Hi members!
These past couple years have brought intense growth for my little business, and I've learned a TON about marketing my work on social media! As you know, I like to share all kinds of knowledge in my Inner Circle (not just runes and magical things), so this week I wanted to try to condense everything I've learned into "5 Social Media Secrets". If you've been wanting to build a social media following (or maybe you already have one but you're still eager to learn more), I hope you like today's post! Since I run an art business, they might be more geared towards selling products, but I think each point is pretty universally helpful no matter what you do!
Of course, it's important to mention that everyone has a different way of doing things, and I encourage you to experiment until you find a strategy that works for you. 🖤🖤
Many blessings,
Marin
1. Build a community
We're starting off strong with one of the best pieces of advice I can give you. There are a lot of ways to build community on social media, and all of them will help you develop a loyal following who will remember you or your brand. It's also incredibly rewarding on a personal level, and lots of fun! Here are just a few things that have helped me build community on social media:
- Connect with other makers/artists/brands and support each other
- Go live and answer viewer questions
- Post interactive polls, questions, and buttons in your stories daily
- Host giveaways
- Create collaborative projects that include your followers
- Share customer photos
- Collaborate with influencers, public figures, or other brands that are in your community demographic
2. "Likes" aren't everything
In fact, "likes" don't mean very much at all. It's so easy to get caught up in the thrill of Instagram popularity, and judge your own work based on the number of likes a post gets. But I'm here to tell you that "likes" won't get you sales or success - connections will. I know it's hard to believe, but some of my most sales-driving posts have actually been my worst-performing in terms of "like" count. So my suggestion? Don't even look at the likes. Look at the comments, shares, and messages. Look at the real connections you're making with your followers and customer base. Focus on what you can control, and strike up meaningful conversations instead of striving for a number.
3. Schedule after learning
I've read countless articles that say schedulers will destroy your social exposure... But I've found that it's not as simple as that. I think that the reason most people have a hard time with scheduling posts is that they don't take the time to learn from their success or failures. It's easy to schedule posts for the week and never think about them again - and that's how you'll miss all the juicy information and engagement trends that will help you learn who your demographic is.
But at the same time, scheduling posts is incredibly helpful for ensuring that your posts are consistent, and consistency is one of the most important things to building a following! So what's the middle ground? My answer is this: actively learn how to reach your demographic by live-posting until you have a good follower base, then slowly start implementing scheduled posts. It can even be a good idea to schedule a baseline (one post every other day) and give yourself some room to post live when you have something urgent to say.
As for the right scheduler to use, I recommend using Facebook Business Suite. It connects to both Facebook and Instagram, and even allows you to schedule story posts (with links!). I've had good luck with it, and it seems they've ironed out all the bugs.
4. Video is the future
It's frustrating, but true. Alas, the future of social media is video content, so it's time to get comfy with it. Of course, video editing is still a new skill to a lot of people, so don't be hard on yourself if it takes you some time to adjust. I know I'm still trying to transition myself - I'm no pro! But hopefully I can help you get an idea of where to start. Here are some notes that I've been using to get more comfortable with creating videos:
- Start on easy mode with a timelapse. Set up your phone on a tripod, and take a timelapse video of yourself making something, setting up a space, or any other physical transformation that makes sense with your brand.
- Hop onto a TikTok trend. Scroll through the most popular sounds until you find one that relates to you or your brand, and then use it as a prompt!
- Tell a quick story. It could be the story of how you started your business, your favorite story from mythology, or even a funny story from your daily life!
- Create your video content with a 3rd party app (like CapCut) so that you can post it to both TikTok and Instagram Reels without either of their pesky watermarks getting in the way.
5. Don't be afraid to recycle
It took me a long time to get comfy with the idea of recycling my content. For years, I pushed myself to come up with brand new content for every social post. I ended up spending several hours on every post, and I constantly drained my creative energy. When my business started ramping up, I gave in and begrudgingly started reposting some of my most-loved photos... And what I found is they did just as well (or even better) the second time around. I found that my long-time followers would recognize their favorite image and share it with their friends, and my new followers were seeing it for the first time. As it turns out, no one was even remotely disappointed to see it again! (Now it's obvious, but it didn't seem so at the start...)
Recycling your best-performing content is essential for preventing creative burnout. You can even reuse your photos and captions for email marketing as well as social posts! When you have a good-performing post, why not copy and paste it into your email list? Chances are your newsletter subscribers will want to catch a glimpse too.