Now if you don’t have a strong social media marketing presence is like your business doesn’t exist.
So, You know you need to be on social media. YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram are some. of the most popular sites out there on the web. Snapchat even though Instagram’s crushing it, it's still doing really well. They have over 100 million active users daily, but as a beginner, all of this is overwhelming and complicated.
So how do you start your social media strategy?
Hi there, and welcome back to Serendipity Marketing Blog. We're a digital marketing agency with the mission to help small and medium businesses grow by applying psychology to their marketing strategies.
Before we get started, please go ahead and follow us on LinkedIn, Facebook or Instagram.
Today we’re going to share with you how to get started with social media as a beginner.
The first thing you need to do is pick the right social network. We know… there are a lot of them. Whether it's Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram… It's up to you on which network you want to be on. You could be on all of them but if you're on all of them you're not going to spend enough time to make these profiles amazing. You don't want to be on LinkedIn and do a mediocre job. You don't want to be on Facebook and do a mediocre job.
It's better to not be on them if you do a mediocre job because doing a mediocre job will get you no reach.
5-6 years ago, social media was way easier to leverage to get traffic from. Nowadays, their algorithms are so strict because there's so much competition. If you're not the best of the best you're not going to do well, so you need to pick the right social network. And what's right for others may not be right for you.
So the way you pick the social network is to look at what space you're in. If you're in B2B the chances are LinkedIn. LinkedIn is going to be the best social network for you.
Twitter is also another good social network for B2B but LinkedIn typically is better if you're in B2B.
Facebook does really well.
Instagram does really well.
Youtube does really well. Funny enough, Youtube works for both B2B and B2C.
Now here's the thing, you also have to look at what content type you like creating. Are you someone who's really good with videos? If so, you probably want to start with Youtube or Linkedin. Facebook is much more competitive.
On Youtube you can get longevity even if you don't have an audience, you don't have a subscriber pool. You can get more traffic over time because Facebook people don't really search on there. Youtube people perform searches all day. Long for videos and your videos can continually get views if you rank higher.
If you're going after an older demographic Facebook is amazing.
If you're going after a younger demographic, Instagram and Snapchat are amazing.
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Now that you have a rough idea of which social network to go after and if you're still unsure just leave a comment below. Tell us your business and we’ll help answer the question for you, so that way you're using the right social network from day one.
Now that you have the right one, the second thing you need to do is start creating content. Now you are probably like: “ hey I have no friends, I have no following!”
It doesn't matter, no one is going to follow if you don't have any content. So start creating content that starts off with completing your profile on Facebook/ Twitter/ Instagram. All of them have profiles. You need to complete everything from a username to your email address, to a really proper nice image, to a description of who you are or your company. If you don't complete your profile, you're not giving people a reason to follow. When you're completing your profile talk about the benefits that people are going to experience from following you or subscribing to your page.
But as we mentioned it's all about creating content. So it starts with the profile and then it gets the content. If you're not sure what content to create, you need to check out your competition. You all have competitors even if you're in a new space. Like, let's say you're Uber and you're revolutionizing the taxi industry. Well, your competition would be the taxi industry.
So you look at what my competition is doing on social media now. We know Uber's already around. They're a multibillion-dollar company but we’re giving example. If we were creating Uber from day one that would be our competition. You need to look at your closest competitors it could be indirect competition. But still, you want to see what your closest competitors' content is doing well for them and what content's not. That'll give you an idea of what you should do more of and what you shouldn't do as much.
If you don't know how to create content it could be as simple as status updates. You’re pulling out your phone, recording a video of you sharing some links and if you're not sure what links to share you can go to buzzsumo.com type in any keywords from your industry and it'll show you all the popular articles that people like on Facebook, Twitter, all the social sites.
This will then give you an idea of what kind of content will resonate with that social network and what doesn't now.
The next thing you need to do is build a connection and you need to build a connection with PEOPLE. It's a social network, just because you're on a computer doesn't mean you're not connecting with humans. So make sure you're friending all the people that you know, following them. You're engaging, right? You're building connections, so if it's your friend already like someone that you know in person you can just invite them to friend you on Facebook or follow you on Twitter. If it's someone you don't know you're going to have to work more to build that connection and here's how you do this.
You go and look for all the people in your space who are putting status, updates, posts, if they have questions respond to them. Help them out. If they have articles, feel free and share them if you think they're valuable. You can repost, reshare, whatever it may be. If there are other people on these channels, fan pages, that are related to your industry, even if it's your competitors and they're asking questions, you can respond to them. Help them out. That's how you build a connection. Even when you're posting on your own page when someone responds with a question or a comment you should acknowledge that they're there. Thank them for leaving a comment, respond when they have a question.
That's how you engage and what we found is over time as you engage, what you'll see is a lot of people come back over to your site, they'll follow you. You'll engage deeply with them and they'll become a loyal die-hard follower.
It's not just about growing your number and having a thousand followers or ten thousand followers
Our last tip is don't go for the follower account. it's all about having valuable connections. Personal ones because if your first hundred fans or followers aren't that engaged with you, all these social networks have it in their algorithms but they're looking at a percentage so if you have a million fans but only a thousand engaged the algorithms are like “whoa this is a terrible engagement rate, we shouldn't show your content to anyone, because no one likes it!“
But if you had a hundred followers and every single one liked it, shared it, and commented, Social networks like Facebook, Linkedin, Instagram are going to be like “this content is amazing, it needs to go viral because everyone loves it!”.
So, it's not about having the most amount of fans, it's about having the most amount of engaged fans. If someone's not going to engage you don't want them. Don't just pay models to talk about you, so you can get more followers. It's about having the most relevant die-hard fans.
And we know we said that was going to be the last tip, but here's one more bonus tip for you.
Don't push people to your business from day one. Within three months or six months by all means you can start talking about your business slowly, mentioning it, trying to get people over to your site and as customers, you can do simple things like just sharing a link. But you don't want to do that from day one.
Why would you want to promote your business when no one is following you? They're not engaged. If you went to a random stranger on the street and you said “hey my name is Peter, I know that you buy toilet paper because everyone uses toilet paper, Would you like to buy my toilet paper? They're going to be like “you're crazy, who are you? we don't want to buy anything from you!”
You need to build a community first.
If you need help with your digital marketing to grow your business in terms of visibility, engagement, and profit, contact us today and speak with one of our digital marketing experts to see how we can build the bridge between the point you’re standing at right now and your goals.
