content marketing

When it comes to social media, many independent business owners, coaches, and consultants jump in head first without putting together a solid social media marketing plan.

A social media marketing plan can help you stay organized on social media and get you results.  However, some people confuse success on social media with a large following, but  it’s not a large following that determines your success on social media, it’s how engaged your followers are to your brand, your message, your products and services. 

This blog post discusses 6 Surefire Ways to Succeed on Social Media Without a Large Following.

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1. Know Your Target Audience– when you are very specific about your target market, you will be able to know the best social networks to be on to reach your target market, and you will be able to know exactly what to say to your target market to keep them engaged.   Who is your target audience?
2. Create Engaging Content–  when it comes to the content that you share on social networks, be sure to keep your content 80% entertaining/educating and only 20% promotional. After all it is “social” networks not “business” networks, so you want to make sure that the majority of the content that you post is “social” in nature.  However, you are on social networks to gain exposure for your business too, so be sure to post some promotional or “business” focused content.  It’s important that you know what type of content you want to share with your target audience, will your content be humorous, educational, inspirational, motivational, etc.? It is good to have a good mix of various forms of content.  Including content that naturally creates more engagement like pictures, videos, questions, fill in the blank statements, polls/opinions, and inspirational quotes. If you have good content that is appropriate and interesting for your target audience, this will naturally encourage engagement.
3. Create a content calendar and automate some of your posts–  Be sure to create a content calendar. In your content calendar you can plan what topic you want to concentrate your conversations around each month, and make it relevant to your target audience and your business. Your content calendar could be for the next 90 days, 6 months, or 12 months.  Once you decide on the content you will be posting, there are some great tools available to help you to automate the publishing of your content on your social networks. Some popular tools are HootSuite, Sprout Social, Social Oomph, Post Planner, Meet Edgar etc. Planning out your content and then automating the publishing of it saves you a lot of time!
4. Grow your social networks organically (offline)–  Organic growth is the most affordable because you don’t have to pay money for it, and if you consistently post good content you will be able to grow your network organically easily. Here are a few ways you can grow your social networks offline:
   1. Encourage people to connect with you online by placing your social network information on your business card.
      
   2. If you do public speaking engagements for your business, be sure to promote connecting with you on your social networks by placing your social network information at the beginning and/or at the end of your presentation
      
   3.  If you have a retail space or an office that is open to the public, place signs around your establishment encouraging your customers to connect with you on social networks.
5. Grow your social networks organically (online)
   1. Promote connecting with you on social networks by adding links to your social networks on your e-mail signature line.
      
   2. Email your current customers inviting them to join you on a social network. It helps to offer some type of incentive for joining like a discount, coupon, e-Book, report, checklist, etc.
   3. Encourage your current fans and followers on your social networks to promote your page to their network.
   4. Post good content and encourage your network to share your information with their network, by liking, sharing, retweeting, repining, etc.
6. Grow your social networks using paid advertising–  Each social network is different in the types of paid advertising that they offer, but it helps to look into the following options of advertising for the particular social network you may be on.
   1. An Ad– consider paying to place an ad that is targeted to reach your particular target market as a way to grow your network. The ad must have a good image, good copy, and be relevant to your target audience in order to be successful.
   2. Promoted Content– this is a great way to use existing content that has gotten a good response from your followers and fans, and pay to promote that content to a larger audience. This can include a promoted post on Facebook, a promoted tweet on Twitter, a promoted pin on Pinterest etc.
   3. Affiliate marketing– connect with someone with a large audience that fits your target market, and ask him to promote your business, you can offer some type of incentive for promoting you or you can offer to promote that person to your network.  Even though your network is smaller, it could still be potential exposure to new people for the person with the larger audience.
      
   4. A contest or sweepstakes where someone will win something for connecting with you on social media. Depending on the prize, the cost of this method could be minimal or expensive, but it’s a great way to increase you fans and followers.  Just make sure that the prize is something that is of interest to your specific target audience.
      

These are just 6 ways to succeed on social media without a large audience.  What other ways have you used to succeed on social media?  Be sure to comment below.

Also, don’t forget to download the Marketing Essentials Checklist 21 Things You Must do in Order to Get Amazing Results from Your Social Media Marketing .

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