How to Succeed on Social Media
Engagement is the key to success on social media. If you want to build a quality social network of ideal customers, getting your brand noticed by commenting on those posts made by people you want to connect to, will ensure this objective is met.
This article focuses on how to get noticed by your ideal customer on social media.
How to successfully engage on the right social media posts:
To stand out on social media, put aside an hour a day to engage with other people's posts. Engage by making a comment or asking a question to start a conversation. The more often you write comments the faster you get noticed by those in your target market. Hitting "like" is not enough, though it will help to build your newsfeed. When you hit like, that person's future posts will show up in your feed to comment on.
Find the right content to comment on social media.
On Twitter:
Use Twitter's list feature to create feeds of interesting people. Check the list consistently to engage with your ideal audience criteria. The more you engage the more people will follow you.
All Social Media Platforms:
Create a spreadsheet with links to profiles of people you want in your newsfeed. Go through the list once a week to find content to engage with and start adding these people into your newsfeed.
Make a list of hashtags you find interesting and search them daily for engaging content.
Use the search bar to find posts using your keywords to find people who are talking about what you do. You will discover what your competitors are posting about and potential clients. To improve your newsfeed, engage with people you want and block the spammy posters you don't want to see. If you do this regularly, your newsfeed will become more valuable.
On LinkedIn
If you want to improve your post's impressions - You must engage with other people's posts. Otherwise the algorithm will not show your posts and you'll struggle to get 10 impressions.
If you can afford the premium to help you prospect on LinkedIn, you can save 2nd and 3rd connections to lists, which will show you their latest posts for you to comment on. This makes it easier for you to get noticed by people you want in your ideal audience but don't know you yet. After commenting on their posts for a month or two reach out with a request to connect saying...
Should we connect?
If you want <insert a service you offer>
If you want to know about <insert the topic you post about>
If you enjoy <insert the type of content you create - blog - podcasts - etc>
If you struggle with <insert the problem you solve>
If you want to <insert the result you provide others>
If you said yes to any of these - Let's connect
Once you've connected on Linkedin make a task to reach out and book a one on one 2-4 weeks later
Tip: Don’t bother commenting on posts with lots of comments and lots of likes. Just like your posts, your comments will get lost and chances are, the person has someone else monitoring the profile, so you aren’t really engaging with them.
The top people to engage with are those who match your ideal customer avatar and post regularly on the platform. If they aren't posting on one platform, check other platforms to see where they hang out.
Which Social Media Platform is your favourite?
Facebook
Instagram
LinkedIn
TicTok
Give people reasons to follow your story
You need to show them your band story and give them something interesting to engage with, which in the noise of social media can be time consuming and difficult. Here are some ideas: share special offers, behind-the-scenes glimpses, and entertaining facts. Post regularly and engage with other people’s content so they will come over and check out your content.
Find posts by people who have a few comments on them and a few likes so you know they have an engaged audience, which they engage with, and they will respond to your message. You want engaged followers, not just followers.
Create multimedia content
Post photos, graphics, and video to engage your audience in different ways. Don’t be boring, change it up and continually test new ideas. However, make sure you are consistent in your posting, and you stay within your brand messaging guidelines. Don’t have brand messaging guidelines, well – You my friend need to become a MarketAPeel member and start creating your brand story with MarketAPeel – Level 1 membership is free to get you started. Tip: People need some repetition to get a message through their skulls and deep into their minds. Repeat your message using the same layout and message with different images or different media styles. Cycle three messages through for a month and then switch it up and start telling a different part of the story with a new objective and goal.
How to Tell Brand Stories on Social Media.
I first started hearing about Facebook in 2005 and from there quickly started connecting on other emerging social media profiles of the time, some no longer in existence. Facebook changed the way we connect with each other and how we tell and consume stories. Experts in telling stories in sound bites and trailers evolved as we moved into the digital realm of storytelling on social media. The stories were no longer written by the professionals, they evolved with each comment, like, and share. This method of storytelling has rapidly fractured brand stories and confused the marketplace about what unknown, small business, service-based businesses were about. In the game of getting eyeballs and followers, the stories became not about the brand but about whatever the audience would engage with leading brands to evolve into celebrities and the new business model of influencer marketing. Influencers are pros at looking good, entertaining people, inspiring them, and motivating them. They tell a story about themselves over multi posts with pleasing aesthetics and short prose. To get to the level of an influencer, one must spend hours on social media engaging with other influencers who are like them in the hopes of sharing their audience and finding new followers. Those who gamed the system soon found that the platforms turned against them and soon the numbers no longer mattered and those who understood how social media worked, focused on their niche, and engaged with their audiences on a different level. Influencer marketing worked for big global brands whose customers would buy what their favourite influencers would showcase. It didn’t work so well for local businesses because the influencers audience was global. Many small businesses wasted money on influencer marketing thinking the audience lived where the influencer did. They did not know to ask how many of your followers live in the area. It didn’t take long for small businesses to realize that giving away a free product for a selfie with an influencer did not result in increased sales and they began to push back. Influencers know how to brand themselves and how to tell their brand stories to garner a following and convert that following into dollars. It isn’t cheap or easy to tell a brand story into the sphere of influencer. It takes a team of talented content creators working endlessly to tell the story of your brand’s life and actively go out into social media to find new followers and entice them to commit to being a part of the brand’s audience. Those who understands the audiences on each platform will be successful at building a following, however, that doesn’t mean those followers will convert into customers that takes a deeper type of storytelling most influencers ignore in their race to the most follower’s championships. If you want to succeed on social media by building a following and then converting them into customers, you need a full brand storytelling funnel strategy. And it starts by understanding each platform and the audiences you will find there.
Tools I use for Social Media Content Posting
Even though you are spending time engaging, you still need to post to let those who visit your profile know why they will want to connect to you. Ensuring you
The best way is to post on each platform directly everyday, but that isn't always practical for the solopreneur or small business owner... to make it easier, use a scheduling program.
To save you time, use a social automation posting tool like, zoho social, to schedule your posts and ensure your content calendar is full. - I've used Hootsuite, Loomly, Buzzsumo, meta suite and currently use zoho social because it is part of Zoho One's 40 apps that work together to manage everything a small business needs measured for one small rate.
All the social automated schedulers work the same. It comes down to ease of use, budget, and unique features.
I started out using Hootsuite, but it hasn't improved it's features in 20 years.Though I prefer to support local business, Hootsuite is too limited compared to other programs.
I like Loomly for the content library you can create for ease of reposting in the future. Meta business has a drafts content library for future scheduling for Facebook and Instagram. The ability to save content and easily reschedule it again in the future is helpful.
Social Oomph is amazing for evergreen content posting because you can create a basket of content in a que that automatically puts a post back in the que for the future. No need to schedule each post as the system will post based on the weekly schedule you create. example Mondays every 2 hours - Tuesdays every 5 hours - Saturdays none - etc... It is an easy connect to Twitter - I still haven't figured out how to connect it to other platforms, though there is a way but you'll probably need a programer to help you.
