ABC May18_Social Media Management_Final
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>> In this lecture, you'll learn how to effectively manage
your social media accounts to market your business.
You've probably noticed that social media is a huge market
and can be a great way to market your business
if you understand it
and don't get lost in the Facebook newsfeed.
Social media is a wonderful marketing tool
as it allows you to reach audiences
around the world with a single post.
All you have to do is learn the best ways to use it
for your business.
But before that,
I want to talk to you about the pitfalls of social media.
While social media can be great for your business,
it can also be incredibly easy to get sucked
into social media and end up with no time
to work on your business.
BuzzFeed anyone?
This is why it's important to limit the time
you spend on social media and set clear goals
for your social media management.
Every time you log into social media,
you want to have a clear intention in mind.
What's your intention?
Are you responding to comments and messages,
doing research to see
what posts have received the most engagement,
commenting in groups or on other pages?
Before you log on to social media,
write down your intention
so you can focus on the task at hand
rather than get sucked into another video on BuzzFeed.
For this reason, it can be extraordinarily helpful to use
social media management tools such as Hootsuite or Buffer.
These tools allow you to schedule
social media posts in advance
so you don't have to manually log into social media
several times a day to post content.
Instead, you can set up posts that go out in advance,
saving you time and keeping you on track to your goals.
For your convenience,
we've included a list of these resources in your module,
some of which are paid services
and others of which are free to use.
Now let's talk about what to post on social media.
This is the big question, isn't it?
What you post makes the difference
between whether people follow you
and build a relationship with you online or not.
The most important thing to remember about what you post
is that it will be unique to your audience.
Here are some guidelines to keep in mind
when posting on social media.
One, keep your audience engaged.
Engagement is key.
This is how posts get shared, why people comment,
and what keeps people coming back to your page for more.
Engagement can take the form of questions such as,
"What do you think about this article?"
And calls to action such as,
"If you like this post, share it with your friends."
Pay attention to what your audience responds to most
and keep doing that.
Number two, don't be overly promotional.
While your social media accounts may be for your business,
they should not be focused solely
on promoting your products, programs, and services.
Your followers need to get value
out of their interactions with your social media.
A good rule of thumb is to promote something
every five posts.
So if you've made four educational posts,
the fifth should be something promotional such as an invite
to a free webinar teleclass you're hosting,
an invitation to a Health History,
a promotion for a product or program
you're currently selling,
or a link to sign up for your free gift and mailing list,
which brings me to number three.
Vary your content.
No one likes to see the same kind of post
over and over again.
It's important with social media strategy
to vary the kinds of content you're posting
to your social media accounts.
Here are the most common types of posts.
Educational videos.
For instance, you could share a video
of a healthy cooking demonstration
or how to eat healthfully on the go,
photos, they could be your own photos,
perhaps of yourself with a client
or of your farmers' market finds
or they could be photos
you sourced through a stock photo site.
The photos you select should be eye catching
and match whatever you're writing about in the post.
Fun things.
Show off your sense of humor
by sharing a funny post you saw such as the Farmacy,
where you see on the screen
patients are picking up fruits and vegetables
as their prescriptions.
Personal posts.
Remember, your prospective clients
want to learn more about you.
This is why they'll choose you
over another Integrative Nutrition Health Coach.
Share pictures of yourself, your family,
or what you've been up to as a way for your followers
to get to know more about you,
your interests, and your personality.
Articles and videos.
Articles and videos are a great way
to share content and information with your audience
as well as educate them on what you do as a Health Coach.
It's always good to share content from other people
that you admire as well as your own content.
This showcases to your followers
that you aren't just interested in promoting yourself
but in promoting health and wellness across the board.
Questions.
Questions are a great way to engage your audience.
For example, you could post a picture of your breakfast
and ask the question, "What do you eat for breakfast?"
or "How many of you eat breakfast?"
Promotional posts.
As I mentioned, these posts should be made less frequently
and should include a clear call to action such as,
"Sign up for my webinar here," with a link to register.
Of course, if you're posting on a site
such as YouTube or Instagram,
you're limited to posting only videos or photos,
but even then you can vary up the content.
For instance, you could film different kinds of videos
for YouTube such as educational videos
like the healthy cooking demonstration
we talked about earlier,
coaching videos,
wherein you share a story about a client you work with
and a problem they had and how you worked together
to find a solution to that problem.
