(This blog post is a transcript of my YouTube Podcast episode: Social Media in 6 Steps). Welcome, local business owners. I’m Lori Gama, and in this video, we’re going to go over the who, what, where, why, and how of social media marketing. Let’s stop the frustration.
Social Media in 6 Steps: First of all, define your target audience. Write down the demographics: their age range, gender, location, where they live. Write down their biggest pain point, which is the problem you’re going to solve for them. Once you get that written down and you know what that is, this becomes the foundation of all your marketing, including your social media marketing.
Define why people should follow and engage with YOU vs. someone else in your industry
The next thing you want to do is define why. What’s your unique value proposition? What realistic goals should you have to achieve with your social media marketing? Let me give you some examples. It could be you want to increase the number of followers, yes, that’s good, but I recommend increasing the level of engagement. That just means having many conversations with your people who are writing in the comments or sending you a DM and nurturing that community that you’re building.
I always say you attract your tribe with your vibe, but you’ve also got to nurture that tribe so they stay loyal to you.
They’ll keep coming back to you again and again. Let me give you some other realistic goals. You could set a goal for going from zero to 10 mini-conversations per day or per week.
Another example would be to get 20 people to redeem a coupon or a freebie that you’re giving away, or a lead magnet in exchange for their email, phone number, and name, and then they can go into your email list, and you can constantly stay in touch with them that way because you never know if social media is going to just go away like that.
Another part of the “what” step is what should you share
Another part of the “what” step is what should you share. I always like to come up with a content theme for my clients, and of course, they approve of it. Then you want to divide up that theme into thirds because you don’t want to be self-promotional 100% of the time, or they’re just going to tune you out. So, one-third of the time in your content that you’re sharing, it’s okay to be self-promotional. Another third of the time, be educational. Show people how you solve that problem.
If you’re a restaurant owner, show them how you cook that dinner that everybody loves to come to the restaurant for.
If you own a boutique, put together three different outfits out of two pieces of clothing. Just show what you do. This is your time to shine and share your passion. It also establishes your authority, and then people will start to think of you and keep you top of mind when they want to go buy that thing that you sell.
The final third of the content you should be sharing something that will fit with your brand, whether that be that you share motivational videos or motivational quotes, or you like to shine the light on each member of your team. That final third thing has to be decided, and it should fit with your brand.
Another thing that you want to do is more of that show-and-tell.
How can you attract more people to you and show your unique value proposition? Making videos is really powerful. In fact, social media generates 1200% more shares when it’s video than text and image content. Viewers retain 95% more of the message when they watch it in a video compared to 10% reading it in text, and 96% of people have watched an explainer video to learn more about a product or service. So make those types of videos and share them in all your social media, including YouTube. You can clip it up too and use that in reels, stories, and YouTube shorts.
Where should you post?
Another part of the who, what, where, why, when, and how of social media marketing is where. Deciding where you’re going to share your content. It could be all of the platforms that are out there, but you don’t want to feel overwhelmed. So just start with one, get comfortable with that one, and then move on to adding on a second one, a third one, a fourth one, and before you know it, people are going to be coming up to you when they see you and they’re going to say, “Wow, I’m seeing you everywhere. By the way, I want to make that appointment with you.” Or they’ll reach out to you in the comments or DMs of that social media platform that they find you on because not all of them are going to be hanging out in the one place that you think they are. So do your homework on that as well.
When should you post?
Another part of this formula is when. When should you post? There’s actually a deeper dive we could do on that. For example, parents who are picking up their children and they’re waiting in line in their cars, they’re going to whip out their phones and go to Facebook, right? So that prime time of that after-school pickup could be good. Late at night when they’ve put the kids to bed, that’s another time. As far as the days of the week, there have been studies done on the different types of industries. For example, if people are making plans for the weekend and they’re trying to decide if they should hang out at your brewery or distillery, they’re going to start looking at things on Thursday before that. Start with once a day and grow from there. Engagement is really super important. Be sure that when people are liking and commenting, don’t ignore them because that’s why it’s called social media, right?
You want to develop those conversations, even if it’s a quick thank you with their name and you like or love their comment as well. Especially the people that share your content, you can actually look up who’s sharing your content, especially when you’re on Facebook. You should, if it’s allowed on their privacy settings, you should thank them, and they’re really going to appreciate that because they’re basically endorsing you to their network, and that’s huge.
Be Consistent
Most of all, though, be consistent. If you show up sporadically, then people are just going to forget about you, and it’s going to be like starting all over again the next time you show up on their social media. But if you’re consistent, whether it be every day or every four days or whatever, just be consistent. You can save time by pre-scheduling. There are lots of tools in all the social media platforms that you can use. Facebook has a scheduler, even YouTube has a scheduler, and there are also outside third-party tools like HootSuite, Buffer, Planable, all kinds of tools that you can schedule ahead if you want to by one or two weeks.
Just be careful, though, if something terrible happens to happen in our country and your happy-go-lucky post is popping up in the middle of that when everybody is expressing about a sad thing, be sure that you take down that post ahead of time and you can reschedule it. So, if you’re going to stay ahead that way, at least be cognizant of that.
The 6th Step of Social Media in 6 Steps:
Also, you want to measure how you’re doing. Did you know that there are analytics in all of the social media platforms? For example, in Facebook and Instagram, there’s analytics, it’s called insights, and you can go there and you can actually see the true numbers of people who are looking at your posts and engaging with you. So it’s called reach and engagement. Think of reach as the number of eyeballs on your post, and engagement is all the likes, loves, shares, and comments. Keep track of that data because it helps you improve. If you have a constant up, up, up on the graph of that data, then you’re building momentum.
Just remember, you’re growing relationships, just like in real life. You want to take time to listen and nurture the relationship. So through social media, you can do that as well, and you can be found all over while you’re busy in a meeting. Your online self is being engaged with on your Facebook page, right? Somebody there found your post, they really liked it, maybe they left a comment. It’s like cloning yourself. Be sure you get back into your social media and respond to those comments.
So that’s the who, what, where, when, why, and how of social media marketing in a really tiny nutshell. We could do a deep dive into each of those things, but the important thing is now you have a good overview, and I hope that it will help you. I’m Lori Gama, I own the Gama Digital Marketing in Greeley, Colorado, and I help boost my clients’ profits by 75% by leveraging website design, AI, social media marketing, and Google ads. So come along with me on this journey of learning about social media. Please like and subscribe and share in the comments the next step that you’re going to do after this video is over, and follow along, and I’ll see you in the next video.
