’s just you know, if I’m employed to do that, that’s part of the job.
Altrincham HQ: Yeah, definitely. Naturally as part of what I do I go out somewhere tweets about it or post on Instagram.
Jos Mills: And you’re the only person I know that is more interactive than me.
Altrincham HQ: Oh, that’s Yeah, I am. I am kinda like Mr. chatty on social media. It’s nice to be nice. It’s I think I’ve done it in the past where I’ve gone and spent with a local business and tweeted or posted about them and they’ve not acknowledged it and it gets to the point where it does have a real life knock on effect on where you go. If a business can’t even bother saying thank you. I’m not gonna go back and spend money with them.
Altrincham HQ: So that leads us as well. engagement is important and it’s something I love. I thinkTwitter, literally, in your sector, particularly, I think in both hospitality. I think retail businesses aswell find it really hard to get on board with Twitter and what or why do you think that is? Why does it work for you and if you have to explain to somebody who doesn’t use Twitter, how is it different compared to Instagram and Facebook?
Jos Mills: So I love Twitter. And we had some people actually come in and like kind of look into our our social reports and followers to kind of give a bit of give me a little bit of publicity. To support and kind of say, look, this is where you’re falling short, and they couldn’t understand why I bothered and wasting my time on Twitter and I was like, that’s not a waste of time to me because my main thing with Twitter is how I speak to other businesses. That’s how I know what’s going on. I find locally I can have a look at what’s going on with the council. I can speak to you and you’re constantly updating letting everyone know what’s going on in in like the region. And it’s also another way to just say like, “Hey, guys, you alright, how you doing?”
We’ve got Twitter groups with all the local businesses. That’s how we all speak to each other. And and I think Twitter’s good because I personally think when you go on Instagram, like I said, You are not interested in what is written underneath that picture. You’re really not, you’re looking at the picture and you’re going up or you’re going across the top and you’re looking at the stories. You’re not really listening into what’s being said. And I think Facebook and then I think Facebook, kind of a mix of both, but I think Twitter is more information. And I think as well, it’s interesting. I don’t know, I just find it really interesting.
I’ve always liked Twitter. And it really annoys me when people don’t use it. It still travels Well, you might not have loads of interaction with with it, but it’s genuine interaction. And to me, Instagrams, fake, right. But I think that it’s a little bit superficial now. I think with Twitter, it’s general it’s genuine interaction with people. It’s a conversation. I think that Instagram, as much as I like. I just don’t think it’s necessarily sometimes the best for business speak to speak to each local areas.
Altrincham HQ: Yeah, I think Twitter’s really, really massively underrated. I mean, I’m biased, because it’s the first platform I like really really loved as a platform but I think it’s really massively underrated. If you work in hospitality and use it your business and if you if you chat to a local solicitors suddenly you can have 30 solicitors turned up. Or if it’s a retailer, he could have like a 30 people buying a president for their Secret Santa or something like that. And it’s really, really underrated. And yet, everyone who’s listened this should go and join Twitter and start to use it as much as you other platforms
Altrincham HQ: So we touched on this before briefly when we talked about people looking to be offended on social media. And every business has complaints. I know in real life sometimes you have 999 happy customers. Most of them won’t say that they’re happy customers on social media, a handful will, and then you’ll have the one person who literally sends 20 tweets probably about half 11 at night after a few special brews and complains. How do you You deal with those?
Jos Mills: You always get one.
So, how do I deal with them? Well, I always go to the to the route to the source. And I always contact them. And privately First of all, I just say, look, tell me tell me what’s up? What’s the problem? What happened? And the customer’s always right. You know that thing in hospitality you bought in, you know, in all sorts of sectors. You just have sometimes got to just say, I’m really sorry, what can we do for you? It’s backfired to me. I don’t know whether you remember ages ago on Twitter. Someone complained about our beer because we brew our own beer on site here at the Con Club and someone got in touch on Twitter, a keyboard warrior says there’s something wrong with your beer and you know, complained about it. So I’m like, got straight into it for them privately. Really sorry. Next time you’re in have a free pint. He then publicly tweeted allowed more like, well, I won’t swear, crap about us start seeing all these really nasty things. So I thought, right, okay, publicly, I tweeted him and I just said, Don’t bother coming in for that free pint of.
