How To Get Started With Social Media Marketing

A lot of my clients are just getting started with marketing. They're small businesses, and up to this point, they've been a one-woman show, doing everything they can in the time that they have. So when we do finally meet, they have questions about all the things they thinks they're supposed to do, but haven't found the time to do well or consistently.

Top of the list: Social Media.
Top question: How Do I Go Viral?

Going viral is in many ways out of our control. It depends on unpredictable things like the algorithm, the current trends, and how broad your content is. If you're a very niche company, you're naturally going to find it more difficult to go viral because you are (or should be) primarily focused on creating content to serve your niche.

I would also argue that going viral isn't the end all be all of social media, especially not from a marketing perspective. Going viral can be great and get a lot of attention to a particular post, or even your page. But often, it doesn't actually do much to move the needle in terms of sales. Especially since most things that go viral lean towards the entertainment side of the social media spectrum.

So, all that to say, rather than going viral, our focus should be on developing a strong social media strategy to help us accomplish our overall business goals.

How do we do that?
Let's talk about it!

Know Your Goals For Social Media Marketing

This is step one of marketing in general, but especially when it comes to social media. If you don't know where you're going, there's not a vehicle in the world that can get you there. 

What are you trying to accomplish? Are you selling a product or a service? Are you trying to grow your email list? Are you just trying to grow your brand awareness, help people realize that you exist and you can help solve their problems? Any and all of these are great goals and social media can help you achieve them.

Which brings me to point two:

Create A Strategy for Your Social Media Accounts

This is slightly more advanced. If you're just getting started, or if you're a one-woman show, this might feel intimidating, but never fear. Just like IKEA furniture, once you jump in and start working with the pieces, it all comes together.

Strategy = Goal + Method

For example: let's say my goal is to grow my email list by offering a freebie on my social media accounts. My goal is to grow my email list. The method is offering a freebie. So then my strategy is to do the thing that I've lined out in order to reach the goal.

You can get more granular if you like, but that is the meat of it.

I'll also say that most marketers are working on several strategies at once, and that's a good thing! That's why you aren't constantly bombarded by the same companies trying to get you on their email list. We create different types of content for different strategies. It keeps things interesting and keeps people following you to see what comes next.

When You Have Goals and Strategies, You're Ready To Make A Content Plan.

This, also, can feel complicated, but truly it's just the actual work piece of your strategy. So, taking our example above again, here's how we create a plan.

We know we want to grow the email list by offering a freebie.

So we're going to create a number of posts that directly reference the freebie. That's the content plan. How you go about this is totally unique to you! The options are deep, wide, and varied, and there is no right or wrong answer. Eventually the numbers will tell us what worked and what didn't work as much, but for now the trick is to produce content. (Hot Tip: I use Canva for this, and lucky you, there's a free version!)

Here's an example that I've used for this in the past:

They are pretty different so my audience will register them as different things and stop scrolling to see what new content I made for them.

Publish Your Content!

This is often the hardest part. Your inner perfectionist will come out and have LOTS to say about how it looks, what you said, if anyone will see it, and why are you even attempting to run a business anyway.

Breathe. It happens to us all.

Then — and this is important!— press publish anyway.

If you don't put it out there, you can't accomplish your goals and all that time we spent strategizing is worthless. Don't do that to yourself. The world needs YOU and the products and services that you are so generous to provide. You should allow people the joy of discovering the unique goodness that is you.

Your Turn

What are your marketing goals?
How can social media help you accomplish those?
What's standing in the way of you putting your plan into action?

Need a little help with this? Social Media isn't fun for everyone and if you're in that camp, I'm happy to take that off you're plate. Rest easy knowing you don't have to ever think about hashtags again. Get on my calendar and let's talk it out.

XO,
E