As an Entrepreneur If You Are Doing the Following, You Are Doing a Great Job On Social Media

I have been consulting a lot with clients lately about their social media strategies and something over the past few weeks; something stood out to me. Lots of entrepreneurs do not understand some of the fundamentals of using Social Media for business. I never thought that I would find myself trying to convince a “Marketer” to put out content that has practical value for clients. I didn’t think I would have to say to a digital entrepreneur that you need to have a Facebook page to run ads. I didn’t know that I will have to convince someone who spent the last six years in marketing that developing thought leadership will not negatively affect you. I couldn’t understand how being known as an expert in your field will reflect poorly on you. Nevertheless, these are some of the things I had to deal with, so today I decided to write this post for all the awesome people out there doing social media right.

You are doing social media right if you are doing the following:

1-    Your Branding is consistent across different social media profiles– When someone goes from your Facebook to your twitter and then Linkedin etc., is your cover photo and profile consistent or do people have to wonder if you are the same company or brand? If you are consistent, you are doing a good job.

2-    You are posting value-based content and not only sales pieces– ask yourself, is all the content you post on social media about buying your product or service? Or do you post valuable content that people can benefit from? If you mix your sales pieces with other value-based content, you are doing a good job.

3-    Your social media profiles are optimized – Do you have a well-written bio, is your about section on Facebook complete? did you claim your page’s username on Facebook? Is your website link visible? Can people tell what you do after visiting your profiles once? Are you using your cover photos to push your business? If yes, then kudos to you

4-    You are using the recommended size images for the different profiles – Nothing grinds my gear more than seeing someone post a flyer as their cover image and the size is all over the place. If you are using the correct image sizes then well done.

5-    You understand what each platform is used for– Do you know that Facebook is not Twitter and Twitter is not Instagram so you can’t just create one piece of content and try to post it all over. You do understand that you need to be storytelling on each platform in a way that’s native to these platforms, right?

6-    You are staying up to date on the latest trends in Social Media – You must understand by now that social media changes on a daily basis and what may be a best practice today may be obsolete tomorrow. That’s one of the reasons I don’t call myself a Social media expert; I find its hard to be an expert in something that changes so frequently, I prefer to call myself a practitioner. If you are staying up to date then well done.

7-    You understand the principles of storytelling? – You know that stories are the currencies of conversations and that stories move people to action more than raw facts and numbers ever could. Ok, right so you understand that.

8-    You know what causes content to spread online– Do you know that positive content spreads more than negative ones and that making your content emotional will get you more bang for your buck? You do understand the concept of providing practical value right? Ok good, you understand that so you are doing good, keep it up

If you are having problems with any of the above, don’t stress yourself out, there is hope, reach out to me and lets chat.