5 Free & Simple Ways to Get Started Using Social Media Marketing To Get More Clients!

When it comes to social media marketing, the common phrases that I here are:

I don’t know where to start
How do I get started?
I am a complete newbie, what are my first steps?

Many social media marketers will probably tell you to get on Facebook because that’s where 1 billion of your potential clients are hanging out. While Facebook is definitely a great social media platform to promote your business, it’s not the end all to everything social media. That’s why I came up with a mini-guide to help you get unstuck, and show you how to really get started with using social media to build your business and make more money. How does that sound? Great! Let’s get started.

Find out your reason for being on social media- If you ask anyone why they are on social media, they will probably tell you because it’s the hot new way to get leads, or all their competitors are joining all these social networking sites so they have to follow the crowd. The first step to getting started with social media is actually finding out your reason for being on social media. Think about what you are trying to accomplish. Are you trying to do the following?

Build brand awareness
Increase leads
Build a community
Promote your content
Make joint venture connections

Whatever you reason is for being on social media, make sure it is for a metric you want to measure, and NOT because everyone else in your profession is jumping on the band wagon.

Find out what platform your audience is on- Now that you have a better understanding on why you should be on social media, you need to find out where you audience is hanging out. This can be tricky because everyone and their Mamma is on Facebook, and I know you want to jump on that social media train right away. But, not so fast Lone Ranger, it’s going to take a little bit of research to find out who’s your best target audience. Think about your products/services and offers, and think about how your ideal customers will use them.

How to find out what social media sites your target audience is on?

The best way to find out what social media sites your potential clients are hanging out on is to simply ask your existing customers. If you sell a product and service to the same demographic, they all seem to hang out on the same social media sites in most cases. Simply ask your current customers what sites they hang out on, and why. This will give you a gauge to figure out what social media networks will be the best use of your time.

Spy on your competitors- Surely if you are in business, you have competitors. Why invest thousands in market research when you can simply take an hour or two to see what your competitors are up to? So pick 3-5 of your top competitors and see what social media sites they are touting on their website, but don’t stop there! Once you find out what social media sites they are on, go visit each and every one of those social media sites. Yes, each and every one of those social media sites. You need to look for the following-

- How many fans and followers on each

- How many people are commenting on a consistent basis

- What kind of content their audience is responding to the most

- What social media sites seems to be the most beneficial to your competitors

Sometimes, you just have to throw spaghetti on the wall and see what sticks!

Once you find out where your target audience is hanging out the most, now you can start narrowing down to 1-2 social media sites you can play around with first. I usually recommend just 1 so you can learn all the ins, outs, bells and whistles, then move to the next one.

Where your clients come from may surprise you!

If you are a little more advanced, you may want to start with 1-3 networks and throw spaghetti on the wall and see what sticks. For example, when I was setting up a few of my clients and myself on social media, I was surprised to see where we all got clients from. Take my local air condition guy for example; I was for sure that he was going to get most of his leads and clients from LinkedIn. But that certainly didn’t happen; he got his 1^st sale from Twitter and then a few of his leads from Facebook. As for myself, I thought that all my clients were going to come from LinkedIn. After all, my social media gal pal was crushing it on LinkedIn. I quickly realized that Facebook was my bread and butter. Therefore I mastered and I still am mastering the ever-changing Facebook to get most of my clients.

3. Find out what kind of content they want- Here’s the thing; when it comes to social media or business for that matter, no one really cares about you. But they do care about what you can do for them. I can bet you $ 100 dollars that no one wants to hear that you are the best and the greatest! However, they do want to hear how you can help them and solve their problem.

How to find out what type of content your social media audience wants to absorb

When it comes to social media marketing, you have to figure out exactly what type of content your audience likes to absorb. There are a few ways to do this, but the best three ways that I love and abide by are:

- Study your competitors again. Surely if they are engaging and responding on your competitor’s website, they will engage and absorb the same kind of content you offer. Be aware if your competitors are offering video, links, graphics, pictures or a mixture of both. Take note of their behaviors and how they interact and respond to each form of content. Hard work? Well, if you don’t have clients now, understanding their behavior is crucial to your social media success.

- Ask them! Ooh my favorite strategy is asking your customers straight out what they want. You can do this by simply posting a question on social media. The question can be just as simple as: Hey what kind of topics would you like to learn more about? Or you can go a little deeper and survey your audience with free tools like Survey Monkey. Most of the time, your clients are lazy, and they don’t want to think. Therefore, you have to create a compelling survey that is multiple choice. There is an art and science to asking the right types of questions on your survey.

- Amazon- If you are struggling to get a lot of responses to your survey, you can always go to Amazon.com and type in the keywords for your industry. For example, let’s say that you are a personal trainer. So you would go to Amazon and look for books on weight loss and exercise. The key is to look at comments and reviews of the bestselling book in your industry. You want to look for common words that keep popping up. If you keep seeing “lose belly fat”, or “need more energy”, then you know that this is the kind of content your audience is looking for. On the contrary, there is going to be a few or a lot of upset people who didn’t receive value from the book in question, and they will complain. Listen to their complaints and concerns. And if there are enough complaints, you can fill a gap in the market place and structure your content around what your competition is lacking.

4. Deliver the content your audience wants – Now this can be tricky, because you have to know what site you are working with. Instagram and Pinterest are great for pictures and videos, while Twitter and LinkedIn are great for short and snippy text post. Well, my first love, Facebook, it’s perfect for all forms of content, at least in my opinion. If you did your research, you will be able to tell which kind of content your audience responds to the best. To make it easy for you, I would just start off with simple tips. I am sure you know your audience very well by now that you can come up with 30 tips that will delight your fans and followers. Going back to the personal trainer example. Let’s say the angle was “Lose Belly Fat”. You can create 5-10 tips to go out throughout the day that provide information on how to lose belly fat. It can be simple as :

- Make sure you do 30 minutes of cardio to blast fat

- Eat an avocado a day to keep the belly fat away

- Drink lots of water before every meal to decrease your appetite

Of course, when it comes to social media, you always want to engage your fans by asking questions, posting pictures, responding to comments and just fully engaging and commenting. But, we are going to keep it simple for now, okay? So after you build some momentum, and some relationships on social media, what do you do next?

All Social media traffic MUST lead back to your website or blog!

5. Direct traffic back to your blog- I see too many talented businesses owners make the mistake of not having a website or a blog. They think that Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are great FREE platforms and they can build their client base by using these social networking sites. Simply not true. You see, you don’t own any social media platform. At any given time, any of these social networks can close up shop, change the rules, block you, ban your account, you name it. And guess what happens when you no longer have an account on the social networks? Yep, you guessed it: all those 20,000 followers and fans that took you forever to build will all be gone too! That’s why it’s absolutely critical for you to have a website/blog platform in place to lead all your social media traffic back to. Once you lead them back to your site, you want to have a FREE offer to give them in exchange for their email address. This way you can put them on your email list to build relationships and nurture them over time. Once they get to know, like and trust you, they will buy from you!

Now, what’s holding you back from getting started with social media marketing?

When it comes to social media marketing, you have to pick a platform that works for you. If you find yourself getting frustrated, it’s important that you find someone or a training class that can show you the ins and outs of how to use the social media sites your target audience is on. Or better yet, you can always hire someone to help you get started with the social media process and do most of the social media research and management for you. Tell me, what’s your biggest challenge with getting started with social media marketing? Post your comments in the box below!

(All photos courtesy of Freedigitalphotos.net,piyato, dominci)