How to Use Engagement to Harness the Power of Social Media

Jeffro (00:03.525)
Welcome back to Digital Dominance. In today’s digital age, mastering social media presence is paramount for small service-based businesses who want to thrive in a competitive market. You know, the platforms are evolving quickly and consumer behavior is always shifting more towards online engagement. So you need to understand the ins and outs of social media if you want to succeed. You can’t ignore it anymore. So joining us today is Aviva Fustuchenko, the capable leader behind AVF Solutions Group. She’s a prominent figure in social media management, and she has a focus on empowering service-based businesses. Her expertise lies in crafting effective content calendars and implementing robust review management strategies to kind of, you know, it works together with the social media strategies in order to bolster a business’s online visibility and customer retention. So in this episode, we’re going to dive into the intricacies of social media engagement and

We’ll talk about optimizing content strategies, navigating the nuances of these organic social media campaigns. And I’m going to try to extract all of Aviva’s insights and tips for you guys to more effectively leverage social media in your business. So whether you’re a budding entrepreneur or a seasoned business owner who wants to improve your social media presence, I’m predicting this episode will be a must listen. So Aviva, it’s great to have you on the show. Welcome.

Aviva Fustochenko (01:23.338)
Hi, thanks so much for the introduction, Jeffra. That was awesome. Yeah, so listen, a super scary statistic is I want to say the average adult spends 3 and 1 to 4 hours a day on social media. Jeffra, my guess is between you and I, it’s a little higher. Because our clients are on there. But it’s a lot.

Jeffro (01:26.493)
Definitely. Well.

Jeffro (01:37.529)
Yeah, that’s a lot. He he he.

Jeffro (01:44.389)
Well, and so it’s only scary if you’re looking at it from a society point of view or an individual point of view, right? If you’re the business owner, you can view this as an opportunity because this is a chance to get in front of them, right? And that’s why we’re talking about this.

Aviva Fustochenko (01:56.142)
Correct. So I just more so wanted to mention it because a lot of the business owners that have come across in the service industry They may not be on their phones so much because they’re busy out there Engaging with their end user with their client, but their clients are on social So how do we get in front of them? And I always tell them if you’re not advertising where your clients are living I call it living which they’re not really living. They were watching You’re just leaving money on the table. So how do you get ahead of the game and

really make sure that all of your potential consumers know that you exist and that you’re out and about.

Jeffro (02:31.893)
Right. And really the shift that you have to make as a business owner is going from simply consuming social media to being one of the creators and producers on the platform, right? So putting the stuff out there that other people are gonna watch rather than you watching other people’s stuff. That’s the transition, right?

Aviva Fustochenko (02:48.919)
Right, 100%. And then again, taking advantage of, so my favorite tool that social media offers are these Facebook groups. I know some people look at them and they’re like, oh my God, I just wanna sit there with some popcorn and watch people be bananas and go crazy. But the reality is, is it’s become one of the number one referral sources to date. People are asking the most ridiculous questions. I was on there once and someone asked for a neurologist on Facebook.

where they went to find a good neurologist in the area. More than likely though, you’re finding people who are asking, hey, my basement just flooded. I really need help with water removal or my plumbing is about to go. Anyone have a nice plumber? And you’ll get, depending on the ask, somewhere between 40 and 80 people responding. I call it the positive Karen effect. It’s everybody wants to say something and everyone wants to be heard. And please listen to me, listen to me, whether or not, you know.

they actually had a good experience or not, they want to comment. So if you aren’t on Facebook, and if you don’t have a business page, you are missing out on opportunities to be tagged. When people ask what is tagged, it’s like a digital card, right? So when someone says, oh, you need to contact ABC Plumber, your business page pops up, and then it’s just a matter of someone clicking twice and your phone is ringing, versus if you aren’t on Facebook,

One, you’re lucky if someone remembers to talk about you, but when they do, they’re taking a picture of your business card, they’re posting it now, but we have a big issue with that, Jephyr, why is that? How many people are looking on their computer when they’re on Facebook? So it’s like 92% of, right, 92% of people are on their phone. I was looking at one of my client’s email campaigns recently.

Jeffro (04:33.062)
It depends on your audience, yeah.

