What do you find is the hardest part of using social media for your business?
Most business owners will find that the hardest part of social media marketing is coming up with new content on a regular basis.
This could come down to not having the time to post, not knowing what to post or how to attract your audience with posts.
Lingering on these points alone will procrastinate your social media marketing and will slow you down. It could have an impact on other parts of your business too, if you spend too much time concentrating on this one aspect, or even if you get too stressed trying to figure it out, you run out of steam to carry on with anything else!
Creating content is not easy and it does come with practice. It’s a never ending cycle machine that needs to be monitored and fed, and also it needs some love. Finding the passion in your social media goes a long way to making it successful. It’s the same as anything, when you enjoy something, it works.
Should I just post ‘something’ to get content out there?
Many business owners fall into the trap of just posting ‘something’ so it looks like they’re on top of their social media. Anything is better than nothing, right?
Not necessarily. If you’re churning out content with no engagement or reactions, no new followers, no comments or shares – it’s not working. You are simply spending time creating content that has absolutely no impact on your business at all, wasting your precious time and causing you stress when you can’t get ‘something’ posted.
How do you know what to post on social media?
This is the part that you need to figure out – and this should only be a handful of things, preferably not the same content posted on every social platform out there. Once you’ve worked out what it is that works well, the rest will fall into place. It’s much better to do one or two things well and to see results from those actions, than to try and do lots of things not very well. One of the reasons we lose followers or people unsubscribe from our mailing list is that they are either bored with the content, or they feel that it’s not relevant or adding value to them. The key is in providing the value so the people are going to want to continue to listen and ask for more.
Therefore, to be able to post something well and make it relevant and with value, you must enjoy what you are posting about. When you don’t enjoy it, neither does your audience. The positive energy and the vibes that you give out from your content is an important factor in your social media marketing. You need to make your brand stand out from the crowd, make your content unique and by adding in your personality and spice you’ll give it an edge – the whole reason people choose to follow you rather than another business. 
What should I be posting about on social media?
When you’ve discovered what you’re enjoying and what makes you smile when you’re creating it (along with more and more people engaging with the content), that’s when you’ll know that you’ve found your sweet spot. Now it’s time to focus in on this and to make it the best it could be.
You’ve tried Facebook and managed to get a little engagement. Perhaps your friends and family still support your business page and like your posts, but the community isn’t growing. You post two or three times a day, spend ages creating beautiful images with captions. Share all the latest articles that you come across and even add in some of your blog posts… but still no engagement.
You jump over to Twitter and again share all the best news stories and retweet a few posts that you like the look of. Perhaps even follow a few more people in the hope that you get some love back. Tumbleweed… nothing.
So you head over to LinkedIn in a last attempt to get a little attention, perhaps you might get one like on a post and feel like you are still appreciated.
After all of this you are absolutely exhausted, completely overworked and have not achieved very much – sound right? So what have you done wrong?
Niche down and specialise
You’ve not done anything wrong per-se but you’re not giving your business the chance it needs to dig deep and find its perfect clients. After all your posting and content creation, you need to work out which is the right platform and what type of content fills you with joy; you’ll know when both are right when the content you create gives you a buzz every time you create it and you just love to talk about it and share.
This may mean that you’ve got to niche right down, you may even think that this will cut out half your audience and you’ll lose people, but that’s ok. As when you do specialise in a particular area and have a focus on your ideal clients, not a general overhaul of everyone you can imagine in a ‘just in case’ mindset, then you’ll start speaking directly to the people you want to reach.
Being too general can have a negative result even though it can seem the best thing to do to reach as many people as possible. As a young business, a startup trying to build a business, you need all the positivity you can get – and nailing down to a smaller specific audience will be beneficial and help with the success. When those ideal people start to see that you are sharing a solution to their specific problem or scratching their itch, they’ll start to follow you and engage in what you have to say. When this shift happens, you’ll discover the people that want and need your services and they’ll begin to share your content and recommend you to their communities too.
When you dig deep down, you may only find one social platform that suits your audience. For example if you are a B2B, LinkedIn might be a great place to connect with other business owners and to build relationships and to show your expertise. This will build trust and a familiarity of your brand. And when they realise that your services will give them value, they’ll come to you. No more hard-selling, no more pushing and knocking on doors. When you build a reputation for being an expert and offering value to those who need it, your business will grow organically.
What about the other social platforms?
We’re not saying that you have to dump every other social network that you’ve ever used and totally disappear from these sites. Customers are still searching for you on their favourite platform and having a presence is still a good idea. But why not spend 90% of your time focused on the platform that works for your business and 10% keeping up appearances on the rest? 
Using a scheduling or management tool for your social platforms will help with time management and give you a freedom to spend more time on the platform that you enjoy being on and communicating with the people that are more likely to become clients. If you realise that Pinterest or Instagram are your platforms of choice, we recommend Tailwind – you can try for free too!
Where do you go from here?
It’s all about using a working marketing strategy that you can work alongside and adapt as time goes on. Setting goals and targets, understanding your business objectives and knowing what you want to achieve. When you can answer these questions, finding the platform and creating the content will be a lot easier.
Don’t forget that we’re not all good at everything – we all have our own creativity inside but not everyone knows how to express that into social media marketing. If you’re looking for guidance and a creative spirit to come alongside your business and help you tighten the reins, we’d love to chat with you. Get in touch to start the conversation.
Why not start off with our social media checklist, giving you an idea of what you can achieve on a daily, weekly and monthly basis before you get started? Organisation is a good habit to get into! Best thing is, it’s free! Download now…
