If you’ve ever thought that social media for your business isn’t working, or maybe that you’re not getting it right (because everyone LOVES talking about how great it is), this post is for you.
The way you’re using social media is costing you money, losing you business and wasting your time. Here’s how to stop that and use social media for your WordPress business, right.
Note: If you pick up a few tricks for your customers and help them use social for their business better too, I won’t tell 😉
Build a website, get a Facebook page, invite your friends and family to like it (cheers Mum) and get a Twitter profile. This has been happening for so long, that it almost seems like common sense. Obviously, this is how you use social media to generate leads.
Except, this is total nonsense and doesn’t work at all.
Here’s how most businesses envisage using social media:
We set up a website to show off what we do and let people contact us. Facebook pages let us find an audience of people who might like what we do. Twitter apparently lets us have conversations with our market.
However, what exactly is it that we’re using social for? Is it lead generation, to talk to customers or market research? What does our business get out of us spending time on our different social platforms?
The Truth About Social Media
The truth about social media is a little ugly. So read on if you want to discover the dark secret to using social media for your business.
First, don’t get sucked into the false strategy that a lot of massive, large brand businesses use. Duracell, Ritz Crackers and Cif have millions of followers – but for what? A few awful videos about using crackers instead of pizza? I’m not saying people don’t love their products, but their social media content has a lot to be desired.
Or how about Monster Energy Drink, or Microsoft? They produce exciting, adrenaline pumped content AND people use their products! Yep and if you’ve got a budget of $270 million, then go ahead and create that content. It certainly will get shared, but unfortunately, we don’t have millions to spend on grabbing people’s attention.
Here’s How Social Media Should Work For Businesses…
First, you need something to say. Lisa Simpson knew this back in 2000. It’s such an important part of having a website. Yet many businesses neglect the most important part: having a voice; having something to say.
It could be that you want to help customers with a certain task. Maybe you want to update customers on a recent event or news that helps their business.
If you don't have content to share or anything useful to give away, then you won't get traffic full stop. It's imperative that you have free content that’s valuable and that your customers want to read. The biggest mistake businesses and marketers make is that they expect to grow an audience without giving them anything to read, watch, listen to or consume.
The truth is that you need content to have any chance of exploiting social media for your business. Agency Mavericks has a content planning guide specifically to help you create more content to share and quickly too. Even if you’re not a writer.
Wrong Place at the Wrong Time
Next, social media is used in the wrong place and the wrong part of a customer lifecycle. If you want to seriously help your customers, offer them private access to a Facebook group instead of trying to grow likes or followers on a page.
When someone signs up with an email address, offer them free access to your private group, then share better and more specific content with that group. Treat a Facebook group like growing an email list of leads. But instead of an email database, they are followers inside your social group.
Social media is better suited to people who have already interacted with you. Building a list of interested leads and customers lets you communicate and talk with those customers inside of social media. You should be having conversations with your customers in a private area and offering them help.
Smarter Than Your A-v-erage Bear
Here's where we can get really clever.
The questions that your customers and leads ask inside the group are exactly what you should be writing about on your blog.
Instead of driving traffic from social media to your website, start driving cold traffic to your website from other sources. Then, continue sharing higher quality content with those who follow you.
Paid social media and paid ads, certainly have an important role to play with traffic. We found that if we drive cold traffic to our most popular blog posts, we can re-market to that same user later with more specific content. Instead of trying to grow a page of likes, start trying to grow a list of social media leads and a group of interested and engaged people.
Don’t Try to Outsmart Human Nature
Finally, social media is best used when we're already having conversations with other people. Don't try to cheat or use quick solutions to something that we've been doing for thousands of years. We’ve been building networks with other humans forever. And every time, it’s always been based on helping each other or having an opinion/voice to follow.
You're just trying to build a network with other people that follow you. If you give content that's genuinely useful to an audience that listens to you, you'll have no end of quality traffic, and you’re nurturing leads at the same time.
Some of the most interesting conversations and topics that we've had that Agency Mavericks, have come straight out of our Private Facebook group. Some of our members are so dedicated and smart, that they'll help other members with specific and complex problems. This in turn provides us with a wealth of interesting and specific content that we can share with our leads audience and people that don't know we exist.
Clever huh?
Takeaway
So to sum up, start having something to say and share with the right people. The truth is that you're probably going to need to buy traffic, but once you start getting people in a closed group, much like building a list, you can share that content with them and start nurturing leads.
How does that sound for a start to social media? Maybe something that you could try and use to generate more leads? Let us know in the comments below if you’ve used a process like this with your leads, or if you’re keen to give it a try.
Remember to sign up to download our complete course on getting better clients with bigger budgets. It’s a free email course that covers everything you need to start getting the leads your business deserves.
