TOPIC: Business | How To
Social Media 101 for Pop-up Cinema Businesses
A smartphone with social media icons

If you stumbled across this post it’s probably because you are a hot nonstop entrepreneur googling “the next great business venture” – if this is true then you should probably pop on over to the Own Your Own page to buy a screen, think of a name, get a package and create a listing. Then come back here to get help on how to set up your social media. BOOM you are now in business!

Otherwise, we expect you are here because you have just signed up for a package and set up your Listing on Pop-Up Cinema. So now it’s time to reach out to a larger audience and the best way to do that is to have a presence on social media. This will also allow you to take full advantage of the social media shout out we’ll give you!

 

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Firstly, here are quick links to the most commonly used platforms:

Instagram

Facebook

Twitter

YouTube

Pinterest

Snapchat

Tik-Tok

LinkedIn

FORGOT YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA PASSWORD?

Let’s get this out of the way first – Forgot Your Password – you created an account ages ago and can’t for the life of you remember the password. Don’t worry we had to do it too. Hopefully, you know the email address associated with the account – if not you may have to make a few attempts at discovering which one you used. You can still recover your account but you will need to access the email address you used to get the account. If all else fails just start fresh!

PRO TIP: Don’t co-opt that account you created years ago for your business, create a new one. Like, for example, say you have a @silly_name for a Twitter account you thought up one night (possibly when not in your right mind) so you could follow some joke sites your friend put you onto. Don’t use it.

If you don’t use social media personally, that’s totally fine we are not here to judge, but if you do, really consider creating a brand new profile for your business. People will look at it when thinking of following you or inquiring about your business. The upside to creating a new account and you also have a personal one is that you can drive people from your personal account to your business account.

CHOOSING YOUR HANDLE (aka Username, profile name or account name)

Your handle is the @yourbusinessname that you create on all the platforms that makes up this new world of β€œfree” advertising and reach, called social media. Even if you aren’t going to use one particular platform or another you want to secure that handle on all the platforms where possible. Start brainstorming the perfect name!

PRO TIP: Know your limits! Each platform restricts the number and type of characters you can have for your @handle. So before you get too creative, familiarise yourself with the restrictions. We recommend 5 – 15 characters. Avoid β€œ_” [underscores] or β€œ.” [full stops/periods] because special characters are restricted on different platforms. As an example, here’s where to look for the rules for Twitter and Instagram. You can get great info for Dummies here.

STEP 1: PICK YOUR PLATFORMS

There are so many platforms these days: some that are regional, some that are politically specific, it’s a good idea to do a little research to figure out which ones are going to have the biggest impact on your company’s brand, marketing, and presence.

STEP 2: SEARCH YOUR @HANDLE

Search for the @handle you want to use across all the platforms you decide on [yes, at the same time – multiple browser tabs are cool]. Is it available on them all? Great – sign up immediately to secure those accounts! Go ahead, we’ll wait.

If your preferred @handle it’s not available, you’re going to have to choose a new favorite that is available, or get clever. You can make slight adjustments Like we said it’s ideal to have the same @handle across all social media or at least really similar to each other to make cross-posting easier and also to make you discoverable to your customers. We would suggest starting with Instagram and Twitter (Facebook is a separate beast). If you can’t, not to worry, you will still be able to be found by your β€œName” as well. So keep this in mind when creating your accounts for your business.

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Confession: We’ve been around so long we decided to use our existing social media accounts even though the @handles were not the same and had to change things up part way through. Trust us, it’s alot of schlephassle to do it that way so do your best to choose one and stick to it.

STEP 3: CREATE THE ACCOUNTS

So all you really need to set up the accounts is an email address. We strongly recommend you use a business email address, but not the one you use for your general correspondence. Why do we say that? Well, hackers are a real and present threat, so if your social media accounts should ever get hacked, at least they won’t have access to your main business email as well. Smart right?! Try using email accounts like social@yourcompanyname.com or you could set up a whole new address like yourbusinessnamesocialmedia@gmail.com.

After you’ve set up the accounts you’ll want to complete your profile by adding a profile image, a description/bio and a way for people to reach you. This is simple. Basically, two sentences are all you can use on the most limited bio (each platform has specific limitations on the character count of bio’s so be sure you are aware and tweak yours accordingly). When drafting your bio, just answer these two questions: Who are you? What do you do? There are other β€œfields” on your profile set up for location and link (for your website).

PRO TIP: If you don’t have a website, or it’s in development, use the LINK from your listing on Pop-Up Cinema to provide interested followers and clients a way to find out more about you!

