Are you looking to use social media in your business, but you’re not sure where to start? If so, you’re not alone.

Many businesses are aware of the power and potential of marketing using social media, but few know how to actually do it successfully.

Perhaps you’ve also asked yourself some of the following questions:

• What social media channels should my business join?
• How often should I post on social media?
• How do I find my potential clients using social media?
• What’s the best way to engage with business people on social media?
• How do I convert leads to sales using social media?

In this article, I’ll show you what you need to do, step-by-step, to successfully use social media as part of your businesses marketing strategy.

STEP 1: CREATE A SOCIAL MEDIA PLAN

Wait.. “You mean to say, before I do anything on social media, I need a plan?”

Yep.

Businesses that jump straight into social media without a clear plan, usually end up failing and getting no results.

Therefore, creating an effective plan is essential to the success of your social media campaign.

In your plan, you need to identify:

• Who are your ideal clients?
• What social media channels are they using?
• How can you best engage with them?
• What content will you create and share?
• How will you convert your leads into sales?

Your plan, is ultimately a marketing and sales funnel, that takes people who have never heard about you before to people who like, trust and buy from you.

It’s important you create a clear social media plan before jumping into the next steps.

STEP 2: POST REGULARLY ON SOCIAL MEDIA

The next step is to make sure you build a strong social media foundation. You can do this by setting up your social media channels and start to post regularly.

What is the best content to post?

We recommend sharing content that your potential clients will find interesting and relevant.

For example, if you’re targeting business consultants, then post content that business consultants will find interesting – such as how to win more clients, how to be more productive, how to be a better consultant, etc.

With a bit of research, you’ll find that there’s plenty of content available. And if you do happen to be working in an industry where content is very scarce, then you can always create your own content (see step 4).

STEP 3: GENERATE LEADS AND GROW YOUR AUDIENCE

One of the most exciting parts of social media is lead generation: finding new potential clients who are interested in working with you.

One of the easiest ways to generate leads is by creating content that your potential clients will find interesting and helpful.

This can include free guides, articles, videos, webinars and even live events.

The key is to use social media to get the relevant and helpful content in front of your target audience in return for your potential clients’ contact details (usually their name and email).

Once you have their contact details, you’ve generated a lead, and you can start to nurture and convert that lead into a paying client (see step 5).

STEP 4: BUILD TRUST THROUGH CUSTOM CONTENT

No one will buy from you if they don’t like or trust you. So how can you build up likability and trust?

Create your own content.

Creating consistent content for your business is one of the easiest and most powerful ways to build trust with your leads.

What kind of content is it best to create?

We recommend you create content that your potential clients are asking (whether to you, others or on Google).

The more you can help your prospects with the problems they are facing, the more you will trusted in their eyes.

STEP 5: CONVERT LEADS TO SALES BY FOLLOWING UP VIA EMAIL MARKETING

The final step to a successful social media strategy involves your email marketing.

This may come as a surprise to some, because email marketing isn’t technically “social media”. But, it’s important to note that a successful social media strategy actually includes more than just social media.

To actually get sales from your social media, you need to create content and follow up with your leads on a regular basis.

Regularly following up with your social media leads can be accomplished using email marketing.

What kind of emails is it best to send your leads?

We recommend sending simple, plain-text emails, from a person (such as YOU). These types of emails look less salesy and usually get better results (higher open and engagement rates).

In the emails you send, you can share with your leads your content.

This combination of following up via content builds trust and helps you sell to your prospects in a way that isn’t salesy or annoying.

WHAT NEXT?

First, it’s important that as part of a successful social media campaign, you have to do all of these 5 steps. None of them are optional.

So if you don’t have the time or expertise to do everything in-house, then hire someone, or hire a social media agency, to do this for you.

Secondly, remember to be consistent with your marketing. This isn’t something you do once for a few months. You need to do it regularly for at least a year.

Businesses that get the best results from social media are the ones who are in it for the long-term. Sure, there are definitely some short-term results you can get. But overall, the best results will come after doing this for at least 12 months.

Finally, remember to track, monitor and improve your results each month.

