Why social media marketing?
In the digital age, when it comes to any product on the market, more social media brand visibility equals more sales. It’s also a medium that’s highly affordable compared to traditional marketing avenues. Instead of a return on your monetary investment, you’re getting a return on your time.
Social media has also proven an effective marketing tool when it comes to connecting with your audience. You can reach anyone, so long as they have internet access. The beauty of social media marketing is that you can build community in a short period of time — without leaving your grow room. You may even find your newest grow buddy through social media, and you can help each other make your yields better than before.
Keep in mind, anyone can create a social media account, which means it can be easy to get lost in all the news-feed noise. For that reason you must strategize a solid social media presence that can help you acquire new clients and keep them engaged and loyal. You need to craft a story for your brand that captures people’s interest instantly.
Here are some handy hints on how to build a strong social media presence for your cannabis grow op.
Register Your Social Media Accounts
Open an account on all the social media platforms including Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Duby and MassRoots. If you’re not tech savvy, then search for YouTube tutorials on how to start a social media account. Should that still prove overwhelming, be patient and resist the urge to give up. If all else fails, and if you have the means, hire someone else to do your digital marketing. If you’re paranoid about putting your cannabusiness out there on the internet, then make sure you’re connected to a secure internet app, or an anonymous logless VPN.
Identify the websites you like to use the most. Also make sure those are the same websites your audience uses. If you find a happy balance of sites you love to use and where your audience is most engaged, then stick to those and forget the rest.
Make sure all accounts are consistent. Use the same profile pictures, and use the same style, colors and fonts in your advertisements. Your fans should know they are looking at your company the moment they see your social media profile.
When filling out your social media profiles, ask yourself, “What am I doing? Why I am doing it? How am I doing it?” Look at it with a beginner’s mind. If someone didn’t know anything at all about your company, then what would you want them to know right away?
This exercise will also help you refine your elevator pitch. Profiles limit how many characters you can enter, so you want to be concise. You may only have 60 seconds to impress potential investors when you’re at a cup or convention, right? The same goes for your social media accounts and potential customers.
When you can say what you’re offering — your “why” that gets you up every morning — and deliver your message to people in an articulate and simple manner, you’re more likely to get people on board with your brand.
For example, let’s say you’re a grower who specializes in growing Clean Green Certified high CBD strains. You believe in the benefits of CBD for pain and anxiety because it helped your grandpa with his post-traumatic stress disorder and severe arthritis. You grow outdoors and only use Advanced Nutrients.
For the medical marijuana patient who needs high CBD strains, who is a senior with pain, or perhaps a grandchild with a grandparent in pain, and who doesn’t want pesticides in their medicine, you will be the only brand relevant for this person’s specific needs. Your uniqueness is your advantage. Always promote it shamelessly.
Stay true to your voice and your mission. Your brand is not going to appeal to everyone. Your true audience will love what your company stands for and they will be loyal because of it. You don’t want to blend in. You want to stand out.
Create Social Media Content
Always keep your “what,” “why” and “how” in mind when building your media. Use pictures and videos as often as possible. Whether through text, audio, pictures or video, you want to stay aligned with your core business goals.
Aim to help your potential clients and patients first before giving them the sales pitch. The most successful social media accounts for cannabis businesses do one or both of the following:
- They produce high-quality content. They take amazing photos of their medicine, and they tell a very compelling story.
- They educate patients on why their medicine is helpful. The medicine they have relieves patients of pain and makes them feel great.
Make sure you’re putting your patients first, and they will be super fans for life.
Beware of creating content that explicitly promotes the consumption of cannabis on mainstream social media platforms. Many successful cannabis social media accounts have been shut down because they promote a product that’s still illegal on the federal level, despite some state laws deeming cannabis legal recreationally and medicinally. Research the loopholes that may prevent your brand from being shut down, and create a backup of all the content you create so you can republish at a later date.
Creating accounts on cannabis-friendly social media platforms will definitely reduce the likelihood of your account being blacklisted. Be sure to read the fine print in the terms of agreements. Each platform has different rules. It’s better to be safe and informed than lose everything because you didn’t protect your intellectual property.
Build A Content Calendar
Your grow room has a schedule that you tend to religiously or your plants will suffer. This rule also applies to your social media account. You need to create a calendar for your social media account updates so you’ll stay on track.
Anyone can create a social media account as long as they have internet access. While that’s great news for you, it also means that, since the bar of entry is so low, there is a lot of competition for people’s online attention. In order to stay relevant, you need to stay fresh on people’s very busy minds.
Of course, it doesn’t matter if you update your social media accounts everyday if your mission statement isn’t irresistible. No amount of social media updates can cure a boring story. Great branding speaks to the heart.
Staying consistent breeds success. Just like your grow operation, you need to put time in every day to see results. Your followers won’t grow overnight, so stay diligent.
Automate Social Media Content Publication
If your argument against social media is that you don’t have the time, then technology is your best timesaving friend. IFTTT is a great aggregate tool that uses triggers to automate actions on the internet. It stands for “If this then that.” For example, if you post a picture on Instagram, then you can program IFTTT to post that same picture to Twitter as well. Boom! You just bought yourself five minutes to do another important thing to improve your business.
Hootsuite helps you schedule to-be-published posts on Twitter and Facebook. Queuing up posts in advanced allows you uninterrupted blocks of time to tend to your grow. Instead of worrying every Monday at 2 p.m. about what you’re going to post for your weekly Monday post at 3 p.m., you can create and schedule posts anytime of the week to eliminate stress and procrastination.
Engage With Your Community
By now, you’ve created content for your profiles, and people have started following you online. Follow your most engaged followers and people whose businesses inspire you to make your business better. Send those brands words of encouragement. Do your best to lift up the people who admire you, and those people will feel like you care about them as human beings rather than just a paycheck.
Sure, you can do the bare minimum and make a quick buck. But a community will back you up through the challenging times and be there with you during moments of celebration. Having friends and colleagues to brainstorm and dream with will take everyone to the next level. Build a place for your community to gather, learn and grow together, and you’ll have more than just a fat wallet. You’ll have a tribe, and your grop op will become legacy.
