Building Your Business - Social Media Presence
Starting a business of any sort can be a challenging task. You have the drive, you believe in yourself and the service (or product) you want to provide, you’ve done your research and you’re ready to launch. Unfortunately that’s not all you need! Starting in a business nowadays requires a healthy level of social media presence in order to progress. I am not saying without a social media presence you won’t be successful, because your success will be based on your type of business and the continuous need for it. You will, however, have to implement other ways for building your clientele and sustaining the relationship beyond the initial engagement. Social media has made that part of “marketing” quite easy, in my opinion. You are able to vlog, share pictures, offer tips, make announcements, etc., and as soon as you hit “post” everyone that follows you will get that new post on their feed. This allows your audience to even share your post with their network of friends and on and on. It’s a simple and highly effective strategy for marketing.
That said, creating a social media presence is a struggle!
Mainly because you have to literally understand the platforms algorithm so that you work with it and not against it. There are some folks that are more inclined to use certain platforms based on their niche. For example, as a blogger, you may want to create a presence on Facebook or even Instagram because this allows you to post micro blogs and you can drive your audience to your actual website. If you don’t have a website then you can certainly use those platforms in that way. Tiktok and twitter can be a bit more challenging for a blogger, for example. Twitter has a limited text field and tiktok is mostly 60 seconds videos. See what I am saying?!?
No matter the platform though, there are a lot of do’s and don’ts to understand before launching into building your presence. Here are the top five that I find to be very common and useful:
Hashtags - Nearly every platform allows for the use of hashtags. Don’t discount the power of hashtags because they can certainly drive new traffic to your page. Let me explain: hashtags narrows down your post to unique searches and interests. You can really maximize the amount of people that sees your posts by telling the algorithm what your content entails. I believe there is a cap on how may you can use on the various platforms so also be mindful of that. On Instagram, the max hashtags that can be use is 30 per posts. I always recommend splitting that amount up between the caption of the post and then placing a comment with the remaining hashtags. Bottomline, USE HASHTAGS!!! It’s just an additional tool for getting your content in front of people who are interested in seeing it.
Frequency of posts - Posting frequently seems to be very liked by most algorithms. It’s simple, they want all of your attention 24/7, but that’s unrealistic for the average person. Point here is the more you post the more traffic your page will get. Pick a regimen that works for YOU! Posting five times a day is not for everyone. So start with one post a day and allow that to naturally grow as you get more comfortable. I find that the more engagement I have causes me to post more frequently. So my baseline consistency is one post or story a day and every now and then I get carried away and do three or more posts. Again, do what works for you because in the end, it will be you having to keep up with it. There are also many apps that can help you plan your posts and it will automatically do it for you. Do some research!
Post engaging content - Your content has to leave an impression on the people seeing it. Your content should be doing one of the following: 1. giving advice or tips, 2. showing/advertising your product or service in action, or 3. telling your audience about you and your business. Randomly posting a variety of things that has nothing to do with your business can have some unintended negative impact to your growth. People like consistency and they like to be intrigued. It’s not easy to do this which is why there are such jobs as content creators. You have to be creative, transparent and out of the box when building your social presence.
Follow people that you aspire to be like - Follow people that are in your niche that are steps ahead of you. This will help you to stay on top of what you need to do differently based on trends from the trendsetters themselves. Limit following your family and friends on your business account. And the reason is simple: your business page needs to be business not personal. There are some exceptions, depending on your niche, but I’d say for the most part I have seen this to be very important to you being able to increase your following.
Drive people to your website or your other social platforms - You will find that your growth on the various platforms will vary. I was able to gain 40k followers on one platform in a matter of six months but can’t seem to get past 800 on another. That’s ok though, simply drive the traffic on the larger platform to your other platforms. You can do that by putting your handles in the caption of your post or on your page bio. Since all of the platforms specializes in different types of content it’s important to get on at least 2 (preferably two that are different in the way your content is posted) so that you maximize your exposure.
While building your business remember to stay encouraged. Don’t look for that overnight success and don’t compare yourselves to other entrepreneurs on social media. There is a need in the world for your creative product or service; you just need the right people to see it and fall in love with it. All it takes is the right person seeing it one time to completely change the game for you. Stay consistent and stay plugged in!
Candidly,
Kim