Track how many leads you generate, who opens your emails, how well they convert and so on. By tracking your results, you’ll be able to see how you can improve at each step within your marketing and sales funnel.

Engagement is the worst way to judge the success of your content.

This may surprise you to hear, because most people base success on the amount of traffic you get, how many "likes" a Facebook posts has and how many shares an article creates.

Look, these metrics matter to an extent. They help you judge the success of your content marketing strategy, but if this is the only way you judge it, you're playing the game wrong. 

I say this from experience because I played the game wrong for a long time. I put a lot of effort into content and advertising, and I based the success of it on likes, shares and love-hearts. For a long time, this worked (really, really well). A thousand shares didbring leads and customers and money. But, over the last two years I've noticed a new trend, and it surprised me a great deal.

You cannot take Facebook likes to the bank.

I've built more than eight businesses over the last fifteen years. Some have succeeded whereas others did not, but they all involved building an online platform in some form. As such, content marketing and online advertising have played a large role throughout my entrepreneurial career.

Over the years, I've spent hundreds and thousands of dollars on this, and since 2015 I've helped other entrepreneurs do the same through effective marketing funnels.

A few years ago, you could take likes to the bank. But, those days are over, and they are never coming back. In fact, when I looked into who bought my programs and became one-on-one clients in 2017, I realized most of them didn't engage with my content. They didn't "like" my posts. I didn't notice them inside my Facebook Groups. They didn't reply to my emails or other social media messages.

They lurked. They clearly saw what I was putting out, but they hardly ever engaged.

This stopped me in my tracks, because I realized the way I judged my content was all wrong. To this point, I made decisions based on how many likes a post would get, but I now realized likes didn't mean money.

I didn't feel bad though, as I noticed most of my entrepreneurial friends did the same. It comes down to simple chemistry, in fact, because likes, shares and love-hearts create a dopamine spike. You feel happy and confident, and you want more of the same. Whereas no likes or shares leaves you feeling empty and insecure.

• Highly engaged content = good content marketing
• Poorly engaged content = bad content marketing

This is how judged success, but here I was with the revelation that engagement didn't lead to success, and that those who did buy from me hardly engaged at all.

I learned something important during this period:

The more sophisticated your audience, the less engagement you will get from your content marketing.

If you're targeting insecure, vulnerable and naive people, this may not apply. Because insecure, vulnerable and naive people tend to not know what they want. These people engage with content because it creates a dopamine spike of its own. They feel productive because they have done something, even though that "something" may or may not help them.

So, if this is your audience, likes, shares and love-hearts may lead to profit.

Whereas if you target educated, secure and sophisticated people, it won't. These people are too busy to spend their time commenting on every tweet and post. In fact, the more sophisticated your audience is, the less engagement you will see -- be it email, social media or online advertising.

Again, this realization blew me away.

I created content, products and services for a sophisticated market who already had a successful business. My audience didn't have time to always engage with what I put out, but that isn't to say they didn't see it or experience it.

This forced me to step back and reevaluate how I judged my content, and I realized looking at how many likes a post gets wouldn't do the trick.

Focus on revenue, not likes, shares or love-hearts.

The only true way to judge the success of your content marketing is to measure the amount of revenue it makes.

The next time you push out content -- be it email, social media, PR or video -- consider how it actually makes you revenue. Forget about the likes, shares and love-hearts. Forget about the dopamine spikes and how happy a popular post makes you feel. Let go of the emotional attachment toward your content, and instead hone in on what it does to your bottom line.

How you do this depends on what you produce and sell, but the simple answer is to turn attention away from vanity metrics (likes, shares, love-hearts, hits, views, etc.), and toward more intimate measurables like messages, replies and people who contact you directly after you share a piece of content. It's not as easy to measure, but the insight this offers you is far more profound.

Of course, even measuring this isn't enough if it doesn't drive people to actually take action, such as purchasing your product, arranging the sales call or filling in your application. This is the bottom line and all that matters: literally, how your content affects your bottom line.

