How to Social Media Marketing for Home Business
There are many great social media marketing sources that adequately explain the various networks and how to use them. Unfortunately, they did not do a very good job of explaining how to make a daily social media plan.
If you are struggling with social media, here are tips for creating an effective plan without taking much time and it is worth trying.
How to Social Media Marketing for Home Business
Part One: Planning Social Media
Before you start tweeting and sharing a home business, you need to make sure your profile is ready for promos, and you know the results you want from social media.
The first step is to visit each of the social networks you use and make sure you have:
1). Upload Appropriate Image
Unless you make a swimsuit or sell travel services in your home business, your drawing with a bikini in Cancun probably will not work.
Consider your business and audience and choose the appropriate photos. Your photos will be more interesting than your logo, even if you want to consider your brand image and what you want people to remember.
Make sure it's a good quality photo, which does not mean it should be taken by a professional, but it should have good resolution.
2). Completed Most Profile Sections
On some sites, you can get away with everything, like your favourite movie. But you must complete all the parts that are important to your business.
3). Following influencers in your Industry
Social media is not just about people who follow you, it's also about you following others. Start by connecting with people you admire or enjoy, especially in your home industry.
4). Integrate Social Media Tools on Your Site Or Blog
At a minimum, you must have a link to your profile so that your visitors can follow you, and social media sharing buttons so they can share your content with their followers.
However, there are many other great tools you can use to save time and results. For example, including the "Click to Tweet" option in your post (WordPress generator or plugin - locate your plugin directory) makes it easy for readers to tweet your content.
Integrating Facebook comments on your WordPress blog can increase engagement with your market. I use a plugin called CoSchedule to create and schedule my blog posts on social media on WordPress.
But you can use Hootsuite (which has WP plugins) or Buffer. Another WP plugin to consider is Revive Old Post, which after 30 days (or whatever you choose) will randomly select the content in your chosen category and the Tweet.
5) Determine What You Want From Social Media
The short answer is sales or clients, but posting "Purchase My Goods" or "Hire Me" all the time does not work and, in fact, will result in loss of followers.
Instead, think about what you can post that can ultimately lead to sales, like more traffic or email subscribers. Some social media coverage goals may be to:
a). Improve Your Blog Reader
b). Get More Email Subscribers
c). Find more followers on other social media sites (i.e. promote a Facebook fan page on your Twitter feed).
d) Improve your influence (credibility and expertise) with your target market.
e) Build good relationships with your target market (ie show you fun or friendly).
Any social media you create should have the accompanying end result. So if you post the URL of your latest blog article, the goal is to improve readership and influence and to build rapport.
Part Two: Sharing in Social Media
When it comes to social media, you have two jobs. One: share items to meet your goals above, and Two: to engage with others.
First, we will discuss sharing.
Share Your Content
The challenge in sharing social media is in maximizing exposure. This is difficult because each platform is different. Some limit the number of characters (Twitter) and others mainly involve graphics (Pinterest or Instagram).
Here are easy steps to plan your sharing strategy:
1). Decide What You Share
Whether you share a blog post, email list, giveaway, inspiration, or something else. In your planning, you must have things to share.
For example, I'm sharing new blog posts, re-sharing old posts, promoting my newsletters, and promoting cross in social media (i.e. sharing my Pinter feed on Facebook).
2). Decide how you will share it
Will you send a post? Do you take a selfie and add a text overlay? Is it a video? At the very least, consider creating a chart or two.
Right now, graphics are very important to get your content noticed, so consider creating easy-to-share graphics. There are many places to find free and cheap graphics.
For example, you can create a graph for Pinterest and Facebook that have the title of your blog post or an interesting quote from your blog post. The difficulty in using a graph is that each network has a recommended size, and often changes it.
To make it easy, you can use an image resizer like the one in Sprout Social or Internet Marketing Ninjas, to cut and customize your image for each network you use.
3). Share your posts on your network at the time of posting
Earn an early eyeball in your post by getting it online when it's ready.
4). Schedule repost content over the next few days
For example, you can Tweet your various quotes with a link to the post once a day for the next three days. When it arrives at the post, note that you are not passing mail to a particular network.
For example, you can get away with sending multiple Tweets (various content, not just your post) one day, but that also does not work on LinkedIn.
Guy Kawasaki and Peg Fitzpatrick in his book The Art of Social Media (get the ebook as the printed version does not have the URL for all the mentioned sources) recommend casual social media users to Facebook 1-2 times, Google+ 3-4 times, LinkedIn 1 time, Pinterest 6 times and Twitter 8-12 times a day.
This number is doubled for hardcore users. Finally, do not forget to schedule content for your followers on the other side of the world, especially on Twitter so they tend to see it.
5) Make calendars or other written plans.
Ruth Soukup from Elite Blogging Academy and LivingWellSpendingLess.com has a colour-coded spreadsheet for Pinterest where she schedules what pins are posted on the group boards when. And that's just Pinterest.
Having a social media calendar will help you remember to post and also know what to post. There are social media tools that let you schedule content.
For example, you can assign blog posts to be shared once a month for the next six months on any social network and all.
6) Tracking What Works
Google Analytics tools and social media will tell you which social media posts will produce results. Furthermore, your analysis will tell you what's popular on your blog or website, so you can schedule social media posts from those pages to keep traffic active.
Involving Social Media
This is an area where many home business owners do not pay enough attention to it but are vital to the success of social media.
Posting your content at any time regardless of what other people are doing is a party and just talking about yourself.
So, along with setting up content to get out, you need to have a plan to comment, share, and engage with others. Here are tips for doing that.
1). Sign up for a social media management tool, such as HootSuite, which lets you see your feed in one place, as well as a scheduled post. If you're using HootSuite, add Hootlet to your toolbar so you can easily share content you find online.
Using social media tools that offer to the schedule allows you to share content (including ReTweets) at different times, as opposed to posting them all at once.
Another advantage of this tool is that you can follow the people and the feeds you want to follow, and filter out the sounds that are bothering you.
2). Choose one or two times a day to engage in social media engagement. Plan 15 to 20 minutes per day (excluding preparing your posts as shown in the section above).
3). Share 2-3 pieces of content appropriate for your network. Using an RSS feed reader like Feedly or a content curator like AllTop can help you find content in your industry.
4). Share 2-3 three social media posts from people you follow (ie Twitter retweets, Pinterest Pin, etc.). Sharing other people's content is a great way to get them to share it.
5). Comment on 2-3 posts from your followers. Be part of your "friends" conversation. Again, this is a great way to improve relationships and the possibility of your friends getting involved and sharing with you.
6). Reply to others who share or comment on your post. Not responding to comments made by others on your posts is not polite.
7). Like other people's content when finding items that interest you. "Like" (Facebook) or "Favorite" (Twitter) and other single click links are not at all packed like sharing or commenting, but still engagement.
8). Repeat every day. Social media is not a "set-it-and-forget-it." You need to post and be involved every day. But with a plan, you keep social media in order not to take too much time and ensure your maximum results.
