Social Media Management
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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 intentions
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 in
to 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 worked with
and a problem they had,
and how you worked together
to find a solution to that problem,
Q and 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.
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've included in this module,
a social media counter 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
let 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 up
the hashtag HealthCoach,
you would find posts by health coaches.
Similarly, if you were to look at
the hashtag 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 seeing 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 percent 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 easily 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.