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Disclaimer

All the material contained in this book is provided for educational and

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outcomes resulting from the use of this material.

Table of Contents

Introduction—Why Use Social Media .................................................................... 4

Facebook Business Basics ...................................................................................... 6

Instagram Business Basics .................................................................................... 11

Twitter Business Basics ........................................................................................ 15

Creating Content for Social Media Platforms ....................................................... 18

Benefits and Features .......................................................................................... 24

How to Set Up Your Business Accounts ................................................................ 29

How to Navigate Social Media Platforms ............................................................. 34

How to Monetize Social Media Platforms ............................................................ 38

How to Advertise on Social Media Platforms ....................................................... 41

Conclusion—Use What Works ............................................................................. 43

Introduction—Why Use Social Media

Social media has become one of the easiest and least expensive methods of

marketing your business. Most accounts are free to set up, which means you are

saving money on ways to get your products and services in front of your audience.

If you aren’t currently using social media as a marketing channel, here’s why you

should be.

Frequency is one of the biggest determinants of whether a customer

remembers your company. Social media helps to increase your brand

recognition because you can post as frequently as you like.

Social media platforms provide a better chance for you to interact with

your customers. A TV ad only shows them information you think they want.

On social media, you can answer questions that they actually ask you.

Customers can also interact by taking action. Every post you make, whether

it is an image, article, video, etc. can contain a link to your website or

product.

You build trust with your customers because being able to interact makes

them realize there is a human behind your company, one they can relate

to.

Customers can share links and information about your brand in their own

posts if they like the information, services, and/or products you provide.

This means you get additional word-of-mouth advertising as easy as

someone clicking “share” on your posts.

Social media accounts, or profiles, generate more inbound traffic to your

website. Every time you add your link to a post on of your profiles, you are

creating a clickable opportunity to drive online traffic.

Even paid ads on social media platforms are relatively cheap forms of

marketing. And successfully marketing on social media does not require a

lot of work hours, making it one of the most cost effective marketing

strategies available.

In fact, social media marketing even increases organic traffic because

search engine algorithms now look at social media presence when ranking

search results.

You are able to provide a personal experience to your customers and

addresses problems quickly. Social media allows you to incorporate

customer service (which would otherwise be done through phone or email)

into your existing marketing channels.

Your ability to understand what your customers want is immensely

improved. You don’t need a team of people guessing at what would make

customers happier because you have direct communication with your

audience.

So, how do you make all these advantages work for you? This guide to marketing

on social media platforms will show you.

Facebook Business Basics

Let’s start with Facebook. Facebook is currently the top player in social media

marketing. Statistics show that it has the most users and interactions of any

existing social media platform. What does that mean for your business? It means

that Facebook is potentially a very profitable place to make your presence known.

The thing about Facebook is that many users go there for entertainment and to

interact with the people they know. They go there for news and information too.

They go there to see new things. If your business is providing one of the things

that people use Facebook for—news, information, entertainment—then they are

seeing what your business provides in exactly the same place where they are

interacting with their friends and family.

That means Facebook is one of the best word of mouth marketing tactics

available. Users can instantaneously see your post and share it with the people

they know. And those people are more likely to pay attention to what you share if

you are being vouched for by someone they trust.

If you can build this trust in the right way, you can greatly increase your business

profile and profits. And the affordability of the platform makes Facebook a terrific

place for solo entrepreneurs to advertise.

There are a few special features on Facebook that are unique to the platform.

Other social media platforms have similar features, but every platform does

things a little differently. Here are some of the things about Facebook that you

should be aware of.

Business categories

One of the first things you will set up for your Facebook business profile is your

business category. It is important to select the correct category so that people

searching for your specialty on Facebook or through a search engine will be able

to find you.

Relevance is huge when it comes to online marketing of any kind. If your

keywords and categories are not relevant to what you do, the customers who are

looking for you will not find you.

If you own a physical location for your business, it is very important that you

categorize your business as a “Local Business or Place” so that local customers are

able to locate you, check your hours, and check-in at your business location. A

check-in means that customers can post on their Facebook wall that they have

visited your business.

Once you choose the general category for your business, you will also be

prompted to select a subcategory. If you can’t find your specific business

category, it’s better just to choose one of the more general options like “product”

or “company”.

Facebook groups

Facebook groups are one of this platform’s unique features. Although it is not

necessary to join groups in order to market your business on Facebook, they

really can help. When you join groups that are relevant to your target audience,

or niche market, you can interact with the people who are most likely to be

interested in what your business provides.

Responding in groups and providing valuable information to your audience

increases your business’s authority in your field. And that can lead to group

members checking out and liking your page. If used correctly, these groups can

help your business obtain even more traffic through Facebook.

Your pinned post

Facebook allows you to include one pinned post on your business’s page. You

should consider carefully which post you choose to pin at the top of your wall.

Most users will only ever visit your page wall one time. And that’s when they first

find and like your page. After that their interactions with your business will be

through posts that show up on their newsfeed.

So the pinned post is what they will see at the top of your wall on that one and

only visit to your page. And that means it can be a deciding factor in whether

individuals will choose to like your page. If they don’t like your page, your posts

will not show up in their newsfeed, and you will miss out on reaching a potential

customer.

The best type of post to use for your pinned post is one with a relevant, high-

quality image and a topic that will hook your audience. You can change your

pinned post occasionally to reflect your current primary marketing campaign.

Posting frequency

Different social media platforms require different strategies. And with Facebook

your best bet is not to post too often, just a few times per day. Because so many

users are on Facebook, and they are inundated with so many posts on their

newsfeed, Facebook uses algorithms that determine which posts each user will

actually end up seeing on their feed.

