Social media posting shouldn’t be something you just do when
you remember.
Your social media content should be planned, and that plan should be part of an overall marketing strategy that pulls together your different marketing avenues and strengthens them.
Using social media to successfully position yourself as an expert or go-to person in your field will ensure that potential clients think of you when they need the product or service you provide. Keep yourself at the forefront of their mind with frequent and relevant posts – consistency is the key.
A lot of clients ask me: How do I plan what to post?
These are the key steps I take every month with my own, and
my client’s social media :
1/ Identify specific goals
Do I have a goal this month? Or a particular topic I want to cover? Is there an event I want to promote or a particular message I want to get across? What do I want to promote? (remember the 80:20 ratio of content to selling)
2/ Research & plan
Incorporating any goals from 1/ and any awareness days for the month along with any relevant hashtags, as well as general hashtags for use on Twitter and Instagram (and lesser extent on Facebook) into a daily plan of content. Remember to include shares of any relevant articles you may have read, quotes or sayings that resonate with your audience, and plenty of content to share your expertise with your fans.
3/ Write the posts
Flesh out the full post content from the plan, using your research from 2/, source images to use and create graphics if appropriate. Remember that your posts need to be informative and include a Call To Action most of the time.
4/ Schedule
It is much more time-effective to bulk post if you can. I use a scheduling tool to post ahead of time for all of my clients, and directly into Facebook using their own scheduling system. There is a great satisfaction (and reassurance) to knowing that you’ve got a few weeks of posts sorted!
5/ Be social
Once you’ve got those daily posts sorted, you can add in some Facebook Lives or ad-hoc posts to keep your content lively and interesting. and make sure your fans can see what you’ve been up to. Make sure that you interact with your fans too, and ensure that any comments on posts are monitored and replied to if necessary. Regular posting will increase your organic post reach, and interacting with others will also help that. Tagging other people (only if relevant though) is also a great way to increase your post reach!
There are 6 things that need to be in every social media post.
They are:
Headline
Hooks
Emotional Triggers
Formatted for social media
Visuals
Call To Action
Headline
The headline gives your audience a reason to focus and should create enough curiosity to keep them reading. Make sure it’s interesting or is something that will resonate with your audience and ideal client.
Hooks
These can be treated like mini headlines to make information stand out. You can use several of them throughout your caption to keep your fans interested and encourage them to keep reading.
Emotional triggers
These triggers get people to comment or leave their opinion on your posts. If you think about what prompts you to comment on social media, it will be because you had an emotion triggered. Just make sure that the trigger is relevant to your audience.
Format for social media
People are easily distracted, so make sure it’s skimmable, and any key points are easily identifiable. If you’re reusing long-form content, don’t just copy and paste.
Visuals
They need to stop the scroll and grab attention. Whether your visuals are all text or a combination of text and images, they must be simple and easy to read and understand.
Call To Action
Your Call To Action needs to be the final flourish on your post and tells your followers what they need to do next. Never presume that your fans know what you want them to do. Sign up, download or send you a DM? You need to be specific.
You can download a handy guide to these 6 elements that you can pin up on your office wall as a reminder.
Not every business has the same message to convey on social media.
A brick-and-mortar business that doesn’t sell online needs to get a different message across than an online shop.
New businesses need to take a different approach than established businesses with a large following of fans and repeat purchasers.
Taking a moment to consider where you are on your business journey will help you identify your business focus and how you need to show up on social media.
The three stages are:
Visibility
Relationships
Conversions
Each stage has different messaging, goals and Call To Actions, so we’ll look at each in detail.
Messaging
Visibility – For businesses that need to increase their visibility, for example, new businesses, new products for established businesses and businesses that don’t sell online but need a presence.
Relationships – For businesses that need to build relationships with potential clients, want to start conversations or answer questions from potential clients.
Conversions – For businesses that are happy that they are visible online and have a strong relationship with their followers. Their audience will be in a position to buy, and so they need to give them the information they need to make the decision. They need to continue providing value and keep all of their posts client-focused.