Aviva Fustochenko (04:43.338)
And it was 96.8% of the people who opened that email opened it on their cell phone. So you have to think about what’s happening when you’re putting content out there. Like a lot of people are using QR codes right now, Jefferyl. We see like the QR code’s a big deal. It’s great, but not if the QR code’s gonna pop up on my phone, because I can’t scan it from my phone, right? It’s great if it pops up on my computer. It’s great if it pops up on my TV. It’s great if it comes to me in direct mail.

Jeffro (04:48.565)
for us soon.

Jeffro (05:04.587)
Right, exactly.

Aviva Fustochenko (05:13.334)
Right, that all makes sense. But if you’re using social media, you need to know how you’re engaging with people. So it’s great that you have friends and family taking pictures of your business card and posting it there, but it would be even better if they tagged your business and all the customer then had to do was click it and your phone starts ringing. So.

Jeffro (05:30.029)
Yeah, that makes sense. I want to circle back real quick to a comment you made. Facebook groups are one of the best places for referral groups and all that. And I’m sure some people were like, what? Because a lot of people have only been in Facebook groups where it’s all about self-promotion, like business owners of this county. And everybody’s just posting their own stuff. Like, hey, come to my store. We do this, we do that. And that’s not helpful. But the ones I’m guessing you’re talking about are the specific cohort groups, like physician moms.

Aviva Fustochenko (05:52.206)
short.

Jeffro (05:58.877)
Because, okay, I trust other moms who are physicians. If I, like, I only know my specialty, but my kid needs this, how do I approach this? What do I do? And that’s when everybody jumps in, right? And so if you can create that type of group, that’s where you’re gonna get those referrals.

Aviva Fustochenko (06:09.198)
100%.

Aviva Fustochenko (06:12.894)
Yeah, or take advantage of the groups that are there already. So like by us, we have a group, the North Rockland Community Group, that has 35,000 members. You know, you might not be allowed to post your stuff in there, but that’s where you have people asking for referrals. You need to make sure that you’re at the bare minimum, a member of the group as an individual, if not as your business. And then ask friends and family, hey, listen, can you like be a member of this group for me and tag me whenever my name pops up? And you’ll be surprised. You only need to ask that question probably for the first month or two. After that, you’re going to be asked

Jeffro (06:21.03)
big group.

Jeffro (06:32.774)
Mm-hmm.

Aviva Fustochenko (06:42.21)
people who have used you are gonna start tagging you again because of that positive Karen effect, at least. I need to coin a new term for that, Jefferyl, but I really do feel that that’s exactly what’s happening. But the best thing to do is don’t, I’m not saying don’t join the local business community groups on Facebook, definitely join them, right? It’s a way to get your brand out and your name out there, but it’s more important to make sure that you’re a member of the Facebook groups that’s your target audience.

because that’s where people are going to be looking for you when asking those questions. And they are asking, especially in the service industry. Out of all the clients that I have, we took an electrician on, I want to say, in January. He specifically was turning to us to help him build his commercial side of the business. He had a pretty good foothold in our community on the residential side, but he wanted to build commercial. And this is not typical. I like to have that little.

asterisk there because everyone’s like, oh, it’s really not typical what happened with him but he didn’t even have a business page. So we had to build a business page and then we put some content on there for him. We didn’t even start sharing it yet. The next week, I think we had two posts posted on his business page but somebody realized he had a business page now and they must have searched him up. His business page populated, he ended up with seven of those Karens saying, hey,

Jeffro (08:00.842)
Mm-hmm.

Aviva Fustochenko (08:05.294)
contact so-and-so and he landed a huge commercial deal that he probably wouldn’t have gotten had he not had a business page. And that’s not even content related. So it’s not even like we posted some beautiful content that was out of this world with a video that made people laugh. It was just the pure fact that he had a business page that was able to be tagged. And once this building owner, because it was a strip mall, saw that he was tagged five times, that says more.

Jeffro (08:14.928)
Right.

Aviva Fustochenko (08:34.498)
than any one post could say, right? That goes back to the review management piece of it.

Jeffro (08:37.096)
Yeah.

Yeah, and the reason you even need to build that business page in the first place is it legitimizes you, right, to show that you’re actually doing stuff and it makes other people feel more comfortable referring people to you rather than just, oh, it’s this guy I know. It’s like, no, this is the company over here that’s doing these things.

