Episode #075 Make your Bookkeeper Facebook Pages a success – hosted by Angie Martin

• Blog Post about Bookkeeping Facebook Pages
• Episode #074 about Social Media for Bookkeepers Marketing – LISTEN TO THIS ONE FIRST!
• Blog post for Episode #074 about Social Media for Bookkeeping
• The Savvy Bookkeeper on Facebook
• Join The I <3 Bookkeeping Facebook group.
   

Make your Bookkeeper Facebook Pages a success – hosted by Angie Martin

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

bookkeepers, facebook, clients, bookkeeping, people, facebook page, creating, marketing, seo, business, lead generation, brand loyalty, social media, website, savvy, continue, initial consult, targeted, page,

SPEAKERS

Angie Martin

Angie Martin  00:03

Hello, everyone, this is Angie today again, not Amy, I am doing exactly what I promised last week, and I'm giving you a second episode in our series about social media. And I'm super excited about this one because I think this platform is the one that most people are the most use to and are aware of in regards to social media, marketing and just social media in general. The platform I want to talk about today is Facebook. Now I know there is a massive line of people who love Facebook, who despise Facebook and people who only do Facebook because they have to, that is perfectly fine.

All of the information I'm going to be sharing with you today is simply to help you in your business to continue to thrive, grow and sustain, just like what I talked about in the last podcast. episodes. Now, if you didn't listen to the last podcast I did, I would seriously recommend you to stop listening to this podcast and listen to podcast 74. First, simply because I am doing these series in an order to make you be able to learn as much as possible and get the most out of these podcasts as much as possible as well, which is very exciting. It's the first time that we've really done something like this on the bookkeepers voice. So I'm very interested to see how you guys go with it.

And if you want us to keep doing this kind of series to help you learn a bit more about all the things that The Bookkeepers' Voice and The Savvy Bookkeeper talk about. So, today, as promised, I want to talk to you about Facebook and as I mentioned, you can love it hate it, it doesn't really matter. If you are a bookkeeper and you either run your own business or work as a contractor. Or just want to continue to increase your the company that you work for lead generation. You need to be aware of Facebook as I said in last episode, it is now costing you too much money to not have social media and not have a social media presence.

So I do hate to say it guys, but Facebook is here to stay, at least for the next 10 – 15 years. And it is still a really fantastic tool for helping your businesses, especially small businesses to continue to grow in thrive and just survive the ongoing changes that are happening in our world, both digitally, just in relation to bookkeeping itself and economically as well. So I hope you get a lot out of this episode today and let's just get right into it. First I'm going to talk about things that a lot of us already know again, but I want to go through just the summary of it.

Why Facebook Pages can help Bookkeepers

Angie Martin  03:04

So, as we all know, Facebook is the number one social platform used by businesses today, even more than LinkedIn, which LinkedIn is meant to be more for professional based businesses anyways, but Facebook still takes the key for having the most engagements and the most activity for business, which is amazing it since it started out as a actual social platform, just to connect with people. It is now a marketing powerhouse for businesses, which I think is always really exciting. So with Facebook, over 2.1 million users or active world. Oh sorry, 2.1 billion users let me correct myself their users are active each month.

And this is why business large, small doesn't matter have taken such a kind response to marketing and using Facebook as a way of leveraging and creating brand recognition. And it's really amazing tool that Facebook is aware of this. So they keep making it easier and easier to create engagement for you and your customers, which is fantastic. They keep doing changes. I know sometimes when they change the interface, it can be super frustrating. But the changes that they are currently making are making it easier than ever for you to connect directly with your potential clients and get to know them more and make sure that you are supporting them more than ever. And that is a game changer in the world of bookkeeping.

Now one thing again, I want to say if you haven't actually listened to the episode or read the blog, from last week's episode of The Bookkeepers' Voice, I would strongly suggest you to listen to that first. It's not a long one that time. And then go into this one because I am going to be talking about things that I mentioned last episode next. So I just want to make sure you don't miss anything.

So, next bit I want to talk to you just re emphasize the different benefits of using social media and Facebook specifically. So social media is an amazing tool that you can use to connect with your clients create that lead generation, and really cement yourself as a knowledge base in an expert in the industry, but also does a whole heap of other things that is equally important for all businesses, especially bookkeepers now that the world of bookkeeping is completely changing, and has completely changed just within the last three months because of COVID.

So you really want to make sure that you're taking the time now to act and get involved, on social media, and specifically Facebook, to make sure that you are going to be able to continue the great amount of interactions that you and your clients have been experiencing over the stressful time that has been caused by COVID. So, as I mentioned last episode, but this is specific to just Facebook. The benefits of having Facebook in use for your business means that you get to have more customer into interaction and you get to learn more insights about your customers.

