A Timeless Approach To Social Media Marketing

 

Table Of Contents

 

The Truth About Social Media 1

Do You Know What Social Media Really Is? 3

How Social Media Works VS Real Life 8

Who Are You? 11

Who Is Your Audience? 15

What are you trying to do? 18

Getting Setup For Success 23

Creating Your Brand Identifiers 25

Grab Attention With Your Bio Information 28

Website Links 31

Your Image Is Everything 34

Adding To Your Image 38

Being Thorough Across All Your Profiles 40

Activity Generates Business 42

Introduction To Content 43

Writing Is As Strong As Ever 44

Video Is The Future Of Content 47

Who Is Listening To You? 51

The Power Of Live Content 53

How Much Content Should You Produce 56

How You Win With Content 60

Content Splitting And Distribution 67

Putting Yourself On The Map 70

Finding Your Audience 75

Becoming Part Of A Community 80

Messaging And Outreach 83

Including Others In Your Social Media 88

Real Life Is Important 93

Post That Get Massive Engagement 96

Are You Asking The Right Questions? 97

Give Them The Answers, They Need The Answers 99

Story Telling Posts 101

Value Driven Posts 103

Update Posts 105

How I Made $500 With One Facebook Post 106

 

The Truth About Social Media Marketing

Yes, you can hack social media!

Yes, you can take the shortcut to success

Yes, you can fake everything.

Yes, you can even make tons of money doing it

But…is it worth it?

Nope…

Not at all

Because fake stuff never lasts.

I’ve tried everything, and the only things that really work, and pay off long-term are NOT hacks, tricks, and scams.

So right now, RIGHT NOW!

I want you to change your mindset.

I want you to stop believing that you can find a magic way to get the results you want overnight.

Every overnight success, is not an overnight success.

These people worked hard AF every single day until one day, everything came together for them. And the same will happen to you, ONLY if you get rid of the hacker / scammer mentality.

Yes, there are tools and strategies to help you be more efficient. 

Yes, I’d encourage you to be creative in your marketing etc., but always think about the long term.

Is what you’re thinking about doing something that can last?

Will it scale, or is it just a quick fix?

Could it ruin your reputation?

What are the long term negative effects?

It’s ok to explore and have fun thinking about possibilities but before you do anything, make sure it’s worth it!

In this course, I’m going to teach you some EXTREMELY POWERFUL techniques.

And by the end you’ll be insanely capable and powerful yourself.

Please use your power to create something real and worth-while and don’t be a short term oriented hacker. You’ll thank me later.

Do You Know What Social Media Really Is?

We all know what social media is and how it works, or at least we think we do.

Most people forget what social media is and what it’s actually for.

At the core, social media is the way humans are able to be “social” online.

Being social is one of the most important parts of being a human. And before social media, we only had real life interactions. Now we have real life interactions through our technological devices. 

In short, Social media is just the digital representation of real life social situations.

Think about it.

In real life we have conversations. We use our voices to speak to one another and we take turns talking and listening.

Online we do the same thing, yet because of the digital landscape, we must use things like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Blogs, Forums, etc. to have those conversations.

And these tools have provided us with just about every feature we need – to act as we do in real life social situations, online.

So, when you think about social media.

Just pretend its real life.

No matter what your job is or what you’re trying to accomplish with social media, pretend it’s the exact same as real life, because it is!

I want you to imagine you’re at a cocktail party. Take a look around the room and you’ll notice groups of people having conversations. You’ll immediately notice which people are getting the most attention and who’s standing alone. You’ll see many different social situations taking place all across the room.

Now I want you to imagine yourself approaching a group of people. As you get closer they all look over towards you and wonder, what does this person want?

As you approach, instead of introducing yourself, you go immediately into a sales pitch. Imagine you say something like this, 

“Hey all, at Sam’s Car Wash, you can get superior service and a better clean than anywhere else. Guaranteed.”

The only thing that is guaranteed –  is that the group of people that you just approached will want you to go away.  You’ll get rejected and no one will ever buy from you. 

Why?

Because that’s not how we’re supposed to act in social situations.

The proper thing to do would be to walk up to the group and politely introduce yourself. Then ask the group some questions about who they are and what their interests are. Then someone in the group will naturally be curious as to who you are and they’ll say, 

“So, what do you do?” 

And that’s when you get the chance to casually mention that you run a Car Wash.

Would you ever walk up to someone and try to sell them a product or service without introducing yourself?

The point is, when you’re using social media you’re living your real life, online.

And you’ll get accepted and rejected online for the same exact reasons you would in real life.

When you’re being socially active online just ask yourself, would I do this in real life? And if you do this, then all of your marketing, all of your outreach, and all of your content will generate the right results. 

Just remember that being behind a computer or phone gives you no special power, excuses or abilities to do things that you shouldn’t or wouldn’t normally do in real life

However, social media DOES allow you to be social with just about anyone in the world.

And that’s the real power!

We live in a time where you can instantly connect with anyone you want to, at any time that you want to.

How crazy is that?

So, use the proper social graces like manners, respect, authenticity and thoughtfulness when you get social with other people online and you’ll be able to network with the world.

MAJOR EXCEPTION: If you are creating social profiles for the sake of comedy or what I call topical accounts (meaning accounts that aren’t a person but they are about a topic, TRAVEL, MEMES etc.) then, many of the social graces we just discussed don’t really apply. I’d suggest using topical accounts to experiment with and discover how you can push the envelope to getter better results. When you find something that works well and doesn’t ruin your reputation, you can start using that strategy on your personal profiles.

Ok so, now that you have the proper mentality and framework to understand how to fundamentally approach social media, we can start talking about how to use it.

How Social Media Works VS Real Life

At the core of every social media platform, the idea is to be social. We established that. But let’s take a look at the main tools that almost every social media platform has these days.

There’s POSTING, LIKING, COMMENTING, FOLLOWING, SHARING and MESSAGING.

And here’s why each of these tools is so important for a human to express themselves online. 

POSTING: That’s you sharing your thoughts with the world. That’s you, starting a conversation. It’s you walking in the door to a party with the outfit you picked, the hair you styled, and the attitude you want to bring. Posting is your chosen outward expression.

LIKING: Giving someone a like accomplishes two things. One, you’re giving your approval to a person or their thoughts (limited to that specific post). Two, you’re smiling, you’re saying hi, without actually approaching and introducing yourself. If you were at a cocktail party, it might be like smiling at someone close by – but never talking to them.

COMMENT: A comment is you engaging in conversation with someone. It’s a way of introducing yourself with your ideas. If you make a good impression with your contribution to the conversation, people in the conversation will like you. And people in the conversation will become aware of who you are. Commenting on conversations in real life and online, is a great way to become known. And It helps people decide if they like you or not.

FOLLOWING: Following someone is like saying “I’d like to be in touch”. In real life someone might ask you for your phone number or email after having a good conversation with you. Only, online, you usually don’t have to ask to follow someone. Following someone online can also be a way of alerting someone that you exist. It could be like complimenting someone on their outfit at a party in passing. “Oh, I love your outfit” as you walk out the door. Following is similar to LIKING, but your liking more than just a few things (more than just a post) about that person. You’re liking their vibe and what they represent as a whole.

SHARING: Sharing is accomplishing a few things. It’s giving your approval on someone’s thoughts or ideas, it’s letting the world know you agree, and it’s flattering to the person who originated the post. Sharing other people’s content is like introducing a friend at a party, a friend that you are very proud of. It’s basically you giving a badge of approval. And if your posts are getting shared, it’s an indication of how enthusiastic your audience is about you.

MESSAGING: Messages are direct. These are one on one conversations not to be had in public. This like taking someone aside to talk to privately. Maybe you want to discuss business or drama, or share insider tips. Whatever it be, it’s private. Messaging can also be a way to introduce yourself formally, without the fear and intimidation of a crowd. Imagine walking up to someone who is alone at a bar, introducing yourself and then, starting conversation. Messaging is one of the most powerful tools because it allows us to open a one on one conversations with anyone. It allows us to make ourselves known immediately.

The key to social media is to be social enough to make people aware of who you are and hopefully, make other people like you. You can use these tools POSTING, LIKING, COMMENTING, SHARING, FOLLOWING and MESSAGING to interact online and raise awareness to who you are. 

But, getting people to like/love you, is a different story.

Who Are You?

With everything you’ve learned so far, you should be developing a solid understanding of the psychological side of social media. Let’s take it a step further and figure out who you are, or who you want to be.

People like to be friends with and or follow other people who KNOW WHO THEY ARE. Consistency is attractive to humans and predictability helps people know what to expect and it makes them feel safe.

Think about stability.

Everyone wants a stable job, stable relationship, stable parents, stable kids, stable finances, they even want stable idols.

Cardi B might be crazy and unpredictable, but you know she’ll always be crazy and unpredictable.

Therefore, she’s consistent, stable, and reliable.

So, who are you? What defines you? What’s your theme?

In the beginning, it’s best to niche down and figure out what your core “thing” is. 

As you grow in popularity you can expand your niche into other areas.

 

Here’s an example of niching down as it relates to business.

 

The best businesses start out as experts in ONE thing, then they expand into similar offerings to grow their business even larger.

I used to work at a staffing agency that only helped Executive Assistants get jobs. 

To their potential clients (audience) their message was very clear!

“We’ll find you the best Executive Assistant for your company”

They didn’t do anything else.

