One of the most common questions I get asked is how business owners can use social media to market themselves.
There seems to be a lot of overwhelm out there in terms of how to use social media to market yourself. With new tools available all the time, and then older tools acquiring new features (I’m looking at you Instagram!), it’s enough to make anyone’s head spin.
The good news is you can use social media in small ways to market yourself. At the end of the day, it’s a whole lot of little actions that add up over time anyway. Keep that in mind as you implement social media in some small ways.
Show behind the scenes.
Do you want to know what audiences on social media love? Behind the scenes content. I’m serious. They eat it up!
I’m going to go out on a limb here and assume that the reason behind the scenes content is so popular is because we have this craving for public figures and businesses to pull back the curtain and show us their real lives. In a constantly connected world, we’re ironically craving real connection.
One of the ways you can do this is by using the Instagram Stories feature (or Snapchat if you’re still into it). For example, I’ll do small videos where I explain marketing concepts as I’m working on them. It gives some behind the scenes of my business as well as provides value for social media followers.
It doesn’t take a whole lot to do this either. The videos are literally 10 seconds. It’s simply a matter of remembering to do it.
Livestream while you’re working.
A few days ago I was interviewing the founder of a local meetup group for freelancers for my podcast. I posted about it on Instagram and instantly received requests to livestream the interview. Since the people asked for it, we gave it to them.
It ended up being an excellent idea. Not only did I show viewers how I set up for a podcast interview (that’s the behind the scenes stuff I was talking about), we also took live questions from the audience while I was recording.
It was a hit! And all we had to do was fire up Instagram and start a live video of us filming something we were already doing anyway!
So rather than trying to invent new content all the time, you can use social media to show people what you’re already doing.
Share wins.
Another small way you can use social media is to share wins with your audience as they happen.
Did you get featured in the press? Snap a picture of the article and post it on social.
Did you hit a new milestone? Post about it on Facebook.
Did a client text you an amazing testimonial? Ask them for permission to use it, take a screen shot and put it on Instagram.
The Bottom Line
It’s not difficult to use social media to market yourself if you remember that it’s all about small actions that add up over time. By taking it one step at a time and using social media in some of the ways mentioned in this post, you can cut out the overwhelm.
