social media is more competitive today
than ever before which is why if you
don't follow the five tips that I'm
about to share with you you might as
well just pack it in and give up now
because you're just gonna end up wasting
your time energy and money hey there my
name is Adam Earhart marketing
strategist and welcome to the marketing
show now it's no surprise that social
media today is more competitive than
it's ever been and essentially if we
take a look at social media as a whole
from that 30,000 foot holistic overview
well it's a no secret that it's kind of
a gong show billions and billions of
users and new people signing in every
single day it's no surprise that a lot
of business owners and entrepreneurs are
getting frustrated and overwhelmed and
just swearing off social media
completely before ever seeing success on
any of the platforms well I don't want
that for you which is why in this
episode I'm going to be sharing five
tips that you need to dominate your
social media marketing tips that I've
learned after years and years of running
a social media marketing agency running
thousands of campaigns for hundreds of
clients across all sorts of different
markets businesses and industries so
with all that said let's dive right into
tip number one be selfless now what I'm
talking about here is creating content
that is incredibly customer focused way
too many people way too many businesses
create content that is business focused
and essentially really selfish content
that serves pretty much nobody other
than the business or the person that's
creating it rather than really trying to
get into the mind and the shoes of the
person that they're trying to serve and
to connect with and creating content
that's going to resonate and benefit
them you see one of the biggest things
with social media today is that it's now
become well a relatively sophisticated
marketplace with most customers having
seen pretty much everything and having
already heard all of the spammy and
sales these tactics that so many people
have used for so many years now this
means if you want to succeed you've got
to flip the script and essentially
approach it like well a normal nice kind
of human being would which means
creating content that's going to
resonate and really provide value to
your market rather than just creating
stuff that you think might be
interesting to you now here's the catch
doing this way easier said then actually
done which means if you're going to
create customer focused content really
content that serve
provides value to the people that you're
trying to reach well first you're gonna
have to deep dive into that ideal
customer that you're trying to connect
with so you can know what kind of
content they want you to create now
there's a few different ways that you
can go about this but by far the best
way is to really spend some time
crafting an ideal customer avatar which
is essentially just a fictional
representation of all of the best
characteristics of your absolute best
customers the kind of people that love
you love what you do want to do business
with you or happy to pay you for the
value you provide and want to tell all
of their friends and family about just
how great you are so to do this you
really want to take a look at those
common characteristics between your top
customers between the people you want to
serve you want to look at things like
their demographic details like age
gender income occupation title things
like that their geographic details like
what cities state province or country
they live in and their psychographic
details like their attitudes interests
beliefs and basically all the head stuff
that goes on it also pays to really dive
into what I call their miracles and
their miseries their miracles being all
of their wants and their dreams and
their desires and everything that
they're trying to get that hopefully
your business is positioned to give them
and their miseries being all their fears
and frustrations and problems and
nightmares and all the stuff they're
trying to get away from that again
ideally your business is positioned to
help move them away from now if you have
no idea what any of these are well it's
time to do a little bit of research and
that means having some conversations
with your customers also you can take a
look at what are the most common
questions you get in your business or
what are the most common questions out
there
about the type of business you're in
which is widely available with just a
simple Google search now once you've got
all that dialed in the next step is to
go about creating content that does one
of two things or hopefully even both
which is to either educate them or
entertain them or again combine them
both with edutainment the reason
education is such a powerful tool when
it comes to marketing your business is
because we're naturally programmed as
humans to respect and essentially to
value those that teach us stuff now I
could go into the details and the
studies behind why this is all true but
the reality is all we have to do is
think about it for just a few seconds
about how we're raised and how were
brought up to kind of respect Authority
and respect teachers and respect people
that are imparting their knowledge on us
well you want to put yourself in that
position
for your customers the other side is to
entertain them now especially today when
attention spans are getting shorter and