It's the only way to judge your content's success in 2018. It isn't to say likes, shares and love-hearts don't matter. They do to an extent, and they can help you gauge success. But, they do not define your success.

Once you get on board with this, it empowers you to go out and create your best content yet, unaffected by how many dopamine spikes it does or does not give you. Instead, you create relevant content for the right people at the right time, and measure the effect it has on your bottom line, so you can scale-up and take your business to seven figures and beyond.

Glen Gilmore, Principal at Gilmore Business Network, observes that a lot of people who are a part of the startup ecosystem in India don’t understand the real potential of social media. It is a great platform for startup entrepreneurs to connect with the right people whether it’s for obtaining venture capital, attracting the right talent or growing the community.

He thinks that the entrepreneurs should strike the right cord by deploying strategies that create a buzz on social media and generate interest among more and more people. They should leverage all possible tools and techniques to connect with the right community of people.  

“The strategy should be to share your passion because people in social media gravitate to the content that interests them. So whatever your startup is, if there is a genuine community then that community will find you if you are sharing your passion through social media by leveraging some of the tools and techniques be it hashtags, videos or live streaming,” added Glen Gilmore.

According to him, Indian entrepreneurs those he has come across are naturally charming and compassionate about their idea and the same charm should be shared along with their innovative ideas on the social media platforms.

“The Indian entrepreneurs that I have met are absolutely charming and they are on social media. They have to use the same social media platforms to share that charm along with great ideas,” acknowledged Glen.  

Finally, he believes that with time, entrepreneurs in India would be using social media to a greater effect and further goes on to state that “In the startup ecosystem of India, there are many talented young people and institutes like the IITs are providing a solid foundation to such creative minds to move forward with new startup ideas.” 

Sometimes when speaking to clients I’ve heard people say “oh, I can’t afford to spend thousands each month on Facebook ads!”

The truth is, however, you don’t need to spend a lot of money on Facebook ads when you’re just getting started.

Instead, I actually recommend it’s best to start with a small budget first and when you start getting results, you scale up and spend more.

WHAT IS A SMALL FACEBOOK BUDGET TO START OFF WITH?

This does depend from client to client, but for the majority of our clients (who are businesses with a professional service targeting other businesses) we recommend around £300 to £500 (or $300 to $500) as a good starting point.

For best results, if you can, I’d aim for £500 (or $500) as your Facebook budget to get started.

WHAT SHOULD YOU SPEND YOUR FACEBOOK BUDGET ON?

When you’re creating a Facebook paid advertising campaign you’ll see lots of different ways you can spend your money. You can increase your traffic, video views, engagement and leads.

My recommendation is to focus on what will bring you the best results.

In most cases, that is more leads.

So in your Facebook campaign, choose “Lead Generation” or “Conversions” as your campaign goal.

Then, focus on creating an offer where you give away a highly valuable free piece of content, in return for your potential clients contact details (such as their name and email).

MEASURE YOUR RESULTS

If this is your first time running Facebook ads, then don’t expect perfect results. It will take some time to measure what works and what doesn’t and it takes a little bit more time to test your offer so that you get the most amount of leads by spending the least amount of money.

One of the most important numbers to look at is your cost per lead.

You want to try to get this as low as possible.

The lower your cost per lead, the more leads you can generate (without paying more money).

HOW CAN YOU IMPROVE YOUR COST PER LEAD?

There are many variables but it’s mainly to do with your competition, your message and who your targeting.

In particular, if your message (your free piece of content) is going to be highly relevant to your target audience, Facebook will notice your good results and will reward with a higher “relevance score” which in turn reduces your cost per lead and your advertising costs.

SCALE UP ONCE YOU GET GOOD RESULTS

By testing different offers, target audiences, images, text, etc in your adverts, you can see what one’s perform better and get you a lower cost per click.

Once you’ve tested it to a reasonable level (where you’re getting a good amount of leads that you’re happy with and you’re happy with how much you’re paying per lead) then you can scale up and spend more (if you want to get even more results).

THINK ABOUT WHAT HAPPENS AFTER YOU GENERATE LEADS

Generating leads is the first part of a successful social media strategy, but the second part, which is lead conversion is also very important.

