How To Market Your Business On Social Media

So if you’re watching this video, you’re interested in knowing how to market your business on social media and we’ve got Michelle McCullough here. She is the one that I go to, that I admire in this realm, So, I’m excited for you to learn from her wisdom.

Hi, I’m excited to share this video with you about how to market your business through social media. But before we dive into social media itself, we have to set a few foundational principles that will lead this conversation today. The first is, I want to share with you my definition of marketing. Now there are a lot of definitions of marketing out there and while I share this message when I am speaking on stages about marketing all across the country and through many webinars reaching people throughout the world you will never find this specific definition in any textbook. That said, I think it’s really important to understand the principles I’m about to share with you.

To me, marketing is sharing the right messages, to the right masses, through the right mediums. And I like to think it about like this triangle, that you’re sharing the right messages, through the right mediums, to reach the right masses. Now again I’m a sucker for alliteration so they all start with M because of course, marketing. But as you think about each of these things, it takes three things to make marketing and so people will say, “Oh long spending so much time on Facebook” and they’ll either, some of them are spending eight hours a day on Facebook and I said, “oh how’s that working out for you?” they’re like, “well I’m growing my following and it’s great”. So there’s one other piece to this marketing equation we have to have in place that while marketing is sharing the right messages, to the right masses, through the right mediums, the trick is is that you have to be making money. Okay, now I know that’s what we all want and I know that’s why you’re here watching this video because you want to make money with your marketing. But we have to understand this first because otherwise if you’re spending so much time in social media but it’s not bringing you an ROI, I don’t call that marketing I call that wasting your time. Now stay with me because I’m going to share with you how to overcome this challenge. Because it can be tempting to spend many hours online. For some of us, it can be free or low cost.

Advertising is cheaper now than it’s ever been before. That said, I still feel like it’s important for you to create a plan when marketing online. Now, many people do what I call reverse marketing and that’s where they pick their medium before they understand who their target market is and what messages they want to share. So we’re going to put these in any kind of order you need to understand and who your target market is first. Not if you should be playing on Facebook, not if you should have a snapchat strategy, not if you should be on Twitter, or even create a YouTube channel for that matter. You need to start with your audience and you need to ask yourself, “where is my audience playing? where will I see my audience the most? and where will my messages best work to reach that audience? Because while social media is wonderful and we can do more with social media now that we could with almost any other outlet through the years, social media still has limitations because your messages are quick, short, and concise. And sometimes people will pay to watch your video and other things but they’re coming on social media not to buy from you. They’re coming online for information and connection. And so if you think through these things the most important part about marketing your business online is by creating a strategic plan. Now, if you’ve watched some of these videos, or if you’ll watch some more and I hope you will. You’ll hear me be a broken record about a couple of principles and the first one is the plan is the four-letter word for success. We might hate planning, but really if you want a strategic social media strategy, it starts with a great plan. It starts with understanding who your market is, it starts with creating objectives so that you know if your social media marketing is working for you or not. And I think, that you need four main objectives to your social media strategy. The first is, What’s your growth strategy? How much do you want to grow your following in the next 12 months? for some people, it’s 10%. For some people, it’s 25% and depending on where you currently are, that number might be different. If you’re just getting started, you might want to increase your following by a hundred percent or four hundred percent. So think through the numbers first. But that’s not the only objective that’s important. The second objective is to make sure that you’re marking traffic from your website. How much increased traffic would you like to have come from your social media strategy? Now well you may not have a crystal ball, no one in marketing ever does. But, if you don’t have a goal in mind to shoot for? then nothing else matters on your social media strategy. So make sure that of these objectives that I talked about, that you think about them. and you actually write down what your objectives will be for the next 12 months. And then after 12 months come, you have something to look at. See what worked what didn’t, and you can make new objectives moving forward.

So, the first one is increasing your social following. The second one is increasing traffic to your website. The third metric that I hope that you have for your social media strategy is increasing your email list. I believe that your email is a gold mine when it comes to your social strategy and being able to continue the conversation above and beyond the social networks that you choose is really important. And, it’s also a piece of your home court advantage while your website is your home court and Facebook is Facebook’s home court, when you’re playing as a visitor you need to do everything you can to get people to your home court. Getting them to your website, getting them to your location or brick-and-mortar store, or office, and getting them to your email list is an extension of your home court advantage. So those objectives are really important. The fourth one is of course objective and objective for an increase in sales. Now as an organization, I know you want your sales to increase and you probably have objectives already set company-wide but think about the objectives that you really want to have happen in your sales specifically for your social media. And understanding these four different objectives will help you make sure that you’re reaching the right masses, sharing the right messages, and then choosing the right social media mediums for you and your business. But if you don’t spend time thinking about that you just say, “oh I want to be on Facebook, oh I want to be on LinkedIn” then you’re missing the most critical part of marketing your business online and that’s creating a plan and a structure for your business. Okay now the second piece, now that you have your objective set, it’s important for you to build a narrative. Now when I talk about building a narrative through your social media strategy, it’s easy to think of big brands like chat books if you haven’t seen what their most recent video series take some time to go watch it not only is it a great insight in marketing but you’ll also laugh a little as well. But they are clear on who their target market is and they are clear on the mediums that work best for them and you can tell that just by watching their videos. other video narratives that I love are the poopourri company, I did just say that on a video but I’m going to go with it if you haven’t seen that narrative you should go see it. And, the third one is the purple mattress company that recently came out with a simple video series that tells their story. Now, if you’re a small business you’re probably thinking to yourself, “but Michelle, I don’t have millions of dollars to spend on a video strategy like that.” that’s okay. You still have the ability to build a narrative and if you want this to be proven, I want you to go watch one of my favorite, what I call, “low budget videos” called the clever cutter. You can find it right here on YouTube. Of course listen to me to the very end. Take notes and then later go back and watch these. But the clever cutter video if you look at it, it looks like somebody made it on their phone but it tells the story that they need told for people to know that their kitchen appliance is going to work. But you can tell the difference between the value in the budget on chat books and the clever cutters but they both still sell millions of dollars of product a year. Do what’s right for your business. Now, whether you’re a small business owner, or a large business owner, maybe even a marketing executive in a large corporation, it all starts with making sure that you understand that your mindset is set for success in creating that narrative. Now, if you’re a small business I love the quote by Brendon Burchard that says, “don’t let your small business make you small minded” and that is really important. One of the things that I know to be true about building a strong and successful social media strategy is that you can build it like a big business on a small business budget.

