Social Media marketing can get sometimes really confusing, especially when you’re a beginner.
There’s a lot of stuff to handle, every platform has different things that perform better and you need to adapt.
And that’s why I am going to reveal to you where to start with social media marketing in this article.
So, are you ready to begin? If so, let’s dive in…
What To Do Before You Begin
To successfully do social media marketing you must do some preparation before you even get on the social media platform.
That’s because if you start applying the strategies that I am going to show you based on the wrong information, you’re going to struggle.
So, the first thing you need to do as a beginner is to define who is your dream customer.
If you did this before because you did other types of marketing online or offline, then you can use the dream customer avatar you have already created.
However, if you have none, then you need to create your own dream customer avatar right away.
Your dream customer avatar is an avatar of a person who is most likely going to buy your product or service a.k.a. your ideal customer.
Literally, take out a sheet of paper, draw a stickman, give him or her a name, and write down what they desire, what frustrates them, what they like, what do they hate, etc.
Here’s an example of what a dream customer avatar can look like:
Once you have it, then it’s time to define your niche.
This is extremely important because niching down will help you crush your competitors, gain more authority, charge huger prices, attract the right dream customers, and dominate the space in your market that you’re in.
There are two ways to niche down effectively niche down on social media (but it’s way better if you’re going to do it for the entire business.)
The first way is to just go super specific. That means instead of a marketer you’ll be a social media marketer. Instead of a plumber, you’ll be a mountain homes plumber.
The more specific you go, the easier it will be to stand out. However, there’s a price in form of a narrowed audience. So once you start to dominate your space, don’t be afraid to go broader.
The second way to niche down is to create your own UNIQUE niche.
The best example I know is Dave Asprey and his Bulletproof coffee.
He was hiking in the Himalayas and met some Nepalese people who gave him coffee with yak butter.
It was so good and it energized him so much that he decided to share it with the entire world.
Coffee with yak butter is not something you have likely seen but it’s not so crazy that you immediately abandon it.
It’s an example of a unique niche.
You want to do the same for yourself. Create a unique niche, a unique way to get to the result your dream customer wants, and make sure it’s not too crazy, nor too mainstream…
…and then use it to dominate.
And last, you also want to study the platform that you plan to get on.
This is extremely important as what works on one platform is not likely to perform as well on the other.
Study people’s behavior, what they like and what they don’t like, what makes them act, what they share on the platform, and on…
And also study people in your industry that are already dominating the space…
Don’t skip this just because it’s not the fun part that you’d expect and INVEST THE TIME NECESSARY to do this properly.
It’s absolutely necessary to get the results you want.
Once you’ve done this part of social media marketing for beginners it’s time to move on to actually building the strategies you need.
Preparing A Strategy
Don’t expect to get any results without a proper social media marketing strategy. Without it you’ll be blind, driving around in circles, not knowing what’s happening.
So, what does a great social media marketing strategy look like? It consists of 3 main parts:
- ATTRACTING DREAM CUSTOMERS
- NURTURING YOUR AUDIENCE
- SELLING AND CUSTOMER LOYALTY
If just one of these parts is missing, your social media marketing strategy is not likely going to work.
So, let’s look at the first part of your social media marketing strategy and what needs to be there…
Attracting Your Dream Customers
This is probably the toughest part.
Attracting your dream customers is not easy at all, especially when doing it organically (i.e. you don’t spend money to get their attention on stuff like ads or influencer marketing, etc.)
Regardless of the platform that you’re on, there are only 3 ways you can reach people.
- By leveraging other people’s audiences
- By leveraging the algorithm
- By buying paid ads
So, let’s have a look at the first way you can reach people…
Leverage Other People’s Audiences
The most common way to leverage other people’s audiences everybody knows is by making others share your content.
Another way to leverage other people’s audiences is by engaging with other people’s content.
And both of these are just the tip of the iceberg.
Real exposure is in collaborating and getting in front of audiences of BIG accounts in your industry.
There are many ways you can do that like:
- Guest Posting
- Collaborate On A Post/Video
- Be A Guest On A Podcast
- Go Live Together
I highly recommend that you try as many of them as possible.
But it’s not easy to land a collaboration or do guest posting. You first need to build a relationship with the person that you want to collaborate with.
Comment on their posts hit them up in DMs, and get on their radar.
And after about two months of intense relationship building, hit them up with a message asking for a collaboration.
All you need is one “yes” and you can reach hundreds of thousands of people.
But leveraging other people’s audiences is just one way you can reach your dream customers on social media.