Q&A videos where you take a question
from one of your followers and answer it in a video.
The possibilities are endless.
We recommend checking out other YouTube channels
by successful people in the health and wellness industry
to get an idea of the kind of content
you could create for your own YouTube channel.
Next, let's talk about how often to post.
How often should you post on social media?
Is there such a thing as too much posting
or not enough posting?
Again, it depends on your audience.
And we want to encourage you to use
what you learned about your audience
to pick the right social media platform or platforms
to focus on with your social media marketing.
A general rule of thumb is to post
three times a day for a site such as Facebook
where popular posts will stay in the newsfeed longer
and five times a day for sites such as Twitter
where there are constant updates to the newsfeed.
If you're posting on a content site
such as Pinterest or YouTube,
you can get by with maybe posting less,
once or twice a week.
We have included in this module
a social media account template
that you can use to start planning out
your social media post using these tips.
Now that you have your social media
content strategy in place,
let's talk about other ways
that you can optimize social media for your business.
Number one, respond to comments and messages.
Customer support engagement is crucial to business success,
especially in the world of social media.
We recommend logging into social media
at least once a day to respond to any comments and messages
that you may have received.
Number two, comment on and share other posts.
Take some time while you're online to comment on
and share other posts,
including those of other people in your industry.
If you're on Instagram, this is called reposting,
on Twitter, it's called retweeting,
and on most other forms of social media,
this is just called sharing.
Make sure you're using your business profile for this.
This will help you get seen by other people
and build relationships with other people in your industry
which may lead to future referrals
or opportunities to partner together.
Number three, join online groups.
Some social media sites such as LinkedIn and Facebook
lets you join groups with other people
who share similar interests.
This is a great way to start interacting
with your ideal clients.
For example, if you work with emotional eaters,
you could join a Facebook group for emotional eaters
and comment on some of their posts
with your insights or coaching advice.
This establishes trust and rapport
with the members of the group,
which will make them more likely
to check out your business page.
Just make sure that this kind of interaction
is not against the group's guidelines
as some groups don't allow promotion of any kind,
even if it comes in the form of coaching advice.
Number four, use hashtags.
Have you ever seen words or phrases
with the pound symbol in front of it?
These are called hashtags.
Hashtags are used on social media to help people
find content with similar themes or messages.
For example, if you look at #HealthCoach,
you would find posts by Health Coaches.
Similarly, if you were to look up the #Fitness,
you would see posts related to fitness.
Hashtags can help you build your audience online
as many social media users are actively searching
for posts using hashtags that they follow.
We recommend using a hashtag research tool
to help you find the hashtags that relate to your niche
so you can build your following online.
Resources for this are included on a handout in this module.
Regardless of what you choose to include
as part of your social media strategy,
aim to spend less than 30 minutes a day on social media.
You can do the whole 30 minutes at once
or break it up into two 15-minute segments.
This will keep you from getting caught up
in the world of social media to the neglect of other tasks
that will bring you clients.
One last thing to remember,
marketing yourself on social media
is not just about the number of fans
or followers that you have,
it's about how many of those fans and followers
are becoming paying clients.
Once a week, sit down and figure out
the answer to the following questions.
One, how many of your followers are signing up
for your mailing list or clicking the link
to buy one of your products?
Two, how many of your Health Histories
are coming from social media?
Write down the answers to these questions.
And if you aren't seen sales
coming from your social media accounts,
revise your strategy to include more promotions
and stronger calls to action.
Also, make sure that you are finding
other ways of bringing in clients
to your business outside of social media.
And lastly, I want to remind you
that if social media isn't your thing,
that's 100% okay.
You can outsource this part of your business,
focus on only one social media site,
or skip it altogether
in favor of marketing yourself in person.
Throughout this course,
we want to remind you that the way you market yourself
and your business is unique to you.
So if social media isn't working for you,
don't worry about it.
To recap,
we talked about managing your social media accounts
and how you can schedule posts in advance
to save you time,
we talked about how easy it is
to get lost in the world of social media
and how to avoid that time trap,
we also talked about what to post on social media
and how often to post.
Finally, we talked about other ways to use social media
to market your business.
How will you use social media to grow your business?
I'm excited to find out.