The Social Media Takeaway - Louise McDonnell

Social Media Strategies for Small Businesses

• Louise McDonnell • Season 1 • Episode 36

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In this week's episode of The Social Media Takeaway, I am delighted to welcome Peg Fitzpatrick, an accomplished social media strategist with over a decade of experience. Peg was the first head of social strategy for Canva, and she shares the story of how she helped grow Canva from a small startup to a global brand. In this episode, we explore the critical role of consistent social media engagement and the importance of networking and building partnerships for business growth. We also uncover some of the biggest misconceptions small businesses have about social media and offer practical advice on branding, engagement, and handling negative feedback. Whether you're new to social media or looking to refine your strategy, this episode will help you elevate your online presence and drive real results.

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Louise McDonnell:

Hi, welcome to the social media takeaway. I'm your host, Louise Louise McDonnell, and this is the show for business people who want to learn how to use social media to find new sales and leads. If you enjoy the show, please make sure you subscribe. And if you know of any friends or business groups who would benefit from the advice here today, make sure you share it with them. So today I'm delighted to welcome Peg Fitzpatrick to the show. Peg brings over a decade of social media marketing experience to help small businesses succeed. As the first head of social strategy for Canva, she's a pro at boosting engagement and brand awareness. Peg loves visual marketing, not surprisingly, Canva, especially on Pinterest. Her book, The Art of Small Business Social Media, shares every Insider tips for entrepreneurs and small business owners. You're very welcome to the show, Peg.

Peg Fitzpatrick:

Oh my gosh. I'm so obsessed with your accent. Thank you for having me. It's like a social media bedtime story. I'm here for it.

Louise McDonnell:

Oh, thank you. So tell us, Peg, tell us like, that's an amazing accolade to have to be able to say that you worked for Canva. Do you want to tell us about your journey and where all that came in?

Peg Fitzpatrick:

Sure. so I started out in industry, I did traditional marketing before there was social media. And then 14 years ago, I started working for a company full time. So I've always worked in social media, like at a job running, running marketing and small business. So but that was only part time. So then I did things on the side and as I was like trying to figure out how to do things, because everything was very, very new, there weren't books on how to do things back then, or even blogs, really. So I kind of on the side grew my own social platforms. And when I was learning things, I started writing on a blog. I love blogging. I know. Podcasts are more popular now, but I still love the written word and my education was, I was a geography and education major with an English minor. And I use all of those things for my job, which is amazing. I've traveled all over. And I, you know, teach people how to do things through my website and, you know, videos and books. And then English obviously helps with writing a blog, even though it's different than the things that you learned in school, but. Grammar is still the same. So in my doing things part time, I was also working with Guy Kawasaki helping him with his social media and doing brand campaigns and things with him. So in creating graphics for him, Canva actually saw something that I had created in Canva that I was tweeting From guy's account. So they sent him an email saying, Hey, we see you're using Canva, you know, we'd love to talk to you because at that time they had been around for a little bit, but they, they didn't have the traction outside of Australia. So they were small and like. Small businesses or all startups, their goal was like, we need people to find us. Like we need to get out there in the world. And also being in Australia at that time, it was really hard to connect in Silicon Valley because Silicon Valley is so obsessed with themselves. So they're more interested in that. And of course, guy if your listeners aren't familiar, Guy Kawasaki was the original Apple evangelist, and he's literally a legend in Silicon Valley. He knows. the connections that he has there are amazing and he's a very generous person with them. So canvas said, you know, we'd love to come and meet with you. So they flew from Australia to San Francisco. I flew from New Hampshire to San Francisco and we had a meeting at guy's house. And it was Melanie and Cliff who are two of the co founders and Zach. Kitschke, who is their CMO now, he's been with the company. I don't even know how many years he was 1 of the very, he was there before me. So he was probably in the 1st, 10. Employees, maybe, maybe 15 at the very most, but anyway, Zach is like. he's been integral for everything that happened amazing at Canva. So we met with them. And they were like, we need help, you know, getting people to know who we are. And so we had this meeting with them and basically they wanted to hire a guy and I had to help them. Launch Canva in the United States and globally, they've always had big, big plans. And Melanie Perkins is especially like the visionary of canvas. She's always had, like, her big dreams for Canva to be, you know, way beyond, just a little app from Australia. And now they are now they're global. And, you know, they especially help teachers. it's free for teachers, free in classrooms, they really, they're very generous company. So guy, and I started working with Canva guy was the, he is still the chief evangelist of Canva and I was the head of social strategy. So the 1st thing that we did was had guy and I had a meeting, they left and we were like, okay, now, how are we going to, you know, get this out in the world. And so then I just went to it and, use guy's social platform and my social platform and. Canva had started things, but they weren't, you know, big everywhere. So I just ran all of their social media. I ran their blog and. You know, it worked because we grew our numbers really big pretty fast, we ramped up and built a community. And then it's just, obviously the little snowflake that we started is snowballed into like a, an avalanche of Canva everywhere now, which is amazing, but it was really great to be, there at the very beginning when they were just a small startup and their little first office and, Not that many employees and just, they were doing, you know, great things and they had big dreams. So Guy and I were very lucky to be a part of it like early and then just, see everything cascade from there. That's when I was only there for like six months.

