So you want to market your business.
You realise the power of social media and how it can benefit your business to generate leads and sales.
Great, so I don’t have to strong arm or push you towards it.
In this article, you will learn how to use the power of social media to your advantage that brings you likes, comments, social shares organically WITHOUT coming across as a salesman.
By the end of this article, you will have a cognitive shift on approaching your next social media campaign.
I promise.
So without any further adieu.
Let’s get into this.
Who Would Gain The Most Value With Your Offer?
Every brand has a ‘dream customer’ – that ideal individual who would benefit the most from what you have to offer and would be the most loyal advocate for your brand.
Most people approach social media or any kind of marketing from an angle of selfishness i.e, talking about themselves and project how good they are.
This makes them look plastic and artificial.
Once they identify this mistake and possibly watch enough Gary Vee videos, they come to a realization that they have to provide value on social media either in the form of entertainment and/or information.
This is great. However, there is a missing piece here.
Provide valuable content to who?
To the social media platform?
To the algorithms?
To random people online?
Who are you posting your valuable content for?
This is a mindset shifting question.
Most people come up with a common answer like, “Well, I’m marketing to everyone. Everyone needs my product or service.”
If you don’t know this already, keep this in mind, “If you are marketing to everyone, you are marketing to no one.”
Unless you are specific about who you are marketing to, you cannot be specific with your message.
This mindset makes you ask critical questions like,
“Who is my dream customer?”
“Who is my most ideal customer that I want to serve?”
“What are their pain points, dreams, desires? What interests them? Aside from sex, what brings them pleasure?”
What sort of emotional and psychological pain are they going through because they didn’t get access to the product or service you have to offer?
All these points are insanely valuable information for you to talk to your ideal customer to attract them, to educate them, build relationships with them, to solve their problem for a fee.
In this day and age of AI, its highly tempting to get AI to come up with suggestions to discover the pain points, dreams and desires of your target customer.
Although this might give you some starting points for your brainstorming session, its not something that you should be relying completely on and base your marketing around.
By truly, honestly, investing your cognitive energy to brainstorm and describe your ideal customer, you can better tailor your content to address your ideal customer’s specific needs.
This will make your brand more relevant, appealing, increase engagement and foster a deeper connection between your brand and your audience.
Where To Find The People You Really Want To Impact?
You’ve identified your dream customer.
You know and feel their pain. You understand their desires and what ticks them.
Fantastic!
Your next challenge is to find out on which social media your dream customer spends MOST of their time on?
Facebook? Instagram? TikTok? LinkedIn? Twitter?
“All of the above” is the wrong answer….at least at this stage.
Identify one.
Just one, so that you can stay laser beam focused.
Most people choose a social media platform based on the demographic or the unique purpose of the social media.
While this may sound efficient, in my opinion, this is too much of a logical approach, because people are not 100% logical.
Regardless of what platform you choose or your dream customer hangs out on, your dream customer will have the same pain and challenges your service is able to solve.
For example, in our case, our ideal customer is eCommerce business owners.
The first platform that came to my mind is LinkedIn, because you know…”business”.
However, the same person who spends time on LinkedIn also spends time on Facebook, alot of time, because my ideal customer likes seeing the quotes and memes that comes on his/her facebook feed.
So now, I would need to prioritize facebook in my efforts to find and attract my dream customer.
How to Be Consistent With Content Creation?
Imagine subscribing to a magazine that promises monthly issues but delivers sporadically.
Over time, wouldn’t you lose interest in the publication?
The same principle applies to social media.
In an understandably flaky, unreliable and untrustworthy world we live in today, regular posting establishes trust and reliability.
When your audience knows that they can expect content from you, they build trust, authority and likeability.
You become a trusted figure to rely on.
Besides the ability to build authority, algorithms on platforms like instagram and facebook prefer accounts that post consistently, so that they retain visitors on the platform for the purpose of serving ads.
Now that we have covered why its important to be consistent on posting on social media, lets talk about how to stay consistent.
Without appropriate systems in place, it would be insanely difficult to be able to maintain consistency with posting content on social media.
Lets face it, we have other things in life that are more important to us than posting content online.
Last thing we want is additional tasks to the laundry list of things that we already have to get through.
This calls for the importance of planning in advance, in this most pragmatic way possible.
In step 3, we had already covered how to create content at scale.
Creating long form content consistently just-in-time to post, is not a feasible process in the long run.
You’ll experience burn out.
The solution is to create 1 to 5 high quality value packed long form content ahead of time, which requires time and effort investment.
I would advise caution on the temptation to outsource this task to someone else, as they’ll take shortcuts to get the work done.
Outsourcing will inevitably produce content that doesn’t have your personality or your unique style.
Once you have created 1 to 5 long form content that provides lots and lots of value, the content ideas you can post on social media goes up exponentially.
The subtopics in your long form content becomes a gold mine of information that can be repurposed for providing value to your audience.
Think, creators who make 3 to 4 hour podcasts and then make short form clips of the podcast highlights to post on TikTok, YouTube and Instagram for raising awareness of the long form content.
