#27 Social Media for Business with Lindsay Hanson

Welcome to Episode 27 of the Easy SEO and more podcast. Last episode, I asked the question: “Does Google, like your website?” Your website may not be ranking as high as you want simply because the search engines don’t like it. So go to Portbell.com/26 to learn how to make your website more Google friendly.

We have a treat today. Lindsay Hanson from the podcast “Quit Your Job, Sis” is joining us. And she’s going to talk about social media. Welcome to Easy SEO and more Lindsay, I’m so glad you’re here.

Lindsay Hanson 

Thank you. Thank you for having me. I’m excited to be here.

Ty Belknap 

So you’re going to talk to us about social media today. What do you think about doing social media for business?

Lindsay Hanson 

Well, doing social media for business is the only way that I really have ever known to do business.

I built my entire business using social media. I’ve had a couple of different business models now also. So, just briefly, to give you my background: I started off doing online fitness coaching back at the end of 2018. And then sometime in the middle of 2019, that transitioned into life coaching, which from there transitioned into business coaching. Now I’m doing a little bit of business coaching, a little bit of social media management and copywriting marketing type of work for other business owners.

And I didn’t even have a website until about a year and a half into my business,  I was just using social media. At the beginning, it was really just Instagram, and now I’m on Instagram, LinkedIn, Tik Tok and Pinterest, And I have my podcast, so it’s grown from there. But I have never done paid advertising. I do have my website now. But all the traffic that I get is from organic social media marketing.

Ty Belknap 

That’s interesting, because especially in the last, let’s say, a year and a half or so I’ve noticed it seems like especially with Facebook and Instagram, you can do posts, but fewer and fewer people are seeing the posts. Have you seen that?

Lindsay Hanson 

I’ve never seen a ton of engagement on platforms like Instagram and Facebook personally. There are other platforms that you can get greater organic reach, like Pinterest and Tik Tok specifically. I get a lot more engagement and a lot more organic reach on there.

But what I’ve seen for Instagram is even if you don’t have a huge audience or you’re not reaching hundreds or thousands of people with every single post, it can be a great platform to engage with your audience. So especially if you have a business where you’re maybe a coach and you are the face of your business, and so people really need to get to know you and trust you before they are ready to work with you; I think a platform like Instagram can be really good for that. Because, you can get on your Instagram story every day, and you’re literally talking directly to your audience. So even even if it’s a small group of people, it’s kind of a more intimate platform where you’re able to really connect with them on a deeper level and build up trust really quickly.

Ty Belknap 

Okay. So, from what I know, and I actually don’t use Instagram a lot. I always thought Instagram was more about pictures. And so I think about businesses like coaching, how do you use pictures to promote a coaching business, or, or even a service based business like that?

Lindsay Hanson 

Yeah, honestly, I’d say posting pictures is the least of what I do on Instagram. It really started as a picture platform, but Instagram has grown so much. You can post videos, you can post longer form video content on there. And on your IGTV section, they now have reels, which is similar to Tik Tok, where it’s like short 30 second video clips. Those tend to do really well and get more reach than your regular posts.

You can obviously still post pictures with captions, but on Instagram I’m on my story all day. And when I do post content, typically it’s short video clips from a training that I did, or a live. You can also go live on Instagram the same way that you can on Facebook to connect with your audience more and you can save those live videos. So honestly, at this point, Instagram has grown so much, and there’s so many different features on there. I would say posting pictures is probably the least effective way to connect with your audience on Instagram in 2021.

Ty Belknap 

Well, that’s great to know. So, if you could think of one way… And even if it’s Instagram or Facebook or Tik Tok or anything, what do you think is the most effective way to build your business? And which platform do you think is most effective? Right now, if there’s one thing that you could pick on?

Lindsay Hanson 

I think that’s gonna depend on what type of business you have. But if I had to pick one platform, that generally works for most businesses, honestly, I would say Tik Tok.

I have seen so many different types of businesses on there. The reach that you can get on Tik Tok is insane. it’s so much larger than any other platform I’ve seen. To give you some context, probably the the most reach I’ve ever gotten on an Instagram post is maybe a few thousand views. And II do I have a relatively small account right now; I have a little over 1000 followers on there. But I don’t think I’ve ever hit even 10,000 views on a single post on there.

I have reached over 100,000 views on more than one Tik Tok just in the past few months. So it’s crazy how how quickly you can reach literally hundreds of thousands of people on that app, just the way the algorithm works.

If you’re posting good content, if you’re posting content that’s valuable, and that’s entertaining, it’s going to reach your audience very effectively on on Tik Tok.

 So I would say even if you think “oh, well, I have this type of business, so it’s not going to do well on Tik Tok.” I’ve seen everything. There’s product based businesses, there’s coaches, I’ve seen lawyers on Tick Tock and accountants. There’s an airline that I always see that comes up and their ads are hilarious. If I had to pick one platform, that’s the platform I would say to get on.

Because not only that, it’s so low effort. The amount of effort you put into your videos obviously varies and depends on how much you want to put in. But for instance, I posted a six second video that took me all of a minute to make and write the caption and post it and within a day I had 76 email opt ins on my email list from that one video. So the return is huge on on a platform like Tik Tok.

Ty Belknap 

That’s great. And you said that you had these two posts that got over 100,000 views in the last couple of months? Are you finding that a certain kinds of posts on Tik Tok are doing better than other kinds for you?

Lindsay Hanson 

I want to say that there’s three or four, that I’ve posted that got over 100,000 views, and they are all so different. One was not even related to my business at all. It was just some random video I posted because I thought it was funny. That was my first one that got over 100,000 views.

But then there was one that went viral, it got over 420,000 views. And I was in BuzzFeed and Yahoo and a couple other news sources. And that was one where I got a lot of engagement because I asked people tell me the moment when you realized that your workplace was toxic.

And asking questions like that can really help because then people are gonna want to respond whether they comment on Tik Tok. You can stitch the video, which means you reply with your own video. And so that got 1000’s of comments and 1000’s of shares.

And then there was another one that also wasn’t related to my business at all, it was something that I posted about my car that blew up. So it’s kind of random. I haven’t seen one particular video structure that necessarily blows up. But I think that’s what’s great about it is because anything or anyone can go viral on this app. It’s really kind of crazy.

Ty Belknap

That is pretty crazy. And Lindsey, that’s, that’s one of the reasons why I’m so glad that you’re on today. Because I would have never thought of Tik Tok, personally. With SEO, it’s all about your website first, and maybe social media a little bit down the road. And so it’s really interesting to hear how you built your business. And the website was one of the last things you did. So it’s, you don’t have to have the website right away, which is cool.

Lindsay Hanson 

Well, and the other thing is, for SEO, you’re optimizing your website so that it’ll come up and rank higher on a search engine like Google. Social media is almost like those search engines.

You’re posting out content to try to drive people to your bio because you have the link in your bio that leads to your website. So it’s almost like a different type of search engine, where you’re drawing people into your page, so that they will then click your link, which will lead them to your website or your lead magnet, your OPT in page, wherever it is that you want to drive traffic to.

And that’s what I’ve really seen. Like I said, I got 76 email opt ins from a single Tik Tok that I made. And that’s because I had a link in my bio that was that lead to a free Instagram guide. It’s a different form of SEO. I guess you could think of it that way.

Learn more abut Lindsay at:

Web site: www.lindseyhanson.com
Email: info@lindsayhanson.com
Social media: @lindsaymhanson

And you can get her free Instagram guide by clicking here.