Pausing Your Social Media and why you shouldn’t do it.
In a recession often the 1st thing that gets cut is marketing.
And inevitably, when we’re talking about marketing for many businesses, that means social media.
Social Media is often the only form of marketing that small businesses are doing regularly.
Our longest client has been with us for 12 years now and the only pause they took with us was the 3 months of lockdown 1, when the business was forced to close. As soon as they could open again they came straight back to us as they knew that the social media marketing was working.
For any business thinking of pausing their social media for a “couple of months” here’s 6 big big warnings.
Pausing Your Social Media Is Turning off your only supply of customers
Look back over the last 3-6 months.
Have you had customers through doors? Customers visiting your website? Customers emailing you or calling you?
Now unless you’re a huge business with big budgets the chances are that you’re not spending money on newspaper advertising, billboards, SEO, sponsorship, PR, Event Marketing, Leaflet drops, television, radio, sales teams, cold calling.
Your only source of marketing is social media (and the word of mouth that comes from that social media marketing).
If you pause social media for a couple of months you are turning off your only supply of new customers.
And you lose all the touch points with your existing customers and followers. It’s easy for people to forget you 100s and 1000s of pieces of information on social media each day.
You might be saving on social media marketing costs, but you are also losing all the benefits and revenue that drives.
Pausing Your Social Media Is is Giving the competition 30-90 touch points
It takes 7 touch points to make a sale.
That is the figure that is often quoted.
Although in the modern age it can be as high as 42.
Essentially by pausing your social media, you’re giving your competition an open goal.
All those extra touch points from social media posts, engagement and more.
You’ve gone from top of mind and tip of tongue to the competition being top of mind and tip of tongue.
And trust me – the competition will take any easy advantage they can.
All is fair in love, war and business.
Pausing Your Social Media Harms the algorithm
The algorithm is a needy desperate attention seeking beast.
The social media platforms rewards people and businesses that pay it attention.
The businesses that win on the social media algorithm
- Post Consistently
- Post Content The Audience Love
- Engage With Others
If you pause your social media, you’re telling the social media platforms they’re not a priority.
And if they’re not a priority, you are not a priority.
When you come back after the pause, you’ll be in uphill battle against the algorithm.
Pausing Your Social Media Creates Uncertainty for customers
Are you open?
Aren’t you open?
Suddenly going silent on social media creates an air of uncertainty in your customers eyes.
They want a safe bet.
Half of the battle in business is just turning up.
On Social Media that means posting regularly.
If your last post was 30-60 days ago people start to make assumptions.
They’ll book elsewhere for their special event.
Pausing Your Social Media Undoes all the good work your social media manager has done
Most Social Media Managers will only take a limited number of clients on.
They care about every single one of them.
They create work they’re proud of.
They’re the one person outside of your immediate family that cares about your business as much as you do.
And whether it’s a short pause or a longer pause, it does feel personal to see your hard work undone.
Seeing a business go from a great social media presence to invisible, the competition taking over, poor content being banged out and a dwindling customer base is hard to watch.
It feels like a grieving process of sorts.
I often compare it to a personal trainer working so hard and watch a client to getting to their optimum health … and then bumping into the client 5 years later and finding them 7 stone overweight. If they’d have just stuck with the right person and the right programme the work wouldn’t be undone
Pausing Your Social Media Turns Into A Downward Spiral
A short pause turns into a downward spiral
One Day: We didn’t need a social media manager – we’re still busy
One Week: Still busy – we’ve made the right decision
One Month: We’re getting a little bit quieter … it must be the weather, road works, cost of living crisis
3 Months: We’re significantly quieter … we need to increase our marketing
Social Media Marketer comes back but 3 steps back rather than 3 steps ahead from where they were.
Ask yourself the question based on your current monthly revenue
- If it increases 10% month on month, where would you be in 12 months
- If it decreased 10% month on month, where would you be in 12 months
Answer
So, starting from £10,000, with a 10% increase each month, the income would reach £28,531.17 by the end of the year.
£10,000, with a 10% decrease each month, the income would reach £3,138.10 by the end of the year.
If you are pausing to save money – will reduced income ever allow you start marketing again and turn things around.
NEED HELP WITH SOCIAL MEDIA TRAINING FOR YOUR BUSINESS
Chat to us about Social Media Marketing for YOUR organisation , so we can better understand YOU and what will grow your organisation
We can chat about whether online or Face 2 Face is better for you
We can only find out what is unique to your business by chatting with you
Look at our Social Media Training and Social Media Management services
We offer Social Media Training on
* LinkedIn
* Instagram
* Facebook
* Twitter
* TikTok
* Blogging
We can do this
* 121
* Corporate Workshops
* Group Workshops
* Face to Face or Via Zoom / Skype
Please call Alex on 07806774279 or email alex@altrinchamhq.co.uk