Louise McDonnell:

Oh, okay. Okay. But you know, what's amazing to take from that for anybody listening in, like that, you know, Canva themselves needed help and you know, sometimes you can't do it all yourself. And for this brand, like they had amazing people behind them and amazing visionaries and amazing energy. Like they, they too were at a point in the business that they recognized, I need help. Like, And I need to help with the socials. I'm going to give it people and they can help. And I think that's an important message.

Peg Fitzpatrick:

And it was even beyond the socials because they really needed to connect with investors. And Guy actually was, you know, helped move all of those, you know, he gave them street cred. People were like, Oh, Guy Kawasaki's worked with them. So sometimes it's even who you partner with, you know, sometimes it's not even just like, cause it was two pieces of Guy's piece of it. And my piece of it, we both started talking about them a lot and, then we started like doing webinars and like, Speaking about them at comfort, like we brought it, you know, we did like everything but it's like the networking piece of it. And the community piece of it, or sometimes the piece that maybe people forget about, like, when you're a small business and you're just getting started and, working with other people in your community or outside of your community can really help and people get so isolated in their, bubble of their thing, you know, with their business.

Louise McDonnell:

I completely agree and I think sometimes what people don't recognize as well is that social media can help you with that too. So, okay, you might be on social media trying to grow sales and leads for your business, but the power of networking, even through social media, the connections that you make, it may not be potential customers, but it just may be people that can help you along the way. People that can give you a platform. So I think that's a really important message as well.

Peg Fitzpatrick:

It is and you connect with people. it's not always just about what you see publicly on social media. It's, you know, direct messages and the fact that Cliff, you know, reached out through email. he also left comments on my blog on a blog post that I had with that I had used Canva on. So he was like doing a little research, figuring things out and he's a COO. So he's a chief operating officer, but at that time they didn't have like legions of people that are doing so, you know, it was literally, Cliff was out there looking for people. So,

Louise McDonnell:

and that's another important message when it comes to use of social media, social media is not just about creating content. It's about engaging with other people's content. It's about DMing people. It's about reading their blogs, commenting on their blogs, commenting on their posts in a meaningful way to create that connection. So Hank, that's a wonderful point.

Peg Fitzpatrick:

And then the other side of that is making sure if you're there to make sure that people can reach you, right? Don't make it so hard to find you that people can't send you an email guy puts his email address out all the time. Like a lot of people at his level. Don't. Give out their personal, you know, they're like you know, I'm not going to do that, but he does. And he, he reads his email and he checks stuff and, he's always like this could be a thing. Is this a thing? You know, he doesn't just dismiss things. So there's a lot of, great lessons in there about being open to talking to people about their ideas. maybe it is a great partnership for you and you don't know it yet. Making sure people can find a way to reach you I mean, if. Like small business owners, I love them so much. And they, there's just some really basic stuff that sometimes they miss cause they don't know, but like, there's no contact information anywhere. or you can't even find their hours, or, like, there's no even link to their website, or they don't have a website. Sometimes it's the very basic things that can, be the thing, you know, and even though social media seems really overwhelming, sometimes just taking a look at. Even just the real basics like that, you know, setting yourself up for success, by having the bio that's there and the photo, you know, and, who you are and, and small businesses, there's a little fine line of, people do want to know who's behind there. So, and about us, like who created this brand, like, who's the passionate person behind it is always great. I love to see, Obviously brands to get bigger, like an ultra brand or Barnes and Noble, like things like that. They're not going to have the, who started, I have no idea who started Barnes and Noble. Was it Barnes and Noble? I have no idea. But you know what I mean? Like just. If you're a small business owner, don't post your personal things on your social media. But sometimes people do like to know who's behind. Don't you always look on websites to see like who's making the jewelry or who's, making the soap or whatever it is. I like to see the, the person who's creating or whose dream it was.

