Promoting Events, Sales, and More on Social Media

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So many people are torn when it comes to social media. They want it to drive their business goals, but they don't want to seem spammy. If they go too far in one direction, they're investing a lot of time without a great return. If they go too far in the other, their audience (and the algorithms) will get turned off. Here you'll learn how to promote your company on social media without turning your feed into an annoying billboard.

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Get your social media marketing pointing your audience to what you offer.

We’ve all seen it: social media accounts that just post about themselves all of the time. It’s kind of gross. Normally we just scroll right on by, until eventually, they don’t even turn up in our feeds anymore.

You know you don’t want your brand to be like that.

On the other hand, you’ve got a business to run. And you need customers. And social media helps you connect with those customers and potentially find new ones.

It can be confounding trying to figure out the right amount of self promotional content that will let your audience know what you offer without turning your account into a constant commercial.

I’ve been working in the social media space for nearly ten years and have found that you need to promote your work, but not too much. I developed the PAGER Method to give you best practices for what kind of content to create and how often.

Let’s break down:

• What PIE Content Is: Promotions, Initiatives, and Events

• How often to post Promotional Content

• How to create posts that support them - fast

What is PIE Content?

PIE Content is a mnemonic device that stands for:

• Promotions

• Initiatives

• Events

When I would create social media content for clients, their business goals usually revolved around one of these three elements. So I’m going to break down what each one is.

An example of a Promotions post on Twitter.

Promotions

When you have a sale coming up, or anything that’s a “limited time offer” that’s a promotion. Think about Black Friday sales. “Cyber week” sales. Or a “summer sale.” Promotions usually involve a date range of some sort.

This is probably something you’re already posting about on social media. And keep reading to find out how often to post this type of content.

Initiatives

“You know, we offer [this service] and no one ever buys it. We need to let more people know about it.” That’s what I would hear time and time again from a client of mine who was a doctor and offered a whole host of treatments. But must of his patients only came in for one or two of them.

It was important, then, that his social media audience knew about all of the services that he offered. So we had to make sure that we put those services into the mix.

Initiatives are the products and services that you offer on an ongoing basis that you want to point your followers toward. If you offer many different things, then you may want to have the internal goal to let more people know in the first quarter that you are available for one of those. Like workshops, for example. And you’ll make a point to create a bunch of social media posts that will help people book you for your workshops. Then, in the second quarter, you’ll let people know about the book that you wrote and point people towards that.

If you have a free lead generator that you’ve created to increase your email subscribers, then your company may have an initiative to get more people to take advantage of it.

Or, simply, if you want to get more people to “buy now” or “schedule a call” then putting an initiative like that in your content mix on social media will help your audience know what you offer.

Note: if you have written a BrandScript for your company, this is an excellent time to use it.

Events

Finally, events are just that - events that you have going on in your business that you need your audience to show up for. Shows, webinars, open houses, workshops. Anything that you want other people to attend. Unlike promotions, events have not only a date, but a time as well.

Again, this is probably something that you’re already posting about on social media, but let’s dive into how often to post this kind of content so that your audience knows about what you have going on, but doesn’t feel like you’re constantly promoting yourself. Because we all know that gets old quickly.

How Often to Post PIE Content

It has long been thought that best practices for content that asks your audience to purchase something is about 20 - 25% of the time.

Gary Vaynerchuk made this notion famous in his 2013 book, Jab, Jab, Jab Right Hook where he touted posting inspirational, educational, or entertaining content as a “jab” and then after three jabs, hitting them with the “right hook” of your ask.

Social Media Today has also touted it as best practices, and many marketing agency owners that I speak to subscribe to this as their rule of thumb.

Because of this best practice, I created the PAGER Model to include this type of promotional material as one of the types of content to create. According to the PAGER model, you post something from each category once a week. So PIE content will come up once out of every four or five posts in your content mix.

By adhering to this cadence, you’ll ensure that you don’t post too much self-promotional stuff, but still let your audience know what you do, how it will make their lives better, and how they can get it.

With PAGER, you post one piece of content each week from each category so you are posting 4-5 times a week on a platform. Note: Random is optional.

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brought to you by Downstage Media and StoryBrand

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How to Quickly Create PIE Content

1. Create a BrandScript for your Promotional, Initiative, or Event. (Here’s a tool to help you make a BrandScript)

2. Number it from 1-10 like the image.

3. Roll a 10-sided die (Google has a free online version) twice

4. Write copy that corresponds to numbers that you’ve rolled on your BrandScript

5. Add an image, link, or video

Repeat a few times to create a stockpile of social media content that you can use to continually drive your audience towards your offerings.

Watch the video that walks you through the process.

Use Social to Get Your Audience to Show Up

Imagine how great it would be knowing that your social media is helping your company meet its business goals without spamming your audience.

Learn to Simplify Your Social

Register for the next Simplify Your Social webinar to learn how to create, vary, and automate your social media posts in a fraction of the time using the PAGER method.

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