Social Media Marketing for Cannabis Companies
Social media is probably the most over saturated but necessary platforms to use for cannabis marketing. Since there are still a number of restrictions on ads for the cannabis industry, social media is a great way to reach your audience. While there are still limitations on what you can say and promote on social, many companies find this to be their biggest traffic source.
Marketing Cannabiz on Social Media
Promoting your business on social media is as simple as creating a profile and getting people to follow your content. As long as you are not making claims about health benefits you should in the clear when it comes to compliance and FDA regulations.
The best ways to market your cannabis business on social media
Building a page on Facebook will not just draw tons of traffic to your page. Creating engaging content will draw the right people to your page and posts. Instagram is a great way to share photos, short videos, stories and short visual messages about your company, products and services. If you are not proficient in social media for cannabis, we highly recommend hiring on a team that can help.
Influencer marketing is a great way to connect with a new audience. This can be done with review videos, unboxing videos, client testimonials and much more. There are thousands of content creators out there who will review your products and share their opinions about your product to their audience. Some of them will do it as a trade for free product samples, others usually have a fee added on top of the samples. The paid content creators are generally much better than the free ones in our humble opinion.
How often should you post on social media?
There is no rule of thumb when it comes to how often you should post. Different platforms react differently based on their algorithm. We highly recommend posting at least 1x a day if you can and if you have the content available to do it.
What should you post?
We recommend switching up your posts. Sharing service, products, updates, reviews and promotions is a great way to engage your audience. This also allows you to get a good idea of what your audience interacts with more.
The Do’s and Don’ts of Cannabis Marketing on Social Media
the simple fact is, is that most cannabis business owners don’t understand what can and cannot be done on social media on their website, on their Facebook, on their Instagram, on their Twitter, on their Pinterest, on their YouTube, on their, you know, on anything on their advertising. So we’re gonna go over that here. And the other thing is that like roughly a good bulk of the quote unquote writers out there don’t actually understand what you can and cannot do in regards to writing content for a cannabis website.
The 420 space right now, is the wild west in regards to content creation. Having the wrong information on your website can get you flagged or completely removed from the platform. Imagine having a hundred thousand followers and that’s your main stream of income and all of a sudden that disappears. That’s scary.
What we want to do is basically inform you on your dos and Don’s what you can do so that you can avoid being in a world of Facebook violations and losing all your stuff. Don’t lose your account because of somebody else’s lack of information.
Facebook Restrictions
Ads must not promote the sale or use of illegal prescription or recreational drugs. And right now, you know, until it’s federally legal cannabis, THC and all just about all of its you know, this includes CBD. This includes Delta eight, this includes D 10. This includes HHC THC O Delta nine. Everything is still considered a recreational drug. So you cannot promote the sale of it, right?
Instagram Restrictions
According to Instagram their policy prohibits any marijuana seller, including dispensaries from promoting their business by providing contact information like phone numbers, email addresses, street addresses, or by using the contact us tab, any Instagram business accounts.
Twitter Restrictions
Twitter prohibits the promotion of drugs and drug paraphernalia.
LinkedIn Restrictions
Linkedin adds to a legal prescription over the counter or recreational drugs are prohi prohibited think CBD as well.
TikTok Restrictions
TikTok your videos will likely be removed that they include basic words or hashtags as sorted with cannabis like weed cannabis, stoned high, you know, four 20 shadow banning is a real thing. So spelling, you know, you can get away with using spelling variations and also like emojis but avoid smoking on videos and, you know, watch your numbers to make sure that you don’t get, you know, tagged with this.
The pro’s & con’s of Social Media Marketing
The benefits to social media marketing is obviously everybody uses it. You can attract new customers on a steady basis, and get lots of engagement, lots of interactions and grow your brand. The cons of social media marketing though there’s a ton of restrictions around cannabis, a ton of restrictions around the industry, a ton of restrictions around THC related businesses. Shadow banning is real. IG accounts also get hacked regularly.
The most important thing here that you do not own the platform. You do not own Facebook. You do not own Instagram. You do not own Twitter. You do not own TikTok.
You created an account, you created a free account on their platform, which means you’re subject to their rules and regulations, which means that they can shut you down anytime they want for policy violations. And that’s scary. That’s really scary for a lot of business owners.
I met somebody who lost a hundred thousand followers and that was their main source of reaching their market, their audience, their fans, and just like that, they lost it.
Leveraging Social Media
You should never have all of your marketing eggs in one basket. A website on your own hosting account is a great idea. Website builders, platforms like that are like self hosted, like w Squarespace goad, web builder, and others can literally lock your site and shut you down if they do not like what you publish. We saw a lot of this happening. And I can tell you this from a web design standpoint, from a marketing standpoint, from an SEO standpoint, a business standpoint, from a branding standpoint, you should own your own hosting account and you should own your own domain.
