The Miseducation of Yancey Red

April, 2019

The Miseducation of Yancey Red

Not knowing where or how to start is something we hear all the time. Business owners know they should be on social media, they know their posts should be connected to a larger, integrated campaign, but most people are using the post and pray method of social media - hoping something, anything they are doing will eventually work.

Social media is a tool that will solve problems for you.

I, the granddaughter of Yancey herself, had a traumatic birth experience with my daughter and one of the results was that I was unable to make breastmilk for her. The reason that Yancey Red exists as a social media agency today is because of that birth.

A few days after my daughter was born I launched a Facebook campaign searching for donated breastmilk. For the next two years mothers from all over the west coast shipped me over 22,000 ounces of breastmilk. They did this because they found the story I created on Facebook compelling and important to their value systems.

Eight months after the birth I started a Facebook community for mothers that experienced a similar birth trauma to me. I brought people together and organized a cadre of volunteers to manage the online interactions of the group, which is now over 4,000 active mothers.

From there, I leaped into all the social media platforms to run a 30-day fundraising campaign to support the writing of my book about birth trauma. Because of social media, I was able to raise close to $25,000.

This led to me using social media to launch a nonprofit and workshops for birth professionals around traumatic birth.

Then I started taking on local social media clients and my portfolio grew to national corporations and a few Fortune 1000 companies.

None of this would have happened without social media.

Social media is about the human story.

Erase the computer screen and there’s a person on the other side reading your posts who within microseconds decides if what you wrote deserves their interest.

There’s 3 things to know when you sit down with a social media manager:

1. When starting on social media, you want to know what your Key Performance Indicators (KPI) are. These can be anything that is important to your business, it doesn’t always have to be increasing your sales. Over the next 90 days you may want to increase likes on your FB page. In some cases this is a very valid KPI. This can be done through a targeted ad campaign that involves creative content that makes it a no-brainer for someone to like your page.

2. You’ll also want to consider how you define your Return on Investment (ROI)? Similar to any content campaign, with social media you’re playing the long game. After three months things will start to shift, at six-months you’ll see even more positive changes and on from there.

3. Know that there is an exit strategy. A social media manager can also help you, or an employee, take over your social media accounts by creating strategy documents that lay out your online voice, narrative, and how to achieve your goals.

At Yancey Red we work hard to ensure that our clients meet their KPIs and have a nice ROI. We also make sure our clients stories are out in the world, seen by their audience, and that the businesses are remembered for their unique value systems.