Do You Find Social Media Marketing Overwhelming?

If you’ve never built out a social media channel, it can be overwhelming. Where do you start? How does it work? What should you post and when should you post it? How do you reach the right people online with your social media posts? What if you fail? These are all great questions to ask and it’s where every business owner starts when creating a social media marketing strategy.

Where to Begin

The downside of all those questions is that there is a process that needs to happen before you set up your social profiles. Are you confident in your brand messaging and your company’s culture and story? If that question makes you pause, let me encourage you to begin the work here. If your message is in alignment with your values and culture, you will attract the people who are seeking out that vibe. If you aren’t certain what those things are, then people will be confused and they won’t resonate with your content.

Being of Service

The next step is understanding that while social media marketing exists to help you sell your products or services, it is not a sales platform. The way you build out your social media channels should not feel like it’s 100% promotional or sales or that you are only there to pad your pocketbook. Social media is meant to be social. A commitment to social media marketing, if you want to successful, is showing up generously – from a place of service. You want to attract your ideal clients, not repel them. You want to build an online community around the way you serve. It’s a different mindset than simply selling and it’s vital to be successful on social.

Providing a Safe Space

One of the subtle aspects of growing your online community on social media is that you earn the trust of your audience. You are creating a safe space for people who are like you, think like you, and dig what you like. Your ideal client will look and behave much as you do. You are creating a safe space for your people. That trust will encourage them to convert from followers to clients.

Are you looking for social media training you can participate in from the comfort of your home?  Join other small businesses, at your own pace, currently benefiting from the 40+ video training series included in the Social Power Program.  We have a Private Facebook Support Group, Monthly Ask the Expert Mastermind Sessions, a FREE Ebook, and regularly uploaded new videos to support your marketing efforts. Become a social media expert by learning everything involved in social media marketing from creating the editorial calendar, to creating custom branded images, to use of hashtags, to paid ads and reporting and so much more. Find out more about the Social Power Program here.

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Hollie Clere of The Social Media Advisor is a “#BeAwesome” Developer, Social Media, Brand Builder, Content Manager, Trainer and Author in LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Blog, Google+, YouTube, Pinterest, Instagram, and the tools to manage them.

Click here for Social Media Training, Speaking and Strategy Consultations.

What Are You Grateful for With Your Online Marketing?

Online marketing is challenging because it is always changing and evolving. As technology advances and new tools and platforms are created, small business owners may feel like they are scrambling just to stay on top of the latest marketing trends. With all the noise comes frustration and overwhelm. 

Instead of spending your time doing the work you set out to accomplish, you are chasing your tail trying to figure out whether or not Facebook is the place for you, how often to post to Instagram, what hashtags you should be using, and what the heck is a chatbot? 

We hear you. As marketing experts, we know just how much information (and misinformation) is being shared on a regular basis and we want to tell you to turn off the noise. You don’t need to know all that stuff to be successful at marketing your business. In fact, if you develop a plan for incorporating and using simpler systems for your online marketing efforts – this process can even be fun!

You just need an experienced guide to show you the way. One who can recommend which tools to use, show you, step by step, how to use those tools to create content in an easy way, and someone who can explain working strategies to grow your business online.

Even if it doesn’t feel like it right now, there is so much to be grateful for when it comes to your online marketing. Here are some of our thoughts:

Be Grateful for Your Vision

No marketing expert can help you grow your business online if you aren’t clear and passionate about your company’s vision. Knowing the big picture of what you want your work to accomplish and what you want your company’s legacy to be is where all the great storytelling begins. Knowing this information makes marketing so much easier so pat yourself on the back for creating something bigger than yourself and sharing it with the world!

Be Grateful for Your Service

Businesses exist to solve problems. In fact, if what you offer isn’t a solution to your audience’s problems, then they’ll have no reason to pay attention to you at all. This problem-solving is providing a service for people who need your skills and expertise. Take a moment to feel gratitude for this service you provide to your community.

Be Grateful for Your Brand

How people feel about your company is what branding is all about. All the work that you do, and every time you show up, people will feel an emotion related to what you do. If that emotion is what you want them to feel, you win! 

Take a moment this month to sit in gratitude for your big vision for making the world better, for the drive to help your audience solve their pain points and problems, and for making people feel better in a world filled with uncertainty and chaos. That combination is a worthy legacy.

Are you looking for social media training you can participate in from the comfort of your home?  Join other small businesses, at your own pace, currently benefiting from the 40+ video training series included in the Social Power Program.  We have a Private Facebook Support Group, Monthly Ask the Expert Mastermind Sessions, a FREE Ebook, and regularly uploaded new videos to support your marketing efforts. Become a social media expert by learning everything involved in social media marketing from creating the editorial calendar, to creating custom branded images, to use of hashtags, to paid ads and reporting and so much more. Find out more about the Social Power Program here.

 

Be sure to Follow us and Let’s Engage!

Hollie Clere of The Social Media Advisor is a “#BeAwesome” Developer, Social Media, Brand Builder, Content Manager, Trainer and Author in LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Blog, Google+, YouTube, Pinterest, Instagram, and the tools to manage them.

Click here for Social Media Training, Speaking and Strategy Consultations.

Evaluating Your Competition’s Social Media Marketing

I can’t say it enough, no one is like you and your business. You serve clients in a unique way and your company culture automatically sets it apart from others in your industry. However, everyone has competition – other businesses that do something similar to you and target an audience that looks like yours. 

