Social Media Marketing Consultants & Experts for Hire

4 Elements of Social Media Success

Very often I hear from people saying social media is too expensive, they can’t afford to spend that much, or they’ve tried it, and it hasn’t worked for them. If this is you, or it sounds like someone you know, let me share something with you. Something that will help you find social media success.

Consistency for Social Media Success

People are not consistent, it’s part of the reason we fail, it’s why marketing campaigns like social media don’t work, and it’s also why blogging attempts fail, time after time.

Heck, I’ve let go of a few blogs myself, as other opportunities come along, you get swept away in family issues, time constraints, etc. It happens.

But, if you want social media, blogging, or even SEO to work, you have to be consistent. That is the primary reason I see people fail.

Multiple studies have been done online that show if you blog more, google will visit your site more often, index more pages, and you will eventually get more traffic to your website. It takes time, which leads me to another point: Patience.

Patience

You can’t expect results overnight. Sure you will start to see a few more likes (assuming you already have some), you will get more followers on Twitter, and you can get more connections on LinkedIn without much work at all, but the real results, that show as more sales, it takes awhile to see these.

It takes time to build a following, build a relationship with that following, educate the following, set up your sales funnel, and earn the trust and loyalty of your following before you can promote to them and get a real response.

So, if people have a hard time being consistent, and no one wants to wait for results, what can you do? Are you starting to see why these campaigns fail, left and right?

To start with I suggest changing your expectations. You will not see an overnight success with social media, or most types of online marketing, adjust the way you think of it, because you are setting yourself up for failure from the get go.

Routine

Instead you should start by coming up with a plan, write out what your goals are, come up with reasonable check points to consider where things are going, and then plan to give it at the very least 60-90 Days.

In your plan for social media success you need to work social activities into your current routine. I have a social media plan in a blog post from a few weeks ago, but that isn’t what I mean as routine, this is:

You wake up
Read the news
Shower, Dress & Eat
Drive to the office
Sit down, open email
Look at schedule
***Morning Social Media***
Phone Calls
Production
Lunch
Email Again
Afternoon Schedule
**Afternoon Social Media**
Production
Phone Calls
Go Home
Family Time
**Evening Social Media**

When you add it to your daily activities, you will begin to make it a habit, and over time, you will most likely spend more time on social media than you planned, and hopefully that will be because you see results.

Expectations

At the beginning, if you have no likes or followers, it can be difficult to not feel disappointed. Even when you have some followers, you might hit a wall, where no one is responding to you, and feel let down. The problem is, you need several hundred people to like you, to get a regular response. Here is why:

Not everyone is on when you post an update, and a lot of people will login to their accounts and not read all of the updates so they miss your posts.

On Facebook your update is only shown to those fans that Facebook feels would want to see it, but it is still worth it, because Facebook is so huge, and so many people are active there.

Getting Followers

I always suggest when you first start out to use a few tactics to get people to follow you. If you don’t have access to an email list, ask friends and family on your personal accounts to like it. There are like exchanges, groups you can join on Linkedin, and other options. [arrow_list]

Email your list of past customers, recent customers, or people who have signed up to get more information through email.
Buy an ad on Facebook.
Put out a blog post about it.
Put your new page link at the top of your website.

Monetary Results

To be honest, you will see some traffic pretty quickly from social media, but to get a steady stream, and to get sales from it, you are going to be at the 90 days of CONSISTENT effort mark. It takes time to build an image people will trust, enjoy conversing with, and want to buy your items. It takes time to become a social media success story.

That about sums it up. You need to be consistent, build relationships, have patience and set realistic expectations. I can promise if you follow the social media marketing template I put together, at the end of 90 days you will see results.

Depending your experience with the internet, this information might be too advanced, or you might have questions. That’s great, I love to help, ask your questions below, or contact me and I will do my best to help.