A Client's Journey (Social Media Edition)

Maintaining an effective digital presence can be a challenge for a business, regardless of size. For small businesses, such as mom and pop shops, making sure you’re creating quality, accessible content at a steady pace can be a job in itself. Larger businesses may be able to hire a dedicated digital marketing team or an outside firm to manage an effective digital marketing strategy. However, the same cannot be said for many small businesses, as this can be quite costly, with even the most basic services being $1,000 a month or more. 

Don’t fret, though. Here at Saddle Mountain Digital Marketing Services, we believe all businesses, even with the most modest budget, should be able to maintain a strong digital presence. We currently offer two services (and look to expand in the future): social media management and website design/management. The processes have been designed to be as streamlined as possible for you, leaving more time to focus on other aspects of running a successful business.

This month’s blog post dives into what a client’s journey may look like if we’re helping them with their social media presence.

Typical Process

Step 1: Pre-Onboarding Information is Provided, and Accounts are Set Up

After the client discovers us, they will be asked to fill out a questionnaire on our website where information about the company and what they're hoping to achieve by using our services will be provided. After submission, we’ll review the information and send a follow-up email with a link to schedule a virtual onboarding meeting at their convenience. 

To make the onboarding meeting go smoother, we ask that before the meeting, the client creates their social media accounts if they don’t have existing ones and links them to one of two social media management platforms. If only using Facebook and/or Instagram, please connect them to the free Meta Business Suite. If additional accounts or ones not affiliated with Meta are being used (although it is a small extra cost), we ask that you please get Buffer Essentials for the number of channels you want to have and link your pages. If you need help doing either of these, we are more than happy to help at the onboarding meeting. Instructions and other relevant links will be included in the follow-up email.

Step 2: Onboarding Meeting

During the onboarding meeting, we will set up your social media accounts and/or management platform (if you haven’t already) and walk you through giving us access to them. Having all of your accounts linked in one central location allows us to schedule posts in advance for greater efficiency and have access to your accounts without knowing your personal account information for a heightened sense of security. 

Another thing that will happen during this meeting is the setup of a shared Google Drive folder (preferred). This is where you will share content with us, whether that be text or graphics/images. The first things we ask you to share are images to set up your pages, such as a profile/logo and cover photo (if they’re not already on your pages) and any criteria for meeting your brand voice. 

Finally, we’ll have a casual conversation where any further questions can be asked and answered.

Typical Process Overview

Step 3: Completion

In the next few weeks, we will collaborate with the client to refine their "brand kit," encompassing the colors and fonts for their graphics, along with their brand voice for text. Subsequently, using the information you provided, we will engage in a back-and-forth process with them until the content aligns with the company's expectations.

Step 4: The Remainder of the Journey

Each week, we ask that the client send us a brief report of what content they would like to see for the next week (preferred as it gives us time to create quality content in advance). This includes highlights of what’s happening that week and any photos or other content that should be seen in your posts. If you have more urgent content, such as updates from an event the day before, please let us know. We will create your content and interact with your audience, reaching out to you if we are uncertain about how to respond to a comment or message. 

Finally, they'll receive an invoice for our services at the end of each month. 

We sincerely look forward to working with you, and helping make your business run as smoothly as possible!

(Stay tuned next month as we walk through what a client’s website journey would look like)