Louise McDonnell:

Absolutely. couldn't agree more with you. And in fact, like when you say to make it easy for people to reach out, I think sometimes there are some businesses who are so intent to use scheduling tools that they never actually go onto the social media networks. And so, what can be happening is that people are responding to what you're doing, but if you're not there, if you're missing the opportunity to connect, well then what was the point in the social media content in the first place? So, you know, you overusing scheduling tools, I know to save you time, but you need to be on an, and actually you need to be in 2024 going into 2025, you need to be on them even more than ever. Cause that engagement piece is so, so important.

Peg Fitzpatrick:

it's the last thing we can do, right? Algorithms are shut down. Engagement is the thing. So I a hundred percent agree and make sure that you have like Google alerts set up for your company. So if Somebody is mentioning you, if you have enough money to use something like brand 24, where you can do, you know, it'll do like searches and send you reports on stuff. Yeah, it is important if there, it seems like there's tons of things to remember, but there's really basics like that. Like just even make sure that you go to the platform to make sure that you're, you know, is somebody asking you a question that, I mean, that's the worst. If someone's sending you a message and you don't respond, and it can't all be done by bots, it's fine to have an auto responder, but on off hours, but you do need to answer people want to hear from you on the brand that I manage. and we covered North America, but. we're the only part of our company that's online. So I get people from all over the world, emailing questions. So I have to always be, up on looking at stuff, but I still get stuff like in the middle of the night or, Friday night at 11 o'clock or cause it's different time zones. So I get to them as soon as I can. I do have an auto responder that says, if you have. bigger questions or need something right away. Here's our phone number and I'd give my email address so people can send me something if they have something longer and then I respond to it as soon as I can. Sometimes it's the, just as soon as you can is the best you can do.

Louise McDonnell:

But to respond, you know, is ultimately the most, most important thing. Another thing as well, if you're starting it or a small business, I don't know if you noticed this peg, but one thing that I would notice some, a mistake, that's Businesses make is that they look very different, on the different platforms and that could be that they set up their Facebook page, you know, years and years ago when that was a thing. And then a few years later they decided, Oh, I need to go into Instagram now. So they set up an Instagram profile and the name of the channel is different to the name of the channel on Facebook. That's the worst when the

Peg Fitzpatrick:

names are different, it's very hard because people can only remember one. If you're lucky, they'll remember one.

Louise McDonnell:

Exactly. And then if somebody is trying to tag you across two different platforms, and then you've got different names on different platforms and you look different and your branding is different, your contact detail is different. It confuses the hell out of people. So it's, yeah, that's, as you said, just. Just get the basics, go and check it out. If you're tuning in here today and you haven't updated your social channels in a few years, just go back and review them. I was even horrified to see like an old email address. It just missed it. make sure your contact details up to date, your opening times up to date, your email address, You know, make sure that you're, the same name as much as possible across all the socials.

Peg Fitzpatrick:

Yeah. Try to avoid the underlines and like the, here were this underline us here were this, you know, dot this. And people are just like, what? I mean, you're asking yourself not to be tagged on anything if it's too hard. And I think, I haven't set up a brand new account in a long time, so it's probably getting even harder to get names for stuff. But yeah, as close as you possibly can to your website and to your company name.

Louise McDonnell:

I agree. Yeah. I have, when I was rebranding the company a few years ago, so I'm selling social media and of course Twitter or X as it is now that was too long. I know it was too long. It's like, Oh, I

Peg Fitzpatrick:

still call it Twitter.

Louise McDonnell:

so I'm selling social M everywhere because I could get that everywhere. So at least it's consistent, you know? So so tell us about this book that you've written.