Customer interaction with Facebook Pages is direct and immediate

So by being able to be on Facebook, you're able to directly, very directly,

 Angie Martin  06:41

work with them and talk with them and engage with them. Whether it's their personal Facebook page or their professional Facebook page, you are able to follow them like them comment, reply to comments that they leave on your posts, and really create that engagement to have kind of a fan base page esque environment that can be created through one Facebook page. And to the point that they want to work with you and they want to talk with you.

So when their bookkeeper calls them, they're not instantly put off and don't want to speak with you. It creates a better engagement and a better relationship for you, which really goes a long way when you're really trying to help them support them in helping their businesses continue to thrive. The next bit that I personally really love using Facebook for is the ability of it to give you a bit of a personal touch to your business, you're able to actually give it a bit of a humanity more and more people and your clients are shouting out loud. For bookkeepers become more involved, have more of a face to face, personal touch.

Facebook Pages brings a human touch to Bookkeepers

They don't want that this mystery person anymore who are often another world or often in office where you never speak to them, never engage with them more and more the value of knowing who you're working with is becoming King for bookkeepers in something as simple as an image on your Facebook page showing you your clients what you look like what your office looks like, or anything like that can go a really long way and then feeling more comfortable and confident in your ability. So it's a really great way to provide a personal touch and let them know a bit more about the business to understand why you are going to be a great fit for them. It really does go a long way and it creates a way of having a brand loyalty but not only just a brand loyalty but a loyalty to their bookkeeper in general.

A lot of people now after COVID have realized the the importance of having a bookkeeper, which is amazing, and I can't wait to see what's going to happen in this industry over the next six months, because of COVID more people were able to actually learn and understand what bookkeepers do. Mainly because of all the stimulus packages, all of the shopkeepers and job seeker applications had to be done. That was all done through your bookkeeper in businesses gained a new level of respect in working with their bookkeepers, which you really want to make sure that that loyalty continues.

Everyone I'm speaking with at The Savvy Bookkeeper, all of our clients have been amazing and helping and prioritizing their clients businesses over their own well being so I have been working so hard over these last few months, and I'm really excited that soon soon. Everyone will be able to have a bit of a break to relax after this crazy season. But for the fact that everyone has gone the extra mile to help your clients right now, it is such a fantastic way of continuing to show that there is a strong brand loyalty with all of your hard efforts that you do to support your clients. This can be done through your reviews, through your communities, on Facebook, anything like that. It really goes a long way.

Better qualified lead generation from Facebook Pages

And it really helps you stay ahead of the curve pretty much when talking about building your brand awareness creating actual quality leads for your business. There is a difference between just generally generation in quality lead generation, if you can get any Fred, Joe or Sally or whatever. Coming to you to do bookkeeping, but none of them are your ideal clients. That lead generation isn't successful, what you want is quality lead generation of people who actually do want to work with you. And by creating this aura of brand loyalty and education around your Facebook group and Facebook page, you are able to help educate people exactly what you're about. And it redefines and helps people go, Oh, well, that's not really what I want. So I'm not going to go with them. Or Yes, this is exactly what I'm looking for. This is the one for me. I need to contact them now.

It all depends on how, what kind of clients you want. So creating that brand loyalty is really important and can go a really long way to making sure that you're getting found by the right people. Another thing that it really helps you boost help with is boosting your overall SEO. I think there's an episode that we need to do with Amy and Will coming up shortly where we talk just about SEO in the power of social media and SEO, because it's one of the things that we are working at, at Off The Hook. And at The Savvy Bookkeeper now, really looking into and utilizing the power of social media has for your SEO. Just because your website might not be trending because there is you're in Melbourne, and there's thousands of bookkeepers in your area.

Facebook Pages show up in a Google search

You can make your SEO for your Facebook page trend better. In fact, for my own passion project business that I do, when I'm not working with the amazing savvy team in Google, my Facebook page ranks higher than my website page because I started the Facebook page before I even had a website. And because I do a lot of interactions through that Facebook page, it continually bumps me up in SEO and shows that it's So it shows all search engines that I'm a reputable and active business that connects and engages with clients. And that's exactly what search engines are looking for. So it does this kind of dual work of having SEO being done, because you can relate it directly back to your website.

But it also stands alone in an extra base of having SEO which, for bookkeepers, it's still a very low amount of bookkeepers who actually focus on the marketing focus on the SEO. So it is a massive opportunity for any bookkeeper who is willing to learn or willing to put the effort in to actually work on these kinds of aspects because once you do, then it's almost like your clients are just running towards you. It's fantastic.