That means that if you post too much, some of your more important posts might

not be seen at all as they are swallowed up in the flood. Another way to combat

this is to share your most important announcements, articles, or images more

than once, spread out by a few hours or days. This makes it more likely they more

of your audience ends up seeing the information you want to get out.

Incorporating various media

Facebook allows posts containing texts, links, photos, GIFs, and videos. You can

make the most of your marketing efforts on this platform by utilizing all these

available media for different posts. Know that posts with some kind of visual

element get far more views, likes, and shares that posts with only text content.

Static images

There are a couple of places on your Facebook page with static images. These are

your profile picture and your cover image. These are important aspects of your

marketing on Facebook because they make you and your campaign recognizable

to your audience. You should make sure that these images tie in with either your

brand or your current marketing campaign.

And don’t forget about quality. The higher the resolution of an image, the higher

the quality it is. You also need to select images that are the right size for fitting in

the designated areas. A profile picture on Facebook is 180 pixels by 180 pixels, so

if you choose an image that is larger than that, part of it will be cut off.

Call-to-action buttons

Another handy feature of Facebook is its call-to-action buttons. These are buttons

you can specifically add to link to important features of your business, such as

your blog, newsletter sign up, specific videos, products, and many other linked

information and services for your business. Call-to-action buttons can come in

extremely handy for directing any traffic that does land on your profile page.

Facebook messenger

Messenger may be considered more of a texting app for keeping up with friends

and family, but it can actually work quite efficiently in conjunction with your

Facebook business page. You can use messenger as a quick way to respond to

customers. And you can even use it to set up automatic responses with

Messenger bots.

These are some of the basic features to consider as you prepare your marketing

plan for your Facebook page.

Instagram Business Basics

It’s a good idea to focus on growing one social media platform at a time, but over

time you can grow your online presence by adding additional social media

platforms to your marketing strategy. You do not have to add platforms in the

order they are discussed here. The best strategy is to start with the platform that

you are most familiar with and that fits your marketing strategy for your business.

One of the big advantages of Instagram is that it allows you to easily share your

visual content with your audience on other social media platforms as well. That

makes it a nice platform for building up your other social media presences as you

go. And it also doesn’t use an algorithm to determine what your audience sees.

Anyone who follows you can potentially see everything you post if they are on the

app at the right time.

Because of this, Instagram can be a good second platform to set up a profile on. If

you already have a growing following on Facebook or Twitter, you can easily

continue to send posts to that platform while you build your Instagram audience.

Here are some things to know about using Instagram for business marketing.

What kind of images do you show on Instagram?

You may feel like Instagram isn’t necessarily a business platform because so many

pictures being shared there are of a personal nature. But that’s actually what

makes Instagram so effective for your business. You can humanize your business

by showing its personality.

You do that by posting pictures of the fun you have bringing your business plans

to life. You can show pictures of yourself and your colleagues, employees, or

business partners having a good time. You can also post pictures of business-

related events you attend. Anything that shows off your personality and the way

you want your business to be seen makes great visual content for this platform.

Another idea is to show behind-the-scenes photos of what your business does on

a daily basis. Show sketches, notes, or whiteboards at your office. You know your

process, so you can think about what process-oriented photos may interest your

audience. Many online businesses don’t produce physical products, but that

doesn’t mean you don’t have a process to share.

And of course it’s an excellent way to add visual content to your other platforms

so that you can focus on other kinds of content for direct posts on those pages.

Links in Instagram

You may have noticed that Instagram does not allow active hyperlinks in posts or

captions. This can make it difficult to drive traffic from Instagram to you site,

posts, or lead pages. The only exception to this limitation is that clickable links can

be used in paid advertisements on the app.

This means that for the most part you will have to use Instagram differently than

social media platforms where you can drive traffic back to your site. That being

said, you can get some inbound traffic with Instagram by putting a link in your

company’s bio. The links in the bio are clickable. You can simply include a

reminder in your captions to click the link in your bio for more information.

And keep in mind that you can change the link in your bio as often as you like. It

does not have to link directly to your primary website. You can use it to drive sign-

ups, opt-ins, and event registration, among other possibilities.

It’s also worth noting that although the links are not clickable on Instagram, when

you share them to other social media platforms they are live links that are able to

be clicked. Remember what we said about using Instagram to generate visual

content for your other platforms? So it can be worth including links in your

captions anyway.

Hashtags

Although hashtags are searchable on many social media platforms now, there are

certain platforms where they are more widely used than others.

Instagram is one of the platforms where incorporating hashtags into your

captions and comments can be beneficial to your online exposure. The number

one rule of using hashtags is to make them relevant to your post.

Just adding hashtags that you know are popular in order to gain wider reach is a

bad idea. It can turn off potential leads and cause your audience not to trust you

as much. Instead, choose a few relevant hashtags. Some can be campaign specific,

and others can be more generally used, like #tbt, or general to your business,

such as a hashtag with your brand name. You don’t need to max out the allowed

number of tags. That just makes your post cluttered and difficult to read.

Instagram Direct

Much like Facebook Messenger, Instagram Direct is a messaging app that allows

people connected with you on Instagram to send messages to you. This can come

in handy for businesses as a quick and inexpensive customer support service. Any

strategies that allow you to respond quicker to your audience boost their

confidence in you.

Although you can interact with your customers publicly on the platform,

Instagram Direct can be a good option for support issues that don’t necessarily

warrant a public answer.

Don’t underestimate your profile

Sometimes your audience doesn’t find your website. But they may find you on

Instagram. And that means you need to make your profile showcase who you are

and how your company stands out in your niche. It’s a chance for a first

impression.