Leverage The Algorithm
Leveraging the algorithm is extremely important if you want to reach as many of your dream customers as possible.
When the algorithm begins to promote your content, you can reach more people than you ever dreamt of on AUTOPILOT.
That’s because the algorithm works on its own. It doesn’t require any of your efforts.
However, leveraging the algorithm is really tough. And I wish I could give you the exact steps to take to get results, however, I can’t.
The only thing I can give you is a formula to figure out these steps. And it works on every social media platform.
The first step you need to take is to go to the platform you’re doing social media marketing on and find out the features where exposure is given.
These features are often, for example, search, hashtags, or explore pages.
But of course, it varies based on the platform that you’re on.
Once you have the features then you’re going to find out what performs the best there and you’re going to model it.
And the last part of this equation is testing and improving.
It’s going to take some time until you get a hit and the algorithm starts to promote you.
But once it does, you may become an overnight success when it comes to social media marketing. It’s that powerful.
And the last way to reach people on any social media platform is to…
Buy Your Way In Using Ads
Advertising is something that shouldn’t be neglected even by the biggest promoters of organic social media growth.
That’s because, in the end, you’re in absolutely zero control over the number of people you reach and WHO you reach.
With ads that are not gonna happen.
But you have to always remember that the only goal of an ad in social media marketing is a SALE. Not growth, not engagement, but a sale.
Also, always make sure you don’t test the waters of advertising with both feet.
Instead, you want to set a small budget for an ad that you just created and test it.
If it doesn’t perform with $100, it’s not going to work with $100,000. Be careful about it.
And now when you know how to reach people it’s time to move on to how to nurture the audience you currently have.
Nurture Your Current Audience
This is part of your social media marketing strategy where you need to build relationships with your audience, earn their trust, and make them a part of your movement.
And there is only one way to do that – share content that is going to build your authority and personality.
In other words, you must share something that is going to build your trust and make people relate to your brand.
Here are some of the content types that do that:
- Educational Content
- Behind-The-Scenes Content
- Content Sharing Your Backstory
- Recent Achievements
- Social Proof
But be careful because this should be only 40% of all the content that you share (not counting the education content as that can belong to the other groups as well.) Another 40% needs to be content that is going to attract your audience and the last 20% should be content that is going to promote.
These are the ratios you want to share your content by as they are going to generate you the best results.
Also, don’t forget that engaging your audience and involving them plays a big role in nurturing them as well.
Reply to their comments and messages (or hire somebody to do it for you), ask them questions, and create polls that ask them to decide or give you a suggestion about something that is going to be happening.
These are all essential things.
And also, don’t forget that you need to overdeliver. If you want to be the best and dominate, always give more than you promised. And if that’s impossible, at least stick to the promise you made.
Got it? Awesome, now let’s move on to the last part of your social media marketing strategy which is…
Selling And Customer Loyalty
This is the most exciting step because, after all, the main reason why you are doing social media marketing is to get a sale, right?
If you don’t make sales your business is going to go to the ground, so it is absolutely essential that you focus on it as well as on making customers LOYAL customers.
That’s why 20% of your content is meant to be promotional.
But there is one important thing to remember before you share a single promotional post.
Your goal is NOT to make a sale in the post. So, don’t sell – only pre-frame.
That means you make them interested in the product or service you are selling but you don’t try to seal the deal.
You only try to make the people who see the promotional post to enter your sales process.
Where the sale is going to be made is inside your sales funnel.
So, don’t forget that you want to promote as well, and if you are going to do it the right way like I told you, you’re going to generate more social media traffic and sales than you could ever imagine.
When you follow this strategy, chances are that you are going to be pretty successful. However, there is also one thing you must remember to do.
Stay Consistent
This is the key. You need to have the heart, and the will to stay consistent over a long period of time.
If you aren’t willing to do that, don’t even bother with starting as you are not going to get any results.
One thing that is going to help you stay consistent is batch-creating all the content and scheduling it using a tool like Sprout Social.
That way you will no longer have to open the social media app every time you want to schedule something and it will be way easier for you to stay consistent.
Also, if you have really a lot of things to handle yourself and you are a solopreneur…
STOP being a solopreneur and hire help. Look, you can’t change the world alone and you also can’t scale your business alone.
There is only a certain point where you can get to but in the end, we all have just 24 hours in a day. So, if you want to scale you will also have to leverage the time of other people.
There is no way around it. Once you get bigger, you NEED a team. So, don’t be afraid to hire a social media manager to help you if you can’t handle all of the necessary stuff yourself.
Filip Konecny 