TO INFINITY AND BEYOND

YOUR FIRST POST: Regardless of which platform or all of them at once, this is the creative part! Don’t get daunted or too caught up in it being perfect. Just like blogging, you want to think about β€œthe voice” of your business and β€œthe look.” You can just post willy nilly and it will be fine but if you put a little thought into it first you can really make it a marketing tool.

WORDS: Each platform is slightly different – in terms of their rules – this mostly has to do with the number of words or rather more specifically the number of characters (like letter count) that can go into a post.

IMAGES: not so much size but the shape is important. Instagram uses a square cropped shape so start there. Also, you can TAG people and our social media account in your pictures to reach a larger audience. All the platforms have filters and ways to add text to your posts to grab attention.

VIDEOS: Oh boy, videos are huge on social media. And there are lots of different things you can do:

  • Reels/Fleets (15 seconds or 30 seconds and less, Instagram/Twiter).
  • Stories (Instagram and FB).
  • Regular Video Posts (Up to a minute on Instagram, the only platform that categorizes by the length of time).
  • IGTV (long format more than a minute, Instagram).
  • LIVE streaming function.
PRO TIP: Use subtitles or closed captioning on your videos. Studies have shown the majority of users explore vids with the sound off. Not to mention 20% of the US population has a disability, that’s a pretty big market – who will undoubtedly be impressed with this extra effort and consideration.

HASHTAGS AND TAGGING: Hashtags (#) cost nothing and allow you to be as creative and audience-focused as you want. Now that you’re set up with your listing and your social media become part of our community by utilizing the hashtags we use and tagging (@) our social media accounts in your posts and pictures.

Be sure to Like/Share/Retweet/Repost your listing when you see it on our social media channels!

REPOSTING, RETWEETING, SHARING…

it’s basically digital recycling. If you have read our other blogs about joining the listings you have read this term already. We will do our best to make our post about your company as focused as we can and so when you share it on your page you will get all that lovely traction. Like having chewy tires on your 4×4. Check out the apps in your fav app store called β€œREPOST” for Instagram.

You may or may not know this but Facebook owns, itself obviously, but it also owns Instagram and Whatsapp (I know, this bummed me out too when I found out). The upside to the same company owning FB and Insta is they are connectable, especially if you have business accounts. But be careful which FB page you link to your Instagram. On Facebook, there are different β€œpages” you can have e.g.: Personal and Business. You want to make sure when you are connecting your Insta page to FB you connect the right one. Some people (like personality/celebrity types) will decide to use their personal FB page for their β€˜biz’, we don’t recommend this for two reasons:

  1. You don’t want your Aunt posting pics of you in the bathtub when you were a kid on your biz page nor do you want personal comments up there.
  2. Personal pages are limited to a number of β€œfriends” so you will eventually hit a wall if your business is a success.

You can lock down or provide as little info as you want on your personal page but you will want a robust page for your business page with lots of info for customers. The best way for everyone but especially yourself to keep them separate is to use images in your profile that are specific: for your personal page – yourself or your kid whatever but for your business: Your Logo, Your storefront, something that will prevent your Auntie thinking it’s your personal page.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Hope this gets you off on the right (correct) track and helps you get started. Keep in mind the social media sites constantly update the way you can provide your media to your audience so it’s a good idea to use your social media regularly.

And just to recap: Put the Link from your Pop-Up Cinema Listing in your social media bio, follow us, use our hashtags (#popupcinema), tag us in your pics, mention us in your posts and create your own unique identifying hashtags to make it easy for your audience to find out what you are doing and where.

Feel free to browse the blog posts for ideas on what to post and when – the What to Show section is almost like a monthly “what’s happening” calendar. Get your questions answered in our FAQ’s section.

FEELING OVERWHELMED?

Our blog posts address many areas of running a pop-up cinema business and it can get overwhelming, so we have also designated areas of the blog for the 3 stages of a business owner’s journey to make it a bit easier to see targeted relevant info in one spot, they are:

  1. Starting Out
  2. Growing Your Business
  3. Established Business Owners

In addition to categories, if you are looking for information on a specific topic – use the keywords on the side panel to go directly to a curation of those topics.

Are you a POP-UP Cinema owner?

Stop suffering from FOMO and get listed on the Pop-Up cinema directory! With all the increased traffic you are going to have to deal with you may have to hire car guards. Click the button, choose your package, fill in the form, upload your images and you’re good to go! And don’t worry, you can actually preview your listing before you commit…
because we all know commitment can be scary.

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SPECIFIC AREAS OF INTEREST

Quick links to a collection of articles for business owners based on your journey and stage

Β  Starting Out

Β  Growing Your Business

Β  Established Businesses

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