These basics should give you some ideas for how to effectively utilize your

business Instagram account.

Twitter Business Basics

Twitter works differently from both Facebook and Instagram. Like Facebook, you

can use Twitter to send text and hyperlink content. But like Instagram, you see

every update that the people you follow post. That means that if you use Twitter

for your business, anyone who follows your profile will potentially see all of your

content.

That being said, if they follow a lot of people, your message still may get pushed

down their feed and go unnoticed. Take a look at a few of the ways Twitter can

benefit your business.

Join conversations

You can find other businesses in your industry also on Twitter. Rather than

treating them as competitors, you can actually increase your business by treating

them as part of your community. Join industry conversations to help make

yourself seen. Pose and answer questions. Or just search for conversations

relevant to your niche to give you ideas for your business and your content.

Also communicate regularly with your followers. Twitter is more like a

conversation than other social media platforms, and the platform makes it easy

for you respond back to those who respond to your tweets. It’s a good idea to do

this too because it shows your audience that you are a real person they can

engage with.

Customer service

Facebook and Instagram have messenger add-ons that can be effective for

customer service. But Twitter’s conversation-style platform makes it an effective

customer service tool in itself. If you set up notifications you can know when a

customer is trying to reach you and respond as soon as possible. Quick response

times are valuable to the people who are interested in what you provide.

As a small business owner, building relationships with your existing customer base

is essential to your success. Remember, one of the reasons people like to work

with small businesses is so they feel like they are working with real people rather

than a faceless corporation that doesn’t listen to them. Be the one that listens.

Find influencers

Influencers are people with authority in your industry. Networking with them can

help you boost your own level of authority and eventually increase the reach of

your business. The best way to interact with influencers is to watch what they

post for a while, and then find a relevant way to respond and provide value to

them. Do this a few times.

You can also add to a conversation by mentioning someone else in one of your

tweets. You mention someone by typing the “@” symbol and their username.

Eventually, they may just respond back to you once they become familiar with

seeing your name on their feed, and then you can begin building a business

relationship with them.

What’s in a tweet?

A tweet, or the message you post to this social media platform, can contain text,

images, links, gifs, or videos. Unlike Facebook, which will condense long text with

a “continue reading” link, Twitter has a character limit of 140 for each tweet. Your

visual content, excluding emojis, does not count toward the character limit.

Retweet

Retweeting is the Twitter version of sharing, and it is the primary way of

determining how popular your posts are. Although follower can also favorite a

tweet, ideally you want them retweeting what you post. In addition to posting

your own original content, you can also retweet other users’ content. This is a

good way to get noticed by influencers, as well, if they see that you are

retweeting their content.

#Hashtag

Twitter is the original social media platform to popularize the hashtag search

term, recognizable by the “#” symbol. Although hashtags are less widely used on

Facebook, on Twitter they are regularly used to categorize related tweets. And

this is an opportunity for your business to make itself more visible.

Just as you want to carefully select your website keywords to drive organic traffic

from search engines to your pages, selecting the right hashtags can help users

looking for specific information to find you. When a Twitter user searches a

hashtag category, they will see tweets that have been posted using that particular

hashtag.

These basics will get you started on the Twitter platform. Now let’s move on to

more details about how to maximize your business success on social media.

Creating Content for Social Media

Platforms

Each social media platform you use for your business will require its own unique

marketing strategies, and that includes content creation methods. Content

creation is probably the most important aspect of successfully marketing on social

media. This chapter will first give you some general tips for generating quality

content, and then we will go into specific advice for each of the three social media

platforms that we discuss in this guide.

There is one major factor you need to understand in order to be successful at

social media marketing, and that is the mind of your audience. Of course, you can

never fully understand another person’s mind, let alone hundreds of thousands of

minds. But you can make it a priority to learn as much as possible about what

your audience wants, and specifically what they want from you.

Part of this involves A/B testing of your content. If you try strategies that get no

response from your audience, then it’s time to let those techniques go and try

something else. Giving your audience what the right content is as much about

knowing what they do NOT want as knowing what they want.

You can never stop remembering that the success behind your business is actual

people, not the numbers you analyze.

Here are some suggestions for drawing in the people behind the screen.

Help your audience connect with each other. Many people use social media to

well…be social. They are not usually on there looking for products or services.

That being said, most people follow several businesses or entities that they

become fans of.

If you are creating content they want to see and share, they are more likely to

become a fan of your business. This is even easier when you are a small business

or solo entrepreneur. That’s because you can inject your own personality into

your posts.

Showing personality and making connections becomes harder and harder the

larger your business structure becomes. That means you actually have an

advantage on social media over large corporations.

How do you put this tip into action? Avoid posting content that just looks like an

advertisement for your business. Advertisements are not what social media is for,

and they do not work well as a marketing strategy on these platforms.

And try sharing good news that your followers will want other people to know

about. Studies show that positive news is actually more likely to be shared heavily

on social media than negative news stories.

Keep your message simple. This tip goes for all of the social media platforms.

Short, simple messages share much more (and are more likely to be read or

viewed) than long, complex posts. What constitutes the right length of post can

vary somewhat from platform to platform.

How do you put this tip into action? Despite different specific length

recommendations, what remains the same for each platform is that each message

you post should focus on only one thing. If you have something else to share, wait

and use it for another post at a different time.

Content for Facebook

Facebook recently implemented a video feed, and videos tend to get a lot of

attention on this social media platform. But what kinds of videos do you post to

Facebook? It’s best to steer clear of videos that look like television commercials.