Comparison can be dangerous. A business owner that spends all their time comparing their work to their competition, and adjusting their strategy or goals to match, will 100% of the time miss out on what makes their brand special and unique. Comparison can kill your creativity, your innovation, and can make your brand feel like a copycat instead of a leader in your field.

That being said, there are benefits to paying attention to your competition:

Online Presence

First, check out your top three competitors online. Do they have a website? Is it attractive? Easy to use and navigate? Does it tell their brand story in a compelling way? How do they appeal to their audience? It’s much easier to evaluate another person’s website and brand than it is to be objective about our own. This process will reveal a couple of things: 1) what you are doing well with your own website and 2) where there is potential to do better than your competition in areas where they aren’t currently ranking well. The second, in particular, can reveal opportunities that exist that your competition is not currently focusing on.

Then do this again by searching for your competition’s brand using a search engine. How do they rank in the search engine results for their brand? Where do they rank in search in regards to industry or location-specific keywords? How often do they appear in the results? Are multiple websites talking about their brand? How much of a presence do they have? How much authority or credibility do they appear to have? Then do the same for your company and make improving your own searchability a priority based on the results.

Social Media Marketing

Let’s repeat this process with your competition’s social media marketing. While we would never encourage you to copy or plagiarize their content, paying attention to what gets good engagement on their social media marketing channels can be revealing. If your audience is similar, they may also respond well to that type of content. This is true for content that’s not performing well. Does your target audience like articles or videos? Do they respond to motivational quotes? Are they willing to engage in conversation when content is shared? This effort can be a process of elimination of what you should or shouldn’t share on your own social media channels and may inspire you to create something new or different that is better suited for your audience.

If you can approach evaluating your competitors from the viewpoint of learning what you can do better, where the opportunities may be that your industry isn’t taking advantage of, and inspiring you to build a better online presence for your audience – then this practice can be a positive tool used to become more successful. If you find yourself trapped in comparison or you use this practice to mirror what someone else is doing, forget I ever mentioned it! No one needs a copy of someone or something else. They need you to show up authentically and do your thing because that’s how you resonate with people.

Are you looking for a social media company to train your staff on online marketing strategies and equip them with the tools to maintain engagement, spark interest through Linkedin and other social media platforms, and build a solid foundation company-wide? Contact us to set up a training session for your sales team to improve your online marketing efforts.

Be sure to Follow us and Let’s Engage!

Hollie Clere of The Social Media Advisor is a “#BeAwesome” Developer, Social Media, Brand Builder, Content Manager, Trainer and Author in LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Blog, Google+, YouTube, Pinterest, Instagram, and the tools to manage them.

Click here for Social Media Training, Speaking and Strategy Consultations.

How Often Should Your Social Media Manager Post for Your Business?

At the Social Media Advisor, we talk a lot about posting consistently. Consistency is the foundation of any social media marketing strategy. However, what consistency means for each business can look different. The point is to pick a posting schedule and have an editorial calendar and a plan for your social media marketing.

How, as a small business owner, to determine how often your social media manager should post for your business?

Schedule

Depending on the platform, the number of posts you should aim for each week can look different. Since most of our clients prefer Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn – we can tell you that, at a minimum, your business should be posting at least 3x a week to stay relevant for your audience and for the social media algorithms. (This amount goes up for platforms like Twitter and Pinterest.)

We also have clients who post 5 days a week and some that post every day. How often your business should post, within these timeframes, is usually determined by how much original content is already available to work with. Business owners that invest in a blogging or video strategy have more original content to pull from, making it easier to create more social media posts per week.

Too Many Posts

There are brands that post more often than 7x a week, which we don’t recommend. In our experience, posting more increases your opportunity to lose followers or to post content that isn’t seen. The way the algorithms work, the first post per day that starts to get engagement is the one that will be featured the most – burying any other content you’ve shared that day. This is a waste of time and energy. It could also be a strategic problem if your audience doesn’t first engage with the post you were hoping would get seen or shared the most that day. You can eliminate this problem entirely by posting no more than once per day.

Newsfeed Rotation

You may find that a post does so well that it will show up in feeds for more than one day. Social engagement is always the goal, so, a top-performing post may continue to get featured in the newsfeeds of your audience in an attempt to gain even more reach and engagement. This will, certainly, downplay any other posts you have scheduled until this one begins to lose traction. Notice when this occurs as it will be a good window into the type of content your audience prefers so that you can continue to get great engagement in the future.

Only you, and your social media manager, will be able to determine the right posting schedule for you. If you are new to social media marketing, consider the first few months a trial period where you pick different dates and times, and then check the analytics to see what performed best. This way you can build, and continue to tweak, your social media schedule to achieve optimal results.

Are you finding it is getting more difficult for you to post about your business in social media due to time and energy restraints? The Social Media Advisor team can create a custom editorial calendar for your business, create on-target messaging and branded images aligned with your culture, and get it scheduled each month – taking this huge task off your plate entirely! Ask us more about our Monthly Social Media Management service!

Be sure to Follow us and Let’s Engage!

Hollie Clere of The Social Media Advisor is a “#BeAwesome” Developer, Social Media, Brand Builder, Content Manager, Trainer and Author in LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Blog, Google+, YouTube, Pinterest, Instagram, and the tools to manage them.

Click here for Social Media Training, Speaking and Strategy Consultations.

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