How To Be Good At Social Media Marketing

The last thing you want to do is invest serious time and money into social media marketing, with no results to show for it.

Besides setting you or your company back major resources it could use to grow in other areas, it’s also a morale killer to go all in on an objective, only to experience a disappointing business outcome.

So how can you be good at social media marketing?

In this blog post, I pulled the key principles from my experience growing my personal Instagram account to over 62,000 followers and Twitter account to over 15,000 followers, as well as growing customers accounts to over thousands of followers and driving numerous leads and sales in the process.

Once you know how to execute on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, Snapchat, Pinterest, and more, then you can set your sails toward grabbing market share. But until then, you first need to know how to work smart before you work hard.

First off the bat, is what not to do.

Why Brands Struggle With Social

If you treat social media marketing like traditional media marketing, then your performance will suffer.

Social media is not the one-sided communication channel like TV or radio is. On those platforms, a brand does all the talking while the consumers do all the listening, with zero engagement between each other.

That’s the old method, also known as outbound marketing, and until the past few years, the status quo to best advertising your business.

Since companies are used to doing things the old school way, brands struggle when they take the traditional media principles into new media apps like Facebook or Instagram.

On these social platforms, you need to be much more in tune with your audience, give value, and often listen to your audience—this is called inbound marketing.

If you don’t, you won’t capture people’s attention. With no attention, your growth will be forever stunted compared to not only your competitors, but also your potential if you were to embrace these apps correctly.

And Matt Goulart gets it right when he said, “Social media is about the people! Not about your business. Provide for the people and the people will provide you.”

Coming back to our point, when we take the opposite of that message, it goes back to what brands should not do: push their company message down people’s throats like the old days.

The brands who struggle to grow a following—and later monetize that following—are repeat offenders of these traits:

1. Don’t see the value of growing a social media following.
2. Refuse to invest money in it.
3. Fail to post consistent content.
4. Struggle to come up with new ideas.
5. Are not giving value to their audience, and only ask audience for sales.

Social media isn’t about direct sales. It’s about subconscious marketing that eventually leads to awareness, and then sales. Switch up the order and you’ve got it all wrong.

Using that list as the baseline of what not to do, here’s how an individual or brand who is serious about winning on social media will act.

How Brands And Individuals Win On Social Media

1. Post consistent content

Growing a following all starts with content. Without content, you can’t accomplish the other four action steps. So you must understand the importance of publishing new posts, that’s the lifeblood of growing a following.

Publish content daily, twice a day if you can, and do whatever it takes to get the content machine pumping out posts. Now don’t toss quality to the wayside just to publish more posts, but never stop publishing content.

The worst thing you can do is go a month without publishing a post on your brand’s Instagram account.

Not only are you giving your brand zero chance to connect with new audiences, you’re also lessening the attention you hold over your current customers and followers.

So if one of your competitors is capturing their attention with marketing, and you’re not staying active, next time they have a need for the service or product you offer, where do you think they’re going to go? Exactly, you’re not relevant anymore and they’re onto the company that does have their attention thanks to their consistent content.

Well done example:

National Geographic is absolutely killing it on Instagram. Besides their stunning shots—which is the obvious number one reason for their success on the platform—what’s helped them amassed over 85 million followers in just a few years is their frequency of posting.

For instance, in just the past 24 hours alone, Nat Geo has published 10 Instagram posts. Some brands barely have the time to publish 10 posts in a month! Forget about that publishing that kind of content in a day—which is why National Geographic is on top.

Publishing this many unique shots from all around the world only introduces their brand to new global audiences. Not to mention they also crush it on Twitter marketing, Facebook, and other platforms.

Be more like National Geographic, and you’ll have no problem landing new customers.

2. Publish videos and audio

I totally get that publishing a picture is efficient and leaves less room for error.

But understand that videos and audio hold much more weight in connecting with your people than a picture.

Studies show that people who watch a video retain 85% more of the message than through text. That’s a big deal! An audience who remembers your brand is more likely to engage in the future, tell a friend, and purchase.

And in a video, audiences are far better at getting a feel for your employees and company culture compared to a stock photo.

Because get this: text is four degrees of separation from your audience, an image is three, audio is two, and video is the best at connecting you with your people since it’s only one degree of separation.

Well done example:

I’ve mentioned this company’s video content in a previous article, but if you’re looking for an example of a brand that doesn’t mess around and goes all in on video, look no farther than Red Bull’s YouTube channel.

While most of the content has Red Bull branding, very rarely do they make the content about their drinks. Instead it’s full of intense action sports that make you hold your breath along the ride.

This is creative marketing because it gets people solely interested in the content, while subsciously persuading their viewers to remember Red Bull the next time they need an energy drink.

Bravo Red Bull, bravo.

3. Be authentic

One idea that trips up business owners and marketers is that their content has to be flawless. And if it’s not, there’s no point in posting.

