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Revised and republished 2021.
Social media marketing strategies can get incredibly complicated. There always seems to be so much to do and so little time. It can really be stressful. However, there are ways to keep it simple once you know what to do. The most important thing is to have a consistent system that you can use over and over. At the end of this article, you can click to download our workbook that will also help walk through these things for YOUR business.
1. Know your niche. The niche research you did when you first started your business should have revealed your people's interests, pain points, problems, and spending limits. If you’re not sure, do some research. Above all, find out where they spend their leisure time on the Internet and target those sites. There’s no point in banging away on a social network if the ideal customer in your niche isn’t hanging out there. For instance, if you are targeting women in their 40s to their 60s, who are entrepreneurs, you are most likely to find them on Facebook and less likely to find them on Twitter and you probably will REALLY not find them on Snapchat.
2. Brainstorm hot content. Hot content is the kind of content that will appeal to those in your niche. As you do your niche research, you will probably see the same questions coming up repeatedly. Make a list of them and create content that answers these questions. Be sure to create your paid products that address these issues. Creating a lead magnet around hot topics is also a great way to help your followers and get their email to share future products with them. Remember, free products can lead to paid products.
3. Leverage the content you create. Repurposing content is king! Make every piece of content you create work hard for you. One of the best ways to do it is to put it into more than one format. For example, your content could be an article, a top-10 list, or a PowerPoint deck. Your deck could become a video on YouTube which you would then embed on your site. You could also share the deck at popular sharing sites like SlideShare, owned by LinkedIn, which has very convenient sharing buttons for all of the major social networks. Catching on? Great. If not, make sure to get the workbook at the end of this article as I have a great section on repurposing in there.
4. Create a publishing schedule. Once you leverage your content, schedule it. You obviously can’t publish leveraged content on the same topic back to back, but you can use your blog scheduler to set the date and time in advance and, for example, publish one each month for several months. Make video your priority, though, to build up a robust YouTube channel full of interesting content that will gain followers. If you are working alone, create your own calendar and follow it. The plugin Editorial Calendar for WordPress is incredibly useful. If you are working in a team, set up a shared calendar to make sure something of value is being published regularly. 5. Use automated tools. WordPress has a range of plugins that will create share buttons so people can just click to share on their social networks. In addition, they have plugins that will announce your new content on your social sites automatically, such as WordTwit for creating a link to your content on Twitter. Then there are specific tools that will allow you to schedule posts in advance, such as Buffer, which will link with a number of different networks, and HootSuite, which allows you to schedule Pinterest pins in advance. These tools have both free and paid levels, so you have nothing to lose by trying them out and seeing how useful they are. If they make your publishing on social networks easier, the cost will more than pay for itself in terms of the amount of time you will save. This is what we do here at Blue Dot. As an agency, we have a massive scheduler that allows us to set up posts all over all the networks for our clients with just a few clicks. There are so many digital tools out there to help you automate. Click HERE to see our favorites. Most of them are even free or have a free level available.
6. Make an appointment with social for 1 hour each day. Social media can devour your time if you’re not careful, so block out 2 appointments of 30 minutes each, morning and evening, so you minimize the danger of getting distracted and wasting hours wandering around in an unfocused manner. An hour is just a sample. Make that time frame whatever makes sense to you in your industry, niche and schedule. 7. Outsource Once you get things organized, outsource the work to a reliable virtual assistant if you’re a really small company. Or, if you need help with the whole process, you can look for someone like us that has experience with this. So many people get really excited at the beginning about setting up their social media and then it just falls by the wayside. I do it myself. Every time, Blue Dot’s own social media ends up coming last because we have client work to do. I’m trying to now have other people help with this. The money is well spent when it saves you stress AND has the ability to help make you profit. One thing that I have found helpful is to go through and make notes and write down your schedule and plans. To do that, I created a workbook and even print it out and use it for myself and revisit it at least every six months. I'm happy to share that with you. You can click HERE to get a copy.
Have questions, hit us up for answers. We’re here for you.
Rebecca Paciorek is an Online Business Manager specializing in assisting in the growth of your business through traditional and digital means.
*I often recommend products and services that I use or that have been recommended to me by people we trust. In many cases these recommendations are accompanied by an affiliate link, which provides me with a referral commission should you click through and make a purchase.
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