Goals
As you write your social media posts, you must remember what you want people to do. And this won’t be the same for every stage of your business journey.
And if you look at your Insights (if you don’t, why not?), you’ll need to make sure you focus on the one relevant to your business stage.
There’s no use aiming for Link Clicks if you are working on your visibility.
If you are in the Visibility stage, you will want to concentrate on:
Reach
Followers
Page/Profile views
Video views/likes/reactions
Shares
If you are in the Relationship stage, you will want to concentrate on:
Shares
Comments
Saves
Video views
Direct Messages
If you are in the Conversion stage, you will want to concentrate on:
Direct Messages
Link clicks
Call To Action
The CTA you use on any social media post will depend on what your goal is for that particular post (see above). Make sure you use a CTA to get your followers to do the right thing!
Here are a few examples of CTAs you could use.
Visibility
Share if you agree
I bet you know someone who could relate to this. Tag them below!
Watch this video to learn more
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Who needs to see this?
Relationships
Would you agree?
Which would you pick?
My DMS are always open – cme chat
Help me with your top tips in the comments
Let me know your recommendations below.
How would you do this differently?
Any questions? Pop them below.
Conversions
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Don’t be tempted to move too quickly through the stages. You won’t succeed in converting buyers if you haven’t been visible and nurtured those relationships.
Once you move forward with a stage, you can still use the previous stage(s) elements for some of your posts.
So, even if you are now focused on converting followers into buyers, you can still increase your visibility and nurture your relationships.
When I tell someone that I’m a social media manager, they usually laugh and ask ‘So you sit all day looking at Facebook’?
It is a fact that a lot of the time I have Facebook open on my browser, but not always for ‘looking’.
Yes, some of my time is researching on Facebook. And for some clients, I need to go into Creator Studio via Facebook to schedule their posts.
And I check insights for my Basic package clients to monitor how their posts are performing so I can tweak and improve their reach.
I reply to comments on my own social media page, reply to my messages and also monitor my own page insights. Monitoring and creating ads for myself and my clients. I post to my own Facebook and Instagram accounts via Creator Studio and hang out in groups for Facebook strategists and Social Media Managers, so yes, I do spend a lot of time on Facebook.
BUT a considerable amount of my client’s social media work is spent away from Facebook.
Researching topics for posts
Checking awareness days
Drafting a plan for the week/month
Reading client blogs for content
Writing copy (a lot of time is spent writing)
Creating graphics
All of this work is done away from Facebook and actually takes up a large portion of some days.
Facebook being open would be a massive distraction too, so if I don’t need it, I close it down.
Creativity for writing and design doesn’t need the distraction of Facebook throughout the day. Any messenger notifications come to my phone and will be dealt with between tasks depending on urgency.
So, actually, no I don’t spend all day looking on Facebook.
But as I move my business towards Facebook strategy and paid ads, the fact is that I will be around Facebook much more often – but rather than the social side I’m more likely to be knee-deep in Business Manager.
Not quite the same.
If you would like to have a chat about Facebook Ad Strategy, then I offer a 45-minute discovery call to find out if Facebook Ads are for you.
Facebook often suggests boosting posts and I often see social media posts and comments from people who have boosted posts and seen no benefit – it has costs money but they’ve had no leads from it.
Boosts have very limited options for targeting – friends and family, and some very generalised targeting options. Under most circumstances boosts are a waste of money. It is highly unlikely that your post will be placed in front of someone who will buy your product or service.
But there is one occasion when boosting a post will achieve the results you want – if you want to get lots of likes and shares on a post and before running it as an ad.
An ad that has a lot of likes and shares will get better results – it is providing the social proof to potential purchases, giving your brand extra credibility.
You need to really think what your final aim is and create a post on your page specifically to run at a later date as an ad.
Initially, any post you put out may well get a few organic likes and comments. By spending a relatively small budget (say £10 ) on a boost (to family and friends of friends) the algorithm then kicks in and boosts your post to the people most likely to engage.