Instead, you can share online content that your target audience would find

interesting. This does not have to be original content that you created. However,

it can be. You can make your own videos and live feeds of yourself talking to your

audience, which is a great way to connect.

Your best strategy is to use a combination of your own video content as well as

videos you find elsewhere online. If you’ve never made your own video before, it

may sound difficult. But it’s actually not hard at all. You can simply use your

smartphone to make a basic video that allows you to address your followers.

Here’s some advice on how to edit your video for free.

Of course, in most cases you don’t want to post only videos. You should vary your

content forms. And one thing you definitely want to be doing on your Facebook

page is posting links to your blog articles. These types of posts can (and should)

incorporate text content, an image, and a link.

Ideally you are posting to your blog at least once a week, and every one of those

articles should be posted to your Facebook page. This is an excellent way to drive

traffic to your blog and the rest of your website. But the reason you don’t want all

of your Facebook posts to just be your blog links is because you still need to build

a relationship with people in order to make them be interested in what you have

to say and to get them to trust you as an authority in your niche.

When you’re making a post that is an image unrelated to your blog content, it’s a

good idea to always include some kind of textual content with it. And a great way

to encourage interaction from your audience is to end your text with a question.

You don’t want to ask questions on every post, but people like being asked for

their opinion.

While we’re on the topic of formatting posts for Facebook, it’s really a good idea

to design each post for the specific social media platform you are posting it to.

Copying your Twitter post to your Facebook page looks lazy and doesn’t utilize

the formats that work best on this platform. You can post about the same things

on each of your profiles, but tailor them to the specific audience.

Content for Instagram

Instagram functions much differently from Facebook or Twitter. It is the platform

to go to for visual content. And that means you need to provide plenty of visual

content for your Instagram profile.

Where do you find this content? Look to your everyday business interactions.

Show the products you sell, events you attend, and people you work with. It

doesn’t have to be stuffy and professional. People use social media to unwind,

not specifically to shop. And that means you should make your content fun.

The good thing about the platform being so visual is that if you have a physical or

digital product to sell, you can get images of those products in front of your

audience. Just remember you have to engage them, and that means sharing other

types of images as well.

Create stories with your images. You do this by choosing images that convey

meaning. Don’t just fill your profile with as many images as possible.

Your images do not always have to relate directly to your market, but they should

always be related in a way that makes sense to viewers. They should be able to

understand why the image is relevant. The majority of images you share on

Instagram should be photos that you have taken yourself. And you don’t need

fancy equipment, just snapping a raw image with your phone works amazingly.

Instagram also offers a variety of filters and editing tools you can use on your

images. Don’t be afraid to try them out in order to make photos more interesting.

Although photos continue to be the most popular format on Instagram, you can

increase your follower interactions by also including GIFs and videos.

Although you can of course place links in your posts, users cannot click them, and

this can be frustrating. You can try using a URL shortening service like Bitly or

Owly in order to make it easier for your audience to copy and paste your links.

These URL shorteners also provide statistics on how many people have used your

short link, so you can perform testing to see if users actually will copy and paste

from your Instagram post.

Content for Twitter

One thing about Twitter content that

makes it different from other social

media platforms is that you can get away

with posting more often on Twitter.

Twitter is like a conversation. And you

post in snippets, not full stories. This

makes it a perfect place for businesses to

get responses and really start a dialogue

around their niche.

And that brings up the most important point about content for Twitter—keep it

short. Focus on one specific message and include a blog link if there is more that

needs to be said about it. There’s no need to fit multiple points into one tweet

because you can send another relatively soon. As with Instagram, it’s a good idea

to use shortened URLs like Bitly and Owly on your tweet to save characters.

Remember, each tweet is only allowed 140 characters, not including visual

content.

The good thing is that if you already have a little marketing background, you may

be accustomed to crafting short, impactful headlines, slogans, and campaign

titles.

Because Twitter is a conversation, it’s also the most important social media

platform for using hashtags. Posting a hashtag allows your followers to find

connected parts of the discussion.

Also, don’t be afraid to ask for a retweet. You can do this creatively. If you just

type “please retweet” on every post, you probably won’t get much benefit from

that. But if you offer a bonus to followers who retweet your message, you can

definitely see a difference in how much your posts get spread.

For instance, if you are running a giveaway or contest, you can offer extra entries

for retweeting. Of course, you should make sure that whatever you are offering is

something you can follow through with if you get more retweets than usual. Few

things turn of prospects faster than failure to follow through.

Like posts on other platforms, your tweets can benefit from adding a GIF, photo,

or video. However, on Facebook and Instagram a visual should be added for every

single post. With Twitter, you do not need a visual element for every post. In fact,

if you are posting often, you would probably be better off not adding visuals every

single time.

The tips in this chapter should help you to come up with some ideas for where to

get content and how to format your content for various social media platforms.

As a final tip on content, make sure that you brainstorm plenty of content ideas to

use before you ever need them. This will help you keep up with your marketing

campaign without getting stressed or burned out by your social media campaign.

Benefits and Features

Each of the social media platforms covered in this guide has its own distinct

benefits and features. This chapter will cover those in order to help you make a

choice about which platform you would like to focus on first, as well as making

you aware of the different ways you can use each platform by taking advantage of

its features.

So let’s take a look at each platform separately.

Benefits and features of Facebook

Facebook is one of the most successful platforms for building a business presence

on. Some experts are saying it’s better to move on to the newer social media

platforms and forget about Facebook, but that is absolutely not the case. Maybe

Facebook isn’t the shiny new toy anymore, but it is an established form of

outreach and an efficient way to find new customers and interact with existing

ones.

Here are the tops benefits of marketing on Facebook.