As their business grew, they gained hundreds of clients, the clients trusted them, trusted their product and trusted their service.

Still they stuck to their core competency and they didn’t deviate, they stayed consistent.

Only after years of success with staffing executive assistants did they start to offer more services. The trust they had built with their clients (audience) was so strong that they were able to start moving into different areas. They started to offer staffing for, administrative assistants, personal assistants, receptionists, and data entry assistants.

Over the next couple years, they expanded again into Human Resources, Recruiters, Recruiting Assistants and more.

Now they staff for over 50 different jobs and they continue to grow.

Ok so what’s the point?

At first you should pick a niche to be known for and then you can expand. 

For example: 

Let’s say you are a Dessert Blogger.

As you gain popularity in the dessert world and really dominate your niche, you can then slowly expand your content into other foods. Then you can talk about restaurants, nightlife, drinks, travel and then eventually LIFESTYLE, which encompasses just about everything you can think of. 

So, you need to answer some basic questions before you get started. 

Who are you now?

What are you good at?

What do you love?

What do you want to be?

Make it very simple, do not over complicate this –  and always be consistent. Stick to your theme until you completely dominate it then you can start expanding.  

The absolute worst thing you can do is keep switching things around all of the time.

Because you’ll become unpredictable, confusing, hard to understand, and impossible to follow.

 

Who Is Your Audience?

You figured out who you are and who you want to be, so now it’s time to figure who your audience is.

This one is a little tougher and involves a lot of experimenting. As people we make assumptions to who we think would like us. Sometimes those assumptions are accurate and sometimes they are totally inaccurate.

Over the years I’ve run some huge social media accounts and I’ve always been very surprised to see who my real fans are.

I’ve also run ads to audiences that I believed would be a great fit for my product or service and it turns out I was completely wrong and wasted tons of money.

I’ve made assumptions like, “plumbers would never pay $300 for a product” and then seen that over 30% of the customer base for a certain $300 product was plumbers or a related field.  

Some of the worst ads I’ve ever made (in my own mind) have gotten the best results.

The point, it’s hard to know your audience, so don’t freak out when you’re having trouble defining them in the beginning. Part of defining your audience is discovering them along the way.

But you will find that audience categories will be easier to define and connect with than others.

Let me elaborate on defined audiences.

 

If you sell luxury cars and you want to get known for that niche, you’ll target luxury car enthusiasts. However, you might also target business owners, real estate investors, wall street guys, rich people, etc.  It’s pretty straight forward who you’ll go after.

Here is a broad audience example

If you’re a “life coach” your audience is… anyone who is alive and needs help in their life, with anything? I don’t know what a life coach is to be frank. And your potential audience won’t really either.

However, if you’re a life coach for startup founders, you’re getting closer to a defined audience.

But…there are even different stages of startups to consider. Most true startups are one and two person teams. They can’t afford to pay you $1000/m to coach them about startup life. So, you’ll have to further define your audience to – startup founders with series A or B investments.

Try your best to define your audience. It may take time to discover who your real true audience is so test as much as you can. Make sure you observe what’s happening and learn from the activity you’re generating. 

What are you trying to do?

Depending on your goals, you’ll need to adopt a customized strategy. Social media marketing is not one size fits all. That’s like saying there is just one way to act in order to be successful. Remember, social media is just real life, online. So, your real-life goals, will give you a real-life strategy, and your real-life strategy translates to an online strategy.

 

Approaching social media with one of two goals.

1. Business development
2. Mass appeal

 

Business development

The one I call the “business development” approach to social media is much more focused on quality connections, selective outreach, thoughtful posting, strategic messaging, and authenticity. It reminds me a lot of being in the Business Development role.

The “business development” approach is great for niche bloggers, sales people, personal brands, small business brands, and people who serve a small or very specific community. This category typically monetizes with generating leads for their own business, driving online sales, and brand collaborations. Don’t be fooled, the business development approach can grow rapidly and become massive as well! Many small time and very curated fashion bloggers have eventually turned into huge lifestyle brands. Sam with models, fitness gurus and more.

 

Mass appeal

The mass appeal strategy is usually focused on fast growth, rapid testing, quantity over quality and it doesn’t necessarily have to be authentic or very strategic.

The mass appeal approach is typically used by people and companies who want to hide behind a “viral account” that was built specifically to reach a massive audience. These accounts are also created to “bend” the rules and test new strategies without fear of damaging your personal or company brand. 

A lot of these types of accounts are focused news stories, memes, comedy, celeb gossip, models etc. These accounts typically monetize by selling or partnering with products everyone can afford and use. They’ll sell merch like t-shirts, mugs, cell phone cases or whatever. 

 

Profitability

In many ways the “business development” approach can be much more profitable than the mass appeal approach. 

For example, if you’re a realtor and you have worked hard to get 100 top real estate investors to follow you, over the course of a year you might make 1 million dollars from those highly curated followers. You just need to do a couple deals with a couple of your high-power followers and you’re making the big bucks. 

In the mass appeal scenario, you might gain 1 million followers, sell 50,000 t-shirts with a profit of $2 per t-shirt and only make $100,000 for a year. This is very typical of many large Instagram accounts who aren’t creatively monetizing and instead they are selling cheap stuff with low margins.

 

Followers to income ratio

I want you to understand that the number of followers you have doesn’t correlate with the amount of money you make. It’s the TYPE of followers that you have + the amount, that will determine how much money you’re able to generate.

To get clear on your strategy, you’ll need to get clear on your goals for your business or brand, especially in the beginning. Just keep in mind that the business development strategy can suddenly and rapidly grow, and turn into a massive opportunity. For example, a fitness trainer might suddenly have explosive growth and go from serving a small local community to serving a large nationwide community.

 

Side note: One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned about social media, is that it can be more powerful for sales people than it can for almost anyone else.

Isn’t that weird?

We don’t think of a traditional salesperson using social media, do we?

But, when you realize that social media gives us the ability to connect with anyone- AND we go back to the basics of being social, it actually makes perfect sense!

Who are the best salespeople?

People who have great social skills, who are likable, great in conversation, determined, focused, selective, and goal oriented.

And those are the exact type of people who have major success on social media too!

Going forward in this course, I’ll be explaining how you can dominate social media and I’ll be using examples from the “mass appeal” and the “business development” approach. I’ll also be giving examples of different businesses and how they take advantage of each approach.

Getting Setup For Success

Since you know you are and who you want to be, you’ll need to figure out how to communicate that to your potential audience in a clear and concise way.

I’ve worked with way too many people who have created confusing and unclear profiles that turn visitors away, and they wonder why they’re not getting any followers. If you can’t explain who you are, what your do, or how you can help people one sentence, then you need to figure that out immediately.

But, setting up your profiles and accounts properly is not just limited to your bio information. In many cases you’ll have the option to add things like…

• Website Links
• Profile Pictures
• Header Images
• Additional Profile Information
• And much more…

In this section, we’ll be discussing the most common aspects of social media profiles and how you can optimize each area to ensure your success with social media marketing.

 

Creating Your Brand Identifiers

For the networks that allow you to choose a Username or Handle, being tactical in your choice is going to pay off huge in the long run.

Some people don’t pay much attention to their usernames, they sort of take what they can get but that’s not the best approach. Picking a username has a lot to do with your objectives and how you define yourself.

For many people they try and use their name and that’s because they’re developing a “personal brand” although that is a great idea, it’s not always necessary to do that.

If you’re a fashion blogger who loves flowers, your blog may have a name like “Petals and Stems” Your actual name will go hand in hand with the brand petals and stems, so creating the username @petalsandstems would be a great idea.

People who are already fans of your blog may tell their friends about their favorite blog “petals and stems” and then, their friends will search those words. Your username will most likely appear in a Google search.

However, your username may not appear for the search terms “Petals and Stems” if you just chose to use your actual name as your username or handle. On most platforms you’ll have the ability to add your name in the bio section as well, so that is always helpful when trying to connect a brand to a name and showing up in search engine results.

Some of you may not be interested in creating a personal brand or blog but you may be interested in creating topic specific profiles and accounts.

In this case you’ll want to take a different approach entirely. When you take a topic specific approach, you’ll want to name your account in accordance with the topic.

Let’s say you want to create an account about exotic travel destinations, you might want to pick a name that very closely represents exactly what your account is about. In this situation you might pick @ExoticDestinations or @ExoticTravel or @TravelDestinations

You can do KEYWORD research to help you figure out exactly what the best username would be.

 

Pro Tip: You can use the Google Keyword Planner Tool to find out what people are searching on the internet. If you’re planning to create a travel based account, you can find out what the most common searches are around the interest of travel. You might find that 1 million people search the term “Best Vacations” every month. If that’s the case you should consider naming your travel account @BestVacations so you may appear in search results and get exposure some of that 1million people searching for the best vacations.

 

Choosing a username is always a fun challenge. For some it will be much easier than others but the key is to really think about what you want your username to do or represent.

Is it you? Is it a brand?

Is it both you and your brand?

Is it a topic?

Once you’ve figured that out, you begin the process of identifying what names are available and what names aren’t. This might force you to be a little more creative because your ideal name might not be available. Although that can be frustrating, with some deep thinking you’ll always be able to find the perfect name.

Grab Attention With Your Bio Information

 

Make It Easy

Most social media networks don’t give you very much space to explain who you are and what you do, so in most cases you’ll need to think of a short and catchy tagline that describes you, your service, or your business perfectly.