there's entertainment all around you
want to do your best to ensure that your
content is providing some kind of
entertainment value to your customers
this doesn't mean you need to be funny
or have really long drawn-out stories or
be overly creative it just means that
you need to keep them interested and
keep them engaged with whatever content
you're creating basically just try not
to be boring and you'll do okay the
final point on tip number one of being
selfless is just to try to give more
than you ever intend on taking and
ideally give with no intention of ever
taking knowing that by simply giving
away content and providing value well
the receiving for you it's gonna come
naturally alright my next tip to
dominate social media is to double down
what this means is to really deep dive
into your metrics and your analytics and
find what works best for your business
so you can do more of that and less of
the stuff that doesn't work
now I know this isn't the sexiest topic
to talk about after all metrics and
analytics math and numbers there it's
not a lot of fun especially when it
comes to social media where we're often
sold on the promise of artsy and
creative and making funny pictures and
gifts and things like that but if you
want to succeed and if you want to
dominate social media you're gonna have
to dive into the metrics and into the
analytics fortunately the platform's
whether we're talking about Facebook or
Instagram or YouTube whatever well
they've made their analytics dashboards
way more user-friendly than they've ever
been before making it a lot easier to
get the high level overview of exactly
what type of content is resonating best
with your ideal target market if you've
never looked into the metrics before
can't seem a bit overwhelming at first
but it's okay to start with really high
level metrics like what kind of content
gets clicked on or gets more likes or
gets more shares it gets more comments
these are all vanity metrics which don't
necessarily pretty much never equate to
actual monetary returns but there's
still a pretty good place to start when
kind of getting your feet wet and
getting used to the whole metrics
dashboard if you're a little more
advanced or have the functionality to
track exactly what type of content leads
to more sales well then this is kind of
a no-brainer you basically want to do
more of that stuff this is where the
8020 principle or Prentiss principle
really comes into play essentially 20%
of
your content is likely to get 80% of all
the likes and comments and shares of
probably revenue which means you really
want to keep focusing in on that top 20%
that's giving you those 80% returns do
more of that so you can get more of that
over time as you create more and more
content well again you can take the top
20% of your top 20% which again is going
to give you exponentially greater
returns then by just kind of looking at
everything and just doing whatever
overtime you're gonna find themes about
what kind of content resonates best with
your audience and what they want to see
more of for example on my channel well
anytime I create content around social
media or Facebook ads or Instagram as
well it tends to perform incredibly well
contrast this with a couple of years ago
when my highest performing content was
around content marketing and how to
write great content so again you've got
to stay tuned in to your market and to
their wants and their needs and their
desires so you can make sure that you
stay kind of up-to-date and give them
exactly what they want the takeaway
point with tip number 2 hunt double down
is you want to find what works and then
do as much of that as possible alright
and that leads me perfectly into my next
tip which is that quality comes from
quantity now essentially when you're
just getting going and even if you've
been going for a long period of time
well so many people overanalyze and
scrutinize and strategize and really
really try to dial in the type of
content they're gonna make which gives
it the greatest chance of success now in
theory this sounds fantastic and I'm all
for strategy in fact I think you should
be strategic but not overly strategic if
it's starting to hinder or to get in the
way of you actually creating content the
biggest reason for this is especially
when it comes to social media content
well you can have a rough idea of what
type of content is really gonna resonate
and really gonna get you good results
but you can't be sure in fact the best
thing you can do is take a pretty good
guess and then go for it again using my
channel as an example some of what I
believe are my absolute best videos full
of my best strategies and stuff that
would pretty much only share with my top
tier VIP clients well I'm giving it away
for free in videos that maybe only got a
few hundred or a few thousand views on
the other hand stuff that I put out that
I thought is pretty common knowledge
that I wasn't really sure was really
gonna resonate well that gets tens of
thousands even a hundred thousand views
which to me is kind of crazy but it's
important to understand
this is how social media and the
algorithms and essentially the free
market works so how do you find those
good things well it's by creating a lot
of not-so-good things and knowing that
the good things are gonna come through
as well you're not gonna get to those
good things unless you can kind of get
