BUILD A PRO SOCIAL MEDIA PRESENCE IN 7 STEPS

Life is too short to make all the mistakes yourself (that’s what my career coach says!)

If you’re ready to get serious, and strategic about your social media planning and systems, keep reading. Save the five years of rigorously reading, attending conferences, trial and error, and get a digital download of my brain!

My mission is to teach small businesses how to use social media. I know you have an amazing idea, service, or product and you deserve just as much exposure, or more, than the big companies with giant marketing teams.

Social media levels the playing field.

I've seen how social media builds businesses and can provide income, choices, and opportunities. I hope these skills will help all your wildest dreams come true.

This step-by-step process can be applied to any industry.

STEP 1: GET REALLY CLEAR ON YOUR BRAND, MISSION, AND GOALS

This consists of identifying your mission statement, your dream client avatar, goals of your business as well as your social media presence, and how you want to come off to your readers.

If you hold these in mind as you go through the next steps, and create all content going forward, your message will stay clear. Your dream clients will find you (instead of being confused if you’re the right fit for them) and your non-dream clients will move along (instead of clogging up your pipeline).

STEP 2: DECIDE WHICH PLATFORMS ON WHICH TO START.

Biting off more than you can chew is a recipe for overwhelm. You’ll tire before you build any momentum.

You can make this decision based on which platforms you enjoy the most OR where you think your dream clients are spending their free time.

This isn’t a fad decision….if TikTok is the hottest platform, will you dedicate time learning it or are you going to stick to what you know?

Once you DO decide on a platform, you’ll need to optimize your profiles. Try to keep the same username across all platforms. Even if you have no intention of starting on a platform now, you can at least register your account and claim your username.

Each platform is different but overall, you’re going to be very intentional about the words you type as you have very minimal space. You can put some version of your mission statement here.

Make sure it’s clear what you do, who you do it for, and how they can take action when they’re ready.

STEP 3: BRAINSTORM CONTENT IDEAS.

I have an entire guide on this in the Social Media Playbook but here are some ideas to get started.

Start a document, notepad, some sort of list and answer the following questions.

-how did you get started or discover your niche?

-what are common myths?

-what kinds of problems did you solve this week?

-what’s the first step new customers take with you? Sign up for emails? Book a certain type of appt? Schedule a call? Make sure this is a regular type of post on your socials.

You can also search Google, Answer the Public and social media for most post ideas.

I find I have so many ideas after a meeting with a new client. I either record a bunch of reels immediately afterward and save them as drafts, or I put them in my list.

Once you’ve done this, plug the ideas into a content calendar. (Yes, you guessed it! I have a template ready for you when you get the Social Media Playbook.)

Make sure at least every 5th post is a promotional one, talking about your services and inviting people to book.

STEP 4: CREATE CONTENT EASILY (I HAVE ALL THE HACKS!)

You don’t have to record the content while you’re creating content. Save time by doing similar tasks all at once.

Since you’ve already made a list of the topics from the previous step, think about what kinds of things you could do on camera to pair with those messages.

The first thing I tell people is to create a content bank. This is an album in your phone with short video clips and photos you can pair with your messages on social media. It can be a simple video of you walking down the sidewalk.

Make it a daily practice to film a simple video and put it in your special folder.

(One of my favorite hacks is to use the caption in stories or carousel posts. Pictured)

STEP 5: POST AND SCHEDULE.

I love to use a scheduling tool for my clients (Metricool). For myself, I have set up an automation. Since I’m an Instagram girl through and through, I get ideas and create for IG. Using Repurpose.IO, I have every reel auto-post to YouTube Shorts, LinkedIn, and TikTok. Instagram has a feature that auto publishes to Facebook, since they’re both owned by Meta. As of the time of this writing, this is my absolute favorite way to post.

STEP 6: BUILD COMMUNITY.

You can’t just post and ghost.

Set it and forget it.

No way.

You have to engage, too. You have to be social on social media. (Crazy, huh!?)

Yes, for the algorithm, but also because we want to build connection and trust with real humans, too. Here are some ways to get started.

Ask questions in your posts, reels, and stories.

Reply to every comment and message.

Actively look for accounts in your niche, who are more advanced than you. Look in their comments and see if any comments have unanswered questions. See if you can be a resource in that topic.

STEP 7: DO MORE OF WHAT WORKS AND REPEAT.

Check-in with your analytics and see what you can find.

Are more women or men seeing your content? Could you/would you update the perspective in your reels knowing you’re talking to that demographic?

Look at your top-performing posts and look for trends. Did you use a trending audio? Was this short or long video? Could you take the same topic and repurpose it differently?

If you’d like more detail on any of these steps, there are templates, downloads, screenshots and more detail in the Social Media Playbook. It’s literally a summary of what I’ve learned in the 5+ years I’ve been devouring social media strategies.

So many step-by-step guides in one place.