Exposure to new customers. Over a billion users are on Facebook. That means

you are sure to find people interested in your niche on this platform.

With that many people gathered in one place, you would have to be working in an

entirely unknown niche in order not to gain some interest on Facebook. That

makes this platform an excellent place to impress potential customers.

Enhances lead gathering initiatives. If you use Facebook correctly, you are not

just hording likes on your posts. You are using those posts to drive traffic back to

your website and mailing list sign-up page. This way, you maintain a connection

with your leads even off the platform.

Builds brand loyalty. This basically means that being active on Facebook allows

your followers to get to know and love your business’s personality. Marketing on

social media is in part a form of entertainment for your followers. And if you do

this effectively, they won’t just be customers; they will be fans.

What about the features that can aid you in the pursuit of these benefits?

Facebook ads are an excellent feature for businesses on the platform. They are

much more effective for small businesses than TV or radio ads. Let’s look at why.

When you use Facebook ads, the ads are specifically targeted to people who are

interested in your business niche. TV ads, on the other hand, are much less

specifically targeted. If you get an ad that plays during an episode of The Big Bang

Theory, you may be reaching some of the people in your target audience, but

many people watching the show are not in your target audience.

Facebook ads, on the other hand, allow you to select the demographics your ads

will reach so that you are likely to get more leads from your advertising

investment.

Facebook insights allows you to keep track of your statistics without needing to

know a lot about numbers and analysis. It presents your page information in easy-

to-understand graphs.

This feature is a huge help for solo entrepreneurs who are doing their own testing

and analysis but don’t have time to dedicate large portions of their work day to

these activities.

Insights allows you to see your post reach and the interactions for your posts. And

the graphs allow you to easily see whether there was a spike in interactions on a

particular day.

Taking a look at what you posted that caused these spikes will help you to know

which types of posts your followers respond to the best.

Benefits and features of Instagram

Instagram can seem like a difficult online marketing tool for some entrepreneurs,

especially if you haven’t used it much. But with the right strategies, Instagram

really can be a wonderful part of your marketing arsenal. Despite how different

this social media platform can seem from the others at first, its benefits are quite

similar.

Quickly expanding to the global market. If you are running an online business,

you can have customers anywhere in the world. This is doubly true if you sell

digital products that don’t require extra shipping costs to travel long distances.

And Instagram is definitely a global platform. About 80 percent of Instagram’s

more than 500 million users live outside the US.

In fact, Instagram is better suited to targeting online or global niches than local

business audiences.

Allows up to 30 hashtags per post. Instagram allows more hashtags per post than

any of the other popular social media platforms. Of course, you probably don’t

want to spam your post with all 30 allowable hashtags. Your followers’ eyes will

probably blur and stop reading them. But the high limit does give you plenty of

room to play around with these useful tags.

Increases your chance for repeat purchases. If you get your audience to really

engage with your brand on Instagram, you have a good chance of keeping your

customers coming back to you for more. Because this platform is so visual, it

keeps your company and your products or services in front of your target

audience. Using those hashtags is a good way to help you find your followers.

And here’s the feature of Instagram that will benefit your business the most.

Instagram photos are easily shareable across multiple marketing channels. Every

photo you take can be quickly accessed and shared to your other social media

accounts or used on your website and in your email newsletters. And because

Instagram has some included filters and editing tools, your Instagram photos are

better to use across channels than just generic photos.

Benefits and features of Twitter

Twitter tends to be the most text-based of the social media platforms. This is the

place where people go to share ideas. Sure, photos, videos, and GIFs are here too,

but if you want to start a conversation, Twitter is the place to be. Like Instagram,

Twitter works best in networking and building relationships with your followers.

It’s not really a place for advertising in the traditional sense. If you make your

posts into mini-commercials, you will likely have difficulty gaining followers.

Take a look at a few of Twitter’s unique benefits.

Get ideas from influencers. Whatever your niche, there is sure to be someone in

your field who is already successful doing what you would like to do with your

business (or something very similar). Seek out those people. Become their

followers. Yes, following others is an essential step to gaining your own following

later.

These people will introduce you to relevant ideas and maybe help you think of

things that you wouldn’t have on your own.

And they can also become valuable mentors or even partners for your business.

Twitter exposes you quickly to a range and quantity of ideas that would otherwise

take you hours to come across through research or by chance. Twitter is

absolutely an opportunity to learn from those who are already successful.

Plenty of material for market research. Twitter allows you to do your market

research and your marketing all in one place. Watch what people in your niche

are tweeting about. Find out what makes them tick, what they are interested in,

and what they are missing but would really like to have.

Twitter has been referred to as a microblogging service. Sometimes you have

important things to say to your audience that don’t necessarily require an entire

blog article to express. This can create short, easy-to-read snippets of useful

information for your audience. And that means people who are too busy to read

your full blog articles can still build a connection with you and your business.

So what features are the most helpful on this social media platform?

Twitter has is designed to show you every tweet from the people you follow.

That makes it convenient to use as a news source for your niche. If you are

following other Twitter users who work in your niche, are hobbyists in your niche,

or are influencers in your niche, you will see instant updates of any new event or

change.

This allows you to respond quickly and be a relevant resource for your own

followers. And it can also allow you to tailor your marketing plan to what is

happening at the moment so that you can take advantage of trends in your niche.

These benefits and features should help you in designing marketing plans that

make the most of each platform’s advantages.

How to Set Up Your Business Accounts

Okay, so now you have an idea about what you would like to put on your social

media pages. But if you don’t already have these accounts set up, you may be

wondering if there’s any special knowledge required to get your business up and

running, and making connections with your audience. No worries—this chapter

provides the step-by-step process for setting up your business profile on

Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

Setting up a Facebook profile for your business

It only takes a few minutes to set up a Facebook page for your business. And you

can do it from your desktop or laptop computer, or your mobile device (tablet or

smartphone), whichever you prefer to use.

