It can be nerve-wracking to delve into the world of social media marketing, especially for those who don’t use social media platforms on a regular basis. Common questions we often hear from financial advisors include:
- What should I post to get people engaged?
- When should I post?
- How do I know if my posts are successful?
- Is posting worth my time and effort? Is my business growing because of my social media activity?
For any successful marketing plan, the first and most important step is to determine the main purpose and goals for any activity. Before even considering posting something on your social media channels, you should consider:
- What is my goal when I post online?
- What feelings or emotions do I want to evoke in readers when they are reading my post?
- When visitors view my post, what follow-up action do I hope they will be compelled to take?
- How do I want this post to be remembered?
Start With Your Marketing Goals
Your social media campaign should flow from your marketing goals, which should be based on your business’s overall plan.
For instance, Rebecca is 25 and just started her own jewelry line. She creates her jewelry from rocks, pebbles, stones, and other materials that she finds from the beach near her summer home.
The messages she may wish to portray to her clientele include, “A new, fresh, and natural approach to luxury” and “Carry the beach on your wrist“. Thus, her social media campaign consists of pictures of her newest jewelry designs, nature shots of sunsets on the beach, reposting blog articles about saving the environment, sharing articles about water preservation, etc.
Rebecca has a product, a message and a strategy. While social media is used to align these components and support her overall brand.
4 Steps for Posting on Social Media:
Step 1: Share Meaningful Content
Once you have determined your online brand, the rest is fairly simple, and in fact, rather fun. Start by building every post from meaningful content. These should portray your company values and spotlight what your company brings to your community and customers.
Be sure to also create posts that show your firm’s personality – share interests, celebrate with your community and showcase your team. These sorts of posts often receive the highest engagement. For instance, in the post below, we share our sales development representative Nate Sobiech on his trip to Beaufort, SC.
Lastly, create a bookmark and save any content or links that you feel could be relevant to your brand. And when you post an article or link to social media, include your own commentary, write about a conference you attended (while mentioning and tagging the conference in your post), or simply write about how great the food was at the new neighborhood restaurant (don’t forget to tag the restaurant!).
Step 2: Engage Your Online Community
Engagement is the key to social media. After all, how fun would a conversation be if it was one-sided? For that reason, make sure do the following to interact with your online community.
Start by making a habit of commenting on other users’ content. Not only does this get your name out there, but it also increases the chances of the reader reciprocating the engagement by commenting on your posts in the future.
Next, take the opportunity to tag others in your posts. Remember, the more you tag, the bigger the audience that’s potentially exposed to you and your business becomes.
Lastly, be sure to engage those that comment on your posts. As mentioned before, social media is a conversation. And, by engaging commenters, there is a chance the conversation continues. This is good for engagement in general, but could also attract more users to join in.
Step 3: Create a Posting Schedule
Once you have compiled a number of potential posts, it is important to stay organized. We suggest creating an editorial calendar using Google Calendar, an Excel document, or downloading this free one from CoSchedule. Keep in mind that different social media platforms vary in the best times to post content.
Once you have added your posts into a calendar, it’s also helpful to use a scheduling tool such as Hootsuite to help you stay organized:
Step 4: Measure the Success of Your Content Using Analytics
No marketing campaign is worth your time and resources if you don’t take the time to track what is and isn’t working. Fortunately, social media marketing can be measured and quantified through analytics, allowing you to determine what types of posts work best for your audience.
Across the big three (Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter), you can track each of your posts to see how users have observed or engaged with your content, and what actions they have taken (i.e. clicks, likes, shares, views).
This allows you to measure the success of your posts. But keep in mind, just because a post was not successful, does NOT mean it was because of poor content. Poor results could be due to timing and context. So, be sure to test the post again at a later date. You may be surprised at how the numbers change.
Key Takeaways
Social media marketing can be tricky but rewarding. Remember, it’s important to express your business, its values and its purpose within each post. But above all, it’s important to enjoy and be proud of your content. After all, online marketing is no longer optional, but a necessity for any growing business. So why not enjoy the process? Happy posting!
Note: This post was originally published by Nicole Skalamera on July 12th, 2019, and has been updated to ensure consistency.
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About The Author
Stuart Farst
Stuart is a Content Marketing Specialist at Twenty Over Ten and enjoys creating content that both entertains and educates. A Game Designer at heart, he can be found pursuing one of his many hobbies during his free time.
