Social Media Strategy: 3 Elements Identified by an Expert to Help Entrepreneurs
Meet Lindsey. She knows social media is no longer optional for business and helps entrepreneurs with strategy.
It’s the truth. Social media is no longer optional for business. If you’re building a business, and you don’t have a background in marketing, don’t freak out. Take a breath. Using the right social media platforms as you develop your brand and creating a strategy that works for you is possible. And you can crush it!
Lindsey White founded Magenta Strategies in 2018 and has been using her expertise to help small business owners who are confident in their offer but have limited time (and maybe knowledge) to market it. Her words: "Through creating killer content, images that stop the scroll, posting when your audience is online, keeping up with all the trends and updates, along with a mix of coaching, I'm able to help reach your dream clients, show them you're the expert, and guide them to wanting to work with you!"
In the guest article below, she shares insight on how to get your social media strategy on point.
Image by Markus Spiske from Pixabay
Follow your own path on social media using 3 key elements.
Social media is overwhelming! And then you think about updating what you’re doing? Updating your social media strategy? Where do you start?
There are so many ‘experts’ out there that claim to know what’s best for you. The ones that believe their method is the only way or that you should avoid certain trends because it didn’t work out for them.
The truth is, there are so many ‘experts’ out there who will tell you to follow in their footsteps, but you need to be following your own path; and we’re going to dive into how.
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Social media is not about puppy pictures, it’s about a strategy marketing your business and your brand.
When it comes to social media for entrepreneurs, you really need to focus on the strategy of how you show up online.
You aren’t there to just share a cup of coffee you got that morning or your puppy waiting for you when you arrive home from work.
You’re showing up online to sell yourself and your business to try and attract customers. There needs to be thought that goes into what you’re doing, when, and why. Which is why you need to build a strategy and continue to update it. Continue to make improvements to stay up with trends, changes in your business, changes in your audience, changes in just the world around us.
Luckily, it doesn’t have to be hard to update your social strategy.
This blog post will go through the three main points you need to focus on when you’re on the path to updating your social media strategy to make it as easy as possible.
So, let’s start diving into things, starting with those three key elements you need to have.
You need to think about:
- Audience
- Consistency
- Yourself
Photo by Calvin Hanson on Unsplash
Element number 1: Your audience should be a priority when marketing your business on social media.
Your social media strategy needs to focus on your audience when using it to market your business.
I mean, that’s the whole part of social media for entrepreneurs. We’re trying to market ourselves; we’re trying to market our offers to those who are interested in working with us.
So if you’re not doing anything on social media with the thought and focus of your audience, then what are you doing? I can guarantee you’re not selling.
Your audience is everything.
You need to focus on your audience by knowing on which platform to market.
Does your audience like to spend their time on Instagram or TikTok or Facebook or LinkedIn or even Twitter?
If you’re not seeing much success where you are and started your social media marketing by just taking a guess (and that’s what we all do by the way), it may be time to listen to some of your existing clients or do some market research and listening to what they say in terms of where they like to spend their time.
Photo by Sanket Mishra on Unsplash
If the majority of them answer that they’re not spending time where you’re marketing, that may be the biggest answer to your problems, and you have a new direction on where to go.
The other thing that you need to take into consideration with your audience is your actual marketing.
The content that you write needs to capture what they’re feeling and what they’re looking for. Typically, marketers will tell you to go for the gut and really go after their fears and challenges. Truthfully, I have seen both ends of the spectrum – focusing on successes and focusing on challenges – and I see no difference.
I actually have seen more success in my own content by focusing on the successes I can provide.
Why? Because I was being forward with the information. I wasn’t holding anything back and I was focusing on the things that my audience wants to hear, in the way they want to hear it and that is what drew them in.
Photo by Steven Van Elk on Unsplash
When writing your content, your audience needs to be at the center of your thoughts.
Think about the keywords they use, the way they talk about your offer – don’t use words or phrases that may be technical to your industry; instead, use words and phrases that you know they would use when looking for your kind of help.
When you write the way they would talk, they will connect with and understand your content so much better that it will be common sense to work with you.
Note: As a blogger, Daphne uses affiliate links sometimes! I may receive commission from purchases I share, but it does not change your price.
FREE AT 50 FAVE: The branding e-book Daphne uses!
Photo by Steven Van Elk on Unsplash
Element number 2: Consistency with marketing yourself on social media.
Second up on the three elements of your social media strategy is your consistency. Consistency is an element of social media that trips up a lot of people. I’ll tell you right now, I’m not going to say you need to be posting daily. I don’t necessarily think that’s insane, but I don’t think it’s necessary either.
There’s no set number you have to follow, instead, consistency to me means literally being consistent. I would say there’s a minimum to how often you should be posting which is about 2-3 times per week. If you can do that, awesome. If you can do more than that, cool. The biggest thing is to figure out what you can commit to and not what you want to commit to.
You can start slow and work your way up but it’s a lot more defeating to start off big and work your way back down.
RELATED: More on the Free At 50 blog to ease the overwhelm of social media!
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Element number 3: Yourself!
Last on the list? Yourself! When it comes to marketing and everything I talked about before, you and your opinion and your lifestyle matters when it comes to marketing your business with social media.
First off, you are the heart of your business.
There could be hundreds of other businesses who offer the same exact thing you do. The reason someone would choose to work with your company is because of YOU.
Which means that you need to show yourself off in your marketing.
When you’re writing content, don’t worry about being grammatically correct or writing in a way that doesn’t feel natural. Be yourself. Use slang, fill your content with emojis, throw in some swear words if that’s authentic to yourself, talk about situations you’ve been through and/or seen because I’m willing to bet your audience is going through those right now.
Whatever it is, be you.
Photo by Tara Vester on Unsplash
The other side of focusing on yourself in your social media strategy is making sure you are comfortable in how you’re marketing.
- If you feel stretched too thin by posting daily, you’re not going to show up well for your audience.
- If you are forcing yourself to find creativity to post when it’s really not coming to you, you’re not going to write engaging content.
- If you don’t like the platform that you chose to market on, you’re not going to show up with 100% effort and that will show in your marketing.
The truth is that you need to take yourself, personal and business-wise, into consideration when you’re updating social media strategies. You are the one marketing, you are the one in charge of your business, so you are a very key element in making your marketing work.
Don’t lose sight of that.
RELATED: This Free At 50 blog guest post from Katie about sharing not selling!
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Conclusion: Social media for entrepreneurs can be tough and figuring out how to update your social media strategy can be overwhelming.
But if you follow the three key elements above, you should have no problem beating those algorithms and find success with your online marketing efforts.
And if you need more help or like this blog and want to learn more, you can head on over to Facebook and join my group here, where I share plenty of tips and tricks like this to help you improve your social media marketing and start making easy, consistent sales from social!
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