Recap

In the last post we discussed advertising on social media to attain the broadest reach. Now, in the final part of this series, we are going to discuss the most difficult, and perhaps most important part of social media marketing - patience.

Know your end goal

Before we jump in I want to add some context to this conversation. In this series we've been discussing social media marketing - If you are attempting to improve your brands social media presence and you've landed on this page and haven't read the rest of the series I highly recommend starting with the first post, picking the right social media platform. Go ahead and read through the rest of the series before continuing, it'll be worth it.

Awesome, now that we've all caught up we can continue this last post together.

This post is about patience so why did I title this section "Know your end goal"? Because before you do anything, on social media or otherwise, you need to know why you're doing it. Maybe you want a larger audience for your vlog series about flags, maybe you're writing a book and want to have an audience to sell it to, or maybe you just want to generate more brand awareness. This is important because your overall tactic will be the same, provide value to your followers, but what content you provide will change based on what your end goal is. Whatever your end goal is though, it's important to know it's not going to happen tomorrow. You need to deploy patience.

Attention is better than impressions

Many, if not most, brands on social media are focusing on the wrong thing. They are chasing the followers. That little number is what drives them. Getting that 100th, 500th, 1,000th, 5,000th follower is exhilarating and all of their actions map to that.

The issue is not that they want to increase their followers, a larger audience is important, but how you grow your audience and what type of audience you have is the key. This series has been about growing your audience, growing through providing value. Provide real value, and engage with your audience. Care about your audience and what you can give to them, not that number on the side of your profile. I don't care if you're talking to 200 or 200,000 people, your only focus should be providing that group of people something of value.

If you take this approach to growing and interacting with your followers you will likely grow slower than others, but what is important isn't the number of followers your page has, it's about the attention you are getting. 

The difference between you and your 500 followers on Facebook and Rick's Pizza with 1,600 followers is that when you post something you get genuine engagement and each post is getting 300 likes and a flurry of comments where Rick's Pizza may be getting 150 likes and a handful of comments on every post becuase their audience just doesn't care about what they have to say, there's no connection. You're focused on your followers, Rick's Pizza is focused on their follower count.

Provide real value and deploy patience.

Be Patient.

You are connecting with your audience and providing them with the majority of the value in the relationship without ever really asking for anything in return. You're providing them with content and conversation for months and then eventually, after 7 months of giving and giving and giving you finally go in for the ask.

That's right, 7 months. Not 7 days, or 7 weeks. You are providing valuable content and one-on-one interactions with your followers for over half of the year, every day, and not asking them for a thing. You're providing the value and now that you have something coming down the pipe you have the leverage. You've got an eBook coming out soon and you want all of your social media followers to purchase it because it's packed with valuable content they need to read.

Apr 6 - "Hey everyone, just wanted to let you know that I have an eBook coming out on Amazon next week. I'm very excited and wanted you to be the first to know."

Apr 10 - "Hey guys, I was just thinking and I am so excited about my new eBook I decided I wanted to give away a few copies. If you're interested let me know in the comments below."

Apr 13 - "Good Morning! Today's the day. Head on over to Amazon (link below), I've decided to discount the eBook 50% for the first 24 hours - I hope you guys love it! Tag a friend you think would get some value from this."

By the way, every day from April 6th - 13th you're still posting regular content and having other valuable conversations with your audience. Remember, we are never done building and fostering that relationship with them, after all, you're already writing that second eBook.

It takes patience to wait 7 months to ask your social media audience to purchase an eBook. However, in that 7 months you have provided them with a disproportionate amount of value compared to the few dollars your asking in return for that book. They have spent time every day with you and value your brand, your opinion, they're going to buy that book. Now of your 1,500 social media followers 800 have purchased your book, which is also bringing them more value than they paid for it - remember we always provide the majority of the value - and they're telling their friends and colleagues about how they have to follow you because your just so valuable to them.

Meanwhile, Rick's Pizza has posted 18 contests and is up to 4,900 followers which makes them feel great, but they only have 5% engagement becuase people aren't getting any real value from them.

Attention is better than impressions.

Congratulations.

In this series you've learned how to pick which platform(s) you should be utilizing, what to post and when is the best time to post it, utilizing hashtags and ads to grow your audience, how to properly position yourself and engage your audience, and finally, the importance of patience.

This series was meant to introduce you to some of the important aspects of social media marketing. It's a very intricate and challenging thing so now that you've gotten a good overview please read through some of our other posts for more in-depth and specific insights. Of course, if you're looking for help with your social media marketing you can always reach out to us, we would love to have a conversation with you.

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