Another thing that really does well with Facebook is looking at Your competition. And I do this all the time for our clients. Whenever I do an initial consult or a mentoring session, I always like to make sure that I look at what they're doing. And what people around them similar to what they're trying to achieve are doing on Facebook, in social media in general as well in Facebook is so such a great way of being able to go in and check out to see what other people are doing. And it doesn't have to be thought of in a way of stalking. It can be thought of a new way of checking to see what you like with their marketing and what you don't. Sometimes it is the best way of doing any kind of, what's the word I'm trying to think, of inspiration based target marketing and inspiration.

Investigation to what you need to be doing for your strategy is looking at what other people are doing and what's working and not Obviously isn't. Facebook is amazing for that. And there's nothing wrong with doing that. I do that personally all the time. And in continually learning what more you can do with Facebook, there's a million different applications and Facebook that you can just get so much out of it makes it really easy to seem like a really experienced marketer when you just start using a couple. Another thing that works really, really well is viral promotion.

There's actually a video that I was told about yesterday, I'm going to share to our Savvy I Heart Bookkeeping Savvy page and Savvy group, which you will be able to see he'll already be on the group and you guys are hearing this, but I'm going to be sharing it to you just to show the power that Facebook has. What's happened in this video that I'm going to be sharing is somebody has done a song about celebrating their bookkeeper for into financial year. And the video is hilarious. It is amazing. And because it is so specifically targeted to the world of bookkeeping, it has gone viral. And it's something that's funny. It's honest, it's true. And it's just a great way

Angie Martin  16:27

to get people to notice your page. So, even though you're a bookkeeper, there's still quite a few different ways that you can create opportunities to go viral, and to get a lot of people Looking at your page. It's so easy, especially with the new additions that Facebook is pushing for hashtags and such. It's great. Also to get viral, you can always use Facebook ads which are really easy to be able to use as opposed to Google ads, which is a whole other section, and even I some days get scared to work on Google ads. I much prefer Facebook ads. And I love how targeted you can go for looking at the audience, the location, the demographics, the interests, what kind of behavior they have.

So the reason why Facebook often you'll see either learn more, or shop now or anything like that when you pick certain options for call to action. Facebook can immediately check to see which users are more likely to like a photo to click shop now to click learn more. It has such a power of analytics and stats in there that you can make your marketing go search so much further in so much more defined. Then just doing general law Marketing, which is amazing. And Facebook is looking at doing this right now. It is something that I think every platform is looking off of to really make the most out of their marketing as well.

Facebook Ads are better tailored than Google Ads

Another thing that I like because the promotions in Facebook itself, it's so targeted in and really make sure that everything you do has a real strong and purpose is that it makes your marketing have a massive lower cost in your expenses. Because your Facebook promotions are highly targeted, you won't be spending as much money on failed or accidental clicks, which really add up me do Google Ads advertisements, and it makes sure that if you spend typically with the savvy bookkeeper or off the hook, if I spend 20 to 30 minutes on social media and on Facebook, doing different adjustments, we will instantly see a lead generation spike off of those efforts.

So it makes it so that every time you do work on your social media and especially on Facebook, your efforts are going so much further in creating a reward system almost for being able to directly correlate your time versus the potential of leads that you will get from it, which I really enjoy. Another thing that I really, really like is that it drives your clients to your website as well. Again, for my own personal passion project, my Facebook page super interactive, I've worked really hard to make sure that it's fun. It's a fun place to look at. And the end result though I still want them to go to My website. So I have about six different places in my Facebook page that people can click, and then go directly to the website, which is the end goal for people for my sales journey is they go to the website and then they buy.

Angie Martin  20:17

And for bookkeepers, your end journey is going to the website, buying a package if it's available online, or booking in an initial consult with you. That is what your ultimate game is, when using Facebook, and it gives you so many options to be able to do that throughout each different page, which I'm about to go through with, which is great. The last thing that I really wanted to talk about is the ability of being able to provide extra customer service and also monitoring and improving your customer service.

So as bookkeepers, especially these last few months, we have been needing to do a lot of customers service, and really helping to support our clients as much as possible in Facebook is a way of doing that wholeheartedly and almost instantly as well. So if someone is doing something on their phone, and they instantly have a question about their bookkeeping, that they were supposed to do something for you, they can instantly just message you on your Facebook, and then you can reply back to them and the issue can be sorted within a few seconds instead of having to be on the phone or in email for half the day.

It goes a really long way. And like I mentioned last episode,

Angie Martin  21:36

you can actually do webinars and facebook live videos to provide extra amount of support in crisis situations such as the COVID situation that we just went through and keeping them updated to what we know and how we can help them. So that is a massive tool that you can use with Facebook in there's really Nothing like it, even LinkedIn in Instagram. It's not the same power of Facebook Lives in being able to post in groups to really support your clients directly.

It's a fantastic way and I would highly suggest for bookkeepers to start looking into it, and really starting to implement it as a way of improving their customer communication and just satisfaction as well.