Step 1. Select your category. This step is easy. Just choose whether you are

making your page for a local business, a company, or a brand/product. There are

a few other categories as well, but these are the ones most likely to be used by a

business social media page. If your sales will be predominantly online and/or you

do not have a physical location, do not select local business.

Step 2. Be prepared with a name for your business Facebook page. Ideally, it

should be your business name or something very similar. If you run your business

under your name, you can make the page your name plus a description of what

you do. For example, your page could be called “Beth Turner, Photographer”.

The best tips for selecting a page title is to keep it short and relevant. You won’t

be able to change it later. If you want to change the title of your page, you will

have to make a new one and try to move all your existing followers to the new

page. If for some reason your business has a very long name, you may consider a

shortened version for your Facebook page title, but it’s up to you to decide what

will be best for your business.

And one last tip on setting up your page title—don’t make it your URL. This

usually doesn’t work well in ads if you’d eventually like to make advertisements

for your Facebook page.

Step 3. Prepare a description for your “About” section. Every Facebook page has

an About section. This is where you tell people what you do, and many people

may read it to decide whether they’d like to follow your page.

The key to a good about section is to keep it brief and provide the most important

information. You should let people know what your business niche is, and include

key words that will help relevant individuals to find your page. You can edit this

section later if you need to.

Step 4. Add your business URL. This is absolutely imperative. You want to use

your Facebook page to drive traffic to your website, so don’t forget to provide

that information for your followers.

Step 5. Add photos. You will have a place for a profile picture and a cover image

on your Facebook page.

The cover image is the large, primary image seen when people visit your page. It

should make a good first impression, but this is an image people likely will not see

often after clicking “follow”.

The profile picture, on the other hand, will be attached to every post that you

make from your business page. And that means you should really put some

thought into what picture you will use. This will be the image that followers most

associate with you and your brand. Note, however, that you can change either of

these images at any time.

It’s best to choose an image that is square for your profile picture. Otherwise,

Facebook will crop it to be square, so you’ll want to make sure this doesn’t

negatively affect the way the image looks. When you select your cover image,

check how it looks both on your desktop page and from a mobile device. The

image will be cropped on each side on smaller mobile device screens. You just

want to make sure that important parts of the image are still visible.

Step 6. Add a call-to-action button. This is an absolutely fabulous feature of

Facebook pages that allows you to put a button right at the top of your page. If

someone visits, the button allows them to easily take the action you are trying to

accomplish with your marketing campaign.

The buttons can be used to allow people to quickly and easily send you a direct

message, send you an email, call you, watch a video of yours for more

information, go to your website or web sign-up form, or several other options.

Note: You will not be able to set up a personalized Facebook URL right away.

Instead, your page will be assigned a URL with a string of numbers at the end.

Once you have reached 25 followers, you will be allowed to set up the URL you

want, and you definitely should do this.

Setting up an Instagram profile for your business

An important thing to note about Instagram is that it is designed to be used as an

app on a mobile device. You can access it from a web browser on your computer,

but you cannot post images in that way. That means you absolutely must have

your Instagram business profile set up from your smartphone or tablet. Here’s

what to do

Step 1. Download the app and enter your email address. You will be prompted to

just sign up with your Facebook account, but you do not want to do this when

making a business profile. It will automatically grab your personal email address

from your personal Facebook account.

Instead, fill out the sign up with your business email. You should use the email

address that goes directly to you so that people you have already made

connections with can easily find you.

Step 2. Create a username. Your username will be visible every time you post, so

make sure you pick one that will make your brand or business recognizable to

your audience. This is the name they will associate your products or services with

on Instagram. So make sure that it makes sense.

Step 3. Add a profile image. Now, take a look at the size of the little circle with a

plus sign where you click to add your profile picture. See how tiny that circle is?

That is the actual size your profile picture will show up as. That means you need

to pic an image that is simple and easily recognizable.

Anything with intricate details will be too small for followers to make out. If you

have a logo design, you can use this. But I suggest considering a more personal

touch. Especially if you are a solo entrepreneur, a headshot can be a great choice.

And you can still work in your logo if you have a coffee mug or something to hold

in the picture that has your logo or business name on it.

Step 4. Add your business information. If your business has a name, you can put

that in the name section, or you can just use your own name. And remember to

fill out the bio section! This is the only place on Instagram where you can use a

clickable URL. Make the most of that opportunity.

Setting up a Twitter profile for your business

On Twitter, setting up a business profile really isn’t much different from setting up

a personal profile. You will just be using the account a little differently from how

you would use one for your personal entertainment and information. This is

different from Facebook, where you must have an individual account in order to

work as the admin for your Facebook business page.

Here is how to tailor the setup process to your business.

Step 1. First you will select your username. Give it some thought because this

unique identifier is how people will find your business on Twitter. Note that you

will also be prompted to add your name, and this will show up above your

username. On tweets it will be to the left of your username, which is the name

people use to respond to you with the “@” symbol.

Your Twitter username is permanent for your account. But the name you go by

can be changed.

Step 2. Next choose a profile photo and header photo. The header will only be

seen when people visit your profile. The profile picture will show up next to all of

your tweets, so it will be the image that followers associate with your brand.

Step 3. Add your bio description. This is where you tell people what your business

is about. Remember to use key words. Twitter allows clickable links in all tweets,

but it’s still a good idea to add your URL here.

These are the basic steps for setting up your social media profiles.