This will ensure that your post has a much healthier engagement when you use the exact same post as a targeted ad. Laser targeted to your ideal client, not only will your post be in front of the eyeballs that matter , but the ad will also have more engagement that will act as social proof.
It’s really important that you use the same post ID, and that you write the initial post as you want it to go out as the ad as you won’t be able to amend it afterwards.
You may well already have a post on your page that you could do this with as well.
Once you have a little boosted engagement, your next step is to increase the social proof even more by creating an ad with an engagement objective. Send this out to a warm audience, such as website visitors or page engagers.
Once you have aggregated a satisfactory amount of social proof through your engagement ad, you may then choose to run another ad (using the same post ID) with a conversion campaign objective to get in some leads from a cold audience. Your ad will have likes, comments and shares and your brand will have the social proof to instil confidence in potential clients.
I have conducted my own experiment on one of my own posts when I was promoting the launch of my Facebook ads strategy service. Initially the post had a handful of likes and shares.
After a £7.72 spend on boosting my ad, I had accumulated a reach of 1.9k with 73 engagements on the mobile news feed and Instagram.
I then ran an ad very briefly (only for a few days as this was just an experiment) to an audience of website visitors (and a lookalike audience) with a spend of £10 and another 73 engagements.
I stopped my experiment there, but I can see that the potential was starting.
A total of 2450 people reached. 88 engagements. A total of £17.72 spent.
A post that had some credibility to then share to a cold audience. (I should ad that I didn’t conduct the second part of the experiment and run the ad to a cold audience as it wasn’t linking out to my lead generarating page)
Although this was a failry low scale and low budget experiment I think it shows that you can buy engagement within your warm audience and if needed, build the social proof to give your brand credibility to a cold audience. If you’re interested in seeing how a Facebook strategist could level up your business using Facebook ads, then get in touch.
Your sales funnel is the journey someone takes from knowing nothing about your product through to purchase.
Every business has a sales funnel, and it can be very simple or very complicated.
Prospects go into the top of your sales funnel, and buyers will reach the bottom of the funnel. Along the way, people will drop out and the funnel narrows.
The AIDA model traces the customer journey –
Awareness – search, FB ad or post shared by a friend – unlikely to buy immediately
Interest – More FB posts, lead magnet – you establish expertise
Decision- content informs via an email sequence
Action – purchase/coupon
Sales Funnels can be much more complicated for businesses with lead magnets, email lists, tripwire products and high ticket items. There are many more places where potential customers can drop out and forget about your products.
Understanding your sales funnel is the first step towards maximising it.
Where are prospects falling out?
Where are the weak spots?
Could you do more to get more people through to the bottom of the funnel?
How are you getting prospects into the top of the funnel? Are there enough?
One of the ways to get prospects into your funnel is to offer a Lead Magnet or freebie.
This could be a pdf or masterclass that shows off your knowledge. Prospects give you their email address in exchange for a freebie, making them a lead you can follow up with further emails.
Having a useful and professional-looking lead magnet is going to put you in the best light possible, and I would highly recommend using Biz Template Babe. As well as templates for Lead Magnets there’s also templates for podcasts, email sequences, and social media.
They are straightforward to use, and you can switch them up with your own branding to look professional; each template comes with tutorials as well making it super easy to use.
I speak from experience too, as I created my own lead magnet last year……….
And don’t forget that Facebook Ads are a great way to retarget people who have visited a web page or Facebook business page with your offers and products.
If you want to check out my own Lead Magnet (because it is also packed with super-useful ideas for your social media posts), then you can find it here.
Second cup of tea in hand, I’ve always been in my home office for 8.30 am. Or thereabouts.