Peg Fitzpatrick:

So it's called the art of small business, social media, a blueprint for small for marketing success. Sorry. It's a long title. And it's, it's I wrote another book with guy called the art of social media, and that one is power tips for power users. That one is kind of like, you already have some experience and it's power tips, but this new book is specifically for small businesses. And it just goes from the beginning to the end, everything, from like, how to create your brand? What is an online brand? Do you need a website? it's how to do the things, but it's not things that you could just Google. You know, if you can like Google how to do it, that's not in there. It's like really the strategy of everything from the beginning to the end for small business owners who are super busy, who don't have a lot of money. It's like. It's not, I do talk about tools and things, but I am well aware that people can't afford, a hundred dollars a month for each tool, you know, it's things have gone up in price a lot. It used to be A lot of things were had freemium versions that you could use and now things are expensive. So taking all those things to consideration, like how to create a budget for your social media, a time budget and a money budget. And it basically just walks you through all of it. And by the end of it. You should be able to create your own social strategy, create a content calendar, and really get out there and be able to market your business to be a success.

Louise McDonnell:

Excellent. Okay. So, so what are the misconceptions small businesses have about social media? Do you think?

Peg Fitzpatrick:

Ooh, that's a good question. I think some, okay. Number one, people think something's going to go viral and they're going to be rich. Let's just make it go viral because that's what people think. That doesn't happen. That's not the thing. You can't try to go viral as your marketing plan because that's going to fail. Like you can't plan that. I mean, there is planning that goes into some of the stuff that people create. That goes viral, but mostly not. I think number two, a lot of small business owners have tried it and. Maybe didn't things have things just right the 1st time. So it didn't it wasn't successful. So they say social media doesn't work because I tried it and it didn't work. So they tried it. They abandon it and then they went back 2 months later and they posted 1 thing. So they're very inconsistent. They didn't know what they were posting. They posted. They had no branding. You couldn't tell 1 post from the other who they were, what they were. So, because of that, they say it doesn't work or another situation, which is. A bummer, they hired someone to do their social media who didn't know what they were doing and kind of got burned by it and they spent money on it and they didn't see anything from it. So those are 3 things that I see a lot, you know, where they just and then it just seems overwhelming. And then the very obvious thing is small business owners are very, very busy. Doing all their business stuff, and it's hard for them to have time. And they think it's going to take so much time that they just can't even do it, but there's ways that you can. create your content in batches, and then you can use the scheduling tool, but then you go in when it's posting and check everything. I mean, I schedule stuff, but I always check stuff. And there's always stuff that doesn't post post wrong. Didn't connect. Like, yeah, didn't tags hardly ever work. So even if you schedule it, you still have to go check things. So I think those are the bait, you know, those are the big ones that I think, what do you think? I

Louise McDonnell:

love the fact that you started off with the people think everything's going to go viral. I actually, it's one of my hobby horses, to be honest, because I think the media are in some way responsible for this because anytime that social media is featured within the media, it's always about the, Oh, here's the account. And it's had 3 million, billion, trillion followers and views and blah, blah, blah, blah. And you here's what I will say to people now, can you think of a day yesterday when you were on social media, can you think of an account that came into your newsfeed that you'd never seen before, because they did something quite clever and it went in your newsfeed, you never saw them before, and you possibly might never see them again. do you even remember them today? Because you won't remember them in two weeks time. Okay. Right. If you didn't

Peg Fitzpatrick:

