Social media marketing
Worth doing when it brings customers. Worth stopping when it brings applause.
The honest version
For most small and mid-sized businesses, social media is not where demand is created. It is where demand that already exists decides whether to trust you. That is a smaller job than the industry sells, and it is a real one.
What that means in practice
Fewer posts, and a reason for each
A calendar full of posts nobody asked for is a cost, not a presence. We would rather publish twice a week with something to say than five times with something to fill.
The profile is a landing page
Most of the traffic your posts earn goes to your profile, looks for a reason to believe you, and leaves. That page is usually the least considered one in the whole account.
Paid and organic are not the same activity
Boosting a post that performed well organically is not a campaign. It is paying extra to reach people who were going to see it anyway. Paid social is worth doing deliberately, with its own targeting and its own measurement, or not at all.
How we tell whether it is working
Not followers. Not impressions. Whether enquiries went up, and whether the people arriving from social convert at a rate worth the time. If they do not, we will tell you to spend the budget elsewhere, including on nothing.