Once you start generating leads on Facebook, make sure you also have a plan for converting these leads into paying clients.
You can do this through email marketing, content marketing, live events, webinars, and so on.

As always, if you need any help with running your Facebook ads (through training or our done-for-you services) you can reach out to me here.

Are you interested in learning how well you’re performing on Twitter? How many people are viewing your tweets? How many new followers you’ve gained?

You can find all of this information and more for free, without using any 3rd party tools, by using Twitter Analytics.

HOW TO GET STARTED WITH TWITTER ANALYTICS

To get started, go to https://analytics.twitter.com and you’ll be able to sign in to your Twitter Analytics account.

A lot of people don’t even know that this exists – but it’s completely free and available to everyone that has Twitter.

You can use Twitter Analytics to manage both your paid advertising and organic stats.

For the purpose of this article, I’ll be focusing on how to use Twitter Analytics for measuring your organic growth.

YOUR TWITTER ANALYTICS MONTHLY SUMMARY

The first thing I normally check when I log into my Twitter Analytics is the summary. The summary will give you a snapshot view each month of the amount of Tweets you’ve sent out, your Tweet impressions, profile visits, mentions, and new followers.

Here is a screenshot of my summary for last month:

Top tip: On its own, this data is great, helping you be able to see a quick snapshot of how you’re performing. But if you track this data month-on-month, over a longer period of time, then you will be seeing much clearer trends of how you’re performing.

YOUR TWITTER ANALYTICS TWEET HIGHLIGHTS

Next to your summary, Twitter will also give you data on your Top Tweet, Top Mention, Top Follower and Top Media Tweet for that month. This is good to see some of your high-level engagement across the Twitter platform.

Here is a screenshot of some of my Tweet highlights for last month:

YOUR MONTHLY TOP TWEETS

If you click on “Tweets” at the top of the page, you’ll be able to see how many Tweets you sent out each month day and how many views, engagements and clicks you got.

You can click on the ‘choose date’ button, on the right of the page, to choose the time period you want to see your most popular Tweets from.

In the example above I’ve selected ‘January 2018’.

Next you’ll be able to select ‘Top Tweets’ to see your most popular tweets based on impressions and engagements for the time period you selected.

Impressions means how many times your tweet was seen (this could also mean the same person saw it multiple times). Engagement means how many times someone clicked on your tweet.

Looking at my top tweets each months allows me to see what my target audience are most interested in and what content gets seen or clicked on the most. I can then focus future tweets to talk about similar kind of content.

For example, it seems like a lot of people in my audience like the idea of working remotely. And I’m not surprised, since that’s exactly the type of people I love working with.

YOUR TWITTER AUDIENCE ANALYTICS

The next button at the top of your Twitter Analytics page is ‘Audience’. It allows you to see how many new people have followed you and what kind of people you have following you.

Here is a screenshot of my Twitter audience for the last 30 days:

As you can see, it’s growing steadily each month, with over 600 new followers every 30 days.

If you keep scrolling down, you’ll be able to see lots of data on the type of people you follow as well.

This gives me a rough idea of whether the type of people we are attracting are those that could be our potential client. In my case, I’m targeting professionals, business people and self-employed people – all of which are within my target audience.

It’s also worth noting that this data isn’t a complete list of your whole Twitter audience. In fact, it’s only a small snapshot of those from some of your audience. Twitter has to partner with other data companies in order to get this information, and it doesn’t yet have this data for the majority of its users. Still, it does give you a rough idea of the quality and types of people following you.

IT’S NOT ALL ABOUT “FOLLOWERS, LIKES AND ENGAGEMENT”

Although it’s great to see new followers, likes and engagement, in my opinion this isn’t the most important thing you need to be tracking. The most important thing you need to be tracking is the amount of leads and sales you generate in your business.

On Twitter, are you tracking how many leads you’re generating?

Are you even generating new leads with potential clients each month?

If you’d like to learn how you can do that, for free, then sign up to my online training session on ‘How to generate leads using Twitter for your business’. Look forward to seeing you there!