Aviva Fustochenko (08:56.166)
Yeah, listen, the reality is back in the 80s, the Yellow Pages was big, right? You had to have a listing in the Yellow Pages and you need to be in the Better Business Bureau. Things had shifted and evolved. Now it’s a matter of you have to have a Google My Business listing and you need to have some social media pages that legitimizes your business, especially after COVID. Because once COVID happened and everybody, you know, stopped leaving the house, they were all going to Facebook to see is this business still open? You know, it’s…

Obviously, it started with restaurants first because they wanted to order out and do all those things. But it really did shift. Like now if I go to a business’s Facebook page and they haven’t posted since 2020, my assumption is they closed. Right? They don’t exist anymore. They haven’t been posting. I’m moving on. But it’s just this mind shift. Right? We don’t have the Yellow Pages anymore. We now have Google My Business. We don’t have the better, well, we have the Better Business Bureau. But it’s not what it used to be. Now it’s.

referrals and reviews and really capitalizing on what your consumer says about you. It means more than anything. Again, you know, the power of reviews bolstered during COVID. We were all ordering and getting things delivered and not getting our product or service because we didn’t realize what was happening. We were suddenly purchasing things. I’ve never ever actually ordered a product on Facebook prior to COVID. I don’t know if

Jeffro (10:21.686)
Well, everyone’s got different preferences too for their platforms, right? And you can’t make the assumption that just because I like Instagram better, all my customers are going to be on Instagram too. A lot of them might be on Facebook. And so to your point, if you’re going to assume they’re not in business, a lot of people are doing that. So it’s just a marginal amount of additional effort to post the same stuff on other platforms. So there’s really no reason not to.

Aviva Fustochenko (10:23.378)
You know what? Right. So, I’m going to go ahead and turn it over to you.

Aviva Fustochenko (10:45.623)
And for sure, they have tools now out there also that make that so easy. It’s silly not to make sure that your content can be seen across the board. Listen, I’m a firm believer that you post to Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and your Google My Business profile at the bare minimum. Minimally, twice a week. It really doesn’t need to be more than that. There’s no need to be daily or six times a day, maybe unless you’re an e-commerce. But as Jeff introduced me, I’m not an e-commerce specialist.

help people in the service industry. And really two to three times a week is plenty. There’s new statistics coming out now that are saying less is more in terms of the algorithms. They’re starting to show, if you’re posting twice a week, they’re gonna show that post more than they would if you were posting every day. So you have to pay attention to those algorithms a little bit, and then also understand what the content is for. Like are you posting because you think somebody needs your services right now?

are you posting because when they need your services, you’re top of mind. That also makes a big difference in exactly what you’re doing. Is that organic evergreen content where it’s there all the time? Or is that a paid ad where you’re hoping somebody is talking about the fact that you need a new roof and they’ve been talking to their friends and family and now Facebook’s listening with their little ears and Google’s hearing it. Now you get the ads exploding all the time. Why do they keep sending me I need new roof ads? It’s because you said it out loud somewhere.

So it’s important to kind of know. I was just going to say it’s important to know what you want to achieve when you’re engaging on these platforms.

Jeffro (12:16.554)
So.

Now finish your thigh, go ahead.

Jeffro (12:28.701)
Right, and that was gonna be kind of my next point here. Like we started talking about engagement before we even started about content. And obviously content’s an important piece of the puzzle, but you do need to have a strategy, otherwise you’re just gonna be hoping that, well I saw other people posting on social media, seems to be working for them, I’ll just try some stuff and hope it works. You know, that you may get lucky, but most likely you won’t. And, cause you don’t know what you’re doing or which direction you’re going, you don’t know if you’re in front of the right people. So how…

You know, that seems daunting if you don’t know this space. So what do you recommend for clients when you’re putting together a social media strategy to help them get oriented here?

