Let’s Define Social Media

By now most of us are accustomed to using social media (at least personally) and we know that it seems important to be on there in some capacity.  We see it everywhere, we hear about it, read about it, and we certainly know that it’s here to stay, but almost all of us have zero ideas on what to do or even where to start.  

These are all frequent questions that we are asked during consulting meetings:

• Should I get a Facebook Page? 
• What about Twitter? 
• How do I get immediate business from Instagram? 
• I set up some accounts but that’s basically it. Now what? 
• Should I have a Linkedin because it’s about business?

Before we get into any of this, I want you to understand a realistic perspective that you should have about social media and what it can do for you as a self-employed business owner. 

What Social Media is.

It’s a tool that is used to engage with people. 

That’s it. Think of this as a tool and only a tool. 

It creates top of mind awareness among your customer base.  

Word of mouth referrals happen because of top of mind awareness.  When the timing is right for someone to need your product or service, they will probably talk to someone about how they are looking for “X Product/Service.”  Your followers will be more likely to refer you and your business because they are seeing your regularly posted content, which allows them to recall who you are, what you offer, and why you’d be a good solution for their friend in need.  It’s all about “Top of Mind Awareness.” If you and your business are at the top of their mind, they are MUCH more likely to refer/hire you.

For Example – You own a chiropractic business.  Your patient Jody loves your service and follows you on your social accounts.  You post about your practice and general body health regularly. Jody has a friend Taryn who was mentioning over a luncheon that her sciatic nerve has been bothering her and she needs to find someone to do some bodywork on her.  Jody will most certainly recommend you and your services and she’ll remember to do so because you were at the top of her mind.

It is a resource of information for prospective customers. 

When people go to look up a company, brand, product or service they usually type it into google and look for RELEVANT and RECENT information.  This is incredibly important to understand. You’re creating your own database for your brand. You get the opportunity to educate your clients about who you are, why you do what you do, why they’d want to work with you, and what overall solutions you can provide them. People like to use social feeds to see how legitimate a brand seems before reaching out.

It creates a brand voice and a perceived brand value.

Your brand voice is what will turn casual followers into fans.  People want to be educated and entertained and you get to choose how you present yourself via your messaging.  Perceived brand value comes when people believe something is valuable based on the way that it’s presented and understood.  We all know that a pair of gas station sunglasses cost $5 and we’re totally okay with the fact that a pair of Rayban Sunglasses can cost upwards of $200.  That’s brand value and it begins when people assume value and are 100% excited to be a customer.

It helps create brand fans and convert them into customers.

This is your chance to build a relationship with your customers and fan base through conversations.  The more you engage with your audience, the more meaningful of a relationship you create with them. When your audience becomes champions for your brand, you’ll certainly begin to see a lot of word of mouth (WOM) referrals and repeat business.

What Social Media is not.

It is not a gauge of your success

Do not use followers or likes as a business thermometer. We’ve seen it hundreds of times where our clients will wonder what they’re doing wrong in their business because they’re not amassing followers like they thought they would.  The internet is a busy place and it takes a lot of time and money to grow a social account. On the plus side, there are a lot of people there too, so be sure to regularly post valuable content and you’ll start to see followers convert to customers over time.

It is not the be-all-end-all of your business

Do not put all of your stock into social platforms.  You do not own your accounts and you can’t control what happens to algorithm changes, ad revenues, etc. A lot of people think that likes, followers, fans, and re-tweets are a measure of success and that is simply not true.  So much of these “metrics” are meaningless and the statistics hold no weight for your business. It’s much better to have meaningful conversations with a smaller number of followers than to have an inflated following of random people with little to no engagement.

It is not an immediate ROI

It takes a lot, I mean A LOT, of time and energy to successfully build and run a social account.  It will be extremely beneficial and valuable to your business, but not immediately. Again, initially, we’re looking for the top of mind awareness among our followers and we’re posting as an informational resource for prospective followers to read up on you and your brand.

