Social Media Marketing – 2 Lies and a Truth

We’re going to share the three things businesses need to change for success in social media.

LIE NUMBER 1: You need 10,000 followers

It does NOT matter if you have 100, 1000 or 10000 followers. Getting to 10,000 followers on Instagram or FaceBook isn’t going to suddenly catapult your business forward.

Generally speaking, more followers means more people will see your content, but there are many large social media accounts with very little interaction. That could be due to buying followers (which are 100% fake and useless), using questionable tactics to grow their base (buying a pre-built account, or playing the follow/unfollow game).

It’s most likely because their content isn’t great.

If your content doesn’t make your 100 followers want to engage with you, it’s not going to be any better when you have 10,000 followers. It’s better to figure out how to get 100 people to engage than keep your best content for when you have 10,000…because you probably won’t get there if you can’t get the first 100 to engage.

Your focus as a business owner should be on making content and decisions that improve your numbers. Agreed, you want to grow your followers and these types of goals are good, but stop thinking that getting to a specific number of followers is magically going to make people start buying from you.  It’s a vanity metric that doesn’t add much value to your business on it’s own.

LIE NUMBER 2: Social media algorithms aim to fail you

We know that social media platforms change the rules all the time, and yes, you may need to invest some money for success on social media by way of paid social.

Do you know this about these social media platforms? They reward content that gets people talking. They’ll reward you if you make content that engages your audience, gets them to click buttons, comment and share. And isn’t that all we really need to know about the algorithms?

As a business owner you have to keep up with the changes to the platforms on which you’re depending. The platforms want you to succeed…because without YOU and your content, they have a lot less to offer users. And they make a lot less money.

So once again, it comes back to you needing to focus on making content that engages your audience and gets them talking.

TRUTH NUMBER 1: You need a social media plan

Winging it in social media just doesn’t cut it. Sure it’s great to be spontaneous sometimes and add in something you “just thought of” or something that happened to you today. But if you fail to plan, you’re planning to fail when it comes to social media.

When things aren’t planned and based on strategy you end up wasting a lot of time.

There are things you can do to ensure you’re not wasting time on social media by focusing on the wrong things.

1. Do your research.

   Understand your audience. Ask them questions and get to know them. They will tell you what you need to know to produce content–if you’re willing to put in the effort to ask and listen.

2. Prioritize.

   You do not need to be on every platform. And in some cases, it may be more effective to pay for ads than constantly creating new content. Figure out your time and financial resources and spend them wisely. Is your time best spent creating new content, or recycling old content? 

3. Be strategic.

   Once you know your audience and where they’re hanging out online, design your social media strategy and content to meet the needs of the platforms and the audience. The type of content you will create for YouTube is vastly different than the content you will create for FaceBook or Instagram. And while there are ways to recycle your content across the networks, you should always start with your priority network and work outwards from there.