Please do not make this complicated. The average American reads at an 8th grade reading level, so whatever you’re saying make it very easy to understand.

It’s always great to practice telling people what you do… in less than one sentence. If you can’t describe what you do in less than one sentence, you’re probably not focused and you’re trying to do too much. As I mentioned before, you need to “niche down” and get very specific, especially in the beginning

 

Make It Attractive

Most social media networks allow you to add styling to your bio sections. This is a great way to draw more attention to the things you want your visitors to see. You can stylize your bio with formatting, symbols and emojis. You’ll see very creative bio’s on Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn. The point is to draw attention to this section so way you can generate leads and sales.

 

Make It Searchable

When you’re creating your bio’s you’ll also want to think about Search Optimization. When people search the internet (Google) or when they search specific social media networks (LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook etc.) they search by typing in what they are looking for. We call those keywords. Try and create a bio that includes keywords that your target audience might be searching for. 

If you need help figuring out what keywords people search for, in terms of volume, you can use the tool Google Keyword Planner by Google.

This tool allows you to put in a keyword like “career coach” and then find out how many people are searching for this keyword every month. It will also recommend other keywords for you to consider as well.

 

Bio Example

🏈 Football Coach At Derby High School

Athlete, Father, Husband

Follow Me For Football Tips

In this example we have a very short bio, a little description of the person, and a “call to action” that encourages people to follow – for a very specific reason.

Not every biography will be this short but you should think about how you can quickly get to the point whenever you’re creating the bio section for any social media profile or account.

 

Where are you sending people to?

 

Website Links

Ok so just about every social network allows you to add a link to your website, or any website. That also includes linking to other social media networks. I need you to understand what the benefits and the downsides are to linking out to another site.

As a general rule of thumb only add a website link if there is a very good reason to send people to your site.

For example, you might want people to buy a product, download a free PDF, enter their email for a free consultation. And if that’s the case, then yes adding a website link MIGHT be a good idea. But think about what your objectives and how you really want to interact with your “customer” and then weigh your options.

 

Here’s what I want you to think about

Social media profiles are a great way to capture people’s attention and start direct communication with them. However, when you send someone out to another site, you’re directing them away from you and sending them somewhere else. So, wherever you send them, you must have a damn good reason for doing so, or you just might lose a potential customer.

 

Let me explain a little further.

Let’s say you’re a life coach and you want to find more people to coach. Someone comes to one of your social media profiles and likes what they see. Then they see a link to your website that says checkout my website to learn more about me!

They’re intrigued so they click your link and head to your site. On your site there have few different options. They read a little about you, they learn about your services, they might see some past clients and then…they might just leave…Without contacting you…

 

Here’s what you should do

Determine if your website is really the best place to send people or if it’s actually better to encourage them to message you directly on the social media network they found you on.

If you’re a sales person or you have a service based offering, I would highly recommend that you encourage people to message you (on the social media site) rather than send them to a website. If you do this, you can have a one on one conversation with your prospects, answer any questions they may have, and even set up a meeting or a call.

For me the objective is to get in touch with my prospects as fast as possible. I don’t want them wasting time browsing around on my website when I could be chatting with them directly.

Now, if you determine that your website is super optimized and that your offerings don’t and shouldn’t require any chatting, then yes, link to your site and hope for the best.

 

Make sure your links have purpose

Whatever you do in terms of linking, just make sure it has a clear purpose and an effective end result. Linking to other social media networks, websites, etc. might just be creating an exit for your potential customers or followers so I just want you to be aware of that.

 

Quick example: You link to your YouTube channel. They check out one video and get distracted by another video. Instantly they are off of your channel and browsing another person’s content. Is that what you want?

If used properly, links in your profiles can help you SELL like crazy BUT so will asking people to message you. Figure out what’s best for your unique offerings and always make sure to test all options.

Your Image Is Everything

Clearly, using a great profile image for your social media accounts is going to be helpful but what exactly is a good profile image? The answer is not going to be the same for everyone so let’s take a look at some examples.

 

The personal brand

If you’re going for the personal brand or “business development” approach as I call it, you’re going to need to create trust and confidence in the visitors of your social media networks. That being said, you need to appear in a way that resonates with your audience. A general rule of thumb for personal branders, is use the highest quality headshot you have. You want to look like you’re a professional at whatever you’re doing and professionals can usually muster up a good headshot. If you can’t, you’re not a pro!

But just because you’re a pro doesn’t mean you have to have a “corporate” headshot. You need to understand what your audience is going to connect with, so try and create a professional photo that creates a connection.

If you’re a yoga teacher get a great photo of you doing a yoga pose. If you’re a business man, get a headshot of you looking serious in a suit. If you’re a comedian, get a good pic of you being a goofball.

Make sure the picture is quality but also represents who you are and creates a connection with your audience.

 

The topic based accounts

Because many of you will be interested in creating massive social media accounts or “brands” if you want to call them that, you might take a different approach.

Earlier we discussed naming a topic based account like a travel account. In the case of a travel account, you’ll use a beautiful travel destination image for your profile image. You might even use a brand logo for your profile image.

I have three Instagram accounts and two Facebook pages that are topic based. One of my Instagram accounts is an account about ice cream, so the profile image is of a WEIRD ice cream cone. Another one of my accounts is about Christianity, it’s called Godfruits and we created a logo for it, so the logo is the profile image.

Your profile image should also speak to the viewer. They should be able to tell what your account is about just by seeing the profile image or logo.

However, you decide to represent your “topic based account” is up to you. There’s one more thing we need to touch on to complete this section.

 

Attention

Social media is about capturing attention! It doesn’t matter if you’re a personal brand or a topic based account, you need your profile image to get attention. In a social media feed, you’ll see hundreds of profile images but what makes you stop and click on one versus the other.

When creating your profile image figure out how you can make it “pop” and grab attention in a feed. If you’re a personal brand and you’re going to use a headshot, you might want to wear something that stands out like a red hat, or blue hair, or green glasses. You want your headshot to “pop”

If you’re creating a topic based account and you’re using a logo, make sure the colors are captivating. Make sure the logo communicates the topic of your account very well in a stand out way. Same goes for if your using a picture. On my ice cream account, the picture is an ice cream cone that looks like a dog, it’s weird and it GRABS YOUR ATTENTION!

Adding To Your Image

The same basic principles apply to header images as the do to profile images except there are a few differences to keep in mind.

Header images aren’t available on all social media networks but when they are available they should be used to create the brand image that you want your viewers to experience. And they should capture attention too.

Some people choose to add text to their header images. Mostly the text is used to encourage the viewer to take some sort of action or to help the viewer get a better understanding of the accounts topic or purpose.

Some networks, like Facebook, allow you to upload a video to your header image. Adding a video header image can be very cool for your personal brand or topic based account. I’ve seen Gary V do some great header videos on Facebook.

Just remember, when you are adding your header image make sure whatever you do, that it’s mobile optimized (looks good on phones and tablets). There is nothing worse than a header image that has text in it, that is only partially viewable on mobile devices, that goes for video too.

Topic based accounts can really take advantage of header space by adding calls to action, short descriptions, or social proof. One of our clients uses a header video to show how large their community is. It says “55 Million Members Strong! Thank You”

It captivates new viewers and increases their follow rate.

 

Being Thorough Across All Your Profiles

Most social media networks don’t require you to fill out more information than the basics. We’ve covered so those basics so far. But some networks allow you to add additional information about yourself and your companies. For example, Facebook and LinkedIn allow you to add quite a lot of information about yourself from jobs, to volunteer opportunities, and much more. The rule of thumb with social media networks is to fill out everything that you can. And there are a couple of reasons to do this.

 

Confidence and credibility

When you completely fill out a social media profile, you look real. By having a completed profile, you avoid people questioning who you really are and whether or not your profile might be a fake. You also help your viewer to have confidence in you. When you come across a profile that is missing a lot, or even a little information, it raises red flags.

You don’t want any red flags.

One time I was on a phone meeting with somebody I never met. Naturally I had to look this guy up online to see who he was. I found TWO half filled out LinkedIn profiles and ONE Facebook profile that only had a name and a couple pictures. His business website was listed on both LinkedIn profiles but the website was also half ass and didn’t work properly. I was getting frustrated because I couldn’t really pull up any qualifying information on this guy. I started doing Google searches and all I could find was bits and pieces this guy everywhere but nothing was complete. He had the worst low quality profile images too. It was shady to say the least. I later found out this guy was a complete scammer.

 

Search results

When you completely fill out your social media profiles, you show up in search results and I don’t just mean Google search results. Although many social media profiles show up in Google Searches. People search social media networks all of the time. In fact, people are searching in more places than you know, and if your information is properly filled out and up to date, they can more easily find you. Trust me, you want to be the first thing that shows up when someone searches your name or business.

Activity Generates Business

While we’re on the topic of confidence and credibility, we should touch on profile activity. Now, it’s understandable that someone may have an inactive social media profile, but that’s not the way it should be. If you are going to use social media networks, use them.

This is a problem.

If you go and set up five social media networks and you only really use one of them and someone finds one of the inactive ones, what does that do to your credibility right?

If you’re trying to develop your personal brand and or develop a business brand and people are able to find dead accounts, you are leaving your potential audience to a wasteland.

