Social Media Marketing Explained for Newbies
By Cassandre Pierre
The purpose of being on social media is to engage with others, participate in conversations, ask questions and show interests in others. This is why social media marketing comes in handy.
But, let’s be honest keeping up on social media can be often overwhelming especially if you’re a newbie trying to get the word out that your brand exists.
Not, to mention you may feel intimidated by all the competition and noise that is prevalent on these social media platforms.
One of the things I had to learn when I was starting out was that it’s best to focus on one or two platforms rather than being everywhere. After all, you need to have a fine tune system in place so that you don’t spread yourself thin.
So here are just a few tips that I follow in my own business. *Please use these to your discretion, some may apply to your current situation and some may not.
“It's a dialogue, not a monologue, and some people don't understand that. Social media is more like a telephone than a television.”
1. Select your social media platform
As a beginner, the first thing you need to do is pick the right social platform. There are quite a few to choose from such as Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Linkedin, Twitter, etc
The choice is up to you, but a word of caution you may be tempted to be on all of them which would not be a good look for you.
Why? well for one it makes no sense to spread yourself thin also what is the point of doing so if you don’t spend the right amount time in creating and nurturing your profiles to be amazing.
Doing a second-rate job definitely will show on your profile which in turn will turn most people off.
Also, you must decide what makes sense for your business model if you are in the business to business (aka b2b) or the business to customer space (aka b2c).
The B2B model will do well on Linkedin and Twitter. If you are in B2C space you have a good chance at reaching your ideal audience on Facebook, Instagram, and even Youtube. And just so you know YouTube can also be a great platform for B2B as well.
2. Create Content
What type of content do you find easy to create? For someone who may like creating videos, YouTube will be a great place to start. Why? There is the longevity factor, even if you don’t have an audience at the moment, you can get more traffic over time.
Because people perform searches for videos all the time and your videos can continually get views if you rank higher.
If your going after an older demographic Facebook will be your best bet. For a younger demographic Instagram and Snapchat works well.
What type of content should you create?
If you’re not sure what content to create you need to check out your competition. Your competitors will have content that is doing well for them and that contents will give you an idea of what you should do and create for your audience. Best places to look for what’s trending you can check on these content search tools.
- Ahrefs
- EpicBeat
- Social Animal
- NinjaOutreach
- Feedly (Free)
- Google Trends (Free)
- Sprout Social
- BuzzSumo
Also, you need to keep in mind what’s your social media goal? If you don’t know where you want to go, it’s pretty hard to get there.
Promote your most popular posts and that goes for blog posts as well as social media posts.
3. Build Connections
It all starts with the profile, create your profile with a username, add your email address, add a nice image, and a description of who you are or your company. Also, mention the benefits that people will experience from following you or subscribing to your page. If you don’t complete your profile you’re not giving people a reason to stick around.
Stay active, stay engaged
if they have questions respond to them help them out if they have articles feel free to share them if you think they’re valuable right you can repost reshare
If your audience has questions respond to them. And even if it’s not your area of expertise point them to those who are better suited to help them out. .Are there any articles you think they’re valuable? Share them if you can repost or reshare, whatever it may be. Are there other people on these channels/ fan pages that are related to your industry even if they’re 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. Also, don’t forget to thank them for leaving a comment.
Automate
Be consistent and post regularly during your audience’s peak posting times on any social networks you’ve chosen to frequent. This where a scheduler can come in pretty handy. For Instagram you can use Planoly, Pinterest Tailwind is quite popular. Then there are the schedulers that can be used for more than one platform such as Buffer.
4. Don’t Get Caught Up with Follower Count
I used to feel bad when I would see other’s with larger followers count, but I had to learn that it’s not about the amount but how many people actually interact back with your content.
There is no point in having a large number of followers if they are not interacting and engaging with your content. If anything this should be an indicator of what type of content you should focus on delivering.
Be mindful in knowing that social media platforms reward those who have high engagement, this is an incentive to anyone who wants to reach their ideal audience.
5. Wait to Promote Your Business
I know it’s tempting to promote your business in the beginning, but it’s in bad form if you do this. Why? Think about it would you be receptive to someone who randomly comes up to you in the street promoting their product or service without first learning about what they stand for?
Of course not. So why would you do this online? It’s the same concept.
It’s best to promote within three months or six months, by all means, you can start talking about your business slowly.
“Engage, Enlighten, Encourage and especially…just be yourself! Social media is a community effort, everyone is an asset.” – Susan Cooper (@buzzedition)
Conclusion
When everyone starts out with social media it may seem like a huge undertaking, especially when you are wearing many hats in your business. It will seem like your not doing enough. But, what’s important is focusing on the activities that produce results. This can be done with a good plan and strategy.