You just have to make sure the plan is in place. But that narrative is a key part what message do you want to be crystal clear to your audience in the next 12 months? Because that’s part of your objectives and part of your plan. If you don’t know what messages are right, you might find that your message will not work in the social media outlet that you want to play in. You might find that it will work better in a different outlet. So, understanding this trifecta of marketing is really where the money is it’s not just about the medium. But then, once you know that all these things are in harmony that it’s really easy to build a strong and successful strategy online. Now, above and beyond creating your objectives and building a narrative we actually need to go to work and start implementing some of these strategies. So how does that work? Number one, I’m going to recommend that you use video in some way shape or form. Ten years ago, I wouldn’t have recommended that for you. Because everything was text. Five years ago, I might have just recommended that you use picture graphics. And while picture graphics are great today, you still need to have a video strategy. This video strategy is part of my marketing system and it’s also part of the hero TV plan. Knowing that video needs to be a piece of it. But do video your own way. well you may not be able to have an expensive production or a studio shoot, there are so many things that you can do with the technology with the phones that you have in your pocket and even the computer the video cameras that you have on your laptops. Now, some technology and all technology is created equal and I can even feel my videographer right now going “Don’t tell people all that. Make sure they do it the right way” But what I know for sure is that you have to do it the right way for you. And then time you’ll be able to afford the studio and the strategy but you can’t wait until you can do that to build a solid video strategy online because social media has to exist in the video realm.

Now that’s not the only way. You have to have other content too. You still have great texts and cool graphics and you can do all of that on a budget and on a dime. But, you need to make sure that you’re building out some type of video message. Whether it’s a consistent video series that you put out every single week on a Facebook live, whether it’s that you decide that you’re going to snapchat behind the scenes in your office, or even if you’re just going to create how-to videos like this to share on YouTube or LinkedIn, some kind of video strategy is an important part and it’s really quick and fast easy way to share your narrative with your audience. Butt of course, it goes above and beyond video and if you’re not ready for that yet, there are still pieces of your social media strategy that will work in creating consistent content. So check out some of the videos we have now and coming up and stay tuned with the hero TV channel because we have all kinds of videos in store for you about how to create content, how to grow your following, and part of that making it work within your strategy and creating your social strategies that’s right for you.

This is just the beginning. So I’m excited to share more. But the last tip, that I want to leave with you in terms of building and marketing your business online through social media, is make sure that you continue to provide value. Books didn’t just say, “hey put all of your pictures in this little book and we’re going to send it to you.” they provided value through humor and entertainment. Other people, other businesses, other brands, provide value through education. How to series advice. How will you provide value to your audience? So that they know that you care about them as an individual, as a customer, and so that they know that you’re the right company for them when they make that choice. it all depends on the content that you create. Now more than ever, it’s easy for you to have a microphone in the media. In the past, when I was growing up and 15 years ago and 20 years ago when I was in college we had to get somebody else or by that time, or hope it through public relations we could get on an interview and have all the kinds of content and things that we were shared and now we can do that for ourselves. We have the opportunity to be the media through social media online but it won’t work without a strategy and it won’t work without understanding and making sure that your customer is number one as you consider every piece of your social media content.

So, wish you all the best as you create the right social media strategy for your business and if you begin with the objectives in mind, you’ll find great success in reaching your target market. Happy marketing. Alright, thanks so much for watching this video and of course thanks Michelle for sharing your wisdom. You talked about the iPhone and wondered, if I would recommend that? I have to say the iPhone not this one, but the previous version I have this this is how I got started in video. Even professionally. So people would hire me they have the teleprompter the lighting but I was filming with my iPhone. Highly recommend it. You don’t need the big fancy equipment unless you have a reason. The main reason for this camera, so I can blur stuff in the background. you don’t always need to blur stuff in the background that’s the one thing that you can’t do with this. So use this, it’s better to use this and be on social media than to be hung up on all the the equipment. Get started. Yeah. So, hopefully you found value in this video and if you did subscribe, there’s new episodes every single day. And remember to live on purpose, make a difference, and be the hero.