It’s not worth stressing or obsessing over

Just know that you should be posting regularly and don’t worry about likes, engagements, stats or metrics.  To be clear, we’re not looking to post our valued content into the void of the internet for no one to see it.  You should be posting once a day or once every other day in order to keep your brand current and relevant. Regardless, it’s important to not beat yourself up about a lack of engagement or viewership on what you post.  Just focus on the goals and keep sharing valuable content for those that do see it…it will all work itself out over time.

Mindset

We often lose sight of why we’re on these social platforms in the first place.  The endgame with social media is to create more customers. That’s it. 

The problem that arises is that our ego takes over and we begin to seek external validation.  While doing this we begin to compare ourselves to everyone else, and it’s really easy to fall into the trap of envy and comparison. Likes and follows are not a metric that should be driving your business strategy.  Genuine conversations in comments or groups, email subscribers, and direct messages are how you can get the most “ROI” from social platforms.  

Unless you are a 100% Social Media brand and putting in 100% effort daily, it’s not worth the constant let down, especially while you’re in grow-mode.

That said, it is extremely important to have a social media strategy.  If you do not plan your content, implement a content creation strategy and distribution workflow, you WILL get BURNT OUT VERY QUICKLY!  If you think that you just need to sit down each day and write a quick post, I’m here to tell you that it’s much harder and more time-consuming than that.  You should be able to write out a month’s worth of content in one writing session and then use a scheduler to ensure that you’re not chasing your tail each day trying to keep up with your daily posts.

Even if you don’t have many followers at the beginning, it’s easy to overlook the people who are constantly interacting with you.  Don’t write them off, they are actually the people that matter the most. Each person that is a fan of your business is connected to at least 200 people.  Just remember that there is value in each and every person who supports your business. Stop worrying about who isn’t there yet and nurture those who show support.

The moral of the story.

Understand that this is a long game of creating a brand voice, brand value, and loyal fans of your brand.  Having an active social media account does matter in today’s landscape, but it should supplement what you’re doing offline and you shouldn’t get caught up in chasing likes or getting let down when your accounts don’t grow as fast as you thought they would. Keep yourself focused on providing value and getting new customers, both online and offline, and you’ll begin to see your business grow to new heights.

The post As a Self-Employed Business Owner – What’s Your Social Media Mindset? appeared first on Learn It - Do It.

Organization is Key — Introducing Content Campaigns

We organize everything we create into content campaigns.

What are content campaigns?

Content campaigns are topically-focused streams of content that are distributed throughout your proper marketing channels. In other words, we like to categorize what we can talk about, write the content, make the designs, and then distribute it based on our overall marketing plan.

Sharing is Caring

Once you have your content campaigns, you need to let the world know about them.

Where do I share my content campaigns?

When creating a content campaign you should look to use this content across the following channels:

• All social media accounts [Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Linked In, SnapChat]
• Email Newsletters
• Your Blog

What Should I Say?

Believe it or not, this is where it gets fun provided you have a plan to generate good content.

We suggest that you have yourself an old fashion brainstorm session geared around the following pain points and questions:

• List your services, products, skills.
• What are some questions your clients or potential clients may have about you?
• Describe the process of becoming your client.  Break this down and use it to educate your audience.
• List the industries that your clients or customers interact with regularly.
• List any industries that may be related to your company.
• What are some things that you could take pictures of that you do?
• What are some trivia questions your company could use to encourage interaction?
• What are some other things your clients could be interested in besides your product/service?
• Are there any contests or giveaways you could plan?
• What’s happening in the news or pop culture that relates to you and your industry?
• What’s happening seasonally that you could post about?

Take these lists and use them as inspiration to begin writing some posts. ALWAYS keep your audience in mind.

Remember: This content is NOT for you, it only exists to help your potential clients solve a problem, or maybe to engage them with laughter, knowledge, information or a fresh perspective.

Group Topics into Categories

Each category will then become a campaign. Each campaign should stand on its own, and you should try to run 3-5 different campaigns at any given time. These campaigns should be outlined and written with your specific audience demographics in mind.  

If you need help discovering your audience, download our Audience Profile Worksheet and get started now!