follow them right away, which that doesn't always happen with viral stuff. I mean, people don't. Or sometimes viral things, they get a lot of followers from it. And then people unfollow them later. Cause they don't like the rest of their content. And the other thing is people just, then they're trying to recreate the viral thing. the one that's been really popular lately is that, that awesome account that started the demure trend on Tik TOK. I'm very demure. I'm very mindful. I actually love that. And it's a very tight little tagline. And they've continued with it and they've been successful. And it literally like, that's more of like a catchphrase thing. And then more people are using it. And so sometimes, you can create a sustainable, interesting thing. Another one that I love is, and it wasn't necessarily a viral thing is Lexi, the girl that created the Coastal grandmother trend. because, everybody's obsessed with Nancy Myers movies and the holiday and, all of her movies, but they love the coastal grandmother, Diane Keaton, vibes. And so she kind of created like a whole persona around that. And that's, continued and she probably has made some money from it, like brand deals and things like that. She definitely gets a lot, it's definitely hard to turn the one thing. as a viral thing and another one that I talk about in my book, this one really makes me crazy. Clancy's auto shop. I don't know if you know this story. It's one of the ones I talk about in the book. So it's a tick tock account and this auto shop, literally it's a shop that does collision work for cars in Florida. So they hired this guy who said he knew how to do brand social media, which he didn't, he created a tick tock, which went viral using a meme of Maxwell, the cat with a, which is a tuxedo cat, like chubby taxi. It's a really cute cat. and it was trending music. He didn't have any idea how to do anything else that went viral. And people were just like going back to the account. Like we want to see the cat. We want more of the cat. They don't own the cat. They didn't have really legal use to use it because it was. a meme. So it was like a million things wrong and he tried to keep it going, but it ended up just going crazy. People left what left millions of Google reviews on the business because of this, but then it was like overwhelming and it just got to be a mess. And the moral of the story of that is they're an auto. Body shop in Florida. All that matters is that local people are interested in what they do. So they went viral. They got followers. That guy is not there anymore. It just was a hot mess. It's like the perfect example of what going viral isn't what matters because you're an auto body shop in Florida. You need local people. It doesn't matter. You don't need 10, 000 followers. You need, the right people to follow. You need other mechanics to follow you that would refer business there. You need the local people. And that's, I think, where the bigger picture of social media gets kind of lost is that people think, oh, you know, getting a million views on something would be great, but it ultimately didn't help their business. Or that person who got eventually fired. Louise McDonnell: Exactly. Well, I know, I always say to people as well, I have clients who run very successful social media marketing campaigns in the back of 300 followers and they, make money on it because they follow a process to create sales and leads. And then I've had people who've come up to me at events that I've been speaking at and they say, you know, I have 40,000 followers, but I dunno how to make money. So. You know, so that whole thing of going viral, those are two different things, aren't they? Right. Having a following and how to make money from it.

Louise McDonnell:

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And I will say to people as well, that are content creators. That's their job. They create content. Whereas if you're a small business owner, your job is to, do all the stuff in the business and social media is just one little part of that. So I love the fact that, that you started off talking about the whole thing viral, because that drives me crazy and trying it and it didn't work is absolutely out on the button because people say I tried that and it doesn't work. Or people say I tried Facebook ads and they don't work. And I'm like, can I see the ads? And I'm like, look, that's why it didn't work. Yeah.

Peg Fitzpatrick:

Facebook ads are. Those are complicated. there's a whole art and a science to getting all the pieces right. And the conversion copywriting is again, a whole other thing. Like being good at, like I can write great social media posts, but I will agonize over the conversion pieces of it because they're so different.

Louise McDonnell:

Yeah, exactly. And there's so many different parts of

Peg Fitzpatrick:

that.

Louise McDonnell:

You know, and people run the wrong one ad expecting a different outcome. And that ad was never going to deliver that outcome, you know? So yeah, not working, nothing consistent, huge, huge issue or not being clear on their branding or their core messages. So, and then if you don't know your branding, your core messages, but you're trying to outsource to somebody and you can't communicate where they are, they're never going to get it right either.

Peg Fitzpatrick:

Right. It is really hard. that's another thing in the book. I mean, I do talk about, you know, where you can hire people to do things, but having an overview of everything helps, you know, you have to know what you're hiring someone to do and you have to be able to say to them, I want to do these promotions the rest of the time I want some, I want to grow things. Like if you just tell people to do social media for you, you're not going to get anything very good. It's way too general. And if they're not going to do reporting for you, forget it. You know, there's accountability and can they send things to you ahead of time? So you can kind of look at them to get an idea at first. Cause it's hard to create content for a brand that if you don't know all of those things, if they're like, Oh yeah, I can totally, you know, they can create content for you, but it's not going to be content that converts. Or works necessarily

Louise McDonnell:

exactly. And that's going back to your point that people getting burnt and then thinking that it, that it doesn't work. I know in the book, you talk about like, what should brands should do if, should a crisis arise? And I know sometimes, the fear of, you know, people who have been avoiding social media, they're maybe not into it themselves personally. So they have this fear that what's going to happen if I, you know, if all the bad things happen. So what's your advice then around, you know, if a crisis should arise?

