How do I use social media for my business?
If there’s anything that developing the Create Your Business program has taught me is that almost everyone struggles with creating a social media strategy.
At one point in your social marketing process, you found yourself stuck with what to post, when to do it and what social site you should use to connect with more customers online.
And it’s just more than frustrating … you know that social media is no longer an option to your marketing plan. It’s something that you really need to understand so you can grow your business.
You’ve seen other entrepreneurs make connections on LinkedIn, sell their coaching spaces in a Facebook Group and bloggers grow their site traffic with Pinterest. You know that it works when you work it.
Not building your social media strategy is one of the biggest social mistakes that you can make for your business. Because it’s more than just having monthly goals or an idea about how your business will use social media.
It’s about knowing what to post, where to post and when you’re going to get this done. All of that stuff is what creates your social media strategy.
Whether you’ve taken some time to create a social strategy or just scratched out a plan on a piece of paper, there’s a good chance that you’re making some other social media mistakes that’s affecting how you’re connecting to customers online.
Let’s walk through these four social mistakes you might be making … and how to fix them.
Mistake #1: Not Filling out Your Social Media Profiles
An incomplete social profile is like a missed opportunity to connect with new people. Your profile is more than just your picture in the corner of your social site.
This is the place to share what you do during that quick moment you were able to capture someone’s attention. Make sure you fill out all the sections in your Bio and the About area to give us the full picture about who you are and what you do.
And tell us a little more about yourself than the fact that you’re a mom or entrepreneur. Have a little fun with your bio copy and show us your personality. People will always remember you more if you wrote something that gave them a laugh.
Social profiles are now searchable in your social sites so filling out all your information with searchable terms is another great way to have new people find your profile.
And it’s not just about the text copy – don’t forget to use quality images when you’re uploading your background graphic and profile image.
Mistake #2: You’re Spending Time on the Wrong Social Site
Are you spending time on a social site that you shouldn’t be using? OR worse, are you missing out on a social platform that you should be on?
Most of us spend time on the social media sites where we feel most comfortable. You’re thinking, “I’m on here every day so I’m sure everyone else is too.”
If you’re always posting on your personal Facebook page, it just made sense to spend your time posting on your Facebook business page. You set up your page, post your promotions and links and no one hits the Like button.
The only person who engages with your latest Facebook marketing post is your mom and you’re pretty sure that seeing the comment “Good work sweetie!” isn’t going to get you new clients.
You’re spending a bunch of time doing all the steps that the experts tell you to do and nothing is working. Have you ever stopped and asked yourself, “Just because you like to tweet or post stories on Instagram, does that mean that your customers do too?”
Before you spend any more time posting on your preferred social site, do some research about where your target customer likes to hang out.
Find out which site they like to use and how they like to use it { do they only hang out in this site at night? } and then focus your marketing efforts on the social sites where your customers are spending their time.
Mistake #3: Doing the Same Thing You’ve Always Done
Every time you think you’ve figured out how to use your favorite social site, they go and make changes to everything from what you see in your home feed to how you post your stuff.
You see the changes, you talk about what happened in your Facebook Groups but then instead of changing your social strategy, you do the same thing that you’ve always done.
And then you wonder why this isn’t working like it did before.
Instead of what wondering what just happened, it’s time to make things happen and change your social strategy to work with the new changes.
Pay attention to the conversations in places like Facebook Groups to see what others are doing to adjust to the new changes. Do some research to learn how these new features will affect your posts and what you can do to keep engaging with your community.
Just think about these changes – we’ve seen Facebook posts with videos get pulled to the top of your Facebook feed and Pinterest shows us pins from people that we’re not following. All of these changes have affected not just WHAT we post but HOW we post our content on these sites.
And remember when the experts told us to post the same content two or three times a day to make sure that you reach as many followers as possible? This strategy worked when the sites had chronological feeds and the newest posts would appear at the top of the page.
But does it work now? With the new changes we’ve seen, not so much.
If you continue to do the same thing with the same old plan, it’s more likely that your content will stop showing up for people looking for your information.
Spend some time studying the site you want to use to connect with your customers. Take a look at other businesses that are like yours and study their posts to see what content is getting the most engagement. Watch how everyone interacts with each other, comments on their posts and the conversations that they’re having among themselves.
Write down some notes, create a swipe file, whatever you need to do to breakdown what you’re seeing online. Then use what you’ve learned to rework your strategy to work with the new algorithm changes, not against it.
Mistake #4: Not Creating Quality Graphics
There’s no doubt that you’ve heard this bit of advice from just about anyone talking about growing your social presence. But are you really doing it???
I know that you know this because I’ve heard just about every reason under the sun about why most people don’t spend the time to create quality images.
Seriously, which one of these have you heard yourself say?
- I don’t have an expensive program like Photoshop to edit my images.
- I don’t want to spend a bunch of money on good images from a stock photo site every time I share a blog post.
- I’m not very creative and don’t know how to make graphics.
I get that doing something you haven’t done before is a bit scary and it’s easier to think that if you can’t do it right, why bother.
I’m here to tell you that every one of the above sentences are just excuses and when you change the way you think, you can fix this social mistake.
Let me show how to break down all of these image excuses so you can start making quality images for your social sites
- You don’t need an expensive program like Photoshop to create images. You can use the free version of image editing programs like Canva or spend a little money paying to use Picmonkey.
- Canva and Picmonkey are simple to use and – to answer that last excuse! – both have amazing blogs showing you how to use their programs.
- Both Canva and Picmonkey have image templates for all of the main social sites so even if you don’t know a thing about creating graphics, you can use a template and just drop in an image and edit the font, colors and text.
And that objection about spending a bunch of money to post something on Facebook, with all the free image sites out there, you don’t have to spend a dime to use eye-catching images.
Here’s a list of my favorite image sites to get you started creating quality images:
Unsplash.com – this is my favorite ‘first-place-I go’ site when I’m creating my social images
MorgueFile.com – an awesome search feature and if you click on the key words link in the search, it’ll help you dig even deeper into their archives.
Pixabay.com – this huge library of images has a great search feature so you can find exactly what you’re looking for by just typing in a few key words.
Foodiesfeed.com – beautiful images of food and food related photos.
DeathtotheStockPhoto.com – you do need to sign up for an account to get access to these fantastic images but once you do, Death to Stock Photo will send you unique photos to your inbox that you can use for free and easily edit.
Publicdomainarchive.com – this site gets new photos every week so you always have new choices to view and the Public Domain Archive has a Vintage section if you ever want to go Old School with your pins.
Gratisography.com – for the quirky and those moments when you want your images to just the push boundary into weirdness.
Skitterphoto.com – an interesting mix of landscapes, people, transportation and urban life.
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