So they’ll waste valuable time and money bringing in photographers, special lighting, and organizing an entire day’s event around getting the most beautiful shots for their Instagram or Pinterest account.

While I’m not saying there’s no time and place for filters or putting on your best face, what I’m advocating is that every single post shouldn’t be a work of art.

Switch up the vibe by posting a no filter photo of the founder hustling. If you’re an apparel company, show a video of how the t-shirts are made from start to finish, compared to always publishing the smooth final product. Or answer customer support questions publicly to show your true colors.

Human nature is inclined to like different, original posts. If every single image looks like a well-crafted masterpiece, that gets boring fast. (See the section below on the power of being unique.)

Well done example:

Gamers love @XBoxSupport on Twitter. It’s a far cry away from the more corporate-like @xbox Twitter profile, and that’s why it stands out for authenticity.

The @XBoxSupport profile answers gamers’ questions directly one-on-one to show their brand authentically cares about their audience. And this account often directs people to FAQ pages or phone numbers to better serve their customers.

By making their customer service responses public, XBox wins major publicity points to its audiences with and without a technical problem. This authenticity goes a long way in brand loyalty. Nice work, XBox!

4. Go for unique

Here’s where the time investment kicks in. By prioritizing your brand’s social media content, it won’t look like trash.

Going above and beyond to have an all hands on deck meeting where members of your staff spend an hour or two, at least, every month that’s strictly dedicated to social media content, will produce more likes, comments, and shares—not to mention it’ll generate more sales.

My personal philosophy is, if you’re going to do something, best to go all in to make it worthwhile. So while a restaurant who posts once a month to their Instagram is slightly better off than a shop without a profile, why settle?

Every month or quarter, have an internal meeting to brainstorm creative ideas that you haven’t done on your profiles before. Just throw every decent idea on a white board, and then narrow it down to a few excellent ideas that will make your content pop.

When your content is unique in how it’s communicated or designed, a bunch of benefits come with it: your brand will stand out, your followers will look forward to seeing your future content, and you’ll convert more consumers from viewers of your content to buyers.

That means a whole lot of dollar signs in your brand’s near future.

Well done example:

Who would have thought an avocado could be so skilled at picking the winner of soccer matches? Didn’t that first sentence intrigue you?

Well it all starts with the creative social media strategy by Lidl UK, which centered around opening an avocado and using the seed to pick European football teams to win the game.

Just watch this video to get a feel for their ingenuity.

Their campaign went viral to the tune of countless shares. And it highlights what can happen when you mix a little creativity with your product and an international obsession (soccer in this case).

5. Give value to your audience

A consistent topic in the best social media books is the idea that true success comes from giving value to your audience. That’s it. If you can do accomplish this, people will flock to your profile.

How do you give value? There are countless ways if you think long and hard:

• Publish informational content to educate your audience
• Give them an escape from their day with entertaining content
• Respond to their comments on your posts and answer questions>
• Like your audience’s content every once in awhile to show them love
• Run a contest or Facebook giveaway where the winner receives a gift or cash
• Invite a few of your followers to meet you or visit your office
• Offer them decision-making power in your brand’s creative process, like naming a product or choosing the colorway

The problem brands find themselves in on social media is they lose the human side of it, which is hard to disguise for long with their audience. If every post is selling a product or service, it’s obvious their true intention is to only monetize their following (which is fine).

But for brands who want to truly build a community that loves them, start supporting your audience as much as you want them to support you. And when you continue to give value, it’s your followers who will have your brand’s back in the tough days.

Well done example:

You’ve probably heard of the popular investing app called Acorns, right? But do you know they have a blog called Grow? This blog has trendy articles teaching their audience financial intelligence left and right. Some of the categories include Most Popular, Millionaire Money Tips, Voices, and Interviews.

Where social media comes into play is Acorns uses their Twitter account to regularly share articles to their audience. By leading people from their Twitter account to their high-quality blogs that teach the power of financial intelligence, Acorns gives value first. This is smart. And it accomplishes their ultimate goal: getting people to click the Acorns link (in the header of their Grow blog) and download the Acorns app.

That’s how you sell in disguise through social media and a blog.

Final Thoughts

Social media hasn’t been around that long. You’re still in the “early stages” of this social and business phenomenon.

Yes, it would have been unbelievable to build a following on Facebook when it was easier to get fans. The point is you can’t go back in time.

But you can make the most of the present to focus, invest money, and put in the man hours to publish outstanding content, engage with our community, and collaborate with other accounts to grow your following.

Because one day in the not so distant future, it’s safe to predicate that the platforms will be ultra-competitive, making it near impossible for a new brand to gain any traction. Let’s avoid that fate by going all in to growing your following today, right now, this second.

Lastly, find peace in the fact your audience is out there, waiting to come across your profiles. Do your job to connect with them. And eventually you will grow a loyal tribe of customers who tell other people about you.

Best of luck, and keep posting new content!