Peg Fitzpatrick:

So one of the crisis is that I talk about in the book is this, it was a bakery and they had chef Gordon Ramsey came and he tried to work with them to help them. And he was like, I can't work with them. There's no way like I'm done. I can't help them. it just went viral on their Facebook page because they did the thing. That's a horrible thing that small business owners do sometimes. They started ranting on their Facebook page and post over and over again. He's horrible. He, how dare he say that you know, they just ranted. And that's a thing where sometimes small business owners get confused about. The professional account, they think it's my account. And so I'm going to write whatever I want. And in theory, that's true. It is your account, but you're not talking from your business account as your personal self. So they just ranted and went crazy. And. People were like, what? I mean, people were just like watching it because it was just like watching a train wreck. BuzzFeed wrote about it and just talked about how they made the whole viral thing themselves. And then the account ended up closing. I think the business even ended up closing because It was just horrible. So, you know, 1 of the things, if there's a crisis or something's going on, don't rant on your accounts that happened to be Facebook. And that's the kind of place like, Twitter and Facebook are kind of where people do that. But another place is like. Google or Yelp reviews because small business owners are petrified about Yelp reviews and they are very important. People check them, you know, review on like people really trust online reviews. I do include a section on Yelp, even though it's not technically social media, but it is a community place because if you set your Yelp up, right, you can do like a page, like a Facebook page with a cover. You can add photos, all your, like, there's a lot of stuff that you can do to set your Yelp. Page up, right? But just make sure if you get a negative review that you respond to it and, and, you know, get the person's email and you don't have to have a big, long conversation in public. You should respond publicly and then deal with everything offline. That's a good, like, rule of thumb for a crisis. Like, always respond publicly and then. get their phone number, email them, do something you can to make it up for them, like for whatever bad thing happened. You can't just take it so personally that you lose your temper and say, how dare they? That was the best soup they've ever had. They just don't even, you know, sometimes people even use their Yelp reviews to write. Funny things. I saw one that was like It was a very popular restaurant, but somebody gave their soup, like one star. And they did like one of the little boards outside. It was like, don't miss our one star soup that blah, blah, blah. You know, they just, they made fun of it. And most people won't go to that level, but it's kind of like the best crisis. short advice I can give is really just that. Make sure you respond to things positively and then take it offline to solve whatever customer service. Thing it is because small business owners want to be there to get customers and make sales, but people are online and they want customer service So they, whether you think you're doing customer service online or not, you are because they expect customer service. So that's one of the big things about answering as a brand and small business is that you are doing customer service. It could make a sale. It could. You know, fix someone's negative review of an experience, but it's all important and every single thing you do is not going to be a sale. A lot of things are brand awareness and people can ask you questions in just like networking. There's a lot of different aspects to it. Everything is not going to be a direct sale. that's another thing, you just have to know that it takes time to, win people's hearts and to have them, but if you're local and you're posting things locally, you know, people can come in your shop or connect with you or just make sure that you're, you Letting people know where they can find you.

Louise McDonnell:

Exactly. And I will say that if you do get a negative review like that, and like, sometimes if you are the business owner, you can't take it personally because you've put so much time and effort into this business. Well, one of the things I will say to people, if that happens is, Never respond when you're angry or upset, like go away and calm down and breathe and go for a walk and offline as fast as you can because the whole thing is that it's the people that come afterwards that are going to look at how you responded. That's actually what's really important. and I know. If I'm going to eat someplace, it's the one star reviews I check first and if you read a one star review and you think, Oh, that person wasn't been reasonable with them, you don't take any heat, but like, you know, you as you said, the business owner still has to say, I acknowledge what happened. I've sent you a DM. Let's take this conversation and let's get this. Yeah.

Peg Fitzpatrick:

Yeah. Don't respond angry for sure. Yeah. I mean, It seems common sense. A lot of things like this are common sense, but we do have emotions. I mean, it's the same thing. When you write a book, you can get a bad review and it hurts. You know, you want to just believe all the good reviews, but then when someone, you know, gives you a one star and says like, I didn't like this. You're like, you know, you put a lot of work into that. everything isn't for everybody.

Louise McDonnell:

True. actually, sometimes you can learn a lot from the one and two star reviews, so sometimes you might like the feedback, but then if you take it and you go, okay, how can I use it? So how can I improve? That's important too.

