It’s no secret I LOVE social media, but maybe not in the way most people think I do, and most likely not for the same reasons they do. I enjoy a juicy conversation, especially when someone challenges and broadens my point of view with their own. Yesterday I was having a chat with a friend and fellow business owner in the techy world, who would like to stay as far from social media as possible...which I found super interesting!! He’s an extremely talented web programmer who loves to travel, and I immediately assumed the digital nomad world would be the perfect fit for him.

I was reminded of 2 important life lessons yesterday...1 never assume! And 2 Not all things are as they appear. And these actually go both ways when discussing any particular point of view. Because I love to travel and I love being able to work from anywhere, I often think to myself, who wouldn’t want to have that kind of flexibility? To me, this is the absolute dream lifestyle, but for some it can be a nightmare. There is a preconceived notion that if you are building a business through social media, that you must be sharing all of your life’s contents and surrender your privacy in exchange. On the contrary, it can feel like a place where people share limited information, usually just the highlight reel, and you have to fake it till you make it, and in a sense sell your soul. Ok well, first of all, most people do both of these for free, and with little thought ( I say this laughing to myself).

But those of us who use social media as a tool to grow a business have a different idea about how to use it, and we set it up a bit differently so that it’s not just a place to go to pass time and announce whatever is on our mind at any given time, but a place that carries a lot of value for us and for our audience. When I shared with my friend a few of the tools I use in order to protect my privacy, manage my time, and to build an organic following through being authentic and providing value, and to market and sell without being a dirty salesman and pitching my product and service all over my platforms, I saw the light bulb go off in his head. His response was, “oh, so you’re using social media without having to be all over social media all the time. Clever” He’s scottish, so everything sounds just that much more exciting and important when he speaks, you know.

And that was when my light bulb went off and I realized I needed to share my tips with you. So...how have I increased my presence without increasing the time I spend on Social Media? Let’s get started!

Mindset

Social media is a tool to build relationships, trust, and share your message with a larger audience. It’s not for selling (which I think I say in every blog), but it is a place for marketing! Marketing is what you do to get in front of people, selling is what happens when you’ve uncovered a need and have offered a solution with the people who follow you. There are 2 kinds of marketing, active and passive. Active is where you are engaging and networking online, which most people do, but many do it in a way that makes most of us cringe because they are focused on the quick and dirty sale. Done correctly, this is a method which does not involve public posting or sharing and is done through building relationships in private messages. Passive marketing is where you build your authority online by creating meaningful and valuable content to your followers, and provide an offer to bring your audience to you and your services through targeted marketing. You can read more about the different methods in my previous blog post http://johannahunt.ca/best-way-to-recruit/

Planning

The next step is planning your content! This can be as detailed as you want and here are some topics to consider. But you want them to be multidimensional and follow the 80/20 rule (80% value, 20% your offer). Here is an example of what 1 week would look like: Choose 5 dimensions of the topics that highlight your brand (and I don’t mean your products, I mean who you are as a business). You’re going to create 10 posts from these 5 dimensions, so 2 posts for each topic. Then create 4 curiosity posts about your business that are indirect references to what you do (I recommend these be in story/testimonial form), and 1 direct post about your business with a call to action. This direct post can be a before and after, or a post highlighting a benefit about your product and service, but you don’t want to give details or specific names. You want people to ask you for more info, and if you give it all away, they’ll just go to their friend google and look it up, and you won’t have a chance to have a conversation and answer their questions, because they will have drawn their own conclusions.

Side note for fellow bloggers/vloggers: If you are blogging or vlogging for business, your direct post call to action can lead to your blog with a call to action in the content. I recommend if you are blogging for business, you also plan out what your topics will be in advance and plan your social media content around that.

Need help planning our your content, knowing what to post, when to post it, when to promote your business, and what graphics to use? What if you could have all your social media marketing done for you​? Learn more here about a program I use called MONTHLY MARKETING SOLVED>>

Scheduling

Now that you have your content planned out, schedule your 2 posts a day on a calendar as well as when you will offer your promotions. This is important because you want to be mindful of holidays and trends taking place as well. You can then use the native scheduler on your Facebook Fanpage to pre-schedule most of your content, and you can automate it to post directly to Twitter by by visiting Facebook.com/Twitter. You can then connect your selected Business page to your Twitter account for autoposting. For the posts with images you will be uploading to Instagram, I recommend scheduling these on Planoly. This allows you to see what your gallery will look like ahead of time, save and schedule your content and it will alert you when it’s time to post. When you’re ready to post, you can then share your content from Instagram to Facebook and Twitter with the click of a button.

Pro Tip: If you want to schedule all of your content for all platforms in one place with the click of a button the way I do, I recommend using Buffer. I used the Awesome plan so I can also schedule my group posts and repost on all platforms with one click! Check out this video I made for you to demonstrate the AWESOMENESS of this tool. 

This may seem like a lot of work, but in all fairness, this is less than a day’s work for a month of freedom. Most people spend 8-10 hours a day 5-6 days a week in a cubicle, waking up to an alarm and going through the same motions every day...which is amazing if that is what you love..but for me, it wasn’t the right fit, and I had to find another way to make things work.

Relationship Building

Yes you can set it and forget it, but you’re not going to keep the followers you’ve earned if you don’t nourish the relationship. This doesn’t have to take up all of your time, but you do need to engage your audience. Set an alarm for 30 minutes a day to check your notifications, reply to comments, like what other people are posting, find new people to follow, and return any relevant messages. In general, make time to make others feel important and special and let them know you’re thinking of them. I use a plug in on google chrome called Kill Newsfeed so I can do most of this without getting distracted by random cat videos or whatever else is going on in my feed. It helps me stay focused and in my own headspace.

Selling

Like I said, I don’t sell on social media, but you have to sell something sometime if you want to make any money in your business, and yes this means even those of you who are not in the business of selling, unless you can afford hiring someone who is going to make the sales for you. While most people are focused on selling their stuff, some of us are focused on growing our list and nurturing our relationships over time. Sure you can make a sell on social media, but most often, it’s like a 1 night stand...you barely know each other, you’re living in the moment, and you’ll likely never see each other again. List building is a long term relationship and you get out what you put in. I love that saying, the grass is always greener where ever you water it. I see a lot of blogs and businesses online that are losing business because they are a 1 stop shop, and they haven’t taken their potential client to a nice quiet place where they can provide value and make more offers, so they just get lost in the crowd. List building is a whole new subject that requires a space of it’s own, but I can tell you, it begins with a lead, and if you want leads (which is different from a follower), you need to know how to get them.

Learn more here about creating a lead magnet and building your list by clicking below!