If your ideal mode of communication is through the written word like me, then your long form content will be a blog post and your social media content will be small tips and subtopics of that long form content shared on platforms like LinkedIn as a blog post, Twitter as a tweet, your long form content subtopics converted into slides for instagram etc.
However, this is only possible if you DO NOT take shortcuts.
If you take shortcuts, you will shortchange your success. Thats a guaran-damn-tee.
Next order of business is to take these subtopics and tips and schedule them for auto posting on social media using tools like Hyperfury, Buffer, Hootsuite etc.
These tools allow you to plan and automate your posts, ensuring you never miss a beat.
So, no matter what life throws at you, you remain consistent because of these tools.
I would recommend to plan for 30 to 90 days in advance, so that while your content is being posted, you can work on creating more valuable content tips in different formats, which becomes input for the next 30 to 90 day posting cycle.
How To Get The Most ROI Out Of Your Content?
So, lets do a quick recap of what we have covered.
We started with identifying your audience and knowing more about their dreams, desires and pains etc, i.e our ideal audience.
We discussed where to find our ideal audience.
We discussed the importance of long form content creation and how to do it.
How to extract your long form content to form tips and tactics that you can share on social media to gain traction to your long form content.
Furthermore, we discussed automating the process of posting content on social media.
Now lets talk about how to increase the effectiveness of the content you are posting on social media.
User Engagement: Its a Two Way Street
Unlike the newspaper, radio, TV or any other media for that matter, social media is a two-way street.
While posting content can get your brand, attention and some eyeballs to your content, what is equally crucial is the act of listening and responding, i.e user engagement.
Lack of user engagement is one of the main reasons many people don’t find success in social media marketing, as they are being like a bullhorn shouting value added content, but not engaging or replying to the few comments they do receive.
Replying to comments gets your potential ideal customer excited to open the app to see your response and if you engage with them with leading questions, you can potentially get ideas on content that they might like to see, which is more content ideas for you.
The more you engage and interact with your audience, the more connections you build with them.
Social media platforms love user engagement on posts, as it is an indication to the algorithms that the content is valuable, gets a lot of attention and is monetizable with ads.
Hence, they would grant you more reach to newer audiences.
Build an Email List
You see, social media is kind of like going to a party or a social event, there are new people everywhere.
At the event you have to follow rules of the party host, like following a dress code, buying a drink or two etc.
Out of the new people you meet, you potentially exchange contact details with a few to then stay connected later on.
At this stage, there are no rules in terms of dress code or the way you speak etc, because you have more rapport built with them, which further builds into a friendship or potential partnership in the future.
Same thing applies to social media.
As amazing and convenient as social media is to provide value to your ideal customer, it comes with strings attached.
Each social media has it’s own policies that you would need to follow to stay on the platform.
There are certain degrees of censorship that you would need to abide by to use the platform.
Truth be told, you don’t own the social media platform, you are using a small space on the platform to reach your ideal customer, so it makes sense to follow their rules.
However, as a business owner or a content creator, this is not in your best interest, as the rules and regulations of the platforms can change overtime, which puts your marketing efforts in an unstable state.
Its unstable because for whatever reason, if tomorrow your account gets suspended or the platform itself gets taken down, you lose access to your audience, rendering all the marketing efforts you have invested on the platform to be worthless.
The best and the most effective way to counter this potentially unstable state is to capture emails and build your email list.
When you have an email list, you are not bound by the platform’s changing rules and regulations.
You have complete freedom over the way you communicate with your audience in the email list.
They have a deeper connection with you, than the new visitors your post encounters on social media.
Furthermore, an email list helps you gain stability and confidence in your ability to provide value to a focused group of potential ideal customers and convert them into paying customers in exchange for the value you provide.
Build a Community: Beyond Followers, Towards Family
Once you have systems in place to create long form content, to extract ideas from your content for social media, to repurpose the extracted content into other formats, amass a decent following, generate leads and sales, now you are ready to get more intimate with your followers.
Unlike the new people who see your posts, people in your email list and your customers know about you, they feel your vibe, they like you enough to do business with you.
The next step to maximizing your ROI is to invite your entire email list subscribers and social media followers to a group where they can network and get support from other like minded people with similar interests from different backgrounds.
This can be achieved by either creating a private facebook group for your brand or if your budget allows you to invest in a community building platform like MightyNetworks.
Some creators prefer a non-facebook platform because it helps the followers to not get distracted by the constant notification from facebook, which could distract the users from the creator’s content.
That being said, a community is more than just a collection of followers; it’s a group of engaged, loyal enthusiasts who resonate with your brand’s values and vision.
Its a much deeper connection than replying to a comment on your post.
A community allows your followers to have vibrant conversations on various topics that they are passionate about and share perspectives that they wouldn’t have got if it wasn’t for the members in the community that you’ve managed to gather together.
This community can be used to host live sessions as Q&As, support groups, and live coaching calls which allow followers to directly interact with the brand and with each other.
Furthermore, building a community helps you understand what other topics your ideal customer might be interested in, which helps you with getting new content ideas.
Influencer Engagement: Strategic Collaborations for Mutual Growth
Until this point, all of your marketing efforts have been done within your sphere of influence of content creation, posting, user engagement and brand building.
