Most solopreneurs understand that having a social media presence can help attract more clients to their business, so they rush in and sign up for lots of different accounts and hope for the best. But if you don’t get the fundamentals right in the first place you might find you get very little ‘return’ on your time invested in social media, or worse still it actually ends up putting off your ideal target audience.
Aside from the actual nuts and bolts of setting up your profiles – the first thing to get your head around when you use social media is the actual mindset behind it.
I see far too many business owners hopping up and down in delight at what they think is a huge pool of millions of their target ideal audience – just waiting to be told about their latest business offering.
They completely miss the point of social media being a ‘relationship building’ process. They dive in and start throwing salespage links around without a thought of what impression that might be giving – and then wonder why it’s not working for them.
If you’ve wondered if social media could be working better for you then maybe it’s time to re-visit some of these fundamentals, in my ‘Social Media Golden Guidelines’ :
1) Give before you get
Look at how you can add to the conversation, add value, help others’ make connections, give useful tips and comments, and generally be helpful (remember you will be showing your expertise as you do so!). Do it in a conversational style rather than being in ‘lecture mode’. Remember this is about building connections and relationships, so your followers want to feel included rather than talked AT.
The mindset behind using SM in your business building mix is to attract your ideal clients. It’s all about magnetic PULL marketing rather than repellent PUSH marketing!
2) Do NOT endlessly promote yourself
This is what’s known as spamming – it’s called SOCIAL media for a reason! So show your human side, be approachable, and contribute a balanced proportion of non-promotional posts, tweets and comments to the conversations. Believe me, when I see someone who never actually contributes in a human relational way, and only ever promotes themselves I’ll unfollow / disconnect from them fairly quickly.
3) Have integrity
Social Media is no different from being at a real life party, or in-person networking event. You wouldn’t start running people down and being rude there, so don’t do it in SM. Enough said!
4) Be professional
Yes you can be entertaining, and show you are a real person, with adding some safe personal stuff about you but remember that this is a great way to entertain AND educate others’ in your business sphere, so give great tips, educate, and support people in your niche of target prospects (I call it edu-taining).
The more people can see what you and your business stand for, the more they will feel that they know, like and trust you, and the more likely they would be to want to do business with you!
5) Be consistent
Remember the annoying ‘friend’ who only ever gets in touch when they want something from you?! Well you do not want to be that person in SM. If you only do SM in a half-hearted way, and only ramp it up when you want to promote something you’re doing, your followers will quickly get fed up with your approach.
6) Plan your Social Media Time
OK – this one is really important! I have seen too many people spending HOURS on social media, thinking that because they are busy doing this they are growing their business!
Yes, you do need to earmark some time out of your schedule to use SM effectively, but you must be super strict about ringfencing that time, and planning it into your schedule for the allotted amount of time, just as you would any other activity.
You can have a very credible presence on all these platforms by allocating perhaps 10 minutes in the morning, 10 at lunchtime, and 10 in the evening (think of all those moments when you’re waiting for the kettle to boil, or a document print off – all perfect SM windows!). SM will not work for you if you only contribute once in a blue moon, but you must be strict with managing your time, and not get sucked into conversations only to realise that an hour has gone by, which you’d earmarked for other business building activities.
7) Be Balanced
As long as you are connecting and contributing with integrity, it IS fine to do a certain amount of direct promotion within social media as part of your marketing strategy. The key is to keep it balanced with your edu-taining content as well. That way you know that your promotional activity is just a logical next step to show your followers where they can get more than your f’ree content.
So there you have it – my thoughts on the mindset behind having a successful time with social media.
So now it’s your turn – take a look at how you’re using social media from your ideal target clients’ eyes, and see if you think it’s helping or hindering your business.
Try a few tweaks based on these guidelines and see how much more engaging it feels! If you use this marketing strategy correctly it will help you attract more clients, promote your massive listbuilding success, and create a profitable longterm relationship with your crowd of followers.
I’d love to hear from you – social media always sparks plenty of debate, so let me know what your thoughts are, or what you’re going to do differently or better this week in your business after reading today’s article?
Have YOUR say, and leave a comment below.
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