If I can do it, you can too.
In the spirit of the Holidays I decided to share everything I’ve learned – as a simple mortal – with you. This is my end of year present for my readers.
Sharing my secrets as a present for you this end of year. Image Credit: Danilo Rizzuti
In a nutshell, I went from a novice Facebook page administrator to a full online marketing strategist. These are the core truths of the matter:
- One Social Platform is NOT enough, you must diversify depending on where your audience is
- You MUST blog to produce fresh content using your own voice suited to your potential clients
- Get a Website professionally done and hire a graphic designer
- Social Media is NOT for selling but to share what you learn on a daily basis and to network
- You must get OFFLINE and attend IRL (in real life) networking events
- Grow a targeted and segmented e-mail list and create campaigns for the various segments
- Be honest, be yourself and be enthusiastic – if you’re not feeling the passion, move away until you find it
- Pay to be seen on Social Media by using targeted Adverts
- Hire a professional to cover any of the above if you cannot do it yourself
How can you apply this? Regardless of your line of business, the above guidelines apply to anyone selling a product or a service. When it comes to ‘sharing what you learn’ it could be changed to ‘sharing what inspires you’ if you are a creator of art pieces.
Remember that if you sell anything, you ARE a marketer, so you might as well become familiar with the basic principles. Many of these points are explained further in a previous article about using e-mail as part of your marketing strategy. More recently April Heavens-Woodcock gave some valuable tips about e-mail marketing focusing on permission e-mail for the Social Solutions Collective.
I am doubting the value of writing articles about Facebook Marketing anymore. There are so many changes taking place on that platform and so many people ‘reporting’. The bottom line is to find relevant content to keep your audience engaged, keep an eye on reach and boost posts if necessary, and increase your fan base by using targeted Adverts. Connect a giveaway with e-mail collection so you can convert your fans into leads and nurture them. Jenn Handford explains it beautifully in yesterday’s article for the Social Solutions Collective on Lead Nurturing.
To be completely honest, I believe you can find prospects on ANY social media platform, as different people have their own preferences for using one particular social channel the most. In very simple terms, here’s what I do on my Social profiles:
- Instagram: I take photos of my garden, the seaside and food I cook or consume with satistactory engagement from my followers. I’ve also shared Social Media related visuals without much response.
- Pinterest: It is SO active, always alive, I Pin to read later, to sort articles for pages that I manage and I use the Search bar to FIND information on any topic.
- Twitter: Lists for finding content, same as hashtag searches for specific topics. Excellent to share my own content and content from other professionals in my same line of business. Connection builder using the @ mention feature.
- G plus (g+): love the analogy Simona Stefanescu made in her recent article of ‘papa Google’ and ‘Google boy’. No need to add anything: you ought to have a profile and a business page there. Open your gmail account and customize your profile NOW! YouTube is now tied to the G family and videos are the way to go, so this is in the agenda for 2014.
- LinkedIN: It’s beating g+ as a source of interesting and informative relevant content for my audience but my Company Page there feels more lonely than the one on G plus. My personal connections grow on daily basis though.
- Facebook: Still my most active platform with my personal profile and 2 business pages, the original one for Facebook Marketing and a more recent one for all things Social Media. Here’s where most of the ‘action’ takes place as it’s where the crowds are.
And how do I manage all of these? I have 5 profiles on HootSuite and 2 on BufferApp. They make my life a lot easier! I can schedule my tweets at certain times on Buffer and I have the Facebook, LinkedIN and G plus company pages on HootSuite. Basically anything relevant to followers of my pages about Social Media is scheduled via HootSuite. I use the articles own sharing plugins to share to my personal LinkedIN and g+ profiles and to reach the hootlet Chrome extension.
Merry Christmas!
