Making Money with Social Media Requires a Trident Approach

We're coming up on fourth quarter and you're probably wondering how to get people to shop with you, during the busiest season of the year. This article will give you insight into things you might be doing wrong as well as tips you can use to improve and start earn passively during this important season.  

This article will give you insight into things you might be doing wrong as well as tips you can use to improve and start earn passively during this important season.

You may be aware that social media is key to your success, but you might not be sure how to make it work for you. You know that it's important to start making money with social media, but the big question is how?

This article will show you how to use a three pronged approach that will help you connect with people who are looking for what you have to offer. 

Mistakes You Might Be Making on Social Media

Here's a list of mistakes that might be plaguing your business when posting on social media. There's also an explanation of each below the list. 

• Hard selling - When everything you post is focused on hard selling, people see through your efforts and you lose credibility. No one wants to see you coming if you're always selling and not adding value. Keep in mind that people love to buy, but they hate to be sold. Remember the overbearing salesperson in brick and mortar stores who keep asking if they can help, even though you've told them you are just looking? You don't want to be that person. 
• Not selling at all - On the flip side of that, you can be too cautious. In an effort to avoid coming across as salesy or spammy, you never ask for the sale. You post things like motivational quotes, animal memes, humorous items, etc. In this case you'll never sell anything because you never position your products as something your audience needs to solve a problem or enrich their lives. 
• No target audience - If you don't know who you're selling to, you'll have a really hard time adding value or selling. When you bypass the research needed to determine your niche and who you're selling to, you'll end up trying to sell to everyone. And in the end, you'll end up selling to no one. 
• No (What's in it for Me) WIIFM - When posting on social media, your audience needs to see a benefit that will help them reach their goals. You won't grab their attention with your posts, if they can't see a benefit that enriches their lives. When you're not adding value to your audience, you end up losing followers
  
• Posting useless stuff - There's definitely a time and place for strategically posting your family photos and pet memes. But when you're trying to build an audience you need to balance out your posts with content that will help your audience solve a problem or make their lives better. Posting about your personal life and pets without providing other valuable content may not be enough to get you over the finish line to reaching your goals.
• No strategy - When you skip taking time to think about the direction you want your business to take, like setting goals, focusing on a niche, mapping out your future, you tend to be all over the place. In the long run it costs you time and energy that could be best spent moving your business toward progress and success
• Inconsistent posting - Your business exists to help the people in your niche. If you post today, and your audience doesn't see you for a week, a month or six months, they're not going to hang around waiting for your next post. And that's good news for your competition. As a matter of fact, you can count on losing them to your competition.
  Businesses that post valuable content consistently will gain the trust of their audience, making it easier to take them from followers, to leads and finally to ask them for the sale.  
• Not building a list - List building is one of the most important things you can do when starting a business. It's the way you get your products in front of a targeted group of people who are really interested in what you have to offer.
  
  People who have taken the step to sign up for your list have already taken the first step toward buying from you. Nurturing your lists, will make it easier to sell your products and services. Neglecting this group will make it easy to leave money on the table.
  

Why You Need a Three Pronged Approach

Next you'll learn why it's important to have a three pronged approach that will help you connect with people who are looking for what you have to offer. 

Many new business owners struggle with knowing what to say when trying to post social media content that will enable them to build an audience, help more people and sell more products. Making strides on social media is one of the challenges we face when trying to sell online.

Once we are able to connect with an engaged audience on social media, it's a lot easier to see an increase in our ability to sell products and services. 

There's a fine balance between selling, entertaining, motivating, and educating an audience to reach our sales and marketing goals.  And each audience is unique... what might work for my audience, may not be a good fit for yours. 

Put Your Three Pronged Approach Into Practice

Posting to social media requires a multifaceted approach because people are getting their updates using a variety of digital formats these days. And as a business owner, you'll need to reach your audience on as many of these platforms as possible, meeting them where they are. 

For example, some people prefer reading emails and blog posts. Some are glued to their favorite social channels like Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook, TikTok and YouTube consuming stories, posts, videos, images and reels.

As a business owner, it's a smart practice to create content that ties these platforms together. When you do a good job of using these platforms together, you are going to do two amazing things for your business. You'll (1) create awareness and a connection to your audience and (2) build the know, like and trust factor. 

Why You Need a Plan

A social media plan that includes goals, a weekly routine and habits that will give you focus. Being organized means that you can try things out (testing) and if they don't work, you can pivot to something different.

Understanding where you are, and making changes to the things that are not working can help you get where you need to go much faster. 

Tools like the planner below, can help you organize your social media strategy.

Let's start by stating the obvious. Being scattered and unorganized can cost you money. Consider the following scenario...

What would happen if you only half heartedly posted to one social media channel once or twice a week on a random schedule.

And in those posts you included weak, fluff type messages that sent people to a generic page that didn't even have an op-in form.

