Do Social Media Marketing Right
Social media marketing is more about starting and less about how you start. That doesn’t stop the “how” from being a crucial part of using social media to help drive organic traffic and growth for your business.
You are what you share — Charles Leadbeater
The easiest way to handle your social media marketing for your business is to create custom pages for it all. For example, I have a personal Instagram account and Facebook profile but I created a Facebook page for my business and recently made a business Instagram account too.
That’s just a lot of accounts. Why would you have that many?
Well, it is a lot but my personal accounts share things not related to my business more often than not. I don’t post often on either personal account but I post constantly on my business accounts.
I post on Facebook every time I post an article, video, podcast episode, or even when I post on my Instagram. I also post graphics on Instagram to help people answer some kind of question every day. I also post motivational graphics on Instagram at times. Here’s a quick example of the graphics I typically use.
It’s all about making the right content for the platform you’re targeting while answering questions, giving motivation, or helping other people with things in their lives.
If you don’t know where to get your start in marketing your brand or business through social media start by answering these questions for yourself.
What platform(s) can best show off what your business does?
My Answer: To target local businesses Facebook is the best choice for me. Beyond that, Instagram is a great avenue because I found a way to help people and share what I do there. Medium is also great because it has a built-in audience which is why I moved my blog from the Helms Media site here.
How much content can you create?
My Answer: Since creating content helps me bring in new clients I can make a lot. I do Two YouTube videos a week, one article a week, one Instagram post a day, one podcast episode a week, and multiple Facebook and Linkedin posts weekly.
Who's your target audience and what platform do they spend their time on?
My Answer: Business owners. They spend their time on Facebook more than anything.
Start Slow
It’s important not to get in too deep on social media marketing. At least not too quickly. Know your limits and stay within them. Eventually, marketing and managing your social media will be more comfortable and allow you to expand a bit more.
I suggest starting with two platforms and giving them your all until you’re comfortable then branching out into some other places. If you’d rather just do one that’s acceptable too, of course!
Here’s a list of only a few social media platforms right now
- Medium
- YouTube
- Twitch
- Tumblr
- Dribble
- Snapchat
- Discord (Can be)
That’s only a few and only ones that are big in North America. There are others that are big in Asia and some in Africa and a totally different set for South America. Don’t try to start them all at the same time. That’s a recipe for disaster.
If you’d rather outsource your social media marketing and management Helms Media specializes in both.
Consistency Is King
The reason you want to start off slow is so you don’t ever miss putting out your content. I highly suggest making a content strategy or social media marketing strategy where you define what you’ll do for each platform each day or week.
For example, I will post two YouTube videos a week at 10:00 am and spend an extra hour replying to comments to engage with my viewers.
Doing this lets you be consistent which allows your followers or subscribers to get on a schedule. They will begin to rely on your content coming at that time every week or day. This creates a great cycle to ensure your content is seen as often as possible.
Making The Most Of It
If you can find a way to use a social media platform to show off parts of your business well then that’s ideal. I could use my Instagram page to take pictures of me working on things or my cameras or even me on shoots and leave it at that. Instead, I decided to do something different and make graphics to help and motivate my followers.
Think outside the box and be different. Share interesting things with your followers and they will be more likely to engage with your profile by liking, commenting, and sharing.
Do things differently than everyone else and you’ll reap the rewards by growing infinitely faster than anyone else.
Your Toolbelt
Try to find tools that make creating content for your social media platforms a breeze.
Here’s a quick overview of the tools I use when creating and managing my social media marketing content.
Canva is a great tool that lets you create graphic assets for your brand. Everything from logos to YouTube thumbnails and even Instagram graphics. Canva is great! It is free to use but limited. I use it at times still.
Adobe Spark is my favorite for creating graphics and content. It’s the main service I use for creating all my graphics for all my content. It’s incredible and one service I think is well worth the money to unlock everything on. Spark also lets you do some video editing stuff which is also nice. I don’t use that aspect of it as much though.
Agorapulse schedules your content and posts in advance. This is great if you batch produce content for your brand. I batch produce all my Instagram posts every Sunday for the entire week and schedule them.
Later is another content scheduling system that’s a bit cheaper or free depending. I’m just getting into this one but I’m really starting to enjoy it!
Anchor is the podcast hosting I use. I know this one is a bit different than the others. Anchor is completely free and has been revolutionizing the podcasting industry. It does a ton including distributing your podcast on all platforms and even finding you ads to run on your podcast. It’s the best and I highly recommend it to anyone getting into podcasting.
Adobe Suite provides me with everything that Adobe Spark can’t. This is stuff like coding, in-depth video editing, and After Effects work.
I know some of those are out of the price range for businesses; especially if you’re just starting out. That’s why I tried to mention a few solutions. Canva is free if you need to make graphics it can work. Later is free for 1 account at least up to like 30 posts and that cycles monthly which is great. Then Anchor is just free and amazing.
Wrapping It Up
Let me know if you have any questions and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.
If you’re interested in learning more about how content creation leads to organic business growth here’s a great article on that
