#GrowMyFollowing--DAY FOUR. Social Media Marketing 101
Tools and concepts you can use to expand your Social Media Marketing and generate new followership
Yesterday, Fiddleheads & Floss hosted DAY THREE of #GrowMyFollowing, and it was all about active, authentic engagement and automation. Today is DAY FOUR and we are putting some of the things we have covered in the course into ACTION.
Today is about:
Developing a Social Media Marketing plan that suits your branding and targets your optimal audience
Creating tools, organizing them, and having it all together for easy integration into social posts
Using automation to help cut out some of the leg work
Todays Downloads (Don’t forget to make your own copy for editing & use):
Let’s Talk About Your Readers
Effective Social Media Management puts you in the path of your potential reader, your target audience, and provides some kind of value to them. Your ultimate goal is to get their attention, offer something they may want or need, and seal the deal with a new follower.
Ask yourself:
What does my reader like?
What kinds of things interest my reader?
How can I appeal to them?
What problem can I solve for them?
What incentive might persuade them to keep in touch with me?
Using the Social Media CTA & Tools Record (link above) you can plan a few CTA’s to use, add in some media you have created, your links for your email sign up landing page and your lead magnet there for reference, and have the tools ready that you need to create each social media post. This keeps everything in one place for quicker Social Media Management daily activities.
Think of your CTA’s in this reader-centric manner.
Develop CTA’s that address your reader’s pain point or need. Offer a solution.
Develop CTA’s that appeal to your reader’s interests.
Develop CTA’s that offer some kind of incentive.
I have included a link on the form that tells you the images sizes to use for various platforms. Create a few stunning graphics in Canva and have these ready to use each day. (I use the same templates in my Canva over and over, update for the post I am doing, and then download these into a Writing Graphics folder on my computer.)
Let’s Make Your Social Media Management Easier
Social Media Management is an every day process.
Creating dynamic posts, implementing them daily or a few times a week
Rotating CTA’s and social posts to keep your platform feeds active and fresh
Following up with authentic engagement
The Social Media Posting checklist (link above) helps by keeping a list of all the sites you are working in your Social Media Management Program.
Here’s how to use the form:
List your platforms in Columns A & G
In the columns that say CTA, check it off when you have shared a CTA for the platform.
In the columns that say Incentive, check it off for each platform when you have incentivized a post (offered a lead magnet, for example) This lets you see how often you are incentivizing your posts.
Check off SP1 for Share Post 1, and then SP2 and SP3 for the second and third posts.
This is a checklist—nothing more. Work the list through your day or week to make sure you are covering all platforms. You could add a column for “engagement” to also check off when you took time to actively seek out engagement with potential followers. (Share threads, follow threads, trending hashtag posts, etc.)
Automation
If you choose to use automation such as Social Bee or Buffer, you can use both of the above forms to help you plan out your posting schedule. Automation works by integration which means that it connects to your social media sites and posts for you on a pre-determined time schedule. There are free and paid versions of these services.
Tips for using automated social media management tools:
Take your time setting up your posts. Make sure you use a good CTA and something snazzy to catch your reader’s attention like a picture or meme.
Use the correct picture or meme size for each platform
Rotate your posts so they have a bit of variance. Write 2-3 versions of each post.
Schedule a post to occur a few times the first week, then once a week for a few more weeks. Anything more will make your social media sites look too spammy
Schedule posts for different times of the day and week.
Optimal posting times vary by site
Watch your feeds. If a post is appearing too frequently, go into your automizing site and adjust the settings for that post or update the post to make it different
So for DAY FOUR, the work is pretty straight forward.
Work on your Social Media Marketing plan. Prepare your tools. Start simple and build on what you are doing so you can keep it manageable. Look for progress and feedback. Remember to engage with people who interact with your posts.
Look for the email today on DAY FOUR (from Fiddleheads & Floss) and I look forward to hearing how it is going! If you have media posts you want to share in the comments for feedback or for support you are welcome to do so.
Tell us what is working for you!
I am putting the Mailchimp links for this #GrowMyFollowing program onto a Medium article, so if you have gotten behind or want to start from the beginning, you can:
LET’S GO. LET’S GROW!!
Christina M. Ward
Blogger, poet, writer, author of organic, Fiddleheads & Floss vol. 1
Fiddleheads &Floss Writing Services
Fiddleheads & Floss Poetry on Medium
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