all the bad things out of your system
too
anyway I think you get the point but
just to make sure the point here is that
when it comes to dominating social media
especially with the competitive
landscape the secret is more all right
so on the topic of more let's move on to
the next tip which is to invest now what
I'm talking about here is investing in
education investing in assets and
resources and possibly team members or
even new gear essentially taking social
media marketing seriously and investing
in it accordingly you see a funny thing
happens when we start talking about
social media marketing and people tend
to focus on the social media and they
forget about the marketing which is
essentially the proven marketing
fundamentals the principles the concepts
that have been around for decades if not
hundreds not thousands of years really
the things that influence human behavior
and persuasion and influence and all the
things that are essentially going to
lead to you making a sale this is why as
much as I talked about not overthinking
things when it comes to the quality from
quantity well you do need to think at
least a little bit you're going to need
to be strategic you're gonna need to
have an ideal customer avatar in mind
you're gonna need to have a business
direction or goal or objective or
something you're trying to accomplish so
you can make sure that you're in
alignment with the content you're
creating now when it comes to social
media marketing there's kind of two
different camps and two different things
that you're gonna need to study in order
to stay on top of the situation number
one is the fact that social media
changes constantly there's new algorithm
updates new channels that get released
new ways of doing things new features
all the stuff that you're going to want
to be aware of so you can take maximum
advantage of it the other side of course
though is those proven marketing
fundamentals those concepts those
strategies those theories that have been
around for as long as people have been
making buying decisions if I had to make
a recommendation I'd say spend around 70
to 80 percent of your time on the
fundamentals and those proven strategies
and then around twenty to thirty percent
of your time on the tactics and on the
platforms because tactics and hacks and
platforms and channels they're going to
come and go but those proven
fundamentals well they're gonna last you
a lifetime lastly when it
the social media marketing whether you
choose to outsource it or delegate it to
someone on your team or hire marketing
agency or whatever
well the best way to learn and to really
dominate is to be a practitioner first
because otherwise you're not gonna
really know what they're doing and if
it's effective or if they're just
wasting your time and money all right
and that ties in perfectly with tip
number five choose the best channel now
I've talked about this a lot before but
I'm all about avoiding what I call the
marketing wasteland essentially the
marketing channels and platforms where
none of your customers are active or
present on and yet are hyped up as the
newest and latest and greatest marketing
strategy or marketing channel and social
media network or whatever that you just
have to be on no you don't have to be
there in fact being there is terrible
terrible advice you should pretty much
only be where your customers are active
and present on it sounds like totally
common sense you'd be amazed how many
times I see businesses that have no
business at all being on certain
different social media channels and yet
they're there simply because they
thought they had to be doing everything
and trying to be everywhere is probably
the worst marketing advice ever you only
need to be where your customers are and
this means looking at probably some of
the major players like Facebook
Instagram YouTube and LinkedIn which are
pretty much gonna cover most of your
bases in fact I can probably almost
guarantee that most of your market is on
at least one of these four channels now
once you've identified which one or two
or maybe even three of those channels
they're on you can start looking at
other options like snapchat and tik-tok
and Pinterest but they're going to be
very niche specific and really relevant
to which customers are sort of active
and present on them so make sure to do
your due diligence and do your homework
on that ideal customer avatar and where
they're spending their time online
fortunately again all it takes is a
quick google search on social media
network demographic usage statistics
so just Chuck a bunch of words like that
into the search bar and you'll come up
with all sorts of different graphs and
charts and data telling you exactly what
type of person is on what type of
network then you just really have to
align up the pieces your customers and
the right network if you're at a loss
though and you still really don't know
what to choose well there's two great
channels that have already mentioned but
I want to reiterate them here because
they're just that valuable number one
being Facebook and the second being
Instagram two great places to start
that's why the very next thing you're
going to want to do is check out the
video I have linked up right here on
Instagram marketing for small business
so make sure to check that out now
thanks so much for watching and I'll
catch you next time on the marketing
show