Nothing creates more excitement or a stronger will to connect with someone online than quality and consistent content. When a viewer sees that consistent output it SCREAMS, this person (or brand, or company) cares! It inspires confidence and build trust!

You’ve done all the work to get people to your profile, don’t drop the ball when they get there.

 

Introduction To Content

Let’s take a look at the most common forms of content we can produce and consume.

We have written content, static image content, video content, audio content, and live content. Understanding these different types of content and how to apply them to your overall strategy will be imperative to your success in social media marketing.

Writing Is As Strong As Ever

Written content is usually found in long form, on blogs. Not too many people post status updates with only words these days, however written content can be extremely powerful when used correctly. And many people have had success with written content on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

Copywriting is the practice of writing words that sell, or just capture attention. If you’re good at writing and you understand the basic principles of copywriting you’ll be able to create incredibly engaged posts using only a few words. And, you’ll be able to create incredible engagement by writing long form posts as well.

Twitter, when it first started was an amazing place for short form copywriters to show off their skills.

And it still can be.

There are many great writers on Twitter that tell 140 character stories. And they are amazing.

Facebook allows people to write much longer posts and LinkedIn is and Instagram are somewhere in between.  

The point is, written content can be your main way to capturing people’s attention, even in this video driven and picture driven world we live in. If you’re skilled at writing use that to your advantage.

Words are incredibly powerful

 

A Picture Says A Thousand Words

Every social media network allows you to combine writing with imagery. They say a picture says 1000 words. Many people choose just share imagery and or keep the written content to a minimum. Take Instagram for example. Instagram is an imagery based site, most people caption their pictures with simple quotes like “work hard everyday”

The reason they do this is because the picture speaks for itself. But… just as it hard to create quality and captivating written content, it is a challenge to create quality and captivating imagery as well. A simple quote like “work hard every day” with a low-quality picture (bad angels, bad lighting, bad subject) will garner almost no engagement.

It’s important to remember that when using images on social media the IMAGE is the thing that will draw people in, the words are secondary and sometimes overlooked, but that depends on the platform too.

So, what is bad imagery?

Some images that we would consider to be low quality or “bad” actually get massive attention and engagement. And the key word here is ATTENTION.

Does your image GET ATTENTION?

You may want to the quality of your images by their ability to capture attention. My agency has run thousands of IMAGE ads and we are always surprised by which images work the best in terms of CLICKS and CONVERSION.

Generally high quality images are better for most purposes but you’ll have to decide that for yourself. Look at your objectives and figure out which strategy should work best for you. There are many MASSIVE meme accounts that use very low quality images and they have great success.

Always keep your objectives in mind when you are deciding on imagery for your personal brand or business. Sometimes you’ll want to sacrifice attention for quality and visa versa.

Video Is The Future Of Content

Video content is currently EXPLODING and it’s only growing more and more. The great thing about video content is that it’s so interactive! If you’re working on your personal brand, you’re able to speak directly to your audience and help them relate to you on so many different levels.

Actually, video content is a bit scary because it’s so powerful. If you constantly produce videos of yourself, people begin to feel like they know you, they may start to unconsciously become obsessed with you. And that’s sort of what you want.

People love to feel like they are getting an inside look into your life. And that’s why content filmed around your house, your possessions, and your peers tends to create a stronger bond with your audience. Just talking to the camera in front of a white wall can be powerful too but nothing creates a stronger bond than letting people into your life.

They get to see who you actually are and how you live. They become curious about the backgrounds and settings and how you fit into everything. Suddenly, they know who your wife is, or your uncle, or your best friend, and they know what car they drive, and what foods they like to eat and so on.

Vloggers have crazy obsessed fans that will buy anything from them. And more importantly they show up for their fans on a consistent basis.

Some businessmen and businesswomen use this VLOGGING technique very well. They constantly talk about their business and success with the backdrop being their home, or their fancy car, or their family, or nice restaurant, or meeting, or just about anywhere besides in front of a white wall.

Why?

Because this way they can talk to you, sell to you, entertain your mind, and prove to you how successful they actually are. The trust they build with their fans is off the charts.

Grant Cardone does this amazingly well.

 

Side note: If you’re making motivational videos in front of a white wall, it SCREAMS that you’re a broke loser sitting in your dumpy bedroom trying to fake it until you make it. It’s literally telling the viewer that you’re too afraid to show then the truth of your situation. It kills all trust and credibility. Go film outside in the street if you have to.

 

Video content isn’t just limited to Vlogging and filming yourself, although that is extremely popular.

There’s animation, there’s explainer videos, there’s just PowerPoint slides with a voice talking over it, there’s “NOW THIS” style videos, which are videos with flashes of text that tell a story. Those types of videos are very popular on social media. There’s slideshows, I mean nowadays you can turn just about anything into a video.

And each social media platform has a unique approach to video. YouTube is now a place for long form video, 15 minutes to 2 hours.

Instagram is a place for short form video. 15 seconds to 60 seconds.

Facebook has both long form and short form.

LinkedIn has long and short as well.

You get the point.

As with everything else, test, test, test!

We’ve testing hundreds of video styles with one of our audiences on Facebook that’s over 55 million people strong and with that audience, IMAGES always get better results.

Just because video is EXPLODING right now, does not mean that it’s the only way for you to have success with social media. It’s just one of many ways to deliver your content.

Who Is Listening To You?

Music & Podcasts / Radio Shows. These are the main forms of audio content.

Audio content is consumed everywhere, in your car, in your house, at your work, at your school, EVERYWHERE.

And just like the other forms of content, AUDIO has its own place.

Podcasts tend to grow extremely large and loyal fan bases and it’s no wonder why. You can take in audio content virtually anywhere AND you can do other things while you listen. See, audio content doesn’t take your full attention. You can accomplish things while you consume and that’s the most powerful thing about audio content.

You can reach people when their running and high on endorphins, or when they are going to bed, or when they are sitting at the DMV or DRIVING THEIR CAR!

But.. this type of content is almost always long form and or hyper laborious. For example, music is not easy to make and produce.

Podcasts and radio shows usually last more than a couple minutes and some even last for hours. And editing these things OMG!!!

Audio content can be a much larger time investment than the other forms of content we’ve discussed earlier, yet again it’s up to you on how you’d like to incorporate and audio strategy, if at all.

With everything I like to try and best understand what return I’m going to get for the time I put in. It might be the case that one podcast episode reaches 1 million people or I might be able to reach 1 million people with a picture. You have to weigh the positives and negatives of both and figure the right path for you.

The Power Of Live Content

Live content is usually done by live streaming through YouTube and Facebook and Twitch.

The most popular live content currently is ESPORTS or live video gaming. Video game streamers are some of the top producers of live content and some of the highest paid. If you haven’t heard of NINJA or PEWDIEPIE look them up. They make millions of dollars every year from live streaming their video game play and interacting with other players and fans in real time.

But live streaming is a great option for people who want to cover live events as well. For example, I know many small freelancers and techies that live-stream events that they attend so their audience can tune into the live event with them, in real time. That’s a great use of LIVE video because it builds good will with your audience, gives them an inside look on where you are and what you are doing, plus its free and quality content.

Many people use live video to host interview shows. This helps people establish credibility in their space because it helps them prove to their audience that they can connect with top quality people. It’s also a great experience for the viewer because they get access to someone they normally wouldn’t get to learn from.

Some people go live to pitch themselves and promote products, very similar to a live infomercial. What’s cool about going live on social media is your ability to interact with the audience.

Live TV does not offer that and never has.

As a live streamer you can take questions and have conversations with your audience while you are live, which can be EXTREMELY powerful for building relationships.

I used to host a live show on Facebook and my friends, family and about 5000 other people would tune in daily. My business partners and I would talk about different topics in relation to social media marketing and people would drop in and ask questions all of the time. It was sort of like a live podcast on video.

 

People got obsessed with our show.

When we moved offices, we stopped and canceled our show.

I can’t tell you how many people messaged me asking what happened and if the show was coming back. We had no idea we were making such a huge impact but people really loved the ability to ask questions on a live show.

You have a lot of options when it comes to creating content. In fact, there are so many options within each different type of content, that people end up getting confused about what they should actually be doing. Thinking about your content strategy ahead of time will help you alleviate a lot of stress and you will avoid a ton of mistakes going forward.

Content production is never easy, even if you are just posting memes all day. Try and focus on the kind of content you can keep creating without getting burnt out.

We’ll expand more on content and growth in later sections.

How Much Content Should You Produce?

We’ve talked a lot about going out and engaging with other people’s content as a great way, and the main way to gain exposure and get attention on social media. But engaging with other people’s content is just one piece of the puzzle. In order to be a thought leader or an authority figure in your space, you have to produce content. How much content you NEED to produce really depends on your goals with social media. For example, a salesperson might not need to create as much content as a daily vlogger would.

 

High volume output

The world seems to be telling everyone they need to put out lots of content and that’s just a blanket statement that doesn’t apply to everyone. Yes, there are people who should and will create more content then others. Some examples might be, bloggers, daily vloggers, topic based accounts, new sites, and the like. Let me explain this a little bit further.

Let’s say you’re starting a cooking channel on YouTube and you want to become one of the largest cooking channels to exist. At first, you’ll start creating maybe one or two videos a week but soon you’ll realize that’s not enough. Other cooking channels are uploading at least one video a day and some are uploading 5 to 10 videos a day. You want to compete with these big players so you must up your game and start producing a crazy amount of videos.

