Your Most Burning Questions Answered!
I was so excited with the response I got from all of you when I reached out to you the other day to see what your most burning questions were about marketing your business with social media. One of the things I love most about my job is that I get to help other entrepreneurs … when I first started my business online almost 5 years ago I had a lot to learn, I was brand new to online marketing and I spent hours and hours behind my computer learning everything I could possibly learn about how to market my business. I know how it is to have a dream and work your little butt off to try to succeed but still feel like the learning curve is too high to make any progress. That’s why it is my utmost pleasure to answer your questions and help you in any way I can to grow your online business. I want to see you succeed and I love being a resource for you.
I received a ton of questions so today I am going to do my best to answer a bunch of them and then next week I will cover some more of them in case I can’t get them all into one blog post!
Here are your answers to your most burning questions about social media marketing:
- How do you know what form of social media your target market uses most? This all comes down to knowing your target market on a personal level. The different social media platforms do cater somewhat to different markets so it depends on your niche and where you think they hang out. An example of working through this would be if your target market is women who like to cook, Pinterest is a great platform to be on, people pin 1000’s of recipes per day on Pinterest and it is a great place to connect with women. Do some research on each platform to see what age groups , gender, etc… are active users (you can do this just by typing that into a google search) and then compare that to your target markets demographics.
- How do you know what hashtags are most effective?? Are people using hashtags on Facebook?
Hashtags can be used in several ways. You can use them to target readily used keywords in your market on social media platforms and you can also create your own hashtags to brand your own hashtags based on a promotion, class, or sale you may be doing. So it depends on your goals. Here is a great article written by Social Media Examiner giving a lot of great advice on the proper use of hashtags. When it comes to using hashtags on Facebook, yes people are using them and they can be very effective if used correctly. A great way to start your research is to type in your best focused keywords with the hashtag symbol on Facebook and Twitter and see if other people are using it and also how they are using it. Paying attention to what the experts in your market are using also will be a good first step.
- What types of posts are most effective on which media type? This depends on your market/niche and what they most respond to. Short and concise posts work best on Twitter because you only have 140 characters to work with. Pinterest and Instagram are all pictures and videos. But Facebook can be all types of posts so my best advice is to do some testing on your page with your market. Do each type of post throughout the day and then go to your insights on your page to see which posts got the most interaction, likes, and comments, and also what time of day did the best. Using your analytics and insights is going to be your best tool for finding what works best for your page and your niche. Test Test Test and then make adjustments as needed for best results.
- I heard something about images with red and orange being the most repinned on Pinterest. Are there other things like this that would be helpful? Using bright colors to draw attention to your posts is very helpful in getting them to stand out. This is also a great strategy when using FB ads. The internet is a very busy place so it is always helpful to do things that will catch your potential customers eye. But the real key is to provide value … that is the number one thing that will connect you with people and keep them coming back for more.
- What do you do to most quickly turn “Likers” in to shoppers? Unfortunately there is no “quick fix” for turning Likers into shoppers, that all happens by building a relationship with your Fans. Using social media for your marketing is not a quick sale strategy it is a relationship building tool. Customers in today’s world want relationship and want to get to know the businesses they are shopping with. The know. like, and trust factors are huge when it comes to online shopping and building a consistent trustworthy relationship with your social media connections is the first step in converting them into customers.
- I am not Facebook developer and I need something simple to help grow my fans. You don’t need to be a developer to put a strategy in place to grow your FB Fans. The number one thing I do to grow my business pages on Facebook is Facebook ads. You can target your potential customers very specifically in your ad campaigns and you can also do it for a very small budget per day and still be effective.
- I don’t have a lot of time to actually put into it, but I don’t want to give up on it either. What do you think is a good way to start out and be able to maximize what time you do have to put into using social media to try to promote a business to get customers and other potential distributors? The biggest time saver I know of when doing your social media is using a service like Hootesuite to manage your social media pages and schedule out your posts. This is a one stop shop for being able to manage all of your social media channels from one place and also allows you to systemize your social media schedule by planning it out and scheduling. The other option is to hire a social media manager to manage it for you.
I hope these questions and answers were helpful to you. As you can see by the questions a lot of people have the same challenges when learning how to market with social media. There are a lot of different social media platforms available to market your business with, if you are just starting out my biggest suggestion is to pick one or two platforms to start with, master them and start getting results and then add in more platforms as you grow.
Let me know if you have any more questions … I am always available on my Facebook Page https://www.facebook.com/MarketingMomma as a resource for you. Stop by and let me know what types of topics you are interested in and I will do my best to include them in my upcoming trainings. If you didn’t see your question answered this week don’t worry I will cover the rest of the questions I received next week so stay tuned! 🙂
To Your Success!
Kate Wilber
The Marketing Momma
If these answers were helpful to you but you have more questions you need answered you can always hop on the phone with me for a few minutes. Just schedule your call here 302-259-1644