 Hey, welcome back to my YouTube channel guys. Today, I'm going to talk a little bit of a different topic. If you don't know me, I generally talk about what it's like living in New Zealand as an American. But I'm starting to create some new content around other areas that I know. And today, we're going to talk about marketing. We're going to talk about five social media strategies for small businesses in 2023 that I think will really help. Now, this is for beginners. This is for, well, you know, if you do a little bit of social media, this is relevant to you. But if you're heavily into it and you do it all the time, then this is going to be basic. I have taught at the university level for over 20 years and I have run multiple small businesses in all different industries and have recently over the last couple of years started doing some marketing coaching and heavily into social media management and all of that sort of things. And so today, I'm just going to talk about some five strategies that I really think are important. Now, you may have heard some of these strategies from other people and there's just a lot of information out there. And based on my experience and actually using it on my own channel and my own personal brand, but also all of my clients, seeing this is what I really think that you should focus on in 2023. If you're like, Oh, I got to deal with a social media issue. I got to actually get out there and do it and you should be. And it's hard and it's overwhelming. And I understand that there's so much going on. And it's always changing like literally daily changing, but this video will help you kind of know, like these are the things I should focus on, even if you don't focus on all five, just one or two. Trust me that this is, this is what I think will really help if you are a small business in 2023. Okay, my first strategy if you are a small business is YouTube, YouTube, YouTube. Okay, I think you get the idea. Like you need to get on YouTube, whether that's long form video or short form video, they're now paying people for both of them. And YouTube is just the second biggest search engine past Google, right? And it's, it's just nothing better. I have used all of them for years. And so with, you know, the history and the knowledge and how they, how these platforms work and how user friendly they are, I think you need to, this is the year that you get on YouTube. Now you don't need to get overwhelmed that you need to have a whole channel and do long form video and I need this and I need the fancy cameras and I don't know, you don't need that. You just need your phone. I have a ring light and a phone. I had a microphone, but the microphone was like $10. Like that's it. Nothing fancy. And just do YouTube shorts. At least do the YouTube shorts because it'll be searchable. And I think in the long run, it'd be where you want to invest in right now. And it's going to take time. Okay, you can't just like put out a video and like, oh, I'm amazing. I'm going viral. Like that doesn't happen. Okay, so get that out of your head. Just be consistently posting and I highly recommend YouTube. And number two, speaking of YouTube shorts, you should definitely 100% take some time to learn short form video. Learn short form video, whether you do Instagram reels, Facebook reels, TikToks, YouTube shorts, or just do one video and put it on all of them, you know, even Pinterest pins, idea pins and like everywhere LinkedIn is actually really good. Like you're going to have to learn short form video. I'm telling you, if you're just doing blogs or you're just posting a picture, it's not good enough. Like you need to learn the short form video. Actually, I have a free short form video course. If you want to get started, I'll put it in the description. I actually forgot that I made that and it just helps you kind of get started and try to produce your first couple of videos and you should be good to go. But definitely whatever it takes that there's tons of you don't take that course. It's just free anyway. But like if you just go on YouTube and learn practice, do find your voice, talk about what, you know, is important to you and what you know about and yet you're passionate about and just learn how to do short form video. Don't get caught up in the details. Do not get caught up on getting all the right equipment. You just need your phone and a window. Just your phone and a window and start creating video and you might actually really like it. Now, number three is a strategy that I've started using this year and really works well. It's only February. If you have a video or a post that performs very well organically and organic, I mean free. So you just put out a post, right? It doesn't cost anybody to post on Facebook. Like you get that, right? That's called organic. If you do a post that does really well organically, those are the ones that you put money behind. Don't just create an ad over here. Okay. And there's a whole thing that we can talk about in terms of ads, but if you are going to do ad spend, definitely use the creative that people already like. Okay. And put it in ad format. Now that doesn't mean you just like copy and paste the exact same one. You have to put it for the context and be very clear. And yeah, there's a lot involved in that. But my only point here is that don't just put, just don't create Facebook ads, Google ads, whatever that is, but actually use the creative that has done well on your channel. Like if you do something and it just pops off, people are just engaged and they like it and they have questions and they're commenting positively anyway, because you may have videos or posts that don't do well or are positive. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about like, well, why does it do positive? Then put money behind it and that will, you've solved half of your problem that way, right? And so you already know that people respond to that and then put that into the same target market and you're good to go. Number four, you need to get comfortable with AI. Sorry, it's here to stay. It's arrived, it's amazing. It's not nearly what it could be, but it's here and it's pretty darn good. And there's a lot to learn about that, but don't get overwhelmed, okay? ChatGPT is the biggest one right now as I'm recording this video, but it's not everything. And there's some definite, some things to know about it, but just play with it, understand it, use it because it will make your marketing life a lot easier. As a small business, like you're not in the business of marketing, like you're in the business of whatever it is that you do, whatever product you sell, whatever service you sell, so you don't have time for marketing. So use AI to your advantage, okay? And use platforms that help you do things automatically, okay? Setting up really good systems really worked well, but just there's no avoiding it. If you're in your mind thinking like, ah, this whole AI thing is overwhelming, you're gonna need to learn it. So put that out of your head and just start playing with it. It's actually fun and amazing and it's hard to get used to all that it actually can do for you. So just any tasks that you do, type it into AI and just see if it's helpful and see if it's good quality for what you're doing, whatever that task is. And I'm telling you, you might be really impressed. And number five, my last strategy for you in 2023 is repurpose. Repurpose. As a small business owner in the ideal world, you're gonna create content for each platform that fits that platform, okay? Because like, who you are on Facebook is not who you are on LinkedIn is not who you are on Snapchat, right? Even though you're the same person. So like, ideally you're creating content that's contextual to each platform, but small business owners, they don't have time for that. So we're gonna repurpose. So you're gonna make one short form video and you're gonna put it on all the platforms and then you're going to write a post about that and then you're going to use that as a tweet and then you're gonna use that in your email to your email list and you're just gonna make your life easier, okay? That's what you're gonna do in 2023 for your marketing strategy. So I hope that this video was helpful. I hope that it will outline some things that you need to do. If you need some extra help, don't hesitate to reach out to me as I am a marketing coach and just kind of help small businesses get up and running with their social media and train them on how to do it because a lot of them don't jump into it because they just actually don't know how to do it. It feels overwhelming. I don't want to learn it. I don't have time to learn it. This is it what I'm interested in. This isn't the business that I run, but it is actually very important. It's not going away. And there's a great way to grow as a business that can be completely free. So reach out to me if that would be helpful to you, but otherwise I hope that these strategies are helpful to you. And if you have other ones, please share them in the comments below or any questions that you have about marketing in general. I'm here to help. Have a great week.