In this example, the person creating these videos is making this their full-time job. They are dedicating all of their time to this channel and it’s not a side hustle. If you have the luxury of affording this then by all means crush as much content as you can and really go for it.

Another example of high volume output might be a fashion blogger. Typically a fashion blogger takes amazing pictures (and usually videos a bunch too) of their current fashion, writes a full blog post with pictures, creates a unique Facebook post about their recent blog, creates a unique Instagram post about the blog, probably drops a YouTube video about the creation of the photoshoot and also writes about it in the video description, they might even send out some snaps and tweet about it too. Usually the content distribution is unique to each platform. That means Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Snapchat, and Pinterest all used slightly different captions, pictures and videos.

So, doing the photo and video shoot to distributing all of the content across all of the networks, that’s huge amount of content output. And that’s why blogger and vloggers stay up all night, every night, editing their photos and videos.

 

Low volume output

If you’re in sales and it’s just your job to reach out to people and get meetings, your content output can be relatively low. The reason is that’s the case is because your content production is much more of a consumer confidence play than anything. Your primary task is reaching out to people and landing meetings. Your content production isn’t directly related to income like it is for a blogger (at least not unless you make it that way)

In a sales role you’ll be reaching out to people mostly with direct messages, where your content comes into play is when someone that you messaged that doesn’t know you, checks out your profile and sees your content. The goal is to look active and educated in your space, so posting 1 to 3 times a week is actually fine. Your prospect will look at your profiles and see that you’re real, you’re active, and they’ll feel better about engaging in conversation with you.

However, if you do choose to take your content game to the next level and start producing a ton of content and your successful at getting lots of attention, it will only boost people’s confidence in you. Everyone loves to engage with people who are having success and if you can display that through social media, it will really help you as a sales person.

Side note, when I say success I mean it in two ways. Success in your content, meaning you’re producing a lot of content and a lot of people are reacting to it (being an influencer) AND success as in showing off a little bit of your actual success.

If someone is trying to get a meeting with me and I see their driving nice cars and living the good life, I’ll be more likely to take that meeting.

Just saying.

 

Conclusion

So, remember that you don’t have to go out and create tons of videos and pictures and blog posts and stories and burry yourself in content production. Producing a ton of content is not a requirement in being successful but it can help. In fact, I’d encourage you to be really smart and efficient about your content production to make sure you’re not wasting time and losing money doing things that don’t pay off.

More about that in a later section labeled “defining a winning content strategy”

How You Win With Content

If you want to win at content here’s how.

1) Figure out what your goals are

2) Decide how much content you actually need to produce

3) Figure out how much time and effort it will take to produce that content

4) Decide how much content you actually need to produce to get your desired result.

5) Make a plan to execute on delivering that content consistently

6) Decide if you’ll actually execute on your plan

7) Do the work

 

Content is much more of a mental game than it is a production game, especially as a solopreneur or someone who is just starting out. It’s incredibly easy to fall into the trap of spinning your wheels on activity that gets you nowhere. When you’re starting out, you need to focus on things that generate income, and people love to avoid those activities and replace them with things like content production.

Remember, you’re producing content because you think it will have a certain effect on your personal brand or business and ultimately, you probably think that your content will bring you more income. Don’t lie to yourself, you’re in this to make money.

So, if your content isn’t going to contribute to you making money immediately, why are you producing it? This is a hard thing to talk about, especially in a social media course, but I told you in the introduction that I want to teach you about business not just social media marketing. The truth is producing content might be the exact thing that is preventing you from making any money.

 

Here’s quick story to illustrate my point.

I was working with a woman who had just left a long successful career to start her own company. She came to my office one day to get some advice on being an entrepreneur. I asked her what she was doing, how she was getting clients and what her current challenges were. For some context, she wanted to be a consultant on company culture. She had no clients but she knew tons of high-level people and I believe she could have lots of success.

When I asked her how she planned on getting clients, she told me she’s been working on her website for the last two months and it’s been really difficult because she can’t get her website to be perfect. She’d hired multiple people to work on it, she even tried working on it herself but she was totally dissatisfied with the site so, she’s still working on getting it fixed.

Sounds reasonable, right? Everyone NEEDS a website.

Wrong!

This woman had an amazing skill set, she had all the right connections, all she had to do was pick up the phone and call her connections and tell them that she was starting a new business. And if she called everyone she knew and asked for business or referrals, I guarantee she’d have her first client in less than 2 weeks.

Instead, she developed this insane idea that she could not get any customers unless her website was launched and designed perfectly. She spent two months obsessing over something that had no direct influence on her business growth. In fact, with her connections and her skills, she could have a ONE page website that just says, “contact me for culture consulting.” for her whole career and nobody would think less of her.

At the core, she was scared. She just started a new business and she wasn’t confident enough in herself to go out there and do what it takes. So instead, she hid behind the excuse of creating a website to protect herself from discomfort of actually growing her business.

It’s the same with content production. People obsess over creating content because they think that content will bring them customers. And yes, your content can and will bring you customers.

But…

You can’t sacrifice doing things that work, for the sake of content production, especially when you’re starting out. Even to this day I have trouble pulling myself away from producing content that won’t have any impact. I love making videos and taking pictures and writing blogs and all of that is fun to me, however you only have so much time in your days and in your life, so you need to focus on income producing activity to maximize your time.

Ok, so what are your business goals? I want you to write them down.

Now, I want you to think about how producing content will help you achieve those goals. Draw clear connections between content production and your goals.

 

Here are some examples.

 

Goal: I want to get paid to travel the world as a travel blogger. I want to be a travel influencer.

 

Content: Think about all of the things you could do to get exposure as a travel influencer, list every opportunity and what it would take in terms of content output.

*Blog: Write a long form blog post about travel every day.

*Instagram: Post 3 travel pics a day on Instagram to grow my account. Use the proper hashtags, follow the right people, make comments, like photos, buy a growth tool.

* YouTube: Create three well produced videos about travel every week. Calculate all the labor involved in that one 😉

*Facebook: Post on your personal profile and fan page about travel experiences and share cool pictures. 

*LinkedIn: Grow your LinkedIn influence by sharing your travel experiences with business professionals. Post every day.

*Twitter: Post 25 times a day

*Pinterest: Post 5 times a day

*Reddit: Get involved in travel communities

This list goes on and on, so make sure you think of every opportunity. Don’t be lazy, keep adding more until you’ve full exhausted your list.

 

Time: Since you have an idea of what you think you need to do to create enough content to get noticed, think about how much time in your day you actually have to do this. Write out in detail how much time this will take and include conceptualizing, photo shoots, video shoots, writing time, editing time, posting time, and engaging with comments time etc. (let me give you a hint, you won’t have time to do everything on your list)

 

Efficiency: Figure out what activities are going to get you the best results. Do some research and see if anyone in your space ONLY has an Instagram or ONLY has a blog, or ONLY has a YouTube. If you can find a way to cut down on the amount of shit that you need to do, do it! Cut out anything that doesn’t produce immediate results or contribute to your growth.

 

Side note: One thing I see so many people do is go where their audience IS NOT. They might have a Facebook profile with 3000 friends and a LinkedIn with 5000 friends, yet they think they need to start a YouTube channel or a new Facebook account or a new Instagram account. Why start somewhere new when you already have a built-in audience somewhere else? Go where you already have attention and start there. Don’t be nervous your friends will love watching you grow, trust me.

 

Start Planning: Plan out a content schedule. Figure out exactly how much content you need to produce each week and make estimates on how much time it will take VS the impact it will have for you.

 

Be Realistic: When your plan is in place, will it actually be accomplishable? This is where you have to know yourself! Do you usually bite off more than you can chew? Be realistic and don’t create a crazy over the top schedule just because you’re motivated and you think you can do it. You want to win in the long run, not just post a shit ton for a week and then start posting once a week, then once a month and then give up.

 

Execute: Once you’ve gotten real about the situation and you’ve discovered a content production schedule that you can manage and potentially grow. Go out there and start doing it. And stick to it, be consistent, and stay focused.

Content Splitting And Distribution

If you decide that you want to and need to create more content than the average person and you believe that you can handle the output and stay consistent, here are some great recommendations on how you can create one piece of content that turns into tons more!

Ok so my favorite thing to do is start by writing long for blog post. I’ll usually spend about 1 hour creating a really well written and understandable blog post. I try to keep my explanations very clear and to the point and I also try and format my blog posts in a really easy to read way, with bullet points, highlights, italics and underlines. I like to emphasize certain aspects of my writing to make sure I keep the reader’s attention. I also read my blog posts out loud so that the post sounds conversational, like I’m speaking directly to you. I basically write the perfect script for a video!

Guess what?

Then I make a video. I use the blog post to act as my script and I try and stick to the script as much as possible. It’s easy to wander off in videos and start talking about a bunch of nonsense, so having the blog post be a clear guide for your video is AMAZING!

—Right off the bat I have 2 pieces of content. A blog post and a video.

Then what I do is I post my video on YouTube and I add my written blog post in the description. I do this because YouTube will rank my content better if they have more words in the description to judge my video on. I also include my social links, website links, and affiliate links in my YouTube description posts.

I usually take my whole YouTube video and add it to LinkedIn. I try and shorten my long form blog post to fit the maximum amount of text allowed in a LinkedIn post. I basically summarize my long blog post and try to make it catchy and formatted in an easy to read way. I’ll add some relevant hashtags, a few emojis to keep it interesting, then I’m done. You can also shorten your video if you think it’s too long.

