8 Simple Ways to Start Social Media Marketing Right Now

If You’re Not Doing These 3 Core Things in Social Media, You’re Wasting Your Time

1. Define core personas

This is the first step to make sure you’re not wasting your time. The last thing you want to do is build an audience of people that WILL NOT BE YOUR CUSTOMERS. For example, if you are in the health industry, post more of this: One of those images will be liked and shared by people that care about health. Once of them is a picture of kittens. It’s likely both will share well. But only one of them is going to get you the personas you want. So define several personas that are relevant to your business. And then do everything around those core personas.

2. Identify personas’ problems

Each persona you identify has problems that you can solve. Tell them how to solve their problems. Answer their questions. Make a list of every single question you think they would have and answer those questions in a blog or social media post. Blogging and social media is not that hard when you think in these terms: Answer their questions, solve their problems, be a resource.

3. Get emails

Much of the interaction on social media is with potential customers at the awareness stage. People that see your product or service here are usually not ready to buy on the spot. So, getting their emails is the best thing you can do. You need this so you can continue to nurture that audience and lead them down the path to becoming a sale. See also 7 Ways to Use Content Marketing for Lead Nurturing

4. Think visual and video

Try to get at least one compelling image for each social media post. When you’re doing Facebook, don’t think “status update.” Think Pinterest. What would share well on Pinterest? An image, a meme, an infographic, an image with a quote, an image with a recipe, etc. Related Post 4 Keys to a Successful Online Video

5. Think share-able

In this section, I should talk about all the things that make something “shareable.” But I’ll simplify it: Go back to the second one on the list. If you solve problems, and if you solve problems with clear communication, if you do it visually, your target personas will see it. And they will share it with others in your target audience.

6. Be consistent and timely

If you won’t jump in and do it consistently, you will be wasting your time. People are on social media at all times of the day. If you are not consistent, your audience will never see what your posting. I recommend about 3-5 post a day on Facebook (minimum). Some of the biggest pages on Facebook actually post 10-20 times a day, or every hour! The typical advice is to not post that often. But reality might say otherwise for your audience. Here are a couple examples of pages that post often in case you don’t believe me. Here. Here and Here. And when you do share, share when people are online. How do you know when to post on social media? There are a few good tips here, The Two-Word Answer to When You Should Post Stuff on Social Media.

7. Promote

“If you create good content, they will come.” I had a boss tell me that once. There’s nothing more wrong than that statement. You will never reach all of your social audience with one post. This graph to the right comes from a Wisemetrics post about the short lifecycle of Facebook posts. If you want your stuff seen by more people, you need to promote hard and promote fast. Very few things that go viral are completely organic. There are plenty of ways on Facebook and other networks to promote your stuff (which is worthy of completely new blog post). And Fit also has a good network of people that can help promote your content through a wide variety of social networks.

8. Call to actions

In the end you gotta ring the cash register. Make sure you have call to actions to visit a link on your website, to share your content, to join an email list, etc.

Your Turn

What did I miss? What key thing will help people as they start in social media?]]>