Social Media Marketing, What NOT to do to attract new clients

Are you over complicating your social media marketing?

Hello again,

Well, I said that I would write my content marketing and social media marketing tips here as often as possible THEN, i took an entire week off.

The good news is, that I have been really busy launching some new strategies for some pretty amazing clients - so i really cannot complain.

Truthfully, if you are a new online entrepreneur be prepared to live this way! You’ll spend A LOT of time marketing your own services and products - and then get hired, and not have ANY time to work on your own content. This is just how it goes. What do they say? “The shoe-maker wears the worst shoes”…

In fact this is something I occasionally get embarrassed by. Here I am preaching blogging and social media marketing - living and breathing it day to day - but if I manage to get my daily Rockstar Visibility Tip up and share a new Instagram post, I am having a good one.

No matter how busy I am, i still try to keep up with my personal social media and maintain a strong and active presence. Which, to be honest, is how I do most of my client recruiting these days; through my personal content. Not my “marketing” content.

What is the difference? Well, and this just my opinion, but marketing content is content created with the intention of “selling” directly. It usually is accompanied by a call to action: do this, receive this. Marketing itself can come in various shapes and forms, from direct IN YOUR FACE marketing. ( Like a door to door sales-person ) - to subtle indirect marketing, like product placement or influencer mentions.

Personal content on the other hand is different but it can still be your BEST method of self promotion. What producing “personal content” does is demonstrates a competency or proves a point. For instance, i always preach Facebook engagement as the most important thing and I demonstrate it by being HIGHLY ENGAGED on Facebook, directly from my personal account. 

When I am engaging on Facebook, sometimes I talk about content marketing and social media, BECAUSE this is a topic that I am genuinely enthusiastic about. However, sometimes I just talk about the other things that interest me like, like punk music, things happening in my community and mindfulness practices. Just like everyone else on Facebook I use the platform to catch up with my friends, share interesting posts and just HAVE FUN. For me, my genuine and frequent use of the platform is how I prove that I understand it and love it. AND yes, the marketing strategies that I develop for Facebook are “marketing strategies” - not personal accounts, BUT when people see me using Facebook the way that Facebook is meant to be used it shows them that I know what is up with the platform.

In my opinion, this is THE NUMBER THING wrong with social media marketing industry these days. Tons of opportunist see dollar signs in producing media for social platforms, and attempt to bank on them. However, a large majority of these “social media marketing experts” aren’t even using the platforms themselves. Grr… this peeves me off. 😡

Alright, I got a bit side-tracked there, but I do want to LAND ON A POINT and provide some value for those of you who are kind enough to read this. Here we go - 

For people who are new to ( Marketing ) -I use parentheses because we are talking about the GOOD type of content marketing here - not direct in your face marketing - there are few things that YOU DO NOT want to do. These include:

Only showing up on the social media platform that you are marketing yourself on to market yourself.

You’ll see this all of the time. Business operators who show up on social media once a week, write a standard marketing message and take off. 

They’ll do this on any given platform, and then wonder why “social media marketing” is not working for them. Instead, try choosing a few platforms that you like and would genuinely use. Make a point to engage on content and with other users who are part of your target demographic. Only market yourself when the opportunity is directly presented.

Copying what “you think” a good social media profile looks like

Okay, so ALL social media platforms require users to create and curate content in order to participate. 

Remember, content can be anything, from your “status posts” to the captions on the links that you share. Some platforms, like twitter are pretty minimal as far as the creative goes. Where other platforms, such as Instagram, require the user to be highly creative when coming up with visual content to share. 

If you don’t fancy yourself a “natural creative”, then it can be fairly tempting just to copy what you see other successful account operators are doing - believing that if it works for them it will work for you.

I want to stomp this out right away. This isn’t true. A successful social media profile - can’t be imitated on first glance. And because content marketing is a two part undertaking: create content, then network content. You can’t see from just looking what that individual ( or account manager ) is doing behind the scenes to engage their audiences.

Plus originality, trumps everything - and you cannot expect lightening to hit the same spot twice. Creating a copy-cat social media profile / or campaign, is just an all around “bad plan.” Don’t do it. It is annoying. Disrespectful to the original content creator - and BLATANTLY amateurish. 😲

Aimlessly Producing Content With No Clear Intention

Alright, last but certainly not least - when you are tackling a social media marketing strategy there does need to be some rhyme and reason behind your approach. Why? Well, quite honestly because YOUR TIME IS VALUABLE.

You could spend hours upon hours randomly producing content and talking to “who-ever” hoping that they may bite. Meanwhile, the world is passing by and you are just simulating “being busy” working on your business rather than actually working on your business.

So, how do you differentiate?

1. Set time frames for different behaviours - for example, 1 hour a day on follower recruitment. 1 hour a day on engagement. Create and produce one or two good pieces of content, rather than just posting whatever comes to mind... 

2. Know your audience. This is also EXTREMELY important. You need to know who your target audience is on EVERY platform that you participate on. Have a person and mind and create content that will be attractive to them. As your following grows, PAY ATTENTION to who your people are. Write to them. And for fruck’s sake be REAL about it. Don’t grow a following of middle-age conservative housewives and then start selling neon yellow beer bongs. 

3. Have a goal in mind. As you get to know me, you’ll learn that I am a huge advocate of setting goals for everything. Why? Because goals give you a metre of success. The only way that you can know that you have achieved something is to have a target in mind. For example: each week I set a goal for how many new members i want to recruit into my Rockstar Visibility Group through my Facebook and Instagram strategy. By the end of the week, if i haven’t met my goal I get more aggressive about my recruitment tactics and find more time to dedicate to the strategy, so that the goal is met.

Alright, another long rambler - but I hope you all gained some value from this post. I guess (for you skim readers) my big take-away is this: 

Social media marketing is easy to understate and over-complicate. If you really want to be successful at it, you need to invest your time, be original and have a clear goal to accomplish.

Thanks again for tolerating my meandering writing style

I look forward to sharing again, could be tomorrow, could be a week from now, only time will tell.
⭐✊😝⭐ 

Stay Cool
- Brandie

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