Back when I was Project Managing a team and was expected to be available in office hours, it was a perfectly acceptable expectation that I was available and at my computer. But I stopped offering that service almost a year ago, I have no ‘time-sensitive’ work to carry out and often write away from my desk (in the garden sometimes, but don’t tell anyone)
Over the last few weeks, I’ve seen lot’s of people reminding me of the benefits of keeping to a routine, and I have no doubts that these are valid points:
Increased efficiency
Reduces the need to plan
Creates a structure to your day
Develop good habits
Break bad habits
Easier to prioritise
All very valid.
Except, at some point over the last four weeks, I’ve realised that some of the routines and habits I had formed over the previous months and years were no longer serving me. They were making life MORE DIFFICULT. And at the moment, I’m all about making life easier.
The first thing to go was being in the office at 8.30 am.
Instead –
Leisurely breakfast with my daughter
Battle the queues at the supermarket
Drop shopping off for my parents
Collect a prescription
Go for a run
All of these things were much more important than the false importance I had attached to turning my computer on by 8.30 am at the latest.
Changing my routine has reduced my stress and anxiety, the overwhelm and the feeling that I was somehow failing somebody (me?) if I didn’t sit down to work at 8.30 am.
And the whole change of pace from being in lockdown got me thinking about other habits and routines that I had that were no longer serving me (Because I do like routines )
Is it laziness or a fear of change that keeps us in these routines that no longer serve us?
After the realisation that I didn’t actually have to start work every day at 8.30 am, I began to reassess other habits – finishing at 2 pm, using specific software, methods of carrying out work, carrying out tasks in a particular order. It turns out that a change really can be as good as a rest, and that even a single tweak can totally revitalise your day.
I recently watched a webinar hosted by the marketer Luan Wise, called ‘How to Adapt Your Social Media Activity in Times of Uncertainty’.
The main takeaways from the webinar I have been sharing over the last few weeks in my social media posts.
Don’t panic
No-one planned for this, so it’s ok not to know what to do
Don’t stop marketing and posting on social media
Keep yourself visible
It might feel a bit awkward continuing as ‘business as usual’ during these uncertain times. Still, if you are operating as ‘business as usual’ (or even if you aren’t), then it’s best to tweak how you’re marketing yourself on social media. Even if you’re not in a position to continue business as usual, you can still interact and engage on social media and keep building those relationships………and your reputation. Empathise with your clients, and focus on the help that they need now – help and support that is of immediate use to them, even if they may not be in a position to buy at the moment. Everyone is feeling something at the moment, even if we aren’t all feeling the same thing. And tapping into what your potential clients are feeling is vital.
One aspect of your social media that you may want to tone down temporarily is the selling aspect. Of course, you’re still running a business, and you still need to attract new clients. But let’s be sensitive to feelings, to uncertainty and to building relationships that will extend beyond this crisis.
If you’re finding yourself with time on your hands as business has slowed or stopped, then there are a few activities you could carry out to spring clean your social media:
Update your profiles
Unfollow/Remove connections
Review Groups
Create or update your content resources
Research hashtags
Research Awareness Days
Understandably, you aren’t sure how to pitch our social media efforts at the moment, as these times are unprecedented. But one thing is for sure. You need to continue something on social media if you want to remain visible and be at the forefront of your clients’ minds now – and when they are ready to buy in the future.
Download my free pdf for 20 prompts of what you could be talking about on social media, or get in touch for some 1-2-1 support to pull together and implement your own social media posts.
No time for all that? I can plan, create and post for you! My packages cover the requirements for most businesses, let’s have a chat about how we could support you.
When you first start your business, your initial investments are usually the bare essentials to get you up and running. But once you’ve been in business a while, how do you make a decision on what investments to make for your business?
Once you start to become more experienced as a business
owner, you will begin to see what you need to move your business forward to
help it grow whether this is software and programmes to streamline processes or
services that can be provided by another person with a different skillset to
yourself. On occasions, you may not even realise that there are programmes or
people who can support you. Speaking to other business owners often highlights
services that they provide or use themselves, that may be of interest to you as
well.
