Everyone has been asking "How can I dominate social media in 2020 to grow my business?" Ask and you shall receive. Here are 5 simple steps you can put into ACTION to become a better social media marketer.
Lead Generation That Gathers Data
The first step to becoming a better social media marketer is lead generation by gathering data. How do you gather data and what is data? What's the data that you should be gathering? Let me break this down for you. Hopefully your goal in using social media is to sell, not just chasing followers, likes or impressions. As I share in my book "Small Business Marketing Made EZ", these are vanity metrics. Metrics that make you feel good, but they don't put money in your bank account.
If you're using social media to get these vanity metrics, stop now! What you need to be doing is capturing email addresses and phone numbers - lead generation - and there's a couple of ways that you do this. One, you can set up a landing page so someone goes to your website and then they have to input their information. They get something in return, whether it's an ebook or a white paper or an exclusive video. Whatever that exclusivity is, you want to make sure that someone has to opt in first and in return you're getting something out of it (their contact information).
What happens when you set up this landing page and capture their information? Well, you can then remarket through Facebook ads or by sending an email out to these potential customers. Don't lose sight of phone numbers. Phone numbers now become valuable for remarketing through SMS or text message marketing. There's a platform called SuperPhone. When you collect phone numbers through SuperPhone, you can rebroadcast out and guess what? You're now bypassing the social media super highway and you're able to get your message in front of people directly on their cell phone. But in order to do any form of remarketing, whether it's through email addresses or phone numbers, you need to gather data, not followers.
Text Message Marketing
Step two is text message marketing. You can use a button on social media to have people text you directly. By using a tool like SuperPhone or ManyChat you can then capture their contact information. So think of social media and email marketing and SMS marketing all being married together.
Private Messaging
Step three, private messaging on WhatsApp and Slack. Let's face it, social media today is noisy. And your objective as someone that uses social media in their business is you have to find ways to break through that noise and stand out. So staying along the same lines of what I said previously with collecting data, whether it's email addresses or phone numbers, think about setting up a private group on Slack or WhatsApp for your super fans or your more connected fans. Hopefully you're using some sort of social listening tool that you can easily identify who these fans and these supporters are. Once you've done that, then you invite them over to your own private experience.
By doing this meaning by creating a group on Slack or on WhatsApp, you're able to bypass all the noise, all the self promotion, all the flexing that's occurring every single second of the day on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, et cetera.
Gather Intel
Step four, gather Intel or set up listening feeds. Let me break this down for you and make it really easy. I help businesses get their marketing done. How am I going to find businesses who are looking for my services? It's really simple. I go to Twitter and I type in struggling with marketing, need help with marketing, or looking for marketing help. Now you can save that feed and you can go back to that feed in real time, any minute of the day and you can see who's updating the feeds.So in my case as a done-for-you marketing agency, as soon as I see that there's a tweet about someone needing marketing help, I then reach out to that person.
If you're a real estate agent, you can set up feeds for the city that you do business in and certain key phrases or terms like looking to buy a house in Boston or moving to San Diego. The key is that you're using social networks as search engines, so once you gained the Intel, now you can effectively communicate with your prospects.
Use Video
Step five is use video. Yes, you! Use video. It's one of the most engaging forms of content on social media and in 2020 it's a must have. If you want people to stop scrolling by your posts, use video!
YouTube. It's not just a social media platform. It's a search platform. And it's bigger than Facebook.
Here are simple videos you can create in a weekend:
- About us videos
- Product demo videos
- Special offers or promotions videos
- Customer testimonials
- How-to videos
