How to Stop Wasting Time on Social Media
If you want to grow your business you want more people to hear about it and to connect with you. So you start using social media – because everyone else seems to be on it now. Then you hear that you need to be on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Instagram – and the list is growing. Pretty quickly social media marketing can become overwhelming. So what do you do? Read on to find out.
So how can you expand your network, build your profile, raise your visibility, without wasting valuable business time on various social media networks?
So maybe you feel scared before you even started and you don’t want to waste time. Or maybe you’ve tried it for some time without much success. Or possibly you are getting on well, having some success with promoting your business. But all in all, are you doing the right things at the right time, or will it turn to a waste of time and effort in the long run?
Step 1: connect and engage with the right people on social media.
With millions and millions of users of each social media network, it’s easy to focus on “vanity metrics” and spend you time trying to get the most followers and fans for your business. But unless you are connecting with the right people – potential clients and partners – the numbers will mean nothing.
For example, if you are a coach and are connecting with lots of other coaches, you will have great conversations about coaching techniques and practices, but no one will gain new clients. If you connect with small business owners talking about business overwhelm or being Spotify Streams kopen stressed – you are more likely to get them as your clients or refer you to clients.
In order to find the right people on social networks, you need to be pretty clear yourself on who these people are: where do they live? What do they do? What do they talk about? Are they male or female? What other interests do they have? Exploring your client profile in detail is a very important step in planning your marketing, whether online or offline.
Step 2: balance social and marketing for an engaging mix of content.
SOCIAL media MARKETING is about being social, I.e. engaging with other users, and about marketing, I.e. promoting your business, products and offers. If you spend too much on one or the other the balance will be broken – either you will be spending too much time on just social interactions and having fun. Nothing’s wrong with that obviously, but usually it’s not a goal you would set for your business marketing.
Or your social networks will get filled with marketing messages sell-sell-selling your stuff to others without any engagement or personal touch to it. No one want to just get a stream of blog posts and special offers on your Twitter profile, hence it’s important to strike this balance.
Step 3: less is more, you don’t have to be on ALL social media networks at once.
It’s better to get started with just one-two social media channels and do it well, rather than set yourself up on ALL social media networks and fail spectacularly. As a social media manager, I keep track of development in various networks at the same time, I spend my professional development time learning about and upgrading my skills for each social network.
But that’s the business I’m in – unless I’m knowledgeable about social media marketing I won’t be able to consult my clients effectively.
Your business as a coach or a consultant is different, and it will be impractical for your to waste hours and hours each week trying to catch up with what’s going on in the world of social media and keep endless social networks updated all the time.
So don’t feel bad about not being everywhere. Choose what you like and where you ideal clients are already present – whether it’s Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest or LinkedIn – and get started. Once you get used to one or two and start seeing some success with it, add more social media networks to your practice.