When I started my business, I did it all myself. I created a
logo for myself and set up my website. At the time, I didn’t have the money to
invest in a professional to do these things for me, and I had the time
initially to DIY it. In retrospect, it showed. It was only as my business
developed, and I worked on the impression I wanted to give to potential
clients, that I realised the logo and website I had created were a little
unprofessional.
A graphic designer was able to take my ideas and create a professional
logo and business cards I was proud to give out. My web designer was able to
create a professional website in a fraction of the time it was taking me to
make basic amendments to the pages I already had.
These two examples cover the reasons why you might consider investing
in your business:
There’s something you don’t know how to do
There’s something you don’t like doing
There’s something that you can do yourself, but someone
else can do it quicker/better
For me, the graphic designer was able to create a logo that
far exceeded anything I could produce and design business cards that
represented my business well. My web designer can make changes to my website quickly
and has saved me hours trying to work things out, Googling ‘how-to’ and getting
progressively grumpier at my incompetence.
There are a lot of ways you can invest in your business, but
overall the key factors you need to consider for any of them are :
Does it add value to your business?
Does this allow you to better use your time elsewhere?
Does this allow you to better use your skills
elsewhere?
Does this progress your business or remove
something from your to-do list?
If your investment ticks one (or even better, more than one)
of these boxes, it could be worth the investment.
There’s a whole host of possibilities to invest in your
business, but here are a few ideas of things I’ve used or considered.
Equipment, laptop etc
Coaching
Mentoring
Training/Courses
Personal Development
VA/admin support
Social media support
Marketing
Website
Graphic designer
Copywriter
Accounts software
Industry-specific software
Can you add to the list?
What has been the most worthwhile investment you have made
in your business?
Social media often seems like a mystic art (particularly the algorithms).
The key to social media is to remember that it is just that – social. There is an element of time needed to invest in the social side, but the returns can be well worth it. The more you post and interact with others, the more coverage your own posts will get. This consistency will keep your brand at the forefront of your audience’s mind.
There are a few ways to maximise your success on social media:
Accurate and ethical shares
Don’t just share for the sake of sharing, ensure that you are sharing content that is relevant and engaging for your audience. Is the content accurate and from a reputable source? Does the content add value to your page/profile and show that you’re knowledgable in your field?
Brand consistency
Consistency across all social media platforms will ensure that your brand is identifiable to potential clients. Make sure that your posts are recognisable as coming from your brand.
What you write about
Make sure that your posts are true to your brand in both content and voice. Are you coming across on your social media pages as an expert in your field? The aim is to position yourself as the go-to person.
What people see
Make sure that some of your personality shines through in your social media posts – people buy from people, after all. After networking events, make sure you follow up on face to face meetings with connections on social media as well.
Posting Schedule
By posting at a regular time, your audience will know what to expect and maybe look forward to your posts. Consistent posting will also increase your organic posts. Don’t forget that a lack of regularity could be perceived as lack of content/knowledge. I wrote a whole article about the impact of irregular posting.
Ratio of content: selling
Sometimes, a lack of posting leads to random ‘panic’ posts whenever you remember/have a chance to post. Random posting has no strategy and often results in more ‘salesy’ posts than ones which add value. Stick to the 80/20 rule and plan 80% non-sales posts.
Perception of your business
Whether it’s the regularity of the posts or the value they add, everything you post on social media will give potential clients a particular perception of your business. I go into this in more detail in this blog post.
There are downsides to breaks in your social media posts –
potential clients who visit your profile during a ‘break’ (particularly a long
one) won’t know you’re on a break, or whether you have in fact gone out of
business. The impression that your neglected profile will give to potential
clients is not a good one.
My 5 Steps to Social Media Success
Set a Goal
Identify what you want to achieve from your social media activity
Make a Plan
Pull together a plan of how you will achieve this (types of post, regularity)
Write the copy
Flesh out your plan with text and any relevant images
Post to the Platform
Scheduling ahead is best if you don’t have the time to post every day
Interact with your Followers
Schedule some time each day to interact with your audience and reply to comments