Aviva Fustochenko (13:07.554)
So when we take on a new client, we have an onboarding process that, first of all, it takes a lot of the pressure off of you as a business owner because you know that we’re listening and not everybody is the same, even when it comes to my clients who are in the same industry. So let’s talk about electricians. I have a ton of electricians on board, but they don’t all do the same thing, nor is their client the same. As I mentioned, that one guy really wanted to break into commercial. But I have another client that is really

Aviva Fustochenko (13:38.502)
power port like power ports in. So when we’re talking to our client and figuring out who their end user is, you start building out campaigns and campaign is a scary word. So let’s not say campaign. I’m just going to change it to schedule. Let’s talk about a schedule. And I’ve even taken it as far as I just open a calendar out. I’m like, all right, so we’ve got a month. We’re going to do two posts a week. What’s the most important thing you want?

Like what’s the most important message that you wanna come across? Is it that you’re family owned? Are you fourth generation electrician? Is it that you do a lot of community service work and you want people in your community to know that you are community-based and you support the local softball team? All of these things, believe it or not, would push people more towards hiring you. So figuring out who you are in your community, who your target is, who’s calling you? Is it a woman who’s calling you?

Is it the man who’s calling you? Is it the emergency calls? Is that where you’re getting most of your business from? Is the, oh my God, my basement’s flooding? Is that where you’re getting most of your calls from? All of these are important when it comes to planning out your schedule and how often you’re posting about certain things.

Jeffro (14:44.501)
Mm-hmm.

Jeffro (14:51.045)
Right, and that brings us to the content calendar, right? Because that helps you track if you’re actually doing what you need to be doing.

Aviva Fustochenko (14:58.014)
Yeah, 100%. And then again, as we mentioned before, there are tools out there, or not only will it share your content across the board to all these platforms, but it will also tell you which types of content are doing better. So if we have this content calendar, right? I’m sure we’ve all heard the word, and it’s, again, it’s daunting. We don’t really understand what it is, but being able to tag it and understand, okay, well, my community posts are getting three times the amount of engagement.

as my post about the fact that I do pool lighting. So where should I be focused more of my time on? Maybe I should focus more on community posts than on the fact that I do in-ground pools or landscape lighting. That’s not getting as much engagement.

Jeffro (15:31.861)
Mm-hmm.

Jeffro (15:45.341)
So the next natural question there though is, how much of that is vanity metrics versus converting to actual business? Because if some posts, hey, people like this, but it doesn’t help me, I don’t get new clients from it.

Aviva Fustochenko (15:53.346)
Great question.

Aviva Fustochenko (15:58.518)
You know, so that is my both favorite and least favorite question is when someone asks me what my ROI from my social media campaign is. And the reason for that is unless you’re doing paid ads, where you have actual trackable conversions, and you’re saying, OK, well, I’ve got 30 people who clicked on it. From those 30 people who clicked, I had 10 forms filled out. From the 10 forms, I know exactly how much closed business I have. When you’re doing organic social posts,

Jeffro (16:07.059)
Mm-hmm.

Aviva Fustochenko (16:24.73)
That goes out the window. There is no true trackable conversion. What you can track, and if you’re doing it properly, as you can see, again, all of these tools are pretty much free. Your Google My Business page shows you how many people are going to your website from your Google My Business listing. If you’re tracking it and you’re saying, okay, well, in January, I only had 20 visits, I started some social media engagement, and now in June, I’ve had 100 visits, you know something’s working.

But I tell people all the time, are you asking? So when your phone rings, are you asking, hey, listen, where’d you get my number from? And they go, no. And I go, okay, well, is your phone ringing more than it was before? And they say, yes. Okay, when you, so unfortunately, when it comes to organic posting, it is extremely hard to track conversion. If you are one of those people that needs to have a dollar to dollar comparison, then organic,

Jeffro (17:02.693)
Probably not.

Aviva Fustochenko (17:23.502)
Hiring someone to do organic might not be for you, might make you uncomfortable. You might want to pair organic with paid. And that would make you feel better. But even then, Jeffer, this is where we’re going to slide to you. In terms of paid ads, not everybody belongs on Facebook to do a paid ad campaign. Some companies do better on Google for a paid ad campaign. And figuring out that.

is super important. You can throw thousands and thousands of dollars into pay-per-click campaigns and it not go anywhere because you were advertising in the wrong platform. Maybe you should be doing paid campaigns on LinkedIn. There’s a learning curve everywhere, and you really have to be willing to figure it out.