I do the exact same thing with Facebook, except on Facebook you’re allowed to add more text. However, LinkedIn forces me to condense my text and I usually like the way it looks and feels so I’ll just repost the same post on Facebook, emoji’s and all.

Then I head over to Instagram. I usually cut up my main video into 15 second sections that are perfect for Instagram video posts or Instagram stories. Then I take whatever I wrote on Facebook and LinkedIn and I post it as my caption. Make sure you know how to stylize posts on Instagram or else a long form post is going to look very ugly, but you can do it. If I don’t make a caption and post a video, I’ll add the video to my stories. Since so many people watch Instagram stories on silent, I usually cut up my text and add it on top of each story so that the viewer can watch the video and read the text!

Also, I don’t usually like posting video content on my Instagram feed I usually only post pictures on my feed. Sometimes I’ll use a picture for my post and use my blog post as the caption. Sometimes I switch out the video for a picture on LinkedIn and Facebook too.

Or… Sometimes I’ll make customized short versions of my video specifically for Instagram. And sometimes I’ll reshoot my videos within Instagram stories because it can be easier that way. There’s no video editing involved which saves a ton of time!

That’s how I turn ONE blog post into various pieces of content across 4 different social media networks.

I don’t really use Twitter or Pinterest anymore but the process would be the same.

This gives you a good idea of how you can split content. Keep in mind if you are filming video, you’ll need to become familiar with editing software and splitting up videos. It can be a laborious process.

Social Media Marketing Yourelf

 

How do you make yourself known?

The first thing you’ll need is attention

You can post content that is likely to get attention but the problem is, if you only have a few followers, even your amazing content won’t really reach enough people to get the attention you want.

And this is where most people are getting it totally wrong.

Most people think the first thing they need to do is post content.

The truth is the first thing they need to do is INTERACT with content.

Your first step should be to find your target audience and interact with them. The more you interact with your target audience, the more followers you’ll get.

It’s really that simple.

So right now, you need to let go of ego, stop thinking about posting selfies, and focus on authentically interacting with other people’s content.

You’ll make faster progress complimenting someone’s selfie thank posting your own.

 

Following, Commenting, Liking, Sharing and Messaging

Do you remember talking about these things in earlier chapters? We mentioned these things as being fundamental social tools that you can use to be social online, right?

We’ll here they are making an appearance in the GROWTH section of this course and it’s no wonder why.

Typically, the most social people have the most friends.

And the most socially active people online, have the most followers.

It’s the same thing.

Being social online means finding your target audience (potential customers and peers) and liking their content, commenting on their content, sharing their content, following them, and messaging them AUTHENTICALLY.

It means starting conversations and adding to conversations. It means developing friendships and relationships through these social tools.

I’m part of many marketing related groups on Facebook and people are posting interesting content every day. When make comments and share my thoughts, people respond. And sometimes people send me direct messages to have more in depth private conversations in relation to the posts or comments.

I might meet 10 new people a day online, just by interacting with content. And many of the people I’ve met online have helped me and my business grow. In fact, I’ll be reaching out to some of my expert friends, who I met online, to get advice sections of this course.

 

Here’s a great example of “selfless” growth

I know a guy who became an influencer simply by liking and commenting on other people’s content all day long. The guy was literally appearing in every comment thread about marketing, across all of my social media channels. He must have been making 100 or more likes and comments a day. And he was honest and thoughtful in his comments.

What he was doing was participating in conversations. Through these digital conversations he gained lots of attention. 

Don’t you see how that works?

If you leave a comment on someone’s post, they get an alert, and most people want to see what that alert is about. In fact, if you comment on someone’s posts, and someone else comments on that same post, you might get an alert too. So, imagine how many people were getting alerted about his comments every day. Imagine how many people thought to themselves, who is this guy? And then checked out his profile.

Let’s just calculate this for a second.

Let’s say he left 100 comments a day. And let’s say each post he commented already had 10 comments.

That means 1000 people a day were getting alerts about his comments and finding out who this guy was.

1000 people a day were engaged with his personal brand.

And if you calculate how many people he reached it would have to be around 10,000 a day.

Ok let’s recap, in ONE DAY he was getting 1000 engagements and exposure to thousands more people.

That’s insane.

Most people won’t get that type of reach with 5000 – 10,000 followers.

Back the story….

Over a period of six months he made himself incredibly well known in the online marketing community just by participating in conversations. He gained an incredible amount of followers and recognition and he never posted content.

After six months of gaining massive recognition he began producing his own content. And guess what happened?

His content exploded and he started gaining even more reach and more followers.

Now he speaks at conferences all over the world and he has an amazing reputation in the digital marketing space.

But between you and I, he’s never really done anything special.

He just figured out how to get lots of attention.

When you think about growth keep this story in mind. You don’t have to do exactly what my friend did, you can post lots of content along the way but the real key to success is to engage with others. And even when you develop a large following it’s crucial to stay in touch with your fans, to be active in the comments, and to continue having new conversations always. It’s how you stay growing, and if you’re not growing you’re dying.

Finding Your Audience

Your audience could be everywhere. Most people are on all the main platforms, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, and now Tiktok and it’s not just that your audience is on one these platforms, they are hiding on these platforms and it’s your job to find them.

You might hear things like, young kids aren’t on Facebook. That type of generalization with no proof and no testing is going to work against you. I’ve run college related ads in large volume on Facebook where I was reaching HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of high schoolers – ages ranging from 13 -19 and not only that, they were very active with my content. A social media network with over 1 billion active users WILL have your target audience. 

Almost every social media network has hundreds of millions of users, trust me, you’ll be able to find your target audience. So how exactly do you find these hidden gems?

 

Search

Every social network has search features. Facebook allows you to search hashtags, people, posts, groups, pages, places, events and more. Instagram allows you to search by hashtag, location and people. Twitter allows you to search by keywords. LinkedIn might have the most detailed and robust search filters.

The point is that every social network has multiple search features, and that’s how you are able to start finding your target audience. You search for them.

In order to search for your target audience, you need know who they are. The better you know your audience, the easier you will be able to find them.

 

Here’s an example.

Let’s go back to my recruiting days. When I worked my first job in recruitment my boss had me do sales. My goal was to land business with some of the best companies in Los Angeles. I was told to identify companies that had more than 100 employees and contact the Head Of Human Resources at those companies to sell them our recruitment services.

So, I went on LinkedIn and started searching the terms Head Of Human Resources, I filtered my search to Los Angeles, and added company size of 100+. And instantly LinkedIn gave me hundreds of results.

After that I started learning more about the Human Resources profession. I found Facebook groups, LinkedIn groups, I found blogs and online communities and forums all about Human Resources. I even started finding local Human Resources events.

I also began searching through Twitter and Instagram to see if I could find anyone on those platforms, and guess what?

I found tons!

It was only because I knew exactly who I was looking for that I was able to find them. Additionally, I researched the crap out of Human Resources so that I knew all the lingo that was used in that space. Therefore, I could be creative with search terms, hashtag searches and more.

I know my target audience was very straight forward compared to many of you taking this course. Some of you may have audiences that are more general and general is actually hard to find.

A big mistake people make is thinking that their product or service is for everyone. It’s not. And EVERYONE is not well defined, so it’s really hard to market to everyone because your messaging doesn’t speak to ANYONE specifically.

So, if you think your product or service is for everyone then think again. Get specific about who you want your customer to be and start finding them.

 

Followers

Besides hashtags and search terms and job titles you can find you target audience by discovering communities of your target audience.

Chances are, your potential customers are already following somebody that offers the same or similar products and services. In most cases you can see who’s following your competitors and you can reach right out to them directly. If not, you can see who’s commenting on or liking their posts and start conversations there too.

 

Here’s an example

Let’s say I want to sell an email marketing software and I’m trying to find my target audience. First, I can identify all the top email marketing software providers in the world, find them on social media, and start interacting with their followers. Either I can look up who’s following them or I can start interacting with the followers on posts and comments. Or I can go and look up the top email marketing bloggers, find their social media accounts, and start interacting with their followers.

The point is, whatever you do, your audience is following someone else on social media and you can directly interact with those people.

If you know your audience, you shouldn’t have trouble finding them, they are everywhere!

Becoming Part Of A Community

In the last section we touch on community a bit. Here I want to expand on community and make it clear how powerful community can be for your personal growth.

I mentioned that your target audience is hanging out online in certain communities. Those communities could be fan bases of certain celebs or influencers, those could be Facebook groups or LinkedIn groups, or Telegram groups, or forums, there are a million ways to find community.

When you do find a community that can be prosperous for you don’t ruin it by trying to sell to people right away, or spamming the community with promotions, or doing anything like that. Join the community, understand who main people are (admins or leaders) and soak in how the community works. Just “lurk” and read and observe and really start to think about how you want to participate in the community. 

Our exercises in knowing you are and what you want to be will help you here plan your community interactions.

Once you’ve become comfortable in your understanding of the communities you want to participate in, you can start interacting. Sometimes there are rules and guidelines for communities, so make sure to read and understand those things first.

You’ll want to start off by liking and commenting on other people’s posts and slowly growing recognition within the community. Stay consistent and don’t try and overdo it. Make easy to accomplish goals like, participate in two conversations a day.

