Lunching and Learning – the NEIR way!

 In General

Lunching and Learning – the NEIR way!

By Vicki Pozzebon

When we envisioned our NEIR grads and current participants getting together to share ideas, I’m not sure we thought through the space we had available to host everyone! On Tuesday May 14, we hosted our first Lunch and Learn of the NEIR Community of Practice on the topic of using social media to grow a business.  

We had a packed conference room of 15 NEIR grads, participants, and mentors. Featuring rockstar business owners, Jaclyn Roessel of GrownUp Navajo (NEIR grad), Arianna Johnny-Wadsworth of Quw’ut’san Made (NEIR participant), and Kalika Talou of Salon Talou (NEIR grad and our own NMCC Social Media Coordinator) talking about their experiences with social media platforms, the group engaged in a lively and educational discussion about what works and what might not work for a business.  Some key takeaways:

 

 

  • Know your platform, know your audience. You need to know what each social media platform will actually do for your business, how people engage on it, and who uses which platform and why.  Know who you are reaching out to and what your audience wants to see and will engage with on social media. Instagram is becoming more popular for businesses; Facebook is always shifting its services for businesses so stay on top of it but set up a business page; Twitter can be useful for growing followers and putting out content or information about your business or service. Try not to post the same thing on every platform. Your followers on each platform will be different and want to see unique and authentic content.

 

  • Follow inspiring people to get ideas for your own posts. You can learn a lot by paying attention to the accounts you follow that you engage with or inspire you. On the flipside, look at accounts that turn you off, too. Learning what not to do is also really valuable!

 

  • Get comfortable with getting personal. Combine some personal posts to show that a real person is behind the business and the account. Even if you have a service and not a product to sell you can show your audience aspects of your business through visual storytelling or posts. Give them a “sneak peak” of what you’re up to, and show a personal side.

 

  • Analytics can tell you a lot about your followers. Find out through each platform’s analytics who you are reaching, when, and what they are engaging with. You can tweak your posts, boost your coupons and offerings, and target your audience better. So don’t be afraid to get nerdy with data!

 

  • Post what you want, when you want. You can try to post early morning on a Tuesday and you’ll get 50 likes, and the same post a week later at a different time could get hundreds of likes. There isn’t much rhyme or reason anymore to posting times so the key is to post authentic content from the heart when you are so moved to do it.

 

  • Cross-post and cross-promo. Show off your favorite businesses on your own posts and you’ll likely get new followers, and you’ll be providing interesting and valuable content to your own followers.

Lunch and Learn sessions take place the 2nd Tuesday of every month, and are free and open to grads, current participants, mentors, and staff of NEIR.  We’d love to see you next time!

 

Recent Posts