Jeffro (17:56.659)
Right.

Jeffro (18:04.369)
Yeah. And there’s, yeah, there’s pros and cons to all the different platforms too. So like if you’re going to run paid ads on Facebook, it’s because you know who your demographic is very clearly and they might not be ready today to buy your stuff, but you know you’re getting in front of the right people. Whereas with Google, there’s already intent behind whatever they’ve typed into Google. So, you know, they’re searching for your thing. And so sometimes that makes a lot more sense, especially if it’s like, you know, my house is flooded. I need a plumber. Okay. Google is a better place to be than Facebook, right?

Aviva Fustochenko (18:33.358)
100% right.

Jeffro (18:35.233)
So you can kind of make those decisions. But to your point about the organic stuff, I think you’re right. I think if you’re looking at it as, I want every post to bring me this much business, yeah, forget it. But it’s good to ask questions for feedback so you know what is working, regardless of whether you’re doing social media or flyers or anything else, right? You need to have feedback. And then the other question is just understanding that, okay, if I’m doing organic, it might just be for brand building. And…

Yes, that does help my business grow over time. It helps convert people later because they’ve seen me multiple times, right? And so now they grow to trust my brand when they are ready. It’s an easy yes for them. And you can’t really put a number on that directly because there’s multiple touch points. It’s over time. And if it’s not tracked 100%, you won’t know. But you got to look at those things that indicate progress. Like you mentioned, phone’s ringing more, people are easier.

to close on the phone or whatever it is, that kind of indicates that what you’re doing is working.

Aviva Fustochenko (19:33.462)
Absolutely. I saw a brain game years ago where they were talking about the brain and how your brain functions in terms of your memory. And one of it was the easy retrievability of certain information. So they say the reason that branding is so important and should be part of your strategy is the likelihood of somebody needing your product or service today is low. For most cases, it’s low.

even in the service industry, like how many times do I really need an electrician in my home?

Jeffro (20:08.201)
Not that I…

Aviva Fustochenko (20:08.426)
Right? A plumber, maybe more often, right? Because more things are obviously wrong. Even a roofer, hopefully, I only need to replace my roof once while I’m in it. So all of those things, you really need to think about how the likelihood of me calling electrician A over electrician B is how easily retrievable.

the brand is. And I talk about this all the time. There’s companies that come to mind for me when I have like an emergency in my home and they’re not even local. But it’s because I’ve seen them all over social media, they’ve got commercials, I get like and they’re not even a local company. I try calling them and they can’t even service my home. But it’s you know branding and the people who do it well are these really big companies obviously who have a really big budget. But if you think about Old Navy, I love using Old Navy as an example.

Old Navy doesn’t tell you it’s Old Navy until the very last second of their commercial. But you know it’s Old Navy the first five seconds of the commercial because of their colors and the type of music that they’re playing in the background that their actors are dancing to. They’re always dancing. And it’s always sort of like cool and relaxed where if you switch to the Gap, it’s the same company, they do the exact same thing. And again, you can tell within seconds that this is the Gap versus Old Navy.

based on the type of music they’re playing. And what they’re, same with, I mean, Target’s even better. You don’t know it’s Target until the very end when that dog pops up, right? But you know it’s Target because every once in a while, there’s a red lamp that pops up or they’ve got a red blanket that they’ll unfold and they’re doing something with the red and you go, oh, this is a Target commercial. And at the very end, they show you. Those are the brands that are well formed.

Jeffro (21:38.673)
Right.

Jeffro (21:53.865)
Mm-hmm.

Jeffro (21:58.457)
Right. And you know, branding, the reason that big businesses are good at it is because they have a lot of money to spend consistently, right? They’re not expecting you to run out and buy something today. Like there’s no Coke ads. Don’t say go buy your Coke right now. Like get it at your local 7-Eleven. They don’t say that it’s just about their brand and what it makes you feel and staying top of mind so that when you’re thirsty, you’re like, okay, I’ll reach for a Coke. Yeah.

Aviva Fustochenko (22:13.099)
Right.