How to Navigate Social Media Platforms

Now that you have your accounts all set up, it’s time to learn how to find your

way around all those features and posts. Finding, reading, and sharing other

people’s posts works fairly similarly across all three platforms. That’s because

social media designers take the age-old business advice that there is no need to

reinvent the wheel.

If a technique is already working, you’re more likely to have success if you don’t

confuse people. And that’s good advice for you too as you form a social media

marketing plan.

Get to know people

One of the first steps (and most important steps) you should take as you start to

use social media for your marketing campaigns is to get to know people in your

niche.

This is easy to do. All the platforms provide a feed where you can see information

from the people you follow.

Of course, you won’t start out following anyone. So how do you decide who you

should follow on your business feeds? First of all, there is no magic number for

how many people or brands your business should be following. However, the

more pages and people you are following, the more you are exposed to what is

going on in your niche and in the world, and that is definitely a good thing.

On the other side of the coin, if you follow too many people, you are less likely to

see all the things they post. That means you should be somewhat selective about

how you choose to follow for your business. Think about whether this particular

page or person can add value to your niche in some way.

The profiles you follow absolutely do not have to lead directly to sales for you.

That is not the point. But they should allow you to find information and make

connections in your niche and with your target audience. It’s a good idea to look

for profiles that share content you are interested in and would like to share with

your own followers. (Remember, not all of your content has to be original.)

Here’s a quick list of people to follow:

Influencers in your niche, who can be other business leaders and

entrepreneurs or well-known hobbyists;

Your own clients and customers (following them helps to build a

relationship);

People who are likely to talk about and share content in your niche.

Now, you should know that on some platforms, people will follow you just to try

to get a follow-back from you. These people are not really interested in your

content; they are just trying to build their fan base. This is why you do not need to

(and should not) follow everyone who follows you.

If someone unfollows just because you don’t follow them, then they probably

were not interested in your business in the first place. Following too many people

will make it difficult for you to have quality interactions on social media.

Check your feed

Once you’ve followed a few other profiles, you should start checking your feed on

the platforms you’ve chosen to market on. This helps you to keep up with what is

going on in your niche and helps you to produce ideas for your own content. Just

don’t become obsessive over this.

Make peace early on with the fact that you will not see every single relevant piece

of content. You cannot spend your whole day on social media or the rest of your

work will never get done. Social media is a tool that you need to learn to use

efficiently. Ideally, you don’t want to spend more than an hour each business day

on your social media strategies, especially if you are handling everything yourself.

The good news is that most of your platforms have methods available to schedule

your posts so that you can interact throughout the day without having to take

time out of other tasks.

The exception to this is checking direct messages. If you get a notification about a

direct message, you should check it as soon as possible. This is a great opportunity

to interact with a customer or potential customer. Treat messages on your

business profiles like customer support calls. You don’t want to leave them

waiting too long.

Post your content

The next major thing you need to do is learn how to post content on each

platform. Social media is made to be easy for users to navigate, so you should get

the hang of it fairly quickly for each of them.

On Facebook, if you visit your own page you’ll see a place near the top, below

your cover image and page information, where you can type up a post and add

visual media to it. For Instagram, you’ll see a small icon that says “+ your story”

where you can snap a pic and add a caption.

And on Twitter, it depends whether you are using the mobile or browser version.

On the browser, you will see a text box to type in and add your post. For the

Twitter app, a small circle icon with a quill will be on your feed for adding your

own posts. You can also add content to your platforms by sharing content from

websites with social media sharing buttons, other users’ posts, and content from

other platforms. Remember to tweak the content delivery between platforms.

Check your stats

Checking your engagement stats on social media has become easy. You don’t

need any separate software to see how well your social media marketing

campaigns are going. Each platform offers ways to track your success.

Facebook

To use Facebook Insights, look for the tab at the top of your page (whether using

mobile or browser) that says “Insights”. From there, you will be taken to the page

that shows your post reach, page visitors, and post engagement statistics.

Instagram

As long as your Instagram account is set up as a business profile, you have access

to Instagram Insights, which provide stats very similar to Facebook Insights.

Access this information by going to your profile and clicking the bar graph icon.

Twitter

Twitter Analytics are optional, so you will need to turn them on to see info about

how many likes and retweets you’ve gotten.

How to Monetize Social Media Platforms

Monetizing your social media platforms is less about actually making money from

your profiles on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, and more about driving traffic

from those profiles to the places where you are actually doing business. That

would be your website, lead pages, and mailing list (email newsletter).

And you do that by building and engaging your audience. That being said, there

are a few things you can do to drive extra sales with your social media profiles.

Posting your products (in moderation)

Because social media is so image heavy, you can easily post images of your

products (even digital products) to your pages. Add a clickable link, and you may

even get customers buying your products right from the product link on your

social media page. You can even make this work on Instagram, despite it not

offering clickable links on posts. Just make a note in the caption that the product

is available by clicking the link in your bio (which would lead to the product

section of your website).

That being said, you should only make these kinds of posts very rarely, and only

after you have an active following that engages with your posts on a regular basis.

People do not like feeling like a page is just trying to sell something to them.

However, they do like buying things from a person or business they are already a

fan of.

Facebook even gives you the option of adding a shopping button to your page.

Offering special promotions

You should be grateful for your social media followers, especially those that are

sharing your posts. They are essential to your social media marketing campaigns.

And that makes offering special promotions to your followers an excellent

strategy.

First, giving followers a special discount makes them feel appreciated. And that

helps you to retain page engagement and return customers. Second, your loyal

fans are more likely to tell their friends about your page if they feel like they are

helping out someone they know with a relevant discount. They will feel like they

are letting their friends in on a helpful secret.