Peg Fitzpatrick:

It is especially, if it's somebody commenting that somebody was rude when they went into the store, or, you know, if it's that kind of thing, there's a lot of different kinds of reviews, like shipping. Maybe it wasn't your fault, it's definitely and I think if someone's taking the time to leave. A review for something like that, it's an open door, so you can talk to them and try to make it right. Can I have you come in for another meal? Can we copy your meal? Like some way to fix it. Is there something that we can do, because those people could turn into your biggest fans later. You know, like, you get a product and you open it up and it's like, immediately broken, like, makeup palettes, a lot of money for eyeshadow palettes these days are like 60, 75. I mean, they're like super pricey and if it's broken and then you posted it and the brand contacts you and says, we're so sorry, can we send you another one and they do, and that one's perfect, I mean, they fixed that. You know, I think a lot of times when people are complaining, they are looking for that kind of. Support. I had a makeup, it's a skincare brand that I like called Otacite. And they have like a little gua sha tool. That's like quartz and it's so beautiful, but you use it when you're doing like oil on your face and I dropped it and it just broke in half. And I was like devastated and I posted like, Oh my God, like, I was just sad. I didn't post like negative. I was just sad, but they sent me another one and they're not inexpensive, but I mean, they were so, so nice about it. And I was just like, thank you so much. Like, I appreciate it. They didn't have to do that.

Louise McDonnell:

And here you are sharing that story,

Peg Fitzpatrick:

right? was thing that happened and then they. rectified it. So taking the time to do that, you know, if they weren't listening and looking on social media, they wouldn't have seen that, but they did. So, yeah, it's, you have to look at it as an opportunity to get over the emotional piece of it. try to process that first and just think, how can I, turn this around and surprise and delight that person to turn them into a fan. it's a little bit of a harder conversion, but they are, I think they're open to connecting with you. Cause they're posting it.

Louise McDonnell:

Exactly. Okay. So I know we're not quite at the end of 2024, but we're heading towards the last quarter of the year. What trends do you see emerging in the last quarter of 2024 and heading towards 25?

Peg Fitzpatrick:

I think more than ever community is really important. Important and engagement, because, as we kind of already mentioned a little bit, the algorithms are so hard right now. So I think it's really important to connect with the people who are in your community right now, growing is great, but also don't forget, like, nurturing the people that are there and sharing with them and helping them and, if you make a connection, make sure you're following people right away, commenting on their things, because it takes a little bit of a work these days to make sure that you see the people that you want in your feed. If you like an account and never engage with it, eventually, you're not going to see any of their things. So, I really wish there is a way where you could like make a little side list of accounts so you could follow it on Instagram, but there's no way to do that unless it's a hashtag, but you almost have to like have a little list of your most important people. So you can make sure that you're going and engaging with them on their accounts, not just on your account. Cause we talked about how important it is to answer every question, but also if people are spending time on your account, make sure that you're reciprocating that and going to their account, leaving Thoughtful comments on their posts, not just something fast, but like leave a little comment so you can build, you know, continue to network and grow that community because I think it's getting harder to grow communities. And I think that people are still really looking to be connected and engaging with people online. So I think that that, for me, I feel like that piece is really big going forward. What do you think?

Louise McDonnell:

Yeah, I totally agree with you. And I actually, I think the algorithms now have changed that they no longer serve content to followers. They serve content to people who engage. because the algorithms, their only sole purpose is to keep people on the platform. So if they know that somebody's interested in a particular topic they're going to serve them that content. and even if they're not a follower, so it's all about that engagement piece and getting into people's DM box as well, super important. Um, So yeah, taking the time. Unfortunately, there's a little bit more time needed, but if you spend the time correctly, it will really work. And you build connections as well. So it's not just about, interacting for the sake of it. People like when you comment on their stuff and they really appreciate it and they notice it. And it becomes a notification in their newsfeed.

Peg Fitzpatrick:

Right. Agreed. Yeah. Yeah. I think it is. I, so I, I feel like that's even more important.

Louise McDonnell:

Yeah. And I think like in a world where there's so much AI content and people are bombarded with more and more content, that whole engagement and community piece is more important. Important than ever. So I, I completely agree. So I know your book is coming out on the 19th of November. where can people find this peg?

Peg Fitzpatrick:

It's actually available now, wherever books are sold, it's on preorder now everywhere. So find your favorite independent bookstore or online bookstore wherever you like to get your books and it's there. I, my website is pegfitzpatrick. com, super easy to find. So I have more information there if you're looking for like how to do things. My website also has a lot of great resources on it.

Louise McDonnell:

Fantastic. So just remind people again of the name of the book.

Peg Fitzpatrick:

It is the art of small business, social media, a blueprint for marketing success. It's like a test.

Louise McDonnell:

I know. Yeah. I was letting you say it. so much for coming on the show and sharing all your wonderful advice. I really enjoyed our conversation.

Peg Fitzpatrick:

Me too. thank you so much for having me.

Louise McDonnell:

Thank you.