How many people do you think would connect with? I'm going to venture to say, none. Is that what you want for your future? 

The reality is that if you're hearing crickets in your business, that could be why.

Three Important Pieces of the Social Media Puzzle

How many people who are actively looking for what you have to offer (the people you want to reach) would you reach and connect with from the previous scenario? I would say very few, if any.

That's why you need an organized plan and an approach that includes: 

So lets talk about each of these areas and how they can be used to build your business.

1. Social Media

You're aware that social media is the first prong of your social media strategy. It's a great way to build an audience of followers and get the word our about pretty much anything. But it's one of the most under used, misunderstood elements of digital marketing, (second only to email) around. 

It can be awkward in the beginning trying to figure out how to use it to reach your business goals. 

There's more to social media for business, than the occasional post that talks about nothing. You can talk about nothing all day in your personal account, and your friends and family won't mind.

On the flip side of that, when you're in business, your audience needs consistency and valuable content that helps them accomplish their goals. So they may not be as forgiving if you fill their feed with fluff that they don't understand. 

You don't want to be so enthusiastic when it comes to selling that you over post, salesy, spammy content that adds no value and turns off the people you're trying to reach. There's a fine balance. 

Because of the ever growing influx of new businesses it's getting harder and harder to grab the attention of your target audience. The internet is a really busy place and if you're not careful, your business can easily fall between the cracks.

Social media is a free resource that when used to deliver solutions and transformations, can drive targeted traffic to a landing page, educational content (like a course or an eBook), a blog post, a sales page, a product listing, or an opt in form.

All of these items have the potential to help us sell something! And when you help people reach their goals, they will pay you again and again for your knowledge and solutions. 

But when we start our business, a lot of times we get stuck in our old habits, posting family photos, motivational content, rumors, the latest updates from our favorite news outlets, pet memes and more. And we learn quickly that the stuff we posted on our personal accounts does little to help us reach our sales and marketing goals. 

Tips for Posting to Social Media

Here are a few tips you can use when posting to social media: 

2. Email Marketing

Email is one of the most overlooked and underused forms of marketing for new business owners. But in the best scenario, email should be used to start building a list as soon as you start your online business. This helps you attract and build a targeted audience of people who are actively looking for what you have to offer. 

Email should be the second prong of your social media marketing efforts, and used in conjunction with the theme of your social media campaign.

When you post on social media, the next step should be to post similar content to your email list with a brief explanation of how your solution can help them solve a problem or receive a transformation of some kind. Your emails should contain a call to action that leads to your solution. The solution should be a product.

You can also send social media followers to a lead magnet that gets the follower on your list. It's important to dedicate a number of social media posts each week that sends followers to a page that will allow them to sign up for your email list.

When you deliver helpful content via social media and email it helps you create awareness about your business and who it helps, and it builds the know like and trust factor. 

By informing and educating your audience, you can showcase your knowledge, helping them during the research phase of their buying journey, answering product or service related questions and addressing any objections they might have.  

Email can be used to deliver a packaged version of your knowledge as a course that your audience can receive for in-depth knowledge.

In exchange for the fee or an email address, they can receive a lesson each day for a stated number of days using email. 

It's an excellent delivery mechanism, allowing you to sell a digital product, earning money passively, allowing you to deliver courses, videos, ebooks, checklists,  subscriptions and more on auto-pilot. 

You can use social media and email to announce a sale, directing people to individual items, collections or categories at a discounted price. This makes it easy for your ideal customers to save, while receiving the benefits offered by your best content and solutions. 

You can provide the details on an instant download they can receive via email and use it to solve a problem or accomplish a goal.

Playlist: How to Set up An Email Marketing System

3. Video Marketing

Video is the next best thing to being there in person  talking to your audience. When you create videos, you have an opportunity to make a connection with your audience that's not available on other mediums. 

Videos can be used to deliver product demonstrations, share in person tips, promote products you made, affiliate products and print on demand products. You can give your audience the inside scoop on how to best use your products and what not to do to get the best results. 

Videos are digital products that can be combined with written materials, eBooks and email messages to become in-depth educational courses. They can be sold with eBooks as part of a mini course. And they can be monetized on channels like YouTube. They can also become an add on product that accompanies physical products. 

When you craft your social media strategy, video can be the third prong of your marketing plan that reaches an entirely different audience of people, versus the people you reach on social media and email. 

When creating your social media posts you want to create short and long form videos for platforms like Instagram, TikTok, Pinterest, Facebook and YouTube. Watch the playlist below to discover how to monetize your YouTube channel for an additional source of passive income.

Playlist: How to Monetize Your YouTube Channel

Using a three pronged approach to social media, consistently delivering value, helping your audience make positive transformations and finding solutions to their problems, your audience will grow.  

As a result, you'll attract people who are looking for what you have to offer, connecting and building meaningful relationships that make it easy to sell products and services to your an engaged audience of people who know, like and trust you.