Aviva Fustochenko (22:21.194)
Yeah, it’s that easy retrievability. And that’s where the consistency comes in posting. And that’s why it’s so important that, yes, OK, fine. Paid ads, do it. And you should. If you’re worried about what’s happening in your business today, definitely paid ads. If you’re worried about what’s happening in your business in general, you need to have that evergreen content, that organic stuff that’s happening. You’re posting regularly. You’re letting people know what’s going on.

I mean, a great example are those, yeah, 100%. But I was gonna say like the remediation companies, right? The, I mean, I can name a bunch of them, but when I have water damage in my house, I might be thinking, okay, I can clean that up on my own. Right? But if I’m posting regularly and I see it regularly, I might go, oh my gosh, this is three inches of water. I just don’t feel like dealing with it. And now I might call that remediation company. But it also doesn’t occur to me that remediation deals with a lot of things.

Jeffro (22:52.357)
You’re being part of the conversation, but go ahead.

Jeffro (22:57.941)
Mm-hmm.

Aviva Fustochenko (23:21.454)
smoke removal, we actually posted for someone recently that they were helped out a renting situation. They had a rental unit and the people that were in it prior to them were smokers and they didn’t realize that they were smokers. They had to come in and get rid of the smoke smell and they hired a remediation company. Like it wouldn’t have even occurred to me that a remediation company can help with something like that. So sometimes posting triggers something and somebody that goes, oh my God, I didn’t even know that you did that.

Um.

Electricians are another good example. Like I think of them for most things, but wouldn’t occur to me with the whole EV. So like the electron, like it just wouldn’t occur to me.

Jeffro (24:00.105)
Right.

Jeffro (24:04.285)
Until you go that route and you’re buying the car and you’re like, oh, I need someone to install this for me.

Aviva Fustochenko (24:08.743)
Right, so top of mind, making people aware of all aspects of your business, and just consistent, be as consistent as possible.

Jeffro (24:18.961)
Yeah, one last thing I’ll mention though, if you really want to be able to track the effectiveness of a post, you know, every once in a while on one of your posts, just put a code in there like mention code XYZ for an extra 5% off or something. Okay, then you can count. Yeah, count how many times people use the code. All right, now you know, but don’t do it on every post, obviously, because that’s not the goal. But that can give you some markers over time to show that, hey, you know, my exposure is increasing more people are paying attention and actually using these codes.

Aviva Fustochenko (24:32.782)
That’s funny, I was just gonna say that. I was just gonna say that.

Aviva Fustochenko (24:48.442)
I have people who also set up different phone numbers for their social so that they know if that phone number is being called, it came from social media. But in all honesty, guys, just ask. You should be asking anyway. Because if it was a referral, you want to be able to thank that referral. Jeff, I’m sure you get this all the time whenever I ask. They always say, online. I found you online. That’s awesome. Online where? What does that mean? Online, right. But yeah.

Jeffro (25:03.974)
Yeah, definitely.

Jeffro (25:11.829)
The internet’s a big place.

Jeffro (25:15.977)
to get specific. But anyways, we got to wrap up. We’re at the end of our time. So thank you Aviva. I know we could keep talking about this. There’s a lot more stuff we could get into. Social media is an amazing tool, guys. I mean, if you spend the time and create a strategy like this and just be consistent, it can have a big impact on your business. So if you guys are listening, go connect with Aviva. She actually has a discount for listeners of this podcast. So please take advantage of that. Do you want to tell us what that is real quick?

Aviva Fustochenko (25:41.77)
Yeah, absolutely. So we’re doing a couple of things right now. For our review management, we’re offering the first month free. And for our social media package, we are waiving the onboarding fee. So give us a call, and we’ll let you know how that works out for you.

Jeffro (25:55.705)
and mention the Digital Dominance Podcast so we can track where you came from. So, Viva, do you have any last thoughts for us before we end?

Aviva Fustochenko (25:59.316)
Exactly.

Aviva Fustochenko (26:04.918)
No, just not really. Thanks for listening. Be consistent. And consistent means stick with your brand, too. So don’t go hopping in colors and fonts and themes. Pick a theme, stick to it. And have fun. I mean, it is social, guys. Be social.

Jeffro (26:19.725)
Yeah. Well, thanks again for being here, Aviva. Thanks to all you guys for listening. Don’t sleep on social media, guys. It’s getting more important than ever. So go dominate the feeds and I’ll see you next time.