So where do we start with social media? Should we just post the same simple thoughts that pop into our heads each day or should we dive into the advertising opportunities they offer? Or both?
Well the truth is you shouldn’t be doing any of these things until you’ve read this blog post.
If you truly want to get the biggest return on your social media efforts, then there’s a number of steps you must work through before you post or advertise a single thing.
You see the biggest problem we have with social media is the process of tracking our return. It’s a very difficult thing to do. You don’t always know the entire processes someone might have gone through before they decided to become your client or buy your product.
Sure, you can ask them and they could say they read your promotional email or visited your website and thus purchased. But what about social media? How many accounts are they connected with you on, and how many of your posts have they read?
In this modern society the answers to these questions is likely to be a lot. It’s how people check us out now before spending any money with us. If I don’t know who someone is, I search straight away for them on social media. If that’s what I’m doing, then you can bet your potential clients are doing it too.
Yet we don’t know when people are doing this or how long for. That’s why you should follow the 8 steps in this lesson to get it just right.
Let’s break each of those down now:
1. Set Measurable Goals
If I asked you what your primary reason for wanting to become successful at social media is, you’re likely to say to build a better business. Would I be right?
So your key measurable goal associated with getting better at social media is to improve your general customer / client acquisition rates. This means your key decisions with using these platforms should always be working towards achieving this goal.
It’s easy to post something on any platform and get people to hit ‘like’. Yet the same content is not usually going to turn anyone into a client. Don’t confuse popularity with success. Compelling content is the key.
Don’t focus on how many likes or comments you get, but instead aim for more leads, conversions and sales. Basically, aiming for 10,000 Facebook followers doesn’t mean you’ll have a great business.
Social media is the first point of contact many people have with us. Yet it’s over crowded and you are always fighting for your audience’s attention.
Your measurable goals here should be to draw this audience deeper into your world. Your social media then needs to be directing people onto your website pages where they are met with opt-in forms, detailed blogs, high quality videos and opportunities to buy from you.
Your social media should be driving people to your website and thus getting people to take the next step with you. Learn how to track this and work constantly on improving it.
2. Who and How
This is another quick lesson on understanding who your social media platforms are designed for. You must then decide how to best reach them and how they best prefer to connect more with you. Can you see how important this avatar stuff is yet?
Here’s some questions I want you to write down and think about:
Who are you taking to?
Your social media updates are going to vary depending on who you want to attract as your audience. If you want to work with bodybuilders as a contest prep coach, then you might use words like, - bulk, cut, ripped, peaking and testosterone.
This will be completely different if talking to 55 year old women about losing weight. Instead you’ll use words like exercise, diet, health, longevity, well-being, happiness. It’s going to be completely different, and you have to understand that.
Then you must take that a step further:
- Think also about the images, the colours, the fonts, the copy and everything else that’s involved in your posts. It will all need to be matched to your ideal client or customer.
Now you must dig even deeper:
- What keeps them up at night? What are they struggling with? What are their current pains?
Think really hard about this stuff, and start carving out your social updates to reflect it.
When you know these answers, you can really begin to relate and connect to those people you want. You’ll also be able to stand out from the competition. While everyone else is saying they can get people ‘fit and healthy’, you’ll be saying you can reduce their ‘frustrations and overwhelming fitness problems’. Because you really know how they are feeling at that moment in time.
3. Do More Of What Works
If you’re already involved with social media then occasionally it can be a good idea to take a big ole step back. Take time to review your current events and what’s working for you. It’s easy to fall into a routine of posting to social platforms yet it’s doing very little for you. So take time to periodically review your methods and adjust where required.
If it’s working for you, then do more of it.
Look at your previous posts or updates that were successful. Think about why that was and how you could repeat that. Ask your audience what they would like more of, and how you can best help them. Do exactly the same with your clients or customers. Find out where else your audience hangs out, who they follow and what they buy.
4. Check Out Your Competitors
Maybe you know some people or brands who are crushing it on social media. Take a good look at what they are doing. Ask yourself how they are solving the problems for their potential clients. Even better, find a number of people doing this well in your chosen niche or community.
What are they sharing that’s working?
What are their most popular pieces of content?
How much engagement do they get with each post?
This task isn’t about making you feel bad about your own efforts, but a simple learning curve to find out what really works. Compare their social media posts and efforts to yours.
What are they better at?
What are they not so good at?
5. Build Out Your Brand
When someone clicks on your facebook page, YouTube page and website, it should all look similar. The key to doing this is branding. Make your logo visible on every platform and be sure to use a similar colour scheme throughout.
Use high quality profile pictures and artwork to make your pages unique. Canva.com is an awesome tool to help you do this. Basically, if your branding isn’t tight on every platform, it’s going to cost you. So go and check over your cover images and profile pictures and decide if they are a true representation of what you do and how you can help people.
Now that you have branded all of your social platforms, they are now part of your business. This means you should be driving traffic to all of these sources. Link your YouTube to Facebook, Facebook to Twitter and Twitter to Instagram. Encourage people to connect and explore the different social platforms of your business. When you get this right, people will quickly get to know you and move closer to the next step.
6. Post Great Content
You’re now ready to start posting. Remember the goal is to share great stuff. But what classifies as great stuff? Well that’s going to be highly individual and based on what your audience likes the most. But you can’t post exactly the same stuff everyday.
You likely have planned content each week that you want to share, like a product, blog, recipe or video. This can be the ‘meat and bones’ of your content each week that provides detailed information to really help your audience with a topic. This needs to be very consistent and should go out at least once per week.
You will likely want to post more frequently than this, and that’s where spontaneous content comes into place. This is when you post about your little wins, challenges or something personal. It can be a short update, a picture or both. But it should still speak to your core audience.
Both planned and spontaneous content works great - keep it human, keep it fun and keep it real. And when you mix that up, that balance is just fantastic.
Another content tactic to use on any social media platform is to re-purpose. If you create a great blog post that goes down really well, then turn it into another format that people can consume. Turn it into an audio podcast, a short video series or even short quotes. Now you have a bunch of further updates to share.
For me, great content across all social media starts with writing. Make writing a daily habit and you will never be short for content to share. If I write a short article, it goes onto my website. I’ll then turn it into a podcast and upload it to iTunes. I’ll then jump on camera and turn it into a video for YouTube. I’ve even been know to get on Facebook live and run through the key points on there too. The possibilities are now endless and it all starts from having some nicely written content down on paper.
And lastly but by no means least, don’t be afraid to share other peoples’ great content. Buzzsumo.com is a fantastic tool for hunting down sharable content for your chosen topic or niche.
7. Have a Strategy
If you don’t know when and where you need to post something, it’s probably not going to happen. Therefore map out your weekly social media strategy and go give it a test run. Decide upon which days you will post what and when.
Each week I map out the exact content I will be sharing for the coming 7 days. If Monday is a podcast, then that will be added to my planner, and it becomes one of my most important tasks for that day. This ensures I hit ‘publish’ on that piece of content and load up my scheduler to ensure it gets shared on the platforms I use.
I also notify my team if I need some design work for it and that will be added to the content before sharing.
Remember to keep track of these measurable goals, not just likes or comments. Did it spike your website traffic, boost your email opt-ins or generate any sales?
8. Get Some Help
Remember to get some help with all of this if you can. I don’t mean a social media manager or anything like that, as that’s likely not on the cards right now. So instead make the most of free or cheap software like buffer and Canva to make the content do all the heavy lifting for you. It’s really is important to get it right.
Now I want you to take action on this lesson. Go back to each step and really think about what you learnt here. How can you take your social media up a level by applying one or more of these key steps?
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