Now, we’ll focus on partnering with other influencers who have already amassed an audience just like you.
Partnering with other influencers in the same niche is akin to the concept of building relationships with backlinkers in my Counterflow SEO guide.
This partnership is insanely beneficial to both of your followers not only because of the similarity in values and interests, but also because of the sheer amount of people both partners are able to reach, which could lead to increased leads and sales.
A partnership can bring new ideas into your content and perhaps enable you to provide value with your content with a fresh perspective from different life experiences aside from just your own.
Track, Analyze, Adjust, Repeat
Pumping out content, engaging with users and partnership with influencers are actions you take inorder to find your ideal customer.
All of these actions take alot of time and effort. Hence, we need to make sure that we are investing time and dollars appropriately by tracking how effective our social media marketing is.
After all, as Peter Drucker says, “what gets measured, gets managed”.
Tracking the effectiveness of your social media campaign is as simple as looking at the increase in the number of likes, shares, comments and how much time people tend to spend on your content.
The higher the user engagement on your posts, the more it indicates that your content is relevant and effective to garner and maintain user’s attention.
These tracking metrics are available with both platform specific and third party tools like Social Blade, Sprout Social etc.
If you engage us for your social media content marketing campaign, we have a tool ready for you to use for free to track and analyze how we are performing.
Furthermore, tracking on third party tools gives you information on how good your organic content reaches.
Social Media Platform Growth Progression
Just to insert a brief story here,
Nearly all social media platforms that have ever been launched to this day, follow a very similar trend.
As soon as it gets launched, many people join the platform and start posting content, which gives them the first mover’s advantage for insane content reach, because of the less number of content creators.
As the platform gains popularity, more and more creators join the platform and now attention becomes harder to achieve because of the small ratio of content consumers and increased quantity of content producers.
Eventually, content producers have to work 10x harder to gain meaningful viewership and engagement to the content they produce.
Not to mention, the algorithms change from inception to the later stage inorder to account for operational profitability of the platform and they achieve this by limiting the reach of the users, to entice content creators to pay for reach.
You might think, this is a bit shitty of a platform. I thought the same too.
But hey, don’t hate the player, hate the game.
This is the unfortunate reality of the social media marketing game.
Moving on, how do you track the conversion rate of your social media marketing?
All of your marketing efforts, however big or small it might be and regardless of whether it is on social media or your blog, you need to have A call to action (CTA).
This CTA can be a newsletter signup, product purchase, etc.
Having a CTA, gives your marketing efforts another way to track how effective your marketing strategy is.
The higher the number of users taking action, the more effective is your content marketing efforts.
Stay Up To Date
The digital world is constantly changing. Matter of fact, change is the only constant in the digital world.
Your strategies and marketing efforts that worked last year may not work this year, because of the change in algorithms, culture, advent of new social platforms etc.
Hence, it is important to be cognizant of the change that happens in the social media space to be able to maximize the ROI of your marketing efforts.
Its insanely beneficial to look out for emerging platforms, as you can get a first mover’s advantage to start establishing a content presence before other more prominent content creators own that space.
Aside from changes in the digital space, its important to feed your mind, to stay sharp and knowledgeable about marketing by attending webinars, reading books, understanding people, learning about human nature which will inevitably take you on a journey of personal growth and self-actualization.
This journey will provide you fresh perspectives that emerge from your life experiences, which are unique to you and if used well can bring value and foster a deeper connection with your audience.
Conclusion
In this ultimate guide, we have covered
…how to identify your ideal customer
…where to find them
…tips and strategies to create content for social media
…why its important to stay consistent and how to do it effectively
…how to get the most out of your social media content.
Now, on the surface, this might seem like a lot of work.
Don’t get me wrong, it is alot of work, especially at the start.
Initially, much like starting any business, learning a new skill, there is alot of blood, sweat and in some cases, even tears needed to be spent inorder to reap the rewards we are after.
I mean case in point look at this article, you think this article was written in a single sitting on a saturday afternoon, while chilling at the beach?
Hahah…how I wish! It took me weeks of writing, re-reads, editing and lots of WTF moments to get to this line of the article.
Consider the analogy of a tree.
While some plants might sprout quickly, it’s the trees that take their time, sending their roots deep into the earth, that ultimately reach the greatest heights and withstand the toughest storms.
Similarly, brands that focus on building a strong foundation, deeply understanding their audience, refining their value proposition, and consistently delivering quality, are the ones that enjoy lasting success.
If you are a numbers person, much like compound interest in finance, consistent efforts in branding and business, even if they seem small at the moment, accumulate over time.
A single social media post, a solitary blog article (like this one), or one product improvement might not create a significant ripple.
However, when these efforts are sustained over time, their cumulative effect can lead to exponential growth and impact.
Can I Get Your Help?
I hope you enjoyed this article, just as much as I enjoyed every second of it preparing it for you.
If you’ve gained value from this post, I would love to know your thoughts on what you have learned, questions or if you feel like I didn’t cover something, drop them down in the comment section below.
With this ultimate guide you have the information you need, to help you market your personal brand using social media organically.
That being said, you don’t have to do this by yourself. I can help you.
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