In last month’s challenge, we covered the ins and outs of cleaning up your social media presence. Now we’ll take the next step in using LinkedIn and Facebook to their best advantage. It all starts with a documented social media strategy.
In just five days, you’ll hone in on your ideal clients, find strategies for optimizing your platforms, and inspire yourself with engaging new content ideas.
By the time we’re done, you’ll have a clear view of what you need to do and create, so you can implement your strategy and get fantastic new clients.
Day 1 Goal: Know who you’re talking to.
On the first day of creating your social media strategy, we’re going to make sure you have something key nailed down.
We’ve said it many times before, but here it is again: No matter what kind of marketing you do, it’s crucial to know who you’re trying to reach and what you offer.
Are you trying to speak to small business owners working in retail, or savvy marketers in the organic food industry? Are you offering all kinds of web-writing services, or focusing on a specialty like email newsletters or SEO? You’ve got to know!
Here’s a test to see if you’re clear on who you serve and what you offer. If someone were to ask you what kind of business you own, would you have an answer ready for them?
If you’re not sure what you’d say, take the opportunity to work on it with our Day 1 exercise.
Day 1 Exercise: Confirm your core offering and your target audience.
Craft a sentence describing what you do and who you do it for. It shouldn’t be cutesy or clever. Clear and straightforward messaging often works better for business-to-business marketing.
As an example, here’s a working draft of the offering and target audience for my own business:
“As a UX writer and content strategist, I help app developers improve user experience and retain customers.”
Take some time to make sure you’ve got this set. When you’re happy with your messaging, you’re ready for Day 2.
Day 2 Goal: Study best practices.
Now that you’re clear on who you’re targeting and what you offer, it’s time to study the best practices of successful freelancers using social media.
Keep in mind you don’t have to emulate all the strategies you’ll see in this stage. Even just one or two strategies are enough to get you going.
Still, it’s super helpful to have inspiration, so you get ideas for effective approaches to using the main platforms.
Day 2 Exercise: Study successful freelancers on Facebook and LinkedIn.
Your Day 2 task is to go onto Facebook and LinkedIn and find some freelancers who are using the platforms well.
If you’re not sure where to look, you can take a look at Jessica Varga McKay’s profile on Facebook and Julia Borgini’s feed on LinkedIn.
Read through a variety of their posts and take notes on the following:
- What does each freelancer do well when marketing their services?
- How are they encouraging engagement among their audience?
- How do they promote their business without constantly soliciting their connections?
- How else are they using their platform to its best advantage?
When you’re done researching and taking notes, move on to Day 3.
Day 3 Goal: Pick your platform.
As you can probably tell from looking at the profiles of successful freelancers, maintaining a social media presence takes time and attention.
It’s very hard to maintain an active and meaningful presence on ALL the platforms, so you need to decide from the beginning which social media platforms you want to focus on for your business.
If you’re a relative beginner, just keeping up with LinkedIn or Facebook is plenty. If you’ve already got an established social media presence, however, you might consider branching out to an additional platform in this step.
Day 3 Exercise: Facebook or LinkedIn?
In today’s exercise, you’re going to decide which platform to focus on.
To keep it simple, choose either a LinkedIn or Facebook profile, depending on your business and some considerations below. (I recommend considering a Facebook profile, not a page, since organic engagement on Facebook is so low these days, and you need meaningful connections to get traction.)
Here are some questions to help you decide which is best for your business:
- How many connections do you have already on each platform (if any)?
- Does one platform make more sense for your business than the other? For example, Facebook can be very useful for getting business referrals from friends, whereas LinkedIn is better for making direct business connections.
- Are you drawn much more to one platform over the other?
If in doubt, know that you can’t go wrong with LinkedIn, if your clients are marketers or business owners. Still, lots of freelancers have found creative ways to use Facebook to promote their businesses, so it’s worth considering.
Take some time to find the best fit for you, but don’t get stuck here. Pick your platform, and let’s move on to Day 4!
Day 4 Goal: Practice making engaging content.
The heart of any social media strategy is publishing great content, such as original posts with text and multimedia, as well as links you may curate from other sources.
On Day 4, you’re going to practice making this kind of content.
To kickstart some ideas, take a look at a handy acronym from HubSpot for creating engaging social media content: “AEIOU.”
Here’s what each letter stands for and how you can use it to come up with content ideas:
- (A)sk questions: Pose interesting and relevant questions to your audience.
- Invoke (E)xpression: Try to get customers and clients to feature your brand, such as in user-generated content or testimonials.
- Provide (I)ncentives: Make a little contest for your audience, provide a quiz, or find other ways to “gamify” your feed.
- Make (O)ffers: Get clients to act quickly by making special offers, such as discounts, free consultations, or other goodies.
- Deliver (U)tility: Make sure you’re offering something useful to clients in your posts, ideally something they’ll refer to again and again.
Now, experiment with coming up with some ideas of your own.
Day 4 Exercise: Brainstorm social media content ideas.
Today’s exercise is to come up with five social media post ideas for your business. You can try to create one for each of the letters in the above AEIOU acronym, or you can come up with completely different ideas, if you like.
The main rule is to make your ideas as engaging as possible, and make sure they’re relevant to the target audience you identified on Day 1.
Do your best and have fun!
Day 5 Goal: Commit!
Today is the day when you’re going to COMMIT to a strategy and bring it all together.
In this step, you’re going to roughly plan out the first month of your social media activities, so you can start getting out there and connecting.
Let’s dive in!
Day 5 Exercise: Document your strategy.
For this exercise, take some time to think about and research, if necessary, the final missing pieces for your strategy.
This includes logistical things, like when you’ll schedule posts and how much time you’ll block out for social media activity.
Answer these questions to begin documenting your social media strategy:
- Who are you planning on targeting through social media?
- Which social media platform will you focus on?
- How often can you commit to posting original or curated content? Tip: Posting a few times a week is ideal, but it’s okay to scale back, if this helps you create higher quality content.
- How much time do you need to block out to plan and create your posts?
- What days do you want to publish on your platform? Tip: Consider what’s best for your chosen platform, and don’t be afraid to do a little research.
- What’s ONE other idea you’re willing to commit to trying in the first month of your social media activities? For instance, you could send a connection invite to a new marketer each week, record and post a video of you introducing yourself, or tackle one of any number of other projects.
When you’ve answered the questions above, sit back and take a deep breath.
You’ve got yourself a social media strategy! Now it’s time to execute.
Stick with the plan you’ve outlined as best you can, but don’t be afraid to adjust, as you see what works.
Just like with all marketing approaches, social media marketing can take time to pay off, but the great business you can get from your efforts makes it absolutely worth undertaking.