I think you, you get in touch with the customer and you try and do your best. You can only try your best. You win some you lose some. And it’s the same with TripAdvisor. It’s the same with various platforms, you’re always going to get one so you try not to take it to heart too much. I do for a couple of days. But you kind of try and move on forward with it. You know, I think you can you can try and be the best of the best of the best and get 110% in everything. And I think you’re not going to be able to please everyone you’re really not if those 999 people think what you’re doing is great, then you can’t be doing all right.
Altrincham HQ: So last few questions and time management of social obviously, I know you mainly from The Con Club as a main brand and then you had Food Unagi and Holy Dough launch this year. Did your time increase on social media after work and this Oh, did you have to like split the time you’re normally doing into like several chunks.
Jos Mills: It’s just increasing. I’m not gonna lie to you. I think at the minute I’m doing okay. I think that lockdown has helped. I think that when we open to the public again. I think I’m going to have to reevaluate how I split my time. And like we said before social media is such such a machine. And it the minute I’m working more and but, you know, I’m also looking at maybe trying to get a bit of help now and a bit of assistance on it because as as things grow, we’ve got two brands. I’ve got two extra brands now that I’ve got talk about one of those brands has got three sites. So it’s quite a quite an increase in such a short space of time and I’m going to have to start looking for assistance now and becoming Yeah, otherwise I would be permanently 24/7 on social media.
Altrincham HQ: So that’s the thing again and keep we keep coming back staffing, resources, resources, resources, isn’t it. If you’re a business they often just go, right, you’ve got a spare 20 minutes you can do. It’s gonna be like, hours, hours hours,
Jos Mills: As well, let’s remember that social media doesn’t work between the hours of nine to five social media is on 24/7. So if someone’s asking you a question, at quarter to 10 at night about what time last orders is somewhere, you know, I can’t ignore that. I’ve got this conscientious mind that I’m kind of thinking like, Oh, no, it’s a customer and you know, I kind of want to get back to them so i’d love like social media to be nine to five That was really good for me, but it’s just not anymore.
Altrincham HQ: So that again is and that nicely leads us on to this next question your your personal relationship with social media. I don’t know. You work in it, obviously. But are you? Are you still active on social media on a personal level?
Jos Mills: Oh, God. I used to. I used to absolutely love, like, being on social media all the time, personally, to check on my friends to check on family that I don’t necessarily see all the time. And that has reduced significantly in the last two years, and I just don’t want to look at it all the time. I really don’t. And like I said, I get the report on my iPhone saying, you know, you’ve been on the phone eight hours today, you’ve been on screen time, eight hours, and I just kind of think, Oh, God, like I really need to get off this and read a book or go for a walk in like my mind flowing again and not just be like, you know, tunnel vision down the screen.
Altrincham HQ: It’s stressful. I do the same if I go on a run the phone strapped to me arms so I can’t look at it
Jos Mills: Yeah. And it’s kind of that thing when it gets to when it gets a little bit later at night, I just make sure that it’s there. But I’m kind of like every so often, check notifications, just make sure there’s nothing like huge going on that I’m missing out on or something huge going on that that means, you know, we need to be careful here or something like that. And yeah, but it’s it’s always there.
Altrincham HQ: So last two questions. You said you spending lots of time on social. Every business watching this wants to know this, what is the ROI of social and is there an ROI return on investment?