Examples of Campaign Categories

• Company Brand & Mission – Here you’d write all of your posts to highlight specific details about who you are and what you stand for while keeping your audience in mind.
• Product/service – You would highlight all unique selling points of what you’re offering while keeping in mind that the purpose of your product or service is to solve a problem.  Make sure that you aren’t just shouting about your product. Cater your posts to help your audience solve their pain points.
• Testimonials – Leverage the positive feedback that you’ve received by breaking it down into bite-sized chunks and share it!
• Event or Contest Promotion – If you have a time-specific launch for a promotion or event coming up, make sure that you create a content stream that reaches your audience on all platforms and engages with them about the event or contest.
• Blog or Newsletter – If you write a blog or newsletter for your business, you re-use the content that you’ve already prepared by breaking it down to targeted bite-sized posts.

These are just a few ideas to get your brain juices flowing. Once you get started, you’ll find that you may write down too many ideas or have too many categories. It’s never a bad thing to come up with too many ideas. If this happens, welcome all of the ideas and write them down. Once you’ve got them down you can refocus and start working on the most pertinent 3-5 campaigns that are the closest aligned to your current goals.

Make sure to keep the rest of your ideas handy because before you know it, it’ll be time to write some more content.

Broadcast Your Content in Your Brand “Voice”

In order to understand what your brand voice needs to be, you need to understand your customers and clients. You need to know who they are, what they are looking for, what obstacles they face and what would help them. Once you know these things about who you’re trying to market to, you need to write simple messaging directly to them.

Remember, messaging is not about what you want to say or want to hear, it’s about what your ideal customer needs to hear. You want to think about your voice as if you were having a conversation with your audience. Don’t shout your message on the screen, think about how you would say it in person and create a brand voice that really speaks to your audience. Consider the words you use, whether you are formal or casual, and what would your audience really want to engage with.

Again, it’s not about you. It’s about your audience. Write directly to your audience. And no, your audience cannot be everyone. Ever.  

If you need help discovering your audience download our Audience Profile Worksheet and get started now!

Pro Tip

I always write out what I think each post should say in an outline or spreadsheet before I work on any design. Sometimes if you start with design, you will realize that as you were focused on making things look cool, your message may have been ignored. Messaging is always 100% more important than fancy design.

Create Designs & Media

Video and images get far more traction than text posts, so it is silly to just post a plain text post. Go ahead and scroll any social feed right now and you’ll quickly notice that it’s an extremely visual place. This ultimately means that you, too, need to have visuals to coincide with your posts to encourage engagement. We are a visual society, and if you are going to go through all the energy of creating content, you should definitely try and make it as effective as possible by adding some sort of visual.

Pro Tip

We use Canva for all of our social campaign designs. It’s a brilliant, easy-to-use, web application that allows you to create custom or templated designs and resize them for multiple social media formats with just a click of a button. If you’re not using it, start!

Total lifesaver.

Create a Schedule

What do you do now that you’ve created the content for five social campaigns?

Schedule them, of course!

You should not be manually posting to social accounts daily unless you are posting about something that is happening relevant to a live event. There are so many online services, websites, and WordPress plugins that allow you to schedule posts for all of your social accounts from one dashboard. There are almost too many to name, so I’ll let you find the one that best suits you.

How to know what to schedule and when?  

You can Google search your demographic in terms of when they use the internet, social accounts, and email so that you can determine the best time for you to post your content.  

Remember that each post will natively receive less than 4% organic reach [without paying for ads], so never assume that “everyone saw the post and it’s all washed up now.”

You can (and should) certainly recycle posts, especially across different social platforms.  Just make sure when reposting content that you change the publish time and day of the week so that you can potentially reach a whole new audience.  

I know it can seem like a lot at first, but after you’ve done it once, you can set up an organization system that works for you and start churning out content!  

Pro Tip

We like to sit down a few times a year and organize our campaigns from our master ideas list, which makes posting consistent content a little less daunting and A LOT more effective than randomly posting when we remember to do so. Ultimately, the campaigns keep your messaging focused and working towards your marketing goals, rather than sporadic and inconsistent.

It’s time to get a coherent message for your marketing with social media campaigns that are easy to create and fun to implement.

Now, let’s get social!

The post Best Practices for Creating Social Media Campaigns appeared first on Learn It - Do It.