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You've finally built up the courage to dive into the world of social media to start marketing your brand, business, or maybe even yourself to start building a personal brand. As you start getting more comfortable and more familiar with platforms like LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc... you begin to notice something. A lot of the people or brands you follow are getting lots of likes, comments, shares, and overall their posts seem to be getting much more attention than yours. By now you're probably starting to second guess yourself and begin thinking, "Hmmm maybe this just isn't for me. I mean I was never really a big social media person to begin with."
I have good news. Nobody was a "social media person" to begin with.
What are you bringing to the table that others should take the time to engage with your posts? You think just because you took a picture of your breakfast and then took a video of the rain outside that you're all of a sudden going to get people to buy into your brand, business, or at the most basic level, stop scrolling to give you a thumbs up?
Nobody was born a social media guru. Chances are, the people who you see today on your news feed who are crushing it and monetizing their audience in one way or another, have tested numerous different strategies until they found one that worked for them, but more importantly their audience!
Pay attention to what the people who follow you or who you'd like to have following you, react to. Pay attention to what you react to, and why you take the time to like, comment, and share certain posts, but not others.
Don't try to reinvent the wheel. There's no need for it. Originality is incredibly important and people will see right through you if you're trying to emulate someone else's exact strategy and content. However, there's nothing wrong with piecing together different things that work from 5 different accounts that you follow, and then putting your own spin on the final product.
Ask yourself these 2 questions before your next post: "Is this going to entertain my audience?" and "Is this going to inform my audience?"
There's a really good chance you've heard this phrase before: "Make sure you're providing value." But what the..... does that mean, and why does EVERYONE say this now?
What creating and posting successful content comes down to is giving your followers/audience something they're actually looking for. Much different than what you think or what you want them to look for and consume.
Maybe your followers are constantly looking for new insight on company leadership, HR, company culture, or entrepreneurship. If they are, share an article that you wrote or even an article you came across and let them know why you found it insightful and so valuable that you think it would be worth their time to take a look at. They'll appreciate the fact that you took the time out of your day to save them time and bring them.... *drum roll please* .... VALUE!
In some cases, depending on your audience, they just want to laugh or be entertained. Now, if you can entertain and educate at the same time by injecting some personality into your educational content, you're going to hold the magic key that unlocks all the doors to social media marketing success.
Let's get to work!
Be great,
-Mike