Jos Mills: You will know unless you are putting offers on whereby you are asking for some form of return with regards to and when you’re booking you need to quote this and we’re doing two for ones on this cocktail. Because then you can kind of measure it and you can look at your report online you can check your you know how far your posts are reaching you can check on if you’re doing paid socials, and how many new followers are coming back from x y Zed things like that, that you can get away with with with with regards to sales and My thing is, as long as the sales are always like this, and never like this, we’re getting a return on investment because and I also know just from interaction, I can tell, you know, if I’m if I post about something, and I see it going off the scale straightaway, I know we’re going to be busy for that, because the interaction on it is already, you know, crazy. And I just think this is what people want. And I think that as you, you know, whether you’re just starting your brand or you you’re rebranding or anything like that, as you kind of learn more about your business and what it is that you want to get across to people and you see that interaction. That’s how you know something’s working and you know, to do more of that, and kind of, you know, go down that down that route, go down that channel and kind of go with the flow because it’s working for you.
And, and you know, if anything ever does kind of bomb or kind of end up being a crappy idea, and you just take it on the chin and you just didn’t sell very well didn’t do well, but onto another day.
Altrincham HQ: Now, I think you’re right. I hear from people who manage social media as well.
Yeah. When you outsourcing your social media that the owner of the business almost expects everyone to walk in the business and say, “I just saw you on Twitter, I just saw you on Facebook or Instagram.” And it doesn’t happen because they never did the same with TV, radio, newspapers. They never walked in and said, I just saw you in the Sale & Altrincham messenger, because many people never did it unless they said they’ve got the voucher or the offer or the so on. So a lot of it’s common sense for a business owner to sort of go, are we getting busier? Are we going quieter? Is it remaining the same sometimes even in difficult times?
Jos Mills: As well, Alex, I think the whole point of having me or you is that you are the voice. So you’ve just you’re just that little constant reminder in the background saying, Well, here, we’re open with serving foods great, you know, like that kind of thing, just to, it’s just like, you need that little thing in the background, you know, just kind of saying like, Oh, God, yeah, we’ve not been there in a while. And then I suddenly come in saying, I love that picture. Can I have it just happened, but you never saw, like, I saw this picture on on Instagram. Can I have that whatever that is? Unless that kind of happens. No, you’re not going to know what you know, you can tell nowadays by the little numbers on your reports that are telling you like, you know, 5000 people saw this, you know, and that’s that matters, that that means that 5000 sets of eyes have looked at your Sunday roast and got
Altrincham HQ: You know, is that really is that constant reminder and I think the business is are at the front of people’s minds, like particularly when now when we come back from lock down on July 4th. You’re at the front of mind for after lockdown and it’s that kind of that sort of mentality because I always see you as the bars that aren’t on social, restaurants aren’t on social, they’re kind of at the back of your mind and you don’t really think about them in the same way.
And so last question for anyone who’s watching this 3 top social media tips.
Jos Mills: And so I would always say have fun. I think it’s important to have personality in your posts. Whether it’s the picture it’s a bit fun, and, or whether it’s the way you’re saying something, put your personality into it. That’s what matters. That’s what makes you unique. That’s what makes you makes people remember
And I will say I always personally, in my social posts, if they’re a visual thing if it’s going on to Facebook or Instagram, try and have like an A member of your team in the photo kind of, you know, kind of holding the drink with a smile on the face. Because it makes it personable, it makes people kind of think, you know, a smile on your face makes you think, ah, like, look at them enjoying the drink, think I might go and enjoy that. So I always like to have a bit of interaction in the photo as well.
And lastly, God, what would I say?
And just, I would say, don’t take everything to heart that because on social media can get really kind of bogged down if you don’t think that you are kind of living up to the expectations, if your pictures don’t look as greatest, you know, so and so is don’t, you know, don’t kind of take that to heart as long as you’re, and as long as you’re doing what you love, and you love what you sell. And you think that your brand is great that will come across and might not be the best picture. But it might be a picture that means something to you and when you talk about it. Have integrity about your brand and about what you’re doing in your own business because it comes across. I don’t like things that are kind of heartless, you know, to me, you’ve got to believe in what you do. You’ve got believe in what you’re talking about, and you’ve got to make it genuine.
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