As you get comfortable and get to know people in the community you’ll develop a sense of the types of posts the community members will want to see. Then you can start posting content that you know will get good reactions. You should focus on providing value to the community and the other members will value you.

Then the rest is easy.

All you have to do is maintain your participation in the community and if you stay consistent and add value you’ll soon become a leader in the community, which is exactly what you want.

This approach allows you to genuinely grow, develop influence, and ultimately trust. And eventually, you’ll be able to sell to you your community by offering products and services of real value.

Along the way you’ll develop real relationships and people will want to help you achieve your goals. Actively participating in a healthy community can be one of the fastest ways to grow your personal brand and even a topical account.

 

Messaging And Outreach

Messaging is one of my favorite things about social media because it is so freaking powerful. If done correctly, you can get just about anyone on the phone or out to an in-person meeting. Additionally, you can build real relationships, get follows, or sell products and services.

Here’s what you shouldn’t do

Most people use messaging the wrong way. I can’t tell you how many direct messages I get across all platforms that are straight sales pitches. Most of these sales pitches are for products and services that are complete garbage too. And even if the product or service was good, I would never know it, because I don’t respond to sales emails like that. I mean think about it, when is the last time you bought something from a cold caller?

Don’t introduce yourself and your company

Don’t send a sales pitch as your first message

Don’t send a message about collaborating

Don’t offer to help people and then explain your services

The point is, you don’t want to reach out with some sort of sales agenda at all. At least don’t do it in the first message.

Here’s what you should do

Before you send someone a message you should consider how normal people socialize. If you were at a cocktail party you’d jump into a conversation or you’d introduce yourself, or you might just make a quick comment to someone. It’s the same online so you should act the same when it comes to messaging.

Before you message someone, you should do a little research on them and figure out how you can virtually “jump into a conversation” let me explain what I mean.

Let’s say there is a CEO you read about and you really want to gain their business. The first thing you should do is follow them on social media. Find them wherever they are most active and start following them. Start looking at the content they produce, if they do. Start looking at the comments they are making online. Find out if they have written any articles or been featured in any videos. Find out if you have any common interests. The point is, do your research and learn about your prospect.

Once you’ve done your research you’ll be able to reach out them in a smooth and casual way.

Let’s say you found out that the CEO plays tennis at a court near you. Your first message to that CEO could be “Hey, how are the courts over at _____ park? I’ve been meaning to check them out” Of course it helps if you are actually a tennis player.

Or you might have liked a comment they made on someone’s post. Your first message could look like “Your comment on Jim’s post was spot on. What do you think about x?”

Let’s say you saw a video that they were interviewed in. “Hey I just watched your interview and I wanted to say thanks. You provided me with some really valuable insight. Do you have any other interviews I can watch?”

The point is to open a conversation and leave it open to more discussion by asking a question. If you do that properly, opportunities will naturally present themselves.

Let me explain further.

When you start a conversation with someone you don’t know, the point is to get to know each other and you do that by asking each other questions. When you start learning more about each other more questions come up and eventually the MOST common question gets asked. What do you do? That’s your goal in any conversation weather it’s in person or online. You want to get someone to ask you what you do.

First, that tells you that the person is interested in you AND that you’ve made a good impression. Second, this opens up the ability for you to sell to that person, kind of.

Don’t take this opportunity to sell by pitching yourself and trying to prove your worth. Just explain what it is that you do and answer the questions that they ask you.

That’s how selling truly works. If your product or service piques their interest then they will tell you. They’ll say something like “That’s interesting, our company is looking to expand their marketing efforts. Do you have time for a call next week?”

And that how you do it!

Remember what your goals are though. For me, when I was a recruiter I didn’t really want to sell my services online. I found that building relationships in person was more powerful and effective. My goal was to land in person meetings.

My technique would be to open a conversation and keep it going for a little and then ask for an in-person meeting when the time was right. I actually developed a 5-step process to accomplish that so rather than relying on the prospect to inquire about me, I was a little more aggressive in my approach. I would land in-person meetings about 90% of the time.

When I got the in-person meeting I would focus more on building the relationships and talking very little about business. Inevitably business would come up and I was able to close the deal.

No matter if it’s online or in real life focus on having relationship building conversations and they’ll naturally lead you to a point of business. That’s how life works, that’s how social media works.

Including Others In Your Social Media Marketing

Messaging is one of my favorite things about social media because it is so freaking powerful. If done correctly, you can get just about anyone on the phone or out to an in-person meeting. Additionally, you can build real relationships, get follows, or sell products and services.

Here’s what you shouldn’t do

Most people use messaging the wrong way. I can’t tell you how many direct messages I get across all platforms that are straight sales pitches. Most of these sales pitches are for products and services that are complete garbage too. And even if the product or service was good, I would never know it, because I don’t respond to sales emails like that. I mean think about it, when is the last time you bought something from a cold caller?

Don’t introduce yourself and your company

Don’t send a sales pitch as your first message

Don’t send a message about collaborating

Don’t offer to help people and then explain your services

The point is, you don’t want to reach out with some sort of sales agenda at all. At least don’t do it in the first message.

Here’s what you should do

Before you send someone a message you should consider how normal people socialize. If you were at a cocktail party you’d jump into a conversation or you’d introduce yourself, or you might just make a quick comment to someone. It’s the same online so you should act the same when it comes to messaging.

Before you message someone, you should do a little research on them and figure out how you can virtually “jump into a conversation” let me explain what I mean.

Let’s say there is a CEO you read about and you really want to gain their business. The first thing you should do is follow them on social media. Find them wherever they are most active and start following them. Start looking at the content they produce, if they do. Start looking at the comments they are making online. Find out if they have written any articles or been featured in any videos. Find out if you have a common interest. The point is, do your research and learn about your prospect.

Once you’ve done your research you’ll be able to reach out the them in a smooth and casual way.

Let’s say you found out that the CEO plays tennis at a court near you. Your first message to that CEO could be “Hey, how are the courts over at _____ park? I’ve been meaning to check them out” Of course it helps if you are actually a tennis player.

You might of like a comment they made on someone’s post. Your first message could look like “Your comment on Jim’s post was spot on. What do you think about x?”

Let’s say you saw a video that they were interviewed in. “Hey I just watched your interview and I wanted to say thanks. You provided me with some really valuable insight. Do you have any other interviews I can watch?”

The point is to open a conversation and leave it open to more discussion by asking a question. If you do that properly, opportunities will naturally present themselves.

Let me explain further.

When you start a conversation with someone you don’t know the point is to get to know each other and you do that by asking each other questions. When you start learning more about each other more questions come up and eventually the MOST common question gets asked. What do you do? That’s your goal in any conversation weather it’s in person or online. You want to get someone to ask you what you do.

First, that tells you that the person is interested in you AND that you’ve made a good impression. Second, this opens up the ability for you to sell to that person, kind of.

Don’t take this opportunity to sell by pitching yourself and trying to prove your worth. Just explain what it is that you do and answer the questions that they ask you.

That’s how selling truly works. If your product or service piques their interest then they will tell you. They’ll say something like “That’s interesting, our company is looking to expand their marketing efforts. Do you have time for a call next week?”

And that how you do it!

Remember what your goals are though. For me, when I was a recruiter I didn’t really want to sell my services online. I found that building relationships in person was more powerful and effective. My goal was to land in person meetings.

My technique would be to open a conversation and keep it going for a little and then ask for an in-person meeting when the time was right. I actually developed a 5-step process to accomplish that so rather than relying on the prospect to inquire about me, I was a little more aggressive in my approach. I would land in-person meetings about 90% of the time.

When I got the in-person meeting I would focus more on building the relationships and talking very little about business. Inevitably business would come up and I was able to close the deal.

No matter if its online or in real life focus on having relationship building conversations and they’ll naturally lead you to a point of business. That’s how life works, that’s how social media works.

Real Life Is Important

Whatever you do and however you approach the social media game, make sure to add a REAL-LIFE component to the things you do. Before there was social media there was just being social and that meant getting out of your house and meeting up with people. Meeting new people and expanding your network is still the FATEST way to success. So, use the power of social media to bring the right people into your REAL LIFE and develop real friendships and partnerships. If you do that, it will pay off huge over the long run.

I use social media to get people out to my networking events. I host networking events because I love meeting new people and I fully understand the power real in-person relationships. I’ve met people 5 years ago that are sending me huge marketing contracts to this day.

And as time passes, all the people I’ve connected with in life are growing their networks and becoming more successful too, so I’m starting to develop an insanely powerful network, especially compared to when I was in my early 20’s. All my friends and acquaintances are becoming top people at their companies, or starting very successful companies. Staying in touch with them has led to great opportunities for me.

For example, I follow an old high school friend on Instagram. He now lives in Miami and we haven’t seen each other in 10 years. We sort of keep in touch over Instagram. Whenever we see each other doing something cool on our Instagram stories, we send DM’s to each other and we have these fun mini conversations. After following each other for a while I noticed that he came out to LA quite frequently. I also noticed that he was rich AF. I said “hey brother, next time you’re in town let’s grab lunch” and we did.

During lunch we got to talking about business. Turns out he makes $500,000 a month with his business and he’s looking to increase his marketing and increase his staff. I have a marketing agency and a staffing agency.

I landed those two contracts.

In one meeting pulled in more revenue for my companies than the average person will make in one year.

Wow!

Just remember that real life is REAL POWERFUL!!!

