vickioneill

Show Notes:

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About Ella

Ella Orr is a social media marketer and owner of Much More Social. Having spent almost 30 years in teaching, she retrained in social media management in 2017 and set up her business just over a year ago. She is passionate about social media and keen to support small businesses to utilize this form of marketing more effectively. After an initial consultation with the client, she can provide audits, strategy writing and training to meet the client’s requirements, where transferable skills from her teaching prove very useful. Ella also runs training workshops for small groups.

 

She currently manages client accounts ranging from a glass blowing and handmade gifts company in Bath to a non-profit in London. Her mission is to communicate to businesses why having a strategy is essential whilst enabling them to feel more confident in harnessing the full benefits of social media marketing.

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Ella, Social Media and Teaching...Oh My! 

Ella's experience of teaching helps tremendously with the #1 thing all businesses need to be social media - strategy.

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Just as Ella planned as a teacher, a business must plan their social media. With a well-thought out, defined and measurable strategy, a business is setup to succeed in social media. 

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Who is Ella's Target Audience?

Help mostly small businesses with their social media management and marketing. Training and helping them create the right content, write strategy, auditing their platforms, and actually managing their social media for them.

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How can small businesses succeed on social media?

The most important thing is having a strategy. Ella having a teacher background knows the importance of planning – having a clear strategy, knowing who their target audience is, where they are hanging out, the type of content they are interested in and take it back to those platforms.

 

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How did you make the transition from being a teacher to social media manager?

After teaching elementary to adults, she started feeling disillusioned and burned out in that industry and wanted to do something different. She started to get restless but still use her teaching skills. She tried to find something that really excited her.

 

And when she realized she liked social media and she liked writing, she put it together after scrolling through social and seeing an ad about learning social media. 

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Doing some sort of formal training helps with learning social media and the industry. Free training or self training is useful for niche topics - but not learning all of social media. By taking free training in different places, you can easily get caught up in the Internet rabbit hole. Paid training provides you a formalized way to learn and stay focused.

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Ella went through a professional training course for 6 months which was very helpful. The community was aimed at working women who were parents so a tight community. Needed a schedule that was more flexible for her work home life balance.

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Kudos to John Espirian and Janine Coombes as two of her online tribe helpers.

 

Ella’s 'one word 3-6-5 is ‘wins’ – it’s the small wins that make being in business for yourself all worth it.

 

 

How will you move your business forward using your teaching background to help small businesses?

Social media is about communication. Trying to get that across to small businesses can be challenging. It’s different than other types of marketing. It’s about having a conversation with potential clients. Warm them up by posting content that creates engagement that entertain, advises, inform them and drop little bits of content that talks about the products and services you offer.

 

Social is about the background of the business, the story. Ella tries to get that through to them. As a teacher she can tell what a business owner's strengths are and she plays to those strengths. If they learn or communicate a particular way, then she communicates that way. Her teaching skills help her be intuitive and helps her recognize how someone will best learn and communicate.

 

Teachers are fantastic at planning and delivering. That’s what you want with social media. You want a tight strategy that says this is the target audience, this is where they hang out, here’s the plan we’re going to go with, here's a calendar and know you don’t have to post every day.

 

As long as you're consistent – with your message, voice, and reaching out consistently to your audience, you should be getting results.

 

“Talk to your target audience like they are a class of enthusiastic students. If a teacher goes into a classroom and delivers a lesson that’s a bit boring, the students switch off. Same is true with social media, if you keep delivering mediocre content that doesn’t engage them, they will look somewhere else.”

 

You want to post something interesting so when someone is scrolling through their Instagram feed, for example, your post will catch their attention and create some sort of action with your post.

 

In social media, we Test. Measure. Refine. If you don’t get the reach you want, keep testing. Whether it’s video or written content, measure it and refine it as needed until you get the following or result you want. 

 

 

Types of business you work with?

All sorts and industries. Focuses mostly on small businesses whether it’s one person or a small team. It could be non-profits and charities because of the engagement on social media. Local farm shop. Local VA is a client. Her niche is more about herself – she believes she’s the brand more so than social is the brand.

 

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Three resources she uses on a daily basis can’t live without?

1. Networking groups – helps with meeting real people, local businesses, see what’s going on in the local area, you can chat in person and that's really important to her. Moral support and great people. FaB, Find a Biz Networking Group – local in-person networking work Ella Orr attends regularly. Great for referrals!

2. Technology – phone, laptop and tripod.

3. Apps – Canva for everything high quality images you create yourself, A lot about social media is what looks good – so make sure you’re using a great app for making great visuals including videos.
    

Ella recommends to her clients and prospects - Have a solid bank of content, including images of your business, to use on social media. There are a lot of stock image galleries but having pictures of your own business – behind the scenes, employees, location, day-to-day happenings with the business – are important ways to put your stamp on the content in social media.

 

It’s important to show your branding because that’s what differentiates you from others. Be your authentic self – show your authentic side. People prefer authenticity and what warms your audience to you.

 

Know. Like. Trust. That’s what we want  people to eventually do and buy from us to feel about us and our brand.

 

Everyone is different – if you’re in a small business and want someone to help with social media, reach out to someone who will really give you the support you need. There are a lot to choose from but reach out to find the right person – including Ella! 

 

One thing no one knows about Ella?

She likes to sing! And she sings a bit for us toward the end of her interview. 

 

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My 3 take aways from my conversation with Ella:

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1. The most important thing a small business can have before diving into social media is a clear strategy. Without it, it’s like going into a classroom and the teacher fumbles through the day with her lesson – and she may or may not cover everything and is likely to lose the attention of her class.

2. Ella’s word of 2019 or 'Word 3-6-5 is ‘wins’ – while we love to celebrate those big wins, it’s just as important for our business and ourselves to celebrate the small wins along the way. That’s one of the things that keeps us going and focused on the bigger goals.

3. Test. Measure. Refine. You won’t know what works until you try it. So test it and if it doesn’t give you the results you want, refine it and test it again until it does. Makes so much sense!
    

How is Much More Social Connecting the Dots between Marketing and Sales?

Ella is connecting the dots by leveraging her teaching background and professional social media training to identify, attract, engage and convert her ideal customers. As a teacher you learn how to read people so by being intuitive, strategizing and communicating to connect with her ideal customers through in-person and online networking, she's increasing her 'know - like - trust' factor which is leading to customers. 

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Connect with Ella on the following social channels: 

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1. LinkedIn 

2. Instagram

3. Facebook

4. Twitte