That means your new followers benefit from the discounts, and you benefit from

increased awareness and more leads from your target audience.

Making affiliate ads

This is another one of those tactics that needs to be used sparingly. But you may

be able to get related companies to pay you in exchange for advertising their

product. It’s another benefit of visual-rich social media.

You can make review videos or blogs and post them to your social media pages.

Your sponsor will then pay you for marketing their products. The amount and

payment terms varies widely between companies.

Keeping your current customers coming back

Social media platforms are excellent tools for retaining your current customers.

With all of the options available for information and entertainment, if someone

follows your page it means they are really interested in hearing from you. And all

you have to do to keep them coming around is deliver on the content they expect.

This is why it is important to have a schedule for posting to your blogs (or

whatever other long-format content you prefer, like podcasts or videos) and then

posting those links to your various social media platforms. Staying in front of your

audience is essential to maintaining brand awareness and remaining relevant.

Here are a few tips for maintaining follower engagement.

Give them what they want. If your followers are making requests of you or

posting particular images all the time in your niche, then you should respond to

that. Post the kinds of visuals that your particular target audience likes to see.

Offer the information they have been asking for.

Turn the attention to them. Everyone loves getting a little attention. If fans are

commenting on your page or sharing pictures of your products, take the time to

thank them or include them in your next post somehow. If you notice a huge

number of fans engaging in a particular way, find a way to make that engagement

part of what you do on your profile.

Solve problems for them. This is a business basic. People are willing to spend

money on solutions to the problems they have. One way to do this is to offer

digital products with the information your followers need, like ebooks, guides,

and how-to videos.

Trying a few or all of these tips will help you to get started making money from

your social media profiles.

How to Advertise on Social Media

Platforms

You already know that the big benefit to advertising on social media is that it is

much less expensive than other more traditional forms of advertising. That being

said, you still don’t want to waste your money on methods that don’t work. So

this chapter will help you figure out how to advertise on social media platforms.

One thing to keep in mind is that simply being active on social media is in itself a

form of advertising. But you may at some point want to utilize the paid

advertising options, and they really can help boost your sales. And all the

platforms that allow advertising allow you to set your ad budget.

Facebook ads

Facebook offers several different formats for paid advertisements, including

photo and video ads. These adds can be used to provide click-thru links to your

website or products, and you can even add call-to-action buttons to them to

make the intent of your ad clear. Carousel and slideshow options are available

that allow you to use multiple images and links in one advertisement.

But the big advantage of advertising on Facebook is that this platform has the

most advanced audience targeting tools of any platform. You can filter your ads to

reach specific user demographics, interests, and social media behaviors. There are

probably more targeting options than you need at first, but this is a great way to

make sure that your money is being spent on the people most likely to convert to

sales in your niche.

Facebook even makes it easy for you by asking you to choose your campaign

objective. That means you have to have a goal for your ad campaign (and you

should even if Facebook wasn’t asking for it).

Instagram ads

Because Facebook owns Instagram, the ad process is quite similar on both

platforms. You again have photo, video, and carousel ads available. And you will

select from a list of specific objectives to help you keep your campaign on track.

You will also be able to specify your target audience, but remember, Instagram

and Facebook cater to different demographics.

Twitter ads

Twitter offers three distinct types of ad. These are Promoted Accounts, Promoted

Trends, and Promoted Tweets. Promoted Tweets and Promoted Accounts are the

ads you will most likely be using the most. They are more affordable and can be

used to target specific goals like driving traffic to your site or gaining more

followers. Twitter also allows you to define your target audience (though not to

the same extent as Facebook), and you can schedule the campaign to begin on

and end on particular dates.

All of these ads are easy to set up by following the process on the platform’s ads

page and adding your images or videos.

Conclusion—Use What Works

One thing to keep in mind is that your marketing strategy will be different for

every social media platform you market on. Each platform works differently, has

different audience, and has users that use the platform differently from their

other social media accounts.

With experimentation and the help from this guide, you will find social media

marketing strategies that work for you, your business, and the platforms you

choose to work on. The way to make social media work for you is to understand

your goals and what you expect to get from social media marketing. Are you using

it to drive more traffic to your website? Are you using it to increase your sales?

Are you using it primarily as a way to retain loyal customers? Think about your

plan before you set up your profiles. (And your goals can include all of these

suggestions. You don’t have to stick to one.)

Just remember to focus on only a couple of goals at a time and build your way up.

If you try to do too many things at once you may find yourself in over your head.

You should also make sure that you recognize the measurable objectives of your

plan. Perform A/B testing on as many items as you can (again, sticking to only one

or two at a time). A/B testing should continue for as long as you are in business.

Test which types of posts work best.

What’s the best content? What’s the best length for a post on a particular

platform? What kind of pictures or videos seem to get the most engagement from

your target audience? Nearly everything you do on social media can be tested to

get the most from your online marketing campaign.

You should always be testing and trying to improve. And it doesn’t have to take

up a ton of your time. Remember that social media is only one aspect of your

overall business plan.

The biggest consideration to keep in mind as you find what works for you is that

you want to choose strategies that work for your particular target audience. It will

do you know good if your strategies are perfect…for the wrong audience.

Get to know who your ideal customer is. Get to know who some of your actual

customers are and why they like to work with you. The good news is that social

media is perfect for making these kinds of connections and audience research.

You probably already use social media for your own entertainment, networking,

and relationship connections. It’s fun. And it’s important to keep that in mind

when you use it for your business too. It doesn’t have to be all serious just

because it’s professional. Make it fun, and have fun with it as you build your own

social media following for your business.