You can use social media to attract amazing people into your life and that might be the best gift that the internet has given us.

Pro tip: If you really want to be successful in life you have to keep in touch with the right people and invite them to do things with you constantly. Always be thinking, what can I invite these people to do with me this week?

 

Post That Get Massive Engagement

There are certain types of posts and that tend to get higher engagement than others and although the engagement strategies vary from platform to platform, there are some general engagement techniques that work well across all platforms.

It’s not rocket science, think about how you’d engage people in real life and apply those methods to your social media accounts.

 

Are You Asking The Right Questions?

Questions are a great way to engage your audience but not all questions are created equal. Some questions will get your audience to engage much more than others. Here are a couple of examples to illustrate my point.

Open Ended Questions

Q: What did everyone do today?

This is a terrible question. Not only does it focus on asking the whole GROUP, and it lacks focus in terms of possible answers. There are literally 1000’s of answers to this question. A reader would read this question and have to think way too much before responding.

In most cases the people responding to the question will start writing an answer, then it will become too long winded, then they’ll think, “why am I spending so much time on this dumb question?” and they’ll simply delete what they wrote and move on.

How many times have you done that?

Therefore, you’ll only end up with a few comments from people who are way too excited to tell you about every detail of their day, which is NOT WHAT YOU WANT!

If you want your posts reach more people, you need to get lots of engagement as fast as possible.

So, you need to ask direct, simple questions, that have easy answers.

A better question would be..

Q: What’s the first thing you did this morning?

This question addresses the INDIVIDUAL, not the GROUP and it has easy and short answers. People can answer with dumb comments like “got out of bed” “brushed my teeth” “turned off my alarm” This question also lets people give longer form answers, for those who like to brag. “I always start my day with a cup of black coffee before I get on sales calls and answer the 1000 emails I have every morning. Morning routine is everything!”

When you’re writing open ended questions, think about how you can help your audience easily drop a comment/answer and move on, without it taking too much time AND without forcing people to reveal too much about themselves.

 

Give Them The Answers, They Need The Answers

Multiple Choice Questions / Polls

When you ask questions and supply a few answers to select from, you have much better chances of having your audience engage. Not everyone wants to share their opinion online. Some people are very shy when it comes to engaging with social media so when you give them a select few answers to pick from, all those shy people to feel safe leaving a comment. Here’s an example:

Q: Do you prefer the color red or blue?

Q: Which is better, steak or chicken?

Again, the people who want to expand on their answer, they will. But the people who are shy will just pick an answer and move on. This will help you rack up comments and likes on your posts.

Yes or No questions are similar and they work very well for engagement too. And the nature of a yes or no questions is a call to action itself. For example, Do you like tacos? Answer YES or NO in the comments down below.

 

Call To Action Posts

Multiple Choice Questions / Polls

When you ask questions and supply a few answers to select from, you have much better chances of having your audience engage. Not everyone wants to share their opinion online. Some people are very shy when it comes to engaging with social media so when you give them a select few answers to pick from, all those shy people to feel safe leaving a comment. Here’s an example:

Q: Do you prefer the color red or blue?

Q: Which is better, steak or chicken?

Again, the people who want to expand on their answer, they will. But the people who are shy will just pick an answer and move on. This will help you rack up comments and likes on your posts.

Yes or No questions are similar and they work very well for engagement too. And the nature of a yes or no questions is a call to action itself. For example, Do you like tacos? Answer YES or NO in the comments down below.

Story Telling Posts

Getting Massive Engagement With Story Telling

If you look at LinkedIn and Facebook, you’ll see a lot of storytellers.

They use the same storytelling format as some of the greatest movies do. The main character of any good story usually starts off in a good place, then experiences some sort of difficulty, learns a lesson, and then ends up better than they started.

When you tell stories, you can create a real connection with your audience. Many people in business have similar stories about the hardships of starting or running a company. Everyone loves when someone can beat the odds.

By telling your story, you give thousands of other people hope or the ability to relate to you. Some might even challenge you, but all of this emotion creates engagement.

Telling stories might be one of the most effective ways to engage an audience on social media

Make your story INTERESTING

• Give enough details, but not too many

• Be clear about your message / lesson learned

• Ask your audience a question in relation to the story

And you’ll get engagement you want.

Do a little research on storytelling and copywriting to sharpen your skills. Formatting and sentence structure can help you deliver your message clearly. Additionally, consider the fact that the average American reads at a 7th – 8th grade level.

Make your stories easy to read and understand!

Value Driven Posts

 

Giving Value to Your Peers.

If you produce quality content, with real value, then people begin to trust you. When people trust you, they tend to cheer you on. When people cheer you on, you’re getting engagement.

So…

 

Give away VALUE to your audience.

Create content that can help others succeed in their business. In marketing, giving value could mean describing your new sales funnel, giving a tip, or sharing data.

In real estate, value could be updating people on the local market and available inventory, sharing home-buying tips, or giving away a house appraisal checklist.

When you know your audience, you know how to deliver value.

Focus on creating content that is packed with value.

For example:

“Want to know how to get people to your events with social media? Here are 5 ways I growth hacked my events on Facebook.”

 

You can also…

• Share articles related to your industry and add your own opinion.
• Give people encouragement and motivation
• Give away guides and data

Update Posts

 

Updating Your Following

Posting updates on your life or business is a great way to increase engagement on FB.

But posting updates like this:

“Just updated our Website, check it out when you can!”

Doesn’t work.

When you’re giving people updates, add some elements of a good story. Show your struggle, show your risk, show your payoff, and show your gratitude to whoever helped you along the way.

You can tag people on your team in the post (Encourage that engagement, right?!)

Or tag people that influenced you and helped you get to where you are.

Ex: Writers, Content Creators, Mentors, Bosses etc.

Don’t just tell people WHAT happened; tell them WHY it happened or HOW it happened. Include people that contributed to your success and you’ll get engagement on your post.

How I Made $500 With One Facebook Post

In this section we went over some great ways to get engagement but how do you turn engagement into money? In this example I’m going to show you how used Facebook specifically to create a post that got tons of engagement and how I turned that engagement into $500.

When you make a post on Facebook, you have to look at the post like you’re creating your own little audience within your larger Facebook audience.

Everyone who engages with your post in some way will start getting notifications about that post. So, every time someone makes a comment or likes the post, everyone involved in the post typically gets notified.

That means you have built a mini audience on your post who is aware of everything that’s happening. You’ve taken people from the broader Facebook audience and brought them into a more concentrated audience who is now “following” your specific post.

 

Now if you really want to leverage this idea to make money, there are two ways to do it.

1) You can use your Facebook profile but not many people have targeted customers as friends on their Facebook profiles. (I wrote a guide on using your FB profile to generate income it will be launched in this course soon) If you have built a Facebook profile filled with potential customers that you can use this strategy on your personal page.

2) You can use this strategy in a Facebook group that you know already has your target audience. If you don’t know much about Facebook groups, I’m adding a section on that as well. The point is that you can find a Facebook group for just about any topic you or your customers might be interested in. You can join those groups and start posting in them and engaging in conversation.

 

Here’s what I did.

I was hosting an event in Los Angeles. I wanted to boost my attendance and my ticket sales. I went into a Facebook group of tech people in Los Angeles, all people who would be interested in my event, and I made a post.

“Hey all, were having a happy hour event on Thursday Jan 20th at 6pm! We’re giving away 5 FREE tickets to the first 5 people who comment “I’m in” below.”

Then I added our event poster image to the post and I did not add a link to the event! When you add a link in the main post Facebook reduces your reach, meaning it shows your post to less people.

Because I gave away FREE tickets and I told people to comment (engage) with the post to win the FREE tickets, I started getting comments immediately. As soon as I got a comment, I liked the comment and wrote a comment back saying that I would message them with a coupon code to get their free ticket.

Because I was interacting with the comments, I got more comments and more engagement and… this helped the post reach more people.

Within 24 hours my post went viral within the group. It was the most active post in the group and everyone was commenting and liking it. I created a frenzy.

I gave away the 5 free tickets and then had to let everyone know that we were out of free tickets. However, many people asked if they could get a link to the event because they still wanted to go, even if they had to pay. So, after about 24 hours I had the attention of hundreds of people on this one post. See how I “created an audience” that was paying attention? I dropped a link to the event, everyone got an alert and within another 24 hours I sold $500 worth of tickets from one Facebook post.

 

Let’s go over this one more time.

1) I told people in a tech group about my event and told them to comment for a free ticket.

2) I immediately responded to the first commenters to actually give away the tickets

3) I liked and responded to every other comment (creating lots of engagement)

4) My post became viral within the group, getting more exposure and more comments

5) I posted a comment with a link to the event sales page

6) Everyone who was paying attention to the post saw my link

7) More than 25 people bought tickets to the event

 

The key things to remember are…

Create engagement. Here I did it by giving away something free in return for engagement.

Build up your audience by responding and engaging with everything.

Never put a link in your Facebook posts, only put a link in the comment section. And post the link when you already have lots of attention on the post.

You can apply these ideas to other social media networks as well. Just make sure to understand the differences in the platforms and figure out how to customize your strategy.

 

Thanks For Reading!

I hope you’ve enjoyed my Social Media Now And Forever guide. If you’re interested in taking things a bit further I have a website at www.commandtraffic.com where you can get access to this material in a video course as well as many other courses on social media marketing.